Pauline Kael, who reviewed movies for the The New Yorker for many years, was considered by many to be the goddess of film critics. Her comments on movies were both insightful and controversial. Once again, a compendium of her reviews is coming out in  a newly published book.

Her writings were distinguished by her sharp opinions. When she was negative about the quality of a film, she was downright lethal. When she was positive, she was ecstatic. But whatever her thoughts were about films, her enduring view was that movies were transformative, important, and, in some cases, life changing.

On the surface, such a conclusion might seem, to say the least, exaggerated and over expansive. Indeed, how many times have I heard it said: “It’s only a movie.”

Years ago, I might have dismissed her opinion, but after a very long, personal retrospective on the impact of movies on my own life, I’m inclined to see her point.

The effect that movies have had on my life, psyche, worldview, relationship with people, knowledge of the human condition, hopes and fears, emulations and aspirations, romanticism, speech, general appearance, taste in clothing, courting, sex, travel, yearnings and ambitions has been profound. There is no denying it.

Note: I am talking of the overall effect of movies, not individual movies, per se. This is not to say that individual movies have not affected my life, but the cumulative, overall, dominant effect has been transformative in deep ways and in some that I can barely imagine or explain.

How could it not? Historically speaking, I have been attending movies regularly since the middle thirties, which marked the rich golden years of Hollywood. At that time, studios owned the theaters. They churned out hundreds of films a year, creating the stars, sets and stories that captured our imagination and drove us into darkened auditoriums to peer through a window into a world beyond our own existence.

For a child growing up in that era, the Saturday matinee was almost an obligatory rite of passage. Movie theaters were easily accessible and showed movies created for all ages, reflective of our times and times past. For ten cents, we would spend about three hours mesmerized and immersed in the film’s skillfully imagined activities.

My senses are in total recall of those moments spent in the movie palaces of those years. The sweet smell of candy from the vending machine (in the days before popcorn became the profitable staple of movie going), the baroque design of the movie houses, the uniformed usher with his ubiquitous flashlight, the iconic beginning of the News of the Week and the sonorous voice of Lowell Thomas and the coming attractions of new movies changed twice or sometimes thrice weekly.

I recall the cartoons of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other animated favorites and the shouts of joy when they appeared on the screen, the “chapters” of Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and others and the antics of Charlie Chaplin, the three stooges, W.C. Fields and the Ritz Brothers.

Who can forget the cowboys of that era with indelible names that have never faded from memory, such as Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, Johnny Mack Brown, Hoot Gibson, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and numerous others along with the names of their horses?  I spent many days riding make-believe horses (which were my grandparents’ porch railings), imagining myself as a hard-riding, quick-on-the-draw cowboy hero.

At times, the Saturday movies for kids were hybrids of what adults might be seeing that same evening. At those movies, when the action stopped and the mild love scenes would come on, the kids in the audience would erupt with restlessness and throw spitballs, shout and tussle until the action scenes started again.

The moviegoing habits of those years have continued throughout my life, although my ritual of moviegoing has changed with the nature of the films being offered, which seem to deeply curtail the adult demographic.

As for Pauline Kael’s sense of the transformative impact of films, it is validated by my own experiences revisiting the films in black and white on contemporary television, especially those run by Turner Classic Films. These old films have rejuvenated and enriched a world whose images can be recalled from their etched vaults in my mind and memory.

I need no further proof of the transformative nature of their impact than my almost total recall of the cast names of movies well before the crawls of identification. Not only can I name all the featured actors and secondary players in my favorite films, but I find myself obsessed with the familiar backgrounds, the clothes, the furniture, the gadgets, the kitchen appliances, the lighting, the ubiquitous smoking, the dialogue, especially those slang remarks that have gone out of fashion and the general atmosphere and environment of the world of my past. Indeed, I often wish I could just walk into these sets and return to the life of my youth with the expectation that my mother has dinner on the table and my Dad has just come home from a day at the office.

At times, these images are competitive with what passes for real life. Perhaps I exaggerate, but they did have the power to make me laugh and cry, worry and hope, yearn and mourn, revel and disappoint. They enriched my imagination and gave me clues to the secrets of suspense and storytelling.

If this is what Pauline Kael meant about being transformative, then she did indeed get it right.  She wrote a book with a winking double entendre entitled “I Lost it at the Movies.” If I wrote it I would have changed the title to: “I Found it at the Movies.”

I wouldn’t characterize myself as an intellectual snob, but I have always regarded fiction for adults as an indispensable endeavor that offers insight into the human condition through storytelling, excites one intellectually and emotionally, and is truly worth the investment of time and concentration.

My generation read deeply of the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, O’Hara, and hundreds of others, as well as the glorious classics as represented by Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, Flaubert, Mann, Twain, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Proust and many, many others who form the canon of great works of literature.

We weren’t necessarily academics or one-note specialists in the study of these works. We read largely for pleasure and to absorb ideas and inspiration that helped us navigate the shoals of a complicated life.

We graduated into these works from young adult fare that set the stage for future appreciation of literature and formed a lifelong habit of reading as our principal mode of gaining insight. Thus, we learned to profit from the leisure moments that are essential for a fulfilling life.

As a child, I did cut my reading-teeth on comics and eagerly followed the adventures of Smilin’ Jack, Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates, Gasoline Alley, Flash Gordon and many others syndicated in strips in newspapers throughout the country. We called them “Funnies.”

Then, came the comic book era with Superman, Batman, and other knock off superheroes rendered in colorful drawings with balloons of dialogue in staple bound magazines.

I read, too, the serial sets produced regularly by story factories that provided such series as the Hardy Boys, Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Boy Allies and for girls, Nancy Drew, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and numerous others. The heroes and heroines were teenagers, just like us. Edward Stratemeyer and his army of ghostwriters pioneered many of the series for teenagers.

This and similar books were the usual fare of young readers of my generation, and they are still being sold in up-to-date versions. In my case, these books were read long before television. Our Saturday movie fare consisted of comic book characters like Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, who took human form in what were dubbed “chapters,” which were continuing sagas that always ended in a cliffhanger to be continued at next Saturday’s matinee.

Radio held sway in those days and we kids couldn’t get enough of the adventures of The Shadow, Omar the Tentmaker, and Inner Sanctum with its scary, creaky-door opening.

Then, I grew up.

I turned away from comic books and those wonderful serial books, over which I haunted Stone Avenue’s children’s library in Brooklyn. I outgrew the excitement of the movie serials and limited the horror fare and Flash Gordon’s adventures. I remember, too, outgrowing some brief childhood fling with fantasy, horror, zombies, vampires and other stories in books with characters that also cropped up on the radio and in the movie form.

It must have been around age of 15, but I began to upscale into semi-adult reading like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Albert Payson Terhune’s books about dogs, and the enduring books by Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling. Who can forget David Copperfield and The Jungle book? In high school, we were encouraged to read these books and were required to write book reports on them to be graded by our teachers, who could rest assured that we were reading these books.

Comic books began to fade from the American scene, along with the serial books. But then, I was growing older and the comics and the boy’s adventure stories no longer interested me, along with horror, zombie and vampire stories. They were always around, of course, but did not seem to dominate the popular culture.

Now, all these categories are back with a vengeance, attracting vast hordes of fans, including, to my shock, people that are, by age, sophistication and experience supposedly outside the age of the young teenage demographic (which is still the golden target audience of these products).

So, my question to everyone within reading distance is: why the phenomenal upsurge? How come these categories are soaring back in other forms? Are we regressing as a culture? Why are comic characters returning in new wrappers that are attracting thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions worldwide to graphic novels, games and movies illustrating the adventures of superheroes and superheroines? Please enlighten me. Does it have something to do with wishful thinking about empowerment? Perhaps.

Nor do I understand the enormous fascination with zombies and vampires. Indeed, I have a friend, a top executive at a major computer company in his fifties, who admits to being addicted to books about zombies. Others, in age groups well beyond the “teenage” category, are also in thrall to vampire and zombie movies and books. It baffles me.

Some say it is because real life is so fraught with problems and insecurity. They say that the doom and gloom retailed by our media and politicians turns us away from reality to an escape into fantasy, the unreal, or anything that turns our attention away from the terrors of modern life. Others say it is merely our culture inventing new forms of communications, reinventing and embellishing old cultural assets through the transformative wonders of modern technology. Still, others say that this is a passing phenomenon. Who knows?

I hate to think of it as a manifestation of our decline, which some have postulated, a kind of dumbing-down of American culture. I offer this later idea not as a flip or inflammatory insult to those thousands who flock to this kind of fare, but as a somewhat biased, informational observation. Admittedly, it could be evidence of stubborn literature elitism on my part.

Believe me, I have no quarrel with folks who love and enjoy these categories. I did when I was a teenager. But why are adults gobbling them up? Why is purveying this material increasingly profitable? Will it last? Where is our culture heading? Is it good or bad?

I am very aware of the vast diversity of human interests and the slicing and dicing of categories of human endeavor. As they say, “different strokes for different folks.”

Was it always thus, or have I lost touch with what motivates Americans of upcoming generations? This is a possibility that I contemplate with very personal alarm.

But, please, don’t condemn me for asking. I am open to explanations and enlightenment.

With all the talk about the disparity of wealth in America, about the rich getting richer, I keep wondering what actually happens with this so-called embarrassment of riches. Frankly, it is the recent auction of the goods of convicted Ponzi scheme hustler Bernard Madoff that has triggered this question and set my mind screaming for answers.

I’m not an economist and have zero understanding of the impenetrable language that marks that esteemed profession. According to press reports, Bernie’s wife’s diamond ring went for $550,000 and her diamond necklace went for $135,000 and a vintage Rolex “Moon Phase” watch went for $67,500. The man was crazy for wristwatches. A Steinway grand piano, originally bought for $7,000 went for $47,000.

He apparently was a shoes hound with 250 pairs of shoes, some never worn, and piles of fancy boxer shorts, shirts, socks and other articles of clothing. Considering that he possessed a single body, all these accoutrements seemed beyond excessive, indicating a man to whom acquisition had lost all human dimension. His wife’s possessions, many sold at previous auctions, indicated the same propensities.

Okay then, these people lived a life beyond sanity. One can only imagine what they paid therapists over the years, if they went at all. And if they did, what a lousy job the therapists provided.

My question is more mundane. Aside from the Madoffs who benefited from their mad largesse and were able to afford their crazy addictions, lots of other people derived economic benefit from their spending spree. Think of all of the people who benefited from their consumption. I will attempt to list them.

Ranchers who grew the animals who made the leather for all the shoes, people who sold the feed and the growers of the feed for the animals, workers who cared for the animals and who carted the manure, butchers who butchered, skinners, tanners, truckers, laborers who loaded the trucks, designers who designed the shoes, workers who made them, middle men who provided the goods, shippers, and who knows how many I’ve missed before they got to the retailers who sold them to Madoff.  More than 250 shoes for just two feet.  Imagine all the people who lived off these products.

Take the diamond jewelry. From the miners, to the owners, the truckers, the people who manufactured the machines, the elevators to the mines, and all those in between, down to the cutters, the polishers, the wholesalers, the retailers, to the salesman and on and on each taking their cut.

They had homes, apartments, a yacht and who knows what else. Think of all the workmen who benefited on the construction, the furnishings, the decorators, landscapers, gardeners and every other type of maintenance worker and employee in his various businesses.

Lest you think I am a cheerleader for the disposal of ill gotten gains, I am instead outraged by the fact that he bilked so many innocent investors of their wealth. Were they so blinded by greed, ignorance and snake oil salesmanship that they put their money into his hands? Caveat Emptor! It is a cautionary tale. Bernie Madoff, hopefully, will stay in jail for the rest of his days on earth, which provides merely psychic comfort for those who lost their nest egg since it is unlikely that they will ever recover more than a small percentage of their investment.

As I have illustrated, and what the auction of his remnants suggest, is that the objects of his wealth are recycled to others who are consuming it in their fashion.

My interest is in the larger point of what actually happens to the wealth of the wealthy. We know, of course, that the Government takes a share and how it is spent by the bureaucracy is another issue for others to dope out although the track record of Federal efficiency leaves something to be desired.

I am all for the government providing a safety net for those that have fallen short in the game of life for whatever reason. We think of Lady Justice being blind and try our best to keep her blindfold on. As for Lady Luck, she is more of a whore who bestows benefits on her favorites for reasons that will always remain unclear. She definitely does not wear a blindfold and is far beyond the reach of social engineers.

It is a given that most wealthy people spend lavishly on their luxurious lifestyles. They buy things, lots of things. Others, who are involved in the making and servicing of this lifestyle, benefit. Many create foundations that do largely good things, encouraged by tax breaks that allow them to finance many non-profit enterprises. This, too, benefits many people.

I am all for the idea of the greater risk earning the greatest reward. Nor do I care how much wealth is acquired by anyone provided it is recycled to the fullest extent. Hoarding vast wealth in gold, diamonds or other valuables in vaults seems counterproductive to my own, probably spotty, reasoning.

I am no more jealous of wealthy people than I am of people who are smarter or prettier than I am, of which there are many. Who cares? I wish everyone would be wealthy and pretty and smart and compassionate and content.

All this demonizing of the so-called wealthy is, in my view, a smokescreen for envy, jealousy and political posturing. Acquiring wealth is a drive built in to our DNA. It is a human aspiration to be celebrated and, for the most part, treated with respect, especially for those who earned it with verve and imagination.

Not that it matters in the long run. The fact is that for all of us there is no long run. Like in the movies, the last title says “The End.”

How many times have you faced the dilemma of the monologist?

You have begun a conversation with someone expecting a dialogue and quickly discover that the alleged partner in this dialogue is instead engaging in an interminable monologue. The discovery, while being an affront to your patience, is also a challenge to your essential understanding of the rules of politeness.

The monologue assault is endless, unedited, often repetitive, without insight to the nature of your attentiveness. The speaker, wrapped up in his narcissistic binge hasn’t a clue to your interest. He is convinced that you are enraptured by his monologue, an oral deluge about which you have long lost interest, and your mind is devising ways to protect itself from this onslaught by various strategies of mental avoidance, while you assemble your features as if you were listening to the Sermon on the Mount.

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