And so it does.

From here on in, I recklessly spoil the film where I need to. If you haven’t seen the film yet, and want to be surprised by it, then don’t read this.

That the film makes reference to the apartheid, or at least, draws on imagery and emotions associated with it is, well, what it is. What I fail to grasp, is why this association immediately adds value. Does the picture make a valuable commentary on the apartheid? I feel uncomfortable making too sweeping a comment here, because my knowledge of South Africa and its history is, alas, below the threshold of meaningful commentary. Maybe there are nuances that I am missing. The audience is certainly made to feel sympathetic for the alien cause, made to feel suspicious or outraged at the various actions of human characters. How this maps back, though, I’m not sure. The apartheid is, as far as I know (and gaps are filled by reasonable assumptions here), already viewed negatively by everyone I’ve ever met. If this film gives audiences the ah-ha! moment: “Oh my! The apartheid really was as bad as performing Nazi experiments on space aliens”… what value does this new perspective bring? Because… I don’t see it.

If the film were placed elsewhere: what would change? The story would remain more or less the same, with whatever value that has left intact, but it would lose the apartheid flavouring. Is it appropriate, then, to use apartheid as flavouring?

The second value of the film, brought up by the same people who use the first, is how totally awesome the extremely gory action sequences near the end are. Which is odd. The first premise is that the film’s value comes from bringing a message about the dangers of dehumanization. We’ve dehumanized people, and treated them abhorrently… the aliens stand in as even more easily dehumanized beings, but just as undeserving of it. Or something.

And then, gleefully, that’s exactly what they do. What exactly, on film, is more dehumanizing than inviting the audience to laugh and hoot and enter a state of general arousal, as human bodies are puffed up and exploded by space alien electro guns? The ridiculous Hollywood villain, a skin-headed nazi with exactly zero redeeming qualities, preposterously survives as all of his men are killed up until the very last moment of the story. And then he is torn to pieces by the aliens. Here, says the film. Relish in this.

So, on the one hand, the film says: look how horrible we humans can be. How casual with life and liberty and dignity. And then it says, “Don’t worry, it’s totally okay to get a boner when people are slaughtered.”

I enjoy extreme ultra-violence in films. But within the context this film creates, I really couldn’t take pleasure in it. And strangely, many of those who appeared to appreciate the apartheid imagery more than I did, seemed to find no conflict in also loving the final act gorefest.

The complete unsympathetic portrayal of the oppressors in the film has an unattractive side-effect as well. Average film-goers are going to feel they have exactly nothing in common with these awful bastards. Our moronic asshole of a protagonist, our final antagonist, the a psychotic Nazi: we are free to wash our hands of it, finding nothing of ourselves in those responsible for this terrible situation.

To take something the viewer is already familiar with, and simply dress it up in Science Fiction clothes isn’t inherently valuable. To be of value for the social reasons that the film’s cheerleaders imply, either, the science fiction perspective should bring greater awareness and knowledge where a simple production of facts would be ignored, or reframe the problem so that the audience’s presumptions are challenged. The science fiction perspective should be transformative. Does that really happen here? For most of the film’s viewers, the apartheid was a problem that occurred elsewhere, perpetuated by other people. Does this science fiction perspective really alter that position in the least? While the film certainly creates a visceral sense of this situation’s horribleness, are there really audience members who had fond memories of apartheid? Who have positive feelings about oppression and genocide? And after the film ends, I suspect that they will feel just as disconnected and without responsibility for these issues as before. But they’ll feel mighty clever at having figured it all out.

But there isn’t anything to figure out. The equation is made obvious from the start. From the start, then, it is clear who the good guys and the bad guys are. The viewer’s own positions and views are never challenged. The viewer is never seduced into sharing culpability with the villains. The viewer’s responsibility blinders are, if anything, reenforced.

I wouldn’t have written this post if people weren’t professing mad, slobbering love for this film, making declarations of its cinematic superiority. I liked it. I’m glad this film was made. I respect someone spending time and money and special effects talent to make something more intellectually ambitious than Transformers or GI Joe or Star Trek. I think Neill Blomkamp has proven here that he’s a hell of a director, but he hasn’t made the game-changer that people imagine exists here. Give him another shot at Halo, or better, a classic SF story or novel that was too technically impossible to film a decade or two ago, and he’ll have his game-changer yet.

For a speculative picture that tackles dehumanization using a similar visual grammar and pseudo-documentary structure that doesn’t in the same breath celebrate rampant ultra-violence, I would recommend Peter Watkins’ 1971 film Punishment Park.

It is important, here, to use the classic Nicholas Cage voice while playing out this dialogue in your head.

“There are, like, two different ways of viewing the universe, man, the theory of, like, determinism, and whoa, random chance. Determinism is, like everything happens for a reason, and random chance is all of this is the result of random chemical reactions and genetic mutations.”

He tosses around a ball that’s been painted to look like the sun while asking random facts about the sun. The kids in the class know how hot the sun is, and that it has a bunch of hydrogen in it. Whoa! Excellent work! Class dismissed!

Meanwhile, there’s a chalkboard behind him with some hardcore space Calculus that goes unmentioned (but the camera lingers on it for a moment… You see that there? That’s some fucking MATH right there. This guy is a fucking genius).

Dear Everyone Who Is Ever Going to Make a Movie,

DO NOT PUT A CLASSROOM SCENE IN YOUR FUCKING MOVIE UNLESS YOU HAVE ACTUALLY ATTENDED A COMPARABLE CLASS YOURSELF. THAT MEANS EVERYONE INVOLVED.

That means, go to a local University or Community Fucking College, and tell them you’re a fucking screenwriter or film director or actor, and ask to sit through one or five of their classes on X (here, Astrophysics… I think).

One. University level science lecture, even the most fun and entertaining ones, tend to be pretty information dense. The lecturer tends not to quiz his students on fucking random trivia, but rather, if he’s going to be asking questions at all, it’s going to be something the requires a proper understanding of the material, usually involving problem solving or mathematics.

Two. Gibberish. His entire “science” lecture comes across as pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo, even though it’s stated in the film that Nicholas Cage is an atheist (formerly a Catholic). He says, “Why, dude, is it, like, that our Earth is at the exact right position from the sun for life to survive… did this happen for a reason, or was it, like, you know, random chance?” His students, apparently all members of MIT’s Special Education Program (I didn’t know they had this) have no rebuttal. Lottery winners. Lottery winners must think, “Why me? How is it that I picked the exact right numbers… it must be magic, a miracle.” Whoever wins the lottery always reels at the specialness of their improbable victory, but SOMEONE ALWAYS WINS THE FUCKING LOTTERY. That is a statistical inevitability. With all of the galaxies and all of the stars and all of the planets (we suspect) in the universe (and that, only the universe that we can see), it seems pretty fucking likely that there are going to be some planets formed in the habitable zone with the right basic materials to get this life thing started. We won the lottery, so obviously we’re able to look at our improbable position and marvel at how unlikely it is that we’re all here… but it had to happen to someone, somewhere. He then tells the students that he thinks it’s all just random chance and coincidence. A scientist. A man who by all means, should believe in things only when there are sensible reasons and explanations, has made exactly zero arguments for how all of this can happen without a capital R reason behind it, but he believes it anyway.

His class is enraptured. His MIT class. His class that must have been top of the fucking pile at their respective high schools or colleges across America, now attending arguably the most prestigious science school in the world, are completely satisfied with this, the stupidest science lecture they have likely ever heard. And another scientist has walked into the room, partway through the lecture. He has heard this. He walks up to Nicholas Cage and he says, “That’s some heavy stuff, bro.”

Not, “That’s the stupidest fucking lecture I’ve ever heard, turn in your science gun and your science badge.”

At a point, later in the film, there’s this guy in the woods that’s creeping out Nicholas Cage and his kid, so Nicholas Cage heads out into the woods with a flashlight and bat, and he shouts, “You want some of this?” and then he hits an innocent bystanding Tree with the bat… implying that the “this” in his statement was, in fact, referring to getting hit with a bat. Judging by audience response, this was the funniest scene in the movie. It was clearly not meant to be.

I’m about to spoil some things.

It’s aliens. Aliens have known everything all along. The creepy whispering people that gave kids dates and times for disasters and eventually the end of the world: Aliens.

Here’s an interview with the Director, in which he talks about how Knowing is a Science Fiction movie… that it had started off as a supernatural story, but when he came aboard, he made it science fiction instead.

Here’s a fun fact: Taking a supernatural story and then using aliens to explain your mystical shit doesn’t make it Science Fiction. For fuck’s sake, were you raised by monkeys?

Plot summary: some kids have the ability to know of future dates when terrible distasters will occur, culminating with the end of the world. They know this because they’re being whispered to by creepy dudes. The creepy dudes turn out to be aliens. Turns out the sun is going to shit out a major solar flare that will destroy all life on Earth. Aliens save some children, and take them to outer space garden of Eden. Earth dies. The end.

These Aliens have starships cabable of fucking interstellar travel. These Aliens apparently have a computer which is so fucking huge and advanced that it was able to predict the behaviours of the Earth’s sun to the fucking day, at least five decades in advance. Behaviour that almost certainly depends on everything going on in Sol, right down to small scale quantum interactions.

As in, they have a super computer inconceivably powerful, they are capable of changing their form to appear humanoid, they are capable of communicating.

And.

And.

And they decide to be really creepy trenchcoat-wearing dudes who whisper confusing number information to children? With all of that power, they decide to be creepy and confusing? There is no way imaginable that they could be capable of the things shown in the film, and simply lack the necessary skills to speak directly, or you know, to a broader group than little children. So, essentially, we have beings that behave like otherworldly ghost beings, or incomprehensible angels. But it’s Science Fiction, because they’re aliens. Aliens who act like spooky horror movie characters for no fucking reason. Aliens who had absolutely all of the necessary capabilities to save the Earth, but did not, for no reason.

It’s not science fiction if you take your spooky otherworldly ghost or incomprehensible angels, and give them a fucking spaceship.

Also, none of what we’ve seen in the film matters.

None of it.

The world ends, Nicholas Cage dies. His kid and his kid’s new friend are taken away by the aliens. And it would have fucking happened anyway. It’s clearly shown that plenty of other kids are taken, so even if they had all died of spontaneous combustion halfway through the film, the whole Human Race Carries On thing still happens. The last scene with Nicholas Astrophysicist Cage is with his parents and sister, finally reconciled after years without communication. And even that, we can assume, might have happened anyway, you know, because he would have known about the world ending regardless (it’s announced on television near the end of the movie… turns out, those fucks at NASA knew all along), and his kid would have been kidnapped by Aliens anyway… same result.

Nothing that happened in this movie mattered, even within the context of the movie. And the movie itself is a huge piece of shit. Kind of a one-two punch.

It had some pretty decent special effect sequences, though.

And I think it’s the first summer event movie shot on the Red camera. It looked good, looked like film… which I guess is the whole point. I saw Pontypool, also shot on the Red camera, last week. It was better.

When I said the word, an employee, further down the counter, who had been in conversation with an older Asian gentleman said loudly, to this gentleman, “Wang”, and then looked deliberately at me. As if to say, “Check out this racist motherfucker.” This triggered a moment of reflection.

    Wang is only one of many human last names that have also become a word for penis. Wang, obviously, is a Chinese last name.

    Dong is a Vietnamese last name, and also a word for Penis.

    Johnson is an anglo-saxony kind of last name, and also means Penis.

    Willie is an English first name of German origin, and also means Penis.

    Ono is a Japanese last name, and doesn’t mean Penis. Yet. Think about it, though. “I walked into the room without knocking first, and I saw his Oh No!”

    Jonker is a Dutch last name, and the word Junk is frequently used for Penis (probably also testicles). Jonker is pronounced Yonker, and there is no evidence that it shares an origin with the word junk.

    Ding is a Chinese last name, and the Penis, has, on occasion, been referred to as a Ding-a-Ling. Ling is also a Chinese last name.

    Weiner is a German last name, and is also a word for Penis. Also, it is something that you can eat, sometimes in a bun.

It also means Penis.

I don’t think I would have written anything here at all… but this morning I recieved a remarkably stupid email message (forwarded) from a perfectly reasonable and intelligent person.

1)Conservatives win a minority government.
2)Conservatives propose that the other Canadian political parties sever their genitals and hand them to the Conservative party.
3)Other Canadian parties realise that combined, they could form a majority.
4)Other parties say, “No, you may not have our genitals, but we shall have yours.”
5)Everybody fight!
6)I get the following stupid-ass chainmail message from a friend of mine

I recognize that many of my friends vote differently than I do and that diversity makes this country the best in the world.

You may not agree with the present government but voting against this coalition is the right thing to do as consent will undermine all that our forefathers have worked hard to build: DEMOCRACY.

Approval of this coalition open’s a ‘Pandora’s Box’ and most importantly sends a clear message to our youth that their vote DOES NOT count.

(The best thing about Canada is that a democracy gives you the right to agree, sign & forward this e-mail, or disagree and delete )

Please take a moment to express your thoughts about our current political situation! PLEASE FORWARD to as many CANADIANS as possible.

No – this isn’t a chain letter. No, you won’t have good luck or win the lottery, but you may just get the opportunity to exercise your right to vote, instead of having your vote erased by those that claim to “know better” than we as the Canadian electorate.

Signing takes only a minute, forwarding just a second – the results can last a lifetime!

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/CANADIAN/petition.html

Canadians don’t seem, in general, to have a very strong grasp of the mechanics of their government. Harper and his conservatives have been taking advantage of this fact, as does the writer of this garbage chain-mail message.

You may not agree with the present government but voting against this coalition is the right thing to do as consent will undermine all that our forefathers have worked hard to build: DEMOCRACY.

About here, one ought to realise that the author of this piece is a permanent resident of crazy-town. Or a liar. Or some highly imaginative know-nothing who believes deeply in his fantasies.

Forefathers? Canada is the product of an evolution, rather than a revolution. We have no direct equivalent to American-style founding fathers; our government was not the result of some idealistic experiment in democracy, but rather, inherited from the British.

Also, appealing to some idealized white haired old white dudes? Pointless. We should be able to evaluate whether something is legal and democratic without appealing to somebody’s great great great grandpa.

Approval of this coalition open’s a ‘Pandora’s Box’ and most importantly sends a clear message to our youth that their vote DOES NOT count.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that the writer of this doesn’t actually know what Pandora’s Box is. The writer might also benefit from knowing that the “Pandora’s Box” she refers to in this case has actually been opened before. Not for a while, sure, but a coalition is an established option in Canadian government.

As for votes not counting: if I voted for a Conservative candidate in a riding where a Liberal won, how exactly does my vote count, past election day? Currently, popular vote is used to determine public funding of political parties. In fact, the present crisis was triggered in part by a move that would have stripped out this provision, the only place where popular vote is taken into account, the only place where your vote does count past election day unless the MP of your choice got in.

(The best thing about Canada is that a democracy gives you the right to agree, sign & forward this e-mail, or disagree and delete )

What? The best thing about Canada is that we have the choice to either forward this email message or delete it? Really? The best thing about Canada?

No – this isn’t a chain letter. No, you won’t have good luck or win the lottery, but you may just get the opportunity to exercise your right to vote, instead of having your vote erased by those that claim to “know better” than we as the Canadian electorate.

Whose vote is being erased, here? Certainly, my vote for a candidate who didn’t win would be erased if it no longer contributes to campaign financing, as the Conservatives would have had it.

The big appeal, throughout all of this, and many critical newspaper columns, is to some ideal of democracy being broken. Because democracy was responsible for the Conservatives entering power, that must mean that any changes now must be a foul violation.

In Canada, citizens do not vote for a Prime Minister. They do not vote for a political party. They vote for a member of parliament. They vote for a person to represent their riding. Historically, when an MP has left her party, perhaps to join a new one, a bi-election is not automatically triggered. That person would retain their seat until the next election, because it is that person who was elected, not their party, not their party leader.

That, in their own minds, many Canadians are voting for a Prime Minister or a party does not change this. The prime minister and his party enter power because they have the most MPs supporting them.

The Conservative Party of Canada received 38% of the popular vote, and won 143 of 308 seats. The Liberal Party of Canada received 26% of the popular vote and 77 seats. The NDP 18% and 37. The Bloc 10% and 49.

The NDP, Liberals and Bloc together represent 54% of the popular vote. Together, they represent 163 of the 308 seats in parliament.

Each member of the coalition was voted for. These elected representatives, who have chosen to support different leadership, represent the majority of seats, the majority of ridings, the majority of voters. The Majority.

The majority of voters voted for the MPs who are now supporting this meausure. As for being a legal but distasteful violation of voter trust, this measure doesn’t even approach the party-switches of David Emmerson or Belinda Stronach (both of whom remained in office). The MPs you voted in are still members of the same parties. They are likely to have the same goals, and the same principles. The only difference, is that now they’ll actually have the power to take action on behalf of the people who voted for them. The Majority.

How is this not democracy? How is this a violation of democracy? How is it that this is somehow less democratic than being ruled by the single largest minority?

Unless, of course, you believe the Conservatives, and the dumbass who wrote that original chain-mail message, that 37% of the popular vote and 46% of available seats are somehow a truer representation of the majority than a comprimise between those who represent more than 50%, that Harper’s mandate is magic, and in this special case, 46% represents a majority, for the first time in the recorded history of mathematics.

The coalition and its proposed ascent to power is not a legal violation. It is not a move counter to the interests or the votes of the majority of voters. Less histrionic, less dishonest conservative commentators have implied that, at best, the coalition presents some crude technicality, an aberration that wouldn’t exist in a fairer, more carefully constructed electoral system. But the numbers clearly show that in a more carefully constructed representative system, Harper would never have been Prime Minister in the first place.

The imaginary system the Conservatives try to represent as our own, is a winner takes all game with many players. One where no comprimises can be made, and the team that loses least wins big. It is a game for children. And like children, they’ll continue to cry about it.

We used it incorrectly. Some of us, knowingly. Always, we would write, “Hopefully these steps will resolve your problem.” Many clumsily constructed grammar sites will tell you that hopefully is banned at the beginning of a sentence because it is an adverb, that it ends with an -ly. The people who spread these lies don’t deserve to wear clean socks. We can use mercifully, or finally, or secondly, or quite a few other things as sentence adverbs without a second glance from even the grumpiest of grammar grandmas.

Hopeful, of course, means full of hope… who is full of hope? The… uh… the steps? Correctly, we might have said, “We hope that these steps will resolve your problem.” But that would make it too personal… it would make it too much about us… and really, you wouldn’t want to know what our expectations were, vis-a-vis your problem, nor would we want to lie to you.

To begin a sentence with some quality of hopiness, while attaching that hope not to a subject, but rather, to the sentence itself, to add an ambience of hope, we should look to what has already been established. Regret. “Regrettably, I ate the week old sandwich.” It is, in a general sense, regrettable that I ate the week old sandwich. “Regretfully I contemplated that week old sandwich, the sandwich which had cut my young life short.” Now on my deathbed, I contemplate that week old sandwich, and my thoughts are filled with regret.

And so the solution is that we must begin our hopeful sentences in this way: “Hopeably, these steps will resolve your problem.” Or perhaps hopably. Or hoppably.

Or, as I found myself doing, simply write, “These steps should resolve your problem.” It’s clean, there’s that tiny disclaimer contained in the should, but the sentence is more or less projecting confidence. This is the real reason to avoid beginning a sentence with hopefully. Hopefully is wussy. It makes your sentence weak, makes you seem wishy-washy, unsure. The real reason hopefully should be directly attached to the subjects, and never the sentences, is that the subjects are wussy enough to hope. We forgers of English, like Chuck Norris, know.

I have no idea what the point of this was. I was going to mention how I really really hate the word Healthful, and that even though in some fascistic way it’s the more grammatical alternative to healthy, usage both popular and historical would dictate that this ugly uncommon word and the people who use it should be dipped in concrete in sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

And now I’m going to make myself a healthy snack of late-night bacon.

Words of fiction since last time: not nearly enough