Just got back in from the theater. I went to Camelview (for none Arizonians: one of the few theaters in the Valley that play independent films) and saw This Film Is Not Yet Rated. There were only about five other people in the theater during the showing. It was a very well-done documentary. The best bits of the film are the director interviews with Matt Stone, Mary Harron, John Waters, and others that really highlighted the absurdity of the rating process. Harron, when talking about American Psycho, expressed shock that the scene the MPAA had the biggest problem with wasn't the axe murder or throwing a chainsaw down a flight of stairs, it was a menage a trois sex scene. This is a riff the film plays over and over again: the MPAA just ain't down with the sex. Or gays. Or telling people who they are (frankly, the secrecy of the raters' identity is just completely absurd: if people in important positions like judges and government officials can't hide their identities from the public, why should some lowly film screener?). The parts where the documentary drag is the private investigator sequences. Director Kirby Dick hires an unorthodox P.I. team to uncover the identities of the MPAA raters, and while the detectives are interesting in their own right, it just isn't as compelling as the director interviews or the film's history lessons on film censorship. The film is quite humorous in parts, and I would recommend it to anyone with a love of cinema as essential viewing. It is, however, in many respects a depressing film. The comment that really stuck with me exiting the theater was John Waters, remarking on the NC-17 his film A Dirty Shame received (side note: I love Waters, but Dirty Shame was a pure meh, shoulder-shrug of a film), that it seems that the MPAA no longer goes after films for depicting sex; its also targeting films for talking about it. I reflected on this as I headed home, and my trains of thought started heading for unpleasant stations (side note before I go off on my ramble: before the film started, they had a trailer for Short Bus, the new film by John Cameron Mitchell, aka creator of Hedwig And The Angry Inch, and it has now shot to the top of the list of movies I want to watch NOW, dammit!).
Coming home, I was thinking of the culture war. Its the one people have been ranting about for years, the rational secularists versus the born again puritans, locked in an endless struggle for the future of America's youth, the soul of the Constitution, etc etc. So much of the film underlined just how much of a stranglehold the forces of Uptightness and Buzzkilling have on our culture (for Christ's sake, they have TWO clergy members on the MPAA appeals board, who seem to be on the board for no other reason but to make sure they can use their religious stances to edit films the way their respective faiths want them to be editted). I'm really starting to think that the forces of Moderation and Reason are going to lose the culture war. A lot of this stems from conversations I have with people about politics, both in the real world and on message boards. The running theme that keeps coming up with conversations with my fellow lefties and centrists is that we're destined, BOUND to win this cultural war. The argument goes that surely reason will sway the masses away from Fundamentalism, that people's innate desire for freedom will cause them to shake off the chains of puritanical restrictions, yadda yadda yadda. No one seems to want to consider the possibility that we may be out-manuvered by the other side of the chess board. I think that arrogance will do us in in the end. First off, it makes the assumption that Americans as a whole are reasonable people. Bullshit. Emotion trumps reason. When you want to manipulate a large group of people, the fastest way to do so is to appeal to their emotions, their gut instincts, their biases and misconceptions. Using reason and dropping science on people takes more time, it takes an audience willing to commit their attention span to absorbing that information, it runs the risk that people will not understand what you're trying to say. Why did Fox News gain the foothold that it did in our media? It succeeded through undermining the concept of journalistic detachment, of emotional distance from the story. They used flashy graphics and anchors with talking-straight-from-the-gut attitudes. That's how they attracted the public imagination, not through a cool Mr. Spock demeanor, but rather by playing up and pandering to the loutish Captain Kirk inside us all ("to hell with the Prime Directive! Let's blow these Klingons away and go get some greenskin girls to give us all lapdances!"). Much as how the Republicans have gained the edge on Democrats over the last several years: they played the Charles Atlas to the Dems' scrawny beach dude. By being more aggressive, they used that emotion, that rhetoric, to mobilize their base and to make them memorable and distinctive from their opponents. They made the Dems play Defense for so long that when Dems should have been more offensive (i.e. Kerry in 04), they dropped the ball big-time.
I worry about the cultural war because it seems that our side (by our I mean the lefties, the liberals, the freaks, the waiter-there's-Big-Government-in-my-soup conservatives, the diehard seperation-of-church-and-state advocates) isn't as committed to it as the other side. The religious right are embedded deep in our political and corporate culture. I don't see the forces of reason penetrating and infiltrating our society in a manner as effective as the Born-Agains have. I've lost count of the number of people I know, most of whom are secular and either left/moderate, who have vowed never to have children (I will admit that I am one of these people; hell, if I had the money to do so right now, I would get a vasectomy ASAP). These are people who really SHOULD have children: they're smart, compassionate, cultured, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) self-aware enough not to be parents. Meanwhile, white trash and religious zealots are breeding like rabbits. Many in the evangelical communities see it as their duty to boost their numbers by popping out as many new Christians as they can. And a book I started reading (Righteous by Lauren Sandler) makes me even more paranoid for the future. The book deals with how evangelical groups are co-opting countercultural icons (skateboarding, rap and punk music, body modification, etc) and using them as RECRUITMENT TOOLS for getting the younger generation on their side. And apparently its working. Its one thing for corporations to co-opt countercultural imagery: corporations are essentially amoral entities. The only ideology they truly believe in is turning a profit, the only missionary work they do is convincing you to buy into their brands. So what if Nike uses Minor Threat for one of their commercials? That doesn't concern me nearly as much as the idea of someone using Minor Threat music as a way of drawing people into religion, into following a set of beliefs that run completely counter to what most countercultural artists/creators stood for (sure, Minor Threat were straight edge, and for the record I loathe straight edge, but I can't see Ian McKaye and company being in favor of the reactionary politics these evangelicals are pushing). Its insidious and ingenious because it takes the imagery and culture of the opposing side and uses it to draw people onto their side. Like constructing a giant Trojan Henry Rollins full of door-to-door bible-thumpers.
This all concerns me because while we all take the passive route, the let's-just-wait-out-the-storm route, the opposing end is planting deep roots in our culture. I'm not advocating revolution or anything ridiculious like that, but what I do propose is that we start taking off the kids' gloves. For too long, people on the secular side of the fence have tried taking the high road, the "we won't stoop to their level". Or worse, we don't even bother attempting to have a discourse with the other side, or discredit what they're saying. Part of the problem with the Intelligent Design debacle is that so many evolution advocates simply didn't bother or outright refused to respond to I.D. proponents' arguments. The idea seemed to be that responding to a concept as half-cooked as I.D. would be lending it credence. A view like that is the wrong one to take: in our culture, silence, the refusal to engage the other side, is a sign of weakness. An admission of guilt, an admission of outright defeat, an admission of being intellectually lazy or cowardly. No matter if what the other side says is completely ridiculious, we have to be willing to engage them in a dialogue anyway. We can't simply assume that people will see through the craziness and approach it from a rational perspective. The problem with being a secularist/lefty/kinky freak/old-school conservative in this day and age is that we don't have any pimps, any carny barkers, any grandstanding champions for our cause that are even half as effective as the craven snake-oil sales-men the other side have. They're rolling up their sleeves and digging trenches across our society, building bunkers and getting ready for the shit to hit the fan. Meanwhile, those of us on Planet Live-And-Let-Live are too busy making new iPod playlists at Starbucks to respond to their advances. They gain inches while we sit around, assuming that since we're right, we'll win in the end.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Perhaps I have little faith in the American people at large. Perhaps I overestimate the Puritans. But I would rather overestimate them than underestimate them. I think as a whole, we've been conditioned to expect that if the day came that our government went from good to EVIL, from democratic to out-and-out theocacy/fascist state, that that change-over would be a dramatic one, an obvious sea-change. We read Orwell and Huxley and expect Big Brother and all that melodramatic dystopian nonsense. Book burnings and the like. My fear is that as a culture, we're like the frog in boiling water. Throw us in too early when its burning hot, we'll jump right out, see the immediate danger. Drop us when it simmers on cool, and slowly, ever so slowly up the temperature, we'll be sitting stupid and pretty as we slowly boil to death. Its what people in the film said, that even if the ratings board disbanded tomorrow and the government stepped in to regulate the film industry, there wouldn't be large-scale censorship. And they are absolutely right. What's the point of banning something? It will make people want it more. Simply release the product, and then release 50 other bright shiny things to distract people from that one questionable object. There are probably more provocative records, books, and films available to the average consumer today than there has ever been throughout human history, and never has it seemed to matter less. Revolutionary ideas, art and philosophies so bold that they could single-handedly cause paradigm shifts, are buried beneath layers of mediocrity. It doesn't matter if some incredible, life-altering foreign film is given an NC17; most people will be too busy watching the latest Julia Roberts movie to give a shit.
I've written enough for today. I know its disjointed and a bit of a rant, and I would offer to mail people who read the whole thing delicious baked goods, but I'm too broke to buy cookies for other people. Also: I really despise saying "We" when talking about ideas, especially since what I'm really saying is "I and this vague, hypothetical ideological group that I kinda sympathize with". Just saying "I" in certain sections felt too awkward, so I used the rabble-evoking We. So if anyone reads this and they think I'm trying to sound like the spokesman for an entire spectrum of culture, a voice of a generation, that was not my intent. Besides: I feel far too apathetic towads my generation to ever attempt to speak on their behalf.
Coming home, I was thinking of the culture war. Its the one people have been ranting about for years, the rational secularists versus the born again puritans, locked in an endless struggle for the future of America's youth, the soul of the Constitution, etc etc. So much of the film underlined just how much of a stranglehold the forces of Uptightness and Buzzkilling have on our culture (for Christ's sake, they have TWO clergy members on the MPAA appeals board, who seem to be on the board for no other reason but to make sure they can use their religious stances to edit films the way their respective faiths want them to be editted). I'm really starting to think that the forces of Moderation and Reason are going to lose the culture war. A lot of this stems from conversations I have with people about politics, both in the real world and on message boards. The running theme that keeps coming up with conversations with my fellow lefties and centrists is that we're destined, BOUND to win this cultural war. The argument goes that surely reason will sway the masses away from Fundamentalism, that people's innate desire for freedom will cause them to shake off the chains of puritanical restrictions, yadda yadda yadda. No one seems to want to consider the possibility that we may be out-manuvered by the other side of the chess board. I think that arrogance will do us in in the end. First off, it makes the assumption that Americans as a whole are reasonable people. Bullshit. Emotion trumps reason. When you want to manipulate a large group of people, the fastest way to do so is to appeal to their emotions, their gut instincts, their biases and misconceptions. Using reason and dropping science on people takes more time, it takes an audience willing to commit their attention span to absorbing that information, it runs the risk that people will not understand what you're trying to say. Why did Fox News gain the foothold that it did in our media? It succeeded through undermining the concept of journalistic detachment, of emotional distance from the story. They used flashy graphics and anchors with talking-straight-from-the-gut attitudes. That's how they attracted the public imagination, not through a cool Mr. Spock demeanor, but rather by playing up and pandering to the loutish Captain Kirk inside us all ("to hell with the Prime Directive! Let's blow these Klingons away and go get some greenskin girls to give us all lapdances!"). Much as how the Republicans have gained the edge on Democrats over the last several years: they played the Charles Atlas to the Dems' scrawny beach dude. By being more aggressive, they used that emotion, that rhetoric, to mobilize their base and to make them memorable and distinctive from their opponents. They made the Dems play Defense for so long that when Dems should have been more offensive (i.e. Kerry in 04), they dropped the ball big-time.
I worry about the cultural war because it seems that our side (by our I mean the lefties, the liberals, the freaks, the waiter-there's-Big-Government-in-my-soup conservatives, the diehard seperation-of-church-and-state advocates) isn't as committed to it as the other side. The religious right are embedded deep in our political and corporate culture. I don't see the forces of reason penetrating and infiltrating our society in a manner as effective as the Born-Agains have. I've lost count of the number of people I know, most of whom are secular and either left/moderate, who have vowed never to have children (I will admit that I am one of these people; hell, if I had the money to do so right now, I would get a vasectomy ASAP). These are people who really SHOULD have children: they're smart, compassionate, cultured, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) self-aware enough not to be parents. Meanwhile, white trash and religious zealots are breeding like rabbits. Many in the evangelical communities see it as their duty to boost their numbers by popping out as many new Christians as they can. And a book I started reading (Righteous by Lauren Sandler) makes me even more paranoid for the future. The book deals with how evangelical groups are co-opting countercultural icons (skateboarding, rap and punk music, body modification, etc) and using them as RECRUITMENT TOOLS for getting the younger generation on their side. And apparently its working. Its one thing for corporations to co-opt countercultural imagery: corporations are essentially amoral entities. The only ideology they truly believe in is turning a profit, the only missionary work they do is convincing you to buy into their brands. So what if Nike uses Minor Threat for one of their commercials? That doesn't concern me nearly as much as the idea of someone using Minor Threat music as a way of drawing people into religion, into following a set of beliefs that run completely counter to what most countercultural artists/creators stood for (sure, Minor Threat were straight edge, and for the record I loathe straight edge, but I can't see Ian McKaye and company being in favor of the reactionary politics these evangelicals are pushing). Its insidious and ingenious because it takes the imagery and culture of the opposing side and uses it to draw people onto their side. Like constructing a giant Trojan Henry Rollins full of door-to-door bible-thumpers.
This all concerns me because while we all take the passive route, the let's-just-wait-out-the-storm route, the opposing end is planting deep roots in our culture. I'm not advocating revolution or anything ridiculious like that, but what I do propose is that we start taking off the kids' gloves. For too long, people on the secular side of the fence have tried taking the high road, the "we won't stoop to their level". Or worse, we don't even bother attempting to have a discourse with the other side, or discredit what they're saying. Part of the problem with the Intelligent Design debacle is that so many evolution advocates simply didn't bother or outright refused to respond to I.D. proponents' arguments. The idea seemed to be that responding to a concept as half-cooked as I.D. would be lending it credence. A view like that is the wrong one to take: in our culture, silence, the refusal to engage the other side, is a sign of weakness. An admission of guilt, an admission of outright defeat, an admission of being intellectually lazy or cowardly. No matter if what the other side says is completely ridiculious, we have to be willing to engage them in a dialogue anyway. We can't simply assume that people will see through the craziness and approach it from a rational perspective. The problem with being a secularist/lefty/kinky freak/old-school conservative in this day and age is that we don't have any pimps, any carny barkers, any grandstanding champions for our cause that are even half as effective as the craven snake-oil sales-men the other side have. They're rolling up their sleeves and digging trenches across our society, building bunkers and getting ready for the shit to hit the fan. Meanwhile, those of us on Planet Live-And-Let-Live are too busy making new iPod playlists at Starbucks to respond to their advances. They gain inches while we sit around, assuming that since we're right, we'll win in the end.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Perhaps I have little faith in the American people at large. Perhaps I overestimate the Puritans. But I would rather overestimate them than underestimate them. I think as a whole, we've been conditioned to expect that if the day came that our government went from good to EVIL, from democratic to out-and-out theocacy/fascist state, that that change-over would be a dramatic one, an obvious sea-change. We read Orwell and Huxley and expect Big Brother and all that melodramatic dystopian nonsense. Book burnings and the like. My fear is that as a culture, we're like the frog in boiling water. Throw us in too early when its burning hot, we'll jump right out, see the immediate danger. Drop us when it simmers on cool, and slowly, ever so slowly up the temperature, we'll be sitting stupid and pretty as we slowly boil to death. Its what people in the film said, that even if the ratings board disbanded tomorrow and the government stepped in to regulate the film industry, there wouldn't be large-scale censorship. And they are absolutely right. What's the point of banning something? It will make people want it more. Simply release the product, and then release 50 other bright shiny things to distract people from that one questionable object. There are probably more provocative records, books, and films available to the average consumer today than there has ever been throughout human history, and never has it seemed to matter less. Revolutionary ideas, art and philosophies so bold that they could single-handedly cause paradigm shifts, are buried beneath layers of mediocrity. It doesn't matter if some incredible, life-altering foreign film is given an NC17; most people will be too busy watching the latest Julia Roberts movie to give a shit.
I've written enough for today. I know its disjointed and a bit of a rant, and I would offer to mail people who read the whole thing delicious baked goods, but I'm too broke to buy cookies for other people. Also: I really despise saying "We" when talking about ideas, especially since what I'm really saying is "I and this vague, hypothetical ideological group that I kinda sympathize with". Just saying "I" in certain sections felt too awkward, so I used the rabble-evoking We. So if anyone reads this and they think I'm trying to sound like the spokesman for an entire spectrum of culture, a voice of a generation, that was not my intent. Besides: I feel far too apathetic towads my generation to ever attempt to speak on their behalf.
heracleitus:
It's definitely a rant. As such, I won't comment. Hope it felt good to get it off your chest. The Rocky Horror amused me.
heracleitus:
I remembered something I forgot to write after getting to the end of your essay. I recently watched the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica at the behest of a friend. While I doubt I'm anywhere near as enthusiastic about it as she is, it's pretty good as far as hour-long television dramas are concerned. However, there's something that one of the main characters points out in the first episode that appears to be one of the show's continuing themes (if the writers for the week get around to it that is), that something being "When we fought the cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction, but we never answered the question 'why.' Why are we as a people worth saving?" It's a damn good question and it's one that I've yet to come up with my own personal answer to.