Me and You and Brad Land

A few points of business before I get to my review of Goat by Brad Land.

First, a confession: I can't write about my family.

The thing about families is that everyone has one. Or almost everyone, and not having a family is more interesting than having one. So when you write about your family you have to be able to look your reader straight in the eye and tell him - not just tell him, but explain to him why, also - tell him that it's somehow more important or interesting when you say I love my brother/father/mother/sister. You have to be able to explain that when you say the word "brother" you mean something different and better than what they mean.

Personally, I am not up to this challenge. My writings about my family stall under the weight of inaccuracies, misrememberings, and usually bromides. It's pointless.

Ok, end of confession. Now, an article:

I was directed to an article in The Guardian about the nature of American filmmaking. Here's the closing paragraph, for the lazy among you:

"But the fascinating thing about the history of Hollywood is the dream that you might have it both ways - have your cake and eat it, make a fortune and win the Nobel prize for film. And after more than 40 years' thinking and writing about the movies - and American movies, above all - I am still no clearer in my mind as to whether that double assault on culture and posterity is possible, hopeful and very American - or demented, dangerous and very American. It's plain, I think, that film promotes fantasy as a basic form of existence, that it can detach us from reality, and that it may have shifted the pursuit of happiness from a phrase on paper to a kind of imperialism where presidents cannot help but behave like characters from old movies."

David Thomson's argument is compelling and clever, but, I submit, incomplete. Steven Spielberg, cited by Thomson as an example of a haute couture filmmaker who is also a commercial success, is constantly in a battle to direct a movie about fatherhood. The principles in many of his biggest successes - Jaws, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Saving Private Ryan leap to mind - struggle with their relationships to their family members.

It's a leap to say so, but I suggest that Spielberg seeks to write about his own family, probably, if his motifs are a fair indication, about his father. And, anyway, it's a tangent: patriarchy is integral to the American psyche. The ill moods of the American gentry - cf. the films of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman, for instance - illustrate that both critical and commercial acclaim are not enough; one has also got to overcome the hurdles of poverty. The Statue of Liberty claims no interest in your solvent, your affluent, or your intellectually curious. It's the huddled masses we're after.

Article Author: Kirt Manwaring

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