Brown Sludge

Leave Ayn Rand Alone

April 27th, 2006

“Who is John Gault?”

Drudge is carrying a link to this Variety article claiming that they are getting ready to attempt to make a movie of Ayn Rand’s epic “Atlas Shrugged”.

Webster defines the word “travesty” as “an exaggerated or grotesque imitation – a debased or grotesque likeness”. This definition haunts my thoughts as I think about the possibilities that a making a movie out of Atlas Shrugged presents.

I’ve had this ugly little lump in the pit of my stomach since I read the Variety article.

Over the course of my life, I’ve read a handful of books that have actually had an impact and helped shape the person that I have become.

Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”, “The Fountainhead”, and especially “Atlas Shrugged” number among them.

I’ve plumbed the depths of Rand’s work both personally, and academically, having studied her at length in college.

All my life I’ve admired the Randian Hero, who is first and foremost an individual, and there are few things that invoke in me a more passionate response than those who pervert Rand’s hero and Rand’s objectivism into something corporate. There is an entire wing of the libertarian party devoted to this perversion. Misguided dolts who have read “Capitalism: The New Ideal”, picked out a couple of passages that fit their extremism and think they’ve found a blue-print for a political movement.

Thankfully, these fools usually wallow in the obscurity they so richly deserve, being shunned by both the left, and the right, and being proud of it. More power to them I suppose, but as lifelong Ayn Rand fan Geddy Lee from the thinking man’s rock band Rush once proclaimed, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

When you pick libertarianism apart – you realize very quickly that what they are really about is a sort of bizarre tribalism mixed with an even more bizarre utopianism mixed with a yet more bizarre semi-anarchism that is not connected to any rational thought. That some of these people have adopted Ayn Rand as they’re hero disturbs me in ways that are hard to write about.

That Hollywood is going to adopt her is more disturbing still.

Rand is complex. Extremely complex. More than once in college, I sat in the first day of a course covering one of Ayn Rand’s books that was filled to capacity with students that thought they were in for an easy “A” in a book study class, only to be one of less than 5 people to show up on the second day after seeing the syllabus. Her heros are controversial and complex, and her theories are controversial and complex.

The problem is… that in real ways “Atlas Shrugged” is a story about someone who would rather see society destroyed than to see certain ideals perverted.

So many times I’ve seen her work mischaracterized and manipulated both by people too stupid to understand her, and those who understood her all too well and were deliberately trying to paint her work as something it wasn’t.

Example : In the movie “Dirty Dancing”, (one of my daughters most favorite movies in all the world), there is a scene where an arrogant jerk is reading an Ayn Rand novel, “The Fountainhead” specifically, and during the scene the main character, “Baby”, is lecturing the arrogant jerk about getting her friend pregnant, and not caring or doing anything to help. The arrogant jerk waves a copy of “The Fountainhead” around and claims that according to it “some people count, and some people don’t!”.

Anyone who’s ever read it know that “blatant mischaracterization” doesn’t even cover it.

And this is the same cabal of people who are going to make “Atlas Shrugged”?

Leave Ayn Rand alone. Leave “Atlas Shrugged” alone. No true fan of Rand’s will patronize this movie. Nobody else can truly understand it. It cannot be made successfully.

For those who haven’t read her, I offer you this :

Reading and studying Ayn Rand changed my life. Not because she taught me something I didn’t know, she didn’t, but because she validated so much of what I already felt. Her books are long and dry and complex, and contain some disturbing images and some controversial ideas. They aren’t for everyone. But if you can make the attempt, and stick with her a few chapters you will probably begin to see many things that are very ‘meaningful’ to you.

I’m a fairly successful professional software designer. I design, create, and write software for the aerospace industry, and it’s been a fact of my professional life for over 25 years that the things I have created have been controlled by those who neither understood the process, nor had the talent to create it themselves. Rand gives these type of people a special treatment in her novels. Trust me on this.

Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was over 1,000 pages. And virtually every page of it was important to the plot. Good luck “cutting that down” to a feature length movie.

You will never convince me that they will honor the true spirit of Ayn Rand’s work or her objectivist philosophy. They’ll pervert it like they pervert everything else.

They’ll pervert it to destroy it, and present it as something it’s not.

Think about the word “travesty”.

You can buy it from a true independent here.

I’ll leave you with the words to one of my favorite Rush tunes, and one that does a killer job embodying the Ayn Rand ideal.

The Trees.

There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the Maples want more sunlight
And the Oaks ignore their pleas.

The trouble with the Maples,
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the Oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the Oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made.
And they wonder why the Maples
Can’t be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the forest,
And the creatures all have fled,
As the Maples scream “Oppression!”
And the Oaks just shake their heads

So the Maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
“The Oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light.”
Now there’s no more Oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet… axe… and saw.

Entry Filed under: General