Utilitarian Review 4/25/15

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Pam Rosenthal on Jo Baker’s Longbourn — literary fiction or romance?

Shonen Knife forever.

Ginsburg and Breyer have doomed us all.

Nate Atkinson wonders whether the superhero genre, or any genre, can be racist in itself.

Stephan Gary on ARTS video games, neoliberalism, and randomness.

Chris Gavaler on the X-files and super doctors.

The Premiere of Agents of Shield is really racist.

Episode 2 of Agents of SHIELD is also really racist. They’re on a role.

Utilitarians Everywhere

This was kind of an insane week. I had six pieces published in one day, which I think is a record…and the Playboy piece on Laverne Cox went semi-viral on twitter.

For Pacific Standard I wrote a piece on the importance of sex workers and former sex workers doing research on sex workers.

For Chicago Magazine I wrote about how Chicago’s torture reparations fit into the case for reparations for African-Americans.

At TNR I wondered why all the hate for Superman?

At the Life Sentence I explained why cozies are morally reprhensible.

At Reason I wrote about how Daredevil sacralizes torture.

For Playboy I wrote about:

—how the structure of twitter is optimized for abuse, and needs to be changes.

— how poptimism does’t limit music criticism; attention does.

—Laverne Cox posing nude and how radical feminism often fails black women and trans women.

At Quartz I wrote about how searching for happiness makes you unhappy. Also evil.

At Ravishly

—I wrote about Daredevil and how white saviors need injustice.

—I argued that to puncture the cult of motherhood we need to value other relationships, not independence.

At Splice Today I wrote about how Orphan Black’s male clones are kind of boring stereotypes.

Other Links

I think with all the above I’m a little link-exhausted…but if you have pieces you’d like to share in comments, that’d be great.

Waiting for Alan Rickman

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Splice Today.
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Good guy, bad guy. It’s what you do if you’re making a basic action/adventure movie. In Die Hard, you have John McClane as the hero…and the most interesting, most charismatic, most important secondary character is Alan Rickman having the time of his life as Hans Gruber. In Face/Off, you’ve got John Travolta as the good guy (or bad guy) and Nicholas Cage as the bad guy (or good guy), and who the hell can remember anybody else in that film? Superman’s got Lex Luther, Batman’s got the Joker, and Jennifer in I Spit on Your Grave has her evil rapists. Good guy, bad guy. A simple-minded formula for people who want to sit and watch simple-minded virtue triumph while things blow up. You give them what they want, and they are happy.

Olivier Megaton, director of Colombiana is not trying to be fancy. He wants to give you the good guy — he hired Zoe Saldana to play heroine Cattaleya, gave her lots of firepower, skintight outfits, and a tragic backstory, and sent her out there to right wrongs and/or cause explosions. And he wants to give you the bad guy too. Evil Colombian drug lord who murdered Cattaleya’s parents while she watched — offensively stereotypical, yes, but for that very reason an efficient fulfillment of narrative expectations. So you see crime lord Don Luis (Beto Benitas) and his henchmen Marco (Jordi Molia) pop up at the beginning all swarthy and sneering and you say, okay, so these are the guys we hate; for the balance of the film we’ll get to see them being sneaky and nasty and underhanded and ruthless and then at the end they’ll get their satisfying comeuppance. Thus it has ever been, thus it shall be.

Except…somewhere, somehow, something goes horribly wrong. Cattaleya, the good guy (or in this case good gal), wreaks horrible vengeance on slimy evildoers just the way she’s supposed to…but somehow the prime evildoers, the guys we’re supposed to love to hate, are brutally blindsided not by our heroine, but rather by a series of viciously sodden subplots. There’s lots of back and forth with Catalleya’s adoptive, tough, but tender-hearted uncle. There’s sexy shenanigans with the hot artist-guy boyfriend with the adorable sign between his ears proclaiming, “this space for rent.” There’s the earnest cop and his earnest cop sidekick who pursue Saldana by drinking coffee and looking at computer screens and talking into cell phones, or sometimes by doing all three while simultaneously reusing footage from every Hollywood film from the last decade.

By the time we’ve eliminated the uncle and watched the boyfriend take off his shirt and watched the cop and his subplot emit their last joint indifferent fart, Megaton has almost run through his hour and forty minutes, and there’s no time left for the baddies. The final apocalyptic fist fight between Cateelya and Marco is shot in kinetic jerky fast forward, presumably because the director was worried the clock would run out. And after that, the supposed criminal mastermind doesn’t even get a face-to-face confrontation. It’s like Saldana spent her life looking for revenge, and then just shrugged and said, “ah, to hell with it. I guess I’d rather whimper at that boring artist guy — or maybe talk tough to that cop, presuming I can tell him apart from all the other cops.”

The saddest part is that Colombiana has a real star; a hero with charisma and beauty and oodles of killer instinct. Not Saldana, alas, who has the intensity of a mildly weepy guppy, but Amandla Stenberg. Stenberg plays Cattaleya as a child with a restrained and canny brutality that brings the film’s first half to life despite the best efforts of every adult involved in the project. When the young actor impassively makes herself vomit, or declares to her uncle with utter conviction that she’s given up on being Xena Warrior Princess, and now she wants to be a killer, you know that here, at least, is a hero who deserves the best villain Hollywood can dish out.

Denied that, however, she should at least get the chance to kick Olivier Megaton a good crack in the shins on our behalf. Vengeance is beautiful.

Stealing Your Relics for Your Own Good

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Well, I was supposed to have another post today, but it fell through…so. Second episode of Agents of SHIELD, just as racist as the first? Somewhat improbably, yes.

Our team heads off to Peru to find an object of great power, which they appropriate in the name of international law and harmony and because white people are the best ones to hold onto bombs, just ask Hiroshima. The Peruvians understandably don’t see it quite that way, and try to get the object for themselves. In particular, one of Coulson’s old flames, a (surprise!) hypersexualized Latina woman tries to use her wiles on him, but he’s too stoic and smart and white. The team sets aside its internal differences to self-actualize through the slaughter of the brown people whose stuff they’re stealing. Then at the end Samuel Jackson shows up and gives forth with the silly over the top indignation just to show that there’s no hard feelings from POC about the pillage and murder. Happy ending all around.

What’s interesting here is that this isn’t even really a superhero narrative. There aren’t any metahumans about; it’s a basic action-adventure narrative. Yet, the superhero filled world it exists in remains important — and part of the way it’s important is in the racism. Superhero genre default is that the powerful are good; the righteous who win are right. In the context of international security arrangements, this ends up meaning that stark imperial condescension is justified, and the bad guys are the indigenous people who object to having their borders violated and their resources robbed.Similarly, online activist Skye’s efforts to argue for people resisting oppression are pooh-poohed; rebellion against authority is portrayed as violent while the gun-wielding international agents with the flying fortress are just protectors.The connection between superpower narratives and the international superpower couldn’t be much more naked, or much more unquestioned.

Be White Or Explode

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Agents of SHIELD starts out as a black superhero story. Mike Peterson (J. August Richards), a laid-off factory worker, is on the street with his son when a building nearby explodes (as they do.) He hears someone screaming for help inside, and uses super strength to smash handholds in the wall, climb up, and save the damsel in distress. He then leaps to the ground and slinks away, covering his head with his hoodie. He’s soon being referred to as the Hooded Hero.

This seemed like an intriguing development. No one had told me that AoS was based around the adventures of a super-powered, single-dad, working-class black man. Even the hoodie — a reference, intentional or otherwise, to Trayvon Martin’s death the year before the pilot aired — seemed potentially positive. The symbol of supposed black criminality reversed and turned into a heroic icon; that could work, maybe. Maybe?

Or then again not so much. As you know if you’ve seen any of the series at all, the Hooded Hero is not the hero. He’s just some schlubby plot point. He never gets to save anyone else. He volunteered to be a guinea pig for an experimental treatment after he was hurt on the job, and his powers are unstable. Soon he’s experiencing uncontrollable rages, beating up his old factory boss, and engaging in kidnapping, assault, and other nefarious super-villainesque deeds. It turns out even the woman he saved wasn’t an innocent, but the evil scientist herself. At the end he gives a speech about how people like him don’t get a fair shake, etc. etc., and the white guy hero without superpowers listens to him sympathetically and calms him down to where he can be ignominiously shot with some sort of sedative for his own good. Yay.

It all seems wearisomely familiar, doesn’t it? For me I was reminded of one of the first comics I think I ever read; an old Flash story from way back in the 1970s. The comic is about Ms. Flash; Patty Spivot is standing in Barry Allen’s lab when (improbably) another bolt of lightning hits, electrifying the shelves of chemicals and giving her superspeed just like Barry Allen had. She too decides to fight crime with her super-speed…except there’s a catch. Her powers are (wait for it) unstable; whenever she runs anywhere, she causes poison gas to seep into the air, or fires to break out. She doesn’t believe that she’s causing the damage, so Barry has to contain her and eventually figure out a way to depower her. Only guys can be Flash; empowered women are too dangerous. End of moral. (It was all an imaginary story anyway, so I guess you could see it as some sort of critique of Barry’s paranoid misogyny, if you felt like being kind.)

Just as the female Flash is a danger to us all, so, in AoS, is the black supehero. The Hooded Hero talks throughout the episode of his desire to be good, and he’s supposed to be a good man confused by the treatment he’s undergone. But that just emphasizes the disconnect between power and blackness. Good white people who get superpowers go off to save the day; the Hooded Hero proves his goodness by recognizing that he can’t do anything but stand there and let the white super-espionage dudes get a clear shot at him with their magic depowering gun.

You could argue I guess that the Hooded Hero doesn’t need to stand in for all black superheroes ever; he’s just one guy, after all. But the show stacks the deck by, inevitably, presenting him as the only black character around. Other than the wearisomely obligatory Asian martial arts expert, the entire SHIELD team is white. (Update: Skye, the superhacker, is bi-racial, with Chinese ancestry.) The climactic surrender scene, then, takes on racial overtones that the show is clearly not prepared to handle. Peterson rails against the giants, the people putting him down — which diagetically are supposed to be the superheroes. But as a lone black man facing a sea of white agents, it reads as a lament about whiteness. In that context, the denoument, in which the solution is for the black guy to trust patiently that the white cops shooting him are beneficent, seems almost unbelievably callous — especially, again, in light of the perhaps accidental but unavoidable resonance with Trayvon Martin.

None of this is particularly surprising given the crappy record of the superhero genre on race…but still, the gratuitous stupidity of it make you shake your head a little. Joss Whedon, who’s supposed to have a brain, directed — and yet, the best he could come up with is a parable about how black men with power need white agents of the state to shoot them for their own good? If this is how the series handles race, maybe it’s just as well that there aren’t any black continuing characters. Erasure is bad, but condescending disempowerment may just be worse.

Ginsburg and Breyer Have Doomed Us All

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Ruth Bader Gisnburg was honored in Time this week, so there was a lot of Ginsburg love floating around. In response, I thought I’d reprint this Splice Today piece about how Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should have retired, and now that they didn’t we’re all screwed.
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It’s increasingly likely that the 2014 midterms will result in a Republican Senate. It’s quite possible that a Republican will be elected in 2016. The government, therefore, is more progressive now than it will be for another six years. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 81; Stephen Breyer is 75. They are both in good health, but when you get into your 70s and 80s, six years can cause major reversals. If they want their legacy to be carried on by other progressive justices, the smart thing for them to do is retire now. If they wait, and get sick in, say, four years, their replacements could be appointed by a Republican president, and the balance of the court tilted decisively conservative for who knows how long.

Judges who care about progressive goals should try to ensure continued progressive justices on the court. That’s a pretty simple calculus. But Dahlia Lithwick and Garrett Epps both disagree. Epps says that Ginsburg loves her work and that “the timing of judicial resignation is a complex mix of ego, ideas of mortality, political fealty, and dynamics within the Court”—which I’m sure is correct, but doesn’t either refute the electoral calculus, nor explain why it shouldn’t be taken into account. Lithwick, for her part, insists that “arguments about Ginsburg’s political judgment almost by necessity inflect upon her judgment as a whole, and yet nobody has advanced any argument for the proposition that Ginsburg’s judgment is failing.” The reasoning here is that Ginsburg is awesome, her faculties sharp, and that suggesting that she might possibly make an error, or even attempting to present arguments to sway her, is disrespectful. Ginsburg is the Pope; not only can’t you question her pronouncements after she’s made them, you can’t even offer an opinion on a matter where she hasn’t yet weighed in.

Ginsburg and Breyer are powerful and important people in the U.S. government, but they aren’t kings or popes. They’re public functionaries in a democracy—we pay their salaries. Moreover, as Jonathan Bernstein points out, the founders intended judges to be included in the democratic process. Federal judges are appointed by the executive and confirmed by the legislative branch. Executive and legislative elections therefore have a major effect on the judiciary. Pointing that out isn’t bad form or insufficiently respectful. It’s simply acknowledging how our Constitution works.

Of course, the Constitution also says that Supreme Court justices serve for life, or until they decide to retire. No one can make Ginsburg or Breyer leave; it’s a decision they’ll make for themselves. But part of democracy is a free press, and part of a free press is attempting, through argument and reason, to influence policy and political actors. And whether they want to be or not, Ginsburg and Breyer are political actors, and their decisions about when they will retire have enormous political consequences.

Epps says he thinks it’s “bad manners and bad psychology” for anyone to tell Ginsburg (or presumably Breyer) what to do. As far as the “bad psychology” goes, the idea that Ginsburg is some sort of cantankerous child who will stay in her seat just to spite some op-ed writer strikes me as insulting and ridiculous. And for the “bad manners”: well, democracy thrives on bad manners. Deference to power and reverence for position have their place, but in a democracy that should be fairly circumscribed. The Constitution says that Ginsburg and Breyer can hang on as long as they want or can. But it also says that people have the right, and arguably the responsibility, to point out what the political consequences of that political decision may be.

Knife Forever

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Madeloud way back when.
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Shonen Knife
Free Time
[P-vine]

I haven’t heard any of Shonen Knife’s albums since 1998’s sublimely silly Happy Hour. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware that they were still a going concern. So when I picked up their latest, I was excited, but a little nervous as well. They’ve replaced their founding bassist, they’re a decade past their heydey — Lollipops and Fish Eyes forbid, but…is it possible that they suck now? Could their cuteness have curdled?

I needn’t have worried. Shonen Knife’s formula has stayed the same: Ramonesesque three-chord songs backing adorably dada lyrics about food, animals, or any other topic as long as it is treated as if it were a food or an animal. It’s simple, it’s unpretentious, and — even if the indie scene has moved on to other things — it works every bit as well in 2010 as it did in the 90s. The most characteristic outing here is undoubtedly “Capybara,” an insanely catchy tune about…well, you know. “South American animal/always biting grass….roly-poly body shape/swimming very well.” Sing it in a winsome female voice with a Japanese accent, shifting into a Beatles-y psych chorus to announce “Sleeping, biting, all the time/Sleeping, snoring, all the night” — it’s so comforting. In fact, the only way it could possibly be improved is with a techno version sung in Japanese — which is thoughtfully included as a bonus track.

“Comforting” pretty much defines Shonen Knife’s whole aesthetic. Greil Marcus and a million sad aging morons may point to the Clash and mumble incoherently about fighting the power, but in Japan they know that punk is music to shake your toddler to. “Rock N Roll Cake” isn’t about keeping the faith — it’s a recipe for woolgathering. (“Rock cake/ I want to sleep inside it…Roll cake/I can have funny dreams.”)

Even a song like “Economic Crisis” is not a call to arms but a cheerful ditty. And “Perfect Freedom” isn’t about the allure of Dionysiac abandon, but is instead a thoughtful, cautionary note from your mildly dotty aunt. “An…archy in the UK/it might be a mistake.”

“Love Song” though, is my absolute favorite. The band nods to girl group garage with a tune that adds some sway to the rock as they sing about how they don’t really like love songs, but everyone likes to listen to them. “Maybe I have a strange mind,” they muse, and then, in half parody, half capitulation, they start trotting out the clichés. “I want you, ooooo/ I need you, oooo/ such phrases/embarrass me.” The completely disarming sincerity of the distanced disavowal sung in those little girl voices just about breaks my heart. There are another six albums that Shonen Knife released over the last 12 years, and I’m thinking I’m going to have to go back and get them all.

Utilitarian Review 4/18/15

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Sean Michael Robinson on why we need to translate more Adachi sports manga.

An index to the Blog Carnival on Censure vs. Censor on Women Write About Comics.

Nate Atkinson on freedom to speak and freedom from speech.

Domingos Isabelinho on Stefano Ricci’s “The Story of the Bear.”

Michael Carson on the military documentary “Point and Shoot” and overdetermined freedom fighting.

Chris Gavaler interviews Katy Simpson Smith about pirates and literary fiction.

On Ivan Brunetti’s New Yorker cover, gender, genre, and genius.

An interview with anDee of the amazing Aquarius Records.

Utilitarians Everywhere

In my first piece for Quartz I argued that the internet is making us smarter because we never read anything.

At Pacific Standard I reviewed Allison Pugh’s book on economic precarity and talked about how eroding worker/employer commitments damages personal relationships.

At the Atlantic I wrote about how clones on Orphan Black are really robots, and class war in R.U.R.

At Urbanfaith I wrote about the 20th anniversary of Dead Man Walking and how racism contributes to the death penalty.

I started writing for Playboy.com with articles about:

—why Idris Elba as Bond is only a start if you want diversity in film.

—why getting rid of indie rock doens’t address racism.

—Orphan Black, feminism, queerness and biological determinism.

On Ravishly I have a list of rockabilly women.

On Splice Today I wrote about

—America’s exceptional authoritarianism.

—the fact that there’s no media conspiracy in favor of Hillary.

Other Links

The Calgary Expo seems to have ejected a female MRA group that was disrupting panels there.

Katherine Cross on what’s wrong with Jon Ronson’s book on public shaming.

Arthur Chu on Madonna, Drake, and consent.

Ms. Marvel and female characters sell really, really well on digital.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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