A Sort of Defense of The Amazing Spiderman

This will not be as spirited a defense as my Man of Steel thing.  Part of it is it does have some genuine flaws that bog the film down at times.  Also, there's the whole reboot fatigue thing, what with this new version coming out a scarce 5 years after Spiderman 3; not to mention that the whole concept of "gritty" franchise reboots (fresh and novel when Batman Begins and Casino Royale first premiered in the mid-'00s) had already worn thin by 2012, and are mainly now just another sign of the utter creative bankruptcy of contemporary Hollywood.

Yet though I, too, was already sick and tired of reboots by 2012, I still gave a pass to The Amazing Spiderman, because, quite frankly, the Sam Raimi/Toby Maguire Spidermans sucked.

There, I said it.

I still remember letting my then-girlfriend drag me to see Spiderman 3 in theaters clear back in 2007,  and I likewise remember swiftly regretting it, for it featured all the same lame dialogue, schmaltzy lines, overly-CGI'd effects, campy over-acting, that infuriating, nonsensical "will-they-won't-they" romance, ridiculous plot, and cringe-inducing moralizing, as the previous 2 installments.

In fact, all that surprised me this time was that my then-girlfriend also hated it--and for the exact same reasons!  In fact, everywhere I looked, folks had turned on the Spiderman franchise, naming numero tres the one that finally jumped the shark, to which all I could reply was: Really?  This is the one you hate?  But everything that's wrong with 3 is what's also wrong with the other 2!  Weren't all these flaws obvious before?

In a perverse sort of way, I was kinda grateful for Spiderman 3: for it foregrounded everything wrong with the franchise, things I'd long felt alone in noticing amongst all the fawning critical and popular praise.

What's more, as fine as an actor as Toby Maguire may otherwise be, he is simply not a super-hero:  He has neither the physique, nor the presence, nor the energy to pull off a believable action star.  I saw him with his mask off, and then I saw the computer graphics acrobating across the screen, and I could never reconcile the two.  It was more than my willing suspension of disbelief could bare.

Which is why I appreciated Andrew Garfield's take on Peter Parker--he played him like an actual teenager, one who was already twitchy, anxious, and hyper self-conscious--such that when the super-powers first started acting up, it wasn't a stretch to see him start climbing the walls, because he practically was already.  His witty one-liners also felt a lot more organic and natural in the context of them coming from an actual smart-alack teenager.  My willing suspension of disbelief had a much easier time about it.

Martin Sheen also brought a lot more grounded and believable gravitas to Uncle Ben, less a stock-figure than a real human being, than whoever-played-the-last-guy did (see what I mean?). 

Likewise, contrasted against the self-seriousness of the not-even-that-hot Kirsten Dunst, his relationship with (noticeably hotter) Gwen Stacy also felt a lot less forced, and their whole "will-they-won't-they" schtick was mercifully dropped, and if their chemistry was still sometimes awkward, well, once again, it was awkward the way actual teen romances are.

There was also no blatant 9/11 pandering in this one either, which I appreciated.  And maybe Dunst and 9/11 are related here: for they both plaster the film with an unearned sense of faux-seriousness, making it ironically more joyless than all those "gritty reboots."

In fact, let's discuss "gritty reboots": for though they were already old hat by 2012, that "gritty" feel still makes a lot more sense for Spiderman than the splashy sentimentality of the Maguire versions--for Spiderman is an urban superhero, and, surprise surprise, urban New York is kinda gritty!  Like, in real life!  Paradoxically in fact, by letting Spiderman exist in a "gritty," "realistic" environment, that freed him up to actually be less self-serious and more good-humored, you know, like the actual comic book character.

Look, I get it if one has fond memories of the 2001 version (it will be neither the first nor last terrible film that gets a free ride based on sheer nostalgia, trust me), and yes, 5 years hardly qualifies as enough time to necessitate a "reboot" already.  But look at it this way: The Amazing Spiderman is the film that should have been 10-odd years ago.  If Amazing demonstrates anything, it's that it's never too soon to correct your mistakes.

Also, you really can judge a film by its soundtrack: The Amazing Spiderman?  James Horner.  Spiderman?  Nickelback.  Nuff said.

Jesus the Christ Revisited

The above image is the cover that probably most every one who's actually read James E. Talmage's Jesus the Christ is familiar with--not the fine, ornate hardback versions that appears on some LDS bookshelves to show-off but never crack open, but the cheap-paperback version that actually gets read.

It's the cover from the "Approved Missionary Reference Library"®; there's an incredibly narrow number of non-scriptural books (like, 5 of them) approved for LDS missionaries to read on their very limited downtime, you see.  Various other books have been added to and dropped from said list over the decades, so Jesus the Christ's persistent presence thereon is, all things considered, rather impressive.  To this day, it's practically a rite of passage for young missionaries to write home about how much they loved and adored and were enthralled by Jesus the Christ and admonish everyone else to read and re-read it--I was that way, too.

Which is why I was a little trepidus to revisit it after all these years--would it hold up?  How would my experience be different now than as a teenager?  What if it sucked?  I finally just recently finished re-reading it for the first time since my mission, and here's what I found:

First, the book is before all else a harmonization of the four gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  These are Talmage's primary texts, and though he brings in some outside scholarship, the text still by and large germanes strictly to the four gospels, specifically the KJV English translation.  Those who, say, are seeking linguistic analyses of the original Greek or Hebrew are advised to look elsewhere (it does not appear that Talmage even knew Greek).  Those hoping for some discussion of the various non-canonical gospels left out by the Counsel of Nicea will likewise be disappointed (this extra-canonical exclusion is especially perplexing when one considers how loudly Talmage condemns the Counsel of Nicea, as well as his explicit endorsement of a famous edition of The Apocryphal Books of The New Testament.) This book is primarily an extended recap of the four gospels; his project it to corral the disparate data spread across the four gospels into one coherent narrative--nothing more, nothing less.

On the one hand, this can be a helpful approach, for it saves the casual, non-professional scholar (like teenaged missionaries) precious time and energy from trying to compare and contrast all four gospels on their own. But on the other hand, this approach limits the books scholarly scope--there's only basic historical analysis present here, little linguistic, and hardly even any literary analysis going on here, mostly just literary recap, as though this book were the world's longest wikipedia article on the Savior, most of his commentary the scholarly equivalent of saying "This is a thing that happened."

Those seeking the most cutting edge Biblical scholarship will of course be sorely disappointed, for this book came out clear back in the scholarly stone age of 1915.  (Though that lack of engagement with major scholarship is also ironically what probably keeps the book from becoming dated; the KJV text is the same today as it was 100 years ago, while scholarship is constantly overturning itself).

Frankly, all these reasons are probably why young LDS missionaries love Jesus the Christ so much: it saves them the hard work of having to master the New Testament themselves.  I don't mean that disparagingly--like I said, missionaries' downtime for study is severely limited, we are not graduates of rigorous professional seminaries (at least, not in the Catholic/Protestant traditions), most of us had hardly read the entire New Testament once before our missions, and besides, conversion comes about by the Holy Ghost and love and kindness, not complex Biblical exegesis.  For kids like we were, still trying to marshal a basic command of the synoptic gospels, Jesus the Christ was a godsend.

Talmage's Jesus the Christ, then, is a great primer for reading in depth the four gospels.  The problem then becomes when one goes on to actually read and study the four gospels for one's self.  Most missionaries, if they read Jesus the Christ at all, read it while still greenies, but afterwards they do actually read the synoptic gospels quite regularly.  I knew a missionary who was hardly an aspiring scholar or intellectual, who nonetheless finished the N.T. six times during his two-year mission alone, and I think I finished it at least four times myself--and I've lost track of how many times I've re-read it since.  As such, when I finally re-read Jesus the Christ this summer, I found myself constantly saying with a sigh, "Yep. Yes. Yep.  I know. I know. I know.  Uh-huh, I already knew that too," to most everything Talmage writes.

Furthermore, his hermeneutics is unapologetically LDS, and while I have no problem with that (who doesn't have a hermeneutic, and why should Talmage apologize for his?), that approach does result in the text mostly just reflecting my own opinions back at me, without adding to or challenging them, which gets old fast--again, that approach may be useful in keeping young missionaries on message, but not particularly helpful for expanding one's understanding of the New Testament.

What's more problematic is how Talmage engages with the KJV text at face value, beginning with the uncritical assumption that the present Biblical text is 100% accurate--that is, "translated correctly" (which is not a part of LDS articles of faith; and since Talmage wrote a book on those, too, he really should've known better).  All in all, Jesus the Christ, far from being some profound work of Biblical scholarship and commentary as it is often marketed, is really just the New Testament for beginners, a sort of "Total Idiot's Guide" to the life of the Savior, a giant "Jesus Christ 101" textbook.

But then, maybe that was Talmage's endgame all along (or at least the LDS Church's in handing it out to missionaries)--Jesus the Christ really is just a primer for the unitiated perhaps, an entrance point, some scriptural training wheels, a gateway, to help you feel like you've read the four gospels before you've actually read the four gospels.

I am obviously far less blown away by the book this time around than when I was 19, and part of me worries that that somehow reveals me as less spiritual now than I was then or something; but another part of me also wonders if that actually makes me Talmage's ideal reader: you read Jesus the Christ in order to become the sort of person who doesn't need to read Jesus the Christ.  Far more problematic, perhaps, would be if I was just as enthralled by Jesus the Christ today as I was when I was 19--that would show I've made no progress at all.

[Author and Apostle James E. Talmage]

But I try not to be a total crank about things, so I have compiled a brief list of things I did find genuinely insightful about Jesus the Christ:

• Talmage's catalog of the gross legal inconsistencies in the Sanhedrin's trial of Jesus is thorough, illuminating, and concise.
• I feel like an entire novel could be written on Talmage's line: "Mary appears never to have fully understood her Son."
• And I believe that an entire novel has been written on (and a Martin Scorsese film based upon) the line: "Christ's realization that He was the chosen and foreordained Messiah came to Him gradually."
• Talmage's connection of Satan's "If thou be the Christ..." in the desert, with the Sanhedrin's taunts of "If thou be the Christ..." on the cross, is masterful.
• Talmage also pulls off an intriguing balance between emphasizing both Christ's humanity and his divinity.
• Boy, does Talmage sure hate Judas Iscariot.  Anyone hankering for a more sympathetic Jesus Christ Superstar-type treatment won't find it here.
• Yet at the same time, he's weirdly pitying of Ponchus Pilot.
• None of this is to imply that Talmage is illiberal or ungenerous; he says of the parable of the Good Samaritan: "We are not justified in regarding priest, Levite, or Samaritan as the type of his class; doubtless there were many kind and charitable Jews, and many heartless Samaritans." 
• In fact, when one considers how as recently as 2004, Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ utilized the same old anti-Semitic caricatures that have plagued Christianity for centuries, then Talmage's fastidious avoidance of even the faintest hint of anti-Semetism clear back in 1915 is downright refreshing (he's careful to only implicate the rulers, never the Jews--and even then, only some of the rulers).
• And despite writing in 1915, Talmage could be writing of today's sexist double standards when he notes sardonically of those who brought the adulteress before Christ, "One may reasonably ask why the woman's partner in the crime was not brought for sentence, since the law so zealously cited by the officious accusers provided for the punishment of both parties to the offense."
• "It is noteworthy that the Lord specified belief rather than faith as the condition essential to the case."  That's a line that could use a lot more explication.
• Talmage also does an excellent job of explaining how and why Christ's declarations of "He who is without sin, cast the first stone" and "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's" were so brilliant and devastating to his enemies.
• Talmage, an Apostle himself, showed some real chutzpah when he wrote: "Holy Apostleship is no guarantee of eventual exaltation in the celestial kingdom." (Something to remember for those of us who assume that Church leadership positions are an ipso facto divine validation of one's goodness).
• Talmage is also good at highlighting how Christ was literally alone, bereft of the sustaining presence of God, when he cried out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." 
• He's also good at explaining how Christ's death was a miracle as well, since men were supposed to take days to die after increasing exhaustion, not after a mere 3 hours and then a scream.
• It's surprisingly moving when Talmage notes that the "mixture of water and blood" that came from Christ's side is consistent with the medical effects of "a rare heart-valve rupture," and then says, "The present writer believes that the Lord Jesus died of a broken heart." 
• Talmage also matter-of-factly assumes that the Book of Mormon takes place mostly near the "Isthmus of Panama."  Take that, conservative "Heartland" theorists!
  
  [A piece about Christ should really have a picture of Him, shouldn't it]

A Defense of Man of Steel

If you went by sage wisdom of internet comment boards, you'd assume that Man of Steel is the most uniformly panned and despised superhero movie in the history of mankind; of course, if you went by the internet, you'd also assume that Community was the most popular TV show in America, so there's that.

Also, since the flick grossed well over a half-billion dollars globally, I think it's safe to say that not only is it probably not as universally detested as they interwebs might indicate, but that in fact quite a few people seem to have actually enjoyed it, to say the least.  In fact, one might even argue that mounting a defense of Man of Steel against the internet commentariat is a bit like defending the likeable, affable captain of the football team against the scowling cluster of angry nerds at the back of the lunchroom who wonder why girls don't like nice guys like them.

To be clear, I didn't love Man of Steel or anything.  I only thought it was fine.  It has its flaws, viz: the film never quite reconciles Producer Christopher Nolan's "gritty realism" (™) with Director Zach Snyder's fawning comic-book fidelity, resulting in a somewhat uneven tone.  The opener on Krypton runs a bit too long.  A lot of the dialogue is clunky.  I can totally get why, after all the hype, some folks could claim that Man of Steel was a bit of a disappointment.

But I do feel that the vitriolic hatred directed at the film by the comment boards is largely unjustified.  Maybe my viewing benefited from lowered expectation following its many mediocre reviews; it certainly benefited from my having then recently seen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which really is a long, dull, poorly-paced, boring slog of a misfire that fails its source material at every turn--serious, every movie looks better after seeing The Hobbit.  In any case, I actually enjoyed Man of Steel, and although, again, a mega-successful blockbuster probably doesn't need much defending, I do feel this bizarre need to vindicate this movie against the most common charges leveled against it.

First: The Commentariat claim to be appalled--appalled, I tell you!--by the staggering amount of civilian deaths and property damage inflicted upon Metropolis by the film's climactic battle.  This accusation always felt strange to me, because I've seen The Avengers too, a film that is uniformly beloved by all the comic book nerds, and justifiably so--it's a dumb film, but it's the right kind of dumb, a really fun dumb that takes itself just seriously enough for there to be real stakes but not so seriously that it ever forgets that this is still just a comic-book movie.  Nevertheless, that film's climactic battle likewise features a staggering civilian death toll and property damage upon New York--a non-fictional city, mind you! (Apparently we're finally over 9/11 now?)

"Ah, but the difference is that the Avengers were constantly trying to protect civilians while battling the invading space hordes!" is what I've heard some cry out.  To which I say: how convenient!  I'm sure if Superman had had a group of super-friends to fight along his side, then he could also have prevented quite the same level of wanton death and destruction!  But whereas The Avengers had each other and thus could teach a whole new generation of 9-year-olds the importance of teamwork, need I remind anyone that Superman was fighting this alien invasion all by himself?! 

And not only was he fighting all by his lonesome self, but against a half-dozen supermen with all the equivalent powers as him--what's more, General Zod and his posse are certainly not the knock-off Phantom Menace drone-soldiers of The Avengers, but trained warriors and brilliant tacticians with zero empathy or sense of morality, manning a hyper-advanced starship that is trying to murder every living thing on Earth in order to terraform it into a second Krypton.  Superman here is not only outnumbered, but (to paraphrase Nick Fury) hilariously out-gunned; if Supes forgets to catch a falling civilian from a collapsing sky-scraper, well, it's probably because he was a little side-tracked trying to stop the psychotic death machine from killing literally everyone else.  Superman gets lambasted as an amoral sociopath, even though that's exactly who he's fighting!  When the Third Reich blitz-bombed London, the English did not get mad at the RAF for shooting back.

Second: Spoiler Alert!  Superman kills General Zod at the end.  Darth Vader is also Luke's father and Bruce Willis was dead all along.  Anyways, apparently if you're a comic book purist or whatever, then you find Superman's killing of Zod to be some complete betrayal of the character's ethos, who I guess is supposed to be virtue and decency personified, and thus bends over backwards to never kill anyone, even a genocidal sociopath, apparently.  Of course, if someone's a comic book purist or whatever, then they should probably remember all the other times Superman has killed villains throughout his long, convoluted publishing history (I seem to remember Doomsday being a super-being he killed to save others?  And Brainiac?  And Darkseid?  And, well, Zod?  I also hear tell that in his early history, Superman battled mob-bosses and Union-busters by punching them.  Probably killed them).

But besides the inconsistency of lambasting a super hero based upon an inconsistent comic book series, there's the rather stark simplicity of Superman's moral dilemma: This ain't the ol' Philosophy 101 thought problem of whether one should flip the railroad switch to save 2 people tied to the tracks up ahead but kills 1 other person on the other tracks or whatever. There isn't a profound moral quandary here. Simply put, Zod is Superman without the empathy.  He is just as indestructible and powerful, and he's already demonstrated his willingness to kill everything on Earth given half a chance.  I should hope Superman kills him, the same way he would a rabid dog.  In fact, if Superman had somehow spared Zod, only for Zod to later break out of space-prison or whatever to try and destroy Earth again in the sequel, resulting in millions more civilian deaths and property damage, that would truly have been morally unconscionable!  Not to mention a cheat.  Superman kills Zod to prevent him from repeating the exact same destruction the Commentariat so lambasts about Man of Steel.  Be consistent, nerds: you can't condemn the destruction in Man of Steel and Superman killing Zod in the same breath.

Third: Maybe not as major a plot point, but I've heard some folks complain about that penultimate scene when Superman destroys the drone that's been spying on him.  "That's a $12 million piece of hardware!" shouts the general.  "It was," corrects Superman.  This scene for some feels emblematic of Man of Steel's utter disregard for the gratuitous destruction that this iteration of Superman wrecks everywhere he goes.  To which all I can say is: Guys, when on Earth did we start defending Drone Warfare?!  The U.S. government is spying on its own citizens, Edward Snowden has confirmed this for us, and Superman, who's Mr. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" incarnate, shows the government exactly what he thinks about that.  The new Captain America sequel is basically anti-Drones and Edward Snowden with 'splosions, and the nerds love that movie (me included).  In fact, Captain America 2 ends with the Cap destroying 3 trillion-dollar hover-carriers (price estimated), basically because they were our worst fears about Drone Warfare embodied, as well he should.  So why get mad at Superman for destroying one single actual drone, then?  Guys, we should be encouraging drone destruction in our pop art.

Frankly, the anger about the death toll and property damage in Man of Steel feels like a justification for hating on the flick, an a posteriori rationalization, not the primary motivation.  (It's certainly not like massive destruction is a new feature of Hollywood films).  So from whence cometh all the hate?  My current theory is that folks still love the original Christopher Reeve Superman films; and especially after Reeve became some sort of folk hero after his paralysis and death, any attempts to reboot the franchise have been met with unconscious resentment.  Now, I actually went and rewatched the original 1978 Superman when Man of Steel came out; I have fond childhood memories of that film, and I was curious to see how it holds up.  And indeed, the Reeve love is mostly justified, he is a very charismatic actor with a boyish charm who has defined the roll for a generation; anytime Reeve is on screen, the movie sparkles.  But what many forget is that there are large swaths of the film where Reeve is not on screen.

For example, do you remember that Lex Luthor has a comedic henchman named Olaf in the film?  He's as unfunny as he sounds.  There's also that scene of Superman flying through the night sky with Lois Lane in a hot-pink nightie, while she spoken-word recites the lyrics to the movie's love theme--it is so diabolically cringe-worthy that I assume most everyone blocks it out when they praise the film.  Gene Hackman also really hams up Luthor with some of the dumbest real estate plans in existence: nuking the west coast to sink it into the sea?  Really?  He honestly thinks he'll be able to flip his Nevada beach-front property and not, say, be executed for crimes against humanity?  Moreover, Superman III and IV both really sucked, giving the Reeve films a .500 batting average at best.  Also--and apparently this bares repeating--you can't actually make the Earth spin backwards simply by flying really, really fast around it, and even if you could, such would not make one travel back in time.  Superman is the late-70s equivalent of The Avengers--a fundamentally dumb film, but at least the right kind of dumb, a fun dumb.  But still dumb.  (I suspect The Avengers will age the same way).

Contrast the stupidity of Lex Luthor against the lead villain in Man of Steel--a xenophobic, nationalistic, patriotic yet sociopathic General Zod, who, driven mad first by his failed coup and then by the destruction of his home, goes off the deep end as he madly tries to reconstruct a lost world for his people by destroying Earth.  His motivations are almost sympathetic, even as his methods are monstrous.  There is a sort of weary plausibility to this Zod, because there are in fact people like Zod in real life, willing to kill and destroy everyone to create a homeland (I believe some of them are in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine as we speak).  Hackman's Lex, meanwhile, is only cartoonishly evil, in the dumbest way possible.

Other things I preferred about Man of Steel: Lois Lane figures out from the beginning that Clark Kent is Superman.  I frankly found that refreshing.  Leave the will-they-won't-they schtick to Cheers and Friends, it was tired as a comic book trope over 30 years ago.  I also liked the portrayal of the U.S. military, which in most of Hollywood is either impossibly competent (e.g. Independence Day) or impossibly incompetent and in need of rescuing (e.g. well, The Avengers).  But in Man of Steel, they are appropriately distrustful of Superman when they first meet him, then appropriately trustful when he fights alongside them, and though they stand their ground when they can and are even reasonably competent in delivering that Phantom-Zone thingamajig, they are still absolutely outclassed and lose every battle with Zod everywhere, because, well, they are battling a super-advanced alien civilization.

The film is also very well-paced, which is the single most underrated element of any action film (though again, I admittedly may just think so cause everything is well-paced compared to The Hobbit.  Mold growing between shower tiles is well-paced compared to The Hobbit.)

Again, I only liked Man of Steel, I certainly didn't love it or anything.  I only wrote about this silly film for this long because I live in the ever-present dread that if I'm not constantly always writing about something, then I'll forget how to write altogether.  (Practice makes perfect, after all).  Maybe the larger lesson here is simply that I quit reading internet comment boards altogether, and thus find better things to write about.  But in the meantime, I thought Man of Steel was a perfectly serviceable film, and hating on it is not only a disproportionate response, but frankly kind of an idiotic one, too.

Facebook Was NEVER Actually Cool, Kids

So every few months, some new clickbait appears about how the kids these days "say that facebook isn't cool anymore"; indeed, some of these kids have told me so in person, telling me that they spend so much time on the twitters and the instagrams and so forth that they're "hardly ever on facebook anymore"--yet these same 18-year-olds keep adding me on facebook, "liking" my statuses and photos, and updating their profile pics.  If this is what qualifies as "hardly on facebook anymore," I'd hate to see their instagrams.

Although the demise of facebook would probably be one of the more positive things that could happen to our civilization, the reports of its impending death have likely been greatly exaggerated, no matter how much the kids and the clickbaiters might pontificate otherwise (and not just because a billion-plus active users kinda gives the lie to its supposed loss of prestige).

What it comes down to is this: Facebook was never actually cool, kids!  Serious.  I was in college myself when this ridiculous little social network exploded--that was my generation--and I can testify that every single other person my age who first opened a profile did so with a groan and a grimace.  We couldn't believe that we were doing this--in fact we still can't believe that we did this.  We mocked it as mercilessly and relentlessly during the Bush Administration as we still do today.  Each and every day, from roughly 2006 to the present, we have asked ourselves why even have a facebook, and only sheer inertia and the occasional cat video keeps most of us from up and closing it for good.  Claiming that facebook isn't cool is like claiming that insurance adjusters aren't cool, or that public utilities aren't cool--they were never cool to begin with, and their continued existence and utility has little to do with their coolness factor. 

Stranger Than Fiction: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

 So near the end of each semester, I would teach a short excerpt from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave," the autobiography of a slave turned abolitionist pre-Civil War.  I assigned the part where a young Frederick has been rented out for a year to Mr. Covey, a particularly brutal farmer known for being a "slave-breaker."  But for once, his brutality backfires: Frederick finally snaps, and starts beating Mr. Covey for 2 hours straight; he even has a moment straight out of Hollywood wherein he grabs Covey by the throat and raises him into the air (serious, why isn't this book a movie?).

 After this incident, Covey never whips him again.  Frederick Douglass highlights this fight as a "turning point" in his "career as a slave," for "it rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free."  And indeed, 4 years later, he did finally make his thrilling escape North.

 So here's my sincere question that I always posed to my students: why didn't Mr. Covey just straight up murder Frederick after their fight?  Just go grab his rifle and be done with it?  Legally in the state of Maryland, he would have been completely within his rights to do so.  In fact, earlier in his autobiography, Frederick recalls seeing a slave, after a particularly brutal whipping, head straight to the river to soak his back; the overseer gallops over, orders the man back to the fields, but the slave ignores him.  So the overseer simply unslings his rifle, takes aim, and stone-cold murders the man right there and then, letting the body float down river as an example to others, without any legal repercussions.  And that was a slave that was merely passively disobedient, not one actively attacking his overseer!

In fact, the behavior of slaves like Frederick Douglass is exactly what Southern whites feared more than anything at the time; the slave revolt in Haiti had practically transformed Dixie into a police state, what with spies and informants everywhere and the postal service reading everyone's mail to prevent a similar uprising in North America; Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831 and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 likewise freaked out the entire South.  A panicked Mr. Covey could have easily ran straight into town after his brawl with Frederick and been back with a lynch mob in 10 minutes flat.  So why didn't he?

My students and I have brainstormed a number of possibilities: Maybe it was a pride thing, Covey didn't want to lose his reputation as a "slave-breaker"; maybe it was economic, no one would rent slaves to him anymore if word got out that he couldn't control them; maybe Frederick actually won Covey's begrudging respect after that fight; maybe all of those, maybe none of those, who knows.

Cause here's the thing: if this episode had happened in fiction, I would have just dismissed it as a nice thought but totally unrealistic, as pure Hollywood, a Django Unchained-esque vengeance wish-fulfillment fantasy that nevertheless would've never happened in real life.  But it did happen in real life!  That's the incredible, wonderful thing!  This book is autobiography, non-fiction, "just the facts, ma'am."  I'm glad Frederick wasn't murdered, and even more glad that he escaped to freedom, but why was he able to?  That's the question I find so fascinating!

Now, it's not exactly a surprise to me anymore to learn that reality is always stranger than fiction; but the fact never ceases to astound me, either--and that real life can be at once far worse and far better than we can imagine.  Just why didn't Covey kill Frederick?  Thoughts?  I'm sincerely asking.

Batman vs. Iron Man

When The Dark Knight debuted in 2008, it was quickly acclaimed not just for the quality of Heath Ledger's Joker and Christopher Nolan's direction, but for how perfectly it captured the zeitgeist, what with those opening scenes of black billowing smoke emerging from an assaulted federal building reminiscent of 9/11, and the Joker as the international terrorist par excellence, encapsulating all our anxieties about those "men who just want to watch the world burn" without regard to pain or torture or reason or basic human decency, and the deep moral quandaries of Batman using NSA-esque cellphone-tapping to track down these terrorists, and etc.

Taking their cues right from the Dark in the title and the troubling ending, many critics and fans alike have pointed to The Dark Knight (alongside such other "gritty" and similarly 9/11-milking films as Star Trek Into Darkness and Casino Royale and Skyfall and No Country For Old Men and so forth), as popular expressions of the general hopelessness, despair, and fear felt by the American public in our post-9/11 world gone mad. 

Such sweeping generalizations are always problematic at best, however, as shown by the fact that that same summer of '08, The Dark Knight was not the only franchise-defining superhero blockbuster about a billionaire playboy philanthropist with parental-abandonment issues who transforms into a high-tech vigilante after a personal tragedy in a post-9/11 world gone mad. 

I am referring, of course, to Iron Man.

Arguably Iron Man foregrounds these post-9/11 tropes even more explicitly than Batman; in the opening scene, protagonist Tony Stark is straight-up in Afghanistan, demonstrating his company's new weapons of mass destruction for the U.S. military, when he is captured by a Taliban-esque group (secretly funded by his treacherous business partner) that forces him to create just such weapons for them, which is when he builds his first robo-suit to escape instead.  He then designs an even better robo-suit to battle U.S.-corporate-funded international terrorism.  It's a 9/11 movie that doesn't even try to disguise its 9/11-ness. 

Yet tonally, Iron Man and The Dark Knight could not be more different! The latter is quite literally "dark," gritty, and brooding; the former is all bright colors, big explosions, and slap-stick comedy.  For although both flicks (if we're being honest) are brazenly adolescent-male vicarious fantasy wish-fulfillments, Batman  subsumes those fantasies under a veneer of "dark themes" and such, while Iron Man openly and cheekily embraces them.  Dark Knight may win in the "genuinely serious film" category, but Iron Man probably wins in the "sheer, stupid fun" bracket.  If you were to going to try to gauge the mood of the American public in 2008 strictly by Iron Man, you might conclude not that we are all anxious, fearful, and despairing like The Dark Knight, but as brash, cocky, and cartoonishly self-confident as ever. 

Probably both films are right--we at once feel more helpless and impervious, more serious and more carefree, more anxious and more cocksure, as we ever have.  Most individuals are walking masses of contradictions (a major theme in both Batman and Iron Man), so why not entire countries?  My point here is not to argue that one film is secretly better than the other or whatever, but simply to demonstrate the problematics of trying to make sweeping over-generalizations about an entire generation based solely upon a couple of popular movies.

(Though for the record, impossible as it would be for DC and Marvel to play nice, I would totally pay real money to see a Batman vs Iron Man movie.  "Superman vs Batman" my eye!)

Low's July

 

[From Things We Lost In The Fire] 

This song is brilliant, because there really is this malaise associated with the month of July, isn't there.  Because you must now confront the fact that the year is not only half over but past half over!  I mean, wasn't it just New Years?  But no, the summer solstice is past and our souls are not saved; the days have started to imperceptibly shorten again with the threat of much shorter soon to come, and even in this the high heat of summer you just know in the back of your mind that the world is already tilting away from the sun again, that your summer vacation cannot last.  Any and all New Years resolutions of yours are not only long forgotten, but laughably so. 

The song even appears exactly midway through Low's 2001 critical-high-water-mark album Things We Lost In The Fire, so to emphasize the month's midway point between the starts of our hopes and the end of another year.  That is, it's already getting too late to do all the things you said you'd finally do this year, the time keeps passing too fast.  Suddenly the song's opening rhymes of "Wait/It's late/We missed/The date" doesn't sound so simplistic anymore.

You even have to listen to the song's understated opener for years before you realize that Alan and Mimi's inimitable harmonies, gently rising from major to minor key, actually mimics a rising scream in the softest way possible, like the quiet desperation Thoreau warned us against.  This is the song for those summer months when the joy of finally getting to sleep in has worn off, because now all those late mornings leave you with less and less daylight to do all that you intended to do even as the daylight in general shortens once more, and you know it, but still you just keep sleeping in.  "They'll never wake us in time..." comes the alarmed realization and repetition at the start of each chorus, like an alarm clock sounding perpetually too late.

So of course, what do we do?  With an unquiet anxiety that is unmoved by our promises, we swear that we'll get to it tomorrow, or next month, or finally get our act together come summer--"maybe we'll wait till July..." says the song, giving it its title; for this isn't just a song for the summer slipping away you see, but for all the months leading up to July as well, when we slog through our school years and day jobs and early mornings and harsh winters and myriad other inescapable distractions and responsibilities, even while we subconsciously sense that there are far better ways we could be spending our more-limited-than-we-care-to-admit time on this Earth than the daily minutiae that plagues and binds us; maybe we'll finally find the time to do it come Summer break, perchance?  When the weather's nicer, mayhaps?

"Maybe we'll wait till July" we tell ourselves, but the song is already wiser, for it knows that come July we'll just say "then August," and the song brutally continues down the list of chilling months in a whisper far more menacing than any scream can be, "September,  October, November, oh, December..." like the final hiss of death that the winter solstice represents.  The songs achingly beautiful finale of "la-la-las" is us la-la-la-ing our time away in the inevitable march of procrastination.  The wait till July represents the beginning of the end, of the year, of all time, both metaphorically and literally...