Deeper and detached meanings

I've been picking up a lot of Blu-rays (and occasional DVDs) these days after I realized that things "bought" on streaming services like Amazon can be lost, not by disconnecting from the service (obvsly), but if they happen to lose the license. The only way to rewatch Gandhi a couple years ago was to buy it for your Amazon library for $8 or whatever. I wanted to see it again, so I paid my $8. A few months ago, I noticed it was missing and upon further investigation, discovered that they had lost the license for it. So, despite me "owning" the digital copy of said film, I no longer did because they no longer had access.

The other thing is that I'm not interested in being tied to someone else's service fee and, if we do end up relocating to somewhere cheaper to live for retirement, I want to be able to watch what I want to whenever I damn well feel like it and regardless of whether we have access to this or that service. My friend, Roger, who retired to Panama with his wife last summer approached things the same way. He brought along a few hundred DVDs and Blu-Rays that he'd been acquiring over the years. I'd always been a movie acquirer, too, as I once had a huge collection of VHS tapes and now have a substantial collection of discs. At the very least, said discs are more durable than the tapes, which I eventually abandoned because it was more and more difficult to find a VHS player that could connect with modern TVs. Anyway, last night I decided to rewatch my newly-acquired copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's not a great film, but I think it's one of Johnny Depp's (and Benicio Del Toro's) better performances and I really liked the book. (It was also on sale, having been sitting on one of my Amazon lists for some time.) When it was done, Tricia looked over and said: "What's so entertaining about a couple of drugged-out idiots?", which is a valid question in most contexts and could be leveled at the current man actually running the White House.

I told her that the point of the book wasn't just to relay all of the weird visions that Hunter Thompson had while ostensibly on assignment for Sports Illustrated (and also while finding a place away from the LAPD to talk about the latter's murder of journalist, Rubén Salazar.) It was more to make a statement about just what drugs could do to the way you perceive things and if you were able to use that perception to talk about things from a broader angle; in this case the end of an era, being the 60s and hippie culture and the idea that expressions of peace were the only answer to institutional violence, whether at home or abroad. I compared it to Jack Kerouac's On the Road in the same way that it took a snapshot of the period in time and talked about life, the culture, the zeitgeist, and how people interacted with and were affected by all of those. She'd never read either of them, so I said that the best approximation I could make was of the difference between what I post about our trips to different places in the world and what she'd expect (and has suggested, pointedly) a normal "travel report/blog" would say. 

The obvious rejoinder is that I'm not writing a "normal" travel blog any more than Fear and Loathing is a "normal" novel. The fact that it wasn't normal is why it originally garnered so much attention and has lasted down through the decades as a significant piece of American literature. In the same fashion, I don't spend much time talking about where we went and what we saw and did, but more about the people we encountered and the differences in culture and the general "feel" of the place. You can bring up 1000 different reactions on Yelp or Tripadvisor about where to go and what to see. I'm not interested in replicating that. Instead, I'm going to tell you what I was thinking about while we were there, which is more of what interests me and which is kinda what Thompson and Kerouac were doing and what ended up delivering the greater impact of both their works.

The film is a decent approximation of that story and its theme. After all, it does give some prominence to "the wave speech", which is the central moment of the novel, really. But I think director Terry Gilliam's focus on the visuals (as is logical in, y'know, a film) clouded a lot of what Thompson's words otherwise delivered in the book. It's the most common problem with translation from one medium to another (typically prose to film; "the book was better-!") and this film does not escape it. Given Gilliam's general tendencies, it's hard to imagine how he could have. But I wanted a preserved copy of it because I think it is saying a lot more with those images than I think many gave it credit for or still do. It is, of course, in part because I have an appreciation for the novel and for Thompson's approach to life, in general. Suggesting that I'm trying to do what he did is only the most facile of comparisons, as it has never really been my intent. It's just the way I do things which, in the end, is about as much respect as can be conveyed. Kinda like making sure you can hold the film in your hand when the world starts dissolving around us. And not because of the drugs.

Batman: TAS, episode #6: It's Never Too Late

This episode is a departure from what we've seen so far and is, consequently, an appropriate insertion. We go from the shapeshifting monstrosity that is Clayface to a relatively mundane story about a crime boss coming to grips with the legacy that he's leaving behind and the impact that his actions have had on the city around him and the family beside him. It's a way to portray The Batman as a member of that community, instead of just the stopgap measure against the super-powered threats. But it stays true to form in one respect: The Batman is something of a side character, as the story is really about Arnie Stromwell, crimelord of Gotham, as the camera almost never leaves him and all of the major events revolve around his life and perspectives. This is where the character of The Batman kind of assumes its "guardian angel" aspect, which works hand-in-glove with Bruce Wayne's determination to protect/revive/save the city, depending on where you come into the Batman mythos.

It's also our first meeting with Rupert Thorne. Thorne occupies an unusual place in Batman lore because he was one of the central figures in Steve Engelhart's run on Detective and Batman in the mid-70s, but had very few other appearances once Engelhart left the books. That run is often lauded as one of the defining arcs for the Darknight Detective. It provided the template for both Bruce Wayne and The Batman against mundane opposition (Thorne, a corrupt politician leveraging his way through city hall and the local crime scene) and the more fantastical (Dr. Phosphorus, a man with see-through skin who burned everything he touched); through obscure characters (Dr. Hugo Strange) and the most prominent (The Joker, as we'll see later in the series); the strictly superhero side of The Batman (encountering all the usual suspects, like The Riddler) and the human side (the emotional weight of losing girlfriend, Silver St. Cloud.) It was so good and so highly regarded that it was reprinted in the 90s as Shadow of the Bat. As much as I enjoy other renditions of the character, that will always be the defining version of him for me. So, I wasn't really surprised when the main "crime boss" character selected for BTAS was Rupert Thorne, despite how obscure he might have been to others more familiar with characters like Carmine Falcone, who appears so frequently in the comics that he was tapped for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, for example. The fact that Thorne fits the role of "standard White guy" without a lot of the cultural stereotypes attached to characters like Falcone might have helped that decision, too.

As much as this story is a "come to Jesus" moment (almost literally, given the involvement of his brother, Michael, a priest) for Stromwell, I wonder if a slight change of atmosphere might have made it work better. From the very outset, we know that Stromwell is a figure of pity. He's already under pressure from Thorne and he's already distraught about his missing son. We're already set up to feel for him as a human, rather than perceive him as a figure of menace (crimelord, guys with guns, etc.) We don't get the opportunity to see a real shift in his behavior, since he's already kind of sad sack from the opening moments. I think that may have been an attempt to make him, the callous crimelord ("I sell candy!"), into a sympathetic character, but given that we're already sympathizing with a guy who dresses up as a bat and beats people up, I think the audience is already primed to accept people "in the life", as it were, and don't really need the encouragement to look favorably upon them if they decide to drop out of it. After all, that's basically The Batman's driving mission through the whole story: he's trying to encourage Stromwell to a state of contrition, and not just throw him in jail again. The flashbacks to the moment with the trains as a psychic scar and how we're shown that increasingly powerful impact (possibly losing a friend, possibly losing a brother, brother losing a leg) was sufficient for us to generate some degree of sympathy for him.

Along the way, we also intersect with a prominent social issue then and now: The War on Drugs. Given that this was produced in the early 90s, with it still in full swing and ardently supported by politicians across the spectrum, I think it's a credit to writers Tom Ruegger and Garin Wolf that they couched it fully in the theme of the episode. It isn't Batman beating Stromwell to a pulp to get the scourge of drugs off our streets. It's just a demonstration of what often happens to regular users; the ignored consequences of Stromwell's attitude that "No one's forced to take'em!" Of course, the wider scope on this is that legalization would force a lot of guys like Stromwell and Thorne out of business and the millions poured into enforcement and prisons could instead be poured into treatment and social services. But that's understandably not a conversation that either writers or producers were interested in having in this little morality play.

There are a lot of little technical points to be made in what is, first and foremost, a decent episode of the series. First off, it's odd that in their possible eagerness to distance themselves from constantly portraying Italians as crime bosses and crooks, in general (as with using Thorne and another "typical White guy" Stromwell), they end up in a restaurant, neutrally named "Pete's", whereupon Thorne asks him to bring out "an antipasto that will knock our socks off!" For the record, a place named "Pete's" is not the first choice I'd make for a dish like that. Also, why does everyone in this bar/restaurant, from the in-disguise Batman to Thorne and all his thugs, seem to be drinking Tang? Was there no more neutral color available in the palette that could still be interpreted as alcohol? And speaking of our disguised hero, this is exactly what I was complaining about in Feat, part 2. Instead of a Batman in full costume who throws a maintenance worker's cap on so that people somehow won't know it's him, we have Bruce Wayne in full disguise, convincing people that he's a passed-out patron of the bar. An actual master of disguise, yo. Also, I think it really helps Thorne become memorable in the audience's mind by being voiced in the stentorian tones of John Vernon, whom most know as Dean Wormer or the mayor from Dirty Harry. Vernon's voice could easily go from bark to mutter and still carry an enormous amount of weight. On the other side of the coin, it was kind of hilarious to see Commissioner Gordon speculating on an active event/investigation (a mob war) to a reporter on camera, as it that wouldn't inflame and/or hinder things. Yes, I know it's a way of avoiding straight exposition, but still. Plus, this episode was a much more bumbling Harvey Bullock, concerned only with the commissioner's hair, than the one we see in On Leather Wings.

Overall, despite the symbolism being a bit heavy-handed, I think It's Never Too Late did its job of showing the "regular" side of The Batman's adventures. Next time, we ramp back up with the most notorious opponent of all...

Not sorry

[Editorial note: I've been spending time away at another site, but decided that the conditions there just weren't appropriate for the writing I'd like to do about TV and cinema (timeliness, image controls, etc.) They, appropriately, really just want to talk about games, so I'm going to start trying to post here about other kinds of media on a twice-weekly basis, be it TV series or movies or whathaveyou.]

Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley's initial foray into moviemaking, is clearly a project that he's been sitting with for some time. There are details embedded in the story and the production that can provide the careful observer a lot of joy and it's part of what makes the combination alternate reality/urban comedy/morality play a success. The message of the film is both deeply embedded and often parodied at the same time, which brings another arcing theme to the forefront: No matter how crazy things get, you gotta go to work.

The dual message from the very beginning is that capitalism clearly isn't working for a lot of people and the amount of lying that people often have to do in order to participate in that system is ridiculous. We see this from the opening scene, when Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) tries to present a trophy and a plaque indicating what a great employee he was at former jobs that he never had. The joke, however, is on him, because the telemarketing firm he's applying to will hire any warm body off the street. Once he grasps the basic concept of continuing with the Big Lie by adopting his "white voice" to be a successful caller (hearkening back to Dave Chappelle's assertion that "Every Black American is bilingual. We speak street vernacular and we speak job interview."), Cassius begins to climb the socioeconomic ladder at the office, to the point where he's elevated to the level of Power Caller; a title that fairly drips with the multiple meanings of those in society with money being not only able to exercise the greater freedoms that it creates, but having access to the knowledge of how modern society is even uglier than many people imagine. At that point, he has a choice to make: abandon his social ties and the basic morality of standing up for the majority or continue on the path of societally-determined success (i.e. wealth.)

Along the way, Riley continues to present situations and characters that ask a variety of extremely overt and very subtle questions about the state of society and how many lies everyone has to willingly participate in to keep it moving (Gotta go to work...) These range from the most popular show on TV, "I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me" being displayed as "I Got the S@!# Kicked Out of Me", presenting the fiction that profanity isn't actually in use, to the very basic idea that the only measure of success in modern America is making enough money so that no one else can tell you what to do (reminding one of Office Space's Peter Gibbons' perfect job: "I would do... nothing.") The screenplay is smart enough to take those subtle jabs like the barely concealed profanity and elevate it to something more elaborate. In that case, it would be Mr. _____ (Omari Hardwick), as the guide for Cassius once he makes the coveted level of Power Caller. Mr. _____ is the only other non-white person in the room; thus, his name can't be spoken, as an example of something that is too profane to be revealed, since he serves the overlords (like WorryFree CEO, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer)) both adeptly and very willingly.

But there are a number of smaller creative details that also appear, from the fun with names (Cassius "Cash" Green, Diana DeBauchery) to Danny Glover tossing in his trademark line from 20 years of Lethal Weapon pictures ("I'm too old for this shit.") Riley also gives us comedic bits that demonstrate the characters' awareness of the bizarre reality and falsehoods that they're all living through, such as Anderson (Robert Longstreet) becoming very disturbed about how DeBauchery and Johnny (Michael X. Sommers) are regurgitating the sales/capitalist message that they've absorbed a bit too well to an office full of employees that will be repelled by it; or Cassius easily entering the VIP room at the bar, using the password that never changes and discovering that he's just one more obstacle to be walked over in a room full of regular people aspiring to a higher status, just like he is.

There were some great production approaches. Depicting the world of the telemarketer dropping into the room where their target is answering the phone was a slick depiction of the age of social media, which often brings the realities of those we're interacting with into our most intimate spaces. The setting of Oakland, a city long known for its working resistance to the social order, but now undergoing a rapid course of gentrification, was a great choice. The contrast between Cassius' one room garage apartment, filled with the poorly lit detritus of being lived in, and the starkly white, museum-like apartment with its view of the Oakland city center, was well done. Lift's quip about the "high production values" of the Claymation movie that introduced his Equisapiens program was also a nice study in contrasts; the use of a medium from childhood TV specials introducing a project of grotesquerie maintained the comedic element of this film and made imagining that kind of delivery a feasible choice, even in our own (slightly) more sane world.

Stanfield did an excellent job in the starring role; so much so that certain scenes attempting to depict his struggle with his new life choices seemed superfluous. We didn't need a couple minutes of him explaining how torn he was when that was already splattered across his face every time he faced the camera. This actually contributed to a bit of a slow period in the middle of the film where I found myself almost doing the "hurry up and move on" wave. We don't really need a lengthy conversation between Cassius and Detroit (Tessa Thompson) to know that the former isn't quite on the same awareness page as the latter. Indeed, Thompson's role was kind of disappointing, in that her artistic depiction of what was happening on the streets didn't add a whole lot to the overall story. Similarly, Squeeze (Steven Yeun), as the labor organizer in the office, was kind of pro forma. Yes, Cassius needed someone new to show him the realities of labor-management action and politics, but Squeeze didn't serve much purpose other than to provide the rather obvious romantic complication.

And that's my one real complaint with the film: the messages occasionally felt too obvious and shaped to provide an easy transition between the second and third acts. We didn't need to be hit over the head quite so hard (with a cola can or not) with the impact of these changes on Cassius. Similarly, we didn't really need the happy ending where he ended up getting the girl (back.) Thankfully, there is a little moment at the end that brings the air of bleakness and the bizarre back to something that was edging toward the formulaic, but I think Riley could have gone even farther in keeping things on the fringes of sanity and still gotten the positive audience reaction that studios lust after.

Regardless, it's definitely a worthwhile film that occasionally hits one squarely between the eyes when considering modern America and its, uh, excesses of all kinds. As Riley noted in an interview, the current political situation made some parts of the script a bit too "on the nose". Something to think about when we all head back to work...