Category Archives: Culture

This Photograph Isn’t Black and White

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This picture, while commonly called black and white, is actually greyscale. The picture elements, pixels, as I do not shoot on physical film but with a digital camera, recreate the image with tones that go from black, an absence of signal, to white, a saturation of signal, but with the vast vast majority somewhere in the middle creating some level of grey. We call it a black & white picture for simplicity and ease of language, but the actual image presented is not binary, it is more complex than that. Our troubles begin when we take what is used for simplicity and speed of communication, black & white, and mistake that for actual reality. The same applies to so much of life.

To many, the founding of the United States is a binary event, either good or bad depending on the person’s perspective. Terrible things were brought into this world with the European settlement of these continents, diseases that killed millions and destroyed civilizations, kidnapping and enslavement of millions more. It is foolish to dismiss these events and actions as mere history, products of their time, and insignificant to today’s events. Today’s home is built on the foundation of what has been. It is also true that the founding of this nation brought forth fantastic new ideas. The very concept of true human liberty and equality expressed in those events reverberated around the globe, inspired countless struggles for freedom and set the conditions for those who followed to even conceive of righting the wrongs of history. The founding of the United States, like the photograph, is not a black & white thing, it is both good and bad, existing far beyond the straightjacket of binary thought.

Nature doesn’t exist in any binary. Everything out there is part of a spectrum of existence, gender, intelligence, consciousness, everything.

Reject the binary and see what is real.

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My Two Unpopular Takes on Frankenstein

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rankenstein is not science-fiction.

The Creature/Creation is not sympathetic.

There is not a small number of people and fans who want to count Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s 1816 novel as one of the first if not the first work of science-fiction. I disagree, but not because I want to dismiss such an influenceable work. Frankenstein is one of the most important works of literature. Two hundred years plus after its publication we still not only debate and adapt the work itself, but the theme of irresponsible creation echoes in so many works it would be futile to list them all. Both HAL9000 and the Terminator owe a debt to Shelly’s vision. But the fact that so much science-fiction mines that productive vein that she uncovered doesn’t make the original science-fiction as well.

In a work of SF, the method of the fantastic is vitally important to genre. Taking a Pegasus to the moon is not science fiction, but using a cannon to shoot myself there is. Method defines the genre. While Shelly may have been inspired by Galvanism it is absent from the text. In fact, in the text of the novel Shelly doesn’t just hand-wave her way past how Frankenstein created life, she leaves out the method entirely. She leaves it out because the method is unimportant to her theme and her subject. She wasn’t interested in how he created life only the ethical issues that raised. Verne’s trip to the moon is built upon the method of getting there and far less interested in what that means. Shelly’s creation of life ignores the ‘how’ but explores the why and the consequences. Frankenstein is one of the most important works ever created but it is not science-fiction.

The Creature is not sympathetic to me because it comes off to me as a dangerous, murderous, narcissist. Much has been made about how the doctor abandoned the creature, leaving it to suffer torment in isolation. That’s fair enough and is Shelly’s point, but the creature’s actions following that are impossible to justify.

While I think we can agree that vengeance is at best a questionable course of action, and had the creature’s vengeance been directed solely at Frankenstein it would be far less reprehensible but that it is not how the text unfolds.

To make his creator suffer the creature not only murders a child only because the boy is a relation to his creator but then frames an innocent woman to suffer the mob justice for his own crime.

When the creature confronts his creator in the ice caves of Switzerland, he proclaims that no being could love as greatly as himself but hurt and abused he swore to hate as greatly. He betrays the classic profile of a narcissist, his own feelings are paramount and those of others, such a murdered child, grieving parents, or those unjustly lynched for his crimes are of no consequence. There is precious little difference between the creature taking his violent vengeance on innocent bystanders and the mass murders of American murdering strangers.

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The Prisoner, A Conservative Psychiatrist, & Our Dark Times

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In 1967 star and producer Patrick McGoohan released into the world a surreal allegory of television series The Prisoner about an unnamed espionage agent kidnapped to a secret island called ‘The Village’ with the reason for his sudden resignation of great interest to his captors. A full decade before the brilliant surrealist filmmaker Daid Lynch would burst onto the scene with Eraserhead, The Prisoner would be most people’s introduction to film and television that would later be called Lynchian.

An important aspect to The Village and its totalitarian governance is that dissidents, malcontent, and people who attempted to resist were not labeled criminal but rather sick, mentally unbalanced. after all, no sane person could possibly resent to idyllic life present by the Village.

36 years after the debut of The Prisoner, conservative columnist and former psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer commenting on Democratic politician Howard Dean toying with conspiracy theories that President Bush had been forewarn of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 coined the term ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome,’ mirroring the Village’s policy of treatment dissent and disagreement as mental illness allowing easy dismissal of any and all criticism. Granted, Krauthammer probably meant the term as merely play on words and not at all a serious rebuttal, but the fast adoption of the term and its repeated deployment negates whatever intent the writer had.

A dozen years after Krauthammer introduced mental illness as a dismissal and pejorative for those is disagreement the term ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ entered the political terminology with current events expanding it to include ‘Musk Derangement Syndrome’ to include the wealthiest man alive and the administration hatchment man for regulatory governance.

As this administration proves itself criminal, callous, careless, and cruel the terms ‘TDS’ and “MDS’ are employed more and more. After all, no ‘right thinking’ person could possibly oppose such ‘common sense’ actions such as ignoring the courts, holding due process in contempt, and persecuting ‘enemies of the people’ for their speech.

At the end of the Prisoner’s only season when our unnamed protagonist finally discovers who is ‘Number One’ the person in charge of the Village and all its conformity demanding madness, it is a person who looks precisely like himself. The allegory clear, we all live in the Village. We have put ourselves there, caged by our own conventions and demands for tranquility.

And now in reality we are trapped in a ‘Village’ of our own making. Our wardens insisting that our rejection of an insane, idiotic, and cruel administration proof of our mental illness. I, for one, wear the ‘syndrome’ badge with honor. The truth remains, this is a cruel, criminal and deeply stupid administration and the truly deranged are those who profess that is normal and good.

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Tesla Vandalism Is Domestic Terrorism

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Before I start let me state without qualification or evasion that Elon Musk, unelected and unaccountable, should get the fuck out of our government.

A recent spate of vandalism against Tesla dealerships and charging stations has erupted on the news cycle prompting the President to declare the acts as ‘domestic terrorism’ with promises of persecution. This is turn has caused some corners of the left to insist that it is ‘just vandalism’ and not terrorism.

I would maintain that acts of violence, against people or property with the goal of effecting political change, in this case driving Musk from his position of power, is pretty much the definition of terrorism. It occurred within our national jurisdiction and presumably from American nationals making it thoroughly domestic. Simple logic renders the inescapable conclusion that these acts are indeed ‘domestic terrorism.’

That’s not the real fuck issue.

The real issue is that this administration will in no way or in no manner treat all acts of domestic terrorism equally. The pardoning of the violent insurrectionist who attempted to overthrow a fair, free, and legitimate election is proof of this. Further evidence is the legal action against the man who organized pro-Palestinian protests.

When Trump promises to use law enforcement against some persons but not others, he is employing the fascist credo ‘For my friends, everything; for my enemies the law.’

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Fake it Till You Make it

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The affirmation ‘fake it ’till you make it’ has long been one employed to fight the dreaded ‘impostor syndrome.’ To be a writer with confidence, act like you have that confidence, play the part until it because a reality for you. This applies to nearly all areas of human activity; act the way you want to be, and it will help you become exactly that.

I think there’s a dark mirror-universe version of this effect as well. I think if you want to be that thing you are act is fairly irrelevant. You will tend to become what you pretend to be, even if that was not your original intention.

There’s an activity, principally online, known as ‘owning the libs,’ where people, mostly men, perform in a manner to provoke anger and outrage from liberals and then rejoicing in the fact that you managed to make the outraged. The fact that there’s an entire community of people acting this way is of concern because in my opinion many of them are ‘faking it’, being homophobic racist until they ‘make it’ actually becoming homophobic racists.

Compounding this effect is the presence of actual homophobic racist all too eager to welcome anyone to their ranks. The pressure of conformity within any social group is powerful, humans are social creatures, and those drives are very hard to overcome. Pressure to conform to the hateful community eventually molds those ‘pretending’ into actual adherents.

So, maybe that ‘okay’ hand gesture wasn’t really and truly meant as a white power symbol, and maybe that ‘roman salute’ was just someone throwing their heart to the crowd, but such things a welcomed with great joy by the fascists and racists and positive reinforcement changes people. Sometimes they fake it until it makes them Nazis.

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Aesthetics Defines Fascism

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One of the more tedious debates in popular political discussion is the endless argument about placing fascism on the left or on the right. Both ends of the political spectrum are desperate to have the 20th century’s greatest monsters reside in their opponents family tree rather than their own. As such both sides are immune to actual arguments and logical constructions because it is a requirement of their purity that the ‘truth’ bend to their personal preference and that their ‘side’ remains free of that taint.

Some years ago, I saw the fascinating documentary Architecture of Doom which examined the NAZIs from an artistic point of view instead of a political one. The thesis was that while the party lacked any real coherent political philosophy adopting conflicting positions if that led to real power its aesthetics were fairly consistent. From Hitler on down there was a real obsession with how things looked. A fixation on the ‘high’ art of the past and a hatred of the modern ‘degenerate’ art.

Which brings us to America today and the neo-fascist that have corrupted the Republican party.

This past week Trump dismissed most of the board of the Kennedy Center for the Arts and installed himself as that chairman. When asked about it during the Super Bowl interview one of his comments was “It’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”

Later that day the Super Bowl paused for its massive halftime show led by performs Kendrick Lamar. Apparently, I did not watch the game or performance I was at Disneyland, there were no white performers in the show and there’s been quite a bit of griping about that show. Of course, most people have interpreted the complaints to be principally about racism and they are not far off in that assessment. But a great component of the right’s racism is again an aesthetic issue. These performers don’t look like what these racists think people who are to be admired and coveted should look like.

This applies to the queer and trans communities as well. The neo-fascists know precisely what they think men and women should look like and those who vary from that image are the ‘degeneracy’ that the neo-fascists fear and abhor.

None of this is meant to dismiss or play down the very real legal threats that are multiplying like tribbles in our government today. The flood of illegal actions, dismissals, and seizure of power is a very real threat to our system of government. These must be fought. We are under assault from every quarter and the artistic is a vital one not merely a sideshow.

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Movie Review: Companion

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Nailing the genre of Companion is a tricky endeavor. Many consider it to be a horror film, after all it’s about an A.I. that’s for the run time of the film is primarily engaged in a spree of killing. Other classify the film as science-fiction/thriller, I guess because they turn their nose up at horror. What is undeniable is that Companion is at its heart a satire taking aim at terrible men and the manner in which they treat their romantic partners.

Warner Bros Studios

Sophie Thatcher, whom I last watched in the terrific Heretic stars as Iris, an emotional support robot, that is sex bot, to craven and despicable Josh (Jack Quaid.) They have journeyed far into the countryside for a weekend with two other couples, Eli, (Harvey Guillen) & Patrick (Lucas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) & Sergey (Rupert Friend.) Very quickly things go badly when in an act of self-defense Iris kills one of the men and events spiral out of everyone’s control.

Some have complained that Companion’s trailers, revealing that Iris is in fact a machine, destroys the movie’s ‘twist’ but that is not the case. The script is loaded with reveals and reversals that at each turn enhance the story and further the satire.

Writer/Director Drew Hancock has crafted a find piece of cinema that is both highly entertaining, rightfully funny without ever losing it thematic core while avoiding becoming a tiresome lecture. Sophie Thatcher is excellent in her performance, often making these tiny choices that very subtly convey quite a bit about Iris and her internal monologue.

This is a film I can whole heatedly recommend.

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When You Join a Group, the Group Changes You

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Among my political reading and podcasts are former Republicans who have walked away from their party since the rise of Trump. It has been fascinating to see what changes has taken place in their worldview as they now think write, and debate outside of the borders of what had once been their ideological home. Particularly interesting is their view back at their colleagues and friends and former friends that remained ‘good’ Republicans and have drifted more and more into mindsets that these formers have a hard time comprehending.

Here is a fallacy many people believe; that people choose a political party based on how much that party matches with their own internal set of beliefs and policies. That’s not how it works. What happens is there are one or two really important issues for the person, and they gravitate to the party to matches those very limited concerns. It may be right for an under representative group, it may be a specific thing like abortion or guns, or it can be more nebulous like ‘traditional mores’ but it’s mostly a very limited set of things. Then once the person is in the party, in the social grouping, theybegin to change their beliefs and attitudes to match the larger group. These ‘minor’ issues aren’t what brought them there, but they adopt them just the same. Humans are social animals, and it is our evolved nature to conform to the society we wish to belong to.

What has happened with the Republican Party under Trump is a similar sequence except instead of joining a clique the clique changed and the people who remained in it changed to stay accepted members. It is not a conscious and intended act these changes; it happens below the level on intention action. The person makes slight, minor alterations to their speech, their actions, and eventually to their thoughts.

These people who stayed with their party for whatever reason that they found compelling were buffeted by the new changed GOP and it’s ideology and standards. Some left the dissonance between their image of themselves and the party to great to bridge but many stayed. They stayed and convinced themselves that they hadn’t really changed, not had their goals, only the tools and methods had changed. Like Saruman they didn’t and don’t think of themselves are being in the wrong, only bending to necessity. But as time drags on and the process is never ending like water eroding away a mountain the results are inevitable. They become the thing that they said they stood against without any defining moment save the first that one can point to as when it flipped. It’s that first moment, that second when you decide to do something that is wrong, but you have argued yourself that it’s really for the best that is the fall.

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The Art and The Artist Part One Million

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With the further and now apparently well documented allegations that paint Neil Gaiman as a rather nasty piece of work we are once again thrust into the unresolved and unresolvable debate concerning separating the artists from the art.

First off, it is decision of personal moral standards. I hold no ill will or any negative opinion for anyone that decides to boycott or who continues to support the art an artist. We each make our own choices about how much compromise the broken world demands of us. No one can live in this universe pure and unsullied. Every choice we make has consequences and moral implications.

Personally, I think one defining line is asking how much of the art promotes the objectionable stands, beliefs, or actions of the artist. Roman Polanski should be rotting in a prison cell for forcibly raping a child. yet, his cinematic production of Macbeth or Chinatown do not promote such a world view and while both have a cynical approach to evil in the world, both recognize and clearly delineate that the evil is real and not an arbitrary illusion crafted by mere mortals.

Bryan Singer a talented filmmaker is always accosted with more than a little credibility of also sexually abusing minors. If true he should face legal consequences. But it is also true that his film X-Men is an allegory for the mistreatment of minorities and takes a stand against such bigotry.

Kevin Spacey’s career was derailed by allegations of sexual abuse and he cowardly tried to use he newly disclosed sexuality as a shield. A dodge that did not work and he was ejected from a number of productions. Spacey’s portray of Jack Vincennes as morally corrupt cop who comes to realize the evil he has helped perpetuate and tried to correct it is a deeply moving and touching job that gives hope to the concept of redemption.

In each of these cases and others I would argue that the art is not corrupted by the evils of the artist. These are also all films, and I think the boycotting of film productions if particularly problematic.

Film is a collaborative art and to boycott a film is not just a harm to the objectionable artist but to all the artist that work and profit from that production. Boycott the Harry Potter films due to Rowlings despicable beliefs and you also are striking against Radcliff who gives every appearance of a devoted ally. Boycotting film, for me personally, has too high of a ration of collateral damage to target.

Books are a different matter.

Only three entities profit from the sale of a book, the book seller, the publisher, and the author. Everyone else has already been paid and compensated for their time and labor. If you are one to buy books then your support for the book seller is unlikely to change, leaving just the publisher and the author. Given that I find the boycotting of books from questionable artist much easier to justify.

Luckily for me I was never much of a Gaiman fan with his novels, so not buying them isn’t so much a boycott as life as normal. For you, well that’s your decision.

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Celebrity is a Performance

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The Neil Gaiman story which went much wider this week with a long and disturbing account of his alleged sexual assaults and other nasty work has stirred up some very deep feelings of betrayal among his fans in the fantasy and horror communities.

I don’t blame them for feeling betrayed. Gaiman had constructed a nearly perfect public persona that invited respect and admiration. He doled out advice that encouraged artists of all stripes as they struggled with impostor syndrome, his stories celebrated the outsider, and they presented a level of inclusion that welcome many groups of people form whom society has always felt excluding and threatening.

But it his public persona was all for show, and the most vital lesson we need to take away from all this is that all public personas are for show.

Gaiman, Whedon, Cosby are but a few names of men with public faces that made them admired are people who lifted up others and presented what appeared to be images of our better selves. The truth for each of these turned far darker than most expected.

Everyone who is some form of celebrity presents a public face that is not their true self. Some do it to market themselves and their art. Some do it to cover up an inner insecurity that never leaves them. Some do it because their true selves are not readily accepted in wider society. This is particularly true for those in the closet. But some do it to conceal their monstrous nature.

On the outside looking in we cannot not their true selves, we can only know what they project, the image that they create and distribute for their own purposes, some of which are mercenary, some self-protecting, and some nefarious. This is way it is important to never place anyone on that pedestal of admiration.

Praise the art, praise the skill of the artist, but do not believe that simply because of the art that they are good. They may be, there are noble, good, and great people everywhere, but you cannot know them save by their actions and even then, your data set is limited by what they want you to know.

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