I've Been Ayn Randed and Billy Graham'ded, I'm Communist 'Cause I'm Left-Handed

I recently watched the movie version of The Fountainhead. And I think I can now say, with perfect confidence, that Ayn Rand can bite me.

Prior to this, I knew effectively nothing about Ms. Rand. I had never read any of her work, had never had any conversations about her that went beyond "You should read such-and-such." Never looked her up in an encyclopedia, never read any articles about her, never watched Biography Channel programs about her, never ran across anything about Objectivism in any works on philosophy. I had a vague sense that her work was controversial, and that was absolutely it.

So I really truly did come to The Fountainhead with an open mind. Ten minutes later...

Apparently, the history of the movie is this: the novel was very popular, so Ms. Rand was hired to write the script, and she demanded that there be no interference whatsoever with what she wrote. (Exactly the sorts of demands Howard Roark makes repeatedly.) When the director, King Vidor, trying his level best to make a movie, tried to tighten up that nearly six-minute speech she'd written for the end, Rand threw a fit, went to the head of the studio, demanded that Vidor film only and exactly what she had written, word for word, and got her way.

The result is awful. It's a bad, bad, bad movie, entirely because of the script. (I will submit that Gary Cooper's particularly wooden performance had a lot to do with his dislike of the script.) Leaving aside for the moment the philosophy espoused in the film, my initial adverse reaction was purely as a writer responding to the writing. And bear in mind, I'm not complaining because the film is preachy and didactic--I'm a huge fan of Bernard Shaw, and no one can ever say that Shaw wasn't preachy and didactic (the plot of Man and Superman is interrupted for about an hour by a speechfest called "Don Juan in Hell"). But Shaw had a sense of humor, and Rand doesn't at all. This makes a huge difference. Shaw was also a much better writer of dialogue, which is partly a function of his sense of humor, but it goes deeper than that--writing dialogue is a specialized skill, and clearly, Shaw had mastered it and Rand hadn't.

To be fair, I've still never read any of Rand's prose, and it may be that she was a good novelist but a bad screenwriter. I'm completely happy to accept, for the moment, that this is true, and to move on.

But here's the thing: the whole philosophy espoused by the movie is that the individual artist must never be interfered with in any way, that only the pure, untrampled creations of such artists can ever advance art and society. And this movie? It's a bad movie. By being left alone to create exactly what she wanted, without interference, Ayn Rand wrote a bad movie. The work itself completely undermines the very idea it seeks to advance.

Probably the reason why my dad has from time to time suggested I read Ms. Rand's work is because I seem to share her affinity for the supremacy of the artist. I am, after all, the writer of Thereby Hangs a Tale, which is a challenging novel written very much according to its own dictates, and resolutely not a casual beach-read. But at the same time, I'm also a former actor, and one thing I learned very clearly in my days on the stage is that the work isn't for the performer, it's for the audience. A bad actor is one who is only interested in exploring his own psyche onstage, which is that peculiar form of Narcissism that insists that the rest of the world watch the actor love himself.

Ms. Rand's architect, Howard Roark, continually insists that his buildings be constructed as designed, and he refuses to ever consider any other points of view about what's in his designs. (The movie stacks the argument ridiculously: opposing points of view are never balanced or thoughtful, they are only deadly literal recitations like this one: "You can't hope to survive unless you learn how to compromise. Now, watch me! In just a few short years I'll shoot to the top of the architectural profession because I'm going to give the public what it wants.") Since his opponents are all manifest idiots, there's never any real Socratic dialogue, never any attempt to play one idea against another in order to arrive at a new truth--art here is an excuse for a predetermined ideological position, which is exactly why it fails as art--and, again, undermines Rand's own purpose. Roark is that bad actor, just as Rand is--they're not actually interested in the art for its own sake, they're only interested in their own self-aggrandizing freedom of expression at all costs.

To be Buddhist about it, the thing that is most missing from Rand's work is any sense of humility. A humble artist can still insist on the importance of following his own muse without allowing it to be watered down, but the key to that is to let the work itself lead where it must, without imposing preconditions on it--without insisting that the art support your philosophy of Objectivism, for example.

Again, we come to Shaw. You might well ask, isn't that exactly what Shaw's plays did? Weren't they often just excuses for him to espouse Socialism, or some other pet theory he had? In rebuttal, I will only offer Saint Joan. The reason why it's his best play, I've often thought, is because Joan surprised Shaw--that he originally wanted to write the play for didactic reasons, but as he went along the work started to take him to different places, places that surprised him. The character came alive, and he was a great enough artist to let that happen, to let the work lead him where it would, and didn't try to wrest control of it back to his ideological purpose. That is what makes great art--being humble enough to let the universe speak to you, to accept that you are not superman, that you don't know everything, and that sometimes the work is best when you just get the hell out of its way.

Plus, there's nothing at all wrong with finding some smart people whose opinions you respect and asking them what they think of the work you've made. Thereby is definitely a better work because I sought, and respected, and incorporated, the opinions of some very smart people.

There's more. I've now read up on Ms. Rand, and Objectivism. I can certainly see why someone who was a child in St. Petersburg during the 1917 revolution would come to hate any form of collectivism, and I certainly feel some empathy for how she came to reach that conclusion. But I can also see that she swung so far in the other direction that Objectivism became one short step away from Fascism, and it now comes as no surprise to discover that proponents of laissez-faire capitalism (Alan Greenspan, Dick Cheney, etc.) are huge fans of Ayn Rand. Her work often appeals to just the sort of person who has no humility, who believes himself to be a superman who must never be interfered with, who feels no need to "cater to the stinking masses." Her work becomes, in essence, one of the excuses they use to convince themselves that their own personal Fascism is perfectly okay, that they best serve society by ignoring society. And that's just plain wrong. There's a balance to be struck, and it's a difficult balance to be sure--but without the essential thing, without a little humility, listening to Ayn Rand will only lead you way down a dark, dark road.

Or, to say it again: Ayn Rand can bite me.