Eruditorum Press

We’re not on the blockchain, but we are blocked by Gareth Roberts

Digital Landfill

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Update 8/29/2017: And now the original XBOX One has been discontinued to make room for the XBOX One S (which is *different* from the XBOX One X). Only two years and nine months after it was released. Think about that, and remember how the SEGA Dreamcast was considered a colossal failure.
 
 
Can I make an appeal to the video game industry? Can we cool it with the technological determinism shit already, please?
 
Just…stop it.
 
I want to apologise in advance if this turns into more of an angry, ranty polemic than what I’m comfortable presenting these days, but I’m deeply upset this week. I’ve always been exasperated and annoyed with the line of thinking in games criticism that graphics tech is the most important thing in the industry and needs to be privileged above all else, but at this point I’ve officially had it. The state of the current industry is so out of control I don’t really even have words to express how stunned and aghast I am by the aggressive, mindless technofetishistic lust that seems to be driving almost everyone on both sides of the Pacific right now. The most blatantly obvious example is the grotesque display that is the current console market: We’re supposed to have hardware cycles of 5 years or so between revisions and new machines, but then somebody told Microsoft and Sony about Apple’s business model with smartphones and suddenly we’re in an era of “mid-generation hardware revisions” for $500 computers. We didn’t even get 3 years between the PlayStation 4, touted in 2013 as the most powerful thing to ever anything, and the PlayStation 4 “Pro” that supports 4K resolutions, which Sony seemed so embarrassed about they didn’t even announce it until it came out. Meanwhile, Microsoft is about to unleash the XBOX One X, a machine that is so obscenely overpowered I’m convinced it comes from some outer space futurescape and that mere mortal humans aren’t worthy to wield it. Certainly nobody I know is rich or crazy enough to be able to get it to do what it’s supposed to do.
 
(Meanwhile, Nintendo came out with the Switch after just managing to squeak five years out of the WiiU, but that’s primarily because with the WiiU and 3DS Nintendo momentarily forgot absolutely everything they learned about branding and marketing in over a century of trading. I’ll come back to them a little later.)
 
None of this is of course new. Microsoft’s strategy with the XBOX One X to push 4K reminds me of what they they tried to pull with the XBOX 360 in 2005 to push 1080p (the one that forced them to rebrand and slash prices a couple years later). And there is, of course, a precedent for this going back decades. I like to pick on Sony here for how they set the discourse for the fifth generation with the original PlayStation, but I probably also have to blame SEGA of America for how they marketed the Genesis in the United States, openly bullying Nintendo and Nintendo’s fans by saying that faster processors and better graphics chips were blatantly, objectively better in every instance and anyone who thought otherwise was a dumb crybaby.
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The Proverbs of Hell 17/39: Takiawase

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\TAKIAWASE: A mixture of vegetables and a protein in which the ingredients are cooked separately; on the whole a fair description of an episode in which the characters are unusually segregated.

WILL GRAHAM: Your father taught you how to hunt. I’m going to teach you how to fish.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: Same thing, isn’t it? One you lure, the other you stalk?
WILL GRAHAM: One you catch, the other you shoot.

Will makes a second attempt at the hunting/fishing conversation that went so unsatisfyingly in “Relevés.” This time, instead of becoming obsessed with accusing Abigail, he comes up with a suitably witty retort to her comparison. Although the difference between catching and shooting is likely academic to the fish.

WILL GRAHAM: Last thing before casting a line: name the bait on your hook after somebody you cherished.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: So you can say good-bye?
WILL GRAHAM: If the person you name it after cherished you, as the superstition goes, you’ll catch the fish.
ABIGAIL HOBBS: What did you name it?
WILL GRAHAM: Abigail.

It’s an interesting and quietly revealing character beat that Will stakes his successful catching of Hannibal on the question of whether Abigail cherished him. Not least because it’s very difficult to construct a credible argument for an answer other than “not nearly as much as she did Hannibal.”

BEVERLY KATZ: Hannibal Lecter has no reason–
WILL GRAHAM: That’s exactly right. He has no discernible reason other than his own amusement and curiosity.
BEVERLY KATZ: That’s hard to prove.
WILL GRAHAM: Whimsy. That’s how you’ll catch him. There will be a very clever detail to find on James Gray. He wouldn’t be able to resist. Something that’s probably been overlooked. Something hidden.
BEVERLY KATZ: I’ll look for clever details. But I’m not looking for Hannibal.

One of the purest instances of aesthetics being used as investigation techniques. It’s not even the relatively cliche aesthetic principle of Hannibal’s need to prove his superiority. Instead it comes out of his basic love of dramatic irony – the same thing that leads him to stitch the muralist into the center of his own design or to kill the judge in a way that comments on the flaws of his jurisprudence.

A straight-up killer of the week, but one that serves in most regards to highlight the rapidity with which returns are diminishing on that front. Its main appeal is this visual of a body that is partially other, and specifically partially an object of nature. But this is visibly just the mushroom people from “Amuse-Bouche” done with bees instead. Meanwhile, the case in general is completely segregated from the other plots – neither Will nor Hannibal do any work on it, and its only direct contribution to the plot at large is that an offhand comment that inspires Beverly, who literally pops her head into this plot just to hear that comment. For the most part, this just seems to be here to check a box. The box is certainly checked, but it’s tough to say more than that.…

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Ikigami: Reflections on Shin Gojira in 2017

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This past week I treated myself to two recent Blu-ray releases that oddly seem to compliment one another: The brand new Collector’s Edition release of Species from Scream Factory (which gives the film a proper HD transfer for the first time and features a whole slew of interviews, making-of featurettes and commentary tracks), and Funimation’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release of their localization of Shin Gojira, known as Shin Godzilla in the US.
 
I currently don’t have access to an HD TV so I can’t actually watch most of the material here yet…I haven’t even touched Species, which is killing me because this set looks really interesting: Just the prospect of getting people like Natasha Henstridge and Michael Madsen to talk candidly about their experiences with that curio is tempting enough, but add to that the fact there’s an alternate ending included and I truly cannot wait to be able to put this set through its paces. Whenever I get the chance I’ll be sure to give this release a proper analysis and any re-evaluations I come to will definitely influence the revised version of the Species essay that will go in what will hopefully be next year’s book release.
 
I also can’t watch the main disc of Shin Gojira yet, but since a print of the film is included on DVD in this set I am able to watch that on my laptop. So the other night I sat down to watch the first new true Godzilla movie in twelve years for only my second time to see how it holds up a year later, and to see if I could hopefully make better sense of it this time around.
 
I’ve loved the Godzilla series forever. Godzilla 1984 is a movie whose imagery is burned into my psyche, and was probably one of the first pieces of genre fiction to really have a big impact on me. I always remember being mesmerized by the movie poster and the haunting, out-of-context movie stills of Godzilla prowling around the disquietingly empty neon canyons of Shinjuku, still lit up as if the night shift salarymen were still making their rounds. In fact, it’s probably directly responsible for a not-insignificant portion of my aesthetic preferences. In the 90s I remember being exposed to both the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla cartoon show and the Trendmasters Godzilla action figure line (which was my big clue the film series was still going) at about the same time, and I always made an attempt to watch the older movies whenever they would show up in horror movie marathons or if I found a copy at the local video store. When I first saw the original Gojira I was blown away by its maturity and tone, and it’s a film that’s only grown with me and I understand better the more I learn about Japan and East Asian history and culture. Then came 1998 and the TriStar reimagining and Godzilla was big in the West in a way I’d never seen before, and getting to see Godzilla 2000 in theatres two years later was a thrilling experience even if I was one of only four people there.
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The Proverbs of Hell 16/39: Hassun

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HASSUN: A sushi course with small side dishes that sets a seasonal theme. Janice Poon discusses it in terms of balancing opposites, which could be made related to the weighing of guilt and innocence involved in a trial with relatively little critical legerdemain. 

A bewildering and suggestive opening image as Will is shown imagining his own execution from the perspective of the executioner. This is an entirely plausible thing for Will to do – indeed the idea that Will would actively try to empathize with his potential executioner is really interesting. But its substance is in practice merely “unsettling cold open,” the impact of the image left entirely for the viewer instead of the narrative. In one sense this is emblematic of the episode, which is very much the season’s “Œuf.” It’s actively identified by Fuller as the weak link, and sees the show attempting its spin on courtroom drama instead of police procedural, only to find that the move to the second half of Law and Order is a step further than the forced perspective brilliance of its iconography can sustain.

This smirk off the line where the prosecutor asserts that Will is the smartest person in the courtroom is interesting; its most superficial reading is standard issue “Hannibal gloating about how clever he is,” and yet given the depth of his investment in Will’s development it’s equally likely that this is a smile of genuine satisfaction that his friend is finally getting the critical reception he deserves.

JACK CRAWFORD: My instincts have not yet arrived at conviction.
KADE PRURNELL: Mine have. With the benefit of no prior involvement and no personal connections to the accused.
JACK CRAWFORD: Meaning, I can’t be impartial.
KADE PRURNELL: Of course you can be impartial. But right now, you’re not. You have to believe something. As long as there is reason and evidence to believe. You have reason. You have evidence.

It’s interesting that Prurnell’s case here frames belief as a moral obligation as opposed to a logical consequence. She is, after all, presumably not saying that all things there is both evidence for and some reason to believe are true. Rather, she is suggesting that an FBI agent has a duty to believe in these circumstances that Jack is being lax in. For all his faults, even Jack ain’t buying that bullshit.

JACK CRAWFORD: He can think like anybody. He has pure empathy and projection. He can imprint profiles on the blank slate of his mind for us to read.
MARION VEGA: Sounds like a supervillain.

Transparently untrue; a supervillain with such a thoroughly non-offensive power would be an extremely bizarre idea. A power like this is far more suited to a superhero, or, better yet, the troubled protagonist of some overly pompous post-House cop drama. Which is to say that perhaps genre-based narratology is not a great alley for Hannibal to wander down.

HANNIBAL: Tell me, Jack. Was your testimony meant to be a resignation?
JACK CRAWFORD: Something very appealing about walking away from all the noise.

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The One Thing I Can’t Seem to Shut Up About: A Commentary on Sol

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I cannot possibly review Seeming’s new album Sol. It’s fucking amazing. It’s astonishing to me that Madness and Extinction is an album it’s possible to double down on and outdo. But Alex did it, with a second album that’s frightening, ambitious, and unlike anything else that’s been done, ever, by anyone. I care about it like I care about Kill the Moon and Promethea. Go buy it. Honestly, buy it, listen to it a few times. You can stream and buy it here. All Bandcamp’s profits today are going to the Transgender Law Center, so it’s a great day to splash out some cash for it. Then come back here.

I’m one of the people Alex regularly sends demos to, and so Sol has been the single biggest soundtrack of my last three years. Alex is one of my closest friends, but I’m also an unabashed and unreserved fan of his stuff, and I tended to play each new demo to death and beyond before just as eagerly devouring the next, listening in rapt wonder as song after song mutated from idea (sometimes even an obviously good one) through to demos that sketched its potential and finally to finished mixes, each one of which evolved and developed further in a frenzy of final tweaks and flourishes. Most notably, Sol was the secret soundtrack to Neoreaction a Basilisk, with multiple passages in the book being directly influenced by songs on it. Which we’ll talk about,

Beyond that, Sol as it exists for me is a tangle of songs well beyond the thirteen that actually made the album. I can’t even fully map the album’s creative influence on me without talking about songs like “Yes Artemis” and “Angel in the Jungle,” which you can at least check out on the Faceless EP, and others like “Party Anthem 2000” and “You Rang” that might show up somewhere some day, but might just as easily be things that wither away having been heard by a couple dozen people at most, ever.

So this isn’t a review. Instead it’s a commentary that is utterly rooted in my own idiosyncratic perspective. A “now the whole story can be told” documentation of the last few years of my life by way of one of the most titanic creative achievements I’ve ever seen, little yet had front row seats to. And, along the road, my own external sense of how the songs developed.

Doomsayer

I’ve mentioned more than once that I “accidentally” wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk. This is a funny line that did its marketing purpose, but beneath the joke there’s a kind of grim-faced reality. Accidentally writing a book is more accurately described as compulsion and obsession. Whatever I may have wanted to be doing with my evenings, what happened instead was that I opened my laptop and continued to extend the strange and twisting block of text that insisted, again and again, that I come back to it. I too know what it’s like when only one thing is real.…

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Bloodmoon Episode 1: BloodRayne Part 1

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Today’s video over at my channel is the first in a new series featuring full playthroughs of a number of different video games, all centred around the same set of themes and motifs. These will probably be split up into 15-30 minute episodes of pure gameplay footage. First up, the original BloodRayne from 2002, which was available on the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, XBOX and PC. I’m playing the PC version, modded for controller support and widescreen HD resolutions. Now I know this perhaps doesn’t seem like the kind of game I typically like to talk about and some of you might have questions about that, but all I can say right now is to please trust me-I’m going somewhere with this 🙂

Edited text from the video description:

Bloodmoon is a series that looks at the evolution and apotheosis of specific themes and archetypes throughout various video games via the medium of full playthroughs with open discussion prompts.
 
Questions and observations:
 
Why does the intro cinematic seem to be, at first, trying to mislead us into thinking Rayne is a villainous monster when it would have been immediately obvious to anyone buying this game that she was the protagonist?
 
Rayne’s look and general persona are derived from that of a classical dominatrix. What BDSM themes, if any, can you find in the game going forward and what ramifications does this have for how we should read it?
 
According to the game’s official backstory, during this opening tutorial sequence Rayne is technically only still a teenager. Do you think this influences how Laura Bailey chooses to play her?
 
In Romanian folklore, where such legends are almost exclusively derived, the traditional name for creatures like Rayne is not “vampire”, but “strigoi” (thought to be derived from the Greek “strix”, which referred to a nocturnal bird of ill omen). Only male strigoi would have been comparable to what we think of as vampires: Rayne, being female, would specifically be a “strigoaică”, which simply connotes a witch or sorceress. Of course, an important part of the game’s story is that Rayne is only *half* vampire, or “dhampir”, a reference to Balkan folklore which emphasized male vampires’ patriarchal lust to dominate women.
 
Much modern American art and folklore is inspired by places such as the Louisiana Bayou and Mississippi Delta region and is about coming to terms with its place in the nation’s collective consciousness. The birthplace of the blues, the only true musical style invented by the United States and home to the deepest of the deep South, and all that goes along with that, many would argue this region is the “real” heartland of the United States.
 
In Neopaganism and Wicca, the Moon, especially when full, is associated with the power of the Sacred Feminine. However, myopic and appropriative beliefs stemming from the ubiquity of these schools have misled people into thinking the Sun is “always” masculine and the Moon is *always* feminine, even though Solar Goddesses have been prominent in many cultures throughout history.
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Eruditorum Presscast: Alex Reed (Sol Interview)

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The new Seeming album, Sol, is out Friday. So I sat down with Alex Reed to talk about it and play clips from a bunch of songs, including three that are getting their world premieres. It’s a fantastic conversation in proper Eruditorum Press fashion, which is to say that it jumps freely from the Situationists to the X-Files in order to talk about things with no obvious relationship to either one of those. We also talk about important things like “what is a self-banishment ritual” and “so Alex, you recorded a gothic funk album, tell me about that.” Seriously, this is a great conversation. You can listen to it here.

Sol, meanwhile, is out on Friday and available for pre-order here. I’ll be back on Friday (where I’ll be replacing Jack this week) for more talk about it. It’s amazing – literally every song on it is brilliant. I cannot wait for you all to be able to hear it and to finally talk about the ways it’s been influencing me for three years now. …

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The Proverbs of Hell 15/39: Sakizuke

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SAKIZUKE: Variantly spelled “sakizuki” and “saki-zuke,” the latter on Janice Poon’s blog, where she describes it as “a sampling of small appetizers whose ingredients, garnishes, and dishware sets the tone for the season and invites the gods to partake of the meal.” Wikipedia, meanwhile, directly compares it to an amuse-bouche, I.e. the second episode of the first season.

The killer-of-the-two-weeks here is given an unusual sort of focus. On the one hand he’s the least sketched out killer the show has ever done – he’s literally only in the script as “Muralist,” and essentially everything we learn about him is projected onto him by other characters. On the other, Roland Umber’s awakening inside the mural is used as the cliffhanger, and the second episode luxuriates in this cold open, giving the sheer and visceral horror of the mural room to breathe. Fuller has said that his inspiration for this killer was equal parts Busby Berkeley and the film Jeepers Creepers, which is a pair of inspirations that boil down to “this is why you are the perfect showrunner for Hannibal.”

The wide shot of Roland, already making a probably fatal leap into the water, being dashed upon the rocks is a surprisingly black comic beat to end on after a very straight horror movie chase through a cornfield.

In an understandable move to avoid having all of Will’s scenes for the first six episodes take place in the same set, Fuller and company have crafted a second asylum location based on bright, stark whiteness instead of gloomy darkness, with the discrete white cages doing the work of making the space disturbing. It’s a triumph of design, managing to be a more impressive location than the iconic subterranean cell.

WILL GRAHAM: I’ve lost the plot. I’m the unreliable narrator of my own story. I’m trying to place myself somewhere in the frame of my mind and I have no bearings. No landmarks to tell me who I am.
ALANA BLOOM: You have an incomplete self. We are who we are in the now and we are the sum of our memories. There are pieces of you… you can’t see.

Will opens with a pair of lines that are starkly meta even for Hannibal. (Though who among us is anything other than the unreliable narrator of our own story?) The exchange is on the whole familiar – it’s restating stuff we’ve been dealing with explicitly (Hannibal doesn’t really deal with things in any other way) since “Rôti.” Of course, there’s a reason for this.

WILL GRAHAM: I’m… very confused.
ALANA BLOOM: Of course you are. Ideas and perceived experiences have the same effect on our minds as tossing a rock into a pond. It all ripples.
HANNIBAL: Let us help you, Will. Let me help you.
WILL GRAHAM: I need your help.

This exchange is followed by a scene of Will, still shaking with the emotion of this scene, being led back to his cell, where, once alone, the mask of overwrought emotion drops and it becomes clear that he was manipulating Alana and Hannibal through this entire exchange.…

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Here’s a Podcast Round-Up

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“The system James and I have been using to post Pex Lives stuff to the site whereby James tells me it’s up and I post about it has been falling through lately due to missed steps like James telling me or me doing anything about it.” – Phil Sandifer, 27th April, 2017.

Being James Murphy is a remarkably frustrating endeavour and one I can’t recommend. The only spot on the league table of frustrating tasks that beats being me is knowing me, I would guess. Yes, there’s lots of upsides but there’s also the beleaguered inability to ever capitalise on them. Let’s say that for some reason a writer you greatly respect long ago chose to offer you an amplifier. That’s great, you’ll definitely do something about that, you (I) think to my(your)self. But then you don’t, you useless bastard, you just get distracted and strum the same eight songs over and over on an acoustic guitar and go to work and sleep. Well, you’ll never beat the world’s finest procrastination artists, in their perfectly tidy houses, at their own game so you may as well make an effort at self improvement at self-promotion.

So. In an effort to actually exploit the kindness and worrying blindspot of my family here at Eruditorum Press, here’s an update of some of the Pex Lives – a left wing podcast that uses Dr. Who as an excuse to meet again every month – that have fallen out of the sky since that strange bashfulness about bothering Phil around my media and cultural criticism overtook me.

Download the Doctor Who and Silurians episode of Pex Lives right here: http://pexlives.libsyn.com/41-doctor-who-the-silurians-or-present-them-with-a-new-problem-and-they-start-shooting-at-it

Look at the length of that link. Lovely, isn’t it? That alone should keep you busy when you’re depriving your boss of your surplus labour. And then there’s the podcast itself, me and Kevin Burns bullshitting on classic gallic cinema and the Silurians’ first appearance.

Here and now, now come hear, our 40th episode: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. http://pexlives.libsyn.com/40-spearhead-from-space-or-outside-your-cozy-little-world-other-things-could-exist

And, finally, in the land that time forgot, the ghetto that was February of 2017, way back when Ronald Reagan was still President and you could get a goddamn ride at the funfair and a sodie pop for a nickel and still get change, here’s our very ill, literally phoned in episode around the Tenth Planet. Now, that is a good serial of Dr. Who. http://pexlives.libsyn.com/39-the-tenth-planet-or-its-far-from-being-all-over

Somebody commented saying that one of the hosts let out a belch that was satisfying and happy sounding and it brought them some joy in these dark days and that you have to take any pleasure where you can get it, so, I suppose, keep an ear out for that wonder of an editing failure.

Alright!

Moving on, let me tell you about the rebirth of a podcast within the cheerful anarcho-collective of the Pex Lives feed. I love the manners and movements of old horror films. And the Amicus films, cheap, pretty, and often very well written, acted, and directed, are prime examples of the stuff that draws me right on in.…

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Wrong With Authority, Ep 5 – ‘Mississippi Burning’

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Wrong With Authority, the podcast where four white guys talk about movies based on real historical events, returns… and this time we’re talking about Mississippi Burning (1988), a travesty of the story of three civil rights workers – Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman – who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 by the Klan/cops/state government (all essentially the same thing at that point).

Download our episode >>HERE<<

Beware triggers.  We’re talking about vicious racism, hate-motivated violence and murder.  At one point in the episode, one of us reads out part of a historical document which contains the n-word.  We believe the context justifies its inclusion, but please be aware that it’s there.  Jack made the decision to not bleep it out, and takes responsibility.  Also, we mention rape a couple of times – because it was an integral part of both Jim Crow and slavery.

The film focuses not on the Civil Rights workers, or the struggle, or the African Americans oppressed by Jim Crow (American Apartheid), but rather on the subsequent FBI investigation.  It portrays the FBI as a heroic organisation bursting with concerned liberals, but also as solving the case via maverick vigilante violence.  Systemic racism is effaced.  In other words, according to Mississippi Burning, black people are invisible, or are passive and cowardly; Civil Rights workers are foolhardy victims; and the problem is neatly solved by a benevolent establishment going righteously outside the law to punish the bad guys – bad apples who are bad because they’re just inbred hicks.

With this episode, we’re all acutely and especially aware of the structural flaws inherent in our show… i.e. we’re all white guys.  This episode is, nonetheless, an attempt to grapple with the fact that WWA has, up til now, been heavily white-centric.  But we’re inevitably going to underperform here.  We in no way wish to talk over PoC who are talking about issues like this.  We’ll be happy to hear input and criticism.

[Jack here to add a personal note: I deliberately chose Mississippi Burning to address the overpowering whiteness of our subjects to date… which shows a fair bit of privilege and privilege-blindness on my part because a) Mississippi Burning isn’t about African Americans, as mentioned… in fact, it is a film that thieves an African American story from African Americans, and b) I unthinkingly chose a story about African Americans suffering, and which portrays them as passive victims.  I’ll try to do better in future.  I can only hope our critique of this film on these terms stands for something.]

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Some Links To Things Menioned in the Episode:

The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen.

We Are Not Afraid by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray.

I Am Not Your Negro – new documentary about James Baldwin.

The 13th – documentary based on The New Jim Crow.

Do The Right Thing – Spike Lee’s classic.

The Butler

The Garrett video Jack mentions.

Here’s the article written by Chris Gerolmo, Mississippi Burning screewriter.…

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