Some thoughts on Judas and the Black Messiah

Judas and the Black Messiah is pretty fucking great. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in but was elated that Fred Hampton wasn’t softened into a more digestible liberal for the moderate masses. And while politics aren’t a terribly huge component of the movie, we still get Hampton quoting Mao and proclaiming “we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.” Indeed, it’s difficult to see a movie explicitly celebrating an anti-capitalist black radical being made prior to Mike Brown/Ferguson/BLM.

The movie was incredibly well written and acted. It was gripping, emotional, brutal, and enraging (this is the extent of my movie reviewing abilities). Condensing 2+ years, multiple characters and state entities into 2 hours was necessarily bound to leave a ton of essential material out (i.e. Hampton’s break from the NAACP, the background of his partner Akua Njeri, the interrelations between the FBI and Chicago police, etc.). But rather than being seen as detrimental, it should be a catalyst to learn more about Hampton, the Black Panthers, COINTELPRO, and the war fought by the state against its own citizens – which preceded Hampton and survives his death.

***

One of the more profound aspects of the movie is FBI agent Roy Mitchell. He’s neither cartoonishly racist nor a would-be race traitor – just a bland, middle-of-the-road suburbanite. He shows obvious discomfort while being grilled about the supposed horror of his daughter dating a black man by his ghoulish colleagues. If this movie were made 10 or 15 years ago it would be the event that impels him to work within the system for change, or at least cause palpable existential angst – but we see neither.

We don’t get a scene where FBI informant/Black Panther Party infiltrator William O’Neal is kind to his children while Mitchell looks on, experiencing an internal epiphany as a black man is humanized before his eyes. No scene where he confronts the naked racism of his colleagues. He merely is what he is. Arrogantly, he sees patient, incremental progress as the only justifiable means for equality. He executes his role within the state apparatus, secure in his belief that black radical groups are no different than white nationalist groups (which obviously parallels the conservative brain-worm idea that BLM is equivalent to the Proud Boys).

Roy Mitchell is just one of the unremarkable faces nestled within the bosom of systemic/structural racism.  Countless more like him are dissolved into this amorphous morass: politicians, capitalists, bankers, real estate brokers, landlords, cops – and their vast army of underlings performing the banal work of maintaining the systems and structures that produce/reproduce racism. Most are well compensated and few experience consequences – what they do, after all, is perfectly legal. This is as true during Hampton’s short life as it is today. Such people are occluded when politicians do little more than pay lip service to systemic/structural racism. Behind that sprawling framework are people just like Mitchell doing their jobs, sometimes with and sometimes without malice.

***

This is mentioned in articles and reviews but a little is lost in the portrayal of William O’Neal as a man in his late 20’s when he was actually 17 when blackmailed and terrorized into working for the FBI (similarly, Hampton was 21 when he died and played by an actor in his 30’s). We should not forget that this was a literal child bullied by the might and force of racist state power. This is not to excuse his heinous actions but it is an essential component to understanding the context of how/why O’Neal did what he did.

This can likely go without saying, but none of what happened to O’Neal (and Hampton, of course) should be seen as relics of a bygone era. State power continues to harass, imprison, and infiltrate those agitating outside of legal, polite channels for long-delayed justice and inequality. One need look no further than the suspicious deaths of prominent Ferguson activists, or the brutality displayed by cops all over the country to peaceful marches and demonstrations.

As the title of the movie implies, and as the Lucas Brothers make explicit, Hampton and O’Neal embody the extreme duality underlining how one chooses to act in a patently unjust society. Hampton is a principled revolutionary willing to die for what he believes. He refuses money that would guarantee his personal freedom and instead directs it toward furthering the cause. O’Neal is solely concerned with saving his own skin, and takes his blood money to become a small business owner, thus fulfilling the American dream. One loses his life, the other his soul. Between these two shores – collective revolution and individualistic counter-revolution/collaboration – is an ocean where some hew closer to one side or the other, while the masses cluster in the middle, primarily concerned with finding their socioeconomic niche within a society they have little interest in materially changing.

I don’t really know how to end this except to say the powers that be would love for all of us to be more like William O’Neal than Fred Hampton.

A heartwarming tale of redemption for the singer of a shitty Christian metal band

To be a fan of metal can be annoying if you care at all about supporting people who aren’t terrible. The vast majority of bands in the genres (and genre crossovers, and subgenres, and subgenres of subgenres, etc.) are composed of cishet white dudes. Because of this, one has to be – again, if they even care – on guard against supporting racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, rapists, and garden variety garbage people. I suppose in this regard it’s not all that different from supporting the work or art of any person you don’t know – artists, politicians, comedians, scholars, bloggers, etc.

As I Lay Dying – God, what a terrible name – is a Christian metalcore band. Metalcore is basically a hybrid of hardcore (itself an offshoot of punk) and metal that began in the early 90’s and whose best days were over by the end of that decade. One might think that Christians wouldn’t be very good at playing such evil sounding music, but Christian bands are among the genre’s best: Zao, Disciple, Living Sacrifice, Strongarm, Overcome. Not among those bands, in my opinion, is AILD, who began in 2000 and signed to Metal Blade Records in 2003 (this is indicative of their popularity within the context of the underground metal scene).

But the good times didn’t last as the singer, Tim Lambesis, was convicted of trying to have his wife killed in 2013 – I’m not certain, but I don’t think is something Jesus approves of. I don’t want to get too into the convoluted timeline, but it seems he stopped being Christian without telling anyone in the years leading up to the attempted murder-for-hire. He further claimed the band wasn’t really Christian, which they vehemently denied (I love the idea that he pretended to be Christian just to sell his band’s music and merchandise to Christians). Anyways, it seems it was during his “atheist phase” that he tried to have his wife killed.

Lambesis served his time – 2 whole years – and was released in 2016. Somewhat hilariously, he sued the State of California for $35 million because they wouldn’t provide a prescription to combat his withdrawal from steroids (the toxic mixture of atheism and steroid usage are the true culprits in all of this). But, whatever, he’s out now and AILD has triumphantly reunited (check the comments for how to be a terrible online atheist)! In the months leading to the reunion, Lambesis had this to say

I cannot say for certain what life looks like going forward as so much is different now and I’m still learning. Music always has and always will be a part of me, and has helped me get through the darkest parts of my journey. However, this apology is not a part of promoting anything [Sure, right]. Rumors circulate, and that’s something I’ve learned to accept, but this apology is just that, an apology to everyone around me.

I’ve remained silent to the public since expressing remorse at my sentencing because time seemed like the best way to promote healing. Today marks the first opportunity to freely apologize without any motivation to gain favor from the courts, as I have now completed the entirety of my legal sentence (including the completion of all parole/probation requirements). Let it be clear that no amount of time served can right my wrongs. I do not feel deserving of a second chance and am not asking for anyone’s trust [Several months later, he apparently made the decision that he very much deserves a second chance; though, no doubt, he will make no such claim publicly]. The way many people feel about me makes sense, and only time will tell if my future actions line up with my remorse, something I pray for every day. In the last five years, the ripple effect of all my actions has extended further than a written statement can address. Thus, I will continue to apologize in both words and actions moving forward.

People who like bad music are really psyched – shows are selling out, or being put in larger venues.

The band claims that the singer might be a Christian again:

[Lambesis] has spent much of the last year re-evaluating what originally convinced him to abandon belief in God. After much brokenness and repentance he sees things differently, considers himself a follower of Jesus, someone submitted to the will of God, or whatever you want to call it,” adding, “That’s for him to talk about when he’s comfortable and only time will tell if he is sincere.

That was from 2014 and occurred a couple months after his conviction. It does not appear he’s addressed his faith, or lack thereof (aside from the reference to praying in his statement above), but I can’t wait for the interview where he explicitly blames his atheist lapse for leading him astray. Because who among the godless readers of this blog hasn’t used their non-belief to justify orchestrating the murder of someone close to them?

I checked out a few Christian sites to see how this is being handled among those types. A sampling:

I, for one, am hoping Tim is a changed man and becomes a productive member of society once more. Often the greatest stories of redemption carry the heavy burden of failure. Tim will have to earn people’s trust and prove he’s different. He has a long road ahead of him and his crime will always haunt him. Yet, I’m hopeful. My story is marked by failure and shortcoming, but people were kind enough to believe in me when I was at my worst.

You don’t have to listen to or support As I Lay Dying’s return, but I think we can all agree that the best hope for a broken world, is reformed healers who mend the parts they’ve shattered [I, for one, don’t agree with this simplistic nonsense].

If that happens, we might just see more people’s evil actions become a story of redemption and reconciliation. [Right]

…

[L]ambesis points to his embrace of atheism as precipitating the whole thing. There’s a long and storied argument about whether objective morality can exist in a universe without a creator, and a lot of atheists take personal offense at it because they think it implies that atheists are inherently immoral. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case [THANKS BRO!], but I have encountered plenty of people in my own life who, upon losing their religious faith, used it as an excuse to do horrible and ugly things to the people around them. What I am fairly certain of is that a rupture in worldview seems to make people behave abominably [ESPECIALLY when Christians morph into atheists]. When our ideological presuppositions come out from under us, our true, ugly selves are revealed [I love the idea that he apparently thinks Christians like himself are “ugly” and need their religion to keep their “true” selves locked below the surface. I almost wished I gave a shit about being Catholic so I could have went fucking wild when I rejected it. Sad]

That’s a scary thing. Scarier than after-school-special-style ‘roid rage, almost.

Scary stuff indeed. I’m scared.

Lambesis, of course, will be fine – there are many who fucking love redemption stories of men coming back from the bad things they’ve done. That’s what makes it so galling when people like Michael Ian Black (“we’re in a cultural moment in which some men who do terrible things have no pathway for redemption”) mewl about how it’s apparently a difficult thing for men to regain their lost status. Motherfucker, the roadmap for doing so is very well established. One only needs to have the requisite social capital in relation to whatever it is they did/said. Add in a dose of real or feigned contrition and you can be well on your way to regain lost status.

There are many, many bands that are far better than AILD in the underground metal scene. Due to this, I actually am a bit shocked at the response because they are so derivative, so generic. I should add I think it would be unfair to single out the Christian portion of their fan-base as they have wide crossover appeal to the non-religious. How nice that shitty, banal music can unite them in supporting someone who was thankfully too inept to coordinate the murder of his wife during a protracted phase of atheism and ‘roid rage.

RIP Anthony Bourdain

Content Warning: suicide.

I was dicking around on my phone before showering last Friday when a news pop up alerted me to Anthony Bourdain’s passing. At that point I knew roughly two things about him: he was some kind of bad-boy chef on cooking/traveling reality shows, and he said the following about Henry Kissinger:

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.

This was in 2001. The quote was unearthed this year, went viral and, once it caught his attention, Bourdain refused to back off statements made so long ago:

As someone who thinks things like this about any number of US war criminals, I thought this pretty awesome.

In regards to the second thing I knew about him – his “bad-boy image – it seems he had recently done a little introspection and critiqued the macho culture he participated in:

To the extent which my work in Kitchen Confidential celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse.

(I should note I have no idea how his specific behaviors manifested within our toxic patriarchy and how much he contributed to it)

Up until this weekend, I had no grasp of the extent of his popularity. Friends and acquaintances of mine, writers, bloggers, journalists, athletes, comedians, and people from all across the political spectrum expressed their sadness at his passing. Even America’s beloved president was shockingly able to muster a semblance of humanity by not saying terrible things about Bourdain, which is hilarious because he had “utter and complete contempt” for the dear leader, and joked about wanting to serve him hemlock.

***

Had he not died by suicide, I’m not sure this would’ve affected me as much as it has, and I wouldn’t have written anything about it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a morbid interest in suicide. That’s more or less because, at several points in my life but thankfully not in the recent past, I’ve wanted to die, or wanted to hurt myself. The former was a distinction I made between wanting to actually kill myself and merely not wanting to live or not caring if I died. This all feels really weird to actually write.

What had always kept me from walking further down that path was a combination of what I perceived as a lack of courage to go through with it and knowing what it would do to the people who loved and cared about me (apologies if anyone is offended by seeing suicide discussed in terms of courage – in my case it’s just a recounting of how I felt when I was younger). I don’t know if any of this necessarily counts as being suicidal, but it is suicide-adjacent.

For me, underlying everything it all was (and sometimes still is) a lack of self-esteem and outright self-hatred. This has been more difficult to banish. That sentiment is liable, at any time, to bubble to the surface and spew its noxious fumes all over my psyche. Even now, there’s a small voice in my head saying “why the fuck would anyone want to read anything you have to say?” (this is far from the first time; the answer is usually “I don’t know, fuck off.”)

It’s incredibly irresponsible for me to sit here and speculate about the specifics of why someone I’ve never met chose to end their life. But with the amount of Bourdain-related media I’ve recently consumed, I can’t help but highlight part of an episode of Parts Unknown from 2016. In it, he went to a psychotherapist, because he “need[ed] somebody to talk to”:

Bourdain admitted to his therapist that he felt like “a freak,” further explaining that he felt isolated. “I communicate for a living, but I’m terrible with communicating with people I care about,” he said. “I’m good with my daughter. An eight-year-old is about my level of communication skills, so that works out. But beyond, that I’m really terrible.”

[…]

Bourdain also revealed to his Argentinian therapist that he believed the likelihood of him having Narcissistic Personality Disorder was high. “I tell stories for a living. I write books. I make television,” he said. “A reasonable person does not believe that you are so interesting that people will watch you on television.

***

This past rainy weekend, my wife and I watched a lot of Parts Unknown. Normally I have a reflexive antipathy to all reality shows, but I found it pretty enjoyable. Though, in light of the circumstances of that led to us having an interest in watching, it was hard not to watch without a sense of melancholy.

His desire to show Western audiences places that they’ve never thought about, and in many cases couldn’t place on a map, was extremely admirable and, I would argue, important. He displayed a preternatural ability to both empathize with and humanize people featured on the show. It’s not surprising that so many with roots in the places he visited were affected by the news of his passing:

In our hyper-connected, late capitalist hellscape where so many have neither the desire nor the disposition to regard the Other as worthy of any modicum of compassion, the loss of a person who had ample amounts of it and went to the trouble of sharing it on such a massive scale is pretty fucking sad.

Not sure how else to end this except to say that The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours/day at 1-800-273-8255.

 

Goddamnit Morrissey

I had a difficult time coming up with a name for my blog. I’m not very creative, so I picked a song by an artist I adored – Morrissey. And Morrissey is, well, problematic. I’m not going to rehash all of the questionable opinions he’s vomited out over the years. The idea for this post actually came from the last time he said something terrible but, like dozens of other posts I’ve began and left idle, I never finished it. For that instance, he had some thoughts on Kevin Spacey and #metoo:

Morrissey says that the whole thing has become “a play,” and that the definition of sexual harassment has become so broad that “every person on this planet is guilty.” Specifically, he says that the allegations against Kevin Spacey are “ridiculous,” saying that if he was 26 and alone in a bedroom with a 14-year-old boy, then the boys should’ve known what was going to happen. “When you are in somebody’s bedroom,” he says, “you have to be aware of where that can lead to.” Because of that, he thinks Spacey has been “unnecessarily attacked.”

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2017/05/26/there-are-some-bad-people-on-the-right/

This was on the heels of his new garbage album. Coupled with his last garbage album, he hasn’t made good music in almost a decade. Yet he still sells out everywhere he plays and has an extremely devoted fanbase. This gives him a modicum of mainstream relevancy so, unfortunately, microphones keep being shoved in his face. Behold the most recent example:

“As far as racism goes, the modern loony left seem to forget that Hitler was leftwing,” he says now. “When someone calls you racist, what they are saying is: hmm, you actually have a point, and I don’t know how to answer it, so perhaps if I distract you by calling you a bigot we’ll both forget how enlightened your comment was.”

Yes, people tend to forget that Hitler was leftwing – I mean, c’mon people, Socialism is in the freaking name of his ideology! Also, when I call someone a racist, deep down I think that they’re right. Moreover, it masks the fact that I have no way of responding to the airtight logic so masterfully deployed by those I unjustifiably call bigots. Fuck.

Anyways, my blog name is bad. Fortunately for me, most people probably don’t even know it refers to a Morrissey song. I suppose I could change it, but the only thing I came up with is “Godless Soy Boy.” A Google search for it in quotes yields no hits, but it’s not a great name. Then again, I also don’t think it’s terrible. I’ll likely never decide one way or the other, and eventually stop thinking about it. And so the I Have Forgiven Jesus #brand will live on.

Bill Donohue has a tantrum about a show on Comedy Central

Comedy Central has a new show called Corporate, which is a satirical take on the drudgery of working in the corporate world. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in an office will find aspects of the show to be familiar. Overall it’s pretty decent. The only critiques I have are that the satire has all the subtlety of a brick through a window, and that Aparna Nancherla is underutilized.

Segments of the right do not like this show. I only know this because Jake Weisman, one of the show’s creators, has been gleefully posting articles about the backlash. It’s tended to skew towards accusations of the show being “anti-business,”but after a recent episode, Catholic tears began to flow:

They really hate Christians, especially Catholics. [this makes little sense as the episode in question is mostly, if not entirely making fun of Protestantism] Indeed, that is the most defining characteristic of those employed by Comedy Central. It is not certain whether they screen for bigots, or whether only bigots apply.

“Corporate” is a show most Americans have never heard of. They are not missing anything. Last night it sent a Valentine’s gift to Catholics by portraying a lay person dressed like a nun who gives an advertising executive the finger.

She works for a group of mega-churches, the Glorious Salvation Ministries, and is interested in hiring the ad company to do a marketing campaign. An employee of the ad firm shows up wearing an oversized rosary, suggesting that both characters are Catholic. [not true – this was performative Christianity on the part of the employee as directed by the CEO. I can’t tell if this makes it more or less blasphemous]

At the end, the nun-like character is shown sucking a cross-shaped popsicle seductively. She smiles, saying, “My favorite flavor—the blood of Christ.”

All the employees are godless and the show writers never pretend that the Christian god has any basis in fact:

After learning about the Catholic League response, Weisman tweeted about it. Someone responded, leading him to joke that he wanted to “bring the whole system down.” Or, wait was he serious??? Enter Bill Donohue:

Viacom has a serious problem on its hands: Jake Weisman, the co-creator and writer of the Comedy Central show, “Corporate” (he also stars in the show), has threatened to “bring the whole system down.” He was referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

Weisman made his threat yesterday on Twitter. His incendiary comment was in response to a news release I wrote about the February 14th episode of “Corporate.” In it, the Eucharist was obscenely mocked.

…

It must also be said that the filthy responses that supported Weisman’s tweet cannot be reprinted here—some were aimed directly at me.

In one sense, I am happy Weisman made this threat. While Hollywood was not always a bastion of anti-Catholicism, in the past half-century it has certainly evolved into one. Let’s be honest: If Jews were portrayed the way Hollywood portrays Catholics, it would be labeled the premier anti-Semitic industry in America.

(This is somewhat reminiscent of the Jesse Farrar fiasco, in which people are apparently unable to recognize obvious jokes.)

I’m generally not in the business of parsing out nonsense like this, and I will not start now except to say fuck this guy and his pathetic victim complex. Weisman, for his part, was positively (and justifiably in my opinion) gleeful:

I have to admit this adds to my enjoyment of the show.

Thoughts about The Last Jedi (SPOILERS)

Because this is why you come to FtB. Read no further if you haven’t already seen it.

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Ok. Hi again.

What follows is a “review” only loosely organized by bullet points:

  • The opening crawl has the First Order conquering the New Republic almost immediately after the events of The Force Awakens. Which, what? How? At the end of The Force Awakens, they used their dumb planet death star to blow up the capital or whatever. But that shouldn’t entail the rest of the republic falling like a house of cards. It had DECADES to create some kind of a military infrastructure that should survive the destruction of one planet. That leads to what I think is my main problem with TFA and TLJ. The scaffolding that holds up the various narratives is rickety. In a galaxy with tens of thousands of star systems, hundreds of thousands of sentient species, and trillions (quadrillions?) of inhabitants, everything just seems so small. Canto Bight and Maz Kanata’s place were the only times it felt like there was a larger universe that the stories occur in.
  • One of the few things the prequel trilogy did well was give a sense of scale to the enormity of the Star Wars galaxy. Perhaps it’s just too difficult to tell a good story this way and that’s why these new movies are moving back towards more localized narratives. Fortunately, the localized narratives of TFA and TLJ are, for the most part, compelling and well done.
  • You may not be surprised to learn that I am the type of nerd whose read almost all of the recently decanonized Expanded Universe novels, many of the comic books, and other random SW ephemera. I just love the size and scale of an entire universe (spanning thousands of years) to fuck around in. When I see a weird looking alien I think “What species is that? What planet are they from? Why aren’t there any more of them? Why the hell is the Resistance so human-centric (I’m aware this is not a real word)?”
  • The first scene after the crawl saw Poe and Hux reenacting that awful “can you hear me now” commercial, and the forced, gimmicky attempts at humor continued for most of the movie. Not all of the humor was terrible, but it should’ve been dialed back.
  • Probably the funniest part of the movie was Leia, seemingly dead, flying through space back to safety. I think I was the only one in the theater laughing out loud. It was terrible.
  • The writing wasn’t always great, but overall, the acting was phenomenal.
  • Rey and Ren were great together. Their chemistry is amazing. It almost makes me want to ship them, but I’m ride or die for Rey and Finn
  • Finn and Rose’s detour to the casino planet was meh. I liked Rose lecturing bright-eyed Finn about the amoral capitalist scum in their midst (to be honest, this should be enough to group this blog post under the “Politics or “Social Justice” categories). I fucking loved that they went animal liberation front on their asses while escaping. The entire plot proved to be a red herring, as the plan ultimately failed. I’m conflicted as to whether or not I liked it. On the one hand, not all the plans of the protagonists should work, but on the other, an opportunity was missed to develop Finn and Rose’s characters.
  • Speaking of Rose, she stopped Finn from leaving to find Rey, calling him selfish. Then later on, she selfishly saves him, compromising a suicide mission that could’ve bought the Resistance much-needed time. I guess it’s supposed to be character growth, rather than acting out of character
  • After saving Finn, she says she loves him. I don’t think their storyline was developed enough for that, as mentioned above. Exchange care for love and it’s much more palatable. Then again, I’m not exactly impartial given my preference for Rey/Finn. Rose is great though.
  • Poe was kind of annoying. Hot of course, but annoying. He was salty as fuck because he wasn’t given command in Leia’s stead. Shit like that sucks.
  • I had similar issues with Finn. He had a bit too many unfunny one-liners which is more galling due to his character’s unexplored background and motivations. Unlike Rey, whose backstory is blessedly uncomplicated (see below), he was a goddamn stormtrooper who defected. It’s a good thing John Boyega is awesome or his character would be almost c
  • Captain Phasma continued to be useless. It looked like she died after once again failing. Which is basically her arc in TFA, though with even less screen time. It’s an absolutely criminal misuse of the fantastic Gwendoline Christie
  • Speaking of underutilized characters, the most notable thing Chewie did was eat a porg, which I believe was supposed to be funny – because eating a creature as that creature’s relatives look on sadly is funny I guess.
  • Luke was way more excited to see Artoo than Chewie. Kinda shitty, especially since Chewie’s bff just died.
  • Speaking of Artoo, playing the Princess’s message to Obi-Wan definitely hit me in the feels
  • Speaking of feels, Yoda’s reintroduction into the saga gave me legit chills
  • There were other callbacks, most of which I can’t remember off the top of my head. They were both subtle and effective, and evoked just the right amount of nostalgia.
  • Two of the biggest questions, Rey’s parentage and what the deal is with Snoke turned out to be enormous red herrings:
    • Leaving the theatre after I saw TFA, I wasn’t even thinking about who Rey’s parents were. She was awesome and it wasn’t something I was interested in. After a friend brought it up, I thought “god fucking dammit, her parents will matter and that blows.” The internet endlessly debating this only solidified what I thought was inevitable. However, I did have some hope, as none of the theories were very convincing. It was baggage that the character didn’t need. And so Rey’s parents are nobodies! That’s awesome! There’s a small chance that Ren is lying, but it would severely undercut the last scene of the movie, which I liked quite a lot (a child slave practicing jedi moves against a starlit backdrop)
    • To me, Snoke requires more of a backstory, despite his awful name. His age made it clear that he was around during Palpatine’s empire. What was he doing during this time? Did Palpatine know? What’s his deal? There should be interesting stories about this. Also, how did he ensnare Ren? That’s not to say I didn’t like that he died. It was completely (to me) unexpected, gutsy, and I respect the decision.
  • Luke and Ren’s differing perceptions of their falling out was artfully done and effectively revealed to the audience. In short, Ren had every reason to believe Luke was going to kill him. I do wonder, though, how much Leia knows of this. Luke wasn’t very forthcoming with Rey at first.
  • I liked Luke apparently achieving nirvana (unless he comes back as a force ghost, which wouldn’t really make it nirvana). I was annoyed when he appeared unscathed after getting shot with enough lasers to blow him to bits, and cut through with a light saber. The fact that he wasn’t physically present was a good enough justification for me, even if it necessitated an absurd and nonsensical amount of force power. But there was a consequence to using all that power. I think it was a cool death.
  • Overall, it was good, but too long. A lot of the humor was bad. It appears I didn’t like it as much as some, and am one of the few that like TFA better. But that could change – my thoughts are definitely fungible when it comes to this. For example, TFA lost a bit of luster when I became aware of it’s numerous similarities to A New Hope, which I didn’t realize on my own. But it was still good (despite the awful planet death star thing). All of the post prequel trilogy movies have been good. And that’s good – after the prequel debacle, there was ample reason for concern. (Though I do think the prequels are somewhat defensible – in a nutshell, I think of them more as the Rise of Palapatine, rather than the Fall of Anakin Skywalker (because Anakin was terrible and Palaptine ruled))
  • As for what’s next, it’s hard to see The Resistance, apparently consisting of one ship, being any kind of threat to The First Order. Perhaps they’ll do a several year time jump. I think Rey kills Ren and the saga of the Skywalkers and Solos comes to an end. TFA was pure nostalgia; TLJ threw a bunch of that nostalgic baggage in the trash; and episode 9 will set the course for the next series. Not bad.

New job, less blogs (maybe)

I’m pretty boring. The only possibly interesting thing about my presence on this network is the fact that I work in child welfare. Due to my perspective, I’ve been meaning to write about it, but for various reasons haven’t. For the past 10 years I’ve worked in the field both directly with families as well as more behind the scenes. Guess which pays better. The paradox of all social services work is that the more money one makes, the less direct interaction there is with those they hope to help.

Working in child welfare has only cemented my non-belief in a kind and loving god. Such a god who doesn’t stop the horrors perpetrated against children that I’ve been confronted with on a daily basis is beneath contempt. I have intimate knowledge of some the worst things in the world – specific stories of abuse, neglect, violence, child sex trafficking, etc. Each story is different in it’s own heartbreaking way. Every person in the field needs the ability to compartmentalize. In my case this has led to numb feelings of desensitization, which is a depressing coping mechanism.

This is one of the reasons I’ve been long been ambivalent to shit like presidential elections. No matter who’s in office (federal, state, local), the workload of child welfare workers generally remains the same. The plight of abused and neglected kids, an extremely large proportion of which grow up in poverty, are mere talking points by asshole politicians who don’t do shit. Any attempts to mitigate poverty and institutionalized racism are band-aids applied to gaping wounds, and the children are the ones who suffer the greatest. It’s a fucking race to get ahead in the hyper-competitive developed world, and these kids are held back and getting lapped by the more privileged.

***

Social services workers are almost always overworked, underpaid, and very unappreciated. There are no TV shows or movies celebrating what we do (or are there? I don’t really have an encyclopedic knowledge of the entertainment field). If we’re ever portrayed it’s always as exhausted and mildly incompetent, with the latter being a direct consequence of the former. Compared to other public servants, such as firemen, nurses, and even teachers, we’re largely invisible, little thought of, and certainly not worthy of fetishization by popular culture, as opposed to the aforementioned.

The only time the general public is aware of anything relating to child welfare, to pick the aspect of social services I’ve been involved in, is when something horrible happens – a child dying in foster care, a social worker clearing a family for child abuse or neglect only for the worst to happen. At the same time there is a nagging, and not entirely undeserved perception of child welfare workers breaking apart and ruining families – after all, we are paid representatives of sociopolitical structures that have historically oppressed people unluckily born into bad situations.

None of this is to excuse the fuck-ups, of which there are countless in child welfare and other areas that comprise the field. There are wide systemic problems in the delivery of services to vulnerable populations. That we are a largely reactive industry that confronts systemic societal problems certainly doesn’t help. Also not helping: there’s little sign that systemic societal problems show any meaningful signs of abatement. A professor once told me that there will always a need for work in human services, and that’s proven to be right in my experience. But as I wrote, the work is low paying, hard, and little appreciated. Turnover is high on and just behind the frontlines, and there’s stiff competition for mid to upper level management. Often this necessitates prohibitively expensive higher education, a risk in any field that may or may not pay off financially.

***

Anyways, it’s not all bad. I’m just feeling a bit melancholy about it all because I’m about to start something completely new. While I’m still with the same organization, I will now be performing quality assurance related duties. It’s hard to say how often I’ll be able to blog, as I’ll need to devote more brainpower to an area I’m relatively unfamiliar with. It doesn’t help that I write slow and scattered – it takes much more time than I’d like for my thoughts and words to coalesce. So we shall see.

Crows!

Here is an awesome short about crows wrecking shit:

Here are some internet things about crows:

Crows Understand Analogies

Stop Picking On Crows: Study Reveals the Birds Aren’t Evil Predators

Do Crows Hold Funerals for Their Dead?

6 Terrifying Ways Crows Are Way Smarter Than You Thinkl

Solitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn

Here are some books about crows:

Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans, By John Marzluff

Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, by Bernd Heinrich (mostly about ravens, but there’s some crow talk)

Crows are great and I welcome any cool crow stories. Crow negativity will not be tolerated.

ETA: A few years back I was walking from the house to the garage when  something hit me on the head. It was a chunk of bread. The weird thing was, it felt like it came straight down – the house was on my immediate left (it seemed unlikely someone from that direction threw it on a high enough arc that had an endpoint at my position), and I couldn’t see anyone in my field of view to the right of me. Sure enough, I look up and there’s a crow looking down at me from a wire. Well played, I thought.

The frustrating genius of South Park

As an impressionable 16 year old, I was instantly hooked when South Park debuted in 1997 and have generally loved it ever since. Though my interest waned significantly from roughly 2009-2014, I’ve literally seen every episode. I had long since given up on the other long-running adult-oriented cartoons – Family Guy and The Simpsons (2007 for the former, 1999 for the latter), and was considering letting go of South Park. But Trey Parker and Matt Stone managed to inject new life into the show by introducing serialized episodes in 2015.

Attempting an analysis on 20 years worth of episodes is hard, especially for a show that has something to say about everything. To distill its ethos to it’s essence: both the left and right are full of shit [1], and PC-culture is abominable. The latter runs parallel to the stereotypical comedian’s belief that nothing should be off-limits, and any criticisms are the products of unwarranted hysteria. Moreover, it’s pretentious to care about things that don’t concern you, especially if you’re a celebrity.

This has served them well and ensures there’s something for everybody. Not so much from the perspective that one agrees with any specific character in any specific episode, but more to the extent that they will inevitably skewer ideologies and beliefs that one detests [2]. Individual episodes have received favorable coverage all over the internet, from Salon, The Atlantic, and Slate, to dumpster fire websites like Breitbart and The Daily Caller (not linking to them). Whether their widespread appeal was intended with a diverse audience in mind or not misses the point – this is a pretty ingenious way to ensure a large amount of people across the political spectrum can laugh at the caricatured absurdities of those they disagree with.

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Parker and Stone’s political beliefs can be best described as pre-Tea Party libertarianism, with an emphasis on free-market economics combined with a socially liberal live-and-let-live attitude. Parker described himself as one in 2001, while Stone has never, to my knowledge, claimed adherence to any political party. As an example of how this is manifested, consider Big Gay Al. Very early on (in 1998) they had the keen insight to allege that being gay is okay. However, a few years later Al makes an impassioned plea to respect the rights of private organizations to discriminate with impunity. The liberal elite, represented by Gloria Allred, predictably turn on him, calling him a homophobe, because of course those silly, stupid, hypocritical liberals would do that. Non-homophobes could cheer gay acceptance, while assholes could delight in the idea of keeping government out of where it doesn’t belong or, less charitably, legitimizing their bigotry.

Many times, what’s being made fun of and what, if anything, the creators are trying to say can be open to interpretation. For example in “The Jeffersons,” one of the main plot points used for comedic affect is South Park’s extremely racist police department trying to frame Michael Jackson. When it aired in 2004, I remember laughing at the cops because I generally think cops suck, and the show apparently agreed. But now I’m pretty sure that’s not the case – the racism and cruelty displayed by the police was too over-the-top. More likely, it should be interpreted as a critique of people who denigrate the hardworking, usually noble police and imagine wildly implausible race-based conspiracies. This theme can also be seen in a 2015 episode, “Naughty Ninjas“. Officer Barbrady, a relic from the earliest seasons, ineptly shoots a kid, leading to vehement anti-police actions. Later in the episode, the townspeople are forced to grovel to the now hated cops for help which is vindictively refused. Broadly, systematic racism and police violence is trivialized and the hypocrisy and stupidity of police-hating morons is emphasized.

The above examples are just two of countless issues tackled by Parker and Stone. Many characters say many different things and it’s damn near impossible to pin down what they actually think after 20 years of providing social commentary disguised as jokes. Therein lies the difficulty of gleaning insight into what the creators are trying to say. It certainly doesn’t help that they think all proponents of any issue, religion, and political belief is full of shit, pretentious, or both. That the characters are tethered to the plot means anyone at anytime can say or do something if the story calls for it.

***

For all the cruelty, nihilism (which I think the creators would object to), and gross-out humor, there is a heart to the show. Nothing, of course, is off limits, but themes of friendship and caring are abundant. Take Kenny’s interaction with his sister while in the guise of his superhero alter-ego Mysterion, after they had been placed in foster care:

Karen: Oh, it’s you. I was wondering when you’d appear. You always come when I’m sad.
Mysterion: You are going to be okay, Karen! You have to keep believing that!
Karen: Why did my mommy and daddy go to jail?
Mysterion: [thinks a moment] Sometimes, people do stupid things. Sometimes they don’t realize what should have come first. Until it’s too late.
Karen: But I’m all alone now.
Mysterion: You are not alone. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will always be here! Do you understand?
Karen: I’ll try, guardian angel.
Mysterion: Don’t try, Karen. Do.

It almost brings me to tears every time I see that part. As an aside, the perplexing depiction of the foster family as militant agnostics was a complete failure. One gets the idea that they were grasping at straws to find a group of people they had yet to satirize.

There are also characters that are almost always treated with respect by the creators. Wendy Testaberger is the foremost example. Earlier depictions aside, before the shows characters crystallized into their current recognizable forms, she is shown to be intelligent, principled and caring – the feminist foil to Cartman. If she says something, it isn’t something to be mocked except by assholes, such as Cartman, with the joke always being on Cartman rather than Wendy. This season, Wendy led a group of cheerleaders sitting for the national anthem due to online bullying, obviously paralleling Colin Kaepernick. This ended up going nowhere (see below), but the girls at no point were portrayed as being in the wrong.

Another example is Butters who is exceptionally kind-hearted. While he is perpetually shit on, it is primarily due to his limitless gullibility coupled with the brutality of other characters, rather than for being a decent kid. That doesn’t mean he’s immune to acting out, as evidenced by becoming a Men’s Rights Activist after being dumped, and somewhat vindictively telling off his cruel and abusive grandmother:

Grandma? I did it, Grandma. I finally stood up for myself. I got real mean and I beat the snot outta Dr. Oz. I can’t lie, it felt kind of good. At first. But since then all I have is just… a kind of dark, empty feeling. Then I realized… that’s how you must feel. All the time. Poor old Grandma. You know, I’ve been gettin’ lots of advice how to deal with you. Stand up to you, tell on you… But I kind of realize there’s just people like you out there. All over the place. When you’re a kid, things seem like they’re gonna last forever. But they’re not. Life changes. Why you won’t always be around. Someday you’re gonna die. Someday pretty soon. And when you’re layin’ in that hospital bed, with tubes up your nose, and that little pan under your butt to pee in, well I’ll come visit ya. I’ll come just to show you that, that I’m still alive and I’m still happy. And you’ll die. Bein’ nothin’ but you. ‘Night Grandma.

Overall, Butters is a sympathetic character and serves as another moral anchor to the show. But the above quote is another typical South Park theme: there are horrible people in the world, and the onus is on you to stoically deal with it.

That South Park does have a heart should not be seen as an excuse for the many, many examples of cruel, offensive comedy. In no way am I insinuating that those offended by South Park are wrong. For example, body shaming, particularly towards females and transgender peoples, is rampant. Women are frequently mocked for personal appearance, from Jennifer Lopez’s ass, to Sarah Jessica Parker’s supposed equine features. Caitlyn Jenner is portrayed as a walking plastic surgery disaster. Why they felt the need to do this is beyond my comprehension, except perhaps to show they can still be offensive and “edgy.” Even more perplexing was that Jenner’s appearance occurred after their very well received episode that tackled the bathroom uproar in a fair and enlightened manner. Moreover it showed pretty substantial growth from their hit or miss (mostly miss) portrayals of Mr. Garrison’s continually evolving gender questioning and sexuality [3].

The point is, Jenner’s portrayal was completely unimaginative and gratuitously cruel. Perhaps more galling is that they refused to do the same with more odious figures like Chris Christie and Steve Bannon. All of that being said, I laughed pretty hard each time Jenner smashed her car into people. Such humor poked fun at something Jenner did, rather than fundamental aspects of her being. But I digress – if you are offended by anything on South Park, nothing I write should be construed as telling you to “get over it.”

***

This past season, the second of their serialization project, they fucked up. Broad, season-long plots failed to coalesce into anything resembling a coherent conclusion. By mixing real-world events of the previous week into the already existing plots they undertook a huge risk that relied on Clinton winning the election. That the election happened the day before episode 7 out of 10 certainly didn’t help [4], and the final episodes reflect a team of writers scrambling to adjust. Some plots were disregarded, and the final episode, appropriately titled “The End of Serialization as We Know It,” fell flat.

There was a very meta aspect to one of the plots, which is something I think South Park does extremely well [5]. Briefly, Kyle’s dad Gerald is a secret online troll. His trolling leads to the suicide of a Danish citizen. The Danish are pissed and begin work on a system to reveal every persons’ online history – something that causes mass destruction as everyone’s anonymous internet persona is unmasked. It’s revealed the leader of the project is a master troll who, rather than giving a shit about outing trolls on moral grounds, undertook the project to cause mass chaos. Early on in the season, I felt that Gerald represented the decades of trolling that South Park has done and this is, more or less, confirmed with a final showdown between Gerald and the Danish troll. The Danish troll is the devil’s advocate for Parker and Stone’s entire career, as represented by Gerald:

Bedrager [the Danish troll]: What I’m doing is wrong? How is getting millions of people to kill themselves different from getting one person to?
Gerald: It’s completely heartless and malicious!
Bedrager: You can honestly stand there, as a troll, and tell me that what I’m doing isn’t hilarious?
Gerald: No! Its not! Hacking the world to show that most people act differently online isn’t even technically satirical.
Bedrager: How is not satirical?

…

Gerald: Okay, okay, look. What you’re doing is just trying to prove that everyone is either a bad person or a snoop, right? So how is that funny?
Bedrager: That’s not what I’m doing. I’m showing everyone that all this stuff that they freak out over doesn’t even matter.
Gerald: No, but see, that’s just nihilism.
Bedrager: Oh, come on!
Gerald: That is!
Bedrager: So–so wait! If you do some big, outrageous, offensive thing with a positive attitude, you’re a satirist, but if you’re cynical about it, then you’re a nihilist? That’s fucking ridiculous

…

Gerald: You’re trying to get people to go to war and kill each other.
Bedrager: So maybe this is like the new post-funny era of satire. [6]

At this point, Gerald kicks Bedrager in the nuts and exclaims: “Ha! Fuck you! What I do is fucking funny, bitch!”

Humor is the highest ideal, and is differentiated from nihilism by actually being, you know, funny. Or, humor that causes actual real world destruction is the line they will not cross, at least intentionally. While I agree that the show’s trolling can and has been funny, the showdown’s conclusion came off as hollow. Gerald’s trolling was extremely vicious and not even remotely satirical. He received no tangible comeuppance. To the show’s credit, however, when Gerald is reunited with his family, Kyle and his brother Ike give him withering stares: they know he’s an asshole who’s full of shit. That he’s acknowledged as such is quintessential South Park – the creators allow that they too are not immune from the criticisms they’ve dispensed over the years.

***

Recently Parker and Stone discussed scrapping serialization completely and have deemed Trump to be beyond satire. In an interview with ABC Australia, Stone said:

People say to us all the time, ‘Oh, you guys are getting all this good material,’ like we’re happy about some of the stuff that’s happening. But I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like they’re going to be more difficult. We’re having our head blown off, like everybody else.”

Watching the interview, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he is more upset about Trump’s presidency, rather than the death of political satire [7]. But then, of course, I may be hearing something that isn’t there.

It bears noting that in 16 years of Bush and Obama, they’ve largely resisted making fun of them. Both appeared in episodes, but were almost never the butt of any jokes [8]. Now they’re faced again with the choice to pick a side. Only at this point in time one side has mutated into a cesspool of bigotry, anti-intellectual fervor, and a shameful disregard for human suffering. Despite the above quote, I don’t think they’ll be able to resist political commentary. And if I’m right, I wonder if they’ll incorporate unfavorable depictions of Trump opposition. I could see the kids joining a black bloc – I don’t believe anarchists have been mocked yet. This is not surprising since they’ve been invisible in the US since the “Battle of Seattle.” Or maybe Kyle will punch Cartman, the literal Nazi, causing an uproar (as opposed to the many times he’s done it in the past). I cringe at the thought of the mockery of, in Stone and Parker’s mind, outrageous Trump/Hitler comparisons taken to absurd levels. Or alleging Nazi-punchers are as bad as Nazis. Hopefully they’ve evolved since 2004, when Parker stated:

[p]eople on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.

That is fantastically douchey. The more I think about it the more I think they’ll stay the course, while perhaps dumping the serialized format. This may prove to be unfortunate, as some of the best episodes are apolitical and only tangentially related to any specific social or political issues, if at all. So getting rid of politics shouldn’t be seen as necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, their injection of social commentary has enabled their relevance for much longer than their contemporaries. I don’t think many people give a shit what The Simpsons or Family Guy is trying to say. If they do, they shouldn’t, because they both blow.

Underlying all of this, I find the show consistently funny in tons of different ways. The show is watched by millions and is an indelible part of our culture, for better or worse. It’s generated ample material that warrants analysis. For some, it’s just humor. For others, it reinforces worldviews, primarily through negative portrayals of people and ideas one doesn’t agree with. And that is the big question heading into Season 21 – will they maintain the status quo by negatively depicting the rich panoply of Trump-haters, all in the interest of maintaining their “both sides are bad” ideology? If so, it will only give unneeded ammunition to the aforementioned cesspool denizens. I’d like to think Parker and Stone wouldn’t want any part of that.

[1] Parker infamously stated

I hate conservatives but I really fucking hate liberals.

[2] In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2010, Parker said

everyone sees their own thing in it. A lot of our shows where even we think we’ve taken a very deliberate stand, liberals say, ‘That’s awesome, you took on the conservatives’ [and for the] same show conservatives say ‘That’s awesome, you took on liberals.’

[3] He has been portrayed at varying lengths of time as heterosexual cisgender male, homosexual cisgender male, heterosexual transgender female and homosexual transgender female. In earlier seasons he attempts to meet a young child on the internet (Cartman, unbeknownst to him), fucks a pig, and is extremely distraught that his father didn’t rape him as a child. He is currently the show’s literal stand-in for Donald Trump who wants to “fuck them all to death.”

[4] The episode was titled “First Gentleman,” referring to Bill Clinton, and remained the title displayed on my cable information screen.

[5] One of the most poignant meta moments has Cartman, defeated by PC Principal (a funny but nonsensical character whom deserves a level of scrutiny I don’t feel like doing) saying: “We’re two privileged, straight white boys who have their laughs about things we never had to deal with.” I mean, it FEELS meta, but it very well may not be – after all, it’s coming from Cartman. It’s usually not wise to rely on Cartman as the show’s conscience. For example, MRA type shitheads crowed about Cartman supposedly lampooning Amy Schumer’s vagina jokes, when it’s pretty obvious she is not what’s being made fun of. If that interpretation is incorrect, it’d be especially galling, seeing as South Park has a rich history of genital-related humor.

[6] This is a great and chilling line. I’m very tempted to believe that this is a shot at the destructive troll-humor of 4chan (i.e. Pizzagate) and Milo Yiannopoulos-types, but I’m not sure.

[7] Overall, Garrison/Trump is almost always shown in a negative light, somewhat hilariously leading to Reddit discussions with titles like “Is it just me or has South Park gone full cuck?” In a 2015 episode, a Trump-like figure was elected in Canada which proved to be prophetic and, in retrospect, terrifying:

Nobody ever thought he’d be president! It was a joke! We just let the joke go on for too long. He kept gaining momentum, and by the time we were all ready to say, ‘Okay, let’s get serious now, who should really be president?’ he was already being sworn into office.

[8] I only recall one instance of Bush being unambiguously mocked for his poor speech habits. For Obama, any humor related to him derived from Cartman or others saying racist things – in other words, Obama is not the joke, racism is. Clinton, on the other hand, was mocked early on (and recently) for being a sexual deviant.