Lord of timeLords: on Peter Capaldi

So finally I get to write about Doctor Who. Hurrah!

And because this is a very important thing to talk about, let's not beat about the bush, and get straight to the point (to borrow the cliche)

To whit: Peter Capaldi is leaving. Long live Capaldi!  Long live 12! (or is he 13?).  Capaldi Rocks. Capaldi rules. I love Capaldi and want to have his babies. Capaldi is the best thing to happen to the new series since the new series. Which alone guaranteed he would never last long. Just as Steve's Law dictates that any song he enjoys will always be switched off, any aspect of New Who he approves of will be rejected by the masses and tossed into the rubbish bin. And, God Forbid, if he actually Enjoys something, embraces it whole heartedly with child-like abandon not seen since childhood, then it will most definitely be widely despised. So, Peter Capaldi, and the first unobnoxious companion we've had in forever, Pearl Mackie's wonderful Bill, are both leaving.

Grumble grumble grumble, harrumph.

I knew I'd love 12 since his very first appearance. He didn't even have any lines - just a close up on his eyes at the end of the Fiftieth Anniversary special as a bit of a harbinger of things to come (or, "teaser" if you'd rather stick with industry terms). A rather brilliant little piece of temporal play if you ask me.  The eyes said it all; power, dignity, mystery. I could tell right away, this new Doctor would mean business.

To be sure, he got of to a rough start. His debut was just awful. He came across as rude, unintelligible, and despite the very worst Moffat excesses, the episode itself was a frightful bore. The rest of the season was a mess, they tried to find the right tone and strike the right balance, (anchored down the whole time by the wretched Mr. Pink story arch), but when he finally found his feet. . .

For the first time since the reboot began, I finally felt this was my show again. I was never sold on the cool Doctor, the suave and cute Doctor. The ladies man, party animal, inventor of the banana daiquiri - the hip and "with it" Doctor was never someone I could relate to. Even his choice of companions were cool kids. The Doctor I knew was the misfit's misfit, the eternal oddball and outsider.  Finally, we had a Doctor who fit the Bill (ha!). An aged professor of physics, a teacher, an actual scientist. Deeply caring but largely unsentimental, world-weary but never self-pitying, old and wise. These were adjectives I could never apply to Tenant or Smith. Maybe Eccleston if he'd stuck around - but he didn't. It wasn't until Capaldi really took off that I realized I much I missed these aspects of the Doctor's character. I didn't want a Doctor the cool kids would like, but a Doctor who was too busy to care what the cool-kids thought. I missed the unabashed intellectual who didn't give a damn about fashion.

Capaldi was all these things. The fact that they made him a physics professor was no accident: Capaldi didn't just take his companions out into the universe to show them a great time - he was trying to teach them something. To get them to think. If I've been alienated from the new series so much of the time it's because too often it just doesn't think. Sure, it could feel up a storm, but it so rarely thought about things, and didn't demand it of either its characters or its audience. Capaldi was a thinker. It was a joy to see him in action. A joy cut off, all too soon.

Who knows who they'll replace him with. Probably a woman - there's been every indication of it. Give the person a chance, has always been my motto. But haven't finally gotten used to this one, and fallen in love with him, it's saddening to have to give it up so early and start the disorienting process of a new Doctor all over again.

Loosing a Doctor is always a bittersweet experience - a forced goodbye, but a promising new hello as well. I suppose, like many things in life, I shouldn't mourn that he's leaving but rejoice that he was here, even for a short time. Fact is, I haven't been this broken up about a Doctor's departure since Logopolis. Maybe I should be grateful that I can still feel that way, that Doctor Who can still do that to me, and that they finally found someone who could make that happen.

Capaldi's leaving. Long live Capaldi.  







         

A Nationalist Screed. . .

Today is Canada Day - and not just any Canada Day, but the "sesquicentennial" (150 years). This means a lot of people will flock to the nearest downtown core decked out in red and white to scarf down copious quantities of cheap fast-food coffee and vaguely cheese flavoured buckets of bacon grease. The government will commission performances from the lamest possible local musical acts, (such as the disappointingly misnamed Barenaked Ladies) to promote its continuing vision of toe-bitingly boring national mediocrity.

It's lame, but largely harmless, even innocent, and in a world where nationalism usually means either going to war or ceaselessly persecuting ethnic or religious minorities, lame is not such a bad thing. If fascism is just nationalism by another name, then any nation that prides itself more on hitting rubber pucks with a stick than killing enemies on a battlefield, or selects a tree nibbling rodent as its national symbol, is perhaps worth celebrating. And, if on paper at least, it takes ethnic harmony and universal health care as not just points of pride but intrinsic to its identify, than it is definitely worth a party or two.

Not everyone will be celebrating of course. The Indigenous peoples can't pretend than any country founded on their destruction and subjugation is worth celebrating, and even a cursory awareness of the history makes it hard to disagree. By any standard, the residential school system was an atrocity. Who could approve of a project to take children from their parents, forbid them to speak their language, and hand them over to sex perverts?

That's what it amounted to. And it wasn't that long ago either, not some distant era of incomprehensibly different values. It was recent, within living memory. Victims and perpetrators are still alive to tell the tale. Nor was it an an anomaly, but official government policy - publicly elected officials called for it, taxpayer dollars paid for it and publicly paid bureaucrats carried it out. Nor just to one or two unfortunates, but thousands and thousands of people, an entire society.

Our country did this. Our country committed this act of evil.

There are lots of other examples too. While our boys were "over there" fighting Naziism, our government was conducting experiments on native people right here. Our government, our country, our beloved multicultural haven. The reserves are like third world countries, people are dying right left and centre, poverty and alcoholism and suicide is everywhere, there seems no end in sight. . .

So yeah, celebrations may be a little bittersweet this year. How does a society accept responsibility for evils done in its name? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. At the very least, we don't pretend it never happened.

But there are other stories to tell as well.

Perhaps all those Syrians dying to get in might one day have such a story. But I was thinking more specifically of my Polish grandparents who came fleeing Stalinism in the 40's, having lost everything to Hitlerism already. They opened up a small shop, never got rich, but did live peacefully ever after, and died knowing their children and grandchildren would never have to experience Hitlerism or Stalinism. That is not nothing, and that is worth celebrating. 

Perhaps it is a mark of maturity that a country could be confident and secure enough to celebrate itself without pretending it shits gold (are you listening Russia?)

(Let's look at the fireworks!) 











 

A letter to a professor from Delaware.

So an American student thought he'd see North Korea with own eyes, thought to take home a

souvenir, and ended up paying for it with his life. In his wildest dreams, poor Otto Warmbier never imagined taking home a stupid poster would be the death of him; he probably thought, like most of us, that getting yelled at and send away would be the worst that could happen to him. He underestimated the psychotic viciousness of the regime.  

The fact is, the Kim Il Sung death cult will waste no opportunity to violate human dignity. Warmbier was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour, and released only after N.Korean hospitality put him on death's doorstep - he died less than a week after coming home. 

It was a particularly horrifying example of extreme culture shock, a naive, just about unconscious faith in the sanctity of human life confronted with an almost cartoonish indifference to it. Rarely have two sets of values been more incompatible, and rarely has right and wrong been less ambiguous. 

One would think so anyways. Some folks here in the decadent West side with the regime.

Kathryn Dettwyler, a professor anthropology from the University of Delaware, thought Otto "got what he deserved". 

I provide her words in their entirety (courtesy of the rancid Daily Mail) 

"

“Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved? 

He went to North Korea for f*** sake, and then acted like a spoiled, naive, arrogant, US college student who never had to face the consequences of his actions. 

I see him crying at his sentencing hearing and think 'What did you expect?'

How about the moments of thought give to all the other people in North Korea who are suffering under the repressive government there? Just because they are north Koreans, and not US citizens, we shouldn't care about them?  

I've spent my life teaching folks just like Otto (I'm a 62 year old college professor of anthropology) and Otto is typical of the mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueles (sic) males who come into my classes. 

These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn't think they'd really have to read and study the material to get a good grade. They simply deserve a good grade for being who they are. 

Or instead of crying, they bluster and threaten their female professors. His parents, ultimately, are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. 

Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea. And of course, it's Otto's parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives.”

Kathryn Dettwyler

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4636010/Professor-says-Otto-Warmbier-got-deserved.html#ixzz4l1yLASMr 
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Now, I provide my own response to Prof. Dettwyler:

(*ahem*)

Yes Professor, it is very wrong and you ought to feel ashamed of yourself.

It is very wrong to think that anybody rotting and dying in a dictator’s dungeon is “getting what they deserve”. I am astonished that anyone needs reminding of this. Apparently you do however, so I will repeat it: nobody deserves it. Nobody, whether American or Korean or whatever arbitrary distinction we happen to give them. No Human Being deserves it.

It should go without saying, but it clearly doesn’t. There’s a callousness throughout your post which makes it necessary to repeat. It does make me question your concern for the “other people in North Korea who are suffering” whom you so disingenuously invoke; if one person tortured to death for a petty crime is so unworthy of your sympathy, what makes anyone else? They failed to obey the laws of their land as well (namely, offending their thin-skinned god-king); by your logic surely they “got what they deserved” as well, no?

            No? Then what is the difference?

            Furthermore, how does concern for the one preclude concern for the other? Compassion is not finite; it does not need to be rationed (though yours apparently is).

            I suspect you don’t actually give a damn about the long suffering people of North Korea (your sympathy in this case clearly being for the regime), but use them to dignify your own prejudices. You heap adjectives on this young man – “spoiled, naive, arrogant, white, rich, clueles (sic)” – whom you’ve never met, and is no longer here to defend himself. From what I gather, he was never enrolled in any of your classes (being a student of the University of Virginia I understand, many miles from your office) and never cried to you for marks. He certainly never raped anyone. These are projections that have more to do with archetypes of your own invention that with Otto Warmbier.

            Perhaps you’ve replaced him with a composite of annoying students from your own experience. Perhaps you have had bad experiences, and perhaps you have a right to feel bitter. But I would caution against letting your bitterness overwhelm your basic decency. Remember, this was a person you had never met, and who had not actually done you any wrong. Are you really going to claim that justice was served? (In which case, what of the “all the other” people of North Korea serving similar sentences for similar “crimes”?). Does that kind of student (which Warmbier may or may not have been) really anger you more than the regime that killed him? Would you look his mother and father in the eye and say to their face what you wrote: not only did their son “get what he deserved”, but it was their fault?  

            Think carefully of your answer: it will reflect far more on you than on them.

I so wanted to write about Doctor Who. . .

But then I woke up to this:

London attack: man, 47, arrested on suspicion of attempted murder


and then this:

Muslim girl, 17, killed on way home from Virginia mosque"

and, finally, this, advertised on Facebook:

I think I'm going to be sick. . .

Naturally, a great many couldn't see, (or refused to see) any connection between the two; singling out minority religions for special attention apparently being a harmless exercise. The supporters of the patch, who outnumbered its opponents, displayed a depressing dis-ingenuity, comparing it with the Bad Religion logo:

(While, interestingly enough, never quoting nor seeking the band's opinion on the matter).

Does the difference really need to be spelled out? Do they really not see that a punk band railing against their own society is not the same thing as braying against a minority culture? That singling out minority groups for special attention is NOT the same thing as critiquing your own society, and never ever EVER ends well?

Nor am I convinced by the "all religion is bad so what's your problem?" mantra spat out by the apologists. Call it a hunch, but I suspect those patches will be less favoured by the anti-theist philosophers of the Sam Harris variety than the cowardly thugs who beat  Nabra Hassanen to death.

Most depressingly of all is we've seen it all before. And we've apparently learned nothing.

I so wanted to write about Doctor Who. . . .

More stooges

So. . .

Dozens of torch-wielding white supremacists show up in Virginia, and folks wonder why I'm worried?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/15/emboldened-white-supremacists-charlottesville

The Prophetic Vandal: Thoughts on THX 1138

I have a weakness for science fiction films from the seventies, come what may. Which brought me to THX 1138. I don’t think anyone will dispute me when I say the film itself is less interesting than the fact that George Lucas made it.

By which I don’t mean that the film doesn’t have its own interesting bits (though nothing here that hasn’t been covered in Every Dystopia Story Ever), but the fact that a film this slow, cerebral and technophobic could come from Mr. Star Wars is just mind-boggling. This is the man who thought nothing of having droids deliver babies. It’s not so much that a film director in his youth could stitch together an art film just before writing the book on popcorn-cinema – there’s room in the human imagination for both. It’s just hard to fathom how someone who made his fortune via sheer consumerism could have once tried so hard to skewer consumerism, and sad to think that an impassioned defender of the human soul would one day banish it from his movies.    

The contrast, from both a thematic and aesthetic level, is just weird. In contrast to the traditional – nay, archetypal – plotting of Star Wars, THX largely just sort of happens. Most of the “dialogue” is just the background noise of machine operators giving instructions to each other over intercoms. Conversation, in terms of human beings talking to each other, is either hurried or whispered. Sex is repressed (of course) as is every other emotion, people live in subterranean cells, and deviants are stuck into vacuous white voids. Like most dystopias, it’s clearly not intended to be prophetic, but cautionary – I can see it happening.

After all, in the Star Wars universe, droids deliver babies. . .

Perhaps THX was intended as a Utopia? No one would accuse the Star Wars prequels of an excess of humanity. What isn’t generated by a computer is altered to look like it was. What human beings are present are made to act like robots, as if Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman and a host of actors who spend their lives channelling different kids people had had their brains cut out and replaced with computers.  Even the old films, which so captured people’s imaginations, have been destroyed and replaced with hideous computer mash-ups, in a Stalinistic rewriting of history.

Even the current edition of THX is full of this after-the fact tampering, modern CGI spliced into 70’s era film stock. Again, the effect is jarring and distracting, like modern pastels worked into old oil paintings. Sometimes it seems to blatantly contradict the story; the “shell people” of the outside world were clearly intended to be and said to be midget humans – the shell people. Now they’re feral monkeys. What the hell was Lucas thinking? A glimpse of the original pops up in the original trailors, which Lucas forgot to alter. Robert Duval is briefly seen being attacked by a stuffed doll. It looks pretty dumb, but at least matches its’ surroundings, unlike the CGI chimp that replaced it, which looks no better.

I suppose that’s what puzzles me the most about these alterations. None of them actually improve anything. But they do alter the product unrecognizably. The original prints have been withdrawn from circulation-they no longer exist. We can no longer experience the films as their original audience did. For THX, it’s no great loss – a curiosity and a noble effort, but hardly earth shattering. Star Wars is another matter. For those of us of a certain generation, who were exposed to Star Wars at birth, who recite every word of dialogue and hum every note of music before we could spell or even write our own names, Star Wars was part of the scenery – the environment in which we grew up. And it’s gone now, bulldozed by the man who built it in the first place. I can’t shake the feeling that an incredible vandalism has taken place.

To think the vandal saw it all coming. . .