TIPRR 11

Looking at Barry, one of the things that was especially interesting to me was his outline of how Marxism is interpreted. In other chapters, he had one or two variations on a theme, but with Marxism, it seemed like there were so many cooks in the kitchen it was almost entirely impossible to differentiate the head chef: Marx, Engels, Hegel, Eagleton, Belsey, Lenin, all those Russian Formalists, Althusser, etc. When I finished, I found it interesting that his section, “What Marxist critics do,” had to be separated into “methods” rather than generalized directions (as I interpret other chapters) because you can choose to make a division between the overt and the covert, or you could relate the context of the work to the social-class status of the author, or you could explain the whole literary genre in terms of the social period that produced it, or you can look at the social assumptions of the time it which it is consumed, and lastly, you can claim that literary forms are themselves are determined by political circumstance. Wow, the possibilities! Oh, and I should mention that there are varying degrees of each method that you can take (as explained in the Stop and Think section). Because of my own personality, I think that I end up in the Althusser realm in my philosophies (if I were to related myself as a Marxist) and like looking at those subtle views of how society works. To me it felt like he was one foot in Marxism (because there is a meaning) and one foot in postmodernism (because he likes looking beyond the “sign” to what is going on underneath).

Now, because of the variations on Marxism that exist, the matter that I had more than one choice to focus on was a little unnerving: How do I look at Chosen? Can’t really say for sure. I could look at the helplessness of the lower-class monk to the upper-class car driver (though I think it up to debate that the monks are particularly destitute because they had the funds to hire “the hire.”) I could also look at how Ang Lee was a recent addition to the A-list directors because of his most recent award-winning hit: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and the possible pretention that comes with an Asian director “proving” the spiritual superiority of Asian mysticism in the face of the BMW western world. On the other hand, this film is pre 9/11 and the Western power over the threat of subtle conspiracies was unquestioned at this point in time, perhaps never even looked at, thus heightening the superiority of the western social structure and the prominence of such iconic forms of “upper class” as having a BMW as a vehicle used in conjunction with a “transportation” job – we are so rich that even our menial jobs of transporting people are done in luxury cars. At the time (May 2001), Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun had been out for roughly 4 years (both released in 1997), the reality of Tibetan monk refugees was easily accepted and China’s involvement in Tibet and the need for westerners to intervene in their time of need was a topic of debate. In 2000 the Dalai Lama made the statements, “we need to develop more altruism and a sense of caring and responsibility for others in the minds of the younger generation” and “As long as there is no freedom in many parts of the world there can be no real peace and in a sense no real freedom for the rest of the world” – both the boy showing his superior altruism and the lack of peace and freedom explicit in the film reflect these statements that have direct political circumstance relations. But what “method” should I choose to elaborate on? It does make for a fun game, though.