Well, history continues to happen and to be shit. So does editing and writing, though that’s less shit – the next Last War in Albion chapter is actually almost done with the main text. And I just got the last bit of copyediting back from Jane, so I can finish typesetting Volume 1.

Anyway, I mostly want to use today’s Waffling to plug Noah Berlatsky’s latest, an essay collection entitled Fecund Horror: Slashers, Rape/Revenge, Women in Prison, Zombies, and Other Exploitation Dreck. Noah’s a friend of the blog (we podcasted about Wonder Woman a bit ago) and one of the best critics out there, and I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the book, which takes the tired “trashy exploitation films have something interesting to say” angle and finds fresh new life in it, suggesting that the genre works by “looking wrong” at the world, and that this is a generative and, well, fecund angle to take. It’s a delightfully odd collection, hitting obvious things like I Spit On Your Grave and also totally weird things – the title essay culminates in an enthusiastic paen to the subversive potential of a piece of erotica about wasps that lay mind-controlling eggs in people’s brains. It’s on Amazon here, and worth a look if weird trashy cinema is your thing.

As for discussion, getting back to the appallingly rapid pace of history in 2016, in amidst all the news stories that are (deservedly) getting coverage like Brexit, Black Lives Matter, Trump, the Nice attacks, the coup attempt in Turkey, and whatever fucking awful thing has no doubt happened in the couple hours between my queuing this and it posting, what news are you wishing were getting more attention? What’s interesting and underdiscussed in the world?…

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Hello, I’m Ian Chinashop, and I own and run the Ian Chinashop China Shop Co.™ And I’m here to tell you how I made it in business, and how you can make it too. 

The secret of success is hard work and determination.  Without these things I could never have turned the million pounds my dad gave me on my 21^st birthday into a global business empire.  Some hang around waiting for handouts.  That doesn’t work.  You just end up embittered, entitled and useless.  Some people expect life to serve them what they want on a silver platter.  I can’t stand people like that.  I had to work hard to succeed, and there’s no reason why you can’t do that too.  Some people say I had advantages, but who doesn’t?  Even if you grow up in the poorest housing estate in the country, you can turn your desire to escape into an advantage.  If life hands you lemons, make lemonade – as my friend Ian Lemonademanufacturer OBE of the Ian Lemonademanufacturer Lemonade Manufacturing Company™ always says.  He should know.  When he inherited his company from his father – Sir Simon Lemonademanufacturer – it just made lemonade.  I mean, how 20^th Century is that?  Simon diversified into limeade and cherryade and cola, lemonade ice lollies, a lemonade chocolate bar, lemonade flavoured condoms… the company’s mascots – the Lemonade Family – got their own TV series and now sell millions of pounds of merchandise every year.  He puts a lot of his profits into a nice lemony hedge fund.  You see what I’m saying?  Take a disadvantage (i.e. ‘my father’s company just sells lemonade’) and turn it into an advantage.  Okay, so he had lots of help… like when he was able to pay for meetings with government ministers to lobby for relaxation of rules on what he was allowed to put into the lemonade… and able to get away without paying corporation taxes for more than a decade because he could pay accountants to put it all off-shore for him… and able to pay his staff less, and give them fewer holidays, and less compensation for work-related injuries and poisonings, and stop them joining unions, and pay less for more part-time workers on precarious contracts, all thanks to liberalisation of labour laws… but hey, that’s just winners helping other winners.  You can’t complain if the winners do that, it’s part of how winners get to be winners.  If you want to be part of the winners club, where the winners help the other winners, then use your individual enterprise and initiative to turn things around for yourself.

There are certain facts of life that everyone has to come to terms with.  You never get anywhere without a hard-headed appreciation of how the world works.  This is especially true in business.  If you’re going to succeed in a business, you need to make yourself master of the facts of that business. 

I’m going to explain to you how the china shop business works. …

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From worst to best of what I bought, which actually includes things this week. And no, I’m not doing that KFC comic from DC. It’s free, so I can’t buy it, and you can’t buy it for me, so pfft.

Stumptown #10

Phil’s comic pet peeves, number 398 out of a series of fucking infinite length: when writers do near-wordless scripts and then give them to artists who aren’t actually good enough to carry it off. This is a reasonably good story, and there’s some smart, thoughtful writing with a real focus on letting the images tell the story. The probelm is as I said – Justin Greenwood’s not a strong enough artist to convey the information needed clearly. Too often one is left looking at a page going “OK, what’s happening here,” and not in the sense of “what are the storytelling implications of this” but rather in the sense of “is that the same person from three pages ago” or “wait, where are these people?” Letting the pictures tell the story is great and a lovely comics writers trick that I get why everyone likes. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of professional artists working in the industry today can’t actually pull it off, and that writers would be better served not triyng to be so damn clever.

Wonder Woman #2

The start of Rucka’s other Wonder Woman storyline, an origin retelling with Nicola Scott. Like any origin retelling it’s overly well-trodden ground, and Rucka neither brings earth-shattering new ideas nor hyper-brilliant style to the task, but it’s still got a bevy of nice, subtle touches that at least remind what Rucka’s strengths on the character are. I remain inherently suspicious of Rebirth and of the first two issues here, but this is at least a perfectly competent and enjoyble comic, which has to be called a result in context.

New Avengers #13

The impending relaunch brings a sense of acceleration to the book, which is generally good for it. The resolution to the ongoing POD subplot is clever and moving, although I find myself rather sharply hoping the character was not then immediately killed. (I trust Ewing more than that, though.) The Songbird plot is good. The army of Dum Dum Duggans remains barmy and clever. And I’m excited to see the Maker finally make his move. All in all, successful rising action.

The Wicked + The Divine #21

Speaking of Rising Action, the penultimate installment of this arc, which fulfills the description “like Shakespeare but with lots more punching” even better than NextWave did. Gillen and McKelvie have maintained FULL TILT quite well with this arc, and the comparative lull of last month’s installment seems considerably more artful given this jump to eleven. Excited to see how many people have their consciousnesses expanded in next month’s conclusion. (There. I finally did a joke other than “mind-blowing.”)

Next Week…

Lazarus #23

Hunt #1

Snotgirl #1

Darth Vader #23

Spider-Man #6

The Ultimates #9…

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The Pex Lives boys are back with The Crusade. And also with “then-current events,” which I don’t actually know when refers to. Dallas? Brexit? The Crusades themselves? Listen here and find out. They also apparently talk about the classic westerns Shane, Johnny Guitar, and The Searchers. 

Also, apparently Jack uploaded himself reading Canto 25 of Dante’s Inferno a few days ago without explanation or mentioning it anywhere. Well we’re mentioning it here. You can listen here.…

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(Content Note: The following contains descriptions of racial injustice and violence, discussions of the author’s own personal history with racism, and some use of the N-word. It is also written by a white man from the American South, and is an attempt to dicuss these issues with a presumed-majority-white audience, and as such is in no way intended to displace black voices on these issues. If you’re looking for black authors on these topics, may I recommend Ijeoma Oluo’s “Dallas is a tragedy for all of us – and shouldn’t shut down calls for justice,” Bianka Bell’s “How Pseudo-Allies Enable the Killing of Black Bodies,” and Messiah Rhodes’s “Scary Negroes With Guns.”)

“I tried to hold his right arm and use my left hand to get out to have some type of control and not be trapped in my car any more. And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.

[…]

“…he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked. […] He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me. His first step is coming towards me, he kind of does like a stutter step to start running. When he does that, his left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me. […] At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him. And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way.”

— From Darren Wilson’s testimony on the shooting of Michael Brown.

No Way Out (1950) is a strange bird of a film by modern eyes: approximately equal parts despairing film noir, Tennessee-Williams-style social realist drama, and Hollywood harrangue about the evils of racism. Sidney Poitier (in his first-ever major motion picture role) is Luther Brooks, a young medical doctor working in a prison ward who pretty much sets the mold for the character Poitier would spend a career portraying: well-scrubbed, morally forthright men of impeccable ethical standards who abhor violence and serve not as the Magic Negro, but the Good Negro. If Luther Brooks or Vigil Tibbs had been murdered in the street by Darren Wilson, not even the Bill O’Reillys of the world would be able to find much cause for claiming the “no angel” defense.

Opposite Poitier is Richard Widmark’s Ray Biddle, a horrifying snake of a man who finds himself being healed by Brooks after he and his brother are shot fleeing from the scene of a robbery they have committed. When Biddle’s brother dies, he doesn’t buy Brooks’ diagnosis of a long-resident brain tumor but blames “the nigger doctor” for intentionally murdering a white man.…

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I think it’s symbolic or something. (The weird doors in the background, I mean.)

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly.

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister

Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

The Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish

The Burning Heart, Melisandre

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

The Direwolf, Sansa Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

The Shield, Brienne of Tarth

Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn

With the Bear of Meereen, Jorah Mormont

Winterfell, the Dreadfort, and Braavos are abandoned.

The episode is in eleven parts. The first runs four minutes and is set in King’s Landing. It is in sections. The first section is three minutes long; the first image is of an angry Jaime, his dialogue preceding his appearance. The second section is one minute long. The transition is by dialogue, from Jaime talking about who Cersei will choose as her champion to the Mountain

The second part runs five minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Gregor to Sandor Clegane.

The third runs three minutes and is set at the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya Stark to Jon Snow.

The fourth part runs four minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon and Sam sitting ruefully to Tyrion’s window.

The fifth part runs three minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion in his cell to the great pyramid.

The sixth part runs four minutes and is set in Dragonstone. The transition is by image, from naked Daario to naked Melisandre.

The seventh part runs three minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Melisandre and Selyse looking into the fire to Daario walking out of Daenerys’s room and getting dressed.

The eighth runs three minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys to a wide shot of the Hound and Arya.

The ninth runs five minutes and is also set in the Riverlands. The transition is by dialogue, with Brienne and Podrick coming to speak of Arya.

The tenth runs five minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, with Podrick having just talked about Tyrion.

The last runs eight minutes and is set in the Eyrie. The transition is by family, from Tyrion to Sansa. The final image is of the Moon Door after Lysa Arryn has taken landing on a snake to new levels.

Analysis

Structurally speaking, the elegant style of play that had been the hallmark of the season pretty much gives out here. “Mockingbird” is a jagged mess of hard cuts and piece-shuffling concerned more with positioning plot lines to be able to handle the existence of a single-location ninth episode than with anything of its own. Thankfully the season’s overall shape from “First of His Name” on, in which episodes are anchored by a sequence of escalating set pieces, largely covers for this lack, making “Mockingbird” a more or less satisfying experience.…

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I was supposed to produce an essay today. I had a whole plan and everything, which would have involved writing the first of no-doubt many essays discussing the intersection of polyamorous perspective and large-scale political movements. Then two black men were murdered on camera in less than twenty-four hours and that post felt, shall we say, less than perfectly empathetic. I have a very different post, looking at racialized violence and systemic racism coming up for Sunday, but instead of doing something serious today I figured I’d do the weekly Oi! Spaceman podcast post. I promise, we don’t deal with any kind of serious or political issues on any of the Oi! Spaceman family. Honest.

Anyway, the big news is that Pex Lives’ own James Murphy came onto Searching For Fuchal to chat about the fifth episode of Series One, “Confidence and Paranoia.” James has been watching Red Dwarf about as long as he could talk, so this was a very fun (albeit relaxed) episode. Go check it out. 

Over on They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, we’re even less on any kind of overt poltical move, chatting about sleazy sex comedies. We covered The Cheerleaders and the ulta-obscure One Night Only this week and had a really nice time doing so. The Cheerleaders is kind of an accidental art film (with lots of female nudity and Skinemax-style sex scenes) and One Night Only includes an extended sequence involving The Scary Cave, a vaguely sexual act which really must be seen to be believed. If you’re interested in listening to two increasingly-drunken men chat about titty flicks, it’s probably not an entire waste of your time. …

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So, the Chilcot Report, end result of ‘The Iraq Inquiry’, is finally out.  I understand frantic, cosplaying fans were queuing up outside bookstores at midnight, desperate to get their hands on a copy.  People were getting seriously worried that Chilcot (or TRHSJCGCB, as fans call him, for ‘the Right Honourable Sir John Chilcot G.C.B.’) was getting too old, and would die before finishing it. 

Personally, I won’t bother.  The TV series overtook it years ago.  The most recent seasons have been especially good, what with all the stuff about the rise of ISIS.  The finale to the series just gone, with the bombing in Baghdad, was very shocking, if not entirely unpredictable.  I was less impressed with the comedy storyline about the attempted Blairite coup within the Labour Party, happening right the away across the other side of the map you see in the opening titles.  It was disappointing that the TV series gave so much space to the keystone palace revolutionaries within Labour, and so much less airtime to the storyline about ISIS terrorism against Muslims, but I guess they know their audience.

I don’t need to actually read the Chilcot Report to know what the main plot developments are, not least because reviewers have helpfully spoiled it at me since the publication. 

1. The war was “not a last resort”.
2. “The judgments about Iraq’s capabilities … were presented with a certainty that was not justified”… in other words, Blair & Co. deliberately exaggerated the case for war.
3. Bush and Blair had no plan for what would happen after they made their momentous decision (gee, I sure am glad politicians don’t do stuff like that anymore). 
4. The Americans ignored advice and made blunder after blunder in their administration of occupied Iraq, blunders that led directly to the subsequent chaos.
5. Saddam wasn’t an imminent threat to other countries.  It would’ve taken him sanctions-free years (which were not a likelihood) to develop WMD.  Other countries were significantly more threatening.
6. British intelligence, while taking a slightly more nuanced view than Blair’s faith-based certainties, nevertheless worked from the pre-existing assumption that Saddam had WMD, and consequently produced “flawed” intel.
7. The British Army were sent in ill-equipped, in a rush, with little planning.
8. “If the UK had refused to join the US in the war it would not have led to a fundamental or lasting change in the UK’s relationship with the US.”  So all the talk of Britain needing to safeguard its international profile was unfounded.
9. The decision that the UK’s involvement was legal was “far from satisfactory”.

The report is actually quite strong, which (I admit) surprised me.  While I was not expecting (as it seems some were) the report to openly call Blair a war criminal and demand he be strung up from a lamppost in the Strand, I was expecting the report to be another in the line of whitewashes and semi-whitewashes which constitute the long history of UK establishment ‘reports’ and ‘investigations’ into that mess of things we now refer to by the handy catch-all word ‘Iraq’.…

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