j a c k *

Twisted Priorities...

I will confess a weakness; I love bad science fiction movies.  Not avant-guard movies, or movies about challenging topics – not that kind of bad.  I like science fiction movies that have idiotic plots, 2D characters, wooden actors and papier-mâché sets.  Special effects?  Don’t need them.  So long as the costumes have pointy shoulders and the dialog is overblown and pompous, I’m there.  That’s not to say that I have no standards; I do. It’s just that they can be easily overwhelmed by the clichés of my childhood obsessions.  And capes and wacky headgear.  But mostly it’s the pointy shoulder pads – the pointier the better.

Therefore it should come as no great surprise that I mostly like the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.  Despite everything it had going for it – costumes to beat the band, scenery chewing by the BBC A-list, and a soundtrack by Queen – it managed only to be mediocre.  Still, the shoulders: my god were they pointy.  In any case, I’ve been watching the SciFi channel’s new Flash Gordon TV series and was tickled to see that the series is following some of the plot elements of the movie.  (Or perhaps both are deriving their story from the comic (which I have only seen bits of in odd bookstores) or the old movie serial (which I have not seen for years), whichever came first.)  I can’t help feeling that someone on the staff was also a fan.

Obviously there are differences in translating a 30 year-old movie (or 70 year-old serial) to a cable series, but what struck me most was one change that while trivial seemed almost venal.  In both the movie and the TV show Ming captures Flash and Dale, sending Flash to his dungeon and Dale to his bed chamber.  Slave girls prepare Dale for her erotic encounter with the emperor, dressing her in ridiculous boudoir clothing and joking that the whole thing will be brief, but also offering her psychic relief.  In the movie this was a special wine that would render her insensible.  But in the cable series it was an earphone that produced music that induced a state of “waking sleep.”  In both cases the intrepid Dale manages to use the offered device to intoxicate a slave girl to take her place and escape.

But why this seemingly trivial change from adulterated wine to sleepy song?  It’s about standards of decency.  We as viewers are confronted with a tyrant intending to systematically rape one of his prisoners. The censors apparently didn’t want that experience tainted with something that might be interpreted, however vaguely and abstractly, as a reference to using drugs.  After all, this was prime time.  There might be children watching.

Someone’s got their priorities all out of whack.

- jack*

A Random Triple...

A mere two days after I wondered what happened to the War Czar, the War Czar (a.k.a. Lt. General Douglas Lute) gave an NPR interview which confirmed that conscription is currently and has always been considered a serious option to replenish the depleted armed forces.  Not, I imagine, the kind of PR that the White House was looking for at this point.  So long Lutey; we hardly knew ye.

While I’m tooting my own horn, I’ll point out that my post comparing Cheney’s constitutional status with quantum mechanics predates this Tom Tomorrow cartoon comparing Cheney’s constitutional status with quantum mechanics.  His is better, of course, if only for the fact that he includes a reference to the VP’s man-sized safe which he no doubt uses for human Schrödinger’s cat experiments.  It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from boys who used to shock frogs with a battery charger.

Speaking of psychology, this interpretation of the GOP brand of machismo gave me a giggle.  Admittedly this is essentially Freudian analysis, and thus has as much scientific validity as a literary critique of the symbolism in The Great Gatsby.  On the other hand politics is about symbols, so whether the men of the GOP really are repressed six year-olds is not the point.  The point is that this is the type of pseudo-macho symbolism that they think reflects them and will win them political allies.  And that's just pathetic. The call for genuine adult discourse in our national media is long overdue.

- jack*

My Vacated Brain...

I’ve been remiss in posting lately as the dates on my recent posts will attest, but this time I have an excuse.  I’ve been on vacation.  The family and I took a leisurely camping trip up the California coast, skirting through southern Oregon and then down again through Lava and Lassen.  We finally met up with several other families near Lake Tahoe for a long weekend of group camping.  The tensest moment I had for two solid weeks was a 12-hour downpour in a redwood rainforest (the tent held up fine and the storm cleared before we had to break camp).  Watching all the families sharing their hardbound Harry Potter books was a little tough, but my wife and daughter already had dibs on ours.

I’ve been back for a week or so, but I’ve been having trouble getting out of the vacation mindset.  I’ve caught up with the news at this point but I feel like I missed something.  What happened to the War Czar?  I mean wasn’t this guy supposed to cut through the red tape and make the whole occupation go smoothly?  So what happened?

Also, what’s with Congress?  Somehow the Republicans have wrested control of the agenda out of the hands of the Democrats, probably through some sort of armed coup, and yet I haven’t found out how they did it.  I assume the Democrats put up a monumental struggle to protect our rights and liberties from such an unconstitutional assault, and that should have made good TV but I can’t find anything about it.  Not even on the YouTube.  I’ll keep looking.

I’ll post something most coherent once I have a chance for my brain to reengage.  Something of real consequence.  Maybe Harry Potter.

- jack*