November 15, 2003

MASTER AND COMMANDER: HOMAGE TO A VANISHED WORLD--OR CRITIQUE OF OUR OWN?

Horsefeathers goes to the movies.

"Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? Do you want your children to grow up singing the 'Marseillaise'?"

        So says "Lucky"Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander, before leading his men into battle against the perfidious French. Horsefeathers awaits the criticism of this politically incorrect-but thrilling movie. We expect Frank Rich to decry its defense of white male privilege, its sexism, its homophobia, its racist insistence on the superiority of Great Britain and its culture. Above all though, it presents a defense of archaic manly virtues: physical courage, mastery of emotions, devotion to such abstractions as duty and honor. It is especially anachronistic in our therapeutic culture to see a defense of emotional restraint; this is not the world of Bill Clinton biting his lip and feeling everyone's pain. Instead, it is a mark of masculine courage to not express even your own pain. A young sailor who undergoes amputation of an arm is praised for his bravery in stifling his emotions and enduring the ordeal. In our therapeutic culture, such courage would be regarded as 'neurotic'. After all, we know more, we are more tolerant, accepting of human frailty--aren't we? Jack Aubrey's is a world where men leave home and hearth, go to war to protect their women and their civilization. They are not afflicted by doubts about Western culture, nor are they beset by androgynous yearnings. They lack our multicultural sensitivity, our insistence that manhood is something to be apologized for or transcended. And yet, deep down we know that when the crunch comes it is the Jack Aubreys, the Winston Churchills, the George Pattons-not the Jacque Derridas- who will save us from the barbarians.

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