Gorr the God-Butcher: A Child's Story

 Thor: Love and Thunder is a “classic Thor adventure” told by Korg to children and ending with a punchline that is poignant rather than funny. The audience of children frames the way the story is told in both omission of gruesome deaths and the prominent inclusion of children within the story. This child-focus also creates a connection between the narration and the other framing device about Gorr the God-Butcher, which in the source material was less child-friendly and certainly more lethal. There are a lot of scary and dangerous things in Love and Thunder – as Thor reminds us, these are (mostly) Asgardian children.

The reticence of early MCU to use the word ‘gods’ is wholly gone from this movie, although Thor is still from space. The gods in this story are the sort tp whom you can pray and they might hear you. The attitude of the gods is established in the interaction of Gorr, the last surviving devotee of his god, who takes his devotion for granted and mocks his belief in an afterlife. This god’s existence is not contingent on the existence of believers. The existence of a divinely lush oasis on an otherwise dead planet suggests a retreat of the gods from reciprocity of do ut des, which is mirrored in the hedonistic isolation of Omnipotence City. The corpse of the previous owner of the Necrosword, a weapon which can kill gods, suggests that Gorr is not the first to turn resentment towards the gods into direct hostility; perhaps the existence of gods who might aid mortals are a hindrance in the Celestials’ plans for planets such as Earth? Or perhaps the Necrosword is a weapon of an enemy of the Celestials, who want life, if only specific kinds, to exist? After this nameless god has dismissed his last worshipper, Gorr starts his career as Gorr the God-Butcher.

By the end of the movie, there has been a lot of love and even more thunder, but both have been recontextualized in such a way that Thor and others receive as happy an ending as one can find in the death and battle dominated world of Norse myth. Thor’s arc, like those of many MCU heroes, finds him in a state closer to his canonical self than at the beginning. The mid-credits scene promises the audience a new father-son dynamic to replace that of Thor and Odin for the next phase.

Superman '78 Mini-Series Review and Analysis

 To me, Superman will always be Christopher Reeve. I was excited, therefore, to read the six-issue mini-series Superman '78. 

Robert Venditti is the writer. Wilfred Torres is the artist. The colorist is Jordie Bellaire, and Dave Lamphear of A Better World (DC's main earth, perhaps) is the letter. Torres does an excellent job rendering the characters to resemble the actors, and Venditti captures the dialogue admirably. I am, however, more interested in how the mini-series' themes allow it to serve as the third volume and conclusion to the first two movies. This is absolutely worth reading, but my analysis below includes spoilers, as an ending in a trilogy would, so be forewarned. Even better, buy it wherever you get your comics.

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The goal of the Superman movies can be summed up in Jor-El's words to Kal-El: "They can be a great people, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you ... my only son." (Superman: The Movie) Jor-El's world is doomed, with an absence of hope, but he can share hope with another civilization. Superman in the first movie learns how to be human from his adoptive parents and about Kryptonian civilization from the Fortress of Solitude; unlike the Kryptonians, however, he learned about it without the sterility or Jor-El's despair. He learns that he can literally change the course of history. In the second movie, Superman faces off against Zod and his goons. Zod's goal is to exploit others, whether they be the doomed Kryptonians or humans under Kal-El's protection. Superman learns that the capacity for evil is as present in Kryptonians as it is in humans, and that this nature must be incorporated and overcome because it cannot be eliminated.

Since the first movie had Luthor as a villain and the second had Zod, the mini-series uses Brainiac. The movie universe has a simple mythology, so Brainiac is doing what he always does: bottling cities and destroyed civilizations. This obsession, of course, makes Superman a rare prize. This Brainiac is not the organic one of the Silver Age, not the mechanical skull of the Post-Crisis era, but a more movie-suitable transitional one - appropriate for the period in which Brainiac was moving from organic to artificial. Brainiac himself is the sole survivor of his civilization, but lacks the empathy of Superman and Jor-El. It is not clear whether this is the result of eons of loneliness or a defect in his species' psychology. Brainiac doesn't even have a '70s space monkey for company. His "solution" to his loneliness is not to settle somewhere for a time, or even communicate extensively with various civilizations, but rather to preserve each in his bottles. This preservation leads to resignation at best, and despair at worst for the cities in flight; thus Brainiac is spreading despair rather than hope. 

Superman is willing to sacrifice himself to save the Earth, but Metropolis is bottled anyway. The existence of Kandor is a surprise for Superman, but not to anyone who knows the Brainiac mythos. The bigger surprise is that Jor-El and Lara are in Kandor. They are delighted to see their son, but Jor-El, whose words were so inspiring to young Clark Kent, has given into despair and seeks only to ensure the continued existence of Kandor, the last remnant of Krypton. Superman does not accept this and wins Jor-El over with his optimism borne of sources unavailable on Krypton. The sterility of Brainiac's ship is fundamentally no different from the sterility of Krypton. Superman fights Brainiac, but the fight also includes a discussion of how one reacts to the destruction and other terrors of the universe, whether the hope of action or the despair of inaction is the appropriate response. Brainiac choses to die rather than live among lesser mortals; he also choses death for all the bottled cities and the lesser mortals who live therein. Even if suicide is a legitimate choice for Brainiac, he not only has no right to choose for others, but he is also making the opposite choice of the citizens of the two cities featured in the mini-series. The look on his last uploaded body suggests that Brainiac realized his error after he could no longer avoid the consequences. 

Superman saves Kandor and Metropolis, the latter of which has apparently not set to permanent miniaturization, but the bigger surprise is that he saves most or all of the other cities as well. Perhaps this is as close to the Cosmic Zoo as the movie universe can come, but the more likely reason is that the victory over despair would ring hollow if only the cities of the hero and his loved ones survived. Although Brainiac's technology is lost, the cities and their inhabitants are safe, protected by a guardian who wants to restore them rather than a specimen collector who wants to preserve them. Hope triumphs over despair.

Jupiter Ascending

My decision to watch Jupiter Ascending despite reading the reviews beforehand was based on sociability rather than quality, so this review will focus less on the question of whether it is worth seeing in theaters (if you have a large screen at home, the answer is no) and more on the details; as such, there will be numerous spoilers.

The best way to picture the movie if you have not seen is a combination of the poor man's Dune and Star Wars with an aesthetic but not the heart. The heroine of our story is Jupiter Jones, an illegal immigrant (her words, not mine) with a stupid name and a crappy job. She is the daughter of an English ambassador's son, whose life expectency is governed by the Law of Disney, Parental Division, and a Russian woman. Her soon-to-be-late father is, of course, an astronomer, and like many scientists, is terrible at naming things, in this case his unborn daughter. The choice of the name Jones for our protagonist is no doubt meant to remind us of Indiana Jones, and therefore Harrison Ford, and therefore the good Star Wars trilogy. Our hero is an adventure – IN SPACE! The alliteration is typical of a superhero name, which our heroine definitely is not. The use of the name Jupiter, however, goes beyond this. One can tell from the spelling of their surname that the Wachowskis are Polish rather than Russian, and there is a Polish name, Juspeczyk, that is sometimes transliterated as Jupiter. The most prominent characters in comics with the surname Jupiter are Sally and Laurie Jupiter from Watchmen and the financier of the version of Teen Titans with teenage Ray Palmer, Loren Jupiter (who may be a gender-swapped version of the Watchmen character, given how the DC multiverse/hypertime tends to work). The use of Jupiter in this context makes me wonder whether the Wachowski's protagonist was Polish before the demands of blockbuster movie-making mandated that all Slavs be Russians with ties to criminal activity.

In the world of Jupiter Ascending, humans are not native to Earth – Earth is in fact a long-term plantation. I do have to give the Wachowskis credit for answering the question of why there are humans in space before it irritated the more perceptive members of the audience. In science fiction terms, panspermia, the idea of genetic seeding, is a better explanation than “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The movie only discusses planting humans, but I must assume that other items were also seeded when the Earth humans were. The deliberate extinction 65 million years ago would certainly provide the opportunity – because of course the movie has to tie in the one extinction event that even a moron has heard of. No doubt the novelization of the movie will fill in some of these details.

Jones is important to the powers that be because she is a genetic recurrence, the exact genetic copy of an important figure in the universe. I should mention that this movie illustrates the common flaw that science fiction writers have no sense of scale. The Empire in Dune does not encompass the whole galaxy, and even the Republic and Empire is limited to its own galaxy. The use of Babylon 5-style hypergates suggests that long distance travel is not as “simple” as putting in coordinates. Since this is a movie rather than a book or television series, the limitations are not explained. But I digress. The idea of a genetic recurrence as the secular equivalent of reincarnation in a human population which is probably in the quadrillions or quintillions is a good idea. The movie makes it clear that the powers that be are looking for a genetic recurrence because the will of Jones' late identical space twin has a clause that drew attention to the possibility rather than some mystical prophecy or some Kwisatz Haderach-y nonsense. In a bit of foreshadowing, Jones is identified as a genetic recurrence when she goes into a clinic to sell her eggs, which her creepy Russian slacker cousin identifies as “harvesting” in order to make money to pay off his debts. Perhaps the Wachowskis used Russians rather than Poles because Russians are an acceptable target for ethnic slandering.

The universe of Jupiter Ascending is a highly aristocratic place, complete with Houses, servants, and planets as properties. Jones is the genetic recurrence of the matriarch (no father is mentioned) of the House of Abrasax, which is a stupid Star Wars name if I ever heard one, although to be fair there are some profoundly stupid names in Dune as well. The House of Abrasax is one of the most powerful Houses of the universe – nobody ever discovers that they are the scion of some piddling mid-rank House in adventure stories – although since we don't see or hear anything about any other Houses, the House of Abrasax might as well be rulers of the universe. The other reason for their importance is their control of the human resources (quite literally) to make the liquid that allows indefinite life provided that you can pay for it. This is not only gross, but also begs many questions regarding the function of the harvesting industry.

Let's take a look at the numbers. The human race, according to the movie, emerged one billion years age on a planet other than Earth. The Earth was seeded 65 million years ago by the Abrasax Corporation. The House of Abrasax is therefore at more than 65 million years old. Kalique, the daughter of the genetic original who exposits at Jones is 14,000 years old and the genetic original was murdered at 91,000 years old. Kalique feels that this was an abrupt and untimely end, but the movie never clarifies what is a normal lifespan for the one millionth of the 1%. This means that if 100,000 years (rounded up to the nearest hundred thousand) is an average lifespan for the member of a House, the House of Abrasax has existed for 650 generations! To put this in perspective, the Empire in Dune is 10,000 years old, and the maximum life span of aristocrats is around 200 years. Houses Corrino, Harkonnen, and Atreides have existed from the beginning of the Empire. Therefore there are at most 50 generations between the foundation of the Empire and Muad'Dib. This is still an absurdly long number of generations for one group of families to consistently hold power, but at least it is within the time frame of human history measured in generations. Assuming that 50 generations is a reasonable time span for space aristocrats, this means that a healthy life span is 1.3 million years! Even at 100 generations, it's still well over half a million years per individual. This exaggerated (and I've never had to use the word 'exaggerated' in a understated sense before) life time would explain why the children of the genetic original behave like petty infants. They are, after all, only tens of thousands of years old. Since there is no suggestion that ordinary humans such as the space navy captain, live any longer than Earth humans, the longevity of the aristocrats is dependent on the liquefied humans. This longevity allows the Houses to maintain dominance over the other races of the universe. Since there are no other products shown of similar importance, I must declare that the spice must flow! - in the most literal and disgusting way possible.

The three primary heirs to the Abrasax fortune naturally fight over control of the resources. Although two are content to use coaxing or intimidation, the third combines these tasteless but expected corporate tactics with the creepiest seduction to ever “grace” the silver screen. I can understand how aristocrats can present a marriage as a business arrangement, and I'm no prude, weaned on Greek and Egyptian myth and history but this is beyond the pale. Luke and Leia didn't know that they were related (although the ret-conned information about the Force suggests that they should have), Jaime and Cersei Lannister have some level of affection for each other, and Pietro and Wanda have serious psychological problems, but a son marrying his own mother (from his own, genetically-oriented perspective) is creepy beyond words. That said, this lack of concern about genetics in a future space society is nothing new. The Spacers of Isaac Asmov's Robot series show no concern for kinship outside of reproduction, but this is made more palatable by an exaggerated avoidance of the Westermarck effect. Not so here. Jones rejects her own son's sexual advances before agreeing to the political marriage.

The aesthetics of the spaceships is different, but not as impressive as some of the reviews indicated. Perhaps a contemporary audience has been spoiled by the abundance of movies and especially video game designs. The extensive use of force fields in the construction of the spaceships is definitely futuristic, but immensely impractical. Here is seen the benefit of using actual models at some stage of world building. There is considerable latitude in spaceship design once you are free of atmospheric considerations, but wide freedom does not equal absolute freedom. If there were peace throughout the realm and nothing ever crashed, then perhaps detached parts of a spaceship would make sense, but it is an absolute that in any adventure set in space the power will fail. In a world full of million-year-old aristocrats, I wouldn't place much faith in the detachable parts having adequate life support or engine capability.

Selma and Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is an essential component of the cinematic experience, aided and abetted by that human faculty that gives rise to stories, lies, and Plan Bs when the world seems set against you. The darkness of the cinema, only recently swept clear of the glare of cell phones, is a sensory deprivation which the audience has chosen in order to clear the palate for other sensory experiences. This voluntary immersion is especially important for films that take place in other times, whether in the past or future. Selma is about the past, although its release date suggests it is the past representing and commenting on the future - the Chinese government once banned films set in the past for this reason. This representation, however, may not be exact, and above all should not be explicit. The power of such messages are that they infiltrate the mind, allow the audience to ruminate, to understand where the parallels are not exact and thereby encourage a creative response to the social crisis so addressed.

The inability of the creators of Selma to get the rights to use the actual words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is not necessarily a liability. Every school child has heard "I have a dream" so many times that there is a substantial risk that the audience will gloss over it. The torturous rewrites that this legal barrier triggered may have cause audiences to pay more attention to the message. These rewrites, however, are very much in character for the era and therefore do not disrupt the audience's immersion in the narrative.

This immersion lasts throughout the film, only to be broken at the last second by an intrusive song referencing the incidents in Ferguson. Even if King's Selma march were the right comparison to Ferguson, the insertion of this song indicates an astonishing lack of subtlety in an otherwise well-constructed film, the cinematic equivalent of crying out another woman's name in the moment of passion or the study guide that turns a work of literature into a school assignment. The only possible conclusions to be drawn from this are either that somebody involved in the film did not trust his audience to understand the parallels (in which case he should have made a better, more focused, film) or that the parallels between movie and reality are not as strong as the auteurs would wish, and that the addition of the final song is a desperate attempt at "relevance".

The Power of One

First of all, a caveat: I wrote this for my book club, so it is a book review that presumes that you have read the book. So, while I often talk in generalities, I do not avoid all spoilers. You have been warned.


I was almost finished with The Girl with All the Gifts, (the cheaper Hachette link is not working right now) by M. R. Carey and truly enjoying it when it occurred to me to look him up online. Then I discovered that M. R, Carey was the pen name of Mike Carey, the author of the 11-volume Lucifer graphic novel series, which I highly recommend, as well as the Unwritten graphic novels, which I started but lost interest in (they weren't bad, though - check the first volume out, and make up your own mind), and the Felix Castor supernatural mystery series, which I have not read. Carey's origins as a comics writer and a screenplay writer are important influences in the strengths and weaknesses of The Girl with All the Gifts.

At first glance, The Girl with All the Gifts has two strikes against it: it is a zombie book (herein called "hungries") and its protagonist is a precocious girl. Either of these, if done less than well, could have ruined the book. The protagonist, Melanie, is a hungry who has maintained her intelligence. Melanie's character is fleshed out (so to speak), and her mentor/schoolgirl crush, Miss Justineau, recieves some character development, but the other characters who round out the principal quartet, Sargeant Parks and Doctor Caldwell, are shallow. The characterization of Parks improves as that of Justineau goes fallow. Melanie is a strong enough character on her own, but the plot demands interaction (it's a zombie book, after all, not a "last man in the world" book), so there is a lot of Justineau in the beginning. Justineau is the force that explains why Melanie is "alive", rather than cannon fodder for Parks' men, and a quite different novel could have been written about Justineau's project. Justineau, however, is fundamentally a plot device in Melanie's world, so once the quartet leaves Justineau's natural domain, her characterization withers and dies on the vine as she persistently engages in mind-numbingly stupid objections given the post-apocalyptic world she lives in. Sympathy for the devil is one thing, giving him your credit card is quite another.

To make a long story short, bad things happen (because of course they do, because it's a zombie book), and the merry band hit the road. Justineau becomes baggage, and Melanie and Parks become the important duo. Parks' changing attitude to Melanie is not really character development as much as revelation of a constant character in differing circumstances. He does not learn as much as one might think, but to say more about that would spoil the ending. Melanie's relationship with Caldwell remains (justifiably) hostile.

The limited sociological detail in the novel is reasonable, since this book is not about the society, but rather about the coming of age (in a strange way) of a little undead girl. The scantiness of the personal relationship is more troubling. The Girl with All the Gifts is not only a novel, but also a screen play, written simultaneously; apparently, the novel's multiple viewpoints are collapsed into the single viewpoint of Melanie in the script. The paucity of description of characters in the book is probably interference from the script process, as are some of the graphic scenes that only touch lightly on the plot. Both movies and comics are collaborative art forms, which means that they are both more than the sum of their parts and divided in complimentary tasks. Some of the details absent from the book would be filled in by the illustrator in a comic or the set designer in a movie.

The scientific explanation of the apocalypse makes a fair amount of sense - at least, it explains how the walking corpses are walking. The explanation of Melanie's functionality is good, as far as it goes. It does answer how a ten-year-old hungry can maintain intelligence, but there are some confusing and inexplicable things about her existence to the ten year mark - human babies don't map perfectly onto animal babies. Only Melanie's total lack of knowledge of her life before captivity excuses the lack of an explanation. The complexities of Carey's other plots makes it probable that he does have one. The resolution of the plot, which is closely tied to Melanie's nature and others like her, is cold and logical, yet hopeful. It would be nice if the movie does not have an artificially happy ending, but Hollywood is rather hopeless in that regard. As in all zombie books, the solution is (or seems to be) a temporary solution, but it does further the standard "future history" of the zombie apocalypse from one generation to two generations. If The Girl with All the Gifts catches the imagination of the zombie-mad masses, I expect that there will be further exploration of undead incubation, child care, and post-human civilization.

Nos Spectaturi Te Salutamus

On a recent Monday, I found myself down at the Commonwealth Club for a talk, "The Ancient Roman World on Film" presented by the Humanities Forum. Dr. Gary Devore from Stanford was the speaker. He spoke about the way directors manipulated the image of cinematic Romans to present them as Us, Them, Both, and Neither. The Romans were Them in The Sign of the Cross (1932), a bland Victorian pseudo-historical piece spiced up and sexed up as only Cecil B. deMille could do. Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) presented a remarkably pro-Communist message for its day, while being aggressively pro-family. Allegiance to a cause and its leader spans the political spectrum. In Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire, which Devore described as the "thinking man's epic" in contrast to Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), the Romans are both Us and Them, and serve as a warning to our era. Fellini's Satyricon (1969) absolutely rejects the possibility of identifying with the ancient Romans; Satyricon is a reaction to Fascist use of Roman symbols and the Mussolini-penned Roman epic Scipione l'Africano.

Movie Review: "Footnote"

On Wednesday I went to the Clay Theater and watched Footnote, the 2011 Cannes film from Israel by Joseph Cedar about the conflict between two Talmudic scholars, father and son. I assume that the Clay was airing it because it is Passover. The tension between the father and the son is vividly portrayed, and the score dramatizes the highly intellectual scenes. My favorite is a scene shows the elder scholar feverishly researching an insight critical to the plot. A flurry of images, like a mental montage, adds vibrancy to the scene and reflects the way the brain of many scholars function when they are high on research work. I had trouble empathizing with a father who found his son's accomplishments a slight to himself - I am more familiar with stage parents than the reverse. I did NOT like the abrupt ending - it seemed intellectually dishonest.

I plan to return to the Clay to watch The Lady, about Aung San Suu Kyi. I have read about the recent election in Burma and read Guy deLisle's The Burma Chronicles to better understand the conditions inside the country. If they show Monsieur Lazhar at the Clay, I will go there; otherwise, I shall have to find a theater that is showing it.

Review: The Hunger Games

Note (2/24/22): This has been edited to remove an offensive term. Saying what it was would negate the effect of the edit, and seeking to know what it was would prove the seeker more interested in finding offense than reading the remaining content.

Circumstances, related to the rainy conditions of Saturday's Scout hike resulted my double viewing of the film version of The Hunger Games. I do not regret watching it twice, since the Venn diagram of friends and acquaintances with whom I saw it did not overlap. The Hunger Games is a well-made film, and I would watch it again, although I probably would not buy the DVD. The transition from novel to film always entails simplification and externalization of details which books can present in an introspective manner. Although the Treaty of the Treason, in which the Capital set forth the terms of the Hunger Games, appears prominently in the film (an instance of cinematographic externalization), there is no mention of the "reward" that the winner of the Hunger Games earned for his or her District. In the book, the winning District receives extra rations to stave off malnutrition and starvation. Its omission makes the Capital's abuse of the districts more offensive, but also eliminates an obvious motivation for the Districts' complicity in this appalling ritual. The book uses third-person limited narration, and thus ignores the omnipresent cameras necessary for the viewing pleasure of the citizens of the Capital; the film never lets you forget about the cameras, in an attempt to condemn the audience in the theater as well as the Capital. It is a valiant attempt, but the freakish appearance of the Capital citizens, who look like the world's most fashion-challenged parade, compared to the normal (if rustic) dress of the residents of the Districts, creates to much visual dissonance to succeed. The depiction of the reaction of District 11 to a key moment in the movie seems heavy-handed; Rue, the female tribute from District 11, is described merely as dark-skinned in The Hunger Games, but her District is shown as the "black" district with one token white guy. Then the Peacekeepers (who are as ominous as the name suggests) bring out the water cannons. The racism in the world of the Hunger Games is an oblivious racism against all Districts, rather than one predicated on contemporary American racial fears.

Birthday

That was quite a birthday! My cousin, Zach, and his girlfriend, Katie, came up for the festivities on Thursday. On Friday, we tried for the river, but in the morning the raft company had not opened, so we decided to go on the boat around the lake. Katie had never been on the lake, although her friend had been to Tahoe may times. We went over to Thunderbird Lodge, the stately manor founded by the heir to PG&E and Richmond/Sunset real estate, former circus performer, and 1905 earthquake hero. The old woodie Thunderbird II was nowhere in sight.

We continued down the Nevada side of the lake and stopped at a cove and a group of rocks. Three of us jumped, and as usual, were stripped of our breath by the bone-chilling temperature. Two of us adjusted fairly quickly. We swam to the rocks and climbed up on them. The rocks were as warm as the water was cold; unfortunately, somebody had tagged the back of the rock.

Once we were back on the boat, we went southward, past the clothing-free beach. Since we had enough gas, we headed across the lake to Emerald Bay. The heavy snowfall of this winter, still abundantly evident in the peaks of the Tahoe Rim, had filled Emerald Bay nearly to its greatest extent, so that the water was a marine blue rather than emerald green. The waterfall behind Vikingsholm, usually a trickle at this time of year, was visible from the mouth of the bay as a foaming white spray. As we travelled around Fannette Island, I told the others about Mrs. Knight, who owned Vikingsholm, and her predecessor Cap'n Dick, who used to row to Tahoe City for drinks and rowed back drunk every night. Nobody wanted to swim to the island with me! The one unfortunate effect of the high water was this: the travel lanes in and out of Emerald Bay were not as idiot-proof as usual (and a lot of idiots go on vacation). The return trip was uneventful, except for gas.

Since we had missed lunch altogether, Zach, Katie, and I went into town and got a slice of pizza to tide us over. Later, Mom, Dad, Zach, Katie, Aidan, Kirsten, and I went to the recently reopened Hacienda del Lago. It was nice to have the place back, although the bar that they built for the (former) tapas bar places takes up a lot of room that used to be seating.

After dinner, Zach, Katie, and I went to The Blue Agave to kill some time before the movie, and ran into Aidan and Kirsten. Zach, Katie, and I then watched Captain America, which all of us (even Katie) enjoyed. Marvel is doing a good job of tranferring its interwoven narrative to the screen.

On Saturday, Aidan, Kirsten, Zach, Katie, and I floated down the Truckee (since the rafting had opened the afternoon of the previous day). The extra water that had been added that morning made navigation more hazardous, since the rocks which usually showed were underwater and all the gunk which heretofore had lain on dry, or least slight damp, land, had risen up and headed downstream in the current. Several groups of enormous size hit the river, so we had to avoid the logjams. I got suburnt, but it was a great last part to my birthday "weekend".

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I recently watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third and (sadly) last installment of the Chronicles of Narnia movie line. The solid beginning arose great hopes in me, since the visual signature was definately Narnian, not Lord of the Rings nor Harry Potter. I can forgive the rejiggering of plot necessary to sustain a movie, since the literary form is more tolerant of episodic narrative than its cinematic cousin. The plot device was weak, albeit an obvious one (what aristocrat doesn't have a sword?) The mysterious fog seemed a bit more contrived. The addition of a second female passenger seemed gratuitous. The longer dragon-stage of Eustace, however, was used to good effect, especially since the conversation between Aslan and Eustace in the book is profound, but would not translate well to film. That brings me to my final point: the Christian elements were minimal and well-hidden by conflicting desires to capture both the Christian and the secular market. The salvific (and generally non-Evangelical, non-Apocalyptic) Christian element, though objectionable to many, is the thematic signature of the Chronicles of Narnia, as integral to its setting as Quenya and Sindarin are to Lord of the Ring.

The Lincoln Lawyer

I rented this on a misunderstanding: I thought this was the film, recently lauded on NPR, about the trial of the woman who sheltered John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators. By the time I realized my error, I had already returned home. The Lincoln Lawyer is a tightly scripted thriller about a defense lawyer whose cases intertwine. I especially enjoyed this film for two reasons: firstly, I come from a family infested with defense lawyers; secondly, said defense lawyers know Hell's Angels (some came to my aunt's funeral), and the group features prominently and more or less positively in the film.

Duty and Responsibility

I find myself in a solemn mood returning from The King's Speech, an excellent movie about George VI (Bertie) and his stammer. Although the focus of the movie was Bertie, I find my mind turning to the themes of responsibility and duty in the face of challenges. Sometimes we earn the rank bestowed upon us; sometimes we are not worthy of it. In either case, our duty is to perform our office as well as we are able, and not to shirk our obligations. If we neglect our appointed office, we make a mockery of our post, bring shame upon ourselves, and reduce our symbols of office to shiny trinkets not more valuable than a shiny tourist pin from the pier. Responsibility and duty means placing the needs of others before that of oneself, and by helping others we advance ourselves in experience and character.

Movie Review: Avatar (but mostly Na'vi)

Those who know my obsession with languages, real or imagined, will not be astonished that I went twice to Avatar, once for the experience and once for the language (and the 3D). I do this with rented movies, too, rewatching them with the commentary on - as archaeologists well know, sometimes there are nuggets among the trash; of course, it's a lot cheaper with rented movies!

I shall first say that I was pleasantly surprised by the additional information and coherence that a second viewing of Avatar afforded (although the particulars would betray the plot too much). I may actually read the novelization of the movie for the extra anthropological/linguistic/historical information. What most interested me, of course, was the alien language, Na'vi, which was constructed with care by an accredited linguist. One thing that irks me about poorly written fantasy novels, such as that written by Tolstoy's great-greandson, even more than the hackneyed plots is the lack of effort which goes into the creation of believable languages. I would not expect anyone to top Tolkien, a genuine language professor, but it seems to me that if you wain the want to use a fictional language and are uninterested  in the details, you should crib a grammar of a real, possibly obscure, language rather than half-heartedly attempting to make one up, or else settle on differences in dialect and prosody to distinguish your fantasy races.

I was pleased at the extensive (for a film) use of Na'vi, by characters who would find it useful or necessary, even if the biosphere (and language) seemed a bit "It was raining on Mongo that day". Soldiers and anthropologists have competing but compelling reasons to learn the native tongue. Once I had seen Avatar once, I looked up the Na'vi language on Wikipedia, and was pleased and amused to see the list of features which were combined to form a language which humans could learn, but was unlike any human language. Na'vi features clusivity (which would make some the insider/outsider dialog of the movie particularly interesting), three grammatical numbers (singular, dual, and trial), Celtic-like lenition, Russian-like short forms (in combination with lenition!), Algonquin-style infixation, the bane of the English settlers of the New World. One can sympathize with the complaints of the protagonist about the difficulties of learning Na'vi! This particular combination of features renders the language natural but not transparent, which is one of the risks of a lazy movie linguist. The lyrics of the songs were in Na'vi, no doubt inspired by the use of Quenya and Sindarin in the LOTR movie trilogy, although there are songwriters here and there who have felt moved to sing in a language of their own. I would be interested to see the dialog of the Na'vi-speaking actors, since the use of clusivity and "attitude" infixes would make the disposition and political orientation of the Na'vi actors much clearly in their native tongue.

Desolation On My Mind

Those who know me well are aware of my morbid predilection with movies portraying totalitarian societies or post-apocalyptic wastelands (yes, I include 1970's New York in that category), so they will not be shocked that I watched The Road (even though I found the idea of reading the book too depressing even for me) and am reading Collapse by Jared Diamond (the Silver Age successor to Steven Jay Gould).

The Road is based on the book of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, whose Southwestern novels I have read; I am not a fan of that genre. I did once read a Louis Lamour book once, but it did not compel me to pick up any others, and Western movies never grabbed me, even though I watched plenty of Paladin as a young kid. The Road, on the other hand, seemed like the bleak despairing movie I would enjoy, even if it did not seem appropriate for popcorn and a soda: the 2008 cut was not issued because it was too bleak and depressing. I suppose modern movie goers have not been inoculated with enough Ingmar Bergman. Viggo Mortenson was a good choice for the Man (as usual, someone of whom I had never heard played the juvenile lead), but the flashbacks and the tacked on feel-good ending presented problems. I suppose that the flashbacks served much the same function as the "satyr play" of a tragic trilogy, namely, to provide a brief respite to the sense of doom. The ending of the movie was marginally hopeful, which is the best one could expect from such a depressing setting. The inclusion of certain analogues to the Boy makes some sense, but the other companion of the adults at the end stretched credulity.

After I had finished Memoirs of a Geisha, I started reading Jared Diamond's Collapse. Reading it is a bit like reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant if Lord Foul had won: every time you think the book could not become more depressing, it exceeds itself (someone actually lived on Henderson?). The general results of ecological abuse seems to be same: ecological genocide, a barren wasteland, and near or total extinction of the human population. The horrifying aspect of these tales is that these were not people who were using intentionally destructive practices and just didn't care, but rather people who were just trying to feed themselves and their families.

I've never been to Iceland or Easter Island, but I have seen the effects of overpopulation, deforestation, and overgrazing firsthand in Malta, right before it surrendered its currency to the Euro. Malta is not a wasteland (it's actually quite lovely), and was never isolated in the way of Easter Island or Greenland, but it is a far cry from the "low wooded isle" with streams it presumably was in the days of Odysseus. In addition to the usual rainwater problems of a Mediterranean island in a dry climate, the remaining topsoil is so precious that it is recycled from site to site, vexing the archaeologists, and there are no permanent lakes or rivers.

Lost Landscapes 4

On Friday, I went down to Lost Landscapes 4, at the Herbst Theater, on the protest-unfriendly side of City Hall. I only had one ticket, which illustrates a vexing conundrum: when I want to go to an event where tickets are scarce, I need to buy the tickets early, but I don't like paying the price of two tickets without trustworthy confirmation that I will have a companion for the event. Some people might suggest scalping the extra ticket, but I have neither the talent nor the inclination to do this successfully. So I bought one ticket - but it was numbered so that I could not add a companion at a later date in an adjacent seat.

The actual presentation of Lost Landscapes was an intriguing mix of event footage and home films. I may have been better prepared in some regards than other members of the audience thanks to many talks with senior alumni of my troop, but there were plenty of surprises, and sights of things known but never seen. San Francisco archivists have benefited from the nearly concurrent development of early photography and the expansion of San Francisco, as well as the ubiquitous desire of tourists to document their holiday. Several things which I learned from this: the traffic on Market has always been bad; the first transportation battle in the city was between horses and horseless carriages; hats used to be an acceptable substitute (predecessor?) for placards. I really do wonder at that last point: did the strikers feel that waving a hat was sufficient to indicate their cause?

Foxy Luvers

In accordance to the familial mandates of Thanksgiving, I consented to accompany my progenitors to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The difference between those who have a car, however, and those who do not, is greater than most imagined. I cannot claim a surfeit of virtue in this case, since I was briefly the sole passenger on the bus, but the mode of transportation still determines how much consideration is given to time of travel. In short, I arrived ludicrously early at my destination, a situation with which I am intimate. Since it was a familiar situation, I resorted to my default plan: find a coffee shop wherein I might abide. There were several other culinary establishments near the 4-Star, but all of these were either proper restaurants or involved drinking of the Dionysiac kind. I went to Luvers, which (contrary to what might be gleaned from its name) was a coffee shop rather than a business rival for Good Vibrations. Its interior is well-appointed, although I do not know what their usual customer profile is.

As for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, I enjoyed it greatly and did not find any indication of the Uncanny Valley in the stop-motion animation. I must confess that I have never read the book - my preference was The BFG - but one of the endearing traits of Roald Dahl's fiction is his refusal to pander to the "Children's Hour" censors. The anthropomorphised  animals of British fiction are less sentimentalized than their American counterparts, and that tradition shows in Fox. It also lacks the mandatory unqualified victory with which the American audience is besotted - or perhaps the American film industry, since Lord of the Rings made plenty of money.
George Clooney was an excellent choice as the titular Mr. Fox, although one does wonder if there were not less high-profile names who could perform the voice equally well. The bitter antagonism between Ash and Kristofferson, which had been added to the script to lengthen the still short movie, was a realistic portrayal of adolescent strife.

Myth-understanding (I need an Aspirin)

Hollywood's remake machine has set its sights on Clash of the Titans. The remake itself is not what bothers me, since this movie was never a favorite of mine, despite my love of myth and legend. Strange versions of the Arthurian mythos bother me more. I am, however, concerned that this adaptation of an adaptation, like the light of mirror in moonlight, will have myth-obsessed fanboys up in arms about its (no doubt gross) misrepresentation of the mythological canon.

Let me say this up front: I love myths and have been reading them since I was eight years old. I started with Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, and Norse myths; moved to Yoruba and other African myths; and once was mocked in grade school for reading the tales of the Aboriginal Dreamtime in a book which featured Aboriginal art (which lacks the same modesty taboos as contemporary pseudo-Victorian society). Once I had moved on from Bullfinch, however, I learned from Graves and translations of the Greek tragedies and epics that ancient authors and poets felt no compunction at changing the narrative of a myth in order to illustrate their desired point. The backstory of Oedipus at Colonus cannot be exactly the same as the ending of Oedipus Rex, and the version of Oedipus in the Iliad is less flawed than the Oedipus of the tragic stage.

The outrage of the mythological fanboy, therefore, is not only unwarranted, but even untrue to the spirit of the nature of myth. The last outburst of such outrage I can recall occurred at the release of Disney's Hercules, which made the radical change of having Hercules as the son of Hera and therefore a god without terrestrial access to his own godhead. At the time, many complained that this was some desecration of the Herculean canon, although that canon includes Hercules as sage and barbaric, irredeemably stupid and unexpectedly crafty, in love with women and in love with boys. The syncretism of the Herculean mythos from the tales of strongmen of many cities prohibits a single interpretation of his character.

This lack of canonical exclusivity, it seems to me, is characteristic of myth in general. Although there may be general outlines, the teller of the tale is free to stretch or diminish portions to suit the point which he desires to make at that telling. Since Hollywood desires only to entertain (as judged by ticket revenue), it is natural that it would bend the tale in the ways most suitable to that purpose.

Fanboys have no right to complain that something as fluid as myth should conform to their preconcieved standards, although they are free to dislike it.

Michael and Me: A Personal Story

On Saturday night, I went with Georgina to the prophetically named Michael Jackson vehicle This Is It. I had forgotten how charismatic Jackson was on-screen, and I especially appreciated the exposure which the footage gave to all the people who work so hard on set and (at best) are reduced to a name in the list, which nobody except their grandmother notices. Several of the interviewees displayed a peculiar, yet not unexpected, mix of adulation and professionalism.

My first exposure to the Gloved One was in the early eighties, before his disgrace. This period saw the birth of MTV, but my parents were and are conservative in their judgments of how much television a child should watch, so the first really big impression of Jackson I received occurred during my first visit to Disneyland. At that time, Jackson had made a short music video (new and exciting technology at the time) called Captain Eo, in which he played a space captain contesting against an evil, loveless alien queen. It would be prudent, perhaps, to point out that Jackson was hardly the only pop star of the day who could portray an androgynous space captain convincingly. Captain Eo, naturally, vanquishes the queen through the power of music/love - Jackson appears to have conflated the two. This video disappeared from Disneyland, although I couldn't tell you whether this occurred before or after charges were levied against Jackson. If it was after the charges, the cause for removal is clear; the most mercantile land on Earth, however, has a habit of periodically demolishing and replacing its attractions.

After the infamous Neverland charges, I began to feel uncomfortable saying anything about Michael Jackson. Although my interest in his music had started at the height of his solo fame and my youthful impressionability, I was concerned, as a youth leader, and particularly as a Boy Scout leader, I would be misinterpreted and ostracized (although the current meaning of that word lacks the implication of temporary exile). One of the factors which has always bothered me about any charges involving misconduct against youth is the presumption not of "innocent, until proven guilty", but rather "guilty, even if proven innocent". I'd rather save that argument for later. I've wondered why the family accepted an out-of-court settlement, but I shall be discreet and avoid possible libel charges. This blog, after, is merely a personal one.

I was surprised as much as anyone by Jackson's marriages and procreation. This surprise does not derive from an assumption of homosexuality, but rather from an assumption that Jackson filled his own niche of sexuality. Years of reading Savage Love have educated me to the existence of many "perversions", from those common to much of the human race down to exceedingly rare fetishes.

They say the best promotional tool for an artist is dying, and in this case it's also freed me from one of my many insecurities that prevented me from enjoying the soundtrack of my youth.

The Marvelous Mouse

Even though I am not the biggest fan of the Mouse (that would be a certain "North Dakota" among my friends), I do not think that the purchase of Marvel by Disney is not a bad thing. The Disney brand has tilted too far towards the shores of princess-infested kingdoms, and they are aware of this, since they made an entire film (Enchanted) gently mocking their success in this genre. I remember watching Classic Disney on Sunday nights when I was growing up, and the films of those eras provided plenty of materials for boys as well as girls. I remember a church lock-in at Saint Mary's where the girls prevailed upon me to watch Beauty and the Beast, which I did enjoy. The problem is not so much the quality of the material for girls as the dearth of material for boys.

The American comic industry, in contrast to Disney, has a a terrible record in attracting female readers. Manga producers, however, have no difficulty attracting female readers. What I suspect will happen is this: Disney will promote the kid-friendly and continuity-free lines of Marvel and draw in the boy viewers whom they lost after the duck-heavy years of my childhood, and Marvel will produce more comics oriented toward romance (which disappeared from their line because the action comics merged with the romance line), although it's hard to say whom they could use as leads outside of Mary Jane Watson and Kitty Pryde.

Speed Spectator Movie Review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

I finally watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, although it had been one of the movies I rescued from the “caretaker’s cottage”. I assume it belonged to my brother or his wife when they lived there. First of all, I must admit that I did not grow up watching westerns other than some episodes of Paladin which the Reno stations played early in the morning. I also visited the Bonanza Ranch before it went bankrupt and became another real estate development. My taste in fiction of the American West runs more towards Laura Ingalls Wilder and Brett Harte than John Wayne and Lee Marvin.

The plot and pacing of Valance is excellent and well thought-out, although probably insufferably tedious to Generation ADHD. The title of the film is chosen carefully to provoke interest, accurately reflect the hero antagonist of the film, and conceal the twist ending. The dénouement of the movie shows a satisfying subversion of the ‘sudden ability syndrome‘, a curious plot-related disease in which the hero suddenly develops a specific and necessary ability to save the day. Contemporary movies intended for children are the frequent victims of this, and fuel the narcissism of the current generation - but that’s a rant for another day.

Valance observes the majority of the Western clichés, including the drunken Mexican, the drunken sheriff (in this case, the same person as the former), the stubborn newsman, the ‘happy Negro’, the funny-talking immigrant, and the color-coded hats, but the mere naming of the villain as Liberty Valance suggests a certain degree of self-aware subversion. The character of Liberty Valance does not seem to be sufficiently clever to understand irony, and the depth of Donovan’s (Wayne's) character is limited to a tedious repetition of ‘pilgrim’ as a synonym for ‘fellow’ and a dogged insistence on the necessity and utility of firearms. It may be a generational difference, but I do not understand the appeal of John Wayne and cannot perceive his charisma.

This was an interesting movie to watch, but it was a bit like a mediocre Agatha Christie: the plot is satisfying, but the actors are chess pieces rather than living players.