Design Against Darkness: Vigilance and Our Moral Architecture

Learning from Hitchcock how resistance shapes resilience

Stuffed heads. With thanks to Mike Kelley and MoMA. Credit: Author

Dear Designer,

Last week I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) with my daughter. It was a cold winter evening and she wasn’t feeling well so what better way than to spend it watching a movie about murder and getting away with it.

Rope features two young men, just out of college, who strangle their friend… because they can. The killing is bloodless and happens in the first minute of the film. The other 79 minutes takes us down the road of whether these two smarty pants college grads are smart enough to outwit their guests at a party that they throw in their lavish Manhattan penthouse with the body hidden in plain sight.

Witty repartee, sleight of hand and clever dialogue take us back and forth between the two murderers and their unsuspecting partygoers. I’ve seen the movie three or four times now and new details emerge every time.

Rope trailer screenshot. Public Domain. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Rope is a fierce tale of interpersonal intrigue, male chutzpah, generational differences, and meandering conversations. It is a technical triumph, with long shots that show conversations just off screen while the camera teases us with distanced distraction. It smells like college, with its young love and desperate hope against hope.

Rope is not about dopes

Rope is also a story about America at a time when the country was finding its new footing and exploring ideas of masculinity, national superiority and most relevant today, intellectual hubris.

Ad for a big red American car (Hudson) from 1949. Credit: Flickr

We have to remember what 1948 represented. America, with its Soviet ally, had just won the violent wars in Europe and Asia. The war machines that cranked out bullets, brawn and bravado were quickly being refashioned for a burgeoning consumer culture. Newly flush with money and power, Americans were starting to purchase goods on a scale that was theretofore unfathomable. Products like washing machines, vacuums, cars and cradles — Americans not only dreamed of post-war progress — they were starting to live it.

Advertising switched from a war footing, persuading people that American freedom was at risk, to a commodity one, promoting patriotism through personal ownership. The power of persuasion, from war propaganda to peaceful advertising, never stopped in the United States (or Canada for that matter).

Rope doesn’t directly address the fact that the young men in the film would have missed out on serving in the Army a few years earlier. But it does capture the feelings of American superiority, domination, and ultimately, subjugation that were emerging then.

Here are two young philosophers, Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan, who decide that they can — and will — strangle their friend, David Kentley, to death. Why? Not because they are particularly envious; they remark that David is simply not as bright as they are. Not because of jealousy; the film gently hints that the two young men are more than just friends.

Rather, they seek to demonstrate their moral superiority through committing heinous acts. They hurt because they can. Their capacity to act — and live — is a direct correlate to their own power. The cowardice of Brandon and Philip in Rope is disguised by their hubris, their feeling that they deserve to live and make a mockery of the unwitting others.

Does any of this sound a little familiar?

This weekend, we saw the onset of an economic war begun by the U.S. against its Canadian and Mexican neighbours. Two days ago, USAID began to shut down or massively downsize. Websites for departments that support research and information about and for the most vulnerable — little groups like Head Start, the FDA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Justice, and the Centers for Disease Control — went dark or partly dark.

In just two weeks, highly empowered men of privilege and great means have decided to make the lives of the weakest among us (children, veterans, seniors, LGTBTQ+, immigrants and the poor) less livable. Why? Not because those communities are particularly needy; these elected and non-elected officials have never themselves had to worry about resources. Not because they are particularly afraid of those groups; they are almost entirely dependent on U.S. government policy and largesse.

Rather, or again, they hurt because they can. What we are witnessing is a strangulation — but one that will quickly scale.

So, where is Jimmy Stewart?

I’m probably taking this Rope movie metaphor a little too far, but we are going with it anyway. Spoilers follow.

In the film, there is only one person that can outwit the young men. Rupert Cadell (what a name), played by the great Jimmy Stewart, slowly and assuredly over the course of the movie, figures out what is going on. As Brandon and Philip’s former teacher who often professed the superiority of some men over others, Rubert recognizes not only what the young men have done but how he himself had contributed to their toxic ideals of superiority and menace.

The film implies that ideological contrariness — righteousness in pure form and individual liberty mainlined — are the causes of cowardly acts. The young men didn’t get the idea of taking away human life from their wealthy parents or from fighting in the World War II. Instead, their callousness was hand delivered at their prep school by their teacher, an influential man who callously extracted philosophical and religious tracts to justify harms. (Probably it was some bastardized version of Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, which Hitler also misread.)

So, where is our Jimmy and other folks like him? They are not here yet. But they will arrive — people in our midst who will show us once again that the real power of power is not more power.

Real power is about letting people be.

Real spoiler: In the end, the sirens wail in the background while these two cowards privately wail in the fore. Jimmy Stewart goes all Jimmy Stewart, collapsing in relief, exhaustion and faith in being able to read the signs.

That’s what we’re going to do, too, dear designer. Individual acts of compassion and creativity will survive us.

Warmly,

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Image of the Week

Americans All -- ". . . it is the duty of employers and labor organizers to provide for the full participation of all workers without discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt. By the War Manpower Commission, 1942. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

We won’t see a poster like this for a long time. But it does show what working together, across lines of difference and deep uncertainty, might look like visually.

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Quote of the Week

Force always attracts men of low morality.

~ Albert Einstein

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Thanks for reading to the end, my friend.

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