An epic seriousness fail from Fred (of Portlandia fame)

Watch this video from Fred of Portlandia and see if you like the idea or not:

Comedy and seriousness can certainly coexist. This is part of why I love Nabakov, and part of why Rules of the Game is one of the great works of art (hi Evan!). There are crucial moments in each of those where the comedy and the drama reinforce each other endlessly, in a positive feedback loop, and create staggering emotional effects. But it's also worth noting that comedy and seriousness can be further broken down, and when you look at the different types, you find much more complicated dynamics between them.

For instance, seriousness can be broken down into POMP (i.e. the seriousness of politics, outrage, and theory), HIGH DRAMA (i.e. the seriousness of opera, epic poetry, etc), and REALISM (i.e. the seriousness of documentary, cynicism, etc). Likewise, comedy can be broken into any number of sub-forms... if Aristotle had really written a second volume of the Poetics devoted to comedy (as hypothesized in The Name of the Rose), it would have broken that shit down for us, and I'd have something to cite. As it is, I'll only bother commenting on one particular type of humor: SARCASM.

SARCASM, as a type of humor, doesn't seem to coexist with seriousness very well. Or, at least, it doesn't in this video... there such an intense ironic framework that it cannibalizes the seriousness, breaking down the concept right after the premise. Of course, this is further reinforced by the alleged "rules" of seriousness, which have a smarmy meta-serious tone to them.

I actually have a great love for seriousness. This should be obvious from this post itself, which is just as intolerant of levity as sarcasm is of seriousness. So it rather pains me that in the pop-cultural sphere, irony has become such a powerful force. It's a self-defense mechanism, a knee-jerk response, a permanent filter of perception, and a totalizing framework. Though there are some VERY SERIOUS ARTISTS (I'm well aware), and I understand how lots of people might find them pretentious and annoying, it seems like there's very little space left at the amateur level to experiment with real gravity and seriousness in art. It falls directly into the paper-shredder of judgment and gets laughed out of the cultural record. Just listen to random conversations at art museums, especially during tourism season, to see this in action.

Anyway, to beef up this post a little, I'll include a thing I wrote a while back, and never published, because it's painfully incomplete (it was originally written as a sort of meditation on why I dislike Entourage and Gossip Girl, despite their being fairly intelligent and well-acted).

FROM SOME TIME IN 2011:

I can relate to characters in fiction in two ways -- as caricatures (comedy), or as characters (drama). For the first type, I see their actions as absurdist, non-sequitors, as having no consequences except those of the scene, the immediate scenario, my immediate reaction, etc. For the second type, I form a moral understanding of their behavior. I evaluate their choices as either good or bad, and I anticipate a certain outcome. If they're well-intentioned, relatable, etc., I hope it works out well for them. If they're assholes, antagonistic, etc., I hope they get redeemed or punished in some way. I also try to understand their evolution, their "narrative arc," and when they change, I feel it's a serious change to the dynamic of the world they're a part of.

I'm happy laughing at the clowns, the caricatures. Laughing at them distances me from them. That kind of character is the kind you find in traditional cartoons (The Boss in Dilbert, all the characters in It's Always Sunny, Hagar the Horrible, etc). I feel no need to relate them to real world cause-and-effect or consequences. The second type of character is the type you encounter in anything dramatic, and in a certain way, I judge them... or, you might say, I evaluate their actions. I try to make sense of them and their world. If I don't like that kind of show, it's because I can't make sense of the world it takes place in. This often happens in shows where ill-intentioned characters are rewarded, or the virtue of selfishness or malice is implied. I just don't fit into those worlds, so I don't like those shows. Gossip Girl and Entourage are good examples.

Do I never like shows if I don't agree with the moral alignments of the protagonists? Not quite... the fact is, I just don't like these shows because their moral universe is so different from mine. Maybe the shows frustrate me because they don't validate my own values.

I don't like Entourage because it's all about a frat-boy universe. Even moreso than Friday Night Lights, which is more a family and social community universe. I don't like it because it's all about a flock of men, being the kind of man I was aggressively socialized not to be -- the shit-talking, alpha male, sexually aggressive, massively heteronormative male -- the kind of universe where I would get shit on, and would have to walk away out of shame and frustration. This is a world that I was socialized to reject, and apparently this instinct carries over, even to watching TV shows.

I don't like Gossip Girl because it's about a high school universe I was taught to resist and stay out of, a universe I was taught was unrewarding, even contemptible. The high school universe of cliques and social climbing and talking about people behind their backs and being part of a Machiavellian social battleground. The kind of place where high drama is the order of the day, where you see your immediate social relationships as the most important thing in the universe (I was always taught to try to enjoy myself, but look to the future, be focused on college and on making choices and being independent blah blah blah).

Is it true that aesthetic judgments are so often just our own projections and perceptions of ourselves, displaced onto the things we're critiquing? If so, is that okay?

Mad Men: Peggy and Pete as two faces of Don Draper

I think I have the tendency to turn every story I consume into its own inner world in order to understand it. It's sort of a New Criticism tendency, I think... the show/movie/book/game sets it conditions, and then everything gets to fall into place within that framework. So the observant viewer gets the privilege of figuring out what the framework is, and coming to a more robust understanding of how the specifics fit into it.

As I've watched Mad Men (mainly seasons 3 and 4), I've discovered that the world of Mad Men gravitates entirely around Don Draper. Yes, I realize he's the main character, and sort of our stand-in/protagonist/flawed hero, but he's present in the narrative as more than just a character. His personality also determines the personalities of the people around him, and I think, in a certain way, the whole cast of characters can be seen as refracted rays from the prism of his personality.

Consider: aside from Don, two of the centerpieces of his show – Peggy and Pete – are under his supervision (more or less). Both have risen in the corporate ranks to the point where they're no longer strictly his underlings, but they certainly both answer to him, as the whole of each company he works with has done. I would say that Peggy and Pete are the two most important characters in the world of Mad Men, even more important than Betty, Joan, or Roger Sterling. And I think the reason they're so important is that they share a special triadic relationship with Don -- specifically, as his twin proteges, they have come to embody two contrasting aspects of his personality.

Peggy is Don's introspective side, his hard-working, straight-talking, insightful, and creatively pragmatic inner artist. She not only overcomes her social barriers, as he has overcome his... she actually turns them into advantages without letting herself become defined by them. Over the seasons of the show, she repeatedly shows an uncanny ability to see into the obscure heart of business and personal situations. She stays with Don late into the night when he needs to develop a visual solution for Samsonite. She is the only employee at SCDP who understands his publication of the anti-cigarette editorial in the New York Times. In Season 3 Episode 10, she defies the writer's block that's set in with Don and Kinsey by dropping a pitch-perfect tagline, after Kinsey has spent a full night struggling to come up with something.

In this light, it's worth watching the relationship between Don and Peggy develop. Don, at times, uses Peggy as a cognitive appendage, letting her write copy and disgorge ideas, and then editing them into high-profile ads and taking credit for them. He makes an effort -- whether warranted or not -- to keep her controlled, demanding that she stay humble, even when her work has gained new ground for the firm. Don knows that the creative force in the ad business has to stay organic, opaque, and mysterious, and even as he guides Peggy to her full potential, he also helps delineate the space in which she is most effective. He places a mask over her to keep her secrets safe.

It's also worth noting that in her personal life, Peggy is caught between two pursuits: the pursuit of self-reliance and independence, and the pursuit of lasting happiness and stability. She struggles to honor her own family without being caught in the force field of her moralizing mother; she searches carefully for a sort of love that provides both growth and consistency. Her grounded, carefully-calculated relationships with her various male paramours (Duck Phillips, Mark, Abe Drexler) mirror Don's relationship with Betty, who provides him with stability, but who defers to him on matters of family and business.

Pete, on the other hand, is a reflection of Don's extroverted aspect. He aggressively courts clients and projects a calm, genial persona at all times. His specialty -- something Don, at his best moments, is also able to effect -- is identifying and targeting the specific desires of the client... telling clients what they want to hear, even if they don't realize it themselves. As the series progresses, Pete becomes an expert at raising stakes at the right moment, a skill he puts to use in his negotiations with Trudy's father in the episode "The Rejected."

Through the course of the show, Pete learns a lot about competitive diplomacy. He learns to lie (hastily pretending to be sick when his bosses show up at his house during a job-hunting absence) and he learns self-preservation. This reflects the side of Don that can lie so audaciously to Betty when she suspects him of cheating... this is a crass, calculated lie, never really convincing, but always barely sufficient to give Don some plausible deniability. And Pete, like Don, is an impulsive cheater -- just as he has learned Don's skills of public appearance, so he has developed the same self-indulgent addictions.

When did Pete become a shade of Don's public persona? Probably at the end of Season 1, when he threatened to expose Don's past as Dick Whitman. This, in effect, literalizes the relationship between Don and Pete. After this, Pete not only symbolizes Don's public facade... he also becomes a sort of guardian familiar, responsible for keeping Don's secret and protecting his identity from exploitation and collapse. He is called upon more than once to bear this burden -- for instance, when he intercepts the security clearance in Season 4 Episode 10.

So in Peggy and Pete, we see the Yin and Yang of Don Draper. Peggy is the introverted, creative, ambitious, observant, and faithful side of Don, and Pete is the extroverted, cunning, impulsive, entitled, and carefully suppressed side. So what do we make of the fact that in episode 1 -- the VERY FIRST EPISODE of a long and complex series -- these two facets come together and conceive a child? Is it possible that once Don sublimates into a disembodied marketing blurb signed by the long-lost Dick Whitman, the love-child of Don's two proteges will become a new Don Draper, a Janus-faced ad-man for our own generation?

I hope the answer to this question is as interesting as it deserves to be.

Dexter Season 4: essential (post)modern man(hood)

Rita: Car pools and swimming pools? How much are we living the dream?
Dexter: So much.

Dexter Morgan is a performer. Michael C. Hall does justice to this aspect of his character -- Dexter is always saying the right thing, but only after searching for a moment, letting his bewilderment show in his eyes as he struggles to sync up with the people around him. His neighbors, his coworkers, his psychologist, his wife -- they're all the audience, and he's a magician, a Stephen Colbert, always in character.

How much truth is there in Dexter's performance? That question is no easier for Dexter to answer than it is for any of us. Because as far as Dexter is concerned, there's no truth whatsoever. Normalcy is the ultimate role he plays, and every time he switches from a smirk to a smile, it strains his composure. The rest of the world is comfortable with its mundane preoccupations and its rote conversations, and Dexter is aware that he's the outsider, faking it until he can get away from it.

But if Dexter is an outsider, why do you sympathize with him so strongly? Come on, I know you do. And this is what complicates the question... in Dexter's momentary lapses, in his little hesitations, his moments of confusion and alienation, he seems to be saying, "I'm supposed to care about this shit? This is what's on these peoples' minds?" And when you see that look in his eyes, it doesn't register as bizarre and unhinged -- instead, it rings with familiarity. Because we all feel like that outsider, looking into a gallery of normal lives. Whether we're at the water cooler or hosting a garden party, we all have those moments where we feel like phony play-actors trying not to be noticed and called out on it.

Just ask Chris Rock. He's a married man who hates married people.

I know this goes for all humans, but I'd wager that men (or the masculine-conditioned) have a stronger affinity with Dexter than the feminine-inclined. Traditional masculinity is constructed as a double-edged sword of independence and isolation, the keystones of the rugged individual. And the non-traditional male, the "nerd" as it were (Dexter gifts Harrison a shirt with the phrase "My Dad's a Geek") is doubly-bound by this outsider stigma: you are constantly faced with the standards of traditional masculinity (cars babes sports money) but you even place yourself outside of that. The greatest survival skill of the anti-social man is to fully embrace his outsider status, to love his own alienation, to take this isolation as a source of great pride.

So we all do that thing that Dexter does: "I can't believe you punched him!" "Yeah, me neither!" You own up to the little emasculations, you bend with the turbulence, admitting that fighting is out of character for you, preempting any true ridicule with gentle self-deprecation. It's a crutch, a self-defense mechanism... self-awareness and self-acceptance. It's a certain kind of honesty, though perhaps overstated.

Oh, right... except for the fact that it's not really honest. At least not for Dexter. With every humble remark Dexter makes, we're in on the joke: we know that he's not really that gentle nerdy science husband. He's actually a seasoned hunter, an expert in disguise and guerilla warfare and thievery and hand-to-hand combat. He can disarm thugs, intimidate bullies, and outmaneuver vicious killers. He's basically a superhero, and his little passing self-deprecations are steeped in irony, meant just for us, the audience that gets to travel around in Dexter's head.

And that's where Dexter becomes unrelatable, right? He's an outsider, like the rest of us, but unlike the rest of us, he's a superhero deep down? Isn't that where our sympathy ends?

Nay!

Let's take a moment to listen to Neil Stephenson, speaking for all men. From his seminal novel Snow Crash:

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

This may sound like an adolescent boy's fantasy, but let's face it... all humans, and especially all men, carry that adolescent around with them their whole lives, and we all have a little bit of Hiro Protagonist within us. Dexter actualizes this fantasy. He doesn't just dream of being a superhero -- he IS a superhero, flipping from disguise to disguise, strong-arming thugs into going straight, out-maneuvering cops and murderers, and generally being a black-ops martial arts outlaw whenever it's convenient. Dexter turns the male fantasy into a reality, and it adds an extra dimension to that self-deprecating humor he's always using to protect himself.

Another of Dexter's key moments -- aside from his "how much are we living the dream?" response -- is when he impersonates a truck driver in episode 11, which I would definitely transcribe here, if I could find the quote online. More than any of the beat-downs or boat driving, this is the moment when Dexter becomes the man we all keep in our back pocket, the man who can do ANYTHING, provided he's driven to it by necessity. You need me to be a truck driver right now? Goddammit, I'll do it. I'm a man. This is what we do.

This isn't just cop-educated serial killers in Premium Channel TV shows. This is all men. Some part of us, however small, believes we're secretly a superhero. Hiro Protagonist thinks he could be the baddest motherfucker. Dicky Barrett's not a coward, he's just never been tested. Alias, Mission: Impossible, Cloverfield, your plumber, your neighbor -- every man is convinced that if it came down to it, they could do what's necessary to punish assholes, save their family, protect AMERICA.

And yet, it's tough for us to maintain this illusion, when we're struggling with illusions of control and the ominous shadow of inadequacy, when we're faking normalcy, and also embracing our outsider status so that we can feel it's legitimate. We're all Shrek and Donkey, onion parfaits, starting with "normalcy" on top, then proceeding to a fluffy layer of alienation, all stacked on top of an inner superhero who's forever kept in dire reserve.

This is what it means to perform masculinity. This is where "truth" gets lost in layers of projection, self-preservation, and constructed identity. This is the territory where nerdy men -- nay, all men -- nay, all people -- get lost in their own performances.

Arthur Mitchell: "Which are you?"
Dexter Morgan: "All of them."

The Walking Dead: The psychology of enclaves

The first season of The Walking Dead ended this past weekend. Did it measure up to the standards set by the comic? Not entirely, but it was damn well done, and I'm excited that there's gonna be a season two. Despite my desperate urge to compare Darabont's adaptation to Kirkman's original, I'm going to do my best to resist, and look at the series on its own terms.

After the various tangents and interjections, what we've ended up with, in this AMC series, is a sort of post-apocalyptic anthropology, showing the breakdown and restructuring of society into various enclaves in an economy of self-defense and scarcity. Rick's family group is the control group, an intensive investigation into the unstable power dynamics and desperate decisions of a fugitive community. It'll provide fuel for a lot more episodes down the line.

But perhaps more interesting are what I just referred to as "enclaves," the isolated autonomous zones that Rick and his group come across as they navigate the landscape. There are really three, aside from the main group: the Jones's household, the Atlanta clinic, and the CDC. Each offers a glimpse into how extreme circumstances may effect human behavior and self-presentation; together, they provide a fascinating perspective on the landscape of desperation.

Morgan and Duane Jones initiate Rick into the world of the walkers, reluctantly taking him in when he wanders into their front yard. When we encounter them (Episode 1), they are isolated and paralyzed, still stuck in the state of shock that the zombie apocalypse has caused. The reappearance of Morgan's wife reflects their failure to accept the zombies as inhuman and come fully to terms with what's happened to the world; they are still undeveloped, showing us the early-development stages of bona fide post-apocalyptic survival. They are an important emotional anchor for the show, but they're not the most interesting fragment for analysis.

If the Jones's are in the primitive stages of adjustment, still showing signs of shock and paralysis, the other two communities -- the clinic and the CDC -- are both communities that have been distilled into pure psychology, representing two opposite sides of pure personality. One is the animal impulse for survival and protection; the other is the rational mind, devouring itself as it stares into the void.

The Atlanta clinic (Episode 4) is truly survivalist. It's a collective of folks from the street, with all the ethnic diversity of urban neighborhoods, who exhibit the highly defensive responses of a family group in the wild. When Rick, Darryl, and T-Dog arrive to demand the return of Glen, Guillermo's group is defensive and reactionary, bristling and intentionally escalating the conflict. Their demand for the guns, and their claim that they're willing to enter into a shootout, is almost a bluff, but it's the type of bluff that could be disastrous if called. Rick and his gang, in turn, refuse to concede the guns, their most important resource. These two groups are like wild dogs, circling, exploring their dominance and trying to find some equilibrium before they tear each other apart.

It's telling, of course, that the clinic residents aren't pure evil. Rather, they're protective of themselves and their families, and they are desperate for the firearms that they noticed in the street. Once they find common ground to cooperate with Rick, they're revealed to be reasonable and deeply compassionate people, holding out in the city to take care of their elderly. According to the show's narrative, their behavior is justified by necessity -- they're really just following their survival and caretaking instincts in a desperate bid for survival.

Contrast this with the CDC (episodes 5 and 6), where the lone Dr. Jenner holds out, having just given up on continuing his research into the zombie plague. Rick and the gang find him on the verge of suicide, having just lost his stock of fresh samples. He makes an exception to let them into his sanctuary, where he's the little glimmer of consciousness in the center of a big electronic brain.

Jenner's misfortunes are telling and troubling. He's absolutely isolated, and his wife died under his observation. He is clearly a smart man, driven by a rational engine that continue to run even after his great emotional breakdown. In a pivotal scene, he uses his wife's brain-scan as an illustration to explain all the functions of the mind and the zombie disease that takes over it. This real-time brain scan even includes the bullet that takes the test subject's life. For Jenner, this lecture is an act of self-deconstruction, ending with a reference to the human "extinction event."

Jenner's wife invested him with a final purpose before she departed, perhaps because she knew he was a goal-seeking type of guy, but with the destruction of his samples, this purpose died, as well. Jenner does not seem to be a man who's interested in pressing on no matter what the costs... for him, life has had a point, and it no longer has one, so there's no longer a reason to sustain it. Jenner's tragedy isn't that he dies for no reason, but that he lives for no reason. This is not how they would frame the situation out at the clinic in Atlanta.

And of course, Jenner's despair almost leads to a suicide for the whole company, including the survivors, the protectors, and the children. Jenner's computer, carrying out a "decontamination" that's actually just a self-destruction, is an extension of his own sense of hopelessness. He is higher consciousness turned on itself, the death drive turned into a suicide impulse, and he even goes so far as to argue to Rick and his companions that it's more merciful than trying to live on.

With these two communities, The Walking Dead sets up an interesting argument by juxtaposition. I'm going to stick this into a classic Freudian framework, so bear with me. Jenner, representing the higher faculties, is a nod to the superego, especially since he ultimately directs his own aggression toward himself... according to Freud, this was the basic mechanism that created self-control. Presumably, this would make Guillermo and his crew the id, a vicious, protective, uninhibited animal instinct for self-preservation. It holds pretty well, considering the Atlanta clinic crew seemed so quick to violence and so desperate for resources.

But the inversion brought about by the economy of scarcity is striking. The Atlanta clinic may be aggressive and reactionary, but it's also protective and self-perpetuating, and ultimately these urban warriors live to protect their own and take care of the collective body, even when it's made up of thugs and aging grandparents. Jenner the superego, on the other hand, despite his claims to rationality and order, is the more destructive of these two forces, because in the absence of a purpose, he directs his frustration back on himself. Reason implodes, and without the raw desire to survive into another day, Jenner just gives up on the whole human project, not just for himself, but for those around him.

Assuming there's something to be said here about Freudian psychology and different cognitive levels, it seems that the show is arguing the reverse of the Freud assumption. The Walking Dead is in fact suggesting that in the absence of order and civilization, it's going to be the animal part of the human that preserves the self and the species, and the rationalizing, intelligent part that dooms us to self-destruction.

If I have time, I'll discuss some more of this fascinating show. Shane alone is worth the price of admission -- his character is thoroughly complex and conflicted, an authority figure tortured by a sudden loss of power and intimacy. If Kirkman had developed Shane more thoroughly in the comic, I'm pretty sure he would have looked like Darabont's rendition. It will also be interesting seeing the development of Andrea, as she's already got the emotional groundwork to build into a strong and complicated character.

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.

Walking Dead: Three Episodes Down, First Thoughts

I'm keeping a close eye on AMC's The Walking Dead. I could give a respectable-sounding reason for this... it's an unusual artifact, being a television series based on a horror comic. We've been seeing a lot of movies based on comics lately, but isn't a television series probably a better match for the comic's format, which stresses perpetual, cyclical continuity? And a horror-based television show... aside from infamous examples like Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, we haven't had many of those, partly because broadcast television has such strict content controls.

But the real reason I'm following The Walking Dead is that I'm a huge fan of the graphic novels. I have been for three or four years, since they were publishing collection five or six (out of thirteen now). It's fascinating on a personal level to see how the story, characters, and atmosphere of the comic is changing with its move into a new format. As much as that stuff is my real point of contact, I think I should start with the media questions, because in writing these two paragraphs, I've realized that stuff is probably more interesting.

Sure, there have been TV series based on comic books before. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- these all jump to mind. And recently, there've been some abortive attempts at creating series based on comic strips -- Boondocks, Dilbert, etc. However, it's worth noting that those first four, the adaptations of superhero comics, totally abandoned the continuity that makes the comic book series such a fascinating medium. Indeed, The Walking Dead is one of the first live-action adaptations that, as far as I can see, attempts to keep the comic book's sense of perpetual continuity and change.

This was one of the great aspects of The Walking Dead in its graphic novel form. The characters weren't unchanging, mythical embodiments of ideals, like Superman and Batman, nor were they stuck in constant cycles of crisis and contrived resurrection, like many superheroes tend to be (the characteristic they share with soap opera characters). It's an inevitable fact of the series that characters, including the ones you hold dearest, have finite lifespans, and as the reader, you never get the comfort of functionally immortal protagonists. The series itself isn't even titled after a hero, so there's always the possibility that Rick Grimes, the series protagonist, may die a permanent death.

Within these limited lifespans, these characters evolve constantly, becoming hardened in the face of the apocalypse, sometimes breaking, sometimes becoming pillars of strength. If the series plays its cards right, we'll see that by about the mid-point of the second season (which has already been renewed, by the way). This is when the first batch of protagonists will have established their roles in the group dynamic, and it's when we'll probably be seeing the first "turnover," if you will, of some of the most important characters.

I have to mention, in passing, the brilliant casting decisions. Carl, in particular, is perfectly cast. His presence in the show is actually one of the first times I've ever seen an adaptation improve upon the spirit of the original. Carl makes the most sense as a character when he's seen as a fresh-faced little boy. Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic, does a good job of evoking his childlike mentality, but artist Tony Moore can't really do justice to the face of a child. This is mostly because of the harsh, scratchy, India-ink finish of the artwork. Yet, it still stands -- the rough artwork seems to alienate the reader from sheltered little Carl. In the show, on the other hand, Chandler Riggs has exactly the right on-screen presence to evoke the Carl of Kirkman's writing.

We're now past the third episode, and it's become clear that pretty extensive liberties have been taken with the core team in adapting the comic to a television series. In particular, the show has added a couple subplots about social issues: a raving racist becomes a key figure in the show's first major moral dilemma, and some of the early power struggles among the survivors occur because of a wife-beater's treatment of the women of the camp.

These additional elements of drama are only provisionally welcome. They provide some additional opportunities to cast Rick and Shane as heroic defenders of justice and order, and they allow for some commentary on the civil strife within an isolate community. They also feel a little too easy, because "racism" and "domestic abuse" are very easy cues for our moral indignation. Without these little indicators, the comic provided a fairly broad, unpredictable, and murky moral landscape. Perhaps these civil disputes are commentary on culture clash in the American South, where the story is taking place; that rationale is enough to redeem the dramatic baggage, at least for the moment.

Ultimately, and refreshingly, the most powerful scenes in the show are the moments of emotional redemption, brought into relief against a ruined world. The cross-cut "mercy killing" sequence in episode 1, where Rick wanders into the woods to euthanize a female zombie, paralleling Morgan Jones' unsuccessful attempt to put his wife down: this sequence was one for the ages. The reunion scene between Rick, Lori, and Carl was another perfectly directed cinematic sequence, bringing the joy of the reunited family into focus without losing sight of the emerging tension between Shane and Rick.

I'm not completely done discussing these three episodes yet. In particular, I need to devote a post to the gender roles in the show, because they're a bit different from the comic, and they're showing a little regressiveness. However, that's a post for another day, not in the least because it's a bit too foggy and complex to be covered in a mere few closing paragraphs.

With that said, I hope everybody is enjoying the show as much as this Walking Dead fanboy, and I hope you'll stick with me through the first season.

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?

Katy Perry: Kicked off Sesame Street

Katy Perry recorded a segment for Sesame Street, found below:



Maybe you heard about this? If your reaction was anything like mine, your initial response was, "Woah. That seems weird..." But if you're anything like me, you got over that pretty quickly, realizing that Sesame Street has long featured counter-cultural guest stars and musicians whose work is a bit outside the suburban family mainstream. They've done references to Mad Men, and appearances of Danny Devito, Johnny Cash, Kofi Annan, and Queen Latifah. They seem to know how to make all different types of guests work.

But oops! Not everybody got over it as fast as I did. After it aired on YouTube, the network decided not to broadcast Katy Perry's performance on TV. Watching the video, it's clear why this would come about, even if (like me) you don't think it's necessary. Katy Perry is wearing a gold strapless top that shows her shoulders, and some undeniable cleavage. She isn't as fully desexualized as parents in our culture expect celebrities to be. Obviously the wardrobe people at Sesame Street thought this was well within the bounds of reason, but for the YouTube patrol, it was too outrageous.

My own appreciation of Katy Perry is compromised by her homophobic streak and her occasional outbursts of moralization. But I still recognize her as a talented pop act, committed strongly to her aesthetic and capable of delivering catchy-as-hell bubblegum pop, stuff that's smartly directed at my age group (and a little below it, I guess) by combining the energy and charm of teenagehood with the romantic and sexual concerns of the 20-something crowd. Despite the quantity of skin showing, the clip wasn't crass. It wouldn't confront children with inappropriate images of sexual feelings or body parts. It was a perfectly relatable, decent adaptation for kids who constantly hear this song on the radio.

My opinion aside, the clip makes me wonder: how does Katy Perry play for very young children? I don't know my adolescent psychology too well, but she honestly seems right at home. Her energy comes out clearly in her on-screen persona, and she's all about the bright colors and expressive expressions. If there's anybody I could believe has more energy than Elmo, and wants to play even when he gets tired, it's Katy Perry.

It strikes me as weird, sometimes, that one of our most beloved pop princesses seems like she could double as a childrens' performer. Goes to show that infantilization and "cute" have become perfectly valid aesthetic modes, whether via Hello Kitty, or Katy Perry, or Betsy Johnson. People like Jim Windolf of Vanity Fair have expressed concerns that it's drowning out all the other cultural modes, and though I disagree, I see the point there.

I don't think Katy Perry should have to worry about covering up like a Victorian for a musical number on Sesame Street. If anything, I still think we're a little too touchy about the female body in our culture, especially since we're also obsessed with genuinely sexual images. If we stigmatize Katy Perry's innocuous costume design, but can't stop the sexual images from major fashion companies on every urban billboard, we're going to end up with a pretty damn neurotic next-generation.

Yet, there is still something cautionary about this little debate, and we can't throw the other side out completely, either. With a culture that's so immersed in cute, where the aesthetics of childhood seep so deeply into everyday life, we need to be careful not to let sexuality become infantilized and trivialized. That's on the other side of the demilitarized zone of "reasonable tolerance."

My opinion on the Katy Perry video stands, but I know it's a gray area, you know? Let's hope we can find a healthy relationship to sex and maturity somewhere in there.

Caprica: Okay, I'll bite...

It's been a long time since I've watched any sort of television at all... as you can see from my archives, most of my consumption time is divided between movies, books, and occasionally graphic novels and blogs. However, I've seen some ads for Caprica around the subways, and the stark stylization and theo-philosophical innuendo of the posters hooked me. I'm a sucker for that "apple of knowledge" theme. So I'll try to follow it.

I just got through the pilot. Now, mind you, except for the pilot, I never saw Battlestar Galactica. I know, generally, that it's about the death of an interplanetary civilization and the final refugees escaping through deep space to find a mythical "seed planet." Also, I know that the Cylons are scary-ass antagonists because of their merciless hatred for humans, and because they manage such a perfect replication of the human body and mind. These are all things that intrigue me... but it was never enough for me to dive into the series, especially as late in the game as I was when I was informed of all this stuff. With Caprica, on the other hand... with this, I can start from the beginning.

For the moment, I'm going to look at a couple of the key "speculative fiction" concepts that make Caprica so interesting. Maybe I'll find other ways to tackle later episodes of the series... I don't know. I'm just trying to talk about what catches in my mental filter.

1 - How about the idea that you can fully reconstruct a personality, including memories, habits, opinions, and identity, by harvesting traces that person has left in the global information network?

At first, it seems massively far-fetched. But then, when you think of how much you might be able to learn about somebody from the various protected records of them, it becomes intriguing. For instance, your doctors, employers, and even the government might have files on you. The more visible you’ve been throughout your life, the more complete a picture they might be able to build. See, for instance, Douglas Hofstadter’s book I am a Strange Loop, in which he speculates that by getting to know someone intimately, you create a low-resolution imprint of them in your own brain. Zoe’s program... which resurrects a person from their distributed imprint in the infosphere... isn’t too far off conceptually.

But then you may think: when is it that people have taken records of you? If you were sick at a certain time in your life, there are probably an excess of medical records from that time. If you were ever accused of a serious crime, there would be a bunch more records from that period. And if you were ever considered for a very important job, you might have been highly scrutinized and recorded at that time, too. If someone tried to reconstruct you from your records, how would this "reconstructed personality" be tinted by exceptional cases? Would your avatar seem like a highly-qualified, medically-challenged savant with terroristic tendencies?

2 - How about the idea that when your personality is recreated digitally, you’ll have a terrifying anxiety about not having a body? This is a fear that Pauley, the Dixie Flatline, wrestled with back in 1985, when Gibson published the infamous Neuromancer.

I have to admit, the “reunion” scene with Tamara Adama and her father was the most compelling moment in the pilot episode(s) for me. If you’ve ever been in an altered state of mind without fully understanding it, you may have been able to identify with Tamara’s confused panic in the claustrophobic little virtual room. Some people (Zoe?) seem completely comfortable with not having a body and living solely as a mind, but I speculate that I would feel like Tamara feels… like I’m missing something essential to my existence.

So assuming that Zoe is a special type of person, able to exist solely as a cerebral construct, at ease without a physical body weighing her down, what type of person might this be? Is she transcendent? Or is she inhuman?

Other thoughts on the pilot:

Does Eric Stoltz remind anyone else of Craig Kilborn?

My inner espionage nerd would love to see how the meta-cognitive processor got stolen from Vergis, and how Sam got into the Defense Minister's bedroom so easily, when Caprican security is obviously pretty advanced.