Why The Aviator Didn't Fly

by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D.

I had this empty feeling when I left the theater after watching Martin
Scorcese's biopic about Howard Hughes, The Aviator. It wasn't the worst
movie I had ever seen. In fact as movies go it was fairly good. I went
because the reviewer at Chronicles recommended it. He kept referring to it
in the same breath as Citizen Kane, and I suppose that was at least one of
the movies Scorcese had in mind when he decided to take on a larger than
life figure like Howard Hughes. The special effects were great, but all
Hollywood movies have great special effects. In fact, a possible definition
of a Hollywood movie could be a film with great special effects but a
defective plot, which could also serve as a good definition of life in
America. But why did I have this sense of eerie incoherence when the final
credits started rolling up the screen? What was keeping me from dismissing
The Aviator as just a more factual version of Star Wars, the ultimate
American movie, one which is all special effects and no plot whatsoever.

In order to plumb my perplexity, I began to reassemble the movie in my mind.
If it's about anything, The Aviator is an anatomy of Hughes' madness. Hughes
screws lots of beautiful women but ends up worrying about germs on
doorknobs. He produces films and builds airplanes but ends up a naked
recluse in a room covered with the tissues he uses to touch potentially
germ-laden objects. He beats Pan Am at their own corrupt game, but he
shuffles around his room in wearing shoe boxes for shoes. At one point,
after Kate Hepburn leaves him, he burns all his clothes. In order to make a
stab at explaining all of this bizarre behavior, Scorcese begins the movie
by treating us to a scene of little Howard being bathed by his mother, who
warns him he is not safe because of all the germs out there. The key to
understanding Hughes' madness, in other words, is Freud. Howard was too
attached to his mother. He wanted to kill his father and marry his mother.
Because of this he was afraid of germs and went mad.

If you find that explanation implausible, so do I. It has all of the
earmarks of a Hollywood explanation, i.e., something imposed from without by
a universally recognized authority which really has nothing to do with the
plot it is supposed to explain (or, in the case of Freud, any other plot as
well, including Oedipus Rex). The answer to this riddle is in the
biographies which Scorcese pillages to make his film. I will be honest with
you though. Like some heroic Oedipus, I solved the Hughes riddle before we
got home from the theater, simply by adding up what Scorcese threw into the
movie but did not explain. What do compulsive womanizing and compulsive
handwashing have in common? What is the link between hearing loss, fear of
germs, grandiose projects like the Spruce Goose, whose one hundred yard leap
into the air provides the climax to the film, and madness. The answer is
obvious for anyone with eyes to see, namely, syphilis. Howard Hughes had
syphilis. Martin Scorcese has made a movie about syphilis without once
mentioning the disease. He has done the biographical version of King Kong
without the monkey.

To get back to the film, the clothes-burning incident is in Charles Higham's
biography The Secret Life of Howard Hughes, which is evidently where
Scorcese got it, but with one small difference. Hughes, in the process of
throwing all of his clothes into a fire, is interrupted by one of his
employees, who asks if he can have Hughes' leather jacket before he destroys
it. "Not unless you want to get syphilis," Hughes answers. Once we add the
word syphilis to The Aviator, the story of Hughes' life suddenly makes
sense. People who are afraid of picking up germs from doorknobs do not
engage in promiscuous sex, but if we put the incidents in Hughes' life in
their proper causal relationship, it is easy to see that someone who
contracted a venereal disease through promiscuous sexual intercourse might
then become afraid of all physical contact as a result. Hughes' compulsive
handwashing just seems crazy in Scorcese' re-enactment of his life, but
obsessive compulsive disorder makes sense in light of syphilis, even in the
absence of a deteriorating brain, one of the symptoms of tertiary syphilis.

This brings us to the next question. Why did Martin Scorcese, who was
reportedly furious over the fact that he got passed over once again when the
Oscar for best director went to Clint Eastwood, wreck his own story by
leaving out the only element that could make sense of Hughes' life? We have
dealt with related questions before. Fifteen years ago (see "Marty's
Christ," Fidelity, November 1989), I did a long article on Scorcese's film
The Last Temptation of Christ. At that time the question was, why does
Martin Scorcese want to make Jesus Christ look like a pathetic loser, a man
not unlike the character Travis Bickle, played by Robert de Niro in
Scorcese's early film Taxi Driver. The answer to that question is fairly
simple. Scorcese had just broken up with his third wife at the time; he had
just finished his "rockumentary" The Last Waltz and had moved in with the
main character in that documentary Jaime "Robbie" Robertson of The Band,
and the two of them were conducting marathon drug and sex orgies in their
Bel Air, California home. Scorcese, the man who was a Catholic seminarian
in his youth, found that portraying Christ as a pathetic loser who had an
affair with Mary Magdalene and then forced her into a life of prostitution
by jilting her was consoling. Why? Because if Christ was an idiot, why
should Scorcese feel bad about rejecting his teaching?

The situation with The Aviator is not quite so simple. Jesus Christ is
simply an empty vessel onto which Scorcese projects his guilty conscience.
Scorcese obviously relates sympathetically to Hughes' womanizing, but there
is no indication that Scorcese has syphilis as far as I know. Why then the
suppression of this fact? The suppression is especially telling in the light
of the Hollywood ethos of full disclosure, the rationale that was used to
break the production code in the '60s. "It's part of life," the codebreakers
used to tell Joe Breen throughout the '50s. Breen replied by saying that the
bowel movement he had everyday was part of life too, but no one was
proposing to make a movie out of it. Hollywood, we are told in just about
every history of the film industry in America, needed to break away from the
oppressive censorship of Catholics like Production Code enforcer Joe Breen
so that they could make films that were true to life.

Well, 40 years after the code got broken, Hollywood is still involved in
censorship, but now it is not obscenity which gets censored, it is the idea
that "actions have consequences," to paraphrase Richard Weaver.
Scorcese can't bring himself to admit, in his film, that Howard Hughes
screwed a lot of women, contracted syphilis and went crazy, but he can't
completely avoid making that statement either. As a result, he simply wrecks
his own story. Why is he drawn to Hughes' life if he can't portray it as it
was? Why did Jonathan Harker in Dracula, another book about syphilis,
say to Minna after he had spent a night with three strange women in
Dracula's castle, "Here is my diary. Do not read it."? Because, as I said
in Monsters from the Id, some things are too painful to talk about but too
painful not to talk about as well. The suppression of moral causality on
a scale of this magnitude proves what truly moral creatures we are, but
in a perverse way.

The Aviator was especially interesting in light of one of the less-acclaimed
biopics of the same year, namely, Kinsey, starring a generally wooden and
glum Liam Neeson. (If you had to face a script like Kinsey, you would be
glum too.) Alfred Kinsey is portrayed as a courageous scientist who had the
courage to pursue his studies and break irrational sexual taboos. The Kinsey
you get in Kinsey is essentially the guy featured on the cover of Time
magazine in 1953 when the female volume came out. This is the man who
champions "diversity," because in nature there is nothing but diversity,
something Kinsey concluded by studying gall wasps. Or by engaging in
homosexual behavior. Of course, that Kinsey was never mentioned in Time,
largely because every article that got written on him was personally vetted
by Kinsey himself, often after he took the sexual history of the reporter.
Blackmail is a theme which goes unmentioned in Kinsey, but it informs the
Kinsey story every bit as much as syphilis informs The Aviator.

There is, of course, a syphilis sequence in *Kinsey*. I have talked with
nurses who graduated from Indiana University who were forced to watch films
of syphilitic prostitutes having sex. They were forced to watch these films
largely because of Kinsey's influence at IU as part of their education. Just
what medical benefit they derived from this is hard to say although it
should be perfectly clear that propaganda of this sort certainly broke down
any resistance they might have had to what Professor Kinsey, the
disinterested scientist who happened to be obsessed with homosexual
eroticism, might have had to say. If it did nothing else, the film derailed
any objections they might have had to Kinsey's idea of "diversity" as the
bedrock of human life.

It is the bad sex educator in *Kinsey* who shows films about syphilis, and
we know he is a bad person because he drags morals into his sex ed
course. He is bad because he proposes "abstinence" as the best
prophylactic against syphilis. Kinsey, of course, promotes penicillin, even
though at the time of the sex ed course, which is to say in the '30s, it was
not available to IU students or anyone else for that matter. Deb Hayden,
who has written a book on syphilis which was reviewed in these pages,
says that "What constitutes adequate treatment" of syphilis "remains an
open question since spirochetes shed round bodies that can appear as
active spirochetes later in a cycle. Tissue from rabbits treated with
penicillin and then injected into healthy rabbits can cause syphilis. The
concept of 'cure' at any stage of the disease is controversial." So much
for penicillin as Kinsey's silver bullet. Kinsey is the good sex educator
because he attacks morality as out of place in this area of life. "We have
technology; we don't need morals," is not something Kinsey says in the
movie, but the movie is suffused with that idea because it is one of the
primary myths of both the Enlightenment (as proclaimed by the Marquis
de Sade) and the American version of it which uprooted traditional
American mores and morals in the years following World War II.

Syphilis was decertified as a moral cautionary tale by penicillin, long
before the same thing happened to AIDS. In fact the whole AIDS virus myth,
created at a news conference by Margaret Heckler in 1984, was precisely the
syphilis story extrapolated to another disease. The virus was convenient in
this regard because it let homosexuals off the hook of their behavior, which
was the real reason they were dying. Polite people did not say that the
wages of sin were death in the context of AIDS, which was real enough as a
form of self-induced poisoning among homosexuals even if it wasn't caused by
a virus. Syphilis is mentioned in *Kinsey* and banned from *The Aviator*
for the same reason -- to break its link to moral causality.

And why is moral causality so repugnant to Hollywood? Because it is the only
thing that allows people to make sense out of their lives. Hollywood is in
the business of control through entertainment. Morality is the opposite of
that. It is autonomy through restraint. Hollywood's main weapon against
moral causality is pornography in its various forms because passion
short-circuits reason and provides the simplest form of control. But their
lust to dominate goes beyond that. The thread that leads Theseus out of the
labyrinth of his own passion is practical reason, which is another word for
morality. Syphilis was a moral tale that got decertified in two different
ways in two different movies. Which shows how important it is to those who
are willing to wreck their stories and lose Oscars by not mentioning it.

At this point, it might be appropriate to mention successful cures, not to
syphilis but to what causes syphilis, namely, movies. The antidote to
Hollywood used to be known as the pledge, not the Alcohol pledge (although
it was similar) but the Legion of Decency pledge not to see obscene movies.
The Legion of Decency Pledge was the teeth in the production code. I've
written about its demise in John Cardinal Krol and the Cultural Revolution.
The pledge is based on the premise of moral causality, the one premise which
Hollywood goes out of its way to deny, even if it means wrecking perfectly
good stories that could earn lots of money. As Larry Dickson has pointed
out, an oath is the only thing that most people have. The only oath of any
significance left in our culture is the marriage vow, which is undermined by
Hollywood because Hollywood wants to weaken and control people by robbing
their lives of moral significance. The pledge is the one thing Hollywood
feared in the past, and it is something they can learn to fear again. The
details still need to be worked out, but a pledge of total abstinence when
it comes to television might be a good place to start.

E. Michael Jones, Ph.D. is the editor of Culture Wars.

This article was published in the May, 2005 issue of Culture Wars.
http://www.culturewars.com/2005/Aviator.htm

Dire Straits:

The watchdog's got rabies the foreman's got fleas
And everyone's concerned about industrial disease
There's panic on the switchboard tongues are ties in knots
Some come out in sympathy some come out in spots
Some blame the management some the employees
And everybody knows it's the industrial disease

The work force is disgusted downs tools and walks
Innocence is injured experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
That these are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze
On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless theology is worse
History boils over there's an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease

Doctor Parkinson declared I'm not surprised to see you here
You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewers droop from drinking beer
I don't know how you came to get the Betty Davis knees
But worst of all young man you've got industrial disease
He wrote me a prescription he said you are depressed
But I'm glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later - next patient please
Send in another victim of industrial disease

...

They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in Espana and Sunday striptease

Dire Straits:

Get your money for nothing, dicks for free.
We got to install microwave ovens,
Got to move these digital TVs.
Now that we're indebted to the coven,
We got to keep away the Spanish flu,
Be one step ahead of them blues.

coven, n.
an assembly of witches.

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War,
known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million
people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world
history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years
of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu"
or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

...

In 1918-19 this deadly influenza pandemic erupted during the final stages of
World War I. Nations were already attempting to deal with the effects and
costs of the war. Propaganda campaigns and war restrictions and rations had
been implemented by governments. Nationalism pervaded as people accepted
government authority. This allowed the public health departments to easily
step in and implement their restrictive measures. The war also gave science
greater importance as governments relied on scientists, now armed with the
new germ theory and the development of antiseptic surgery, to design
vaccines and reduce mortalities of disease and battle wounds. Their new
technologies could preserve the men on the front and ultimately save the
world. These conditions created by World War I, together with the current
social attitudes and ideas, led to the relatively calm response of the
public and application of scientific ideas. People allowed for strict
measures and loss of freedom during the war as they submitted to the needs
of the nation ahead of their personal needs. They had accepted the
limitations placed with rationing and drafting. The responses of the public
health officials reflected the new allegiance to science and the wartime
society. The medical and scientific communities had developed new theories
and applied them to prevention, diagnostics and treatment of the influenza
patients.

[end of article]

At 6:40 am (April 29, 2007), the Holy Ghost prompted me to include
this revelation of Jesus Christ on the AIDS plague:

SECTION 58.

REVELATION ON AIDS AND THE NEW AGE

Received February 10, 1987; Salt Lake City, Utah.

1 Thus saith the Lord concerning that new age which ye imagine up in thy
heart that God is a woman, saith the Lord, and create a God in thy image,
because ye are effeminate and weak: Yea, thus saith the Lord, thy liberality
in the which ye flatter thyselves in the which ye think, saith the Lord,
that ye assail heaven with thy false science, and thy vanity, shall be swept
from under heaven by the plague that thy science, O Babylon hath no cure,
for ye shall fall victim unto it that it verily sweepeth the earth, O vain
man and woman that flattereth thyself with thy ignorance as to my power.

2 For I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and I am the same yesterday,
today, and forever and change not according to the vain and foolish
doctrines of men.

3 Even so, the earth is defiled under the curse thereof, for ye have changed
the ordinances and ye have defiled the earth, and have broken the New and
Everlasting Covenant, and my wrath, saith the Lord is upon thee O man, yea,
even unto the destruction of thy body with what ye call aids, saith the
Lord, but is that plague decreed, as also the destruction of thy soul in
hell with the punishment thereof, that ye be anhialated that ye lose thine
identity according to the death of the spirit, yea which death is verily the
second death.

4 And ye shall not be remembered at all, for ye, O vain man, have defiled
the earth with thy science, as them before the flood, and ye have defiled
the earth with thy inaccurate knowledge concerning the real power.

5 For I am a God of battles, saith the Lord, and I love the confusion and
the noise and the slaughter of the battle, and the song thereof.

6 For I am God, and regard not the persons of men, in thy vain politic,
saith the Lord, but I change not, and am no respector of persons or
generations.

7 Even so, join with me, O man and O woman, and ye shall be destroyed.

8 For ye shall see in a little while that the Lord omnipotent reigneth in
the heavens above and the earth beneath, and there is none beside me in the
might of mine arm as it falleth upon thee even now and upon thy nation, O
foolish Gentile Dog.

9 For ye did murder also John Singer because of these things.

10 And thy new age, saith the Lord, is illegal, for I the God of Isaiah,
Ezekial and Jeremiah speak only through the medium of mine appointment which
ye, O Gentile are ignorant, and I am not a woman, but am a warrior, and the
medium of mine appointment, is the Holy Order of God, which is after the
Order of the Ancients.

11 Even so. Amen.

Revelations of Jesus Christ 58:1-11

12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, [that] when the Lord hath performed his
whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the
stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.

13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done [it], and by my
wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and
have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a
valiant [man]:

14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one
gathereth eggs [that are] left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was
none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.

15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? [or] shall
the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should
shake [itself] against them that lift it up, [or] as if the staff should
lift up [itself, as if it were] no wood.

16 Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones
leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of
a fire.

17 And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a
flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day;

18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field,
both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth.

19 And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may
write them.

20