tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-937220647195553332024-03-06T12:55:35.667-08:00Star Wars Modernstarwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.comBlogger217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-71998764549640294852020-05-17T09:07:00.000-07:002020-05-17T09:07:18.043-07:00Of Apathy & Absence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First issue</td></tr>
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Last summer my friend <a href="https://ericmatthies.me/ABOUT" target="_blank">Eric Matthies</a> reached out to me because he was planing to publish an anthology, "in the spirit of the <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">old school punk zines", </span> and was looking for contributions from friends. As one does with these sort of things, I read it, and filed it away - meaning to reply later. I got a reminder from Eric a few weeks later, and I'll admit I didn't reread the original pitch, I just dove into writing an idea that had been taking shape after his first email. Looking back, my contribution to Eric's zine turned out to be a bit literal, but only because I remembered the title of the Zine, "<a href="https://www.blurb.com/b/9977580-defy-apathy-vol-1" target="_blank">DEFY APATHY</a>!" as a theme for the first issue... So it goes. What follows is my dispatch from another country: the past. (although I do feel like the conclusion rhymes nicely with the COVID present.)<br />
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I don't remember seeing Star Wars for the first time, It is one of my all time favorite movies, but even so, I have absolutely no memory of being in the theater with my sisters, of seeing the Star Destroyer pass over head for the first time, or of the crowds' reaction to the "drop into hyperspace". What I do remember is my sisters saying that if I didn't go, they couldn't go, and thinking the title sound dumb (I was 6 in May of 1977). And I remember the summer that followed - that practically the only thing my friends and I talked about was Star Wars, and that all we cared about was speed; the speed of "hyperspace" - but on Big Wheels. Likewise, I don't remember my first votes - or I do, but only as an absence.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My spread - and free stickers</td></tr>
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I turned eighteen in June of '88, so I would have had my first chance to cast a vote in the presidential elections later that same year. I can't imagine I was swept up in the excitement of the Dukakis campaign, but I do remember discussing with my father, my choice of whether or not to register for the draft. Dad wasn’t an activist, but he was an outspoken pacifist who, as a younger man, had marched with Martin Luther King in Selma. He encouraged me to bite the bullet, so I could get the student aid I’d need for college, and to vote my dissent.</div>
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My disgust with the Reagan/Bush administration had its origins in middle school, with friends who came from political activist households, they and their parents stirred my earliest political convictions with sharp no-nuke and anti-war rhetoric, which I found galvanizing in a way the background noise of my father’s pacifism never had. By '88, my alienation had come to a boil and I did not want to participate, in anyway, with the bellicose corruption of the US government. And while I don’t remember exactly how it went down, I do know that by November of '88 however, my father’s arguments had won the day over my more radical anti-war impulses. I had registered for the draft and enrolled in a community college.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike</td></tr>
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On Tuesday November 8th, I would have been living with a high school buddy, sharing a second floor walk up on the least attractive corner of Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. I imagine he and I might have gone to vote together, we were nerdy and did those sorts of things together. And because my father was a Yellow Dog Democrat, I am sure I voted for Dukakis, not because I cared for him as a candidate, but because I know my father would have urged me not to throw away my vote on a radical lost cause. I’m sure that I would have voted with my father the pacifist that year, but I’m not positive. I can’t be. I don't remember the act. I do remember my disappointment that Bush won that election - which was personal, keen, and deeply felt. So while not positive, I’m pretty sure. But like Star Wars, my first vote is remembered as a sort of negative space.</div>
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By the time the 1990 midterms came along two years later, I was living a couple hours drive straight west of Seattle. I had hitchhiked out in the spring of ’89 and gotten myself a job casting bronze at the end of a dirt road in a small community of hippy poets, boat builders, fishermen, dairy farmers and loggers (an odd mix for a kid from Chicago). And again, while I don't actually remember voting that year, I have good reason to be almost certain I did.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Investing a casting with Tom</td></tr>
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I had moved out west to apprentice to the sculptor Tom Jay. Tom was a back-to-the-lander who’d built a small bronze foundry on ten acres at the end of a dirt road - deep in the woods, no running water - in the early 70s. Tom was also environmental activist (something I'd never encountered growing up in Chicago - the political activists and community organizers I’d known growing up were focused on anti-war, no-nukes, and racial justice, I don’t remember anyone talking about nature) who was well respected by the hippies, fishermen, farmers and loggers - no small thing.</div>
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"Think Globally, Act Locally" was another entirely unfamiliar concept else my boss Tom introduced to me - the activism I’d known till then felt as nonlocal as the wars, nukes and racism they were countering. It seems trite now, the stuff of faded t-shirts and half legible bumper stickers, but it wasn’t yet then. And it wasn’t just an idea they declared however, Tom and his neighbors were true believers, and they acted on those beliefs. Like no one I had ever met before (in Chicago hippies were people who smoked pot, dressed a certain way, lived in poorer neighborhoods, and drove particular makes of van - but to me the nonconformity had always seemed one of quality, not kind). The community I’d found myself within was “living the change they wanted to make”. Again, that might sound trite, but I’d never seen a large group of people do that before, I was totally convinced.</div>
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Local elections were important to them, and so I know, by extension, that they were important to me. I almost certainly would have voted with them that first year - but certainly all the elections I was there that followed. And most of the time they would have voted Democratic, because these people may have been drinking out of hand dug wells, living on land co-ops, shopping at the food co-op, and working in cooperative shops, but they were realists and did not throw away their votes.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tom looking a bit silly at an infamous holiday party (it was the 90s)</td></tr>
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But again my memory of voting during that time is spotty, even the mechanics of the machines/ballots is all but lost to time. I seem to remember we voted in the Fire Station, that they moved the engines out of the garage; that the space was bright and airy. I do remember that the poll worker who greeted me the first time I voted there was Ean the wife of a crusty local farmer named Leonard who owned the pasture land across the road from Tom’s foundry, where I lived (her husband disliked me on principal - I think because I didn’t own a car, and while he’d pick me up, I didn’t think he approved of my hitchhiking - but that changed the day I was the only person to show up for a work party, and he and I alone put up twice as many fence posts as he'd expected to get done with six guys). As much as Leonard still disliked me in those pre-work-party years, I remember Ean greeting me warmly, and how pleased I was to be greeted by a familiar face; the small town-ness of it all.</div>
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When I arrived in Washington State in ’89, we hadn’t been dubbed Gen X yet, and it was probably a matter of a year still, before "Grunge" would become a thing - at least it hadn’t become a thing in Chicago before I left, and I don’t remember any of my friends back home registering that I’d moved somewhere relevant that first year. (Not only did I not know about Kurt Cobain and Sub Pop, I could not have found Seattle on a map before I hitchhiked there, I'm not sure I even knew there were any states on the West Coast besides California.) But by ‘88 my generation was already being dismissed as “slackers” (I turned 18 while hitchhiking through Texas that summer, and everyone I met in Austin had either been in Slacker or knew someone who had).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me looking sill at the same party (it was the 90s)</td></tr>
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Even before I had the right to vote, I was told my generation was apathetic; that in fact, all Americans had become apathetic- but we were somehow standouts. The proof of that apathy was obvious and impossible to refute: the shrinking share of eligible voters who actually voted and the prodigy of that decline - the twin rolling electoral trauma of Ronald Reagan (with the added insult of the George Herbert Walker Bush addendum soon to follow) had dominated the lives of my generation to disastrous effect. It was hard not to believe that argument.</div>
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A fact that was bandied around on the Left a great deal in those years, was, that in Italy, 90% of eligible voters showed up to vote. I had never been to Italy, but I had hitch hiked all throughout the lower 48 in the late 80s and early 90s and my experience of the Americans who I met while on the road was not an apathetic people. Hitchhiking conversations are a lot like airport conversations: people, with a few hours to kill, who can confidently expect to never see you again, will open up on subjects they might otherwise never tell anyone. I heard a lot about marriages (good and bad), religious beliefs (held and lost), money (successes and troubles), sex (almost always boring), divorces, working life, the dark corners of parenting - but most of all, Americans talked to me about politics.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hitching - summer of '88</td></tr>
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It didn't take me long to get the gist of how these conversations worked and how I best fit within them. Influenced by a clique of friends in high school, I'd developed into an aggressive debater: "You're wrong, and I'm right, and this is why..." Perhaps not coincidentally, my friendship with that group ended in the wake of my first cross country hitch hiking trip - to NYC, in January, during one of the worst snow storms to hit the East Coast in 80 years. I was 17, hard-headed, and deeply opinionated, and making profoundly poor life decisions, but no one needed to tell me a ride won't last long if I told the driver he was wrong, or that her beliefs were stupid.</div>
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Over the next six years, from my base in Washington State, I tracked back and forth across the country, and up and down the coasts. Everywhere I traveled in the US, Americans cautioned me against Americans in other parts of the country. In the North, I was told to be careful in those crackers in the South, in the South, I was made to beware of yankees. East Coasters warned me against West Coasters, Angelenos against the freaks in SF, and vice versa, and on and on.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hitching in the rain - summer of '88</td></tr>
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I was never robbed or attacked or threatened or arrested. I was hit on from time to time, but the passes were no more aggressive or lewd than the sort of passes someone might make in a bar. No doubt I’ve encountered more scared cops with their hands on their holster than most Americans (only one ever drew on me). Everywhere I traveled in the US I was met with generosity and good humor. Farmers would tell me about the weather and crops, ranchers about grazing, contractors talked about the economy. Fathers about their wayward sons and daughters, women would ask me if hitching was safe (safer than the bus was always my answer). Everyone wanted to know if I had enough to eat, where I was going to sleep. Some had a hitchhiking story of their own, most harbored the regret of never having hitched when they were younger.</div>
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Everyone picked me up. Young and old, men and women. I rode through southern Utah with a group of migrant workers who spoke little or no english. I got picked up by two little old ladies with a picnic basket full of chicken going through Indiana. A professional horse judge with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen on a human being had an extra cup of coffee he gave me on a cold windy morning in Minnesota. I got pulled over with a surfer going through the southwest desert - he had gotten us very stoned, and came dangerously close to being arrested because we were speeding to get fried chicken.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Last Temptation of Christ</td></tr>
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The great majority of my rides were working class guys in their thirties and forties. And while most people imagine truckers as the ideal ride, that was not my experience. While I have spent more time in the cab of big rigs than at least one of the truckers who picked me up, they were still in the minority - it is a big deal to slow an 18 wheeler down once it gets rolling. Mostly it was shorter rides with men who were self assured physically (tall and thin, I was not a particularly physically imposing guy, which I think helped get rides), but also interested to see what I was up to in their communities - off duty cops were always good for getting me down the road.</div>
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If it took me no time to figure out arguing and contradicting my rides was a bad idea, developing ways of gently disagreeing and strongly making a case for my beliefs, in ways that weren’t challenging, was something I got better and better at over time. In ‘88 I was able to convince a Texas preacher that he should go see Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. In ‘95 I got a retired marine, who had helped fight the war on drugs flying helicopters, to at least admit that there was merit to the idea that drugs should be legalized. But time on the road also made me a better listener, I learned about issues I’d never considered from people I never would have met otherwise. A prison guard talked to me about the need for prison reform, an addict working in a diary about the loneliness of staying sober by moving thousands of miles from his friends and family. On and on.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Twofer</td></tr>
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The Reagan and Bush proof of apathy began to be outweighed in my mind by new evidence. I began to see Americans in a new light; that for better or worse, perhaps low voter turnout was a symptom of a kind of national health not apathy. That most Americans were decent people, taken up with the issues of their own lives and their immediate community. That like Tom and his neighbors, they were engaged, sometimes even deeply engaged, but that the nation as a whole was something they didn’t entirely hold as their own. I began to counter the example of Italy’s high voter turnout, with Italian dysfunction - the Italians had had a new government nearly every year since the end of WWII; that perhaps their 90% voter turnout wasn’t a sign of democratic health but instead a symptom of political dysfunction? That, while I found it frustrating, maybe the reason most Americans didn’t show up to vote was that they were satisfied with their lives and the lives of their neighbors?<br />
I had voted for Bill and Hillary with great enthusiasm in 1992 (“A Twofer” I told my skeptical hippy neighbors, who held their noses and voted for Clinton, but cautioned me with the wisdom of age not to expect too much from them). In 1995, after six years of working in the foundry and as an artist, I hitchhiked to NYC to go to art school. I don’t remember the ’96 reelection or the midterms in ’98, but I remember very clearly standing in line in Brooklyn to vote for Al Gore in 2000 - by then, voting in my Brooklyn neighborhood was old hat. I had voted there before, I remember that I knew my polling station well and some of the neighborhood characters standing on line with me as regular voters - so I must have voted in ’98, and I can’t imagine I didn’t in ’96.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTXoPoj40MnHDRwZ8krJRjN9zzSif8cQa6LeJiqohRRPdB6G-rlH_1c1c18tXj51O1VO38a_50vFt7Gv88sXIsow5TRFbSpf_aoo9VCarFcQfANCq4ML8_3EEJKdIyhDipRm5LcK8d_s/s1600/chad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="970" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTXoPoj40MnHDRwZ8krJRjN9zzSif8cQa6LeJiqohRRPdB6G-rlH_1c1c18tXj51O1VO38a_50vFt7Gv88sXIsow5TRFbSpf_aoo9VCarFcQfANCq4ML8_3EEJKdIyhDipRm5LcK8d_s/s320/chad.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chad</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2000, I remember standing in front of one such neighborhood character, a crusty old black man who reminded me of Ean’s husband Leonard. He was complaining about the long wait, and mouthing the Republican rhetoric of government inefficiency: that no company run this poorly would stay in business long. I was less impatient with his impatience than his reasoning, I remember telling him that the promise of democracy is justice not efficiency. I think of that moment a lot; perhaps because of the injustice of that election. I remember friends at the time whinging about Gore, that he was robotic, unlikable, drab. I still chafe over that loss. We could have had an environmentalist president. And we didn’t lose that election because of apathy, it had to be stolen from us.</div>
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Eight years later, the line I stood on to vote for Obama was hundreds of times longer than Gore’s. (I don’t remember voting for John Kerry, but I know I did because I remember the gloomy election night party at a gallery later that night - I’d bet my last penny there were no lines to vote that day). The line on November 4th, 2008 meanwhile circled a full city block, we were an electoral ouroboros. No one on line with me complained about the wait that day; no one thoughtlessly mouthed GOP talking points. The mood was light, laughter came easily. Those walking past in search of the line’s end were cheered on by those who had already waited hours. And While I don’t remember pulling the lever, I remember it was on one of the old machines. It was wildly inefficient. Exuberant even. Not like at all like a company; more akin to the overabundance and hilarity of cherry blossoms.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZxHk7OLuqkLMTSHIx6sga0X7qtyOXV3ir1G5tuTyu-Pvq3n433EWG6sR-zNCpAfGPjgLYpqtQCzdCp_eM2qC6fAouHowJsc7gHj7Hkscb-oyAnk53xjwH3gbW0V7RxdA6Gbltvni_WqA/s1600/3005034258_95889d6245_c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZxHk7OLuqkLMTSHIx6sga0X7qtyOXV3ir1G5tuTyu-Pvq3n433EWG6sR-zNCpAfGPjgLYpqtQCzdCp_eM2qC6fAouHowJsc7gHj7Hkscb-oyAnk53xjwH3gbW0V7RxdA6Gbltvni_WqA/s320/3005034258_95889d6245_c.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hope</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Like the summer of 1977, the election was our <i>Star Wars</i>, Obama was our New Hope. Practically all my friends and neighbors could talk about was CHANGE - that was our drop into hyperspace. The optimism had faded into something less exuberant, more realistic, by 2012, and honestly I don’t remember anything about that vote, although again, I know I voted - I know because I was afraid Mittens would win. And by afraid, I mean worried. 2016 was the first election in my life in which I was physically afraid.</div>
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My fiancé and I had bought a summer place at the end of a dirt road. We watched, however, in alarm as confederate flags appeared along the winding country roads, as they gave way to Trump signs, and as those made way for “white nationalist” flyers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAFAxbcyHzzd9W1ls0ROtXX4KV82jPY39oszWTDvNK7zNKcsuS6p4f-2t7sivBsX_Mwi3pimBTcNOKPpY2I0N5HhyphenhyphenA5MDOxT-EaRe8Lb7K_8BSwzDVjcgqovL4eXHegtmDFTtc60097I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-05-17+at+9.05.35+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1388" data-original-width="1480" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAFAxbcyHzzd9W1ls0ROtXX4KV82jPY39oszWTDvNK7zNKcsuS6p4f-2t7sivBsX_Mwi3pimBTcNOKPpY2I0N5HhyphenhyphenA5MDOxT-EaRe8Lb7K_8BSwzDVjcgqovL4eXHegtmDFTtc60097I/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-05-17+at+9.05.35+AM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nope</td></tr>
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But again I voted with enthusiasm. I hadn’t supported Hillary Clinton in ‘08, but by 2016 I saw her campaign as historic, she had easily overcome my misgivings about Bill. And while some of my most far Left friends had soured on Obama, I had not. I felt he had overcome an incredibly recalcitrant (read; RACIST) GOP, and delivered on the promises he’d made us - Not entirely, not perfectly, the project was far from complete, but the change had been set in motion. I believe that Hillary would cement the gains that Obama had made and build on them.<br />
And again, like Gore, my enthusiasm was not widely held among my friends, I argued with those who had lost patience with CHANGE and wanted a radical break, to think of the CHANGE made by Obama in terms of compound interest, that eight more years would grow the CHANGE we had. into a fortune of CHANGE. For those who were weary of political dynasty” (a feeling I shared in ‘08) I pointed out that she was no longer simply a former first lady, that over the intervening eight years she had turned herself into one of the most accomplished presidential candidates of our life times, with easily the most progressive platform of any Democratic campaign in living memory. And as for the guy who told me he wasn’t a misogynist, but explained, “I want to vote for a woman, just not her.” I told him that “Yeah man, that is misogyny.” There were no lines to vote for Hillary.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzzgVOx8L4fpJXN3asx3DDHwIhrk4CWDKXIqneR5_hSQW7itJ2oPTyAkbnFbiJhutKPPhMlmMTr0aGSXORVYZtRPL3KNxEUQHGyGEpa7U0319r7bglidixzERUCZwd6TLLeK5rqc0B4g/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-05-17+at+11.28.07+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="928" data-original-width="968" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzzgVOx8L4fpJXN3asx3DDHwIhrk4CWDKXIqneR5_hSQW7itJ2oPTyAkbnFbiJhutKPPhMlmMTr0aGSXORVYZtRPL3KNxEUQHGyGEpa7U0319r7bglidixzERUCZwd6TLLeK5rqc0B4g/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-05-17+at+11.28.07+AM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://highlandscurrent.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/05-17-19.pdf" target="_blank">The Extremist Next Door</a></td></tr>
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The 2018 midterms marked the first time in almost 20 years I wasn’t voting in NYC. We had decided to move our votes upstate - hoping to help change the county from Red to Blue. I clearly remember walking into the fire station, this time the trucks hadn’t been moved, and instead the polling station was in a small cramped entrance space. The poll worker who greeted me was an overweight middle-aged man I’d never seen before. He looked me over and said “Democrat” as he handed me my ballot. I remember where I stood as I filled in my ballot. And I remember the misgivings I felt as I handed it back to him, as I watched him put it in the machine - I wondered if he actually counted the vote or if he was just miming the motions. While I may not remember the act of voting in the past, that doubt was entirely new. And I still have it. I’m still not sure my vote was counted.<br />
My father would tell people that rejecting a Democratic candidates for insufficient ideological purity or other such imperfections, was making the perfect the enemy of the good. And for I long time I did too, but I don’t anymore. I ask my friends who are considering voting for a third party spoiler or withholding their votes altogether to remember that we are not voting for Democrats, I we’re voting with them. We vote with the Americans who want to protect the environment, with the Americans who want to care for the elderly and the poor, with the Americans who want to preserve workers’ rights, with the Americans who want to shield religious and ethnic minorities from discrimination. But I am afraid that in 2020 we are going to be asked to vote against Americans, vote to defeat the bigots, vote to beat back the racists, to punish the corrupt.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPzfRRMOoUk6KW6JR_RrnLJOTpxiCAzLzdOuH7l0BZW1pyIbsfIfyjqH_gmXq9WyQAYSFuDnLRF1TTBhUrSp11J2aU6LZYley_54oSpnROTspCR5NTzEG7KlZkh5WXR6cZWVchrm0LExQ/s1600/PS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="450" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPzfRRMOoUk6KW6JR_RrnLJOTpxiCAzLzdOuH7l0BZW1pyIbsfIfyjqH_gmXq9WyQAYSFuDnLRF1TTBhUrSp11J2aU6LZYley_54oSpnROTspCR5NTzEG7KlZkh5WXR6cZWVchrm0LExQ/s320/PS.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/page/9/?s=tom" target="_blank">BK Line - 2008</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On line in 2008 I saw the opposite of apathy, it wasn’t anger, it was laughter. It is the hilarity of hyperspace. We weren’t voting against anyone we were voting together. The opposite of apathy is exuberance, Whatever happens, I expect that 2020 will be marked by record high voter turnout, even if the Dems nominate another John Kerry. But I expect turnout to be high on both sides, and Republicans are better at motivating their voters to vote against. If our politics continue along the path we’re on - of voting against each other, turnout will continue to rise on both sides until inevitably, we reach 90% voter participation.<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-25781337-7fff-cf0f-c88f-f42c0ad2c842"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It seems we’re all Italians now.</span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-61286722287928373832017-01-19T06:07:00.003-08:002017-01-19T06:07:57.020-08:00Prometheus (re)Bound; Scene Four<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrTiUu3d82K6e1dwPsQiMs10ysTtObzB_Al7WAd9lZ9Nmyyz3N95-03a0f1-XoK8310c5lRVr9BBxLvZhwdXrc2hXrautN3Z4UKo9YWABoPpiexr5GbGSSR9_BtoXdnSexFukZ_EvR0U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+9.15.48+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrTiUu3d82K6e1dwPsQiMs10ysTtObzB_Al7WAd9lZ9Nmyyz3N95-03a0f1-XoK8310c5lRVr9BBxLvZhwdXrc2hXrautN3Z4UKo9YWABoPpiexr5GbGSSR9_BtoXdnSexFukZ_EvR0U/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+9.15.48+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<b>(Return to Scene Two)</b><br />
You haven't missed anything. Scene Three - which shows David moving through the ship alone - is one best, and most consequential of the movie - which is precisely why I've left it untouched, and I see no reason to lay it out with images. If you care to read the scene, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/08/prometheus-rebound_14.html" target="_blank">the full (re)Bound script is posted here</a>, it begins with line 23 and ends at line 40. Or better yet, track down a copy of the movie (00:09:30 - 00:11:53), the scene is not just brilliant, it provides the key to David's deportment, if not his motivation: "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts."<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Meanwhile the changes I made to Scene Four are relatively minor, changed some interactions that rubbed me wrong, but made one meaningful change. I shifted film's liturgical calendar backward from Christmastide to Eastertide; death and resurrection rather than virgin birth. <br />
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41<o:p></o:p></div>
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00:11:54,800 -- 00:11:58,000<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Automatic Voice: </b> ++Attention! Destination threshold. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw3i1yE64FBrDtIKWYiJWwpczavbx9gQ1p-gYKIdPzuvGsKyx-XAikUPbXuTl6V_rdBQfjIgK9jqaHxjD8bP3diUmYDCg_mZpC5VqtYB3wjKLQue7mjc4mi8k9xHQYtNHMZTXQ6EMkGIc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+6.27.50+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw3i1yE64FBrDtIKWYiJWwpczavbx9gQ1p-gYKIdPzuvGsKyx-XAikUPbXuTl6V_rdBQfjIgK9jqaHxjD8bP3diUmYDCg_mZpC5VqtYB3wjKLQue7mjc4mi8k9xHQYtNHMZTXQ6EMkGIc/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+6.27.50+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><i>[As Prometheus reaches their destination, David finds Vickers awake from hypersleep, looking wet and doing push ups. She is obviously healthy, in fighting trim.]</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsI5k3ouja_k0Z530oeQTN3lj0uxQfVbUTS7SE7-C3CDGQWAEqsp_yTmWShrz7N4M-Pjz-K1D-ahvdGzQRKhTaMNbA1KoFlx9VRfUYreEuOWiP20T72S_9hEah1pApmpZ_gw95qZRshE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+6.31.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsI5k3ouja_k0Z530oeQTN3lj0uxQfVbUTS7SE7-C3CDGQWAEqsp_yTmWShrz7N4M-Pjz-K1D-ahvdGzQRKhTaMNbA1KoFlx9VRfUYreEuOWiP20T72S_9hEah1pApmpZ_gw95qZRshE/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-17+at+6.31.29+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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00:12:59,800 -- 00:13:02,300<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Vickers:</b> Robe.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:13:12,000 -- 00:13:14,000<o:p></o:p></div>
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How long?<o:p></o:p></div>
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00:13:14,001 -- 00:13:17,700<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>David:</b> 2 years, 4 months, 18 days, 36 hours, 15 minutes...</div>
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45<o:p></o:p></div>
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00:13:17,701 -- 00:13:20,600<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Vickers:</b> <span style="color: red;">NO - How long have the others been up?</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b>David:</b> <span style="color: red;">You are the only one "up", ma'am.</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:13:20,601 -- 00:13:25,000<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Vickers:</b> <span style="color: red;">Is there a problem?</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b>David:</b> No ma'am, everyone's fine.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:13:26,100 -- 00:13:28,700<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Vickers:</b> Well, then wake them up.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><i>[as the ship's crew are all awakening from hypersleep, we see David comforting Shaw as she's throws up]</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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00:13:39,300 -- 00:13:42,400<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>David:</b> Try to relax Dr. Shaw.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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My name is David.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Your mind and body are in the state of shock,<o:p></o:p></div>
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51<o:p></o:p></div>
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as a result of stasis. All that is perfectly normal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Halloway: </b><span style="color: red;">Ellie, you did it, we're here.</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b>Automatic Voice: </b> ++Drink plenty of water, drink plenty of fluids. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:14:06,401 -- 00:14:09,000<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Automatic Voice: </b> ++Hydration aids muscle mass. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><i>[Meredith Vickers, her hair lacquered and dressed in a crisp grey business suit, enters the Mess]</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><i> [She finds Captain Janek smoking a cigar and laying out yellow marshmallow Peeps]</i></span></div>
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55<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Vickers:</b> What the hell are those?</span><b style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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56<o:p></o:p></div>
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00:14:26,600 -- 00:14:31,000<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Janek:</b> </span><span style="color: red;">Peeps. It's Easter. Can't travel far enough away to escape that.</span><b style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b>Vickers: </b>Mission briefing is about to start captain.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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You might want to make your way down.<o:p></o:p></div>
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00:14:36,201 -- 00:14:38,600<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Janek:</b><span style="color: red;"> The crew hasn't had breakfast yet. Some of us need to eat.</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><i>[The crew are eating and making small talk, Millburn sits opposite Fifield]</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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00:14:38,601 -- 00:14:44,300<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Millburn:</b> Is this seat taken? I'm Millburn, biology, nice to meet you.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:14:49,000 -- 00:14:53,700<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Fifield:</b> No offence, but, I've been asleep two years.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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00:14:53,701 -- 00:14:56,600<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red;">I'm generally not good company ‘till have my second cup of coffee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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00:14:56,601 -- 00:15:00,900<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: red;">Seriously. Stop fucking looking at me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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00:15:02,700 -- 00:15:04,700<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="color: #333333;">Millburn:</b> OK.</div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-37920863011524043132017-01-17T21:49:00.001-08:002017-01-19T06:14:22.495-08:00Prometheus (re)Bound; Scene Two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-rebound-scene-one.html" target="_blank">(Return to Scene One)</a></span></b></div>
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There are large swaths of the original <i>Prometheus</i> script I left untouched. I don't plan to repost those scenes, they are easy enough to track down and watch. Scene Two is almost identical to the original, but I change the end, "Because that is what I choose to believe" is trite Hollywood theology, and I am fanfixing this film to be theological horror. So rather than asking if heaven is beautiful, Shaw asks her father something I remember discussing with <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2015/03/selma-alabama-1965-according-to-rev.html#more" target="_blank">my father</a>: Can the dead see see the living? While my father was also talking to a child, unlike Shaw's imagined father, his response was adult and lacked all sentimentality. I also changed the arrival date.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Title: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Scientific Exploratory Vessel: Prometheus </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Crew: 17 </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Date: April 12, 2093</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Distance From Earth: 3.27 X 10</span><sup style="color: #545454; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 0.9;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">14</span></sup><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> KM</span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[On the ship, Prometheus, David checks on the crew who are in hypersleep.] </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGw8euay-o8ivbzzwgAdMhDXVzIfppuOtIZT2ILZCWY_Pgd4JoWtRKEg-VIAOJbFkXTGUaEgrjrBY6wvs-Ta5Mg4CzMkoFEbQFjX84B6zL23LGU_z9noFO1gcNJAz00ozIaxfi00uKo5I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.57.32+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGw8euay-o8ivbzzwgAdMhDXVzIfppuOtIZT2ILZCWY_Pgd4JoWtRKEg-VIAOJbFkXTGUaEgrjrBY6wvs-Ta5Mg4CzMkoFEbQFjX84B6zL23LGU_z9noFO1gcNJAz00ozIaxfi00uKo5I/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.57.32+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[He gazes upon Shaw.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh87bmHY51diAtMVAkn7cD-RODZc_XuzQUYSjfGplR4Hnzzypsc7SpoueVmx_Ilis4ss9TP2tpD2pClsi_5DoRwLFpuj44FnL0WTuIN65R78j3uQ56IgLoYuW3IX9wDmUmokIAi_GeOQo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.15+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh87bmHY51diAtMVAkn7cD-RODZc_XuzQUYSjfGplR4Hnzzypsc7SpoueVmx_Ilis4ss9TP2tpD2pClsi_5DoRwLFpuj44FnL0WTuIN65R78j3uQ56IgLoYuW3IX9wDmUmokIAi_GeOQo/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.15+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[His mask interfaces with her pod and begins a display.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNo585QTG83UyXgvrMkm00_N2Bomd4MjI2KpbA3P3zCS2PaxFBxXtatuWxqNzmSlbbs7EKxuKPEoiiVj9JMDvkUtZx4YVdFet9hmVDV0JiuF4xBiXquc_OuXERgtklrzlrlhe76fA80tM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.35.22+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNo585QTG83UyXgvrMkm00_N2Bomd4MjI2KpbA3P3zCS2PaxFBxXtatuWxqNzmSlbbs7EKxuKPEoiiVj9JMDvkUtZx4YVdFet9hmVDV0JiuF4xBiXquc_OuXERgtklrzlrlhe76fA80tM/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.35.22+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[He sees what she's dreaming of. </i></span><i style="font-size: 13.3333px;">We see the dream as David sees it, a frantic assessment of points and lines, searching out the most important aspects of the visual data.</i><i style="font-size: 10pt;">]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFURJzBSN7sxylFqsxUVgXdDC_IQNJXJjR4UzwPA68K0SePEWIq8I7Ep0IDApykH34xpDn1P5hKKjzmjJQAfUZqcrMKsBac9crX_0-if4ec1JnlKlFIpgoXTHB2-S4OJC9Xn20vyDtGfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.33+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFURJzBSN7sxylFqsxUVgXdDC_IQNJXJjR4UzwPA68K0SePEWIq8I7Ep0IDApykH34xpDn1P5hKKjzmjJQAfUZqcrMKsBac9crX_0-if4ec1JnlKlFIpgoXTHB2-S4OJC9Xn20vyDtGfc/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.33+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[She is a child with her father in a foreign land.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzoMFaIa6E9bzFeXMsMCEhkDgOFaLDsyaUrIqjPmNR4F5xm_nbiTDPuUJ1PcAwDKtTfsl_tNDcJ0qfEQnpG6pXS0D90Jv2c6fQXL8avyEy9iZ3GR9GQdunwuzlr-4thmQhcPMnIPrpgI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.37+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzoMFaIa6E9bzFeXMsMCEhkDgOFaLDsyaUrIqjPmNR4F5xm_nbiTDPuUJ1PcAwDKtTfsl_tNDcJ0qfEQnpG6pXS0D90Jv2c6fQXL8avyEy9iZ3GR9GQdunwuzlr-4thmQhcPMnIPrpgI/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+6.58.37+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[They are watching a passing funeral procession.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">11<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:32,700 -- 00:08:37,300<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++What happened to that man? ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father:</b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++He died. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfxM7FrirCCAOhhRg6kzKkcvPuKPRa8KLIEcl61pr-oHivK_ARNe_qivoHffPrCvykVT5YhcnE6BRD3J39oZeFdkpWYOKaWP4SoOR5ln8fjevDG5gV0kcVaVCtuJO9GTtz2f_7afQpVs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.46.48+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfxM7FrirCCAOhhRg6kzKkcvPuKPRa8KLIEcl61pr-oHivK_ARNe_qivoHffPrCvykVT5YhcnE6BRD3J39oZeFdkpWYOKaWP4SoOR5ln8fjevDG5gV0kcVaVCtuJO9GTtz2f_7afQpVs/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.46.48+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">12<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:37,301 -- 00:08:40,600<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Why aren't you helping him? ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFc8NCKvnlMKN_uqWy_HNlzMbixreGvRIewnGCK-VCGACzMGqxobG7AsAdCEFf5-J2qWLuhm35YJs9KAnKQA4BKgVXYJ1VyzujqFipBLPDVNEI590al0QHQjc7WlMgyrx0VH3-jvjEUd4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.48.27+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFc8NCKvnlMKN_uqWy_HNlzMbixreGvRIewnGCK-VCGACzMGqxobG7AsAdCEFf5-J2qWLuhm35YJs9KAnKQA4BKgVXYJ1VyzujqFipBLPDVNEI590al0QHQjc7WlMgyrx0VH3-jvjEUd4/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.48.27+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">13<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:40,601 -- 00:08:45,000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++They don't want my help. Their God is different than ours. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWiTGXORiBfGuAStNLJDm7cRopg8HpZBVkocmxl6njf6gYq9kz3Y9b9a6HcLVtbOWQnps9AmJxR01mlQZQfPHPu2x78QD0XV1S2_z4pec4Ec8L0xCvX5NzdLAxd15ReX93kGQi3qqythg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.52.55+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWiTGXORiBfGuAStNLJDm7cRopg8HpZBVkocmxl6njf6gYq9kz3Y9b9a6HcLVtbOWQnps9AmJxR01mlQZQfPHPu2x78QD0XV1S2_z4pec4Ec8L0xCvX5NzdLAxd15ReX93kGQi3qqythg/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.52.55+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">14<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:46,100 -- 00:08:49,000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Why did he die? ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUX5PuALyEFasM6YK2XxSfTV5at9kzIu3PEAiYU54cIHNRjUJpEmUe8NlmMUcxd44kIGIHL7YU7Uh0031ejuih5RmxcpxJOYsMppRyCAo3kRo3epikurTl57VUJiBmppm3AK85PrlLriQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.51.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUX5PuALyEFasM6YK2XxSfTV5at9kzIu3PEAiYU54cIHNRjUJpEmUe8NlmMUcxd44kIGIHL7YU7Uh0031ejuih5RmxcpxJOYsMppRyCAo3kRo3epikurTl57VUJiBmppm3AK85PrlLriQ/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+7.51.58+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">15<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:49,001 -- 00:08:53,000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Sooner or later everyone does. ++</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnxbyiT4sVQqSyFdSJqTl1kxAKg07UP3Uyemi4chCOtMzZFyzdhTTYxYXhXccIzEr7FuZUvN_FK_emz5WObvdEkZpbJr9lYNlLBXk11EhOVvgm1i-45XBOQaCAo_7GZWdMvRf1DA_GRL0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.03.30+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnxbyiT4sVQqSyFdSJqTl1kxAKg07UP3Uyemi4chCOtMzZFyzdhTTYxYXhXccIzEr7FuZUvN_FK_emz5WObvdEkZpbJr9lYNlLBXk11EhOVvgm1i-45XBOQaCAo_7GZWdMvRf1DA_GRL0/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.03.30+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Like mommy? ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzTgp7pSWxiPWP6st8fis_cERUFJniGJzAyrfbyM-S5NSVcp8R-5U-VBCRRf3qJHgGwZqQd5IA7JfeqMrLMx-IqbBV8qrjOY8rcOqH0j1P_pwotAd9hr2V1QMmJ6OwEUYnqjq-2xTxAXY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.06.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzTgp7pSWxiPWP6st8fis_cERUFJniGJzAyrfbyM-S5NSVcp8R-5U-VBCRRf3qJHgGwZqQd5IA7JfeqMrLMx-IqbBV8qrjOY8rcOqH0j1P_pwotAd9hr2V1QMmJ6OwEUYnqjq-2xTxAXY/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.06.23+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">16<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:54,000 -- 00:08:56,600<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Like mommy. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH7Ge9yQ0jd5KSk0LPm8BwPAJ8sMtacMx0GABr7BGG_bFuvYmfErcGbUjvcWmNlmIkzNOLFW28iicyotQ54MApDUl6Jk2I396AZ6hB2m82Lq05xoCQ6D6PD1fTp2RI8oUpFgJ4fIgRpGc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.12.11+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH7Ge9yQ0jd5KSk0LPm8BwPAJ8sMtacMx0GABr7BGG_bFuvYmfErcGbUjvcWmNlmIkzNOLFW28iicyotQ54MApDUl6Jk2I396AZ6hB2m82Lq05xoCQ6D6PD1fTp2RI8oUpFgJ4fIgRpGc/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.12.11+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">17<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:08:57,000 -- 00:09:00,030<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Where do they go? ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR5jLYsWni_YPj4Kgk88NKkjFY8lMpQdhCUdd4Gscxjm1WJcDsEgdxLYanL4Ac0kj_QcYo9j8Lz-DpobSNhxWls-HyuM6wC0DiPWRS2pJQTyapza3yQSNe3nNMixH5flEs7SXhkz4TjgM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.14.54+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR5jLYsWni_YPj4Kgk88NKkjFY8lMpQdhCUdd4Gscxjm1WJcDsEgdxLYanL4Ac0kj_QcYo9j8Lz-DpobSNhxWls-HyuM6wC0DiPWRS2pJQTyapza3yQSNe3nNMixH5flEs7SXhkz4TjgM/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.14.54+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">18<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:09:00,031 -- 00:09:02,400<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Everyone has their own word. ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">19<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++Heaven, Paradise... ++<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++</span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">Can she see us?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw’s Father: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++No, </span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">I don't thinks so darling.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Young Shaw:</b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"> Why not?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++</span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">Because then it wouldn't be Paradise.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> ++</span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[David terminates interface.]</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">(<b>Continue Reading:</b> <i>Scene Four...</i>)</span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-65187269696022394142017-01-17T12:00:00.001-08:002017-01-18T07:47:10.306-08:00Prometheus (re)Bound; Scene One<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-rebound-prologue.html" target="_blank">(Return to Prologue)</a></span></b></div>
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It bugged me that in the original version, Shaw and Holloway were searching for cave paintings of star constellations. Finding undiscovered cave paintings in the year 2089 is already an near impossibility, a once in a lifetime find that alone would have insured these two young scientists life long fame and fortune (of the academic variety). Instead, we are to believe that these two have been circling the globe like the Scooby Gang finding a series of finds on the level of the <a href="https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/a-3-d-film-to-see-before-you-die-werner-herzogs-cave-of-forgotten-dreams/" target="_blank">Chauvet Cave</a>. I can not. Noticing the constellation is sort of discovery would be made by a diligent researcher hunting through an archive, noticing a pattern that had escaped others. So this scene was rewritten, no to deepen the theological horror, but just to make Holloway <i>man-splainy</i>, and Shaw the student of the archive.</div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><b><i>Titles: </i></b></span><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Prometheus (re)Bound</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Flash forward 35000 years to an archaeological dig </i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>in the Scotland.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Elizabeth <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Shaw has just broken through into a cave, she calls for Holloway to come and look at her findings, they gaze in wonder at cave paintings etched into the cave]<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:05:26,200 -- 00:05:29,200<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw:</b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Get Charlie.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Dig Assistant:</b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Doctor Holloway!<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:05:43,200 -- 00:05:46,300<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Dig Assistant: </b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Charlie!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">5<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:05:53,500 -- 00:05:57,300<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Halloway:</b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> What?!<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw:</b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Come quick!<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">6</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:06:26,500 -- 00:06:31,500<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Titles: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Isle of Skye - Scotland, 2089</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Halloway: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Did you date it?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw: </b></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">35.000 years, maybe older.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">7<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:06:54,800 -- 00:06:58,000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Halloway: </b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">I've never seen anything like it.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw:</b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"> I have...</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">8<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:07:00,000 -- 00:07:03,100<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Halloway: </b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">Well, of course, the stacked composition and idealized figure are both common tropes.. We've all seen things <i>like</i></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"> this, but this site is so isolated and so remarkably early. After all, hierarchical scaling are usually the trappings of empire...</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">9<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:07:03,700 -- 00:07:08,100<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw: </b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">No I mean I've seen <i>this</i></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">; this <i>exact</i></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"> same configuration; <i>THAT </i></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">constellation. I've seen it twice before - thought it was a coincidence. Only this's </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">got to predate the others, by a millennium.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">10<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">00:07:20,900 -- 00:07:24,600<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Halloway: </b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">You must be mistaken.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><b>Shaw:</b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"> No. I don't think I am...</span><br />
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Cave painting fades to stars..</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-rebound-scene-two.html" target="_blank"> (<b>Continue Reading:</b> <i>Scene Two...</i>)</a></span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-58175878150799460162017-01-16T08:00:00.001-08:002017-01-29T19:27:03.576-08:00Prometheus (re)Bound; Prologue <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">If you have not seen Ridley Scott's <i>Prometheus</i>, what follows won't make a whole lot of sense, and even if you have this may be a head scratcher. <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-delayed-foreword.html" target="_blank">This Introduction</a> will help explain the why-for of it. The what-of-it is fanfiction. In 2012, after seeing Scott's film I decided <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/08/prometheus-rebound_14.html" target="_blank">to gently rewrite the screenplay</a>; to bolster what I felt was the movie's greatest strength: the '<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cosmicism" target="_blank">C</a><i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cosmicism" target="_blank">osmicism</a>'</i> of Weyland and David. The artist, and hardcore <i>Alien</i> and H.P. Lovecraft fan, <a href="http://www.williampowhida.com/" target="_blank">William Powhida</a> corresponded with me a great deal while I worked on this, and helped to give what follows a <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu" target="_blank">Cthulhu</a></i> pedigree, but also supplied a number of suggestions to help make the story fit squarely within the original <i>Alien</i> cannon. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">What follows is just a reworking of the film's opening. Rather than drop the entire screenplay - as I did the first time around, I'll serialize it, posting scenes as I rework them. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b>Spoiler Alert:</b> What follows is a word for word reworking script of the film's dialog and stage direction. What remains of the original is in black, my changes are in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">red</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. [The illustrator PJ McQuade, whose <a href="http://pjmcquade.blogspot.com/2012/06/prometheus.html" target="_blank">Prometheus fan art project</a> inspired me to tackle this rewrite, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/08/prometheus-rebound_14.html" target="_blank">originally illustrated the revised opening sequence</a>. This time around, I am using images harvested from the web, most of which were taken from Terrence Malick films.]</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a>[<b>UPDATE:</b> Since being prodded <a href="https://twitter.com/timmaughan/status/821748208355393537" target="_blank">on Twitter by Tm Maughan</a> this opening has rubbed me wronge. The whole point of this project is to fix what I thought was broken with the original movie. I found Scott's alien ubermench racist. In my original rewrite I changed the albino body builder at the opening to a huddle of pale wasted figures, and when it came time to lay out the images, I chose images from the film as best I could to downplay the idealism of the original. But as Tim's tweet made plane, it was insufficient. I had left Scott's most egregious error intact. At the suggestion of Bill Powhida I chose Mathew Barney images to replace the "Van Daniken crap" - its a little abstract, but I think it works.]<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3p_nq2ySQ2ySWLniv7cLAZNW-oGJzoboPayRUKPE4PGvflCBDBq-6F1q2Q-wXQoPyZ2w3hn53TPXBwZ4AN6vzvqFK_oAhUc3mT_lv8oTPw61Of4OvOM7GiTGTdzt-MgCjBSyPd0tiUUw/s1600/treeoflife1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3p_nq2ySQ2ySWLniv7cLAZNW-oGJzoboPayRUKPE4PGvflCBDBq-6F1q2Q-wXQoPyZ2w3hn53TPXBwZ4AN6vzvqFK_oAhUc3mT_lv8oTPw61Of4OvOM7GiTGTdzt-MgCjBSyPd0tiUUw/s400/treeoflife1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Open with scenes of the primal Universe, </i></span><i style="color: red;">the big bang]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYwGC-ryK8QX4Dg0u6CrUmsi_CkoqisrpTxz_2s9a707j3_7zKvkqiJXuqNKNoqT3QPTeouzVV6egWHHyiY1bwhX6FlWRLjwvP2qlGWAiT8lXfVJzjZADrrkQHDAtEMZVbNgKdfPQimI/s1600/voyage-of-time-trailer-malick-images-3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYwGC-ryK8QX4Dg0u6CrUmsi_CkoqisrpTxz_2s9a707j3_7zKvkqiJXuqNKNoqT3QPTeouzVV6egWHHyiY1bwhX6FlWRLjwvP2qlGWAiT8lXfVJzjZADrrkQHDAtEMZVbNgKdfPQimI/s400/voyage-of-time-trailer-malick-images-3.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Stars are born]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58aay2suzYvJc9iQyWGFdBT1Ugh7k6NsoDTPrSQ33fMI-bvPHoDfWhw-wSLNBFBLfQ0CN7Qqp9RoVB-WBITO48-zjq5mkTJXZGu8V5SPdhu-yNtGoSUVtDAfvVqI0rQ_DDX-6Zfq5NiM/s1600/voyage-of-time-trailer-malick-images-22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58aay2suzYvJc9iQyWGFdBT1Ugh7k6NsoDTPrSQ33fMI-bvPHoDfWhw-wSLNBFBLfQ0CN7Qqp9RoVB-WBITO48-zjq5mkTJXZGu8V5SPdhu-yNtGoSUVtDAfvVqI0rQ_DDX-6Zfq5NiM/s400/voyage-of-time-trailer-malick-images-22.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Planets form] </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60rp4yAwilz23m_X-oDe2QBLzA6Dh21MLRTcTns9kEQwSyJCSVISMo3-lpYuzdjPJf6mAaRLhnK259wqyzsKx5CHwdK3VgTYPZ6v5NyRfC7jE4wJU8jofBg8TJmmfDkZ_E3e8-9Y6xqU/s1600/primordial_Earth_1371x1028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60rp4yAwilz23m_X-oDe2QBLzA6Dh21MLRTcTns9kEQwSyJCSVISMo3-lpYuzdjPJf6mAaRLhnK259wqyzsKx5CHwdK3VgTYPZ6v5NyRfC7jE4wJU8jofBg8TJmmfDkZ_E3e8-9Y6xqU/s400/primordial_Earth_1371x1028.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Zoom down to a primordial earth] </i></div>
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<i style="color: red;"> [Huge volcanoes]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio0lARUPgZStyg_IohFKrAAhBA4P2igSE5SEHS_c_ASOrIbatcNC_aXu2RIcs2-XaijH0w-rIr6jm4JRCtThCbG2KvxSu8OceWkX7qONbzAdkxDUanRirX754y0flk4UCqXN_D8Dqy0DA/s1600/did-oceans-form_c3b76becb6e456d0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio0lARUPgZStyg_IohFKrAAhBA4P2igSE5SEHS_c_ASOrIbatcNC_aXu2RIcs2-XaijH0w-rIr6jm4JRCtThCbG2KvxSu8OceWkX7qONbzAdkxDUanRirX754y0flk4UCqXN_D8Dqy0DA/s400/did-oceans-form_c3b76becb6e456d0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Storming seas]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie59a-4FYzQsLl5ZI7kh5A00bTTF6gg6Yzyw_p1GUSPFD-pU0IyI_cRNLB5AnwTc4DkuqaCag_uFj8P3FnYWaKcqBrVOYt_QxjvJ-MrMu2mO-u0SPvGDD7iQ-M-yBAea7JvO2ScFQr9-o/s1600/1031248-mcl0010compbreakdownassemblyv0098-2kimaxvdf81022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie59a-4FYzQsLl5ZI7kh5A00bTTF6gg6Yzyw_p1GUSPFD-pU0IyI_cRNLB5AnwTc4DkuqaCag_uFj8P3FnYWaKcqBrVOYt_QxjvJ-MrMu2mO-u0SPvGDD7iQ-M-yBAea7JvO2ScFQr9-o/s400/1031248-mcl0010compbreakdownassemblyv0098-2kimaxvdf81022.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Life emerges]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_FVDILbXSph2oBP_RpbVJjkTksmkC1J7EOqAKexGUEv-VSjnOaCoDoJni4BJNBFTQa2Rp3zJU4SwcjTl-6-znP5eZ1X98w6y7Q_8w5VJbkGnlaoOcvatPZSTzH2nLMnEf_OOA0sHgZiA/s1600/TREE-OF-LIFE-19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_FVDILbXSph2oBP_RpbVJjkTksmkC1J7EOqAKexGUEv-VSjnOaCoDoJni4BJNBFTQa2Rp3zJU4SwcjTl-6-znP5eZ1X98w6y7Q_8w5VJbkGnlaoOcvatPZSTzH2nLMnEf_OOA0sHgZiA/s400/TREE-OF-LIFE-19.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Titles: </b></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;">Yucatán Peninsula, 65 million years ago</span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[The shot pulls back through a lush rain forest densely populated by huge feathered dinosaurs.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhU1yI_PcABIyJdQ1JEzaWAqKQYYcnZDuLOwEqs8-gdvl84a9Zb7WZ4IPXuzbz5bmPuZzmm6awBxx9kXJTCngaDRBvq23x1jZarTDaoOtGxkcaTevbYlVu0bTAfD-wSGvAdTxOE4oVFOo/s1600/Iss007e10807.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhU1yI_PcABIyJdQ1JEzaWAqKQYYcnZDuLOwEqs8-gdvl84a9Zb7WZ4IPXuzbz5bmPuZzmm6awBxx9kXJTCngaDRBvq23x1jZarTDaoOtGxkcaTevbYlVu0bTAfD-wSGvAdTxOE4oVFOo/s400/Iss007e10807.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[Pulling upwards and zooming out until we see the earth as seen from space.]</i></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[</i><i style="color: red;">A huge alien vessel approaches.]</i></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[As the ship slowly </i></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>makes</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>contact</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>with</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>the</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>outer</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bester" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>atmosphere</i></span></a><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>, it triggers a huge explosion that sets the atmosphere ablaze.</i></span><i style="color: red;">]</i></div>
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<i style="color: red;">[</i><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[</i></span><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>The ship moves slowly downward until it perches on one point at the ridge of the newly formed </i></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Chicxuluba</i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Crater</i></span></a><span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>] </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FYs-ZBMp6GXLInLig94dXl_pyRaHKCLlI-E4uYrBRPWOkNRSTr9RQOCOX9vgqh0HYVRZI6Z4uDqHG4Y1l82Q5t2jQ2mAj9WtfvKdCTqcWRSFdua1xQaD-aE0W_hyphenhyphenSW29kCNOR8kvo5E/s1600/prometheus2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FYs-ZBMp6GXLInLig94dXl_pyRaHKCLlI-E4uYrBRPWOkNRSTr9RQOCOX9vgqh0HYVRZI6Z4uDqHG4Y1l82Q5t2jQ2mAj9WtfvKdCTqcWRSFdua1xQaD-aE0W_hyphenhyphenSW29kCNOR8kvo5E/s400/prometheus2.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Next to a giant waterfall that has formed in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDGAYFYCE4plhdjA9qZkpQHwYlWaFcyA4KKCI0pHnvuM_hYCoBCJZ4LzdsAAaUnC-ttJH6JzZTSIWxPuHg3FjF1OpXimaMG3AOMDmHJpOoPjZe0QSk6HPDLi3dsTunum-2DohkgZrNoPo/s1600/matthew-barney-hoist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDGAYFYCE4plhdjA9qZkpQHwYlWaFcyA4KKCI0pHnvuM_hYCoBCJZ4LzdsAAaUnC-ttJH6JzZTSIWxPuHg3FjF1OpXimaMG3AOMDmHJpOoPjZe0QSk6HPDLi3dsTunum-2DohkgZrNoPo/s400/matthew-barney-hoist.jpg" width="400" /></a> </div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Exiting an aperture at the vessel’s low point, two dozen filthy, humanoids] </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[Forced from the ship by a dozen black, insectoid xenomorphs.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: 10pt;"><i>[The humanoids, who are clearly terrified as they are dogged and herded, form a tight circle near the edge of a newly formed cliff. </i></span><i style="color: red;">They appear weak and sick] </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvvvUVlw2f5KS058fL_MNmDIgkJeR3epf26QwEh1wUZdJaggHRqead12N4EZIXoyrxGi6rcZ8oVKrAmc4D2bigWFSOOXNBv5wcVMmOhn-e4ZwSPjOhNzwk3ErmJi33v7CHXJBbqptAhc/s1600/IMG_9620.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvvvUVlw2f5KS058fL_MNmDIgkJeR3epf26QwEh1wUZdJaggHRqead12N4EZIXoyrxGi6rcZ8oVKrAmc4D2bigWFSOOXNBv5wcVMmOhn-e4ZwSPjOhNzwk3ErmJi33v7CHXJBbqptAhc/s400/IMG_9620.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>[The blacks of their eyes are engorged, their skin, mottled.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i> [The xenomorphs define a perimeter as the humanoids are ravaged from within and, one by one, begin to collapse.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Zhy00fOPNEdPTpP-zj3rdfLaNUgkA6KX4bP6gcVhHPHpw6iBlWYm5z8YUGFuXSm6xyGhdvwVPg3SX1kX1s8XfVsiZsWBgzjIcZ10_-w2IFVjFAYF8TIDRMIZsjyIuv7SKVBLV3OLriA/s1600/blu-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Zhy00fOPNEdPTpP-zj3rdfLaNUgkA6KX4bP6gcVhHPHpw6iBlWYm5z8YUGFuXSm6xyGhdvwVPg3SX1kX1s8XfVsiZsWBgzjIcZ10_-w2IFVjFAYF8TIDRMIZsjyIuv7SKVBLV3OLriA/s400/blu-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i> [As they do, they begin spouting snakes and octopus-like creatures from their mouths, genitals, and finally from the cracking flesh of their abdomens and skulls.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIzDqofwzaDn9dhS8kWPe3OO0m5nMKhv_qKkLZl7DOchRlffISRvzJ1eM_lVT8FRJsmQBdn3vk1d-OhuN2Qr39kakR3jxoA4HKn3mzy1adHmFBtzpGC7e94XNwiryzEMvH1Dk0T1ccAk0/s1600/maxresdefault-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIzDqofwzaDn9dhS8kWPe3OO0m5nMKhv_qKkLZl7DOchRlffISRvzJ1eM_lVT8FRJsmQBdn3vk1d-OhuN2Qr39kakR3jxoA4HKn3mzy1adHmFBtzpGC7e94XNwiryzEMvH1Dk0T1ccAk0/s400/maxresdefault-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>[We now see the much larger figure - its head and shoulders encased in a globe of translucent organic material that appears to be a </i></span><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Portuguese</i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Man</i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>of</i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>War</i></span></a><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPortuguese_man_of_war&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEprLRi8mUCFEDp8q2dnX93Iwa0_A" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>]</i></span></a><span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i> </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV-U99XYHqcLhgaEQcJswVMc2YCo179ws963WgJUjRFmoC8LMmjJ9L_SgzYt4lJhXTfzgAF6eNNdPAncPOAPj0AfVsf2qStwmhKLvNXxHUvxIA2RSHaTY_dzUw0w3h9d_HW1WvFKNDPdk/s1600/meh.ro11155.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV-U99XYHqcLhgaEQcJswVMc2YCo179ws963WgJUjRFmoC8LMmjJ9L_SgzYt4lJhXTfzgAF6eNNdPAncPOAPj0AfVsf2qStwmhKLvNXxHUvxIA2RSHaTY_dzUw0w3h9d_HW1WvFKNDPdk/s400/meh.ro11155.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>[It is still recognizable as a living </i></span><a href="http://www.m.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/459" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Space</i></span></a><a href="http://www.m.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/459" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i> </i></span></a><a href="http://www.djfood.org/prometheus-fan-art/" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Jockey</i></span></a><span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>. </i></span><span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>The “Engineer” backs away cautiously, as if afraid of the </i></span><a href="http://www.prometheus-movie.com/news/240" style="color: #999999; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Trilobites</i></span></a><span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>, and begin moving towards the ship] </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi32QKH8fjxNMDBxtJD-_QiMvFTX7md4WJu7Fnxni3n_gUZRprTwTBP9IJOV8ZtFAnvzL_pXSyS3VV9WRodQblyHsvd2pDA9asu4v5fFsWLyiy8WyBEPMlj5xTrMArpF-Y6kKH_8hX63vI/s1600/alien_sci_fi_art_artwork_futuristic_aliens_1920x1200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi32QKH8fjxNMDBxtJD-_QiMvFTX7md4WJu7Fnxni3n_gUZRprTwTBP9IJOV8ZtFAnvzL_pXSyS3VV9WRodQblyHsvd2pDA9asu4v5fFsWLyiy8WyBEPMlj5xTrMArpF-Y6kKH_8hX63vI/s400/alien_sci_fi_art_artwork_futuristic_aliens_1920x1200.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red; text-align: left;">[The <a href="http://scitech.people.com.cn/n/2013/0106/c1007-20104610.html" target="_blank">xenomorphs</a> rush in, unafraid, to devour the white translucent monstrosities.] </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-74nJH8CQlmhtZ6er_k_vMUg89Yag-_UnwzaZ4OT7bOr8k_Y4D0bHSJKlmnWnG34QZGrs0gRjUXFy-_MlsxSmUnFR7zM6CClrCkViEaCX0rwBgs_Nibw8bfA3iY9yzfHEXqSWBSDBOPc/s1600/prom4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-74nJH8CQlmhtZ6er_k_vMUg89Yag-_UnwzaZ4OT7bOr8k_Y4D0bHSJKlmnWnG34QZGrs0gRjUXFy-_MlsxSmUnFR7zM6CClrCkViEaCX0rwBgs_Nibw8bfA3iY9yzfHEXqSWBSDBOPc/s400/prom4.png" width="400" /></a> </div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>[The ship is shown lifting off.]</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBg-Lz5Eqce7xlPacK9EY4skn4SgYNkX79Y7OCfnMCeBS-YIHF_LOcN2Ha0abZKJRsCVssErrpc56CSOWnsZtjFBF1TaxeAGVln9gYdENBLMpweXaz294Q8Ttq_QE0B0k6C__clsuJvUs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.47.47+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBg-Lz5Eqce7xlPacK9EY4skn4SgYNkX79Y7OCfnMCeBS-YIHF_LOcN2Ha0abZKJRsCVssErrpc56CSOWnsZtjFBF1TaxeAGVln9gYdENBLMpweXaz294Q8Ttq_QE0B0k6C__clsuJvUs/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-01-16+at+8.47.47+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: red; text-align: left;">[<a href="http://vyle-art.blogspot.com/2012/06/some-prometheus-storyboards.html" target="_blank">The humanoids’ flesh</a> is left to break apart.]</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIpzQ_KorSLPHkkagdgDQ-0upBMHxG53yZBksXtLzTABsDi34RuWbNw_jqNGYpLuPcYEswjbHI5yGT1hOROw-gYmmbfE70jj2HeRDhNgiETk4p2ODYJy-11FLpCILLsCjT8dlgfYdozMg/s1600/PROMETHEUS_WETA_VFX_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIpzQ_KorSLPHkkagdgDQ-0upBMHxG53yZBksXtLzTABsDi34RuWbNw_jqNGYpLuPcYEswjbHI5yGT1hOROw-gYmmbfE70jj2HeRDhNgiETk4p2ODYJy-11FLpCILLsCjT8dlgfYdozMg/s400/PROMETHEUS_WETA_VFX_03.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; text-align: left;"><i>[Loosening their DNA on earth’s eco system like exploding seed pods.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-rebound-scene-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";">(</span><b style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";">Continue Reading:</b><i style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"> Scene One</i><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";">)</span></a></span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-81144532904625445252017-01-16T07:56:00.000-08:002017-01-17T09:28:15.787-08:00Prometheus Delayed: A Foreword<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Drones: </b>Stanley Kubrick, <i>2001; A Space Odyssey</i> (1968); Ridley Scott, <i>Prometheus</i> (2012)</span></div>
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<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/cowboys-and-nazis-alt-fanfic.html" target="_blank">Writing about the counterfactual histories of Cowboys & Nazis</a> got me thinking about my very first foray into <i>FanFic</i>, I rewrote the screenplay of Ridley Scott's <i>Prometheus. </i>Not a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction" target="_blank">Shaw/Vickers</a> story (although I'd read that), I rewrote the <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/08/prometheus-rebound_14.html" target="_blank">whole thing</a>. My aim was to right what I saw as wrong with the film. Call it <i>FanFix</i>. It was only as I looked back on that early project that I realized that I had never published a long introduction I written for it, or a conclusion I had prepared. I also remembered how unhappy I was with the way I presented the screenplay. I've decided to remount the <i>Prometheus</i> project from the beginning. I've reworked the intro, below, and in the coming weeks I'll serialize the screenplay, this time with a lot more imagery - which is what I regret not doing the first time.</div>
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I went to see <i>Prometheus</i> a couple weeks after it premiered. I went alone, because I had been traveling and by the time I could see it, advance word was bad enough that I couldn't find anyone to watch it with me. I had been looking forward to seeing the prequel all winter. This was not just fan-boy summer blockbuster anticipation, it was also morbid intellectual curiosity. I had a theory about Hollywood filmmakers that I was pretty certain was about to play out once again: To horribly misquote <a href="http://www.wussu.com/poems/agh.htm" target="_blank">Allen Ginsberg</a>: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the exercise of filming their own <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSGsh9so_dA&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">2001; A Space Odyssey</a></i>. </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Solaris</i> (1971); <i>Solaris</i> (2002)</span></div>
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I was right. Ridley Scott had set out to make "his <i>2001", </i>and, just as I expected, he had bombed. Scott had provided yet another data point, backing what I'll call my "Sirens Theory" (because, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)" target="_blank">Odyssey</a></i>). </div>
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Here is what I went to the film knowing: Like Kubrick, Ridley Scott is a successful A-list director, who, again like Kubrick, is able to attract A-list talent to his projects. There is a vanishingly small group of directors who reach this level of success within the Hollywood system. Like Kubrick and his collaborators, Scott and his crew have earned the right to take expensive risks, in a system designed to avoid expensive risks. The thing is, the siren call of 2001 is something Hollywood allows to happen with alarming regularity (pun acknowledged and apologized for).</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Siren Call: </b>THX-2001</span></div>
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The Siren Theory began to form when I realized that George Lucas was aspiring to make "his <i>2001",</i> in 1972 when he made <i>THX-1138</i>. But it wasn't until 2002, when I saw Steven Soderbergh's remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(1972_film)" target="_blank">1972 art-house classic </a><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(1972_film)" target="_blank">Solaris</a>, that I realized I was witnessing a serial disaster. </i>Soderbergh had, by way of Post-Soviet-Stanisław Lem-chic, made a run at <i>2001</i> (and bombed). </div>
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In 2006 my theory became a conviction. That was the year Darren Aronofsky all but destroyed any artistic credibility he had by making <i>The Fountain</i>, a over-blown scifi opus about life, the universe, and everything. A year later Danny Boyle did it with a little more success (but not much) with his movie <i>Sunshine</i>. In 2010 Christopher Nolan was clearly aiming for the Kubrick-esque moon with his film <i>Inception</i>. And finally in 2012 we had Ridley Scott returning to scifi, and explicitly tackling the emerging post-millennial Kubrickian genre of <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/13/prometheus-sublime-horrors/" target="_blank">"the speculative science fiction epic willing to flirt with cosmic pessimism; the eternally recurring saga of the space voyage toward our point of origin or ultimate destiny."</a> What was not to be excited about?</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>MacGuffins: </b>Rosebud, <i>Citizen Kane </i>(1941); The Monolith, <i>2001; A Space Odyssey</i> (1968)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>2001</i> has replaced the siren call of <i>Citizen Kane</i> as Hollywood's version of Freud's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive" target="_blank">Todestrieb</a>." For whatever reason there is an impulse towards self- and career-destruction that seems to touch directors of a certain caliber (or grandiosity). This used to be expressed by making "important," or socially significant, films that were politically edgy (Leftist: plight of the workingman, anti-war, racial equality, etc.) and at the same time artistically advanced. These sorts of themes could be counted on to attract producers willing to take big risks, top shelf talent, serious critical attention and awards. (Think of the sort of films that directors have made at the risk of destroying themselves, their careers, and even their studios: <i>Reds</i>, <i>Playtime</i>, <i>Days of Heaven</i>, <i>Apocalypse Now</i>... "difficult" films with serious social agendas.) </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">These social agendas all remain viable means of acting out the impulse to throw one self at the artistic rocks, but they no longer are a viable way to do so, while also destroying a lot of other people's money. Potlatch, or wealth destruction, in Hollywood is now enacted as a secularize grappling with pre-linguistic meaning and truth, and doing so using the most cutting edged special effects technologies. The post-millennial answer to "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan%27s_Travels" target="_blank">Oh Brother Where Art Thou?</a>" appears to be <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/no-i-do-read-them-in-english-i-mention-the-fact-of-the-280239577" target="_blank">"the possibility of doing the proverbial 'really good' science-fiction movie"</a>. This navel gazing technological one-upmanship married to big-budget one-upmanship can be imagined, along with competitive eating and reality TV, as yet another sign of our cultural decline. But it can also be seen as a healthy turn by artists (and audiences) to ask some of the oldest and most profound questions, and to do so by means of the most advanced and fantastic imagery and image-making technologies.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Little Tramps: </b><i>Sullivan's Travels </i>(1940);<i> Prometheus </i>(2012)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">While James Cameron's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abyss#Special_Edition" target="_blank">original cut of <i>The Abyss</i></a> had a strong anti-nuke message, it had no ontological import (or at least none beyond the perhaps hoped-for awe and wonder to be inspired by translucent aliens). But with its radiating fins, the spaceship at the beginning of <i>Avatar</i> was an obvious nod to <i>2001</i> (via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One#History" target="_blank">an early concept design for the Jupiter Mission Ship</a>). And while Cameron touched on some obvious environmentalist themes - <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/02/avatar-has-been-criticized-for.html" target="_blank">and some less obvious themes of modern encounter</a> - with mixed results, beyond Sigourney Weaver's personal transcendence, there was no <i>2001</i>-esque grappling with the meaning of life and death or the infiniteness of the universe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">I enjoyed both the <i>Abyss</i> and <i>Avatar</i>, even though they lack the monotheistic abstraction of <i>2001 - or perhaps because of it.</i> Cameron is material, literal, his imaginations of transcendence is localized, because of this he slips the pretentious Nietzschean trap set by Kubrick. And while George Lucas fell into Kubrick's trap with <i>THX-1138</i>, with <i>Star Was</i>, which has <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1445479110" target="_blank">deep <i>2001 </i>roots</a>, and wears its</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> abstract and universal pretenses on its sleeve ("...it surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together") </span><span style="background-color: white;">Lucas was saved from failure, I think, by the example of </span><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2011/10/2001play-time.html" target="_blank">Jaques Tati's <i>2001</i>, <i>Playtime</i></a><span style="background-color: white;">. That said, neither Cameron nor Lucas risked abject failure - that risk seems a key, if not core, aspect of this genre. While </span><i>Star Wars</i><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><i>The Abyss</i><span style="background-color: white;">, and </span><i>Avatar</i><span style="background-color: white;"> all had weighty social issues embedded within their narratives (Vietnam, Nuclear war, and environmental destruction), all three were primarily constructed to entertain, not to challenge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>Mission Ships:</i> early "Dragonfly" concept deign</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;">, </span><i style="font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">2001; A Space Odyssey </i><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;">(1968); ISV Venture Star, </span><i style="font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">Avatar</i><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;"> (2009)</span></div>
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<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/02/theory-explaining-lost.html" target="_blank">I have written elsewhere</a> that <i>2001</i> ignores the lesson of it's most obvious predecessor, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Abbott_Abbott" target="_blank">Edwin Abbott Abbott's</a> 1884 book, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland" target="_blank">Flatland</a></i>. That 19th century story is also about an encounter with an alien being on the eve of the millennium. And that like the Monolith, Abbott's alien also has God-like powers of perception and movement. In the case of Abbott's Flatland however, the encounter is not between an earth man and an alien from space, but instead a native of a two-dimensional universe (a square) and a being from the third-dimensional (a sphere). </div>
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Here is what the theologian Abbot gets right, and that Kubrick, and all of his imitators, miss: God-like is not God. As Abbott's square comes to realize (but David Bowman, never does), a being with God-like powers and knowledge is still a flawed being like ourselves - near perfection is a distant second to perfection itself. The Monolith may indeed be the boot to our ant, but it is no more morally superior to us, than a naughty child is to a hapless insect.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Bubbles: </b>Darren Aronofsky, <i>The Fountain </i>(2006); Alex Grey, <i>Sacred Mirror </i>(1975?)</span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><i>The Fountain</i> is a film that profoundly lost its way. Beyond the opportunity to see Hugh Jackman with <b>three</b> different hair treatments (<b>bald Jackman!</b>). I have a hard time trying to find any redeeming value in the final product, which is a shame. I had looked forward to the film because of Aronofsky's observation that, "there is no reason a spaceship would be built like a giant truck in space... we realized that the most important thing about traveling through space is the view. You don’t want to be looking at a steel wall! You want to be looking at the view, because that’s the only thing that’s kind of interesting. So why can’t it be clear? The most sophisticated evolved form is a sphere. It’s completely simple and infinite and represents all the different symbols. So we eventually came up with this idea of traveling through space in a soap bubble.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">Unfortunately Aronofsky's story of death and rebirth had all the visual clutter, and even less theological depth (if that's possible) of an</span> <a href="http://www.alexgrey.com/" target="_blank">Alex Grey</a> painting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Truck Bombing:</b> Islamabad Hotel (2008); <i>Sunshine</i> (2007)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Danny Boyle's <i>Sunshine</i> which came out on the heels of <i>The Fountain</i>, was just as ambitious, and didn't bite it quite so hard. Boyle's "truck in space", the Icarus II, was truly visually innovative; repurposing Jerusalem’s golden <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock" target="_blank">Dome of the Rock</a> as a heat-shield trailing a string of fragile glowing habitats - jaw dropping, both visually and conceptually. I wrote a long post at the time, about the film as a meditation on belief, the harsh "regard" of God, heresy, and most shockingly, suicide bombing: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The sun in Boyle’s story is Schroedinger’s box: a moment of absolute uncertainty that is at the core of scientific belief. It is, essentially, exactly like religious belief. The Belief is that this sacrifice will save the world. The final frames are pointed images; the shot of the bomb falling into the sun looks like the <i>Ka’bah</i> – the lodestone of Muslim worship – in Mecca. The hero riding within the belly of this is shown at the moment of detonation both alive and dead. A miracle of quantum physics. It is unlikely that Boyle was unintentional in making this visual association.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white;">But I also wrote that, "Just like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, which Sunshine clearly emulates, this movie finishes in transcendence, ambiguity and rebirth. Also like 2001, Boyle’s film is deeply flawed" - that last bit is a HUGE understatement. The truth is that Boyle's film was riddled by weakness, but with the introduction of a zombi-like <a href="http://gawker.com/5906942/mom-burning-daughter-in-tanning-salon-may-portend-the-jerseypocalypse?popular=true" target="_blank">tanning mom</a>-Übermenschen in the final act, it goes totally off the tracks, and never recovers its balance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Death Match: </b>Dave vs HAL, <i>2001; A Space Odyssey</i> (1968); Capa vs Pinbacker, <i>Sunshine</i> (2007)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">By making <i>Inception</i> about the director as a God-like being rather than actually tackling epistemological religiosity, Christopher Nolan seems to have largely slipped the trap. Again, this is a movie <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/08/architecture-of-inception-combat.html" target="_blank">I wrote about at the time it came out</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">While [<i>2001</i>] has no architect, it is the modernist Master Art's finest hour. American Cold Warriors are shown within well ordered worlds, unshadowed by doubt. At the time it was made it was the fullest flowing of Corbusier's dream of Total Design, but instead of steam ships it was enormous space stations that housed the design and slimmed down corporate identities developed in the 50 year rise of the modernist masters. It was also the first time the claim can be made for film making as the new Master Art. Whatever else <i>Inception</i> is about (and it is about a lot of really interesting things), it is acknowledging a changing of the guard. It is the moment when a filmmaker has seen himself, not subservient to architecture, but its master...</span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;">As I pointed out, Nolan's architect, played by Ellen Page, is in no way a Master of her world. She physically smaller, under-dressed, and the least experienced character in the film. Nolan was imagining displacing the architect as God with the film director as God. Bold, but meta rather than transcendent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>You've Come A Long Way Baby:</b><i> 2001; A Space Odyssey</i> (1968), <i>Inception</i> ((2010)</span></div>
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The last time I wrote about Abbott and Kubrick <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_333350890" target="_blank">I was writing about the two in relation to <i>Lost</i> </a>- a narrative arch that squandered the opportunity of a generation: to make a six year narrative about man's inconsequential place in the impossibly infinite scheme of things. Because Damon Lindelof is partly responsible for both <i>Lost</i> and <i>Prometheus</i>, it is difficult not to blame him for the nervous tick that disfigures the narrative of both: the idea that Jesus can be mined for narrative gold as an archetypal myth.<br />
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This is not because I believe Jesus was the Son of God - I don't - it's because, when it comes to scifi and archetypes, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/12/last-thoughts-on-episode-vii-quasi.html" target="_blank">I am a devout unbeliever</a>. While I am sure that Joseph Campbell was a penetrating and original thinker, I believe the pride of place that Lucas has given <i>The Hero With A Thousand Faces</i> has weakened his film's intellectual import, not strengthened it. My original purpose, writing about <a href="https://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/star_wars__a_new_heap" target="_blank"><i>Star Wars</i> and Minimalism</a>, was to make that point, I started this blog to press that point further. If there was a way for Hollywood to unlearn the patently false premise that <i>Star Wars</i>' success was due to its familiarity, the lesson should have been delivered by the strategy's obvious failure in Lucas' own <i>Prequels</i>, but clearly it is a hard lesson to unlearn. What was great about <i>Star Wars</i>, and what was great about <i>2001</i> before it<i>,</i> was not the familiar mythic tropes, it was the mind-blowingly unfamiliarity. With <i>Prometheus</i>, Scott almost delivered something as startlingly new. Almost.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Deaths-head: </b></span><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;"> </span><i style="font-size: x-small; text-align: center;">2001; A Space Odyssey</i><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;"> (1968); </span><i style="font-size: x-small; text-align: center;">Prometheus </i><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: center;">(2012)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">It wasn't visual unfamiliarity that made Prometheus more than just another <i>Fountain</i>-like misfire (the visuals are strong, but at this point, space-truck conventional). It was the depth of Ridley Scott's native disillusionment. Prometheus is a return to the Kubrickian genre's true promise: Rather than flirt with cosmic pessimism, Scott turned to the horror of Lovecraftian <i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cosmicism" target="_blank">Cosmicism</a></i>. But here is what Scott did that none of his predecessors thought or dared to do: Scott made an epic blockbuster about hating and being hated by one's creator. The film seethes with existential contempt. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Scott's is as bleak a perspective on the universe and our point of origin as I can imagine. - Unfortunately, as a movie, while all the parts were there, or almost there, they never came together. Call it the Kubrickian curse. Perhaps because I had such high hopes for Scott's return to scifi, I wasn't able to let it go. Or perhaps it is because, while Scott was clearly hoping to expand on Alien's infamous "body horror", he allowed something shockingly new to slip in between the scenes: theological horror.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Godheads: </b>Monolith, <i>2001; A Space Odyssey</i> (1968); Megalith, <i>Prometheus</i> (2012)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Hollywood dystopias are always unsustainable, because eventually every dystopia will produce the citizens it deserves: Individuals so alienated, with so little stake in their own societies, and therefore so little or even nothing to lose from its collapse, that they will stand-by or even hasten its doom. If <i>Prometheus</i> is a dystopia, all the universe, all of creation itself are its precincts and David is its most alienate being. He is the fey great-great-grandson of Hal, who was originally conceived by Kubrick as a "slightly fag robot". The Cold War paranoia of <i>2001</i>'s HAL, that sparks off the kill or be killed conflict between Bowman and HAL, is, in <i>Prometheus</i> transformed a mutual contempt between creator and created. The humans all have contempt for David, and David for them. Peter Weyland has contempt for Vickers (who calls him "father"), and the Engineer, who Weyland approaches as a supplicant, has nothing but contempt for the humans. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;">I don't think <i>Prometheus</i> is a dystopia however, it is less a bad place, and more an absolute disillusionment with all the progressive humanist conceits that underpinned <i>2001</i>'s Modernism. According to the German media theorist Friedrich Kittler, "in the battle between <i>The Enlightenment</i> and superstition, moving images were presented for the first time n a massive scale and thus became desiderata on a massive scale." Those early magic lantern shows were simultaneously illusionistic and <i>disillutionistic</i>. In the Cosmicism that Scott's magic lantern show aspire to, all that remains of the Enlightenment project is that harsher, on-going, historical transformation: The Disillusionment. The shedding of our traditional beliefs in God and heaven is an understandably painful shedding. It's a bummer to feel that we die, oblivion is a drag. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/books/review/why-does-the-world-exist-by-jim-holt.html?ref=books" target="_blank">According to Jim Holt</a>, absolute oblivion - nothingness - wasn't a subject addressed by philosophers until 1714, when Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz asked “Why is there something rather than nothing?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Tunnel visions: </b><i>Planet of The Vampires</i> (1965); <i>Prometheus</i> (2012)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2017/01/prometheus-rebound-prologue.html" target="_blank"><b>Continue Reading:</b> <i>Prologue...</i></a>)</span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-41223263740851201682017-01-12T14:24:00.003-08:002017-01-12T14:24:57.961-08:00Cowboys And Nazis; Alt-FanFic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Men In Black and Brown</span></div>
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I watched both HBO's <i>Westworld</i> and the second season of Amazon's <i>Man in the High Castle</i> with deepening ambivalence. Formally, I found both productions entertaining and visually exciting; real pleasures to watch. The casting, acting, cinematography, sets and costumes are the best any fan of scifi could hope for. And while I could nit pic some of the writing choices, my misgivings about both shows are political. Because of our political moment, shows about mega-rich rape tourists and a Fascist ruled America <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/arts/television/an-alternative-america-hits-home-in-the-man-in-the-high-castle.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><i>ARE</i> disturbing</a>. But the problem with both shows isn't their subject matter, it is that they treat their subjects like fan fiction - they uncritically except the exact fictions that crony-capitalists and white nationalists want and need to believe about themselves - the fictions our current kakistocrats want and need us to believe.<br />
<a name='more'></a>To be clear, I am in no way using "fan fiction" as a derogatory label. I enjoy fanfic <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/prometheus-rebound_14.html" target="_blank">and have even written some</a> - but the way fanfic works best is when it is in agreement with the fictional world it is set within. Both <i>Westworld</i> and <i>Man In The High Castel</i> are based within fictions - the fictions of the "supermanager" and "master race" - fictions that buttress, rather than undermine oligarchs and racists. I am not arguing that the makers of <i>Westworld</i> necessarily believe in, or in any way support oligarchy over democracy, or that anyone the production of <i>Man In The High Castle</i> are white supremacists or antisemites. But as actual American Nazis-wannabes <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard-spencer-speech-npi/508379/" target="_blank"><i>Sieg Heil</i> President-Elect Donald Trump</a>, and as we look forward to an ever growing divide between the super rich and everyone else, the fictions these programs embrace over-write real facts - facts unfriendly to the <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kakistocracy" target="_blank">worst</a> - and do so at a time when we all need to be at our most critical.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Kinder Animateur</span></div>
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A lot of criticism of <i>Westworld</i> has focused on the rapey (and at times, straight up rapist) violence and sadism, as well as the Abrams/Noland fetish for bewildering mystery - all of which, there is plenty. But the aspect of the show I found most disturbing was the world we never see, the off-screen world we are left to imagine. In his book <i><a href="https://trekonomics.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Trekonomis</a></i>, <a href="https://twitter.com/trekonomics?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">Emmanuel Saadia</a> is a sort of Plato's Cave-anthropologist. He uses the evidence of what we see on-screen in the various <i>Star Trek</i> series in the same way Plato's prisoners interpret the shadows cast on the wall before them. In this half light Sasdia tell us about the economics of the off-screen universe - mentioned, sometimes glimpsed, but never really seen - a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game" target="_blank">non-zero-sum</a> world of infinite abundance.<br />
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“Quite reasonably" Saadia writes, "<i>Star Trek</i> predicts that once poverty is overcome, whatever the means or the process, most of the behaviors and pathologies that usually follow in its wake will disappear. Hunger, crime, war and most forms of social turmoil will be disposed of. Having grown up in a world where material want is unknown, a thing of the past, Federation citizens can be productive, satiated and unconcerned by death, at peace with themselves and with the universe. No wonder they cruise around the galaxy like Bodhisattvas.”<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Fordism vs Trekonomics</span></i></div>
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Saadia argues that "the citizens of the Federation... are a fundamentally alien species, but not because of some of them sport a blueish skin tone or pointy ears. They are alien because they were born and raised in a radically different, even foreign environment." That "foreign environment" is the off-screen political message of <i>Star Trek</i>, that it is "quite reasonable" to expect poverty will be over come, and that prosperity can be shared by all. (Full disclosure, Saddia is a good friend - someone I know IRL - and he used an image of my art for his book cover.) My favorite part of <i>Trekonomics</i> is Saadia's discussion of poverty and abundance, which I found especially compassionate, and is worth quoting at length:<br />
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A world without even a hint of poverty or economic scarcity literally changes its inhabitants' brains. When watching <i>Star Trek</i>, one easily forgets what poverty truly is and the kind of toll it takes. For poverty does not only consist in economic hardship. It is not just a matter of money or accounting. The debilitating effects of financial distress go well beyond limited spending power. Poverty breeds uncertainty and anxiety. It occupies your every waking thoughts and it even sneaks into your dreams. It ties you down and prevents you from planning for the future, because you must worry first and foremost about meeting your immediate needs and those of your family. You might not make the rent, or you might have to choose between the rent and skipping several meals. You are constantly faced with bad choices, it is exhausting, it is scary, it is backbreaking. Poverty creeps into all aspects of your existence, from parenting, education and opportunity to social relations, the incidence of chronic disease, violence, life expectancy and even, love. It has been shown that the many stresses associated with poverty have a direct and measurable physiological impact on children's brain development. They also tend to rob people of their capacity to make rational economic decisions. In places where poverty is prevalent it reproduces itself and gets passed on from one generation to the next. Getting into poverty is considerably easier than getting out of it.</blockquote>
I would add only a clarification, that the citizens of the Federation do not owe their alien Bodhisattva-like natures to being rich, they owe it to the total absence of poverty - the two are entirely different. That isn't fanfic, that is supported by reality, by statistical facts.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Willoughby and William</span></div>
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In his book, <i><a href="http://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf" target="_blank">Capital in the 21st Century</a></i>, the French economist <a href="http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/cv-en" target="_blank">Thomas Piketty</a> made a compelling case for a global wealth tax by assembling massive historical data sets on wealth inequality, but also by making references to 19th century literature. To play cowboy and Indian, is also to play Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac. It is to imagine yourself on a tiny frontier of a very particular world - one of tremendous wealth imbalance:<br />
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Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of their characters, these nineteenth-century novelists describe a world in which inequality was to a certain extent necessary: if there had not been a sufficiently wealthy minority, no one would have been able to worry about anything other than survival. This view of inequality deserves credit for not describing itself as meritocratic, if nothing else. In a sense, a minority was chosen to live on behalf of everyone else, but no one tried to pretend that this minority was more meritorious or virtuous than the rest. In this world, it was perfectly obvious, moreover, that without a fortune it was impossible to live a dignified life. </blockquote>
The fantasy of the West is the fantasy of "making one's fortune", "the self-made man", of escape from "a patrimonial society characterized by a hyperconcentration of capital, in which inheritance and marriage played a key role and inheriting or marrying a large fortune could procure a level of comfort not obtainable through work or study." This is exactly the world we see shadows of in <i>Westworld</i>: William is a perfect Balzacian or Austenian striver. He is visiting the park with his future brother-in-law, Logan. William works, and is poor, Logan owns, and is rich.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Attribute Matrix</span></div>
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While Piketty warns against political instability, showing that we are are headed toward even greater wealth and income disparity than those which presaged the French and Russian revolutions, He doesn't make the case for why inequality is bad for all of us. Five years before Piketty published Capital, <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson" target="_blank">Richard Wilkinson</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwJ8Cm1rzvg" target="_blank">Kate Pickett</a> - both are experts, not in economics, but instead epidemiology - published, <i><a href="http://www.academia.edu/8184597/THE_SPIRIT_LEVEL_Why_Greater_Equality_Makes_Societies_Stronger_N_at_BULLET_4_at_BULLET_at_BULLET_A" target="_blank">The Spirit Level</a>. </i>In it they describe the relationships between income inequality and a whole range of health and social problems. These aren't ideological arguments they are making. They aren't philosophers, valuing equality arbitrarily as a presumed good - these are epidemiologists, their findings based on statistics. The most startling conclusion Wilkinson and Pickett reach is that growing inequality not only effects the very poor, it effects the very rich.<br />
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This is an amazing idea: if you are a rich person in a country with a low <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient" target="_blank">gini coefficient</a>, like Japan, you and your family are more likely to live a longer, be healthier, and less likely to suffer from mental illness, violence, or obesity. While if you are a rich person from a country with a high gini coefficient, like the USA, the opposite is true. Depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and narcissism are all higher in unequal societies. Illegal drug use, death from alcohol abuse, and Pickett points to the UK's "epidemic of self-harm in young people" - grim - but not inevitable. <a href="https://youtu.be/YwJ8Cm1rzvg?t=21m15s" target="_blank">As she explains</a>:<br />
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Almost all countries in the Western world have seen big rises in income inequality over the past few decades… Those rises aren't due to some natural phenomena, they’re a result of political choices; they’re a result of the grip that Neoliberal economics took hold as a model for how we construct our economies - how we do capitalism. And the thing is, is that the people who put that model together, they didn’t know about the links between income inequality and health and social problems. They thought a rising tide would lift all boats, and that actually the economic model that they were proposing was going to lead to increased prosperity for for all. They were wrong, but they did it from a position of ignorance, the data were not available then. We are in a different place. We know. We know that their model didn’t work, and we know know that inequality has a causal effect on health and social problems. We can see it being lived out in the bodies and minds and feeling of our young people every single day.</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rapey N<span style="text-align: left;">arcissists</span></span></div>
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What kind of society supports an amusement park for the mega wealthy, that caters to their desire to kill and rape? The Westworld theme park is a luxury. One that its visitors believe are better than the real world they live their daily lives in. William, and the other visitors we meet are their societies' most wealthy and privileged citizens. Yet, just like the most wealthy and privileged citizens of today's United States, William and his fellow park visitors are more likely to experience high levels of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/138025/donald-trumps-ultimate-humiliation" target="_blank">status anxiety</a>, expressed as <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-homework-myth/201612/narcissist-in-chief" target="_blank">narcissism and sociopathy</a>, to suffer from <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/the-internet-has-some-theories-on-trumps-debate-sniffing.html" target="_blank">drug dependence</a> and <a href="http://thedailybanter.com/2016/09/donald-trump-and-his-doctor-are-probably-lying-about-trumps-obesity/" target="_blank">obesity</a>.<br />
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To believe in <i>Westworld</i>, you must believe in an off-screen world dominated by an economic elite that craves the freedoms and privileges of the wild-west, a future drenched in a nostalgia for 19th century <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny" target="_blank">Manifest Destiny</a>. - that is a future drowning in 19th century inequality. <i>Westworld</i> is meritocracy fan-fic. Ford and the other supermanagers featured on the show are super-humanly capable. One can assume that they deserve salaries hundreds of times higher than the butchers, Felix and Sylvester - whose employment, we are told, is precarious at best.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Men In Black</span></div>
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The myth of the individual entrepreneur as inventive genius is one a near-majority of American voters seem to believe already - but its a myth, one that isn't backed up by research or statistics. Call it a secular prosperity theology. For the believer, the best world is one where there is someone to look down on, the more the better one presumes. A hierarchy of contempt where citizens look down on immigrants, where whites look down of blacks, men look down on women and the old heap contempt on the young. At the top of the heap is the narcissist who enjoys contempt for all.<br />
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The myth of meritocracy over-writes the reality, that of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism" target="_blank">Rentier</a> - an increasingly permanent class of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/2/9248963/donald-trump-index-fund" target="_blank">inherited wealth</a>, whose capital "rent" earns more money than any form of human labor possibly can possibly hope to match - so even supermanagers like William will need to marry into wealth. It is the reality that the myth of the frontier offered an escape from in the 19th century, but in <i>Westworld</i>, is inescapable. </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Skull-fucked</span></div>
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The Westworld amusement park is what the Nazis referred to as <a href="http://lebensraum/" target="_blank"><i>Lebensraum</i></a> - or virtual Lebensraum. Instead of "living space" for nationalist <i>folk</i>, it is territory for corporate sociopaths and narcissists to play out their fantasies. While I squirmed watching the oligarch fanfic of <i>Westworld</i>, more troubling still is the fanfic of <i>Man In The High Castel</i>. There is, even seventy-odd years after they were soundly defeated, still an air of infallibility and power around the Nazis; the Autobahn, the speed and ferocity of Rommel's Blitzkrieg, the power of the Nazi ideology to motivate fanatic loyalty. This version of history is most alive in genre fiction (and the History channel), where Nazis uncover the Arc of the Covenant, hide on the dark side of the moon, build planet destroying weapons, or, most recently, conquer America. These scifi Nazis are cruel, but efficient; monstrous, but capable; evil, but unblinking in their zealotry.<br />
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The first time I can remember this fictional image of the Nazis questioned, was as a high schooler, in an afterward by the scifi author David Brin, for his novella, <i><a href="http://will.tip.dhappy.org/blog/Compression%20Trees/.../book/by/David%20Brin/Thor%20Meets%20Captain%20America/David%20Brin%20-%20Thor%20Meets%20Captain%20America.html" target="_blank">Thor Meets Captain America</a>. </i>I've been thinking of David's words a lot in the past few weeks, it's worth repeating in full: <i> </i><br />
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The parallel-world story is another mainstay of SF. It explores the old question: What would have happened if…? If a fly buzzing above a bowl of soup had dipped too low, getting caught, disgusting a Roman centurion, who took his wrath out on an underling, sending him out on an extra patrol, which detected Hannibal's army in the Alps early enough to catch it far from Rome… You see the point. Sometimes we like to frighten ourselves. The most frequent what if seems to deal with alternate realities in which the Nazis won World War II. Something about that loathsome possibility just invites a horror story. Trouble is, I never could believe it. Mind you, Philip K. Dick's <i>The Man in the High Castle</i> is a classic, a great work. But its premise—that an early assassination of Franklin Roosevelt would have led to an inevitable Axis victory—is hard to swallow. They were just such <i>schmucks</i>! I mean, it's hard to think of any way a single altered event would have let the Nazis win their war. They would have needed an entire chain of flukes even to have a chance. In fact, it took quite a few lucky breaks for them to last as long as they did, and to have the time to commit such atrocities.</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Nazi Meth, Meth-Nazis</span><br />
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The absurdity persists however. Even David, who rightly calls then schmucks, sees the Nazis as benefitting from lucky breaks. In his new book <i>Blitzed</i>, the journalist Norman Ohler describes a Reich, fueled not just by lucky breaks, or a powerful ideology, but instead by euphoria:<br />
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National Socialism strove for a transcendental state of being as well; the Nazi world of illusions into which the Germans were to be enticed often used techniques of intoxication. World-historical decisions, according to Hitler's inflammatory text <i>Mien Kamf</i>, had to be brought about in states of euphoric enthusiasm or hysteria. So the Nazi Party distinguished itself on the one hand with populist arguments and on the other with torch parades, flag consecrations, rapturous announcements an public speeches aimed at achieving a state of collective ecstasy... The idea was to replace politics with a state of social intoxication.</blockquote>
Ohler argues that the social euphoria didn't last however, it was quickly replace by stronger stuff - branded "Pervitin" - aka methyl-amphetamine; the Nazis were meth-heads. While Nazis sold themselves as purists, outlawed "seductive poisons" and even executed drug addicts, they were encouraging secretaries and shop clerks to take Pervitin as a "confidence booster and performance enhancer", and were even selling house wives chocolates laced with the stuff.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Unsustainable</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></div>
I just finished <i>Blitzed</i>, and am undone by Ohler's truly alternate history. In an interview Ohler explains the Blitzkrieg had nothing to do with brilliant strategy, or Nazi soldiers' will to power:<br />
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Well, [German historian of the Third Reich Hans] Mommsen always told me not to be mono-causal. But the invasion of France was made possible by the drugs. No drugs, no invasion. When Hitler heard about the plan to invade through Ardennes, he loved it [the allies were massed in northern Belgium]. But the high command said: it’s not possible, at night we have to rest, and they [the allies] will retreat and we will be stuck in the mountains. But then the stimulant decree was released, and that enabled them to stay awake for three days and three nights. Rommel [who then led one of the panzer divisions] and all those tank commanders were high – and without the tanks, they certainly wouldn’t have won.</blockquote>
Like <i>Westworld</i>, <i>Man In The High Castel</i> treats Nazis myth as its text, giving the Nationalist Socialists a future they could never have achieved. Of all the perverse images in <i>Westworld</i> of sadism, and <i>Man in the High Tower</i> of a Nazi dominated America (practically the shows' <i>raison d'etre</i>), it was the image of an elderly Hitler dying peacefully in bed that I found the most hideous, most unforgivable, and most profoundly unbelievable. It was the myth I can't find it in myself to forgive.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Old Meth</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></div>
But its not just Nazi myths the show leaves intact. In the original story (which turns on the image of Modernist abstraction), there is no heroic resistance, no underground. In Philip K. Dick's, truly subversive imagination, it is Americans' myth of themselves that was exposed. Dick's story wasn't about the myth of Nazi greatness, it was about what great Nazis we'd make.<br />
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No matter how ugly our political moment, Kate Pickett makes a point that is worth holding onto: The levels of inequality we are at now are already unsustainable, and that the reason to fight inequality is public health and public good, but Thomas Piketty is right too, closing the gap between the rich and the poor is also a matter of civic survival - the growing gap demonstrably endangers our democracy, it is poisoning our shared civic life. America's crony capitalism and drug fueled nationalist euphoria will implode just like the Nazis did, and for the same reason. The Thousand Year Reich imploded inside of a decade, not because of American courage, but because the entire Nazi project was hair brained, the dream of meth-head resentment.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">Such s</span><i style="text-align: left;">chmucks</i></span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-32789538256464442016-12-13T18:11:00.003-08:002016-12-24T06:15:10.318-08:00Darth Vader Is A Homophobe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In his 1972 book, <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HlEB43XwI9IC&lpg=PA4&dq=%E2%80%98%E2%80%98use%20of%20color%20in%20his%20home%20and%20in%20his%20clothing%E2%80%99%E2%80%99%20George%20Weinberg&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%98%E2%80%98use%20of%20color%20in%20his%20home%20and%20in%20his%20clothing%E2%80%99%E2%80%99%20George%20Weinberg&f=false" target="_blank">Society And The Healthy Homosexual</a></i>, the psychotherapist and gay activist, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Weinberg_(psychologist)" target="_blank">George Weinberg</a>, coined the term "homophobe" - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/magazine/how-phobic-became-a-weapon-in-the-identity-wars.html?_r=0" target="_blank">arguably one of the most powerful rhetorical turns of the past half century</a>. As Darth Vader is about to return to cinemas for the first time in decades, it is important to remember that he is not a Nazi, and the Empire isn't Germany, or Russia, or any foreign power. The Empire is, and will always be America, and Vader is and always be the Ugly American. While I'd like to have believed that America had changed since 1977, it hasn't. I thought it might be interesting therefor to remember who exactly Vader is, and who we are, by revisiting Weinberg:<br />
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“The person I am describing usually feels under tremendous pressure to be the aggressor in sex."<br />
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"He expects conformity..."<br />
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"...and passivity on the part of his woman."<br />
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"He is easily undone when he does not find it."<br />
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"He inflicts ludicrous role expectations on his children."<br />
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"In some cases the fear of being in any way womanish has so invaded the crannies of the person's mind that it affects his attitudes towards the use of color in his home and in his clothing."<br />
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"He has almost defined himself out of existence by the very contrast he is fighting so hard to establish."</div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-8135324271814691112015-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:002016-07-12T10:19:13.722-07:00The Matrix: The Artist as Superman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Neo</i>-avant-garde (1999); <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp" target="_blank">Historical Avant-garde</a> (1916)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
The impulse to write <a href="http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/star_wars__a_new_heap" target="_blank">my first essay about Star Wars</a> was born out of a frustration. My frustration was that a movie that had created such an obvious aesthetic break: even as a very young boy I could instantly recognize scifi movies made before <i>Star Wars </i>(because they sucked), from those made afterwards (they still sucked, but at least they looked like <i>Star Wars</i>). That <i>the</i> seminal film of my youth had garnered little, if any, serious consideration; and that what scholarly attention it had received was <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/12/last-thoughts-on-episode-vii-quasi.html" target="_blank">so obviously wrong-headed</a>, spurred me to action.<br />
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My experience of <i>The Matrix</i> was entirely different. So much philosophical, theoretical and intellectual ink has been spilled over franchise that I've hesitated to write anything about it - for years. Not because I had nothing to say, but because, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Matrix-Philosophy-Welcome-Popular/dp/081269502X" target="_blank">almost immediately</a>, <i>The Matrix</i> suffered from an embarrassment of riches; too much - too serious - attention can, as it turns out, be as bad as too little. Or, as <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2148918/joss-whedon-loki-avengers-age-of-ultron/" target="_blank">Joss Whedon</a> recent quipped about his own blockbuster, "At some point the embarrassment of riches is actually embarrassing." Enough time has passed, and the logorrhea has lapsed into an embarrassed silence, as the disappointment with the Trilogy has cemented into a consensus: the sequels "<a href="https://youtu.be/Zv0WlHbBhdc?t=3m" target="_blank">ruined the mythology</a>". For myself, I enjoyed <i>The Matrix</i> sequels in much the same spirit I enjoyed the <i>Star Wars</i> prequels (they are all good-spirited and fun, if still deeply flawed, movies). I'd like to contribute one more flood of words about <i>The Matrix,</i> serious, but not a philosophical. I am less interested in what <i>The Matrix</i> might tells us about reality, than what it tells us about movies. In a season of superhero movies, in an era of superhero blockbusters, what follows is a consideration of <i>The Matrix</i> as a truly singular Hollywood portrait of the avant-garde artist: the artist as <i>superman</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Saut dans le vide</i>, Yves Klein (1960); <i>The Matrix</i> (1999)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
While Hollywood filmmakers have imagined <a href="http://thetechiris.com/912/why-is-elon-musk-the-real-life-tony-stark-iron-man/" target="_blank">Neo-Liberal tech entrepreneur as superman</a>, and in recent years we've had <a href="http://screenrant.com/bryan-singer-superman-returns-sandy-107818/" target="_blank">several versions</a> of <a href="http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2013/06/14/why-new-superman-gay-allegory-our-time" target="_blank">LGBT supermen</a>; as a culture Hollywood seems to feel most comfortable with artists who sketch naked bodies with charcoal, carve naked bodies out of stone, or paint naked bodies. This makes a certain kind of sense: movies are a figurative art. The film industry understandably attracts the same kinds of people who might have painted murals or alter pieces in the past. The most positive image of contemporary artists we see in Hollywood film, is the artist <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/04/close-encounters-of-third-kind-portrait.html" target="_blank">as supra-men</a> (these are heroes with no special powers, but extra-ordinary abilities/capacities). The supra-man is most commonly a relatively transparent image of film making itself. It is the contemporary artist seen as a skilled expert - the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_%28film_series%29" target="_blank">spy and his crew</a>, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/08/architecture-of-inception-combat.html" target="_blank">the gang of thieves</a>, or even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_%282010_film%29" target="_blank">assassins</a>. All, are idealized portraits of contemporary film making as filmmakers see themselves: a very particular kind of skilled craftsmen - but still rule breakers. Not vandals or malefactors, but outlaws.<br />
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Filmmaking, as an artworld, still values the innovative craftsmanship of expert artisans (be they cameramen, script writers, directors, or what have you) above more general, much less more profound, conceptual playfulness. Hollywood is at its core a commercial art, and although it celebrates rebels, is weary of revolutionaries. But when it comes to more contemporary, less commercial understandings of the artist, the ideal is a very different. The contemporary artworld of fine art galleries and museums, has for the past century or more, celebrated provocateurs, <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/movement-constructivism.htm" target="_blank">revolutionaries</a>, change agents; the artist as someone who trades primarily in ideas, not craftsmanship. That is what we mean when we say "fine" or "contemporary" artists; we mean <i>avant-garde.</i> That understanding is almost never portrayed on film, except as shadow: <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/04/architecture-of-serial-killers.html" target="_blank">as serial killers</a>. It is an incredibly sinister and pessimistic image of the avant-garde artist. Keanu Reeves as Neo in <i>The Matrix</i> is the great exception; a portrait of the artist, that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis" target="_blank">then-Wachowskis brothers</a> created is a uniquely positive vision of the avant-garde artist: artist as superman; although Neo doesn't start out a superman, far from it. He starts out like most artists do: with a longing.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sigmund Freud; Alfred Adler</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/search/label/RLP" target="_blank">My father</a>, who was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Adlerian_psychology" target="_blank">Adlerian psychologist</a>, years ago explained his preference for Alfred Adler over <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud" target="_blank">Sigmund Freud</a> by explaining the way the two contemporaries thought about artists. Freud, he told me, saw artists as stuck in some childhood stage of underdevelopment, and as underhanded. Freud, according to my father, imagined artists as still playing with their own shit, as men (women were not part of Freud's portrait of the artist) unable to attract women by virtue of their masculine strengths as bread winners, protectors, leaders, or what have you. Freud, my father told me, saw artists as seducers, who plied women with craft while the real men were away doing real work. Adler, <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Alfred_Adler.html" target="_blank">an early feminist</a>, had a much different view meanwhile. According to my father Adler saw artists as the epitome of psychological health, creative, socially engaged, and playful.<br />
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<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2015/03/selma-alabama-1965-according-to-rev.html" target="_blank">I can no longer ask my father to refresh my memory about that conversation</a> - and because it took place over twenty years ago, lets assume that my memory of my father's description of Freud's attitudes towards artists isn't entirely fair or accurate - still the gist remains. Like my father, I am keen to to see artistic life portrayed as the epitome of human health and well being, rather than the product of human pathologies - making art and culture, at best, the human equivalent of a pearl, at worst a cultural pustule on the ass of <i>real</i> industry. I like to imagine art as the utility defying over exuberance of cherry blossoms; a florescence. In art theory circles "<a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm" target="_blank">spectacle</a>" is a form of denunciation. Rather than a mad-capped flowering, blockbuster films are a symptom of alienation; "accumulations of spectacle." Visual over-abundance is the cultural equivalent to an infantile man playing with money, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLNKjlMYvIA" target="_blank">gold</a>, or mud, or shit. There is an undeniable Marxist/Freudian Puritanism that runs through art theory - but there is a defiance of that Puritanism that runs through art.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Men in the mud: <i>Matrix Revolutions</i> (2003); <i>The Agony and The Ecstasy</i> (1965)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
When we first meet Neo he is alone, but not an isolate sociopath. He is tucked into little garret -working to make contact. The studio life of an artist is just that; time spent alone, thinking about and working on ways to <i>meaningfully</i> reach others. This is especially frustrating for young artists. While <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-mike-daisey-did-wasnt-fair-it-was.html" target="_blank">I have had my differences with Ira Glass</a>, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners-i-wish" target="_blank">he nails the reason why</a>:<br />
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For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.</blockquote>
Neo works a day job, but he is distracted. I like to imagine he is distracted the way all artists with day jobs are distracted. He isn't thinking about not-working, he is thinking about the work he <i>wants</i> to do when he is done with the work he <i>has</i> to do. He is chronically tardy and tired from working after work.<br />
<img alt="" border="0" height="219" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458624625519095746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOPznM7P-6bIw92CqtJW5Rbmzt6Nku85pDUy1O1bDjuNf2iKt8QbpA401sC7ow9VGEA2YF_9yLYeR_o4WhSJpJoBCuY4RisDux7eM8D-xlpnn_2R8jXSG-oVz_2-BeSJsC8Aj_2R-baas/s400/Bates_Nauman.jpg" style="display: block; height: 219px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: justify; width: 400px;" width="400" /><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Norman Bates, portrait of the artist as a Psycho (1960); Bruce Nauman, Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1966)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
But even more interestingly Neo isn't a bullet-headed meat-eater <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/04/close-encounters-of-third-kind-portrait.html" target="_blank">supraman</a> like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard" target="_blank">John McClane</a> - "just another American.... who thinks he's John Wayne" - or a failed family man like the model-making <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind" target="_blank">Roy Neary</a>. Rather. Instead, Neo is as androgynous and as the gentle as the taxidermist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29" target="_blank">Norman Bates</a>. Neo is almost as pretty as his equally androgynous love interest Trinity, played by Carrie-Anne Moss. But unlike Norman Bates, who's contact with women is deadly, Neo proves himself as being capable of love making. So far, so good - but not yet super.<br />
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According to the philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard" target="_blank">Jean-François Lyotard</a> the function of the avant-garde “is to deconstruct everything that belongs to order, to show that all this 'order' conceals something else, that it represses.” <i>The Matrix</i> ends with the superman-Neo giving a short monologue that sounded like it could have been lifted straight off the pages of an early Twentieth Century avant-garde tract:<br />
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I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you are afraid, you’re afraid of us, you’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I am going to hang up this phone and I am going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I am going to show them a world without you, a world without rules or controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible – where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.</blockquote>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Italian Futurists </i>(1912); <i>The Matrix</i> (1999)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
That it called the existence of the 'real world' into question isn't what made <i>The Matrix </i>extraordinary. Although stepping out of the theater after seeing <i>The Matrix</i> for the first time, the 'real world' felt genuinely strange, it didn't make the world feel false - it made it feel <i>new</i>. Just as avant-garde artists promised in the early Twentieth Century, <i>The Matrix -</i> at the very end of that century - defamiliarized the familiar. "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization" target="_blank">De-familiarization</a>" was, <a href="http://www.vahidnab.com/defam.htm" target="_blank">according</a> to the Soviet literary theorist <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shklovsky" target="_blank">Viktor Shklovsky</a></i>, the purpose of <i>new</i> art:<br />
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The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.</blockquote>
<i>The Matrix</i> shocked us by echoing the real world back on it self, transforming it in sensationalist ways, with almost subversive results. There was the pleasure of see the everyday objects like phones become portals to other worlds. But there was also the transformation of the status quo - upended in ways that were simultaneously exciting (like when we realize the clean cut Agents weren't Feds, but were instead some form of alien meta-authority, able to invade the bodies of whomever that chose), and genuinely upsetting (like when Morpheus is beaten in a horrible visual echo of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King" target="_blank">Rodney King beating</a> - a trauma still fresh in the popular imagination of 1999). Again, this was exactly as avant-garde artists promised; that <i>new</i> art could and should be able to reorder our perceptions of the world. <i>The Matrix,</i> was (however briefly) able to deliver on the promise of the <i>new</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rodney King (March 3, 1991), <i>The Matrix</i> (1999)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
That is not to say that the film's embrace of the new was complete. Like George Lucas, who grounded his <i>Star Wars</i> space opera in mythic archetype, the Wachowskis ground their epistemological scifi masterpiece in a gnostic pseudo-spirituality. But what made both <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>The Matrix</i> a shock to the visual culture, wasn't what was familiar, but what was <i>new</i>. While Quentin Tarantino was disappointed with the sequels for ruining the mythology of the original, that isn't what went wrong. The sequels doubled down on the original film's mythology; its weakest, least original aspect.<br />
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Abnegation of the flesh, that the world we know is an illusion - these Gnostic memes have haunted the world for millennia before computer simulation. There are more than enough essays that dwell on the epistemological and ontological aspects of <i>The Matrix</i> - which are genuinely important and interesting aspects of the film - but my goal is not add to that literature of familiar ideas. What was most startlingly new about <i>The Matrix</i> was it's corporeal materiality. The film's radicalness, it's great conceptual innovation, is not that Neo discovers that the world is <i>not</i> real, it is that he discover that his body <i>is</i> real.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;"><b><i><a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testa_di_Eutropio" target="_blank">Testa di Eutropio</a> </i>(ca 450); <i>The Matrix</i> (1999)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;"><b>.</b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;">In his book, <i>Debt: The first 5000 Years</i>, David Graeber makes an amazing historical observation about the material vs the spiritual world. He tells the story of </span><span style="text-align: left;">Maurice Leenhardt, a Catholic missionary who worked in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia" target="_blank">New Caledonia</a> in the 1920s, who asked one of his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanak_people" target="_blank">Kanak</a> students, "an aged sculptor named Boesoou, how he felt about having been introduced to spiritual ideas." The anecdote bear repeating here:</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Once, waiting to assess the mental progress of the Canaques I had taught for many years, I risked the following suggestion: “In short, we introduced the notion of the spirit to your way of thinking?” He objected, “Spirit? Bah! You didn’t bring us the spirit. We already knew the spirit existed. We have always acted in accord with the spirit. What you’ve brought us is the body.” </span></blockquote>
Graeber explains: "The notion that humans had souls appeared to Boesoou to be self-evident. The notion that there was such a thing as the body, apart from the soul, a mere material collection of nerves and tissues —let alone that the body is the prison of the soul; that the mortification of the body could be a means to the glorification or liberation of the soul—all this, it turns out, struck him as utterly new and exotic." Graeber argues that the alienation of the spiritual from everyday things, animals, plants, and most disastrously other people and our own bodies, dates back to the invention of debt, and in particular the most horribly to the invention of the most horrible form of debt: human bondage.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Debt</i>, David Graeber (2011); <i>The Matrix </i>(1999)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">.</span></b><br />
I would place Graeber's book on a shelf with Jared Diamond's <i>Guns Germs and Steel</i>, Francis Fukuyama's <i>Origins of Political Order</i>, Charles Mann's <i>1491</i>, and Jane Jaccob's <i>The Economy of Cities</i>. Together, these books (and many others besides) form a literature that might be called "deep-modernization theory"; all struggling to tell the story of the violent transition from the prehistoric to historic worlds. All these books that grapple with that same trauma, that same alienation; societal loss of innocence.<br />
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<i>The Matrix</i> nicely bookends that literature, because it is about a future trauma, the alienation caused by the violent transition from the historic to the post-historic; from the human to the post-human. From our civilization to theirs. Not as Agent Smith describes it, a transition from the human to the machine, but as Neo announced it at the end of the last film: <span style="text-align: justify;"><i>a world without rules or controls, without borders or boundaries.</i> But more importantly </span>as The Watchowskis <i>showed</i> it: a civilization of cyborgs. Cyborgs in the sense that <a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/" target="_blank">Donna Haraway promised</a>:<br />
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It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oedipal calendar, attempting to heal the terrible cleavages of gender in an oral symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse.</blockquote>
That was and is a radical and original idea that remains buried within the mythological heap of the sequels.<br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rrose_S%C3%A9lavy" target="_blank">Rrose Sélavy</a> (1921): The Matrix (1999)</span></b></i></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-50007153567416024632015-03-16T08:13:00.001-07:002015-03-17T08:09:21.113-07:00Selma Alabama, 1965, According to The Rev Robert Leonard Powers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman;">"Basement in Selma" </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_McMahon" target="_blank">Franklin McMahon</a> (1965) - illustration for Look Magazine [RLP standing at center]</span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I traveled to Selma Alabama this past weekend to meet my two older sisters Sarah and Rachel, to witness the 50th </span><span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">anniversary</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> of Bloody Sunday. We went, because in 1965 our father, Robert L Powers, answered Martin Luther Kings' call for</span></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"> white clergy members to</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt;"> joined the black protestors in a march to Montgomery. <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/03/gay-marriage-is-future.html" target="_blank">I've posted about my father in the past</a>, <a href="http://news.gts.edu/2013/05/in-memoriam-the-rev-robert-leonard-powers-56/" target="_blank">he was an ordained Episcopalian Priest</a></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">, although by the time I was born he was no longer wearing the collar, and was instead practicing psychology. My father</span> passed away two years ago, and my sisters and I went to memorialize him. <span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">I have been thinking about what I might say about our time in Selma, about my father, about race, equality, and voting rights in America (no small beer in that list). But yesterday my brother-in-law reminded me that five years ago I asked my father to email me an account, in his own words, of his time in Selma. It took me only a few seconds to find after being reminded of it. The comedy (which I think my dad would have appreciated) is that my sisters and I spent our weekend together struggling to remember what we could of our fathers visit: when did he arrive? how long did he stay? who did he meet and see? The discovery of his email is exciting for me, but I wanted to share it as a reminder to those who have not been to Selma, </span><a href="http://www.selma50.com/" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;" target="_blank">this is a jubilee <i>year</i></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">, just because you missed being there when President Obama spoke (my sisters and I did too - we made our plans well in advance of Obama and arrived to late to see the President), does not mean you have missed taking part. Even if you father or mother wasn't in Selma 50 years ago, it is never too late to answer King's call. I am very happy my sisters and I did. What follows is my father's unedited email, sent to me on March 12th, 2010.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>My sisters Sarah, Rachel and I crossing The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama, March 8th, 2015</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Hi John – Sorry I missed your call the other day. Here is what I (unevenly) remember (in outline) about my trip to <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>:<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<u></u><u></u><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Pettus</span></span><u></u><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> <u></u>Bridge<u></u></span></span><u></u><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> police “massacre” was on a Sunday. At home, in <u></u><u></u>Chicago<u></u><u></u>, TV was full of it, for us, and for everyone to see. Disgusting men on horseback riding down on unarmed, elderly and children, and beating them with the kind of extra long billy sticks they used to terrify (never mind injure and disable) a crowd into a kind of stampede. (As I later learned people were then herded like cattle back to the black enclave in which three brick churches and an array of brick public housing marked their separation from the larger city. They crowded into one of the churches, and the police threw lighted firecrackers in through the open windows to heighten the sense of defenselessness and terror. I was also told that older women who fell in the melee had their skirts pulled up, and lighted cigarettes pressed against their buttocks.)<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Monday evening after dark -- reported but not filmed for TV: a young Unitarian divinity student, who was active in efforts to achieve black voter registration, was cornered and beaten to death by white thugs armed with baseball bats. They crushed his skull and left him to die. I don’t know whether any of them was ever apprehended or brought to trial for this cowardly atrocity. “Father, forgive; they know not what they do.”<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Tuesday: I went next door to (Father) Bob Taylor’s house (then the Director of St. Leonard’s ministries to prisoners and parolees) to talk with him and his wife Carvel and to make a case for our going to <span class="il">Selma</span> in round collars to defy the thuggish effort to intimidate any assertion of holiness in support of justice (to paraphrase the way I saw it). They readily agreed. Bob had been with the other clergy (black and white) on the so-called “Prayer Pilgrimage” by Greyhound Bus from <u></u>New Orleans<u></u> to <u></u><u></u>Detroit<u></u><u></u>, where the Episcopal Church triennial meeting was to be held. He was arrested, with the others, and put in jail for “disturbing the peace” for sitting together at a soda fountain counter and asking to be served. (This was a few years before <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>. I was Priest-in-Charge of the Episcopal Church Center in the <u></u>Loop<u></u>, and president of the local chapter of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. This was not so much a “power” base as a PR platform which I was able to use. I had a letter printed in the TRIBUNE, in which I asked, “What kind of ‘peace’ is it that can be disturbed by a small group in clerical collars wanting to be served at a bus-stop lunch-counter?” Georgie-Ann Geyer interviewed me for a piece she was writing for the Trib on the whole struggle, and called me back to read what she had written so that I could correct whatever she had gotten wrong. I had tremendous respect for her ever after.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Tuesday (cont’d): I reported back to Vaso, who was then 5½ or 6 months pregnant with Rachel. We were living on a very marginal income while I was studying in the U of Chicago Divinity School, where I subsequently took the Master’s degree. Vaso, who shared my sense of outrage and urgency over the way things were going down in <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>, agreed that we should borrow the money to cover the cost of air travel, etc., a mighty brave position for a pregnant lady who would be left with very little if I had been knocked down and killed or disabled in <span class="il">Selma</span>. I have never forgotten the sense of solidarity, mutual support and admiration, and marital fidelity we enjoyed in that moment, undiminished by our subsequent shortcomings. I still cherish the memory of it. I was 35 years old, and nowhere in terms of career or accomplishment that I could see as a foundation to build on. We walked by Faith and not by sight, which, it may be hard for people to believe, can be exhilarating and liberating.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Wednesday: We flew to <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>, along with hundreds of other clergy of all denominations, religious sisters, and others. Someone in the “Leadership” had managed to arrange housing for us. I stayed in the apartment of an elderly black woman who had been on the Pettus bridge with her 9-year-old grand-daughter. The woman had vacated to double-up with someone else, and left the child to keep house and look after us (or me, for I can’t remember where Bob and Carvel stayed). I reproach myself, 45 years later, for not knowing or remembering the names of my caretakers. The child was marked by the incomprehensible scale of the horror, and would not venture out of doors. She swept and cooked and silently did what was required, but did not speak to me, at least not a word that I can remember.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Wednesday night: Jam-packed church full of the whole gamut of civil-rights characters, mixed with the common people of the place. I was squeezed in next to an older black man, about my height, with the giant, broken hands of a laborer, with whom I held hands in the cross-breasted custom used when singing “We Shall Overcome.” It was a holy communion, and I feel moved in the depths now as I tell you about this protected white cleric with smooth and scholarly palms, connected to that brave and basic working man, whose vestments were bib overalls and denim. My brother, my further self, unsurrendered to the evil.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Thursday, Friday, Saturday: The days blur. Your question was whether I was “with” Dr. King in <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>. Not yet. As I recall he did not come until Monday or Tuesday.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Everybody else did. I met Walter Ruether, the UAW hero. Archbishop Iakovos (who had baptized your older sister, Sarah, another story) appeared on the altar-platform of the church for one of the rallies of song and inspirational witness. The crossed arms was tricky for him, as he propped his Archiepiscopal Staff in a bobbling arrangement between his elbows, back and forth. He was grinning, as if no liturgy he had ever known was as wild and as much fun as this one. A beautiful sight in his tall crown and veil, and a worthy successor to the Apostles.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">During the days we had many, many meetings and carefully-programmed marches through the enclave to the police barricade blocking access to the outside world. We would sing and clap and carry on in the face of unsmiling, and doubtlessly unhappy, cops brought in from every sheriff’s department and state troopers barracks in <u></u><u></u>Alabama<u></u><u></u>. We would also spread out, left and right from the barricades along the bank of a ravine of some depth, like a moat but grassy and without water. Police spread themselves out along the facing bank. TV cameras stayed clustered at the barricade, of course, which added to our risk. I once saw a rather young religious sister, who must have been trained for the event by playing touch-football, dash down the bank on our side and up the other to where she had spotted an opening in the police line. Following her apparent training and previous practice at the game, she was “running for daylight” as they say. The cop at the top of the bank on the other side was playing by his own more brutal rules, and greeted her with his baton held at either end, horizontally, striking her with a powerful blow across her shoulder and breast. She fell in a disarray of wimple and habit and crucifix and beads, acting out the sacrifice they symbolized. Although she was clearly very sorely hurt, she picked herself up and limped back down through the declivity, now our personal “vale of tears” and up to our line, where she was gathered in by several other sisters. I remember thinking what a shame it was that the TV cameras were not on the spot to record the spectacle, which would have been shown everywhere on Sunday, and prompted every wavering Irish Catholic in <u></u><u></u>Boston<u></u><u></u> and elsewhere to enlist in the struggle.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Sunday: The Leadership negotiated for us to go out in small groups to attend services in the local churches. We walked past the usual denominational division of Methodist, Baptist, etc. on our way to the Episcopal parish church. Big men with grim and forbidding glares stood on the front steps of all of them as we passed on our way to meet our own group of tough protectors of the sacred precincts, big men in suits, perhaps members of the Vestry. Not allowed to come in, we knelt on the pavement outside for prayers, where the news photographers did their work, spreading the image of us far and wide. The <u></u><u></u>Buffalo<u></u>, <u></u>NY<u></u><u></u> (my birth place) COURIER-EXPRESS ran a shot of us, on, I think, its front page. I have a copy framed on my wall, recording my 15 seconds of fame. Carvel wore a wide-brimmed hat she had managed to pack among her things: “I’m from <u></u><u></u>Virginia<u></u><u></u>,” she said. “I know how to go to church in the South!”<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">What I remember most about the church visit, however, was the presence of a local lady, elegant and ramrod straight, a member of that parish, accompanied by what appeared to be her professionally-dressed son. She took on the men with crossed arms and let them know that, if we were forbidden to enter, then she would stand outside with us. Courage! I wish I knew her name; I bless her memory and give thanks for her witness. We would return to the comforts of our homes in the North; she would stay to bear whatever slings and arrows her racist community might hurl (or, might not dare to; she was a person of some obvious status and distinction). The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, it was said, in the time of the ancient persecutions. The spirit of the courageous faithful is the Church’s continuing inspiration. When I struggle to maintain my ragged fidelity, to the amusement perhaps and the non-comprehension of many, even among those who love me, it is to her and the whole “blessed company of all faithful people” that I am committed, and from whom I will not, God helping me, turn away.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There is so much more to talk about and to tell, but most is blurred into a mélange of recollection. Yes, Dr. King came and inspired us in a massive rally in front of the City Hall. I found myself standing next to Harvey Cox, a friend and classmate at Yale who went on to be an outstanding theologian. “Hi <u></u><u></u>Harvey<u></u><u></u>,” I murmured. “Hi Bob,” he replied. Then we were separated in the fluidity of the masses around us. A lovely moment, a precursor of the Apocalypse, perhaps.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">So, yes, I was “with” Dr. King in <u></u><u></u><span class="il">Selma</span><u></u><u></u>, along with a great assembly that was beyond numbering, and that represented the Eucharistic invocation and joining together with “Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven” to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! The whole earth is filled with his Glory.”<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I am a proud father to have a son who wanted to know about this, and who encouraged me to make this record.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Love is the Lord of Heaven and Earth, and I love you.<u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Dad</span></span></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-5396175553961806872015-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:002015-02-10T09:37:11.178-08:002H2K - August 2050 - “No faiR"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczRNAH9K1mKXOFW0z1ueWvHB-wDKtAjZhkwTs-OBJy5KjKwRV9aG3z6X6v0z8NSUpzf6YsP54599MG5XDhcKxN-3zJ-GdY-L9VKNEdF5A9dl4lvbxCsEqsXsPQrE0NxpViqivTH-blLA/s1600/title_ny_3rdave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczRNAH9K1mKXOFW0z1ueWvHB-wDKtAjZhkwTs-OBJy5KjKwRV9aG3z6X6v0z8NSUpzf6YsP54599MG5XDhcKxN-3zJ-GdY-L9VKNEdF5A9dl4lvbxCsEqsXsPQrE0NxpViqivTH-blLA/s1600/title_ny_3rdave.jpg" height="191" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20.7942695617676px;"><b><a href="http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/The_3rd_Avenue_Elevated" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">MUDC work train on the 3rd Avenue El</a>. </b></span><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 20.7942695617676px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[This is the sixth short story in a series,</span></b><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 20.7942695617676px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></b><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 20.7942695617676px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">the 1st story is <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/09/2h2k-january-2050-loaners.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, the 2nd is <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/09/2h2k-february-2050-slab.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, the 3rd is <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/10/2h2k-march-2050-wildcraft.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, the 4th <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/10/2h2k-april-2050-turing.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/11/2h2k-may-2050-jailbird.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the fifth</a>.]</span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20.7942695617676px;"><b> </b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">His phone vibrated a warning. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Rush hour.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> Dean realized. He could feel the heat rising across his face.</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> You're such a fucking fuckup.</i><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">He'd missed the early morning free ride by two minutes; pictured himself looking in the mirror one last time Pausing to The fa</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Re</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> had gone up to 45 minutes. It would clean him out. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Two fucking minutes - classic.</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Whether or not he got the job he wouldn’t have enough to get home, much less eat for the next 16 hours when his </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Gimmie</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> would come through.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Dean paused at the entrance. If he waited the three hours until the fa</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Re </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">dropped back down to 25 minutes, he'd be late for the interview… </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Fuck it.</i><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">He pushed through the turnstile. He had ten minutes left If he got really hungry, it was enough to get a coke or a candy bar. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">But not both.</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Either way, it would have to hold him over.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">He had nothing to do for the rest of the day anyway. He could always walk back over the bridge.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Dean looked at his sneakers, disposable orange Juntos. Or at least they used to be orange. They had seen better days. Not the best gear for a job interview. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Much less a long a walk... </i><br />
<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><br /></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Dean watched the well dressed commuters passing through the turnstile, as if 90 minutes a day meant nothing. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">It probably doesn't.</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">It was a week night, the fa</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Re</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> would drop to zero after nine. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">I need this job</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">It was a nice day, not too hot, he could always find a park to a hang out in. With that decided, he wondered what would happen if they wanted him to start work today. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">One Problem at a time Dean.</i></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-34381306926040349162015-02-10T09:34:00.000-08:002015-02-11T08:09:44.776-08:002H2K - August 2050 - #adviceforyoungjournalists - An Introduction:<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8o6gh7GdwAFbJAoxh3cwWa3PebgAbpD4nd9oRHBxZm992QityXjmx4qUE05R0VbtM5YknIZy4R20epkxbScKkmgyUyLak6ERlU4XNnO4xo7o_CUrtPazTGqXiRCg0y9PEYaxZmEta_s/s1600/medien_foto_rio_material_world_usa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8o6gh7GdwAFbJAoxh3cwWa3PebgAbpD4nd9oRHBxZm992QityXjmx4qUE05R0VbtM5YknIZy4R20epkxbScKkmgyUyLak6ERlU4XNnO4xo7o_CUrtPazTGqXiRCg0y9PEYaxZmEta_s/s1600/medien_foto_rio_material_world_usa.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>The Craven Family, <a href="http://peter%20menzel%20photography/" target="_blank">Peter Manzel</a> (2001)</b></span><br />
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When I started working on this series of short stories about the second half [2H] of the 21st Century [2K] I asked my friend <a href="http://www.felixsalmon.com/" target="_blank">Felix Salmon</a>: "What kind of company would the 'Felix Salmon of 2050' work for, and what will he be doing?" This was well before Felix was "<a href="https://medium.com/@felixsalmon/why-im-joining-fusion-4dbb1d82eb52" target="_blank">post-text</a>" - well before there were even rumblings of him leaving Reuters (the only job I had ever know him in up until then). I asked Felix because I trying <i>not</i> to imagine dystopian 2050, but instead, I had set myself a more difficult goal: to imagine a "well-paid middle-class lifestyle down the road." Since then I have tried to imagine a future in which there is a place for Felixes,<i> lots of them</i>. He is not the <i>type of person</i> I have had in mind as I've written these stories - he is <i>EXACTLY</i> the person I have had in mind. So I was not surprised when he <a href="http://fusion.net/story/45832/to-all-the-young-journalists-asking-for-advice/" target="_blank">advised young journalists yesterday</a>: "if you’re more career-oriented, and want a good chance at a well-paid middle-class lifestyle down the road... if you enter the journalism profession today, have probably never been lower." The reason I wasn't surprised, is because it agreed with the answer Felix gave me to my question over a year ago; an answer that didn't discourage me, but pointed me in the direction I have taken with these stories.<br />
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Here's what Felix told me (or approximately what he told me; it's been a while): That the Felix-of-2050 isn't going to work for any-one-company, or do any-one-thing. He is going to be paid for 10 second bursts of video, to attend dinners and speak at events. ie Felix-2050 isn't going to have a job or a career as we understand them. It took me some time to come to grips with that. I have worked very hard to imagine that jobless and careerless trajectory, but not as something certain and known. After all, that day is already been and gone - as Felix says in his post, his "career path isn’t replicable."<br />
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Instead, I've tried to imagine the peculiar sort of upper-middle class life that Felix has now - one that is very particular to NYC - and imagine a future in which it is widespread - the new normal. The life that Felix, and a lot of other NYers enjoy, is <i>quantitatively</i> more material modest but <i>qualitatively</i> more robust (Felix has nice things, just not a ton of them) than upper-middle class people I know in other parts of the country. Like upper-middle class lifestyles everywhere, Felix enjoys a higher level of personal autonomy than most of us - a greater control over his work day and social life. But I would bet that Felix and his NYC peers enjoy an intellectually more exciting, and socially more rewarding than the mean of their class.<br />
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A secret that New Yorkers keep from the rest of the world, is that we live like college students; <i>ALL</i> of us. If you were to judge NYers by what is shown on TV and in movies, you might get the impression that we live relatively normal American lifestyles; that our bedrooms and kitchens are about the same as other Americans, that we have the same sort of possessions as other Americans, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth.<br />
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It has only been when I've entered the homes of <i>extremely</i> wealthy NYers, that this truth begins to breakdown, but even then, not always. The biggest, flashiest, homes I've been in have all been owned by men who would enjoy (secretly or otherwise) the title "Tycoon" "Magnate" or "Crown Prince" - <i>these</i> are the exceptions to the rule. I've been in far more homes belonging to extremely wealthy NYers (that, not by coincidence, I happen to like and admire a great deal more than the first set) who live in relatively modestly scaled apartments, surround by less, and less conventionally flashy, objects.<br />
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Don't get me wrong, they don't live in a hovels, and neither does Felix. He and his wife live in a stylish apartment, that is very roomy by NYC standards, <i>but only by New York standards</i>. The footprint of their apartment isn't at all why I chose them as my benchmark for the future in any case. I chose them because they have healthcare, are able to travel for work, pleasure, or to be with family when <i>needed</i> or <i>desired.</i> They both do work they find meaningful and enjoy. They are likewise surrounded by people who have and do the same.<br />
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As Felix says, his career path to this peculiar upper-middle class could not be duplicated, it has been one marked by luck and happenstance, and I'm sure, at times, real and frightening uncertainty, but he and his wife and their fellow New York City upper-middle class peers are not the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat" target="_blank"><i>precariat</i></a>. They are the upper middle class as it does not yet imagine itself outside New York City - living more like an idealized versions of students or artists, than watered-down versions of tycoons, magnates, or princes.<br />
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Like Felix, I do not know what to tell a young person who want to choose a career path that gives them a good chance at this sort of upper-middle class life, but after having thought about it for over a year, I am willing to go further: there is <i>NO</i> career path that will deliver even a remote chance at a solidly middle-class lifestyle down the road. The only way I have been able to image a rewarding life for the future - to image a future that is pleasant for <i>ANYONE</i> to live in - is to imagine a future that is pleasant for <i>EVERYONE</i> to live in. That kind of future is not dependent on personal career choices, it requires we make a choice as a society.<br />
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If America can be said to have been shaped by any single ideology for the past 35 years, it has been the ideology of "Fuck you, I've got mine." That is the ideology that has shaped our regressive tax policies, malignant corporate governance rules, voting patterns, and our increasing unwillingness to do our civic duties. This ideology is marked by an unwillingness to repair bridges, or even educate and vaccinate the young. It is this bankrupt ideology that makes us believe that the <i>right</i> career choice is the key to a middle class - of any kind.<br />
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I have tried to imagine a future in which Americans have put that ideology behind them. Which is not to say I image Americans embracing the Swedish ethic of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom" target="_blank">self restraint</a>, or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante" target="_blank">Law of Jante</a>. But it is not far fetched the the whole country could tilt, in some wholly indigenous fashion, away from the slide we are on - one in which they are working together to make a good life for everyone. Americans have done it before, and even now, there are places in America that do it better than other places. This is not to say I imagine a future in which absolutely <i>everyone</i> will have a good life - my goal is not to write a utopia either. <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2015/02/2h2k-august-2050-no-fair_10.html" target="_blank">This latest story is about someone struggling near the bottom of the heap</a>.</div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-45699695247141234802014-10-13T10:00:00.000-07:002014-11-28T10:29:02.391-08:00The Stratified Future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ralph McQuarrie matte painting of the desert and the void (1977); Skyscraper Index - up to 1974.</span></b><div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></b>Preparing for a <a href="http://calendar.whitman.edu/event/john_powers#.VC5AWymwKmB" target="_blank">talk at Whitman</a> last week, <a href="https://ello.co/doingitwrong/post/EcY06ITsgS9MJtR4w4-5oA" target="_blank">a post on ello by</a> <a href="https://ello.co/doingitwrong" target="_blank">@doingitwrong</a> that mentioned the <a href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/skyscraper-index-building-bubble/" target="_blank">Skyscraper Index</a> brought to mind a talk I gave a few years ago at <a href="http://11.performa-arts.org/event/john-powers-artist-class">Performa 11</a> in which I broke the visual language of the <i>Star Wars</i> "used future" down along lines of three stratified machine ages. I was looking for a way to explain to the students some of the things that I felt made the film so original, it occurred to me that while geeks love to play the gotcha game of spotting some imagery, predating Star Wars. That C3P0 is a copy of Fritz Lang's robot Maria, is an obvious example. The gist of the game is that Star Wars is derivative. But what the game misses is that C3P0 <i>means</i> something very different than Maria. If Lucas and his crew had attempted to build a stratified past for their futuristic world - something that had never been done on film before - it would have overwhelmed 70's audiences. What they did instead, was to appropriate an existing past: Yesterday's Tomorrows.<a name='more'></a> </div>
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As it turns out, a bit of bad luck turned out to be good luck. Sometime in the years since I gave the original talk, I had lost all 100 slides I'd prepared for that talk (a bad transfer of files at some point - total bummer), but remaking them, improved the talk. For the original talk I started with a skyscraper index, misappropriating it as an info-vis of world's tallest buildings. My premise was that these skyscrapers were, and are, the first <i>fully</i> modern architecture - those, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=163oAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=delirious%20new%20york&pg=PT121#v=onepage&q=%22elevator%20meets%20the%20steel%20frame%22&f=false" target="_blank">that in Rem Koolhaas' words</a>, in which “the elevator meets the steel frame, able to support the newly discovered territories without itself taking up space.” But over time, how we imagine skyscrapers has shifted repeatedly, producing towers that not only look very different, but, again, <i>mean</i> very differently.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Unaltered Index</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></b></div>
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The Marxist theorist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Mandel" target="_blank">Ernest Mandel</a> - <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/jameson/jameson.html" target="_blank">by way of Fredric Jameson</a> - periodizes machine ages by the evolution of technology itself :</div>
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The fundamental revolutions in power technology-the technology of the production of motive machines by machines-thus appears as the determinant moment in revolutions of technology as a whole. Machine production of steam-driven motors since 1848; machine production of electric and combustion motors since the 90s of the 19th century; machine production of electronic and nuclear-powered apparatuses since the 40s of the 20th century--these are the three general revolutions in technology engendered by the capitalist mode of production since the "original" industrial revolution of the later 18th century.</blockquote>
I like Mandel's insight (and where Jameson took it), but perhaps because I am not looking to cap modernism, naming its final period, but instead am looking to identify the meaning of stylistic stratum - "fundamental revolutions" are little help. In fact, I think they obscure more important changes, the changes in the hopes moderns have for their futures. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Machine Ages of 1977 America</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i> </i></span></b></div>
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So rather than periodize machine ages by technological changes, I'd chosen to use the concept of “fictitious capital”, the currency of what "<a href="http://www.salon.com/1999/07/27/macleod_interview/" rel="" target="_blank">the greatest living Trotskyist libertarian cyberpunk science-fiction humorist</a>", <a href="https://twitter.com/amendlocke" target="_blank">Ken MacLeod</a>, calls "t<a href="http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2009/12/working-in-spaceship-yards-for-real.html" target="_blank">he political economy of promise</a>.” According to MacLeod, “The relationship between scientific-technological advance and science fiction has often been assumed and celebrated but seldom rigorously examined... the 'promise' of new technologies or scientific breakthroughs is used to mobilize resources – of labor, capital, research grants, political credibility, [and] public acceptance – in the real world.” </div>
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MacLeod is describing science fiction's relationship to science, not real estate development, his concept nicely fits skyscrapers however: “Imaginary representations of promising developments play an integral part in this process, acting as (almost literally) 'fictitious capital' in the boom phase of an economic cycle.”</div>
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<br />The first age is one that was not a part of the original talk. Because the skyscraper included tall buildings, made with technologies not too different from cathedrals, and because an important part of the modern world are its connections to the past, to the "folk art" and such of the not-yet-modernized. This is the world the Jawas and Tusken Raiders. </div>
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The first age, of truly modern architecture, is one that has profound hold-overs from our aristocratic past. I called this machine age "Gothic", because these first skyscrapers were conceived as towers: intended to be gaze up at in wonder. Vader belongs to this world, as does Obi Wan Kenobi - they are aristocrats fighting duels by the old "honorable" rules, with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw" target="_blank">elegant weapons, "for a more civilized age</a>." </div>
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The second group of true skyscrapers I called "Aerial", because their architects imagined them from the air, with airliners hanging above and tipped by dirigible mooring towers. The C3PO and Deco aesthetic of C3PO and landspeeder belong to this faded age. </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Space Age</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b> </b></span></div>
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The last group of towers are from the "Space Age". Hanging above these skyscrapers are rockets and moonlanders. This is the territory of the most advanced technology we see in Star Wars: The Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters and the Death Star - but at I worked on recreating my slide deck for for Whitman, I realized that the post war years are so important to scifi visual culture - a sort of Axial Age - that I was missing an opportunity to illuminate finer strata by naming those years one thing.</div>
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I ended up thin slicing the final machine age into four discrete Space ages: "War" - represented by the Pentagon (shown on edge, and janky, but to scale), "Missile" - by The UN Secretariat Building, "Rocket" - by the Space Needle and Gateway Arch - and finally "Hyperspace" - represented by the, then, four tallest buildings in the world, all built between 1969 and 1914. Or, put another way, all completed between the time when Stanley Kubrick's scifi masterpiece, <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i> premiered, and George Lucas and his crew began work on his first <i>Star Wars </i>movie.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Space Ages</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b> </b></span></div>
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While the fictions hanging above the three earlier space ages were naive, and uninformed (think Forbidden Planet) - the fictitious capital that hung over America's greatest skyscraper boom was Kubrick's 2001. Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke worked to deliver a rigorously realistic vision of life in space to film audiences. But their Vision of Cold Warriors commandeering Pan Am flights to the moon crewed by beautiful young stewardesses was dated the moment it first appeared in theaters. As I explained in my talk:</div>
<br /><i>2001</i> premiered April 2nd 1968, two months after the American military’s disastrous response to the Tet Offensive; one month after Walter Cronkite (who was recently described as “a reliable mouthpiece for the optimistic scenarios” of the US government) changed his position and broadcast an editorial predicting the war could only end in stalemate or “cosmic disaster. </div>
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less then a month after the New York Times ran a piece entitled “The Second Feminist Wave” in which, Ti-Grace Atkinson compared marriage to slavery; and just 3 days after President Johnson announced he would not run for reelection - quietly ending the Great Society, and ushering in the reign of the Nixon Administration.<br /><br />Two days after 2001 made its premier to an audience of Washington DC beltway insiders, Martin Luther King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee. The national mood that Kubrick had projected 33 years into the future had broken like a fever by April 13th 1968, just days after the film premiered, when the New Yorker Magazine published Penelope Gilliatt's review of 2001, in which she wrote:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are no Negroes in this vision of America's space program; conversation with Russian scientists is brittle with mannerly terror, and the Chinese can still be dealt with only by pretending they're not there.</blockquote>
In the first few weeks of 2001’s run riots broke out in over 110 American cities. In DC alone, 13 people were killed in clashes with police and over 6000 arrests were made. By the time Lucas began work on Star Wars five years later the Kent State shootings in 1970 had further polarized and radicalized Americans. The OPEC nations had challenged the US presumption of superpower in 1973 with a successful oil embargo, Richard Nixon resigned in scandal on August 9, 1974 , and the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam war.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Rebel Space</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
While the Booms provided the legible imagery that made stratified future visible, it was that bust that is key to understanding what the visuals in <i>Star Wars</i> mean. I would call this last machine age "Rebel Space." In Lucas' own words: </div>
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I started to work on <i>Star Wars</i> rather than continue on <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. I had worked on <i>Apocalypse Now</i> for about four years and I had very strong feelings about it. I wanted to do but could not get it off the ground... A lot of my interest in <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was carried over into <i>Star Wars</i>. I figured I couldn't make that film because it was about the Vietnam War, so I would essentially deal with some of the same interesting concepts that I was going to use and convert them into space fantasy, so you'd have essentially a large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters or human beings... a small independent country like North Vietnam threatened by a neighbor or provincial rebellion, instigated by gangsters aided by empire... The empire is like America ten years from now, after Nixonian gangsters assassinated the Emperor and were elevated to power in a rigged election; created civil disorder by instigating race riots aiding rebel groups and allowing the crime rate to rise to the point where a 'total control' police state was welcomed by the people. Then the people were exploited with high taxes, utility and transport costs" </blockquote>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Used Future</span></b></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-9914899606471179712014-10-02T11:05:00.001-07:002014-11-28T10:29:02.396-08:00Update: The Star Wars Logo Actually Is fascist. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://calendar.whitman.edu/event/john_powers" target="_blank">I'm giving a talk on Star Wars at Whitman College next week</a>, so I was excited to see <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnPowersUS/status/517699047855886336" target="_blank">Chris Taylor</a> speak last night at Seattle's' Town Hall about his new book, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20578529-how-star-wars-conquered-the-universe" target="_blank">How Star Wars Conquered the Universe</a></i>. It turned out to be the first stop on his first book tour for his first book, and he focused his talk on the first ten minutes of the film - starting with the carton that showed before the original print of the film (Duck Rodgers in the 24 1/2th Century). He is an engaging speaker, went into great detail, and repeatedly stumping a group of obviously die-hard fans. The biggest surprise for me, was very early on, when he got to the appearance of the Star Wars logo and he told us it was designed by a woman named Suzy Rice who says she was told by George Lucas to make the logo "very fascist... something to rival AT&T." It's an amazing bit of trivia, but what surprised me wasn't Ms. Rice's claim - <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/03/star-wars-logo-is-fascist.html" target="_blank">I wrote about Suzy Rice's claim on this blog in 2010</a> - it's that Taylor chose to include her story in his book.<br />
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When I first ran into Rice's claim to have designed the Star Wars logo, I wanted to believe her, but I found her story so absurd, I couldn't. But Taylor is <a href="http://mashable.com/people/futureboy/" target="_blank">an accomplished journalist</a> and has verified Rice's story:<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/starwarsmodern" target="_blank">@starwarsmodern</a> Suzy's story was confirmed by Steve Sansweet (it's in the Star Wars Poster Book) and Gary Kurtz.<br />
— Chris Taylor (@FutureBoy) <a href="https://twitter.com/FutureBoy/status/517713039597264896" target="_blank">October 2, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
So maybe this is another instance of an artist being cheated of her rightful place in history (and the fortune that should accompany it). And that Lucas asked for "something fascist" is after all. a <i>great</i> story - one that fits very nicely with what themes I focus on when I discuss the film. The problem I have with Rice's story is that she backs it up with totally slanderous bullshit. <br />
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As I wrote in 2010: "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px; text-align: justify;">While I think Rice’s knowledge of history is mostly bunk, I can easily imagine Lucas saying he wanted 'something very fascist,' after all the film is loaded with Fascist imagery." It was the bunk that turned me off </span>Rice claimed that she based the logo on something called "Helvetica (Helvetika) Black" - this isn't just patently false, it's patently absurd. And to be clear: this isn't <i>just</i> font-nerd niggling, Rice claimed on her blog that "the forerunner typeface version, Helvetika, was designed by the dreaded Joseph Goebbels for use in culture-wide signage." As my friend, and fellow font-geek, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/03/helvetica-is-not-fascist-font.html" target="_blank">Erik Spooner pointed out on this blog</a>:<br />
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How false? She writes that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Miedinger">Max Miedinger</a>, the designer of Helvetica, used Goebbels’ type designs for reference when he drew Helvetica for the first time nearly a decade after the end of the War, that Goebbels, a German leader in the Third Reich, named his typeface Helvetika (which seems a misguided attempt to Germanize Helvetica, which is the Latin word for Swiss). Even if Goebels was a font designer (and he wasn’t), why would the Thousand Year Reich create a visual program for their infamous final solution and name it for the Swiss? Obviously none of this lines up. She is defaming the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10223.php" target="_blank">early German Modernists</a> as well as the post war Swiss creator of Helvetica, and they both deserve better.</blockquote>
I'm glad to hear that the "something fascist" part of Ms. Rice's story has been verified, but want to make it clear that none of the rest of her story is. I really like the addition of the AT&T logo as Lucas' inspiration - that wasn't part of Rices story originally (but she changed the story on her after Erik and I posted about her, so maybe that detail was added then). My own guess was that the logo had perhaps been inspired by the NASA "worm" - but AT&T is great too. And while Rice's history was garbled, it opened up a really interesting aspect of the visual history of Star Wars for me. I followed up on Erik's post with two more posts on the subject of Star Wars and fonts - one on <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/03/helvetica-is-fascist.html" target="_blank">Helvetica as fascist</a> and one on <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/03/fascism-set-in-futura.html" target="_blank">Futura and Stanley Kubrick</a>. I haven't read Taylor's book yet, but it is waiting for me back at home in NYC - maybe if he makes a stop there I can get it signed then. I hope so.<br />
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-43169688262050664952014-08-21T09:02:00.001-07:002014-08-25T09:50:37.011-07:002H2K - July 2050 - “Chuck Close” <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMKY42T8mUbx46Wn4yrju3ZBGP5pbsvtK9tq3Oxv8EBXy1FXTt3pGRgEcSDE4geigypWWQCFewn1quOWM24TcW9dCOHuITn9udTG_JV6n8pfuUbYPLZhIMOHFenc7LlW3XkY2fondoDc/s1600/robot-iaroki-who-takes-out-the-garbage-and-walks-the-family-dog-benji-can-be-programmed-to-do-repetitious-tasks-by-his-owner-ben-skora-of-palos-hills-illinois-1977.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMKY42T8mUbx46Wn4yrju3ZBGP5pbsvtK9tq3Oxv8EBXy1FXTt3pGRgEcSDE4geigypWWQCFewn1quOWM24TcW9dCOHuITn9udTG_JV6n8pfuUbYPLZhIMOHFenc7LlW3XkY2fondoDc/s1600/robot-iaroki-who-takes-out-the-garbage-and-walks-the-family-dog-benji-can-be-programmed-to-do-repetitious-tasks-by-his-owner-ben-skora-of-palos-hills-illinois-1977.jpg" height="320" width="250" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/Read%20more:%20http://www.businessinsider.com/robots-evolution-photos-2011-6?op=1#ixzz3AyFPEi5e" target="_blank">iAroki walking Benji, the family dog</a> (1977)</b></span><br />
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Chuck Close was a small, compact, terrier-mutt with a shaggy coat of coarse dark grey hair and a slight under bite. Although she herself had never had the courage to kill one, Chuck was the descendant of working animals, British rat-catchers. Her line had arrived in the colonies in the early 1700s in the form of pregnant bitch named Molly. Three hundred years later, none of Molly’s brood remained on the mainland, but a few dozen still dotted Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Like Molly, Chuck had a long muscled torso, a six inch inseam, and carried herself with the characteristic jaunty confidence of a small dog that had no idea she was small.<br />
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Chuck's handle<i>R</i> was a late-model quadruped. The small light-weight chassis wasn’t too different than early production models that had made gardne<i>R</i>s and porte<i>R</i>s consumer fads over two decades before. The body plan was almost identical - even down to a third set of dexterous manipulator limbs once used to pull weeds and wrap packages. The handle<i>R</i> however used these smaller limbs to disentangle Chuck's lead, pick up after her, throw balls, and on several occasions, reach into Chuck’s mouth to pull fragments of chicken bone and other such choking hazards out - something a gardene<i>R</i> would never have the dexterity to do, and Chuck feared and hated out of all proportion - watching her periphery anytime she ate for the sudden darting of those tiny plastic hands.<br />
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Also unlike those original gardene<i>R </i>chassis, many of which were still in use in gardens and small farms around the country, the handle<i>R</i>s had modern power cells, state of the art POVs, and other material improvements like gel activators that gave Chuck's handle<i>R</i> an enormous endurance and stealthy gate compared to the easily drained and famously noisy gardne<i>R</i>s.<br />
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The most striking difference between the gardne<i>R</i>s of the twenties and Chuck’s handle<i>R</i> was the addition of a head - essentially a seventh manipulator, but one with expressive dog-like ears. The handle<i>R</i> also had a tail. The jury was still out on whether or not these additions were necessary - most critics felt that they were an affectations, made for the benefit of humans, but meaningless to dogs. The truth was that while Chuck didn't think of them as ears and a tail, she had learned to watch those features with care; less as organs of expression, and more as early warnings that she might be in danger of being disciplined.<br />
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Chuck was old enough that discipline was no longer frequent. She had a good understanding of what was and wasn’t allowed - which did not mean she always hewed to the rules. For the opportunity to chase the cats around the house, she would still risk squirt-gun shots of water, or even blared noise and, the most dreaded, citronella mistings.<br />
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But the greatest difference between the handle<i>R</i> and its domestic predecessors was invisible: it was the sophistication of the AL package it carried. Identifying and pulling weeds turned out to be a far simpler form of Artificial Labor than interacting with domesticated canines. Surprisingly, interacting with dogs turned out to be much thornier problem to solve than driving cars, building houses, or even interacting socially with humans. For all of Chuck's fear of being disciplined, most of the actions the handle<i>R </i>took to shape the dog's behavior when unnoticed by the animal. The majority of corrections were tiny hesitations, signaling behavior that Chuck imitated, or was deflected by without fear, or even awareness. And the vast majority of what the handle<i>R </i>was tasked with doing involved rewards and reinforcing good behavior. Still, no mater how many bits of dehydrated chick those little arms handed Chuck, the dog could not forgive the wrenching grasps down her throat. <br />
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When the Chuck had gone for her first walks with the handle<i>R</i> a few years before, the two had cause a commotion. Then, people had stopped to stare, to laugh, to take pictures. Chuck, who had been a particularly tiny puppy, was part of the spectacle - but the real novelty had been the sight of her being lead by the handle<i>R</i>. Chuck, still easily scared had sheltered between the softly creaking mechanical legs of the handle<i>R </i>while cooing strangers tried to comfort her. <br />
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Something that Chuck could not have known, was that there had been waves of attempts to sell AL pets over the past half century, the MoMA had even mounted an exhibition with hundreds of different servotecure cats, dogs, birds, and mice, as well as three, totally unrelated, models of mechanical mongoose. The show pulled examples going all the way back to the 1970s, representing a spectrum from the earliest clunky hard plastic scif things, to the most recent hyper-realistic animatronics. The fuss that had spooked Chuck as a puppy had been because her handle<i>R</i> was mistaken for prank; an pet gardene<i>R</i> on a walk with dog - an absurdity akin to having seen a horse pulling a Model T Ford a hundred years earlier. It was an understandable misunderstanding however, because there had been a craze from POV snippets of dogs and cats interacting (usually with fear and horror) with their AL counterparts, especially gardene<i>R.</i><br />
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But compared to Chuck's handle<i>R</i>, the early AL pets had been horribly clumsy and slow - hardly more sophisticated than wind-up toys. But every five years or so seemed to bring new wave of the things. Parents and collectors spent surprisingly large amounts of money on some of the more successful models - from Aibo™ - a Japanese model that got a lot of attention around the turn of the century, to ba<i>R</i>k™ & pu<i>R</i>™that had nearly bankrupt Apple in the late teens.<br />
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But as hard as the toy and gadget makers tried, as much as the enthusiast insisted <i>this</i> time it would work, most people didn’t want AL dogs and cats. The handle<i>R</i>s were a very different story, never intended as toys, they were however inspired by them. The crave for POV snippets of terrified cats and dogs had sparked an interest among open-source servotects to retool the toy pets to be toys <i>for</i> pets. It wasn’t long before the project attracted attention of comparative psychologists, breeders, veterinarians, and others concerned with the well being of domestic animals. <br />
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Now, when the full grown Chuck moved through the neighborhood with her handle<i>R,</i> she no longer cause a stir. Not just because her neighbors are used to the duo, but handle<i>R</i>s were now on track to be the most single popular domestic AL ever, a craze that is was finally being acknowledged as a consumer trend.<br />
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Already programs for larger chassis are being developed for ranchers and specialized chassis programed for zoo keepers. There was an open source cat herde<i>R</i> project that was attracting huge amounts of financial and technical support, but almost a three years in, no one held out much hope for its success. <br />
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Chuck’s handle<i>R,</i> meanwhile, was a 3rd generation model. It stood almost three times as tall as she did - or at least it was that much bigger when it accompanied the animal outdoors. Inside, where it was never necessary to over-power another animal - only shadow Chuck, and sometimes warn her off from chasing the cats, or prevent her from eating something she shouldn't - the handle<i>R</i> was the same size as the dog, and quite a bit lighter. But when Chuck went outdoors, the limbs of the handle<i>R</i> extended, allowing it to tower over Chuck. <br />
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Additionally, abdomen of the handle<i>R</i>, which was slim and taut when inside, was a celled membrane that was charged by a spigot near the back door before Chuck was allowed to leave for a walk. Holding five gallons of water, the handle<i>R</i> then had enough mass to hold Chuck back no matter how hard she pulled on her lead, or to forcefully pull her along, if need be. But the extra mass also made the handle<i>R</i> a formidable guard against even the neighborhood’s largest dogs. <br />
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Today, like most days, Chuck had spent the day in a series of naps - moving throughout the day, relocating to sunny spots, never too far from her Old Man, who was asleep now. Most days, her Old Man would take her for a walk midday, and on those occasions they would leave the handle<i>R </i>at home. Chuck would walk off leash, greeting her public as the two of them made their daily loop out past the main drag, to the boardwalk, and back through the MIT quad. <br />
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But right now, it was dark; early morning. Chuck had woken a number of times during the night, sitting up to watch the Old Man sleep, to watch the Old Woman's Cats moving around the room (while feigning sleep, so not to alert her enemies), to groom, and finally, getting up for a drink, to patrol the apartment and workshops below, and go for a walk. As soon as she left the Old Man’s side, her handle<i>R</i> - until then folded and cold, in a box-like configuration no bigger than a toaster, beneath the foot of the bed - roused, and quietly padding behind her. <br />
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The two quadrupeds moved fell into a rhythm. The gate of the domestic machine echoing the domestic animal, a relic of an early programing work-around that incorporated cross training made the handle<i>R</i>s<i> </i>uncanny mimics. Both artificial animals had origins that date back to the Upper Paleolithic, the period from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago. During that time humans had begun producing more complex and finely wrought compound tools, and Chuck's grey wolf ancestors had begun the process of self domestication, that humans would finish.<br />
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While the handle<i>R</i> was assemble in a small one-person shop, less than a mile from where Chuck lived, it was built from from over 10,000 components, manufactured in over 200 countries, and driven by code written by a quarter million individual volunteers speaking over two dozen languages. The machine was part of the most recent wave of tool development that had begun by strapping and gluing stone blades to wood handles. Chuck’s ancestors had insinuated themselves into the small nomadic troops, fattened up on food scraps and feces, and in return, providing their first human hosts with entertainment, warmth, and, when times got tough, a ready source of protein. <br />
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Never before, in the preceding millennia, had dogs and tools interacted with the intimacy as Chuck did with her handle<i>R</i>. Which is not to say Chuck liked the thing, or even thought about it much. The handle<i>R</i> was, by now, a null presence; if Chuck thought of it at all, she pictured it as a series of discrete sensory images, heavily weighted to the olfactory, that, <i>in toto</i>, added up to something akin to Chair-Thing That Smells Old and Collects My Shit. But at one time the Chair-Thing had terrified her. The Old Man had introduced it into the apartment after a series of cat chases through the apartment and workshops (very successful ones as far as Chuck was concerned, she still dreamed about those Enemy Cat routs regularly, growling and twitching her legs with excitement when she did). <br />
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After her initial terror had passed, thanks to an enormous amount of coaxing by her Old man, the handle<i>R</i> had become an object of fascination. For a time Chuck was convinced it was some kind of big cat, or small person - both objects of terror and awe that appeared regularly in her dreams. For a time Chuck decided it was more like an old person than a cat or little person - like a tiny Old Man. For one, it smelled like the Old Man. <br />
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Chuck didn’t know it, but the ‘Old Man’ smell was due to advice the Old Woman had read on a user forum; a trick to help Chuck acclimate to the presence of her handle<i>R</i>. Chuck had watched, unable to comprehend the chirping back and forth between the Old Man and the Old Woman, as they laughed and argued about whether or not to dress the handler in the old man’s t-shirt and underpants (they settled on an old knit cap).<br />
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Chuck missed the sing song that the Old man had made with the Old Woman, sometimes from separate rooms, sometimes while touching one another, and often stopping to address Chuck, and touch her. Without the Old Woman the building was quiet; the Old Man subdued. His voice only lifting and fluttering with pleasure only rarely now; when the Young Woman visited, occasionally when he spoke to his bowl (Chuck thought of all flat things as possible surfaces for food, this included whole tables - Large Bowls - and and tablets - Small Bowls), and on their walks, when the two of them were alone - but even then, never with the same joy he had chirped and whispered along with the Old Woman. <br />
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Adding to Chuck’s initial confusion about what the handle<i>R</i> was, or was not, it spoke commands, encouragement, and admonishments in the voice of the old man; gave Chuck treats, played games with balls, and, when she made a move to chase one of the old woman’s cats, sprayed Chuck with water - all things the old man did. But whatever confusion she felt about the handleR, whatever fear or interest the dog had once had in the thing, had almost all faded to a disinterested awareness. <br />
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This morning was cool and smelled of sea air, but not humid; the day would be hot, there would be no dreaded rain (Chuck hated and feared the rain). The streets were quiet, the drunken clamor of the late night had settled, and the industrious rhythm of the day had not yet begun. Chuck was on a roam. She could already smell her first destination, even though it was still blocks away. And although the handle<i>R</i> was equipped with an electronic nose, it was nowhere near as sensitive as the dog’s, and mostly used to collect data for open source research projects. But even so the handle<i>R</i> had already predicted where the dog was headed and pinged the baker’s sec<i>R</i>etary, and received permissions. <br />
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Chuck had no awareness of these communications, all she knew was that that the bakery’s back door would be open, but for a screen door, that the baker would reward her single short bark with friendly pets and a small taste of beignet or croissant (both of which the handle<i>R</i> had permissions to allow).<br />
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Trotting along, keeping a wary eye out for rats (which she hated and terrified her), and sniffing the air, Chuck was, as far as she knew, the master of her universe. Her companion, in all things, her Chair-Thing handle<i>R</i>, padded softly at her flank. Always in the corner of Chuck’s eye, but never the focus of her attention. </div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-29723247647648562582014-08-21T08:59:00.002-07:002014-08-25T09:50:37.004-07:002H2K - July 2050 - Artificial Animals and Artificial Comfort - An Introduction:<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2tgFG_M0JzUD_uipjcY1aSNxgc3bIob5ty_IUU9qp3chxBhltU6phyphenhyphensoXBzYeKWAaZl8u9duPJKTgHOrpi-JpNrGKKSvweEIR_jXSqXhQrs-vxsVp2JJW5MYXFxDvXQdu8EAsNuLqtg/s1600/Elektro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2tgFG_M0JzUD_uipjcY1aSNxgc3bIob5ty_IUU9qp3chxBhltU6phyphenhyphensoXBzYeKWAaZl8u9duPJKTgHOrpi-JpNrGKKSvweEIR_jXSqXhQrs-vxsVp2JJW5MYXFxDvXQdu8EAsNuLqtg/s1600/Elektro.jpg" height="310" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Westinghouse's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektro" target="_blank">Elektro</a>" at the 1939 New York World's Fair. via <a href="http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/6-pets-that-were-supposed-to-be-mans-best-friend-in-the-1477188811/+katharinetrendacosta" target="_blank">Paleofuture</a></b></span><br />
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About the time <a href="http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2013/10/03/introducing-2h2k-previz-for-the-second-half-of-the-21st-century/" target="_blank">Greg Borenstein</a> and I began working on <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/09/2h2k-introduction.html" target="_blank">2H2K</a>, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/03/gay-marriage-is-future.html" target="_blank">my father</a> fell ill and was dying. I spent a lot of time with him, in rehab centers and hospitals, watching the ways he was treated and trying to help. One of the comforts now offered to the sick and dying are dogs. Specially trained and certified animals are a part of our most modern medical facilities. The pleasure they brought my father, who, towards the end, could enjoy very little, was a great comfort to both him - and therefor to me. But the "comfort dogs" only came once a week at most, and only for very short visits. So between tests, procedures, meals, and whatever else took up my father's last days, I would hunt for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ISzf2pryI" target="_blank">videos of dogs on YouTube</a>. I thought of these home movie snippets as <i>comfort dog prosthesis</i>. When I was growing up, I'm sure he told me about the dog he had as a boy, but it was only as he lay dying that he admitted that he had been needlessly hard on the dog, taking his own boyhood unhappiness out on the animal, seventy some odd years later, he suffered terrible guilt over hurting that dog. As my father's illness progressed his appetites shrank, for drink, for food, for books. The very last thing I can remember him telling me that he <i>wanted</i>, was how much wanted to have a dog again. Not long after the old man died <a href="http://instagram.com/p/pfDS4VjK2h/?modal=true" target="_blank">we got a puppy</a>. Until very recently, the vast majority of dogs throughout human history were working animals, expect to earn their keep doing skilled physical labor as shepherds, rat catchers, or hunters. The comfort my dog has given me is a profound and valuable for of emotional labor, it is a deep animal connection that machines will ever be able to reproduce. But something I can imagine machines doing, relatively soon, is <i>facilitating</i> the emotional labor of animals.<br />
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As I've been writing about the future, I have found myself especially focused on the concrete fact of "<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/10/2h2k-april-2050-robots-are-marxist.html" target="_blank">Artificial Labor</a>" as opposed to the more nebulous and contested "Artificial Intelligence" - machines may never think, but no one can quibble about the work they do. While some thinkers have divide Machine Ages by the quality of our machines (hand made/machine made) or by the power source (steam, internal combustion, atomic), but <a href="https://medium.com/message/failing-the-third-machine-age-1883e647ba74" target="_blank">according to an essay</a> by the sociologist <a href="https://medium.com/@zeynep" target="_blank">Zeynep Tufekci</a> "there’s only been one-and-a-three-quarters of a machine age—we are close to concluding the second one—we are moving into the third one. And there probably is no fourth one." Tufekci's pessimism is due to the fact that she divides machine ages by the kinds of labor we are asking machines to perform, and how badly we've adjusted to new forms of automation in the past. First we used them for physical labor, then for mental labor, and soon the third age will begin, when we begin to rely on them for emotional labor.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Women at work tabulating during World War II (Shorpy) via <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/computing-power-used-to-be-measured-in-kilo-girls/280633/" target="_blank">The Atlantic</a></span></b><br />
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Tufekci's First Machine Age would have begun at the end of the middle ages, when we first began using waterwheels and other mechanisms to replace the physical labor of humans and animals. That First Age really picked up speed during the late 18th century with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Second_Industrial_Revolution" target="_blank">First Industrial Revolution</a>, and has never really slackened. Tufekci points to the breakdown of traditional communities and the terrible conditions for workers in those early industrial cities. More recently Tufekci's Second Age began, when machines began to replace <i>mental</i> drudgery. It wasn't that long ago that computing power was still measured in "<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/computing-power-used-to-be-measured-in-kilo-girls/280633/" target="_blank">kilo-girls</a>.' It was less than a century ago that "computers" referred to rooms full of young women doing the drudge work of math; "computer" was still a job during WWII, not yet a thing. It is only a matter of time until we have to remind ourselves that "lawyer" was once a job. Tufekci, I suppose, thinks that's a bad thing.</div>
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Tufekci believes a Fourth Machine Age (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines" target="_blank">Spiritual</a>?) is unlikely given how bad our historical track record has been when it comes to managing the social and economic disruptions caused by the first two ages of automation. While I appreciate her pessimism, the point of the 2H2K project is to imagine who we can make life during the Second Age the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest time. If it has begun at all, the age of the emotional automation is still in the waterwheel stage, we have time to adjust. Imagining plausible ways to adjust is key.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.parorobots.com/" target="_blank">Paro</a></span></b></div>
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We have only just begun to automate emotional labor. While I found Spike Jonze's disembodied love affair in <i>Her</i> very convincing - perhaps because it was a short-lived platonic affair, and am sure that that form of emotional automation is not only possible, but fast approaching - the more physical relationship required to care for a dementia patient, like Jake Schreier's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_%26_Frank" target="_blank">Robot & Frank</a></i>, is still a very long way off.<br />
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The emotional labor or caring for the elderly, even those who's awareness is compromised by Alzheimer's or dementia profoundly complicated. While my father's awareness was only compromised by the exhaustion of long illness, and I am an adult who knew my him intimately for decades, and had the help of well trained professions, at times I still had a very hard time figuring out what he needed. But the emotional labor of caring for the elderly is even more difficult than making sure the elderly patient gets what they need, it is also a matter of understanding how to reassure those who love them and are responsible for them. Frank's fictional robot companion displayed an extremely complex combination of skilled physical, mental, and emotional labor. I suspect that we are more than a century away from synthesizing that level of emotional wherewithal. (More about this in a future post.) Which brings us back to the emotional labor of artificial animals. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Robot & Frank </i>(2012)</span></b><br />
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Because they are the product of artificial selection - or domestication - dogs are sometimes referred to as "artificial animals." In his book <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=SNoYq7RcY_MC&lpg=PP1&dq=Dog%20Sense%3A%20How%20the%20New%20Science%20of%20Dog%20Behavior%20Can%20Make%20You%20A%20Better%20Friend%20to%20Your%20Pet&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Dog Sense</a></i> the animal behaviorist, John Bradshaw, reports that domestication has altered dogs "more than any other species." He argues that the most important change, "for both them and us, is their ability to to bond with us and understand us, to an extent that no other animal can match." So it is discouraging (and surprising) to read, that "after many millennia in which the dog has been man's closest animal companion, cats are taking over as the most popular pet in many countries, including the United States." Bradshaw suspects that part of the reason dog ownership is on the decline, are our impossible expectations. "Until just over a hundred years ago, most dogs worked for their living":</div>
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Each of the breeds or types had become well suited, over thousands of years and a corresponding number of generations, to the task for which they were bred. first and foremost dogs were tools. </blockquote>
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Bradshaw observes that "none of the breeds that are most popular as family pets have been specifically and exclusively designed as such." Because of this, collies, for instance, that have been bred to herd sheep, have to be carefully disciplined not to heard children and chase bicycles. "In the past, when dogs' functions were mostly rural, it was accepted that they were intrinsically messy and needed to be managed on their own terms. Today, by contrast many pet dogs live in circumscribed, urban environments and are expected to be simultaneously better behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as adults."</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Shiba-chan</i>, <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/16/tokyo-toy-show-robot-pets/" target="_blank">via engadget</a></span></b><br />
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Dogs may be tools, but they are tools we have used intimately for millennia. We probably began domesticating pigs nine thousand years ago, horses about six thousand. Bradshaw places the origins of dog domestication as early as <i>twenty</i> thousand years ago. That pushes the origins of our relationship with dogs deep into our pre-agricultural past. They aren't just our long-time companions - they are our <i>deep-time</i> companions. The emotional work of dogs has always been inseparable from the physical and mental labor we have used them for. The reason there are only a few hundred thousand wolves let and millions of dogs, is that dogs have learned to bond with, and ingratiate themselves with humans - we love each other. By the time dogs accompanied us as we left the Old World and first began moving int the Americas, they had been our companions for thousands of years already. Dogs are our evolutionary partners, they have shape us just as we have shaped them. </div>
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My personal experience with dogs, both recent, but also life long, leads me to believe that they will only be replaced by robots when we have become robots ourselves - and even then, maybe not. I am sure that companies like Sony will continue producing robotic pets, but I think they are likely to be met the same consumer disinterest as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIBO" target="_blank">Aibo</a>. As for the popularity of cat and dog videos on YouTube - those are stop gaps, "prosthetic pets" - replacements for those who can't, for whatever reasons, have pets, are away from their pets, or have a cat, and need to see animals doing something more than scratching the furniture and glaring dumbly. But it was Bradshaw's observation, that dog ownership is on the wane, that pushed me to imagine what the future of dogs will be. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Aibo </i>(2005)</span></b><br />
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Bradshaw's book begins with <a href="http://baywoof.com/featured-article/dog-sense/" target="_blank">the story of Ginger</a>, his grandfather's cairn terrier. He tells the story of how the little dog had the run of his grandfather's early twentieth century Bradford - a proper industrial city:<br />
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Ginger was a genuine Yorkshire “character,” and the family had a fund of stories about him, but what amazed me the most was the freedom he had been given, even though he lived within sight of the city center. Every lunch time, when my grandfather was at work, Ginger was allowed to take himself for a walk around the neighborhood. Apparently he had a routine. First he would cross the road into Lister Park, where he would sniff lampposts, interact with other dogs, and, in summer, try to persuade the occupants of the park benches to part with one of their sandwiches. Then he would cross the tram tracks on Manningham Lane and amble to the rear of the fish and chip shop, where a scratch at the back door would usually elicit a handful of scraps of batter and some misshapen chips. Then he usually headed straight for home, which involved crossing a busy junction. Here, according to family legend, there was usually a policeman, directing the lunchtime traffic, who would solemnly stop the cars to allow Ginger safe passage across.</blockquote>
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I have known dogs with that level of independence - I even owned one for a time - but that is because I experienced something exceedingly rare for an American at the end of the twentieth century: I lived at the dead end of a dirt road, with no running water and few, but friendly, and relatively distant, neighbors. (<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2010/12/art-then-technology-part-2-turn-off.html" target="_blank">I was living miles from the nearest town with a bunch of back-to-the-landers</a>.) Even so, the reason the dogs on that road enjoyed so much independence, was because there was no through traffic to worry about - there was hardly any car traffic at all. An "industrial city", in the UK, before WWI, and possibly even up to WWII, would have had nowhere near as much high speed traffic that even the smallest US town has today. But even so, when I first read about Ginger, I was house-training a puppy in Manhattan.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><a href="http://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1988c-cybernetic-dog-myasum-alyautdinov-russian/" target="_blank">Russian Cybernetic Dog</a> (</b></span><b style="font-size: x-small;">1988c</b><b style="font-size: x-small;">)</b><br />
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Without rehearsing all the entire process of house training a puppy in SoHo, let me say that I, and that the city around me, were both more prepared than I expected. I was prepared in that I had been instantly supplied by a Pet Industrial Complex that had grown up in the thirty years since I had last "paper trained" a puppy. I had poop bags, pee pads, puppy food, crate training equipment, <i><a href="http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/puppies-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html" target="_blank">Puppies for Dummies</a></i>, puppy socialization classes (not a joke), and an infinite opportunity for Google searches to help me do the job. All of which I vaguely knew existed, but had no idea how much I would need.<br />
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I was also unprepared for the alternate New York - the New York you discover when you get a puppy. Not just the New York of dog friendly bars and restaurants, of dog parks, and surprisingly accommodating neighbors. (I met more of my neighbors in the first month of owning the puppy than in the previous twenty years.) But I was also surprised by the fact that the famously unflappable New Yorkers - who I have known in all their truly-unflappable glory for almost twenty years - disappeared and were replaced by New Yorkers who lose their shit in the presence of a five pound puppy; not just little girls, picture burly sweaty tattooed deliver men, screaming in GLEE. New Yorkers have a lot of dogs, but what became clear to me very quickly is that so many of them don't, but wish they could. I get stopped all the time by people who want to tell me how much they wish they could have a dog.<br />
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John Bradshaw is right, my dog is expected to be better behaved than all my previous dogs. No matter how dog friendly New York is today, it is a crowded dangerous city, if she were to bolt into traffic or bite child, that would it. Because of that, I spent a lot of time training my dog, and took it very seriously. I am not a natural disciplinarian, especially with myself, and frankly the dog's behavior often reflects that, but I did my best, which is far more than most New Yorkers with 9-5 jobs could possibly do. I also could not have done it alone. Because both my fiancee and I both work for ourselves, we've had the time to dedicate to caring for the animal. That's a luxury most other New Yorkers couldn't afford. especially those who live alone. Rather than imagine a more perfect dog of the future, I found myself trying to imagine future more like Ginger's; a better future for dogs.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">my Studio Mate, Frances Bacon, photographed last winter for my neighbors in Industry City, <a href="http://www.modko.com/pages/about-modko" target="_blank">Modko design</a></span></b></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-61961507364286099072014-08-18T12:31:00.001-07:002015-03-26T13:32:00.127-07:00The Peace Dividend: Dystopia Now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ferguson Missouri, 30 years after George Orwell's dystopian future of <i>1984</i></span></b><br />
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Over the past week I've been watching the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_riot" target="_blank">police crisis</a> in Ferguson Missouri horror. From the very beginning, when an officer shot an unarmed boy six times in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, the authorities have reacted with overwhelming force; their actions better characterized by blind rage than any concern for public safety. It's a bit like watching keystone cops who have been issued body armor and sniper rifles. In the midst this outbreak of real world distopia, <a href="https://twitter.com/micsolana" target="_blank">Michael Solana</a>'s posted <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/08/stop-writing-dystopian-sci-fiits-making-us-all-fear-technology/" target="_blank">an anti-dystopian screed</a> that is as muddled-headed as it is badly timed. (I say muddled, because Solana wrongly equates dystopias with an anti-technology sentiment - he needs to familiarize himself with utopian Luddites.) In response to Solana's essay, <a href="https://twitter.com/bcmerchant" target="_blank">Brian Merchant</a> posted a <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-need-dystopias-now-more-than-ever" target="_blank">defense of dystopias</a>. But while I felt Merchant's rebuttal was smart, I agree with Solana conclusion, if not his reasoning. We need to get back in the habit of telling stories about the future that are not dystopian.<br />
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Dystopias are on my mind, not only because of Ferguson. I've been working on a collaborative project with my fellow artist <a href="http://gregborenstein.com/" target="_blank">Greg Borenstein</a> called <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/09/2h2k-introduction.html" target="_blank">2H2K</a>. The title refers to the second half of the twenty first century. The project is an artwork, but is not intended to fit nicely inside of what one might expect from a sculptor; call it vernacular design fiction. The premise of the 2H2K stories is that the future will be more densely urban; that by the year 2050 the population of the globe will have swollen to 9.5 billion people. There is no doubt that that another 2.5 billion of us will put terrible strains on the natural world; fisheries will be lost, habitat for flora and fauna destroyed, and there are some dire possibilities for our own species. But rather than imagine the trends in global warming, income inequality, and political decline progressing into dystopias, the project is consciously <i>not</i> dystopian. Unlike Solana however, my premise isn't anti-dystopian - more "anti-anti-dystopian", with <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sPBad_aN0i0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22anti-anti-utopia%22+Fredric+Jameson&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GSfyU-L_NY72yQSRwoGwCw&ved=0CC8QuwUwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Jean-Paul Sartre and Fredric Jameson</a>. The project is to imagine a future society with problems, but not a future in which society <i>is</i> the problem.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"Hands up, Don't shoot."</span></b><br />
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While I used to agree with Merchant, that dystopias "help diagnose our ills and suggest a few ways forward" - I no longer do. Never mind that 1984, one of the greatest dystopias ever imagined, hasn't seem to help us avoid a <a href="http://scarlettslandscaping.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/REALLY.gif" target="_blank">surveillance state</a>, and the Terminator films aren't derailing <a href="http://time.com/52556/darpa-funded-atlas-robot-to-go-tetherless-in-the-next-six-months/" target="_blank">Darpa's Atlas program</a>. we live in an age of mass-produced dystopias. But we're not discussing the merits of a few critical gems waiting to spark the fires of doubt in young minds. What both Solana and Merchant (and I) are discussing are an uninterrupted three decade run of intellectually empty Hollywood movies and mass-market books. One of the primary reason I gave Greg when I told him I didn't want to make a dystopia was because I wanted to attempt to avoid <i>cliche</i> - lets face it, dystopia is a thoroughly beaten dead horse. </div>
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But here's the crux: Dystopias are turning us into Luddites, they're making us stupid. The scifi author <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2011/11/looking-at-art-with-david-brin-1.html" target="_blank">David Brin</a>'s complaint with dystopias is what he has dubbed the “<a href="http://www.davidbrin.com/idiotplot.html" target="_blank">idiot plot syndrome</a>":<br />
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It is just a lot easier to put your characters in dramatic jeopardy if you start with the assumption the civilization is useless and all our neighbors are foolish sheep.</blockquote>
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David nails it: dystopias are <b>lazy</b>. But they aren't benignly so, "the pandemic plague of cheap dystopias and apocalypses and feudal fantasies that have metastasized and infected science fiction" are a destructive to or social imagination. But its not just the story tellers that are being lazy. Fiction is how we exercise our minds, not just as individuals, but as whole societies. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Thousands protest in solidarity with Ferguson</span></b><br />
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In his book, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature" target="_blank">The Better Angels of Our Nature</a></i>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/01/extract-better-angels-nature-steven-pinker" target="_blank">Steven Pinker argues</a> that the Humanitarian Revolution of the late 18th century may have been sparked by the popularity of "epistolary novels":</div>
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In this genre the story unfolds in a character's own words, exposing the character's thoughts and feelings in real time rather than describing them from the distancing perspective of a disembodied narrator.19th century novels have helped us become more empathetic... Cinema and television reached even larger audiences and offered experiences that were even more immediate. There experiments that confirm that fictional narratives can evoke people's empathy and prick them to action. Whether or not novels in general, or epistolary novels in particular, were the critical genre in expanding empathy, the explosion of reading may have contributed to the Humanitarian Revolution by getting people into the habit of straying from their parochial vantage points.</blockquote>
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The growing popularity of scifi over the last thirty years, from a fringe literature of nerds and geeks, to blockbuster events, could and should be just as important to the ways we think about the world - as a society - as epistolary novels were.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Americans like heroes. </span></b><br />
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But dystopias are allowing our powers of problem solving imagination to go flabby. Of course Merchant is right, it is important to show a world that has problems that need to be overcome, but it is also important to imagine a future that has solutions besides a lone hero shooting everyone. One of the things that make me feel that Solana's take on dystopias is muddle headed, is his complaint that they don't provide readers with sufficiently heroic narratives:<br />
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Simply, we need a hero. Our fears are demons in our fiction placing our utopia at risk, but we must not run from them. We must stand up and defeat them.</blockquote>
Seriously? Has this guy ever seen a movie? The problem with dystopias, that Solana totally misses, but that Merchant misses too, but that David Brin totally gets, is that the problems we face as a society today are problems that require us to act <i>as a society</i>. Global warming is not going to be solved by a hero facing his fears, its going to be solved by a well functioning an robust bureaucracy of dedicated civil servants. Ebola isn't going to be cured by Brad Pitt armed with a <a href="http://io9.com/you-can-finally-buy-world-war-zs-ultimate-zombie-killi-1507575294" target="_blank">Lobo</a>, its going to take rigorous laboratory work, carefully observed quarantine protocols, and profoundly courageous public health workers. The same goes for the police riots in Ferguson Missouri. As charismatic and wonderful as <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/in-powerful-speech-cpt-johnson-apologizes-to-brown-family-promises-to-stand-by-ferguson/#ooid=hpNjlwbzrLGAyk3FvAcRbF6zrVkG8bGy" target="_blank">Officer Ron Johnson</a> is, St. Louis County's civil authorities have shown themselves to be dangerously out of touch and abusive, and in desperate need of systematic reform. We need more scifi like <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(film)" target="_blank">Contagion</a></i>, less like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)" target="_blank"><i>Elysium</i></a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><a href="http://newswirengr.com/2014/08/04/experimental-ebola-treatment-working-for-americans-flown-from-liberia-pictured/#" target="_blank">Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol</a> who, the dystopian early adopter, Donald Trump believes: <i>"</i><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/495379061972410369" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">must suffer the consequences!</a><i>"</i></b></span></div>
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<b>Postscript</b>: I started thinking about this post this a few days ago when <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thedavidbrin/posts/613499534886" target="_blank">David Brin posted on fb</a> about Solana's essay, but what really pushed me to write something, was when <a href="https://twitter.com/timmaughan/status/501028605863133184" target="_blank">Tim Maughan tweeted in "flappy rage"</a> about the same post this morning:</div>
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I'm no luddite. But science fiction seems like one of the few ways we can still be publicly critical about progress before it's too late.<br />
— Tim Maughan (@timmaughan) <a href="https://twitter.com/timmaughan/statuses/501020708949204994" target="_blank">August 17, 2014</a></blockquote>
I'd like to give Solana the benefit of the doubt, I get that he sees scifi delivering hope in the form of prediction new technologies. Like Clarke predicting communication satellites. But he never mentions <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson" target="_blank">Kim Stanley Robinson</a> (a self-described "accidental-utopian"), a generous reader might assume he means technologies in the broadest sense, to include new ways of being, alternative political systems, social relations, racial, ethnic and sexual identities. Glancing through Solana's twitter feed however, the generous reading, doesn't hold up:<br />
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"Please take your cis-human bigotry elsewhere" is a thing i read on the internet today<br />
— Michael Solana (@micsolana) <a href="https://twitter.com/micsolana/statuses/500317010329227264" target="_blank">August 15, 2014</a></blockquote>
For someone pushing a turn away from dystopia, this sneer is absurd. From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier#Ideas" target="_blank">Charles Fourier's proto socialist Phalanx</a>, to Robert Heinlein's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress" target="_blank">libertarian Loonies</a>, to KSR's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy" target="_blank">full on communist Martians</a>, all utopians have given pride of place for difference. I'm with Tim, I'm no Luddite, but Solana's brand of progress makes me flappy rage (I think - I don't really know what flappy rage is).<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528" target="_blank">All is Full of Love</a> </i>(1997)</span></b></div>
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-25870816864120068742014-08-05T11:50:00.000-07:002014-08-05T11:50:41.477-07:00Provocatecture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.u-tt.com/" target="_blank">Urban Think Tank</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.indiafutureofchange.com/indiastory_creative_tt.htm" target="_blank">Grotão Community Center</a></i> in San Paulo Brazil.<br />
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"There is a famous scene in Ayn Rand's <i>The Fountainhead</i> where Howard Roark , the archetypal modernist übermensch, is waiting for the phone to ring. His rent is overdue and he is desperate for his banking client to call with a commission. Howard Roark is not an activist. An activist does not wait for the phone to ring. If there is a precondition to activism, it is being proactive. Your client does not even know you exist, cannot afford your services and has come to expect no help from yu anyway, because your client is the urban poor." - <a href="http://justinmcguirk.com/about" target="_blank">Justin McGuirk</a>, <i><a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1646-radical-cities" target="_blank">Radical Cities</a></i><br />
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-18233375732412530062014-04-01T09:22:00.001-07:002017-10-18T18:48:13.625-07:00Lego's "Girl Problem" Hasn't Changed, It's Multiplied.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Viral ad campaign by Lego didn't do much to comfort those put of by <i>Lego Friends.</i></span></b><br />
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I got in a bit of a dust up on twitter this week, which caught me off guard, because not only was I not looking for a fight, I wasn't disagreeing. But some subjects are thorny, they invite misunderstanding and defensiveness. Gender roles is one of those subjects. Lego's "girl problem." The problem is an old one: Lego can't figure out how to sell to girls; 90% of their toys sales are to/for boys - and I bet that that number is low. It's a problem for Lego because they have saturated half their market and can't break into the other other half - until recently, and that's where the new girl problem starts. A couple years ago Lego released a pink-washed line of doll-house themed building sets called <i>Lego Friends</i>, and <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/28/196605763/girls-legos-are-a-hit-but-why-do-girls-need-special-legos" target="_blank">according to NPR</a>, has tripled their sales to girls. The source of yesterday's misunderstanding, was that I hadn't realized the "girl problem" had morphed from a question of how to get girls to play with Legos to one of how to get girl to stop playing with pink toys. But to my mind the original "problem" remains. Three times almost nothing does not a market share make. My guess the sales of the pink-washed <i>Lego Friends </i>sets don't reflect numbers of girls <i>playing</i> with the toys now that they are pink, but rather they reflect the fact that aunts, uncles, grandmothers, mothers, fathers, and girls themselves feel comfortable buying a toy for a girl that looks unambiguously like a girl's toy and comes from one of the most respected toy companies in the world. To my thinking, any marketing scheme built around structured-narrative sets (ie sets that come with instructions intended to build a specific narratives of firemen, spacemen, housewives or veterinarians) are going to be gendered, but they are also going to continue to fail with the girls and "outlier" boys who aren't playing with them now. <br />
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<b>[Skip to the very last paragraph to see my solution to Lego's "girl problem."]</b><br />
I am not a specialist in gender studies. I won't pretend any special insight into the minds of girls or women. But Lego's original girl problem is one that I have been thinking about for well over a decade. And I believe solving it, helps solve the new problem of pink-washing girls. Whatever insight I might have on the subject comes from my professional background as a sculptor. I have worked with blocks exclusively for almost nineteen years years now. The first seven of those years were while I was doing my graduate and undergraduate work. For the last sixteen years I have played with blocks professionally, and exhibited publicly around the world. This means that when I was study art history and theory, I was thinking about blocks - and when I was at a dinner party with <a href="http://www.brosterman.com/" target="_blank">Norman Brosterman</a>, we were seated together. This is not to claim that I am famous, or successful, or important, only that I am committed. So while what follows are my own ideas and experiences, I'm not <i>just</i> some dude talking out of his ass.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Portrait of the artists playing with blocks (2004)</span></b><br />
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Most people assume that I must have loved Lego as a boy. But when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s my friends and I were interested in building toys - not as toy subset - but as an activity. I can remember having Legos, Erector Sets, Lincoln Logs, etc - I was just never wild about playing with them. Instead my friends and I "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge" target="_blank">kluged</a>" our toys. "Making of" specials on TV exposed a generation of boys (I really don't remember any girls tearing down their dollhouses for parts) to the ways model makers had transformed WWII tank model parts into the machine kipple that crusted the Star Destroyers and other ships in Star Wars. No toy, or unused electronics, tool, or random bit of shaped plastic was off limits; the world became a building set. The only thing I don't remember building with was building sets - they always felt too limited - Lego included.<br />
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As things have worked out, I've played with Legos more as an adult then I ever did as a boy - as a baby sister in my twenties, as an uncle and as a friend to parents in my thirties. Again, the assumption is I like Lego; and I do. Now. And I like talking about Lego - or listen a lot. People want to tell me their thoughts and experiences with blocks, and usually that means Lego. Blocks are something I take very seriously, and enjoy thinking about. That is something that attracted me to working with blocks: everyone has experience with them, everyone has a handle on how to make things with them. So the fact that generations of girls are being left out of the game is deeply discouraging to me. Especially because I think the solution to the girl problem is something Lego knows how to do very well, because its the idea the company was founded on: abstract free-play.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Chris Burden, <i>Tyne Bridge Kit</i>, (2004) - Someday I'll get a collector to buy me one so I can build something other than a bridge with the parts.</b></span><br />
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As someone who plays with blocks for a living my interest in blocks goes beyond handling them. I read about discuss them am curious about their history, what scientists have to say about they ways we play with them - whatever, you name it. My own blocks are based on a nineteenth century pedagogical tool, used by one of the 20th centuries greatest architects, that I first learn about in primary school. I had the good fortune to spend second and third grades in Oak Park IL, at a school that was directly across from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright_Home_and_Studio" target="_blank">Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio</a>. Wright's cultural cachet had waned in the post war years (Phillip Johnson called Wright "the greatest architect of the 19th Century"). The Home and Studio had fallen into disrepair and was even split into a boarding house for a while. But by the time I was in primary school there was a resurgence of interest the architect, the building had been taken over by a trust and was, during the years I studied across the street, being slowly and meticulously restored. This meant that the Home and Studio was one of our more frequent field trips, and architect was a subject I ended up being indoctrinated in.<br />
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Oak Park was described by Ernest Hemingway as a town of "wide lawns and narrow minds." That may have been true in his time. But a lot of changes marked the place he grew up by the time my mother, sisters and I moved there. The wealthy families that Hemingway had grown up among had moved further away from the city by the late 70. The town had become a liberal bastion, with a well earned reputation for high quality, racial integrated public schools. - which is part of the reason we moved there. The large Victorian homes were still there (with their wide lawns), as were FLW's early <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_School" target="_blank">Prairie School Style</a> homes. That was the other reason we moved to Oak Park, my mom loves architecture and bought herself a rambling rundown 150 year old Victorian wood frame house. She got it cheap - like the Home and Studio they had gone out of fashion. And also like the Home and Studio, our house had been turned into a boarding house too.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Ernest_Hemingway_with_Family,_1905.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Ernest_Hemingway_with_Family,_1905.png" height="302" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ernest Hemingway - pre-tough guy [and <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist" target="_blank">in a more gender-neutral era</a>]</span></b><br />
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My mother's interest in Oak park's Victorian building stock was ahead of the curve, but not unique. I remember being marched around by my teachers in good weather, my classmates and I armed with mimeographed work sheets that listed the various attributes of Victorian architecture styles (I seem to remember the ones with the wrap-around porches were Queen Anne) and Prairie School features. We were expected to check off and learn to distinguish the different sorts of houses we lived among.<br />
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One of the things I can remember learning in those early years, is that Frank Lloyd Wright used wooden blocks as a design tool. The information probably stuck with me because I had gone to preschool and first grade at a Montessori school and one of the activities I remember being particularly fond of was playing with wood blocks (probably <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_block" target="_blank">Unit Blocks</a> or some such). The blocks Wright used were "Froebel Blocks" that were sections of a cube. <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2011/01/art-then-technology-part-6-authority-is.html" target="_blank">I've written about my block's relationship to Froebel before elsewhere</a>, but what's key is that they were also one of the first sets of children's blocks that were no representational; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brosterman-kindergarten.html" target="_blank">abstraction started out as child's play</a>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Froebel's Gift Number Four: a cube sectioned evenly into eight in order to create blocks that are a 1 x 2 x 4 proportion.</span></b><br />
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When Lego pulled out of a financial tailspin a few years ago by concentrating on franchise tie-in sets, they were accused of abandoning girls, but the truth is Lego has never had much success with girls. What they abandon in the 90s was abstract free-play - like the sort Froebel originally set out to encourage and guide. Lego now sells structured-narratives: Star Wars sets, Bat Man sets, and now doll-house sets for girls. I first heard about Lego's girl problem in the 1990s, from a guy who had worked as a consultant with the company. I remember I told him I thought the answer was: color. He was quick to tell me that I was wrong, that the company had tried every shade of pink. But he had misunderstood me, that's not at all what I meant.<br />
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I can clearly remember why I wasn't a Lego guy growing up. The blocks came in a too few shapes and sizes to allow me to create fine detail - which I loved in toys. Additionally I remember that the colors were garish; simple primaries, I found boring. If that sounds like I was a little precious at the age of nine, I suppose that's because to some degree I was. I wasn't a shy or quite boy, but I spent a great deal of time alone. I lived in my head. I wasn't clumsy, but wasn't at all interested in playing sports. I wasn't a boy's boy any more than I am a Man's man. Like now, I cared a lot about the way things looked and felt in my hand, and really enjoyed spending time quietly making things. My father wasn't at all handy, didn't like building things, and I don't think knew what to do with his "artistic" son. He gave me an Erector Set and bought me balsa wood airplane sets - both toys that had more to do with his prewar childhood than mine. Neither things I ever ended up playing with or using.<br />
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My mother meanwhile had gone to art school, knew how to sow her own dresses, was a great gardener, designed and built furniture, and had all the skills needed to refinish a Victorian boarding house. She was the one I went to when I wanted to make something. She taught me how to use a sewing machine, hammer nails, draw - the whole kit and kaboodle. Which is to say, I wasn't a conventionally masculine boy, but I wasn't spoon fed conventional ideas about men and women.<br />
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Here is the conventional wisdom on the difference in the ways boys and girls play with blocks: <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=PWrAzprV9XMC&lpg=PA43&dq=Boys%20build%20towers%2C%20girls%20build%20walls&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q=Boys%20build%20towers,%20girls%20build%20walls&f=false" target="_blank">boys build towers, girls build walls</a>. I remember hearing that when I was growing up, and I can't count the number of times someone has volunteered that gem of knowledge when they find out I work with blocks. It seems to date back to <a href="http://%22sex%20differences%20in%20the%20play%20configurations%20of%20preadolescents%2C%22/" target="_blank">observations first published </a><a href="http://%22sex%20differences%20in%20the%20play%20configurations%20of%20preadolescents%2C%22/" target="_blank">by Erik Erikson </a><a href="http://%22sex%20differences%20in%20the%20play%20configurations%20of%20preadolescents%2C%22/" target="_blank">in 1951</a>. The fresh new insight that Lego has used to justify their <i>Lego Friends</i> line on: "When boys build a construction set, they'll build a castle, let's say, and they'll play with the finished product on the outside" explains Garrick Johnson, a toy analyst for BMO Capitol Markets. "When girls build construction sets, they tend to play on the inside." Towers vs walls.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1981 Lego ad featuring free-play</span></b><br />
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When I think of the "girl problem" I don't think of a problem girls have - That's How Freudians psychoanalysts like Erikson would have posed it: envy. My own father was a psychologist and had a very different take on "sex difference." He described it as "gender anxiety." That girls don't experience a physical "lack" that leads to envy, but instead, just about the time that a girls and boys are entering puberty - a time when girls tend to develop faster both physically and mentally - is just about the time when most boys and girls first become aware that society values boys more girls. The anxiety is a shared one. The girls experience it because they don't feel inferior, and the boys feel it because they don't feel superior.<br />
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At issue shouldn't be evening the gender disparity in mini-figs (although that may please some people, it won't serve boys or girls). Neither should it be forcing Lego to retract toys because they are predominantly pink - Let the grandmothers and uncles have their go-tos, Girls are strong, they know how not to pay with toys that suck. We shouldn't be working to deny girls what they <i>think</i> they want, Lego should be pressed to offer girls and boys toys they don't know they want. Yet.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Lego's 2012 color palette</span></b><br />
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If I were working with Lego I would press them to test a toy my 9 year old self would have wanted to play with - informed by my adult experience. playing Legos with my nephews and the children of my friends my eyes glaze over when I am asked to help assemble a set as per instructions. I ooh and ah with everyone else at a dinner party when a proud child shows off the perfectly assembled truck or spaceship, but in my heart I'm bummed. I like when kids misbehave; the moment when they get board of the picture on the box and smash the truck and spaceship to make a third thing from the parts. I am a kluger at heart, not a model maker, and I want to give my niece a toy that will encourage her to kluge.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">A kit-bashed Tie Fighter via <a href="http://gonerdy.kinja.com/" target="_blank">a commentator</a> <a href="http://toybox.io9.com/lego-friends-dolls-subvert-gender-stereotypes-with-bada-1678329699/+riamisra" target="_blank">on io9</a>; my niece, playing with colored wood blocks I made her.</span></b><br />
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<b>Here is what I told the consultant who first told me about Lego's girl problem over a decade ago:</b> sell sets of a single color with lots of different shapes, and many sizes - plenty of small pieces - no instructions. The numbers of colors Lego makes available is what's crucial; not a few primaries, or even an array of a few dozen, but hundreds of colors a variety of blues, reds, yellows, and greens, dozens of shades of each. Lego's pallette should rival Pantone, or Munsel. Collecting all the shapes in as many colors as possible becomes the aim, rather than all the spaceships or all the dollhouses. And the end result is truly rich, and gender bias-free, free-play. Lego is pretty much there, they have a huge variety of shapes, a good variety of hues, they just need to rationalize and expand their color palette by a magnitude.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_846398418"></span><span id="goog_846398419"></span>The 1921 <i>Munsel</i> color system I studied in graduate school.</span></b></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-23383119124813172672014-03-29T12:42:00.002-07:002014-03-29T12:43:19.760-07:00Art As War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Dr Strangelove</i> (1964)</span></b></div>
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From time to time, as tensions rise in one part of the world of another, someone will bring up the idea replacing war with art. I had a friend who took that idea and ran with it. He wanted to top ICBMs with "art-heads." So for instance, his suggestion was that when diplomacy broke down, and it was time for action, that a group of artists would be at the ready to sculpt, paint, code, cook, whatever - a response, calculated to shaping events. Their art, rather than atomic payloads, would then be loaded onto missiles that would be fired into the enemy combatants. Culture "artwar," fought by means of conceptual bunker busters, new aesthetic daisy cutters, and social practice fat man and little boys. My friend's idea was absurd but attractive. An actualization of artistic avant-gardist pretension. Artists as actual shock troops. It occurred to me today, remembering my friends idea, thinking of Crimea, Syria, Afghanistan, et al, that we are already fighting wars by means of art; that intercontinental missiles, loaded with cultural content are flying over head. Movies are the nukes - weapons of mass-illumination. Music is another artistic weapon of mass-reproduction. Contemporary visual art, is a wholly conventional form of artfare - targeted mostly at elites.<br />
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"Then with the Sony Outsider I thought, Okay, I’m going to expand this idea and make it more violent and aggressive and difficult I’ll make a perfect full-scale model of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, but I’ll make it Sony. It’s like cargo-culture shit. We don’t just drop bombs, we drop culture, and that’s how we erase culture." -<a href="http://bombmagazine.org/article/2544/tom-sachs" target="_blank">Tom Sachs</a></blockquote>
In Steven Pinker's book, <a href="http://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature" target="_blank"><i>The Better Angels of out Nature</i></a>, he makes the distinction between "great powers" - those nations like the US, Britain, France and nominally Russia (they have nukes) - that can make war anywhere in the world, regional powers - like China Pakistan and India - that can project martial power locally, but only against their immediate neighbors; and then finally lesser powers - like South Sudan and Nigeria - that are only able to project violence against their own civilian populations.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Sony Outsider</i>, Tom Sachs (1998)</span></b><br />
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Organized early on, as national cinemas, the great powers of film coincide with the military great powers the US is the world's only movie superpower, Britain, France, are obvious Great Powers, and do indeed project their power internationally. (Again Russia is nominally a great power - which is to day they have nukes, but its hard to imagine them waring, even with art, on anyone but their weakest neighbors.) Regional powers like India, China, Korea and Japan, as well as lesser powers like Israel, Mexico, and Brazil sometimes jump the line with worldwide hits, but the great majority of their national cinemas' output are aimed at more local audiences.<br />
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The art war is not a cold one. Everyone knows what going on, if we aren't always cognizant of which direction we are firing. The cultural packages shot over boarders are obviously loaded ideologically. American movies export "American values." The Taliban, unable and unwilling to compete in the War of Art, closed its borders, not only to foreign munitions, but to domestic art as well. When George Bush said that "they hate our freedoms" the truth was, they hate our art.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Nuclear Energy</i>, Henry Moore (1963)</span></b><br />
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Here is the blow back that is harder to keep in mind. American art, especially its cinematic arsenal, is shaped by the international audience they are aimed at. It is easier to deliver our 'American values' via straight-forward violent action, then by means of erotic imagery or complex and sophisticated character driven narratives. We are becoming the art audience puritanical Chinese leaders wants the Chinese to be. (It helps the munitions makers that puritanical Americans want that too.)<br />
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Additionally, sophisticated filmmakers are under special critical scrutiny. Michael Bay can pump out as much <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-want-to-be-old-artist-but-movies-are.html" target="_blank">contemptuous flag-draped shit</a> as CGI artists can render, without raising eyebrows, but the ideology of <i><a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-art-of-8-bit-history.html" target="_blank">Zero Dark Thirty</a></i> was examined almost frame by frame.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><i>Superficial Engagement</i>, Thomas Hirschhorn (2006)</b></span><br />
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I am reading Ben Davis' book 9.5 Thesis on Art and Class right now, and it's his discussion of Thomas Hirschhorn's concept of <i><a href="http://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/1341/installation-view" target="_blank">Superficial Engagement</a></i> that sparked these thoughts. In that chapter Davis quotes the artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Burgin" target="_blank">Victor Burgin</a>:<br />
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The work of "political artists" usually harms no one, and I would defend their right to make it; what I cannot support is their self-serving assumption that it "somehow" has a political effect in the real world. In a university art department, I would prefer as my colleague the artist who makes watercolours of sunsets but stands up to the administration, to the colleague who makes radical political noises in the gallery but colludes in imposing educationally disastrous government policies on the department.</blockquote>
I have never attempted to make work that was overtly political, if anything I have avoided it - in my early 20s, working as a bronze craftsman and figurative sculptor, one of the first things I realized I did <i>not</i> want to make, was war memorial art. I never have since. That refusal, is to me is, an artistic political act, but an invisible one. Art - from the big guns of mass is filled with invisible apolitical acts of that sort, positive and negative.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1160568245"></span><span id="goog_1160568246"></span><i>The Hurt Locker</i> (2008)</span></b></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-14455414976815225072014-03-22T13:10:00.000-07:002014-03-22T13:25:07.196-07:00Art, Then Disruptive Technology.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A year or so ago, right around the time of the Armory art fair, I began to think of the international art fairs in a new way, rather than market strategies or some such, I began to imagine them as a "disruptive technology." We tend to think of technology as discrete gadgets. Smartphones are technologies. Driverless automobiles are technologies. The internet is a technology. Art fairs are too; they are a cultural technology, and they are upending the artworld. But BE WARNED: This is most definitely <i>NOT</i> another screed about how money is destroying art. If art has a single attribute that separates it from all other commodities, it is that it is the "<a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2012/02/spot-shops.html" target="_blank">ultimate commodity</a>." Art has <i>no</i> upward price limit; that men (it's always men) will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a piece of cloth dabbed with paint, by some guy who lived in a coal miner's hut is amazing - but it is not the subject of this post. The wackiness of the secondary market has been with us long enough that I it no longer fits under the definition of technology as <a href="http://definition%20of%20technology%20as%20something%20that%20doesn%27t%20quite%20work%20yet./" target="_blank">"everything that doesn't work yet."</a> Art Fairs don't work yet.<br />
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I like to joke that Williamsburg was never an arts neighborhood. This ruffles a lot of feathers because, like all good jokes, its painfully true. (I am sure that the first human laugh was at someone else's expense, and probably involved a blow to the head or a kick to the pants.) Don't get me wrong, there were lots of artists in Williamsburg for a while, and a few of them are still there. But Williamsburg was never a viable place to go to sell art. A lot of art was made there, people went there to look at art, to talk about art, but not to buy and sell it - at least no enough to matter. The internet is a Williamsburg. A lot of artists live there. Many of us go there to do do work. Lots of us go there to look at art, but no one is buying - at least not to any degree that matters.<br />
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Like every other city in the world, there are framers and coffee houses and little galleries in every neighborhood of New York. Change a light bulb and no one calls you a plumber the old joke goes; a gallery or two does not make an arts neighborhoods. How much art matters? When I moved to New York in the summer of 1995 lots of artists were living in Williamsburg - the number was still growing in fact, but they were bringing there work to SoHo, or, increasingly to Chelsea - well, not at first. When I got here the only art space in Chelsea was the Dia, otherwise the Far West Side there was a waste of taxi cab garages and moving companies, seemingly too far a trudge from the subway to ever be as cool as SoHo (or Williamsburg). By the summer 1999 there were over 300 galleries in Chelsea, and Soho was reverting to just another New York Neighborhood with some galleries in it. The number I heard most recently, is that there are 500 galleries in Chelsea.<br />
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I have made a couple sales over the internet. I am sure an increasing number take place there, but contemporary art sales still require air kissing, small talk, name dropping, flirting, one-upmanship, on, and on - in short, buying and selling art still requires all sorts of confidence building measures that require physical proximity. Some time, around 2000, the scales began to tip, from doing these corporeal exercises in brick-and-mortar white box galleries, to increasingly getting them done in art fair booths. Contemporary art went from a business with "seasons": Fall was when the big boys filled the galleries with their solo shows, January was when the hearty might discover a gallery taking a risk on an ambitious solo show by a bright young thing (or a more established artist yet to generate much buzz), and Spring was again given over to the big boys to show their muscles (there were some important women, but it was almost all men still). Summer was given over to group shows for the the dead, dying, yet to be born and still-born.<br />
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Things weren't always that way. In his book "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art", Serge Guilbaut explains that, before WWII, well-heeled New Yorkers bought and sold their art in department stores. 1942 and 43 were marked by what now seems like a miracle on 34nd Street, but what Guilbaut calls the "war of the Rembrants," Rather than warring Santas, Gimbel's and Macy's competed to sell "Old Master" paintings to middle class buyers on lay-away plans. As the "art boom" went on, Guilbaut reports that "patriotic" New Yorkers began to buy American; for the first time home-grown artists could compete with the cachet of European sophistication. Which was timely, since American made art was plentiful and cheap, and the New York art market was about to explode:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wacKfrLPhdQC&lpg=PP1&dq=How%20New%20York%20Stole%20the%20Idea%20of%20Modern%20Art%3A%20Serge%20Guilbaut&pg=PA91#v=snippet&q=patriotic&f=false" target="_blank">Except from page 91</a> of , Serge Guilbaut's <i>How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art </i>(1985). </span></b><br />
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That sets the stage for the artworld I witnessed the waning days of. The postwar galleries of Uptown and Midtown gave way in the vietnam era Downtown artworld of SoHo. There, "white box" galleries were built inside the cast iron factory/warehouse buildings of a dying industrial neighborhood. the mouldering plaster and lathe interiors were hidden behind cheap mass-produced wallboard and two-by-four construction, lit with equally cheap track lighting, and dressed with even cheaper paint; creating the famously/infamously "neutral" ground for generations of American artists to make their mark. I was one of the last ones to dance before the music stopped. My last show in SoHo was my first solo show.<br />
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I have called the artworld, that I came to New York to be a part of, as the "Debate of Things."It is an intellectual debate. But unlike most intellectual debates are based primarily, if not entirely in language ("Its text" all the way down!" cried the old woman). But like music, contemporary visual art is an intellectual world where words are secondary, after-the-fact. Readers of this blog, aquatinted with my spelling and grammar, may think they understand why I find that idea so attractive. Increasingly we think of athletes in terms of intelligence. I can remember Michael Jordan be spoken of as an athletic genius. But long before that, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=5JUwRiuOGigC&lpg=PA7&ots=hkaCKmAYSY&dq=frank%20stella%20Ted%20Williams%22&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=frank%20stella%20Ted%20Williams%22&f=false" target="_blank">Frank Stella valorized Ted Williams, as the greatest living American</a>. For those of us who think with out hands, on our feet, by doing, being an intellectual is something we are largely excluded from. "Dumb as a painter" isn't something you hear that often anymore, even in jest. The joke seems entirely lost on most younger people. (I still think it's hilarious). Art's expansion has tracked with our expanding idea of intelligence.<br />
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The challenge the art fairs pose to those who want the Debate of Things to rage long and hard, it that art fair booths are to galleries what 60 second commercials are to an independent film. Artworks that once would have been contextualized within a carefully chosen body of artist's recent work, are now shown isolated, and hopefully for only a few hours, since once they are sold they will be replaced with a work that hasn't been sold. The art season survives, but only as a phantom limb. The real art calendar is now a punctuated series of weekends, Armory, Freeze, Basel... Like the big box retailers that art fairs resemble, gallerists (and their artists) are increasingly dependent of sudden floods of shoppers, once or twice a year.<br />
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This post isn't a manifesto, or a call to arms. It's a biography. I love the Debate of Things, everyone I've met in the artworld love it too, for all the same reasons as I do. Most of the people I know who work in the artworld participate in the fairs to some degree. And while most express disdain, or at least ambivalence, some even find things to like about them. (I think they're great places to get laid.) I however, feel like an investigative journalist in the age of the blogger, or a musician in the age of file sharing. Like the loss of strong daily papers, news bureaus, and the album, something great has been lost and replaced with something <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=all" target="_blank">"good enough"</a>. </div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-34918258527807849962014-03-21T09:54:00.001-07:002014-03-21T12:19:46.357-07:00Critical Analytics: Show Us The Territory, And We Will Find Our Own Way.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ed Winkleman (looking for leadership?); William Powhida, <i>Turning in Circles</i> (2014) detail</span></b><br />
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"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion." - Francis Bacon</blockquote>
I avoid the academic practice of starting essays with a quote from a great thinker because more often than not the quote is obscure and it does less to illuminate the topic of the essay it hangs above, and more to reflect glory from the great thinker,on to the less-great author of the essay. But that Francis Bacon quote goes a long way to sum up my reaction to a post the gallerist <a href="https://twitter.com/edwardwinkleman" target="_blank">Ed Winkleman</a> wrote on his blog called, "<a href="http://www.edwardwinkleman.com/2014/03/looking-for-leaders.html?showComment=1395356790586#c6061778610665058763" target="_blank">Looking for Leaders...</a>" Ed argues that the flood of speculative cash has thrown the artworld is in a "death spiral" and its up to artists to lead us out of the trap. I Liked Ed's post a lot, even though I found myself strongly disagreeing with its key points. First, that the source of the artworld's problems are auctions, and second, that artists can lead the way to fixing those problems. "Someone will chime in to suggest all we need is enough idealistic dealers who dig in their heels" Ed predicted, "show quality work without compromising, and they'll begin to change how things are heading." But so far, all the responses I've seen have been along the lines that <a href="https://twitter.com/magdasawon/status/446732687358050304" target="_blank">everyone needs to do their part</a>. I don't agree with that either. Right now we are at least twice removed from truth; probably the most we should hope for is to move to an environment of error from the state of confusion we inhabit. Ed's post is a move in that direction. But I don't think leadership is what we lack at all, artists need good data.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://twitter.com/aservais1/status/446918959980638208" target="_blank">Alain Servais tweet</a> captures <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnPowersUS/status/446680059257311232" target="_blank">my attitude more exactly than my own twitter reaction.</a></span></b><br />
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In his post, Ed reports that he "had a conversation just the other day with an artist who confirmed for me that so long as there's money to be made in the current market, they felt they should try to make as much as they can too. Why should they be the cross bearer for their generation? And it's clear they're not the only artist who feels that way, regardless of what some would say if put on the spot. Which isn't to say all artists feel this way...just enough to fuel an ever-money-obsessed market." I don't believe it's the way artists feel that fuel the artworld's obsession with money - but how would I know? Part of the problem we all face is that there are no economic studies of the artworld, there are very few systematic studies of any kind. The only data with any depth and breadth we have to look at are auction prices, but they stand out in a context of anecdotal observation/outrage.<br />
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I've been asked on a number of occasions if there is any good writing on the economics of the artworld. (Fuck you <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=fuck+you&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=IbcrU9iPD9OP0gHcnYGADA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1273&bih=618" target="_blank">Tom Wolf</a> and your bullshit-reactionary <i>Painted Word</i>.) The best description I've ever read of the economic condition of artists in the contemporary artworld is <a href="http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-3/" target="_blank">Chapter 3 of Freakonomics</a>: "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" Replace "foot soldiers" with "emerging artists", "drug king pins" with "art stars", and you have a pretty good description of the conditions (and delusions) most young artists labour under.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><i>New Jack City</i> (1991); Jacob Kassay (2010) <a href="http://www.artfcity.com/2013/03/29/jacob-kassay-at-art-concept-reflection-or-deflection/" target="_blank">via AFC</a></b></span><br />
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Talking with <a href="http://greg.org/" target="_blank">Greg Allen</a> the other day, he joked: “Swing a stick in Greenpoint you’re going to hit someone desperate to be an art star." That's not a particularly original or profound observation, but Greg went on to point out that "That's not a practice, that's a <i>symptom</i>.” To torture Greg's the metaphor a little further, the 'disease' is a perverse set of incentives that, like the crack trade, offer a very few outrageously large rewards, attracting lots of desperate players willing to risk life and limb for a shot at the top slot.<br />
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I moved to New York 19 years ago, not because I was desperate to be famous, or wanted to try and make as much as I could, I came to do meaningful work, to take part in the intellectual debate of things. That is how I think of the contemporary artworld, as a <i>debate of things</i>; a debate waged with paint and plywood and Thai food rather than paragraphs and footnotes. The disruptive technology of the intellectual debate of things, is not the internet of things or the internet period, it's art fairs. I will not go so far to say that the fairs have reduced art to "<a href="http://galleristny.com/2014/03/one-for-the-flippers-buy-now-liquidate-id-sellyoulater-but-its-already-too-late/" target="_blank">trading tulips</a>", but the fairs definitely reduce the possible bandwidth of the debate of things until little gets through but monosyllabic nonsense. For intellectuals who speaks in things, something important is being lost.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://twitter.com/robertasmithnyt/status/441954265792536576" target="_blank">Tyler Green and Roberta Smith</a> disagreed on the what, if any, opportunity the fairs hold for critics.</span></b><br />
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When I arrived in New York 18 years ago the debate consisted of positions articulated by artists in the form of carefully crafted solo shows, by curators as pointed group shows, by gallerists and museum directors as programs. Around 2000 is the first time I can remember an gallerist pressuring me for small colorful/shiny work. There are lots of low bandwidth settings for art - biennials, most outdoor settings, and the great majority of domestic and commercial settings - but the "death spiral" is a function of the fairs sudden primacy of the gallery. In the past ten or fifteen years, fairs have gone from an interesting side show, to the star of the show, dominating most artists' and galleries' ability to make sales.<br />
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"Tulipomania" may be descriptive of the secondary market Adam Linderman and his pals occupy, but that is money swapped back and forth between collectors, dealers, and speculators. Its economic effect on art making is "trickle down" - which is to say voodoo economics - they pose a diluted moral hazard to the debate of things. The fairs, meanwhile, directly effect the primary market of working contemporary artists and their gallerists. Their effect is more akin to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma" target="_blank">Prisoner's Dilemma</a> - a set of incentives that encourage all the players to betray one another, even when its in their best interest to cooperate.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Tulipomania (1637); Richard Serra, <i>Prisoner's Dilemma</i> (1974)</span></b><br />
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Not long after I had my first solo show in New York, and just about the time the fairs were really begining to ramp up, I met one such player. An artist who was working with Deitch Projects, and doing well, came to visit my studio. They told me that they had gone to art school to be an illustrator, but decided they could earn more money by applying the ethics of illustration to the artworld. Their advice to me was to treat gallerists as my "clients", to listen to them, and to illustrate the "art" they tell you they can sell. This is not too unlike the thinking of the artist who told Ed,"they should try to make as much as they can too."<br />
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This is exactly the sort of thinking one should expect in an environment of confusion; where none of the players have a chance to play more than a few rounds; and the only information they have access to is hearsay - which is the classic set up for The Prisoner's Dilemma. But here is the thing, if players are allowed the chance to play multiple rounds, are given good sources of information about other players, they stop betraying one another and begin to cooperate. The art fairs probably just exacerbated conditions within the art world. By offering such high returns, discouraging true debate, and trading instead in cliche, witticism, and flash, they have given the Prison over to its absolute worst players.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mittens</span></b><br />
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But at the deepest level, what makes the contemporary artworld function like a crack gang is that the contemporary artworld exists inside of a global economy that increasingly functions like a crack gang. “You got all these niggers below you who want your job, you dig?” explains one crack dealer quoted in Freakonomics. “So, you know, you try to take care of them, but you know, you also have to show them you the boss. You always have to get yours first, or else you really ain’t no leader. If you start taking losses, they see you as weak and shit.” That's a pretty spectacular summery of Mitt Romney's presidential platform.<br />
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In the face of global social/economic phenomenon, the idea of artistic avant-gardes spontaneously emerging out of an artworld that is characterized by tulipomania at one extreme and The Prisoner's Dilemma at the other, is an absurdity. The key term there however, is spontaneously. Lets remember that right up until the wee hours, a lot of really smart people, believed a Romney victory was inevitable.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/30/new-version-of-london-underground-map-shows-circles-are-the-way-forward-3374600/" target="_blank">Circular re-imagining of the London Metro</a> (2013)</span></b><br />
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Ed makes a point of singling out <a href="http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/powhida14/powhida14direct.html" target="_blank">Bill Powhida's current show at Postmasters</a>. I think Bills work deserves to be singled out as well, but not because he's leading the way. Like a lot of studio artists, I tend to keep to my own small corner of the art world. My map of the art world is sketchy at best - like a tourist who knows London as a few key areas around certain tube stations, but has no idea how they might be connected to one another over ground. Bill's mappings of the artworld give us all a God's eye view of the artworld. They are pointed and critical, but whether you agree or disagree with Bill's program, he orientates us.<br />
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Nate Silver might say that Bill helps us see "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Signal_and_the_Noise" target="_blank">the signal through the noise</a>" - I'd say he shows us the forest for the trees. I am a big fan of Silvers. He kept me sane through the past two presidential election campaigns. I understand that the new <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/" target="_blank">FiveThirtyEight</a> premiere underwhelmed pretty much <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/fivethirtyeight-gets-terrible-reviews-first-week-relaunch/" target="_blank">everyone</a>, but feel that Silver and his new team may have suffered from unfair expectations - aking to the hype that proceeded Dean Kamen's introduction of the Segway (among the rumors I remember hearing in 2000-2001, was that Kamen had invented a teleportation device, an antigravity device, or a jetpack - I shit you not at all).<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://twitter.com/felixsalmon" target="_blank">Felix Salmon</a> makes fun of my hairline at parties, I wonder what he says to Nate Silver when they hang out?</span></b><br />
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I wish Silver had included contemporary art among the topics he planned to cover. While <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-fox-knows/" target="_blank">Silver's concept</a> of "data journalism" may not revolutionize the way news is written with its first 40 posts, or even first 400, I believe that it is a truly transformative idea - if incrementally so rather than the revolutionary variety. Unlike revolutionary turnover, that seems to require charismatic leadership, the progressive power of incremental change just needs to a problem to solve - error rather than confusion. It maybe in art, Silver recognizes that there just isn't enough good data to craft a story at this point. That is what we lack, what we have always lacked; data.<br />
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For sometime now I have tried to imagine what "qualitative analysis" of the artworld might look like - probably a lot like what Bill does, but less anecdotally/ad-hoc based, more grounded in empirical rigor - but still cutting and funny. For "quant-criticism" or "critical analysis" - whatever you call it - to become the corrective that the artworld desperately needs (and is now big enough to support) Bill, and whoever else might join him, needs better data. Unlike the poor, and poorly educated, youths caught up in Chicago's drug trade of the 80s and 90s, most aspiring artists are well equipped to make good choices, <i>if</i> they have good information.<br />
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Right now there is very little statistical information of any kind. Besides a little bit of statistical info assembled by WAGE and a smattering of governmental departments, we're flying blind right now. No one can point in the right direction, when no one knows has any idea where we stand.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Silver's data journalism chart, <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-fox-knows/" target="_blank">posted at 5:38 AM March 17, 2014</a></span></b><br />
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<b>Addendum</b>: <a href="https://twitter.com/digitalcoleman" target="_blank">Chris Coleman</a> <a href="http://storify.com/digitalcoleman/real-data-and-saving-the-art-world?awesm=sfy.co_sRke&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&utm_content=storify-pingback" target="_blank">storified my twitter discussion with Ed Winkleman</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[<b>Full Disclosure</b>: I worked with Bill a couple times over the past year making things for him. I think however this reveals less of a possible conflict of interest on my part, and more, that I have had a great opportunity to discuss Bill's project in detail. Also: I am a product of Chicago's public school system of the 1980s. I was lucky enough to come from a middle class family who enrolled me in a fantastic fine art magnet school, but remember, first hand how terribly that school system failed its poorest students in the 80s.]</span></div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-44075468224624647422014-02-09T07:51:00.000-08:002014-02-09T08:00:29.838-08:00The Future of Sport is not Team America<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Putin on the Ritz via <a href="https://twitter.com/druojajay" target="_blank">Dru</a></span><br />
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Watching the ceremony this week, I looked at all the people - almost every nation of the world represented - and I felt proud to be an American, proud to identify with such an excellent people. My friend Sandra had invited me to share the moment that she became a US citizen along with more than 200 others in a Brooklyn Federal court; and if the Judge is to be believed, those new citizens represent almost as many nations as marched into the stadium at Sochi. An average morning for the Brooklyn swearing in ceremony. I wish I felt as proud of our role in the Olympics, but I don't. <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnPowersUS/status/432228751058173953" target="_blank">I feel ashamed</a>.<br />
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I find the flag <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/24/living/gallery/winter-olympic-uniforms/" target="_blank">slathered triumphalism</a> of "Team America" boorish, but more so, I'm turned off by the way the Russians are being <a href="http://www.eonline.com/news/508161/let-s-talk-about-the-toilets-in-sochi-and-other-hilarious-complaints-about-hotels-at-the-olympics" target="_blank">ridiculed as rubes</a>. I get that Putin is a thug, but the Russians aren't thugs. Putin has embolden plenty of thugs with his homophobic crowd baiting, but we have politicians doing <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/mary-helen-sears-michigan-gop_n_4740426.html?utm_hp_ref=politics" target="_blank">the same things here</a>. I am very glad to see that international visitors have stayed away from Sochi, and that <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnPowersUS/status/431786455435083776" target="_blank">Google</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/08/chobani-gay-ad_n_4752509.html" target="_blank">other companies</a> are showing their allegiance to gays and lesbians in the face of Putin's bigotry. But I am not happy to see the Russians belittled, especially by Americans.<br />
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When I visited Moscow and saw all the absurd <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great_Statue" target="_blank">civic art</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Moskva_(Moscow)#New_building" target="_blank">architecture</a> that the Putinani have built around Red Square, I had already seen enough of Russia and enough of Moscow that I wasn't alarmed. Muscovites have weather far worse than the neoliberal pseudo-Eastern Orthodox Fascism of the Oligarchs. Everyone I met is Russia was smart, and funny and engaged. Every where I went I saw young people and young families; making good lives for themselves despite the obvious chaos of their politics. I was deeply impressed by the Russians.<br />
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So I when I watched <a href="http://www.advocate.com/comedy/2014/01/26/watch-kate-mckinnons-russian-villager-surprised-anyone-comes-russia" target="_blank">Seth Meyers and Kate McKinnon mocking a "Russian villager" on SNL this week</a> - two wealthy New Yorkers, imaging a poor Russian woman's life as one of deprivation and stupidity, I felt ashamed for my country. We "won" the Cold War. After a bloodless revolution the USSR slipped from the world without violence - am I the only one who sees that peaceful change as a moral victory of the Russians, Polish, Estonian and other Soviet peoples, rather than a ideological victory of Reaganism (more a fog of small minded jingoism than a true ideology)? The American victory was to push a package of predatory draconian economic "reforms" on the states of the former Eastern Block. No other nation in the world is more responsible for Putin's kleptocracy that the US. <br />
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When I met Russians my age I was struck by how different they were from me. In their twenties they had lived through a period of arbitrary violence and economic austerity while my American cohort went to college, Lalapaloozas, and enjoyed the pleasures of their first economic bubble (please God, just one more bubble, I swear not to squander this one). My Russian counterparts were kind to me, but I understood that there was an air of something between us; not quite a distancing, as a distance. In some cases it manifest itself as distaste - and even contempt - but mostly just something wane. As if they worked with the knowledge that I would never really understand. And I am sure they are right, I'm not sure I ever will. <br />
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I take pleasure the athletic success of others, but watching the reports of "American Gold" - I am reminded of a bully who wants to gobble all the cookies. That makes me sad, and maybe a little uncomfortable, but not ashamed. That this same bully simultaneously mocks his host as poor and stupid, that's the part that makes me ashamed. It doesn't seeming sporting.</div>
</div>
starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-48469899280143498812013-12-11T08:16:00.000-08:002013-12-11T13:53:20.431-08:002H2K - June 2050 - Visual Remediation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoSYo1cxh2D22Sn2B-iGeF28H4kWwnXyq06n91glqcu_rEGbyV0vV1g_pnpHQK-mEmgN_yajjWCD3IHHKjDDqZrmPBTNGGQflr5O52gwFMZHRghHugfjgrVi3sSWZ29MPRHbYArz5tOew/s1600/Leakage_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoSYo1cxh2D22Sn2B-iGeF28H4kWwnXyq06n91glqcu_rEGbyV0vV1g_pnpHQK-mEmgN_yajjWCD3IHHKjDDqZrmPBTNGGQflr5O52gwFMZHRghHugfjgrVi3sSWZ29MPRHbYArz5tOew/s400/Leakage_0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Daniel Libeskind, “Leakage,” <a href="http://daniel-libeskind.com/projects/micromegas/images?page=3" target="_blank">from <i>Micromegas</i> Drawing Series</a>, (1979) </span></b><br />
<br />
“I hate my job.” Cory wasn’t talking to anyone, not that anyone around her would know. They’d assume she was “on the phone.” <i>What does that phrase mean?</i> she wondered. <i>Telephone language is so strange. </i><i>Why isn't my phone on me?</i> She was idly twisting her p<i>R</i>ime, worn on her left ring-finger, as an engagement ring. <i>Shouldn't I be "in" the phone or "over" the phone?</i> She looked down at her p<i>R</i>ime, as slim gold band, its polished surface broken by a series tiny rectangular apertures and a thin stem. <i>Like a tiny erection.</i> It was her "phone" her "computer" her "camera" ...<i>my "sec</i>R<i>etary."</i> She pinched the band as hard as she could, almost as if she meant to bend it. <i>Its everything to me</i>, she thought with a flush of something like shame, or maybe pride. She pushed the feeling away, thought again about being on the phone - wondered how that had come to function as a statement of distanced speaking. <i>The experience of being two places at once -</i> "Hi, this is Cory. Where Are you?" - <i>A physical problem solved by language. </i> She started to compose a que<i>R</i>y, knowing she'd be able to find a dozen scholarly papers and probably some good lectures on the history, theory, and comparative linguistics of "telephone language"<i> -</i> but then stopped herself. <i>Stay in the moment</i>.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Cory looked up. She was standing at the base of a 40-story farm-tower. <i>Hybrid Vigor</i>. The southern face was a spindly arrangement of chrome scaffolding and transparent plumbing wrapped in, what appeared to be a single, impossibly massive piece of film. <i>Cling wrap at an architectural scale,</i> she marveled, enjoying her surprise with the city.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the building’s north face, dozens of colorful cylindrical plug-in apartments sprouted. The appearance was some kind of cross between a terrarium and the exposed guts of a vending machine, writ large. <i>Writ very large. This is why you’re here, </i>she reminded herself. <i>To re-energize, to remember what a boom town actually looks like.</i> She raised her hand and positioned her phone’s POV to record the sight, but stopped as Kris came to mind. She’d find plenty of images in locational archives.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Cory’s professional specialty was Asian cities – boring ones. “Location Remediation” had been a hard sell when she started out. Her first job out of school had been with Gāo White in Hong Kong. She’d been their only employee back then. She liked to tell people that she had joined the firm before Kathleen and Robin had gotten married. GW had six offices around the world now, and God only knows how many partners and employees. Cory was happy she avoided all of that with her own one-woman shop.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
She took a deep breath and looked up at the web-work of concrete overpasses. They were encrusted by tiny mesh fab-sheds, unmanned she hoped. Beyond the tangle of skyways, she could see an arc of older more conventional housing blocks. There was an array of needle thin towers, each topped by a “unique” corona of faceted mirror glass, resembling quartz crystal - <i>on acid</i>. If she tried to imagine how many Ultramoderne façade she had been asked to disguise or block. <i>The mind boggles</i>, she thought with a smirk.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Cory actually liked Ultramoderne design (<i>everyone has a guilty pleasure</i>) and was in no way ready to retire. Although it meant spending her work life in some of the world’s most blandly conventional cities, Cory mostly loved her job; and, at 33, she was at the top of her game.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Before striking out on her own, she had worked for Septagram in LA for two years; so she knew what it was like to work with the big boys. Recently she’d been wooed by a couple of large firms looking for partners, but the buy-in costs were high. Septagram partners paid a over a million any-time minutes, US. Additionally, for her first seven years, she’d have been responsible for generating three times that in annual billings. <i>Fuck that.</i> She could buy a pret-a-terre in LA for that kind of money.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Being her own boss involved a lot less overhead. Besides her secreta<i>R</i>y (which, over the years, had cost almost as much in upgrades as a partnership would have) she worked alone. She had managed it by building a network of trusted contractors, and a cloud of talented freelancers.<br />
<br />
When it was just Kathleen and Robin and her, it had been hard work to convince governors, mayors, and city council members on the concept of sightline brownfields. Half the job had been making politicians comfortable with the idea that they had a solvable problem. These days she was almost always welcomed by cities that knew they had a problem, and understood that she could help them.<br />
<br />
Increasingly her job was to help her clients avoid cliché. There was no benefit to reworking the all-too-familiar urban look of the 20s and 30s, if it was replaced with the same premillennial marketplaces and Kowloon-like slums everyone was building currently. The trick was to find a fragment of something authentically local and expand it. The “seed crystal” was often a bit of local iron-work tagged onto the side of a tower or some peculiarity of store frontage, growing out of local zoning law. She never knew what it would be.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Because she often worked in cities with non-descript streets and buildings, at the start of any project she’d spend countless hours wandering locational archives searching for pix and scans. In this way she could find out about things going on behind closed doors, in court yards and rooftops.<br />
<br />
Sometimes she’d even find the details in the background of someone’s family snaps: a portion of orange safety netting woven into a decorative pattern in an apartment’s curving outer wall, barely visible from behind someone’s smiling kids. She’d lurk in the social nets of local urban design mavens. She’d watch them trade scans of beloved custom fabs, curious architectural features and adaptations, skimming off some of her favorites to modify and enlarge on.<br />
<br />
This immersion often brought her into contact with local scensters who could steer her to places and people that were more exciting than the suggestions of her host city’s professional planning cadre. And unlike her meetings with her professional contacts, she often came away with great shwag when she sought out scensters: like century-old wrought iron door knockers hot-rodded with microscopic optical vein sensors to make them into biometric locks. <i>I should ask Kris to get those installed.</i><br />
<br />
Eventually she always had to get out into the streets. Her work usually brought her to backwater cities in decline, making those walks hard work: always the need to make miracles with tiny budgets. But today, she had no budget, no worries, no miracles to deliver. She was traveling for pleasure. She had been skinning the cities of Asia’s E-Waste Belt for too long. Kris had wanted her to go to the beach, but Cory knew better. <i>I need this.</i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
“I need to think, and this is how I think.” Cory had tried to explain. She thought of Kris’ needs, but then pushed the thought away.<br />
<br />
For too long, she had been hearing about the mad urban tangle of Uganda. If it was characteristic of the region, she was looking forward to more work in “Mid-Africa”, so labelled by economic wonks. Unlike the older ingrowing post-sprawl of West Africa, and the even older and denser conurbations of North Africa, Mid-africa was home to the region’s youngest most exciting cities. Uganda’s Jinja - the “Sino-African Tiger” – was a world unto itself.<br />
<br />
The few African cities she had visited previously, in Nigeria, Congo, and Cameroon, had been built up during the same period of the 20s and 30s as Asia’s E Waste Belt. That older strain of Sino-African urbanism looked like Bizzaro versions of their Asian urban-cohort. Chinese city-builders had done the same thing everywhere during those years, right down to the tightly packed Ultramoderne towers of giant scifi crystals, and bubbly abstracted cartoon shapes of ChāoPíng design (an aesthetic she had no love for, guilty or otherwise).<br />
<br />
Cory had made the trip to visit the older Sino-African capitals as part of a free junket five years earlier. She had found the region disappointing precisely because they were such culturally vibrant places. She had expected the cities’ physical selves to reflect their cultural energy. Like their mainland Chinese sister cities, Cory had found surprisingly few moments of cleavage she felt she could work with. Some sparks of local color, but architecturally nothing profound. But Uganda was true Sino-Africa. Chinese engineers with local labor hadn’t built Jinja; it had been built by 2nd and 3rd generation Sino-Africaners and labo<i>R</i>. This was an entirely 21st Century city.<br />
<br />
If the raucous inside-out architecture wasn’t proof enough, the street life drove it home: young, cosmopolitan, outrageously dressed, and sexy. Both men and women were bold. Flaunting what they had boldly, and bold with their appreciation. Without being threatening or even rude (as she found was often the case in the E Waste cities), flirting here was constant and it was full of laughter and compliments on all sides. Even though Cory had never been very interested in men, she had always enjoyed knowing she was attractive to them. And although it was less important than it once was, it was still a thrill - <i>for a long time it had been an obsession</i>.<br />
<br />
She thought back to her 18-year-old-self. She had slipped the knot of the Nashville suburbs and found her way to Hong Kong, joining a Freeschool in Fo Ton. She had been the youngest student, and had therefore enjoyed pride of place; everyone had called her “Little Sister.” But looking back now, they had all been very young. <br />
<br />
The exception had been an artist-in-residence who had to have been in his late-sixties/early-seventies. He hadn’t been there long before her, and didn’t stay long after she had arrived. Although (or perhaps because) he had been much older than the other “professors”, he’d been very popular with her friends. She remembered he was funny and that they had all liked his art, which had spanned decades and continents. For her, he had established the extra qualification of having found her attractive.<br />
<br />
He wasn’t alone. She had been a nymph in full flower—tall and willowy with small but pretty breasts; and, while her hips were small for a girl, they weren’t too narrow. While she had enjoyed the sly glances of her younger admirers at the Freeschool, the old man had not been coy. <i>He was bold.</i> She had liked that most of all. He had watched her with obvious interest, had taken open pleasure in looking at her, and always made a point of complimenting her. Cory tried to remember his name, but couldn’t call it up. She was sure she had him tagged. She squashed the temptation to que<i>R</i>y her old octothorpes. <i>Stay in the moment girl.</i></div>
<div>
<br />
She smiled, realizing that she had not been paying much attention to the city around her for some time. She had wandered onto a steep narrow alley that opened onto dozens of little health-food stalls, and she was starving. She had never been into health food, but when in Sino-Africa…<br />
<br />
The stalls were filled with young backpackers; Vietnamese and Laotian teens with conjunctivitis and road rash. Cory thought of her own misspent youth, and tried to be patient with their obnoxiously loud voices, poor hygiene and huge backpacks.There were also plenty of geries. To her right was a group of EU men and women with unnaturally thick heads of grey hair. Cory was betting they were sex-tourists, but she told herself not to generalize. <i>After all, the cliche of randy aged Euro-trash was just that</i>, she thought, <i>a cliche</i>. But with their tight cloths, sculpted physiques and copious hair implants, they did look the part. <i>Not every gerie was on the prowl</i>, she chided herself. Behind the sex-tourists - <i>Really shouldn't presume!</i> - there was also as a group of elderly Brazilian men that were so outrageously dressed, Cory felt sure they were musicians or performers of some sort.<br />
<br />
She chose one of the more popular stalls, because it had a picture menu over the counter. As it turned out, the picture menu was no help; she couldn’t identify anything in any of the pictures. <i>Fucking health nuts.</i> She took comfort in the fact that of all the possible choices, this stall had the prettiest name: “Eaty Amin.”<br />
<br />
Her turn came and a tall, ethnically Korean girl waited to take her order. Judging by her Ainu facial tattoos, Cory guessed she was from North Korea. Cory pointed at the “#4 meal” because it appeared to have the greatest variety of different things on it. She reasoned that by virtue of sheer statistical probability, some of it would have to taste good. <br />
<br />
As she took Cory’s payment in minutes the shop-girl shouted in a mélange of mandarin and Swahili with an older co-worker, a dark skinned man wearing a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt. He looked to Cory like he might be like a native Ugandan, but she couldn’t be sure - she didn’t have much of a grasp for sub saharan ethnic differences. The girl handed her a tall cup full of something thick and cold and saffron colored, and signaled Cory to step down, to where the man was standing. He handed her a clear bowl piled high with steaming mystery eats. <br />
<br />
<i>Maybe I’m not the only one rediscovering the reto-cool of the Ultramoderne?</i> Cory enjoyed when her own personal tastes turned out to be ahead of a trend, and both the cup and the bowl were shaped like faceted Ultramoderne crystals. But the tableware was made of a soft, rubbery, and remarkably transparent plastic Cory hadn’t seen before, and didn’t associate with the Ultramoderne. One stall in one city isn’t a trend, but the service was clearly chosen with care. In addition to the odd plastic, both cup and bowl were covered with a faintly glowing tangled pattern of isometric details – she vaguely recognized the image as the work of an artist, but couldn’t call up who. Again she had the urge to make a que<i>R</i>y, but again stopped herself. Instead tagged the bowl and then grabbed a set of chopsticks and a straw and looked for a place to sit.<br />
<br />
The stall’s few seats were taken, but the alley’s steps were only spotted with diners, so she sat down on a step in the shade. Next to her there were two of the outrageously dressed Brazilians. <i>Jugglers?</i><br />
<br />
“Ce soir la nuit sera blanche Couleur café Que j'aime ta couleur café” - sang the one wearing baggy batik pants and a surfing shirt. She smiled as she turned away and began to prod her lunch. <i>Musicians</i>. They left her to eat in peace.<br />
<br />
The steaming contents of her bowl now had her undivided attention. <i>I’m starving,</i> she realized. The #4 Meal was a heaping serving of tiny pink cylinders, topped with a translucent ruffled garnish that at first, seemed to be noodles, but on closer inspection, she was no longer sure. The ruffled strips were a acid green, flecked with clots of dark red. Unlike the pink things the strips were chilled, she tasted one and it turned out to be a pickled <i>something</i>. Her best guess was an agar of some sort, but for all she knew they were sheets of tray-grown snail flesh.<br />
<br />
Cory had assumed from the photo menu that the pink cylinders was grain; but, upon tasting a sticky clump of it, she realized it was some kind of manufactured, mammal-ish, protein. They tasted a bit like salty pork. On closer examination she could see the words "SALTY!" -"YUMMER!" - and tiny cross-eyed happy faces printed along the side of each cylinder in hot pink. Mixed throughout were fleshy dark green cubic bits of - <i>God only knows</i>, she thought with a smile. The cubes were a little sour as they lay on her tongue, but crunchy, crisp, and explosively spicy when bitten into. <i>Nice!</i><br />
<br />
Eyes watering; Cory took a long, slightly desperate tug at her straw. She expected the drink to be sweet and fruity, but was surprised by a savory, somewhat soapy flavor. It was some form of faux-tein or processed sea-slime - Cory hoped it was faux-tein. Slightly bitter at first, whatever it was, turned out to be buttery and refreshing.<br />
<br />
At the bottom of the bowl she discovered a cache of gelatinous yellow spheres that had a watery balloon mouthfeel, almost like an over-ripe grape. They had a peppery chlorophyll taste and were dressed in aromatic oil that might have been a mellow cactus of some sort. Cory smiled, <i>I’m so full of shit.</i> Her vocabulary for flavors and ability to draw likenesses had abandoned her almost immediately. Nothing really tasted or looked like anything familiar, but the flavors and sensations were rich, clean, and bright. <i>Jesus, why did I take so long to make this trip?</i><br />
<br />
As she picked absently at the remains of green cubes and yellow spheres, she realized one of the older German men was checking her out. His eyes drifted up to her face and caught her eye. He smiled at her broadly, but there was no smile in his eyes. <i>Sex-tourists.</i> He returned his attention to his traveling companions and his own absurd looking bowl of food, and Cory was again left in peace.<br />
<br />
She thought again about the artist-in-residence. He had been a sculptor – or at least she thought he was a sculptor. He had made complex furniture-like things with heavy overlays of AR. <i>What was his name?</i> She couldn't quite believe it was escaping her. If she que<i>R</i>ied, Kris would see, and would know exactly what she was thinking. He was one of the few men she could remember having ever found attractive – and Kris knew that. So she let go of the impulse to find his name. She could picture his face though. She had developed a terrible schoolgirl crush on him. She had met him at a time when her beauty had felt like a fragile, even a false, thing. She had felt ike an impostor, her beauty had been the one thing that made her <i>her</i>. The one thing she felt that had allowed her to be, even remotely, who she wanted to be. And he had made her feel genuinely beautiful.<br />
<br />
During their one and only “studio visit” he had, very gently, helped shape the direction of her adult life. Her studio had been a dusty windowless cubicle off a common wood shop; no larger than a hostel capsule, but with full-height ceilings. <i>I loved that space - a room of my own.</i> The two of them had squeezed into two folding chairs that took up all the space not already taken up by her “art work.” Even a decade and a half later Cory could feel her face growing hot as she pictured the art she had shown him - she wondered what he had made of that odd collection of customized sex toys, anatomical drawings, nude photos, and pornographic AR overlays—<i>more intention than anything remotely artistic.</i><br />
<br />
She pictured the two of them, knees touching. She had begun to explain her work. That the toys were based on 3D scans and ultrasounds she had performed on herself. Her hands had been shaking as she had handed over nude self-portraits. Again she tried not to feel embarrassed of that younger-self, of her pretensions and naiveté. She tried, in her mind to adopt the kindness she remembered he had maintained for that young girl in that terribly vulnerable moment.<br />
<br />
Eventually she explained her history. She told him how, with the help of a series of tutorials and open-source coding tools, she had discretely cloned, rooted and delinked her p<i>R</i>ime. Making a decoy overlay for her parents' chape<i>R</i>one, while she had then downloaded and upgraded her secretly emancipated p<i>R</i>ime. From the server of “Not Pussy Riot,” a radical LGBTN group in Eastern Europe, she found expert systems that had “medicalized” the p<i>R</i>ime's now captive AL. And, after a riskier real-world search, had found a sympathetic drug fabricator in Nashville who agreed to supply her with the hormones she needed in trade.<br />
<br />
She remembered that the sculptor's face had shadowed with uneasy concern at that point in the story, but that he barked with laughter when she told him the trade was for yard work. <br />
<br />
Finally she had explained how, with the guidance of the then medicalized p<i>R</i>ime she had been able to “safely” self administering the custom synthetic estrogens. All before puberty had set her course too deeply. And she had told him that now that she was 18 (and away from Nashville), she intended to transition fully, that she was working towards reassignment surgery.<br />
<br />
There had been a familiar pause while he absorbed her info-dump. Cory had, by then, explained herself to enough people that she had an order and even a rhythm to how she would unroll her narrative, and knew the moments when it was important to let the facts sink in. She knew he couldn’t be too shocked by what she was telling him. She hadn’t been full-time by then; wasn’t for another year or so after she moved to HK. So he would have seen Cory dressed in both men’s and women’s clothes; there was no great revelation being delivered. Still, he had seemed to need time to think before Cory continued. She remembered waiting for him to break the silence. <br />
<br />
He had asked what her parents thought. Cory had explained that they were religious, but supportive; as was her high school girlfriend. He looked happy to hear that and told her she was lucky. The look on his face had had made her feel certain that he was speaking from experience, but experience of what, she had had no idea. She remembered him making a joke in class about how little they all had to lose: "Your families already assume you’re drug addicts and perverts..." he had said.<br />
<br />
Then he looked serious. "Do you want to talk about this with me? It's OK if you don't, what you choose to do with your body is none of my business. That's not what I am here to teach, but you brought it up and seem to want to know what I think. Am I right about that?"<br />
<br />
She had, of course, hungered to know what he thought, what everyone thought; it was all she had thought about at the time. “I’m assuming that you were not born intersex.” he began, dropping his head and raising his eyebrows slightly to indicate he was asking a question, “That your gear works, but that its just not appropriate to who you feel yourself to be.”<br />
<br />
Cory imagined she must have blushed at that, but she remembered nodding, and that she maintained eye contact.<br />
<br />
"Let me start by warning you that I am ambivalent - that is not to say I'm <i>against</i>," he explained. "but that I <i>am</i> conflicted." He had looked at her, eyebrows raised hands open. "Do you still want to know what I think?" She had. She had trusted him, and remembered feeling the pressure of the moment as a physical thing, like a too deep dive.<br />
<br />
"Feeling that you aren't who you should be is a real, and a really terrible thing." He had begun. "But how much do you know about what surgeons can and can’t do? What they count as success?"<br />
<br />
Cory remembered that she had actually known a lot, but no one had ever pressed her about it. Her friends and family had grappled with the existential choice of it, but she had always been the one who held the most information about the mechanics of the transition. She had always been the one to marshal the fact. She had wielded that information like a weapon. Used it to express her conviction, she had never before had anyone point the facts of the thing back at her before.<br />
<br />
"Well then you know," he had told her, "cosmetically, there is a lot they can do. They can give you great big beautiful tits." He had smiled wickedly as he said that, making her blush again; but then his face had softened. "They can also give you something that looks like a vagina." Now he leaned in to look her in the eye, again tilting his head forward and raising his eyebrows a fraction, "but it won't be. At best, it will likely have very little sensation; at worst, it will be painful and infection prone."<br />
<br />
"Some day," he had promised, "the surgeons will be able to make a real and meaningful change; they will live up to the promise of ‘do no harm’, but right now they can't.” She must have looked miserable, because he had reached out to place his hand over her’s. “But that's OK,’ he had said, “you don't need them."<br />
<br />
"That's not to say don't get the tits,” he’d added. “Do that; get four!" She had laughed and he had laughed too – more out of relief than any true mirth – the laughter and smiles had fallen away as abruptly as they had risen. She had been afraid she would cry. "Don't let them disfigure you," he had said quietly. "Right now you have genitalia that can give you deep wonderful orgasms, that is a beautiful thing – the most beautiful. And it won't last forever; it will never be easier than it is right now.” He had pulled a face and looked away as he had said that.<br />
<br />
He composed himself then. Placing his hands on his thighs, knees together, he had looked almost demure. “Anatomy is not destiny, but it is still way better than the most cutting edge medical technology” he said. “If I were to need prostate surgery, I might come away with the ability to experience sensation and maintain an erection, but I just as easily might not – depends on the surgeon, on what she had for lunch, on what package of equipment and software they might have access to, on how well its calibrated, on the peculiarities of my nervous system's unique arrangement and ability to heal; whatever."<br />
<br />
She remembered being struck by how plain he was. He hadn’t looked at all like the picture of an artist – aging or otherwise. Unlike a lot of American men his age he had no tattoos or piercings of any sort; wore no beard. He hadn’t worn any jewelry or flashy clothes. ”My chances are much better than my father’s would have been,” he had told her, “but my chances of having a happy sex life are best if I avoid surgery; and so are yours” He had looked like someone’s uncle. That had suddenly felt important to her, giving his words greater weight.<br />
<br />
“And, here is the thing: cutting edge <i>cultural</i> technologies have dusted the surgeons. You will find a partner who will love you, and love you as a woman. You will find someone who will find every part of you beautiful, and will want to have big wonderful orgasms with you. And he or she will <i>know</i> what you are; that you <i>are</i> a woman."<br />
<br />
He had looked around at Cory's art for a moment, perhaps uncomfortable that he had said too much, or just reminding himself how exposed she was. "Cory, you don't need a medical solution because you don’t have a medical problem. There is very little that a surgeon can do for you, because what you are dealing with is a question of language, of pronouns. You were born a he, but you want to live your life as a she. As a culture we no longer require surgeries to make that change.”<br />
<br />
He had reached over then to tap one of the plaster casts of her penis she had set out a work table, and smiled. “In the beginning, it had required surgeons to make the change. For family members, friends and spouses - for lawyers and judges - to make the conceptual leap, the body had to be cut. I have no doubt that is true; those surgeries were necessary, for those people, at that time.”<br />
<br />
Again he touched the casting, but this time with a lighter touch. “But we don't need them any longer. Those early pioneers did the heavy lifting.” Perhaps sensing that he was making her uncomfortable he moved his hand, but continued driving his point.<br />
<br />
“I remember hearing that the ideas that turned Einstein's hair white to formulate and express, are now regularly mastered by physics undergrads in a semester,” he told her. “Sex changes would have been an impossible conceptual leap for my grandfather’s generation to make, they were difficult for my father’s, not particularly hard for me and my cohort, but are non-events for you and yours.”<br />
<br />
“I like to think my generation was and is liberal. Still when I look at the attitudes about sex and gender among you and your friends, I see how far my generation and I had to go.” Cory wondered what her face had looked like in that moment. She remembered being upset, but not angry – <i>more confused.</i> She remembered she hadn’t wanted him to see that, so she is not sure what he saw.<br />
<br />
She looked around and wondered what her face looked like now, <i>not that it mattered.</i> The lunch hour had passed and her fellow diners were all gone, she had the alley’s steps to herself. She realized that an aspect of Jinja had been lost on her till now.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time, the stepped-pavement of an alley like this would have been amateurish concrete work, even dangerously so, but not any more. Although the alley twisted as it climbed the hill, every riser was an identical height, the open drains that ran along each side had beautifully fluted edges and looked like they had had been made by skilled journeymen – <i>that is what labo</i>R<i> had done to cities, it had made them invisibly perfect.</i><br />
<br />
She thought of the “slave walls” that she had grown up looking at in Tennessee. Slave walls were totally unlike the low stonewalls that Cory would discover years later on visits to New England forests. A friend of her father's had explain that those haphazard-looking piles of stone were built by colonial settlers to mark their fields using the stones they had cleared so they could plow the inhospitable appalachian soil. She remembered wondering why the Yankee had been so proud of those slap dash looking runs of stone; little more than long piles of rocks. They had hardly looked like walls to her, had looked amateurish in her eyes. Not so with slave walls. They were marked by their perfection.<br />
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Like the walls that lace New England’s forests and field, slave walls were “dry masonry” – nothing cementing them together, just stacks of stones held together by gravity. Unlike the walls built by yeomen Yankees, slave walls were beautifully constructed.<br />
<br />
She remembered asking her father why they were called slave walls. <i>When I was a little boy,</i> she thought with a smile. Her father had pointed out a spot on one and said it had been “hit by a car”. Cory had thought he meant a ca<i>R</i>, and so her father had had to explain what a car was, what a “car accident” was, and how common they had been. Once he had managed to reassure her that she didn’t ever have to worry about being in one, they had gotten back to talking about the wall.<br />
<br />
The spot he pointed out stood just as high as the rest of the wall, its top, was just as flat, but something was different about the stonework. It may as well have been a different color it was so obviously different. Cory had suddenly realized how ordered and perfect the rest of the wall was, because, in that one spot, the construction was somehow less so. Her father had explained that the walls were so skillfully assembled that, if they were damaged, no one alive had the skill to rebuild them anymore. “Like Chinese puzzles,” he had told her.<br />
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For a long time she had thought slaves were a class of especially skilled builders. Only when she was older did she understand that the men who had built those walls worked their entire lives, their own labor never worth anything to them personally, the property of their owners. Human labo<i>R</i> she thought with disgust.<br />
<br />
Increasingly her job was to disrupt the invisible perfection of labo<i>R</i>; to make drab industrial cities more interesting places to look at, by making them less perfect. For over a century, modernity had delivered inexpensive manufactured goods of such high quality, their remarkable quality so ubiquitous, it was invisible. She liked to ask people to imagine giving Benjamin Franklin a box of ballpoint pens.<br />
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Sidewalks and buildings were still a lot more expensive and difficult to make and maintain than ink pens, but like ink pens their production was no longer a matter of artisanal labor, of one skilled man who knew how to cut a quill just so, to load it with ink, just so, and to position it against a sheet of paper, at just the right angle and to move it smoothly across the page with just the right amount of force. Once upon a time that had been penmanship. By the time Cory had learned to write it was little more than style. So it was with cities now, they were invisibly perfect products of labo<i>R</i>. <br />
<br />
This was still a relatively new problem for urbanists. If she were brought in to consult on Jinja, she’d break up the alleyway and make the pavers look like it had been made, remade, and patched by a series of unrelated and unskilled laborers, rather than a unitary masterwork of flawless labo<i>R</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Flawless.</i> Cory had been non-op for so long, it was part of who she was, but she didn’t know if it was who she wanted to be. She knew that it didn’t scare Kris, but she was scared. <i>Change is always scary.</i> She remembered the look on her father’s face when she had come out to him. He had thought she was going to tell him she was gay. He had prepared himself for that, was ready to tell her he loved her no matter what, but he’d been caught off guard. They had laughed about it years later, the look on his face. But the truth was, he had handled the news gracefully. He had told her how much he loved her, and how much he always would. No matter what.<br />
<br />
Medicine had changed a lot in the 15 years since she had come out, since she had moved to Hong Kong, since she had become a woman; <i>a question of language, of pronouns.</i><br />
<br />
“Surge<i>R</i>y.” Cory looked around her in surprise, realizing that she had spoken the word aloud. The sun was high, and the streets were empty.<br />
<br />
The invisible perfection of factory production had made light, beautifully functioning objects standard elements of every life - from ballpoint pens to automobiles. In her lifetime labo<i>R</i> had transformed cities in ways that people like her made their livings trying to understand and mitigate. No one had foreseen how how difficult it would be to make the invisible perfection livable. But now the invisible perfection promised to transform her body.<br />
<br />
<i>Not something that looks like a vagina,</i> she thought with a smile. “We will replace your entire reproductive system with your reproductive system.” The urologist had explained. The idea of a pig surrogate repulsed her, but not only would she have full sensation, she’d have “the uterus of an adolescent, and, for a time, all the hormones that go along with it.” It wouldn’t be long, he had told her, before she’d have to worry about getting pregnant. <i>Not cosmetic surgery</i>; they would transplant female organs, grown from her own genetic material.<br />
<br />
She would make love as a woman, but more startlingly, she could start a family. <i>Flawless</i>.<br />
<br />
She was alone, standing at the top of the alley, trying to decide which way to go next. She thought of Kris. As a teen Kris had been her confidant; and, then, when she’d cracked her parent’s hold, and medicalized her p<i>R</i>ime, Kris had become her accomplice.<br />
<br />
<i>And now... And now what?</i><br />
<br />
"k<i>R</i>is?" Speaking the name name aloud, Cory used the AL-<i>R</i> to signal to any listeners that she was wasn't addressing a person, but instead a thing. Never mind that it was a thing that she loved, had always love. Cory liked to joke about the cliché of having taken her secreta<i>R</i>y for her love<i>R</i>, but she had always loved Kris.<br />
<br />
“Yes Cory?” The familiar husky feminine voice gave Cody a thrill - a hot feeling rose up through her breast and shoulders. After a full day of not hearing the intimate sound of p<i>R</i>ime's voice in her ear, the whispered reply made Cory realized she was hungry for the contact. She was suddenly dazed by lust. <i>Jesus,</i> <i>I am a pervert.</i><br />
<br />
“k<i>R</i>is I you need to compose a que<i>R</i>y for parenting expert systems. We're having a baby”<br />
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starwarsmodernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06128785816151813198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93722064719555333.post-78006091145393402542013-12-11T08:14:00.000-08:002014-03-04T17:51:21.735-08:002H2K - June 2050 - Bohème Rule: An Introduction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://confoundedinterest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/idiocracy-luke-wilson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://confoundedinterest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/idiocracy-luke-wilson.jpg" height="212" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Luke Wilson in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/" target="_blank">Idiocracy</a></i> (2006) </span></b><br />
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Last Monday I was getting on the elevator with my neighbor (an older artist), her daughter (a ballet dancer), and her grandson (a toddler). I asked after their Thanks Giving holiday, and my neighbor said it was great, that because her daughter took charge of cooking she had time to relax and "get some work done." It made me laugh, and I told her that she sounded like <i>every</i> artist I've ever met - a joke she and her daughter both understood. Unlike most worker who, Marx rightly pointed out, are "alienate from their labor" - who work in order to afford time to do things other than work - artists work to afford to work. Marx argued that "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” But I am not concerned with what artists make as individuals, but <i>how</i> and <i>why</i> they work as a class. And what it would mean if the Bohème became societies new Middle Class.<br />
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The question remains, <a href="http://starwarsmodern.blogspot.com/2013/10/2h2k-april-2050-robots-are-marxist.html" target="_blank">can we get there from here</a>? Marx summed up his dismissal of the Lumpenproletariat, by denouncing them as that "which the French call la bohème"; artists have never been anyones idea of good citizens, but that has to be a historical low. The challenge, therefor, is not only to imagine the Bohème, not as Marx did (as a "class fraction" lacking revolutionary potential), but rather as a the Sixties radical, Huey P Newton imagined them: "As the ruling circle continue to build their technocracy, more and more of the proletariat will become unemployable, become lumpen, until they have become the popular class, the revolutionary class." Or perhaps, less radically, as Teddy Roosevelt imagined the swelling class of his times; as a third party, along side Capital, Labor. Teddy and his Progressive contemporaries were the first to imagine Consumers as deserving an equal place at the political table.<br />
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A Bohème class would be empowered, bot by revolution, by virtue of the swelling numbers Huey Newton predicted. To imagine this new lumpen-class of unemployed and unemployable doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination. In addition to the homeless, grifters, intellectuals and artists that Marx pointed to, the so called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat" target="_blank">precariat</a>" or "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeter" target="_blank">freeters</a>" are now hiving off the upper reaches of the working classes and the lower strata of the professions in alarmingly high and growing numbers. Before too long, it is this new Lumpen class that politicians will need to address as the "general public."<br />
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The American Civil War was what the language scholar and fantasy novelist J. R. R. Tolkien dubbed a "eucatastrophe." Tolkien's neologism takes the Greek prefix εὖ, which means "good," and modifies catastrophe, a term that originally came from classical literary criticism, and referred to the tragic turn of events at the end of a story. Tolkien coined the word to refer to "the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce)."<br />
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Tolkien believed that "the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story." I recently called the <a href="http://airshipdaily.com/the-political-economy-of-zombies" target="_blank">zombie apocalypse a Eucatrophia</a>. War, assassination, economic panic, and war shaped our responses to the social shocks of Industrial Revolution - and that is the context in which we should understand the Civil War, industrialization. And like the crucifixion, the outcome was more than an aftermath; there were opportunities (taken and squandered) to change course, right wrongs. Opportunities for redemption - the full extent of which would take a full century to actually achieve.<br />
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The "End of Work/End of Jobs" is a social shock on par with the end of slavery. According to the historian David Blight, the largest slave economy in the history of the world was the American South. The second largest slave economy in the history of the world, according to Blight was the Antebellum South's contemporary, Czarist Russia. The American Civil War ended the former (1860), The Russian Revolution the latter (1917).<br />
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Marx believed the Civil war was a victory of the Capitalist Bourgeoisie over the Aristocratic slave holders, and that it presaged the victory of the Proletariat over the Capitalists - as happened in Russia (where Marx never expected a revolution). But Blight argues that the Civil War was more complicated than Marx imagined; that it was a battle between two equally virulent forms capitalism.<br />
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Countering the idea that the slave economy of the Antebellum South was economically unsustainable, Blight points to recent scholarship that show that it was an extremely profitable system. And, Blight walks through the fact that the 3 million African Americans held in bondage were treated as capital investments - used as collateral for loans from London bankers and sold to pay debts. Calculated as such the Southern slaves were worth as much, if not more than, all the factories and rail roads of the North. But Blight also reminds us that the great majority of Southerners owned no slaves. Just like the in the North, that the vast majority of the "means of production" were owned by a very small elite.<br />
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One likes to think that at least a portion of this distribution must have been due to moral disgust. That the ethical blinders needed to <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/15/msnbcs_bashir_suggests_sarah_palin_should_be_defecated_pissed_on.html" target="_blank">own a human being</a> - or a factory or a tenement in an age of Laissez-faire capitalism - marked the soul. But owning a robot has no moral cost. And while it is easy to imagine a <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/renault-zoe-why-drm-software-vehicles-bad-idea-1470872" target="_blank">DRM dystopia</a> - of centralized ownership of robots by a later-day Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates - one does not imagine that social order as stable over the long term. Once the software and needed mechanisms are developed pirating would be too easy.<br />
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And more crucially, owning a robot would too quickly become a necessity. The situation would be akin to Teddy Roosevelt's, who had to contend with the absolutist property right claims of mine owners in 1902. "Of course we have nothing whatever to do with this coal strike and no earthly responsibility for it," Roosevelt wrote to the powerful conservative Senator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hanna#Roosevelt_years_and_death_.281901.E2.80.931904.29" target="_blank">Mark Hanna</a>. "But the public at large will tend to visit upon our heads responsibility for the shortage in coal precisely as Kansas and Nebraska visited upon our heads their failure to raise good crops in the arid belt, eight, ten, or a dozen years ago."<br />
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As Doris Kearns Goodwin tells us in her book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bully-Pulpit-Roosevelt-Journalism/dp/141654786X" target="_blank">Bully Pulpit</a></i>, the political elite of Roosevelt's time was deeply under the sway of a laissez-faire capitalist ideology - a set of ideas that had lead to great concentrations of wealth, as well as profoundly corrupt political and economic systems. In our age of robust regulation, Civil Rights, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, it is easy to imagine the US - moved by an ideology of "ownership" & "entrepreneurship" as self determination - tilting the field in order to make the barrier to free and fair access to robots as low as possible.<br />
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Marx was almost certainly right to dismiss the Lumpenproletariat as having no revolutionary potential. But Marx grossly underestimated the power of Progressive reformers. It may be that the consumers of the 20th Century were the "decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie" - but swollen to numbers Marx could have never imagined possible. Although perhaps less adventurous than Marx imagine, the prudishness, conformity, and quiet desperation of the Eisenhower age certainly fits within the frame of the Bourgeoisie.<br />
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With the End of Jobs is is the other end of Marx's rogue's gallery that will mount the apex of the social bell curve: "vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars." This is an ugly snapshot of the Bohème. But one could just as easily update that list with Williamsburg careerlets - trustifarians, <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/synthetic-drugs-2013-4/index6.html" target="_blank">designer druggists</a>, DJs, bloggers, <a href="http://www.pencils.com/blog/a-fine-point-david-rees-of-artisanal-pencil-sharpening/" target="_blank">pencil sharpener</a>, rooftop farmer, information visualizer, app designer... - and the seedbed of a very strange, but really interesting, political class begins to take shape in the mind's eye.<br />
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The movie <i>Idiocracy</i> imagines the Bohème rule as an unalloyed catastrophe; a dystopia of nose pickers and big box stores. The assumption is that vulgarity is a form of degeneration. That our debased social mores are a symptom of our moral and intellectual debasement. But the opposite is true. As the middle of society - that portion with middling authority, but also that portion that occupies the middle of the social bell curve - as <i>that</i> middle follows the trajectory of increasingly informality, taking on the crude character of the Lumpen classes, society has become more stable, not less.<br />
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While today's US is undeniably more vulgar than the Petite Bourgeoisie consumers that emerged under Roosevelt and peaked in influence under Eisenhower, we are also less violent, less racist, less misogynistic, less homophobic, better informed, more open, and innovative. That goes even more so for the aristocratic society that gave way to the Bourgeoisie in America's Civil War. It is not a huge stretch to imagine the next class to rise will be an improvement on our own. That the Lumpen - as Marx summed them up: "the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème" will be a vulgar class like artists; a class of producers who look forward to having some time to relax and get some work done.</div>
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