I can’t quite explain it, but between this, Occupy Wall Street, and the statements from the Republican candidates, there’s something oddly hilarious about this.
Atlas Productions LLC announced today its plan to replace more than 100,000 title sheets appearing on the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 DVD and Blu-ray versions sold through major retail outlets. These retail versions were packaged with an inaccurate synopsis of Atlas Shrugged. […] The 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is known in philosophical and political circles for presenting a cogent argument advocating a society driven by rational self-interest. On the back of the film’s retail DVD and Blu-ray however, the movie’s synopsis contradictorily states “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
[…]
Harmon Kaslow, CEO of Atlas Productions and Producer of the film stated “As we all well know, the ideas brought to life in Atlas Shrugged are entirely antithetical to the idea of ‘self-sacrifice’ as a virtue. Atlas is quite literally a story about the dangers of self-sacrifice. The error was an unfortunate one and fans of Ayn Rand and Atlas have every right to be upset… and we have every intention of making it right.”
[…]
The new title sheet will more accurately read “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of rational self-interest comes to life…”
Ayn Rand is to Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, as Mark Twain is to Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Show off… 🙂
I just watched the Blu-Ray last night, and while it typically has to make concessions to the media translation and leaves out much of the detail of the book, the movie was an excellent representation of the original novel. Taylor Schilling makes an excellent Dagny Taggart as well.
If you haven’t read the novel, you should make an effort to do so, as it is one of the American greats of the 20th century. The parallels between Rand’s world of Atlas Shrugged and ours of today is chilling.
In the rational self interest of shifting DVDs to a population who by and large feel helping their fellow human is probably a good thing, the line ‘AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life’ makes sense. I mean ‘Ayn Rands timeless novel about courageous selfishness’, just doesn’t have the same ring.
Unfortunately Tocquevilles ‘Rational self interest properly understood’ is way over Rands head.
To be a real Hollywood movie it should say: A movie based on true events of a book by famed author Ayn Rand. Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Megan Fox’s boobs. The trailer should have big robots and lots of splosions and images of Megan Fox’s boobs. The hero of the story gets to touch Megan Fox’s boobs. Did I mention Megan Fox’s boobs? It will make billions world wide but the studio will show it as a serious money loser.
Nah. It would be “Torn from the Headlines: James Murdoch on trial for being a successful capitalist?”
No, His father and he are on trial for being bastards who used their papers to intimidate everybody from political whores to Scotland Yard so they could be unfeeling, uncaring, don’t bother me with the illegal details, “So the kid’s been kidnapped. We sell papers. She’s going to move a lot of dead trees for us. You don’t see us crying over some dead tree. We want e-mail her messages, and we don’t care how you get them!” pricks.
The Murdochs and John Galt.
They both died on the cross, for nobody but themseves.
Pod. The blue pills are for sunday the green ones for monday. You always get this way when you mix them up.
Would you take a higher paying job than a current one if all other parameters were equal (driving time, benefits, etc.)?
Hell yes.
I’m trying to find out if Mr. Podcast would.
I know you would 🙂
There was no typo fools. The warning against Self sacrifice was the central theme of her message. Read the damn book.
A quick by pass of the 1000 pager is chapter seven “this is John Galton speaking”, where he does a three hour rand rant covering the full message.
Awful book. Horrible. Excruciating. Adolescent incoherent self-conscious intellectualism. About as interesting as being hit on the head with a sack drowned cats.
The Fountainhead is a pretty decent read. Try that instead.
“The Fountainhead” is the charming tale of a sociopath who blows up a building because he didn’t like the implementation.
Case closed.
I wouldn’t want to live in any world which would suit Ayn Rand anymore than I would like William Golding to be my vacation panner.
Luckily they are historical footnotes in a book that nobody reads.
I agree. The nihilist, humorless world that Ayn Rand created was utterly devoid of human kindness. Atlas Shrugged is also a crap read.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a great American novel. The Old Man and the Sea. Or The Great Gatsby. Tossing Atlas Shrugged in with these books is criminal.
> Luckily they are historical footnotes in a book that nobody reads.
LOL. Keep thinking that. This book has been selling 100,000s of copies each year for the last 25 years.
It was #4 on Amazon’s Best Seller List in April.
There are over 60,000,000 copies in print worldwide, which is 3x that of The Adventures of Tom sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin
What do you considered a “popular” book?
Kim Kardashian’s wedding was popular – that’s not much of criteria. I said it was a crap read. The Fountainhead is a more readable book by a long shot.
I would also bet good money that for every 100 Tea Party Boys who buys Atlas Shrugged, only 1 actually finishes it. You should try it, it’ll keep your lips moving for a few months.
Touche’ on the wedding comment.
AFA the rest, everyone I’ve talked to who has purchased the book admits she is quite wordy but they’ve all finished it. Doesn’t reduce the importance of the message, though.
Personally, I think that if you don’t agree with the message, you didn’t actually comprehend it.
Would YOU take a higher paying job, assuming all other parameters were equal?
Aw, the Hell with it —
Would ANYBODY on this board refuse a higher paying job assuming all other parameters were similar?
Nice comeback LL. You got game.
#01–What?===thats not true. Mark Twain is a useful bit of information about how deep the water is. Ayn Rand tells us nothing.
Comic books for adolescent first look at social policy.
Very telling there is any following at all.
I have been trumped by BB one one level.
I find it funny that, of “Rand’s” mistress, who later cheated on her in a rationally selfish way, it was reported: “Rand published an article in The Objectivist repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other “irrational behavior in his private life.””
Obviously, what is good for the goose is not allowed for the gander.
My first point was simply, Twain and Rand are characters (who created written characters) created to hide real people (Clemens and Rosenbaum) with blankets of words that were not attributable to real (meaning everyday rational) people. These characters, Rand and Twain, eventually became so big that a money making industry grew up, enveloping and suppressing the real people (Rosenbaum and Clemens), in order to create a philosophical engine that was not real.
It is all about money, attention (fame), entertainment.
Not a way of thinking.
#13–What==you say I trumped you and then take pains to explain to me the intricacies of what you meant?/or could have added?
I shrug.
No, not really, I was talking to the larger audience. My ideas went fully formed when I wrote to first post.
I assumed you saw something deeper, and deconstructed it. Trumping me on one level.
#15–What==fair enough. I think we both enjoy the word play that was present. I had a roommate once that subscribed to The Objectivist and I tried to read it a few time. Too much like the bible: a bunch of gobbledegook. My roomie was a very nice guy though and didn’t bring his corruption into view unless directly asked and even then he preferred to just read and muse privately.
Clemens–he became rich and famous and then poor and famous but did a machine arise around him on his philosophy or personality? I don’t think so.
But to your point—no, I wasn’t delving deeply at all, just playing with how their pen names arose and there is a difference there. Anonymity makes sense when you write about politics and everyone packing a gun just as it makes sense when you are a woman in a man’s world. Or is my ignorance showing and everyone knows Ayn is always a woman’s name? I had to mark twain once off a motor launch in the Bahama’s. Of course I thought about Ayn Rand while I was doing that.
Keep on posting. Good stuff.
Our founding fathers set up this nation in such a way that those who had ability and were willing to work hard could become wealthy. This is called a meritocracy. Such nations tend to be highly successful and their citizens prosperous. You do have to watch the sharks to prevent unfair practices such as monopolies and price fixing but the economy will boom.
We are becoming a nation in which the government limits opportunities by its shear size, rewards failure, and decides who the winners and losers are based on kickbacks for which reason our prosperity is vanishing.
When societies productive workers realize that they are not being allowed to reap the fruits of their labor but rather are being robbed to support a dolest class at the same or even a higher standard of living than they are ambition dies along with all hope of a better life and with it their work ethic. In the Soviet Union a nation crawled into the vodka bottle.
The simple proliferation of regulations to which progressives like Obama, Nancy P., and Reid are addicted plus the rampant growth of government which is bleeding the private sector of resources is enough to stagnate an economy by itself. Once that happens the only winners are the people running the government.
Do-ill==I demand my broom stick back AND you have to clean it up too.
Imagine with all this destruction arrayed in front for all to see, there are still dipwads who want to blame one party over the other?
HAW, HAW!!!!! Mom—do-ill won’t stop bothering me. Make him stop.
“The simple proliferation of regulations to which progressives like Obama, Nancy P., and Reid are addicted plus the rampant growth of government”
Sounding a lot like alfie. You forgot to mention Bush I and II, Reagan, Ford, and Nixon. Remember Nixon, he gave us the EPA, the Endangered Species Act, and OSHA.
Simple test for the class, which regulation(s) would you repeal and why? Please be specific the Code of Federal Regulations are available online I have provided the link in past posts. Come guys which regulations? I plan on being off this week it being deer season in Missouri but I will have some internet access.
I look forward to reading your choices and justifications.
Ayn Rand was a sociopath and those who celebrate her work are also sociopaths trying to glorify their mental illness.
The human species would not have come as far as it did without altruism and empathy. It’s a genetic trait seen in our primate relatives (ie: chimps adopting orphans).
We should be working towards a society that benefits everyone and encourages unity. Instead, we seem to be moving backwards towards an era of indentured servitude to monomaniacal aristocrats who believe they are genetically superior. Ayn Rand’s utopia.
Nobody wants to live in a world like that, not even those who practice rational selfishness.
I help people because it makes ME feel good. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you approve of that or not.
You force people to help others because it makes YOU feel good to think others think highly of you.
You are a clueless bully.
No you’re the clueless one.
I want everyone to have the same opportunities I had and I don’t want someone who gets cancer or has a terrible accident to have to be forced to sell their homes and live in poverty.
You call me a bully when it’s assholes like you telling the elderly and children without medical insurance that they should just die if they have an illness they can’t afford to be treated.
You say that you help people because it makes you feel good? What do you do, drop $5 into donation jars and think you’re making a difference. The least you can do is pay taxes which really does help the needy through social programs. Programs that helped my mom raise me and helped me go to college.
Get some perspective! Get educated!
I donate over eight hours a week, of my time, to charity and public service. How much do you donate?
AFA the rest, you don’t know what I want. You say I want to tell old people to go die? No I don’t.
As I said, you are projecting your fears on others. And through that, you are being a bully by telling me how to I should help someone else. That’s all a bully is — someone who is scared and acts out to make themselves feel better.
Clear self-delusions.
You donate 8 hours of your time to charity *golf clap.* You and everyone else making anonymous claims on the Internet.
Let me ask, if taxes were cut and the social programs you hated were defunded, would your donations make as much of an impact as the tax dollars you spend? NO!
It’s clear to any sane person who the real bullies are.
Let me state it clearly: I am a person who wants to share my income so that those with illnesses can afford treatment and NOT die.
YOU are someone who does not care if they die.
Who is the bully again?
Nilum,
Golf Clap[…]YOU are someone who does not care if they die.
Woah! You really don’t know how to read (look above and you’ll see that is not how I feel). If you don’t take what I say at face value and think everything I write is a lie, how do you suppose we will discuss anything? If that is the case, how do I know you really want to pay taxes? What do you gain from it?
That’s the projection thing again. You lie, so you assume others do, too.
Let me ask a couple of simple questions.
Do you want me forced to pay taxes to fund social programs?
Do you think the government is the only entity capable of charity?
Actually, societies that have embraced individualism have greatly outpaced the primitive communal groups of early humans. It’s really not even close.
Rejecting individualism for altruistic unity is the real regression in the state of human beings.
“It’s a genetic trait seen in our primate relatives (ie: chimps adopting orphans).”
Chimpanzees also kill and eat each other.
Aren’t chimpanzees vegetarian?
Not always. Jane Goodall documented chimps actively hunting other animals including other primates. She also documented incidents of cannibalism between groups.
IIRC this movie barely survived one weekend in theaters.
As to the book sales, they’re going to the same people who buy books with names on them like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, and Herman Cain. These books aren’t any good, but conservative PACs buy thousands and give ’em away…because really…nobody is buying this Ayn Rand crap for the adventure, they buy it because they’ve been told to buy it. Same with the video…it will sell a million copies because conservatives must have one.
Which makes me wonder…what happens if you put a Bible on top of a copy of Atlas Shrugged? Is there a thermal reaction?
I read Atlas Shrugged about 6 months ago just to see what it was about. I came to it with a liberal bent, but after finishing it, I’m very intrigued by a lot of the ideas presented.
The part I can’t figure out is how the intellectual part of the Republican party sells this book to the religious part of the base. Do they not actually read it or notice how anti-religion it is?
Cognitive dissonance is rampant among some on the right.
Colbert: Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition — and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.
You hit the nail on the head.
Most of them haven’t really read it. They are just latching onto it because they think it supports their cause.
If they truly read it, they would shit bricks and burn Ms. Rand in effigy. Atlas Shrugged is about as atheist as you can get.
The book espouses self-determination, self-reliance, and self-esteem — effectively, bowing down to nobody, not even God.
Interestingly, that’s why most liberals who read it don’t like it either. Instead of bowing to God, they want people to bow to the State and the book rejects that premise as well.
Out of curiosity, do you see a lot of what is happening today described in the book?
Geeze, they’ll make a movie out of anything.
After reading that POS book, I was compelled to burn it on the spot.
The only thing that “Atlas Shrugged” was good for was the little bit of heat it provided with this burning.
It should go down as one of the worst books ever written.
Atlas Shrugged = Irrational GREED – like the Repukes and their OVERLORDS !!!
I read it through and enjoyed it. I’m not a literary person so i guess it is ideas and not prose or other wanky things people put out for.
Currently reading ‘gone with the wind’ about the first american civil war. hehehehe.
Ayn Rand’s version of societal collapse was completely different to the current one unwinding.
Just shows you intellects unmatched in their time are usually complete balls ups.