Ready for the free market.
For the product of a creator as humorless as Ayn Rand, that "Atlas Shrugged—Part I" movie has certainly provided us with plenty of chuckles this year. First there is the film itself, which was greeted with reviews only slightly warmer than the ones for "Jack and Jill" ("Not all books should be made into movies, and this is one of them," Boston Phoenix; "The tinhorn film version of 'Atlas Shrugged: Part 1' fails to rise even to the level of 'eh' suggested by Ayn Rand's title," Chicago Tribune). Then came its theatrical release on April 15 (GET IT?), when -- in spite of the tireless efforts of such renowned cinematic publicists as FreedomWorks and John Stossel -- it tanked, failing to earn back even a quarter of its $20 million budget. The perils of the free market, am I right?
But like many a previous would-be cinematic impresario, the producers of "Atlas Shrugged—Part I" could always put their trust in the home video market, where perhaps the film could finally find an audience, folks looking for a bit of light, pro-business entertainment to toss in the DVD player after "Hannity." Why, popular and financial success on home video might even create sufficient demand for the planned sequels. (It worked for Austin Powers!) From here on out, it's cake -- press the DVDs, work up the packaging, easy peasy.
Except, ha ha, whoops.
"Atlas Shrugged—Part I"'s DVD and Blu-ray release was handled by the folks at 20th Century Fox, whom you'd think would know a thing or two about Randian philosophy. But here's what they worked up for the back jacket copy:
"Ayn Rand's timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life. . ."
I also write for a DVD review site, so I've spent a lot of time reading DVD jackets, and I can assure you that "timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice" is the kind of phrase you come across constantly; it's the sort of vaguely positive description that film marketing spin is made of. The trouble, of course, is that Rand's "timeless" novel is about, um, the exact opposite of self-sacrifice.
As anyone who's suffered through its 1,200 or so pages can tell you, Rand's literary landscape is (to borrow a phrase from Michael Phillips' Tribune review) "me-time, all the time." Describing it as a tale of "self-sacrifice" is something akin to describing Sicko as a clarion call about the dangers of the social safety net.
The film's producer, Harmon Kaslow, has sprung into action, releasing this statement: "As we all well know, the ideas brought to life in 'Atlas Shrugged' are entirely antithetical to the idea of 'self-sacrifice' as a virtue. 'Atlas' is quite literally a story about the dangers of self-sacrifice. The error was an unfortunate one and fans of Ayn Rand and 'Atlas' have every right to be upset... and we have every intention of making it right."
They're "making it right," in this case, by replacing the jacket sleeves with a revised version, this time summarizing Rand's work as a "timeless novel of rational self-interest." And in the spirit of rational self-interest, Kaslow also noted, "To those that purchased the flawed cover, congratulations are in order. You've inadvertently got yourself a real collector's item there." The free market lives on!
(H/t Badass Digest/The Stranger)
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Actually that should read "A dated novel of supreme self-centeredness and grandiose selfishness."
I don't think that any DVD blurb has ever really gotten it right. I mean, the blurb on the back of THX 1138 contains the phrase "a man whose mind and body are controlled by the government." Except, there's nothing resembling a government in the film's world. It's an anti-corporate movie, not anti-government. And you'd never know that MASH is an anti-war movie if you only read the back of the DVD box. Or that Downfall isn't really a musical comedy set on a banana plantation. (OK, I made the last one up.)
They probably pick the one person in the office who knows the least about any given movie to write the blurb for the DVD.
Maria: I read Ayn Rand when I was - oh - about 15 and very into supreme self-centeredness. By the time I entered college, I realized how hollow and juvenile that was and wondered why those books weren't in the YA section of the library.
Carolinalady
I forget who said it but there seems two books teenagers read that seem to help determine what kind of person they will be. One is Atlas Shrugged the other is The Lord of the Rings. I guess because one is about supreme self- centeredness and the other about people joining together to defeat a supreme evil (I could say Sauron is a symbol of supreme self-centeredness).
I too read Atlas Shrugged in an art school English class (odd selection for an art school English class I know) but hated it. I love The Lord of the Rings and periodically re-read it. I am glad you saw the light in college and became the fine woman you are today. :-)
I also periodically re-read Lord of the Rings ;D
So I guess the question becomes "could the Fellowship take down the protaganist in Atlas...?"
I was a Tolkien fan, though I also loved Tom Robbins, Harlan Ellison, Douglas Adams, and Roger Zelazny.
One on one, Dagney could take out Frodo, no question here, but I do think Bilbo could take her down. Bringing in the fellowship changes things though, so to be fair, she's have to have her own people with her. So really, it's the fellowship against Dagney's team, with Rearden metal armor. While the fellowship has magic, Dagney does have a secret pirate who'll show up near the end of the fight. This one could be close.
Still, no matter who wins, Zaphod would show up after it's over, cheat and take the day.
I read too much, but Don's question sort of made the connection between my childhood and my imagination.
To season with some Zelazny and Creatures of Light and Darkness if the Fellowship wasn't enough to finish the job, Typhon would administer the coup de grasse by enveloping the whole planet, sinking it into the Skagganauk Abyss of his own being - thereby consigning himself to permanent exile from this universe.
Who here knows what I'm talking about? I'm just curious.
Step 1. Collect underpants.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. PROFIT
We won't stop 'til we get underpants!
I'll take your word for it. I have better things to self-indulge in!
The best spoof I've of this I've ever seen was a side plot on the Simpsons (I think it's the Streetcar Named Desire episode), when Maggie is taken to the Ayn Rand preschool (where the blocks say A = A) and the little kids stage a great escape.
I remember that. Naturally, when I first saw it -- I was seven or eight -- I didn't get the reference (hell, I didn't even understand which play Marge was participating in).
The film "Margin Call" has been out 4 weeks and was shown on 198 screens, "Paranormal Activity 3", also in it's 4th week was on 2776 screens. Is there some film distributor agenda to control the messages we see? Something to ponder.
Luckily Margin Call is on pay-per-view if you have Time Warner Cable.
Yes, it's called free-market and the movie distributors pay big bucks to study it. The producers of this flick should follow Micheal Moore's lead and sue the distributor.
No movie can come close to adequately illustrating the crimes against language, let alone the thesis, this book contains. It reads as if it were written by a twelve year old.
Yep. It's a conspiracy. All of these film distributors plotting together, to not show terrible films based on hollow philosophies that no one, no one in their right mind would care to waste their money on. Instead, they show movies that people want to pay to see.
The free market will beat Ayn Rand every time.
Atlas Shrugged is THE model of how to collapse an economy. The economy of all counties have improved after you do the exact opposite of the economic policies cited in books written by Ayn Rand.
Each of Rand's claims about how an economy might work can be demonstrated to be wrong, which is not surprising considering that she was the most influential Russian immigrant living in the US since Orly Taitz. The Soviet Union made the mistake of considering the Ruble to be a commodity like gold, which caused the Soviet Union to bankrupt, and that is THE concept championed in all of Rand's books.
To begin with, the form of money Rand imagines is gold coinage established by a group of people with no form of organized government to enforce the use or value of money. This invites abuses, like if someone were to try to charge a month's income to replace the windshield wipers on your car. Anarchy and money are mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other but not both at the same time.
Money is actually a means of exchange required by government to standardize the value of labor, goods, services, and raw materials. In theory, direct barter without using money during the exchanging of goods and services is against the law in all countries. Government can step in with law enforcement officers and the court system when people do things that are abusive or illegal. Money is not a commodity. Money is required to trade commodities. The money supply actually expands when trade expands, so direct barter reduces the value of money (gross domestic product).
The other thing that is profoundly ignorant is when Rand insists that the wealthy should provide no support for the poor. To begin with, poor people that are not mentally ill will commit crimes to obtain food and shelter if they cannot satisfy those needs any other way. Electric utilities in the US estimate $5 billion is spent annually for lighting to grow cannabis that sells for $3,000/pound. Not hard to figure out what is going on now that UI has been cut off for the 99rs. It is hard to understand how it could be possible that Rand does not know how that works.
The prison population is largely poor and uneducated, which are the people that tend to comprise the people involved in most revolutions. France and Libya are two of the most notable autocracies where the government failed to appreciate how that works. Creating the perception that poverty is increasing corrupts the authority of government.
Lack of equitable income is why the US incarcerates more non-violent prisoners for drug related crimes than any other nation in the world. People with a bachelors degree are 20 times less likely to become involved with drug sales that result in a jail or prison sentence.
The payback time to recover money invested in education is about 10 years just because of extra tax revenue created by increased income. That is why education up to a bachelors degree is funded by most governments, and this is also why most countries require 2 to 12 months of compulsory government service after high school (Britain, Spain, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Korea, ...).
About 90% of the value of the capitalization that creates the backing that establishes the value of money in most countries is based on real estate. That is why the value of money collapses when a large number of people start selling real estate to buy gold, which sounds like a good idea to most Rand fans.
One of the most ignorant mistakes made by a government is to force illegal immigrants out of the country. These people have to live somewhere, they tend to stop paying the mortgage when they are deported. Failure to appreciate that fact collapsed the economy in 1993, in 1929, in 1987, and in 2007 when the housing market collapsed after the occupants of that housing were deported en mass (or left voluntarily). This is also very popular with Rand fans.
In fact, Ayn Rand was an illegal immigrant. She overstayed her tourist visa by several decades and never held a green car while working in the US. She received her education in Russian schools, so it is impossible for me to imagine how someone would think it is a good idea to use her fiction as a model for how to run our economy
If you could reduce this post to a coloring book, you could share it with the Tea Party/Republicans and Libertarians.
Crackhead, I love you man!
Didn't Ayn Rand collect social security?
Social security? Didn't research that, but my bet would be yes.
I'm not sure it was social security, but actually Medicare. Basically, she took financial assistance when she developed lung cancer, but she used another name to collect to hide it from her fans.
That's so CUTE!
Goofy, nonsensical and dangerous themes aside, no motion picture can begin to adequately portray the crimes against language in this book. It reads as if it were written by a twelve year old, what with pirates, international theft, and unintentionally hilarious, fifties style sex. I thought Sex Life of a Cop was overall a better book. At least it was honest.
The Randians, with their atom-sized brains, wouldn't have picked it up anyway.
Does anyone know if this woman ever had to work for a living...I mean work hard physically, or was she an intellectual, knowing what was good for everyone else. Did she have any responsibilities, parents to care for, children? I've never heard a person who "works" , you know, physical labor, spout such idiocy.
Two days after arriving in Hollywood, she took a job in the film industry. She married a successful actor a year or so later. She continued working in the film industry for a few years after this. She transitioned from this into a writing career. After that point, she took a few jobs, working in the industries represented in her books, such as a stint as a secretary (I believe) at an architect firm, while writing the Fountainhead. She never had kids.
There is some speculation that her time in Russia was pretty rough, but other than a suspected recant in one of her early novels, little is known about her time in Russia, except that she was politically active.
She went to college in Russia, studying Philosophy and (I think) history.
All in all, she did struggle for quite a few years trying to write screenplays and break into a more significant role in the film industry. So, in answer to your question, sorta. She did work, and worked hard, but not for a living. Her husband was a very successful actor, and not poor by any means. People who knew them mentioned that he was very indulgent to her eccentricities. She did do physical labor in her early life, but again, not for a living. She worked because she wanted to build a career.
Ayn Rand was born into a bourgeois (middle class) family of secular (non-observant) Jews. The established bio says that her father was a pharmacist who owned the building his pharmacy was. This however doesn't ring true since Jews could not own real estate in Imperial Russia. I know this from family history. Her life was fine until the Revolution. That's when her family lost everything as many families, of her class, did.
I have never found evidence she did any hard physical labor. However as Matt said it doesn't mean she didn't work hard. OTHO it seems she had that contempt for working classes that many (but not all) of the middle class of Imperial Russia did.
Of course. She announced she would ahead of time. She had paid huge money into it, not having an employer to contribute 1/2 in. No reason for her not to - her principles didn't include surrendering expropriated assets to the State.
Indeed -- and Medicare, too.
Hypocrisy is a major virtue among the Reichwingers.
Cheerlead for wars -- but never put your own butt in one (Cheney, GWB, Rush, etcetc), nor your kids' (Mitt, &c).
Castigate your political opponents as liars and cheaters -- while cheating on your own wives (all three of 'em -- Gingrich, and Rush, again).
Praise the "free market" and excoriate the poor and people of color as leeches and moochers -- but make your entire living from government, whether as your employer (all of em), by no-bid contracts and war profiteering (Cheney again, at Halliburton), or as recipients of taxpayer-funded handouts (Michelle Bachmann, recipient of hundreds of thousands of your $ in agro-subsidies).
That's the Gross Old Perverts party at their very best.
And Ayn Rand is the very hypo-est of crites.
Inappropriate Nazi reference.
The biggest problem with Ayn Rand is neither her writing, nor her ideas. It's the way her ideas are accepted, without question, without criticism, by her supporters. The primary responsibility of any philosopher isn't to write truth, but to start or carry on a conversation, to put ideas into the human discussion and provide a unique perspective. It's both confusing and irresponsible to turn philosophy into a simple categorization, where some books are tossed in the truth pile and others in the false pile.
Rand railed against communism and existentialism, among other things. While her ideas were extreme, so were the ideas she wrote against. While I wouldn't even try to defend most of her ideas, she does have her place in the discussion.
The real flaw is when people start considering her writing as the absolute she tried to teach. Along the way, her fans forgot that philosophy isn't religion. Instead they took their economics and science books off their shelves and replaced them with bibles, propped up with a copy of atlas shrugged. Doing so allows them to hold up quotes and snippets of Rand's writing, like verses from a bible, and use them like little weapons, without really understanding them.
The only good thing about Ann Rand is Neil Pert used it as inspiration to write Rush's breakout 2112 album.
My favorite thing on that website is the official mock Rearden metal bracelet, for sale for $159. That is just brilliance. They've actually stooped to celebrating one of the cornerstones of the book by selling a cheap aluminum knock off. Green money was the image of Ayn Rand's philosophy, but it seems that green wrists will be the image of her legacy.
I love the smell of irony in the morning.