December 24, 2012 at 1:05 P.M. Several attempts to revise and edit my work at "Philosopher's Quest" have been obstructed by hackers. The usual harassments and threats that are part of the "psychological torture" protocol for the holidays have inspired me to write further about New Jersey's continuing disintegration. Fraud and (potential) insolvency in the state's pension funds will be next. Happy holidays, New Jersey! ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
December 20, 2012 at 2:12 P.M. A notice has appeared on my draft, within my blog's dashboard, that states:
"MENTION PEOPLE IN YOUR POST WITH GOOGLE+
New! Now you can call out a Google+ profile or page from your blog to help them notice your post. Connect your blog to Google+ to get started. Learn more."
I do not believe that this message comes from Google or that there is a "Google+."
I can never know from one day to the next whether I will be able to return to these posts in order to continue my work. I am prevented from printing today from the public library's printer.
December 18, 2012 at 1:51 P.M. I am forced to retype this essay in its entirety because I am prevented from editing or revising the previously posted version of the work.
This review first appeared on November 9, 2011. I will retain a copy of that essay showing the date on which I first posted it.
I am told that efforts have been made to plagiarize this work. The harassments and obstructions of editing efforts are part of the cybercrime and censorship that I struggle against, every day.
I continue to receive phone calls from 214-283-1316. The caller is identified as "MARKETING" and/or "MARTIZ RESEARCH" at 636-203-7123. Both calls may originate from the same source, probably this is also true of calls from "Jazmin" at Time/Warner. ("Manhola Dargis Strikes Again!")
November 10, 2011 at 1:16 P.M. The computer (Number 5) at my local library branch was obstructed when I signed-in, so that it had to be restarted twice before I could make use of it. This was after a Latino gentleman left it just before my arrival. Funny, this man had a Miami accent.
Since anyone using this computer today must have signed-in using a public library card -- or daily guest pass -- this person (who shut off the computer) should be easy to identify.
A number of computers and printers at NYPL locations have been destroyed, mysteriously, by Miami persons just before I am scheduled to make use of them. ("How censorship works in America.")
Mr. Menendez, I am not the only person using New York Public Library computers and printers. Please give my regards to Mr. Bigica and Dr. Melgen. ("Illegal Payments to Bob Menendez" and "Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes.")
British drama is still the best quality television available to Americans.
With few exceptions most U.S. television shows do not come close to the UK standard of excellence. "Copper" was a rare miss on BBC America. I hope to review "The Hour," also on BBC America.
As someone who has been plagiarized by persons who have not done well (because they have not understood) my ideas -- beyond making money with my work! -- I think one problem in U.S. television programming may be aiming for the lowest common denominator. Those who have stolen from me, successfully, tend to be more ambitious if somewhat less adept. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review" then see "God is Texting Me!" and the CBS series "A Gifted Man.")
The "average" American television viewer (a person whom Iliana Ros Leghtinen would describe as "The Average Joe") has a 6th grade reading level, according to experts, as do many of the Congresswoman's most fervent supporters. ("Manhola Dargis"?)
I suppose that it makes sense to have shows written by mental twelve year-olds for an audience sharing a limited vocabulary -- persons like Stuart Rabner, perhaps. ("Whatever!" then "Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "What did you know, Mr. Rabner, and when did you know it?")
Why not help to educate the audience and elevate tastes by exposing young people to fine drama in a non-threatening way? Downton Abbey?
"That's elitism!" Diana Lisa Riccioli -- my favorite evil Jersey "chic" -- likes to say.
I do not believe a concern with excellence is sexism or inappropriate elitism. David? ("David Stove and the Intellectual Capacity of Women.")
Narrowness of focus allows the rest of the world to disappear in a cloud of ignorant stereotypes and disdainful dismissals. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
Recently, our British cousins have taught several lessons to upstart Americans -- like me.
"John Luther" on BBC America, for example, is a reinvention of the police serial that focuses on the complex psychology of the eponymous hero whose life unfolds as a struggle against evil.
I will leave for another day my comments about the exquisite David Hare drama, "Page 8." (See my review of the film from Mr. Hare's script, "The Reader.")
"Restless" on Sundance is another example of fine drama based on the novel by William Boyd whose Ordinary Thunderstorms is keeping me up at the moment. This two-part drama exported to "the colonies and dominions of the empire" features outstanding performances by Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling as well as Hayley Atwell. The film may still be available "On Demand."
Living under life-or-death pressure for sustained periods of time does strange things to the mind as does the certainty that there are resourceful, well-financed, government-protected persons determined to kill you in one way or another.
Such a realization that one is hated can be enervating and deeply flattering. It is nice to know that you care New Jersey. Mazeltov.
There is also something about the experience of an abyss of evil in persons who are usually fascinated by their opposite numbers -- flawed human beings, like Luther -- fascinated by good persons who could never be evil and whose struggle against malice amounts to being dipped in the acid of hatred. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
Absolute evil -- yes, there is such a thing -- baffles the understanding by undermining all the potentialities of human reason. When we come upon undiluted evil -- someone like Herman Goering -- rationality is simply stymied and helpless. "Motiveless malignity" makes no sense. ("Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Power.")
Luther is seemingly seduced by evil -- for which he displays an amazing intuition -- while never succumbing to corruption. This "dance macabre" with sin is Luther's flirtation with the darkest possibilities of his nature that are always defeated in the end by an indestructible moral center. Luther is also "Alice Morgan." ("'The Prisoner': A Review of the AMC Television Series" and "'Alice': A Review of the Sci-Fi Television Series.")
Knowing the sexual pleasure derived by very sick individuals in causing pain or anxiety, controlling or dominating a helpless victim -- whose agony is somehow validating for the criminal -- makes one feel the full weight of conscience.
Whatever happens in my life I doubt that I could ever be evil or a criminal. I must admit that I am often tempted to try to be evil when thinking of New Jersey persons.
Luckily, I have great self-control.
Realizing such a truth about oneself is liberating. It is a necessary burden even to struggle to be a moral person in an age of cruelty. It helps to be certain that the effort is worthwhile. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")
For others the opposite realization -- not only that evil deeds are committable but, worse, that there may be no such thing as "evil" -- may be equally liberating: "What is most liberating," Luther's "Alice Morgan" reminds us in a Nietzschean moment, "is to be unmitigatingly evil." Alice admits to difficulties with impulse control. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Friedrich Nietzsche On Self-Realization.")
Kenneth Tynan said that when he first saw the young Richard Burton in Hamlet, it was "immediately apparent that a great actor had stepped on to the English stage."
Idris Elba as "John Luther" is a young actor whose screen presence is magnetic and powerful. The last time I said something similar about a young actor, her name was (still is?) "Kate Winslet." I wonder what happened to her? Joelle Carter on "Justified" has this kind of incandescent talent. ("'Justified': A Review of the FX Television Series.")
Mr. Elba is a born movie star. He is also a genuine actor whose anti-heroic qualities in this role are balanced by an unusual sensibility and tenderness not associated in our culture with hyper-masculine roles. Russell Crowe exhibits some similar qualities. These qualities are perfect traits for a vulnerable and tough cop by the name of "John Luther."
Why has this character not been brought to the big screen?
For Luther material "success" in life is less important than saving his world -- non-tourist areas of London or the city's mean streets -- as a police officer (" ... a copper").
One issue raised by the drama has to do with the nature of "success."
What is a life well-lived? How do we measure a man's or woman's "success"? (I "hope and expect," as David Cameron says, to read Howard Jacobson's The Making of Henry.)
Luther is the kind of man who does not wish to face -- or (better) to be delayed or distracted by losses and pain, much less self-analysis -- from the important task of achieving himself or "becoming the person he is" through healing those hurt by evil. Luther needs to capture the bad guys in order to make the world a better place for the helpless masses from which he comes.
Luther wants everyone to be O.K., safe, well-fed and comfortable in a "reality" that makes some kind of rational sense.
This desire or hope is the dream of every wounded child.
The world -- after the events of the twentieth century -- is no longer safe, logical, or comprehensible if it ever was any of those things. ("'Irrational Man': A Movie Review.")
At the conclusion of this drama, after the loss of his wife and career, with his shaky return to the job, beyond personal devastation, lonely and injured, Luther is still fighting, caring, helping a young woman to escape prostitution and drugs.
Luther continues to struggle to make his grimy and dismal Noir world a little better for everyone else. His own feelings seem to be an after-thought or irrelevant which mystifies Alice Morgan.
"It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting." F.H. Bradley writes: "Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least."
Aphorisms, No. #22 (1930).
Mr. Elba's compassion for Luther -- combined with his avoidance, ultimately, of Luther's self-destructive tendencies -- reveals his character's personal life as a mess that Luther ignores by concentrating on saving the lives of others.
Idris Elba may be the only person who cares deeply about John Luther's happiness.
We see a multi-dimensional human being emerge in this drama, a "character" not easily reduced to a stereotype or cartoon. Realistic details and psychological truth explain audience members' concern for Luther's fate. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
Mr. Elba refuses to tell you what you should think of John Luther. This is Shakespeare's lesson to all of us. No one is a cartoon. No person is entirely good or the opposite.
Mr. Elba would make a fine Hamlet. The difficult task of judgment or interpretation belongs only to the audience member. That's you, the co-author of every text. ("Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")
Idris Elba is simply the perfect successor to Daniel Craig as "James Bond." ("'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review.")
Ruth Wilson is equally good as the sociopathic killer (I've known a few women like her in my life!) called "Alice," who takes us down the ultimate rabbit hole into the subconscious mind of a psychopathic killer.
Murder is one way to avoid terminal boredom; sex is another means to the same ends. The sexual tension between these two characters on-screen is palpable.
Any time Alice is with Luther there is an excitement that seems to transcend the scene. It is as if there were another presence added to the interaction between these characters that the camera "sees."
I hope to discover these two actors together again. An updated "Nick and Nora Charles" team in the criminal underworld of London, say, in the thirties black-and-white era would make a great miniseries on Masterpiece Mystery.
Mr. Elba may inject new life into the James Bond franchise after Skyfall and Spectre, as I have suggested, becoming the current generation's MI-6 hero in a sinister version of post-Blair Britain, embodying his society's archetype of heroic manhood until now inconceivable as anything other than an aristocratic white man while defending the British empire as an idea if no longer an empirical fact.
The acting challenge for Mr. Elba as 007 would be formidable and delicious.
I can't think of any young actor with greater charm and charisma (or a larger political role or significance as a "hero") to play James Bond than Mr. Elba whether he is "shaken" or "stirred."
To become the Sandhurst and Oxbridge-educated hero, who embodies British class privileges -- while retaining a capacity for ruthless violence -- would allow Mr. Elba to carry the message of a new and more complex notion of greatness for Britain to many more parts of the world as he comments on the significance of this archetype of the hero for today's audiences.
Among predecessors on-screen for Mr. Elba, I suggest Sean Connery and Michael Caine as well as Daniel Craig and, perhaps, Denzel Washington or Sidney Poitier.
Please think about a remake of the British Noir classic "Blue Ice."
Creator and writer of "Luther," Neil Cross ("John Lawton"?), is yet another annoyingly brilliant creative artist in Brit television and cinema.
If Mr. Cross writes mystery novels I have yet to find them. Mr. Cross claims to write under the name "Agatha Christie."
Wonderful supporting performances are offered by Warren Brown (Occupation, Shameless) as "Justin Ripley," a loyal detective who is Horatio to Luther's Hamlet. Justin is tortured by one of the most hateful villains I've seen in a long time. This is a tribute to the actor playing the part Mark North.
Detective "Martin Shenk" is played by Dermott Crowley, as a conventional boss cop who is a stickler for rules that Luther believes get in the way of catching the bad guys and gals allowing for the hero's usual conflicts with authority.
Newcomer Kierston Waering plays "Caroline Jones," who is more concerned with her career than with Luther's friendship, or capturing the culprits, usually with disastrous consequences for her.
With words that sum-up Luther's life and adventures, Raymond Chandler concludes his classic essay "The Simple Art of Murder":
"The story is this man's adventure in search of hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a safer place to live in ... without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
The Simple Art of Murder, (New York: Vintage, 1988), p. 18. ("Raymond Chandler and the Simple Art of Murder.")
