Eruditorum Press

Cuck the police

Shabcast 25 – Phil and Jack talk about High-Rise

5

Hello again, my fellow muggles. 

First, apologies: I wanted to provide you with some written material this week, but I was unable to get the next bits of either Psychic Landscape or Are You Sitting Comfortably? ready in time, so you’re getting yet another Shabcast instead.  It’s a good one though.  I’m joined by Phil again, and we chat about High-Rise, both the Ballard novel and the Wheatley/Jump movie.  In the process we veer wildly off topic at times (I can hear your gasps of surprise), touching on subjects such as Phil’s upcoming Build High For Happiness project, ‘Paradise Towers’ (of course), The VVitch, some other movies, Stranger Things, and whether or not Robert Holmes read J. G. Ballard.

Download or listen here.  (Beware Triggers and Spoilers.)

ADDITION: I forgot to link to a couple of relevant documentaries.  I posted this one – a dated but still-excellent account of some of the hidden history of Modernism – at my own YouTube channel recently.  (I’m slowly working my way through a huge stack of old home-recorded VHS tapes.  When I encounter a good documentary that I can’t find anywhere else online, I post it at my channel.)  This one is about Pruitt Igoe and that whole thing, who is mentioned by Phil during the Shabcast.  It takes a political, myth-busting look at the issue.

In other news, it’s apparently Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary today, and so ATB Publishing are now taking pre-orders for their forthcoming collection Outside In Boldly Goes.  Every episode of original Star Trek written about by a different writer.  As you may recall, I was in the first Outside In, the one about classic Who, with a little essay about ‘Snakedance’ that was initially written for the fanzine Panic Moon.  This time I’m in Outside In Boldly Goes with an entirely new and original piece about the TOS series 3 episode ‘Requiem for Methuselah’. 

 …

Continue Reading

Comics Reviews (September 7th, 2016)

3

Glitterbomb #1

Kieron Gillen was on Twitter yesterday making a very good point about a standard first issue structure where you open by showing the interesting thing then cut back and recap how you got there, which is that it’s a weak structure. I pointed out, in particular, that it’s a TV structure based on fear that someone will change the channel at the first commercial break, as opposed to a comics structure where the concern is that they won’t come back next month. Gillen wasn’t talking about Glitterbomb, as it only came out today, but it’s a case in point – on page 2 I was 100% in for what the book was doing. By the issue’s end, I was bored and wishing we could get back to that bit where it was interesting. It wouldn’t quite be as simple as not doing the flash forward structure – if you did the issue in chronological order Farrah’s first kill would defang the end. But still, it’s a lackluster approach that puts the moment of big emphasis in the wrong part of the issue. 

Eclipse #1

Competent but unexceptional sci-fi mystery. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing that immediately announces itself as transcendently brilliant and must-read either. Some good images, but could probably have used to do a little more character work and a little less worldbuilding. 

Mercury Heat #11

Good stuff – this arc slowed down rather a lot in the middle, but it gets off to a proper roar again here, and you start to see how it’s possible that we could be leading to a semi-satisfying book ending with the next issue. (Although I wish it had gotten one more arc – this is good stuff and I trust Gillen that it’ll come to a conclusion, but it’s also clearly not the plot he’d have picked to go out on.) The first ten issues of this are available as part of the currently running Uber Kickstarter, and if you like 2000 AD-flavored hard SF, it’s definitely one you wish you’d checked out.

Kill or Be Killed #1-2

Not sure how I missed the first one of this. The Brubaker/Phillips noir stuff has historically left me a bit cold, but this has a wicked sense of humor and a really compelling narrative voice that makes it feel vigorous and fun and daring in exactly the way previous Brubaker/Phillips things have not. It’s notable that this has much of the same premise as that ghastly Demonic comic that came out a few weeks ago – reading them side by side would be an excellent demonstration of good vs trite and mediocre writing. Also interesting to compare is Scarlet – there’s a similar case of “let’s take vigilante justice as a morally serious concept.” I hope it doesn’t end up going too blandly noir as a result – I don’t demand that our protagonist “get away with it” by any stretch of the imagination, and the book’s discussion of that notion pretty firmly mitigates against the idea that it could end that way, but straightforward “no murder really is wrong” will be tremendously unsatisfying.…

Continue Reading

Hyrule Haeresis 3

, , , , , , , 2

When Christian monks and missionaries first reached Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, they brought their gods, language, writing and canon with them. And with these tools, they set about the process of assimilating the indigenous gods, culture, history and tradition they found there. One problem they had was what to do with the in-depth genealogies the locals in Ireland had that told tales of a series of invasions and resettlement of the island by successive groups of immigrants, some of which seemed to have a decidedly divine and magickal air about them. As this clearly did not mesh with what their own mythologies told them about the origins of humanity, they put these stories to the pen and retconned them as the supporting cast, ungods and demons of what they interpreted as the definitive Christian canon.

Although The Legend of Zelda is typically read as being largely based on Celtic mythology and mythological archetypes, there is actually a fair amount of Christian influence in the series, particularly in these first three games. Link’s sword in Zelda no Densetsu and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link bears a very prominent cross, and in the first game he wields a book of magic that is explicitly called a Bible (this was changed to be less overt in later localizations, but the influence is still there). The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past opens with an elabourate creation myth that seems very evocative of the one in Genesis, with the three “Golden Goddesses” of Power, Wisdom and Courage descending from the heavens to create Hyrule (and notably, bringing “order to nature”) before retreating the world to observe in silence from afar. Rather than filling the role goddesses traditionally seem to fill in our world, Hyrule’s “Golden Goddesses” seem to be more reminiscent of gender-swapped Abrahamic creator gods.

In this version of the Legend, the Triforce is the physical embodiment of their divine essence, and in fact the game’s title in Japan is The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, but it was changed to A Link to the Past by the Nintendo of America in order to downplay the game’s connection to religion. This same attitude led NOA to change the name of the holy building Link and Zelda seek shelter in early in the game from “Church” to “Sanctuary” and the title of the injured man they rescue from “Priest” to “Sage”. Agahnim himself, the game’s antagonist, was once a priest too, though he was masquerading as one.

Yet there are undercurrents to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past‘s cosmology, many of which do in fact seem to come from non-Christian sources. There is a female nature spirit Link can contact for help at various points in the game explicitly called a Goddess in the Japanese game, but who gets renamed with the somewhat indelicate moniker of “Fat Fairy” in the Western localization. There are other fairies too, including an actual Fairy Queen (who is named Venus, an appellate with a storied etymology).…

Continue Reading

Attack of the Fifty Foot Podcast

9

Okay, the podcast isn’t literally fifty feet.  Because we don’t use spools of magnetic tape for recording anymore.  We use computers.  And so trying to measure a podcast as such would be ludicrous.

What’s not ludicrous is the podcast itself, Giant Woman, the second in what’s shaping up to be an ongoing series with Shana and Jane talking about Steven Universe.  You can get the podcast here.

By the way, we are planning to go to Virgina Beach next year (yes, I really like to plan things out in advance) for the Beach City Con, a Steven Universe convention in Beach City.  The kickstarter for it is already funded, but of course the more that’s pledge the more awesome the con will be!  Check it out here.

Finally, for those listening to the podcast, I forgot to mention that the theme song itself indicates that a “spiritual” approach wouldn’t be inappropriate for intepreting the show.  After all, “That’s why the people of this world… believe in…”

…believe in giant women!  Because giant women are awesome.  Literally!

#BelieveInSteven…

Continue Reading

Alt (Chrono Trigger)

9

It’s not about changing history; not really. One does change history, yes, but that is not the point, at least in the conventional sense. Normally we change history to alter present circumstances, after all. Here, however, we change history to alter the future, with the present remaining not fixed, but largely conceptualized as a somewhat indifferent midpoint between the two poles – strangely unimportant to the actual story being told.

On the other hand, the apocalypse is set in 1999, which is to say that it was our own impending eschaton – the end of the world we were thoroughly fixated upon by 1995. We’re less than a year out from Doctor Who’s ridiculously and pointlessly millennial American reboot. Bowie was about to launch on tour with Nine Inch Nails to promote Outside, the start (and sole piece) of his millennium-ending superproject. It’s the year that Seven hits, more murderous paranoia piling up in the cultural gutters. The greatest magician of the age is finishing up his diagnosis of the previous century’s grisly denouement, turning his attention to the task of birthing the new aeon. I go to CTY for the first time, the beginning of a genuine realization that yes, I had a tribe, it was just geographically mis-distributed. AOL was in its boom years. It was, in other words, strange fucking days.

The game’s present, meanwhile, is 1000 AD, squarely in the middle ages, which are portrayed as a standard JRPG technological medieval aesthetic – the sort of thing where there are stoves and refrigerators but no cars or airplanes, and the government consists of a hereditary monarchy whose castle is surrounded by a forest full of monsters. There’s both a tomboy princess (water-affiliated and your first healer) and a steampunk inventor (also female, satisfyingly, as is the later prehistoric barbarian). Making up the past is 600 AD, i.e. also the middle ages, portrayed as such in a more traditional European fantasy milieu (by the time the Byronic Magus with purple flowing hair shows up in that timeline the game’s doing enough genre fusion that it doesn’t jar), which is a terribly cute conceit. Rounding out the timestream are a 2300 AD “domes in a radioactive wasteland” dystopia, a 65,000,000 BC “dinosaurs and early humans” set piece, and a late addition of a 12,000 BC timeline that’s basically Atlantis with the serial number filed off. (Which, notably, means Chrono Trigger is a retelling of The Time Monster made by actual Buddhists.)

The relationship between this and our world is strange. It’s modeled on ours without having any particular connection to or relationship with it. It does not seek to reflect any particular concerns with our world. There’s a vaguely ecological bent to Lavos and the destruction of the world, but it’s vague to the point of being essentially contentless. Past that, this isn’t a game that’s about anything as such.

This is mirrored, in a key sense, in its production. It’s silly to try to identify where the notion of the AAA game began – the term arose in the late 90s, yes, but the idea of the tentpole game that’s designed with the clear intention of it being a hit has been around for ages.…

Continue Reading

Regarding J.K. Rowling’s Recent Ridiculous Comments on Twitter…

36

… it’s old news.  I don’t condone any abuse she recieved, but (and this isn’t one of those ‘buts’ that really means ‘ignore what I just said’) her stated views are terrible… and, despite the apparent surprise of some, predictably terrible.

Rowling wrote a book about how dangerous it is for softy governments to ignore terrorism – in 2003!

Rowling put the following into her books:

  • Gold-obsessed Goblin bankers with big noses and a nigh-communistic inability to comprehend or respect ‘human’ notions of private property.
  • A race of willing slaves with brown skin, huge rolling eyes and ‘pickaninny’ speech patterns.
  • Giants who are born savage and thick, and who live in ‘primitive’ tribes.

In her Potter books, there’s only one political extreme and it contains both the Right and the Left, both representing an evil and illegitimate challenge to the mainstream and the established, which is legitimate whatever it does and however unaccountably it works.  So of course she thinks the ‘far Right’ and ‘far Left’ are essentially the same.  She’s already told us this.  As the above adumbrations illustrate, she’s horribly insulated from the implications of her own privileged position.  It shows in her politics (which allows her to insult the memories of millions of left-wingers who died fighting fascism) and her politics shows in her writing.

As I wrote somewhere else:

“Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise represents – like so many villains – the distant and distorted echo of the snarl of radical anger.  He is himself thoroughly unsympathetic, as Koba comes to be when he starts murdering other apes.  However, even thoroughly unsympathetic villains like Voldemort (who, as the snobbish fuhrer of the magic-Nazis, is not someone I’d vote for) tend to represent the – to use a hackneyed phrase – ‘return of the repressed’. And repression is political.  That which is oppressed is also repressed in mainstream discourse.  Voldemort can ascend because he takes advantage of faultlines in Wizarding society that reveal deep, structural injustice and hypocrisy, ie the ethnic cleansing of the giants, the economic ghettoisation of the Goblins, the resolutely undemocratic and unaccountable nature of Wizarding government, the enslavement of the Elves, etc.  Now, J.K. Rowling never really addresses these problems.  She occasionally has goodie characters display a bad conscience about them (ie Hermione’s patronising SPEW campaign and Dumbledore’s occasional remarks to Harry about how badly Wizards have treated other races) but the addressing or remedying of these injustices is NEVER made crucial as a precondition of saving the Wizarding World. The Wizards never really have to face the consequences of these injustices, or change them.  Harry & Co fight to reinstate the status quo that includes all these structural injustices.  The happy ending involves no emancipation of the Elves, no change in Wizarding attitudes to giants (indeed, Rowling makes it clear that the Wizards are essentially right about the respectively servile and primitive nature of these races!)  The happy ending involves no real tackling of the deep strain of racial prejudice about bloodlines.…

Continue Reading

Shabcast 24, Part 2 of the JFK / Nixon Conversation

7

And here it is at last, Part 2 of Shabcast 24. 

Rejoin the conversation between myself, Daniel, James, and Kit.  We talk more about Oliver Stone’s grandly bad, silly, outrageous, audacious, irresponsible, febrile, fascinating epics of 90s political cinema, JFK and Nixon. 

(Part One here.)

This episode concentrates more on JFK (man, myth and movie), and moves to a wonderful final act in which the awesomely well-informed Daniel, under Kit’s adroit questioning, dismantles some of the more pivotal parts of Stone’s conspiracyballs.  (And it is balls, by the way, just in case any of you were in any doubt.  I speak as a one-time believer, as does Daniel.)

*

Here are some links for you:

Generously, Oliver Stone and the Mail Online (brothers under the skin) have been helping to promote this episode of the Shabcast, with a new ‘news’ story – here. 

Here are the two parts – Part One and Part Two – of an excellent TV documentary about Nixon, which picks at the scab and uncovers some of the pus Stone doesn’t let you see, including the factual conspiracy on the part of Nixon and his people to commit treason and sabotage LBJ’s 1968 Paris peace talks.  This article from a couple of years ago is a good way into the subject.

While I’m referring you to YouTube, here‘s a good documentary about the Kennedy assassination – a rarity on YouTube (I refer to quality rather than subject matter).

Here‘s John McAdams’ site about the Kennedy assassination.  McAdams may be, as Daniel says, a Right-wing nutjob, but his site seems to be generally considered a good portal for real info about the assassination, and is a good place to go to quickly get myths and factoids busted. 

The audio at the start of the episode is of my own mixing, but the audio at the end is mostly taken from a couple of John Pilger documentaries, Vietnam – The Last Battle and Year Zero – The Silent Death of Cambodia.  Lots of Pilger’s documentaries are on YouTube and they’re mostly essential, scorching, and revelatory (though Pilger and I have our differences).

Sadly the Errol Morris documentaries about Lee Atwater and Robert Macnamara that Daniel mentions are not on YouTube, but they can be found online if you look in the right places.  Not that I’d ever encourage anyone to do anything illegal.  I’m not a crook.

If you want to know about some real, actual, historical ‘conspiracies’ (carried out or just planned) by powerful people (which have the benefit of having actually happened) check out these links:

Suez – Iran-Contra – Northwoods – Operation Mongoose – The Gulf of Tonkin Incident (which, with intense irony, Stone refers to in JFK without mentioning even that there is a controversy about what really happened) – COINTELPRO – Pinochet’s coup – the coup in Guatemala – and I could go on. 

As you will see from the above examples – which are, if not undisputed, at least part of the historical record to the point that they’re on Wikipedia – is that real conspiracies of the powerful are mostly conducted within what the conspirators broadly consider normal business, even if they feel the need to be clandestine about it. …

Continue Reading

Comics Reviews (August 31st, 2016)

2

In a smidge of a hurry today, so I haven’t had time to look at what’s out next week yet.

Ms. Marvel #10

The bits that work are typically brilliant – the “nine years earlier” intro in particular is charming. But Wilson can tend towards a somewhat subtlety-free didacticism on its own, which works fine when she’s picking interesting topics like gentrification, but is a rough mix with the already crass didacticism of Civil War II. Add in yet another “Captain Marvel shows up to be blatantly and transparently wrong” scene and a desperately unsubtle bit with Becky and you get an issue that’s just not very good. Also, opening with four pages of Adrian Alphona art serves to make the rest look lackluster, which is terribly unfair to the quite talented Takeshi Miyazawa, whose only flaw is to not be flattered by the comparison. 

Avatarex #2

One strongly suspects Grant Morrison is writing the scripts for these in an afternoon and then collecting the paycheck. I’m sure it’s a very nice paycheck, and I don’t begrudge him this one bit, but it’s still Grant Morrison at his most “here are the standard issue Grant Morrison tropes put in an equally standard issue order.” If it were the mid-90s this would be refreshing. Instead it’s just got some pretty art in places.

Spider-Man #7

A solid issue. The Bombshell conversation in the middle is grotesquely contrived in that way that talking about the plot of Civil War II almost has to be, but the narrow focus on Miles and Miles trying to figure out what being a hero means to him along with the basic satisfaction of the Jessica Jones plot keeps this one in the “Bendis showing why he’s actually good” category instead of the “for fuck’s sake Bendis I know they say style is the stuff you keep doing wrong, but could you have a little less of it” category. 

Lazarus #24

An above-average issue that maintains a simmering tension throughout. There’s a lot to wonder what’s going to happen about, which is always a good place for a book like this to be. There’s still an entire plotline I couldn’t tell you what the hell was going on in, which is a frustration (the recap page for this book never comes close to doing enough). But it’s good, compelling sci-fi espionage, which is what i look for out of this book, and the “Forever finally learns the truth but from Johanna of all people” twist is a smart one.

4 Kids Walk Into a Bank #1-2

Couple weeks old, but came recommended. If Stranger Things were a heist film, basically. There’s a sort of willful sloppiness in places, which is kind of a thing with Black Mask, I find, but the entire premise of “four kids get themselves involved in a bank robbery” is sufficiently ludicrous that the moments of “what are you actually trying to do here” seem more like charming embellishments than carelessness. I’m not as in love with it as some are – I think there’s a real failure to develop a lot of the main cast adequately – but it’s smart and funny and trying interesting things, and I’m probably in for the back three issues of it to see if it pays off cleverly. …

Continue Reading

Myraid Universes: Divided Light Part 3: Bodies of Evidence

, , , 2

As with all issues of this kind, we begin with a couple of pages of recap from Captain Picard. The Enterprise then sends down three teams to assist the three gestalts in retrieving the missing bodies as per Deanna Troi’s request, each containing a doctor and an engineer (needed to disable the shield generators surrounding the holy sites). While on the ship, Captain Picard asks Reg Barclay to try and track down the base where the crewmembers were captured initially, just in case Deanna’s plan runs into trouble.

Each team has to navigate some kind of harsh environment to reach the holy sites in question. Needless to say, they all make it and everyone gets their body back in one piece. The first team, led by Deanna (in Alexander’s body) also includes Commander Riker and Robin Lefler. As they hop across a series of ice floes in an arctic environment, Will regales his team with tales of an old friend who fell through the ice and couldn’t look at ice cream sundaes for months right before Deanna promptly does that. She’s fine (as is Alexander) though, and no sooner do they fish her out then they come across what they were looking for. Deanna comments on a very literal out-of-body experience.

Doctor Selar’s team (comprised of her, Alyssa Ogawa and Jenna D’Sora), has to navigate through a desert in the middle of a howling sandstorm. Thankfully Selar has figured out how to use Geordi’s VISOR and can lead everyone through the sand no problem, except for Alyssa who stupidly wanders off and gets lost. Thanks to the VISOR though, it’s no time at all before she’s found again. And just as before, the team finds the missing person, the engineer disables shit (while Jenna stands guard) and they beam out. And finally, Ro Laren leads Lwaxana Troi and Doctor Crusher through a dense thicket of tropical jungle. The three most kickass ladies in the crew use their phasers as machetes and fry their way through the undergrowth to reach the temple where Worf is being held (to which Laren kicks the door in to get inside, because you’d better fucking believe she does). On each team, someone comments on how strange it is that none of these places seem to be guarded.

On the Enterprise, Captain Picard is about to contact the Sakerionites to let them know the missing crewmembers have been retrieved safely and to take them up on their offer to put everyone’s consciousnesses back where they belong. But before he does, Reg comes in and tells him he might not want to do that until he hears what he discovered. What follows is one of the worst dumps of exposition in the history of mankind: For the duration of an entire two-page spread, a bunch of Sakerion randos explain in extremely loud and exacting detail about how it was in fact they who orchestrated the whole body-swapping fiasco and framed the Ergeans in order to sabotage their application for Federation membership and cover up the fact the Sakerionites have been exploiting Ergeus’ natural resources and have been effectively using its inhabitants as slave labourers.…

Continue Reading

«‹ 103 104 105 106 ›»