Category: Media

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The Pernicious Influence of Joseph Campbell’s Mythological Insights on Hollywood

Firstly, let’s get one thing clear: it’s the influence that is pernicious– not Joseph Campbell, the author.

Campbell argued that all stories are essentially variations of the same basic archetype, the hero sets out on a journey, undergoes some arduous trials, is challenged and almost fails, encounters a mentor or inspiration, re-engages the challenge, succeeds, and lives happily ever after, or dies like Jesus Christ.

All right– I’m playing with that a bit.

Which is not to say that I am particularly dazzled by Campbell’s work. Some people write about him as if no one before him had ever written thoughtfully about the essential elements of tragedy. In fact, the Greeks did, long before Campbell came along, and Shakespeare himself seemed to have the formula down pat.

No, no– my problem is that I don’t like the concept of a “hero”, and even if I did like it, I don’t believe that there is any real-life correspondence to the idea– it’s all fantasy. It’s all usually male fantasy. It’s all sometimes a bit fascist, as in “300”.

It would be more interesting– but far less popular– to identify the delusions the general public demands from hero-worshipping tales.  Firstly, that all other characters must defer to the hero; secondly, that his acts of violence are palatable because it is established that his enemies are unworthy or have sex.  Thirdly, that people worship heroes even though the actions of the “heroes” in real life highlight the deficiencies in the rest of us.

Think about a mother who neglectfully allows her baby in a stroller to roll into the street.  The “hero” sees the baby and rescues it and returns it to the mother.  In the Campbell story, the mother is eternally grateful and worships the hero for his timely act.  In real life, the hero’s action is a rebuke to the mother for her carelessness, something she will not want to highlight or be reminded of.

Real life is far more complex than Campbell’s mythic delusions.

And “Star Wars” is a crappy “B” movie that accidentally became the object of millions of people’s fetishistic enjoyment.  They are happy they get it.  Unlike “A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner”, it is immediately comprehensible, and just as immediately ridiculous.

More on “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”.

 

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Jane and Henry

THAT said, in the 10 years I took to write her biography, I observed many Janes. I saw the Jane with the agenda; the girlish, self-effacing Jane when she’s with men; the armchair shrink Jane who spouts advice about sex and love and exercise as if by rote whenever she’s on TV; the ruthless, hard-as-nails Jane in business and self-promotion; the generous Jane with friends in need; the loving grandmother-matriarch Jane; the celebrity Jane who in May walked down the red carpet at Cannes in a glittery white gown and left all the young starlets in her dust. Patricia Bosworth, in the NY Times, September 25, 2011.

What is this? I mind it. All the young starlets “in her dust”? You mean, she can be smart and shrewd and giving and all that and, oh, just for the fun of it, let’s march down that red carpet at the age of 70 and prove that I am still more desirable than, say, Greta Gerwig, or Anne Hathaway, or Jessica Alba.

Poof! It’s not dust, Patricia, it’s dried up embalming fluid.

Is that what it takes to get access to Fonda, and to her friends and professional colleagues? To make sure that she understands that your biography will include lines like “and left all the young starlets in her dust”? After the Viet Nam War and Roger Vadim and Tom Hayden and “Klute” and Ted Turner– that’s ultimately what always really mattered, isn’t it?

To leave “all the young starlets in her dust”?

What’s the article really about? About how really amazing Patricia Bosworth is, really just as mysterious and alluring and deep and beautiful, as Jane Fonda, with whom she is ever so close. Because, after all, she and Jane share a deep, dark, secret, one that is so profound that all of your friends would want to know, if only they could be trusted to not spoil it.

What was on Henry Fonda’s mind the night he performed in “Mr. Roberts” after his wife slit her own throat? Jane thought he just didn’t know how to deal with grief. But it’s all a puzzle to Jane. Why didn’t she feel grief? Why didn’t she cry? Rather than acknowledge that much of what passes for grief nowadays is more like grief theatre anyways, she thinks there must have been something wrong with her, that she was trying too hard to please daddy.

Let’s all wonder about it.

The beautiful, dewy photo of Ms. Fonda on the book’s front cover is a miracle of photography, fitness and plastic surgery, probably all three. NY Times, Janet Maslin, 2011-08-18

 

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Wienergate

Unemployment. The War in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq. Global warming. Thousands killed in Syria. The government collapsing in Yemen. Spain and Portugal going broke. Japan. Cancer. AIDS.

The Anthony Wiener story is intended to amuse the illiterate, the sheep, and the frigid-hysterics while the government and big corporations continue to ensure the gradual impoverishment of the middle and lower classes and continuation of disastrous foreign policies over there.

I am hugely disappointed in Jon Stewart. The story was funny for five minutes, not 105. And it wasn’t funny because a foolish young politician made stupid decisions. The very, very funny part of the story is Wolf Blitzer with a straight face pretending to be a journalist. At least he got that right.

I was baffled, at first, by the amount of time Stewart was giving this story. Wasn’t he doing exactly what he frequently ridicules other media organizations of doing? Tunnel vision. Flogging a trivial, inane issue to death?

Mystery solved: Stewart is very touchy about some critics who claimed he low-balled the issue on the first day because of his personal friendship with Anthony Wiener– not, they believed, because he was rational. Those critics successfully manipulated Jon Stewart and made him look like a fool as, on the very next Daily Show, he desperately tried to muster the hysterics to prove that he really, really can’t be tricked out like some CNN tart. He made the story the centerpiece of three consecutive Daily shows, long after it stopped being funny.

But then, that’s about all you get on the news these days, including the CBC up here in Canada. When it’s not falling over itself to drool over the royal wedding.

At the end of the June 8th “Daily Show”, Stewart played a clip of a reporter listing five or six important stories she had intended to cover and then announcing that she would not be covering those stories because there were new developments in the Anthony Weiner story.

My wife and I could never could figure out if the reporter was being sarcastic or serious. It is so had to tell nowadays. But it was utterly shameless of Stewart to play it because he was doing the same thing or worse.

If you were to be honest with yourself for a moment… if you woke up one day and heard that Anthony Wiener, who is married, had flirted with several other women online, would you really believe that this was an important story that needed to be on the front page of every newspaper and online news website in the country?

But you believe it now, don’t you? Because it was on the front page of every newspaper, top of the news on every broadcast, all over the web. You believe that no story would be given such prominence by so many different news organizations and media entities if it wasn’t really and truly important.

Or do you think for yourself?

No matter how many news organizations cover it, nor how many gallons of ink are spilled on it, or how many photographs or videos or web pages, or self-serious pundits using euphemisms, no matter, no matter, no matter, the Anthony Weiner scandal is trivial and irrelevant and unimportant.

The real story now is just how bad is the entertainment-news industry in the U.S.? And the next real story is, is this really what Americans want– because they do tune in– or is something they are having shoved down their throats? The Anthony Wiener story might well begin to seem important to some people because coverage of it is ubiquitous.

This story will die soon enough. Unlike Sarah Palin’s enduring idiotic appeal to every numbskulled dissident survivalist in the U.S.– something that appears to be trivial but isn’t (we’re talking about the intellectual ability of a potential candidate for the highest office in the land)– this never was a real story, there never was a real impact, and not even Fox News can make a whole turd out this fart.

No crime was involved. No political issues were involved. It’s none of anybody’s damn business.

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Exquisitely, Completely, Consummately Irreligious American Exceptionalism

The world looked at America, and lo, it saw this: obese children suckling mega-super-ultra-gigantic soft drinks and fries; men in camouflage shooting at helpless animals and beer cans; a city drowning in floods while the government stumbled around like drunken blind crippled men; children on motorized off-road vehicles tearing into the hillsides; cities draining; farmers growing gas; cosmetic surgeries; abandoned factories; Koran-burning pastors; pyramid marketing materialists; bunker-bussing survivalists; drug pushers on the streets; drug-pushers in the doctors offices; poverty and indifference to poverty; screaming hatred at “town hall” meetings.

And lo, America looked at itself in the mirror and did not see what the world saw. America looked at itself and saw that it was EXCEPTIONAL. And that the rules of the world, of fair play and mutual respect and cooperation, did not apply to them, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And America was chosen by God to be the vessel of his or her grace, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And he who does not embrace this ideology shall be accused of not loving America and if he does not embrace it, America will hold its breath until it turns blue in the face.

What is truly exceptional is how American politicians like Newt Gingrich have managed to take “I’m better than you are and I can do whatever I want to do because I’m special” and repackaged it as some kind of weird religious-patriotic mishmash expressed in a harmless sounding euphemism: “exceptionalism”.

It’s code. “Manifest Destiny” is back. Look out, boys. This time, they’re after your oil, your fish, and your water. And they’ve invented a new kind of morality to make it right. And they’ll kill you if you stand in their way.

Newt Gingrich has written an entire book which essentially argues that America, the exceptional, is like some titled noble to whom the rest of the world, a collection of lesser nobles, peasants, and slaves, must kowtow.

No, of course he doesn’t put it that way. They never do, do they? But no one should mistake the meaning of “exceptional” for anything else: we get to make our own rules and we have special access to the world’s wealth and resources because God said so.

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Identity Theft

Some notes on property rights and identity, from an article in the New York Times, March 28, 2011

Ownership of a person’s identity after death is regulated by the states. Each one does it differently. In New York all such rights expire upon death. So, because Marilyn Monroe was legally a resident of New York State when she died, any one can use her likeness or identity for any purpose.

You can’t use Einstein’s likeness or identity without permission, and without paying a fee.

There is no legal mechanism by which a person who disdained endorsements in his or her own life can prevent others from selling their name or image after death. Too bad Chaplin, Hendrix, Einstein. If Einstein had expressly declared in his will that he didn’t want his face and name to be used to hock automobiles– too bad. It’s like the courts would have nullified his wish.

Guess what– the right of publicity is taxable. So the heirs of a famous person’s property may have to sell those rights simply to pay the taxes on the value of those rights. That seems very wrong. The law essentially seems to require that a person’s good name and image be despoiled.

In fact, that seems repellent. Are the courts actually insisting the government has the right demand the commercial exploitation of deceased celebrities, because, that, in fact appears to be the case. (Unless the tax only kicks in if the property is sold. That actually makes more sense. The Times article was not clear on the point.)

Did you know that it is accepted tenet of will law that a person cannot demand the destruction of property or assets in his or her will?

Well, he or she can “demand it”, but courts will generally rule against it.

 

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The Trapped Chilean Miners Get Nannied

According to “60 Minutes”, the Chilean miners nearly mutinied against their erstwhile rescuers when they discovered that their messages to and from their loved ones were being censored by therapists who were determined to maintain an upbeat, positive atmosphere in the mine.

In an age in which psychobabble repeatedly seeks to assert itself as a new religious orthodoxy (and in which heretics are as roundly punished as medieval free-thinkers), I found this particularly disturbing. Who decided to claim this authority? Who took control? Why did anyone think that that person had the authority to do this? What kind of psychologist would cooperate with this kind of emotional putsch?

Some answers: The plan, according to the rescue effort’s lead psychiatrist, Alberto Iturra Benavides, is to leave them with “no possible alternative but to survive” until drillers finish rescue holes, which the government estimates will be done by early November.

“Surviving means discipline, and keeping to a routine,” Iturra said.

So when the miners do get moments to relax, they can watch television — 13 hours a day, mostly news programs and action movies or comedies, whatever is available that the support team decides won’t be depressing. They’ve seen “Troy” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with Brad Pitt and Jim Carrey’s “The Mask.” But no intense dramas — “that would be mental cruelty,” said Iturra.

I cannot imagine mental cruelty more brutal than watching “The Mask” or “Troy”. However…

The news the miners see — which in Chile includes frequent reports about the miners themselves — also is reviewed first by the team above, said Luis Felipe Mujica, the general manager of Micomo, the telecommunications subsidiary of Chile’s state-owned mining company.

“Of course to do that you need to watch the news first and effectively limit access to certain types of information, or to put it vulgarly, censor it,” said Mujica. “This is a rescue operation, not a reality show.”

Though some miners have requested them, sending down personal music players with headphones and handheld video games have been ruled out, because those tend to isolate people from one another.  “With earphones, if they’re listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they’re not available,” Iturra said. “What they need is to be together.”

So it was the mining company that made these decisions. But didn’t the worker’s rights take priority over this dictatorial impulse? What was the rationale? That the mining company owned the mine, and that the workers were their employees? Let’s just pass over that little detail about the negligence of the mining company causing the imprisonment in the first place…

I saw a website that questioned the strategy of the company psychiatrist, but not the essential point: who appointed this asshole to tell the miners what they would or would not be allowed to think or do while waiting to be rescued?

It is a stunning achievement: a discipline that has the success rate of witch doctors and palm readers has succeeded in appointing itself as an authority over mental/emotional issues. They have succeeded in convincing timid, gutless managers everywhere that they have some kind of magical authority that entitles them to decide what adult men and women may or may not see and hear.

Authoritarianism lurks all around us, just below the skin, even in so-called free societies. Even Hollywood movies adore it, giving us, time and time again, some asshole who “takes charge” and is supposed to be our hero because he tells people what to do, breaks the rules,  and because, in the fantastically rigged outcomes of Hollywood blockbusters, he’s the hero, the only one who can save us.

Mujica says “to put it vulgarly” as if it is only vulgar if you have to describe what it actually is, and as if his mind is not at least as vulgar as anything the miners could hear or see if someone was not trying to nanny them.

 

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After the Performance: AI

There has been a bit of noise this week about the IBM computer that supposedly defeated some of the top human Jeopardy Contestants. I have rarely heard such unmitigated bullshit in the past few years. Consider this:

The computer was allowed to store the IMDB and several encyclopedias including Wiki on it’s hard drives. The human was not even allowed to use Google.

The computer did not express the slightest desire to play the game or win. The IBM programmers did. They cheated by having the IMDB and Wiki with them when they played while the human contestants, of course, did not even have a dictionary.

Some of the observers were dazzled that the computer was able to understand a rhyming word– what animal living in a mountainous region rhymes with “Obama”? They were surprised that the computer had been programmed to “know” that llama rhymes with Obama? You are indeed easily impressed.

The odd thing is that the computer’s performance hasn’t even been all that impressive, even if it was actually a “performance” in any human sense of the word. Apparently, it is offered the question in text rather than verbally. 25 IBM programmers in four years couldn’t do better than that? And why does it get a bye on the verbal questions? Human contestants can’t ask for a print out of the question before they offered verbally to other contestants.

This is a scam.

The bottom line, of course, is that computers can’t “think”. They will never think. All they can do is process data. The data and the processing are constructed by humans. The computer contributes nothing but the illusion of autonomous operation.

People who think computers think are staring at the puppets at a puppet show and wondering what they do at night after the performance.

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Phony Flash Mobs

If I told you I saw a video of a choir performing the Hallelujah Chorus in a food court in a mall, would you be interested?

Probably not. Firstly, the acoustics would not be that good. Secondly, the choir– having displayed their standards of professionalism by agreeing to perform in a food court– would probably not be all that good.

Thirdly, why would you want to hear the Hallelujah Chorus in a food court?

But that is exactly what the so-called “Hallelujah Flash Mob” is. It is neither a flash nor a mob. The entire event was meticulously planned out to the last detail, other than the unsuspecting shoppers. The event was staged not only with the approval of the mall owners, but with the active sponsorship of a camera store (note the number of cameras shown in the video).

The singing was pre-recorded and then dubbed.

This one, at least, is not dubbed.  The original dubbed one doesn’t seem to be available anymore.

It is an average, possibly even mediocre choir performing one of the most over-exposed pieces of the music in history in front of a group of surprised shoppers. The entire “flash mob” thing is a con. There really are flash mobs and they really are spontaneous, and this is not one.

So why have 10 million people watched the video? Because the initial wave of viewers– upon whom “going viral” depends– thought it was this coolest thing they heard of, a “flash mob”, that is just so cool, and they heard it was cool, and they knew a little about flash mobs and they were supposed to be cool, so if I e-mail my friends about the video and tell them to watch it and then e-mail all their friends and Facebook it and tweet about, then I will be cool.

The flash mob aspect– the suggestion of spontaneity and risk– is the grossest deceit of the this video. There was not the slightest spontaneity nor risk involved in the making of the video. There is not much special about the video at all, other than the faked cache of the name.

There is a second aspect of the popularity of this video that I find disturbing. When you read the comments about it on Youtube, you find a kind of triumphalism among some Christians who are resentful of the courts removing overt testimonies of the Christian faith from city halls and courtrooms in the U.S. In your face, liberals! When the people are permitted to voice their convictions unfiltered by the left-wing media, they are overwhelmingly in favor of Jesus! It’s almost like we are all kind of martyrs.

The choice of “The Messiah” seems to prove that Christians can not only be as sophisticated as anyone else (the flash mob) but that they also have good taste (even if the hallelujah chorus from “The Messiah” is the only piece of classical music they can identify).

But… here’s a performance of “Hallelujah Chorus” I really like.

And if you like a good choir performance.

To those who found the Hallelujah Chorus Flash Mob inspirational: I apologize. I know, it’s mean to find fault with something that seems that perfect. I can’t help it. We all crave the real, the authentic, the true. We owe to ourselves to not be taken in by people who just want to fake it.

Bill’s suggestion for future flash mobs to appeal to the same crowd that adored the Flash Mob Hallelujah Chorus:

  • Flash Mob “Amazing Grace” at a funeral (preferably of an atheist).
  • Flash Mob beer party at a Tea Party Event singing “Joe Hill”.
  • Flash Mob “Copacabana” at a symphony orchestra performing Beethoven’s 5th.
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Three Days of the WikiLeaker

There is one scene– actually, two or three– in “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), Sydney Pollack’s brilliant thriller about a rogue CIA agent– that really is quite preposterous. Having caught up to the mastermind of the evil secret rogue CIA network, Turner (Redford) forces him to reveal the secret purpose of his group by pointing a gun at him threateningly.

Of course, this makes people tell the truth, instantly.

Of course not.

It makes people say whatever it is they think you want to hear, so they can live another day. And so Leonard Atwood tells Turner what he thinks he wants to hear. No he doesn’t. He tells him the whole truth, so the story can be concluded.

[Spoiler] The scene ends brilliantly, however, when Max Von Sydow, playing a hit man named Joubert, enters the room. We have been prepared to believe he is there to kill Turner but, in fact, he turns his gun on Atwood and shoots him in the head.

He explains to Condor (Turner/Redford) that he was hired by the CIA to dispose of Atwood who was about to become an embarrassment. Since his contract to kill Condor was with Atwood, it is now null and void. He offers Condor a ride back to town. A little surprisingly, Condor accepts. Joubert then gives Condor an astute, restrained, intelligent explanation of how things really are.  There is no future for Condor in America.

Condor returns to New York where he contacts Higgins and, ridiculously, informs him that he has turned over documents to the New York Times to reveal the rogue CIA group to the world. Wikileaks, 35 years ahead of it’s time! Condor strides off, triumphant, but Higgins yells after him, “What makes you think they’ll print it?”. The last shot, a freeze frame, is Condor’s face melting into the crowd…. with a flicker of doubt.

2022-05-10:  We now know that the New York Times held off publishing a scoop at the request of the government.  I forget the details but I will find them and link to it here when I do.

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CBC News: Copying CNN’s Dismal Formula

Richard Stursberg came to the CBC about six years ago, hired some American consultants who told him that people want more weather, more banter, more light news, more trivia in theirs newscasts, and systematically destroyed the least worst news broadcast in Canada.

My wife and I now watch PBS news from the U.S. I’ve tried out CTV occasionally. Incredibly, it is better than the CBC National. I didn’t think I would ever be saying that.

So here’s the CBC:  Nancy Wilson is the hostess on the weekend. She is a perfect little hostess and I think she should take time out from her busy hosting gig to maybe hock a little Tupperware or Avon on the side. In the meantime, she conveys to the viewer just how remarkably trivial the world is out there. One minute it’s a tornado or earthquake or war killing thousands of people, the next it’s chilly out there– did you bring a sweater, Mark? Might be a good day to curl up with a warm book. Did I mention the airplane crash? Let’s go to the reporter in the news room– look! He’s got his sleeves rolled up! He must be working very hard, and you can tell he’s incorruptible because, for God’s sake, he has his sleeves rolled up. And he’s moving! He’s walking from one desk to… where-ever. The camera is moving with him. By golly, this is real news I care about, not some mere journalist. And now, let’s cut to Diane to explain how we can keep our kids safe from meteorites– Diane? Diane has moved to the same desk as Nancy– they are having a conversation about the news, just like people you know.

I’ll admit, the PBS Newshour seems a little dry in comparison. There is a ten or fifteen minute lead story, explored in depth, then the news headlines, then three more stories, usually, each allotted about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes, compared to most news broadcasts, is a lot of time. Stories can be explained and analyzed in depth. The expert guests often look rather plain– you immediately suspect they were recruited for their expertise rather than their looks.

Stursberg has now resigned, with no explanation. I hope the CBC realizes they made a big mistake and chooses to head off in a different direction. The first step should be to unmakeover the National.

Am I the only one who does not like the National makeover?  No, not by a long shot.  Ratings are down between 30 and 40%.  More on Richard Stursberg.

The idea was that even if old fogies like me get pissed off, the new format would attract young people. One prays for future generations if they’re right.

So, when do they admit failure and move on to something more interesting?

By the way, CTV News ratings are currently about double the CBC’s.

The CBC makeover into a pale clone of CNN is not a coincidence. The chairman of the CBC, Richard Stursburg, openly wanted the CBC to be more like the big American stations.

So that’s why we also got absurd programs like “The Border” and “Dragon’s Den” and “Battle of the Blades” and “All for one with Debbie Travis”.