Modern Age - Summer 2017 - 53

Why Intellectual Work Matters

And yet the vision of the suffering world is revelatory: it uncovers all sorts of comfortable falsehoods and pointless tasks. It turns
books to straw and draws soul-crushing ennui from lucrative
and prestigious positions. So it should. Our work ought to serve
real human needs. But there is a difference between service and
corrosive forms of activism, however difficult to articulate and to
find in practice. Seeing how the urge to make a difference goes
out of order might be a good place to start.

Laughter and other little human things
Preston Sturges's 1941 film Sullivan's Travels hides in its screwball
comedy a profound meditation on the ways an earnest desire to
do good can go wrong. John L. Sullivan, the filmmaker protagonist, has made his fortune writing popular comedies. Nonetheless, in an era of depression and war, he is haunted by the failure
of his work to address the suffering of the poor and marginalized.
He aspires to imitate a weighty film allegorizing the struggle
between labor and capital. Mocked for his new seriousness and
his privileged background by his circle of advisors, he decides
he must experience real poverty for himself. He plans to ride the
freights and commune with the impoverished common man for
a time, to see for himself firsthand what poverty is really like.
Sullivan's attempts to experience poverty are a colossal failure.
His handlers insist on following him in a huge vehicle fully stocked
with a kitchen, chef, doctor, and press team. He gets rid of them
and hitches a long ride on a truck. He emerges to find himself
back in Hollywood and is joined there by a love interest played
by Veronica Lake. The would-be hobos hop a freight that brings
them, hungry and out of cash, to the Las Vegas diner where his
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Modern Age - Summer 2017

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Contents
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