a sense of joy and then a panic

Lake Dead = The worst rip-off of The Hills Have Eyes.  EVER. 
     - Worse even than The Hills Have Eyes 2.  And boy, that movie was bad.

Real problem with movies like The Hills Have Eyes: they generate so many awful rip-offs that think they're doing the same thing - good people vs. murderer-rapist-cannibals (wait, didn't Faulkner first do this?) somewhere in uncivilized America - but they completely lack everything that made THHE good: blatant gore (not fake cut-away gore), political critique, character development, good acting, good make-up, an unsensual eye, and atmosphere.  Oh, the lacking atmosphere.  

I don't think I've ever written about how much I love, love, love the remade THHE (I've never seen the original).  I knew I would since seeing that "Mein Teil" AMV and reading the Wikipedia entry - and I actually bought one song off the soundtrack, "Beast Finds Beauty" (Beast and Beauty are the family's German shepherds - Beauty, the male dog, is killed and eaten by the mutants, but Beast, the female dog, survives and helps the protag Doug save his baby) before I ever saw the movie.  It was my "favorite movie I've never seen".  I wasn't disappointed when I finally did see it over the summer.  When survival horror is good, it's very, very good.  THHE's the kind of movie that's going to get a lot of flak for "gratuitous sex and violence", but I'm so tired of cut-away, assumed violence that I wouldn't care even if it was gratuitous.  It's not.  Sometimes I wonder what these people would do if they ever read a Western.  I mean, I'm reading about dead babies hanging from trees like every other page, and this is widely regarded as one of the best American novels of the past quarter-century. 

I'm not saying Blood Meridian's not great - it is - but "regeneration through violence" is part of humanity's thematic landscape, not some twentieth century slasher-flick trend.  And it's a lot worse when there's no regeneration at all, no catharsis, because violence has no consequences and is never really that bad.  Because people are that bad, and they're not that bad because they watched THHE or Cannibal Holocaust or Tom & Jerry or a Madonna video or whatever.  What the fuck are they going to blame the Inquisition on?  Have they read Bartoleme De las Casas' "Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account"?  Again - television did not exist then, and the Spanish were already feeding babies to dogs and ripping open pregnant women and massacring like millions of people. 

It somewhat reminds me of this LJ comment I read today (with a peace sign userpic!) on a controversial!photoshoot featuring naked men and guns, "dominating" each other a la war on terror: 

"I hate these. I hate the use of guns in this 'fashion' shoot.  Shows how militarized our society is."

What, are you serious?  I don't understand people like this (the user also claims to like Chuck Palahniuk, which just makes me doubt Chuck Palahniuk's credibility as some kind of countercultural iconoclast even more).  My cousin-in-law is similar.  She hates watching depressing movies (and by depressing, I mean Apocalypse Now, because she just had to know what my favorite movie is) because she doesn't like being depressed.  I would clearly fail as a hippie. 

Oh yeah.  I'm going to be changing my username soon.  So if you see some unfamiliar person hanging around LJ, please don't take 'em out back and shoot 'em.

I just saw an ad for Zune (the MP3 player) with all these Zunes standing in what looks to be a graveyard, dormant.  Then one starts sending another one a song, and soon they all have the song, and they're all alive and showing videos and blah blah blah.  Anyway, I mention this only because on one of the Zunes, there's a Hello Kitty-style panda and some other cute little animal standing next to each other...

... doing the Fusion Dance.  Trust me on this, I would recognize it anywhere.

Other pop culture trends I've noticed:
* R&B is becoming inspired by rock and synth.  Seriously.  See "Umbrella" by Rihanna feat. Jay-Z.
* Soft pop is turning into disco.  See Maroon 5's new song.  Don't remember what it's called.  It is still bad, even if does try to be disco.
* Linkin Park is trying to turn into U2.  Watch their video for "What i've Done" and be amazed by Chad-Bono. 
* Southeast Asia's making a name for itself!  Just yesterday Law & Order SVU thought that maybe their suspects would be Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists in Indonesia, and today I see that Road Rules has taken its entourage to Thailand.  Most of the twenty-somethings, of course, just want to par-tay in the land without laws.  But Brooke says, "I've never been outside the country, much less a place like this.  I just want to stay safe."  Ah well, she changes her mind about Thailand soon enough - it's "awesome" when they go to an exclusive island hotel.  Until she steps on some sea anemone and is convinced it's a jellyfish, then insists everyone else pee on her.  Truth stranger than fiction.
* Is it just me, or is everyone getting into the "dark side" of their favorite heroes?  Now god only knows I love temptation of the good by the dark side.  However, in order for this to work, there's gotta be a good reason.  Batman was the original, and of course he is completely dark and awesome.  But Spider-Man, now?  Please.  Peter Parker goes dark?  Harry Potter tried and became emo.  'Tis always the danger when people who are not actually dark become taken over by their dark side.  Also, if you want to do a radical makeover, the makeover ought to be radical, not superficial.  Like, evil Spider-Man kills Mary Jane.  Now that movie, I would see.

In conclusion, the mainstream is trying to woo me over, apparently.  Synth and disco, dark and rebellious, Southeast Asian and politically conscious!  Too bad the mainstream fails miserably at trying to be alternative - pretty much by default.  Of course, it only fails for people like me.  For the mainstream, it's great, fresh and exciting!  The Lincoln Journal Star's new column, "What did you think of 'Spider-Man 3'?" (yes, we actually have columns like this) proves this.  One guy says, "I'm sorry but the third installment was horrible.  What's up with Peter Parker going emo?  People in the theaters were literally laughing at Peter Parker when he starts crying."  But the other two say the movie was "fantastic... character development was excellent". 

Meanwhile, the battle between teachers and students - or rather, between censorship and free speech - continues. 

A teacher at my own high school has been suspended with two weeks left of school (though the school district insists he planned to retire and him being gone the last two weeks is for "personal reasons" - the teacher himself responded to a student email by saying that he was suspended), apparently for showing a video in his geography class called "Baghdad ER", depicting "life in the emergency room of a combat support hospital in Baghdad [that] includes graphic footage."  He's known for being the history teacher who wanted to teach history "backwards", starting from the present and ending with the past, something that was apparently horrific for reasons I can't really think of to Lincoln Public Schools.  He had been teaching it backwards for years when suddenly LPS told him he had to stop.  Around school, he's famous for having a holographic poster in his room that shows Osama bin Laden when you look at it from one side, then turns into President Bush from the other side.  Many think that it wasn't really about the video - the video was just an excuse for LPS to get rid of him.  Also, according to a girl on a facebook group (and I trust the students in this case), the whole thing with "Baghdad ER" was a girl in the class casually mentioned it to her parents, who freaked out and called Mr. Mann (my biology teacher who doesn't believe in evolution), who told the principal. 

In Cary, Illinois, a straight-A senior got an assignment to "write continuously for 30 minutes without making corrections, and without judging or censoring what he produced", and turned out an essay "rife with profanity, obscure pop culture references and hints of violence", ending with the following directed at his teacher: "No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting."  (cg being short for Cary-Grove, the high school)  He was arrested and charged for disorderly conduct after the teacher took the essay to school officials, who called the police.  He's been discharged from the Marines' delayed-entry program. 

In another case, a student was asked to write in the style of a favorite author - in this case, Stephen King.  This of course produced "extreme violence", and the student was suspended pending a psychiatric evaluation (which he passed).  The AP article goes on to quote a criminologist as saying "significant episodes normally involve students who are loners and who have expressed previous fantasies of bloodshed" and because this particular student was "an athlete and accomplished... with no record of trouble", this took vigilance too far.  And that's like saying preps can express violence if they want, but not nerds.  And people, please.  We shouldn't decide whether kids "get away" with things based on how popular they are.  Right?

Granted, it's not smart for students to tell teachers they're going to inspire a school shooting.  It's rare that a student actually means to get guns and shoot up the school, but they often joke about it, even if teachers don't hear - at the cafeteria, online, on weekends.  With each other.  The sentiment is there.  Adults joke about killing co-workers and bosses too, but no one seems to get anxious about that.  I also think it's ridiculous to tell a student they're effectively in a "safe space" - don't censor yourself, don't correct yourself, just free-flow - and then freaking have them arrested for what they write.  That's entrapment, isn't it?  How do you expect students to actually follow assignments when that's the response they get?  To actually express their opinions?  To say anything at all to you, grown-ups?  And if they can't say anything, how do you expect them to get "better" - assuming, of course, there's something "wrong" with them in the first place. 

Not to mention, always the assumption that it's the individual, and not the system, that must be fixed.

In the words of Stella Gibbons, there's "something nasty in the woodshed." 

I love Hail to the Thief, it's the first album of theirs I got and I have a certain fondness for it... I bought it in a Borders in Wall Street that we entered to take refuge from the downpour.  I associate Hail to the Thief, thus, with a cold and dreary, ambitious New York.  A gray romanticism.  Anyway.  Here's the full lyrics of the above song - a very, very good song about a very, very sad disease that kills bunny rabbits.

the mongrel cat came home holding half a head, proceeded to show it off to all his newfound friends
he said, "I been where I liked, I slept with who I liked... she ate me up for breakfast, she screwed me in a vice
but now I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied"
I sat in the cupboard, I wrote down in neat, they were cheering and waving, cheering and waving,
twitching and salivating like with myxomatosis
but it got edited, fucked up, strangled, beaten up
used as a photo in Time magazine, buried in a burning black hole in Devon
I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied, don't know why I feel so skinned alive
like my thoughts are misguided and a little naive, I'm twitching and salivating, like with myxomatosis
you should put me in a home or you should put me down, I got myxomatosis, I got myxomatosis
no one likes a smart ass, but we all like stars
(for a reason) that wasn't my intention (for a reason) I did for a reason (reason)
it must have got mixed up, strangled, beaten up, I got myxomatosis

- Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

Before I went on that tangent, this post was supposed to be about this infuriating thing I read last night.  Well... is it really infuriating?  Maybe only to me.  I have serious psychological issues, clearly.  But for some reason I have this irrepressible need to defend violent movies, especially graphically and unstylistically violent movies.  Stylistic violence - i.e., most American action movies that involve action heroes and squeaky leather capes and shooting guns sideways, etc.... a good example of this is The Matrix movies and Equilibrium - is something I detest. 

Maybe it's because I learned from a YouTube post that FUNimation thought it would be clever and sensitive of them to cover up collisions with "ugly white flash marks".  Maybe it's because of this post that I read last night... criticizing the movie Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah) for its portrayal of women.  It was one of those "angry feminist" blogs.  It was very angry that the character of Amy is shown to enjoy being raped - the first time that is (the second time can't be mistaken for that, but it's edited out of the cut version, so most people don't see it) - and you know, this is a horrible thing.  Also, she screams and is helpless.  But not every movie can be made to your liking, and I do think that rape is frequently not cut and dry.  The man that raped her was her ex-boyfriend.  She was distanced from her husband.  I'm not saying that's an excuse but I think it should be mentioned.  And not every woman would react to attack by putting up a huge fight.  See "A Streetcar Named Desire"'s end scene, where Blanche essentially just shuts down, physically and mentally, when she realizes that it's hopeless. 

I also have decided that I'm not really so much an angry feminist, or an angry Asian, or an angry college student, or an angry brunette - if anything, I honestly believe that I'm an angry organism.  That's it.  Because I really hate it when people have button issues that forbid them from considering that something that is contrary to that issue might have some merit.  I know I rant about colonialism all the time, but I don't go around screaming that Joseph Conrad is racist because of the way Africans are depicted in Heart of Darkness.  It's still a great book.  Same with Catch-22.  I mean, Lewis Carroll - unhealthily obsessed with little girls - but Alice Through the Looking-Glass is amazing.  Or the people who decide DBZ is racist because of some unfortunate artistic design.  And then they get hung up on it.  They can't get past it.  I really think, however, that you have to look at the entire message of a work instead of one snippet about its creator or in the work itself, a snippet you might object to. 

Is the point of Heart of Darkness that Africans are savage, emotionless, faceless dark shapes?  No.  Absolutely not.  If anything white people are.  I've never understood this criticism myself.

Is the point of Catch-22 that women all act the same - like whores or crazies - and are sex objects?  No.  Yeah, the characters might think that.  They're also in World War II at the time.  Instead of getting uppity about the way women are portrayed, maybe wonder if your grandpa or whoever who served in World War II didn't think the same way when they were overseas. 

I only dislike movies for their messages when I dislike the entire message.  I could have liked A Clockwork Orange, but the message was that criminals should not be blamed or punished for their actions, and should not be made to change.  And I disagree.  I could have liked V For Vendetta (well... actually, the movie was made pretty poorly, so maybe not quite), but the message seemed to be that you can shake up the system through blowing up buildings and detaching from everyone, and I just can't support that perspective. 

And I can't stress this enough.  I feel like most of the things that actually get banned or edited or censored are mangled because they tell the truth.  And you know what's weird?  Almost everything is the truth.  White supremacy is not the truth, but the existence of white supremacists is.  I'm really into the first amendment.  I really think that if you don't want to listen to it/see it, just don't.  I would actually suggest you do.  My mother always said to know your enemy.  I'm also really against protective bubbles.  Like, I just can't take it, don't show it to me.  I feel like no one has the right to not be able to take it, not unless they're saying that from personal trauma (which is a different matter entirely).  Pretending that the world is not ugly, short, and brutish, as Hobbes put it, is just deluding yourself.  And if you delude yourself, you'll never know the extent of the problem, you'll never know the entire truth of the matter, and you'll never find the entire solutions.  Ever. 

Banned Videos That Are Banned Because They Tell The Truth:
* "Mein Teil" - Rammstein
* "Closer" - Nine Inch Nails
* "Jeremy" - Pearl Jam
* "American Life" - Madonna
* "What It Feels Like for a Girl" - Madonna