Libertarian Girl

After watching a movie, I always read a few film reviews of it to gauge others’ opinion compared to my own.

After watching Harold and Maude last night, I found a review that ran in Film Quarterly in 1972 and made me think twice about the movie I just saw: “Maude philosophizes continuously about living life to the fullest, about rebellion and noncomformity, about individualism and spontaneity. Her speeches are in fact a remarkable compendium of libertarian attitudes, ranging from antistatism down to the most personal and immediate independence. That Maude can get away with delivering lofty messages and still remain ‘in character’ is a triumph for the makers of this film. They have designed a character who is both a sympathetic human figure and a mouthpiece for precise cultural criticism. Maude’s social and private radicalism is so integral to her personality that it arouses none of the discomfort that is commonly experienced when a movie character expounds about ‘life.’”

Hmm, this must in fact be easily overlooked if I, Libertarian Girl, had not noticed this while watching Harold and Maude. Maude has some good ideas, but I had not thought of her as a libertarian soothsayer. While the Film Quarterly reviewer may have had an odd idea of what libertarianism is (in the next paragraph, the reviewer says Maude thinks all private property should be liberated from its owners), the misguided reviewer is not the only one who saw elements of libertarianism in the movie; Maude is described as a “social libertarian” by Brown University’s film journal, while law professor Butler Shaffer writes on LewRockwell.com about the value to libertarians of over-obedience, using the movie as an example. Shaffer writes about the scene in which Harold and Maude convince his military uncle that Harold is too eager to join the military and therefore gets out of being forced to join. One viewer believes Harold and Maude succeeds in portraying individualism in a way that Dead Poets Society doesn’t, but still wonders how Maude comes to her particular set of ethics with no framework.

There are some severe problems with these generalizations. Film Quarterly probably first called Maude a “libertarian” because she fits what many see as a “typical libertarian,” or the libertarian stereotype: someone who believes people should do what they want, with no rules, especially when it comes to themselves. Maude steals private property, steals public property, flouts traffic laws and endangers other drivers and pedestrians. She disrespects the families of the dead at funerals and graveside services by attending and striking up conversations during the ceremonies, laughing that death is no big deal, and dancing away with a yellow umbrella, then stealing cars afterwards. Sure, it’s a movie, but these are all things Maude did that may be acceptable in cinema but not in real life. They suited her and her life and goals and philosophy, but they didn’t suit others who were probably highly inconvenienced by them. It’s bad enough that your friend or family member may have died; it’s even worse if your car is stolen after the funeral.

Maude’s justification for stealing cars? “Well, if some people get upset because they feel they have a hold on some things, I’m merely acting as a gentle reminder, ‘Here today, gone tomorrow, so don’t get attached to things.’ With that in mind, I’m not against collecting stuff.” Her stuff, memorabilia she keeps in her house, is not “integral” to her, she says, so if someone took it from her she presumably wouldn’t suffer. Maude drives everywhere and conveniently chooses a new vehicle everywhere she goes. At the same time that she says cars mean too much to people, she’s using those cars all the time for her own transportation, which obviously means something to her. It works well for her purposes, but let’s imagine everyone was “liberated of their possessions” in this way. It wouldn’t really work out that well, would it? No one would want to be the sucker who buys cars that are stolen wherever they’re parked. This is the absolute dead opposite of libertarianism. Libertarianism is not selfishness disguised as altruism.

Maude, then, may not be very libertarian, but she is certainly good for a few laughs and does “privatize” dying trees located on the sidewalk in the city (which handily demonstrates not only her personality but that privatization is usually better for the environment).

Maude “doesn’t believe in” driver’s licenses, but that’s not necessarily libertarian, either, although it might be a commonly held idea out there that libertarians might believe this (i.e., terrible drivers like Maude could drive around with no problem because they just wouldn’t get licenses and would steal police officers’ motorcycles when caught) and could be a leftover from her Holocaust past, as this reviewer alludes to, though it’s more likely just a symptom of her zany personality than any principled personal stance. (An argument could be made that a concentration camp survivor might be less willing to kill themselves for no other reason than “it’s all downhill after you’re 80″ than a “normal” person would, too.)

The license scene does bring us possibly the most libertarian quote of the movie, in which Maude tells the police officer: “Don’t get officious, you’re not yourself when you’re officious. That is the curse of a government job.”

Harold and Maude is a good movie, but it’s not a libertarian movie. Maude is a good character, but she’s not very libertarian, though she has nice sentiments at times. Probably the most libertarian thing about the movie is its theme song, by Cat Stevens:

“Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to live high, live high
And if you want to live low, live low
‘Cause there’s a million ways to go
You know that there are.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Media, libertarianism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.