#1: Green Arrow comics

OK--let's try this again.

My resolution for 2014 is to become a reader again.  Going to graduate school and writing a dissertation has pretty much killed my love of reading, and I'd like it back.  The plan is to read a lot, and to record my thoughts here.  We'll see how long this lasts.

Green Arrow: Quiver (Kevin Smith)
Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest (Brad Meltzer)

I can remember exactly when teenage me decided to stop reading comic books.  It was just after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, when DC was rebooting everyone.  I was quite excited for a new GA comic--I always loved him in JLA, and I had enjoyed a recent mini-series he had starred in.  I loved Green Arrow as a kid.  Loved Hawkeye, too.  As the title of this blog indicates, I'm a sucker for insecure non-powered superheroes who have to prove that they belong on the same team as Superman or Thor, and archers are good for that kind of story.


So imagine my surprise when I started reading the new GA comic by Mike Grell, and I hated it.  At the time, I didn't know what "grim and gritty" was.  I hadn't read Watchmen, or Dark Knight Returns--this series was my first encounter with what would become a major trend to make superhero comics more "grown-up."  When I saw that first image of GA skewering a bad guy with an arrow, I was appalled.  When I saw his girlfriend Black Canary tortured and raped, I was disgusted and angered.  I decided that perhaps I wasn't enjoying reading comic books any longer, and that my money would be better spent on cassette tapes.


These images are taken from the Comics101 website, which I was perusing the other day.  The site had published an overview of GA's history, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author Scott Tipton felt as I do about the Grell run.  I also learned that a major plot point of Grell's run was GA's continued infidelities--another choice which bothers me.  I'm sure the decision can be justified on "realistic" grounds--men in high-stress occupations blah blah blah--but I've come to loathe the excuse of realism, especially when evoked to tell superhero stories.  I also can't help but notice that it's the outspokenly liberal hero who gets saddled with infidelity stories, feeding the conservative stereotype about liberals and their lack of family values.  Every generation seems to have its own philandering liberal: JFK, Gary Hart, Clinton, Edwards, Weiner.  All the conservative politicians cheating on their wives somehow get much less attention.

Anyway, Tipton recommended Kevin Smith's resurrection of Green Arrow (because DC killed him off in the 90s as part of a youth movement they came to regret) as well as the follow-up series by Brad Meltzer.  Since I agreed with Tipton about Grell, I thought I'd check these books out (literally--grabbed them from my local library) even though I'm not a fan of Smith's films and I loathe Meltzer's other comics works.

The verdict?  I quite enjoyed Smith; did not like Meltzer at all.

Smith's story is continuity-obsessed, but in a good way--the story not only reintroduces Green Arrow Oliver Queen, but uses his entire publication history as part of the story being told.  Most importantly in my mind, Smith chooses the resurrect the character not as he was when he died, but as he was just before the Grell series.  In other words, Smith, while not erasing another writer's work on the character, made it so that this new Green Arrow had no memory of the grim and gritty years--they happened, but hadn't happened to him.
Of course, Meltzer then proceeds to go right back to the "liberal hypocrite" well.  On the surface, Meltzer's story seems a lot like Smith's--continuity obsessed. But whereas Smith uses the past to provide a way forward, Meltzer's story  takes a step backward.

A Half-Assed Defense of R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People"

Yesterday on Facebook I asked my friends to name a song they hate from an album they love.  (Yes, I am that guy.  I also post obnoxious political diatribes.)  I got very good responses, the least surprising of which was "Shiny Happy People," from R.E.M.'s 1991 bestseller Out of Time.  R.E.M. fans really don't like that song.  R.E.M. themselves seem to not care for the song--they left it off of their 2003 greatest hits compilation In Time despite it being one of their, you know, biggest hits.  (I suspect that part of their disregard for the song, if such a disregard exists, stems from the fact that they don't play the song live, due to the importance of non-member Kate Pierson's vocals.)

Now, "Shiny Happy People" does not make my personal list of favorite R.E.M. songs.  (Nor, for that matter does Out of Time rank highly on my list of favorite R.E.M. albums.  I find it one of their lesser efforts, to be honest, one that I rarely return to.  See what I mean about a half-assed defense?)  But R.E.M. have plenty of mediocre songs, and let's be honest, even mediocre R.E.M. is better than most of the music polluting the airwaves on a daily basis.  So why the hate for this particular song?

And believe you me, there has been plenty of hate, from both R.E.M. fans and non-fans alike.  The backlash began soon after the song's release in September 1991 as the follow-up single to "Losing My Religion."  "Losing My Religion" was everywhere the summer of 1991, and so some backlash was inevitable.  The video for SHP was goofy as hell too, in marked contrast to the arty and symbolic video for "Religion." In spirit, the song was more of a sequel to "Stand," another goofy garage-rock tune that somehow mostly escaped the ire of R.E.M. true believers (perhaps because the song came first, or perhaps because the song's lyrics can be connected to environmentalism and so are "important").  My theory is that for R.E.M. fans, the song's upbeat attitude contrasted with the growing perception of R.E.M. as a "serious" band, a reputation cemented by the "Religion" video.  R.E.M., like U2, Sting, and 10,000 Maniacs, wrote political lyrics and advocated progressive politics.  They were making art, dammit.  How dare they tell us that everything is "shiny" and "happy"?  Have they forgotten who is in the White House?

But SHP fits well into the R.E.M. canon, much better than many R.E.M. fans want to admit.  R.E.M. is, at its heart, a postmodern garage rock band.  Garage rock began in the late 1950s, was extremely popular in the 1960s, and is seen in the 1970s as a progenitor of punk rock.  The best garage rock combined the goofy fun of 1950s rock with the tunefulness of British Invasion bands, all while retaining a harder blues sound that would provide inspiration for a 70s punk scene put off by the overindulgence of most AOR music.  The first garage rock hit was "Louie Louie," reportedly the most performed rock song of all time.  "Louie Louie," with its amateurish musicianship, unintelligible (and suspected to be obscene) lyrics, and fast rhythm, is practically the prototypical rock song.  It is also goofy as hell.  "Shiny Happy People" is a throwback to an earlier era, when rock songs could be goofy without also being seen as girly.  At some point in the late 60s, we decided that rock music had to fit certain masculine stereotypes, and any songs that didn't were either banished to feminine "light rock" or to children's music.  (Indeed, many of the classic 1950s and 1960s rock songs are now known exclusively as children's songs.)  This is why SHP was so successfully reinvented as a Sesame Street song.  (Seriously--go youtube "Happy Furry Monsters."  It's fantastic.  Replacing the strings with a banjo is genius--I wish R.E.M. have done that on tour.  And the Kate Pierson muppet is strangely hot.) Once placed in its "proper" genre, the song loses most of its annoying qualities, despite being the same damn song. As Michael Stipe himself wrote in the liner notes to their 2011 greatest hits, "Not my favorite song.  But kids do love it."

"Shiny Happy People" is certainly less goofy than a 50s song like "Chantilly Lace" or "Splish Splash."  And it is less goofy than many classic Beatles tunes.  (Seriously--the Beatles have a song about driving a car in which the chorus is them beep beeping like a car.  That's a hell of a lot more goofy than SHP.)  But SHP didn't premiere in 1961; it came out in 1991, and so got caught up in several backlashes.  In addition to the backlash against R.E.M., SHP came to represent the wussification of the American male.  Remember, fall 1991 was when Nirvana exploded onto the music scene.  SHP was the anti-Nirvana; happy, not angry. 

Therefore, with even the true believers ambivalent at best about the song, there was little defense offered when the haters began hating. And hate they did.  Dennis Leary famously ranted that "Hey, hey, hey! Pull this bus over to the side of the pretentiousness turnpike! I want everybody out, I want the shiny people over here and the happy people over here! I represent angry, gun-toting, meat-eating fucking people! ...Sit down and shut the fuck up, Michael."  Here we see the real crime that "Shiny Happy People" commits--it is not masculine enough.  If further proof is needed, in 2006 AOL Music ranked SHP #1 on its list of Wussiest Songs, ahead of such classics as "You Light Up My Life" (#22), "Your Body Is A Wonderland" (#23), and "Hello" (#11).  The song was seen as belonging to the "light rock" genre, a feminine wasteland inhabited by Anne Murray and Peter Cetera.  True rock and roll has to be about adolescent alienation and/or wanting to fuck a girl, dontcha know? (And you can't tell me that Michael Stipe's sexuality doesn't play a part in the perception of SHP as "wussy.")

Except, of course, for the small fact that the song was incredibly popular.  Though the song was rejected by angry Nirvana fans, and only begrudgingly tolerated by R.E.M. fans, it sold quite well.  But the history of music doesn't really value the opinion of the vast middle, those non-obsessive Americans who aren't looking for a deeper message, but just want a happy, shiny song to sing along to in the car. And perhaps it is just my middle-aged depression talking, but I already spend too much time thinking about how my life sucks, you know?  Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that there is happiness in the world.

Or perhaps I should just quote Matthew Perpetua's fantastic Pop Songs 07-08 blog:

Ah, yes. The most unfairly maligned song in the R.E.M. discography.
Actually, that’s not quite true: It’s actually one of the band’s biggest hits, though they’ve gone out of their way to distance themselves from it by never performing it in concert, and omitting it from their second greatest-hits collection in favor of several songs that were not even close to being popular.
Though I can understand why the song would not work well in concert — the string accompaniment is crucial, and perhaps the single best thing about the composition — it’s a bit sad that the band are not proud of it, or at least enough to acknowledge that it is one of their most successful and best-known singles. It’s a lovely song, and it takes the band’s long-established penchant for chiming, jangly chords and sunny harmonies to a logical conclusion: Full-on retro bubblegum, complete with a guest vocal from the high priestess of camp, Kate Pierson.
Clearly the trouble with “Shiny Happy People” is not the song so much as the lyrics. Frankly, it’s always a bit tricky to work out to what degree the song is meant to be ironic. There’s certainly a touch of irony in it — I mean, c’mon — but I think what puts some people off is that it’s mostly quite sincere. In the middle of an album of love songs and/or songs about love, “Shiny Happy People” takes it all to a radical extreme: It’s this relentlessly cheery vision of utopia where everyone is in love, all of the time. Whether you laugh at it, cringe, swoon, cry, or sing along, it’s revealing something about your outlook on life. It’s kinda like a Rorschach test that way.

I am listening to SHP as I write this, and it is just a delightful song.   The beautiful three-part harmony between Michael, Mike and Kate!  The uber-jangly guitar riff!  The opening strings!  The never ending "dit dit ditditdit"!  Handclaps, for god's sake!  This song is pure, distilled joy.

We are firmly entrenched in an ironic worldview which rejects any attempt at sincerity as childlike and naive.  And therefore there is no room in rock and roll for a song about laughing, about happiness, about community, about non-sexualized love.  When Stipe sings "Everyone around--love them, love them," he might as well be singing "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing."  Hey look--it turns out that the song is political, after all.

Last Friday

So last Friday I was sitting in the library waiting for my son to get out of school.  I was chatting with another parent--my son is best friends with her daughter, so we spend a lot of time together, and I really like the whole family.  We rarely discuss politics or other serious matters, but on this day, for some reason, she brings up the Trayvon Martin murder (which, unbeknownst to her, I've been following obsessively).  Serious conversation ensues.

 I won't bore you with the whole conversation, but at one point it gets brought up that Zimmerman was paranoid in part because of recent thefts in his neighborhood.  Whereupon my friend goes off on a tirade against thieves.  She really hates thieves, hates the idea of them, wishes we could "string them all up" (which is a really, really unfortunate turn of phrase that I let go by because a) she used the phrase unthinkingly and b) there was no stopping her anti-thievery rant).  She was lighthearted in tone as she said all this, but it wasn't a joke--she meant every word. 

I've been thinking about that conversation all weekend.  Not to get too Marxist on you, but I'm struck by the centrality of the concept of theft in our capitalistic society.  We often place other crimes within the framework of theft--rape as the theft of virginity or innocence, murder as theft of life or of the future--theft from both the victim and the victim's family.

Zimmerman's actions, according to the 911 call he made, springs from this hatred of theft--"they always get away with it."  Government welfare is disparaged because it is seen as theft--undeserving people taking money that doesn't belong to them, taking it from hard-working people.

The concept of theft requires us to make moral judgements.  Heist shows can be moral because, like Robin Hood, the thieves steal from the undeserving and give to the deserving (yes, I've been watching Leverage recently, why do you ask?) 

So here's my point: one of the most insidious traits of modern racism is how it has mapped itself onto this central feature of a late-capitalistic society--out hatred of thieves.  In different ways (and I don't want to elide those differences, though they aren't my point) both the native black and the immigrant experience in America is one of being accused of theft. 

George Zimmerman didn't set out to kill a young black man--he set out to catch a thief.  I'm sure Zimmerman would say that he hates thieves, regardless of color.  Of course, the bigger question is why, when Zimmerman looked at Trayvon Martin, did he see a thief?

Deception (1946)

As part of my ongoing quest to watch all the movies used in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, last night I watched the 1946 Bette Davis film Deception.  Shorter review: meh.  And so I wasn't going to write about it.  And yet, one thing kept bothering me.  You see, at one point in the film, our bad guy, Claude Rains, monologues while stroking a cat.  Straight up James Bond villain strokes a cat, twenty years before the Bond films even existed.[1]  I wanted a screenshot of this cat-stroking, but the Internet has none.  Which blows my mind.  Wasn’t the Internet invented in order to catalogue cat pictures?  And so, I decided that I must create one myself.  Which meant teaching myself how to use DVD software, since I had no clue how one grabs screenshots from films and posts them online.

 Fast forward several hours, and I give you—Claude Rains stroking a cat, evil villain style.

And since I’ve gone through all this trouble, I might as well talk about the rest of the film.  Disclaimer: of the three main actors (Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains), I only care for Rains.  If you are a Davis or Henreid fan, then you’ll most likely disagree with my mostly negative take on them.  If, like me, you don’t much care for either actor, this isn’t the film to change your mind.

Deception opens with a reunion between Christine Radcliffe (Davis) and Karel Novak (Henreid).  The couple met while studying music in Europe; Radcliffe was able to return to America, but Novak was trapped in Europe.  The background to this story is incredibly vague.  (I suppose the filmmakers assumed that 1946 audiences didn’t need a rehash of Nazi atrocities.)  Novak never discusses what happened to him in Europe with Radcliffe; the closest the audience gets to an explanation is in the cat-stroking scene, when Alexander Hollenius (Rains) comments that Novak “wouldn’t perform for them” (or some such words) and that he’s lucky he still has his fingers.[2]  All we need to know is that Novak is a delicate, broken man, prone to jealous fits alternating with absurd naivety.  The opening reunion is all tears and chaste embraces, with Radcliffe saying that “I saw them kill you!” (or some such words).  How this statement is possible is never explained.  Really, we aren’t supposed to think too much about it.  All we need to know is that, for whatever implausible reason, Bette Davis thought Paul Henreid was dead, and so moved on with her life.  And now that her dead lover has returned, she’s got some ‘splaining to do. 

Radcliffe takes Novak back to her NYC apartment, explaining as they walk how she is a struggling musician.  Then they get to her place, which is—I kid you not—the greatest NYC apartment I have ever seen.  (Apparently the design was modeled after Leonard Bernstein’s apartment.) 

Novak is naturally suspicious, and accuses her (without directly saying it, of course) of being a hooker—even choking her at first.  (This is the scene Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid uses, and since it occurs so early in the film, I thought about just turning it off here, as so far the film was a bit of a snoozefest.)  Radcliffe naturally can’t tell her domestic abuser the truth—that she is now a famous composer’s kept woman—so we get the first of her many, many lies.  She tells Novak that she takes in students in order to pay for her fantastic apartment with its opulent artwork and décor, and her fancy fur coats.  (No wonder Warner Brothers lost money on this film—the sets and costumes are crazy ritzy.)  The fact that Novak falls for such a terrible lie is either proof that the concentration camps destroyed his brain, or more likely, proof that the filmmakers don’t expect us to think too hard about this film.  Any trauma Novak may suffer from is merely a convienent plot point, which surfaces when needed and disappears otherwise.

And this is my biggest complaint about the film—it is a melodrama where characters act as they do not for any realistic psychological reasons, but because the plot demands that they act in this way.  The plot is especially jarring to contemporary audiences, since Bette Davis’s central dilemma—preventing her lover from finding out that she’s been unfaithful to him—makes little sense anymore.  A simple “I thought you were dead, and so I moved on with my life; if you can’t accept that, then you obviously don’t love me” won’t suffice for a film which insists upon a very conservative view of female sexuality, even as it exploits that very sexuality in order to drive the plot.

What this film needed was more Claude Rains, who plays the manipulative, scenery-chewing composer.  His first appearance, crashing the wedding reception of our not-so-perfect couple, is a hoot.  Rains comes on like a cross between Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Simon Callow in, well, anything. 

Rains almost single-handedly turns this film from a flaccid melodrama into a camp classic.  Deception is part of a long tradition of films about the creative class, and had the potential to be an ur- All About Eve.  Sadly, only when Rains is on screen does the film come alive.  I would say he steals every scene he’s in, except that makes it sound like he’s doing something wrong.  To be fair, Rains’s character is a lot more fun than the PTSD cellist or the anxiety-plagued kept woman.  After crashing the party, Hollenius discovers that his kept woman’s new husband is a world-class cellist; coincidentally, his just-finished work is a cello concerto.  So he offers the part to Novak, partly because Novak is really, really, good, but mostly just so he can mess with him. (Rains and Davis have zero chemistry, which leads one to believe that Hollenius’s interest in Radcliffe was not sexual; rather, he just likes having people around to jump through his hoops.  Rains’s campy demeanor and extensive collection of cravats and dressing gowns furthers this “no sexual interest” theory.)  After his initial disappointment wears off, Hollenius seems delighted to have not one but two people to play mind-games with.

The middle section of the film is the most enjoyable, what with Hollenius finding more and more creative ways to fuck with the not-so-perfect couple.  Radcliffe is convinced that Hollenius is going to destroy them, even at the expense of ruining the premiere of his new work.  (The Netflix blurb states that “Christine’s efforts to conceal her actions are hampered by Hollenius’s insistence on sabotaging Novak’s career,” but this isn’t quite right.  Christine thinks that this is so, but as we shall see, she is catastrophically mistaken.)

Long story short, Radcliffe keeps sneaking off to see Hollenius to beg him not to tell, and Hollenius keeps saying, “What, me?  I wouldn’t do such a thing!” while flashing his best shit-eating grin.  Then he messes with Novak some more.  Finally, on the night of the big concert, Radcliffe shows up at Hollenius’s palatial brownstone and shoots him dead.  (Yeah, yeah—spoiler alert.  The DVD is obviously not concerned with keeping this little secret—check out the title screen:

Oh, and this final Rains scene also contains the best line of the film.  When Bette Davis walks in the room, Rains is sitting at his dinner table, and he says “You look positively majestic.  I’d better remain seated.”  That’s how you do an erection joke, people!)

The film ends after the concert, with Radcliffe tearily confessing all to Novak.  (Because why not?  She just killed a man to keep her secret from him, so why not immediately spill it?  Women, amiright?)  We also learn explicitly what some of us suspected all along—Hollenius was never going to spill the beans.  Spilling the beans would ruin his fun.  Radcliffe has made the crucial mistake of thinking that this love triangle was all about her[3], that Hollenius was so distraught over losing her that he would sabotage his own concerto, and that if Novak found out he would sacrifice his career.  But it was never about her at all, it was about the creative class, and how members of the creative class love power for its own sake, love manipulating people, and love being the center of attention, even negative attention, at all times.  Hollenius has been fucking with them because that’s what directors composers do.  If he didn’t have the “kept woman” stuff to use as blackmail, he would’ve just found something else.  Hollenius plays mind games for the same supposed reason that they all do (to evoke emotions that lead to better performances) and for the actual reason that they all do (because he can).  The real tragedy, the film tells us, is that Radcliffe, despite being a musician herself, never understood the masculine world of the creative class.  So not only is Radcliffe a loose woman and a compulsive liar, but she’s an idiot to boot. 

The film is categorized as a film noir, which doesn’t seem right to me.  The form may be a film noir form—I really don’t know enough about the specifics of film noir composition to say.  Deception is certainly a beautifully shot movie, with its noiry high ceilings and shadows everywhere. (Half the film seems to be Davis blowing out candles.)  But the content doesn’t seem all that film noir to me.  Davis is a femme, and she does fatale someone, but I wouldn’t call her a femme fatale.  The movie certainly tries to take itself as seriously as a film noir, which is its biggest mistake.  This film is all about overwrought musicians talking endlessly about their craft, making themselves out to be the most important people in the world.  Only Rains seemed to know that this pomposity required acting of the highest camp in order to keep it from being insufferable.

---

[1] Which reminds me—someday I need to write a post about how James Bond is a film noir hero.  More specifically, how Bond retains all the affectations of a film noir hero while removing the reason for those affectations; i.e. his outsider status.  Bond is an establishment hero who co-opts the manners of a hard-boiled detective.

[2] Of course, this hint of violence must only be discussed between the two men—wouldn’t want to hurt Bette Davis’s delicate fee-fees.

[3] Radcliffe obviously never read Eve Sedgwick.

Ramblings about World Building

Today I can't stop thinking about world building.

Last night I watched the latest Doctor Who episode, called "The Girl Who Waited."  The girl in question, Amy Pond, is the latest in a long line of female sidekicks for the titular Doctor.  (I'm going to try to write this for an imagined reader who knows nothing about the TV show, which is A) quite difficult, and B) part of my point about world building.)  Doctor Who is a long-running British sci-fi drama in which our protagonist, a time traveller, goes on wacky and sometimes creepy adventures throughout time and space, often in the company of beautiful, young, mostly female but sometimes male sidekicks (called "companions").  The Doctor's latest companion, Ms. Pond, is often called "the girl who waited" by the Doctor in reference to their first meeting, when Amy was just a little girl.  The Doctor, having to leave, promised Amy he would return for her.  But because of his cantankerous time travel device (think Han Solo's relationship with his ship, or any use of the trope where mechanical breakdowns further plot development) while he was gone only a few minutes, many years passed for young Amy, and they met again only when she was a young adult.  Every night she waited for him to return, and every night she was disappointed.  But all's well that ends well, and now they adventure together (along with her husband Rory).

Last night's episode involved a repeat of this initial premise--Amy becomes trapped on a creepy quarantined planet, the Doctor promises to come right back for her, and though mere minutes pass for the boys, they find Amy 36 years older (in old-age makeup) and very, very bitter.  After all these years, Amy Pond has grown tired of waiting.

Which brings me to my first thought about world building.  Authors have always built worlds, of course--London is a character, perhaps the most important character, in the novels of Dickens, and Faulkner would not be a success without his evocation of the Gothic South.  But television world building is a very different beast.  Most episodes of both comedies and dramas in the early years of television were written to stand alone.  Tune in to any episode of Leave it to Beaver or Gunsmoke and you'll find the same basic plot.  Each episode contained all of the information one would need to understand what was happening and why.  The same was true of comic books--each issue of Superman was a stand-alone story, and the characters would explain in dialogue any pertinent information.  Even soap operas, the most continuity heavy of genres, made sure that characters were constantly expositing, so that one could go on vacation, miss two weeks of the show, and then return and catch up to speed almost instantly.[i]

But as time went on, all of television became more and more soap operatic.  By this I mean that TV began to tell stories that moved past individual stand-alone episodes and began telling longer stories.  Writers discovered that what audiences were interested in weren’t the plots, which after all were utterly formulaic.  No, what we wanted to see was the characters, and the plots were just excuses to watch the characters do something.[ii]  But as we watched these characters have their comedic or dramatic adventures, each the same as the last, we began to notice that these beloved characters weren’t very bright.  Why would Superman throw Lex Luthor in jail at the end of each adventure, knowing full well that he’ll just escape again in a few months?  Why would anyone ever be friends with Jessica Fletcher, knowing full well that murders follow her around like stink on shit?  In short, audience members were watching so many examples of narrative that they began to see what was previously noticed only by lit professors and other devourers of novels—they were noticing the conflict between the tropes upon which plots are constructed and the need in all realistic genres (and even comic books were being written “realistically” i.e. characters behaving in psychologically believable ways) for characters to learn from their experiences.  It used to be that characters didn’t learn anything until the adventure was almost over.  Elizabeth Bennet’s discovery of the true nature of both Darcy and Wickham means that the story will soon be moving to its close, as does Oedipus’s discovery of his true parentage.  However, in open-ended genres like soap operas and comic books, characters could not learn, because learning means the end of the story, and these stories don’t end.  So soap opera husbands are always having affairs that end badly, returning to their wives for a tearful reunion, only to begin again the cycle of adultery.  Robin will always blunder headlong into the trap from which Batman must rescue him—if he ever learnt to avoid the trap, he would cease to be Robin.  So now we are faced with a dilemma.  We want our characters to learn, but we don’t want the story to end.  This conflict between plot and character drives most of the TV I’ve seen in the past decade, including the revival of Doctor Who.   Last night’s Doctor Who episode, in fact, used perhaps the most melodramatic of tropes, the one most emblematic of the plot/character conflict—the damsel in distress.

How do we know that our protagonists are heroes?  Because they save people.  And though saving strangers is alright, we respond better when we have an emotional investment in the person being saved.  Hence the need for a love interest to save.  The rescue of the damsel tied to the train tracks is a trope that has been with us for well over a hundred years now, and dates back to a time when theatre audiences were mostly male.  The women that made up the soap opera audience didn’t seem to mind, but female audiences today are (quite rightly) tired of seeing women as nothing but love interests and passive victims.  This dilemma would seem to have an easy fix—just stop writing women as damsels in distress.  Give them the agency that men have enjoyed for a long time now.  But this isn’t happening, and it’s not because all these shows have misogynists for writers (though, boy, it feels like that sometimes.)[iii] Instead, I believe that these writers are wrestling with how to show characters changing within an open-ended story.

At the beginning of “The Girl Who Waited” we are explicitly reminded that Amy Pond is the traditional damsel in distress.  She tells her husband to save her, which he does, though he is 36 years late in doing so.  The plot is a rerun, and though tradition calls for characters to make the same mistakes over and over again, this time Amy learns.  In the rest of the episode we are shown an Amy Pond who has learned to take care of herself, and as a consequence, we know that she cannot be allowed to remain in the story.  And sure enough, the Doctor finds a way to go back in time and save the young Amy.[iv] But by saving younger Amy at a point in time before she spent 36 years learning to rely on herself, the old age make-up Amy is wiped from existence, having never lived.  The story thus, in a very postmodern way, makes its plot turn on the very problem of telling this kind of damsel in distress story.  We are made aware of the injustice of taking away Amy’s hard-won agency even as we understand that the story cannot proceed unless it happens.  Instead of not ever learning, characters now learn only to forget.[v]  At first this growth followed by reset button might seem like the perfect solution, but my unease with last night’s episode lies in part with how it seemed to deconstruct itself as it went along, as if lampshading the genre’s difficulties with character growth and female agency was the same as fixing it.[vi]

The problem of character growth within an open-ended story results in another trend that last night’s Doctor Who demonstrated—that of a generally world darkening—which will be a subject of a future post, as these ramblings have gone on long enough.

---

[i] This is one of my favorite aspects of soap operas—the expositing.  Characters telling each other things that they should be fully aware of, simply for the audience’s benefit.  In a more realistic milieu such dialogue would be bothersome, but in a world in which evil twins kidnap and impersonate their siblings, I’m OK with the idea that everyone is expositing all the time.

[ii] .  Ironically, the current demise of the soap opera on daytime television is proof of the fantastic popularity of the genre.  All TV is now soap opera, and the tropes of the genre no longer written just for stay at home moms.  Doctor Who was a trendsetter in this regard, as it has always been quite a soap opera, albeit one which uses scientific mumbo jumbo to paper over its more melodramatic leanings. 

[iii] When I say “not happening,” I don’t mean to belittle the wonderful worlds that many writers are creating, especially within the genre of science fiction novels.  I am discussing TV (and indirectly comic books) and its reliance upon long-standing tropes.

[iv] OK, that’s not quite an accurate summary of the plot, but summarizing time-travel plots is an exercise in masochism. 

[v] Superman’s “kiss of forgetfulness” at the end of Superman II being a prime example of this trope.

[vi] This post needs about a million links to tvtropes.org, but I’m too lazy to bother right now.  Look up “lampshading,” but be prepared to spend the next four hours of your life down that particular rabbit hole.

Enjoying Bad Baseball

Friday night I attended a baseball game here in Houston.  The first-place Milwaukee Brewers were in town to play the last-place Astros.

At 37-74, the Astros are the worst team in baseball.  Since I last saw the Astros, at the beginning of the summer, they traded away their SS, CF, and RF, they dumped their 2B, and they sent both their 3B and 1B back to the minors due to poor play.  That's pretty much the entire team gone.  The new folks aren't any better, mind you.  And since they have very little minor-league talent, he Astros are going to be bad for many years to come.  And yet, there I was, willingly shelling out 16 dollars to sit in the cheap seats and watch along with a half-empty stadium as the Astros lost yet again.

The final score was 8-1, but it wasn't that close.  The Astros pitcher (who was himself sent to the minors after the game) gave up three runs in the first inning, and three more in the third.  The Brewers at this point basically stopped trying very hard, and the Houston players all looked like they would rather be anywhere else but where they were.  In short, it was a pretty lackluster affair all the way around.

And yet, I had a great time.  I love going to ballgames.  Others have discussed the joy of the ball-field much more eloquently than I ever could, so let me just confirm their reports.  There is almost nowhere I would rather be than sitting with a beer in my hand watching a game.  If the game involves a team and/or players I root for or against, great.  If the game is exciting, back-and-forth, well-played baseball, fantastic.  But if the game is like Friday night--two teams I don't really care about, a game over before it really began . . . well, that's OK too.  Because there is always something in a baseball game to enjoy.

Sometimes it's not just what happens on the field, of course.  Spending time with friends at the ballpark is always more fun than just sitting in a bar. Friday night it was the quest for an Astros cap.  My friend needed a new cap, you see, and not just any old cap would do.  So we went into store after store, never settling, until finally finding the perfect cap.  Now, some people might have been annoyed by such a shopping trip, and if I had been at mall, maybe I would have been too.  But quests seem appropriate for the ballfield.

On the field, two particular events stood out at this non-eventful game.  An Astros rookie came into the game in the fifth inning, after the score was already 6-1 and everyone knew the game was over.  JB Shuck (what a great baseball name) had just been called up that day.  This was his first major league game, and I was there to cheer him on.  He singled in his first plate appearance, and I stood and applauded along with the rest of the crowd--it was as excited as the crowd had been all game.  He then stole second base, and the crowd roared even louder.  Mr. Shuck will always remember this game, as will I.  I attended a game at Shea Stadium in NYC many years ago (Sept 2 1998 to be precise) where I saw a Braves rookie named Marty Malloy play his first game and get his first hit, a home run.  It was the only home run he would ever hit in the big leagues.  He only played 35 games in all--the proverbial cup of coffee.  I doubt there are very many die-hard Braves fans, let alone baseball fans, who remember Marty Malloy. But I will never forget sharing his greatest baseball memory. Perhaps Mr. Shuck will go on to have many great baseball memories himself.  Or perhaps, like Mr. Malloy, his first game will also be his greatest.   Either way, it was a privilege to share in the moment.

There was another moment late in the game that I am happy to have seen.  In the ninth inning the Brewers sent up Craig Counsell to pinch-hit.  Mr. Counsell had been featured in many places the past few days--including a mention on the Colbert Report--for a very dubious reason.  If he were to make one more out, he would tie the record for most consecutive at-bats without a hit.  This was a record that had stood for over a century, a record that no one would want their name next to.  Mr Counsell is no Hall-of-Famer--not even close.  He never made an All-Star team, was never considered anything more than a scrappy second baseman with a very weird batting stance.  But he played important roles for two World Series teams, and was the MVP of the 2001 NLCS.  In 1997 he scored the winning run in the 7th game of the World Series.  Now in his 16th season, he is very close to the end of his playing days.  But he has had a pretty great career, with lots of happy memories.  Would it all be overshadowed by this record streak of futility?  Thankfully, we will never know.  Mr. Counsell got a hit on Friday night.  The crowd applauded, which I found touching.  Mr. Counsell had a grin that I could see from the cheap seats.

 Two important things happened at this uneventful game (three if you count the quest for the perfect cap).  One will make the records book, and one will not.  One was a beginning, one an end.  Together they represent baseball.

A Response to 21st Century Hoovernomics

Most economists are saying that now is a terrible time to be slashing spending.  With unemployment at close to 10% (and that's using the very conservative official numbers), with the housing market still reeling, austerity measures such as conservatives are advocating are little better than 21st century Hoovernomics.  But I can imagine the conservative response--so when is a good time to cut this unsustainable spending binge?  If not now, when?  And they are right, these imaginary conservative interlocutors of mine.  The answer will always be "later."

Progressives have erred in accepting so many conservative frames, and this is one of the biggies.  It has become conventional wisdom that the federal government needs to slash spending--the only question is who will be affected.  Liberals advocate soaking the rich. (Well, not really, but since I'm trying to imagine the conservative mind, let's just play along.)  Conservatives know that their base does not like--if fact hates--this notion.  Rich people, of course, don't like it, but neither do conservatives in general, and most of them are not rich.  These conservatives do not vote their economic self-interest, as many--including Thomas Frank--have pointed out.  For them, it is a moral issue.  Taking money from those that have earned it, and giving it to those who are shiftless and lazy, is the major complaint--perhaps the only complaint--that conservatives really have against government.  Progressives will never win any economic argument as long as this ideological framework is in place.

A huge majority of the country loved FDR and his big spending ways, because they saw directly how government spending affected their lives.  Government spending defeated the Nazis and saved the world.  Government spending provided electricity to the nation.  Government spending helped young couples buy their first home, and helped send them all to college.  In short, government spending created the post-war era that conservatives nostalgically pine for as the Golden Age of America.  Minorities, however, were largely shut out of the golden age of governmental spending.  Sure, they loved FDR too, for they were better off than before, but while white America was booming, their progress was slow and incremental.  The civil rights movement and LBJ's Great Society aimed to fix this inequity, to open up the power of government spending to all Americans.  And not so coincidentally, this is when more and more conservatives began to sour on government spending, when the idea began to take hold in the conservative mind that government spending doesn't help us any more.  All it does is take money from our pockets and give it to Them.  And that's not right.

Much is made of the Republican party being taken over by fundamentalist Christians, a phenomenon that began in the conservative backlash to post-war cultural changes and became manifest with Reagan's victory in 1980.  But I believe that this bit of common sense has it backwards.  Christians didn't take over the Republican Party--conservative ideology transformed Christianity.  Al Franken's Supply-Side Jesus is funny because it's no joke.  Conservative economic dogma is now central to Christian fundamentalist beliefs.  The idea that the government is taking from the wealthy to help the undeserving poor mapped almost perfectly onto the central anxiety of the post-war era--the eternal struggle between Christian America and godless Communism.  All of the ridiculous accusations of socialism, fascism, communism, and Marxism hurled against progressives (to the deep consternation of pedants like me who object not to the ideological frame being employed but to the muddling of language by using the terms interchangeably) stem from this post-war anxiety that our government is robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, which is communist, which is unchristian, and so must be opposed by good Christians.

I was born in the South in 1973, and grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household.  I went to a private Christian school, as the public school I was zoned for was largely black.  This school, of course, had not been so up until the late 60s, when desegregation finally began being enforced throughout the South.  My parents never took me to a public park--I played on the swingset in my backyard, in friends' backyards, at my private school's playground, or at my all-white church's playground.  I was never taken to a public pool--my grandparents had a pool, as did many friends.  In short, I grew up in a world where public = black.  I almost never encountered black people; not until high school did I have a black friend. For me, the South might as well have still been under Jim Crow.  And this is what progressives are getting at when they accuse conservatives (often implicitly, sometimes directly) of being racist.   These accusations are, of course, a terrible strategy.  Individual conservatives are not racist (well, some of them are, but so are some progressives).  But the current conservative economic dogma, the one that is doing so much damage to our politics right now, the one that has utterly transformed American Christianity, is built upon an ideology that took root before the vast majority of conservatives were even born.  It is an ideology that renders invisible all of the governmental services that benefit the white and the wealthy, and obsesses over those services that benefit minorities and the poor.  It is an ideology that has built a shadow world, a private world, and become more and more epistemically closed as time has passed.

This frame of government as Communist Robin Hood must be rejected if progressives ever hope to make substantial economic changes in this country.  We must return to the understanding that created FDR's popularity, the understanding that government services are a piece of the puzzle (NOT the whole puzzle--hard work and good luck will always be important, and progressives neglect this at their own peril) that is American prosperity.  The government is at its best when it curbs the excesses of capitalism (and we will always be arguing over how free the market should be--it is a good argument and should continue).  The government is at its best when it provides services, such as health care, that would be immoral to turn over to the heartlessness of pure capitalism.  But most importantly, we must return to the idea the government spending affects us all.  Providing health care to the jobless helps them, but it helps me too, by driving down the insane costs of the current health care system.  We must reject the notion that all government spending is bad, is immoral, because all government spending is redistributive.   It is most certainly not.  The federal government is certainly no utopia.  It will always be filled with self-centered individuals, always be teetering on the brink of corruption.  But unlike the private shadow system that conservatives have created, governmental corruption can be discovered, can be brought to the light and punished, and the corruptors voted out of office.  This is why governmental services are superior to private services, and why government spending should increase--it's not that the government is more pure, or more moral, than private industries, but rather that the government is more directly accountable to the American people that they serve.