funny

here

me on TV?

I dunno if it'll end up in the abstracts or the video archive, but I just got interviewed by KFTY, about Cinco de Mayo. It'll be on at 7pm.

Update:

Man, did that ever suck. Next time I'll make sure I have a full time staff to prep me and a cool looking office to get interviewed in.

The Least Sucky Prequel Ever

(possibly barring the early version of the Exorcist prequel)

Revenge of the Sith, feels familiar. The oppressive obvious evil, and thankfully finally characters I can care about. I actually gave a shit about Anakin this time, felt sorry for Padme and Obi-Wan, and Yoda got to trash talk the Emperor. Lucas hasn’t recaptured the glory of The Empire Strikes Back or Star Wars with this installment, but he has finished the story and sharpened its message.

The Good: Anakin’s slide toward evil, the Emperor revealed, the fall of the Jedi

The Bad: Lucas is still romantically dead, the wookies are just window dressing, the Frankenstein moment, I wanted more bitterness from Anakin at the end

The Ugly: the effects are too good there is no wonder left it’s all just eye candy, with four climactic light saber duels there is a distinct lack of the mid-fight plot development of the originals, the twin “surprise” ending

There are a bunch of plot holes that will leave fan boys (like me) losing sleep.

Best line goes to Padme: “this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”

some pre-Star Wars reading

In the Guardian Lucas admits Star Wars has roots in reality and that he has an opinion about the real world. Lucas's interview and especially his Q&A in WIRED shed some light on why the prequels suck (read: are so drastically different in ambiance and tone than the originals), and give me some hope that he'll make at least one more truely great film (probably not this one or Indy 4).

Oh yeah, suprise, suprise Kevin Smith loves Revenge of the Sith and the New Yorker doesn't.

white people have thin skin

There is a burgeoning new conversation about the nature of white supremacy, how to be an effective anti-racist, the meaning of the term “race traitor”, and a genuine asking of if it is possible for white people to escape whiteness in the world today.

I’m going to make several assumptions for the purpose of this post, that white supremacy exists, that white supremacy has been at the crux of the lefts impotence for the past 30 years, that white supremacy is a complex social/power structure, that white supremacy is not a personality trait, that white supremacy doesn’t have an on/off switch.

Over at Anarchist People Of Color’s website there is an article that, while approaching sectarian sniping, presents core ideas I’m sympathetic to. White privilege and white supremacy are fundamental parts of the ruling power structure. White people who think that white privilege can be left behind after going to some workshops, need to think some more (snarking aside the CWS workshops are vital, useful and important). Bring The Ruckus respond to APOC’s article with their own slide towards sniping, but also make many good points, it’s a good primer on Race Traitor Theory, which boils down to acting right. When a white person witnesses another white person abusing (or even using) the power vested in them by the complex social structure of white supremacy, it is always right to call it out for what it is, people who say they are concerned with social change have an obligation to act right.

What disturbs me the most about both of these articles is the self righteous tone. What is the real concern here, dismanteling white power or sounding like a know it all? This kind of self-referential writing and insider bickering has kept the good ideas of the left from spreading. Whether or not I’m fully satisfied with the development of Race Traitor Theory, it definitely brings a deeper understanding and higher level of conversation than today’s popular “reverse-racism” pabulum. It is an idea worth talking about and struggling over.

Socialists are often criticized for subordinating race to class. Today the left seems to conflate race and class (poor people/workers = people of color). This view doesn’t reflect reality; most workers, welfare recipients, and poor people in the US are white. If the left cannot find away to speak to those people, we will continue to lose. The advantage to a simple socialist world view is that it attempts to flatten oppression, this also doesn’t reflect reality, a black homeless vet is gonna get harassed more often than a white homeless vet even if every other fact is their lives are identical. However the socialist organizing model makes sense, if white workers can be brought into class consciousness, it doesn’t take much to expose white supremacy.

Yesterday Hard Knock Radio, interviewed Adam Mansbach author ofAngry Black White Boy. Mansbach, like me, is a white Hip-Hop fan. Unlike me he became an active participant in Hip-Hop, while I continued to smoke the punk rock and visit Hip-Hop for the Public Enemys and NWAs. Angry Black White Boy is a race novel in the tradition of Invisible Man, the twist is the protagonist is a white college freshman determined to be down, and show black people what Hip-Hop is all about. I think this book and Jeff Chang's recent Hip-Hop history will add crucial elements to the renewed wrestling with white supremacy. This conversation needs to continue, but it also needs to result in practice and that practice needs to be summed up and discussed. Rinse and repeat.

look it's me

yep it's also a good place to go kick it and cast off the man's oppresion, if only for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.

Serenity

Last night instead of Copwatching I saw the rough cut of Serenity the big screen follow-up to Joss Whedon's brilliant TV series Firefly.

If you are a fan of Whedon or Firefly, the movie is awesome; if not you might have trouble tracking the ten character main cast. I'd suggest begging, borrowing, or stealing the DVD's of Firefly to understand the nuances of Inayra, Book, Kaylee, Zoe, and Wash; otherwise they'll come off as underdeveloped foils for Mal (which really is all they are, as Mal died in everyway but physically after emerging from a civil war on the losing side; the crew of his boat are expressions of all the parts of himself that he has cut-off). It opens with a long multi-layered flashback/dream/history lesson that effectively sets-up the world of the film, then quickly sets up the conflict and then the first hilarious and terrifying action sequence. I'm damn glad that Reavers (screaming, cannibalistic, self-mutilating, rapists with spaceships) aren't real

Serenity successfully rises above the overblown TV show feel of some of Whedon's other big screen projects, most notably Alien: Resurrection. The big action set pieces are just candy, the meat of this movie is the characters and the story. The tone is significantly darker than the series, the stakes are higher, it really feels like everyone is going to die at several points. I choked up at a couple of the more vicious turns, someting I haven't felt from a movie since Ricky Baker got killed in Boyz in the Hood.

Hopefully this will get punched up over the summer, the print I saw needed color correction, some sound work, and some more transit shots.

The real treat was the intro and Q&A doled out by Alan Tudyk and Gina Torres this kind of fan appreciation is rare, and illustrates the crucial genius of Whedon and his crew. They understand that popular culture is a conversation between the creators and the viewer/participants, they don't sit in a tower and spit out a product every couple of years to rake in a bit more cash. They are passionate about the stories they tell, who they tell them to, and how they are told. Input, feedback and questions are cherished, not dismissed as fanboy revisionism.

Science fiction has always been away to talk about the world we live in. Now that Whedon is unencumbered by Fox TV, he has some very pointed comments to make about where we are living, what we are doing, and most importantly how we think about it.