Monthly Archives: May 2012

Great Movie Villains, Volume IX: That Witch With a Bow!

30 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Movie Villainy, Movies

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Katniss Everdeen
(Avoid at all costs!)

Now some of you may think the title to this piece is a little harsh, maybe even disrespectful. But I’m telling you, if you had seen the movie I just saw, you might be calling her something a little to the left of the term I actually used.

There is a word for her kind, and it rhymes with itch!

I’ve been hearing about this movie for months, and I was really looking forward to it. The title alone had me sold from the beginning. It sounded like a nice sports flick, maybe with a bit of a charity angle worked in. How can you not love a movie with sports and philanthropy? I was really looking forward to this.

I missed a minute or two at the beginning, but as I understand it, there were supposed to be 24 kids in this contest; it’s winner take all. Great! I love a nice high-stakes contest. So, I can’t wait to learn how the games are played and watch our hero develop character and depth on the way to becoming a true champion.

What followed was the most vulgar display of brutality and poor sportsmanship that I have ever seen.

Ever!

Run!!!

You see, the lead actress is not down with the plan. Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Shrader Lawrence) doesn’t even want to hold her team-mates hand in the opening ceremonies. With all the people from her home town pulling for the two of them, she has to be talked into this simple gesture of solidarity.

As if that wasn’t enough, you should see what this spoiled little princess does when some television executives don’t give her enough attention. All I can say is you better stay away from the orchard fruit when this girl wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.

I mean seriously, …sounds a bit like glitch!

Katniss doesn’t even stick around for the start of the game. When the pepper meats the paprika, this spoil-sport takes off and runs the opposite direction. It works out in her favor though, because some sort of disaster befalls the other contestants. I really couldn’t figure out what it was that happened, because the cameraman was awfully shaken up by the whole thing. That sequence was really hard to follow, but the one thing that I know about the opening sequence to the games is that while other athletes were playing and dying, our main character was doing her damnedest to get the hell out of Town.

Cowardly stitch!

The people who run the games had to trick little Katniss back out onto the game field, and even then she spent most of her time hiding in the trees. When some of the other boys and girls came to welcome our wayward girl back to the contest, she wouldn’t even come down to meet them. Worse than that, Katniss soon proved just how far she was willing to go to prove herself the worst sport ever to disgrace any game ever. She knocked a big nest of wasps down onto her fellow contestants as they slept below her.

It was awful. One of the girls died. I can only assume the poor girl was allergic or something. That’s right, Katniss killed one of the other contestants. I don’t even think she was sorry.

Knows a guy named Mitch!

In fact, Little Miss spoil-sport was just getting started with the wasp nest. Next, she blew-up the food stores for all the contestants (apparently the games had an endurance element to them). Katniss followed that up by killing yet another of the other contestants just as her new best friend falls prey to some terrible accident. That’s right, while the innocent little girl dies an unfortunate death (the cause of which I never quite understood), our girl Katniss was busy shooting another contestant with an arrow.

Yes, it was fatal.

Rue (Died of an Unfortunate Coincidence)

Up to this point, you could perhaps have given Katniss the benefit of the doubt. She had no way of knowing about the one girl’s allergies, and her friend, Rue? Well Katniss can’t really be blamed for that, …I don’t think. I don’t even think you can blame her for disaster that befell the other contestants. But when you shoot a guy with an arrow, there just isn’t much doubting your intent. By this point it’s damned clear. Our girl Katniss is a damned murderer.

An itchy murderer!

I can only guess as to the intended nature of the games, but what difference could that possibly make? When you invite this girl to the party, it turns into a war of attrition.

The whole thing comes to a head when one of the contest finalists falls prey to a pack of wolves. Guess how our hero helps out!

Go-one guess!

She kills the guy. I mean how cold do you have to be to refuse help to a man being eaten by wolves?

Cold! I tell you. Stone cold pitch!

So, after all the murder and mayhem, the game officials make one very simple request, that our girl and the one person she hadn’t put under the turf should actually play off one final round. You would think the least she could have done is to grant this one simple request, what with a whole nation watching and the fate of the hungry poor hanging in the balance!

How does little miss Ever-mean react? She threatens to poison herself instead.

You have to wonder, what the hell is she afraid of? It’s just a contest! Can’t she just play one round of this game after all that’s happened? Couldn’t she just give the audience just a little taste of the contest they were supposed to be watching all along?

You would think that wouldn’t be too much to ask. But no. With a single injured opponent, this girl STILL wouldn’t step up and give it a go. Instead, she gets out some poison berries, cons the other contestant into some sort of suicide pact, and gets ready to Jim Jones the whole affair.

The Hungry are Still Hungry
Bet on it!

And do you know how the people behind the games respond to this pathetic display of passive-aggressive manipulation? They give-in. they totally give-in! In some typical lefty-liberal display of everybody-wins nonsense, the fools declare a shared victory, thus depriving a whole nation of viewers of the chance to watch even one, JUST ONE, actual game.

I can only assume the hungry didn’t get their donations!

Damned Dirty Ditch!

The Straight Shooter Who Isn’t!

27 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in General

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I really love these 1800 Tequilla commercials!

By “love” I probably mean something else. But seriously, how can you not love a commercial that tells someone to drink like a man? A man oughtta dress like a man, and drink like a man, right? Mostly, remember to drink like a man!

Can these guys be just a little more flagrant about their use of peer-pressure? I get that it’s supposed to be fun, and I get that Michael Imperioli is doing a character (and by ‘get’ I probably mean ‘hope’), but this reminds me of the bad-guys in after-school specials and 70s sitcoms. I can practically hear someone in the background telling Greg Brady how all the cool kids are smoking. Seriously boy, drink like a man.

Drink like a man!

But that is nowhere near as golden as this next commercial. See that straight-shootin’ celebrity spokesman there. Proximo (the folks who make 1800 Tequila) wanted a non-nonse kind of guy for this campaign. According to Elwyn Gladstone, Vice President of Marketing; “The roles (Imperioli) has played in his acting career have made him an icon within American popular culture. Just like 1800 Tequila, he’s not going to be pushed around. He tells it like it is.”

I can see what they are talking about too. Other people get distracted by silly fluff and frivolous distractions, but not Imperioli. He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy, one who gets right to the heart of the matter!

…which is exactly why he sells Tequila by talking about cars.

The Spirit Always Grows Deeper On the Other Side of the Fence

23 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Native American Themes, Religion

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Canyon de Chelly national Monument (Chinle)

It had been a very long drive into work that week, not the least of reasons being a heavy snow storm that descended upon the central Navajo Nation just as I got into the area. I didn’t expect to see my landlady in the office, but there she was. She and I normally passed each other going both ways of our weekly commutes, and upon seeing her I assumed she had been trapped in town by the snowstorm. Would I be on the floor that night? …or asleep in the office? Not to worry, my landlady and her 4-wheel drive were on the way out of town, but she wanted me to know that I would have company that night after all.

I cocked an eyebrow and waited to learn more.

It turns out she had picked up a guy on the side of the road near Chinle. She didn’t know much about him, except that he was a bilagáana (a white guy) and he had come out to the reservation looking for native wisdom. She had blessed him with his first taste of that wisdom by getting him in out of the cold. She added that she thought he was sick. So, I taught my class that evening and headed over to the house wondering what (or rather whom) I would find.

I’ve long since forgotten the man’s name, but he was indeed sick. A doctor had apparently told my guest that his Prostate Cancer could not be treated. So, he had come to Navajo country in the hopes that a Medicine Man could accomplish something that modern science could not. My guest didn’t elaborate much on his condition, though his frequent trips to the bathroom might have testified in some sense to the diagnosis. He was French, as I recall. I don’t think he ate at all that night, nor did he accept an invitation to breakfast.

The house contained two quite decent beds, but no central heating. So, my guest slept on the floor that night and I slept on the couch, thus putting us both near the coal-burning stove. In the morning, he pulled out his tarot cards and tried to get a sense of what the day had in store for him. The man offered to do a reading for me, but I declined. It had been a long time since I had left that sort of thing behind, and I didn’t want it back in my life, not even as a sort of social experiment. Instead, the man explained what each card meant as he drew it during his own reading. There was some good and some bad, and as one might expect, a lot of wiggle room on the particulars.

Although I asked, the man never really told me whether or not he was looking for someone in particular. I suspect he thought the practical problem of finding a Medicine Man willing to help him would resolve itself, perhaps with the aid of his cards or some comparable means of divination.

I don’t think my guest ever asked me for anything, nor did he accept anything I offered. The storm had broken late that evening, and his reading had been promising. So, the man opened the door to find a truly beautiful morning. Soon, he was on his way.

***

It is hard to explain just how out-of-place my guest for the evening had been. The man would have had far more luck turning south and heading into Sedona. Perhaps one of the more shady medicine-men would have sold him a quick Blessing-Way, but the real thing, so to speak, is a family affair. It would take friends and relatives to put together the resources, to aid in the ceremonies, and to help in the long rites. The proper healing from a local perspective might have taken several nights on end with several participants needed to make all this work. The logic of the system is as much social as it is metaphysical. Repayment for all of this effort would take the form of similar service when those same people needed help in various forms over the course of their lives.

This man didn’t really fit into the scenario he was trying to bring about. It wasn’t just the clumsy eclecticism of tarot cards and native healers that seemed off to me. On a much more profound level, my guest had come seeking a personal experience; its social implications were simply beyond him. With enough goodwill, folks could of course devise a work-around, but how likely was it that anyone would give him the chance? To say nothing of the odds that any of it would work!

Who knows?

I could easily hope that my guest for that evening found what he was looking for and flourishes today, living evidence that my sense of both metaphysics and indigenous culture are dead wrong on all counts.

It was desperation, not malice, that brought this man to Navajo country, and yet his failure to appreciate the social setting was part of a much larger problem. I often wonder just what is it about other people’s rituals and beliefs that makes them so attractive to those on a spiritual quest, even with personal health hanging in the balance? Among other things, this question always comes to mind when I think of that particular night in Chinle. Once that question takes hold of my thoughts, I cannot help but to want to follow it down a few similar paths.

***

I’m not altogether unfamiliar with the sort of thinking my guest brought with him that night. I remember reading about the ascended spiritual masters (Kuthumi, Maitreya, St. Germaine, etc.) in my grandmother’s old Theosophy books. The masters dwelt on this earth, at least when they wanted to, or so I read. The home of the masters, so the story goes, rested in the remotest parts of Tibet. I suppose that when the books had been written, this seemed an adequate explanation for the seeming impossibility of finding the masters by normal means. It took meditation to bridge the distance.

I remember sitting in on a séance as a child in the early 70s, one in which I and several family members received the names of our spirit guides. I remember the name of my “Indian guide.” It was “White Thumb.” With the name of “Wee One,” my “Joy Guide” also seemed to bring to mind an Indian, albeit a little one, perhaps an invisible playmate, …very useful to a kid living on a ranch inconveniently far from my classmates. I wasn’t half as interested in any of my other guides as I was in these two.

I also remember that the name of my father’s Indian guide had been of the South Asian variety. I cringe at the explanation, …this was a higher form of Indian guide, so he was told. I cringed again many years later when a family friend dismissed questions about the authenticity of sweat baths run by non-Indian practitioners. She assured me that she and her spiritual mentors were engaged in practices far more advanced than anything Native Americans had actually done. And of course I thought about all of this when I learned about the tragedy of a sweat bath lead by James Arther Ray. I wonder if he too was engaged in practices far more advanced than those of the Indian peoples from whom he borrowed piecemeal?

I remember a woman at a Native American Studies conference who once asked me if I was following the “Red Road,” a question so loaded with cultural baggage I couldn’t begin to unpack it in time to give an adequate response. I expect the woman must have found me quite a disappointment.

But Spiritual appropriation isn’t just limited to Native American traditions. I recall with great pleasure reading Karma Cola long before I headed out to the rez. Gita Mehta’s brutal observations on the antics of spiritual tourists in India touch upon issues quite familiar to those observing how Native traditions fare in New Age circles. Many of the characters she describes in Karma Cola appear quite as hapless as my guest sitting there reading tarot cards on his way to find a Medicine Man. Few seem quite so innocent or nearly as sympathetic.

Mehta has been rightly criticized for focusing on the negatives. So many claim to have found something of value in Eastern traditions. What personal pettiness it must take to deny or to minimize this! And yet the specter of people on a personal quest, proceeding oblivious to the social context in which they operate rings true for me. Whatever folks may have found in these strange, foreign, traditions, it seems a safe bet to suggest that they commonly miss much more.

What bothers me most is that the part spiritual tourists miss may well be the most important piece of the story, the part which anchors all that spiritual talk to an established community. I cannot help but wonder if the quest to learn someone else’s spirituality isn’t rather commonly an effort to escape that very thing!

Those traveling (literally or metaphorically) through another people universe are freed from much of the social context in which the symbols and ideas they seek to learn acquire meaning. They can learn how to perform a ritual, or even what it’s iconography means in some idealized sense, but they are freed from the tedium by which that ritual is connected to countless aspects of daily existence. Most importantly, spiritual tourists are free to fill in the gaps of their understanding as they see fit, unencumbered by multiple sources of information, some of which will surely disagree. What spiritual tourists acquire is a radically simplified version of some other world view, all the easier to tweak it to their own tastes. Perhaps some people need this; perhaps some even do great things with the opportunity. Either way, the point stands. Something highly important is lost in translation.

For some at least, the chance to strip a practice of its social context and rebuild it as they see fit is precisely the pay-off for embarking on a trip into unknown spiritual territory. There may be good reasons for doing that, but how often do people even realize that is what they are doing?

Auto-Kitty Says ‘Meow’: What she Means is that Belief is not a Choice

16 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in atheism, Religion

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Auto-Kitty
(not a Siamese)

Is belief a choice?

I don’t think so.

It is certainly common enough to speak of belief as a choice, but could I choose to believe that I was not sitting in a chair right now? (I am.) Could I choose to believe that the music playing at this moment (Sky-Fucking-Line-of-Toronto) had been recorded by The Kinks? (It was The Rugburns.) Could I choose to believe that my cat, Auto-Kitty (pictured to the left) is a Siamese? (She is of course a Tortie.)

Mind you, I am not asking if I could tell you that Auto-Kitty is a Siamese. I most certainly could. I am not asking if I could play some special word-game in approaching the subject and define ‘Siamese’ in such a manner as to include cats with a tortoise-shell coat. I am not even asking whether or not I could embark on some long-term project to convince myself that my little Auto-Kitty was really a Siamese. …though I really don’t think I could do that either. No, I am asking whether or not I could choose to believe, right here and now, that a cat I know to be something other than a Siamese was in fact (using a conventional understanding of the term) actually a Siamese?

The answer is ‘no’.

I think it is safe to say, dear reader, that we could come up with a range of similar propositions for you, claims that you could not choose to believe, at least not without a complex long-term brain-washing process to get you there. You could probably assert these claims, but you could not actually believe them.

So, there is at least one respect in which belief appears to present a limit to our choices. Somewhere in the question of what one believes, we all encounter an emergent property which is beyond the control of our immediate will. …Okay, at least the vast majority of us do.

No, it is not my intention to suggest that we have no choice at all with respect to beliefs, but rather to suggest that the choices must in some respect live with this emergent property, the one which defies our power to shape it at will. Truth be told I think we could probably put a range of different propositions on a scale of sorts. Auto-Kitty’s non-Siamese status is, for me at least at maximum (or near maximum) resistance to the whims of my personal belief. For you, perhaps, taking my word for it, there is perhaps cause for doubt about the matter, and it might be reasonable to say that one’s response to doubt involves a degree of choice.

More to the point at hand, we could perhaps find a range of propositions about subjects inherently difficult to resolve, full of ambiguity, and perhaps even loaded with more heuristic than factual value. One might get to say that he or she has a bit more choice in such matters. But I still think it is worth knowing that somewhere in our mental landscape, we normally encounter a limitation, a point of resistance to the free play of our choices.

I should add that I do think personality is another variable. Some people seem far more capable of choosing what to believe than others. I should also add that in at least one respect this is far from a virtue.

So what?

Well, what I am getting at is a trace of the larger question of Beliefs with a capital B. I don’t mean beliefs such as; What color is the chair? What kind of cat is that? or Is there too much chili paste in the chicken red curry? No, I mean questions like; Do you believe in God? How about reincarnation? karma? …The Holy Trinity? …you get the idea. Because people often speak of these beliefs as a choice.

The notion that belief in god is a choice is a particularly common fashion of speaking, and that fashion of speaking can be very misleading. It makes of belief a moral decision, and side-steps the epistemological questions about that belief in favor of arguments from consequantialism. One must, according to this approach, choose whether or not to accept or reject God, all of which actually begs the question of whether or not She actually exists.

But I don’t wish to go too far down this particular road at the moment. I am more interested in fleshing out how the issue affects self-presentation in matters of belief.

Okay, I am thinking about how this affects me!

You see, I often think back to these days of my own deconversion, and I realize that I have become accustomed to speaking of the process in unnecessarily mystical terms. I sometimes say that “I lost belief in God at around the age of 18,” or I may explain that “I chose to reject religion at that age.” Perhaps I will say that “I lost my faith,” and so on.

I don’t think this language is at all unusual, but the more I think about it the more I realize that they are not accurate descriptions of what happened at that time in my life at all. It would be far closer to the truth to say that I never really had faith at all. It would be more precise to say that I could find no aspect of my thought process which has ever answered to the concept of ‘faith’ as it is normally used in connection to belief in God.

Still further, I think it would be more accurate to say that I never really believed in God. Oh, I wanted to! As a young teen I REALLY wanted God in my life. I read. I prayed. I meditated. I studied. I did everything I could to ‘find God’ as they say, and the truth is that I just never did. I found a great deal of speech about him, but that speech never resonated with me on any personal level, nor did it point to anything in the objective world that struck me as a good candidate for a deity. When the day came that I finally came to see myself as an unbeliever, it was less a rejection of some viable notion than it was a concession that no such concept could be found in my mental landscape.

It was less a choice to reject belief than an acknowledgement of a mental state over which I did not really have a choice.

This was about the age of 18 or 19, and by that time I had come to know a number of approaches to the subject of God and religion. But these were always bracketed concepts in my own mind. They were ideas that someone else believed in, definitions of God that fit someone else’s beliefs, …or at least their claims. When I embraced my role as an unbeliever, the decision changed absolutely nothing about my beliefs. It was a change in my self-presentation, a decision about how best to describe the beliefs (or the lack thereof) that I already had.

For me at least, I could no more choose to believe in God than I could choose to believe that Auto-Kitty is a Siamese. I could say that God exists of course, but short of equivocation, I could not mean it.

I could deflect the question and say that I do not know whether or not God exists. Better yet, I could grunt and change the subject.

I could choose to put forward a variety of labels for my thoughts on the subject. So, for example, I could probably describe myself as either an ‘atheist’, an ‘agnostic’, or even an ‘agnostic atheist’. I could add the qualifiers ‘weak’ before ‘atheist’ or ‘soft’ before ‘agnostic’, or I could leave them off according to taste. Any of these approaches would be an equally accurate description of my take on the matter of God. I am somewhat inclined to believe that the label ‘non-cognitivism’ would work as well, though I would have to read-up a bit more on that approach to the issue before deciding once and for all on the label. But let us be clear, what I am choosing here is a label and a certain amount of baggage that goes with that label. What I am not choosing is what I will or won’t actually believe.

I have a little more wiggle room on the issue of surety. I could say that I am certain on the matter or that I am open to the possibility that a god does exist. The cognitive hazards of container metaphors aside, both of these could be a reasonably accurate description of my attitude on any given day.  Choosing one or the other term would in a sense help to make the issue normative; it would give me an incentive to try for the attitude I had adopted as a self-description, and to avoid the other. Either way, I do feel like I have a little more choice in the degree of certainty I wish present my approach to this issue to others.

Indeed, I have lots of choices about the way I package my lack of belief and explain it to others. I also have lots of choices about what my (non-)beliefs mean to me and how they will shape my actions in the future.

What I do not have a choice about is what I actually believe on the subject. Somewhere in there, the power of choice simply escapes me.

***

Okay, I lied about what Auto-Kitty was trying to say in the title. What she was actually trying to tell you with that little meow of hers is that in the picture above, she is more comfortable than you or I or any other person in the whole of human history will ever be. She just wanted you to know that.

Happy Juzo Day, And Damn You to Hell if you Don’t Know What I’m Talking About!

15 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Movies

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Juzo Itami

Juzo Itami’s mother inflicted him on the world on May 15th, 1933. Sadly, he chose to show mercy upon that world on December 20, 1997. In the interim, Juzo Itami directed some of the most biting satire ever to hit the movie screen. He was wonderful! Shall we describe a few of his better films?

(Damn right, there are gonna be spoilers!)

***

In Itami’s first film, Chizuko (played by, Nobuko Miyamoto) and her husband Wabisuke (Tsutomu Yamazaki) must hold a services for her recently departed father. THE FUNERAL (1984) takes us through the next three days in the life of this couple and their family. The Shinto traditions may seem strange to those of us unfamiliar with Japanese custom. The experience of loss and the awkwardness of dealing with it in public will not.

The Funeral

The first obstacle Chizuko and Wabisake face certainly rings true for me. Amidst their sadness and loss, our lovely couple must learn quickly what is expected of them during the coming funeral. Luckily, they have a tape which provides plenty of good advice on what to say to guests. With wooden precision, the couple practice their lines, adding a trace of performance anxiety to their grief. The first guests to arrive express their condolences fittingly enough in language perfectly matching the suggestions of the tape.

Itami captures the emotional cycles of a funeral with marvelous sensitivity. One does not stay sad for three days. So when those first guests arrive, the family is in the midst of fond remembrances, laughing and smiling at stories of the departed. then suddenly there they are, outsiders who have themselves screwed up the courage to come and be part of this terrible event, …and suddenly the smiles seem out of place. In but a moment, grief returns to the family and the chain of events continues as one might expect.

…well, for the most part.

This is a slow moving film, one which invites you to linger on the details. In one of my favorite scenes, the whole family kneels down in prayer. As incense burn and a priest chants, the camera pans slowly across the backside of the grieving family members. Moving from character to character, this simple shot provides us with a wonderful study in discipline and loss of cultural knowledge. The elderly are perfectly still, their feet tucked neatly behind them. The middle-aged get by with a little fidgeting here and there. The children? Their posture is a train wreck. (A Japanese high-speed train wreck.) And the whole scene gets comes to a climax when the phone rings in the midst of this solemn ritual. It just keeps ringing. When a family friend finally gets up to answer, he quickly finds that his legs have fallen asleep, and, ….well, it’s just a little awkward.

As a side note: I should mention that I have shown this movie to my students back in Chinle a couple of times. I should say that Navajo ceremonies are all-night affairs during which people are expected to sit cross-legged with their back against the wall of a Hogan. This scene always earned a lot of laughter, and more than a few knowing smiles.

Alright, I’ve ruined enough of this movie for those who haven’t seen it yet. If you want to know more, then you shall have to watch it yourself!

***

Tampopo

Itami’s second movie is TAMPOPO (1985), which has been described aptly enough as “the first noodle western.” The connection is firmly established as we are introduced to Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki again), a truck driver in a cowboy hat, his big-rig sporting a set of steer horns. When Goro and his side-kick stop at an isolated noodle stand for dinner, he gets in a fight with a number of locals. Goro awakens to find himself sleeping the damage off at the home of the shop owner Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto).

Yes, it’s the same couple playing the leads here. The lovely Miyamoto was in fact Itami’s wife. As to Yamazaki, I should think the wisdom of casting him in a lead role speaks for itself.

Let us get back to this wonderful movie!

When Tampopo asks Goro how he likes her noodles, our straight-shooting hero cannot tell a lie. His critique is as thorough as it is devastating, and with that he establishes not only her failure as a cook, but his own mastery of the subject. Ashamed and impressed, Tampopo begs Goro to teach her how to make a proper bowl of ramen. Reluctantly, he accepts to task of teaching her.

What follows is a perfect parody of a movie theme familiar in both westerns and samurai films, the process by which a true master trains a promising young student. Goro does not merely teach Tampopo how to cook, he subjects her to strenuous exercise, helps to her to put together the perfect recipe, and (with the help of another character) redesigns her whole shop. The two of them will use bribery, espionage, and outright heroism in the effort to get everything just right. At the films end, Goro and his sidekick leave Tampopo with her newly renovated shop full of well-earned and very happy customers, driving their big-rig into the sunset.

Gozo and Tampopo

I am going to resist the temptation to describe any of the scenes here in great detail, but I must say that it is the details that make this movie wonderful. Food does not simply supply the central plot; it serves as the central focus of every single scene. If the characters are not talking about food, they are preparing it, or they are eating it. Most scenes in this film manage to do include all of the above.

If you watch this film, you will hungry when it’s over. Don’t try to fight it! You could stuff yourself full with a feast and watch this movie afterwards. You WILL be hungry again at its conclusion.

It really is in the details of each individual scene that Itami’s humor takes on its biting edge. Itami wanders off of the central plot several times during the course of Tampopo. In some cases the camera literally veers off and follows an apparent extra into the next scene. And in those scenes, everything from the culture of Connoisseurship, to proper etiquette, and even the sanctity of motherhood fall prey to Itami’s ironic treatment. If his main plot-line is a gentle ode to the genres of Samurai films and American westerns, many of these particular scenes are brutally satirically send-ups of Japanese society. Note a few of those send-ups will ring true for the rest of us as well.

Most people do seem to remember the sex scenes (and no I am not telling you why). You may call me a bastard if you wish. I don’t mind.

Tampopo is easily my favorite film of all time. It stole that spot from A Clockwork orange the day I saw it well over two decades past; it has remained there ever since.

***

A Taxing Woman

As one might expect, the lovely Miyomoto plays the lead in Itami’s next film as well, A TAXING WOMAN (1987). As a relentless tax inspector in a land where cheating on one’s taxes is expected, Ryōko Itakura (Miyomoto) has her work cut out for her when she goes after Hideki Gondō (played by… Do I really need to say it? Come on, pay attention!). Gondo owns a string of unsavory hotels, and Itakura is suspicious that he is not paying his full share of the tax rate. So, the stage is set for a showdown.

Itakura initially fails to turn up any evidence of tax evasion, a fact which is almost suspicious in itself. …okay, let’s just drop the ‘almost’; it just is. Naturally, she redoubles her efforts. In time, she and Gondo will develop a grudging respect for one another, treating their conflict as though it were a strategy game and each of them a master in their own right.

I will not tell you who wins.

Ha!

I must admit that I have not seen the sequel to this film, A Taxing Woman’s Return. I think that shall have to go on my list of summer projects.

***

Minbo

One could hardly describe MINBO NO ONNA (THE GENTLE ART OF JAPANESE EXTORTION) (1992) as Itami’s greatest film, but it is an amazing accomplishment in its own right. This time, Itami’s target proved to be none other than the Japanese mob. Miyomoto plays a lawyer, Mahiru Inoue. Inoue leads a small team of inexperienced employees in a campaign to thwart a gang of yakuza in its efforts to extort money from a large hotel. It is a long and difficult battle, but she emerges victorious.

What is most striking about this movie is the portrayal of yakuza. Gone are the pretensions to honor and nobility. Forgotten are the images of modern-day samurai or highly-skilled ninjas. These men are simply thugs, brutal, vicious, cruel, and cowardly. Indeed, the yakuza of this film carry little or no redeeming qualities. The one-dimensionality of these villains would normally strike me as a real flaw, and perhaps it is. But set against the backdrop of countless movies depicting mobsters (yakuza among them) in glowing terms, I could not help feeling proud to see someone who had the courage to portray them without all the flattery that usually accompanies the subject. It is a portrayal that took great courage to put on the screen.

Sadly, I do not think Hollywood will be doing anything like this in the near future. The whole of American cinema seems to have a big old girlie-crush on the mob, and it won’t be growing out of it soon.

Sadder still, Itami seems to have paid the price for his courage. He was attacked, beaten and slashed in retaliation for making Minbo. As Itami lay in the hospital recovering from his wounds, the public outcry led to crackdown on criminal activities associated with the yakuza. Rumors that his death by apparent suicide may actually have been a murder circulate to this day. The facts surrounding Itami’s death are something of a mystery at this point. The only thing for certain about it is that it came way to soon, except perhaps for the yakuza.

But of course today is not Itami’s Death Day. It is his birthday. And it is a damned good day to celebrate the work of this incredibly brilliant film-maker.

***

Treat yourself to something brilliant today and watch Tampopo.

Be sure to leave room for desert.

Great Movie Villains, Volume VIII: Your Mother!!!!

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Movie Villainy, Movies

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Okay, maybe not your mother, but damned close! Today’s movie villain is that lovable every-Mom from A Christmas Story.

What?

I should wait for Christmas?

This villain isn’t Santa Clause! It’s Mother. And today is exactly the day to celebrate the most excellent movie villainy of Mom.

The Mom from A Christmas Story is the perfect Mom to be our movie villain of the day. From the very first scene you cannot help but fall in love with her. …which would only be your first mistake.

Don’t even try to tell me that you don’t see it, because we all know that you are right there with Ralphie on that Red Rider BB Gun thing. You want it for him. You want it for yourself. Even if you are a girl, you want the Red Rider BB Gun, or at least you’ve wanted something as badly as Ralphie wanted that Red Rider BB Gun. Your own Red Rider BB Gun might have been a Cabbage Patch Kid, a new bike or even a bullwhip, …mine was a bullwhip. Anyway, the point is that we’ve all had our Red Rider BB Gun. So, when Ralphie says he wants one for Christmas, he speaks for all of us. Hell, he is us!

And that makes his Mom, OUR Mom!

…at least for the balance of the movie.

And when Ralpie’s Mom says ‘no’ to that Red Rider, you all know damn well how it feels, because you heard it from your Mom too. If there was ever any doubt that his Mom was your Mom and my Mom, it vanished in that very moment. Right there and then Mother squashes your one true purpose in life. What on earth would possibly be better than a Red Rider BB Gun? Nothing! And she says ‘no’! It’s soul-crushing.

You know what I am talking about. You are right there in the scene with Ralphie and I right now, aren’t you? You are there.

And sure enough, there Mom is, telling you ‘no’. “You’ll shoot your eye out,” she says. It is the first of many times you will hear this terrible proclamation. And seriously, is Mother not acting as the true villain here? Is she not the central obstacle to fulfillment of our major ambition. How could Mother possibly be anything else but a villain while doing such a terrible thing?

Dad would understand. At least he would if it weren’t for Mom. She’ll talk to him and that will ruin everything.

Don’t try to say that it’s okay, because it’s not. At that moment Mother crushes the heart of hope itself. World Peace, the love of God and country, even the taste of really great candy; all these things fail when you hear those words; “You’ll shoot your eye out.” No movie villain has ever taken more away from a protagonist than Mom did in that moment when she first uttered those terrible words.

But that is not all. Let us not forget how skillfully Mother wielded the winter-clothing torture against our little brother! Let us not forget how he cried all the way to school, how he fell in the snow, and how we had to help him up! Let us not forget the vision of our poor dear brother crying as no child has ever cried before, all because Mom insisted on packing him into such a bundle of cloth. What villain could possibly have been more ruthless?

Let us not even speak of the lamp! …that beautiful lamp that father loved so much, the one she destroyed, thus proving her total domination of the household! No, let us not speak of these things. It is enough to remember them.

…and cry.

Yes, my friends, the mother of A Christmas Story is perhaps the most powerful movie villain ever. Who else could possibly block our greatest ambitions with a single phrase, bring our closest kin to tears, and destroy our father’s prize possessions? Who else but Mom? Worse still, who could do all that and make us love her for it? With her gentle strength and calm demeanor, the Mother of this story seeks to seduce us all, to help us find in her what we loved most about our own Mothers, all the while inflicting upon us that which we most feared in them. She beckons us to find reasons to thank her for every crime against our hopes. She insists that we learn to see it her way. There is no quarreling with this mother, no chance to fight back against her charms. She is relentless!

Who could make us love her even as she rules over us with a gentle but overwhelming smile?

Only Mother.

Best villain EVAR!

Old Pranks Don’t Matter, …Unless They Do.

11 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Justice, Politics, Religion

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Picture Courtesy of The New Civil Rights Movement

Until today, I haven’t thought of Mitt Romney as a cruel person.

Insensitive? Perhaps. Completely out of touch with the vast majority of working Americans? Definitely. Willing to serve the interests of malicious parties if that’s what it takes to get elected? Absolutely. I’ve thought all these things about the presumptive Republican candidate. But I have never really thought of the man as overtly cruel.

Until today.

Today, I have a new perspective on Mitt Romney, and it is not a flattering one. Perhaps you might think it was a recent story in the Washington Post that led me to rethink the issue of his character? According to the Post, Romney led a bullying incident in his youth. Apparently, Mitt Romney found the young man’s hair unacceptable. So, he took it upon himself to rally a number of classmates, tracked down the younger student, tackled him, and cut his hair while the young boy screamed for help.

That’s pretty cruel, isn’t it? You might think it was this story that has me rethinking the character of the presumptive Republican candidate.

Well not quite. See, I’m not in the habit of holding what middle-aged people did back in high school against them. Short of a dead body or a crashed car at least, I am generally willing to give folks the benefit of the doubt for their youthful conduct. …Hell, I can even forgive a crashed car. There is just too much ground between this incident and today’s politics to make this story a clear case against voting for Mitt Romney. I would normally have been willing to believe that Romney was no longer the sort of person to attack and humiliate an individual just because that person was gay, …or that he had weird hair.

Until, that is, the Romney camp opened their mouths and weighed in on the issue. In an interview with Fox News, Romney has said he doesn’t remember the incident. He and his wife have also taken to playing up the story that Romney was a bit of a prankster in his youth, all part of an obvious attempt to minimize the issue. Romney tells us he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but if he has he is certainly sorry.

Great!

Mitt is hypothetically sorry for anyone he might have inadvertently hurt, but he assured us he didn’t mean to.

Which is utterly pathetic.

This response isn’t simply minimizing the damage to Romney’s campaign, it is minimizing the damage done by such incidents. I understand Romney’s desire to do the one, but the other is completely unacceptable. Hell, there are genuine questions about the accuracy of the Post article. Romney could reasonably quibble with a number of the specifics. I’m not entirely sold on some of the details in the Post article (the exact role of sexual orientation in this incident is certainly questionable). Instead, he seems to suggest that this sort of thing just doesn’t matter.

In this response, Mitt Romney has shown us the heartless little bastard who once attacked and humiliated a classmate over his hair is still with us. Is that too strong? Well then, he has certainly shown that such incidents don’t warrant a place in his memory, and that they count as little more than practical jokes in his book. But (you may ask) what if he really doesn’t remember? Well then I should think a little more surprise might be in order. He could at least acknowledge the gravity of the charge.

In likening this event to a harmless prank, Mitt Romney has shown us what such a thing would mean to him now, and that is not much. He hasn’t been accused of an overly raucous joke; he has been accused of an action clearly intended to leave a lasting, miserable, impression. He has lots of room to maneuver on this, at least he had, but what he came up with was as dismissive a response as any bully has ever given to the suffering of his victims.

Mitt Romney will be the spokesman for homophobia in the coming election, among other things to be sure, but that will clearly be part of his job. It is expected of Republican Presidential Candidates. Until today I had no idea just how well qualified Mitt Romney will be for this aspect of his coming task.

What Romney is accused of doing may have happened long ago, but we should all be able to address the question of whether or not it is acceptable in a straight-forward manner. As the accused party in this instance, Romney has a responsibility to own up to what he did, defend his actions, or apologize for them in clear terms. Whether or not you personally care about such things, well that is a decision we will all have to make for ourselves.

Mitt clearly doesn’t.

This is Really Gross: You Probably Shouldn’t Read It!

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in General

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Very Bad!

I may have mentioned in the ‘About’ section of this blog that I count an episode of projectile vomiting among my greatest accomplishments?

Okay, that’s gross right? Yeah, but it’s not going to stop me from giving you a long-winded and over-dramatic account of the whole thing. Best leave this post now if you have any sense whatsoever!

I dabbled in Speech and debate a little when I first got into college. My school had a great debate team at the time, all owing to the coach, but that coach was the absolute worst driver you ever met in your life. It was really amazing. If he wasn’t speeding up, he was slowing down (I mean foot on the break, because by then we were closing rapidly in on somebody’s rear bumper) and if he wasn’t drifting steadily left he was drifting steadily right. To make matters worse, the man had a very small vehicle, and he would often engage in serious discussion or coaching as he drove. So, while riding along you had to concentrate WHILE holding down your lunch and praying to the gods that you would make it to your actual destination.

It was awful!

Still Worse!

One day I had agreed to help in the tab room for a High School Debate Tournament. I caught a ride down to campus that Saturday morning and waited to get picked up for the trip out to the high school. I had some time to kill, so I ate breakfast, …well the sort of breakfast I ate back then. It was a Super Big Gulp of Pepsi and a row of donut gems from a 7-11. I horked them down in no time because I was suddenly very hungry. Along comes the coach and stuffs me in the back seat of his vehicle, then shoves a pile of paperwork into my lap and tells me to read names to another student in the front seat. The coach hadn’t done his preparation yet, and so he was trying to get things in order as we drove over to the tournament. …yes, reading in the car will normally do me in. Reading with that driver was bound to be REALLY BAD. And then it dawns on me that slamming a Super Big Gulp and a row of donut gems might have been a mistake.

…definitely was a mistake.

The Coach was in rare form. He read documents of his own while double checking the other student’s paperwork as he drove. We veered toward this wall and that car, screeched to a halt just before hitting that bumper, all the while checking paperwork.

And of course, the donut gems want to come back up pretty much whole at this point.

Then we started to smell gas. It was overwhelming! Turns out the guy directly ahead of us on the Freeway had some sort of a leak, so the coach decides to catch up to warn him. Now, his worse-than-usual driving was compounded by his impression of Starsky and Hutch, and the man still expected me to read names to the other student. The other driver seemed to be in a hurry, so the effort to catch him involved a lot of weaving through traffic. …with gas fumes coming into the vehicle, me turning very green, and “…uh, Jeremy Ditweiler, yeah that’s with an e i.”

(Okay, I made up the name, but you get the idea.)

About half way there I realize with absolute certainty that everything I slammed before getting picked up IS coming back up sooner or later, probably sooner. The donut gems are so determined that I feel sure they will find their way back to the wrapper and replace themselves on the shelf at the 7-11. All with the prospect of a full day’s work ahead of me.

…more names.

We never do catch the gas-spilling driver. It takes about 30 minutes total time on the road before we pull into the High School parking lot. It takes a couple more minutes to get out because we aren’t done yet with the paperwork. I could have killed to breathe fresh air, and the coach insisted we finish whatever the Hell task it was we were doing. The other student weighed at least 400 pounds (though I believe it was closer to 600, …honestly), and it took him forever to get out of the tiny car. Then we fumble with the broken seat and finally push it forward, all just so I could scramble out in a state of panic. For some reason I didn’t mention this to anyone, …but I was in my own little private Hell at that point.

(The story is just going to get worse from here folks, you really might want to click on one of those links in my Blogroll and go find an author with better taste than I have.)

So, I finally stepped out into the fresh air, and I got about 2 steps before the urge to purge overtook me. It wasn’t much. I was very discreet and I don’t think any of the many folks around us realized just why I leaned down next to that little bush.

(Note how I brag about my discretion at the time as if I had any credibility on the subject while telling THIS story. That’s called ‘irony’ folks. Can you say; ‘Irony’?)

I knew that little mini-purge was just a taste of things to come, …literally. I could feel the misery building within me as I debated what to do next. Out here would be better than on the floor in the building, but best of all would be in a garbage can or a bathroom stall. I stood there for a moment and assessed the situation. “It’s not coming yet,” I thought, “I may have a chance…”

I  power-walked into the High School, trying to hit that perfect balance that enhances speed without jarring things too much. I thought I was going to lose it with every fricking step. Every single step seemed to court disaster, and with enough witnesses to make it a truly humiliating experience. The walk seemed to take forever.

And then did it! I actually made it into the High School. I grew very nervous at this point because I didn’t want the upcoming event to occur on the carpet. But at least a final resting place for the donut gems ought to be on the horizon.I just kept dreaming about a trash can or a toilet stall.

So, why was this bathroom locked? That one too? And where are the others?

It turns out that all the bathrooms were locked AND all the garbage cans had been hauled off somewhere. That’s right; it was a Saturday, and someone forgot to tell the cleaning staff that there would be hundreds of people in the building this weekend. So, NONE of the bathrooms were open and the garbage cans were all GONE. I walked/ran from one bathroom to the other, and one after another they all proved to be locked. ALL OF THEM!

At this point I felt like I was dying, because I knew the food was coming back up any moment. I will never get back outside in time; the donut gems are coming back and they are bringing Hell with them.

Then I got lucky.

I tried the teacher’s bathroom door for the second time, and (praise be!) this time it was open. With an immense sigh of relief, I walked/ran into it. At last I could find a place to let go of my burdens. My ever so heavy burdens! Sweet Jesus, I have never been so happy to find a bathroom in all my life. I think I actually prayed for the damn thing, and at the time I must have counted it as proof positive that there is indeed a God in Heaven, because He had just provided me a bathroom in my moment of need.

But then…

With one foot in the door I experienced a violent spasm. It felt like my stomach had just lowered its shoulders and launched into my heart and lungs like the biggest lineman on your favorite football team. (I don’t do sports metaphors often so you have to cut me some slack with the imagery here.) Anyway, the point is that bad things were happening in my belly and I wasn’t going to get another step before seeing those donut gems one more time. The bathroom was empty, so I was okay there, but the obvious targets were closed to me. A single toilet rested behind a closed stall door to my left, and the garbage can was covered a few steps off to the right. No time to open it. Disappointment gripped my soul. All that effort and I was going to fail within sight of my goal. But then…

Hope!

A sink stood on the other side of the bathroom. Nothing between me and that beautiful, sparkling clean receptacle. One last chance to send my meal somewhere besides the floor, and believe me, I took it. I aimed the upcoming surge toward the sink, and I ran up on the back end of it as I went.

Success!

The launch literally began in the doorway across the room, but I’m telling you not one drop spilled on the floor. I got it all in the sink. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t done it myself. Right there on that very day!

Yeah that’s right. I am the projectile vomiting king of the world I tell ya! I could not have been more proud.

That was still a miserable day, cause I had the worst headache after that, and I remained dizzy for several hours. I do recall hearing gossip about the filthy sink in the teacher’s bathroom, but I saw no reason to enlighten anyone. I couldn’t even look at the debate coach, because that would have fallen far short of killing him, which is what the bastard deserved. Oh, but that one moment was glorious. I so narrowly avoided disaster and somehow managed the impossible. Heck a part of me wanted to go back and measure the distance as I felt quite certain it was some sort of record, an athletic accomplishment of sorts. It may have been a disgusting glory, but some days you just take what you can get.

***

My dear reader, did you actually stick with me through this entire abomination? That’s disgusting! You should be ashamed of yourself.

Temporary Loss of Northitude: In Which I Wax Photographic About Barrow

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Alaska, Bad Photography

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So I have “gone out,” as they say, and I will not see Alaska for a couple months. It’s a shame that I can only get out during the summer and Christmas. Those are the best times to be in Barrow.

So, I thought this might be an opportune moment to throw up some images of America’s northernmost city.

I will miss it.

My Chalet
(I think my brother has bigger walk-in closets)

Midnight Sun
(Actually, this was probably about 2:00am)

Umiaq Race During Independence Week Celebrations
(Cause Fireworks aren’t so keen in July)

Barrow at 2am in Late May
(Out for an evening walk)

The Ocean
(Can’t tell where it begins, can ya!)

Arctic Palm Trees

Ice Sculpture
(Modeled on bone sculptures)

The Northernmost American-Style Football Field in the World
(I suck as a sports photographer, don’t I)

Cheerleaders!
(No skirts on these girls)

The Ocean as Seen from Barrow’s Cafe
(Whale jawbones and umiaq frames)

The Ocean from Outside Brower’s Cafe
(A little later in the Year)

Again!

Probably Returning from a Hunt

Arctic Fox
(Trying to steal muktuk from the back of that pick-up)

Nalukataq
(Spring Whaling Festival Held in June. It’s been a good whaling season, so this will be a great festival this year, …and I am going to miss it!)

Local Art
(Barrow has the best dumpsters!)

The College
(Whale skull in the foreground)

Will Rogers Memorial
(He died in a plane crash on his way to Barrow)

DEWLine Station
(Part of the early warning defense system)

Let’s See the Ocean Again!

Fido and Junkmail
(All packed and ready to go out)

A Moment in an Airport

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in General

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So, I am sitting here waiting on my meal at the airport in Anchorage. I have an Alaskan Amber Ale sitting in a tall glass in front of me. The glass is narrow on the bottom and wide at the top. Light penetrates the bottom portion of the glass, but the top is a rich dark brown.

I notice something odd, a faint ring is rising up from the bottom of the glass, catching the light as it goes. For just a moment I have no idea what I am looking at, then I realize it is a thin layer of ice from the chilled glass. a bit like a ring of smoke, it moves slowly, dissipating as it rises into the darkness. Nothing reaches the top.

I wonder, have I ever seen that before?

I really need to drink beer more often.