Rogue One takes Star Wars in a bold new direction by exploring for the first time what it would look like if the fate of the free galaxy didn’t rest upon characters but upon a half-dozen interchangeable gray boxes.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Save Dewey, Build The Wall (Pepperdine Service Announcement)
The following is a digital transcription of an urgent message ineffectively distributed across Beatissima University the week before finals so that nobody would notice it or pay it any heed. Dewey Hall is a stately and beloved middleclass dormitory situated on the far side of Greek Row that’s set to be demolished in spring of 2017 in order to be rebuilt from the ground up as a larger living area accommodating larger, more diverse class bodies that will incidentally be paying even more tuition to acquire less applicable knowledge from less intelligent professors. What the Housing and Residence Life office of Beatissima does not know or refuses to acknowledge is that Dewey is currently resting on “sacred ground” and any construction efforts advanced upon it will not only prove catastrophic to the coastal environment but, more pressingly, cause irrevocable harm to the feelings and comfort of the students living there, who will be forced back into the shadows they’ve fought their entire adult lives to escape. As it stands, people who call Dewey their home are Beas in every way except on paper, and the time has long since passed for the school’s Christian administration to recognize their dignity, which brings us to the text of this poster.
Most of this will not make sense to those who haven’t studied recently at Beatissima. Most of this will not make sense to those who are currently studying at Beatissima, as reading comprehension is frankly not Beas’ strongest suit, any more than is staying informed on food and housing arrangements affecting where they live, any more than is remembering the statements of those running for president pertaining to Americans’ gun rights and freedom of speech.
First they came for the fountain, and I did nothing, because I was a broke-ass college student and did my laundry at my parents’ house, not in the fountain.
Then they came for the La Brea and Peet’s, and I did nothing, because I did not eat baked goods and already had Starbucks, which is better, at the cafeteria and HAWC and verily every corner.
Then they came for the cable, and I did nothing, because I did not watch anything that was not on Putlocker or Netflix and because I could not get cable on my iPhone.
Then they came for the library, and I did nothing, because I knew better than to waste my time reading anything more complex than a 100-word Facebook “rant” or a nihilistic Salon article.
Then they came for the mural, and I did nothing, because I was not one of the unacceptably few not-white people here and was not aware of any such mural or the affront it caused.
Then they came for Dewey, and no one did a thing for me, because they had never called Dewey “Home” and did not even know that it existed.
It’s time to send The Powers That B a message:
That they cannot take whatever they want.
That this is our land.
That we stand in #insolidarity and unity for
A WALL HIGH AND IMPREGNABLE to be built
Immediately around DEWEY as a SANCTUARY DORM.
* Miller will pay for it.
** Some of the people in HRL, I assume, are good people.
Most of this will not make sense to those who haven’t studied recently at Beatissima. Most of this will not make sense to those who are currently studying at Beatissima, as reading comprehension is frankly not Beas’ strongest suit, any more than is staying informed on food and housing arrangements affecting where they live, any more than is remembering the statements of those running for president pertaining to Americans’ gun rights and freedom of speech.
First they came for the fountain, and I did nothing, because I was a broke-ass college student and did my laundry at my parents’ house, not in the fountain.
Then they came for the La Brea and Peet’s, and I did nothing, because I did not eat baked goods and already had Starbucks, which is better, at the cafeteria and HAWC and verily every corner.
Then they came for the cable, and I did nothing, because I did not watch anything that was not on Putlocker or Netflix and because I could not get cable on my iPhone.
Then they came for the library, and I did nothing, because I knew better than to waste my time reading anything more complex than a 100-word Facebook “rant” or a nihilistic Salon article.
Then they came for the mural, and I did nothing, because I was not one of the unacceptably few not-white people here and was not aware of any such mural or the affront it caused.
Then they came for Dewey, and no one did a thing for me, because they had never called Dewey “Home” and did not even know that it existed.
It’s time to send The Powers That B a message:
That they cannot take whatever they want.
That this is our land.
That we stand in #insolidarity and unity for
A WALL HIGH AND IMPREGNABLE to be built
Immediately around DEWEY as a SANCTUARY DORM.
BUILD THE WALL*
* Miller will pay for it.
** Some of the people in HRL, I assume, are good people.
Labels:
Beatissima
Friday, August 19, 2016
Responding to Criticism, Warner Bros. to Adapt Childrens' Novel that Parents Also Read
Labels:
Original Reporting
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Star Trek Beyond, Jason Bourne, and Catching up on a Lot of Trailer Reviews
The Author reluctantly reviews some forgettable sequels and offers his unbiased opinions on 39 stinking movie trailers.
Labels:
Abbreviated,
movies
Friday, July 29, 2016
The Killing Joke Is Feminist Affirmative Action
The much-reviled batsex in The Killing Joke film adaptation would be deplorable enough on its own, but the added subplot also reeks of politically opportunistic revisionism.
Labels:
movies
Monday, July 25, 2016
Dharma Relativity Theorem in the Ramayana
The following was written for a catch-all class on Asian great books, philosophy, and calligraphy which kicked off with a reading of the Good Parts Version of the Ramayana. The paper won’t make much sense to the uninitiated, firstly because I wrote it for a professor reasonably familiar with the Ramayana, secondly because the Ramayana itself just doesn’t make much sense. It’s still a pretty good entry point to Eastern literature, as it feels like the best Michael Bay movie Hollywood hasn’t yet had the good sense to green-light and offensively recast with non-blue people of European descent. Where the Ramayana falls apart as religious epic – or stands tall depending on your spiritual persuasion – is in its confused, progressive, and relativistic presentation of the moral code of dharma.
The essay is way too long and rephrases the same idea over and over because I was being graded on a page count and because a pretty big chunk of it was written overnight. Teachers in other fields may take this as a cautionary paper.
The concept of dharma in the Ramayana takes a multitude of forms, encompassing such meanings as natural calling, social obligation, and right behavior more broadly. Pretty much every character in the epic lays claim to knowing and walking in the way of dharma, even those whose aims are diametrically opposed to one another’s. As such it’s often hard to discern what the author of the Ramayana believes real dharma to be. The contradictions within the moral order and its manifold interpretations are most easily reconciled when one sees dharma not as a concrete, immutable, absolute code but as a personal excuse pleaded by fallible, selfish characters in justification of their actions. In the grand scheme of the epic, fate plays a much larger role in Rama finishing his exile and reclaiming Sita than does his inconsistent, continually revised commitment to dharma.
The author commonly refers to Rama as a perfect incarnation of dharma, Avatara of the deva Vishnu. The introduction to Rama at the beginning of Book Two describes him as a human in whom “all the virtues that Brahma ever created were gathered as the galaxies are within the universe”. When held up to scrutiny, though, Rama often falters from the very principles he describes as dharma, succumbing to fits of wrath and needless outbreaks of violence. In one chapter he lectures Lakshmana on the foolishness of violent resorts, saying, “Violence is never dharma and you must not give in to your anger.” But throughout the Ramayana, Rama not only engages in violent acts but veritably relishes the opportunity for them. When the “hideous” and pitiful rakshasa Surpanka enters their encampment, Rama recognizes her for what she is, but instead of attempting to defuse the situation quickly and peacefully, he entertains her seductive behavior and toys with her by recommending his brother in his stead. Aiming to capitalize on the brothers’ pretense of flirting, Surpanka aggressively moves to devour Princess Sita, and Rama responds by brutally disfiguring the demon with the aid of his brother. Rather than lamenting this unfortunate defensive act, necessary to protect the wife who gave up everything to enter the wilderness with him, Rama celebrates the maiming of Surpanka, for as the text reads, “The brothers dissolved in mirth.”
Was it dharma for the exile to break his former testimony against bloodshed, in such a sadistic and excessive manner none the less? Did the dharma of defending his wife overrule the dharma of nonviolence he’d spoken of earlier? The key implication of this scene is not that Rama has somehow violated dharma, considering that his personal “dharma” is ever changing to suit his current circumstances, but that fate or destiny is using him in unpredictable, seemingly ungodly ways to fulfill his ultimate purpose of toppling the tyranny of Ravana. As the abducted Sita says in her encounter with Hanuman, “Ravana is part of our destiny and destiny must take its course. Rama must come to Lanka and kill Ravana... Then dharma will be established on earth… Let there be a war, a dharma yuddha, as is honorable.” The humiliation of Surpanka only leads to Rama’s decimation of Khara’s rakshasa – another sweeping reversal of his prior counsel –, which leads to her inflaming Ravana with jealousy over Sita, which leads to the beautiful woman’s separation from Rama and his ensuing, predetermined quest to regain her by any means.
Rama again resorts to gratuitous, ill-informed brutality when he unhesitatingly offers to assassinate Sugriva’s brother, the monkey king Vali, for reasons not entirely clear on a very one-sided account. “It is plain that only Vali’s death will bring you peace,” he tells his new ally, “And I swear to you, he will die.” These don’t sound like the words of a man who “shuns violence wherever he can”, nor do they make much sense given his address to the dying Vali, whom he reasons he can justly kill within his dharma because the vanaras are wild animals that have been hunted through the ages by his ancestors. Since Rama isn’t beholden to the same rules when dealing with the punishment of animals, one can only wonder why he treats so solemnly the suffering of one like Sugriva, who has simply fallen short in the natural world’s battle of the fittest.
In any case, the prince of Ayodhya breaks his initial tenets of dharma in several ways, by needlessly killing a creature instead of negotiating a peaceful resolution, by shooting him from hiding like a coward – an insult frequently levied at Ravana for stealing Sita in the night –, and by subjecting his reason and concern for justice to his emotion. “You are the worst kind of sinner: the one who pretends to be dharma itself… You have not even heard both sides of our story,” accuses Vali in his dying throes, but even now Rama tries to rationalize his execution of the monkey as an act of dharma, saying he’s called to judge and punish the sinful. Whatever choice he makes resolving any given conflict Rama passes off as dharma, whether or not it clashes with the precedents of dharma he’s set in the past.
Rama’s unwavering adherence to a rigid dharma, if it existed, would probably be an impediment to his destiny more than anything. The more pragmatic, impulsive Lakshmana expresses as much after he’s been deceived into thinking that Sita’s died by the hand of Indrajit. “My brother has been a savior to the munis of the forests… But his dharma has not saved him from evil. Gentleness and dharma are of no use in this world.” In fact, “real dharma”, or honorable action, often seems like it would counteract destiny, which depends on people acting in accordance with their baser natures and desires, i.e. with their personal, contextualized sense of dharma. All the events that set in motion the eventual destruction of Ravana and his kingdom are motivated by transient adharma so that a different, generalized kind of dharma can prevail at the end of the ancient war.
One example of this pattern is Ravana’s disagreement with Vibheeshana, who urges him to follow “the way of dharma” and return Sita to her husband, “the perfect man”, so as to avoid innumerable casualties in a catastrophic war with the vanaras. Yet for Ravana to do this would not only contradict his own dharma as a demon, but further undermine the whole pretext for Rama dethroning Ravana in the first place. Here the author introduces the theory of dharma as a natural, rather than a spiritual obligation, for Ravana repeatedly emphasizes the importance of what he’s doing to his role as a king and a rakshasa. “You say it was dishonorable for me to abduct you, but you forget I am a rakshasa. It is natural, and so entirely honorable, for me to take another man’s wife if I want her... That is a rakshasa’s nature, and his dharma.” The dharma of a rakshasa, who’s given over to animalistic rage and orgies, differs starkly from the dharma of a human or a vanara, whom Rama judges must never take another man for his wife lest he be worthy of death. According to Ravana, who may be speaking falsely to get his way but nonetheless points out the relativity of dharma, even Sita violates her own calling as his prisoner by resisting his advances. “You are denying your own nature, Sita. Other woman have been brought here as spoils of war, as frightened as you… But when they knew me, none of them resisted me for more than a week.”
So too does the dharma of a king, who has to exercise aggressive, ruthless, often stubborn dominance to sustain his power, differ vastly from the dharma of everybody else, as both Vali and Ravana observe at various points. “Let Rama come not with an army of monkeys but with the host of heaven, and I will not give Sita up to him,” objects Ravana to his wisest advisor Vibheeshana. “Your counsel is the way of cowardice. How can a king like me heed such advice?” The disparity in dharma arises because each character, being in pursuit of different interests, reveres a different, private dharma that condones their actions specifically. For Rama, that dharma is the divine authority of his judgment passed on other souls, and for Ravana it is the natural course of things when people follow their most essential, ravenous tendencies.
Where they overlap is in their confidence that everything they do is directly working out for fate. “Sita, fate is all-powerful. You and I were created for each other. Why else would you have come to me at all, by the long and winding way that you did… Don’t resist the will of God.” Ravana, for once, speaks truth without fully realizing it, because it is the will of Brahma that Sita and the Lord of Lanka be together for a while, just as it is Brahma’s will that Dasaratha banish Rama for 14 years and that Rama fulfill his inborn purpose of killing Ravana and inheriting the kingship. Sita echoes this sentiment: when she defies her captor: “Now that I have seen how evil you are, I think fate conspired to make you abduct me. So Rama would come to kill you.” Whether or not the characters reach the final point by “dharma” is an insignificant detail, because destiny is the only constant in their lives and destiny dictates that dharma will ultimately triumph over adharma. The path to this victory is paved with sin and violence, but sometimes it’s necessary for people to bend or pervert their sense of dharma in order to satisfy the will of the gods.
Another place one sees the relativity of dharma is in the prevalence of suicide threats from almost every grief-ridden character, including Rama and Sita themselves. Hanuman briefly comments on the depravity of suicide in his scouting trip to Lanka: “But they say it is a grievous sin to kill oneself, worse than murder.” This shows that most of Rama’s family are either ambivalent to their dharma concerning suicide, not understanding its consequences, or think that other forms of dharma – sharing the fate of one’s spouse, loyalty to one’s brother, motherly love – outweigh the bad karma they’d inherit by taking their own lives in violence.
If the subjectivity of dharma can be summarized in a single passage, it would be in Rama’s preparations to depart from Rama, when he tries to comfort his anguished mother and temper the furious Lakshmana. “All this is fate working toward her own inscrutable ends. Not even the rishis who are masters of their sense are beyond fate; even they fall prey to the passions of destiny… It is not that mother Kaikeyi is evil… only that destiny uses her, even against her own nature.” Such is true of all the adversaries the hero faces on the path to Lanka, of Surpanka and Khara and Vali and Maricha and the dark lord Ravana himself. Though Rama encounters much resistance and deception and constantly adapts or qualifies his dharma to meet the challenges he faces, fate in the Ramayana is always utilizing dharma and adharma, righteous deeds and sin alike to advance the final will of the Devas, and that which seems immoral or contrary to dharma in the present is just one of many instruments used by the divines in a greater plan.
And those are just the ones I feel secure in sharing on this blog.
Rama, Lakshmana, and Jatayu hunt rakshasas in a notoriously unsuccessful 2009 adaptation.
© 2007 Twentieth Century Fox
Rama again resorts to gratuitous, ill-informed brutality when he unhesitatingly offers to assassinate Sugriva’s brother, the monkey king Vali, for reasons not entirely clear on a very one-sided account. “It is plain that only Vali’s death will bring you peace,” he tells his new ally, “And I swear to you, he will die.” These don’t sound like the words of a man who “shuns violence wherever he can”, nor do they make much sense given his address to the dying Vali, whom he reasons he can justly kill within his dharma because the vanaras are wild animals that have been hunted through the ages by his ancestors. Since Rama isn’t beholden to the same rules when dealing with the punishment of animals, one can only wonder why he treats so solemnly the suffering of one like Sugriva, who has simply fallen short in the natural world’s battle of the fittest.
Hanuman smashes Aksha while razing Lanka to the ground in Peter Jackson’s dumbed-down crowdpleaser.
© Universal Pictures
One example of this pattern is Ravana’s disagreement with Vibheeshana, who urges him to follow “the way of dharma” and return Sita to her husband, “the perfect man”, so as to avoid innumerable casualties in a catastrophic war with the vanaras. Yet for Ravana to do this would not only contradict his own dharma as a demon, but further undermine the whole pretext for Rama dethroning Ravana in the first place. Here the author introduces the theory of dharma as a natural, rather than a spiritual obligation, for Ravana repeatedly emphasizes the importance of what he’s doing to his role as a king and a rakshasa. “You say it was dishonorable for me to abduct you, but you forget I am a rakshasa. It is natural, and so entirely honorable, for me to take another man’s wife if I want her... That is a rakshasa’s nature, and his dharma.” The dharma of a rakshasa, who’s given over to animalistic rage and orgies, differs starkly from the dharma of a human or a vanara, whom Rama judges must never take another man for his wife lest he be worthy of death. According to Ravana, who may be speaking falsely to get his way but nonetheless points out the relativity of dharma, even Sita violates her own calling as his prisoner by resisting his advances. “You are denying your own nature, Sita. Other woman have been brought here as spoils of war, as frightened as you… But when they knew me, none of them resisted me for more than a week.”
Where they overlap is in their confidence that everything they do is directly working out for fate. “Sita, fate is all-powerful. You and I were created for each other. Why else would you have come to me at all, by the long and winding way that you did… Don’t resist the will of God.” Ravana, for once, speaks truth without fully realizing it, because it is the will of Brahma that Sita and the Lord of Lanka be together for a while, just as it is Brahma’s will that Dasaratha banish Rama for 14 years and that Rama fulfill his inborn purpose of killing Ravana and inheriting the kingship. Sita echoes this sentiment: when she defies her captor: “Now that I have seen how evil you are, I think fate conspired to make you abduct me. So Rama would come to kill you.” Whether or not the characters reach the final point by “dharma” is an insignificant detail, because destiny is the only constant in their lives and destiny dictates that dharma will ultimately triumph over adharma. The path to this victory is paved with sin and violence, but sometimes it’s necessary for people to bend or pervert their sense of dharma in order to satisfy the will of the gods.
Another place one sees the relativity of dharma is in the prevalence of suicide threats from almost every grief-ridden character, including Rama and Sita themselves. Hanuman briefly comments on the depravity of suicide in his scouting trip to Lanka: “But they say it is a grievous sin to kill oneself, worse than murder.” This shows that most of Rama’s family are either ambivalent to their dharma concerning suicide, not understanding its consequences, or think that other forms of dharma – sharing the fate of one’s spouse, loyalty to one’s brother, motherly love – outweigh the bad karma they’d inherit by taking their own lives in violence.
On a side note, the Ramesh Menon adaptation/condensation of the colossal poem is hilarious and makes for a great read even if you have no interest in Hinduism or Indian folklore. The Good Parts Version of his translation had me bursting into laughter almost as frequently as Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and I would gladly have finished it if I wasn’t enrolled in 18 units and it wasn’t practically impossible. Here are some of the more riotous or just plain interesting passages:
“One moment, the rakshasa rushed at Rama with his claws outstretched to seize his throat; the next, he screamed as the astra struck him and his flesh fell away from his skeleton in anxiety to escape the intolerable pain of that missile. His heart exploded, then his giant head, and nothing was left of Khara but patches of blood, skin, and a heap of bones on the ground.”
“‘Have you seen her?” he cried to the kadamba and the tilaka, the asoka, the karnikar and the kritamala. But they stood mute, on the eloquent verge of speech.”
“Playfully, he cut off her nose and her ears, so black blood spurted from her face.” [One of at least two nose & ear removals in the Ramayana.]
“Hanuman thought, ‘By her beauty she must be Sita. But how does she sleep so contentedly in Ravana’s bedchamber, with a smile curving her perfect lips?’ He slapped himself again, across his cheek this time, as monkeys do.”
“Rama seemed undecided what he wanted to do first: look for Sita or consume the world.”
And those are just the ones I feel secure in sharing on this blog.
Labels:
Beatissima,
Books
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
NWTE – "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" and "The Invitation"
In which the Author briefly and half-heartedly recommends two “I Heart Indie” movies that have nothing in common and that almost nobody saw.
Not Worth The Effort was conceived in early Fall of 2015 with the aim of succinctly documenting and summarizing movies (and possibly other media) that simply aren’t worth the effort of a full review. This month’s issue is dedicated to Ghostbusters (2016), which is so far by far the most astonishing movie of the year and which proves to misogynist haters beyond a shadow of a doubt that women can be as witty and hilarious as Azis Ansari, Louis C.K., Adam Sandler, and Anderson Cooper.
Not Worth The Effort was conceived in early Fall of 2015 with the aim of succinctly documenting and summarizing movies (and possibly other media) that simply aren’t worth the effort of a full review. This month’s issue is dedicated to Ghostbusters (2016), which is so far by far the most astonishing movie of the year and which proves to misogynist haters beyond a shadow of a doubt that women can be as witty and hilarious as Azis Ansari, Louis C.K., Adam Sandler, and Anderson Cooper.
Labels:
movies,
Not Worth The Effort
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Swiss AR-15 Man – Moving Radcliffe Biopic, Potty Humor, or Both?
A documentary of Daniel Radcliffe’s life as a farting corpse, Swiss Army Man does more to normalize unrepresented gender identities than any film in a very long time.
Labels:
movies
Monday, June 27, 2016
Feminazi Tomb Raider and the Unshakeable Curse of Cinematic Adventure Games
With the possible exceptions of Avengers, Avatar, or any reboot directed by J.J. Abrams, whenever a Hollywood blockbuster trades logic and pathos for flashy special effects and chaotic bursts of red, it’s lampooned as a puerile, vapid, Michael Bay explosionfest made by and for an audience of undiscerning teenagers. Whenever a triple-A video game blockbuster does the same, it’s hailed as a “cinematic” joyride with dazzling “set piece moments” and amazing graphics.
But I was about to talk about how gorgeous this thing is. The landscapes and lighting are indeed befitting of a tropical paradise retreat, one where hundreds of well-armed plane crash survivors converge to pointlessly murder and get murdered by you. There’s truly no greater reward in Tomb Raider than getting to pause and gape at the lovely mountain ranges between one forced firefight or untimed rescue effort and the next. The weather effects are impressive and varied enough that you can run through a snowy, a rainy, a nighttime, and a sunny level in one hour of real time without leaving the island. The character animations are astonishingly true to the adventuring life, and I never tired of watching Lara jumping, climbing, somersaulting, grabbing onto ledges while plummeting, and never getting tired through any of it because she’s a weightless “platforming game” character. The best fun to be had from this title, besides setting scads of random, bloodthirsty lunatics on fire without remorse, stems mainly from charging around wide, open villages where the game isn’t bossily directing you down a tunnel to the next pit stop in the story.
These sections, it goes without saying, are very few and far between. Most of Tomb Raider’s so-called gameplay involves running and occasionally jumping down a straight path while structures blow up and collapse around you in spectacular, preordained fashion. To save Lara from falling to certain doom with the rest of the crumbling, largely unexplained ancient architecture, the player follows predictable on-screen prompts to press this or that button or to jerk the joystick back and forth maniacally. None of these “quick-time events” will challenge anyone who knows the layout of the controller, nor do they amplify the intensity of the scripted cutscenes they replace. Rather, they serve as an obnoxious reminder that one is simply furthering a fictional, deeply linear interactive movie, and a really uninvolving, tensionless movie at that.
* Battle dialogue. Again, the Die you Bastards thing, but also creative stuff like:
[Cultist 122] “She’s just one girl!”
[Cultist 123] “That one girl is kicking our ass!”
“Look, I know this is a crazy plan.”
“It is, but right now crazy is all we got. Let’s do this.”
“You think you’re a hero, Lara? Everything I’ve done I’ve done to survive!”
“Oh my god. Sam – a vessel for the sun queen’s soul. I have to stop this madness.”
* The mythological sun queen plot actually being treated seriously, despite it being the least appropriate thing to put in a story about the formative molding of Lara Croft. The only adversaries needed were a band of loony cannibal cult-worshippers, some vicious wolves (the wolf-to-human ratio on this uninhabitable, storm-ravaged island is and should be something like 50:1), and the elements of the island itself. Instead of a bracing, primal survival story about a frightened woman outwitting and fighting men who’ve forsaken any moral boundaries, what we get is a silly, unbelievable fantasy romp wherein the crazed savages are actually right and the hero must appease the angry, mythical sun creature to calm the storms enveloping the island.
A Lara I cared more about than the one in Tomb Raider
In case I haven’t been clear, make no mistake that killing patriarchs as Lara can be pretty fun, and after an hour, I had gotten really good at killing them. The problem is, in modern video games, killing people has gotten far too easy. Any kid, heck, any crazy person who doesn’t even play video games, can walk into a shop, or go on Craigslist, buy any 1st-person action game, and start senselessly mowing down tons of people with assault weapons, and whenever someone tries to stop them, they can just duck down and let their health recharge.
Now there are two ways we can respond to this. We can pretend the problem doesn’t exist, keep praising crappy military-style games like Tomb Raider, saying that Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Jonathan McIntosh, and other Feminists are trying to take these games away, which… is just not true. We can tell ourselves that Tomb Raider is an A+ story when it’d really be a C- movie, because we think the jokes are funny, or the violence is provocative, or we like watching buildings fall down and blow up.
6.5/10. I have nothing good to say about this game.
Labels:
Other reviews
Saturday, June 25, 2016
NWTE – A Forgotten Blake Lively Film & "The Expendables 2"
Unmerited reviews of some terrible movies about terrible people doing terrible things to other marginally less terrible people. Blake Lively! Arnold!
Labels:
movies,
Not Worth The Effort
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
"A Serious Man" – Asking the Unanswered Questions
Channeling Job in a pensive rumination on the problem of pain, A Serious Man may be the Coen Brothers' most challenging film, both exceptionally pious and aggravatingly agnostic.
Labels:
movies
Monday, June 13, 2016
Even More Stuff That Larry Twicken Says
This being the final chapter of an epic trilogy of things that Saddleback professor Lawrence Twicken says. The great thing about taking classes with Mr. Twinkett is that one could theoretically never run out of new and exciting Twinkettisms to share with all the world. The not-so-great thing is that one would have to keep taking classes with Mr. Twinkett.
On the souls of black folk:
“If you thought black people were animals, why were you having sex with them?”
“People still want to study why black people run faster…”
[Imitating a hypothetical black mother while explaining how blacks are “super-spankers”] “Tonight – and she’s fingering her belt – I’m gonna whoop your black ass!”
“The black middle-class of today would not exist without affirmative action.”
“There are two groups of people we don’t talk about: upper-middle-class black folk and Asian criminals.”
“We still are under that slavery, that system… even to this day.”
[On the 3/5ths Compromise] “Shows you how important diversity is…”
“Black folk have to buy a white anniversary card.”
On females:
[Possibly facetious, possibly earnest] “There should be twice as many bathrooms for women.”
“Women are a numerical majority, but we talk about them as if they’re a minority because they have less power.”
“… patriarchy…”
On his wife:
“My wife’s been trying to teach me to appreciate smooth jazz.”
[Recounting an anecdote about his wife getting caught in traffic, or a car crash, or some tense situation. The only necessary background is that his wife never swears, but when she does…] “So this guy is screaming at her, ‘I’m going to come over there and ____ you!’ And my wife says, ‘You don’t have anything to ____ me with!’”
On parenting:
[A long digression] “Spanking children. It doesn’t work. All the psychologists say so.”
“I used to take my son, throw him up in the air and catch him, but you’re not supposed to do that – spinal injuries… When I figured out, I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. That’s a violent act.’” And he told another dad in a parking lot not to do it.
On Global Warming:
“Let me just say that there is global climate change. The earth is getting warmer.”
“You shouldn’t write articles saying Global Warming isn’t real.”
“We can solve it… it’s not a left-right issue, it’s all of us.”
[Talking about the Hummer motor vehicle] “It’s like you take your penis, flap it around, and say, ‘I’m going to rape the environment, I’m going to ____ the environment!’”
On technology:
[Addressing a student checking his phone, while he’s setting up an HBO movie he’s about to screen for almost 2 hours] “Put that away please.”
On court packing:
“Adams thinks that Jefferson state’s rights people are gonna ____ things up; so he fills up the courts with Federalists… Basically they said, ‘____ you, ____ you, no ____ing way. Not gonna happen.’”
“Then Jefferson says, ‘How great is this? I can destroy the mother____ing court forever!”
On law and order and law enforcement:
[On de jure segregation, or de facto, not that it really matters to him] “Whites know they’re privileged; blacks know they’re being ____ed with… No matter how many opportunities they get, they’re ____ups.”
[Referring to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments] “… The Second Constitution…”
“We have some pro-life groups which go out and shoot doctors…”
“Most police don’t live in Los Angeles or give a s____ about people living there.”
On the Confederate flag [snippets of a 35-minute intro to one class period]:
“The Confederate Flag was not just a battle flag. It was a flag of slavery, meant to replace the United States flag.”
“The flag was used to intimidate black folk. It came back in the 1950s because of the civil rights movement.”
“It’s a symbol of terrorism… the same as the swastika.”
[Anecdotal story about someone drawing a graffiti swastika in his neighborhood, school, wherever] “My kids couldn’t sleep in their beds for months.”
On what conservatives and liberals want:
[Talking about mutual sacrifice and racial equality] “Liberals just want to make the pie bigger, but the pie always shrinks.”
“John Roberts did the conservative thing [on Obamacare]… There’s no doubt Roberts is a conservative. It’s a very logical argument he made on Obamacare.”
“The NRA’s views on guns are not in line with the average gun owner’s.”
“So conservatives don’t want to change the two-party system.”
“Affirmative action is pretty conservative.”
On himself being conservative:
“I’m pretty libertarian that way. If people want to do [Operation Chaos, or similar electoral sabotage], let them do it.”
On checks and balances:
“The division of powers was logical, but not rational.”
“How is the president any more qualified [than the people] to select the judges?”
“The limit on that federal government is us.” Says like he cares about limiting the government.
“The layer cake analogy of government is bad because there are a lot more forces at play. It’s really more like a marble cake.”
[On Congressional committees] “The truth is no one’s going to read the ____ing bill.”
On demographics:
[On Social Security] “They ____ with young people cause they don’t vote, but old people do vote.”
“In the California suburbs, they want to be super-Mormon. In Salt Lake City, they have Mormon drunks, Mormon gay people.”
“The core of blue states’ voting blocs is black people.”
On fairness:
“It’s unfair to ask a truck driver to work two more years to get Social Security… it’s unkind.”
On homosexual marriage:
“Scalia’s outrageous, mean-spirited rant…”
“The only argument against same-sex marriage is religious or that it’s icky… but people only think gay PDA is gross because of the government’s disapproval.”
“Marriage is a civil institution… Marriage is a right. It’s one of those privileges.”
[Mockingly] “Horses and people are going to have sex with each other and have horsey babies…”
[On incest, speaking sophistically, I think] “Why is it wrong? What rational reason is there for fearing it?” [Waits for student response.] “Just no ____ing way!”
“Scalia was so wrong on Obamacare.”
“You have to go back 100 years to find a Supreme Court this crazy.”
On other stereotypes:
[A lengthy tangent concerning a particular Irvine high school] “I’m against every Indian mascot.”
“There are Asian people who are tall. Not every one is super teach-smart. Some of the most vicious gangs…” [The Author’s notes end here.]
“If I say nigga, no one cares. If I say the same word for Jew, then everyone is up in arms… [Demonstrates.] Nigga, nigga, nigga! … I’m using the Kanye West version.”
On his grading rubric:
“I’m not ideological – I’m a pain in the ass to everyone.”
“If you make a dumb argument, I’m gonna be pissed. I hate stupid people.”
On himself:
“Most people want to challenge Mr. Twicken the first week. But most teachers know more than you – not necessarily smarter, they just know more.”
“A student journalist here once got outraged that I said Thomas Jefferson raped a slave and wrote about me in the paper. So I got my whole class to wear hoodies for Trayvon.”
“One reason my wife married me is my hairy chest… and that I’m really smart, which I am.”
[Of the John Adams government and the Alien Sedition Acts] “They’d probably use the death penalty three times on me.”
“That’s why this class is such a bargain.”
Fast-travel to other parts:
Stuff That Larry Twicken Says
More Stuff That Larry Twicken Says
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Spotify Is Bad For Civilization – on Genre, "Music Discovery", and the Decline of Taste
I don’t often learn anything new in liberal arts classes, but when I do, it’s a revelatory experience. Such an awakening occurred during the 5-minute break of a literature class when the conversation turned to one student’s musical tastes, or deficiency thereof. “I’ve been listening to a lot of EDM,” remarked the three-year student of epic poetry, theology, and philosophy. “EDM when I wake up, when I shower, when I drive…” Everybody laughed, except for the Author.
A collage of extremely wealthy and popular EDM “artists”
This is not to call the pop star a strictly Millennial invention. Indeed, every generation has had its share of safe and featureless junk that rapidly fades into obsolescence, only to be resurrected in a hastily made Totally 80s playlist and exposed to a whole new batch of suckers who think they love the pop music of their parents but wouldn’t bother themselves to buy or listen to any older album in its entirety. This is the paradox of claiming to love music from the 80s or any other decade: by the very denotation of “80s music”, one both demarcates said music to a separate category from contemporary music, suggesting it’s less relevant or pure as art, and subtly dehumanizes the authorship of the older music by attributing its genesis to cultural trends instead of individual composers and performers. Talking Heads, e.g., were not an amazing “80s Music” band; they were a very influential and creative band who were known for working in the new wave and art pop genres, who happened to flourish in the 80s, and whose lead singer went on to have a semi-successful solo career.
Nor do I wish to say that genuine musical artistry has expired; quite to the contrary, the internet, self-publishing, and crowd-funding have parted the floodgates to a deluge of artists who in past days may never have reached an audience outside their own town. The sphere of music at our disposal has compounded in volume over the last decade, and yet Millennials have somehow conceived more and more efficient means of homogenizing everything that reaches their ears. Instead of listening to artists, stories, or sonic landscapes, we listen to genres and “moods”, effectively screening out any music that doesn’t match our spirits at a time or that we don’t already find pleasing. We have music for pumping iron, music for hitting the beach, music for drinking fake, expensive coffee, music for getting drunk and upsetting the neighbors, music for spiting male conservative friends, and according to Spotify, even music for having sex. Wired has an interesting article examining how exhaustively the company has wrapped itself around the lives of its customers, but this should already be apparent to anybody who has used the program more than once a day. While music as a mindless supplement to other activities steadily proliferates, we see music for music’s sake increasingly regressing into an intimidating, alien concept, and not the kind that European leaders welcome into their society. This is detrimental to any thriving culture.
Spotify bombards users of the free version with advertisements enticing them to subscribe and “skip away” until they find a song that’s just right for their current company or state of mind. In the dark ages predating the internet and ADD streaming services, skipping away was not a viable or easy option, requiring one to record a mixtape or burn a CD in order to jump between several unrelated songs in a row. Alternatively one could fumble through a collection of physical media to sate one’s longing for a radically different song, but the hassle involved in this exchange intrinsically motivated the listener to focus on one artist for 40 minutes at a time. Certain LPs, such as The Dark Side of the Moon, played out as two unbroken, sweeping pieces of music, defying anyone twitchy enough to skip around and achieve the same emotional high encapsulated in the whole. Pink Floyd’s albums, and others’ to a lesser extent, rewarded those who listened intentionally and persevered through the slower instrumental sections. They were theatrical exercises in balance and contrast and bombast, ones that deserved to be heard in whole even by those who didn’t take to the band’s style.
A collage of albums that wouldn’t benefit from skipping away
Labels:
Music,
Musings of The Author
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Marketing the 100-Something Movies List
Back in late November of the last year people could still say, “It’s 2015,” to justify their politics, The Author’s Files decided to run a narrowly segmented print advertising campaign targeting students of Beatissima who were preparing to turn in for the long winter and watch a lot of subpar television on their iPhones. The fliers were to be posted on the so-called “Freedom Wall” outside the cafeteria in such quantities and visual variations as were absolutely necessary to catch the attention of an extremely inattentive demographic. It didn’t work, but we put too much effort into the project to let the posters just disappear after the run. Maybe they’ll find a more understanding, cynical audience right here. If there doesn’t seem to be any binding logic or textual theme behind any of these, that was the idea, because Beatissima as an institution doesn’t think in logic or in text.
Labels:
Beatissima,
miscellaneous
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