Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser DROPS

What did I miss? Another week of teaser trailers from a beleaguered Hollywood, nigh a beleaguered world? The Star Wars trailer was delivered to us to on Friday from the Disney overlords.



John Boyega's gasping face shot from the Tunisian sands, his eyes searching for something the audience knows not. Did he crash here? Did he wake from a nightmare? Was he revived by someone or something (a droid, as the sound cue seems to suggest)? We do know he is wearing White storm-trooper gear (yes, White with a capital 'W'. That is real White. Not beige on your average crochet, box fan, or hell, cream-colored toilet). This is contrasted with the black of his skin, something Boyega told his critics to "get used to :)" [sic]. I find the contrast between the two a duality that our race-baited world is too afraid to speak of. Yes, his skin is black. Yes, his armor is white. Perhaps there is meaning to be found here. From early rumors, it appears Boyega's character is going to turn against whomever is in charge of the stormtroopers. Perhaps the contrast of 'black' and 'white' is a theme that the movie will hold from the original two trilogies. I can hope (probably quite safely).

Next...

We see a rapid succession of faces as a foreboding voice (Andy Serkis) soliloquys about the Dark and the Light. Cutesy droid bounds along the earth on a beach ball, discarded pod racer engines in the background. Daisy Ridley rides across a Sergio Leone landscape on a junkyard hover craft in the form of an ice cream bar. Oscar Isaac, inside a retro X-Wing, flies to battle over a misted lake. And then we see a hooded figure trample through a medieval wood, unleashing his tri-blade, red, as he halts. The narrator suddenly ends his philosophy over-speech with a husky, "... the light" and the Millennium Falcon zooms over a desert landscape (notice a pattern here?) avoiding Tie Fighter blasts. John Williams's score is constantly crescendoing and decrescendoing, and classic Star Wars droid, laser, and other noises are spaced throughout the teaser to give anyone who grew up with the films a nastalgia boner. It's also quite clear that most of these shots come early in the film on what looks to be Tatooine, a key location in many of George Lucas's original films.

I loved it.

I have been excited about the new Star Wars since, well, since Disney announced it was making a 2010's trilogy. I like Disney. I like that Star Wars is under the Disney banner.

It fits.

It just feels right, doesn't it?

And I love that Marvel (the house of ideas), Pixar, and Lucasfilm are under the same corporate umbrella. All that creative energy has to cross-pollinate. I think that's one of the many reasons why Disney is putting out good films like Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, and Big Hero 6 in quick succession.

So yeah, I know I probably made you uncomfortable with my John Boyega comment. I honestly love the actor's work in Attack the Block and was excited to hear that he was in the new film. I like that he is black. It's about time a major Hollywood picture was led by someone who is. Not that I have some sort of social justice warrior thing going on, but I am excited to see a tent-pole feature that isn't brought to you by young, white hunk and bombshell 1 and 2. It's fresh, and I am excited.

The whole thing feels fresh and exciting for a 30 year-old franchise. I can't wait a year. I just can't.

Marvel shows off extended Avengers 2 trailer

I am loving these extended Avengers trailers, and I think it's mostly because of James Spader. That voice is distinct. It grabs me by the testicles like a vice, doesn't let go until I am screaming like a school-girl, and then when you see Ultron at the end. He looks creepy as hell-- glowing eyes, menacing pose as if the view is looking up at him. It's demonic, but also fun.

In this trailer we also get a longer look at the Korean actress, Claudia Kim, and a few more lingering shots of the party and Ultron's speech. It was posted by JoBlo this morning. No one seems to be quite sure it's origin beyond that. Here it is:



I am excited for this movie. Marvel and Disney have sold their soul to the devil. They can't seem to do anything wrong. Tell me what you think below.

Man tells woman to shut up in Theater, man gets maced

You are part of the problem. We all are.


image obtained from tumblr.

Mashable is reporting that a man was maced at point-blank range at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood after asking a woman to politely put her phone away. Most of us have been in this situation-- the glow of some douche-canoe's screen intruding on our vision. It's annoying, to say the least, especially when you paid money to see a film you are attempting to enjoy despite all the other monkeys in the theater throwing their figurative 'screen poo' into your line of vision...

The article, written by Josh Dickey, continues:

"He was saying 'Excuse me sir, could you please turn off your screen'" over and over, the eyewitness tells Mashable (he had apparently mistaken the woman for a man). After repeating himself several times, and without a response, the man then tapped the woman on the shoulder.

The woman reacted angrily to being touched, and "flipped out" on him, the eyewitness said. "She stands up and starts cursing, saying 'You hit me, you hit me, I'm going to call the police." She then turned the phone's flashlight function on and pointed it directly at the man's face.

The awkward standoff lasted for nearly a minute, the witness said, and she continued shining the light even as people all around implored her to turn it off and sit down. As the man was calmly defending himself, she then told him she had mace and started digging in her bag.

Without hesitation, she took the cap off the bottle, pointed it directly in his face and sprayed him at point-blank range. The man and the woman sitting next to him sat for a moment in shock as she sat back down. As the couple left, the man slapped the woman on the arm and said something to her, the eyewitness said."

Apparently the women then preceded to watch the movie for another 20-or-so minutes before being escorted out by management.

This harkens back to earlier this year when a man murdered another during the previews because he wouldn't turn off his damn phone. I can't say I agree with his intentions but I got to admit, I got a little sympathy with the shooter, Curtis Reeves (who was, by the way, 71 years-old and a retired police officer). We've all been there, haven't we?

Because it's shit like this that makes some of our shitty opinions on our fellow man justified. "Crikey, kids today feel like they are owed something even when they ain't," is what I would belch out if I was a wrinkled porch-sitter from the South. Being rude to people sucks. It creates a chain reaction where everyone ends up being more miserable because of one rude step. Be nice. Be respectful. And most of all: put your phone on silent in the theater and in your pocket when the movie begins. Isn't that why you came out and spent the exorbitantly high fee? To watch as the spectral actors appear before you in a faze, pretending to be someone they are not for two hours as you make-believe along with them? Some might call that an initiation bordering on the eleusinian mysteries... and many of you are failing at it.


image obtained from tumbler.

David Edelstein, from Vulture, wrote about his experience with a rude couple in a movie theater:

It was like this. These two … persons, a man and a woman (God, I’m so angry I wanna just go LN26IRTUV3C55CUXWX11111!!!!!11#$%Y###%$#W ####SDGZ) who happened to be sitting behind me decided to keep up a running conversation during the film — a lyrical, meditative, exquisitely photographed portrait of the Brooklyn-based Nigerian community and what happens when a young wife is unable to conceive a child.

Maybe you can shut out the sound of two idiots yapping at a Roland Emmerich film, but much of Mother of George is wordless — or would have been if the Ugly Couple hadn’t filled the silences.

I decided, for the sake of inner peace, not to say anything, to try to focus on the screen: inhale count four … hold it count five … exhale count eight … but every so often I could hear people behind them say, “Stop talking!” The couple laughed and went right on. A half-hour went by. An hour. Periodic outbursts of “Shhhhh!” “Stop talking!” They were just low enough to keep the whole theater from turning on them, but just loud enough to keep everyone in their vicinity from becoming suitably entranced. It’s that ability to be hypnotized — to be drawn into the action onscreen — that’s destroyed by talking and/or the eye-stabbing flickers of smartphones.

I finally turned and gave the couple the evil eye, which they ignored.

And finally, finally I said, “SHUT UP!” So, for the record, did the guy next to me.

The woman said, “YOU shut up!”

What do you do in that situation? Make a scene? Go running to the manager? There was no manager or usher in or anywhere near the theater (which happened to be full and then some).

Finally, finally, finally I said, “That’s it!!!!!!” and threw a fit — just lost it. And I’m not proud of that. The person who makes a scene inevitably looks in the wrong, even if he or she is in the right. Because fits are never good. And I’m especially ineffectual. When I say, “Do you know who I am?” they generally say, “No — who are you?” and I say, “Uh. No one. Never mind.” Only in this case I found a BAM publicist, who looked appropriately stricken but had no idea what to do. Another publicist actually went over to the couple and asked them to stop, but the woman waved him off. She actually did that gesture with the hand that says, “Enough of you. Leave.” Then she went back to chattering.

Edelstein later writes in the article if it isn't experiences like these that are playing a role in the death of cinema as we know it. Perhaps it's just easier to avoid others? Going to a movie is supposed to be, at least conceptually, an inherently private experience. Yes, there can be hundreds of people around us, the energy contributing something to the appeal, but at the end of the day, the theater is dark and it's your personal relationship with what is happening on the screen that's going to be the deciding factor on whether you enjoy the film or not-- other people, with their entitlement, can take this away-- this one treat-- this one little thing you were supposed to be enjoying-- gone, because some asshole wouldn't turn off his iPhone.

In related news: in 2011, the Alamo Drafthouse played this message in front of every film they featured:



It's amusing.

But what does this say about our culture? About ourselves? Technology, welfare, the capitalistic instinct of selfishness? Relay your thoughts below.

The screens haven't gone all dark.

I died and went to hell.

The pit consumed me, licking wisps of flame scorching my skin like a blow-torch on egg, caramelizing the white, turning me delicious, pure, crunchy yet oh-so-softy-yummy. It was the best of times and the worst of times in the life of Benjamin Schneidenfreude. A veritable Ā seikō watashi wa dokoda? A land of green, blue, grey.

Anyway, if you don't know I moved from the Gallatin Valley to the dreariness of Rockwood, Oregon.

They tell you you are arriving in Portland, a capital of Hipster smarm, when you are actually in Gresham, meth-head Union City. The residents have that crazed stare, the one where they open their eyes too wide, their faces pot-marked with drug use, the thug walk. The best example I can give of the 'Gresham stare' is the way Conspiracy radio host T-rex, Alex Jones, speaks. It's animalistic, and at first a watcher doesn't know how to handle that amount of pupil. It's freaky. It's manly. It's threatening. In Alex's case, it works. On the streets of Eastern Portland, it doesn't. It isn't uncommon to see a man, hair jazzed-up in orange neon-glow dye, dancing on the sidewalk to silent music only he can hear, chest bared and ribs protruding. I drove past this scene in the passenger seat of my roommate's Chevy Silverado. As the danceur waltz his waltz in the middle of the walkway, a woman, bent-over and head covered in Gypsey veil, neared him. Her face was confused. It read, "fuck my life."

Gresham isn't all bad.

There are nice people here too. I met my girlfriend in Fairview. She is beautiful. A quiet poet.

What I am trying to say is that I am back. I didn't descend to hell after all, and if I did, this isn't the hell they sold me on. Not in my brief interludes at Harvest Church in Billings or Guam's Catholicism. (Not that they talked about the underworld much. I just haven't been to many religious things).

So stay tuned. The fight continues, friends, and the Ghoulies haven't all won yet. The screens haven't gone all dark. Your radio DJ is still playing those old tunes, and the everlasting songs continue as the world collapses into ruin... the last Ghoulie killing the last twelver gazing on the blinking TV screen.

The HORROR of writing a book

Woo, writing is an exhausting experience, especially when you are trying to make it mean something, maintaining its flow and keeping the reader informed on where he is in the world you are creating. That is what this first chapter is: world creation, character introduction, making the reader care. Caring. It's difficult. You need to get them emotionally invested, and that's what I am attempting to do. This is a fun process-- exploding the character, making him feel real, identifying through him, experiencing him.

Well, wondering what I am talking about yet? Here is the link to the first chapter here: The OtherWorlds Chapter 1 Trojan Horse.

Read it. Edit it. Tell me what you think of it.

Personal.



Lately, it has become even more personal. It always was, but I have been glazing on the themes of the text like a thin icing. (God, that was bad metaphor.)

Here's another one:

Your foot is on the accelerator. Tearing down I-90 between Bozeman and Billings, you see a truck driving in the wrong lane. You put on the breaks but it's too late. Your life flashes before your eyes, to use a cliche; you swerve back and forth, back and forth, nothing to do but die. It's a story about nostalgia, living in these last few moments. It feels good. It feels right. You love it. Even the bad times because they made you who you are in that last second before the crash, before you are ripped to human shreds, nothing but red gunk and pink flesh and brains. Nostalgia. Nóstos for homecoming, álgos for pain or ache. They are ancient Greek words-- melancholy for times past, things you miss, you experienced that you can no longer experience. Jacob and Jhonen, in my novel, literally live on the skeletons of the past, drifting along in a world, full of miraculous new things, but desiring something that is no longer there. Mankind is dying. There is nothing left but pain, loss, and death. Death is the end... it's right in front of you. What do you do? Hold onto something, let it go, forget about it all. Do you give in?

I am living through Jacob. He is me and I am him. My Grandpa sent me this years ago:

Nick: Sorry I missed you. I was busy hauling brush and had to clean the drain troughs out before the weather turns next week. I need the ladder which is hanging on the wall in front of Grandma's car. When she was off having lunch with you and Linda I could get to the ladder. I'll see you at Thanksgiving. Hang over there and do your best. Of all things in your life grades are [sic] crudial now for your future.

My father's father was a doctor. He loved the military and foreign places. In the 1800's when he was about your age now there were few professions acceptable if you wanted to call yourself a gentleman. A doctor or minister were acceptable. That surprizes me because doctors without degrees were plentiful, medicine crude and mortality very high.

He did hold session as a minister but I think in many churches a member was often asked to climb to the pulpet. His doctoring studies even took him to Europe where he finished. The branch of Axlines he was from in his day had money made from the Florida orange groves where they lived and the invoation of the insulated ice cars on the railroad. They could ship the oranges north to the states now where they were a prized commody. He married into a family by the name of Bishop who were a pioneer family from the state of Iowa. The branch of the tree for the Axlines and for the Bishop's would lead your female children to membership in Daughters of the Revolution (DAR) if it were important now as it once was. We missed Montana Pioneers through the Adami line by about seven years. You had to be a resident of Montana territory in 1865 to qualify.

Jacob Adami came to Helena in 1872. It must have been a wonderful time full of hope and expectations. I started telling you about Father's Father, Morton Homer Axline because you have a friend who enjoys the stage from the side of the stage where you stride the planks (actor rather than audience). Morton Homer Axline always wished to have been an actor. Not much credit for actors in his day. Maybe you will get a chance to give it a try for him.

See you later, Grandpa

I had forgotten about this message. One day I was going through my old documents and noticed one titled Jacob Adami. It was a surprise when I opened it. I had, thankfully, saved the email my grandpa had sent me, copying and pasting it into a WordPad rtf file. I guess I am smarter than I think I am some days. The email interested me then and still does.

History. The Past. Living up to someone who is not there. Abandonment.

There is always a past, but the actors are fading away. The old kings are dead, and you can't live up to them. As my old English professor used to say: you are always late to the party. Recently, I have been re-reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. IT is the villain in the story-- he is the father who wants to control everything. He wants to absolve you of your decision making. He wants to let you live in a society without any control of your own. But there is peace of mind in this. You don't have to think anymore. You give in your freewill for complete safety.

But what is the exact opposite? It's living in a world where there is no father, no government, no nothin', says the Texan.

That is the world of The OtherWorlds. There is nothing. Children are guilty. Children run rampant. Children are sad and lost and there's no one there to help when they fall.

This appears to be a very modern problem. I am not sure the extent of the sense of nothingness others feel, but I do, perhaps because of my history. I don't know. There are a lot human 'floaters'. They bump through life like a turd in a bowl until they are flushed, and that's that. So it goes. So it goes. So it goes. That's this story. That's The OtherWorlds. I hope its themes reflect the Millennial generation's sense of guilt-- you admire but abhor your parents. You feel like you have done nothing while so many others have done so much. It's painful. It's evil. You want to change something but can't. You hate yourself. You hate yourself because you have no one to tell you what to do, don't want anyone to tell you what to do. They told you were special, but you weren't so special after all. You don't think anyone loves you, even if you are beautiful, even if they told you were special because you haven't done anything worth a damn no matter what they tell you. There is nothing left to gain for the Millennial. He is standing on the edge of eternity, looking at nothing but defeat and hopelessness. It's all contradiction... Is that what this is? It's nostalgia, something the Millennials are known for-- it's NickToons, it's Power Rangers, it's Pokemon. It's something to hide away inside as society rots around you. You are special, and you don't really believe it.

Jacob and Jhonen.

I chose the name Jacob because I liked the sound of it. I chose Jacob 'Adami' during a revelation while mowing the lawn at my grandparent's house one summer between college semesters. Jacob is one of the Hebrew patriarchs. Jacob was the main character in Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave. That is all relevant.

Jhonen I picked because of Jhonen Vasquez, writer and artist of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and show-runner of "Invader Zim". I also liked the name. He is modeled after Oscar Wilde, as you might be able to tell from the description of his appearance.

The story started out as "Star Wars" fan fiction. Jacob was a younger Ben Kenobi finding Morgan Omega who was Anakin Skywalker. The Greek God aspect came from a joint story I was writing with friends. Malick was my character. Morgan (then named something else) was somebody elses. It was all basically conceived between the ages of 10 and 14. I am now 25.

Mythologically speaking, the 'brother battle' is ubiquitous. It has been told in stories across the world, in Egyptian mythos, in Shakespeare's tragedies, and in modern day pop entertainment like Thor: The Dark World. Alan Watts wrote of this perennial tale in his book The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity. Essentially, the brothers are opposites stemming from the same wellspring. They share much but are apart, locked in a never-ending battle between dualistic personalities and philosophies. They complete each other by existing in separation. In my novel, it is represented by cousins Jacob and Jhonen. One is stoic, quiet, and blames himself for his pain. He dresses functionally, is emotionally closed off, and when he does emote, is explosive. His most defining characteristic may be his need for independence. The other, Jhonen Finn, is flamboyant, gaudy, and snarky. His outer appearance secretly harbors deep insecurities, and at his base, he is sycophantic, always moving to new power players he consciously or subconsciously believes can benefit him. In the end, both Jacob and Jhonen care for one another, though Jhonen may care a bit more. That is the nature of brother battles, and I think aspects ofboth their personalities relate to many Millenials.

I grew up in Billings, Montana.

Billings is not what most people think of when they think of Montana. It is flanked to the north and the south not by mountains but by what the locals call 'rim rocks'. They are sand stone, dirt brown, and easy to chip away with fingernails. They are ugly and short, looking like stratified ant hills, not much growing on them but weeds and small trees. The Yellowstone river runs through the southern part of town. It's brown. It's lethargic. It's what you think of when you think of Billings: refineries, banks, hospitals, sugar beats, old timers, brown, brown, BROWN, and kids trying to get out. I lived in the Heights for the majority of my life. They are on top of the rims. We have our own Applebee's, Target, and Wal-Mart. We have no refineries. It feels separate from the valley somehow, like it's its own city.

During the summers I used to push my grandpa's heavy red lawn mower up and down the hill in his yard. It was a good time for thinking. I did this a lot... Jhonen calls himself 'the Dragon'. His last name is Drakard. Birds were in the trees. They would fly away when I brought the mower closer to them, squawking and fluttering their wings. The first chapter contains a lot of birds. What does that mean? These are the types of things I would think of when I shoved that machine up the hill, chopped grass smell in my nostrils, sweat in my armpits and hair, grasshoppers buzzing, sun baking down on the gnarled trees and my body...

My grandparents fed the birds every day like clock work.

Like I said, Billings has a lot of refineries. They are like a second skyline, or a third one if you count Lockwood (which I do). Dark smoke floats into the red sky like dragon's breath. The town stinks. It looks burnt out. But I have grown to love it. People don't appreciate the grit enough. When Spike Lee criticized whites moving into his old Brooklyn neighborhood, I got it. "You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start Bogarting," he said, "and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they did in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people." While I don't agree with Lee's opinions, I think he comes from a real place. I live in Bozeman, Montana now. It is lacking some of what Billings has-- a sense of place, a sense of 'realness', a sense of people actually sacrificing anything. It isn't true of course, but in Billings, you can see the old timers who moved there from Eastern Montana and beyond. You can see the meth heads, the bankers, the school teachers, the doctors, the criminals. They are there. They are real. The phoniness of Yellowstone tourists and college bohemians haven't rubbed off on it, and that's something.

Troy.

The first section needed to feel urgent. It was the hardest part to write.

Troy was originally supposed to be a throw-a-way character, but I grew to love him as an every man. Now I wish he wasn't dead. He has to be for the story to work. I battled myself over and over again. I am still not sure this part is all there, but I have to thank a girl I met who pushed me to make it better. Thank you, nameless girl. That's all I really have to say here.

The Demon.

The Demon is important. It is a bird and you will see it again.

"[...] The secret preserved and nurtured by geniuses as diverse as Plato, St Paul, Leonardo, Shakespeare, and Newton:

1. If you can think so deeply that you can rediscover the spiritual roots of thought, if you can recognize thoughts as living, spiritual beings ...

2. If you can develop a strong enough sense of your own individuality that you can become aware of your interaction with the Thought-Beings that weave in and out of yourself, yet not be overwhelmed by this reality ...

3. If you can recreate the ancient sense of wonder and use this sense of wonder to help awaken the will power that lies sleeping in your deep, dark recesses ...

4. If the fire of love for your fellow human beings rises from your heart and causes you to weep tears of compassion ..."

(Mark Booth, The Secret History of the World, 542-3)

Jacob's demon is a representation of his own darkness which he cannot control. It is a very literal representation. His arc will be redemption, of accepting humanity in all its ugliness of emotion and thought and all its forms and appearances. By the end of the series he will weep "tears of compassion" for his fellow man. That's what I want for him. To be happy.

Montana



The World.

I was reading The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I wrote Jacob's ride eastward toward Billings. Pirsig, the author of the aforementioned book, taught at Montana State University in Bozeman right before his breakdown. He references Montana throughout the book-- the homeland of Phaedrus. Phaedrus, I would like to point out, is Saturn. IT is Saturn. That will be important going forward. A land without a father, a land without time, a land without order. Montana is currently a place barely blemished by man's will to dominate. It is a more pure, 'big' nature. That notion will be destroyed in the OtherWorlds. Montana is the homeland of the gods. The world is in ruin-- and they come here of all places, to Granite Peak.

"According to esoteric Christianity, Jesus Christ lived on earth in the middle of the history of the cosmos. His life represents the great turning point in history. Everything after it mirrors what happened beforehand. So we are experiencing the great events of pre-Christian times in reverse order and our future development will take us through earlier stages in reverse order" (Mark Booth, The Secret History of the World, 538).

The Next Chapter.

The second chapter needs much reworking. It will cover various characters. Upon finishing my many re-readings of Chapter 1, I noted how much I wanted to know more about Jhonen. He will be explored more in Chapter 2 where he wasn't before-- his relationship with the king, General Ordo, and the triumvirate in general. I will also detail how important Morgan and Evie are. They are the two, the dreamers, the destroyers.

Best scene in Rick and Morty so far

New X-Men Trailer is neato burrito

There is a high likelihood there are too many characters in this. I feel like someone is going to short-changed.

Did You Know Gaming covers Street Fighter

I found this interesting, especially the origins of the characters.

Jeremy Jahns reviews the new Metal Gear game.

Jeremy Jahns reviews the new Metal Gear game.

Damian Wayne coming back to the New 52?

Here's a link to the Bleeding Cool forum page.



Ever since Damian Wayne was killed in Batman, Incorporated, I have been wondering when they were going to bring him back. Hey, these are comic books.

I like Damian Wayne. He is a feisty, nasty version of Bruce-- and he's a lot of fun. How he will return, well, I am guessing a Lazarus Pit has Damian's name on it, or one of those armies of clones in Morrison's final issue on his run. At any rate, I wonder what will happen to Harper Rowe, or... Carrie Kelly? She sort of fell out of the New 52 universe didn't she?

Tom Hardy as Mad Max

A black and white pic of Hardy as Max. I am not sure how I feel about this. Mel Gibson IS Max to me, but I am interested in seeing where this goes.

New Godzilla poster for upcoming film!

I love the Japanese symbol under the name. Very Eastern feel about this-- I am in love.

Imax Poster of new Transformers

This looks positively Apocalyptic. I am 75% sure this movie is going to be awful, but you never know, I thought Transformers 3 was... not bad.

Total Recall -- Lost in the Haunted Dreamscape

1. Total Recall

"Total Recall", as directed by Paul Verhoeven, is pure sci-fi spectacle. Released in 1990, it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, a man disillusioned with his life-- his spouse and job bore him, and he keeps having dreams of a seductive woman on Mars. She is an albatross, a lost dream seeping into his daily reality, and somehow, she feels more than a figment of a fractured mind. She is out there. But the worst part of his nighttime experiences is this: he occasionally slips out into the Mars landscape, breathing in the toxic air. His eyes bulge red. His tongue slips out of his mouth like a slithering strawberry. And he dies in agony. That's the end of the story.


A truly disgusting image, ala Paul Verhoeven

Similar to "The Matix" in concept, Total Recall deals with reality-bending storytelling. It asks the perennial questions: Is what we experience with our senses real? Can it ever be proven to be real? And if it isn't real, would it matter anyway? Several great philosophers have dealt with this quandary, famously with Plato and his cave, Descartes and his 'think therefore I am', and Hume before Kant's a priori. Verhoeven confronts it through Philip K. Dick, attacking it laterally. In his film, a company, known as Rekall, implants memories into clients' brains. These are done willingly, a means to escape the drudgery of life without actually going anywhere physically. Rekall's newest 'vacation' is more than relaxation on a beach, it is being the hero, beating the bad guy, and saving the girl.

The doctor/salesmen gives Schwarzenegger's Quaid the pitch:

"Basic Mars package will run you 899 credits. Now, that's for two full weeks of memories, if you want a longer trip it will cost you a little bit more because it's a deeper implant. [...] When you go Recall, you get nothing but first class memories. Private cabin on the shuttle, deluxe suite at the Hilton, plus all the major sites, Mount Pyramid, grand canals, and of course, VenusVille. [...] As real as any memory in your head. [...] Your brain will not know the difference. And that's guaranteed or your money back."

After the procedure is done, the patient will mis-member a trip as a millionaire playboy, a sports hero, an industrial tycoon, a secret agent... "What is it that is exactly the same about every single vacation you have ever taken? [...] You. You're the same. No matter where you go, there you are, it's always the same old you. Let me suggest that you take a vacation from yourself. And I know it sounds wild. It's the latest thing in travel. We call it the ego trip." You want to escape yourself? Are you sick of standing on the side as the party rages? Of wondering why your life in meaningless? You can escape the facade of your character, just Rekall it.


Be the hero.

Post-Colonial theory hinges on the idea that by describing the Orient, the fantasy kingdom, the outer-space adventure, you are actually describing yourself more than a real location. These beautiful, horrific kingdoms of the dreamscape only exist in the interior world-- these modern gods, these Martian landscapes which Quaid finds himself in, these legions of Heaven and Hell-- they are results of a mind laid bare by the monotony of typical Western life. You are experiencing life through a window. You are bored. You need to escape. On Earth, you are constantly reminded you are unimportant, that your opinion doesn't matter, that you have to kowtow to other people's wishes-- Quaid's fantasies are deeply masculine ones. He finds himself in Joseph Campbell's mono-myth. He is the hero of this story. Rekall can fulfill a desire to be the main actor and win.

Because of these reasons, because he is bored with his wife, his job, his childless experience as the world falls apart around him, Quaid chooses a secret agent as his dream persona. Something goes dramatically wrong with the process though. He stands and throws the doctors aside, escaping through the front doors, pursuers on his trail. Arnold has awakened. He has become a Buddha.

Layers keep falling away, revealing new aspects to the complex question of "who am I if I am not me?". We are introduced to a Mars colony, the woman in Quaid's dreams, and we discover that Quaid's previous persona may have been complicit all along.


You are your own enemy.

Arnold's character finds out that he was once Hauser, part of a conspiracy to find the terrorist, Kuato. He was the villain before he was the hero. In other words, his past comes back to haunt him. Hauser is Phaedrus-- the evil wolf, Saturn, who slices and dices the universe. And that means Kuato is the wise teacher come to help Osiris beat Set. On Mars, Kuato is an illusive man who the capitalists are desperate to find and kill. Quaid does find Kuato's hiding place, but he turns out not to be the ordinary person we expect. He is, in fact, an infant tumor growing on the chest of another man.


Kuato is the true Messiah. What does that mean to you?

He tells Quaid, "you are what you do. A man is defined by his actions not his memories." He grabs Arnold's hands. "Now open your mind to me, please. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind." He repeats it to really get his point there, see? We are taken down a hallway to underneath the mysterious Marshian pyramid, down more passages, and discover the ancient alien technology which will release oxygen into the atmosphere of Mars, ruining the villain's monopoly on the planet's gas.

Besides being a rip-roaring male fantasy with intrigue, back-stabbings, romance, and three-breasted whores, Total Recall is a surprisingly deep meditation on modern-day life. Because Quaid is a white man, we experience his perfect dream-- and it is a dream full of heroism, of killing, of sex. He kills his wife. He gets to be with the hot, exotic Marshian. He gets to be the cunning, heroic, strong leader of a clan of mutants. There are midgets. There are whores. There are gunfights. There are twists and turns, but Quaid is always the one who will win in the end. This is his fantasy. This is his Orient of the mind.


The Winner

But then it all comes crashing down. As Quaid sits in his fancy suite, he hears a knock on a door...

In walks Dr. Edgemar.


Ye tempter.

We assume that he is working for the film's villain, Cohaagen, because the audience has also been swept up in the Quaid's adventure. But almost surprisingly the doctor suggests none of this real afterall, that the adventure we have all been living through Quaid is a dream within a dream within a dream. He tells our hero that he has "suffered a schizoid embolism" and that he has experienced a "delusion". When Quaid tries to justify it, especially of the woman he had visions of before the memory implants, Edgemar answers back, "Oh Mr. Quaid, she's real because you dreamed her." Quaid raises a gun the doctor's head and threatens to kill him:

"It won't make the slightest difference to me Doug, but the consequences to you will be devastating. In your mind, I'll be dead, and with no one to guide you out, you'll be stuck here in permanent psychosis. The walls of reality will come crashing down around you. One minute, you're the savior of the rebel cause; next thing you know, you'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy. You'll even have fantasies about alien civilizations as you requested; but in the end, back on Earth, you'll be lobotomized! So get a grip on yourself, Doug, and put down that gun!"

Quaid fires it. He refuses to give into the Doctor's suggestions. The basis of growth is 'letting go' say the mythologies of the East. We have to release the ego's need to cling to things to be at peace. 'Bhudda' literally means one who has awakened.





2. Intense Level of Play

Hinduism's Shiva has ten arms. He moves them independently but also without thought, as if they were a machine working in tandem. "[The Hindus'] image of the divine is of a sort of centipede. A centipede can move a hundred legs without having to think about it, and Shiva can move ten arms very dexterously without having to think about them" (Watts 79, Myth and Religion). Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps unsurprisingly, delivers a similar image in Slaughterhouse-Five, one of a man's life in the form of a millipede, crawling from baby to death, forever alive in still images in the fourth demension.


Featured in film, Samsara.

The multi-armed god is a representation of every person whom has ever lived. We are his arms, we are all Shiva and just don't know it, pretending to be someone we are not. The word person having the same origin as 'persona' or mask. We wear 'personalities' like a mask, and the more lost you are the more you have forgotten the fact that you are THE godhead, the universe, the divine. Watts continues, comparing theater to the Hindu god. He says:

There are actors coming on the stage, but they are real people like you. In order for you not to see them in that way, they are going to put on their costumes and makeup, and then they are going to come out in front here and pretend to various roles. And you know you want to be half convinced that what they are doing on the stage is real.

The work of a great actor is to get you sitting on the edge of your chair, anxious, or weeping, or roaring with laughter, because he has almost persuaded you that what is on the stage is really happening. That is the greatness of his art, to take the audience in. In the same way, the Hindu feels that the Godhead acts his part so well that he takes himself in completely. And each of you is the godhead, wonderfully fooled by your own act. And although you won't admit it to yourself, you are enjoying it like anything. (Watts 82)

Story and myth are the closest we get to truth. They represent the plays which have been occurring since the big bang exploded and light and matter ballooned across the nothingness and until the end of everything.


The knight saving the princess from whatever.

We are capable of playing every role there is. We identify with the hero's quest to take down the villain, we gasp when it looks like he is about to be killed, and applaud when he wins out; but at the same time there is delight with the villain's shenanigans. In theater, we realize the importance of the bad guy when he receives applause from the audience at the end of play. This, of course, is less explicit in modern entertainment. There is no dramatic bowing of the mobster with gales of approval at the end of the movie.

As kids, we engage in this intense "level of play", which the ancient hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic era extended to all of life. Joseph Cambpell writes in Primitive Mythologies: The Masks of God that a "certain level of 'make-believe' is operative in all primitive religious. 'The savage' wrote Marett, 'is a good actor who can be quite absorbed in his role, like a child at play; and also, like a child, a good spectator who can be frightened to death by the roaring of something he knows perfectly well to be no 'real' lion'" (Campbell 23). By acknowledging that the villain is being acted by someone who is not evil, we are beginning to acknowledge that it is all an act. That we are all being tricked into believing that we are who we are, that we are the hero, and that we should cling to material things. And that we have been tricked by ourselves.

Like Dr. Edgemar says, it is a delusion. What Quaid's character in Total Recall doesn't realize is that he is performing the hero's role in this dream. In the next, he might be the evil industrialist, the perky lover, the little mutant child with the freaky eye. That is what reincarnation truly is, a morphing of the eternal consciousness into every role.


MUUUUTANTS!

The Indians have the mythic image of the Net of Indra. It "is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can't blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended" (Campbell 284, The Power of Myth).

This is not to say we shouldn't be involved; however, it does seem to be the case that the worst atrocities against our fellow men occur when we become too involved in rationality, in complexity of 'I'-ness, in the material world. Stories show us that we are communicating with archetypes. When we get into a really good book, our minds start communicating with this unconscious realm. It gives the chaotic voices of the right brain shape and coherence, linking both hemispheres together in a song or dance and harmonizing the brain like a lyre.


A liar... I mean a lyre.

Old archetypes from ages past haunt us again. There is no one there to tell us that this isn't real, or that this can't happen. It is complete experience. We get caught up with the characters, with the monsters which the ego usually denies us with its rational knowledge. Trolls, ogres, demons gods are there in their archetypal splendor, daring us to be terrified by their grotesque visages, or the specters within ourselves.

Erik Davis in his book TechGnosis claims that the "pagan and the paranormal have colonized our pop media" and that the "West's mystical heritage of occult dreamings, spiritual transformations, and apocalyptic visions crashed on the scientific shores of the modern age" (4-5). It is the same with video games, with their fascination with alien and fantastical monsters, the same with Total Recall with its mutants and godlike aliens-- creatures that were at first thrust into the spiritual dimensions, then to the farthest reaches of the Earth, and now alive in science fiction and fantasy... these nightmares will never go away...

As we progress further into the 21st century, there is going to be more bending of identity to the whims of computer interface. Information technology has already begun to shape our personalities in profound ways. With the ascension of social media, users are picturing themselves not as a person but an online image.




Go through your friends' photo albums, wall posts, and favorites list-- these are online identities which can be very separate from the person they present in public.

Erik Davis says that of all the technologies, "it is the technologies of information and communication that most mold and shape the source of all mystical glimmerings: the human self." It "tweaks our perceptions, communicates our picture of the world to one another, and constructs remarkable and sometimes insidious forms of control over the cultural stories that shape our sense of the world" (Davis 6).

Like all tools, these technologies become extensions of the person wielding them. However, beyond even that, they allow us to interface with each other in methods which weren't available to us before. In the online sphere we can hide behind masks. No one knows our "true" personalities, only a silly username. This allows great freedom of identity in the cyber-world and is an interesting case-study on the nature of reality-- of images and illusion.

Davis writes of the growing number of new technologies. Each time a new one became available, people would see it as mystical. People believed that electricity was the spiritual force which God used to create life. In it, they found new mythic experiences. When we don't understand something, we usually choose to see it as magical, fill in the space with 'lacuna'. Magnets were also used for therapy by icons like Franz Anton Mesmer who came up with 'animal magnetism', which eventually led to the concept of hypnotism.


Picture by Christopher Burdett... I thought the eye was a nose.

Phone calls and radio waves were seen as spiritual-- voices from people that were them and not them at the same time. Old animist spirits were evoked in us. Their desire was to be free, roam the collective imagination once again. As the world became increasingly demystified, the magic was drained from peoples' everyday lives. This was translated into 'real-life' adventures of explorers discovering new civilizations underground and ancient islands populated with strange locals in books like The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, or reemerged in spiritual contact through electricity and radio waves.

Whereas older technologies were extensions of a limb, McLuhan opines that modern ones were more like the expansion of the nervous system. "As new technologies begin to remold [...] boundaries, the shadows, doubles, and dark reflections that haunt human identity begin to leak outside the self as well, many of them taking up residence in the virtual spaces opened up by the new technologies" (73). Magic of ages past has dissolved into the pseudo-underworld, and it is now the magic of the internet which possesses the mind of man, only one part of the GRIN (genetics, robotics, information tech, and nano-tech).

Now that we are nearing the technology that Total Recall experimented with, what does this mean for us? Will it be the continued break down of identity into something new, into something terrifying? Other science fiction has also shown similar dystopic hells where the only outlet is fantasy, so much so that it becomes the only reality for most people. The power of story, of myth, is endless. Governments and corporations can use it to manipulate us, to control, and especially to distract us, but we can also use it destroy ourselves. Most of us see our lives as being on a course with a destination in mind. Taoism, Zen Buddhism would remind us that that's not what life is really about-- it's about letting go, experiencing the moments, the joys of the uncarved block. It is folly to believe that life can be controlled at all, at least in the long run-- are we moving to a world where technology destroys the self? And is that a bad thing? Verhoeven seems to believe that this desire is a symptom of something greater: the desire to be free of the demystification of the universe, of the collective boredom, the dazed eyes of contemporary life. What do you think?

There is also one more important piece to Total Recall's story: you, the viewer. We watch a man live out his fantasy, but are we not living out our fantasies through him. Like the play at the end of A Midsummer's Night Dream, are we not forced to view ourselves as potential actors in a play we did not realize we were in?

What Comics Mean to Me, Part 1

About two years ago I went through a bad break-up. I mean it was really bad. I felt like a little kid lost in the mall looking for his parents, every face scary or strange... there was a big hole and I wanted to fill it so badly with something, anything, to distract me from the one thing I couldn't accept: she was gone. Looking back now, I realize I was being childish, selfish, generally awful-- and one of the only things that got me through that time was comics.


[Getty Images from The Guardian]

I needed an outlet, something to entertain my mind. Since then I have latched on to other passions: magic the gathering, writing, mythology, and generally anything that has to with magick. But I speak about this now to give you a context for my passion for comics. I didn't necessarily grow up with them like a lot of others did. I didn't spend my allowance on them, I didn't get caught up in the '90s craze. I was a kid then, but I still remember loving the X-Men on Fox Kids, playing the N64 Activision Spiderman game, occasionally seeing Bruce Timm's Batman series... no one ever told me to love comics, to follow the various teams, I just did, but none of that really mattered until two years ago when I finally started reading them for myself-- and I know people will hate me for saying this, but my gateway was the New 52.

A lot of people hate DC's relaunch, but I can only say I love it. I picked up several series randomly I guess. I don't remember why I chose them in particular. It could have been the art, stuff I read on the internet, like I said, I don't recall, but I got Snyder's Batman and his Swamp Thing, Azzarello's Wonder Woman, Lemire's Animal Man, John's Justice League and Aquaman, and a Superman comic. In the end, I think I chose right. I ended up dropping John's output and Superman, and stuck with Batman, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing, and Animal Man. These were my favorites, and I have enjoyed them throughout their run.

Comics are gratifying-- they are a more pure form of art than most give them credit, perhaps in a way a lot of literature lovers will never understand. It isn't only the writer, but the artist, the inker, all these talents coming together to produce a moving image in your head. They can be more cinematic than books, something I struggle with in my writing because I think in images and feelings. They are perhaps more ancient, more inviolate. They are a spirit which grabs you, pulling you into its world... Grant Morrison's book, Supergods, mentions that the different artists interpretations of the character give a tapestry, a history, slaving over the spirit of Batman, Iron Man, or Spiderman, they hand over their soul to a budding image from the collective unconscious, giving it meaning, life, power, something which harkens back to oral tradition, where each storyteller gave his interpretation of a tale each time it was retold. Perhaps, these characters are pure enough, have affected enough lives that they are more real than any one person could ever be. We are birthing universes.

Recently, the PBS Idea Channel had a video on the same topic:



In fact, the author himself may be communicating with a higher authority if he writes from a subconscious state. If his words are clairvoyant enough, the spirit may go on to infect the masses around its original creator. Cultural figures like Superman or Batman have gone through many deviations over the years, and the same holds true for Harry Potter, who was originally created by just one author, but after his ascension in pop culture, thousands, if not millions, have used their own voice to portray him, especially across different medium. Is it possible that man did not create these cultural icons? What if, instead, they were particular powerful gods who wanted to be known in the lower spheres?

In The Secret History of the World, Mark Booth quotes Bob Dylan as saying that to change the age “‘you have to have power and dominion over the spirits. I had it once ... ‘ [Dylan] writes that such individuals are able to ‘... see into the heart of things, the truth of things—not metaphorically either—but really see, like seeing into metal and making it melt, see it for what it is with hard words and vicious insight’” (Booth 36). Booth says of this:

Note that he [Bob Dylan] emphasizes he is not talking metaphorically. He is talking directly and quite literally about a powerful, ancient wisdom, preserved in the secret societies, a wisdom in which the great artists, writers and thinkers who have forged our culture are steeped. At the heart of this wisdom is the belief that the deepest springs of our mental life are also the deepest springs of the physical world, because in the universe of the secret societies all chemistry is psycho-chemistry, and the ways in which the physical content of the universe responds to the human psyche are described by deeper and more powerful laws than the laws of material science (Booth 36)

There have been eight films produced from J.K. Rowling’s books, artwork by thousands of artists, and maybe most importantly, the fan fiction littered across the web. Sites like fanfiction.net and MuggleNet allow users to log on and create their own stories with their favorite pop culture properties. There is a wide range of romances (be they between Hermione and Harry, or Harry and Hagrid), rewritings of established books, and further sequels. Harry is not the singular point of one woman’s imagination anymore. He is a lightning rod of our collective dreams and fears. He can be anything to anyone, and his books are not “delimited by the individual who writes alone and silently” (Wisdom of the Mythtellers, 188).

Walter Ong’s ‘secondary orality’ lets the online community continue Harry’s adventures, though they may be apocryphal. We can compare this to the authoritative canon of the Bible, which was used to try and squash the writings of the Gnostics and other sects at the first Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The internet, in its own perverse way, is the voice of humanity—it is so alien, so intangible and logical, but it is also more human than any one person could be. It is our collective emotions, prejudices, logos, and mythos; it is everything great about us, but also everything wrong with us.

Grant Morrison, in his book about super heroes, Super Gods, says characters like Superman and Batman did not exist in a:

Close continua with beginnings, middles, and ends; the fictional ‘universe’ [of DC and Marvel] ran on certain repeating rules but could essentially change and develop beyond the intention of its creators. It was an evolving, learning, cybernetic system that could reproduce itself into the future using new generations of creators who would be attracted like worker bees to serve and renew the universe (Morrison 117)

(His emphasis, not mine.) He goes onto to compare the characters to something like twelve-bar blues or a chord progression. Different writers could “play very different music. This meant interesting work could be done by writers and artists who knew what they were getting into and were happy to add their own little square to a vast patchwork quilt of stories that would outlast their lives” (Morrison 118).

Myths, memes, and serials are similar to the concept of ‘tulpas’ created by Tibetan masters (‘thought-beings’). They can possess an age, live past their creators, and become something bigger than any one man or woman. The characters we create and adore are like the gods of old. They descend from the astral spheres and inhabit a person, speak through them, become them. The voices inside their head are not their own, but the gods’ divine thoughts. Sean Kane relates that myth-telling, like all communication, is a performance. We dance with each other without realizing it. In this way, we are God pretending to be human, a rabbit, or a bush because in the end, it is all an act.



Myth is everywhere. It is in the trees. In the rocks. In the rivers. In the sky, and especially in the comic book shop. It is alive, almost as if the polyphonic voices of nature (the spirits) were coming together to craft a story. Myth is not static. It changes every time someone retells it. This is similar to how memory works, in that each time a person relives a memory, they mismember it subtly. It morphs to fit the arch they believe themselves to be on and because of this, a myth will die away if it is no longer relevant to the group of people which it is associated, just like we bury a memory which no longer fits in with our story.

In contrast to characters being accepted as gods, Alison Lurie, in her article “Who is Peter Pan?” opines that instead of their works, writers are often compared to the higher authorities:

They create men and women and children who seem to us to be real. But unlike gods, these writers do not control the lives of their most famous creations. As time passes, their tales are told and retold. Writers and dramatists and film-makers kidnap famous characters like Romeo and Juliet, Sherlocke Holmes, and Superman; they change the characters’ ages and appearance, the progress and endings of their stories, and even their meanings (Lurie).

Like I discussed above, characters used in perpetuity by a host of different media and interpreters develop a life of their own. Did Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster foresee a modern Superman fighting Supergirl and the villains of Wildstorm inside the pages of the New 52? No, it would not only be improbable but impossible. Lurie brings up a good point—often when we perceive the author, we think of him or her as a god, but the the real question may be who is controlling who? Many authors will tell you there comes a point when their characters start to possess them. They cease to be writing about them. Their creations are now writing through them. Grant Morrison wonders in his aforementioned book “if ficto-scientists of the future might finally locate this theological point where a story becomes sufficiently complex to begin its own form of calculation, and even to become in some way self-aware. Perhaps that had already happened” (Morrison 119).



It was Bob Dylan who talked of the spirits’ (stories, images, and characters) ability to mesmerize an age and the artist himself. It is almost as if the great gods are worming their way into the lower celestial spheres by using clumsy talismans. Booth writes of the gods, “If you believe that ideas are more real than objects, as the ancients did, collective hallucinations are, of course, much easier to accept than if you believe in a matter-before-mind universe—in which case they are almost impossible to explain. In this history gods and spirits control the material world and exercise power over it” (Booth 59). Where before humanity was in direct communication with the gods, now they are distant, and the only way they can be contacted is through perverse means, and reading and writing are just a few of the ways.

Inside a book or comic, a person is free to commune with aspects of themselves that are hidden away or buried. Books, like any good talisman, have been burned for being evil. They can inspire great evil or great kindness. Literate society has not killed humanity’s great mythos, it has only changed or transformed it. It has moved toward the Occult, to the Orient, to serials and cultural icons, and finally to fantasy and outerspace. Myth and story, once recognized as a great societal linker, bringing together the young and the old and instructing on the proper ways of life, has died. It has moved into the hands of the few. Capitalism has led to the commoditization of our cultural icons, and it has done this without the masses realizing what they have lost.

These days, I continue to pick up Batman (along with Batman and ...), Soule's Swamp Thing (even better than Snyder's), Animal Man (though this month is its last issue), Wonder Woman, Superman and Wonder Woman (I love Charles Soule!), and some of the Forever Evil tie-ins. Books I have heard that are worth reading from DC include Lemire's Green Arrow, Soule's Red Lanterns, and Snyder's Superman Unchained-- and these three tend to be my favorite authors from DC. I have yet to delve into Marvel because as my uncle put it, you know what you are buying when you pick up a DC book, but apparently Bendis' X-Men series are pretty awesome, as well as Hawkeye, and a few others I read about on CBR and Bleeding Cool. These books don't even take into the account the great stuff going on in Vertigo, Image, Dark Horse, and a menagerie of other outlets-- it is a great time to be a comic book fan, especially with Vaughan's Saga.

Like I said at the beginning, comics mean a lot to me. They were another world I could hide away in during a dark time. I felt like I had nobody, like I could talk to nobody about the problems I had, the things I felt. But Batman was always there, in all his righteous rage and his tenaciousness. Swamp Thing and Animal were fighting against the rot. Wonder Woman was meeting her family for the first time. There is that feeling when I was leaving my home to grab a few books or novels from the local Hastings or Barnes and Noble-- it felt like everything was going to be okay for awhile, like I could manage the next few hours. I know things will not always go swimmingly, and bad things will always happen, but I know my friends will always be there, and I count these heroes as friends.

Daylight Savings Pain

Why do we still perform this old and terrible tradition? Fall back, Spring ahead!  And here I am just wanting to sleep another hour.  Why do we follow something which was only meant to be a joke in the first place?

Maybe it saved a little on coal during the first World War, but come on.  That ended in 1918.  Most recent studies show we actually use more energy during the months of DST.  That sucks.  In fact, it sucks even more than you or I think.  During the final month of DST, consumers spend an extra amount on car fuel, with most buyers getting their fuel at convenience stores, producing and extra $1 billion for oil industries.  This means it will probably never change!

This, despite the fact that traffic accidents tend to surge the Monday immediately following the DST changeover.  We live in a sad world, folks.  One in which monetary profits far outweigh the cost of human lives and safety.  Hell, Daylight Savings Time is simply bad for your health.  And the Fast Food industry likes it that way.

I could come up with a million reasons why I think this evil tradition should be straight up abolished.  But really, the only one that matters is I want my damn sleep.

Spider-Cents And PG-13 Pains

I was watching the new Spider-Man incarnation, The Amazing Spider-Man, the other day and I realized I have a difficult time getting into contemporary American cinema.  Maybe I’m getting old, but I can’t relate to the characters (who are, admittedly, younger than myself a lot of the time) or get into the drama of these stories.  I think it might be because the stories and characters take turns because they are expected, rather than earned.

I’ve come to notice a particular trend towards zero consequence in modern movies, and perhaps even more frequently in a lot of these Super Hero films.  Characters behave without recourse, and it ends up making these adventures ring false, and the deeds hollow.

The Peter Parker of The Amazing Spider-Man (not to be confused with the Peter Parker of the comic books of the same name) is the latest descendant of the Harry Potter-type. A your-parents-were-awesome-so-you-were-born-to-be-special wish fulfillment disguised as a character.  If it sounds like I don’t care for this modern iteration of a “hero”, it’s because I don’t.  He’s a whiny, needy, nothing and everything who is continually rewarded for his idiotic decisions and non-decisions alike.

Just your average (super good-looking, muscular, athletic, skateboarding, popular) nerd

He attacks police officers, afflicted scientists, and gets people he knows hurt and killed with such stunning frequency, you think he’d start to notice and straighten up.  But is he blamed or punished for this?  Not really.  The sole person who considers this emotionally unbalanced teen masquerading as a hero a true menace is treated as a villain.  No wonder kids want to be super heroes.

Notions of choice and accountability are rare in American cinema today.  I mean, the Ridley Scott-directed The Counselor was heavily about consequence, but it was also a convoluted mess almost no one saw.  Are audiences so desperate for escapism they’ll only watch movies with miniature drama, whose heroes all seem to represent the fulfillment of vague “chosen one” prophecies or children of greatness who can do no wrong?

Films seem to have long-since dropped the “will-they-or-won’t-they-survive” sort of drama, especially in today’s franchise-building efforts.  Was there anyone seriously concerned they would kill off Iron Man at the end of The Avengers?  No.  They had to invent an entirely original character, because they won’t even allow the movie’s antagonist a just demise.

"We'll let you go if you promise not to do it again."

I’ll give The Avengers credit in that you actually see people on the streets reacting to the carnage occurring around them.  Sure, it’s basically just a couple dozen or so people, but at least it doesn’t give the impression this is some vacated cityscape as in Man Of Steel.

Why are these movies so afraid of collateral damage?  It’s of thematic importance our heroes have something to fight for, and yet we rarely see it.  Without showing us the danger these scenarios ring completely hollow.  Do studios think we’re too squeamish to imagine our heroes might fail and our world will be dominated by these aliens?  Or do they think such thinking will eliminate the “fun factor” if we know innocent civilians are out amongst the chaos?

I once watched a film where a demigod opened up an interdimensional portal over New York, let loose a colossal monster which then began stomping cars and crushing buildings, and only a small mismatched band of heroes could hope to save everyone. 

It also had a decent run time

It was called Ghostbusters, and I would argue not too many people  would accuse it of being a dour or unfun movie.  In fact, not only is Ghostbusters widely considered  a classic genre film, it does so entirely without avoiding the subjects of consequence and collateral damage.  One could even say some of the movie’s best bits are derived  from these very themes.

I’ve noticed modern films have a surprising lack of violence, or rather, the lack of consequence to the violence.  When I was a child, we had G.I. Joe and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  These shows, respectively, were about a paramilitary force loaded to the teeth with the most advanced weaponry, and set of bipedal reptiles trained in the ancient and deadly art of ninjistu, the martial art of ninja assassins.

These are shows whose very concepts are unavoidably linked to violence.  But each one found a way around using what, in most circumstances, would be lethal force to defeat their adversaries (always bent on world domination).  The favorite fix-it for these shows was the change from weapons utilizing bullets to those of lasers.

 To be fair, the whole show is incredibly weird

The change in weaponry has a dual effect: firstly in that the weapon can pretty much magically change its use and level of damage and effect; and secondly that impressionable children may feel less apt to dig out their father’s laser gun and unwittingly zap someone to death.  Mostly, it’s for the latter.  In accordance with our culture’s strange rules, violence must be, in all its forms, shielded from the eyes of the youth.  This is why these television shows, and the many that preceded them and those that followed, used the same device to bring violent concepts safely into the hearts and minds of the youth.

Yeah, this is real

And how a comic book about lethal mutant ninja monsters who kill people

became a kid’s t-shirt and a catchphrase.

How does this relate to consequence?  I’m getting there.  See, the other thing shows about violent confrontation need is some level of of consequence.  Having heroes who can perform all manner of martial art gymnastics is good and well, but they’ll probably need to hit something if you want to keep kids watching.  But if our heroes are beating people mercilessly, won’t that encourage violent behavior in children? Enter the robots.

A robot feels nothing.  You can chop it apart, beat it, shoot it (with lasers), blow it up, mangle its innards, and it can still be shown on Saturday morning television to kids of all ages.  Loop hole granted.

When we’re talking about live-action films, we’re in the same boat.  But here, we’re also talking about a lot more money at stake.  Films are more commerce than art anymore, and anyone who disagrees can look at the sudden prevalence of PG-13 action films for proof.

Movies rarely receive the PG-13 rating by chance.  Much planning, editing, and giving up of artistic ground takes place before finally being granted this rating instead of a dreaded R rating.  Film studios recognize that kids under 17 will be turned away from R-rated films, and thus pressure filmmakers into making PG-13 movies and even frequently take finished films away from said filmmakers and edit them down.

Take the new RoboCop, a remake of one of the most famously violent movies ever made.  Iconic sequences from the original mostly involve vast amounts of blood and gore as the titled protagonist blasts round after round into corporate and streets scum, shredding their flesh apart in an amazing and also disgusting display of red violence.  

Probably not lasers doing that

In one particular sequence, a corporate upstart is horrifically killed when a test of one of the corporation’s new products goes wrong.  The big machine pumps hundreds of rounds into the poor man’s already dead and mutilated body, implicating not only the companies shocked executives as spectators, but also us, the audience at home.  We’re meant to be completely taken aback by what we’ve witnessed, similar to the titular character’s human demise early in the film.  

Not quite the same, ahem, impact

The remake completely sanitizes these moments by removing the gore, changing RoboCop’s “death” to a blocked out but colorful CGI explosion, and removing the violence of the original film’s lethal bullets by giving our hero a taser gun and making his enemies robots instead of humans.  Seeing a human body torn to shreds by an array of bullets is affecting.  Seeing non-blinking cyborgs with sparks bouncing off of them is quite a bit less so.  It may open the movie up to a broader audience, but it’s also a loss for the film’s integrity.  But worse, while we might suddenly be treated to a litany of ways to dispatch robots, and thus technically more violence, we are not shown or feeling the consequences of such violence.  We, the audience, are not asked to think about these acts, which may have a far more damnable effect.

If there is no consequence to violence, than what’s to stop an impressionable mind from committing it on another?  If all of the adversaries of one’s heroes are unfeeling combatants, why not begin assuming everyone who stands against you is equally unfeeling and undeserving of remorse?

Continuing on, the lack of consequence in choice in these more modern films may also have a damning effect in itself.  I return to the character of Peter Parker.  He causes his uncle to die.  He reveals his secret identity to his love interest. He reveals his secret identity to his love interest’s father.  He basically gets that guy killed.  What recourse does he suffer for these acts? Nothing.  He ends the film on good terms with his love interest, who’s father he had promised he’d leave her alone in a last dying wish scenario.  His bad behavior is rewarded throughout the entire film, while his primary antagonist, Dr. Connors (Lizard) is a man trying desperately to save lives and his own career but is treated as a vile enemy.  Something is off here.

 Yet he still gets the girl

I feel like I’m not being particularly constructive here.  I really could go on and on about other movies which deal with choice, consequence, and violence incredibly well.  But let me try and end this on a more conciliatory note.  I believe this new iteration can be turned around.  They can make it all built toward something so character-shaping and interesting it would make for a very good turnaround.  Something even Sam Raimi’s much better Spider-Man movies messed up.

Fans of the comics know exactly what I’m talking about.