Beautiful cars and hats + some serious integrity = the art of Foyle’s War

Do visual and moral aesthetics go together like amputees and prosthetics?

Cars and Hats: screenshot from Foyle’s War

The last of eight seasons of Foyle’s War aired in 2015. I began watching it a few years ago on DVD and kept at it pretty steadily, including a bit of bingeing (two 100 minute episodes back to back).

The series takes place in Britain during and right after WWII. Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle is a middle-aged man in the town of Hastings who wants to join the war effort but is turned down because the powers that be feel that his work on the home front is too valuable.

I was enchanted by the quiet integrity of Foyle’s character — by the actor’s (Michael Kitchen) and author’s (Anthony Horowitz) craft in demonstrating it in word and deed.

I was also enchanted by the physical beauty of Foyle’s world, the cars, the hats, the built and natural environment. And yet, the backdrop to this beauty is a brutal war that effects everyone, and the vagaries of human nature that often result in murders that need to be solved.

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Visual and moral aesthetics, amputees and prosthetics

I asked this question in my subtitle: Do visual and moral aesthetics go together like amputees and prosthetics? Well, partly I just wanted the rhyme… love and marriage, horse and carriage, etc. Also, amputees and prosthetics play a significant role in Foyle’s War.

In addition to a lot of dying in WWII, there were a lot of lost limbs. Foyle’s assistant, Paul Milner, comes back from an early entry into the war with a missing leg, and does all his detective work wearing a prosthetic, which one forgets about as the series progresses (though it never stops bothering his wife).

Is it a valid analogy, or not? A prosthetic has no reason to exist on its own. If there is not something missing that needs to be replaced — inadequacy in need of support — it has no purpose. Does visual beauty have something missing that requires moral beauty to be whole? Or vice versa?

And wtf are moral aesthetics, anyway?

That question is an unanswerable quagmire. To even begin to answer it we would have to whittle down multiple meanings of the word ‘moral’ into something specific and agreed upon.

By ‘moral aesthetics’ I mean actions that arise from an awareness that sees, and cares, beyond its own immediate needs, and that arouses in us, the viewers, an emotional reaction akin to the reverberations of visual beauty — a feeling of presence, vulnerability, openness. Moral aesthetics are what make all those Facebook videos that show people engaged in acts of heroic kindness towards other people or animals so appealing to watch. I want people to be like that and it makes me happy when they are.

Whatever the connection between visual and moral aesthetics, perceiving patterns of meaning beyond immediate self-gratification is a prosthetic that braces, and embraces, our limited limbic-brained approach to survival, and allows us to function as the seriously good doobies we have the potential to be.

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How about some serious integrity?

Let’s put the problematic word ‘moral’ to the side and talk about integrity, which suggests the idea that moral clarity arises from the integration of self. It suggests a flow of interior energy unobstructed enough by fear and pain to allow an integrated field of awareness, and the will to act in accordance with that awareness.

The sum of Foyle’s behavior adds up to a man more in command of himself than most others around him, with the kind of natural authority this engenders.

He gives people plenty of rope to hang themselves, in small ways and large. (Hanging was the punishment for murder in that time and place.) He asks questions, listens to the answers, and keeps his analysis to himself until the time is ripe. He has boundaries. He has strategy.

When Foyle is finally ready to nail an evildoer, he gives them a genuine piece of his mind and heart. He tells them just what kind of a bad person they are and why. In doing so, he upholds the concept that right and wrong are distinguishable.

When he arrests a murdering war profiteer, he points out clearly and harshly how ignoble, how immoral, it is to take advantage of a situation in which a suffering nation desperately needs to come together to defeat a great evil.

And even though this may have been poignantly obvious in the midst of WWII, it’s still true. Immoral actions are those based in too small a field of vision, too small a field of personal responsibility.

Foyle has many subtle facial gestures that mean either a.You’re an asshole, or b.I’ll bet you have a bridge to sell me, or c.Just you wait, buddy…

If you have a few extra minutes, watch this video of Foyle’s expressions set to music.

Tea and toast, or Fred and Ginger?

And now, back to the question of whether visual and moral aesthetics go together like amputees and prosthetics, one making up for a lack in the other, or more like tea and toast, separate and equal delights, better together, or like Fred and Ginger, complementary partners, the sum greater than the parts.

All I can tell you is that it was the fusion of visual beauty with a continuous demonstration of integrity that made me love this series so much. Integrity is as jaunty as a beautiful hat, as sleek and polished as a 1938 Wolesley. Integrity is a form of beauty — a heart-opener.

And I kept feeling stunned by the visual beauty on the screen.

It wasn’t just form and color; it was cultural and design aesthetics too. It was the gorgeousness of the cars, the fashions, the homes (the ones that had not been bombed to smithereens), and HATS!

Maybe visual and moral beauty don’t go together like amputees and prosthetics; maybe they go together as diverse manifestations of the great spirit that animates all life—the spirit that, showing up in human form as intelligence, courage, and love, makes art.

A selection of representative screenshots:

What can I say about these cars… they are such gorgeous artifacts.

And all this built-by-humans beauty appears against the backdrop of destroyed-by-humans ugliness — a cruel and devastating war, to say nothing of crooks, liars, swindlers and murderers.

A VW Beetle on steroids?

Yes, I like the cars. And I like the hats. And I adore this composition… the black, grey, and red tones.

This was an astonishing choice for the costume designer to make: two red coats, different shades and styles, ditto the hats.

Flowered wallpaper, flowered apron, and I want the vest…

Just love the colors, patterns in this one

Hats and Coats

Cars, architecture and HATS. I wish men still wore those hats. The cars look good enough to eat.

A few more thoughts. There are so many people now in public life—politics, business, and other areas of our culture, for whom the idea of integrity has no meaning. It’s all gaming the system, strategy without values, dirty pool, and no shame. Is modern life so confusing and scary, such a fear-based scramble for money and power, that we have lost sight of what integrity looks like, feels like?

One of the two leading candidates for President of the United States is a poster boy for a lack of integrity. Mainstream media is continuously failing to make this distinction as it continues to promotes horse race statistics with no scruples as to what is at stake in the next election.

And yet. There are so many people today demonstrating great insight, great love, great courage. There are so many people striving for integrity in this complex and troubled world. Just as WWII was a horrifying background to the beauty and integrity manifested in Foyle’s War, so too the people now who are making art, making love, making sense, against a background of feckless foolery, and much worse, are my heroes. We each have our little moment under this sun. What we do with it matters in ways we can never quite know.