Philosophy Now Forum

There are two sides to every story. The right side and the wrong side. The good side and the bad side. The true side and the false side.

And then there’s the real world.

But most will see this guy as a scumbag and what he did as despicable. And Robbins shows us just how despicable. Personally, I think the state did the right thing. My real qualms with execution revolve around what can happen to the innocent in a criminal justice system that can be at times nothing less than criminal itself. But that really wasn’t applicable here.

Though both Robbins and Sarandon are known political activists on the left [and opposed to the death penalty] you can’t say they didn’t bend over backwards here to show both sides of the issue. Towards the end, just when you think the whole focus is going to shift to Poncelet’s narrative [his suffering, his redemption], the actual execution itself is interspersed with a depiction of what these two men did to the victims the night of the crime—the rape and the murders.

Basically, they show us that both sides are right. We simply view the events from a conflicting set of value judgments embedded in a conflicting understanding of what is good.

Of course God and Jesus are practically Marxist revolutionaries here.

Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen: What about you?
Matthew: l live here.
Sister Helen: You were brought up poor?
Matthew: Ain’t nobody with money on death row.
Sister Helen: You and l have something in common then.
Matthew: What’s that?
Sister Helen: We both live with the poor.

Next up: the parts they don't have in common.

Matthew: l don’t trust nobody in here. But you don’t kiss my ass or preach that hellfire brimstone crap. I respect that. You got guts. You live in a neighborhood with every n***** carrying a gun.

Clearly, a man whose life is worth saving.

Matthew: We have to prove l’m innocent.
Hilton: We’ll file appeals with the federal and supreme courts for that but this is a pardon board. They won’t care if you shot the gun. They’ll be thinking of the crime. And of you as a monster. lt’s easy to kill a monster but hard to kill a human being.

Though for some it's actually the other way around. Matthew maybe?

Matthew: l like being alone with you. You’re looking real good to me.
Sister Helen: Look at you. Death is breathing down your neck, and you’re playing your little male come-on games. l’m not here for your amusement, Matthew. Show some respect.
Matthew: Why, cause you’re a nun?
Sister Helen: Because I’m a person. Every person deserves respect.

No, really, how ridiculous is that?

Hilton: Ladies and gentlemen, let’s be honest. You’re not gonna find many rich people on death row. Matthew Poncelet’s here today because he’s poor. Didn’t have money so he had to take what the State gave him. He got a tax lawyer who’d never tried a capital case before. An amateur. The lawyer raised one objection the entire trial.

That's one more than some get.

Hilton: The death penalty. lt’s nothing new, been with us for centuries. We’ve buried people alive, lopped off their heads, burned them alive in public, gruesome spectacles. In this century, we kept searching for more and more humane ways of killing people we didn’t like. We’ve shot them with firing squads, suffocated them in gas chambers. But now…now we have developed a device that is the most humane of all: Lethal injection. We strap the guy up. We anesthetize him with shot number one. Then we give him shot number two which implodes his lungs. And shot number three stops his heart. We put him to death just like an old horse. His face just goes to sleep while inside, his organs are going through Armageddon. His facial muscles would contort, but shot number one relaxes those muscles. So we don’t have to see any horror show. We don’t have to taste the blood of revenge while this human being’s organs writhe, twist, contort. We just sit there quietly, nod our heads and say: ‘‘Justice has been done.’’

Of course there are those who want to see all these things. Folks who think that is just what he deserves.

Slavoj Žižek

The problem of materialism is not 'does reality exist outside?' The problem is 'does our mind exist?' How does my mind exist and how is it inherent to reality?

Then the part where it seems that some minds clearly exist more than others. But are they compelled to?

It is only when we despair and don't know anymore what to do that change can be enacted - we have to go through this zero point of hopelessness.

How's that not working out for you?

It is the reign of contemporary global capitalism which is the true Lord of Misrule.

On the other hand, what if it's still the best of all possible worlds?

Our thesis eleven today should be: "Critical leftists have hitherto only dirtied with dust the balls of those in power – the point is to cut them off."

Shouldn't that be way up in the top 10?

It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology.

No, really, you tell me.

Authentic emancipatory events always involve ignoring particular identities as irrelevant.

His "woke" in other words.

Dead Man Walking

State’s attorney: There’s been no doubt in the court’s mind about who did the murder. Matthew Poncelet is not a good boy. He is a heartless killer. These murders were calculated, disgusting and cruel. This man shot Walter Delacroix two times in the back of his head. And raped Hope Percy and stabbed her 17 times before shooting this sweet girl two times in the back of the head. These families will never see their children graduate from college. They will never attend their wedding. They will never have Christmas with them again. There will be no grandchildren. All they ask of you is simple justice for their unbearable loss. l ask you to take a breath, steel your spine and proceed with the execution of Matthew Poncelet.

That works for me. Well, "here and now".

Earl Delacroix: Excuse me, Sister, l’m Walter Delacroix’s father.
Sister Helen: Mr. Delacroix, l’m sorry about–
Earl Delacroix: Sister, l’m a Catholic. How can you sit by Poncelet’s side without ever having come to visit with me and my wife or the Percys to hear our side? How can you spend all your time worrying about Poncelet and not think that maybe we needed you too?
Sister Helen: Mr. Delacroix, l didn’t think that you wanted to talk to me.
Earl Delacroix: This is Mary Beth and Clyde Percy.
Sister Helen: l’m sorry about your daughter.
Clyde Percy: Yeah, so are we. Excuse us.
Earl Delacroix: Listen, Sister, l’m sure you’ve seen a side of Matt Poncelet that none of us has seen. l’m sure he’s on his best behavior, must be pretty sympathetic to you. But, Sister, this is an evil man. This is a man who abducted teenage kids and raped and killed them. That scum robbed me of my only son. My name, my family name dies with me. There will be no more Delacroixs, Sister. No more.

Conflicting goods, let's call them.

Sister Helen: Do you ever read the Bible?
Matthew: l ain’t much of a Bible reader, but l pick it up from time to time.
Sister Helen: Like W.C. Fields read his Bible.
Matthew: Who?
Sister Helen: W.C. Fields. He used to play this drunken character in the movies. He’s dying and a friend comes and sees him reading the Bible. The friend says, ‘‘W.C., you don’t believe in God. Why are you reading the Bible?’’ And Fields says, ‘‘l’m looking for a loophole.’’

None that I know of. How about you?

Clyde Percy: l just couldn’t bear the thought of them burying that body without making absolutely and positively sure that that was Hope. l called my brother, he’s a dentist. l asked him to go to the funeral home and make an l.D. from dental records. Before he’d stuck his hand into that bag with all that lime in it and fished Hope’s jaw out he’d been against the death penalty. And after that, he was all for it.

See how it works? You believe this. Then you have a profound personal experience and you find yourself believing that instead.

Mary Beth Percy: So, what made you change your mind?
Sister Helen: Change my mind?
Mary Beth Percy:What made you come around to our side?
Sister Helen: l wanted to come and see if l could help y’all and pray with you. But he asked me to be his spiritual adviser, to be with him when he dies.
Mary Beth Percy:: And what did you say?
Sister Helen: That l would.
Mary Beth Percy: We thought you’d changed your mind. We thought that’s why you were here.
Sister Helen: No.
Clyde Percy: How can you come here? How can you do that? How can you sit with that scum?
Sister Helen: Mr. Percy, l’ve never done this before. l’m trying…l’m trying to follow the example of Jesus who said that every person is worth more than their worst act.
Clyde Percy: This is not a person. This is an animal. No, l take that back. Animals don’t rape and murder their own kind! Matthew Poncelet is God’s mistake. And you want to hold the poor murderer’s hand? You want to comfort him when he dies? There wasn’t anybody in the woods to comfort Hope when those two animals pushed her face into the grass!
Sister Helen: l just want to help him take responsibility for what he did.
Mary Beth Percy: Does he admit to what he did? ls he sorry?
Sister Helen: He says he didn’t kill anybody.
Clyde Percy: Sister, you’re in waters way over your head.
Mary Beth Percy: You don’t know what it’s like to carry a child in your womb and give birth and get up with a sick child in the middle of the night. You just pray and get a good night’s sleep don’t you.
Clyde Percy: My parents raised me to respect the religious. But Sister, I think you need to leave this house right now.
Sister Helen: l’m sorry.
[she turns to leave the house]
Clyde Percy: Wait a minute! lf you really are sorry and do care about this family you’ll want to see justice done for our murdered child! Now, you can’t have it both ways! You can’t befriend that murderer and expect to be our friend too.
Mary Beth Percy: You brought the enemy into our house. You gotta go.

Okay, logically, who...wins?

Matthew being interviewed on TV: I had two families. Both of them I’d love and die for.
Interviewer: Your other family is… ?
Matthew: The family of man. Of men in prison. My white family, the Aryan Brotherhood.
Interviewer: You’re a white supremacist? A follower of Hitler?
Matthew: He was a leader. I admire him for getting things done. Like Castro, he got things done. Hitler might have gone overboard on the killing but he was on the right track about the Aryans being the master race.
Interviewer: The right track? The murder of 6 million Jews?
Matthew: That’s never been proven.
Sister Helen [listening at home]: What am l doing with this guy? l must be nuts.

I'd say so. Here and now.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

A few of them might even be funny.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

If that doesn't encompass objectivism, what does?

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Unless, perhaps, you are your own worst enemy?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

If only on this side of the grave?

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

And then one day you realize it's both. Or, rather, I did.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

On the other hand, if you're not enjoying yourself...?

Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen: Think about it. Their kids are shot, stabbed, raped left in the woods to die alone. How’d you feel if somebody did that to your family? What would you do to them?
Matthew: l’d sure as hell want to kill them.

There you go?

Prison guard: Tell me something sister, what is nun doing in a place like this. Shouldn’t you be teaching children? Didn’t you know what this man has done? How he killed them kids?
Sister Helen: What he was involved with was evil. I don’t condone it. I just don’t see the sense of killing people to say that killing people’s wrong.
Prison guard: You know what the Bible say, ‘An eye for an eye’.
Sister Helen: You know what else the Bible ask for death as a punishment? For adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, trespass upon sacred grounds, profane in a sabbath and contempt to parents.
Prison guard: I ain’t gonna get into no Bible quoting with no nun cause I’m gonna lose.

He'll have to go here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... SjDNeMaRoX

Matthew: …and l got a thing or two to say to the Percys and the Delacroixs.
Sister Helen: You want your last words to be words of hatred?
Matthew: Clyde Percy wants to inject me hisself!
Sister Helen: Well, think of how angry he must be. He’s never gonna see his daughter again. He’s never gonna hold her, love her, laugh with her. You have robbed these parents. They have nothing in their lives but sorrow, no joy. That is what you gave them. Why were you in the woods?
Matthew: l told you, l was stoned out of my head!
Sister Helen: Don’t blame the drugs. You were harassing couples for weeks…for months before this happened.

Uh, that and the drugs?

Matthew: Walter?
Sister Helen: Yeah? What?
Matthew: l killed him.
Sister Helen: And Hope?
Matthew: No, ma’am.
Sister Helen: Did you rape her?
Matthew: Yes, ma’am.
Sister Helen: Do you take responsibility for both of their deaths?
Matthew: Yes, ma’am. When the lights dimmed last night l kneeled and prayed for them kids. I never done that before.
Sister Helen: Oh, Matt. There are spaces of sorrow only God can touch. You did a terrible thing, Matt, a terrible thing. But you have a dignity now. Nobody can take that from you.

Still: what else is there but this religious bullshit? If that's what it is, of course.

Prison guard: Do you have any last words, Poncelet?
Matthew: Yes, I do.
[pauses]
Matthew: Mr. Delacroix, I don’t wanna leave this world with any hate in my heart. I ask your forgiveness for what I done. It was a terrible thing I done, taking your son away from you.
Clyde: [Softly to his wife] How about us?
Matthew: Mr. and Mrs. Percy, I hope my death gives you some relief.

Of course, it goes without saying it doesn't bring their son back.

Time

“Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.” Graham Greene

Anyone here know for sure?

“There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.” Sherwood Anderson

Uh, you're a girl?

“How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!” John Milton

Like all of the other years, in other words.

“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.” Ray Bradbury

Let's explain that.

“Time is a storm in which we are all lost.” William Carlos Williams

Some a hell of a lot more than others. Here, for example.

“There is a time for work, and a time for love. That leaves no other time.” Coco Chanel

And what we do here? Yeah, I thought so.

Woody Allen once suggested this:

"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable."

It seems applicable here. I couldn’t even imagine it. And it is all the more horrific given the gap between before and after.

And it goes to show how contingency, chance and change – inside a circumstantial landslide – are always just around the corner. And it is captured in a particularly haunting manner here.

I don’t think I could live like this. But suicide is out of the question when the only thing you can do is blink one eye.

Locked-in syndrome at wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Dr Cocheton: You see, Jean-Dominique, you’ve had a stroke. You’ve been in a coma for almost three weeks. But now you’re waking up and you’ll be fine, I promise you.

Let's run that by...God?

Doctor: All right, don’t worry. It’s a slow process. Your speech will come back.
Bauby’s voice: I can’t speak?! Why can’t you hear me? Oh, Christ. I can’t speak. I can’t move. What’s happened to me?

Let's run that by...God?

Dr LaPage: Jean-Do, I know how difficult this is for you. I also know that nobody has explained to you the full extent of your condition. Well, that’s my job. Yes. My job. You’ve had what we call a cerebrovascular accident. It’s put your brain stem out of action. The brain stem is an essential component of our internal computer, the link between the brain and the spinal cord. In the past, we would have said you’d had a massive stroke. You would very probably have died. But now we have such improved resuscitation techniques that we’re able to prolong life.
Bauby’s voice: This is life?
Dr LaPage: I’m not going to mince words. You are paralyzed from head to toe. And, as you now must have realised, you are unable to speak. You have what we call ‘locked-in syndrome’.
Bauby’s voice: “Locked-in syndrome”.
Dr Lapage: It will be of no comfort to you but your condition is extremely rare. Extremely rare. And we simply don’t know the cause. You don’t smoke and you’re not a heavy drinker. So. I’m afraid it’s just one of those things. However, apart from being totally paralysed, we believe you are normal in every other respect.

Somehow, he must have deserved it?

Marie: I’m the physiotherapist, and my priority is to get you to swallow. So I’ll be working on your tongue and lips.

You gotta start somewhere?

Dr. Mercer: Do you hear what I say? Your right eye isn’t working properly. I’m going to sew it up.

Thank God for the other one?

Bauby’s voice: A poet once said, “Only a fool laughs when nothing’s funny.”

No fools here though, right?

Lyrics

Natilie Merchant
I should know to leave them home
They follow me through the store with these toys I can't afford
"Kids, take them back, you know better than that."
Dolls that talk, astronauts, T.V. games, airplanes, they don't understand and how can I explain?

I try and try but I can't save
Pennies, nickels, dollars slip away
I've tried and tried but I can't save

My youngest girl has bad fever, sure
All night with alcohol to cool and rub her down
Ruby, I'm tired, try and get some sleep
I'm adding doctor's fees to remedies with the cost of three day's work lost

I try and try but I can't save
Pennies, nickels, dollars slip away
I've tried and tried but I can't save
The hole in my pocketbook is growing

I played a card in this weeks game
Took the first and the last letters in three of their names
This lottery's been building up for weeks
I could be lucky me with the five million prize, tears of disbelief spilling out of my eyes

I try and try but I can't save
Pennies, nickels, dollars slip away
I've tried and tried but I can't save
The hole in my pocketbook is growing

John Cale
Mercenaries are useless, disunited, unfaithful
They have nothing more to keep them in a battle
Other than a meager wage
Which is just about enough to make them wanna kill for you
But never enough to make them wanna die for ya

I'm just another soldier boy
Just another soldier boy
Looking for work
Looking for work
Looking for work
My rifle is my friend
My rifle is my friend
I clean my rifle everyday
I clean my rifle everyday
That's why my rifle is my friend

Ready for war, ready for war
Ready for war, ready for war

I did some work in Zaire, the jolly old Belgian Congo
Went back to Geneva to get paid
Back up in Geneva, that's where the money flows
That's where the money flows, where the money grows
They didn't wanna pay me
They didn't wanna pay me, but they did
Try to separate me from my money
Is like trying to separate me from my life

Ready for war, ready for war
Ready for war, ready for war

Let's go to Moscow, let's go to Moscow
Let's go, let's go, let's go to Moscow
Find a backdoor to the Kremlin
Push it down and walk on in

2000 feet and closing
Target visibility nine eight
500 feet and closing
Target visibility eight four
300 feet and closing
Target visibility nine five
200 feet and closing
Visibility seven eight
100 feet and closing
Target visibility zero!
Ready for war, ready for war
Ready for war, ready for war
Ready for war, ready for war
Ready for war, ready for war

Paul Simon
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry

It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry

Harry Chapin
...another man might have been angry,
And another man might have been hurt,
But another man never would have let her go…
I stashed the bill in my shirt.

And she walked away in silence,
It’s strange, how you never know,
But we’d both gotten what we’d asked for,
Such a long, long time ago.
You see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off for the sky.

And here, she’s acting happy,
Inside her handsome home.
And me, I’m flying in my taxi,
Taking tips, and getting stoned,
I go flying so high, when I’m stoned.

Wall of Voodoo
He got dropped off on a street in town
Where a grey old man looked him up and down and said
"Son, this ain't no Western movie matinee
And you're a long way off from yippee-yi-yay
'Cause I can tell at a glance
You're not from 'round these parts
Got a green look about ya
And that's a gringo for starts
Sometimes the only thing a Western savage understands
Are whiskey and rifles and an unarmed man like you.

Harshly awakened by the sound of six rounds
Of light-caliber rifle fire
Followed minutes later by the booming of nine rounds
From a heavier rifle
But you can't close off the wilderness
He heard the snick of a rifle bolt
And found himself peering down the muzzle
Of a weapon held by a drunken liquor store owner
"There's a conflict," he said
"There's a conflict between land and people...
The people have to go
They've come all the way out here to make mining claims
To do automobile body work
To gamble
To take pictures
To not have to do laundry
To own a mini-bike
To have their own CB radios and air conditioning
Good plumbing for sure
And to sell Time Life books and to work in a deli
To have some chili every morning
And maybe... maybe to own their own gas stations again
And to take drugs
Have some crazy sex
But above all, above all, to have a fair shake
To get a piece of the rock and a slice of the pie
And spit out of the window of your car
And not have the wind blow it back in your face

The Human League
All day
Hiding from the sun
Waiting for the golden one
Waiting for your fame
After the parade has gone

Outside was a happy place
Every face had a smile like the golden face
For a second
Your knuckles white as your fingers curl
The shot that was heard around the world
For a second
It took seconds of your time to take his life
It took seconds
It took seconds of your time to take his life
It took seconds
It took seconds of your time to take his life
It took seconds of your time to take his life
Seconds
Seconds

The Human League
My life
I'm a fool for you
You who take no advice
You who think evil doesn't exist
Just because you deny it is true
You're lucky I care
For fools like you
You're lucky I'm there
To stop people doing the things
That you know they are dying to do

You know, I am no stranger
I know rules are a bore
But just to keep you from danger
I am the law

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Roussin: I can roughly guess what you’re feeling. Being taken hostage is not so different from what you’re going through. Am I right?
Henriette: Hostage?
[Awkward silence.]
Roussin: Jean-Dominique was kind enough to give me his seat on a flight to Hong Kong. Then, unfortunately for me, the plane was high-jacked and I remained a hostage in Beirut for four years, four months, two weeks, five days and seven hours. They kept me locked in a cellar. Very tiny. Dark. It was hard to breathe. I called it my tomb.

Cue Benjamin Button?

Jean-Dominique Bauby: I decided to stop pitying myself. Other than my eye, two things aren’t paralyzed, my imagination and my memory. They’re the only two ways I can escape from my diving bell.

I'd never stop pitying myself, I suspect.

Note: The only way he can communicate is through a laborious trek through the alphabet—reciting the letters in the most frequently used order:

Henriette: E - T - A - 0 - I (a blink) I. (two blinks) I is the first word? (a blink) OK. E - T - A - O - I - N - U - S - H - R - P - C - D - Y -W- (a blink) w. E - T - A - (a blink ) A. E - T - A - 0 - I - N (a blink) N. E - T - (a blink) T. (two blinks) I - want - ’ (two blinks) I want’. You’re doing brilliantly, Jean-Do. What do you want? E - T - (a blink) T. (writes it down) E - T - A - O - (a blink) 0 . (two blinks) I w a n t t o ’ - E - T - A - 0 - I - N - U - S - H - R - P - C - D - (a blink) D. (writes it down) E - T - A - O - I - (a blink) I. (writes it down) E - (a blink) E. (she writes it down; two blinks) ‘Die’. ‘I want to die’.

How about you?

Bauby’s voice: Through the frayed curtain of my window, a wan glow announces the break of day. My heels hurt, my head weighs a ton, and something like a giant invisible diving-bell holds my whole body prisoner.

365 days a year to boot.

Bauby’s voice: This Naval Hospital has in its time been a home to children with tuberculosis, a fat farm, a school, a place where, so legend has it, the great Diaghilev rehearsed his Ballet Russe.They say it was here that Nijinsky leapt twelve feet into the air. No one here now leaps into the air. These days we are all elderly, enfeebled or, like me, rigid and mute. A battalion of cripples.

He wondered what it was now.

Bauby’s voice: Sunday. I dread Sunday. No therapists, no shrinks, no visitors, a skeleton staff. Sunday is a long stretch of desert. But today, Marie nobly suggests she take me to Mass. I have tried to explain to her that I am not a religious man. This cuts no ice with her. ‘It will do you good,’ she says.

He's cured!

Bauby’s voice: All over the world people are praying for me. Top of the list is my daughter, Celeste, who prays for me every night. And Marie, of course. The most diverse deities have been enlisted to help me. In Nepal, I’m told, they chant a mantra for me. In a Breton chapel they burn candles and a Cameroon holy man has procured for me the goodwill of Africa’s gods: I have assigned him my right eye. All of them. And I can’t deny that I have attempted to organise this vast spiritual energy to support my existence. It may not be admirable, it may even be a touch hypocritical, but I’ll try anything.

Just out of curiosity, what wouldn't you try?

Title card: Jean-Dominique Bauby died on March 9, 1997, 10 days after the publication of his book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

And now?

God

“No matter what the cause, God is only as willing as you are.” Steve Maraboli

Tell that to the Jews in Nazi Germany? In other words, it is never, ever God's fault?

“I had a standing agreement with god. I'd agree to believe in him, barely, so long as he let me sleep in on Sundays.” Richelle Mead

So, what's yours?

“For me, it goes without saying that much of the dogma of many religions is harmful. Thinking other people will burn forever because they love the wrong person or worship the wrong god has done a whole lot of bad. What I wanted was the part where people were asked to get together once a week to talk about how to be a good person and, like, hang out with their neighbors. It's pretty amazing that apparently the only way to get people to do that is to invent an all-seeing, kindhearted sky dad who will be super disappointed/burn you for eternity if you don't show up.” Hank Green

Comments?

“...all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.” Truman Capote

Next up: the "F" word.

“The essence of religion remains love and kindness,
yet it has been the biggest cause of hatred and violence.” Mouloud Benzadi

And how ironic is that?

“Libet’s EEG experiments suggest that we might not have free will. If the results of the experiment are to be believed, then what is the point? What is the fun if everything is determined? Wouldn’t Almighty get bored with us?" Abhaidev

You know, going all the way back to the Big Bang.

Described as a misanthrope he is actually more than just that. The scene in the bowling alley for example. But he is definitely aberrant when engaging the opposite sex. He creates this fantasy in his head [re The Collector] and then fortuitously [voyeuristically] bumps into a beautiful incarnation across the courtyard. Naturally she goes about the business of living her life [even the most intimate parts] with the curtains fully agape.

In any event if you were incessantly mocked and bullied in the neighborhood merely for being introverted and different you might grow to detest your fellow man too.

But who is playing whom here?

Monsieur Hire

Inspector: Pierrete dies on her 22nd birthday. That’s no age to die, people say, as though there were a right age. Who could have done it? No one, as usual. She probably shouted and struggled. But she shouldn’t have. The man panicked and killed her without meaning to. She died by mistake. How could someone lose their head over a few hundred franc in a handbag? They’ll find this accidental killer someday but no one will hold her in their arms again.

That's certainly true.

Inspector: I have a few questions for you but first I would like to know why people don’t like you.
Hire: They don’t. It’s true. But then, I don’t like them.
Inspector: That’s no reason. What did you do to make them hate you so much.
Hire: Nothing. That’s the point. I’m not very sociable or friendly and they don’t like that. Converstaions stop and then resume after I pass. It doesn’t bother me. I prefer silence. I don’t like to talk.
Inspector: You’re a strange guy.
Hire: I don’t agree. See? You’re just like the rest of them.

Next up: the bowling alley.

Hire: See, inspector? Some places I am not hated.

They love the guy!

Inspector: Tell me, Monsieur Hire, how long has it been since you came inside a woman?

Of course, here, that's the point.

Hire: How old would she have been? Seventy? Eighty? She’d been around forever. People loved her, this little old lady who spent all her time feeding the pigeons. Feeding the pigeons. All day, going from park to park, distributing birdseed by the handful. All the park rangers knew her and were touched. A photographer wanted to market a postcard of her surrounded by pigeons. She agreed. In her own way, she was famous. One day – I don’t know how it emerged – her will, maybe – people found out the birdseed was poisoned. For years, smiling all the time she’d been killing pigeons by the thousands. Her neighbors couldn’t believe it. She seemed so nice.

He's telling this to a prostitute.

Prostitute: Come on, you’ll catch a cold.
Hire: No, I don’t want to.
Prostitute: Do you want someone else? Should I get Rosa?
Hire: No, not Rosa, not Jasmine, not anybody. I’M SICK OF SCREWING YOU SLUTS! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

Cue Alice. Alice and her ulterior motives.

Madness

“THIS IS MADNESS,” TOM HISSED.
"You said that already,” I whispered.
“And yet, here we are, still doing it. So, if you don’t mind: This is madness.” Kevin Sands

Cue the fish man? Here I mean.

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying: ‘You are mad; you are not like us.” Saint Anthony the Great

Cue the fish man? Here I mean.

“Passion in work, fueled by madness, leads to phenomenal discoveries that have changed the course of history.” Hafsa Shah

Name one?

“Do you think I've gone round the bend?'
'I'm afraid so.
You're mad, bonkers, completely off your head.
But I'll tell you a secret.
All the best people are.” Lewis Carroll

And, from time to time, a woman?

“The opposite of misery is also misery because there is no escaping the madness of this world.” Khayri R.R. Woulfe

Fortunately, only all the way to the grave.

“I am scared of snapping. That something, some random day, it will simply...‘click’ in my mind and all of the sudden I will absolutely lose my mind. In other words having gazed into the abyss for too long. Go completely and totally insane! How does one decent into madness? What makes one click so all of the sudden life is upside down and people don’t know themselves anymore?” Ryan Gelpke

Of course, coming here everyday doesn't help.

Monsieur Hire

Alice: It’s nice to be watched. I enjoy it. But only because it’s you. I couldn’t with someone else. With you it’s different. I can see you’re sweet.
Hire: How can you say that? You don’t know me.
Alice [walking over to the bed]: Sit by me. We can talk more comfortably. Don’t you want to?
[pause]
Alice: Have you been watching me long?
Hire: Yes, every night.
Alice: When I went to bed what did you do?
Hire: Nothing. I waited.
Alice: What for?
Hire: I don’t know. I sleep very little.
Alice: So you watch all the time? You know all about me?
Hire: Not all, certainly, but some things.
Alice [reaching for his hand and rubbing it]: What’s you’re favorite part? When I undress, when I wash up?
Hire [suddenly guarded]: Go now. Don’t stay here.
Alice: I’m sorry, I thought…
Hire [out of the blue]: GET THE HELL OUT!

Even now he knows she suspects that he knows.

To wit:

Hire: Why go on playacting. We both know you’re not here for the plesasure of my company. You’re intelligent Alice. Don’t say you don’t understand. Or do you just not want to?
Alice: I’m cold. Won’t you take me in your arms. Love me a little?
Hire: Could you love two men?
Alice: Why not?
Hire: You’d go to any lengths then?
Alice: Kiss me. Please say you will.
[She kisses him tentatively]
Hire: You’re so sweet. I can’t believe how sweet you are to me. All for that charming Emile’s sake. You both want to know if I was watching that night. If I saw him come in and wake you to help him clean the blood of Pierrette Bourgeois, who he had just killed. And to hide his bloody raincoat. That’s what you want to know? Yes, I was watching. I know everything.

It's all completely exposed. But he still believes he can "woo" her away from him.

Hire: So, will still be still be nice to me? Still want me to take you lovingly in my arms? Still want me to kiss you? Still want me to watch you undress?
Alice: Why don’t you tell the police?
Hire: Because I can’t.

After all, it's Sandrine Bonnaire.

Hire: I see only one solution. Will you go away with me? Emile isn’t worthy of you. I can make you forget him. I’ll be patient. In any case time won’t matter there. You’ll love me at your own pace. I won’t rush you. I know how to protect you. You can trust me. No one will ever love you as I will – as I already do. I’ll devote every second of my life to you.

He's really convinced himself of this.

Hire: You’ll think me a fool, Alice, but I don’t feel any anger…just a deathly sadness.

He's really convinced himself of this.

Then this part:

Hire [voiceover]: “Dear Inspector, When you read this letter Alice and I will be far away. In the locker you’ll find the raincoat Emile wore when he killed Pierrette Bourgeois…I’m taking Alice away because she is innocent and I want to protect her. Please don’t try to find us. I trust you. I think you’ll respect this happiness. We are happy…together. And nothing else matters.”

Modern love let's call it.

This film transports us back to the dark ages for women enduring the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy. The age of the back room [or the back alley] abortions. In England. And not as an exchange of polemics [abstractions] either. This is how such things actually did unfold. On both sides of the track.

And, if certain political forces manage to prevail here in America, may well again.

It won’t change many minds of course because there are always countervailing narratives that can be construed just as effectively from “the other side”.

More than anything, it distinguishes abortion as an exchange of abstract political arguments and abortion as your whole fucking world about to be turned upside down.

Even so, Vera’s approach to the whole thing [in the first half of the film] is almost surreal. She as entirely matter-of-fact about what she is doing. It throws some of the women off to say the least. This is anything but a matter-of-fact experience from their perspective.

Vera Drake

[repeated line]
Vera: Right dear, take your knickers off.

And off they come.

Ivy: I should be at work.
Vera: You can’t go to work in this state.
Ivy: Somebody has to earn the money. I’ll lose my job if this goes on.
Vera: It’s not your fault, dear.
Ivy: Try telling that to your boss. They don’t understand nothing, men. Bastards.

And most of them still don't.

Psychiatrist: Tell me your feelings towards the father of the child. Do you love him?
Susan: No.
Psychiatrist: Does he love you?
Susan: No.
Psychiatrist: Did you love him at the point of conception?
Susan: No.
Psychiatrist: Did he force himself on you?
Susan: Yes.
Psychiatrist: Miss Wells…if you were to have the child, would you keep it or have it adopted?
Susan: I can’t have it. I’d rather kill myself.

Better her than the baby...or the "clump of cells"?

Vera: I know why you’re here.
Inspector Webster: I beg your pardon?
Vera: I know why you’re here.
[pause]
Inspector Webster: Why are we here?
Vera: Because of what I do.
Inspector Webster: Because of what you do?
Vera: Yes.
Inspector Webster: What is it that you do, Mrs Drake?
[long pause]
Vera: I help young girls out.

Run that by God?

Inspector Webster: Can you answer my question, please? How do you help them out?
Vera: When they can’t manage.
Inspector Webster: When they can’t manage?
Vera: That’s right.
Inspector Webster: You mean, when they’re pregnant? So, how do you help them out?
Vera: I help them start their bleeding again.
Inspector Webster: You help them to get rid of the baby? You perform an abortion. Is that right, Mrs. Drake? You perform abortions, don’t you?
Vera: That’s not what I do, dear. That’s what you call it. they need help. Who else are they gonna turn to? They’ve got no one. I help them out.

Run that by God?

Inspector Webster: How much did you charge, Mrs Drake?
Vera: What?
Inspector Webster: How much did they pay you?
Vera: I don’t take money? I never take money. I wouldn’t…That’s not why…
Inspector Webster: You do it for nothing.
Vera: Of course I do. They need help.

And, unlike Annie Wilson, she doesn't take "donations".

Sid: How could you do those things, Mom? I don’t understand it.
Vera: I don’t expect you do, Sid.
Sid: Why’d you do it?
Vera: I had to.
Sid: It’s wrong though, ain’t it? Eh?
Vera: I don’t think so.
Sid: Of course it is! That’s little babies. I mean, you hear about these things, you read about it in the papers, but you don’t expect to come home to it on your own doorstep with your own mom! You ain’t got no right!

Next up: the logic of it all.

Vera: Poor Sid.
Stan: I know. Everything’s black and white for Sid. He’s young.

Unless youth has nothing to do with it at all?

Judge: Vera Rose Drake, you have committed a crime, the gravity of which cannot be overestimated. The law is very clear and you have willfully broken that law. And furthermore, in so doing, you have put at risk the life of a vulnerable young woman. And but for the timely intervention of the medical profession…you might have been before me on an even more serious charge than the one that has brought you here today. Now… I have heard your plea of guilty, and I have taken that into account… and I have listened very carefully to the submissions of your council. But nothing has been advanced me today on your behalf which would persuade me to take any course other than to impose a custodial sentence. Indeed… the extreme seriousness of your crime is bound to be reflected in the sentence that I am about to pass. And that must serve as a deterrent to others. I therefore sentence you to a term of imprisonment, which will be two years and six months. Take her down.

Of course, had abortion been legal back then, “the vulnerable young woman” would have been considerably less at risk. Though, for the fetus, the results would have been the same.

The corporate lawyer will do anything and everything to bolster the bottom line of whatever particular company he or she represents. And if that means destroying the lives of others – or just reaming them inside out it – it can be rationalized easily enough: the law’s the law.

This is the part libertarians brush aside by insisting “real capitalism wouldn’t work like this.” Bullshit. This is the way real capitalism often does work. It has to work that way if competition is to prevail. You do whatever it takes to keep your costs down to an absolute minimum. Because if you don’t, the competition will. And practically everybody is expendable.

Class Action

Maggie: If you guys want to learn to be big time lawyers you’ve got to learn to lie better.
Brian: Maggie. Maggie. Lawyers never lie. We just tell the truth judiciously to guarantee utter confusion.

Trump taught them that.

Jedediah: This firm was built on David and Goliath cases. They’re just not aound anymore. You got all these fascist Reagan judges. They hear you’re after a big corporation, they throw your ass out of court. It’s just too goddamn discouraging.

Next up: Trump judges.

Jedediah: You’re an associate at Quinn-Califant. They pop out baby lawyers like you like a shark grows teeth row after row after row, forever.

If only all the way to the bank. And then all the way to the grave.

Jedediah: Does it matter to her that these cars are blowing up? No. Does it matter to her that people – babies – are being killed? No. Does she care that she’s in bed with the vilest kind of corporate vermin?

Or is this more about Jedediah cheating on Mom?

Quinn: I’m worried about this Steven Kellum deposition.
Maggie: No, it’s completely under control. He’s wearing down.
Quinn: If he gets into court in that wheelchair with this story he’ll be far too sympathetic.
Maggie: I understand that, Mr. Quinn.
Quinn: I can’t put this in strong enough terms. I want him eliminated as an effective witness.
Maggie: Yes sir.
Quinn: Are you prepared to do that?
Maggie: Absolutely.

Well, before the reconciation with Dad anyway.

Jedediah: What’s a good set of 8 x 10s cost these days, 10, 15 bucks? This is important Fred. What’s the going rate for a man’s dignity, huh? You stole his wife, his kid, his body. Now I guess you spend another $10 or $15 and get the whole package. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Money. He’s after your money and you’re out to protect it. Well, you hold onto it real tight because without a heart and soul that’s all you’ll ever have.

My guess: in one ear and out the other.

Pavel: The depth charge!

Then people die. Though, for some, only if they're lucky.

Pavel: You want to know about the circuits…it’s just a simple reaction.
Maggie: So what you’re saying is that if the car is hit from the rear when the left turn signal is functioning it just might blow up.
Pavel: Correct. Well, if you are really interested in this why don’t you just read my report.

Five will get you ten they bury it.

Maggie: People were blown up sir.
Getchell: We changed that light in the next model year.

Well, that's a relief.

Michael: You’re going to break rule number one, which is don’t fuck your friends. If you turn on me, every lawyer here is going to turn on you. You’ll be on the bricks faster than you can dream of. And when you try to tie into another firm, you’ll be lucky to get hired as a messenger.

Dad will hire her.

Quinn: Bottom line—it is within the letter of the law.

Next up: the letter of the law, the Supremes and Donald Trump.

Maggie: Why didn’t you just change the blinker circuit?
Getchell: I told Flannery about the problem. He called in his head bean counter – risk managment expert. Flannery shows him the data and asks how much it would cost to retrofit…
Maggie: You mean recall?
Getchell: Yeah. You got it. To retrofit 175,000 units. You mutiply that times $300 a car give or take. You’re looking at right around $50 million. So the risk guy, he crunches the numbers some more. He figures you have one of these fireball collisions every 3,000 cars. That 158 explosions.
Maggie: Which is almost exactly as many plaintiffs as there are.
Getchell: These guys know their numbers. So you multiply that times $200,000 per lawsuit. That’s assuming everyone sues and wins. $30 million max. See? It’s cheaper to deal with the lawsuits than it is to fix the blinker. It’s what the bean counters call a simple actuarial analysis.

And, after all, it’s not very likely to be your family and friends that get maimed and mutilated and killed. And of those that do? Well, it’s not murder, is it? No laws were broken, were they?

Quinn: Come on, Jed, some of your clients weren’t even hurt that bad.

Tell that to the jury.