What I Hear When I Hear People Defend "Man Of Steel" Based On Its Visuals ...

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Man of Steel, Episode One: The Phantom Menace Zone

(Quick programming note -- it's been almost two months since my last post, as I've spent the bulk of that time moving to a new city and finding a new job.  So if you begin to notice a distinctly "west coast" quality to my writing, as opposed to the "east coast" stylings of my previous posts, that would be the result of my recent relocation from Manhattan to Seattle.  And now back to your irregularly scheduled program ...)

Me: Hey, so did you hear that new symphony orchestra last night? What did you think?

Other Guy (OG):  Oh man, the trumpets!  They were so loud!  It was amazing!

 (continued below the fold ...)

Well, Which Iron Man Was I Watching?

Pop quiz ... which entry in the Iron Man series am I describing?

(This game necessarily involves spoilers, so follow me below the line to continue.)

On Ninja Angels And True TV Enlightenment

I'm a Midwesterner by upbringing as well as a Catholic, though I can't say I really identify with either identity now in my adulthood.  When it comes to the latter, I'm apparently in some very good company.  According to a recent Pew survey, while Catholics still constitution the single largest religious denomination in the United States at 23.9% of the population, a whopping one out of every ten adult Americans is a "lapsed Catholic."  (By way of comparison, the Catholics have lost more members than the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims and "Historically Black Churches" have acquired put together.)

For whatever theological qualms I came to develop with official church doctrine (which I needn't go into here), I quickly came to appreciate one thing in particular about Catholicism as it's practiced in America (and in my hometown of St. Louis in particular, a city known as the "Rome of the West" for its high Catholic population) when I traveled upstate for undergrad college in the sleepy rural town of Kirksville, Missouri.  In a few words, Catholics keep it in church.  I'm not talking about being a "Christmas/Easter Christian", or a "salad bar Christian".  I mean, Catholicism by and large doesn't busy itself with inserting itself into every moment and facet of life, or getting in the face of every passerby even when (particularly when) it's uninvited.

I'm looking at you, Bible Belt of America.

The first week of college was a real wake-up call to be suspicious of every friendly face that suddenly wanted to be my best bud on campus.  Give a Born Again Christian fifteen minutes and the conversation will quickly turn from "what classes do we have in common" to "have you invited Jesus Christ to be your personal savior?"  Midwestern politeness (and a deep urge to end the conversation as soon as possible) kept me from saying, "Yeah, after ten years of Catholic elementary and four years of Jesuit high school education ... me and the JC go back a few years, but I'm glad you had an epiphany last week and saw God in your cereal or whatever."

Outside of the classroom, I can easily say that the two biggest lessons I took from my undergraduate years is that (a) our culture is deeply awash in Christianity, and (b) many practicing Christians are convinced that, to the contrary, our culture is thoroughly godless in general and deeply anti-Christian in particular.  I've never quite figured out how these two things can be simultaneously true, how I could pass by dozens upon dozens of Christian-themed billboards on the four-hour drive to Kirksville, along with enough churches to give practically every Missouri resident their very own congregation of one, only to hear upon arrival that Christians are in fact a persecuted class of citizens in this heathen country.  This, of course, extends to our entertainment industry, which is widely disparaged as a wellspring of anti-Christian messages.

I still don't fully understand why the Christian Persecution Complex is so pervasive, but at least when it comes to the supposed "lack" of positive Christian entertainment, I think I know part of the answer.

Victory Has Defeated The Simpsons

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(Programming note -- my goal is to post at least once a week at the beginning of the week, and so far this year, my track record hasn't been horrible.  Recently, I've been devoting a lot of my non-work-hours to planning a move from New York to Seattle, and this blog has suffered as a result.  I can't promise anything, but tune in on Mondays and I'll do my best to stick to a weekly schedule.)

I had a near perfect New York weekend a few weeks back, starting with a Louis CK benefit show for PS3 Elementary on Friday (minus the fifteen minutes he had to spend lecturing rambunctious PS3 teachers to stop heckling him), the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts at the best cinema house in all the five boroughs -- the Nitehawk -- on Saturday, and unstoppable party machine FM Belfast at The Studio at Webster Hall on Sunday.  It was an embarrassment of riches and left me with far more to contemplate than I had time to write about ... the fine art of heckler confrontation, the spinelessness of the Academy awarding the Oscar to the flavorless Pepsi-commercial that was Paperman instead of Adam And Dog, the challenge of convincing friends to take a chance on a new band they haven't heard before ...

Instead of all that, the winner this week is The Simpsons, and specifically the question that stuck with me now weeks later (now that my schedule has opened up enough to type this post out): Why can't they make a modern-day TV episode of The Simpsons as simple and clever as "The Longest Daycare"? Maybe they were angling for the Oscar and, thus, needed to release the short in theaters to qualify. Maybe they were brushing up their animation chops as a trial run for the next Simpsons Movie (which is apparently not going to happen any time soon)? Or maybe it was just too experimental -- a dialogue-free segment without B- and C-plots or celebrity stunt casting to keep things "zany." But ... why does it have to be zany? If I'm right, if it's the latter explanation, then I'd like to spend a minute lamenting this staple of my childhood before casting it off the iceberg of Great TV Shows That Were.

"And the Oscar for Best PRACTICAL Effects Goes To ..."

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We're hours away from the pinnacle of the 2012 Awards Season, and I'll make no bones about being excited -- perpetually, inextricably -- by the Academy Awards.  It's the Super Bowl with sequined dresses, a monster truck rally with orchestral interludes.  It's every good reason to scream at the TV with friends over arbitrary and meaningless decisions.  Like a NASCAR race, I'm half in it for the crashes, like (well) seeing Crash expose the cowardliness and self-satisfaction of the Academy voters who favored that tripe over Brokeback Mountain and Munich (let alone the not-even-nominated A History of Violence).

I don't have any particularly strong feelings about the Oscar contenders this time around, other than a suspicion that Argo will emerge as this year's "safe" choice (by engaging Middle Eastern politics and terrorism without all the baggage of Zero Dark Thirty) -- that is, unless Silver Linings Playbook takes the cake in the same lighthearted spirit that gave the Oscar to Shakespeare in Love over The Thin Red Line and other headier historical dramas.  I do have more to say about whether awards shows such as this, and indeed the entire critical establishment we still rely upon to single out "quality" artworks amongst the rabble, still play a useful role in the era of internet anarchy, where anyone with an internet connection can bypass the cultural gatekeepers of the Analog Age to find an audience.  For the time being, however, I have something far more modest in mind.

No Need To Be Gun Shy on Video Game Violence

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"I think real violence on film is completely acceptable and should be seen. ... When you don't show the consequences it makes it seem like it's okay. I think video games and that stuff should be as violent as possible, but age-appropriate. It should be realistic."- Darren Aronofsky (2009)

 “Apple is treating games as shallow commercial entertainment experiences because they have been taught by game developers that that is what games are.” - Braid developer Jonathan Blow regarding Apple's App censorship policy (2013)

Last week, the Senate took the next tentative, lumbering step towards responding meaningfully to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by hearing testimony from a wide spectrum of gun control advocates and opponents.  While our government is designed to operate with the response time of the Titanic in iceberg-laden waters, this time around it seems that Congress may actually respond in a meaningful way to gun violence in America, and the momentum has put gun control opponents on the spot in a way they haven't been in possibly decades.

A recurring tactic amongst these opponents is to point a wagging finger at video game violence, starting with the earliest comments of Wayne LaPierre (Executive VP of NRA and presently their most prominent spokesperson) following the massacre and culminating in the recent comments of Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, who said last week that he thinks "video games [are] a bigger problem than guns" (emphasis added).  Unfortunately, such comments do a significant disservice not only to the real and pressing issue of gun control, but also to the substantive, important conversation we ought to be having about the influence of media and entertainment on our culture -- as well as our propensity to miss opportunities again and again to harness that power constructively.

The "Eye of the Beholder" is Just the Beginning

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(Yes, this post is about Modern Family ... sort of.  Just go with me here for a minute first.)

I'm an addict for cultural criticism. When I walk out of a movie -- particularly one that I felt strongly about (whether positively or negatively so) -- the first thing I do is pull up Rotten Tomatoes to scan through the reviews, particularly by critics who had an opposite reaction to the film than I did.  In the case of any TV show I watch regularly, I'll almost immediately look at A.V. Club's TV Club recaps to see their reaction.  When I stumble upon a new critic who captures my attention, I find myself obsessing over digging through their back catalog to see how they felt about my most (or least) favorite movies, or albums, or whatever.