Confession

I'm an elite. In current usage I am, at least. This despite living in a one-room apartment, having a good number of miners and assembly-line workers in my family tree, and working my own first jobs as a dishwasher and mail-sorter.

That's because "elite", now that it's been divorced from economics and class, has basically taken on the meaning of "different." It's become a dysphemism or cacophemism in that way. You can't just accuse someone of being different in those exact words without tipping your hand that your appealing to dumb prejudice. Throw around "elite" though, and you pick up a salt-of-the-earth quality.

Politicians who aim high are vulnerable to accusations of eliteness, because they've led lives and may stand out in some ways. Barack Obama is a black man from a mostly Asian-Pacific state, and has a half-sister who identifies as Buddhist, for starters. Hillary Clinton kept her maiden name during Bill's first term as Arkansas governor, and named her daughter after a Joni Mitchell song. McCain has worn the POW background into mundanity. Otherwise, that might strike voters as a trifle peculiar as well.

This weaponizing of "elite"ness is not good for any politico with a brain, but some of them deal with it better than others. Unfortunately the damage spreads further. A lot of Americans have opinions and backgrounds that mark them as different. To dismiss them as "elite" is to discourage people who consider themselves "normal" from giving half a thought to what they have to say.

I guess my point is that while presidential candidates wolf down chili dogs and choose neutral ties, the rest of us need to reclaim the weird. Weird is beautiful.

BTW, you know what "dysphemism" is now, so you're elite too.

California hallucinatin'

One of my favorite Hollywood anecdotes involves the first screening of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddity. According to legend, Rock Hudson stood up when the lights came on and yelled, "What the fuck did I just watch?" Gee, I hope that's true.

If there's a movie made in the last few years that invites, even demands that kind of response, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is that movie. Kelly, of course, first came to attention as the director of Donnie Darko. Your liking one does not guarantee you liking the other. There are themes that run between the two movies, but the treatment is markedly difference.

ST could be seen as a mixture of Philip K. Dick, Saturday Night Live (a major source of supporting actors), Left Behind, Alan Moore's graphic novels, that stupid reality show with Britney and K-Fed, and a host of other things I won't name now. While I believe that I understood pretty much everything I saw, it defies synopsis. Trying to describe the plot to a friend earlier tonight, I got a couple of sentences in, stumbled into a "wait a minute, but really..." and got no further.

The Iraq War is involved, and because of a nuclear attack that destroys Abilene, TX, PATRIOT Act measures have become even more draconian. To the point where just about anything you see happen, someone else is watching on some kind of screen. Republican's are hoping to ride a wave of xenophobia to an easy third term, and as for the Democrats, a brief shot of a Clinton-Lieberman logo is all you hear of them. Opposition mainly comes from the Neo-Marxists, a bombthrowing radical organization with some major Judaean People's Front/People's Front of Judaea issues. But there's a good chance both the rebels and the Empire are being manipulated by Baron von Westphalen (Wally Shawn), a melodrama villain who's become an environmental savior in the public eye. Oh, and time is destroying itself, so all the above may be moot.

You see the problems that might arise for Kelly. He spent five years and tens of millions of dollars making a self-negating art film. (Not quite, though. See update.) Too big to recoup its costs on the arthouse circuit, too iffy and strange for most exhibitors, it never really opened in secondary markets and below. Basically, Kelly courted disaster and disaster said, "Yes."

But what is it like watching the movie? Not perfect. There's no Darko-like character to identify with. Seann William Scott's out-of-depth cop is the protagonist by default. Infodumps are necessary to keep the plot somewhat comprehensible, in part because no one has ever read the comic books Kelly wrote to introduce the premise and characters. That produces some clunky exchanges, although the clunkiness is self-aware.

Yet overall, I'd give it a positive, even glowing review. Part of the reason is that if you approach it as comedy, it works. It's funny. There's a dichotomy. The story juggles a dozen oblique scientific and philosophical ideas, but the cast never hesitates to go for a gut-level laugh. As the amnesiac actor who sets the plot in motion (maybe) Dwayne "No longer the Rock" Johnson takes comic stiffness to Adam West levels. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays it so dumb, real porn stars will stand up and scream "Lies!", but she's kind of lovable in her thickness. And Cheri Oteri (one of the SNL emigres) gives fiery support as a scheming Neo-Marxist. Plutonium in the form of a Venice CA crunchy.

Another thing I like about Southland Tales is the way it puts grim aspects of current American life onscreen without being horribly depressing. Reality TV and wartime desperation are treated with a kind of slapstick catharsis. Meanwhile there's something that comes next, even if that something is oblivion.

Finally, I'd recommend it as a unique experience. This movie has not been made before, and won't be again. It's massive commercial failure is part of the reason. But it's also a film that nobody else would have thought of. It may actually be a good thing that Kelly made it right after Donnie Darko. If he had waited, he might get to know better.

Will Southland Tales be vindicated by history? Is it at least on its way to becoming a cult classic? I don't know. It's definitely the kind of work where either you like it or you really don't. But I requested it through the Providence Library many weeks ago, and spent most of the summer waiting. People out there are starting to pay attention to it. What kind of voodoo it will work remains to be seen.

Update: According to this interview, the budget ran to 12-15 million, fairly cheap for a studio film. Inside-industry stuff doesn't really interest me, but I could have sworn that it was somewhere in the 100 mil neighborhood, especially factoring in star salaries. Credit him for getting bang for the buck.

One for the formerly bald guy

So, in case you're David Blaine and have been practicing that fifteen days in a coffin stunt, you know that Delaware Senator Joe Biden is Barack Obama's running mate for the '08 election. To be honest, the selection doesn't overjoy me. Like much of the Democratic establishment, he has--especially in the foreign policy arena--often put looking tough ahead of making the right decision. Other guilty parties include Bob Kerrey, John Kerry, and Tom Daschle. And like all these guys, Biden has wound up failing at both tasks.

But one thing about him is that he wants this. He wants to get to Pennsylvania rather than rack up even more ungodly levels of Senate seniority. And being VP means that he'd get the top job if anything were to happen to . Incentive enough for him to go after the Republicans with everything he's got, which is what the running mate needs to do.

I still would have preferred Jim Webb, but apparently he didn't want the job. Anyway, no one asked me. Steven Moffat will pick the next Doctor and Obama's pet wonks pick the running mate. You can't be too disappointed when they don't heed your messageboard comments.

The Friday Random Ten strikes again

Hm. No central theme or anything. Good music I happened to have on hand. I may rejigger things to bring some other sets of songs nearer the top, but this is a good list for today.

1. Dr. John--Let's Build a Better World
2. The Kinks--Do You Remember Walter?
3. Ladytron--Playgirl
4. The Brunettes--Her Hairagami Set
5. Talking Heads--I Zimbra
6. Sammy Davis, Jr.--Easy to Love
7. David Bowie--Cactus*
8. Dressy Bessy--Oh Mi Amour
9. LCD Soundsystem--Great Release
10. Bjork w/ Antony Hegarty--The Dull Flame of Desire

*Great Pixies cover

Was ist dieses?

On one of my other writing projects I keep running into this glitch. The document I'm working on is saved to disc, and I add some more changes to it. Then I get an error message, and the whole thing is unsaved. I mean, it's no longer on the discette. The document changes names to something with a tilde and a bunch of numbers. I've been dealing with it by copying and pasting to a blank document and resaving. Still, it's more than a little annoying. Anyone else familiar with this/know of a solution?

Parity v. Parody

If the words "Bill O'Reilly's movie debut" don't fill you with dread, maybe this trailer will.

The way he slaps the pseudo-Michael Moore, you'd think it was a Hooter's waitress or his own penis.

Okay, I'm going out on a limb and predicting that An American Carol will suck. The question is why. Is it because they employ every B-list Hollywood conservative they could grab? (They lost Kevin Costner when his agent insisted on reading the script. Stephen Baldwin had an eye doctor's appointment.) Not exactly.

This is a matter of trying to even the scales politically at the expense of all other concerns. I call it Mallard Fillmore balance.

Mallard Fillmore, in case you haven't heard of it, is a comic strip by Indiana-based Bruce Tinsley, centered on a conservative op-ed writer who's also a duck. (Despite the title, nothing is generally made of this last part.) It's Mallard and his opinions 24/7. You'll sometimes see his editor, a straw-liberal newspaperman, and a guy with a big chin who's a straw-liberal news anchor. If Mallard has any kind of social life, it's not shown.

Now this strip was intended as a balance against "Doonesbury" "The Boondocks" and other liberal-leaning comics. The question of whether the comics pages were actually left-biased is beside the point. Some perceived it to be so, and Tinsley, for one, did something about it.

But while he looked, he didn't really learn. "Doonesbury" has what I'd call a Democratic-moderate orientation. Notably, Gary Trudeau has long included likeable conservative characters. It could be argued that BD is now the moral center of that universe. Mike Doonesbury himself became a Republican during the Gingrich revolution, although it's not clear whether he still is. The point is, there is substance to "Doonesbury" aside from liberal soapboxing. "Mallard Fillmore" adds to the right in terms of quantity, but surrenders where quality is concerned.

Another example: while 24 seems a little repetitive for my tastes, I've seen it and can say it's a decent thriller show. Its producer, Joel Surnow, went on to create The 1/2 Hour News Hour, an attempt to conservatize the format of The Daily Show. If you've heard of it, you've probably forgotten about it already.

The thing with The Daily Show is that while a lot of the talent may be liberal (founding producer Lizz Winsted was also one of the first Air America hosts) their main agenda has always been comedy. If it were a five-times-weekly political screed, it wouldn't have lasted this long in the market. Surnow's authoritarian politics had been background noise on 24, but with "1/2 Hour" he made them front and center, which didn't benefit him.

Which is not to say that politics has no place in art, or even pop-culture. But this movie seems to have little to it but scoring cheap shots at imaginary targets. (Eliminate the 4th of July? So you go to sleep on the 3rd and wake up on the 5th?) It doesn't seem like it will have much audience beside the like-minded and the polite. And people who find Trace Adkins saying "turdhead" innately hilarious.

Resolution

I resolve to be more open, approachable, friendly. To see meeting new people as an adventure and act accordingly. This is difficult in the long run, because bad past experiences color future behavior. But it's down on (virtual) paper now.

Also resolve to come up with a non-boring post soon, but that's another matter.