Django Unchained: Opinions, Reactions, Critiques and Reflections

If I were a movie reviewer, I'd describe my reaction to Django Unchained as follows: it was an intense movie with a lot of great moments, some funny, some poignant, and some satisfying in the way that a good action movie is satisfying: sudden, climactic, and cathartic. Is there a word for that? Anyway, those strengths are just enough to outweigh the fact that the film is stretched out and paced and plotted in such a way that it wears out its welcome. The theatrical violence and racism are exciting and indulgent for the first hour and a half, and the bloodbath and Candieland really tops it off, but it becomes exhausting by the time Jamie Foxx's genitals make their appearance. By the end, I was numb to the film's strengths, and honestly eager for it to end. It had already spent all its momentum by then.

This might be the rare film that's better in a home-viewing environment, rather than the theater. At home, you can let off steam by yelling at the screen, making remarks to your friends, or getting up and getting food. It would make the film feel less insistent, like it was leading you on through its twists and turns, rather than jabbing spurs into your sides and yelling in your ear. I might like to see it again, once it's out on Blu-Ray. I think it would benefit from a second viewing in a slightly different context.

Despite being overlong and sometimes toilsome, the film doesn't lack for substance, and I did detect an honest consideration of racial issues, rather than frivolous postmodern regurgitation of provocative material. Candieland is a vivid symbol for the collusion of wealth, power, violence, and tradition in the racist fabric of American history. Django himself embodies a racial fury that echoes forward (or back, I guess) through the black panthers, Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son, and a whole succession of hip-hop, jazz, slam poetry, and political discourse. Perhaps it's fitting that at the end of the film, Django has found his identity as a vengeful outlaw, rather than as a law-abiding citizen of the enlightened North.

Christoph Waltz's character is fascinating, as well, forming the third part of the Django/Calvin/Schultz triad. Schultz is the kind of immigrant that has always made the United States what it is, an idealist who's been shaped in equal parts by his native culture and by the American experience. He fights for Django's freedom, but he does so in an idealistic spirit, an enemy of the idea of slavery, as much as he is a friend and mentor to Django. His idealism is encouraging, but as the plot reveals, it is also suicidal: it acts on emotional impulses, turning minor slights and symbolic offenses into massive, bloody conflicts. If Schultz had really seen Django's agenda as his own, and had considered Broomhilda's rescue as a victory, he would have shaken Candie's hand and headed off into the sunset. His final act of defiance revealed that he was a slave to pride, not to necessity.

The discussions about race and discourse that have been occurring subsequent to the film are colorful and volatile, as should be expected. On Razor Horizon, Joel Randall hits pretty much all the beats, claiming that it's part of a long history of hip racism in Tarantino's films, revealing a perverse fascination with black Otherness. Of course, Spike Lee is the most visible opponent of the film's language, as Spike tweeted, not having yet seen the film in question.

I have a gut response to Spike Lee that I have to get out before I go on. Spike is entitled to an opinion, but is anybody entitled to such an uninformed opinion? Simultaneously nursing such a strong reaction, but also refusing to see the film, and then pronouncing a judgement via Tweet... it seems vaguely passive-aggressive and pathologically defensive to me. I would have seriously appreciated a well-reasoned critique from Spike, as provided by Joel Randall, above. It could have been a much more savage take-down than his twitchy Twitter response, had it been backed by some actual insight into the film itself. But for that, he would have to see the film, either by paying to watch it in the theater, or by requesting a promotional copy, from the studio or from Quentin himself. Or by pirating it.

So, in my search for other reactions, I get to read things like Steven Boone's interesting reaction piece in PressPlay, in which he discusses his own feelings about the N-word and his valuation of Spike Lee's career against Tarantino's. And reading the piece, and the comments, stirs up all those doubts and irresolvable confusions that discussions of race and power always seem to entail. For others, especially non-whites and non-Christians and non-cisgendered-males, but even for me, a standard-bearer of the American race/gender hegemony.

Of course, I still understand the counterpoint, the ugly scent of absurd unfairness that a film like this gives off, directed by a mass-marketed white man who often presents himself with a shrill, sanctimonious air. One of the liberal parts of me -- the part that twitches and shudders thinking of Daniel Tosh -- wants to write Boone's article off as contrived apologism that misses the emotional core of the controversy. But one of the comments defends the film in simpler terms, and I think, before it can be pronounced as vile and opportunistic, it has to be glimpsed in those terms, at least for a moment. That comment is from Bryan Hill, and the relevant section is as follows:

'The fact is that DJANGO UNCHAINED is the most expensive and most mainstream film depicting the horrors of slavery in the history of American filmmaking. It has a black hero. A black heroine. An unflinching look at violence (psychological and physical) and a bonafide superstar playing a slave owner. As a cultural achievement, it's remarkable. "Django Freeman" is the kind of black hero most black storytellers (me included) wouldn't dare to think they could get Hollywood-land to finance, and Tarantino spent his political-cultural capital to do it. In the theatre, my wife and I constantly looked at each other during the film sharing the silent sentiment: "Wow. They did this." I imagine that has to hurt Lee personally. Even with Denzel by his side, Hollywood would never finance DJANGO from him.'

For me, this is underlined, at the very least, by the fact that Django Unchained is serious and sickening at the right moments. A lot of mook deaths are played for laughs, but the physical and psychological torture of the slaves is always sobering and uncomfortable. If white people are allowed any freedom to take an unflinching look at racism and slavery and at the white cultures and institutions they've seeded -- and I'd be hard to convince otherwise, as long as progressivism still pushes us toward greater awareness of ourselves and our privilege -- then Tarantino's film deserves to be seen as an honest exploration of those issues. Tarantino and I are absolutely, irresolvably outside the black experience of history, but we have to find terms to examine it and even -- am I allowed to say this? -- relate to it. At some point, in some capacity, we have to scour that boundary between the black experience and the white experience. Blindness and disconnection from these issues, this inheritance of violence and these systemic social failures, is not an option.

If I get a chance, I may write another post about Django... specifically, about how Candie, Freeman, and Schultz form a triadic structure with some kind of symbolic or semantic weight. We'll see what I can come up with. I suppose I should watch Blazing Saddles and the original Django, huh? Factor in the most important reference points?

Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal, and another lesson in jokes about rape

I wanted to touch, again, on one of the little hang-ups in the whole "rape humor" controversy. I know the saturation point for this topic is WAY below the volume of material being churned out, and pretty much everyone who's given it any thought it dug into their point of view and sick of any further discussion. Still, each time I come up with a new angle on it, anything I think might be useful trying to sort out their own ethical position, I'm going to throw it out there where people can get to it.

Last time this came into my purview, it was the Daniel Tosh incident and the subsequent commentary by Louis CK. I've learned since then, largely via this article: it's also come up for Rainn Wilson, who is a very conscientious and self-aware entertainer; and that Two Broke Girls, which I've never seen and don't have that much interest in, apparently has a hat in the ring of this controversy, as well. And even as I was writing this, there was a little burst of controversy about FHM making a casual joke about rape victims in the middle of a tongue-in-cheek fashion advice piece. Clearly this is a raw, red, touchy, twitching, swollen nerve center on the butt-cheek of public discourse.

The big vortex of controversy today comes courtesy Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal, who found himself swamped in a ton of shit for a throw-away line in one of his recent comics. The final panel – the one that's no longer there – said something to the effect of, "The F5 key = The rape victim: 'The Internet is not behaving as expected! I must now violate you over and over and over again!'" As of this writing, it can be found here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/keyboard/f5.png

Now, upon getting broadsided by a barrage of criticism, Inman made a typical move that we should recognize from other similar cases: he lashed out in self-defense, replacing that offending panel with a bratty editorial snark, found here: http://www.blogher.com/frame.php?url=http://i.imgur.com/XekGY.jpg Just for the record, he has since taken this down and issued a more thoughtful response, so read all this with the understanding that I'm still a fan and I appreciate his mindfulness.

As I've said before, this is the first, biggest mistake when facing a battlefront of critics. You don't give voice to your first self-righteous reaction. It will only amplify the anger, escalate the conflict, and thereby fully trivialize the larger issue. Penny Arcade, Michael Richards, Daniel Tosh... all of these major "offensive comedian" controversies happened because the comedians saw their provocative material as some kind of territory that should be defended against critics, and they ended up losing any diplomatic perspective whatsoever. In contrast, consider Rainn Wilson's simple response, which allowed him to get out from under the hate almost immediately. Rainn is not, and will not become, an icon of anti-feminism to anyone out there in the activist community.

But there's another tangent I want to follow before I shrug my shoulders and say, "There goes another one." In his faux-apology, Inman seems to think he's being criticized simply because he used the word Rape, and that every use of the word is now policed and shut down. If he was paying any attention, he would know that this isn't true. Even in comedy, some people mention rape and it goes unpunished, and even appreciated. The question is, what was it in Inman's particular case? What unique lesson might he learn here?

It's not that complicated, honestly, and it holds consistently across all the cited examples: Penny Arcade, Rainn Wilson, Daniel Tosh. And it contrasts mightily with other cases, like Louis CK and Sarah Silverman, who can get away with joking about rape without being shouted down for it. What triggers the outrage is that Inman (and PA and Tosh) seemed to use "rape" as a punchline because it's the first damn thing they thought of, and they just blurted it out. It was a simple "so provocative!" verbal cue that made whatever they were talking about funny by default.

THIS IS THE GODDAMN PROBLEM, PEOPLE.

Rape is an actual thing, with very serious cultural and psychological implications for a ton of people. It is not a good thing, ethically or pragmatically, that it's a de facto punchline, funny just because it makes people gasp and giggle. It's especially dangerous that, in a certain way (and I know this is debatable), it's a little winking reminder to violent, abusive people that their power is feared, accepted, and trivialized by our culture... i.e. by everybody around them, who are content to laugh at rape jokes without actually considering their content. Look, I'm not a sociologist. But I know a sociological issue when I see one.

The point is, don't throw rape around as a punchline because it's easy, and it's the first thing you think of, and it's easy shorthand for "abuse, but funnier!" That's what all those outraged, screaming PC police are trying to tell you. Talk about rape, and make jokes while you're doing it, but when "rape" is some kind of punctuation mark that makes people laugh reflexively, that's a problem. Don't be the asshole comedian who makes it worse.

To his credit, Inman has issued a much more solemn apology later, indicating that he had actually thought about the issue and didn't want to lock himself into being a dismissive douche about it. For a while, he retweeted the criticisms of his comic... at first in defiance, I think (I could be wrong), but eventually it seemed to become a form of penance. Personally, I think Inman has paid his dues, and has settled upon a wise and well-considered response to all that controversy, and deserves to continue his gross, hilarious, extensive comic production unmolested.

Self-awareness: it's the new S-M-R-T.

The Fiction of Politics: Sweet Home Alabama and American Beauty

I suspect that most of my small audience is liberal types, media and design and art and culture people who identify strongly with things like academia, city life, secularism, and technocracy. In case you haven't noticed from previous posts, this blog comes from that framework, as well. I think it's important to step back and reflect on those things once in a while.

I rarely notice politics in film, except when I'm watching a documentary (those tend to make open statements on politically charged ideas), or when the politics are farted clumsily into the story as a bunch of generic devices (see: The Dark Knight Rises, Avatar). I suspect I frequently miss the broader political assumptions of films I'm watching. Sometimes, the politics only surface at the broad philosophical level, with frameworks that have political implications... like "war is the way to solve the tough problems," "business people are greedy," and "teenagers are bad decision makers."

Other times, the politics are rather more immediate.

I saw Sweet Home Alabama on TV today, and it struck me again -- just as it did the first time I saw it -- that though this film doesn't adhere perfectly to conservative dogma, it comes from a very conservative framework. However the film wants to apologize for it, the message can't be scrubbed away: city life has ruined Melanie, and though it creates an illusion of happiness for her, only the earthy, family-oriented, idealistic humanity of Southern country living can really give her lasting fulfillment. The Yankee North is caught up in the pursuit of money and status; New Yorkers are self-absorbed, ambitious at the expense of authenticity, and closed off from the awesome power of nature and childhood.

The cues are clear: Melanie's parents won't like Andrew because "he's a democrat" (and their assumed reaction turns out to be right, as if they exist in Melanie's subconscious, warning her against this course of action). Kate Hennings, played by Candace Bergen, is a transparent caricature of Hillary Clinton, with touches of other PR-happy politicians. At the end of the film, Melanie reverts entirely back to a stomping, drinking country girl, as if city life was a dress she put on for a few years while she played around in fashion (a very successful career that she gives up completely, to no fanfare whatsoever).

There are positive portrayals of gays in the film, to its credit. You may read this as a whitewash of the actual attitude toward gays in the South, or you may feel it's refreshing, because you know that many rural Southerners aren't as homophobic as the liberal rumors would have you believe. Nevertheless, there is no real confrontation with the politics... none of the gay characters make any mention of wishing they could get married or adopt kids. In fact, the film conveniently glosses over the fact that Bobby Ray had to stay in the closet for so long in the first place.

The film's attitude toward homosexuals feels rather like the attitude of some liberal films toward religious leaders: Shepard Book in Serenity, Father Barry in On The Waterfront, Friar Tuck in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves... though the films themselves are clearly secular, they make a gesture toward religious figures to acknowledge the positive, paternal spirit that a man of God can embody. Such films tend to ignore the fact that the main characters are not churchgoers, and that they are often acting in a very unreligious way.

My first reaction to Sweet Home Alabama was lukewarm indifference, but after I thought over it and picked up on the conservative bent, it gradually turned to annoyance and aversion (yes, I do change my opinions of films after having some time to think about them... my initial reaction has no special authority). Now, seeing the film for a second time, I have a chance to step back and consider that refined reaction, and I think that Sweet Home Alabama has something to teach me, especially considered in relation to many drama and character study films. Particularly, it can teach me something as a liberal cinephile who doesn't want to be irrevocably stuck in his own dogma.

I sometimes forget that serious films often (very often) have a liberal framework to them. Some of the greatest enduring celluloid antagonists are the bugaboos of liberal identity politics: racists, sexists, businesspeople, and military authorities. Brokeback Mountain, Crash, Avatar, A Beautiful Mind, even down to The Muppet Movie: films considered "serious idea films" overwhelmingly come from a socially-conscious, vaguely leftist framework, and it's easy to become blind to that.

Consider, for instance, American Beauty, in which (SPOILERS AHEAD STOP READING IF YOU WANT TO SEE IT TONIGHT) an ex-army homophobe murders a suburban dad, just as he reaches some sort of personal epiphany about his place in the universe. To us liberals, who are consciously sensitive to issues of racial, sexual, and heteronormative marginalization, that's pretty unremarkable. But how would it have changed the movie if that murder had been committed by the angsty pot-dealing teenager trying to impress his girlfriend? You know... the one who was vaguely glorified, in an offhand way, in the course of his character development?

So if you're a liberal cinephile, think about Sweet Home Alabama, and remember: if that movie inspires frustration, that might be how a media-literate conservative feels all the time. That might be why conservatives often claim to be oppressed by a liberal media conspiracy. And if you're a conservative cinephile, take some comfort in the fact that Sweet Home Alabama is out there, an enjoyable, technically competent, well-acted romantic comedy that makes liberals feel as ideologically needled as Avatar makes you feel.

I have another hypothesis: that Will Ferrell made a double-feature of political parodies in Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory, satirizing the right and the left, respectively, through sports. I need to see both of those before I can really sink my teeth into that idea, though.

Daniel Tosh, Louis CK, and comedy and advocacy locked in an eternal struggle

On the Daniel Tosh incident: I'm perfectly comfortable with the standard, rational interpretation of these events, which takes all of the following for granted:

First, Tosh made a cheap joke whose punchline was simply a provocative subject. As annoying as that might be, it's got many precedents in comedy.

Second, the lady blurted out an opinion, which can be rude, but also has precedents in the world of comedy. When Tosh is saying intentionally offensive things, he will occasionally have to deal with people being offended. Nobody denied anybody else's right to speak. Nobody was censored.

Third, Tosh was a dick to the woman in his response. He had all the power in the room... a microphone, a sympathetic audience. His response showed him to be a clumsy, flat-footed entertainer playing to the stupidest common denominator of his audience. It's this insane, overheated response that got Tosh the monumental backlash from the rest of the Internet. Again, he deserves it. Nobody is being censored. If people are calling you out for being an idiot and an asshole, then obviously, in a certain person's world, that's exactly what you are. I'm glad he at least apologized, but he has to realize that won't close the discursive floodgates he opened, or entirely absolve him of purveying some ridiculous bullshit.

I agree, on a philosophical level, with this piece in Jezebel, which is pretty straight-up with ya'll on the issue. If you and I already understand each other, you don't need to read it (or you've probably already read it anyway), but if you still find yourself fuming with hate at the humorless lady in Tosh's audience, then maybe check it out as a bit of reinforcement.

Louis CK addressed it on The Daily Show later.



I dig Louis CK; I trust him that he wasn't really supporting Tosh's RJ when he tweeted about him, so much as tweeting a general fan message that got stuck in the wrong context. Louis CK has, after all, taken on an insane challenge: he's tried to be true to his comedic art and impulses, while also being conscientious and respectful of his audience... and since he's now a massive international phenomenon, that audience includes everybody, from frat-boys to minorities. His success at navigating those complex waters is a testament to his genius and audacity as an entertainer.

Look at what he's trying to do here. First, he's engaging with everybody at once, inhabiting a gray area of diplomacy where he's both funny and critical. This involves holding a few things in his head at once: first, the feminist perspective of, "Why the fuck would you say that? Why should we let it slide?"  Second, the comedic perspective of, "We're in it to make people laugh, and sometimes offensive stuff gets the LULZ," and more abstractly, "We are doing our jobs, and we won't be bullied by people who have no investment in our success."

When he says feminists and comedians are natural enemies, he is making a broad generalization. It's far from universal, and the defenders of feminism are quick to jump on the exceptions. However, it's not a total deception. There is a sense in which advocacy of any kind (racial, gender, etc) is at odds with comedy. After all, comedy is almost entirely about pushing boundaries. Even the most benign jokes are premised on the need to break, overturn, or subvert our expectations, with the punchline usually breaking out of the boundaries of the original question ("Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side!" "Hey! You tricked me into thinking there was a real reason! Jerk!") Advocates, on the other hand, are at least partly responsible for sculpting the boundaries of speech. Make no mistake -- when you're telling people not to use the terms "faggot" or "retarded," you're erecting (lol) a very justified boundary within the game of language. You're pushing back against the uncritical, offensive, intentionally demeaning uses of those words.

So in this very abstract way, these two impulses are opposed to each other. Of course, they can work together... Louis CK never said they can't, and he's one of the greatest exemplars of ways to make this work. It requires a sort of judo... a kind of humor that calls attention to some boundaries while breaking others... in order to shape the discourse in a positive way. And, in the opposite side, a kind of advocacy (feminism, for instance) that is willing -- through humor -- to puncture some interpersonal boundaries and acknowledge some stereotypes in order to shed more light on the whole edifice.

That's what the great self-aware comedians do... Margaret Cho, Bo Burnham, Dave Chappelle, Richard Pryor, and of course, Louis CK, among many others.

Then there's a somewhat passive-aggressive reaction piece, questioning Louis CK's Daily Show discussion, on The Daily Beast.

It's nice that this piece presents a range of opinions from people who identify with both feminism and comedy, but I think it's a little uncharitable toward CK. It never bothers to actually ask: what did Louis CK mean when he said comedians and feminists are natural enemies? How does it jive with his persona as an actual comic? Does it make sense, in the larger context, for me to get offended by it?

Luckily, this is mostly dying down at this point, and I think most people feel that justice was served. And by this time, the trickle of remaining opinions (like, for instance, this one!) aren't going to change the landscape of civil rights or humor or anything like that. I just wanted to get this perspective out there, to make sure I had contributed a few words to the balance of the larger consensus.

No Church in the Wild, Les Miserables, and the aestheticization of unrest

Hey, two things came out today. First, Jay-Z and Kanye's music video, No Church in the Wild, directed by Romain Gavras (he's done some videos for MIA, in case you don't recognize the name). Here's that:



Second, there's the first trailer for Tom Hooper's film adaptation of Les Miserables, starring Russel Crowe, Hugh Jackman, and Anne Hathaway. So here's that:



Okay, take a deep breath.

Why mention these two in the same blog post? Because they both aestheticize the SHIT out of social hardship and unrest. Let's take a moment to think about that.

Gavras's video is like a slow-motion ballet of civil violence, juxtaposing the restless aggression of youth against the faceless defensive belligerence of institutions of authority. There array of images evokes a whole spread of emotions, like a shotgun blast of provocation. There are strains of noble solidarity, disaffected coolness, and pure nihilism; only the cops seem to have a consistent, legible characterization, which is: anonymous, inhuman, the true representatives of the empty, reactionary rule of law.

There's no explicit revolutionary message here, but in the sweeping, mythic presentation of these young rioters, it's hard not to read some glorification. There are probably a lot of people (the vast majority, perhaps) in the activist community that would find this a gross misrepresentation of their ethos. On the other hand, these scenes are becoming more common at protests, both on the international stage (the IMF protests in particular) and in certain isolated incidents of pure chaos (i.e. the 2011 England riots).

The Les Miserables trailer is based on a much more stable groundwork of source material, though it's a few generations removed from the actual unrest depicted in the narrative. Victor Hugo adapted by Schonberg, now adapted by Hooper -- from the outset, there's a seriousness of purpose here that it's hard to find in the Gavras video.

Still, this trailer is cutting us with the same blade as the rap video above. There's a striking abundance of images of suffering -- Cosette glancing back over her shoulder in terror, and later, Anne Hathaway as Fantine, crying desperately in close-up. For a trailer, it's surprisingly heavy, and you might be tempted to recoil from it, especially if you're in a public place.

When it comes to fictional depictions of violence, anguish, redemptive fantasies, etc, the fact that they're entirely invented provides a shield, allowing the viewer to be affected in a sort of suspended-disbelief isolation chamber. But for these two media artifacts, that chamber is porous, because however fictional and stylized they may be, these are clearly referencing both historical precedents and current events. Without going into a thesis-length analysis, I can only offer a shallow thought: this media packaging probably presents a double-edged sword to the viewer: one edge being awareness, the other being consumption and desensitization.

But as long as we're thinking of the grand narratives of human history, the social breakdowns, the frayed edges of civilization, we should take a moment to consider the continuing unrest and suppression in Syria, which is gradually intensifying, under our noses. Would that we could take this violent drama and tragedy -- which is all too real, and becoming more so every day -- and contain it within the harmless confines of a highly-stylized short film.

X-Men: First Class can't bear its own weight

This article by Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a broad, sentimental case for reconsidering X-Men: First Class in light of its purview of history. He makes a good observation, but he doesn't really even scratch the surface of the film's politics. It's a film being championed by reviewers across the US, appreciated by critics and fans alike as a return to form for the series, and yet, under even the mildest scrutiny, its politics and fictional histories start to look twisted. And ultimately, First Class proves itself to be a very pure form of that plague of the modern blockbuster: it's a film that doesn't stand up to even a breath of critical thought, and rapidly caves in under pressure of critique.

SPOILERS AHEAD ALL OVER THE PLACE

As Coates points out, X-Men: First Class is a conceit about society and The Other, played out by a small, oppressed group of superhumans, and thematically linked to the Holocaust, one of the greatest genocidal catastrophes to ever affect white Westerners. Aside from being an emotional trigger, the Nazis also abstractly represent the repressed Patriarch, embodied by the evil Sebastian Shaw and eventually co-opted by the troubled Erik Lensherr. This is a worthy background for a film about self-actualization: the rigid, destructive hegemony of the warlike Father is an interesting counterpoint to the whole idea of modern pluralist democracy.

In First Class, there is a proliferation of White Americans and Brits, running the government, running academia, fixing the problems left over from World War II, and managing the new war against Russia. Xavier champions the emerging Western ideals of plurality, rational restraint, and assimilation, the necessary foil to both Sebastian Shaw's wealthy, power-hungry genocidal tendencies and Erik's reactionary liberation violence. What a cluster of conflicts we have here: power, retaliation, and restraint, played out in all those terms defined by Western international politics.

And from the sidelines come our minorities, Darwin and Angel; in the wake of strong men come our female characters, Emma Frost, Raven, Moira, and Angel again. And here is where First Class actually shows its true colors: in the treatment of these marginalized characters, the traces that the real world leaves on this fantasy of rebellion. That's where the film's unstated assumptions appear, and ultimately, these speak louder than any of the pandering aphorisms that Charles and Erik exchange.

The racial minority characters in X-Men: First Class are both African-American. There's nobody of any other race in sight. In a movie taking place in the 60's, during the height of civil rights activism, this is significant: this is a sign that Xavier has already reached the level of consciousness that the whole country is still struggling to attain. These black characters are a stripper and a cab-driver -- two blue-collar jobs, the employment of people just trying to get by, avoiding attention, already assimilated. And in the very first encounter with the primary antagonist, one of these two characters betrays the cause, and the other dies trying to prevent her defection.

I don’t know if this happened to anyone else, but in my theater, there were some groans and boos when Darwin appeared to defect, and then died at the hands of Sebastian Shaw. And why shouldn’t we jeer? These characters, the only two actual minorities in a whole film about being a minority, are treated in the most frivolous way possible, as triggers for our emotional response. The sting of Angel's betrayal is sharp but absolutely empty, coming from somebody who has no apparent reason to betray the rest of the group; the sting of Darwin's death is even sharper, and though we have no more than a few minutes total devoted to his real life, we have a solid 30 to 60 seconds to gape as his body burns up and falls apart. He was effectively rendered a Black Cop Sidekick with no inner life, only developed enough to be a victim, an emotional patsy with a melodramatic long death scene, and a demonstration of Sebastian Shaw's evilness.

I want to keep writing about the stupidity and callousness of this treatment, but writing more about it won't help. If you're not outraged by the first viewing, you should be angry now, since you've gotten a chance to think about it. If you're not, then maybe you'll be outraged on the second viewing. If none of the above, then you're probably not going to be very sympathetic to the rest of this critique, either.

It sucks being a non-white person in this alternate-universe 60's (New?) England, but you know what sucks even worse? Being a woman!

Now, I know women weren't doing so well in the 60's, which were still trying to correct the hyper-domesticated gender relations of the 50's. I know Sebastian Shaw is an autocratic villainous fascist superspy, so it makes perfect sense that he would order Emma Frost around to get ice from glaciers in her underwear. In fact, that line of dialog was one of the few occasions in the film where it seemed to be aware of real-world oppression -- where the actual struggles of human beings seemed to impinge upon its fantasy for a moment -- so I applaud it. There is a wealth of potential here: being a woman, born powerful, in a society that devalues you based on your gender? Being a person for whom "pride" might mean complicity in an entrenched system that constantly oppresses you? What opportunities!

But in First Class, there was a tragic consistency -- an equal treatment of all women, whether they were villainous or noble, willfully subservient or supposedly "liberated" -- in that they were all treated as trophies for the three major patriarchs. Their value within the plot was reduced to sexual interest and ideological loyalty, which were constantly conflated. Emma Frost was basically a concubine for Shaw, and Angel started the film out as a stripper. Raven's key dramatic moments had a consistent sexual/romantic component: her moment of jealousy and suggestivity toward Xavier in Oxford; her fleeting romantic encounter with Hank, which could have become an important character development, but was actually just a way of creating an artificial sentimental bond between them; her apparent attempt to seduce Erik, apropos of nothing. Moira, the CIA agent, was one of the only female characters with any institutional clout, and she attached herself to Xavier from the beginning of the film; in the end, of course, it's revealed that her interest in him went beyond "professional."

The females in this film are not oppressed minorities or the unacknowledged Other, or even independent, active characters in the field of powerful personalities. They're basically a scorecard, awarding points -- in the form of sexual and ideological loyalty -- to whoever's rhetoric is winning at the moment.

A film that deals with The Other is great, and if it can wrap it into a fantasy in order to make it easier to digest, all the more power to it. But that kind of purpose comes accompanied with some responsibilities. In a film about oppression and marginalization, you have to make sure you're always CONSCIOUS of the ways you put that oppression on display. X-Men: First Class was unforgivably blind to its own politics, and its representational devices totally sabotaged its explicit message of self-actualization and liberation.

I would have liked to say it was a good movie, just because it was fun and the young mutants were endearing -- but someone once said to me that you can't call anything "good" if it doesn't stand up to some reflection without immediately becoming "bad." Sorry, Matthew Vaughn... you're going to have to retake Earnestness in Storytelling and Critical Thinking 101.

Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins, with some parallels to Libya and Gaddafi

Watched Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins the other day (trailer here). Here is a film that takes the heroic crusade story, strips it of any sanitation, and presents it in a raw, relentlessly pure form. The protagonists represent moral outrage in pursuit of a shogunate advisor; this advisor, the antagonist, represents pure authoritarian cruelty. This is one of those defining stories of Western culture, mostly manifested as tales of revenge: Medea (no, not the Tyler Perry creation), The Searchers, the films of Park Chan-Wook, right on up to Die Hard. In all of these films, and thousands of others, there's a crossing-over from the role of "protector" to the role of punitive crusader... from "we need to stop him from hurting people" to "it's time the bastard got what's coming to him."

Takashi Miike purifies this narrative by reducing each side to a 180-proof distillation of itself. I'll try not to give too much away, but in a harrowing scene early on (not the first scene! So don't let your guard down!) the film provides the necessary evidence that Lord Naritsugu isn't just a bad leader – he's a monster, an absolutely deserving target for the audience's hatred and the protagonists' retribution. Here, Takashi Miike does the things that have made him famous in other movies, like Audition and Ichi the Killer: he provokes absolute revulsion, creating one of those rare situations where voyeurism is actually kind of painful for the audience.

So Niragitsu is painted as unabashedly sadistic and cruelly authoritarian. Throughout the film, he's also portrayed as totally indifferent to the world, morally and politically and socially, a blasé despot whose fascism comes less from ambition than from lethal boredom. In nature, even "animal instinct” has a sort of rationality, usually springing from a sense of self-preservation or a vested interest in dominance. Niragitsu doesn't even have this virtue. He embodies the tyranny of sadistic irrationality, and indeed, comes the closest of any villain I've seen to pure nihilism. By the end of the film, he's willfully defied human nature and the ethics of war by wantonly murdering families; he's broken the mandate of brotherhood and military loyalty by disrespecting the remains of his most loyal subordinate; he's even flaunted self-preservation, walking willfully into traps and thanking his assailants for making his life more interesting. Niragitsu is a force of chaos

This makes the thirteen ronin tasked with murdering Niragitsu a de facto force of order and rational retaliation. Interestingly, their motivations are actually split at the top of their hierarchy. On one hand, there is Sir Doi, who hires the assassins, and whose motivation is very political. He sees the threat that Niragitsu poses to the legitimacy of the shogunate, and he is acting to neutralize it. On the other hand, there is Shinzaemon, leader of the assassins, whose motivation is moral outrage. The pivotal scene of the film, referred to above as causing "revulsion," has Sir Doi trigger Shinzaemon's retaliatory instinct, and the rest of the film follows through the brutal, precision-targeted punitive act that results.

So the opposition -- our protagonists -- are embodying both sides of the rational-response position: they are there to protect the political system from breakdown, and they're there to punish a cruel and chaotic criminal maniac.

The desire to inflict punishment sets the stage for some of the most compelling, cathartic moments in the film -- in particular, the presentation of a scroll reading "Total Massacre," and the withering gaze of a master swordsman within a chamber of loose swords. This is male posturing at its finest, obligatory in a movie of showdowns and stand-offs -- those pivotal moments that join the samurai film with its cousin, the Western.

As I was just beginning to forget this vicious slice of filmmaking, I got around to reading Barack Obama's speech about our approach to Libya, and it reminded me that this sort of posturing and aggression and retaliatory instinct appear on the world stage, as well. Whether in the case of Iraq or Libya, it seems that the US has lately been spending a good deal of its military capital on protective/punitive tasks in global politics. This is because, according to the Commander in Chief, "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different."

Like Miike's moral schema, whose violent moral indignation is underwritten by a political mandate, Obama sort of had a situation with two competing motivations: to restore order and allow the country to stabilize, and to aggressively depose Colonel Gaddafi. The parallel isn't too exact, I admit, but there's still an analogue between the two sets of cases. Obama spent a good portion of his speech speaking to that tension -- the tension between acting cautiously, in support of political stability, versus bringing down the vengeful might of a powerful nation upon a ruler who has proven cruel and unpredictable.

In referencing Iraq, Obama was drawing attention to a situation where we acted upon our deeper moral instinct -- the morality that comes from emotion, rather than calculation. When we went into Iraq, we were taking a sort of 13 Assassins approach to the problem: our political aims (protect ourselves from supposed WMD's) and our moral aims (punish a relentless enemy of America and of democratic values) appeared to coincide, although in retrospect, the political aims seem like they might have been a bit of a pretext for the moral righteousness. Anyway, after that conflict, America got to have its own little drama of catharsis, when the public got its hands on those cell phone videos of Saddam's hanging.

But Obama's speech was largely about point out that though the situation in Libya is dictated by a broader sense of ethics and protecting just causes (his answer to the true isolationists), it can't be about the need for retaliation and punishment. It can't be about creating an enemy for the United States to crusade against; rather than an emotional morality of retribution and closure, this conflict has to be built upon a rational morality, a calculation of responsibility and a flexibility of approach. And I think that if Gaddafi got executed by the opposition tomorrow, and we got to see it, very few Americans would feel a sense of self-indulgent pride.

After all, we haven't made that kind of an enemy out of Gaddafi. Because as much as it makes good entertainment, it makes for terrible politics. America has no business instituting a policy of Total Massacre.

But anyway, to end on a shamelessly editorial note: luckily, we have a principled, calculating leader at the helm of the armed forces in this country. We have a commander in chief who believes in the importance of the international community, and who believes that the best way to serve American ideals is to create international partnerships. Only in this way will the United States succeed in fighting despots, rather than becoming one.

The Walking Dead follow-up: tracking some gender issues

I'm going to do a quick post on gender relations in The Walking Dead, the AMC series that's recently aired its third episode.

The Walking Dead holds true to the atmosphere of the comic, which is good enough for me; I believe an artist has some responsibility to their source when adapting something, but I'm not a purist. Darabont's series treats Kirkman's protagonists lovingly, it adheres to the tone and intensity of the comics, and it remixes these elements to form a great parallel product. It seems to me that most of the new material -- the racists and the domestic abuse, the additional action and escape scenes, the return to Atlanta -- are mostly added in order to keep up with the pacing needs of television. I find this acceptable, even if these additions aren't as graceful as the original writing tended to be.

However, there are a few ways in which AMC's changes effect the tone of Robert Kirkman's narrative. One of the most jarring is the way the TV series handles its females, at least in these first three episodes. Now, I know there hasn't been a lot of development of the secondary characters, but real quick, I'll mention a few of the details that come into play when you talk about gender roles in The Walking Dead.

The first conversation in the TV series is between Rick Grimes and Shane, his best friend. After Shane offers some half-baked female-bashing guy talk, Rick unpacks some of his frustrations with his marriage to Lori, his wife, and he basically argues his side of the argument unilaterally: she undermines him emotionally, right in front of their son. Shane's only answer is to reassure him that this is just a phase marriages go through. This exchange is NOT in the comics; take that as you will.

Later in the same episode, we see Lori, just for a short sequence. She has a minor fight with Shane in front of Carl, and it becomes clear that Lori and Shane have started a relationship, since they both suspect Rick might be dead. Again, this conversation was invented for the show. In light of the previous exchange, it gives us a sense that Lori might be a bit self-righteous and hysterical (a "nag" is one word that springs to mind). This would naturally come as a point of contention for critics with a feminist awareness, such as, for instance, Nathaniel of Film Experience Blog.

But what I think is really happening here is that the writers are filtering these first two to three episodes through an explicitly male point of view. These are Rick's story, following the total collapse of his domestic life, and all the plot points introduced are related to this collapse. He was struggling with his relationship with Lori; now he's been replaced by Shane (though he doesn't know that yet). He's confronted with the unvarnished love and camaraderie between a neighboring father and son. If this unilateral point of view takes over the whole TV series, I'll take issue with it, as the comic is notably subtle and objective in its tone.

In the second episode, there is still a conventional gender divide, but it becomes more complex. Andrea is a presence in episode two, acting courageous, if a bit frantic, in the face of disaster in inner-city Atlanta. Again, there is a sense that she's a bit hysterical, and that should rightly raise some hackles. However, she also shows signs of becoming a strong, assertive female character, confident with a weapon and willing to take action. Her personality dominates the males around her, until the arrival of Rick, who derives most of his authority from the fact that he's a sheriff.

Through these two episodes, the male point of view remains fairly coherent. Rick and Shane are the strong, grounded, controlled leaders of whatever company they keep. The female point of view is kept at arm's length, at least somewhat. Lori and Andrea seem to linger in conventional modes: frantic, over-emotional, and motherly. Happily, in the third episode, these essentialisms break down further.

In Episode Three, "Tell It To The Frogs," Rick is finally reunited with his family. There are already power-struggles fomenting among the survivors, and they seem to ignite when Rick arrives. Lori viciously reprimands Shane for acting as a father figure to her son, since her husband has returned; meanwhile, the other women of the group step up to an abusive, misogynistic husband over the distribution of duties in the camp. Both of these are highly charged events, the cracks in the gender wall that the show has erected.

Lori's angry move to reclaim her family -- especially her son -- from Shane's paternalistic aura is rather jarring. It seems like nobody has even discussed this uncomfortable love-triangle situation, and she's acting like Shane's moving in on her kid. From the rationalistic, "let's discuss the issues" standpoint of a male viewer, her behavior may seem unreasonable, but it's probably appropriate in the circumstances. We've already seen how this post-apocalyptic world has brought out the territorial, the brutal, and the reactionary in its shaken residents. Lori has rediscovered her solid ground, and she takes this opportunity to stake it out.

The sequence that immediately follows justifies her aggression, at least partly. Shane "heroically" steps in to punish the domestic abuser of the group, effectively asserting his own status as the benevolent patriarch and punisher of injustice. However, you can see in the faces of the women he's defending: his reaction is excessively violent and self-indulgent. Read in isolation, Shane's outburst is a gesture of benevolent masculinity. However, seen in the context of his situation -- his sudden loss of a potential mate and protege -- it hints at dangerous reactionary instability. As the law-officer/husband/father patriarchy unravels, it starts to show something sinister underneath.

These are the first hints of something I hope continues through the rest of the season, and the series: the exploration of gender at the horizon of the apocalypse. Georgia has been converted, almost overnight, into a place governed by desperation, paranoia, and scarcity. This could devolve into pure vicious patriarchy (I understand something like this happens in the movie/book Blindness?) but in the hands of the writers and directors at work here, it should become something far more complex. Alliances will certainly be shifting over the next few episodes, and gender struggles will be balanced against familial loyalty and group solidarity.

Ultimately, it will be worth considering the writers' treatment of evolution and regression: do our human natures endure the trial of a desperate, wasted world? Do paranoia and desperation break down the barriers between us, or do they reinforce them beyond repair? If the writers are half as good as the other people writing for AMC, the gender issues will feed into these broader questions, rather than distracting from them.

More Politics: The old and wealthy right: Media outrage and resistance

I know I've been a little over-active in the political writing, but these thoughts need an outlet, or they'll vanish into my cognitive history. I'm connecting various dots from the media and from my previous speculation, and suddenly, I'm understanding how conspiracy theorists are born: they like this feeling too much, the feeling of synthesizing disparate information, and they get addicted to it, and start to do it in excess.

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, it seems that the effectiveness of John Stewart's rally, at least in the short term, maybe be tragically limited by economic conditions. As Fenzel from Overthinking It points out, it's far more profitable for the media conglomerates to promote outrage, as it tends to draw more viewers, whether in fearful agreement or disgusted skepticism. Somebody else wrote about this just recently, as well: The New Republic's Jonathan Chait suggests that a lot of the misconceptions about policies stem from the disparate amount of influence of the wealthy over the media. The wealthy scream that taxes are going up because they ARE going up, for the wealthy... even when they're going down for the middle class. So everybody thinks Obama is raising taxes, when he's actually just weighing them toward wealth to flatten out the bell curve of privilege.

These points, recalling the theory of the Frankfurt School, explain some aspects of the short-term political environment. The media (whether consciously or unconsciously) milks the outrage of the right, the political party most sympathetic to free-market business interests and most dismissive of social concerns.

There's another line of thinking going on, as well, dovetailing with the first. This is the theory that the older generation has been galvanized against the left, again offered on Jonathan Chait's feed. It might be argued that the older generations are more susceptible to the kind of outrage and sensationalism that the media outlets are selling. They haven't developed enough immunity to the influence of the once-credible traditional media.

To be honest, I've even felt this myself. As I get older, I get more mentally involved in politics and media, and it becomes hard to withstand the bombardment of information. Whether there's necessarily a right-wing bias, I can't tell, because I still mostly exist in the liberal echo-chamber (though I do take occasional excursions to the conservative outlets). However, I can tell you without a doubt that there's a bias toward discontent, alarmism, and cynicism, especially in the mainstream media that fills in the cracks between Salon and FiveThirtyEight. It's hard not to be taken up in the tidal wave of hand-wringing: is the world really going straight to hell, RIGHT NOW, in front of my eyes?

I'm still pretty sure that it's not the real world, but rather the raw, chafed, twitchy sensory organs of the media, which profit from our fear and oversensitivity. After all, it's built on advertising, which works best when we're off-balance, vulnerable, distracted, and hyper-perceptive.

With all that said... even that thing about me feeling mentally vulnerable myself... I can find a lot of hope under the surface onslaught. If this conservative surge is being driven by the older, richer, cynical generation, then it means that the future isn't necessarily in the hands of the conservatives. In fact, there are signs that this populist upswell is being locked out of party leadership now that it's fulfilled its electoral purpose. And if this is all the result of a malignant, outrage-prone media environment, then we see in John Stewart and Stephen Colbert the seeds of a media resistance. That's why I feel their rally was a significant event: it was a manifesto against the infrastructure that profits from our paralysis.

The younger generation won't always be apolitical; we all get more civic-minded when we step out of the bubbles of our childhood homes. And with luck, they'll be totally indifferent to the inane rantings of the media outlets, and much more prone to get their information from alternate sources -- and to know how to filter and synthesize that information in useful ways. Obama's big win was the first glimmer of consciousness from that generation, and recent progress on gay rights is a continuation of its positive influence.

If you came here looking for hope, it's above. If you came looking for some ideas, they're below.

First, we have to stay progressive, even when the real world seems frustrating, and multiculturalism seems to be swimming upstream against poverty and hostility, and social welfare seems like a futile gesture. If every generation really does turn conservative when it gets old, there will always be a culture war between the old and the young.

Second, we need to be vigilant enemies of cynicism and doomsday prophecy. The outrage and sensationalism always seems to turn people into fearful conservatives. As Bill Maher says, there is no equivalence (and he's got a good goddamn point there), but what he doesn't realize is that all irrational, self-righteous discourse will become political capital for the conservative cause. Fire and brimstone are not the liberals' strong suits... discursive agility and broad perspective are the weapons that fall on our side of political asymmetry.

Third, we need to listen to the youth, and groom our leaders from the emerging generation of activists and media personalities. These people will know how to manage the insane, super-complex media environment, and by defining the media environment for the next political age, they'll also be writing its policies. And they're smart and compassionate and hard-working.

A couple more observations on politics and discourse

First: if we're going to try to get this "well-informed, balanced discourse" thing going after the Stewart Rally and the election-day fisticuffs, we can start with some worthwhile articles from reputable sources that address some of the myths echoing around popular discourse:

Here's one on how Obama saved Capitalism, to his own ultimate political disadvantage.

From Bloomberg Businessweek, Obama is meeting his legislative objectives, and very few people are noticing.

And now a more personal response to these unstable political days.

After the Comedy Central rally, I happened to pick up one of my old Media Studies sourcebooks, Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. It argues an elaborate theory that for two thousand years, Western civilization conditioned itself into being an extremely visual society (which he also associates with being individualist, linear, chronological, and structured in our thinking)... he asserts that the Gutenberg press brought about the apex of this form of culture. He then argues that for the past 100 years, we've been reverting into an auditory culture, which he associates with spatial, non-linear, and simultaneous ways of thinking.

And he says that panicked, terror-stricken behavior will be a product of this shift in perceptual mode, if we're not prepared for the changes. His description of this rocky transition is strikingly familiar:

And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. It is easy to perceive signs of such panic in Jacques Barzun [a cultural historian/philosopher] who manifests himself as a fearless and ferocious Luddite in his The House of the Intellect. Sensing that all he holds dear, stems from the operation of the alphabet in and on our minds, he proposes the abolition of all modern art, science, and philanthropy. This trio extirpated, he feels we can slap down the lid on Pandora's box. At least Barzum localizes his problem even if he has no clue as to the kind of agency exerted by these forms. Terror is the normal state of an oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the same.

So, M.M. offers warnings of anti-intellectualism, and a prophecy that our culture will be engulfed in panic and terror, a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden explosion of our mutual awareness (aka loss of privacy, high visibility, and ubiquity of trivial information). And now here we are, scared of terrorists next door, homosexuals infiltrating our childrens' heads, and rats with human brains. It may be a little late for this world, Marshall, but if you can see this from the next, I hope you're saying, "Yup, that's what I figured."

Rally to Restore Sanity: A meta-political landmark. I hope.

Happy political Halloween! Instead of spending a day working on a costume or watching artsy horror movies from the 60's and 70's, I went to the Rally to Restore Sanity. It was a last-minute decision, made on the fly because I knew it would be a cultural landmark, and I saw the opportunity. At least, I hope it will be seen as a cultural landmark. It was a little microcosm of liberalism, in all its beauty and its vulnerability.

I didn't see all the mad performance pieces at the front; I couldn't hear Yusef or Ozzy or Rahzel. I didn't catch the keynote until I got to a video after-the-fact. You may think that this gave me a narrower insight into the dynamic of the event, but au contraire! It gave me a better one! Because, no matter how diplomatic John and Stephen tried to be, the tenor of the rally would be set by the attendees. If they had been Black Bloc and revolutionary insurrectionists, or even straight-edge punks chanting slogans, the politics would have been pretty one-sided, no matter how the speeches themselves were handled. By wandering among the signs and participants, I got a feeling for the mood of the crowd and the tone of the event as a whole, rather than for the specific performances, which (being affiliated with a major media network) are obviously going to be sanitized.

What I found was pretty impressive: the rally as a whole -- both the on-stage rhetoric and the expressions of the crowd -- were strikingly on-message. Leftist solidarity and socialist advocacy were generally absent, and almost all the signs were meta-political, targeting the language and media of politics, rather than the divisive issues that make up its content. The fears of people like Timothy Noah at Slate, who felt the event automatically had a strong liberal bias that made its message of moderation disingenuous, were pretty much unfounded. And the massive crowd was universally calm, cordial, well-behaved, good-humored, and easy to get along with, even in stressful positions (like shut out of a full metro car, even when they'd been waiting for hours to get downtown).

Now, here's where I'm coming from. I'm a guy who indulges the unhealthy habit of reading highly partisan blog posts from time to time (on both sides of the aisle) and then reading the comments to each of them, wherein the tantrums of the few trolling attention-whores tend to drown out any useful dialogue going on. I get this feeling from the mainstream outlets themselves, too, at least in the past year or so: that participating in the democratic discourse is always a losing proposition, because any argument is automatically hyper-politicized, linked with dozens of bad (usually irrelevant) arguments, and invalidated by proxy. Every attempt to participate is turned into a shouting match, and thus, expressing any political position whatsoever is enabling trolls and reactionaries, and is therefore self-defeating.

So this rally was genuinely refreshing. John and Stephen (and Yusef and Ozzie and the guy next to me with a big "Use Your Inside Voice" sign) had a cohesive message, contrary to some of the nay-saying that's gone on since the rally... and it's a cohesive message I can get behind: discourse needs to be civil. In so many words, we were trying to say, "We respect, and expect, maturity and restraint from our political media, and we will reward it." And there were a lot of people saying that. And it's actually one of the first large-scale, mass-media sentiments I can get behind, because it outflanks the hyper-politicized culture-war rhetoric. Stewart and Colbert stepped back, took the whole situation into account, and fashioned a message that responds to it at a higher level than mere partisanship. It's a little more complex, and it's far more gratifying.

Of course, with the palpable relief comes the fear that many of us leftists (and also tons of moderates) probably still have, especially after yesterday's election: the fear that this whole thing will be overlooked, because it's not sensational enough to be interesting. Unfortunately, no matter how high-level the thinking is, Stewart and Colbert are still subject to the media conditions that created this shitty situation in the first place.

Fenzel from Overthinking It puts it rather nicely:

The rally isn’t going to solve Stewart’s problem with the press — it’s not even going to come close to solving the problem. The economic fundamentals are too heavily stacked against it. The profit motive for media organizations to keep going the way things are dwarfs what they can make just producing news. They can make a lot more money — for their own books, for their own pockets, and through various complex business relationships — selling de facto editorial control of news outlets to private companies (that will turn profits by influencing government policy) than they can make selling time to the Pine-Sol lady and the Scooter Store.

So while I can call this event a "landmark," it won't even be a footnote if it doesn't have some effect on the material conditions that govern these things. And it will be hard, especially if you follow a Marxist framework, like Fenzel seems to... it won't have much effect on the economics of the situation.

But here's where my hopes for the rally come in.

First, it's important to note that shows of solidarity have a powerful effect, if they can resonate with the media. The Tea Party has proven this -- their power isn't in their spending or their economic force, but rather in their visibility, and their ability to reframe the political environment. This rally was indeed a response to the Tea Party (a common theme on the signs), and it makes reframing the discursive environment its explicit business. The exposure from this rally may give everybody -- not just leftists or teenagers -- an essential tool that they didn't have before: a new sensitivity to media sensationalism, which might have been affecting them for a long time without their even knowing it. Maybe, because of this rally, a new crop of people will be able to roll their eyes and change the channel when someone accuses a university professor of "hating America," or a Christian teenager of being a mindless conservative drone.

I especially hope Stewart and Colbert reinforce the younger generation's resistance to outrage and sensationalism, because they're both the most vulnerable to bad discourse, and the its most powerful potential foe. They need to build up a media immune system, and if their influence works out right, Stewart and Colbert could act as vaccines against the festering media conglomerates.

Also, as a progressive, I have some hopes (didn't mean to give away my political persuasion, but there you have it). I think the conservative perspective is currently dominating the media environment because it's created a foundation of outrage and reactionary rhetoric, and this has served its message very well. This is one very important reason for the partisan shift in yesterday's elections. Though the rally came to late to have any effect on the elections, I hope they can do something new: provide a parallel foundation for the leftist platform to be consolidated and articulated. If a discursive framework of moderation, diplomacy, and constructive, hopeful, humorous, self-aware dialogue can be laid, then the progressives may stand a chance of forming a cohesive platform, based on our core values: compassion, economic and social equality, and market capitalism supported by universal social programs providing for basic civil rights (both negative and positive, outlined in documents like the Bill of Rights and the UDHR).

Banksy stacks The Simpsons with different levels of messaging

Banksy's recent opening sequence for The Simpsons is striking and discomforting, which is a small triumph right from the get-go, as far as I'm concerned. However, more brilliant is the way Banksy has used this forum to navigate a gauntlet of corporate pressure and open critique. He's done this by subverting his own message with sarcasm, which provides just enough of a hook for FOX to let the ad run; it may make the sequence more diffuse in its targeting, but it also makes it much more effective, if only by giving FOX a reason to put it on the air.

WTF am I talking about? Check out the sequence:



Well, let's start with the most obvious reading of the intro: that it's an exposé and a direct, open attack on FOX and The Simpsons' overseas outsourcing policies. I'll call this the CRITICAL READING -- the interpretation that Banksy has used this forum to make a direct comment on FOX's corporate immorality.

This raises an obvious first question: how did this get past the FOX executives? It doesn't matter how powerful Matt Groening is in the FOX heirarchy... the network would never PAY a video artist to create a direct attack on its own policies, and then air it on a high-visibility network show. They also wouldn't give such a dangerous artist completely free license; they would only hire him on particular conditions of review and approval. So how'd Banksy make this work?

Presumably, if this sequence was too literally on-target, it wouldn't have run. If FOX was actually perpetrating human rights abuses for the purposes of creating FOX animation and merchandise, and it wasn't a public issue, and the network was trying to keep quiet about it, then they wouldn't have touched this bit of subversive commentary by Banksy. So there must be something else going on here, something that subverts the CRITICAL READING that's initially evident.

Well, guess what? There IS another reading out there. After all, this information about FOX outsourcing from Korea... this is already public, and the public has already had a chance to chew on it and gripe about it. So the suggestion that The Simpsons outsources its labor isn't so dangerous. People who realize this are seeing this opening sequence as being a satire of media hype, a wry hyperbole of critics' misinformed ideas of foreign labor. This reading, seeing the segment as more tongue-in-cheek and humorous, is what I'd call the SARCASTIC READING.

And it's an adept turn of message that the SARCASTIC READING subverts the CRITICAL READING. Certainly, this was enough of a selling point for Banksy to get the network to agree to air this segment. They know The Simpsons has always been edgy and self-critical, so when Banksy tells them that his opening sequence is actually making fun of the critics for being so sensitive about this "sweatshop labor" outsourcing thing, they buy it. They understand that the segment is controversial, but not outright dangerous to them, so they agree to run it. It's good for all parties.

It's important to note that even with the specific FOX-focused criticism slightly declawed, this intro sequence still makes a statement. For one thing, many people won't notice the sarcastic reading and will just come away with the critical reading. For another, there is a higher-level critical reading that isn't preemptively invalidated: the reading that this intro is a general critique of American consumerism and lack of global awareness. People may follow this insight to a dead end with regards to FOX, but at least they will have taken a moment to consider where their products come from. And there will be lots of people -- the smartest of them -- saying, "Well, maybe FOX isn't the worst offender in terms of exploitive labor, but there are definitely American companies out there who are actually just this bad." ... "And honestly, we don't know about FOX, either. Maybe this is closer to the mark than we realize."

Banksy is walking a deeply ambivalent line between co-opting the instruments of mass culture, and selling out to them. His ability to simultaneously skewer FOX and its critics shows just how complex his messages can be. As much as this attests to his skill at working with the information apparatus, it still begs the question: for whose benefit is this media artifact created? You're sending a valuable message, but is it enabling the offender? Which is more important: what you say? Or on whose behalf you say it?

Tyler Clementi - pausing for an imprudent political rant

I composed this post as a comment on this Salon.com article. It's long and undirected, and basically reframes the discussion in that article: on whose head does Tyler Clementi's death fall?

Infantilization is accelerating. As my fiancee said to me recently, college is the new high school; 18 is the new 10 years old. We talk about how the perpetrators were victims of an irresponsible society, and how their actions were adolescent pranks that went too far. I address this comment to all those who were shocked at this kind of incident happening in a Northeastern college, where young people can finally go to escape the bullying of teenagehood: undergraduate programs are feeling younger and younger, less and less decisive as a transition into adulthood. This reflects in both the behavior of the perpetrators, who were criminally negligent of another human being's personhood, and in the behavior of the victim, who wasn't prepared for the crushing blow of an inhumane society.

However, right now, talking about the victim's preparedness is not appropriate. Society is indeed causing confidence and self-image issues, but that's something we need to address in the long-term, on the social level. Punishing, or blaming, anyone for not being prepared for cruelty is bizarro-world logic.

What's much more appropriate -- and the collective indignation of so many of us is a good guideline to the morality of the situation -- is interrogating the perpetrators, and interrogating society to find out where these people come from. Why are we creating people who are so desperate for attention that it overrules their empathy, their practical judgment, and their decision-making skills?

There are a number of steps we need to take, but one of them is to acknowledge and commit to our moral standards. An educated, undiagnosed adult in the United States is responsible for the ramifications of their behavior, and these perpetrators did something almost unspeakably vicious to a classmate. Of course, the law delimits their possible punishment, which is a good thing, but they deserve the absolute maximum allowed for by those terms.

As a side-note, this is one of the reasons this particular story is getting so much attention -- it was the result of a single act of cruelty and moral perversion. People like watching moral train wrecks, and gasping at the outrage it inspires in them.

So, um, yes, there are a lot of people who are to blame for this. For starters, 1) the perpetrators... 2) the media and cultural trend toward attention-seeking behavior... especially 2a) those who do so in order to advance a hateful agenda, like the aforementioned right-wing pundits, and also 2b) those media trollers (some of them very far left) who profit off of cruel, attention-seeking, voyeuristic sensationalism.

I'd like to throw in the leftist political establishment, too, as abetted by Obama. These are the people who are actually able to advance an agenda logically, through argument and diplomacy, in contrast to the sound-byte-screaming right wing pundits. And yet, this political persuasion consistently proves unable to articulate and defend a strong set of principles. I can suggest some obvious ones: anti-opportunistic-corporatism. Social and economic infrastructure to regulate the excesses of capitalism. Oooh, and here's one: tolerance of personal freedom and sexual liberty as a core civil right.

Come on, Officially Licensed Participants in Society. It's the 21st century. We need to get this shit straight.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I am a supporter of Obama, especially in terms of his actual initiatives, and his approach to political discourse. This just happens to be an issue where I wish he would take a stronger position.

Victory for Barack Obama

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I just wanted to say congratulations to my fellow leftists and centrists, my fellow students and young voters, and the whole mass of a nation that needed to see politics take a fresh turn. As with Hegel and my enlightenment forefathers, I believe history has a trajectory that will become clear in time, and this election has reassured me that it's a direction I can understand and appreciate.

Benefit of the Doubt believes in the power of public discourse, but more importantly, I believe that this discourse isn't empty -- the words of a public figure, whether spoken in private or from behind a podium, are a window into that figure's consciousness. Each of us has been forced, over the last year, to turn our ears toward these candidates, and I believe that we, as a collective culture, have heard the truth in them, and we have made a sound judgement.

So most of all, congratulations to Barack Obama, our new President... may he bring a new voice to our nation, and may its echo endure in history.

Barack Obama: An old medium for a new media age

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

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.

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

"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.