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 showcases the opposing views, that of the state establishment and 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

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 actions likely in such an event.

Fail-Safe highlights the conflict 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 (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:

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, 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 strange 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, Buena Vista/Disney the distributor is definitely gouging the market,  so fuck to them. 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, they're values which attain their status 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 movies quality in proper context they have to have at least 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 not just to be 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 based on a book 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 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 watching 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 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: 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 has 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, 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 God destruction regardless of the reason. The more we try to defeat this 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 both 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.
	Diller: As bald as I wanna be.

'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 and 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 journalism that is programmed to be ineffectual on a policy level or that attacks trivial issues that everyone hates but little can really be done about it. 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 product of carefully cultivated classical values.

Dada was a rejection of these standards and limitations 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 or belonged to the wrong class or basically anything not fitting with 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 it's 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 it's 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 all tied together with flashy special effects 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 a quality, even visionary film that remains evocative and intriguing even 30 years or more later, example the resilience of 2001.

The difference and subsequent appeal of Kubrick's films is that they contained a meaning, they had substance and even a message. Spielberg's films have no meaning and no message they are completely hollow cheap entertainment 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 some ham-fisted propaganda flick like Schindler's List. Yet when Kubrick got political like 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.

Kubrick used lesser known actors to prevent a distracting screen presence because in a quality film the actors are secondary to the image and message. Hollywood and Spielber, it's narcissistic crown prince, believe the opposite, that a big name is primary to a film and its 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 2 week opening (gasp!) but undoubtedly eventually if its 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 is used only to desensitize the public like a steady trickle of poison.

Still, the film in its entirety seems to have left something to be desired; however, certain 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.

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 inculcation from family, society and media. Stone himself speaks of genetic predisposition's to evil which are 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 killers much like the rest of their prison pals are snakes, they are naturally violent, 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.

Down With Disney

I had the misfortune of being significantly annoyed by an opinion molding 'news' story on ABC news Thursday Dec. 7. Hate and the Internet, how easy it is for kids to get sucked into that dark vortex of evil that falls under the banner of "hate". I think Peter Jennings set a record for number of times he used the word hate in one sentence. Did you get the message into your TV addled mush-head? "HATE is BAD, Internet HATE must be CENSORED! "

The concerted effort to pry that policy window open with crowbar and sledge hammer if necessary is more than palpable. Pure propaganda, that's exactly what it was because only one side was given voice, no attempt was made to turn it into a fair or accurate view of Internet communications. And furthermore the deliberate use of loaded words like 'hate' and 'hate groups' biases any newsworthy validity the story may have had. Once again the nightly news brings us editorial opinion posing as accurate reporting with all too few viewers the wiser. No one said monopolies die without a fight and this one is no exception.

My question is, what can we do to keep our Constitutional rights to free speech and keep our communications mediums free from government and interest group censorship? Well if you say nothing, think again.

Since ABC had the audacity to air this piece I say we first target ABC, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The following are some recommended guidelines to follow until ABC news begins fair and accurate reporting reflecting a respect by the management and staff of that company for the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the freedoms it grants to all Americans.

• ABC stock will never be bought or owned except to sell short.
• Disney merchandise will not be bought nor any tickets to Disneyland/world or other company theme parks.
• Disney owned films and videos will not be bought.
• The following table lists some Disney/ABC interests to avoid:

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. One wonders if any government art subsidy can ever sponsor independent and honest expression. 28.09.00

Food of the Oxymorons (with fries)

2002

Cultural Imperialism

Few things are more disastrous in their loss than genetic character and culture especially since the two are intricately related. Neither can be replaced once gone. While some are out 'hugging' the whales and the trees meanwhile even more horrendous loss is being exacted upon human populations.

The 'John Frum' cargo cults of Melanesia are an astounding depiction of the effects that imported culture has on native traditions, a story almost too bizarre to believe. Like an alien invasion the American military moved into these islands in the Pacific to occupy them for bases during W.W.II. ...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, ample 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 'superior' American culture they 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 is 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