Summer Hours: more on inanimate objects

Summer Hours (L'Heure d'été) is a 2008 film in the well-established genre of 'French film in which nothing happens except people talking, drinking wine and smoking'. It was made by the Musée d'Orsay; it stars Juliette Binoche; it was well-received (94% on Rotten Tomatoes, prizes galore from the English-language media): in short, it is very much that sort of thing. But, for those of you who like that sort of thing (and it seems that I do), this is very much the sort of thing that you will like. (And, no, I don't know why the title of the film became plural on being translated.)

I watched the film the other day. It seemed, at the time, to be a series of inconsequential and slightly oddly chosen episodes. But it lingered in my mind in a way that made me think it warranted a bit of thought. So I thought about it; and I now think it is quite a clever film about our relationships with objects, in particular valuable objects, and that there is good reason why the film shows us what it does. 

When I last wrote about our relationships with inanimate objects, I specifically disclaimed writing about works of art. This is by way of being a companion piece to that piece, as Summer Hours is mostly about works of art. 

Three warnings before I go further:

(1) It's fair to say that what follows is chock-full of spoilers about the film. But then I've already given you the main spoiler: nothing happens. 

(2) The intended audience for this piece is pretty niche: it's people who watched Summer Hours and quite liked it but wondered whether it is really about anything. If that's not you then feel free to read no further (or go and watch the film first).

(3) Like the film, I will muse rather than come to any particular conclusions. 

You have been warned!

What We Learn from the Conservative Case for Abortion

I saw someone on Twitter saying, "Given that most British conservatives, however defined, support the maintenance of an effective abortion on demand regime in this country, it ought to be easier to find someone who'll make the case for that. And, necessarily, against the bodies/cells/whatever being destroyed." But where, the writer went on to ask, do we see that case being made? Not just an anti-anti-abortion case, but a full-throated defence of abortion from a conservative perspective.

That struck me as an interesting observation. What, I wondered, would such a case look like? What could a conservative who accepts the (pretty obviously correct) biological premises of the pro-life case but who nonetheless endorses the continuing legality of the practice say without resorting to mere question-begging libertarianism or disguised left-wing slogans? Purely as an intellectual exercise, I set out to construct that argument - and I was interested in what I found. 

What follows is in two parts. First, I set out what the truly conservative reasons for being pro-choice are, and after that I set out what conservatives can learn from such an argument. TL;DR - being pro-choice is not dissimilar to being a brutal but not wholly unsympathetic US Marine Colonel.