Movies & Dreams Part 2: Idiocracy

Marcie and I were in Boston recently (more on that later) and one night in our cable-equipped hotel room we caught the movie Idiocracy. This was Mike Judge’s low-profile effort in between Office Space and Extract. Idiocracy starts from the Darwinist premise that dumb people are reproducing much faster than smart people, meaning that smart will eventually die out and dumb will take over the world. Technology and societal mechanisms become idiot-proof enough to keep humanity alive before all good sense disappears. As you might expect, Mike Judge’s picture of a future Stupidtopia is hilarious. Ironically, the film stumbles due to the dumbing down of its presentation. Too much is delivered via omniscent voice-over, and the story eventually devolves into a pedestrian and implausible race against the clock.

I had a dream that night in which we watched the same movie, but it was better- a smart, magical realism kind of scenario. There was a group of animals who were beginning to use the tools and technology left idle, evolving to fill the niche for intelligence left vacant by the idiot humans. Then, in their hubris, the humans exterminated the evolving animals, thus sealing the doom of intelligence on Earth. That would have been a good movie, and probably just as profitable.

Movies & Dreams Part 1: Big Man Japan

Someone (Erik?) described Big man Japan as “The Spinal Tap of Godzilla movies.” That’s a perfect description. The movie is about Daisato, who is a normal guy most of the time. When a giant monster threatens Japan, he heads to the nearest power station, gets zapped, and becomes a pudgy giant with Eraser Head hair and a ludicrous little club. Most of the film follows Daisato (or Sato, I suppose, Dai meaning giant) going about his daily life. His grandfather was a popular giant guardian, but Sato is seen as a nuisance. In between battles, he ignores rocks thrown through his windows, tries to connect with his estranged wife and daughter, and fights with his agent over sponsor tattoos.

All in all, a superbly crafted satire of the daikaiju genre. I found it profoundly disturbing. I don’t what that says about the film, or about me. Part of it is coincidence. If you apply Daisato’s vertical hairstyle to the Superfriends and the original cast of Star Trek, you have images from my worst childhood nightmare. It sounds silly described in the light of day, but in its sheer sense of wrongness it remains the most frightening dream I’ve ever had. Add to that the surreal, dreamlike quality of the monster battles, which begin and end in highly disjointed fashion (echoing the trademark choppy editing of traditional monster movies). All the monsters have human faces, making them infinitely more creepy than Ghidorah. And Daisato is essentially enacting the classic bad dream scanario, running around in towering visibility in his underwear. His CGI giant face has an inhuman life, a more animal intelligence, more suited to his usual silence than his spoken confrontation with the Stink Monster. At which point, by the way, the visual gags begin to cross the line into Asian body horror.

The final scene is astonishing, and narratively ambiguous, and probably hilarious, but for me it was pure nightmare. If you don’t want me to spoil it, skip the next paragraph. You’ve got the gist of things by now.

Up until the end, all giant characters are computer animation. In the final showdown, they are actors in suits, in an obviously artificial miniature city. The transition is marked by the appearance of the Super Justice family, a group of American giants who look like disco-sitcom versions of Jet Jaguar. Daisato, now the actor playing Sato in a puffy muscle suit and vertical wig, crouches stoically amid the skyscrapers, hiding from his nemesis, the Red Monster. The Red Monster, who was quite scary in CGI, is patently ridiculous in suitmation, as if even the costumers have too much contempt to put more than cursory effort into his creation. He offers no resistance as Super Justice and his family gleefully, systematically abuse him. Daisato is humiliated from beginning to end; cowering behind buildings, failing to add anything to the group-generated power beam, pooping his pants when the SJs fly him away.

It’s likely I over-identify with silly monsters. One of Lynda Barry’s writing exercises is to identify “your monster” and write about it. Her example is the gorgon, which she found especially frightening as a child because of a resonance with her mother. I have always loved monsters, but never found them scary. My conclusion from the exercise was that rather than externalizing my fears or anxieties, monsters suggested to me a powerful existence within alienation. I’m sure there’s all sorts of hay to be made of that, but I only bring it up to explain my reaction to Big Man Japan, which seems out of balance with the movie’s intentions. Or maybe not. If you like monsters, or satire, or Japanese pop culture, you should see it for yourself.

Sherlock Holmes vs The Curmudgeon

I’m trying to give myself an out with the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. Yes, it plays fast and loose with the source material, but why should I go through life all sour and angry about fluff movies?

I can’t just turn off the curmudgeon, but I can make conditions. My condition is, there must be at least nuggets of faithfulness. What is the essence of Sherlock Holmes? Deduction. Encyclopedic knowledge. Uncanny observation. If those things are present along with the opium and pugilism, I can get on board.

Shamanic Lemonade

Read the Comic

I made some deliberate risky choices going into 24 Hour Comics Day this year. I decided to work on very large paper (18″ x 24″). I brought colored refills for my brush pen (it’s the Pentel Color Brush, but I’ve always just used black ink). Also risky, though I didn’t realize it, was the change of venue. For the first time we held PNCA’s annual event off campus, at Backspace Cafe. Some unforeseen logistical issues caused us some inconvenience, and while most people didn’t mind too much, as organizer I felt thrown off balance. It may be for these reasons that this is by far my weirdest 24 hour comic ever.

While I always make up the story as I go, usually I can see at least a narrative trajectory from early on. This time, I had no idea. at 1:30 am, on page 15, I got my first inkling that there might be a way out of the hole I’d dug myself. At 4:45 am and page 19 I could finally see an ending. When I finished it, I felt like certain parts worked in isolation (I really like page 1 all by itself) but as a whole it had gone off the rails. However, the more time that goes by, the better I feel about it. I think I was mostly successful in letting the story be what it needed to be, without resorting to my usual safety cushion of wacky nonsense.

There is wacky nonsense, to be sure, but in the service of larger things. Mostly. Professor Flatworm being the most egregious exception. He showed up to fill an empty space on page 10, and I thought he might be a useful device to counter the increasingly murky weirdness. But right away it felt like a cop-out, so I left him un-inked and planned to erase. Then I reached the end of the story on page 23, and having no better ideas, I brought the Professor back. Maybe the better idea would have been to leave him out and let the comic be 23 pages.

I hate to give anything away, but it’s come to my attention that I’m too cryptic and alienating in general. So I’ll give you the multiple-choice question I’m trying to get you the reader to ask and then answer for yourself:

the stars and swirlies brought on by a blow to the head cause what?

A) hallucinations

B) visions of true reality

C) travel to another dimension

D) all of the above

E) other

Last thing: people have had trouble with the transition from page 17 to 18. Just go with it. It may help to note the contents of Potato-Roy’s vomit. (That’s probably the best sentence I’ll ever write.)

Flash Forward: not buyin’ it

Second episode of Flash Forward and I’m seeing a lot of inappropriate character reactions to manufacture drama and humor that is not supported by the events. Maybe it’s nit-picky, but laziness in the details often coincides with laziness in the big picture. This show clearly wants to be the next Lost. I have my doubts.

Maybe the bar has been set too high by Lost, The Wire, Dexter, and other gems of the current golden age. On the other hand, if your gonna be a tv show in the golden age, maybe you need to step it up.

24 Hour Comics Day: The Report

This year, PNCA’s annual 24 Hour Comics Day jam was held at Backspace Cafe. Attendance peaked at around 21 people. Despite a couple of logistical glitches, we had a lot of fun and created a lot of strange and wonderful comics. The Staff at Backspace worked hard to keep us happy and drawing. See all the photos on Flickr. Links to all available comics will be on PNCA’s graphic novel blog.

We started at 10 am Saturday. Soon after midnight we were down to about 11 people. Emi and Tom finished their pages around 4 am. Annie and Rick finished around 6, and Josh and I finished around 8. David Chelsea worked on his upcoming perspective book until 9 am, and Pete Soloway kept at it for the full 24 hours.

Once I get mine scanned, I’ll post it with the usual self-indulgent artist’s notes. Stay tuned….

Disney and Marvel

Here’s an email exchange I thought I would share.

Hi Neal,
Do you think the Disney purchase of Marvel comics means the death of an era? Or did that era end when Marvel’s paper products stopped being profitable and they had to turn to movies?

Odd to think of Mickey and Spiderman working together, maybe sometimes under the Disney treacle treatment, and (I assume this is true) the special Disney capital punishment copyright protection suddenly following along this large new realm of characters, just because they are Disney.

Does it seem to be a colorful example of a general national trend? Something Nader-y about powerful corporations?

I am sure you know more about it than moi, would love your thoughts.

Cheers,
P.

Hi Pete,

I am hopeful that Disney will leave the creative side of Marvel alone, as they say they will. It brings them a largely male demographic that Hannah Montana doesn’t appeal to. And with the Touchstone imprint, for example, Disney demonstrates they don’t need to put mouse ears on absolutely everything.
Marvel has never tapped the grown-up audience like DC has with their Vertigo line (Sandman, The Invisibles, etc). I’ve noticed some Marvel titles (The Ultimates, Daredevil) trying to move into more adult territory, but as far as I can tell there is an unbreakable policy against swearing, nudity, and excessive blood. Undoubtedly this is in deference to parents and the cultural assumption that Spider-Man is for kids. It seems likely that Disney will reinforce this policy, and unlikely we will ever see a Marvel movie as deeply evocative as The Dark Knight. Even so, there is plenty of room for fun and powerful movies in the vein of Iron Man, X-Men, and Spider-Man (1 & 2, let’s not repeat #3 please)
The copyright issue is something I had not considered. It’s an interesting thought. Will parodies of the Fantastic Four be met with lawyerly death squads? One hopes not.
As for the death of an era…that’s something I’ve been trying to pin down for some time. I’m sort of amazed that superheroes have any traction at all, given that all the big ones were created in the 40s and 60s by a bunch of hacks who could only appeal to readers of adolescent-to-infantile disposition. The comics of the Golden Age and Silver Age are most valuable as fodder for later writers and artists who gave the characters depth and believability. If Stan Lee had to start from scratch today, he would probably become a blend of Ed Wood and Michael Bay. The point I’m failing to make is this: the beginnings of comic book characters are less important that their present. They are woven into our cultural fabric and will never go away.
I think the real era marker is the creation of Wolverine in the early 80s, the last superhero to achieve cultural icon status. Thousands of new characters have been created since by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, and others, but none will ever have the broad, instant recognition that Spider-Man or Superman has.

Appalled, Yes; Shocked, No

So the latest voyage of the right wing crazyboat is keeping children out of school to protect them from the big bad president’s message of socialist indoctrination, i.e. study hard, stay in school.
I knew this would happen, and you did too, just not what form it would take. It started the instant Obama set foot in the White House. Actually, no, it started the instant the Democratic nomination was solidified. Attacks. Rabid, nonsensical, ad-hoc character assassination. In years past, the MO has been to dig up scandal from the candidate’s past and harp it into the headlines by brute force. Obama has proved better than most at resisting this tactic. In at least one small case, the attack backfired; Obama’s decision to meet the Reverend Wright “scandal” with a brave and clear-eyed discussion of racism is what convinced me to support him.
Thus, the new MO: whip up frenzied opposition to his every move, large and small, and dress it up as populist revolt. This works better against Obama. It requires him to commit to specifics; he can’t move the discussion with big-picture principles. The principle of providing health care without danger of bankruptcy should be enough to motivate Congress, but clearly it isn’t.

Playlist Playin

I can’t imagine anyone will care about this, but I’m blogging it anyway. That’s what blogging’s all about, isn’t it?

Sometime, maybe a year ago, I made a playlist with ten songs for each letter of the alphabet. I only had one song starting with X in my library (They Might Be Giants’ XTC vs Adam Ant) so I included ten songs titled with numbers. After my big hard drive crash, I had to rebuild my music library and all my playlists. Rather than replicate the original Alpha Binghi, as it’s called, I went through the process again, picking my favorite songs that start with each letter and boiling it down to just ten. For the most part it’s the same songs, but not completely.
And now…what changed!

Original Alpha Binghi
Songs: 261
Total number of artists: 79

Top artist: 3 way tie between Legendary Pink Dots, Tangerine Dream, and Skinny Puppy; 14 songs
2nd place: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; 11 songs
3rd place: Front 242; 10 songs
4th place: The Fixx, Jethro Tull, Sisters of Mercy, They Might Be Giants: 7 songs
5th place: Depeche Mode, Front Line Assembly, Juno Reactor, Marillion, Peter Murphy, Pink Floyd, Rush; 6 songs

tracks 10 minutes and over: 13
tracks 20 minutes and over: 3

tracks from the 2000s: 33
90s: 104
80s: 102
70s: 19
60s: 3

New Alpha Binghi
Songs: 262 (added one X song: Xlao Tshao by QWII Music Arts’ Trust Khoi San Music. I don’t know why I have that.)
total artists: 90

Top Artist: Legendary Pink Dots, 14 songs
2nd place: Tangerine Dream, 13 songs
3rd place: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 11 songs
4th place: Front 242, 9 songs
5th place: Skinny Puppy, 8 songs
6th place: Peter Murphy, 7 songs

The 5 and 6 song block includes Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Dead Can Dance, and all the remaining former 5th and above placers, except for Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull (4) and They Might Be Giants (2! the most precipitous drop).

tracks 10 minutes and over: 15
tracks 20 minutes and over: 3

Tracks from the 2000s: 52
90s: 100
80s: 83
70s: 16
60s: 2
10s: 1 (Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War)

Letters to the Editor: Town Hall Zealots

The righteous indignation coming from the right is too much to bear.
From his first day in office, Barack Obama has been reaching out to Republicans, in search of common ground. This after eight years of Democrats being stonewalled by the most secretive, “my way or the highway” administration in living memory. And true to form, Republicans in congress have thrown up a wall of opposition to every Obama initiative. Now, we have town hall meetings being overrun by aggrieved conservatives who say the president is ignoring them. The Republicans like to style themselves the party of grown-ups, but all I see are a bunch of screaming babies.
By all means, conservatives, disagree, dissent, protest, write letters, vote. But there is no call for shutting down the process with uncivil behavior. Try participating in our democracy before you declare it to be dead.

Rich Lowry (A populist revolt from the grass roots, 8/14) characterizes the town hall obstructionists as the finest example of grass-roots populism. He goes on to say “The same distrust of power that had left-wing activists spinning feverish theories about George W. Bush’s eavesdropping has the right agitated about Obama’s ‘death panels.’” In this sentence, as in the entire column, Lowry gets it exactly wrong. The “death panels” are a feverish theory from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page that have been denounced even by some Republicans. George W. Bush admitted to signing wiretap orders in 2005, to cite just one of his administration’s many well-documented assaults on privacy.