Solving the Supreme Court

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I had this brilliant idea about how to fix the Supreme Court, but no one wanted to pay me for it. But the country needs to know! So here it is.

So what is the problem with the Supreme Court anyway? I would say there are 2.

(1) Judge’s have life tenures and life forever now because of pesky improving diet and healthcare. That means that your grandpappy’s electoral preferences determine who gets to marry and have abortions and have labor unions. Nothing against your grandpappy, but people shouldn’t have their lives mangled and stretched by elections that happened before they were born. The court needs to be more accountable to the current electorate. Or, in short, the court isn’t politicized enough.

(2) Partisan polarization means that battles over judges have become completely intractable. At the moment, it’s not entirely clear that we can ever get a judge approved again if the President and the Senate aren’t of the same party. Justices are also forced to try to time their retirement so they’re replaced by a President of the right party. The whole thing is undignified, distracting, and generally pitiful, as well as potentially interfering with the smooth functioning of the court. In short, the court is too politicized.

So, how do you fix the too much politicization and the too little politicization? It seems impossible…but I have the one perfect awesome solution that you can tell is awesome because no one would pay me for it.

Prepare for said solution…now.

Have each President appoint one and only one judge per term. Appointments should happen right after the President is elected; it can be one of the first things the President does.

This of course means that the number of judges on the court will change. But the number of judges isn’t set in stone, or even in the Constitution. It’s been as low as 7 and as high as 10. There’s no reason it can’t vary every four years (or more often if a judge retires or dies mid-term).

Let’s list the advantages of the Berlatsky plan:

1. Every Presidential election will be represented on the court. Voters will know that a vote for President is a vote for one (1) Supreme Court pick.

2. Since everyone knows there is a pick coming, the election will be a mandate for a Supreme Court selection. This will undermine the partisan “wait till the next election” nonsense. To prevent stalling and stonewalling, a bill could also provide that if there is no vote on a nominee within 6 months, the judge is automatically seated. Since everyone knows each president will get a judge, the stakes will be reduced; each party will hope that their own judge will affect the balance of the court in four short years.

3. Retirements would be divorced from Supreme Court nominations. Justices would have much less incentive to time their retirements, since every President would always get one pick, no matter when the sitting justices step down. Presumably, justices would often retire at the beginning of a presidential term, when the new judge would be selected…but if they didn’t, it wouldn’t make no nevermind.

4. At least in theory, this shouldn’t be a difficult reform to pass. It doesn’t give a clear advantage to either Democrats or Republicans; instead, it ensures that each President, from whichever party, has a chance to select a judge with much lower stakes and much less partisan squabbling. It also mean that Presidents, of whatever party, will be able immediately to somewhat reduce the chance that the court will interfere with their policy preferences. Democrats and Republicans alike should like that, since Democrats and Republicans alike always think they’re going to win the next election.

So there you have it. I could see various tweaks—maybe it should be two justices for each President rather than one? But overall, I think it’s a remarkably elegant solution if I do say so myself. Since all the policymakers read the Hooded Utilitarian religiously, I expect it to be adopted any minute now.
 

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I John Marshall, old white dude, and I endorse this plan.

My Dystopia is Better Than Your Dystopia, Part I

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Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985. The first issue of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen was published in 1986. Despite that closeness, they’re not two novels that are routinely paired. Which is why I was pleased when a pair of students in my Late 20th Century Fiction course decided to combine them as examples of dystopias. And, even more fun, my students disagree about the definition of “dystopia.”

So here’s round one of their literary match-up.

—Chris Gavaler
 

 

Beginning with Thomas Moore’s Utopia, a tradition of idealized societies has existed both in the imaginations of great thinkers and writers as well as in the literary canons of virtually every culture. Yet frequently in these perfect utopian universes, a dark underbelly emerges, characterized by abuses of power, totalitarian regimes, and control of every minutia of a citizens’ lives, usually as an excuse for their protection in the beginning. These types of dystopian universes create environments of fear and isolation, with an evil government and good and innocent citizens. However, what happens in dystopias in which there is no clear oppressor, no direct dichotomy of good and evil? Instead, subtle powers are at work that do not allow for a clear ability to point a finger at the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ power responsible for ‘light’ oppression. In their novels The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen, Margaret Atwood and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons grapple with this question of good and evil and create two dystopian worlds that either reinforce the Manichean dichotomy or blur the line between good and evil. Where The Handmaid’s Tale utilizes total dystopian control of its people to further confine and separate them, creating a Manichean dichotomy between good and evil, Watchmen uses subtle manipulation in order to unite the entire world, blurring the line between good and evil. In showing two radically different uses of dystopia, these authors call into question the assumption that absolute control in a dystopia is necessarily evil.

To formulate my argument, I will begin by exploring two definitions of dystopia. I will then examine how The Handmaid’s Tale fulfills Ketterer’s definition of dystopia. Contrastingly, I will delve into the world of Watchmen, and explore the ways that it fits into Greene’s definition of dystopia. Finally, I will examine the good versus evil dichotomies in each of these novels and their relationship to dystopian literature.

Utopia and dystopia are frequently two sides of the same coin, representing idealized societies that are either perfect or move too far in the direction of creating a perfect world. Greene establishes a simple yet effective definition of utopia as “an ideal society” (Greene 2). Unfortunately, these utopias are rarely idealistic and perfect places in practice, even if their ideals are, in theory. In one of the earliest examples of utopian literature, “Thomas More, in his Utopia (1516), conjures an isolated island to describe a better world but one that in hindsight sounds fascist” (2). By blurring the lines between these two genres, Greene demonstrates that utopia and dystopia are on a continuum and lend themselves to blurring the lines of Manichean dichotomies of good and evil.

Dystopian literature is characterized by a multitude of individual genre characteristics, but is pervaded by a sense of oppression via governmental and totalitarian powers. The opposite of a perfect society, a literary dystopia is an “imaginary society that differs from the author’s own, first, by being significantly worse in important respects, and, second, by being worse because it attempts to reify some utopian ideal” (Beauchamp 11). By Beauchamp’s definition, dystopia perverts positive ideals and the world of the author in order to create a plausible society in which there is no freedom from the government. In order to classify novels and stories as dystopian, Ketterer provides a clear framework of the types of features included in the genre: “lack of freedom, the constant surveillance, the routine, the failed escape attempt” (211). In a different vein, Greene claims that dystopian universes are characterized by a distinct “suffocation of independent thought” (2). Greene’s definition of dystopia may include some of Ketterer’s elements, but focuses its attentions on the atmosphere of control and stifling of non-institutionalized thought amongst its citizens. These two definitions, though not always mutually exclusive, serve as useful categorizations for The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale’s government of Gilead contains every element of Ketterer’s definition of dystopia. Though there are some elements of stifling of independent thought, its most salient dystopian features belong to Ketterer’s definition and classify it solidly in the dystopian genre through four specific features.

Firstly, Gilead eliminates freedom from the lives of its citizens. When the Gilead government began, “newspapers were censored, and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, the Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful” (Atwood 174). The government closed down the freedoms of its citizens one by one, slowly taking every semblance of freedom they had in a subtle way, at first. Ultimately, Gilead obliterates freedom by creating roles relating to fertility, and women’s “real name[s have] been erased in favor of the form of ‘Of’ plus the first name, possibly abbreviated, of her Commander” (Ketterer 210). As Offred herself states, “my name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up”(Atwood 84). This removal of names dehumanizes women and forces them to become their proscribed roles, as Handmaids, or “two-legged wombs” (136), Aunts, Marthas, Wives, Unwomen, or prostitutes. By removing agency and proscribing roles, Gilead destroys freedom.

Routines similarly are present in Gilead, from a daily morning walk for the Handmaids, to the Ceremony. The most salient routine of the society is the Ceremony, a brutal moment when the Commander tries to impregnate his Handmaid. Offred does not describe this scene as rape, however, instead calling it “nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is what I chose” (94). Through this brutal routine and near sacred ritual, Atwood creates the only alternative a young fertile woman could choose, aside from the oblivion of Unwomanhood. This monthly routine of impregnation, in parallel with other more innocuous routines and rituals, demonstrates the ways that Gilead governs through strict control of its citizens’ freedoms, particularly by organizing their daily lives.

Gilead constantly spies and watches its citizens, as is proven by the many golden eyes found in public places and privates ones, such as the doctor’s office (60), Offred’s room, or on the Soul Scrolls (167). In front of the Soul Scrolls store, Greene’s rules of no independent thought are broken, and readers see the surveillance in place in Gilead. Ofglen, Offred’s walking partner, leans over to Offred and says, “’Do you think God listens,’ she says, ‘to these machines?’ […] In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it’s treason,” (168) remarks Offred. Thought and spoken original thought is no longer taken for granted. It is stifled and discouraged through constant surveillance and fear of being taken by the Eyes. To think is treason in Gilead; to birth children is of the highest importance. This government fulfills Ketterer’s category of constant surveillance, and uses it to engage in thought suppression, though that is not necessarily its ultimate goal. Surveillance in Gilead is used to incite fear, not to prevent independent thought.

Finally, The Handmaid’s Tale contains varied escape attempts, including the ending of the novel. There are minor ‘escapes’ found throughout the novel, during which the women of Gilead attempt to communicate with one another while escaping detection. For instance, in the Center where the Handmaids are trained, “in the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks” (222). These clandestine messages, though not directly escape attempts, create distinct groups in Gilead of good and evil. These two categories are even further proven in an actual escape attempt at the end of the novel, when the Eyes come to take Offred. Nick assures her, “It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them” (293). Mayday, signifying a day of rebellion for Gilead, shows the final escape attempt. She must choose to trust the only male in the story not in a position of possession over her and go with the Eyes, not knowing whether or not she should believe Nick. This final attempt, in conjunction with smaller escape attempts found throughout the novel fulfill Ketterer’s definition of dystopia, as people want to leave the evil power regime created by Gilead.

Conversely, Watchmen’s universe contains almost no direct elements of Ketterer’s dystopia, and instead only falls into the category of Greene’s definition of dystopia as preventing independent thought. Instead of creating a directly oppressive and tyrannical government, Moore instead forms a world in which corporations and powerful individuals subtly exert control and manipulate the masses in order to gain power and influence. In Watchmen’s “realistic world, governed by power politics” (Paik 27), the most important elements of control are eerily similar to those of the American present: the media. Thus, thought is controlled by advertising and other media and independent thought is stifled, fulfilling Greene’s definition.

Adrian Veidt, the evil mastermind behind the ultimate destruction of the world of Watchmen in order to create a new world order, controls the entirety of the novel and the world inside of it through media influences. Before Moore reveals that Veidt is at the center of the conspiracy to destroy half of New York in order to unite the world, Veidt’s commercial empire permeates almost every page of the graphic novel. Before the attack on New York, Veidt’s ad campaign for his perfume, Nostalgia, is seen in the background of dozens of panels. It is found over boutiques (Moore 3:7), diners (4: 24), on torn posters on walls (5:18). These nostalgic campaigns reflect back to a time when there were superheroes and no threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction: a utopia. By bombarding the citizens of Watchmen’s world with imagery relating to the past, Veidt controls their thoughts and emotions, forcing them to feel anxious about the threat of the Cold War. After resolving these fears he created in the public through the Nostalgia ad campaign by killing millions of people in New York and ending the Cold War because of a new perceived alien common enemy, Veidt continues to exercise influence over the public through his new “Millennium” campaign, that shows figures facing toward the now bright future(12:31). Veidt even talks about the way that he influences the public through advertisement and media in Chapter 10 on page 8, saying that because of the trends of pre-war times, he is going to invest differently “into the major erotic video companies. That’s short term. Also, we should negotiate controlling shares in selected baby food and maternity goods and manufacturers”(10:8), because of the baby boom he predicts. Veidt’s control is subtle, yet absolute, giving Watchmen the qualities of intellectual control instead of direct oppression as in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Finally, Veidt literally destroys independent thought when he threatens to destroy the world. The superheroes of the novel all agree to follow Veidt’s lead because it is the only way to unite the world, and the deed had already been done (11:27). Yet Rorschach, the one dissenter who wishes to return to America and tell the world that Veidt is behind the destruction is obliterated. Because the rest of the superheroes “must protect Veidt’s new utopia, one more body amongst the foundations makes little difference” (12:24). Rorschach is destroyed because of his refusal to follow what Veidt wants him to believe, and so Veidt continues to exercise influence over thought and independent thinking by literally destroying his enemy and Rorschach’s dissenting opinion. Clearly, Watchmen fits perfectly into Greene’s category of dystopia as being a government that stifles any kind of oppressive thought and serves instead to manipulate thought and control its citizens’ minds.

Not only do The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen fulfill two differing definitions of dystopia, but they also represent two different dichotomies between good and evil. The Handmaid’s Tale, which clearly fulfills every feature of Ketterer’s dystopia definition, creates a distinct Manichean dichotomy of good versus evil. Conversely, Watchmen only fulfills Greene’s definition of dystopia, and blurs the lines between good and evil. Though The Handmaid’s Tale contains elements of thought suppression, it is not the most salient dystopian feature of the novel. Instead, Watchmen is distinctly characterized by the repression of independent thinking and in doing so creates a world in which good and evil are on a spectrum and characters and corporations cannot necessarily be placed on one end.

The Handmaid’s Tale grapples with evil in distinct dichotomies that are perceived by not only the reader but also by the citizens of Gilead. This novel’s “Historical Notes” present a perspective from hundreds of years after the Gilead Empire, denouncing the atrocities that were in place at the time. The black and white nature of good and evil is one that is clear because the dystopia was overthrown; it must have been so oppressive and miserable for its citizens because they were controlled by routine, roles, and removal of freedom, that they tried to escape and overthrow the government. The Historical Notes present The Handmaid’s Tale as a true story that was “unearthed on the site of what was once the city of Bangor” (Atwood 301) as “thirty tapes in the collection altogether” (301) having been spoken by the same narrator. Because of this conclusion that the tapes came from someone who escape the Gilead regime, The Handmaid’s Tale’s world is one in which the evil of the Gilead government was overthrown. The novel’s easily identifiable evil characters, such as the Aunts, the Commanders, and some unnamed powers who run the government, create a target that readers are invited to view as evil in nature. Because the novel was told in first person and identifies these characters as evil, readers even further view the women and men forced into their proscribed roles as being good, while those who did the forcing are represented as evil. By fulfilling the necessary components of Ketterer’s dystopia and entrenching herself in the genre, Atwood formulates a world in which the reader’s beliefs about dystopia are reinforced. There is an evil overlord and government who presides over a good citizenry. In order to restore the balance of good over evil, the government must be overthrown. These citizens of the future are able to claim that, “Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free” (302), because of the overthrow of this evil government, further imposing strict categorizations of good and evil.

Watchmen, on the other hand, presents a much grayer view of good and evil, particularly in the form of Adrian Veidt. Veidt reaches the height of his control over the world when he chooses to employ dystopian means in order to attempt to create a utopia. Sending an ‘alien’ monster he created through genetic engineering to New York, Veidt causes a cataclysmic neurological disaster, killing millions, with the intention of uniting the world against a common enemy. Moore places the destruction of Times Square on six full pages at the beginning of Chapter 12, ensuring that the reader must take in the entirety of the carnage. Placed amongst the the bodies, Moore places discarded newspapers that read “WAR?” in large typeface (Moore 12:3-6), indicating that the society was on the brink of destruction before this terrorist event, along with a discarded pamphlet for The Veidt Training Method. This pamphlet falls to the ground amongst the destruction, reading “I Will Give You Bodies Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings” (12:6). This darkly almost comical insertion of Veidt’s presence into the scene demonstrates not only his responsibility for the event, but also signifies that perhaps Veidt could truly have meant two things in what he was communicating; he wanted to help the people of the world by literally helping them to perfect their bodies, yet gives the world dead bodies in order to unite them. Though he has murdered countless people, “we are invited to read this extended scene of death and destruction as the signifiers for the near-miraculous founding of a new and peaceful order, a golden age of international cooperation and solidarity” (Paik 35). Instead of viewing Veidt as an inherently evil character, the reader is asked to instead see that perhaps his evil actions serve a higher and ‘good’ purpose.

Moore confuses the question of good and evil further through his characters Rorschach, who represents an idea of justice and the vindication of good and evil, and The Comedian, who seems amoral but in fact sometimes stands for good. After the heroes find out that Veidt has committed this attack, they almost universally agree to cover up his involvement for the betterment of society. Yet Rorschach disagrees, and leaves to return to America because “evil must be punished” (Moore 12:22). As seen earlier in this examination, however, Doctor Manhattan chooses to kill a crying Rorschach instead of allowing him to reveal what Rorschach believes is Veidt’s evil nature. Though in this moment Rorschach represents good, he is imprisoned as a violent criminal earlier in the novel. Similarly, the Comedian is evil in his love of senseless violence, yet says that “Somebody has to save the world” (2:10), even though this perhaps inspired Veidt’s evil deeds. The Comedian is even killed because he uncovers and opposes Veidt’s plot: “He knew my plan would succeed, though its scale terrified him” (11:25). The Comedian is seen murdering his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend (2:14), yet in some situations clearly takes a moral standpoint. These two characters muddy the waters between good and evil and cause the reader to seriously question the morality of not only the world of Watchmen, but of dystopias and powerful governments as a whole.

Finally, though Veidt commits an evil action of mass murder, he is perhaps good in his attempts to create a true utopia resulting from a common enemy, but Moore complicates this issue further with the final frames of the novel. On page 32 of Chapter 12, a lowly assistant at a newspaper is seen reaching for Rorschach’s journal that reveals every part of Veidt’s plan, as the symbol of the Comedian’s badge lies on his shirt. Though the story ends here, there is an epigraph on the last page, on which is written “Who watches the watchmen?” (12:33). Here, the reader sees that only two confusingly amoral at times and moral at times characters, Rorschach and the Comedian, are the watchers of the world. They selectively condemn evil, and in others moments perpetrate evil, yet they are both silenced because they condemn Veidt’s actions despite the moral gray area they reside in. Their ideas of certain acts as being concretely good or concretely evil demonstrate just how confused the notions of good and evil are in Watchmen. By stifling their voices, Moore indicates that Greene’s definition of a dystopia is one that creates a more realistic world, in which there is never a true dominance of good over evil in the end.

Through their varying uses of dystopia and dystopian features, Atwood and Moore bring to light a hidden feature of each type of dystopia. In fulfilling each of Ketterer’s strict features of dystopia, Atwood reveals that this definition of dystopia creates a world with strict separation between good and evil. In only fulfilling Greene’s definition of dystopia as destroying independent thought, Moore reveals that these sorts of dystopias, that are much less extreme in their manifestations, create a world in which good and evil are not clearly defined. By calling morality into question or creating a hyper-strict definition of good versus evil, Moore and Atwood grapple with questions of the nature of power in dystopia, and challenge readers to question their understandings of this genre. Power is not always inherently evil, and neither is dystopia.

Works Cited

Beauchamp, Gorman. “The Politics of The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Midwest Quarterly 51.1 (2009): 11–25. Print.

Greene, Vivien. “Utopia/Dystopia.” American Art 25.2 (2011): 2–7. JSTOR. Web.

Ketterer, David. “Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: A Contextual Dystopia (‘La Servante écarlate’ de Margaret Atwood: Une Dystopie Contextuelle).” Science Fiction Studies 16.2 (1989): 209–217. Print.

Paik, Peter. “Utopia Achieved: The Case of Watchmen.” From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 23–69. Print.

The Politics of Grief

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What can political science tell us about grief? Antonin Scalia’s death provoked a mixture of disgust and admiration that was covered extensively by American and international news media.

Some progressives were ready to list Scalia’s faults and argue that, even though dead, the man needed to be held accountable. Others, including some leftists, argued that condemning Scalia’s politics was disrespectful and tasteless. Death became a de-politicizing force that elevated Scalia above contestation, an ideological position that has historic support from philosophers like Hannah Arendt, who once argued that, “what makes a man a political being is his faculty of action.” The argument might go that Scalia, now deprived of his ability to enact politics in any space that could be called ‘the public sphere,’ had become a depoliticized object. But this position obscures how dead bodies are politically managed, with some dead bodies used to advance national identity and others being omitted from civic life. Death and grief aren’t apolitical.

Literary texts, at least, suggest that mourning can be a form of political expression. Texts like Antigone and the character of Ophelia from Hamlet illustrate how grief can either consolidate or subvert state power. When President Obama visited Scalia’s body “to pay his respects”, he also reinforced the idea that grief could be managed through public practice. But is publicizing grief necessarily wrong? I don’t think so, for reasons I’ll explain below, but there are certainly some articulations of grief that should make us wary.

Judith Butler, for example, warns her readers that highly ritualized styles of mourning, often supported by state and media, can produce moments where “critical modes of questioning are drowned out.” Butler, in particular, is interested in how grief for certain bodies can meet “social and cultural force of prohibition,” a conclusion she has reached by examining LGBTQ relationships and the institutional barriers that prevent couples from engaging in certain rituals of mourning. Think of hospital visitation rights, where a seemingly mundane waiting room becomes the space where grief is managed by bureaucratic processes. Certain persons become the recipients of national mourning, with all the material support this entails, and others have their grief consigned to the margins of society through legalistic manoeuvring.

We can extend these examples to world politics. Witness how grief is often used to advance nation-building projects and manage international conflict. Children, in particular, often figure as natural innocents and become strategic assets that are used to mobilize outrage. Take the death of Mohammed al-Durrah in 2000, a Palestinian child who was filmed hiding from Israeli gunfire with his father. His mother described his death as a sacrifice “for our homeland, for Palestine.” A PLO spokesperson told the BBC that the international community shouldn’t be surprised when children participate in spontaneous uprisings when “from womb to tomb, we are condemned to sub-human living conditions.” The Israeli Defence Force similarly condemned Mohammed’s death, but then blamed Palestinian militants, arguing that the “cynical use” of “innocent children” as human shields resulted in Mohammad’s death.

Certain deaths cultivate outrage, while others are met with shrugs. When Ben Norton asked last week, “[d]o French lives matter more?” he was contrasting Western rage at the ISIS attacks in Paris with the silence on attacks in Iraq, the deadliest the country has seen this year. Answering his own question, Norton writes: “The responses — or lack thereof — from Western media outlets, governments, and citizens makes their answer obvious.” In this moment, grief could have acted as a critical intervention to the way conflict in the Middle East is usually understood.

Alternatively, we see how the grief surrounding Alan Kurdi, whose death prompted international rage, pressured the EU into adopting a more favourable stance on refugee policy, indicating that public grief has the potential to, as David McIvor writes, cultivate “ethical dispositions towards human vulnerability that would make possible a less-violent politics.” Perhaps for this reason I’m hesitant to condemn public rituals of grief, since these rituals can produce grassroots movement. But the question of whose pain is validated has an answer rooted in the asymmetries of political power.

These are only a few examples that illustrate how grief is legitimized through political ritual. Mohammad al-Durrah’s body, for example, became a stage upon which two competing nation-building visions were articulated. Alan Kurdi underwent the same treatment, and the nearly universal outpouring of grief towards his death was then later subverted when Charlie Hebedo portrayed him as an Abuser-in-the-Making on its front cover. The message was clear: the humanitarian impulse towards refugee children was misplaced, since they’d grow up to be misogynists anyway. Scalia now faces similar treatment, with various factions competing to dominate the narrative that gives meaning to his death.
I’m not convinced that dead people can remain apolitical, or that being ‘apolitical,’ (translation: being silent) is even desirable. Attempts to dampen criticism about Scalia can reinforce an ‘official’ American identity, one that’s apparently dependent on conservatism in the judicial branch. Certainly, the Republican presidential nominees have used Scalia’s status as a “legal giant,” to quote Ted Cruz, to push forward their ideas about what America should be. At first, these words seem courteous and tasteful and so haven’t attracted scorn, but kind words aren’t automatically apolitical or non-strategic and commemoration can be a way of validating ideology. Scalia’s towering reputation, according to Jeb Bush, creates an onus on Obama to nominate someone with a “proven conservative record,” after all. And as any pacifist can attest, kindness and praise shouldn’t be conflated with an absence of politics.

Can criticizing Scalia create an alternative political vision for the United States? At the very least, Scalia’s critics counter the national vision offered by state officials and their supporters. Mourners should not be compelled to reproduce civic identity in a way that celebrates some lives, like Supreme Court Justices, and marginalizes others. Celebrate or condemn Scalia, but don’t pretend that one side has a monopoly on etiquette or exists outside of politics.

Zootopia, the Only Good Cop is a Judy Hopps

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Based on the leaded trailers and, let’s face it, troubling buddy-cop framing, I expected to bitterly groan my way trough Zootopia, Disney’s new CGI bauble which is on its way to box office records for the studio in its opening weekend.  For me, the glaring sting in this movie purported to teach kids about racial bias and the idea that anyone can be whatever you want to be (a novel concept for a Disney film!) is that a picked-on girl’s greatest dream is to be a police officer.  In the lead-up to the film’s release, I’ve brooded over a melange of discomfort and disgust at a theme so poorly timed when more and more attention is being paid to the tensions between minority communities and law enforcement.  I feel like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  “Cops…  Why’d it have to be cops?”  It’s the Achilles’ heel to a film I largely found delightful.  However, in those moments of doubt, I had of course set aside the fact that a) I am a furry pervert.  b) this movie stars a plucky bunny lady.  c) BUNNY.  BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY.

I’ve written before about how using furries as an analog for racial strife can be a very bad idea, specifically dealing with the disaster that is Blacksad: Arctic Nation. (TW: cartoon depictions of racist violence/lynching)  It can be just too crude a cudgel with which to bash your message into the lobes of your intended audience, and animal stand-ins often substitute for racist caricatures in an ostensibly anti-racist work.  The dynamic between the lead characters, and the sociology of a furry metropolis could have fit into many kinds of stories.  Instead we have a message that tensions in a multicultural society are solved by policing.  That by the end of con-man Nick’s (Jason Bateman) arc is that he joins the civic-minded, selfless Judy on the force, as that is the natural end-point of those good personality traits.  I’m sorely disappointed with that particular angle.  I agree largely with furries like twitter friend Eva Problems whose critiques the movie on the grounds that the political element can’t be decontextualized provide some much-needed clarity.

The social organization of the furry universe of Zootopia serves individual character interactions with less clumsiness than the broad “message” of the film. The film actually benefits from a lack of commitment to a coherent racial analogy like the depiction of white fur in Arctic Nation that mimics whiteness as a social construct. The hazy coexistence of predator/prey gives us an environment where contradictory characters can experience marginalization and empowerment in a variety of contexts.  The tension between predator and prey abruptly upends itself three-quarters way through the movie, where the point of view switches somewhat from Judy’s to Nick’s and we are given new perspectives from which the characters can feel discounted, othered and feared.  It’s bewilderingly self-aware and at the same time is so not.  For instance the police department that Judy is assigned to is largely staffed by predator species.  This makes sense in the first act when they bully and discount Judy’s ability, but doesn’t carry over to the 2nd when predators are the targets of fear and suspicion.  The take-away of the film is clearly meant to instill empathy, compassion, anti-racism and multiculturalism in its intended audience of young viewers.  The real concern regarding a critical reading of Zootopia’s themes is whether this movie will inspire more curiosity in young folks about bias, bigotry and corruption or pacify that curiosity instead in a pat, simplified entertainment product that upholds the status quo.

In Zootopia, Judy Hopps is our hero, voiced by Jennifer Goodwin.  Judy is a punk and Judy is a runt.  A child in a litter of two hundred or so kittens of content Rabbit carrot farmers in a rural community, she is driven to be extraordinary, to explore and to serve the greater good.  That her vision of service involves the career of law enforcement… well I’ve already registered my reservations.  Judy is personally ambitious and driven to protect others, except maybe when made to doubt her competence as an authority figure.  Her chief, the hulking Cape Buffalo (Idris Elba), accepts her assignment as a publicity measure but was never interested in employing his city’s “first rabbit officer.”  He wants Judy out of there as soon as the good press blows over, assigning her to parking duty in an attempt to humiliate her off the force.  Stung, Judy sticks it to the chief by being the best meter maid she can be, employing a predatory practice that often disproportionately affects the poor.  She knows how to stick up for herself when a (juuuuuuust  right) sized citizen wants to pick on her (which is all the time) and also misjudges the good nature of bigger people who accept her presence as a matter of political convenience rather than actual tolerance.  She busted her ass to ace exams she was disadvantaged for only to matriculate into a police department made up of brutes and bruisers who, predator and prey, male and female, are evaluated on a scale of physical characteristics that only acknowledge the big and physically imposing.  She battles against the idea that bunnies are too meek for serious work, that gentle-hearted people are too feeble for serious service.  It’s clear she’s every bit as capable at her job as much for her wits, tenacity and compassion as any big bad wolf.

She takes an opportunity to butt her way into a real case when over a dozen citizens, all predators, go missing.  What’s more, they’ve all been struck by a rapid degenerative position that renders them violent and in basically a “feral” state.  After being burned by him, she conscripts the petty grifter Nick Wilde, a sly-but-not-as-sly-as-he-thinks-he-is fox into her scheme to keep her job by him helping out in the missing-person investigation.  Nick takes every opportunity to gleefully undermine her ecumenical dream of moving to the big city and changing the world, so Judy blackmails him into helping her, in part because she needs his streetwise knowledge of her new city, and also to test her insecurities.  She wants to battle the social prejudices that belittle her, but can she overcome deep-seated ones of her own about foxes?  Her moment of clarity was after being violently bullied by a fox as a child who told her, dumb bunnies can’t amount to anything.  Hopps’ overcautious Midwestern parents reinforce this.  So Judy goes for broke and moves to to a miserable little boarding house in the big city, not necessarily to spite them, but to prove them all wrong in any case.

Nick is Judy’s natural foil, a totally self-interested, cynical crook whose dreams got crushed early by his childhood tormentors (all herbivores), replayed in a devastating flashback (good thing I saw it at a nearly empty matinee, as a lone adult crying seated next to a strangers’ kids is not a great look).  He nags her with poisonous barbs because, well naturally he doesn’t like cops, and her cloying earnestness eats away at something inside of him.  They share a back-and-forth that reads like the first act of a horseshit romantic comedy, bitterness and acrimony as a silty overcoat to a significant bond.  The value that comes out in the wash though, is the damage, and the shared desire to heal that damage that brings them together, and breaks them apart, and brings them together again.  The emotional core of this movie, the reason that it works, is these two people who are so fundamentally opposed in every way who grow to depend and care for each other.  Maybe you could read their relationship as a romantic one, but it’s not necessary for appreciating the bond they share.  It’s a buddy cop movie, and Nick and Judy are magnetic buddies.
 

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The Zootopia-inspired site banner for Furaffinity, the internet’s largest furry social media/art gallery site. By Korichi.


 
So again, the race allegory keeps weaving itself through every relationship, interpersonal and social.  Judy is transferred to the heart of the city by calculating bureaucrats seeking to appeal to a %90 herbivorous population who nevertheless entrust their policing to a minority of mostly predator species.  The predators are the natural leaders and protectors, and yet feared and ultimately despised and marginalized for their supposedly “biological” predilections toward violence.  The mayor is the lion and his deputy, the lamb (well, sheep).  Judy in the world of Zootopia occupies at the same time the position of being victim and victimizer. She’s someone counted out by her native community and her chosen community.  But Judy finds herself wielding tremendous social power against a populace that is seen as highly influential and yet looked upon with suspicion.  Criminality is shown as a trait of in predatory species, just as as political corruption is in prey species that secretly manipulate the supposedly homogeneous society of Zootopia. The explicitly stated point is that forming a multicultural society is messy, and yet each individual is responsible for dealing with their own ingrained biases when interacting with people with a (naturally) different perspective.  Judy and Nick are not fast friends.  But they share a common experience in being singled out.  There are large herbivores on the police force, but there’s never been a BUNNY cop.  Carnivores are largely integrated into society, but everyone agrees you can’t trust those nasty FOXES.
 

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Hi Daddy


 
There has been non-stop chatter in the community in the lead-up to this weekend about the extent to which Zootopia is a “Furry” movie.  How many of us walked among the aminators, directors and writers who brought us this fantasy.  Would Zootopia, like its antecedent, Disney’s Robin Hood be a secret key to the hearts of people who pretend to be cartoon animals in order to really feel human?  Young folks love cartoon animals, sure, but will this film mark another Cambrian explosion of lifers like well, me?   Supposedly, the image Byron Howard, Zootia’s director along with Rich Moore, used to pitch the concept of a return to funny animal movies to executive producer John Lasseter was of Disney’s foxy loxy Robin Hood reclining in a wicker basket.  The not-insignificant marketing campaign behind the movie might have included a branch directly reaching out to furries.  I’ve noticed a rush to claim ownership over a well-anticipated property.  I share in a relief at its positive response that wouldn’t have necessarily happened maybe just five years ago.  Nowadays who even are you if you don’t have a fursona?

I’m somewhat of a camp that understands Furry culture as inextricable from sexuality.  So I’m hesitant to speculate on the upcoming generation of furries who have a right to figure their own shit out in their own time.  Furries have already proliferated a king-of-the-jungle’s ransom of Zootopia inspired fan porn (sometimes obnoxiously using official hashtags.  I do wish people would cut that gunk out.)  If you know where to look, it’s unavoidable that Zootopia is a fueled in part by the horny of furry animators and storytellers from roughly my generation.  There’s  the scene where Judy, though small in stature compared to many creatures, got to be a relative giantess, stomping around the neighborhood populated by  tiny mice and shrews.  While not an exclusive attribute, the Macro/Micro fetish focusing on extreme size difference is a conspicuous facet of furry culture.  It’s a spectacularly composed chase scene for those not in the know, and a pretty big “OOOOOOH” moment for the kink-literate.  During the climax, Nick (with negotiated consent) “went feral” and play acted a scene that culminating in him sensually biting Judy’s neck.  This doesn’t necessarily subvert my non-rom-com interpretation of the leads’ relationship, I’m of the school of friends boning down sans-strings being a thing that can happen.  But in any case, this is a crucial, fraught, terrifying intimate moment.  And Nick’s definitely a type of guy who’s down to get pegged.  Oh.  By the way.  Did you notice, watching the end credits…………… THOSE TIIIIIIIIIIIGERS?  MY GOD.  Zootopia highlights a lead who is not a princess, and not really romantically driven. But it’s also the horniest movie Disney has ever made.  I’m talking almost Don Bluth-level barely sublimated horny.
 

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EXCUSE ME???!


 
Zootopia is a PRETTY movie, no… a goregeous movie, with jaw-dropping attention to detail in background animation and dedicated research based on the real animals the cartoonized characters are based on.  Every figure, major and minor, is cartooned with an exaggerated take on their native animal’s shape, weight and movement.  Their responses to high-stress situations, like ducking an obstacle on the roof of an out-of-control subway car, is informed by the meticulously observed behavior of the actual animals being represented.  The environments they move through, the city center or the tundra or, my lord, the jungle zone, are spectacles, lovingly rendered in frequent wide establishing shots.  The fur (THE FURR) of each chraracter is so tactile, from the fluffy cheeks of a sedentary cheetah to the greasy, nappy locks of a naturist gnu (voiced by Tommy Chong!).  To the art department, only love and kisses and more money for you.

Zootopia’s message is mired in role reversals, or dualistic prejudices cast into flux.  The twist ending, the reveal of the mastermind behind the purposeful stoking of tensions between species is hysterical in one sense and deflating in another.  There is a constant, conscious focus on hard realities in this breezy fuzzy fable for kids.  People sometimes act on unexamined biases or are motivated to do terrible things by an unaddressed but real sense of grievance.  Zootopia glosses over issues of police departments’ responsibilities to the communities they serve, but also highlights its main characters empathy and selflessness as her personal and professional strength.  It mind-blowingly (though abstractly) references the panic about crack cocaine in urban communities in the 80s and 90s and how it was cynically used as a wedge to stoke racist paranoia.  And yet the film presents a fantasy where the government parties who stoke the fires of fear and division are punished for their corruption and the victims are given treatment.  The city focuses on a theraputic, non-carceral solution to the chemical that turned the unlucky predators  to violence, and they return to their families.
 

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This court has concluded that there is no statute on record that explicitly forbids parties Wilde and Hopps from kissing.


 
Zootopia is one hell of a slimy gumbo of contradictory messages.  But I’m from Alabama, and I like gumbo.  The inherent pun in the title, in the United States release at least, is that the messy, resentful furry metropolis that Judy vows to serve and protect is not anything like a Utopia.  It’s multi-culture sheen is driven by barely restrained resentment and contempt.  People like Judy Hopps can in good conscience think they’re doing the right thing while letting their biases stoke sub-dermal bigotry between predator and prey.  And in the pursuit of her own dreams, she realizes that she’s the convenient tool of predatory bureaucrats covering their own asses until the next election cycle.  In this miasma of cynicism, the corniest of Disney cliches kind of… blossom.  When Judy believes in herself, and cares about others, and trusts someone who isn’t anxious to give her a reason to, she saves the day.  Fatally flawed as it is, Zootopia is one paw forward into our furry future.

ALSO LOOK AT THE BUNNY.

Utilitarian Review 3/5/16

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: Kinukitty on Neil Gaiman and the death of dream.

A storify about telling people they’re privileged.

Chris Gavaler presents a superhero performance.

I reviewed the film Bethelehem about the Israeli spies and how they suck.

I reviewed the doc Next Year In Jerusalem about elderly American touring Israel.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates of comics from the end of ’52.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Playboy I interviewed David Barash about how humans are naturally polygamous and harem forming.

At the Kernel I wrote about my failed Patreon campaign.

For my first piece at The Week I wrote that this isn’t the year of the political outsider.

At the Establishment I wrote about the fascist fantasies of “London Has Fallen” and Trump.

At Splice Today I wrote

—about some great future past electronica: Chema64, Gqom, and Kraftwerk reprised.

—that Sanders should quit when it’s clear he’s going to lose.

A couple of Shmoop guides I worked on were posted.

—One on Karel Capek’s R.U.R.

—One on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 
Other Links

Jeff Spross on how we should give welfare to everyone.

C.T. May on shitty prose on the Internet.

Suzy Khimm on the movement after Sanders.
 

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Israel for Tourists

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This first ran at the Dissolve.
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In a scene toward the end of the documentary Next Year Jerusalem, a nursing-home attendant tells Helen, one of the residents, how much she admires her, and hopes she’ll be just like her when she’s her age. Helen is clearly flattered and touched; it’s a sweet moment. But in the context of the film, it isn’t explained or justified. Viewers are told that Helen is wonderful, but the film never conveys why that is, or what about her, precisely, her caregiver is responding to.

That’s emblematic of the documentary as a whole. Next Year Jerusalem is about eight nursing-home residents who travel with the home’s staff to Israel. The obvious touchstone is Barbara Myerhoff’s famous book and documentary Number Our Days, which is also set in a Jewish home, and which movingly examines the persistence of ritual, life, and meaning at the end of the line. But director David Gaynes lacks Myerhoff’s anthropological perspective, intellectual rigor, and imagination. There’s little depth to his presentation. The residents and staff don’t come across as individual characters, so much as a series of endearing tics. One 90-plus man makes jokes about how he’s no longer a ladies’ man. (He quips that his “thing” doesn’t work anymore.) Helen and her attendant are shown declaring their affection for each other. One severely handicapped woman named Selma jokes about how much food she gets on her coat. The nursing-home president gets weepy as he stands with his travelers, looking down on Jerusalem. Much of this is amusing, even tear-jerking; the president’s emotion is obviously real, and the care he feels for his residents and his community is affecting. But that affect is presented primarily as spectacle, rather than as a narrative that the viewer is invited to understand or participate in.

That’s true not just for the residents, but for Israel as well. The subjects went to Israel as tourists, so it’s no surprise that the film presents a tourist’s-eye-view of the country: There’s the river Jordan; there’s the Western Wall, with the Hasidim acting self-consciously as tour guides; there’s Masada. It’s the Holy Land as amusement park, and while it’s impossible to begrudge the residents their trip of a lifetime, it’s hard not to feel like the filmmakers do just about everyone a disservice by ignoring the painful realities undergirding the sightseeing. A film about Israel that completely ignores the Palestinians’ existence in the interest of focusing on Americans’ self-actualization is a film that really needs to reconsider its priorities.

Perhaps Gaynes would have been better served by eschewing the trip to Israel, and concentrating instead on getting to know the residents over a longer period of time. As it is, Next Year Jerusalem offers little insight into its putative protagonists, and even less into Israel. The residents are impressive in their willingness to get outside of their comfort zone. The film, unfortunately, demonstrates little of that courage.