Caught these documentaries at the Cinematheque last night and liked 'em both.

Derrida naturally spends a lot of time in his interviews deconstructing the process by which the film is being made, and the filmmakers sometimes show him watching footage of him watching other footage, which sounds a bit too cute to me now as I write this, but seemed quite funny when I watched it in the theatre. I have never read any of Derrida's works myself, but I was struck by his focus on the distinction between the 'who' and the 'what', in terms of the nature of love, and in terms of the nature of being, etc. I was also struck by the way he suggested biography ought to be incorporated into philosophy yet he refused to discuss many aspects of himself and his own life, and by his idea that to freely improvise is to somehow cease being oneself. These and other remarks vaguely reminded me of the liner notes to Vox Humana, in which Terry Taylor quotes a line of Czeslaw Milosz's to the effect that creating art requires the artist to "surrender" -- no one puts pen to paper doubting, but rather, if doubts come, they come several minutes later. Alas, I was not taking any notes during this film, so I can already feel it slipping from my memory.

Then came The Trials of Henry Kissinger, based on the similarly named book by Christopher Hitchens. Near the beginning, there is a clip of Kissinger refusing to discuss Hitchens' book on a talk show because, well, as you know, Hitchens has written negative things about Mother Theresa and he is a Holocaust denier to boot (say what!? what has Hitchens ever said that could warrant THAT sort of accusation?), and such people do not deserve to be taken seriously, etc., etc. The film makes it pretty clear that Kissinger was involved in some evil stuff, and it also makes it pretty clear that Kissinger has lied about a lot of this stuff, but I did find myself wondering how much truth there might be to Kissinger's claim that, as a politician, you often cannot choose between good and evil but, rather, you have to choose BETWEEN evils. I know very little about the politics of the early 1970s -- I was only in diapers then, after all -- and I've seen enough Michael Moore films to know that documentaries can be less than fair in their handling of the evidence, so I wonder if there has been any response to this film from "the other side", as it were. (Anybody know any links they could point me to?) What I find especially interesting is the way the film tries to find a symbolic connection between Pinochet's American-backed coup on September 11, 1973 and the terrorist attack on Washington and New York 28 years later -- I got the feeling the filmmakers WANTED to go beyond this and make some comment on present-day American foreign policy and the wars in Iraq etc., but Hitchens has actually argued passionately in FAVOUR of the war in Iraq, so the film seems to hold back and pull its punches there. (The coup in Chile replaced a democratically-elected leader with a monstrous dictator, but the war in Iraq is replacing a monstrous dictator with, we hope, a democracy, is Hitchens' way of looking at this, I think.) Interesting stuff, at any rate. And I found myself humming that Monty Python song on my way out of the theatre ...

Haven't seen those docs, but in connection with reading the Bob Hope-related threads here today it was coincidental to also today read Hitchens's unflattering paragraphs on Hope (posted at slate.com). Hitchens calls Hope out for being unfunny, and while I know that's not an uncommon opinion to hold and it's polite to speak well of the dead, I've just been a little overwhelmed by all the positive press. Yeah, I know he was more a favorite of older generations, but there are plenty of those old favorites who I've enjoyed as much as my parents or grandparents.

Edit:
Here's the link: http://slate.msn.com/id/2086499/

I should have put this post in the Bob Hope thread and not in the thread about the documentary about Hitchens's book.

FWIW, the Derrida film reminds me of this interesting comparison of Derrida and C.S. Lewis:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/8b6/8b6036.html

The Derrida film was one of the features at Cornerstone's Flickerings. I really enjoyed it. It was especially interesting to watch Derrida watching himself on television and thinking about his own thoughts on how what we see is so far removed from the source. I was extremely disappointed that, due to technical difficulties with the projector, we lost the time designated for post-viewing discussion. There was a LOT there to discuss.

While most Christians consider Derrida a threat, I think what he has to say is unintentionally helpful for Christians. I agree with him on how little information we have on what we think we "know."

When I talk to you, Peter, in person, I think I "know" you, but so much of that is my own mental construct of random scraps of information I have gathered about you. Further, my interpretations of what you say are similarly constructed within my own frame of reference, and may or may not have anything to do with what you are actually saying. If I were to read a biography of you, I would be farther removed... having only a representation of you put together by someone else within their own system of assumptions. I would, indeed, be getting a better representation of the Author than the biography's subject.

While Derrida uses this to underline the near-futility of trying to "know" anything, for me it underlines the essentiality of faith in each and every endeavor of my existence.

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: When I talk to you, Peter, in person, I think I "know" you, but so much of
: that is my own mental construct of random scraps of information I have
: gathered about you. Further, my interpretations of what you say are
: similarly constructed within my own frame of reference, and may or may
: not have anything to do with what you are actually saying.

Yes, Lewis gets into this in A Grief Observed, how one of the great things about having his wife around was that she was able to surprise him, to shatter the images he had constructed of her ... and how one of his fears, now that she was dead, was that the image of her in his mind would become further and further removed from the real her, without her there to correct those images. (DA's Darn Floor - Big Bite gets into this too, I think -- "If I were to give you an animal's name / Could I keep you locked in a cage in my brain? ... I try to describe it, can never succeed / Moving around in a big make-believe / I say you are this, I say this is you / But you're one strange animal, I am one too.")

: While Derrida uses this to underline the near-futility of trying to "know"
: anything, for me it underlines the essentiality of faith in each and every
: endeavor of my existence.

Yes, exactly. Well put.

Stanley Grenz considers the writings of Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty in some detail, in his Primer on Postmodernism. It was a dense read, but well worth it. He concludes by stating that Christians would do well to acknowledge our common ground with postmoderns, in rejecting the arrogance of Enlightenment epistemology; while at the same time, we should stand our ground in spurning the postmodern rejection of the Gospel metanarrative.

McLaren puts it much more simply in his recent writings, when he speaks of holding to the nuances and grayer areas of faith with humility and flexibility. As one of his characters says, "This is the best way to talk theology...Playfully. Because we're just a couple of boys talking about matters too great and lofty for us."