Perelandra review

Up at CMS. I wish I cared more about copy editing.

Badman vs Sad God

Batman versus Superman: No matter who wins, we lose

I don't know what's wrong with Zach Snyder. This is probably unfair, but it's what I walk away from all his movies thinking. There's just a vital, human element completely absent from his latest blockbusters (see also Michael Bay). I appreciate the attempt to answer the glaring moral issues presented in Man of Steel, but the sequel still feels like a robot trying to figure out what human feelings are and why it's bad to kill; a conundrum it largely fails to compute.

I think most professional reviews have addressed the host of cinematic flaws, so I just have a few bullet points to add.

• It really does feel like a series of scenes stitched together. I didn't feel much about the characters or what was going on, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.
• Eisenberg's Luthor is not a compelling villain. There's a scene where he's babbling, and it's nonsense, and he realizes it's nonsense, and he just stops and says, "thank you for coming." "Hi, I'm Lex Luthor, I play the villain, thanks for watching the movie this evening." more or less sums up his character. No deep exploration of his motivations, just some awkward guy who doesn't make sense.
• The best part was when the music changed like it was a WWE match and Wonder Woman showed up. "Mah God, I think that, is that, that's Wonder Woman's music. Yes, she's here! The amazon princess is here!" She was great, but wasn't really on screen long enough for Snyder to fold/spindle/mutilate her character.
• Affleck was good as Batman. With better writing and a director that understands the emotions different facial expressions indicate, he could be great.
• Cavill was sexy, but I still loathe the politics his parents taught his character, framed for some reason as "good" in the movie. "You don't owe those fuckers nothing." is the main philosophy of the Kents, which is why their son turned out to be a sad murder god (whoever said this was brilliant) who thinks consequences are for other people. 
• Batman and Superman never resolve their taut erotic tension by making out. It might have saved the movie for me.
• I went out to get a second beer, because it was that kind of movie, and came back to a weird scene I didn't understand. "Wait, is that a apocalyptian fire pit? And, oh hey, parademons? Parademons!" Between that and Luthor's last unhinged rant at the end it's pretty clear the Justice League movie is going to be about Darkseid. On some level, Darkseid and his anti-life equation is probably the most appropriate villain for Snyder to handle, given that he seems to apply said equation to every one of his films. "Good, good, one last piece of editing motherbox, to suck all joy and vitality out of every second of it! Muahahaha!"
• Cyborg! Flash! Aquaman! 
• I wish movies would stop interrupting themselves to set up the next movie. A movie should naturally flow into the sequels, not launch the sequel halfway through and finish the movie still playing as an afterthought. It's like reading a novel where every chapter the narrative stops abruptly to throw in heavy-handed previews of the next chapter. Before, going, "where was I again, oh yes, all this business needs to be wrapped up I guess." Maybe in the era of widespread ADD this is the new normal?
• It would be interesting to see the ideas explored here, which are genuinely interesting to me, explored by someone who doesn't seem entirely cynical about the source material.
• You know what happens when you take the idealism out of DC comics?  NOTHING GOOD. Idealism is the only thing saving comics from macho violence porn.

This modern era of superhero films is everything I wanted as a kid. The tragedy is that I got it.

Saturday at the Museum

I managed to drag myself out to the farmer's market and museum again today, which is a small victory. Not particularly early, but still, I'll take it. There were 3 whole floors I missed at the museum's main building, so I took some time to wander through, before finishing on the gorgeous cat picture again. Portland Art Museum has a truly great collection of native american art, both contemporary and historical.

Of particular note this visit was the "Next Level Fucked Up" exhibit on the 4th floor by Vanessa Renwick. I'm not always too into A/V installations, but this one I liked. In it, there's a short video of an artist on one monitor talking about the gorgeous mural he painted in Portland decades ago, which is in danger of being destroyed by the building's new owners. He has been assured that the new owners are reasonable people. But he kind of wrestles with that, and how that didn't entirely reassure him, and he struggles to articulate why, because reasonable and art aren't necessarily good friends. "Do you know what I mean?" he keeps saying. Which is the part that sticks with me. Because what's great about art is not it's reasonableness. What's great about art is the way it tries to puncture holes in the reasonable and comfortable world you've built for yourself.

The joy of the artistic experience is probably not best summed up by, "well, this seems perfectly reasonable."

"Wow, this is kind of fucked up!" is where it starts to get good, right? Whether it's too real or too surreal, it should move you a little.  Jostle your good sense uncomfortably. Good art is a broadside across the bow of your sensibilities, a reminder to your conscious mind that "reasonable" is the mask your animal wears, and there are uncomfortably unreasonable layers always squirming around just underneath.

The museum is not where you go to be reasonable. It's where you go to bludgeon your reason within an inch of its life.

Bullets

• So that last post is an example of writing I want to get away from. I believe those things, but I'm still struggling to find a way to express it in a way that isn't preachy and off-putting. People are hypocrites and I don't think we've ever really tried adhering to our highest values out of a fear they won't really work when things get scary is the short version.

• I'm thinking of starting an email newsletter. Almost entirely because of the quality of the newsletters I currently follow (especially Warren Ellis and Ghostcop).  

• Still working on that "So you've hit 40" post. It's either going to be really long or really short and possibly really bad.

• In a recent newsletter, an author I follow described her depression as a thing in her head that wanted her dead. It was a really frank and thoughtful letter about living with depression. I think it's fair to say I struggle with depression, and it feels like a thing in my head that is not quite me as well, but I wouldn't say it wants me dead. It just wants me inert. Curiously inert. Never-changing, never succeeding, never happy. Coasting along short of happiness, but just clear of misery (although I hate to tempt fate). A fuzzy, lukewarm, unremarkable, grey goo comatose state that doesn't end until the inevitable heart attack. So, yeah. Depression sucks.

• I still want to retool the site. Maybe as wordpress. Blogspot is serviceable but I want more control over format. My failure to reinvent my blog really echoes my failure to reinvent myself though. I figure when one happens the other falls into place a little more.

• I took a break from stubbornly refusing to change by heading the the farmer's market and the Portland Art Museum today. I'm going to make a weekly thing of it, because they're both RIGHT THERE. I had the egregiously wrong assumption that the annual pass was $65 a month, but it's $65 a YEAR which is well worth it in my opinion, so I finally picked up one of those.
  I like going with friends, but it's really quite lovely to go on my own as well. No pressure to appear more artistically knowledgeable than I am, no social pressure to move to the next thing because the other person is bored. Just nice to look at whatever and linger at whatever speaks to me. And lingering on what speaks to me is a big need in my life right now. I can see this being a good habit.
  Of particular note right now are the 80s New York art scene installations, the giant and glorious painting of cats in the lower level connecting the main building and the modern art wing, the contemporary native american exhibit (indian taking pictures of tourist taking pictures of indians was kind of awesome), and the teeny, tiny animal sculptures, the name of which escapes me. Get your art on y'all!

Being is believing

I know I adopt the position of liberal scold far too often, but I'm really not on board with the righteous crusade to disrupt Trump's rallies. Not only is a terrible idea strategically, he actually has the high ground on this one issue currently because he is, to the best of my knowledge, NOT sending his supporters to disrupt democratic rallies.

I don't really weep too many tears for a disrupted Trump rally, although the optics are truly terrible, but I do worry about the hypocritical self-righteous streak on the left sometimes. It's becoming clearer to me that this poisonous idea that these are unusual times and it's important to put our usual moral values aside is not a phenomenon limited to republicans or conservatives. This was the justification for torture and how many other immoral acts ("there's a ticking time bomb, maybe, so we just have to kill innocent people with drones!"), and for me the issue was not that the conservatives had just chosen a poor reason to put aside their morals, it's that putting aside your morals for any reason betrays a fundamental disbelief that higher morals are actually better and more effective in achieving a better world. On the liberal side, this seems to thrive as well, with the conceit that only a liberal can truly decide who is and is not a monster, and therefore are the only people able to fairly decide when to abandon their moral principles. Which is the same madness, just maybe in lesser degree. I agree Donald Trump is frightening, I don't agree that unusual times means it's okay to skip straight from name-calling ("how did calling him names not work??"), to provoking physical confrontations at rallies.  Clearly not every incident at a trump rally was intentionally provoked, but you'd have to be blind not to see how many clearly are.

I truly believe you can win people over, it just takes time. It takes genuine empathy. It takes full acknowledgement of their humanity. I think even people like Trump himself can be talked down, but starting off with "you and your followers are monsters" negates that possibility entirely. Liberals claim to understand how counter-productive demonizing the other is, but do it at the drop of a hat themselves. I think the most important test of liberal values is when it's REALLY difficult to adhere to those values. Because I believe those values are not just nice fairytales, i believe they are truly the best guidelines to the best possible resolution for all involved, even when things get scary and it's easier to and more emotionally satisfying to resort to demonization and aggressive conflict. I believe it's possible to effectively resist hateful rhetoric and dangerous movements without compromising any of these morals "because these are unusual times," and without demonizing opponents and that it is, in fact, the better option for all involved.

We've just watched anyone afraid of terrorists throw their morals out the window for the last 15 years because "terrorists are uniquely dangerous," even though it's completely obvious that this state of affairs will not be changing in the near future.  So they've effectively thrown away their higher morals for more a expedient, incredibly violent moral structure purely out of fear more or less permanently. Why the left is so eager to do the same exact thing with Trump and his supporters, I don't know. No, no one's talking about bombing them, but they're starting to adopt the same, "you just can reason with these people" and "we have to stop them, by force if necessary" memes which are counter-productive. If you can see how demonizing the entire muslim world based on the actions of terrorists is counter-productive, you can see how demonizing Trump's supporters based on the actions of a few is counter-productive too.

This may not be everyone's take, but we didn't win the gay rights battle by telling everyone who didn't like gay people they were haters, we won it by millions of brave LGBT people coming out of the closet and standing up for their rights, but, and this is very important, remaining in relationship with people who needed and maybe still need time to get used to the idea. People started to realize gays were okay when they got the chance to hang around them a bit and the world didn't end. Changing hearts and minds doesn't happen overnight, you can't just burn the ladder behind you once you've decided you have enough of a critical social mass to just tell the stragglers who haven't come around yet to go fuck themselves with no social repercussions. That shit's not only counter-productive, it's immoral.

It is your job, as an idealistic person who clearly has better morals than your opponent (as we all believe we do), to keep the high ground. This means you must do what your opponents seem unable or unwilling to do: respect their humanity, firmly reject bad ideas while not demonizing them for holding them, embrace a little humility about your own views, and listen to theirs while attempting to empathize as much as possible. 

As tempting as it is to believe the self-righteous mic-drop speak is the  most effective tool at effecting real change, it's just not. Quick, imagine a conservative giving you a mic-drop speech about gay marriage or something.  Imagine their condescending tone, their lack of interest in your viewpoint, their indignant lecture filled with confident self-righteousness. Imagine how much you will recoil from their body language and tone and presumptive attitude. Whether the argument is better or not is irrelevant when you deliver it like a complete asshole.

People don't believe peace works because few are every really brave to truly try it. When we get scared we reach for the gun or righteous violence in some form. And we lionize the armed warrior who deals the violence so righteously. But the bravest motherfucker in the room is always the one reaching out with an open hand, even though they might get shot or hurt for their trouble, because they believe if enough of us do that, the threat of violence goes away and the underlying humanity of our opponents begins to shine through. I strongly believe they are not wrong. We can't expect people to behave like kind human beings unless we give them the space to behave like kind human beings.

Making peace is always a risk. Always. If you believe you're better than they are, then prove it. Be the bravest motherfucker in the room.

Lordy, Lordy

I'm mulling over some thoughts on reaching 40. As it has coincided with some life events that have not been pleasant, so far they are not too positive. The current status report is I'm just sitting with some stuff and mulling it over and staying away from people in the meantime. People frustrate me immensely right now so I've been avoiding them, although that's more a stalling tactic than a solution.

I'm frustrated at myself. I'm frustrated at people. Currently in hiding. 40 is looking good so far!