Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 4 January 2005
Sunday night I watched M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable," which is, like all his films, made up of a host of beautifully directed and acted scenes. You can either get into his gotcha endings or you can find them too quirky, but there's no denying that this guy gets the best performances out of people. If I were an actor, I'd jump at doing anything with him—he's just that good.
I love the second discs of Shyamalan's DVDs, because he always gives a personal introduction to all his deleted scenes. Most of the deleted scenes are awesome little bits that make you wonder why in God's name he cut them. He always has very good reasons, but they're just so brutal in their logic. You really have to respect an artist who's that honest and self-critical regarding his material.
I make a point of watching his films and going over his deleted scenes before I sit down for any writing project. That's because they put my mind in such a strong frame of reference regarding my own material, forcing me to think like he does about ruthlessly pruning material if it's not just right for where it lies in the book.
More to the point, Mark Warren really plays that role for me, and he is brutally honest and ruthlessly thorough in his deleted scene decisions. I know some readers and reviewers criticize PNM for including parts that are career narrative, but Mark was very systematic in that approach, crafting the whole book so its main character, the strategist, was front and center only as much as required to explain the intellectual journey that brought about the vision. In that quest, Mark cut a lot of stuff I really treasured, but he always had very good reasons, and remembering Shyamalan's logic, I always accepted those cuts, M. Night's reasoning being, if you can't cut your most treasured pieces, then you're not cut out to edit your own material.
What I also like about Shyamalan's direction is his focus on crafting every single scene for maximum impact. I try to do with each paragraph whenever I write, and I think it really pays off in terms of discipline, which is a quality I admire greatly in his films—that sense of unity of artistic purpose.
The upcoming piece in Esquire suffered some brutal editing by Mark, in his own words, because the original text had almost 0% body fat. I blanched at all the cuts at first, but over a few days, I came to appreciate Mark made, because in the end, the piece's unity of purpose is that much stronger—like a Shyamalan film.
I'm hoping we get to butt heads incessantly on this book for all the same reasons: I'm writing with low body fat, and Mark is ruthless on unity of purpose. I think it will end up being more like that on this piece, simply because this is a very focused sequel. I think I know what that focus is, but I imagine Mark has his own definition as well, as does Neil Nyren at Putnam. I am greatly intrigued to see how those competing definitions will all match up. Not nervous—just truly intrigued.
It should be a very interesting creative process from stem to stern.
What follows below is an op-ed I published yesterday in the Baltimore Sun. It's a very small concept, but an important one to me. It will make it into the PNM sequel, no doubt, but I felt good about practicing here in this op-ed. In any op-ed, you really only have room for one good concept. In that way, if you do it right, it's much like a well-acted scene in one of Shyamalan's movies: tight, focused, strong unity of purpose.
Go here for a more formal presentation in my articles section I was very happy with the edit from the newspaper and how it reads in the end. Here's the text in full for the blog.
Not in America's image
By Thomas P. M. Barnett
Baltimore Sun
Originally published January 3, 2005
IN HIS CLASSIC description of globalization The Lexus and the Olive Tree, columnist Thomas L. Friedman quotes an Egyptian professor asking, "Does globalization mean we all have to become Americans?" This simple question contains the current great myth of globalization, within which we can locate much of the world's anxiety regarding America's global war on terrorism.
In short, the world's current anti-Americanism is based on the notion that globalization is an American plot to enslave the planet in an economic and military empire of unprecedented historical scope, with the war being nothing more than propaganda to hide our true intentions. After all, if we really wanted to fight al-Qaida, wouldn't we have invaded Pakistan instead of oil-rich Iraq?
Like all good myths, this one contains a modicum of truth. Unlike the global economy of a century ago that was defined by the European colonial system, today's globalization is clearly based on American source code: democracy, free trade and collective security.
The United States is the world's oldest and most successful multinational economic and political union—50 members strong. Americans tend to forget that, but we shouldn't, because that model will eventually be replicated around the planet, just as it's being done today in the nascent "United States of Europe."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about one-world government. Yes, we're playing bodyguard to globalization's spread by waging war on transnational terrorism, but enabling that growth and controlling its content are two vastly different things.
Look at it this way: Is California a carbon copy of Kansas? Or Texas a simple knock-off of Massachusetts? Of course not. So why assume globalization yields a China that's a mirror image of America? Or a similarly formatted Brazil or India, for that matter?
This myth cuts both ways: Foreign cultures experiencing deep integration with the global economy naturally experience a rise in nationalism as they seek to preserve their unique cultural identities. Yet Americans seem perplexed that as other nations become more like us, they don't seem to like us more.
Here's the good news: Within 10 years, no one on the planet will confuse globalization with Americanization. That's because several new superpowers are rising across the landscape, offering distinctively different faces to the often-demonized globalization process. Here's a quick preview.
The European Union will emerge as a financial superpower based on the rising importance of the euro as a global reserve currency that competes with our dollar. China is well on its way to emerging as the manufacturing superpower of the global economy, with design superpower Japan acting as its natural mentor. Then there's India, the information technology superpower, Brazil, the agricultural superpower, and Russia, the natural gas superpower for the impending hydrogen age.
All of these rising powers will inevitably remake the face of globalization, giving it a host of features not easily recognized as American, even as they will contain some of our historical DNA.
In a decade, America's plot will be superseded by a grand conspiracy involving more than two-thirds of the world's population as the functioning core of the global economy expands to include every region save those still largely disconnected from its embrace, such as the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. These non-integrating regions, or what I call globalization's gap, will constitute the central battlefields in this global war on terrorism.
Does this smack of globalization at the barrel of an American gun?
Indeed, America possesses a unique capacity in terms of military power projection around the planet in support of globalization's emerging set of security rules and regulations, but let's not forget who pays for much of that service by buying up large chunks of our federal debt - the rest of the world. Globalization comes with rules, not a ruler. So yes, America may take the lead in enforcement, but we can't pretend these rules are ours and ours alone to define.
This era's globalization is America's gift to the world, but as with all gifts, once offered, it ceases to be ours. To win a global war on terrorism is to make globalization truly global and—by doing so—fundamentally transforming its complexion into something as fabulously diverse as the face of America today.
Thomas P. M. Barnett is the author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century.
| Permalink |
