The Dark Knight Falls

The more I’ve read and the more I’ve thought about the last Batman movie the more I’ve grown to question its merit.  I do think there were some amazing moments but I think it was mired in mediocrity for such a talented director and team.

There are numerous spoilers below.

Disconnect

The film often  felt disconnected from the other two movies of the trilogy and from the source material.  Since when does a story involving Batman take place predominantly during the day.  It just screws up the whole aesthetic.  The film has the words Dark Knight and the darkness in the movie is usually metaphorical.  It wasn’t just metaphorical it was dark.  Batman worked at night and used the night to his advantage.  In this universe (the film one) he was trained by the league of assassins.  Speaking of which if you were trained by an elite theater of ninjas one would think when you face down a great enemy you don’t start yelling like a cave man and throwing wild haymakers.  Nice martial arts training there.  Any decent martial artist who thinks being tense and muscling out a wild punch is superior to literally anything else is not such a good martial artist.  And you don’t use the same tactic twice when the first time resulting in a broken spine and severe head trauma.  Although the severe head trauma might explain a few things.  But fortunately the whole mask thing allows for a quick and easy way to win which the World’s Greatest Detective seemed to overlook the first time as an option.

It’s odd how a film so obviously predicated on the events of the who last ones can feel like it’s an odd man out.  For one thing the first two movies were about Bruce Wayne/Batman.  The cast of characters revolved around him.  The first movie, the origin piece introduced the main characters; Bruce, Alfred, Gordon, Fox, and Rachel.  It also introduced Ra’s and Dr. Crane (Scarecrow) as well as Falcone (the mob boss).  The second film burrowed a bit deeper into Gordon’s character and flushed out more the character of the mob bosses.  The mob has always played heavily in Batman’s universe.  It also introduced Harvey Dent and the Joker.  These two individuals were the turning point of the series.  This was the big choice.  The third film was the after effects of the choice made.  The second film was all  setups forcing choices (the Joker’s twisted intention was to force these kinds of games upon the supposedly incorruptible).  The third film introduced even more characters into an already crowded world: Selina, Blake (Robin), Bane, Miranda, Foley, and Daggett.  With such a cast it’s unsurprising that the last film was the also the longest.  There was an effort made to put all the characters on screen for more than a fraction of a moment but it made it feel like more of a collage than the story of one man our hero.  Sadly the best actors had the shortest part.  Morgan Freeman was barely on screen and the same for Michael Caine – and damn you Michael Caine for making people misty eyed every time you were in front of the camera with your whole relatable emotion strife.  I’m sure Anne Hathawy is a wonderful actress but it’s difficult to take a performance as serious when she’s in skin tight leather and performing acrobatics.  Not that this bother me mind you.

With this many people involved and so many plots swirling around it felt like Batman and friends the movie.  Honestly I felt that if we replaced the character and got rid of the whole Batman part it would had made much more sense.  Every part of the first two films as I sat in the theater I was thinking man Batman is awesome not this movie kicks ass.  Because that’s half the point of Batman.  He’s the guy we wish we could be except for the crippling paranoia, the lack of a normal life, the immense physiological scarring, and the constant pants shitting level of danger.  This film I thought hey this cool.  This whole motif and thematic relevance.

Villians or the legacy of the Joker problem

Part of the problem was the last film was just so good.  It had a few points that merit critiquing but it was so pitch perfect on many accounts that such trivial errors feel just so, trivial and of little consequence to the whole.  But this was not that movie.  Another reason is it’s hard to move on past the Joker.  He has cemented himself as the foil for Batman.  In the enormous and varied collection of rogues Batman has accrued no one can touch the Joker.  Joker is to Batman as Moriarty is Holmes.  A dark broken reflection.  The two circle each other eternally unable to truly defeat one another because of their own code and motivations.

Bane tested Batman but not on the same level.  Bane’s goal was vengeance.  Bane’s goal was to break the body and spirit of Batman.  He accomplished one of those things temporarily) and almost accomplished the other.  But Wayne rose from his trial.

The Joker didn’t try to test Batman physically.  He tried to corrupt him.  Batman is rigid in his code.  It is the one thing that keeps him total psychosis.  Once he crosses that boundary there is nothing holding him back.  His lust for justice would turn him into another Ra’s Al Ghul.

Another point why Bane is not as exciting or as memorable (besides his poor use in the god awful Batman and Robin movie which is a prime example of why technology from Men in Black should be used and how) is because he isn’t as true a reflection of Batman as the others.  Ra’s was Btman once he eschewed his holiest moral stance.  The joker was the exact inverse.  Where Batman stood for order the Joker stood for chaos.  They both did all that could be allowed to force their societal direction.

Internal Logic and the hypocrisy of character

Generally when you work from preexisting stories you try to be true to the source material.  This was, to an extent, accomplished.  This was not a warm fuzzy romp of a movie series.  It was gritty, it was dark and it was unflinching.  As such the series portrayed Batman/Wayne as paranoid, angry, bitter and vengeful .  However in the last film he was completely inconsistent in this regard.  Or rather the script had inconsistencies here there and everywhere and even the central character who was well defined still ended up betraying the set expectations.  This is generally a bad thing.  When a story creates an expectation or a rule it cannot be dismissed or altered lightly.  That’s like creating a zombie film, taking time to explain a head shot is the only way to kill zombies and then in a pivotal scene a headshot doesn’t work then the best friend dies.  Which is kind of bullshit.

The main lapse in character here is Batman’s paranoia.  Wayne practically bankrupts his company to fend off the possibility of a nuclear disaster.  Once this had been made clear it has to be set in motion that that nuclear disaster will play out to an extent.  So on paranoia he hid the instrument of hope because of fear of the possibility of death.  But yet he constantly sets into motion events where Selina is allowed to betray him.  He gives her everything with no sign of hesitation.  He is unafraid of her possible betrayal.

Another lapse is he is not over Rachel, yet he, without much provocation whatsoever, sleeps with Miranda.  Or his calm acceptance of Blake’s knowledge of his secret identity.  He spends so much time protecting the secret identity for him to so lightly allow another person to know seems odd.  He hid the truth from Rachel even when he knew it would benefit himself.

And if he was so intent on protecting that identity how come right around the time Batman retired Bruce Wayne fell out of the public eye to become a recluse.  Then shortly after Batman comes out from hiding so does playboy Bruce Wayne with no repercussions or possible implications.  World’s greatest detective, huh?

Okay how about the whole Batman is a symbol idea?  Bruce out of rage created Batman to circumvent the law but to uphold order by foiling crime.  In the first movie he become a symbol.  IN the second movie he looks to another white knight but Dent falls.  In the third he looks to Blake as the person who could pick up the mantle in his absence.  But this negates an important part for the second movie.  The copycats near the beginning of the film.  They dress like Batman and fight crime in their own vigilante manner.  Yet Batman disavows them.  But Blake is okay.  In the comic books Bruce know he can never not be Batman and he understands deep down how he can’t stop and his only out is death.  It’s a beautiful moment of sorrow and true understanding of self.  The man is half-deranged.

Was the movie awful?  Not really but it fell flat a lot of the time.  The aesthetic felt off, the characters seemed wish-washy and I was as emotionally invested as the other times.  The only part of the movie that I really thought was awesome was the scene where Selina is negotiating with Daggett’s man and she executes as her various fail safe’s which all were necessary to stay alive.

Ben

The Problem With Apathy

I started this blog for a few specific reasons.  I wanted to be able to vent some rage and maybe get a few thoughts out there into the ether to positively influence the world at large.  But mostly I wanted to give myself a solid reason to write and to write consistently.  I love writing.  Oftentimes I love thinking about writing and musing about writing and starting new projects more than digging in an really creating but none the less I love it.  I love the whole process.  The agony over a single word, the scrutiny over a few line.  Writing, and then rewriting, then rewriting again.  I love the moment you realized you wrote a few hundred pages without realizing it.  Or the odd connection you get when you hit a flow state and words seem to appear, unbeckoned, as if you weren’t putting them paper by the machination of your hands but by conjuring them from another world.

This reason, the true force behind my blog, is why I jump back and forth between sociopolitical rage and light fluffy narrative conjecture.  But sometimes I lose focus of my primary reason.  I find the fun in rage wears off quickly.  People might find the brooding artistic type attractive from afar.  The pensive eyes and disdainfully glances are enticing at first sure but dealing with the sourness that accumulates is poisonous.  I’m not saying you should interrupt the sometimes cathartic anger with bursting into show tunes but a nice smile every once and a while doesn’t hurt.

And so this is my self serving reminder to myself.  But to extend outward to the readers I do have let me explain a few situations intrinsic to that of the writer.  There is often a need for failure among those who write.  There are a few reason for this.  One reason is the written word can very personal and  sense of ownership is attached to the thoughts.  Criticism of something you have slaved over is not always taken well.  Also there is this voyeuristic/exhibitionist side of writing.  There is often a want to hide the creation away from prying eyes and keep it to oneself.  Then there is the exclusion of the writers most favorite and simultaneously least favorite activity: editing.  There is sage advice in asking a writer what their favorite part is and cutting it out.  Embellishment is frivolous – unless, of course you are Charles Dickens and flowery language is not simple allowed but encouraged – and should be excised like a malignancy.  But there is that more immediate sense of failure, the one imposed not by laziness or fear of critique but of fear of success.  It’s odd but the idea of success can be terrifying.  Dreaming about making it big is fantasy and easy whereas actually working towards that goal realistically is daunting.  So often the writer torpedoes themselves.  It’s simply a hobby and they downplay its significance.  Meanwhile the resentment, the feeling of never making it builds and grows power.  It lurks over the shoulder.  It speaks to you as you write.  “If you were any good you’d be famous by now.  No one cares about what you say.  You syntax sucks and you’re funny looking.”  That voice is a jerk and doesn’t know what it’s talking about.  But these are the forces a would be writer must face down.  Essentially the enemy within, which is generally the force we always are at war with.

My other goal once I got a feeling for blogging would be to conquer the online medium as it were.  To create a website with a blog, webcomic, various webisodes, web videos and all manner of content I had a hand in.  I’ve had some starts and stops (mostly stops) with the ideas.  I’ve reestablished some manner of follow through with these ideas.  The inspiration is simple.  I don’t want to be an old man with a lot of regrets.  I’m okay with the majority of the mistakes I’ve made in my life but I don’t want apathy, of laziness or fear to stop me from achieving and experiencing the things I want before it’s too late.

Along those lines I’ve force myself to follow a new idiom: 30 day change.  I want to start down a path and consistently perform and grow over the course of a month.  Be it learning a new language, picking up a musical instrument (and learning it not just the act of hefting it into the air you grammar police jerk you), or in the case training for the warrior dash.  My training revolves around the fact that I never got into jogging and the course is a 5k with obstacles.  I want to be able to make good time and not have a throbbing knee at the end of it.  Last Sunday I took Mac to the reservoir and started easing my way into jogging.  Something I’ve never done before. I have every intention of kicking ass and being significantly better at keeping a good steady pace in a few weeks.

Apathy for me is something I have to remind myself to defeat.  It’s one of those insidious little villains that creeps up out of nowhere and seizes you.  But there is one more flaw endemic not so such to writers but perhaps to those of my age group that I on occasion fall prey to.  The feeling of being owed something.  The universe owes me nothing.  Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I’m owed a good job, a nice salary or anything else.  I think this is something that isn’t always communicated and it certainly fucks up recent college graduates and I see it with a lot of what I like to term fucking brats in adult bodies.  There are plenty of people rapidly approaching thirty who still have crap jobs.  They hold out for the miracle for the school program they will eventually take that will set them on their new course.  Perhaps people forget a job isn’t handed out its struggled for.  I was awful at this in my early twenties.  It took me a long time to get where I am.  A lot of people have gotten lucky and achieved earlier (or worked harder) but I think as of late I’m head of the curve.  I took years of awful jobs to get one I don’t hate that pays somewhere in the neighborhood of not god awful.  I’m still not quite where I want to be but I’m okay with that.  I have plans, realistic plans.  And I think my generation for a large part is missing this rational head firmly planted on their shoulders mentality.  There seems to be disdain for taking a job below you.  As if being unemployed is worse than working fast food.  I’ve work food industry and it’s reasonably awful.  Yet still there are thirty year olds choosing to live at home rather than work their way up.  They yearn for the long shot hoping for someone to fix their problems.  All that time dreaming could be spent building a future.  But its hard work and it’s easier to dream.

But I don’t wish to simply look down from my life of reasonable comfort.  There are plenty of mitigating factors, a pretty common one  being crushing student debt.  Nevertheless I can only hope my generation gets it collective mind right.  We are eventually going to control the world and I hope we don’t fuck it up to much.

Ben

The Problem with Immortality

Very few people wish to die, it just isn’t appealing.  Countless stories have our protagonist chasing after the fountain of youth, or some other paradise or device which grants forever life.  Medical science* is now catching up to a point where increasingly long life and near immortality, barring heinous injury and accidents, is possible.  This is exciting to say the least.

The one thing that intrigues me however is once we have a technology that allows us to live much longer and healthier how does this impact the world as we know because once this happens nothing will ever be the same?

Overpopulation

There are a few billion people in the world – it’s around 6.79 Billion – and that number is rising.  Back in the 1990’s it was under 5.5 billion.**  Now think about what happens when we drastically cut death but not cut birth rates (our population growth is around 1.14% annually).  Imagine New York city doubling in population.  Imagine once small towns exploding in population.  Think driving around L.A. is bad now?  It’ll only get worse.  We’ll have to revamp transportation, which America is already years behind as we tend to enjoy cars for every individual and shun public transport.  Highways will have to be built destroying homes and lives, tearing up pristine wilderness.  Urban sprawl will get worse, much worse.

With more people and less lands we’ll have another problems.

Resources Running Out

We may very well run out of food if we keep consuming in the manner we currently do, There could be dustbowl again in the main swath of America and countless other nations.  This is without a few more billion mouths to feed.  We chew through resources like we are indestructible because of the mentality of someone else with deal it and also if it’s really so bad why isn’t someone doing anything or what better idea do you have.

There are already countless poor and impoverished going hungry.  If we truly start tightening our belts on food demand being a fat American might not seem like such a bad idea.  Sorry, Tony Horton I think you might be screwed at that point.

But that’s just food what about things like energy and housing materials or just plain old metal.  We don’t have an infinite supply.  Fortunately things like reclaimed wood are coming into vogue (and are heinously expensive, which is upsetting as its taking preexisting materials like floorboards or telephone poles and making tables out of it for people with a bit too much money) but that isn’t going to help nearly enough.  We’d actually have to start heavily investing in renewable free energy like wind, solar and other methods.  With stable hydrogen cells perhaps?  One could hope.  But if we grow and we still have gas fumes expect global warming to get worse a lot faster.  With oceans rising the usable landmass  is going to shrink.  Goodbye shoreline.  However at the point it may be very shrewd to invest in housing a few thousand feet in or wherever the shore may be in a few years.

You could say invest in harvesting materials in space, a real things that is extremely promising and very possible but that only helps bring some materials in like metals, precious and otherwise, and ore.  This if course would flood the market and devalue the rest (asteroids have a lot of stuff on them like enough to tank small nations economies that need blood diamonds and other such trade).

But let’s assume we can cover the exploding need for resources.

The Job Market and Economy

Think getting a job is hard now?  I am grateful that in a few years the first wave of baby boomers will start retiring in droves (unless they stay on a wee bit longer due to say the tanking of retirement funds linked to the stock market or sheer outright greed) and that will free up a bit more mobility in the market allowing people my age and older to move up and people younger to grab those bas level out of college starting out jobs.  But if people live longer and healthier they’ll need money.  This is already happening anyway with senior citizens staying alive longer.  Just think about job competition for a manger job with an active hundred year old.  Being fifty will look young.  And resumes will look a whole hell of a lot different.  Intern – 15 years, Jr. Analyst - 25 years, Analyst – 10 years, Sr. Analyst – 30 years.  The skills and credentials would go on for pages.  Think a college degree is useless now?  Although it might be nice to have a few more educated people walking around.

More Generations Together at Once

This is one of the things that intrigues me the most.  I remember eating dinner with my grandmother and her manner struck me at how utterly different her generation was from mine.  I understand my parents generation as I had live with them my whole life and felt their governance and rules.  But my grandmother’s generation, understanding to my mother, seemed so alien and antiquated to me.  While my mother was obviously connected to my generation there were obvious moments where there things she simple could not intuitively grasp.  That’s only three generations.  If we expand life expectancy to two hundred and we assume a generation every twenty five years that’s eight or so at once.  Imagine a twenty year old having a conversation with their great, great, great grandfather.  This might be extremely exciting as so many points of view and cultures will mix and overlap at once.  If that was happening today we’d be talking to people who were around before any of the world wars, before there were cars and airplanes, before there was cinema.  Think how fantastic and exciting it would be to be alive to see the advances of humanity if we keep moving forward.  Imagine what I might be like to be alive in a hundred years.  But there are issues with this of course.

Loss of Connection

It constantly surprises me when I think back on things from my childhood and realize that was over twenty years ago.  To me that feels like a long time.  And it isn’t a particularly short time.  To a ten year old that’s incomprehensible.  To an eighty year old is certainly doesn’t feel as long.  But I remember when the movies of my childhood came out and it shocks me, but it shouldn’t, that younglings today have no idea of these things.  You ever have a conversation and talk about actors who have died that you liked.  That’s going to be all sorts of fucked up in fifty years or a hundred years or two hundred years.

But more importantly think about how many people from older generations that have issues with using a computer or the internet.  It is so pervasive and ubiquitous it seems like children now are born with a mouse in their hand.  It would be like not know how to use a phone many years ago.  That kind of adoption is going to be really hard in a hundred years.  When we have ocular implants or simply creat things with our minds or any number of fantastic new fangled stuff that science will majestically plop into our undeserving laps.  Or what about language.  Think kids today are fucking up the language well just wait to those kids have kids and so on and so forth and you’ll have to communicate to the little bastards a tenth of your age.

Wealth

One thing that does scare me is this; one things the rich have to deal with just like everyone else is death.  They can’t keep the money forever it has to keep flowing.  If they live two hundred years or more we may well all be very fucked.  Wealth is just a pretend resource we agree holds value.  It ceases to hold value once we discount it.  A dollar is worth what we agree to assign to it and no more.  If the 1% live forever just think of the harm they could do.  Of course this might mean that we all have enough time to catch up and save up.

Dreams Come True?

With the possibility of endless time it does feel invigorating.  With the clock not ticking we’ll have time to chase dreams with abandon.  If we fail that’s okay we can try again in fifty years.  Or we can spend a hundred years slowly building up money to buy our dream business.  But conversely without that ticking clock we may very well lose inspiration.  Death has always inspired.  Knowing we only have a limited time has forced so many great people to perform.

War

But if we no longer have to die will people be willing to throw their life away for the pursuit of life liberty and happiness?  Will we still have soldiers willing to kill and be killed?  Will murder and death seem all the more ugly as it should be useless?  I can only hope that long life will bring peace but somehow I think it may only bring discordance.

But my favorite though is this; if I had hundreds of years to live I see no reason not to learn ten languages, basket weaving, how to play ten instruments or so, learn to ride a horse, get a few Phd’s, and explore the world and the many, many things I just won’t be able to do with my time as it is.  Plus if we have other people who actually go out and educate themselves we’ll truly have another renaissance and bring some more enlightenment to this age which we are always in need of.

Sadly there is one obvious downside.  I'll have to remember a whole lot more birthdays and that's a pain in the ass.

Ben

*http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/07/human-immortality-could-be-possible-by-2045-say-russian-scientists.html

**http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+world+population

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