We talk about remakes and reboots just... entirely too much. Today's post isn't going to be about how remakes are all fucked up (though they often are), or reboots are money-grubbing bullshit (though they often are). No today I'm going direct reference. Relativity is doing a remake of The Crow. I fucking loved The Crow, both the comic and the first movie. That said, seriously, don't fucking do that.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the our little tale of woe; Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, straight up fucking died in making The Crow. When your movie kills one of the ridiculously rare instances of a second generation fucking legend you need to pack up and go home. They didn't, they made three more movies and a shitty T.V. show, but that was at best in bad taste. I totally understand that its a nifty concept, I intimately appreciate that The Crow had a huge impact on a certain population, like me. However, The Crow is a pretty self contained story about loss and pain, that does extrapolate out pretty well but that doesn't require the bludgeoning of a deeply intimate story, especially after the first cinematic attempt fucking killed your headliner.
The Crow is essentially about a dude who comes back from the dead to inflict his grief on the people who murdered him and his SO. There are so many fucking ways to do that story without piggybacking the comic or disrespecting Brandon Lee's death. Find one and do that if you wanna make a movie.
Okay, so I lied, this is all about how how fucked up remakes are and how the film industry is a soulless, money-grubbing fuckscape. Sorry for the deception.
Showing posts with label Tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tragedy. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2015
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Seasonal Disa-fuckthis Disorder
I loathe people this time of year. Its not entirely a christmas thing or a holiday thing, or even a rabid consumerism thing, though my issue is related. I hate people in the winter because american culture apparently demands that, what is for me, the most beautiful, comfortable, and peaceful time of year has to be fucking terrible.
Between the narcissistic, masturbatory rage of the evangelicals bitching about how their monopoly on a season is slipping, to the tragic slide of joyous celebrations into vile obligations as progressively more distant and abusive families bludgeon each other with politics and forced proximity, society fails this season completely.
Additionally, this season means enough cooking to rival the feast of Tantalus, and though I love to cook, it means that I have neither the patience nor the inclination to write more on this subject than this. So I'll just say that if its cold outside and you're an asshole, fuck you. Viciously. With the pointiest, most horrific, seasonally appropriate prop you can find.
Between the narcissistic, masturbatory rage of the evangelicals bitching about how their monopoly on a season is slipping, to the tragic slide of joyous celebrations into vile obligations as progressively more distant and abusive families bludgeon each other with politics and forced proximity, society fails this season completely.
Additionally, this season means enough cooking to rival the feast of Tantalus, and though I love to cook, it means that I have neither the patience nor the inclination to write more on this subject than this. So I'll just say that if its cold outside and you're an asshole, fuck you. Viciously. With the pointiest, most horrific, seasonally appropriate prop you can find.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Status Quo Part One: Book Leanin'
I may be a day late and somewhat deficient of appropriate remuneration, but insomnia is a hell of a thing. If possible, I'll try to make up for doubling up on Brian's day with all the wit and vigor sleep deprivation affords me. Its been suggested that I discuss problems I have with the idea of a status quo. I like that idea, but in order to do it proper justice I need cover a fair bit of additional ground. I've chosen to start this little journey by exploring education.
My first target here is standardization. On paper, setting a standard is great; it seeks to ensure maximum saturation and retention of information while minimizing the percentage of the population abandoned to hopeless ignorance. The problem (as has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone from ivory tower academics to the self-congratulatory "wont someone think of the children" idiots) is that the size and relative complexity of our society demands that focus be placed on that second part. This means that in order to keep that percentage of failure low, the limited resources of our education system tend to be funneled into greater standardization. Some of this is problematic because those standards tend to define success at progressively lower levels of retention, dragging the whole system ever closer to incompetence. We manage this by taking a page from capitalism and rewarding success. We give more subsidies to schools that have a higher pass rate on standardized tests (more on this next time) which allows them to afford better teaches and more classroom resources, it also leaves schools that were already struggling pretty well fucked. As more of these schools start to suffer the habit is then to essential only teach children how to pass the relevant tests, forgoing anything like actual education. More schools "succeed" but the actual value and density of the information students receive has less context and less use outside of passing a given test. But, rather puzzlingly, that isn't the part I find most disturbing. High level standardization of education demands an increasingly rigid structure in the classroom. Which would be great if childhood wasn't a thing.
Think for a moment about all the things that are going on for a child. They are (hopefully) starting to develop the awareness of other people as people, dealing with these newly extant people, learning empathy, constantly expanding a rudimentary understanding of a massive and complex world and themselves, growing and changing at a frankly terrifying rate, and trying to construct a conceptual universe that can justify all of those experiences. That is completely ignoring any schooling and all but denying anything other than an optimal home life. Now imagine how a fucking disgustingly high percentage of these children are dealing with some form of abuse at home. Oh, and all the while they're being told that if they lack focus in class it could ruin their lives. In the midst of this clusterfuck of, what is to them, completely new and complex experience we tell them to sit down, forget all of that and focus on poorly contextualized facts and over-abstracted maths for between four and eight hours a day, depending on age. Now pack thirty or forty of these things into desks together and see how many of them "fail to perform to expectations".
The other major concern I have with the bastion of competing ideology that is education is just that, we can't seem to agree what its supposed to accomplish. Some people argue that schooling is meant to make children into well rounded adults, others argue that it's supposed to prepare children for the "real world" usually meaning the job market. Now, I'll reign in from the bile-spewing polemic about children spending all their time learning how to best sell themselves into slavery and try to only address these issues in themselves. If the idea is to produce well rounded adults then school would be more of a guided discussion with teachers and students interacting with concepts and generally progressing toward relevant details. Alternately, if the goal of education was to prepare children for the "real world", there would be a much greater emphasis on understanding social roles and the mechanics of various industries. The really tricky part is that either interpretation on its own would demand a higher regard for practical application. Unfortunately, the prevailing combination of the two is a gross maladaptation where general concepts and contextualization are largely ignored and the realities of economies and market factors are denied in favor of either hollow optimism or cynical resignation. Practical skills are all but left out entirely.
We place so much weight on the importance of education that these holes in the system don't just fuck with our children, they end up tearing at society as a whole. Because we don't really give children the opportunity to become real people, we end up with a population where many of us never get past stupid high school bullshit. Because we can't agree on what purpose education ought to serve, it largely ends up doing nothing for those twelve mandatory years, and even if you pursue high education you'll still have to fight through the shit to get anything out of it.
I know this might not seem like it leads into a critique of status quo mentality, but give me a couple posts to work through the details and I'll try to lead us into a coherent narrative.
My first target here is standardization. On paper, setting a standard is great; it seeks to ensure maximum saturation and retention of information while minimizing the percentage of the population abandoned to hopeless ignorance. The problem (as has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone from ivory tower academics to the self-congratulatory "wont someone think of the children" idiots) is that the size and relative complexity of our society demands that focus be placed on that second part. This means that in order to keep that percentage of failure low, the limited resources of our education system tend to be funneled into greater standardization. Some of this is problematic because those standards tend to define success at progressively lower levels of retention, dragging the whole system ever closer to incompetence. We manage this by taking a page from capitalism and rewarding success. We give more subsidies to schools that have a higher pass rate on standardized tests (more on this next time) which allows them to afford better teaches and more classroom resources, it also leaves schools that were already struggling pretty well fucked. As more of these schools start to suffer the habit is then to essential only teach children how to pass the relevant tests, forgoing anything like actual education. More schools "succeed" but the actual value and density of the information students receive has less context and less use outside of passing a given test. But, rather puzzlingly, that isn't the part I find most disturbing. High level standardization of education demands an increasingly rigid structure in the classroom. Which would be great if childhood wasn't a thing.
Think for a moment about all the things that are going on for a child. They are (hopefully) starting to develop the awareness of other people as people, dealing with these newly extant people, learning empathy, constantly expanding a rudimentary understanding of a massive and complex world and themselves, growing and changing at a frankly terrifying rate, and trying to construct a conceptual universe that can justify all of those experiences. That is completely ignoring any schooling and all but denying anything other than an optimal home life. Now imagine how a fucking disgustingly high percentage of these children are dealing with some form of abuse at home. Oh, and all the while they're being told that if they lack focus in class it could ruin their lives. In the midst of this clusterfuck of, what is to them, completely new and complex experience we tell them to sit down, forget all of that and focus on poorly contextualized facts and over-abstracted maths for between four and eight hours a day, depending on age. Now pack thirty or forty of these things into desks together and see how many of them "fail to perform to expectations".
The other major concern I have with the bastion of competing ideology that is education is just that, we can't seem to agree what its supposed to accomplish. Some people argue that schooling is meant to make children into well rounded adults, others argue that it's supposed to prepare children for the "real world" usually meaning the job market. Now, I'll reign in from the bile-spewing polemic about children spending all their time learning how to best sell themselves into slavery and try to only address these issues in themselves. If the idea is to produce well rounded adults then school would be more of a guided discussion with teachers and students interacting with concepts and generally progressing toward relevant details. Alternately, if the goal of education was to prepare children for the "real world", there would be a much greater emphasis on understanding social roles and the mechanics of various industries. The really tricky part is that either interpretation on its own would demand a higher regard for practical application. Unfortunately, the prevailing combination of the two is a gross maladaptation where general concepts and contextualization are largely ignored and the realities of economies and market factors are denied in favor of either hollow optimism or cynical resignation. Practical skills are all but left out entirely.
We place so much weight on the importance of education that these holes in the system don't just fuck with our children, they end up tearing at society as a whole. Because we don't really give children the opportunity to become real people, we end up with a population where many of us never get past stupid high school bullshit. Because we can't agree on what purpose education ought to serve, it largely ends up doing nothing for those twelve mandatory years, and even if you pursue high education you'll still have to fight through the shit to get anything out of it.
I know this might not seem like it leads into a critique of status quo mentality, but give me a couple posts to work through the details and I'll try to lead us into a coherent narrative.
Monday, August 25, 2014
The Most Charitable Thing I Can Bring Myself to Say About Police
I've been trying very fucking hard to keep my mouth shut about whats been happening in Ferguson the past couple weeks. As Michael Brown's funeral is today and I'm not a complete fucking ogre, I'm going to refuse once more to exploit the agony of his family's loss for the sake of a discussion. My heart goes out to them. I truly hope they find the justice they so clearly deserve.
However, while I have no desire to salt wounds, I have no such compunction against picking scabs. The systemic abuse of authority is something I must engage.
Authority in general is a bit of a touchy subject to me; both in that I don't have any, and in that its a philosophical minefield. I believe that the right to reasonable self defense is a primary human right. Now, people aren't always reasonable and not everyone is capable of protecting themselves. With this in mind its pretty natural to prevent people just loosing their shit all the time (both literally and figuratively) by outsourcing self defense. These days we call these defenders "police", and the entire impetus for their existence is and needs to be the reasonable defense of the civilian population against anti-social factors. Now, that means that the whole purpose of a police force ought to be peacefully deescalating dangerous situations when possible and utilizing just enough force to detain those who would do active harm to society. This does rather heavily mug my previous post on Ethics in that these actions are meant to ensure justice, i.e. the appropriate punishment of anti-social elements and the rehabilitation of those capable of recovery. Anything other than this is meant to make wronged parties feel better and that is an intrinsically moral issue, if you want to feel better that's all on you.
The unfortunate worm this this particular apple is that most police are just people doing a job. Because of the way we interact with law enforcement (note the different terminology), they are given undue, and often vindictive, protections. It is intrinsically unreasonable to make it a crime to assault an officer; being assaulted is an expected vocational hazard when dealing with the sort of people who tend to require police intervention: the actively violent and the anti-social. Besides there are already laws against assault, making a special law for people who assault cops is ridiculous. It is intrinsically punitive to have laws punishing resisting or avoiding arrest, making laws designed explicitly to add to an initial crime is just beating a dead horse. The fact that a police officer can beat a homeless man to death, or murder a young man in front of his family, or melt a baby with a flash/bang grenade or ever kill someone not actively trying to kill another person, and have any hope of still being a police officer is fucking disgusting and a gross miscarriage of justice.
Unfortunately, it is a core aspect of any kind of authority to maintain and accumulate power. Even the most well-intentioned person, given a degree of command, will seek more power under the auspices of being able to do more good. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying all police are corrupt, or that everyone in a position of power is bad. I am simply saying that being in a position of control tends to encourage one to seek more control. Authority, like a fucked up super solder cocktail, can't help but emphasize preexisting traits, and not one of us is ever really a saint.
However, while I have no desire to salt wounds, I have no such compunction against picking scabs. The systemic abuse of authority is something I must engage.
Authority in general is a bit of a touchy subject to me; both in that I don't have any, and in that its a philosophical minefield. I believe that the right to reasonable self defense is a primary human right. Now, people aren't always reasonable and not everyone is capable of protecting themselves. With this in mind its pretty natural to prevent people just loosing their shit all the time (both literally and figuratively) by outsourcing self defense. These days we call these defenders "police", and the entire impetus for their existence is and needs to be the reasonable defense of the civilian population against anti-social factors. Now, that means that the whole purpose of a police force ought to be peacefully deescalating dangerous situations when possible and utilizing just enough force to detain those who would do active harm to society. This does rather heavily mug my previous post on Ethics in that these actions are meant to ensure justice, i.e. the appropriate punishment of anti-social elements and the rehabilitation of those capable of recovery. Anything other than this is meant to make wronged parties feel better and that is an intrinsically moral issue, if you want to feel better that's all on you.
The unfortunate worm this this particular apple is that most police are just people doing a job. Because of the way we interact with law enforcement (note the different terminology), they are given undue, and often vindictive, protections. It is intrinsically unreasonable to make it a crime to assault an officer; being assaulted is an expected vocational hazard when dealing with the sort of people who tend to require police intervention: the actively violent and the anti-social. Besides there are already laws against assault, making a special law for people who assault cops is ridiculous. It is intrinsically punitive to have laws punishing resisting or avoiding arrest, making laws designed explicitly to add to an initial crime is just beating a dead horse. The fact that a police officer can beat a homeless man to death, or murder a young man in front of his family, or melt a baby with a flash/bang grenade or ever kill someone not actively trying to kill another person, and have any hope of still being a police officer is fucking disgusting and a gross miscarriage of justice.
Unfortunately, it is a core aspect of any kind of authority to maintain and accumulate power. Even the most well-intentioned person, given a degree of command, will seek more power under the auspices of being able to do more good. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying all police are corrupt, or that everyone in a position of power is bad. I am simply saying that being in a position of control tends to encourage one to seek more control. Authority, like a fucked up super solder cocktail, can't help but emphasize preexisting traits, and not one of us is ever really a saint.
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