The Problem with Disney

I loved Disney movies growing up, they seemed so safe and family friendly. The good guys always won and the bad guys were always punished.  There was the just the right amount of singing and not too much mushy stuff for a young boy to suffer through.  Being a bit older though the subtext and the message of the animated films often horrify me.  A lot of movies have an unsettling thread running through the story  unintentionally so I could be overstating.

So what are some of these not so nice themes that seem to pop up in Disney you ask?  You don’t have to say it out loud just thinking in your own head will suffice.

How about racism?  Yeah, I played the race card, deal with it.  Disney created a movie so racist they refuse to even dignify its existence.  The song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” lives on but The Song of South most certainly does not.  If you’re ask yourself what the hell is Song of the South that isn’t abnormal.  It’s the live action film with three Br’er Rabbit shorts placed inside that Disney refuses to rerelease.  You can see Br’er Rabbit on Splash Mountain and few other places but his movie isn’t seeing the light of day.  They don’t use the term Disney vault lightly.  That shit it never coming back out.

Well, they obviously learned a lesson after that fiasco.  Disney would never again impugn African American culture by abusing stereotypes right?  Unless of course you count the crows from Dumbo, the African American satyrs from Fantasia (which have been excised from the original cut so good luck finding them), King Louie from the Jungle Book and most recently Sebastian from The Little Mermaid.  Sebastian at least wasn’t the kind of racism that make you squirm in your seat.  It’s just the kind of racism that you can explain away to friends by saying, “Oh yeah, Uncle John is alright as long as you  don’t talk about Asians.  But he’s really a nice guy, I swear.”

Any other stereotypes Disney perpetrated on our young, eager to assimilate any message, minds?  I’m glad you asked.  Remember the native American’s in Peter Pan.  Watch that shit.  I’m not even going to explain why it’s fucked up.  You don’t need me for that.  Or hey, how about the twin cats Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp (voiced by Peggy Lee who I’m pretty sure was not Asian, just a hunch)?  I wonder if they might be racist caricatures?  Yes, the answer is yes, put your good damn hands down.

Tying along with racism is well racism again but kinda of different.  Before we thought about stereotypes now I’m talking about color palettes.  Totally different right?  Your silence is good enough for me,

What am I talking about with color palettes?  Quick what did Hercules look like?  If you said blond with blue eyes and a fair complexion congratulations you relate closer to Disney than Kevin Sorbo.  Sorry Kev… well, not really.  Now think about the are the movie is set in.  The answer is Greece.   You can stop thinking.  I should probably give a space or something to let you have time before you eager eye can gobble up the information but fuck the extra work to do that.  Suck that Enter button.

So Hercules is pale as all hell when he shouldn’t be and Hades is dark grey.  There are quite a few other problems with this movie but I’ll get into that later.  Yeah light person is good and dark person is bad thanks for making things easy for me.

Or instead of color palette just switch in the term ethnic looking.  Fast forward any Disney movie to a random spot.  I’ll wait.

Ok, now look at the person on the screen.  Are they female?  Skip ahead.  Yes, there is a reason for this, and  no, I will not tell you why yet.  Okay is the dude super ‘ethnicy’ or something?  Yes?  Congratulations, you found the villain.

It so true that if you argue I will reach through the internet and slap your stupid face Kyle.  What about Aladdin?  The two main characters don’t look at all like white people who just happen to be living in Arabia.  And Jafar isn’t super Arabian looking at all or anything.  In Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest traditional animated movie, the bad guy may have been just a wee bit darker than the African American leads.  Just a touch.  Or a shit ton one or the other.  Oh, and the country bumpkin lightning bug thing was super classy.  Like Transformers 2 classy.  Burn.

So there was a few not so great moments in relation to ethnicity that may or may not be getting any better.  But at least we are treating women like things right?  Right…

Yeah, so Disney totally thinks women are things.  These supposed love stories are not affirming.  Yeah, that whole thing with a Prince kissing a cold, cadaver-like lady is not at all creepy.  You know what happens in real life for kissing a sleeping women?  Bad things involving the police and losing the privilege to vote afterwards.

Outside of somnophilia there is still plenty of not so good sex and gender issues.  Like the message of young girls changing everything about themselves to please a guy they hardly know.  That’s healthy and couldn’t possibly have any repercussion on the psyche of young girls.  Maybe if I explain the situation it won’t seem so fucked up.  Alright, so you’re a pretty girl and you validate yourself through your looks and you beautiful singing voice (one of those things is better than the other, you figure it out).  You see some dude and decide hey, he’s awesome I wish I could ditch my worry free lifestyle ot be with this stranger.  He’ll totally love me even though I know nothing about him.  Swoon.  Hey this whole changing myself to be near him was a great idea.  It’s too bad I can’t FUCKING TALK.  That’s okay.  I’ll give up one of only two things I care about to be with this guy I don’t know at all.  And risk everything in the process.  Good idea right?  Swoon!  Fuck this is bad something went terribly wrong with this whole deceit thing.  Deceit is the best way to get someone to love me right?

That is part of the plot of The Little Mermaid.  Ariel, a teenager, gives up her voice to be a human.  Yeah, I know there are other factors involved like being an idiot teenager and getting away from Dad but to change everything about yourself for guy you fantasized about without meeting?  Fantasies are just that.  Of course it’s Disney so everything turns out just fine but that further ratifies the shitty message.  Don’t change yourself for others change yourself for you.  And for the love of god don’t negotiate with half squid half women.  Also shut up and listen to your father you’re like what fourteen?  That’s way too young to be obsessing about a life with some guy.  Kissing sure but… teenagers… stupid decisions… sigh.

So to round it out let’s throw in some Stockholm syndrome.  Goody.  So this Beast guy kidnaps you.  Then he imprisons you and yells a lot.  But he has this gentle side right?  No you fucking moron he kidnapped you and forced you to stay with him.  So what if Gaston can eat a shit ton of eggs he shouldn’t be the bad guy.  But Disney still swaps out the interesting part.  The fun thing about Beauty and the Beast is that Beast isn’t supposed to change.  You should love him besides his looks.  Him changing back invalidates that message.  So an important message if you get kidnapped and the dishes start signing jump out the fucking window, shit will not end well for you.  Belle is the exception.

So women do stupid stuff for love.  This isn’t unusual we all do stupid things for love especially if we’re young.  But at least when a woman proves herself to be equal to man or even better she can take over the role he filled right?  Not in the Lion King.  What am I tlkaing about?  How about the fact that Nala kicks Simba’s ass not once but twice.  And does so with the same exact move both time separated by several years.  Way to learn from your defeat Simba.  Why is this important.  Well if Simba was physically weaker than Nala why didn’t she kick Scar’s ass.  Why did they need Simba to help.  You can argue well they need a male for breeding purposes.  Well maybe not Scar so much for the job.  He was kinda typified as gay.  In Hamlet, the story Lion King follows (along with stealing from some Anime or other), the uncle kills the father and Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father and he takes revenge blah, blah, blah… Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa.

So the straight male lion needs to grab power from the gays and the minorities because the woman are too weak and stupid to do it on their own.  Yeah, the hyena’s just might be typified as minorities.  Super nice that the grand kingdom worked awesome as long as the straight male ran things.  Then went to shit when Jeremy Irons and Whoopi Goldberg moved in.  Not the first time Whoopi Goldberg has ruined everything… cough Jumping Jack flash… cough … Eddie… Cough sputter choke… Theodore Rex.  Sorry about that.

There are some funky exceptions like you know James Earl Jones being all African American or Timon and Pumba being best buddies and rasing a son of their own.  I totally respect their lifestyle choices by the way, parenting skills maybe not so much.  Maybe a little less show tunes and little more maybe you should worry about one or two things now please don’t eat us.

Disney at times is racially and gender insensitive but at least they respect the material they remake and try to keep it historically accurate.

Everything about Mulan pisses me off.  The Chinese emperor would never touch anybody.  Also you don’t enter the palace with your stuff intact.  Also there’s the whole deal with the Japanese geisha makeup on a women on Chinese descent in a movie about… China.  Or the whole chronology being all screwy depending on what the story demanded.  “Huns sure, fireworks sure, great wall, yeah throw that shit in there.  What period is set in?  The period of shut your mouth and give me your money.” – some fictional guy at Disney voiced by my head.  I just Googled “Mulan inaccuracies” and came up with several useful sites.

Convenient links:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080227234644AAYlSkn

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/1232-hua-mulan/

Or then again there is Pocahontas.  Albeit the historical inaccuracy totally turns down the creep factor from Ariel’s misadventure by Having Pocahontas not be a teenager.  This may be the only time a article  about racism which involve Mel Gibson without saying he’s an asshole and why.  Yeah, creep factor just went back up to eleven.

There is also Hercules again.  Everything is wrong here.  Nothing about the myths were shown correctly.  I’m strangely okay with Paul Schaffer as Hermes for some reason though.  In the Greco Roman myths Hercules was a dick.  He committed the worst kinds of crimes possible and was punished with the twelve trials.  Also Hades wasn’t a bad guy.  He was just lonely.  Most of the other gods were far worse.  Hades was just a dude that lost a game of dice with two brother Zeus and Poseiden and got stuck with the shit job.  How did Hades deal with shitty lot.  He ran the fuck out of the afterlife and mostly stayed out of mortal affairs.  He didn’t do any swan rape stuff that resulted in horrible tragedies and a decade of war like a certain thunder god.  Rip Torn screen tested that voice over.  It totally worked.

So now we have racism (twice!), historical inaccuracy, horrid love stories that teach the wrong lesson, and stomping all over the idea of anything that isn’t the traditionally nuclear family with the male firmly as head of household.  You might ask, “Hey, what about The Sword in the Stone”.   Then I would say thanks helpful segue creation.

It is correct that Sword in Stone didn’t really have those issue but it it did have a hero who’s only  real accomplishment was being ‘the chosen one’.  That is not so fantastic.  It’s what I like to call “The useless protagonist”.  Harsh.

A lot of children’s stories have the problem of the protagonist just kind of being there.  The only skill they display is being special.  That’s not say as important as bravery of intelligence or a myriad of ways traditional heroes prove themselves.  But kids movies have a protagonists that the audience demographic csan relate to.  Themselves.  They want to be special (who doesn’t) but they lack to ability to be awesome somehow so the protagonists’ only skill is one any youngling can have.  Being special.  Two examples are  The Sword in the Stone and Snow White.  The issue here with the main character not really doing anything and relegating all the action or conflict resolution to other characters is there is no arc.  A good story should have this character arc.  Character should meaningful growth.  When there is no growth or the character does not overcome a flaw often times the story ends, intentionally, with tragedy.  This is a common device in noir films where the lead is normally damaged good to begin with and can’t overcome the tragic flaw.  Most often this flaw surfaces with drinking.

But these characters still end up with a happy ending after no character progression.  We as an audience feel cheated somewhat as the protagonist is almost as much of viewer as we are.  Who are we to relate to in order to feel satisfaction at the resolution?

But there are always exceptions.  There is one that is so good I’m almost surprised Disney made it.  I call it The Lilo and Stitch exception.  I really liked Lilo and Stitch.  On the surface it’s a movie about a girl, an alien and their misadventures.  The movie is really about being a in a broken family that is trying desperately to stay strong.  Lilo ends up teaching a genetic experiment about the importance of ‘ohana’ then ends up realizing herself how important her family is and how her actions haven’t been helping.  Oddly reminiscent of a character arc.  They treated Lilo like a real little girl: full of insecurities, idiosyncrasies (like feeding her favorite fish a sandwich) and correct childish mentality that at first inhibits her character growth.  Both Lilo and Stitch have the same growth over the film.  They made Lilo’s sister struggle but not be a martyr or a salve driving harpy.  It all too often happens that the older female is either treated only as the dotting matriarch or the evil stepmother.  Here we have normal characters going through normal relatable troubles we can see ourselves in.  Just in this case with some aliens thrown in as well to keep it fun.  Plus that dude from “Kids in the Hall”.

Here’s to hoping they make more Lilo and less Ariel.  But please, no more direct to video crap, okay?

Ben

The Rhythm is Going to Get You

There is a rhythm to most everything. To our breathing, the way we walk, and apparently to how we see. We know this to an extent through illusions based on patterns. If a light is strobes at a particular speed it can affect how we interpret an object. We still see everything but how our brain unravels the image is quite different. If there is quick successive flashing we don’t see the moments between of dark after the light – damn you science and your scary ways. So if there an object moving during the dark period we don’t perceive that moment of movement. This means what we see is not in fact what we get. Our eyes still see that movement during the dark period but our brain doesn’t process it. This is important for many reasons. Our brains develop tricks to speed up certain functions much like a bio-computer if you will. Why waste that processing power when I can write a script that does it for me. Our bodies are complex codes. And we are just scraping the surface of understanding how we’re wired and programmed. This is at one point exciting and horrifying. Illusions are one thing but understanding how a brain interprets could be used for ill intent.

One of the latest findings points to different rhythms within us. One of those patterns is our circadian clock. This is our master schedule for all our functions. “The circadian clock is an internal daily body clock that controls alertness, appetite, sleep timing and hormone secretions.*” Affecting this clock can affect our health almost immediately affect us, either negatively or positively. This clock however is not exclusive to the realm of the brain as it is thought to belong to other body parts and organs as well. There is a some manner of feedback. It’s more like a band than a solo performance.

Another tempo that is being investigated is brain oscillations. Our whole brain processes in spurts. We do not think in an even flow but in quick moments strung together. We can’t perceive this as our brains create our perceptions. Different functions have different timings. For instance “…a prominent brain rhythm associated with visual cortex functioning that cycles at a rate of 10 times per second (10Hz).”** So this means we see ten images per second and our brains cobble it together to see flowing time. So time is our method to splice these images together. But there lies a problem we don’t take in time uniformly. Our brains do neat little tricks every once in a while that seem to bend time. One is called Chronostasis***. It’s that moment where it actually makes us go back in time… sort of. Not Doc Brown back in time just gain a fraction of second. It’s when you look at watch and notice the second hand pause a bit when you first look. We take an extra moment to process and it freezes time for our perception. Time I unaffected just our perception of it. Our brains intentionally tricks us so we can better perceive an objects movement at our first glance. So the first time you see something moving you have this extra moment of sight not because time slowed down just your perception of time was changed in a manner you saw more. That’s only way too complicated. And this of course brings me to one of my favorite things: film.


Film works so well because it plays along with the same trickery of our brain. Film is closer to reality than I originally thought, probably closer than anyone thought actually. The reason being is frames – those pictures spliced together to make a coherent and fluid display. In animation there is usually twenty four frames per second. Less than that and it starts looking a bit off. Our brains notice the lack of finite change and it drops us out of the imaginary state where we can be absorbed into the world presented to us. We cannot as easily be part of that world with the frame rate reminding us and planting us back in reality. Any first year philosophy student then might ask what is reality.

After you’re done ignoring them and avoiding a bitch fest you can rationally think about the question. Is your reality different from others. Sometimes this is incontrovertible. There are instances of false memory. And not implanted false memory. These false memories are created within the minds of normal people and are so vivid, so real (to them) they swear up and down it happened. There is also the notion of time. By this I mean our perception of time itself. As five year old your backlog of knowledge and experience is not the same as someone who is fifty. Your sense of time is different. You don’t know what ten years feels like. The passing days seem to linger forever. It’s the same day perceived entirely differently. There’s also the thought that different animals and life perceive differently. We only have so many rods and cones in our eyes so we can perceive only so much color. Does this mean that there isn’t more? Is something only real or possible if its observed?

Have you ever told a story to a group of friends and one person in the group was there and they tell it very differently? And not like your shirt was light red not deep red different like no Kyle totally didn’t hook off with Denise he passed out in the bathroom and almost went to the hospital.

Our realities our own personal adaptation of the world and existence as we know it is singular and impossible to recreate within another person. This is at once amazing, beautiful and truly terrifying. No one will ever experience any moment exactly as I do, ever.

But there are commonly methods of perception and rhythm inherent to humanity. The brain patterns of animal one would think differ and this brings up a whole different idea about how existence is seen; who is to say some animal doesn’t perceive in only two dimensions, or maybe four dimensions or any other sense taken to levels we cannot think to perceive? But we, as members of the human race, intrinsically know our own rhythm. A perfect rhythm is impossible to be played by man. We always precede or antecede a beat after a while. Only by moments seemingly imperceptible. A drummer who plays to the beat misses the beat in a way that we find correct. A drum beat perfectly is found to be slightly foreign and mechanical and not as pleasing to the ear. A drum beat that has imperfection placed in on purpose sounds even more alien as it lacks the correct human rhythm.****

So what does mean? This understanding of inherent rhythm. I take this as a sign of beauty. I see it a grand design in a sense and that we are all part of one big rhythm of life, of existence. There are notes within us that echo among all of creation. It’s kind of magical.

Ben

*http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-body-clock-genes-unravelled.html

**http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-brain-oscillations-reveal-world.html

***http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis

****http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/07/when-the-beat-goes-off/

The Profit of Imprisonment

There are lot of ways to measure the integrity and or goodness of a person.  One way that always seems interesting is how does a person treat his or her enemies.  Do you treat them hatefully and reduce them to racist caricatures or do you treat them as equals who are simply irreconcilably different.  I can only hope I’m with the later not the former.  I know I’m often grumpy, stubborn and entirely judgmental.  Fortunately I have been taught how to distance myself from a situation to look back rationally with a clear and level head to make decisions on a person or persons.  I also try to constantly revise this decision and not, simply, stay with my initial reaction or sentiment.

I breach this subject because I think it is worthwhile to look at how our country treats its ‘enemies’ or ‘undesirables’.  Specifically our overwhelmingly large prison population.  If America is to be judged in this manner the country does not look so good.  By not look so good I mean something a might bit past Draconian.

Let me throw some statistics at your incredulous face.  I encourage you to check these out and prove me wrong.

“The United State has the highest prison population rate in the world.”*  This means we imprison more people on average than any of the axis of evil type places.  Or any of those scary places out there who doesn’t love freedom as much as us.  Because we love freedom so much.  Yeah, that last sentence reads different with the whole we incarcerate a lot of people knowledge.

“Annual state spending on corrections tops $51 billion and states spend on average two and a half times more per prisoner than per public school pupil.* … Federal spending on prisons totaled $6.6 billion in fiscal year 2012.*”  So we spend a whole lot of money on the corrections industry and it is an industry.  I use this term because a lot of it is privatized.  How much so?  We just ask the Corrections Corporation of America or CCA (http://www.cca.com/).  It’s like Omnicorp but with less murder... I think.  I shit you not.   The website even has a cheesy eighties feeling video package.   Robocop reminded us of corporate greed running amok in law enforcement during the eighties and how that might not be such a good thing and now we have this.  Of course Verhoeven is half insane admitted Robocop was essentially the American version of Jesus ( He walked on water, died and came back et cetera, the American part came with the whole lot of violence and explosions) so I’m not sure what level of advice we should take from him.

Privatization is not always a good thing.  Why, you might ask?  Because privatization means they are running things for profit.  And correction and crime should not be a profit industry.  There isn’t profit without criminals.  So there is an incentive for crime or more specifically an incentive for people to be jailed.  What do I mean by this?

Let’s talk about Lousianna when we talk about how scary these things are.  I mention this state because they are the worlds prison capital**.  This shit chills me to the core.  If we are such a  great and wonderful nation why aren’t we acting like it?  Why are so many citizens in jail?  And why is the preponderance of these individuals poor and of non Caucasian ethnic backgrounds?  Obviously racism in this case is essential setup to justify this unfair incarceration.  The racism is encouraged because jailing people make more money.  And its harder to jail people who have good money to fight bogus charges.  And minorities tend to have less money due to things like, you know, racism.

So in Louisiana where there are for profit prison guess who are part of the prison entrepreneurs?  If you said county sheriffs you are either as or more cynical than I am or read the same articles.  I wonder if it’s a bad thing for law enforcement to make money off of prisoner count.  What with  “Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day”** you could make a few dollars. 

So how can there be meaningful reform and lowering of crime when it is financially encouraged to have more people imprisoned?  Well it kind of can’t.  But you can just create crime.  Or well you know you could bring people up on false charges and make it hard to fight back.  Or get in the way of legal reform to change drug laws.  Drug laws are reasonably important as about half of our prisoners are there for nonviolent drug related crime.  So if we made drug legal we’d have our prison population overnight?  Well… yeah.  Here some more stats on violent and violent crimes as represented by percentage of prisoners***:

Drugs 50.7%
Public-order 35.0%,
Violent 7.9%
Property 5.8%
Other 0.7%


I guess that means that crime that isn’t violent or with an immediate victim is the vast majority of those imprisoned. And what do I mean by immediate victim. Selling drugs doesn’t steal or take away from others. It might not be good but it’s not theft and it’s certainly not violent.

But do we really imprison or punish those who shouldn’t be for money.  Yes, yes we do.  Wrongful imprisonment laws only flex for those who can turn over on others.  So the lowest links or unfortunates get screwed.  As per usual.   What this means is if I get caught involved with drugs and I roll over on my supplier I get a wrist slap but if I’m an unsuspecting Texas grandmother who has used a mule without knowledge I get sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole (and it’s my first offense) because I have no juicy knowledge to lead to a higher up.  I only wish I was kidding.****

So we aren’t in a state of reform.  We want criminals.  IT makes some of these no so nice guys a whole slew of money.  But at least its not dangerous… I’m not even going to finish that. I’m just going to pretend that during Katrina that whole disaster the country had not long ago that exposed some of the festering racism, classism and hate we still harbored as nation was only partially reported.  It’s not like 600 or so prisoners might be elft to die while officers fled the scene.  Shit…*****

And we wonder why other countries think low of us.  If these is how we treat our own citizens how do we treat others.  Oh yeah, Abu Ghraib.

I can only hope that America does not continue down this road of privatizations and making money off of legal loopholes and ruining lives.  Because maybe the prison for six months didn’t mentally scar you but the whole being a felon might ruin the rest for your life.  Because it super easy to find job nowadays with a clean record, especially a good one.  But money will always compete with basic human compassion and kindness.

Damn it America, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Ben

*http://www.cagle.com/2012/07/ending-the-cradle-to-prison-pipeline-and-mass-incarceration/

**http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/05/louisiana_is_the_worlds_prison.html

***http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/09/29/victimless-crime-constitutes-86-of-the-american-prison-population/

****http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/without-card-play-texas-grandma-sentenced-life-without-parole-first-time

*****http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/09/21/new-orleans-prisoners-abandoned-floodwaters

Full Reset

In narrative there needs to be conflict. In a good narrative there needs to conflict that is not easily surmountable.  Hopefully, if we are lucky, there is both internal and external conflict.  There is an appropriate rush as reader, or viewer, when there is an escalation of tension over  a period of time before it is let off.

The problem, however, comes with the fact with so much media and storytelling out there is far too little attention paid to appropriate levels of tension and too much attention to resetting the story to normal.  One of the greatest enemies of such crappy writing is, not surprisingly, children’s television.  Many action cartoon shows have a reasonable simple premise.  There is a group of good guys and a group of bad guys.  At the end of the episode the bad guys slink away defeated.  The bad guys don’t learn their lesson, they don’t adapt to their failure, and everything resets just the way it was.  G.I Joe saves the world and no one gets hit by lasers unless they’re a robot.  Hundreds of damn laser shots by trained military elite and no one gets hit.  How can COBRA be a credible threat if they never win.  If they never injure anyone or blow up home base or capture or kill anyone important.  It’s designed to keep simple attention spans.  Bad jokes, simply violence where no one actually gets hurt and million toys being sold.  But no realistic tension.  No one is afraid Lady Jane will be hurt.  I’d lump Transformers in there but the animated cartoon movie actually pulled the trigger and released us from the thrall of lack of change.  I used to root for the bad guys and get upset and their stupidity.  The bad guys were always more interesting almost more fun than the boring good guys.

You could say that children’s television is always poorly created and not much is placed into their writing and creation.  This is undeniably false.  There are too many coincidence of choice for thse shows not to have some manner of thought involved.  Looking at say Looney Tunes, or even Tom and Jerry, we always see the protagonist as the animal of prey while the antagonist is the predator.  The prey, usually smaller or without weapons (read child) is against the dominant individual who is punished for the adherence to the normal social role.  Tom was just a house cat doing what any normal house should and he was punished for doing so.  Elmer was hunter and, as Looney Tunes pointed out, he would so rigidly abide by the law he wouldn’t shoot an animal, even one making fun of him, outside the correct season.  He was an idiot who couldn’t understand that season’s don’t change five times in one day but there is some cartoon logic to be allowed.  We had children related to the smaller smart-alecky screwball who flippantly gave authority the middle finger.  What child doesn’t find saying no to authority invigorating or fun?  This had to be intentional.  You can look at the classical combinations to see the pattern; Tom and Jerry; Elmer and Bugs; Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner; Sylvester and Tweety; Chip and Dale versus Donald Duck;  and more.  Pepe le pew, however, is outside this conversation for this point as he is oddly not a character that defied society but was simply confused and probably a date rapist.  No means no, you perverted skunk.

But what angers me the most is the expectation of tensions this build up towards an eventual release when the whole thing is derailed and all the tensioned is eased off leaving no satisfaction.  A good examples of proper tension in Die Hard.  Die Hard also ruined the action hero it defined.  So many movies tried to be just like it but failed miserably it hurts me to think about all the bad films perpetrated on audiences.  What made Die Hard great, other than being the best Christmas movie of all time, is there was a reasonably normal protagonist placed in a bad situation where he probably shouldn’t be able to make it through.  We felt nervous when he had to run through the broken glass.  We felt scared when the weight of the fire hose was pulling him out the window to certain death.  We felt terror as he led around Hans Gruber’s great impersonation of a scared businessmen.  There was a moment of deceit on the directors part when the character had more knowledge than the audience.  McClane knew the gun wasn’t loaded but we didn’t.  The villain wasn’t an idiot either.  He was more than likely significantly smarter and more prepared than McClane.  The kicker is McClane won out the day, not because of being smart, or stronger, but by his wits.  He made them laugh, then he shot them.  Yippe ki yay.

I bring up tension and this need to reset because it sucks.  We don’t need this safety this return to normal.  It isn’t good storytelling.  There should be danger.  There should be questions.  The hero doesn’t have to win.  People need to die.  Even if they are the character you like.  X-Men: First Class brought me to this train of thought.  The reason being that it so clearly outshined the rest of X-Men movies.  Besides the coherent plot it presented real villains who had the potential to win.  There, at all points of the film, were moments when no one felt safe of above sacrifice.  Characters died.  It made the previous movies feel safe and lackluster.  Also the Cuban Missile crisis was a culturally significant moment of great tension.  Even reading about that period of time makes the hair on the back of your neck stand.  Two modern nations were seconds from annihilating each other.  That is tension, that is good narrative.  Bad politics, and indescribably abhorrent, but great storytelling.

Ben

List of Awesomeness: Part Two

Just to make sure you guys get the appropriate dose of awesome I’ve decided to let you in on next part of the list.  Let’s continue in no particular order or demarcation of importance.

1. Sriracha

A gift directly from the spice goddess.  It’s probably the perfect blend of heat and flavor.  Like getting kissed by a spicy angel.  It can elevate bland crappy food above acceptable.

This spicy wonder was invented by David Tran a man who emigrated to America from Vietnam in the late seventies.  Asia has probably never forgiven us for making a better hot sauce.  One of the cool things is the business I entirely family ran and shockingly it’s “never advertised its products, relying instead on word of mouth, the phone number listed on its products, and its website.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huy_Fong_Foods

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforkinit/2011/01/sriracha_infographic_facts.php

2. Zorro

He was wealthy playboy Alejandro De La Vega carousing with the oppressors of the common men and women of a predominantly Spanish California (back when California was more Mexico than United States).  He then donned the mask and alter ego of Zorro to fight the very men he gained trust from.  So he used his wealth and status to undermine those of his own social caste to fight for equality.  Kind of like the Scarlet Pimpernel but with a better name and a Latin flavor.  But most importantly without Zorro there wouldn’t be Batman.  And thanks to Zorro the world got to see Catherina Zeta Jones before she was Michael Douglas’ed.

3. The Goddamn Batman

The.  Goddamn.  Batman.

4. Teddy Roosevelt

Bully for you!  Rounding out part of the badass Presidents wing is this man.  A man who punched childhood sickness in the face then went out into the wilderness to hunt something.  Although Teddy was at times weaponless, on rare occasions, (I think he may have slept with a shotgun under his pillow and a small cannon under the mattress) he was never unarmed.  The man was a true Chuck Norris joke.  Undeniably a great man he is also one of only three Presidents with a Noble Peace prize (however, the whole Nobel Peace prize can be called into question when you think about the fact that Gandhi never got one). 

5. Uppercuts

There are four pretty basic punches in boxing; a jab; a cross; a hook; and a uppercut.  I like to think of the jab, cross, hook as rocks, paper, scissors and the uppercut as magnum revolver.  It’s a thing a beauty in the right hands.  It’s probably one of the few things both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat got right.

6. Caffeine

The savior of the workday.  It enlivens your brain and speeds you up without the jitters of the uppers.  Without caffeine coffee, one of my good friends, would be muddy water and that's only good if you're a  famous blues musician.

7. Rags

Rags was a war hero, an inspiration and a very good boy.  Abandoned on the street of France he was saved by a American soldier.  A dog’s dog, Rags helped run vital messages from the front line.  He was able to predict incoming shells or rather his canine sense alerted the humans with less fine tuned senses of the incoming shells.  He saved countless lives and was able to retire home after the war. Though he was in the thick of trench warfare he managed to survive being gassed and hit by shrapnel to be able to eventually get smuggled to America.  He died at age 20 and was buried with full military honors.  Oh, and he learned how to salute as well.  Which is both badass and completely adorable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rags_(dog)

8. Whiskey

Whiskey is a Gaelic word meaning "water of life."  It’s the drink of cowboys and manly men.  You can drink expensive or sophisticated or exhaust fume like brands such as Old Granddad.  It may very well put hair on your chest.

9. Bill Murray

The man has been in some of the greatest comedies of all time.  His immensely quotable performance in Caddyshack was only over the course of four days and was predominantly ad libbed.  The only more quotable movie: Ghostbusters (if you say Airplane so help me Kyle I will punch you, I will punch you with the fury of the internet and the net is fifty percent seething geek rage).  Also Zombieland synched his awesomeness.   While Garfield the movie is inexcusable he actually thought it was written by one of the Coen brothers not Joel Cohen (who did write it).  In my dreams Bill Murray gives advice to the Dalia Llama not the other way around.

10. Nikola Tesla

The man has invented, against foes of progress and science, much of the wonder of the past century.  Without some of the setbacks that have occurred he may well have discovered unlimited energy and other reasonably helpful advances.  The man was like a portal into insanity and scientific revelation.  Also he was portrayed by David Bowie in a movie and that can only help.  I’m pretty sure if you stand over his grave you get free wifi and your electronics are powered.

It’s also possible the man probably just faked his death because he was sick of dealing with people like Edison or any of the other wealthy assholes who ruining the gifts he would have brought to the world.  Sadly we treat our geniuses rather poorly for the most part.  He was crazy enough to do it.

Ben

The Problem with Zombies

Lately zombies have been the answer to every medium; inserting themselves as the antagonists in books like Max Brook’s World War Z, or television shows like The Walking Dead, or comic books like…  The Walking Dead, or films like any of George Romero’s films (and remakes), or video games like Resident Evil 1-6, Dead Rising 1 and 2, Dead Island, Dead Space 1 and2.  That list is just the beginning of the overuse heaped upon the shambling undead.  Zombies are now an overused, over thought trope.  We have brought the extreme attitude (fuck you the 90’s, sincerely everyone )to zombies with pieces like 28 days Later where we super charged the slow moving and stumbling corpses into speedy versions of hungry hungry hippos just with, you know, people instead of marbles.  But besides getting a does of Tony Horton the main concept hasn’t changed much.  The back story has changed here and there with genetic modification, voodoo, evil spirits, ancient civilizations, various scientific issues, and other possibilities but honestly zombies don’t need back story I’d actually prefer it if we as an audience never knew the cause.  The unknown has and always will be the staple of good horror.  It’s why the first Night of Living Dead worked when it did.  It was a new enough concept at the time.

But is the problem with zombies the lack of creativity of the overuse?  Or is it because everyone and their brother uses the archetype that there isn’t enough quality control?  But content is only consumed if there is a an audience for it.  And oddly enough the audience mindlessly craves and consumes.  There is an obsession with the faithful, an over analysis and delight in the possibility of a true occurance.  People have devoted time to building zombie survival teams.  And not just like a few minutes of fancy.  Whole discussions and serious periods of thought.  Well… maybe not serious concerning the subject matter.  But taken far too seriously.  Discussing the ins and outs of rules and keys to survival.  Because obviously in the zombie apocalypse with fires raging, family members dying and/or infected, society fallen, energy failing, food sources scarce, a foe that doesn’t sleep or stop, some idiot who’s watched a couple of movies won’t crack under pressure.  They will obviously triumph and with their equally brave cohorts triumph and restore society.  These heroes chose teams of people based on some merits of awesomeness and violence.  Not really on true merits like perhaps having a doctor, or a scientist, or probably most helpful a farmer.  Everyone forgets about starvation.  It does mildly concern me how people truly get excited over the thought of a zombie apocalypse happening and all the fun they might have.  It’s like they see the collapse of modern society as okay and these murderous truly scary and gruesome foes as nothing but way to vent violent fantasy.  But perhaps I am looking too deeply here.

So what would happen in a zombie outbreak.  If we assume that zombies are slowly rotting bodies the zombie outbreak would just kill itself.  The human body isn’t really meant to work once you’re dead just don’t tell Mary Shelly; she wanted humanity to be the bad guys anyway.  Regular humans being the really bad guys is a common theme in many survival horror plots, especially those by Stephen King.  Watch The Mist.  Or better yet don’t.  It doesn’t *spoiler* end so happily. *end spoiler*

Zombies just dying off and falling apart would be logical but this is a reanimated body come back to kill mindlessly.   It’s hard to interject too much logic here.  So assuming the body won’t degrade to much either due to magic or some other explanation humanity will not do so well.  If there was an outbreak and it didn’t fizzle out we’d pretty much be fucked as a species.  Don’t take my word for it.  Trust the power of math.

http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf

Yeah, someone actually spent the time to figure out the math behind the spread of the infection and humanity’s chance for survival.  Also remember a handful of people surviving does not guarantee humanity survival in fact it guarantees the very opposite.  Having only a few hundred people essentially means a stagnant gene pool and well that is not so good for humanity.

The one good thing about the rules and codification of zombies (rule as evidenced by Zombieland) is that it gives a stable and well defined set of guidelines for the world of the story.  The problem with a lot of terrible writing is we, as audience are completely unaware of the rule in the world presented to us.  If we feel like things are constantly being revealed to us and we’re like “the fuck is that?  The fuck is this?  I don’t get it?” that generally means the author is bad person.  Take that dreadful dragon series that turned into a single movie “Eragon”.  You know why I can believe it was written by a teenager?  Because it sucked.  If you shoot someone in the head they should generally die.  You can’t casually introduce new rules, like only a direct shot to the heart kills a warlock (or whatever the fuck the bad guy was), especially to a person who lives in that world.  That’s why so many stories have that fish out of water who gets introduced to the weird stuff to help us the audience understand so the other characters, the ones who know what’s going on, have a good reason to explain things and give exposition.  It’s why there is always that new recruit or student or what have you.  Otherwise if one character was lecturing another about why Cyclops has to eat a sheep every week to live and the other character would logically say “Yeah, I know that fucktard; I feed him.  Why are telling me that?  Am I some sort of audience member new to this story… oh, right.”

These well defined rules are part of the reason why everyone is an expert on zombies, a made up creature that exists only in fiction.  There are so many armchair zombie survival experts it boggles the mind.  Hell, I’m complaining about this and I know far too much about zombies.

But hey zombies are really just an expression of mindless consumerism (mindless eating machines that crowd together), a reaction against communism (they never attack each other and ‘convert’ those they fight – this is especially prevent in movies with pod people in place of zombies), and a reaction against single minded acceptance of the norm.  You look at these stories and it usually a small group against a horde of the same.   It’s also often an allegory for racism and warning about cultural hegemony (that means a disparate group can be controlled by a single entity of subgroup).  But heck sometimes it’s really more about gratuitous violence and we tend to accept a greater level of violence those circumstances.

But either way you look at you should totally have me on your zombie survival team.

Ben

http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly_p7.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen_p2.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Tech&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended

Chronological Ethnocentrism

Chronological ethnocentrism… oooo, big words, that must mean I’m smart. Alright, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way we can be serious… maybe.  I find this subject actually quite fascinating because it speaks to this little nagging voice in your head, the voice that questions common truth and accepted thought. When people say at least it’s not the cold war, or at least it’s not the fifties, or at least we’re not in Russia, these are all various examples of ethnocentrism. It means that we, as a culture, kind of blot out the truth to an extent by the thought that we uniformly march forward in time progressing evenly.  So twenty years ago we had to have been more racist and less intelligent, handsome what have you, and in twenty years time we’ll all be better, less racist, more intelligent and more handsome.  Except for you Kyle, you suck.  Also we, the place we are in now, most obviously is better than other places.  The United States must be the best, regardless of my lack of experience or knowledge of other places.  Seem silly?  Draw it in a few steps.  Does your region seem better than others?  Obviously New England is far more sophisticated that other regions.  Al other states are far behind the intellectual discourse of New Englanders.  This could only be true is intelligence was inversely proportionate to driving acumen.  And, oh my god Rhode Island drivers make me swear and scream in my car.  Adi was bewildered by this behavior.  Driving in Long Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware have never given me such aggravation.   She stared, mouth agape at my transformation from rational human being to knuckle dragging insult generator and rage-bot as my fingers curled around the driving wheel shaking with fury.  Not my finest hour but I digress.

So why is that true?  Are we just so self obsessed we feel things are better because we’re around?  Or is simply more comforting to think that our ancestors were idiots and we’re better?  Maybe it is some misguiding optimism that things have to get better.

I bring this up because of this article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/our_real_first_gay_president/

In the article it talks about the new moniker given to Barack Obama as the first gay president due to his recent outpouring of support for gay right and marriage.  I appreciate his sentiment but it always seems odd when we get character revelations around election time.  If it were near the beginning of his presidency it would seem less smacking of a grab for positive public attention.  But I’ll take what I can get.  The article goes on to say that the praise is nice but it grossly wrong.  It’s wrong because of James Buchanan.  Time to drop some knowledge.  Several article point to James Buchanan being gay.  That kinda one ups approving of gay marriage.  Now, this kind of factoid is one that must be questioned and scrutinized.  But there is enough evidence of homosexual tendencies to at least point out that while President Buchanan may or may not have been gay he was probably a bit more rainbow proud than our sitting President.  Not to detract from Obama’s stance.  Political maneuver or not I’m glad Obama is siding progressively.  At this point it seems that politician’s lag far behind popular opinion and we as a people are dragging them by the nose forward towards a brighter future.  Whereas it should be the bright luminaries of our day influencing the American public towards that beacon of improvement.  In my humble opinion it seems politics in this country have degraded and faded from their austere and pure form into backdoor dealing snake oil hucksters.

But let’s find fault in our political system another day (It’s always easy to complain about greedy politicians, regardless of the whole burden of truth).  I think a major part of the problem I history and those who tell it.  Partly I blame history teachers.  Anyone who says history is a hard subject to teach is an idiot.  History is awesome.  Its filled with wars, betrayals, illicit sex, espionage, romance, treachery, debauchery, explosions, and mystery.  No book or movie can be as awesome or unbelievable as the stuff that we as a race have done.  The problem is book make things boring.  And they shouldn’t.  Books can be wonderful amazing thins but history books for the majority of my school career were boring and at many points, wrong.  We like to think of the whole serf class during the period of the dark ages as being constantly downtrodden, horribly abused, bent backed, black teethed, malodorous perverts.  Sorry some Python leaked in at the end, ignore it and move along.  That premise is inherently false.  Serfs didn’t have it that bad.  We have this problem as seeing people living in thatch cottages near animals being the lowest of the low and that we have elevated ourselves to be better and greater.  It isn’t totally true.  There were hierarchies within the serfs.  There were those who could read.  There wasn’t as much filth and disease as everyone thinks.  IN the cities of course there tends to be much more due to chamber pots being emptied directly onto the streets hence why men were supposed to walk on the outside bit of the sidewalk and women in side and why they put their coats down when the ladies crossed the road.  Because of shit.  Men didn’t want their ladies covered in filth.  That was the code of ethics for being a gentlemen.  You wonder why we don’t hold open a door and you say chivalry is dead.  Nope it’s just there isn’t as much poop out there with the whole advent of sewers.

Sewers remind me of something important.  The Romans, predating the dark ages, had working and efficient sewers.  They had n earlier from democracy (which we Americans stole and melded with French and English thought).  Not only that but the gay thing wasn’t such a big deal.  Roman sexuality however was a bit odd in the idea of penetration equals power and oral penetration meant that your mouth and then therefore you word was sullied.  Those receiving were in no way sullied.  But worse still anyone who performed on a woman was even more sullied and thus their words were sullied.  So there were some forward thinking ideals mixed in with very archaic ones.  Which is more how I like to think is history.  We just stumble forward and some things advance while others stagnant and others, worse still, feel the effects of entropy.  So the Romans had working sewers then the dark ages didn’t.  A whole bunch of time and we as the western society took massive steps backwards in basically every bit of study like we got a bad card in Monopoly or land in Chutes and Ladders.

So I get to thinking why do we forget about all those forward thinking parts of history.  Like the great gay men who have shaped our history.  There is no denying Alexander the Great was gay.  And we obviously pretty great it was in his name and not one went about changing it to Alexander the pretty ok.  We’ve had a bit of time to revise and edit so it could have been done.  But ignoring the hot button topic of homosexuality why do we forget these ebbs and flows of culture?  Why during the dark ages did it take so long to have that amazing resurgence of art, science and philosophy of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance?  Why now do we forget our history?  Is it our fault for not educating ourselves?  Is it some darker plot of nefarious (I love that word) invisible forces censuring our intellectual consumption so we cannot know the truth of our past?  I doubt this to a certain extent as I cannot believe the government so capable of conspiracy.  It just isn’t that easy to hide massive plots regardless of what the lone gunmen say.  And yes, I just pulled an X-files reference.

I think it’s probably just our perceptions.  You get used to your environment and because it’s what you know it’s what you love.  And what you love must be the best.  So you convince yourself the rest of the world the rest of the time isn’t better than it is now.  In some ways this is right.  But mostly it is always wrong.   One thing that blew my mind recently was my preconceived notion of what certain countries look like.  What an average street looks like in Chain, in South African, in Yemen.  I thought about it and I realized I only know what has been represented in film essentially.  And I know half the time most locations are represented by Toronto.  It’s cheap to shoot there and they a bunch of different sections that mimic other cities.  There was a post online with two pictures.  Both had what appeared to be Muslim people walking down a shopping area on a busy street.  In one you see a young couple, smiling, in jeans and polos.  The other, in more traditional garb.  Obviously I can’t comment on the smiling.  The picture with the smiling couple was taken in Pakistan.  The other was in England.  I would never have guessed.  Processing that I began to think what other preconceived notions do I have?  Am I just a sponge absorbing the thought of those around me and that shapes my idea of the world?

All I know is I owe a few history teachers a swift kick in the ass for making such an interesting subject so boring.  I mean they could people talking about people flinging shit in the streets or fellatio but they talk about all the boring bits.  History should be fun.  And history makes us better people.

Ben

http://lindholm.jp/chinf_buc.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/17/who-was-our-first-gay-president/

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/our_real_first_gay_president/