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"The Aviator" (http://www.miramax.com/aviator/)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Mirmax Films
PG-13 / Argentina:13
2004
Reviewed by a contributor January 2, 2005
"The Aviator" focuses, in part, on what psychiatry would consider mental illness symptoms: Euro-Amerikan imperialist Howard Hughes' obsessive-compulsive behavior and paranoia. Today, at least a few million Amerikans are supposed to have obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD patients' obsessions are often specific to a certain kind of object, or a certain kind of thought. The manifestation of OCD seems to vary with circumstances.
Mental illness diagnoses in general are often a response to behavior that either conflicts with, or concentrates, ideas and practices prevailing under the imperialist-patriarchy. What psychologists call "Pure-O," involving obsessive thinking only, is particularly interesting from the point of view of this approach. Some of what is called obsessive thinking could be viewed as excessive use of formal logic, and idealism. MIM has used a similar approach with other so-called mental illnesses. "In MIM's experience, it has been useful to address eating disorders as an incorrect line on gender."(1)
MIM has dealt with a related theme in the context of the Chinese communists' practice of including politically-oriented group activities as a part of rehabilitation. "The manifestations of schizophrenia are social even if there is a chemical component or basis. The gross individualism and violence in Amerika may lead people diagnosed as schizophrenics to shoot up a McDonald's or worry about constant surveillance, while in a socialist society their behavior would manifest itself differently. Even before socialism, a revolutionary party can divert this energy to meaningful political work. The key is good politics."(1) In the same issue of MIM Theory , MIM discusses how revolutionary activity can effectively mitigate other mental illness symptoms, particularly depression symptoms. However, "good politics" is not just a rehabilitation technique. Rather, individuals must defeat their own mental illnesses so that they can even better participate in the revolutionary struggle. "We operate on the conviction that everyone [including the psychiatrically defined "retarded"], without exception, is capable of being incorporated into the revolutionary struggle."(1) This is the case even if mental illnesses represent a deterioration of urban parasites' mental abilities and require their children to take leadership in different ways.
Obsessive-compulsive symptoms are central to the persynality of Howard Hughes in "The Aviator." Most movie viewers will not go out and buy a Howard Hughes biography book after seeing "The Aviator," instead interpreting the movie as an example of a great Amerikan innovator and visionary, and taking the part-fiction biographical movie for what it is and leaving it at that, so I am not going to get into whether "The Aviator" accurately portrays Hughes. The movie ends with Hughes in the late 1940s, which leaves out some of the most controversial and disturbing aspects of Hughes' life in the first place. Exactly what kind of murderous, CIA-serving u.$. imperialist Hughes was is not that important. Suffice it to say that the pretense of a movie's being somehow inspired by reality is almost always a smokescreen for the movie's politics. Especially when the persyn in question has so little bearing on political practice, those reviewers who emphasize accuracy of portrayal are focused on artistic criteria, an approach to art criticism which smuggles reactionary ideology into listeners' , readers' and viewers' minds.
The Hughes character (Leonardo DiCaprio) is frequently distressed with what he perceives to be uncleanliness, and what he perceives to be imperfection of a technical sort, for example, his complaint about the protruding rivets on the body of an airplane. The obvious comparison is with "A Beautiful Mind" (2001) despite the main characters' different types of mental illness. The idea is that mental illness can coincide with, or even produce, genius, but may also be its downfall. Despite the notion of the mad scientist, the idea of the mentally eccentric intellectual is typically reserved for artistic bohemians, so it is interesting to see these movies featuring the mental illnesses of Hughes and John Nash, who are more "scientific." Unfortunately, "The Aviator" does not ponder how every urban imperialist-country parasite, female or male, entertainer or scientist, is prone to "mental illness." Doing so might undermine the whole individualist approach to "mental illness" and expose social problems.
Instead, in "The Aviator," "mental illness" has the context of celebrity and success, as if the movie were trying to say: see, even the ruling class needs psychology and therapy, so you should want it, too. Like many other movies that depict seemingly mentally ill persyns, "The Aviator" does nothing to disturb movie viewers' assumption of the need for psychology and therapy when there is a mentally ill character on-screen. To top it off, "The Aviator" tries to be stereotypically Freudian with all of "The Aviator"'s breast, milk and death wish references. So, Hughes's need for psychology seems to be just a matter of fact. This is particularly damaging in the context of professional psychology's rapid growth after World War II, which "The Aviator" completely ignores even though it focuses on mental illness.
At the same time that it expresses sympathy for "mentally ill" Hughes, "The Aviator" makes use of Hughes's fame in another way. "The Aviator" contains a lot of bullshit about a visionary Euro-Amerikan entrepreneur and innovator's being victimized by corporate monopoly and government corruption. For example, "The Aviator" portrays Hughes as being unfairly targeted by the Senate War Investigating Committee. Less sinisterly, Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) repeatedly objects to Hughes' spending his own money unwisely. In fact, it is true that capitalism and particularly highly parasitic imperialism are brakes on technical innovation and other technical change in several different ways. Social science researchers drawing from bourgeois ideology themselves recognize a certain disconnect between entrepreneurship and business management skills. The problem with "The Aviator" is that it glorifies Howard Hughes's entrepreneurship and innovativeness as being a sign that he overcame his mental illness, without getting into the roles of entrepreneurship and innovation in the division of labor, and exploitation. That the united $tates imported much of its food, fuel and raw materials during World War II, from Mexico, for instance, is not going to cross most Amerikan movie viewers' minds anyway, but "The Aviator" pretends that only u.$. white men engineers and mechanics made the united $tates' fleet of aircraft during World War II. The Hughes character himself goes as far as saying that he, unlike Katharine Hepburn's family, "works" for his money.
On the other hand, "The Aviator" suggests that mental eccentricity was a cause of Hughes's perfectionism, so we may ask: what is so laudable about entrepreneurship or innovation in the first place if it were mental illness that created Hughes's success? And didn't Hughes have an advantage in being born into so much money? "The Aviator" also deserves some credit for pointing out, through the not-so-ditzy character of Katharine Hepburn, that the Euro-Amerikan bourgeoisie was too busy being anti-Communist and decadent to recognize the threat posed by Benito Mussolini--but the movie goes on to wrongly suggest that Franklin Roosevelt was some kind of vanguard in this respect. Still, "The Aviator" offers a useful example of how imperialist-country oppressors' mental illnesses are portrayed in the movies.
As the author of "Disavowing suicide : Testimonial of a Woman Revolutionary" points out, "the most meaningful existence for members of parasitic Amerika is to work for communism to destroy [Amerikan imperialism]."(2) That's working for communism, not working to innovate so that some imperialists can have better weapons, or so that some capitalists can have more profit. Engineering and science are useful, but not so important that there is no need to take responsibility for their use for exploitation and repression. Maybe this hardly needs pointing out since Hughes is a millionaire, but the same question arises for lesser parasites as well.
In fact, what the author of "Disavowing suicide" is talking about applies to both millionaires and lesser parasites. Working for communism is the most meaningful thing imperialist-country parasites can do. It is the most meaningful thing anyone can do, who has enough leisure time and freedom to do it (while others, particularly in oppressed nations, are compelled to work for communism as a matter of survival). Yet, not everyone does it.
Even some millionaires that have alleged "OCD" feel the need to have congruency, evenness, or symmetry, in their own environments and possessions. Most people with such concerns do not care about oppression and are not disturbed with being parasites themselves. The recent review of "The Machinist" (2004) points out that there is a multifaceted contradiction between the powerfulness of parasitic privileges, on the one hand, and powerlessness to change the system at the lifestyle level. The specific kinds of things that OCD patients obsess about are often specific to certain societies.
Interestingly, "The Aviator" attributes Hughes' obsession with cleanliness to his mother's warnings about disease epidemics and her fear about "coloreds" under quarantine in the neighborhood, which implies that Hughes' obsessive-compulsive behavior has a social basis: other persyns' poverty, and some kind of socio-spatial stratification. That Hughes continues to distance himself from uncleanliness even when there is clearly no longer any reason for him to do so, may be because he is so powerful and aspires to be even more powerful as an imperialist and gender oppressor, but can never reach perfect powerfulness, so he somehow feels the need to create an illusion of control precisely where power to change the system is absent: at the level of lifestyle. He has to have so many peas on his plate, positioned in a certain way. Errol Flynn's (Jude Law) helping himself to one of Hughes' peas is like a disarming and devastating blow against Hughes. Hughes creates more order elsewhere, perhaps to regain a sense of being in control. Hughes dates different kinds of females: wimmin escorts, famous actresses, and a young teenage girl, Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner)--after the older Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) dumps him for not being attentive to her "needs."
It is nice to know that the enemy can lose control through "mental illness," but "The Aviator" depicts an imperialist as being mentally ill only to make parasitic movie viewers' feel better about their own problems. This is why "The Aviator" is not embarrassing to them. They can add Hughes to the list of "famous OCD sufferers" or whatever, who, of course, would have benefited from psychology and therapy since "The Aviator" does not question the psychiatric and therapeutic culture. At the same time, they can reminisce about the life and times of a real-life Amerikkkan hero.
Check out MIM Theory no. 9: Psychology and Imperialism .
Notes
1. MCB52, "Psychological Practice in The Chinese Revolution," MIM Theory , no. 9 (1995): 37.
2. "Disavowing suicide : Testimonial of a Woman Revolutionary," MIM Theory , no. 9 (1995): 45.