The sliding scale to movie hell

The last time I ranted peremptorily about Star Trek Into Darkness, the conversation in the comments reminded me that not everyone agrees what Star Trek was or should be. Yet the opening lines in this early review only reinforces my curmudgeonly stance toward the rebooted franchise. See if you can spot where the problem lies:

How quickly a steady starship can veer off-course. JJ Abrams’ brainy, ballsy 2009 reboot of Trek has given way to a shallow, shrill, all-action sequel that reduces the characters to parodies. The camaraderie between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) now makes no sense: one is a risk-taking, rule-breaking rascal, the other’s a whiny geek; their dynamic brings to mind a socially inept schoolkid who thinks his bully is his friend. Scotty, Chekov and McCoy are just silly voices in uniforms, and beyond demonstrating her fluent Klingon, Zoe Saldana’s Uhura gets little to do except wonder why her pointy-eared boyfriend is bad at discussing his feelings (d’uh!).

If Nick Dent didn’t specifically mention in the second sentence that this is a review of the 2013 sequel, I would’ve thought this to be a near-perfect encapsulation of the first reboot. The fact that he regards Star Trek 2009 as “brainy” and “ballsy” compared to Into Darkness suggests that film critics have had to hire the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a ladder down to Hell to find a place low enough to set the bar for what counts as brainy and ballsy. Perhaps that’s another reason why the love for ST09 pisses me off so much. It’s not that I’m against enjoying big, dumb summer blockbusters. But when a big, dumb summer blockbuster rolls off the Tinseltown assembly line and it’s directed by Michael Bay, it is what it is, and is recognized (and most often derided) as such. When it’s directed by J.J. Abrams, it’s brainy and ballsy, though no smarter or technically more proficient. Apparently J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek is now a golden standard by which we measure summer blockbusters, so much so that even his own sequel can’t measure up. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the sliding scale to movie hell. I’m not, by the way, using this review to confirm whether or not Star Trek Into Darkness is really as bad as I’d feared; it may, contra whatever this critic says, be a very good film. That’s the not the point. The point is that I don’t think Dent is alone in his perspective on Abrams’s Star Trek. The point is that we’ve lost our cultural moorings where it comes to establishing benchmarks for taste and accomplishment. When the first film — which itself was a shallow, shrill, all-action reboot of a franchise that was initially intended by its creator to be the opposite — now towers above its successor as a model of depth, restraint, and thrills, it’s pretty clear to me that we expect nothing from our entertainment, and we therefore get nothing in return. Except we call it an embarrassment of riches when the next-worst thing comes out a few years later. No wonder Purgatory looks so enticing if you see it from a subjacent angle.

Via Opus. ☕

In praise of controversy

When Roger Ebert died a couple weeks ago, movie fans around the world mourned. Most eulogies ranged from respectful overviews of his life and work to moving testimonials extolling his prose and insight. I may have been remiss in not commenting immediately on his passing, since his absence does indeed leave a large void in the profession of film criticism, but what I’ll miss most about Ebert has somewhat to do with his accomplishments, and somewhat to do with the particular role he played in pop culture. These two things are related, but not the same. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that when I’ve mentioned Ebert, it has not always been in a flattering way. Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say: I did appreciate his work, and he was a skilled critic. What we’ve lost, however, isn’t a good film critic but rather the only film critic in America (possibly the world) who mattered to the moviegoing public.

Lots of people read reviews. They visit Rotten Tomatoes or perhaps they follow their local paper’s resident critic; maybe there’s a blogger they particularly like, or maybe they just have that one Facebook friend who reliably gives the lowdown on everything s/he’s seen recently. There are still dozens — hundreds — of critics of Ebert’s caliber out there, and there are several that I frankly enjoy more than him. The thing about Ebert is that he came along at exactly the right moment in our culture to carve out a specific kind of persona. For a variety of reasons, not all of them having to do with his actual prose or personality, Ebert became the archetype of the Critic we all imagine when we think of those sitting in a darkened theater with pen and paper a week or two days before the release of a movie, ready to praise or savage it for their public. For the most part, Ebert was perceived as a benevolent sage, as opposed to an Addison de Witt, and this was an image he earned. However, his unique status as America’s preeminent film critic enabled him to attract a great deal of attention whenever he espoused views that weren’t always enlightened or ingratiating with the majority of his readership. Being the only film critic in the world who mattered to Joe Public meant that he was also virtually the only film critic in the world who could generate controversy simply by stating his opinion. (Sorry, Armond. Only haters and intrigued contrarians like me care what you think.)

Thinking back over the last twenty years or so, it’s difficult to think of many mainstream critics who have done anything that drew attention to the substance of their opinions by created anything resembling a controversy. Even if Ebert wasn’t the one to create the controversy, he usually benefitted from it. I recall when David Lynch’s Lost Highway came out, advertisements ran in the newspapers bragging that Siskel and Ebert had given it two thumbs down, which prompted a conversation about the relevance of critics and the way they resonated with various audiences. A popular YouTube video shows the pair debating with John Simon the merits of Return of the Jedi; the fact that this video is making the rounds thirty years after it was broadcast indicates that there’s a certain amount of stock in the fact that critics came to verbal blows over what is now a touchstone film in popular entertainment. Not just any critics; Siskel and Ebert.

There were similar mini-controversies from just the last decade. Remember the kerfuffle over Ebert’s four-star review of Knowing, which prompted not one but two further blog posts defending his opinion? Then there was the incident in which he reviewed a movie without having watched the entire thing, being forced to walk back his scathing review later. How about his not-entirely-unfair tweet about “Jackass” Ryan Dunn’s death? And, of course, there was his dismissal of video games as art. The point isn’t that Ebert was right or wrong in any of this stuff. The point is that when anybody but Ebert says or does stuff like this, the only people who care are probably hardcore cinephiles who thrive on manufacturing topics for debate. But when Ebert says it, it reaches a larger circumference of the public sphere. At least, it did. Now that Ebert is gone, there is nobody who occupies that particular place in American culture.

Much as I often lament the level of vitriol that passes for discourse these days, there is something to be said for having someone who stirs the pot productively — a provocateur who can bring attention to issues and generate actual debate, as opposed to name-calling and fiery denunciations of a truly Puritanical order. Public debate needs controversy to a certain extent. Not a culture war, per se, but issues framed in such a way as to amply demonstrate to the average citizen that s/he has a stake in whichever direction the issue is taken. Ebert did that for the movies. He knew that movies mattered, and he devoted his life to illustrating that as clearly as he was able. In that endeavor, I think his legacy was of success. But the degree to which that legacy remains immediate and relevant to the further evolution of motion pictures within our culture is anything but set in stone. With Ebert around, we always had a focal point around which to orient the larger discussion. With him gone, that responsibility falls to all of us with a vested interest in the subject, but none of us has the cachet he did. It is now incumbent upon the cineastes and cinephiles of the world to uphold Ebert’s legacy. As discourse wanes, so does the memory of his life’s work; let his death be commemorated by the continuing conversation. ☕

Reader question: What 2013 movies am I looking forward to?

Another reader question. Rob is pretty straightforward:

[A]ny 2013 movies you’re really looking forward to?

Indeed. My primary go-to guide is this io9 preview, which covers 77 sci-fi/fantasy flicks. Since that kind of stuff is definitely my bag, let me just run down a couple highlights, listed in chronological order.

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G.I. Joe: Retaliation – I dug the first one. What else can I say? Bring on the mountaineering ninja battles.

Upstream Color – Shane Carruth has finally made his second movie. Being as how Primer is one of the masterpieces of the 2000s, I couldn’t be more excited for this. I’m especially atwitter over the Kubrickean visual rhymes all over the most recent trailer. I’ll go ahead and say that I hope this will not only be one of the best (if not the best) films of the year, but of the decade.

Oblivion – Cool trailer. Joseph Kosinski did an awesome job with Tron: Legacy, and the biggest misstep with that film was casting Garret Hedlund in the lead role. With Tom Cruise as the headliner, I’m thinking this will rock.

This is the End aka The End of the World – For some reason, I’ve become a huge Seth Rogen fan in the last few years. I still despise Superbad, but I’ve liked most of his other stuff. As much as I bag on raunchy comedy, the redband trailer made me laugh.

The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, RIPD – July’s gonna be packed. The first two films already have cool trailers out, and with Gore Verbinski and Guillermo Del Toro directing them, I’m pretty confident I’ll have a good time. Not nearly as confident about RIPD, but when I saw him speak at a convention, James Hong said that he got strong vibes (Blade Runner strength) about its potential. Good enough for me.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters – I dug the first one. What else can I say? Bring on the Fillion.

Riddick – I’m a fan of the first two films. I fully expect much spacefaring badassery.

The Tomb – Arnie and Sly team up to break out of a high-tech prison. Fingers crossed that Dominic Purcell is their man on the outside!

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – I liked the comics. I liked Sin City. I even liked The Spirit. Odds of me liking this? Three to one in favor.

The World’s End – Pegg, Frost, and Wright re-team for genre shenanigans. What better reason for the world to end, if not to have them do a movie about it?

Ender’s Game – Let me clarify that I’m not looking forward to this per se. Gavin Hood is a hack, and my expectation is that he’ll screw this up. But it’s based on one of my very favorite books, so I’ll be seeing it no matter what. The line between fandom and masochism is oh so very thin.

Thor: The Dark World – The first one was surprisingly solid, and this one apparently has Thor versus the Ninth Doctor. Fantastic!

Saving Mr. Banks – A biopic about the making of one of my ten favorite films of all time? Yeah, pretty pumped.

Gravity – The director of Children of Men does hard sci-fi.

Snow Piercer – The director of The Host and Mother does a post-apocalyptic, socially-conscious… something. Really, I don’t know much about this one, other than the people involved make it a must see.

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That’s the easy part. Other films I’m hoping will come out in the theater near me this next year are as follows:

Chinese Zodiac – Jackie Chan’s last action picture. Absolutely required viewing.

The Grandmasters – Wong Kar-Wai does period kung-fu epic. Advance word is that it’s incredible.

Amour – This should be out pretty soon near me. To say I’m “excited” to see it wouldn’t be accurate. Let’s just say that I expect it to be an experience I will appreciate having had once I’ve had time to recover from it.

Bullet to the Head, The Last Stand – More Sly and Arnie. Because I’m one of those idiots who went to see Expendables 2 opening day.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters – Probably really bad. Then again, the trailers make it seem like it has some Hong Kong-esque energy to it.

Parker – Statham plays Richard Stark’s (aka Donald Westlake’s) most indelible creation. Pretty jazzed about this, especially as a potential franchise. Parker aged along with the books (more or less), so Statham could conceivably have a lifelong ride with this one.

A Good Day to Die Hard – Duh.

Stoker – An English-language vampire flick by the director of Oldboy. Not enough to get me salivating, but the trailer was pretty sexy.

Dead Man Down, Oz the Great and Powerful – I’ll probably be seeing one of these for my birthday. Not particularly looking forward to either, but you never know.

To the Wonder – Terrence Malick hasn’t made a great film since The Thin Red Line, but everything he does is still worth seeing.

Much Ado About Nothing – I’ve already blogged about this one. Very excited.

Oldboy – I expect the remake to be better than the original. You decide if I’m joking or not.

The Monuments Men – I’m a fan of Clooney as a filmmakers, and this sounds like a cool Oscar-season ensemble piece.

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That’s pretty much it for the ones I know I’m hyped about. There are a few big other big ones I know that I’ll see just because, and a few about which I’m on the fence. The biggest maybe-maybe-not film at the moment is probably Iron Man 3. I’m not a particular fan of the first two, though I liked the second one better than the first. I’m also a bit leery of films trying to tap into The Dark Knight in order to grant themselves some legitimacy, and it feels like Iron Man 3 might be going for that vibe. At the same time, it looks visually impressive, it’s gone Shane Black directing, and if there’s one thing the Marvel films have done pretty well, it’s build up the need for heroism, even if the heroes are flawed and human. One of the things I think the trailer did particularly well was have that chest cell behind the logo wink out, then wink back on again. A small gesture, but well-delivered. I know I’ll probably see it within a week or two of its opening; I just hope it tops the disappointing first two films.

All of that said, though, one of the things I most look forward to in any given year is the number of films that I hadn’t previously anticipated, but which completely take me by surprise in the most pleasant way. The above list is by no means exhaustive. I can’t wait to see what 2013 has in store for me that I haven’t anticipated.

So, dear readers: what are you planning to see in 2013? ☕

Geek: a word nerd digression

Over at io9 (via Comics Alliance), Rachel Edidin has posted a rant drumming up a faux-crisis about the myth of the fake geek girl, and how guys are threatened by the presence of female geeks, so they assert that geek girls are not actually real. Or something. Frankly, I barely made it past the third paragraph, which stated the following:

“Geek” is a gendered noun. There’s a GeekGirlCon, but no GeekGuyCon: every con is GeekGuyCon, unless it specifies otherwise. You don’t say “geek guys” the way you say “geek girls”: once you’ve said “geek,” the “guy” is pretty much taken as read.

It may be the case that some people think of the word “geek” as being masculine, but it is not noted as such at Dictionary.com, nor do I recall it being described as such in any other dictionary I’ve ever consulted. In point of fact, most words in the English language are gender-neutral. While many of the languages from which English evolved do gender their nouns, this linguistic practice has fallen out of use over the last couple centuries in English itself. I think that Edidin mixed up denotation and connotation. Denotation is the literal meaning of a word; the textbook, dictionary definition of what it describes. Connotation is the meaning associated with the word; the ineffable impression left upon that word by its common usage.

In practice, yes, most people who are not geeks probably instinctively think of a “geek” as a male nerd who obsesses over trivial and/or highly technical arcana that are of little interest to most people or are beyond their comprehension. That’s the connotation of the word, not its denotation. There are probably many male geeks out there who either feel threatened by female geeks or who simply refuse to believe that there could be feminine counterparts to their particular brand of esotericism. On the flip side, I also know that there are plenty of female geeks out there. I married one. She’s awesome. I rarely feel threatened by her, and when I do, that’s only when I’ve done something thoughtless; her geekiness, in and of itself, poses no threat to me. In fact, I quite dig it.

Furthermore, most of the other self-identified male geeks I know are all familiar with female geeks. (If they don’t know any personally, they surely take note of them at conventions.) A few of them are even quite active in promoting feminist geekdom. In short, we all use “geek” as a gender-neutral or gender-inclusive term. I don’t know what sectors of the Internet Edidin has been patrolling, but in both my online and flesh-and-blood life, there is no such thing as a “fake” geek girl. Most of the male geeks who think geek girls are a myth are probably not real geeks.

None of this changes the fact that “geek” is not, by definition, a gendered noun. And since that is the cornerstone upon which Edidin builds her rant, it speaks to the vacuity of both her argument and the topic.

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UPDATE 11/21/2012: Alyssa Rosenberg has weighed in on Edidin’s post, and you should definitely check out what she has to say. The biggest thing that gave me pause was the idea of geeks “consolidat[ing] our cultural power.” I know that Rosenberg isn’t exactly advocating hegemony or conformity, but those tend to be outgrowths of consolidation, not to mention the implication that, in order to consolidate, there must be some sort of widespread agreement on core values. If its (alleged) sheer diversity is one of the best things that geekdom has going for it, it feels like consolidation would be fatal to its (supposed) vibrancy and predilection for change. Who’s going to assign or decide those values or geekdom’s core mission? One of the advantages to geeks being a notoriously cantankerous and iconoclastic group (who nevertheless fall eagerly in line behind super-big brand names like Disney’s Avengers, and death to anyone who refuses to slobber all over it!) is that even their groupthink is fractious. They don’t like being told who or what they are or what they should be all about, even if they’re all about very mainstream stuff. I dunno. I guess the idea of prescribed geekery being a cure for what ails us just rankles me. I am, after all, notoriously cantankerous. ☕

A dialogue on the cultural divide

You may remember that Andrew O’Hehir took a bit of a drubbing over his “death of film culture” screed last month, especially because of the undisguised elitism permeating it. This last weekend, he wrote a sterling post reflecting upon, in part, that elitism and the cultural divide it perpetuates in the United States. But he goes even beyond that, assessing (pretty accurately, I think) that the so-called “culture war” is something that is being waged almost subconsciously; that the dynamics informing the ebb and flow of one side or the other’s cultural dominance has deep, deep roots, and that most people are not necessarily aware of it, especially when doing things like voting for political candidates.

But the American division is not essentially about partisan politics or ideological labels, and it can only sometimes be reduced to questions of economic policy. It is sometimes but not always about racial resentment, sometimes but not always about the contested public role of Christianity, and often but not always about big words that are inherently squashy and subjective, like “patriotism” and “freedom.” One of the key concepts, to my mind, is what sociologists call the loss of “relative privilege.” Many white men perceive, correctly, that they have lost social status relative to women and minorities, especially when they compare themselves to their fathers and grandfathers, who benefited from white supremacy and male supremacy (whether or not they personally held racist or sexist views). But is that really the central issue or just the one that my own cultural and educational backgrounds point me toward? We have to be careful about forming conclusions when the evidence is so deeply buried.

There appear to be two aims of this post. One is to warn liberals not to get too cocky, lest the the right wing ambush them; the other is to take seriously the thought that perhaps this cultural divide is better discussed openly and thoughtfully rather than fought over. I’ll take it a step further. O’Hehir doesn’t really endorse a binary division, per se, but it’s convenient to talk about the divide in such terms. I am not chiding him for doing so, because it wasn’t really the point of his post, but I’d like to make it explicit that there must be more than two sides to this culture war, and that’s part of what makes it so confusing and troublesome: it’s a war with multiple groups and multiple fronts that keeps getting commandeered by the two biggest armies. When discrete groups with their own interests are pressganged into fighting for a side that isn’t really theirs, ideological confusion is sure to take root. The entire discourse basically hinges upon a binary construct, yet as Jubilare recently ranted, it’s not actually a dichotomy. Framing it as such only cracks the frame and skews the debate.

The other important aspect to consider is the fact that this cultural divide is framed as a war. Wars have winners and losers, and wars are usually won by aggression and martial superiority. In many ways, it’s an apt term. Competition is a fact of nature; it’s everywhere, it guides the evolution of species, it’s built into our DNA. We can’t ignore it or excise it, even though we wish we could. War is the nightmarish, logical extreme of this natural impulse. But it isn’t the only outlet for it. I do believe that we can work around the exigency of war by other means, if a majority of people are committed to it — both literally and metaphorically.

The day after the election, I was disgusted with the bitterness and intransigence on display by partisans. Earlier this year, I ruminated on what it means to be conservative and the ways in which Americans of various political persuasions relate to each other. I ended by suggesting that we acknowledge that, divided as it is, our culture is still our culture; we share it, and by that virtue we are still fellow Americans. We needn’t behave as it this were a second Civil War. One of the responses I got was from another self-identified conservative who had this to say:

America certainly has a recognizable culture and that is what the Liberals – and some who call themselves Conservatives – are, amongst other things, assailing. Their’s is an attempt to remake the nation into something unrecognizable.

Hence, this is not a game. It is a war, though one that has not reached the point of large scale violence as of yet.

And no, insofar as I can see the Liberals are not part of American culture since they’re deliberately and willfully antagonistic too it more often than not.

But then I’m one of those who you describe as a hateful, hostile warriors that will rip the throat out of anyone in my way. That’s because I take this serious, not as some useless competition where you meet your enemy for a friendly dinner, though I’ll certainly drink a beer standing on their grave – then piss on it.

I found this response to be both disappointing and disturbing, but not very surprising. My attempt to engage fruitfully with the commenter was a bust, unfortunately. But it shook me up a bit. I read plenty of blogs from across the ideological spectrum that espouse attitudes similar to this. They anger me, but they don’t shock me. They mostly preach to the choir or vent hateful prejudices that are unlikely ever to be overcome. They aren’t specifically directed at people who are likely to engage them in any meaningful way. What upset me about the comments on my blog was that they were a direct response to me and to what I had said. And the comments weren’t simply insulting; they conveyed an explicit hatred toward others and a profound refusal to consider a more productive — dare I say “Christian”? — dialogue. What’s worse, they came from someone who ostensibly hails from “my side” (even though it’s obvious that he considers me to be a “fake” conservative).

The problem is that I didn’t ask for everyone to alter their beliefs or aims; I didn’t suggest that this wasn’t some sort of competition. I didn’t even debase myself by suggesting that “we’re all winners” or somesuch cockamamie thing. Instead, I simply suggested that this competition not be regarded as a war. Then I got that response.

Obviously, not everyone agrees with that view. But it’s fairly prevalent. I have talked to both Romney and Obama supporters who have said in no uncertain terms that they expected their opponents’ champion to bring the vengeance of the gods down upon them and to destroy America. I can’t even say that these people are stupid. Most of them may be, but I know plenty of them that I consider to be intelligent, reasonably well-informed adults — and they still felt this way. Is it any wonder that they treat this as a war?

There are a couple of reasons I wanted to highlight O’Hehir’s post. First, to commend it for being mature, for apparently seeking a constructive dialogue on culture. I don’t know that he would be interested in bridging the divide, but perhaps substituting the slings and arrows on each side of the chasm with bullhorns and semaphores. Second, because I think he’s right about the deep roots of the cultural divide — however you want to define it. If I’m right in that there aren’t just two sides, and if O’Hehir is right in that nobody is really aware of how deep the trench goes, then this is a war in which nobody actually knows which side they’re on, who they’re fighting, or why. In a way, George Orwell’s prediction of perpetual war in 1984 has come to fruition; just as his book was an allegory, so is his war. Instead of literal battle, it’s metaphorical. But it’s total and unceasing. As a culture, the only thing bridging the divide seems to be the acceptance of the terms of total war. By allowing war to frame the cultural debate, there’s only one peaceful solution tolerable to any side. Our culture has adopted an ideology that demands unconditional surrender. As history shows, the cost of those terms is horrendous. At the moment, it is my belief that nobody truly understands what terms of unconditional surrender would mean for the conquered or the conquerors. Maybe there are some of us willing to tear the throat out of our opponents, carpet bomb Berlin, or drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — metaphorically speaking, of course. You know who you are. What you need to understand is that, metaphorically speaking, you are behaving like war criminals.

Framing cultural differences in terms of war does not lead to a unified culture; it does not lead to progress; it does not lead to a lasting peace. It does not bridge a divide; it fills it with spent uranium, then forces the defeated to walk across in bare feet. To me, this is untenable. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t have these warlike impulses. I do, and they sicken me. I challenge them in my culture because I wrestle with them in myself. At the core of who I am is a struggle not to be the kind of person who delights in warfare, but the kind of person who disdains it. Some days — maybe most — I fail to be the latter. I’m a war criminal, too.

I don’t say this because I think everyone should simply emulate me or necessarily share my subjectivity. I say this to illustrate that I understand struggling with the kind of choices we must make culturally in order to be a better people. What I can’t do is hate myself, just because a large part of me is something antithetical to my values; if I believe that I have been forgiven out of love, then my struggle within myself must be done on those terms. Culturally, the same applies. Instead of building cultural struggle on unconditional surrender, perhaps it might be based on unconditional love. Loving someone does not preclude them from being wrong; it doesn’t preclude challenging or wrestling them. It does require not going for the kill, and it does require accepting them in cultural fellowship. I’m not sure if this frame is any better than the one currently dominating our discourse, but it’s one that I would find much easier to live with, and I’m glad that there appear to be others out there who feel the same way. ☕

This is what I see this morning.

A quick impression for you:

One Side: “UP YOUR ASS, BITCHES!”

The Other Side: “WE WILL FIGHT YOU EVIL BASTARDS TILL OUR DYING BREATH!”

With some exceptions (and God bless them), this appears to be the state of the electorate right now. Full disclosure: even though I’m apparently a one-percenter, I’m glad that Romney lost because I think a Romney presidency would have been slightly more disastrous than four more years of Obama, and the Republican Party has, in my view, pretty much been in the process of a slow-motion implosion for the better part of the last decade. (And what the Tea Party movement became was a contributor to that implosion, as opposed to the galvanizing revival, as many conservatives have painted it.) What I had hoped — but not expected — is that, after a Romney loss (not to be confused with an Obama victory, which isn’t quite what happened last night), Americans would wake up and realize that they actually have to work together to find common ground and goals once the dust settles; that they are not enemies, but mere opponents. Alan Jacobs put it brilliantly:

I have seen (we all have seen) more and more articles, blog posts, and comments premised on the assumption that the writer’s political enemies really are enemies — wicked people bent on the destruction of all that is good and right in the world.

As for me, I don’t think people who disagree with me — about abortion, politics, religion, literature, whatever — are, on balance, any more wicked than I am. I just think that on the points where we disagree they happen to be wrong. That shouldn’t be such a difficult distinction to keep in mind.

After the North won the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president, the United States was probably in the most fragile position in its entire history. Some historically ignorant partisans may wish to claim that we’ve almost never been so divided, but until states start seceding from the Union and booting federal employees from their borders by force of arms, I call B.S. any such sentiment. To say that political tensions still ran high at the time of Lincoln’s second inauguration would be a fundamentally idiotic understatement. To their credit, both Romney and the president struck conciliatory notes in their respective concession and victory speeches. I don’t think either one put it quite as succinctly and eloquently as Lincoln, for whom, and for whose country at the time, the stakes could not have been higher:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The United States hasn’t literally been at war with itself these last four years; the politics of this election cycle (or the last several) haven’t literally created widows and orphans, and the nation’s wounds are metaphorical. Yet to judge by the rhetoric I’ve seen on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and video clips this morning, you’d think that Obama had just kneecapped grandma with a tire iron, or that Romney’s evil minions had been dragging people out of their beds at night and slapping them facedown on the guillotine. This is not a war, people, and just as losing losing political ground in an election does not mean losing the soul of the country, winning ground in an election does not equate to a unilateral endorsement of a monolithic (partisan) vision of progress. What it means is that, for the next two-to-six years, this particular set of people has been elected to debate, discuss, compromise, legislate, administrate, and generally do the hard work of running this country on its citizens’ behalf. That’s it.

So if you’re out there gloating or sulking, put a cork in it. Put on your big boy/big girl pants, wipe the spittle from your mouth, shake hands with your opponent, and get back to the business of being good neighbors. If you can’t do that, then it means you’ve never been interested in democracy, but domination. Show a little charity, please. ☕

What about Ender Wiggin? Not epic enough?

The Doctor tops io9′s list of 8 Epic Heroes Who Committed Mass Murder. Just so. The case for (against?) him:

For a character who frequently makes moralistic pronouncements and shows plenty of righteous indignation towards other people’s actions, he is probably responsible for more deaths than any action hero or horror icon of the 1980′s. [...] In his 1103 years, the Doctor has racked up a body count that could be conservatively tallied in the trillions. It’s gotten so bad, for a while he was able to defuse any potential conflict by doing nothing more than introduce himself.

And now that he’s gone off grid with the whole faked-death thing, not even his reputation can hold him accountable to what he chooses to do. Prepare yourself, universe, for the Doctor unbound.☕

It’s a beautiful morning here in sunny Wisconsin!

Football fans are in a tizzy over a last night’s Packers-Seahawks game. The scuttlebutt is that the Packers lost because those darn replacement refs blew the call for a game-deciding point. Normally I wouldn’t blog about sports — and especially not football. The Packers generally fall under the heading of “if you can’t say something nice…” so I don’t blog about them, because my contempt for pro football means I have little to say that’s at all constructive. That said, take a look at the tweets reported by this article. A highlight:

“Disgusting. Can’t wish you a good night because that’s not possible. Shame. Shame. Shame. Just disgusting” — NFL agent David Canter.

“Disgusting,” eh? With all the awful stuff going on in the world, a bad call in a ball game is enough that some jackass can’t wish everyone a good night? Cripes. Get some perspective, people. To me, this whole “controversy” is illustrative of why I started hating football — and the Packers — in the first place. It’s just a game. Yes, it’s a zillion-dollar game. Yes, the athletes are really good at what they do. Yes, there’s a lot of action and strategy involved in each play. Yes, sports have the capacity to bring people of diverse — and even opposed — backgrounds together in a common love of the game. And I know that most of those players are decent folks who do a lot of good in their communities. None of that really negates the fact that it’s a glorified game of catch, and that people take it way too freaking seriously.

I think it’s hilarious that Monday night was “ruined” for people on account of a couple amateur refs. I’m especially gratified that the Packers’ precious win-loss record is now irrevocably skewed for the season. Sure, I’m being petty and childish. Compared to the unbridled vitriol vented at the NFL and those poor referees, though, I’m serving milk and cookies. Leaving aside my ornery animus against the Pack, just consider for a moment, if you are a football fan, how angry you are right now. If you’re not angry at all, good for you. You’re a rational adult, and I applaud you. If you’re miffed, that’s fair. Chalk it up to an unpleasant aesthetic experience. If you’re blazing with wrath, you have a problem. That problem is the unbelievable amount of emotional capital that you — along with so many of your countrymen — have invested in this sport. You want to talk about disgusting? That level of rage is disgusting. It’s a sport. By definition, a “pleasant diversion.” If your “pleasant diversion” is filling you with anger and hatred, it’s not a sport anymore. It’s a psychosis. Get some help.

I know that a lot of people in my home state are really angry right now. They’re sitting in their cars, listening to the morning sports anchors wax indignant about the referee lockout, the idiocy of last night’s call, the fate of the Packers’ Super Bowl hopes, etc. They’re fuming. They’ll bitch endlessly all through lunch with their friends and coworkers about how terrible that was and how deeply upset they are right now. They’ll never stop to notice how brightly the sun is shining, how crisp and fresh the air is, how full of possibility the morning. It is a beautiful morning (at least in my corner of America’s Dairyland), but there are so many fools still trapped in a single moment of last night, reliving an unfortunate incident from a gladiatorial pissing match and allowing it to darken the promise of a new dawn. Relax, people. Take a deep breath and have a cup of coffee. Wake up.☕

The dialectic of elections

“Today only [stereotyped] thinking is left. People still vote, but only between totalities. The anti-Semitic psychology has largely been replaced by mere acceptance of the whole fascist ticket, which is an inventory of the slogans of belligerent big business. Just as, on the ballot paper of the mass party, voters are presented with the names of people remote from their experience for whom they can only vote en bloc, the central ideological concepts have been codified into a small number of lists. One has to opt for one of them en bloc if one’s own position is not to seem as futile as splinter votes on polling day in face of the statistical mammoths.” – Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from “Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment” in The Dialectic of Enlightenment

Adorno and Horkheimer were writing in the long shadow of Hitler’s Germany, from which they fled along with almost all of their colleagues in the years leading up to the Second World War. The book from which the above quote is excerpted is a critique of the prevailing philosophy of civilization, one that, in the view of the authors, divides society into individuals (who worship at the altar of individuality), then forces conformity upon them (the better to control them as a collective mass). In the context of the chapter from which that quote is taken, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that anti-Semitism is essentially a symptom of the larger disease, not the cancer itself. Anti-Semitism is an expression of a cultural phenomenon that could be filled by virtually any other attitude that projects fear and self-loathing onto Difference.

What struck me about this particular passage is how uncannily — minus the period-specific references to anti-Semitism and fascism (which was, please remember, considered to be a viable and progressive political philosophy in the early 20th century) — it describes the election politics of the United States in the 21st century. One of the central themes of The Dialectic of Enlightenment is how sameness and conformity preserve the power structure of society by offering the illusion of choice to the average joe. This applies as equally to brands of soup as it does political parties. You don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate just how much capital (cultural, economic, psychological) has been concentrated in the hands of America’s two biggest parties, and the myriad ways in which that power is wielded by both the parties’ gamesmanship and the sheer inertia of the system against the interests of the individual voters.

By dividing America in twain, the Democrats and Republicans haven’t offered choices to its citizens; they’ve categorized them as being One or the Other. If you are merely One or the Other, then you have little choice but to vote accordingly, which amounts to no choice at all. Whatever the differences between the two parties, consider that they and they alone have — together — monopolized the political establishment of this country for more than 150 years. In their theatrical struggle for power, they have exonerated the use of power itself as a political means. This is why you can hear each party claiming to “Take back America!” as if it had been stolen overnight from its crib.

Despite the changes in cultural values and their respective platforms, both parties have remained. Only those with money can gain entrance to the machine, and only those willing to perpetuate the false (that is, fraudulent) dichotomy as The Real Choice are permitted to stay. Every election is The Most Important Election in Our Lifetime. Only by giving a Mandate to Our Party can Real Change begin. The Others want to Destroy Your Country. Only We are Fighting to Preserve the Real America. Each is defined in opposition to the other, but it’s not a real contest: it’s two bullies dividing the class’s lunch money evenly between them, then flipping for that last quarter. The beauty of it is that they’ve convinced the rest of us that we actually have a stake in whether it lands heads or tails.

I’m not a Adorno/Horkheimer acolyte. But the pessimism exemplified in that quote articulates very well the frustration I feel regarding Decision 2012. It’s not a decision; it’s a coin toss. Worse than that, I know that the machine has won. Instead of seeing elections as an opportunity to direct their own political fate, the American people continue to treat election for political office as a beauty pageant. Good thing, too. We all know that the most valuable quality in an administrator is how often we’d like to have him over for a beer. The personal touch has been mechanized and commodified. In an age when the voice and image of a single person can be disseminated across thousands of miles to thousands of people via wires and electric pulses, it must be reassuring that it’s so easy to believe that, hey, I could easily imagine myself being that guy’s friend! He doesn’t even need to threaten me for my lunch money: I’ll hand it over gladly, because maybe he’ll see me for who I really am. I think he gets me, man. He really cares.

Why else would partisans work the phones on behalf of “Mitt” or “Barack”?

One more riposte from H & A. Substitute “industry” for “the two parties” and “customers and employees” for “voters and campaign volunteers.”

“Industry is interested in human beings only as its customers and employees and has in fact reduced humanity as a whole, like each of its elements, to this exhaustive formula. [...] As employees people are reminded of the rational organization and must fit into it as common sense requires. As customers they are regaled, whether on the screen or in the press, with human interest stories demonstrating freedom of choice and the charm of not belonging to the system. In both cases they remain objects.” – Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” from The Dialectic of Enlightenment

Yep, they care, all right. You’d look just darling up on the shelf with their collectible Furbies.☕

Reframing hackery: the life’s work of Tony Scott

After muttering, “Wow. That sucks,” upon hearing the news of Tony Scott’s suicide, my first thought was, “When was the last time I watched one of his movies?” I believe have an exact date: October 14, 2005. That would be the day Domino entered wide release. In my review, I had this to say:

I can’t walk out of a Tony Scott film without feeling absolutely exhausted. His latest film, “Domino” is the “sort of” true story of Domino Harvey, daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, who walked away from the glam high-life of Beverly Hills to plunge instead into the risky business of bounty hunting. Domino’s neo-grunge lifestyle is saturated with all the grimy pastels that Scott can manage to pour into every frame; every frame is spliced with about a dozen others from different angles, effecting the woozy brain-pain of an all-night binge.

The Sight & Sound 2012 poll: My hypothetical ballot(s)

Yesterday, the BFI made available an interactive list of every film tallied in its most recent poll of critics of the greatest films ever made. One of the most common complaints about this list (and every other like it) is the stuff that gets left off. When you’re looking at a list built from consensus, it’s not so much that stuff has been completely ignored so much as that the final result cannot possibly reflect the diversity of the selections — which is why I always look forward to the individual ballots so much. They probably more accurately reflect the diversity of taste and aesthetic priorities of those polled than the official top ten. Yet even creating an individual ballot is a challenge in itself. How does one decide on the best ten films one’s ever seen, let alone the best ten films ever made?

The Sight & Sound 2012 critics poll: disappointment and hope

Plenty of analysis has already been done on the top 50 films from Sight & Sound’s 2012 critics poll. Indiewire has a whole series running on the poll, including a lament about the lack of female representation. As I mentioned in the comments in my previous post, I had three big disappointments in this year’s list, which was compiled from the top ten lists of 846 professionals.

 

Newbies but goodies

The most recent film in the top ten is from 1968, indicating that virtually no consensus has had time to emerge in the last 40-odd years about what constitutes great contemporary cinema. It’s also disappointing that the most recent film from the top 50 is Mulholland Dr. (not a favorite, though at least it wasn’t Inland Empire), and that it came in at 28 (with 40 votes). By contrast, many analysts have already noted that the silent era is well-represented, with three of the top ten films being silent films made between 1927 and 1929, though only five of the top 50 (if I understand the list correctly), are silent, and they are, ironically, clumped up into the top twelve slots, with Battleship Potemkin missing the tenth slot by one vote, and L’Atalante close behind.

I’m very glad that the silent era is well-represented, and I don’t know that newer films are more or less deserving of the distinction of being in the top ten (or 50), but it does seem to be such a shame that four decades of wonderful cinema are barely represented, once all the votes have been tallied. Here’s the tally of films in the top 50 from each post-60s decade:

Sight & Sound’s 2012 Greatest Films of All Time

From BBC News.

Critics’ Top Ten:

1. Vertigo | Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
2. Citizen Kane | Orson Welles, 1941
3. Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story) | Ozu Yasujiro, 1953
4. La Regle de jeu (The Rules of the Game) | Jean Renoir, 1939
5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans | F. W. Murnau, 1927
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey | Stanley Kubrick, 1968
7. The Searchers | John Ford, 1956
8. Chelovek s kino-apparotom (Man with a Movie Camera) | Dziga Vertov, 1929
9. La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) | C. T. Dreyer, 1927
10. 8 1/2 | Federico Fellini, 1963

Directors’ Top Ten:

1. Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story) | Ozu Yasujiro, 1953
2. (tie) 2001: A Space Odyssey | Stanley Kubrick, 1968
3. (tie) Citizen Kane | Orson Welles, 1941
4. 8 1/2 | Federico Fellini, 1963
5. Taxi Driver | Martin Scorsese, 1976
6. Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
7. (tie) The Godfather | Francis Ford Coppola, 1972
8. (tie) Vertigo | Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
9. Zerkalo (The Mirror) | Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975
10. Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) | Vittorio de Sica, 1948

The BFI’s intro to the updated list on the S&S site. The dates I’m most looking forward to are the 15th and 22nd, at which times S&S will reveal the ballots of all the critics and directors, respectively. Stay tuned.☕

Batman rises, intelligence falls, part 2: El Rushbo loco?

I just finished a post about the idiocy in some of the reactions to the new Batman movie, and then I read on Opus that Rush Limbaugh has also allegedly bought a(nother) one-way ticket on the crazy train. Quoth El Rushbo:

Have you heard this new movie, the Batman movie, what is it, The Dark Knight Lights Up or whatever the name is. That’s right, Dark Knight Rises. Lights Up, same thing. Do you know the name of the villain in this movie? Bane. The villain in The Dark Knight Rises is named Bane, B-a-n-e. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran and around which there’s now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time. The release date’s been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?

Batman rises, intelligence falls

The Droid You’re Looking For has a hilarious 5 step chart for how to cope with bad reviews of The Dark Knight Rises. Not only hilarious, but apparently essential to the health of our society. Death threats were made by raving fanboys over the temerity of critics to criticize the new Batman movie. The likelihood that anyone who readily resorts to such tactics has the acuity (mental, physical, or constitutional) to carry through on such threats is infinitesimally small. The fact that this sort of thing is common is regrettable. Both Sonny Bunch and Glenn Kenny (among many others) have weighed in on this, and I’d like to highlight one quote from each. Bunch:

Fanboy fascism and elite groupthink are, in a way, flip sides of the same coin. Both in-groups are desperate to maintain their privilege; both looks warily at the other. A certain subset of fanboy harbors the sense that a few critics out there will never respect comic book films; a certain subset of criticism does them a solid by constantly slagging comic book films and acting as if they can never, at least, suffice as entertaining summer fare—and God help anyone who thinks they can be more than that. C’est la vie. The world turns. We will soon move on to the next Internet emergency.

Kenny:

[T]his thing called “fan culture” or “nerd cuture” or whatever it is you want to call it is largely predicated on emotional immaturity combined with a variety of willed cultural illiteracy. Fan culture doesn’t say “comic books can be high art,” it says, “comic books are the only art.” And, further, “the film of the comic book must provide an analogous heightened experience of the comic book, and YOU, the person on the outside of our purview who is now being gifted with this artifact of AWESOMENESS, must fall into line and PRAISE this artifact and confer upon it the legitimacy it has always deserved but which YOU have been too blinkered by your own pretentious prejudices to recognize.” That’s what fan culture wants. That’s what it demands. “Nerd culture” is Peter Pan as a brain-eating zombie.

To me, this is of a piece with the Tosh rape kerfuffle and what Alex over at Confused Gender considers to be the scourge of Internet discourse. I’d like to say that the relative anonymity of the Internet is what fuels the fanboy fire, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I’ve encountered many, many people in real life (who aren’t critics or bloggers or Internet debaters in particular) whose reaction to a difference of taste is frighteningly disproportionate to the “offense” or is a maddening brand of willed cultural illiteracy, as Kenny puts it. My guess is that while the Internet offers these brain eating zombies a forum for airing their grievances in the safest, most vile way possible, it’s not the Internet that causes it (though it’s probably a contributing factor). Instead, I get the impression that there’s something more generational at work. People my age, or perhaps a little older, simply don’t care that they are, for lack of a better word, being stupid. They don’t care that they’re being jackasses. They celebrate being stupid jackasses because they damn well have the right and they don’t give a crap about anyone or anything else, goddarn it. Except they do, of course. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be upset by things like a “ruined” Tomatometer or the fact that some people think that some rape jokes are out of line. Like the self-appointed feminist warriors who simply declaim Game of Thrones on the basis of male-gaze-rape-fantasy-and-if-you-disagree-you’re-probably-a-racist-rapist, those who truly own their nerdrage are so insecure about their own taste and cultural position that, rather than simply praise something they love — or, if they want to engage in debate, meet their opponents on a genuinely critical field of battle — feel compelled to dehumanize those who disagree with them.

On one level, Bunch and Kenny are right to be a bit snarky about this whole thing: it’s kind of silly, and as idiotic as fanboys are, nobody’s in direct, literal danger here. It’s one of those “Internet emergencies” that will blow over. On another level, though, I don’t think they or anyone else of their caliber would be commenting on it if it didn’t signal a broader, more fundamental undercurrent that, if equally silly, is more dangerous to the intellectual health of our culture. One of the points I emphasized in my Tosh post was that we live in a culture where making death threats is considered to be a legitimate response in discourse. Or dismissing your opponents as misogynist-rapist-racists. Or designating them as people who deserve to be raped. As long as everyone knows that you’re not really saying these things 100% seriously, what’s the beef, right?

Here’s my beef: it may be my obligation to let personal insults roll off my back, to thicken my skin, to turn the other cheek, etc. At the same time, you — and by “you,” I mean You Fanboys who get genuinely, seriously pissed off when someone dumps on your Holy Bat-Trilogy or whatever idol you’re worshipping this month — have an obligation to act smarter, to be more thoughtful, and to do better than threaten a critic’s life when his careening trolley car of paid opinion smashes your rickety, mealy apple cart of uncultivated cultural sensibility. Are these obligations legally binding, morally sacred, or enshrined in some unwritten (yet ironclad) tome of social etiquette? No. It’s simply what people do when they want to exist together and build something worth preserving. In this case, it’s cultural discourse. It’s being able to sit down and talk about what we think about art and entertainment and such — or politics, or philosophy, or how much rain our respective lawns need — without first having to establish whether one of us is an utter nincompoop. That is, if you want your viewpoint to be taken seriously. If you want your perspective to count. Because if you really mean the things you say when you say a woman should be raped by five guys, or liking Game of Thrones is tantamount to excusing rape/racism, or that a film critic should be murdered, then you’re a horrible psychopath; and if you’re just resorting to that rhetoric because you’re too lazy or uninspired to come up with something that we actually could take seriously, then you’re just wasting everyone’s time. Is it any wonder that your opponents are so quick to dismiss you and that which you love?☕