We’ve all read a science fiction story and thought about how great it would be if some of these inventions existed. The genre of science fiction is full of unbelievable seemingly impossible inventions that would make everyday life so much easier. Sometimes these inventions actually turn out to be feasible; many of our gadgets today were once just part of someone’s imaginary future world in a story.
Part of the reason science fiction has so many fantastical inventions is because of the freedom of imagination the genre has. In the future in a different world anything is possible, allowing for authors to imagine endless amounts of devices and gizmos. With all of these inventions, though, it’s only a matter of time before some of them are implemented in real life, right? Well, some already have been. Older novels have been predicting our current technology for years.
Earbuds, a common part of everyday life. Earbuds are an invention used so often people rarely think about their complexity. Even though they had bulkier headphones, earbuds weren’t around in 1953 and wouldn’t be for roughly half a century. But when Ray Bradbury published his dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451,he was able to conceive such an invention. Though he did not go into great depth, the “little Seashells in her ears, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk” are unmistakably an idea of our modern earbuds.
Arthur C. Clarke predicted using geostationary satellites for telecommunications, namely television signals, 20 years before the first commercial satellite was launched. He mentioned this in the magazine Wireless World in 1945. At the time, geostationary satellites were already being widely talked about as potential for radio communications. A geostationary satellite is “a satellite in an equatorial circular orbit at a distance of approximately 42,164 km from the center of the Earth, i.e., approximately 35,787 km (22,237 miles) above mean sea level [at] a period equal to the Earth’s rotation on its axis (Sidereal Day=23h56m) and would remain geostationary over the same point on the Earth’s equator.”
Not impressed? Well, Jules Verne predicted the moon landing a full century before it happened. In his story From Earth to the Moon, he tells about the journey of three men completing the first manned space flight to the moon. While parts of it are pretty far off, such as the vessel being launched from a cannon, other details are uncannily close. For example in Verne’s novel the launch from Florida predates the Kennedy launch site by more than a century. While his science was obviously flawed, many of his calculations referring to outer space travel are surprisingly close.
While it isn’t “literature,” Star Trek predicted many inventions we have today. While ours isn’t quite as advanced, our modern 3-D printers are similar to the replicator used in Star Trek. And our iPads are almost identical to the PADD (Personal Access Display Device), and the virtual display used by the Dominion bears a striking resemblance to Google Glass.
With the growing number of science fiction works and increasing dependence upon technology, it’s inevitable some authors would have gotten some stuff right. They’ll probably continue to predict stuff correctly as well. And while there are many of these predictions that came true, there is an even greater amount that didn’t. However, we’re still progressing and may one day see teleportation or the hoverboards promised to us by Back to the Future.
In Euclid’s Elements, Euclid follows a certain architecture for how he structures his logic. Mathematics at its core is pure logic. It is not bound to anything but itself. The logical architecture is in itself the framework of any particular theoretical mathematical reality. In math, the framework can be endlessly changed, but everything else is based upon extrapolation of that framework. Euclid provides a framework and much extrapolation upon the framework throughout the elements. Although this structure can be seen throughout the Elements, focus will be drawn to the first book. And due to space and time constraints, the structure will mainly be focused on the context, up to the twelfth proposition, in relation to the whole, from the definitions to the postulants and from the common notions to the propositions.
When Euclid begins to set up the theoretical reality of the Elements, he begins with three fundamental types of truth. The first of type of truth is definition. The definitions are truths of the factual level. This is this and that is that. It identifies basic parts of his theoretical reality in the same way a scientist tries to reduce the universe into fundamental scientific facts or laws. The first definition is a point is that which has no part. The second definition is a line is a breathless length. These two definitions are fundamental to Euclid’s Elements. They are not based upon each other and can be seen as foundational laws. We also see extensions to some definitions in later definitions. The definitions are the basis on which geometry is extrapolated and other fields in math are based. However, these definitions should not be seen as constant; they are free to be changed to create a new theoretical reality of mathematics.
The second of the three fundamental types of truth are the postulates. A postulate can be defined as a fundamental principle accepted as self-evident without proof. The postulates are claims to be considered true regardless. These can be thought of as a special revelation the same a religion may claim special revelation from a God. Euclid’s postulates are necessary for his theoretical reality to make sense. Some philosophers thought the foundations of reality are ultimately unknowable and only the individual can decide what foundational theory is true for them. Similarly, mathematics in general can have postulates that may seem to concur with reality or not. Since mathematics is pure logic, it is not constrained by any physical reality. Euclid provides in his Elements a definite special revelation of the foundations of his theoretical reality with these postulates. The postulates can almost be viewed as a form of religious dogma or worldview Euclid uses to explain the operations of his theoretical reality. They are Euclid’s five commands. They dictate certain things are possible and these things be considered fact. The first of these is to draw a straight line from any point to any point. This could be said differently as it is possible to create a straight line between two points. The second in the same fashion could be said differently as it is possible to create a straight line so it is straight. However, these slight rephrasing may disrupt some of Euclid’s nuances.
The third of the three fundamental types of truth are the common notions. The common notions are generally accepted logics. They are common for they are generally understood by human sentience. And they are notions because they are abstract reasoning. The common notions reflect the general revelation of man. Man understands the universe he lives in has general rules for functioning. In Euclid’s Elements, these are those rules. For example, the fifth common notion is the whole is greater than the part. It makes sense to the common understanding of sentience a whole is greater than the part, because it is not known to them an example otherwise. The common notions could be left out and more could be added. They act more as a shove toward logical extrapolation, a gentle guide toward the laws of the theoretical reality Euclid is creating in his Elements.
The fourth part of Euclid’s Elements is the propositions. Propositions are hypotheticals that can either be disproven or proven. An assertion is examined through the use of the common notions in the light of the definitions and the postulates. It takes the provided truths and logically analyzes them to see whether or not another truth can be extrapolated from them. Each proposition expands upon the foundation to create multiple and exceedingly more profound layers in the theoretical reality. This profoundness can be seen through the elegance of the each proposition alone, but they can also be overlaid to show their interactions and how they have built upon each other. Each proposition adds to the complexity of raw extrapolated logic. It is from this superposition of the layers Euclid’s theoretical reality can be seen as truly elegant. Euclid takes the layers a step at a time, first proving one thing, and all necessary corollaries and other needed propositions on the layer, before taking the next step up. The ultimate layer of the first book is with proposition forty-seven, the Pythagorean Theorem. The Pythagorean Theorem is well known for being mindlessly memorized as a2+b2 =c2. Although the Pythagorean Theorem taught in that simple algebraic form, it is based on tons of logical extrapolation from several dozen propositions. It should be remembered there are no numbers or variables in the Elements and it is built only by extrapolation and inquisitive shape line arrangements. The Pythagorean Theorem is proven by comparing lines together in context of the previous propositions. Euclid’s Elements are intuitive at their core.
Euclid’s logical architecture in the Elements provides insight to the complicated, because it is the process from the simple to the complicated. It is easier to climb a staircase one step at a time rather than trying to jump from the bottom of a staircase to the top. The book leaves the reader to find the theoretical universe behind the words but gives the reader freedom for his own intuition to guide him. In Euclid’s Elements, intuition is the only path to understanding. To be intuitive with logical frameworks is to find the heart of mathematics. Euclid makes it easy to grasp and to love the pursuit for that reality. On this staircase, each step is provided, but the steps have to be made not memorized. Unlike the bulky mimic taught in many math classes, mathematics is imaginative, fantastical, and intuitive. In this elegance lies the heart of beauty itself, for mathematics is best defined as “the art of expression.”
Bibliography
Devlin, Keith, Ph.D. “What Is Mathematical Thinking?” Devlin’s Angle. Mathematical Association of America, 1 Sept. 2012. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.
—. “Will the Real Geometry of Nature Please Stand Up?” Devlin’s Angle. Mathematical Association of America, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.
Lockhart, Paul, Ph.D., and Keith Devlin, Ph.D. A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and ImaginativeArt. Jackson: Bellevue Literary, 2009. Print.
One may accuse me of being an anglophile if one wishes, but it is fair to say a good deal of the time television series from our cousins across the pond are superior in numerous ways to their American “counterparts.” This is perhaps not always true, assuredly, since I did just say “a good deal of the time,” which is not a lengthy way of saying “always” (which, as an amalgam of “all” and “ways” seems like a strange expression to use for time and not methods). Still, the BBC has given us a wealthspring of enjoyable series. It is no secret I am a lifelong fan of Red Dwarf and Doctor Who (the original run, since I haven’t much experience with the relaunch). Elsewhen I have mentioned the superiority of crime-drama shows such as Cracker and Prime Suspect. Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes cannot be topped, and that’s just a fact. Rumpole of the Bailey, Poirot, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves & Wooster, Whose Line is it Anyway? — most of you likely agree with the general high quality of the BBC’s offerings, and we haven’t even mentioned the contemporaneous shows and their international popularity (mainly because I haven’t seen them yet, though you could check out some of the recommendations given earlier this issue). To this list of delightful shows I add a show certainly not overlooked in its native England but far too long overlooked by Americans, the delightful As Time Goes By.
The premise for the series strikes one immediately as being wholly British — not in the sense of tea, crumpets, or Scotland Yard, but as a premise only the British would consider for a television series: a young couple in love, separated by war and communication breakdown, meet again 40 years later and slowly rekindle their relationship (and romance — sorry for the spoilers). A show about two experienced people, getting along in years, both fairly set in their ways, does not seem at first glance to be a show with a lot of appeal … but somehow, the simplicity, the general aura of ease and calm create such an atypical show that draws you in and feels most of the time as a refreshing, relaxing relief from the antagonism-filled workday you have temporarily escaped. Sure, the show has its inane moments: characters do bizarre and occasionally frustrating things here and there, but the vast majority of the time we know we are going to be in for an enjoyable time with these characters.
The two central characters are Jean Pargetter and Lionel Hardcastle, played by Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer (the powerhouse casting certainly helps the enjoyment of the series). Jean is a semi-recently widowed mother of her twice-divorced daughter Judi. Jean owns and manages a typing/secretary agency (perhaps dating the early seasons a bit … the subplot of a late episode revolves around getting a modem), and Judi works for her. Judi’s own secretary, Sandy, becomes a major supporting character before too long in the series. Lionel, after his time in Korea (at which he is kicked by a mule, prompting Jean to dub him Lionel Hardcastle, kbm, mimicking the British knighthood system), becomes a coffee plantation manager in Kenya, marries, divorces, and returns to England and writes a book about his experiences. His publisher, Alistair Deacon (a truly great character who must be seen to be believed — and even after seeing him you won’t believe him), urges Lionel to get a typing secretary to help him finish his book. This throws our main characters together, starting the rekindling process slowly but surely. It takes some time for their friendship to resume and grow over a few seasons, but the pacing (thanks to the shorter British season-lengths) is not a problem, especially if you have the whole show on dvd or Amazon Prime™. Soon enough, we meet family members and others who become recurring characters each season, and the focus of the show shifts from rekindling friendship and life at the agency to home life, new business opportunities, and other character-driven stories, all the while giving us good laughs, intelligent dialogue, and simple stories that give you more value and enjoyment than you think you’ll get most of the time.
My favorite character is Lionel, mostly because we’re pretty similar (overlooking the fact I’ve never been a coffee plantation owner in Korea, a soldier, divorced, or British). Lionel gets grumpy rather easily, though I don’t think I do, not as badly as he does, but there’s enough Eeyore and Marvin the Android in there to remind you sooner rather than later his soft, nurturing side is going to override whatever momentary goofiness is interfering with his relaxation. One gets the sense he’s the kind of parent/husband you want Mr. Bennet to be but never will. Lionel, for all his gruff, is an intelligent, caring man — the show does revolve around his ability to re-woo the long, lost love of his life, after all. Like Lionel, I have difficulty understanding the younger generation (as also indicated earlier this issue), I enjoy being at home more than most other places, I would totally enjoy being on the lecture/book-writing circuit, and I am skeptical of technology (we’ve already had that conversation). Unlike Lionel, I don’t follow rugby or cricket, I don’t pop down to the pub for a quick half, I don’t walk to the neighborhood grocer for groceries, and I don’t like custard tarts. Three of those could easily be addressed if I lived in England like Lionel is fortunate enough to do, however.
He’s certainly not a perfect man; his flaws come out with fair regularity (it is a situation comedy, after all), and he does let us down at times when his bluster and self-centered drive for things to be more comfortable and easy than they usually are override good sense and common courtesy. But, then again, that would be another area in which we are similar, and that well-rounded humanness of Lionel’s character makes those many bright spots when he comes through and saves the day and says just the right thing all the more enjoyable. He’s probably the most lovable wet blanket you’ll ever meet on the screen. The plus side is seeing those flaws encourages one (me) to improve those flaws within oneself (myself).
I don’t want to ramble on about too much else, since the point of this was to introduce you to an overlooked series, not tell you everything you should know so you don’t have to watch it (like I did with Centennial way back when). Jean, Judi, Sandy, and Alistair (especially Alistair) all are good characters with their ups and downs, and the second tier of supporting characters that flesh out the series starting in season two make the show even better. It is the television equivalent of putting on your favorite jim-jams, eating your favorite goodnight snack, and spending time with people you really care about, all the while being believable, realistic, and worthwhile. It is sentimentality at its finest. Do yourself a tremendous boon and get and delight in As Time Goes By.
“The amount of educational programming on television today is simply desensitizing. The only reason left to go to school is to see gun violence,” (Humphreys 1) states Martin Chizelwit Humphreys in his book, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic. In this day and age, Martin Humphreys is not the only one who shares this view reflected by his quotation on desensitization. Many others take up the call on the subject of desensitization with the same outlook. In their minds, desensitization is a horrible, vile cancer upon society; one which must be avoided at all costs. An example of one who shares the thoughts of Humphreys on this matter is Genice Phillips. On the Web site “Beliefnet,” Phillips is the author of a particularly interesting article on desensitization entitled, “Is Desensitization the Norm in America?”in which she states
When violence, of any kind, splashes across our TV screens during the news, what is our reaction? For a moment we’re concerned. If it hits close to home, we’re afraid, overwhelmed by the thought that tomorrow it may be our daughter, our son; it may be us. But those feelings last for a short period of time, and then, the news moves on. And so do we… Our emotions have numbed towards violent occurrences across the country (par. 2).
Phillips’s outlook on desensitization in a corrupted society is nearly exactly homogenous to Humphrey’s thoughts on the matter. Both authors share the previously stated idea desensitization is comparable to a form of crippling cancer. Hence, the question is raised, “If more than one person seems to firmly hold this belief desensitization is present and detrimental, what evidence exists upon which they stand?”
Evidence of desensitization runs almost as rampant as desensitization itself. The majority of officials, authors, scholars, or others who take up arms against the spread of desensitization usually cite the growing “mature”-rated gaming industry as evidence of its spread. On July 24th, 2006, Iowa State University officials published a report involving studies completed on the link between violent video games and exponential desensitization. In the findings, the report makes numerous claims based on studied observations, stating:
Research led by a pair of Iowa State University psychologists has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence…. Their paper reports that past research — including their own studies — documents that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions (sec. 4).
As if the evidence found in this report supporting the link between violent video games and desensitization was simply not enough, the pair of researchers went on to make their own conclusions on the experiment at the end of the report, stating
They conclude that the existing video game rating system, the content of much entertainment media, and the marketing of those media combine to produce “a powerful desensitization intervention on a global level.”… “In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool,” he [researcher Craig Anderson] said (sec. 4).
Only one undeniable and obvious fact can be drawn from the findings of the pair of Iowa State University researchers: desensitization is prevalent and highly corruptive upon society by being exuded from violent media. Based upon the firm conclusion drawn by the researchers, violent media is a tool that would spread desensitization globally. Something to note, however, is the fact this study was carried out, completed, and published all in 2006; nearly 9 years ago. The only way to prove the validity of the seemingly-outdated study is to compare it to studies completed in the past three or four years, studies more recent and therefore more “valid” than Iowa State University’s report.
A report published August 12th, 2013 by the University of Texas at San Antonio reviewed evidence again supporting desensitization linked to violent media, seven years after the Iowa State University initial report. In the report, UTSA scholars describe their findings:
Today, a growing number of children, teens and adults purchase and play video games, supporting an industry that is valued at nearly $80 billion worldwide. Scholars estimate that more than 85 percent of video games contain some form of violent imagery, and half include what they coin “serious violent actions.” They also warn that violent video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops have desensitizing effects on the body’s physiology…. “It is generally accepted within the scientific community that violent video games lead to desensitization, negatively impact psychological functioning and contribute to aggressive behavior” said [UTSA scholar] Cordova (par. 2-4).
As clearly and concisely laid out by the UTSA report, desensitization is still prevalent nine years after ISU’s original report. Not only does that prove the still-extant validity and relevance of ISU’s findings, but also it proves the point made by ISU researchers when the report stated, “They conclude that the existing … media combine to produce ‘a powerful desensitization intervention on a global level.’” Desensitization has latched onto the gaming industry like a parasite, as it has abridged continents and grown across the world. Based upon the findings of both reports, anyone who attests to the valid fact the gaming industry is partly responsible for the spread of desensitization is neither inaccurate nor incorrect.
Thus, based on these findings, the fact desensitization is a crippling cancer upon society, using violent media as one of its means of locomotion, is now feasible. Both Martin Humphreys and Genice Phillips are correct in their logic regarding the subject of rampant desensitization. Desensitization is definitely rampant and undoubtedly dangerous. Now that the question of desensitization’s existence is proven, many turn to face questions begged by the whole of societies across the globe yet, thus far, have unfortunately gone unanswered on a wide scale. Arundhati Roy, writer and winner of the Booker Prize in 1997, summarizes the questions many ponder on the subject the best, as she states, “Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a ‘real’ war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other’s heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?” While many recognize desensitization as a major threat, only time will tell if and how the world will react to it on a unified scale.
Works Cited
Carnagey, Nicholas. “ISU Psychologists Provide First Study on Violence Desensitization.” Iowa State University News Service. 24 July 2006. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Fish, Christi. “UTSA Scholars to Study Desensitization…” UTSA TODAY. 13 Aug. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Health Day. “Violent Video Games May Numb Players to Brutality, Study Says.” U.S. News and World Report. 9 May. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Humphreys, Martin Chizelwit. Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic. 2 Nov. 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Phillips, Genice. “Is Desensitization the Norm in American Society?” Beliefnet. N.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
The media have a way of taking history and rewriting it to create a tale more easily sold to the public. Most recently, this has been done with the Bible, like in Noah, A.D., and many others. But even more often a historical figure is misrepresented entirely — like Pocahontas in Disney’s classic, who was supposed to be around 10 or 11 years old and had no romantic connection to John Smith whatsoever. However, this paper isn’t another bout with Disney. Instead, the decline of fiction is shown through the portrayal of another historical figure: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII.
Anne was born in Norfolk and appears to have been the dutiful daughter expected of 16th-century England. In other terms, she, along with her father and brother, worked vigorously for the family’s interest in the court of King Henry VIII. They were known to be early acceptors of the “New Religion” — or Protestant interpretation of the New Testament from Germany — and Anne in particular shared these views with precise, deep, and learned zeal. She had been educated in France since she was six years old, and thus not only became fluent in French but also was gifted with exposure to Renaissance classicism and fashion. The fervor she held for the Reformation was most likely first introduced to her through Marguerite of Angoulême, who later became known as the Queen of Navarre; Gillaume de Briçonnet, her Reformist bishop; and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, the humanist Bible translator and influential polymath. Indeed, “Lutheran” ideas came to France through these three individuals. Anne’s delight in the French language — it being the third principal language of the movement — became her primary source of the Reformation.
Her relationship with Henry Tudor began with the English king’s impatience for a male heir. Despite the fact the physical descriptions of Anne are not particularly flattering, her vivacity and personal confidence caught Henry’s eye. Around 1526, Henry began courting her. The story of Henry VIII’s break with the church over the annulment of his previous marriage is a well-known one, and it ultimately ended with his marriage to Anne in 1533. Three years later, Anne was executed on grounds of treason, having failed to produce a male heir because of multiple miscarriages. She remained steadfast in denying the charges against her and was equally resilient in holding to her faith.
Enter Natalie Dorman, starring as Anne Boleyn in Sony’s The Tudors television series. It would admittedly be unfair to pin the blame on the actress. For many actors, a job is a job, and they need it. The writers and the production company, however, have no way to escape criticism. The Tudors depicts Anne as a hot-tempered, French-taught seductress and schemer. It follows the basics of her life — her children, her marriage to King Henry, and her death — but in between the glimmers of truth are deep shadows of eroticism. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it downplays Anne’s faith and magnifies her sexuality. One of the most poignant examples of this is possibly in how Anne’s refusal of Henry’s sexual advances is portrayed. In the TV series, it is presented as one more way she seduces Henry. She encourages him and then refuses him, all the time making him all the more infatuated with her (which was her aim in the first place). However, it is recorded Anne really did refuse to be Henry’s mistress saying she would only be his wife. And if she was, as is believed, a Christian, wouldn’t this refusal be a no-brainer?
So once again, the media are seen portraying a female as a character “more befitting” to the screen. Why is it a singing self-actualizer or a fiery-tempered temptress are better than a noble heroine or a leading figure in the English Reformation? The world’s values have shifted drastically, and not for the better. These shifted values are most prominently shown through the decline of fiction.
Already, at the title, the mere claim the topic of extrasensory perception may seem irrational and even pointless to discuss. If one were to do a Web search on the subject, it is likely one would find hundreds of sites without good credentials of any kind willing to impart their secret knowledge, often for a slight fee. These sites may be taken as representative of the subject matter, but they’re not. These sites tend to be fraudulent in nature, and one’s opinion of the subject matter should not be based on such things as these sites are filled to the brim with exaggerated claims and bogus studies in order to make money (Stein). Even without such a negative, yet extremely popular, influence, the claims of extrasensory perception may seem bizarre and baffling to the point they should be rejected offhand. However, as Einstein once said in a letter to Jan Ehrenwald, “It seems to me, at any rate, that we have no right, from a physical standpoint, to deny a priori the possibility of telepathy. For that sort of denial the foundations of our science are too unsure and too incomplete” (Frazier 63-64). This concept is known is otherwise known as Clarke’s Law. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong. It would seem rather than denying extrasensory perception a place for discussion under the enlightenment of science it would be far more rational to explore the topic to see if it is researchable or to see if a phenomenon actually does exist. As our level of technology increases, perhaps phenomena currently difficult to study may be the next frontier of science. After all, the black hole was only recently considered to be mere science fiction and any scientist caught taking such things seriously would be politely ridiculed. Rationally, who could expect objects of infinite density, mass, and gravity could exist? The entire Earth would have to be collapsed into the size of a golf ball. Yet science has since proven these astronomical monsters do exist. If people weren’t scanning the heavens for them, they would still be a laughing matter. But what exactly is extrasensory perception? To know that, it is best to start with the history of extrasensory perception and its terminology. The potential benefits for scientific analysis should be examined so as to know whether or not the field is worth any extra attention.
Parapsychology really began in the British Isles during the middle of the 19th century. Some of the people who were involved in the field at that time included such names as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William James, Lord Rayleigh, Henry Sidgewick, and C.D. Broad. They studied such things as mediumship, telepathy, the Riechenbach Phenomena, and apparitions. While many scientists would subscribe to the belief in the validity of the field, it also became widely criticized by many scientists, splitting the scientific community more than ever before. Above all else, the field became incredibly popular in the masses. Harry Houdini even took it upon himself to try to prove parapsychology was false, although many people thought he could legitimately cast magic with strange occult powers. This era developed little to no substantive proof for anything in the field of parapsychology (Kurtz).
In 1930, Duke University opened up its parapsychology unit. Duke wasn’t the first university, but it spawned a new era in parapsychological research known as the Rhine Era. For the parapsychology laboratory, Duke University employed psychologists William McDougall, Karl Zener, Louisa E. Rhine, and J.B. Rhine. The era would be named after J.B. Rhine, who would become the most well-known parapsychologist ever. His name would become as well known as Einstein’s for a decade (Berger). J.B. Rhine would be one of the first to attempt to rigorously study parapsychology and quickly realized the study of Extrasensory Perception was at the time the only part of parapsychology that had a possibility for study in a laboratory setting. Initially the results of the Duke experiments were quite successful, but soon they discovered methodological errors in their studies. The studies would be fixed of those methodological errors and repeated only to have more methodological errors. The Rhine Era was a continuous cycle of refining methodologies for laboratory studies, and with each cycle the results diminished (Laycock 28-31). After the Rhine Era, the studies broadened to include more topics. The research publically known continued to show no significant results; however, other studies were done in secret.
In the late 1940s, with the defeat of the Nazis, the United States government began to secretly and systematically bring Nazi scientists back to the United States and even sometimes away from the Nuremburg Trials. Many scientists were given amnesty in return for sharing the Nazis’ technological secrets (National Archives). This program was known as Operation Paperclip. The goal was to keep Nazi scientists away from the Soviet Union. NASA was a product of Operation Paperclip, as the Nazis were the first to develop rocket technology, so much of NASA’s original group of scientists were former Nazi scientists. However, Operation Paperclip had a darker side to it. In addition to Nazi rocket scientists, they also brought over and employed Nazis who were involved in Nazi mind control experiments. These brainwashing specialists were employed by the CIA in a collection of programs often collectively referred to as Operation MKUltra (Lasby). MKUltra was declassified in 1975 by the U.S. Congress shortly after CIA Director Richard Helms managed to destroy all but 20,000 documents in 1973 (CIA). MKUltra and its many subprojects were experiments into human behavioral engineering; many of these experiments were highly illegal and unethical. The CIA would collect unwitting American and Canadian citizens for human experimentation that often resulted in severe neurological and psychological damage. The subjects of the human experimentation would be subject to many varieties of altered mental states brought on through various means including, but not limited to, hypnosis, hallucinogenic drugs, insulin induced comas, LSD, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal abuse, and even sexual abuse. “The frequent screams of the patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to depattern their subjects completely” (Mark ch. 8). In subproject 119, scientists implanted electrical devices into people in order to try to take control of motor function and human behavior. In subproject 68, lead by Dr. Ewen Cameron, patients were placed into comas, sensory deprived, and forced to listen to repeating tapes for months on end. Dr. Cameron’s experiments included the sexual abuse of children. His subproject and other subprojects would manage to obtain film of high-ranking American government officials committing sexual acts on children and blackmail those officials in order to maintain funding (Goliszek 170-171). He would become president of the American, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Association.
How do these atrocities relate to extrasensory perception? Firstly, any significant research into extrasensory perception during altered states would have been researched in this program. Secondly, the work done (and probably still being continued under another codename) by Operation MKUltra prompted the U.S. Army to start Project Stargate. MKUltra lead to many strange and bizarre projects concerning parapsychology and extrasensory perception, but Project Stargate has more easily available information concerning it. Project Stargate was a remote viewing project that lasted until 1995. Remote viewing is a type of extrasensory perception that involved subjective locating abilities. The Stargate Project involved soldiers and some civilians being isolated from news reports and current events and asking them in to find out about enemy movements while in a trance. The final public report of the Stargate Project proclaimed that,
Even though a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory, it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated. The laboratory studies do not provide evidence regarding the origins or nature of the phenomenon, assuming it exists… even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that a paranormal phenomenon occurs under the conditions present in the laboratory paradigm, these conditions have limited applicability and utility for intelligence gathering operations (Mumford).
While the specifics pertaining to results of these tests are widely unknown, they are still a significant portion of the history of extrasensory perception.
Modern-era parapsychology has become rare in the United States. The only two universities in America that continue to study parapsychology are the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona. The University of Virginia is studying near-death experiences and the possibility of survival after death. The University of Arizona is studying mediumship. Mediumship includes a little extrasensory perception. There are also a variety of private institutions in America that study parapsychology, and they do tend to have occasional studies into extrasensory perception. In Europe, parapsychology has had substantial increases in research funding. The University of Edinburgh has become somewhat famous for the Koestler Parapsychology Unit and is currently offering degrees in parapsychology for anyone who has two masters degrees in two other fields of psychology and completes all of their parapsychology courses. Parapsychology has also started to be augmented by other fields of psychology in recent years to try to provide theoretical framework (Zusne). Overall, there is no known research that substantiates the claim of extrasensory perception. To claim the government managed to succeed with their secret tests would be a conspiracy theory that would require far more substantiation. For more than a century research has been poured into this subject without any fruitful results.
As previously mentioned, there are several kinds of extrasensory perception, and they can be categorized into types. These types are telepathy, clairvoyance, and trans-temporal cognition (Encyclopedia Britannica). Telepathy is the transmission of thoughts between at least two people. Clairvoyance is a general term for several subtypes of the ability to know or be aware of objects or events that shouldn’t be known because the senses haven’t been exposed to them in what would generally be considered the natural way. Trans-temporal cognition is a broader term for precognition and retrocognition. Precognition is the ability to see into the future. Retrocognition is the ability to see into the past (Parapsychological Association).
Telepathy is essentially thought reading. There are several forms of telepathy. One of these forms is emotive telepathy, which is the ability to influence others with emotions. However, latent telepathy is typically considered to be the most frequent form. Both of these along with classic telepathy are the only pure forms of telepathy. Telepathy is often studied with Gansfeld effects, or other uses of sensory deprivation in order to try to increase the ability of extrasensory perceptions. Earlier experiments made use of Zener cards. Experiments tend to have two subjects, one of whom is given a picture in one room and the other is in another room and is supposed to try to know what the other is thinking subconsciously. Testing is done by marking the time by when the photos appear and what the sensory deprived subject says to be seeing or feeling (Parapsychological Association).
Clairvoyance is the sixth sense. It has many subtypes as follows:clairalience, clairaudience, claircognizance, clairgustance, clairsentience. True clairvoyance is the ability to actually see the objects or events that should be out of sight. True clairvoyance includes remote viewing. The subtypes each relate to the other senses, with the exception of claircognizance. For example, clairalience refers to the sense of smell, and clairgustance refers to the sense of taste. They all generally operate in the same way, but each to its own sense. Claircognizance, on the other hand, is more of a general feeling. A good example of claircognizance would be the feeling one is being watched, which is a common phenomena currently being researched. While claircognizance is an intrinsic knowledge, it defers from trans-temporal cognition in that claircognizance only gives knowledge about the present. It may be likely claircognizance is more similar to trans-temporal cognition than the other forms of clairvoyance (Parapsychological Association).
Trans-temporal cognition is both retrocognition and precognition. It is the ability to know the past and the future. All evidence for this must be anecdotal in nature. Currently, there is no proof it is anything other than a confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. Recently, thanks to new technologies, social media, and mass data storage, it may be possible to start new experiments by observing old data collected in order to objectify the anecdotes (Alcock).
Extrasensory perception is part of the field known as Parapsychology. Parapsychology encompasses telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and similar claims. Contrary to popular belief, Parapsychology is not concerned with UFOs, Bigfoot, paganism, or witchcraft. Like many forms of psychology, parapsychology is a pseudoscience (pseudo is a prefix meaning false). A pseudoscience is anything that takes the form of science but isn’t. In other words, a pseudoscience can be empirical and based on statistics (Panskepp).
One of the key parts of what demarcates science from pseudoscience is the idea of falsifiability. For example, if one were to examine an instance where a man saved a child from drowning that was being drowned by another man from both Freud’s and Adler’s differing theories, we would get different results of which both are equally valid. Freud would claim the second man is suffering from psychological repression stemming from the Oedipus Complex and the first had attained sublimation. Adler, on the other hand, would claim both men simply had feelings of inferiority, which drove one man to save another and also drove the other man to kill. The observation in this case confirms the theory, both opposing theories. This is pseudoscientific as there is nothing that could prove either theory to be false (Popper). For something to be truly scientific, it must be falsifiable, refutable, and testable. In science a prediction must be made, like Einstein’s prediction light can bent by gravity. That is testable during a solar eclipse by observing the light of stars behind and nearby the sun during an eclipse. If the effect isn’t observed, then Einstein’s theory is refuted, thus it is refutable. Since Einstein is either correct or incorrect, it is falsifiable. Therefore, Einstein’s theory of relativity is true science. Psychology fails to meet the standards of science (Kuhn). Technically, however, psychology is an accepted science but is considered a soft science, which is merely a way to separate the stigma of the field being called a pseudoscience (Popper). The reason for this is just because it is pseudoscience doesn’t necessitate it being not true or helpful. Certainly psychology is thought to be helpful for many people, but it isn’t scientific. It uses many aspects of science to attain a level of empirical thought, but it relies on a confirmation basis, and the theories are mostly inherently improvable. It would be hubris to throw out psychology on the basis it isn’t always scientific. Additionally, psychology does have a few parts to it that are scientific (although, admittedly, quite a bit of the earlier scientific portions of psychology were unethical). Psychology’s credibility only came about by advances in other fields of science, particularly neurology and biology. Similarly, parapsychology currently fails at not being falsifiable or refutable.
If there hasn’t been any known substantiated research and if extrasensory perception is a pseudoscience that will defy any attempts at true scientific analysis, then why continue devoting funding and time to studying extrasensory perception? This is a good question. Parapsychologists always start from the assumption the phenomenon of extrasensory perception and other phenomena are real. There is an inherent confirmation bias in parapsychology that prevents answers from being found. Whereas in the past, some pseudosciences were able to achieve the rank of soft science, or even hard science in the case of chemistry, by managing to create a substantial theoretical framework and laboratory data, parapsychology will never be able to achieve that level of credibility. By always looking for the confirmation and not considering the null data, parapsychology has crippled itself. Yet, this doesn’t necessitate the subject matter of extrasensory perception shouldn’t be studied. It would be a fallacy to assume because the field extrasensory perception is relegated to is corrupt and unscientific extrasensory perception shouldn’t be studied scientifically at all. Unfortunately, until recently, the critics and skeptics of parapsychology have done very little in the way of running tests themselves in order to refute the phenomena the parapsychologists claim exist. There is a new field of psychology that has recently been established known as anomalistic psychology that attempts to study these purported phenomena from a purely scientific view (French). Anomalistic psychologists don’t rely on a confirmation bias and therefore are free to explore all possibilities, and they have made great strides in doing so. Wiseman and associates did a study on apparitions and alleged haunting that showed environmental factors caused people to more likely see apparitions. These environmental factors included levels of lighting, local electromagnetic fields, and other similar factors. In one case, they found a fault line in the earth was emanating certain ions underneath a house and causing hallucinations to anyone in proximity to the house and the effect of the ions increased with exposure. Hauntings and apparitions aren’t normally considered to be part of extrasensory perception, but this was brought up to make an example of the successes of anomalistic psychology. Unfortunately, there have not yet been anomalistic psychological studies into extrasensory perception. It is here encouragement for study into extrasensory perception is warranted and needed (Wiseman).
Extrasensory perception has eluded researches for more than a century because of a confirmation bias that has existed since research has begun. Only recently have researchers taken the study beyond the pseudoscience, and it is now time for research to truly begin into the paranormal. This line of research is of the utmost importance as the results would either change all we scientifically know about the nature of the universe, or it will do nothing more than cast away doubt. Either way, the research is necessary.
Bibliography
Alcock, James E. Parapsychology, Science or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective. Oxford: Pergamon, 1981. Print.
Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
“An Interview with Richard Helms.” Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, 08 May 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Goliszek, Andrew, Ph.D. In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation. New York: St. Martins, 2003. Print.
“Koestler Parapsychology Unit.” Koestler Parapsychology Unit. University of Edinburgh, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.
Kurtz, Paul. A Skeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1985. Print.
Lasby, Clarence G. Project Paperclip German Scientists and the Cold War. New York: Atheneum, 1975. Print.
Laycock, Donald, David Vernon, Colin Groves, and Simon Brown. Skeptical: A Handbook of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Ed. David Vernon. Canberra: Canberra Skeptics, 1989. Print.
Marks, John. The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control. New York: Times, 1979. Print.
Mumford, Michael D., Andrew H. Rose, and David A. Goshin. An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications. Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research, 1995. Print.
Panksepp, Jaak. Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Popper, Karl R. Conjectures and Refutations; the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Basic, 1962. Print.
“Records of the Secretary of Defense (RG 330).” National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
Stein, James D., Ph.D. The Paranormal Equation: A New Scientific Perspective on Remote Viewing, Clairvoyance, and Other Inexplicable Phenomena. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page, 2013. Print.
“The VERITAS Research Program.” Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. University of Arizona, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
Wiseman, Richard, and Caroline Watt. Parapsychology. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Print.
Zusne, Leonard, and Warren H. Jones. Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum, 1989. Print.
I hope you aren’t disappointed by this article or you find it misleading. Like Colin Mochrie, I try to stay pretty current with the latest vernacular of the younger generation, especially since we at Redeeming Pandora like to keep it fresh. My students are certainly aware of my intuitive grasp of the latest lingo, but despite what you may have thought from the title of this article, it’s not really about diction. Instead, having recommended a number of quality movies, books, albums, and games over the issues, I thought it would be good to hear from some of the youth today. What movies, series, and artists/albums do they find worthwhile? What classics resonant within this generation? What contemporary aesthetic delights should I and my elders experience? We have kept the responders anonymous, in part to avoid the excessive adulation and further requests for recommendations that no doubt will follow (and in part so you don’t get mad at anyone specifically if you think any of these are inappropriate — I assume they mean the clean versions of whatever selection you find distasteful). Any multiple-responder recommendations are noted with an “x#.” As always, no grown-ups are to blame for what happens next.
Well, there you have it. The people have spoken. Rousseau is happy. Before you start clamoring for a “Here’s What Good Culture Is, You Philistine Youth!” elective (which, actually, isn’t such a bad idea), remember even Bach was “pop culture” long ago. Perhaps these may not have Bach’s staying power, but who better to keep us informed on what’s current than the youth? So go check out some of the new good stuff, as the kids say. Or keep enjoying the good old stuff, whichever. Either way, delight in something beautiful and share it with others.
Here we are again, friends. Another Christmas issue, despite all the hardships, all the setbacks, all the doubts, all the world-shattering, mind-numbing insanities of the age we are together again. See what good hope can do? We may end up rechristening our subtitle to “A Journal of Hope.” Not because many of you out there mention we tend to slant more toward “opinion” than “scholarship,” (which is not a completely fair assessment, considering most “scholarship” is basically “this professor’s/scienty-person’s opinion supported by other professors’/scienty-people’s opinions”), but because we see the world needs more hope now than it has for the past couple of millennia. We don’t want our 31st-century offspring to look back upon our day as The Second Dark Age. We’ll see. Just a thought.
Without a core group of students contributing to this volume (despite some welcome return authors), I was somewhat trepidatious if this year’s “Christmas issue” would end up being all that Christmassy, or if this would be our “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” issue. Yet somehow, no doubt through mysterious and wondrous Providence, a fair number of Christmas tidbits did appear, however tenuous the connection (which is about typical for our “Christmas” issues, come to think of it). Julian Rhodes reminds us it is cough and cold season (despite his remarks about art criticism standards being subjective). Katie Arthur mentions Christmas briefly in her essay; Professor Zylstra’s timely essay likewise has a patina of Christmastime in it, especially in his conclusion. Michaela Seaton Romero discusses Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at some length as well. Quite exciting how these things are working on this year. I hope you are enjoying the ride as well. (The trickiest thing is getting the back-cover previews to come true without having to write them all myself … not that I mind doing that, of course.)
Looking back on the early years (without trying to sound silly, considering the “early years” were four and three years ago, but a gnat’s wing on the spectrum of Time), especially in some of my personal Christmas reflections, it is odd to see how things have changed within even such a short span. I suppose raising children will do that. Though certainly most of that is being accomplished by my gracious and overly-self-sacrificial wife. Certainly some things remain the same: I’m committed to remaining in my jimjams Christmas morning, even if I am the only one. My parents are visiting again this year, which as always will be nice (and not just because of the excuses to get milkshakes at Chick-fil-A or going out to new restaurants), but even if they feel compelled to get fully dressed before presents time, I will keep that tradition alive as long as possible. But some things even now don’t seem as important as they did even a few years ago — not the material things, which are increasingly less important each birthday or holiday season (no doubt a sign of my impressively-deepening maturity) — things that seemed to be necessary for each holiday season to be meaningful.
I’m fine if I don’t listen to every Mannheim Steamroller album this year; I’m fine if we don’t watch The Bishop’s Wife this year; I’m fine if we don’t watch It’s a Wonderful Life this century. It’s possible the annual compunction to do those things was a kind of anti-death-drive response, as if each Christmas had to be meaningful, had to be special, all the right foods had to be eaten, we can’t possibly forget to sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” this time … “just in case.” But that’s really no way to live, especially around the holydays. I’ve had (probably less than) my share of “last Christmas” experiences, whether knowingly or not, and trying to make each one special “just in case” does a disservice both to our loved ones (as if cherished memories are not important enough as now) and more importantly Christmas itself. Christmas should be valued for its own worth, the truly wondrous riches of the Incarnation of our Savior and the beginning of the final phase of God’s redemptive processes throughout Time before even that existed. Christmas is not important dependent on our experience of it. And while I don’t want that increasing awareness within me to sound like a resignation of sorts (especially in light of our Death to Cynicism 2015 campaign), it is altogether likely it may be past time to resign ourselves from some things that seemed so important and necessary in our youth that truly are hindrances to delighting in not only this season but our entire experiences abiding in Christ richly as a whole.
This is starting to be a lot more serious than I intended it to be, but tough times demand tough talk, after all. But as Hamlet says, “Something too much of this.” You and I most likely originally thought of the Peanuts song when reading the title of this, but it turns out more accurately to refer to the Beach Boys’ lesser-known Christmas ditty “Christmas Time is Here Again,” a far more upbeat and energetic number than “the other one.” And that should renew our hopes and enthusiasm for the season. We all have painful memories of what did and/or never would happen at and around Christmases not-so-long-long ago, but for now let’s delight in what the season is and can be, an enjoyable time of traditions new and old, quality time with friends and family and, natch, “the reason for the season.”
Perhaps it’s the old age talking, but some of my seasonal music tastes are changing as well. Indicated above, I don’t necessarily need to listen to every Mannheim Steamroller album each year, but certainly the first two albums are a “must.” Their first Christmas album is about as pristine as an album can get, Christmas or no. It’s not that the more recent albums from there are “disappointing,” but part of what makes the first two so impressive is the counterpoint arrangements (and the fact they are carols, not just “songs of the season”). While this may seem contradictory in my character, as I have railed quite pronouncedly in the past (and authoritatively, don’t forget that part) against Christiany singers doing their own “modernized arrangements” of classical hymns, it is not the same thing. Slowing down or speeding up a beloved carol and/or adding a musically-enriching counterpoint or harmony is not in any way the same as adding irrelevant choruses with drastically dissonant chord progressions within the same song. When Mannheim Steamroller arranges a carol, it gives a new unity to the song, an entirely fresh and invigorating and moving approach to the work as a whole, without deceiving the audience into thinking “oh, good, this is one of my favori— hey, hey! What is happening here?” Mannheim Steamroller’s first two Christmas albums, especially, give us a better appreciation for the songs in their care.
Admittedly, that has nothing to do with changing tastes, but I do think my appreciation for these albums to which I’ve been listening for thirty years is deepening. What is really changing lately is my fondness for other modern-classical Christmas sounds, such as Harry Belafonte’s “Mary’s Boy Child,” the New Christy Minstrels’ first Christmas album (thanks to a chastisement from my father after an earlier Christmas article), and especially the deep, rich tones of Roger Whittaker. Something about the timbre of his voice, I suppose, evokes memories of gentler, simpler times (real or imagined). This phenomenon is akin to the Andy Williams Effect, I’m sure. “Those halcyon days” may not have been all that great at the time, but the nostalgia for them is powerful. Yes, must be the old age kicking in.
As we look back on 2014, we’ll likely rank it as one of the better years for our family. I know that sounds horribly selfish, as genocides, race warfare, international conflicts, biological epidemics, and the usual destructions have run rampant throughout the world of late (as is their wont — said without facetiousness). These truly are heartbreaking, and without trying to sound like I’m bragging, having prayed through Operation World this past year, my heart is becoming even more sensitive to the sorrows and needs of others around the world. But allow me to say for my family at least we will look back on this year fondly. It had its hardships, indeed, but nowhere near as challenging or enervating as others in recent memory.
Summer vacation this year saw an actual out-of-town vacation that did not involve driving to Iowa for the first time in over five years. I spent several weeks not on the computer. Days and days were spent reading actual books. Games were played, including approximately four hundred rounds of Go Fish. I got to play Panzergruppe Guderian and Here I Stand for the first time. Julia got her first library card, which began a continual life of going to the library as a family. True, that did have the unfortunate side-effect of me reading so many New 52 TPBs (as lamented earlier in this issue), but on the positive side it has enabled me to get and see dozens of good movies I hadn’t gotten around to yet (especially a number of William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood, and John Wayne movies — so victory all around, there). No point for me in going to the library for books, really. I have my own.
What others planned for evil (notably something ironically named “affordable”), God used for good, enabling us to give up dependency on wholly flawed systems and live by faith far more, which has been both helpful financially as well as psychologically and spiritually vivifying. This will definitely be a key signifier of the fondness of this year.
Many of these positive elements (vacation, assuaging a potential financial disaster) are owed to, well, God, obviously, as we said, but also to the kindness and generosity of others, who deserve far more than brief mentioning here: thanks especially to Dr. and Mrs. Moore for the use of their Outer Banks vacation home for a very enjoyable week; and Mrs. Kucera’s tireless efforts while we were enjoying our summer vacation, working diligently to find better solutions to the seemingly-inexorable financial/insurance debacle (oh, for the good ol’ days, when “mandated insurance” used to be called “a protection racket” — where is the A-Team when you need them?). Another important hero for 2014 is our own Mr. Emry, whose tireless efforts in restoring one of my self-crashed computers has enabled me no longer to pack one up and take it to school every day, an enormous boon indeed.
One remarkable aspect of 2014 is we did not grill out one single time. Usually those are important moments in an enjoyable summer, but we managed to get through a summer without any grilling and still managed to stay comparatively trim and healthy. We’ll have to work on that for next summer, if the Lord tarries.
Another remarkable aspect of 2014 is not only did I buy a pair of drumsticks for the first time in over a decade (finally found a pair of Neil Peart signature ProMark wood tips! — which means we are basically best friends), but also for the first time in about a decade or so my drum set has seen the light of day (at least, it has been set up and played inside). I admit freely I am still as rusty as the old set of grilling tongs hanging in the shed, but that is working itself out bit by bit. I noticed the other day when playing I was channeling my inner Greg Nichols (or at least the Greg Nichols within all of us), mainly in that my ride cymbal stick hand was perpendicular to my arm in the same way he always played in jazz band. Ah, good times. Speaking of Greg, out of nowhere recently (California, to be more precise), Greg contacted me on a social networking Web site asking how I was and all that and asking for a replacement copy of the book I wrote back in the halcyon days of 1997-98. Of course, I was more than delighted not only to hear from Greg but also to fulfill his request. That series of communications, combined with writing up that exploration of Hold Your Fire has made this a rather reflective conclusion to 2014.
Well, friends, it’s about that time once again. Jack Benny and Co. are rehearsing their annual allegorical fantasy “Goodbye ’14, Hello ’15” (it’s been too long; we’ll need to add “listening to Jack Benny again” to the schedule for 2015). Have you any big plans for the New Year? Having rediscovered in 2014 what snacks taste like, it may be time again to break out the Wii Fit and see if I can’t regain that boyish figure, by which I mean as a boy I always figured I’d play video games my whole life, so I should get back to that. I have been hearing the call of Final Fantasy VI lately, and it’s awfully difficult to resist that call … though it may be easier depending on what games arrive (if any) for me under the Christmas tree.
I mentioned as well I want to read good books next year. I plan to finally read Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, and Thucydides, at least (in translation, of course), some more Nero Wolfe adventures, and maybe some Marvel comics again (new to me and some old friends like Operation: Galactic Storm and Age of Apocalypse). I need to finish some longstanding works as indicated in previous summer reading lists, but we’ll see where the mood takes us. Keep it fresh, as the kids say.
As you’ve noticed by now, another concerted effort for 2015 is our Death to Cynicism campaign. Join us, won’t you? as we extirpate cynicism from our lives by walking in faith and caring about the world and living with openhanded and openhearted generosity. If nothing else in these troubled times, the decrease in gasoline prices alone should remind us (perhaps in Al Michaels’s voice) we should still believe in miracles. Chesterton reminds us pessimism occurs not when one gets tired of badness but when one gets tired of goodness. While pessimism and cynicism are not tantamount, the sentiment is still valid. Let us all eagerly await what wondrous gifts God is gearing up to lavish upon us in 2015!
Yes, the Christmas time feeling is in the air again!
Hello, friends. As you know by now, I tend to lean in favor of Marvel over DC, though I have certainly spent a fair amount of time in the DC Universe (not that there is such a thing as “the” DC Universe, of course) and began in the DC Universe (for a short time, at best) and don’t feel any need to declare one comic universe is somehow superior to another. Though I’m not a “die-hard” DC fan, having never subscribed to a series for example, I would consider myself a decent DC fan of some long standing. I own a number of DC issues and TPBs, I grew up watching (and recently owning) Super Friends, and Batman Returns was the first movie I saw twice in the theater. I regularly read the Death of Superman 3-TPB storyline and have for a couple of decades. I am thrilled beyond repair the Adam West and Burt Ward Batman series is finally available on DVD, and I hope with intense passion I will be receiving it for Christmas (though I’ll be fine if that doesn’t happen). So I believe I may say with some DCU authority “The New 52” is a total humongous pile of nonsense.
Supporting that declaration I have actually read a fair amount of it — certainly not all 52 series, and not every single issue of even the major “flagship” series, but thanks to my semi-local library I have read a respectable amount of this palaver in the past year or so, and almost all of it has been a tremendous disappointment. Yes, the Batman “Court of Owls” story had some fine points, and while I am willing to allow many of the series I haven’t experienced could be quite spectacular, what I have read of it so far has demonstrated The New 52 is a disorganized, purposeless shambles.
The “purpose” behind it, purportedly, is to give a new generation of readers the chance to jump aboard with a brand-wide re-launch (apparently the term “reboot” is verboten) without feeling burdened by ignorance of the last 70-some years of character development, plotlines, conflicts, and other interfering story elements. One suspects the memo to the faithful readers of the last several decades went something along the lines of “Get Bent.” If I had been a loyal fan over the decades, having weathered Crisis after Crisis after Crisis, origin rewrite after origin rewrite after retcon, I would probably feel a little betrayed. Then again, it’s possible I might have thought, “Yeah, figures.”
Below I have included the reviews I wrote for my Goodreads.com account for each of the New 52 TPBs I read in the past year, in the order in which I read them. In order to avoid plot spoilage, you won’t get too much of the stories, but I think they will be helpful enough to see the imbricating failures and even the infrequent successes. The main theme that develops by the end of my to-date experience with The New 52 is, as you shall see, the apparent absence of a unified goal or creative guideline beyond “make it young and sassy.” Despite the advertised “you don’t have to worry about the last 70 years of issues, supporting characters, and anything at all,” most of these series expect the reader to know a great deal about the DC Universe, its history, its supporting characters, and an almost ludicrous amount of arcane knowledge in direct violation of the stated goals of the re-launch. Either that, or it’s all a lavish tribute to the Easter Egg, making the audience more irritated with a nagging feeling of “I’m missing something, aren’t I” more than “yeah, this is new and fresh! Whoopee!” (or whatever the kids are saying these days). I hope these don’t come off as cynical — especially as I am trying to extirpate that in my life quite intently — though I admit now many of them are filled with disappointment. Anyhow, here’s my experience with The New 52.
Batman, Vol. 1: The Court of Owls, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (read in late 2013, several months before I got to any other New 52 TPB, so enjoy the optimism while it lasts)
I thought I wouldn’t get a chance to read this until I found it on the shelf at a local library. Unfortunately, this library doesn’t like to get volumes after 1, so this may be my only experience with the New(est) 52 Batman. Snyder impressed me fairly well with The Black Mirror, so I suspected going in this would be fairly good, but I’m glad I read this second, since I would have gone into TBM without as much enthusiasm. Not that this was bad, it just leaves you wanting more, since it’s not the complete story and little is resolved even in 7 issues. Positively, Snyder treats us to a reminder he knows of the Batman history and isn’t completely rewriting it with this relaunch (at least at first), and he even gives us some nice humorous moments (a refreshing change for me, since Black Mirror had about 0 lighthearted moments). Soon, though, Snyder starts making Batman his own, thanks to the freedoms of relaunching the character and his corner of the DCU. He doesn’t do it heavy-handedly (in these issues, at least), but he does it earnestly — so fans will have to experience that and react to it for themselves. He does create a sensible and fitting new nemesis for Batman, which is rather an impressive feat, considering the myriad nemeses Batman has accrued over the decades. The danger, though, as is so often the case, is the villain seems almost too powerful: how can Batman (and Snyder) overcome a cabal older than his great-grandfather, who own the city far more authoritatively than he does? I sense a Locutus “sleep” sort of resolution, but I may never know (I’m sure you all do by now, though). It probably has something to do with newly-coined too-good-to-be-true? Gotham shining knight Lincoln March. The artwork is impressive and increasingly gritty, especially as the story progresses from the safe, shiny, futuristic world Bruce Wayne wants Gotham to be to the dirt, ancient, downtrodden world Gotham really is. I was a little confused at the beginning since Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian, and Lincoln all look exactly alike (minus height differences), but I got over it and allowed Snyder to tell his story (the first half of it, anyway). I’d like to know how it ends, but I don’t need anyone to tell me here. For those who like shiny, computer-generated comics and don’t mind the casual violence of contemporary comics, this is not too shabby a place to start. It’s not the Batman you may remember from the days of old, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you like those days, as I do, you can probably go back to them without too much hassle. If you want something newish, check this out.
Batman, Vol. 2: The City of Owls, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ⭐⭐⭐ (read about 10 months after volume 1, admittedly, but the rest were read in short order after this)
Well, that was easy. Taking a lesson from “Best of Both Worlds, pt. 2,” Scott Snyder decides the best way to conquer a centuries’-old unstoppable secret force is to have it self-destruct, giving our hero nothing to do but wonder (and doubt), really. I suppose there wasn’t any other way to stop this threat, given the head-scratching notion of Batman being able to discover, rout, and extirpate a 200-year-old secret cabal in 36 hours, but be prepared to be a bit disappointed. That’s the trouble with stopping unstoppable foes. Supplementing the explosion-filled semi-conclusion to the Owls saga, we have some reprinted stories from Night of the Owls, the best being the Mr. Freeze story, wholly unrelated to the rest of the collection. We also have a “slice of Gotham life from the commoner’s view” story, which isn’t quite as bad as it could be, but we are also left wondering why our hero isn’t as nice as he could be to some of the downtrodden he supposedly loves. After all, one of the major themes of the Owls story and its epilogue (driven home by the end of the of Death of the Family storyline coming up in volume 3) is Bruce Wayne loves Gotham City — not just the idea of it or the sentimentality of saving something because it makes him feel powerful and accomplished, but he truly cares for the city, its people, and he wants to make it a better place. So why does he treat the people he is apparently doing all this for with such semi-disdain? We may never know. Or, we’ll find out two issues before DC launches the Newer 52 in a couple of years. Stay tuned.
Batman: The Night of the Owls, Scott Snyder, et. al. ⭐⭐⭐
As the whole “Owls ruling Gotham” thing starts to wear thin, we are presented with one slam-bang night of bloody action as the almighty Owls let loose their centuries’-old Talons against all the powerful people of Gotham … only to fall to the inevitable, more or less. Apparently, the Owls want to secretly rule a city populated mostly by the world’s craziest psychopaths, corrupt politicians, and police officers, and eliminating all the decent, hardworking policy and decision makers who bring order and stability to the city will somehow make that a more enjoyable experience. On the surface, this is a touch confusing. Adding to the confusion, some of the early entries in this collection give us “flashbacks” into the history of Gotham and the Owls, though most of them go nowhere and don’t relate in any significant way to the present story. Additionally, as with many crossover collections, unless you are familiar with the characters/supporting stories going on in the other series, some of the issues will be confusing. This is exacerbated at times by this collection’s refusal to let you know what issue you are currently reading: some of the early stories tell us we are reading Nightwing or Birds of Prey, but most of them just start, giving us no cover artwork or series title/number (as if knowing what we are reading would somehow detract from the momentum or enjoyment of the story). Another detraction here is some of the failed emotional moments: if the girl is going to leave Hiroshima in a few months, why are we supposed to be emotionally moved by the bombing several years after she leaves? especially since the A-bomb bombed a city that made devastating bombs that bombed the USA. Instead of a pointed and poignant attack on America’s political decisions, we are given even more reasons to cheer on President Truman’s decision. Anywho.
Apparently the most effective way to defeat the almighty Talons is to get them to talk about their past, and as fast as you can say “Bob’s your uncle,” they will give up their quest to destroy you. The first issue with Jonah Hex is confusing and almost wholly unrelated to what is going on, but apparently the mention of the word “Owl” is enough to include it here. Some issues are out of order, which one supposes could have been better planned out by the development team, but sometimes “making sense” is a luxury comic makers just can’t afford. Still, this series does have some interesting moments, especially the Mr. Freeze story and the story about Alfred’s father. The “Gray-son” idea is also an intriguing notion, but we get no payoff with it here, since that thread is perhaps taken up in a different series. It’s worth reading if you are really into the New 52 or the Court of Owls thing, but be prepared for some confusing rabbit trails and a lot of tension that gets resolved rather quickly.
Detective Comics, Vol. 1: Faces of Death, Tony S. Daniel ⭐⭐
Somewhere along the way, “Batman” became an excuse for “excessive violence” and über-violence, perhaps because DC was jealous of Punisher MAX or something. I do not deny Batman (as an idea/world) has a dark side — as much as I enjoy the Adam West Batman, the “Dark Knight” aspect to the character is just as true. But that does not mean we need this much blood: removed faces, blown-out brains (Night of the Owls), etc. As Daniel even proves himself by the end of this collection, he can tell decent Batman stories without grotesque indulgences appealing only to the base visceral impulses of man. I’m sure many of you will disagree with me and my weak tummy — that’s fine. Part of my frustration with the violence in the Dollmaker story was the sheer absence of any meaningful payoff: it goes nowhere, delivers predictable moments of “detection” and suspense, and stops. The second group of stories is a little better, but it also either expects too much of us, or just assumes we know what is going on, or uses too much flashback with Batman knowing too much to be very believable — or possibly a combination of all of them. I know Daniel didn’t stay long on the series, but he did show a little bit of promise — it just doesn’t go anywhere meaningful here.
Batman, Vol. 3: Death of the Family, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I am willing to give this 4 stars for a graphic novel, though I don’t agree with Goodreads’s “4 stars means ‘really liked it.’” I would probably give Joyce’s Ulysses 4 stars, but I don’t really like that. I would probably give Joan Miro 4 stars without liking what he does, either. It’s a goofy thing, art. Perhaps it’s being overly generous to call this “art,” especially with its preponderance toward unnecessary graphic violence at the beginning of the work (too much red-shirting at the beginning), but the challenge of creating a meaningful, fresh interaction between Joker and Batman certainly demands a high degree of difficulty after 70-some years of their “relationship,” but Mr. Snyder does a fine job, especially toward the end of the collection here, telling an edgy Joker/Batman story with genuine menace and an allegiance to Batman’s high ideals (his version of them, at least). The pacing is a bit off, mainly because of the misplacement of some of the supporting stories (the commitment to reprinting the issues in their published order is sweet, but for a collection such as this I’d be happier getting the bits and pieces in the proper overall story order, something the Night of Owls collection failed at quite impressively), but the ending of the story is quite well achieved. The Joker’s appraisal of many of his “colleagues,” especially the scene between him and Two-Face, is a welcome group of “character moments” (I don’t mean that in the patronizing way it always sounds when people say “good character moments”).
The final confrontation is not unexpected (I was expecting Joker to shout “MacGyveeerrr!” as he fell), but the actions of the supporting Family during that scene is a nice testament to their moral centers (despite DC’s frequent attempts — and Marvel’s — to make all “heroes” gray, morally ambiguous anti-heroes). I was a tad disappointed by the epilogue, everyone’s desire to be alone, though I suppose if they all re-gathered to talk it out it would have come across more like a Star Trek: The Next Generation wrap-up (or early ’90s Avengers or X-Men finale). That’s fine, provided they don’t believe the Joker. They don’t, do they? Bruce doesn’t, does he? Let’s hope not. If he does, what would he really be fighting for all this time? As Snyder tried to teach us with the Owls thing, Bruce Wayne truly does care for Gotham City. He wants it to be a good place to live. Similarly, Bruce Wayne must truly care about his family, dysfunctional and manufactured though they may be. They better believe that, too. If you don’t, I hazard to suspect you may be reading/enjoying Batman for the wrong reasons. Thank you, Mr. Snyder, for encouraging us to care about Batman for the right reasons.
Superman, Vol. 1: What Price Tomorrow?, George Pérez and Jesús Merino ⭐⭐
Fun — excitement — interesting — fresh — engaging — and other words that don’t apply to this volume. No offense intended to the great George Pérez and his lifetime of fine work, but this was just dull. We’ve seen this in most every science fiction show already, and if it was dull on Babylon 5, it was dull in the “New” 52. I guess the point of this relaunch was to shake it all up, make it all different, and by that they meant break up all the good relationships that took 60-some years to develop and frustrate all the loyal readers (because OLD = BAD and NEW = GOOD, and loyal readers = useless detritus and new readers = the best thing ever). The Daily Planet is gone, Perry and Lois and Clark are all separated, the Kents are dead, and no one likes Clark, really. In order to make the Superman world “fresh and relevant,” the Daily Planet has been sold to arch-villain Morgan Edge. Doing things the old-fashioned way (with honesty and integrity) are as buried as Jonathan and Martha, but only Perry seems to care (maybe Clark, too, but he spends so much time dazed and confused we don’t get to know this version of him much, other than he cares about the poor and displaced and his old apartment building doesn’t exist anymore). Also, for no explicable reason, Pérez has Superman narrate all his thoughts, but his thoughts are more like stage direction and ultra-obvious commentary, nothing truly insightful or worthwhile. Pérez seems stuck in the old days of having characters narrating all their motions. Oh well.
Like Alex Ross’s Justice, this volume has the potential gem of “what if Metropolis lost its faith in Superman?,” but like Justice it gets sidetracked with all its other things (though the other things here are far more confusing and old hat than Justice) and sort of abandons that idea by the end in very rapid and unbelievable “oh, sorry, Supes, we love you and always did” epilogue panels. This story just doesn’t know where it wants to go and takes a long, dull journey to prove it to everyone.
Superman, Vol. 2: Secrets and Lies, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen ⭐⭐
I like the Death of Superman story (not that Superman died, just the whole story, all three parts). I read it fairly regularly. I even like the Hunter/Prey followup. Zero Hour … meh. See, this is what I’m not quite getting about this New 52 thing. Why are we bringing back guys from 20-some years ago to contribute to something supposedly new and fresh for this present generation that thinks conversation is done with thumbs? I’m not saying Pérez and Jurgens don’t have it anymore, but if they do, they didn’t share it with Superman New 52. Part of the failure with this series is Jurgens continues Pérez’s “what if Metropolis thought of Superman the way Gotham thinks of Batman, like he is the problem?” But Superman is not Batman. Don’t try to transplant that sentiment over here — it doesn’t work. Maybe this is why Mr. Morrison’s All-Star Superman gets so much love, because it doesn’t try too hard to be a fresh Superman story. Secrets and Lies, here, is just dull.
Jurgens also feels the need to have Superman narrate his actions and obvious commentary. I don’t need that. Granted, I must admit, I rarely pay much attention to the artwork. No offense to the great pencillers and artists and colorists and the whole gang, I just usually read for the story and character development/moments/lah-de-dah. But even I notice what the characters are doing — I don’t need stage direction telling me “I must break free from these chains and now I will punch this villain!” I can see it. The whole Daemonite thing is also a letdown: stop giving us acerbic, witty villains who take nothing seriously. I can’t take Superman’s turmoil seriously if he is trying to escape from Stalag 13.
The “revelation of Superman’s secret identity” thing could have made for an interesting, drawn-out storyline, but it occurs as a backdrop to a nowhere-going combat between Superman and some girl who wants a locket and can’t be touched (but she can hold a locket) and gets wrapped up quickly and obviously. Then there’s another unstoppable alien who is wiping out people left and right and suddenly we’re on a lesser-quality episode of Step By Step and we find out his problems and feel sorry for him and say goodbye. Blah.
At the end of this volume I suppose we have switched to the annual (since the editorial team can’t be bothered to let us know what issue we are actually reading at the time), which is a total embarrassment, not only for the way Superman looks but also for the way women are drawn (literally — why are we still doing this, people?), and the whole Daemonite nonsense twaddle bushwa. It can’t really be this difficult to write Superman stories. It can’t. It’s been happening for 80 years. Why is The New 52 Superman so dreadful? Someone please help me understand this.
Justice League, Vol. 1: Origins, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee ⭐⭐
If the creative team got paid by amount of work done, Jim Lee earned about 18x more than Geoff Johns did. Apparently DC’s motto for New 52 was something to the effect of “Since Old People are Worthless!” Making all the superheroes young and brash may have sounded good on scratch paper, but it doesn’t read well on glossy paper. Fortunately, Johns gives us almost no dialogue to read, though most of what he gives is petulant ranting, petulant whining, and self-evident observations of actions and whatnot. Virtually none of these beings are heroes: they are almost all self-indulgent jerks, with the exception of the Flash and Batman. I suppose Cyborg isn’t much of a jerk, but I have no idea why he is popular enough to warrant being a first stringer instead of Green Arrow. The basic premise of this volume called “origin” is … hold on, I’ve got it … wait … no, I just had it. What was it? Oh, that’s right: look at giant, mostly meaningless and overly-complicated splash pages by Jim Lee. Perhaps it’s the “origin” of Jim Lee’s diminutive pencil collection. Saving the day, as I said, are Flash’s decency and Batman’s maturity. Almost wholly out of character with the rest of this mess is Batman sounding like the more mature Batman, not the “this is supposedly five years ago Batman.” But, we’ll take it.
Since all the old people (and authority figures in general) are presented as worthless idiots (in contrast to all the valuable idiots we all know and love), it’s odd the young “heroes” are doing their best to prove they aren’t worth knowing — most of the time they (including Superman) are trying to prove the people’s fear and mistrust of them are warranted. Except Batman. Ironic, especially since he does want their fear. It’s just mostly a mess. It moves fast, says very little, and gets the job done more or less, but it takes six issues. X-Men #1 does it in one. As usual, though, we are left wondering “what is the point of the New 52?” All this does is make the heroes young and jerky, all the while tossing things from the supposedly rejected canon at us like grapeshot (too much?). Is this “new” or just an admission “we aren’t nearly as creative as the old teams, so we are just going to do their stuff our way”? and for a new generation that values worthless “heroes”?
This could have been so much better.
Justice League, Vol. 2: The Villain’s Journey, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, et. al. ⭐⭐
2.5 stars, how’s that? We finally have the beginnings of a story, and Mr. Johns finally beginning to attempt to earn his paycheck. Yet, the main premise for this villain and his motivation is rather disgraceful: having given us a reason to care about these heroes from the regular guy perspective, instead of developing that line or character it is immediately shattered with a puff (or sniff, rather) of magic smoke. Johns attempts to prove he knows as much mythology as Joseph Campbell, but he certainly falls short, even shorter than JMS (who certainly knows his fair share of myths), and the failure makes the story that much thinner. Once again the series seems to be mainly a vehicle for Jim Lee splash pages. The dialogue is less insipid, which is surprising considering there’s more of it, but a few mildly enjoyable comments and asides do not make up for belabored plot resolution and pedantry. We are timeshifted back to the “present,” five years after the so-called origin series, and we haven’t missed anything except Steve and Diana breaking up (and our “villain,” who is treated more like a poor, misguided, product of his environment, not a responsible being who acted out of malicious volition, starting on his eponymous “journey”).
Finally Green Arrow shows up, but he is treated horribly by most of the JL — no doubt because they are jealous of him getting younger and slimmer (like the rest of them, since old, stocky people can’t be heroes in the New 52) — though Aquaman hints at something we are supposed to know about, as if they had an altercation in the past. But I thought the point of the New 52 was we aren’t supposed to care about the past or even be bothered by it: not only is the New 52 disregarding the Old 52’s past, it can’t even be bothered to cement a believable New 52’s past. Oh well.
In an continuing effort to make humanity seem wholly incompetent, the politicians in the New 52 universe are wholly embarrassing specimens (well, perhaps that part is realistic) and, even worse, military families are presented as over-reactionary crybabies. I seriously doubt Steve’s sister would blame WW for him disappearing, especially since he has been a top-line military soldier for years, even before the JL appeared. The military families I know would certainly not react that way. Fairly offensive characterization, really. There’s no way a 38-second clip of the JL fighting amongst themselves (plus a nonsensical talk-show interview) would suddenly turn worldwide opinion of the JL 180°. Everything is done too chaotically and suddenly (like Cyborg’s instantaneous acceptance of everything from last volume). Oh well.
Plot Convenience Playhouse will return in Volume 3 — a new Justice League, new villains, and certainly no resolution to the “why are we supposed to care about these mysterious beings and their inscrutable soliloquies into thin air?” epilogues. Green Lantern is gone (in a wholly unbelievable change of heart), Green Arrow is still who knows where, Martian Manhunter is a badguy (nonsense), and, well, I just really feel sorry for the people who not only had to wait 6 whole months to read these issues but also had to pay, what, $24-some dollars for the privilege of being let down? What a world.
Justice League, Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis, Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis ⭐⭐
Just when you think a cohesive story is about to occur, we are given a crossover without all the pieces, a villain that’s 12 years younger than he looks with his villain mask on, a surprise twist that gets ruined by the rest of the story, and further mistreatment of poor Steve Trevor. Once again we are expected to have read every other single New 52 issue along with this so we can understand the missing pieces and the rest of the new characters and who the mysterious villain behind other things is. It’s hard to sustain interest in this series, especially with the puerile writing of Mr. Johns. He continues to have characters narrate what we can see, as well as spell out things we have already figured out. There is one great moment toward the end, but Aquaman’s treatment of Vulko feels out of character. His entire resolution of the conflict is likewise nonsensical. Most of how the Justice League behaves during this is confusing: if Wonder Woman’s family were really attacking she’d side with Earth instead of finding a solution to save everyone? Doubtful. It’s another example of the confusion everyone is under with the New 52: do we ignore everything before this? do we assume everyone knows all the supporting characters and events? do we ignore the need for characterization because of the mysterious 5-year jump? Apparently the answer to all of them is “yes,” even though these questions contradict each other.
The two-part Cheetah story is a nice respite between forever-earth-changing four-to-six-parters, but it doesn’t quite work as a Justice League story, since it’s mostly a Wonder Woman story. The Cheetah’s ability to stop the Justice League singlehandedly is no testament to the strength and power of this disunited League. And it all ends with further mistreatment of poor Steve, who has done nothing except give and give and give. Perhaps Steve represents the audience: DC has taken everything away from you, acted like the first 75 years of character growth and storylines never happened, and is now charging you high prices for the pleasure of giving you poor work. DC Fans: you should expect better. That the best sources of praise the makers of the TPB can find are made-up Web Log sites that didn’t exist two years ago and won’t exist in two years should give you enough warning — this is not good enough.
Justice League, Vol. 4: The Grid, Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis ⭐⭐
Now we know what “DC” stands for.
Should we give the audience a complete story? DC.
Should we include all the issues so they get their money’s worth? DC.
Should we tell people what they are missing from the skipped-over issues? DC.
Should we introduce the “bonus” material so the audience knows why it’s there? DC.
Should we explain the differences between the old and New 52 versions of the characters, especially the ones who are different genders? DC.
Should we charge less for this trade since it has fewer issues? DC.
Should we be consistent in what we sell in the TPBs within the same series? DC.
Should it matter to us if we tell stories that make sense and/or are any good? DC.
Should we be respectful to or honor readers who have been with us for decades? DC.
Should we try to give meaningful payoffs to the nonsensical super-secret characters we have been polluting all our issues with? DC.
Should we come up with a name that is impressive or should we go with “Crime Syndicate”? DC.
I guess Johnny from Time of the Apes grew up to take over the creative direction of DC. “Crime Syndicate” is really the best name we could come up with for the all-powerful, super-menacing döppelgangers the entire New 52 has been heading toward, huh? Why haven’t I heard about The Great DC New 52 Reader Revolt? Are you people just passively accepting this? Storylines rehashed, even from recent memory? Characterizations that make no sense? Plotlines that have more holes than a whiffle ball? Conflicts that exist for no reason other than to make large splash pages? Stop settling for sub-mediocre work, DC fans. Maybe they “don’t care,” but you should care.
Batman: The Dark Knight, Vol. 1: Knight Terrors, David Finch and Paul Jenkins ⭐⭐⭐
This really should be 2.5 stars, but I’ve rounded up just because it was better (sort of) than most of those not-that-great Justice League collections. The artwork is both impressive and nauseous together: the impressive parts remind us of Neal Adams’s way of revitalizing series with real movement, fine detail, and believable action. The nauseous parts are the over-abundance of blood and gore. That truly is not impressive. The depiction of the female characters is also insulting to every human being, but I guess you can’t take the Image out of the artist.
The writing is likewise a confusing combination of rambling internal monologue and decent storytelling. Nothing is a surprise, but at least some of the character moments are good. But then again, just when one thinks things are going to run intelligently, along comes another “I’m going to take down Batman and Gordon!” I.A. guy … I mean, honestly. Don’t these two have enough to worry about? Is writing for Batman truly that difficult we have to rehash this nonsense? Finch teases us with potentially enjoyable moments only to snatch them cruelly away, such as the potential enjoyment of seeing Batman and Flash together only to sidetrack the Flash immediately and send him away. This could have been better without the blood and violence — I know this is the “Dark” Knight, but subtlety and implied violence would work far better than showing it, especially so frequently. If offstage violence worked for Aeschylus and Sophocles, surely it could work for crafters of Batman tales. I acknowledge this review does not apparently mesh with 3 stars, but as it was on the whole better than most JL tales of the New 52, and the potential of storylines such as Gordon at the psychiatrist office and The White Rabbit (despite her embarrassing visual appearance), I’ll say “decent effort.” Faint praise all around, on me!
Batman: The Dark Knight, Vol. 2: Cycle of Violence, Gregg Hurwitz and David Finch ⭐⭐
Most of these 2 stars (which I feel even now is too many) are for moments of what is I suppose issue #0. In DC’s TPB commitment to hiding from you what issue you are actually reading at the time, I can only guess the final origin-like story at the close of this volume is issue #0. While that issue doesn’t tell us much we don’t know, as the continuing uncertainty over reason for The New 52’s existence provides an “origin” for Bruce Wayne — not Batman — we already knew. It’s nice to see the origin of Bruce Wayne on paper, I suppose, as well as the confrontation with Joe Chill (strangely reminiscent of Minority Report).
The majority of this collection is the overly-long Scarecrow story. Having just seen Scarecrow in the last TPB, his return is bizarre. I understand a new writer has taken over, though David Finch is still around to draw unnecessarily bloody fight scenes and other grotesqueries — but still, this is a wholly different Scarecrow from whom we just saw. Even in the dark world of the “Dark Knight,” this story is probably too dark. For some inexplicable reason, the library has labelled this “YA” — I’ll probably show them this is not in any way the case. The world is already dark enough, why must we keep adding to it with stories like this? Batman can be effective without this. I’m not saying we have to return to Adam West’s Batman, but even Neil Gaiman was regretful for the “24 Hours” issue of Sandman. While there are interesting moments in this story, such as Scarecrow’s reactions to the brave girl who stands up to him, the Light vs. Dark scene, and Bruce’s gratitude for Damian’s rescue, it’s overall just a barbaric appeal to the base and the visceral. We are given too few redeeming moments in this to make it worth owning or reading again (or for many even reading the first time).
It’s like the first TPB didn’t even happen — none of the storylines there are picked up here, none of those new characters return, and new ones are introduced here as if we should already be familiar with them! I can see the idea Hurwitz + Finch wanted to present, but it fails — as evidenced by the anticlimactic wrap-up to the story. It may not be my place to say, but I don’t consider this a respectful treatment of Batman and his world (as dark as it is and may “need” to be).
Batman: The Dark Knight, Vol. 3: Mad, Gregg Hurwitz and Ethan Van Sciver ⭐⭐
As with the previous TPB, most of these 2 stars are for the atypical issue, the annual. At least, I assume it is the annual at the close of the volume, since we are still not allowed to know what issue is which throughout the TPB, given instead an exciting repetition of cover issues two pages in a row (sadly, it’s not nearly as thrilling as I’ve just made it out to be). Hurwitz’s relaunching of the relaunch continues, with the second new version of the Mad Hatter in this storyline. Again Hurwitz tries to make Batman seem more of a “bad guy” than the supervillains are, since the new backstory of the Mad Hatter places all of his evil on experimental medication and societal rejection — he was a sweet, wonderful guy, really, so none of his badness is his fault. Bruce Wayne, however, chose to go to the darkness when his parents were killed. Pretty shoddy writing, overall.
Making it even more infuriating, Hurwitz takes the low road for pathos. Now we know why Hurwitz ignored the new characters from the previous writer — well, actually, no, we still have no idea why Hurwitz wants us to pretend none of those things happened (other than perhaps he realizes how fatuous most of them were) — but at least we know why he invented a new girlfriend for Bruce. Cheap. (Hurwitz’s writing, not the girl.)
The Mad Hatter story has plenty of holes (Gordon and Batman had identified the criminal organization before they instigated their plan — surely they would have announced that before the terror began). Hurwitz even rips off himself: the story opens with more kidnappings, just like the Scarecrow story did. And even though we have new artists, the violence and gore are far more graphic and “onstage” than they should be: less is more, people — implied violence is stronger than going through four red markers each issue (or whatever they are using to paint the blood on every panel these days). Three easily forgettable TPBs so far.
The only interesting story, as mentioned above, is the annual story: seeing three villains outsmart themselves with a clever and humorous payoff. This is much closer to a good Batman story. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to write well for Batman.
Batman and Robin, Vol. 1: Born to Kill, Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason ⭐⭐⭐
As with most of the New 52, this volume has a lot wrong with it, but it is better than most of the other Batman titles I’ve been reading lately, so by sheer novelty (or its rehashed version of novelty, at least) it deserves a slightly higher rating. Unlike the dialogue-sparse Geoff Johns volumes, the absence of dialogue in parts of this collection is aided by quality artwork and better dialogue when it occurs. True, some of it is stilted and obvious, but by the end it gets better.
Even with the violence, it is not as over-the-top as The Dark Knight, even with a killer in the title, and the tensions between Bruce and his son drive the issue more than violence. Nothing in the story is groundbreaking. We get a “secret” look at some of Bruce Wayne’s missing years, which to no one’s surprise comes back to break him. But this is another volume in which the success of the ending makes up for a fair amount of lackluster and obvious moments, and the better painting-like artwork and better writing make this a better Batman series than many of the others.
Batman and Robin, Vol. 2: Pearl, Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, ⭐⭐
A bit of a letdown after the decent first volume — seems almost like the basic idea was fully played out in the first series and now they were getting a bit desperate. Zombies? That’s the best we could come up, zombies? Did I miss the “teenage vampires in love” crossover? As potentially great as the final moment of this collection could be, it comes out of nowhere and seems forced and majickally convenient. Also, the story just stops. Batman and Robin go home and we are left wondering, “wait, what about all that stuff you said you had to go do? Is this halftime?”
The first story in the collection has some very fine moments, especially with all the Robins together, but the basic premise for it is irritatingly tiresome: another “Batman is the real menace and we are all victims of him!” story, with a main nemesis whose origin is unclear, motivation is murky, and grief with Batman is unexplained. Feel free to tell me how he was back in issue #3XX of Detective Comics waaay back when — I picked up “The New 52” because I was promised I wouldn’t need to know all that stuff.
Stop trying to get us to feel sorry for the villains, Bat-writers. Stop giving us “will Batman lose his cool and finally kill?” stories. Do better at your overly-paid positions. And stop giving us cover art that has nothing to do with the content of the stories. This series promised more than it delivered here.
Justice League of America, Vol. 1: World’s Most Dangerous, Geoff Johns ⭐⭐
Someday, the intelligent among you must explain Geoff Johns’s popularity. In the New 52’s concerted effort to play foully with our affections and intellect, this ball of confusion exists. True, it would be nice if we knew what issues we were reading, where they occur in connection to other series, who these characters are, and other mundane trivia, but that would make too much sense. Why be helpful when you can be inscrutable? This started out with such promise, but it doesn’t take too long to devolve to the usual depths of sub-interesting New 52 shenanigans. On the off-chance the unstoppable superheroes go rogue (despite being okay for everyone for 5 mysterious years), the B-squad is gathered led by poor Steve Trevor and some stereotypical tough-as-nails-no-nonsense-I’ve-earned-it-of-no-substance-female-character. Somehow these unskilled, untrained ragtags will be able to take out the A-squad. If necessary.
Shockingly, “necessary” shows up almost immediately. But first, some “getting to know you” story with as many surprise twists as a candy cane. It could have been good, but as it’s all part of the Master Plan for The Trinity War, well, it doesn’t make much sense, especially to new readers who don’t know who these characters are (which seems counter to the basic premise of the “New” 52). Then we get a few pieces of the Trinity War, which won’t make a lot of sense if you are reading these series in the TPBs the way they are published. Finishing up seems to be a separate issue about Martian Manhunter, but apparently it was a B-story series in the first few issues (which you can’t learn simply by reading the collection as it is printed). This could have been better. But it’s not.
Justice League, Vol. 5: Forever Heroes, Geoff Johns ⭐⭐
I give this 2 stars because of the Metal Men. Without them toward the end of this collection, I’d probably give this 0 or negative 1 stars. This is quite possibly the worst Geoff Johns writing I’ve read yet, which is rather an impressive, if stomach churning, achievement for him. This is really abysmal. We totally get from panel 1 that these alternate-universe versions (or parallel-dimension versions, if you prefer) of the Justice League are villains — cold-hearted, ruthless villains. We completely understand that. However, to drive the point home, Johns gives us four mind-numbing and utterly extraneous issues to underscore this point. Nothing new is revealed in these “when they were young” issues we couldn’t have already filled in with our own imaginations. Oh my, the bad Superman (Ultraman) killed his parents! … So what? Oh my, the bad Batman (Owlman) killed his family including Bruce Wayne! … Why should we care? Even the “Creative Teams” got tired of giving backstories to these new villains, since Wonder Woman (or is it the other Lois Lane? they say both, which is probably just shoddy editing) and Firestorm don’t even get stories. I’m thankful for that, of course, but it’s just another exemplar of the sheer lack of meaningful direction in this New 52 universe. Oh, I’m sure they have their multi-year storylines all figured out and storyboarded and what not, but that doesn’t mean they are being executed with any amount of finesse or skill.
So you want to “shake up” the New 52 Universe, eh DC Masterminds, after an eternity of 24 issues? Howabout you hire writers who can write quality stories! with engaging dialogue! that are not insulting piles of rubbish such as this mess! Yes, the Metal Men are in it toward the end in what appears to be their own spin-off issue, and that was enjoyable because it was the Metal Men, but after that the insensible palaver returns.
Finally, Cyborg confronts Grid, his rogue, sentient computer self! And Cyborg has an EMP but does not use it! Surely the only reason rebuilt Cyborg even has a built-in EMP is to stop rogue, sentient computers! How ridiculous. Instead, Cyborg just tricks the Grid into feeling sorry for himself … and we know the feeling.
Consider, in final reflection, the masterful work given to us 20 years ago: The Age of Apocalypse. In that brilliant, effectively 4-month-contained storyline event, we have a compact, well-structured “alternate universe” look at the X-Universe totally believable and understandable even when given to us in its final moments. Yes, it had a couple issues of prequel stories, but they were additional things not main title issues. This masterpiece is 20 years old, and the supposedly “even better generation of creative writers” in the “young, hip New 52 Universe” can only give us this attempt at an interesting alternate universe cross-over. Forever Heroes? Forever Boring.
Detective Comics, Vol. 2: Scare Tactics, Tony S. Daniel and Ed Benes ⭐⭐
Not much to this rambling collection of sub-quality issues, really. The extra star is again for what I assume to be issue #0, since as with all New 52 TPBs, we are not allowed to know what issue we are reading at the time (too much information might clue us in to an awareness nothing important is happening). I’m not sure why this is called “Scare Tactics” — yes, the first issue is called that, but the collection contains longer storylines, though as I said none of them are really impressive. The longest story concerns a nonsensical excuse for drawing yucky melted bodies under the guise of time-travel and villainy, but while there is all the appearance of scientific credibility sprinkled throughout, most of the scientific application is “Batman pushes a button and majickal things happen.” It’s just a boring mess that ends abruptly without any closure.
Following this is a potentially interesting conflict between Black Mask and Mad Hatter, which likewise ends with the “majick plot-stopping button” being pressed and the story just ending. I suppose we should be grateful for that. The #0 issue flashback is the most interesting in the collection, despite its rather obvious ending. The epilogue between Bruce and Alfred is certainly the highlight, even if it is yet another version of the Batman mythos (the point of the New 52, I know).
The ending of this collection is a worthless series of Two-Face vignettes that are so poorly lit you’d think they were sponsored by the color “invisible.” It tries to make us interested by dangling a few lines of “the secrets of Two-Face’s moral struggles” out there, but nothing comes of it and instead we are given grotesque violence, banal dialogue, and no reason to care about any of it after all. Another disappointing collection of half-baked Batman and Co. ideas.
Justice League Dark, Vol. 1: In the Dark, Peter Milligan, Mikel Janin, ⭐
I solemnly promise I am not reading these hoping they will be bad. I’m not looking for a frustrating time. Nor can you really say I’m not giving these a fair shake: reading over a dozen New 52 volumes is quite generous, considering how unimpressive they are. Take this pail of hogwash, for example. Admittedly, beginning with a nominalization is poor writing, but there is no story here. Truly no story. Instead, we have a jumbled mess of pseudo-introduction stories masquerading as a typical “gathering of heroes for a new team” story — but get this! It’s “dark”! Apparently that makes it new and fresh, or at least it did in the minds of the people who gave this project the proverbial green light (no doubt a dark green light). Perhaps “dark” is New 52 talk for “draw lots of grotesque things and the people won’t know nothing meaningful is happening.” Even X-Files had generally good narrative reasons for its grotesqueries. This palaver has nothing substantial to tie its nonsense together. Panels happen in whirly-gig order, as if we are supposed to have some intuitive guide to discerning how this is supposed to be read. Oh, and apparently we are already supposed to know who these characters are, since we are never told who they are, even the ones who are possibly new, except Deadman. We are told his origin every issue.
This jumbled mess has some potentially interesting ideas, but none of them come to fruition and we are not given any reason to hope they will mature in future issues. Characters all basically look alike (which is not impressive), and most of the poses and outfits of the ladies are apparently designed to evoke ungentlemanly responses within the male readership. Characters show up, leave, wide gaping holes of what poses as a story rip through and no one bothers to explain why (not that we need moment-by-moment spoonfeeding, but an absence of meaningful continuity is not tantamount to “quality storytelling”).
Horrible things happen throughout these pages (children murdering one another, towns caving into madness), but none of these “heroes” care. Then we are to believe it was all a test to get this ragtag group of jerkweeds together. It’s impossible to empathize with any of these characters until John Constantine says he wants no part of this.
If this is the best this series has to offer, it’s hard to disagree.
If it makes you feel better, I have read very high-quality DC trades recently (especially the Knightfall trilogy). One of my key goals for 2015 is to read fewer books but books I just know are going to be good. I’ve read too much tripe lately, and I know it has all been volitional, but still I need to improve my literary diet. In my vast munificence, I will likely give The New 52 more chances to disappoint me, but that does not necessarily mean you won’t enjoy them. It’s likely it’s not as bad as I have made it sound. Somebody out there must think these are worth making again and again, and since several of them are available for free from the library (perhaps the best part of that is you don’t have to feel obligated to keep them — you can’t actually give them back!), this is as good a time as any to try The New 52 (I don’t want that to sound like a threat, of course). If not, fair enough. In either event, I wish you and yours good reading.
“What is the greatest film ever made?” This is a question that continually challenges film enthusiasts throughout the world. For with this question comes a greater question — how are we to evaluate greatness and excellence in a film? The answers to both questions vary from person to person, as standards for art critique are vastly subjective. But beyond individual response, there is also a cultural response to these questions — for fifty or more years, Citizen Kane (1941) was hailed as the greatest film ever made, holding the top spot on polls taken by multiple film institutions. Only just recently was it ousted from the #1 position on Sight & Sound’s “50 Greatest Films of All Time” list. The film that replaced it was Hitchcock’s colorful and haunting masterpiece Vertigo (1958). Is Vertigo a better movie than Citizen Kane? Absolutely; though at the moment it’s best not to explain my reasons for believing so. But is Vertigo the greatest movie ever made? Most likely not. Vertigo is a perfect movie, in many senses — but in order for a movie to be given a ranking that places it above all others it must be more than perfect — it must be quintessential, “quintessential” meaning in this context a film that portrays key facets of the human experience, relating them to classic archetypes while staying within an original and consistent aesthetic, in short, the purest example of a film.
When I was stirring this question around in my head about a year ago, searching for the “quintessential” film, I was trying to find something that would have artistic excellence, unique ideas, popular appeal and cultural significance. Then I saw Fight Club. My immediate response was confused, but elated — I felt in a way I had found the greatest film I had ever seen because it was “quintessential,” but at the same time, was it “perfect”? No. The pacing seemed off in some parts, and the plot was so insane and twisted at times the film appeared to lose its own coherency; even the framing and the aesthetic could have been a bit more finely mastered. Could a film that is quintessential but flawed be better than a perfect one? Perhaps. But then I had to wonder, could the film ever be considered as one of the greatest films of all time by any respectable institution? Despite all the good questions of ethics and sociology a film like Fight Club raises, it was marketed as a violent blockbuster and will hence be viewed as such. And yet some films on many lists were once seen as nothing more than simply really good blockbusters. Does age change a film? In the future, will Fight Club be looked at with the same fondness with which we look at films like, say, The African Queen? No one can really say — but why are films like Fight Club brushed aside by many respectable critics? Why not put Fight Club in the top 10? I am not saying the film is the best film ever made, that it deserves to outrank films like Vertigo, Apocalypse Now, or Aguirre: The Wrath of God. However, I do aim to encourage you to challenge your own conceptions of what a perfect film looks like. The argument I hope to make here is as a film, Fight Club is the a keystone example of the union between thought-provoking artful cinema and popular mass-market action-suspense cinema and therefore is a culturally valuable piece of art that deserves more recognition within the world of film analysis. I will do this through examining first: the storytelling and narrative, second: the use of aesthetic, and third: the philosophical themes presented within the film.
Narrative. The film captures our suspense from the opening shot. It begins through a stunning visual effects sequence of painstaking CGI — the nerves of the brain, electronic impulses passing back and forth through a tense mind. Immediately this tells us what to expect — this is going to be a film of the psychological, perhaps of the psychotic. The camera pulls back further and further until it passes out through the skin pores and pans back to show us the narrator of the story, sitting in a chair in a dark room, with the barrel of a gun stuck inside his mouth. We are soon informed he is being held hostage by one Tyler Durden — we are also informed through another visual effects shot there are vast quantities of explosives surrounding the foundation pillars of several skyscrapers surrounding. Now that the stakes have been placed on the table, the narrator feels it’s safe enough to take us back to the beginning of the story and explain all the events that led to this moment. We are hooked, and then very abruptly reeled in, held in curiosity until the end of the film. Chronologically, the story really begins with the main character’s insomnia. Note that the narrator and protagonist is never named — he is the hopeless everyman on the quest for truth and enlightenment — a truth that constantly eludes him. Though, for the sake of convenience, we shall call him Jack, as he is called in Jim Uhls’s script.
Through clever uses of visual montages and special effects, we are shown the protagonist’s world — he is living in a state of apathy, trying to give his life meaning through his IKEA purchases — to quote the film directly, “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. If I saw something clever like a coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang, I had to have it … I flipped through catalogues and wondered: what type of dining set defines me as a person?” He consults a doctor about his insomnia, where he complains he is in pain because of his sleep loss. The doctor’s response: “You want to see real pain? Swing by First Methodist Tuesday nights. See the guys with testicular cancer. That’s pain.” Having nothing else to do, he takes his doctor’s suggestion and visits “Remaining Men Together.” This phrase resonates throughout the film: remaining men. The character Tyler Durden’s entire fight against society is built upon the idea society is slowly emasculating us — the struggle is to not sink into apathy, but rather to feel the vibrancy of life, the feeling of freedom and strength men are intended to feel. Our unnamed protagonist becomes addicted to these support groups, to people sympathizing with him because they believe he’s been through some tragic circumstance. This is his first experience of “hitting low” — another theme that resounds throughout the film.
What disrupts this empty bliss? Marla Singer — a cigarette-smoking, punk-goth, neo-noir femme fatale. We get a picturesque image of her face as she smokes indoors, while wearing sunglasses — her mouth is an empty abyss, we are staring into the endless darkness of something that looks, by all appearances, utterly hollow. Marla brings chaos into our hero’s life because she reflects the lie he is living — she exposes him to himself, his deception. He has an attraction toward her he is afraid to admit, and he feels inadequate because of her presence in his life, she is a reminder he doesn’t stand a chance with her.
Now he feels empty, powerless. Hence a new force steps into his life — Tyler Durden, a charismatic stranger he meets on a plane, who claims to make a living by selling soap. Tyler claims the oxygen masks on planes are to make passengers high so they don’t panic in an emergency situation, and equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate can be made into an explosive. Strangely enough, that very night Jack’s apartment explodes. Having nowhere else to go, he calls Tyler up using the number on his business card. The two share a drink, after which Tyler invites Jack to his house. On their way out of the bar, Tyler asks him to hit him as hard as he can. “You never know yourself until you’ve been in a fight,” Tyler says. Neither of them have been in a fight before. They fight, with no reason between them for doing so — and they find it strangely therapeutic. Soon it becomes a group activity: other people join in, and before long, a fight club is started. People meet once a week, fight, and then go back to their normal jobs, pretending like none of it ever happened. This becomes a new therapy group for Jack, his second “Remaining Men Together”; at one point he compares the group of hollering men to a Pentecostal Church.
As Jack lives with Tyler in his dilapidated house, Tyler slowly begins influencing him with his principles — the life they embrace is so disconnected from the rest of civilization their behavior and ideals become closer and closer to a naturalistic animal-instinct state. They go out and start “sizing things up” with their life-or-death survival-of-the-fittest logic, looking at people and wondering how well they’d fare in a fight. The fight club is compared to “a Pentecostal church”… the experience of hitting the ultimate low is described as “enlightenment.” There is a very masochistic nature to Durden’s philosophy — it is only from giving up and realizing there is absolutely nothing left to live for that true knowledge of the human condition comes: to Tyler, this is “enlightenment.” “Self-improvement is [self-stimulation],” to quote/paraphrase Durden, “now self destruction.” Durden slowly evolves Fight Club into something beyond a therapy group, something resembling a fascist terrorist organization, through which he wreaks anarchist havoc on the city’s symbols by destroying corporate art, smashing car windows, blowing up computer displays, etc. As the chaos caused by Tyler’s organization “Project Mayhem” increases, Jack tries to distance himself from Tyler — only to discover he and Tyler are the same person: Tyler’s aggressive personality was his own mental projection. Tyler is the person Jack secretly wishes he could be. Now Tyler has evolved into a threat to himself and others, and he must find a way to seize back control before Tyler takes over his life entirely. Jack discovers Tyler plans to demolish all the buildings belonging to major credit card corporations, in an attempt to set everyone’s debt back to zero. Jack has a final climactic confrontation with Tyler, during which he diffuses only one of the bombs. He finally finds a way to rid himself of Tyler, by putting the gun in his mouth and shooting through the cheek — the bullet does not kill him, despite the physical damage it causes the trauma of the gunshot is enough to give him the mental shock he needs to restore his sense of objective reality and bury Tyler down in his subconscious forever. In the final moments of the film, he is reunited with Marla, brought back to him through unfortunate circumstances. They stand on the balcony of the building, looking out the window. “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. No sooner has he said this than the buildings in the background explode, and the song “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies begins to play as the skyline crumbles. The narrative choice to end the film on a note such as this indicates while his life is back to normal, Project Mayhem continues. Does this mean Tyler’s philosophy was correct? Society needs to be destroyed and rebuilt? Not necessarily. It meant Tyler was, in a way, successful — not that he was necessarily correct. The film presents the opposing views objectively and asks you to interpret the events and decide for yourself whose side you’re on.
Style/Aesthetic. The director David Fincher (known for Se7en, The Social Network, and most recently, Gone Girl) was highly particular on the aesthetic to his film — it’s a look that’s hard to describe. When the film prints were sent to the studios, there were complaints about dirt and smudging on the film. This was intentional. The film was tinted to become darker, browner, greener, or bluer in some sections — all to establish a neo-noir effect; that the frames are smudged, shaky, intercut establishes a sort of grunge. “Fight Club presents Tyler’s stylized, designer-grunge-aesthetic as the alternative to Jack’s erstwhile affluent IKEA-appointed environment and constructs an excessively squalid mise-en-scène as a lifestyle choice. Tyler delivers an agitational address to a large Fight Club residency that meets illegally in a dank basement during the midway plot-point discussed above” (Bedford 8). The settings and mise-en-scène, especially in the basement where the fights take place and the house on Paper Street, are consistently associated with low-key lighting and the feelings of wet and dry. As it rains, water drips through the floorboards of the house. Dust cakes in the windows on a hot day. In the fight club, puddles of blood form on the floor — yet later we see Jack looking at the dry floor and thinking of the feet that scuffled there the night before.
Fincher’s work on the project gives it a distinct out-of-the-box feel: there are bizarre and surreal moments like the meditation scene, where Jack imagines himself in a cave of ice, confronting his chakra animal, a penguin that looks at him and says nothing but “Slide!” in the voice of a child and then slips away. Strange moments like this would not happen were it not for Fincher’s unique touch; his creative insanity. The film is full of odd moments like this, little treats for the audience, that give it a multi-flavored and zany feel. The best of these are what Fincher calls the “subliminal Brads” — moments before Tyler Durden is introduced, he appears five times in the film, for one frame only. This subliminally introduces the character to the audience before they even meet him (Smith). This parallels the film editing Tyler does when he works as a film projectionist and splices single frames of pornography into children’s movies — it is as if Tyler himself is editing the movie we are watching.
This is not the only instance in which flash-frames are used within the film. The use of brief and passing frames are used to great effect in the “chemical burn” scene in which Tyler pours lye onto Jack’s hand and forces him to deal with his pain. The narrator attempts to retreat into meditation to imagine away the pain, but Tyler tries to awaken him back to reality. “The excruciating bodily pain caused by the chemical burn immediately catalyses a visceral thought-image montage that vies for prominence amongst the action images,” writes William Brown, “The narrator initially attempts to apply meditation to escape the intense pain, and viewers are presented with serene images of a green forest. After returning to a close-up of the hand, now bubbling as his flesh chemically dissolves, mental images of fire and intertitle-like images isolating words like ‘searing’ and ‘flesh’ intermix with sounds of intense burning and crackling. These compete with Zen-like images of trees, birdsong and the narrator’s healing cave as he attempts to escape these overwhelming feelings and sensations” (288). The pain and mental urgency of Jack’s situation is communicated effectively into the minds and hearts of the audience through stark imagery we are forced to process very quickly.
Philosophy. The film discusses a wide variety of philosophical topics, namely consumerism, authoritarianism/fascism, Übermensch/nihilism, masculinity/gender roles. All of these tie together into one unifying theme — as humans living in the 21st century, what do we find our identity in? What do we use to define ourselves? The essential problem presented in the film is we have a society that bases self-worth on achievement, that encourages us to communicate our identity to other people through what we buy, that having a job is the end, not a means to some higher goal. While this is not always true, it is largely accurate and therefore concerning. The fight clubs Tyler starts are attempts to solve this problem; when people connect to their primal selves, they come alive. To quote Tyler, “In the world I see, you’re stalking elk through the damp canyon forest around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn. Laying down strips of venison down on the carpool lanes of some abandoned superhighway.” In the film, Tyler performs what he calls a “human sacrifice,” in which he points a gun to a small-time store clerk’s head, asks him what he studied for in college, what he wanted to be in life. He responds saying he wanted to be a veterinarian. Tyler takes his license and says, “I know where you live. I’m going to check back on you in six weeks. If you’re not on your way to becoming a veterinarian, you’re going to die.” The scared man runs off, promising to pursue a degree in biology again. The narrator stands befuddled, looking at Tyler and asking why he did that. Tyler responds, “Tomorrow will be the best day of that man’s life. Tomorrow, he will eat breakfast and it will taste better than any meal that you and I have ever tasted.” Tyler’s goal is a destruction of society, but what will he profit from it? What are his ideals? From these two scenes, it seems what is important to Tyler is people look at themselves and feel they are doing something important. As Christians, we derive our sense of worth from our connection to God, our purpose in living comes from His mission to us. Christ is our identity. What Fight Club demonstrates, albeit unintentionally, is deriving a personal sense of worth from anything else will lead to disastrous results.
Tyler is a poster-child of nihilism — Nietzche’s Übermensch. “Our fathers were models for God, and they bailed on us. Now what does that tell you about God? We are the middle children of history — God’s unwanted children.” Thus is Tyler’s perspective on reality. The schism with the father figure and the mother figure is what defines the entire subversion quality within the film (Gunn 287). Jennifer Barker makes the connection between Tyler’s “Project Mayhem” and fascism in her article “A Hero Will Rise”:
[Jack] becomes addicted to submission, first finding the freedom of “losing all hope” with self-help groups and then replacing this with the freedom of losing all control with Tyler. He destroys his past and his identity upon Tyler’s arrival and submits completely to the meaning Tyler creates. This experience, not only of submission, but the feeling of freedom through submission is a process required of fascism’s political agenda. Hitler, in Mein Kampf comments that the masses, by giving in to the strong man, engage in a complex game of denial: “They are equally unaware of their shameless terrorization and the hideous abuse of their human freedom, for they absolutely fail to suspect the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruthless force and brutality of its calculated manifestations, to which they always submit in the end.” Or, as the narrator points out: “Sooner or later, we all became what Tyler wanted us to be.” This process is fundamental to fascist subjectivity, requiring a misconstruction of the self in terms of an ideal other, and for the narrator, manifests itself in a literal misrecognition of Tyler Durden.
It is only through the loss of identity the authoritarian submission-based state Tyler starts is possible.
Critical reception of Fight Club can go to one of two extremes — critics have either lauded it or hated it. It would not be a lie to say it is one of the most controversial films of the past twenty years — the mistake to make while analyzing the film is to believe it advocates the violence and rebellion it portrays. “In one of the more apoplectic slams, Rex Reed, writing in The New York Observer, called it ‘a film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell.’ More than one critic condemned the movie as an incitement to violence; several likened it to fascist propaganda. (‘It resurrects the Fuhrer principle,’’ one British critic declared.) On her talk show an appalled Rosie O’Donnell implored viewers not to see the movie and, for good measure, gave away its big twist” (Lim). The film does not advocate violence — in fact, the entire point of the ending of the film is to laugh in the face of Tyler’s agenda and beliefs — it is those beliefs that are destroying us, that must be opposed. The film complains about the consumerist apathetic society, yes, but it is just as much about the counter-reaction to that society, and it shows how both are wrong. Who we are is something for ourselves to decide. When we simply allow ourselves to be defined by the material and the physical, we degrade from humans and become more like machines or animals.
To conclude, if Fight Club is not one of the greatest films of our time, it is one of the greatest films of our era — I have not seen another film made since 1999 that has equaled it in sheer impressiveness. Why is it great? Because it is important, because it provokes heated discussion amidst the film world. The movie is analyzed extensively, so surely it is finely crafted. And it is also debated extensively, so it must have left an impact. Dare I even mention its massive cult following? It has become an icon of popular culture. Unlike many critics, I do not believe it is pseudo-intellectual. Though it is clever, it is not as pretentious as some would argue. It does not market some new panacea-philosophy, but rather encourages us to look around us and rethink things. Are we allowing ourselves to be deceived by the popularly conceived notion of masculine ideal? What do we find purpose in, in a world caught between a deluge of marketing and a violent counter-culture? Where is the world going from here, as a new millennia begins and the world becomes more and more populous and more and more technology-inundated and culture-inundated?
Having nothing more to say, my final urge is this: if you have seen this film, I encourage you to pay attention to these things if you choose to see it again. And if you haven’t, I hope I’ve helped you to rethink your ideas about what you’ve heard about it. And as a last safe reminder: keep hydrated. It’s cough & cold season.
Bibliography
Barker, Jennifer. “A Hero Will Rise: the myth of the fascist man in Fight Club and Gladiator.” Literature-Film Quarterly. July, 2008, Vol. 36, Issue 3, 171.
Bedford, Mark. “Smells Like 1990’s Spirit: The Dazzling Deception of Fight Club’s Grunge Aesthetic.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 2011, Vol. 9:1, 49-63.
Brown, William. “Deterritorialisation and Schizoanalysis in David Fincher’s Fight Club.” Deleuze Studies. 2011, Vol. 5:2, 275-299.
Gunn, Joshua and Thomas Frentz. “Fighting for Father: Fight Club as Cinematic Psychosis.” Western Journal of Communication. May/Jun 2010, Vol. 74:3, 269-291.
Lim, Dennis. “Fight Club Fight Goes On.” New York Times. Nov 8, 2009, Vol. 159:54853, 18.
Redeeming Pandora 