Gandhi

Film is indeed an art form, but the medium can also function as a teacher in how it conveys values and wisdom. Both of these features of film are salient in Gandhi (1982), whose director, Richard Attenborough, says in his audio commentary that the film has done much keep Gandhi’s philosophy alive in the world. In using the film’s star protagonist to explain what is behind his approach, viewers become, in effect, students. The strength of film here lies in its use of both audio and visual means to engrave the lessons in memories. In Gandhi, the main concept to be explained and illustrated is nonviolent active non-cooperation or defiance of unjust laws or regimes.

In a speech to his fellow Indians, Gandhi declares, “We must defy the British.” The crowd erupts. “Not with violence,” he explains, that will inflame their will, but with a firmness that will open their eyes.” He then advocates burning clothes manufactured in Britain. “If you are left with one piece of homespun, then wear it with dignity!” Active, nonviolent defiance strengthens self-esteem. The strategy also has a strength that counters the force of the unjust.

For example, guards at the Salt Works hit the Indians protesting the British monopoly on salt. As the unarmed Indians walk row by row into the guards, wood swiftly comes down on heads, shoulders, and backs. “Women carried the wounded and broken bodies from the road, an American reporter reads into a phone, “until they dropped from exhaustion. But still, it went on and on.” Then, crucially, he reaches the essential point. “Whatever moral ascendancy the West held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated.” In the voluntary taking on of suffering is a kind of invisible force that confronts the aggressors with their sense of being good rather than evil. In other words, the suffering is like a mirror making the dark side of the human psyche inexorably transparent. Not even a tyrant can put down such a squalid self-image. The image is also likely broadcasted to third parties and even the world at large, likely resulting in the very human sentiment of disapprobation, which Hume calls the moral sense. The culprits may find themselves cornered, psychologically and perhaps even politically and economically.

“I think our resistance must be active and provocative,” Gandhi tells the Congress Party leaders meeting in Jinah’s living room to strategize. “Where there’s injustice, I always believed in fighting,” Gandhi states at another point in the film. “The question is, do you fight to change things or to punish? For myself, I’ve found we’re all such sinners, we should leave punishment to God. And, if we really want to change things, there are better ways of doing things than derailing trains or slashing someone with a sword.” Nonviolent non-cooperation is geared to changing the unjust by forcing them to confront themselves.

“I wish to embarrass all those who wish to treat us as slaves. All of them,” Gandhi tells the Congress Party leaders at Jinah’s house. He then illustrates his point. Specifically, he asks the servant for the tray of tea and starts to serve “I want to change their minds, not kill them for weaknesses we all possess.” He then suggests a day of prayer and fasting, which of course would have the same impact as a general strike. The prayer and fasting are oriented to confronting a person’s own demons, while the societal discomfort draws attention to the demons plaguing the oppressors who are living comfortably while exploiting the Indians. Awareness is the first step on the road to change.

“What about very powerful tyrants like Hitler? Do you really believe you could use nonviolence against Hitler?” a photographer from Life magazine asks Gandhi in a later scene. “Not without defeats and great pain,” he replies. “But are there no defeats in [World War II]? No pain? What you cannot do is accept injustice from Hitler or from anyone. You must make the injustice visible; be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.” The strength in active nonviolent defiance is subtle, unlike that of a club or gun; the impact on the oppressor psyche is reflected in the excessive measures that it takes in reaction.

For example, Gandhi remarks at one point that “Marshal law [in Bengal] only shows how desperate the British are.” Surely some kind of force had provoked the desperation that the British rulers could not shake. The strength of Gandhi is essentially the innate ability of any human being to make force a confrontation within another person between a self-image, which can be so convenient to the self, and the demons that inhabit every person.

More broadly than in nonviolent civil disobedience, the demons plaguing another person’s soul can both be made more transparent and exculpated by means of restorative suffering. While Gandhi is on a hunger-strike to end Muslim-Hindu violence in the newly independent India, a violent Hindu man approaches Gandhi and tosses some bread on the old man’s chest.

“Here! Eat! I’m going to hell, but not with your death on my soul.” Unlike the typical oppressor, the man is already aware of his demons.

“Only God decides who goes to hell,” Gandhi retorts.

“I killed a child,” the man explains. “I smashed his head against a wall.”

“Why?”

“The Muslims killed my son! My boy.”

“I know a way out of hell,” Gandhi offers. “Find a child—a child whose mother and father have been killed . . . and raise him as your own. Only be sure he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”

The hardened murderer is stunned, and collapses at the foot of Gandhi’s slender bed. The great soul has given the angry sufferer a way to reintegrate his soul that is plagued with pain; in coming to see the Muslim side by raising a Muslim child, the man would come to see the other side in the societal strife and therein create space in his own soul for the otherness of the other in place of the seemingly intractable demons. For being a man of peace, Gandhi does an awful lot of fighting.

Just before Gandhi is assassinated by a fellow Hindu, he tells the photographer from Life that “(t)he only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts, that that’s where all our battles ought to be fought.” Civic clashes are essentially projections of those which take place in the human mind between contending urges, and ought to be viewed and attacked as such by opening eyes.

Citizen Kane: A Virtue Hearst Never Had

In Citizen Kane (1941), Charles Kane is not a replica of William Randolph Hearst. As a young, wealthy man running a newspaper, the character embodies a politico-economic ideal in both word and deed that Hearst only used as a campaign slogan. As per Kane's Statement of Principles, the young publisher is willing to diminish his own wealth held in stock in other companies in exposing the exploitive and corrupt money-bags in big corporations and trust who prey on the otherwise-unprotected working poor and presumably consumers too. For his part, Hearst merely published a daily oriented to the poor man.  As Kane's early ideal is a principle recognizable to, and even resonating with, virtually any audience, Welles' inclusion of the ideal in the film contributes to its endurance as a classic.

Hearst papers twice called for someone to put a bullet into William Mckinley.  When the U.S. president was fatally wounded on September 6, 1901, the American people turned on Hearst, even burning him in effigy. He ran for mayor of New York City, Governor of New York, and even for president, and lost all of those races. He did get elected to serve a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, but hardly ever showed up on Capitol Hill. His passions lied elsewhere than in listening to floor speeches, attending roll-call votes, and questioning witnesses at Congressional hearings. He found he had more power using his newspapers to shape public opinion.[1] I suspect he had very little regard for the public good, and thus any true interest in politics as a means.

Even though Hearst advocated the eight-hour work-day and an income tax, his purported intent to be the servant of the immigrants and working poor would be discredited by his vehement opposition to unions, including firing his employees who were members of the guild, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt raising the income tax rate on incomes over half a million. Antipodal to his earlier support for an income tax, he called the income tax system “intrusive, despotic, discriminatory, and perhaps revolutionary.”[2] Repealing the tax would be better for “the honesty, the industry, the wealth, and the welfare of the whole [population] of Americans.”[3] Facing demands from his creditors at the time, Hearst was actually looking out for the wealth, his appeal to the public good being a mere prop, or trope.

Charles “Citizen” Kane, on the other hand, was willing to use his papers to attack corrupt companies even in which he himself held stock. Speaking with his ex-guardian, Walter Thatcher, about the paper’s crusade against the Public Transit Company, in which Kane is one of the largest individual stockholders, the newspaper editor/company stockholder delivers the following as an explanation for his apparent willful disregard for his own financial interests.

“Mr. Thatcher, the trouble is you don't realize you're talking to two people. As Charles Foster Kane, who owns eighty-two thousand three hundred and sixty-four shares of Public Transit prefer, you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings. I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel, his paper should be run out of town and a committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of one thousand dollars.”[4]

In other words, Kane knows that he is doing real damage to his financial position in going after the company. This point is essential, and warrants an explanation. So he continues,

“On the other hand, I am the publisher of the Inquirer. As such, it is my duty, I’ll let you in on a little secret, it is also my pleasure—to see to it that decent, hard-working people of this community aren’t robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because they haven’t anybody to look after their interests! I’ll let you in on another little secret, Mr. Thatcher. I think I’m the man to do it. You see I have money and property. If I don't look after the interests of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without any money or property and that would be too bad.”[5]

Kane is wearing two hats, one of which he readily admits can indeed work against the other. He appeals to his duty as a journalist (and a wealthy man)—a duty that he enjoys (which is Kant’s ideal)—to, as Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) was fond of saying on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “fight for the little guy.” I suspect that the secret behind Kane’s motive here lies in the powerlessness that he had as a boy when his mother made him leave her and his beloved sled, Rosebud. As his dying word attests, Kane never got over being forced to leave his boyhood home; but he could get some vicarious satisfaction exposing commercial cases of exploitation and corruption at the expense of the powerless. The virtue, Nietzsche would say, is actually the instinct to power overcoming obstacles in order to feel the pleasure of power. Poised against the robber barons, Kane thus has a passion for going after corruption at the expense of the innocent even if Kane’s own stock portfolio takes a hit in the process. His passion for justice is greater than his greed. Translated by Nietzsche, the will to power the main human instinct, and thus motive.

To be sure, Kane doubtlessly wants the power in politics; after all, he runs for governor (as Hearst did).  Even so, not many candidates for public office actually go after corrupt fat cats who scrape off even more off hardened sweat off the backs of the hard-working laborer, or knowingly rip off consumers. Precisely for this reason, the practice is not a bad political investment. Had Hearst actually watched the film (he claimed later he had not), he might have learned a valuable political lesson. Sacrificing one’s private interests for the public welfare can reap tremendous political benefits. Not many wealthy individuals are willing to expose injustices by speaking truth to power. Typically, they conclude that they have too much on the line to risk going after the bad guys. Hence, being one of the few to do so—knowingly taking a financial hit in the process—is a valuable political commodity.

In cinematic terms, putting an ideal such as justice above the vice of greed, a feat that even a flawed person like Charlie Kane can accomplish, is a timeless principle audiences through the centuries will be able to appreciate.[4] Hence, like Rick’s willingness in Casablanca to sacrifice personally not only for Elsa, but also for the larger anti-Nazi cause, Kane’s principle can be expected to contribute to Citizen Kane continuing on as a classic.

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1 For this and the preceding points in the paragraph, see “The Battle Over Citizen Kane,” The American Experience, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1996.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Script of Citizen Kane.

5. Ibid.

6. To be sure, the virtue in a person being willing to diminish one’s overall financial position by using it for a larger cause necessitates having sufficient assets. In this sense, this virtue is like munificence, which differs from liberality in that the amount of money given is much larger. Even though not every viewer of Citizen Kane will not be able to identify with such virtues personally, everyone can value the sacrifice of private interest for public good, and thus have an emotional connection to the movie. 

Lincoln

In addition to providing an excellent glimpse of a man much studied yet nevertheless lost to history, Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, affords us an opportunity to grasp a particular virtue that applies rather surprisingly to politics. Simply in there being such a virtue applicable to a profession much maligned and relegated to swamps, an insight into the value of politics is here for the taking.

On the negative side of the ledger, the art of politics suffers from the vice of self-aggrandizing compromise—selling out the voters, for example, for a private perk. Additionally, fabrication is often associated with politics. In the film, Thaddeus Stevens admits to a bevy of his colleagues that Lincoln is indeed not to be trusted. Noting the men’s flabbergasted expressions, Stevens remarks, “Gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten that our chosen career is politics.” The implication is that mendacity is interwoven into the very fabric of politics, and should therefore be expected rather than held as blameworthy.

Yet surely the purpose of the compromise or lie matters. In refusing to take the bait, Stevens tells his adversaries in the House that equality before the law, rather than in all things (such as in slaves being given the right to vote), is the sole purpose of the proposed 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the gallery, Mary Lincoln says out loud, “Who would have guessed that man capable of such control; he might make a politician someday.” Off the House floor, Stevens explains to one of his allies, “I want the amendment to pass.” That is why he held back, in great self-control, from divulging his true North—freed Blacks able to vote and even getting some land from the government. Had he stated his version of radical reconstruction, the anti-slavery conservatives in the House would have bolted rather than support the Amendment.

Mary Lincoln’s observation is the hinge on which the insight for us pivots. To be sure, Stevens lied, and compromised, but—and this is crucial—he did so with great self-discipline. The exigency of self-restraint points to the priority of a public good over private gain, for who needs to draw on discipline to pursue the latter?  So here we have a virtue applicable to the profession of politics. By this reckoning, pushing through one’s own ideological true-North, whether by lying or expedient compromise, or by playing it straight, does not evoke the virtue. Rather, it is demonstrated by a politician holding back on the allure of an unabashed pursuit of one’s vision out of a mature recognition of being one mere mortal among others.

Even though similar virtues applicable to politics exist along the tether of self-discipline, such as having the political courage to act in the public good in the face of constituent discontent (even though the action is in their own best interest), Lincoln illustrates a particular virtue, or version of it, that I suspect is not well-known among the citizenry. In short, compromise and even lying in the service of politics are not necessarily indications of a sordid character. Rather,  a stubborn, or otherwise unrelenting pursuit of an ideology may point to an underlying vice.