Mister Peace.com

I still buy music on compact disc but, lately, very rarely.  I was thinking to myself that I should buy more CD’s but then I had to stop and ask myself why I’d bother.  The album as a format is dead.  Many would argue that it was an artificial contrivance designed by record companies for profit motive in the first place and that it dying is a natural progression.  The digital era gives us access to music on a song-by-song basis.  More bang-for-buck and less extraneous nonsense.  Most would say that since an album is just a couple good songs and then a bunch of filler, it’d be easier to do away with the excess anyway.

And I agree with this.  But only to a point.  I think the reason I still have some subconscious desire to buy a CD for a band I like is that it gives you more of a complete picture of a band.  Instead of just downloading the couple catchy songs that hook you and ignoring the rest, you get the good moments, the bad ones, the fast songs, the slow ones… you get a better sense of range and dynamics from a full album, warts and all, than you could by cherry-picking songs piecemeal.  It’s like the difference between having a lengthy conversation with someone versus just getting a couple bits and pieces from a twitter feed or soundbites.  The little excerpted quotations trim the fat and give you a better signal to noise ratio, so to speak, but the long conversation, with its awkward pauses, rambling tangents and non-sequiturs is messier but probably a fuller encapsulation of the person you’re talking to.  My love of simplicity and minimalism in all things abides… things that are direct and uncomplicated are more elegant and transparent but for some reason, I sometimes want scope and the album gives you a wider panorama than the single.

It was clutch, naturally.  I love any story about Dwight and the girls of Old Town and the idea of him going up against the mob in retaliation for the death of one of the girls is brilliant.  His love of, and life-debt sworn to, Gail is unending and I love how the concept of what a family is and can consist of is examined.

A thought that pertains to the series entire but is particularly true of Family Values:  NO ONE in these comics is on the level with the law… everyone is doing something immoral or dubious but a main theme of the entire series is the nobility of those in the gutter and the corruption of those in the upper echelons of society.  Dwight and Marv and those like them are criminal degenerates, Hartigan is a disgraced cop wrongfully imprisoned and rejected by society, and the girls of Old Town are hookers.  But they have strong ethical codes and fight valiantly to uphold their own justice.  They are immensely heroic, despite all odds.  The main villains of the series are priests, society’s idle rich, cops, a senator’s sex offender son, and a crooked politician running on a conservative platform of “family values”… the world’s purported upper class, who are vile and loathsome beyond description.  I think you have to look beyond their surface as prostitutes or killers and see that the thing that defines the protagonists of Basin City is a moral code that transcends the law, the moral code of mutual respect and old-school “eye for an eye” justice.  The girls of Old Town are actually the most noble characters in the series.  They have a sense of fair play, community, and loyalty that isn’t erasable by money or the pressures of violence.  They’re entirely self-sufficient and even loving to one another.  Dwight McCarthy seems privileged to roll with them, seemingly the only male on friendly terms with their society of warrior women.   And they’re utterly competent.  Miho’s revenge against the mafia hitmen is brilliant.

Like everything Sin City related, I definitely recommend it.  It’s the shortest and cheapest of the trade paperbacks so it’s worth every penny. 

Horror movies almost ALWAYS prey on feminine fears… fears that are innate to the feminine experience.

In teen slasher films, girls are murdered in direct correlation with their dating or having sex with guys.  In this way, the horror relates to budding female sexuality.  In Halloween, the main character was babysitting, obviously popular among teenage girls.

And then you look at some of the more adult psychological thrillers and they’re again preying on feminine phobias, albeit adult feminine phobias.  Often, supernatural elements are just metaphor.  Rosemary’s Baby is about fear of pregnancy and betrayal by people you feel close to. 

The Exorcist is about Ellen Burstyn’s maternal fear of raising a child almost ready to hit puberty.  The demonic possession is a metaphor for the impending evils of adulthood intruding upon her innocent child and what mother doesn’t fear that?  She is helpless, just as parents are helpless to stop the progression of their babies into the wicked world of adult sin. 

The Shining was about Shelley Duvall’s fear of her husband; she had to protect her young son from the crazed masculine violence of Jack Nicholson.  All these flicks are supposed to push a woman’s panicky fear buttons. 

I re-watched Bullitt and it occurred to me how cool it is to just FEEL San Francisco circa 1968 seeping into the film.  Just watching it, you can completely absorb the way the city looked and felt, its size and shape, what people were doing there and even aspects of the culture.  That kind of verisimilitude is really beautiful.

And that level of verisimilitude can’t be faked.  Could you imagine The French Connection or Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy if they were shot anywhere EXCEPT New York?  You can’t just go to Canada or shoot it on a soundstage or shoot in on green screen and hope some geeks can draw a cartoon into the background and expect it to have that real, street-level, tangible quality. 

For the record, this is just one of many, many reasons to watch The Wire.

Me: oh… the end of inception? are you asking if the top fell over?

Kate: or if you even think it matters? (cuz i dont…..but maybe thats the existentialist in me squeeing in joy at a film that i thought made is seem that it doesnt, or at least gets you thinking in the vein)

Me: i think it does matter to the character and to the story but the director wants it to be ambiguous so that you can think about YOUR OWN interpretation and you can think about how you’d like it to go… i think it’s absolutely true that the top stops and it has to stop because he’s back to reality… the top could only continue if it were still a dream… he’s rejected the false facade of happiness for something substantial…. painful, yes, but substantial… so it’s essential to the character and the resolution of the story that the top stop spinning… BUT, at the same time, Nolan doesn’t want to come out and hand you that ending like a verdict because it’s also true that there are people in the audience who wanted him to stay with the fictional version of Mal and be satisfied that way… there is that ambiguity because the director wants you to think about what is right instead of preaching it to you but i can’t imagine the story having any meaning if he didn’t wake up and choose life

also, did you say that the film makes it seem like it doesn’t matter? the choice between fantasy and reality is just OK either way? try telling that to Mal… she lost herself in the illusion and it destroyed her because she was never able to accept reality for what it was again

Kate: I dont want to say it doesnt matter cuz yes you have to consider Mal and what happened to her and the consequences those actions… had on the rest of the movie really. I just want to say as far as the ending is concerned….he got to where he wanted to be….a place where he could see his childrens faces again and the fact that the result didnt matter to him at that point….. and its a whole movie about process too

Me: well, his reality matters to him and the top is symbolic of that reality… the symbolism is the main function of the top… i don’t think he literally cared if the thing stopped spinning or not

Kate: nodshrug well yeah

Me: what do you mean when you say the whole movie is about process? that’s interesting

Kate: process? dont you think so?

Me: yes, i think so but what do you mean specifically? the process of something in particular or just systems in the way they function?

Kate: Well a couple ways really, but its most apparent in their goal to implant this idea in Fischer they couldnt just jump in and say “hey, break up your company” there was art and layers and the importance of them all… process of cobb getting back and being able to finally let go of mal… (& marion cotillard? hm? hm? i thought she was so great)

Me: oh, that’s right… yeah, that’s also true… there was a system there… and he bothered to explain it! which blew my mind because it meant that he thought about this and lived with it and planned it all out and then wrote it… that’s incredible to me… that’s so much hard work and planning and thought and it’s so much more satisfying than the lazy method, which is the route the SOPRANOS guys took in their finale yes, nolan goes through the legwork of very detailed processes… i love it for its complexity and that it cares enough to attach some sort of logic system to it…. it was a very densely layered film… yeah, she’s great… she’s a real femme fatale in the classic sense… actually, i was going into it expecting her to be a femme fatale in the classic sense but she’s MORE than that… she is a very nuanced and sad character… she is tragic

Kate: I know right?! Can you believe that…his structure and logic in this was actually a criticism of the film? I know im drawing lines from the ebert article i read earlier today but this wasn’t about the limitlessness of the dream word and all its crazy possibilities i mean, the people in this film had a very specific goal that would take a little bit of construct and order i think so anyway… and yes, tragic when it comes to Mal. And she was able to bring that in even when she got to be a little scary at points…

Me: right… i mentioned david lynch… his movies are completely brilliant and this isn’t a criticism but his dream-reality doesn’t seem to have any system to it… it’s more loosey-goosey and disturbing that way…. just a different approach to formalism, i suppose… i think Mal was this movie’s Harvey Dent… i think a few of Nolan’s films kind of sync up in terms of thematic content… i mentioned how this movie kind of relates back to MEMENTO… he’s talking about memory and the way we perceive reality and whether or not it’s ok to manipulate those things… well, there’s a thread between this and THE DARK KNIGHT, too, and that is both of those movies deal with the conflict between the Perfect Ideal and the Pragmatic Compromise… the perfect ideal was when he created his own reality for his wife but it fell apart… the pragmatic compromise was the loss of her at the end… similarly, harvey dent was the idealist whose goodness and purity had to be sacrificed for the sake of the pragmatic compromise… both movies needed that tragic sacrificial lamb to prove that reality demands we bend our notions of idealism a bit… and it’s tragic… in both cases, it was tragedy… i think aaron eckhart as harvey dent was one of the tragic performances i’ve seen… his fall from grace is heartbreaking

Kate: Thats a very very lovely correlation there sir…..im impressed…you;re very perceptive im not sure i would have really compared the 2.. Mal and Dent but i like that, its works…yes

Me: thank you i appreciate that… i’ve seen THE DARK KNIGHT so many times and I think it’s underrated in terms of depth… it’s very much about the balancing act between those two notions: the perfect ideal and the pragmatic compromise… dent being the former and batman being the latter… even the title is an allusion to dent’s downfall (he was once called the white knight of gotham or something like that) and Batman’s need to stay in the shadows to remain effective… and with Mal, she died because she refused to let go of a vision of reality that was perfect but it was untrue… THAT, i think, is the fundamental message of the movie… for cobb, his kids matter more than the comforting lie

“Alright, Curly, enough’s enough.  Ya can’t eat the venetian blinds, I just had ‘em installed on Wednesday.”

- Jake Gittes

“Tell me, did you foreclose on many families this week?”

- Gittes, in response to a mortgage banker insinuating he doesn’t do honest work

“I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes, my lawyer does.”

- Evelyn Mulwray

“Maybe he takes it very seriously.”

- Gittes, after being reassured that Mulwray “never even kids about chasing after women”

“How’d you find about it?  You don’t drink it… you don’t take a bath in it.  They wrote you a letter?  But then, you’d have to be able to read.”

- Gittes, after Mulvihill explains they shut his water off

“Well, you’re in luck, Mr. Yelburton.  When Mulvihill here was sheriff of Ventura County, the rum runners landed hundreds of tons of booze on the beach and never lost a drop.  He ought to be able to hold onto your water for ya.”

- Gittes, commenting on the Water Department’s dubious choice for chief of security

“Well, I’ve been accused of a lot of things before, Mrs. Mulwray, but never that.”

- Gittes, after being told Hollis Mulwray thinks he’s an innocent man

“That’s alright, officer, we can make an exception this time.  I’ll see he’s careful with the matches and doesn’t burn himself.”

- Escobar, correcting a security officer for stopping Gittes for smoking

“It’s my lunch hour.  I just thought I’d drop by and see who dropped dead lately.”

- Gittes, visiting the morgue

“You’re a very nosy fella, kitty cat.  Do ya know what happens to nosy fellas?  Huh?  No?  Wanna guess?  No?  OK.  They lose their noses.”

- Man with knife

“Mrs. Mulwray, you’ll have to explain that.  I do matrimonial work, it’s my métier.  When a wife tells me she’s happy that her husband is cheating on her, it runs contrary to my experience.  Unless she was cheating on him.”

- Gittes

“I goddamn near lost my nose.  And I like it.  I like breathing through it.”

- Gittes

“Only when I breathe.”

- Gittes, after being told by Yelburton that the cut on his nose “must really smart”

“It’s fine, as long as you don’t serve the chicken that way.”

- Gittes, on fish being served with the head

“If you want an answer to that question, Mr. Cross, I’ll put one of my men on the job.”

- Gittes, when asked if he’s slept with Evelyn Mulwray

“He passed away two weeks ago and one week ago, he bought the land.  That’s unusual.”

- Gittes, on the strange fate of Jasper Lamar Crabb

“What happened to your nose, Gittes?  Did somebody slam a bedroom window on it?”

- Loach

“Nope.  Your wife got excited, she crossed her legs a little too quick.  You understand what I mean, pal?”

- Gittes, in response

Screenplay by Robert Towne

If you’re a fan of westerns, there’s nothing better and if you’re new to it, each issue is a stand-alone story and a great reminder of a classic form of American storytelling.  “Forget the movie, just go read the comics!” has become my official motto after Daredevil and The Spirit so this is just continuing the trend.

Censorship has only negative consequences and one of them is that it makes otherwise intelligent adults look like they’re too stupid to use language effectively and correctly, particularly when euphemisms act as a forced substitute for swear words.

In 1948, the publishers of The Naked And The Dead convinced Norman Mailer to use the word “fug” as a euphemism for a more obvious expletive.  Upon meeting Mailer for the first time, Dorothy Parker greeted him by saying “So, you’re the man who can’t spell ‘fuck’.” 

But even if I was, seeing the movie Paranormal Activity would lay those fears to rest.  Being haunted by a demon, apparently, involves many quiet, undisturbed nights of long, restful sleep, barely interrupted by a door moving slightly or a chandelier being nudged.  By far the quietest and least obtrusive of all supernatural monsters, the demon in Paranormal Activity was barely even there, utterly silent and literally invisible.  I honestly wish my neighbors were so harmless.  Bonus:  If you leave old photos of yourself or Ouija boards lying around, you know… stuff you don’t need any more, the demon will burn them and get rid of them for you, almost like a trash removal system.  Pretty nifty!

Ladies, pay attention.  When the demon DOES do something worth mentioning, he kills your obnoxious, self-important, whiny douchebag boyfriend who you wanted rid of anyway.  According to Paranormal Activity, the WORST outcome of a demon haunting your home is that he might kill a guy you wished was dead to begin with.  It’s total win-win!

The thing a demon certainly NEVER does is scare you.  I watched the entire movie and wasn’t remotely unsettled once.  If anything, the demon might bore you to tears, his rustling of sheets being the combined entirety of his “reign of terror” but I suppose that’s the price you pay for such a quiet and polite house guest.  Hell, you’d never even notice he’s there unless you were deliberately searching for him every day for a month.

My chief problem with most music criticism is that it only examines and judges music based on how well it fits into the zeitgeist or a specific cultural niche.  I don’t want to say that music critics aren’t listening because they are but the questions they’re asking of the music never center around the music itself objectively but rather who is taking it in and what they’ll do with it.  Music critics will examine a specific song or album but only along the lines that cultural currency is the only criteria that you could possibly care about; who likes it, why they like it, and possible significance are all relevant, as no music is ever created in a void, but I don’t care as much about trends and cliques and perceived credibility as I do what the music sounds like.  They focus so deeply on what will come of it in terms of reception and interpretation that they ignore what it is to begin with.  The music itself is never the focus, only the relationship between listener and music and, myopically, only within the very narrow confines of a particular cultural paradigm.

Think about it:  You could read 100 snarky, negative reviews on Bitchfork and not learn a single thing about music but you’d be an absolute scholar on the useless topic of which trending sub-cultures have absorbed which hip musical sub-genres.  (True also of many popular blogs and publications) 

If I were trapped in a room with a guy who played nothing but cheesy mid-80’s adult contemporary while he meticulously analyzed every musical nuance of Phil Collins and Huey Lewis, I would BEG to be murdered.  I’d pick up a wood-splitting axe and kill myself if he didn’t shut the hell up about Whitney Houston.

Here’s how the symbolism stacks up:  Superman represents the ideological left and Lex Luthor, the right.  Superman is literally an immigrant, born on a distant planet but adopted by American parents after traveling here as an infant.  Once here, he adopts kind of a scrappy, New Deal, FDR worth ethic and desire for social justice.  He becomes Superman to dedicate himself altruistically to saving the poor and under-powered (humanity).  He represents, in a single stroke, immigration, cultural pluralism, samaritanism, altruism, optimism to the point of debatable naivety and community service separate and apart from any personal gain, since he never accepts payment for his deeds.

Luthor, on the other hand, is a brilliant scientist, a self-made man and a capitalist through and through.  Despite these arguably amazing qualities, his reach exceeds his grasp and he wants more and more.  Like Gordon Gecko, he embodies pure American greed.  His view of Superman is what I find fascinating, however.  He resents Superman because he resents an alien, a non-human, living on his world and doing the work that he believes should be left to non-powered people.  If you read the comics, this is actually something that truly bugs him: He has worked so very hard to get what he has but Superman was just BORN with his powers and he thus views himself to be in rightful command of his power, while Superman is  merely an interloper.  This is actually a big part of conservative ideology:  Everything must be attained through the SELF and nothing can come from external sources like a community or else it lacks validity.

Luthor also believes that his money and power give him the right to do what he wants and whoever he steps on isn’t really his problem because victory is for the strong.  He is purely a capitalist, letting might make right.  In an episode of the cartoon show, he had a great line:  “Lexcorp bleeds millions every time the Man of Steel thwarts my covert plans to achieve world domination… What does he have against free enterprise, anyway?”  Obviously, this line is written for a humorous tone but this is actually how conservatives look at the world.  If you told them that drilling for oil will damage the environment and they’re not allowed to do it, they would ask you why you’re attempting to stand in the way of their ambition.

Another interesting point is that Luthor not only resents Superman for power that wasn’t earned and also for standing in the way of his power, his manifest destiny to take what he can grab, Luthor is suspicious of Superman’s intent.  He never trusts him… because he’s an alien, Superman could obviously have sinister motives.  One might be surprised how nuanced the good versus evil conflict in these comics are: Lex Luthor is usually the hero of his own story, saving the world (albeit to his own end$) from a foreign menace.  There are undertones of jingoism and ethnocentrism and racism in his descriptions of Superman.  Luthor is controlled by skepticism: his doubt that Superman could ever have purely noble intentions informs his perception entirely.  WHO could ever be THAT good without also wanting something?  He views Superman’s constant saving of humanity and humanity’s dependency on a force too big to be controlled not entirely unlike the way the right wing views the US Fed.  He feels that HE, a self-made and intelligent man, a man who is American and human by birth and birthright, is best to lead the way and decide what’s what.

I find it a bit humorous that Clark Kent works in print journalism, given the stereotypical relationship between the left and news media.  Yes, The Daily Planet is Metropolis’ stand-in for the NY Times and Lois Lane is their own… I dunno.. Maureen Dowd?  Or something?  I let this analogy go too far, I think.

As for Batman, I think it’s obvious that he is, next to Tony Stark, comic books’ most stereotypical arch-conservative.  He is pure Republican, through and through.  Consider:  He is blood money.  If there’s one person who would be opposed to the death tax, it’s Bruce Wayne.  He is also a self-made man, the very picture of the triumph of the Randian Self over a Corrupt Society.  He refuses emotional nourishment in any form, his dedication to his war being all he knows.  Batman is not exactly a modern man when it comes to feminist ideology, either.  His only contact with women are vacuous bimbos that he beds after cocktail parties to keep his playboy image afloat… any time an emotional connection is even attempted, it’s immediately rebuked so that he may continue on his silent war alone.  And, of course, he is far too macho too go through the work of legitimate therapy, instead using some old John Wayne-style violence to take the place of intimacy or dependence on another human being.

Batman, simply put, is a joyless billionaire who works his aggression out of his system by going into alleyways and beating up kids trying to score weed.  He beats up hookers and homeless people and probably buskers just because they’re filthy hippies.  In fact, he beats up whoever he feels like.  Republicans have WET DREAMS about living that life.  That is their idea of pure justice.  Sure, Bruce Wayne could be spending his money on education or healthcare or rehab or SOMETHING in the way of help for the citizens of Gotham but what kind of pinko McGovernite do you take him for?  Batman would rather spend his money on laser-guided Bat-bombs to TEACH YOU A LESSON than help you.  And lastly, Batman, like all good Republicans, will stay in the closet forever and ever and ever.  And ever and ever.  And ever.  Like Larry Craig or Mark Foley or whichever strident conservative opponent to gay marriage was caught blowing a teenage boy in a gas station this week, Bruce Wayne will need to be dragged out of the closet kicking and screaming and swearing that you can’t PROVE he and Alfred and Robin have done anything.  There’s nothing more Republican than that.

simpleartofcrime:

You may have noticed that we’ve got a new addition to Simple Art of Crime. I’d like to welcome Dorian Peace to the SAoC family.

So far he’s written two great pieces on a two completely different comic books, the anthology of best crime stories that has a little bit of everthing and the true crime story Union Station.

Union Station is one of the most interesting stories, as it has so much to do with J. Edgar Hoover’s war on crime as it does with anything else.

After reading Dorian’s excellent review, he’s made me want to talk a bit about James Ellroy’s American Tabloid - which is really about America’s corruption.

So expect that quite soon, other wise stay tuned as I’m sure Dorian is going to have a shit-ton of other great stuff to write about!

Thank you, sir!  I appreciate it.  I’m not entirely sure how often I’ll post but I’ll try to get a new piece up once every few days to a week, if possible.  I really like pontificating on this stuff.  And I look forward to your bit about James Ellroy.

Anyone so inclined should follow The Simple Art Of Crime tout de suite.