Somnopolis

Ok, here’s one of my main objections to the Sarah Palin dominated wing of the Tea Party. Beyond the whole racist/fascist/revisionist agenda they’re spouting while tearing up the GOP and intimidating the fickle Democrat party (US politics is like a car crash in slow motion, eh?) one of their main bugbears is that the Media is run by atheist Jewish sodomites, or somesuch nonsense.

Which is patently ridiculous, as I find American movies and television shows are pathetically reliant on religious themes, particularly Christian ones. Y’know why Richard Dawkins is so angry? Probably because every time he turns on a tv, or watches a movie he finds yet another insipid depiction of ‘faith’ curing all ills. Himself, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens still have their work cut out if they’re to establish any kind of strong secular position.

Above I’ve posted the trailer to the Hughes Brothers’ The Book of Eli. I watched it on a plane, having missed the cinema release. It’s set in yet another post-apocalyptic world that looks surprisingly like Fallout 3. Denzel Washington plays Eli, a lone wanderer who has in his possession a special book. He is traveling west across the remnants of the United States, left devastated after an unspecified event that scorched the Earth’s surface. Arriving at a town that’s ruled by Gary Oldman’s crime boss Carnegie, also searching for a certain book, he is discovered to be in possession of a King James Bible. Which of course is exactly what the villain is looking for, as its words have the power to sway men.

Now I’ll get back to the plot of this movie at the end of this post, but it’s extraordinary to have a dystopian action film that revolves around the importance of the Bible. When Clint Eastwood made Pale Rider there were hints that he was more than he appeared to be, but that interpretation was open to those who wanted to make it. The Hughes Brothers have set up an action film filled with Old Testament wrath and revenge, with Denzel playing a jesuitical knight errant who will kill to protect the book and is protected as a result.

In HOLYWOOD God exists and he’s an Interventionist God

Three long-running television series wrapped up recently that also featured heavy religious overtones. Ashes to Ashes
a British cop procedural that flirted with time travel narratives concluded with the main characters discovering they were all in Limbo. Battlestar Galactica which initially pitched itself a show charting the conflict between the monotheistic robot race the Cylons and the polytheist/secular humans – in space – ended with series lead Starbuck being resurrected as a foul-mouthed angel and a final scene that shouts from the roof-tops that God literally had a plan for what had happened. Turns out that we the audience are descended from the characters in the show, having abandoned their technological advantages out of some misconceived Rousseaulian pretence. Lost, like Ashes to Ashes, also employs the “everyone’s dead and in Limbo”, story ending. Like BSG from the very first episode there were supernatural elements to the show, but creators Lindelof and Cuse had previously claimed the fantastical aspects of the Island had a scientific basis that would be explained. Yet in the finale we see a cast reunion in a church, moments before they’re all swept into Heaven.

Oh BSG. You used to be cool. That pussy Bryan Singer wussed out of doing a post 9/11 take on the Dirk Benedict fromage-fest that you once were, but you had balls! Hell, President Roslin had balls – big ones. You had fleshy Cylons that had blew themselves up assured of an eternal reward – getting to come back and blow up more humans! Your main scientist character, Gaius Balter, had an angel living in his head. The only conclusions he could draw were a) he had an angel in his head and b) he was batshit insane. God love him, he opted for b).

Yes from the very start there were religious overtones, but in a science fiction show, set in space, where the villains were genocidal machines that had been programmed by humans….many were surprised when it turned out there was a God. That the Cylons were more or less right all along (if a little too enthusiastic in their faith). And Starbuck was Jesus/Lazarus or somesuch. Actually we don’t know what exactly she was, but she seemed to be a manifestation of God’s will. Also Head-Six (who was in Baltar) and Head-Baltar (who was in Caprica Six) are in the final scene shown walking through Manhattan discussing mitochondrial DNA and how it relates to God’s will. See – science got a look in at the end! Even if it’s a botched mixture of evolutionary theory and intelligent design. In fairness writer Ron Moore doesn’t come out and say any one religion is right, but instead implies that we are caught in a kind of Nietzschean eternal return that will eventually succeed in producing the desired result – which is I presume some kind of Panglossian ‘best of all possible worlds’.

But the entity responsible is for all intents and purposes God. Sigh.

Already the pundits are proclaiming Lost’s finale The End to be ‘not as bad as BSG‘. To wit, it also relies heavily on religious symbolism, but the argument goes it’s not as egregious as the final episode of Ronald D. Moore’s show.

To which I say donkey butter! This was offensive schlock of the highest order, laying the plinky plinky music on thick, with some dead daddy issues to boot (Christian Shepherd! Jesus….) that are sure to elicit a tear from the eye. As the episode ends you’re supposed to be thankful that you had some kind of emotional response, reward enough for the six years spent waiting for answers. No not where the polar bear came from, or why Walt appeared to Shannon, or any of that finicky crap – but WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN!

Was there any meaning to it at all? I don’t think so. Book titles and philosopher’s names are dropped throughout scripts like easter eggs, hinting at some underlying meaning, but in the end this was nothing more than a soap opera for nerds! Philip K. Dick was an expert on interweaving science fiction themes with Biblical apocrypha. This was not up to PKD’s standard. It liked to think it was, but really it’s all come down to hand waving and a musical score.

The final scenes in the Limbo-universe that the dead Losties find themselves in is especially insipid. They all reunite in a church, having been forced to remember their past on the Island by the dimension-hopping Desmond (a plot that copies the equally undercooked House of M from Marvel comics’ Brian Michael Bendis). Attention is drawn to the stained glass windows and religious idols within the building. There’s Christian, Islamic and Jewish iconography everywhere, suggesting that all religions are more or less the same and in the afterlife we can all just hang out, nevermind the misery and division that religion inspires.

In short, Lost sings the praises of Orson Welles’ Sugarcandy Mountain and ends with Jack Sherpherd smiling as the life bleeds out of him. If Kevin Spacey were to have suddenly narrated the end sequence, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Now remember the Book of Eli? I actually love how that film approaches religion. Carnegie sees the Bible solely as a tool to control. Hell I won’t argue with that. He’s basically an evangelist. Eli eventually escapes his clutches and meets Malcolm McDowell, here resembling Mark Twain, who is preserving the few remaining books that have survived the catastrophe. The film ends with him placing a new edition of the King James Bible on a shelf with dozens of other books – all of which are equally important! See, religion as a cultural expression is perfectly valid. It is aspirational at the best of times and can give comfort. There but for the Grace of God go I – give thanks for what you have and look to your advantages so that you can improve yourself as an individual, or help your community. That I have no objection to.

When screen-writers fall back on the Word of God to resolves dangling plot threads though? I find that lazy, cynical and offensive. Religion has been used to justify much evil in this world and should be challenged for that reason to be more meaningful, more relevant to our lives. When science fiction, the speculative imaginings of our present, past or future, uses religion to provide an ending, it’s a step backwards into unthinking dogmatism. “God did it”, is no better than “A Wizard did it”.

I have just watched the harrowing documentary Ghost Land, an investigation into the after-effects of the property bust in Ireland. With deserted housing estates, stranded home-buyers desperate without facilities or habitable conditions and the parties responsible having the slate wiped clean courtesy of NAMA.

RTE are hosting the programme on their player for a short time here.

Many viewers vented their anger on Politics.ie at the extraordinary degree of short-sighted planning development. The Sligo Today newspaper carried a feature on lecturer Dr. Chris Sparks, who is appears in Ghost Land. At one point he discusses the arrogance of the Irish construction sector, the belief that the boom would somehow plateau and that everyone was entitled to get rich through property sales.

His analysis acts as a counterpoint to the quoted statements of Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen and Donnie Cassidy, encouraging young buyers and those looking to advance upward on the property ladder, that there was no better time to purchase a house thanks to generous tax breaks and continuing ‘development’.

Unfortunately the construction industry followed the Kevin Costner/Field of Dreams ‘If You Build It They Will Come’, school of thought. Supply outstripped demand and now those who purchased a home are left sunk in debt and negative equity.

It’s heart-breaking viewing, but also inspires great anger at the negligence of our public officials, regulators and county councils.

Oh and Dave McSavage got here first, taking aim at the Monasterevin estate (skip to 3.40):

copyright Guardian Ltd/Steve Bell

So the nightmare that kept the Murdoch press awake at night has occurred. Looks like Britain’s next government will be formed from a coalition, something which almost happened in 1974, but didn’t. The papers insist on referring to this as a ‘hung parliament’, which gives I feel the wrong impression. Although it does conjure up a mental image of the British PM strung up by a noose.

When a government is formed, typically the ministers and back benchers follow the direction of the party leader. This ensures the stability of the ruling government. However, it goes without saying that consensus is not always unanimous and there often are disagreements between individual members. Deals are struck, compromises made. This is the essence of democracy, public representatives acting on behalf of their constituents’ interests, which can conflict with the party line.

So what is so horrible about forming a parliament from a mixture of ideologies?

Results are slowly trickling in from the 2010 British General Election. While it remains a close call still as to who will form the next government, we can be sure it will not involve the BNP. They were wiped out in Barking.

Given the overtures David Cameron has made to the Ulster Unionist party, a dangerous move that threatens to place a wedge in the fraught relations in Northern Irish power-sharing, it would appear the Tories are not as ‘anti-coalition’, as they might have British voters believe. Here’s a notion. What if the BNP had made gains? Would Cameron have got into bed with Griffin?

I imagine he would have. For at the end of the day a rainbow coalition is a matter of pragmatism. Nick Clegg is in a courting mood, we’ll see how this turns out.

I remain intrigued at how vigorously certain parties tried to sway the British public from the possibility of a hung parliament though. One issue that is at stake is the introduction of proportional representation to the UK, a goal of Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Now while this is an exotic concept still in Britain, in Ireland we already enjoy ‘PR’ (now a term that is trending on Twitter).

Yet if you were to take a snapshot of the Irish political scene you would be hard-pressed to spot just how this works. For the majority of the Republic’s existence the ruling party has been Fianna Fáil. Unlike the chaotic mess of the British 1974 election, we have had sustained coalition governments. The most recent, a Labour/Fine Gael held Dáil in the early 90s is often credited with the improvement in Ireland’s economy that led to the ‘Celtic Tiger’.

Not that Bertie Ahern would have you believe that.

So whenever the notion of a new coalition government is dismissed by an Irish commentator as a silly notion, you have to wonder where their interests lie. The British are waging electoral war over the very same advantages of proportional representation that we as citizens of the Irish Republic already enjoy, but do not make use of. Instead the same two party horse race is waged whenever the formation of a new Dáil comes around, with Labour jumping around hoping to get noticed like a champagne socialist Jim Corr.

At every turn the Irish electorate are faced with compromised and corrupt politicos, who are only happy to act in the interests of the backroom boyos they do deals with, ignoring their constituents unless there’s a chance of a photo-op (or indeed an upcoming election). Despite being a fully paid up member of the PIIGS clubhouse in Brussels, we’re all too happy to turn on the Greeks in their hour of need and damn them for living beyond their means (and we haven’t?). So much for any pretence of a ‘community’ in Europe.

I’ve been talking about political pragmatism, the possible advantages of a coalition government, but the suspicion remains that this is only half the story. After all, who wants to lead their country into the onrushing recession fast approaching? Who wants to be seen as being responsible for making decisions that fail to resolve the crippling debts we have incurred? The only advantage to being in power in these circumstances, that I can see, is that you gain access to whatever national assets still remain and carve them up as capital for personal use. Is this cynicism, or the most pragmatic stance of all – take care of your own.

(Is it just me? My real fear, however, is not that David Cameron is a supervillain, but that once he’s elected he’ll turn to the camera and rip off his rubber mask to reveal TONY BLAIR! Supervillains always return….)

Today’s Irish Independent carried an opinion piece by Maurice Hayes on the current clerical sex abuse cover-up scandal the Vatican is enduring.

Given the weekend that’s in it, he compares in the title the troubles of the Church to the Easter Rising that led to the eventual formation of the Irish Free State. The Church, he says, needs a similar revolution.

I take issue with the following.

Cardinal Sean Brady is a decent, honourable and compassionate man who has laboured mightily to install effective procedures for the protection of children.

Cardinal Sean Brady is none of these things.

He did not act with honour, failing to take action when made aware of the rape of children by members of the clergy.

He is not a man of compassion, his mea culpa elicited not from guilt, or self-awareness, but after having been caught by campaigners and the media.

He is not a decent man, as through his inaction great evil was allowed to occur.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s book  Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, describes the lengths the Church will go to protect the authority of the Vatican. He talks of the symbolism of Rome as the centre of power for Catholocism, how it represents the Rock of Saint Peter and sanctifies the site of his martyrdom. Over the Easter weekend Ratzinger himself was described as such by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, as a rock of strength the church rests upon.

Again and again it becomes clear, as Robinson argues, that the pontiff is not God’s representative on Earth, but a man who has ascended to a position of great political power. A position that needs to be protected at all costs. Even at the cost of innocent lives. Sodano and the bishops who defend the pope are no different, nor is the weak and compromised Sean Brady.

A simple question. If a crime were committed against a member of the clergy, would the police not immediately become involved? Why then is this not the case when a child is raped?

From the pope’s pastoral letter to the ‘people of Ireland’

4. In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel. The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.

Wait did Ratzinger just blame ’secular Ireland’ (where? Where!?) for child abuse?

Well that’s one reading. I find that Ratzinger’s writing is frequently obtuse to the point of meaninglessness. The anger displayed by parishioners this morning during seperate readings of the pastoral letter – there were reports of organised walk outs in the Dublin Pro-Cathedral – was surely inspired by the semantical run around of the Church’s official statement. What’s more though there is anger at Ratzinger himself, who as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the order for investigations into child sexual abuse at the hands of clerics be kept secret.

Yet here he places the blame for the cover up and huge distress caused to the families of the victims on the individual bishops involved. This is a grossly unfair dereliction of responsibility.

Apparently the buck stops at the borders to the Vatican.

Last week I was asked by a friend to give my opinion on a rough cut of a documentary on the Burmese military dictatorship. I hasten to add this was just to make a note of my emotional response, not due to the value of any views I may hold. As such I only watched the very beginning of the rough cut. I would like to discuss what my impressions of that experience were.

It begins with hidden footage of the day-to-day horrors of life in Burma. We as the intended audience are only seeing this due to activists and native Burmese smuggling the shots out of the country at great personal risk. Immediately the footage establishes just how everyday, in the most awful sense of the word in this context, death and misery are to these people. The police and military target their own citizenry, forcing them to live in terror, exhausting their will to resist and depriving them of even the most basic dignity. A woman is shown standing beside an open graveside dug in the dirt, sobbing as a body wrapped in black cloth is lowered into the hole. We see citizens forced to their knees in the street and beaten with truncheons by uniformed thugs. The visual shorthand that typically signifies a secretive, brutal regime – the police man reaching out to cover the camera lens that bears witness – is also employed.

What strikes me most forcibly about these scenes is that they are unsurprising. I am aware of the extent of the regime’s brutality to its people. I doubt there are many who aren’t. The smuggled footage itself only serves to confirm that knowledge, perhaps confront us as viewers with our own indolence and apathy, but nothing more than that.

The documentary then introduces us to its subject, a man who lived through the Burmese regime and has escaped. When we meet him he is watching a dvd of the Sylvester Stallone film John Rambo. Following the title screen, our hero’s name in thick red font on a black background, the film locates the action in Burma with a scene of soldiers massacring innocent Burmese. There is a quick cut to a child being shot in the chest. We see several people running from the soldiers, only for them to be executed in slow motion.

The man is shown breaking down in tears after watching the scene. He says it is just like his memory of life in Burma.

I am troubled by this scene in the documentary. It acts as a contrast to the reality of the footage at the beginning of the film. Here is horror courtesy of camera techniques, blood squibs and paid actors, packaged for our entertainment. This is a fiction that apes the brutality of the real. It also presents a solution to the crimes committed against the Burmese in the form of Stallone’s monosyllabic Vietnam veteran. Rescuing Western peace activists from captivity, his violent dispatching of the villainous soldiers is cathartic for cinema audiences. Here at least is a form of intervention we can all agree on.

There is a scene featured in the trailer for John Rambo when Darla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is rescued from being raped at the last possible second. The  soldier unbuckles his belt, grinning at his victim. The moment is stretched out, with Julie Benz’s pitiful cries for help. Then our hero appears and garrottes the soldier.

This was how the film-maker’s advertised their picture. There are bad people in Burma doing bad things. In this movie, Rambo kills them dead, in a variety of interesting ways, and rescues a white chick from being raped (but not soon enough that you won’t be denied some small vicarious thrill).

Why set  John Rambo in Burma? The franchise needs a villain, just as its fans need their Two Minutes Hate. Commies are gone and the majahideen are something of an embarrassment for Stallone, given that his character previously aided and abetted them against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. For the next outing of the series, it is rumoured Rambo will be fighting werewolves.

And so the suffering of the Burmese people becomes a cartoon for our amusement. Watching that man cry as he watched the beginning of Stallone’s film made me angry and sad all at once. He recognized in the slow-motion captured fakery the real. Cinema-goers though were afforded a fictional catharsis that allowed them to ignore it.

Addendum – since writing this blog, I have been told the finished film will not include the scene discussed above. All the same I felt I should publish this piece, as it affected me quite strongly.

God bless the Rubberbandits.

Oh Gordon…

Willie O’Dea ladies and gents.

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