Wired Mesh

Highlights for Fledgling Japanese Filmmakers

Since I've been rambling on about comics influencing the movies and vice-versa, here's a McSweeney's vision of what would happen if Akira Kurosawa, of "Rashomon" fame, got his hands on that old moralistic warhorse Goofus and Gallant. "Goofus loved Jack Daniels. And Yukon Jack. He always wanted to do snakebites even though I don't think he liked them — just the name. He would do two and then switch to something else."

The Pornography of Grief

Slate has an article on the growing popularity of the memorial T-shirt, that classy article of clothing designed to remind the world that we will never forget until such time as we burn a hole in our sleeve. Such items have become so popular that the newest threat in Oakland, California, public schools is "Don't make me put your face on a T-shirt."

What's troubling about this trend isn't so much the tackiness, but the notion that our society is marketing death and grief in the same glossy, disposable way we've marketed sex, food and clothing. These shirts feel a bit like the pornography of grief -- the emotions of loss and mortality are reduced to a disposable memorial you can purchase for ten dollars.

Chattanooga has its own distinct example of this trend: the MAKUS billboards. You probably remember the first time you saw one; the typical reaction is an open-mouthed wordlessness that can continue for days. It's not ususual to see photos of dead teenage drivers used to remind living drivers to buckle their seat belts. It is unprecidented to see that dead teenager looking so... um... sexual. There's a horrible necrophiliac sensibility about these signs, as if teenage girls are supposed to be inspired to safety by the hot shirtless dead kid. Here the santitized glamorization of death takes on a creepy erotic dimention. Who thought this was a good idea?

If I should die young, please, PLEASE don't put my image anywhere. I promise if you do, I will haunt you.

Kirby & Kirby

While Pakistani sportswear salesmen were busy on my blog ("We always prefer Customer Satisfaction"), I was cruising the backwoods of Florida with Josiah, catching up with family and friends. In the most interesting development, Bruce Kirby, who runs the Cambridge Study Center and taught me in high school, has asked J. Q. and I to start an online magazine on Christianity and culture. We're envisioning something a little bit like Salon or Slate, only much smaller, with greater openness to faith, and making no money (I guess that last bit's not different from Salon at all). Anyone interested in submitting thoughtful pieces on music, literature or contemporary culture is welcome to drop me a line.

Speaking of Kirbys, Elvis Mitchell has a great article in today's Times, with novelist Michael Chabon talking about Jack Kirby, the King of Comics. Kirby, who invented the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four, would have been 86 tomorrow.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article is Chabon's contention that while a glut of movies are being based on comic books these days, Jack Kirby's comics actually borrowed constantly from the movies. "But it worked both ways," he says, "because Kirby was a huge movie fan. And his comic books are sometimes subtly, sometimes very blatantly borrowing from the movies that he loved. There was always this very strong element of that Warner Brothers, George Raft, John Garfield, Jimmy Cagney gangster stuff going through all of the books. And there's all the Universal horror movie stuff he kept going back to over and over. You can just tell the influence of movies was very, very heavy on him."

It always fascinates me how different forms of art influence others. Film seems to have a special potential for impacting and being impacted by other types of art, since it is an amaglam of visuals, music and narrative. It borrows constantly from paiting, novels and musical composition, and those art forms in turn borrow from it.

More on this later. I have to go apartment shopping.

Homeward Bound

So Josiah and I, both fresh off finishing significant projects at work (I just sent the second Perinatal Post to the printer, he just launched Covblogs) are leaving tonight for Lake Wales, Florida, the hometown of Bok Tower Gardens, Donald Duck orange juice, and me. I haven't been back to Florida since Christmas. I may have to make a pilgrimage to the site of the Dead Theme Park Formerly Known as Cypress Gardens.

I'll be back in Chattavegas on Monday, but until then I'll leave you with an enjoyable Bill Simmons column on the most underrated movies ever. These he defines as "movies that when you mention them to someone, they get excited about it, and both of you feel like you're in a special club. To me, that's the definition of an underrated movie. You love it, someone else loves it, and neither of you can believe that everyone else doesn't love it, too. It almost makes you angry."

The Passion and the Jews

Growing up in a charismatic church, I came of age with Sunday night dramatic productions, the same way that Presbyterian children are weaned on catechisms and church splits. But I can only remember attending one Passion play, when I was about 13 years old. It was held in a dusty, three-stoplight Florida town called Wauchula, at sunset in the local rodeo arena. There were a lot of rednecks in the metal stands, the sort of people who tended to boo Judas with cheery vigor. As I watched an actor be tortured and crucified by an angry mob, while the stagehands created convincing lightning flashes, I felt the usual pentecostal emotions of guilt and gratitude. But I strongly remember allowing myself a brief fantasy as well. I imagined myself as a strong, silent disciple, one never named in gospel accounts, who fought against the bloodthirsty mob on behalf of the Savior. I saw myself attacking the Roman soldiers and Jewish rioters, kicking and punching dozens of them out of commission before finally being subdued by centurions. And, being 13 years old, I added for myself a brief scene of being chastely consoled by Mary Magdalene, who was (in my version of events) quite the looker. Then, being charismatic, I felt very guilty again and rededicated my life to Jesus.

I haven't seen a Passion play since then. But I will soon, as will a great many people who've never attended one before. Only this production is on celluloid. I've been avoiding posting anything on Mel Gibson's new film The Passion, because I suspect what I'm about to write will get me in more trouble than anything I've posted here before.

Movies portraying the life and death of Jesus almost always attract controversy (Last Temptation, anyone?), and this one will be no exception. In this case, the debate is whether the film is anti-Semetic, whether it portrays the Jewish people as bloodthirsty Christ-killers. Debate on the matter is already predictably rancorous. In this corner, you have conservative Christians nominating Gibson for immediate sainthood, and who say that "To take issue with this movie is, essentially, to take issue with the Gospels, to take issue with the Christian faith." The film is simply telling the story of the atonement, say the Gibsonites, and Jews who are concerned about how they are portrayed are really just offended by the Gospel. (And though no one's said it yet, there's an undertone obvious in this argument: I mean, after all, they did kill Jesus. They may as well deal with it.)

On the other side, you have a spate of critics in the ADL, scholarly circles and news magazines who fear that the film will perpetuate "the familiar puerile, stereotypical view of the evil Jew calling for Jesus' blood and the clueless Pilate begging him to reconsider." But these same critics counter the "it's in the Gospels" argument by flatly denying the historicity of Scriptural narratives: "Of the five discrepant biblical accounts of Jesus' trial, composed decades after his execution by men absent from his trial, none are very helpful, nor are the disciples very trustworthy sources."

Now let me say this: I have no clue whether The Passion has a single scene in which Jewish people do anything but smile benignly at Jesus. I haven't seen the movie. But coming from a Jewish background, it makes me a little nervous to hear rumors that a film is coming down the pike that will portray people of my ethnicity as uniquely guilty of deicide. But as a follower of Jesus, I'm unwilling to compromise the reliability of the Gospels, which say quite clearly that a Jewish fisherman and spiritual teacher was killed by his countrymen and their Roman authorities for saying a good many things that nobody wanted to hear.

I've been thinking about this issue for some time now, and the more I've considered it, the more I feel that both sides in this debate are missing an obvious point. The Passion is simply a traditional Passion play put on a screen. It meets all the requirements: it is a celebratory dramatization of Christ's death, designed to inspire love and respect in the faithful, and conviction and repentence in the previously unconvinced.

And Passion plays are, make no mistake, a fundamentally anti-Semetic medium, in a way that the Gospel records and the orthodox understanding of the crucifixion are not.

Here's why: Passion plays are an intrinsically distancing form of religious art. They do not invite audiences to participate in the story; instead, they push them away from it to become adoring viewers. A Passion play is designed to make the audience come to love and respect Jesus (usually by showing him caring for the sick and the children), then to be shocked, horrified and worshipful when they see him tortured to death. Because the audience is in a passive, "objective" vantage point, it is able to see Jesus as the hero of the story. Thus an audience identifies and, to put it crassly, roots for Jesus, and perhaps a few of the more upstanding disciples, like John. The audience does not identify with and root for the Jews and Romans who want to kill Jesus. Instead, I think the crowd has a reaction not unlike the one I had at 13, if less vulgar: They see themselves on Jesus' side. They see themselves as separate and distinct from those doing the crucifying: those people are killing Jesus; I worship him. Most Passion plays ask you to identify only with one sinner, Peter, whose betrayal is ultimately redeemed.

Now, I don't doubt that many people see Passion plays and feel sorrow for their role as those for whom Jesus had to die. But that guilt is abstract; the guilt of the Jews onstage or onscreen is concrete and immediate. Little wonder that a frequent reaction to Passion plays in Europe has been to go and burn down a Jewish village.

A Passion play can be more or less anti-Semetic by the amount of attention it pays to Christ's own Jewishness, to the role of the Romans, and to the anger and confusion experienced by the Sanhedrin. But no Passion play -- and I feel confident Gibson's film will be no exception -- will ever start from the perspective of those who hated Jesus.

But in the real world, that's the role we play. We were all enemies of Christ, not passive viewers who rooted for Him. None of us would have lifted a finger to prevent the crucifixion. The Gospels, written by Jews to Jews, assume this point. The Lord's Supper reminds us of it, confirms our active participation in the story -- and not as the good guys. But a Passion play, through a combination of its internal mechanics and centuries of nasty tradition, denies this central tenet of the faith and, ironically, looks for a scapegoat for the killing of the Scapegoat. The greatest danger the anti-Semitism of a Passion play poses isn't to Jews at all, but to the Christians who watch it and minimize their own involvement in the story.

And while the jury's still out on The Passion, I really can't imagine a way in which it will avoid this trap of distance and blame. The warnings of secular and Jewish commentators should be heeded, and not just to avoid hurting people's feelings. He who diggeth a pit, after all...

Summer Gas

From our Truth in Advertising Department* comes the following: Taco Bell's big summer promotion offers all of us the chance to "Win Gas Instantly!" Just buy a large drink from Taco Bell and you can "win free gas for a year." This may be the first time that a fast food eatery has ever been so open about their product: Taco Bell is actually hyping itself as "your home for summer gas."

*The Truth in Advertising Department pretty much consists of Jackson Alexander.

Sailsmen

Dave Eggers and his fellow postmodern geniuses at the 826 Valencia Writing Project in San Francisco decided the time had come to start a "front" business to make a little cash. So they opened up a Pirate Store.

Called simply The Store at 826 Valencia, it sells a variety of nautical supplies and piratey paraphenalia, including eye patches, planks, mops, glass eyes and a bucket of lard. In typical Eggers humor, the store features a blowfish named Karl ("the v. intelligent-looking fish with the blue eyes that never stop searching. Karl is thinking!") and a feud with San Fran's other pirate-supply store, Captain Rick's Booty Cove. The store also features a great many informative signs:

The store is apparently making enough money to pay the Writing Project's rent. But how could it not, what with the ringing endorsement of David Byrne: "Definitely one of the top five pirate stores I've been to recently."

Today, by the way, is the store's official Shouting In Foreign Languages Day. Although most of you are likely a long ways from San Fran, I encourage you to take part all the same. Ahoka! Sodai gomi!

"Enjoy Your Day Here at Beautiful Cypress Gardens..."

Growing up in Central Florida means coming of age among the ruins of tourist attractions. The Deep South is haunted by visions of Confederate glory, and hopes remain of a rebirth. But Floridians are nostalgic for the inherently ephemeral, the gaudy magic of a roadside monorail covered in plastic leaves. (Yes, this attraction existed. It was called Rainbow Springs, and I've been to the site. All that's left is the track, running empty through the trees.) Maybe I'm being pretentious, but I think Floridians are among the only folks born after 1950 who can really identify with Jay Gatsby's love of the green light, who can understand that the light's flim-flammery is what makes it so desirable.

My childhood was filled with these lost attractions, all of them slowly being eaten away by time and the economic pressures of a monolithic mouse in Orlando. Some I saw for myself, like Boardwalk and Baseball, with its giant ferris wheel, Royal Lippizaner horses and mock Atlantic City boardwalk (minus the water). Some I only saw mouldered traces of, like the Christian theme park with the giant Last Supper mural. (My dad built his duplex development not 200 yards from where the park's skyway once hung.) Whenever I go home, I drive by these places, and they give me a feeling of loss and longing, like something special and bright once existed here and has now been boarded up and left to the deer and alligators. The only other time I've experienced this feeling was in Japan, where I visited abandoned Shinto shrines and felt a more chilling version of the same thing: Something magical happened here once, and now it's gone.

I'm thinking about such things today because while reading the paper at lunch, I discovered rather belatedly that Cypress Gardens closed its gates permanently in April, joining the ranks of lost attractions. Cypress Gardens was Florida's first designed tourist attraction. It was the home of the world's biggest waterskiing show, and the site of acres of topiaries and Southern Belles -- women in sleeveless hoop dresses who waved becomingly at the tourists passing by in boats. It was also about twenty minutes from my family's house.

It's not too much to say I came of age at Cypress Gardens. At age six I hid in my mother's arms at the park's Halloween ice skating show when a werewolf appeared -- it's one of my most vivid childhood memories. Almost every weekend my sister and I went to the park, either with our parents or grandparents. When I was ten years old, I possibly spent as much time at Cypress Gardens then I did at my church. As I became a teenager, many of my friends got jobs at the Gardens: the boys as concessionaires, the girls more often as Belles. One of my best high school friends, John Michael Marchetti, managed the kiddie rides, and got me into the park for free on many summer afternoons. We'd wander around the place, checking out the flowers, the skiers and the girls. Mostly the girls.

Anyway, it only seems appropriate to take a moment to remember my top five favorite memories of the Gardens, in no particular order. Most of these memories cemented themselves in my head when I was at my aforementioned peak of attendance, around my tenth year under heaven.

1. Island in the Sky. It was basically a moderately sized, round, rotating observation deck with a large molded plastic volcano in the middle. It sat in the middle of a slime-encrusted pond that served as home to a family of pathologically torpid turtles. Attached to this "island" was a long hydraulic arm which lifted the platform out of its pond some 150 feet into the air, where it slowly spun. You were supposed to remain seated, but no one ever did. All the passengers got up and walked around, taking in the views of the park and the surrounding lakes and orange groves. When you've never lived in the mountains, 150 feet seems pretty damn high.

2. Whistlestop USA. When I was ten years old, this was the greatest attraction of all time, because a) it was inside an air conditioned building, unlike the stupid flowers my parents wanted to see, and b) it had lots of model trains. In fact, Whistlestop USA was billed as the largest model train layout in America, and I still cannot find it in my heart to doubt this contention. The trains traveled through vast landscapes of red canyons and white ski slopes, past circuses and (I remember this with particular freshness) a tiny drive-in movie theater that showed a real movie on its four inch screen. There were parades, an apartment building on fire, waterfalls, and cotton thunderclouds dyed a somber gray, from which flashes of lightning occassionally emerged. Displayed in miniature form, America seemed like a magnificent and mysterious place to a boy of ten.

3. Corky the Waterskiing Clown. The most famous waterski performer at the Gardens was "Banana George" Blair, who was like 875 years old and still skied barefoot in a bright yellow spandex suit. He was very good, but I was always more fond of Corky, who did crazy things like get halfway up the ski jump and skid to a halt, afraid to go any further. Then the boat driver would yank him off and he'd fall into the water. This was quite funny. Then Corky would come back to shore and explain to the two grandstands what had happened. He had a very squawky voice that bordered on the unintelligible. This was also sidesplitting. Again, it is important to remember that I was ten years old. Later I became very cynical about Corky, especially after I discovered women, and realized that I was not with any, but was instead watching a waterskiing clown with my parents. Sometimes I would mutter mean things at Corky, sarcastic, vicious jabs at his manhood. Since that time, I have come to see the error of my ways, having spent a good many evenings with women that I would much rather have spent in the presence of a waterskiing clown. So Corky, wherever you are: I'm sorry.

4. The Capyberas. Cypress Gardens had a special animal section of the park. It wasn't terribly impressive, but it included an aviary and a reptile show, and had boardwalk area with alligators and emus, which was nice for strolling along the side of Lake Eloise and thinking about why you had spent the day watching a waterskiing clown and not with H________, the girl of your dreams. It also had capyberas, which are really nothing more than oversized shaggy aquatic rats. But I was very fond of the capyberas. They were awkward, ugly, pudgy and bored, qualities that I identified with from an early age. One of the first diary entries I wrote, at about age five, concerned capyberas, and I required my mother to look up the proper spelling in the dictionary. I was an anxious child.

5. The Fourth of July Lee Greenwood Gulf War Waterskiing Extravagana. The waterski shows at the Gardens rotated regularly, each with a different name and theme ("Ski! Ski! Ski! Everybody's Skin' Caribbean!") but all with the same basic elements: jumping off ramps at increasingly dangerous speeds, a hangglider, a ski pyramid, Banana George, and Corky. But one particular show stands out in my mind. It was the Fouth of July, 1991, and American troops had just returned from kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. So Cypress Gardens, which always had a fireworks display, went the extra mile, bringing in someone to stand on a platform in the middle of Lake Eloise as skiiers zipped around him and fireworks exploded above, to sing Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." (To this day, I have the hazy memory that it actually was Lee Greenwood himself. I know I thought it was him at the time.) I was, of course, ten years old. And I have never felt so patriotic in my life. The flags were waving, the skiiers were jumping, the sparklers were, um, sparkling, Lee was singing about starting all over again with just his children and his wife, and I knew that America was the most wonderful place on earth. A storm was building on the horizon, and there was an pre-thunderstorm electricity in the air, which made Lee's sentiments about standing up next to you to defend her still today seem all the more fragile, since there was a decent chance that he would be fried by a bolt of lightning at any moment. And all this passionate belief in the American way of life hit my prepubescent brain and I started to cry.

And I guess that's the thing I'll miss most about Cypress Gardens: It was hokey, sure, but it was a place of unironic wonder, where people stood impressed at bushes carved into the shape of frogs, marveled at miniature clouds overlooking miniature trains, and wept with pride at America. Cypress Gardens still awakens that ten-year-old boy in me, for whom a little theme park is the world, and the world is beautiful as hell. And it hurts to know that little world has closed up.

Roommate Roulette

I was reading the New York Times at the Safari Pub last night, and on the front page was a feature on Emory University's new online roomate-matching service, which allows incoming freshmen to pick a compatable roommate using a profile-matching system similar to online dating. The article went on to explain that colleges across the country are putting increased effort into ensuring that new roommates will have similar lifestyles, expectations, and interests. Davidson University even has its new students take a Myers-Briggs personality test.

My initial reaction to all this effort is skepticism. For one thing, matching roomates for their homogeny seems to defeat the point of going away to college: to expand your horizons, to meet people unlike yourself. If a school puts so much time into pairing roommates who will bond well, there's a danger that they'll eliminate the possibility of a wider, more diverse social setting. Why branch out when your roommate is your soulmate? And the whole system becomes rather absurd when you consider that public university officials aren't allowed to use religion as a factor in making housing decisions. So students can be paired together because they both like washing the dishes immediately after meals, but no one can request to live with another Catholic, or another Orthodox Jew.

Personally, I've always appreciated how Covenant College handled rooming assignments, matching personalities with a lot of prayer. In four years at Covenant, I never once roomed with anyone remotely like me. Instead, I bunked with a Scotch Canadian who liked to collect mushrooms, a hippy folksinger who slept in a cardboard box, the world's nicest soccer player (who spent his nights outside the room on the phone with his long-distance sweetheart), a somewhat irritable Pink Floyd buff, the campus' holiest man, a cheery video game addict, a guy who built his own computer and liked to hear it hum at night, a dangerously skinny freshman, and Julian the Cynic, who was also Canadian but less happy about it. And almost all of those situations were perfect for me: I learned more about myself and how to relate to those unlike me. And I had a great time.

Oddly, I never roomed with Josiah. Perhaps this is why we're such good friends.

The High Line

Imagine a city park 30 feet wide, 1.45 miles long, and 20 feet off the ground. That's the dream of Friends of the High Line, a preservationist group that wants to save New York City's High Line railroad track from demolition, and turn it into a Manhattan walking promenade. The Line was built in the 1930s as an elevated freight line stretching from 34th Street to the Meat Packing District. It was slowly abandoned after World War II; "the final freight train carried three carloads of frozen turkeys down the High Line in 1980." The track was scheduled to be torn down, but then someone noticed that a wildflower meadow had bloomed 20 feet above the street. Now many hope to turn the railway into New York's narrowest park.

I first heard about the High Line on an All Things Considered radio piece. I think it's the niftiest city planning idea I've heard in a long time. Pedestrian promenades can become the heart of a city (the Walnut Street Bridge here in Chatty is a great example) and I've always loved the conceit of restoring old industrial edifices to new, pastoral uses. Plus there's something unassailably cool about having a park that connects different neighborhoods.

Waughmongering

The book discussions on Slate are among my favorite Internet reads: They're almost always witty, perceptive and make me want to read more novels, which is never a bad urge to encourage. This week Judith Shulevitz and Christopher Caldwell are debating the literary legacy of Evelyn Waugh, a writer who was famously "misanthropic and mean-spirited toward everyone—including those he didn't have religious or political or cultural or aesthetic grounds to get grouchy about."

I've only read one book by Waugh (A Handful of Dust), but I am attracted to his writing as I'm attracted to that of all Catholic novelists. There's something about the Catholic novel that takes seriously the dialectic between an ancient tradition and a modern era that dismisses it. (Protestants, on the other hand, like to pretend their tradition transcends modernity, while in point of fact it is often suckled by it.) Waugh felt this tension acutely: As Shulevitz says, he "craved some stable and all-encompassing order but couldn't stop spotting the flaws in whatever system he encountered." No wonder he was so grumpy.

Horton Hears a Whomp

It's only Monday, and already the Needlessly Good-Natured Quote of the Week has been uttered. Thai veterinarian Preecha Puangkham attempted to offer an explanation as to why a bull elephant went "beserk" and crushed two forestry workers and a farmer to death.

"He is quite a sensitive elephant -- working hard in the logging industry might have made him feel unhappy."

This is the entirety of the quote. The cheery graciousness of Puangkham's tone grows stranger, and funnier, with each rereading. Well, West is West and East loves elephants, I suppose.

Charging the Mound

Just the other day, Josiah and I were discussing the finer aspects of baseball, and we agreed that nothing beats a good benches-clearing brawl. So I was pleased to discover this Bill Simmons essay explaining why "baseball fights are so damned loveable."

It's a 12-point document, wherein we learn that it is never a good idea to toy with an angry catcher: "Remember when Carlton Fisk beat up Thurman Munson and Gene Michael at the same time back in '72? After Munson barreled into home plate, Fisk flipped him over and started pummeling him ... and when Michael (the next batter) helped Munson by grabbing Fisk, the Sox catcher turned the tables and started choking Michael while still flailing away at Munson. I'm telling you... don't mess with catchers."

Simmons neglects to mention my favorite brawl component: the players who join the surge from the benches, only to troll around the edge of the pile, not quite bold enough to wade in but not wanting to abandon the cause. They look so awkward, like girls who aren't asked to dance at the cotillion. Sometimes one will get so frustrated that he'll punch the nearest opposing player at random, just to feel involved. This should happen more at cotillions, come to think of it.

For the record, my favorite baseball fight of all time was the one where Robin Ventura charged the mound whereupon Nolan Ryan threw his glove at him, sidestepped the charge, grabbed Ventura in a headlock and beat the crap out of him. That was great.

All-Too-Honest Movie Ad: Gigli

Unsurprising confession: I read movie reviews obsessively. In fact, I do a lot more review reading than movie watching, at a rate something near 10-to-1. Perhaps this is sad. Perhaps I need an outdoor job. I don't know. But I do know that I've been wanting to start some regular feature on this page to utilize the useless knowledge I gain from these reviews.

This morning, a joke over on Instapundit finally gave me an idea: All-Too-Honest Movie Ads. You are no doubt quite aware that all television, newspaper and radio advertisments for Hollywood features use sound bites from film "critics" reporting for WBLO in Akron. These blurbs suggest that the movie in question rivals the greatest work of Renior and Tarkovski, but with more hilarious fart jokes that will have the whole family in stitches. It is impossible to make a film that some hack won't find incredible, jaw-dropping and rousing, even if that film is a Wild Thornberrys cartoon. (The New York Times ad for the Thornberrys movie has in fact been lying on my bathroom floor for two weeks now, so I see it every day. It frightens me.)

Something must be done to counter this mendacious trend. So every Friday, I will bring you an advertisment for a major release, complete with short, catchy but all-too-honest (hence the name) quotes from the critics.

We begin with Gigli, that fine Ben and J.Lo lovefest. Man, this was fun to do.