Garth

Dear Mick: What is it with these people who write to you, in effect, "I haven't seen the film, but how dare you trash it?" Have people's perceptions sunk so low that they are unaware that Hollywood has become better than ever in the brainless rubbish department? I see a great difference between the simply dumb, innocuous, generic movies of the past and the proudly, transcendently stupid products on the screen nowadays.

James Pendergast, Sonoma

Dear James: Stupidity used to be something to be embarrassed about. But we're going through a phase of stupid pride right now, and it pervades many aspects of our cultural life. People in power, with access to the media, have stumbled onto a great truth: Stupid people long to feel good about themselves. They want to be told that what they secretly suspect is true: that they're the ones who apprehend the big picture, while the supposedly intelligent folks are just nitpickers bogged down in meaningless detail. Since the stupid can't see the nuances, they prefer to believe those nuances just aren't there. That's why, for example, every stupid critic's favorite reference is "The Emperor's New Clothes." For the complacently stupid, that's the height of aspiration, to see and think like a child, a state they sentimentalize as clarity and virtue.

We see this in movies. We also see this in politics and religion. Appeals to reason are distrusted and discounted. Appeals to emotion and invitations not to think rule the day. Fifty years ago, the most famous television preacher was Bishop Fulton Sheen, a highly orthodox Catholic who, nonetheless, offered complicated Aristotelian proofs of God's existence and who insisted that thought, study and rationality were intrinsic parts of a religious life. Today, TV preachers say what politicians say: "Don't think, just listen to me, and you'll be saved. You'll be virtuous." The good news, sort of, is that eventually stupid pride produces situations so untenable that reality becomes undeniable. In the movie business, reality presents itself at the box office, and in a democracy, it's usually at the ballot box. But in Berlin, 1945, it didn't quite sink in until people were knee-deep in rubble. In any case, this delightful phase we're in will end, sooner or later, one way or the other.

"What characterizes a fanboy, as opposed to a mere consumer? Paramount sinks a lot of money into producing new episodes of Star Trek, so one assumes that it must have a mainstream audience far beyond the realms of obsessive hobbyists. Either that, or there must be an awful lot of fanboys in the world. Is there a difference between 'Thinking that Star Trek is an enjoyable television programme' and 'Being a Star Trek fanboy?' Can we come up with a definition of Doctor Who fanboy other than "One who has watched 'Creature from the Pit' more than once, and watched 'The Gunfighters' at all"?"

"It would not be fair to say that the fan-boy does not like the thing which he is a fan-boy of. It would be more accurate to say that liking and disliking is irrelevant to his activity. Fan-boyhood grows out of nostalgia and therefore fixes its gaze on something ephemeral, commonplace and of low artistic value. It then attempts to catalogue it, study it, collect it—or in extreme cases re-enact it, thus investing it with significance and mummifying the memory."

" ... (noun, pl.); fans who violently believe the only valid interpretation of any entertainment source is a dogmatic adherence to their favorite version of that source. Any change to the smallest detail is inherently unacceptable (see also heresy) and met with frantic scorn. See also Hal Jordan and Klingons, bumpy vs. smooth."

I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Old hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anaesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.

The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire, are 'safe', but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are 'dangerous'. Experience of life itself is dangerous. The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a declining nation with a morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism. Humanity was derided and marginalised. Sentimentality became the acceptable subsitute. So few people seem to be able to tell the difference.

• Most overrated historical aspects of the 20th century — The Cold War? Martin Luther King, Jr.? White makes a good case that they, and other things, people, and events, are overrated.
• Most underrated historical aspects of the 20th century — To balance it out, some people, events, and things that deserve to be better known.
• Which has killed more people: gun control or Christianity? — Doesn't really answer the title question, but is quite interesting.
• Comparing the USA to Rome — A lot of people (particularly on the left) like to compare modern America to Imperial Rome, usually implying that it's about to fall. But most who say this don't actually know that much about Rome. So, how do they compare? Starting with the provocative assertion that current events bear much closer resemblence to Rome circa the end of the 2nd Punic War, White draws up a comparative chart of the two nations, which extends into an amusingly written future history.