Plan for Peace, Movie Ad rundown, and my most recent Genius Idea

First off, I would like to confess to the world: I really suck at keeping an up-to-date blog. Are we clear on that? (pensive pause as the indifferent world answers with silence) Alright, moving on...

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So while biking between work and home I noticed a couple of cars with stickers like "End War" or "War is not the Answer," and I felt sorry for my peace-loving brethren. Obviously their message still hasn't been effectively communicated to this battle-scarred world of ours. I think it's time they try a different tactic. Instead of displaying their pacifist sentiments here in the USA, a program should be established to transport all our peace-loving brethren to the Middle East. There they can use their bumper-sticker summations of wisdom, peace-sign t-shirts, and John Lennon music to turn the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and various other Islamist insurgents from their violently coercive ways. I'm sure that a simple multi-cultural dialogue between idealistic college students and bloodthirsty zealots is the missing ingredient we need to add to the hopes-and-dreams stew to finally bring about an age of planetary Kumbaya.

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So during the superbowl (which, good Mormon as well as uninterested-in-sports-geek that I am, I did not watch) a veritable plethora of advertisements for new movies came out. I watched several of these half-minute montages of thrills, explosions, and stirring music on youtube. My thoughts:

Rango: LOVE THE MARIACHI OWLS! Looks beautifully animated, really original, and pretty dang funny. Love the bits of Johnny Depp's voice performance that you hear. Ever since I saw the first trailer towards the end of last year I've been really psyched for this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbFcEHM4I0

Cowboys and Aliens: I have been very vocal about my excitement for this movie to my less enthused peers. Come on, it's Indiana Jones and James Bond in a cowboy movie, with FLIPPIN' ALIENS! This movie may have been #1 on my most-anticipated-for-2011 list, and now that I've seen the new sights from the super-bowl spot: I admit, I think it took my excitement down just a notch. Never fear, I shall stay faithful and fervent in my support for the film, but I kind of liked it better in the first trailer where I didn't see the space ships. It's true that the power of imagination almost always trumps the actual product. Still looks pretty awesome though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXNbpqc1gLE

Captain America: Looks pretty dang good and thrilling. They did a great job with the costume; it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't be sure of translating to the screen well, but the glimpses of it in action here all look glorious. I'm excited to see a superhero movie set in World War II, which hopefully should lend a distinctive spin and atmosphere to the superhero-origins genre that has become quite well-worn over the past decade. I just hope they don't water down Captain America's patriotic America-ness. The director's already made some comments that have rubbed me the wrong way; the trend in Hollywood now seems to be that America needs to act apologetic to the rest of world and that any suggestion of American exceptionalism must be wiped off the screen. But look, it's his name and his costume is the stars-and-stripes. I think it would make for a much more interesting chemistry-dynamic among the Avengers (basically Marvel comic's Justice League; Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Hulk are all gonna meet up in the same movie in 2012) if they let his character stay old-fashioned in his love of country, letting him bounce off the more jaded personalities of the modern-set superheroes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnE4uzT7sro

Kung Fu Panda 2: The du-du-clap! of We Will Rock You totally got stuck in my head after watching this. I loved the first one. Hopefully the sequel can maintain the breezy fun of the first one. For some reason now I keep feeling the urge to exclaim "Shashapooi!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ote5aOIPpJQ

Thor: Well, this movie does have Anthony Hopkins in it so that automatically gives it some entertainment cred. It could be a lot of fun; it's got some awesome visuals anyways. Thor's gonna be the trickiest character to work in with the more grounded (for comic books, anyways) super heroes who will make up the Avengers. I hope it all works well. I wonder if the super hero genre's gonna run completely out of steam in a few years; we've just been bombarded with so many superhero movies and even superhero parodies over the past decade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTTGL-OxzGY

Super 8: They're going the Inception route with their advertising for this one, showing you barely nothing of the plot but just quick glimpses in the trailers. The plot details that have been announced is that it's about these kids in the late 70s making an amateur zombie movie with their Super 8 camera (hence, the title) by some train tracks when a military train transporting an alien gets derailed. ET breaks loose and apparently some creepy shenanigans follow. I might actually be more psyched about this movie than any other coming out this year. This movie is produced by Spielberg, directed by the JJ Abrams (who, after directing Mission Impossible 3 and Star Trek, in my mind can claim the popcorn throne as Spielberg's heir), and the glimpses from the trailer (combined with the very John Williams-esque music) does give it the feel of a vintage Spielberg fantasy film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5dLtRnaOY

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Also, I just recently realized what would be the perfect, non-sinister application of memory-erasing technology should it ever be invented. Here's a real-life scenario: I watch a movie trailer and get really excited about the movie because the trailer is so awesome. As a devoted movie geek, I watch the trailer again and again. So, now I'm excited about the movie, but I've also now made myself very familiar with a lot of the "wow" moments and possibly even the plot points of the upcoming movie from its trailer. As such, my movie-going experience will be slightly-less-than-it-could-have-been as I ruined some of the element of surprise by watching the trailer. Now comes the sci-fi scenario answer: Thanks to memory-erasing technology I watch the trailer, get super-psyched for the movie, get my ticket for the movie, and then get mind-wiped just before I see it. I'll know, since I bought the ticket, that I was excited about this film, but I'll really have no idea what's about to come and thus can enjoy my first-time viewing experience to the fullest. Heck, I'd also use this stuff to keep wiping my mind before watching Star Wars movies (that way, when Vader drops the "I'm your father" line, I could really have my mind blown).

I'm sorry, stupid phrase, but I'm letting you go.

Well, I got fired today. Just a month or two of working once a week at the salad/sandwich place Chopped and I was informed today that I was being let go. So, yeah, you can imagine what wonders getting fired from a minimum-wage fast food job does to your self-esteem, but that’s actually not what I want to get into right now (and in fairness I can’t really blame them; they probably really didn’t need to take me on in the first place and I wasn’t as quick as everybody else on the salad/chopping line [though in my defense it was only four/five hours a week so I think it was harder for me to get into the rhythm of it]). Ah, crap, I did get into it. I’ll stop and actually move on to the real topic of this post.

Lately my mind’s been getting stuck on the seeming contradictions or inadequacies in certain phrases we human beings use. You can see this in my last post when I went on a quick side-tangent about the phrase “Native American.” Well, today what I thought about was the phrase “We’re letting you go” as an alternative to “We’re firing you.” Now, I appreciate the desire to be tactful about firing somebody (and the manager, Nick, was very kind), but “letting you go” seems like a very retarded, almost cop-out way to say you’re firing somebody.

We’re letting you go!? Letting someone go implies that they wanted to go, that you were holding them back and now you are setting them free.

Why, yes, indeed, I hated having a job, hated actually having an income, hated gaining job experience, hated feeling like I had something steady and reliable, a place where I could contribute and receive rewards; those jerks were making me come in every week to work! I didn’t want to but they bodily dragged me in and chained me to the counter! If only they would just liberate me and let me go.

Sometimes I wish for a world with less tact and more frank, up-front communication. “Sir, we’re firing you because you suck at this job.” Yeah, it hurts, but it hurts no matter how you dress it up. Whatever method they have for telling you you’re fired, the same feelings of loss, inadequacy, and failure set in (ah, dang it, I’m getting back into it again).

Point is, I think the phrase “letting go” is a phrase that that simply does not jive with the reality of what firing is.

The other phrase that’s been troubling me a bit lately is the phrase, “anti-war” (this train of thought was inspired by the movie Avatar). Whenever I hear the phrase “anti-war” applied to a movie or story, it's usually a turn-off for me. Which then makes me feel weird. I mean, does that mean I’m pro-war. That’s a terrible thought!

Why, yes, I can’t get me enough war. Every morning I wake up thinking, “Boy, I just can’t wait till the next big war!” I just love the thought of young men from different cultures and nations coming together to kill each other. I love the smell of napalm in the morning!

I guess my issue with the phase is I’m not really sure how to define myself (at least not in the simplistic pro/anti terms we like to use in politics), because I would say overall I’m anti-war, too. It’s just that I do think there are situations where the alternative is worse, that there are situations where not going to war now means that eventually an even more horrible, disastrous conflict will take place later on(see Neville Chamberlain), and that until the Lord comes and sets things straight that war will be a fact of human life.

There are anti-war pieces of art/story telling I enjoy (musically, for example, I love the songs “Devils and Dust” by Bruce Springsteen and “Belief” by John Mayer even though I know both songs are protesting the war in Iraq/Afghanistan, military engagements which I have supported). But when I hear that term applied to something I always fear that it will be some over-simplistic narrative in which Americans are always painted as the bad guys, soldiers are either blood-thirsty nut jobs or psychologically-shattered victims, and the reality of there being dangerous, evil men out there who will not be deterred by anything less than violence is denied.

Anyways, just some things that have been on my mind.

When in Doubt, Blame Whitey or (in the case you are part of said whitey ethnic group) When In Doubt, Apologize

Alright, this post arises out of a little rant that occurred inside my brain during the second half of my "Slavery In Latin America and the Caribbean" class yesterday. I kind of wish I had written this post sooner so more of my genuine frustration would have poured out (I've mostly cooled off about it now), but in any case I still want to get my thoughts out on this subject.

The subject for our class yesterday was the Haitian Revolution, which occurred in Haiti during the last decade of the 18th century and the first few years of the 19th century. It's actually a really complex and interesting subject, but all I'll say about it is basically it was the only successful slave uprising that truly destroyed the local system of slavery during that era. In our class the teacher told us that really the Haitian Revolution is just as important and impactful as the American Revolution, French Revolution, etc. in modern history but that in America we don't really do pay much attention to it. I agree with that; I was never really taught about it in any detail growing up, and it was a very important event (it didn't immediately lead to abolition elsewhere, but it did send waves throughout the rest of slave-owning America, in any case terrifying the heck out of slave owners and affecting how they viewed their slaves). The question our teacher posed was "Why don't we focus on it more?"

Obviously early on accounts of it would be suppressed or highly biased as slaveowners would want to protect the slave system from any further uprisings, and after that for a while racists also would not want to confront it, but really now I don't think there's any deliberate ignoring of it now; I just think that, as in the past most people avoided the subject, now most modern historians don't really think to much about it, instead focusing their research on more commonly known topics and on the fates and actions of more powerful nations (American Revolution eventually leads to superpower; French Revolution likewise still leads to a powerful nation; Russian Revolution leads to a communist superpower). Haiti, meanwhile (as another student in the class pointed out) has not been very economically successful or militarily powerful in the world scene.

Anyways, a female, Native-American student (I've realized I have issues with both the ethnic label of Indian [because the Americas are not India, though peopled did call them the Indies] and native American [because, heck, I'm an native American; whether you're white, black, or Asian if you're born here you are a native]) made a comment about how in American history classes nobody studies or teaches native American history enough (she's commented about this many times before); she told a personal anecdote about how she went to some college lecture with these white guest Professors from the east. She talked about them opening [I think] their lecture with an apology. I'm not sure if she was saying that they were apologizing for what had been done to the native Americans in the past or that more white people had not shown up at the lecture or if they were apologizing for there not being enough research on native American history (I don't think it was for the last one, but for one of the first two). She made a comment about how she appreciated them being more sensitive to the native Americans and how she thinks conquering societies don't like to confront or own up to the destruction of indigenous societies they caused. I'm trying to represent what she said fairly because miscommunication/misinterpreting is a common thing, but to me her comments seemed to possess resentment against white western society and fit into the whole "white guilt" pattern of thought where white people have to always make sure they're apologetic about their society's past and really sensitive to the feelings of formerly persecuted minority groups.

Okay, moving past her comments (which were just a trigger; it just got me thinking about the broader white guilt philosophy in our society), I just wanted to make it know that I think white guilt political correctness is a BUNCH OF CRAP! If I understood correctly and those professors were apologizing for what Europeans had done to native Americans, then I think that's just absurd, because YOU CAN'T APOLOGIZE TO SOMEBODY WHO NEVER HAD AN ATROCITY COMMITTED AGAINST THEM FOR AN ATROCITY YOU NEVER COMMITTED! It's a ridiculous, childish exercise that really doesn't advance the cause of historical truth or social progress but instead gives people feelings of warm fuzzies and "Boy, am I enlightened!" self-righteousness. The past is done; it happened. And what happened then does affect where people are now socially in the present. But the way to fix problems is NOT to keep harping on the past and demanding restitution from the descendants of a conquering society. We should know our history, and if people want to do further research into the history of conquered/largely wiped out societies, more power to them. But, please, nobody should feel either guilty or entitled to apologies because of what past ancestors did.

And while it is true that conquering societies usually do white-wash their history, I just really don't think that's the case in this situation now, as far as what's taught in American schools about white/Indian relations in America. I was always taught, from elementary school on up that what European conquerors had done to native Americans was VERY WRONG. I don't think there was ever any moral confusion or debate over that. We might not know tons of details about past Indian cultures, but I don't think modern America really has any problem admitting up to its history of destroying indigenous cultures.

The other problem I have with white guilt is that turns our narrative of history into a perverted, innacurate, skewed account just as surely as racism or a belief in the infallibility of the United States does. While western society (referring to western European civilization and the societies it established in other places that it conquered at one time or the other) does have a history of many atrocities and oppression against indigenous societies (and, btw, western civilization did not invent murder, rape, prejudice; they existed everywhere throughout human history because they are simply part of the darker side of human nature and not unique to any one civilization), it also has a history of many political/scientific/social achievements and inventions that have benefitted the whole world. Decreased child mortality rates, longer life spans, cars, planes, greatly improved general standards of living, the protection of civic liberties, greater opportunities for social advancement, etc. I believe these all developed out of WESTERN civilization and philosophies, and if you're going to knock on America/Britain/whatever for past crimes you should also acknowledge all the good and great things those countries did (for, example, being/becoming the kinds of countries that DO ALLOW you to criticize them or their past without fear of being beheaded or tossed into a gulag).

In closing, I'll leave you all with a quote from one my most favorite political commentators, Mark Steyn: "We are encouraging of certain forms of assertiveness: I am woman, hear me roar! Say it loud, I’m black and proud! We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it! But the one identity we’re enjoined not to trumpet is the one that enables us to trumpet all the others: our identity as citizens of a very specific kind of society with a very particular inheritance, built on the rule of law, property rights, and freedom of speech. Heaven forbid we should assert any of that: I am western, hear me apologize!"