There Willl Be Blood

For me, the most anticipated movie of the 2007 season was There Will be Blood, the new film by P.T. Anderson starring the inimitable Daniel Day-Lewis. (A rare profile of him is here). It was nearly unbearable that the wait stretched all the way in to 2008, but perhaps more galling that the film was released in Houston one week before Austin.

The film has been described as a withering critique of the capitalist aplomb that fueled the early development of the American West and that, ultimately, led to the crowning of the United States as an unrivaled economic power. TWB filters this capitalist fervor through the experiences of two ferociously ambitious and megalomaniacal characters representing two archetypes of the American experience--the rapacious oil prospector and the religious demagogue.

I interpreted the film, as I presume Upton Sinclair would have wanted, as a direct counterpoint to Adam Smith's optimistic nostrum: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Indeed, there's a wonderful scene that, fortunately, wasn't tired out in trailers, where Day-Lewis' character makes grand promises of transforming the arid and desolate area under which "oceans of oil" lie, and bringing bread to a heretofore breadless population--the parched land was inhospitable to grain cultivation. But P.T. Anderson detours, somewhat, from this early direction, and focuses instead on the moral unraveling of the characters.

But the film's criticism of fanciful religious dogma, and the profiteering of it's exponents, is just as withering and, again, something that Sinclair would have approved of. It presents an unflattering comparison of organized religion to oil exploration, and the zero-sum mentality that drives them both--indeed, a tither to Lakewood is one lost to a smaller congregation (the Wal Mart-ization of organized religion?), just like an oil field lost to a rival. And both undertakings, if successful, pay quite handsomely. Comportment, as Joel Osteen urges, is important, too in the pitch:

"Even many good, godly people have gotten into a bad habit of slumping and looking down....[Y]ou need to put your shoulders back, hold your head up high, and communicate strength, determination, and confidence." After all, "We know we're representing Almighty God. Let's learn to walk tall."

The thin truth?

This headline, from CNN, caught my attention.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/19/doctored.photo.ap/index.html

There's a bit of research in political science that explores the relationship between candidates' looks--usually measured through follicle endowment (one of my favorite journal article titles: "Hair Loss and Electability: the Bald Truth") or overall measures of attractiveness--and their electoral success. Indeed, several countries--Brazil and the UK, being two of them--include photos of the candidates who, presumably, try to strike as debonair a pose as possible to appeal to indecisive voters. The logic is that, particularly in low information elections, voters use whatever cues are available. Voters, it seems, find handsome candidates irresistible (so do employers, it seems). Here's a link to one nice example of this research.

The implications, and criticisms, of this line of research are endless. One wonders, for instance, whether there are racial effects and whether certain races voted for other races less/more frequently, and how this was related to partisanship or ideological orientations? This has taken on added relevancy with the recent surprise second place finish of Obama in New Hampshire, and the bizarre theories that have been unearthed to explain this. Or, even whether evaluations of attractiveness vary across cultural frontiers? For instance, plumpness is prized in Mauritanian women, but thinness and unnaturally tanned women seem to appeal to many American men. But, of course, perceived attractiveness may be difficult to nail down objectively, particularly since it may be related to your own physical traits. And, it isn't clear what elements of attractiveness have the most....weight (pardon the pun)...in these evaluations. I'm afraid the chubby-chaser demographic may throw a wrench in the whole research agenda.

Great, another blog...

Which must be the reaction to someone stumbling on this blog. Or, if you're anyone invested and involved in seeing my dissertation completed, unmitigated outrage. But, after terrorizing other blogs' comments sections with my long-winded, meandering comments, and as I tire of the stifling creative barriers of slogging through a dissertation, I've decided to establish my own outlet, where I can ramble, grumble, and fritter away time on less productive activities.

I hope to provide a forum for fleshing out some original, unconventional, and hopefully interesting ideas and commentary that has been skipped over or ignored. I intend to touch on a range of issues, some already thoroughly explored, some less so. The topics will cover a wide range of themes that are, sometimes only tangentially, related to my interests. These include politics, education policy, economics, traveling, film, Austin bric-a-brac, beer, and economic development.