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”.

So yesterday George Lee, the great white hope of the Fine Gael party, TD for Dublin South and self-confessed economics expert, quit the Opposition as he was feeling unfulfilled in his role.

Basically he did a Palin.

Much like that other media whore, Lee feels hurt that the world was not handed to him on a platter. This is almost understandable. After all, here is a man who converted a career in doomsaying on RTE into a seat in the Dail. I’m sure he was convinced the only possible trajectory was upwards.

However, perhaps he should have borne in mind that he had in effect jumped the queue of arse-kissing, door-stepping and compromise that generally constitutes a political career in its infancy. Yes Enda Kenny is a gormless fool. Richard Bruton has failed to present anything that resembles a coherent economic policy. However, in no universe would it make sense to hand the control of the party to a newly arrived junior TD.

Its like the Lotto. You have to be in it, to win it. Fine Gael was the best ticket in town to oust the corrupt mandarins that have run Ireland into the ground. Change was possible from within. Having walked away, George is now just like the rest of us – another malcontent carping impotently from the wings. Having struck a possibly fatal blow to Kenny’s stewardship of the party, all he has in reality achieved is to weaken the country’s best bet of a rival to Fianna Fail. They have the numbers, but they need strong leadership and policies that eschew opportunism. It might have been possible to effect this change from within the party and once the election was secured, plot a leadership handover to a more suitable figure.

Once again, Irish politics leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Now this was certainly interesting. Let me direct your attention here and here.

I don’t enjoy discussions of American politics, because so often it just seems to be one side dogpiling on the other. Rarely is there an actual discussion of issues involved. Accusations are flung back and forth with alacrity, with the level of debate hovering above the school-room.

Michelle Bachman’s statement has been criticised for being reminiscent of McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy is the Democrat Bogeyman – whenever your opponent is a threat ‘McCarthyite’ is a handy phrase to throw around. Obama has often been compared to Kennedy, whose time in Washington seemed like a Camelot for the 20c – at least if you were to listen to him it did. The comparison is interesting. The first Catholic to win the presidency, ensuring widespread solidarity from Catholics everywhere, particularly the Irish; and the first Black Presidential nominee, who manages to appeal to blacks by virtue of a similar degree of solidarity and whites by not being as black as Jesse Jackson.

Bachman reminds me of a phrase from an episode of the West Wing: “the train is leaving the station”. She’s a female Republican in the wake of Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin issuing hardline partisan soundbytes, with little argument to back them up. Not that that matters. The statement itself is enough. Once again compare this to Obama. His ‘Kennedyesque’ speeches brim with hope. His book The Audacity of Hope positions itself as a rediscovery of what it means to be American. His optimism and positivity is infectious, but I’m unsure as to how much substance is actually there.

This is an essentialist argument I guess. Is a message which is positive but without basis inherently better than a negative stance without substance? There’s a logic to both positions, very much based on ‘either/or’ principles. You’re with us, or against us. You’re for America or not. This is stake-claiming more than anything, making ground by planting ideological flags in the landscape and then declaring it a win.

Let us not fool ourselves. This is not a recent development. Reducing politics to a grudge match has been a tried and tested tactic for over a century (”I speak softly….but I carry a biiiig stick!” Teddy Roosevelt) The political fallout of 9/11 merely toxified the pundits with a sudden awareness of just how much fear and hate they had to hand to use against the people of America.