FROM THE PAGES OF AYN RAND
Posted by overmanwarrior 9 years, 10 months ago to Entertainment
When Ayn Rand spent approximately twenty years writing two books—one, The Fountainhead and two, Atlas Shrugged, she took Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch and completed the work that the German philosopher was unable to due to madness. In The Fountainhead was the first real attempt to provide an Übermensch to ever occur as a fully functioning character. The novel published in 1943 was part of a growing trend for human beings to grapple with the Übermensch concept.
Ayn Rand further flushed out the Übermensch concept and put them on the pages of her novel, The Fountainhead—which to me is one of the greatest novels of all time. Rand would then further perfect the concept into Atlas Shrugged which 60 years later is still selling like French Fries at McDonald’s. It was in these two books that the Übermensch found the right philosophic balance and emerged as a new way of thinking. It was this concept which found itself into the Sergio Leone films thus inspiring modern Hollywood in ways that would be inconceivable otherwise. If not for Ayn Rand, her early work as a screenwriter for Cecil B. Deville, her casual associations with Walt Disney, and John Wayne and her deep work in philosophy with the fresh eyes of an immigrant who had seen the worst that communism had to offer—the movie For A Few Dollars More would have never happened, and likely Clint Eastwood would have remained an obscure actor doing bit parts on television shows.
Ayn Rand further flushed out the Übermensch concept and put them on the pages of her novel, The Fountainhead—which to me is one of the greatest novels of all time. Rand would then further perfect the concept into Atlas Shrugged which 60 years later is still selling like French Fries at McDonald’s. It was in these two books that the Übermensch found the right philosophic balance and emerged as a new way of thinking. It was this concept which found itself into the Sergio Leone films thus inspiring modern Hollywood in ways that would be inconceivable otherwise. If not for Ayn Rand, her early work as a screenwriter for Cecil B. Deville, her casual associations with Walt Disney, and John Wayne and her deep work in philosophy with the fresh eyes of an immigrant who had seen the worst that communism had to offer—the movie For A Few Dollars More would have never happened, and likely Clint Eastwood would have remained an obscure actor doing bit parts on television shows.
All good! I especially enjoy all of those old Eastwood and Wayne movies. They just don't make them like that anymore. Well, there was a Captain America movie recently...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCR83LxG...
Regards,
O.A.
What timing! Amazing that last week I was reminiscing about going to a drive-in movie in 1968 (may have been '69) playing dawn till dusk Clint Eastwood. I wished to repeat the process, but no drive-ins, so I then watched the DVDs of "A Few Dollars More", "A Fistful of Dollars", and "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"! Maybe tonight I'll watch "The Outlaw Josie Wales" or "Pale Rider".
Way To Go, Overman!!!!!
"There had never been another character like the one that Eastwood played in those westerns in all of human history—including stage plays from the Renaissance. Eastwood’s character was a brand new concept that few understood at the time—but loved. " It was a clear copy of a Japanese original, and not the last time. Disney's "Lion King" was cribbed from anime.
http://youtu.be/P0Z89zy5ENo
He lets a stick tell him where to go. How stupid is that. Eastwood said he thought the Leone westerns were like Yojimbo. I'm sure this was said to appease the press antagonistic to Ayn Rand at the time. But Kurosawa was coming from a different point of view, and philosophy. Nature is the guide, not mans decisions.
I was a kid -- Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, the Lone
Ranger, Thor Heyerdahl, Lazarus Long, Jack London,
and others -- back in the 50s and 60s before I met
Rand ... I have always loved heroes, and the
world of movies has too ... Sergeant York, for
example. Rand finished the portrayal;; yes? -- j
A Fist Full of Dollars is a little bit mixed in its approach, but by For A Few Dollars More it was much more individually based, rape revenge, the power of the individual over a group of thugs, and capitalism. Very interesting stuff.
I've seen the Sanjuro character in the first movie, Yojimbo," and in 3 or 4 others, I think. He even fights Ichi, The Blind Swordsman (Now that's one HUGE franchise). Reading the subtitles of countless samurai movies prepared me well for my hard of hearing senior years. Now when I rent any DVD, I check for English subtitles.
Hey, let's start making movies like the Arab Moslems make! Let's celebrate Iranian Islamic culture! Let's take the worst from our enemy's philosophy, adopt it, celebrate it, make it our own... and wonder why the hell our own country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Eastwood's best film quite probably was "The Outlaw Josie Wales", even over "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". It was NOT the same character as in his "Man with no name" films. They were amoral scumbags; just likeable amoral scumbags. Wales was a man who was wronged and responded correctly, for a homo sapiens male. Wales wasn't an amoral (or immoral) drifter. He wasn't a professional gunslinger. He was the closest Eastwood could come to Ethan Edwards, or Shane. Some of us are just tainted, however, and can't achieve that moral purity (for want of a better term).
And if Uma Thurman was an "ubermensch" in Kill Bill... then all ubermenshen need to be hunted down and exterminated. With extreme prejudice.
Nobody else noticed how immoral these Jap-based films are? At least by American (real American, not 21st century PC American) standards? Thurman's character was a professional killer; what happened to her was karmic justice. The only bad part was that when Bill shot her, he didn't kill the baby as well, thus saving countless lives when the brat comes to adulthood as a sociopathic killer like her mother.
No, I'll buy Ethan Edwards as an ubermensch. I'll buy Audie Murphy as an ubermensch. But not "the Man with No Name".
I think John Wayne may have delivered the Objectivist creed (or what could be an Objectivist creed) in "The Shootist", btw:
John Bernard Books: "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them. "