With its roots in the second half of the 1970s, and scoring one win after another beginning with the Reagan era, the gun nut movement does not fit with the timeline of socially and culturally conservative values -- that would be the Midcentury, whether under FDR or Eisenhower -- but rather with the timeline of libertarianism, whether under Reagan or Clinton.
The NRA did not begin its hardline lobbying efforts until the mid-'70s, which also saw the birth of the Gun Owners of America, an even more hardline group. For both organizations, the main goal is deregulation of gun laws, placing it squarely within the broader laissez-faire trend of the past 40 years.
Such groups are kindred spirits with other deregulatory organizations that represent business interests (here, firearms manufacturers), like the Chamber of Commerce, who have been mainstays of the Reaganite era that we are still in, and that have actually scored big under the regime. They are no more of an "activist" group than the CoC, and we gain nothing from emulating their model if we are not also a deregulatory lobby group.
Social-cultural conservatives have seen jack squat in results from Reagan's two terms, Bush Sr., two terms of Bush Jr., and now Trump. Take any top issue for the Moral Majority types that libertarians don't care about -- pornography, homosexuality, divorce and broken homes, drugs and alcohol, gambling, religion in public places -- and all they've received is lip service.
And it's not for lack of electoral commitment to the GOP -- they just don't fit in with the laissez-faire impulse behind the Reaganite revolution. In fact, conservative morality is defined by placing all sorts of regulations on individual and collective behavior in order to obtain a more harmonious state of being at a collective level, such as the community (a difference explored in this post).
The gun groups won't even dignify the candidates of conservatives with an endorsement. Indeed, the more hardline the gun group, the more libertarian they prefer their Republican candidates to be -- in the 2008 primaries, the GOA endorsed Ron Paul, not the social-cultural conservative Mike Huckabee.
To explore what moral themes the gun nut movement resonates with, we'll rely on Jonathan Haidt's model of five: harm prevention / provision of care, fairness / justice, deference to authority, in-group loyalty, and purity / taboo.
Liberals tend to resonate primarily with the themes of harm and fairness, and less so with the other three. Conservatives resonate with all of them, and are most distinct from liberals in resonating with the theme of purity / taboo. Libertarians, as it turns out, are even more liberal than liberals in their moral themes. It is not primarily about harm and fairness, but entirely about these two themes. Liberals are at least somewhat in agreement that certain things are immoral, despite being legal and practiced by consenting adults, like disgusting forms of pornography or buying and selling human organs on a market.
So what are the gun nuts' main concerns?
First, bearing arms in order to practice self-defense from harm and destruction, whether of one's body or property. Preventing the harm of others also enters into the mindset, although theirs is mostly an individual-level focus -- showing down mano-a-mano with a bad guy who would do the gun-owner harm in a situation where the gun-owner is alone, or at least with no companions to have his back.
And second, doing so in order to re-balance the cosmic scales of justice, which have been thrown outta-whack by the bad guy. The gun nuts don't imagine drawing their weapon on someone who doesn't deserve it, but on someone who has already violated the law. They are also quick to emphasize that guns are the great equalizers, leveling the playing field between a skinny introvert like Bernie Goetz and a pack of beasts who try to prey on him on the subway.
This shows that their concerns are urban and suburban forms of violent crime, not the kind that rural residents face where there literally is no government nearby to protect them.
There's no relation to the theme of preserving purity from corruption, or upholding taboos, which makes it feel not distinctly conservative.
They do try to relate it to the sacred by linking it to the Second Amendment, and viewing the Constitution as a sacred text. But carrying and wielding a firearm is not done in service of preserving something sacred from being defiled -- as though they drew their weapon to stop a bad guy who was defecating on a copy of the Constitution or burning the American flag (the secular sacred), let alone to defend something that is religiously sacred like the Christian cross.
It's conceivable that the gun nuts could mobilize to defend Us against Them (in-group loyalty), but they do not behave that way, and do not have that in mind. Look at the hordes of immigrants pouring in -- no call to arms from the NRA, whether to collectively defend against invaders generally or, say, radical Muslims specifically.
At best, the Minutemen might organize to defend the border against illegal immigrants, but again that only has to do with fairness and justice -- mass immigration is permissible, as long as it's done legally. If mass immigration is to be challenged, they think it should be done by peacefully lobbying Congress rather than taking up arms in collective defense.
And the gun nut movement flies in the face of the theme of respecting and deferring to authority. It is explicitly about assuming an authority unto oneself, rather than delegating it to the usual authorities. If the authority figure insisted on its prerogative to use force to defend against harm and destruction, at the expense of the individual gun-owner doing so, the gun nut would escalate this into a turf war over who has the say-so, rather than deferring.
Indeed, the gun nut has a low view of authority figures, who are either too inept, too ignorant, or too callous to properly protect people from harm and property from destruction. In the nut's view, the authorities have too many protocols and regulations (imposed by that hidebound District Attorney), and too rigid of a chain-of-command structure (imposed by that out-of-touch desk jockey Chief of Police). The nut imagines liberating himself from these constraints by carrying a weapon himself, and following intuitive guidelines instead.
No one should overlook how anti-Establishment and anti-authoritarian the tough-on-crime movies of the 1970s and '80s were felt to be by contemporary audiences, whether the protagonist was an insider railing against the system like Dirty Harry or an outright vigilante as in Death Wish. The governmental authority structure was too unreliable for whatever combination of causes, and had to be substituted by a private citizen's use of force to prevent harm. Nor were they group-oriented -- it was not an organization of fellow citizens banding together as a para-police force, but a lone wolf defending himself or opening fire on behalf of others.
These movies reflected rather than shaped popular opinion of the time, but they're useful to study since they're so well preserved, unlike the opinions of real-life ordinary people.
It is this kind of vigilante fantasy that all Boomers share as a reference point for how to prevent crime, including the president (all the more so in his case, being so immersed in the media/entertainment world).
Even the Boomers who are against vigilantism assume that that's the only real option being discussed (it is), and spend their time arguing against vigilantism and by extension the whole gun nut movement associated with it, including arguing against gun rights broadly (Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC). It's not that the anti-gun Boomers are as deferential toward authority as conservatives are, they're just more confident in the government than are their libertarian peers. Thus with no conservatives among them, the Boomers argue between liberals and libertarians -- on this and all other issues.
We really need to hear a sober, reflective, cogent view on the role of guns in society from a social-cultural conservative who has communitarian rather than libertarian leanings. Look to Gen X for these voices.
In the meantime, here are three earlier posts with variations on the general theme of this one:
First, the myth of "Christian terrorism," which suggests a link to social-cultural conservatives, when right-wing violence actually comes from libertarian types who reveal a secular liberal morality, lack of church attendance or other religious practice, and a suspicion and antipathy toward authority and government.
That includes some school shooters, who are described as conservative despite abundant evidence of being libertarian and hostile to conservative values. Perhaps this is why the gun nuts get all the more defensive after a school shooting -- the killer's beliefs are more akin to their own, only acting out of a vindictive sense of justice (settling scores) rather than in self-defense.
Second, the pro-life movement as just another form of victimhood feminism (mother = victim, abortion doctor = criminal). It focuses on the liberal morality of preventing harm -- i.e., advancing the argument that abortion is murder. Ironically, this turns the debate away from morality, as everyone agrees that murder is wrong, and makes it a scientific debate about when "life" begins. A conservative view would focus on the warping of a natural process -- terminating a pregnancy -- and resonate with the theme of preserving what is natural over what is artificial (purity).
Third, prepping for cataclysms and neglecting ordinary emergencies. The gun nuts focus more on zombie apocalypse scenarios, causing them to neglect the kinds of problems that the typical conservadad has to show stewardship over at the home, office, and neighborhood.
As we shift out of the Reagan regime, first under the attempted but failed re-alignment of the GOP under Trump, and then by the Bernie sympathizers, we will adopt a new morality that focuses on the re-regulation of social life -- whether that's the economy or personal behavior. Remember, the Progressive Era was coincident with the Temperance movement.
Bernie is not a degenerate libertine like Bill Clinton, or Hillary for that matter, and his Millennial supporters want to be free of crushing student loan debt so that they can get married and start a family like normal people -- not so they can waste their newfound income on strippers and skipping out on child support payments like the Boomers. And Tulsi Gabbard could not be a more wholesome role model unless we saw her knitting slouchy beanies in between catching waves.
The late Gen X-ers and Millennials have lived through just about enough chaos and anarchy, from their vulnerable formative years up to the present, and they wouldn't mind a return to regulated life, to finally enjoy the normalcy like the ungrateful Boomers grew up under during the Wonder Years.
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
February 23, 2018
December 25, 2017
When must-have toys were Made in USA, and built to last
Another Christmas, another Star Wars movie, another attempt to cash in on the hype with toy lines just as the little kiddies are drawing up their lists for Santa Claus.
By churning out new Star Wars movies every year, they are making them less unique and distinct as cultural events. And the same goes for these toy lines. Kids won't get excited about them, as they become habituated to them, and will not have other novel toy lines to turn to, since everything is about Star Wars now.
Back when Star Wars first came out, it was a self-contained phenomenon rather than a continually practiced religion -- it was not going to be re-enacted from now until the end of the universe. It made the toys a phenomenon in themselves, rather than the same old predictable crap from last year but slightly updated. You had to get in on the Star Wars toy craze, because it would not last forever, and next year or the year after that, it would be something else.
If you Google Image Search "Christmas 1983," a majority of the results show Star Wars toys. When my family gets together for Christmas, we sometimes watch old home movies, and there's one from Christmas '83 where I'm so entranced by the Star Wars toys that I don't show much appreciation for the other gifts under the tree. It was the thing to get.
A lot of those toys literally still hold up today, since they were made before manufacturing standards went down the tubes as American companies started off-shoring these jobs to places where labor is cheap and doesn't give a shit about quality results.
They were not made to high standards because they believed Star Wars would become an enduring brand, and that the merchandise needed to be collectible in quality to last as long as the brand's appeal lasted. They simply didn't want to sell their customers a bunch of cheap junk at high prices.
Not everything from the heyday of children's toys during the 1980s was made in USA, though. No matter which brand, the ubiquitous action figures were mostly made outside the country (Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). These toys do not require much assembly, and the process of pouring plastic into the molds for the arms, legs, torsos, and heads can be overseen by careless Chinese or Mexican laborers.
The 1980s did see the beginning of the off-shoring of manufacturing, but it began with cheaper things that customers might not care about so much being made in China. Such as action figures, compared to other kinds of toys.
The vehicles and playsets, however, were still being made right here in America. Things that require a decent level of assembly -- putting a bunch of heterogeneous components into a single finished whole product -- were too much to be trusted to Chinese sweatshop labor back then. You needed more attentive and well-paid American workers to put complicated things together.
It's the same reason that major devices were still being made here, like automobiles, washing machines, and television sets, while less complicated products were undergoing rapid off-shoring, like textiles and clothing.
Even if the parent had to put the pieces together for their kid's toy ("some assembly required"), the quality of the components was too high to be done overseas. The plastic used for action figures does feel cheaper and more rubbery, but the stuff used for vehicles and playsets is more durable and has finer details. Anything that required precision had to be done here.
The three major toy makers were Mattel, with factories in southern California, who made He-Man and Secret Wars; Hasbro, manufacturing out of Rhode Island, who made G.I. Joe; and Kenner, whose main factory was in Cincinnati, Ohio, who made Star Wars. Other companies who made toys here in America include Coleco, Tyco, Remco, and Tonka.
When they closed up most of their factories is hard to determine, but from old news articles it seems like the late 1980s through the early 2000s saw the sustained shuttering of American toy-making plants. The companies and brands still exist in America, just not the actual production that sustained working and middle-class families and their communities.
Once American companies had off-shored the cheaper products, they began off-shoring the more complicated ones as well. No washing machines or televisions are made here anymore, and it's lucky that cars and airplanes are so complicated to make -- they're one of the few things we still feel are too complex to trust to cheap foreigners.
So it goes with toys, as the vehicles and playsets have joined the action figures in all being made in cheap-labor countries, with cheap materials, and shoddy assembly. No one thinks that today's Star Wars toys are going to physically endure as long as the ones made 35 to 40 years ago.
And yet mergers and acquisitions, together with off-shoring production, have made these companies more profitable than during their heyday as makers of cultural phenomena (no one cares about new Star Wars toys).
They should not be rewarded with skyrocketing profits after destroying their American workforces and offering customers more and more forgettable products of lower and lower quality. Time for those 35% tariffs on off-shored production, maybe combined with some direct federal subsidies for American toy manufacturing.
While sociopathic corporations deserve nothing more than a load of coal in their stocking, let's not end on such a "Bah humbug" note, and let memories of the not-so-distant past remind us that a better world is possible. If we were doing better then, we can do it again in the future -- it's not a hypothetical experiment.
Working and middle-class kids got to enjoy quality-made toys, and the still largely manufacturing oriented economy allowed the toys' assembly-line workers to earn enough to give nice things to their own children for Christmas.
Click to view larger image; right-click the pop-up image to view the full-sized image.
I was lucky enough to own an AT-AT as a kid. It seemed so much more real because of how well put-together it was -- not just some cheap little "toy". Although scaled down, it seemed like a real vehicle that had rolled off of a real assembly line at a real factory.
I still have a few old Star Wars toys, and the motivation for this post came when I checked the country of origin on Jabba the Hutt out of curiosity. His little pet is made in Hong Kong, but I couldn't believe the dungeon / throne and Jabba himself are made in USA.
Another of those old home movies shows me playing with the Snake Mountain set from He-Man. It has a microphone and speaker with a "scary voice" effect built in (some distortion, echo, lower pitch). I didn't notice until looking at the ad just now, but the painting detail on the He-Man playsets is something you wouldn't see done today -- too much skill to use an airbrush, or whatever it was.
The most impressive toy I ever got was the Defiant space station from G.I. Joe. It really is as big, complicated, and slickly made as it looks in the ad. My father and uncle had to spend most of the afternoon putting it together. I couldn't ask for hardly anything else that Christmas, but I didn't mind -- it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Now that the Millennials are old enough to go through nostalgia, it's notable how little they care about the toys of their childhood to the same degree that Gen X-ers remember their toys from the '80s. Much of that must have to do with how fast the quality level dropped off during the '90s. There was no American-made Ewok Village, Snake Mountain, or Defiant space station to captivate them. Just cheaply made disposable crap from China.
Once we restore manufacturing to the American economy, kids will appreciate the things of their childhoods again.
By churning out new Star Wars movies every year, they are making them less unique and distinct as cultural events. And the same goes for these toy lines. Kids won't get excited about them, as they become habituated to them, and will not have other novel toy lines to turn to, since everything is about Star Wars now.
Back when Star Wars first came out, it was a self-contained phenomenon rather than a continually practiced religion -- it was not going to be re-enacted from now until the end of the universe. It made the toys a phenomenon in themselves, rather than the same old predictable crap from last year but slightly updated. You had to get in on the Star Wars toy craze, because it would not last forever, and next year or the year after that, it would be something else.
If you Google Image Search "Christmas 1983," a majority of the results show Star Wars toys. When my family gets together for Christmas, we sometimes watch old home movies, and there's one from Christmas '83 where I'm so entranced by the Star Wars toys that I don't show much appreciation for the other gifts under the tree. It was the thing to get.
A lot of those toys literally still hold up today, since they were made before manufacturing standards went down the tubes as American companies started off-shoring these jobs to places where labor is cheap and doesn't give a shit about quality results.
They were not made to high standards because they believed Star Wars would become an enduring brand, and that the merchandise needed to be collectible in quality to last as long as the brand's appeal lasted. They simply didn't want to sell their customers a bunch of cheap junk at high prices.
Not everything from the heyday of children's toys during the 1980s was made in USA, though. No matter which brand, the ubiquitous action figures were mostly made outside the country (Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). These toys do not require much assembly, and the process of pouring plastic into the molds for the arms, legs, torsos, and heads can be overseen by careless Chinese or Mexican laborers.
The 1980s did see the beginning of the off-shoring of manufacturing, but it began with cheaper things that customers might not care about so much being made in China. Such as action figures, compared to other kinds of toys.
The vehicles and playsets, however, were still being made right here in America. Things that require a decent level of assembly -- putting a bunch of heterogeneous components into a single finished whole product -- were too much to be trusted to Chinese sweatshop labor back then. You needed more attentive and well-paid American workers to put complicated things together.
It's the same reason that major devices were still being made here, like automobiles, washing machines, and television sets, while less complicated products were undergoing rapid off-shoring, like textiles and clothing.
Even if the parent had to put the pieces together for their kid's toy ("some assembly required"), the quality of the components was too high to be done overseas. The plastic used for action figures does feel cheaper and more rubbery, but the stuff used for vehicles and playsets is more durable and has finer details. Anything that required precision had to be done here.
The three major toy makers were Mattel, with factories in southern California, who made He-Man and Secret Wars; Hasbro, manufacturing out of Rhode Island, who made G.I. Joe; and Kenner, whose main factory was in Cincinnati, Ohio, who made Star Wars. Other companies who made toys here in America include Coleco, Tyco, Remco, and Tonka.
When they closed up most of their factories is hard to determine, but from old news articles it seems like the late 1980s through the early 2000s saw the sustained shuttering of American toy-making plants. The companies and brands still exist in America, just not the actual production that sustained working and middle-class families and their communities.
Once American companies had off-shored the cheaper products, they began off-shoring the more complicated ones as well. No washing machines or televisions are made here anymore, and it's lucky that cars and airplanes are so complicated to make -- they're one of the few things we still feel are too complex to trust to cheap foreigners.
So it goes with toys, as the vehicles and playsets have joined the action figures in all being made in cheap-labor countries, with cheap materials, and shoddy assembly. No one thinks that today's Star Wars toys are going to physically endure as long as the ones made 35 to 40 years ago.
And yet mergers and acquisitions, together with off-shoring production, have made these companies more profitable than during their heyday as makers of cultural phenomena (no one cares about new Star Wars toys).
They should not be rewarded with skyrocketing profits after destroying their American workforces and offering customers more and more forgettable products of lower and lower quality. Time for those 35% tariffs on off-shored production, maybe combined with some direct federal subsidies for American toy manufacturing.
While sociopathic corporations deserve nothing more than a load of coal in their stocking, let's not end on such a "Bah humbug" note, and let memories of the not-so-distant past remind us that a better world is possible. If we were doing better then, we can do it again in the future -- it's not a hypothetical experiment.
Working and middle-class kids got to enjoy quality-made toys, and the still largely manufacturing oriented economy allowed the toys' assembly-line workers to earn enough to give nice things to their own children for Christmas.
Click to view larger image; right-click the pop-up image to view the full-sized image.
I was lucky enough to own an AT-AT as a kid. It seemed so much more real because of how well put-together it was -- not just some cheap little "toy". Although scaled down, it seemed like a real vehicle that had rolled off of a real assembly line at a real factory.
I still have a few old Star Wars toys, and the motivation for this post came when I checked the country of origin on Jabba the Hutt out of curiosity. His little pet is made in Hong Kong, but I couldn't believe the dungeon / throne and Jabba himself are made in USA.
Another of those old home movies shows me playing with the Snake Mountain set from He-Man. It has a microphone and speaker with a "scary voice" effect built in (some distortion, echo, lower pitch). I didn't notice until looking at the ad just now, but the painting detail on the He-Man playsets is something you wouldn't see done today -- too much skill to use an airbrush, or whatever it was.
The most impressive toy I ever got was the Defiant space station from G.I. Joe. It really is as big, complicated, and slickly made as it looks in the ad. My father and uncle had to spend most of the afternoon putting it together. I couldn't ask for hardly anything else that Christmas, but I didn't mind -- it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Now that the Millennials are old enough to go through nostalgia, it's notable how little they care about the toys of their childhood to the same degree that Gen X-ers remember their toys from the '80s. Much of that must have to do with how fast the quality level dropped off during the '90s. There was no American-made Ewok Village, Snake Mountain, or Defiant space station to captivate them. Just cheaply made disposable crap from China.
Once we restore manufacturing to the American economy, kids will appreciate the things of their childhoods again.
October 14, 2017
Is dystopia bright, lush, & harmonious or dark, bleak, & fractured?
The Blade Runner sequel may not live up to the visuals of the original from 1982, but that's not because they didn't try. The original was one of the first to establish the visual code for dystopian environments that remains to this day -- dark, bleak, and socially fractured.
Original director Ridley Scott laid the foundations for this aesthetic a few years earlier in Alien, although that movie did not rely on a fragmented social atmosphere; all the characters knew and trusted one another, and were part of an organized team.
Mad Max, also from a few years earlier, had the bleak and fractured atmosphere, but not dark.
It was Escape From New York and Blade Runner in the early '80s that really cemented the contemporary look-and-feel of dystopian environments. That continued through The Terminator, RoboCop, Total Recall, right up to today's re-boots and sequels like Tron: Legacy and Blade Runner 2049.
What did dystopia look like before Alien and Blade Runner? Bright rather than dark, lush vibrant and life-supporting rather than barren decaying and life-sapping, and suffering from an excess of social harmony rather than an excess of everyone looking out for Number One.
Here is a whirlwind tour through dystopian environments circa the 1970s:
The brightness is self-evident, and so is the lush and thriving state of nature -- or if it takes place in an urban setting, the clean orderly and well-maintained structures as opposed to more contemporary urban scenes of filthy crumbling ruins.
You might object that the social atmosphere was still atomized back then -- it would seem to contradict the premise of it being a dystopia if everyone got along happily. But it was the source of atomization that differed -- back then, the creators of these scenes pushed the idea that individuals lost their authentic connections to one another by mindlessly following the herd, going through social rituals whether each individual wanted to or not, and in general having social harmony enforced and regulated by some higher council rather than organically emerging from relations that were freely entered into by the individuals concerned.
In short, they were the libertarians' view of dystopia, where some council had gone too far in enforcing social harmony. Pushing these scenes as nightmarish came right as Western societies were moving out of the Great Compression, where the mindset was reining in your individual ambitions in order to maximize harmony, and into the New Gilded Age, where the mindset is letting individuals do whatever they want, whether or not that destabilized the larger groups that these egocentrists belong to.
The Seventies was the time of the Me Generation -- the Silents and the emerging Boomers who had grown up under Midcentury conformity, taken social harmony for granted, and begun to "liberate" their individual desires in ways that would break down social bonds and societal cohesion. The dystopias from the tail end of the Great Compression reflect that bristling at a moral order that they viewed as "conformity uber alles".
It did not take very long to see where this re-birth of the laissez-faire moral order would lead to -- a new Gilded Age, a new inequality, and a new ethos of Social Darwinism to rationalize the new material conditions.
If everyone is looking out for Number One, group-level structures will crumble as public goods are no longer paid for or maintained, and individuals will become isolated from one another due to the "use or be used" morality. As stewardship vanishes, so will environmental conservation and maintenance -- there goes all that lush and vibrant greenery.
The darkness not only suggests the hopelessness of a dog-eat-dog world, it heightens the sense of nobody is supervising what anyone is doing, as the very first step toward any degree of social regulation. If anyone gets to do anything they want, it is as if they are all acting under the cloak of night.
Contrast that with the libertarians' view of dystopia, where the overly bright spaces give an almost painful sense of being supervised under the spotlight of a council in charge of a Panopticon. You would feel more obligated to rein in your selfish tendencies if you felt you were being watched so powerfully by a group of norm-enforcers.
The sole exception that comes to mind of post-'70s dystopias is Demolition Man from 1993, which juxtaposes both sets of environments -- the bright lush overworld where councils go too far in enforcing harmony and prosperity, and the dark decaying underworld where urchins do their own thing in atomized poverty.
Of course the intended message from the creators was that the well-fed and bubble-wrapped dwellers of the overworld were cruelly oppressing the starving and vulnerable denizens of the underworld. But it can be just as easily understood the other way around -- that their own choice of moral framework determines the material conditions of the two worlds, not that one is imposing its will upon the other. You can either choose to rein in individual desires and be prosperous and safe, or you can choose to let people do whatever feels good and be poor and vulnerable.
Although not the intended message, this movie still shows a deeper awareness of the trade-off than the dystopias of the Seventies, where the bright lush harmonious world was uniformly loathsome and oppressive. They believed that a society could have both the prosperous and safe world of the Midcentury, while also allowing individuals to liberate their desires. They were libertarian utopians who denied the inherent trade-off between liberty and prosperity.
Later entries of Me Gen libertarianism at least admitted that the two conflicted, and that they would choose liberty over prosperity anyway. Here's the classic Dennis Leary rant from the underworld of Demolition Man, where he concedes that doing whatever you feel like at any given moment means choosing an environment where you "maybe starve to death":
Generally speaking, though, the contemporary dystopias have come not from apologists for laissez-faire but from Me Gen members who did not cast their vote for "do whatever" along with their cohorts back in the Seventies. Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Paul Verhoeven.
They have more of an anti-yuppie attitude and long for a world with more order rather than more chaos, as exciting as chaos can sometimes be, because they value the group's well-being over the sum total of hedonism over all individuals. They come off more as New Deal Democrats than Reagan Republicans or Clintonian neoliberals. And whether they would admit it or not, they would agree more with the vision of how the world looks as delivered by Trump-the-candidate and Lou Dobbs than by Crooked Hillary and Rachel Maddow (being liberals, they would probably agree most with the view delivered by Bernie).
A future post will look at Surrealism, which shares a lot with the Seventies dystopias and also hailed from the Great Compression.
Original director Ridley Scott laid the foundations for this aesthetic a few years earlier in Alien, although that movie did not rely on a fragmented social atmosphere; all the characters knew and trusted one another, and were part of an organized team.
Mad Max, also from a few years earlier, had the bleak and fractured atmosphere, but not dark.
It was Escape From New York and Blade Runner in the early '80s that really cemented the contemporary look-and-feel of dystopian environments. That continued through The Terminator, RoboCop, Total Recall, right up to today's re-boots and sequels like Tron: Legacy and Blade Runner 2049.
What did dystopia look like before Alien and Blade Runner? Bright rather than dark, lush vibrant and life-supporting rather than barren decaying and life-sapping, and suffering from an excess of social harmony rather than an excess of everyone looking out for Number One.
Here is a whirlwind tour through dystopian environments circa the 1970s:
Star Trek, 1968
Planet of the Apes, 1968
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1969
A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Zardoz, 1974
The Stepford Wives, 1975
Logan's Run, 1976
Logan's Run
You might object that the social atmosphere was still atomized back then -- it would seem to contradict the premise of it being a dystopia if everyone got along happily. But it was the source of atomization that differed -- back then, the creators of these scenes pushed the idea that individuals lost their authentic connections to one another by mindlessly following the herd, going through social rituals whether each individual wanted to or not, and in general having social harmony enforced and regulated by some higher council rather than organically emerging from relations that were freely entered into by the individuals concerned.
In short, they were the libertarians' view of dystopia, where some council had gone too far in enforcing social harmony. Pushing these scenes as nightmarish came right as Western societies were moving out of the Great Compression, where the mindset was reining in your individual ambitions in order to maximize harmony, and into the New Gilded Age, where the mindset is letting individuals do whatever they want, whether or not that destabilized the larger groups that these egocentrists belong to.
The Seventies was the time of the Me Generation -- the Silents and the emerging Boomers who had grown up under Midcentury conformity, taken social harmony for granted, and begun to "liberate" their individual desires in ways that would break down social bonds and societal cohesion. The dystopias from the tail end of the Great Compression reflect that bristling at a moral order that they viewed as "conformity uber alles".
It did not take very long to see where this re-birth of the laissez-faire moral order would lead to -- a new Gilded Age, a new inequality, and a new ethos of Social Darwinism to rationalize the new material conditions.
If everyone is looking out for Number One, group-level structures will crumble as public goods are no longer paid for or maintained, and individuals will become isolated from one another due to the "use or be used" morality. As stewardship vanishes, so will environmental conservation and maintenance -- there goes all that lush and vibrant greenery.
The darkness not only suggests the hopelessness of a dog-eat-dog world, it heightens the sense of nobody is supervising what anyone is doing, as the very first step toward any degree of social regulation. If anyone gets to do anything they want, it is as if they are all acting under the cloak of night.
Contrast that with the libertarians' view of dystopia, where the overly bright spaces give an almost painful sense of being supervised under the spotlight of a council in charge of a Panopticon. You would feel more obligated to rein in your selfish tendencies if you felt you were being watched so powerfully by a group of norm-enforcers.
The sole exception that comes to mind of post-'70s dystopias is Demolition Man from 1993, which juxtaposes both sets of environments -- the bright lush overworld where councils go too far in enforcing harmony and prosperity, and the dark decaying underworld where urchins do their own thing in atomized poverty.
Of course the intended message from the creators was that the well-fed and bubble-wrapped dwellers of the overworld were cruelly oppressing the starving and vulnerable denizens of the underworld. But it can be just as easily understood the other way around -- that their own choice of moral framework determines the material conditions of the two worlds, not that one is imposing its will upon the other. You can either choose to rein in individual desires and be prosperous and safe, or you can choose to let people do whatever feels good and be poor and vulnerable.
Although not the intended message, this movie still shows a deeper awareness of the trade-off than the dystopias of the Seventies, where the bright lush harmonious world was uniformly loathsome and oppressive. They believed that a society could have both the prosperous and safe world of the Midcentury, while also allowing individuals to liberate their desires. They were libertarian utopians who denied the inherent trade-off between liberty and prosperity.
Later entries of Me Gen libertarianism at least admitted that the two conflicted, and that they would choose liberty over prosperity anyway. Here's the classic Dennis Leary rant from the underworld of Demolition Man, where he concedes that doing whatever you feel like at any given moment means choosing an environment where you "maybe starve to death":
Generally speaking, though, the contemporary dystopias have come not from apologists for laissez-faire but from Me Gen members who did not cast their vote for "do whatever" along with their cohorts back in the Seventies. Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Paul Verhoeven.
They have more of an anti-yuppie attitude and long for a world with more order rather than more chaos, as exciting as chaos can sometimes be, because they value the group's well-being over the sum total of hedonism over all individuals. They come off more as New Deal Democrats than Reagan Republicans or Clintonian neoliberals. And whether they would admit it or not, they would agree more with the vision of how the world looks as delivered by Trump-the-candidate and Lou Dobbs than by Crooked Hillary and Rachel Maddow (being liberals, they would probably agree most with the view delivered by Bernie).
A future post will look at Surrealism, which shares a lot with the Seventies dystopias and also hailed from the Great Compression.
October 13, 2017
Less popular outrage over victims of Dems b/c they're more likely white-collar
It's only natural that the media would collectively do damage control for one of their own, as when Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is publicly revealed to be a serial sexual exploiter, and perhaps serial rapist.
But why isn't there more on the demand side for coverage of these practices in a major industry? All it would take would be a few journalists at a few outlets with even a few sources coming forward to break the propaganda cartel and meet that pent-up demand.
Even if more big-wigs in the media are outed and shamed for Weinsteinian exploitation -- whether in Hollywood or in the New York / DC media -- I still don't sense that much outrage at the popular level.
Contrast that with the revelations about similar longstanding patterns of sexual abuse by the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts, or public schools where adults prey on children.
The main difference seems to be that the victims in Hollywood are generally members of the elite -- and that their sexual exploitation was part of their induction into the Hollywood economy. If they want the roles, they have to let some disgusting slug have his way with them. If they don't want the roles, they can turn him down.
Now these aren't everyday blue-collar roles in the Hollywood economy that they're getting -- these roles will catapult them into elite status and wealth.
Most observers are going to see this kind of casting-couch exploitation as the actors and actresses sleeping their way into a job, or into a promotion, which nets them millions of dollars in wealth, as well as national and even international fame.
If, on the other hand, they had to sleep with some disgusting creep just to get a cashier's job in retail, or had to tolerate some fat hairy ugly boss feeling them up in the stock room, that would strike most people as real degradation and slavery. They're working class, they get very little out of it, and they don't have sustainable alternatives -- unlike actors and actresses who could make a decent living outside the entertainment or media industry.
The same goes for child victims -- now that would really nuke Hollywood, if the pedophile rings are finally outed and their ringleaders shamed. That is not consensual, not a calculated move to advance their wealth and status in exchange for degrading treatment, and not a career move they made instead of a number of well-paying alternatives (children can only make money by being in entertainment, not by being professionals or managers or stock market gamblers).
I addressed this in an earlier post about prosecuting pedophiles in order to delegitimize Hollywood. The casting-couch stories are not going to wreck Hollywood's moral credibility. Those reports mainly resonate with people who face similar pressures if they want more wealth and status -- other white-collar workers in the media / entertainment industry, and at most white-collars in general.
That might lead to a movement among media workers to seek better working conditions, like not having to let some slithering reptile touch you in order to get the job. But will it lead to a broader outcry from the public and fuel the anti-liberal side of the culture war? Not really.
The anti-pedophile stuff would, though, and that's why the media is far more dogged in doing damage control over that kind of sexual exploitation. A related post is only four months old, yet the offending tweet from a Breitbart reporter and the video clip embedded in it have already been removed from Twitter. They showed Al Franken at a roast of Rob Reiner, telling a story about Rob being molested as a baby and turned out by his well-connected Hollywood father, which was likely an outing in disguise of Rob himself as a serial pedophile in Hollywood.
But it's not just Hollywood that gets a pass for exploiting aspiring or actual members of the elite. Wall Street took rich people for a ride, yet nobody cares about Bernie Madoff's victims because they were just rich scum looking for a get-rich-quick scheme and got burned by the only type of person who would sell them such a scheme, namely a con man.
Silicon Valley replaces American computer coders with cheap foreign workers, either over in India or by bringing Indians here. Yet there is little popular outrage like there is about the decline of manufacturing in the Rust Belt. Again, the coders in Silicon Valley were more elite, and factory workers in Michigan and North Carolina more blue-collar.
This all traces back to the fundamental split between the Democrat and Republican parties, where the Democrats represent the power factions that are more cerebral, digital, and easily scale-able, while the Republicans represent the power factions that are more physical, labor-intensive, and less scale-able. These are differences at the material level -- how they develop their wealth and power -- and not at the ideological level.
Democrat industries scale up easily and are not labor-intensive, so their workers tend to be more elite. Republican industries are more physically rooted, so their workers will be some elite but mostly working-class (fruit pickers and ranch hands, policemen and soldiers, oil and mine workers, stock boys and cashiers at Walmart and McDonalds, and so on).
By their very nature, these two sets of industries are not equal when it comes to portraying their workers as being exploited. White-collar professionals who have to submit to casting-couch hiring practices are not as sympathetic as blue-collar workers slaving away at physically taxing labor.
Some culture warriors will try to score points asking "Where are all the feminists coming out against Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood?" But more to the point, where are all the women among the general public coming out in anger over how Hollywood actresses are treated?
This should be yet another reminder that gender plays little role compared to class, when it comes to collective behavior. As disgusting as Weinstein's behavior is, most women cannot put themselves in the place of Hollywood actresses who make millions of dollars and global fame on the other side of that revolting exploitation.
But some child who gets inappropriately touched or otherwise taken advantage of -- that's something that transcends class and gender. Working-class women would have no trouble relating to those kinds of crimes, and would threaten to destroy Hollywood if it came out that so much of the upper crust there have been serial pedophiles who have twisted and ruined people's lives before they even got started in adulthood.
The real culture war against Hollywood must target those kinds of crimes, which are far more heinous and would resonate with a far broader audience, and not the casting-couch practices that are less offensive and even then primarily to white-collar women.
Ditto for taking on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and higher education -- expose their exploitation of naive and innocent young people, and they will have zero moral authority left. Not just sexual abuse of their workers, but financial exploitation of youngster consumers who don't understand how the world works.
But why isn't there more on the demand side for coverage of these practices in a major industry? All it would take would be a few journalists at a few outlets with even a few sources coming forward to break the propaganda cartel and meet that pent-up demand.
Even if more big-wigs in the media are outed and shamed for Weinsteinian exploitation -- whether in Hollywood or in the New York / DC media -- I still don't sense that much outrage at the popular level.
Contrast that with the revelations about similar longstanding patterns of sexual abuse by the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts, or public schools where adults prey on children.
The main difference seems to be that the victims in Hollywood are generally members of the elite -- and that their sexual exploitation was part of their induction into the Hollywood economy. If they want the roles, they have to let some disgusting slug have his way with them. If they don't want the roles, they can turn him down.
Now these aren't everyday blue-collar roles in the Hollywood economy that they're getting -- these roles will catapult them into elite status and wealth.
Most observers are going to see this kind of casting-couch exploitation as the actors and actresses sleeping their way into a job, or into a promotion, which nets them millions of dollars in wealth, as well as national and even international fame.
If, on the other hand, they had to sleep with some disgusting creep just to get a cashier's job in retail, or had to tolerate some fat hairy ugly boss feeling them up in the stock room, that would strike most people as real degradation and slavery. They're working class, they get very little out of it, and they don't have sustainable alternatives -- unlike actors and actresses who could make a decent living outside the entertainment or media industry.
The same goes for child victims -- now that would really nuke Hollywood, if the pedophile rings are finally outed and their ringleaders shamed. That is not consensual, not a calculated move to advance their wealth and status in exchange for degrading treatment, and not a career move they made instead of a number of well-paying alternatives (children can only make money by being in entertainment, not by being professionals or managers or stock market gamblers).
I addressed this in an earlier post about prosecuting pedophiles in order to delegitimize Hollywood. The casting-couch stories are not going to wreck Hollywood's moral credibility. Those reports mainly resonate with people who face similar pressures if they want more wealth and status -- other white-collar workers in the media / entertainment industry, and at most white-collars in general.
That might lead to a movement among media workers to seek better working conditions, like not having to let some slithering reptile touch you in order to get the job. But will it lead to a broader outcry from the public and fuel the anti-liberal side of the culture war? Not really.
The anti-pedophile stuff would, though, and that's why the media is far more dogged in doing damage control over that kind of sexual exploitation. A related post is only four months old, yet the offending tweet from a Breitbart reporter and the video clip embedded in it have already been removed from Twitter. They showed Al Franken at a roast of Rob Reiner, telling a story about Rob being molested as a baby and turned out by his well-connected Hollywood father, which was likely an outing in disguise of Rob himself as a serial pedophile in Hollywood.
But it's not just Hollywood that gets a pass for exploiting aspiring or actual members of the elite. Wall Street took rich people for a ride, yet nobody cares about Bernie Madoff's victims because they were just rich scum looking for a get-rich-quick scheme and got burned by the only type of person who would sell them such a scheme, namely a con man.
Silicon Valley replaces American computer coders with cheap foreign workers, either over in India or by bringing Indians here. Yet there is little popular outrage like there is about the decline of manufacturing in the Rust Belt. Again, the coders in Silicon Valley were more elite, and factory workers in Michigan and North Carolina more blue-collar.
This all traces back to the fundamental split between the Democrat and Republican parties, where the Democrats represent the power factions that are more cerebral, digital, and easily scale-able, while the Republicans represent the power factions that are more physical, labor-intensive, and less scale-able. These are differences at the material level -- how they develop their wealth and power -- and not at the ideological level.
Democrat industries scale up easily and are not labor-intensive, so their workers tend to be more elite. Republican industries are more physically rooted, so their workers will be some elite but mostly working-class (fruit pickers and ranch hands, policemen and soldiers, oil and mine workers, stock boys and cashiers at Walmart and McDonalds, and so on).
By their very nature, these two sets of industries are not equal when it comes to portraying their workers as being exploited. White-collar professionals who have to submit to casting-couch hiring practices are not as sympathetic as blue-collar workers slaving away at physically taxing labor.
Some culture warriors will try to score points asking "Where are all the feminists coming out against Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood?" But more to the point, where are all the women among the general public coming out in anger over how Hollywood actresses are treated?
This should be yet another reminder that gender plays little role compared to class, when it comes to collective behavior. As disgusting as Weinstein's behavior is, most women cannot put themselves in the place of Hollywood actresses who make millions of dollars and global fame on the other side of that revolting exploitation.
But some child who gets inappropriately touched or otherwise taken advantage of -- that's something that transcends class and gender. Working-class women would have no trouble relating to those kinds of crimes, and would threaten to destroy Hollywood if it came out that so much of the upper crust there have been serial pedophiles who have twisted and ruined people's lives before they even got started in adulthood.
The real culture war against Hollywood must target those kinds of crimes, which are far more heinous and would resonate with a far broader audience, and not the casting-couch practices that are less offensive and even then primarily to white-collar women.
Ditto for taking on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and higher education -- expose their exploitation of naive and innocent young people, and they will have zero moral authority left. Not just sexual abuse of their workers, but financial exploitation of youngster consumers who don't understand how the world works.
June 11, 2017
Al Franken on Rob Reiner and gay pedo rings in Hollywood
From Breitbart writer Ryan Saavedra, here is a surreal bit by Al Franken during a roast of Rob Reiner at the NY Friars Club in 2000:
After joking about Carl Reiner having inappropriate boundaries with his baby son Rob, Franken goes on to joke about Carl inviting "his famous friends" in Hollywood to rape his child-aged son.
Rob Reiner looks nervous, frazzled, and fidgety throughout the whole thing. Not because he's shocked by the transgressive humor -- he's heard plenty worse in the entertainment business. I wasn't the only one who noticed such a bizarre reaction:
Now, the culture warriors on the Right are taking aim here at Franken for his taboo-breaking jokes. But in this case, truth may be stranger than fiction.
Here is an article from Radar Online, re-posted with comments at Blind Gossip, which both have a proven track record of accurate sources in the entertainment industry. It is about former child star Corey Haim naming one of his sexual abusers from when Haim was underage in the 1980s. Haim named his abuser to close friends before dying in 2010, and his friends so far have not revealed the name for fear of libel charges.
In the detective work of the many pages of comments, the only guess that makes any sense, and who has a known link to Haim during the mid-1980s, is Rob Reiner. (Charlie Sheen was a popular guess, but the article clearly says someone with a "family-man" facade -- obviously not Sheen, and perhaps a play on words, with Reiner staring in All in the Family.)
How is Reiner linked to Haim at the time of his abuse? From Wikipedia:
And of course Stand By Me stared another former child actor who keeps threatening to call out specific gay pedophiles who control Hollywood -- Corey Feldman, a close friend of Haim's. So there's the early link between Reiner and Feldman.
Was Al Franken joking that this kind of behavior started with Carl setting up his son Rob for abuse by Hollywood pedos, or was he thinly disguising a revelation that Rob himself was the kingpin of a pedo ring in Hollywood? (Or both -- that the practice ran in their Hollywood family?)
Franken is a liberal Jew who became famous in show business, so it's possible he doesn't disapprove of such behavior, and is enjoying the transgression on two levels -- violating the taboo against incest, pedophilia, and homosexuality, and sharing an earth-shattering secret in public, but one that only the in-group realize is truthful.
Then again, he is a do-gooder Minnesota type, so it's possible he disapproves of gay pedo rings in Hollywood, and is trying to shame Reiner as openly as possible while maintaining as much plausible deniability as possible (by switching Reiner's role from adult kingpin to child victim). Franken's tone sounds more dour than titillated, so I favor this explanation. Not all Jewish liberals from show-biz are so far out-there that they delight in thoughts about pedo rings.
This roast from 2000 was before the torrent of coverage in 2002 of Catholic Church abuse of underage boys. So Franken and Reiner might have felt safe to awkwardly take part in a joke about such things.
If you're on Twitter, post that Blind Gossip link whose comments repeatedly bring up Reiner's name as a strong lead for Corey Haim's abuser, and point out the link between Haim and Reiner (and Feldman) from Stand By Me. That is the far bigger story than Al Franken joking about a gay pedo ring (especially if he was only doing that bit in order to publicly hint at Reiner's dirty laundry).
Related post, "Prosecute pedophile rings to delegitimize Hollywood: Winning the culture war without warring over culture"
.@AnnCoulter was right, @alfranken did make BABY RAPE JOKES on Comedy Central in 2000.— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 10, 2017
Absolutely horrifying that this man is a Senator. pic.twitter.com/YluSlsc5FI
After joking about Carl Reiner having inappropriate boundaries with his baby son Rob, Franken goes on to joke about Carl inviting "his famous friends" in Hollywood to rape his child-aged son.
Rob Reiner looks nervous, frazzled, and fidgety throughout the whole thing. Not because he's shocked by the transgressive humor -- he's heard plenty worse in the entertainment business. I wasn't the only one who noticed such a bizarre reaction:
check out rob reiner— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 11, 2017
Now, the culture warriors on the Right are taking aim here at Franken for his taboo-breaking jokes. But in this case, truth may be stranger than fiction.
Here is an article from Radar Online, re-posted with comments at Blind Gossip, which both have a proven track record of accurate sources in the entertainment industry. It is about former child star Corey Haim naming one of his sexual abusers from when Haim was underage in the 1980s. Haim named his abuser to close friends before dying in 2010, and his friends so far have not revealed the name for fear of libel charges.
In the detective work of the many pages of comments, the only guess that makes any sense, and who has a known link to Haim during the mid-1980s, is Rob Reiner. (Charlie Sheen was a popular guess, but the article clearly says someone with a "family-man" facade -- obviously not Sheen, and perhaps a play on words, with Reiner staring in All in the Family.)
How is Reiner linked to Haim at the time of his abuse? From Wikipedia:
Haim had read for River Phoenix's role in Stand By Me while eating lunch in director Rob Reiner's backyard, and got the part the same day that he was offered Lucas. He later said he would not have changed his decision [to go instead with Lucas].
And of course Stand By Me stared another former child actor who keeps threatening to call out specific gay pedophiles who control Hollywood -- Corey Feldman, a close friend of Haim's. So there's the early link between Reiner and Feldman.
Was Al Franken joking that this kind of behavior started with Carl setting up his son Rob for abuse by Hollywood pedos, or was he thinly disguising a revelation that Rob himself was the kingpin of a pedo ring in Hollywood? (Or both -- that the practice ran in their Hollywood family?)
Franken is a liberal Jew who became famous in show business, so it's possible he doesn't disapprove of such behavior, and is enjoying the transgression on two levels -- violating the taboo against incest, pedophilia, and homosexuality, and sharing an earth-shattering secret in public, but one that only the in-group realize is truthful.
Then again, he is a do-gooder Minnesota type, so it's possible he disapproves of gay pedo rings in Hollywood, and is trying to shame Reiner as openly as possible while maintaining as much plausible deniability as possible (by switching Reiner's role from adult kingpin to child victim). Franken's tone sounds more dour than titillated, so I favor this explanation. Not all Jewish liberals from show-biz are so far out-there that they delight in thoughts about pedo rings.
This roast from 2000 was before the torrent of coverage in 2002 of Catholic Church abuse of underage boys. So Franken and Reiner might have felt safe to awkwardly take part in a joke about such things.
If you're on Twitter, post that Blind Gossip link whose comments repeatedly bring up Reiner's name as a strong lead for Corey Haim's abuser, and point out the link between Haim and Reiner (and Feldman) from Stand By Me. That is the far bigger story than Al Franken joking about a gay pedo ring (especially if he was only doing that bit in order to publicly hint at Reiner's dirty laundry).
Related post, "Prosecute pedophile rings to delegitimize Hollywood: Winning the culture war without warring over culture"
December 21, 2016
Is the next Star Wars trailer out yet?
Here was my take on the Star Wars pop cultural experience as of 2016, back when the trailer was released for Rogue One (with links to three earlier posts as well). Nothing about the theatrical release has changed my take.
I haven't heard people reciting memorable lines of dialog, re-enacting key scenes, and so on, as though Rogue One were actually memorable, rather than just another forgettable and disposable chunk of pop culture junk food.
I didn't see The Force Awakens, and won't be seeing this one either. This is more to look at how the general public and Star Wars fans themselves are treating the franchise.
Two key paragraphs from before:
Star Wars has taken on an almost religious quality for its fan-base, which includes larger and larger swaths of the population nowadays.
So, why continue adding to the Star Wars Bible? It just keeps diluting and weakening the impact of the original movies. Enough of this continuing revelation from one false prophet after another.
Midwits liken religion to an opiate of the masses, but that misses the feeling of satiety that religious people come away from each religious experience with. They're "full" for awhile, until they get hungry in awhile, then they'll take part again. They aren't constantly on the brink of withdrawal symptoms, searching for ever greater dosages to bring about the same painkilling effect.
Rather, this is what the cult of Star Wars has degraded into -- a bunch of anhedonic depressives being supplied by Hollywood with pop cultural opium, as quickly and as regularly as their movie-mills can churn the stuff out. Unlike an actual religion, its practitioners feel no joy, satiety, communion, or community -- no more than a crowd of drug-addicted strangers who file into the same crackhouse to get their fix.
Here's to hoping that in the more prosperous and point-having lives we will begin to enjoy as Trump returns America back toward normality, the general public will no longer treat movies, even supposedly sacred ones like Star Wars, in such a degrading way. And, Hollywood will no longer be supplying them with this Force Awakens / Rogue One kind of crap anymore.
I haven't heard people reciting memorable lines of dialog, re-enacting key scenes, and so on, as though Rogue One were actually memorable, rather than just another forgettable and disposable chunk of pop culture junk food.
I didn't see The Force Awakens, and won't be seeing this one either. This is more to look at how the general public and Star Wars fans themselves are treating the franchise.
Two key paragraphs from before:
What's new to observe with the release of this trailer is just how forgotten The Force Awakens has become, not even three months after its release, and even among its hardcore nerd following. Facebook was filled with spazzy Star Wars shit for a few weeks when the new movie came out, but then... nothing. No quoting favorite lines -- evidently the dialog was forgettable. No references to favorite scenes -- evidently all visuals were forgettable. And no gushing over favorite plot points or themes -- evidently the entire narrative was forgettable...
Like I said, the real drama now takes place across the trailers -- one prolonged masturbatory anticipation, brief climax when it's out in theaters, and hardly any resting period before the next obsessive anticipation. Nerds don't want to enjoy the actual experience, they want to geek out over forecasting what it might be like (reminds me of how they behave in another domain of life).
Star Wars has taken on an almost religious quality for its fan-base, which includes larger and larger swaths of the population nowadays.
So, why continue adding to the Star Wars Bible? It just keeps diluting and weakening the impact of the original movies. Enough of this continuing revelation from one false prophet after another.
Midwits liken religion to an opiate of the masses, but that misses the feeling of satiety that religious people come away from each religious experience with. They're "full" for awhile, until they get hungry in awhile, then they'll take part again. They aren't constantly on the brink of withdrawal symptoms, searching for ever greater dosages to bring about the same painkilling effect.
Rather, this is what the cult of Star Wars has degraded into -- a bunch of anhedonic depressives being supplied by Hollywood with pop cultural opium, as quickly and as regularly as their movie-mills can churn the stuff out. Unlike an actual religion, its practitioners feel no joy, satiety, communion, or community -- no more than a crowd of drug-addicted strangers who file into the same crackhouse to get their fix.
Here's to hoping that in the more prosperous and point-having lives we will begin to enjoy as Trump returns America back toward normality, the general public will no longer treat movies, even supposedly sacred ones like Star Wars, in such a degrading way. And, Hollywood will no longer be supplying them with this Force Awakens / Rogue One kind of crap anymore.
October 20, 2016
2000 election was delegitimized by Congressmen, media, and pop culture -- for years
The latest attempt by the clueless Establishment is to make it sound like Trump is some kind of extremist by making his acceptance of the election results contingent on there being no shenanigans that deprive him of his rightful votes. According to a narrative that's only been created during the past week, the United States has a long glorious tradition of never questioning the outcome of a presidential election.
Time for a quick reminder.
The 2000 election not only saw the apparent loser refuse to concede -- sue, sue, sue -- but his supporters at all levels (voters, media, etc.) continue to call Bush illegitimate for a long time after.
They didn't obstruct his rule, probably only due to the post-9/11 climate, but they certainly did not consider him the legitimate winner.
As for the voters, I attended Bush's first inauguration with other anti-globalization activists, and there were yuge numbers of mainstream Gore voters from the DC metro area who were there protesting, holding up signs, shouting, etc., about how Bush didn't really win, the Florida voters were robbed, and so on. Estimated protest size: 20,000.
This was after he'd already been sworn in as President, not when his status was still in limbo.
The protests were not far removed from the event but right along the motorcade route, which flew by so fast we barely saw his car. If he'd come by at a regular waving-to-the-crowd pace, he would've gotten pelted with so many eggs, plastic bottles, and random debris.
It was raining, too -- such a dreary atmosphere, with over half the crowd being against the President, who they were still insisting was not really the President.
Don't believe me? Here is a clip from Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911, whose pre-titles sequence focuses on the theft of Florida by Bush in 2000. At 6:00, they show the protests at the inauguration, just how I remember it. Hardly a frictionless, objection-free passing of power.
At around 3:30, a bunch of Congressional Representatives lodge objections to the official decision to make Bush the President-Elect. No Senators, though, as required.
Make an example of every one of those Reps, if they're still serving. Maxine Waters is there -- ask her about questioning the legitimacy of an election all the way through the official anointing by Congress.
And ask Michael Moore why he was still questioning Bush's legitimacy four years later: the protesters poured into the streets "in one last attempt to reclaim what had been taken from them".
This movie was released during the summer before the re-election, to try to unseat Bush in part by re-litigating the very legitimacy of his presidency. It was a smash hit, grossing $222 million (the most for any documentary ever), and winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Hardly a marginal example from popular culture -- four years later.
Those protests at the inauguration show signs with a common charge -- "Hail to the Thief". While googling to find some old-internet articles with that phrase, I learned that it's also the title of a (probably crappy) album by Radiohead from 2003, which was a top 5 album around the world. Three years after the election, and they still could not get over it. From Wikipedia's description (emphasis added):
I'm not going to mine the internet for further examples, since these are all sufficient to make the point. Anyone who didn't vote for Bush was convinced that the 2000 election was stolen, and were still bitterly vocal about it years and years later.
Every Establishment dicksucker who's whining about Trump breaking with ARE ELECTORAL CUSTOMS is covering up the truth about a presidential election from just four cycles ago.
If they try to steal this election, it'll be the Florida recount in a steel cage death match. Trump will have numerous Representatives to object to an attempt by Congress to anoint Crooked Hillary, and he would have at least one Senator this time -- Jeff Sessions.
Unlike wimpy Al Gore, Trump is a brawler and will not relent. More importantly, high-energy Trump voters would not just bitch and moan like the Gore voters. Unless the Establishment wants to see Bikers For Trump getting into a road war with the US Army right there on the steps of the Capitol Building, they'd better tighten the screws on the local election officials to make sure that there's not even a whiff of election theft.
The will of the people is for the incumbent party to be changed up. If they do not go the easy way, angry mobs will make them go the hard way. Let's hope there is enough residual sanity and survival instinct left in the decadent corrupt Establishment for them to transition peacefully.
Time for a quick reminder.
The 2000 election not only saw the apparent loser refuse to concede -- sue, sue, sue -- but his supporters at all levels (voters, media, etc.) continue to call Bush illegitimate for a long time after.
They didn't obstruct his rule, probably only due to the post-9/11 climate, but they certainly did not consider him the legitimate winner.
As for the voters, I attended Bush's first inauguration with other anti-globalization activists, and there were yuge numbers of mainstream Gore voters from the DC metro area who were there protesting, holding up signs, shouting, etc., about how Bush didn't really win, the Florida voters were robbed, and so on. Estimated protest size: 20,000.
This was after he'd already been sworn in as President, not when his status was still in limbo.
The protests were not far removed from the event but right along the motorcade route, which flew by so fast we barely saw his car. If he'd come by at a regular waving-to-the-crowd pace, he would've gotten pelted with so many eggs, plastic bottles, and random debris.
It was raining, too -- such a dreary atmosphere, with over half the crowd being against the President, who they were still insisting was not really the President.
Don't believe me? Here is a clip from Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911, whose pre-titles sequence focuses on the theft of Florida by Bush in 2000. At 6:00, they show the protests at the inauguration, just how I remember it. Hardly a frictionless, objection-free passing of power.
At around 3:30, a bunch of Congressional Representatives lodge objections to the official decision to make Bush the President-Elect. No Senators, though, as required.
Make an example of every one of those Reps, if they're still serving. Maxine Waters is there -- ask her about questioning the legitimacy of an election all the way through the official anointing by Congress.
And ask Michael Moore why he was still questioning Bush's legitimacy four years later: the protesters poured into the streets "in one last attempt to reclaim what had been taken from them".
This movie was released during the summer before the re-election, to try to unseat Bush in part by re-litigating the very legitimacy of his presidency. It was a smash hit, grossing $222 million (the most for any documentary ever), and winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Hardly a marginal example from popular culture -- four years later.
Those protests at the inauguration show signs with a common charge -- "Hail to the Thief". While googling to find some old-internet articles with that phrase, I learned that it's also the title of a (probably crappy) album by Radiohead from 2003, which was a top 5 album around the world. Three years after the election, and they still could not get over it. From Wikipedia's description (emphasis added):
Radiohead chose the title partly to "state the bleeding obvious ... that the most powerful country on earth is run by somebody who stole an election", but also in response to "the rise of doublethink and general intolerance and madness, and feeling very much like individuals were totally out of control of the situation that somehow it was a manifestation of something not really human."
I'm not going to mine the internet for further examples, since these are all sufficient to make the point. Anyone who didn't vote for Bush was convinced that the 2000 election was stolen, and were still bitterly vocal about it years and years later.
Every Establishment dicksucker who's whining about Trump breaking with ARE ELECTORAL CUSTOMS is covering up the truth about a presidential election from just four cycles ago.
If they try to steal this election, it'll be the Florida recount in a steel cage death match. Trump will have numerous Representatives to object to an attempt by Congress to anoint Crooked Hillary, and he would have at least one Senator this time -- Jeff Sessions.
Unlike wimpy Al Gore, Trump is a brawler and will not relent. More importantly, high-energy Trump voters would not just bitch and moan like the Gore voters. Unless the Establishment wants to see Bikers For Trump getting into a road war with the US Army right there on the steps of the Capitol Building, they'd better tighten the screws on the local election officials to make sure that there's not even a whiff of election theft.
The will of the people is for the incumbent party to be changed up. If they do not go the easy way, angry mobs will make them go the hard way. Let's hope there is enough residual sanity and survival instinct left in the decadent corrupt Establishment for them to transition peacefully.
April 8, 2016
Star Wars: The Already Forgotten Sequel
If you've got even one nerd that shows up in your Facebook feed, you learned today that a trailer came out for the new Star Wars movie. I've already explained that the new movies are cosplay fanfiction, that the release of trailers for them is a new form of serial drama, and that the nerd obsession with butt-kicking babe characters is a form of latent transgender fantasy.
The trailer for Rogue One proves that all three key aspects of the sequels are going to infect the two anthology movies. Rather than being a quirk of the first director, they represent Disney knowing exactly what kind of content-chow the nerd audiences want, and supplying them shamelessly.
What's new to observe with the release of this trailer is just how forgotten The Force Awakens has become, not even three months after its release, and even among its hardcore nerd following. Facebook was filled with spazzy Star Wars shit for a few weeks when the new movie came out, but then... nothing. No quoting favorite lines -- evidently the dialog was forgettable. No references to favorite scenes -- evidently all visuals were forgettable. And no gushing over favorite plot points or themes -- evidently the entire narrative was forgettable.
The very same week that the DVD is released, there's already a BRAND NEW TRAILER for the lame anthology movie out later this year. No time off at all, just swill the content for The Force Awakens, and by the time it works itself out into a large belch, your gut is ready for another swill, this time from Rogue One. And by the time you belch that one out, there will be another of the sequels, belch, another anthology, belch, and finally another sequel, belch, and then all will be forgotten. Onto the next year-after-year geekout for some other nerd goldmine franchise.
I figured the nerds would pick apart the plot of The Force Awakens like they did Phantom Menace, pro or con, begin imitating characters either lovingly or mockingly ("Meesa hungry, meesa gonna make hot pocket and ramen noodle again for breakfast!"), and otherwise get familiar with it. But they've already flushed it all out of their system, to make room for their obsessing and spazzing over Rogue One.
Like I said, the real drama now takes place across the trailers -- one prolonged masturbatory anticipation, brief climax when it's out in theaters, and hardly any resting period before the next obsessive anticipation. Nerds don't want to enjoy the actual experience, they want to geek out over forecasting what it might be like (reminds me of how they behave in another domain of life).
Sadly, it's not only the hardcore nerds who are showing this addiction treadmill response to the new Star Wars movies. These days the whole movie-going audience is full of junkies in search of another quick fix before feeling empty by the time they get home. It'll be a miracle if anyone still feels attached to today's movies in just five years, let alone the rest of their lives.
The trailer for Rogue One proves that all three key aspects of the sequels are going to infect the two anthology movies. Rather than being a quirk of the first director, they represent Disney knowing exactly what kind of content-chow the nerd audiences want, and supplying them shamelessly.
What's new to observe with the release of this trailer is just how forgotten The Force Awakens has become, not even three months after its release, and even among its hardcore nerd following. Facebook was filled with spazzy Star Wars shit for a few weeks when the new movie came out, but then... nothing. No quoting favorite lines -- evidently the dialog was forgettable. No references to favorite scenes -- evidently all visuals were forgettable. And no gushing over favorite plot points or themes -- evidently the entire narrative was forgettable.
The very same week that the DVD is released, there's already a BRAND NEW TRAILER for the lame anthology movie out later this year. No time off at all, just swill the content for The Force Awakens, and by the time it works itself out into a large belch, your gut is ready for another swill, this time from Rogue One. And by the time you belch that one out, there will be another of the sequels, belch, another anthology, belch, and finally another sequel, belch, and then all will be forgotten. Onto the next year-after-year geekout for some other nerd goldmine franchise.
I figured the nerds would pick apart the plot of The Force Awakens like they did Phantom Menace, pro or con, begin imitating characters either lovingly or mockingly ("Meesa hungry, meesa gonna make hot pocket and ramen noodle again for breakfast!"), and otherwise get familiar with it. But they've already flushed it all out of their system, to make room for their obsessing and spazzing over Rogue One.
Like I said, the real drama now takes place across the trailers -- one prolonged masturbatory anticipation, brief climax when it's out in theaters, and hardly any resting period before the next obsessive anticipation. Nerds don't want to enjoy the actual experience, they want to geek out over forecasting what it might be like (reminds me of how they behave in another domain of life).
Sadly, it's not only the hardcore nerds who are showing this addiction treadmill response to the new Star Wars movies. These days the whole movie-going audience is full of junkies in search of another quick fix before feeling empty by the time they get home. It'll be a miracle if anyone still feels attached to today's movies in just five years, let alone the rest of their lives.
February 8, 2016
Lifestyle strivers compete in domains where stuff is still "made in America"
People who compete for status in the lifestyle arena, as opposed to the career arena, have settled on two main battlegrounds -- food, and leisure activities. (See earlier posts on the career vs. lifestyle vs. persona contests here and here.)
In practice, "leisure activities" nowadays means what kind of entertainment you consume in your free time. Only a minority of lifestyle strivers are very into competing over rock-climbing, yoga, skiing, and other physical activities outside the home. All lifestyle strivers, though, are heavily invested in contests over the kinds of entertainment they consume, mostly while relaxing at home.
Food works as a status contest in the lifestyle domain because it's part of a person's regular routine, and there's enough innate interest in it already for the pleasure that it gives, rather than some boring part of a person's routine that would not energize a competition. The same goes for entertainment.
And yet for all of the exotic novelty that lifestyle strivers aim for -- to distinguish their lifestyles as beyond the familiar, pedestrian norm -- the actual objects of their competition are still made right here in America (or other culturally familiar first-world countries).
It's one thing to show your Facebook friends that you had beef cooked in a Mexican style -- carne asada -- but it's quite another to eat beef that is from Mexico. You want the raw materials to be American (or first-world), and only the style of preparing them into a final meal to be exotic. You wouldn't want to risk food poisoning at every meal and cut short your lifetime career of uploading food pictures to your social media accounts.
It's also telling how little the entertainment strivers consume of foreign media. Remember -- one of their goals is to show how their tastes are beyond the familiar norm, e.g. by eating carne asada and drinking horchata. Why don't they brag about their consumption of Mexican TV shows or movies? The language barrier is not the answer, since they can be watched with subtitles, and again they otherwise prefer the status boost from exotic and hard-to-pronounce stuff.
The simplest explanation seems to be that they recognize how crappy the production of Mexican entertainment is, especially compared to first-world standards. The quality of acting, the cameras, the lighting, the sound recording, editing, directing, etc. -- some or all of these elements are just not up to snuff.
Yes, there's a tiny niche of film dorks who compete over who has seen the most obscure hits of foreign cinema, but that's been going on for a long time, and has not grown as a phenomenon. On the other hand, 40 years ago nobody held contests over who was a bigger fan of The Bionic Woman, or who could micro-analyze the social world of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or who had boosted their status in a single day by binge-watching an entire season of The Waltons. These days, TV shows are so obsessed over and fought over, it's pathetic. But they're all made right here in America, or England.
It's not just due to the greater supply of higher-quality TV shows now vs. the '70s, because it isn't only Mad Men and the like that are obsessed over. Lifestyle strivers hold contests over utterly pedestrian crap like The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: SVU, Orphan Black, and whatever other gay-vampire-detective junk they're running in primetime.
Perhaps the clearest comparison can be drawn between the appeal to lifestyle strivers of clothing and accessories on the one hand, and grooming items on the other. Both clothing and grooming are part of your regular routine, and there's an existing interest in seeing what other people look like. And they're part of the same lifestyle domain -- your daily presentation to other people.
However, most clothing, shoes, hats, etc. are made in third-world sweatshops, whereas most grooming items are made right here in America. Even the $2 shampoo from a big box store says "Made in USA," whereas even a higher-end clothing item like a merino wool sweater from Banana Republic says "Made in China".
So which one do the lifestyle strivers do the most battle over? Just go to any retail store, and notice how much grooming stuff there is. Aisles and endless aisles of striver-oriented grooming products.
Clothing is subject to fashion cycles, but lifestyle strivers don't seem to make use of it in their battles over who is cooler than who else. Competing over clothing is more of a niche thing, and even then it's over clothing made in the first world. Competing over grooming products couldn't be more widespread, when any given supermarket offers men dozens of hairstyling materials, deodorant scents, and vitamin-supplemented moisturizers.
On YouTube, the most popular female lifestyle strivers are part of the contests over hair products, makeup, and the like -- not so much clothing, shoes, or bags. Ditto for male strivers -- they're not as obsessed over either one or the other, but they're still more likely to obsess over hair products, beard oils, shaving cream, cologne, and so on, rather than apparel.
The one possible exception is technology products that are made in the third world, but that play a key role in lifestyle status contests -- iPhone / MacBook, Skullcandy headphones, Nintendo DS, etc. Toting these devices around and showing them off to others is part of their regular routine, and there's interest in who has what. Why don't people mind that they're all Chinese crud?
But that misses the difference between the device and the media that it's used to access. Strivers obsess over TV shows -- all of which are made in America -- but not really over the television sets themselves. Whatever will do, will do, as long as they stream the shows that the strivers have to stay on top of in order to be part of the coolness competition.
It's no different with desktop or laptop computers, smartphones, headphones, or video game consoles -- the media that they provide to the user are all designed and produced in the first world. Internet sites, smartphone apps, pop music, video games -- all made in the first world.
So, even in the world of lifestyle competition, where the point is to move away from competing over career, wealth, and materialism, there is still a vexing concern about how high-quality the materials and labor process were that went into making the stuff needed to carry out their lifestyle contests.
This gives insight into why folks back East are more in favor of Trump's campaign to "Make America Great Again" by bringing back manufacturing to the US (darker colors mean greater support for Trump):
People are more career-striving back East, and are more concerned with the quality of material possessions -- TVs, cars, clothing, furniture, and so on. What is made now is crap, and hardly worth bragging about in a status contest. Imagine trying to preen over some crappy IKEA coffee table made out of Chinese frankenlumber (albeit "assembled in America" -- by you).
Out West, the focus is more on lifestyle contests, and the raw materials and labor that go into the relevant products are already made here in America. They're not really what we think of as possessions, though, but more like the material or immaterial stuff that greases our daily lifestyle routines. They don't see what the big deal is, when it's American or first-world materials and labor that produce their pumpkin spice granola, craft beer, tea tree oil shampoo, TV shows, movies, smartphone apps, and even video games.
To the out-West mind, it's "Why so gloom and doom about the state of the economy?" Hence the focus instead on social and cultural values rather than matters of the economy and government, whether that's in the blue-state or red-state flavor of out-West values orientation.
All you beard-oiling, Walking Dead binge-watchers out West of the Mississippi should be throwing your support to Trump rather than the regional favorite Cruz, or just stay out of the way altogether. You can continue jerking yourselves off about who's the bigger craft beer aficionado, while the materialists back East are busy bringing back quality-made stuff to our country, and in the process restoring dignity, prosperity, and freedom to the working and middle classes who will be powering those formerly long-gone sectors of the economy.
In practice, "leisure activities" nowadays means what kind of entertainment you consume in your free time. Only a minority of lifestyle strivers are very into competing over rock-climbing, yoga, skiing, and other physical activities outside the home. All lifestyle strivers, though, are heavily invested in contests over the kinds of entertainment they consume, mostly while relaxing at home.
Food works as a status contest in the lifestyle domain because it's part of a person's regular routine, and there's enough innate interest in it already for the pleasure that it gives, rather than some boring part of a person's routine that would not energize a competition. The same goes for entertainment.
And yet for all of the exotic novelty that lifestyle strivers aim for -- to distinguish their lifestyles as beyond the familiar, pedestrian norm -- the actual objects of their competition are still made right here in America (or other culturally familiar first-world countries).
It's one thing to show your Facebook friends that you had beef cooked in a Mexican style -- carne asada -- but it's quite another to eat beef that is from Mexico. You want the raw materials to be American (or first-world), and only the style of preparing them into a final meal to be exotic. You wouldn't want to risk food poisoning at every meal and cut short your lifetime career of uploading food pictures to your social media accounts.
It's also telling how little the entertainment strivers consume of foreign media. Remember -- one of their goals is to show how their tastes are beyond the familiar norm, e.g. by eating carne asada and drinking horchata. Why don't they brag about their consumption of Mexican TV shows or movies? The language barrier is not the answer, since they can be watched with subtitles, and again they otherwise prefer the status boost from exotic and hard-to-pronounce stuff.
The simplest explanation seems to be that they recognize how crappy the production of Mexican entertainment is, especially compared to first-world standards. The quality of acting, the cameras, the lighting, the sound recording, editing, directing, etc. -- some or all of these elements are just not up to snuff.
Yes, there's a tiny niche of film dorks who compete over who has seen the most obscure hits of foreign cinema, but that's been going on for a long time, and has not grown as a phenomenon. On the other hand, 40 years ago nobody held contests over who was a bigger fan of The Bionic Woman, or who could micro-analyze the social world of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or who had boosted their status in a single day by binge-watching an entire season of The Waltons. These days, TV shows are so obsessed over and fought over, it's pathetic. But they're all made right here in America, or England.
It's not just due to the greater supply of higher-quality TV shows now vs. the '70s, because it isn't only Mad Men and the like that are obsessed over. Lifestyle strivers hold contests over utterly pedestrian crap like The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: SVU, Orphan Black, and whatever other gay-vampire-detective junk they're running in primetime.
Perhaps the clearest comparison can be drawn between the appeal to lifestyle strivers of clothing and accessories on the one hand, and grooming items on the other. Both clothing and grooming are part of your regular routine, and there's an existing interest in seeing what other people look like. And they're part of the same lifestyle domain -- your daily presentation to other people.
However, most clothing, shoes, hats, etc. are made in third-world sweatshops, whereas most grooming items are made right here in America. Even the $2 shampoo from a big box store says "Made in USA," whereas even a higher-end clothing item like a merino wool sweater from Banana Republic says "Made in China".
So which one do the lifestyle strivers do the most battle over? Just go to any retail store, and notice how much grooming stuff there is. Aisles and endless aisles of striver-oriented grooming products.
Clothing is subject to fashion cycles, but lifestyle strivers don't seem to make use of it in their battles over who is cooler than who else. Competing over clothing is more of a niche thing, and even then it's over clothing made in the first world. Competing over grooming products couldn't be more widespread, when any given supermarket offers men dozens of hairstyling materials, deodorant scents, and vitamin-supplemented moisturizers.
On YouTube, the most popular female lifestyle strivers are part of the contests over hair products, makeup, and the like -- not so much clothing, shoes, or bags. Ditto for male strivers -- they're not as obsessed over either one or the other, but they're still more likely to obsess over hair products, beard oils, shaving cream, cologne, and so on, rather than apparel.
The one possible exception is technology products that are made in the third world, but that play a key role in lifestyle status contests -- iPhone / MacBook, Skullcandy headphones, Nintendo DS, etc. Toting these devices around and showing them off to others is part of their regular routine, and there's interest in who has what. Why don't people mind that they're all Chinese crud?
But that misses the difference between the device and the media that it's used to access. Strivers obsess over TV shows -- all of which are made in America -- but not really over the television sets themselves. Whatever will do, will do, as long as they stream the shows that the strivers have to stay on top of in order to be part of the coolness competition.
It's no different with desktop or laptop computers, smartphones, headphones, or video game consoles -- the media that they provide to the user are all designed and produced in the first world. Internet sites, smartphone apps, pop music, video games -- all made in the first world.
So, even in the world of lifestyle competition, where the point is to move away from competing over career, wealth, and materialism, there is still a vexing concern about how high-quality the materials and labor process were that went into making the stuff needed to carry out their lifestyle contests.
This gives insight into why folks back East are more in favor of Trump's campaign to "Make America Great Again" by bringing back manufacturing to the US (darker colors mean greater support for Trump):
People are more career-striving back East, and are more concerned with the quality of material possessions -- TVs, cars, clothing, furniture, and so on. What is made now is crap, and hardly worth bragging about in a status contest. Imagine trying to preen over some crappy IKEA coffee table made out of Chinese frankenlumber (albeit "assembled in America" -- by you).
Out West, the focus is more on lifestyle contests, and the raw materials and labor that go into the relevant products are already made here in America. They're not really what we think of as possessions, though, but more like the material or immaterial stuff that greases our daily lifestyle routines. They don't see what the big deal is, when it's American or first-world materials and labor that produce their pumpkin spice granola, craft beer, tea tree oil shampoo, TV shows, movies, smartphone apps, and even video games.
To the out-West mind, it's "Why so gloom and doom about the state of the economy?" Hence the focus instead on social and cultural values rather than matters of the economy and government, whether that's in the blue-state or red-state flavor of out-West values orientation.
All you beard-oiling, Walking Dead binge-watchers out West of the Mississippi should be throwing your support to Trump rather than the regional favorite Cruz, or just stay out of the way altogether. You can continue jerking yourselves off about who's the bigger craft beer aficionado, while the materialists back East are busy bringing back quality-made stuff to our country, and in the process restoring dignity, prosperity, and freedom to the working and middle classes who will be powering those formerly long-gone sectors of the economy.
January 11, 2016
Goblin King RIP (the generations reflect on David Bowie)
That's the in memoriam of David Bowie on social media that seems about as common as referring to Ziggy Stardust. How people are responding to a cultural figure so long-lived and influential reveals some interesting generational differences.
Early Gen X-ers remember his musical personas from Ziggy Stardust through the Thin White Duke. They imprinted on him via the radio, the turntable, and MTV.
Millennials make up a good part of those referring to Labyrinth. They seem to recall his role in the movie more than his crafting of the soundtrack. This reflects a pattern I've detailed earlier (here and here) about how their only memories involve pop culture rather than the outside world, and how movies, TV shows, and video games replaced what should have been real-life experiences.
Unlike an audio-visual narrative like a movie or an immersive video game, music does not simulate or substitute for a real-life experience. Escapist Millennials are not drawn much to music in the first place, they remember little of what they do hear, and they remain emotionally attached to even less. So they're going to remember Bowie as the character of the Goblin King, and not the singer of "Magic Dance" and all the other great songs from the soundtrack.
Late Gen X-ers are also remembering his performance in Labyrinth, but equally for the music as for the persona. This movie played a special role in their development, as the final event in what was a mini-phenomenon during their childhood -- dark-toned fantasy films starring youngsters who find themselves without adult protection in a topsy-turvy world. (See footnote for a list.) This genre came and went during just a five-year period (1982-1986), so the elementary school-aged children who made up its audience were born from about 1970 to 1980.
In their minds, the Goblin King isn't just some cool character from a cherished childhood movie -- he's a reminder of the shadowy people who the unsupervised children of the 1980s could have run across while out roaming around public places, a real-life memory association that is lacking among the Millennials.
And nobody could have played that role better than Bowie. He needed to be more than just a cookie-cutter villain, more of a trickster whose anarchic tendency was seductive. For the boys, it meant bending the rules without getting caught. For the girls, it meant the allure of the intimidating yet tantalizing older man. (It's clear from their responses that late Gen-X women had a huge crush on the Goblin King.)
Consequence-free rule-bending and attraction to older dreamy strangers -- two qualities of the Eighties youth atmosphere that these late Gen X-ers remember with more than a twinge of awkwardness, almost like they expect to have seen him on one of those public service announcements after G.I. Joe or Jem reminding them to be cautious around strangers who invite you into their car. Awkward as those memories may feel, they're still a defining mark of their maturation, and they can't help but fondly remember the Goblin King.
Bowie's songs for Labyrinth had a similar effect on their budding audience, introducing them to more mature sounds and themes rather than patronizing and pandering to them. Once helicopter parenting took off, this approach would strike their mom and dad as letting some stranger throw their child into the deep end. But the songs are simple and accessible to youngsters, allowing them to later grow into the music that Bowie intended strictly for adults.
In fact, only "Magic Dance" sounds like it was written for children and has a music video showcasing the Jim Henson puppets of the movie. However, if you were a grown-up, you would not have guessed that "As the World Falls Down" and "Underground" were not aimed at the adult contemporary demographic. Neither do the videos play up the songs' origins in a children's movie, but look like any other adult-oriented Bowie video:
So, if you're puzzled by why so many are remembering him for his performance in Labyrinth, that's why. He was the last popular figure to throw the kids into the social and emotional deep end -- for their own good -- a quality that resonates especially with children who lived through the climate of the early-to-mid 1980s.
* The genre consists of:
1982 The Secret of NIMH
1983 Something Wicked This Way Comes
1984 The NeverEnding Story
1985 Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass (TV movie)
1985 Black Cauldron
1985 Return to Oz
1986 Labyrinth
Early Gen X-ers remember his musical personas from Ziggy Stardust through the Thin White Duke. They imprinted on him via the radio, the turntable, and MTV.
Millennials make up a good part of those referring to Labyrinth. They seem to recall his role in the movie more than his crafting of the soundtrack. This reflects a pattern I've detailed earlier (here and here) about how their only memories involve pop culture rather than the outside world, and how movies, TV shows, and video games replaced what should have been real-life experiences.
Unlike an audio-visual narrative like a movie or an immersive video game, music does not simulate or substitute for a real-life experience. Escapist Millennials are not drawn much to music in the first place, they remember little of what they do hear, and they remain emotionally attached to even less. So they're going to remember Bowie as the character of the Goblin King, and not the singer of "Magic Dance" and all the other great songs from the soundtrack.
Late Gen X-ers are also remembering his performance in Labyrinth, but equally for the music as for the persona. This movie played a special role in their development, as the final event in what was a mini-phenomenon during their childhood -- dark-toned fantasy films starring youngsters who find themselves without adult protection in a topsy-turvy world. (See footnote for a list.) This genre came and went during just a five-year period (1982-1986), so the elementary school-aged children who made up its audience were born from about 1970 to 1980.
In their minds, the Goblin King isn't just some cool character from a cherished childhood movie -- he's a reminder of the shadowy people who the unsupervised children of the 1980s could have run across while out roaming around public places, a real-life memory association that is lacking among the Millennials.
And nobody could have played that role better than Bowie. He needed to be more than just a cookie-cutter villain, more of a trickster whose anarchic tendency was seductive. For the boys, it meant bending the rules without getting caught. For the girls, it meant the allure of the intimidating yet tantalizing older man. (It's clear from their responses that late Gen-X women had a huge crush on the Goblin King.)
Consequence-free rule-bending and attraction to older dreamy strangers -- two qualities of the Eighties youth atmosphere that these late Gen X-ers remember with more than a twinge of awkwardness, almost like they expect to have seen him on one of those public service announcements after G.I. Joe or Jem reminding them to be cautious around strangers who invite you into their car. Awkward as those memories may feel, they're still a defining mark of their maturation, and they can't help but fondly remember the Goblin King.
Bowie's songs for Labyrinth had a similar effect on their budding audience, introducing them to more mature sounds and themes rather than patronizing and pandering to them. Once helicopter parenting took off, this approach would strike their mom and dad as letting some stranger throw their child into the deep end. But the songs are simple and accessible to youngsters, allowing them to later grow into the music that Bowie intended strictly for adults.
In fact, only "Magic Dance" sounds like it was written for children and has a music video showcasing the Jim Henson puppets of the movie. However, if you were a grown-up, you would not have guessed that "As the World Falls Down" and "Underground" were not aimed at the adult contemporary demographic. Neither do the videos play up the songs' origins in a children's movie, but look like any other adult-oriented Bowie video:
So, if you're puzzled by why so many are remembering him for his performance in Labyrinth, that's why. He was the last popular figure to throw the kids into the social and emotional deep end -- for their own good -- a quality that resonates especially with children who lived through the climate of the early-to-mid 1980s.
* The genre consists of:
1982 The Secret of NIMH
1983 Something Wicked This Way Comes
1984 The NeverEnding Story
1985 Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass (TV movie)
1985 Black Cauldron
1985 Return to Oz
1986 Labyrinth
December 18, 2015
Star Wars fan service reveals latent transgender fantasies of nerd audience (butt-kicking babe protagonist)
From a comment I left at Uncouth Reflections, on the topic of progressive status signaling in the creation of the new Star Wars movie:
* * * * *
I’m more convinced that the whole butt-kicking babe trope has little to do with progressive status signaling, but is instead a form of autogynephilia — nerd boys feeling an emotional rush from imagining themselves as babes — mixed with standard nerd revenge fantasies against vapid jocks (that’s why she has to be a butt-kicking, patriarchy-thwarting babe, rather than a housewife babe or a supermodel babe).
I call these types “latent transgenders” because they don’t openly present as female (cross-dressing, etc.), but still invest loads of psychic energy in a make-believe persona where they’re female (why not imagine themselves as butt-kicking dudes?). See earlier posts on the general topic and the specific example of women's MMA.
The butt-kicking babe tends not to engage in any sexual activity because the socially stunted nerds are still in the stage of development where they’d rather receive a bunch of attention for being awesome (hot), rather than get into an adolescent or adult relationship. And seeing their avatar get it on might make them feel gay — which I don’t think they are. Unless, of course, their avatar gets it on with another girl — an increasingly popular scenario for nerd masturbation in 2015.
If the babe were the object rather than the subject of nerd sexual fantasy, meaning someone he wanted to bed, then the butt-kicking babe would get it on with a male character with whom the nerd viewer would identify. But she doesn't, so it's not a typical pornographic portrayal. It's something much weirder, where they identify with the babe herself rather than the guy who gets to bed her.
Progs don’t really care about Star Wars, and besides the creators are already fully leveled up members of the prog clan. There’s little left for them to gain. And girls are much more amenable to playing with boy-oriented toys than vice versa, so they don’t care if the protagonist is male.
The over-riding rationale for making this movie is fan service — offering any drug that fanboys are addicted to, and spiking the potency to 11. Therefore the point of making the protag a butt-kicking babe must also be part of nerd wish fulfillment, i.e. to stoke their latent transgender revenge fantasies.
“Would you Force me? I’d Force me.”
* * * * *
I’m more convinced that the whole butt-kicking babe trope has little to do with progressive status signaling, but is instead a form of autogynephilia — nerd boys feeling an emotional rush from imagining themselves as babes — mixed with standard nerd revenge fantasies against vapid jocks (that’s why she has to be a butt-kicking, patriarchy-thwarting babe, rather than a housewife babe or a supermodel babe).
I call these types “latent transgenders” because they don’t openly present as female (cross-dressing, etc.), but still invest loads of psychic energy in a make-believe persona where they’re female (why not imagine themselves as butt-kicking dudes?). See earlier posts on the general topic and the specific example of women's MMA.
The butt-kicking babe tends not to engage in any sexual activity because the socially stunted nerds are still in the stage of development where they’d rather receive a bunch of attention for being awesome (hot), rather than get into an adolescent or adult relationship. And seeing their avatar get it on might make them feel gay — which I don’t think they are. Unless, of course, their avatar gets it on with another girl — an increasingly popular scenario for nerd masturbation in 2015.
If the babe were the object rather than the subject of nerd sexual fantasy, meaning someone he wanted to bed, then the butt-kicking babe would get it on with a male character with whom the nerd viewer would identify. But she doesn't, so it's not a typical pornographic portrayal. It's something much weirder, where they identify with the babe herself rather than the guy who gets to bed her.
Progs don’t really care about Star Wars, and besides the creators are already fully leveled up members of the prog clan. There’s little left for them to gain. And girls are much more amenable to playing with boy-oriented toys than vice versa, so they don’t care if the protagonist is male.
The over-riding rationale for making this movie is fan service — offering any drug that fanboys are addicted to, and spiking the potency to 11. Therefore the point of making the protag a butt-kicking babe must also be part of nerd wish fulfillment, i.e. to stoke their latent transgender revenge fantasies.
“Would you Force me? I’d Force me.”
December 1, 2015
Movie theater experience less powerful with new seating style
When I caught Spectre this weekend, it was the first time I'd been to one of those movie theaters with Starbucks seating -- large comfy recliners in a variety of arrangements, some adjacent all the way down the row, some in a pair (like a loveseat with an optional armrest divider), and some singletons. Kind of like this:
Not a fan of the new seating style (but you already knew that).
The overly comfy recliners made my body feel like I'm at a friend's house watching a late-night movie on TV or VHS, kind of getting prepared to doze off. After a brief experiment with the recliner part up, I kept it down for the rest of the movie.
Overstuffed furniture also keeps you from ever getting that "edge of your seat" feeling. How are you supposed to resonate with the on-screen tension when you're sunken into a cushion-cloud? Worse when the chairs are highback and give you a nice comfy headrest to fall asleep against.
Aside from the construction of the seats, allowing some of the arrangement to be singleton seats and isolated loveseats weakened the feeling of all the audience being part of the same group (unless you were in the traditional row section). It didn't cancel it out, but being that spread-out does take away from the "all in the same boat" experience.
That, too, made it feel more like a teenage sleepover, more informal, where there's a couple people over here, a couple people over there, some others back over there. Not like a more formal and close-together seating arrangement for what's supposed to be a more group-bonding experience than a sleepover -- the pews in a church, the bleachers in a sports stadium.
Attending church services or a football game is not an ordinary experience, and does not take place in an ordinary setting. It's only fitting that the seating be outside of the ordinary as well. Going to the movies is supposed to be that way too -- taking place outside of the home, with seating suited to "audience attending a performance" rather than "group of folks just hanging around," where they're more focused on each other than on the movie.
In short, making the movie theater feel like home makes the experience feel less special, less powerful, and less memorable. It's not unlike the drive-in craze of the cocooning Midcentury. Cocooners just feel too awkward being out in public, so they make the owners of public places re-shape them to feel more like home.
The high points for watching movies as part of a superorganic audience were low points for cocooning behavior -- the 1920s and the 1980s. In the former time, it was the heyday of the "picture palace," while in the latter it was the "multiplex," both attempts at creating a larger-than-life spectacle of the place where we went to the movies.
Central to both types of theaters, or even the relatively more mundane one-screen theaters of the Midcentury, was the seating. Arranged in rows, enough upholstery on the seat and the back to make it comfortable without feeling comfy, backs high enough to support the shoulders but not a sleepy neck and head, shallow seats that everyone can feel on the edge of, and no damn cupholders on the arms.
Cupholders on a chair's arm does make it feel out of the ordinary, but not in the right way. It makes it seem like the purpose of going to the movie theater is to fill up on junk food, rather than to watch a performance. Going to the movies is supposed to stimulate your fight-or-flight system, not rest-and-digest.
While the overall architecture of the picture palaces may be superior, I actually prefer the spatial layout of the multiplex, which feels like a Gothic castle (or so I imagine) -- first a grand entrance where folks mill around, then a trek down one of several dark tunnel-like hallways, settling into one of many large private chambers for a shared spectacle with the lights off, and then when the movie's over retracing your path during the cognitive and emotional decompression. We need that winding-down experience after a good cathartic movie, not just walking straight out the exit door and emerging instantly back into the ordinary world.
How many other experiences, whether everyday or special, lead you through that kind of layout? If Netflix and Redbox kill off the multiplexes, we are going to lose the only place we have to navigate a dimly lit labyrinth in an enjoyable way.
Not a fan of the new seating style (but you already knew that).
The overly comfy recliners made my body feel like I'm at a friend's house watching a late-night movie on TV or VHS, kind of getting prepared to doze off. After a brief experiment with the recliner part up, I kept it down for the rest of the movie.
Overstuffed furniture also keeps you from ever getting that "edge of your seat" feeling. How are you supposed to resonate with the on-screen tension when you're sunken into a cushion-cloud? Worse when the chairs are highback and give you a nice comfy headrest to fall asleep against.
Aside from the construction of the seats, allowing some of the arrangement to be singleton seats and isolated loveseats weakened the feeling of all the audience being part of the same group (unless you were in the traditional row section). It didn't cancel it out, but being that spread-out does take away from the "all in the same boat" experience.
That, too, made it feel more like a teenage sleepover, more informal, where there's a couple people over here, a couple people over there, some others back over there. Not like a more formal and close-together seating arrangement for what's supposed to be a more group-bonding experience than a sleepover -- the pews in a church, the bleachers in a sports stadium.
Attending church services or a football game is not an ordinary experience, and does not take place in an ordinary setting. It's only fitting that the seating be outside of the ordinary as well. Going to the movies is supposed to be that way too -- taking place outside of the home, with seating suited to "audience attending a performance" rather than "group of folks just hanging around," where they're more focused on each other than on the movie.
In short, making the movie theater feel like home makes the experience feel less special, less powerful, and less memorable. It's not unlike the drive-in craze of the cocooning Midcentury. Cocooners just feel too awkward being out in public, so they make the owners of public places re-shape them to feel more like home.
The high points for watching movies as part of a superorganic audience were low points for cocooning behavior -- the 1920s and the 1980s. In the former time, it was the heyday of the "picture palace," while in the latter it was the "multiplex," both attempts at creating a larger-than-life spectacle of the place where we went to the movies.
Central to both types of theaters, or even the relatively more mundane one-screen theaters of the Midcentury, was the seating. Arranged in rows, enough upholstery on the seat and the back to make it comfortable without feeling comfy, backs high enough to support the shoulders but not a sleepy neck and head, shallow seats that everyone can feel on the edge of, and no damn cupholders on the arms.
Cupholders on a chair's arm does make it feel out of the ordinary, but not in the right way. It makes it seem like the purpose of going to the movie theater is to fill up on junk food, rather than to watch a performance. Going to the movies is supposed to stimulate your fight-or-flight system, not rest-and-digest.
While the overall architecture of the picture palaces may be superior, I actually prefer the spatial layout of the multiplex, which feels like a Gothic castle (or so I imagine) -- first a grand entrance where folks mill around, then a trek down one of several dark tunnel-like hallways, settling into one of many large private chambers for a shared spectacle with the lights off, and then when the movie's over retracing your path during the cognitive and emotional decompression. We need that winding-down experience after a good cathartic movie, not just walking straight out the exit door and emerging instantly back into the ordinary world.
How many other experiences, whether everyday or special, lead you through that kind of layout? If Netflix and Redbox kill off the multiplexes, we are going to lose the only place we have to navigate a dimly lit labyrinth in an enjoyable way.
November 30, 2015
Spectre: A two-and-a-half-hour music video cycle (not bad)
I allowed myself to get dragged to the movies with family over Thanksgiving weekend, since I'd heard that the new James Bond movie, Spectre, wasn't as bad as the last couple. I'd only seen the Pierce Brosnan ones before, and pieces of the Connery and Moore movies on TV over the years. Not going in with high expectations, I still didn't mind the experience.
The acting was OK, the storytelling implausible and forced in many places, and the cinematography too bleak (not unlike Interstellar, which the D.P. also shot). But the score is viscerally engaging, placed into the foreground of the experience, and lasts for over two-thirds of the movie (100 minutes of music during the 148-minute running time).
It's hard to nitpick the plot, characters, and cinematography in what amounts to a cinematic take on the overwrought music video form circa 1990. The dialog, acting, etc., is just that one-third of the really long video where the director tries to make it larger than life, with honest-to-God actors in addition to the music playing.
The movie is not treated as one single long video, either, but more of a cycle of videos that are only loosely related by narrative. Breaking the movie down into a series of shorter, more easily digestible videos made the running time fly by, whereas mediocre action movies feel bogged down after 90 minutes.
In a welcome change, the locations, set design, and costumes were not used to turn the movie into one long metrosexual ad campaign from GQ, but more to set the mood for one of those music videos that shoots in exotic locations just 'cuz.
The only down-note was the dispensable music video over the opening credits. It was flamboyantly homosexual, decadent, and full of falsetto, making a horrible contrast with the opening action scene where Bond stalks an assassin while tribal percussive music plays.
And as it happens, this one must be the gayest Bond production of all time. Open gays include the singer of the theme song, Sam Smith; the screenwriter John Logan; and actors Ben Whishaw (Q) and Andrew Scott (C). Blind Gossip ran an item about the actress playing the lead Bond girl, Lea Seydoux, being a lesbian (other than having a wasp waist, she had no sex appeal). Daniel Craig has gay rumors surrounding him, has zero chemistry with any woman in the movie, and is sporting the closest thing to a gay-whoosh hair-do that the producers will allow James Bond to wear. Director Sam Mendes seems like a huge closet case (also directed homoerotic American Beauty starring not-so-closeted Kevin Spacey). Actor Christoph Waltz (the main villain) shows a decent level of gayface on Google Images, as does Ralph Fiennes, who may have pioneered the gay-whoosh trend back in Schindler's List.
I mention all this to show that despite the Young Republican level of gay influences, Spectre wound up basically watchable and entertaining, albeit as a series of music videos rather than a proper movie.
Sometime I might torture myself by watching Skyfall, which was made by largely the same team with about the same level of gayness going into it, only with Javier Bardem being the closeted gay actor playing the villain (the character himself being a bit less closeted). I haven't heard great things about the score, so I'm assuming that it won't follow the music video cycle approach that Spectre did. That would leave only the toxic levels of homoeroticism typical of 21st-century blockbusters -- no thanks.
I've been wanting the music video medium to make a comeback, so we can enjoy a little visual storytelling while being engaged by music we haven't heard before, with the narrative elements being an after-thought. Now that Hollywood screenwriters can't seem to write good dialog, characters, and plot, they might as well take a back seat to the composers and cinematographers. Once the ability comes back, then shift the focus back toward storytelling.
And really, what other than a James Bond movie lends itself so naturally to being a series of music videos shot on exotic locations, featuring models, and mostly dispensing with narrative? If they took this way forward (and removed the gay elements), I'd be a regular viewer for sure.
The acting was OK, the storytelling implausible and forced in many places, and the cinematography too bleak (not unlike Interstellar, which the D.P. also shot). But the score is viscerally engaging, placed into the foreground of the experience, and lasts for over two-thirds of the movie (100 minutes of music during the 148-minute running time).
It's hard to nitpick the plot, characters, and cinematography in what amounts to a cinematic take on the overwrought music video form circa 1990. The dialog, acting, etc., is just that one-third of the really long video where the director tries to make it larger than life, with honest-to-God actors in addition to the music playing.
The movie is not treated as one single long video, either, but more of a cycle of videos that are only loosely related by narrative. Breaking the movie down into a series of shorter, more easily digestible videos made the running time fly by, whereas mediocre action movies feel bogged down after 90 minutes.
In a welcome change, the locations, set design, and costumes were not used to turn the movie into one long metrosexual ad campaign from GQ, but more to set the mood for one of those music videos that shoots in exotic locations just 'cuz.
The only down-note was the dispensable music video over the opening credits. It was flamboyantly homosexual, decadent, and full of falsetto, making a horrible contrast with the opening action scene where Bond stalks an assassin while tribal percussive music plays.
And as it happens, this one must be the gayest Bond production of all time. Open gays include the singer of the theme song, Sam Smith; the screenwriter John Logan; and actors Ben Whishaw (Q) and Andrew Scott (C). Blind Gossip ran an item about the actress playing the lead Bond girl, Lea Seydoux, being a lesbian (other than having a wasp waist, she had no sex appeal). Daniel Craig has gay rumors surrounding him, has zero chemistry with any woman in the movie, and is sporting the closest thing to a gay-whoosh hair-do that the producers will allow James Bond to wear. Director Sam Mendes seems like a huge closet case (also directed homoerotic American Beauty starring not-so-closeted Kevin Spacey). Actor Christoph Waltz (the main villain) shows a decent level of gayface on Google Images, as does Ralph Fiennes, who may have pioneered the gay-whoosh trend back in Schindler's List.
I mention all this to show that despite the Young Republican level of gay influences, Spectre wound up basically watchable and entertaining, albeit as a series of music videos rather than a proper movie.
Sometime I might torture myself by watching Skyfall, which was made by largely the same team with about the same level of gayness going into it, only with Javier Bardem being the closeted gay actor playing the villain (the character himself being a bit less closeted). I haven't heard great things about the score, so I'm assuming that it won't follow the music video cycle approach that Spectre did. That would leave only the toxic levels of homoeroticism typical of 21st-century blockbusters -- no thanks.
I've been wanting the music video medium to make a comeback, so we can enjoy a little visual storytelling while being engaged by music we haven't heard before, with the narrative elements being an after-thought. Now that Hollywood screenwriters can't seem to write good dialog, characters, and plot, they might as well take a back seat to the composers and cinematographers. Once the ability comes back, then shift the focus back toward storytelling.
And really, what other than a James Bond movie lends itself so naturally to being a series of music videos shot on exotic locations, featuring models, and mostly dispensing with narrative? If they took this way forward (and removed the gay elements), I'd be a regular viewer for sure.
November 1, 2015
The over-use of gory, filthy sets in horror movies
While I tune out the boring plot and ham-fisted dialog of modern horror movies, I try to find a silver lining in the visuals, although they're usually just as off-putting as the narrative.
One of the most ubiquitous of these visual cliches is a set where gore and filth cover as many surfaces as possible -- walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, fixtures, you name it. The idea is to gross out the audience, rather than to create a frightening or disturbing atmosphere, but even that attempt fails.
Let's review some examples first and then explore what is so off about the approach. In movies, the style began with Saw in 2004, although it appears to have made the jump from video games of the survival horror genre, such as Silent Hill 2 from 2001. At any rate, it continues in both media through today.
Putting aside any concerns about color palette and lighting, and sticking only to the application of details to surfaces, what goes so wrong in this approach?
First, it's information overload. There are simply too many details to attend to, across the entirety of the frame. Worse, there's no pay-off to inspecting them, as though one of the details held some plot clue or revealed something about someone's personality. The result is to leave the viewer confused, frustrated, and annoyed -- but not disturbed or afraid.
It also prevents tension from building in what is supposed to be a frightening scene. While your eye is busy scanning through all of those details on the walls, floor, ceiling -- everywhere -- it doesn't get a chance to rest. Tension cannot escalate except from an initial resting state (sparse details, silence, minimal action).
Nor can a surfeit of gory details represent an emotional climax, if it doesn't follow a period of tension-building. The approach is trying to blow us away with too much too soon -- we aren't awed but, again, puzzled about how the hell the scene got to look that way. And with so many details, no one of them stands out to grab our attention. Each bit of gore is only a drop in the bucket, as it were.
And although the intention is to portray a gritty naturalism, the overly filthy and gory surfaces strike us as incredibly unnatural. No dirty / abandoned / squatted place has so many sources of filth continually renewing the filthy look. Over time organic matter decays, so a long-abandoned bathroom will not have copious stains from urine, feces, or vomit. Blood dries and decays too -- are we to believe that every one of the myriad blood stains are fresh, without having seen them made? Decay of building materials is more likely, but most of that is structural rather than chemical -- stuff breaks down into smaller pieces, not discolored (as though every building material and fixture corroded like cheap rusty nails). Airflow blows dirt off the walls to settle on the ground.
Aside from how recently all these stains would had to have been made, there's also the matter of how they could've gotten to where they ended up. What source and path could have led to the placement that we see? Copious blood stains high on a wall or ceiling? Filth and grime dripping down a wall with no source above? When every stain is a mystery stain, the whole thing feels made-up. It strikes us as staged and therefore fake, reminding us that it's the result of deliberate and exaggerated set design. It's as though one of those shabby chic decorators was asked to apply their overly distressed style to a horror geek's bathroom.
Thus, the approach to gross us out fails because our disgust reflex is not triggered when we aren't convinced that we're seeing a plausible scene of gore and filth. It doesn't have to look 100% realistic, but it does have to feel plausible, and we don't feel convinced when it looks like some set decorator let loose with a gore-hose over every square inch of every surface.
Contrast the filthily encrusted look of contempo horror with the restrained or sometimes clean sets in classics from the late '60s through the early '90s. Really the only filthy shot is a close-up of a toilet in Candyman, but the establishing shot of the entire bathroom shows no gore, and not even that much filth -- more graffiti and trash than anything.
With less cluttered surfaces, and only the occasional splotch of blood or filth, all of the problems are solved. There's no information overload, and we can start off in a resting state to build tension toward a climax. If that climax produces gore, there won't be that much since it comes from a single event, and we'll have seen its source and path, making its residue on the walls, floor, etc. believable and unobtrusive.
Fairly stain-free surfaces are also more what we see in everyday life, even when the place has been subject to weird, violent, and disgusting events. This relatively cleaner-looking set lends a naturalism to a story that is beyond the ordinary -- demonic possession, butchering, and the like. What truly disturbs us is the sense that something so bizarre could take place in our ordinary settings.
The restrained approach to set design not only succeeds in creating a disturbing atmosphere, it even succeeds at the goal of grossing out the audience, since we can focus better on the gross-out event, its source is known and convincing, and it just stands out a lot better in contrast against the cleaner setting. Costumes play a role here, too: the gross-out event is more disgusting when people are wearing normal clean clothes, than if one of them were dressed in overly filthy clothes. Regan spewing vomit in The Exorcist, for example, compared to a similar scene in the recent remake of Evil Dead.
In the 21st century, horror makers have encrusted their sets with gore and filth based on the belief that clean sets = dull sets. In reality, cleaner sets allow for a disturbing atmosphere to gradually develop, and for occasional gross-out moments to trigger disgust in the audience. Overly messy sets are just distracting, unconvincing, and therefore non-threatening. Perhaps that's the ultimate goal in this period of falling crime rates -- to make horror sets so unbelievable that we won't be in any danger of feeling unsettled.
One of the most ubiquitous of these visual cliches is a set where gore and filth cover as many surfaces as possible -- walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, fixtures, you name it. The idea is to gross out the audience, rather than to create a frightening or disturbing atmosphere, but even that attempt fails.
Let's review some examples first and then explore what is so off about the approach. In movies, the style began with Saw in 2004, although it appears to have made the jump from video games of the survival horror genre, such as Silent Hill 2 from 2001. At any rate, it continues in both media through today.
The Cabin in the Woods
Dementium: The Ward
Evil Dead
The Evil Within
Hostel
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Saw
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2
First, it's information overload. There are simply too many details to attend to, across the entirety of the frame. Worse, there's no pay-off to inspecting them, as though one of the details held some plot clue or revealed something about someone's personality. The result is to leave the viewer confused, frustrated, and annoyed -- but not disturbed or afraid.
It also prevents tension from building in what is supposed to be a frightening scene. While your eye is busy scanning through all of those details on the walls, floor, ceiling -- everywhere -- it doesn't get a chance to rest. Tension cannot escalate except from an initial resting state (sparse details, silence, minimal action).
Nor can a surfeit of gory details represent an emotional climax, if it doesn't follow a period of tension-building. The approach is trying to blow us away with too much too soon -- we aren't awed but, again, puzzled about how the hell the scene got to look that way. And with so many details, no one of them stands out to grab our attention. Each bit of gore is only a drop in the bucket, as it were.
And although the intention is to portray a gritty naturalism, the overly filthy and gory surfaces strike us as incredibly unnatural. No dirty / abandoned / squatted place has so many sources of filth continually renewing the filthy look. Over time organic matter decays, so a long-abandoned bathroom will not have copious stains from urine, feces, or vomit. Blood dries and decays too -- are we to believe that every one of the myriad blood stains are fresh, without having seen them made? Decay of building materials is more likely, but most of that is structural rather than chemical -- stuff breaks down into smaller pieces, not discolored (as though every building material and fixture corroded like cheap rusty nails). Airflow blows dirt off the walls to settle on the ground.
Aside from how recently all these stains would had to have been made, there's also the matter of how they could've gotten to where they ended up. What source and path could have led to the placement that we see? Copious blood stains high on a wall or ceiling? Filth and grime dripping down a wall with no source above? When every stain is a mystery stain, the whole thing feels made-up. It strikes us as staged and therefore fake, reminding us that it's the result of deliberate and exaggerated set design. It's as though one of those shabby chic decorators was asked to apply their overly distressed style to a horror geek's bathroom.
Thus, the approach to gross us out fails because our disgust reflex is not triggered when we aren't convinced that we're seeing a plausible scene of gore and filth. It doesn't have to look 100% realistic, but it does have to feel plausible, and we don't feel convinced when it looks like some set decorator let loose with a gore-hose over every square inch of every surface.
Contrast the filthily encrusted look of contempo horror with the restrained or sometimes clean sets in classics from the late '60s through the early '90s. Really the only filthy shot is a close-up of a toilet in Candyman, but the establishing shot of the entire bathroom shows no gore, and not even that much filth -- more graffiti and trash than anything.
Candyman
Candyman
Candyman
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Exorcist
The Fly
Hellraiser
Night of the Living Dead
The Shining
The Shining
With less cluttered surfaces, and only the occasional splotch of blood or filth, all of the problems are solved. There's no information overload, and we can start off in a resting state to build tension toward a climax. If that climax produces gore, there won't be that much since it comes from a single event, and we'll have seen its source and path, making its residue on the walls, floor, etc. believable and unobtrusive.
Fairly stain-free surfaces are also more what we see in everyday life, even when the place has been subject to weird, violent, and disgusting events. This relatively cleaner-looking set lends a naturalism to a story that is beyond the ordinary -- demonic possession, butchering, and the like. What truly disturbs us is the sense that something so bizarre could take place in our ordinary settings.
The restrained approach to set design not only succeeds in creating a disturbing atmosphere, it even succeeds at the goal of grossing out the audience, since we can focus better on the gross-out event, its source is known and convincing, and it just stands out a lot better in contrast against the cleaner setting. Costumes play a role here, too: the gross-out event is more disgusting when people are wearing normal clean clothes, than if one of them were dressed in overly filthy clothes. Regan spewing vomit in The Exorcist, for example, compared to a similar scene in the recent remake of Evil Dead.
In the 21st century, horror makers have encrusted their sets with gore and filth based on the belief that clean sets = dull sets. In reality, cleaner sets allow for a disturbing atmosphere to gradually develop, and for occasional gross-out moments to trigger disgust in the audience. Overly messy sets are just distracting, unconvincing, and therefore non-threatening. Perhaps that's the ultimate goal in this period of falling crime rates -- to make horror sets so unbelievable that we won't be in any danger of feeling unsettled.
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