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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 01/15/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 29
MT Chair/Librarian:
Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-5619 mleeper@lucent.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 732-957-5087 jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 732-949-7076 njs@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2E-537 732-957-6330 robmitchell@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-2070 eleeper@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
meets irregularly; call 201-652-0534 for details, or check
http://www.interactive.net/~kat/njsfs.html. The Denver Area
Science Fiction Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of
every month at Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
1. URL of the week:
http://www2.shore.net/~dkennedy/woburn_trial.html has a description
of the real trial upon which A CIVIL ACTION (reviewed in this
issue) was based. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. In H. G. Wells's ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU the title character is
bent on experiments to modify animals to be in the form of humans
and thereby raise their intelligent potential. He has created a
varied collection of animal people who really are fusions of animal
and human. It may be that Wells may have over-rated how necessary
it was for an animal to assume the posture of a human to be
humanlike. I have been giving some thought to canine intelligence
of late and I think that dogs have done to themselves without
surgery what Moreau was attempting so crudely to do with his
knives. Much more than we would like to realize an intelligent dog
is not just a domesticated wolf but a fusion of wolf and of human.
And dogs have done this to themselves through sheer will to
assimilate into human society. They have the examined human
society, an they have realized how little of it they understand.
But they are constantly trying to understand the rest and in the
meantime they have adopted what customs they can.
The position of a dog in our society is a lot like that of SHOGUN's
Blackthorne in Japanese society. Like Blackthorne dogs have their
own culture that they could return to if circumstances allowed
them, but as long as they are held captive in our society they will
try to understand how humans operate and try to fit in. And
imagine how bewildering that effort must be.
Blackthorne never confused what he was with being Japanese. Let me
lay to rest one myth. People like to say things like "This is my
Floppsey. He's a dog, but he thinks he's a human." It is my
belief that dogs are acutely aware that they are not human and may
perhaps underrate rather than overrate the human component of their
personality.
Why do I think that dogs are so aware they are not human. I am
basing this on observations I made of Sam, the dachshund I grew up
with. His reaction to seeing a human and seeing a dog was entirely
different. A human he might look at or even bark at, but he would
not really get excited about unless it was a human he knew very
well. But a dog, even a stranger, would excite him a great deal
and he really would want to go and commune with the other dog. He
reserved this excitement for dogs and a few other quadrupeds. (He
did once express the same excitement for a horse, but I suspect he
assumed it to be yet another strange form that a dog could take.
He was a dachshund with legs maybe four or five inches long. I
remember his obvious amazement to see a much longer-legged dog in
the park one day who could bound across the entire park the size of
a large city block in just about 20 seconds or so. Poor Sam had
never seen a dog do that and it was well beyond his capability.
But he was amazed to see that dogs could do that.)
The other observation I would make that convinces me that Sam knew
he was a dog is that he would occasionally be standing in front of
our full-length mirror. I would make faces at his reflection. He
would watch my reflection for a few seconds then turn his head and
look directly at me. Why? Well, obviously he wanted to see me
more directly. He knew what he was seeing in the mirror was not
really me but a reflection. So he understood the concept of what a
reflection was. I assume from this when he saw a dachshund in the
mirror he knew that was him. That is one more reason I think he
knew he was a dog. He never showed a lot of interest in his own
reflection, but if he understood what my reflection was, he
probably understood his own and hence knew what he looked like.
Like Blackthorne toward the beginning of his stay in Japan, a dog
is constantly trying to pick up what he can of the language he
hears. I think as humans we tend to under-estimate how much of our
language dogs do pick up. But, of course, it is very important for
dogs to understand these strange sounds that humans make and a good
intelligent dog will make a good deal of progress on this problem.
Sam would occasionally surprise the family by apparently reacting
as if he understood a English. I know I had a medium distant
relative, embarrassingly also named Sam. He and his wife came to
visit us. At one point his wife was sitting on the couch in the
den and called to her husband, "Come here and sit with me, Sam."
She was amazed to see the dog instantly do just that. He jumped up
on the couch, sat beside her, and looked expectantly at her to see
if she would say something else to him. If this stranger was going
to be friendly to him, the least he could do was be friendly back.
The dog did not understand that there was another Sam in the house,
but he did apparently know exactly what the sentence he heard
meant. It is not a complex sentence, but for a dog to understand
it is to me quite impressive.
I remember noticing dogs in China. There are some pet dogs and
they do respond to Chinese. Now my ear is just not good enough to
respond to a tonal language. But I realized that the dogs I was
seeing could understand a tonal language much better than I could.
That is a somewhat humbling realization. Tonal language is a human
invention but there are dogs who understand it better than I do.
One more new speculation I have on dogs. One of the mysteries of
dogs is why to domesticated dogs bark. Wolves and wild dogs never
bark. It could be just a useful behavior that dogs learn from
other dogs when domesticated, and it might be interesting to
isolate a dog from other dogs and find out if he learns barking.
It is my belief that dogs pick up barking not from other dogs but
from humans. They clearly hear human language and recognize that
it would be useful if they could do the same thing. Their anatomy
does not allow them the articulation to form words, but do what
they can and the result is barking. I think dogs have picked up on
the value of oral language to humans and have reinvented it for
themselves. Barking is their attempt to reverse-engineer language.
And they use it much like we use language. Dogs use barking to
communicate with each other and to communicate with humans.
This discussion will continue next week. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. A CIVIL ACTION (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A successful but unscrupulous personal
injury lawyer takes on an environmental case
and soon finds that he and his law firm may be
in over their heads. Stephen Zaillian writes
the screenplay as well as directs an excellent
supporting cast in a true and realistic story
of a civil action case. The film may even
sacrifice dramatic impact for accuracy. This
may well not be the story the viewer is
expecting, but it will be an education in how
the law works. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to
+4)
New York Critics: 10 positive, 0 negative, 7
mixed
Stephen Zaillian has written some of the most intelligent
screenplays to be made into films in the last several years. He
wrote SCHINDLER'S LIST and SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER. The latter
he also directed. His second directing project A CIVIL ACTION. He
is again directing his own script, a very nuts-and-bolts look at a
civil action against two major corporations as seen through the
eyes of the lawyer who brought the action and risked his law firm
and his career on the case. The film is based on the book A CIVIL
ACTION by Jonathan Harr.
The film's first moments are among its most chilling as the voice
of Jan Schlichtmann (played by John Travolta) gives us "the
calculus of personal injury," a litany of cold rules for figuring
the settlement a personal action suit. A victim who is alive and
suffering pays off better than one who is dead. A male victim will
pay better than a woman will and a child will pay least of all. As
he explains the rules we see how he plays for a jury's sympathy in
order to squeeze more money from a defendant.
Schlichtmann's law firm is considering a case from Woburn,
Massachusetts, where eight children have died of leukemia. It
sounds like just the sort of idealistic case everyone would assume
lawyers should take, but several law firms have already turned down
the case. Schlichtmann is also inclined to refuse the case until
he discovers that there are two major corporations involved.
(Apparently no names have been changed, by the way. Certainly all
the major characters have the same names as the principal in the
original court case. The viewer will probably recognize the names
of the corporations.) Schlichtmann attacks the case in the only
way that he knows how, launching a multi-million dollar
investigation in the hopes that a sufficiently large settlement
will pay off the investigation costs. This is not the story the
viewer expects. A lot of it is about the financial gamble of
environmental litigation. The huge commissions charged by the
legal trade are seen not so much as greed but as the pay off of a
very big investment. In its own way this is one of the most
positive films ever made about the legal profession.
As with SCHINDLER'S LIST we never actually see when Schlichtmann's
motivation changes from being purely financial to idealism, but
eventually his outrage is obvious. However, his crusade will bring
him in direct conflict with eccentric legal genius Jerome Facher
(not unexpectedly well-acted by Robert Duvall). In the film Facher
plays law the way Bobby Fischer plays chess, repeatedly trying to
get under his opponent's skin.
John Travolta is sufficient for this role, but never manages to do
anything beyond the obvious. He just wears a suit well and looks
reasonably sophisticated. But Robert Duvall really is a brilliant
actor, and here he has to take an eccentric and make him seem
formidable. That he does quite nicely. William H. Macy's role as
accountant for Schlichtmann's law firm seems a little overplayed,
but there is nice support by Tony Shalhoub and especially James
Gandolfini who plays with real sincerity. It would be nice to see
Dan Hedaya in a sympathetic role for once, but this is not it. He
seems condemned to always play characters seething with inner rage.
But Duvall steals the show.
Conrad Hall's camerawork is a little showy. He intentionally
under-lights any courtroom scene. Half of an actor's face will be
lit as if carved out of the darkness. The score by Danny Elfman
shows more control than he usually has, but the end-credit song by
Talking Heads seems jarringly out of place. In all this may well
be the most sympathetic and at the same time frightening film about
the legal profession since THE PAPER CHASE. I give it a 7 on the 0
to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
For one good description of the actual case see
http://www2.shore.net/~dkennedy/woburn_trial.html. This site is
authored by Dan Kennedy, who was a reporter at the Woburn trial.
Included at the site is the questionnaire that plays a part in the
movie. For more information you can also see
http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/courtroom/. And for greater
detail see the book on which the film was based. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely,
the frayed, and the rejected.
-- Jimmy Cannon
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