On the Michael Jackson media fustercluck front, the taxpayers of Los Angeles paid a million and a half dollars to bankroll a gaudy spectacle where celebrity attention-whores could prove themselves to be at best fair-weather friends and at worst cynical opportunists.

On the movie front, right-thinking, modern, sensitive, cultured folk are shocked—shocked!—to discover that a movie mocking gay people in order to mock homophobia is, it turns out, mocking gay people after all.

Oh, and Harry Potter will make a mint.

What’s on your mind? It’s the open thread.

Related Posts

• Open Thread for July 3, 2009
• Open Thread for June 26, 2009
• Open Thread for June 19, 2009
• Open Thread for June 13, 2009
• Open Thread for June 5, 2009

Literary Theory, Mlawski
Knowing nothing about music theory and unable to come up with anything of note to say about “Living on a Prayer” as poetry, I’ve decided to complete an assignment I once had to do when I was getting my masters in English education.  It’s… the literary theory assignment!  Behold!

Living on a Prayer, the New Criticism reading: The lyrics start with the claim that this story happened “once upon a time, not so long ago,” which is our cue to read the text as a modern day fairytale.  What happens in the text itself, however, is not the stuff of fairytale at all.  “Tommy,” our dock-worker, is no knight in shining armor, though he tries to be by putting his six-string in hock.  But, like Prince Charming in the fairy stories of old, Tommy does represent Everyman, the ideal.  Likewise, “Gina” is no princess, but she is indeed a damsel in distress, the Everywoman in need of protection.  Thus, the “once upon a time” introduction to the song is meant to be a somewhat ironic reference that suggests that “Living on a Prayer” is at once a fairytale and something of a satire of one.

Living on a Prayer, Marxist reading: Bon Jovi is “working for the man” indeed.  While, at first glance, “Living on a Prayer” seems to be a paean to the working class couples of the world, the text ultimately is meant as an opiate for the masses.  It suggests that the poor workers of the world must “hold onto what they’ve got,” rather than rising up against their capitalist oppressors.  The music video corroborates this claim.  The band sings sadly about the plight of Tommy and Gina, yet the video on the screen is of the band’s members in expensive outfits, being worshiped at a concert, a bastion of capitalism.  There is a clear discrepancy between the lyrics of the text and the setting the song is being performed in.  Can any song about the poor by the rich count as true art?

Living on a Prayer, Feminist reading: Interesting to look at is the construction of gender in “Living on a Prayer.”  Tommy has a typically “male” job as a dock worker; Gina has a typically “female” job as a waitress.  When Tommy loses his income due to union troubles, he immediately feels emasculated and overcompensates by going into Protective Cave Man mode.  He hocks his six-string—which, incidentally, he didn’t use to make pansy “art”; he rather “made it talk” “tough” (so tough).  Then, he spends the rest of the song trying to convince his wife not to leave, because, without a wife to provide for (even if he can’t actually provide), he is not a real man.  The question is never asked, though: why does Gina dream of running away?  Is it only the lack of money?  Or is it something more?  Has Tommy been lashing out at her, beating her?  Does he come home and make her talk, like he used to do with his six-string?  We don’t know, because the male narrator does not tell us.

Living on a Prayer, Reader Response reading: Man, Bon Jovi rocks!

Living on a Prayer, Deconstructionist reading: Man, Bon Jovi sucks!

Living for the Fight: The Dockworker’s Strike of 1977, Belinkie

Let me say this right off the bat: I do not believe Bon Jovi based his song on specific historical events. As Shana points out, the “once upon a time” puts it pretty clearly in the realm of fairy tale. However… New Jersey dockworkers are part of the International Longshoreman’s Association, and as it turns out, the organization went on a major strike in 1977. The song was written in 1986, so I’d say 1977 counts as “not too long ago.”

The strike, which began on October 1, was a “selective” one. That is, dockworkers only refused to unload cargo from container ships, which were handled largely by machines and thus took jobs away from longshoremen. But Tommy is clearly a young man, and if there wasn’t enough work to go around during the strike, the more senior union members would probably get dibs.

The strike wasn’t just tough for Tommy–it was pretty tough for America. Over 70% of maritime cargo was cut off from the east coast. According to the Washington Post:

The strike has meant tens of thousands of layoffs in other industries and a loss of more than $1.3 billion in the gross national product… It has tied up more than $4 billion worth of freight, including such things as Christmas tree lights and components for Star Wars toys manufactured in the Far East…

“2-Month Dock Strike May End This Week,” Bill Peterson. The Washington Post, November 27, 1977

Keep in mind, this is 1977. A lot of the economy is based around Star Wars toys.

But Tommy’s story has a happy ending. On November 14, the ILA announced a tentative settlement that gave the longshoremen virtually everything they wanted. The workers received pay increases of more than 30 per cent. They also got better job security, and protection against being replaced by machines. The higher pay was even backdated to June 1.

So when Tommy went back to work unloading Star Wars toys in early December, there was a check for at least $500 waiting for him. Think he’ll be able to buy his six string back?

Related Posts

• The Musical Talmud: Neon Knights
• The Most Montrous Ballads Ever [Think Tank]
• Overthinking Lost: Episodes 1.16-1.22
• Remembering the King of Pop [Think Tank]
• Language and the Jedi [Think Tank]

The passing of Ed McMahon earlier this week actually signaled the end of an era. The sidekick of Johnny Carson for more than thirty years on “The Tonight Show,” McMahon was an easily-caricatured personality mostly because he was just as exaggerated and ebullient as his many imitators. It would be a shame to remember him simply as the man behind the catchphrase “Here’s Johnny,” or as the Human Laugh Machine because of his oft-imitated guffaws at Carson’s jokes. Though he played the straight man (and butt of many jokes) to Carson’s witty wise-cracking host, he was in many ways more of an innovator than his more recognized and feted colleague.

Ed McMahon, in short, is in many ways the common thread for such reality shows as “American Idol,” “America’s Got Talent,” and Punk’d,” in that he did it first (and arguably better). In the Eighties, he was not just Johnny’s loyal foil but a host in his own right, helming the shows “Star Search” and “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.” You can argue about the relative merits of each show (such as whether any real “stars” were discovered or whether already known “stars” like Connie Selleca and Corbin Bernson merited ridicule), but Ed McMahon helped make such formats popular again for television audiences. It’s hard to say that there’s a direct line between Ed and Susan Boyle or Ashton Kutcher, but the debt is hard to miss. 

Of course, all of this is dwarfed by his considerable tenure on the “Tonight Show,” thirty years during which his unmistakable voice ushered us in to the national conversation piece that was Johnny’s monologue. That’s a hell of a run in any business, and it’s fair to say that Ed set the template for TV talk show sidekicks to come. One always had to be deferential to the host (after all, that was the main name on the paychecks), but able to tweak his nose in whatever foible or slip-up might occur during a given night’s taping. A sidekick could be wacky, but not so much that he overshadowed the host. Above all, he had to be able to relate to the host and add to the show so much more than just the announcement of who was on that episode. In all of those categories and more, Ed McMahon succeeded.

My own memories of the “Tonight Show” are hazy ones, from the Eighties and early Nineties before Jay Leno took over and made the show just as popular if slightly dumber. I remember the thrill of being allowed to stay up late on rare occasions, just so I could see what Johnny would say about the latest scandals or news stories (of course, any jokes about Ollie North or Saddam Hussein now seem as dated as Johnny’s wardrobe). And always there would be Ed at his side, laughing even at the terrible jokes with an enthusiasm that would be mistaken as desperate brown-nosing were it anyone else. But you always felt like Ed got a kick out of the joke simply because he was a jovial kind of guy (of course I didn’t know at the time that Ed was something of a drunk; everything’s hilarious when you’ve kicked back a few before show-time, I guess).

What’s amazing to me, as the years go on, is how Ed’s reputation as a generous and good-hearted man has not suffered the slings and arrows of sudden revelations that, say, he pushed small children down flights of stairs or shut out those with whom he argued over the years. Johnny’s reputation in public as a witty host has been offset by the fact that he could be cold and impersonal in private, which might be understandable if it was developed as a shield against the intrusiveness of people who see you night after night and think that you must be the same person that you play on TV. Fame probably changed Carson into a SOB, but it never had that effect on McMahon. By all accounts he remained as jovial and easy-to-please off camera as he was on.

Ed McMahon wasn’t just a sidekick to Johnny, of course; for years he helped co-host Jerry Lewis’ annual Labor Day telethon to raise money for kids with muscular dystrophy. Ed served as a calming counterpoint to the frequently manic Lewis, whose shtick was old in 1956. I have a feeling that Ed might have wanted that legacy to get as much mention as his tenure with Johnny.

Of course, the sad course of events in Ed’s last years bears mentioning: the health problems and money worries that contributed to the loss of his home are the stuff of tabloid legend. No doubt these issues contributed to his demise at the age of 86, but I’d hope that they didn’t beat him down or cause him to rethink his approach to life. Donald Trump offered to buy Ed’s house to help him keep it, which shows that the Donald isn’t quite as hard-hearted as his public persona suggests. So hopefully when McMahon uttered his last “Hi-Yo” on this earth, it was not in resignation but in consideration of a life well spent.

Ed McMahon is a tough act to follow; only Dave Letterman’s band leader Paul Schaffer continues in the vein of the frantic kiss-ass sidekick, and I think he does it more ironically than Ed could ever have mustered. Andy Richter has taken over for Conan O’Brien’s tenure, and he’s more in league with his host than opposed to him as a sober (relatively speaking) straight man. But whoever else comes along in the world of showbiz sidekicks will never really trump the man who set up the model. Ed McMahon never aspired to outshine his comedic partner, and in the end he leaves a legacy to be proud of.

Related Posts

• Michael Jackson, 50, and Farrah Fawcett, 62
• Bea Arthur (1922–2009)
• He Has Gone to His Father: The Big District Attorney in the Sky
• Isn’t it Quixotic? Dontcha think?
• Michael Crichton Dies

The stories of Hinduism are fascinating, and reveal much about the nature of humanity. Unfortunately, many of us in the West were not educated in Hindu tradition, and so we feel alienated from a significant part of the collective unconscious. What should we do to get better acquainted with the nearly one billion Hindus?

We should watch Transformers. 

Unlike Western Abrahamic religions, Hinduism is not a single, unified narrative. Instead, the holy texts of Hindu tradition offer a cloud of overlapping, contradictory or unrelated puranas (stories) populated by hundreds of characters of varying degrees of divinity. While certain characters might be incredibly important to one local tradition or another, three of the most important deities in Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) appear in the texts of almost all regions. In the numerous creation stories of Hinduism, these three gods compose the trimurti, a trinity responsible for the creation, preservation and eventual destruction of the universe.

Michael Bay’s Transformers is also not a unified narrative. It is a cloud of overlapping explosions, contradictory dialogue and unrelated plots populated by robots and character actors of varying degrees of obnoxiousness. While certain giant talking robots might be incredibly lucrative at one point or another, the three most important players in the Transformers’ story are Optimus Prime, Megatron and the All Spark. These three intellectual properties act out the creation myth for the Transformers universe. They also serve as a handy analog for understanding the central narratives of Hinduism.

We cast the All Spark as Brahma, the creator, though this is not an easy fit. All of the Hindu gods are complicated and paradoxical, and tend to work better as aspects of a specific story than as universal constants. Thankfully, Michael Bay’s Transformers are not as nuanced as their cartoon counterparts; character development accounts for very little of the film’s runtime, and almost none of the little there is goes toward fleshing out the fleshless title characters. We can therefore assign whatever value we like to the few details that we do know about the All Spark and everything else that fell to earth from the ruins of Cybertron.

Many of the Hindu creation stories imagine the pre-human era as an endless sea, barren of life, on which floats the golden egg of life, waiting to be cracked. We can easily pull together this lifeless sea and the endless, empty space between Cybertron and Earth. Just as Optimus Prime, defiant among the burning rivers of Cybertron, flung the All Spark into space to give life a new start on Earth, Hiranyagarbha was cast into the darkness, from which Brahma would emerge, restarting the infinite cycle of creation. In certain traditions, the spark of life (containing Brahma) is cast adrift after it comes from the chest of Vishnu, the preserver, whose essence is present in all leaders and kings who wish to do good in the world.

Vishnu must then be Optimus Prime. According to Anna Dallapiccola’s 2003 book  Hindu Myths, Vishnu is the “heavenly king who…descends to Earth…to redress the balance between good and evil.” Throughout Transformers, Optimus reminds the other Autobots of their responsibility, not to the humans themselves, but to a greater sense of justice. The humans are not good or bad of themselves, for they are a “young species.” Humans can learn to approach the godly state of the Transformers, who live for eons on the level of the cosmos (just as the Hindu deities live in divine years, each of which contains 360 human years), but only if they can stop destroying each other.

This leaves us with Shiva, and with Megatron. Shiva is known by a number of names, prominent among them is “Shiva the Transformer”. Like all Hindu deities, Shiva assumes many shapes and visages (another close tie to the robot toys). He is the “transformer,” however, because of his role in the cycle of creation and destruction. Vishnu works to preserve life and stifle the endless creation and eradication of the universe. Shiva is the opposite force, dancing the universe into existence and then dancing it into the abyss. Shiva, the master of yoga, meditates for thousands of years, waiting for the right time to play his part in the cosmic ballet.

Megatron, sitting frozen for centuries under the North Pole, fits well into the role of Shiva. It is Megatron who instigates the terrible dance of death that takes up a large portion of the second half of Transformers. As silly as it is to watch Optimus and Megatron engage in what looks like Greco-Roman wrestling, the role of dancing in the end of the universe cannot be understated. If we accept that the battle is a dance rather than a struggle, the arbitrary actions of the giant fighting robots begin to make (a little) sense.

Where does this leave poor Shia Labeouf? Implausibly, miraculously, Shia’s character is the human mystic, fated to bring the stories of the gods to the people, initially suffering but ultimately vindicated, and rewarded with the love of a beautiful and virtuous woman…Megan Fox.

Please don’t let me be misunderstood. I am not defending Transformers. It’s a dreadful film, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ve chosen wisely. My goal here was not to justify the lazy and blunt filmmaking of Michael Bay, but to (hopefully) point at one way in which the stories of Hinduism might seem less alien to Westerners. Through the lens of a nearly artless blockbuster, I think we can see a little more clearly the beautiful saga contained in Hindu traditions.

Related Posts

• Michael Bay: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis
• Episode 52: Billy Mays for Kaboobies
• Episode 43: Just So Movies
• Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women
• I’m not done complaining yet

The Musical Talmud is our ongoing series that finds the true meaning behind pop music lyrics.  There have been a whole bunch of entries already.  The current post attempts to decode the noise-pop band Deerhoof’s 2007 single, “The Perfect Me.”

Ok, I actually have kind of an issue with the whole premise of the Musical Talmud series, because it encourages the idea that pop music is basically a form of poetry, and that the best way to understand a song is by understanding the lyrics.  This is the point of view implicitly endorsed by about %60 of professional rock critics, but it’s also patent nonsense.  Pop lyrics are important, but at best they’re only half of the equation:  if an album were equivalent to its lyric sheet, we’d just buy the lyric sheet.  And in some pop, the lyrics hardly play any role at all.

Take a listen to this song, for instance…

Great song.  Enigmatic song, clearly worth decoding.  But do the lyrics really tell us anything about it?

You of no home, of no family
You of no clan, of no history

Meet me, meet me, over the mountain
Meet me, meet me, under the ocean
Cry out, cry out

Cry out, cry out [3x]

Meet me, meet me, beautiful daughters
Meet me, meet me, terrible daughters
Cry out, cry out

Meet me, meet me, meet the perfect me
Meet me, meet me, over the mountain
Meet me, meet me, under the ocean
Cry out, cry out

What’s the war
What’s the war for

The “perfect” protagonist of the song, who lives over the mountain and under the ocean, and has beautiful but terrible daughters, is beckoning a social outcast (with no home or family) away from a life of war.  So clearly what we’re dealing with here is a retelling of the Tannhäuser legend from Venus’ point of view, amirite?  Not much to decode there at all, really.  Instead, let’s take a look at what’s going on in the music.  But don’t worry, I’m going to avoid music theory terminology as much as possible…  the point of exegesis after all is to make the source text clear to everyone. Instead, I will try to explain the music by making reference to other bands or other songs. (This approach, incidentally, accounts for the other 40% of professional rock criticism.)

0:02-0:11 “Konichiwa/How’s it going/[tap tap tap tap tap]”

Before the song proper starts, we get this interesting little spoken-word section, where the members of the band all introduce the song simultaneously.  The singer Satomi Matsuzaki is speaking Japanese, the guitarist John Dieterich is speaking English, and the drummer Greg Saunier is kind of also speaking English but mostly just tapping on his woodblock, the implication being that percussion is his “native language” just as Dieterich’s is English and Matsuzaki’s is Japanese.  Deerhoof is an unusually percussion-centric band, and they evidently want to get that message across to you as quickly as they can.  They also might be trying to let us know that they – like me – consider the music more important than the lyrics.  After all, the drumblock rhythm here is as clear as day, while the speech is an incomprehensible garglemesh.

0:11-0:27 [Instrumental Section A]

What’s interesting here is the juxtaposition of the rather simple pattern in the guitar and organ (highlighted by the extremely lo-fi garage rock sound of the instruments) and the almost perversely complex drumming.  It’s interesting to compare his style here to other “main event” rock drummers such as Brann Dailor or Keith Moon. Listening to songs by Mastodon or The Who, you sometimes get the feeling that there’s one enormous epic drum solo going on in the background.  That’s not quite the impression that Deerhoof creates… for all the complexity of the drum part, it doesn’t quite sound soloistic.  Rather, Saunier just occasionally seems to be playing a different (and more interesting) song than the rest of the band.  His music is always entirely rational.  This will become important in a minute.

0:27-0:50 “You of no home… of no history”

Each vocal couplet is punctuated by the riff from Instrumental Section A, above, so it’s fair to consider the first 50 seconds of the song as one big section, probably what would be called the verse in a normal song, although that label causes difficulty here.  The grain of the singer’s voice is particularly interesting.  As a rule indie rock has always eschewed the vocal pyrotechnics of the Steve Perrys and Tom Arayas of the world. (Yes, that’s a voice hitting the high note about 20 seconds into the Araya link.  Quiver in terror, mortals.)  The explanation given by critics is usually that polished vocals are an “inauthentic” display of empty virtuosity, which is anathema to the indie scene.  I’m not quite sure this would hold water for Deerhoof – is the drumming then supposed to be a display of somehow “full” virtuosity, then? – but we can see something similar operating Matsuzaki’s voice.  Her voice is untrained, it is also somewhat childish (not all untrained voices are so thin), which makes a double whammy of organic “innocence” to be contrasted with the technological timbres of the harmony instruments and the mathematical complexity of the drumming.  She might be trading on her ethnicity a little here as well… are we supposed to try to ignore her accent, the way we would if we met her on the street, or is the fact that our language is foreign to her (and thus, she is foreign to us) very much the point?  This kind of thing is not unheard of, certainly – consider Damo Suzuki, lead singer of the legendary krautrock band Can.  (Suzuki doesn’t actually have a noticable accent, but they still traded pretty heavily on his “otherness” as an itinerant street poet.)

0:52-1:01 “Meet me, meet me, over the mountain… cry out, cry out”

Up to this point we have had an alternation of two different textures:  crazy drumming with power chords, or somewhat less crazy drumming with vocals.  This is the first place where we hear the voice, drums, and harmonic background at the same time.  This kind of build in intensity would usually indicate that we’d arrived at the chorus… again, that’s a tricky label to apply to this song, but worth using nevertheless.

1:02-1:17 “Cry out, Cry out [3x]”

The music here is the same as what I called “Instrumental A” up above, with the addition of a vocal melody.  So there’s a sense in which we’ve come full circle.  But note that this is not the same music as what I hesitantly labeled the “verse.”  So while we’re seeing a standard verse-chorus-verse form take shape, it’s already a pretty distorted one.

1:16-1:27 “Meet me, meet me, beautiful daughters… cry out, cry out”

In the second chorus – if you want to call it that, the drums and bass abruptly drop out, leaving us only with the vocal and a twinkly cloud of organ chords.  The momentum of the song is suspended, and we’re left floating in space.  Not only is it a beautiful gesture, it’s necessary to prepare us for…

1:28-1:47 [Instrumental B]

…this explosion of bluesy skronk, which is related harmonically and rhythmically to the rest of the song by only the most tenuous of threads.  This music is not actually all that weird in its own right, but placed in its context it is nearly incomprehensible.  Personally, I find it very difficult to hear what chords are being played.  I mean, I can sit down at the piano and figure it out, but when I listen to the song this section just sounds like glorious noise.  Having a section of completely new music at this point in a song isn’t so weird.  Songwriters call this a bridge, and you get them all the time.  (The “Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me” bit from Somewhere Over the Rainbow is perhaps the paradigmatic example.)  And having a guitar solo as a bridge is a pretty standard move for rock songwriters.  But this again doesn’t quite sound soloistic.  It sounds – well, I’m repeating myself, but it sounds like Dieterich has suddenly decided that he’s going to play part of a different song for a few seconds.  If you’re beginning to get the impression that this song is oddly put together, you’re on the right track.

1:47-1:59 “Meet me, meet me, meet the perfect me.”

This is pretty spare on the surface, but when you unpack it it’s an incredibly dense twelve seconds.  Flip back up to the first 50 seconds of the song, where we had vocal phrases alternating with Instrumental A.  Later on, Instrumental A came back, but not the vocal section.  Here, balancing the scales, we get the vocal phrase, but no answering riff.  Or rather, we do get Instrumental A, but only the drum part, which still feels like an absence.  And this itself – playing the drums of Instrumental A without the harmony instruments – balances out the section at 1:16 where we had the harmony of the chorus without the drum part.  Finally, we get the title of the song in the lyrics, which is always an important moment when it happens.  Everything that’s occurred in the song thus far is leading up to this moment.  The split second of silence (matched visually with a cut to black) that follows is a little slice of perfection.

2:00-2:10 “Meet me, meet me, over the mountains… cry out, cry out”

And it’s followed by the most intense statement of the chorus so far.  One thing that might be of special interest to music nerds is that the rhythm and harmony here are actually less complex than they usually have been in the chorus sections… out of the entire stretch of the song, these ten seconds sound most like rock music, I suppose.  Lyric nerds, take heed of the way that stock phrases such as “cry out” and “meet me” bleed across the edges of the musical and poetic form.  This isn’t new here – it’s been going on throughout – but it’s a convenient place to point it out.  It has the subtle but powerful effect of preventing the listener from quite getting his or her bearings in the song.  But wait, isn’t this the chorus?  Isn’t that line from the verse? Etc. etc.

2:10-2:31 “What’s the war, what’s the war for?”

This is a completely new section of lyrics and music, the latter reminding me powerfully (if somewhat unaccountably) of the Brinstar music from the old NES Metroid.

Yeah, now try to get that melody out of your head anytime in the next week and a half. You’re welcome.

Anyway, the significance of this new section appearing here is that, for the first time, the end of the chorus feels like a sharp division rather than a gentle blur.  This aids in the impression that we’ve only heard the “real” chorus this one time, and that the earlier versions were just rehearsals for it. Some two thirds of the way through the song, we’re finally beginning to feel like we know where to stand.  But the “Metroid” section keeps going a little too long, and that sense of accomplishment is replaced with a heightened insecurity.  What is this music doing here?  This could be a bridge, but we’ve already had a bridge, and while songs with two completely unrelated bridges are not unheard of, they’re pretty odd. So having heard the chorus, shouldn’t we be getting a verse? Or at least Instrumental A?

2:31-2:51 “For… fo-o-or?” [Instrumental A]

Yeah, that’s the ticket!  Or so we think.  But scant seconds after the familiar chord changes appear again, the song fades out in a flurry of overdubbed monosynths.  It’s a perverse ending, one whose effect is generated entirely by its frustration of expectations.  Something like Stella, only in musical terms, and with fewer jokes about sex toys.

In conclusion:

There is no real conclusion.  Unfortunately, with a song like “The Perfect Me” where the lyrics are relatively unimportant, it’s impossible to neatly summarize the meaning of the work.  Perhaps the most I can do is point out that places where the meaning takes shape – in this song, largely at the divisions between the major musical sections – and the processes through which it occurs, which is the subtle frustration of the expectations we’ve formed through decades of listening to less adventurous pop.  The sound of the lyrics plays a large role, but their semantic content has little if anything to do with it.    The song is likely telling us something about how pop music is put together, both revelling in and exposing as hollow the sense of arrival that we feel when a long delayed chorus finally arrives.  This meaning cannot be easily put into words, but suffice it to say that it doesn’t have anything to do with mountains, or daughters, or war, or perfect, or me.

On the other hand, I am kind of proud of that left field Tannhäuser reference.  So maybe there’s something to this interpreting-the-lyrics business after all.

Related Posts

• The Musical Talmud: The KKK Took My Baby Away
• How to Survive the Thriller
• Illmatic and the Crisis of Peaking Young
• Kanye West has never seen RoboCop
• The Musical Talmud: Neon Knights

This week, I’d like to talk more about the differences between Lord of the Flies and Lost, particularly the differences between views of modernity in the 1950s, when the novel was written, and views of modernity now, in the era of Lost.  And anthropology!  Lots of anthropology.  But first, let me quickly summarize the episodes I watched this week.
Episode 2.1 (“Man of Science, Man of Faith”): In the past, Jack learned to do exactly what every episode of Scrubs warned against: give his patients false hope.  In the world of Lost, false hope is better than anything in the Universe.  Er, I mean “faith.”  “Faith” is the most important thing in the Universe.  In the present, Locke and Kate go down the hatch and find Desmond, brother.  Hooray for new characters and new settings!  My interest in Lost is back, baby!

Episode 2.2 (“Adrift”): In the past, Walt’s mom was annoying, again.  In the present, Michael shoots a shark?  In retrospect, not very much happened in this episode.

Episode 2.3 (“Orientation”): Ah, here’s the meat.  In the past, Locke was banging Katey Sagal!  Go Locke!  In the present, the hatch appears to be some kind of psychological experiment and/or a nuke.  Also, Team Raft gets captured by Team Ana Lucia.

Episode 2.4 (“Everybody Hates Hugo”): In the past, Hurley won the lottery.  First it was good, then it was bad.  In the present, Hurley doesn’t want to be the one to ration the hatch food.  Ana Lucia takes Team Raft to her team’s hatch.

Episode 2.5 (“…And Found”): In the past, Sun didn’t want to get together with the man the matchmaker picked for her.  Then she did.  Then he dumped her.  Jin got a job with fancy schmancy hotel, then quit.  In the present, Sun loses her wedding ring, and Team Raft avoid the Others.

Episode 2.6 (“Abandoned”): In the past, Shannon’s dad dies and her step-mom takes the inheritance.  In the present, Shannon sees Creepy!Walt and needs Sayid to believe her.  Sayid eventually admits he does and that he loves her, so of course Shannon gets killed.  Boo.  I liked Shannon and thought she’d make it at least until the middle of the season.

Episode 2.7 (“The Other 48 Days”): Oh, boy.  A lot happened in this episode.  The back of the plane crashes.  Ana Lucia thinks Nathan is a spy, but it turns out to be Goodwin.  A bunch of people who were on a list of “Good People” are taken away by the Others.  Ana Lucia kills Goodwin.  They find Team Raft.  Ana Lucia kills Shannon.

Episode 2.8 (“Collision”): In the past, Ana Lucia was a cop who lost her unborn baby when a thief shot her.  She kills the thief.  In the present, Ana Lucia feels guilty about killing Shannon and decides not to kill Sayid.  Oh, also Sawyer’s dying or something.  (No, I’m kidding.  I love Sawyer like whoa.)

We Were All Fine Until We Found the Potato Chips.

Note: The information about anthropology in the following article comes mostly from my misremberances of college anthro courses, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, and games of Civilization III.  If you know better than I do about these topics, feel free to correct anything I say.

If I’m misrembering correctly, political systems tend to align with society size and economy.  Humanity started out in small hunter-gatherer bands that shared food fairly equally.  They didn’t need a leader.  Then, as their sizes grew, and as agriculture allowed societies to stick around in one place, humans began to need leaders to resolve conflict and protect property rights.  Thus, the social contract was enacted.  But as wealth grew, those leaders would try to keep more and more for themselves.  They became kings, enslaving people and forcing them to build them palaces and monuments.  Monotheistic religions became more popular.  Social classes became more stratified.  The barter economy was replaced with some type of market economy, though sometimes it was controlled by the king.  Finally, after a long time of growth and many uprisings, the people received what they demanded: a democratic society, or at least a constitutional monarchy, and modern, industry-based capitalism.  I’m not trying to espouse some ridiculous theory of historical Progress, just pointing out how societies usually develop in the world we live in.

Let’s step back for a second and go back to comparing Lost to Lord of the Flies, this time with a focus on political theory.  What is the very first thing that happens in The Lord of the Flies?  Do the boys start building a fire to connect to the outside world?  Do they start fighting?  Do they start looking for food?

No.  The very first thing they do is hold an election.

How ridiculous is that?  How optimistic the novel’s author, William Golding, was!  If the novel is a slow descent from 1950s notions of civility and modernity to 1950s notions of savagery, then Golding must have believed that the democratic process was the most civilized aspect of the modern world.  The difference between man and beast, in the mind of Golding (as well as some of the above political philosophers) is democracy.  In other words, modern, democratic, Westernized society is the pinnacle of human development.  The rest of the novel is a descent: democracy=>Jack’s monarchy=>tribalism=>complete anarchy.  It’s the opposite of the tech tree in Civilization!  That is No Good.

What happens at the beginning of Lost?  Do the mostly American passengers of flight 815 hold a democratic election to see who will run their merry band?  Ha, no.  Jack immediately becomes the de facto leader simply because he is the doctor.  The same thing happens on the other side of the island, where Ana Lucia becomes leader due to nothing more than force of personality.

I don’t want to sound too ethnocentric, but it does seem like Lost is working in the opposite direction of Lord of the Flies in terms of political development.  LotF started with a civilized democracy that slowly degenerated into anarchy.  Lost, on the other hand, starts with complete anarchy (watch the first five minutes of the pilot to see what I mean), not democracy.  Then, once Jack becomes leader, the political system shifts to the more anthropologically sophisticated system of Big Man politics.  In a tribal, Big Man society, a leader rules not through inheritance or wealth, but through influence and charisma.  Being basically anarchocommunist pseudo-states, these tribal societies are fairly equal in terms of socioeconomic status.  The Big Man doesn’t usually amass most of the society’s wealth; there’s just not that much wealth to go around.  The Big Man’s just the one you go to when you want to make decisions.

Sounds similar to Lost, Season One, doesn’t it?  Jack’s the Big Man.  On the other side of the island, Ana Lucia is the Big Woman, with a little less success.

Ana Lucia discusses the finer points of political philosophy with her clan.

So Lost starts with anarchy, then changes to tribalism.  Then what?

Well, then they get guns.  The discovery of the U.S. marshal’s suitcase brings Jack’s little society to a new level of political development: the autocracy.  Suddenly, he’s not just the Big Man whom you go to if you have a minor conflict or need general leadership.  Now, he’s the man with the key to the suitcase full of guns.  Notice that Jack wears the key around his neck for all to see at all times.  It’s like his crown.  “I am the keeper of Force,” the key seems to say.  “Argue with me at your peril.”

I’m being a little hyperbolic here, sure.  Jack seems like a relatively benevolent dictator.  But he is a dictator.  Now that he has access to the guns, he has a monopoly on force.  Unlike a tribal Big Man, who is first among equals, Jack now seems to see himself as the sole authority on any decision.  Notice how impatient he has been growing when it comes to Locke’s insubordination.  He and Locke used to be on relatively equal footing.  Jack was the Big Man; Locke was the Hunter.  Now Jack, the dictator, is getting sick of sharing power.

Jack the dictator is also building a small army around himself.  Consider poor, doomed Arzt.  Though his bitching that Jack and Kate and Locke and Hurley and the rest of the main characters are part of some “cool club” or clique was played for laughs, there was a lot of truth to it.  There were the people who had access to the weapons (Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer) and there were those who did not.  There were the loyal subjects to Jack, who were given the currency of secrets; those just on the margins (like Charlie); and those left on the far outskirts (like Arzt and the other unnamed masses).  Once the guns came into the picture, a little caste system began to develop.

Now, with the opening of the hatch, though, everything has changed.  Team Jack now has access to a variety of luxuries, such as shampoo, rifles, a shower, and, as Hurley mentioned, potato chips.  Jack’s no Big Man now.  Now he has a palace.  Only a select few can come into this palace.  Only they have access to the weapons.  Only they can decide who gets what.  If they were greedy, they could simply hole up in the hatch with their luxuries, leaving the rest of the masses to remain on the beach at their lower standard of living.  Team Hatch might think, “They’ll be fine out there.  They were fine before.”  But that’s not the case.  Now there’s an income disparity.  An extreme one.  The beach dwellers will want those potato chips.  Which is why Jack and co. need the guns.  Welcome to the world of monarchy, island inhabitants.

What Lost's island looks like to the dudes at the Dharma Initiative.

God Save The King.

Jack’s not only a king now.  He’s a king by divine right.

I know, I know.  “Divine right!?” you’re saying.  “How could Jack be king by divine right when he doesn’t even believe in God.  He’s the Man of Science!”  To that, all I can say is just… bear with me.

The difference between a simple dictator and a king is divine right.  In a tribal society, the Big Man is chosen to lead because everyone likes him; he’s first among equals.  In a monarchy, however, the king isn’t chosen by the masses in a social contract.  He’s grandfathered in somehow.  The king isn’t the coolest guy on the block; he’s the one with the guns or the one with the right dad.

But without a firm social contract, how can such a king hope to rule without civil strife?  Easy!  The king can claim divine right.  God chose him for this task of ruling the nation. The king didn’t want to do it.  He has to do it.  Have faith, peasants, and you’ll understand why you have to do whatever the King—and, by extension, God—says to do.  In this divine right scheme, the King’s not the CEO of the country.  He’s the supreme Middle Manager.

In the land of Lost, people are starting to mutter about Jack.  Locke disobeys him in front of the masses.  People like Charlie and Arzt have started wondering who put him and his army in charge.  Now Ana Lucia is here, and I’m sure she’s not going to love giving up her power to this doctor.  Jack needs some way to justify his rule.  He needs some divine right, fast.

Luckily, Jack’s got some divine right standing by, waiting for him to use it.  It’s not divine right from a bearded dude in the sky.  Anyway, Jack wouldn’t believe in that.  No, it’s a God of Science: the people behind the Dharma Initiative.

Think about it.  Jack goes down into the mysterious hatch.  He meets a man who tells him what he must do for the Dharma Initiative.  The man gives him the hatch and all the food and supplies inside.

Or, in a more religious light: Jack goes down into the deus’ machina.  He meets a prophet who tells him the duties bestowed upon him by the gods.  The prophet gives him his palace and his new wealth.

Notice how the use of the word “faith” has changed from the first season of Lost to this second season.  In the first season, faith almost always referred to some spirit in the sky: Jesus, Fate, Lady Luck, whatever.  But from “Orientation” on, faith has a new meaning.  Locke is saying, “We have to have faith” not in reference to God or to Fate but to the researchers at the Dharma Initiative.  We have to have faith that they (the creators) had a plan.  Thus the orientation video is Locke’s Bible (notice that he wants to watch it repeatedly), Desmond a link to the old prophets who actually spoke to the Dharma gods.  I’m also sure it’s no accident that the initiative is named after a religious concept (dharma) and that the timer is set to 108, a number with religious significance in Hinduism, Buddism, Jainism, and Sikhism.  The members of the Dharma Initiative aren’t literal gods, but they’re setting themselves up to be the island’s figurative ones.

Of course, Jack doesn’t have to say, “Do this or God will strike you down” to his subjects.  But now, with this divine right he can say, “Do this or the island will blow up.”  (Interestingly, Jack doesn’t even necessarily believe in this God, himself.  In episode 3, “Orientation,” he almost let the hatch’s counter run out to prove that he can beat those Gods of Science, who have probably trapped him in some giant Skinner box as a practical joke.  To tell you the truth, if I were running that island, I’m 90% sure I’d let that damn timer run out, too.)

Conclusions.

We therefore see that, unlike Lord of the Flies, Lost’s political development has been moving toward complexity rather than degenerating into anarchy.  If we were to plot Lost onto history, it might look something like this:

The first half of season 1 : Paleolithic Era (hunter-gatherer society) : Big Man politics : Anarchocommunist/barter economy : Social equality

The second half of season 1 : Neolithic Era (Sun develops agriculture, but the island still operates based mostly on gathering) : Big Man politics + weapons : Anarchocommunist/barter economy : Caste system developing

The beginning of season 2 : The beginning of empire (I assume Team Jack is going to take over Team Ana Lucia) : Monarchy : Beginnings of a command economy (Jack and Locke are forcing people into doing certain jobs), potential for the development of a premodern capitalist economy : Caste system solidifying

If Lost continues in this fashion, we should expect to eventually get a constitutional monarchy and maybe even a democracy.  We may see the barter economy develop into a true market with a currency, or we may see some version of feudalism.  Ultimately, the characters may return home to their modern democratic societies and capitalist economies.

But is this seen as a good thing in Lost?  Remember, in Lord of the Flies, democracy was the pinnacle of human existence.  Civilization was to be yearned for, a return to modern society a noble goal.

In Lost, it’s not all that clear that the modern world is so great.  We look at the character flashbacks, and what do we see?  Locke is alienated from his work, a peon in the cogs of a box manufacturing company.  Jin’s life is made increasingly more difficult because of his social status.  Hurley lives a meaningless existence as a guy in a chicken suit until he wins the lottery.  Then life gets worse.  Shannon is made to give up her dream of being a ballet dancer because she lacks the capital to make the move to New York.  Walt must give up his dream of being an artist and give up his son due to unfortunate economic circumstances.

In Lost, chicken suits represent suburban ennui and labor alienation.

In Lord of the Flies, home is heaven.  I said back in another post that Los Angeles might play that role in Lost.  I might have to retract that statement.  Home is not at all that heavenly in Lost’s flashbacks.  In Lost, modernity may not something to strive for.  It is full of con artists looking to make a quick buck, middle managers waiting in the lunch room to crush the last vestiges of your masculinity.  Lost’s political and economic systems may be growing ever more complex as the show continues.  But is that a good thing?  I’d bet it won’t be.  From the looks of it, Lost’s writers have an ill view of modern society, so the closer Jack’s tiny nation gets to modern America, the worse it may get.

Maybe everyone was better off without the potato chips.

Next time on Overthinking Lost: I figure out what the deal with the Others is?  I hope?  Maybe?

Remember, everyone: when you’re commenting, no spoilers past season 2 episode 8!

Related Posts

• Overthinking Lost: Episodes 1.0-1.7
• Overthinking Lost: Episodes 1.16-1.22
• Overthinking Lost: Episodes 1.8-1.15
• Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Brains: Zombieconomics
• No Fate But What We Make: The Greatest Terminator Lie Ever Told

Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend!

Download Episode 53 (MP3)

Related Posts

• Cultural Sensitivity McFail
• The Best Logo In The World [Think Tank]
• The Use of Punch and Pie as an Attendance Incentive: A Case Study
• Analyzing Oscar
• The Puzzling Logic of Conan O’Brien’s Super Bowl Ad

Malden came up in the 50s with Newman, Brando and the rest of the new generation of Method actors. He didn’t have striking good looks or a silky voice. Instead, he had a bulbous nose and a comfortable, Middle American drawl. He wouldn’t draw the audiences in like Newman’s blue eyes or Brando’s sulky rebelliousness would.

Malden had a different edge. He had a face you could trust.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Malden plays the (relatively) honest Mitch, Blanche duBois’s only lifeline out of the filthy town of New Orleans. In On the Waterfront, he played cynical but uncompromising dockfront priest Father Barry. He played General Omar Bradley, beloved by his troops and trusted by his superiors -- to the point where he got promoted past his friend, in Patton. And he was the perfect match to temper the college-educated naivete of young Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco.

Malden looked like a face you could trust not because of any saintly aspects. He looked kind, sure, but he also looked experienced -- a man who’d seen the ways of the real world. Every role he made famous combined those two elements -- the detached wisdom and the grounded cynicism -- making him a pillar of support.

He parlayed that trustworthiness into other roles too. For 21 years, Karl Malden was the face of American Express, pitching its travelers cheques to jet setters and business professionals. He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences between 1989 and 1992. And his wife Mona Greenberg must have found him trustworthy as well; their 70-year marriage is the third longest among Hollywood actors.

Malden also led the charge to get an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievements for Elia Kazan, the phenomenal director whose reputation was crippled after he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Many felt that Kazan’s aid in blacklisting Communist sympathizers should bar him from any future honors. But Malden stood up for him in 1999 and Kazan was honored that year. Without Malden’s integrity behind him, the lingering furor toward Kazan might have blocked him from being recognized.

Karl Malden portrayed, and was, a man to have in your corner. Overthinking It would miss him more, but the body of work he left behind makes one hell of an honor roll.

Related Posts

• Pixar’s Up: Paradise Lost at Paradise Falls
• Speculations on the Future of Film in the 2010s
• Kanye West has never seen RoboCop
• Stoicism, the Black Swan, and the Resurrection of Vin Diesel
• Great Moments in Racial Discourse #2: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

From my perspective, the video game industry seems to have become everything that I wish that the film industry was. There is a very good chance that sequels will be at least as good as originals, and there is no fear of innovation and creativity. I think it is obvious from the 2009 game list that creative people are responding quite well to this. The games look much more interesting than the summer movie list ever looked.

Video games have always been defined by the user effort required to fully enjoy them. The evolution of games has moved towards greater efforts for greater rewards in the form of better visuals and better stories. Rather than simple “The End” screens after defeating final guardians, video games now tell the devoted elaborate stories about grand mythologies (If you want to know what the next Lord of the Rings or Star Wars is going to be, believe me that it will be neither book nor film: tomorrow’s Tolkiens and Lucases [Lucii?] will be in video games).

On the other hand, the evolution of cinema in roughly the same period of time has been in the opposite direction. Though as always there are exceptions, the intellectual challenge and reward of cinema have been traded in in favor of popcorn whose user effort tends to amount to staying awake in a dark room.

So the sort of individual who would be naturally drawn to video games, who would like the idea of spending months of their spare change and time taking on the Hordes of Hell more than watching someone else do it, would naturally be also more open to big new ideas and adventures. The potential for a more passive enjoyment found in much of modern cinema, however, is designed to attract the Swing Cinephiles whose dollars differentiate a blockbuster success from a failure and who are eager to exchange the intellectual rewards of thoughtful escapism for the easier to come by pleasure of familiarity. The trend in video games may even be a reaction to this trend in cinema.

But back to E3. Photo gallery and game trailers after the jump.

This game was actually in 3-D, but you need to buy a special television and wear 3-D glasses to get the full effect. When you have these things, it looks pretty awesome. James Cameron is also developing Avatar: The Game in 3-D, but you had to be a VIP like Steven Spielberg who bounced in with eight bodyguards (thus foiling my assassination plot which only had a seven bodyguard contingency) in order to get a look, so I have no idea whether it uses similar technology.

This was just a way cool idea, even more than Guitar Hero, in my opinion.

This game was described as The Legend of Zelda… in Hell. When I talk about big new mythologies, this is what I’m talking about.

Speaking of Hell, this seemed a little insane to me. Is the fact that it is based on the Inferno really going to push more copies than had it been about a man just going to hell to battle monsters? I wonder what Dante would have thought.

Looked fun. Not exactly Overthinking this one.

The series of Lego games continues to baffle me. What is the point of the Legos? Are more people interested in this game than would be a non-Lego Harry Potter game? Why are there glasses on a baby? Having never played a Lego game, my theory is that Lego wants to be in video games, but they know that they will push more games if they are attached to a property like Batman or Indiana Jones. Those franchises get licensed out because it must be pretty cheap to develop and render Lego worlds compared to the textures and physics of a world like in Batman: Arkham Asylum, so they turn mostly profit for little effort and money. But that’s purely a theory.

Once again, it just looked cool. They’re remastering the entire Beatles catalog in conjunction. If part of the goal, as it presumably is, is to reach the Guitar Hero crowd with Beatles music, they had better put it on iTunes.

This is actually a reboot of sorts, considering there is a whole series of these games. As with previous entries, you can be alien, human, or predator. I watched a British suit-wearing spokesman jump from tree to tree as a predator, lure humans away from their posts with sounds, impale them on the above-demonstrated wrist knives and rip their spine-dangling heads off.

This game looked awesome. I fought a turtle monster that was probably the best-looking thing I have ever seen in a video game.

I only saw the first Saw and am no fan of “torture porn” unless you count Japanese game shows. But this game is actually a pretty interesting idea: it is a puzzle game where you are one of the Jigsaw killer’s victims, trying to escape. I only got to play it for a little bit, but I would say there is potential that it could be better than the movies as it is less about the uncomfortable sadist voyeurism of the film series and more about the clever twists which may not bring me to the theater but I have at least read about on Wikipedia. Of course, it could suck, too.

Looked badass.

I love me some Jables. Jack Black’s rock star schtick and its appeal could be the subject of an Overthinking It blog in and of itself.

That’s about it from me. I’m going to Comic Con in July so maybe I’ll have more for you then. [Ed. Note: Yes, please.]

Related Posts

• Overthinking E3

If you can’t get enough of us in that time, did you know we’re on the Facebook and the Twitter?

So as we continue to mourn the loss of Michael Jackson (and the ladies begin to mourn the loss of Kevin Jonas to matrimony, amirite?) let us remember the true meaning of the holiday: Our true enemy is the British.

Oh, hey, anyone see Public Enemies?

Related Posts

• Open Thread for July 10, 2009
• Open Thread for June 26, 2009
• Open Thread for June 19, 2009
• Open Thread for June 13, 2009
• Open Thread for June 5, 2009