In Comparison to Rights I Never Had

I was reading an article today about women’s rights in post-1989 ex-Soviet Bloc countries. I started thinking about the old Soviet constitution, which is full of wonderful language—many of the same nice-sounding concepts that we’d consider “progressive” today and that we also find in Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto of 1919. The Soviet Constitution was a one big dead letter, of course; and Mussolini compromised away his early socialist ideals for popularity and, later, power.

The article had quotations from leaders of woman-themed NGOs and many made the point that as communism fell and states moved toward democracy, some rights important to women, such as the right to unconditional abortion, were taken away. The reason was to show that political progress, as commonly understood, could actually mean a net regress in rights for a certain segment of the population. In this case, the segment was half the population!

What struck me, however, was not the reaction to rights taken away; but the seeming blindness to rights gained. Remember the old joke about being granted a wish, but with the catch that whatever you get, your neighbour gets twice as much (“I wish for my arm to be cut off” is the punchline)? I think something similar was at play here. Clearly, citizens of these newly non-communist countries gained a say in the political process via free[er] elections. Though elections had been held prior to 1989—some right after the war ended—what good is an election if each voting booth is next to an incinerator and the communist winner walks away with a stunning 95% majority? Now people had a real voice.

But, relatively to one another, they mostly had the same individual strength of voice. Women, in this case, didn’t gain anything in relation to men. Before 1989, neither men or women could influence who ruled. After 1989, both could. Hence, even though women did gain a new power, it was not specifically a female power. And what was taken away—unconditional abortion—was specifically female.

There’s also the issue that the right to vote was gained only in fact. In theory, it had been around. Yet it’s dangerous to say that it wasn’t a new right. If in one hundred years we read an article like the one I read, we will get a false picture of things.

The reason I thought about the Soviet constitution and Fascist Manifesto is different: if history is reconstructed through documents and “important” documents overpower others, how long until someone takes my examples at face value and forgets (or “forgets”, for those of us who are more cynical) that they were not actually representative of reality?

In my hypothetical 100-years-later article, the author will seem to be authoritative if he or she says that abortion was taken away and nothing was gained. He or she may even point to something like the Soviet constitution to refute the notion that 1989 brought with it the vote. After all, the beautiful language of the official and “important” document says it right there: everyone has the right to vote.

The conclusion will follow: in 1989, women gained nothing and lost the right to unconditional abortion; in communist times, people enjoyed greater individual freedom and had more rights than they did after communism fell.

I wonder how many past societies we’ve unrightly condemned or praised based on words that didn’t correspond to practice. In historians’ defense, the words may be all that they had access to or that we have left. Indeed, what is good history may still be bad truth.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is one of my favourite novels of this past decade. It’s sad and science fiction, and romantic and reading that had both an intellectual and emotional effect on me. Music video director (Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”) Mark Romanek’s film adaptation is an able and pretty attempt at translating Ishiguro’s words into pictures, but it seems an adaptation at the literal level. Sometimes this approach works—John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is literal and a worthy classic—but, here, though experiencing the story for a second time isn’t unpleasant, it’s not revelatory, either.

Most everything in Never Let Me Go is polished, from the cinematography to the acting, yet there are moments when grime would have worked better than beauty. For example, there’s something too model-and-catwalkish about a scene of a skeletal Keira Knightley barely walking down a long and antiseptic hallway. Her character is struggling for life despite being a decaying sack of pre-purchased organs. She’s not supposed to be modeling the latest fashions. Indeed, she says as much in another scene, reminding her co-clones of a reality that may or may not have an effect on who they are: to find their originals, they should look in the gutters. Cue also the last scene, of bits of plastic stuck to a wire fence, blowing in the wind. It’s simply too shiny.

One of the strengths of Ishiguro’s novel, and my favourite aspect of it, is Kathy’s first person narration. When the book first came out, I remember reading a few reviews that criticized Ishiguro for a drop in his writing quality (compared to The Remains of the Day). I think this “drop” is what breathes life into the novel by letting us look into Kathy’s soul, thereby showing us that she has one, one of the fundamental questions about the book’s clones. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to translate this into cinema. As a result, the film’s characters, and especially Kathy, are distant, too flat. The novel relies on Kathy’s memory and how she describes what happened to create her personality. To lose that is to lose a lot.

There is, however, one genuine and breathtaking shot in Never Let Me Go. It’s not on the pier or on the beach in a shell of an old ship. It’s in front of a stopped car, in the glare of headlights. (Unintentional shades of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identificazione di una donna?) The scene itself is overwrought, one of the film’s worst, but the image—of Kathy embracing Tommy—is the one that sticks with me.

Read the book, then revisit it by watching the movie.

Identificazione di una donna

Seeing Stars: A Two-Tier NHL?

Watching the news the other day, I got to thinking about what several sportscasters were calling the need for the NHL to protect its star players. The issue finds itself in the spotlight again after Sidney Crosby’s concussion, but it’s a recurring one. I reason: if the league is to protect certain star players, then, obviously, there need to be different rules for stars and non-stars, which itself demands rules for categorizing players, and a kind of two-tier system of “citizenship”.

It’s possible, of course, to protect star players by protecting all players (every star player being a player), but, in that case, it would make more sense to describe the situation as one requiring protection [full stop]. Anyway, my assumption is that to protect star players is to protect some players, not all.

How do we divide players into stars and non-stars?

1. We could let the teams themselves decide. Each team could get an equal number (one or two) of “star” labels that they could attach to any player. Selection would occur at the beginning of the year and would be set for that year. These could be fixed or possibly trade-able, kind of like in a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

2. We could assign “star” status to players whose salaries are above a limit. Ostensibly, how much a player earns is a quantification of his worth to his team. This might mean one team has three stars, while another has one or none, but, from the league’s point of view, perhaps it isn’t important where the players play; what’s important is to protect the best ones.

3. We could let fans decide, like in All-Star voting!

How do we protect stars?

The most obvious method of protection is deterrence, which is what the NHL already does through penalties, fines and suspensions. Hit someone: pay the price. Because penalties and suspensions affect a team as well as an individual player, they have the added bonus of making sure that teams also stand to lose when players make dangerous plays.

If we want more protection for the stars, an obvious place to start would, therefore, be to hand out longer suspensions and bigger fines for transgressions against star players. For example, the same head shot delivered to the noggin’ of Sidney Crosby would be twice as costly as that delivered to the head of Dennis Wideman. Our sense of equality—the notion that one player’s health is more valuable than another’s—may bother us, but this type of inequality is hardly rare. A visiting head of state has more protection than his aide, for instance. That may still bother us, but we generally accept it as practical. If someone assassinates the prime minister, it’s more chaotic than if someone shoots his aide. Perhaps the same holds for hockey. An injured Sidney Crosby is worse for the league (and his team) than an injured Dennis Wideman.

The natural follow-up question is: how much more costly should a transgression against a star player be? For the sake of simplicity and some sense of equality (two tiers, not a thousand) let’s assume that we treat all star players equally. Sidney Crosby is no more important, and, thus, no better-protected than Alex Ovechkin; but how much better-protected should Alex Ovechkin be than Jay Beagle?

I don’t know. Keeping in mind that suspensions of 3 or 4 games are not uncommon, a multiplier of ten is too harsh. Five is strong, but seems on the border of reasonable if we stretch reasonability. Two through four is, in my opinion, the range we would be looking at.

One could argue that the players who are suspended most often are those fourth line guys who need to play hard in order to keep their spot on the team, and that they make the least amount of money, so increasing fines and suspensions would hit them too hard. On one hand, that’s no argument. If they can’t make the team without playing “on the edge”, then they shouldn’t be on the team. On the other, we can be sympathetic. We could suspend them with pay or limit “without pay” suspensions and fines to players making more than some set amount of money per year.

The bigger problem is that teams can replace these players without too much trouble. So the penalty is felt by the player more than by the team. This may be acceptable and may produce the results we want (less injuries to star players), but there’s no guarantee. However, we would certainly bolster our chances of success if we penalized the team, as well.

One idea is to make sure the team suffers off the ice. Fines? Perhaps. But what about some kind of penalty on the salary cap? What about adding an $x/year “ghost” to a team’s payroll for a set time in addition to any fines or suspensions handed down to the player? This would mean that a team that puts a star players at risk would feel the cost as an organization and for some time.

Another idea, this time one felt on the ice, would be to increase the length of powerplays for penalties taken against star players. The details aren’t important (maybe +2 minutes for any penalty taken against a star player, akin to the +2 plus minutes a players gets if a high stick draws blood; or some kind of increase to certain penalties that are most likely to injure), but the weakness is apparent: it might be a blow to the offending player’s team, but it’s a blow felt only in one game. If the team was already losing, who cares?

How would it affect the game?

I suppose it’s anyone’s guess, but if the league made it much more costly to deliver a dangerous hit to a star player than to a non-star, it would probably mean more room to play and greater freedom for star players in general. Considering that most players don’t intend to injure an opponent, we may conclude that players who might be tempted to deliver a questionable or risky hit to a star player would decide against it, either on their own or on instructions from their coach.

Note

I don’t think a change toward what I’ve proposed is good for hockey or the NHL, but if both brass and pundits keep talking about protecting stars, I don’t see how they can do that without segregating players into classes and imposing harsher penalties on transgressions against the more important class—the new “untouchables”, if you will.

My understanding is that “protecting star players”, which both the league and sportscasters talk about, contains within it two assumptions: (1) Star players are not being adequately protected and should have more protection; and (2) Star players are different from non-star players and to protect star players is, therefore, not the same as protecting all players.

My point is that if these assumptions are true and the league does act to protect star players, it will, by definition, create a two-tier NHL. I think this is bad. Of course, there are other ways of protecting stars (they could have safer equipment than non-stars, etc.) but each creates two tiers. What I’ve done is tried to take the way in which the NHL protects players now—increasingly so—and expand it to fit my assumptions.

I’m glad most people think that my conclusions are absurd. I hope that instinctual response points toward this conclusion: either the message that “star players need more protection” is misguided or the current way of protecting players is, in general, wrong.

Sancho Panza’s Efficient Breach

An economic approach to law is on the rise. Efficiency is the big fish. A common example is the idea of an “efficient breach” of contract, which ostensibly leaves all parties better off. It works like this:

Bill agrees to sell Andy a dog for $50. Later, Bill meets with Chris and finds that Chris will pay $200 for the same dog. Bill breaches his contract with Andy and sells the dog to Chris. Bill pays Andy $50 (what Andy would have gotten, had Bill carried out the contract).

When the situation began, Andy had $50 and the desire to buy a dog, Bill had a dog and the desire to sell, and Chris had $200 and the desire to buy a dog.

If the contract had been carried out, Andy would have lost $50 and gained a dog, Bill would have gained $50 and lost a dog, and Chris would be left with $200 and the desire to buy a dog.

After the breach, Andy has $100 (his original $50 plus what he was paid by Bill) and the desire to buy a dog, Bill has $150 ($200 from the sale to Bill less $50 for what he paid for breaching his contract with Andy) and no dog, and Chris has lost $200 and gained a dog.

All three people are in a better position.

Andy still wants a dog, but he now has $50 more to spend on one. Bill sold his dog and made $150 instead of $50. Chris, who valued the dog more highly than Andy, got the dog.

We could start to poke at the idea with a stick and see if it holds up, but that’s not the point of this post. Suffice to say, not everyone agrees that efficient breach is a great idea, whether based on moralist (a promise is a promise!) or realist (if Bill won’t pay Andy, then they’ll have to go to court and that costs money, too) grounds. What this post is about, however, is an example of efficient breach—and, therefore, an economic approach to law—in Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century masterpiece Don Quixote!

The situation is this:

Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire (or “squire”, as Don Quixote is something of an anachronistic make-believe knight errant) is in conversation with the squire of another knight errant (or “knight errant”, if you will). Don Quixote and the other knight, the Knight of the Wood, will be dueling at dawn. Thus, Sancho and the second squire, the Squire of the Wood, will be seconds in the duel; and the Squire of the Wood tells Sancho that it is custom in Andalusia for seconds to also fight.

Sancho counters this argument by saying that that custom only applies to ruffians and fighting men, not the squires of knights errant. Don Quixote, says Sancho, has never mentioned this rule and he knows all the rules of knight errantry.

However, Sancho goes further:

“No matter how much I’d like it to be true that there’s a specific rule that squires have to fight when their masters fight, still, I wouldn’t obey it, and I’d pay whatever fine they make peaceable squires pay, and I bet it wouldn’t be more than two pounds of wax, and I’d be happy to pay those two pounds, because I know they’ll cost me less than the bandages I’ll need to heal my head: I already count it as split and broken in two.” (Part II, Chapter XIV)

In Sancho’s hypothetical, there is a rule requiring squires of dueling knights errant to fight. We can think of it as being a rule in a contract signed by every person who becomes a squire. There is also a penalty for breaching that rule: two pounds of wax. Sancho weighs the cost of two pounds of wax against the cost of having his broken head healed and finds that it makes more sense to breach the contract and pay the wax. The other squire, we may say, will do whatever Sancho does.

Before the duel was decided, both Sancho and the other squire had the benefits of being squires, the desire to continue being squires and some amount of money (let’s say the equivalent of 100 pounds of wax). The guardian of squirely law (the other contracting party) also has some set amount of money.

If the rules were followed, the squires would still have the benefits of being squires, would still (probably) want to be squires, would still have the equivalent of 100 pounds of wax, but would now have broken heads, which would cost more than 2 pounds of wax to heal. In effect, they have, let’s say, 70 pounds of wax. The guardian of squirely law would gain nothing and lose nothing.

If Sancho breaches the rules and pays 2 pounds of wax to the guardian of squirely law, and the Squire of the Wood does the same, both end up with whole heads, the same benefits and desires regarding squireness, and 98 pounds of wax. The guardian of squirely law has whatever money it had plus 4 pound of wax.

Hence, if we don’t take into account any loss to the guardian of squirely law (for example, a loss to the prestige of the squire profession on which it relies to receive benefits from third parties and grant them to its member squires), all three parties are better off. Of course, this also doesn’t take into account the other squire’s possible desire to fight or the possibility of either Sancho or, more probably, the Squire of the Wood, winning the fight, thus coming out unscathed (no broken head) and thereby having to pay nothing for healing and nothing to the guardian of squirely law.

But as imperfect as the example is, it’s interesting to find this type of reasoning in the novel. Indeed, the entire conversation between Sancho and the other squire is a crafty defense by Sancho, who also says that he can’t fight because he doesn’t have a sword, to which the squire responds, so then we’ll use sacks, to which Sancho agrees, because sacks don’t hurt, though the squire counters that they’ll be sacks with stones in them…

True Grit

It’s funny: I watched my favourite film of 2010—the Coens’ True Grit—on the first day of 2011. Two weeks earlier, I’d seen Henry Hathaway’s original. The latter is a good Western, the former an amazing one. The ’69 version does have its comparative strengths (Mattie’s horse bartering scene is longer and easier to follow, the first Act is more substantial, and there is more action, in the sense of characters doing things: Mattie tumbling, not walking, down a mountain before meeting the coward Tom Chaney by the river; the convict in the cabin de-feathering a turkey, rather than simply sitting, before turning on his friend, etc.), but the remake has it beat on almost all other counts.

I won’t dare say that Jeff Bridges is a better Cogburn than John Wayne, which, in addition to being blasphemy would also be untrue, as John Wayne is Rooster Cogburn and Jeff Bridges is, in that sense, playing John Wayne as much as Rooster, but Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon are both more entertaining as their respective characters than Kim Darby and Glen Campbell. It’s a defense of sorts that the characters they play are more refined and, in Damon’s case, better-written than their original counterparts, though such an argument, taken too far, threatens to take away from the performances. Damon’s LeBoeuf is a hoot and given a respect that the first film unfairly denied him. He’s still funny, but he’s no buffoon.

And lest I forget that films are made by people behind the camera, I’ll add that Roger Deakin’s cinematography is expectedly lush and gorgeous. True Grit is one fine-lookin’ movie!

I haven’t read Charles Portis’ novel, but have read that the Coens are more faithful to it. Perhaps as a result their film has a tighter narrative logic than the lighter, more frolicking, Hathaway version. Then again, I’ve heard the Coens’ (and Portis’) “years later” coda called silly and their film dubbed “emotionally unengaging”, a criticism that, given my own experience (as emotionally caught up as in no other film that year), I don’t understand one bit. To each her own.

Maybe I’m way off on my own little crazy island, but there’s a sadness that permeates the story and is underlined in the true ending. Rooster lives out his days, and he lives to be quite old, as a traveling attraction. Mattie enters middle age alone and with no prospect of togetherness. Hence, as much as anything, True Grit is the story of the tragic impossibility of their romance. They are, in a spiritual sense, perfect for each other; yet they were born too long apart. I yawned during The Notebook. Here, I held my breath.

There’s one scene in the new True Grit that cranks up the surrealism and threatens to take the film down a more familiar Coen path. It doesn’t, and, on the basis of that restraint, we have a great way to spend two hours. Because whatever that film might have been, this one is better. Lesson: sometimes it’s good to do the conventional; and do it to perfection.

PS: My favourite scene is the river crossing. In the original, Rooster watches with admiration as Mattie, stubborn and determined, emerges on the other side—commenting, “She reminds me of me.” In the remake, there is no spoken explanation. There’s just a look.

Life in Future Times

I used to hurt, because I knew I wouldn’t be alive in future times. Not only was I painfully interested in the technologies and lifestyles and possibilities of the year 100-from-now, but I imagined the future without the realism with which I thought about the past. Life in the fourteenth century was tough. Life in the twenty-fourth century I believed would be easier. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps life will be easier, longer, filled with more comfort.

Yet walking home today, for the first time not only did I feel glad to be alive when I’m alive (now), but, even more so, happy that I will not be alive in the future. In one hundred years, I will be dead. And that made me smile. Assuming a worst-case scenario—a global catastrophe, an increase in poverty, irreparable environmental damage, etc.—that’s understandable. In a best-case scenario, I feel myself in the minority. How could a world of greater equality, governed by an increasingly-single (hence, increasingly peaceful in the traditional sense) government, founded on racial and ethnic harmony, dictated by science and ruled by an ever more-efficient and economic system of law be bad?

The evasive answer is: it’s not, but it’s just not for me. The truthful answer is that I’m only starting to find out. I have a gut feeling, an instinct, that something is going wrong—or, at least, that developing social, political, philosophical and legal trends are leaving me opposed and behind. At the same time, I see that, for most of the people around me, things are going right. It’s not a case of one boy crying wolf and the rest of the village going matter-of-factly about its business. It’s a case of everyone seeing the wolf but disagreeing about its fundamental nature: friend or foe, saviour or downfall?

I suppose the true issue is one of proportionality. The problem is a teeter-totter. On one side is the individual, on the other the community. On the individual’s side are rights and a rights-based interpretation of the law; on the community’s is an economic, efficiency-based view. The debate is not a new one and it will not be resolved any time soon. But I sense the balance shifting smoothly and irreparably toward the side of the community. I sense popular opinion shifting with it.

And so I smile, happy that I am alive now, still in a time of relative balance, when I don’t have to live my life continuously striding up a slope, slipping and sliding, struggling to keep from falling into what I don’t believe.