An essay by Virginia Postrel. I’m pretty indifferent and immune to glamour and charisma, which is one of the reasons I saw through Obama right away, but many otherwise smart people obviously aren’t, so glamour is more important than many think.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Daniel Boone Was A Man
A big man. Fess Parker has died. We used to see him when we went to the Fess Parker winery up north of Los Olivos. I wonder how many kids today know who Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett were?
[Evening update]
I am negligent, given the occasion and timing, in not linking to Davy Crockett’s famous speech on his obligation to the Constitution. Sadly, we live in a time when not many of either party give much of a damn about it, but certainly not the Democrats.
Translation
Why it matters. I recall in high school when I read an English translation of Dante’s Inferno (the only way I could read it, being almost completely innocent of Italian), and being impressed at the ability of the translator to take poetry from one language to another.
Where No Man Has Ever Gone Before
And, let’s hope, never goes again:
[Via Phil Bowermaster]
A Movie Trailer
This is pretty funny.
Et Tu, Mary Ann?
Dawn Wells thinks that a Gilligan’s Island remake has to have diversity.
She is roundly and justly mocked at Free Republic. With a bonus Biden/Obama photoshop.
She just lost my vote in the next “Mary Ann or Ginger?” poll.
Tom Hanks
…the most disturbing phrase of all was Hanks’ suggestion that the Japanese wished to “kill,” us, while we in turn wanted to “annihilate” them. Had they developed the bomb or other such weapons of mass destruction (and they had all sorts of plans of creating WMDs), and won the war, I can guarantee Hanks that he would probably would not be here today, and that his Los Angeles would look nothing like a prosperous and modern Tokyo.
You’d have thought that someone who seems so interested in history, particularly of the space program and the war, would be better informed about it. But there just seems to be something in the water in Hollywood. America — racist and evil, America’s enemies — justifiable behavior as a reaction to our evil racism and imperialism.
This is, in fact, still the popular media narrative for the current war, in which if we’d just leave those poor Muslims alone, and apologize for fighting back in the Crusades, they’d stop trying to kill us infidels and establish a new caliphate.
Academy Awards?
When I moved out here decades ago, one of the reasons that didn’t cause me to do so was proximity of the movie business. It was just for the space work, and the climate, and a general love of California. Just never had that much interest in it, or its denizens, and I can’t remember the last time (if ever) I watched an Oscar ceremony. Of course, I hardly ever go to the movies, so it’s likely that I haven’t even seen ninety percent of the contenders.
My big hope for this year is that Avatar wins an award for effects, and gets shut out on everything else. When a producer/director comes out and blatantly states that he was setting out to make an anti-corporate pro-“environment” movie, that should seal the deal, as far as I’m concerned. As Mayer famously said, if you want to send a message, use Western Union.
[Monday morning update]
Overall, I’d say that the Academy got it right. I think it’s interesting that, now that the evil tyrant George BusHitler is no longer terrorizing us from the White House, it’s all right to praise the troops, and to give an Oscar for best actress to a woman who played a Christian conservative (though maybe they were imagining what a feat of acting it must have been, as it would have been for them, for her to do so).
And we finally went to see Avatar yesterday afternoon (it’s no longer playing in IMAX, having finally been shoved aside by Alice, but still in 3D). It was just about as annoying as I expected.
Amoral anti-science philistine corporate toady interested in nothing but this quarter’s bottom line? Check. (Though to be fair, probably a lot of people in Hollywood have no experience with any other kind of businessman.)
Evil military guy who takes great joy in wiping out folks he considers subhuman? Check.
Scientists good, businesspeople evil? Check. Though again, to be fair, Hollywood often portrays scientists as evil as well.
Mindless worship of nature over technology (which is evil and destructive)? Check.
Perpetuation, even elevation of the pernicious myth of the noble savage? Check.
The last two, of course, are greatly aided by the propaganda effort that has been undertaken in our public school system for the past three or so decades. The Indians lived in peace and harmony, and in sustainable balance with their environment, bla bla, with no evidence to the contrary offered (e.g., mass slaughter of buffalo by driving them over cliffs, their horrific imagination for torture, the human sacrifices, the slash and burn, etc.). It’s all part of the ongoing effort to turn us from a nation founded on the principles of Locke to one based more on Rousseau. I’m glad that it wasn’t rewarded last night (though, had they invested one percent of the amount they did in effects on writing and story telling, and less cartoonish characters of a dimension greater than a half or so, that they did on effects, they might have gotten away with it).
[Update a while later]
Here’s an example of the brilliant dialogue:
NEYTIRI
Why save you?
JAKE
Yes, why save me?
NEYTIRI
You have a strong heart. No fear.
She leans closer —
NEYTIRI
But stupid! Ignorant like a child!
I think I know where the scriptwriters got their inspiration:
Eros: “You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!”
Harsh, I know. But that doesn’t make it not true.
Also, as Ray Kurzweil notes, Cameron seems to have a warped view of technology. Daisy cutters: bad. Arrows that can stop a man’s heart in less than a minute: good. And noble. And strangely, their bows and arrows are the only technology that these people seem to use. There is no mention of how their clothes and jewelry are made, though they clearly have them. And they clearly needed the Skypeople’s technology to destroy them. It’s all fine to have Gaia or whatevertheheckhername send a herd of stampeding hammerhead rhinocerous-like things, but that daisycutter would have been delivered if they hadn’t had a gunship and ordnance of their own.
And their only transport is the animals, though they don’t seem to use saddles. How do they expect to make serious war when they can get knocked off at the first impact with the enemy? The invention of the stirrup how the Mongols wiped up the place with everyone else. And really, don’t those flying things need seatbelts? I was quite amused to watch Sully firing his full auto cannon without being knocked off the creature from the recoil.
What this movie reminded me of was another movie with groundbreaking (at the time) effects, and terrible story, dialogue, and annoying characters. It was called Jurassic Park.
Is Paris Hilton Glamorous?
Virginia Postrel wants to know.
I’m not much of a judge of such things, myself.
Hope Is Not A Strategy Or Method
Unless you’re Barack Obama.