Prinzhorn Dance School

[Photo Via Flickr]

Pitchfork has a review of Prinzhorn Dance School's album, giving it an 8.2. They write:

Only 70% or so of Prinzhorn Dance School's debut album is made up of music. The rest is... well, it's hard to say. What do you call the space in a song that lingers between the guitar parts, vocals, and beats? It's not exactly empty space, since it takes on properties that change according to sounds in the surroundings. And it's not "negative space" as plied by sculptors, whose hold on nothingness needn't account for fluctuations in drama brought about by time. So what do we call this space, then? Is it material, immaterial? Is it music?

I don't know what it is either, but I'm kind of hooked. The songs on the album are oddly catchy in spite of all the clang and noise. It's sort of like eavesdropping on noisy neighbors. But there's also this sort of gleeful dislocation from the awareness that you're listening to something odd. It's like the first time you heard the Ramones. That brief, what the? And then, oh yeah. The same for the Violent Femmes, or the White Stripes, or Pavement. It's the left-field-ness of it that appeals.

The full album is streamed here and you can judge for yourself.

"Is There a Ghost" - Band of Horses

Band of Horses release their first single from their upcoming album, Cease to Begin. It's awesome.

Aliens vs. Predator: Mayhem

Everyone loves the new trailer for Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Why? It's all mayhem all the time. In horror, supernatural atmospherics come off as cosplay; madness is a little too close to home for most actors and actresses; and decadent obsessions are just too cerebral. But mayhem! As New York magazine sez:

We’re going to go out on a limb and say that Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is about Aliens and Predators battling each other on earth, creating collateral damage in the form soft, slow-moving humans. We’re not even sure because this trailer pretty much just shows people being punctured, flayed, and just plain tossed around; the ratio of dialogue to repugnant squelching sounds is about one to ten. All in all the movie, directed by a pair of FX producers, looks pretty frickin’ awesome — at least compared to 2004's Alien vs. Predator, which was a bitter disappointment for people who collect Alien and/or Predator action figures.

Personally, I enjoyed the first one just for the Mountains of Madness premise (creepy temple at the south pole and all), but I'm willing to accept the conventional wisdom that it stunk. That being said, why is it that the Sci-Fi channel can't make a single movie that's even that good (er, bad).

Of Wonks and REMFs

This is a great article on the real world problems of being a professional writer. I work in tech, and all of these stereotypes can easily be applied to management, IT, marketing, etc.

As Will Dixon describes it,

It's a classic...people would reference it at parties, and the story meeting archetypes described in the post title should be in Websters. Not only is the essay very smart, funny, informative, and entertaining...yes, it's still relevant ten years later.

It's a little tricky to read because of the scans, but it's well worth the effort.

Browns 17 Broncos 16 (Preseason)

It's not often that I get to see Cleveland play on TV, so last night's pre-season game in Denver was a treat. The Browns beat the Broncos in that kinda, sorta, but not really way you do in the exhibition games. More importantly, the Browns looked like an actual football team for much longer stretches than I'm used to. They'll probably go 4-12 this year, but it will be a positive 4 and 12. Like the Colts in Manning's first year (1998).

The good:

• RB, Jamal Lewis is still the real deal.
  
• QB, Charlie Frye played very well.
• LB, D'Qwell Jackson was fierce.
• QB, Brady Quinn is ready to play.

The bad:

• QB, Derek Anderson was underwhelming.
• Run Defense did not close the gaps very well.
  
• Pass Defense looks leaky. Lots of guys were either poorly covered, or were able to run free underneath the zone.
• Pass Rush seemed non-existent at times.

As for the home team Broncos, it's not clear that they are really going to be able to challenge for the AFC West this year. I'm not a big Jay Cutler fan, and the defense didn't play with a lot of fire. Perhaps everyone's just waiting for the season to start. It was great to see Colorado State's own Cecil Sapp out there challenging for a starting position. And Selvin Young, the rookie from Texas, looks like a keeper.

Cliches and Conventions

I was thinking about the differences between cliches and conventions in genre fiction. When is something familiar enough to set the right tone, but not so familiar that the reader says, "oh, no, not this again!" Through the magic of the tubes, I found this blog post at Storytellers Unplugged, where they take on the topic this way:

My point is that it's all cliche, to a significant degree. In mysteries and certain kinds of horror, the killer's either going to be a man or a woman, as is the victim. You go to a ghost story for, well, a ghost. Same with vampires, werewolves, etc. If you want to approach plot and character from a point of view of irony, with emotional distance and intellectual curiosity, then I suppose you'll want post-modern with its own unique way of doing and saying things. But like New Wave, splatterpunk, experimental fiction in general, you pretty much know what you're going to get. There's an expectation of predictability in the fiction readers seek out. We want gore. Or atmosphere. Or footnotes.

The whole post is worth reading as are the comments. As one commenter notes, the French word cliche is meant to imply a stereotype, something that has been stamped over and over until it has lost its freshness.

So these question arise: when is a story convention just another cliche? When is an archetype just a stereotype? And when is prescribed way of doing things just too conventional?

Since I tend to think about writing in terms of hardcore structuralist expectations and mythical archetypes, this can cause problems. For instance, using Dramatica as my guide, I tend to approach stories holistically. So if I have this main character in this situation, depending on how I start the story, my ending is almost dictated for me. If that means if a part of it seems predictable or stale, then really the whole thing is predictable and stale and I either need to accept it or start over. Otherwise, if I change gears in midstream just to upset expectations, I end up with two halves of two stories that don't make a coherent whole. It's craziness for its own sake.

Where does one go from here? I think the best way (for me) to approach the problem of cliche and convention is to go back to my little pet theory of culture (emergence, refinement, parody, and revision). Conventions represent that refinement stage where meaning is inscribed and codified. Cliches on the other hand are the later parody stage where overuse and repetition robs the convention of its meaning, making it look foolish or just plain dumb.

The answer then, is to always revise. Attack the cliches head-on and reinvigorate them with our own perspective, our own "take". After all, that perspective (our own), is the only thing new that we can ever bring to our writing anyway.

"Silver Lining" by Rilo Kiley

I like this video and song sooo much better than "The Moneymaker". I may need to reassess my decision not to pick the album up. (Or, maybe not).



[via: Pitchfork]

Are You a Reader or a Writer?

One of the issues that we have as writers is aspiring to create experiences as mind-blowing and real as those we remember from reading great books and authors in the past. More often than not we analyze works not as writers but as fans. This makes it difficult to gain the perspective required to really understand what makes something work, and how we might do the same ourselves.

Chris Huntley has this bit of sage advice:

An early axiom determined in the development of the Dramatica theory was this: If you look for meaning in your story, you cannot predict how to put your story together. If you want to predict how to put your story together, you cannot know what your choices will mean. In other words, you can try to find meaning in a work OR you can predict how to put it together—but not at the same time from within the same context. Why? The short answer is that we use one as the given in order to evaluate the other. When looking for meaning, we assume a particular story structure. When looking for structure, we assume a particular meaning (author's intent). It's tied to the same reason we can see light as particles and waves, just not at the same time within a single context. One aspect defines the basis for the other. Story structure provides the basis for seeing meaning in the story. Meaning provides the basis for understanding and manipulating structure in a story.

In other words, meaning is tied to the audience's experience of the story while structure is tied to the author's perspective of the story. The audience perspective allows a synthesis of the underlying story elements to discover its "meaning." The author's perspective assumes a given meaning (author's intent) and allows manipulation of the arrangement of the story's structure and dynamics. Using the appropriate context is important.

I'm very intrigued by this relationship between meaning and structure, as well as the notion that structure and prediction are the same thing (it's all very scientific sounding). Understanding the structure of something, how it works, allows you to repeat the process and make predictions about the likely outcome. This is the writer's perspective.

On the other hand, the reader can't see the process. They can only look at the effects and speculate about what the author intended. More importantly, what a reader takes from a work is really their experience and enjoyment of the bells and whistles. It's all surface. The mechanics of the thing never really come into it. It is in fact a very different perspective from the author's, just as living in a house is very different from being the architect of the house.

Even deep analysis of theme, history, society, economics, etc. are just more rigorous forms of meaning making. It is only when we have a complete picture of the meaning of a work that we can begin to work toward understanding how that meaning was encoded into the story.

So the challenge is to look at examples and works we admire not from our natural perspective as fans and readers, but from the much more difficult perspective of the architect, the scientist, the writer; stay focused on all those moving parts and formulas that no one else can see.

Cowbell, Or, The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers are getting a pretty lukewarm response to their latest effort: Challengers. Pitchfork gives it a 6.0 and Stylus gives it a B- comparing it unfavorably to post-cred Wilco and Shins. It also doesn't help when an enthusiastic four star review compares the album to comfort food: fish fingers and ketchup? I'm inclined to skip it.

I think we all know what the real problem is: needs more Neko!

Denial of Death

The New Republic has an article on how the Denial of Death plays into politics. Summary quote:

In The Denial of Death, Becker tried to explain how fear of one's own demise lies at the center of human endeavor. "Man's anxiety," Becker wrote, "results from the human paradox that man is an animal who is conscious of his animal limitation." Becker described how human beings defend themselves against this fundamental anxiety by constructing cultures that promise symbolic or literal immortality to those who live up to established standards. Among other things, we practice religions that promise immortality; produce children and works of art that we hope will outlive us; seek to submerge our own individuality in a larger, enduring community of race or nation; and look to heroic leaders not only to fend off death, but to endow us with the courage to defy it. We also react with hostility toward individuals and rival cultures that threaten to undermine the integrity of our own.

I don't think the anxiety caused by knowledge of one's own mortality can explain everything, but I think Death must be one of the essential things in the human psyche that motivates us. And clearly in art and literature it is an obsession: from tragedy to war epic to horror story to funeral poem, it sits side by side with romantic love as art's great topic.

The problem with the "Worldview Defense" is that it doesn't explain the red state/blue state divide, nor does it explain why some people are motivated by fear and death, and others by more positive principles. Perhaps it is the difference between "deficiency needs" and "growth needs" as in Maslow's hierarchy. The fear of Death could just as easily be seen as anxiety about safety and security (Crime, jobs, etc.) and the unmet desire for stability and certainty. If there is a difference between how New York and West Virginia responds to 9/11, it is probably rooted in the social and economic anxieties each community is already facing. It may also be that some areas offer more choices and improve your ability to cope with these anxieties by providing greater social mobility and economic diversity.

It would be interesting to see how these sorts of job and safety concerns correlate with voting patterns.

They Fly Toward Grace

I have finished reading Pynchon's Against the Day. The final 200 pages are particularly strong, and I found myself loving the book much more than Mason & Dixon. In the end, the book becomes a meditation on family and relationships, and the many ways that people come together, form ad-hoc family units, reunite, say goodbye, and/or move on. It's really very beautiful.

The only person I really felt sorry for was Lake, who finds herself briefly caught up in a Raymond Chandler meets the Black Dahlia story without ever even realizing it. Kit ends up (finally!) with Dally, and seems to find Shambhala, only to discover that Dally may have gotten there first! Frank and Stray end up together and Frank raises Reef's son, Jesse. Meanwhile Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian form an interesting menage which inexplicably produces a daughter. Finally, Reef and Yashmeen make their way from post-war Europe to the states and meet up with Frank and Co. Reef finally meets his son and all in all the extended family of the Traverses seem well prepared to face the challenges of the modern world, however explosive those might be.

And thats how it goes: the good guys find happy endings, and the bad guys get their just desserts. The more fanciful figures realize that they are not suited to the modern world, or aren't part of this world, or transcend and become something else. The history of the Traverse family is a first rate family epic, and the Chums of Chance become one of the more charming literary inventions in Pynchon-land.

As I read, I felt completely immersed in this world, and patience allowed the story to unfold at its own pace, making each stop along the way that much more interesting. I am ready to begin again, and I'm sure I'll remember everyone's names this time around.

Jon Stewart on Dick Cheney

Read this blog post from Dead Things On Sticks and then watch the clip from The Daily Show:

In reaching for the core of why this thing upsets him so much, Stewart tries to do what he does: be funny. But when that doesn't work, when Hayes tries to use it to wriggle away, Stewart does the thing that is breathtaking whenever I see someone on TV smart and brave enough to do it: he asks the very thing the audience is thinking. He won't let it go. And when the answer is unsatisfactory -- how could it not be? -- Stewart goes for his main point: it's not just that he knew and lied. It's that he knew and lied, and along the way, pointed to anyone who didn't buy his disingenuous spin as gospel and questioned their patriotism.

The gasp from the audience is pretty amazing.

Adam Gopnik on Philip K. Dick

A nice New Yorker article on the new Library of America editions of Dick's work.

Of all American writers, none have got the genre-hack-to-hidden-genius treatment quite so fully as Philip K. Dick, the California-raised and based science-fiction writer who, beginning in the nineteen-fifties, wrote thirty-six speed-fuelled novels, went crazy in the early seventies, and died in 1982, only fifty-three. His reputation has risen through the two parallel operations that genre writers get when they get big. First, he has become a prime inspiration for the movies, becoming for contemporary science-fiction and fantasy movies what Raymond Chandler was for film noir: at least eight feature films, including “Total Recall,” “Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly,” and, most memorably, Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” have been adapted from Dick’s books, and even more—from Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” to the “Matrix” series—owe a defining debt to his mixture of mordant comedy and wild metaphysics.

If the Cthulhu stories had lent themselves so easily to film he might have been talking about Lovecraft (that other genre-hack-to-hidden-genius icon). The article doesn't go into a lot of depth but it does provide a nice overview of what makes Dick so interesting.

Pynchonesque in Our Emptiness

The normally smart Techsploitation blog comes up with this baffling bit of non-conformity:

On The Simpsons, however, the characters are nothing but stereotype. They’re practically Pyncheonesque in their emptiness — not people, but objects who get driven through various pastiches in order to become the butt of the audience’s arch, ironic jokes. I didn’t give a shit about any of them. The only way I could enjoy these characters was to say, “Haha look at the funny dumb poor people who are so incredibly stupid that they actually work at nuclear power plants.”

I don't know what's worse: the failure to understand The Simpsons, the failure to understand Pynchon, or the over-the-top knee-jerk reaction against strawman hipsters (with their "arch, ironic" jokes).

There seems to be an assumption that there is an intellectual elite sitting somewhere in their towers mocking dumb poor people for sport and profit. When in fact, that is exactly the sort of situation that would be ably lampooned on The Simpsons (with a guest appearance from Wes Anderson and a Royal Tenenbaums spoof). Because it is the situations in The Simpsons that we are meant to laugh at and the way they expose unspoken desires and power relations in the real world (just like a Pynchon novel).

If Homer seems like a stereotype its because he is archetypal in the same way Bugs Bunny is: able to be dropped into any storyline, role, or pastiche while maintaining his core identity. More importantly we don't laugh at Homer so much as recognize that his dumbness is a reflection of the world he lives in. We sympathize with Homer for his laziness, inflated sense of importance, weakness for donuts, and talent for disappointment (d'oh!). He is us. He is our everyman. At the same time he is also all of our own worst habits, all those things that annoy us in everybody else

Perhaps good comedies exploit that same tension that we find in the fear and entertainment experienced by audiences in a horror movie: "the frisson of ambivalent feelings". In The Simpsons we have characters who remind us that life is both wonderful and stupid. We laugh with as we laugh at and that ambivalence is what makes the show so brilliant.

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As for Pynchon, his latest book, Against the Day, is a steam-punk epic and a meditation on the unnecessary violence that gave birth to the modern world. His characters begin as types, but their true humanity is revealed for those patient enough to read to the end. No joke.

Putting Away Childish Things

Sage advice from the Tolerability Index at A.V. Club:

No one likes Hollywood's remakes of '80s cartoons, but nostalgia aside, Transformers, Voltron, and Alvin & The Chipmunks aren't classics. Your childhood was asking for it. Also, grow up.

That goes double for Star Wars.

Stylus on Fleetwood Mac

Patrick McKay does a nice job of summing up and contextualizing Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. It's one of those rare albums that was both hugely popular and actually very good. McKay writes:

While the Clash and the Sex Pistols renewed rock with a shot of youthful danger, Rumours allowed for the possibility that rock could age gracefully, and take on subjects of an emotional complexity unavailable to a teenager. This may have begat adult contemporary, VH1, and Phil Collins, but at least with Rumours, Fleetwood Mac wasn’t trying to soften rock, but to blunt its edge, to create something more expansive in effect and broader in appeal. The consequence was a career spent in the shadow of that peak; the reward was a receptive audience—of 19 million and counting.

I think this is a continuing issue in contemporary music. On the one hand pop music is driven by watered down corporate concerns (with ever diminishing artistic and financial returns). On the other, indie rock is too often motivated by resentment and artistic overreaching; always in pursuit of the new at the expense of skill, craft, and experience. What gets left out or pushed aside in the mom-rock and dad-rock name-calling of today (as Gen-Xers hasten through their 30s and into their 40s), is this desire for subjects in rock music that have that "emotional complexity unavailable to a teenager." This is the idea that music can have a purpose and be about something deeper than the latest sense of moral outrage or cause-based charity hullabaloo. That it could actually allow you to express something true about life, and how it is lived, and how people grow and change over time. In the end, music is a refuge for our most emotional, irrational selves, and it is this ability to sing your life that connects those 19 million and why we need more music like Rumours.

Belief System Admin

The New York Times's John Tierney goes off the deep-end:

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

God is the comic book guy from the Simpsons playing World of Warcraft. The most perfect "you can't prove it isn't true" of them all. Take that rational spiritualism.

Creative Mythology

Conservative Roger Scruton has a lovely essay on the work of René Girard. Although he takes some fairly pointless and frankly stupid swipes at Hitchens and Dawkins et al. in order to make the essay seem more timely and relevant, it's really a fantastic overview of a fascinating topic. The power of myth:

Girard's theory, like Nietzsche's, is expressed as a genealogy, or a "creation myth": a fanciful description of the origins of human society from which to derive an account of its present structure. (It is significant that Girard came to the anthropology of religion from literary criticism.) And like Nietzsche, Girard sees the primeval condition of society as one of conflict. It is in the effort to resolve this conflict that the experience of the sacred is born. This experience comes to us in many forms—religious ritual, prayer, tragedy—but its true origin is in acts of communal violence. Primitive societies are invaded by "mimetic desire," as rivals struggle to match each other's social and material acquisitions, so heightening antagonism and precipitating the cycle of revenge. The solution is to identify a victim, one marked by fate as outside the community and therefore not entitled to vengeance against it, who can be the target of the accumulated bloodlust, and who can bring the chain of retribution to an end. Scapegoating is society's way of recreating "difference" and so restoring itself. By uniting against the scapegoat, people are released from their rivalries and reconciled. Through his death, the scapegoat purges society of its accumulated violence. The scapegoat's resulting sanctity is the long-term echo of the awe, relief and visceral re-attachment to the community that was experienced at his death.

It is indeed significant that Girard comes to anthropology by way of literary criticism, because the study of religion and mythology now properly belongs to the field of literature. As Joseph Campbell noted, since the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the modern era, secular literature has taken on the role of creating and continuing mythic traditions. These myths, freed by science from the burden of explaining the universe, now are able to explain humanity to itself and how the individual relates to society. These are psychological truths that do not require faith or proof but only steady reading, wisdom and understanding.

Music They Missed

The All Songs Considered crew (Bob Boilen, Will Hermes, Tom Moon and Meredith Ochs) look at CDs they missed from 2007:

LCD Soundsystem, "North American Scum" - Good track from a great record. It was probably hard to pick a favorite.

Roky Erkison, "You're Gonna Miss Me" - Good grief. Sounds like some kind of Animals/Yardbirds rip-off. Great if you like second tier 60s garage band records but, as a missed record of 2007? Seriously?

E.S.T., "The Goldhearted Miner" - Euro-jazz. Sounds cool, but this track is so mild, it's hard to tell.

Beirut, "Elephant Gun" - Wow, excellent song from a band I've never quite been sure about (always seemed like Bright Eyes-lite). But this is great. Must have.

Patty Griffin, "Stay on the Ride" - Um, what? This sound is played out. I'd rather hear Cat Power or Jenny Lewis.

Amy Winehouse, "Me and Mr. Jones" - Are they kidding? Nobody missed out on this record. This thing gets as much play as that Umbrella song. And "Me and Mr. Jones" is the most annoying track on there (I can't complain too much though since I do own it).

Dr. Dog, "The Girl" - This song went by in a non-descript blur. Sort of rocking, sort of dull.

Jose Conda y Ola Fresca, "Oshiri Pan Pan" - Peppy. Good for the genre but not my cuppa.

Common, "Misunderstood" - "A rapper with something to say ... a spiritual guy..." If I can't say something nice, I shouldn't say nothin' at all.

Justice, "Waters of Nazareth" - Hurray. Good way to close the show. I prefer D.A.N.C.E. but electronic-metal is pretty fun.

Trailer Moment

A great interview with Joss Whedon at the A.V. Club. Here, Joss describes how he develops ideas by thinking of what would look good in the trailer:

I'll have an idea, and then I'll start to think about what's behind that, and what would be the big emotional moment, what would be the catch, what would be the thing I'd love to see. It's usually easier in a situation with a known quantity. For example, Wonder Woman. Like, how do you introduce Wonder Woman? "Oh, that's cool." I did Aliens 4. When I first wrote it, it was a 30-page treatment that was completely different from what they shot. It didn't have Ripley in it. Somebody just said, "We're interested. Would you write a treatment on spec?" I was like, "It's Alien. Are you kidding? I'll carve one on my forehead." That hurt, so I stopped and used paper. [Laughs.] Paper has worked out great for me since, really. But, I thought to myself, "Okay, I've seen three Alien movies. Alien is one of the most important franchises in my mythic history. What haven't I seen? What are the moments that I go, 'Okay, that's new, that's worse, that's good, give me that'?"

It's easy doing that with a script for a TV show. You can feel the characters, you can get to the emotional moment. With a new thing, it's still part of the process. The most obvious example, and I've used it before, is Buffy in the alley. I really thought about it: [Trailer narration voice.] "It's a bad town to be in, especially at night." There's the girl in the alley. "Especially if you're alone." And then the monster attacks her and she kills it. "And especially if you're a vampire." It was that turnaround, which I hadn't seen, and which has obviously been seen a million times now, but this was 20 years ago. I wrote that, and it's in the actual movie. They didn't use it for the trailer, and the scene isn't shot exactly how I imagined it. But when I'm thinking of a trailer moment, I'm not just thinking of how I can grab people. That's my whole philosophy. My entire career is in that trailer moment: The emotional highs of the movie, and the thing you haven't seen, and the thing you're longing for. They should all be connected.

Good stories are always pitched at that level: emotions, surprises, and wish-fulfillment.

"Doing It Right" - The Go! Team

Something cheerful to end the day.

With Regard to the Average Reader

Writer David Simon interviewed in the Believer:

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

I don't know if he's right, but man that makes me laugh. Verisimilitude indeed.

[Via Dead Things On Sticks].

Go For Character

From the "Running With My Eyes Closed" blog:

A pilot script can be rich in scenes that are only present to develop character and don't drive the story forward in any other way. Written well, they don't stop the action. Instead, they up the viewer's commitment to the series.

The pilot script for a TV series is like the opening scene of a screenplay or the first chapter of a novel. If you give the audience someone they're interested in, they will become more invested in the plot and the story you are trying to tell.

Hit the Ground Running

Actual real advice from actual real writers. From the Write Here, Write Now blog:

You've heard the phrase, "hit the ground running"? In my experience, those scripts that are read in full are those that do this. We join an obvious protagonist, with an obvious journey, from page one. That protagonist's motivations and backstory is hinted at from the start (no expositional dialogue please: "I need to change my life because of the death of my wife..." Yuk!) and his or her need to gain something - and indeed whom the antagonist is and why they are standing in the protagonist's way - needs to be introduced. All within ten pages: therein lies the challenge.

Lots more good stuff there.

Oh, So Ron Paul Really Is A Nutcase

Just in case anyone was concerned that Libertarians and Liberals were going to team up against the Conservatives and Christianists, the questionably popular Ron Paul ends the debate:

Ron Paul may have soured his antiwar appeal among progressives with a speech Saturday at the Iowa straw poll. Paul referred to Roe v. Wade as “that horrible ruling,” called for the abolition of the Departments of Energy and Education and the IRS, and attacked welfare and immigrants. But the most bizarre moment came when he suggested airline passengers should be allowed to carry guns, saying: “I think 9/11, quite frankly, could have been prevented if we had had a lot more respect for the Second Amendment.”

Exactly when would it have been a good idea to be exchanging gunfire on a pressurized airplane? Just curious.*

Paul, like McCain before him, is just pandering to that same old right-wing base.

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* The gun debate is also ahistorical in that every previously hijacked airliner had been diverted to another airport and landed safely. No one on the planes would have assumed that they were going to be crashed intentionally until it was too late. If guns were to have been fired, the armed pilot would have assumed that he could retake the plane after landing.

Atheism in Capsule Form

Via Pharyngula, this page provides a tidy summary of all the arguments, counter-arguments, insults and complaints.

Highlights include Stacey's Law:

In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one.

And John Emerson's logical argument from skepticism:

God is just this bin of wish-fulfillment into which people toss all the things they want but don't have. It would seem that if Someone that important and powerful did actually exist, His existence would not be something that was argued about.

The skeptical disproof of the existence of God: "I doubt, therefore God does not exist". God, if He existed, would be a Thing of such perfection that His existence could not be doubted. But His existence is doubted. Therefore, He does not exist.

All of which is much wittier and more clever than anything I might come up with.

Agnostic Spiritualists?

Brandon Kumm bites off more than he can chew with an essay that tries to debunk religion and atheism in one rhetorical stab. His answer is something he calls rational spirtualism:

In reality there is no such thing as an atheist or an agnostic. There are only two camps of people: the spiritualists and the religious. The spiritualists are those who do not necessarily subscribe to the dogma and doctrine of a particular religion, although sometimes they do. They believe part of the dogma of a particular faith, but find the rest of that faith to be bunk. There are many spiritualists who call themselves Christians who would never enforce their particular belief system on anyone else. Those people are spiritualists at heart, not religious. Atheists, who purport not to believe in "god", also seem to have some spiritual grounding. A belief in something that they may not be able to even articulate, but that belief is there. Thus, they too are spiritualists, but of that most rational of bents.

There is so much wrong with his argument that it's hardly worth getting worked about it. Nevertheless, here's my quick rejoinder:

First, Atheists are not closet spiritualists. That divine spark that he's so excited about is something that atheists share in the form of secular humanism. This is the notion that ethical behavior between human beings can and should be based on our shared existence on this planet and our common hopes and fears. What he's calling spiritualism, is really just a form of irrational aestheticism - the placement of emotion above reason. I don't have a problem with emotion, but I do think it says more about our internal life as conscious beings that it does about the workings of the universe.*

Kumm also tries to use quantum weirdness to debunk the rationality of science, but this is really just a misuse and misunderstanding of quantum theory. I also don't think you can explain quantum weirdness by assigning emotional motivations to sub-atomic particles, however poetic that might be.

Secondly, Spiritualism refers to the 19th century religious belief that mediums could speak with the dead, so he really needs a new term. Talk about red flags. Unless seances, ghosts and ectoplasm really are part of his enlightened aesthetic world view.

More importantly, spiritualism as he describe it is essentially devoid of any content. It's fine for people to carry on in this fuzzy way about the power of faith and having a sense of a higher power, but what is it exactly? What is it they have faith in? Virgin births? Transmigration of souls? What exactly are they claiming? And if there are supernatural things that make up you belief system how is that different from the dogmatism of religion?

Finally, Atheists do not believe you can reference God, gods, or anything supernatural to explain natural phenomenon and that's pretty much the end of the story. They will acknowledge that scientific knowledge is always incomplete and highly improbable things are still possible, but that doesn't leave the door open for plainly impossible (and factually irrelevant) things like supernatural beings. Highly intelligent super-aliens? Maybe. Lovecraftian elder gods? They were aliens too after all. But not magic-man.

I understand the desire on Kumm's part to bring the rational and the emotional into balance, but it's important to remember that these are strictly human qualities and it would be a fallacy to try to project them onto the natural world. God did not create us in his image, and we should return the favor.

---------------------------
* One of our basic human qualities is our ability to understand that other people have minds, emotions, and motivations. This helps us to socialize and interact in productive ways (there may be an evolutionary psychology argument to be made here but I won't go that far). I think this attribute has also allowed us to interpret mindfulness in the world around us even if there is none: in a rock, in a tree, in a mountain top, in an eagle, in a thunderstorm. God is our sense of mindfulness projected onto the entire universe. Religion is our attempt to socialize and interact with this greater mind in productive ways. But it's really just our psychology doing the work.

The Rules of Horror (Be Careful Not To Break Them)

All right, so, back to the horror genre. Literacity via Dirty Writer invites us to again consider the rules of horror, using some fairly familiar movies as examples. The more I look at these examples and the more I look at the genre overall, the simpler things seem to get. In this post I'll try to outline the basic structure of a horror story using Dramatica terms and give my version of the overarching theme that drives horror fiction (yeah right, have your grain of salt at the ready).

For those unfamiliar, a Dramatica Storyform divides every story (horror or not) into four different Throughlines: The Overall Story (The objective perspective that We share), the Main Character (The I perspective that we identify with), the Impact Character (the You perspective that stands in the MC's way, and represents an opposing point-of-view), and the Subjective Story (The passionate Relationship between You, the Impact Character, and I, the Main Character, and the subjective perspective that pulls the story in one direction or another).

In Horror these perspective are pretty formulaic, and in truth the genre is really driven by special effects and increasing permissiveness. That is, more gore and violence. But anyway, here we go:

Overall Story

The Overall Story places all of the characters in an extreme or unusual Situation. Features of the situation often include physical or social isolation that cuts the characters off from easy escape or access to help. There is the sense that forces are closing in on the characters who are forced against their will to deal with the unpleasant events.

Subjective Story

The Subjective perspective in a horror story is where we get into the juicy philosophical side of things. This is represented by the conflict in Fixed Attitudes between the Main Character and the Impact Character: between violence and passivity, the normal and the abnormal, the natural and the supernatural, the pure and the corrupt, pursuit and escape. This conflict is marked by the explicit transgression of order. In this aspect of the story we see that the laws and rules of every day individuals, of society, of nature, of God, or of the gods are violated, overturned, thrown into chaos, cast into doubt. The very nature of this relationship is one of inhuman criminality.

Main Character

The Main Character is the person the audience identifies with emotionally. This character is both a potential victim and the person who is most likely to survive to the end. He or she is characterized by their Psychological responses to the terrifying events. This usually is expressed by the degree to which they themselves believe in the extraordinary nature of events. They are either deeply skeptical or a true believer among skeptics. In the end, it is this character's intense fear and what they do with it (fight or flight) that makes us root for them.

Impact Character

The Impact Character is the Big Bad. A person or monster who has succumbed to evil or is an expression of some larger negative force. The point of this character is that they have already overstepped the boundaries of ordinary life. They are an angel of retribution, a doomed overreacher, a cautionary warning, or a vengeful spirit. The impact character in many ways is a tragic figure not suited to the world of the main character.

Examples

In a horror story, the Objective story and the Subjective story work together to create the overall sense of jeopardy. First, the situation is established that evil is near and there is a boundary not to be crossed. A character warns of the danger but no one listens. The rules are broken, terror is unleashed, and through the main character we witness the consequences. In other words:

1. Evil - The creature is waiting
   
2. Warning - I wouldn't go that way if I were you
   
3. Transgression - Crossing the threshold
   
4. Consequences - The running, and the screaming, and the death
   

The key is that one way or the other, the consequences are punishment for crimes real or imagined, commited by the characters present, or something that happened in the ancient past. This idea of punishment and retribution is why horror stories lend themselves so well to religious and political readings.

So, if we look at our examples:

Cujo

• OS - Mother and Son trapped in car, besieged by rabid dog.
• MC - Donna. We experience her fear, claustrophobia, and desperation.
  
• IC - Cujo: is he possessed, or just the tragic victim of a bat bite?
• SS - Donna is metaphorically punished for her failing marriage.
  

The Hills Have Eyes

• OS - A family, lost in the desert, attacked by cannibals or mutants or whatever.
• MC- Brenda? She's the mom, suffers a lot, and is one of the survivors.
  
• IC - The Outcast inbred Cannibal mutants, or whatever they are.
  
• SS - The traditional nuclear family is punished by a twisted version of itself. As near as we'll get to social commentary in this sort of thing.
  

Saw

• OS - Characters are trapped and tested by the games of a serial killer
• MC - Adam? He's the last victim.
• IC - Jigsaw Killer.
• SS - Jigsaw tortures his victims because they don't appreciate living, or something.
  

Dawn of the Dead

• OS - The world is overwhelmed by a zombie plague.
• MC - Peter/Francine?
• IC - Zombies!
• SS - Society is punished by its own dead and may be responsible for the radiation that started the zombie menace in the first place. The zombie problem is a useful metaphor for a whole host of social ills.

Jaws

• OS - A Great White Shark attacks holiday beach-goers.
• MC - Brody, the sheriff who tries to close the beach before it's too late
  
• IC - The Shark, nature's merciless killing machine
  
• SS - Don't go in the water! The townsfolk and vacationers are punished for their lazy and greedy disregard for nature and its dangers (?)

Hellraiser

• OS - An evil puzzle box connects the normal world to the demonic world of the Cenobites. Frank solves the puzzle and after his death, tries to use its power to resurrect himself (it's complicated).
  
• MC - Kirsty, who has to survive both Pinhead and Frank.
• IC - Frank who succumbs to the box's evil and Pinhead, the tragic anti-hero of the Cenobites.
• SS - The puzzle box is an evil temptation. Those who solve it are punished by the sado-masochistic demons who promise both pleasure and pain.
  

The Island of Dr. Moreau

I would consider this a science fiction story, but it still fits the model.

• OS - On the Island of Dr. Moreau animals are transformed into humanoid monsters.
  
• MC - Prendrick who is shipwrecked on the mysterious island.
• IC - Dr. Moreau and his creations. In many versions of the story, the creatures are pretty sympathetic.
  
• SS - Moreau commits crimes against God and nature by creating abominations who eventually turn on him and punish him for his crime.
  

Freaks

• OS - The circus world of Freaks.
• MC - The Freaks? We are sympathetic to them but I'm not sure we really are meant to identify with them.
  
• IC - Cleopatra and Hercules
• SS - Our sense of normality is inverted as the freaks are normal and the normal people are the villains. In the end Cleopatra is punished for her crimes against the Freaks by being made a freak herself.

Halloween

• OS - A deranged killer escapes from a mental hospital in spite of the warnings of his psychologist. He returns to the scene of his childhood crime to go on a new killing spree.
• MC - Laurie Strode, the archetypal last girl standing. She's also the "good" girl whose repressed impulses allow her to fight back in the end.
  
• IC - The Shape, a horrible monster in the form of a man. He may be driven by sadism and/or misogyny but it's not clear.
  
• SS - Once he escapes the mental institution, he punishes the teenagers of Haddonfield for their promiscuity and substance abuse.
  

One of the finest moments of the film comes at the end. After the Shape has disappeared, the camera searches for him. The everyday places and objects of suburbia are permanently corrupted and seem menacing even in the monster's absence.

Conclusion

Horror stories follow a pretty simple formula and often are embellishments on basic morality tales. In terms of plot and narrative they are pretty primitive, but in terms of psychological and emotional impact they can be quite potent.

Because of the simple nature of the story, the energy of the writer must go into creating fresh scenarios for the Overall Story, evermore wicked villains for the Impact Character, and more wildly transgressive themes and punishments for the Subjective Story. One of the more transgressive practices of movies since the 70s is to shift the story emphasis to the Impact character, making him the more sympathetic character at the expense of the Main character and the other victims.

This is unfortunate because the key to a good horror story is the psychology of the main character, and by proxy, the audience. The goal is to find some overlooked piece of human psychology, something in us that is conflicted or suppressed, some crutch we use to justify or rationalize our faults. Once you have that germ of an idea, extrapolate on it. Extend it to its logical, or illogical conclusion. Allow it to manifest itself, become real, get it out there in the world. Let it be about pleasure and pain and all those ugly desires that we don't like to think about (except that we always do think about them). Give yourself the freedom to go insane.

That way, once you've shown your audience the path of destruction and warned them of the door they weren't supposed to open. Once you've made it clear that this is their last chance to turn back before it's too late -- then, you can really unleash the scares. Bring the whole thing down like a ton of bricks. Punish the sinful and exact vengeance on the unwary. For every transgression, an apocalypse. Make sure they learn, because if you don't force them to gaze into the abyss, they'll never really see the monsters gazing back.

Just keep telling yourself, it's only a story. And maybe in the end, you'll be all right. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Mom Rock and Ethan Hawke

Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum reviews the soundtrack for the new Ethan Hawke film, The Hottest State:

..it's terrible. The Hottest State soundtrack features a roster of acts old and newish that would draw the envy of Cmdr. Braff: Bright Eyes, Feist, Cat Power, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, etc. But rather than culling the castaway B-sides from this posse, Hawke organizes a tribute session to none other than Jesse Harris-- that's right, the Jesse Harris. You may best know Harris as Norah Jones' guitar player, but he has a solo career in his own right, playing exceptionally harmless jazzy folk/folky jazz in the vein of James Taylor. So basically, Ethan Hawke (and all these other artists, apparently) have all the cutting-edge and adventurous preferences of, say, my Mom's bunko group.

Such a burn!

Of course, Rob is the same guy who wrote that Wilco's Sky Blue Sky "nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise." So clearly, Rob is still dealing with a lot of angsty teenage type oedipal issues. "What's that racket, son?" "It's called music, dad! Jeez! Of course you'd never understand!" Slam. Slam. Stomp. Stomp.

I guess I'd rather rock with Rob's dad, and hang out with his Mom's bunko group. They seem to at least have it together.

"Up! Up! Up!" - Prinzhorn Dance School

So lo-fi. So seemingly inept. I find them mesmerizing.

"This is a Song" - The Magic Numbers

There Are No Stupid Questions

The infamous Proust (and Vanity Fair) Questionnaire. [via Literacity]

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

All suffering comes from desire and separation. Misery is almost always self-inflicted.

Where would you like to live?

I've learned it doesn't matter where. I'd rather travel.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

A. What other kind is there?
B. Knowing that nothing needs to be done.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Enthusiasm. People should be stupidly passionate about things. Everything else is annoying.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

Lovable misfits who band together in the end...

Who are your favorite characters in history?

The one's who got away with it.

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

Mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

The Brunnhildes and Bodhisattvas

Your favorite painter?

Edward Hopper

Your favorite musician?

Guitar players: Jimmy Page, Johnny Marr, John Squire, Graham Coxon

The quality you most admire in a man?

Decisiveness.

The quality you most admire in a woman?

Impertinence.

Your favorite virtue?

Gravity, because it always wins.

Your favorite occupation?

I prefer to think I'll be greeted as a liberator.

Who would you have liked to be?

Not Proust.

David Lynch and the Death of Film

The Village Voice has a great little piece on David Lynch. Here's how they describe Inland Empire:

In thrall to the vanishing art of 35mm cinema, they failed to appreciate the extraordinary variety and visual richness of Inland Empire, with its encyclopedic investigation into the spatial and textural possibilities of video as video, not a low-rent replacement for film: the distortion of objects looming in the foreground and evocative ambiguity of background shadows; the unique beauty of a video dissolve and the dissolution of forms in “overexposed” light. To dismiss the medium of Inland Empire is to miss the message. Just as Mulholland Drive can be read as a cautionary tale about the effect of movies on consciousness, Inland Empire speaks to the isolation and fragmentation of the post-cinema psyche, the splintering of self in the matrix of the Internet. As such, it may be the first movie masterpiece that doesn’t properly belong in movie theaters.

Who says Art Films are dead?

Revisionism and the Death of Everything

Camille Paglia is exactly the sort of person who should not be writing about art or culture. If she had even the vaguest notion of what was going on in the world around her, she would not be able to make nonsensical statements like this:

On the culture front, fabled film directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was certainly a cold douche for my narcissistic generation of the 1960s. We who revered those great artists, we who sat stunned and spellbound before their masterpieces -- what have we achieved? Aside from Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, is there a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" or "Persona"? Perhaps only George Lucas' multilayered, six-film "Star Wars" epic can genuinely claim classic status, and it descends not from Bergman or Antonioni but from Stanley Kubrick and his pop antecedents in Hollywood science fiction.

Or like this:

The waning of art film has been just one of the bitter cultural disappointments that the baby-boom generation has had to endure. Rock music, which exploded in the artistic renaissance of the '60s and '70s, seems to have exhausted its formulas. At the moment, hip-hop and disco-derived dance music enjoy far greater prestige everywhere. It's no coincidence that the geriatric Rolling Stones are still going strong: Their style is grounded in African-American rhythm and blues, which the ultra-virtuoso Keith Richards still spiritually mainlines in hotel rooms on the road.

Everywhere she looks she sees death and decline; the art world as a parodic shade of its former self. Because this is the age of the Revision, she is constantly trying to reinvest the past with her own autobiographical mythology. Nothing surpasses her own college years when Antonioni and the Rolling Stones were the gateway to intellectual enlightenment. Nevermind that in the intervening forty years, popular music and popular cinema have each found ways to destroy and reinvent themselves spawning new and emergent art forms: punk rock, hip-hop, independent cinema, digital film-making, and online distribution have all altered the way we relate to both art films and rock music.

Where would we be without The Clash, Public Enemy, Nirvana, Radiohead, and the Arcade Fire?

Where would we be without David Lynch, Pedro Almodóvar, Quintin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, or Wes Anderson?

It's not that these things have died, it's that they have so radically changed themselves from her overdetermined sense of what they should be, that she hasn't the intellectual framework to recognize them when they are right in front of her and everywhere. She's not alone in this of course, but her voice is the most persistent and grating.

When I think about my sequence of 1. Emergence, 2. Refinement, 3. Parody and 4. Revision, I find that there is a tension in that final stage, a tension that makes it both explosive and very interesting. In Revision, there are two arrows. One looks only backward, reinvesting the object only with nostalgia and longing for the "Golden Age" of Refinement when the power of the object was its strongest. But this arrow really only points leads to self-parody as we struggle to replicate the past with ever diminishing returns. The more we for truth and authenticity, the kitschier and more deadly laughable the results.

The other arrow points cyclically around the loop to Emergence again. If we can push the boundaries of the original object, reinvest it not with nostalgia but a strong grounding in the hopes and fears of the present day, we have the ability to make something completely new and unexpected. Something that can later be refined and sped along the course of history. It's the people who know how break things and make them more beautiful who should be at the forefront of cultural discussions.

Not these sad old people who can only say the same thing again and again.

Hero's Journey Redux

Jane Espenson has a short essay on why Harry Potter appeals to non sci-fi fans. It's a pretty simple observation actually:

It's something about the actual Harry Potter narrative that makes it cross the boundary. It's a very specific type of Hero's Journey, the most potent sub-case. It's told over and over again, and it works, over and over again. Dorothy Gale, Buffy Summers, Harry Potter, Charlie Bucket, Luke Skywalker, even Peter Parker, they all fit a very specific pattern. They're living a life, sometimes a fine one, often a troubled one, but certainly one governed by ordinary rules, when suddenly the curtain is pulled back and a whole new world, or a new set of rules of this world, is revealed. And what's more - and this is the important part - in that new world, they are something special. They are The Chosen One.

It's all about having a strongly written main character that readers can identify and empathize with. We can see the world through their eyes, feel what they feel, struggle as they struggle, and experience the world as it can only be experienced through a powerful piece of narrative fiction. That's it.

A Theory of Culture

The cultural landscape is awash in nostalgia, revisionism, and remakes of every kind. If you weren't around in the 70s you can see new versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and soon an all-new Halloween. If you were a kid in the 80s, you had the Transformers movie this summer as well as a new (bad) version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Coming up, Nicole Kidman is starring in yet another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, called simply Invasion, and Harrison Ford again has taken up his bull-whip and fedora for another Indiana Jones outing. There are highly successful new versions of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who with an all new Kirk and Spock led Star Trek on the way. Along with these (pretty obvious) examples, we have genres built around nostalgia: retro-futurism, steam-punk, neo-victorianism, new weird, all hearken to our love of an invented past, present, or future.

So, just as Vico had his New Science to account for the cyclical nature of civilization's rise and fall, I would like to propose my own (though by no means original) theory of culture in order to account for this phenomenon. As I see it, all popular creations go through four stages: 1. Emergence, 2. Refinement, 3. Parody, and 4. Revision.

The first question of course, is what is meant by a "popular creation". I'm playing pretty fast and loose, so it could mean almost anything: a character, a scenario, a theme, a mood. Anything that can be transmitted and replicated, like a meme, between artist and audience, between individuals, and even between cultures.

Stage 1. Emergence

In the first phase, the creation appears suddenly and seemingly from nowhere and is recognizable as something that's new and unique or at least innovative. More importantly it is something that emerges in response to a need, to something that's missing from the culture. It is raw and immediate. This is the creation as myth, as folklore, as superstition.

Stage 2. Refinement

In the next phase, the creation takes on an iconic role within the culture. It has been refined and put into the larger social context. This is the period where all of its qualities become well defined, rules are fixed in place, relationships are established, and its meaning is easily comprehended. This is the creation as art, as literature, as Romance.

Stage 3. Parody

As time passes, the power of the creation is drained. It is no longer relevant to the culture and there is an effort to de-mythologize it and see it for what it is: one object among many. What was once dark, is now light. What was once deep and meaningful is now superficial and trivial. An object can have no power over us if we can laugh at it. This is the period of camp, of kitsch, and of irony. It is the creation seen through the lense of modernism and postmodernism.

Stage 4. Revision

Finally we come to the era of nostalgia, where the dead creation is restored to a new version of its former self. There is an attempt to get back to origins and the authentic nature of the creation, to reinvest in its original power. This can also be a period where the original meaning of the creation is subverted or inverted in order to give it new relevance to the present day. This is the creation in its endlessly volatile, endlessly repeatable retro mode.

One of the interesting things about this last stage is the creeping anachronism where contemporary interpretations are given to past events and our motivations become the motivations of historical persons. There is often a sincere attempt to restore something to its original and authentic state, but what we get instead is a simulation that reflects our own cultural desires and fears.

We confuse the Victorian era with our Neo-Victorian fantasy, ancient paganism with our neo-pagan inventions, and we assume that our readings are the same of those of the author and his or her original audience. The truth is we are reinventing things in our own image.

Examples

Dracula and Frankenstein

1. Emergence: The original texts from Stoker and Shelley. Raw imagination, folklore and superstition come together in original visions. Dracula expresses Victorian anxieties while Shelley gives us science fiction as skepticism and philosophy, as well autobiographical fears about the horror of childbirth.
   
2. Refinement: The Universal Monster movies fix them permanently in the public imagination with all of their features, characteristics, back-stories, and rules. Lugosi's accent. Karloff's bolts and lumbering walk.
3. Parody: Over time, the Universal Monsters are no longer scary. They turn instead to comedy and merchandising: Abbot & Costello, the Munsters, "The Monster Mash," Count Chocula and Frankenberry cereals.
4. Revision: The characters are reinvented as romantic and tragic figures, as in Coppola and Brannagh's remakes, as well as Goth culture, post-humanism, and Anne Rice. Contemporary anxieties cause us to empathize with their outsider status rather than with their victims. Monsters become anti-heroes.

Batman

1. Emergence: Bob Kane's original and dark Bat-man. He is a two-fisted hardnosed pulp character that reflects the time period.
   
2. Refinement: Now called Batman, he joins the DC pantheon of super-heroes alongside Superman and Wonderwoman in the Justice League. His universe is well defined: millionaire Bruce Wayne, sidekick Robin, Alfred the Butler, the Batmobile, the Batcave, etc.
   
3. Parody: The Batman comic and TV show de-volve into camp and self-parody. Ka-pow!
   
4. Revision: The Dark Knight Returns. Batman is reinvented as a much darker and violent character beginning with Frank Miller. Though no one will acknowledge it, he is a villain. In the Graphic Novel he battles and defeats Superman, a pawn of American Imperialism. We all cheer.
   

The Wizard of Oz

1. Emergence: L. Frank Baum writes the original Oz novels and invests in them his own experiences and political beliefs.
2. Refinement: The Wizard of Oz movie becomes the iconic version of Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion. Changes from the original become the canonical version for most people.
   
3. Parody: The Wiz, a failed attempt to update the story, as well as repeated showings on television ultimately drain the story of life.
4. Revision: Wicked retells the story from the wicked witch's point of view, revitalizing it through inversion, and perhaps restoring Baum's original political vision. The upcoming Tin Man mini-series on Sci-Fi channel looks to be a darker sci-fi version of the story.
   

Bravo's Fantasy World

New York magazine has a big story about the fleeting fame of Bravo's reality TV stars:

If you’re a viewer, Bravo’s competition reality shows—Top Chef and Project Runway in particular—make up some of the most addictive programming on television. In part, their appeal comes from the simple, old-fashioned pleasure of watching people make something with their hands. But they also come with a television-ready arc: Each episode starts with a mystery and asks the contestants to solve it, as if they were cops: Your challenge is to make a dress out of coffee filters and azaleas. For “coastal, educated” people, the base of Bravo’s viewers, these shows offer idealized reflections of their lives—urban, verbal, multiethnic, creative, gay—and, like an idealized life in the city, they’re mini-meritocracies, driven not just by personality but talent.

For the contestants, the implicit promise of these shows is that they’re time machines, compressing the brutal urban mechanics of getting ahead—the political maneuvering, the grinding incremental labor—from a matter of years to months. The problem is that reality-show success is no substitute for real-world experience. “There is something a little bit cruel about all the attention,” says Ted Allen, the dignified cooking guru of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and a recurring judge on Top Chef. “Because during the season you’re in one of the shows, you are famous for a while, and you get to enjoy all the fun of that. But you’re not someone who has any sort of expertise that’s going to keep you on television. There’s no certain road map for translating that kind of ephemeral success into a life of yachts and bling.”

But without yachts and bling, life can have no meaning.

I think the real appeal of Bravo's worldview (embodied in its shows) is the idea that you can have a job that is both creative and fulfilling. That it can take these random people from all over America and turn them into stars makes the fantasy seem that much more attainable. I'm just like contestant x, only I have talent. The crushing reality is that it was all a fantasy, and that the job market doesn't actually need any more art and design majors, wannabe chefs, or emo hipsters than it did before Bravo came knocking.

Writer's Request

I need a tool that highlights all instances of:

• its, it's
• your, you're
• there, their, they're
• then, than
  

Before I click publish. It would save me a lot embarrassment. Ugh.

Jim Cramer Gets Serious

Ordinarily he and his show seem to exist solely for the entertainment value of the boo-yah (limited thought that might be). But now he seems to be getting kind of serious:

In the "Stop Trading" segment, Cramer said the nation's central bank is "asleep" and should immediately "relieve the pressure" on financial firms and the nation's home owners who are facing big increases in their mortgage payments as 'teaser' rates expire. Many thousands will "lose their homes," he warned. "This is not the time to be complacent."

I'm honestly shocked that he'd be making these statements. My impression of Wall Street is that it represents the most libertarian anarcho-capitalist extreme of the Christ, Capital, Consume triumverate. They put greed and profit first, and if the little guy gets squashed, too bad. Cramer on the other hand seems to be predicting the next great Depression should the Fed fail to protect consumers and homeowners. Can this be right?

I'm both confused and impressed.

What If Withdrawl from Iraq Brings Peace?

From Tom Quiggin, Why Bush Has It Wrong, and why al-Qaeda needs us to stay in Iraq:

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly claimed that if American forces leave Iraq, the war-torn state would be surrendered to al-Qaeda. It is unlikely that there is any basis in fact for these statements.

Al-Qaeda is likely to leave Iraq once American forces depart and when a new government (or governments) take over. For reasons of doctrine, history, and al-Qaeda's own assessments of the situation, it is unlikely that al-Qaeda is either planning or counting on a long-term presence in Iraq after an American withdrawal.

The U.S. has been wrong about everything else, why not this too?

Night at the Museum Is Better Than You Think

Night at the Museum is a much funnier and more entertaining movie than I expected it to be, and probably more than it deserves. First it has a great premise (and the premise is probably what sold me to begin with): the exhibits in New York Natural History museum come to life at night. Awesome. The kid in me is already thrilled. Add in the fact that the screenplay is written by alums of The State and Reno 911, and I'm thinking this could be interesting (it also has the same Director of Photography from Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, so it looks really good).

But on the other hand you have Ben Stiller who is pretty hit and miss with his movies, an overly sentimental storyline involving a father and son, a Rotten Tomatoes ranking of 44%, and I become a little more concerned about my DVD choice.

Luckily my 8 year old daughter and I laughed through the whole thing so it really doesn't matter. But I had to ask myself, why did it work for me, and not for the critics? Why did I enjoy this more than a lot of other more highly rated films? For those who think I just have bad taste, you can stop reading now.

What was Good

Like Rexxy the dinosaur, the basic story has good bones (in Dramatica terms). In a lot of reviews I read, the critics complained about the lack of plot or the incoherent story. This is just a dead give away that they have no idea what plot or story means, but that's a complaint for another time. In the case of Museum, we have a very solid base to work from:

• Overall story: Chaos in the Museum
• Main Character story: Larry, the Ordinary Guy
• Impact Character story: Teddy Roosevelt, the lovesick adventurer
  
• Relationship story: Becoming a hero

So regardless of the slapstick comedy and the Ben Stiller improvs, the movie has a backbone. This what also allows for some of the more imaginative sequences like the puppy-dog dinosaur, the lilliputian cowboys and Romans, the Easter Island head (gum-gum, dum-dum), or Attila the Hun in need of a hug.

You can also tell that there was probably more to the story then they had room to tell: about the Egyptian tablet, the Security Guard's masterplan, financial troubles at the museum, and the stolen property subplot that would have gotten Larry in trouble. But again, because the four throughlines are so well defined, none of those details need to be explored. Each storyline finds its own satisfying resolution and the overall story ends on the right note when the future is secured for all concerned.

So What Bugs People?

So why the 44%? I have two reasons and they're both related to the Dramatica notion of story reception. The first issue is that the story limit is poorly defined (I'm sure StoryFanatic would be the first to point this out.) Is there an Option limit or a Time limit? On the one hand, the story takes place over three nights, so Larry has three chances to get things right. On the other hand, we're constantly being reminded of the time limit set by the fact that everything needs to go back to normal by dawn. Because, of the three nights, the story feel repetitive: the character's dilemma (chaos in the museum) should be solved regardless of time, or the clock should not be reset over and over.

The second issue is that Larry is a holistic thinker. He doesn't think in linear terms (like the other Security Guards) and he isn't able to follow the instruction manual's 1, 2, 3, 4. Even when he tries to learn about the museum exhibits, he treats each character individually in pursuit of overall balance. Like Stiller the actor, Larry is intuitive and improvisational. This makes for a funny character, but ultimately one who is more sympathetic than empathetic to a largely male audience. If we combine this with the timelock problem, we tend to see the characters as flat and one-dimensional. Not because they are, but because the nature of the situation and the problem solving style keeps the audience on the outside of the situation (this all comes from Dramatica).

I think this is probably true of most comedic characters. From Chaplin's Tramp to Mr. Bean, most characters are intuitive do-ers and the comedy arises from their lack of skill in or their unconventional approaches to everyday situations. More often than not we laugh at not with and that perhaps is the best way to distinguish between sympathy and empathy.

And Yet It Is Fun

Luckily kids don't seem to care about story reception. Funny is funny, and when it comes to plot, my kid was yelling at the TV the whole time about what she thought should or shouldn't happen. When it comes down to the happy ending (Success/Good in Dramatica terms), well how else should a movie end? It's a family movie after all, with some subversive comedy courtesy of Stiller and Owen Wilson that makes it fun for grown ups too.

Too Little Too Late for the Magic Numbers?

A Pitchfork review announces that the Magic Numbers' second album, Those the Brokes, may finally (finally!) be arriving in the states. It's a pretty lukewarm (6.3) assessment:

The only people in the music business successfully marketing sounds like the once fervently hyped Magic Numbers'-- that is, unassumingly sentimental folk-pop even an exhausted Baby Boomer could love-- are in the coffee business. Almost as remarkable as the songs on the Magic Numbers' self-titled 2005 debut was their indifference to fashion, both underground and mainstream.

More than eight months after the UK edition hit well-stocked import aisles, this slimmed-down domestic release of Those the Brokes won't bring commercial success to the band any more readily. At least, not unless the sort of people who don't usually seek out new music somehow discover the disc's best tracks. If they do, they'll hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

First UK single "Take a Chance" encourages us to risk our pride for love. The burnished harmonies of the group's two sibling pairs-- Trinidad natives Romeo and Michele Stodart along with London-born duo Angela and Sean Gannon-- make it easy to overlook any risks the cheery power-pop arrangement declines to take itself. The video for second single "This Is a Song" shows the band playing to a slowly growing assemblage of cross-legged young people, a real sleeper hit. Despite the apparent obviousness of the title, this is a song against itself-- as broken-hearted as it is upbeat and catchy. ("Don't wanna hear it," comes a backing vocal.) The questioning "Let Somebody In" and comparatively muscular "You Never Had It" each glide by on the kind of inchoate magic that in more credulous days used to be called "soul".

Regardless, The Magic Numbers are a hugely talented band that deserve better than the treatment they've received from the music industry and the press. If music has been left to the coffee houses then so be it. I'll take Starbucks over Hot Topic any day.

The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry

Interesting article on the decline of the CD at Prospect. The basic idea is that the decline of the CD does not represent the decline of one particular format, but the decline of interest in recorded music overall. 1). It's harder to make money off of MP3s and 2). Consumers are shifting their money from music buying to concert going.

I'm not sure I agree with it all, but there are definitely trends. Live performances are also where the musicians make their money so they're obviously more concerned with touring than with recording, but does that really mean that the audience for recorded music is disappearing? I'm listening to more music now than at any other time in my life. Am I a music nerd? Or do I just have more disposable income?

The article sees the interest in concerts as a quest for communalism in our new digitized era of alienation and isolation:

A rediscovery, or a renewed appreciation, of the communal source of music-making—and listening— must lie near the root of this upending of the music business. As personal stereos and MP3 players have grown in popularity, so has an appreciation that music isn't just something that goes on between your ears. The guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax expressed this rather neatly: "Our album is the menu," he explained. "The concert is the meal."

That sounds good, except for the fact that most concerts are pretty lousy. The sound is usually really poor. You either have to jostle for position, if its open seating, or you're stuck in the assigned seat you paid for. There's usually a bunch of morons just behind you and to your left who only came for the evening out, don't care about the band or the music, and they are talking to each other or on cell phones. At really big stadium shows you end up watching the band on the video screens anyway. So, to me, unless it's a real venue like Red Rocks, I kind of hate live shows.

I think the problem really is that, as the article mentions, a lot of the sales of CDs were artificially inflated due to people replacing their copies of Rumors and Sgt. Peppers that they had on vinyl and/or cassette. But once you have the CD, you don't need to replace it, ever. In the new digital age, you don't need to purchase new MP3s of a CD you own: you just rip it to your computer and away you go. So, as the article mentions, the record companies really did sell their master tapes. No matter what new format comes out you'll never need to buy another copy of something you already own and that's what's killing the industry.

That's also what's driving touring. A concert is always new. It's always an event. And people will pay to hear the same old songs over and over if it's live. It's the only way that the Police, or Prince, or Rod Stewart, or The Eagles or any other countless "stars" will ever have a hit again. Instead of writing new versions of the same old songs, it's easier to just play the one's you know by heart.

So overall, the only people who want to buy new music are teenagers and music nerds who are constantly on the hunt for the latest thing. But that's a small segment of the population. The majority of people who once bought CDs have stopped because they don't need to replace the handful of records that they listen to on the way to work every morning. But they do have money to spend on unique experiences like concerts which are social and allow people to be nostalgic for that same handful of favorite tunes in a way that always feels fresh and new. Everyone else there is singing a long to "Maggie May" so there's no need to feel embarrassed that you've been listening to the same song for 40 years.

What's really needed now is a recording process that will allow you to take home a CD or a memory stick with MP3s of the show you just heard at the end of the night. They could sell it to you as you left the venue. You pop it into your car stereo, and relive the experience on your way home - a permanent souvenir of the evening. (Or would that ultimately kill concert going? It's an endless downward spiral in the digital age.)

Democrats Have A Lot to Worry About

File under "heh", or "snark-of-the-week". New York Magazine with some food for thought:

Inspired by the logic behind an article in today's New York Sun, "U.S. Success in Iraq War Could Hurt Democrats: The Petraeus Report Worries Party Analysts," some other things that could hurt Democrats:

1. A kamikaze-unicorn attack, successfully foiled by the Department of Homeland Security.
2. World's oil resources found to spontaneously self-regenerate every 125 years, thanks to foresight and ingenuity of Halliburton and KBR.
3. Fred Thompson saves Abigail Breslin from drowning.
4. Gay marriage erodes the core of morality; Massachusetts descends into bloody anarchy while New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont descend into slightly less bloody anarchy.
5. Election-week Volvo recall.
6. The Rapture.

It's all fun and games until the kamikaze-unicorns start attacking.

A Dogma That Has Forgotten It Is a Dogma

PZ Myers firing on all cylinders, takes down Alister McGrath. Here's his best response to one of McGrath's f(l)ailing attempts at reason:

Whoa. What happened to "of course there's no way you can bring those criteria to bear on God"? What about "God may not be in the same category as scientific objects"? One moment he's claiming you can't study god like you would the possibility of water on Mars, and next he's claiming the validity of using observation and theory to justify the existence of the remote and directly unseen. How … inconsistent.

McGrath also has some weird things to say about the Nicene creed. It's only weird, because the creed is really more of a mission statement for believers than an attempt at making a persuasive argument. And it is dogma, by definition. So you can't say you believe in the Nicene Creed, but you're not being dogmatic. That is what dogmatic means: asserting religious beliefs. But, whatever.

The Littlest Giant

King Kaufman has a great column on New York Giants player Michael Strahan. It seems that Strahan is refusing to come to training camp because he wants more money, or wants to retire, or is feeling disrespected, or something*. It's just the usual pre-season shenanigans we see every August.

Here's Kaufman's great line on Strahan:

Wait till he hears about the '56 Giants, who went 8-3-1 and pounded the Chicago Bears 47-7 in the NFL Championship Game -- without Strahan even being alive!

Best thing I've read in a sports column in like forever (I also agree that it's time to start legalizing these performance enhancing drugs and see what life looks like on the other side).

* Update
He's getting a very expensive divorce.

Emancipation of the Mind

Christopher Hitchens is interviewed in the Atlantic Monthly. Here's an excerpt (interviewer in bold and then Hitchens's response):

All right, here it is: the fact that all these totalitarian regimes keep popping up, with or without religion, just shows that people have a tendency toward hero worship, and leaders have a tendency to corrupt that power. Religion might be a tool that leaders can use. But it’s awfully tricky to find religious motives behind every anti-religious dictatorship.

You’re quite right. Atheism is a necessary condition for emancipation of the mind, but it’s not a sufficient one. You can free yourself from superstition and still end up a nihilist or a hedonist or a Stalinist. What’s innate in our species isn’t the fault of religion. But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and sanctified by it. The fact is, we are a mammalian species one half-chromosome away from chimpanzees, and it shows. Curing ourselves of religion is only a small step along the road. Fortunately, our brains seem to be evolving.

His three major points in the interview seem to be: most people who claim to be religious may in fact just belong to social clubs (it's impossible for them to believe in the things their religions demand they believe in - virgin births, for example), religion is all right if it's personal (i.e., if you keep it to yourself), and atheism is only as good as its ability to steer clear of right-wing totalitarianism and cults-of-personality. Hard to disagree.