I find most of the conversations that we have about race to be quite shallow. They usually end in finger pointing or someone saying something like "you don't think I'm a racist, do you?" or my favorite "I'd hate to sound racist but ..." As an American that knows a little bit about history, I start off with the default setting in that I assume if you are an American, you are a racist. How can you help not be? Our history is so seeped in racism, just by the the virtue of you being born here, you cannot help but have some sort of hang-up about race. Racism is in our Constitution. We ended slavery not by decree like other countries, we had to have the bloodiest war in our history to do so. The man on the US $20 bill was responsible for the force marching of 16,000 natives into relocation camps (we called them reservations). They were taken from their ancestral homes in Florida and Georgia and marched across several states to land west of the Mississippi River. I could go on about Jim Crow laws, voter suppression, mass incarceration or the Tuskegee experiments. Is that all in our past? Are we post-racial? Fuck no! The idea that we are post-racial was put forth by guilt ridden suburbanites who wanted to feel good about themselves because they voted for a bi-racial president. We are an inch up the yard stick of racial progress, empty conversations are just marking a notch on stick or a ditch on the road of progress. In light of all the racist bullshit I've been seeing on the news lately (of Ferguson and Baltimore etc.), I would hope that the only people talking about a post-racial society, are only doing so ironically.
I do realize that if you overuse a word, you belittle its meaning. If every attack of violence or rebellion is called terrorism, we belittle real terrorism. Therefore if everyone is a racist, then no one is racist. I understand the semantics. I am fine with this. Consider it a bump on the road of progress, once we get over the name calling, we'll be thrust into a real conversation.
You ready? Let's talk ...
When it comes to Presidential acts of racism, we usually don't think of recent history. We usually think of the aforementioned Jackson and his Trail of Tears or John Adams and his Alien and Sedition Acts or one of the slave owner presidents. We don't think of FDR. Can you imagine Americans being taken from their homes, put on buses and put into camps? It is something that our liberal icon, Franklin Roosevelt, did. The internment camps of recent past is a crime we talk little about today. It is difficult to understand how this could happen. Americans have a tendency to overreact, like the Patriot Act and two
unsustainable wars after the 9/11 attacks. Obviously, we don't learn a
lot from our history. The racism I witnessed after those attacks may not
have been as bad as what the Japanese went through after Pearl Harbor,
but it was pretty gross nonetheless .... and it still lingers. Since we still haven't gotten over slavery, I expect this isn't going away anytime soon.
Let go back a few years before the war. After President Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbade anymore immigrants from China, Japanese immigration greatly increased on the American west coast. Due to laws passed in 1907 and 1924, it completely stopped. This is relevant in that by the time the Japanese government attacked
Pearl Harbor, all the Japanese families living in the US (mostly
California) had been here for over 30 years. They were still forbidden
to be citizens, couldn't vote or officially, own land. The devastation caused by the 1906 earthquake, gave rise to more segregated schools during the rebuilding boom. A small isolated population was easy to demonize. On February 19, 1942 Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt initially giving the Secretary of War the authority to treat parts of the US as war zones. This started with curfews and other restrictions to everyone of Japanese ancestry and lead to interment camps.
We often hear them referred to as Japanese interment camps which is deceptive because it wasn't just Japanese but Germans and Italians were interred as well. About 60% were Japanese. The difference being that only certain professions were interned of Germans and Italians (ranging from photographers to engineers). Entire families of Japanese were interred. After their homes and business were taken, they were carted like cattle, we then asked them to sign loyalty oaths. Due to the 1924 Immigration Act. when they owned land, they often had the names of white men on the deeds because they couldn't own land in their own names. After internment, their property easily was taken. Even when they were released, they had to start over. This was the perfect storm of racism.
Most of the camps were segregated as well. Most of the Germans and Italians were sent to Camp Albuquerque in New Mexico. The only camp that housed a significant mix was Crystal City in Texas. Multiple nationality camps were against the Geneva Convention. Crystal City was mainly used to house detainees who were expected to be used in prisoner exchanges. Roughly 50 camps existed scattered throughout the Western states. The idea of interning more Germans and Italians was unpopular, for one, there were over 50 million Germans in America at the time and some of America's most popular people were Italian. Joe DiMaggio was Italian. After all, they looked like us. Not like those damn slanty-eyed Japs! (**deep sigh**)
If you are looking for something to ponder on Memorial Day. Here is something: At the start of World War II we didn't allow Japanese Americans to serve in the military. But Roosevelt changed his mind shortly after the war started and they formed the 442 Infantry Regiment of the Army. They recruited from the camps. They fought mostly in the Italian campaign. It is one of the the most decorated units in American military history with 14,000 men earning 9,486 Purple Hearts and 21 metals of honor. Even a sniveling peacenik is impressed by this.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Avengers: Age of Excess
I was excited to see the new Avengers movie yesterday. I went to see it alone. I was quickly disappointed. It was choppy, uneven and difficult to follow at times. Having grown up reading Marvel comics, I await the newest installments from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with too much glee for a 50 year old man to admit. The technology did not exist to set these books to film when I was a kid, so I welcome the excess usually ... provided that the excess is well done and worth the money I spent to see it. I can't say that Avengers: The Age of Ultron was worth it .. the wait or the money.
The Avengers were never my favorite comic. I read it and enjoyed it, but I was more into the more angst ridden heroes like Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-men. The more cavalier Captain America and Iron Man were too perfect for me to wrap my little head around. A war hero loved by all and an obnoxious millionaire with high tech toys didn't really resonate with this post-hippy working class teenager. The Hulk was the only member of the Avengers that had any appeal to me, but he had his own book so The Avengers book took a back seat. But when Marvel came out with the first Avengers film a few years ago, they pulled me in again. It was one of the best comic book movies ever made. Most of them are stinkers, but when a good one comes along, I have to really embrace it. Among the better ones I would put Spider-Man 2, The Watchmen, Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman Begins. The Avengers joined that list. The follow-up to it, did not. Expectations were high and they fell miserably.
Most of the members of The Avengers already have their own film franchises (Captain America, Ironman, the Hulk) so no time is wasted on their back stories in this film. The remaining two, Black Widow and Hawkeye don't, so screen time had to be wasted on character development. This isn't usually a problem if it is done well, but it isn't in this film. Hawkeye's back story, well, who cares? He is not a very interesting character. An archer just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in this group. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense when I read the book as a kid. I wouldn't have been upset if they killed him off. Black Widow is a different story. She has an interesting back story and has always been an interesting character. She is the only woman in the group, so of course, her back story had to be a romance (of course not) ... with David Banner, a guy who can't get excited or he might hurt somebody. It was a bit too much like Twilight for me and just seem to be stuck in the film. It went no where. The one joy of the film is the introduction of The Vision, always one of the more elusive and mysterious characters. He was so well done in the film. His presence almost saved the film for me.
I haven't even gotten to the biggest problem with the film. It was just really hard to follow. For one, I couldn't tell what was going on in some of the action sequences. I had no sense of who was where in some of the scenes and who was fighting whom. They were so choppy that the moment I thought I understood what was happening it would cut to another shot or another scene altogether. This type of choppiness continued throughout the film, not just the action scenes, making the narrative difficult to follow.
As far as plot goes, I don't ever expect profundity or anything to challenge any of my ideals. I simply expect good fun and a few hours of pure entertainment in comic book films. But I can't say I am entirely sure what our villain, Ultron's, evil plan was or what his motivations were. He was trying to destroy the human race so we could evolve into something new. What? When he couldn't get the nuclear codes, he decided to take some East European country, make it fly and turn it into a meteor to destroy us like the dinosaurs? Uhm, what? Am I right about this! Did I get that right? I am still unsure. Lets hope the next Avengers film is better and less of a muddle. Hopefully, we'll get less excess and more clarity as to what the heck is going on.
The Avengers were never my favorite comic. I read it and enjoyed it, but I was more into the more angst ridden heroes like Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-men. The more cavalier Captain America and Iron Man were too perfect for me to wrap my little head around. A war hero loved by all and an obnoxious millionaire with high tech toys didn't really resonate with this post-hippy working class teenager. The Hulk was the only member of the Avengers that had any appeal to me, but he had his own book so The Avengers book took a back seat. But when Marvel came out with the first Avengers film a few years ago, they pulled me in again. It was one of the best comic book movies ever made. Most of them are stinkers, but when a good one comes along, I have to really embrace it. Among the better ones I would put Spider-Man 2, The Watchmen, Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman Begins. The Avengers joined that list. The follow-up to it, did not. Expectations were high and they fell miserably.
Most of the members of The Avengers already have their own film franchises (Captain America, Ironman, the Hulk) so no time is wasted on their back stories in this film. The remaining two, Black Widow and Hawkeye don't, so screen time had to be wasted on character development. This isn't usually a problem if it is done well, but it isn't in this film. Hawkeye's back story, well, who cares? He is not a very interesting character. An archer just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in this group. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense when I read the book as a kid. I wouldn't have been upset if they killed him off. Black Widow is a different story. She has an interesting back story and has always been an interesting character. She is the only woman in the group, so of course, her back story had to be a romance (of course not) ... with David Banner, a guy who can't get excited or he might hurt somebody. It was a bit too much like Twilight for me and just seem to be stuck in the film. It went no where. The one joy of the film is the introduction of The Vision, always one of the more elusive and mysterious characters. He was so well done in the film. His presence almost saved the film for me.
I haven't even gotten to the biggest problem with the film. It was just really hard to follow. For one, I couldn't tell what was going on in some of the action sequences. I had no sense of who was where in some of the scenes and who was fighting whom. They were so choppy that the moment I thought I understood what was happening it would cut to another shot or another scene altogether. This type of choppiness continued throughout the film, not just the action scenes, making the narrative difficult to follow.
As far as plot goes, I don't ever expect profundity or anything to challenge any of my ideals. I simply expect good fun and a few hours of pure entertainment in comic book films. But I can't say I am entirely sure what our villain, Ultron's, evil plan was or what his motivations were. He was trying to destroy the human race so we could evolve into something new. What? When he couldn't get the nuclear codes, he decided to take some East European country, make it fly and turn it into a meteor to destroy us like the dinosaurs? Uhm, what? Am I right about this! Did I get that right? I am still unsure. Lets hope the next Avengers film is better and less of a muddle. Hopefully, we'll get less excess and more clarity as to what the heck is going on.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Jefferson, Redistribution and Primogeniture
Great nations and empires die for many different reasons, but one of the most consistent is poor distribution of wealth. Whether we are talking about the monarchy in France or the Ancient Roman Republic, a stratified state is unstable and will end in blood. Not to sound like a purveyor of doom, but the Roman upper 1% owned 16% of the wealth while the US wealthy currently own almost twice that. When Rome was invaded by barbarians, the plebes either joined them or folded due to lack of resources. Why fight to maintain an empire that you have no stake in?
This is a new problem for the United States, mostly because of space. Thomas Jefferson believed that everyone, even the very poor, should own land. In his time, if life wasn't working out for you, you went west. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our country and the government cleared the way of natives making it safe for settlers. Homestead laws promoted ownership. Wealth was redistributed easily because land was plentiful and the population was relatively small. We had a low demand of land and high supply so prices were low.
Unless we develop warp drive or a new continent bursts out of the ocean, the era of homesteading is over and has been for a while. We have had many fixes to this problem. The New Deal introduced many programs to help those devastated by the Great Depression. We have had the GI Bill, student loans, minimum wage laws and even entrepreneurs like Henry Ford who thought his workers should be able to afford the product they made. Whenever President Obama tries to do something about our currently trends of the rich-getting-richer/poor-getting-poorer, which is alarming, the whack job right wing (aka the Republican Party) calls him a socialist or that he is declaring class warfare.
How bad is it? Not as bad as it seems. The big probably we have is one of perception. We keep comparing ourselves to 1950's. Most of the industrialized world was recovering from World War II. Europe, Japan and the other industrial powers in the world were bombed to shreds, while the US remained relatively unscathed. This allowed for a thriving middle class. It also allowed for high taxation. Both German and Japan had recovered by the mid-1960's and are once again economic powerhouses along with India, Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa. The US has a lot of competition. The middle class is disappearing but it was mostly an anomaly of history so we need to stop whining about it and accept it. We were raised under unusual circumstances. If we want to maintain the middle class, which is something that I embrace because I am a member, we need come up with new ideas. You could see the middle class as a great progressive movement in history, but it could just be a momentary blip and nothing more.
The problems of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer has been with us for a long time. Thomas Jefferson, when he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, made some moves that if Fox "News" were around would have flipped. He fought for the elimination of primogeniture. If you have read any British literature or watched Downton Abbey, you know primogeniture as the process by which wealth is transferred to the eldest son. When all of one's wealth was transferred to one person, this concentrated the wealth into the hands of the few. It was changed to what we have now where we transfer wealth to all of one's children. This was eventually adopted on a federal level. Thomas Paine, probably the most radical of US founding fathers, believed that primogeniture was responsible for the moral corruptness of the aristocracy because the young aristocrat began their adulthood by stomping on their siblings. Paine wanted an estate to be distributed to all 21 year old citizens (not just the family) equally. Interesting idea. The current Republican party wants to eliminate the estate tax completely. You really need to shrug when people cling to the founding fathers as conservatives. Some of them were, like Alexander Hamilton, but they certainly are no monolith. Their ideas were as diverse of our current batch of leaders, they just knew the art of compromise.
This is a new problem for the United States, mostly because of space. Thomas Jefferson believed that everyone, even the very poor, should own land. In his time, if life wasn't working out for you, you went west. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our country and the government cleared the way of natives making it safe for settlers. Homestead laws promoted ownership. Wealth was redistributed easily because land was plentiful and the population was relatively small. We had a low demand of land and high supply so prices were low.
Unless we develop warp drive or a new continent bursts out of the ocean, the era of homesteading is over and has been for a while. We have had many fixes to this problem. The New Deal introduced many programs to help those devastated by the Great Depression. We have had the GI Bill, student loans, minimum wage laws and even entrepreneurs like Henry Ford who thought his workers should be able to afford the product they made. Whenever President Obama tries to do something about our currently trends of the rich-getting-richer/poor-getting-poorer, which is alarming, the whack job right wing (aka the Republican Party) calls him a socialist or that he is declaring class warfare.
How bad is it? Not as bad as it seems. The big probably we have is one of perception. We keep comparing ourselves to 1950's. Most of the industrialized world was recovering from World War II. Europe, Japan and the other industrial powers in the world were bombed to shreds, while the US remained relatively unscathed. This allowed for a thriving middle class. It also allowed for high taxation. Both German and Japan had recovered by the mid-1960's and are once again economic powerhouses along with India, Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa. The US has a lot of competition. The middle class is disappearing but it was mostly an anomaly of history so we need to stop whining about it and accept it. We were raised under unusual circumstances. If we want to maintain the middle class, which is something that I embrace because I am a member, we need come up with new ideas. You could see the middle class as a great progressive movement in history, but it could just be a momentary blip and nothing more.
The problems of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer has been with us for a long time. Thomas Jefferson, when he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, made some moves that if Fox "News" were around would have flipped. He fought for the elimination of primogeniture. If you have read any British literature or watched Downton Abbey, you know primogeniture as the process by which wealth is transferred to the eldest son. When all of one's wealth was transferred to one person, this concentrated the wealth into the hands of the few. It was changed to what we have now where we transfer wealth to all of one's children. This was eventually adopted on a federal level. Thomas Paine, probably the most radical of US founding fathers, believed that primogeniture was responsible for the moral corruptness of the aristocracy because the young aristocrat began their adulthood by stomping on their siblings. Paine wanted an estate to be distributed to all 21 year old citizens (not just the family) equally. Interesting idea. The current Republican party wants to eliminate the estate tax completely. You really need to shrug when people cling to the founding fathers as conservatives. Some of them were, like Alexander Hamilton, but they certainly are no monolith. Their ideas were as diverse of our current batch of leaders, they just knew the art of compromise.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
The Literature of Passing
One of my favorite short novels is the book Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, a Harlem Renaissance writer. Her two short novels, Quicksand and Passing are usually sold together in one volume as Quicksand and Passing. Both books are excellent and worth reading, but Passing is one of those books that my interpretation completely changed after I talked to a friend. The book is about a two black girls (Clare and Irene) who are good friends. One of them, Clare, has extremely light skin hence can pass as a white person. Because of this, they go different ways. Clare marries a white man and lives among his world. Most of the book is about the relationship of the two women when they meet up again as adults. The "passing" in the title meant racially passing to me as I read through the book, but this friend pointed out that Clare was also passing as a gay woman pretending to be straight. This blew my mind. She pointed out passages in the book where there are erotic undertone to how Clare describes Irene and how Irene has a sexless marriage. I've always wanted to reread the book. It is so short, I am not sure why I haven't.
I have been thinking about this lately because I recently read an article in Salon about a professor, Carlyle V. Thompson, at Medger Evers College in Brooklyn that is proposing that Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) is a light skin black man passing in the white world. This is the first time I have heard this and it is intriguing. This book came out just a few years after Larsen's and it is possible that Fitzgerald did recognize the hypocrisies in our nation's racial politics and coded it therein. The textual evidence is light, with Gatsby hair being "close-cropped" and he owned 40 acres and a mansion (as opposed to 40 acres and a mule). The best case for this is that Gatsby's past is unknown and mysterious. No one knows anything about him. He changed his name from Gatz to Gatsby and claims that his family is all dead. The only overt reference to race in the book is when Tom Buchanan (Gatsby's rival for Daisy), a Nordic with a body with "enormous power" and "two shining arrogant eyes," starts talking about the black race taking over the world. Tom says "next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white." This is pre-Hitler set in an era when eugenics was discussed casually. Miscegenation was still controversial. The only person that seems uncomfortable with Tom is our narrator, Nick Carraway.
If anyone is passing in The Great Gatsby, it is Nick. His family's discomfort for his isn't only because he is single. It is possible that he is a gay man passing in a straight world. He tells us of his experience with the "feminine" male photographer Mr. McKee that "I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands." Indeed. We are then given an ellipsis ridden paragraph and four hours missing from the plot line. This is about as homo-erotic as we get in any novel of the sexually repressed Jazz Age.
I am not sure how relevant it is whether Gatsby is black or Nick is gay. It just throws more depth in an already masterful tiny book that I can be reread many times without catching everything. Should I give it a fourth read? I'm sure I will get around to it, eventually. Fitzgerald lived in Paris for a short time hitting the jazz clubs with Zelda and Hemingway. His exposure to other ways of life was undoubted rich. I have no doubt it had an effect on him.
I have been thinking about this lately because I recently read an article in Salon about a professor, Carlyle V. Thompson, at Medger Evers College in Brooklyn that is proposing that Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) is a light skin black man passing in the white world. This is the first time I have heard this and it is intriguing. This book came out just a few years after Larsen's and it is possible that Fitzgerald did recognize the hypocrisies in our nation's racial politics and coded it therein. The textual evidence is light, with Gatsby hair being "close-cropped" and he owned 40 acres and a mansion (as opposed to 40 acres and a mule). The best case for this is that Gatsby's past is unknown and mysterious. No one knows anything about him. He changed his name from Gatz to Gatsby and claims that his family is all dead. The only overt reference to race in the book is when Tom Buchanan (Gatsby's rival for Daisy), a Nordic with a body with "enormous power" and "two shining arrogant eyes," starts talking about the black race taking over the world. Tom says "next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white." This is pre-Hitler set in an era when eugenics was discussed casually. Miscegenation was still controversial. The only person that seems uncomfortable with Tom is our narrator, Nick Carraway.
If anyone is passing in The Great Gatsby, it is Nick. His family's discomfort for his isn't only because he is single. It is possible that he is a gay man passing in a straight world. He tells us of his experience with the "feminine" male photographer Mr. McKee that "I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands." Indeed. We are then given an ellipsis ridden paragraph and four hours missing from the plot line. This is about as homo-erotic as we get in any novel of the sexually repressed Jazz Age.
I am not sure how relevant it is whether Gatsby is black or Nick is gay. It just throws more depth in an already masterful tiny book that I can be reread many times without catching everything. Should I give it a fourth read? I'm sure I will get around to it, eventually. Fitzgerald lived in Paris for a short time hitting the jazz clubs with Zelda and Hemingway. His exposure to other ways of life was undoubted rich. I have no doubt it had an effect on him.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
What Happened To Dr. Crusher?
It has been awhile since I blogged about Star Trek. I like to do so because my blog hit stats go way up. Trekkies can't seem to get enough of reading and writing about the show even though it has been off the air for about ten years now. When the Star Trek: The Next Generation (aka TNG) came out in 1987, on demand viewing did not exist yet. The Internet was still a baby, known by very few people. To catch the week's new episode, you had to be at your television at the time it played which made for more communal viewing. For me, it was 7PM on Saturdays. I was still living at home so I roped my dad into watching it with me. We were a one-tv home. I am not sure if those exist anymore. I could always set the VCR's timer to record the show for me, but that didn't always work. Now, it is a real treat being able to pull out my phone and watch any episode at a moments notice if I want to.
Great television shows were a rarity back then. If TNG came out now, it may not have been such a sensation, but at the time, there wasn't much else worth watching from a sci-fi standpoint. I'd go out on Saturday nights to meet friends and that week's episode would always come up. This is something that we miss now. Most of us don't watch shows at the same time. Water-cooler talk doesn't go into the realm of television much when everyone is binge watching different shows.
The first season of TNG was uneven in quality. The characters were kinda goofy, the music was awful and the writing was all over the place. It was nice to see Star Trek back on television but I wasn't optimistic that it was ever be as good as the original series (aka TOS). At the time I referred to TNG as "Yuppies in Space." The characters looked so handsome and neat without any edge and depth. The feeling was that all our problems in the future are resolved and everyone is going to be boring. The first seasons ended in a low point, during the writer's strike. The last episode of that season, "The Neutral Zone," is one of the worst episodes ever made with two unrelated plot lines that go nowhere. They had pulled some fan fiction from a pile and a few producers carved the episode together. By the end of the first season, I doubted if the show was going to be on the air for long, but the ratings were so high, it was clear it wasn't going away.
The changes they made in the second season may have saved the show. At least it did for me. Many were subtle. Commander Riker grew a beard. He looked a lot older without the baby face. The only female character from the first season to make it into the next season was Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor, who also got a badly needed hair-style change. The ship now had a bar with Whoopi Goldberg as the bartender. Of course, the biggest change was the new chief medical officer, Dr. Pulaski, portrayed by Diana Muldaur, who appeared in two TOS episodes portraying two different characters. Gates McFadden, aka Dr. Beverly Crusher, was fired after the first season.
Many of the characters, particularly the females characters, were poorly developed in the first season. The actresses were not happy about it. Denise Crosby, aka Tasha Yar, didn't make it through the entire first season. It was clear to her that the male characters, Worf and Data, were gaining in popularity and her character was being thrown into the background by the writers. She quit and they killed Yar off in the 23rd episode. Yar was very poorly written, flippant and inconsistent. You wonder if Crosby would have stayed with the show if Yar would have been developed better like the rest of the show. Gates McFadden, who portrayed Dr. Crusher, had the same gripe with the writers. The added stress of the writer's strike didn't help. The working relationship became unmanageable and she was fired.
One of the better things that happened to the show in the second season was the introduction of Dr. Pulaski to replace Dr. Crusher. She was a better actress and her character was better written. Her character was edgy, which was badly needed on this show. All the characters up to this point were just perfect people, particularly the humans. They all got along too well, with little conflict and very few flaws. Then came Dr. Pulaski. She was abrasive and somewhat of a bigot which made her interesting. Her bigotry was a new one for the 24th century. She was uncomfortable around androids. She would refer to Data, the android on the crew, as "it" and she would continually challenge the idea that he was a sentient being. While the rest of the crew was not phased by his sentience and accepted it unquestioningly, she struggled with it. It was this struggle that made her a better character than the rest of the crew, annoying but more realistic. This was the kind of stuff that we expected from Star Trek. McCoy had a problem with Vulcan and this made for good television.
Of course, most people don't agree with me. The fan-base of the show complained and demanded the return of Dr. Crusher. The character hadn't been killed off. She was written out of the show by stating that she was the head of Starfleet Medical so they could easily write her back in. Nothing much was said about the reasons for her return. Her character was still overshadowed by most of the male characters although she did star in some of the episodes, some of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made.
Great television shows were a rarity back then. If TNG came out now, it may not have been such a sensation, but at the time, there wasn't much else worth watching from a sci-fi standpoint. I'd go out on Saturday nights to meet friends and that week's episode would always come up. This is something that we miss now. Most of us don't watch shows at the same time. Water-cooler talk doesn't go into the realm of television much when everyone is binge watching different shows.
The first season of TNG was uneven in quality. The characters were kinda goofy, the music was awful and the writing was all over the place. It was nice to see Star Trek back on television but I wasn't optimistic that it was ever be as good as the original series (aka TOS). At the time I referred to TNG as "Yuppies in Space." The characters looked so handsome and neat without any edge and depth. The feeling was that all our problems in the future are resolved and everyone is going to be boring. The first seasons ended in a low point, during the writer's strike. The last episode of that season, "The Neutral Zone," is one of the worst episodes ever made with two unrelated plot lines that go nowhere. They had pulled some fan fiction from a pile and a few producers carved the episode together. By the end of the first season, I doubted if the show was going to be on the air for long, but the ratings were so high, it was clear it wasn't going away.
The changes they made in the second season may have saved the show. At least it did for me. Many were subtle. Commander Riker grew a beard. He looked a lot older without the baby face. The only female character from the first season to make it into the next season was Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor, who also got a badly needed hair-style change. The ship now had a bar with Whoopi Goldberg as the bartender. Of course, the biggest change was the new chief medical officer, Dr. Pulaski, portrayed by Diana Muldaur, who appeared in two TOS episodes portraying two different characters. Gates McFadden, aka Dr. Beverly Crusher, was fired after the first season.
Many of the characters, particularly the females characters, were poorly developed in the first season. The actresses were not happy about it. Denise Crosby, aka Tasha Yar, didn't make it through the entire first season. It was clear to her that the male characters, Worf and Data, were gaining in popularity and her character was being thrown into the background by the writers. She quit and they killed Yar off in the 23rd episode. Yar was very poorly written, flippant and inconsistent. You wonder if Crosby would have stayed with the show if Yar would have been developed better like the rest of the show. Gates McFadden, who portrayed Dr. Crusher, had the same gripe with the writers. The added stress of the writer's strike didn't help. The working relationship became unmanageable and she was fired.
One of the better things that happened to the show in the second season was the introduction of Dr. Pulaski to replace Dr. Crusher. She was a better actress and her character was better written. Her character was edgy, which was badly needed on this show. All the characters up to this point were just perfect people, particularly the humans. They all got along too well, with little conflict and very few flaws. Then came Dr. Pulaski. She was abrasive and somewhat of a bigot which made her interesting. Her bigotry was a new one for the 24th century. She was uncomfortable around androids. She would refer to Data, the android on the crew, as "it" and she would continually challenge the idea that he was a sentient being. While the rest of the crew was not phased by his sentience and accepted it unquestioningly, she struggled with it. It was this struggle that made her a better character than the rest of the crew, annoying but more realistic. This was the kind of stuff that we expected from Star Trek. McCoy had a problem with Vulcan and this made for good television.
Of course, most people don't agree with me. The fan-base of the show complained and demanded the return of Dr. Crusher. The character hadn't been killed off. She was written out of the show by stating that she was the head of Starfleet Medical so they could easily write her back in. Nothing much was said about the reasons for her return. Her character was still overshadowed by most of the male characters although she did star in some of the episodes, some of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Ambivalent About American Sniper #AmericanSniper
I like World War II movies. It is not only a fascinating time in world history, but I also like having an obvious bad guy. The Nazis are clearly the bad guys in any WW II film. Rooting for The Allies and against The Axis is obvious. War films based in different eras are more problematic and usually contain multitude of questions about US involvement in the conflict. The best example of this is the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The makers of some of my favorite Vietnam War films The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now obviously understood this. The "bad" guy is not obvious, it actually could be us. The struggle that goes on in the war also happens within the characters of the films. Are they the "good" guy? Or are they just trying to survive and protect their friends in the madness of war?
I saw American Sniper last night and there is no such nuance in this film which is not the only problem I have with the film, but perhaps the biggest problem I had with it. Even though we are the invading force in Iraq, a sovereign nation that had no connection with the 9/11 attacks and had no weapons of mass-destruction, yet this film presents us with a clear "good" guy vs. "bad" guy mentality. This may work with a movie about comic book heroes or even WW II, but not about a largely contentious war like the most recent war in Iraq. Who exactly is the "bad" guy ... the woman who is throwing a grenade at an invading force or the sniper that guns her down? Chris Kyle, the American Sniper of the film and book, called this woman in the book, his first kill, a "savage." Sorry, but I don't think it is that easy. Reality is much more complex than that and I questioned the sanity and morality of any society that will place Kyle in the lofty caste of hero.
This is not a very good film. However much respect I have for Clint Eastwood as a film maker, I wonder what he saw in this story. The story is simple. Kyle signs up to be a Navy Seal, goes to basic training, does four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper. He kills a bunch of people, has a little bit of difficulty dealing with readjusting to life in America but does okay a short time later. End of story. Not a lot of growth here and nothing very interesting. Most of the film is Kyle going from situation to situation killing people. Occasionally he has a conversation with one of his cohorts or wife, but nothing too introspective. If you like seeing people killed on film, this is the movie for you. If you like character development and reflection on the world, you might want to skip this one. This is melodrama with all the savages being Iraqi with the Americans doing no wrong. You want to see bullshit melodrama, I suggest Birth of a Nation. At least that film has an excuse for its b.s., it is old and its audience didn't know any better. We should. File this film under right wing propaganda.
I find myself alienated with general society sometimes. This is clearly one of those times. This is the number one film at the box office and was nominated for best picture of the year by the Academy and yet, I was bored. Half way through the film, I could tell it was going nowhere. I considered leaving to go home to watch The Walking Dead again. Even the walking dead have more depth than the characters in this film. Spoiler: when Kyle finally kills the enemy sniper, there were a handful of cheers in the theater (of about 100 people). I felt odd because I wasn't cheering for Kyle. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't cheering for the Iraqi sniper either. I felt apathetic, ambivalence. I just didn't care. I was glad because it meant the film would be done soon. I just got a little bit more pissed off that my tax dollars were spent invading a country rather than repairing bridges, educating the young or helping hurricane victims. I'd consider rooting for the Iraqi sniper because at least he was defending his home but I just didn't care. There are no heroes in this film, just a lot of one dimension characters who think they are heroes and I find this film's popularity to be very scary.
I saw American Sniper last night and there is no such nuance in this film which is not the only problem I have with the film, but perhaps the biggest problem I had with it. Even though we are the invading force in Iraq, a sovereign nation that had no connection with the 9/11 attacks and had no weapons of mass-destruction, yet this film presents us with a clear "good" guy vs. "bad" guy mentality. This may work with a movie about comic book heroes or even WW II, but not about a largely contentious war like the most recent war in Iraq. Who exactly is the "bad" guy ... the woman who is throwing a grenade at an invading force or the sniper that guns her down? Chris Kyle, the American Sniper of the film and book, called this woman in the book, his first kill, a "savage." Sorry, but I don't think it is that easy. Reality is much more complex than that and I questioned the sanity and morality of any society that will place Kyle in the lofty caste of hero.
This is not a very good film. However much respect I have for Clint Eastwood as a film maker, I wonder what he saw in this story. The story is simple. Kyle signs up to be a Navy Seal, goes to basic training, does four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper. He kills a bunch of people, has a little bit of difficulty dealing with readjusting to life in America but does okay a short time later. End of story. Not a lot of growth here and nothing very interesting. Most of the film is Kyle going from situation to situation killing people. Occasionally he has a conversation with one of his cohorts or wife, but nothing too introspective. If you like seeing people killed on film, this is the movie for you. If you like character development and reflection on the world, you might want to skip this one. This is melodrama with all the savages being Iraqi with the Americans doing no wrong. You want to see bullshit melodrama, I suggest Birth of a Nation. At least that film has an excuse for its b.s., it is old and its audience didn't know any better. We should. File this film under right wing propaganda.
I find myself alienated with general society sometimes. This is clearly one of those times. This is the number one film at the box office and was nominated for best picture of the year by the Academy and yet, I was bored. Half way through the film, I could tell it was going nowhere. I considered leaving to go home to watch The Walking Dead again. Even the walking dead have more depth than the characters in this film. Spoiler: when Kyle finally kills the enemy sniper, there were a handful of cheers in the theater (of about 100 people). I felt odd because I wasn't cheering for Kyle. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't cheering for the Iraqi sniper either. I felt apathetic, ambivalence. I just didn't care. I was glad because it meant the film would be done soon. I just got a little bit more pissed off that my tax dollars were spent invading a country rather than repairing bridges, educating the young or helping hurricane victims. I'd consider rooting for the Iraqi sniper because at least he was defending his home but I just didn't care. There are no heroes in this film, just a lot of one dimension characters who think they are heroes and I find this film's popularity to be very scary.
Friday, January 9, 2015
I Am Charlie, We Are All Charlie #jesuischarlie
In the age of social media, freedom of expression couldn't be more important. We are not only consumers of media anymore but we are the media. In a world where you get shot or put on a hit list, if your cartoon offends a certain group or your novel offense that same group, no one is safe. If you say something in your Facebook status or Twitter that gets the wrong group of people angry, it could be the end for you. Many people respond by being quiet for fear of offending. I think this is the wrong approach. My immediate response makes me want to Photoshop pictures of their prophet doing perverted things with squirrels. I am grateful that I restrain myself mostly.
I know that most of Islamic people are not insane murderers but are just like everyone else ... just trying to figure things out. I am sure if I had Internet access when I was a teenager, lacking self control, I'd be posting whatever came to my mind. Now I am a bit more reserved. I got somewhat depressed on Monday night after watching this week's PBS show Frontline on the National Rifle Association. It kept me awake. I then got up for work, read my news feed over coffee and heard about shootings in France. My frustration and fatigue turned to anger. Someone on Facebook shared an image that really captured what I was feeling:
I don't know who created it and I assume they don't mind me sharing it here because I think it is genius. It is a bullet going through a pencil plus a pencil sharpener equals two pencils. This is how I react to senseless violence. Cartoonists being killed due to their biting satire just makes me want to write ... scream first but then write. I don't want to just write but to be provocative, to offend, to write something that will metaphorically slap them in the face. I want to stand by Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until the shooting but now I am enthralled. The shooters want to intimidate us, sure, that worked to a certain extent. They certainly stopped these particular cartoonists from producing any more. But we are hydra-like. You cut off one head, two will grow in its place. Their aversion to satire is only going to produce more. We'll have more security and we'll be a little bit more freaked out, but we won't stop satirizing. Not even close.
The founders of America knew something that is lost on the violent sects of the Muslim faith. Criticism makes you stronger. Freedom of speech is something we take for granted in modern America. The basic idea is that we want all the ideas out there, even ideas that are diametrically opposed to our own. In each criticism, even the unfair ones, there is a kernel of truth. In this maelstrom of competing ideas somewhere is truth. When an organization dogmatically follows an ancient book and follow it literally, growth isn't exactly their forte.
My feelings about religion have been well documented in this blog. I am not going to rehash it only to say it seems that the world would be a better place without it. People have different ideas about the nature of humanity and origins of the universe. This is a wonderful thing, yet something seems to get lost when we institutionalize it. An idea that begins as a thing of beauty is set in immovable stone in the halls of an institution and then it dies from lack of growth. It is from that point the ideas of us and them are formed. The Us is those who embrace the idea and Them is those that don't. When the us is threatened by the them, you often have violence.
Religion has done some good for humanity. Even a staunch atheist like me acknowledges this. In the Dark Ages, before we had any institutions, religion provided structure and a moral code. Now that we have many other institutions that provide what religion used to, do we still need religion? Spiritual beliefs are so personal that most people have their own regardless of what their church what their church has to say about it. Most church goers cite social connection as their biggest reason to be in a church. I get that. I joined a Unitarian Universalist church a few years ago. I loved the community but all that religion was just too much for me. Even with all the loose rules of a liberal theology, the group think was too much for me, but I really miss the fellowship over coffee sometimes. I can't imagine those folks wanting to behead anyone. They'd have to discuss it for a decade and then form some committees, nothing would ever happen.
Perhaps the Muslim religion is too young of a religion. I have been told that Christianity was around the same age that Islam is now when Christianity performed all their violent deeds. So the religion just needs to mature. In an era of nuclear and chemical weapons, I just hope humanity survives their ascent into adulthood. Until then, I intend to support anyone's right to express themselves regardless of how wrong or offensive they are. It is wrong and offensive not to.
I know that most of Islamic people are not insane murderers but are just like everyone else ... just trying to figure things out. I am sure if I had Internet access when I was a teenager, lacking self control, I'd be posting whatever came to my mind. Now I am a bit more reserved. I got somewhat depressed on Monday night after watching this week's PBS show Frontline on the National Rifle Association. It kept me awake. I then got up for work, read my news feed over coffee and heard about shootings in France. My frustration and fatigue turned to anger. Someone on Facebook shared an image that really captured what I was feeling:
I don't know who created it and I assume they don't mind me sharing it here because I think it is genius. It is a bullet going through a pencil plus a pencil sharpener equals two pencils. This is how I react to senseless violence. Cartoonists being killed due to their biting satire just makes me want to write ... scream first but then write. I don't want to just write but to be provocative, to offend, to write something that will metaphorically slap them in the face. I want to stand by Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until the shooting but now I am enthralled. The shooters want to intimidate us, sure, that worked to a certain extent. They certainly stopped these particular cartoonists from producing any more. But we are hydra-like. You cut off one head, two will grow in its place. Their aversion to satire is only going to produce more. We'll have more security and we'll be a little bit more freaked out, but we won't stop satirizing. Not even close.
The founders of America knew something that is lost on the violent sects of the Muslim faith. Criticism makes you stronger. Freedom of speech is something we take for granted in modern America. The basic idea is that we want all the ideas out there, even ideas that are diametrically opposed to our own. In each criticism, even the unfair ones, there is a kernel of truth. In this maelstrom of competing ideas somewhere is truth. When an organization dogmatically follows an ancient book and follow it literally, growth isn't exactly their forte.
My feelings about religion have been well documented in this blog. I am not going to rehash it only to say it seems that the world would be a better place without it. People have different ideas about the nature of humanity and origins of the universe. This is a wonderful thing, yet something seems to get lost when we institutionalize it. An idea that begins as a thing of beauty is set in immovable stone in the halls of an institution and then it dies from lack of growth. It is from that point the ideas of us and them are formed. The Us is those who embrace the idea and Them is those that don't. When the us is threatened by the them, you often have violence.
Religion has done some good for humanity. Even a staunch atheist like me acknowledges this. In the Dark Ages, before we had any institutions, religion provided structure and a moral code. Now that we have many other institutions that provide what religion used to, do we still need religion? Spiritual beliefs are so personal that most people have their own regardless of what their church what their church has to say about it. Most church goers cite social connection as their biggest reason to be in a church. I get that. I joined a Unitarian Universalist church a few years ago. I loved the community but all that religion was just too much for me. Even with all the loose rules of a liberal theology, the group think was too much for me, but I really miss the fellowship over coffee sometimes. I can't imagine those folks wanting to behead anyone. They'd have to discuss it for a decade and then form some committees, nothing would ever happen.
Perhaps the Muslim religion is too young of a religion. I have been told that Christianity was around the same age that Islam is now when Christianity performed all their violent deeds. So the religion just needs to mature. In an era of nuclear and chemical weapons, I just hope humanity survives their ascent into adulthood. Until then, I intend to support anyone's right to express themselves regardless of how wrong or offensive they are. It is wrong and offensive not to.
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