Critical Theory

I was drawn to an article in The Atlantic today which reviewed the first season of Amazon's The Man in the High Castle. Reviewer Noah Berlatsky compared the TV series to the Philip K. Dick book of the same title. Amazon, Berlatsky complains, inverts and "betrays" Dick's source material.

Amazon, Berlatsky contends, is pushing a "banal" story of "plucky Americans fighting for freedom against the evil invaders." Is there anything more irritating than someone who reads a book, and then uses that basis to criticize the movie?

Probably the only thing more irritating is a Marxist using critical theory to infer the author's intent, and then using that analysis to condemn America.

Berlatsky writes that, "One of Dick's characters muses, for example, that the basic insanity of the Nazis is that 'They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike.'" This, Berlatsky says, is "a reasonable analysis of Nazi obsessions," and also "a reasonable analysis of American obsessions."

Dick, says Berlatsky, citing Carl Freedman, links "the quintessential Western will to domination with the horrors of genocidal Nazism." This "will to domination" expresses itself in Dick's book in the Nazi plan to use nuclear weapons on the Japanese home islands. But in real life, it was America that used the atom bomb. Shorter version: America bad.

I submit that the "will to domination" is universal, not Western. The Soviet Union had agents in Cuba, Angola, South Africa, and every nation in South and Central America. They exerted total control over Eastern Europe. Their determination was worldwide communism. And don't forget that the very word "Islam" means submission. Islam's determination is a worldwide caliphate. So the only place where the only pure "will to domination" is Western is at the Department of Critical Theory.

The beautiful thing about critical theory is that every argument always begins with the outcome. The conclusion is that some Western institution is the cause of all of society's problems. Patriarchy, capitalism, Christianity, Europeans, Western Civilization, whatever, take your pick, these all represent the enslavement of mankind.

Virtually any text can be subject to critical theory. Ever see the movie Point Break? A group of surfers rob banks. The surfers are disguised as Ex-Presidents Reagan, Johnson, Nixon and Carter. FBI Agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) must infiltrate the group and while he does, he forms a complex relationship with Bodhi (Patrick Swayze).

The banks represent the systematic oppression of the proletariat. The Ex-Presidents are robbing the banks as social commentary about how the leaders of the American political system are colluding with the capitalist robber barons.

The Ex-Presidents live as one with nature, harnessing the ocean's energy to make manifest their symbiosis with the universe. They represent the natural state of man, before industrialization. The growing kinship between Bodhi and Johnny Utah reflects the complex relationship between Marx and Engels. When Bodhi comes to trust Johnny Utah, he reveals that they aren't robbing banks for profit, but rather, they are rebelling against a system that "kills the human spirit."

The best way to understand marxist critical theory is to realize that all its practitioners are walking around with undiagnosed personality disorders. Berlatsky seems to be defending himself from unwanted thoughts by using displacement. Maybe Berlatsky is still suffering from the trauma of being born. He was ripped from his natural state and he has been forced to become a cog in the wheel of commerce.

Once you understand marxist critical theory, you begin to understand why progressives "invariably and inevitably side with evil over good, wrong over right, the lesser over the better, the ugly over the beautiful, the profane over the profound, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success."