On Power and Ford v Ferrari

The previews are over, the lights go all the way down, and the big screen is illuminated with those larger-than-life figures. A movie theater is supposed to be an immersive experience; however, it is also a communal experience. Most of us have had the occasional encounter with the rude moviegoer: the talking, the snickering at inappropriate moments, the cell phone interruptions. That said, the normal audience response to a film can be just as intrusive, and though it may disrupt the immersive experience, I've found there is much to be learned from the rest of the theater.

Watching Ford v Ferrari was one such experience. Like many reviewers, the audience around me was loving the movie. Demographically speaking, the audience was about what you might expect: white, boomers, mostly male. But the woman two rows ahead - lets call her Peggy - is the one who caught my attention. She was there with a man, presumably her husband, but she was the one sharing audible reactions to key moments of the film. And she was the one I'm still thinking about as I wrestle with this movie, its potential Oscar win, and what it has to say about us and to us.

First, what works. Christian Bale and Matt Damon are very good. There is a moment when Bale's character, driver Ken Miles, comes off the track in a prototype and tells Damon's Carroll Shelby that the engine feels "like a bag of squirrels." Both the line and the delivery are hilarious and are indicative of the excellent performance Bale gives. The plot is tightly constructed, and I can attest to the claim that you don't have to care anything about cars to enjoy this movie.

Once you start to look under the hood (requisite car pun!), the movie raises more questions than it answers. Peggy wasn't asking those questions, however. Peggy was a fan. She was a supporter at a political rally, nodding her head, and even proclaiming "YES!" at key moments. She - and I suspect the rest of a certain viewing population - felt seen and heard by this movie. She might agree with this reviewer that Ford v Ferrari is a celebration of what makes America great.

Many summaries have already noted the key conflict here is not between the Ford and Ferrari motor companies as the title would suggest. They have rightly located the dramatic tension in the creative conflict between the Ford executives and the guys working in and on and around the cars themselves. A classic story of good guys vs bad guys, and the good guys don't always win. Though that is a better account of the movie, it is not, in my opinion, the most important takeaway. If you really want to know what this movie is about, forget the names on the good and bad sides and focus on that little 'v' in the middle.

This movie is about power. It is about what happens when a culture decides speed, dominance, and winning are the most important things. And it is about the collateral damage resulting from such decisions. Peggy was long ago sold on the notion that faster, stronger, and mightier is better. You might be seduced by the fast cars of this film and think the movie is making the same argument. And maybe that is exactly what the filmmaker(s) intended. But the beautiful - and terrifying - thing about art is that once you release your creation into the world, your intentions are no longer the most important thing. And while Peggy might cheer when the Ford car crosses the finish line first, there are others who see the movie as a condemnation of all the things Ford stood for.

There are two pieces of evidence to support this second claim, and they both come near the end of the movie. The first has two parts: when Lee Iacocca visits the Ferrari factory, and we get a glimpse into the hand-built craftsmanship that Ferrari insisted upon; and when Carroll Shelby and Enzo Ferrari lock eyes at the race course. It is impossible not to note the respect Shelby grants for the higher standards held by Ferrari. It is impossible not to long for a return to such a commitment.

The second piece of evidence involves a spoiler, so stop reading if you don't know the story and don't want to know what happened. I'm willing to reveal it since it is a true story, known by many even before the film was released. After their success at LeMans, the Ford team continued working to create an ever faster, stronger car to keep winning, and in that effort, Ken Miles was killed in a devastating crash on the test track. After his death, Shelby's grief and regret seem to make an unexpected point: the winning isn't worth the loss. The end of the movie left me wondering.

What if this motorhead movie isn't for motorheads at all? What if this movie is meant to show us that might isn't right and that those who cheer for the fast car might need to slow down and reflect a bit? Unfortunately, there's little evidence anyone else is seeing it this way. A feel-good, classic Hollywood movie? Yes. Even a terrible movie celebrating the indiscriminate consumption of fossil fuels? Yes. But a movie that seems to be celebrating the thing it is actually holding up to condemnation? Not much.

This weekend, if the Best Picture Oscar should go to Ford v Ferrari, there will be many who think it is the right choice, and perhaps it could be. I will see it as a further caution, a warning of where we are and where we are likely heading.

The argument could be made that the things this movie seems to be celebrating have been our undoing: white male domination, a culture of power, speed, and convenience that disregards the human and environmental impacts, a focus on winning at all costs, reckless individualism, and a fear of foreign culture. Peggy watches this parade, and because it feels safe and stable and familiar, she proclaims, "Yes!" Others watch that car explode on the track and wonder just how different our world today could have been if we hadn't let the Ford Motor Company drive.

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The best books (and movies!) spark the best conversations! If you have thoughts to share, please feel free to email me at sarabethwest52@gmail.com. I promise a reply.

Every Wednesday, I send out something of a hodgepodge of ideas, a gathering of thoughts on books, culture, and unexpected moments of joy. Sign up here to stay in the loop!

Midweek Dinner #1

Sometimes, when you open the fridge an hour or so before dinner, you have to make some changes. The cheese you were planning to use has a bit of mold on it, but it could be shaved off; however, the zucchini you bought two days ago is already well past its eat-by date. When that happens, you just move on. You slice the onions, peel and chop the garlic, melt a gob of butter, and get started. When the kitchen starts smelling like that, you’re heading in the right direction.

It may not be exactly what we planned, but let's see what still looks edible.

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In Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, when Marmee says to Jo, “I am angry nearly every day of my life,” every woman in the theater draws a collective breath. Because it is true. We are angry, every day. Like Marmee, many of us have trained ourselves not to show it, and we don’t know how to respond when other women urge us to embrace our feelings. We are fearful of anger, the anger of others especially. We try to let ourselves be angry and then tremble at the lack of control it reveals. Of course, being angry about the injustices surrounding us is understandable, but is it right to give vent to that anger? What does ripping a speech in half add to the world except more anger? I’m confident the world has anger enough; what it is lacking is a way forward.

I may never know how to embrace the anger, but I still reread Megan Stielstra’s "An Axe for the Frozen Sea” about once a month.

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Alan Jacobs’ complicated and fascinating book The Year of our Lord 1943 took a lot of time and headspace this week. In the book, Jacobs knits together the views of several thinkers trying to cast a vision (a way forward) in the midst of World War II. Taking such voices as Simone Weil, T. S. Eliot, and C. S. Lewis, Jacobs explains how the crisis of global warfare caused these intellectual figures to focus on a right response to both the atrocities and the victories achieved during the war. It is the coincidence, the triangulation of similar ideas, that makes their resonant conclusions so interesting. My interest lies primarily in the overlaps between force, technology, and power. Jacobs paraphrases Weil’s concept of malheur, explaining it as “that created when force reduces a person to a thing. To know that you have been reduced to a status of a mere thing and cannot undo this violation of your being - this, perhaps, is the experience of malheur” (156). What is war if not a reduction of your opponents to things? I can’t help but think we are living in the world Weil and Lewis and the others were trying to avoid, a world where we put all our chips on force and let the wheel spin. The front page of today’s paper does little to dissuade me.

PS: Jacobs also has a great newsletter.

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I’ve been thinking about Brett Kavanaugh again this week. C. A. Fletcher’s excellent novel A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World knocked me right down with this insight: “I guess no one’s the monster in their own story. Monsters are just a matter of perspective” (114). Kavanaugh was spittle-raging at his confirmation hearings because someone called him a monster, and he knew he wasn’t one. The question that keeps nagging, however, is when men are going to realize they aren’t always the main character in the story. Maybe every story isn’t their story. Maybe we’d all be better off if we lived like a bit character and not the main character.

Good reminder: It’s always someone else’s story.

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In the last several weeks, the confluence of Little Women (the film) and Pride and Prejudice (the book) and Downton Abbey (the show) have repeatedly forced a reckoning with the concept of marriage as an economic proposition. It’s easy to place this notion in the category of “things that were once true and thankfully are no longer,” but is it really safely in the past, or does the trickle of its truth still leak in here and there? Lady Edith can reconcile herself to the fact that "Spinsters get up for breakfast" and end up finding gratifying work in writing because someone else is paying for, preparing, and serving that breakfast. The pressure to marry exists for Elizabeth and her sisters or Jo and her sisters because without a spouse (or a father) you have almost no chance of breakfast at all.

Related/Unrelated: if you are a fan of Pride & Prejudice and have never watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, please take a weekend and remedy that error. And watch for a review of Ibi Zoboi’s Pride next week. Both take this story that could be seen as entirely about marriage and romance and remind us of what’s really important: sisters.

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A newsletter should talk of the news, no? My latest fascination in the newspaper is the way reporters, especially the Associated Press (AP), are covering the current administration. They will report on a thing (for example, a claim in the President’s SOTU address) and then pivot immediately to a fact that counters that claim. No explanation. No language of correction. Just claim/counterclaim. Speaking truth to power. Or more accurately, perhaps, it's something more like this from Noam Chomsky:

First of all, you don’t have to speak truth to power, because they know it already. And secondly, you don’t speak truth to anybody, that’s too arrogant. What you do is join with people and try to find the truth, so you listen to them and tell them what you think and so on, and you try to encourage people to think for themselves.

The ones you are concerned with are the victims, not the powerful, so the slogan ought to be to engage with the powerless and help them and help yourself to find the truth. It’s not an easy slogan to formulate in five words, but I think it’s the right one.

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The act of “catching up” on old issues of The New Yorker may be the ultimate Sysiphean task. Knowing that doesn’t stop me from undertaking it. If I didn’t, I would miss the significant joy garnered from finally getting around to reading Peter Schjeldahl’s stunning reflection “The Art of Dying” from mid-December and this: “If you can’t put a mental frame around, and relish, the accidental aspect of a street or a person, or really of anything, you will respond to art only sluggishly.”

Also this gorgeous poem by Maxine Scates.

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Dinner. It isn't always what we expected, or even what we would have ordered. But we won't go to bed hungry tonight. I'll post most Wednesdays. I'll probably archive these once a month or so. You can sign up (here) to receive the periodic newsletter as an email if you'd prefer.