It all comes down to whether one has man-mentality or dog-mentality. When a man believes something is right and wants it, he feels it in his bones. He tries to get it, and it's not matter of what others think. He prioritizes what HE feels to be right and righteous. He has autonomy, agency, and independence.
In contrast, no matter how much a dog wants something, the desire takes backseat to the dog's need for the master's approval. This need for approval stands between the dog and what it really wants. No matter how much the dog wants something, it won't run after it IF the master will be displeased.
This is why Charles Murray is ultimately worthless. He has a dog mentality. He may want good things for white folks in a country defined by liberty and civic nationalism, but when push comes to shove, this Biden-voting lowlife scumbag's innermost emotion is abject servility to the Jewish Master. (I can understand Murray despising Donald Trump and not voting for him, but how can anyone who cares for America vote for Joe Biden? Only a status-starved craven scumbag who wants to be invited to cocktail parties.)
Because of Murray's dog-mentality, even what he wants very dearly — decent treatment of white folks like himself — must take backseat to sappy servility to Jews and eagerness to win their approval. So, even as he lays out the argument for innate racial differences, it all comes down to, "I'm doing this for YOU, my Jewish Master. It's to prevent the rise of white consciousness lest it challenge your deserved Chosen-People supremacy over us inferior goyim." What a worthless cuck pile of dung. We can't have such dogs to speak for the white race. A true patriot must be pro-white because he feels it in his bones. Because it is his innermost desire and passion. All his thoughts and actions must flow from his pride of whiteness. Anxiety about Jewish Approval must not stand in the way between him and his desire.
When a man wants to hunt rabbit, he does so because he wants to. He doesn't look over his shoulder for approval. In contrast, even when a dog is most eager to hunt rabbit, it first looks over its shoulder for the master's approval. If the master signals NO, the dog refrains from its biggest desire because its innermost emotion comes down to servility to master's approval and abject fear of his disapproval. Murray is just a white dog, a pathetic hound.
But then, Jared Taylor isn't much better. Unlike Murray, Taylor will express pride of whiteness and need for white interests. But when push comes to shove, he is ever so fearful of spelling out that the main enemy of white consciousness and white liberation is Jewish Supremacist Power. He's not full-dog like Murray but is nevertheless half-dog.
One of the unfortunate aspects of HBD is IQ-centrism. As Jews both count as white and possess the highest IQ, there's this ridiculous awe laced with sentimentality that dreams of a magical Jewish-White Alliance, especially useful to whites as Jews come with moral shield as the Holy Holocaust people: "How can we HBD people be 'racist' or 'antisemitic' when Jews are on our side?" Keep dreaming! But philosemitic HBD clowns do keep dreaming and hoping that their position may gain the seal of approval of the Jews with higher intelligence and holier morality points. It's dog-think.
White Consciousness and Liberation must be based on man-think. White people must want what they want regardless of what Jews think, feel, or demand. If Jews want to join the White Liberation and Empowerment Movement, fine, but if not, the hell with them. If whites want to hunt rabbit, they should just do it. Don't look over the shoulder for approval from the Jewish Master. That is White Liberation, the only real path to freedom and power. Especially when Jews are calling on black thugs to hunt whites, whites shouldn't need permission from Jews to go hunting and choosing their own targets.
By the way, it's not enough to mention higher crime rates among blacks. The real problem is BAMMAMA or Blacks Are More Muscular And More Aggressive. Reality is race-ist, and evolution produced different races. Blacks evolved to be more muscular, more aggressive, wilder, and less inhibited. THAT is why they act the way they do, and that has been the cause of White Flight and Jew Flew from blackening areas.
But because Jewish Supremacists need to keep whites in submissive mode in servility to Zion, Jews concoct horror stories about 'systemic racism' to paralyze white folks with 'white guilt'. This is all very amusing since Jewish bankers funded much of Western Imperialism and Jewish merchants played a role in the 'genocide' of the American Indians. Jews were also the biggest sellers of opium to the Chinese, destroying millions of lives(and recently Jews peddled opioids to the white working class, leading to the deaths of 100,000s of whites). Jewish Bolsheviks worked with Josef Stalin to kill millions of people. And of course, Jewish Power ethnically erased the Palestinians in the tragic Nakba, and the Jewish-led Wars for Israel effectively led to the ongoing Arabocaust in which over a million Arabs and/or Muslims have died. So, where is Jewish Guilt in all this? Jews feel NONE. What a vile bunch of people, and yet, sucking up to Jews is the highest value in currently sicko America.
The woman in the video above can throw all the tantrums she wants. It won’t make a difference. Actually, NOTHING will make a difference unless people begin to Name the Jew. Indeed, Jews prop up stuff like globo-homo and tranny-tyranny partly to (mis)direct people's outrage at ANYTHING but themselves. Thus, globo-homo is a win-win for Jewish Power. When accepted by goyim, it has a weakening and deracinating effect on them. When resisted by goyim, it fixates moral outrage at homos and trannies than at Jews, the real puppet-masters behind globo-homo. This is why people must expose the Jew. They must name the Jew for blame. If a puppet hits you, should you direct your rage at the puppet or at the puppet-master? While homos and trannies do everything to further their agenda, they never would have amassed the kind of power and privilege without the backing of Jews who control finance, media, academia, entertainment, law firms, and courts. If you want real change, you must name the Jew. If you are unwilling to do so out of philosemitic sentimentality, craven cowardice, or mere opportunism, just give it up. You are hopeless.
Why must the Jew be named? Imagine the following scenario. Suppose there's this nasty spoiled-rotten kid Billy. Billy is causing a lot of trouble — spraying graffiti, throwing trash, making loud noises through the night, setting things on fire, kicking dogs, stealing property, smashing windows, puncturing car tires, and etc. — , and wreaking havoc all over the place. Now, what must the good people of the neighborhood do in order to end the madness? One thing for sure, Billy will not stop with his rotten behavior unless HE is named and blamed. If people get angry and mention all the bad deeds without naming Billy as the miscreant, why would he stop? Even when his actions are condemned, he himself would be spared any culpability. Worse, suppose all the neighbors flatter and fawn over Billy even as they detest all the bad things he does. If someone kicks you and you denounce the kick but don’t name-and-blame the kicker, what good will it do? Worse, suppose you complain about the pain in your arse but shake the hand of the very person who kicked you and praise him highly. You can be sure he will do it again and again and again, just like the Marx Brothers never stop tormenting their hapless goy victims.
Globo-homo and tranny-tyranny are proxies of Jewish power. Jews fund them(and also BLM). Jews control academia & publishing and favor certain 'intellectual' trends and ideologies for promotion. Jews have in their pockets all those whore politicians who dare not voice any criticism of Jews, even though Jews are tireless in their anti-white tirades. (At most, some conzos will make a big show of standing up to some Jewish-backed agenda, only to back down in due time and revert to the role of ‘beautiful losers’. They'll just shrug their shoulders and mumble about how it is now 'law of the land', and there's nothing that can be done about it.)
And Jews always feel smug and arrogant in the knowledge that, even as their agendas may be opposed and condemned, they themselves will never be. Take the Jewish attacks on the Second Amendment. Jews are the main force behind disarming white goyim, and many conservatives passionately resist such measures. But, for all their fuming and fist-shaking, even the most vociferous defenders of the Second Amendment dare not name the Jew as the force behind Gun Control. If anything, even as they denounce the Jewish-led-and-funded agenda, they praise Jews as the most wise & wonderful people on Earth and dream like a silly little girl about winning Jews over as allies. (Or, they will say they need guns to protect Jews from 'Nazis' and Muslims even though, LOL, it's the Jews who want to take away their guns and leave them defenseless against black thugs, Antifa nuts, and deep state goons.)
Likewise, many conservatives who oppose the agenda of tranny-tyranny(and 'wokeness' in general) dare not name the Jewish Power as the main wind behind its back. So, unless Jews are named as the pushers of globo-homo and tranny craziness, they have nothing to fear and will gleefully continue in their ways.
Now, think of how much things could change if people did begin to name the Jew. Imagine if people called it what it is. What if, instead of relying on misleading labels and brands, they called a spade a spade or a bagel a bagel. Take the media landscape. It's so full of fake news and BS all around. But nothing changes because the controllers of the media are never named and blamed, therefore, they never feel the heat for what they really are. Most people refer to it as ‘mainstream news’ or ‘liberal news' or 'leftist media' or whatever. There's no mention of the crucial fact of Jewish monopoly control. Why would Jews stop with their bad behavior when they are not named and blamed for all the fake news, anti-white vitriol, warmongering, race-baiting, and deep state propaganda?
After all, idiot conzos prefer to blame anything but Jewish Power. Some even refer to the media as 'communist', as if mega-corporations are managed by adherents to Marx and Engels than by globalist Zionist Jewish supremacist super-capitalists. What morons! No wonder Jews run circles around such fools. (Or idiot conzos like Alex Jones will pretend China controls US news and Saudis control Hollywood.) Behind closed doors, Jews laugh at them and indeed they're deserving of the mockery.
If we are truly serious about waking people up to the truth, we must attach the accurate label of ‘Jewish’ or 'Jewish-Supremacist' to the industries and institutions of power. Then and only then will people come to realize and understand the real power equation in the US. And then and only then will Jews feel the heat as the most powerful group in the US. As of now, even when Jews do terrible things, they never get blamed as JEWS. No matter what evils they perpetrate, they know the aggrieved will blame anything but the Jews: The Left, the Liberals, the Communists, China or Russia, the Globalists, the Neocons, or Wall Street or Hollywood as the bastion of 'white privilege', LOL. Only if we Name the Jew will Jews take notice, and then and only then will they think twice about being so vile because their evil deeds will reflect badly on their Jewish identity. Angry with Big Tech collusion and censorship? Don't just call it Big Tech; call it Jewish-dominated Big Tech. Angry with Finance Sector robbing the world with insider trading and denying service to patriots while lending total support to Zionist Supremacists? Don't just call it Wall Street or the finance sector, but call it Jewish-controlled Finance Sector. Outraged over Deep State corruption and abuses of power? Always mention that these deep state operators are cuck-minions of Jewish supremacists.
While the Deep State has immense power, most insiders just go with the flow and do as told. Every nation has its own deep state. Deep State on its own has no agenda but is just a bundle of power/control centers. Its overall direction is decided by whichever group that happens to control the money, the ‘science’, and the ‘gods’. If Muslims controlled the US deep state, its agenda would be very different from what it is now. Jews control the Deep State, and we have the current mess resulting from the bad behavior of Jewish Supremacism. This power must be properly named.
If a tiger is traumatizing a community, would it make sense to blame any animal but the tiger? Suppose people blame the buffalo, the sloth bear, the elephant, the heron, the turtle, wild boar, and etc. but never mention the tiger. They express outrage over the harm caused by the tiger but never ever name the tiger, and so, the tiger is allowed to roam freely and kill or maim people. People go on naming scapegoats but never the tiger. Unless the tiger is named, it is a doomed community. It's like hating and treating the symptoms of a disease but loving and nurturing the disease.
In the current US, even those who denounce Jewish policies feel obligated to praise Jewish identity. It's akin to praising the murderer of your family even as you lament the actual murders. The relation between Jews and whites is akin to one between god(s) and man than between man and man. Even if mankind loathes what the gods do, they must revere and honor them as wiser and superior beings. Likewise, even when white goyim detest what Jews do, they must praise Jews and Israel as the best of the best. Not a winning formula for white goyim… and Jews know it. Will whites ever?
The fact that Jews push all this censchwarzship suggests that they've given up on being Good Jews. After all, if Jews were committed to being good and fair, they could easily get along with most goyim who only want happy co-existence with Jews. Why would most goyim hate Jews if most Jews acted good? Goyim will grow increasingly hateful toward Jews ONLY IF Jews continue to act badly or even worse. The fact that Jews feel a need to push more censorship and implement more social controls suggests that they aren't committed to good behavior and mutual respect between Jews and goyim. Rather, they look upon goyim as subhuman cattle that exist to be exploited and abused by Jews. Naturally, when goyim are treated that way, they will come to hate Jews. To counter such hatred, Jews push for more censchwarzship and use their power of media/academia to instill goyim with 'white guilt', as well as mindless servitude and blind faith in Jewish sanctity and awesomeness. Enough already.
Charles Murray's FACING REALITY: Ruling Class Must Accept Race Differences or Provoke the 'Disaster' of White Identity Politics
So, Murray's First Emotion is to shield Jewish Supremacism from White Liberation.
"Oh master, please don't treat whites so badly. They might rise up to be free and depose you. That would be a disaster."
Never mind the real disaster has been white submission to Jewish Identity Politics. But oh no, Jewish Identity is holy to Murray. Jews are deserving of identity... unlike inferior whites.
His main worry is Jews may lose the servile loyalty of whites if they mistreat whites too much.
Whites awakening and having pride is a 'disaster' for Murray.
It's like someone admonishing a slave-master not to end slavery but to perpetuate it. Gee, the slaves might revolt if they're whipped too hard.
Go easy with the whip if Jews want whites to be happy slaves ho-de-doing and shuffling before the Jewish Massuh. That's Murray's main worry. A cuck to the very end.
Charles Murray is a a real turd. Instead of asking why the elites don't believe the truth, he should ask why the elites are spreading the lie. The ELITES know the truth. Sure, there are plenty of educated dammies, the dogma-driven dogs who have the intelligence but no sense of agency. But many of the elites do know the truth but lie anyway.
But first, who are the ruling elites? Are they colorless and merely based on meritocracy and commitment to 'liberal values'? No, the current elites have a very powerful identity seething with arrogance and contempt. To understand why the LIE is favored by these elites, we need to ask WHO these elites are. Are they merely about riches, privilege, credentials, and power? Or are they about concentrating wealth, power, and influence within a certain group? And that group is what? Take a wild guess. The Eskimos or the Jews?
If all races and groups were equal, meritocracy would produce a colorless ruling class as each group would be proportionately represented at the top. But precisely because of IQ differences among races and groups, even colorless meritocracy leads to domination by a certain group. It's like pure meritocracy in sports has led to black domination and black pride/arrogance in athletics. The end-result has been relative racial homogeneity than diversity in outfits like the NFL and especially the NBA.
Because Jews are smarter, many of them rose to the top and gained more wealth and power. So, there is a concentration of Jews among the elites. But the current elites aren't merely about pride in Jewish achievement. After all, a people could be proud of their disproportionate achievement but still be committed to the principle of colorless meritocracy. Jews don't play that way. Though many Jews did make it to the top by ability, they use their power to rig the system in their favor. Insider knowledge goes a long way to explain why Jews in finance reap such profits. And guess why BDS is suppressed across the nation. And of course, the Tribal control of the legal system ensures that many Jewish crooks get off easy(or get huge bailouts). And even if they're convicted, they are favored for pardons under total shits like Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and etc. Just ask Jonathan Pollard.
There's also the matter of chutzpahistic personality among Jews. (Personality matters. The reason why generic, mild-mannered, golden-retriever-type goyim suck up to Jews is that blandness always loses to salt. Murray is a mild-mannered fuddy-dud, and he gets thrills up his leg by sucking up to Jews with strong personality.) Such personality makes Jews more pushy and arrogant with their power. Anglo Episcopalians are equally smart as Jews, but their blander personality prefers to walk away than get dirty in a fight. (Yellows are also well-represented among higher IQ folks but are even blander than the whites. Thus, they study and follow than think and lead, which is why most of them are cuck-dogs of Jews.) In the past, Anglos had awesome race-ism on their side and used it to great effect. But as 'racism' is now deemed the worst of all possible sins, whites daren't do anything for identity sake or group interest. Not only are Jews stronger in personality but they get pass-over privilege when it comes to 'racism'. What is 'racist' and wrong for whites is noble and wise among Jews. Jews demand that we all support Israel and praise Jews, and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS, even if it has led to the victimization of countless Arabs and Muslims, as well as countless whites. It goes to show ideology loses to idolatry. Even though Jews push 'equity' on the ideological level, it never applies to them because of their idolatrous status as a holy people(and also because they control the media and shape the narrative and its heroes & villains). So, even as whites are to be bashed for not being equitable enough, we must never say Jews are the richest and most privileged people on the planet. Why, that would be 'anti-semitic', insufficiently reverential to the great, super-duper, sacred Jews who not only deserve all that power and wealth but out total devotion(even when they kick out teeth out). The relation between Jews and whites is like a Jew trying to push a white guy off a cliff while the white guy goes out of his way to prevent the Jew from falling.
Privately, Jews know the truth about race and racial differences. True, there are still some idealistic Jews committed to the dogma of 'race is just a social construct', but the really powerful and/or consequential Jews at the top know the truth. They know they are smarter. They know blacks are tougher and more aggressive. They know all about racial and ethnic differences. So, why do they push the LIE? It is not out of some do-goody naive dream for social justice or equality but out of their commitment to Jewish Supremacism.
Paradoxically, Jews need to push 'equality' or 'equity'(or whatever it's called in the Current Year) to maintain Jewish supremacy. As Jews control the dogma and narrative, the issue of 'equality' or 'equity' comes down to blacks and whites(than about Jews and goyim). The Main Gripe is 'why do whites have more than blacks?' It's never about 'why do Jews have more than goyim?' or 'how come 70% of the Biden administration is Jewish?' or 'Why are Hollywood, Wall Street, Big Tech, and etc. controlled by Jews?' Indeed, Murray himself speaks of whites, blacks, Asians, and 'Latins' but doesn't mention Jews. (Why is 'latin' still used for brown people from South America and Mexico when they aren't Latin in race or heritage?) Because Murray won't mention Jews, he creates the false impression that naive white people are behind the 'woke' lunacy about race relations, i.e. hopefully Political Correctness will end IF white elites come to their senses. But, that's just wishful thinking.
In truth, Jews control America and planted those lunatic ideas in the minds of deracinated soulless/rootless whites who are now so gullible because they no longer have a real heritage, history, religion, culture, and/or noble race-ism. Hungry for meaning, they readily absorb whatever BS is pushed by prestigious Jews from the top.
'Woke' lunacy and Political Correctness are not the product of do-goody zealotry and misguided naivete though propped up by them. They are the product of willfully malicious agendas of Jewish Supremacists. Of course, many who believe in the nonsense are sincere in their beliefs. No doubt many white idiots who weep to GREEN MILE or prostrate themselves before George Floyd murals are earnestly dumb or honestly stupid. But these are powerless boobs, the suckers. They are like useful idiots during the Cold War, the anti-war types who were unwittingly used as stooges by Moscow. If not for Jewish concentration of power, the current PC idiocy would not exist, at least not to the extent it does.
Besides, the powerful gets to decide the targets of any ideological ire. Thus, 'equity' fixates on whites having more than blacks but not on Jews having more than whites. It fixates on rare instances of blacks being mistreated by white cops but says nothing about countless whites brutalized by tougher and stronger blacks. It says nothing about the lack of equal protection for many individuals(of all races) who were attacked by BLM and Antifa mobs. It's like in the Cultural Revolution, the slogan 'To Rebel is Justified' didn't mean one could rebel against Mao and the Gang of Four. No, you could rebel only against targets approved by Mao and the Gang of Four. It's no different today in the current West. 'Equity' means kvetching about blacks having less than whites, not blacks or goyim having less than Jews. Even though Jews have the most by far, they hog moral credit by berating whites for having more than blacks. This way, Jews get to own more and morality at the same time. Even though they have more than whites, as spokesmen for the blacks they hog the limelight as champions of 'equity' by bashing 'white privilege'. Rather pathetically, rich white-cuck elites ape the Jews and play the same game. Bidens and Clintons raking it in and living like new royalty but always berating far less fortunate whites for 'exclusion' and 'social injustice'.
But Murray won't mention any of this because he has a giant kosher dildo up his pitiful arse. He is truly one of the most despicable turds that ever lived. In some ways, he's worse than full-blown cucks who are at least consistent in their cravenness; they never deviate from the official line and are rewarded accordingly. In contrast, Murray has taken lots of lumps from Jews in the media and academia, but he sucks up to them all the same. But then, Jared Taylor is even more despicable. At the very least, Murray is somewhat tolerated by the Establishment(because he rarely mentions Jews in a critical way) and promotes libertarianism while denigrating any notion of white identity or consciousness.
Indeed, Murray is sometimes useful to Jews because he will say what's on their minds in a genteel watered-down way. This way, Jews can outsource it to Murray and don't have to dirty their own hands. After all, even as Jews push the nuttery of PC and blackness, they are anxious it may get out of hand, as indeed it did in 2020 with Antifa and BLM getting overzealous and hurting some Jews in the bargain as well. It is then that Jews pull out Murray and publish his views. This way, Jews get to temper the extremism of PC by using Murray as proxy, all the while feigning moral outrage that someone could hold such views. A sneaky way of playing both sides. This means Murray has some value to the Jews. They keep him around as mild and moderate Mr. Crime-Think when things get too out of control(and a bit of counter-narrative is necessary), and on some level, Murray seems to know of and value his little niche in the system. So, if Murray were to speak the total truth, he would have something to lose. His shtick is walking the fine line between the Correct-Think and Crime-Think. In contrast, Taylor is utterly vilified and hated by Jews and has nothing more to lose but carries on with a ridiculous fantasy of smart Jews finally seeing the light and joining with the likes of him.
The current lunacy is the result of Jewish Power. Jews push 'equity-wokery' to blame and shame whites into moral obeisance in order to secure Jewish Supremacism. Critical Race Theory is essentially Jewish reworking of antisemitism whereby Jews-as-villains are replaced with whites-as-villains. There is an element of revenge in all this, but even that isn't the main driving force, which is Jewish Supremacism. Jews are no dummies, and they know they got numeracy but not the numbers. Whites got the numbers. So, if Jews are to maintain their supreme position, they need white cuckery, white submission, white obedience, and etc. before the Jewish Master. Jews use tons of bribes/carrots, but that only goes so far. Japan spread money around in the 1980s, but loyalty based on cash only goes so far. Also, allegiance based purely on money can easily be reviled(as China is finding out these days, especially with Australia). China spent a lot of money to buy influence and ended up being accused of corrupting the world, and people who took the money are shamefacedly cutting ties.
If Jewish Power was solely based on money, it would be vulnerable to exposure and condemnation, much like the money power of Chinese and the Saudis. Jewish Money Power exceeds that of any other in the world, but how come so little is talked about it, especially among whites, the key demographics for Jewish supremacist power? In the past, Jews spent a lot of money and bought a lot of 'friends', but they also faced the danger of being called out for their nefarious influence.
Jews know this and decided to control whites not only through gold but guilt. Give some pieces of gold to the 'good whites' who do as Jews tell them but also instill white hearts with massive 'guilt' so that whites won't dare Name the Jew. So, Jews endlessly bring up the Holocaust and say whites are responsible for all eternity and must atone and make amends. Or any white criticism of Jewish Power is deemed 'antisemitic', thus related to 'nazism'.
But emphasizing Jewish tragedy isn't sufficient to control white hearts forever. After all, Holocaust is receding into history. Whatever might have happened in World War II, the fact is Jews have become the richest and most powerful people in the world, which is becoming impossible not to notice. Also, Jewish Power has become Nazi-like and murderous, which is why criticism of Zionism is growing on the Left. If it were merely between whites and Jews, 'white guilt' may well grow weaker because whites would realize that the Jews who are always berating whites are the richest and most privileged people on Earth. Whatever Jews may have suffered in history, it's not a good look for a rich and powerful people to always play victim.
Unlike Jews however, many blacks will always remain on the bottom. Therefore, they are good material with which to bait long-term 'white guilt'. Unlike Jews who made it out of the ghetto and live in penthouses, many blacks are still stuck in the ghetto. So, while it'd be absurd for Jews to complain about their socio-economic conditions and blame it on whites, this can be done indefinitely with blacks. Jews can always point to blacks and say, "They are mired in poverty because of YOU WHITES", and enough whites will fall sucker for this. And even those whites who see through the LIE will pretend to go along because they won't be hired or promoted unless they are ostensibly with the program. This way, Jewish control of whites isn't just through money/gold but through soul and guilt. Thus browbeaten and sullen with shame, whites seek redemption for their 'racism', and Jews suggest the way: Endless sucking and cucking up to Jews and their two favored allies, blacks and homos. Notice there is nothing about how whites should care more about Palestinians, investigate Jewish power/privilege, or condemn supremacist Wars for Israel that killed countless Arabs/Muslims. If anything, Jews use BLM to whitewash their own racial supremacism in the Middle East. With blacks as bought-off allies, Jews strut around as champions of 'anti-racism' — after all, they are allied with Noble Negroes — , which gives moral cover for what they do to Palestinians. As long as Jews paint the bombs 'gay' or 'BLM', so many educated whites(the key support-demographics for Jewish Supremacism) will turn a blind eye to the evils of US foreign policy. How can the US military be bad when it spreads the gospel of BLM and globo-homo around the world? Jews favor ni**ers to get a free pass for killing san-ni**ers. And US military's globo-homo policy means it has the moral right to fuc* the world in the ass. For many brainwashed woke-cucks or wucks, just about ANYTHING is justified if wrapped in the symbol of BLM or Globo-Homo, in a manner similar to the dumb mantra of 'Support the Troops' justifying wars for idiot conzos.
That's what this is really about. And Jews have gotten even more extreme in pushing PC lunacy because of the internet and Trumpian populism. Jews are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. They know that White Liberation may well mean the end of Jewish Supremacism.
Now, Murray knows all this. He knows it but pretends otherwise because, all said and done, he is a worthless bald-headed cuck maggot whose First Emotion is mindless reverence for Jews whom he deems the Chosen Race due to their higher IQ. If some white women got jungle fever for black dongs, some white men(not least in HBD circles) have Juggle Fever for acrobatic Jewish brains. Murray is so awed by Jewish Genius, the summit of 'human achievement', that he grovels before it as the greatest thing in the universe. It's like master and dog. No matter how much Jews kick him like a dog, his sappy dream is, "I hope they realize I'm a good dog with everlasting loyalty, because my main duty as a goy is to serve the superior race, the one with Jewish Genius." So, just like a dog is loyal even when its master does wrong, Murray is loyal to Jews on a similar basis. While Murray knows full well that Jews sometimes act badly, he has internalized their superiority vis-a-vis goyim, and that means, all said and done, Jews must rule and goyim must serve. The main meaning of his life comes not from libertarian ideology but an idolatrous devotion to Jews as the Superior Race(just like some whites have similar feelings about blacks as the superior race of song-dong-strong.) What a worthless cuck. This lowlife even changed his view on 'gay marriage' because some of his RICH FRIENDS happen to be homo. You see, the status-minded Murray won't dare offend the 'better kind of people', especially Jews. And if Jews say 'homo is holy too', Murray bends over to the homos and gladly takes it up the arse.
He pretends in the latest book that these 'better kind of people' are just misguided and misinformed when, in fact, they know the truth but maliciously spread the lie to guilt-bait whites into obeisance. Imagine there's a master and a dog. But suppose the master, a nasty son-of-a-bitch, gets another dog, a bigger and tougher one, and uses it to attack and humiliate the original dog. The master knows full well what he is doing and sadistically enjoys the cruelty, but suppose the original dog prefers the fantasy that the master is acting this way out of ignorance and in total innocence of the fact that the new dog is bigger and more vicious. Stupid dog.
Murray, who won't FACE THE REALITY of Jewish Power and its abuses, recommends that we face the reality of race. Pot calling kettle black.
This isn't just a matter of facts but of power. Certain facts are suppressed and certain fictions are pushed because of who has the power.
Truth is power-neutral. Facts are independent of any ideology, any agenda, any side. Of course, every power tries to selectively use facts to favor its own agenda. Like with the question, is the cup half full or half empty. Still, the fact is the water fills half the cup, something that can't be denied by both sides... that is if they have any respect for facts. On the matter of race, Jews don't go with cup-half-full or cup-half-empty argument, because, no matter how one slices or dices it, it is threatening to the Narrative. So, they push the NO-WATER-IN-CUP argument when, clearly, water fills half the cup(suggesting both nature and nurture).
Facts don't assert themselves. It doesn't matter how true something is. It doesn't on its own express its truth, just like a gun, no matter how powerful, doesn't shoot on its own. Gun has to be shot by a person. And people communicate and spread messages. People love power-and-control above all, even above facts and truth. It's why we have so many lawyers. People don't hire lawyers to speak the truth but to twist facts and weave fiction to win cases. If politicians must lie to win and face losing with the truth, they will favor the lie over the truth.
Of course, facts are often crucial to power. Those with better understanding of chemistry make better medicine. Those with better understanding of ballistics make better guns. Those with better understanding of soil produce more food. So, better mastery of facts leads to more wealth and power. The West beat out the Rest because its methodology became more attuned to facts of reality.
But just because people use facts to gain wealth/power doesn't mean they prefer facts over wealth/power or hold them in equal regard. No, people love power more, and if suppressing facts will favor their power, they will do just that. Thus, when power favors facts, it's more opportunism than a matter of principle. Why are referees necessary in sports? All the owners, all the coaches, all the players, and all the fans know the rules that must be abided by. And yet, referees are necessary to call foul because the priority in sports is to win. If a foul is committed to the advantage of one's team, it's almost always overlooked(by owners, coaches, players, and fans) even though everyone knows it's a foul. In the 2020 election, even many Democrats must know that there was massive fraud. But those facts are secondary to their winning, their power. It's just human nature. Power has its own logic, and this is where fascism is most useful unlocking the true nature of power.
Truth is Jews control the US, not least its academia and media. And for over a generation, Jews have been using news, education, and entertainment mainly to increase their own power and to weaken rival goyim, especially the whites. THAT is the main driving force behind Jewish media and academia. While Jews will favor facts that favor them, they will almost always favor fiction over facts when it's to their advantage. We saw this with Russia Collusion Hoax, BLM lunacy, lies about Syria & Assad, Covid hysteria, and etc.
Now, why would this be any different with the subject of race? As long as Jews regard the facts of racial differences(being the real factors behind America's problems) as a threat to their control over whites(which ensures their control over America), they will do anything to bury those facts. Jewish Supremacism needs White Submission, and Jews decided long ago that White Guilt is the best way to guarantee white moral paralysis and lack of agency, thus putting them at the mercy of Jews and their allies, blacks and homos. If Murray hasn't the guts to FACE THIS REALITY, he shouldn't be lecturing about how we need to face up to the reality of race. He needs to dwell less on facts and more on WHICH power is suppressing those facts and WHY.
We need to Name the Jew. Why not? Jews always name the White, even for things whites are not responsible for.
The Jewish Way has five main strategies for making whites suck up to Jewish Power and not see the light.
1. Blame White Supremacism and ‘systemically racism'. This puts whites on the moral defensive and always eager to prove they are not ‘racist’, meaning whites are afraid to make any criticism of Jews and blacks. BLM is largely Jewish use of blacks to guilt-bait and castrate whites. ‘White Supremacy’ is also useful to Jews as the ideological and iconoclastic glue that holds various nonwhite groups and self-flagellating(aka virtue-signaling) white proggies together.
2. Russia Factor. Trump won in 2016 because so many people were upset with globalism pushed by Jews. But lest more people realize this, Jews pushed the notion of Russian Collusion. In other words, Trump didn’t win due to legitimate grievances and validity of nationalism but because Russia cheated on behalf of Trump, aka "Putin’s puppet". Of course, Russia did no such thing whereas Jews defrauded the 2020 election — they stole it out in the open and could get away with it because they control all media and institutions — , but that’s how Jews play the game. If Jews do bad and people get upset, Jews blame the problem on Russia(deemed vile in the eyes of libby-dibs because it won’t bend over to globo-homo, the most sacred crusade for many idiot progs who can’t even defend the meaning of womanhood from tranny-tyranny).
3. China or the Chi-Coms. Here, Jews play a more devious game. When it comes to ‘White Supremacy’ and ‘Russian Collusion’, almost all Jews openly and loudly say IT’S EVIL WHITES or THE RUSSIANS. Jews of both parties blame Russia, Russia, Russia. In their paranoia, they hate Russia as a template for sovereign white nation that defies Jewish globalist hegemony.
But when it comes to China, Jews play it both ways. Most Jews on the Democratic side will be somewhat muted in their China-bashing. They will do it but pull their punches because they see China as a necessary partner in the globalist undermining of White West. And Chinese know Jews control the US and work with Jews as the New Masters of America. (Chinese know they must do this on a hush-hush basis as Jews don’t want to be named, but this means people notice the Chinese hand but not the Jewish one, meaning China gets all the blame.)
This is useful to Jews because China will be blamed for all that goes wrong in the US even though Jews are often the main culprits. And bashing ChiComs is a red meat that Jews allow for white conzos who are too chicken to name the Jew, black, or homo. So, while Jews don’t quite join in the pile-on against China(and even pretend to defend Chinese from ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’), they don’t use their formidable control of media and institutions to suppress white conzo attacks on China; usually, they tolerate it and even encourage it while keeping their own hands 'clean'. While Jewish media power will jump on and savage anyone who dares to criticize, however mildly, Jews, homos, and blacks, it pretty much tolerates any level of China-bashing.
This way, Jews win both ways. By acting friendly to China, they use it as a partner in Jewish globalism against whites. But by letting white conzos growl at China, Jews take no blame, all of which falls on the Chinese. (Conzos are like masochistic jealous jilted lover who will do anything to win back their Jewish master-hubby who is dilly-dallying with dragon lady Suzie Wong.) It's a smart move by Jews. Jews outsource China-bashing and China-goating to white conzos. Take the election fraud of 2020. Jews did most of it, but conzos blame China(and Iran and even Venezuela, and some even mentioned Pakistan). Jews know that white conzos are much frustrated in the New America controlled by anti-white Jews, and these conzos need some outlet to vent their spleen against. As white conzos are too afraid of Jews, they need something to bash, and it's usually Russia(among libby-dibs) and China(among conzo-wonzos).
4. Iran and Muslims or the Neocon thing. This may have declined in value over the years. Also, these days, libby-dibs are more likely to support More Wars than the Conzos are. Libby Dibs control all the Deep State and love the game of power; they are more gullible when it comes to so-called 'mainstream news', which is really Jewish Supremacist propaganda, not least for More Wars for Israel. Still, even though Conzos aren’t as war-crazy like in the post 9/11 Dubya years, many of them still love to growl at Mooooooooslims in the manner of Samuel Huntington's CLASH OF CIVLIZATION(and in the hope that if they bark at Muslims loudly and long enough, they will prove their worth to Jewish masters who will pet them on the head and offer more doggy biscuits). Never mind this CLASH wouldn't have existed but for Wars for Israel and Mass Immigration to Europe(pushed by Jewish forces and their cuck minions).
Many Conzos still knee-jerkedly support Israel as the ‘last outpost of Western Civilization’ against the Moooooslim barbarians. It’s seen as ersatz crusade. And more Libertarian types argue we must hate and even kill bushels of Mooooooslims because there’s less feminism and ‘gay pride’ in the Middle East; and Israel is so great and awesome because it puts on the biggest ‘gay’ parades in the world — this is what passes for ‘conservatism’, aka cuckservatism, in the West. (Never mind Iran ensures more rights and freedom for women than Saudi Arabia does, which goes to show that these libertardian arguments take backseat to ‘what is good for the Jews’.) As long as enough white conzos and white libby-dibs are into neo-crusade mentality(for whatever reason, e.g. ‘Muzzies are terrorists’, ‘Support and defend Israel’, ‘women’s rights’, ‘Christians vs Muslims’, ‘Assad gasses babies and eats them for lunch, and must go’ etc), Jews can direct white energies away from Jewish Power toward the Mooooooslims.
5. Use globo-homo as front and proxy. Multi-Culturalism was part of Jewish bait-and-switch. Initially, Jews attacked Western Civilization and the White West by calling for appreciation and celebration of ALL Cultures, especially those of key minorities. But, Jews showed no interest in the real values of Hindus, Arabs, Muslims, East Asians, North Africans, and many other groups. But then, why should they? Most cultures around the world tend to be conservative and traditionalist, at least relative to the deracinated West. Jews used Multi-Culturalism only to the extent of rallying nonwhites(as victims) into a coalition against whites(as perennial villains). It was never about any genuine appreciation of different cultures. Indeed, the globo-homo & tranny-tyranny cult has proven the lie of Multi-Culturalism. Instead of promoting various cultures equally, Jewish Power favors 'gay pride' uber alles. US embassies don't fly banners saying PALESTINIAN LIVES MATTER. Only Jewish Identity and Black Identity get equal billing with globo-homo. The rest are all sideshows or mere backdrop. As most cultures around the world are anti-'gay' agenda, Jews know that true Multi-Culturalism would be mostly anti-globo-homo and tranny-tyranny. So, instead of urging homos to respect other cultures, Jews demand that all cultures change their values and alter their attitudes to welcome, promote, and celebrate homo decadence and tranny degeneracy. Jews especially target the urban affluent and/or educated in cities around the world as such types tend to be most deracinated, rootless, status-conscious, and eager to conform to global trends emanating from Jewish-run metropoles. This is good for Jews because they totally control the money and brains behind globo-homo and also because homos and trannies are avid allies of Jews as both groups have much to gain from spreading rootless globalism and vain cult of narcissism around the world. Globo-Homo is essentially proxy of Jewish Hegemonism. Furthermore, globo-homo is a useful diversion for Jewish Power. If people direct their outrage at 'gays' and trannies, Jews themselves get less abuse. Jews are also devious. While the bulk of Jewish Power pushes globo-homo, Jews also take on the token role as opponents of globo-homo. Thus, Jews hedge their bets and even fool dimwit or sappy conservatives into believing that Jews are on their side.
Now, the sad fact. Jews attack whites, Russians, Chinese, and Iranians(& Muslims), BUT none of them dares mention that Jews rule America and are behind this madness. Just like Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, they are afraid to Name the Jew. Even Russia, China, and Iran, despite their national sovereignty, dare not name the Jew.
Why not? They fear Jewish power because Jews control the West. Whites, conzos and libby-dibs, are so reverential toward and protective of Jews that any naming of Jewish Power by Russia, China, or Iran will be construed by most white cuckservatives and wuckerals as ‘ANTISEMITISM’ or ‘NAZISM’!!
Russia, China, and Iran know that Jews control white people’s minds in the West, and they don’t want ALL THE WEST to be against them. So, they choose not to name the Jew who has the power over institutions and individuals in the West and can turn the Idiot White West against any nation. Jews are the cowboys, whites are the cattle to be herded this way or that way. But as long as whites play cattle to Jewish cowboys, their main role is as meat headed for the slaughterhouse.
Lawrence of Arabia is repeatedly ranked as one of the finest films of all time, and when one compares it to such overpraised items as Citizen Kane and Casablanca, a strong case can be made for putting it at the very top of the list.
It makes little sense to mention CITIZEN KANE and CASABLANCA together. First, most film critics don't regard CASABLANCA as one of the greatest films. They recognize it as a movie favorite, formula done to perfection. It is what is now often referred to as 'iconic'. The way Bogart and Bergman wear their hats, gaze at one another, and say those perfect lines in the misty airfield. Familiarity done to perfection seems fresh and unique. Likewise with MIDNIGHT RUN. It isn't original but done so well that it stands head and shoulders above the rest.
In contrast, CITIZEN KANE is held in high esteem because it broke the rules of the studio but established the law of what cinema could be in the hands of an artist. With Welles' bold and experimental approach, his background in Shakespearean theater, and his knack for popular entertainment(especially in radio), the film welds together modernism, classicism, and populism. And for all its quirks and innovations, it is all of one piece. One can ignore its aesthetic qualities and enjoy it like a Hollywood movie. What Welles did was unprecedented, especially at the incredible age of 26 and in his first outing as a film-director. There is more genius in the opening of CITIZEN KANE than in all of Lean's works(and many others). Of course, genius isn't necessarily best on all occasions, and at times Welles seemed more enamored of showing off his magic than focusing on the story.
CITIZEN KANE is 'overrated' in the sense that it has showed up on movie lists as the obligatory 'greatest film of all time', but it cannot over-rated because it, like several other Welles' works, is superb beyond belief. Also, it's arguable that CITIZEN KANE is the first work that fully absorbed and utilized all the earlier innovations into one package and, furthermore, added its own share of innovations that in quality and quantity equaled all that had gone before. But that's only focusing on the technical and expressive details. In writing, performance, social commentary, and psychological insight, it not only possesses grandeur but depth. Not for nothing has it been said that no other film inspired so many young men to become film directors.
It's telling that Welles compared his film-making with music above all other arts. His works are like concertos or symphonies with classical and modernist touches. The thing that makes music more 'fragile' and difficult than the other arts is the significance of every moment. One false step could be fatal. A painting, novel, and drama can be marred by intermittent flaws but still convey the overall significance and meaning. But one false note can ruin an entire performance. It sticks out as a disruptive and disjointing element. Most movies weren't made like music, and this is why they work despite the flaws. One focuses on the story and characters. But because Welles infused his visuals with a musical sense, aura and mood had to be sustained for duration of entire scenes. Images aren't merely joined together but woven together, much like elements of music. Even more remarkable was his juggling of the consonant and dissonant elements. To maintain continuity and harmony isn't difficult. It's even easier to create instant dissonance. Any dada-ist could do that. But to create dissonance and then fit the fragments into a rollicking narrative, that was something only Welles and few others could do. Not that LAWRENCE OF ARABIA would have been better movie in Welles hands as he might have gone off in tangents at odds with the central story. After all, one appreciates a Welles film more for the film-making than the film-as-story.
I am hesitant to speak of “the greatest” anything, just because I have not seen everything. But when I think of some of my personal favorites—Vertigo, Network, Rashomon—I can’t honestly rank any of them higher than Lawrence of Arabia.
Even if you've seen everything, the notion of 'greatest anything' is of course ridiculous in the arts because of 'apples and oranges' and personal preferences & biases. How can one compare Robert Bresson with Sam Peckinpah? They were different species of men. So, while we can speak of the great works, there's no such animal as the greatest work. As to why CITIZEN KANE occupied the top slot for so long, it was due as much to cultural significance as to artistic merit. It was the first of its kind in Hollywood and has inspired film-makers ever since. Also, Welles came to be regarded by critics and scholars as a tragic hero who fought the system and sadly lost. So, a tribute to CITIZEN KANE is a recognition of what Welles might have achieved had the industry had been kinder to a genius such as he. Similar considerations explain why RASHOMON is ranked so high. Akira Kurosawa's greatest achievement is SEVEN SAMURAI, but RASHOMON opened the floodgates of Japanese cinema to the world.
NETWORK strikes me as inferior Lumet. Like some of Billy Wilder's lesser works, it tries to have it both ways. It panders to the audience as pop satire; it's more bark than bite. Sidney Lumet's greatest work, I would argue, is PRINCE OF THE CITY. In 2012 Sight & Sound Poll, VERTIGO topped CITIZEN KANE, which isn't all that surprising as the two most admired film directors among critics and scholars are Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. And many believe VERTIGO is Hitchcock's greatest work, with which I would concur even though I prefer his other, less gloomy, works.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is undoubtedly a magnificent work, and I would count it as among the greatest. And yet, it was also when cracks appeared in Lean's reputation that would really crumble with DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. What a difference a few years make. The most notable anti-Lean voice in the US was Andrew Sarris who praised THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE over Lean's work that he found overly elaborate, predictable, tedious, and (worst of all sins to an auteurist) impersonal. Even though Sarris went overboard, there was more than a kernel of truth in the hits against Lean and his methodology. Furthermore, this was the early 60s when intellectuals, critics, and impassioned youth caught the eye of new trends in cinema, much of it foreign, mostly European(and partly Japanese). World cinema in 1960 erupted with a debate about LA DOLCE VITA vs L'AVVENTURA, and the French New Wave produced dashing works like BREATHLESS and JULES AND JIM. Even the Old Masters were moving in a new direction, e.g. Hitchcock with PSYCHO. And Bunuel was starting his great second(or third) act. To be sure, Sarris and his school admired John Ford and Howard Hawks but precisely for their personal pride in 'classicism'. Sarris admired Godard for his radical approach but also appreciated Hollywood auteurs sticking to their guns despite the changes all around them; it was seen as a kind of integrity, remaining true to their personal visions, classic or radical. In contrast, Lean came under criticism for sitting on the fence. He seemed both hopelessly old-fashioned and sensitive to shifting opinion. To his detractors, he seemed too stodgy to remain a force in film, and his effort toward greater sophistication and 'modernity' seemed half-hearted and perfunctory than genuine and committed. One might say Lean was caught between the Old and New just like Lawrence between the British Empire and Arab Aspirations. In a way, the rather muted and gloomy ending of the movie anticipated Lean's own fate.
When LAWRENCE OF ARABIA was released, the cultural shift hadn't yet been completed, and for the most part, he was praised by critics who had a 'humanist' tendency to laud serious works with important themes. They could tell it was a work of intelligence, expertise, taste, and respectability. (It was why Stanley Kramer rode so high in the 1950s and early 60s though he sucked at film-making, which can't be said for Lean. He made SERIOUS movies like INHERIT THE WIND, ON THE BEACH, and JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG. For some reason, Otto Preminger got a pass even though his later works were also grandiose middlebrow balancing of classic Hollywoodism and the New Sensibility. I suppose he was seen as more 'personal'.) But while the consensus praised LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, some key voices dismissed it as outdated, bloated, strained, and ultimately conventional. And by the time DOCTOR ZHIVAGO came out, the majority of the critics were hostile, even though it was a mega-hit with the audience, like SOUND OF MUSIC. (Later, with RYAN'S DAUGHTER, Lean failed with both critics and the audience and gave up film-making for 13 years until he returned with PASSAGE TO INDIA.) In a way, the anti-Lean invective that took hold in cultural circles was a replay of the Cahiers du Cinema's attack on the Cinema of Quality in the 1950s. The Cahier critics spearheaded by Francois Truffaut preferred European personal artists and Hollywood's vulgar populists(and eccentrics) but detested anything tasteful, respectable, safe, and 'bourgeois' churned out by the post-war French film industry. They appreciated the vulgar vitality of Howard Hawks, the playful perversity of Hitchcock, and the intensity of European artists like Roberto Rossellini & Ingmar Bergman. What they couldn't stand was the soulless professionals who crafted movies like Swiss watches. The Cinema of Quality wasn't without technical finesse but lacked personality, originality, the stuff of life, and creative spirit, or so the Cahier critics argued. (Of course, once the fizz went out of the French New Wave, Truffaut made films very much in the manner of Cinema of Quality, e.g. TWO ENGLISH GIRLS and STORY OF ADELE H. Perhaps the Cahier diatribe against the Cinema of Quality, which produced its share of excellent works, was mostly an expression of youthful frustration of not being able to make one's own films.)
More than anyone, David Lean was the perfect target for a Anglo/American variation of the backlash against the Cinema of Quality. After all, no one doubted Lean's technical expertise, his keen eye, and his craft. But it also implied that he was more an engineer than an artist(or even an entertainer). Also, the middlebrow sensibility(of Lean's favored writers) suggested Lean was more a moralist than an artist, and not even a honest or good moralist at that. Bolt's screenplay can be praised for thoughtful balance of perspectives, but it's a tad too fine-tuned, as if to skirt any real controversy. It touches on matters without trying to fully crack open any of them. Thus, the movie can be seen as a paean to British Imperialism and a critique of empire. Does this result from genuine complexity and thoughtful ambiguity or refusal to get down-and-dirty with the truth? Given these considerations, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is best enjoyed as a superb piece of middlebrow storytelling, the best of its kind, than a genuine work of art, if art is defined as something personal, original, bold & daring, exploratory, revelatory, and/or uncompromised. From its very conception, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA could only be a compromised work. One might even say it's a high-toned version of 007 fantasy, albeit with homoerotic overtones.
There are elements in the movie that suggest at art, especially concerning the psychological shading of Lawrence and the tormented contradictions of his motivations(and his dread and thrill in discovering the 'dark side' of his character). But they are not fully explored because the work is about archetypes(and stereotypes) than about individuals. This is also the problem with Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW. It has artistic qualities but ultimately it's about types than traits. Despite the complexities, the kidnapper is the classic villain. In contrast, consider the deviants and psychos in Shohei Imamura's INTENTIONS OF MURDER and VENGEANCE IS MINE. Devoid of moral formulations(often pat or smug), they take a colder-eyed and sharper view of what makes the sick tick.
But then, as the characters say in THE WILD BUNCH, "I wouldn't have it any other way." Another director might have made better art with LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, but devoid of middlebrow compromises, it might have made for less entertainment. Still, it's a popular movie in service of respectability than a respectable movie in service of populism. No wonder Pauline Kael had special praise for works that blended artistic qualities with populist appeal. She loved BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE WILD BUNCH, and THE GODFATHER, but she disdained LAWRENCE OF ARABIA for its genteel restraint in service of respectability and good taste. It was more a monument than of vital moments.
At any rate, while some works are marred by artistic compromise with commercialism or respectability, others gain from the fusion of artistic truth and popular myth. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is one of those great compromises, comparable to the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich. Arguably, Shostakovich could have done greater work without Stalinist censorship; on the other hand, he might got lost in self-indulgent experimentation. After all, Francis Ford Coppola's greatest work is the compromised GODFATHER films whereas his full-blown creative endeavors like RUMBLE FISH and ONE FROM THE HEART got lost in the hall-of-mirrors of his 'genius'. Likewise, Peckinpah did best in the spirit of compromise with films like THE WILD BUNCH than when he did everything his way, like with BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, a real mess. And CHINATOWN is a real standout, far superior to most of Polanski's personal follies. And John Lennon was better as artist-entertainer than a full-blown artist.
Still, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA has to be seen as a limited work, like any giant epic made with Hollywood backing. Come to think of it, the only Hollywood-backed epic film of the 60s that could be deemed utterly uncompromised is 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. (THE LEOPARD, ANDREI RUBLEV, MARKETA LAZAROVA, and PROFOUND DESIRES OF THE GODS, true artistic masterpieces, were made outside Hollywood.) There, Kubrick conceived of and pursued his vision to the max, and he probably got away with it because the project was so unprecedented. The producers were probably too confounded or bewildered with Kubrick's concept to formulate any pointed objections against it.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is comparable to SPARTACUS, EL CID, and CLEOPATRA. All of them have moments of awe and grandeur that only Hollywood-backing could deliver, but the general rule, then as now, was that bigger the budget, bigger the scrutiny and lesser the freedom. No one wants to spend that kind of money in a wild gamble. (Michael Cimino was one of the few directors who got both the greens and the greenlight with HEAVEN'S GATE, and it sunk a studio.) Even though LAWRENCE OF ARABIA goes somewhat further than most of its kind in terms of verisimilitude and cultural accuracy, it is still within the paradigm of what Edward Said called 'Orientalism' and Hollywood exotica. It isn't so much that Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn played Arabs — Arabs are Caucasian, Alec Guinness was chameleon-like, and Quinn's odd features made him plausible in various guises — as the range of Arab attributes, though broader, are still within the generic range of Hollywood assumptions. One might say the character of Ali(Omar Sharif) is an exception, but he is less a character than a foil. Later, the emergence of his more humane side says less about him as character than about Arabs in general, i.e. just like the enlightened Brit Lawrence has a savage side to him, the barbaric Arabs have some good sides too. This is a bit pat, like featuring some Good Arabs in EXODUS. It's perfectly acceptable on middlebrow or 'mid-cult' grounds, however.
Everything about this film is epic
This is a plus and minus with all such works. On the plus side, there is the obvious grandeur, superior production values, and sense of awe. But it also means more supervision over the artistic process(understandable given the cost), the weight of logistics, and sheer exhaustion. Coppola lost his mind halfway through APOCALYPSE NOW. Kurosawa's RAN is tremendous in parts, but the focus on scale led to fatal neglect of the main character, which sinks the middle. Nicholas Ray who made his reputation as an outlier sensibility later got lost with production values. KING OF KINGS is essentially just a big(and dumb) Biblical epic. And he totally lost his way(and ton of money) with 55 DAYS IN PEKING. (Same goes for Carol Reed. The man who made such remarkable films as ODD MAN OUT, THE THIRD MAN, FALLEN IDOL, and OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS later got mired in club-footed projects like AGONY AND THE ECSTASY. In a similar vein, Lean's earlier movies are in some ways more expressive and inspired than his later ones. GREAT EXPECTATIONS is probably the best thing he ever did.)
In a way, David Lean was fortunate to be making movies like THE BRIDGE ON RIVER KWAI, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. He was in the right place at the right time. Especially with the advent of TV and people moving out in droves to the suburbs, Hollywood had to offer something bigger to pull the audience back into the theaters. In the past, people went to movies to see just about anything. But, once people could see 'anything'(including movie reruns) on TV, they had less reason to go to the movies(and the main passion among youths became pop music). So, Hollywood banked on making bigger movies with ever increasing production values. If something on the scale of GONE WITH THE WIND was rarity back in the days, the super epic became the staple of Hollywood in the latter half of 50s and the 60s. In a state of crisis, Hollywood figured on making fewer but bigger movies. And some of them paid off, like TEN COMMANDMENTS, BEN-HUR, SPARTACUS, EL CID, and to a lesser extent KING OF KINGS. But some of them bombed and bombed big. CLEOPATRA drew in the crowds but still couldn't recoup its cost. Also, after awhile, people were no longer dazzled by epics. They became standard and were usually about the Roman Empire or something out of the Bible done in the usual style. Most movies based on Biblical material were dreary due to the combo of stuffy reverence(lest they offend any group) and dimwit pontificating. It reached both apotheosis and nadir with George Stevens' THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, the snail-paced sanctimony of which was unbearable to most(but it led to Dwight MacDonald's funniest movie review). Some of the quirkier and perverse spin on Biblical material, like Robert Aldrich's SODOM AND GOMORRAH, failed with American audiences. Taking on an epic project was to take on the role of Atlas. Too much load on one's shoulders, made worse by Hollywood's pressure to keep it mid-cult, washed for the unwashed. The idea was to elevate the unwashed to the middle, flattering the middle for its interest in 'serious' stuff, and ignoring anything above that. For all that, there is enough in movies like BEN-HUR, EL CID, and even CLEOPATRA to make them memorable. And some moments rank as among the greatest in cinema. The chariot race in BEN-HUR still outshines anything of the kind done lately with CGI. EL CID is robust and roars like a lion. Who can deny the delirium of Cleopatra's entry into Rome?
Still, it's no accident that the epic not only buried the career of Nicholas Ray but stifled Stanley Kubrick to no end in SPARTACUS. It's many times bigger than THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY but also many times smaller in inspiration. Kirk Douglas made sure of that.
Taking on the role of Atlas with epic film-making tends to diminish the human element, eccentricity, and/or mercurial ingenuity. It's like a weightlifter can't do gymnastics. Too often, scale itself takes center-stage in epic-film-making, with everyone reduced to pieces on the chess board. This is why most Hollywood epics are dull, made worse by acme formulations. The sense of bigness infects everything. Every step, every gesture, every syllable. Everything is loaded with importance, significance, meaning, or portent. It's like watching a gigantic painting than a spontaneous narrative. It weighs everything down. It's like watching a royal procession or some pageantry than a story. It's no wonder that some of the more entertaining epics are lower-budgeted. B-movie epics with only pretensions of grandeur. They had more elbow room to convey something like life. The original 300 SPARTANS is no masterpiece(far from it), but it's more fun than Anthony Mann's THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, which is impressive but like a massive wall.
Now, it is possible to make a film both epic and intimate, grand and personal. Or big and eccentric, like with Sergio Leone's big Westerns. But then, Leone didn't quite have the budgets and had to make do with less, which afford him more freedom. Also, in having created his own sub-genre, he could make up his own rules. Another way to make an epic come alive is through intensity of focus. In many ways, SEVEN SAMURAI wouldn't qualify as an epic but for its length. Almost the entire film takes place in a single village of poor farmers. The heroes are seven swordsmen, none of them featured as larger-than-life, and the the villains are a ragtag bunch of bandits. Yet, just like a culture in a petri dish is a universe under a microscope, the crisis of one village becomes a story of epic proportions. It feels like a battle for the ages. No wonder it's been called by some as the greatest war film though technically outside the genre. THE WILD BUNCH presented another way to approach epic material. As most of the movie is about a band of outlaws on the run, it is limited in scope. And yet, with the outlaws riding through a Mexican Landscape locked in a civil war, it crosses paths with larger events. It seems incidentally epic. (And even when working big, Peckinpah directed actors to remain idiosyncratic than put on epic airs. This may have owed to his feelings about authority, like when Dutch says "Eh, 'Generalissimo', hell! He's just another bandit grabbin' all he can for himself." In other words, 'great' or not, people are people, they shit and wipe their ass. In contrast, Lean retained the English schoolboy's respect for authority.) Also, by amplifying the emotion and action, Peckinpah found epic qualities in violence itself. The opening and ending shoot-outs feel apocalyptic. He drew inspiration from Elia Kazan's VIVA ZAPATA, one of the most earthy and rip-roaring political movies. In the case of the ambitious but failed ALEXANDER, Oliver Stone sought to capture both the man and the god of his lifelong hero. Stone played an array of Greek gods to mold his vision of Alexander, mama's boy and conqueror of the world, but mixed signals go haywire.
Lean's treatment is Apollonian, and we can admire the control, the order, the meticulousness from start to finish. And yet, one could argue that Lean was too clean. Nothing seems found or spontaneous. Everything seems ordered, measured, calculated, and polished. Lean was like goldfinger. Nothing really feels natural. It's as if the Arabian desert had been combed over by an English schoolmaster for the slightest blemish. Even blood and sweat seem carefully applied, just like even rags in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO seem tailored by the costume department. Peckinpah was known as a stickler for detail, but his world seems pungent and used. You can almost smell the chili peppers hanging on the wall in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. In contrast, even the rough-and-tumble seem carefully choreographed in Lean's epics. Thus, the action in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, magnificent as it is, lacks the vivid spark of, say, the battle scene in Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT or Peckinpah's MAJOR DUNDEE.
It's true that LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is epic on so many levels, but this has usually been a bane than a blessing in the genre. When everything is writ large, it's more like looking at architecture or pageantry than a human story filled with intimate details and foibles that make life interesting. Consider THE LAST EMPEROR. Grandiose, impressive, and colorful, but the human story of Puyi is almost of secondary interest. History treated him like a pawn in imperial struggles, and Bernardo Bertolucci treats him like a model in a fashion show. Neither history nor the film cared to understand the real Puyi. Dismissive of anything unworthy of epic polish, the graceful John Lone was cast as Puyi, who in reality was a funny-looking guy. Thus, what was really an absurdly tragicomic story is turned into exotic romanticism. Even the quirkier moments are enveloped in the fabric of epic events, overlooking the perverse comedy of Puyi's situation from birth to death. Granted, the world of privilege is contrasted with dingy re-education in a communist prison, but even here, the result is less human story than big lesson about the meaning of it all. In contrast, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, despite its meandering middle, never loses touch with the tumultuous feel of life despite its journey through big events. (And Stone's NIXON is an epic political tale that moves back and forth with ease between the grand and the minute.) Rendering everything epic had a deadening effect on most giant epics of the 50s and 60s(and thereafter). LAWRENCE OF ARABIA was the rare exception because it's so stunning to look at, has tiptop acting with a memorable script, and the haunting presence of Peter O'Toole, a revelation or 'miracle'. Still, as wonderful as Freddie Young's cinematography is, I find Leone's treatment of the desert in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY more inspired. For Leone, the desert is both grand arena and a sandbox.
the script by Robert Bolt (A Man for All Seasons, Doctor Zhivago) and Michael Wilson (The Bridge on the River Kwai) is a supremely masterful screen adaptation
It is a fine script with many memorable lines. On the downside, it does feel scripted and overly rhetorical, never natural. It's like even the lowliest Arab is a vulgar Shakespearean. There's a stagy feel to the whole thing. Like Gilbert & Sullivan's MIKADO(the subject of Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY), the movie remains within established conventions in dealing with the exotic. All said and done, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is staged history than explored history. Unlike Oliver Stone who really sat down and pored through Nixon materials to access and re-imagine the inner-Nixon, the creators of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA gleaned the great man's life and exploits for just enough material suited for epic entertainment. It is ultimately a survey than a surgery. Thus, despite some measure of psychological insight and political complexity, it's more about show-and-tell than seek-and-find. In a way, the movie gives the audience precious little beyond what one expects from such a work. Still, given the mediocrity of most epics of the period, it(along with KWAI and ZHIVAGO) stand out as the gold standard.
The Arabs in the movie are real enough but only 'enough', and sufficiency only goes so far. They are more than caricatures but don't quite break the mold, like the Burl Ives character does in THE BIG COUNTRY. Anthony Quinn may have the best line in movie history, but Burl Ives surely delivered the best speech ever.
Lawrence was a nationalist, not an imperialist. To fight the Turks, he favored aiding Arab nationalists rather than spending British lives to conquer territory and resources in Mesopotamia. But, against Lawrence’s own intention, Seven Pillars also makes a case for empire, a case that Lean’s film clearly reinforces.
Why not just say he was both? Indeed, most British back then were nationalist and imperialist. They were clearly nationalist in defending the Mother Country. They were proud to be Anglo and white back then. But they also took great pride in the Empire. And from the beginning, the British justified empire-building by recruiting local nationalisms or proto-nationalisms, sometimes constructed by the British themselves, not least by interpretations of archaeological findings, i.e. the British understood the natives and their histories better than the natives did themselves, and the Brits were there to restore them to their former glory. Brits took over India but also justified the takeover in terms of liberating the Hindus from the Muslim Mughals. Wherever the British(or the French) went, they aided local tribalism against regional hegemonism. But whites did the same in the Americas. They would support one Indian tribe against the more powerful tribe hostile to white settlers. In World War I, stoking Arab Nationalism was useful in justifying European takeover of what had been parts of the Ottoman Empire, just like US and Israel have toyed with Kurdish nationalism in recent years. Globalists claim to hate nationalism but have no problem encouraging ultra-Ukrainian nationalism against Russia, only to weaken Ukraine at the same time by spreading Globo-Homo there. It's sort of like STAR WARS. It's ostensibly about Rebels vs the Empire, but the Rebels are also an imperialist power that rules over diverse folks. When Germans fought French and the British in World War II, it was empire vs empire.
Furthermore, the notion of 'Arab Nationalism' was fuzzy because Arab-ness was never a clear-cut ethnicity, let alone nationality. Besides, unlike European nations, Arabs didn't even have a sense of borders. They fought more over 'whose well' than 'whose land'. Many tribes remained nomadic, not least because it's hard to put down roots in the desert where hardly anything grows. Indeed, what excites Lawrence about the Arabs is that he, in poetic reverie, regards them as the pirates of the desert, like the Brits were once swashbuckling pirates of the seas. Lawrence is a restless wanderer, and he's drawn to Arabs for their mobility. To him, the camels are like boats on sand, and he will be the Ahab of the Arabs.
Third, there is a strong element of Nietzschean self-mythologization: what Aleister Crowley calls “auto-hagiography” and the Arabs call “blasphemy.”
And yet, the Arabs don't seem to regard him as a blasphemer but a blessed man, even by Allah. Unlike Christianity that was mostly about humility and guilt, Islam has venerated the great warrior, the man of pride, the derring-do seeker of fame and fortune.
Indeed, what's fascinating about Lawrence is the ambiguity, part cynical vanity and part heartfelt passion. He is a both a loyal British agent(who stirs up Arabs against Turks for British Imperialist designs) and a semi-traitorous maverick hellbent on leading the Arabs not only against the Turks but the European imperialists as well. He's never entirely one thing or the other, which means he's always both, which in the end is too much of a burden.
The Lawrence of myth is part of a tradition: The white man who goes 'native', identifies with the other side, and fights for their cause. It's there in DANCES WITH WOLVES and THE LAST SAMURAI. Also in THE MISSION and the toddawful AVATAR. But if most such movies have the hero fully switching loyalty to other side, Lawrence remains on both sides, partly because Anglos and Arabs were uneasy allies but also because of his dual nature.
In a way, he serves his own vanity by manipulating both camps. Initially, he is having fun and thinks himself too clever by half for the others who can't keep up with his stunts. But as time passes, he comes to realize the limit of this 'fun' and comes to realize that playing 'god' isn't the same as being god. And, it dawns on him that he was being played by them as he was playing them. He's as much a pawn as the king(or queen). Also, his British superiors crack his code. They sense his vanity and stoke it to send him back into the field. They go along with the charade that Lawrence will do it for the Arabs. On some level, a man as smart and savvy as him must realize that the British promises aren't worth the paper they're written on, but he chooses to believe because his vanity blinds him to the truth.
On the symbolic plane, Lawrence overthrows the three Abrahamic faiths by rejecting their doctrines and reversing or rewriting their central stories with himself as the hero.
There is something of the classic pagan hero in Lawrence's boldness(that turns into hubris), but his success also owes to the chameleon-like ability to make himself acceptable to Arabs on their own terms. Also, in the heat of battle, few ever stuck to spiritual dogma. When did Christian Knights heed the teaching, "Turn the other cheek?" While Lawrence is clearly different, he becomes a hero among the Arabs because he's adept at playing 'more Arab than Arab'. He acts like he understands the Arab soul more than the Arabs do and goes the extra mile to get them what they really want(but don't know it yet). Also, it's wrong to bunch the three Abrahamic Faiths into one. Christianity arose as heresy against Judaism, and Islam rose as heresy against Judaism and Christianity. Thus, heresy is intrinsic to the Abrahamic tradition.
After a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral attended by the crème of the British establishment, a priest asks if Lawrence “really belongs here,” which introduces the theme of Lawrence as an outsider.
Would a priest be concerned about a man's social status? After all, many saints were of humble background and spent(or gave) their lives doing undignified work among the poor and the wretched? It seems the priest's concern has less to do with Lawrence's social background or standing than considerable notoriety that accompanied the myth. Controversy always trailed him.
As for Lawrence's geo-political significance, it was surely exaggerated, especially in the context of World War I. One of the most memorable lines in the movie is "...this whole theater of operations is a sideshow! The real war's not being fought against the Turks, but the Germans. And not here, but on the Western front in the trenches! Your Bedouin Army - or whatever it calls itself - would be a sideshow OF a sideshow!"
True enough. Ottoman Empire was an insignificant power and in fast decline, comparable to Italy in World War II, more an albatross around Germany's neck than a real asset. The fate of World War I was decided in eastern France when the US finally entered the war. Lawrence's romp with the Arabs against the Turks had almost no bearing on the outcome of the war. Also, Lawrence or no Lawrence, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I would have delivered the 'liberated' Arabs into the hands of European Imperialists(until they immolated themselves in World War II and/or were pushed out by US interests or USSR influence during the Cold War). In the larger context, it was of no consequence that Lawrence and the Arabs blew up some Turkish trains. It didn't matter if they or the British military took Damascus first. Indeed, Lawrence realizes this victory all came to naught. His ragtag bunch of Arabs can't manage anything, and the 'adults' take over in the end.
So, despite the victories and moments of glory, Lawrence wasn't a very consequential figure in history, Arab or British. He romped around not only in a sideshow(the war against the weakened Ottomans) but a sideshow of a sideshow(among the Arabs who blew up some trains and sacked a few towns after Ottoman forces had already been depleted and scattered). Then, why did he become such a famous figure? This is where the factor of personality, celebrity, hype, self-promotion, and myth come into play. It's like Yukio Mishima became world-famous not only for his writing talent but his knack for self-promotion. Same with Ernest Hemingway. Surely, other American writers were just as good or even better, but Hemingway knew how to make himself larger-than-life. Not just an author but a man of adventure, a philosopher who lived by the 'code'. It also goes for Sam Peckinpah, whom Pauline Kael called the 'youngest legendary director'. Peckinpah, like Jean-Luc Godard, understood the art of the mystique. A figure comparable to Lawrence is Che Guevara. Guevara didn't achieve much. He wasn't crucial to the victory of the Cuban revolution. His African adventure came to nothing. He made insane remarks during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His Bolivian insurgency was a complete failure and led to his death. And yet, he had the look. A handsome guy whose mug was caught in that famous photograph. Also, he always emphasized the unity of theory and practice. He was both mind and body. And he always pushed to the limits and dreamed big. So, his life and death became the stuff of legend, i.e. he didn't so much lose but sacrificed his body, Christ-like, for the Revolution, and his soul lives forever.
The real Lawrence wasn't tall like Peter O'Toole, but he was rather handsome, and he was a writer and intellectual. He was also a flamboyant narcissist who mugged for publicity. Had Lawrence been an ugly bald guy with a paunch who won battles for the Arabs but lacked charisma and didn't pontificate about his exploits in writing, would he have become the stuff of legend? Unlikely. But then, if Che Guevara looked and talked like 'Pachanga', would he have been so idolized? Also unlikely.
And part of Lawrence's neurosis and insecurity has to do with his uncertainty about the Real Him. Is he becoming famous for his actions or are his actions becoming famous because of HIM? Actions create the cult but the cult validates actions. This is certainly true in the arts. Merit makes an artist's reputation, but then the reputation alone carries him(even as the works become increasingly dubious, culminating in man-as-parody like Andy Warhol).
Peter O’Toole plays Lawrence as slightly autistic
He seems more amused and aloof than 'autistic'. An 'autistic' person is obsessively immersed in some detail, whereas there's an aura of zen-like detachment in Lawrence. It might be seen as smug but for the fact that Lawrence seems genuinely interested in matters and affairs.
He also has a masochistic side. He likes to extinguish matches with his fingers. “The trick . . . is not to mind that it hurts.” It is a small exercise in self-overcoming, a hint of greater things to come.
It also serves as contrast between theory and practice, a hard lesson he learns later. With matches, he is the master of his pain. He controls the flame and can blow it out at any time. But as a captive of the Turks, the pain(and humiliation) is beyond his control. He goes from the god of pain to its slave.
Lawrence’s commander, General Murray, despises him as an overeducated misfit, but a civil servant Mr. Dryden (a composite character played by Claude Rains) values his intelligence and language skills.
'Despises' is too strong a word. He mostly seems irritated. On the one hand, he has the advantage of rank and age, but Lawrence is clearly highly intelligent and gifted. In other words, superior. So, what is an inferior man of superior rank to do with a superior man of inferior rank? Not an uncommon problem. Besides, it was normal for superiors to dress down inferiors in British society, especially in the institutions. It began in boarding schools and reached the uppermost boardrooms, which is why Lawrence doesn't take any of it seriously. It's just the British way.
Lawrence tells Dryden that he thinks this mission will be “fun.” Dryden says that the only people who find the desert fun are Bedouin and gods. His unstated premise is that Lawrence is neither. Lawrence flatly declares, “No, it will be fun.” If Dryden is right, and Lawrence is not a Bedouin, that implies that Lawrence thinks of himself as a god.
True, Lawrence has a god complex but he also becomes a 'Bedouin' in 'cosplay' sense. After all, he becomes Lawrence of Arabia. He dons Arab clothes and prances about as a fellow cutthroat. Homos are into role-play(and trannies are into role-play with the other sex). So, Lawrence is man playing god, a white man playing Arab or 'Bedouin'. So, the 'fun' has more than one implication. The 'fun' is in the role-playing itself as if the Arab adventure is a costume-ball in the desert. Paradoxically, Lawrence feels freer in the role of an 'Arab' because, despite their tribal-traditionalism, Arabs are less orderly and thoroughgoing than the 'anal' British. Also, unlike in British society where men must be gentlemen, Arab men can do as they please simply as men. In addition, there is always an element of 'freedom' in a foreigner taking on another culture. He becomes neither his original self nor entirely the other self(as he is a foreigner). He enters a limbo or liminal state where identity becomes a matter of whimsy than fixed loyalty. No wonder Justin Trudeau loves to put on different dresses and be 'gay for a day', 'Hindu the next day', and then an 'American Indian', 'Muslim', and etc. What was once relatively novel among men like Lawrence has turned into a global cosplay. (Alec Guinness, who was homosexual, seems to have enjoyed dressing up in other cultures.)
Lawrence, especially due to his social background as bastard, has a weak sense of self and finds refuge(and fun) in playacting across cultures. Also, his homo side loves to don different dresses. It's no accident that homos love stuff like Mardi Gras. The film MISHIMA begins with the famed/notorious author donning different masks. Consider Ludwig II. He didn't just love operas but lived as if he was in one. And consider the homo-psycho in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. He's a master of guises.
Why are homos like this? They are naturally flamboyant and get ooh-la-la carried away. Also, their sexual ambiguity makes them feel male and female. This fluidity makes homos useful to the deep state as homos are less rooted and love to travel around the world not only to bugger different buns but to playact and have 'fun'. Take Donald Richie, the American ex-patriate in Japan who wrote books on Kurosawa and others. He loved being an outsider because the ambiguity lent him freedom that eluded him back home. Today, homos may feel less this way as they are accepted and even celebrated everywhere in the West. In the past, however, homosexuality was considered a sin and was a serious crime. So, white men like Lawrence found sexual exploits in other parts of the world where law and order were in a state of disarray. Also, among the poor, you can buy favors for a few bucks.
At any rate, Trevor Lynch's highest regard for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and ALIEN COVENANT(as the best of the ALIEN series) is rather interesting. Both movies feature characters with a god-complex. The latter ends with the triumphant android walking down the corridor(as if its Valhalla) to Wagner no less. Does TL share in the god complex or something?
Crossing the desert to find Faisal, Lawrence’s guide Tafas is killed by Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif) for drinking at his well. You see, Tafas is from the wrong tribe. This prompts a bit of political philosophy delivered with autistic frankness that borders on the suicidal, given that it is spoken to a man holding a smoking gun
Not really. Lawrence isn't entirely green about the way of the Arabs. He knows Tafas was a small Arab. He could tell Ali is a big Arab by his attitude and demeanor, a man of some importance who knows something of the larger world. Tafas the small Araba was totally mesmerized by the sight of Lawrence's pistol. In contrast, Ali is handy with guns, hitting a man from a distance on camel-back. Ali tells Lawrence that he can drink the water and even offers guidance. So, Lawrence picks up right away that Ali is a player. He's in the fight against the Turks, and it simply wouldn't do to kill a British officer as the British are on the side of Arabs. Lawrence knows he isn't talking to some bandit but a chief whose role is to work with and aid the British. So, Lawrence's speech isn't autistic but rhetorical. It's his way of scoring some points. Ali has the gun and the status in these parts. But Lawrence can show himself to be the man of ideas and vision. Arab kills an Arab, and Lawrence shames the Arab for killing another Arab. Not that Ali cares what Lawrence says in the moment, but it reverberates later as Ali comes to realize that Arabs need something more than tribalism to overcome the threats posed by world powers. After all, the irony of Arab Nationalism was it was stoked by empires far bigger and more powerful than the Ottomans in decline. In a way, Lawrence is playing the neo-Muhammad figure. Muhammad and his followers did great things because they persuaded various Arab tribes to set aside their differences and join in the Jihad. But tribalism lingered in the Middle East, just like ethnicism remained in Europe despite Christianity, leading to various internecine wars among the Europeans, something that Napoleon and Hitler sought to overcome with a uniting message: Enlightenment principles or recognition of Aryan Supremacy.
So, at least politically, Lawrence is more a 'Muslim' than Ali is, for whom the tribe comes before common faith. Lawrence doesn't preach Islam but he offers a uniting principle by which Arabs can transcend their tribal hostilities and distrust.
Usually, a sign of autism is the failure to see the bigger picture due to immersion in minute details, like with Dustin Hoffman's character in RAIN MAN. Lawrence is the opposite of 'autism' because he sees the bigger picture.
Throughout his adventures in Arabia, Lawrence’s dream of a rising Arab nation is stymied by tribal rivalries and blood feuds.
There's a kind of irony. One might think there are seven ways of seeing the world. Individual-centrism, family-centrism, kin-centrism, tribe-centrism, nation-centrism, and universalism. Thus, to attain the wider and grander sense of identity and loyalty, one has to move up the ladder from individual to family to kinship to tribe to nation to the world(or all humanity). And yet, the agent of the movement upward is often the cult of the great individual. People into tribalism don't just move up the ladder to nationalism. Rather, a great individual comes along and makes the various tribes pledge their loyalty to HIM, the great man, and through him the transformation is achieved. At least in the movie version, the slaves couldn't unite without the leadership of Spartacus.
For tribal Judaism to birth universal Christianity, there had to be the figure of Jesus Christ. While petty individualism is about 'me', a transition to a higher plane of identity and loyalty usually requires the Great Individual whose cult and legend bring together peoples who might have distrusted and killed one another. Alexander brought together the Macedonians and Greeks. Napoleon, for a time, brought together the Europeans. Muhammad brought together the Arabs. It wasn't just a matter of universalist credo but the power of charisma. American populism went nowhere until Donald Trump arrived on the scene. And it is the cult of MLK that holds together the coalition of various peoples of color and whites of both parties. So, while one must abandon one's petty individual-centrism to arrive at a higher loyalty and wider identity, it is generally through the cult of the Great Individual. And Lawrence seems eager to play this prophetic role. It goes to show that any movement won't get anywhere with ideas alone. Those must be embodied in the figure of the Great Individual, and this is why Jews especially feared Adolf Hitler because he had that magic-touch with the masses. And in his comical way, so did Donald Trump. Jews hate 'bad' ideas but what they fear most is the coming of the Great Man who can articulate and embody those ideas. This is why Jews are eager to spread cuckery among white males so that no such figure can arise among them. Without such figures, 'white nationalism' will remain just ideas on the page. People read books but follow leaders. No leaders to follow, no movement.
An irony of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is that, even as Lawrence lectures the Arabs about their petty tribal ways, Europe itself is engulfed in a white-versus-white war that would end up killing 17 million people. Also, Germans are allied with Turks against other Europeans, and UK & France recruit nonwhites to fight Turks and Germans. It seems whites are also plagued by an inability to come together as one people and bury the hatchets.
Of course, the UK played a key role in this dilemma as its policy was the 'balance of powers'. If the moon has a stabilizing effect on geology and life on Earth, the gravitational force of UK had a disruptive and destabilizing impact on Continental affairs, i.e. just when the Continent seemed to unite around some idea or individual, the UK aided counter-veiling forces to spread dissension across the Continent once again. So, it's rather odd that the British would be preaching Arab unity in the movie. What they did to the European Continent was to sow seeds of discord.
On autistic principle, Lawrence rejects Ali’s help in finding Faisal, preferring to risk it on his own.
It's more a matter of pride than principle. Also, having pored through maps and gone on personal journeys, Lawrence isn't a complete novice when it comes to the desert. He also has a compass. In a way, he's foolish to reject Ali's service, but it's also a smart move. Their first encounter was a battle of wills and competing visions. Had Lawrence accepted Ali's offer, he would be in debt not only to Ali's guidance but graciousness. After all, Ali killed Lawrence's aid but bears no ill will toward the Englishman and offers his service. Lawrence is unwilling to let Ali gain the upper-hand. He wants to show Ali that he's a man of pride and will. Ali could have taken the compass, but Lawrence reminds him of honor, something Ali can't ignore. It's one thing for an high-born Arab to kill an Arab hick(Tafas) over a trifle, but Lawrence, an Englishman, is another matter. Ali recognizes Lawrence as a peer and hands back the compass.
When Lieutenant Lawrence reaches Faisal, he is ordered by his British military advisor, Colonel Brighton, to say nothing, observe, and report back to Dryden. But Lawrence is irrepressible. As an autist, when he has ideas, he can’t keep them to himself, which intrigues Faisal.
The autistic mind is usually trapped in a single idea or methodology. It's like Hoffman's character in RAIN MAN tries to solve the "Who's on First" joke because he has no understanding of humor and comedy. Everything to him is a matter of patterns and logic. Lawrence isn't like that at all. His mind is fluid and flexible. He listens and uses both sides of his brains and weighs all possibilities. (Hoffman's role as Jack Crabbe in LITTLE BIG MAN, another white-man-goes-native story, is closer to 'autristry', but then Hoffman had that aspergy air about him.)
Gasim’s time has come. “It is written,” meaning that it is the will of God. Lawrence declares “Nothing is written”—meaning that the will of God is nothing in the face of the will of man—then he goes back on his own to search for Gasim...
In the space of a single conversation, Lawrence rejects the written laws handed down by Moses and Muhammad. He overthrows God and lays down his own laws. Blasphemy indeed. But Lawrence’s blasphemy is not punished. It is rewarded. When he rescues Gasim, the Arabs begin to idolize Lawrence. As Lawrence sleeps, Ali burns his uniform.
When Lawrence says 'nothing is written', it borders on blasphemy but not quite. The Torah is written. The Koran is written. Those are holy words. But when Ali said it's 'written' that Gasim would die in the desert, it is an assumption, not the word of God. Thus, it's more the case that Lawrence is defying Ali's interpretation of what is 'written' than what is truly written by God. Ali, familiar with the desert, knows Gasim has little chance of making it out alive. Also, it's not just about Gasim but his other men. He can't risk their lives and the entire mission over one man. In BLACKHAWK DOWN, the mission to rescue US soldiers leads to more of them getting sucked in and getting killed. So, based on law of averages, Ali is correct. God or no god, the chances don't favor Gasim's survival and, furthermore, trying to save him would jeopardize other men and the whole mission. In that sense, Lawrence is foolish to go back to retrieve Gasim, especially as he's an amateur in the desert.
Still, Lawrence is starting out on the great venture, and he wants to prove to himself and impress others that he can do miracles. Also, at this stage of the journey, he hasn't yet killed a man, and it wasn't long ago that he registered shock at Ali's killing of Tafas. Against the Arab attitude of life(as dispensable), Lawrence wants to show that every Arab life matters. It's a continuance of his rebuke of Ali's careless killing of Tafas. He, a white man, will risk his own life to save an Arab. (Also, Gasim endeared himself to Lawrence earlier with praise.) One of the themes of THE WILD BUNCH is the leader's guilt of having left partners behind. Pike Bishop fled to save his own skin while his friend Deke Thorton got arrested. Later, he must leave Angelo to Mapache and his men. A leader of men knows that lives are expendable in battle but also feels responsible for each and every man, like with Steiner with his platoon in CROSS OF IRON. Perhaps, this Leader's Guilt is more a Western thing, and Lawrence feels it.
Besides, what can any man know about the real mind of God. Lawrence's feat doesn't necessarily defy God or Allah or whatever. From Ali and Arab's point of view, it's not blasphemous. Rather, Allah had written it so that Lawrence would pull off a miracle. He was right, they were wrong. Thus, he is among the favored of Allah. Lawrence, not being a Muslim, surely has a more egotistical interpretation of events, but he walks the thin line between blasphemy and piety. But then, this goes for Muhammad also. If he'd only cared about what is written, he would have respected the Jews as the Chosen or adopted Christianity. But, he believed the Biblical texts or what was 'written' had been corrupted. The universe is indeed 'written' by Allah, but it is he, Muhammad, who heard God's true poetry. Christianity both accepts and rejects what's written in Judaism. Islam both accepts and rejects what is written in the New Testament. In that tradition, Lawrence both accepts and rejects what is 'written'.
The notion of 'written' has ambiguous meaning in the movie. In one way, it is what is written or willed or commanded by God. But it also means man's resigned assumption of God's will, a kind of fatalism. In that sense, what's 'written' isn't so much about the holy mind of God but man's passive acceptance of his own lot which he conveniently ascribes to God. So, the rejection of what's 'written' isn't so much a defiance against God(something no Muslim could tolerate) but the rejection of the fatalist attitude. The notion of 'written' or Calvinist predestination doesn't necessarily deny 'free will' because humans have no idea what has been predetermined or predestined. It's like some physicists say everything in the universe will unfold as it was meant to, but we still act upon our 'free will'. And in GATTACA, there are outliers in the genetic determinism.
Because Lawrence is a bastard in England, he cannot inherit his father’s name or title. For Ali, that means he is free to choose his own name. He is free to found his own family, clan, or dynasty. He is free to be somebody’s ancestor, not somebody’s heir. This is the privilege that descends on all men who bring victory in battle. It is how aristocracies everywhere are born.
That's an interesting take, and perhaps in an earlier era, Lawrence would have taken up the offer. The world used to be about aristocrats, the warrior class. But after Napoleon, the aristocracy is just too small for the imagination and ambition of someone like Lawrence. Napoleon proved that the warrior class is no match for the warrior mass. He turned the entire French nation into an army, and workers and peasants who took up arms proved they could fight as well as any aristocrat, especially if they're fighting for their own freedom and rights than the privileges of the few. There are naturally aristocratic qualities about Lawrence, but he lives in the shadow of Napoleon, the man who roused up an entire people into a mass army that destroyed all aristocratic battalions across Europe rather handily. So, a clan or dynasty is too small for Lawrence.
But Lawrence has a solution. He will execute the prisoner. He will take the blame. He, not the Howeitat, will bear the brunt of the blood feud of the dead man’s tribe... Lawrence is offering himself as a scapegoat to prevent tribal conflict from spinning out of control.
Not really. The man's family has no reason to hold a grudge against Lawrence as he's an outsider. These Arabs have long grudges and feuds that go back generations. So, regardless of right or wrong, when someone of one tribe kills another, the culture of honor demands tit-for-tat, vendetta. Because of tribal grudges, justice is impossible. Even when one's side did wrong and was killed by the other side for righteous reasons, the first emotion is not 'justice happened', but 'they killed one of us, so we must kill one of them.' Lawrence exists outside this vicious cycle, therefore his execution of the man can be accepted as justice by all sides, even by the family of the dead man.
It's like with the Negroes. If one gang kills the member of another gang, there must be revenge. But if the killer is arrested and sentenced by the judge, both sides are cool with that because the judge isn't part of the grudge culture between the gangs. He just done his job, sheeeeiiiit.
Lawrence asks Gasim if he is guilty. “Yes.” Then Lawrence puts six bullets in him. When he flings away his gun in disgust, a mob converges on it, as a holy relic. Lawrence is becoming a legend. (In reality, Lawrence executed a different man. By making Gasim the killer, the screenwriters not only made the story more economical, they also increased its dramatic power.)
The mob dived for the pistol not as a holy relic but because it is precious in those parts. It's like the scene in AFRICAN QUEEN where Humphrey Bogart tosses a half-smoked cigar and black natives pile on one another for it.
I'm not surprised that the real man shot by Lawrence wasn't the one he'd saved. It seemed a bit too neatly significant, a dramatic invention. After all, what are the odds that the very man Lawrence saved would be the one he must kill. Still, it serves as a reminder that perhaps Lawrence cannot deny what is 'written'. He could forestall it, but Gasim was meant to die. It deflates Lawrence's confidence but also sobers him up for what's up ahead. One thing for sure, the great adventure before him will involve many deaths, and there won't be any more egotistical moral luxuries about saving every man.
Also revelatory is Lawrence's admission that he actually enjoyed the killing. He seemed pained and agonized, especially as he had to execute the very man he went out on a limb to save. And yet, he recounts later how it made him feel alive. It's like he 'popped his cherry', like Henry Hill getting busted for the first time in GOODFELLAS. It was like sex, a moment of ecstasy, the moment of truth!
Partly, it was the thrill of violence. But it was also a liberation from moral obligations and the Leader's Guilt. As the man who conceived of the plan, Lawrence felt responsible for the life of everyone in the mission. But upon killing Gasim, he feels somewhat free of that guilt. It's going to be a bloodbath, and it's written that many of his men will die, so be it.
Ali throws him a garland of flowers, stating “The miracle is accomplished. . . . Tribute for the prince, flowers for the man.” Lawrence replies “I’m none of those things, Ali.” When asked what he is then, Lawrence says, “Don’t know.” But he’s being coy. If he has worked a miracle, he’s a god, or on his way to becoming one.
No, he's not being coy. Lawrence is a complex man. He's both megalomaniacal and modest. He's brimming with confidence, even reckless at times, like a homo into 'rough trade'. Yet, he's also deeply insecure. He's driven by vanity but haunted by conscience. He's like a pagan god but also like a christ figure. He wants to believe he's doing something right, good and true, than merely for fame and glory. Furthermore, whatever he achieves, he is just an agent of empire, never the emperor. And, despite the Arabs' acceptance of him, he will never be one of them. Also, there is a contemplative side to him, one that reminds him that all glory is fleeting, which is the final note of PATTON.
Lawrence is really drawn to adventure and romance. Even though there is a moral component to his modern crusade, he doesn't want to be burdened with responsibility. Indeed, at the end, we notice he has a harder time with peace than with war. In battle, he could lead the Arabs. But in victory, he can't get them to agree on anything. As for the POW hospital for Turkish prisoners, what a mess that is.
When Lawrence arrives in Cairo... Naturally, he is not welcomed until he is recognized as one of their own... But when he reports that he has taken Aqaba, everyone from the top brass to the lowest guardsman knows a good thing when he sees it.
This scene is most notable for conveying the contradictions of the British Empire and Lawrence's ambiguous role in it. The British claim to be defending the Arabs, but 'dirty Arabs' are not allowed into the building. The British offer their hand but shut the door. Lawrence is mistaken as an Arab and excluded... until he is identified as a British officer but the Arab boy(accompanying Lawrence) is rebuffed until Lawrence insists he be let in. Prior to his Arab adventure, Lawrence would have thought nothing of excluding Arabs from the building, but he's been through hell and back with them, not least with the boy accompanying him. Lawrence tortured duality is revealed in this scene. He did a great thing for the empire and is thus its loyal servant. But he's also come to sympathize with the Arabs and takes personal offense at the treatment of the Arab boy.
It was something experienced by many who took part in empire, especially if of an idealistic or sentimental bent. They see the empire as benevolent and good, spreading light around the world. But they also see how the empire tramples on other peoples whom it claims to defend, protect, and elevate. Plenty of American soldiers in Vietnam believed they were fighting the good fight to defend Vietnamese from communism but were also appalled by how the 'gooks' were treated. It defined much of Oliver Stone's career. The British pioneered modern enlightened imperialism along with the French, which was later taken and advanced by Americans, especially with their own struggle with the black issue.
Lawrence carries these contradictions at all times. He is surely proud to be British and feels he, not the Arabs, can pull off a miracle for them. He feels better than them, and part of this superiority was surely racial given the times. It was also cultural as the British thought they occupied the summit of human civilization. But Lawrence also feels superior to most whites. While most of them stay in their neat British uniforms, follow orders, and do as told, he broke through the barriers of identity, loyalty, and class to achieve the unthinkable. Are his feats all for the empire or are they anti-empire, a gift to the Arabs against not only the Turks but eventually the Europeans as well? Of course, Lawrence doesn't have the power to be the ultimate arbiter, which is something of a relief as any decision will be regarded as a betrayal by one side or the other. Whatever he may want personally, others get to make the big decisions. The 'old men'. Young men fight the battle, but 'old men' make the peace, as Faisal later says. It's like actors(and to a lesser extent directors) get the glory in Hollywood, but the real decision-makers are the men in suits in the offices(though rare figures like Steven Spielberg made it as both director and producer).
In that scene, Lawrence feels both immense pride and a bit of shame. He accomplished what others said couldn't be done. He offered it on a silver platter to the British. He also pleased the Arabs. But while the two worlds are united in his personage, they remain divided politically and socially. Arabs fight for the British but your average British regards Arabs as dirty 'wogs'. Lawrence had to go out of his way to insist that that Arab boy be served a glass of lemonade. Lawrence knows the British have good reasons to detest the Arab ways. His harsh rebuke to Ali in their first encounter was evidence of that. Yet, he also knows that Arabs have good reason to distrust and resent the British who are two-faced, devious, manipulative, and often treacherous behind the civil facade. But despite his own prejudices, what separates him from other British is he has genuine curiosity and sympathy for the Other. He is like both Zhivago and Strelnikov. A romantic poet and ruthless warrior.
The scene ends on a note of irony, though not in a ham-fisted way to score cheap points about hypocrisy and 'racism'. The very Brits who'd been offended by his very presence shower him with praise and good cheers. Still, it illustrates the tensions of the empire that preached civility but also exuded contempt.
This is an interesting point, but perhaps we shouldn't confuse tribalism with nationalism though they are often used interchangeably. In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the Arabs have yet to develop national consciousness and remain mired in tribalism, a far more fragile and unstable condition. Tribalism is about us-versus-them among various groups without fixed borders and well-articulated canonical sense of identity, history, and narrative. It is essentially instinctive, yet to develop into a unified community bound by laws and norms. Nationalism, with well-defined borders and mass consciousness, is a modern achievement.
Most of history was about constantly shifting boundaries. It's like in the Americas, there were many tribes but no fixed borders, which shifted constantly with the latest outcomes in battle. But with the rise of kingdoms and rooted settlements, a sense of which people owned which land bound by shared memory became better defined.
Still, the first true nationalism followed the French Revolution that deposed the aristocracy. Under the aristocratic order, the elites identified more with fellow elites in other kingdoms than with their own peoples. Even though kingdoms sometimes fought one another, it was like a family feud. They were all of related blood, and they all looked down on their peoples as subjects or the rabble, pawns in their games. But the French Revolution led to modern nationalism where the elites became one with the national masses, and this paradigm has defined modern democracy(despite its liberalism), communism(despite its universalism), Fascism, and National Socialism. Hitler cared more about volk than class. They all talked about The People.
But globalism is restoring a kind of ersatz-aristocratism where the elites of various nations feel closer to one another than with their own peoples. Biden, though a white American, serves the globo-homo club than White Americans. Obama served the globo-homo club than cared about black Americans. Various elites around the world send their kids to Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge, and they care more about joining the globo-homo club than about their own peoples. They veil this neo-aristocratic trend with 'wokeness' that provides them with the veneer of caring about 'diversity, equality, and inclusion', but diversity only increases inequality, and the elite club is more exclusive than ever. Only their favored idols, narratives, and 'values' are deemed 'acceptable' and the rest are excluded. And notice how 'wokeness' de-emphasizes the masses or the People and instead fixates on the celebration of three minorities: Jews, blacks, & homos and largely for their SUPERIOR qualities. Worship the Jews for their genius, worship the blacks for their muscle, worship the homos for their creativity. Thus, the new idolatry is essentially neo-aristocratic.
It seems Jews are the ONLY exception within the globalist empire. Super-rich Jews like Sheldon Adelson cared about the humblest Jew in Israel, and American Jews did all they could to help relatively poorer Jews in the Soviet Union. But then, Jews want it this way. If goy elites cared about their own kind, they wouldn't expend all their energies serving Jews in the globo-homo club. So, the globo-formula is goy elites snub the goy masses and serve Jewish elites who care about Jewish folk.
If Arabs in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA had nationalism, they would live in a more stable world. But they only have tribalism. Under Ottoman rule, the various tribes enjoyed a degree of stability in their common submission to the Turks. But as Turkish authority wanes, the power vacuum creates havoc, just like the fall of communism led to the breakup of Yugoslavia(that had been united more under Tito-ism than any clear sense of Yugoslavian identity, but then, the US made it worse by pouring gasoline on the fire and encouraging further breakup by dangling prizes before any ethnic group broke away from the dominant Serbs).
Nations have fought one another, resulting in shifts in boundaries(like tug-of-war over Alsace Lorraine between France and Germany), but usually stability and peace followed after the dust of war settled. In contrast, in a world of tribalism, there never really is a state-of-peace because nothing is really settled among the tribes. There are no agreed-upon boundaries, and furthermore, there is only an inchoate sense of 'us'(as opposed to 'them') within the tribe. The identity, culture, and sense of history hadn't been coalesced into something resembling a shared/mass ideology.
Jews are something of an exception in all this because they started with prophets and the Covenant than with kings and swords. Thus, Jews relied more on the power of mind than the power of might to define who they were. Also, the Covenant informed each Jew that he is the equal of all other Jews as the blessed of God. He wasn't just some peon or subject. The kings came later for the Jews, and even they were subordinate to the prophets and the Covenant. This is why the Jewish people and culture could survive even after their elites were massacred or scattered to the winds. Each Jew had a sense of self-worth and carried within his body/soul the seeds of the sacred truth. In contrast, pagan folks were mostly lowly subjects of their master-elites. Their purpose in life was wedded to specified duties and skills, like being a blacksmith. They belonged to an order as long as their elites remained, but when the elites were vanquished, they had little in terms of identity as their worth had been measured in service to their masters than in terms of autonomy from social privileges.
Allenby, Lawrence, and company sweep through the halls and down the grand staircase—past rank after rank of smartly uniformed officers and sentries, standing at attention and saluting—into the sumptuous bar, where all the officers spring to attention until Allenby put them at ease and begs their permission to drink there, as a guest of Major Lawrence. It is a perfect image of how hierarchy is oiled by magnanimity, manners, and good humor....
it is precisely the British ability to look past appearances and to recognize the talents and achievements of an outsider and misfit like Lawrence that made this victory possible.
It also suggests that Anglos, in their deference to authority and hierarchy, are lacking in autonomy and agency. They are rather like well-trained dogs. Their happy acceptance of the new odd-seeming Lawrence comes largely by the way of Allenby's commendation. If the big man says it's okay, it must be okay. So, their feelings about Lawrence have less to do with personal opinion than consensus willed by a superior. No wonder then the Anglo World switched gears so fast under the new boss, the Jewish Tribe. Jews nod this way, and Anglos nod the same way. Jews nod another way, and Anglos nod that way too. This is where Lawrence stands out among the crowd. Allenby and other British officers belong to the system and go by the book. Just like Muslims believe everything is 'written', the British go about very scripted roles, from top to bottom. Lawrence, though impeccably British in many ways, has something of the 'cowboy' in him. He doesn't always go by the book, and it is rather surprising that a man like Allenby would warm to a man like Lawrence who is headstrong with a maverick streak. Under most circumstances, Lawrence wouldn't be ideal but he's the right man for the 'wrong' world.
And yet, this is where the British were different from, say, the Japanese. Both were about hierarchy, order, discipline, and duties. But if Japanese almost always suppressed any sign of individuality, the British Order allowed just enough freedom and space that a man of special qualities was given his due. So, while Japan was 99% anti-individualist, Britain was 95% anti-individualist but allowed just enough space for a man like Lawrence to flourish. This was ideal for the British Empire because, let's face it, most people are dullards and lack any notable qualities; they would do best just to shut up, follow orders, and stick to their allotted duties. However, there is a tiny sliver in any population with special intelligence, creativity, skill, and/or imagination, and it is a society that allows such special individuals to blossom that ends with the better garden. British society was repressive but can tolerate a man like Lawrence. Japanese society couldn't.
The thing about Lawrence was he lived in a time when even a misfit had to fit in. There was no other way. The Beatles, the Stones, the British Invasion, and Punk movement were in the future. Thus, the 'misfit' qualities of Lawrence had no choice but to serve constructive ends. Not only did he have to suppress his homosexuality but he had to channel his wilder energies toward serving the system. In contrast, the future vision of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features Alex, a young man of superior wit and intelligence, who has all the freedom to indulge his misfit fantasies. What was special about the Beatles(at least up to 1967) was they embodied both form and freedom. Then came punk that turned UK into an ugly place.
We pretty much know where David Lean stands on the empire vs. nationalism question.
Based on that scene, the movie could be construed as pro-empire. But the movie grows darker and shows the heavy burdens and messy betrayals of empire, leaving Lawrence disillusioned with just about everything. Also, considering that Lean was thinking of a Gandhi project, he surely had a critical streak about empire.
In the first half of the movie, Lawrence makes himself a legend in service of Arab nationalism. In the second half, he meets a rival myth-maker, Jackson Bentley, a fictional American journalist based on Lowell Thomas and played by Arthur Kennedy. Bentley’s goal is to use the Arab anti-colonial revolt and the romantic figure of Lawrence to build American sympathy for the war... Bentley tells Faisal, “I just want to tell your story.” The bastards still say the same thing today.
Some things never change. The Middle East has been in turmoil since the War on Terror following 9/11, or we can trace it further back to the Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. (And before that was the bloody decade long war between Iraq and Iran, which was instigated by the West that egged Hussein on, only to turn on him later.) Syria is in utter chaos, and Libya has been utterly smashed. A century after Lawrence, it seems the Middle East hardly made any real progress in genuine national autonomy; but then, Western nations are also collapsing from idolatrous degeneracy and ideological lunacy under Jewish Supremacist hegemony. Saudis and their closest allies are total cuck-puppets of the US, which is ruled by Zionists who pulled strings to wreak havoc across the region.
At least back then, there was a remarkable figure like T. E. Lawrence to shake things up a bit. Today, just about every Western operative is a colorless craven-cuck agent of the Empire of Zion. Of course, Jews hated Lawrence for his aid to Arabs. The Middle East movie for the Jews was EXODUS by Otto Preminger.
As for the media coverage of Middle East affairs, it is nothing but Jewish-Zionist propaganda, hardly surprising when all the media are owned by Zionists who hire fellow Jews and cuck-goy-maggots. And among the cucks, the Anglos are some of the worst. In a way, Jews understand Anglos far better than the other way around, not least because 'antisemitism' has been banned, making it difficult to think critically about Jews. Jews know all about the hierarchical character of Anglos. Whereas each Jew is strong in personality, each Anglo is relatively weaker in personality and his self-worth relies to a great deal on peer perception and approval. Being apologetic is part of Anglo consciousness, whereas for pushy Jews, "shove means never having to say you're sorry." When Allenby treated Lawrence like a capital fellow, the rest instantly fell in line and toasted him as a jolly good fellow. Today, if Jews say globo-homo is cool, Anglos with weak personality fall in line first and wave the globo-homo flag. Or, consider how so many Anglo-American types were the first ones to put up BLM signs on their front lawns.
Bentley eagerly snaps pictures, which the Arabs correctly believe will steal their virtue. Bentley is stealing—and selling, and exploiting—Lawrence’s virtue, his power.
But without people like Bentley(and David Lean), there is no legend. Arabs can cheer Lawrence all they want in the moment. They have no cameras, radios, or printing presses, nothing for posterity. It's like there's no Billy the Kid legend without the newsmen and novelists who told and/or spun his tale. Also, Lawrence craves the publicity. As a warrior, he has Arabs as his audience, but with men like Bentley tagging along, he has the whole world as his audience. He is both a deeply anguished soul who wants solitude and a flamboyant narcissist who wants to be adored by the world.
Part of his insecurity derives from the fact that glory is hard-fought and increasingly harder to come by, especially as the stakes are raised. Not everything he does is successful, and the enemy is learning his tricks, making it ever more difficult to pull off the same stunts. The more his megalomania grows, the more insecure and desperate he becomes to live up to the myth as the near-infallible warrior. It's like Paul Newman's character in COOL HAND LUKE. He's introduced as a loner, but his first taste of stardom whets his appetite for more, even if his fans are a bunch of losers in a prison. He becomes addicted to his cult and keeps raising the stakes. He becomes their hero and saint, then martyr and savior as the cult turns into a death wish in search of a legend. Luke's demeanor at the outset suggest not a care in the world, but he's a social animal after all and can't resist the fawning attention of the prisoners, even if it means he has to wolf down 50 eggs or break out numerous times at risk to life and limb.
Bentley is less a 'thief' than a partner in the creation of the Lawrence myth, just like John Reed did much to spread the gospel of Lenin to American audiences with TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD and Edgar Snow did likewise for Mao with RED STAR OVER CHINA. Bentley is a necessary figure because, being American, he is neither Arab or British. Also, being American, he is more more candid and forthright than the relatively uptight British. Individuality and irreverence were more a feature of the American character, perhaps best represented by Mark Twain, though Americanism too isn't without its own myths and delusions as the history of US was undoubtedly about elites, hierarchies, and classes. Still, compared to most characters in the movie, Bentley is the skeptic who can see through Lawrence and has no illusions about his own profession. He brings the movie down to earth, just like the American character(William Holden) in THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is the one with the least BS, precisely because he's so natural at BS, but as a tool than a conviction. Both the British and the Japanese have their hang-ups, but William Holden's character is just natural. He's most honest because he's most shamelessly dishonest without delusions of honor and duty, rather like the American character in KING RAT.
At any rate, Bentley doesn't seem to be a publicist for the Deep State but something of an adventurer himself. And his disgust at the butchering of fleeing Turks by Lawrence and his men suggests he's not without conscience. Also, his joking remark about Lawrence at the funeral indicates he understood Lawrence. He's the movie's obligatory cynic who helps create the legend but also sees right through it, not least because he understands the mechanics of myth-making. When overheard at the funeral, he is met with stern rebuke by a man who says Lawrence was a very great man. When asked, the man says he didn't know Lawrence personally but had the honor to shake his hand. He seems a decent sort but also represents the hoi polloi into earnest hero-worship, pat narratives, and reassuring tributes(like what we hear every Memorial Day about American Soldiers having died for our freedom). The irony is that this man probably got his impression of Lawrence from men like Bentley who spread the legend far and wide. It's like people who make the movies see the image differently from people who see the movies. The audience lose themselves in the myths while the makers have no such illusions as they know the tricks of the trade. For every Quixote, there is a Panza. Dreamer and deflator.
The juxtaposition of the three-dimensional Lawrence and his two-dimensional shadow and silhouette, along with the journalist’s camera, is a subtle commentary on myth-making. Lawrence is becoming one of the shadows projected on the walls of the cave of public opinion.
It has dual meaning. The shadow is like Arabic calligraphy. It seems Lawrence is 'writing' his own destiny. And yet, there is no shadow cast without the Sun. It's as if to suggest that despite Lawrence's conceits, it is the ultimate power that is really writing his fate.
The dark shadow also portends what is to come later. The light goes out in Lawrence's heart and he wants to go home, without fanfare. (But then, his speed on motorbike in Merry Old England suggests Lawrence never lost his appetite for daring and adventure.)
Then he pinches his white flesh and says, “This is the stuff that decides what he wants.” Is he referring to his race, which made it impossible for him to pass as an Arab? Is he referring to his sexuality?
The whole affair is rather odd. His whiteness is prized by the Turks. The homo-Turk wants him precisely because he looks so fair and fine. If Arab boy have exotic appeal to Lawrence, the swarthy Turks are taken by his light skin and blond hair. So, Lawrence isn't a victim of racial prejudice but racial admiration, much like the blacks in GET OUT who are the objects of fetishization by White Libby-Dibs. But the Turk's flattering homo-lust is met with scornful disgust by Lawrence, who strikes him. Thereby, he is harshly punished. This time, the pain is beyond his control. This isn't a match he can blow out at any moment. He must take the lashes(or rods) until they stop, and they break him. Earlier, he spoke of mind over matter, i.e. the trick is not to mind the pain. But the pain from the beating is too much for him to bear. He thought himself the master but is reduced to a 'bitch', like the American guy in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS.
Ironically, it turned out badly for him not because the Turks saw him as less than an Arab but more. More attractive and more desirable. So, when Lawrence laments that he can't be an Arab, it sounds like both curse and blessing. Just like it's unseemly for an inferior to pose as a superior, it's no less so for a superior to pose as inferior. Lawrence is a contradiction because he's a man of superior qualities who prefers to hang with inferiors. Back then(and perhaps even now), both Europeans and Turks regarded Arabs as inferiors, racially or culturally. But, it's also a matter of class. Increasingly, Lawrence recruits lowly cutthroat Arabs who are far beneath Ali's station. Lawrence has qualities to move up the ranks(and is promoted for his exploits), but he feels most natural among the rag-tag warriors and ruffians. Some people seek power by serving the superior. Though subordinate, they get to work within power's proximity. Others seek power by seeking out inferiors to lord over. Though among the lowly, they stand high and mighty above them. Of course, Lawrence does both in the story, serving the British Empire as a loyal subject and lording over the Arabs like Tarzan over the apes.
At any rate, the scene with the homo-Turk is humiliating for both Lawrence and Ali. It's like the hazing in DAZED AND CONFUSED. It's both bad luck and an honor to be targeted for hazing. The boy gets has ass bashed but has moved up the ranks with the upper-classman. In one respect, it's beating and/or humiliation, but it's also a recognition of your worth in a ritual of initiation, like in a fraternity. When the Turks took Lawrence but cast Ali aside, it must have hurt Ali's pride too. It was if the Turks were saying, "We want this golden boy here, not you sand ni**er, so get lost." A further irony is that Ali, though probably not a homo, has special feelings for Lawrence partly for his European qualities as well. They become like brothers of the spirit.
What is puzzling is why the Turks threw Lawrence out after having their way with him? Did they really think he's one of those rare white-looking Arabs? Surely, if they suspected him as a British officer, they would have held him as a bargaining chip with the British. Also, they surely heard of the legendary Lawrence who is leading the Arabs against the Turks. Did the homo-Turk and his men not suspect that they had the Lawrence in the flesh? If so, what a bunch of dummies.
Anyway, what is it like for a homo to be humiliated by homos? If a straight guy is buggered by a homo, the shame is understandable, like in DELIVERANCE. But might not a homo enjoy being buggered by another homo? Was Lawrence especially ashamed because a part of him enjoyed the 'humiliation', just like he was troubled by the fact that he actually enjoyed killing Gasim?
Lawrence’s goal is to beat Allenby to Damascus and install an Arab National Council. He almost loses the race when he comes across an Arab village sickeningly massacred by the retreating Turks. The cutthroats urge “no prisoners.” Ali reminds Lawrence of Damascus. When one of Lawrence’s men charges the Turks and is gunned down, Lawrence unleashes a massacre.
It seems Lawrence's main motivation for attacking the Arabs was personal vendetta for what had been done to HIM than what was done to some Arab village(as such atrocities were common on all sides). After the ordeal with the homo-Turk, the sight of any Turks fills him with burning fury. For those around him, it's a matter of tribal vengeance, i.e "Kill the Turk who killed Arabs", but unbeknownst to them, it's almost purely personal with Lawrence: "Smash the Turks who buggered my butt."
Also, the scene complicates the issue of the 'written'. By going off script and deviating from the direct advance on Damascus, Lawrence is once again writing his own destiny. And yet, he seems overwhelmed by a force beyond his control. His mind says, "No, listen to Ali, head for Damascus", but some dark force drags him towards the orgy of vengeance. Thus, he is both the writer and the written of that moment. He simply couldn't control the urges and got swept away with his passion and the mob, just like Annakin Skywalker couldn't suppress the temptations of the Dark Side in REVENGE OF THE SITH. And Lawrence's own words come back to bite him. True, the Arabs once again acted barbaric and cruel, but Lawrence not only took part but led and utterly exulted in the bloodbath, perhaps more than the Arabs.
Like the remake of THE MAN WHO SHOT TOO MUCH, Lean's movie suggests that beneath the surface distinctions between cultures, similar mechanisms operate at deeper levels. In Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Westerners don't go around veiled like Arab women, but there are various rules of what you can and can't say in the West. And despite the distinctions between the civilized West and backward Arabs, when push comes to shove in the battlefield, white men also turn animal and beast.
Allenby’s response is shrewd. He orders the British army to quarters, including the medical and technical staff. He’s going to let the Arabs muck things up, out of tribal pettiness and general backwardness. Eventually, they will get tired of playing at government and leave. Which is pretty much what happens.
Arabs are better at pillaging and plundering things than in running a city. British can actually run things, but all said and done, theirs too is a pillage-and-plunder operation; they're not there for the sand but the oil. They want it all.
The movie ends with Lawrence, now a full colonel, being sent home so the politicians can take over. Along the road, he passes a troop of Bedouins leaving Damascus and more British coming in. It looks anticlimactic, but that’s history.
This is the most haunting part of the movie and comes closest to the claim of art. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is odd for an epic in forsaking a triumphant or tragic ending with heroic/romantic overtones. People prefer catharsis. By standards of epic conventions, the coda is not only anticlimactic but bleak and melancholic. One could say it's true to history, but when has an epic been faithful to facts? LAWRENCE OF ARABIA itself plays fast and loose with historical events. So, why such an unconventional ending? The ending of THE BRIDGE OVER RIVER KWAI is both triumphant and tragic(with a dash of the absurd). Mission accomplished, the men get killed, and it all seems so 'mad'. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is similar. Zhivago's death is so very tragic but oh-so-beautiful, and there's hope that his daughter will be united with him in spirit in New Russia. In contrast, the final part of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is like a shadow play. Triumph soon turns into chaos and recriminations. He did it for the Arabs, but the Arabs fail him, or did he fail them? They are nomads, not city dwellers and bureaucrats, but then Lawrence himself would rather be a wanderer than an office man. But even a wanderer comes to the end of his journey, and Lawrence has come to his. Everything is denied him. He isn't quite the victor because he can't hold the prize together. He is even denied madness though he comes close in the filthy P.O.W. hospital piled with dead and sick Turks. An outraged British officer mistakes him for a 'wog' and strikes him, leaving him to laugh madly at the absurdity of it all. But ultimately, he doesn't go mad enough either. Madness would at least be a refuge, a haven from the troubles of the world. Rather, he's caught in the twilight region between sanity and madness, victory and defeat, pride and humiliation, humor and sadness. He made it to the end and crossed the finish line, and alas, Arabs will be Arabs, the big powers will have their ways, and 'old men' will decide based on interests than inspiration.
In many ways, Lean made a very classic and traditional film when cinema was moving in fresh and new directions, but its youthful hero who goes 'native' surely resonated with what became the Counterculture where young whites wanted to touch Indians or join with blacks in the Revolution. And US would become embroiled in a messy imperialist game in Vietnam. Some would have noted that Lawrence was the 'rock star' of his era with his diva personality. It is one of the greatest films on the subject of White Man and the Natives, though the most enjoyable of its kind is probably THE PLANET OF THE APES.
Lawrence is relevant today because of his sense of exile. While among the British he longs for exotic adventure, but exhausted among the 'natives', he hankers for home, like Odysseus. He is restless but also longs for rest. There are glimmers of him in Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE who doesn't want his life to be 'plastics'. The constant sense of being ill-at-ease. Lawrence is never quite home, even at home.
But what was once a relatively rare condition among men of some privilege who could read and travel has become nearly universalized. There once was a time when Brits were Brits and Arabs were Arabs. Today, multi-culti UK is a place where not only nonwhites immigrants are exiles but so are the native whites as their nation is no longer their homeland. And identities are confused as non-whites become new British, new French, new Europeans while whites either lose their identity or fixate on the Other as 'savior' or 'redeemer'.
Also, if Lawrence wrestled with sexual ambiguity in a rigidly straight world, sexual multiplicity and then some are the official dogma of institutions and industries all across the West. If Lawrence's mission that required courage and vision channeled his confusions toward constructive ends, today's miasma of social degeneracy and cultural decadence borne of competing identities, be they racial or sexual or whatever, is allowed to fester and pollute the air all around us.
Just like Arabs could be united only in some grand adventure, it seems white people can't seem to get their act together in the absence of such either. When the Brits had empire, the various factions and groups(even the Irish) could put aside their differences and serve to expand and rule the empire, sharing the glory and plunder. And whites were most united in their conquest of the Wild West. But without such outward directive energies, whites feel lost and bored with themselves, easily falling prey to Jews who feed them with 'meaning of life' centered around 'white guilt', BLM, globo-homo, or 'Muh Israel'. Just like Lawrence somehow managed to inspire the Arabs to unite to fight the Turks, Neocon Jews in the US somehow managed to unite all whites at least around ONE issue: We Love Israel. Whether Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Nancy Pelosi, or Gavin Newsom, the ONE THING they can all rally around without any doubt is WE WORSHIP JEWS AND SERVE ISRAEL. Petty and stupidly divided over so many trifles, nearly all whites across the political spectrum are united in total reverence to Jews. In that sense, some things never change.
Though LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is great throughout, the scene where the departing Lawrence catches a glance of Arabs on camel rises to another level. It is where the movie goes from epic to poetic. Back in his uniform and homeward bound, the Arabs seem so different, alien, impenetrable. A people of another world. And yet, it wasn't long before he'd been one of them, eating with them, riding with them. Unlike white people in THE SEARCHERS and other Westerns, he wasn't kidnapped by Arabs and raised as one of them, but he had been among them and got to know them from the inside. They were his friends, almost like brothers. And yet, in that poignant moment, they seem so far away. And yet, something stirs within him. The past he resolved to put behind beckons him, and a part of him wishes to return. He feels as if haunted by a ghost. For homo-Lawrence, Arabia will remain his 'Lara' even as he bids farewell. There's relief of an ended journey but also grief and sorrow. In a way, Lawrence's psychological home will always be the adventure with the Arabs, but he can't go 'home' again because, no matter whatever else he does in life, he will never reclaim the virginal excitement and romantic consummation with the desert. Time turns everyone into an exile from his most cherished memories.
That last scene may have been copped by George Lucas for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK when the wounded Luke in the Millennium Falcon senses the presence of Darth, his father, passing by in the Imperial Ship. They are so far apart yet so close. Likewise, even though Lawrence has burned the bridges with the Arabs, there will always be a mystical link.
One film of interest that very likely owes something to both BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is Nagisa Oshima's MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE. Like KWAI, it is set in a Japanese prison camp in Southeast Asia and is about the test of wills between egos and between cultures. Like LAWRENCE, it delves in the psychology of myth with homoerotic overtones. Lawrence and Jack Celliers(David Bowie) are both men of superior intelligence and ability but haunted by something dark within their psyches. Oshima's film isn't an epic, but the smaller scale makes for sharper portraiture and heightened drama.
