 |
|
|
R E C E N T L Y
More darts at Foucault's scrawny haunches
Ken Starr's strange sexual persona A tale of two Blooms
Can actors (or wrestlers) be great leaders? Forget Foucault; remember the facts
___________________
A L S O
About Camille Paglia
- - - - - - - - - -
C O L U M N I S T S
The Reluctant Capitalist Left Hook Unspun Right On! Mr. Blue Word by Word Media Circus On Television Under the Covers Let's Get This Straight Home Movies Second Thoughts - - - - - - - - - -
|
A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Dear Camille:
I always enjoy the verve with which you attack groupthink, agitprop and
myriad other symptoms of how our society devalues critical thinking. In
reading your essays, however, I note an area on which you only seem to touch:
corporate America's fascination with "non-hierarchical" management schemes, as
typified by such mantras as "The group always has more knowledge" and "There
is no 'I' in 'team'" Am I (O, wicked word!) the only one who sees this
"philosophy" as another toxic outgrowth of Rousseauist feminism? Do I laugh
alone at the irony of perceiving that collectivist thinking has infected
capitalism's body politic like some virus in hiding? (Has the Soviet Union
been insidiously reincarnated here?) Or would this phenomenon be better
viewed as a holdover from "The Decade of Greed," when shallow, cynical
management theorists -- ignorant of culture and human nature alike -- assumed that
Japan's temporary success at practicing Economics 101 could be successfully
imported to an altogether different setting, with predictable results, no
less?
I concur with your analysis of Sade in "Sexual Personae": Humans are
hierarchical creatures, and when established hierarchies are made irrelevant,
new ones arise in their place. But how effectively corporate America's
hierarchies-by-default will serve their intended purpose, to me, remains a
very open question. (As does whether their stated and intended purposes are
truthfully the same.) I even suspect that the phenomenon of "road rage" is a
desperate attempt by disoriented subjects in corporate America's grand social
experiment to reassert their sense of territory. What are your thoughts?
A Leo at the Rat Race
Dear Leo:
How right you are to note the ironic consequences of Japan's current economic
downturn on corporate American rah-rah fads. The team model does benefit
certain types of manufacturing, where the hyperefficient assembly line can
cause apathy and alienation. When workers are treated like artisans
responsible for the end product of their labor, they gain pride and dignity,
as in the craft shops of the pre-industrial era.
However, the chillingly Orwellian mantras you cite belong to the preppy white-collar elite of the service-sector economy that has swelled in size since
World War II. Japanese management philosophy is able to draw on the ego-subordinating principles of Buddhism, outside the mainstream of the West.
Furthermore, Japan's racial homogeneity and xenophobia have made it easier for
corporate collectivism to thrive there. Japanese businessmen are encouraged
to identify more strongly with their companies than with their own families.
Most of what slick American management consultants drill into their hapless
pupils is bumptious cant. But perhaps a temporary, goal-oriented illusion of
teamwork is all anyone can hope for these days in the shark-infested waters of
business or professional sports. As in the Roman empire, institutions have
become too large and impersonal, and traditional ideals of honor and duty have
waned. Businesses today must blandish or brainwash their employees with PC
myths of togetherness -- shattered, of course, when downsizing produces massive
overnight layoffs, while grotesquely overpaid top executives float away on
golden parachutes.
Your connection of "road rage" to the psychological quandary of American
workers is very thought-provoking. There are too many high-powered cars and
sports utility vehicles careening witlessly around American roads. The
federal government should get off its anti-tobacco kick and start focusing on
the far more serious problem of highway carnage. What ever happened to scare-tactic traffic-safety public service announcements?
I would slightly shift your analysis: Yes, "road rage" is due to PC hypocrisy
about authority but originates not in the workplace but the family. Bad
drivers are produced by weak or absent fathers. In my generation, skillful
driving was taught with panache by fathers who had been steeled in the
crucible of World War II. The art of driving has been lost in our era of
broken marriages and single-parent families. Mothers cannot supply everything
that sons need to become men. The tantrums of road rage come from infantile
personalities with invertebrate identities.
As a general solution to social problems, I argue that a course in ethics
belongs in primary education. Boosterish jargon is no substitute for a
foundation in ethical reasoning. All citizens -- whether they manage a company,
inhabit the White House or just go out on a date -- need a reliable ethical
compass. Old-fashioned religion, for all its intrusiveness into sex, once
supplied common-sense values and constrained natural human amorality. Now
it's every Sade for himself.
We also need more searching study of the complex interactions of individuals
and groups in the workplace. There are shadow hierarchies operating at every
level in institutions, calcified clusterings around which murky currents of
power ebb and flow. I recommend John Ralston Saul's book "Voltaire's
Bastards" (which I reviewed favorably for the Washington Post in 1992) for its
historical account of the birth of the modern managerial elites: It's packed
with the kind of sociological substance missing from Michel Foucault. But
there is still no definitive anthropology of day-to-day behavior in office
jobs, which require a peculiar, poisonous mix of sycophancy and aggression.
Dear Camille:
I keep having this weird intuition that Oprah Winfrey is positioning herself
for a run at the presidency in, say, 2008 or 2012. The flop of "Beloved" is
a setback, granted, but if Ronald Reagan can do it ...
Do you share my vision or scoff?
Confessing in California
Dear Confessing:
Ronald Reagan had considerable administrative experience as six-term president
of the Screen Actors Guild and then as two-term governor of California before
he ran for president. I've been an Oprah fan since her Chicago-based program
went national in 1986, but I don't see that she has much experience with or
even interest in politics, judging by her roster of guests, who tend to be
entertainers, novelists, psychologists and gurus. In recent years, in fact,
she has ceded most production duties to others -- to the detriment of the show,
in my view.
The shocking failure of "Beloved" -- its earnings to date of $22.7 million
(according to Variety) barely cover its publicity costs -- should demonstrate
once and for all how hopelessly wrong the Frankfurt School was about popular
culture. In "Backlash" (1991), Susan Faludi, thanks to her defective Harvard
education, used Frankfurt Marxist logic to claim that the staggering success
of "Fatal Attraction" (1987) was due to a Hollywood cabal intent on setting feminism
back. In rebuttal, I insisted that all the PR in the world can't create a
movie hit: Word of mouth makes or breaks a film after the mega-hyped opening
weekend. The people vote with their dollars.
"Beloved" got huge cover stories and stentorian adulation in major magazines
from Time to Vogue. But the film sank like a stone because it was overlong
and confusingly presented. Historical films, particularly those with
emotionally grueling themes, require directing skills that Jonathan Demme
(whom Oprah handpicked) clearly does not have.
Press reports about Hollywood reluctance to fund film projects about
slavery -- after the commercial failure of last year's "Amistad" and "Rosewood"
as well as "Beloved" -- should force moviemakers to rethink their premises.
The great epic about the slavery era will be made by a director, white or
black, who humbly studies classic movie epics like "The Ten Commandments"
(1956), "Ben-Hur" (1959), "Spartacus" (1960) and, yes, the romanticized "Gone
with the Wind" (1939), with their painstaking attention to character, plot,
sets and costumes.
In today's Hollywood, there are too many hipsters and not enough craftsmen.
N E X T_P A G E | The beauty of Vargas Girls, science and lead guitars
|
Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus
Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.
