a thing about the movie "Flight" (with spoilers)

Flight follows William "Whip" Whitaker, a crackerjack airline pilot struggling to admit to his alcohol and drug addictions in the aftermath of a plane crash. Part of the immediate dilemma for the audience and for Whitaker is that (1) the crash resulted from hardware failures, not pilot error, and (2) no other pilot could have negotiated the crash landing with as much skill, and saved as many passengers' lives as he did, sober or otherwise.

The film is about one man's struggle for redemption, but what we see from our theater seat is a struggle for control of truth. In Whitaker's mind, his functionality, his brilliance excuses the behavior that so many rush to judge irresponsible. That is his truth. But under threat of litigation and penalty for the lives lost, the airline and Whitaker's other adversaries use the discourse of medical knowledge, appealing to that discipline's knowledge-making authority, which justifies policies that were violated, and deems Whitaker unfit. The co-pilot, who chooses not to reveal Whitaker's drunkenness on record, appeals to the Word of God; God reveals the Truth, and Whitaker must face that truth.

Finally, after a slew of verbal confrontations, Whitaker is faced with the most intimidating of rhetorical situations--a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent Federal agency "charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States". Here, Whitaker surrenders control of the truth. He cannot speak another lie, he says. Whitaker's truth goes from belief in himself with a confident rejection of medico-juridical labels to, ultimately, the discourse of confession. He adopts the narratives spun about him by others, and finds himself now a craven denier of truth, and no longer a hero airline pilot.

Notes

• This was a fantastic movie. Every performance is spot on; Whitaker is played to perfection by Denzel Washington, and even John Goodman's over-the-top dealer works well, providing relief from the main character's ongoing struggles and tension. And Wikipedia notes, "Flight is (Robert) Zemeckis' first live-action film since 2000's Cast Away and What Lies Beneath, and his first R-rated film since Used Cars in 1980."

• Above, quoting the NTSB's Web site regarding the agency's purpose.

The Higgs, part 2

Back in July when the apparent Higgs Boson discovery was news, I posted here

The physics almost-news about the Higgs boson is simultaneously the most interesting and most boring thing going right now. Maybe this narrative conflict will resolve itself in a nice anti-climax.

This GQ article, "The Higgs Boson: Steaming Particle of Bull$#!%", seems to offer me exacting validation. Is it true that this is the thing that explains the existence of all things? No, "It just isn't true."

Humanities

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky was given the prompt, "In your new book, you suggest that many components of human nature are just too complicated to be really researchable." He replied,

That's a pretty normal phenomenon. Take, say, physics, which restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists ... and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

Abuse your illusions

In addition to events in your personal life, this year's Carrier IQ story and revelations about mental illness and its treatment show that everything that seems good is actually bad. And if not actually, then eventually. But that won't change anything.

(Taking the Carrier IQ story to its logical conclusion, in the not-too-distant future we'll have contact lens computer screens. Soon after that, thoughts can be harvested and stored on Google servers. Then thoughts will be stored on a centralized, searchable database. Scary!)

Happy New Year!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Early in the novel our freewheelin' protagonist McMurphy approaches the insecurely effeminate and possibly homosexual patient Harding following the latter's humiliation during group therapy. McMurphy aims to open Harding's eyes and expose the cruelty of Nurse Ratchet. Harding protests at first, defending the therapeutic methods of the clinic by asserting that its practitioners' expertise is too much for any layman to critique. In other words, the medical community's knowledge is their power. But McMurphy persists, using analogy and his gruff but down-home brand of empiricism to bring Harding to realize that Ratchet's clinic seeks to instill and maintain order through shame. Harding is won over, but then one-ups McMurphy by claiming that they are both peons, separated only by a few degrees.

I can't tell if, in Kesey's mind, Ratchet represents merely a bad apple within the system or if she is the system. Another observation: Having seen the movie many times, I'm surprised by how important a role gender plays in the original story.