Utilitarian Review 4/23/16

In his review of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Roger Ebert complained that the film ended with a pointless action sequence. “Time after time I complain when a film develops an intriguing story and then dissolves it in routine and boring action,” he says wearily. “We’ve seen every conceivable battle sequence, every duel, all carnage, countless showdowns and all-too-long fights to the finish.” Can’t anyone think of an end other than violence?

Ebert didn’t live to see the 2015 Cinderella live action reboot, but if he did, he would have at least been pleased on one count: it doesn’t end with a fight. Cinderella (Lily James) isn’t an action hero. True to the Cinderella template, she doesn’t physically fight, or even much struggle, against her fate. Her mother, who likewise wastes away peacefully, tells her that her ethos should be “Have courage. Be kind.” Ella interprets this as a command to passivity and deference. Her stepmother (Cate Blanchett, having a grand old time) treats her as a servant after her father dies, and Ella just takes it. When a friend reasonably asks her why, she replies that she has fond memories of her mother in the house…and therefore she lets herself be abused and humiliated because that’s what her mother would want? The logic is unclear, but that’s the way the plot goes.

Ella never grows a backbone; she escapes her plight through no fault of her own. First her fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up and magically outfits her, then the Prince swoops in to rescue her. Ella’s only sign of resistance is a few words of rebuke to Cate at the end, and then a haughty “I forgive you.” It’s a fine passive aggressive moment, somewhat undermined by the fact that the film can’t admit to it being anything but the sincere effusion of a pure soul. Ella, so good and true and wonderful, isn’t even allowed to be bitchy or pissed off. To be a perfect Princess is to be not just nonviolent, but utterly unaggressive—and for that matter defenseless.

Roger Ebert asked why films have to end with violence; Cinderella, inadvertently, explains. Films have to end with violence because violence is the only way that these big-budget Hollywood films can express strength, agency, or even really action. Either you’re swinging a sword and decapitating the Jabberwock, like Alice in Burton’s film, or else you’re letting you’re step mother put her boot on your face because you just don’t have the gumption to do anything about it. You’re empowered and awesome or disempowered and pure. There doesn’t seem to be any middle-ground.

the middle-ground is, of course the place where most people live most of their lives. In most conflicts, in most lives, you aren’t fully empowered to beat the crap out of your enemy and have them cringe at your feet. Neither are you completely bereft of agency, waiting for a prince to save you. Instead, you’re somewhere in a difficult, grey middle, with some ability to make some choices, and push back against some power, if you’re cunning, and lucky,and don’t misjudge. Heroism comes not in using superpowers to blast all before you, nor in staying pure souled and above the fray, but in figuring out how to make the best of difficult situations, using what power you have, and what kindness you can muster.

There are some variations on Cinderella that manage to get at those issues in interesting and unexpected ways. Ella Enchanted explains Ella’s doormatness via a spell; the girl had a spell cast on her which makes her obey all commands. She then has to figure out how to use subterfuge, legalism, and ingenuity to abide by the letter of her curse while carving out a space for herself—not a bad metaphor for resistance under patriarchy. Twilight also presents violence as a option to be resisted when possible, negotiated where needed, and used as a last resort; Bella’s super vampire power is to dampen other vampire powers — she’s aggressively passive rather than passive aggressive. Nonviolence for her is a weapon.

But those are quirky, odd stories, notable because they refuse to fit into the more familiar binary. More common is the story which sees only power and powerlessness, the sword or waiting for someone with a sword to rescue you. The fact that we so readily sneer at pacifism isn’t because pacifism is silly, or because we’re sober minded and realistic, like Niebuhr. It’s because our imagination is, apparently, unable to think of any effective action that isn’t imbued with absolute power and bloodshed.

Utilitarian Review 4/15/16

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

Rodrigo Lara Zendejas, Burghers of El Rayo

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Joy DeLyria on the reactionary perils of reboots.

Chris Gavaler and Carolyn Capps discuss their comics collaboration process.

I’m planning to do a longer blog project…not sure exactly what yet (Universal Horror Films? PKD novels? Twin Peaks?) So weigh in if you have a preference.

On Tim Burton’s Alice and colonialism.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Random Nerds I wrote in praise of trying to like the mediocre Black Panther #1.

Also at Random Nerds: brief recommendation of a great Open Mike Eagle song.

At the Reader I reviewed a great art show by Rodrigo Lara Zendejas.

Phil Sandifer and I did a podcast about Wonder Woman: Earth One and other matters.

At Splice Today I wrote about how

—NPR’s gushing review of a novel about Thomas Jeffersona and Sally Hemings is awful.

—All the Presidents’ Men shows Hollywood loves conspiracies.

—PC did not create Trump.

—the Dr. Strange trailer is a racist, boring piece of crap.

Other Links

Liberation Library is sending books to incarcerated children who requested them. You can donate books from their Amazon wishlist here.

Ben Joravsky on how Rahm will blast teachers, but not police.

Lindsay Gibbs on the rape charges against Kobe Bryant.

Alice in Colonyland

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

The potential imperial metaphor in Alice in Wonderland had never really occurred to me before, but Tim Burton’s oddly formulaic,and formulaicly odd 2010 remake stumbles into it. In this version, Alice’s father is a visionary merchant, who dies organizing trade to Sumatra. Alice is trapped in a conventional life and arranged marriage, until she falls down the rabbit hole into a strange backwards monarchy, which she saves before returning to her own land and setting off on an adventure to China. Adventure in the colonies gives white women scope to escape their limited lives; freedom means both freedom from England’s restrictions, and freedom to be a white savior somewhere else.

The connection between freedom and non-white people is emphasized at the end of the film when Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter performs the goofy Futterwacken: i.e., break dancing. Alice when she returns to the mundane world takes a shimmy about with the same dance herself, demonstrating she’s also a free spirited white woman who is down with black culture (somewhere Miley Cyrus was watching.)

So how much of this imperial dynamic was there in the original Alice? The connection between the colonies and freedom wasn’t there; Wonderland isn’t a venue for self-actualization in Carroll’s original story. Alice doesn’t get to be the hero slaying the Jabberwocky; nor does she find delightful friends and allies. In Carroll’s version of the tale, everyone Alice meets has their own impenetrable agenda, and treats her with impatience and rudeness when they don’t ignore her all together. Really, the Carroll Wonderland has less in common with Burton’s Underland than it does with his just plain old regular Britain, where Alice’s relations and friends casually bully her for not entirely clear motives, and demand she play their games without telling her the rules.

Still, in nineteenth century England, any trip to a strange and exotic land has to recall the greater imperial context. The Red Queen wandering around shouting off with their heads is of course a joke in part because Queens didn’t have that sort of authority in England any more—though in the colonies it was another issue. The way in which British customs are parodied and warped in Wonderland —that eternal tea time—also suggests a kind of other who both is and isn’t the self, like the colonized people conforming and yet not, quite.

Carroll’s Wonderland ultimately has a not very buried undercurrent of nastiness and cruelty; everyone casually despises Alice, and she doesn’t much like them either. There’s an authoritarian violence that lingers everywhere, treated as a joke, but never really dispelled. In Burton, the colonies are an exciting adventure, and a chance for exotic triumph. In Carroll, invading that distant land is less of a dream, and more of a nightmare for everyone.

Where Does the Blog Go?

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

So, as people have no doubt noticed, the blog has been quieter than in the past. Lots of regulars have moved on, and I haven’t been as active in looking for replacement writers, mostly because I’ve been busy with other work.

One thing I did with the blog in the past was to use it as a way to work on longer term projects—most notably by blogging through every issue of the Marston/Peter Wonder Woman over a couple of years there. I was thinking it might be fun to try something like that again…and maybe see if I could get people to contribute to a crowd-funding patreon for a more focused project (my less focused, pay me to write weekly project crashed and burned in a rather humiliating fashion.) And even if not it would be nice to have something to write regularly that’s less constrained by the vagaries of what people can sell ads against or get folks to click on.

Anyway, I’ve got a number of ideas that might be fun to do, so I thought I’d list some of them and see if anyone had strong feelings about which they’d like to see (presuming anyone’s still reading this blog!) Here are some possibilities:

—essays on feminist sci-fi novels

—or, as a variant, essays on all of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels

—or essays on all of Gwyneth Jones’ novels

—essays on every episode of the Adam West Batman

—essays on all the Hammer horror films

—essays on every Nicholas Cage film (and maybe ranking them all at the end)

—essays on all of John Carpenter’s films

—essays on all of Philip K. Dick’s novels

—essays on rape/revenge films

—essays on slavery films

—essays on the television series Oz

—Twin Peaks?

I guess (?) I’m leaning towards the Hammer films, just because I’m interested in them and haven’t seen most of them, so this would be an excuse to do that. Though a Twin Peaks rewatch would be fun too (or new watch, since I bailed on the second season.) It would be interesting to do a romance novel project, but I’m not quite sure how to constrain it—I could do Judith Ivory’s novels I guess? Or Jennifer Crusie’s; I’ve been enjoying hers…

Anyway, some of these are obviously more ambitious than others. And maybe it’ll be none of the above (or none at all). But if folks have a preference/interest, let me know. We might do a roundtable or something around it as well, I suppose, if folks felt up to it…

Utilitarian Review 4/8/16

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Trina Robbins on why Azzarello’s Wonder Woman is no good.

Chris Gavaler on why comics shouldn’t have words.

A review of the mediocre Laotian drama The Rocket.

Me on Coates’ Black Panther, which isn’t very good.

Me on race in Hamilton.
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Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I wrote about my favorite Merle Haggard album.

At the Establishment I wrote about how cutting edged sci-fi is often written by marginalized writers.

At Quartz I wrote about how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame keeps not inducting women (and a list of women who they should induct.)

At Random Nerds I wrote about the Sparks Conversation defense. (You know, that thing where you say, Harry Potter is awful, and your interlocutor says, “well, we’re talking about it, it can’t be that bad.)

Oh, also at Random Nerds I got a chance to recommend a looked at possible election results in the next Congress.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—how Superman in BvS is not a Muslim immigrant.

—a great indie pop R&B album by obscure indie artist Claire Keepers.

Other Links

Mistress Matisse Melissa Gira Grant, ethics and reporting on sex work

How Mickey Mouse evades the Public Domain.

Is Hamilton Racist?

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

Of course Hamilton the founding father was racist; the question is whether the musical is. Historian Lyra Monteiro makes the case for thinking so. She argues that casting back actors in the role of the white founding fathers is a way to erase said founding fathers racism, as well as the narratives of actual black people who lived at the time.

I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other…mainly because I still haven’t seen the musical. I did read the Ron Chernow Hamilton biography on which the musical is based, though. So when a friend posted the link on Facebook and asked for comment I weighed in. I thought I’d reprint my thoughts here (with a little editing and tweaking), in case readers were interested.
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It sounds like Monteiro makes good points; the biography pushes pretty hard on the idea that Hamilton was anti-slavery. he seems to have been in abolitionist societies, and didn’t own slaves himself. It wasn’t at the center of his politics though, probably.

I don’t know if the musical talks about this, and Monteiro doesn’t, but Hamilton was racialized himself, at least sometimes. We don’t really know who his father was, and given his childhood in the Caribbean, there’s a non-negligible chance that he was part black. His enemies certainly made much of the fact that he might be part black; he was referred to as a Creole on more than one occasion, and attacked as a foreigner, which I think then (as now) had some racial overtones.

So you could see Hamilton’s story as being about the possibility of black assimilation, which is in part what it sounds like the musical’s about too—black people claiming the Founding Father’s story as their own. The problem is that of course black people haven’t been allowed to assimilate, really, and that Hamilton’s assimilation is contingent on him not having been black (he certainly didn’t live as a black man in America.) And similarly the assimilation of the cast to the Hamilton story means losing blackness as a historical phenomenon, at least to some great degree.

So…the politics of it sort of depend on the politics of assimilation, which seem like they’re fairly complicated. On the one hand, racism in the US is in large part about black people not being allowed to assimilate. On the other hand, assimilating to whiteness means identifying with the oppressor, which is arguably also racist. The alternative would be telling a story about the oppressed—but of course many black commenters have talked about how sick they are of seeing black people only in the role of the oppressed, because it’s dreary and disempowering to constantly be portrayed as dreary and disempowered.

To me, overall, it seems like Hamilton the musical offers a kind of representation that isn’t often seen in the media—that is, black performers explicitly playing white people, rather than playing roles in which their blackness isn’t supposed to be recognized or acknowledged (which happens quite often.) Monteiro makes a good case that this representation isn’t perfect, but no one representation is going to be perfect, and more representations, more kinds of representations, and more jobs for black actors all seem like good things.

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a pundit in every panopticon

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