Category Archives: Culture

The Uncanny Valley Has a Far Slope

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The Uncanny Valley is the name given to the unease one experiences when seeing images or creations in the likeness of humans that almost replicate the appearance. The valley is a metaphor for the gulf between what are clearly illustrations and on the far side images that are indistinguishable from actual people.

Some well-known examples are from the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where computer-generated imagery was employed to recreate images of Peter Cushing’s character Tarkin and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia as they appeared in the original 1977 feature film. Neither CGI character was one hundred percent effective, looking very close to as the actors had appeared in the late ’70s but remaining disturbingly artificial.

With the advent of A.I.-generated images now flooding the internet and social media platforms, there is an even greater number of images that look almost perfectly human and yet are unable to climb out of the Uncanny Valley and emerge indistinguishable from actual photography of actual people.

Of course, on that far slope are actual people who naturally look like actual people. There are some people, and I feel the number is growing, who are inadvertently moving themselves into the Uncanny Valley because of a single substance, Botox.

Botox is the trademarked name for the drug derived from botulinum toxin, a powerful and potentially lethal neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. In tiny therapeutic doses, Botox helps mitigate symptoms for people who suffer from spasms, locked muscles, migraine headaches and uncontrolled sweating. It was from the therapeutic uses that the effects of smoothing out wrinkled skin, by paralysis of the underlying muscles, were discovered, leading to the cosmetic version of the drug being approved.

Because our society prizes youthful appearances and even more so for women, cosmetic use of Botox is quite high, with a significant number of female actors and performers employing the drug to present a smooth and unwrinkled face.

Too smooth, too unwrinkled.

With the muscles under the skin paralyzed, people who have employed Botox can often have a frozen and expressionless countenance. A large portion of how we humans non-verbally communicate our emotions to one another is by way of micromovements of the muscles near and around the eyes, the very muscles that a smooth-browed Botox treatment paralyzes. When that non-verbal communication channel is faulty it reads to others as wrong and uncanny.

Lately, I have been watching a Nordic noir television series where one of the actors, playing the mother of a murdered teenager, has clearly had extensive Botox treatments. It is strange and wrong that, when the character is supposed to be in the grips of terrible and powerful emotions, the character’s eyebrows are frozen in place, utterly still and unmoving. This performer, in a quest to remain youthful, has slid from the human side of the Uncanny Valley into the Valley itself. The performer made the choice to have these treatments with their evident effects, but it cannot be discounted to greater pressures that culture has placed upon them.

It is a tragedy that our global entertainment culture punishes people, women in particular, for the natural course of their aging, prompting them to take such drastic actions as to damage their very human appearance.

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The Illustrative Example of Dave Chappelle

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Comedians are often getting into metaphorical hot water as the nature of comedy, good comedy that is, is to push the boundaries of taste, hopefully exploring unspoken or unconsidered truths, while bringing laughter to their audiences. Of course, if you are flying your craft at the edge of the envelope, then occasionally you’ll end up on the bad side of the curve and lose control. Then it is a question whether you can recover or if you crash and burn.

I cannot say that I am overly familiar with the stand-up work of Dave Chappelle. I have caught a couple jokes and set ups back in the day when one surfed channels instead of websites, but never found his material so compelling as to stop my thumb from pressing the button and moving on. I know Chappelle’s work best as the on-screen sidekick to Tom Hanks in the rom-com You’ve Got Mail. Chappelle has a couple of times now broken out of the comedy section of popular media and into the political discourse having angered some faction and drawn their verbal fire for material that they considered “over the line”, most recently from the right for his observation that murdered conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s afterlife is one in Hell. It has been reported that Chappelle said that since Charlie Kirk’s murder he has “feels better.” Well, no one is compelled to feel bad for any person’s murder. Charitable thoughts are not an obligation. If that is the sum total of Chappelle’s jab at Charlie Kirk, well, in my opinion that is unimaginative, pedestrian, and frankly hardly worth a moment’s consideration, but Charlie Kirk is a venerated martyr of the right, and any disparagement is met with fury and indignation. But that reaction is far from righteous.

Chappelle, however, is a perfect illustration of why any moral outrage from the right can be safely and utterly ignored as their sensitivities are attuned only to their own, with no consideration for anyone beyond their own tribe, and why their indignation is merely another tool, another weapon, in their arsenal to dominate and claim a victorious victimhood.

Just a few years ago Chappelle was once again drawing verbal fire for the insensitivity of his material. When that firestorm erupted around his work, conservatives defended the comedian, proclaiming that comedy must be allowed to be transgressive, to push the boundaries of good taste, and that those who complained with overly sensitive snowflakes unable to take a joke. At that time it was material that used the trans community as Chappelle’s punching bag, not conservative blowhards, and the political left found nothing funny in those routines. It is even reported that Charlie Kirk defended Chappelle’s trans-oriented humor, but of course such defenses cannot extend to humor when it is turned against conservatives. Insensitivities are only allowed when they are aimed at the proper targets.

The right’s defense of Chappelle’s routine had nothing to do with the transgressive nature of comedy and everything to do with seeing a community of which they did not approve of come under some sort of attack. Now that Chappelle is making jokes at the expense of one of theirs, suddenly taste and decorum are the law of the land.

This hypocrisy of the right is not confined to the stand-up’s stage but is playing out as we speak in the electoral fallout of the 2026 midterm elections. Amy Acton, the governor-elect of Ohio, has refused to take the concession call from the Republican she defeated in that contest, Vivek Ramaswamy, sending it directly to voicemail, an action that has drawn more “indignation” from the right for its “disrespectful” nature. But this is just another example from the seemingly endless list of Republican hypocrisies. In a last-minute and desperate act to try and save a campaign that was already failing, Ramaswamy seized on Acton’s mother, who was elderly and, by reports, living in her car, using this woman to cut an ad attacking Acton as a liar. Acton’s mother, according to documentation and reports from the time, fled with the man who sexually assaulted Acton when she was just twelve, choosing him over her daughter. In my opinion, Acton is rightly justified in refusing to speak with Ramaswamy and the Republican “outrage” is just the asymmetrical yardstick that they want to play by. They, the GOP, want to be as mean, as cruel as they wish, as untruthful as they wish, making vile lies about entire communities, while demanding that they be treated with a courtesy and respect that they show to no one but their own.

I do believe that it is pointless to confront conservatives with their hypocrisy. They do not care and will never acknowledge it or change their nature. Revealing their nature is useful only in affecting those who might be swayed by it, those people who are ignorant of the right’s tactics, and not in any manner those who engage in it.

Chappelle is a perfect example of this: he is their hero when he makes their “enemies” the butt of his jokes, and he is a devil when he turns that same fire on their own. Conservative “outrage” is not anything worthy of thought or consideration except as a weapon that they wield in pursuit of power.

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A Companion Disorder for ‘X’ Derangement Syndrome

Notes:

1) Current practice is that mental health issues are disorders, derangement is out dated terminology and its use is considered prejudicial.

2) A.I. was utilized to affix the format and style of the entry to conform it to the manner of a DSM entry.

 

DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS

SECTION III: PROPOSED CONDITIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY

 

300.99 (Q00.0) Partisan Oppositional Disorder

Diagnostic Criteria

  1. A persistent and clinically significant pattern of political behavior characterized by an irresistible compulsion to oppose, reject, or vote against any measure, candidate, or policy associated with an identified opposing political party (“The Rivals”), regardless of the proposal’s actual merit, underlying principles, or personal utility.
  2. The pattern of opposition is manifested by at least three (or more) of the following symptoms occurring consistently over at least one election cycle (or 6 months of active legislative sessions):
  3. Ideological Flip-Flopping: Sudden, unexplained reversal of a long-held ethical, fiscal, or personal belief immediately upon learning that the opposing party shares or has endorsed that belief.
  4. Policy Reflexivity: Immediate, reflex-like condemnation of a proposed bill or ordinance prior to reading or understanding its contents, driven solely by the party affiliation of the primary sponsor.
  5. Spite-Driven Balloting: Expressing high emotional satisfaction after voting for a candidate whose platform directly harms the individual’s own economic or social interests, provided the outcome causes distress to supporters of the opposing party (commonly referred to in clinical literature as the “Owning the Opposition” phenomenon).
  6. Affective Hyper-Fixation: Expending excessive cognitive energy, daily conversation time, or social media engagement reacting to the opposing party’s minor figures, slogans, or aesthetic choices.
  7. Double Standard Somatization: Visceral physical or emotional outrage when the opposing party engages in a specific conduct, accompanied by total apathy, cognitive dissonance, or rationalization when one’s own preferred party engages in identical conduct.
  8. Hyperbolic Demonization: A persistent and omnipresent verbal tic resulting in an inability to discuss the opposing party without characterizing them as uniquely existential, dangerous, or malicious, routinely conflating all factions of the opposition with historical totalitarian regimes based on faint or superficial political overlap.
  9. The behavior causes marked distress or clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or interpersonal functioning (e.g., severe breakdown of family holiday gatherings, unfriending long-time neighbors, or inability to discuss local municipal park maintenance without invoking national party politics).
  10. The disturbance is not better explained by a genuine, coherent political philosophy, well-reasoned policy critique, or actual economic self-interest.
  11. The symptoms are not attributable to the direct physiological effects of consuming 24-hour cable news or outrage-driven social media algorithms (though these frequently act as exacerbating environmental triggers).

Specifiers

Specify current severity based on the degree of functional impairment:

  • Mild: The individual consistently votes against the opposing party but can still maintain civil conversations with neighbors of the opposite affiliation regarding non-political topics (e.g., lawn care, weather).
  • Moderate: The individual actively alters purchasing habits, media consumption, and sports fandom based solely on the real or perceived political alignment of corporate sponsors or athletes.
  • Severe: Total cognitive capture. The individual’s entire personal identity, daily vocabulary, and social routine are governed by reacting to the opposing party. Incapable of agreement on basic empirical facts if stated by an opponent.

Specify if: With Intra-Party Purging — Accompanied by aggressive turning against members of one’s own party who demonstrate even brief moments of bipartisan agreement, nuance, or legislative compromise.

Diagnostic Features

The essential feature of Partisan Oppositional Disorder is an externalized, purely reactionary locus of control. Individuals with POD do not evaluate ideas, candidates, or legislation based on intrinsic content, projected outcomes, or an underlying ethical framework. Rather, the party identity of the proponent serves as the sole heuristic for value judgment. If the opposing party advocates for Position X, the individual feels a compulsive necessity to adopt Position Not-X. Hyperbolic demonization (Criterion B6) frequently serves as the psychological justification for this reactivity, allowing the individual to frame mundane political disagreements as existential battles against historical evils.

Differential Diagnosis

Genuine Ideological Commitment: Unlike individuals with principled, deeply held political stances—who maintain consistent core values regardless of who occupies public office—individuals with POD will routinely abandon or reverse their stated core values if maintaining them would require agreeing with the opposing party.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD): ODD is typically diagnosed in pediatric populations and directed toward general authority figures (parents, teachers). POD occurs almost exclusively in adults and is strictly targeted at opposing political campaigns, commentators, and fellow citizens wearing conflicting political paraphernalia.

Development and Course

Onset is typically insidious, beginning with casual exposure to partisan talk radio, opinion columns, or social media commentary. Symptoms accelerate dramatically during midterm or presidential election cycles. Full remission is exceedingly rare without significant digital detoxification, algorithmic intervention, or temporary removal from family group chats.

Comorbidity

Partisan Oppositional Disorder frequently co-occurs with Doomscrolling-Induced Insomnia, Doom Posting, Excessive Yard-Sign Display Syndrome (EYDS), and Acute Social Media Agitation.

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Why “Conservative” Entertainment Fails

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With the release and scathing reviews of Run Hide Fight: Infidels and the expanding slate of productions from Angel Studios, explicitly conservative entertainment is once again in the air. As with previous attempts at “right-wing” entertainment media, these releases are not finding tremendous commercial or critical success.

Some attribute these failures to the fact that they are conservative, but that is far too simplistic an answer, in my opinion. The Passion of the Christ, which presented the biblical story in a decidedly conservative (some would argue antisemitic) manner as a two-hour subtitled film, took in over half a billion dollars at the box office: hardly a failure. Outspoken and larger-than-life writer and filmmaker John Milius, he of the original Red Dawn, has never shied away from his conservative beliefs, and his notions of honor, masculinity, and living by a code infuse his writings. While Milius never found the outsized success of some of his friends, such as Lucas and Spielberg, he remained an active and vital filmmaker until he was sidelined by health issues.

No, productions like Run Hide Fight: Infidels, its predecessor, Run Hide Fight, or the ill-fated The 1/2 Hour News Hour, a poor attempt to replicate the success of The Daily Show, fail because they prioritize their political hits over any sense of what is actually entertaining.

Some may think that this is an unfair judgment because, after all, The Daily Show is unabashedly liberal, its targets are overwhelmingly conservative, and in the era of MAGA and the Trump personality cult this has only intensified. That judgment is almost correct. The Daily Show is deeply colored by the liberal worldview of its writers and performers just as Red Dawn was deeply influenced by the worldview of its creator. A piece of creative art is stamped, sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly, by the worldview of its creator. When they sit down to pen something that is funny, thrilling, or just interesting to them, it will reflect, to a greater or lesser degree, the manner in which they see and interpret the world. When the writers of The Daily Show look upon the absurdity of the world, they are by nature predisposed to satirize and ridicule the right, but that is a predisposition and not a commandment from on high.

In 2009, during the first few months of Obama’s first term and nearly eight years after the horrific attacks of 9/11, a low-flying jumbo jet provoked low-grade panic in New York City. The Daily Show performed a bit wondering what sort of brain-damaged nut would do such a thing to the traumatized city, and then revealed, through a doctored image, Vice President Joe Biden at the controls of the aircraft. At the time, the defining image of Biden was one of a person who tended to say and do things that caused the administration public-relations troubles, and so the skit exaggerated this for comedic effect, even though the vice president was on “their side.” The 1/2 Hour News Hour never ever skewered anyone on the right, because its mandate was to deliver conservative talking points. It was never comedy produced by a conservative mind, such as the films of John Hughes; it was a terrible attempt to use comedy to propagandize for conservatism.

The very same things are true of The Daily Wire’s and Angel Studios’ productions and releases. Whether it is George Washington converting Native Americans into joyously celebrating Christ, or a very attractive young woman and her guns emerging victorious over school shooters, or a hardened combat veteran saving a feckless and impotent police force and a university from Islamic terrorists, the ideology comes first rather than emerging organically from a creative who is writing and talking about the world as they see it. That is the very heart of the trouble with most “conservative” entertainment: it is a polemic first and often only.

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Trump and The Kennedy Center

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Named for the murdered president, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, constructed of unique materials donated from nations around the world to honor the fallen man for whom it is named, may soon be nothing more than a pile of rubble, destroyed to slake the thirst for aggrandizement of a weak and vain buffoon.

Shortly after assuming the office of President of the United States, Trump, among the numerous illegal actions he has taken, renamed the Kennedy Center, adding his own name to sully and spoil the memorial to a president whose popularity burned so brightly that the narcissistic idiot found such injuries intolerable. The Center’s name, however, is set by law (not that the law has ever restrained this administration), and his illegal renaming was challenged. The courts, in an unusual move for this administration, upheld the law and ordered the offending text removed. Perhaps it was removed, perhaps it wasn’t; we shan’t know, because, with a toddler’s tantrum, a scaffold and blind were erected hiding the name from view.

Now talk has turned to the Center being in “terrible” shape and in dire need of massive restoration, restoration that requires Trump’s name to be permanently affixed to the Center as its savior. It is a move that the courts have again said he has no legal authority to make, and the administration has responded with not-very-veiled threats that the Center is in such a condition that, if not restored, it would require its destruction. As with the East Wing of the White House, Trump is likely to move fast and have the deed done before anyone could use the glacially slow wheels of the legal system to stop him.

In response to this, some voices from the resistance who hold Kennedy and the Center in quite high regard are advising us to let the petulant child have his way, to put the fool’s name on the Center, and to take it back off once he has been consigned to the trash heap of history. They implore us to do this to save the Center.

NO.

I have reasons why I think that this would be a terrible mistake. First, if you pay a blackmailer, you will always pay. Giving in only empowers him, and that must not be done. Second, if it is a bluff, then calling it forces him to reveal the bluff, which wounds him politically. Third, if it is not a bluff and he does destroy the beloved memorial to a slain president, then you hang that shit around the neck of every Republican for a generation. It becomes one more tool in de-Trumpifying the GOP, and one that would accelerate the process.

Stand firm. Either he backs down and sabotages his own standing in doing so, or he mortally wounds the GOP with his actions. In either case standing on principle ultimately accrues to the benefit of democracy.

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Airplane! and Anita Bryant’s Cultural Irrelevancy

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Last night on YouTube I watched a Canadian millennial couple react to the 1980 absurdist comedy film Airplane! As with the many of the reactors who have engaged with this piece of silly cinema, much of the chaotic comedy still worked 46 years later, and some were too fixed to their time and place to have any meaning to people born more than a decade after the movie’s release. It is a strange quirk of comedy that the ‘Jim never has a second cup of coffee at home’ gag is rewarded with laughs because of the strangeness of the spouse’s thoughts, and without any context to the Yuban coffee commercial it is lampooning.

While references to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan spark some recognition in younger viewers, and the use of serious dramatic actors in farcical skits has little to no impact on those who are watching this movie from the last century, this is not the issue that is sticking with me today. One target of the filmmaker’s sharp critique stirs no reaction and is nothing but a forgotten cultural relic, Anita Bryant.

Anita Jane Bryant, beauty pageant queen, singer with multiple top-ten hits, and ubiquitous citrus spokeswoman for much of her career, was a popular but not stellar figure in the American cultural landscape, often traveling with the legendary Bob Hope on tours to support and entertain the Armed Forces, and finding herself welcome at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. She hosted parades, performed at half-time shows for the Super Bowl, and even at the funerals of Democratic presidents, and yet today her name, except for whom politics is a passion or who either in or adjacent to the gay community, is almost entirely forgotten.

In 1977, Dade County, Florida, passed the first ordinance in the nation that prohibited discrimination in housing based upon sexual orientation, protecting gay men and women from prejudicial treatment when it came to renting homes, igniting the ire of Bryant, a fire that would consume her career and, in the end, erase her from cultural memory.

Bryant successfully led a campaign that overturned the ordinance, but that victory raised the issue to the wider culture, and while gay rights were not an unknown thing before Bryant’s crusade, (Stonewall was 8 years earlier,) her actions made the cause much more salient to the national conversation. Sponsors dropped her from their advertising campaigns, networks rescinded offers to host weekly television programs, and her career over the next decade functionally ceased to exist. In order to legally allow bigoted people to refuse homes to those whom she despised, Bryant self-immolated to the point that by the time of her death in 2024 she had ceased to be known by the wider public at all.

Both sides waged the political fight in Dade County with ferocity, Bryant deploying the slanderous, vile label that gay men preyed upon children to ‘recruit’ new homosexuals, while some among the fight for rights resorted to political violence. Yes, that violence was shaving cream pies to her face, but it remained political violence, and in my opinion, one only employs violence when no other path remains open and the physical threat from the dominant political actors is very real. While a direct line cannot be drawn from these pie attacks to the January 6th insurrection, the indirect lineage is there.

Anita Bryant’s obscurity is, in the end, the best of all possible victories over her bigoted political warfare.

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Why Was Andor So Good

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It’s been a year since the Star Wars franchise spin-off of a spin-off Andor completed its second and final season with the last episode flowing seamlessly into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and for many people Andor represented the best material since the original trilogy.

But why is that? What makes this limited series of just two dozen episodes so compelling and so vibrant compared to the rest of the vast and sprawling additions to that ‘galaxy far, far away’?

I think the answer lies in part in the cultural environment that the series was released into. Star Wars hit the box office in the late seventies, a period when the old Hollywood studio system was effectively dead before the mega-corporations took control, when the ‘young Turks’ and their Producer Unit system dictated the industry. These young, rebellious filmmakers explored themes of loss and cynicism with films that dominated the public’s attention. Even when the protagonists of these films claimed victories at the end of their struggles they proved to be Pyrrhic ones. Michael becomes everything he did not want to be at the conclusion of The Godfather, or their victories came at terrible prices such as the death of Father Karras in The Exorcist. These examples don’t even touch the cases where there was no victory, only soul-crushing defeat for the characters, such as at the end of The Stepford Wives.

Star Wars, a straightforward tale of good vs evil where it is unquestioned that evil will fall, exploded into the setting with an undeniable dynamism and optimism. In a nation that still reeled from political turmoil, senseless violence in its cities, and the unfathomable loss in a distant Asian country, this film, which at first blush appeared to have no cynical subtext, was received like a miracle cure for the ailment dogging the American spirit. In combination with Jaws two years earlier, it created the summer blockbuster and reshaped not only film production and distribution but the course of the culture for the next few decades. Studio after studio and production company after production company chased the enormous dollars that seemingly lay in simple adventures, clearly defined good and evil characters, and hopeful narratives leaving the darker, moodier, and more challenging stories from Blade Runner to The Thing to fail at the box office and only be recognized for their artistic merits many years later.

So how does Andor, a story where our protagonists commit murder as the easiest path out of their troubles, kill allies that they perceive to be a threat, willfully allow others to fly to their doom in order to protect their secret, and whose ‘villains’ gain our sympathies as they struggle against the same impersonal bureaucracy that enslaves the galaxy even as they viciously and ruthlessly hunt our ‘heroes,’ compel such admiration and love from its audience?

By the time Andor came to production, the American culture had changed quite dramatically, coming full circle from the 1970s back into a wary and tired cynicism, but after decades of hopeful, optimistic media the public taste for something that reflected the world they knew had grown quite intense, setting the table for something as ethically questionable as Andor to satisfy that hunger. Where audiences in the 70s needed escape from the bleak times, audiences of the 2020s wanted to see their times reflected back at them, but with the promise that victory, even if costly, remained a possible outcome. The enemy’s competence, once a source of derision such as with the marksmanship of the Imperial Stormtroopers, could be recognized even as their villainy remained patently obvious.

And that brings us to the second element that I think contributes greatly to Andor’s success in these times: the depth of the characters.

It is wrong and an injustice to both Andor and Star Wars to label their characters as either ‘complex’ or ‘simple.’ The truth of the matter is that these are very different genres of storytelling, and I do not mean science-fiction or fantasy, but something much more basic than that. Star Wars is a fairy tale, even opening with a revised version of ‘Once upon a time …’ with ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …’. Andor is a drama, not a fairy tale.

In a fairy tale characters are presented with far less depth, often representing archetypes instead of fully realized humans. The Princess, the Knight, the Thief with a heart of gold, The Mentor, the Dark Knight, and the villainous, corrupt King: all these are stock representations of character and not characters in and of themselves. These archetypes often lack depth but that does not make them bad characters, it makes them the right characters for the story that is being told.

Dramatic characters tell different stories: they do not tell fairy tales but stories of relatable characters facing relatable issues, even if the environment where they face those issues is fantastic. Andor’s Dedra Meero is a villain. She tortures prisoners, and is willing to murder entire populations, but she also is conflicted by some of her actions, she mourns the cost of her dedication, and weeps at the loss of a love she thought she had won. These elements of her life do not make her ‘superior’ to Star Wars’ Grand Moff Tarkin, who displays not a moment of doubt and slaughters entire planets as a mere display of power. Both characters serve their respective genres. Cassian Andor, when faced with the accidental death of a corporate police officer, does not hesitate to kill a survivor, an action that Luke Skywalker would never even consider, much less commit.

Andor is not better than Star Wars; to compare the two is like comparing a painting to a sculpture. The reason so many people took Andor to heart is because like Star Wars in the 70s it is what they hungered for, even if they did not know it.

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Thinking About The Batman

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Bruce Wayne, AKA The Batman, is an enduring character that first emerged in 1939 from the pages of Detective Comics and has been with us in some form ever since. Recently, I have been noticing a number of posts that seem to place the version of the character presented in the Zack Snyder films as the ‘best’ version. Now, Snyder’s fans are vocal and intense just as fans, which is a perfectly fine expression of devotion, but I cannot find myself in agreement with them on this. One of the clips that they post and re-post is the fight between Batman and a number of thugs in a warehouse where Batman has come to rescue a woman held under a threat of being murdered.( I am being vague for those who have not seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.) This to me, and that film in general, do a disservice to the essential nature of the character.

Batman, despite predating the term’s general use in fiction or film, is for all purposes a noirdetective and that is what resides at the heart of the character. He investigates and exposes crimes and criminals with his brilliance, but like another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, is adept at combat in all its forms because his opponents are never shy about employing violence. It is perhaps a strange quirk of fictional evolution that over time the two characters, Holmes and Wayne, who shared so much in skill and ability, diverged until what is glorified in each comes at the cost of their full skill set. Holmes, despite in the text as being proficient in so many forms of combat, becomes primarily an intellectual and Wayne, despite being brilliant, is noted for an impressive array of martial arts, his devotion to deduction mostly forgotten.

This reaches its apotheosis in the clip posted and re-posted by the Snyder fans. It is from a film in which Batman’s intelligence and detective skills are utterly forgotten as the character is manipulated and led to plainly false conclusions by the film’s principal villain.

Perhaps this is why my favorite cinematic Batman is Matt Reeves The Batman which, while showing elaborate hand-to-hand skill, is much more of a film noir than a martial arts experience. Even when Bruce Wayne fails to grasp the true nature of a clue he remains at heart a detective, untangling a complex web of cause and effect and ultimately not only uncovering the villain but his true self at the same time.

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Wakanda and Westeros

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Two of the great cultural fictional kingdoms of recent times, kingdoms that have been taken to heart and have occupied the minds of millions, are Westeros and Wakanda.

Westeros, from the mind of author George R.R. Martin, and thrust into the vast public consciousness by the impressive HBO show Game of Thrones, is the fantasy kingdom where treachery, murder, incest, dragons, and ancient magical powers vie for the throne that ruled over the island continent.

Wakanda, from the pages of Marvel Comics and the hit feature films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is home to the secretive tribes that discovered the rare and fantastical abilities of the fictional metal Vibranium and the super-science that it allowed.

Each fictional setting presented its kingdom in crisis and civil war: Westeros plunged into a long and bloody affair when the succession line became tangled and powerful lords arrayed against one another, while in Wakanda, unpleasant secrets surfaced, bringing a murderous thug to victory in the trial by combat that defined their succession. (Yes, I am aware that by some definitions the trial never finished and as such Killmonger’s ascension was never official, that is not the point here.)

In each case we, the audience, are supposed to believe that the matter has been resolved in a manner where we can rest easy and that the troubles lie in these lands’ pasts. In Westeros, Brandon Stark, gifted with sight beyond time and space and wisdom born of his magical gifts, sits upon the throne with benevolence and good will, to rule justly. While in Wakanda, with the would-be dictator and global threat dead, T’Challa, the Black Panther, sits on the throne undoing the centuries of isolation and bringing his nation and his people into the global community, ruling, presumably, as justly as the fictional king Brandon Stark.

But neither kingdom corrected the actual root cause of their terrible troubles.

In both cases the kingdoms are presided over by absolute monarchs whose powers are unconstrained, with their every whim and proclamation passing instantly into law and action. Brandon may be a good and supernaturally wise man. T’Challa is a good man with a good heart, but they are mere mortal men, doomed to die and pass on these unchecked powers to another. The warning is not that bad men should be kept from the thrones of kingdoms but that the powers of any ruler, king or president, must be checked or eventually they pass to those unworthy, untrustworthy, and whose appetites can never be satisfied.

It is a lesson that extends far beyond the borders of fantasies and comic books.

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Should Firearm Owners be Held Responsible for the Misuse of Their Weapons?

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San Diego this week suffered yet another mass murder tragedy when two young men, one apparently still legally a boy and the other legally an adult, murdered three people at a local Islamic center and mosque before taking their own lives. It is a terrible history that this city has at least three times has been thrust into the national spotlight for this sort of violence; Brenda Spencer in 1979 when she opened fire on an elementary school, killing two adults, injuring eight children, and a police officer, James Huberty in July 1984 when he killed 22 and injured another 19 at a McDonald’s, and now this act of brutality.

Early reports, and it should always be kept in mind that early reports are often erroneous and littered with mistakes, indicate that the firearms were taken from the parents of one of the cowardly killers. This week’s attack is not the first in which the perpetrators obtained their weaponry from others who legally possessed the firearms. The unsecured nature of the firearms is in these particular cases a crucial element in the chain that led to murderous disaster.

Gun safety advocates often attempt to pass laws that would require firearms in the home to be secured in a gun safe to prevent theft and misuse while gun rights enthusiasts dispute such proposals usually upon the lines that rapid access to firearms is necessary for self-defense in the home and that the expense of gun safes is in effect a tax with the purpose to depress ownership rather than any actual and practical safety concern.

Should firearm owners who do not secure their firearms in a manner that precludes easy theft or use by an unauthorized person face either criminal or civil accountability?

In criminal law there is the doctrine of felony murder which stipulates that anyone who participates in a felony crime can be held legally responsible for murders that are committed in the commission of that offense even if the person did not actively participate in the killing directly. A getaway driver outside of the bank being robbed is equally guilty of murder as the man who gunned-down the security guard inside the bank.

It is clear that felony murder doesn’t apply to people who have had their firearms taken without their consent or with no knowledge of the crime that is about to be committed with them. Any criminal liability would have to come from new legislation passed with that clear intent. Is such a course wise?

Perhaps.

It is clear from the sheer number of unsecured firearms in homes across the nation that to rely on the inherent responsibility of their owners is a fool’s errand. It is also clear that such proposals would face fierce opposition from the gun rights community. There was a township in the state of Georgia that passed a local ordinance making it a crime to leave a firearm in an unlocked motor vehicle. That’s it, if you left a gun in your car you had to lock the car. The conservative state government in the next session amended their supremacy laws to make such a local ordinance void. It is hard to imagine a more benign restriction of firearms possession but even that proved to be a bridge too far. I doubt any such legislation as required firearms be secured and that the owners would share in some criminal liability for unsecured guns used in crimes could ever see the light of day.

Civil liability has a better shot at viability but that requires private civil actions that incur expensive legal actions and to be honest, civil penalties carry not the weight and fear that criminal ones do.

In the short term there is no solution to this nation’s gun death troubles, of which about half are suicides but being self-inflicted doesn’t make those deaths any less tragic or any less worthy of prevention. The truth of the matter is that this is. deep cultural infection and one that has hounded our nation for generations and will likely carry on for generations more.

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