What vice does each relationship Doc have represent? The whole frame of speaking about virtue is perhaps more of a square community narrative, but I think there is a sense where ethics can step out of lifestyle, sect, background, and class.
Shasta is youth and lack of loyalty, chasing money. The virtue is loyalty, love. The movie has them getting back together in the end, like all Hollywood ending, they are false and feel good pablum.
Wolfmann's vice is that his reform is too late, like Lee Atwater. And then the forces of capitalism send him to a sanitorium to neutralize his insights perhaps gained from drugs. The virtue is generosity, the kindness of building good housing at an affordable rate.
Sloane is glamour and again loyalty. She loves Mickey but she has her side piece. They're the swingers who stay together. It's hard to stay together around money and the sexual revolution, the changing times.
There are a host of women who's vice is promiscuity, though I don't consider that a vice. It's made to be a vice in Christianity, but I'm not a Christian. The women include Luz, Shasta, Jade, Bambi, Hope, Motella, Lordes, Clancy Charlock (threesomes), Trillion Fortnight (anal), Xandra, Lark. These characters represent the author's sexism, and the idea that a good story needs a lot of eager sexpots. The virtue is respecting female sexuality and the desire for intimacy. Sex positive instead of kink shaming.
There are the guys who have sex with these women. Cookie and Joaquin. They're mostly innocents who come back from Vietnam and seek company. Osgood. Macho men. Puck likes macho men, and Puck is bi and gets into fights with his lover about who is more macho. That is the confusion of traditional gender and toxic masculinity.
All the cops represent corruption and using power for one's own selfish ends. That includes Pat Doubonet and Bigfoot. The virtue is integrity and service for others. This goes from city to federal level with Flatweed and Borderline.
Bigfoot represents lack of clarity and interest in doing the good. He mistakes lifestyle for virtue,
Sancho represents friendship. He helps Doc and isn't really paid. I think him and Jade are the most innocent in the whole thing, though they are whores who sell themselves to the highest bidders.
There's a whole raft of hippy friends from the beach: Scott Oof, Lefty, Flip, Flaco the Bad, Downstairs Eddie, Spike and Sortilege. Sortilege is the oracle, or one removed from the guru Vehi Fairfield, who provide cockamamie theories and charge for them, just another form of grifting. But Vehi Fairfield might also be a shaman who offers some insights.
Cartel runners like Blondie-san and his henchmen are evil because they profit off of illegal activity, with kickbacks to cops.
There are tough guys that enforce and protect, that are not cops like Glen Charlock. Or underworld dealer Adrian Prussia and his henchmen. They are the Charles Mansons, anti-social personality disorder. They haven't figured out how to transcend their childhood trauma, and perhaps were unwanted children. Abortion really cut down on crime because unwanted children were not being born, and it's the 70's when birth control becomes more available along with the sexual revolution.
Elmina Breeze is his mother and Leo Sportello is his father. They seem clueless, sort of like Japonica's father Crocker Fenway. Overreacting and not knowing what is going on, and in the earlier years is neglect. Children aren't given the resources in our society because they don't work yet. They have more value than the other non-workers because the hope is they could potentially work some day. The virtues of a good parent are many, but present and willing are the root ones.
Tito Stavrou, and virtually everyone else represents addiction. The virtue they miss is sobriety. Simplicity, stillness and contentment.
All these vices come about because of capitalism and living in the power mode instead of the love mode. The hippy is trying to get to the love mode, but they are too stoned and therefore selfish, ineffective, though at least they have the insights of acid. Wojiciech Frykowski is coming off a 10 day trip when the family kill him (Chaos by Tom O'Neil).
Jason Velveeta is an ineffectual wannabe pimp because he lacks to the viciousness of a pimp, nobody takes him seriously. In capitalism he's unsuccessful because he's human. He sees vertical integration and wants in. The dealers make money through the drugs and then through the rehab centers. Spiritual materialism takes it's cut.
The problem in addiction is lack of a higher power. And not some square community conformity god. It's about real spirituality, real honoring the self and what is great and good. The inherent virtue humanity strives for. Joan Didion will declare the summer of love over when the Manson trial begins in July 1970. They see hippyism as nihilism, when that was just nihilists engaging in a hippy cover. The cultural wars are like sharks fighting over chum.
Culture flourishes in the affluence. Music, is just another mode for getting laid. In the movie the keyboardist is sitting next to a topless women. The movie seems less subtle, but drives the point home more. The movie is more explicit about drugs. Visually draws out the conflict between square society and hippy society. The sanitarium has the slogan: Straight Is Hip. They run anti-communist movies that Joseph McCarthy would have loved.
I think we're heading into another McCarthyism period, as the excesses of capitalism become more apparent in another gilded age. This one is accelerated by the internet and the free flow of information.
Today's recasting of this conflict is progressive versus conservative, though conservatives probably resent being lumped in with Republicans. On one side you have the money taking politicians who vote against the people's best interest under the philosophical guise of being against government. So we have lots of fixable problems like gun violence, premature deaths for lack of health care, pollution and unhealthy foods make money, as we kill the planet we live on. I think the leaders are going to become more vicious, greedy and selfish as climate crisis torques up the class warfare. I hope we can move towards liberation with sobriety, but I doubt it with marijuana being legalized everywhere, in chaotic fits and starts. Hallucinogens are more utilized.
What would a society be like that encourages virtue, that isn't just measured by bank accounts? What kinds of system of love, support and caring are cropping up to counter greed, addiction, misinformation and confusion?
Aimee Semple McPherson seems to be part of the sensual charisma of higher power. An early woman preacher in the 20's and 30's of Los Angeles. I had to look her up when I saw a reference to her in Inherent Vice. Her Pentecostal church seems to continue to thrive.
There are charismatic women Buddhist leaders today. I like that Christina Feldman doesn't have that goofy I'm spiritual smile. Tara Brach isn't on the list from 2010, but I think she has some good teachings. I feel like Pema Chodron's days are past.
You're your greatest working ground, you need independence, and to teach yourself. I think we can draw from all spirituality.
Doc is the stoner with virtue. He keeps grinding and in the end he gets Coy home. He suggests Lark pursue her interest in music. He lets go of Shasta, doesn't try to detain her or control her. He didn't pass her around like Mickey did (according to the movie). Doc only allows himself one evil grin a week, enjoying someone else's misfortune.
When information isn't just the 4 network news, a whole lot of shit is going to come out. Of course there's the people who are against thinking about all the things that are coming up. The head in the sand crowd. Maybe you have to be high to see everything that is going on. The problem of horrified anxiety at seeing the suffering in the world. It's Matthew McConaughey, right winger, asking for gun control. In Florida the thought police are banning books and things teachers can discuss. In England they're banning explicit vegan ads. You can't ban the information on the internet.
It calls for a new era of virtue, discipline, intelligence and empathy.
The inherent vice of using cute women to sell movies... Camera shooting up the skirt, not showing Doc see it but just for the audience. The fantasy of available women who just want it. Mara's daughters.
In these Russian supported hyper partisan times, the vice will align with your politics. Either they're hippy tantrums or signs of problems in society.
“For years now under everybody’s nose there’s been all this class hatred, slowly building. Where do you think that’s heading?”
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