Curtis Weyant

A brief survey of cabin horror film "top" lists

curtis — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 06:48:53 +0000

In preparing for the paper I'm presenting at the Joss in June conference at the end of the month, I've run across a bit of a phenomenon. To wit, about 14 – 15 months ago there appears to have set upon the internet commentariat a desire to craft "top" lists of horror movies that featured cabin scenarios. This phenomenon isn't unexplained; on the contrary, it is quite apposite to their appearing roughly within a month of the release of Cabin in the Woods, the critically and popularly acclaimed genre deconstruction written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard and directed by Goddard.

By way of "research" (Read: procrastination on finalizing my paper), I have managed to collect a number of these lists and catalogue the movies listed. Below, in separate sections, I have listed both the movies listed as well as the lists themselves. What use this may have to anyone remains to be seen.

Cabin Movies

Since many of these movies appeared on multiple lists, I've ordered them by the number of mentions. It's curious that Cabin Fever received so many mentions – possibly because it has the topic of the lists in its title. Cabin in the Woods likely did not receive as many mentions because these lists were in reaction to the release of that movie.

14 mentions

Cabin Fever (2002)

12 mentions

Friday the 13th (1980)

11 mentions

The Evil Dead (1981)

6 mentions

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Evil Dead II (1987)
Wrong Turn (2003)

5 mentions

Antichrist (2009)

4 mentions

The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2011)

3 mentions

The Burning (1981)
Dead Snow (2009)
Sleepaway Camp

2 mentions

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Secret Window (2004)

1 mention

The Breed (2006)
Campfire Tales (1991, 1997)
Deliverance (1972)
The Descent (2005)
Evil Dead (2013)
Fargo (1996)
Friday the 13th (2009)
Funny Games (2007)
Grizzly (1977)
Hatchet (2006)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
The Howling (1981)
Severance (2006)
Silent Voyeur (2004)
The Strangers (2008)
Straw Dogs (2011)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
There's Nothing Out There (1991)
Timber Falls (2007)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
The Village (2004)
The Woods (2006)

The Lists

Here are the lists from which the above data was compiled:

Angus, Kat and Leah Collins. "Top 5 Scary Cabin Movies." Dose.ca. 11 April 2012.

Colebank, Jeff. "Top 10 Horror Films About Camping." Horror News. 3 Aug. 2011.

Dickson, Evan. "10 Top 'Cabin in the Woods' Movies." Bloody Disgusting. 18 March 2012.

Evry, Max. "Our 5 Favorite Cabins in the Woods." 13 April 2012.

Gibron, Bill. "The Top 10 'Cabin' Movies of All Time." Pop Matters. 11 Sep. 2012.

Koenig, Abby. "Top 10 'Cabin in the Woods' Movies." Art Attack Blog. Houston Press, 16 April 2012.

Lemire, Christy. "5 classic movies set in cabins." boston.com. AP, 12 April 2012. [n.b., I didn't included Meatballs or Little Darlings in the compilation for, hopefully, obvious reasons.]

Marvel Guy. "Top Ten Cabin Movies." n.d. Web. 12 June 2013.

MTV Movies Team. "Five More Cabins in the Woods." MTV Movies Blog. MTV.com, 13 April 2012.

Rawson-Jones, Ben. "Evil Dead, Antichrist, Cabin Fever: 10 best cabin in the woods movies." Digital Spy. 23 April 2012.

Taylor, Drew. "To Get Ready for 'Cabin in the Woods,' Here Are The Top 5 Cabin Movies." The Playlist. Indiewire, 10 April 2012.

"The best cabin horror movies for May 2-4 viewing." The Scope. 18 May, 2012.

"Top 5 Cabins in the Woods." Metamovies. Metacafe, 16 April 2012.

"Top 5 Creepy Cabin Movies." Tr3s. 10 April 2012.

"Top 5 Scary Cabins in Movies." Female First. 20 Sept. 2012.

Review: 1984, by George Orwell

curtis — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:54:03 +0000

Yesterday, I finished George Orwell's classic work of dystopian psychological horror, 1984, which I read for the Mythgard Institute's Dystopian Tradition class, taught by the estimable Amy H. Sturgis. It's the second time I've read the book, though I'm not entirely sure when I first read it. In college, perhaps? In any case, it was more than ten years ago.

This time around, I've come to the conclusion that I both love and hate this book, which is likely a form of doublethink. I found myself rooting for Winston Smith to retain his humanity, despite my previous knowledge of his outcome — possibly another example of the aforementioned Newspeak concept. What struck me in particular this read-through was how blatantly the things that will happen to Winston are stated throughout the book. More than mere foreshadowing, we get actual description from very early in the book of the sorts of things that Winston winds up having to endure. The mantra that the result is concurrent with the act is thematically reinforced through Winston's anxiety, torture and deprivations, which makes the story even more chilling with a second reading, at least for me. O'Brien's obviating statement upon first entering Winston's cell ("You knew this, Winston.... Don't deceive yourself. You did know it — you have always known it.") seems directed more at the reader than at the character: We knew what was going to happen, we read what was going to happen, we were told nothing else ever happens, yet we still hoped and deceived ourselves that it would not happen. C. S. Lewis, in his essay "On Stories," notes that a person who re-reads a story "is looking not for actual surprises...but for a certain surprisingness." In 1984, this surprisingness comes from the fact that the conclusion is played out exactly how we are told it will be. (It may be worth noting that Lewis called 1984 "merely a flawed, interesting book.")

It's likely impossible to read a book like 1984 without drawing parallels to one's own place in time. Without getting to much into modern politics, there's some interesting comparisons that can be made between Oceania and contemporary America. For example, privacy concerns about products like Google Glass, which are like telescreens for your face — especially in light of Google's fight with the FBI over "National Security" letters, which are basically non-court-reviewed subpoenas that nobody's allowed to talk about and, thus, don't really exist.... Or the relatively new legal "mosaic theory" of surveillance where at some vaguely magical point a certain amount of public scrutiny by police violates 4th Amendment rights, but in a stunning display of Sorites Paradoxism, nobody (including SCOTUS) can really determine where that point is, and thus, it effectively doesn't exist. We don't know if or how these things will change over time, but that doesn't reduce the relevance of books like 1984 that help us think about these issues, and hopefully prevent abuses.

On a personal note, I read 1984 this time on my telesc— er, I mean, iPad. This is the first ebook where I've actually spent a bit of effort highlighting quotes and passages in that medium. In a stunning display of stupidity, I removed the ebook from my iPad, as is my wont with ebooks to reduce clutter and free up space. Fortunately, when I synced it back, all my highlights were still in existence — thank you Apple for storing my information in iCloud or whatever place you keep it where I don't know it exists and which you use to improve my user experience while also increasing your own profitability. [Pause for a moment of self-reflection.]

Given the providential event of my restored highlightings and the effort I went through, I now present:

A List of Things I Highlighted in 1984

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. (I'm thinking of Season 1, Episode 6 of Buffy, titled "The Pack," here...)

At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilisation.

He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.

Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips.

All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones...

Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word.

...in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body.

But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine confession that had to be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair. Why did you have to endure it, since it was always the same?

Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.

[People incapable of understanding orthodoxy] could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter.

They can make you say anything — anything — but they can't make you believe it.

They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious, even to yourself, remained impregnable.

At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little.

Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there.

The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

Inequality was the price of civilisation.

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors.

For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.

"You don't think the Party would arrest an innocent man, do you?" (Parsons)

In the face of pain, there are no heroes...

It is not easy to become sane.

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you.

We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him.

What happens to you here is forever.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

Reality is inside the skull.

Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

It was all contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that you did not foresee.

For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.

To die hating them, that was freedom.

And Finally...

I'll note with hints of both humor and chagrin, that I once controlled the domain prolefeed.org.

A shorter version of this review was posted on Goodreads.

Some thank yous

curtis — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 03:40:43 +0000

With Kat & Curt's TV Re-View (KCTVRV) launching earlier this week, I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who has helped get the word out. My co-host Kat has already done a bit of reciprocity, but I don't think we can thank these folks enough.

Dr. Amy H. Sturgis has been a great help in getting out the word, posting multiple mentions about KCTVRV on her delightful blog. Dr. Sturgis has a passion for both pop culture and intellectual history, and her enthusiasm upon hearing about KCTVRV has inspired and encouraged both Kat and I, and we really appreciate her personal support. We also appreciate her linking us up with...

StarShipSofa, the Hugo-winning science fiction podcast, which ran an exclusive promo for KCTVRV in their latest episode #292. We were nestled in among some great content, including a "Looking Back at Genre History" segment from Dr. Sturgis on Star Trek and Native Americans as well as a great story about a Labradoodle war-dog — which is exactly as awesome as it sounds! Especially thanks to StarShipSofa host Tony C. Smith for both playing our promo in the episode and encouraging people to check out KCTVRV.

Kelly Orazi, a fellow Mythgardian, has posted a nice writeup about our first episode on her blog, The Middle Page. Check out all of her other excellent posts on fairy stories, fantasy and folk tales!

The Mythgard Institute gave us some love as well. I've talked about Mythgard before, and it's worth noting that Mythgard is a big reason why KCTVRV got started. To say that much of our inspiration has come from Mythgard founder Dr. Corey Olsen's own Tolkien Professor podcasts would not be an overstatement.

Jenna St. Hilaire is a person I don't know, but Kat knows her, and because of their acquaintance, Jenna posted a blurb on her blog about KCTVRV — so, thank you, Jenna!

Our listeners because — holy crap, we have listeners! Seriously, we've gotten some great comments already on our first episode, and according to FeedBurner, we have a subscriber base numbering in the double digits, which I'll be honest, is two digits more than I thought we'd have at this point.

My brother Mike who told me in an email that our first episode "Really flowed smoothly, and before listening to it, honestly, I thought it would be more disjointed." So, um, thanks?

Impossible Podcasts because they are random strangers who tweeted about us.

And everyone who has liked us on Facebook or followed us on Twitter or otherwise has hopped in for the ride.

And of course, I must thank....

Katherine Sas, my KCTVRV co-host and proprietor of the Raving Sanity blog, whose Game of Thrones posts are outstanding and whose Doctor Who posts I don't read because, duh, spoilers! If not for her, it would just be me talking, and nobody really wants that.

In just a few days we'll be posting Episode 2, where we'll be talking about the first episode in each series. It's gonna be a good one. Trust me, I know, because I've heard it already.

K&C TV Re-View Episode 1: Domestically Scaled Menace

curtis — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:09:14 +0000

And we've begun! Episode 1 of Kat & Curt's TV Re-View is now live. You can listen to it on our Wordpress page or subscribe via podcast by clicking "Subscribe to Podcast" (it's almost too easy....).

I talked a little about it before, but as a reminder, the idea behind this podcast that fellow blogger Kat Sas and I are doing an episode-by-episode discussion of two popular science fiction and fantasy television shows: Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each week we will discuss an episode from each show — in sequential order, with no spoilers — and discuss the themes, situations and (most importantly) the characters. We've also been doing quite a bit of comparison and contrast between the shows, which is both fun and enlightening, and we've found that there's really quite a bit of similarity and nuance in juxtaposing them this way.

That said, the first episode of our podcast is introduction. As the veteran Doctor Who fan, Kat gives some details about the history of the show, right up to the point where we are starting to watch it with the 2005 iteration (or regeneration). As the token Buffy enthusiast, I give some background on Joss Whedon's pre-Buffy work, including the eponymous movie that we wall may want to forget about, and delve just a little into the situation Buffy will find herself in when the show begins.

If you're not already subscribed, please do so! Or feel free to listen to stream the first episode right from the site. You can also find us on Facebook and on Twitter.

Enjoy!

It's official: Refs hate me

curtis — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 17:22:52 +0000

I don't know what it is, but there's something about me that sports referees don't like. perhaps it's my caustic wit, or maybe it's my devil-may-care attitude — possibly they're even intimidated by and/or attracted to my chiseled jaw, beefcake physique and classical good looks. Whatever it may be, the simple fact is, I seem to annoy the heck out of sporting officials.

Last year, I had an altercation of sorts at a Y-league basketball game my brothers were playing in. One of the refs there made a couple really bad calls, and I expressed my opinion about them from the sidelines. The ref turned and gave me a technical foul. Me. The spectator. I was baffled, to say the least.

Today, at my daughter's soccer game, the ref was a high school student, as is typical for youth league sports games. I arrived late and sat near a couple other parents I knew, and we were doing our typical sort of chatting throughout the game.

Then, the ref made a really bad call. Inside the goalie box, a girl from the opposing team kicked the ball right at one of our players. The girl on my daughter's team put her hands back and the ball hit her squarely in the chest. Perfectly legal — yet the ref called a hand ball.

All the parents along the sidelines were rather upset about the call, and the grumbling went on for sometime. Notably, not long after that play, a similar thing happened where one of our girls kicked the ball into an opposing player's midsection, only that girl's hands were down — an ambiguous case, but much closer to being an actual foul than the previous call. No whistle. So I, in all my wisdom and equanimity, yell out:

"How is that not a hand ball?"

I wasn't the only one who commented on the missed call, but I may have been the loudest. I definitely meant for the ref to hear my comment.

Later in the game a third incident occurred where one of our players very clearly raised both of her hands and knocked the ball down to the ground. The game pretty much stopped because nearly everyone on the field and on the sidelines expected the call, and the call should definitely have been made. No whistle. After a few moments of stunned silence and confusion, the game went on.

Now, those are the calls. Let me add that at halftime, the ref came over to the sidelines and started talking with parents of kids on the other team. It was clear that the ref knew the other people, and it wasn't that big deal. Until we heard what the ref was saying. For most of the halftime break, the ref complained about our team's coach. I didn't hear the whole discussion, but I heard the ref call our coach "crazy," among other things. Several of the other parents heard it as well.

Ultimately, despite the poor calls, our team won (2-1), and at the end of the game everyone started packing up their chairs, etc. I was ready to go, chatting with a few of the other parents and waiting for my daughter to walk over, when the opposing team's coach walks across the field directly towards me. He points at me and asks if I have a second to talk. I said, "Sure," not really sure what he wanted but as I was just waiting, it was no big deal. He walked a little ways away from the sidelines where I had been standing, and I followed him.

He then proceeds to lecture me about how the refs of the youth league are just kids themselves, and how the ref heard the comment I had made. (He didn't know precisely what I had said, but I'm assuming it was the "How is that not a hand ball?" question I shouted.) I got a bit defensive and stated how pretty much all the parents were talking because there were a number of bad calls, etc. He tried to back off a bit and say he wasn't blaming me for anything, so I replied:

"Look, you singled me out and asked to talk to me. Now, you're saying you're not blaming me for anything. The fact is that, yes, I said something about the ref's poor calls. So did a lot of other parents. If you want to talk to everyone, then do it. You've said what you have to say."

Then, I walked away. A few of the other parents asked me what went on, so I gave them a synopsis. I hadn't brought up the halftime conversation between the ref and the opposing team's parents, but they did. The coach called one of the other parents childish and dismissed the ref's unprofessional conduct as irrelevant when the other parent mentioned that halftime conversation.

And that's that, I guess. Maybe I was wrong to yell out at the ref (there's a clause in the youth league rules about disagreeing or "harassing" — one of those equivocal words that means "not doing anything the ref dislikes" apparently — refs in the league), but I clearly wasn't the only one on either team to do so. Yet somehow, I was singled out by the ref.

QED: Refs hate me.

Okay, now I need to go do some work to get ready for the launch of Kat & Curt's TV Re-View on Monday!

Introducing Kat & Curt's TV Re-View

curtis — Mon, 27 May 2013 18:36:44 +0000

Get ready for something pretty dang brilliant. One week from today, Kat & Curt's TV Re-View is launching, and you'll want to be there to see it (er, hear it) take off.

Maybe I should back up. A few months ago, I was having a conversation with fellow Mythgardian Kat Sas about some of our favorite TV shows. There were a few we both liked, but we shared mutual feelings of appallment when we realized that we each had a favorite show which the other hadn't seen.

"What?!" Kat said in shock and dismay. "You've never seen Doctor Who?!"

"What?!" I replied in equal amounts of amazement and hysteria. "You've never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer?!"

So, in the grand tradition of things like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or mint jelly on lamb, we decided to smush together two things that no normal people would ever smush together. The result is a new podcast that tastes pretty darn good.

And we think you'll like it, too. Even if you've only seen one of these shows — or haven't seen either — you'll be able to follow along pretty easily. Kat's introducing me to the Doctor, and I'm introducing her to Buffy, and in that way we'll introduce both of them to you. Having recorded the first couple episodes already, I have to say it's a pretty enjoyable discussion, and we've found a lot of neat little parallels in discussing these shows side by side.

If you're interested in learning more, we've got a little introduction on the Kat & Curt's TV Re-View website that you can listen to with your ears, and some text you can read with your eyes. So head on over and check it out. You can even subscribe to the podcast feed right now in your favorite podcast listening-type application so you don't miss out on the awesomeness that is to come.

"The Lord of the Rings" as a Catholic-themed work

curtis — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:01:30 +0000

I just finished Tom Shippey's excellent book, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, which I have wanted to read for some time now. In it, Shippey's primary argument (as implied by the subtitle) is that twentieth century literature was dominated by the fantasy story, and that Tolkien holds the premier place of authorship among those who may be called fantasy writers — effectively putting him at the premier place of authorship among all writers of the century. Shippey understandably, and enjoyably, spends the bulk of the book looking at various aspects of Tolkien's best-known works, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and pointing out that, though Tolkien's stories about Middle-earth are indeed "fantastical" and "escapist" tales, the fantasy and escapism of them are products of much longer literary traditions than the modernist works to which the literati (i.e., the elitist and mostly academic literary critical establishment) have endeared themselves. In the last couple chapters, Shippey explores Tolkien's other works, including the posthumous Silmarillion and shorter works that were published during his lifetime, as well as contemporary criticism and praise. There's also a rather enjoyable segment of comparison with James Joyce.

One particular part of the book, however, reminded me of a comments discussion I had several months ago about the Catholic nature of The Lord of the Rings. It was in response to a post by Sasha Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog asking readers to list their favorite Catholic-themed science fiction novels. The request is pretty well qualified:

I don’t mean just books written by Catholics, nor do I mean books where the Catholic church plays a plot role (like the Hyperion series), but books with a strong Catholic-related theme, like A Canticle for Leibowitz. Bonus points if canon law makes a strong showing there.

The comments run the gamut, with some of usual ignorant foofaraw that goes along with some things. Some obviously Catholic-themed works made the list, such as Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. On the other hand, some obviously non-Catholic-themed works made the list as well, such as Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which mentions a priest or two but otherwise fails the sniff test. I didn't add anything to the list until Sasha opened it up to include all literature, rather than just science fiction novels, at which point I contributed a mention of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

While many of the works listed seem to be pretty easily confirmed or dismissed as "Catholic-themed," there were a few that are harder to classify. For example, although Philip Pullman is himself an avowed atheist, his His Dark Materials trilogy is a strong criticism of the Catholic church (and Christianity in general), and thus fits the bill of being "Catholic-themed." Falling just on the other side of the fence, however, is Stephen King's Salem's Lot, which despite having a priest as a main character, the theme of the book is hardly a Catholic one.

Then, someone mentioned The Lord of the Rings. It's fairly common knowledge that J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Catholic his whole life. At an early age, he was taken in by a priest, after his mother died (his father had died much earlier) and remained a faithful devotee of Catholicism for the rest of his life. It makes sense for Tolkien's religious beliefs to have made their way into his fictional work. Tolkien himself even wrote in a letter that "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work" (Letters 172) and Shippey points out a number of pretty clear allusions, symbols and images. For example, Shippey quotes Gandalf's rebuke of Denethor's decision to commit suicide, noting in particular the use of the word "heathen," which has a decidedly Christian meaning (176-7). More specifically, Shippey likens Middle-earth to a sort of Limbo where "the characters…are counted as neither heathen nor Christian but something in between" (179) — that is to say, they are "virtuous pagans," a simultaneously magnanimous and condescending label found in Catholic doctrine used to describe people who might be considered righteous except for the accident of their place and/or era of birth.

Shippey's more interesting exploration, however, has to do with Frodo as a mediating (i.e., linking) figure. Essentially, Shippey points to Frodo Baggins as the literary namesake of Froði (pronounced "Frō-thee," not "frothy"...), a king from Norse mythology who was known for his wisdom and peaceful reign. According to two 13th century authors, Froði was a contemporary of Christ, and because of his peaceful nature and kingship, the two can be seen as analogues. Thus, it seems that Tolkien is linking Frodo, by virtue of his name, explicitly to the Catholic idea of a virtuous pagan, and specifically to a Christ-like figure, through the Norse king Froði. Shippey remains clear that "[i]t would be quite wrong to suggest that [Frodo] is a Christ-figure, an allegory of Christ," but rather that Frodo represents the ideal of "natural humanity trying to do its best in native decency" (Shippey 187).

I quite like Shippey's analysis here, and I don't know nearly enough about language and mythology to argue against his points, if I were inclined to do so. However, none of Shippey's analysis suggests to me that The Lord of the Rings is a Catholic-themed work, even if it certainly is compatible with Catholic teachings via the doctrine of virtuous paganism. Perhaps I'm making to much of such a claim — which, again, was not made by Shippey but by a random person in the comments of a fairly recent legal blog post. In the end, perhaps there's no real distinction between something that is "fundamentally Catholic" and something that is "Catholic-themed." That's the dismissive argument I received in return, at least, when I tried to explain how the two are different: "Some pretty fine hairs are being split here" was the exact phrasing of the recondite rebuttal.

However, I don't really see how differentiating between "Catholic" and "Catholic-themed" is an exercise in fine-hair splitting. Is it splitting fine hairs to say there is a difference between "leopard" and "leopard-printed"? I think one would quickly, and intuitively, realize the difference if faced with a leopard on one hand and a leopard-printed object on the other. Especially astute intellectuals probably could differentiate the qualities of "leopardness" and "leopard-printedness" without putting themselves in the presence of either thing. Why, then, is the same not true of the qualities of "Catholic" and "Catholic-themed"?

Perhaps the biggest part of the problem is the very word "theme." For the most part, people know what it means for something to be "printed," so when something is called "leopard-printed" there's very little confusion about the nature of the thing. But "theme" is often used vaguely, especially in relation to literature, to mean "anything I happen to want to see." However, that's not what a theme is. Although there are a number of variations on the definition of "theme," most boil down to something like: The general idea, point or high-level meaning of a literary work.

With such a straightforward definition of "theme," it's hard for me to understand how people confuse theme with literary elements like allusions, allegory, etc. — all of which contribute to the theme, but are not in themselves themes. Quite possibly it has to do with the idea, brought up in some of the definitions linked to above, that a story's theme is often not explicitly stated. "In fact," Robert DiYanni writes, "theme in fiction is rarely presented at all; readers abstract it from the details of characters and action that compose the story." This abstraction is often flawed, or abused, because people ignore some parts of the text or bring ideas to the text that aren't actually in the text.

I don't mean to argue that looking at only portions of a text or bringing in other ideas is inappropriate or useless. In fact, to do so would be to argue against Tolkien's own ideas about applicability, which Shippey treats at length in several contexts. But to confuse applicability with theme is either incredibly ignorant, incredibly naïve or incredibly obtuse, since they are, in a way, opposite things. Although theme is deduced from the text, and thus requires interpretation, the theme must be divined from the objective evidence provided in the text. Applicability, on the other hand, is primarily subjective, taking some aspect of the text and applying (!) it to specific situations or ideas.

When Tolkien writes that "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work," we have to look beyond to the next sentence, in which he says, "That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." (Letters 172) This evokes, for me, an image of a powder being completely and invisibly dissolved into a glass of some liquid: It's there, but it's not. As Shippey and others point out, Catholic ideas are clearly present in The Lord of the Rings, but they are hidden in symbols and allusions and fragments of language. They are not theme.

Tolkien explains this idea a bit clearer in his 1951 letter to Milton Waldman. In the early parts of that letter, Tolkien describes the elements of fairy-story that he has tried to find elsewhere. He touches on a number of different types of mythic traditions, and in particular calls out Arthurian legend. "For one thing," he writes,

its 'faerie' is too lavish, too fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.

For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (Letters 144)

Once again we get the image of dissolving with the prepositional phrase "in solution" – not in the sense of dilution or reduced in power, but rather dispersed throughout, permeating. At the same time, it is unseen, although it can be ascertained or detected. It is something that supports the theme, not the theme itself.

One final thing to note is that the letter in which Tolkien makes his claim about The Lord of the Rings being fundamentally Catholic was written to a family friend, Father Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest who saw resonances of the Virgin Mary in Galadriel. This is the same Galadriel who, Tolkien certainly knew (having written it), "yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will" (Silmarillion 84), yearnings not typically ascribed to the mother of Christ. Although it would be uncharitable to blame Father Murray for not seeing parts of Galadriel's character that would not be revealed to the public for several decades more, one can imagine Tolkien's chuckling as he assured his friend that, indeed, the work is completely and utterly Catholic, just as the good father divined it to be. In the penultimate chapter of his book, Shippey posits a different interpretation, that "Tolkien's famous and much-quoted assertion…has an air of defensiveness about it." (293) Whether Tolkien was just assuaging a good friend by agreeing to the religious perceptions the father was predisposed to read into the story, or defending his work from attack by an institution for which he cared deeply, perhaps the best answer comes in the sentences immediately after that oft-quoted bit:

However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little (Letters 172)

Maybe the best commentary of all comes from Tolkien's close friend, C. S. Lewis: "[Y]ou must not believe all that authors tell you about how they wrote their books." (Lewis 42) Or even, perhaps, what those books mean.

Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. Of Other Worlds. San Diego: Harvest, 1994. Print.

Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Houghton Mifflin: New York, 2001. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R., Humphrey Carpenter, and Christopher Tolkien. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Print.

Volokh, Sasha. "Catholic science fiction." The Volokh Conspiracy. 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 May 2013. <http://www.volokh.com/2013/02/14/catholic-science-fiction/>.

Constitution USA, a new PBS series

curtis — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:21:53 +0000

Last night I watched the first of a four-part PBS series called Constitution USA with Peter Sagal. In it, Sagal pretends to be a biker and goes on a neo-Steinbeckian cross-country trip in a quintessential attempt to take the pulse of the heartland — and, you know, other lands on either side of the heartland....

I quite like Sagal, whom I know primarily as the host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, an NPR game show that I listen to religiously via podcast. He's funny and insightful, which are generally good qualities to have.

Anyway, this first episode dealt primarily with the idea of federalism, that is, the unique system set up by the founders of the U.S. in which the Federal Government was given a limited set of express powers with the the states retaining others. As Sagal explains early in the episode, this means that while the federal government can invade foreign countries, it can't (for example) fine people for littering.¹

It's worth noting that the episode was incredibly evenhanded. Sagal touched on a variety of topics, including medical marijuana, guns, segregation, federal works projects, Obamacare and regulations concerning the amount of water that can be flushed when using the toilet. He interviewed people from a variety of perspectives, and for the most part Sagal let them speak on their own. The short interviews focused primarily on the role of the federal government as it either interfered with or promoted the common good in the eyes of the interviewee. There were, of course, some people and ideas presented that I disagreed with, but in a way that seems to be the point of the episode. The mere existence of differing powers between the states and the federal government almost dictate that disagreements in how those powers are used.

(Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised by appearances by two of my favorite libertarians included in the interviews: P. J. O'Rourke and Randy Barnett. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, since O'Rourke is a frequent panelist on Sagal's Wait, Wait, and Barnett is probably one of the most recognizable legal scholars. Barnett was heavily involved in a 2005 medical marijuana case that went to the Supreme Court, and more recently he was called the "intellectual godfather" of the legal arguments against Obamacare. I frequently read Barnett's posts at The Volokh Conspiracy, a conservative/libertarian legal blog.)

One of the things I think this episode did really well was to show that there is indeed a balancing act going on here. I've noted before that I think many of my fellow libertarians get sucked down the argumentative hole of dismissing all federal actions as government encroachment. While I think there are a lot of things that shouldn't be done by the federal government, I get frustrated when I see such arguments made, because there clearly are things that the federal government not only has the power to do, but was designed to do. Stories such as that of Minniejean Brown-Trickey and the "Little Rock Nine," who effectively became poster children for desegregation, seems to be pretty solidly within the rightful purview of the federal government. At the same time, regulating the amount of water that goes down a toilet drain hardly seems on the level of fighting for civil rights.

This first episode aired on May 7, but it's available in full at the PBS website. The next episode is scheduled to air on May 14. I'll probably be watching it.

Footnotes

1. There is some nuance here not really clarified in the episode. For example, the Federal Government has pretty much full authority to police federal lands. However, such police actions are nonetheless governed by the constitution, which is not necessarily true of all state police authority.

Braff's "brash" balls

curtis — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:18:06 +0000

Having waited a week after the raucous manhunt for the Boston marathon bombers, I had been planning to write about militias and gun-related laws in Massachusetts, based on some commentary I had seen flit across my Facebook feed. But it seems something much more important has cropped up to discuss at this particular moment in time: Zach Braff's Kickstarter campaign for a "tonal sequel" to his 2004 indie film Garden State. Here's the deets:

When I saw that this was indeed "a thing" I was pretty excited. I'm a big fan of Garden State, and of Zach Braff in general, and I am one of those who has speculated whether that movie was doomed to be a one-hit cult wonder. I recalled hearing Braff's March interview on Q, in which he discusses (starting at about 13:40) how all of the various studios refused to fund his first movie — it was only through finding an independent backer that Garden State eventually got made for a little under $3 million. I also recalled how excited I was at hearing that he was hoping to put together a similar movie based on a script he and his brother had written.

And now, here we are. As of writing this, three days into the campaign, Braff has raised the full $2 million goal from more than 28,000 backers. So yeah, it's gonna happen. Despite the obvious desire to help bring a new Braff-written and directed film to bear, a number of people have criticized him on a variety of issues. None of the complaints I have seen to date come close to being more than jealous wingeing, in my view, but going on the theory that there could possibly be a valid intellectual reason why people might object to other people helping to fund Braff's new movie, I thought I'd do a little in-depth examination of the arguments below.

Dude's Rich

If there's anything people hate more than corporate welfare, it seems, it's celebrity panhandling. It's bad enough we have to listen to pleas to support poorly managed vanity charities. These people are the 1%, amiright? They have money already. As Dustin Rowles of Pajiba emotes:

[I]f Zach Braff has that much faith in his film, why doesn’t he finance it himself? Why won’t he accept the risk? It’s not a huge risk: A Zach Braff movie that shares Garden State’s tone, which stars Jim Parsons, and features a Donald Faison cameo? How many “Scrubs” and Garden State fans will see that? ALL OF THEM. How does that movie not make it’s budget back? Isn’t this what “f**k you” money is for, Mr. Braff?

This is, of course, based on Rowles' stunningly brilliant assessment that Braff is worth $22 million because, well, "that sounds about right." (Yeah, yeah, I know he got the number from someplace else.) Regardless of Braff's actual bank, however, the argument might be valid. That Braff probably has $2 million of his own with which he could fund the movie seems a relatively safe assumption. In that case, why couldn't he simply fund the movie himself?

Perhaps he could. It certainly has been done before. Joss Whedon famously self-funded his upcoming Much Ado About Nothing, which I'm gonna go out on a limb and say will be the most profitable Shakespeare adaptation ever. According to the currency exchange calculator that is Celebrity Net Worth, a Whedon is worth two Braffs, making Ado's budget of $900,000 little more than chump change. A (relatively) much poorer pre-Avengers Whedon also self-funded the super-cheesily awesome Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at 1/10^th the budget of Braff's Kickstarter goal. So, yes, it can be done.

On the other hand, if everybody were Whedon, there'd be nothing wrong with Hollywood (either that, or we'd all be moaning now about how Firefly should've ended while the show was on top instead of drifting along for ten seasons). There are other examples of self-funding, though. For example, the 2011 comedy-horror movie Detention, directed and (mostly) self-funded by Joseph Kahn with a budget of $10 million — but let's face it, I didn't even know that movie existed until I did a Google search on "self-funded movies" a few minutes ago. The better-known Kick-Ass is sometimes described as "self-funded," but in reality it received "independent" financial support, which pretty much just means that none of the studios Michael Vaughn solicited would let him have an 11-year-old character say the word "c*nt," so he had to find another way to fund the endeavor. True self-funding is rare outside of student films, insofar as relying on student loans and parental support is "self-funding," and documentaries.

In all truth, I doubt Rowles and other critics really care whether Braff self-funds the movie. Their main beef seems to be with the fact that Braff is asking people who have less money than him to fund it. In only a slightly modified version of the argument, Rowles also lambastes celebrities who dared to suggest anyone help their friend fund his artistic endeavor. He complains that "if you look at it from a certain perspective, it sure does look like a whole lot of multimillionaires asking people on the Internet to give their lunch money to Zach Braff to make a movie while they sit back on their iPads in their ginormous Hollywood houses and eat lunches their personal chefs are making." As if his faux Guy Fawkesishness isn't showing enough, Rowles belabors the point by claiming, "I don’t mean to make it a 99 percent versus 1 percent thing, but IT’S A 99 PERCENT VERSUS ONE PERCENT thing."

Um. What?

Okay, let's play along. We will assume, for the moment, that people living in the U.S. today can actually be part of "the 99 percent." We will also assume that being part of this "99 percent" means you have zero disposable cash. For kicks and giggles, we will also assume that every appeal made over the internet by someone deemed to be a "1 percenter" is de facto coercive. Even given these assumptions, the claim still doesn't hold up. Why? Because there are 313 million people in the U.S. Of those, about 28,000 helped to fund Braff's campaign. That's a whopping 0.009% of the population. It's entirely possible that everyone who funded Braff's campaign fits into the comfortable margin of "the 1 percent," with plenty of room to spare. Perhaps Braff could add a note in the credits to his movie saying, "No 99 percenters were harmed in the making of this movie."

I'll admit I'm being purposefully obtuse just a bit. There are probably many people who funded Braff's Kickstarter campaign who rightfully believe themselves to be part of "the 99 percent," considering that in the U.S., anyone who makes $506,000 or less per year is part of that demographic. On the other hand, if you have an annual salary of a cool half mil, my guess is that you probably have a disposable cash, and our second assumption goes out the window. Finally, if you think anything posted on the intarwebs is coercive, I'll be happy to make you tin-foil hat to foil (!) the wiffy signals.

The fact is, the people who fund Kickstarter campaigns, regardless of whether they are started by big-name (or even medium-name) celebrities or relatively unknown people, are financially capable of making their own decisions about how they spend their money. Most of them are probably the same kind of people who drop $60-100 (the average contribution for Braff's campaign is $70) on the latest video game. Part of "the 99 percent" though they may be, these are not the poor, the destitute, the "oh crap, I frittered away my student loans and now have to live in my mother's basement" — well, maybe a few are the latter.

All in all, a Kickstarter campaign is inherently less coercive, and therefore evil, than anything that's "publicly funded," like every Ken Burns documentary. (Yes, Burns gets money from other sources as well, such as one of my former employers.) I don't have anything against Burns or his documentaries, but "public" funds are drawn from taxpayer dollars, which are taken by legislative writ and threat of prosecution. Just pointing that out.

It Might Be Bad

Richard Lawson at The Atlantic Wire seems particularly concerned about the quality of the final product. In his view, there's a potential for Braff to pulling a fast one Steve Miller-style by taking the money and running — and leaving financiers with a crappy piece of crap. In his own words:

But there's also the sense that we as the audience are setting ourselves up for potential grand disappointment. What happens to all those loyal Veronica Mars fans if the movie comes out and it totally sucks? (TV shows made into movies tend to suck, guys. Face it.) Or, y'know, if something happens and production has to shut down? In "normal" cases the people who lose money are investors who assumed the risk with the possibility of profitable gain in the end. It's professional. But in this case it's just fans, people zapping their money over the Internet and hoping that what comes out a year later is worth it, something that can make them happy and give them some time with actors, musicians, whomever that they love. What if it all goes wrong?

Well, taking a stab in the dark, I'm going to say that if Braff's movie sucks, he's going to lose at least 28,000 fans. Worse, he'll likely lose at least 28,000 investors for potential future projects. For his first movie he only had one investor. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather have one guy mad at me than 28,000 random internet folks who all recognize me but I have no idea what they look like.

Practically, everyone who contributes to Braff's campaign knows it could be poorly done, even if none, or very few, actually believe the final product will be bad. There's no need to point this out, as if somehow thousands of people are ignorant fools incapable of doing a cost-benefit analysis. For those who are ignorant fools incapable of doing a cost-benefit analysis, there's this great proverb about how soon they are likely to part with their money, and I'd just as soon see their parted money go towards Braff's movie than someplace else.

Furthermore, Lawson mischaracterizes how the money is transferred. Earlier in the same article, he acknowledges that "there is an exchange, it's not unilateral," recognizing that different funders get different things in return for their help in financing the movie. However, a couple paragraphs later, he seems to forget this acknowledgement and portrays fans as "people zapping their money over the Internet and hoping that what comes out a year later is worth it." The two representations of what's actually happening are mutually exclusive, and I would say they are both inaccurate.

The problem lies in Lawson's attempted comparison between "professional" studio investing and crowd-funding. Like the spoon in The Matrix, there is no dichotomy here. The funders aren't "zapping their money" on a whim and a prayer, nor are they merely getting tchotchkes like t-shirts, CDs, etc. Nor are they investors in the same sense as studio investors, hoping to make money of the project (more on that below). Rather, in addition to the hope of a great end product and whatever bonus they may get, I suspect funders are more interested in simply participating.

This is important because ultimately a funder's happiness doesn't necessarily rest in the enjoyment of the final product, but rather in how that final product gets made. "Life is a journey, not a destination," and all that. Even if Braff's movie is terrible, the experience of having participated in the process could be euphoric.

Ultimately, I'm not trying to predict how funders will react in the event Braff fails to make a quality film. I'm just trying to point out that people already are aware of the stakes, and that how it ends up may not matter that much in the long run.

Why U No Make Funders "Investors"?

A number of people have argued that Kickstarter financiers should be treated like investors, so that they have a share in the profits as well as the risk. This is a fantastic idea, and I would love to see the day when a random individual could become a shareholder in a movie. Even better would be a movie stock market where shares could be traded, and they would gain or lose value as people learned what actors and directors were attached to (or walked off of) various projects, or when other significant events occurred, such as DVD releases or premieres in other countries, etc.

Alas, at this point, there is no way for otherwise unconnected individuals to have a small, personal stake in funding a movie. If you want to profit from movies, your only options are either 1) to make a financially successful movie on your own, or 2) buy stock in a publicly traded company that has a movie studio. Since most people don't have the chops for the first option, the second option is the only real one. And with that option, you have no way of separating the good from the bad and the ugly — and since the major movie studios are, for the most part, subsidiaries of big corporations, that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of most people: If you like the movies Twentieth Century Fox produces, you have to buy shares in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. This is the way of the world we live in.

It's also why sites like Kickstarter have become popular. Such crowd-funding sites let people finance the things by skirting the "traditional" financing method. This goes way beyond movie financing, of course. A lot of people are familiar with sites like Kiva, which offer "micro-loans" to people in developing countries. My favorite indie band Sirsy is crowd-funding their "Coast to Coast 2013" tour, and they've used sponsorships to help crowd-fund their CDs, including their latest one, which featured hand-clapping sponsors on the song "She's Coming Apart." I'm sure many other artists have done similar types of things. The Internet has merely opened up more possibilities.

But as I noted in the previous section, crowd-funding is different than investing. There are sites that offer investing opportunities for small-scale contributors. One example is, Lending Club, which lets people pool their money to offer larger loans. People use the loans for all the usual things one would expect, from paying down credit cards to having a ridiculous wedding. (DISCLAIMER: I have a small amount invested at Lending Club — and you could too, if you use my referral link!) Because this is investing, people weigh the risks and rewards separately from the purpose of the loan.

That isn't true of crowd-funded programs like Kickstarter. The whole purpose of Kickstarter is to help people finance things they care passionately about, not to finance things they think will be financially profitable for themselves. The final product is important, but I suspect more important is the feeling of being included in the creation process. I already covered this above, but it bears repeating. That's why premiums like getting on an exclusive email update list or receiving an early copy of a soundtrack, or even having a speaking role in the film, work as funding incentives. If the only incentive was the final product, I suspect crowd-sourcing would be much more difficult.

I also suspect that the model for crowd-funding would change significantly if people looked at it as investing rather than "supporting." Like I said, I'd love to see a sort of stock market for specific movies — or for specific commissioned works of art in general, since that's essentially what a movie like Braff's is. But with such a market you will undoubtedly get not only people who are passionate, but also those who simply are looking to make money. As a libertarian, I don't think that's a bad thing, but it would be absurd not to acknowledge that it's a different thing.

There Are Better Things to Fund

I'm all for discovering unknown talent and supporting them financially. Did I already mention Sirsy's crowd-funded "Coast to Coast 2013" tour? (Hint: You can still contribute, even though they've reached their goal, because I'm guessing they want to drive back when the tour is over....) Another artist I recently learned about is Nataly Dawn, whose Kickstarter campaign raised $100,000, more than five times the goal. There are undoubtedly many, many, many other talented people hoping to get their deserving project(s) funded.

The argument that some have claimed is that Braff and his ilk pull money away from worthier, or at least more needy, projects. John Serba at MLive.com has five particular suggestions, and there are others who think their ideas are better than Braff's. That people are passionate about different things is a defining characteristic of humanity: As Truman Capote once wrote, "The brain may take advice, but not the heart." Arguing for the subjective value of one fascination over another is what makes the world go round.

What is not subjective is that Kickstarter statistics show most projects fail to receive full funding. Given the relative rarity of projects started by celebrities, however, it would be hard to blame Braff and other celebrities for the failure of all these projects. To choose a metaphor I'm sure would make most of these indie artists bristle, it's akin to the RIAA blaming Napster for poor record sales.

Rather, I suspect high-profile campaigns like Braff's and last-month's Veronica Mars movie actually help other Kickstarter efforts by drawing broader attention to the existence of crowd-funding efforts in general. Believe it or not, not everybody knows about everything that exists in the vast void that is the intarwebs. Case in point: My mom didn't know Kickstarter even existed until I related Braff's story to her this morning — and she's on Facebook! (GASP!) More seriously, it's virtually guaranteed that at least some of the people who contributed to Braff's campaign never before donated money via Kickstarter, and some of those newbie Kickstarters will almost certainly go on to fund other things in the same way, now that they are familiar with it.

Obviously, I have no proof of this. I can only rely on my knowledge of human nature. Kickstarter could easily verify or debunk my suspicion do this by publishing a timeline of how such well-covered campaigns affect other Kickstarter campaigns. I don't necessarily expect them to do this, but if anyone knows someone at Kickstarter who would be willing to look into it, I'd be happy to use my vast knowledge of the written language help them spin the story however is most helpful.

Ultimately, the argument that there are "worthier" artistic projects to give money to is a bunch of bunk. If we're talking about worthiness, there are probably thousands of charities which are more worthy of receiving money than anything listed at Kickstarter. Not everybody can fund everything, nor is it reasonable to expect them to. Part of possessing independent agency is the right to choose what you fund — and what you don't. It's fine not to like that other people don't choose your pet project, and even to lambaste them for it, but there's no reason to expect others will think you sensible for doing so.

Final Thoughts

I have not helped to fund Braff's campaign, nor do I plan to. I will most likely see the movie when it is made, and depending how good it is, I'll probably buy a copy of it. The reasons I'm not funding it are because 1) it's fully funded already, and likely will go well past the goal, and 2) if I had the money to fund anyone, it would be Sirsy (c'mon, third mention...you know you want to donate a few miles for their tour).

That said, the hubbub around Braff's campaign is mostly noise. It's simultaneously funny and sad when people are so heavily entrenched in their own personal Hegelian views of the world that they can't recognize when the fake dichotomies they make, such as the whole 99 percent vs. 1 percent thing, don't even fit their own models. It's even funnier when they try to make economic arguments despite misunderstanding fairly basic accounting principles, like the difference between funding and investing. Appeals for others to use their money to support your subjective artistic sensibilities, however, are just tiresome.

Personally, I hope Braff knocks it out of the park. I liked Garden State, and I hope he truly does have something that will be a worthy successor. If he does fail, I hope everyone learns an important life lesson of some sort, though I don't presume to know what the appropriate lesson should be.

Five Sirsy songs

curtis — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:48:27 +0000

It's no secret that Sirsy is my favorite indie band. I've been following them for about three-and-a-half years now, and their latest album, Coming Into Frame (my review), is the first album of new material that they've released since I first saw them in 2009.

I'm excited for the band because since their album came out in March, they've been on the road, traveling further than ever before, and gathering huger cadres of new fans. It's nice to see them getting more exposure and recognition for the years of hard work they've put into their craft, which extends well before my own familiarity with the band.

The unfortunate part, for me, is that I don't get to see them as much as I used to. The past couple weeks have been nice, since they played two shows within (a reasonable) driving distance of where I live.

Not having seen the band since the release of their new album, I realized during last week's show at Higie's Iron Horse Saloon, that there were several songs I had not yet heard them play live. Also, I realized that it has been some time since I've taken any live videos of the band. Fortunately, I have since corrected both of those deficiencies.

So, I present below four videos of songs from last night's show at The Lakehouse Pub in Skaneateles, NY. The first is off their previous album, Revolution, but the others are all from Coming Into Frame. Some of them seem like they're from prior albums because they've been playing them live so long. "Picture," which contains the album's eponymous lyric, they've only been playing live since the album was released.

The sound isn't the best quality, but don't blame the band. I recorded these on my little pocket camera, and while the Lakehouse is a great little pub, there are some acoustic dead spots. Standing about a foot from one of Mel's cymbals probably didn't help....

Anyway, now that I've really sold the videos, please do enjoy them. And hey, subscribe to my YouTube channel, if you're so inclined to subscribe to things like YouTube channels.

"Crazy" (Revolution)

"Picture" (Coming Into Frame)

"Lot of Love" (Coming Into Frame)

"She's Coming Apart" (Coming Into Frame)

"The Cost of You" (Coming Into Frame)

What bespoken images art these?

curtis — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:15:08 +0000

In April did the Avon Bard appear,
    and in that self-same month did he depart
whilst sun shone bright with ever-fulsome sneer
    and Springtime dallied chill as boggler's art.
Today, we halt anon and dream awhile
    to make our vulgar speeches simular,
frail trump'ries though they prove to be, and smile
    in epilogue to his craft insular.
Thus, here below, presented in array,
    art twenty iterations tender-writ
that if poor William wert alive today,
    he would belike have penned of his own wit.
        And if thy wisdom renders thine aplomb,
        congratulate thyself: thou art "da bomb."

(Translation: There are 20 movie quotes below written in Shakespearean language. See if you can work them out. Original quotes and sources listed at the bottom.)

Belike a contender I'l'd have been.
Whom wilt ye summon?
Existence befalls as a casket of suckets.
Verily, milady, no imputation burthens me.
Prithee, this day of mine thou must provoke.
The reek of napalm I do favor upon Aurora's blush.
I am enraged like eternal fire, and I shall bear this thing no further.
This is a fair amity's commencement, methinks.
May Fortitude accompany thee.
Make manifest the gilt!
No truth canst you toss!
One's hearth hath no rival.
Of that nymph's fare I would partake.
Upon thy greeting thou didst ensnare me.
Speak salutations to my puisny playfellow.
Arriven are they.
None constrain Baby in any nook.
I am surfeit with compulsion—the compulsion for haste!
Of all-the-world am I monarch.
Ho, Adrian!

Originals:

I could've been a contender. — On the Waterfront
Who you gonna call? — Ghostbusters
Life is like a box of chocolates. — Forrest Gump
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Gone with the Wind
Go ahead, make my day. — Sudden Impact
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. — Apocalypse Now
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore. — Network
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. — Casablanca
May the Force be with you. — Star Wars
Show me the money! — Jerry Maguire
You can't handle the truth! — A Few Good Men
There's no place like home. — The Wizard of Oz
I'll have what she's having. — When Harry Met Sally
You had me at hello. — Jerry Maguire
Say hello to my little friend. — Scarface
They're here. — Poltergeist
Nobody puts Baby in a corner. — Dirty Dancing
I feel the need—the need for speed!" — Top Gun
I'm the king of the world. — Titanic
Yo, Adrian! — Rocky

P.S. For more information about "Talk Like Shakespeare Day", go here.

Review: "When the Trumpet Sounds" by Sean Melican

curtis — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:28:33 +0000

"When the Trumpet Sounds" was originally published by Daily Science Fiction on April 5, 2013.

Imagine there's a line to get into heaven. Or rather, to get on a rocket ship to take you there. And that nothing you did could help you gain passage — the only things that matter are your health and whether you have a family.

Melican paints a vividly dystopian picture where the only chance at happiness is escaping overpopulated and disease-ridden Earth through a migration to the stars. The main character doesn't make it, because he has pneumonia when his family arrives at "the doors," behind which is a bevy of not-so-angelic doctors and nurses running tests to make sure everyone who might possibly contaminate the space-bound chosen get left behind. As a boy, he is thrown out of the promise of a better life based on some sniffles. His father (a pastor), mother and twin sister make it through the metal gates.

On one level this story is a cynical look at the theology of heaven. Although the references are Christian, they may apply to other religious ideas about who gets to partake in afterliving glory as well. Who gets accepted isn't wholly arbitrary, but it does seem to be out of many people's control. This child is denied a chance at giving his great-progeny a life of bliss on a new world because he has a curable medical condition; some children are denied the chance at eternal bliss in heaven because the right person didn't dribble some water on their foreheads. Or whatever.

However, as much religious criticism as might be seen on the surface of this story, there's something deeper as well. Being condemned isn't a license to condemn others. An old man named Moses — an ex-con who at one time would sell drugs "and steal and worse" — teaches the boy how to survive on "the line," by selling things to those who still have a chance. But while survival is cutthroat, it turns out that Moses has a different view than those who created the line in the first place. "He taught me that the people on the line shouldn't be conned, because the white scientists had already conned them." The people on the line are just hoping they're good enough to get into heaven, the con being that most of them won't, and besides, there may not be a heaven anyway. The worlds they're going to could end up just like this one.

As it turns out, Moses has never even tried to get on the ships leaving for "heaven." He's done some bad things, sure, but he's done more good. That doesn't seem to matter, at least he doesn't seem to think so. But the boy realizes maybe it does. So, even without being able to go himself, he does what he can to help his friend, the one who helped him and so many others on the line over the years. And even as Moses does something his namesake never got to do and goes off to his promised land, it's impossible not to think that maybe his having been here means this Earth isn't quite doomed. At least, not yet.

Standardizimization

curtis — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:18:29 +0000

Apparently, there's some brouhaha over standardized testing in schools. Earlier today, a friend posted a link to an article about parents in Central New York telling their children to refuse to take standardized tests, and it seems it's not just a local phenomenon. The question is, why?

Opponents of the testing say it stresses students, provides limited measurement of a child’s capabilities, takes away valuable teaching time that inspires creativity and shares personal information with private companies that provide the tests.

These are legitimate concerns, it seems to me. Certainly, I'm all for not wasting anyone's time and stressing people out, regardless of whether they are children. And I agree that standardized tests are, at best, a snapshot, and at worst they're a fuzzy, out-of-focus snapshot taken with an old Polaroid in a poorly lit room — which is not the sort of snapshot any parent wants to have taken of their child.

And yet, I can't help but wonder if encouraging your child to not take the test really does anything useful. It certainly doesn't stop the testing, and I have a hard time believing that the few kids who actually follow through with refusing to take the test (which is undoubtedly smaller than the number of kids who tell their parents that they refused to take the test) will make a statistically significant dent in the actual results of the standardized test itself. Which means that the gesture itself is largely symbolic.

Don't get me wrong, as a libertarian who studies literature, I'm all for symbolic gestures. In high school, I rarely stood for the daily recital of the pledge of allegiance — but I'd be lying if I said it was a symbolic gesture. I just thought reciting a daily pledge to an inanimate piece of colored cloth was dumb. I still do, which is why I don't put my hand over my heart or sing along with the national anthem at sports games (though, I do typically stand, but that's just because I don't see a need to purposefully provoke the uber-patriotic drunks that tend to cluster in such arenas.) But where was I? Ah, yes, symbolic gestures.

When making a symbolic gesture, it's important to understand who is actually making the gesture. Having your kid make a symbolic gesture because you believe something isn't really a symbolic gesture – it's a forced gesture. There are times when it's necessary to make your kids do things; forcing your kids to promote your own political ideas through useless acts of "civil disobedience" at the risk of making them targets of ridicule by their peers, not to mention possible disciplinary action by their teachers or school administrators, doesn't seem to be a valid one.

Private Data

The concerns about using student and teacher time more effectively hit home. But one of the concerns that I don't get is the one about private companies possibly using the data gathered by standardized tests. The irony here is that this is stated by people who give their full names in a publicly-viewable news story (published by a private company) that tells people the school district that their children attend....

Maybe privacy isn't so much of a concern as the fact that the data itself is being used by private companies for their own nefarious capitalistic needs. If that's the case, then I'm curious as to how these parents think such data should be used.

Publicly collected data is used by private companies all the time. A variety of public information — from FBI crime statistics to GAO reports to the FDA "Orange Book" (hint: it's not about oranges) to the CIA World Factbook — are used by all kinds of people, including those who work for private companies, for many different reasons. In fact, such data-gathering and public dissemination of information is one of the more useful aspects of government, in my opinion.

Perhaps the concern is more specific than simply using publicly collated data. Standardized tests are forced upon a captured audience of minors. This is BAD™. Because, you know, 1984 and stuff. As a "society," maybe we shouldn't allow our children to be used as a data mine for private companies. Sure, I can get behind that.

However, such an argument seems a bit disingenuous if you don't take a further step back. The problem is with the very idea of mandatory schoolin' to begin with. You can't force someone to take a standardized test in school if you're not already forcing them to go to school.

The arguments that constantly bemuse me are those in which people say, "Government sucks, we need more government." This is precisely the argument of former Westhill High School teacher Gerald Conti, whose resignation letter recently reached the The Washington Post. He makes some really great points about the focus of data-driven STEM pursuits, versus more liberal (in the historical, non-political sense) approaches to education. He then goes on to point out what he sees as the failures of various administrative programs, policies and procedures, summing up with a dire obituary to the profession of Teaching:

My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case.

The irony here isn't the ending quip, but the fact that Mr. Conti, or anybody else, expects anything different from a government-run system. A system that fails at every level, as Mr. Conti rightly argues, is by definition a failed system. Mr. Conti and his peers want to be trusted to teach as they see fit. But they don't want to give up the money that their schools get when they participate in such testing....

Conti, and those who argue similar points, seem to reject the idea that education could work without government. However, you can't have freedom without untethering yourself from the thing that keeps you bounded. If you want public education, then you have accept the encumbrance of public education. "Changing the system" is just another way of saying you wish to be bound differently, not be set free.

Since I'm not one of those libertarians who engages in fantasies about getting rid of the Department of Education, or that even such a move would improve the types of school-related administrative problems people seem to like complaining about, I can't really provide an alternative solution. The only solace I can take is that I don't really remember being particularly traumatized by the various standardized tests I took in the seven school districts across three northeastern states where I lived growing up. About all I hope at this point is that my kids will be able to get over it, too. They're certainly smart enough to do it, and I suspect they probably will.

A linked secondary bibliography for "The Left Hand of Darkness"

curtis — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:58:15 +0000

So, my latest class at The Mythgard Institute is over. It was the second part of a two-part History of Science Fiction class, taught by the preeminent Dr. Amy H. Sturgis. Both semesters are now available as course packs from Mythgard.

Anyway, I wrote my final paper on Ursula K. Le Guin's excellent novel The Left Hand of Darkness. I hadn't read it before this class, and I knew almost immediately after putting it down what I wanted to write about. (As I've said before, the secret to writing is reading!)

In the course of writing my final paper, I put together quite a lengthy linked bibliography of secondary sources on the novel. It's by no means comprehensive, and I certainly didn't use all these sources in my paper itself (though, I read or skimmed through a fair sample of them). Mostly, this was just an exercise in finding online resources that I could use for research.

That said, I think it may be of use to others. There are some great tools available for science fiction (and fantasy!) research, but they don't seem to really interact with each other in any way. For example, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Database is great for looking up citations and cross-referencing authors and topics, but it's not so good in the way of actually linking up to articles themselves. Likewise with the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, which is spotty with the secondary stuff but has a fantastic list of primary sources.

Granted, this is just a single bibliography on one particular book. But my hope is to work on building more like it, and hopefully building something that can pull together similar resources on a larger scale. A boy can dream, anyway....

Enjoy.

Books: The Movie

curtis — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:03:25 +0000

A recent post on the Goodreads Blog explored the question of whether stories in books are better than their adapted movies, noting that half of this year's Academy Award Best Picture nominees were based on books. The good folks at Goodreads tried to get an objective view by comparing a set of books' average ratings on Goodreads against their corresponding movie's average audience ratings (as opposed to critic's rating) on Rotten Tomatoes, a popular movie review site. It's very interesting as a snapshot of self-described utility gleaned from popular consumption.

As one might expect from a book-based site, the survey found that, of the 300 works chosen, people liked books (slightly) better. As a point of methodology, it's worth noting that Rotten Tomatoes allows half-star ratings of movies, whereas Goodreads only allows full-star ratings of books: Since the convention is to round up from half, it's possible books were rated higher than they otherwise might have been if half-star ratings were allowed, which could account for the slight overall preference for books over movies. There may be other problems as well, such as potential selection bias in choosing the initial list of books, deciding which movie adaptations to compare against if multiple movies were made, etc. In short, this goes far from settling the issue.

All that said, however, Goodreads provides interesting analysis about particular stories that appear to have a wide enjoyment disparity between media. They provide two lists, the first showing movies that were enjoyed significantly more than their books, and another which flips the two. Here are the infographics:

With any such list, it's impossible not to compare with one's own experience. For my part, I was slightly surprised by how few of the books I've read from both lists. Out of twenty books total, I've read seven, two from the first list (Forrest Gump and "Benjamin Button") and five from the second (Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Hitchhiker's Guide, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Time Machine). Of those books I've read, I'd seen all the movies except for Charlie. From both lists, I've also seen There Will Be Blood, Die Hard, Goodfellas and Polar Express.

What surprised me more, however, is how accurately these lists reflect my own opinions, based on what I've both read and seen. In fact, the only exception I would make is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," originally collected in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age Without quibbling about its status as a book (it's less than 10,000 words, thus a longish short story or a shortish novelette/novella — okay, I quibbled...), this is one of my favorite all-time stories, whereas I thought the film was mediocre at best. Clearly I am in the minority here, since the film garnered 13 Academy Award nominations and won three.

But I digress. There is more information I would like to see from this data, or from any similar data. In particular, I'm curious to know what books and movies were most closely enjoyed or despised. That is, what excellent books were turned into equally excellent movies, and what horrendous books became equally horrendous movies? Answers to these questions would, I think, help determine a sort of Nash Equilibrium for entertainment, that is, a method for identifying the optimal amount of pleasure to be gleaned by experiencing an excellent story in multiple media.

Posit: You spend a lot of time with someone. It could be a significant other, a roommate or a good friend. Both of you like to read and watch movies, and each of you could do either; however, you both enjoy either activity more when you do it at the same time — for example, because you can discuss the book or movie together afterward, or perhaps because simply having a companion magnifies enjoyment for you. This is a type of coordination game and can be described as such:

Mutual Enjoyment of Books and Movies
	You Read	You Watch
Partner Reads
Partner Watches

In this scenario, both you and your companion are perfectly content if you do what you want on your own, but see how much happier you are when you do the same thing together!

However, this is the real world, in which most people prefer reading or movie watching over the other activity. Say you like reading more and your partner prefers watching movies more. Doing the same activity together still makes you both happier than doing either alone, but given the choice, you will each do the one you prefer. In this case:

Unequal Enjoyment of Books and Movies
	You Read	You Watch
Partner Reads
Partner Watches

Again, you would both be perfectly content doing the separate activities you enjoy more, but doing separate activities you enjoy less leave both of you feeling mediocre. However, doing either activity together makes both of you happy, with one of you being much happier. Presumably, regardless of the nature of the relationship, having a happy companion makes you marginally happier than doing something alone — and hopefully that's true of your partner as well.

To take it a step further, even without the Goodreads analysis we knew that there were some movies which were better than their books, and vice versa. Building on the previous assumption, factoring in the relative quality of the book and movie causes the payoff matrix to start looking funky (technical term).

Unequal Enjoyment of a Good Book and Bad Movie
	You Read	You Watch
Partner Reads
Partner Watches

If you both read together, you not only get your normal enjoyment value out of reading a book, but also the multiplier of reading a particularly excellent book. If you both watch the movie, however, you become mad, and at best your partner feels mediocre. The value of having done something together only makes up for the poor quality of the movie a little. Inverse payoffs occur if the book is bad and the movie is good.

On the other hand, if you know that both the movie and the book are quite good, then you get great payoffs all around:

Enjoyment of a Great Book and Movie
	You Read	You Watch
Partner Reads
Partner Watches

If both the book and movie suck...go do something else.

This is all to say that, while I'm glad Goodreads started this analysis, there's more to be done. Life's too short to waste time on crappy media. How can we put this to practical use?

For starters, I think people are already heuristically good at figuring out what books and movies to watch. Obviously, that's part of the point behind social sites like Goodreads and Rotten Tomatoes to begin with. Again, part of what I find compelling about Goodreads' lists is how the results are so similar to my own tastes — at least, for those books/movies that I've read/watched. There's something almost ascendant about this sort of populist, market-based approach to determining the quality of a particular form of entertainment.

Yet, while it's a fairly easy concept to grasp, it seems hard for companies to put into practice what Goodreads demonstrated above. Retailers like Amazon.com make "recommendations" all the time, supposedly based on personal purchase histories, ratings, etc., as well as those of other people. But let's face it, these systems are not only fallible, but sometimes epically so. Is it a lack of good data? Is it too much reliance on personal preferences? The opinions of friends? The opinions of only those people who purchased "similar" items? (And is "similar" even a useful adjective in such a case?)

I'm sure many other people have asked these questions, and there are likely many answers. My little games above are, like any coordination game, in isolation. We have many forms of entertainment and other activities to pass our time, some which give us more pleasure than others. But it's fun to think about. Just think of how many pages I could have read instead of writing all this....

Curtis Weyant

A brief survey of cabin horror film "top" lists

Cabin Movies

The Lists

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Review: 1984, by George Orwell

A List of Things I Highlighted in 1984

And Finally...

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Some thank yous

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K&C TV Re-View Episode 1: Domestically Scaled Menace

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It's official: Refs hate me

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Introducing Kat & Curt's TV Re-View

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"The Lord of the Rings" as a Catholic-themed work

Works Cited

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Constitution USA, a new PBS series

Footnotes

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Braff's "brash" balls

Dude's Rich

It Might Be Bad

Why U No Make Funders "Investors"?

There Are Better Things to Fund

Final Thoughts

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Five Sirsy songs

"Crazy" (Revolution)

"Picture" (Coming Into Frame)

"Lot of Love" (Coming Into Frame)

"She's Coming Apart" (Coming Into Frame)

"The Cost of You" (Coming Into Frame)

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What bespoken images art these?

Originals:

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Review: "When the Trumpet Sounds" by Sean Melican

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Standardizimization

Private Data

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A linked secondary bibliography for "The Left Hand of Darkness"

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Books: The Movie

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