Public release date 11/17/12, seen by my first available matinee 11/18/12. In attendance, eldest son, recently in the United States Marine Corps. Directed by Stephen Spielberg.
First about Mr. Spielberg. Here, the plane can go down, his spirit to slip to this mortal coil, and upon his tombstone inscribe, Here lies Stephen Spielberg, good and faithful servant to the Muse Of Cinema, master of the art and craft from the beginning, and father of 21st Century Cinema style and substance with his greatest work Lincoln. This film enters the new phase of American filmmaking, possibly the first true work of film, a master craftsman rising above his earlier work to create a masterpiece.
Starring Daniel Day Lewis as the title role, and Ms. Sally Fields as the tormented soul Mary Todd Lincoln.
Yes, Ms. Fields, we still really, really like you please remember that the night your name follows, once again the phrase: "And the Oscar goes to.... " Flawless, brilliant, Fields has the courage of her miles, showing the heart and soul of a woman in a man's world, a heartbroken mother and possibly quite mad. The First Lady as Lady McBeth, treachery and treason unneeded and unheeded, the torment of her soul is on every frame.
The President is shown as a leader of men and a stalwart captain while the ship of state hurtles about in a bloodied tempest, and it is his scenes as husband and father that are the most captivating. Human is as human does, and human is the Icon. For a film so centered around a single character, he is not shown as often as one might expect (even his murder is done off-screen) but his presence is imprinted on every frame. He is the President, father, husband, man and shrewd politician and he is a man of his times that imprinted his time and the times afterwards. Again: "And the Oscar goes to..."
The screenplay is staggering in its enormity. In the chambers of the House Of Representatives there reside men of power and authority, and they will rise, and they will be heard. Verbal blow after blow is issued, a political Fight Club, but one that must needs be spoken. Notions, ideas, ramifications are bandied out, verbal cudgels, sonic assaults.... but in the most rarefied of all languages, American English. The dialog is exactly what would have been written had a certain Elizabethan Bard been alive and commissioned to write it as one of his histories. And a history it is, fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
Lincoln said that: Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
The film allows us that most magnificent of treasures, a story written in lightning and told in light. While there are many, many reminders of other masters, Spielberg reaches to the earliest days of cinema. The film does not necessarily need sound. Everything is there. The sound pulls the language, soaring oratory and barely hidden rage, into a symphony, a rhythm that grows, swells, slips aside and washes away, a flawless conduction of the strange music of America, a series of sharp shocks that build and build.
Tears were shed, yes, they were. Many, from what I could intimate from the sounds around me. The desire, several times, to lurch to one's feet cheering and applauding, made a rare appearance... several times. Sometimes, it was simply a gesture, a moment of some sublime intimacy of the human condition while the madness of war rages, others after an oratory or a defense. Great moments upon great moments do not make a good film, but a great film is loaded with them.
Spielberg may just with to retire. His overall handling of the subject, the story, the orchestration of light and shadow, thunder and cats paw silences...
And the Lifetime Achievement goes to...
Congratulations to all on a finely honed and superb performance.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
Film Review - We Were Soldiers (2002)
Written and directed by Randall Wallace, starring Mel Gibson, featuring Greg Kinnear, Sam Elliot, Madeline Stowe and Barry Pepper.
Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, both of whom were at the battle.
Mel Gibson has become a punchline due to his out of control ravings while drunk. So be it, selah. That outrageous activity bears no reflection on this, possibly his single greatest effort as an actor. In fact, this film is a "plane gone down" effort: had the entire cast and crew died after its release, every man and woman involved should have its title engraved on their headstones.
As per the DVD extra Getting It Right: behind the scenes of the making of We Were Soldiers, the director stated that while reading the original source work, the line "... Hollywood has never gotten it right..." was the impetus for the creation of the film. Moore and Galloway were present during the filming and Wallace referred to them again and again to be certain of the highest degree of accuracy. The result: a gut wrenching work that induces uncontrollable sobbing, bursts of roaring laughter and flat out heart stopping moments of the purest form of drama.
The war in Vietnam has never been shown so perfectly in all of its horrific, nightmarish glory, if glory can be used to describe any arena in which two competing groups of human beings gather for no other purpose than the wholesale slaughter of one another. This is not only the best depiction of that "rancid picnic" (as Stephen King called it) but possibly the single best film about war ever made.
The training is there. The real people are shown. The combat is there, not as a flag waving idiot my country right or wrong but in its visceral ugliness. The families and the shock waves of Hell (literally) brought to their door is there. Tactics and logistics are there.
There are some films that do a little of some, to great effect. The human cost is a matter of record in so many other films that one more would seem to be pointless, but here the cost is shown on the men in the field as well as the impact on wives and families left behind. Often, though, a film that turns its eye to this and this alone tends to forget the rest. Those that look at tactics and logistics forget the family at home.
It is all here. All of it, in its horror, its honor and its agony.
The soundtrack is flawless, a few moments of pop culture infused prior to the men being shipped out, but mostly a brilliant score. The fine art of the film score is all but ignored, but this film is a great return to classic form, as well as pushing the envelope as to what is played, and when. Often, there is nothing, just the sounds of hellfire combat and broken hearts. When the music is used, it is to underscore a moment, not to overwhelm or coerce the audience into a mindset. The music meets the sadness.
Each performance is carved in bittersweet moments, and the simple life pleasures are given as they are lived, no treacle or maudlin sniffle-sniffle-oh-how-sad, just... it is what it is. That direct approach is common of every moment in the film overall.
A film with no humor, regardless of how bleak the moment, is unworthy of consideration, and during a massive firefight the commanding officer demands to know why the mortars have stopped. One of the enlisted men explains that the tubes are so hot the men cannot use them again for fear of the shells exploding in the tube from the heat. Brief pause: commander walks over to one, and as we look between his legs, we see a stream of urine from him, cooling the tube, then, after a brief pause: "Well?!?" The men then stand in a circle around each mortar tube and follow their leaders example.
A superior effort for all involved and a grand way to remember them as have served, regardless of politics, for the reminder of Armistice Day.
Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, both of whom were at the battle.
Mel Gibson has become a punchline due to his out of control ravings while drunk. So be it, selah. That outrageous activity bears no reflection on this, possibly his single greatest effort as an actor. In fact, this film is a "plane gone down" effort: had the entire cast and crew died after its release, every man and woman involved should have its title engraved on their headstones.
As per the DVD extra Getting It Right: behind the scenes of the making of We Were Soldiers, the director stated that while reading the original source work, the line "... Hollywood has never gotten it right..." was the impetus for the creation of the film. Moore and Galloway were present during the filming and Wallace referred to them again and again to be certain of the highest degree of accuracy. The result: a gut wrenching work that induces uncontrollable sobbing, bursts of roaring laughter and flat out heart stopping moments of the purest form of drama.
The war in Vietnam has never been shown so perfectly in all of its horrific, nightmarish glory, if glory can be used to describe any arena in which two competing groups of human beings gather for no other purpose than the wholesale slaughter of one another. This is not only the best depiction of that "rancid picnic" (as Stephen King called it) but possibly the single best film about war ever made.
The training is there. The real people are shown. The combat is there, not as a flag waving idiot my country right or wrong but in its visceral ugliness. The families and the shock waves of Hell (literally) brought to their door is there. Tactics and logistics are there.
There are some films that do a little of some, to great effect. The human cost is a matter of record in so many other films that one more would seem to be pointless, but here the cost is shown on the men in the field as well as the impact on wives and families left behind. Often, though, a film that turns its eye to this and this alone tends to forget the rest. Those that look at tactics and logistics forget the family at home.
It is all here. All of it, in its horror, its honor and its agony.
The soundtrack is flawless, a few moments of pop culture infused prior to the men being shipped out, but mostly a brilliant score. The fine art of the film score is all but ignored, but this film is a great return to classic form, as well as pushing the envelope as to what is played, and when. Often, there is nothing, just the sounds of hellfire combat and broken hearts. When the music is used, it is to underscore a moment, not to overwhelm or coerce the audience into a mindset. The music meets the sadness.
Each performance is carved in bittersweet moments, and the simple life pleasures are given as they are lived, no treacle or maudlin sniffle-sniffle-oh-how-sad, just... it is what it is. That direct approach is common of every moment in the film overall.
A film with no humor, regardless of how bleak the moment, is unworthy of consideration, and during a massive firefight the commanding officer demands to know why the mortars have stopped. One of the enlisted men explains that the tubes are so hot the men cannot use them again for fear of the shells exploding in the tube from the heat. Brief pause: commander walks over to one, and as we look between his legs, we see a stream of urine from him, cooling the tube, then, after a brief pause: "Well?!?" The men then stand in a circle around each mortar tube and follow their leaders example.
A superior effort for all involved and a grand way to remember them as have served, regardless of politics, for the reminder of Armistice Day.
Monday, October 31, 2011
1 Mystery, 2 Houses and lots o' Wax
So, I blew the dust off of the covers of a couple of flicks and decided on a pre-Halloween mini-marthon.
When the remake House Of Wax was released to disc, I was a little in doubt as I normally am with anything that has "Paris Hilton" on it anywhere, porn included. However, on the massive plus side was a re-release of the Price version, and much to my shock and joy was finding it was a dual sided disc, with, almost a footnote, the flip side being the Lionel Atwell/Fay Wray Mystery Of The Wax Museum.
What the hell, right? So, off I went, starting with the middle piece, a dreamscape with which I am most familiar.
Watching it now, it is a little worse for the wear, Carolyn Jones' character giving a giggle that sounds as if it were stolen from The Music Man (missing only "Ye gods!"), and she along with Price are really the only two worthy of being on screen as often as they are. Not to slight the rest, but for the most part the remainder of the cast is phoning in a quick check, very common for the B list.
Two things immediately leap off the screen, however. The first is that the film was attempting to cash in on the Can't See This On Your TV empty headed crap Hollywood was grinding out in the then latest innovation Jump Off The Screen O Rama! aka 3-D. Like the current embarrassments, there is one scene in particular that makes the eyes roll and the hand to lurch towards the eject button. A hawker is sent out to drum up business, and in doing so is using a paddle and ball bouncing the ball into the camera, going so far as to cry out "oh, there is a man with some popcorn! Don't move, sir!"
Egad.
However, on the much more interesting side is that being shot in 3-D lead to a more close inspection of creating the illusion of depth via camera angle and focus, which when viewed in 2-D gives the film a certain beauty. Deep focus, when used correctly, does not need 3-D, film itself is an illusion and this is rather magical... or magickal, if you prefer.
The real reason to sit through this again is, of course, Price. His performance here may well be the one capping moment of his career, other and greater to come, some outstanding prior, but it is here that one sees the Iconic Price take center stage. His man is bitter to literal insanity, but there is a wild black humor dished with every syllable and facial motion. He is hysterically funny, the Clown Prince Of Horror that his fans know and adore, but here it is "funny." The lines are comedic and played to full comic effect, but his delivery makes for a nervous laughter: this character is fully insane, tormented at his deepest portion of his id.
More important, if that can be possible, is that Price often thought of himself as something other than an Actor, thinking himself more workmanlike. This was neither false nor mere humility, and the man turned down many "legit" stage options, not thinking himself capable, which fortunately lead to his accepting Dr. Phibes Part 3 (or as it is known, Theater Of Blood) and the entire supporting cast rushing over from The Royal Shakespeare Company just to have the chance to perform The Bard with Price... if you have never seen it, love Price or really enjoy well done Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself.
Price here is shown as a remarkably physical actor. Here, he uses his body in a manner that is more in keeping with Brando, Dean or Clift. Not a series of twitchy movements or mumbling, though: body motions of surgical precision. Watching him without his mask, he is contorted, one foot twisted, and I did go back and check. He never missed a cue. Total character immersion. Flawless.
The issue was the dialog. This is where the film nearly jumps the shark. My eldest son, 28, was watching it with me, and the groans lead to his excusing himself. A workmanlike performance is no loss, but the actors have to have something to use, and Price alone makes every syllable count.
Flipping it over, and watching Mystery Of The Wax Museum lead to a series of shocks.
Filmed 20 years prior to the first House, color was a new thing, and sound was still in and of itself rather new to the scene. Needing the Criterion Clean Up (as we call it here at our house), the weird washed out color actually adds to the overall effect of the film. It looks like a bad, bad dream.
The story is the same, but it is presented in such a manner as to be far different, and it is here that my personal film theory is underscored... that the times and era are captured, warped and reflected back onto the audience, zeitgeist as auteur.
This film, released in 1933, would have come out during the Depression, and after WWI. The sense that the world was a violent, disturbing place and one of debatable future was a precursor to the aftermath of WWII and the existentialist movement. Atwill's performance is based almost word-for-word the same as Price's, but the differences are shocking when seen back-to-back.
Atwill is also a bitter man driven to madness from his loss and disfigurement, but his rage is not hidden beneath a thin veneer of black humor, but instead is barely controlled rage, lashing out at everyone and everything that does not attach itself to the obsessive pursuit of his art.
Price is more of a serial killer, or signature killer may be more appropriate, putting his "art" on display, and in doing so mocks the world around him. In comparison, then, the "lesser" performances suddenly take on a different weight. Price's film, released in 1953, seems more a slam on the times, Price as hep cat beat artist, similar to Dick Miller in A Bucket Of Blood than anything else, and really, in essence, that is both the Phibes/Lionheart characters in a nutshell (forgive the wanton pun...).
Atwill is mad in a 1933 sense, mad meaning both insane and enraged.
In Mystery, too, the remaining performances take on a wholly different meaning and depth. The dialog is machine gun fast, crackling like a screwball comedy, razor sharp delivery. That heightened sense of verbal daring is the source of comedy then, and it is important because the humor and its source shifts from the Greek Chorus of the supporting players and onto the star. Thirty years made the difference.
The Zeitgeist as auteur has been in the back of my mind for a couple of decades, but watching these three films so close to one another really carved it in stone. Films are produced as art, of course, but in some cases art comes from merely the correct grasp of the mindset of the audience. The film is made in the hope of gathering enough of an audience to recover the cost of its production, and those films that act as our collective id, horror, reflect back to us more of where we were and are than other genres. It is there in our darkest recesses that we see the most clearly defined shadows.
Mystery was released 1933. Price's House was released in 1953. Consider the social changes, the era, and how much things had changed in that 20 year period. The essence of the actual story remains for the most part unchanged: the focal villain is a genius sculptor, albeit odd, who has chosen wax rather than stone as it is more real, more fleshlike. Both have focused on creating Art, capital A included via intonation, and both are poor. At open, both have been approached by a Dickensian Rich Man who will make all financial worries end. Both have a commercial partner, but the partner has been pushing the Artist to give the audience what they want: Blood, death and torment.
Because in Horror there is cash.
The Artist refuses, tells of the Rich Man bail out approaching, but it is too little, too late for the partner, and in both films the fire insurance scam is enacted. This leads to violence and mayhem, the fire begun, and both capture what must be said are still, even now, rather disturbing images of melting human faces. From this moment, both occurring in the first 10 minutes of screen time, all else follows. Disfigurement and loss of fine motor skills to the Artist feeds bitterness at the injustice, which feeds an internal "fire" of rage, and that way leads to madness.
Flash forward, then, to 2005, and the film that has been so wrongly discussed as the "Paris Hilton" House Of Wax.
The title is the same as the Price film. There is murder, and public placement of victims as a form of art.
The times, though, have changed, and changed so drastically as to render the earlier films to nothing more than a mere nod.
This is the post Viet Nam audience, butt more than that, an audience that has little frame of reference to that conflict other than the notion of madmen walk among us. This is the post 9/11 era, and from that comes the notion of a world that resembles nothing so much as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a world that allows for no rhythm to destruction, no sense of Art that would allow for a pattern, any one can die at any moment with no warning whatsoever.
It is also an era that has grown weary of irony, tired of clever for the sake of clever that even the most inspired of clowns would face groans. It is impossible to see Price in this world; he would be groaned off the screen. Instead, we have the visual pun, the crude innuendo and, of course gore. Lots of gore. Implied sex combines with violent, painful death.
The film takes more than one viewing to see its value, and in watching it in context with its two older, somewhat peculiar siblings, the film takes a rather remarkable twist. Rather than one central villain, it has two, formerly conjoined brothers. Is this a comment on the two, earlier films? If yes, I doubt if it was intended to be so, but it does serve the third film well.... think of the bottled hatred and rage that drips off of Atwill, and that defines one of the brothers perfectly. His rage and madness is all-encompassing. He commits acts of brutal ferocity to release that rage.
The other brother is shown as the Artist. His genius is unmistakable, and it is his face that is mangled, but not due to a fire set for insurance fraud, but in the surgical disconnect to the Mad brother, and this sets an entirely different mindset.
It is the Mad brother that controls the entire community, creating it in his twisted image, an entire town that could have come from the mind of Ed Gein, taxidermy and wax statues combine to fill a small town. The Artist brother is, interesting, without speech. His work speaks for him, a fetishistic approach that perfectly combines with the Atwill/Price characters. Atwill/Price were both mad, but they also had a passion for the figures they created, openly speaking with the inanimate objects as if they lived, and did so openly, repeatedly. Here, the Artist appears mentally challenged, and just as importantly, the "weaker" of the two brothers, more inclined to follow the Mad instructions and simply pleased to continue the Work.
What does this say of our era? What can we discern from this?
More important than that, however, is the notion of taking the title and turning it into a reality: instead of a Wax Museum that is called a House of Wax, the entire building is made of wax.
What madness is this? Surely not: a home built entirely of wax would collapse... but then... this is the post 9/11 world, the world of a morality that shifts from one discussion to another. By 2005, the world around the audience is so completely alien to both worlds of 1933 and 1953 as to have almost no basis of comparison at all.
It is also a world in which a person famous for naught but fame can affect our perception of a work in and of itself: the "Paris Hilton" effect, if you will.
So much discussion of the 2005 House is based on her appearance in the film that the film itself becomes a punch line, a joke: Fame is now a virus, a destructive disease that corrupts the perceptive capacity.
Thus, we now turn back to the 1933 and 1953 versions, and compare them to the 2005 version, considering the passage of time and perception of our own era and place.
Carol Clover must now enter into the discussion. Frankly, there is no true critical discussion of the genre without her. It would be less than rude, but disingenuous. Ms. Clover is the one that brought out the understanding of gender in horror film, and identification, and in so doing, coined the most important critical analysis term in regards to the genre: The Last Girl.
Watching the earlier versions, prior to Ms. Clover's Last Girl, the creakiest part of both films becomes apparent primarily because there IS NO Last Girl. There is no central character to identify with other than the villain, and to the 21st century mind that is incompatible with the way we view the genre as a whole.
In the 2005 House, however, as the film struggles to make its point (one... more... rewrite... just one, that was all that was needed), which is that at the core is: The Last Girl and The Bad Boy.
The mirroring used here is the two brothers, the Mad Killer and The Weak Artist on the one side and The Last Girl with The Bad Boy on the other.
Normally, any current horror film that would have at its core a both female and male characters would have to generate some kind of romantic/sexual tension, but here, siblings, also twins. The Bad Boy has a hidden heart of gold (should have shown some of that earlier in the film, would have made him stronger), but his devotion to his sibling is based on a caste and pure love.... just tempered by the fin de siecle pomo dysfunctional family. Comedy replaced by pathos.
It is significant, then, in looking at this film and pay attention to the idea that the dysfunction but murderous brothers reside in a house built of wax, a house that is not a home, and is not purified by fire, but instead is distorted into a melting stream.
The major weakness come at the end of the film, and that too is indicative of the 21st Century horror genre. With a wave of a hand, the ending becomes nothing more than a grab for "Hey, if this makes enough money, we can grind out a sequel!"
Sadly, although so much of the culture of the 70's is rejected, and rightly so, it was in the media of film that such great strides were made, endings in films did not have to be a closing of a book but allowed for the notion of "there are no third acts in America," a feeling that there is something more, however elusive.
That allowed the film makers to create a work that stood alone, said its piece but opened the door for discussion, for contemplation of the work just presented.
It was the horror genre, more than any other, that crushed that invitation to the audience to do more than passively be entertained, but to actually participate in the critical discussion. It is here that again we must acknowledge Ms. Clover, and we as fans must restart that fire, that driving need to look deeper into a film and no longer be content with merely sitting in the dark watching others die.
When the remake House Of Wax was released to disc, I was a little in doubt as I normally am with anything that has "Paris Hilton" on it anywhere, porn included. However, on the massive plus side was a re-release of the Price version, and much to my shock and joy was finding it was a dual sided disc, with, almost a footnote, the flip side being the Lionel Atwell/Fay Wray Mystery Of The Wax Museum.
What the hell, right? So, off I went, starting with the middle piece, a dreamscape with which I am most familiar.
Watching it now, it is a little worse for the wear, Carolyn Jones' character giving a giggle that sounds as if it were stolen from The Music Man (missing only "Ye gods!"), and she along with Price are really the only two worthy of being on screen as often as they are. Not to slight the rest, but for the most part the remainder of the cast is phoning in a quick check, very common for the B list.
Two things immediately leap off the screen, however. The first is that the film was attempting to cash in on the Can't See This On Your TV empty headed crap Hollywood was grinding out in the then latest innovation Jump Off The Screen O Rama! aka 3-D. Like the current embarrassments, there is one scene in particular that makes the eyes roll and the hand to lurch towards the eject button. A hawker is sent out to drum up business, and in doing so is using a paddle and ball bouncing the ball into the camera, going so far as to cry out "oh, there is a man with some popcorn! Don't move, sir!"
Egad.
However, on the much more interesting side is that being shot in 3-D lead to a more close inspection of creating the illusion of depth via camera angle and focus, which when viewed in 2-D gives the film a certain beauty. Deep focus, when used correctly, does not need 3-D, film itself is an illusion and this is rather magical... or magickal, if you prefer.
The real reason to sit through this again is, of course, Price. His performance here may well be the one capping moment of his career, other and greater to come, some outstanding prior, but it is here that one sees the Iconic Price take center stage. His man is bitter to literal insanity, but there is a wild black humor dished with every syllable and facial motion. He is hysterically funny, the Clown Prince Of Horror that his fans know and adore, but here it is "funny." The lines are comedic and played to full comic effect, but his delivery makes for a nervous laughter: this character is fully insane, tormented at his deepest portion of his id.
More important, if that can be possible, is that Price often thought of himself as something other than an Actor, thinking himself more workmanlike. This was neither false nor mere humility, and the man turned down many "legit" stage options, not thinking himself capable, which fortunately lead to his accepting Dr. Phibes Part 3 (or as it is known, Theater Of Blood) and the entire supporting cast rushing over from The Royal Shakespeare Company just to have the chance to perform The Bard with Price... if you have never seen it, love Price or really enjoy well done Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself.
Price here is shown as a remarkably physical actor. Here, he uses his body in a manner that is more in keeping with Brando, Dean or Clift. Not a series of twitchy movements or mumbling, though: body motions of surgical precision. Watching him without his mask, he is contorted, one foot twisted, and I did go back and check. He never missed a cue. Total character immersion. Flawless.
The issue was the dialog. This is where the film nearly jumps the shark. My eldest son, 28, was watching it with me, and the groans lead to his excusing himself. A workmanlike performance is no loss, but the actors have to have something to use, and Price alone makes every syllable count.
Flipping it over, and watching Mystery Of The Wax Museum lead to a series of shocks.
Filmed 20 years prior to the first House, color was a new thing, and sound was still in and of itself rather new to the scene. Needing the Criterion Clean Up (as we call it here at our house), the weird washed out color actually adds to the overall effect of the film. It looks like a bad, bad dream.
The story is the same, but it is presented in such a manner as to be far different, and it is here that my personal film theory is underscored... that the times and era are captured, warped and reflected back onto the audience, zeitgeist as auteur.
This film, released in 1933, would have come out during the Depression, and after WWI. The sense that the world was a violent, disturbing place and one of debatable future was a precursor to the aftermath of WWII and the existentialist movement. Atwill's performance is based almost word-for-word the same as Price's, but the differences are shocking when seen back-to-back.
Atwill is also a bitter man driven to madness from his loss and disfigurement, but his rage is not hidden beneath a thin veneer of black humor, but instead is barely controlled rage, lashing out at everyone and everything that does not attach itself to the obsessive pursuit of his art.
Price is more of a serial killer, or signature killer may be more appropriate, putting his "art" on display, and in doing so mocks the world around him. In comparison, then, the "lesser" performances suddenly take on a different weight. Price's film, released in 1953, seems more a slam on the times, Price as hep cat beat artist, similar to Dick Miller in A Bucket Of Blood than anything else, and really, in essence, that is both the Phibes/Lionheart characters in a nutshell (forgive the wanton pun...).
Atwill is mad in a 1933 sense, mad meaning both insane and enraged.
In Mystery, too, the remaining performances take on a wholly different meaning and depth. The dialog is machine gun fast, crackling like a screwball comedy, razor sharp delivery. That heightened sense of verbal daring is the source of comedy then, and it is important because the humor and its source shifts from the Greek Chorus of the supporting players and onto the star. Thirty years made the difference.
The Zeitgeist as auteur has been in the back of my mind for a couple of decades, but watching these three films so close to one another really carved it in stone. Films are produced as art, of course, but in some cases art comes from merely the correct grasp of the mindset of the audience. The film is made in the hope of gathering enough of an audience to recover the cost of its production, and those films that act as our collective id, horror, reflect back to us more of where we were and are than other genres. It is there in our darkest recesses that we see the most clearly defined shadows.
Mystery was released 1933. Price's House was released in 1953. Consider the social changes, the era, and how much things had changed in that 20 year period. The essence of the actual story remains for the most part unchanged: the focal villain is a genius sculptor, albeit odd, who has chosen wax rather than stone as it is more real, more fleshlike. Both have focused on creating Art, capital A included via intonation, and both are poor. At open, both have been approached by a Dickensian Rich Man who will make all financial worries end. Both have a commercial partner, but the partner has been pushing the Artist to give the audience what they want: Blood, death and torment.
Because in Horror there is cash.
The Artist refuses, tells of the Rich Man bail out approaching, but it is too little, too late for the partner, and in both films the fire insurance scam is enacted. This leads to violence and mayhem, the fire begun, and both capture what must be said are still, even now, rather disturbing images of melting human faces. From this moment, both occurring in the first 10 minutes of screen time, all else follows. Disfigurement and loss of fine motor skills to the Artist feeds bitterness at the injustice, which feeds an internal "fire" of rage, and that way leads to madness.
Flash forward, then, to 2005, and the film that has been so wrongly discussed as the "Paris Hilton" House Of Wax.
The title is the same as the Price film. There is murder, and public placement of victims as a form of art.
The times, though, have changed, and changed so drastically as to render the earlier films to nothing more than a mere nod.
This is the post Viet Nam audience, butt more than that, an audience that has little frame of reference to that conflict other than the notion of madmen walk among us. This is the post 9/11 era, and from that comes the notion of a world that resembles nothing so much as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a world that allows for no rhythm to destruction, no sense of Art that would allow for a pattern, any one can die at any moment with no warning whatsoever.
It is also an era that has grown weary of irony, tired of clever for the sake of clever that even the most inspired of clowns would face groans. It is impossible to see Price in this world; he would be groaned off the screen. Instead, we have the visual pun, the crude innuendo and, of course gore. Lots of gore. Implied sex combines with violent, painful death.
The film takes more than one viewing to see its value, and in watching it in context with its two older, somewhat peculiar siblings, the film takes a rather remarkable twist. Rather than one central villain, it has two, formerly conjoined brothers. Is this a comment on the two, earlier films? If yes, I doubt if it was intended to be so, but it does serve the third film well.... think of the bottled hatred and rage that drips off of Atwill, and that defines one of the brothers perfectly. His rage and madness is all-encompassing. He commits acts of brutal ferocity to release that rage.
The other brother is shown as the Artist. His genius is unmistakable, and it is his face that is mangled, but not due to a fire set for insurance fraud, but in the surgical disconnect to the Mad brother, and this sets an entirely different mindset.
It is the Mad brother that controls the entire community, creating it in his twisted image, an entire town that could have come from the mind of Ed Gein, taxidermy and wax statues combine to fill a small town. The Artist brother is, interesting, without speech. His work speaks for him, a fetishistic approach that perfectly combines with the Atwill/Price characters. Atwill/Price were both mad, but they also had a passion for the figures they created, openly speaking with the inanimate objects as if they lived, and did so openly, repeatedly. Here, the Artist appears mentally challenged, and just as importantly, the "weaker" of the two brothers, more inclined to follow the Mad instructions and simply pleased to continue the Work.
What does this say of our era? What can we discern from this?
More important than that, however, is the notion of taking the title and turning it into a reality: instead of a Wax Museum that is called a House of Wax, the entire building is made of wax.
What madness is this? Surely not: a home built entirely of wax would collapse... but then... this is the post 9/11 world, the world of a morality that shifts from one discussion to another. By 2005, the world around the audience is so completely alien to both worlds of 1933 and 1953 as to have almost no basis of comparison at all.
It is also a world in which a person famous for naught but fame can affect our perception of a work in and of itself: the "Paris Hilton" effect, if you will.
So much discussion of the 2005 House is based on her appearance in the film that the film itself becomes a punch line, a joke: Fame is now a virus, a destructive disease that corrupts the perceptive capacity.
Thus, we now turn back to the 1933 and 1953 versions, and compare them to the 2005 version, considering the passage of time and perception of our own era and place.
Carol Clover must now enter into the discussion. Frankly, there is no true critical discussion of the genre without her. It would be less than rude, but disingenuous. Ms. Clover is the one that brought out the understanding of gender in horror film, and identification, and in so doing, coined the most important critical analysis term in regards to the genre: The Last Girl.
Watching the earlier versions, prior to Ms. Clover's Last Girl, the creakiest part of both films becomes apparent primarily because there IS NO Last Girl. There is no central character to identify with other than the villain, and to the 21st century mind that is incompatible with the way we view the genre as a whole.
In the 2005 House, however, as the film struggles to make its point (one... more... rewrite... just one, that was all that was needed), which is that at the core is: The Last Girl and The Bad Boy.
The mirroring used here is the two brothers, the Mad Killer and The Weak Artist on the one side and The Last Girl with The Bad Boy on the other.
Normally, any current horror film that would have at its core a both female and male characters would have to generate some kind of romantic/sexual tension, but here, siblings, also twins. The Bad Boy has a hidden heart of gold (should have shown some of that earlier in the film, would have made him stronger), but his devotion to his sibling is based on a caste and pure love.... just tempered by the fin de siecle pomo dysfunctional family. Comedy replaced by pathos.
It is significant, then, in looking at this film and pay attention to the idea that the dysfunction but murderous brothers reside in a house built of wax, a house that is not a home, and is not purified by fire, but instead is distorted into a melting stream.
The major weakness come at the end of the film, and that too is indicative of the 21st Century horror genre. With a wave of a hand, the ending becomes nothing more than a grab for "Hey, if this makes enough money, we can grind out a sequel!"
Sadly, although so much of the culture of the 70's is rejected, and rightly so, it was in the media of film that such great strides were made, endings in films did not have to be a closing of a book but allowed for the notion of "there are no third acts in America," a feeling that there is something more, however elusive.
That allowed the film makers to create a work that stood alone, said its piece but opened the door for discussion, for contemplation of the work just presented.
It was the horror genre, more than any other, that crushed that invitation to the audience to do more than passively be entertained, but to actually participate in the critical discussion. It is here that again we must acknowledge Ms. Clover, and we as fans must restart that fire, that driving need to look deeper into a film and no longer be content with merely sitting in the dark watching others die.
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Final Statement Of A Dead Man
The Black Iron Prison never ended...
After the Collapse and the after the Riots, the Plague and the creation of the Control Government, there was the moment called the Naked Lunch, in which a social order that was broken into levels, each level consuming those beneath and being consumed by those above, and that which was thought was the bottom was in reality feeding on the top... and everyone, everywhere simply stopped. The Naked Lunch was the awful, frozen moment when everyone saw what was really at the end of every fork.
The Control Government as was run in Mishawaka, Indiana had taken over certain existing buildings and structures to be used in a manner not originally intended.
The old Methodist Church which had been specifically designed to replicate the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris had become the Hall Of Justice. A building that was nearly completed before the Collapse and had stood empty was made into the Clear Central, publicly a mental institution but actually a place of torment and pain.
A gazebo built upon a hill was transformed into a gun turret. An empty high price condominium was a prison, the House Of Correction.
Those found to be Enemies Of The State were brought to the Hall Of Justice. Under the Control Government law, any lawyer who allowed the accused to plead innocent and later found to be guilty would suffer the same fate as their client. The plea of innocent never ceased to exist but it did cease to be heard.
The accused could do so, but in doing so, the lawyer would ask to be recused, often revealing into the public record information that was still thought to be covered under the Client/Attorney privilege but under Control Government law that was considered an act of patriotic virtue and was protected. The accused would then stand trial as guilty with innocence needing to be proved, and without representation.
Thus, the only two pleas heard in court were the rare guilty, but the most common, insane.
Insanity as a defense was accepted, as any questionable behavior would then be considered through the lens of sanity, sanity defined as the rule of law, and the law was of the Control Government.
If found insane, the accused was then remanded to the custody of the Clear Central for treatment. Here the accused was tormented flesh and spirit until the replies given to questions were completely in order with the world view of the Control Government. It was also here that the place of pain, Room 101, was used to take that one terror, that deepest id secret would be brought forth, the greatest fear held by the accused would be turned against them, making all prior agonies become happy memories.
Once the accused was cured, it was the province of the Control Government to determine if the accused was at core a threat to the state. Should one be found to be such a threat, the torments of the damned were visited upon them, day into night, night into day, world without end. Once the clarity was finally achieved, the accused became the guilty, and from there they would be sent to the House Of Correction, to await the time that would come, the call to the Great Owl Bridge.
Upon their final hours, the guilty would be lead into the open air, would be allowed a last statement, and then be summarily hanged. Not in the traditional means of hanging, it must be said, but via the placing of the noose about the neck and then raising the accused into the air. Death was always slow, and the soon to be corpses would kick and thrash, much to the delight of the gathered crowd.
There was always a gathered crowd. This was law. All executions were mandatory in attendance. Gathered also would be the wide variety of media. On that day, the usually weeping prisoner would beg forgiveness, and bless the state for their coming demise.
As was the tradition of the Control Government, those awaiting execution would be also required to watch the executions from their House Of Correction. Tradition also held that within the last week prior to their own death, the prisoner would be allowed to walk outside again, to record their last thoughts in the event of a lack of coherent thought or speech at the penultimate moment.
They would be heavily sedated prior. Their freedom was an illusion, a thought that was planted and replanted again and again under chemical hypnotherapy.
These final videos were more often than not discarded, as the spectacle of the crowd and media often inspired the most entertaining speeches, and always drew the highest ratings.
The video that became known as The Final Statement Of A Dead Man was kept after the speech given by that Hero of freedom that day, to be examined fully for hints and clues as to how the method had failed. The ending of his speech is still not on the tape, which he recorded as a rehearsal of sorts (although this has never been confirmed). That day, as is known, he began to speak, and sounded at first precisely as the Central Government had hoped.
As is well known, all recording by the media had been cut off at what had later become the rallying cry of the Truth Movement, all cell phone coverage was severed. What came out later, and the moment of the Naked Lunch, was when the aftermath had been discovered. The entire community was executed shortly afterwards, the turret in the gazebo became the burning lead rain of the wrath of the Control Government. The entire city was burned to the ground, bulldozed over, and offically was removed from all maps of that time.
The shrine of The Dead Man stands there now, a gigantic statue of his face in the final visual image seen by all the world, and beneath his legacy, carved in marble six feet in height:
You have been lied to.
After the Collapse and the after the Riots, the Plague and the creation of the Control Government, there was the moment called the Naked Lunch, in which a social order that was broken into levels, each level consuming those beneath and being consumed by those above, and that which was thought was the bottom was in reality feeding on the top... and everyone, everywhere simply stopped. The Naked Lunch was the awful, frozen moment when everyone saw what was really at the end of every fork.
The Control Government as was run in Mishawaka, Indiana had taken over certain existing buildings and structures to be used in a manner not originally intended.
The old Methodist Church which had been specifically designed to replicate the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris had become the Hall Of Justice. A building that was nearly completed before the Collapse and had stood empty was made into the Clear Central, publicly a mental institution but actually a place of torment and pain.
A gazebo built upon a hill was transformed into a gun turret. An empty high price condominium was a prison, the House Of Correction.
Those found to be Enemies Of The State were brought to the Hall Of Justice. Under the Control Government law, any lawyer who allowed the accused to plead innocent and later found to be guilty would suffer the same fate as their client. The plea of innocent never ceased to exist but it did cease to be heard.
The accused could do so, but in doing so, the lawyer would ask to be recused, often revealing into the public record information that was still thought to be covered under the Client/Attorney privilege but under Control Government law that was considered an act of patriotic virtue and was protected. The accused would then stand trial as guilty with innocence needing to be proved, and without representation.
Thus, the only two pleas heard in court were the rare guilty, but the most common, insane.
Insanity as a defense was accepted, as any questionable behavior would then be considered through the lens of sanity, sanity defined as the rule of law, and the law was of the Control Government.
If found insane, the accused was then remanded to the custody of the Clear Central for treatment. Here the accused was tormented flesh and spirit until the replies given to questions were completely in order with the world view of the Control Government. It was also here that the place of pain, Room 101, was used to take that one terror, that deepest id secret would be brought forth, the greatest fear held by the accused would be turned against them, making all prior agonies become happy memories.
Once the accused was cured, it was the province of the Control Government to determine if the accused was at core a threat to the state. Should one be found to be such a threat, the torments of the damned were visited upon them, day into night, night into day, world without end. Once the clarity was finally achieved, the accused became the guilty, and from there they would be sent to the House Of Correction, to await the time that would come, the call to the Great Owl Bridge.
Upon their final hours, the guilty would be lead into the open air, would be allowed a last statement, and then be summarily hanged. Not in the traditional means of hanging, it must be said, but via the placing of the noose about the neck and then raising the accused into the air. Death was always slow, and the soon to be corpses would kick and thrash, much to the delight of the gathered crowd.
There was always a gathered crowd. This was law. All executions were mandatory in attendance. Gathered also would be the wide variety of media. On that day, the usually weeping prisoner would beg forgiveness, and bless the state for their coming demise.
As was the tradition of the Control Government, those awaiting execution would be also required to watch the executions from their House Of Correction. Tradition also held that within the last week prior to their own death, the prisoner would be allowed to walk outside again, to record their last thoughts in the event of a lack of coherent thought or speech at the penultimate moment.
They would be heavily sedated prior. Their freedom was an illusion, a thought that was planted and replanted again and again under chemical hypnotherapy.
These final videos were more often than not discarded, as the spectacle of the crowd and media often inspired the most entertaining speeches, and always drew the highest ratings.
The video that became known as The Final Statement Of A Dead Man was kept after the speech given by that Hero of freedom that day, to be examined fully for hints and clues as to how the method had failed. The ending of his speech is still not on the tape, which he recorded as a rehearsal of sorts (although this has never been confirmed). That day, as is known, he began to speak, and sounded at first precisely as the Central Government had hoped.
As is well known, all recording by the media had been cut off at what had later become the rallying cry of the Truth Movement, all cell phone coverage was severed. What came out later, and the moment of the Naked Lunch, was when the aftermath had been discovered. The entire community was executed shortly afterwards, the turret in the gazebo became the burning lead rain of the wrath of the Control Government. The entire city was burned to the ground, bulldozed over, and offically was removed from all maps of that time.
The shrine of The Dead Man stands there now, a gigantic statue of his face in the final visual image seen by all the world, and beneath his legacy, carved in marble six feet in height:
You have been lied to.
Friday, September 30, 2011
The Final Destination series
Currently the series appears to be over and this is in the face of the 4th film in the series, which was wrongly titled The Final Destination, suggesting it was going to be the series finale. The main problem I have is that, with the release of Final Destination 5, that was a fools' errand at best.
This series has been maligned and misunderstood by just about everyone, and while not maligned usually misunderstood by its fans, of which I am one.
Each film runs the exact same pattern: a collection of characters are shown, mostly young, gathering together such that all parties involved will be in one place at one time. Something goes disastrously wrong, everyone dies a horrific death and then Zip! Into the eyeball of the character whose path we will then follow to the end we fall, and that person comes to the sharp, sudden understanding that they have just had a premonition, panics, and in their panic saves the lives of the rest of the cast members. Throughout the film to the end, each of these characters will die in a manner that has not been seen outside of a Rube Goldberg cartoon: extravagant circumstances lead to a sudden (and often literally) splashy demise. At the end, we are given usually one last Big Splashy Death, and the credits roll.
Those who do not comprehend the genre of horror at all, or possess the slightest understanding with no respect for the genre, are befuddled about this series. It has been called The Dead Teenager Movie, a bit of flick that exists for nothing other than the depiction of gruesome human demolition.
One non-word explains it all: Duh. If I must elaborate, then: Ya think?
Dumbass....
All horror films do this. All. Barring none. Some are captives to the era in which they were created, those times in which the open depiction of body parts and blood had to be kept to a minimum, or in the dark, all agonies in shadow.
Consider then the film Theater Of Blood, starring Vincent Price and featuring a goodly portion of the Royal Shakespeare company. The entire film is based on the works of Shakespeare and death upon gruesome death stacks up along with a rather impressive body count. Both Price films in which he played Dr. Phibes do the same.
What makes the Final Destination films worthy of attention is this: the essence of tragedy is placed throughout each of the (currently) five films. By using the term "tragedy" I think the actual nature of the original term as used by the ancient Greeks must needs be re-examined and removed from its current incorrect usage and for that we need return to Aristotle, The Poetics and the myth of Oedipus.
When Aristotle wrote that the play Oedipus Rex was the greatest tragic play written, what was used as a yardstick for that assessment were the six basic elements in all true tragedy. The first element, and it is first because it is the most important, is plot. This term, "plot," is the basic format, the tale told, the story. In the L. J. Potts translation, published by Cambridge University Press, the term "plot" is replaced with "fable."
Now plot and fable mean two separate things, and in reading Potts' footnote, the original Greek term was mythos. This is of interest here, as the term "mythos" (from which the term myth is derived) has begun to mean That Which Is Not True, a silly little thing with which to entertain children. This level of disrespect is the actual cause of this article.
The myth of Oedipus is currently misunderstood, and once that is clarified, the Final Destination series becomes much, much more interesting.
Oedipus has been reduced, by Freud, as the story of the man who loved his mother and killed his father. While that is indeed the truth, and is the focus of Oedipus Rex, there are layers of importance that the ancient Greek society would have understood that lends a deeper and more powerful impact to the play.
Oedipus was born to the king of Thebes, and as tradition held at the time, the newborn was taken to the Oracle to have the future of the child be foretold. There, the Oracle advised that the Fates had decreed the following: that the boy would grow to kill his father and marry his own mother.
The issue is not the action, but the source: the Fates. In Greek mythology, the Gods themselves bowed to the Fates. Once the Fates had unveiled (however cryptic it may be) what destiny awaited, it was so. There was no argument, no debate.
What makes Oedipus Rex a tragedy of the highest value is that from prior to the opening curtain of the play, the audience knew the story. Aristophanes just did a "cut to the chase," opening the story as close to the action as possible.
The parts of the myth NOT in the play though, continue after the king hears of the destiny of his child, and performs an action that pushes the rest of the play deeper into tragedy with every line and event. The king decides to defy Fate: he has both of the child's Achilles tendons cut, writes out the warning of the Oracle, puts the scroll and the child into a box and throws the babe into the ocean. From there, the box washes ashore, and a childless couple finds the baby, reads the scroll and decides to raise the child as their own. When the boy becomes a man, the adoptive parents decide he needs to know his Fate, and tell him that he can stay with them. Before they can do so, Oedipus finds the scroll, reads it, and decides to flee, so that he can avoid his Fate, not knowing that the man he thought of as his father was not. In his travels, he comes to a crossroad, there meeting a wealthy man who decides to demand the right of way, there is a struggle, and Oedipus kills the wealthy man. Going onwards towards Thebes, Oedipus finds the Sphinx has taken control of Thebes due to the death of their king and presents a riddle, which Oedipus solves. He is shortly thereafter made king of Thebes and marries the widow of the king, the beautiful Jocasta.
It is here that the play begins. A plague has spread throughout Thebes, a curse brought from the gods as a man has slain his father and married/lay with his own mother.
Everything that happened prior to the beginning of the play would have been as familiar to the ancient Greeks as the story of Christ prior to His crucifixion to current Christians.
The tragedy is not the murder of the father and marrying the mother: the tragedy comes from the hubris of man in attempting to thwart the decree of the Fates.
And that takes us back to Final Destination.
Fate decrees that a plane will explode, that there will be an horrific multi-vehicle accident, that a roller coaster will come off its tracks, that a series of collisions at a raceway will enter the stands and that a bridge will collapse. People will die: so the Fates have decreed. One person will have a premonition of each event and will attempt to thwart Fate. They will fail, over and again.
Each of the five films in the series does this, and does it fairly well with a certain consistency. The sneering comment that these films are "Dead Teenager Films" is not only wrong, but dismissive. Granted, they are not high Art, but the films approach an understanding of Fate that has been long absent from film.
The major failing in the series is not the gore but rather the notion of using the tragic element of Fate for nothing more than mere suspense.
The major success in the series is that the suspense works.
This series has been maligned and misunderstood by just about everyone, and while not maligned usually misunderstood by its fans, of which I am one.
Each film runs the exact same pattern: a collection of characters are shown, mostly young, gathering together such that all parties involved will be in one place at one time. Something goes disastrously wrong, everyone dies a horrific death and then Zip! Into the eyeball of the character whose path we will then follow to the end we fall, and that person comes to the sharp, sudden understanding that they have just had a premonition, panics, and in their panic saves the lives of the rest of the cast members. Throughout the film to the end, each of these characters will die in a manner that has not been seen outside of a Rube Goldberg cartoon: extravagant circumstances lead to a sudden (and often literally) splashy demise. At the end, we are given usually one last Big Splashy Death, and the credits roll.
Those who do not comprehend the genre of horror at all, or possess the slightest understanding with no respect for the genre, are befuddled about this series. It has been called The Dead Teenager Movie, a bit of flick that exists for nothing other than the depiction of gruesome human demolition.
One non-word explains it all: Duh. If I must elaborate, then: Ya think?
Dumbass....
All horror films do this. All. Barring none. Some are captives to the era in which they were created, those times in which the open depiction of body parts and blood had to be kept to a minimum, or in the dark, all agonies in shadow.
Consider then the film Theater Of Blood, starring Vincent Price and featuring a goodly portion of the Royal Shakespeare company. The entire film is based on the works of Shakespeare and death upon gruesome death stacks up along with a rather impressive body count. Both Price films in which he played Dr. Phibes do the same.
What makes the Final Destination films worthy of attention is this: the essence of tragedy is placed throughout each of the (currently) five films. By using the term "tragedy" I think the actual nature of the original term as used by the ancient Greeks must needs be re-examined and removed from its current incorrect usage and for that we need return to Aristotle, The Poetics and the myth of Oedipus.
When Aristotle wrote that the play Oedipus Rex was the greatest tragic play written, what was used as a yardstick for that assessment were the six basic elements in all true tragedy. The first element, and it is first because it is the most important, is plot. This term, "plot," is the basic format, the tale told, the story. In the L. J. Potts translation, published by Cambridge University Press, the term "plot" is replaced with "fable."
Now plot and fable mean two separate things, and in reading Potts' footnote, the original Greek term was mythos. This is of interest here, as the term "mythos" (from which the term myth is derived) has begun to mean That Which Is Not True, a silly little thing with which to entertain children. This level of disrespect is the actual cause of this article.
The myth of Oedipus is currently misunderstood, and once that is clarified, the Final Destination series becomes much, much more interesting.
Oedipus has been reduced, by Freud, as the story of the man who loved his mother and killed his father. While that is indeed the truth, and is the focus of Oedipus Rex, there are layers of importance that the ancient Greek society would have understood that lends a deeper and more powerful impact to the play.
Oedipus was born to the king of Thebes, and as tradition held at the time, the newborn was taken to the Oracle to have the future of the child be foretold. There, the Oracle advised that the Fates had decreed the following: that the boy would grow to kill his father and marry his own mother.
The issue is not the action, but the source: the Fates. In Greek mythology, the Gods themselves bowed to the Fates. Once the Fates had unveiled (however cryptic it may be) what destiny awaited, it was so. There was no argument, no debate.
What makes Oedipus Rex a tragedy of the highest value is that from prior to the opening curtain of the play, the audience knew the story. Aristophanes just did a "cut to the chase," opening the story as close to the action as possible.
The parts of the myth NOT in the play though, continue after the king hears of the destiny of his child, and performs an action that pushes the rest of the play deeper into tragedy with every line and event. The king decides to defy Fate: he has both of the child's Achilles tendons cut, writes out the warning of the Oracle, puts the scroll and the child into a box and throws the babe into the ocean. From there, the box washes ashore, and a childless couple finds the baby, reads the scroll and decides to raise the child as their own. When the boy becomes a man, the adoptive parents decide he needs to know his Fate, and tell him that he can stay with them. Before they can do so, Oedipus finds the scroll, reads it, and decides to flee, so that he can avoid his Fate, not knowing that the man he thought of as his father was not. In his travels, he comes to a crossroad, there meeting a wealthy man who decides to demand the right of way, there is a struggle, and Oedipus kills the wealthy man. Going onwards towards Thebes, Oedipus finds the Sphinx has taken control of Thebes due to the death of their king and presents a riddle, which Oedipus solves. He is shortly thereafter made king of Thebes and marries the widow of the king, the beautiful Jocasta.
It is here that the play begins. A plague has spread throughout Thebes, a curse brought from the gods as a man has slain his father and married/lay with his own mother.
Everything that happened prior to the beginning of the play would have been as familiar to the ancient Greeks as the story of Christ prior to His crucifixion to current Christians.
The tragedy is not the murder of the father and marrying the mother: the tragedy comes from the hubris of man in attempting to thwart the decree of the Fates.
And that takes us back to Final Destination.
Fate decrees that a plane will explode, that there will be an horrific multi-vehicle accident, that a roller coaster will come off its tracks, that a series of collisions at a raceway will enter the stands and that a bridge will collapse. People will die: so the Fates have decreed. One person will have a premonition of each event and will attempt to thwart Fate. They will fail, over and again.
Each of the five films in the series does this, and does it fairly well with a certain consistency. The sneering comment that these films are "Dead Teenager Films" is not only wrong, but dismissive. Granted, they are not high Art, but the films approach an understanding of Fate that has been long absent from film.
The major failing in the series is not the gore but rather the notion of using the tragic element of Fate for nothing more than mere suspense.
The major success in the series is that the suspense works.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Deconstructing the Conspiracy Theory
William S. Burroughs once wrote that language is a virus and we use it to infect others. I have said that paranoia is the only known communicable mental illness. These two things are closely related.
One of my earliest memories was wanting to watch a program on TV, which may well have been the Mickey Mouse Club. It was not on that day, but instead, all stations had the exact same program. An ominous drumbeat was the soundtrack, and a slow, steady parade passed by the cameras. In the front was a man leading a horse in sidestep, and in one stirrup was a boot, placed backwards, so the the heel faced the front of the horse and the toe faced the rear. This was the funeral march of John F. Kennedy, our murdered president.
My mother purchased every copy of Look and Life magazine that came out, focusing on the now-infamous Zapruder film. I remember distinctly looking at the images, frame by frame, laid out in 3x5 images. They chose not to publish the final head shot, showing the President's head exploding. Mom also purchased, and read cover to cover, the paperback release of The Warren Commission Report, and later, Mark Lane's book Rush To Judgement.
I was born in 1959. JFK was murdered in 1963. Do the math: I was about 4 years of age.
The Conspiracy Theory was thus introduced to me at an early age. As I grew older if not wiser, the notion that there is a Secret Plan in place was part of the background. When I began to read the countless volumes of books, stacks of magazines and articles, then web sites, dedicated to that one crime, I began to gather a rather jaundiced eye: people, it seemed, would believe anything. Fools, all.
I widened my search and examined all other forms of Conspiracy Theory. All manner of madness came across my view: FDR stood by and allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor; International Bankers financed Hitler; behind every curtain was a man we were supposed to ignore, we were all blind and ignorant.
For me, though, everything was turned on its head by my finding the MKULTRA plot. In a nutshell, it reads as follows: the CIA was attempting to manufacture a Manchurian Candidate, a means of deep hypnosis that would allow an agent to be programmed to commit murder, but to never be aware of doing so. Further, the CIA had purchased the entire supply of the then-legal drug LSD in an attempt to further this attempt, then used questionable means to have the drug declared illegal first in the United States and then the world. Pursuing it further, the CIA then went on to purchase the then existing world supply of LSD, and began using it in in-house testing, often without the subject's knowledge, to see if it could also be used as a truth serum. Once that was in place, it was a short step to begin "dosing" unsuspecting US citizens, most if not all males, who were in the process of procuring a prostitute, the citizen being dosed in hotel rooms where behind a two way mirror, their behaviors would be studied.
The level of raucous laughter that I emitted bordered on hysteria: as my friend Scot says, "you just can't write that shit."
My pattern at the time was to read as much as I could find about such matters, then spend most of my entertainment time of examining the source material. For many, it boiled down to "researchers," individuals with a questionable amount of time on their hands, who had always managed somehow to dredge up the most peculiar of sources. He said, she said, they said: actual evidence, any trail that would lead to a smoking gun, never in sight.
The shock came when I found the source of the MKULTRA conspiracy: a US Senate sub-committee... public acknowledgement from the CIA itself. They admitted it openly, publicly and as a matter of public record. The reason: one of their own agents was dosed and he committed suicide, and his wife filed a lawsuit... one thing lead to another.
That which most resembled a fool's parade suddenly came into sharp focus... and if this one is true... then what of the others?
The point here is not to inflict this mental "instability" onto you, dear reader, but instead to go deeper, into, as the subject lines states, deconstruction.
You see, the point is simple. Anyone who professes to believe in a conspiracy theory is often derided and mocked, a simpleton that has allowed themselves to be deceived.
Ayn Rand, the objectivist, said that mythology was the first attempt at philosophy. It was an attempt to make sense of the world as perceived.
The Conspiracy Theory, then, regardless of its content, is in my less than humble opinion, an attempt to grasp events that are seemingly random and place them into a comprehensible package... like religion.
And science...
When I began writing my novel The Third Event, I was in the mindset that suggested, as Bruce Springsteen said about his first album Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, that I may never do it again, so throw everything into the pot and see what happens. On the back of my novel, instead of a simple blurb, I put in three separate sentences in Latin.
Peto primoris verum.
Panton alius mos insistuo.
Fabula est in nomen.
Seek first the truth.
Everything else must follow.
The story is in the names.
Truth, it would seem, is a rather interesting concept. As written in the Bible, and Jesus Christ, Superstar, Pontius Pilate asks our Lord and Savior: What is truth? Are mine the same as yours?
There are two main characters in my novel, the first has the surname De La Tour, and the other Towers. The first is French: of the tower. Thus, the novel, at its heart and core, are The Two Towers.
I recall distinctly where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001. I had traveled to Las Vegas to take a weeks vacation visiting a brother by another mother (a friend so close as to be as near blood bond as possible). My flight came in at about 1 AM, and he was on a night shift schedule. For a day, we both attempted to mold our times into one another, and early on that day, we were both all but unconscious. The phone rang, and a friend in Mishawaka, IN had called, telling us to turn on the news because a plane had struck one of the Two Towers.
So, there we were, for all the world looking like two boys, in our tighty-whiteys, blearily watching the video of the burning building. While we watched, the second plane came in. We both snapped fully awake.
"One," said my brother by another mother, "is an accident."
"Two," said I, "is a conspiracy."
While the world kept turning on its axis, day into night and night into day, the reality of that day stood stark and clear. We were under attack. Then came the Pentagon, and the fate of United 93.
As I write these words, it is 9:11 AM. Jung called it Synchronicity. Indeed.
Everyone saw it. We all saw the same thing, and for the most part, in unison. All over the world: a communal experience.
Sort of...
See, this is where everything starts to turn sideways.
After the collapse of the Two Towers, there was the collapse of Building 7.
Here, then, is the interesting part: after the fact, there are those who have come forward to define, using their collective specialties, what actually happened, the physics involved, the chemistry, etc.
Some said: you saw what happened, and here is the hard science from professionals, that state unequivocally that what you saw is exactly what happened.
Some said: you saw what happened, and here is the hard science from professionals, that state unequivocally that what you saw is NOT exactly what happened.
There was evidence provided by both groups, the chemistry of the fuel, the architecture involved in the building of superstructures like the Two Towers, testimony by demolition experts, etc.
Yet, somehow, there were two differing viewpoints on the reality of what happened. How can that be?
Those who accepted what is the majority opinion scoffed at those who believed otherwise, because the Truth Movement, as they called themselves, were nothing more and sometimes less than mere (drum roll, please): Conspiracy Theorists.
In my novel, I then was writing about the two Towers (De La Tour and Towers) in conflicting realities. I also mentioned the notion of the Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Cat or the idea involving multiple realities... and the 2 Towers in my novel were separate sides of one coin.
I also quoted, at length, from the film The Happening, often disregarded as a commercial and artistic failure. To condense: Science will look at an event and develop the best possible theory to explain it, but at the core, it is always going to be a mystery.
Think otherwise? Then ask someone that is fully into the materialistic, non-spiritual belief system to explain, in as precise a means as possible, how gravity functions... and how it fits into the notion of Physics...
It just does...
I do not mock those of that mindset. Not now, not ever: rather, as Robert Anton Wilson wrote in The New Inquisition, I mock the closed mind. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, there are more things under Heaven and Earth than fit into philosophy.
The Conspiracy Theory, then, not to mock but to clarify, is an attempt to comprehend the world, history and events as they unfold... much in the way mythology does in the mind of Rand.
The Conspiracy Theory attempts to eliminate the very concept behind the phrase: Things Just Happened...
Was JFK murdered? Yes. By whom? Someone with a gun... do you really need anything else? What about Bobby Kennedy? El-Malik El-Shabazz (formerly Malcolm X, Detroit Red, Malcolm Little)? Watergate?
To openly deride all conspiracy theory as mere bunkum is to suggest that Things Just Happened Like That, that No Man Is Responsible... other than The Enemy.
Who is the real enemy of rational thought? The conspiracy theorist or the one that mocks them? The one that accepts the Official Version or those that mock them?
One of my earliest memories was wanting to watch a program on TV, which may well have been the Mickey Mouse Club. It was not on that day, but instead, all stations had the exact same program. An ominous drumbeat was the soundtrack, and a slow, steady parade passed by the cameras. In the front was a man leading a horse in sidestep, and in one stirrup was a boot, placed backwards, so the the heel faced the front of the horse and the toe faced the rear. This was the funeral march of John F. Kennedy, our murdered president.
My mother purchased every copy of Look and Life magazine that came out, focusing on the now-infamous Zapruder film. I remember distinctly looking at the images, frame by frame, laid out in 3x5 images. They chose not to publish the final head shot, showing the President's head exploding. Mom also purchased, and read cover to cover, the paperback release of The Warren Commission Report, and later, Mark Lane's book Rush To Judgement.
I was born in 1959. JFK was murdered in 1963. Do the math: I was about 4 years of age.
The Conspiracy Theory was thus introduced to me at an early age. As I grew older if not wiser, the notion that there is a Secret Plan in place was part of the background. When I began to read the countless volumes of books, stacks of magazines and articles, then web sites, dedicated to that one crime, I began to gather a rather jaundiced eye: people, it seemed, would believe anything. Fools, all.
I widened my search and examined all other forms of Conspiracy Theory. All manner of madness came across my view: FDR stood by and allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor; International Bankers financed Hitler; behind every curtain was a man we were supposed to ignore, we were all blind and ignorant.
For me, though, everything was turned on its head by my finding the MKULTRA plot. In a nutshell, it reads as follows: the CIA was attempting to manufacture a Manchurian Candidate, a means of deep hypnosis that would allow an agent to be programmed to commit murder, but to never be aware of doing so. Further, the CIA had purchased the entire supply of the then-legal drug LSD in an attempt to further this attempt, then used questionable means to have the drug declared illegal first in the United States and then the world. Pursuing it further, the CIA then went on to purchase the then existing world supply of LSD, and began using it in in-house testing, often without the subject's knowledge, to see if it could also be used as a truth serum. Once that was in place, it was a short step to begin "dosing" unsuspecting US citizens, most if not all males, who were in the process of procuring a prostitute, the citizen being dosed in hotel rooms where behind a two way mirror, their behaviors would be studied.
The level of raucous laughter that I emitted bordered on hysteria: as my friend Scot says, "you just can't write that shit."
My pattern at the time was to read as much as I could find about such matters, then spend most of my entertainment time of examining the source material. For many, it boiled down to "researchers," individuals with a questionable amount of time on their hands, who had always managed somehow to dredge up the most peculiar of sources. He said, she said, they said: actual evidence, any trail that would lead to a smoking gun, never in sight.
The shock came when I found the source of the MKULTRA conspiracy: a US Senate sub-committee... public acknowledgement from the CIA itself. They admitted it openly, publicly and as a matter of public record. The reason: one of their own agents was dosed and he committed suicide, and his wife filed a lawsuit... one thing lead to another.
That which most resembled a fool's parade suddenly came into sharp focus... and if this one is true... then what of the others?
The point here is not to inflict this mental "instability" onto you, dear reader, but instead to go deeper, into, as the subject lines states, deconstruction.
You see, the point is simple. Anyone who professes to believe in a conspiracy theory is often derided and mocked, a simpleton that has allowed themselves to be deceived.
Ayn Rand, the objectivist, said that mythology was the first attempt at philosophy. It was an attempt to make sense of the world as perceived.
The Conspiracy Theory, then, regardless of its content, is in my less than humble opinion, an attempt to grasp events that are seemingly random and place them into a comprehensible package... like religion.
And science...
When I began writing my novel The Third Event, I was in the mindset that suggested, as Bruce Springsteen said about his first album Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, that I may never do it again, so throw everything into the pot and see what happens. On the back of my novel, instead of a simple blurb, I put in three separate sentences in Latin.
Peto primoris verum.
Panton alius mos insistuo.
Fabula est in nomen.
Seek first the truth.
Everything else must follow.
The story is in the names.
Truth, it would seem, is a rather interesting concept. As written in the Bible, and Jesus Christ, Superstar, Pontius Pilate asks our Lord and Savior: What is truth? Are mine the same as yours?
There are two main characters in my novel, the first has the surname De La Tour, and the other Towers. The first is French: of the tower. Thus, the novel, at its heart and core, are The Two Towers.
I recall distinctly where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001. I had traveled to Las Vegas to take a weeks vacation visiting a brother by another mother (a friend so close as to be as near blood bond as possible). My flight came in at about 1 AM, and he was on a night shift schedule. For a day, we both attempted to mold our times into one another, and early on that day, we were both all but unconscious. The phone rang, and a friend in Mishawaka, IN had called, telling us to turn on the news because a plane had struck one of the Two Towers.
So, there we were, for all the world looking like two boys, in our tighty-whiteys, blearily watching the video of the burning building. While we watched, the second plane came in. We both snapped fully awake.
"One," said my brother by another mother, "is an accident."
"Two," said I, "is a conspiracy."
While the world kept turning on its axis, day into night and night into day, the reality of that day stood stark and clear. We were under attack. Then came the Pentagon, and the fate of United 93.
As I write these words, it is 9:11 AM. Jung called it Synchronicity. Indeed.
Everyone saw it. We all saw the same thing, and for the most part, in unison. All over the world: a communal experience.
Sort of...
See, this is where everything starts to turn sideways.
After the collapse of the Two Towers, there was the collapse of Building 7.
Here, then, is the interesting part: after the fact, there are those who have come forward to define, using their collective specialties, what actually happened, the physics involved, the chemistry, etc.
Some said: you saw what happened, and here is the hard science from professionals, that state unequivocally that what you saw is exactly what happened.
Some said: you saw what happened, and here is the hard science from professionals, that state unequivocally that what you saw is NOT exactly what happened.
There was evidence provided by both groups, the chemistry of the fuel, the architecture involved in the building of superstructures like the Two Towers, testimony by demolition experts, etc.
Yet, somehow, there were two differing viewpoints on the reality of what happened. How can that be?
Those who accepted what is the majority opinion scoffed at those who believed otherwise, because the Truth Movement, as they called themselves, were nothing more and sometimes less than mere (drum roll, please): Conspiracy Theorists.
In my novel, I then was writing about the two Towers (De La Tour and Towers) in conflicting realities. I also mentioned the notion of the Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Cat or the idea involving multiple realities... and the 2 Towers in my novel were separate sides of one coin.
I also quoted, at length, from the film The Happening, often disregarded as a commercial and artistic failure. To condense: Science will look at an event and develop the best possible theory to explain it, but at the core, it is always going to be a mystery.
Think otherwise? Then ask someone that is fully into the materialistic, non-spiritual belief system to explain, in as precise a means as possible, how gravity functions... and how it fits into the notion of Physics...
It just does...
I do not mock those of that mindset. Not now, not ever: rather, as Robert Anton Wilson wrote in The New Inquisition, I mock the closed mind. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, there are more things under Heaven and Earth than fit into philosophy.
The Conspiracy Theory, then, not to mock but to clarify, is an attempt to comprehend the world, history and events as they unfold... much in the way mythology does in the mind of Rand.
The Conspiracy Theory attempts to eliminate the very concept behind the phrase: Things Just Happened...
Was JFK murdered? Yes. By whom? Someone with a gun... do you really need anything else? What about Bobby Kennedy? El-Malik El-Shabazz (formerly Malcolm X, Detroit Red, Malcolm Little)? Watergate?
To openly deride all conspiracy theory as mere bunkum is to suggest that Things Just Happened Like That, that No Man Is Responsible... other than The Enemy.
Who is the real enemy of rational thought? The conspiracy theorist or the one that mocks them? The one that accepts the Official Version or those that mock them?
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
A Modest Proposal
Once again, we begin to wind up into the national frenzy of politics, the cheapest and most demeaning form of entertainment available. Personally, while I go headlong Hunter S. into it all with the savage frenzy of the gambling addict, I see that the time has come to actually face the facts and the true situation. I make no suggestion to the Federal Government, nor to any of the potential candidates for President or any other office up for sale, but choose here to focus on the state in which I reside: Indiana.
If need be, the following would be my platform, should I be drafted to run, or drafted into the office of Governor via write-in vote.
1) Make the Indiana State Police the single most well-equipped, well-staffed and highest paid police force in the history of Earth, third planet from the sun. The reason? The police force of this state is sadly none of the above. No officer of the law should ever, for any reason, be paid so poorly as to cause them to rely on outside aid for their family. Being in a position of constant stress, any officer that has to be concerned with the next meal their family may or may not be able to have tends to make them (or any human) rather grumpy, and seriously, do we need armed, uniformed peace officers to be grumpy? No. We give them a badge, and a gun, so why not put them in a more calm state of mind.
2) Any illegal immigrant found within the borders of this state will be given the following options: become legal or leave. If they choose to stay, they must become citizens by following all of the normal means. Any assistance needed for this, i.e., education, will be paid for by the state of Indiana (50%) and their current employer (the remaining 50%). Once a month, they will be shown on television, being sworn in as legal citizens of this state, and of the United States Of America. Those who chose to not become legal citizens will be shot. Along with their employers. Just to make a point.
3) Eliminate the welfare system as currently known by increasing employment by 100% within the borders of the state. The means by this is to work with the Habitat For Humanity group, all of the service groups currently in place for the homeless and indigent. If someone is on welfare and is capable of service or work in some manner, their pay, complete with benefits, will be based on the work done. Those who simply refuse to participate and are capable of work will be shot. Along with their families. Just to make a point.
4) The sanctity of marriage must be defended at all costs. Marriage is the common bond that holds all of society together, and the single greatest threat posed to the institution of marriage is divorce. Thus, ending divorce as it is now is the single greatest means of protecting the institution. While eliminating divorce in its entirety would be best, it must be understood that under the saddest and most extreme cases the health of the populace if not their lives are in jeopardy. So, to defend it further, then, those trapped in a marriage of violence and abuse will be given the authority to report such matters to the police, and the offending party or parties will then be shot. Any person accusing someone of violence and/or abuse that drops the charges more than three times will be shot. Any person shown to use an accusation that is unfounded will be shot.
5) To further protect the sanctity of marriage, effective immediately, all married persons in the state of Indiana will pay no taxes whatsoever on the first $150,000 made per year. That being said then the most obvious next step would allow anyone who wishes to become married, regardless of the gender of those wishing to become married, can do so within the state of Indiana. All parties must agree to live within the state for no less than five years to use the tax break. Those who become married within the state of Indiana and do not remain within the state for that length of time will be shot, regardless of the gender of the parties involved.
6) Any corporate entity currently existing within the borders of the state of Indiana, or wishing to do so, must agree to stay in the borders for no less a time period of ten years. During that time, there will be no taxes whatsoever levied against any corporate entity. If the corporate entity wants to leave prior to that ten years, or leaves without assuring that their existing staff has some form of gainful employ will be charged a back tax of 100% of the corporate gross effective immediately, will lose the land ownership rights of the properties involved and all means of production left within the state borders. All parties within management of these corporate entities, regardless of their location anywhere on Earth, third planet from the sun, will be brought before a televised panel to explain why the actions were taken, giving them a chance to explain the causes and reasons. They will then be shot. Along with their families. Just to make a point.
7) Reducing a state deficit being mandatory, as well as living within the budget, each member of Congress, both representatives and senators, will be held accountable for their performance. The entire state must be considered, not merely a portion of it. To ensure the clarity of mind of each elected official, the following changes must be made effective immediately:
A) Representatives will be paid the average wage of the district from which they came.
B) Senators will be paid the median wage of the district from which they came.
C) The Governor will be paid the average wage of the entire state.
D) The Supreme Court will be paid the mean wage of the entire state.
E) No elected official may remain in office more than three terms.
F) All members of Congress will be required to use the largest medical care provider from the district from which they came, the Governor and Supreme Court will be required to use the largest medical care provider from the state. All will be required to pay for their own medical care coverage out of pocket.
G) Any elected official that does not live by the above standard will be shot. As well as their families. Just to prove a point.
8) Raising income and reducing costs at the same time would be the best of all possible worlds, so effective immediately, marijuana will be legal in the state of Indiana. Not for medical purposes, not decriminalized but legal, produced and marketed solely by the state of Indiana. The product will then be controlled tightly. All revenues from the sales of the product are to be used to fund the Indiana State Police, the schools of the state, the state highways and the improvement of border control. The use of any motorized vehicle while under the influence of marijuana will be treated as if the offender was under the influence of alcohol, which traditionally in the state of Indiana is called a felony but is treated more like a misdemeanor. To increase public awareness of the seriousness of this matter, anyone found operating any form of motorized vehicle while under the influence of marijuana or alcohol in the state of Indiana will be given the option of assistance in returning to their home. If refused, or if damage of any manner to property or injury to anyone, the offender will be shot.
Thank you for your attention, and remember: vote early, and vote often.
If need be, the following would be my platform, should I be drafted to run, or drafted into the office of Governor via write-in vote.
1) Make the Indiana State Police the single most well-equipped, well-staffed and highest paid police force in the history of Earth, third planet from the sun. The reason? The police force of this state is sadly none of the above. No officer of the law should ever, for any reason, be paid so poorly as to cause them to rely on outside aid for their family. Being in a position of constant stress, any officer that has to be concerned with the next meal their family may or may not be able to have tends to make them (or any human) rather grumpy, and seriously, do we need armed, uniformed peace officers to be grumpy? No. We give them a badge, and a gun, so why not put them in a more calm state of mind.
2) Any illegal immigrant found within the borders of this state will be given the following options: become legal or leave. If they choose to stay, they must become citizens by following all of the normal means. Any assistance needed for this, i.e., education, will be paid for by the state of Indiana (50%) and their current employer (the remaining 50%). Once a month, they will be shown on television, being sworn in as legal citizens of this state, and of the United States Of America. Those who chose to not become legal citizens will be shot. Along with their employers. Just to make a point.
3) Eliminate the welfare system as currently known by increasing employment by 100% within the borders of the state. The means by this is to work with the Habitat For Humanity group, all of the service groups currently in place for the homeless and indigent. If someone is on welfare and is capable of service or work in some manner, their pay, complete with benefits, will be based on the work done. Those who simply refuse to participate and are capable of work will be shot. Along with their families. Just to make a point.
4) The sanctity of marriage must be defended at all costs. Marriage is the common bond that holds all of society together, and the single greatest threat posed to the institution of marriage is divorce. Thus, ending divorce as it is now is the single greatest means of protecting the institution. While eliminating divorce in its entirety would be best, it must be understood that under the saddest and most extreme cases the health of the populace if not their lives are in jeopardy. So, to defend it further, then, those trapped in a marriage of violence and abuse will be given the authority to report such matters to the police, and the offending party or parties will then be shot. Any person accusing someone of violence and/or abuse that drops the charges more than three times will be shot. Any person shown to use an accusation that is unfounded will be shot.
5) To further protect the sanctity of marriage, effective immediately, all married persons in the state of Indiana will pay no taxes whatsoever on the first $150,000 made per year. That being said then the most obvious next step would allow anyone who wishes to become married, regardless of the gender of those wishing to become married, can do so within the state of Indiana. All parties must agree to live within the state for no less than five years to use the tax break. Those who become married within the state of Indiana and do not remain within the state for that length of time will be shot, regardless of the gender of the parties involved.
6) Any corporate entity currently existing within the borders of the state of Indiana, or wishing to do so, must agree to stay in the borders for no less a time period of ten years. During that time, there will be no taxes whatsoever levied against any corporate entity. If the corporate entity wants to leave prior to that ten years, or leaves without assuring that their existing staff has some form of gainful employ will be charged a back tax of 100% of the corporate gross effective immediately, will lose the land ownership rights of the properties involved and all means of production left within the state borders. All parties within management of these corporate entities, regardless of their location anywhere on Earth, third planet from the sun, will be brought before a televised panel to explain why the actions were taken, giving them a chance to explain the causes and reasons. They will then be shot. Along with their families. Just to make a point.
7) Reducing a state deficit being mandatory, as well as living within the budget, each member of Congress, both representatives and senators, will be held accountable for their performance. The entire state must be considered, not merely a portion of it. To ensure the clarity of mind of each elected official, the following changes must be made effective immediately:
A) Representatives will be paid the average wage of the district from which they came.
B) Senators will be paid the median wage of the district from which they came.
C) The Governor will be paid the average wage of the entire state.
D) The Supreme Court will be paid the mean wage of the entire state.
E) No elected official may remain in office more than three terms.
F) All members of Congress will be required to use the largest medical care provider from the district from which they came, the Governor and Supreme Court will be required to use the largest medical care provider from the state. All will be required to pay for their own medical care coverage out of pocket.
G) Any elected official that does not live by the above standard will be shot. As well as their families. Just to prove a point.
8) Raising income and reducing costs at the same time would be the best of all possible worlds, so effective immediately, marijuana will be legal in the state of Indiana. Not for medical purposes, not decriminalized but legal, produced and marketed solely by the state of Indiana. The product will then be controlled tightly. All revenues from the sales of the product are to be used to fund the Indiana State Police, the schools of the state, the state highways and the improvement of border control. The use of any motorized vehicle while under the influence of marijuana will be treated as if the offender was under the influence of alcohol, which traditionally in the state of Indiana is called a felony but is treated more like a misdemeanor. To increase public awareness of the seriousness of this matter, anyone found operating any form of motorized vehicle while under the influence of marijuana or alcohol in the state of Indiana will be given the option of assistance in returning to their home. If refused, or if damage of any manner to property or injury to anyone, the offender will be shot.
Thank you for your attention, and remember: vote early, and vote often.
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