Benefit of the Doubt

Forbidden Kingdom: We're All Coming of Age

2008-04-26T21:12:00.004-04:00

Mark Rahner of the Seattle Times says of Forbidden Kingdom, "It might take a Zen master to explain exactly what audience this is aimed at." I left the Tibetan temple behind long ago, like any worthy Bhoddisatva bringing Nirvana to the world, and my koans might be a bit rusty at this point, but I’m going to give it a shot. Sit, my son, before the peace of Benefit of the Doubt, and be enlightened by the Tao of Media Commentary.

Like tiger with face of Easter Bunny, Forbidden Kingdom presented itself in a way that may have confused some critics and audiences. The original trailer showed fascinatingly-costumed, exotic martial arts characters, slow-motion martial arts, beautiful settings, and enigmatic effects. The unknowning trailer-surfer may anticipate a slow, beautiful, well-shot kung-fu opera, in the style of (if not the scope of) Hero, or Curse of the Golden Flower. These expectations are waves that have been dashed against the rocks of popular cinema.

Perhaps this confusion was at work in Mark Rahner’s mind. Seeing Forbidden Kingdom as a work of authentic kung-fu, he may not have been prepared to accept it for what it was. When the tiger’s fluffy pink visage fell away, it revealed itself not as an updated kung-fu epic, but as another update, and another kind of epic. The audience looking for beautiful wire-fu may have been disappointed, but those of us who saw the truth were pleased with its revelation.

The movie was actually a return to the coming-of-age fantasy movies of our youth. I personally didn’t get wind of this until I was about to go see the movie, and the synopsis said something about an American teenager who loves kung-fu movies, and who finds an old staff that takes him to ancient China. Many of us may have wanted a grand, semi-artistic kung-fu adventure to frame the combined talent of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and in this we may have been severely disappointed. Fortunately, many of us were also raised in the 80’s and early 90’s, where the true thematic inspiration for Forbidden Kingdom was born.

If you remember Neverending Story, Last Action Hero, and Labyrinth, and even before these, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz, then you may have been able to appreciate this movie for what it really offered. The cheesy dialogue, the absurdly liberal rendering of ancient China and traditional folklore, and the comically implausible training sequences and montages... these were all in keeping with that well-established mythology that we grew up on.

There are a lot of interesting precedents here, too. The earliest of the examples I’ve mentioned above are Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, and you could also class the Narnia Series with these. These examples are "coming of age" stories that involve a temporary flight into a dream world, whether it’s the hallucinatory, disturbing, and politically-relevant Wonderland of Alice, or whether it’s the whimsical, profoundly psychological Neverland of Wendy and Peter.

The "worlds of our imagination" have changed in recent years, though. Starting with Neverending Story, the storytellers have started to acknowledge the mediated, represented component of our dreams and fantasies. In Neverending Story, Bastian finds his inner universe in the pages of an old book, and he enters it through the mind of Atreyu, its main character. This brilliant film was a staple in many of our childhoods, and it set some profound precedents for honest, sensitive, and troubling portrayals of adolescence and fantasy.

Last Action Hero pulled the fantasy-world coming-of-age story further into the present. This was one of The Governator’s less popular films, a thoroughly light-hearted but deceptively self-conscious popcorn flick about a kid who gets pulled into the unrealistic world of action movies. In that short space between Neverending Story (1984) and Last Action Hero (1993), we watched our cultural imagination move from the world of books to the world of movies. The troubled child building his life around reading became the irresponsible kid obsessed with action flicks. Even so, we were still following the same track: growing up within the space of our imagination, whether that space was built from words or film clips.

The Forbidden Kingdom follows this formula a step further, showing us the inner world of a teenager who can’t get his head out of kung-fu flicks. He ends up facing his fears and building his personality in an alternate-reality Orientalist China, filled with mysterious maidens, silent monks (what a badass character), and Drunken Masters. This is the kind of place where a kid can become a kung-fu guru in about three days worth of training, and where henchmen are available at dime-store prices, but only if you’re evil. It’s also a world well-populated with self-conscious kung fu movie references, many of which I’m sure I don’t understand in the slightest.

The coming-of-age fantasy tropes were EVERYWHERE in this movie, and that's part of what made it both lighthearted and interesting. The bullies at the beginning were right out of Neverending Story, and one of the most charming elements was the appearance of Lu Yan and Golden Sparrow in the real world, a technique right out of Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy's fantasy companions turned out to be dream-versions of the people in her real life. It was also an endearing, and brilliant, casting decision to cast Michael Angarano as the main character... Angarano isn't the tricked out pretty-boy we're used to seeing in every action movie these days. He has the quirky facial features of an awkward high-schooler, and this is a noble concession to make to those original 80's and 90's movies, where we could really believe that the main character was a normal kid.

Many of our parents will roll their eyes at the idea that our imaginations are being built on Hong Kong cinema, just as (with Last Action Hero) they may have been dismayed that their kids’ fantasy world were being built around violent, unrealistic action movies. We may look back fondly on Bastian, whose inner universe came from old books and fairy tales, and we may be nostalgic for Neverending Story’s innocence. The point, though, and the lesson that this whole genre has for us, is that no matter how we form our flights of fancy, they will always allow us to pass safely through childhood and face the real world on the other side. A personality formed through kung-fu is no less authentic than one formed in the pages of a young-adult fantasy novel read in a school attic.

And aside from the ADHD-ridden 13-year-olds that Mark Rahner mentions, I think I know who Forbidden Kingdom was aimed at. It was aimed at those of us who grew up through the media, reading fantasy novels, acting out kung-fu movies and ninja cartoons, and ultimately entering our adulthood through those scraps of fantasy. When we saw those other "coming of age" movies, like Neverending Story and Last Action Hero, we understood that we were those adolescent characters (Bastian, Danny, and now Jason Tripitikas), growing into whole people by embracing our fantasy worlds. This movie was aimed at us... in particular, it was aimed at me.

Wong Kar-Wei's My Blueberry Nights: A strange familiarity

2008-04-19T17:21:00.006-04:00

I know, it's been a month. I've been working on my thesis. That's my excuse. Here's a post with some substance, though, and hopefully these will become more regular very soon.

Wong Kar-Wei directs aesthetically. His films are not designed for your twenty-first century American ADHD sensibility... you’re going to have to give up your explosions and sex scenes and learn to appreciate long pauses and pregnant looks, drawn-out emotional revelations, and stares into the uncertainties of characters’ souls. You may come out of his films feeling like there’s suddenly a lot of random overstimulating shit going on in the world, but at the very least, you’ll find the beauty in the mundane interstitial moments, standing alone in the city streets.

My Blueberry Nights is Wong’s first American production, and he seems to be pushing the "American" aspect pretty hard. He casts Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, and Rachel Weisz in the primary roles, and he follows his main character from neighborhoody New York to dive-bar Memphis, Tennessee, and then to the dusty flats and flashy personalities of Las Vegas. In keeping with the American-made aesthetic, My Blueberry Nights is faster-paced, and has more closure, than Wong’s other work, though it’s not a Bruckheimer film by any means.

Wong is sort of an eighties futurist, from what I can tell. Take a look at his commercial for the Phillips Flat-Panel TV... the neon lights and the fiber-optic sensibility, complimented with oceans of reflective glass and plastic, are what we probably thought the future would look like back when we were first being introduced to ergonomic product design and artificial polymers. Wong experiments with other atmospherics, of course... much of 2046 took place in gilded-age classical architecture, just slightly run down, so that it integrated the epic sensibility of an old city with the pseudo-normalcy of tragic, emotional everyday life. He did something similar with the Nevada desert in My Blueberry Nights, providing a well-rendered vision of an empty Southwest, where his characters could be alone with their emotional dynamics. Despite these breaks, however, it’s always that nightlife neon decadence that runs through Wong’s films.

Wong’s New York and Las Vegas seem like the ideal locations for his stylistic tastes. They both have that neon thing going on, and you’re likely to find those avant-garde fashion tastes and shiny, artificial cars in both cities. However, Wong rarely actually visits the most hyperstimulating parts of the cities he's trying to depict. He never depicts Times Square or Wall Street... he shows a neighborhood café in New York, and he provides a number of long shots of subways traveling above-ground. In Las Vegas, he depicts some small-time casinos and a lot of deserted outdoor landscapes, but I don’t remember seeing much of the strip (I may have been in the bathroom at the time, though). Even so, his visuals seem replete with those ghosts of neon lights reflected off wet pavement. Is he displacing the stylistic center of the city into its margins? Did he see the outskirts of New York and Vegas as containers for the spirit of Times Square and the strip?

Even if it seemed abstractly appropriate in New York and Vegas, Wong’s Memphis, Tennessee definitely doesn’t seem like the right place for his sensibility. His characters... particularly Sue Lynn and her boyfriend... looked like Manhattan fashion models, and all their cars... even Arnie’s truck... look like they've just been picked off a lot and waxed to perfection. The bar where Elizabeth works glows like a downtown nightclub. This isn’t the Memphis of the popular imagination, and though it may be a worthy spin on it, it doesn’t seem to jive with the Southern mythology we’re all so familiar with.

These slight missteps make Wong’s United States seem a bit alien. Perhaps he sees Hong Kong wherever he goes, and perhaps those neon lights are just the optics of Wong’s dreams and imagination.

The city compliments the characters, though, and these really are figures of American mythology. Jude Law’s Jeremy is a perfect Brit turned small-town romantic, charming and well-adjusted in a little neighborhood café. Norah Jones’s Elizabeth is an icon, as well, an innocent, trusting girl who devotes herself to exploring the world in the aftermath of a personal romantic tragedy. Arnie, Sue Lynne, and Leslie are all equally iconic pieces of American character mythology. These are the compliment to Wong’s slightly alien portrait of the landscape – his American characters are so familiar that they almost seem abstracted and imaginary... archetypal... even stereotypical, though that word is probably too harsh.

So it’s largely a mixed bag of traditional, mythological Americana... why does it work so well? It works because those settings and characters are really just a framework for Wong’s characteristic storytelling. The settings are nice, and the characters are endearing, but what makes it a good movie is the obsessive attention to the emotional intersections and turbulence between these characters, all of whom are still clearly discovering themselves. This is the ripple of confusion that underlies all of the established rhythm of Americanism. Even your most artificial settings and your most recognizable characters are the products of their own issues, desires, and failures. Even the most familiar building becomes fascinating when its framework is laid bare.

It might also be a little narcissism talking. In each of the on-screen characters I saw fragments of my own experience of New York, and this is probably why them seem so recognizable. In a sense, I recognize them wherever they go, and I identify with their hope and sadness. That's the mark of a good director -- it’s Wong’s skill with nuance and uncertainty that makes the movie possible.

Watchmen: Bring It Zack Snyder

2008-03-10T20:28:00.003-04:00

Comic books movies, especially early on, before they're well-explored, tend to inspire two perhaps contradictory emotional reactions in fans: on one hand, rabid excitement, and on the other, abject terror. Comic book kids are all eager to see a brilliant adaptation of a favorite graphic storyline, and they're massively appreciative when one works out (as many were for Sin City), but they also realize that the vast majority of comic adaptations crash and burn, failing to capture any of the essential elements of the adapted story.

Hellboy, for instance, embodied both sides of the equation. Mike Mignola's fans are diehards, and they were overjoyed to see Ron Perlman cast as Hellboy. They were ready for a beautiful, brutal gothic/mid-century throwdown. Unfortunately, they got a movie that represented the title character well, but dropped the ball on the supporting cast and the atmosphere. There was scarcely a gothic arch, and the World War II occultism was crowded out by big shiny apparatuses that looked more like plastic than tarnished metal. The themes of self-realization, defiance, and creeping Lovecraftian danger were dissolved in a messy stew of comic book cliches: we have to keep our identities secret! Love will save the day!

So for many Hellboy nerds (me especially), the dream was deferred, and we hold scarce hope for The Golden Army, which seems to be beset with more of the same downfalls.

There's another comic book movie coming out, based on what might be the most influential modern comic series, though it's certainly not the best-known. This comic series, since resold as a convenient graphic novel, is Watchmen. Alan Moore's graphical urban epic was about the demise of heroism, the struggle with real-world moral issues, and the consequences of disillusionment and war in a post-industrial society. It was complex and challenging, and a true masterpiece of the medium.

A film adaptation has been in the works for a while, and it's finally been created under the direction of Zack Snyder. When I first heard about this, it inspired the "fear" reaction. It's hard to imagine an accurate recreation of the world of Watchmen... it's a decaying, rusty New York City, but not a Gotham City kind of way. It's mostly shown in daylight, and the dregs of the city are bored locals and homeless vagrants, rather than innocent old ladies and the criminals who beset them. It's not a dangerous world, but rather a listless, uneventful world, shuffling toward the end of history. It's also a world of the 80's, and it still emanates nostalgia, remembering the Hollywood/disco glory of its 70's superheroes. These heroes, all retired after a wave of social reform, are the protagonists of Moore's story.

This is a complex milieu, and it's next to impossible to recreate on film, I would imagine. It's almost cheesy enough to cover the superheroes in skin-tight primary-color spandex, but Moore's world isn't quite ready to make that much of a mockery of itself. It has to find a postmodern balance between edgy and used up... between updated and outdated. This is why I was afraid for the film. I really couldn't imagine how any creative director could strike the balance required to make the world work.

From the initial stills from the movie, though, it seems that Snyder may be on his way to doing it right. He's picked some perfect actors, like the gaunt, severe Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. On top of the casting, we've seen some initial images of costume and production design, and these do a miraculous job of achieving the right look. The outdoor shots look great: the city is gritty and unadorned at night, and it's blank and pedestrian during the day. The costumes are bulky and plastic, which is probably necessary to reproduce the intentional kitsch in Alan Moore's art, but they're also dark and unironic, the stuff of superheroes who are vengeful, ready to return to their work in the world.

So I've gone from frightened to excited... from apprehensive to hopeful. This movie could really work. Now Snyder's production company has to gather the myriad themes and narrative threads in Moore's book, and they have to build them into a fluid, well-paced action movie with some believable moments of psychology and introspection. He hasn't won me over yet, but hey, I'm ready to watch.

Is M. Night Shyamalan making fun of himself?

2008-03-01T22:25:00.004-05:00

This poster has been appearing at theaters, and at long last, the trailer has appeared to accompany it. It's a dark, mysterious movie about an unexplained global phenomenon, replete with twists and narrative trickyness, titled with an ominous, non-specific noun, and it's being released on Friday the 13th. Come on... does anyone else find this funny? Does Mr. Shyamalan himself?

If it was done by anyone else, it would just look like a supernatural disaster movie. Those have had a resurgence recently... Cloverfield and the forthcoming The Signal are two pretty obvious examples, and I Am Legend sort of counts, as well. This could even be a poster for a more benign 28 Days Later. The Happening doesn't have the most brilliant marketing, but Shyamalan's other movies haven't either. I don't think any of us are suckers for the totally enigmatic, minimalist black-background ambient noise approach at this point. Signs, The Village, and Lady in the Water have all been carried by Shyamalan's name at the box office, and that's fine. He proved himself with The Sixth Sense, and now we know the guy's just a good filmmaker.

So his name's on it, and we kind of know what we're in for. In fact, looking at the poster, it seems like we know almost EXACTLY what we're in for. This looks like Signs and The Village revisited, with those stormy skies and that strange, threatening outside world. You may already smell the twist at the end, the discovery that it's all a trick of the mind, or that it was a conspiracy perpetrated on you alone, and the rest of the world was just playing along. You may already anticipate that the escape plan has been there from the start, and you were just overlooking it. When you saw that two-word title... The Happening... you might have laughed.

But read the tagline, and tell me you don't think Shyamalan isn't laughing too, at least to himself. "You've Sensed It. You've Seen the Signs. Now... it's Happening." The people working on this movie have no desire to create a one-of-a-kind film experience. They wanted to make a Shyamalan movie, and they wanted it to inherit the awesomeness from his previous efforts.

But if you're like me, that might be good enough to get you out there:

Hey, I'm there, ten bucks in hand.

Cool Shit Alert: Jon Arbuckle's existential misery

2008-02-26T18:44:00.002-05:00

I was introduced to something minor but fascinating today. It's a blog, hosted on Tumblr, called Garfield minus Garfield, and it's one of those amusing little media experiments that works out surprisingly well, if you're able to read it receptively. Here's the introduction to the blog:

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb."

Yes, friends, it's a simple experiment: remove Garfield, the commentator and primary personality, from a mundane comic strip and get a glimpse into the angst of a permanent secondary character. Some of the more recent ones are just goofy... "Something is wrong with my pants" is probably my favorite... but if you go back toward the beginning, you discover untold levels of existential anxiety and psychological disorder (such as February 18th, which was truly a miserable day for Jon Arbuckle).

Is there anything to this strange, funny, perhaps unsettling phenomenon, besides simple weirdness? Well, it might stem partly from the fact that Jon Arbuckle is a secondary character whose role is to bear Garfield's ridicule. Of course, Fat Orange Kitty normally distracts us from Jon's tribulations and lightens the mood, but when you remove him, you're left wondering how Jon got like this, what's going on in his head, and how he bears his lonely life. If you removed Sherlock Holmes from Watson's life, would you be left with a failed, lonely writer wandering a ghostly London town? Is secondary characterhood a great curse to be borne throughout literary history?

The empty panels are an effective part of this phenomenon, as well. The blank spaces around Jon give a sense of both physical emptiness (i.e. an empty room) and extended silence. When you have a single line by an afflicted Jon, surrounded by space and silence, you get a very lonely effect... you may sense that the world simply doesn't need Jon Arbuckle, and more frighteningly, you may realize that he feels the same way.

In this way, this reminds me of something else similarly spooky. Rene Magritte painted a piece called "Now, You Don't" which consists of four identical sitting rooms, only one of which contains a human being. His presence is ultimately irrelevant to the room he's sitting in, and ultimately, Jon seems totally insignificant, nonsensical, and even invisible, without his main character to give meaning to his little absurdities.

If you're interested in other creepy phenomena in Sunday funnies, I can suggest a few leads. If you can find it in a library, check out "Family Circus of Horrors" in The Book of Zines, which makes an interesting case about the human condition in Family Circus. You can also check out a Garfield-related existential crisis in the strips of Halloween 1989, which is generally chronicled online, in sites such as this one. Also take a look at the Christian (and anti-Jewish and Muslim) themes in Johnny Hart's comic B.C., which are hard to deny after a review of a few examples.

Monroe and Lohan: Is there anything worth talking about?

2008-02-21T01:25:00.003-05:00

Okay, so here's an interesting parallel for discussion: Marilyn Monroe versus Lindsay Lohan? The question was raised recently, as Bert Stern, famous for photographing Monroe during "The Last Sitting," decided to recreate said monumental event using Lindsay Lohan as a stand-in. Let's try to do what we do here, and dig under the cheesy provocation and sensationalism for some meaning. In this case, there's quite a bit to discover.

I think the metaphor is obvious, after all. Just as with Marilyn, Lohan is a Hollywood starlet, famous for her charm and her body and infamous for her spotty background and bad behavior in the public eye. Marilyn's last photoshoot was looked upon in light of her death, which occurred shortly afterwards; Lohan herself has been plagued with addiction and rehabilitation, and with the attendant paparazzi attention, and her rendition of the photoshoot will be colored by her own recent controversies.

Now, very few of us will be willing to buy Lohan as a new Marilyn. At the most basic level, this return to Monroe's farewell seems like a stunt, something that's been done before, and Lohan seems fairly soulless compared to Monroe, who has a whole mythology and legacy behind her. After all, Lohan is just one of a handful of Hollywood A-List brats currently in the headlines. Marilyn is a one-of-a-kind historical figure, and that's what makes her photoshoot meaningful and culturally relevant.

Another point that needs visiting... something that's important to any feminist critique of the occasion... is that Monroe's portraits seem so honest, at least to our jaded postmodern eyes. She isn't a plastic replica in those shots. She isn't surgically altered or airbrushed, and nobody was able to hide the vulnerable look in her eyes. The whole package -- the flawed soul -- is coming from Marilyn herself, the source of the legend.

Lohan's body looks painfully fake by comparison, and it's the kind of fake that I hope some of us are getting tired of. She's got big boobs, sure, and I'm not one to complain about that, but her figure is boyish, with no hips and scarce buttocks. Stern is obviously shooting for a modern fashion eye, trained by ready-to-wear and Twiggy and Calvin Klein, and it seems like a tired mockery of Marilyn's curves and slight pudge. In that regard, if anything, we can look at these two photoshoots as a lesson in how homogeneous and inauthentic our ideals of beauty have become. Silicon boobs and airbrushed skin, boy-hips and blond wigs. Yawn.

But this can't just be a long opportunity to Lindsay-bash. There's enough of that going on. I want to step back and note something important that a lot of the commentators aren't saying.

Why are these original photographs of Marilyn so important to us? Why do I have the automatic urge to reject Lohan's attempt at the role?

It's because Marilyn is a myth and a legend for our current culture. Her self-destructive habits are part of a beautiful, flawed panorama of life and success and hardship, and we're willing to see her as a whole person, and to see her bad behavior in perspective. She certainly deserves it.

Unfortunately, we're not able to give this benefit to the struggling, self-abusive starlets of our day. Lohan's not healthy, and she's a shitty role-model, but she's faced with a whole culture that's intent on demonizing her and exposing her shortcomings. What chance has she ever had to make us happy? Do these girls have to endure the slings and arrows of stardom, and simply have faith that some day, after they've OD'd, we'll look back on them and see their unique beauty and vulnerability, and read it as a positive contribution to our cultural heritage? What hope do they have that one day we'll forgive their idiocy and irresponsibility, just as we've forgiven Marilyn's?

Maybe the lesson here: enjoy the photos, and stop being so hard on the girls who are stuck in the molars of a culture that's trying to consume and devour them.

Barack Obama: An old medium for a new media age

2008-02-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

Cynical, jaded age of media savvy… meet Barack Obama. Despite all your postmodern disillusionment, your mistrust and confusion, despite the transparent opacity of your catch phrases and rhetorical maneuvers, you’ve still left a space for someone to make an impression, and Barack Obama has come to fill that space. How has Obama managed to penetrate our national defenses? And more importantly, should we still guard ourselves against his dulcet tones?

Obama’s online presence is a critical factor. His mainstream media presence? Perhaps less so, but still important. Even the aggrieved attention of his opponents, the attack dogs on both the right and the left wings, are probably bolstering the power of his campaign with their misguided hostility. Somebody who draws that much fire is a big target, and paradoxically, the mud-slinging seems to be making him more noticeable.

However, I believe it’s the power of the oldest of media that’s managing to penetrate a society that’s colored by the newest. Sure, the Internet and YouTube are powerful things, but Ron Paul certainly didn’t win the Republican nomination… and if the Internet was going to choose a president, Ron Paul would probably win by a landslide. Obama’s sudden rush of endorsements and his unstoppable momentum in the primaries must be due to some other factor.

Myself, I think the critical factor is Obama’s oratory skill, and the new development is the fact that he’s getting more opportunities to present himself personally to the American people. A few wins in the primaries put his face on a lot of television screens, and they gave new a new spark to his public addresses… a platform of victory, even if it’s partial, is a great place to construct oneself as a public image. Obama’s speeches have been reaching more and more ears as his momentum has increased, and I include my own among those new additions.

There, on that podium, is where Obama finds his greatest strength. People will attribute it to his deep voice, but that’s just a shiny paint-job. It’s the muscle car underneath that’s really carrying the campaign. Obama’s content is hopeful and idealistic, but his voice and his delivery are full of conviction, free of hesitation or apology, and this is bound to strike a cord with a jaded voter.

Jesus, so the man is good at public speaking… what are we all so excited about this?

Well, on a simple cultural level, we’ve always placed a profound emphasis on verbal communication. From Plato to the bible to Saussure, the spoken word has always been considered the voice of the soul, and written communication has been seen as a pale reflection of that voice. We’ve got a bit of a cultural prejudice in favor of verbal communication, and whether we see the man speak on TV or on YouTube or in person, the fact that he has a body and a voice are bound to give him some extra weight.

Aside from that, though, I think that it’s more difficult to hide fear and uncertainty in a verbal speech than in a written statement. There are certainly failures of verbal communication – we’ve all tried to communicate something and failed in the delivery – but a successful speech, statement, or assertion is worthy of a great amount of trust, because human beings have a penetrating intuition when it comes to tone of voice and gesture. People who bought into Bush’s stage character may have bought his rhetoric, but I think very few of us trusted him… especially those of us who know about the glamour of prepared speeches and catch-phrases. The media-savvy community was never really convinced by Bush. Obama, on the other hand, has convinced a lot of us.

The speeches themselves are brilliant, and they often confront our cynicism directly, on its own terms. One of the most powerful phrases I’ve heard Obama use was “That cynicism, that sometimes masquerades as wisdom, but is really just a fear of reaching for something higher.” This is rhetorical sharp-shooting at its finest: Obama implicitly asks us to question the naïve sense of superiority that many politicians bring to the table, which so many of us accepts without question. At the same time, he asks us to question our own cynicism, which feeds from this self-satisfied disillusionment that so often turns into hopelessness. So yeah, good speeches.

It’s the questions, though… Obama fielding the inquiries of individuals… that pinpoint him as a man who may be worthy of our trust. If it’s difficult to disguise hesitation in a the delivery of a prepared speech, it’s next to impossible to disguise it in a series of impromptu answers to unscripted questions. Obama fields each of these confidently, with a thought-out answer, and his confidence attests to his authenticity.

Thus, a description of Obama’s persuasive method, but also an argument for people to put trust in it. Obama is an old orator for a new age, and the meta-media of the Internet and cable news have become a mere vehicle for a voice that they can’t distract us from. If we can’t trust anything anymore, why does this guy sound so damn convincing? And shouldn’t we trust that last vestige of intuition we’ve got, and start placing our trust in him?

Partisan philosophies according to National Convention Web Pages

2008-02-06T01:18:00.000-05:00

I know this is a bad day to post about political things. We're probably all tired of hearing about the parties and their delegates and their constituencies and their districts. Still, something very interesting was brought to my attention today, and I thought I should at least mention it.

Compare the Democratic National Committee page and the Republican National Committee page.

Okay, so the Dems don't have a "Favorites" icon. Egregious, but forgivable. But what about the fact that the GOP's page has been displaying attack ads against the Democrats all day, even on Super Tuesday, whereas the Democratic National Committee's page has been keeping tallies of votes, urging people to get involved, and generally running non-partisan ads?

Seriously, who has the perspective here? Who is really in support of a cooperative democracy? Setting aside the slippery slope between nationalist and patriot, who is real Patriotic here, working for the good of a nation, rather than for the good of a partisan ideology? Seeing these two side-by-side is almost like a political punchline. The philosophies embodied in these two visions are so different, and the right-leaning one has become such a caricature of itself, that we're basically all voting on a bedrock of stereotypes.

Maybe that's why McCain is winning for the GOP... he embodies, on some level, a backpedal from that slope of narcissistic politics (after all, he did vote against the Bush tax cuts). Still, there's no real end in sight... this desperation for conflict and sensation, rather than debate and compromise and pluralism, is still ingrained in the right wing. When will people get tired of groundless, useless, ineffective internal hostility and just build a platform on the basis of their own merits?

I'd like to pause, before I finish, and apologize that this became such a rant. I'm aware that a politics of meta-aggression... being hostile at people because they're hostile... may ultimately be counterproductive. This is something that I'm counting on the current presidential candidates to transcend, although they've only been marginally effective so far. Still, Barack Obama's platforms of campaign reform and transparency, McCain's commitment to restraint and civility, and even Hillary Clinton's tough realism could all help break up this poisonous political climate. Unfortunately, I'm here contributing to it, along with the Republicans. I suppose it's just a function of saying what I think.

Well, at least this whole thing reminds me why I'm proud to be a fucking leftist liberal pussy democrat.

Cool Shit Alert: simulating a 3D environment on the Wii

2008-01-18T01:44:00.000-05:00

THE COOL SHIT ALERT:

Johnny Chung Lee, a Carnegie Melon student and known Wii-hacking supergenius, has developed something that's not only an amazing technology hack, but simply an amazing concept in general. It strikes me that this would be revolutionary, no matter what technology it was exhibited on... the fact that the Wii makes it easy is just a testament to the versatility of Nintendo's hardware.

Here's the video. Be patient for the first minute and a half, as Johnny zips through a short explanation. Once you get to the demo of the display, it becomes rather mind-blowing.

When we think of 3D displays, we usually think of filtered glasses, allowing a screen to split an image into a "left-eye" version and a "right-eye" version. This creates the illusion of depth as the brain synthesizes the two images. Though it's also a two-dimensional take on 3D, Lee's display is working from a completely different paradigm.

Instead of simulating depth from a fixed point of view, Lee's program is simulating space by adapting a 2-D image to the position of the viewer. This is, in fact, more advanced than the traditional fixed-point approach used in movies like Beowulf. Here, the user can interact with the simulated space by moving around the frame and processing multiple viewing angles.

This could really be the next generation of displays for consoles and simulation. Even from the video, you can tell that it's mind-blowingly immersive, and it promises new heights of simulation and interaction.

I think it's also a testament to technology that this could be developed and disseminated by a man who is essentially an amateur, working with pre-existing tools and an incredibly innovative brain. He didn't need a room full of engineers to sit around and develop this with him, nor a corporate sponsor to give him financial backing and public exposure... he created it and publicized it himself, and nobody can ever take that credit away from him. That's a kind of visionary independence that's never been possible in any other culture or era.

Quickly, I'd like to throw in my own thought for expanding on this innovation. Perhaps somebody else has already suggested this, but I figure I may as well record it for posterity.

MY IDEA:

Okay, at the end of the segment, Johnny mentions that this will only work for one person at a time. This is because the display has to adapt to the user's position and adjust the image accordingly, and the same image can't accommodate two different points of view simultaneously. I'm not an inventor, and for me this is all speculative, but I have an idea of how to solve this particular problem.

I've heard of a technology that uses interlacing and wavelength filtering (i.e. through filtering glasses) to display two different images on the same screen at the same time. The screen would just interlace two images (image A and image B) that are projected for two different wavelengths, and the users (user A and user B) would each wear a different pair of glasses (glasses A and glasses B). The final result: user A would only see image A, and user B would only see image B. This would be a lovely alternative to split-screen viewing in two-player video games. Both players would be able to use the entire screen to steer their Kart.

Combining this technology with Lee's head-tracking wouldn't be difficult. He himself used a pair of safety goggles to track his head movement. If you just put filtering lenses in two pairs of goggles, you could give each of two users their own individualized content on the same screen. Thus, you could have the same scene, adapting to the positions of two different people at the same time, and you could create two-player games where each player got their own unique 3D experience.

COME ON, NINTENDO!!! DO EET!!! This is the future!

Hopes for 2008: Horror rediscovered in Cloverfield and The Signal

2008-01-18T00:02:00.001-05:00

Okay, so when I did the "movie projections for 2008" post, I said I would do two more to follow it. I may end up only doing this one more; my other projection didn't hold up so well, once I started working through it on-screen. At the time, I was going to talk about comic book movies. Now I think I'm going straight to horror.

I haven't seen Cloverfield yet. It's right up there with No Country for Old Men and Juno on the "movies I need to hurry up and see" list, but sometimes that list just doesn't get taken care of. Instead of commenting on the movie directly, I'm going to comment on what I've surmised from trailers... after all, this is a "looking forward" post, rather than a movie review. I'll also talk a little about another movie coming out, The Signal, and I'll discuss the general history of horror a bit.

Frankly, I was impressed with the presentation of Cloverfield in its advance promotion. The trailer had me genuinely interested, using the sense of immediacy and alarm to generate fear, rather than the sudden noises and creepy children that have become tricks of the trade. It set up a sort of vast unknown to be confronted, and it left its monster so indeterminate that there was no way for the viewer to really confront an image directly. In some scenes, it looked giant, and in others, it looked like a humanoid-sized beast. All we, as the audience, could see was the devastation and fear that it generated.

When I first saw the trailer, I seriously hoped that this would be the movie version of Watchmen. There is a movie version of Alan Moore's graphic masterpiece in the works, and most of his fans are skeptical... if they had taken this grim, epic, uncertain angle on it, it might have made it genuinely fresh. If you haven't read the comic, I'm sure you don't understand what I'm talking about. You should go read the comic.

The power in this trailer, I think, is a power that horror has largely surrendered during the last decade. If you go back to the roots of horror... the old gothic tales, like Melmoth the Wanderer... you discover stories that are entirely submerged in ambiguity and shadow, where the most powerful forces are the ones never described (Melmoth's dire words to each of his victims, from whence they always turn away). This trend continues through into the classic Tales of the Strange, like Lovecraft and his cohorts and influences. Lovecraft's stories were always built around phenomena that seemed complex and inexplicable... malevolent elder Gods who were so rooted in history that the reader couldn't hope for anything but an ominous surface knowledge of them.

Unfortunately, I fear Lovecraft may have started paving horror's new path, out of fear of the unknown and into the giddy panic of violence and self-preservation. Some of his stories, like The Rats in the Walls and The Colour Out of Space, were truly, entirely enigmatic, but others, like the Cthulu story itself, climaxed with a terrifying description of the creature at the source of the story's trauma. Before Lovecraft, I don't know if writers ever brought their stories to a climax where the supernatural adversary was confronted in the flesh. That's a trend that has changed with modern horror.

I'll skip over the discussion of literature... from Pet Semetary to R. L. Stine... and side-step into cinema. Horror movies have largely replaced the terror of the unknown with the embodied enemy, whether in the furnace-blasted skin of Freddy Kruger or in the TV-escaping little girl in The Ring. Jack Torrance, Michael Myers, and Leatherface are all embodiments of horror, but not in the soul-shaking sense that Lovecraft mastered. They are embodied as physical threats, as icons of torture, pain, degeneration, and of our own vulnerability.

This is the trend that I hope these new horror films will turn around, at least for a moment, in 2008. Cloverfield presents a gathering of tension around an invisible force too vast for anyone to really confront, and the individual characters only see a fragment of the picture. That sense of uncertainty and limitation is a key element in classic tales of fear, and it manifests in some similarities. Just as Lovecraft always wrote his stories from the limited point of view of an observer, usually as a troubled memoir, so in Cloverfield, Reeves' vision is through the lens of an individual's handheld camera, perhaps imbuing the experience with the same fear of the unknown that Lovecraft was so powerful in inspiring.

Of course, Cloverfield is walking a fine line. If we're shown the monster at the end of the movie, it might destroy the enigma that made the concept so powerful. If we never see the monster, we may just feel cheated and manipulated. That's the danger of locating your terror in a single malevolent force (like Cthulu, for instance)... you catch yourself in the space between the vast unknown and restitution with the enemy.

The Signal is the other movie that looks like it has a lot of potential, and if Cloverfield's embodiment of the enemy is its weakness, The Signal might find its strength in its refusal to give us this indulgence. While the poster is a little cheesy, the footage shown in the trailer is compelling, with the unpolished, unflinching quality of an indie film. The premise described in the trailer -- the mysterious signal that seems to randomly awaken a bestial impulse in people -- is strange and terrifying, because it doesn't give us a sense that there's an enemy, or an external threat to confront. Instead, it suggests a world that we can't count on, a fragment of humanity that we can't possibly account for.

This is a frightening premise: the keystone of our functional lives is the fact that we live in a world where people share the same sense of order, and when this keystone is removed, the whole thing seems to topple around us. These characters have always built their own identities on their sense of shared experience, on their relationships with the people around them. When these people spontaneously become murderers, it threatens our own integrity as individuals, as well.

In a sense, this is a reconstruction of the "zombie" premise... it's frightening that within each of us there may lurk a cannibalistic, unreasoning ghoul. However, Signal does something exciting with it. Even in zombie movies, the fact that the zombies are dead, or are infected with a virus and robbed of their active agency, allows us to see them as the radical other. In The Signal, there's nothing different between you and the person next to you who just turned homicidal. You have to confront "the other" without knowing what makes him any different.

Sublimation of the fear of the other into the fear of oneself... I hope The Signal manages to pull it off. It may be an exciting year for horror.

Trends to Watch Out For in 2008 #1: the derivative cinema

2008-01-06T17:05:00.001-05:00

This is a three-part entry on some trends I've noticed in the cinema coming in 2008. I did a short review of upcoming movies, mostly using the list found here: Slashfilm's Must-See Movies of 2008, and I came to some thoroughly premature judgments on the films we have to look forward to in the coming year. First, I'll dispense with the over-generalizations.

I can't BELIEVE the number of films that are built on recognizable source material. I mean, I know these have always been out there... adaptations, sequels, and remakes... but now, in 2008, I feel like a sweeping majority of films are depending on their source material for their marketing appeal. We have: films based on books (Lovely Bones, Spiderwick Chronicles, Choke, Angels and Demons, Time Traveler's Wife, Horton Hears a Who, 21, etc.), books based on franchises (Indiana Jones, Prince Caspian, Star Trek, Harry Potter, James Bond, Hellboy, Speed Racer, Get Smart, and Bruno), movies based on highly recognizable directors' styles (Scorcese's "Righteous Kill," Kaufman's "Synecdoche", Guy Ritchie's "RocknRolla," Pixar's "Wall-e", and Shyamalan's "The Happening"), and all sorts of other recycled cultural material, cluttering up our movie screens.

Now, I haven't actually verified that this is an exceptional year in this respect. What percentage of movies, historically, are based on entirely, or mostly, original screenplays? I know a lot of the greatest films, from The Godfather and Clockwork Orange to the Lord of the Rings movies, have drawn their genius largely from the genius of their source material. But there's something singular about stories written entirely for the screen... people like M. Night Shyamalan and Guy Ritche, and movies like Memento and The Matrix... these all seem to be really pushing the boundaries of the art form, and of the art of storytelling.

I don't have a strong thesis here, and I'm talking around a phenomenon that I can't quite put my finger on, but these are stories written specifically to take advantage of the two essential characteristics of film, those that differentiate it from both visual art and from written stories. They take the chronological aspect of storytelling, which can't be reproduced in a still image, or even in a sequence of stills, and they combine it with the visual immediacy of visual art, which can be described, but never really captured, in writing.

And I think Memento and The Matrix are perfect places to find these phenomena. Could Memento, a bewildering head-trip of paranoia and backwards narrative, have taken place anywhere but in the realm of film? Sure, a written story can be told backwards, but when you're reading the words on a page, you have time to process the descriptions and mull over the implications of the broken sequence. Without the forward momentum of the screen, with its edits and scenarios, there would be no way to step into the shoes of short-term memory loss. This was a great movie, but it was also a profound experiment in portraying the debilitating experience, rather than simply the story, of a crippling brain dysfunction.

The Matrix was another story that couldn't have been told in the same way in any other medium. It combined the choreographed art of the kung-fu movie with film's power over time and space, slowing, stopping, and disrupting the physical laws that kung-fu depends on. In a movie about the break between reality and simulacrum (to use an unnecessary academic word), it's critical that the audience experience the difference between real and virtual space. Again, film's niche is as a chronological, sensory medium... chronological in that it captures a sequence of events over time, and sensory in that it involves direct, rather than described, experience.

The visionaries of the future of cinema are going to be the people who create stories to be told specifically on screen, harnessing the power of film and using it to construct something that couldn't be done anywhere else. These are the writers and directors of original screenplays.

So back to 2008... I can honestly say, I think some of the most daring work coming this year is going to be the work created exclusively for the screen. The first and most obvious example is Cloverfield, which harnesses the silver screen's ability to depict a reality that seems too strange and threatening to imagine. In the same way that Blair Witch Project used the camera to situate the viewer directly within the sensory space of the characters, so Cloverfield (from what I can tell in the trailers) will put the audience in the middle of an apocalyptic panic. If it does its job well, it will test the limits of the medium and show us all something we've never seen before.

The other film that seems to push the boundaries of storytelling is Teeth, a strange-looking film about a girl whose vagina has... you know... mastication apparatus. Now, this is traditionally a figure of speech, a verbal trope that represents males' fear of unleashed femininity. In film, where we have to deal with direct sensory input, Mitchell Lichtenstein will have the opportunity to make that metaphor a literal reality for us. That's a disturbing but brilliant take on film's power over reality, its ability to turn an idea into an intimate experience.

That's my first take on film in 2008. Stay tuned for two more entries: first, a look at a strange "replacement movie" phenomenon that will surface in comic book films, and second, two upcoming movies that may use an intimate lens to revitalize the horror genre.

Christmas Meditations: Childhood Innocence in the Music Video Era

2007-12-25T12:51:00.000-05:00

Christmas is a time to reflect on authenticity and obligation, especially when it comes to issues of maturity and disillusionment. It's an inescapable question... it's safe to say that anyone who knows the experience of the Christian holiday also knows how much it changes when you enter adulthood. Santa Clause leads the way for a loss of innocence, and over the course of a few landmark years, we stop seeing Christmas as a singular, mystical time and start to see it as a confusing mix of familial love and troublesome economic and social obligation. If any of you are like me, you probably spend a large part of the holiday searching within yourself for that excited, innocent child who could just enjoy the bright colors and ritualistic songs, and who could just indulge in attention and wish-fulfillment.

So here I am, looking into pop culture for some statements on the shifting winds of innocence and disillusionment. Interestingly, I've found the most salient themes during my diversion into the world of music video.

Sigur Ros's recent music video for the song Hoppipolla is a great example. Before you even think about the social statement it makes, try just watching it and feeling the spirit of the piece. It's simple and beautiful and thematically cryptic, but it represents something spontaneous and touching. It's a brilliant piece of short-form cinema, crafted around an excellent song.

Like I said, thematically cryptic: one of the beautiful aspects of this video is that it doesn't seem to be purveying a judgment or advocating any reform. If anything, it's an invitation to the viewer to imagine an entire life lived as a child, or at the very least, a final return to the joys of childhood at the twilight of old age.

Thus, there's something in this video calling us out of the severity of middle age, showing us the triumph of experience extracted from the prisons of ambition and self-consciousness. It's even making me ashamed to be writing about it this way... this essay is such a trite rationalization of a video that amounts to a siren's song of spontaneity and humanity. I have to write about the video, when I'd rather be creating it, or (better yet) simply living it.

But it leads me to consider another video that makes a complex statement on maturity and self-seriousness, but from a different direction. Take a look at B.I.G.'s video for Sky's the Limit:

Directed, of course, by the indomitable Spike Jones, it takes a simple casting quirk and turns it into a strange experience with traces of a complex statement on maturity within a music genre. Jonze's deadpan strangeness gives the video a different flavor than the Sigur Ros piece, and (as appropriate to the music) it's a less beautiful and more conflicted piece.

Jonze manages to bring a sense of tension to this video that makes it hard to read as message-bearing communication. We often envision rap as a posturing, inflationary cultural complex, proud but fraught with negativity. Granted, I'm speaking as a pretentious indie kid, the demographic that Jonze's videos normally appeal to, rather than as a street kid, the demographic that Biggie's music targets. Still, the very fact that Jonze directed this video... such a departure from his other source material, like Weezer and Fatboy Slim... opens up this contradiction in the first place.

Sky's the Limit is saying that beneath rap's posturing, there's something childlike. You can read this as a compliment or as a critique... are these children acting out this scenario because hip-hop is playful and spontaneous? This is a natural reading if you consider the tone of the music, which is generally reassuring. After all, [the] Sky is the limit and you know that you can have what you want, be what you want. Then again, if it makes you uncomfortable to see children in big bling, buying entirely into a decadent lifestyle of fast cars and easy women, you might see something different. Maybe the kids represent the immaturity of the rap scene, which (arguably) has spent the last ten years replacing defiance and strength of character with glamour and self-praise.

So is it about finding the past within the present? Or is it about losing the past through a painful process of disillusionment? It's hard to say... and that's what makes it a great video. Spike Jonze knows ambiguity, perhaps more than any other short-form director, and he's fully harnessed it here.

Whether you're grasping at the past or interrogating the present, whether you're searching for the sublime or for the naivety of your youth, this Christmas is probably a time to think about who you were and who you're becoming. These music videos offer one small take on an enormous question that we all have to keep asking... even knowing that we probably won't be finding an answer any time soon.

Music Video: A History of Absolute Essentials

2007-12-13T00:39:00.000-05:00

I've been doing a lot of research on music videos lately. It's related to my master's thesis, but not in any direct line of correlated logic. Instead, it's become a little personal mission and obsession, because it's been a fascinating exercise, and because the first thing you have to do, when you're becoming a specialist in something, is to immerse yourself in that thing.

So here's what I've done: I hunted down all the recent(ish) "Top 100 Greatest Music Videos" lists I could find, all from authoritative sources in the video-music industry. I found ones from VH1 (2001), MTV (1999), Slant Magazine (2003), Pitchfork (2006) and Stylus Magazine (2007). I basically recorded every video that appears on any of these lists, and correlated the data about their places on the respective lists. I also gave them all cumulative scores, based on their positions in these lists. It provides a good cross-section of influence, and it has proven a massively interesting exercise.

I'll do a couple posts on my findings, but right now I just wanted to sum up some of the results.

By far the most highly-decorated video is A-Ha's masterpiece Take On Me. It came in within the top 10 videos on three lists (Slant, Stylus, and VH1) and within the top 20 on the fourth (MTV), and it was also recognized by Pitchfork, though Pitchfork didn't give its videos explicit rankings.

Don't tell me this is a surprise. The video was insanely advanced for its day, using the live-action/animation mix, and it combines all the most important aspects of the medium. In a sense, it represents the whole music video medium: it includes a loosely-defined plot, a highly stylized visual environment, and some solid performance footage. It's also a storyline to compete in any forum of short films, although, since it's created through the lens of pop music, it doesn't have the subtlety of the more experimental pieces.

Video number 2: Michael Jackson's Thriller. Also not a surprise... it rivals Take On Me in narrative and performance, and what it lacks in stylization, it makes up for with insane Jackson dance sequences. The walking dead... can you feel it? A world in Jacko's dance trance, unable to stop the rhythm flooding the barricades of our consciousness.

Others among those highly-decorated videos: Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer, The Beastie Boys' Sabotage, REM's Losing My Religion, and Dre's Nuthin' But a G Thang. Before I took VH1's list into account, this last video... a bit of a misogynistic drunken blunder of a clip... was actually number 3 on the list. I guess it had a hell of an influence on the youth of the 90's. Otherwise, it's hella hard to figure out how it would have beaten Pearl Jam's Jeremy.

Most decorated artist? This one wasn't even a contest. Only one person could beat out Michael Jackson (#2) and Bjork (#3) for highest number of awesome videos on countdowns, and this person was Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie, the infamous and unbeatable queen of pop for the last thirty years. Never mind that her highest-rated video didn't come in until #11 (Like a Prayer)... she had a total of fifteen videos on the lists, most of them on more than one. Fifteen videos in four lists? Do the math. That's a lot of noteworthy music videos.

It helped that some people (VH1) liked Madonna's older stuff, like Vogue and Material Girl, whereas others (Stylus) liked her newer stuff, like Ray of Light and Frozen. I remember a surprising number of these videos myself, and I can definitely get behind her as the top video-producing musician in the history of the medium. She and her directors are goddamn geniuses.

And highest-rated director? Barron definitely had the highest average score per video (having produced Take On Me and Billie Jean, both in the cumulative top 10), but with his fourteen placements between the four lists, he couldn't possibly beat Spike Jonze, who had thirteen videos in the four lists (22 placements, one top-ten, two more top-twenties). Jonze has directed Sabotage, two award-winning Bjork videos, and two groundbreaking Fatboy Slim videos. His name will be forever inscribed upon the music video universe.

So before I write anything else on music videos, go -- go watch these award-winners, and rediscover the MTV of our collective youth, before reality shows and TRL, when music video was a respectable medium with a forum on broadcast television. I don't miss the early 90's, but there are some things I wouldn't mind making a comeback.

Blade Runner and the Question of Interpretation

2007-11-19T23:48:00.000-05:00

Blade Runner is kind of an old movie. I was first released before I was... alive, I guess. Still, to my eyes, it seems like the best of (perhaps better than) contemporary cinema, and it was worth the exorbitant Manhattan prices to see Blade Runner: Final Cut a week or so ago. This is what science fiction should be. No glitzy showdowns or garish interstellar CGI plastic, but well-rendered drama, both emotionally and visually, that acknowledges that as the future arrives, emotions and human vulnerabilities aren't getting simpler... they're getting more complex, right along with the technology that protects us from them.

There are a lot of things I could talk about here. There's the differences between this and the previous Blade Runner releases, which are interesting trivia, but well-cataloged over at Wikipedia. There's also the whole bit about the 80's and cyberpunk, Sterling and Dick and Gibson's visions of the future that shuffle and grunt on the opposite end of the narrative spectrum from Star Trek's future utopia. I don't know if I want to tackle that monster, either, though. There's also a disturbing depiction of gender relations, a male-empowerment sex scene that resembles a rape scene remotely enough for casual viewers to pass over, but clearly enough to make me uncomfortable. It's something I've talked about before, though, so I'll hold off on that for now.

Instead, what I want to write about is the complexity of interpretation for a work this complex. I'm a new criticism type, through and through... I've read my share of Derrida, and I've perused Wimsatt and Beardsley... so I usually accept any work of entertainment or narrative media as something I should be picking through, interpreting for myself. I always want to personalize the story, and make it something uniquely my own by working out the connections for myself. I've done it on here a number of times, for James Bond and Unleashed, among many others.

I came to a similar cushy conclusion with regards to Blade Runner. There was something eerie and loaded about the final scene, just before the cut to the credits, and I immediately jumped to a conclusion that made perfect sense to me, even though it wasn't spelled out as such. The connection to an earlier scene, and to a few remarks by Deckard and Rachael, were the dots of meaning that I was able to connect in order to form a full picture.

Imagine my reaction when I discovered that I was "right" (in whatever way that holds). It turns out that Ridley Scott actually admitted, in an interview available on Google, that my conclusion was correct... or at least, it was his intention when he made this cut. This should have been a self-satisfied moment for me, right? I got it right, I caught the hints, I had connected the clues and the killer had just admitted that I was right about him. Neat and tidy, like Sherlock Holmes.

But I was, in fact, rather dismayed at Ridley's confirmation of my theory. Suddenly, there wasn't a real question about it... suddenly, everybody knows where to look, and the work is closed, right after I managed to open it up. Before that time, I was a fan of interpretive openness in my media, but I never thought very hard about it, except through the lens of amateur lit-crit. Suddenly, I had a new angle: an emotional reaction.

When Blade Runner was an open question, it seemed endlessly complex, like so many of the other work I'm such a fan of. This is why I liked Ada, or Ardor, and why I still remember Neon Genesis Evangelion so fondly. Their authors never bothered closing the interpretive code in these works, and openness lends a different scale to it, whether it's literature or art or entertainment. After Blade Runner, I was holding onto my insights like grains of sand I had gathered into my own personal hermeneutic sand castle. I was proud of it, and I was also jealous of it, in a way.

I should explain that last part... jealousy over a clever interpretation is a special vice that I tend to indulge whenever I can. I like having my own personal angle partly because I can explain it whenever my friends are talking about the movie. However, it also appeals because it's unverified, and I can use it to engage people in a conversation about the characters. A half-assed debate on an unconfirmed revelation can make for a lot of discussion and reinterpretation, and a small shadow can reveal serious new depths of a work of art.

There's a lesson for me as an artist, I think. On the simpler side, I'll never walk around explaining my art to people who are wondering about its "true meaning." If there's a true meaning, people can figure it out for themselves. On a deeper level, I'll avoid creating anything with a single, exclusive "meaning." If I can fold some uncertainty into the work when I create it, I won't feel like I'm closing it off too much when I finish it, and/or when people read it and/or ask about it (mental note: you have to have an audience first!)

But this also leaves open a question for the rest of the consumer universe out there (and make no mistake, I'm more of a consumer than a producer myself). Do you prefer your stories and pictures and music to be closed and explained, and to be the product of a clear, well-communicated idea? i.e. as with Ridley Scott, who communicated his idea after the fact? Or do you prefer them to be half-answered, leaving as many questions as "morals" or determinations? To put it another way: if you met the author of your favorite book, and they informed you that all your personal beliefs and reactions to it were "absolutely correct!", would you be happier for it?

I'm curious to know... if anyone, in the history of The InterNet, ever gets to the end of this blog post, please respond, cause I'd love to hear some thoughts.

Speaking for the Millennials: a response to Morley Safer on 60 Minutes

2007-11-14T20:48:00.000-05:00

"I promise that I will not judge any person only as a teenager if you will constantly remind yourself that some of my generation judge people by their race, their belief or the color of their skin and that this is no more right than saying all teenagers are drunken dope addicts or glue sniffers."
- Victor Lundberg, An Open Letter to My Teenage Son

Maybe it's absurd of me to get pissed off at something petty and transparent on 60 Minutes, but as I reviewed (and re-watched, and re-reviewed) their recent piece on Millennials, I was as close as I've ever been to damaging something in my apartment. It's not the kind of desperate rage I feel at rapists, or religious extremists, because I can recognize that Safer's ageist type of thinking is petty and has to fade into oblivion with every generation... but I still harbor a deep, mind-bending anger at a ubiquitous cultural myth that I've recognized, and struggled against, as long as I can remember being aware of it.

This myth is the degradation of America's youth.

Millennials on 60 Minutes

Watch the video and try to be convinced (if you're an upper-class 45-year-old, it might not be too hard). Is this message attractive? Does it validate you? Does it give you more fodder for disapproval, distrust, and cataclysmic discontent at the failures of your successors? The message is painfully clear, fueled by the insecurities of a disappearing generation, and it's vividly, comically transparent.

Here's what they offer to convince you: a series of remarks from consultants, most of whom have business or politics backgrounds, and all of whom offer unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence. Some stock video of kids with "the technology" or at "the computer." A long, rambling narrative by Mr. Morley Safer, inundated with disparaging phrases, and a self-help-book-selling IDIOT as the spokesperson for a generation that probably bought about five copies of his literature.

This is going to be a long post, so be patient with me. I'll go through these one at a time.

Mr. Safer characterizes the current generation's ethos as one of whimsical, childish laziness. If you've been living in the vicinity of planet Earth, you've probably heard that refrain before... teenagers in the 80's were apathetic losers, young people in the 60's were spoiled deviants, and youth in the 20's were hedonistic and self-absorbed. Some of you "doting parents" heard about the Roaring Twenties, didn't you?

Of course, Mr. Morley's monologue isn't exactly a balanced portrayal of an emergent consciousness. I think he starts off trying to be a little more subtle, with jabs like "their priorities are simple: they come first" (a thesis offered, with virtually no credible evidence whatsoever, by Jean M. Twenge, PhD in her book Generation Me'). As the report goes on, his shots get cheaper, as he calls all young people "the teenage babysitting pool" and refers to them offhandedly as "narcissistic praise-hounds."

As a side-note, this includes me... he indicts people born between 1980 and 1995. Thus, I feel my anger is slightly more validated.

Morley's guests have a similar tone to his: Marian Salzman, whose position as an ad-exec from Walter J. Thompson apparently qualifies her as a generational guru, says you "have to talk to them like a therapist on TV" (hmmm... apparently Ms. Salzman doesn't understand the problems that require a therapist in the real world). I didn't catch the information on Marian's vast personal experience with young professionals, or her personal success stories in regards to working with them, so she strikes me as representative of the segment's general tone.

In fact, all the guests sound the same, and they all echo Morley's disembodied monologue. Jeffrey Zaslow pointedly blames Mr. Rogers for his bad national parenting habits. A white house chef turned self-help consultant calls this generation a "perfect storm" of unpreparedness (seems a bit of a discontinuous metaphor to me).

Cherry-picking of guests allows Mr. Safer some more support: Jason Dorsey, a baby-faced author whose book on professionalism is apparent being read by people... somewhere... comes across as a smooth-lobed middle schooler who simply repeats, in a slightly higher register, all the complaints of the elders, and acts like he's being optimistic. I can tell you with complete sincerity that a 20-something who has published a self-help book is not representative of a "generation," and he comes across as a complete asshole (albiet a different kind of asshole from the gems of adulthood who represent the baby boomers).

There's a reason these segments, and the books they echo, depend so heavily on anecdotes and decontextualized comedy... they don't have any worthwhile evidence on their side. Now, I don't usually make demands for empirical proof, but it's a demand I'm willing to make in the face of absurd, antagonistic generalizations.

If you want facts... you know, those relics of modern rationalism... consider YouthFacts.org. Their devastating critique of Generation Me includes some lovely statistical gems. Youth have no work-ethic? Since 1974, the students who planned to work off-campus to finance their college educations has risen by 5% (almost 10% among females). Alcohol consumption among students has dropped as much as 15%. Twice as many females (by percentage) plan to attain PhDs or similar professional degrees. They're self-centered? Felony arrests among young people, aged 10-17, have dropped by 56% since 1974, and community and volunteer work has risen by 14% since 1975/76.

If them young whippersnappers are quitting their jobs at your office, it might be because your ideas, marketing plans, priorities, and economic potential are all crumbling before their eyes.

A continued close reading of these remarks reveals something beyond the thoughtful observation and insightful analysis of the wiser generation. It reveals (actually, it doesn't even take that much close reading) the voice of the status quo, embedded but terrified for its own safety.

In between taking snipes at the "Millenials," Morley practically offers himself and his generation up as the entrenched institution. Apparently, the things the baby boomers hold dear are "giving orders" and "your starched white shirt and tie." Madame Salzman is disappointed that we aren't willing to "live and breathe the company" (how that ever became a virtue in the first place is beyond me). Morley also seems disgruntled that "friends and family are the new priority."

This makes for interesting reflection: was my generation's moment of failure the same moment that it chose "friends and family" over "living and breathing the company"? And does this, somehow, make us narcissistic and self-centered? This seems like a bit of a rhetorical discontinuity to my admittedly youthful brain.

This confusing backlash against young people, my friends, represents a state of fear. "Where did this fantasy come from?" ... "No more 'Pay your dues, just like I did' " ... these are the words of a generation that's used to a very strict power structure -- something developed in the 70's and 80's -- where they were at the top of a simple patriarchal heirarchy, and they're seeing it fall apart. They see a workforce that's increasingly intense and specialized, that can "multitask" and whose technology is "almost an extension of their bodies" (ooh! Somebody read the back cover of Understanding Media!) They realize they have to negotiate with us, rather than simply barking orders, and they react by calling us spoiled and self-centered.

I guess, after all this writing, I no longer feel the need to be angry... I feel rather an inevitable pity for the frustration of a generation in its twilight, and I think maybe I should go try to shake a corporate executive's hand and tell them it's been great working with them. It's time to indulge these corporatists with the reward they've come to deserve: the kind of affirmation you'd offer a discouraged child.

Sorry for the rant. Next time: Blade Runner.

WGA topical ramblings

2007-11-10T13:47:00.000-05:00

Warning: this may be more inane and rambling than my usual razor-sharp critical tongue. If you want something more focused, read the forthcoming piece about Blade Runner.

I'm definitely not qualified to talk about the current state of television. I hardly watch an hour of TV a week... occasionally I catch Scrubs, or a show on the Food Network, usually over someone else's shoulder. Somehow, some cryptic convergence of factors has destroyed my interest in boobtubery, which has been replaced by books, movies, and the Internet in my life.

Still, it's interesting to see an uprising and a debate about productivity in the entertainment industry. Strikes are so closely associated with the great days of blue-collar labor that it's confusing, and almost blasphemous, to see the concept make the postmodern transition into the world of "cultural production." The monetary elite in this country used to care about revenue from products... cars, infrastructure, etc. Now, they care about broadcastable, promotable content... something only seasoned dialogue writers can provide.

So: time to rethink cultural production? For a long time, I had trouble dealing with the idea that the vast majority of costs and payments in this country are for things that aren't physical, and that are infinitely reproducible. A computer program developed by Adobe, or a song written by Radiohead, or a digital photograph from the archives of Sebastio Salgado... those things require the creative effort to be put forth once, and from that point on, they can propagate infinitely at no further cost -- and if somebody is paying for each copy, they can generate infinite revenue. They don't require materials, or even labor, to keep making money for the people controlling them.

I think corporations, asserting endless control over things like songs and scripts, are acting on the old-fashioned paradigm. The fact that the distributor is recouping all the capital suggests that it's the distributor who's paying for the materials, when in fact there are no more materials. It's the creative locus of the work itself that is generating the revenue, so by rights, the majority of the capital should be distributed to the creative producer -- the writer, the artist, the band. Corporations are using their status as middle-men and distributors to hijack all the capital being circulated in this country.

Whether this analysis is accurate or painfully biased, it still seems like the same issue: the issue of revenue being siphoned away from producers and into the hands of bureaucrats. I'm unforgivably compelled by the instinctive belief that there are more executives, accountants, and business majors in this country than the infrastructure really requires, especially in the age of individual empowerment and immediate communication.

So I say, yay to the writers' guild, just like I said yay to the MTA workers a few years ago. I'd suggest going a step further, too... if you're in a stalemate too long, start publishing your writing via alternate sources. Show that, if it's not worth the network's attention, it's definitely going to be worth somebody else's.

Anton Corbijn's Control: portrait of a monster

2007-11-07T00:50:00.001-05:00

I saw the film Control, by Anton Corbijn, a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed it, if only because I like watching moving images and being immersed in the great media spectacle. I'd recommend it to anyone who's in the mood for a troubling, introspective drama that pulls you into an artist's personal web of tragedy. I know, this doesn't sell very well on paper.

Still, if you're like me and welcome the chance to think a lot about a movie and a public persona, you'll probably find Control worth the watch. It brings up an old question that I find myself recycling every so often: how do I react to narratives wherein the protagonist is really a deplorable bastard? Are they 1) personally enriching and/or educational? or 2) even enjoyable? and if the answer to (2) is "Yes," is it an enjoyment I should be indulging in, or is it just the kind of pathetic voyeurism we get from watching a train wreck or a celebrity breakdown?

Quick backstory: Control is about Ian Curtis, the front-man to the goth/punk band Joy Division. Joy has earned a special place in music history, being the hybrid seed of a whole underground movement. They're the type of band that has resonated through the critical and historical consciousness of pop music, even though they've never surfaced in mainstream memory. They were categorically narcissistic and depressed, but they managed to avoid being a cliche because they were so damn sincere. This was no Brand New self-pity... this was genuinely troubled, sincere disaffected personal turmoil, born out for the eye of a thousand teenage fans.

Part of the reason for this sincerity, and for the fame that attended it, was that Curtis was such a pitiful case. His voice, and his songwriting, are the assets that carried the band to greatness. He was one of the rare people who is vulnerable to crushing emotional pain, and who knows how to express it intelligently and sensitively. The pressure of young marriage, fast fame, and medical issues were the engine behind his voice, but they were also the catalysts for his depression and suicide.

(spoiler warning... arg, too late.)

Unfortunately, he was also a dick. If Sam Riley's portrayal is to be believed, Curtis lived at an unfortunate crossroad between cynicism and sensitivity. He was chronically insecure, and yet he was thirsty to prove himself, so he ended up emotionally numb and vulnerable to self-indulgence. The film doesn't skimp on this point, either. Throughout Control, there seems to be a shadow across the characters and their city (dying industrial Manchester), and the discerning audience might realize that this pall is emanating from Ian Curtis himself, who seems to poison the lives and interactions of his friends and family.

So in a sad, vaguely sympathetic, but also frustrating journey, we see Curtis overflow and collapse. Have we learned anything from him? Have we enjoyed his downfall? Why the fuck did we see this movie?

As always, there's enlightenment to be found in any honest portrayal of a foreign psyche and experience. Even Curtis's flaws are part of the world we live in, and we may recognize some of them in ourselves... the dangerous human impulses of hubris and narcissism may be repressed, but there's a trace of them in each of us. This is a film that sheds some light on them in order that we may face them.

In this sense, Corbijn's Ian Curtis reminds me of John Gardner's Grendel. Grendel was a protagonist of sorts... the reader is placed behind his eyes and forced to see his flawed reasoning and his failure. However, in John Gardner's (totally amazing) novel, Grendel is also a monster through and through, willingly blind to the world so that he can feel justified in ravaging it. As an audience, we're supposed to be along for the ride, and we're supposed to give Grendel some face time for a while, but (as Gardner himself has pointed out) we're ultimately supposed to hate him and reject his nihilism in favor of the awesome humanistic strength of Beowulf.

With Curtis, we're not given this kind of alternative. There's no Eddie Vedder (or whoever) to stand up and be the success that Curtis couldn't become. Still, Ian Curtis's role in Control is directly analogous to Grendel's role in Grendel. As a sophisticated viewer, you can stick with Curtis and feel a sense of tragedy for his misfortunes, not because you like or respect him, but simply because he's human, and because ever human being is in danger of losing control. We're free to be angry at Curtis's abuse of his wife, family, friendships, and of his own talent, but perhaps Corbijn has allowed us to ride the line between rejection and sympathy, so that we can arrive at the end of Control and feel the tragedy of a life that could never find its own rhythm.