Pop Culture Confessions

I am always one to quickly defend the virtues of popular culture, to argue, in fact, that the distinctions between "high culture," "folk culture," and "pop culture," are relatively meaningless in practical terms and apart from academic interest.  I celebrate popular culture as a gauge of our public life — politically, socially, and intellectually.  I don't disparage 35-year-old men who spend all day reading comics or writing fan fiction.  I get it.

To be a true pop culture junkie, you have to go deep.  Record nerds, comic nerds, horror nerds, movie nerds — they are all carrying around massive catalogs of information in their heads.  This may make it difficult for them to relate to normal human-type people.

Sometimes I wonder if I really qualify.  When I chat with my cousin Zack, I quickly realize I know virtually nothing about horror movies.  He can thoughtfully discuss Bela Lugosi's latter work or compare and contrast the qualities of the various actors who portrayed Jason Voorhees.  I like to think I'm a music nerd, but sometimes I wonder even about that.

Well, pride be damned, I'm going to come clean.  There is some shit I know almost nothing about.  Pop culture is just too massive.  I cannot possibly keep up with it all and still pay my bills.  So for your edification, I present my list of Pop Culture Confessions.

1. I own no hipster records.  It's a lot safer to say that than it was a few years ago.  Let me be quick to add: it's not that I hate hipster bands.  They just don't interest me.  This might seem less surprising if it weren't for the fact that I have a reasonably large music collection.  (iTunes tells me that I currently have 23,842 "songs."  I've got some vinyl, too.)  I have no Wilco.  No Arcade Fire.  No Postal Service.  No Daft Punk.  None of that.  I'm not really sure why.  This could change at any time.  (I remember telling someone in the mid-90s that I wasn't that big of a Dylan fan.  My record collection would beg to differ these days.)  I'm just not into whiny white boy music right now.
2. I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who.  I have no opinion on which Doctor is the best.  I only vaguely know what a "tardis" is.  We can still be friends, right?
3. I've also only watched one episode of Breaking Bad.  Oh, come on.  Sunday night is/was also the night for "Treme," "Mad Men," and "Boardwalk Empire."  How much television can one person watch in a night?
4. I gave up on True Blood.  And Dexter.  Speaking of Sunday nights.  These showed so much promise.  But no.  I quit on True Blood once they introduced fairies (faeries?).  And Dexter was just . . . overkill.
5. I hated Nirvana when they broke.  So, I am the exact right age to love, love, love Nirvana, but I don't.  When I was 18, I was listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  I'm not saying that to be snooty, it's just the truth.  I sort of feel like I missed something big with my own generation.  I own Nevermind now, but it has no nostalgia for me.
6. I bought a bunch of Dave Matthews records and even saw DMB in concert.  In Charlottesville.  I realize this is a capital crime in hipsterdom and not without some reason.  Jam bands turned improvisation into a masturbatory exercise and the douche level of DMB is pretty high.  But I didn't buy any Phish records.
7. The only comic books I bought before I was an adult were Archie comics.  The medium just didn't reach me when I was a kid.  I didn't even know anyone who was into comic books.  I don't think my town had a comic shop and I doubt my parents would have taken me to one if it did.  I totally get how cool they are and understand the obsession.  I also enjoy them to a fair degree now.  But I lack any real street cred on this topic.

Whew.  That feels better.

Need to get anything off your chest?

Why Gitmo Matters

So today is the start of Ramadan, the month-long daytime fast of Muslims worldwide.  This normally doesn't make a whole lot of news here in the U.S., but 106 of the 166 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp are on a hunger strike right now.  The strike began in March and more detainees have joined in the weeks since then.  At some point, the U.S. made the decision to force-feed the prisoners, ostensibly to prevent their suicides.

Now, force-feeding doesn't really sound nice, but most of us probably just imagine something like when we make the cat swallow a pill.  But yesterday, actor Yaslin Bey (aka Mos Def) released a video recreating a force-feeding.  The thing has gone viral now and the Twitterverse is alive with discussions about what is happening there in Cuba.  The issue of how the prisoners will be force-fed through Ramadan has also been brought up by many.  The U.S. insists that they will try to only force-feed after after sunset, but many think this just won't be possible, given that it takes between 45 minutes and two hours to force-feed a prisoner a can of Ensure, and they do it twice a day.

The Pentagon has responded predictably, saying that Mr. Bey is an actor and the video was a "theatrical performance."  That really just begs the question though.*  To date, no actual video of a force-feeding in Guantanamo has been provided (ahem, Wikileaks), so most of us have no reference point.  Bey's video at least puts a face to the practice.

It also seems to have people talking about the prison camp, which seems like a good thing.  Since the first prisoners were brought there in January of 2002, the camp's existence has just become another fact of American life.  President Obama ran on promises to close the prison, but that priority has lagged.  Most of us are ill-informed about Guantanamo and it seems we'd rather not think about what goes on there.

Here are a few of the most pertinent facts:

• Of the 166 remaining prisoners at Gitmo, 86 have been cleared for release, yet they still remain imprisoned.
• The majority of detainees do not have demonstrated ties to terrorist organizations.
• Only 7 of the total 779 prisoners that have ever been held in the prison camp have been convicted by the military commission set up to try them.  This is more remarkable for the fact that they are not afforded full legal rights that American citizens would expect.
• Each prisoner costs about $800,000 a year to house.  This compares to $25,000 for the average federal prisoner.

The "international community," such as it is, feigns occasional outrage over the prison camp, but what can they do?  The Geneva Conventions only define individuals as "combatants" or "non-combatants," but the U.S. has simply by-passed these classifications by redefining the prisoners as a third unnamed category.  This seems like a pretty clear flouting of international law, but our lawmakers hide behind sovereignty and dare anyone to challenge them on the issue.  And because the "War on Terror" is, by definition, a never-ending "war," it may be that these prisoners will be detained permanently and never be repatriated.  

According to a recent poll, most Americans are in favor of keeping the prison open and almost half think that all of the prisoners pose a threat to the U.S. ­— in spite of the fact that only nine of the current prisoners are even charged with a crime.  Why is this?

Apart from a general xenophobia that we as Americans are guilty of, there seems to be a concerted effort in dehumanizing the prisoners in the public eye.  They have, from the beginning, been called extremely dangerous, although we've sent over 500 of them back home.  The military has limited the public's access even to images of the prisoners, as well as the detention camp itself, all in the name of "national security."  This may be why the Congress has blocked efforts to even bring them to U.S. soil and incarcerate them in federal prisons.  Out of sight is well out of mind for most of us.

We would like to believe the very best about our soldiers who work at Guantanamo, but we should have learned to be vigilant after Abu Ghraib and other abuse scandals.  In my mind at least, the recent letter from Prisoner 329, Abdelhadi Faraj has a ring of truth.  And if force-feeding is anything like what we have seen in Bey's video, a lot of us would classify that as torture as well.  (In a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the American Medical Association has said that the practice "violates core ethical values.)

America should be better than this.  Our founding documents anticipated human rights abuses and sought to prevent them.  The fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments might be invoked were we being treated in like fashion in a criminal proceeding.  Supporters of the camps argue that those rights do not extend to the prisoners in Cuba, failing to grasp that their capture and transport to foreign soil only further indicts our actions.  Were American soldiers captured and transported across the globe and held in indefinite detention and deprived of basic human rights, we would be justifiably outraged.  

Arguments that these rights do not extend to the detainees also demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of "rights."  Were one to ask the average American where our rights come from, he or she would hopefully not say from the Constitution, much less from the government or military.  The framers of our government said that all men were endowed with these rights and though they failed mightily to live by that creed when it came to the non-white population, it is their legacy to us.

If we likewise fail, history will judge us more harshly.  Whatever their race, language, religion, or place of birth, the 166 detainees in Guantanamo Bay are men.  They are our fellow travelers here and even those who may have committed crimes against us should be treated with dignity.  Perhaps it is due to the decline of religion in our lives, but past generations would have seen the image of God in each of the prisoners.  That's a very Christian idea, and one probably not espoused by the prisoners themselves, who are likely circumspect in not "ascribing partners to God."  Perhaps we don't need to go that far either.  Perhaps it would be enough if we could just see ourselves in these men.

Beyond what it means for the prisoners, our ability to respond with dignity to even those we number among our enemies humanizes us.  It seems we have become dull and do not easily hear the better angels of our nature speaking within us.  We are diminished by that prison camp in Cuba and as a people are more base and savage with each day it remains open.

Yet I am hopeful that as a nation we will progress toward our ideal of extending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the entire human family.  Let's begin in Guantanamo.

[*I think this is a correct use of the phrase "begging the question."  I checked on Grammar Girl and everything.  Forgive me if it's not.]

Mike and Lazarus

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that forbade the recognition of gay marriages.  The ruling was the most anticipated of the session, nearly eclipsing all other action by the Court, including striking down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The responses to the Court's ruling were predictably varied with both opponents and defenders of DOMA taking to traditional and alternative news outlets and social media to express their joy or frustration.

Amidst all the hullabaloo, erstwhile Arkansas governor, presidential candidate, and Baptist minister (and current Fox News host) Mike Huckabee tweeted, "My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined same sex marriage is okay: 'Jesus wept.'"  I was truly surprised by the tweet.

Huckabee, a self-identified evangelical, is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  In 1989 he was elected the president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention - the youngest person to ever hold the post.  My guess is that Mr. Huckabee has had multiple undergraduate and graduate courses in Biblical hermeneutics, or how to correctly interpret scripture.

For the evangelical Christian, correct interpretation of the Bible is central to faith; the Bible is infallible and is, in fact, "God-breathed."  The process of correct interpretation is called exegesis.  The term means reading in a way to learn what the original author meant when it was written.  (It's the religious equivalent of "strict interpretation" of the Constitution.)  It is contrasted with eisegesis, which is interpreting the Bible in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions and biases into the text.  Likewise, much care must be given by the evangelical teacher in scriptural application.  The context of the original passage is of prime importance.  Noted Christian teachers study the original Greek or Hebrew language of the text, the genre of the particular book, the author, and the historical context before presuming to speak to it's meaning or application in the lives of believers.

That's what puzzles me so much about Governor Huckabee's tweet.  I'm quite certain that he knows the context of the passage he is quoting and to make application to the subject of gay marriage is a little mystifying.

I'm sure many of you will know the story, but just a quick refresher in case it's been awhile since you've been in Sunday School:  Jesus has gone to Bethany to visit a sick friend, Lazarus, who lived with his two sisters, Mary and Martha.  By the time he arrived there, Lazarus was dead and in the tomb.  It was then that John's gospel records Jesus' tears with the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept."  Then we read that the Jews, seeing him crying, remarked, "Behold how He loved him!"  The passage goes on to describe how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, one of the many miracles recorded in the gospels.  (You can read the passage yourself in the 11th chapter of John.)

It's difficult to imagine any scholarly interpreter of scripture believing this passage was originally about, or had application to, the issue of whether the Congress of the United States could require states' to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex.  The passage is usually interpreted as a picture of the power that Jesus had over death, a testament to his divinity.  In the same chapter we find him saying, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."  It is a heady and dramatic passage for believers and one that has given comfort in times of mourning.

It's just unfathomable to me that Huckabee would twist a passage about Jesus' love for another man (an no, I am not inferring anything sexual) to make it a passage condemning the love one person has for another.

The problem is that when you believe you are speaking not just for yourself, but for the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Creator of the universe, it is difficult to not behave with a degree of arrogance.  I know of which I speak.  I used to believe, as Mr. Huckabee does, that the Bible is the final authority on all matters and that it is infallible in every respect.  To be fair to the Governor, the Bible does, in many places, roundly condemn homosexuality - and in no mild terms.  Levitical law prescribed death for any man lying with another man, calling it an "abomination."  The New Testament, too, lists homosexuals with fornicators, idolaters, thieves, and the like, as those who will not see the kingdom of God.  If you believe that each an every word written by this group of men in past centuries is without error, it is difficult to escape the conclusion, and you are emboldened to behave as some sort of divine press secretary when the Supreme Court or Congress take up the issue.

I will not detail my change of heart and mind here, but suffice it to say that I no longer hold the opinions I once did, to the dismay of many of my family and friends.  All of my confidence that I converse minute by minute with the One who spoke worlds into existence is gone.  I have been humbled.  I'm sure that many of my Christian friends and acquaintances would ascribe that to God, but I've been humbled by my own actions in recent years.  I've learned that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" better than I ever did when I was an evangelical.  To me, that means I have more questions than answers, I don't know the mind of God (or even if there is a literal god), and I try to think more kindly of my fellow travelers on this planet, though I fail often enough there, too.  (And to be clear, I'm not feigning enlightenment here, nor pretending I'm moral.  Those who know me will attest I'm neither wise nor good.)

So I would caution Governor Huckabee to behave with more humility.  If Jesus of Nazareth is risen, as those books say he was, I couldn't begin to imagine what he thinks about the ruling yesterday.  The gospels only record that he attended a wedding one time, at Cana of Galilee.  It was there that he performed his first miracle, when his mother came to him to tell him that a real crisis was about to happen - they'd run out of liquid refreshment.  Most Biblical scholars will say that it was there that he attested to his approval of marriage by turning water into wine.

Mr. Huckabee might have more accurately tweeted: "Jesus is pouring the champagne."

Spies and Metadata

I'm thinking today about Edward Snowden.

The technical contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton celebrated his 30th birthday this week hiding in Hong Kong, after revealing to The Guardian that the U.S. National Security Agency has been collecting something called "metadata" on U.S. citizens and hacking civilian computer servers of both our allies and enemies as part of a clandestine program called PRISM.  The U.S. government has revoked his passport and is seeking his extradition for revealing this information to the British newspaper.  As I write this, he has landed in Moscow, en route some believe, to Ecuador.

I'm thinking about Snowden because I believe his case provides an in-time study for how word and image cause us to process reality.  As an artist, this is no surprise.  In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, image, story, and phrase mean everything.

Take for example that word "metadata."  "Meta-" is almost certainly the most overused prefix in the English language today and no one seems to know what it means.  Meta- implies abstraction from another concept, or something that happens above or adjacent to the concept, as in "metaphysics," i.e., "above or beyond the physical realm."  "Metadata" would seem to mean "data about data," but the NSA has been collecting information about who is placing phone calls to whom and how long the calls last.  As my friend Jacob wryly noted, that just seems to be plain old data.

Yet we are meant to believe that government security agencies are not collecting "data" on U.S. citizens - it's only "metadata."  Whew.  I feel much better now.

A similar problem has arisen with just what to called Snowden.  Depending on who you ask, he may be a "traitor," or a "whistleblower."  The AP this week directed its correspondents to identify him as a "leaker," one of the most inelegant terms of recent coinage.  Some have accused him of being a "spy," failing to note the irony that he was, in fact, employed to be a spy.  Some have opined that the term "whistleblower" does not apply to Snowden as he did not follow the "proper channels" for revealing potentially embarrassing information, but what would the "proper channels" be in such a case as this?

In the age of traditional media, most of us would almost certainly know Snowden as a spy and a traitor and might not give it another thought.  But that age has passed and millions of Americans are getting to hear Snowden's story in his own words and in the words of his supporters.  Many of us wonder why the largest superpower that has ever existed is going to such great lengths to silence a man who is really just confirming something many of his fellow citizens have suspected all along.

Also troubling for the U.S. government is the image that Snowden has been able to project.  When the "enemy" is seen as "other," most of us will not investigate further.  This has been used to great effect when discussing both Islam and the Far East, whose languages, customs, and mores might be treated as a monolithic "Axis of Evil."  But Eric Snowden is a mild-mannered tech nerd with stylish glasses and hipster facial hair who has voluntarily surrendered home, family, friends, and a comfortable life in Hawaii to pass on this information.  (A similar image problem is faced in the court martial of Bradley Manning, though Americans seem to believe that soldiers should not be afforded most of the liberties for which they ostensibly fight.)

The information itself is not actually damaging to national security.  The Chinese have insisted for years that the United States is engaged in this sort of activity and now they have confirmation from someone who was involved that yes, we have hacked Chinese universities and mobile phones.  What exactly will our enemies now do with this information except say, "I told you so"?

No, the thing that is most upsetting to our government is that they are unable to control the narrative.  When we think of data we imagine things like pass codes or the locations of counter-operatives within foreign intelligence offices.  The most important piece of data that Snowden has revealed is "metadata": your government is spying on you.

That piece of data changes everything.  Government in our country is predicated on securing our liberties.  If the mechanisms designed to ensure that end are instead used to violate our liberties, what obligations do we owe our government?  As another traitor has written, "[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them (i.e., the rights of the people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . ."  Or as Mr. Snowden has said, "The public needs to know the kind of things a government does in its name, or else 'consent of the governed' is meaningless."

The outcome of this case may well depend on who controls the story and who is able to best capture the imagination of the American people.

To My Mountain Mother, on Her Birthday

Today is the 150th anniversary of the founding of my home state of West Virginia. That's called a "sesquicentennial" in case you were wondering. I was born here and have lived here my entire life.

I've always been a proud West Virginian. I am not a knight of the Golden Horseshoe (you non-West Virginians will just have to Google that), but I do know a lot about our state's history. I can tell you the state flower and bird and animal. I can sing every verse of the official state song, "The West Virginia Hills."

Yet the holiday finds me with mixed emotions. I was walking with a friend the other day along the Kanawha River in Charleston, the state capital and the city where I live. The conversation turned to our state, as it often does when hillbillies get together. 

Our state has a colorful history. There is still a wild beauty to the place, which is completely enclosed in the Appalachian mountains, and that served as a type of borderland between the native nations who inhabited the eastern U.S. when Morgan Morgan, the first white settler came to the area. 

Yet by contrast, it is also a violent place, in a way that has captured the American imagination. First came the conflict with the native peoples, like the Mingo, as they were forced from their homes and hunting grounds. There were the infamous feuds between large Scots-Irish clans, the most legendary being the Hatfield-McCoy conflict.  The feud lasted decades and resulted in over a dozen murders of men and women, most of which were never prosecuted. Then came the mine wars, with bloody clashes between Baldwin-Felts detectives and coal miners led by the fiery Mother Jones. Sheriff Sid Hatfield was murdered on the McDowell County courthouse steps and the U.S. army was eventually sent in to do battle with the miners on Blair Mountain. 

Perhaps it's just my own perspective, but for such a small place, there seems to be much bloodletting: corrupt state and county officials, wielding their power to quell dissent; Klan lynchings; fights between revenuers and moonshiners; hundreds of deaths under tons of coal; unsolved murders of small-town socialites; fatal floods caused by acts of God and the carelessness of industry; and untold incidences of domestic violence.  There was even a "textbook war" - a violent conflict over a school book adoption in the 1970s that led to shootings and school bombings. 

I suppose I've been thinking about this the last few years. As I've traveled more of the state, I've become more convinced of the fundamental violence of poverty. It's not just that the poor are driven more to overt acts of violence, along with drug use, alcoholism, obesity, and all the rest. It's also that poverty itself is dehumanizing. We have accepted a myth in this country of romantic notions of poverty. But poverty is not ennobling. The lives of the very poor are lives of incredible stress, which some seek to alleviate through OxyContin or booze, and that occasionally erupt between family members or friends. Those who have not fallen prey to these likely find themselves in church pews on Sunday mornings, where they hear that poverty is only temporary, that they should busy themselves laying up treasure where moth and rust cannot destroy, that they should pray and have faith, that the God who created them wills their poverty, or else that they simply lack the faith necessary to reap the reward they desire. They live in extreme rural locations with no access to routine medical care or other services their countrymen take for granted. 

What we fail to notice is the systemic poverty - and violence - of the place. We have a government that serves the interests of the fossil fuel industries, both coal and gas. When they aren't doing that, they occupy themselves with ensuring ready and quick availability of weapons to the criminal and mentally ill, and wrap it in patriotism and Jesus. 

Lest anyone think I'm advocating some type of socialism, I am not. It's just that our entire state has built itself around one or two business interests, instead of the interest of her own people. There are still "coal barons" who pull millions (and billions) of dollars of minerals from beneath the feet of the poorest of the poor. We accept that they "own" the coal - forgetting the untold eons it took to form.  Many who comfort the poor with tales of golden streets rush to defend the rights of the super-rich to possess the Earth itself. The meek may inherit the Earth, but Don Blankenship probably owns the mineral rights. 

It's not just coal and gas, though they historically have profited the most. And it's not just our government - it's our entire culture. We do not ask our children, "What are your aspirations?"  Instead, we seek to prepare them to serve the dreams of the wealthy. 

I know that West Virginia is not alone in this regard, but it serves as a case study, perhaps, of our failures to our fellow travelers in this world. And it's also my home. 

So happy birthday, Mountain State. I hope this evening to enjoy the fireworks over the Kanawha, sitting on the sun porch of my apartment, just across the street from the governor's mansion. My dream for you is that you come to embody your motto: "Montani Semper Liberi" - "Mountaineers are always free" - and that this freedom would come to embrace the very least among us. 

The Last House on the Well-Manicured Cul-de-Sac

Let me begin by saying that The Purge, starring Ethan Hawke and Lena "House of Lannister" Hedley is not a movie for everyone.  My mother, for example, would hate this movie from the outset.  So my comments are really for those who might like this movie, if this is the type of movie one is inclined to like.  Who is that, exactly?  I'm not sure writer and director James DeMonaco knows exactly.

On the one hand, it's part home invasion thriller.  So, you know, all of the typical testosterone-filled 18-35-year-old males who go in for those movies might be the intended audience.  On the other hand, it's kind of an intelligent dystopian future political commentary, the kind that might be based on a book you had to read your junior year of high school if you had a progressive English teacher who also assigned Animal Farm and Brave New World.  Except this isn't based on a book.  So the intended audience might be the intellectual type who call movies "films" and think the NSA poses a serious threat to civil rights.

I guess the problem is that the type of film that appeals to both of these groups isn't likely to be the same film and The Purge probably falls a little short with both groups.  (See what I did there?  I called it a "film.")  In fact, I might be just the perfect intended audience member for this movie, because I like both home invasion thrillers and dystopian political commentary, but it kind of doesn't work for me either.

Briefly: the story is set in 2022 and there has been some sort of political upheaval leading to a "nation reborn."  Once a year for a twelve-hour period, all law is suspended, and many citizens go on a "hunt" - wreaking havoc and murdering others with impunity.  The net result is that crime at other times is exceptionally low and the economy is thriving.  Our supposed protagonist, James Sandin (Hawke), has benefitted considerably from the purge by selling very expensive home security systems to wealthy families.  The movie begins just an hour before the 7:00 P.M. start of the bloodletting, with Sandin arriving home to his wife (Hedley), a teenage daughter who has a boyfriend the parents don't approve of, and a misfit younger son who is luckily precocious with robots and hiding.  Two potential sources of story conflict begin when a. the boyfriend sneaks into the home just prior to the security system being armed and b. the junior Sandin, possessed of scruples of unknown origin, disarms the security system to let in a homeless man who is being hunted by a mob of entitled ivy-league collegians, dressed in school blazers, khakis, and creepy masks.  Learning that their prey has found refuge chez Sandlin, they come knocking.

As a premise, I think it's pretty brilliant.  Yet it comes apart in execution.

<Spoilers ahead>

I'm guessing it's in the interest of time, but DeMonaco gives short shrift to world building.  We're looking at a U.S. just nine years in the future and no real explanation is given about the events that led to the "nation reborn."  It strains credulity to watch the Sandins' neighbors proceed to deliver cookies, chant government mantras, and mutilate teenagers in Stepfordesque complicity.  DeMonaco seems to believe that the wealthy would happily populate the world he has created with nary a thought to the psychic repercussions of murder.  Strangely, the Sandins seem to be the only ones in the neighborhood who are troubled by the practice at all, in spite of the fact that their wealth is built on the purge.  I have no doubt that wealth may create the amoral zombies that we see in the movie, I just think it might take more than a decade.  Perhaps if the setting were 2042 instead of 2022 . . . I don't know.

What the film does best, in my opinion, is work Edwin Hodge's character, the target of the hunt.  Hodge plays the role close the reality that we see on a daily basis in this country.  We truly feel his fear as he is hunted, first in the street and later in the house.  Even as we watch him attack the family, our sympathies are with him: what else could someone backed into such a desperate corner, literally and figuratively, possibly do?

At those moments, the film's central thesis comes through clearest: poverty is violence.  In a world where even our personal security is dependent upon wealth, the poor are victims of the larger culture.  Poverty is an assault on one's personhood, an idea given an exclamation point by DeMonaco's refusal to give Hodge's character a name.  At the movie's denouement, Mrs. Sandin is left at her dining table saying goodbye to the neighbors who have terrorized her, calling them by their names.  She doesn't invite the homeless man to stay, or even inquire as to his name, even though he has saved her life and the lives of her children.  He is instead left to return to the streets where the purge is just a particularly nightmarish episode in a life of daily terrors.

(Aside: Bravo to DeMonaco for making the homeless man almost the only black face we see in the movie.  Although the film is tackling poverty, the subtext of racial inequality is given a human face through Hodge.)

On this level, the movie should work, addressing poverty, along with the country's obsession with guns, our desensitization to violence, and the sometimes sinister roles of media and government.  Yet it doesn't work, not really.

The main fault of the film is that it spends fairly substantial screen time engaging in just the sort of violent voyeurism that DeMonaco seemed to set in his sights.  We get sprays of automatic weapon fire into various torsos, axes buried into backs and skulls, and the leader of the hunting party glibly blowing off the head of a cohort.  The audience is left reacting precisely as they would in any other home invasion thriller, not only hoping the Sandins make it through the night but cheering wildly when the bad guys get their bloody comeuppance.  In the theater where I watched, the audience of mostly white twenty-somethings only really seemed to come alive when someone was being butchered.  This was made easier by the fact that the hunters themselves were dehumanized, not only through their inexplicably unconscionable acts, but also because most of them remained masked throughout the movie.  In short, DeMonaco seems to be offering a critique of the way the poor are dehumanized and then provides an alternative: dehumanize the rich instead.

Now, I'm rarely a critic of movie violence.  While I am given occasional pause considering its effects on the very young, I believe that Bowdlerized stories lead us to imagine that violence is not real.  The problem with The Purge is that its use of violence is to the detriment of the central point of the film.  Just as the audience is beginning to consider the brutal reality of poverty, they are given an out through escapist fantasy.

I really wanted to like this movie, but it was ultimately unsatisfying.  Maybe if there is a remake in a few years, they'll get it right.  In the meantime, I hope we see more art that wrestles with this uncomfortable issue in American life.

Superhero with a Thousand Faces

I am fresh from seeing Man of Steel, Christopher Nolan's Superman reboot.  A few stray observations (spoilers ahead):

1. Overall the movie is an excellent addition to the Superman canon.  For an origin story appearing in 2013, it seems to avoid most of the hipster meta-commentary on the meaning of the superhero. This seems particularly noteworthy, given director Zack Snyder's past with Watchmen and Nolan's vision for the Dark Knight trilogy.
2. Joseph Campbell needs a co-writing credit on this one.  I don't know if Nolan and Snyder immersed themselves in The Hero with a Thousand Faces or have just spent lots of weekends at Lucas Ranch, but this movie wears its mono myth on its sleeve and borrows heavily on Biblical imagery.  Clark/Kal has been made "a little lower than the angels" for awhile, the father sending his only begotten (not made, contra other children on Krypton) son, to save the world.  He is found in a basket-shapped ship, which is kept in the stable/barn, and he grows up as a normal human until he's ready to begin his ministry and ultimately his destiny . . . at age 33.  He even has his own garden moment in an inoffensive church of nondescript denomination, complete with a stained glass depiction of  Christ in Gethsemane over His his shoulder.  (According to adherents.com, Clark's family are Methodists.)
3. This is really the first Superman film fully imagined as an alien story.  Others certainly play around with the idea, but Krypton is completely developed and the alien craft would be right at home on Star Trek.
4. Speaking of which, Krypton is a pretty groovy planet that kept reminding me of Vulcan on the Star Trek reboot for some reason, maybe because we spend a good portion of our time there watching the place destruct.  They have really cool computer interfaces that frankly make me sorry I'm typing on a keyboard right now, and I really dig the art deco/Metropolis feel, especially when ghost Jor-El is telling Kal about the history of the place.
5. In case anyone forgot, Superman is a 'Merican.  He even says so, including once while American flags are waving over his shoulder.  His mom (Diane Lane) works at Sears, dammit!  (And was anyone else surprised by that product placement, including widow Kent's blue Sears polo and worker lanyard around her neck?)  He does manage to take out an unmanned drone that is spying on him.  He is currently still silent on the ones used to kill Afghans and Pakistanis, however.
6. Other unexpected product placement: IHOP.  And like, 27 times.
7. Henry Cavill is pretty great in the lead and manages to reimagine the character in a way that departs entirely from Christopher Reeves' portrayal, while keeping close to the source.  I was never personally a huge fan of Reeves' Superman, though it was certainly hard not to imagine it as commentary on his own life in later years.
8. Can someone just go ahead and acknowledge that Clark/Kal seems to have a pretty nonchalant attitude toward "collateral damage," including that which he seems to cause by, for example, chucking aliens into the gas pumps at 7-11 and watching the place blow up?
9. Amy Adams is a pretty forgettable Lois Lane.  I can't buy her as the "intrepid reporter" and really wanted Margot Kidder back.  She is given a few clever moments, however, like her inquiry about what the "S" stands for (interrupted just before she posits "Super") and her tongue-in-cheek greeting to Clark at the newspaper ("Welcome to the Planet.")
10. General Zod is one of the great villains and Michael Shannon is perfect.  He brings a lot of the self-righteous-but-ultimately-evil vibe with him from Boardwalk Empire.
11. Russell Crowe is a cool Jor-El, but I'm pretty sure they cast him for his dragon flying skills.  I didn't like his Ghost of Christmas Future bit on board the ship though.
12. The "dream sequence" (or whatever that was) between Zod and Kal seems lifted (in style at least) from Watchmen's dream sequence with Night Owl and Silk Spectre.  Except the part where Kal is sinking in human skulls, which reminded me of the climax of Drag Me to Hell.
13. Also, the Kryoptonian ship seems to employ the same technology as is used in The Matrix, where bits of metal can reform into some sort of sentience.  Scary shit.
14. Laurence Fishburne is a completely unintimidating Perry White, perhaps due to his earring.
15. Is it strange that we are now better at depicting what major American cities might look like if attacked by large destructive powers?  I mean, we know all about the clouds of ash and the papers floating around.  Did anyone think of those things pre-2001?
16. For my taste, they spend too much time just blowing shit up.  They could have easily trimmed the 143-minute run time by twenty minutes with no damage to the story.
17. Something in the Earth's gravitational pull ensures that anything entering the atmosphere (baby-ship, meteor, flying aliens, etc.) will only land in Metropolis or Smallville, KS.
18. This is my favorite suit, by far.  It's not just that the suit is stylish and indestructible, it actually looks indestructible.
19. Also indestructible: Kal's coif. 
20. Ghost Jor-El apparently insists (offscreen) that Clark/Kal shave before dawning the suit.  Which leads to the obvious question given the above observation, "How does Superman shave?"  I'm so glad you asked.
21. The cape does seem a particular disadvantage if you encounter fellow Kryptonians in battle, however.  They will use it to sling you into buildings.
22. Also cape-related: one of the flashbacks near the end shows a boy Clark Kent in his back yard pretending to be a superhero while wearing a quickly-fashioned red cape.  But, um . . . who is he imitating?
23. Kevin Costner reprises his role as Kevin Costner.
24. Was it just me, or was there some sort of under-current of faith versus science in the movie, with science wearing the black hat?  Clark/Kal discusses some nebulous "faith" at various points (and is clearly a Christ figure, as noted above), but the baddie-woman also says at one point, "If history has taught us anything, it's that evolution always wins," just before Superman and the 'Mericans kick her space ass.
25. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is completely forgettable and although I understand they didn't want to do the whole John Williams thing, this barely rises above mood music.  Notable exceptions: some song with guitar when Clark is on a fishing boat (have to search this one out via the Google) and Allison Crowe doing "Ring of Fire."

All in all, if you care about Superman or superheroes, you should go see it.  Of course, if you care about these things, you've already seen it.  Also recommended for Jungians, Christopher Meloni completists, and people who like seeing things blown up.

P.S. For my own take on the Superman mythology, go take a listen over at Soundcloud.

A Humble Proposition

The last few weeks have me thinking a lot about guns.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal here that I have been a gun owner in my life and am historically very leery of efforts to disarm the citizenry.  Jefferson famously said that where the governments fears the people, there is liberty; but where the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  This is one of his primary arguments for the second amendment to the Constitution.  It was also, of course, why Jefferson argued against a standing army.  It is interesting to me note that the disbanding of our standing army plays so little in discussion of second amendment rights.  It may also be worth noting that Jefferson rarely armed his slaves, though I'm not entirely sure what motivated his decision there.

Yet, despite my desire for an armed citizenry and a disarmed military, I think that the time has perhaps come for me to rethink my position somewhat.  I will confess here that my judgment may have become somewhat clouded by the recent events in Newtown, Conn.  I have a certain sentimentality for images of frightened children sobbing uncontrollably after their classmates have been shot multiple times with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.  But I recognize the media's attempt to manipulate my emotions through shocking images such as these.

It is hardly fair, after all, to attack weapons such as the AR-15 (the rifle the U.S. military refers to as an M16).  The AR-15 is actually banned as a hunting weapon in some states because the ammunition is not strong enough.  Wiser state legislatures recognize that it would be extremely inhumane to allow a less-effective weapon to be used against a 250 lb. adult deer.  Fortunately for the children at Sandyhook Elementary, the weapon was sufficiently effective in its use against first graders, as the average 40 lb. six-year-old can be felled with significantly less ammunition than his cervine counterparts.

It seems to me that a rational compromise can be reached on this front.  If we allow the state to restrict which weapons may be used against game animals, it certainly seems reasonable that they could restrict which ones may be uses against other human beings.  I realize that the language would have to be crafted rather carefully, however, taking into account the age, size, and general health of the would-be target.  For example, the state could require that those targeting adult males in the prime of life use a 50-caliber weapon, making a clean kill more certain.  If your target were kindergarten students, however, a simple 22 might suffice (though the larger caliber weapons would obviously do the job, too).  In that particular instance, however, it might be essential to craft code to insist on at least semi-automatic weapons with large magazines, since young children are small and naturally quick and all the more so if startled by the unexpected arrival of a stranger with an assault weapon at school.

The National Rifle Association has been quick to point out that more guns may have prevented the recent tragedy.  When I learned that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had taken his mother's legally-purchased hand guns and semi-automatic rifle, leaving her with only two traditional hunting rifles to defend herself against her murderous son, it really got me wondering.  What if she had owned two legally-purchased Bushmaster AR-15 rifles?  She might just have had a fighting chance herself, and prevented the needless deaths of 20 elementary school children.  (I would add here that it is probably advisable to actually own a third rifle as a back-up, as the AR-15 is known for it's tendency to jam when not kept clean. And let's face it: who has time to clean all of those weapons on a daily basis?)

In the wake of the shooting, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for an armed officer in every school in America.  While the closet libertarian in me may question the wisdom of putting an armed police officer in every school and vaguely wonder if this may be the precursor to the sort of police state our aforementioned third president may have been warning us against, I think LaPierre has a point.  He correctly pointed out that we have armed guards at courthouses and airports and this effectively prevents tragedies in those venues.  And please spare me the liberal diatribe about the New Jersey gunman who seized an officer's weapon in a police station filled with armed officers, just two weeks after the Newtown incident.  The fact of the matter is that in that particular case, the gunman was killed while only wounding three officers.  Were it a school and an unarmed criminal had seized an officer's weapon, it is unlikely that he could take out more than five or six children before being shot himself.

This does bring me to another salient point, however.  Many in the public sphere, such as Texas Governor Rick Perry, rightly recognize that this does not go far enough.  These critics have called for arming teachers.  I could not agree more.  Like many on the far right, I do not trust the education of our nation's youth to such a lazy and incompetent group as public school teachers, but let me be the first to say that I do trust them with the safe handling and discharge of large-caliber rifles and handguns in America's classrooms.

Yet I cannot help but wonder, "Is this enough?"  Clearly, the answer is "no."  In the average American classroom there is only one teacher.  A savvy gunman would obviously target the teacher first, preventing her from quickly accessing her safely stowed weapon and defending the children in her charge.  No, the answer is much more radical, yet ridiculously obvious: we need to arm every single student in American schools.

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that arming every school-age child creates myriad problems, including the likelihood that some outcast loser (like an Adam Lanza or Dylan Klebold) would use the state-provided weapon to attack other students because he was picked last in kickball.  But consider it for a moment: if you knew that the class weirdo had a 44 magnum in his backpack, would you even think of giving him a wedgie?

Is it an expensive proposition?  Certainly, but isn't the safety of America's children worth it?

So how are we going to pay for it?  Well, I wondered that, too, until I read Mr. LaPierre's comments more carefully.

What is the root cause of this violence we see in America?  Clearly, it is neither legal gun ownership nor the availability of weapons with 30+ round magazines.  No, it something much more sinister.  Hear the words of the NRA spokesman:

There exists in this country a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.  Through vicious, violent video games . . . blood-soaked slasher films . . . and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.  And they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."

Digital media creators, actors, writers, directors, singers, and musicians.  These are the true culprits in American society.

Guns don't kill people, art kills people.

To pay for the presence of a school police force, the arming of both teachers and students in every school, and the design of a comprehensive marksmanship curriculum, I suggest the complete elimination of school arts programs.  These programs are costly and encourage students to "express themselves."  It is, no doubt, this sort of self-reflection that leads many of these monsters to unleash their inner demons on society at large.  Further, the content espoused by these so-called "academic subjects" include violent music, such as murderous British folk ballads and drug-induced homicidal fantasies, like Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique; the sexualized violence of the dance stage, as evident in Le Sacre du printemps; and canvas grotesqueries, for instance, those by Hieronymus Bosch.  Theatre, of course, seems almost designed to inculcate violence in our young people, with the Bard's Scottish play practically a requirement of the high school literary curriculum.

With the complete elimination of school arts programs, those industries will soon dry up and leave our shores for more barbaric countries like Finland or the U.K.  We will have no more music, film, or literature poisoning young minds.  Our children will grow up knowing only fresh air and the joy of mastering assault weaponry.

I realize there may be resistance to this plan at first, but I can honestly think of no reasonable alternative.  I urge the president, Congress, and the U.S. Department of Education to implement this plan quickly, before it is too late.