Two views of one lecture

NEH head Jim Leach makes a case for civility

Editors note: When National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Jim Leach came to Houston to talk about civility — and the lack of it in today's society — CultureMap contributors Nancy Wozny and Leslie Loddeke each felt moved to write how it affected them. Here's Nancy's civilized reaction.

"Civilizations require civility," so says Jim Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), during his "Civility in a Fractured Society" talk, presented by Rice University's Humanities Research Center.

Who knew? There's not much evidence in the election rhetoric of the past decade. One might conclude that civilization is in a dire state of erosion. Exactly, says Leach, who firmly believes the current state of political communication is crippling our ability to govern wisely. Leach traces the history of political manners back to the founder's protection of the "rights of man."

Leach was appointed NEH chair by President Obama last year, after a three-decade career in Congress as a Republican from Iowa and a teaching position at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He holds eight honorary degrees and has received numerous awards for his outstanding contributions to public service.

"This is not the worst time in history," offered Leach, reminding the crowd that in 1804 the then vice-president Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. "Consider the tension of the 1930s, where everyone suffered. Today some have never done better while others suffer. Yet the best and brightest have let the country down. There's a reason for hard feelings, but we need to think through those hard feelings."

On the other hand, Leach believes that a government without argumentation leads to tyranny. "Let's celebrate argumentation," he says. "We need to respect the right, the left and even the oddballs."

He got me on the oddballs. This last election seemed overwhelmed with fringe thinkers, some of whom won elections and are now in positions of power. According to Leach, the inappropriate rhetoric of this past election cycle was particularly disturbing, the words "fascism," "communism" and "succession" being the most troubling, and frankly, misused.

"Sports has a stronger ethics than politics," Leach insists. He's right, when a player doesn't follow the rules, the ref is there with a penalty. Bad manners are not tolerated.

In politics, it's just the opposite. Consider negative ads that exaggerate or even worse, downright lie, to make their point. Negative ads continue because, sadly, they have an impact. "You are rewarded, not punished," Leach says, about the power of negativity in political ads.

Leach is concerned, and rightly so, there's not enough talking about the public good. "Compromise is not a four letter word," says Leach.

Yet, it comes with a cost. Consider what compromise did to the health care bill. Obama even mentioned it in his somber post-election speech. But without it, we would have nothing.

Leach talked about his days in Congress, where if he didn't listen to the other side no action was possible. "Sometimes they even have a better idea," he offered.

Leach concluded with a plea to consider the importance of the humanities now more than ever.

"The role of the humanities is to put ourselves in each other's shoes," he says. "The best way to do that is through the study of history, literature and philosophy." So as a former philosophy major, I can take pride.

The take home message seems to be that both sides need to calm down, grow up, face our problems with less reactivity and genuinely listen to one another. Really? Even Christine "not a witch" O'Donnell?

OK. I'm listening. In the end, I took some comfort listening to Leach, a voice of reason, logic and well, civility.

Leslie Loddeke is shaken when an acquaintance tears into President Obama at a party; click here for her reaction to the lack of civility in today's society.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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