Category Archives: Culture

Guesses as to Why Support for Black Lives Matter Has Grown

As this graphic from the New York Times shows support for the movement Black Lives Matter has grown significantly in recent year going from ‘underwater’, that is more people opposed to popular support and I have a few guesses as to why things changed so radically.

First off, the video of George Floyd’s killing was particularly horrifying. That is not to say other deaths at the hand of the police were not horrific but rather this particular video captures the horror in a unique and unsettling fashion, dismantling many of the common rebuttals employed when this sort of event occurs. George was restrained, non-violent, and pleading but still the officer callously, cruelly, and lethally knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. There was no ‘split-second’ moment that can be used as ‘justification’ for an overreaction, there was no physical struggle, there was no ‘it looked like he had a gun,’ there was a helpless man fully under authority’s control begging to breathe. Just describing it is horrifying .

But it could possibly be dismissed as a single event and not something that would move masses of people previously unconcerned with BLM to now support the movement, so George’s cruel killing while a significant factor doesn’t explain the movement to support that started before this evil event.

I think it is vitally important to notice that support went from a net negative to positive two years after the election of Trump.

Tribalism is a powerful factor in human emotions and behavior. Someone as inconsequential as the outcome a game can generate fantastic passions purely from the tribalism of the team’s fans. It’s been well document in political science that people once they have selected a party that they identify with over time modify and change their position of issue to fit better within their tribe. You may go over to a particular party for issue A, but drift to support the party on B, C, D and so on. This I think has a large bearing on the BLM movement as we see it today.

For those paying close attention Trump’s racist history was well known when he was a candidate, but most people do not pay close attention to politics or a candidate’s history. For those people Trump was a billionaire, a businessman, a builder and a celebrity. Trump’s support has never been a majority and after two year of constant exposure and coverage his incompetence, cruelty, and racism became obvious helping to sort people into pro and anti-Trump factions.

Trump’s position on BLM is clear and obvious so if someone has identified themselves as Anti-Trump the natural and default position is to support Black Lives Matter. This leads to the question is this support durable? What happens post Trump?

I think it is durable. Some people will have come to their support through thoughtful reflection and some will have come out of reflexive opposition to Trump and his tribe, but neither will be inclined to reverse themselves. It is not human nature to publicly admit error and so their support will remain.

But only time will tell.

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Intertextuality and Vulcan’s Forge

Last night I watched a video essay on YouTube that argued the central flaw of most of Disney’s newer slates of film came down to a misuse of intertextuality. Intertextuality is when the text of one work impacted by the text of a previous work. It can be used as a powerful tool to explore themes and idea raised by the original work either in that work’s own text or as interpreted by the new text. An ideal example would be Tom Stoddard’s play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead which follows as its central character Rosencrantz & Guildenstern two minor characters from Hamlet and uses that conceit to explore concept of narrative and fiction.

The essay argued that lazy utilization of intertextuality in the Disney live action remakes and the extended Star Wars trilogy resulted in a cheap ‘fan service’ rather than using the references to earlier works to comment either those previous pieces or to deepen the content of the new ones. The exception for Disney being the Marvel Cinematic Universe which stretching across more than 20 films and ten years is a grand experiment in intertextuality and uses those connections to paint deeper, richer, and more engaging emotional lives for its characters.

This leads me to think about my own debut novel Vulcan’s Forge. I shall avoid spoilers for the plot of that story but I will touch on how it itself is a work of intertextuality.

The protagonist of Vulcan’s Forge is Jason Kessler and on the colony of Nocturnia his job is to use mass media, principally film, to create, sustain, and reinforce the colony’s culture derived from mid-twentieth century Americana. To promote an idealized version of that culture, which honestly is more mythology than history, some films are elevated in their importance while others are banned as ‘corrupting.’ Jason, an ill fit for this suffocating version of American culture, is dismissive of some films and longs for the forbidden fruit.

Ideally, and only someone who has read the novel and also is unaware of the films it references can answer if I succeeded, the story can be read and enjoyed without understanding the film references but on an intertextual level the movies that Jason derides and the ones he adores informs the readers of the nature of Jason’s character.

Hopefully my use of intertextuality expands and deepens Vulcan’s Forge but even if I missed the mark making all of those film references was damn fun.

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Revisiting: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Last night I pulled out my DVD and re-watched the 1973 film  The Spook Who Sat by the Door.

The central plot of the film is Dan Freeman becomes the CIA’s first black officer but the processing is in reality nothing more than a stunt to lift a Senator’s sagging re-election prospects. After enduring years of racism and menial assignments Freeman resigns from the Agency and returns as a social worker to his home the mean streets of Chicago. However, Freeman has no intention of being a mere cog in the vast system and subverts his old street gang and utilizing his training from the Agency begins crafting a violent Black Liberation movement. Along the way his relationships with former lovers and close friends are tested by his radicalism and when Freeman’s devotion to his cause comes with a terrible price he doesn’t hesitate to pall in full.

Given the unrest, protests, and injustice currently flowering in our nation this film has been mentioned by several podcasts I listen to prompting me to revisit the movie. Laboring under budget and resource constraints the director, Ivan Dixon best known for his role as an actor in the sit-com Hogan’s Heroes, manages to produce a film that is tight, compelling, and without any fat. Watching the film, it is impossible to determine if the conservative directorial choices area  product of limitations or are an influence from Dixon’s long television career, either way Dixon’s makes the most of limited camera set-up and location to explore the characters and their conflicts. The only major weakness in the script is the late introduction of Freeman’s close friend Dawson, played with screen-grabbing presences by J.A. Preston. Given the emotional weight the character brings to the story and the powerful final scenes the film would have been better served introducing him in the first act along with a little revelation of Freeman’s personal history.

The film, though inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural and historical importance, is not available on any rental or streaming service and to watch it you much, as I did, buy the DVD.

With the resurgence of racially challenging media in the wake of Get Out’s astounding financial success, there is a new adaptation of the novel in development as a series but it is unknown if this will be executed as a period piece or if the event will be transposed into the current day. I think it should remain a period piece, if for no other reason than as a faithful adaptation of the source material.

I have discovered that there is a documentary about the production of the movie Infiltrating Hollywood: The Making of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, but so far, I have been unable to locate a copy, damn it.

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Perilous Pedestals

Placing people particularly artists upon pedestals is an action inviting disappointment and hurt. People are flawed and when some are exalted it nearly always turns out in addition to their better natures, they possess darker ones as well. Artistic people are no more immune to this condition than political ones, contemporary or historical.

Roman Polanski is a brilliant filmmaker and apparently a rapist preying upon little girls.

HP Lovecraft blazed a trail into cosmic horror that people still follow today and was a virulent racist and xenophobe.

Joss Whedon championed strong, complex female characters and was a philander and an apparent control freak.

Orson Scott Card created a series that plead for understanding of the other and called for the suppression of the rights of gay people by ‘any means necessary.’

The list, sadly, is nearly endless of artists and creators that wielded considerable talent, adored by many, and then revealed corroded souls. Which brings us to the current participant in this sad parade, J.K Rowling author and creator is the massive franchise Harry Potter and The Quest for More Power.

Rowling’s recent comments, tweets, and postings on her stance attacking the rights people of the transgendered community have provoked pain, suffering, and emotional trauma among not only the target of her tirade but among her devoted supporters many of which have grown to adulthood with her fictional creation Harry Potter.

I believe that the hurt from Rowling’s abhorrent stance is amplified by a couple of factors. One, the sheer scope and penetration of her creation into the popular culture. There is scarcely a corner of our nation or world that has not been touched by Harry Potter and the wizarding world. The sheer number of fans is simply staggering gifted her with tremendous reach and power to influence.

Secondly, people crafted a tremendous mythology around Rowling and her life. The single mom who became a billionaire and then gave away so much money to charity she lost that status. The repeated assertion that the core theme of the work as a plea for understanding and a denunciation of hate. (A theme that, in my opinion, the work does not fully succeed at, but this is not a place for my issues where Harry Potter artistically fell short.)

It is that second factor that I think powers the real hurt felt by the fans. The idolization of Rowling, her morality, and the power of her myth not only lifted the artist onto a pedestal but bathed her fans in a reflected glow of morality. That they shared in her goodness by being such devoted fans so when it turns out that she has darker less admirable beliefs that too feels as though it is reflected on her fan base.

Both glows were illusionary.

Your morality is your own.

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This Year is Lost

About 2014 or 2015 after a meeting of our writers group I stood out in the evening chatting with member as our socializing tends to take place after the read and critique sessions when one member advanced the proposition that in American politics it doesn’t matter who you vote for because ‘they’re all the same.’ I strenuously disagreed. While there may be no best candidate on any particular slate there is always a worst one. In 2016 I had no doubts, none whatsoever, that the worst candidate for President of the United States was Donald Trump.

Setting aside his obvious history of racism, sexism, and corruption, and those were all disqualifying qualities, nothing in the man’s life, education, or experience remotely qualified him for the terrible power and responsibility of that office.  No matter the issues and doubts I may have held with Hillary Clinton, Trump’s deficiencies disqualified him from any serious, rational consideration.

The US Government and economy is like a massive ship, possessing nearly inconceivable amounts of momentum and not something that can be quickly turned to a new course. During his administration this worked in Trump’s favor. The steady economic growth from the previous administration continued benefiting the current occupant of the office, and the corrosion from Trump’s corruption ate at the ship’s hull but had not yet caused it to founder.

The novel corona virus and the disease it creates COVID-19 proved to be a crisis far beyond the capabilities of the little man and his limited grasp of reality. His narcissistic ego kept him from recognizing anything other than how his own image was affected and his decidedly limited intellect prevented him from taking the actions might have saved thousands and reflected well on himself.

He wasted the nation’s lockdown, never intended as a cure or the crisis’ resolution, never putting the full force, might, and capability of the Federal government into action and instead cut the various states loose to compete and cut each other’s throat as tens of thousands died. Now, while the rest of the world claws their way back to some sense of normality, albeit with serious programs in place as they deal with fresh outbreaks of this fatal disease, the USA’s health, economy, and respect sinks under the waves.

For the United States 2020 will be a lost year. We aren’t getting back to anything that even approaches normal. Three vaccines candidates are in phase III trials now and if one or more of them succeed we will not have it on hand before 2021.

Great power and responsibility should never be handed to incompetent fools.

 

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No, The NAZIs Were NOT Racist Commies

Sometime ago a friend sent me a link to a YouTube Video expounding on the tired, worn, and erroneous idea that NAZIs were actually leftwing with the conclusion that they were in the end the same as Communists just also racists.

That video was either deliberately or unintentionally deceptive. It pulled quotes from Mein Kompf out of context, relied heavily on ideology from the Ernst Rohm wing of the NAZI party a wing that was murdered out of existence during the Night of Long Knives and the video begged the question by repeatedly citing a book whose entire focus was that NAZIs were of the left.

There has been considerable effort by some on the right to popularize the idea that Fascism is of the left just as from the 1030s through the 1070s, and perhaps beyond, to portray Stalinism as a thing of the right with terms like ‘Red Facism.’ Both camps are desperately trying to disassociate themselves with their own murderous extremes but this is nothing but spin.

If you want an excellent argument why the NAZIs weren’t Socialists here’s a video for you.

 


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Into the Memory Hole

The polls, and these are a few really high-quality ones, have Trump behind Biden in all the battleground states and tied in both Georgia and Texas. Now as a smuggler once said, “Don’t get cocky, kid!” but with a scant few weekends left until the election things are looking not only for team Trump but the GOP control of the Senate as well.

Should Trump go down in the inglorious defeat he so richly deserves taking the GOP Senate with him I fully expect that all of the Republican’s explicit and complicit support that extended to him will be shoved past the event horizon of their memory hole. There will be a herculean effort to portray themselves as people who never actually supported their party leader. This will be particularly acute among the ‘anti-anti-Trumpers.’ That constellation of politicians, pundits, and commenters who have never, or at least very rarely, voiced direct support for Trump but who have been vigorous in their zeal to attack anyone who does criticize Trump and his administration. Their silence on this administration’s corruption, malfeasance, abuse of office, and its entire lack of dignity shall be forgotten as they turn their fire upon the following Democratic administration.

We can’t stop them from doing this but we can remember and point out that their silence during these dark times exposed the hypocrisy of their ‘principals’ as nothing more than garden variety self-interest and unworthy of any respect.

Also, into that memory hole will follow any sense of responsibility for the rise of Trump. Trump did not fall out of the sky light a bolt of lightning to take the nomination and control of the GOP. The ground was well tilled and fertilized ahead of his arrival making his ascendancy assured. In my search for conservative leaning podcasts to add to my regular rotation I have found two that can listen to with anything approaching regularity, The Bulwark Podcast and The Dispatch. Both come from a conservative approach that is basically hostile to Trump but have a significant difference in their viewpoints. The Bulwark appears to be grappling with how the GOP made it possible for Trump to rise within their party while The Dispatch seems to treat his existence as a ‘black swan’ event and appears to think that once Trump is gone from the stage they can simply return to the party’s previous position.

The Bulwark is at least trying to engage with reality while the people at The Dispatch are lost in their delusion.

 

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Retro Movie: Ms .45

Released in 1981, and I watched this film on its initial released, Ms .45is an exploitation film that is charitably about sexism in society and more accurately an excuse to watch for nearly an hour and a half of a young woman taking revenge with the aid of a semi-automatic pistol. Be warned, spoilers for the entire film abound ahead.

Thana, played by the tragically doomed Zoe Tamerlis, is young woman, mute, who works as a seamstress in the New York City’s garment district. On her way home from work she is attacked and raped in an alley, then when she gets to her apartment, she interrupts a burglar armed with a .45 caliber pistol, who also rapes her. During the assault Thana fights off her attacker and kills him. With her sanity snapped by the violations Thana dismembers her attacker’s corpse and takes his pistol. The rest of the film is following Thana around as she disposes of body parts by leaving them in various trash bins or grinding them into dog food and shooting dead men who attack her, frighten her, or make sexual advances towards her. The film culminated in a costume party thrown by her employer where Thana attends dressed as a nun and after her boss makes a sexual advance, proceeds to shoot every male in at the celebration, though momentarily confused by the man who had cross-dressed as a bride for his costume. The final scenes of Ms .45 has a wildly different context today with mass shootings now ubiquitous compared to 1981 when there were still rather rare.

Ms .45 was written and directed by Abel Ferrara and had I realized eleven years later that he also wrote and directed Bad Lieutenant I would have dissuaded by friend from selected that film as the one we were going to see. The film while attempting to have a thematic point about sexism and the treatment of women in American society lingers on the violence presented following the footsteps of other exploitation movies about crime and revenge that populated theaters of the 1970s and 1980s. Thana’s marksmanship with her pistol is never explained falling into one of Hollywood’s most beloved firearms tropes, precision shooting is easy.

On its release the film received terrible reviews but has become something of a cult favorite and has even had a high definition released of a restored print from the original negative.

Zoe Tamerlis as Thana is really quite good. Bereft of dialog and voice she fully conveys Thana’s inner life with her large and expressive eyes. Sadly, she was devoted to recreational drug use and died from it at the age of 37.

For people who enjoy the trashy sub-genre of rape and revenge films Ms .45may possibly fit your tastes but I was not moved by this movie in 1981 nor in 2020.

 

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Your Opinion Will be Meaningless

Trump’s reelection is in trouble. To be sure it is far from assured that Biden will win this contest. If fact, while it can’t be quantified, I think a major factor in Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College loss in 2016 was that so many people assumed that the election was predetermined, certain that Trump simply couldn’t win that, that those who stayed home and did not vote subtracted just enough votes from her to give the Presidency to Trump. That’s a factor I do not think will be repeating.

During the Obama Presidency conservative commentators and friends seemed to harp on an endless list of ‘scandals’ and ‘abuses’ committed by the president and his administration. (I placed them in quotes because it is my opinion many of them were simply ginned up for political purposes but I have no intention of litigating them here.)

Many of those same commenters and friends have been silent on such abuses, fraud, and corruption during the Trump presidency.

Should Biden win the White House I expect that many of those voice will suddenly find corruption and abuses to horrify them. To which I say to them:

“I do not care at all for your opinion on this. It is valueless.”

They will cloak their opinions in phrases such as ‘rule of law’ and ‘abuse of power,’ but their silence during Trump’s years make plain that their interest is not in principal but politics. They have devotion to morality, fairness, or justice but only to whatever club is convenient for them to wield against their political enemies.

 

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What is the American Dream?

Too often we are told that the American Dream is a house with a white picket fence and the appropriate number of offspring as though the idealized American life had not been conceived before the middle of the twentieth century and that the previous one hundred and seventy odd years contained no national aspiration of individual life.

Liberty, not material possessions, is the core of the American dream. It is unamusingly ironic that a nation with a founding ideal of liberty also at its founding enslaved another people but our national character, just like an individual’s character, is complex and resists simplistic description. We are a nation, a people, raised on the ideal of liberty and far too often and for far too long we have fallen short of our lofty aspirations.

That does not mean we must not try.

Rather the opposite, we must constantly strive to be better. Perfection must never be the enemy of the good, and the evils of history while they cannot be erased nor should they, must never dissuade us from being virtuous today.

Slavery is one of the few things I consider an absolute evil. It is a mark of shame that it is a part of our history but it is there and no pretending that it was somehow caring or considerate can wash away the evil that existed alongside our virtues.

That we ended chattel slavery is a good and should be celebrated even if we continue to stumble towards a better and more just society.

To that end we should celebrate Juneteenth as a holiday. It should be a national one, one that mixes the desire of celebration with the need to reflect on where we still need to go.

 

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