Wow - the author of this review certainly seems to have very strong opinions about Rand and her work, considering the admission regarding "what little of her prose I’ve managed to force myself through." S/He's barely read Rand - but the expressed opinions about Rand's writing and thinking are certainly more definite than such a glancing acquaintanceship would suggest possible.
Clearly, an agenda is at work in this review which has little to do with the movie. In fact, as this reviewer admits "I’ve written half this movie review without saying much about the movie" - indeed, s/he spends the first half demonizing Rand, and then continues to do so in the second half.
There review also clearly misunderstands the entire premise of 'The Virtue of Selfishness' (we'll kindly assume this was one of her works s/he failed to, err, force his or her way through which is no surprise - I've read it and it is very dense, intellectually).
Whatever Rand's foibles (and they were many - I am NOT a big fan of hers), she was by all accounts a remarkably intelligent woman, spoke and read several languages, etc, so to see some writer for an obscure website castigate her as 'shallow' and a 'lousy thinker' with 'dumb ideas' is amusing.
Here's an example - the reviewer asks, sarcastically: "what would we poor plebes do if our titans of Wall Street and Walmart packed up their credit default swaps and cheap Chinese trinkets and moved to Machu Picchu?"
In fact, in the Randian worldview, the titans of Wall St and Walmart would be classified among the moochers and looters (those who use the government's levers of power to gain unearned benefits) - that is, they would be among those left behind when the productive members of society vanished into Galt's Gulch. So the reviewer is completely befuddled and does not even grasp the most basic premise of the work. Rand would never in a million years claim that corporations who lobbied for bailouts were the Galt type! It's exactly opposite her thinking! It's hard to get this much more wrong than this reviewer has - and this seems to be due to blinders going in. After all, we humans do tend to see that which we expect to see, whether it is there or not. My guess is that the reviewer already had most of this review written inside his or her head before viewing the movie - and went in looking for evidence to support his or her views - and, not surprisingly, found it.
Maybe the reviewer should have put a little more effort into his/her past attempts to force their way through that 'potboiler' stuff - at least to the point where s/he grasped the arguments Rand was actually making - because the misunderstanding on public display here is absolutely fundamental.
When I come across such an attack/agenda masquerading as a review, it always seems to me that it says more about the reviewer than it does about the film. That's pretty clearly the case here.
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ozzy43 writes:
Wow - the author of this review certainly seems to have very strong opinions about Rand and her work, considering the admission regarding "what little of her prose I’ve managed to force myself through." S/He's barely read Rand - but the expressed opinions about Rand's writing and thinking are certainly more definite than such a glancing acquaintanceship would suggest possible.
Clearly, an agenda is at work in this review which has little to do with the movie. In fact, as this reviewer admits "I’ve written half this movie review without saying much about the movie" - indeed, s/he spends the first half demonizing Rand, and then continues to do so in the second half.
There review also clearly misunderstands the entire premise of 'The Virtue of Selfishness' (we'll kindly assume this was one of her works s/he failed to, err, force his or her way through which is no surprise - I've read it and it is very dense, intellectually).
Whatever Rand's foibles (and they were many - I am NOT a big fan of hers), she was by all accounts a remarkably intelligent woman, spoke and read several languages, etc, so to see some writer for an obscure website castigate her as 'shallow' and a 'lousy thinker' with 'dumb ideas' is amusing.
Here's an example - the reviewer asks, sarcastically: "what would we poor plebes do if our titans of Wall Street and Walmart packed up their credit default swaps and cheap Chinese trinkets and moved to Machu Picchu?"
In fact, in the Randian worldview, the titans of Wall St and Walmart would be classified among the moochers and looters (those who use the government's levers of power to gain unearned benefits) - that is, they would be among those left behind when the productive members of society vanished into Galt's Gulch. So the reviewer is completely befuddled and does not even grasp the most basic premise of the work. Rand would never in a million years claim that corporations who lobbied for bailouts were the Galt type! It's exactly opposite her thinking! It's hard to get this much more wrong than this reviewer has - and this seems to be due to blinders going in. After all, we humans do tend to see that which we expect to see, whether it is there or not. My guess is that the reviewer already had most of this review written inside his or her head before viewing the movie - and went in looking for evidence to support his or her views - and, not surprisingly, found it.
Maybe the reviewer should have put a little more effort into his/her past attempts to force their way through that 'potboiler' stuff - at least to the point where s/he grasped the arguments Rand was actually making - because the misunderstanding on public display here is absolutely fundamental.
When I come across such an attack/agenda masquerading as a review, it always seems to me that it says more about the reviewer than it does about the film. That's pretty clearly the case here.
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.