Minimalists

Posted by on 06/23/2026 1 comment

I wonder what Wittgenstein (left) would have thought of “separated at birth” Phillip Glass (right). Wittgenstein was from a very musical family, his brother Paul was a celebrated pianist who lost his right arm in WW I, but who went on to commission and perform one-handed pieces from some of the leading composers of his time.

This intrepid attitude is remarkable in light of the fact that there were three Wittgenstein brothers who committed suicide: Hans, Rudolph and Kurt. Ludwig lived an itinerant minimalist life, and although he only wrote one 75 page book, “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, and some notes, he is considered one of the pre-eminent philosophers of modern times.

“Tracticus” is minimalist in that it is “written in an austere and succinct literary style, containing almost no arguments as such, but consists of 525 declarative statements, which are hierarchically numbered.” (Wikipedia). It’s notoriously difficult to understand. Here is a summation of the declarative statements:

  • The world is everything that is the case.
  • What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
  • The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
  • The thought is the significant proposition.
  • Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
  • This is the general form of proposition.
  • Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Got it? Facts –> picture of facts –> thought –> significant proposition –> elementary propositions. He believes there are realities that cannot be captured by language. I’m struggling to think of whether Wittgenstein considered language to be an abstraction – in the systems sense, the representation of something minus non-essential elements. I don’t think so because those realities he thinks are beyond language are not likely to be non-essential. He thinks about language as a code that enforces certain attitudes or beliefs, and states that the meaning of words is dependent upon contextual clues and “landmarks”.

To me that brings up the question of what are the realities that are beyond language? Is that what Phillip Glass is aiming for with his repetitive, rhythmic compositions? Is a Phillip Glass piece an abstracted Mahler? Is it Buddhist chanting (he was influenced by Buddhists)?

One can think of music as having a language of notes. I would say there are musical experiences that cannot be described, or are only poorly described, by words. Can words be represented by music? I don’t mean emotions, I mean whatever happens when you read.

Let’s say that language and music are limited in their ability to accurately describe “elementary propositions”, or even “atomic facts”. How do we then “know” anything? If it’s undescribable, unrepresentable. It’s pure experience, subjectivity. Or perhaps the need to describe is misguided. I have raised more questions than I have answered. I have violated Wittgenstein’s last precept: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent!”

Franklin in a Box

Posted by on 05/01/2026 1 comment

After viewing the star-studded International House” (1933), I’m more convinced than ever that Franklin Pangborn is the inspiration for the Rankin-Bass puppet “Charlie in the Box” from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Pangborn was a comedic character actor who often played prissy fussbudget roles. I learned from this video that he served with the 312th Infantry in WWI and was gassed and wounded at the Battle of Argonne. That must have meant mustard gas, which was a truly heinous weapon of war that often left lasting impairment. Fortunately he seems to have been spared.

Pangborn reportedly was gay in real life, and appears in “gay-coded” roles, making his screen debut in 1926. As such, subsequent “in plain sight” gay actors like Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly stand on his shoulders. Just as today’s out actors stand on theirs.

Often overlooked is his brilliant comedic timing. Two examples from “International House.” First is his hilarious flailing and barely-controlled panic as a hotel clerk whose cubbyhole rack is about to topple over:

Second is his rapid emotional switching during this scene (occurs at 1:00:30 of this video) where he changes from an obsequious tone while speaking to a doctor, to a fussy dismissive tone when speaking to an underling:

A lot of comic actors use this technique, Will Ferrell for example. But in their case the switch is the point, here the switch is incidental to the character. Pangborn does not pause, does not milk a laugh, he moves on to his next line.

Why is it that with the freedom today, modern tv comedies so often fall back into the gay-coded tropes? Shows like “Modern Family” and “Will and Grace” feature gay characters that drip with sass and sibilant “S’s.”

Pangborn seems more opaque in comparison. An exception to this overall trend was Billy Crystal’s character in “Soap” who was not broadcasting fabulousness. I think it’s just an easy, hacky way to get a laugh. This can be seen as a more coded presentation than occurred in the 30’s, and is an exception to the trend that film characterizations get less stereotypical over time.

The Wizard of Id: Harry Langdon

Posted by on 04/18/2026 1 comment
Harry Langdon carries a crude female mannequin down a ladder, saving her from a fire.
Harry Langdon, “Heart Trouble” (1928)

Not enough people know about Harry Langdon, considered one of the “Big 4” silent film comedians (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon). He’s utterly bizarre and far less accessible than his contemporaries, to the point where he has become the subject of post-modern analysis, and interpreted through deconstructionist theory. His physical slapstick and cross-dressing has been viewed through the lens of trans body. So what’s going on?

Lorenzo Tremarelli, in Film Theory, describes Langdon as “creating a semiotic void”, who “detaches the signifier from its expected signified”. He does this by flouting the contemporary film tropes, for example he is known for using an extended pause in holding reaction shots of his face. “This is the brilliance of his prolonged stare: he provides the signifier (his face) but refuses to provide the signified (the emotion), forcing the audience into a state of semiotic crisis.” (Lorenzo Tremarelli, Film Theory, March 6, 2026“).

I think this is absolutely correct. A lot of my writing is about the unspoken conventions of film, and how they enforce a version of the world that upholds the social contract, while purporting to free the audience from the drudgery of everyday life (Hollywood Dream Factory). I’ve discussed this in the context of horror films, how they would simply be unwatchable without the filmic touches that soften the grisly acts central to their plots.

I’ve also talked about it in terms of phony dialog: quippy, or overly expository. I’ve maintained that the crude semiotics of silent films (Keystone Kops, Perils of Pauline) offer a greater freedom for actors and directors to be creative – a simpler more fixed template compared to the seamless baked-in norms of modern movies, which become harder and harder to identify as we assimilate to them.

Examples: Chaplin kissing Jackie Coogan on the mouth in “The Kid”. The convention is love for children, Chaplin made it reverential (having just lost his own child) rather than “referential” – something like the adult character calling the child “buddy” and high-fiving them, which references sentiment without showing it.

Also Garbo cradling John Garfield’s head and stroking his hair in “Flesh and the Devil”.

Greta Garbo strokes John Garfield's hair, his head on her lap.
Flesh and the Devil (1926)

This is a casual liminal act, without dialog, somewhere between passion and familiarity. Modern movies would have them side by side in bed saying something like “Well Mr. Taylor, I do believe I’m starting to develop an aversion to being without you.” And I don’t think today’s films are the worst. Movies from the 40’s and 50’s are oppressingly stylized.

Langdon purposefully makes us uncomfortable. Ella Tucan in her “One Movie Blog” describes him as “the most helpless, immature, sexless, timid and downright stupid of all the silent clowns” and “a middle-aged baby” (Harry Langdon: The Elderly Baby, March 15, 2014). This wasn’t accidental and it wasn’t because Harry Langdon, the performer, was stupid. He fired Frank Capra, the director of his most popular movies, because of Capra’s crowd-pleasing sensibilities (Pauline Kael described his movies as “Capri-corn”). He was a seasoned and popular vaudeville star who was interested in a darker vision

Beyond his Lacanian anti-Otherness, Langdon simmered with a barely-repressed “Id”. the Id is described as an organism’s “basic instinctual drives that are present at birth…. governed only by the pleasure principle”.

I think the prime example of this occurs in one of his first feature length films “Tramp Tramp Tramp”. It’s a straight up “get the girl” redemption story. Bumbling son Harry wins cross-country race to save his family business, and wins the hand of a young Joan Crawford, no less. Yet the final scene, seems utterly separate from the rest of the film, Freshly married Harry and Joan look in on their new baby infant, and the audience is presented with this spectacle:

Harry
“Tramp Tramp Tramp” (1926)

A full-grown Harry Langdon, frolicking in a bassinet with a baby bonnet on his head. Gumming a teddy bear and a ball, then suckling on a baby bottle with a long tube that evokes an enema bottle. This is stylistically jarring, seems tacked on. Langdon frees his id, and thumbs his nose at Capra’s pieties.

Ella Tucan further describes Langdon as “a combination of clown, infant, and hermaphrodite”. He is conventional masculinity’s worst nightmare: hapless, confused, vacant, seemingly gender-fluid. In “The Chaser” one of his self-directed films, he switches roles with his wife, and ends up being forcibly kissed by various deliverymen.

The Chaser (1928)

At the slightest sign of stress his fingers find his mouth.

Harry Langdon poster for "Three's a Crowd" and "The Chaser" showing a close-up of Langdon in a hat with his fingers in his mouth.

What distinguishes him from Stan Laurel, with whom he’s often compared, is Langdon’s complexity and unpredictability. Laurel can predictably be counted on to screw things up and then cry. Compare that to Langdon inventing a strong man routine on the spot in front of a hostile crowd in “The Strong Man” (1926).

Pauline Kael quotes James Agee as saying Langdon looks “”as if he wore diapers under his pants.” here is an aggression in this, just as there is an aggression in clowning. His refusal to reassure, to engage in normative male behavior. Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd were always following the script of self-improvement. Langdon, the true clown, looks as if he would just as soon shit himself, put on a dress, and suck on a baby bottle. A different kind of heroics.


The 525,600 minutes of Dr. T

Posted by on 04/18/2026 Comments Off on The 525,600 minutes of Dr. T
Long shot of expressionistic bare Suessian movie set.

Busby-Berkely meets Emerald City meets Alice in Wonderland meets Kafka’s “The Trial”. Story, lyrics and screenplay by Dr. Seuss. Originally created in 1953, just 8 years after the end of WWII. The sets are expressionistic, weird, Seussian. The acting is banal, that stylized “Leave it to Beaver” cadence: “Listen here Mr. Zabladowski, you may be the very best plumber in town, but when it comes to piano lessons I hardly think you qualify as an expert!” I suppose this is meant to be witty but nobody talks like this.

Peter Lind Hayes plays Mr. Zablodowski, a plumber who gets pulled into the drama and becomes a father figure to the main character, Bart Collins, played by child actor and Lassie star Tommy Rettig. Hayes’ low-energy vibe is decribed in Michael’s Moviepalace as “drab and passive, giving us no confidence in his skills as a hero, a father figure, or even as a plumber.”

In direct contrast to the languid nightmare that is the rest of the movie is this remarkable freak and breath of fresh air, Hans Conried:

Hans Conreid as the maniacal conductor wearing a striped shirt with a pink embroidered bass clef on it.

He brings the zany full force. There are 11 musical numbers, cut down from an original of 20. Conried describes the audience at the Hollywood premiere of the original version ” “At the end there was only one boy left and he was waiting for his mother to pick him up” (Wikipedia). Apparently the original cut has been lost.

There are some fun touches, the chorus of green-painted zombie musicians are amusing.

Fantastical orchestra along stone steps of dungeon playing stylized horns.

The henchmen remind me of those on the old Batman tv show, bumbling oafs:

Henchmen in yellow and blue outfits with yellow and blue skullcaps. Yellow outfit means blue skullcap and vice versa.
Screenshot

I suppose it would be too terrifying without the comic element, although there is a disturbing scene in a dungeon where a percussionist who played an extra bass drum hit is imprisoned in a bass drum that is being played foreverL

Dungeon scene of shadow of man trapped in a giant bass drum.
Screenshot

With movies like this I wonder did no one look at it and say “We have five different types of films here that are all somewhat bad and don’t work together?” I like the ambition, the fantasy, the anti-fascist themes, the creativity, but it this one was hard to sit through.

Lost in Search of Time

Posted by on 09/23/2025 1 comment
Book cover of the book "Don't Sleep, there are Snakes", a tribesman and child

What can the Pirahã hunter-gatherers of the Amazon rainforest teach us about the modern doomscrolling epidemic? According to Daniel Everett, the author of “Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes” they live happy lives, focused on immediate experience, with little concept of past and future. They don’t subscribe to the concept of time as a scarce resource to be managed and measured, prevalent only since the invention of mechanical clocks in the 13th century.

Everett is a Christian missionary who moves his family to Brazil and lives with the Pirahã in order to learn their language, and to convert them to Christianity.

Learning the Pirahã language proves to be difficult, with its absence of “recursive structures”. Recursion is the embedding of a clauses within a clause, for example “The man, who is fishing, is my brother.” Without recursion this would be expressed as a series of clauses: “The man is fishing. The man is my brother”. This finding was controversial and goes against Noam Chomsky’s assertion that recursion is universal.

Everett experiences the Pirahã as living in a very present-focused way. They don’t have stories of legends past, and don’t speculate about the future. Everett fails miserably at converting them to Christianity – despite his valiant efforts creating recording summary of the Gospels the Pirahã’s own language. When they find his audiotape boring (except for a graphic telling of John the Baptist’s beheading), Everett re-records the summary this time narrated by a native tribesman, however this also fails.

The Pirahã simply have no trust and little interest in information that is not directly observed. They ask Everett about Jesus:

“Did you see him?” Did your father see him?” when the answer is no, they tune out. Eventually Everett ends up abandoning his faith, the Pirahã convert him. Exposed to a well-adjusted, happy people who do not rely on the far-removed promises and laws of the Bible, he changes his world view.

What does this have to do with doomscrolling? People who scroll endlessly in search of dopamine describe losing the sense of time passing. They experience intermittent reinforcement, a type of reward frequency that makes a behavior more resistant to extinction. This is not always healthy, and it’s not my contention that it is.

Humans have for 300,000 years lived in a present-focused way, whereas the practice of dividing time into distinct units (to be used productively) is ridiculously recent. Our predisposition toward activities which return one to an instinctive sense of present may evolutionary bias. Doomscrolling provides relaxation from the mental ligatures of time-management.

Thus the appeal of doomscrolling is not just the dopamine hit from entertaining content, delivered intermittently, it’s also a larger sense of being given an ancestral reprieve from the modern tyranny of time.

Chaplin: Sentimental Education

Posted by on 08/05/2025 Comments Off on Chaplin: Sentimental Education

I had Chaplin all wrong, I was too influenced by his personal life and the commercialization of his image. In fact, my conception was more of people imitating “The Tramp” with the weird duck-walk and twitchy mustache, than of him in films. It’s in some of his early comedies that you see the self-sacrificing noble qualities that are less often considered.

Example A: The tenderness he shared with Jackie Coogan in “The Kid” (1921):

Chaplin hugging Jackie Coogan

Shortly before filming Chaplin and his wife had a child who died a few days after birth. Chaplin then poured himself into the production. There is a scene where he is reunited with “The Kid” that includes a full-mouth kiss that is unlike anything I’ve seen in movies.

chaplin kissing "The Kid" jackie coogan

May and Nichols

Posted by on 07/22/2024 Comments Off on May and Nichols

When I see video clips of Nichols and May, I get the sense that comedy can be redeemed from it’s current state of hysterical impersonal caricature by returning to the craft of acting.

Elaine May and Mike Nichols were Method-trained actors. Their improvisational sketches are effective because their acting is so good. In the famous “Mother and Son” sketch, despite the hilarious quips, you get a feeling that Elaine May’s mother is both hurt AND manipulative. It’s a richer portrayal than the “I’m the crazy guy! Look how crazy I am!” monotone style of sketch comedy you see on SNL these days. There are actual stakes, it’s relatable.

Go clean your room!

Posted by on 01/31/2024 Comments Off on Go clean your room!

Admonishment as curative in “Dopamine Nation”

This was definitely a “No Malarky” type of read.

Anna Lembke seems compassionate but limits herself to dispensing the kind of old-fashioned advice you might get from George Will. Just stop doing the bad thing! Throw out anything that helps you do the bad thing! Now experience some sort of discomfort to reset your dopamine. Be honest with people about all the bad things you do.

It’s sort of like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, which basically just says “Be Effective”. Or Jordan Peterson saying “Clean up your room!”. We are in an era of dopamine-seeking dysfunction. But the book’s solution on how to fix this seems limited to personal responsibility. Not much on how well that actually works. Does AA work? The organization says 75% of adherents remain abstinent, other studies put it at more like 30%.

I would have liked to read suggestions at the societal level, and also a better ranking of which actions at a personal level have the most science-backed effectiveness and durability.

“A Christmas Carol” – Prioritizing threat-associated sensory information

Posted by on 01/22/2024 3 comments

I recently saw a local musical adaptation of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (“A Ghost Story of Christmas”) in which Scrooge seemed to magically change from a curmudgeon into jocund benefactor. It seemed abrupt and unearned, so I returned to the novel to try to figure out what specifically changed him.

Scrooge is someone who lives in scarcity, he prides himself on being impervious to any creature comforts: “

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm nor wintry weather chill him”……”Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.”
(“A Christmas Carol”, Dickens, chapter 1)

Three spirits visit Scrooge. I thought the first, The Ghost of Christmas Past, would be the main catalyst, since it show’s Scrooge as a sad abandoned boy, eventually welcomed back into the family. Victorian-era PTSD.

Everyone (except me) loves the Ghost of Christmas Present, with all the food porn and grocer’s shop porn. Also everyone super-merry, hyper-merry, maniacally-merry, especially the poor. I’m sure that in the 1840’s this part of the book would be read and reread, but I found it unrealistic. I think Victorian England was going through a “Christmas Boom” at the time, it reads as aspirational and forced to me. Contrast this section with the early scalpel like description of Scrooge. “Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster.”

This comparison with an oyster reminded me of The Book of Job, where Job describes his degraded state in terms of other creatures: “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.”

It’s the last Spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Future, that causes Scrooge to change. How sobering would it be to hear estate robbers brag about stealing the bed-curtains off of your deathbed, as you lay dying in it? Dark! The only people who express any emotion at your death are people who are happy you died because they owed you money. And finally seeing your own neglected gravestone.

Dickens was tying into human’s “attentional threat bias”, a gift from evolution that causes us to prioritize perceived threats over other types of stimuli. Although Darwin was a contemporary of Dickens, I’m sure this was a later-developed theory, so one might say Dickens was operating “on instinct” by including towards the end of the novel (taking advantage of “recency bias”).

The end result is that Scrooge is basically scared into an abundance mindset. This could be viewed through economic theory as well, he wants more value from his money. Or sociologically he was doing a sort of potlatch, seeking to inflate his status, being altruistic for purpose of pure gain. That would not have sold many books though.

In order not to be a total pre-transformation Scrooge myself, I am providing some fun definitions of Victorian-era terms that I had to look up:

withal: in addition, besides, or as well. It can also mean despite that, notwithstanding, or nevertheless. 

The Treadmill: The treadmill was a feature in prisons where inmates would walk endlessly, pushing a huge wheel while holding bars at chest height. With every step, the wheel would turn, grinding corn. Prisoners were allowed 12 minutes of break every hour. (Wikipedia)

St. Dunstan: Dickens refers to the harsh weather by comparing it to St. Dunstan using his blacksmith’s tongs to grab the devil by the nose

negus: a hot drink of port, sugar, lemon, and spices such as nutmeg

Cold Boiled: “There are disagreements as to whether it is boiled beef, pork or chicken.” (https://daeandwrite.wordpress.com/tag/a-christmas-carol-menu/)

“Martha dusted the hot plates”:  Cannot find anything on this, my uneducated guess is that plates were warmed by the fire and then were brushed off to remove any ashes

Smoking bishop – A hot drink made from port, red wine, lemons or Seville oranges, sugar, and spices such as cloves. The citrus fruit was roasted to caramelise it and the ingredients then warmed together. A myth persists[citation needed] that the name comes from the shape of the traditional bowl, shaped like a bishop’s mitre, and that in this form, it was served in medieval guildhalls and universities. (Wikipedia)


Barbie: Dolls playing with humans

Posted by on 01/10/2024 Comments Off on Barbie: Dolls playing with humans

After seeing the Gerwig/Bambauch toy epic “Barbie” I was left with the question “Where are the girls who play with the Barbies?”  The only girl character (Ariana Greenblatt) is yet another Hollywood proto-adult, who coolly condemns Barbie as “fascist”.  Aside from the comic opening which pays homage to “2001” the only actual scene of a girl playing with a doll takes place in an adult’s (America Ferrara’s) gauzy flashback scenes.

Barbie is a pink fantasy version of the latest Marvel movie.  Critics seem to be responding to the high concept, the tip of the hat to “camp”, without think going much deeper.  I can see a Barbie franchise in the offing “Barbie XV – Skipper’s Revenge.”

This movie goes beyond action, it addresses social issues, just  not in hearts and minds of girls.  The movie tries to compensate by finishing with Barbie becoming more “human”, but it’s a tacked-on solution.  Barbie is popular because she is not human, and although in real life Mattel offers a Barbie with a wheelchair, and a “Down’s syndrome Barbie”, those don’t sell.

The essential contradiction embodied by Barbie dolls, that they are simultaneously liberating and oppressing, must endure, because it echoes the human condition. Liberating, because Barbie shows girls that they can be anything they want to be.  Oppressing because if Barbie were blown up to human-size, her waist would be so small she would not have enough intestines to digest enough food to survive.    Women face the dilemma of “I want to be like that; I can’t be like that.” 

 Kierkegaard addressed something similar in his concept of “despair”.  

“The self is a synthesis of elements which are, and will always remain in opposition.  These elements are “held together” by the person and involve a tension or an anxiety which is a constant temptation to the person to “let it go”.  This would be a cowardly act, destroying the self in order to escape the anxiety.  The forms of “letting go” are the forms of despair.” (p. 58 Kierkegaard’s Philosophy – Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age, by John Douglas Mullen).

The Barbie movie focuses on “Barbie’s” realization of this opposition.  Problems start to occur when a Barbie designer attempts to avoid Kierkegaardian despair by integrating Barbie’s shadow-side via sketches and darker character ideas.   

Just as Kierkegaard described those most in despair (most in normative fantasy) as seeming “in the pink of health” (pink Barbie), when Jungian undercurrents begin to flow, Barbie unpinks: she gets bad breath and flat feet.

Barbieland is veritable “Lord of the Flies” struggle for gender domination.  At first the Barbie’s rule: they occupy the top echelon of society, without effort.  The Kens are literally accessories.  The Barbies seem to have no problem with this injustice, and a reference is made in voice-over that this is the converse of the “real world”.   

After Barbie’s trip to the “real world” including visiting Mattel headquarters, populated by harmless corporate-suit dolls, Barbie returns to Barbieland only to find it now ruled by Ken dolls.  The Kens have become the oppressors, forcing the Barbie’s into abject supportive roles

Two points are overlooked here.  First, the comic version of hypermasculinity which the Kens embrace dilutes the parallel dilemma that boys now face.  Over time boy’s “action figures” (dolls) have become more and more unrealistically muscular, to the point where they look like steroid-using bodybuilders.  The dilemma of being oneself and meeting an unrealistic ideal is one shared by both genders.  The male box was played for laughs.

Second, female internecine norm enforcement is ignored.  The fact that it’s “impossible to be a woman” is in no way tied to female aspiration to be part of the Barbie crew. If Barbie steps out of line (plays too much) the other Barbies ostracize her as “weird Barbie”, Barbie never nurtures, Barbie never IS nurtured.

I can imagine a more interesting Nietzschean take with hyper-Barbies running amok, openly oppressing any weakness, yet succumbing to the inevitable consequences of Kierkegaardian despair: loss of meaning, identity, self.  Similarly the Ken/G.I. Joe identity-havoc-wreakers would create their own personal Armageddon.  The only hope, in this future and perhaps our own, would be a small girl and a boy who picks up a broken doll, strokes their synthetic hair and tells them it’s going to be OK.