Archive for the 'Culture' Category

Cube^3

Published
by
Cineris
on October 21, 2007
in Culture and Visual
. 0 Comments

Cube2

As October’s been passing along I’ve been trying to catch up a bit on some of my backlog of horror movies. Cube and its two sequels were movies that I’d heard of before via friends, but never seen. Last weekend they popped into my mind for whatever reason, and I ended up picking up the trilogy to watch.

For the time being I’m going to limit my discussion to the first film. I’ll get to the sequels later. The concept of the movie is pretty simple: People are stuck in a cube, which is comprised of smaller cubes. In fact, the concept seems so sketchy that I was worried if the movie was going to be able to carry itself. Thankfully, it did so really well. The movie paces its revelations well enough that, even though you think there’s nothing further to unfold, there is. It works out well and keeps what could be a kind of tedious exercise, a group of people crawling through identical cubic rooms, interesting until the very end.

Although Cube is a horror movie, it’s not a slasher flick or the torture porn that passes for horror these days. Cube actually reminds me of what I thought of when I first heard the concept for Saw — “A serial killer who puts people in situations where they kill themselves,” ingenious, I thought. Sadly, Saw didn’t live up to my high hopes, but Cube is in the vein I was hoping for, a cerebral sort of horror.

Cube1

Here’s where the spoilers begin. I’ll probably also be making comparisons to the sequels, so fair warning.

Continue reading ‘Cube^3′

Last of the Time Lords

Published
by
Cineris
on October 8, 2007
in Culture, Politics and Visual
. 0 Comments

About a week ago, after watching the second part of a three part finale to the third season of Doctor Who, I got to thinking about the show. For awhile, meaning for most of the first season and about half of season 2, I was a big fan of Battlestar Galactica. My feelings on the series soured after a particularly bad second half of season 2, and a generally pretty mediocre season 3, with a spectacularly bad season 3 finale.

Some spoilers behind the cut.
Continue reading ‘Last of the Time Lords’

Tunnels and Trolls

Published
by
Cineris
on October 3, 2007
in Culture and Politics
. 21 Comments

Just a fair warning, this is a touchy subject for some people, and kind of off my typical subject matter. After reading 150+ comments over at Shamus’ site, I felt pretty compelled to add in my two cents.

If you read the comments to that post, you know how this one really brought out the real trolls of the internet. All manner of them, they came from the depths, with their warts and boils and their horrifying breath rasping out battle-cries such as, “Race and gender are social constructs!” It was frightening, and a few intrepid posters foolishly went at them with their swords sharpened. Trolls cannot be slain by conventional weapons, in fact, they only become more and more agitated by them. Trolls can only be killed by fire.

Those of us who don’t live in solipsistic darkness where external reality is only what we believe or imagine it to be can recognize that these claims are patently false. Skin color is not a good proxy for race, but races are genetically real concepts. Gender is sex. Despite the attempts by Feminists to redefine this word, Feminists have never made a serious attempt at delineating or measuring the influence of sex as opposed to gender. Gender therefore means only what Feminists decide it means as it is convenient for them at the time. Until science has made a great deal more progress, the influence of “sex” as opposed to “gender” is largely unknown and isn’t worth discussing, particularly not with those who think that their thoughts determine what is real.

Both of these are tangents, however. The real battle in the comments took place over the idea that “Rape is about power.” This is actually a shibboleth repeated by Trolls to determine whether the beings they encounter in their darkness are other Trolls, or if they are interlopers from the surface world. If it turns out the being was not another Troll, 1d3 Trolls are summoned within the next round.

“Rape is about Power” is not a verifiable claim. At best, this is a consensus, not a fact. In the world of Trolls, enough of a consensus may determine reality, but in reality it does no such thing. This sort of consensus is particularly suspect given the well-documented and overwhelming political bias of the Psychology field. As a further strike against the validity of this claim, a quick Google search revealed hundreds, possibly thousands of feminist agitprop sites using the formulation, MYTH: Rape is about sex. FACT: Rape is about power.

Even if “Rape is about Power” were true, what does that tell us? Aside from completely misleading us about when, where, why, and how rapes occur, it tells us nothing. One may as well say “Money is about Power.” Yes, and? An understanding of power relationships is already included in folk-psychological understandings of rape. Pseudo-expertise insisting that “Rape is about Power,” though, is far poorer in that it excludes the most obvious and influential factor in rape, sexual desire.

The claim is made not to illuminate our understanding of the subject to help prevent it, but instead to cast it into the Trolls’ delusion of “The Patriarchy.” According to this ideology, rape is a systematic expression of power by this mythical “Patriarchy” over women. Yet another tool in the toolbox, amongst things such as “Truth,” “Science,” “Marriage,” and so on. In reality, the claim “Rape is about Power” is about power. The entire point of this claim is not to help women or stop rape, it is to frame the unacceptable act of rape in terms that Trolls control. It is both a cavern that entices the curious into the darkness of the Trolls, and a weapon that can be used to frame those who oppose the Troll’s perception of reality as being supportive of socially and morally unacceptable behavior.

End of Andromeda, Part 2

Published
by
Cineris
on September 23, 2007
in Culture and Visual
. 0 Comments

Spoilers Alert.

Continue reading ‘End of Andromeda, Part 2′

Dadaist Comics

Published
by
Cineris
on September 20, 2007
in Culture and Visual
. 0 Comments

Fark ran a story about a guy who forced himself to read all the comics in the newspaper every day for two weeks — The article itself was trash (”How bad was it,” you ask? It claimed that Doonesbury was funny.) but the Fark comments thread it spawned is genius. I was literally laughing out loud for a good five minutes at some of the comics posted there. They even convinced me Garfield is a good strip.

Comics1

Comics2

Comics3

Comics4

Comics5

Comics6

Related: Here’s a Garfield Comics Randomizer, which takes 3 panels from three different comics. This thing is absolutely genius.

End of Andromeda

Published
by
Cineris
on September 18, 2007
in Culture and Visual
. 1 Comment

A long, long time ago I mentioned I was going to start up watching Andromeda, the Sci Fi series with Kevin Sorbo. As I write this, I’m one episode away from finally finishing the series.

Andromeda3

It’s kind of strange because I don’t know what’s coming. After five years, the series has to come to a point, and to a resolution. And where can it go? The possibilities seem so endless that this series could end up being pretty good overall, or a big disappointment.

If there’s anything that can be said for this series is that it’s uneven. Most of the time it’s average fare, but occasionally it really shines. In fact, two of its episodes are probably the best televised sci fi I’ve ever seen. On other occasions, it’s virtually unwatchable, and nearly physically painful to watch.

Andromeda2 Andromeda1 Andromeda4

My biggest feeling is how much potential this story has, if it were told without the constraints of typical network TV fare. There’s just too much filler in each season for me to recommend watching the whole thing to anyone else. Furthermore, a lot of the pacing between shows is done pretty poorly — arcs that are set up that seem like they should last for an entire season are resolved in an episode, arcs that seem like they should be resolved in a few episodes are stretched out over a season. This story really cries out to me for a retelling — But I think I’m too attached to the actors (especially Keith Hamilton Cobb, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, and Laura Bertram) to accept anyone else in their parts. Maybe in the future, when fully digitized actors are most cost-effective, it’d be feasible to do something like that.

Any way, I need to decide when I want to watch this last episode. In some ways, the potentiality of what could be is far more sublime than what is.

OS-Tan

Published
by
Cineris
on September 6, 2007
in Anime, Art, Culture and Technology
. 0 Comments

or, “People Scare Me (especially Japanese people)”

I remember seeing this image awhile ago and thinking how crazy someone must be to make something as weird and fetishistic as this.

OSTan2

Apparently though, there’s a whole genre of fetishization of software, operating systems, machines, and all that kind of fun stuff. It’s called “OS-tan” in Japan. Gigantic surprise — yet another crazy Japanese fad. I found this link over on Reddit to a repository of this madness.

This second one isn’t quite as technically good, but at least it’s not quite as strange. I have to admit I find the concept of a fox-girl holding a giant ball between her legs a little … questionable, but, at least it’s not as overtly sexual.

OSTan3

The weirdest one I’ve come across is this one. I dunno, just the combination of the prepubescent little girl with the text blaring you to “Try!” … Yikes.

OSTan1

Getting Jazz

Published
by
Cineris
on September 5, 2007
in Culture and Music
. 0 Comments

Over at 2Blowhards Michael made a rather long and involved post dealing with elitism, snobbery, high and low arts, America, Europe, and all that. Definitely a great post, and worth checking out.

Michael talks about Jazz as an example of the sort of eclectic American mix of low/high art, and how these categories that have developed in the European art world lose relevance when talking about the American arts world. I’m not entirely in agreement with this sort of thing, as I’m a major elitist, but I’m also in favor of poking the academic arts world in the eye now and again. What I can appreciate about the so-called “low” arts in America is the raw vitality, the in-touchness with human themes and emotions, whereas so much of the academic world seems to be caught up in the pure cerebral.

As usual, the comments on any 2Blowhards post are half the fun. After reading some 50 comments or so, what strikes me is how many people seem to accept as a given that jazz is a “Great Art Form”. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t get jazz. Maybe I haven’t listened to enough, or only to the wrong people. For me, Jazz seems to fall into roughly three categories. The first is as background music that might be part of an enjoyable experience so long as it’s not the central focus of the activity or action. A recent example for me is the music in Taxi Driver, which I found to have great, evocative and moody music without being overpowering to the rest of the movie. The second is sleep-inducing. I’ve listened to a fair amount of jazz, and half the time where I’m simply listening to jazz it seems to induce narcolepsy in me. It’s actually quite astounding, because I can be feeling perfectly fine one minute, then put on some Miles Davis or Charlie Parker and I’ll be napping in no time. The third is just painful. Maybe it’s the academic-bent of the artists that’ve been recommended to me, but a good quarter to half of the jazz I’ve heard is legitimately painful for me to listen to. Whether it’s the brass instrumentation, the poor recording quality, overemphasis on cerebral stimulation, the atonal and dissonant qualities just overwhelm my ears.

To delve into pure nerditude for a moment, it always struck me as beyond belief that Will Riker from Star Trek: TNG would be a big fan of jazz some four hundred years in the future. Jazz today strikes me as a relic that’s pretty much only sustained by academics who use jazz as a form of boosterism for credibility. Mix and match buzzwords like improvisation, syncopation, polyrhythms, throw in a few mentions of dead musicians or fifty year old albums and, voila! Instantly you’re a hip cat with something relevant to say.

Or not. Personally, I think jazz is dead. Whatever historical forces aligned to allow the creation and appreciation of jazz are over, at least in my eyes. In four hundred years jazz is going to be as widely appreciated as medieval folk music is now — And I generally like medieval folk music. But lets not pretend like jazz is something special or enduring. I’m over the “magical negro” formulation, over “soul” being used as a code-word for black, and over the white-guilt appreciation of jazz. I’m over musical scholarship playing its stupid political games using jazz as its knight in shining armor for its neo-Marxist “post-Colonialist” narratives. I’m over people tossing around names of techniques used in the creation of music, to build up its aura of mystique and respectability. Why should I care if I don’t enjoy the music?

On Fantasy

Published
by
Cineris
on August 12, 2007
in Culture and Literature
. 2 Comments

A couple days ago when I was jotting down my thoughts on The Hobbit I came across this interesting post by Andrea on Fantasy as a genre. I really wanted to incorporate it somehow into my Hobbit post, but I couldn’t think of a direct way to link it in and still discuss my reading experiences and impressions.

I’m refraining from endorsing Andrea’s perspective — I honestly don’t think I’ve read enough fantasy lately to have an opinion one way or the other — but I do find her demolition of a lot of modern fantasy books interesting and entertaining. She tears into David Eddings, a writer who I haven’t read but who I’ve heard about secondhand and seems pretty mediocre from everything I’ve heard:

Edding’s is the kind of writer who would have Frodo say to Gandalf when he was safe in Minas Tirath, “You used me, you bastard. You knew I’d claim the ring, and so you told Sam to kill me and toss me in the Pit of Doom when I did. You didn’t have the balls you needed to do what you and your masters needed to do ages ago, so you arranged for a poor dumb schlub like me to take the fall for you. If it weren’t for Gollum I’d be a dead hero and nobody would be the wiser.”

If this is the impression Eddings gives his fans, he’s even worse at writing fantasy than I remember.

I find this little bit pretty interesting on a couple of levels. I’ve never really looked at what happened to Frodo in the context of Gandalf “using” him, but that’s actually a pretty valid possible interpretation. Now, we know Gandalf is a good guy, so that doesn’t work in any sensible reading of the books as a whole, but kind of curious nonetheless.

I do see Andrea’s point in rejecting that interpretation as being valid for “Fantasy” — Gandalf isn’t a character who inhabits a grey moral area. He’s white. He’s good. That’s all quite clear without needing any explanation. If we had a Frodo that came back to us after the events on Mt. Doom embittered with Gandalf for being “used” then we’d feel very confused indeed, because the majority of three books would have been cast in doubt with such a turn.

On the other hand, I’m not entirely convinced that Fantasy must inhabit a world of stark moral choice between good and evil. The one fantasy series I have been reading recently, A Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Martin, is pretty much the opposite of this. One could argue that the lines of moral choice haven’t been drawn yet — There seems to be a gathering storm in Martin’s universe, but it’s not quite clear what the sides will look like or who will be on what side. I’m not even convinced that the series will have a fulfilling ending, as the series does give the impression it could go on in a soap-operatic neverending series.

Now, even though I’m sort of vacillating between agreement and disagreement, I do think Andrea’s observation on the end result of all this is spot on:

I could go on and on. (In fact, I have.) But I’ll end with the effect all of this downgrading, flattening out, and fluffing has on the fantasy story: it breaks the wall. It jolts the reader awake from the dream. It reveals the gold and scarlet gems to be tinsel and plastic.

A lot of modern fantasy does really give me a cheap feeling. I read about a page or two of Eragon before I had to put it down. Any modern game or videogame in a fantasy setting is pretty much just an excuse to collect hundreds of magical items and get caught up in gee-whiz spell effects. I like spectacle, but I need substance as well. The last fantasy series I tried to read, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, gave me the same feeling. I enjoyed Dragonball Z in a sort of guilty pleasure sort of way, but I find it depressing that Rand, Jordan’s main character, kept giving me flashbacks to Goku as I was reading. It seems ridiculous to look at the Mary Sue/ power trip nature of a lot of this sort of writing with any sort of objectivity.

(I suppose one might argue for a distinction between Fantasy as a thematic genre, and Fantasy / pseudo-Medievalism as a setting. But that’d probably be pointless, as people in general aren’t going to bother making that distinction.)