Where have all the movie heroes gone? Drawing social lessons from pop culture is a risky game, and so is pretending to know better than Hollywood execs what people will or will not pay money to see. James Bowman fails to convince me that the clean, inspiring heroes of classic Hollywood are gone, but I wouldn’t much miss them if they were. There is no such thing as a hero. There is such a thing as a heroic act, but the people who perform them are ordinary, and I would rather that everyone realize their own heroic (and villainous) potential, than believe this to be reserved a distinct kind of pious human. Nor are clean heroes particularly interesting as characters. One exception was Roj Blake in Terry Nation’s Blakes’ 7, because his heroism was contrasted with the more realistic world around him, and the ordinary selfishness and cowardice of his followers – his idealistic actions were often ineffectual or counterproductive. This is not to say that the solution is to be “dark and gritty”, a macho style for teenage boys that despite some original freshness is now a boring cliche. Show me real, flawed people doing good and bad things. Show me that regular, selfish, cowardly people like me can choose to do the right thing. Inspire me, if you like, but there’s nothing inspirational about Jesus Christ the son of God with a cowboy hat coming to town to clean out the garbage. Now Judas or Peter, there’s a character.
Monthly Archives: July 2008
The underappreciated finger
The finger is the world’s most underappriciated political statement. Used against people it’s merely an insult. Used against powerful entities such as governments, political parties, religions or corporations, it’s a statement of personal freedom. This is my life, my space, leave me alone. It works on two levels, it not only rejects a set of beliefs but the language they are expressed in. Of course we do need government and even quite a bit of it, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with large corporations or religions. The finger is not the whole of the message, it is the beginning of it, it puts authority on the defensive, forced to justify further invasions of our lives. “Fuck off. Now explain to me again why you need to read my e-mail.” There are more elegant ways to express the same idea, but polite wording strips this beautiful idea of much of its power. The finger is also the only appropriate response to bullshit, the language of PR and spin. A statement that has been carefully manufactured to manipulate you through emotion, evasion and ignorance does not deserve a rational response, it deserves only the finger. There’s no need to actually show it, (and who would you show it to?), but it is important that you think it, that the image of the finger is the first thing to pop into your mind when powerful entities want to mess with your life, and that you let that image guide and inspire your reaction.
Hvor er alle kulturrelativistene?
Dette er en melding til alle kulturrelative venstreradikalere: Jeg trenger frivillige til et forskningsprosjekt som skal finne ut av hvorfor dere hater alt som er godt. Gjennom dyptgående spørsmål som “hvorfor hater du frihet?”, “hvorfor hater du demokratiet?” og “hvorfor gnir du deg i hendene som en bebartet b-filmbanditt over all lidelsen sosialistene påfører samfunnet vårt?”, skal jeg avdekke motivasjonen bak deres terroristvennlige femtekolonnist-arbeid, med sikte mot behandling av rammede og til sist en allmenn vaksinasjon.
Noen frivillige? Anyone? Kom igjen, ikke vær feige. Alle andre ivrer etter å fortelle verden i kjedsom detalj hvorfor X er løsningen, Y er fienden, og Z er en farlig myte. Men dere ondsinnete selvhatende venstreradikalere hører jeg sjelden noe fra. Jeg vet at dere finnes. Jeg har hørt om dere i årevis. Jeg har lett etter dere både her og der, men neimen om jeg finner dere, annet enn langt inne i mørke kroker, men vi vet jo at det ikke er der dere er, men i sentrale maktposisjoner, i midtstrømsmedia og akademia. Av dette kan jeg bare konkludere at dere er meget sjenerte. Derfor dette forskningsprosjektet, hvor dere i full anonymitet kan forklare meg hvordan dere ble så slemme.
Ta kontakt, så avtaler vi tidspunkt. Vennligst ikke ta med urinprøve!
What is your obvious, dull or unlikely idea?
John Brockman at edge.org asked scientists what their “dangerous idea” is, meaning something they believe may be true but might create a stir of everyone accepted it. Their answers are collected in What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, a book that is far less interesting and provocative than the title implies. Cultural differences is one cause, “there is no such thing as the soul” is not my idea of a provocative proposition, (next you’ll tell me we’re related to chimpanzees!) Other dangerous ideas are not all that profound, many are a bit silly, (not as in “how dare they say this!” but “eh .. nah I don’t think so”), or they’re interesting but not the right kind of interesting for a book like this. Some are. I especially like the ones that deal with the unpredictability of technological, scientific and cultural change, meaning we have no idea and no possible way of knowing if we’re headed for a world that is better or worse than the current one. (Here’s my views on this, and here’s Hayek’s.) The book as a whole though didn’t interest me much – buy it to browse through the pages, or better just read the answers online.
256 words or less (or else!)
Now that the Google has turned your brains into mush, (something Microsoft never managed), bloggers have only two (yes, only two – don’t question me, just read and believe) options: We can try to retrain your brains by writing long, difficult essays, or adapt to your short attention span by writing short, superficial blog entries. (For you youngsters out there, a blog entry is sort of like a long Twitter message, a maxi-twitter if you like – we used this in the old days back when horse-carriages roamed the world.) Not being quite sure which strategy will work out in the long run, I’m going with both. Long essays go there, while anything I write here is guaranteed to be 256 words or less. I can offer this money-back-guarantee because you’re too lazy to verify it, and if you do verify it you’re too polite to complain. Also because it’s fun. As Shakespeare once said, the old-fashioned art of selecting your words in such a manner as to have as few of them as possible without loosing any meaning, is the very central characteristic, the essence if you like, or at least the foundation, of the practice of writing in a manner that many people will find poignant, enjoyable and educational, ie. not a waste of time, (though of course this does not guarantee quality as such, and there are plenty of other important caveats, such as the author’s writing ability, but you get the drift). And that clocks us in at exactly 256 words, hooray!