Author Archives: Bob Evans

Nonsense Nomenclature

Recently the San Francisco Board of Supervisors officially proclaimed something that has been a common cry for Gun Control activists that the National Rifle Association is a ‘Domestic Terrorist Organization.’ This is absurd when shouted by protesters and idiotic when made as an official statement from supposedly cooler heads.

Terrorism is the use of force with the principle intent of utilizing fear to affect a political process. Certainly some of the cowardly mass murderers were terrorists, slaughtering helpless people at worship, while shopping because of racist and bigoted ideologies, particularly to ignite a ‘race war’ is terrorism. It is also true that the ideology behind it is a terroristic one, without hopeless odds to induce their twisted bigoted beliefs through the political process, no matter the recent successes of blatantly racist politicians and candidates, the ‘radicalization’ of angry young men continue to generate these cowardly murders.

However, that is a long way from the NRA being itself a terrorist organization.

A player, though its powerhouse days may be behind it, in the American political process, the NRA has never sanctioned, endorsed, or encouraged any of the mass murders. The NRA, its endorsements, and its financial contributions have serous impact on the political landscape seriously undercutting any reasonable attempt to define it as a ‘terrorist’ organization.

Labeling the NRA a terrorist organization is not reasonable but it is understandable.

While the NRA has not in any way encouraged or endorsed these murderous attacks it has displayed a callous indifference. Offering nothing more than the empty phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’ while pointing accusing fingers at video games the NRA stubbornly refuses to take any action to prevent these evil acts giving the impression that no amount of bloodshed or pain can ever matter more than their own narrowly defined self interest.

This heartless inaction, in my opinion, will, in the end, cause greater harm to the organization’s goal and objectives than any minor or modest legislative compromise. As I have argued before eventually a cultural tipping point will be reached, a like a dam bursting, the flood that follows will wash away everything that came before. I think it is instructive that in the 2018 election cycle the Democratic Party did not run and hide from a solid stance in favor of more gun control. The old collations have passed away and in this delicate time new ones are forming. Trump harms the Republican’s ability to reach beyond their core base with the college educated and far less devoted suburbs already fleeing to the Democratic party just new cycle of re-districting is about to be begin. The 2020 election will impact the next decade and the dam may already be bursting.

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Movie Review: Official Secrets

Playing in a limited run throughout the United States Gavin Hood’s drama Official Secrets  starring Kiera Knightly and Ralph Fiennes the story is inspired by actual events surrounding the United Kingdom’s skullduggery in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Knightly plays Katherine Gunn a language translator working for the GCHQ, Government Communication Head Quarters the heart of British signals intelligence where Gunn translates foreign language communications by suspected enemies of the United Kingdom. As the United States attempts to obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq, Gunn’s department is directed to intercept personal communications of ambassadors on the Security Council in order to provide leverage for the United States to ‘convince’ the Ambassadors to support the invasion. In other words hoping to find blackmail material to rig the vote. Faced with such maleficence leaks the memo running afoul of the UK’s ‘Official Secrets Act’ and when the press, through the actions of journalist Martin Bright played by Matt Smith, publishes the memo an intensive investigation for the source of the breach is launched threatening Gunn with decades in prison.

Official Secrets  is Hood’s second foray into politically charged controversial cinema, following up on his masterful film Eye in the Sky  that used a fictional operation to crack open the complex morality surrounding drone warfare. Hood’s approach in Eye was even handed, presenting the complexities of combat where stark right and wrong often evaporates in the fog of war.  In Official Secrets  there are few shades of grey but that could be my own viewpoint coloring my opinion as I was staunchly against the invasion and firmly support that idea of whistleblowers that expose governmental misdeeds. What I can say is that the film is excellent in every regard, the writing, the directing, the acting, all create a reality that is tense, taunt, and never overblown. There is a temptation in drama inspired by actual events to heighten the action, meaning figures in the dark, high-speed chases down airport runways, to think that action is required for stakes and that is a misplaced concern. Official Secrets  opens with Gunn having to enter her plea and when the film return to that moment there is no doubt about the enormous stakes that rest on her answer.

I can fully recommend this movie to anyone who’s entranced by superior dramatic fiction.

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Streaming Review: The Void

Released in 2017 to a limited theatrical run The Void is a modestly budgeted cosmic horror film set in a rural besieged hospital.

Daniel Carter is a sheriff’s deputy in a small rural community when late one evening while on patrol his discovers an injured man, bloodied and disorientated on an isolated back road. He takes the men to the closest hospital, one that is in the process of closing down after a fire devastated most of the building leaving the facility this night with a skeleton staff and only one patient already admitted. Daniel’s wife Allison works at the hospital as a nurse and though they are not estranged it is clear a tragedy haunts their relationship. Before long Daniel, Allison, and the small collection of characters are besieged when masked cultists willing to murder anyone who attempts to flee the building surround the hospital. Strangely, the cultists seem uninterested in invading the facility and it quickly becomes apparent that the real horror is already inside the hospital.

Avoiding second tier digital imagery and boasting practical creature effects The Void  makes the most of its limited budget. Inspired by but not based upon the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this film starts itself grounded in a real and recognizable world before sliding into a scenario of monsters, madness, and unimaginable horrors from beyond. Competently acted and directed the film is not perfect but works overall as an entertaining horror movie that is perfectly willing to leave questions unanswered and matters to audience interpretation. While there is plenty of gore and injury effects the heart of this movie is about loss and how loss transforms us into people we may have little understanding of. There is a slight cinematic trope of ignoring serious injury after a few scenes but overall the movie is fast paces, enjoyable and for fans horror well worth their time.

The Voidis currently streaming on the horror service Shudder.

 

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Detective Fiction vs. Noir

In now way am I proposing a final definitive definition of Noir fiction and what sets a story in that particular sub-genre but I do think I may have stumbled across one of the lines that separates noir  from its close elder cousin detective fiction.

Detective fiction, in general, derives from a European tradition of the intellectual puzzle solver that reveals the killers identity in a dramatic drawing room monologue. In the United States, a rougher culture, this transformed into the genre of hard boiled, where the detective still uncovered the killer’s identity, but through the course of resolving the mystery the protagonist usually faced more serious danger to his life and was often less than a stellar individual himself. Noir  also often dealt with detectives and a crime that needed resolving but as often as not the protagonists of noir  fiction were the criminals themselves and in the cases where the protagonists weren’t the perpetrators they often were as morally compromised as the characters the challenged.

Dividing the genre between hard-boiled and noir is difficult thing but I think it can be done with the concept of moral order and which characters are responsible for restoring the moral order.

In a murder mystery the moral order has been destroyed by the immoral killing of a character and it is restored when the killer is revealed and brought to justice. In this situation the detective is the agency that restores the moral order, it is the detective intelligence and devotion to that moral order that propels the characters, (Side note it is interesting that in Murder on the Orient Express  Poirot does not bring the killers to justice because it is determine that the murder itself is an expression of the moral order. In others words, ‘He had it comin’.’)

Noir  particularly that films made in the classic period of the 19640s and 1950s also restored the moral order by the time the credits appeared on the screen what set them apart was how the moral order was restored.

In noir  films the moral order isn’t restored by way of an intelligent and morally upright character but usually because the seeds of their own destruction sowed by the characters themselves fruited with the final justice. Consider how Keyes was unable to reveal the murders in Double Indemnity but instead Walter and Phyllis bring about their own destruction. The moral order is restored, after all the production code insisted upon that, but the restoration had little to nothing to do with the integrity of the upstanding characters.

Perhaps an interesting boundary case is the classic The Maltese Falcon.Sam unravels the mystery and turns Brigid over t the police, restoring the moral order, she will pay the price for her crimes, as will al the other criminals, but there is the lingering question of why does Sam do this? In the final scene between the lovers he gives lots of potential answers, when your partner is murdered you need to do something about it, maybe he loves her maybe he doesn’t, and of course if he doesn’t he could never trust her and not turning her over puts him, at the risk of ending up like Thursby. Pick an answer and you change the moral calculus. Is Sam doing the right thing because you honor your partner? Then this is more like detective fiction. Is he just looking out for himself? The moral tone gets darker with that outlook. Neither the novel nor the film provides any definitive answer to Sam and his motivation leaving it to our interpretation.

So one test, and only one test of many, for is something noir or not ask how does the moral order get restored and you’ll have a leg up on answering the question.

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Actions Define Character

There is often a gulf between what a character says is their nature and the actions performed by that character. I am not speaking about plot-required deceptions, such as an agent who poses as a businessperson while traveling through hostile and dangerous territory but rather to gap between how a character perceives themselves and that the character’s actual nature.

In an introductory psychology course, I was exposed to the concept of the Johari Window. Take a square and divide it into four quadrants. One section is what that person knows about themselves that is also known by others, it is their public face and identity. Another sector is what the person knows but it is unknown to others, this is the person’s guarded identity. The third sector is what is unknown by the person but known to others, this is the person’s blind spots, aspects of their personality and identity that they are blind to. And the final sector is those aspects of the person that is unknown to both the person and to others, traits, identity, and personality facets that have yet to be discovered. The sectors are rarely even and their areas vary greatly from person to person. It can be a useful tool in character design to consider how the Johari Window applied to people you may create for any work of fiction.

The tension between what a character may believe about themselves and how thy actually act can be a great source of development and conflict. Consider a character that considers themselves to be a ‘progressive’ supportive of LGBQT rights and for drug legalization but if that character is also wealthy and their political energies are spent on the candidates and initiates to reduce their tax burden then the characters actions are in conflict with not only their expressed ideals but perhaps even their own sense of identity. Such a character may not even be a hypocrite as they may unable to even perceive the contradictions between their stated positions and their actual actions. Never under estimate a person’s ability to self-deceive particularly in order to protect a self-image that may be at odds with reality.

The old adage is that ‘actions speak louder than words,’ and we consider it a truism especially when we need to consider characters who believe that own words and yet defy them with action after action.

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A Democratic Decision

It seems clear that the field of Democratic candidates for President can be divided into the leading three, Biden, Warren, and Sanders, and then the rest of the field hoping for a break out that would allow them to replace on of these leading personalities.

What I think is interesting is that the leading three represent very different points of view on the future of the Democratic Party and America’s political system.

Biden’s holds the conceptual space that they system is not broken and that with the right leadership we can return to a mode of operation that operated in the past. That with good will and proper leadership the hyper- partisan combat can be cooled and normalcy can be restored.

Sanders is operating from the presumption that the system is irreparably broken and that not only is there no ability to return to a previous normal, that the previous normal itself was bad. His stand seems to be that the old ways and the old systems must be brushed away and replaced with a new way of doing things. Burn it down and build a new political reality is the strategic aim of the Sanders camp and it is fitting considering that the candidate is not even a member of the Democratic Party.

Warren stands between these two poles. Her position rejects the ‘return to normalcy’ of the Biden campaign and rejects the revolutionary nature of the Sanders. It is fitting that Warren grew up on the Republican side of the political spectrum before finding herself and her voice with the Democratic Party. It is reminiscent of Reagan’s voyage from Democrat to Republican decades earlier. She vocally takes the stand that she is a capitalist and wants to save capitalism while advocating for deeper systemic changes than Biden seems willing to tolerate.

It is likely that the nominee will come from one of these three people and it will be fascinating to see what direct the Democratic Party moves.

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Opening a Story

Sorry I have been away from my blog but last week I managed to injure my lower back and that pulled muscle made it fairly painful to sit at my work desk. I am recovered enough to return to my desk, both here at home and at my day job.

Last night I attended the twice monthly meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group and some of the feedback and discussion has gotten my mind churning on the elements needed to successfully open a story.

Of course, you want something dramatic, something interesting capturing the reader’s interest and imagination. I have also long maintained that the opening scene must be one of conflict, presenting a character with an objective and something that stand between the character achieving that goal. There an often used example of starting off wrong by stating in combat that because we do not yet know who the characters are and what motivates them it is difficult to have emotional investment in battle right from the start. This correct more often than it is wrong, but skillful deployment of character beats can allow a combat focused opening as well.

What I have been thinking and pondering since last night is the importance of the nature of the conflict that you opens the story. It seems rather obvious but sometime the most important elements are only obvious when seen in retrospect. The exact conflict that opens the story informs the reader about the nature of the character and situation. It lays down a lot of foundation for the tone and style of the story that will follow. Why this character is facing this particular challenge and that choices that are forced upon them to resolve it informs the reader who the character is and the nature of their personality.

The challenge doesn’t have to be the central challenge of the story or novel, but it should be there is give us these vital insights.

Consider a character who needs to get to work but whose car is out of gas. Already we know that this character has financial troubles, has work troubles, and is teetering on the edge. A person secure in their finances can easily maintain their vehicle, and someone doing well at their job can afford a single tardy or missed day. So that little conflict has already shared a lot of information. If the character resolves this issue by stealing money from their roommate’s wallet that’s one sort of person if they wake up hours early to walk three miles to get to work on time that a different moral character and either choice gives the reader a taste of who this person is.

When opening a story you have a very special window for establishing tone and character, make the most of it.

 

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Knowing What You Write

There’s an adage in writing that goes “Write what you know,” but I think it should more properly be phrased as ‘Know what you write.’ It isn’t about sticking to things you already know but knowing and understanding your subject well enough to write honestly.

One of the short films at this year’s Horrible Imaginings Festival brought this home to me.

In the film Vicious a family of urbanites are in the lonely rural south when they become guests of an odd local family that invites them for dinner. The film starts off looking as though it is going to be a rather bog standard ‘folk horror’ about the strange and scary people found in the countryside but the filmmakers invert the paradigm and end of a rather different note.

What might have been a fun reversal of a trope felt flat and inauthentic because the filmmakers did not know what they wrote. When visiting a culture not your own it is important to get people who are deeply familiar with it to help you in avoiding simple mistakes.  Here are two of the most glaring examples from the film where inaccuracies damaged my enjoyment.

First off, in the south you do not have dinner outdoors shortly after dusk. Californians might think of this time as pleasant, the cooling air, the breeze heading towards the sea, but California is dry and the south is wet and filled with mosquitos. A table outside is setting a table for those biting insects.

Second, if a Southern family invites another for supper, particularly is this Southern family has a large lovely brick home, the meal they set out will not be a plate of beans and nothing more. Southern culture is a very food centric one and the offerings would have been numerous both as a matter of hospitality and of pride.

These may feel like small errors but they destroy the credibility of the film, yanking audience member who see them out of the tale and shattering the illusion. It is always vitally important to ‘Write What You Know.”

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Horrible Imaginings 2019

This year was the 10thannual Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival. For the second year, the festival has been hosted by the non-profit theater The Frida Cinema and this year I managed to attend 2 of the 3 day run time. I am sad that I missed Friday but day-job commitments are paramount.

Saturday started with a block of short films programed around the theme ‘A Shock to the System’ where the horror lies more in systemic and cultural issues than a beastie or man with a knife. There were 11 films in this block and many were quite compelling. The film that most disturbed me was Off Fleek  which centered in a young woman and the terrible effect of the cyber-abuse she endured. It is a film that haunts the mind well after its brief running time has ended. Per haps most entertaining  was Kathy  a film about growing up gay in a fundamentalist household where demons and possession are common dinnertime discussions. And most artistic visually striking of the block was LVRS a film without dialog that symbolically explored the nature of abusive relationships.

The next block continue the theme with the longer films Conversion Therapist  and What Daphne Sawand included a panel discussion about the issues of ‘reparative’ therapy and human trafficking. We rounded out Saturday with two feature films but the one I enjoyed the most from that evening was Reborn  starring Barbara Crampton and Michael Pare.

Sunday again started with a block of short subjects, this time the theme being Monsters, Sci-Fi and Beyond. Nest  was a ‘found footage’ style short that understood brevity if powerful in that model of filmmaking. How to be Alone  was a wonderful exploration of isolation and the mental toll that can take on a person while Ulysses  presented perhaps the best mermaid design I have ever watched.

Then we were treated to a long form short film block where instead of running times between 2 and 12 minutes the films were along the lines of a half an hour including a lovly film about a séance in the White House at the height of the Civil War. Though perhaps my favorite of that black came from Brazil For My Cat, Mieze  where justice comes paired with a fine wine.

We rounded out the day with two feature films, Antrum – the Deadliest Film Ever Made  which included as part of its conceit a mini-documentary about the fictional film Antrum  and the deaths associated with it, but the film struck me as more gimmick that story. The final feature was Pornoa movie about religious teenagers who accidentally summon a succubus in the theater where they work. It’s over-the top, bloody, sexy, and funny, providing one of the festival’s’ most memorable line of dialog; “I’m not going to get excited by your exploded testicles!”

All in all the festival was a grand time well worth the 3 hours of drive time each day.

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Where Are the Conservative Solutions?

With my political reading and podcasts I try to read and listen to writers, publications, and thinker from both the liberal and the conservative perspectives. I’ll admit that I have yet to find a conservative podcast that seems to be about ideas and not about endless ad hominem  attacks on the viewpoints that they find disagreeable, but the search continues.

One thing I have noticed as I visit various conservative publications is what seems to be a scarcity of proposed solutions to challenges facing us today.  There is a lot of ink and bandwidth dedicated to attack solution proposed from liberals, endless streams of outrage over proposed or actual changes to our social order, and an infinite supply of arguments defending the current administration that are simply at odds with everything these publication have professed to stand for in previous years. It boils do to a lot of ‘We can’t do that!’ while offering nothing as a counter proposal.

This is not how has always been.

I think that what is happened and has been happening for about a decade or so is that we have reached the end of the life cycle for the current wave of conservative thought. I think that political thought comes in the large massive periods and when a version becomes dominant it will remain essentially unchanged for many years.

From the Great Depression through the first Bush administration the liberal political thought was very much just variations on FDR and his legacy. Until Bill Clinton’s campaign the music played at National Democratic conventions was Happy Times are Here Again   a Depression era song. Clinton, sensing that the Conservative era ushered in my Reagan had not yet passed, charted a ‘third way’ for his politics, seeking to appease conservatives as he tried to implement his programs. It was often said during his two terms that it was better to be his enemy than his ally because he would sell out his ally to gain from his enemy. Obama in my opinion represents the final breaking from the FDR legacy and is the threshold as we cross into a yet undefined period of liberal thought. It is why the three leading Democratic candidates for President lead such different coalitions.

On the conservative side the victories of Ronald Reagan broke forth a new dawn, pushing aside the conservative thought of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and that ilk for a new way of thinking. However that victory happened in 1980, 39 years ago, and the last of Reagan ideology has been falling away. We are at the end of Reagan’s period of dominance and conservatism, particularly now that the Cold War is over, must find a new philosophy and new thought and it hasn’t done that yet. Trump represents one possible future for conservatism. It is a bitter, hate-filled future of endless nasty attacks and a very tribal warfare but it is a possible and it holds no solutions only political warfare that never ends. A decided defeat of Trump in 2020 will be a good step in closing off that future, but it will take more than one humiliation to kill that monster.

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