House of Eratosthenes

When I first started this blog, which no one reads anyway, there were a lot of exciting movies coming out and occasionally I’d allow my commentary on political events to mix with what I had to say about the movies. After hitting the Publish button I’d wander around attending to the various other (more important) bits of my life, wondering if that’s the right way to go. This was before Obama, and the point had not yet been driven home that liberalism is like a house fire, we can’t ignore it and hope it goes away…it was before we tried that approach and scientifically proved to ourselves it doesn’t work. And so everything about blogging was uncertain. People who aired their opinions in this new medium were constantly being told they shouldn’t, and I daresay every single one of us seriously entertained the idea that this is true, that we were wrecking something.

Sometime during all this, I’ve gradually come to realize that we are all living things, our political scene is a living thing, and as such it is constantly changing. And I’ve come to look at movies differently, especially the big-budget summertime blockbuster ones. These are massive investments made by people who have devoted their entire lives to relating to others. Now, I can form an opinion about things just like anyone else, but I haven’t been doing that. They know something I don’t know, and it isn’t confined to just making movies. So we stand to learn a great deal from them. The movies are constantly changing too, right?

Kids vote. By “kids” I do not mean, of course, those who are too young to legally vote; I’m talking in terms of age brackets. I’m speaking of the younger voters who were kids, and have now crossed the threshold. Here and there, now & then, they bamboozle the pundits and pollsters because it isn’t really possible to see in advance what this bloc is going to do. It happened in 2016, 2000, 1972, 1968…lots of midterms. The movies mold and shape how this new generation thinks. When you’re a kid, movies are a sort of reality existing in its own universe. In real life you have to wait until you’re eighteen to do stuff, and then you have to wait a whole lot longer to acquire prestige, authority, respect…in the world of movies, kids are important right away. So we have here a window, a crystal ball of sorts — a hundreds of million-dollar crystal ball, better than any other one we have, for figuring out what new generation is being constructed for us. By Hollywood, more than by their parents maybe. And that should produce paroxysms horror perhaps, but the good news is that the movies themselves are fallible. You can invest $200 million in a movie, that doesn’t mean it should make a profit. And if it makes a profit that doesn’t mean the audience — of kids — is going to like it.

I have noticed over the years that this imperfect lens isn’t very much good to us figuring out where we are, but it’s great for figuring out how we’re moving. That’s a significant statement. Because our movements are becoming more rapid, and the year-to-year changes are becoming more significant. We seem to be rounding a corner.

Now a fifth of the way into this new century, we’ve hit a point where the makers of the movies, themselves, are also kids. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because I’ve been aging. But in writing, directing, producing — and defending — their more questionable works, these movie-maker kids are doing a lot of things I would not be doing, which is something I view as instructive.

There is a trend lately, and it’s a recent one, to insert things into movies that will “really blow your (the audience’s) mind.” This crusty old fart is finding it just a bit annoying, particularly when the mind-blowing event is not supported logically by events in the running-up, or in the aftermath. “Turns out, when [blank] did [blank] he really was doing [blank]” appears way too often in the plot summaries. “He knew it was a suicide mission, it turns out.” “Turns out, he really wanted MI6 to catch him all along because his laptop had a virus.” “Turns out, he already abducted Rachel and Harvey before Batman caught him.” I’m not condemning the simple plot twist, which has been a staple of Hollywood fare for generations and generations. Hooray for Alfred Hitchcock, I say. No I’m reserving this criticism for plot twists that lack artistic cachet, that impart the feeling they were chosen by picking slips of paper out of a hat, and make you squirm in your seat and let loose with a hearty but confused “What the–??”

Now, this Last Jedi movie thoroughly abused the privilege. It’s impossible at this point to deny it. I still rank it higher than its predecessor, because it at least purported to answer some questions. But what were those questions?

1. Who is Snoke?
2. Who are Rey’s parents?
3. What does Luke do with that lightsabre when Rey gives it back to him?

And the answers were:

1. Go fuck yourself.
2. Go fuck yourself.
3. Go fuck yourself.

Doesn’t it just blow your MIND??? Awesomesauce!!

No. No it isn’t. And the new “This will blow your mind too, while we’re at it” extra trimmings just dig the hole deeper. The side plot with the rich people on the gambling planet, the turning loose of the goat-horses or whatever, the kicking-off of the movie with a prank call and yo-momma jokes, the burning of the never-before-mentioned “sacred Jedi texts,” the reformed stormtrooper’s suicide run, the Asian chick that foiled the suicide run, the nephew-trolling with the Force hologram…

They’re all rather clever ideas, and each by itself potentially contributes to an enjoyable holiday experience in the theater. But together it’s just too much. Yes, maybe I’m hyper-sensitized to it because they’re trying to “re-imagine” (ugh) Star Wars as a social-justice vehicle, and I’m not down with that…four decades after cutting lawns so I’d have enough money to go to Mt. Baker Theater, I’m no longer in the desirable audience. Which I guess brings us back to “go fuck yourself” as the proper rejoinder to my concerns.

But I do get asked for my opinion, and I have to rate Star Wars movies according to the likelihood of the disc to find its way back into the player. This one doesn’t rank very highly. It’s about on par with “Attack of the Clones.” With the original trilogy, we’re putting the useful lifespan of a DVD to the test, cooking them guys until you could fry an egg on ’em.

So I understand and respect that there is a new audience here, and these items that give me such consternation, they like them just fine. I get that. But that’s what makes it all the more important to clue ourselves in to how things are changing, bit by bit, by way of checking out the movies. The stories end up being incoherent, incomprehensible and nonsensical because the plot events are super-glued together — and the kids don’t mind? Okay then. That tells me something valuable. Kids today don’t appreciate stories. It’s a clue to the rest of us about how the newer generation thinks. Ooh, that blew my mind! Ooh, that other thing blew my mind! Mind blowing here and there! Whee!

All of this is leading up to a salient point though, more important than all the rest of that. The creative force behind the debacle, the mastermind. He’s been taking to Twitter to defend his work, and although he’s a humble dedicated creative type who takes the criticism in stride and is busying himself with seeing how he can channel it to make his future efforts better…

No. No he isn’t. To my knowledge, he hasn’t been doing that at all. You M-U-S-T like his work, dammit! If you don’t, then YOU are the problem.

It isn’t just Rian Johnson who has been doing this. It’s the default behavior now among filmmakers. “Here is how I re-imagined it, and if you don’t like it then go screw yourself.” Female-led action movies, as Matt Walsh has noted, are ensconced in this special exalted status in which you are required to like them. Even if a contrary leitmotif has emerged that you shouldn’t be allowed, due to your gender and your race, to watch them.

There was a time when artists of all kinds — writers, actors, directors, painters, charcoal-on-paper, sculptors, authors, poets — sought out criticism and prized it just as highly, or even more highly, than their praise. It was part of being an artist. They got to be that way because some practitioners like Herman Melville, or Vincent van Gogh, died in ignominy and squalor with their greatness discovered long after they were dead. Well who wants that? And so artists learned that the whole mission was to please the audience. Without that navigational guiding-star, there was no mission and therefore nothing of import was being done. You had to learn to relate, or else not bother, and that meant you had to constructively channel criticism or else not bother.

That was then, this is now.

We got here because we forgot “entertain us” rhymes with “anus,” we forgot that court jesters are not kings, and we’ve somehow hit on the idea that whoever has what it takes to drag us into an air-conditioned theater during the roasting hot days of midsummer must have what it takes to lead us.

There is something else happening here, something else that constitutes a meaningful cultural change. This whole ritual of coming up with a new and unexpected element. There was a time when “creativity” meant one thing, and that was a subtly different thing. You might anticipate the most likely answer expected by your audience, and discard it simply because it was the most likely…The Butler Didn’t Do It. Then you’d proceed to the second most likely, bypassing that as well as the third, and maybe settle on the fourth. There was an understanding that that, all by itself, was not “creativity.” For an example I would point to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians which has found success and been remade countless times. There is a twist at the end. And it isn’t that the killer is the nanny, or the careless driver, or the big game hunter. The twist is truly creative, and it is connected to another meaningful event in the story: The fact that the police haven’t been able to solve the crime.

That’s not the case with Luke chucking away his lightsabre. It’s an isolated event. Wow, that blew my mind…so?

There was another understanding about having creative, unusual, unexpected ideas. It used to be taken as a given that some people wouldn’t like what you’re doing. So if you’re all set to receive the praise you have to brace for the criticism. Cilantro flavored ice cream? Bright canary-yellow house paint? A good stiff self-righteous scolding for being human, when you thought you were innocently settling down to enjoy a Star Trek movie? These are matters of personal taste. Some people may like these things — others will not. The ones who don’t like it will have something to say. There will always be a headwind pounding on the nose-cone of your craft that you’ve steered into the route never-traveled.

Not liking the criticism is normal. Being surprised by it or calling it unfair just because it isn’t positive, is annoying, and makes you look like something of a twit.

This should be a rule. We could call it the “AOC Rule” maybe. Or perhaps “The Rian Rule.”

Now having said all that…

The idea has now been put out there that people who go on the Internet in some form, like a blog such as this one, or social media, or YouTube…if we say bad nasty things about members of Congress, this is a “disgrace,” and…well…

“Those people who are online, making fun of members of Congress, are a disgrace and there is no need for anyone to think that is unacceptable,” Wilson said. “We’re going to shut them down and work with whoever it is to shut them down, and they should be prosecuted.”

“You can not intimidate members of Congress, threaten members of Congress. It is against the law in this United States of America,” she said.

Now the congresswoman who so proclaimed, is something of a clown. A Rian-Rule clown. No really, she goes into the halls of Congress and onto weekend talk shows wearing brightly-colored ten-gallon hats covered with sequins…for no reason at all that’s managed to find its way to me. So this kind of goes back to my original point about big-budget movies lighting the way and showing us where our culture is headed. This used to be unthinkable. Here you are working so hard to be unique — not better, just different — just to get attention. Your methods ensure that this will be a successful effort on your part, but of course you can’t dictate that all of the attention will be positive, so when some of it isn’t positive you get all twisty. And stick your finger in the air and start making these proclamations about disallowed behavior and punishment.

It makes me seriously wonder: Are these people, like Rian Johnson and Frederica Wilson, showing us their true selves when they hold themselves out as bold iconoclasts? Because to me, they just don’t seem to get it. In my younger days I went against the grain quite often because I realized I didn’t have what it takes to go with the grain, and there was no other way for me. With time, I’ve gradually learned to keep my mouth shut until such time as the “common consensus” is sure to lead us into some disaster. That’s the right balance, I’ve determined. Figure out who in this situation has something to learn — I see it might very well be me — and if I’m so sure that I’m the one with something to teach, stop and figure out if the learners can afford the lesson life is about to teach them, versus are they about to do irreparable harm. If they can afford the consequences of the mistake they’re making, then it may not be necessary for me to say anything at all.

But for all of us, if we do say something that goes against the prevailing consensus, for whatever reason, there will be blowback. Lots of it. Whether you’re right or wrong. And even if you are right and your critics are wrong, they still are, in all likelihood, perfectly reasonable people. You are, after all, advancing a novel idea.

It is the price to be paid for having one and giving it a platform.

It has always been this way. You play that game, you have to have a thick skin and not a thin one.

It is the “Rian Rule.”

Be bold and unusual, or be spared the inconvenience of unflattering blowback. Pick one. You can’t have both. No one gets to have both.

“People who aired their opinions in this new medium were constantly being told they shouldn’t, and I daresay every single one of us seriously entertained the idea that this is true, that we were wrecking something.”

Not me, mofo.
- vanderleun | 07/06/2019 @ 16:37
Not even for JUST a split second?
- mkfreeberg | 07/06/2019 @ 17:40
Not for one scintilla of an instant’s jot of a nanosecond.
- vanderleun | 07/06/2019 @ 18:02
[…] Rule The Rian Rule Patterns Their Smirking Smugness Liberalism and Fear F*cking With People The Glory of Error […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/12/2019 @ 05:54
[…] Ghostbusters” Rule Rapinoe Rule The Rian Rule Patterns Their Smirking Smugness Liberalism and Fear F*cking With People The Glory of Error […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/13/2019 @ 10:37

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Rian RuleSaturday, July 6th, 2019

The Rian Rule
Saturday, July 6th, 2019