Ten Years On

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Nothing has changed.

The alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks is gone, and yet, the war shall continue. I do not condemn here the ones that followed their duty, and exacted a rough justice: I also do not rejoice in the death of this man.

As Ronald Reagan once remarked, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Be that as it may: Osama Bin Laden is dead. Nothing has changed.

Had he been captured by his own people and drug through the streets like Mussolini, his dead body struck and kicked and spat upon, nothing would have changed.

Had he been a monster, found eating the raw flesh of children and gunned down in that act, nothing would have changed.

He was not the boogeyman, he was not Satan. He was a man, to our American thinking delusional but to far too many he was a martyr in the waiting, a hero, and that is the reason that nothing has, or will, change.

As a nation, we were drug into the ugly reality of the last half of the 20th century at the beginning of the 21st: every nation on earth has had to deal with terrorist attacks on their own soil as perpetrated by human beings that were not citizens of their attacked state.

With Timothy McVeigh, we here in the US of A had a home grown terrorist. Those we were used to, and have had many throughout our history... terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on one's viewpoint. The raid on Harper's Ferry by John Brown can be considered a terrorist attack: there was nothing new with McVeigh.

After 9/11, this nation had to come to grips with the fact that the policies enacted on foreign soil, with or without the knowledge or consent of the American people, have long term effects on us as a nation. No longer can we pretend mere ignorance will be enough for us as a nation: our fellow citizens died on 9/11.

The citizens of this nation should have been outraged and distraught, which we were, but not merely at the sight of two falling towers but at the government that put us, as a nation, in harm's way.

No more, we should be saying: no more. The greatest value of the internet is the means by which we can speak to all nations, all humans with access to the machines, and we can say without the need of our government "We are not that different, you and I. Come, and let us make peace."

Having said that: To the Muslim world, I say, come, let us make peace. We share the same enemy. To the world at large, I say: Come, let us make peace. We share the same enemy.

Shattered consciousness

Last time on Tirades, rants and other things ignored:

I cancelled my Facebook account a while ago. I'd found that I was obsessing over it the way an alcoholic obsesses over that next drink.

I also found that I was becoming a monster, a ranting screaming sort that acted more of a troll than a man. So. Not for me.

And now:

As if this blog weren't enough.... (insert self-deprecating laughter here)

However, as I had lost contact with several people there, one who is a good friend IRL sent me a note full of angst. I understood what he was saying in that email, and the more I thought about my response to him.

Being connected to the world is IMHO a good thing. We can communicate without boundaries, and I truly believe that the more we understand about our fellow humans, the less likely we are to think of them as something other than less than human... Q.E.D., it goes to follow.

However...

My son in law and I were discussing music one eve, as we are wont to do, and while we were talking, he was waiting for a web page to load, and the longer the page took the more annoyed he became. Finally, after I chided him about his lack of patience, he said: You don't seem to understand. Our generation wants everything at a click.

A statement that, had it been said twenty years ago, would have been meaningless... but now, I see that he was correct, and more... or less, as the case seems to be.

By our collective interconnected instantaneous response to the World As We Know It, we as a culture seem to have lost the capacity for reflection, which means a death of contemplation.

The more I thought about it, and thought about the note my friend had sent, the more I kept coming back to a simple phrase that I have now heard so often that once I repeat it here, you, dear reader, may say, that sounds like me....

Ready?

I need a vacation. Not from work; from my life.

Indeed: so it would seem.

During the first week I disconnected from FB, I noticed something that can adequately be described by an album title: The Roaring Silence. There was a sensation of total quiet, a type of emotional solitude that I had not known in quite a while, and it made me to grow uncomfortable with my self.

As time continued, I so desperately wanted to go back to the noise of Facebook that I struggled, every day, to NOT do so. It was an addiction, an alluring sense of being with others... and I thought to a moment in the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

The moment is during a group therapy session, and the villainous Nurse Ratched is speaking down to one of her wards (as she is wont to do both in film and novel), mentioning that this patient had withdrawn from the others during the day. One of the men present, possibly the man being quizzed (I forget), says, "Are you saying it is wrong to want to be alone sometimes?"

The accuracy of the moment and quote notwithstanding, the fact is: people need a moment alone. We need the quiet, the moment of contemplative thought, we need the book and candle and peace.

Consider: the more interconnected we have become, and the more information that floods in, the less time we have, the less focus on the things that we, ourselves, cherish that the rest of the world has but a nanosecond, or less. We do not have time to process what is coming in, and thus cannot consider the ramifications for anything more than a moment.

Our collective subconscious is falling apart, the world about us is charging in and that which is most private, that thing that is the self separate from the rest, is being drowned in minutiae.

Of what value are the latest antics of some Hollywood actor when we ourselves have our own lives to live? Vicariously we surrender our own souls to be part of a greater whole...

This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but the whimper of you have been sent a friend request. Click here.

Facebook no more.

A few days ago, I deleted out my Facebook account. The reasoning, at the time, was rather clear to me. I was developing the signs of addictive behavior. My sleep patterns of late have been disrupted, one thing and another, and I found I was online, on Facebook, reading and posting, posting and reading. When I wasn't, I was surfing the web to find clever, funny and sometimes brutal things to attach to my Facebook page via Shareaholic... in and of itself that name should have been a warning.

As if spending more time on Facebook and Facebook related activities were enough of a sign, I began to notice that more and more I was acting like an angry drunk: simple comments would lead to a blind unreasoning and unreasonable response, which would lead to the inevitable "I'm sorry."

Just like a drunk... or an addict.

Regardless, the point remains: it had to go. In so doing, the withdrawals were strange. I sit at the keyboard, uncertain where to go. There are other sites I go to, of course, and one, Zen Running Order, is in its own way a social networking page. The problem, I found, is that that sudden rush of adrenaline was missing. Where's the rage?

That is a good thing.

The more time I have, and will continue, to put between myself and FB, the better. I find now that my fingers itch to write, and write more and more. Hell, from the moment of deletion, I realized that had I spent half as much of my time writing my second novel (or first non-fiction book) as I did on FB, I'd be done by now.

There was a defining moment for me, that moment one feels when the bottom drops out and then gravity does the inevitable thing.... and that sudden shock when hitting bottom. I had made a couple of posts, all rather innocuous, one meant to be a "funny" and another just a page about a band, and I had commented on someone's page in re: baseball. One thing lead to another, and the next thing I knew I was flying between the three posts and I completely lost sight of the fact that I was speaking to three separate people. When I completely went batshit insane, the internet version of SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS, complete with multiple exclamation marks and a few stumble rage fat finger typos, I slammed out of my browser... hands shaking, sudden shortness of breath (more like I'd been running) and could feel my heart pounding in my chest...

And then, reality, dear friend and occasional visitor, came back. In webspeak: WTF? What brought that on?

And then: Who was I screaming at?

I honestly could not remember at first, and slowly it came back to me... and I thought, well, I need to go back and remove it, or at least apologize... but what was said to me that made me so possessed of rage? Backtracking: nothing. Nothing.

Nothing was said to me, by anyone, at any moment, that could conceivably provoked that response. WTF?

No, said I. No more. Google: Delete Facebook Account: click here. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye...

Three people (out of close to 200, mind you) asked me what happened, where did I go? Three. Well, so be it then. That, too, was a wake up call. While there are some there that I didn't talk to a lot, fact is there were a lot of "friends" that while wonderful people, I simply did not and still do not know....

Thinking about this on this fine AM, I was wondering if I should post anything here. Letting my mind wander over its own internal landscape, I threw in a couple of films, watching them until I could identify where they jumped the track and/or shark, and had picked up the newspaper.

There, I read the column of a Mr. Leonard Pitts. I don't always see eye to eye with this fine gentleman, but I didn't see eye to eye with James J. Kilpatrick, either, nor did I with David Broder, and still don't with George Will, but I love (adore!) good writing and straight talk, and Pitts is one of the best. His column dealt with privacy, and how it has all but died.

Pitts does the one thing that I admire most in a writer: he causes me to pause, to ponder and reflect.

Privacy, according to the United States Supreme Court (see Roe v. Wade) is not in and of itself a right found in the Constitution, but is implied throughout. Freedom of expression (the 1st Amendment) would point to the right to private thought prior to the expression, freedom from unlawful searches (the 4th) takes the argument that one has a right to demand to be left alone, and the right to refrain from self-incrimination (the 5th) suggests that one can withdraw into one's own self.

Having said that, as I hear time and again Those Who Will Not Think saying out loud that "perhaps our rights should be more limited," it keeps coming back: Freedom cannot be taken from a free citizen, but it can be surrendered.

Facebook, et al, offer a unique opportunity to keep in contact with others and in ways far better than phone or mail. Tweeting does the same.

The question, of course, then would be: when does one stop? Is it our right to stop?

Of course we have the right to pull back, and in fact perhaps some should consider it. Much has been said and written within the last year of people that have lost their jobs over public postings of private matters, career options sabotaged regardless of the strength of resume or interview. The internet is public and the more public it is, and the more we reveal to the world around us, the more likely we are to find ourselves surrendering the right of privacy for nothing more than merely being able to gossip online.

Pitts' column was about an application that would allow a cell phone camera photo to be entered into a facial recognition database... and that, frankly, was all I needed to read. Dear God, are you kidding me? Big Brother is unnecessary, we don't need the Thought Police, we will do it ourselves!

This country (US of [North] America) has always had a proud tradition of attaining any goal the mind could imagine. We could go to the moon if we merely set our minds to it.

The horror is that more and more we are setting our minds to creating a technocratic tyranny and we seem to be hellbent to have it happen before the end of this decade. Total control is possible when the controlled populace does the work themselves.

How long will it be before we ask for it? How long before we ask for cameras on every corner, facial recognition scanners at everybody's fingertips?

How long before we sacrifice freedom for security? We are on our way, FedEx red labelled to Hell.

Film review - Malcolm X (1992)

Based on the book The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley, screenplay by Arnold Perl and Spike Lee, who also directed and played Shorty. Denzel Washington as the lead role, featuring Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo (as of this writing one of the best reasons to watch The Chicago Code) and Al Freeman, Jr.

An epic film based on the life of a real person is always cause for both excitement and alarm. Short of a complete, second-by-second film of a person's existence any book or film is going to be edited, whittling out the parts that Sir Alfred Hitchcock called "the dull bits." We cannot as an audience actually bear witness to every moment; it is impossible. It is just as impossible for a writer or filmmaker to bear witness, even if the tale they are telling is their own. Memory, as Stephen King wrote, is such a subjective thing.

Epic films, for me, always have at their center one figure. (Usually it is a man; how I wish someone would give an epic treatment to the life of Mahalia Jackson.) As the film weaves its tale, the central figure usually has to fight their own demons until they see that they themselves are not as others and simultaneously the times around them are in a similar upheaval. The central figure of an epic, then, is a showing of the zeitgeist; their tale is the story of us all, writ large, showing on the expansive canvas of history as it unfurls.

Think of Lawrence Of Arabia; Gandhi; Patton; even The Ten Commandments. Here, we see men, men like no other but not seeing that they are different until events surpass them. (Granted, the real Patton had a rather clear view of himself in history, but he is an exception rather than the rule.) As the events of their world overtake them, they rise up and refuse to bend, standing taller than the rest but showing a reflection of that which we all know and feel.

The story of Malcolm Little, who later became Detroit Red, and then Malcolm X and finally El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, is the story of the United States writ on the flesh of one man, whose soul and blood make clear so much of what has been missed.

His own story is the story of a man's journey, from angry heartbroken child to thug pimp hustler to an awakened soul to, finally, a soul of legendary proportions. In the book's introduction, Haley remarks how, upon meeting (the then) Malcolm X, that the man was closed, refusing to open himself up until Haley asked X about his mother. That caused a moment, a breakthrough and the tale began to flow.

This film is massive, like any other epic. It catches the ebb and flow of the times and the tsunami of a man's understanding of his own soul and his proper place in history.

To be completely honest, I was raised during the time of his ascendancy and the man was not a man but a monster, hate filled and rage possessed.... or at least I was told. When the film came around, my family was in one of our periodic moments of low funds, so I had to wait until it came out on video.

I was most interested in the film mostly due to the director. Spike Lee has made some truly astonishing films. Also, I have been a fan of Denzel Washington from his days on St. Elsewhere, and the two men working together sparked a real desire. I'd already seen She's Gotta Have It (which was hysterical) and Do The Right Thing (genius but misunderstood). DtRT was an angry film, a different form of hysterical, and I could see how people thought it was about hate when it was, instead, about anger. Hot days, hot nights, hot tempers: how could the film NOT end any other way?

I approached School Daze with some trepidation, then, fearing more rage, and instead was shocked back to my core. The film did not come out and say to me, Hey, White Boy, you don't get it half what you think you do, but it could have, and maybe should have. The last line, spoken by another acting giant Mr. Laurence Fishburne "Please. Wake up." was a kick in the balls.

From that moment, I was totally all about Spike, as I had in the past with his closest peers, Ingmar Bergman, Frederico Fellini, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa.... brilliant.

Finding the first pairing of Washington and Lee Mo' Better Blues, I was stunned. Not that the film was so good (I expect no less from Lee), not that the acting was first rate (no less from Washington) but that it was so damned neglected... the fucking thing ends with a brilliant montage that is, at heart, a music video for John Coltrane! What's not to love and adore here?

Thus, seeing them team again, to approach one of the biggest figures of my childhood... I could hardly contain myself.

There was absolutely nothing to prepare me for this film. I am glad of that. The first thing I want/need to say is that the film was so powerful, so perfect in its rendition, that after I rewound the tape I dug my copy of the book. Had I not had to be at work, I would have read it cover to cover in one sitting. I was stunned: the first thing that went through my mind was the old Firesign Theater album: Everything You Know Is Wrong.

I was also stunned into a silent rage that this film, so sweeping, so grand, so epic in every conceivable manner was utterly neglected by the Oscars. Nothing, not a nomination or recognition.

The supporting cast is brilliant. Watching Delroy Lindo's character go from street power to hopeless waste of a man is heartbreaking. Angela Bassett, so beautiful as to bring the film to a halt is so flawless in her portrayal that one cannot fathom why she isn't in more films. Al Freeman, Jr., a familiar face in so many films, carries a quiet sense of personal dignity that is majestic.

It is Washington, though, that carries the burden of bringing this misunderstood man to the screen and to life. He performance of the man mirrors Lindo's at some points, and Freeman's and is a perfect foil with Bassett. The man's life is shown as a series of movements in the symphony of American History, powerful, strong and (as Arthur Miller wrote) needful of attention. We dare not ignore this man.

Gestalt: Zeitgeist as Auteur

The Auteur theory of filmmaking was based on a series of articles in the Cahiers du Cinema (Movie Notebooks). Within the pages of that magazine were critical analysis' of certain trends found in cinema, notably within the cinema of the United States. (It was also here that the genre known as film noir was coined.)

The Auteur theory was: the director of the film is its author, more so than the screenwriter. It was the unique vision of a given director that marked their films. Both Howard Hawks and Sir Alfred Hitchcock were used as examples, and for the most part this theory has remained, along with genre criticism, as the foundation of film theory.

For the most part, there is a good, solid foundation for this. The filmography of certain directors show a tendency to various patterns: Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and others, all created films (and some continue) that had a unique stamp, not only visually but in all manner of the presentation. The dialog, the music, the editing and, of course, the camera work and editing.

What caused me to post this was the work of various directors whose work is largely uneven, sometimes brilliant, sometimes merely pedestrian and sometimes... the only term that is appropriate would be Epic Fail. Joel Schumacher immediately comes to mind. His brilliant 8MM and flawless Falling Down are superb, A Time To Kill is good, solid filmmaking but hardly a work of lasting art as is his rendition of the Weber version of The Phantom Of The Opera, and his two entries into the Batman series are, at best, regrettable.

It was, however, in looking at his career that I started to wonder. Why? Why so uneven?

I began to notice how certain directors were also stuttering along, one moment grand opera and the next barely a cut above porn.

Here, then, is a little background.

In what was once called The Studio System, the studio (usually in the form of the producer) would assign certain films to certain directors. This was due to a track record of success; Hitchcock made thrillers and mysteries, Hawks made westerns. As the director grew in terms of monetary return to the studio, that given director would be given a little more authority over the film (or product) and some (certainly not all) directors began to thrive.

Hitchcock made few Epic Failures, but one that comes to mind was Jamaica Inn, an attempt to do a period piece. It is wretched. That last three word sentence is overly kind.

Be that as it may, as the auteur theory took hold, and Hollywood saw that the directors were growing in stature, the reins began to loosen. Granted, at the same time, the Studio System was faltering, but the era of the Auteur that was self-aware of the Auteur theory began. From this era, we got: Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Allen, Altman. The list goes on and on, but more interesting is what was happening underground.

In the cheapie, grade Z movie industry, certain studios (much smaller than the majors) were still using the old Studio System, even if they weren't completely aware of it, but also tagging young directors and giving them a certain freedom, if only on a restricted budget.

From here, then, we find Bogdanovich being allowed to make a film so long as he included Boris Karloff. This gave us what may be one of the best films of his career, Targets.

As the years have gone on, and the director became weaker in authority (losing final cut privileges, for example: the studio can hack and re-edit without consent of the director), and the free agent style of actors and directors wandering from studio to studio, the films of the United States as a whole started to take on a different feel.

While a film can be (and sometimes is) a work of High Art, it must never be forgotten that a film is, first and foremost, a product. It is meant to make money, pure and simple. What this mindset has birthed is the idea of using an audience survey prior to releasing a film. This is nothing new: Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy) would often preview a film before an audience. The difference was, though, that Stan stood at the back of the theater with a stopwatch and would time the laughter, so that he could then return to the editing and tighten up the comedy.

Now, however, the audience dictates editing. Sometimes to the point of rewriting the entire film.

On the DVD release of Final Destination, the producer, director and screenwriter all talked about using the audience preview to make changes in the film. Of importance here was that the film was completed, but the audience reaction was such that nearly the entire film had to be rewritten, re-shot and re-edited.

As making a film has become an expensive endeavor, and as the director has become less powerful, what is starting to happen is that the group effort in making a film has become paramount. There is no one particular voice, but rather a group.

This leads us to M. Night Shyamalan.

While his very first film, Praying With Anger is sadly not available for purchase, his second, Wide Awake is, and there, in that film, there is a significant difference between it and that which follows. Wide Awake is the last film he has made that uses someone other than James Newton Howard as the music director.

Newton Howard creates a score for Shyamalan's films that never cease to be anything other than brilliant, making a good film great, and a great film classic. Think of Hitchcock with Hermann, or Lucas with Williams (or Spielberg with Williams), or Burton with Elfman.

This is a gestalt, a group of separate minds gathering together, and adding their own touch to an overall work.

When we, the intended audience, are brought in, which is becoming more and more the norm, to witness the "finished" (if not released) product, then the gestalt widens, and the zeitgeist, the collective unconscious begins to alter the direction of the film. Here, everyone is involved, if only loosely.

When this works, it is unmistakable, the film ends up making a dent in the minds and psyche of the viewing populace that was not involved in the creative process. When the film makes a return grand enough to inspire the studios to continue in a similar vein, then the process repeats itself, as if the zeitgeist demands more, the collective consciousness of the global brain says to a smaller, more selective few: Here, this: this is what we want, give us more.

Coming to mind also, then, was the fact that two separate novels had been written and released within months of each other, and each was optioned by different studios. One was The Glass Inferno (by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson) and the other was The Tower by (Richard Martin Stern). Both novels dealt with the same premise: fire breaks out near the top of a superstructure and the stories of the people trying to survive as well as the efforts of the rescue workers to get them out and stop the fire. Rather than release two competing films of the same nature, the two studios joined to cover production costs and split the returns and the resulting film was the entertaining and rather flawed film, The Towering Inferno.

Armageddon and Deep Impact were released the same year by differing studios as were Volcano and Dante's Peak. The first two deal with an impending impact of a meteor /comet, and the second pair deal with the results of a volcanic eruption.

Some of this is mere happenstance of course, but there is also that sense of multiple minds gathering to create one, new fable, a story that wants to be told.

Blacula (1972) and Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

The sub-genre (if it can be called that) of blaxplotation can be considered either the most racist series of films created, or as is my opinion, just another example of what most people forget: the film industry is an industry, first and foremost. Its employees may be artists of varying caliber, but it is an industry, and thus, creates and releases product with the intent and hope that a profit will be seen.

In the 1950's, the burgeoning market was Youth, and its enthusiasms. This lead to a burst of films being made that were geared to the youth market, what it was perceived as being what that market wanted. Mass producing any form of entertainment leads to the creation of a lot of what can be charitably referred to as dreck or garbage, and rightly so. Periodically, however, a film or twelve will rise up through the mountains of twaddle and reveal an artist, or a vision that is rather unique.

In the 1970's the market targeted was what became known as blaxplotation. Some of these films are, at best, so racist as to be terminally disgusting, brutal assaults on the human condition that should be at best ignored.

Several, however, raise so far above this level of public humiliation that they need to be championed and re-examined.

First then, the two films involving the African Prince Mamuwalde. In the first film Blacula, he is see traveling with his beautiful wife in an attempt to eliminate the slave trade. Sadly, the powerful prince he is attempting to convince is (of course) Count Dracula. He is bitten, and from there the story spins on.

There were other attempts to sell vampire stories in modern dress, but the first standout feature here is the fact that it not only puts the vampire in the 20th century, but along with another film released that same year The Night Stalker, it deals not in the territory of Oh, Look, A Beast Of The Night but more to the point of Are You Kidding??? Do You Really Believe That A (from The Night Stalker, one of my favorite lines) Real Live Vampire Is Killing People?

More importantly, though, is the plot line that shows Mamualde's wife, Luva was not brought into the ranks of the undead, but left buried alive with her husband so she may hear his desperate cries of bloodlust and he can hear her slowing dying. His torment is inflicted from without, underscored by the horrific loss. One can only imagine the madness that would have roiled within his tortured psyche, unable to help, unable to offer comfort, just to remain locked in his coffin, and then, the eventual abyss of silence.

When Mamualde comes to "life" in the 20th century, it isn't long before he meets what is the spiritual twin of his wife... Attention: for those of you who just said, hey! That sounds familiar... that is because it is the basic plotline of the Coppola version of Dracula.

The harsh negatives about this film are many: skid row budget, poor cinematography, the makeup (several of the undead are a pale, lime green), the images surrounding Mamualde when he becomes Scary Blacula rather than Hip And Cool... these are forgiven easily due to the serious horror maven's approach to the horror genre, which was stated by Stephen King as you have to have a taste for good bologna.

What makes the film worthy of consideration?

First and foremost, there have been many, many portrayals of Dracula. From the silent Max Schreck (called Count Orlok) to Bela Lugosi to Frank Langella, David Niven, Leslie Neilsen, Lon Chaney Jr., Willam DeFoe and on and on... BUT: There is ONLY ONE Blacula, and that is the place to start with the swooning fanboy approach; the brilliant performance of William Marshall.

Marshall's Mamualde is a prince, regal, authoritative and powerful, a man's man that happens to be in a position of power. When he becomes the blood lust infected night stalker, however, there is a real sense of longing and regret; he is no longer human, and that awareness torments him.

That longing, that existential torment is what takes the sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream a work of enormous power. While the flaws remain from the first film, the performance by Marshall is if anything stronger and more subtle at the same time. While in the first film, he was (if only briefly) an abolitionist, here he is more of a Black Pride spokesman.

One scene stands out (among many), in which the Prince walks the streets at night, and is accosted by a black prostitute. Being a gentleman, he turns her away, not with visible disgust but with a sense of distaste. When moments later he is assaulted by her two pimps, his comment about how they had destroyed a black woman (leading to one of the better slides from Prince to Vampire) underscores what the best of these films can offer, a generic (and sometimes muted) call to personal responsibility that echoes the change in El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka Malcolm X).

What really makes the second film interesting is, of course, Pam Grier. Not the best performance of her career, to be sure, but the mere inclusion of her magnificent presence makes any movie (to me) worthy of sitting through.

It is her character that moves this film from simple monster movie aimed at a certain market to a deeper, more interesting film. Ms. Grier is a voodoo priestess, and while her character seems more suited to the I Am Going To Stand Here And Scream Because I Am An Idiot Female, she is a spiritual person, wanting to help the tortured soul who seeks release. Release rather than redemption is the point, and that makes the film more than mere sequel but a perfect bookend to the first film.

Spoiler alert....



Why is the title Scream, Blacula, Scream? Because, at the ending, he is screaming, Ms. Grier's magick is bringing the torment to an end, but the ceremony is a form of surgery, if you will, and it cannot be interrupted or slowed for it to be complete. Once the door is kicked in and the "good guys" rush in, the ceremony is shut down, and Marshall here is perfection and horrifying, not because he is a Thing That Sucks Blood, but because he is on the verge of peace and it is torn away from him. The supposition would be that there was not enough of a market to continue, or maybe the notion that the blaxplotation subgenre was flawed in and of itself (see below) but I feel it has more to do with the fact that the ending scream ended the series. Why continue? It isn't going to get better. Marshall caps both films in that one agonized cry. The series really has nowhere else to go.

The last thing that must be examined here is the notion that this subgenre is full of racist depictions. While that argument can be made of other films, in both of these films one sees much, much more.

For every pimp, hustler or whatever stereotype, there is a doctor, publisher or businessman; imagine that, black men are more than just a stupid stereotype! What is also interesting is the preponderant view of other blaxplotation films that white men are all corrupt and evil, but in these two films, while men of differing colors are antagonistic to one another, the antagonism is based less on skin color but more on the men are simply being men, butting heads.

In Scream, Blacula, Scream one of the main characters Justin Carter (played by Don Mitchell) is mentioned as running his own publishing company, but when people start dying in A Certain Strange Manner, his past comes out: he was formerly a police detective. Not a beat cop, a detective. His counterpoint, still on The Job, is Sheriff Harley Dunlop (played by Michael Conrad, most widely known for being Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on TV's Hill Street Blues). These two men do not get along, but the sense, from dialogue and performance, has more to do with life choices and the strangeness of the situation. They may not like each other, they may not socialize, but there is a respect that one wishes people would approach in real life.

Of course, for my friends that are all about the music: watch Blacula and see, not once but twice, The Hues Corporation perform, and neither time do they perform Rock The Boat.

Packaging both films together, and watching them back to back, is not only a grand pleasure but a rather eye-opening experience.

My Hatred Of Christmas (And Why I Am Right)

Every year around this time, I find myself assaulted and assailed by the relentless good cheer of people who apparently are hell bent on making me break my resolve in re: boiling people in their own pudding.

For every person who is shocked by the notion that anyone, anywhere would so despise their Beloved Season Of Good Cheer, I wish to make this public, if ignored, comment: Fuck off. Thank you.

Leave us, now, to determine the causes of this "irrational" mindset, shall we? Or are you too timid, too cowardly to read on?

I care not. This is MY blog. Not yours. Neener, neener, boo boo.

For what it is worth: like all "irrational" hatreds, mine begins with ugly childhood memories. Every year, like clockwork, my father's family would gather on Christmas Eve. Good food, good cheer, all that: what's the problem?

Getting home at about 2AM on the 25th. Being an only child, being drug out of bed by parents and grandparents will harsh, barked (sometimes hangover induced) commands: Be Happy. (Or what? You'll beat me until I cheer up?) The moment was caught one time on 8mm film... a wee child staggering, sleepwalking into a slow wakeful state, and BAM! That horrific glare of a hand held sun explodes, and you can actually SEE the retinas burning. Cut to: staggering child (undoubtedly blind) moving from object to object, wondering what the hell is going on...

Bitch Number One: Enforced frivolity should be allowed, legally, to be responded to a single brutal, physical response. My fist, your nose. Why? Think: how would you respond to a happy clown showing up at the funeral of a loved one? See? A happy clown! Laugh, damn you! LAUGH!

A little over the top? Maybe. BUT: once a year, I am advised by some pinheads that want me (and I assume you) to believe they live by the credo Do Unto Others As You Want Them To Do Unto You.... do they WANT me to demand an emotional response? If that is what they are doing, and they are, then I guess I am going to have a team of clowns on retainer, and send them a group of names: Watch for next funeral....

Everyone likes to whine about the materialism in Christmas, and so, too shall I. No apologies, just the truth. Again: Only child. So many read that and say Ah Ha! Spoiled rotten! Got everything he ever asked for...

Wrong.

My parents started a tradition that my wife, and family, have made every attempt to follow. Demand (not request, demand, which is really fucking annoying coming from your kids, okay?) a list of material goods.... that will then be completely ignored. Completely, utterly. (As a child, this was devastating... even my friends that came from huge and impoverished families would get at least ONE thing from their list...)

Bitch Number Two: (and yes, this is directly related, Things I Have Learned The Hard Way)... there are more in the world who get nothing than those who get anything. Allegedly, we are celebrating the birth of Our Lord And Savior. (I am all about that!) Somehow, we have begun to ignore the homeless, the poor, the orphans and widows... say what? Is that (wait for it: Drum Roll) What Jesus Would Do?

Worst part of Bitch Number Two: Every damned year I get suckered into it. I fall right into the line to the showers: gimme. Gimme. Gimme. THAT is embarrassing. That shopping zombie look, the open drooling mouth... gimme. Gimme. Gimme.

I hate it when I do that.

As time went on, and I became less enchanted with This Idiot Season, I recall most distinctly hearing a (ready?) Pastor, a Man O' Gawd, going on at length about how the most pagan of rituals was accepted into the Christian faith, and thus, made Holy. He then went on about how one of the symbols of Christmas, the Tannenbaum, the Christmas Tree, was one of the most pagan traditions ever subsumed into the faith.

Every year, the world goes 'round the sun. Every year, the planet reaches a point where it appears that the sun is going farther and farther away. The darkness of the night becomes longer, the light of day less: the world was ending. Bring in a tree, that one that is ever green, and it will be a reminder of when the world was not ending. We will festoon it with candles, and chase dark away by bringing our own light.

Bitch Number Three: Christmas, in the way it is celebrated, and even when it is celebrated, has absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with the faith. Nothing.

The Nazis... oops, sorry, their spiritual predecessors the Romans, kept rather accurate records. They marked their calendars with important dates and events, like we do now, and those dates can be easily if not flawlessly determined. According to the Scripture, Mary and Joseph had to return to their hometown for a census. This was recorded, and the date can be approximated within a week or less. Christmas did not happen in the dead of winter, folks.

If it did, "certain shepherds in fields where they lay" would have frozen to death, not too mention their flocks would have died.

Christmas, then, as it exists currently is nothing more than a materialistic pagan orgy of spending.

Oh, and by the way: while the birth of Our Lord And Savior is of vital importance, it was his blood, shed for us all, that we are saved. Not his birth. His crucifixion. Sorry. Hate to be the one to tell you the truth, but... tough.