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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The Flowering Phase of Creativity

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So, another post about my next novel and how my creative process works.

I am in what I can call ‘my flowering phase.’ I haven’t committed much to text as far as the next project goes, it’s still a little too indistinct for that, but enough of the project has firmed up that ideas and concepts are sprouting like springtime flowers. They are common enough and specific enough that even while having lunch with my sweetie-wife I can do quick research to validate them as they erupt.

Yesterday, after our quite enjoyable walk in the zoo under a gloriously clear blue sky, I realized that an element of my plot could be resolved by a second Adamas avenue theater, one that by the 80s had become a fabric store. Fast and accurate googling on my smart phone confirmed that what had once the Adams Avenue Theater, a movie palace of old, worked perfectly for my needs.

Soon it will be time to start crafting the details of the plot and putting the outline into shape. While a lot of the story and the plot remain hazy, just shapes in the fog on a dark night, they are there just waiting to be discovered.

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The Next Novel

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I have begun to earliest work on my next novel. Another horror, this one a bit of a period piece, but a period I know well, San Diego the summer of 1984. This one will be a ghost story centered on an arthouse/revival house movie theater in the Kensington area of the city. For people who know San Diego, yes, I am crafting a fictional version of the beloved Ken Cinema that ceased operations at the start of the pandemic. The Ken was part of the Landmark chain of theaters that once thrived here and now no theaters of that illustrious chain remain open in San Diego.

The summer of ’84 was an eventful summer for the nation and the city. Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, which the Soviets boycotted. Our mayor was embroiled in a scandal that seems so small and quaint by today’s degenerated politics. Ronald Reagan was riding to a massive electoral victory and San Diego erupted on the map with for a while the largest mass-murder event in the country’s history. Sadly, America has broken that record repeatedly.

That was the year I still performed as part of the fans that attended The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screenings, made lifelong friends, and discovered some of my favorite films in class at college.

Amid all this crisis and confusion, I plan to play with ghosts and cinema. It should be a lot of fun.

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This is Far Worse Than I Expected

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I have been posting far less political content not because the environment has improved an in any manner but because I had nothing really new to say. My opposition to Trump, Trumpism, and the entire GOP has not changed or slackened in any manner. It is terrifying to see what has become of this nation and I fear terribly for what is yet to come.

That said, the fucked-up nature of what has transpired in the less than six weeks since the fool and narcissist took office is far worse than I had imagined.

Oh, I was pretty sure that idiot would abandon Ukraine. His sympathies are entirely with Putin. He imagines himself as a strong virile and tough man. In his deluded and stupid brain the man thinks he’s like some cinematic mafia boss when the reality is that his fragile ego and limited intelligence make him the plaything and tool of those vile and evil men. The bowing to Putin is hardly surprising, I just thought it would take a little longer.

I also though crashing the economy would take more time. I though the disaster of extending his massive tax giveaway to the world’s richest people would be the anchor that jerked the nation’s economy to a halt but we’re not waiting for such laws. No, we’re in a full-scale trade war with Canada now and already the markets are falling and if this shit goes on we are in for some serious monetary pain the likes of which we have not seen in decades.

I see no way out of this in the next two years. The Supreme Courts abdication of responsibility has locked in gerrymandered districts that assure us that no GOP house member will stand up for the nation, their district, or even their separated powers. Plus, the world’s richest person has already assured them that his vast wealth, growing greater by the day as he and he alone determines what government spending is to be enacted, that he will destroy them should they show the slightest evolution of a spine.

We may be witnessing a new world order coming into being. One that no longer has American’s hand on the helm.

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Movie Review: Diabolique (1955)

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At a run-down private school in France a cruel schoolmaster torments his mistress and assaults his wife prompting the women to conspire in his murder.

I was supposed to see this film on the big screen with the San Diego Film Geeks monthly screening at the Digital Gym but came down with a cold that weekend and was forced to miss it. Luckily the film is playing on the Criterion Channel.

Artwork: Criterion Collection

Diabolique is considered a classic of the thriller genre. Starring Vera Clouzot as Christina, the Spanish spouse of cruel headmaster Michael (Paul Meurisse) and Simone Signoret as Nicole a teacher at the school and Michael’s mistress. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Vera’s husband, the film is a tight suspenseful production in the vein of a Hitchcock movie. (The novel which the film was adapted from was one Hitchcock wanted but Henri-Georges Clouzot beat him to it.) Murders never come off as planned and murderers rarely are truthful on their lives leading to a story with twists and reveals right up to the final shot. It is an ironic tragedy that Vera Clouzot, playing a woman with a serious heart condition, died suddenly from a cardiac event just 5 years after Diabolique’s release.

There is a reason why this is considered a classic. Every aspect of the production works, the performances, the cinematography, and the direction all take what is a fairly standard film noir set-up and play it to near perfection. I regret that illness robbed me of the chance to see it for the first time in a proper is small theater.

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Key Star Trek (TOS) Character Episodes

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I recently watched a YouTube Reactor react to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The amusing elements in this reaction was that the young woman had zero context for the film, being utterly unaware of the characters and their history. One of her reactions when Spock comes aboard after the wormhole event is ‘Oh, they know Spock?’ with a tone of surprise.

In her wrap up, she of course mused about watching the series and that got me thinking about the most pertinent episodes for understanding the core characters of Star Trek. Not the best episodes mind you, just the ones that give you deep insight to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and the relationship to each other.

Season One:

The Naked Time

The Menagerie Pt I & II

The Galileo Seven

Arena

Space Seed

This Side of Paradise

The City on the Edge of Forever

Season Two:

Amok Time

Journey to Babel

The Ultimate Computer

Season Three:

The Enterprise Incident

The Tholian Web

The Paradise Syndrome

The list ended up heavy on season one episodes, but I think if someone new to the series who wasn’t going to watch all of it would get a pretty good understanding of the characters and what they mean to each other for the films that followed.

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The Hardest Part of Writing a Novel

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It’s really not the novel itself. It’s not plotting out the twists and turns of the story or combing through the entire 90,000 words trying make sure you don’t look like some who failed basic English.

Nope. It is none of those things for me.

It is writing the god damned synopsis.

I’ve spent six months carefully working out line by line precisely what the story is, who the characters are, what the twists and reveals need to be, and hopefully crafting a tone that is engaging and provokes the emotions I want to reader to experience. Now, I have to find a way to convey all that in just a few pages and yet engaging enough that an agent or editor when they read it feel energized and want the full experience.

Can you tell that’s where I am at on The Commune? I have my query letter in place for the next cycle of agent stalking and I think it’s my best one yet but the synopsis? Man, that’s hard.

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Quick Review: The Gorge

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Dropped on Valentines Day this year was the action/horror/romance movie The Gorge. Two expert sniper/assassins are the latest people assigned to monitor a mysterious gorge with

Apple TV+

orders to prevent anything from leaving the site and maintaining strict no communication with each other. Since the pair stationed on opposing sides of the chasm are outstandingly attractive people (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) the no-contact rule is of course broken. By the third act of the film the pair find themselves at the bottom of the gorge, fighting for their lives and uncovering terrible secrets it has hidden for 80 years.

Directed by Scott Derrickson who gave us the first Dr. Strange film and the wonderful Black Phone I had hopes for The Gorge but while not bad the film in the end proved to be less than satisfying.

What works in the movie are the leads, Teller and Taylor-Joy works quite well together, have an excess of chemistry with each other and the camera, and are simply fun to watch. All of the movie’s troubles start at the bottom of the mysterious gash in the Earth. The secret they discover not only strains credibility but is actually lackluster. Their fight for survival is meant to the suspenseful but with a film boasting a cast this limited it can never leave your mind that both are going to survive. Additionally, once they reach the bottom of the gorge all character development grinds to a halt. They face no choices or challenges that impact on their character only on their physical survival.

I don’t regret watching The Gorge but it’s highly unlikely I will ever revisit it.

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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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Who Qualifies as a Final Girl?

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The trope of the ‘final girl’ is one born of the slasher films of the 70s and 80s. The term was coined by Carol Clover in her essay analyzing the gender dynamics of those films. Today the term is pretty much used for any surviving woman or girl of a horror movie that manages to escape or defeat the killers or monsters of the story. The zenith of the concept in a meta-story manner is the ritual sacrifices as presented in the film The Cabin in the Woods which suggests that only when the morally superior, that is virgin, woman is last to die or survive is the ritual, that is the slasher formula, properly solved. A recent film though has me pondering the mutable nature of the trope and just who justly qualifies as a final girl.

The rest of the post/essay will contain spoilers for the film Companion up to and including its ending and its major reveals and reversals. Proceed only if spoilers for Companion are of no consequence for you.

SPOILER WARNING ENGAGED

 

Iris in Companion is the ’emotional support’ android companion for Josh. That is, she is his sex bot and sex toy, fulfilling a role for which he could find no actual human being. On a trip to a millionaire’s secluded cabin, the wealthy host, Sergey, attempts to sexually assault Iris and she kills him in self-defense. Key to understanding this event and how it unfolded is that the character of Iris in utterly unaware that she is in fact a piece of technology. Like Rachel in Blade Runner, she possesses artificial memories giving her the illusion of being a human being. Her defense against her would be rapist is the for all purposes the same as any woman in that horrid situation. Learning of her ‘true’ nature spins iris into a crisis of self-doubt that is only made worse by the further revelation that the murder has been a planned event. Josh, having modifiers her operating parameters and releasing safety measures, plotted with Sergey’s mistress for his death. Iris escapes and seizing control of the app that regualtes her psychological nature first tries to escape but when that fails defends herself, killing all of those who plotted and tries to end her individual existence. In the end Iris ‘survives’ and escapes to live a life unconstrained by preprogrammed boundaries.

So, is Iris a ‘final girl’?

While the human characters are vile, greedy, and without moral standing, it is Iris who is the ‘slasher’ in this story. She is the force that one-by-one dispatches the humans, ending their lives. While it is not uncommon to give the slasher an understandable if exaggerated motivation rarely is it so sympathetic or empathetic as Iris’ in Companion. The emotional release as she drives away in Sergey’s classic Ford Mustang is as great as Laurie Strode’s in Halloween or Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Iris, though the killer in the film, certainly feels like a final girl. So far as I am concerned, she is one.

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