Below is a clip from “Bobby” (2006), written and directed by Emilio Estevez, whose illustrious writing/directing credits include the classic “Men at Work” (1990, and not coincidentally the last film he wrote/directed).
The entire film takes place in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel on the day on which RFK was assassinated. It is actually quite a good movie and deals with pertinent and timely issues, including race, war, marriage, poverty, addiction, etc… In some ways, it feels like what “Crash” (2004) tried and, in my opinion, failed to be and do.
There’s a lot in the clip, but what is most interesting to me (wait for it – it really gets going around the 2-minute mark) is the way in which it portrays how love & passivity, as opposed to anger and aggression, are the keys to life and anything that could be termed “progress,” both individually and collectively. Laurence Fishburne plays a very Jesus-like figure, a man who has clearly “been around the block” a few times, who is acquainted with sorrows & grief, who has walked the path of anger and been “killed” by it. He has come to understand that substantive change only occurs in an environment where grace and freedom reign and that any attempt to, in his words, “force it” or “push someone into a corner” will only lead to the opposite of what is desired. In other words, anger and aggression only arouse rebellion, while love gives birth to love, and this holds true for those who are at the “bottom” as well as the “top”. At the end of the clip, we see this idea depicted in a powerful, uncomfortable way as Fishburne’s character graciously, passively allows himself to be humiliated by those in power over him.
As a final thought, this clip may contain a compelling response to the Nietzschian contention of Robert Zemeckis’ “Beowulf” (2007) that Christianity killed heroism, aka masculinity. More on that later (perhaps:)…
rj
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2 comments
DZ says:
Mar 31, 2008
RJ- Wow, powerful! I especially love the ending. Thanks for this. Oh and I found the Zemeckis version Beowulf disturbing for the very reason you mentioned.
Anonymous says:
Mar 31, 2008
Dear R.-J.,
Your post is as insightful and sharp as anything I have ever read from your wise hand.
Your powerful endorsement of the Justification principle of absolute passivity (the Justified One, the Quitter, to quote Kerouac) ties in so personally to what I have been thinking of late, that I almost thought that maybe the author was “sending up” some of the recent thinking in my head. But No! You are cutting to the surgical heart of the disease and of the cure.
It used to bother me, that section at the end of Holl’s “What Did Luther Understand by Religion?”, where he speaks of Luther’s “self-less self-hood”. I used to think it sounded too, well, almost Eastern, and certain quietistic. But it no longer bothers me at all. It is in Luther, and it is the cure for action, which, when self-driven, is almost always wrong and the wrong thing to do. I now understood this.
Your post digs this down to the lowest stratum. I am loving, just loving what you have written.
Now let’s all huddle when we get to Mockingbird this week.
Bis bald, and let’s invite all the blind, the maimed, the halt, and the lame (i.e., our friends), to Manhattan for the conference… of the Century..
All love, in His Love,
PZ