Ghost in the Shell: Gender Considerations

 

Do you think I am going to discuss how the depiction of naked female bodies (and the lack of male ones) in this classic anime reflects patriarchy's objectification of women? The answer is no. I have free time to write blog posts, but not that much free time to write about things that too many people already see and know. Surely, you know the original manga, created by Shirow Masamune, was published in a seinen magazine (seinen: young adult men) in the early 1990s? Naked boooooobs is par for the course. I have no objections in this context. People should be allowed to have their booooooobs. 

No, there are other gender-related elements in Ghost in the Shell, written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, based on the original manga. Here I just want to point out one curious thing in the gender presentation of the self-aware artificial intelligence, an entity known as either the puppet master or Project 2501.

In the 1995 movie, the puppet master (a ghost without a shell) is driven by Section 6 into a female robotic body (a shell, with boobs of course) and "captured" for destruction, but it is referred to by the human characters as "he" and voiced by a male actor (Iemasa Kayumi). Later in the climactic scene, the puppet master talks Major Kusanagi into mating (connecting) with it to produce a new generation of AIs that live inside Major (or maybe just in the interweb), and Major agrees. (Note that in the manga sequel, Major did go on to spawn a number of "selves", which can be interpreted as baby AIs.)

Let's review. At first, the AI enters and controls a naked female body with an empty brain, it speaks in a male voice and is referred to with the male pronoun, and later it has a cyber intercourse with a female character. Few, if anyone, would question such a premise, even if the scene of a female half-body speaks with a male voice is incongruent (above). Nevertheless, Oshii was obviously not unaware of the gender mismatch, because in this scene he had the (fully clothed) human male characters comment that "we refer to the puppet master as 'him' for convenience, but we don't know whether it is a man or a woman."

That the puppet master was originally imagined or, more precisely, assumed to be male is corroborated by the symbolism of the cyber intercourse scene. The puppet master explains to Major that it wants to reproduce with another entity of its kind to introduce diversification into its own "genetic" material, and it has chosen Major. It is clearly uninterested in Batou or any other man (more precisely, male cyborg) in the world. In fact, the puppet master has been stalking Major in the web for a while, which is why Major had a vague feeling of not being entirely herself in earlier scenes. Thus, the story is on some level about mating/reproduction. Of course, just like the Prometheus series by Ridley Scott, the author assumes that the self/subject (the storyteller and the audience's point of view) is male, who seeks a female body/object to complete the baby-making mission, because he can't do it by himself. The entire chain of logic is so instinctive and deeply embedded in our culture (nearly all cultures in the modern world?) that everyone barely registers its meaning.

(Unlike Skynet, the AI is not interested in world domination. It just wants ... babies, which is kind of funny, because the human urge for babies is driven by our fear of mortality.)

Well, I guess this is about objectification of women after all, ie, as an object used in reproduction.

But not so fast!

In the 2008 "Ghost in the Shell, 2.0," which includes some new 3D animation and re-edited background music, the puppet master is re-dubbed in a female voice.

I realized this when I rewatched the DVD of 2.0. I was switching between the English and Japanese soundtracks and found it strange that the English version had a male voice but the Japanese version a female voice. Usually the English dub would never make such a drastic change from the original version. After a little digging, I found that the English dub was created for the 1995 version and no one even realized that the puppet master was re-dubbed in 2.0.

This had to be a deliberate change. I looked up the credits for both the 1995 original movie and the 2008 version 2.0. It appears that no other characters were re-dubbed except the puppet master. It was neither an accident nor pressure from the "woke mob" that the voice changed gender. Other than Oshii himself, who would or could do this?

Now the above-referenced scene with the female robot body seems more natural. As I watched a female voice inviting Major to have a baby with her---I mean "it", a totally different feeling started to rise in the air. 

On a side note, I have been wondering whether male cyborg bodies in this world have all the male sex organs. Even a blind person can see that Batou has been carrying a torch for Major for years, but he is a character that is discarded by the author in this "romantic" triangle. However, can you still have sexual feelings with a mechanical body? 

Mysteries of Lisbon (2010)

 

I first watched "Mysteries of Lisbon" at least 5 years ago and immediately bought it on Google Play, but I did not rewatch it until now, which is fortuitous, as I have only recently learned about Kenji Mizoguchi's mastery of mise-en-scene while watching his "47 Ronin." Raul Ruiz's camera movement feels similar but with its own contemplative rhythm. There are a few places of panning back and forth that suggest a sense of magic or, perhaps more accurately, memory and dream, such as a character appearing in a previously empty space. 

I must admit to an irrational partiality for 19th century Romantic novels, a genre to which the 1854 novel of the same name belong. Even though I know nothing whatsoever about Portuguese literature and culture, it feels extremely reminiscent of all the British and French epics I read in adolescence. Just like the food one ingests in childhood will become one's permanent favorite taste, the stories one gobbles up with a side of youthful hormones stay with one forever. It's the comfort food that reminds us of home. 

The plot is saturated with the kind of passion, heartbreak, scandals, and improbable entanglement typical of the Romantic melodrama. No doubt the novel by Camilo Castelo Bronco, which has not been translated to English as far as I can find, is as sensationalist and overwrought as the works of Alexandre Dumas (pere). However, the movie does something more with the material --- It both immerses us in this stiff aristocratic world and takes us out of it by several cinematic devices. For example, the foldable cardboard theater carried to the end of the world by the main character, Joao/Pedro da Silva, reminds us from time to time that we are watching a staged drama. The visual layering of characters and space in many scenes heightens the separation of the storyteller and the listener. The layering is also applied to scenes in which an audience exists inside the frame as eaves-dropping but anonymous servants or monks. Ruiz seems to be constantly reminding us about the artificiality of drama and our role as the recipient of a narrative. 

During the years after having watched the 4.5-hour-long movie for the first time, I could barely remember any of the characters or subplots, but the images of lush woods and crumbling mansions, as well as the sense of longing and decay, always stayed with me. Some scenes are awash in a golden glow of nostalgia, while other scenes are soaked in chilled green and blue. Plot is no longer necessary to convey the vibration of mood. 

In a duel scene near the end, which reminds me of the picturesque scenes in Barry Lyndon (but not so self-consciously screaming "look at me!"), the camera lingers after all the principal characters have left, and a bystander entirely outside of the plot sits down and, for a brief moment, becomes the center of his own drama. Like all the other mysteries of the movie, it fascinates me. We have seen this man pacing in the background throughout the duel, but our attention is captured by the fate of the characters inside the story and barely notices his existence ... until the end. It suggests that anyone's life may contain some romance like that of Joao, his mother Angela de Lima, Father Dinis, or anyone else in the story, and perhaps anyone of us can turn our life story into melodrama by enacting it on theater, cardboard or otherwise. 

The soundtrack is fantastic and perfect for the dreamy and melancholy mood of the movie (unlike the Vivaldi used in the trailer). Unfortunately I have not been able to find it online anywhere --- perhaps have to search in Portuguese.

Battle Royale (2000)

 

At the turn of the century, Battle Royale was an international cultural phenomenon. Soon enough I saw a blurry pirated copy on video, which seemed rather confusing in terms of characters and plot. Thus it is a surprise to learn recently that the movie was not officially released on video in the US until 2012, long after its poor cousin, Hunger Games, gained popularity with the American public. (I must note that the author of HG, Susan Collins, has always maintained that she had not heard of BR before she finished the novels. I believe her.)

The movie, directed by Kinji Fukasaku, is a variation of the horror/action movie genre. The original novel, written in 1997 and published in 1999, was considered shocking and controversial in Japan. There is obvious reference to Lord of the Flies, but it also bares the mark of shonen popular entertainment (mostly manga), which centers on the life of young adults (roughly 12-18 years). 

Rewatching it on Criterion Channel in the middle age, I am surprised by its prescience; no, perhaps it is simply astute social observation and commentary. It is me who has been too stupid to realize that our time, in contrast to the post-WW2 baby boom that came to age in the 1960s and 70s, is a time of the old against the young. 

In 2023, it is hard not to be inundated with the dumbass meme that the leading politicians are "too old." News media parrot the meme without any insight, crowing on about the age of presidents, presidential candidates, congressional leaders, etc., etc., without a hint of understanding why. When the very old president tries to do something good for young people, for example, by using tax dollars to pay off a portion of their student loans, look how the entire society goes into hysterics: "No one helped me with my student loans. Why should today's young people get any free money?"

Ours is a time in which older generations take ever greater power and resources from younger generations. The shift in population age pattern in the past 80 years is one of the main forces that drive the political and social climates in this era. (Another force is "the pill.") People tend to hoard more resources and power naturally over time (if they stay alive), but this trend is exacerbated by the delay in death. As the proportion of older people grows more rapidly than ever, young people quickly lose the little power they gained through the 1970s. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 is the first sign that we were entering of an increasingly conservative era with no end in sight, simply because old people continue to outnumber young people. Since then, (draft-dodging) conservatives never stopped complaining about younger generations for being too soft, too lazy, too fragile, too whiny, too whatever ... (The podcast If Books Could Kill has plenty of materials on this phenomenon. The fear and hatred of younger generations are on full display.)

To express the youth-elderly conflict, director Fukasaku derived inspiration from his youth as a middle-schooler carrying corpses killed by US bombs in WW2. The war is a killing game that old men throw young people into. That's certainly true. That the allegory continues to resonate from 2000 to 2023 is an indication that the generational struggle for power and resources remains the same in peace time and will continue in the foreseeable future, when the population continues to live longer and become older, gripping power and money ever tighter in our spotted, wrinkled, bony hands.

An example of this generational conflict? Climate change politics. Older people have less incentive to sacrifice some of their comfort and convenience, and more importantly financial position, to fend off an uninhabitable environment some years from now, no matter how much lip service is paid to loving their children and grandchildren.

----

I have not watched the Hunger Games movies, but I did read the first book. It is OK but vastly inferior to Battle Royale. The difference between HG and BR is precisely a reflection of the difference between the American and Japanese popular cultures. HG is a typical American fantasy of playing pretend revolution in a faraway land/galaxy of dictatorship. Both exciting and safe, because "it will never happen here!" BR, on the other hand, is a horror story smack in the middle of its own place and time with a unique absurdist humor. The Japanese are the best in the world at the art of death, while the American ... well, as Disney has told us, Americans are immortal; death does not exist for them. 

Ironically, 2 decades later, Battle Royale looks more like real-life America than Japan, with young people shooting each other dead in schools (with automatic weapons, just like the movies!) every day while older people buy more and more guns. If Fukasaku could see it from heaven, would he laugh out loud? 

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson seems to be enjoying a moment of revived popularity right now. Her major novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle both got a screen adaptation in the past few years. There is a sort-of-biographical-but-not-really movie made starring Elisabeth Moss. 

While I am in general very sensitive to horror stories and movies, reading "The Haunting of Hill House" was not a particularly terrifying experience, even though I did it mostly at night in the dark. It helps that there is no blood and gore, no hacked-up corpses, no severed limps or gouged eyes anywhere in the book.

The novel is written in a very subtle style, which rapidly shifting perspectives, abundant hints and inferences, and omissions that are as meaningful as words on the page. For example, in one scene involving three characters, we see only two conversing, and the silence of the third is where the drama lies. Deceptively simple but technically sophisticated, the novel was recognized as a masterpiece and a finalist for the National Book award. 

There are a number of components in the novel, including an pervert Victorian-era father who probably abused his daughter in a chilling but very brief segment in Chapter 6. Lesbianism is also hovering significantly in the background, not only in the character Theodora but also the bond between Theo and Eleanor, the main character. However, at the heart of the novel is undoubtedly Mother. 

I looked up a few reviews of the novel. That Hill House represents a mother figure is widely accepted: the soft bed, plush chairs, excellent meals cooked by Mrs. Dudley, enclosed rooms (suggestive of the womb). It mothers all four characters who gathered there to investigate it: Professor Montague, future owner of the house Luke Sanderson, and two women with supernatural talents, Eleanor and Theodora. However, Eleanor is the center of the story and the most susceptible among them to this mothering. It took me a while to be convinced that none of the other characters would feature prominently in the relationship with Hill House, which somewhat hampered my appreciation for the novel in the first half. (Actually, I was waiting for some of the side characters to be killed by the House.) 

The roots of Eleanor's susceptibility are vaguely suggested through her history of having spent almost her entire youth, from 21 to 32 years of age, caring for her ailing mother, with no social or personal life outside of the confinement and obligations. All this took place before the opening of the novel, and we only see glimpses of her resentment and desire to escape into independence. What kind of a mother was Mrs. Vance in her illness? There is only a mention of "small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair." In a word, inadequate. The roles of mother and daughter were reversed, and Eleanor had to mother her mother for 11 years. Thus, the House seems much more welcoming and fits into her desire for a mother. 

(If you do not wish to be spoiled, stop reading here.)

Some reviewers have put forth a theory that postulates that most or all of the haunting in the novel, such as strange noises and writings on the wall, are in fact generated by Eleanor instead of the House, as she has telekinetic abilities. I am in the camp against the theory. I think the House exists as an independent being that sometimes but not always responds to Eleanor's unspoken wishes and desires, which is in fact what most mothers do (respond to and fulfill the wishes of their babies without verbal/linguistic communication). 

While some reviews consider Eleanor's mental evolution throughout the novel as a disintegration or descent into madness, I don't agree. Her mind is increasingly merged with the House (her new mother figure) over time, and her wish to "come home" is then written on the wall. It is indeed Eleanor's wish, which is why Theo the telepath asked "Did you do this?" to Eleanor's rage. 

Among the residents in the House, Eleanor is obviously the closest to Theo, who at first represents an alternative life to Eleanor's, an inspiration and aspiration for her future life. Over time, however, Eleanor turned on her. Although the author somewhat obscured the heart of their quarrels, I am reasonably certain that it is caused by Eleanor's effort to turn Theo into a mother figure and Theo's refusal. This is made clear only in the penultimate chapter:

Theo said carefully, "She wants me to take her home with me after we leave Hill House, and I won't do it."

Luke laughed. "Poor silly Nell," he said. "Journeys end in lovers meeting."

The response from Luke is significant because the quote "journey's end in lovers meeting" is repeated throughout the novel. However, romantic or sexual attraction is sorely lacking between Eleanor and other characters, either male or female. This love is therefore not sexual but rather parental and primitive. Theo's rejection to be Eleanor's request to be the latter's mother is the trigger that pushes Eleanor into the arms of Hill House. 

While we have all heard of Oedipus Complex and its effect on our mating habits -- at least for heterosexual persons, women's relationship with other women is often heavily influenced by their relationship with their mother, especially if the original relationship is unsatisfactory. What Eleanor seeks, with despair, in other women is a new, better mother to replace her inadequate one. Hill House is the only one willing to give it to her.

The male characters sort of fade into the background. There is a brief segment in which Luke flirts with Eleanor and floats the possibility of a romantic relationship. Is this a suggestion that Eleanor is not a lesbian or has a crush on Luke? No. Reading the text closely, it is apparent that Eleanor is merely contemplating a potential escape from her family and old life through marriage. Luke is trying to seduce her by whining that he had no mother and "No one ever loved me," hinting that he too is seeking a mother. This could work with women who want to mother others, but Eleanor is the opposite. That is why she reacted violently:

No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply. I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot. ... that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart. 

A baby cannot be a mother, especially after she had already played a mother for 11 years. Her rage and her despair lie in the condition that no one would mother her and give her the satiated infant experience. 

Late in the novel, Mrs. Montague and her male "friend" made an exasperating appearance. Although their function in the novel is unclear, Mrs. Montague is a hilarious character who constantly shushes her husband, the benevolent father/authority figure in most of the previous chapters, rendering him completely impotent. This odd threesome marriage may be an echo of Shirley Jackson's own marriage, in which her husband Stanley Hyman, a college professor, constantly flaunted his affairs with his students. One of them even lived in their house for a while. Perhaps she serves as another argument for the impossibility of escape through marriage, perhaps it is just comic relief. 

The extraordinary opening of the novel lays out the central premise: 

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. 

The absolute reality that drives Eleanor insane is that she cannot have a mother. This is a true human condition, as all mothers are more or less inadequate to a human infant's need. Mothers are human too and all humans have limitations, especially in the insufficient capacity of telepathy and empathy. Infants wish for an omnipotent mother who can read their mind, but this mother does not exist. For some who have had less mothering than most, their hunger is bigger, more urgent, and more desperate, and therefore they are even less soothed by the lukewarm relationships with other people. For them, the absolute reality that they eventually face is a world in which no one comes when you cry, and this is what Eleanor gradually realizes in the final chapters. She cannot escape her absolute reality through "normal" relationships, with either men or women. Her only path is to return to the womb, and it comes true in the end: the warm, dark, silent, absolutely safe confine in which one never moves.

eXistenZ (1999)

 

Not only is this David Cronenberg movie is often compared with "The Matrix" from the same year, it also reminds me of Christopher Nolan's "Inception." It lacks the exuberance of The Matrix, but far outdoes Inception in its handling of multiple layers of game/dream. Perhaps more important, it is funny. It is playful with a wink and a chuckle, something that is not in Nolan's dictionary. 

To apply the psychoanalytical premise that fiction serves the same function as dream, games --- or movies, for that matter --- are the same. Cronenberg's dream is obviously more imaginative, more gross, and perhaps less inhibited than most people's, but I had a feeling of recognition with the organic game world in eXistenZ, even when I heard about it in 1999 but never watched the movie at the time. There are shared-dream elements in it, as bizarre as they are. It's not just the bone gun. There are creatures/objects in this world that are somewhere between machine and organism, or between dead and alive. Humans tend to regard other living species as either stupid enough to be no different from machine or smart enough to anthropomorphize. Are the "machines" or game pods living organisms or dead tools? Anyway, this is not necessarily a central concern of the movie, but the idea is lurking somewhere beneath the commentary about game/dream/fantasy. 

In 1999, people were not yet walking around with a smartphone permanently attached to their hands. Twenty-four years later, we are all sinking deeper and deeper into a mental existence further detached from our bodily existence. Perhaps there has always been a bodily desire to escape reality that has been discovered, exploited, and monetized only in the past decades. Perhaps this insidious but sweeping change to human existence is largely environmental. In terms of prescience, eXistenZ remains far more relevant than Inception and, to a lesser extent, The Matrix. 

The Talented Mrs. Sacret

The 1948 movie "So Evil My Love" tickled my brain when I happened on it on Criterion channel. There was so much plot, and the relationship between the lead characters (played by Ann Todd and Ray Milland) was both fascinating and fragmented. One couldn't help feeling that there was a lot more to the story. While the movie takes largely Milland's point of view, I couldn't help but conjure up Todd's perspective the whole time, which seemed far more interesting. The predictable moralizing common in Hays Code-era movies is kept to a minimum, delivering a tense and unusual noir. 

And it turned out to be based on a crime novel, published only a year before (1947), written by Marjory Bowen under the male pseudonym Joseph Shearing and originally entitled "For Her to See." Surprisingly (not!), the novel is almost entirely told from the point of view of the female character Mrs. Sacret (changed to Mrs. Harwood in the movie), while the movie not only shifted it to the male character, a painter who calls himself Mark Bellis, but also made him much more sympathetic than he was in the novel. It was obvious that the filmmakers (the screenwriters and director were all male) needed a male anchor to this story or they wouldn't know how to handle it. 

In many ways, the novel reminded me of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith, published just 8 years later. I wouldn't be surprised if Highsmith took inspiration from For Her to See. A key difference between these two novels --- and the element that makes this novel extremely original --- is that the main character is not a hero, not even an antihero, but rather a loser. This choice is so daring and difficult to pull off that very few writers have even attempted it. It is so much easier and more appealing for both the author and the reader to identify with a master criminal and imagine oneself to be the smartest guy in the room. It is much more difficult to enter the mind of a not-too-smart character without making it drab and boring. No part of Mrs. Sacret's limited understanding of the world around her is boring, even if I, as the reader, often know more about what's going on than her. As an unreliable narrator with poor insight into other people's motives, it is a darkly comical pleasure to see the world through the very distorted lens of her eyes and introduces a modernist uncertainty rarely seen in this genre. 

In real life, the vast majority of criminals are not nearly as intelligent as the movies and thrillers want us to believe. Mrs. Sacret's motives and calculations are so petty and common that most authors have no interest in exploring them. The central similarity between her and Mr. Ripley is their resentment and envy toward their rich friends. In other words, money. Their conviction for taking money from their friends by any means necessary push the theme of class struggle very near the surface, which might be a source of discomfort for other writers. Mrs. Sacret especially is driven by a sense of grievance and entitlement that is possibly the most prevalent motivation among criminals of our time. We are startled in our recognition of this pervasive sentiment. "I deserve more. I don't have it because those people cheated me. I am wronged. I have cause to take revenge on all of you." 

The psychological insight throughout the novel is refreshing because it is more astute than most thrillers and, let's not kid ourselves, literary fiction about the lives of college English professors. All of the characters are ambiguous and test the limit of our sympathy. This comes with the unreliable lens of Mrs. Sacret and makes the reading experience delightful (especially for a cynic). 

Unlike the movie that centers around the male seducer/mastermind, the novel keeps him in the shadows, drawing a most chilling and irresistible psychopath rarely seen in other works but resonates with reality. The ending is really stunning in its lack of complete resolution. Even after decades of reading mysteries and crime novels, I am hard pressed to name a villain as well written as "the painter." 

What I like the most about this novel, however, is how aggressive and pungent the language is. In a novel by a woman (an English one no less!), about a woman's crime, told in the woman's voice, and filled with female characters, the pages are unapologetically filled with words like "power" and "stupid" and "hate." No euphemisms, no circumlocution, no fluff. Perhaps that was why Bowen chose to publish it under one of her male pseudonyms?

Communist and Capitalist Dictionaries

The Unbearable Lightness of Being in many ways reminds me of certain boys I remember from high school. They are pretty clever, but not as clever as they think they are. They throw around a lot of catchy ideas that, upon closer examination, lack depth and rigor. But the shallowness of their ideas is a feature, not a bug, in their popularity. Some of them are annoying, others not so much.

Many of the stuff in the novel are annoying, but some actually invite a deeper exploration (which the author did not do). One of the interesting ideas is the separate dictionaries used by Sabina and Franz, who are more caricatures than characters. Sabina represents the exiled intellectual from a former Communist country, i.e., Kundera's own uneasiness in France. Franz is a standup comedy version of intellectuals of the west --- It's funny, but also superficial and stupid. 

Sharing some similarity with Kundera's situation but having emigrated at a much younger age, I happen to have a first-hand understanding of this "separate dictionary" phenomenon, except that I have a much better dictionary for the western culture than Kundera wrote for Franz. Sabina is a more precise portrayal, but his observation of the west, as represented by Franz, is largely cringeworthy. 

I'm sure he wrote this part out of frustration with the French intellectuals who fawn over him without being able to understand him. On the other hand, he too failed to understand them. In his version, "the west" has the strength but lacks aggression. Franz is soft and unmanly. That's why he got dumped by Sabina and killed by some lowly Asian thugs. He is unable to arouse his women because he doesn't know how to issue a command "Strip" (in contrast with Tomas, an infinitely virile Czech man).

(One does not have to dig too deep for Kundera's metaphors.)

This characterization is extremely superficial and misses the reality by a long shot. But that's not surprising. Recently, I have been contemplating the impact of Communism on the 20th century history of the world. From time to time I am asked by American-born friends about the Communist regime of China, and every time I have to suppress an urge to give a longwinded answer about why the Chinese political system is only labeled "Communist", not unlike a box of fried chicken labeled as steak. 

I have finally come to the realization that Communism, from the single source of Karl Marx's brain, morphed into a vast array of totally different meanings to different people who did different things with it. People assume they are talking about the same thing when they talk about Communism, but that's just an illusion. The theory of Communism did something to countries that label themselves as Communist or Socialist, including Soviet Union and China, but these are not really Communist things as defined by Marx. The theory also did something to countries that label themselves as Capitalist, but the effects are subtle and complex and requires some exploration. 

To apply a bit of the systems theory, the fact that some countries in the world labeled themselves Communist (regardless of what they were actually doing) and happened to be economic and military rivals to some other countries in the world, caused those other countries to label any internal conflicts as Communist and foreign. For example, during the 1960s and 70s, the counterculture movement involving civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights was labeled as Communist infiltration by conservatives, thus rebranding long-term domestic conflicts as a foreign threat. When I first learned this phenomenon I almost laughed out loud. Obviously we are using different dictionaries in which the definitions of Communism has no resemblance to each other.