No, the movie hasn’t aged well. Nonetheless, that’s what editing and proofreading the works of others is: getting, imagining a new perspective on things.
All editing (and self-editing) requires empathy. Editing is empathy.
But self-editing doesn’t mean empathizing with yourself. It means the level of quality you reach in editing your own words is measured in your capacity to empathize with your potential readership.
In other words, how well can you the writer put yourself in the shoes of a would-be reader you have never met?
This discussion of empathy reminds me of its importance in a different context: Errol Morris’s The Fog of War (2003), a documentary about Robert McNamara (1916–2009), who was Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
In discussing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara says (I can’t find a clip of it):
In [former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn E.] Thompson’s mind was this thought: Khrushchev’s gotten himself in a hell of a fix. He would then think to himself, “My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: ‘Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'” Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. And Thompson was right. That’s what I call empathy. We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.
This clip follows up on the above quotation:
Empathy can prevent nuclear war. (If only editing could be so powerful!)
I didn’t watch last night’s speech by President Trump.
I haven’t listened to any speech by a president since “yellow cake.â€
Besides, I’m exposed to enough high-quality pornography already.
I instead watched an old movie about an older story full of government corruption, terrorism, and false-imprisonment (with a classic ’90s trailer):
Perhaps I should’ve watched the speech instead.
Perhaps I am one of wise Odysseus’ foolish sailors with ears full of honeycomb, unable to hear the sirens shriek.
Or perhaps it is because I cannot trust the music of politicians, not unlike Kafka’s dog:
But how should they not be dogs? Could I not actually hear on listening more closely the subdued cries with which they encouraged each other, drew each other’s attention to difficulties, warned each other against errors; could I not see the last and youngest dog, to whom most of those cries were addressed, often stealing a glance at me as if he would have dearly wished to reply, but refrained because it was not allowed? But why should it not be allowed, why should the very thing which our laws unconditionally command not be allowed in this one case? I became indignant at the thought and almost forgot the music….
Even if the law commands us to reply to everybody, was such a tiny stray dog in truth a somebody worthy of the name? And perhaps they did not even understand him, for he likely enough barked his questions very indistinctly. Or perhaps they did understand him and with great self-control answered his questions, but he, a mere puppy unaccustomed to music, could not distinguish the answer from the music. (“Forschungen eins Hundes.†/ “Investigations of a Dog.â€)
Or is it that every president is but a cheerleader for the nation?––while the citizens remain the actual players on the field getting dirty, getting hit, engaging with our enemies, those old rivals: economics, bureaucracy, apathy of neighbors, etcetera.
Instead of listening to and watching a president speak, I would rather stare too much at the sun shining on the grass—for so oft does it seem that that is all that is left of America’s forefathers and godmothers.
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And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps.
