I finally made it to Lord of the Rings. As a movie, it lacked real structure, but that’s because it’s merely a third of a movie. I can barely wait to see the entire nine-hour trilogy in one sitting. But as a parable, I can immediately see why the first installment has struck such a nerve. In some ways, all liberal societies are like the Shire. They’re instinctively peaceful, geographically lucky, a little complacent, and always vulnerable. Every now and again, real evil threatens and we’re all asked to fight. Tolkien’s response is very English and the virtues he ascribes to Hobbits, like their idiosyncrasies, are also classically English. It has a very Second World War feel to it – the plucky little Brits fighting the evil Nazis. But the present associations are strong too. Isn’t Dubya a classic Frodo? His dad, Bilbo – I mean, Herbert Walker – had his own little adventure with the dark forces, but poor Frodo is stuck with the legacy. He doesn’t change with the experience; his old and rather ordinary virtues just seem appropriate to the task. After the first installment, we have no idea when and how the real, final struggle with the global forces of evil will take place. But we know enough to believe that Frodo/Dubya will be able to cope. That’s why we’re still sticking with him, beyond the initial battle. Yes, we’re projecting a little; yes, he’s enjoying the benefit of some wish-fulfillment. But he’s also done well so far – for a Hobbit. And the darkest days may well still lie ahead.
OCCIDENTALISM: Here’s the best big-picture essay about September 11 to have emerged in the last month or so. It’s by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit and it’s in the New York Review of Books. The point I tried to make in my New York Times magazine piece, <a href = ‘This Is A Religious War,’ was that this war is not, properly speaking, between Christianity and Islam, as between a Fundamentalist, Illiberal Jihad and a Secular, Liberal Society. The temptation of fundamentalist politics extends to all religions, including Christianity, as we see in the United States. What Buruma and Margalit do is take this further, positing the phenomenon of “Occidentalism,” an anti-Western, anti-liberal mentality that includes bin Laden but also stretches back to Japanese nationalism, Nazism, Stalinism, and others. Hatred of the liberal, bourgeois West is not new. Hatred of Jews, emancipated women, homosexuals, city-dwellers, and other symbols of urban, Western life is an ancient trope in world history. Remember Babylon? Bin Laden does:
“In our world you don’t even have to move to the city to feel its constant presence, through advertising, television, pop music, and videos. The modern city, representing all that shimmers just out of our reach, all the glittering arrogance and harlotry of the West, has found its icon in the Manhattan skyline, reproduced in millions of posters, photographs, and images, plastered all over the world. You cannot escape it. You find it on dusty jukeboxes in Burma, in discothèques in Urumqi, in student dorms in Addis Ababa. It excites longing, envy, and sometimes blinding rage. The Taliban, like the Nazi provincials horrified by “nigger dancing,” like Pol Pot, like Mao, have tried to create a world of purity where visions of Babylon can no longer disturb them.”
Buruma and Margalit are particularly good on the misogyny of Occidentalism:
“To all those who see military discipline, self-sacrifice, austerity, and worship of the Leader as the highest social ideals, the power of female sexuality will be seen as a dire threat. From ancient times women are the givers and the guardians of life. Women’s freedom is incompatible with a death cult. Indeed, open displays of female sexuality are a provocation, not only to holy men, but to all repressed people whose only way to exaltation is death for a higher cause. Pictures of partly naked Western women advertising Hollywood movies, or soft drinks, or whatever, by suggesting sexual acts, are as ubiquitous in the world as those images of the Manhattan skyline. They are just as frustrating, confusing, and sometimes enraging. For again they promise a sinful, libidinous world of infinite pleasure beyond most people’s reach.”
This is an impassioned and brilliant essay, and significant because of where it appeared. Can the New York Review be breaking ranks with the anti-Western leftism that has infected it for so long? The last sentence in the piece is an obvious rebuke to Edward Said and his acolytes:
“But if one thing is clear in this murky war, it is that we should not counter Occidentalism with a nasty form of Orientalism. Once we fall for that temptation, the virus has infected us too.”
One of the great hopes of this period is that a revived and muscular liberalism may arise from the ashes.
FACTOID OF THE DAY: “Excluding fossil fuels the total exports of Arab countries are equal to those of Finland, a country of only 5m people.” – David Landes, Sunday Times. The rest of the piece (on the doleful effects of Arab misogeny) is pretty good too.
The Dish 