Film Review: Punishment Park (1971) DVD

This is an insightful and smart film for the unique way it delivers the underlying emotions and clashing political views within American society. Filmed in documentary style and directed by Peter Watkins, Punishment Park's premise is that students and political dissidents are put on trial in kangaroo courts after a repeal of Constitutional law during the tumultuous Nixon era of the late 60s and early 1970s. Since the prisons are filling up too fast to contain all the political criminals, convicted dissidents can choose to serve time in prison or compete in ‘punishment park’, a 53 mile race in the summer heat of the southern California desert to reach an American flag station while being hunted down by police and military personnel. The participants are told that if they can reach the flag in three days they'll be set free; but will they?

While one group is frantically running through the desert another group is on trial. The proceedings showcase the opposing views, that of the state establishment contrasting with the views of those under arrest and otherwise oppressed. Punishment Park is a film made in the heat of the moment so the opinions and attitudes feel genuine. Not surprisingly most of the court dialogue descends into expletive laced arguments as opposing sides struggle to communicate but find common ground lacking amidst an endemic atmosphere of polarized politics and overly simplified generalizations.

“You either win, or you die.” – Punishment park convict verbalizing the true quality of a polarized establishment where increasing authoritarian violence generates an increasingly violent public reaction.

Although the film is fictional the themes are startlingly relevant to America in 2007 - just replace communism with terrorism and the Vietnam War with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is an excellent film for provoking discussion and serious thought concerning the issues of authority, politics, the oppression of public dissent, and violence within American society. 20.06.07

Lo-Pointe Cinema

October 2009

Film  Review: Daisies (1966) DVD

There’s an enchanting personal attraction to any artistic creation that is so innovative or outrageous that it defies categorization. The 1966 Czech film Daisies directed by Vera Chytilova is just that.

The two main characters, both bored young women named Marie, conclude from what they see around them that the world is bad, consequently they should be bad too and so they proceed to engage in a series of silly and destructive antics. They date older men just to get a free meal then ditch them on the train, hold an existential discussion in a bathtub full of milk, and mostly eat like messy pigs anywhere and everywhere.

Daisies is difficult to describe, it's part Kafkaesque surrealism, part social commentary with a comedic flair, but the final message typed on the screen reveals the reason for all the apparent absurdity. The film is mostly, but not entirely, a criticism of the skewed perspective of a lazy bourgeois society that’s more concerned with the disruption of dinner entertainment than the consequences of a war.

It’s surprising that this film was even made at all when you consider it comes from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1966, was directed by a woman, and contains extensive use of creative photography and film techniques in a surrealistic presentation. So of course Daisies was banned in Czechoslovakia, but fortunately the film survived as did the director, and now you can see it too. 11.05.07

“Everyone does what they can to avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic human trait. People don’t want to think - they can’t make the connection between entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People will not be human until they get pleasure from thought - only a thinking person can be a full person.” – Vera Chytilova, 1978.

Film Review: Fail-Safe (1964) DVD

Fail-Safe details the mindset, all the reasoning and first-strike justifications, and general calculated thinking behind the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cold War era and puts it into a credible and unnerving apocalypse scenario. Fail-Safe is from the same time period as Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, and the basic theme of nuclear war is the same but the two movies approach the issue from two different directions. Where Dr. Strangelove is a dark comedy that works to spoof and mock the absurdity of the people and beliefs involved in manufacturing nuclear war, Fail-Safe takes a literal approach in order to demonstrate how easily an accidental nuclear war could occur in which millions are killed instantly, and the behavior and character responses likely in such an event.

Fail-Safe highlights the clash between the career military commanders and the political leadership, two sides that often have conflicting goals. Most notable are the civilian advisers to the pentagon (Walter Matthau’s character), people that use flawed assumptions about how the other side is different (and thus 'evil'), questionable statistics, and dubious studies to justify appalling actions and provocations that easily spin out of control - all in the name of ‘national self-defense’. These same Pentagon advisors are still hard at work bringing us more idiotic and self-defeating wars like the Bush administration’s escapades in Iraq, still blazing away with no end, or a ‘victory’, in sight some four years later.

A mistaken conflict that pushes the military to the limits of their patriotism - even over the edge into rebellion, how contemporary! Indeed Fail-Safe is an intense movie that still has relevance today; it reminds me of the saying, when the elephant’s fight it’s the grass that suffers (hint: we’re the grass!). 21.01.07

Industrially organized production of culture has always seemed suspect to committed cultural critics. For Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, it represented an instrument of subtle oppression in the hands of those who possessed and administrated economic and political power. Its products served only one purpose — to draw people's attention away from their true interests and, by colonizing their minds, divert it towards superficial, surrogate pleasures. Beyond this, the mass production of standardized commodities and ideas, aimed at the lowest common denominator, would lead to a gradual decline in the general intellectual level. From: Pop Art, by Klaus Honnef, page 20, Taschen, 2006.

Film review: No Man’s Land

No Man’s Land (2001) DVD. Few things get uglier than a civil war but they chose a beautiful location for this one. This film reveals the absurdity within a war, in this case it’s Bosnia, with two sides forced together, one a Serb and the other a Bosnian. Trapped in no man’s land between warring sides they are compelled to find a way out.

No Man’s Land is a war film but with a very distinct difference in that it criticizes not just a futile conflict but all of the other participants as well from the multi-national UN peacekeeping forces to the mass media, while also challenging the concept of political neutrality amidst a conflict where both sides are trying to kill each other. The military peacekeepers are mostly there for appearances and don't want to get involved while the news media will do anything for a story without any genuine concern for the real misery of the people involved in the mess.

This is an excellent film with a sharp sense of humor, and although it doesn’t offer any particular resolution to the basic problem it does poignantly demonstrate that once involved in a conflict there may not be any practical way to get out, a message especially germane to another civil war now occurring in Iraq. 29.11.06

Film review: Why We Fight, A history of America's Military Industrial Complex

Why we fight (2005) DVD by Eugene Jarecki is designed for the portion of the American people that gets their information on world events truncated and shrink-wrapped from the likes of FOX news, Rush Limbaugh, or their local newspaper. In other words Why we fight is a documentary designed for your average ill-informed workaday American. It very carefully and deliberately explains the rationale and personnel behind the current war on Iraq and it also establishes the historical context needed to understand why things are the way they are beginning with World War II and the advent of the United States’ infamous military-industrial complex first labeled by the same man who was largely responsible for its formation: President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This is an Informative and interesting film but what it has to say may not be overly surprising for Noam Chomsky fans or avid readers of Holology, for instance. 23.09.06

Film review: Bush Family Fortunes – The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2004) DVD by Greg Palast

This is a revealing documentary about the rise of the Bush political dynasty and the controversial 2000 election. Investigative reporter and filmmaker Greg Palast shows that the Bush family has used its influence in office for decades to build up their personal fortunes through special personal connections, such as with the Saudi monarchy and the infamous Carlyle Group, and then plowed the profits back into their own reelection campaigns. He explains that the contested Florida election in 2000 was lost due to intentional disenfranchisement of Black voters using a doctored roster of out of state convicted felons. More to the point, vote rigging is a tactic that both sides, Republican and Democrat, want to see continue because it favors the incumbent and they both believe that by perpetuating it they can win at this charade.

This is one of the questions that has always bothered me because, as Vice President, Gore had the deciding vote in the Senate. Gore had a deciding influence in determining whether to recount or just accept Bush's win in Florida. The Vice President and his election team had to know that something suspicious was going on in Florida, especially since the governor of that state was Bush's brother, but apparently they decided to let it go on in the belief that, even if they had the evidence for a case, revealing the scale of the fraud would only end up hurting both parties in the long run. So instead of revealing the massive fraud going on like an honest person should have done, Al Gore let it slide.

Palast goes so far as to suggest that the Supreme Court was a party to the corruption in the Florida election as well. If this is the case then America as a Republic and as a democracy is completely lost because no institution remains that is free of massive corruption. Not the Presidency, not Congress and now not even the Supreme Court. No matter how much effort the public puts into it through agitation and protest, the system cannot fix itself anymore because all legitimate institutions have been corrupted to become part of the problem implacably opposed to the solution! There’s a cynical saying, ‘if voting changed anything it would be illegal’. Read between the lines: Bush’s Family Fortunes is a call to revolution in the United States because it is increasingly apparent that nothing else can rectify the situation. 24.04.06

Film review: Weapons of Mass Deception (2004) DVD, an analysis of the mass media and how they sold the War on Iraq by Danny Schechter.

Danny Schechter, a former mass media employee and now professional media analyst, narrates this very informative and revealing documentary. In Weapons of Mass Deception he is primarily concerned with television news since that is the source, unfortunately, that most Americans get the information they use to form opinions about local and world events. Schechter details multiple aspects of modern mass media and how it has become little more than a propaganda outlet for the established powers. The most recent and polished example of the way the major media outlets twist and exploit news and current events, like a product to be marketed and sold, is the coordinated process that was used to sell the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Some of the things going on behind the scenes include:

Danny Schechter concludes: "Major media covers the world through the eyes of those in power."

When considering mass media bias you have to realize it's not typically an issue of partisan politics, of being pro-Republican or pro-Democrat. The mass media propaganda line backs whatever party is in power for simple personal benefit, to gain the approval of government regulations, or deregulation, that the media owners want. The 'journalists' working for the mass media repeat the official story because it's so much easier and safer to do that than genuine critical and objective journalism. Sycophantic journalism not only means job security but taken to an extreme can even mean a promotion! This explanation for mass media bias doesn't require any conspiracy, simply numerous lazy, shortsighted and selfish people.

The corporate driven mass media is a clear and imperative threat to the well being of everyone who isn’t making a dollar off of the mass media machine, and it’s a mid-term threat to even their well being if they had the brain cells and objectivity to stop for a moment and think about the self-destructive consequences of their greedy actions. This propaganda machine has criminally colluded with political authorities to sell wars, colluded with big business to cover up artificially created environmental disasters, to lie, cheat and steal directly leading to the deaths of millions, and millions more literally being entertained to death as sedentary habits lead to skyrocketing  rates of obesity, diabetes and more. This is the same mass media led by the despicable likes of Disney/ABC and AOL/Time Warner that want to hijack the Internet so they can twist it into a glorified television, another one-way passive experience for filling minds with their mental pollution.

The first step in fighting back is to just turn off the damn television. In fact don’t just turn it off, heave it in the dumpster and don’t buy another one (or take it to the recycling center if you want to save some space in the landfill). I’ve stated it before and I’ll do it again: television as it is currently used is nothing more than an ignorance generator; the more TV you watch the less you know.

Fortunately it's not all doom and gloom. As pervasive and relentless as the mass media monstrosity is alternatives do exist. Most every day I publish a selection of news headlines and links in The Daily Irritant. Links to major and minor news sources are listed on the same page too. Use these sources or go out find your own but whatever the case you'll really have to work at it to find an online news source even worse than the major media's television news pseudo-journalism. 09.04.06

Film Review: Juliet of the Spirits directed by Federico Fellini (1965). Juliet is a middle-aged woman whose personal life is thrown into turmoil by suspicions of her husband’s infidelity. Juliet subsequently finds herself struggling through a world of conflicting messages and moral rules all the while burdened by a past full of religious-morality baggage and a present filled with odd and unreliable people continually conferring poor examples and unsound advice. Troubled by intangible advice for her very tangible personal crisis, Juliet finds herself in a conflict zone between the way she thinks things ought to be and the way they actually are. Juliet eventually leaves her 'martyrs grill' behind and realizes she can only deal with her past and present on her own, achieving a new sense of freedom in the process.

Juliet of the Spirits has the usual colorful Fellini visual imagery as well as the blurring between fantasy and reality; it’s a film that carefully creates the mood and view of the personal world that revolves around the main character. Although the ending is inconclusive concerning the primary event of concern in the film, Juliet’s marriage, a main theme of escaping the burdens of the past is still carried through - many of life’s external problems have to first be dealt with internally. Some of it is strange, some is funny, but it’s a worthwhile movie to watch if simply for the odd and uninhibited characters as well as the striking visual qualities of the realm they inhabit. 23.01.05

Winged Migration (2001) is a movie for observers of nature or anyone who wants to see a fascinating film with a different perspective. It conveys the struggles of many different kinds of birds as they migrate across the globe set against some stunning backgrounds From Antarctica to Arizona.

Part of the idea behind the film is to view things from the perspective of a bird as they travel but getting to know the birds also means respecting them and also gaining an understanding of what they go through and how they fit into the larger ecosystem and life in general. The film clearly conveys the effort that the birds put into their travels and the difficulties they face and if one bird gets injured or falls sick on the journey the others cannot wait they must go on in order for the group, and the cycle of migration itself, to perpetuate.

Winged Migration is a French production and was directed by Jacques Cluzaud and Jacques Perrin. The main film has a soundtrack and narration in English while the other commentary portions on the DVD are French with English subtitles. Winged Migration is an excellent film; the DVD is definitely worth viewing for the movie alone but its also loaded with extra features that explain how the birds were acclimated to people, the aircraft camera platforms used, the concept behind the film and so on. 01.05.04

Review of the Movie Naqoyqatsi (2002) & Analysis

The title is an interpretation of a Hopi word meaning ‘war as a way of life’ and is the third of a trilogy that includes Koyaanisqatsi (1983) and Powaqqatsi (1988). Naqoyqatsi is not a film that can be reviewed in the traditional sense as typically criticized elements such as quality of dialogue or acting proficiency are inapplicable. Naqoyqatsi does mesh well with the previous two films in the series but is also much more visually distorted than the previous two due to the digital image manipulation used to create the hi-tech, ‘brave new world’ impact of the film. Naqoyqatsi  is a very interesting movie but the cinematic qualities can’t really be described, only experienced.

The themes conveyed in Naqoyqatsi do lend themselves to discussion however. I think the primary theme is the difficulty of defining what is real in the modern world and in this regard the public becomes so confused that their exploitation and manipulation by authorities is made all the more simple. The complicity of the mass media in distorting and conveying a skewed reality is a major element in Naqoyqatsi. In this post-modern existence determining the specious from the critical becomes increasingly difficult, largely due to the volume but also the complexity of information continually bombarding us all. Eventually context is eroded and the personal depth of reality shrinks to an absolute metaphysical minimum, solipsism. In the end everything becomes difficult to define, hazy, we become singular entities, detached atoms floating in clouds as the post-modern vision concludes in nihilism. 03.02.04

Given the uniqueness of this trilogy I don't have any criticisms of the technical or cinematic qualities of the film, I think it's fairly consistent and holds together well. The only complaint I have is with the DVD itself which was over-priced for a typical DVD and doesn't even have any liner notes inside - just a plastic case and a disc - my aren't we generous? And I wonder why people pirate? Yeah, the distributor, Buena Vista/Disney, is definitely gouging the market; dirtbags. 04.03.04

***

Anymore we use the term war almost reflexively: ‘war on drugs’, ‘war on cancer’, ‘war on terrorism’, war on everything. War is just another word for competition without pity. Human nature and all life exists within a milieu of competition. But the severity of competition rises in proportion to several factors such as increased population density and scarcity of critical resources, among other things. Thus as both of these factors have become more prominent in modern life, so has competition increased to the point that the modern existence is characterized by a perpetual series of wars because so little room is left for forgiveness and generosity.

Over time different methods of winning the wars for human survival have emerged. Sacrificing individual identity for that of a larger group is one notable method. A parade of varying religions, ideologies and beliefs as well as collections of habit and tradition that form cultures, all serve to bind individuals into collectives. Although the gains of the collective effort are often conferred upon the individual the downside to self-sacrifice is the loss of control over personal destiny as power is granted to the leaders of the collective. Further, the failure of the collective always impinges upon the well-being of the individuals.

The post-modern dilemma is a testament to the struggle to find meaning where none exists and to deal with our own self-created chaos generated by frantic technological development devoid of any holistic aim or respect for consequences. Human effort has succeeded in creating a new environment that is unavoidably regulated by natural laws but designed to serve human desires. Ultimately we must realize that the two are not compatible, that what we want is often not what we need and that our artificial environment is surprisingly incompatible with our biological needs. 08.02.04

When Bad is Good

As long as Hollywood has been churning out movies they've been churning out crappy ones. Very often the bad movies are at least as entertaining as the good ones and sometimes far, far more. Now 'good' and 'bad' are relative terms, values attained through comparison, and the larger the pool of material used to draw the comparison the more accurate the conclusion becomes. In other words stating, Gigli is the worst movie of 2003 is not especially meaningful if most of the other movies this year are equally appalling. However, stating that Gigli is the worst movie in 80 years of film would have a much deeper impact, wouldn't it? But if one made such a wild accusation they would demonstrate a yawning lack of historical references to judge from, as well as being flat out wrong, oh so wrong.

So having defined 'good' and 'bad' in general terms, I'm now going to go further and try to define good and bad in the sense of a movie. This would seem to be a challenging task given the vast disparity of what people consider a good movie as well as the different criteria which can be used to measure a movies quality. But actually it's not that complicated because we already know that many movie viewers have little if any awareness of films beyond the immediate time-frame, partly because of poor public memory and partly because of the films themselves which are so easy to forget, being primarily all visual impact and no intellectual substance.

A bad or a good movie is determined by the audiences expectations of the film. This is why no one can intentionally set out to make the 'worst film ever' and succeed. This is why the most fun 'bad' movies are the ones with the highest initial expectations and why Ed Wood Jr. (Plan 9 From Outer Space, 1959) is, arguably, the pinnacle of this 'bad is good' genre because he honestly set out to make good, meaningful movies but still failed (and filmed) every step of the way. Woe to the fools that actually do try to make bad movies as they only produce wholly lame, painfully un-entertaining disasters. I mean, take Spaceballs (1987), in fact - please take it. Holy hell, you'd have to be really stoned to see that as a fun movie.

Movie-makers intent + audience expectations versus final product = film value

In order for anyone to gain anything remotely resembling an accurate idea of a movie's quality in proper context they have to at least have a chronologically diverse exposure to film, and geographic diversity also helps. Professional movie critics are supposed to have this sort of experience, and some do, but most are just freelance writers who get paid based upon the literary appeal of their work and not the accuracy of their criticism.

That's the great thing about not being paid to write, you can be as outrageous as you want and no one can fire you!

Every film-viewer should try to be not just a critic, but an educated critic. The public should demand more for the surprisingly high expense they pay to be entertained, or in very rare cases, intellectually or emotionally challenged in some way. Obviously nobody has seen every film made or understands every technical aspect and detail of film-making, and no one should have to; in order to be a useful critic you just have to broaden the pool of references as much as possible. The easiest way to do this is just to watch old movies and  focus on genres that you like.

The sci-fi genre in the fifties was arguably about as low as you can go, at least superficially, in the vast majority of the products which reached the screen. Yet actually the simplest part - the script-writing, was surprisingly well done. This is especially ironic considering the stunningly awful tripe gushing from the theater screens today. And this is an interesting event because despite the multi-million dollar budgets and vast technical capabilities of modern film-making, the simplest parts of the film seem to have the lowest quality now.

Hollywood seems to want their movies as big, loud and dumb as they can possibly be.

The script is about the simplest and most important part to the movie but anymore it's been sacrificed to the god of visual flash, and a completely unnecessary sacrifice it is. Take Star Wars Attack of the Clones (2002) a movie that by all accounts had everything going for it, years of development, the absolute best technology and one of the most talented directors in the business. Yet the dialogue was so awful as to be literally jaw-dropping in it's ludicrousness - and I was not the only one laughing in the theater. Star Wars Phantom Menace (1999) is considered to be even worse. Now Phantom Planet of 1961, that was about as entertaining and probably could have been filmed from the catering budget for the Menace set. Not only that but you can buy the DVD for less than the cost of the theater ticket (assuming Menace was still showing) - now that's entertainment!

Budget size is irrelevant to a film's entertainment quality.

Today we don't see too many boom-mikes at the top of the screen anymore or scratches on the film-negative to depict lightning bolts and ray-guns, but the end-result is not appreciably more entertaining despite these technical improvements and vast sums of money spent on production. So if a movie is to be judged by its entertainment value we'd have to admit that some of the old, 'bad' movies are easily the superior to today's blockbusters.

So what is the worst movie ever made? An unofficial award is actually given out to these bad movies called the Golden Turkey award. Plan 9 (see above) won the top place but not for its failings but rather its fame. Easily even worse is Robot Monster (1953), but is it really the worst movie ever made? Well it certainly pisses off the audience and features infanticide (twice). It reportedly had a budget of $16,000 and after the film's debut the director tried to kill himself. Alas he proved equally unsuccessful at suicide and was left with no other choice (I assume) than to keep making movies.

More contemporary colossal failures in this genre include Lost in Space (1998) and Starship Troopers (1997) but have not been rated by the author who, incidentally, harbors no intention of doing so because that would require me to watch them.

• Oldest worst movie I know of: the unwatchable Maniac (1934). Don't even bother.

• Oldest good movie I know of - Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1926).

• A few of the best movies ever made? See the Holology Bibliography.

And finally the worst, worst movie ever made (and theatrically released)? Easy, The Creeping Terror (1964) Watch it you can (and dare)! Acting, editing, lighting, and especially the sound - every aspect is a total failure. This movie is so low-grade even the dialogue is nonexistent, it's just narration, why? The sound reel fell into Lake Tahoe never to be seen again, and had to be completely re-done at the last minute. 03.08.03

See also: Holology Media Content Ratings Issue

Movie review: Zardoz (1974) on DVD

Zardoz (1974) is a fantastic, outrageous film that perfectly distills so much philosophy! Succinctly, it's about an aberrant intellect in the future that learns to read and subsequently has a revelatory discovery concerning the true nature of (their) God. Angry, he concocts a plan to defeat God and establishment. The actual movie is more complex and nuanced of course as well as being heavily symbolic, mesmerizing  and just plain unnerving at moments.

"Would you kill God?"

I think the overall theme is both nihilistic and Nietzschian because it's about killing God(s). All gods are built to create stability but that stability inevitably descends into stagnation, an inability to adjust, and eventually boredom, suicide, death or even an artificial situation worse than death. This situation, although intentionally created to fulfill a human desire for safety and peace, nevertheless negates the ability to adapt to new circumstances, improve or change which is the essence of evolution. Positive progress is dependent upon the destruction of God and gods, regardless of the reason. The more we try to defeat this need, the more it defeats us.

"Truth or revenge?!"

If I had to guess at the reason for its poor reception way back in 1974 it was probably because the movie itself is a bit odd, although so were a lot of 70s Sci-fi films; or perhaps because Sean Connery plays in an unexpected role. But the ending is neat too, we see that's the order of life, that's all it is, just a mark, a hand print on the cave wall. 13.02.03

Fashionable Dictatorship (clothing as control)

Shock Is All In Your Wallet

It's a sad comment that what passes for culture today comes from a TV or a CD and artistic merit is determined by selling volume. No better example of this exists now than Mr. Marshall B. Mathers III AKA Eminem and his rise-to-power movie 8 Mile. Now, this is not about Eminem's musical ability, I'll save that for the music critics, but rather a criticism and analysis of what he represents and especially the system that packages his talent and sells his image. It illustrates an important phenomenon within the postmodern pop-culture saturated world, that he basically used controversy to get him where he wanted to go - the top, the media darling and the best-selling recording artist. Now that's a bit of an oversimplification and he had enormous help from other parties but it's essentially what has happened. It goes to show that on a media dominated playground full of shouting voices, in order to get heard one has to do something that is considered blatantly shocking, and then repeat it over and over until the contracts and the interviews start rolling in.

And it doesn't matter too much what that 'shock' is since it's fairly relative to begin with, just as long as it catches customer attention. The typically self-referential media stories about how he was hated and now loved, about the media and by extension the public, falling over themselves after their initial disgust, that's a joke. It's just another smokescreen to mask the linear nature of the machinery, such as the need for racial-crossover hits to reach the big-bucks consumer demographic markets, reference Monophonic Culture.

Eminem's record company president, Jimmy Iovine, claims his success is a signal that white culture is over and race is disappearing in America as a marker of identity. Today 'it's about class, not race, and hip-hop is one of the reasons'. From: America's new favourite son. And that's supposed to be a good thing?! Yeah well, 'Jimmy' here either doesn't know much about hip-hop music or he's being highly disingenuous, reference the racist roots of hip hop.

The game goes like this: in order to sell you've got get people's attention, and in order to get the public's attention you've got to create a niche in the media stream. And in order to get that niche in the relentless avalanche of sound and plastic image you've got to be different, you've got to shock. We can see the same thing with Marilyn Manson who used Satanism as his vehicle (Marilyn who? That's so last week.). Eminem (primarily) used misogynism and hatred for homosexuals. If this keeps up pretty soon we'll have bands dressing up as white-robed Klansman doing gangsta-rap; and whatever happened to the band Gwar anyway?

You know a joke that gets repeated over and over really isn't a joke, it's a cliché and cliché's are never funny, but that's what the entertainment industry is today. A very sad, pathetic, self-referential cliché that has no other purpose but to perpetually promote it's own sham and bathos to pry yet another dollar from the wallets of Joe and Jane six-pak for the corporate shareholders. I wonder if his image as an angst-ridden rebel would still be convincing if more people knew that Eminem is owned by the world's largest music company, Universal Music, which itself is a division of one of the world's largest media monstrosities, Vivendi Universal.

Vivendi has been struggling to pay down it's massive debt load, something like 20 billion dollars, by restructuring and selling off anything they can for cash. But few companies have that kind of cash right now in the aftermath of the dot-com, debt-bubble implosion. The latest tactic to restore a shred of investor confidence has been to put Barry Diller in charge of Vivendi's media interests in America.

Barry Diller, the veteran media entrepreneur, is to take full control of Vivendi Universal's US media and entertainment assets as part of the shake-up at the cash-strapped French conglomerate. The move consolidates Mr Diller's position as one of the most powerful global media executives. From: Vivendi hands US media assets to Diller.

'Powerful' is understatement; Barry Diller ran the USA network cable TV empire until it was bought by Vivendi for the paltry sum of just under 11 billion dollars. Also note that another fun friend, Edgar Bronfman Jr., is Vivendi's vice-chairman. According to insider trading records, the Bronfman family has been selling large portions of their stock assets in Vivendi, perhaps due to a lack of faith in the strategic viability of the heavily indebted company. The Bronfman's own Seagram, which is how Vivendi acquired Universal.

Finally, an important distinction to mention is the one between products sold directly to customers and those that are broadcast, usually for free, minus the satellite or cable TV fees of course. The products sold directly to customers follow the above stated rules of more shock, more money. But the broadcasts are constrained by very direct financial interests namely their corporate sponsors who buy advertising on their channels. This is most notable within the news media, which is itself a specialized division of the entertainment industry. This news-tainment industry is compressed between two poles, one that demands new and shocking in order to catch the publics attention (remember the news mantra: 'if it bleeds it leads') and thus the ratings needed to charge higher fees for advertising airtime. But the other part demands safe non-offensive (or minimally offensive) products that don't scare the viewing audience because the corporate sponsors don't want boycotts, they don't want to upset the public or allow them to establish negative connections to their products. So the news-tainment media has to walk a tightrope, creating an endless series of investigative journalist reports that are programmed to be ineffectual on a policy level, or that attacks trivial issues that everyone hates but where little can really be done. 14.11.02

Rebel Fashion Statement

What's the story on the standard issue U$ Army field jacket Osama's always wearing? Nobody mentions it but it's far too obvious to be just coincidence. And I don't think he's just wearing it to stay warm. Considering how often he's appeared on TV with it he must be trying to convey a message, to Americans? Perhaps bin Laden got the jacket from the CIA back when he was a freedom fighter and it's his subtle reminder to his former supporters? Otherwise it's just a fashion statement; now debuting - the 21st centuries answer to the Mao jacket and Che's beret. Pick one up today and be the coolest rebel on the block! 03.11.01

Still Life With Beer Can

February 2004

Dada is Deada

I encountered an example of Jasper Johns artwork referred to as "neo-dadaism". After the brief initial laugh it actually seemed more dangerous than just error. Now I've always interpreted dada as an effort to break down much of the accumulated barriers limiting artistic creativity with associated standards and requirements restricting the achievement of that estimable label called 'art'. This included schooling and training which made artists an elite, and their product an elitist result of carefully cultivated classical values.

Dada was a rejection of these standards and limitations that were stoically imposed upon social perceptions of artwork and artists. The point was to divest society from a lot of elitist rules that were being abused to ostracize legitimate talent. Talent that languished for lack of that official stamp of approval, that belonged to the wrong socio-economic class, or basically anything that didn't fit within the boundaries of orthodox rules.

By taking non-art and presenting it as art, dada was trivializing the artistic creation, making it accessible to the public as well allowing them to create art themselves. A democratization of art if one prefers the term. Elements of the positive were gained and certain elements of the positive were also lost in this transition to modernity. But this is history, this is period and era that can only be understood and valued within chronological context.

Dada isn't a genre that can be modified to fit another era. It happened, it's over, give it up, there is nothing left to rebel against, art has already been there done that; those classical rules have long since been buried. In furtive effort to rehash the past we see art like Jasper Johns being treated as the contradiction, the rebellion just for its own sake, the revolution is its own genre - how debasing, how late 20th century! An ironic debasement of debasement or what? "Neo-dadaism" would be like a joke told for the 10th time to the same audience, it's just not funny anymore, it's self-negated by it's very ubiquity. And even that element of artistic saturation has already been done to death. If the artist wishes to innovate in this vein they'll clearly need to try much harder. 15.08.01

Spielberg & Kubrick two ways to make a film and a dollar

Here we have a remarkable contrast between two popular filmmakers that produced very different products with very different styles although they had similarities in their personal backgrounds. Spielberg's films are replete with hollow stereotypes and vapid symbolism, tied together with flashy special effects, and just like a fireworks display it looks pretty for a few seconds then burns up and disappears from the mind. Kubrick on the other hand took time and effort to make quality, even visionary films, that remain evocative and intriguing decades later, example the resilience of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

The difference, and subsequent appeal, of Kubrick's films is that they contain a meaning, they have substance and even a message. Spielberg's films have no meaning and no message, they're completely hollow cheap entertainment often intended as vehicles for sequels and box office profits. Weird little alien lands, befriends and leaves, shark terrorizes sleepy coast and escapes for the sequel(s). Dinosaurs run amok and take over island. The only time Spielberg produces concise message is to spew out blatant propaganda flicks like Schindler's List. Yet when Kubrick got political, as in Dr. Strangelove, he gave it an edge, he made it funny and consequently actually a provocative, enjoyable film to see.

Spielberg's movies are riddled with stereotypes, tired clichés and plastic players, they insult intelligence and play to an insipid audience. Kubrick pushed the edge and used symbolism and imagery to fully deliver the power of the subjective cinema to inspire and provoke and audience to shed complacency and think for a few moments. Unlike Spielberg who uses Tom Cruise like a punch-press, Kubrick used lesser known actors to prevent a distracting screen presence, because in a quality film the actors are secondary to the image and the cinematic presentation. Hollywood and Spielberg, it's narcissistic crown prince, believe the opposite, that a big name is primary to a film and monetary success, because only that will lure an audience into buying overpriced tickets for their latest hackneyed claptrap.

Kubrick is lesser known, enigmatic, an eccentric and probably a genius. Kubrick worked outside the self-congratulatory, narcissistic world of Hollywood. But Spielberg is an omnipresent face even at every awards ceremony and Hollywood event, like stink on a monkey. Spielberg projects an image of family-man normalcy and strives for popularity and public approval, which is not very tough to do with all the help from his inside associations, media buddies, and politico power-whore sycophants.

A quality film will always make money, maybe not within the first two week opening (gasp!) but will undoubtedly over time if it's well made and something people enjoy viewing. Bottom line: Hollywood, and everything associated with it, is dirt - don't get in on you. 01.07.01

A review of Oliver Stone's movie Natural Born Killers, Directors cut [unrated]:

Few things are more utterly revolting in this world than the 'if it bleeds it leads' nightly local news. The first thing they cover is the latest murder, rape, or horrific crime, always with a false sense of pity and sympathy for the victims. Natural Born Killers delivers a well deserved attack against that same media monstrosity, albeit in an extreme form. Sometimes the extreme message is necessary to vitiate the constant moderation that's used  to desensitize the public, like a steady trickle of poison. Nonetheless, the film in its entirety seems to have left something to be desired, although a few scenes were choice:

• Media hiding behind the flag image

• When the Geraldo Rivera-type ratings vulture calls the black inmate sweeping the floors who's in for murder a 'brother' and hugs him. Typifying the media's approach to crime, that a black murderer is more deserving of our sympathy than a white murderer, and displaying disingenuous sympathy.

The most interesting element that was established was the demon symbolism. A demon is something inherently evil, Mickey and Mallory Knox thus were inherently evil, made worse by their desensitization inculcated from family, society, and media. Stone himself speaks of genetic predisposition to evil, exaggerated by environmental influences.

Historically the pendulum is swinging from the faith in the goodness of all souls to the alternate notions that some are just impossible to save. The idea of inherently corrupt persons; hence the background images of Stalin and Hitler in one scene. The two killers, much like the rest of their prison pals, are snakes, they're naturally violent scum who are destroyers of health and life. The not so subtle implication of the message is they must be dealt with accordingly because the consequences of not doing so are even worse.

I think the film establishes quite a strong negative association with just about every aspect of society it lampoons and criticizes, which is a step in the right direction. The penal system, the warden, the cops, and especially the American entertainment/news machine.

Hollywood Kills

Hooray for Hollywood!

Now I'm not an actor, I don't even play one on TV, but it seems to me that acting has got to be one of the most consistently challenging jobs a person can tackle, how so you ask? Because one is constantly compelled to be something they aren't. Now being a two dimensional screen character or your typical TV stereotype is a skill that even a sub-rate actor can moderately master after a few years in the biz. But once an actor reaches that plateau and they're popular enough to sufficiently sate their egomania, they feel a need for something more. They need to be more meaningful and important than a monochromatic line-reader. Not surprisingly many famous actors move into politics, 'causes', and activism.

But here they find that the greatest acting challenge around is playing the role with intelligence. The reason is that intelligence is one of those rare gifts that a person either possess or they don't, a genetic gift bestowed upon tragically too few humans. And to have wisdom AND intelligence, well that's just something not even a professional actor can feign. In their furtive attempt to become intelligent and smart they inevitably fail in a blaze of hypocrisy and foolishness that merely demonstrates to the attentive viewers, the ones smarter than the actors, that they are indeed no better than the average intellect. Yes they have fun feeling important, feeling like they have social and cultural significance beyond the vapid superfluousness of their leading character roles on that big, worldwide two dimensional screen. But what they really have is nothing but self-convincing dogma and silly notions that don't have a prayer against the light of reason or careful analysis. They burn up jet fuel flying around to 'Save the Earth' conferences simultaneously advertising themselves and gaining a perverted sense of charity. Meanwhile their personal industries contribute to our solid waste woes by producing mountains of advertising, CD's, videos, DVD's and other junk not to mention the merchandising tie-ins the fast food 'fun-meal' toys, etc. They employ legions of lawyers, crooked accountants, middlemen and similar parasites that serve no useful function to society. They provide no intellectual or educational value to the masses, only cheap diatribe and hollow rhetoric ripped-off from their equally vacuous social mentors deemed innocuous by the media overlords.

It's fun to pretend, to dress up with makeup. Actors and Hollywood are so popular amongst Americans, why else but because immaturity loves company? A nation of infants suckling the teat of Hollywood and gaining only sickness and arrested development. 20.11.00

Monolithic monstrosities: the Soviet Central Committee, just as the dark-ages European Church, dominated the economy and hijacked free artistic expression by disbursing funds only to approved (self-glorifying) channels. Interesting how the Soviets used icons so heavily, neatly paralleling the Renaissance with its Church mind-monopoly. The Soviets had Marx and Lenin, the Church had Christ and Mother Mary. The faces were different but the intent was the same, to create easily understood hero-idol/symbols for the masses to rally around. Quality of art in both cases was irrelevant but quantity was paramount. 28.09.00

Food of the Oxymorons (with fries)

2002

Cultural Imperialism

The 'John Frum' cargo cults of Melanesia are an astounding depiction of the effects that imported culture has on native traditions, and the continuous struggle between tradition and technological progress. It's a story almost too bizarre to believe.

Like an alien invasion the American military moved into the remote Pacific islands to occupy them for bases during W.W.II. ... and one day the Americans descended from the sky bringing aircraft, ships, boxes, food, clothes, money, radios, guns, things that the islanders had never known of and couldn't even imagine! And then a few year later it all left just as suddenly, save a few relics and some garbage. The cargo cults sprang up as a result of this cultural infection. They mimicked the devices they had seen, making wooden copies of rifles, radios out of pots and rope, idolizing dollar bills and photographs. Americans became gods and their prosperity became something that the islanders were to inherit; all they had to do was parade around acting like American soldiers and soon the giant metal ship will land and bring heaven along with it!

From the simple to the arcane, no aspect of the traditional lifestyle has been left unaffected. Change in diet causes obesity, alcohol and smoking shortens life-spans, western clothing, television, radio and education originally imported by the American military machine and later finished with the aid of tourism and media encroachment. Christianity brought by missionaries predated the military but serves to cap off the obliteration of native culture. Although the lifestyles were rudimentary, they worked well; and although substance in scope that really meant it was just population and resource sustainable. The Polynesian's lived in a paradise of gentle climate, plenty of rain for freshwater, adequate food, a place where hard work consisted of walking into your front yard and picking up a few coconuts, or spearing a few fish for lunch. With the arrival of much more advanced American culture they now suffer from obesity, alcoholism, violence, environmental destruction, and previously unimaginable concepts such as unemployment.

It seems like quite a twisted irony when stable cultures actually want to destroy themselves by adopting an antithetic foreign culture. But it's not so much that American culture is a conquering virus as it's the universal human nature to be wealthy, and the most blatant symbols of wealth are physical possessions. The Yap islander's money consists of giant stone wheels, so heavy they don't even move them, but that demonstrates the concept here, wealth is best when it's an ostentatious display! The Americans had power, they had machines and weapons, to the native islanders they seemed like omnipotent gods that never did any work.

The ease at which forces can be manipulated by the machine-culture belies the slavery that's actually imposed upon the creators.

American culture, by creating the supra-structures that form our society, individuality and the liberty that goes along with it, are sacrificed for amorphous collective goals. The islanders didn't see the unemployment, the diseases, the chronic social friction, the grinding poverty, mental illness, the obliteration of spirit and a sense of personal purpose and identity within society that every living person needs to survive as much as food, air and shelter.

Corporate law, tax codes, rules and details, the plethora of exemptions and exceptions, the trivialities and shading that covers every rule and law of daily life. These social constructs as they become increasingly regimented and complex leave the average person feeling isolated and confused. Simple concepts such as cause and effect, motive and intent become muddled. Getting food no longer means catching a fish for the meal tonight or digging up some taro root to store for the day after tomorrow - it means punching the clock for 40 hours a week to get your paycheck at the end of the month replete with deductions, taxes, union fees, donations and insurance while trying to get through rush hour twice a day to watch newsreaders talk about the latest corporate takeover and most recent mass shooting.

Material goods and technology don't arrive tax free on our doorsteps. Our maniacal pursuit of technological gains has turned us into atoms in a vapid monoculture where nothing makes sense because it doesn't function according to human values but according to the values of the structure itself. The survival of the system takes precedence over that of the individual. For example, if a CEO of a corporation is suddenly stricken by pangs of guilt over the deaths and pollution his company has caused and decides to make sufficient financial reparations and change in conduct, he will either a) bankrupt the company and put himself out of business only to make room for a more 'profitable' corporation who doesn't do nice things or b) get fired by his shareholders the moment he even speaks an 'uncompetitive' thought.

Until this trend towards collective meta-structures without inclusion of elemental human needs is reversed, the inevitable consequences we've already experienced will only become more insidious and pervasive. A prosperous economy no longer means a prosperous population. All the apparent technological and economic gains need to be rectified against the damage to human community. As our advanced meta-structures grow they do so at the expense of individuality and traditional cultural structures. Not that it must be that way just that it's so much easier to worry about the pollution later. Unfortunately some damage can never be undone. 09.19.00 & 20.06.09

Kultur-Terror

2000 Once I was perusing the shelves of one of the sad-sack Universities I've had the misfortune to be part of, and quite by accident I found an interesting book. Of course this might not seem that unusual, but actually finding anything remotely useful, intellectually stimulating or vaguely intriguing is pretty much a challenge unto itself at this [bad name deleted] University library. Anyway it was called Persuasive Images produced by the Hoover Institute, and since it was big and mostly pictures, who could refuse?

Persuasive Images is all propaganda posters and artwork mostly from WW I and WW II. According to the caption, one poster made by a Western European in artist in 1943 is titled "KULTUR-TERROR" and features a giant monster composed of all the typical aspects of American life. One arm has a money bag and a record, another a tommy-gun. One leg a blood stained bomb, another from a beauty queen. The head is a Klansmen's white hood and the body a bird cage with black dancers and the plaque 'Jitterbug - Triumph of America...'. And if that wasn't scary enough the American beast is busy stomping on the historic treasures of Europe - cathedrals and art museums ala Dresden or Monte Cassino, all while posing as the self-stated savior of European culture.

I'd like to have giant copies of 'Kultur-Terror' superimposed over a waving American Flag pasted onto highway billboards all over the country. If nothing else it would be fun just to watch the media and the Pavlovian populace having collective conniptions until they could pass a new law banning my billboards.

This is why the page is titled 'Kultur-Terror' and despite being over 50 years old the poster is the best visual typification I've yet seen of the run-amok nature of American culture, a bizarre and unhealthy beast with a narcotic like grip on Americans, and the world.

The Next Frontier

Low density is popular, cities are obsolescent, communications are instantaneous even if transportation isn't quite. Good land is scarce and a rising population puts demands on land and resources, therefore land prices rise.

According to this, within a free market the rich will have land and space while the poor will have apartments and congestion. So the trend points to a near future where the rich live in the suburbs and the poor live in the cities. Sort of an inverted feudalistic scheme?!

Except that increasingly less reason exists to live in the cities at all, jobs migrate outward. So where do the poor and the working classes go? Expanding border, a frontier. In many aspects the frontier concept is somewhat of a trick because it gets people to do things they would often rather not, such as work and reproduce. What does a thriving nascent civilization need more than anything else? Probably an expanding job base, and then an expanding, skilled, population to fill the openings, etc.

Within the traditional perspective of land we perceive of the needs of geography, and space. The reason is the benefits, the get rich mentality, the land ownership. This was the gimmick that brought millions to America, along with few regulations, low taxes and plenty of land that could be easily and cheaply acquired. But colonization has proved a troublesome issue on planet earth because all the habitable land is occupied. The only way to live in peace is to eliminate the old inhabitants completely and then move in, a slippery-slope unpalatable to western opinion.

The other option is opening up unused land such as irrigating the desert, moon colonies or undersea cities. Irrigating the desert is a good option because much of the desert soil is actually agriculturally productive. This would require a feat costing billions with a dash of central authority but nothing undoable.

Density: non-traditional perspective

Living in a can has been proposed as a solution to overcrowding and I suppose could be viewed as a solution to the frontier. One of the most notable proponents is the Italian architect Paolo Soleri, designer of Arcosanti Arizona. The arcology is a self contained city of a sort built into something like a giant building or a space colony. Despite how nice, and aesthetically designed the place is (or isn't) it's still stiflingly crowded. Crowding kills the birth rate and adds a whole host of it's own baggage to the issue such as crime and violence.

People want space, it's an incentive if it can be promised and provided. Find the space and you have the answer. Lebensraum: The tenacity Americans cling to single family dwellings is remarkable. Even in the face of horrendous housing shortages, example Silicon Valley of California has an average house price of over $600,000, even the developers refuse to build density housing. It's like a duplex is sinful and an apartment tower is reserved for Section-8. Consequently the software developer making $150,000 a year lives at the 'Y' with a duffel bag, a bus pass, and a fat bank account -- bummer dude. But the free-market always knows best so we needn't worry, or so we're told. Even in big America lebensraum is an issue, one that will become even more acute in the near future.

The culture factor

It's long been taken for granted that as a rule the people in France are French, the people of Germany, German. Perhaps this was true 100 years ago, but no longer. The land-life-lebensraum quandary for the 21st century is the fact that ethnic groups no longer are confined within the traditional legal boundaries formerly known as nation-states. Africa has acutely endured the political effects of this troublesome issue ever since colonial independence, what good are lines in the sand when they bisect tribal groups? Even the modernized/industrialized world has the same problem and it is rapidly approaching the African level of danger. The 21st century will be one of unparalleled friction, the second half of the 20th century laid the groundwork. As industry and commerce grew and developed it propelled ethnic redistribution on a scale never before experienced in world history. Even plant and animal life is feeling the same effect. Killer bees and Fire ants, nutria, zebra mussels, formosan termites, green crabs, brown tree snakes, hydrilla, flathead catfish, leafy spurge, Asian tiger mosquitoes just to name a few invaders of the North American ecosystems. All of it is made worse by environmental damage caused by human influences weakening the native wildlife and allowing invaders to gain footholds.

But this analogy is not overly unfitting for human's as well. Weakened cultures and rampant development make for easy prey for invaders to come in and gain footholds. Americans think it's just black versus white, Germans dislike the Turks - a local issue, no it's global. Read the news, Fiji riots and coups, Solomon islands same story, Indonesia. Westerners think wealth, industrialization, and a plastic pop-culture solves these inter-ethnic problems but it actually just masks and suppresses them only to be released in more bloody and violent outbursts in the near future. The melting pot is myth, a placebo all too eagerly swallowed by those most inclined towards self-delusion and the belief that by merely being friendly to the world, the world will be kind in return.

Exclusivity

Everyone wants a homeland but no solution exists because 'ownership' of the land is a singular outcome, a mutually exclusive determination. The Kurds want a nation but Iraq, Iran and Turkey aren't inclined to sacrifice their own control of 'Kurdish' land. Jerusalem is the mother of them all, how is it possible to amicably divide one city among three owners? Even King Solomon would have a hard time cleaving this kid. The outcome is conflict, warfare where only the victor vanquishing the foe to gain undisputed control of the land is the winner. Now add up all the groups of the world that want a nation then add up all the states that want things to stay as they are, then factor in their internal divisions; it makes for some, ahem, 'interesting' redistribution possibilities.

The people make the country not the cartographers

The pretty lines on the maps and the neat political entities so well established over the centuries have already been outmoded and corroded from the inside. Asymmetrical birthrates will turn nations inside out during the 21st century like a bloated corpse bursting with disease.

Migration, immigration, refugees , meet the new land owners

Look, fundamentally the story is always the same. No matter what laws are written attempting to keep a minority in power inevitably they will succumb either through interbreeding or coup. The ethno-demographic majority existing within a boundary becomes the de-facto 'owners' of the land. The minority may think they have control, and perhaps they do legally but it's purely illusory.

The ultimate warfare

Forget computer hacking, missile defense, NBC warfare, that stuff is irrelevant. When will the generals figure out that the ultimate warfare is demographics? Funding Star Wars is like winning the battle and losing the war, what good is a missile defense shield if 1/3 of your country is already de-facto controlled by your southern neighbor?

A Solution

B * P = S

B (population*profit motive)

P (space+useable land+environmental quality+natural resources+technology)

S (GDP+polity)

Although each factor is variable, some are more so than others. The biological part 'B' is difficult to change quickly, birth control would be one method. The physical element 'P' is also relatively inelastic, but technology can increase useable resources. Small changes in 'B' or 'P' can create large changes in S, the nature of the state entity.

The people in group 'B' use their time and labor to extract and create from the environment useable products. This process generates wealth because the finished product has more value than the raw materials. But in the process this wealth is transferred to the infrastructure owners and not (very much) to the majority of the industrial workers. Social friction develops because of this asymmetrical wealth aggrandizement. Not only that but the two classes take on two values with the laborers expendable and under (or poorly) utilized forming the disenfranchised and the alienated and the owners as indispensable aristocrats.

Two ways to change this:

A. Direct the wealth from this process into the hands of a select few who are responsible guardians (nobility, representative leaders etc.)

B. Evenly distribute it amongst everyone

This is the global quandary we've vainly struggled with for three centuries. No matter how you cut the pie, everyone can't be happy because covetous human nature always wants more! Ultimately we must conclude that the only way out of this conundrum is to alter the boundaries of satiation.

In politics it's not so much what you deliver as it is what you promise. Keeping this in mind, the solution is to deliver the basics and promise the world while at the same time keeping growth and development stable, but not necessarily flat. Capitalism offers the nifty behaviorist carrot dangling at the end of stick to the masses, they cooperate within an unfair system because of the belief they can get rich too!

This principle can be applied in ways that are less detrimental to 'P' and even 'B', lowering social friction, but the formulae depends on the values you want to encourage and the outcome you want to occur.

One interpretation could be that everyone should have the essentials to survive and cooperate within the framework of society. If some people have a minor disability and they require a little more than others to compete, this is fine, within reason. Furthermore everyone should have the opportunities to excel above the minimal level of subsistence living, but success is not guaranteed without the requisite intelligence and perseverance. This could well take the form of free schools (and I mean preschool through graduate school and beyond) and training courses. But that is absolutely not enough. Just having open schools is not going to spontaneously eliminate unemployment and make everyone educated. It's a two way street and both the educators and the employers need to get involved, communicate, recruit and apprentice. Not only will this help cement stronger community bonds by building trust between employer and employees but it will boost confidence and employability of the workers by helping them get into a job and career that is valuable and has a future. Americans have forgotten this much to their detriment, and today employers are waywardly trying to get it back by hiring consultants and headhunters but it's not the same and it won't be until a real connection is established between the education hemisphere and the industry hemisphere.

One minor problem within this new system is that a few will realize they're too dimwitted to ever make it, so we throw in a lottery system that offers nearly the same level of reward that the education path offers to a lucky few who tried but couldn't make it.

A singular party system may be needed to make this order function at least initially, I think that's OK, but not to become overly reliant on it. Perhaps something like a national Party based on the scientific method with the search for truth as the underlying thread connecting everyone. Now I'm really getting out on a limb, explaining is the toughest part. Think of communist democracy with science supplanting Marxist dogma. This will either result in intelligent, diligent and questioning individuals rising through the ranks or else a gaggle of jaded and disingenuous hypocrites. I think of the Greek sophists with their students challenging the teachers, a power struggle not with fists but with words and ideas (no less vicious), hopefully with quantitative analysis, established fact can be used as criteria and it wont descend into the legalistic relativism that sent those original Greeks to their 'pay-per-view' deaths.

I think modern science has a real chance to open this door on a new era where cunning and intelligence can be efficiently and safely channeled without wasting the lives of eligible people in drudgery and social disenfranchisement. But it's also about more than that, its about constructing a framework that will benefit all of society through technological advancement and forming the quality and maturity of character needed to handle new technology. Instead of having one hand (scientists) building the bombs and the other (politicians) deciding who to kill hopefully we can take it out of both hands and leave it to a balanced and wise mind(s). 16.08.00

If Hollywood really wants to make some bucks and reach that ever-elusive lowest common denominator, they should just film paint drying and add commercials -- a three picture deal starring low paid no-one's but replete with eye-popping special effects and a Top 40 soundtrack. The audience may complain about the poor quality of the film(s) but like trained rodents they always come back again and again, plopping down another $8 because they have such asinine, tedious existences that the cinema is their most accessible (legal) escape from the perpetually droll monotony of their daily lives. The public has no scruples and no powers of discrimination because the media control the entire spectrum and defines both ends of good and bad. The audience will watch whatever garbage is shown, and pay for it too!

Art Critique

To be a great artist one must possess both talent and imagination. Yes the key to art is in the transformation of reality within the mind of the artist. Their ability to interpret and alter what they see and put it onto a medium; what we want to see as unofficial art critics is the mind of the artist translated and displayed in the art itself.

Paradox - a product of relentless and unmitigated American culture. The British say Americans have no sense of irony, but if this is true it's only due to an immunity or a blindness caused by it being ubiquitous within the society. Pop art and high art go together so well, just as the profane and the transcendent do as well. Through popular and unorthodox, only good in the shadows of bad has any meaning. That's why heaven is hell and vice versa, just like life in the US of A.

Question: Is the value of beauty denigrated when it becomes ubiquitous? In other words is something beautiful because of its scarcity and if so would it then cease to be as beautiful in a world with numerous clones? If everyone was beautiful would aberration be the new beauty? Does repetition destroy the value of beauty? And no matter how beautiful it is wouldn't it get old after a while anyway?

So what does this mean, variety and change are as much key ingredients to beauty as it's inherent qualities like symmetry or skin tone are. Perhaps this is why beauty is so often described as having transcendent and amorphous qualities. It's very much a relative thing one based not so much on itself as it is being measured against other things. By that reasoning one way to be beautiful would be to make everyone else ugly.

Beauty is dead, Dada and pop art have been poking fun at this tragedy for years and the populace has simply become inured to this turn of events. Glibly eat the shit, no one will ever know unless the alternative is present! But this just meshes in with my previous concept that beauty is dependent on references, I hate to say relativistic but its a similar phenomenon. Well more accurately its simply a lack of awareness. Even relatavistically North Korea doesn't have a better system of governance than say Canada does but since the North Korean people have no awareness of an alternative they believe it's OK. Selective truth - information warfare. 15.08.00.

Cultural Shift

It's time to become more proactive so here's a start, from now I'll attempt to move away from the passive observational status and move onto a higher plane of active steps to build a new era. And the most important thing a new era needs is new people, or barring that at least people who think in new and more propitious planes of the patently powerful for the information technology era. They must thrive on unstable grounds and shifting paradigms. But this doesn't require more doublethink or greater attention to the popular, on the contrary it requires the ability to know history and roots on an unparalleled scale.

The only ones that can last in chaos are the ones that can see past it, able to comprehend time beyond the present and before the past.

They must know who they are, where they come from and where they must go. But this needn't be difficult task, with more information and history at our convenience than ever before, knowledge shouldn't be a problem. The need to prioritize everything is a key challenge, since there's simply too much in sum to deal with it all. Think fast, know what you know, what you don't and how to rectify it.

The ability to act on knowledge is even more critical, passivity may well be death by suicide. Clearly the events of the present are a good example of loss of rights and freedom through glib inaction and social diffidence. The classic American method of problem solving - waiting until it's a crisis and swinging into overdrive, may not always work, if indeed it ever has. Time is a luxury and the loss of it is a trend set to increase in the future because technology is a catalyst for change on every level. It feels like there has never been less time to do so much but we keep hitting the snooze button anyway.

Some decry our neo-modern hi-tech society as destroying self-sufficiency through specialization of skills. But this is a necessary evil for building a more advanced society. Much the same way parasitic single celled organisms came together to form organelles and eventually organs within a host body. We are building a whole much greater than the total sum of its parts, something we can't even visualize because its evolutionary. Dependency is the key word and specialization the rule. It's the most efficient way to extract resources from people and the environment. For this reason aberration and social friction must be minimized, a female society is better. And hey, without women where would our mitochondrial DNA be?

This is a woman in Afghanistan (underneath the birdcage). Tradition justifies the stereotypical lack of competence by stifling potential. Yet often those caged for prolonged duration reject the discomfort of freedom. That is if they ever see the opportunity.

Nelson Mandela, canonized South African communist emptied the jails of murderers and rapist, no doubt under the auspices of amnesty from the 'horrors' of the previous racist administration. This has been referred to as a classic tactic of communists worldwide. But what really happened? Was it nothing more than the release of a horde of undisciplined and prone-to-action-without-thought' men upon the unguarded populace! Yes the bane of organized societies worldwide - unemployed and angry males. Should they not be classified as a social hazard in-toto? Something akin to volatile high explosives - untouchable without a permit and proper training as well as being thoroughly regulated by a multitude of laws. 15.08.00

Dependence & Independence

White South Africans just never figured it out, they imported labor because it was cheap and became so glibly reliant on it they never realized the dissent that was brewing. Americans are doing the same thing, creating entire townships by importing cheap labor mostly from Mexico. The white employers may think they're doing the po' folk a favor by giving them a job, in reality they only throw fuel on the flames of resentment. Cheap labor builds prosperity, yet the prosperity is quite asymmetrical, the result is resentment. Communists know how to take advantage of the situation, but blaming them is just a cheap shot because they're merely exploiting an existing problem to further their agenda. Anytime you try to get very different groups to coexist these problems emerge.

Frans Grobler a white SA rancher in 1977:
I can't understand why they're turning against me. I treat my workers well. I give them two and a half rand a day each plus food, clothes, and a place to live. I let them use my land to graze their own cattle. But it seems like if you try to help them they think you're weak. It's a beautiful country and there's room for everyone, but they don't appreciate it.

The demographic ratio reached such a point that they couldn't hide behind open spaces and delineated pseudo-homelands. It may have been the size of three Californias but it still wasn't big enough. Under relentless international pressure the SA government had two choices be nice and compromise or stake a line in the dirt 'them and us' and shoot everyone that crosses it. They took the nice guy approach, carving up completely independent countries that the world refused to accept, like Transkei, turned South Africa into the cartographic equivalent of a smallpox victim, even calving off Namibia. But it didn't do any good because the blacks needed jobs and they had none locally so they went to work in white SA. The map changed but the economic picture didn't. The whites missed the point, they went to all this trouble to build new homelands for the blacks but they still kept them around as cheap labor. I guess it was like a drug, making life more palatable and cheaper.

Instead of indigenous economic development, South African blacks remained dependent on white employers -- and resentful because of it.

It's easy to criticize others but the same trends are manifest in America. They'll go down similar path with a similar bloody conclusion because of the economic and spiritual diseases of the soul capitalism and Christianity.

For that matter the Quebecoise are an interesting bunch, although not so much for their colorful culture as for the means with which the Independantisme and even the less militant tenaciously perpetuate it. Since March 1976 Canada's bilingual mania has somewhat ironically managed to anger both sides, probably playing into the hands of the separatists in Quebec more than anything. English culture pushes and they push back twice as hard. Now, dammit, the back of the 'Cap'n Crouche' cereal box doesn't have any games, just an English reprint of the other side!

Land isn't a country. Take the people away from it, and you have a dam or a parking lot. When I say country, I mean people - the country that is inside of people, inside of us. When we put all those countries inside together - we will have a real country for us all. - Gilles Vigneault.

French culture has been fighting a valiant battle but the likes of MTV and Anglophonic technological inroads have proved formidable foes. Unfortunately France herself won the battle and lost the war because the French are rapidly being outnumbered by their immigrated colonial subjects, perhaps a just desert, or maybe just the wages of nearsighted foolishness. Quebec now may have a chance, it seems development is to often the kiss of death for traditional culture since with money comes corruption of the soul. The blessing of poverty. 13.08.00 & 20.06.09

Art and nihilism

Shock and modern art exhibits have been very newsworthy as of late and generally that's not a debate that I have any interest in getting into. Personally I think that the definition of art should be left up to the individual to determine and that fascist wanna-be's like Mayor Giuliani should strive for a little consistency instead of authoritarianism. My concern with this issue is that nihilism inevitably gets dragged into the fray. The de-evolution of western art is often compared to a conversion to nihilism. This isn't true, and the good name of nihilism should not be besmirched by such allegations [that's supposed to be a joke], let me explain. The modern art revolution is sham nihilism, anything does not go, it is a pseudo-revolution which has been channeled and directed into narrow PC avenues. Can an artist make fun of say the excesses of Winnie Mandela or mind control tactics on University campus' ? An artist can freely make light of the silliness of Catholicism but can they do the same of Judaism? Yeah right! 

If the art community wants to produce trash, that's not a problem. What is a problem is not giving audiences the opportunity to pick what kind of trash they want to see or allowing dissenting artists equal opportunity. This clique of modern artists want the entire spotlight on themselves and their works while denying everyone else an opinion. And what's truly offensive is the fact that these people get the spotlight and no one else does. Their success has come at the price of traditional art and artists who actually try to make something worthwhile or non-offensive.  To say that modern art audience only want shocking and new is totally ridiculous. That's like saying violent shoot-em-up's are the only movies audiences want to see and then only funding those type of movies.

It's all an attempt to create an artificial demand based on a lack of alternatives. The pundits reply that shock-art sells out and evidently it therefore must be worthwhile. It seems to me that the only reason it sells at all is due to the unceasing stream of free publicity from news and other media! How many news stories have you seen for the Monet exhibit at the local museum? Hmm? Art like other fads goes in cycles, form is popular one period then boundaries become unpopular as is today. But what we have now is forced popularity. This is nothing more than another attempt from cliques and certain sectors of authority to define what the citizenry want and denying any alternative. 11.10.99