Changeling is the most horrifying movie I've seen that doesn't fall under the horror genre. The movie illustrates how miserable life becomes when people in powerful positions collude to maintain that power. In this film the police, the office of the mayor, and the head of the state psychiatric ward all work towards convincing the refreshingly de-glamorized Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins that her missing son has been returned to her. When she points out that the boy is not her son, they use all their collective social powers to silence her. It being the 1920s, this is not a hard task to accomplish. As I was watching the film I remember thinking that it's funny how bureaucracy is often at its most efficient when it is used for evil purposes; there's nothing quite like the knowledge that you're destroying and oppressing the lives of thousands to work the doldrums out of all that paper pushing.
The film is beautiful in that aesthetic way that pre-depression United States period pieces always seem to effortless achieve. I felt some of the scenes were trying a little too hard to emphasize this, particularly at the end of the film where a hat is tipped and a crane shot climbs up to the rooftops showing the bustle of the city road. These little period tropes were distracting particularly when they were meant as winks to the audience. Although an invisible style would have been a mistake, the fact that this is a true story required the exercise of a little more restraint than the film delivers. Small slips aside, the film nevertheless seems yet another fine chapter in the history of Eastwood's masterful direction.
After the film's conclusion, Joanna pointed out to me that she'd read a review where the critic complained the film "rewarded the audience for being right." Indeed, there is no moral ambiguity in the film. Victims and villains are defined in such a way that has prompted some vibrantly negative soundbytes. Here are just a few:
"The result is a film that plays like a creaking melodrama, with good guys and bad guys and precious little in between." --Chris Kaltenbach "Baltimore Sun"
"Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski play things right down the middle, letting the story unfold in such an obvious, straightforward manner that you think they must have a curve ball up their sleeves. Sadly, they don't." --Adam Graham "Detroit News"
"The nice people? Gosh, they're swell. The bad people? Splash water on them and they'll melt. Changeling is a true story full of cartoons. There is not a single character in this movie that couldn't be made into an origami swan." --Steve Burgess "The Tyee"
This seems like a critique of the real life events more than it is a critique of the film though. Insofar as I can tell, the true events are largely manipulated in terms of their chronology to ratchet up tension, but not necessarily to amplify moral outrage. It must be understood that a victim, being removed of all his or her power, becomes perfectly moral because they have been robbed of agency. I think this is what critics are responding to, and in so doing are mistaking characters for cartoons. Representations of pure evil and complete victimization seem to be out of style, unless you are making a holocaust film. In the same way that we are allowed to experience despair and the extent of human cruelty in those holocaust films, I don't see why we can't have a similarly emotive experience in watching Changeling. This film is mimetic, not didactic. If anything is being taught, it's history through an artistic lens, not how to behave morally or recognize good or evil.
Million Dollar Baby was another Eastwood film that had this same arc, but had the benefit of "asking" the audience if euthanasia is permissible. I put "asking" in quotes because I don't believe the film intended to ask that question, so much as make a statement that it was, which then brought about a discussion of the ethics behind that message. Subtract that issue from Million Dollar Baby, and what's left is a straightforward inspirational story about the power and potential of the human will. I suppose what I liked about Changeling was the mapping of the human will through bonds between persons and in community. There's the mayor pressuring the Chief to improve the image of the police, who pressures the Captain into making this missing child case go away, and the Captain then puts the wheels in motion to the entire phony reunion. The police put pressure on administration at the Psychiatric Ward to inter without due process all the women that cause them trouble. Even the psychopathic murderer in the film forces his cousin, a young boy, to assist him in kidnapping and brutally murdering children. And Ms. Collins has the Reverend acting as her voice, and the Reverend convinced a famous lawyer to serve as her attorney and advocate for institutional change. On one level I see it as a story about political change, concerning the rights of women and the eradication of political corruption. The latter of which (and probably even the former), I suppose is apropos to our current political climate of change, as evidenced by the success of the Obama campaign. But the idea that politics exists on both abstract and personal levels isn't really something you can explain except through examples or hypothetical situations, and Changeling fills that order.
If a criticism of this movie can be made, it may involve the element of horror I mentioned earlier in the review. This movie is rife with the terror of inevitable torture and death. During a scene where the murderer, Gordon Northcott, has grabbed a boy out of the chicken coup he is using as a prison, the children hook their tiny fingers on the chicken wire, scream, cry, and look with horror as one of them is dismembered with an axe. Then there's the horrors that await the women of the Psychiatric Ward. The violence on the screen isn't nearly as impacting as those moments where you know something horrible is about to happen, and no one will stop it, yet countless people are observing it. This theme gets a little labored and at one point gave me flashbacks of Mel Gibson's Passion. However, this kind of scene if turned on its back during a public execution, the condemned man begs for his life, and howls incoherently as he is dragged up the steps of the platform where he will be hung until dead. Plenty of people watch as he is killed as well, and are similarly unmoved by his pleas. Perhaps this scene will serve as the counterpart for the Million Dollar Baby pet issue, asking if capital punishment is morally permissible? Though I don't feel this film asks that question, either.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Horror and the Human Will.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Militant Agnosticism: Another Entry in Guerilla Filmmaking.
It's easy to mistake Bill Maher for an atheist. After all, he's elitist, he's liberal, he's irreverent and funny--all the spoils of a mind having been liberated and turned against the fantasy of God. But Maher isn't an atheist; he's a strange breed of agnostic. When it comes to the subject of the Uncaused Cause, he readily accepts what he doesn't know, and finds belief or disbelief in the existence of a god fundamentally misguided. This is a distinction worth making when watching the film, as I think a lot of atheists will think he's making their argument for them, when in reality he's trying to undermine the whole debate by scrutinizing the side with the loudest certitude. Bill Maher asserts nothing in the film, saying that all he is selling is doubt, and he does an impressive job of making anyone who isn't buying look, indeed, ridiculous.
Maher has been accused of being unfair to the people he interviews. He does use editing techniques and snide subtitles, but they don't seem dishonest or attempt to distort his opponents' position like Michael Moore's tricks routinely do. He does force religious people into an uncomfortable corner by forcing them to explain and defend the most fantastical aspects of their belief--namely the literal interpretations of stories that run counter to the laws of physics and logical consistency. Having been raised a Christian, I remember wondering as a child why it was God didn't seem to perform big miracles anymore. Sublunary life, it seemed to me had become rather boring after Jesus made his stage exit, and I arrived too late to catch that last really big show. I remember thinking how much easier it'd be to believe if I could have witnessed a resurrection or two. As an adult, I realize that this is the same sort of early critical thinking that allowed me to come to the conclusion that Santa, The Easter Bunny, and the Boogie Man did not exist in real life. It's interesting and somewhat painful to observe the cognitive dissonance that must be employed for people to believe in the stories of Noah, Lot, and Jonah as historically accurate in their adult years. It's even stranger when they're confronted about what these stories mean as morality tales. Is it morally right to offer your virgin daughters to the town's rapists in order to protect the angels you were entertaining that evening from such a fate? Why is it God can be jealous and wrathful but jealousy and wrath are bad for human beings? These questions aren't really answered, and I don't believe the people the filmmakers asked these questions of will want to investigate them. The question I was asking myself as I watched Maher's ambushes: "are these people frightened of these questions or are they too intellectually lazy to be bothered by them? Will any of these confrontations linger in their minds?" I'm not sure they will, or if they do, they will linger in a lockbox full of questions labeled "poisonous doubt" that every Sunday another padlock is added to.
I wish Religulous was Part One of a two part film. I feel it accomplishes what it sets out to do--that is, make religious people look deeply confused, deluded, and frequently outright insane--but I feel the means it accomplishes its goal are mistakenly focused on fear. I felt like I was watching the mirror's image of what religious people tell me: "if you don't believe in God you're going to Hell!" Maher offers the alternative: if you don't stop being religious, our race will perish. I remember thinking at the melodramatic conclusion of the film that it feels like, as an atheist, I gave up one source of religious existential dread for another.
The real problem with religion is its influence over public policy. Maher, and I for that matter, believe we simply can't have people who are operating under delusions that distort their perception of reality deciding what is right for the rest of us. It's not their belief in a God that bothers us per se, it's the consequences of the belief that do. I don't want someone writing legislation who believes birth control is evil because fertilized eggs should have the same rights as individuals under the constitution, that the world is as young as the human race, that the evidence for evolution is inconclusive, and that one day the dead shall walk among the living so long as the nation of Israel endures. In this way, I feel like the end of the film does have a legitimate cause for giving us the warning it does.
However, the human brain does have a penchant for belief in the infinite and the sacred. And human life is peppered with experiences so transcendent that they defy our ability to verbalize and epistemically qualify them. During one moment in the film Maher is getting stoned in Amsterdam and asks whether his friend suspects as he does that the kind of intense spiritual moments he experiences while taking mushrooms or LSD are of the same chemical nature that religious people experience. Immediately after asking this question Maher sees that his friend's hair has caught on fire from the candle behind him, and springs into action to put his friend's hair out. While I laughed with the rest of the audience, I was also moved by this moment. Essentially, that moment is the thesis of the movie. And that thesis is that we should focus on what is real, rationally contextualize our experiences which feel larger than the reality we inhabit, and focus on problems which are immediate--like keeping your friends from being immolated.
It would have been nice to see a longer investigation of how the brain works when it comes to religious inclination. It also would have been nice to hear more about what Maher thinks about the concept of the sacred, especially considering his role as a comedian. These ideas were subjugated to pushing the message that religion is dangerous and intellectually unhinges people. Somehow, culturally, that is the harder message for the film to convey, and its richest source of comedy, so I can't completely fault the movie for dwelling on it. Nevertheless, I can't help but wish a movie would come along and explain how people fall into this trap of needing a fantasy to inform their moral sense and fulfill their need to be made of immortal substance, destined to outlast the universe clutching the hoary beard of a mythic creator. And perhaps that movie would contextualize human existence in an alternative metaphor, both fulfilling and true.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Ubuntu: Installation and First Impressions.
Having several laptops already, I'd been ignoring my desktop ever since I'd first installed Windows on it. I just didn't see the point. Desktops don't seem to have much purpose to me unless you're playing resource intensive games on them or video rendering, and presently I lack the motivation to upgrade my video card. I suppose sitting at a desk can help you concentrate more than lying back in a recliner with your laptop balanced on your thighs, a crumpled bag of Doritos teetering on your chest, a beer nestled between your hip and the armrest, and a TV blaring in the background, but these luxuries are hard to give up despite their impact on productivity. Besides that, I think with the right perspective you might say that by drinking, eating, watching TV, and working on the computer, that I've actually increased my productivity.
But I digress. Obviously, the desktop computer needed some kind of makeover to get me back in that office chair. Without any files needing to be backed up on it, and being bored with the computer as it was, I figured it was the perfect candidate for becoming a Linux box.
I downloaded and burned the image. I decided against dual booting, and went forward with letting Ubuntu wipe and reformat the entire drive in ext3 file system. I ran into my first problem when some of the files on my install CD appeared to be corrupted. I'd originally burned the disc in a PC environment on my Macbook Pro, but the second time I used my PC laptop and it burned clean. I've heard of other people having similar burn errors, which seem to be corrected by using nicer image burning software and burning at a slower speed. The installation was pretty painless after that point.
First impressions of Ubuntu were pretty positive. The GUI has an aesthetic quality that I think matches anything PCs and Macs have to offer. It comes preloaded with a lot of neat software, which I'll talk more about later, but for now, suffice to say that it blows my own expectations of what free software is capable of out of the water. I'm beginning to understand why so many people defend Ubuntu on a political level, as it seems to be the finest example I can think of in terms of an evolving product and craft in the creative commons. A lot of hard work went into this software for its own sake, which is pretty inspiring.
Step one for me was getting the basic computer functionality I'm used to up to speed with what my Mac and PCs can do. I hold nothing but contempt for Internet Explorer, so seeing that Firefox came preloaded on Ubuntu was nice. However, you still have to install java if you want to view all of your favorite sites. Software installation is radically different on Linux, and there are a few ways you can do it. My preferred way is through the Synaptic Package Manager, as I'm not familiar enough with terminal commands yet to make that my go-to method. Plus, I'm lazy. Synaptic Package Manager is essentially your go-to program for downloading and installing software. It regularly downloads lists of available software and updates from online distributors. You do a search for the software you want, you find it, you select it and the other required and recommended packages for install, and you're good to go.
Like most things with Ubuntu, though, you need to change some Synaptic Package Manager settings depending on what software you want access to. (Early lesson in Linux: software rarely ever arrives with default settings that you won't feel the need to tweak.) There are four different qualifications of software using Ubuntu and repositories for each. The different categories of software have to do with the way in which the product is licensed and supported. These categories are: Main, Restricted, Universe, and Multiverse. Main software is Canonical supported software (should you wish to pay for technical support from Canonical, this is the software that they can help you use). Restricted software is software that is supported, but does not have a free license. Universe is community supported software (not supported by Canonical, but generally well supported by user communities). Multiverse is software that isn't free and is also unsupported. There are repositories for each category of software, and these repositories need to be added as software distributors on your Synaptic Package Manager. To add repositories, open up Synaptic Package Manager> Settings> Repositories, and check all the boxes except source code. You'll notice a tab next to the Ubuntu Software tab labeled "Third-Party Software," this is used when the software you wish to download is not available in any distribution lists and requires you to manually add the URL of the distributor. I have had to use this feature already, and will cover it later.
Once you've got all your distributors set up, do searches or just browse through what it has to offer by category. For myself, I needed java installed and its corresponding plugin for Firefox. I did a search for Java and quite a few results came up, but what I wanted was sun-java5-jre and sun-java5-plugin, and whatever dependent and recommended packages were linked to them. In downloading Sun's Java, you are tacitly acknowledging and accepting Sun's EULA. For those of us who accept EULA's every day when using PCs or Macs, this isn't particularly out of the ordinary, but Linux users generally like things to be free, open, and modifiable, and for those modifications to be available to the community. They're a fanatic, feral group of intensely creative egalitarians, anarchists, and communists. Sun Microsystems recently turned red and became sympathetic to their outcry, releasing most of the Java core code. Unfortunately, some pieces of Sun's code are still licensed to other companies who weren't particularly keen on releasing it to Open Source License. So, an open source counterpart exists, package openjdk-6-jre, which is based on the cutely named Iced Tea Project, that works to fill in the gaps the still privately licensed Java code has left. I have heard that there still might be problems with IcedTea, though these problems are becoming less and less significant as time goes by and the community continues to rebuild Sun's "missing" code. I have not tested this package out, but think I might next week and see what happens.
So far, I've been experiencing some bugs with Firefox, which are extraordinarily hard to identify and troubleshoot. I have no idea if it involves a website I frequent, or a plugin that one of the websites I always have tabbed utilizes. Whatever the case, Firefox occasionally, quietly crashes on me as if I'd hit the exit key sequence. I am determined to figure this out, but I'm having a hard time learning where to begin, as no error messages alert me to even the most vague starting point. I'm sure there is a way to monitor the program and log these errors, but I don't currently know it, as I am still clawing my way out of an ignorance darkest. The positive side to this is that I've not yet lost work thanks to one of these crashes, mostly because gmail, blogger, and most of the other websites I travel save as I go along in any given composition. With Firefox remembering all my previously opened tabs, it is but a minor inconvenience.
Insofar as general system stability is concerned, Linux is a pretty sturdy OS. It is not crash proof, however. I've had a couple of system crashes, and a few hiccups that didn't end in complete system lockup but did seem to quit everything I was doing and knock me back to the login screen, though not all the way back to POST. I'm not sure what to call this latter kind of crash, as I'm not familiar with an equivalent in Mac or PC environments. All in all, my level of frustration is pretty mild, but it may just be that it is tempered by my treating this as an interesting learning experience.
Though the paragraph of information I have about Synaptic Package Manager may make it seem like installing software is a pain, it's actually a pretty handy, one-stop source for software acquisition and installation. It can be tricky once you've installed a program, trying locate it in your menu folders. As such, it's always a good idea to look up as much information about the software you're about to install as you can, which is a good rule of thumb with any piece of software in any operating system.
Bush beats Lame Duck Challenge. We get cool, free software to show for our empty retirement funds.
I've been having a really lousy day at work, what with the ceaseless calls from people who misdirect all their hatred of technology at me. It can be surprisingly exhausting working tech support. You're there to provide solutions, but many people see you as the embodiment of the Impenetrable Mystery of the Malfunctioning Box, and find it difficult to resist lashing out. I am apparently also there to hear complaints about software bugs and issues that really should be best communicated to, you know, their developers, but because I am the nearest representative of the nebulous realm of technology I end up receiving the anal fissures that belong to Steve Ballmer. After hearing and emotionally metabolizing their venomous complaints, these users then want me to fix their problem and be gone, for the sooner they dismiss me the sooner they can start feeling secure in their relationship with their PC.
With each call, slowly life force drains from me. My eyes lose their sparkle, become milky. For awhile I feared the cataracts would blind me completely.
But my day has brightened significantly, now that I've heard about CodeWeavers giving away their Windows-API enabler & WINE GUI, CrossOver, for free. BAM! If you've got Linux or MacOS and feel like running Windows programs and games in it, now you can, bubba.
What's even more amusing is why this is all happening. Snipped from Star Tribune:
In July, St. Paul software developer CodeWeavers came up with the gimmick to make its products available free for a day if any one of five positive (but seemingly unlikely at the time) things happened during Bush's last six months in office: gas drops to $2.79 a gallon, milk drops to $3.50 a gallon, U.S. jobs exceed 138 million, the Twin Cities median home price returns to $233,000 or Osama bin Laden is captured.
Bingo on No. 1.
When CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White saw that gas was $2.79 a gallon during a recent fill-up, "I screamed, 'Woohoo!' Then I yelled, 'Oh, crap!' as I realized every American can now have my software for free -- kind of upsets my fourth-quarter revenue projections," he said.
You can't write satire like this. The president just succeeded in beating a Lame Duck Challenge by letting the economy gutter. George Bush is finishing his presidency not as a lame duck, but as a monkey's paw.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Adam's Ubuntu Journal.
Having two jobs and only one work-free day a week engenders a specific kind of insanity. It's quiet and sad. You end up like Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, outwardly succumbing to the crushing power of unavoidable social machinery, which lists its demands of you and offers no negotiations, only grim consequences. The trick is, when no one's looking at you and barking demands or mewling requests, you take advantage of that strange and beautiful moment of clarity in the midst of all that white noise and do, or better yet create something fun, interesting, meaningful. You must later cling to the tiny accomplishments which emerge from these rare moments and claim that they constitute who you really are. Using this irrational line of thinking is how a man maintains his sanity, or, at least, it's how this one does it. I've made a promise to myself to be vigilant in recognizing these moments, like an adolescent male at midnight waiting for the signal scrambler on Cinemax to slip a few distortion free seconds of bare boob--his penis already threaded through the fly of his jockeys, waiting.
(I'll be honest, I don't know how to make a transition from that creepy analogy, but I'm too attached to it to let it go.) Anyways, since I was very young I've always loved playing with computers. In college I built them, read about new hardware releases, helped troubleshoot my friends' computers, and soaked up knowledge from friends who worked in the field, but I never held a tech job personally. Now that has changed, and I've started to find my interest in computers during free time dwindle. It's akin to being around your significant other every hour of every day. Windows and MacOS are like two girlfriends who keep asking me what's new and what I'm thinking until I snap at them: "I DON'T KNOW, WHAT WAS MY ANSWER HALF A MINUTE AGO?!" Even the internet is seeming tired and spent. My cursors blink in the Google and Wikipedia search windows like loving but uncomprehending eyes. It's not their fault. Because I work with computers now, it's only natural that I associate Macs and PCs with the yoke of my oppressors. Something had to be done; I couldn't even bring myself to blog--opening that laptop again was just too depressing.
So, to rekindle my interest in computers, I've made the decision to do what any good couple must before getting outright therapy: try something new, which feels kinda weird at first, but you're assured by everyone who's been there that you'll grow to love it and want it on a regular basis. Ubuntu is my buttsex OS. 
And good Lord is it ever uncomfortable at times! But it's always interesting, at least to me, because what would be a tiny issue of functionality with any Windows OS or MacOS based machine, becomes a long and often tedious search for an answer. However, it's not a search where you get just one answer, you get several of them, and you have to decide which one is right for you depending on what you want and what you may want in the future. Once you get that fix, that feature, or that special line of code, it seems a more complete solution than what you typically get from Mac or Microsoft products, and it comes with additional options and more flexibility than anything offered by another operating system.
It's a long and winding road to answers, though, and I'm starting from scratch. I have zero experience with Linux and I don't have anyone around me who is teaching me how to use it. I have only forums, guides, and the "man man" command. It's my own little side project, and you can read about it if you like. Maybe if you're thinking of trying out Linux yourself, you could use this as a tentative resource. Or maybe hearing about all the stupid shit I have to go through just to mount a harddrive will convince you not to go near it. Hopefully, though, this section of my blog will at least be amusing.
Note: No, I have not given up on movie reviews. It's just really rare when I have enough time to see a movie. When my bartending schedule slows down this winter, and I start getting Friday nights off more often, that should change.
