It always kind of bores me when people complain, as it is so popular to do, about the abundance of remakes and reboots and sequels in movie theaters and on television. Because, you know, the forces behind the movies and tv shows are very nasty capitalists and make their decisions for anything but artistic reasons, let's take that for granted, but at the same time there is nothing either new or intrinsically capitalist about redoing and reworking and reinterpreting works of art. It's just something we do; one word for it is "dialogue."* Complain all you want about the remakes and reboots and sequels not being any good, and I'll agree with you about most (but not all) of them, but then you can say that about just about any movie or tv show or anything, really, so it's not particularly valuable as a critique if you ask me. Complain about how there's more of them now than there used to be and, well, maybe you're right, I haven't done a statistical survey, but on the other hand, try searching IMDB for "Wizard of Oz" and count up the results that come up from before the Judy Garland version, for example.
*Not that "it's always been that way" is a valid defense of anything (see below), but for one thing I wouldn't want art to stop responding to other art, and for another thing the supposed newness of the phenomenon is usually part of the complaint, as in, "today's creative bankruptcy..." etc.
But there's a different issue about the contemporary crop that I've been thinking about recently, and that's the convenient way that it allows for a continuity of white male supremacy in our popular culture. You know, if you're casting a brand-new show about people in space, or even a bridge crew for a new addition to the Star Trek franchise, the wacky kids these days might expect you to throw in non-white, non-male characters in decent proportions. But if you're rebooting KirkandSpock, there will be little objection to there only being two nonwhite characters and only one woman (or to these three tokens being spread miserly across two relatively minor characters), because that's the way it's always been. Not only that, but people will get upset if you try to change anything, because Spock's white! It's canon! I mean, me, I think Spock has been and always shall be Leonard Nimoy, but if you're going to throw an ill-fitting Halloween costume on Zachary Quinto and call it Spock with a straight face, I see no reason why the race and gender of these characters must be eternally fixed. Or my god, you should see, if you haven't, the outrage any time it's suggested that The Doctor could regenerate into something other than a white man, as if race and gender were discrete, unalterable genetic categories for an alien whose entire physical body changes and comes back to life every time he dies. For an even more instructive experience, try googling Idris Elba Thor.
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Training starts early
We've been watching a lot of new-millennium Doctor Who recently. Hey, this stuff is pretty frequently brilliant, you know? The Baronette, for reasons of a) employment and b) general good sense has been sticking to just Who proper, while out-of-work, no-sense me has been indulging additionally in the spinoffs--the self-consciously "adult" Torchwood and the for-kids Sarah Jane Adventures (RIP). At this point I've only made it through the first seasons of each, though we're on the third season of for-adults-really-but-kids-have-always-loved-it Who.
Anyway, the Whoniverse as a whole has always been pretty gentle. Torchwood pushes at that quite a bit (and often tries way too hard while it's at it), but there are far worse shows to grow up on than these. It's often violent and kid-scary (and, occasionally, verges on adult-scary), but the Doctor makes a point of never carrying weapons, and he respects life unless it unacceptably threatens other life, and occasionally drops some nice slogans.* And the whole thing has been pretty remarkably good in terms of women (regularly creating strong female characters who can think, frequently passing the Bechdel test without cheating, etc.), and race (though there are some slightly troubling patterns with its black characters, overall it's not too shabby--and it has a lot of them, relatively), and sexuality. In general, it is very seldom that I cringe while watching it, and when I do it's usually fairly minor things. Much better than you might expect from state TV**, in other words.
*Dalek Emperor: "What are you, Doctor? Killer or coward?"
The Doctor: "Coward. Every time."
That episode also contains the amazing line "You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." Delivered brilliantly by the brilliant Billie Piper as the brilliant Rose Tyler.
**And there's a pair of words to chill the blood, am I right?
All of which makes it all the more...weird, when something goes icky. Like in the Torchwood episode where some startlingly vehement, and yet disturbingly casual, transphobia was put into the mouth of, of all characters, Captain Jack, the pansexual anything-goes-including-aliens open-minded man of the 51st century (though apparently I was the only person in the world bothered by that line--and no, I'm not linking to that After Elton post because I like it, but only because it starts with the quote I'm talking about).
Or like in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode I watched this morning that suddenly spewed out a prison rape joke:
It's the kind of thing that should be unbelievable. Sarah Jane is one of the gentlest characters in the entire gentle world of Doctor Who. It's in the middle of an episode with a decent, if a bit ham-handed, message about how awful it is to train young children for violence. And yet right here in the middle of this show for children, the threat of imprisonment and violence is treated lightly, as if it were funny. Unfortunately, it's not unbelievable. Because, you see, we all have to be trained from a very young age to lack all empathy, to separate humanity into good and bad, and to think that punishing the bad part is not only acceptable, but good, and not only good, but funny. What better way than by casually sticking this kind of thing into a show purportedly against violence?
I'm not saying that the episode's writer, Phil Gladwin, plotted and schemed his way to to sticking this line in. But as far as I can tell there's only two kinds of minds that could think a line like that is appropriate in any context, or, for the love of god, necessary in a fucking children's show*. The first is the kind that does have a deliberate interest in training empathy out of children so as to maintain the status quo. The second is the kind that has been so socialized that it does this unconsciously. In some ways it's almost worse that Gladwin is far more likely to be the second kind. It's in this way that this murderous culture of ours maintains itself.
*And I am most emphatically not one to be all "but think of the children." I think children can be trusted to handle far more than we usually let them. And I don't think they should be protected from information and knowledge about either sex or violence, since those are both integral parts of the reality they live in (one a much much better part than the other, of course). But it's exactly these kinds of messages that slip past the conscious level and become a sort of background radiation of what-we-think-is-acceptable, until it gets to the point where we have a whole society of what used to be human beings who can't be bothered to stop laughing uproariously at goddamn prison rape, let alone do anything to stop it.
A year and a half before that episode originally aired, there had apparently been a minor controversy about a Who episode that had a brief, throwaway, fairly subtle joke about oral sex between consenting adults. To my knowledge (and to google's, as far as I can tell), there was no such outcry about this.
To anyone who doesn't understand, or doesn't believe in, the concept of the rape culture: voilà.
Anyway, the Whoniverse as a whole has always been pretty gentle. Torchwood pushes at that quite a bit (and often tries way too hard while it's at it), but there are far worse shows to grow up on than these. It's often violent and kid-scary (and, occasionally, verges on adult-scary), but the Doctor makes a point of never carrying weapons, and he respects life unless it unacceptably threatens other life, and occasionally drops some nice slogans.* And the whole thing has been pretty remarkably good in terms of women (regularly creating strong female characters who can think, frequently passing the Bechdel test without cheating, etc.), and race (though there are some slightly troubling patterns with its black characters, overall it's not too shabby--and it has a lot of them, relatively), and sexuality. In general, it is very seldom that I cringe while watching it, and when I do it's usually fairly minor things. Much better than you might expect from state TV**, in other words.
*Dalek Emperor: "What are you, Doctor? Killer or coward?"
The Doctor: "Coward. Every time."
That episode also contains the amazing line "You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." Delivered brilliantly by the brilliant Billie Piper as the brilliant Rose Tyler.
**And there's a pair of words to chill the blood, am I right?
All of which makes it all the more...weird, when something goes icky. Like in the Torchwood episode where some startlingly vehement, and yet disturbingly casual, transphobia was put into the mouth of, of all characters, Captain Jack, the pansexual anything-goes-including-aliens open-minded man of the 51st century (though apparently I was the only person in the world bothered by that line--and no, I'm not linking to that After Elton post because I like it, but only because it starts with the quote I'm talking about).
Or like in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode I watched this morning that suddenly spewed out a prison rape joke:
It's the kind of thing that should be unbelievable. Sarah Jane is one of the gentlest characters in the entire gentle world of Doctor Who. It's in the middle of an episode with a decent, if a bit ham-handed, message about how awful it is to train young children for violence. And yet right here in the middle of this show for children, the threat of imprisonment and violence is treated lightly, as if it were funny. Unfortunately, it's not unbelievable. Because, you see, we all have to be trained from a very young age to lack all empathy, to separate humanity into good and bad, and to think that punishing the bad part is not only acceptable, but good, and not only good, but funny. What better way than by casually sticking this kind of thing into a show purportedly against violence?
I'm not saying that the episode's writer, Phil Gladwin, plotted and schemed his way to to sticking this line in. But as far as I can tell there's only two kinds of minds that could think a line like that is appropriate in any context, or, for the love of god, necessary in a fucking children's show*. The first is the kind that does have a deliberate interest in training empathy out of children so as to maintain the status quo. The second is the kind that has been so socialized that it does this unconsciously. In some ways it's almost worse that Gladwin is far more likely to be the second kind. It's in this way that this murderous culture of ours maintains itself.
*And I am most emphatically not one to be all "but think of the children." I think children can be trusted to handle far more than we usually let them. And I don't think they should be protected from information and knowledge about either sex or violence, since those are both integral parts of the reality they live in (one a much much better part than the other, of course). But it's exactly these kinds of messages that slip past the conscious level and become a sort of background radiation of what-we-think-is-acceptable, until it gets to the point where we have a whole society of what used to be human beings who can't be bothered to stop laughing uproariously at goddamn prison rape, let alone do anything to stop it.
A year and a half before that episode originally aired, there had apparently been a minor controversy about a Who episode that had a brief, throwaway, fairly subtle joke about oral sex between consenting adults. To my knowledge (and to google's, as far as I can tell), there was no such outcry about this.
To anyone who doesn't understand, or doesn't believe in, the concept of the rape culture: voilà.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
More London protest footage
China Miéville's commentary (via) is worth a read:
The scene: a mass demonstration in Tehran/Harare/Rangoon/Pyongyang/&c. The police are filmed shoving a 20-yr-old demonstrator with cerebral palsy from her/his wheelchair & dragging her/him across the pavement, to the horror of onlookers. Footage of this event is sneaked out & publicised. Accordingly, Iranian/Zimbabwean/Burmese/North Korean/&c state broadcasters cannot ignore it. Forced to report it, they stress, however, that there ‘is a suggestion’ that said demonstrator was ‘rolling towards the police’.If you haven't seen the BBC interview with Jody McIntyre, the man in (and then out of) the wheelchair, the video and an excellent transcript are here (note: I know nothing of that blog in general, but just having the transcript is a great resource). The interviewer is even more ludicrous than you might expect (even primed by Miéville's commentary), but McIntyre keeps his cool and says some really remarkable things that hopefully had some impact on at least a few people watching. McIntyre's blog, Life on Wheels, also seems like good reading.
The British & American media response can be imagined. Shock. Disgust at such overt & disgraceful victim-blaming. Sympathy for the young activist, who becomes an international hero. Revulsion at the outlet’s patently ridiculous claims of ‘objectivity’. Bitter humour, perhaps, at the sheer Leviathan absurdity of the implied justification.
‘Rolling towards the police’ might become a media meme, this year’s Comical Ali, a shorthand for any self-evidently ridiculous & tasteless claim by the media apparatchik of a repressive regime. Hipsters begin to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase & the face of the ‘journalist’ who spoke it.
Now relocate that attack.
With apologies to What The Tee Vee Taught...
...I don't want to encroach on your territory, but I figured Australia was out of your jurisdiction.
AS IF the full array of standard gay stereotypes weren't ridiculous enough (the "normal guy," the leather daddy, the bear, and the prissy twink, from left to right*), you're really going to shove disability, non-whiteness, slight fatness**, and femaleness onto one token character? This is hilarious. I wonder how many board meetings and focus groups went into constructing that set of characters.
(It is, by the way, a promo from an upcoming Australian sitcom about gay sci-fi nerds. As seen on io9.)
*Because it's certainly been my experience that every group of gay men includes one representative of each of these types.
**The bear doesn't count.
AS IF the full array of standard gay stereotypes weren't ridiculous enough (the "normal guy," the leather daddy, the bear, and the prissy twink, from left to right*), you're really going to shove disability, non-whiteness, slight fatness**, and femaleness onto one token character? This is hilarious. I wonder how many board meetings and focus groups went into constructing that set of characters.
(It is, by the way, a promo from an upcoming Australian sitcom about gay sci-fi nerds. As seen on io9.)
*Because it's certainly been my experience that every group of gay men includes one representative of each of these types.
**The bear doesn't count.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
How does this happen?
CNN and their backers are incredibly gifted with cruel juxtaposition. What better way to slate a video clip on the tragic resource situation in Haiti than this Wheat Thins ad:
Also, Dr. Gupta - either stop playing coy or get a fucking clue.
Also, Dr. Gupta - either stop playing coy or get a fucking clue.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
And speaking of whole stupid things
First Banksy, now Ratzi. And here I thought The Simpsons was, at this point, irrelevant.
I actually think the Banksy thing is the dumber of the two.
I actually think the Banksy thing is the dumber of the two.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
A Wonder Unlike Any Other...
All considered, I'm not sure you could call the 50 second mark a "punchline", but it is a delightful bonus to this Malaysian treasure.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Smile!
The other day I watched an embarrassing old episode of The Avengers called "The Decapod" (it went downhill after the title). The plot was some sort of nonsense about a Balkan dictator/playboy who's going to be assassinated by some guy in a wrestling costume, only it's really him all along and he just wants to steal the UN's money and go on cruises, or something. But was really struck me was this:
That's Julie Stevens as Venus Smith, who was briefly one of John Steed's sidekicks in the early years of the show. She was a lounge singer, and each of her episodes included a musical number or two, which, you know, kind of tiresome since the music is bland, but nice, I guess?
Anyway. I have a minor temporomandibular joint disorder, which basically means that my jaw has a tendency to get painfully tense and can lock sometimes and occasionally feels like it doesn't fit right, which is terribly uncomfortable. Smiling or laughing for prolonged periods can be particularly bad for it. It's nothing tragic, and considering that it's currently my only notable physical ailment aside from back pain due to shitty posture, I'm not going to complain all that much about it.
My point is, look at that picture. The muscles in poor Julie Stevens' jaw must be so goddamn tense. And she's making that face--completely unmoving, incidentally, I wish I had a video to share--while singing. And then she smiles through the rest of the hour-long episode, in which Steed discovers that the Balkan dictator has a thing for blondes and is coincidentally looking for a "private secretary," if you know what I mean, because the last one was sexily killed by a man in a wrestling mask, so then he tricks Venus into thinking that the dictator is actually some kind of entertainment impresario who wants to book her for a tour of the Balkans even though he's never heard her sing, and then she falls in love with him because he kidnaps her.
Smiling all the while.
Women of the world, if I may, I would like to sincerely apologize to your temporomandibular joints. If you don't want to smile all the time, that's totally fine with me. Next time someone stops you and asks "Why so glum?" or ingratiatingly tells you to "Smile, it's not so bad," sock him one for me. Maybe you can fuck up his jaw, too.
That's Julie Stevens as Venus Smith, who was briefly one of John Steed's sidekicks in the early years of the show. She was a lounge singer, and each of her episodes included a musical number or two, which, you know, kind of tiresome since the music is bland, but nice, I guess?
Anyway. I have a minor temporomandibular joint disorder, which basically means that my jaw has a tendency to get painfully tense and can lock sometimes and occasionally feels like it doesn't fit right, which is terribly uncomfortable. Smiling or laughing for prolonged periods can be particularly bad for it. It's nothing tragic, and considering that it's currently my only notable physical ailment aside from back pain due to shitty posture, I'm not going to complain all that much about it.
My point is, look at that picture. The muscles in poor Julie Stevens' jaw must be so goddamn tense. And she's making that face--completely unmoving, incidentally, I wish I had a video to share--while singing. And then she smiles through the rest of the hour-long episode, in which Steed discovers that the Balkan dictator has a thing for blondes and is coincidentally looking for a "private secretary," if you know what I mean, because the last one was sexily killed by a man in a wrestling mask, so then he tricks Venus into thinking that the dictator is actually some kind of entertainment impresario who wants to book her for a tour of the Balkans even though he's never heard her sing, and then she falls in love with him because he kidnaps her.
Smiling all the while.
Women of the world, if I may, I would like to sincerely apologize to your temporomandibular joints. If you don't want to smile all the time, that's totally fine with me. Next time someone stops you and asks "Why so glum?" or ingratiatingly tells you to "Smile, it's not so bad," sock him one for me. Maybe you can fuck up his jaw, too.
Friday, June 4, 2010
RIP Rue McClanahan
I feel bad being a day late on this, but I wanted to get this video uploaded and that shit takes forever.
The Golden Girls continues to be one of my all-time favorite entertainments; the quality of its specific combination of a writing team, four actors, and a spectacularly useful formula has rarely been equaled. You could say this equally of Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, or Betty White, but: it never would have worked without Rue McClanahan.
Everyone knows Blanche, or if they don't, it's easy to find her (and they should). I'd like to leave you with something else, though. It's her brief appearance in Starship Troopers, which I have been known to describe as my favorite movie of the 1990s (this isn't always true, depending on my mood, but it's definitely up there). The scene is sadly under a minute and a half long (you can tell it was edited down from a longer take, I'd love to see those deleted scenes) and largely taken up by Denise Richards' antics, but McClanahan's blind weirdo biology teacher is worth it. I love her face in the background of the Denise Richards barf shot.
The Golden Girls continues to be one of my all-time favorite entertainments; the quality of its specific combination of a writing team, four actors, and a spectacularly useful formula has rarely been equaled. You could say this equally of Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, or Betty White, but: it never would have worked without Rue McClanahan.
Everyone knows Blanche, or if they don't, it's easy to find her (and they should). I'd like to leave you with something else, though. It's her brief appearance in Starship Troopers, which I have been known to describe as my favorite movie of the 1990s (this isn't always true, depending on my mood, but it's definitely up there). The scene is sadly under a minute and a half long (you can tell it was edited down from a longer take, I'd love to see those deleted scenes) and largely taken up by Denise Richards' antics, but McClanahan's blind weirdo biology teacher is worth it. I love her face in the background of the Denise Richards barf shot.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Trivium
Something struck me while looking at one of the pictures of Melissa McEwan's hero, Hillary Clinton, in the post I linked to in my previous.
You frequently see shots of our fearless leaders in settings like these. Two awkwardly large chairs pointed towards the cameras, the subjects of the photographs sitting awkwardly half facing the cameras, half facing each other, twisted in what looks like massively uncomfortable positions, leaning in to one another to attempt to bridge the awkwardly large distance between them as they talk, legs dangling uncomfortably, never knowing whether to cross or stay feet planted on the floor.
One: It reminds me of the awkward posing of televised sketch comedy.
Two: Is there any question this is anything but theater?
Three: Maybe at the very least sitting in these positions gives these people terrible back pain, which would totally make up for all the killing and everything.
You frequently see shots of our fearless leaders in settings like these. Two awkwardly large chairs pointed towards the cameras, the subjects of the photographs sitting awkwardly half facing the cameras, half facing each other, twisted in what looks like massively uncomfortable positions, leaning in to one another to attempt to bridge the awkwardly large distance between them as they talk, legs dangling uncomfortably, never knowing whether to cross or stay feet planted on the floor.
One: It reminds me of the awkward posing of televised sketch comedy.
Two: Is there any question this is anything but theater?
Three: Maybe at the very least sitting in these positions gives these people terrible back pain, which would totally make up for all the killing and everything.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS HOUSE?!?!
Sarah, Leland, and Laura Palmer's house is for sale! The back of it doesn't look remotely like I would have imagined.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
More complaints about women in sci-fi TV
I just sat down to watch the first post-hiatus episode of FlashForward, because even though I mostly hate that show, it throws out enough cool sci-fi bits like "all the crows died at the same time" or "weird mysterious tower in the middle of Somalia and a big black cloud" or "the LHC did it," and enough really entertainingly batty moments like "main character lying on the ground shot and one of those alarm clocks with wheels rolling around in the puddle of blood" to keep me watching half-heartedly.
And I'm disappointed in myself for not even noticing this until ten episodes in, but the main characters' flashforwards are rigidly gender-segregated.
The men: One is in his FBI office dramatically figuring things out while masked people with guns hunt him down. One is searching for his daughter in war-torn Afghanistan (ugh). One is in a heated phone call about the fate of the world. One didn't have a flashforward, so, ooh, is he dead in the future?
The women: One is with a man who is not her husband. One is pregnant. One (it seems) is getting married. One is being drowned. And, uh...that's it.
And, OK, sure, it's not as cut and dry as all that. One of the men is on the toilet, ha ha. The daughter in Afghanistan (whose flashforward I don't believe we've seen) is a soldier. And then there are minor characters whose visions deviate from the standard set by the main characters.
But the overall pattern stands: the men are in action! They're doing world-shaping important things! The women are cheating on their husbands or getting married (or is she?) or being pregnant or being brutalized by men.
The show is also stupid in many other ways.
Also, if I were a TV show coming back from months of hiatus, I would find a better way to open the returning episode than with four minutes of almost unbroken shitty CGI.
And I'm disappointed in myself for not even noticing this until ten episodes in, but the main characters' flashforwards are rigidly gender-segregated.
The men: One is in his FBI office dramatically figuring things out while masked people with guns hunt him down. One is searching for his daughter in war-torn Afghanistan (ugh). One is in a heated phone call about the fate of the world. One didn't have a flashforward, so, ooh, is he dead in the future?
The women: One is with a man who is not her husband. One is pregnant. One (it seems) is getting married. One is being drowned. And, uh...that's it.
And, OK, sure, it's not as cut and dry as all that. One of the men is on the toilet, ha ha. The daughter in Afghanistan (whose flashforward I don't believe we've seen) is a soldier. And then there are minor characters whose visions deviate from the standard set by the main characters.
But the overall pattern stands: the men are in action! They're doing world-shaping important things! The women are cheating on their husbands or getting married (or is she?) or being pregnant or being brutalized by men.
The show is also stupid in many other ways.
Also, if I were a TV show coming back from months of hiatus, I would find a better way to open the returning episode than with four minutes of almost unbroken shitty CGI.
Friday, March 19, 2010
I am SO blogging about this
BREAKING NEWS: Blogger upset about possible developments that may happen in episodes of a science fiction show that haven't aired yet!
Kenneth Johnson's original 1983 miniseries V (I haven't seen the rest of the original series) is far from perfect, but it tries in its charming way to be a thoughtful anti-fascist allegory. As allegory goes it's single-mindedly straightforward and simplistic, but that still allows Johnson to do neat little things from time to time. Like when the elderly holocaust survivor recognizes what's going on, despite the fact that the first victims here are a more amorphous group (scientists--a very clever decision, I think) than the Jews were. Or at the beginning of the show when he follows a lovely dedication ("To the heroism of the resistance fighters--past, present, and future--this work is respectfully dedicated") with a scene of the cameraman character filming footage of Salvadorian rebels fighting off government helicopters (it is never stated who bought those helicopters, but it doesn't take much thought to realize).
Like I said, it's not perfect--it aired on a major American TV network, after all--but for what it is, it's pretty admirable.
The new V, despite a surprisingly awesome performance from Morena Baccarin as the leader of the aliens, is in comparison an incoherent, turgid mess, or at least has been so far. It is impossible to interpret it in any way but as an allegorized (is that a word?) version of the popular right-wing reaction to the Obama administration. Which, you know, is boring and pointless and just reinforces this bizarre concept that Obama is some kind of a radical departure from his predecessors; whether one takes this as a positive or a negative, it's equally untrue. But there we have it; we even had an episode about the evils of universal health care, as if a) such a thing would be awful, and b) we had any chance of getting it any time soon. Where the original series was a critique of the very real threat of fascism, the new one is a critique of a cartoon version of hysterically imagined socialism--covering for the ever-encroaching fascism Johnson saw almost thirty years ago.
An additionally insulting angle on it is that the new series is intensely anti-science. Johnson deliberately positioned his scientists as oppressed heroes; unrealistic considering the actual position of science in our society, perhaps, but a nice vision nonetheless. The new series replaces the scientists with heroes from law enforcement and religious vocations, discovering in each episode another way that science is evil.
And now the show is coming back from its lengthy hiatus with a new showrunner, and I learn that it's poised to become even worse. The new showrunner has decided that "at its spine, (the show is) really about two mothers and how far they're willing to go to protect their children." I could puke.
Convenient, too, that the male lead of the show is a priest, so I can't even object with a "Why doesn't he have to be the father of all children?"
Also in the first four episodes we already have a nonsensical interspecies pregnancy story, because having babies is what women are for, regardless of the biology. Why else would there be women in the cast? And it's a good thing they thought to cast more than one!
Kenneth Johnson's original 1983 miniseries V (I haven't seen the rest of the original series) is far from perfect, but it tries in its charming way to be a thoughtful anti-fascist allegory. As allegory goes it's single-mindedly straightforward and simplistic, but that still allows Johnson to do neat little things from time to time. Like when the elderly holocaust survivor recognizes what's going on, despite the fact that the first victims here are a more amorphous group (scientists--a very clever decision, I think) than the Jews were. Or at the beginning of the show when he follows a lovely dedication ("To the heroism of the resistance fighters--past, present, and future--this work is respectfully dedicated") with a scene of the cameraman character filming footage of Salvadorian rebels fighting off government helicopters (it is never stated who bought those helicopters, but it doesn't take much thought to realize).
Like I said, it's not perfect--it aired on a major American TV network, after all--but for what it is, it's pretty admirable.
The new V, despite a surprisingly awesome performance from Morena Baccarin as the leader of the aliens, is in comparison an incoherent, turgid mess, or at least has been so far. It is impossible to interpret it in any way but as an allegorized (is that a word?) version of the popular right-wing reaction to the Obama administration. Which, you know, is boring and pointless and just reinforces this bizarre concept that Obama is some kind of a radical departure from his predecessors; whether one takes this as a positive or a negative, it's equally untrue. But there we have it; we even had an episode about the evils of universal health care, as if a) such a thing would be awful, and b) we had any chance of getting it any time soon. Where the original series was a critique of the very real threat of fascism, the new one is a critique of a cartoon version of hysterically imagined socialism--covering for the ever-encroaching fascism Johnson saw almost thirty years ago.
An additionally insulting angle on it is that the new series is intensely anti-science. Johnson deliberately positioned his scientists as oppressed heroes; unrealistic considering the actual position of science in our society, perhaps, but a nice vision nonetheless. The new series replaces the scientists with heroes from law enforcement and religious vocations, discovering in each episode another way that science is evil.
And now the show is coming back from its lengthy hiatus with a new showrunner, and I learn that it's poised to become even worse. The new showrunner has decided that "at its spine, (the show is) really about two mothers and how far they're willing to go to protect their children." I could puke.
To me, Anna is the mother of all Vs. ... One of the things that I wanted to make clear in my version of the show was that Anna is not evil at all: Anna is simply an animal. She's a mother and she just wants to protect her children, her species, and she doesn't have anything against humanity. She's not evil. ... We're just something that stands in the way of her children's future.The "mother of all Vs" thing I was willing to let slide, reluctantly; whatever, they're aliens, fine. I'd rather something else, but fine. She's "simply an animal," though? I mean, yes, we're all animals. We're primates, the Vs are lizards, sure. But can we please have a storyline that involves women without invoking the maternal instinct?
In [that] way, Erica's the same. ... Even though it's just Tyler, her son, I feel, metaphorically, she's the mother of all children.OK, shut up. I feel bad for Elizabeth Mitchell. She just left Lost, a show where her character, and other women, were allowed to have a few motivations unrelated to motherhood and men (though admittedly they often do have those motivations, too), and now she has to be "the mother of all children" just because she's the lead woman in her new show's cast? Sucks.
Convenient, too, that the male lead of the show is a priest, so I can't even object with a "Why doesn't he have to be the father of all children?"
Also in the first four episodes we already have a nonsensical interspecies pregnancy story, because having babies is what women are for, regardless of the biology. Why else would there be women in the cast? And it's a good thing they thought to cast more than one!
I think the pregnancy story is a really fun story and weird and twisted but also very grounded and emotional. ... And there will be multiple pregnancies. ... Val will not be the only one who's pregnant.Kill me. I can't wait for when the dramatic tension really ramps up after the scene where all of humanity walks in on Erica having sex and realizes that she's not a virgin after all but really a whore!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Why I don't like snapshots of the zeitgeist
They're almost always stupid.
That's an essay guest-posted at the increasingly useless io9 by Bob Goodman, one of the writers of Warehouse 13, aSci-Fi ChannelSyfy show I have never watched and don't plan on watching because it sounds unbearable to me. In it he describes what he thinks the show is about. It's interesting from a writers' standpoint; as an embarrassingly infrequent writer myself, I recognize the feeling of realizing what your work is about well into the process, and also of not knowing if anyone else feels the same way about it.
As a description of the world (which it also tries to be), it's, as I hinted at above, really stupid. Here's the most ridiculous passage:
As fantasy, unrelated to the real world and what actually happens in it, we can argue about the literary merits of Goodman's description of 9/11. In the real world, trying to respond to it just gives me a headache. Hey, Bob: "the Crusades" were an endless series of wars of aggression against the various Muslim nations of the middle east and guess what that's still happening. And the way we "fight them"? More by slaughtering millions of completely unrelated people than by "cutting off the opium trade." And that's just a start. I'm too tired to go any further.
All of the nonsense about the internet as a fundamental game-changer rather than a delightful convenience, well, I'm way too tired.
UPDATE: Yeah, I was definitely too tired, because I never actually got to my point, which is in two parts.
1. Trying to reduce the motivations of the 9/11 hijackers to a kind of postmodern schizophrenic mish-mash is ridiculous; it only works if you assume that they could not possibly have had an actual motive. They weren't "still fighting the Crusades" because they just felt like it, or were too stuck in the past to move on; they were fighting it because, as I said, it's still going on. Their choice of the WTC has absolutely nothing to do with its being a 70's icon--after all, if that was the case, they wouldn't have also targeted the Pentagon (ded. 1943) and the Capitol building (built over a period from 1793 to 1811). Obviously the sites were targeted because of what goes on inside of them.
And, uh, so on.
2. Goodman's colossal misrepresentation of reality in this one teensy paragraph completely disproves his entire argument, or at least reveals that he has misunderstood it. Sure, Goodman, our lives are on shuffle. But they don't have to be. You've chosen to mindlessly believe a received narrative of 9/11 that falls apart under a moment's scrutiny. But you have the information available to you to make you realize that you've been misled, if you just chose to become aware of it. That you simultaneously are conscious that you have a wealth of information available to you and refuse to make use of it reveals quite a bit about you.
That's an essay guest-posted at the increasingly useless io9 by Bob Goodman, one of the writers of Warehouse 13, a
As a description of the world (which it also tries to be), it's, as I hinted at above, really stupid. Here's the most ridiculous passage:
I apologize in advance for invoking 9/11, but on that day at the start of the new millennium, a group of people still fighting the Crusades used airplanes to destroy a pair of iconic buildings from the 1970's, killing 3,000 people and shocking the West's financial system... and the way we fight them is by cutting off the opium trade.I think I've said before that sometimes people say things that are so completely unrelated to reality that you can't even describe them as right or wrong any more than you could use those words to describe, say, JRR Tolkien's take on Sauron.
As fantasy, unrelated to the real world and what actually happens in it, we can argue about the literary merits of Goodman's description of 9/11. In the real world, trying to respond to it just gives me a headache. Hey, Bob: "the Crusades" were an endless series of wars of aggression against the various Muslim nations of the middle east and guess what that's still happening. And the way we "fight them"? More by slaughtering millions of completely unrelated people than by "cutting off the opium trade." And that's just a start. I'm too tired to go any further.
All of the nonsense about the internet as a fundamental game-changer rather than a delightful convenience, well, I'm way too tired.
UPDATE: Yeah, I was definitely too tired, because I never actually got to my point, which is in two parts.
1. Trying to reduce the motivations of the 9/11 hijackers to a kind of postmodern schizophrenic mish-mash is ridiculous; it only works if you assume that they could not possibly have had an actual motive. They weren't "still fighting the Crusades" because they just felt like it, or were too stuck in the past to move on; they were fighting it because, as I said, it's still going on. Their choice of the WTC has absolutely nothing to do with its being a 70's icon--after all, if that was the case, they wouldn't have also targeted the Pentagon (ded. 1943) and the Capitol building (built over a period from 1793 to 1811). Obviously the sites were targeted because of what goes on inside of them.
And, uh, so on.
2. Goodman's colossal misrepresentation of reality in this one teensy paragraph completely disproves his entire argument, or at least reveals that he has misunderstood it. Sure, Goodman, our lives are on shuffle. But they don't have to be. You've chosen to mindlessly believe a received narrative of 9/11 that falls apart under a moment's scrutiny. But you have the information available to you to make you realize that you've been misled, if you just chose to become aware of it. That you simultaneously are conscious that you have a wealth of information available to you and refuse to make use of it reveals quite a bit about you.
Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles p. 29
(cross-posted from Commonplace)
He was less interested in television. Every week, however, his heart in his mouth, he watched The Animal Kingdom. Graceful animals like gazelles and antelopes spent their days in abject terror while lions and panthers lived out their lives in listless imbecility punctuated by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughtered weaker animals, dismembered and devoured the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity was that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground for viruses. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. The pompous, half-witted voice of Claude Darget, filled with awe and unjustifiable admiration, narrated these atrocities. Michel trembled with indignation. But as he watched, the unshakable conviction grew that nature, taken as a whole, was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust--and man's mission on earth was probably to do just that.
He was less interested in television. Every week, however, his heart in his mouth, he watched The Animal Kingdom. Graceful animals like gazelles and antelopes spent their days in abject terror while lions and panthers lived out their lives in listless imbecility punctuated by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughtered weaker animals, dismembered and devoured the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity was that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground for viruses. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. The pompous, half-witted voice of Claude Darget, filled with awe and unjustifiable admiration, narrated these atrocities. Michel trembled with indignation. But as he watched, the unshakable conviction grew that nature, taken as a whole, was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust--and man's mission on earth was probably to do just that.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
John G. Miller has a cute dog
So that's something at least. I seem to have fallen into something of a blog-writer's block (bliter's block, or block). There should be a new QBQ up in the next few days, and hopefully I'll come up with something else to say before too long. Quick, someone send me a link to something outrageous so I can write about it. That Hilary Clinton sure is something, am I right?
I just finished watching The Prisoner, which I want to write about but have so much to say that it's overwhelming; I'd always heard that the last episode was a rushed disappointment but I was blown away by it. I'm also reading Galileo's Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel, which, silly-sounding title and concept notwithstanding, is also wonderful and highly recommended. It was a nice coincidence that I picked it up just after having read Gunn Allen's Pocahontas and being steeped in that mode of thought, along with having been introduced to Bohm's implicate order (I haven't read the book yet but will soon), because while Robinson doesn't explicitly address any of that, it forms a very powerful background to the events of the novel. I may write more about both of these works soon. Who knows.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Report from a week's immersion in corporate America
Thoughts on watching Nancy Grace
Our society's pervasive dissociation leads inevitably to a sociopathic sadism, which in turn results in an urge to punish the individual-other. We naturally do not want to punish ourselves, and so we perform conscience, we perform indignant outrage, these ritual performances focused by mass-cultural touchstones like Nancy Grace or crime procedurals like the Law and Order franchise or other similar resources. In this way we justify the brutally harsh punitive measures we delight in imposing, despite the fact that what we are punishing--that is, what we perform these horrified reactions about, what we act shocked by--is nothing we would not do ourselves, given a likelihood of getting away with it.
Does anyone fall for this shit?
Poland Spring has a bottle design called an "eco-shape" that they claim is good for the environment. I wish I had saved a label from one of the bottles I was forced to drink out of this week, because the phrasing on it is hilarious. Here's their corporate propaganda about it. Bottled water is perhaps the most purely evil thing on this earth.
Words have no meaning if the corporate world finds out about them
I was sent away for a week to train on a new computer system my employer is implementing. The extremely clear purpose of this system is to allow the company to do less for its clients with smaller staff. Every time the trainer introduced a feature of this system that was different from the way the company had done things in the past, he said it was "counter-cultural to the way we're used to doing things." I had come across the bizarre use of the word "culture" in a corporate context ("Hiring temps at this time of year is part of our culture here at [company]"), but "counter-culture" was new, and supremely bizarre, to me.
Our society's pervasive dissociation leads inevitably to a sociopathic sadism, which in turn results in an urge to punish the individual-other. We naturally do not want to punish ourselves, and so we perform conscience, we perform indignant outrage, these ritual performances focused by mass-cultural touchstones like Nancy Grace or crime procedurals like the Law and Order franchise or other similar resources. In this way we justify the brutally harsh punitive measures we delight in imposing, despite the fact that what we are punishing--that is, what we perform these horrified reactions about, what we act shocked by--is nothing we would not do ourselves, given a likelihood of getting away with it.
Does anyone fall for this shit?
Poland Spring has a bottle design called an "eco-shape" that they claim is good for the environment. I wish I had saved a label from one of the bottles I was forced to drink out of this week, because the phrasing on it is hilarious. Here's their corporate propaganda about it. Bottled water is perhaps the most purely evil thing on this earth.
Words have no meaning if the corporate world finds out about them
I was sent away for a week to train on a new computer system my employer is implementing. The extremely clear purpose of this system is to allow the company to do less for its clients with smaller staff. Every time the trainer introduced a feature of this system that was different from the way the company had done things in the past, he said it was "counter-cultural to the way we're used to doing things." I had come across the bizarre use of the word "culture" in a corporate context ("Hiring temps at this time of year is part of our culture here at [company]"), but "counter-culture" was new, and supremely bizarre, to me.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
I like TV too
For people who like LOST:
Some obsessive fan took scenes relating to the plane crash that we've seen over the past five years and rearranged them into chronological order (with some irritating 24 style thrown in, but whatever), and it's amazing. My favorite parts are when we see several different perspectives on the same scene at the same time (like when Charlie brushes by Jack on his way to the restroom, at 5:23), with the overlapping dialogue honestly reminding me of something Steve Reich would do (just listen to Cindy telling the passengers to remain seated, starting at 5:52). And watching the plane break up from both the passengers' and the Others' perspectives at the same time is fantastic. If you watch the show and have ten minutes to spare, it's worth it.
Some obsessive fan took scenes relating to the plane crash that we've seen over the past five years and rearranged them into chronological order (with some irritating 24 style thrown in, but whatever), and it's amazing. My favorite parts are when we see several different perspectives on the same scene at the same time (like when Charlie brushes by Jack on his way to the restroom, at 5:23), with the overlapping dialogue honestly reminding me of something Steve Reich would do (just listen to Cindy telling the passengers to remain seated, starting at 5:52). And watching the plane break up from both the passengers' and the Others' perspectives at the same time is fantastic. If you watch the show and have ten minutes to spare, it's worth it.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Dollhouse
So on the show the Rossum Corporation serves as a stand-in for pretty much all of human society as it is today--programming us in ways that keep us down, essentially. And we also know that it's going to bring about the end of civilization within the next ten years.
And then there's the main characters on the show, who are fighting the Rossum Corporation (aka society, remember) from within and trying to gain an independent identity--in other words, trying to bring about an end to civilization from inside of it. In so doing, they are fighting to prevent the end of civilization.
I don't really understand how corporate media manages to produce art that is not only good but important and actually relevant, but every once in a while it does. Dollhouse is one of these times.
And then there's the main characters on the show, who are fighting the Rossum Corporation (aka society, remember) from within and trying to gain an independent identity--in other words, trying to bring about an end to civilization from inside of it. In so doing, they are fighting to prevent the end of civilization.
I don't really understand how corporate media manages to produce art that is not only good but important and actually relevant, but every once in a while it does. Dollhouse is one of these times.
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