MISUNDERSTANDING THOMAS SZASZ: It's hard to think of a writer who expressed himself as clearly as the late Thomas Szasz did, or who argued his points with such precision. You might fault his logic or disagree with his premises, but it ought to be hard to misunderstand what exactly he was saying. And yet he was constantly misunderstood. How many times, for example, has someone suggested that Szasz's argument against the idea of mental illness has been refuted by research on the biological basis of schizophrenia? The implications of that research are routinely overstated, but set that aside: Even if the most breathless pop-science coverage of those investigations were accurate, they wouldn't affect Szasz's distinction between metaphorical mental diseases and actual physical lesions. They would simply move schizophrenia from the first category to the second one. Far from being unable to process such scientific developments, Szasz wrote thoughtfully about something similar that had happened in the past, when the treatment of epilepsy moved from the dominion of the psychiatrists to the dominion of the neurologists.
Meanwhile, there seems to be no limit to the medicalization of our lives. So while Szasz's critics tout those schizophrenia studies as evidence that their target is no longer relevant, I read stories like this CNN report and conclude that he's more relevant than ever:
A federal court judge on Tuesday ordered Massachusetts officials to provide sex-reassignment surgery for a transsexual prison inmate, after determining that it was the only adequate treatment for the inmate's mental illness.
The state's Department of Correction said Michelle Kosilek, previously known as Robert, who is serving a life sentence without parole for murdering his wife in 1990, has a gender identity disorder....
Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf ruled that sex reassignment surgery is the "only adequate treatment" for Kosilek, and "that there is no less intrusive means to correct the prolonged violation of Kosilek's Eighth Amendment right to adequate medical care."
In the old days, "gender identity disorder" or some similar label would have been a license to coerce Kosilek back into a male identity. Now it's a license to coerce taxpayers into subsidizing a sex-change operation. Szasz would have said it's absurd to think of the sexual roles people adopt in terms of a disorder.
The medicalization mindset has taken hold even among the people you'd expect to like it the least. While many transsexual activists object, on understandable grounds, to the idea that they're sick, reporters haven't had trouble finding others willing to say things like "It's great to see a judge recognize that transition-related health care is medically necessary health care." In 2012, there are social advantages as well as social disadvantages to acquiring a psychiatric label -- and not just when it comes to a headline-grabbing subject like sex-change surgery behind bars. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is filled with diagnoses designed to describe ordinary life problems, some of which might be solved or made more manageable by talking to a counsellor or by taking a mood-altering chemical. Once upon a time, a label from its pages would have been a stigma; now it's a way to get an insurance company to cover the costs of those talks or those drugs. (The flow of money from insurance companies has, in turn, become an incentive encouraging psychiatric coercion, a process Joe Sharkey described in his muckraking book Bedlam. Circle of life!)
It was bad enough when readers misunderstood Szasz's own ideas. It was worse when they misattributed other figures' ideas to his work. Forty years ago, when people heard that Szasz was a critic of psychiatry, they often assumed he must be a countercultural "antipsychiatrist" like R.D. Laing. In fact, while Szasz saw some of the antipsychiatrists as allies early on -- he recommended one of Laing's books in a footnote to The Manufacture of Madness -- he concluded quickly that they were no more opposed to coercion than the psychiatric establishment was. Eventually he grew so aggravated at being conflated with them that he wrote a book-long critique of their worldview. By then, with Laing forgotten, people were more likely to insinuate that Szasz was some sort of Scientologist. L. Ron Hubbard's weird church denounces psychiatry all the time, after all, and it was Szasz's ally in the political fight against electroshock and other involuntary treatments. But no, he wasn't a Scientologist, and no, they aren't the master manipulators behind every challenge to psychiatric authority.
I had my disagreements with Szasz, but I can't think of anyone who wrote with as much bracing clarity about the ways psychiatric ideology distorts our understanding of issues ranging from religion to the drug war. (Did I say "ranging from"? Szasz's best book -- Ceremonial Chemistry -- makes a strong case that the drug war and religion are closely linked.) He had the ability to look at claims that are presented as objective science and to see the cultural assumptions lurking behind the curtain. Just as important, he could see the ways our it served our social hierarchies to pretend those cultural contingencies weren't there.
I met Szasz just once, at a conference sponsored by Liberty magazine. I asked him about Gregory Bateson's theory of schizophrenia in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, which paralleled Szasz's writing in several significant ways but stopped short of Szasz's full critique of the idea of mental illness. "It seemed like he got halfway to your position," I told him. "No, he got all the way there," Szasz replied, "but he wasn't brave enough to say it." Whether or not it was fair to charge Bateson with cowardice, it's difficult to imagine anyone levying such an accusation at Szasz: Here was a man with the courage of his convictions. And here was a man with the literary skill to express those convictions clearly, no matter how hard some might find it to decipher his plainly stated arguments.
It's an interesting sleight-of-hand that allowed Ciano to get from praising small government to defending a new government mandate in just three sentences. But that's not why I'm quoting her. I'm bringing her up because it's useful to think about why Ciano's employer would have a role in her birth control purchases in the first place.
The answer comes in two parts. First, because the law requires a woman to get a prescription before she can buy the pill, and it requires her to get an invasive and frequently unnecessary medical exam before she can acquire that prescription. Eliminate those controls, and insurance coverage would be beside the point; the pill would be cheaply available over the counter. Second, because changes to the tax code in the 1940s and '50s have channeled us into a system where Americans overwhelmingly get their health insurance through their jobs. Eliminate those incentives, and far fewer people would be dependent on their employers for insurance at all, substantially reducing the relevance of the boss's opinions about birth control.
It goes without saying that Barack Obama has displayed no interest in rolling back the FDA's birth control rules. Nor has he moved away from the policies that push people into employer-based health coverage, or, more broadly, from a system where so many medical services are purchased via insurance in the first place. Indeed, his signature accomplishment is a law requiring people who don't have health insurance to buy it.
If you can't afford to buy it, you may qualify for financial assistance. That's the Democratic Party's promise: We won't end the policies that empower big institutions and raise the cost of living, but when they send you the bill we might help you pay. You saw the same idea at work when various speakers this week invoked student loans: The Democrats will lend you money for college, but they'll do nothing to end the legally enshrined credentialism that makes so many professions off-limits without a degree. And if those subsidies end up inflating the cost of tuition and health care even more...well, then the pols will just call for more subsidies.
When Democrats invoked "equality of opportunity" this week, that's what they were talking about: government action to help people run through mazes that the government helped erect. I don't expect the Dems to stop looking for ways to offer assistance, but dammit, it would be nice if some of them would take on the mazes instead of hatching plans that'll make them more complex.
Last week the Republicans touted themselves as the party of I-built-that entrepreneurship while presenting corporate welfare queens like Boeing as business heroes. This week the Democrats touted themselves as the party of working Americans while praising policies that shore up the insurance industry and the collegiate sorting machine (and while offering an argument for the auto bailout that amounted to a trickle-down defense of corporate welfare). For the next two months, those parties' standard-bearers will tout this election as a stark choice between deeply different alternatives. Where are those factcheckers when you need them?
(cross-posted at Hit & Run -- with pictures! click 'n' see!)
His short volume is not the most complete account of the Antifederalists' struggle—that honor probably belongs to Merrill Jensen's 1940 classic The Articles of Confederation—but it may be the most affecting take on the issue.
Four years later, I'm not sure if this is a half-revised sentence that I did not finish rewriting or just a case of me coughing up the name of the wrong book-read-long-ago. (Probably the former, since I can't think of what other tome I might have meant to cite here.) But while Jensen's book could serve as an excellent introduction to the Antifederalists' worldview, it is in no sense an account, complete or not, of their struggle. Its narrative ends in 1781, six years before the Constitutional Convention.
Sorry, but I don't think I've watched 10 films of any quality from 1921, let alone 10 that are good. Of the ones I've seen, my favorite is Buster Keaton's The High Sign, and of the ones I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Fritz Lang's Destiny. And that's all I'll say about that year, tempted though I am to get into the pros and cons of Manhatta and Orphans of the Storm. We'll start this again in December, when I'll finally blog the best-of-2002 list that I postponed 10 years ago.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1931, it gave its Best Picture award to Cimarron, a mediocre western that aspires to be an epic. It isn't on my list.
1. Bimbo's Initiation Directed by Dave Fleischer
Betty Boop: Final Secret of the Illuminati.
2. Monkey Business Directed by Norman Z. McLeod Written by S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone
We'll get to a real Maurice Chevalier movie below, but first let's pause to praise the Marx Brothers' attempts to impersonate the man.
3. M Directed by Fritz Lang Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou
Instead of quoting a line from the film, I'll invoke the sound of Peter Lorre whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King."
4. Le Million Directed by René Clair Written by Clair, from a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemand
One of the first great movie musicals.
5. La Chienne Directed by Jean Renoir Written by Renoir, from a novel by Georges de La Fouchardière
A man exploits a woman who exploits another man. In the end they all lose.
6. Frankenstein Directed by James Whale Written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort, from a play by Peggy Webling and a novel by Mary Shelley
"Now I know what it feels like to be God!"
7. À Nous la Liberté Written and directed by René Clair
"Work is mandatory. Because work means liberty."
8. The Smiling Lieutenant Directed by Ernst Lubitsch Written by Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda, from an operetta by Leopold Jacobson and Felix Dörmann
This is Maurice Chevalier's show, but let's give a special kudo to George Barbier, who plays the ruler of a tiny European kingdom like a father-in-law who wandered in from an American sitcom.
9. The Threepenny Opera Directed by G.W. Pabst Written by Béla Balázs, Leo Lania, and Ladislaus Vajda, from an operetta by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
With his seedy settings and menacing camera, Pabst creates a vivid movie landscape. That isn't really the best way to present Brecht's agitprop, which is supposed to intrude into our world rather than invite us into a world of its own. But the clash of styles is fascinating enough to be interesting in its own right, particularly when a great Kurt Weill score is part of the package.
10. Night Nurse Directed by William A. Wellman Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett with Charles Kenyon, from a novel by Grace Perkins
This list should have a ludicrous pre-Code melodrama in it, and this enjoyably insane story will fill the role nicely.
Bubbling under: I don't have a full roster of honorable mentions for 1931, but I'll give a friendly shoutout to Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde and Dave Fleischer's Mask-a-Raid. Of the movies of 1931 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Criminal Code.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1941, it gave its Best Picture award to How Green Was My Valley, a cloying "quality" movie from John Ford, who's at his worst when he tries to do something like this. It isn't on my list.
1. Citizen Kane Directed by Orson Welles Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz
I don't think it's the best movie ever made, or even the best movie directed by Orson Welles. But I'm not enough of a contrarian to deny that it's the best movie of 1941.
2. The Maltese Falcon Directed by John Huston Written by Huston, from a novel by Dashiell Hammett
"I've no earthly reason to think I can trust you, and if I do this and get away with it, you'll have something on me that you can use whenever you want to. Since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure that you wouldn't put a hole in me some day. All those are on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant -- I won't argue about that -- but look at the number of them. And what have we got on the other side? All we've got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you."
3. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Directed by Edward F. Cline Written by W.C. Fields
Fields' funniest film. That's saying a lot.
4. The Sea Wolf Directed by Michael Curtiz Written by Robert Rossen, from a novel by Jack London
This is as good as Edward G. Robinson gets. That is also saying a lot.
5. Meet John Doe Directed by Frank Capra Written by Robert Riskin, from a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell, Sr.
Someday I'll write a long article contrasting this dark satire with Elia Kazan's overrated A Face in the Crowd. They're both about manipulative media fakery, but Meet John Doe has a much more sophisticated take on the autonomy of the audience.
6. Hellzapoppin' Directed by H.C. Potter Written by Nat Perrin and Warren Wilson
Between this and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, it was a great year for pop surrealism.
7. Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style Directed by Charles A. Ridley
Take some simple footage of Nazis on the march, then remix it to make them look like ridiculous toy soldiers. Result: the greatest war propaganda short ever made.
8. The Wolf Man Directed by George Waggner Written by Curt Siodmak
This isn't the last good movie in the Universal Monsters series, but it is the last essential one. Unless you count Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
9. Ball of Fire Directed by Howard Hawks Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
"It's as red as The Daily Worker and just as sore!"
10. The Lady Eve Directed by Preston Sturges Written by Sturges, from a story by Monckton Hoffe
This one narrowly beat out Sullivan's Travels for a spot in the top 10 because that "cockeyed world" speech at the end of the otherwise excellent Sullivan gets on my nerves. But if you want to count them as a tie and give this slot to a Preston Sturges double-header, that's fine with me.
Honorable mentions:
11. Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges) 12. Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock) 13. Tortoise Beats Hare (Tex Avery) 14. Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen) 15. The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle) 16. Among the Living (Stuart Heisler) 17. Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen) 18. Ladies in Retirement (Charles Vidor) 19. The Iron Crown (Alessandro Blasetti) 20. The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood)
A bonus award to Victor Mature, who had big roles in two movies bubbling under my top 20: The Shanghai Gesture, a gloriously mad mess that has become a cult favorite, and I Wake Up Screaming, a curious quasi-noir that really ought to be a cult favorite. Mature plays rather different characters in that pair of pictures, but he plays them the same way: as a sleazy version of Cary Grant. That's just as great as it sounds.
Of the movies of 1941 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Man Made Monster.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1951, it gave its Best Picture award to An American in Paris, a musical that I neither dislike nor am especially fond of. Any of these would have been a better choice:
1. Ace in the Hole Directed by Billy Wilder Written by Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman
The darkest film that Wilder ever made.
2. Strangers on a Train Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Written by Czenzi Ormonde, Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook, and Ben Hecht, from a novel by Patricia Highsmith
Walker's 32nd Law: You shouldn't bother trying to remake a Hitchcock movie. Corollary to Walker's 32nd Law: If you absolutely must remake a Hitchcock movie, for the love of God don't give your starring role to Billy Crystal.
3. The Thing from Another World Directed by Christian Nyby and/or Howard Hawks Written by Hawks, Charles Lederer, and Ben Hecht, from a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
"An intellectual carrot? The mind boggles."
4. A Streetcar Named Desire Directed by Elia Kazan Written by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul, from a play by Williams
Yes, they bowdlerized the play, but I have yet to see a better performance of it. (No, not even the version on The Simpsons.)
5. The Tales of Hoffman Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Written by Powell, Pressburger, and Dennis Arundell, from an opera by Jacques Offenbach and Jules Barbier
It's the most experimental of the Archers' pictures, but it doesn't deserve its reputation as difficult viewing.
6. The Lavender Hill Mob Directed by Charles Crichton Written by T.E.B. Clarke
"I propagate British cultural depravity."
7. Miracle in Milan Directed by Vittorio De Sica Written by De Sica, Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Mario Chiari, and Adolfo Franci, from a novel by Zavattini
A strange hybrid of neorealism and fantasy, with squatters using witchcraft to battle the authorities. My favorite De Sica film.
8. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman Written and directed by Albert Lewin
The high point in Jack Cardiff's career as a cinematographer.
9. The Man in the White Suit Directed by Alexander Mackendrick Written by Mackendrick, and Roger MacDougall, John Dighton
Unions and corporate chieftains join forces to suppress an invention that would put them out of work. Screw Star Wars: This libertarian satire is Alec Guinness' best science-fiction movie.
10. Bellissima Directed by Luchino Visconti Written by Visconti, Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, and Francesco Rosi
For a comedy, this made me awfully sad.
Honorable mentions:
11. People Will Talk (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) 12. The African Queen (John Huston) 13. Four Ways Out (Pietro Germi) 14. Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson) 15. He Ran All the Way (John Berry) 16. Susana (Luis Buñuel) 17. Rabbit Fire (Chuck Jones) 18. The Man from Planet X (Edgar G. Ulmer) 19. The Tall Target (Anthony Mann) 20. Rooty Toot Toot (John Hubley)
Of the movies of 1951 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Hôtel des Invalides.