Last week, in railing against an effort to force cable companies to offer "a la carte" pricing, I asserted that the real reason behind the effort was not lowering the price of cable TV for American consumers but, rather, the desire of certain prudes to force their decency standards on the rest of us. But I did not make any effort to defend why it is that televised filth is worth keeping where it is.
Up front: if I were a parent, I would be a permissive parent. When the family went to Europe in 1998 and visited Amsterdam, I took my then-12 year old sister and 14 year old brother to visit the red light district. We walked through, we saw the ladies in the windows (my sister's only real comment was "Ewww" at a particularly hefty lady), we did double-takes at some of the statuary, and we did not take pictures because we had been warned not to. Why would I do such a thing? Because I very strongly believe that it's more valuable to safely experience something than to be sheltered from it. It's better to see for yourself what the world is than to be told about it from a distance, through someone else's perhaps-biased filter. I would not have sent them there on their own, and was ready to have any sort of discussion they wanted to have. As it turns out, the whole experience pretty much slid right off their backs, and after a little while we turned back toward the hotel and met our parents for dinner.
This is my attitude toward TV shows, painting, movies, literature, music, the whole shebang of art and culture. It doesn't mean I'm going to show a porn flick to a five year old, but if a fifteen year old wants to see one, well, fine: I'd rather s/he see it with me than on their own. Besides, I can remember one time when I was a kid, and my mother accidentally took me to see a movie called Zardoz, which had nudity on a scale she just hadn't imagined. (It was 1974, so I was eight or nine.) It was a little embarrassing, and Mom was uncomfortable enough that she asked whether I wanted to leave, but I would have found it even more embarrassing to leave. Mostly, though, it was just--opaque, I think, would be the best way to describe it. I didn't understand what was going on, didn't know why those people were so very naked, and the whole experience just became a mildly uncomfortable, undigestible wash. And that's kinda what happens: if a child isn't prepared to experience something (and bear in mind that I'm only speaking here of cultural experiences; cases of abuse or violence are, of course, a whole different thing), it doesn't really penetrate; and if they are prepared, and if you're there to guide them through the experience, then they know more and understand more than they did going in, which can only be a good thing.
Now here's where upright parents will jump all over me: the adult is not always there, but the TV always is, and it is difficult if not impossible to fully monitor what kids are exposed to on their TVs. It's a fair point--and I will note here that, through experience, I am utterly determined that when I do have kids, they will not be allowed to have televisions in their rooms. This is not to limit their exposure to what's available, but because I know, through experience, that if given a choice between a book and a TV set, kids will pick the TV set every time, and I really, really want to give books a chance by removing the competition as much as possible.
So: the point is granted, you cannot control what your kids will see on TV. Here's the thing, though: if you establish your household as one in which all issues are open for discussion, and programs are not segregated as "appropriate" or "inappopriate," then I believe that kids are much less likely to try and hide what they're watching. And if my kids want to watch, say, "nip/tuck" then I would prefer that they feel comfortable enough to watch it out in the living room where I know they're watching it. And if something on the show disturbs them, well then, let's all talk about it. It is, after all, well understood that trying to forbid a thing only makes it more attractive; so if nothing is forbidden, then your kids approach cultural material on its own merits--or lack thereof. This is an atmosphere in which reason can prevail, where true learning can happen.
How do you protect your kids? I mean really protect them? By teaching them as much as you possibly can during your brief time with them so that they will be strong and able and smart; then they can protect themselves, and there's nothing better than that.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Art and Politics
I am not the first (by a wide margin) to note that films got more political this year, but it's a fact that is still worth celebrating. The day of the 2004 election, as the exit polls turned out to be wrong, I realized then and there: it was time to start focusing on politically-themed art again. Why has the "culture war" become so important in determining the results of elections, and why are we Liberals so often on the losing side of the culture war? Seems to me that it's because at some point, we Liberals got complacent; we decided, at some undetermined moment in time, that our position on various issues was so unassailable that we no longer needed to keep arguing the point. (Once Bill Clinton said that abortion, for example, should be "safe, legal and rare," didn't it seem to you so eminently sensible that there wasn't any point in arguing the matter further? Come on, didn't it seem just that way, just a little?)
Trouble is, the Other Guys never stopped setting forth their side of the various arguments. And in the vacuum, their voices were the only ones being heard. Of course there was also some mind-boggling timidity involved: the moment George Bush Sr. called Michael Dukakis "a card-carrying member of the ACLU," Dukakis should have immediately squared his shoulders and said "Of course I am. The real question is, why aren't you?"
As clever as I want to feel for having had this minor-key epiphany in early November 2004, obviously some of my Hollywood brethren were way ahead of me. Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck; Syriana; Brokeback Mountain (which does have a political point to make no matter how much the filmmakers talk about its being "just a love story"); Munich; and The Constant Gardener, to name only the most prominent films of the past year, would obviously have been at least in pre-production in November 2004, so I wasn't at all alone in thinking that the time had come for us to stand up and start making some noise again. (Hell, even Star Wars was getting political--whatever else you may think about the last movie, Amidala's line about democracy ending "to the thunderous sound of applause" does have some bite.)
And this notion that Hollywood's "liberal elite" should just stick to making mass entertainments and keep their big yaps shut is of course the most blatantly dishonest form of hypocrisy. We all revere Frank Capra's blatantly political films now that they're safely in the decades-ago past, now that they're no longer dangerous; we all talk about the Great Works of Art that were "ahead of their time," once upon a time, and how brave and how bold those artists were--back in the day. I suppose it's part of the rose-hued nostalgia that everyone feels, that sense that things were better in the past but that now, everything is simply screwed up. But there is also, as I said, pure hypocrisy involved: George Clooney should keep his big yap shut, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is a hero. It has nothing to do with Hollywood types not having a right to speak out, and it has everything to do with Hollywood types speaking out about things you don't agree with.
(Personally, I could take or leave Mr. Clooney back when he was just a fidgety actor on ER, but now that he is a capital-A Artist doing his damnedest to create work that means something, he's become one of my favorites. And his company with Steven Soderbergh, Section 8, is consistently doing the sort of stuff I find most interesting.)
I'm not going to get into which film should win the Oscar this year (though I may succumb as the date draws nearer because everyone does), and that's because the films are so very different, and they're all really quite good this year, and they all succeed at what they want to accomplish. (Caveat: I haven't yet seen Capote.) But I just saw Munich the other night, and if you want my guess as to which film means the most, that one is it. The box office for this film may never have taken off, which makes it a failure in Hollywood terms and it will probably get punished accordingly by the Academy; but I think that in twenty or thirty years, this will be the film that people end up remembering, the one that feels really significant. It may even go down as Spielberg's great achievement; because as the New York Times review noted, "Mr. Spielberg has been pummeling audiences with his virtuosity for nearly as long as he has been making movies; now, he tenders an invitation to a discussion." And what is present in Munich, what makes it difficult for an audience to take but is exactly why it is so good at inciting discussion, is ambiguity, the absence of easy answers, the unadorned presentation of multiple points of view. Eric Bana's character Avner is supposed to represent us: in these times, don't we all feel a little of his paranoia, his regret, his unease? All the way through the movie, we keep hearing about the virtues of home and family; but we keep hearing it from both sides. (There is a brilliant scene when a safehouse gets double-booked, and our undercover Mossad agents find themselves sharing a room with, among others, an agent of the PLO, who reveals that he wants for his people exactly what Avner wants for his.) And after I walked out of the theater, I was torn neatly in half: on the one hand, I felt yet again that Gandhi was right, that violence only breeds violence; at the same time, I knew that if I were the leader of a country, I would have to do exactly as Golda Meir did.
That's good art. That's significant, powerful, meaningful art. It's been a great year for movies, no matter what the box office numbers say, and I for one am hugely gratified that once again, the culture war is beginning to resemble a dialogue and not a monologue.
(Note: Apparently I've said some of this before, back in October. But what the hey, it deserves repeating.)
Trouble is, the Other Guys never stopped setting forth their side of the various arguments. And in the vacuum, their voices were the only ones being heard. Of course there was also some mind-boggling timidity involved: the moment George Bush Sr. called Michael Dukakis "a card-carrying member of the ACLU," Dukakis should have immediately squared his shoulders and said "Of course I am. The real question is, why aren't you?"
As clever as I want to feel for having had this minor-key epiphany in early November 2004, obviously some of my Hollywood brethren were way ahead of me. Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck; Syriana; Brokeback Mountain (which does have a political point to make no matter how much the filmmakers talk about its being "just a love story"); Munich; and The Constant Gardener, to name only the most prominent films of the past year, would obviously have been at least in pre-production in November 2004, so I wasn't at all alone in thinking that the time had come for us to stand up and start making some noise again. (Hell, even Star Wars was getting political--whatever else you may think about the last movie, Amidala's line about democracy ending "to the thunderous sound of applause" does have some bite.)
And this notion that Hollywood's "liberal elite" should just stick to making mass entertainments and keep their big yaps shut is of course the most blatantly dishonest form of hypocrisy. We all revere Frank Capra's blatantly political films now that they're safely in the decades-ago past, now that they're no longer dangerous; we all talk about the Great Works of Art that were "ahead of their time," once upon a time, and how brave and how bold those artists were--back in the day. I suppose it's part of the rose-hued nostalgia that everyone feels, that sense that things were better in the past but that now, everything is simply screwed up. But there is also, as I said, pure hypocrisy involved: George Clooney should keep his big yap shut, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is a hero. It has nothing to do with Hollywood types not having a right to speak out, and it has everything to do with Hollywood types speaking out about things you don't agree with.
(Personally, I could take or leave Mr. Clooney back when he was just a fidgety actor on ER, but now that he is a capital-A Artist doing his damnedest to create work that means something, he's become one of my favorites. And his company with Steven Soderbergh, Section 8, is consistently doing the sort of stuff I find most interesting.)
I'm not going to get into which film should win the Oscar this year (though I may succumb as the date draws nearer because everyone does), and that's because the films are so very different, and they're all really quite good this year, and they all succeed at what they want to accomplish. (Caveat: I haven't yet seen Capote.) But I just saw Munich the other night, and if you want my guess as to which film means the most, that one is it. The box office for this film may never have taken off, which makes it a failure in Hollywood terms and it will probably get punished accordingly by the Academy; but I think that in twenty or thirty years, this will be the film that people end up remembering, the one that feels really significant. It may even go down as Spielberg's great achievement; because as the New York Times review noted, "Mr. Spielberg has been pummeling audiences with his virtuosity for nearly as long as he has been making movies; now, he tenders an invitation to a discussion." And what is present in Munich, what makes it difficult for an audience to take but is exactly why it is so good at inciting discussion, is ambiguity, the absence of easy answers, the unadorned presentation of multiple points of view. Eric Bana's character Avner is supposed to represent us: in these times, don't we all feel a little of his paranoia, his regret, his unease? All the way through the movie, we keep hearing about the virtues of home and family; but we keep hearing it from both sides. (There is a brilliant scene when a safehouse gets double-booked, and our undercover Mossad agents find themselves sharing a room with, among others, an agent of the PLO, who reveals that he wants for his people exactly what Avner wants for his.) And after I walked out of the theater, I was torn neatly in half: on the one hand, I felt yet again that Gandhi was right, that violence only breeds violence; at the same time, I knew that if I were the leader of a country, I would have to do exactly as Golda Meir did.
That's good art. That's significant, powerful, meaningful art. It's been a great year for movies, no matter what the box office numbers say, and I for one am hugely gratified that once again, the culture war is beginning to resemble a dialogue and not a monologue.
(Note: Apparently I've said some of this before, back in October. But what the hey, it deserves repeating.)
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Cable Prices
Since the price of cable TV here in West L.A. is absurdly high (Adelphia charges about $82 per month for expanded basic plus HBO, and those prices are due to rise yet again next month), one might think that I would welcome any initiative that might lower that cost. But when I saw a headline in the L.A. Times the other day, "Study Finds Savings in Cable Choice," instead I just found my blood boiling. Here's why:
The article reflects a recent FCC initiative to create what is called "a la carte" pricing for cable television channels. The idea is to eliminate the blocks of channels that most cable providers include as a matter of course, and to allow viewers to pick and choose which channels they do and do not want to pay for. On the face of it, this makes some sense: to pick only one example, since I don't speak Spanish, why would I want to pay for SiTV? If a low price could be found that, taken together, gives me only the channels I do actually watch at a lower price, why wouldn't that be a great idea? The L.A. Times article refers to an FCC report suggesting that, on average, consumers would find their cable bills reduced by about 13%. Sounds terrific.
Funny thing, though. An FCC report from 2004 (before Kevin Martin took over the reins of the Commission) concluded that a la carte pricing would in fact drive prices up. Mr. Martin, however, asserts that "the first [report] contained 'mistaken calculations,' relied on 'unsupported and problematic assumptions' and presented an 'incomplete analysis.'" That's Republican-speak for "it didn't come to the conclusions we wanted, so we changed the terms of the argument till it did."
First, let's deal with the basic economics, and how cable TV works under bundled pricing. Like most people, I pay a flat fee for what Adelphia calls Expanded Basic, meaning I get a couple hundred channels of programming for the same cost every month. And as I said before, if I find that I never watch, say, the PAX channel, why isn't it a good idea for me to be able to say No, and get it off my line-up? Isn't that just good ol' American competition, the marketplace in action? Not with cable TV, no. Because for one thing, there's already competition--for advertising dollars, and that is ratings-driven, just as it is for the free network channels like CBS, NBC and ABC. If enough people aren't watching a channel, it doesn't have good ratings and it doesn't make the big advertising bucks. Now to a certain extent these channels are subsidized by the fact that they're bundled together in the first place, which is how niche channels survive--would Trio still exist, otherwise? A couple years ago, I never watched anything on FX; then they started running interesting original programming like Nip/Tuck and, particularly, the wonderful Rescue Me. That's competition in action: now I watch their channel, their ratings have jumped, and I'm sure they're making more advertising money. But if, a couple years ago, I had been on an a la carte plan, I would have probably decided not to keep FX, and would have never been able to sample Rescue Me and would be missing out on a great show. (Sometimes there are downsides to this competition: Bravo used to be a great channel, with a broad focus on the arts; now it mostly shows pop-culture crap.)
As a Disney spokesman noted in the L.A. Times article, the "Disney Channel was once offered a la carte, and only a privileged few bought it despite the strength of our brand." This tells me that, in practical terms, if people are asked to affirmatively pay on a channel-by-channel basis, they will consistently make conservative choices whose purpose is to keep their bill low. In the process there will be less of what cable has to offer that is available, because if the Disney Channel can't draw subscribers, how will C-Span? Thus, consumer choice is actually restricted under a la carte pricing. And as the article noted, minority-focused channels like SiTV would be hit particularly hard, leaving those communities unrepresented.
And if I were to decide that having all those choices was important to me, then it's a pretty safe bet that I would end up paying more for those channels individually than I ever did when they were bundled. I have to conclude that the 2004 FCC report was correct; so then what's going on now?
Decency. That's what it's about. A la carte pricing is a stalking horse for enabling a small number of decency-obsessed viewers to keep the smut off their televisions. Heaven forfend they should take the trouble to learn how to use their V chips; no, they just don't want this stuff to exist at all. They don't want the naughtiness of Drawn Together, they don't want the harsh language and adult situations of Nip/Tuck, they don't want that damned Howard Stern anywhere anyhow. And they know that if you can starve out the stuff on the margins, eventually you start to starve the beast itself.
And that's when I start to turn red in the face. A la carte pricing isn't about the health of my wallet in the least; it's about a few overly-touchy ideologues trying to dictate the content of the airwaves. (Here's a Washington Post article from March 2005 about Senator Stevens's efforts to extend the ability of the FCC to fine cable programming on the same basis as free-over-the-air channels.)
Now if the FCC really wanted to lower my cable bill, then they would do something about the fact that Adelphia has a monopoly in my part of town. That's why my bill is so damn high, because I simply have no other options. (Satellite TV, alas, isn't an option where I live.) The very high price that Adelphia charges has nothing to do with how much programming comes in over my cable lines, or what kind of programming; it has everything to do with the fact that Adelphia can pretty much charge whatever the hell it wants, and what other option do I have but to bend over and take it?
The article reflects a recent FCC initiative to create what is called "a la carte" pricing for cable television channels. The idea is to eliminate the blocks of channels that most cable providers include as a matter of course, and to allow viewers to pick and choose which channels they do and do not want to pay for. On the face of it, this makes some sense: to pick only one example, since I don't speak Spanish, why would I want to pay for SiTV? If a low price could be found that, taken together, gives me only the channels I do actually watch at a lower price, why wouldn't that be a great idea? The L.A. Times article refers to an FCC report suggesting that, on average, consumers would find their cable bills reduced by about 13%. Sounds terrific.
Funny thing, though. An FCC report from 2004 (before Kevin Martin took over the reins of the Commission) concluded that a la carte pricing would in fact drive prices up. Mr. Martin, however, asserts that "the first [report] contained 'mistaken calculations,' relied on 'unsupported and problematic assumptions' and presented an 'incomplete analysis.'" That's Republican-speak for "it didn't come to the conclusions we wanted, so we changed the terms of the argument till it did."
First, let's deal with the basic economics, and how cable TV works under bundled pricing. Like most people, I pay a flat fee for what Adelphia calls Expanded Basic, meaning I get a couple hundred channels of programming for the same cost every month. And as I said before, if I find that I never watch, say, the PAX channel, why isn't it a good idea for me to be able to say No, and get it off my line-up? Isn't that just good ol' American competition, the marketplace in action? Not with cable TV, no. Because for one thing, there's already competition--for advertising dollars, and that is ratings-driven, just as it is for the free network channels like CBS, NBC and ABC. If enough people aren't watching a channel, it doesn't have good ratings and it doesn't make the big advertising bucks. Now to a certain extent these channels are subsidized by the fact that they're bundled together in the first place, which is how niche channels survive--would Trio still exist, otherwise? A couple years ago, I never watched anything on FX; then they started running interesting original programming like Nip/Tuck and, particularly, the wonderful Rescue Me. That's competition in action: now I watch their channel, their ratings have jumped, and I'm sure they're making more advertising money. But if, a couple years ago, I had been on an a la carte plan, I would have probably decided not to keep FX, and would have never been able to sample Rescue Me and would be missing out on a great show. (Sometimes there are downsides to this competition: Bravo used to be a great channel, with a broad focus on the arts; now it mostly shows pop-culture crap.)
As a Disney spokesman noted in the L.A. Times article, the "Disney Channel was once offered a la carte, and only a privileged few bought it despite the strength of our brand." This tells me that, in practical terms, if people are asked to affirmatively pay on a channel-by-channel basis, they will consistently make conservative choices whose purpose is to keep their bill low. In the process there will be less of what cable has to offer that is available, because if the Disney Channel can't draw subscribers, how will C-Span? Thus, consumer choice is actually restricted under a la carte pricing. And as the article noted, minority-focused channels like SiTV would be hit particularly hard, leaving those communities unrepresented.
And if I were to decide that having all those choices was important to me, then it's a pretty safe bet that I would end up paying more for those channels individually than I ever did when they were bundled. I have to conclude that the 2004 FCC report was correct; so then what's going on now?
Decency. That's what it's about. A la carte pricing is a stalking horse for enabling a small number of decency-obsessed viewers to keep the smut off their televisions. Heaven forfend they should take the trouble to learn how to use their V chips; no, they just don't want this stuff to exist at all. They don't want the naughtiness of Drawn Together, they don't want the harsh language and adult situations of Nip/Tuck, they don't want that damned Howard Stern anywhere anyhow. And they know that if you can starve out the stuff on the margins, eventually you start to starve the beast itself.
And that's when I start to turn red in the face. A la carte pricing isn't about the health of my wallet in the least; it's about a few overly-touchy ideologues trying to dictate the content of the airwaves. (Here's a Washington Post article from March 2005 about Senator Stevens's efforts to extend the ability of the FCC to fine cable programming on the same basis as free-over-the-air channels.)
Now if the FCC really wanted to lower my cable bill, then they would do something about the fact that Adelphia has a monopoly in my part of town. That's why my bill is so damn high, because I simply have no other options. (Satellite TV, alas, isn't an option where I live.) The very high price that Adelphia charges has nothing to do with how much programming comes in over my cable lines, or what kind of programming; it has everything to do with the fact that Adelphia can pretty much charge whatever the hell it wants, and what other option do I have but to bend over and take it?
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Ciao, Torino
Well, I tried. Tried watching a little of NBC's Winter Olympics coverage. But as I was watching today, I noticed that there sure did seem to be a lot of commercials. Finding that seriously discouraging, and with other things to do, I went off and did those other things. (The second half of City of Truth just became very significantly different from what we had originally planned. So it goes.)
Then tried again tonight, after watching Part Five of the completely terrific BBC adaptation of Bleak House. (Anna Maxwell Martin is doing superb work, and is my favorite recent discovery--and oh, how I love discovering great new actors.) And since I'd had the earlier impression that the Olympics coverage/advertising ratio was skewed, I kept an eye on the clock.
The result: six minutes of half-pipe coverage, then four minutes of commercials; five minutes of short-track racing, then three minutes of commercials. And you know what? Nothing that I saw of the actual competition set my heart to beating faster in the least; now maybe I could find myself settling in just to see what happens, if not for the fact that the coverage is being constantly interrupted by commercials. Too much advertising, far too much, for far too little reward.
Ciao, Torino. Ciao, Winter Olympics. I've got better things to do.
(And on a related note, I heartily recommend Laura Penny's impassioned book Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit.)
Then tried again tonight, after watching Part Five of the completely terrific BBC adaptation of Bleak House. (Anna Maxwell Martin is doing superb work, and is my favorite recent discovery--and oh, how I love discovering great new actors.) And since I'd had the earlier impression that the Olympics coverage/advertising ratio was skewed, I kept an eye on the clock.
The result: six minutes of half-pipe coverage, then four minutes of commercials; five minutes of short-track racing, then three minutes of commercials. And you know what? Nothing that I saw of the actual competition set my heart to beating faster in the least; now maybe I could find myself settling in just to see what happens, if not for the fact that the coverage is being constantly interrupted by commercials. Too much advertising, far too much, for far too little reward.
Ciao, Torino. Ciao, Winter Olympics. I've got better things to do.
(And on a related note, I heartily recommend Laura Penny's impassioned book Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit.)
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Sometimes I Am Despondent
There was a line in a news story about Coretta Scott King's funeral that made me say "What on earth?" and so I went searching, and I found this. And at that point, all you can do is hang your head and apologize to the Lord for being part of the same species as these people.
(Please, whatever you do: don't go wandering around the main site. It's just not worth what it will cost your soul.)
(Please, whatever you do: don't go wandering around the main site. It's just not worth what it will cost your soul.)
Absurdity Upon Absurdity
As follow-up to my earlier post, I note this article from CNN about how an Iranian newspaper plans to run a contest seeking cartoons about the Holocaust as a test of just how tolerant the West really is. (Actually, quite aside from my gut reaction that I'd rather not see such a thing, it's actually a fair question.)
But really, doesn't all this beg the question of whether anyone outside Denmark would have ever seen these cartoons in the first place if there hadn't been such a big stink raised? By protesting so loudly, haven't Muslims in fact ensured that these "blasphemous" cartoons have now been seen broadly, all across the world? (I have seen them; if not for all of this, I would have never sought them out.) How does that serve the honor of the Prophet?
But really, doesn't all this beg the question of whether anyone outside Denmark would have ever seen these cartoons in the first place if there hadn't been such a big stink raised? By protesting so loudly, haven't Muslims in fact ensured that these "blasphemous" cartoons have now been seen broadly, all across the world? (I have seen them; if not for all of this, I would have never sought them out.) How does that serve the honor of the Prophet?
Cartoon Bloodshed
Am I the only person who thinks that a headline like "Afghan Police Kill Four in Cartoon Bloodshed" sounds as if Yosemite Sam has taken up a career in Afghani law enforcement?
Fareed Zakaria wrote a superb column about American misconceptions about the Middle East; his column touched on the current imbroglio over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting Mohammad in what is seen by many to be a blasphemous manner. (Interestingly, the below-mentioned Neil Gaiman refers to the possibility that "...three of the images that upset people the most were apparently created by the people who were showing them," in other words that the people protesting the cartoons may have created some of them, but I haven't found any corroboration of that anywhere.)
Now I'm the last guy to make value judgments of a culture, and I sure as hell won't do so here. But I will happily talk about perceptions of a culture. The Americans, for example, have for years now been doing a piss-poor job of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Middle East. (Cf. Mr. Zakaria, again.) When the Bush administration pushes free elections as the perfect exemplar of liberty, then refuses to acknowledge an Islamist party when it wins said free elections, it is fair to assume that the people of Palestine and Iraq might see that as yet another example of a pervasive Western hatred of Islam.
But. When Muslims in Europe and the Middle East see a few cartoons and start burning embassies, it also fair to assume that we in the West might see those good Muslims as intolerant, narrow-minded children whose customary reaction to anything that challenges their worldview is to set it on fire.
An interesting parallel: a couple weeks ago, Rolling Stone ran the instantly-infamous cover photo of Kanye West as Jesus. There were certainly plenty of good Christians who found this offensive, and they certainly had something to say about it. (For the record: I do not find the image of Mr. West blasphemous, but I do find it to be in remarkably poor taste.) But you didn't see Catholics setting fire to the offices of Rolling Stone.
So while I readily acknowledge that we in the West are doing a miserable job of presenting the virtues of our way of life, including our tolerance, to those in the Middle East; at the same time, those in the Middle East are not at present doing anything to help their image in the West. It would be awfully nice if both sides would just calm down a little and not be so damn reactive about everything, but clearly I just moved into the realm of pipe dreams and it's time to stop now.
Fareed Zakaria wrote a superb column about American misconceptions about the Middle East; his column touched on the current imbroglio over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting Mohammad in what is seen by many to be a blasphemous manner. (Interestingly, the below-mentioned Neil Gaiman refers to the possibility that "...three of the images that upset people the most were apparently created by the people who were showing them," in other words that the people protesting the cartoons may have created some of them, but I haven't found any corroboration of that anywhere.)
Now I'm the last guy to make value judgments of a culture, and I sure as hell won't do so here. But I will happily talk about perceptions of a culture. The Americans, for example, have for years now been doing a piss-poor job of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Middle East. (Cf. Mr. Zakaria, again.) When the Bush administration pushes free elections as the perfect exemplar of liberty, then refuses to acknowledge an Islamist party when it wins said free elections, it is fair to assume that the people of Palestine and Iraq might see that as yet another example of a pervasive Western hatred of Islam.
But. When Muslims in Europe and the Middle East see a few cartoons and start burning embassies, it also fair to assume that we in the West might see those good Muslims as intolerant, narrow-minded children whose customary reaction to anything that challenges their worldview is to set it on fire.
An interesting parallel: a couple weeks ago, Rolling Stone ran the instantly-infamous cover photo of Kanye West as Jesus. There were certainly plenty of good Christians who found this offensive, and they certainly had something to say about it. (For the record: I do not find the image of Mr. West blasphemous, but I do find it to be in remarkably poor taste.) But you didn't see Catholics setting fire to the offices of Rolling Stone.
So while I readily acknowledge that we in the West are doing a miserable job of presenting the virtues of our way of life, including our tolerance, to those in the Middle East; at the same time, those in the Middle East are not at present doing anything to help their image in the West. It would be awfully nice if both sides would just calm down a little and not be so damn reactive about everything, but clearly I just moved into the realm of pipe dreams and it's time to stop now.
Friday, February 03, 2006
New From Neil
I'm a long-standing fan of Neil Gaiman's work, and just thought I'd take a second to note that his excellent website has just been redesigned. Neil is of course the writer of the comic par excellence, The Sandman, and has also turned into quite a good novelist. Back in '99, Marc and I wrote the stage adaptation of Neil's graphic novel with Dave McKean, Signal to Noise, and Neil, in keeping with his broad reputation as a thoroughly nice guy, encouraged us to make the changes that needed to be made to translate the material into another medium; he provided some of his notes and unpublished scenes; and when we opened, he came down to Chicago for a benefit performance in aid of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
(An amusing note: a couple years later, the BBC had Neil and Dave do a radio adaptation of Signal to Noise, then released a CD of it; in the booklet for the CD, Neil wrote a short story in which time has passed, and the characters respond to a stage play based on their lives that is clearly a reflection of our own play. Neil's criticisms of our work were valid, and the whole post-modern reflection of a reflection of a reflection was fascinating--and frequently hilarious, at least for me.)
Neil's blog is superb (I particularly admire his light-handed brevity--he's brilliant at boiling something down to its crystalline essence), and has as much to do with why I started blogging as anything else. And while we're on the subject, Mr. McKean is an artist of the highest order, and one of my dreams is to get one of his works for my walls.
(An amusing note: a couple years later, the BBC had Neil and Dave do a radio adaptation of Signal to Noise, then released a CD of it; in the booklet for the CD, Neil wrote a short story in which time has passed, and the characters respond to a stage play based on their lives that is clearly a reflection of our own play. Neil's criticisms of our work were valid, and the whole post-modern reflection of a reflection of a reflection was fascinating--and frequently hilarious, at least for me.)
Neil's blog is superb (I particularly admire his light-handed brevity--he's brilliant at boiling something down to its crystalline essence), and has as much to do with why I started blogging as anything else. And while we're on the subject, Mr. McKean is an artist of the highest order, and one of my dreams is to get one of his works for my walls.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
SOTU, Brute
In a world increasingly riddled with acronyms (or WIRWA, for short), the other day POTUS delivered the SOTU for the fifth time. West Wing has already taught us that POTUS stands for the President of the United States; now SOTU, for State of the Union, seems to be becoming common. I'm waiting for the day when we have acronyms inside of acronyms, the whole damn thing boiling down to PS5, for POTUS's fifth SOTU.
But that's neither here nor there (BTNHNT). I've always made a point of watching the SOTUs, just as I've always made a point of watching as much as possible of both the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. This isn't because I'm a political junkie; more like an interested observer. (One of the important themes in my script based on the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. is an emphasis on the responsibilities of an individual citizen--the Greeks, who were so badly outnumbered by the Persians in that fight, had probably twice as many men at hand, but half of them were slaves, i.e. not citizens, therefore they were never asked to fight. Contrast that with this.) But on Tuesday, which was also the day the Oscar nominations were announced, I had it in my head to go see Brokeback Mountain--at the same time as the POTU. Should I keep a long-standing bargain with myself, or go see the movie that I needed to see? (Needed to see? Yep--there's a scene in the movie that is almost identical to one I've had in Beaudry for a year, and damn it all, there is now no way I can use my scene and will have to come up with something else.)
In the end, the decision was easy. Watching the SOTU, after all, is not an end in itself; it's about obtaining the information necessary to be a responsible citizen. But when the entire transcript can be found within hours at the New York Times, the information is the easy part. More to the point, the question became this: is there, at this late stage, anything that George W. Bush can say that I will believe? Does the man have any credibility with me at all? And the answer is: nope. So I went to see the movie.
And it was good, and in the end none of it mattered: I got home at 10:00, turned on the TV and CNN was just beginning a complete replay of the entire SOTU. So I got to have my movie and get pissed off at the President! Such a deal! (I must confess, it was nice to be able to see the whole thing--the moment when he complained about Congress not passing his Social Security "reform" and the Democrats started cheering definitely had me cackling.)
Now--what did I think of the speech itself? Well, it boils down to some pretty simple stuff. First, you have to admire the skill of his speechwriters, whose skill at making night seem day and day night is extraordinary, an artistry of bullshit that I think has never been matched. Bush is a dualist right down to his toenails, a black-and-white ideologue who seems incapable of comprehending anything that might be complex. His early statement that "...the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline" was typical of the whole speech. His path is presented as "[t]he only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny," and anything that is not his path can only end "in danger and decline." It was particularly astounding to hear this President--who during the 2000 campaign sounded like such an isolationist--suddenly beating the drum against the dangers of isolationism. But then it has long been evident that the son of the man who railed against a "new world order" is in fact trying to create a new world order, with himself as its head.
Now it might seem that in changing his position on isolationism, Bush is doing exactly what his critics always accuse him of never doing: changing his mind to accept a new reality. September 11th clearly demonstrated that a problem festering somewhere else in the world can now wreak havoc on our shores all too easily, so that isolationism is simply an unviable option. Trouble is, everyone agrees with that, Democrats and Republicans alike. But where George Bush sees freedom "on the march," wearing the boots of soldiers, there are other ways to advance freedom. Martin Luther King understood this, so did Gandhi, so did Jesus Christ. The thing that continually astounds me is how unChristian these Christians are, how incapable they seem to be of embracing Christ's most revolutionary idea: turning the other cheek. Greet hostility with love. The path will be hard, and unclear, and fraught with danger (it is serendipitous that the final volume of Taylor Branch's magnificent biography of Dr. King has just been released, reminding us of just how dangerous and hopeless Dr. King's path of non-violence became), but in the end it is (not to get too dualistic about it) the best way to achieve peace. Freedom need not march forward on the boots of a soldier; it can also take flight on the wings of a dove.
But that's neither here nor there (BTNHNT). I've always made a point of watching the SOTUs, just as I've always made a point of watching as much as possible of both the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. This isn't because I'm a political junkie; more like an interested observer. (One of the important themes in my script based on the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. is an emphasis on the responsibilities of an individual citizen--the Greeks, who were so badly outnumbered by the Persians in that fight, had probably twice as many men at hand, but half of them were slaves, i.e. not citizens, therefore they were never asked to fight. Contrast that with this.) But on Tuesday, which was also the day the Oscar nominations were announced, I had it in my head to go see Brokeback Mountain--at the same time as the POTU. Should I keep a long-standing bargain with myself, or go see the movie that I needed to see? (Needed to see? Yep--there's a scene in the movie that is almost identical to one I've had in Beaudry for a year, and damn it all, there is now no way I can use my scene and will have to come up with something else.)
In the end, the decision was easy. Watching the SOTU, after all, is not an end in itself; it's about obtaining the information necessary to be a responsible citizen. But when the entire transcript can be found within hours at the New York Times, the information is the easy part. More to the point, the question became this: is there, at this late stage, anything that George W. Bush can say that I will believe? Does the man have any credibility with me at all? And the answer is: nope. So I went to see the movie.
And it was good, and in the end none of it mattered: I got home at 10:00, turned on the TV and CNN was just beginning a complete replay of the entire SOTU. So I got to have my movie and get pissed off at the President! Such a deal! (I must confess, it was nice to be able to see the whole thing--the moment when he complained about Congress not passing his Social Security "reform" and the Democrats started cheering definitely had me cackling.)
Now--what did I think of the speech itself? Well, it boils down to some pretty simple stuff. First, you have to admire the skill of his speechwriters, whose skill at making night seem day and day night is extraordinary, an artistry of bullshit that I think has never been matched. Bush is a dualist right down to his toenails, a black-and-white ideologue who seems incapable of comprehending anything that might be complex. His early statement that "...the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline" was typical of the whole speech. His path is presented as "[t]he only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny," and anything that is not his path can only end "in danger and decline." It was particularly astounding to hear this President--who during the 2000 campaign sounded like such an isolationist--suddenly beating the drum against the dangers of isolationism. But then it has long been evident that the son of the man who railed against a "new world order" is in fact trying to create a new world order, with himself as its head.
Now it might seem that in changing his position on isolationism, Bush is doing exactly what his critics always accuse him of never doing: changing his mind to accept a new reality. September 11th clearly demonstrated that a problem festering somewhere else in the world can now wreak havoc on our shores all too easily, so that isolationism is simply an unviable option. Trouble is, everyone agrees with that, Democrats and Republicans alike. But where George Bush sees freedom "on the march," wearing the boots of soldiers, there are other ways to advance freedom. Martin Luther King understood this, so did Gandhi, so did Jesus Christ. The thing that continually astounds me is how unChristian these Christians are, how incapable they seem to be of embracing Christ's most revolutionary idea: turning the other cheek. Greet hostility with love. The path will be hard, and unclear, and fraught with danger (it is serendipitous that the final volume of Taylor Branch's magnificent biography of Dr. King has just been released, reminding us of just how dangerous and hopeless Dr. King's path of non-violence became), but in the end it is (not to get too dualistic about it) the best way to achieve peace. Freedom need not march forward on the boots of a soldier; it can also take flight on the wings of a dove.
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