Blogcritics Author: Jesse Miksic

Movie Review: Beowulf

Jesse Miksic — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:17:07 EST

Beowulf finds a nice place between realistic, cartoonish, thoughtful, and jocular.
Beowulf arrived in theaters on November 16, 2007, and it's a difficult task to get one's head around it. First of all, it's competing with a burnt-out run of epic fantasy films, inaugurated by Lord of the Rings and following through Troy, 300, and who knows how many others. Second, it was produced via computer modeling, aided by...

Body and Object: A Philadelphia Judge Forgets the Difference

Jesse Miksic — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:49:21 EDT

A judge eases her conscience by dehumanizing a victim.
Bad news for rape victims: a prostitute is forced to have sex at gunpoint, and her judge doesn’t even consider a rape charge. This shows how confused our culture is about sexuality, power, and commodification. Feminism, justice, rape victims, sex workers… for how many people is this a step backwards?Before we hit the big analogies -...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

The Invisible Hipster

Jesse Miksic — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:30:13 EDT

I've had a theory for a while, and it's generally unpopular; I'm almost the only one who holds it. So far, I've generally kept it under wraps, for fear that its unpopularity indicated a genuine lack of validity. Of course, popularity is not correlated with validity at all (sometimes quite the opposite), but still, if you advance an unpopular theory, you should be sure you have something compelling to offer. After all, chances are you're going to get torn apart by representatives of the consensus.This theory has to do with the general angst and disapproval of "hipsters" in popular culture. It's inescapable, everywhere you look, among people aged 25 and lower. "Fuckin' hipsters" is an alarm sounded all over New York and the Lower East Side... it's a stigma that can be applied to neighborhoods (Williamsburg), beers (PBR), articles of clothing (fedoras), filmmakers (Wes Anderson), musicians (Connor Oberst), and people (that dude who lives in the apartment above you). It's a universally despised stereotype that gets so much bad press, you'd think it was EVERYWHERE, a plague of locusts on our Manhattan avenues. There are some powerful voices attacking the Hipster... Time Out New York just ran an article called "The Hipster Must Die," and Nothing Nice to Say, a generally amazing punk comic, has run a number of strips whose target was the Minneapolis hipster.But where are they? I can't fucking find them. I occasionally see a dude in a fedora, or a girl in eccentric post-hippie attire, or someone drinking a PBR, but none of them seem like the shallow bad faith revolutionaries that are such a bugaboo of modern media. For a while, I figured they were specifically a plague on the streets of Willyburg and Minneapolis, and that I wasn't seeing them because I just wasn't in the right place.But then, one day, someone called ME a hipster. Normally, I'd have just laughed and said, "Oh yeah, you bastard? YOU'RE the hipster, I'm just a kid who lives in Brooklyn" (kind of like in an article in The Onion). But I'm a fucking philosopher, so it makes outright rejection rather difficult. I made the mistake of looking at my own life and tastes and noticing that I share a range of attributes with the stereotype. I genuinely like Wes Anderson, and I like bullshitting about Postmodern film. I have a philosophy degree. I like Bright Eyes. I used to be a punk, and now I listen to The Postal Service and Ted Leo (among many other things). Despite the reassurances of my friends ("hipsters are out there, but you're totally not a hipster!") it started to become a question in my mind: what's a hipster? Did I have the necessary or sufficient characteristics? Who is it I'm supposed to be differentiating myself from?Hence my theory arose: there's no such thing as a "hipster." The hipster is an assemblage of half-hearted characterizations, designed as a sort of cultural "folk devil." Few people share all these characteristics, and there's no real sense of scope to the label. I wouldn't even have a problem with this, but none of us -- normal people, or members of the vehemently anti-hipster crowd -- have a problem with any of these characteristics taken individually. Drink PBR? What's the problem? Listen to indie rock, talk about the politics of the bands? You may be a music snob, but who cares? Live in Williamsburg? Sure, it's a growing neighborhood. If you're a friend of mine, you can fit three, four, five of these characteristics and not be a hipster, cause it's all in good faith. But if I don't like you, and you exhibit even ONE of these qualifications, you're a damn hipster. I hate you people.This "cultural folk devil" concept (which I am currently coining as a variation of the classic "folk devil") is actually fairly common. There are always large groups who have been stigmatized and blamed for culture's problems, from Jews to Teenagers to Fags. These days, this kind of stigmatization has gone from "evil" to "annoying"; we tend to label concepts as stupid, bothersome, played-out, and obnoxious. Admittedly, it's a step up, but it's still a bad social habit. Some of the cultural folk devils stigmatized in recent times have been "sXe (straight-edge)," "emo," "postmodernism," and "chavs." It's up for debate whether each of these deserves its widespread ire. However, all of these ideas and subcultures have at least existed on some level.I repeat: the hipster doesn't exist. It's an imaginary scapegoat, a convenient target for our disapproval and ridicule. I know this because I've looked for a definition that was worthy of my own distrust, and I've found nothing of the kind. It's sort of a cultural stereotype, so my main avenue has been asking friends, but none of them seemed to have a good definition for me. In fact, many of those who gave angry-but-vague definitions were people who themselves fit a number of commonly-cited characteristics. Finally, looking for something comprehensive, if not exactly "precise," I consulted Wikipedia. This is really the best function for Wikipedia to fulfill -- even if it's rarely well-written or accurate, it's at least a good representation of generally-held cultural beliefs on certain topics.As you can see from the Wikipedia article, there's NOTHING to go on. There's a vague mention of PBR, and a reference to metrosexuality, but there's really nothing else to reference.Okay, wait, there's one thing -- irony. And in a way, that redeems the definition. If a hipster is someone who adopts an aesthetic with no intention of buying into it or taking it seriously, then I can understand some of the pan-cultural ire they earn. Maybe that's what everybody is talking about? Williamsburg is a neighborhood where people tend to be ironic? PBR is an insincere choice for a favorite beer? Wes Anderson is an ironic filmmaker?The definition has slipped through our fingers, folks. Even if Wes Anderson is ironic, or people tend to like Wolfmother just for the novelty value of self-deprecation, there's no worthy link between the far-flung accusations and the core complaint. Irony is too hard to pin down, and it's been used effectively in too much art, literature, and music for it to really make sense at the center of a stereotype. So we pile on these auxiliary characteristics, and build ourselves a specter that amounts to nothing.If you want to make a stand against a culture of irony and excessive bad taste, then assert your own good taste. Become a fashion designer, play the ukulele, write for Blogcritics. Make a positive statement about what's awesome, whether you're speaking with your tongue in your cheek (hipster-style) or you're buying into it 100% (traditional nerd style). It's a worthy cause. Stop distracting yourself with random catharsis, dumped on a scapegoat represented by a term you can sling, but can't really define. No stereotype apparitions need to die for culture to be reborn. We just have to fucking DO IT.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Nature Favors the Strong: A Celebration of the Artificial

Jesse Miksic — Thu, 9 Aug 2007 10:16:35 EDT

Every day, I leave work at around 4:30 to get my snack. I don’t get fruit, hells no. I get Hariboro gummy bears (a mockery of one of God’s creations) and I get Coke, flavored with thoroughly fake vanilla. I go back to work and sit in front of a computer, doing things that society pretends are completely essential, and if I remember, I pump myself full of a synthetic insulin compound to take care of all those fake-ass carbohydrates I’ve consumed.I am a profoundly unnatural human being.Let’s take some more examples. I live in a basement apartment where I don’t really get any sun, and where the air is strictly conditioned. Every day I squeeze into a metal tube and spend forty-five minutes reading a book from long before I was born. I only want meat if someone else kills it for me, and I’m not into raw. I’m also not that interested in well-done, like I’m eating a cow that fell into a volcano… nope, medium-rare, cooked to perfection, like they taught us in medieval France. And just to be clear, I don’t mind fruit from time to time, but it’s gotta be the right piece, carefully selected, first by the farmer and then by my own strict (though undeveloped) sense of judgment. If a caveman ate a plum from my shopping cart, he probably wouldn’t recognize it as bounty of the earth.I gave up on a “natural course” long ago, maybe back when I was born and had to be cut out of my mother and infused with antibiotics. When people advocate a return to nature, I wonder what they mean by that; the only real meaning I can discern for “natural” is untreated and untouched, taken from some unknown region of Appalachian country, still fully populated by those effects of competitive wildness: colonies of protozoa, bird footprints, and worms that found this feast before I did.Is this what these people mean? I’ve always had some issues with this question. What really separates a “natural” ingredient from an “artificial” one? It seems that there’s such a distinction, because Sunny Delight has to list both on their label, whereas Tropicana gets to claim one to exclusivity. Yet, if chemical compounds aren’t derived from nature, and from the possibilities proffered by the Earth and its elements, where are we getting them? Is a VERY intelligent scientist using his powers of transubstantiation to manifest these chemicals? If bisexuality and aspartame are aberrations from some profound earthly order, is the human mind, with all its strange ideas and paradoxical self-awareness, such an aberration as well? I’m still a little lost in the space between “natural” and “artificial,” but the rest of the world is ready to accept such a distinction, so I’ll buy into it for the moment.I’m not the only one living a profoundly unnatural lifestyle, but sometimes I feel I’m the only one living up to it. The state of nature justifies the economic principles of the wealthy and the lifestyle decisions of the bohemian – it’s the first line of defense for our desires as artists, acolytes, and legislators. It’s worth paying for (particularly in the form of expensive-ass fruit and nut bars) and it’s a fair reason to give up everything you have and turn to asceticism. The lonely land of nakedness and hunger is the closest we can get to our masturbating monkey ancestors, after all.I don’t buy into it, and there’s a specific reason for that. Read this closely, and advance your argument in opposition, but do so with care -- we all choose our own worlds, and when we choose the Gods of those worlds, we need to know what they stand for. I live in a world where Nature - at least in her most commonly invoked manifestations - stands for something I’m no longer willing to stand behind.My problem: Nature is discriminatory (forgive the personification, but it’s going to continue; and forgive the use of the feminine pronoun, it’s just for convention’s sake). Nature has set some strict, ugly standards that stand in the way of agency. Hierarchy and chaos are her signature, and it wasn’t until the human race learned its form of defiance that something could slip through her granite fingers.She’s very hierarchical, and has a proven bias in favor of the strong over the weak. This leads to a frequent snowballing of forces within her domain, as poor, unarmed gazelle are bullied and devoured by families of lions, who are then allowed to sleep for twenty hours every day. Dolphins have found some fascinating ways of defending their collectives from sharks, but this usually means abandoning one or two of their loved ones to the bloody waters and sharp teeth of the predator; when has nature favored a dolphin in a fight and given it an opportunity to try shark meat? What penguin chick has ever been given the freedom and agency to defy the polar bear, or to make a pact with one?For this reason, a “laissez-faire” economy (the end goal of neo-liberal economics) will never successfully uphold the purely human, purely unnatural virtues of freedom, agency and equality. Nature favors the strong, the subversive tactic of motivated manipulation, and the inertia of self-interest. She will always give precedence to the large company, the multi-national corporation, whose finances and connections can strong arm competitors and the public. Nature doesn’t care about our self-determination or our emotional well-being.And in the same vein, nature has demonstrated a notable bias in favor of the strong over the smart. Until the human parasite took over the natural environment, there was little place for the big-brained chimpanzee, except high in the trees, safe from poisonous fangs and sharp teeth. It was a desperate, fortunate moment when rationality took over the climate of scarcity and struggle. We need to be thanking our ancestors, who invented fire, astrology, and the Age of Enlightenment.After all, nature denied us so much. Under her rule, creatures who preferred the company of the same sex are denied the ability to have children, and it’s a wonder that this disposition has lingered within her realm as long as it has. Now we’ve finally transcended our biological need to rape and devour, our fear of scarcity and starvation. Our sick can finally live long, healthy lives, and our sciences can finally work in tandem with the elements to create new opportunities. And most importantly, our food finally tastes good.Donna Haraway was right -- we are all cyborgs. Our strangest inventions aren’t iPods or Ugg Boots – they’re the more fundamental features of our basic humanity: morals, institutions, cooperatives, altruism, history, and freedom. Every day, we buy into these virtues, these purely human, purely artificial dreams and desires, and yet, we try to justify them by the words of God and Mother Nature. And we fight to preserve some sort of “state of nature,” a natural order of foods and competition and sexuality, as if we’re nostalgic for our slavery and uncertainty.But what did Mother Nature ever do for us, except give us a body and a hope for something different? It wasn’t nature that got us here. It was all us.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Movie Review: The Simpsons Movie Is History

Jesse Miksic — Mon, 6 Aug 2007 09:51:56 EDT

I was a big fan of The Simpsons, back in the day. I wish I could say I loved it when it was awesome, and lost interest because it lost its charm, but those two things are only coincidentally correlated. I was pretty much ignorant of the trends in writing or plotting, and just happened to stop watching around season seven or eight because I didn't have as much time to myself. Even so, given my former dedication to the franchise, I'm surprised how little the movie sparked my interest. When I was talked into seeing it on Saturday, I was pretty blase about it.It was worth the money and the time, though (both of which are high-premium in New York City). I saw it at the Magic Johnson AMC theater, and I definitely enjoyed it. I differ from those friends who said it was never very funny, and who claimed it never really prompted a serious laugh from them. It definitely drew a pretty consistent response from me, ranging from a chuckle to a burst, and it occasionally touched me in an emotional place as well (God, I hope I never decide to use that phrase again).Some people said it just felt like a long episode; for some, this was a good thing, and for some, it made the movie a waste of time (in keeping with Homer's opening observation that we shouldn't pay to see the same crap we can watch on television). I kind of appreciated the tidy narrative, though, and further, I felt it went respectfully beyond the scope of a mere episode. The emotional lows were serious, and the absurdities (i.e. the dome, the catastrophic destruction of Springfield) were developed into real conflicts, instead of remaining non sequiturs, as they would have in an episode of the series.What impressed me most, though, was the range of humor the writers tapped. In terms of jokes, the movie acted as sort of a retrospective on the whole Simpsons series. Some of the slapstick and low-brow humor (the roof repair segments, Bart's naked skateboard ride) recalled the first couple of seasons, when the characters were essentially caricatures of a dysfunctional American family. A good deal of the jokes reflected the humor of the show's heyday, seasons three through eight, such as (off the top of my head) most of the lines written for Mr. Burns, and the President's official decision-making process. Finally, there was a decent proportion of "zany antics" that have been so popular in recent seasons, like Homer's ride on a wrecking ball swinging between a Rock and A Hard Place.Between these jokes, however, there were enough winning lines to keep me engaged, and to keep the movie from feeling way too long, which would have been an obvious problem if it was really just a long episode.Positive criticism aside, however, there's something unsettling about the nostalgia involved in watching an epic retrospective on a franchise that's dimmed in recent years. Part of me sees this movie as a tribute and a farewell to the series, rather than a renewal, and part of me would be happy if this were the truth. Is this blasphemy? It's been an awesome series, and the movie attests to that fact. Even among the later episodes there was an occasional winner, such as the January 6, 2002 episode "Brawl in the Family" (note how the critics disagree with my assessment of this episode). With such a good two-hour long summary, it might be a good time to administer last rites to the series itself.As long as I'm being nostalgic, I'll throw out one thing that I feel was a flaw in The Simpsons Movie -- virtually all of the character conflicts were yanked from Simpsons history. The family was definitely recycled, rather than re-imagined, for this film: Bart's disgust at Homer's bad parenting, Marge's loss of faith in her husband and her marriage, and Lisa's unlikely romantic attachments were each the subjects of multiple episodes in the past. If the jokes were a positive retrospective, the conflicts were a negative one, driven by familial issues that we've seen resolved before. Maybe I can give it credit for developing these same conflicts to greater intensity, but that doesn't quite save the film from a hard truth -- we, the fans, have cried these tears before. But we all know the Simpsons, I guess, so we can't expect an earth-shattering realization about the family or the town. Our familiarity and expectation render this criticism almost moot.So whatever Simpsons era you're a fan of, go ahead and see the movie. Whether it refreshes your impression of the franchise or just reminds you of better days, it's probably going to leave you laughing at least a bit, and remembering all the jokes and Simpsons anecdotes you've appropriated over the years.Bart's genitals are also probably worth the price of admission.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Movie Review: Sublime and Unstable - Danny Boyle's Sunshine

Jesse Miksic — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:26:48 EDT

At what point does a sublime experience turn into a traumatic one? A strange philosophical question that no postmodernist intellectual has advanced, as far as I’ve heard. It’s a question that we, as an audience, might ask of Danny Boyle’s new sci-fi thriller, Sunshine, and though (like many of the questions posed by/of the narrative) it’s never answered, it’s probably worth the journey across the threshold.Boyle is famous for some of his other violent, psychological head-trips. From Trainspotting to 28 Days Later, Boyle seems obsessed with traumatic experiences that tax both our minds and our bodies. Sunshine is the story of such an extreme experience: in the shadow of the dying galaxy, a small crew of a ship called the Icarus II is charged with piloting an apocalyptic bomb into the sun in order to restart its fusion mechanisms.Boyle flaunts his influences. At times, the film seems like a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially during the first half, when the imagery is dominated by slow, balletic interstellar maneuvers and stunning lights and colors. This half of the film is also when the psychological elements are most developed, and it’s this first half that audiences should remember most fondly. This also may be when Boyle seems most an artist: the visuals are unique, sublime, and engaging, and the film looks like it might develop as a ghostly portrait of a crew, rather than as a horror sci-fi scramble.After the first hour, there’s a key change in tone and pace, and Sunshine becomes less about psychological balance and nuance and more about tension and claustrophobia. The key scene, where the transition takes place, is the crew’s exploration of another ship, the Icarus I, and this scene is punctuated by one of the most ruthless little cinematic tricks available to the filmmaker (a trick popularized by Tyler Durden in Fight Club). This tense, ghostly stretch is where the film breaks down into certain accepted horror conventions.To Sunshine’s credit, it never breaks into the excess that characterizes so much horror these days. Though it’s often compared to Event Horizon, Sunshine has nothing like the gore or torture that pervaded that film. Boyle’s use of an unstable, unfocused lens has been criticized, but it’s necessary to keep Sunshine from becoming a simple monster movie. The hazy camera work helps replace the revulsion of classic horror with the fear and claustrophobic confusion that you’d find in an extreme environment that’s breaking down around you.To be fair to the critics, the antagonist was barely developed, and appeared less as a true villain than as another disaster that happened to befall the crew. The audience never feels his presence as a character, and this is one of the biggest weaknesses that can be ascribed to this intelligent, but slightly schizophrenic film.In contrast, however, the rest of the crew of the Icarus II was surprisingly well-rendered. In a rare moment of filmmaking, there was no sudden twist that turned a hero into a villain. The audience is allowed and encouraged to side with the whole crew, and to hope for the resolution of their differences and the achievement of their goal… even when this means their ultimate demise.In closing, we have here a movie in two parts: the first, a sublime, haunting trip through outer and inner space, convincing on both a cosmic and a personal level; the second, the breakdown of that early harmony, a panicked rising action where the psychological constitution of the characters is tested and reconsidered. I’d suggest going for the first half, and enjoying the second half as a corollary. I’m not going to speak for horror buffs, being largely unfamiliar with that demographic, but anyone with a passing interest in speculative fiction, psychological and cosmic suspense, or the power of imagery will find the film worth its inconsistencies.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Transgressions and Feedback Loops: A Partisan Rant

Jesse Miksic — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:01:00 EDT

Take a moment, ladies and gentlemen, to ponder a short selection from the Republicans' first Presidential candidates debate. It’s about three-quarters of the way through, on page 18 of the transcript I just linked up. Here’s the bit I’m talking about:MR. VANDEHEI: Senator McCain, this comes from a Politico.com reader and was among the top vote-getters in our early rounds. They want a yes or n.o Do you believe in evolution?SEN. MCCAIN: Yes.MR. VANDEHEI: I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree -- believe in evolution?(Senator Brownback, Mr. Huckabee, Representative Tancredo raise their hands.)SEN. MCCAIN: May I -- may I just add to that?MR. VANDEHEI: Sure.SEN. MCCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.So three out of six Republican candidates don’t believe in evolution, and a fourth believes in it with a desperate apologist qualification. I’m going to skip the leftist contempt, the haughty dismissal, and the exasperated rationalization, and I’m going to go straight to a rhetorical question:When are we going to see a n American leftist candidate stand up in front of the American public and tell them he doesn’t believe in God?The most common answer: not in a long time... perhaps not while the United States even exists, at least in any recognizable form. This is an indication of the value judgments that infect politics at this point in history. It also says something about the relationship between the left and the right ends of American partisanship, and it says something about the troubled relationship between politicians and their constituencies. So what does it say? Why is this voice so absent from politics?As a qualification, I’m not saying you have to be an atheist to be a good leftist. Rather, I’m saying it’s time for leftist politicians to break down their self-imposed walls of avoidance, to find some ground other than religious righteousness to stand on. Their failure to do so has led to the lingering elephantine footfalls of the issues we’re not confronting... issues like secular morality, and sexual liberty, and socialization. I think you know why we’re avoiding these issues, and I think you’re about to tell me.It’s political suicide, right? This is the eternal argument, the perpetual motion machine of the left. If you stand up in public and proclaim atheism, or even if you proclaim strict secularism and refuse to comment on your personal religious views, you’re out of the race, because those ideas are unpopular. It’s a minefield… the only way to reach the gap is to tip-toe past the strong partisan questions into more neutral territory. Leave it to the right to stampede through touchy issues like God and evolution.I’ll accept that logic as explanation, but not as justification. It may be what's happening, but it's definitely not what should be happening. If no political figure stands up for an idea because it's unpopular, then there will be no channel for the public to express its approval or disapproval (since, necessarily, the public only shows up as a number at the voting booth). This public silence, read as unpopularity, will reinforce politicians’ desperate desire to avoid those issues that they’re already dismissing from public discourse. This is a positive feedback loop, a self-destructive system that’s collapsing on the broader liberal issues.You can put the onus for this on the public, of course... it’s the fault of the regressive, ill-informed, easily-enchanted redneck population of these United States, brandishing at every turn their hatred of intellectuals, their media-fueled self-righteousness and confusion. That assumption is widely-held, but it’s not self-evident. As I noted above, these issues aren’t necessarily unpopular. Rather, there’s no conduit in public discourse for their treatment as issues, or for their popularity at the ground level. Nobody supports them because there is no forum for their support. They need a conductor before they can assemble as a chorus.As much as it pains me to say so, a good deal of the responsibility for this falls on the public personalities and the politicians who are crafting our discursive space. A politician needs to stand up for one of these issues... any one of them... and make an ideological commitment that’s so simple, so authentic, that the right decries it as hopeless radicalism, and the left breathes a sigh of relief as it finds itself standing on its own political foundation.I don’t want to point fingers into the void without pointing one back at myself. As a voter, and a representative of a voting public, I pledge my vote and my support to the person who proves themselves committed to an issue I care about. I'll accept any of the broadly-cast leftist issues that I’ve watched disappear from political discussions at the highest levels. I’ve got three suggestions:1. Secular morality. Stand up and reject the religiously-determined ethical groundwork that the right finds so comforting. You don’t have to say you’re an atheist, as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay... just refuse to discuss your religious affiliation at all. Say you’re not going to govern in God’s name, or according to His law, but rather in the name of the American people and the enlightenment principles of fairness and opportunity. Then watch as your touchy issues turn into rallying points.2. Marital liberty. Don’t fall back on political nuances to justify your support for a tolerant environment. Make it clear that homosexuality is not a crime or an aberration, whether it’s natural or a lifestyle choice. Whether it’s marriage or state-sponsored partnerships, make it clear that you want every person to have the same matrimonial rights, no matter who they choose as their romantic, sexual, and legal partner.3. Socialization. Make it clear that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the heart and soul of American freedom and prosperity, and that large corporations, burying small businesses in pursuit of complete economic consolidation, eventually become an obstacle to that prosperity. The spirit of economic freedom dictates that you don’t dismantle the free market, but that you give those corporations the tax structure and the federal oversight to ensure that they play a healthy role in the American economy.You don’t have to champion all three of these issues. I’m not that naïve. However, I assert and maintain that if a candidate vocally defended any one of these three positions, she would win my respect and my vote in whatever election she faced. If you’re looking for a clear commitment from a voter, look no further. Just stand up for a truly progressive ideal and I’ll back you.Am I really alone in this? Am I the only believer? Or are there some others out there who are with me?

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Jesse's Sensible Political Program

Jesse Miksic — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:36:01 EDT

It’s time to bring some lucidity to our messy culture of politics. For all of us wrestling with the idea of social systems and personal liability for the state of the union, the whole culture of political ideas – from The Republic all the way up to the Ken Starr Report – seems impossibly disarrayed. The truth is, there are probably a thousand ways to bring order to it and make sense of it, on a thousand different levels, but even finding ONE that’s effective has become an insurmountable challenge. But I think I’ve got something.Here’s where I’m coming from: I have no direct political training, but I subscribe to the idea that every person has both a right and an obligation to form a political opinion. Thus, I’ve read some political articles, browsed some Wikipedia write-ups, and dug through hundreds of reader comments attached to newspapers and blog posts. My background is in philosophy and media studies, and as committed as I am to the liberal cause, I’ve struggled incessantly to keep from being a narrow-minded partisan fanatic.What follows is a political program that finally makes sense to me, a reasonably educated citizen who’s tried very hard to make sense of his own place in politics. It’s a three-tiered concept, a triad of "levels" of effectiveness that works as both a way of critiquing current politics, and as a guide to creating one’s own political life. It’s generally abstract, "meta-political," and some of it might seem ridiculously obvious. Nonetheless, it has its fair share of insight for anyone who needs some clarity, whether they’re radical, idealistic, realistic, or cynical.Now, remember, these are levels of political effectiveness. None of them are "ineffective," so even if you’ve only got the time and energy to reach the first one, you’re still doing your part to improve a political culture that’s grown increasingly schizophrenic in the age of mediation and contradiction. Thus I commend thee.Without further ado, here is Jesse’s Program for Political Effectiveness.LEVEL 1: Stop bitchingIf you read through comment posts, listen to political conversations, watch national news, or read almost ANYTHING in the political sphere, you’ll discover that we’re a culture that’s addicted to denial and complaint. It’s a neurotic side-effect of democratic media: we’re all critics, and in a world of critics, we tend to lose the energy to say anything constructive, EVER, because there’s little ground left to stand on.So the right complains about the immorality and indecision of the left, and the left complains about the intolerance and militarism of the right, and (even worse now) the left complains incessantly about ITSELF. This is why we all think the world is going to shit: nobody can stop sniping, critiquing, and complaining.For instance, take this smart, but generally negative and unconstructive take on feminism, written by Naomi Wolf of The Beauty Myth fame: Society Prefers Weak Women. It’s an insightful piece of criticism, worthy of some exploration, finally defeated by its own finger-wagging disapproval of our mass culture. Wolf is deeply committed to her cause, but that won’t help her fight the whole bucking beast of the mass media. All she’ll do is demonstrate the ineffectiveness of reprimand and renunciation.This Mythbusters article is an even more perfect example, and one of the primary reasons I’m writing this essay: The American Left's Silly Guilt Complex.Matt Taibbi actually makes some reasonable points, but they’re so buried in angst-like self-loathing that they fail to come across as constructive. He’s discovered some of the outlying absurdities of liberal culture... avant-garde guerilla theater protestors, Marxists working at Starbucks... and he generalizes them to the entire left wing so that he can blame it for destroying itself. Almost immediately, he buries a critical point: democratic ideas aren’t dead in this country, there are still politicians running on platforms that make sense, and of course college kids are a little ridiculous in their approaches to politics. After all, we all spent college negotiating the relationship between our utopian ideals and the real possibilities for living on the planet earth. When placed in the context of a diverse party, the cases Matt is talking about (the exceptional, stereotype-defining cases) are actually an asset, rather than a liability. Essentially, this essay is an excuse to rant, and for Matt Taibbi blame a handful of political outliers for what he perceives as his party’s failures.Then read the comments. Almost every comment is a complaint, either objecting to "failed liberal culture," or objecting to Taibbi’s own ranting. Even those readers who correctly identify the issue here...the fact that Taibbi is essentially just venting frustration...are repeating the same mistake. Only a few commentators step up and outline a constructive idea. These are the ones who are helping dilute the American Tradition of Bitching.They’re the ones who have reached LEVEL 1 of political effectiveness.LEVEL 2: Figure out what your principles areOnce you’ve fought down the urge to disapprove, critique, and complain, you can move on to a new phase of consciousness (yay theory cred). The first step was a pathway to becoming politically aware... this second step is a way to establish a political identity. To do this, you have to figure out what you believe, and you have to defend it in conversation and vote on it at the booth.Granted, this is tough. It requires listening to both sides of each hot-button issue (information and perspectives are plentiful), and possibly doing some research on the less sensational issues. It requires that you take a moment of your Internet time... whether it’s in the evening, or during your lunch break, or at a friend’s house... and do some reading. It also requires you to drop your preconceptions and stop taking your political impulses for granted. It may require you to ask yourself, "Do I think homosexuality is (im)moral just because my parents told me that when I was five?" It requires that you ask where your beliefs come from, and that you set some standards of legitimacy for yourself.I hate to keep dividing by party, but there’s something to be said here about the left versus the right. The right wing has made a strong showing of unity at LEVEL 2... security, traditionalism, and economic liberalism have become their core principles, and the public has responded well to this cohesion. The left has struggled with this a bit in the last decade or so, losing track of their common ground in favor of a good deal of special-interest pandering and media sniping, both across the bipartisan divide and within their own territory. Arguably, the schizophrenic left has a stronger philosophical base for its commitments, but it’s hard to see that foundation when there doesn’t seem to be any consensus built on it.But note: the left never lost its principles completely, and at the tail end of the Bush dynasty, we’re starting to find them again. Check out the candidate pages on MySpace: MySpace Democrats (scroll to the bottom for the individual candidates). Believe it or not, even on a forum as fluffy as MySpace, there are lists of issues on each candidate’s page, and they’re described in reasonable detail. These candidates are aware that to make their politics work, they have to make affirmative statements and productive commitments.Even in more radical circles, the "find a principle" position makes a critical difference. Fighting for a pet cause... gay rights, religion in schools, workplace feminism... is a positive political side-effect of reaching LEVEL 2 and discovering a political principle you can take personally.For instance, here’s a fascinating letter in Salon magazine, an explosive response to a rather silly advice letter, demonstrating a commitment to a principle. As radical as it reads, it also resonates with certainty and commitment: Is It Okay to Wear a Sexy Tank-Top to Work?Whether it’s "Transparency" (one of Barack Obama’s noblest battles, in my opinion) or social liberty in the modern workplace, you’ve got to believe in something to be a political agent.And that’s how you reach LEVEL 2.LEVEL 3: Find an engaging way to communicate those principlesOkay, so in LEVEL 1, you cleared some ground. In LEVEL 2, you built a tower. Now, in LEVEL 3, it’s time to build a road.Like, to other towers. Or maybe it’s time to have a party in your tower. Whatever. At any rate, it’s time for some outreach. And this is a big, difficult job, not something I’d demand of every citizen, by any means.In fact, this is such a difficult job that I’m hesitant to give any but a few people credit for achieving it. Contemporary politicians certainly aren’t creating any "engaging communication," which is why this whole country has lost interest in politics. The right is trying, at least... setting up media spectacles to appeal to the hearts and human emotions of its constituency. If it didn’t look so artificial, and didn’t alienate so many moderates, I would call it good political marketing, almost LEVEL 3 material.Leftists? Not doing so well at engaging the public with communication. Obama’s podcasts are heartfelt and media-conscious, but they’ll only appeal to the already-convinced. The articles I’ve cited above? Great fodder for debate, but not the type of thing you’d want to give to someone tottering on the partisan divide, because there's no hook for anyone but already-converted leftists with too much free time. And I certainly wouldn’t give this essay credit for being an "engaging communication of principles," either, since I’ve probably already lost most people who started reading it, 1,400 words ago.But there are shining examples of engaging political communication throughout history, and lots of them are on the left. So much political progress has been driven by LEVEL 3’s: Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, George Orwell, and Michael Moore. These were communicators who could move people and give ideas the authenticity and polish they needed to take hold in the public sphere. Though you may not even know his name, Tony Schwartz is the epitome of a successful principled communicator working for the left. He was one of the most effective marketing geniuses in modern media, and he was a man who worked with real political and social principles: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the influence of glamorized smoking, in particular.I’ll skip all my other minor accolades for political communication...Ayn Rand, MoveOn.org, the Situationists, and people like that. You don’t have to hear about this from me, because it’s been said before. If you want a worthy text for reshaping the American left in the memetic age, read Dream: Re-Imagining Leftist Politics in an Age of Fantasy, by Stephen Duncombe.At some point, the most accomplished go from political identity to political efficacy. Will Bush’s aircraft carrier spectacle have the same reach as FDR’s Fireside Chats? It remains for history to decide...but regardless, it's a history made by the political passions of principled people with exceptional inspiration... the people who have reached LEVEL 3.This would be a good time (as good a time as any) to cut through the residue of cynicism and denial that’s building up on our political culture. In pursuit of this lofty goal, I offer this political program, designed to shut out self-destructive disapproval and encourage strength of principle and commitment. It’s a rubric for evaluating the political effects of one’s own approach, and of the approaches of the myriad political agents in the public sphere. It’s also a political program that works sort of like a manifesto, and this is okay, because this political program doesn’t look askance at manifestos as ideological tools. After all, even if they’re a little preachy and boring (i.e., not quite LEVEL 3), manifestos at least require the establishment of some principles and commitments.This is my idea (formed as I walked to the corner store for an evening snack), and it’s more than that...until something better comes along, this is how I’m going to look at politics, both in the world and in myself.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End - Gore Goes Lynch

Jesse Miksic — Sat, 2 Jun 2007 18:41:14 EDT

So a new Pirates movie has hit, and in the spirit of my previous in-depth analysis, I thought I'd come to this one with some critical observations, as well. I was struck by... I don't know, by the sort of indescribable character of this movie. Try to describe the plot. You can't. Try to describe the themes or the core relationships. You can't. It was sort of overwhelming.Obviously this has caused a wide array of critical reactions. Richard Schickel gives the film a reasonable characterization, although he didn't seem entertained by his findings: "They're everywhere, these not-so-merry miscreants — in Singapore, in Antarctica, on a desert island, in a secret pirate cove, riding mid-ocean waterfalls (very odd, that bit), exchanging broadsides while being whirled about in a maelstrom. It is very exhausting, and it makes no sense whatsoever." Here you have a good idea of the impression people got from At World's End... strange and incoherent, engaging in its eccentricity, but generally unfathomable.There's something weird that shows up in these reviews, though; when they reject the movie for its strangeness, these reviewers also snark cynically at the public approval the film is bound to receive. Schickel ends his review by suggesting that "some close variant" of his Pirates III criticism "could be written week-in, week-out every summer movie season." Similarly, and even more cynically, Frank Swietek of One Guy's Opinion says Pirates III "will doubtless repeat the inexplicable boxoffice success of its predecessor — testimony to the lemming-like proclivity of today’s audiences not only to rush to even the worst retreads but in some cases to do so repeatedly." Damn! Such contempt!But what are we really critiquing here? Seriously -- was it too confusing for the critics? In the work of some filmmakers, we see ambiguity and lack of resolution as assets. In the case of a Disney movie, have we no option but to recast them as "confusion" and "lack of focus" and to reject them as failures? Critics need to work out their demands -- you can't judge a movie negatively for being weird, incoherent, and dense, and at the same time, criticize it for being another piece of meaningless Hollywood trilogy fluff.Deep in the writhing mass of special effects and half-realized on-screen relationships, there was something really fascinating going on in Pirates III. It was Gore Verbinski's cinema freak-out, a desperate, unbridled flash of filmmaking, something... how do I put it... Lynchian?Yeah, David Lynch. Anyone who attacks this movie as being too weird or incoherent can go chew on that name for a while. Mulholland Dr. was a tweaky roller-coaster of a film, and it shared a lot of creative and stylistic techniques with Pirates III: unexplained reappearances of characters, strained and shifting loyalties and relationships, and recurrent motifs that were hard to pin down to a particular significance.There are a few specific elements that made me think of Mulholland Dr. as I was watching Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End.First, Jack Sparrow's on-screen delirium was very Lynchian. He spent whole chunks of the movie interacting with himself, and frequently murdering other versions of himself. Two of them were little shoulder-mounted Jacks, like the old couple in Mulholland Dr. who were shrunk to the size of a rodent. Others were alternate-reality versions, Jack Sparrows that laid eggs, Jacks that had been assimilated by the Flying Dutchman, Jacks who were into bestiality. There was no good reason for this tendency -- just a lingering postmodern sense of the surreal and absurd, giving us reason to ask: just whose head are we wandering around in here?Second, the recurrent theme of the crabs was like something from David Lynch. Mulholland Dr. also had a few themes that kept coming back into the narrative, like the little box with the key, and these frequently had no clear symbolic significance or obvious associations. There are a number of ways they could fit into the narrative; they could represent something abstract, like deliverance, or they could represent the call of the sea to Jack. They seemed to be metamorphic presences, turning into objects and people and disappearing back into the environment again. They were never capitalized on or made clear; they just showed up and established their surreal presence, and then vanished again.The mad, forgetful Bootstrap Bill was another strange, surrealist character figure, particularly in the scene where Elizabeth finds him on the Dutchman. He's pathetic and imprisoned in his own uncertainty, caught between mindless loyalty to Davey and futile, misguided hope in his son. Being part of the ship has made him tragic and amnesiac, able to repeat a conversaion as if he's having it for the first time, and it establishes his character as a unique, unpredictable force, both emotionally and narratively. In this sense, he shares a kinship with Mulholland Dr.'s Diane Selwyn, who first appears as a distraught, disturbed, and emotionally crippled actress at a low point in her career.There's also the sick anatomy stuff that keeps kicking us gently in the face. The scene where Jack's doppelganger licks his own brain is priceless. The death by tentacle lobotomy is pretty brilliant, too. These are the signature scenes of a filmmaker who really wants our attention.I'm not going to sit here and say I liked Pirates III because it was, like a Lynch film, a profound, avant-garde piece of art cinema, or a masterpiece of surrealist post-modern narrative. But it did share something with Lynch: it was an explosive, ecstatic act of filmmaking, almost childlike in its lack of inhibition.This is the maelstrom, take it as it is: a mad cinema freakout that none of us could have expected from Gore Verbinski, hard to follow, but insanely engaging on a dramatic and aesthetic level. Don't hold back, Gore. I'm right behind you.

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.

Beyond the Bullet

Jesse Miksic — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:41:43 EDT

My condolences to Virginia Tech from one who hopes he will never fully understand.This post is going to be more political, and thus perhaps more partisan, than most of my articles. Normally, I take a sideways approach to politics by way of cultural artifacts, music, movies, Internet videos, and the like. Right now, though, I think there are some issues in the air that deserve to be addressed more directly.Today’s issue is gun violence. In light of the Virginia Tech shootings, I think it’s a good time to make an intelligent statement on the role of violence and freedom in our daily lives. I run a risk here. In the aftermath of an incident like this, I’m in danger of being drowned out entirely by the flood of reactionary bullshit that comes out of the popular media, the blogosphere, and the mouths of politicians. But maybe I have a chance to contribute something intelligent to this debate too -- one of a few voices of reason in a country that’s become an ideological battleground, far more than a physical or literal one.As far as politics go, I’d call myself a critical liberal. I’d like to be the leftist "old enemy from within" (borrowing a phrase from Bataille), strengthening the progressive position by questioning it and discerning the gristle from the meat. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of gristle out there. On gun violence, however, I think the reasoned liberal position, that assault weapons need to be more fully, federally controlled, and regulate, is a fairly cohesive one, and unlike with feminism, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of self-criticism the left needs to do to support its position.What we’re fighting against: the extreme right, armed with a blanket of civil consent and disinterest. It’s frightening to me that the gun lobby is so large, considering it’s a bastion of regressive American extremism. The Gun Owners of America, apparently the second-largest gun advocacy group in the United States, has declared that the problem, of course, is that more people weren’t armed.You may sense that this argument, symptomatic of pro-firearm argument, is mind-bogglingly irrational, but you may not realize why. It’s based on some reasonable premises: people should be responsible for their own safety, and they should have the means of protecting themselves. Individuals need to be trusted with security and enforcement, because omnipresent institutions like governments are so prone to oppression and abuse. Laws should target criminals, not the broad pool of people who might potentially become criminals. Why does the gun rights creed sound so irrational when these premises sound defensible?The reason is that it makes some erroneous assumptions about the human environment. These assumptions make sense in a world where everybody, including, and especially, the morally upright are heroic bastions of strength and self-reliance. It makes sense in a world taken from movies, like the future of Mad Max or the New York City of The Warriors. It makes sense in a world where your personal well-being isn’t linked in any noteworthy way to the mental health of the collective.But this isn’t a movie. Normal people -- people who have been raised in the suburbs, or on dairy farms, or in lower-middle class neighborhoods -- learn to fear death and protect one another, not to live within a paradigm of pure autonomy and self-defense. That’s why most of us, the vast, noble masses of sane human being, would find it virtually impossible to level a handgun at someone and put a bullet in their head. I would hesitate, even if I was defending myself from a crazed madman or an armed robber. As a well-developed human being living in an ordered society, I lack the instinct to kill an adversary, and I wouldn’t be prepared to do it.This is what some of these fucknut bloggers think is wrong with this country, that we "don't have the balls" to shoot one another, Bruce Willis style, in order to protect ourselves and our friends. But they’re a misguided, over-stimulated group who clearly haven’t thought through the implications of that claim. Entering into a fully cooperative, peaceful society, living in close proximity, working together, and eating from the same tables has required that we lay our killer instincts to rest. No matter how "easy to access" guns are, those of us who are socialized correctly won’t be carrying guns around. They’re excessive and dangerous, and we don’t have the kind of impulsive judgment that would allow us to use them productively.These days, there are enough ways of asserting our autonomy legally, symbolically, and collectively. We don’t need to defend it with lethal force. Guns are the vestigial traces of violence in a society that should be past the need for it, and outlawing "nonsporting" weapons will be the most important step in purging that trace. The only people who are (psychologically) equipped to use lethal force on other human beings are the ones who aren’t fully equipped to deal with discourse, social interaction, and personal responsibility. They’re the criminals, the pariahs, the nut-jobs.As always, in our advanced civilization, guns are the tools of madmen.Some more takes on the subject:A smart post on the conservative gun lobby and MAD-influenced thinkingPop Politics on sparing guns and demonizing popular culture

Designer | writer | critic | dedicated cultural participant

Loud voices fade. Well-chosen words linger.