Star Trek, The Mother Load

Yes. It looks like a penis.

It's Star Trek.  

It's always been Star Trek. 

Where else can you find the widest range of fans around--or fans with such longevity?  Some of the most meaningful Trek is over 40 years old; some of best Trek is the most recent iteration.  Trek, and its fans, can encapsulate the very best about popular culture, television viewers, and, I daresay, humanity itself.  In the 1960s, the fandom latched onto the notion that with cooperation and understanding, peace and prosperity could become a universal ideal.  To that end, fans have seen the (then) far-fetched notion of a multi-racial incorporation of individuals who advance based on their skills, not adherence to the old boys club.  Just consider the bridge of the Classic Enterprise: Black, Asian, WASP, Jew (insofar as Misters Nemoy and Shatner are Jewish), Russian, and Southern American (this last one being its own category in some circles).  Aside from Uhura being made to wear a skirt to work everyday, all are blindly equal.  This is what Trek fans have embraced.

Then there's the seedy underbelly--and underbelly fed by the 1980s glut of Trek.  They were high times then: films every few years, the start of The Next Generation, and merchandising.  Ah, the merchandising that was eaten up by any loyal fan.  Toys weren't for children--they were collectors items!  Pocket Books wasn't for pedestrian paperbacks--they were for semi-official Trek novels, of which one needed to read... all of them!

He's an Admiral now.

And then there were the fan clubs.  Hello, my name is Matt, and I'm a recovering Star Trek fan club member.  I know of what I speak, having inauspiciously served "aboard" the USS Challenger for a time in my pre-driving teens.  My parents, I'm sure, were thrilled to drive me and my friend to our monthly meetings.  And what a bunch it was, meeting in an empty, cold, sparse first aid building.  In retrospect, it was like the worst up-and-coming religion ever, just kind of sitting around and praising great god Trek.  Captain Bob was engaged or dating the first officer; she, in turn, seemed to have some rather serious illness.  The typical meeting started with some sort of whole group "thing" (perhaps a report of whoever had gone to the latest convention), and there would be a look ahead to upcoming things (probably the upcoming convention).  Then we'd break into "section time," or some such name.  I was in engineering.  The... sigh... yes, I'll say it... "chief of engineering" was in the process of overseeing our ships... sigh... refit.  How one refits an imaginary ship, and how it takes longer than a moment, I do not know.  I do recall that he was dead set on the ship having four engines (which I'd venture gives you little benefit but more work for the engineering crew), and demanded that the new boat be painted in gunmetal gray.  He spat hate talking about how the stupid show dared light its ships, claiming that the bad guys couldn't shoot what they couldn't see.  I, as an early teen, dared not point out that a) the bad guys used sensors that detected more than the visual spectrum and b) it was just a show.  He further stated that he had never watched TNG, as it was impossible to build a ship with curved, fluid lines.  I dared not point out that the whole of Star Trek was rather silly, from a nuts-and-bots, realistic point of view: aliens, transporters, warp drive, etc.

I stopped going to Challenger meetings shortly before my 13th birthday.  You see, at the time there was a funny television program called Saturday Night Live.  I think that it has no relation to the unfunny show of the same name on now.  Patrick Stewart hosted, and even though the show was in decline at the time, I as a Trek fan, watched.  It wasn't that great.  The "erotic cake" bit seemed like the future of SNL: drawn out and stupid.  But here's the kicker: everyone at Challenger saw the episode.  Live.  The night before our Challenger meeting.  And you know what everyone did after "section time?" We went into the next room to watch Patrick Stewart on SNL.  For the second time.  In a little over 12 hours.

This was also the time that I stopped being a part of "Starfleet," the national officially-sanctioned Trek fan club.  They had the most stupid of controversies: some Vice Admiral (running for election as Head of Starfleet or whatever stupid title was bestowed upon the president of the fan club made) made a joke about Klingons.  Pan-de-mon-ium broke out. She (a woman of color, ironically) was branded a racist.  In classic "how not to handle a crisis" mode, she first fought the onslaught, then gave a half-assed excuse (she was speaking "in character as a movie-Trek-era person," then ultimately had to give up her aspirations to be Head of Starfleet.  The pound of flesh was her resignation from the organization.

Thus, then, is what makes Trek the mother load for crazy-ass fans.  Born of an aspiration for a better world, its fans at the height of the franchise would meet in cold first aid buildings to watch a lousy show because it had "a guy from Star Trek."

A Beloved Graphic Novel

It's not often that something entertaining can truly blow you away--that "I can't breathe because I never saw it coming" sort of moment in a story.  If you saw The Sixth Sense without being spoiled, that's probably one time.  The LOST episode "Walkabout" comes to mind as well, though some wise few (me) called the zinger about 20 minutes in.

At the top of my list, though, is the graphic novel Kingdom Come.  To borrow a line from old J.R.R., it is precious to me.  The basic story is this: ten years from the perpetual "now" of DC Comics, Superman has retired, our well-known heroes have aged or moved on, and a new, more violent breed of superhero has taken to protect--and wantonly carouse--in our world.  We quickly learn that this violent "protection" has lead to a nuclear disaster of catastrophic proportions, leading in turn to a showdown literally of Biblical proportions between goodies and baddies, humans and superhumans alike.  The narration of the story is set by Norman McKay, a minister whose faith is slipping after the nuclear disaster.  He is led by the Spectre, a fairly familiar DC character able to transcend time and space.  Together it's a Scrooge-and-a-ghost dynamic which, conveniently enough, lets us flit from hither and yon across the globe to see the story unfold. 

Two other points should be made.  First, all the artwork has been painted by Alex Ross; second, it was originally released, as graphic novels often are, in four issues.  When I first read it, the former was apparent, as I was aware of Mr. Ross' work in the Marvels graphic novel.  As for the second point... for that I was not prepared.

I mistook the first issue--coming in at about 50 pages in a paperback (i.e. not comic paper) issue--as the only issue, as a one-shot vision of an alternate future.  McKay sees some horrible visions to open the story, visions of Biblical gloom and doom.  As the rest of the story unfolds, and we see fun and interesting ways that familiar characters are being "re-presented." Norman's visions are largely forgotten, and if remembered, relegated to the dustbin of artistic flourish.  At the climax of the story (in the issue, anyway), Superman returns, saving the day and putting the new non-heroes on their place.  It's stunning and amazing and cheer-worthy, a truly cinematic moment made out of static art.

And on the next page, Norman's visions of apocalypse return, ending the story, telling us that there's much, much more to come.

I love Kingdom Come.  I wrote my college thesis on it, comprising a whopping 30 pages of critical analysis on it, arguing that it deserves to be elevated to the realm of postmodern fiction.

The climax of the novel is the showdown between Superman--but a Superman who is older, one step slower, and who turned his back on humanity for ten years--and Captain Marvel.  For those not in the know, the basic DC backstory for Captain Marvel is that Billy Batson, a 10 year old boy, can yell "Shazam!" and call down magic thunder to turn him into the powerful adult hero.  In the course of Kingdom Come, Billy Batson grew up under the brainwashing employ (and vaguely-suggested sexual abuse) of--wait for it--Lex Luthor.  Ultimately, Marvel goes rogue from goodies and baddies alike, being an X factor as fighting moves closer and closer to Armageddon.  He is the only one powerful enough to stop Superman.  He is the harbinger of death.  It leads to the showdown of a lifetime, that of all our heroes and villains fighting towards the very brink of their end.

And that is just about the biggest game that you could count on: every single character you've ever cared about (at least in the DC universe) battling lest they be, quite simple, no more.

Cringing At Trek; or, When Riker Turned A Gay Alien Straight

Star Trek: The Next Generation's fifth season is punctuated by a litany of episodes About Something: politics, rape, suicide, language, abortion.  In "The Outcast," Trek takes a sci-fi look at homosexuality.  The J'naii are presented as a genderless society who occasionally have members that exist in an alien closet with secret desires of being one gender and being attracted to the opposite.

I remember watching this episode in 1992.  As a 12-year-old, it wasn't exactly fun to sit through what is ultimately a heavy-handed missive on gender and sexual orientation.  In one scene, the alien Soren (played by Melinda Culea of A-Team fame (a female actress was required by the producers because Soren would end up a-kissin' Riker)) asks about the differences of gender.  Seeing Jonathan Frakes bridge the gap between Rikerian charm and a clinical explanation of "male insemination and females carrying the baby" and "the intimacy of procreation can be quite enjoyable" was, to say the least, not fun to watch with my family.

There are further scenes which serve the story, but in a clunky manner.  Sorren comes out to Riker, stating that Soren's preference is female, and her attraction is to males.  She describes how this is a secret one identifies at a certain age, and that it is a tightly-guarded secret.  She tells the story of a classmate in school who was maligned at school for being male, how he was beaten up in school for being that way, and how the solution was mental whoosy-whatsit programming to erase his culturally-unacceptable thoughts.  

Ultimately, Soren and Riker share some secret canoodeling in the woods; Soren is caught, brought before a court, and gives a rousing speech about how she isn't a deviant, and how "the state" cannot dictate how people love each other.  Her dialogue ends the act on a high note.  After the commercial break concludes, the judge basically says, "Great, now that we know you're this way, we know for sure to take you to the mental whoosy-whatsit programmer."

Trek has a long tradition of boldly taking viewers to new cultural territory--the first interracial kiss on television between Kirk and Uhura being an oft-cited watershed moment.  (Indeed, that the modern movie Spock and Uhura kiss was of no cultural significance, and that movie Spock is played by a gay man has become a mere cultural footnote.)  Yet in "The Outcast," Trek half-asses it.  The gay metaphor is so thinly set that it isn't a metaphor (living in secret, bullying at school, "deviant urges," etc).  The show wanted to tackle homosexuality, but gave itself "takeaways" and wiggle room.  Soren is normal by our standards, whereas normalcy is gender neutrality by J'naii standards.  It's not, the show seems to say with showmanship, about anything, just the ideas between the two made-up cultures!

I'd also argue that it's a bit of a counter message to have Riker be so damned dashing that Soren voices her sexual orientation in his manly, musky presence.  Granted, her dialogue establishes that she's felt this way all her life, but it takes someone of sufficient masculinity to out her femininity.  Couldn't that be evidence for the reverse: that with sufficient mojo, Riker could turn a straight man gay?  Or a gay woman straight? 

I suppose a counter argument was that the Kirk/Uhura kiss had equal wiggle room, as in "Plato's Stepchildren" they are forced to do so.  That said, it was 1968, the height of the civil rights movement--the year MLK was shot!  The Kirk/Uhura episode also was championed by Gene Roddenberry, who locked horns with the network; NBC wanted a "non-kiss take" to show in the South.  Nichele Nichols and William Shatner, wanting to support Roddenberry and the idea in general, gave them the non-kiss take--with over the top (for Shatner!) acting, flubbed lines, crossed eyes, and other unusable takes. 

Disappointed.

Thus, I suppose it is rather sadly fitting that "The Outcast" would air a few months after Roddenberry's death (though to be fair, his participation in Next Gen had waned since the second season).  There was no one to champion a proper Star Trek take on homosexuality--no one to fight the studio, other producers, and the world.  And thus "The Outcast," while brave in its attempt, ultimately falls flat--an outcast itself. 

Deus vs. Diablo Ex Machina

"In this episode, I die.  Wait, what?"

Once upon a time, long long ago, the Greeks invented "deus ex machina," or literally "god out of the machine." It was a handy-dandy device: got your hero pinned to a wall by the baddie?  Boom, Zeus comes out of nowhere, strikes down the baddie, and victory is won for the good.

Nowadays, it's looked down upon as a cheap trick, as the heavy hand of the sloppy writer.  Can't kill off your unstoppable Martians in War of the Worlds? Take everyone to the brink of destruction, the boom, microscopic life off the alien invaders.  (I'd argue that it isn't a completely sloppy ending, but hey.)  I wonder what makes someone write a deus ex machina ending.  Lack of talent?  A great story that needs an exit?  The constraints of time/energy/budget?


Take, for example, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ethics." Now, to be fair, this is a season five episode--the season where they tackled: the after-effects of rape, metaphor in language, Romulan politics, childbirth, death of both parents, ghettoization, addiction, and abortion.  In the first half of the season.  In "Ethics," they added another warm-and-fuzzy to the pile: Worf, "permanently" paralyzed in an accident, ponders suicide as a sane and rational answer.


To be fair, the show deserves credit for jumping into such a grave topic (ha!), and for doing so in a manner which wholeheartedly fits into the show.  Who else would consider the 24th Century equivalent to robot braces a travesty and non-option if not Worf, the outsider to the Gene Roddenberry enlightenment?  However, the show quickly paints itself into a corner.

In a scene about halfway between the accident and the ending (deus ex machina spoiler: he lives!  and walks!), a guest doctor muses about the fact that Klingon's have redundant systems: extra ribs, extra livers, it's all set up "in line" so that if one goes, the other takes over.  The show quickly covers its deus ex machinan tracks by scoffing at the Klingon body, saying that it's actually more that can go wrong, i.e. double chance for liver cancer (my words, not theirs).

The show then spends a lot of time debating the appropriate nature of suicide; it does a very nice job of looking at it from multiple angles, with different characters acting organically and sharing appropriate and thought-provoking views.  Worf ultimately decides to try a risky thingus-magingus where they [tech tech tech] a spine transplant or something.  A criticism that Ron Moore has had of the Trek universe is that oftentimes they will out-tech the situation.  Here, again to the show's credit, they don't: the spinal laser scan re-make-ify doesn't work, and Worf dies.  That is to say that the new spine is working great, but because a "dramatic countdown until brain death" counts all the way down, Worf dies.  Literally.

Then we get the skies opening (figuratively) and boom, right after the teary-eyed "We did all we could" scene, the "Son, your father is dead" scene and the "I wanna see my Daddy!" scene, Worf comes back to life.  Why?  That redundant system, it must have a redundant neural pathway that lets the brain restart!  I guess he also had a redundant lung, because with his brain down, he hasn't been breathing for a while either.

Clear-cut deus ex machina.  They couldn't not take the surgery all the way; then it would have just been tech to save the day.  So they went one step further: Zeus/nature/genetics/mysteries of alien medicine, that's what saved the day.

Boo hiss.  Don't the writers know that the "god" in the "god in the machine" has become hackneyed and lousy?  That it's turned into the devil of writing?

Hey, at least we had a salient debate about the pros and cons of end-of-life care... right?

Be The Wyld Stallyn

...and party on, dude!

Film, at its greatest, is not merely a series of pictures in motion; no, it is all.  It can capture life, death, love, hate, the highest highs, and the lowest lows.  When the lights of a theater dim, there is an expectant moment in the darkness where anything--everything--is possible.  Thus, it is in film that we can look to a pair of unlikely heroes, whose journey teaches us not only to strive to the best of our virtues, but to be better human beings.

I speak of course of William S. Preston, Esq, and Theodore Logan, two characters of cinema who are synonymous with the well-earned title The Great Ones.  They inhabit a film which acts as a modern-day fairytale through which a new degree of human sympathy and understanding might be achieved.  I speak of course of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Excellent it is indeed, for in addition to serving as a primer for Western Civilization, it also reminds us of a virtue held in common by Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammad, Moses the Teacher, and Gautama Buddha: that of being common.  Bill and Ted do sip from the proverbial cup of a carpenter, being mistaken for drifty misanthropes particular to Cannabis sativa.  This is not the case, as it is revealed to them by the prophetic Rufus that the music of their band, the Wyld Stallyns, will be the core of a transformatiive philosophic shift in humanity towards peace and understanding.

The central tenet of this philosophy is, we are told, "be excellent to each other." Is this not the basic idea of all philosophy?  Is it not true that, if we all were to follow but this simple phrase for one day, it would be the greatest day of humanity?

Holli Would... But She Shouldn't

Go on, look closer.  Mee-oww!

It was the early spring of 1992, and on the back of every--and I mean every--comic book that made its was through my house had the exact same back cover advertisement.  "Holli Would If She Could," it read.  The message was clear: something seedy, something dark, something sensual.  The things we heard about in health class. 

That Cool World would unquestionably be the greatest thing EVER was just taken for granted.  That, at 12 years old, I'd unquestionably have to wait until it appeared at Prime Time Video that fall--at the earliest--was also taken for granted.  I mean, look at that poster!  You don't have to be Desmond Morris to decode the innate sexuality of Holli in that poster; nor do you have to be Joseph Campbell to decode the setting (snakes show danger, the door behind her is her "entrance," and so forth). 

Indeed, it was so simply known that the movie was the sort of thing that one watched alone that, when in July of that year my brother shystered my parents into taking him and a friend to the movie, buying tickets, getting them into the theater, then going away, I promptly torpedoed it by grabbing a comic, confronting my parents in the hall, and showing them the tagline.  "Holli would if she could," I said.  "They aren't talking about going to a party."  My brother was crushed.

It was years later when I finally sat down to watch Cool World.  Those of us who have been to even one wedding have likely heard the reading about "setting aside childish things."  Whenever I did see the film, it was with vague interest.  I was then living in the world of the Internet.  The true sense of titillation was gone... but still, I sat down feeling like it was almost forbidden.

The perfect first library!

The first thing that strikes you is that the film is by Ralph Bakshi... of The Hobbit animated film.  I have fond memories of going to see The Hobbit when I was 3 or 4.  I had a front row seat at the Point Pleasant Beach brand of the Ocean County Library.  A converted house, it's a creaky, warm, lovely little building, the perfect place to see literature on film. 

But back to Cool World.  The second thing that strikes you is that it's much more... animated than the poster suggested.  It isn't Jessica Rabbit animation, it's mostly Roger Rabbit goofiness.  At least, until Holli appears. 

 

  

I've never liked rotoscoping.  I think there's something unnatural about how natural it looks--animation can extend itself to the little nooks and crannies of its imagined physical world, with stretch and squash being prime examples.  To see Holli appear, bosom a-wobbling, butt a-shaking, it was all wonderfully gelatinous... but also so tethered to earth.  

Think again of Jessica rabbit.  Her figure literally would kill a human.  Add to that an intentional unnatural bounce (her breasts bounce up when they should boune down, and visa versa).  That's the stuff of untethered animation. 

Yet as sultry as Jessica Rabbit is, I think the two clips capture something about subtlety, and certainly sexuality.  Jessica is all about the slow sizzle, the long play before, and ultimately has a sense of girl power.  Let's not forget that she almost kisses Eddie Valliant, before "backing off." Heard at 1:54 in the clip, just before her final sung word, is the quiet grunt of a man off screen.  It isn't the sound of completion--it's the sound of stopping right before.

Holli, on the other hand, is not subtle.  She's clearly a tease to Gabriel Byrne's character (who, ironically, is the most artificial-looking thing in the scene).  She clearly isn't far from screwing or stripping for a reason.  Were she a real person, she would unquestionably have had a long stretch of time in foster homes with men like Kate's father from LOST. (Jessica, on the other hand, was probably did what Kate did more than once in her life.)

Ultimately, Holli is the perfect metaphor for what makes Cool World unwatchable tripe: no sense of of the subtle or sublime.  Every shot of animation is leeringly goofy, when not overwrought with the visual smell of sex-and-candy.  The set production, when not animated, try to cross a visual style between real and animated.  It's like trying to mix a tiger and a lion.  What you get isn't either, and isn't pretty.  As noted, even the acting from real-life, pretty good actors is awful!  

Bizarre character choices.  Wooden acting.  Idiotic story.  And a box office failure.

Holli, it seems, simply shouldn't have tried.

Remember it, Jake. It's "Chinatown."

Roman Polanski is an awful human being.

One needs to say that ahead of any other reference to Roman Polanski, if only to establish a) knowledge of his insidious crime, and b) that we all agree his crime was unquestionably vile.  (I will add that the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired does reveal that his trial was a literally scripted at times by the headline-seeking judge.  This does not discount that Roman Polanski is an awful human being.)

At any rate, now that I've established that we all agree that Polanski's personal decisions were horrendous, I'll mention another name.

Jack Nicholson.

I'll just repeat at this point that Roman Polanski is an awful human being, because when one mentions Polanski and Nicholson together, it tends to be a reminder that Polanski's wretched crime was perpetrated at Nicholson's house, with the latter not being anywhere near there.

Now that we've really established the awfulness, let's focus on a cinematic masterpiece that resulted in a collaboration of Polanski directing and Nicholson acting.

J. J. Gittes after the knife scene

1974's Chinatown is a movie that I've loved since I first saw it, which was probably around 1999.  Inspired to learn more about the then-new-to-me genre of film noir by Dark City and its amazing commentary track by Roger Ebert (who called it one of the year's top ten films), I scoured the library and local rental establishments (all of the latter being gone now) for more examples of this most-wonderful slice of film.

Chinatown has all that makes film noir great: a murky world, half-known motivations, a damsel in distress... or is she a femme fatale?  As the film opens, Nicholson's Jake Gittes is wrapping up another private eye case of... snapping pictures of a cheating wife.  (The husband is played by Rocky's Paulie.) His next case is more of the same: Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray hires him to take dirty pictures of her naughty husband.  Gittes does, and Mr. Mulwray, who works for the LA Department of Water and Power, is caught and humiliated in the papers.

Then the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray confronts Gittes, and we see through his eyes the slow descent into the relatively real-life murky world of politics and power in 1937 Los Angeles.  To be a bit more specific, it's the world of water rights--a drought is on, but it seems the water department is part of a conspiracy.  I'm sure you're reading this saying, "Wow, water rights?  Yeeehaw!" The investigation into the water department, while largely reflecting the real LA of the first part of the 20th Century, is merely a backbone for Gittes to investigate those who are behind it.  As an example, a proposal for a sequel to the film would have had Gittes investigating the conspiracy to end public transportation in LA--a story precisely recycled in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  The analogy is that Roger Rabbit isn't "about" the Cloverleaf conspiracy, but rather the world that the conspiracy takes place in... just like Chinatown.

What makes this film so compelling is the film noir framework in which Polanski so masterfully operates.  Gittes, the quasi-stereotypical film noir gumshoe detective is unphased by the violence around him, as well as the increasing threat to him as he probes deeper and deeper into the powerful people of the city.  When Polanski isn't filming in perfect 1930s locations--every car, every prop, every costume as we imagine it should be--then he is taking us into nighttime shadows, unanswered questions, little clues which gnaw at us only when they need to.  Polanski wisely tells the story from the point of view of Gittes--we learn every clue just as he does, and when Gittes is knocked unconscious at the end of a rather remarkable chase scene in an orange grove (Nicholson appears to actually be driving with the camera in the back seat, speeding between lines of trees, throwing the car into reverse, and gunning it), the camera fades to black.

Polanski, ironically, doesn't play a nice guy.

Chinatown also has a moment that I usually fast-forward through: Gittes, confronted by thugs who are on to him, has a switchblade stuck up his nose.  Polanski plays the thug with a knife--and slices.  Gittes spends the next chunk of the film with slowly diminishing bandages on his face, until it's just stitches.  At any rate, it's horrifying.

For the uninitiated, the title refers to Gittes' time as a cop in LA's Chinatown where, it is said, one tried to do very little.  This is because language and cultural barriers oftentimes meant that the "normal rules" didn't apply.

I won't spoil the ending for you, other than to say that the happy ending was rejected soundly.  It ends like a punch to the gut: hard, harsh, complete.  Suffice it to say that the final appearance of the character of Noah Cross (you'll thank me that I haven't explained more about him) is cringe-worthy, and for all the wrong reasons.

We also learn that it isn't just among lowly Chinese immigrants in 1930s LA that the "normal rules" don't apply.  Sometimes it's for those at the other end of the spectrum--sometimes the ones at the very top win.  Sometimes they win easily, and with little fuss... despite some private eye nosing around.

"Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown."