The Captain and the Silicon Lifeform

It was William Shatner's 90th birthday a few days ago and I saw various people online wishing him well. I decided to watch Shatner's favourite episode of Star Trek (according to his memoirs), the 1967 first season episode called "The Devil in the Dark". It is a good episode and dated in ways that make it a breath of fresh air to 2021 eyes.

Along with Princess Mononoke, "Devil in the Dark" is one of the few stories of human industry versus the environment I've come across that doesn't portray human industry as the embodiment of pure evil. We're introduced to the group of miners menaced by an alien threat before the opening theme.

When was the last time you saw a group of guys like this in a movie or TV series? Nowadays, if a film or series absolutely must show a group of working class proles, they'll invariably be young and sleek. On Star Trek, podgy old guys were cast because that's what miners generally looked like in the '60s.

They're on a planet mining minerals desperately required for reactors by several nearby colonies. The mysterious monster also takes out the miners' reactor by making off with a crucial component--one too old for the Enterprise to be carrying a replacement for. Writers used to integrate a better sense of understanding of how things tend to work. Every piece of technology on this show is made up but there's a legitimacy to this chain of problems--a crucial mining operation that nonetheless relies on dated technology that the relief vessel can't provide maintenance for. Advancements that may be great in the long term, making things worse in the short term.

Spock (Leonard Nimoy) slowly starts to work out that there's more to the dangerous creature than it may seem. The peculiar silicon orbs it leaves around will obviously be eggs to most viewers but Spock is very cautious expressing this theory for 1960s audiences. Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley are all good in their usual debate triumvirate. I particularly like the scene where Spock first mentions to Kirk that killing the last of a species may be a "crime against science." Kirk has a visible emotional reluctance to even contemplating the idea because he senses all the obstacles in the way of doing anything about it. Spock, meanwhile, doesn't actually need convincing the thing still needs to be killed and calmly only says that it's "a pity." After all this time, Spock is still one in a million.

Star Trek is available on Amazon Prime and Netflix (in the U.S. and Japan).

I'm reminded that I began this year by watching Star Trek II, a film that seems an even more appropriate viewing for Shatner's birthday. May you continue to feel young, Captain.

Twitter Sonnet #1435

A face consumes an extra hour's night.
The longer day would take the chin to heart.
The soggy message urged a laundry fight.
A perfect shadow taught the sculptor art.
Repeated beaches build a circle sea.
Recycled salt condensed to cool a whale.
Convening milks endorse the mild tea.
In lettuce juice we dipped the fluffy kale.
The soba noodle turns in boiling dreams.
The sober noggin churns in roiling seas.
The sloppy napkin folds on crumpled seams.
The stripey number yields a ribbon tease.
The squishy onion passed the mustard bomb.
The dishy woman cached the plaster ROM.

Passing the Time Playing Solitaire

1962's The Manchurian Candidate is a film about brainwashing, in the old fashioned, sci-fi sense, but also, more fundamentally about the real world equivalent of brainwashing. That's the truly brilliant thing about it, the way it so skillfully weaves a sense of untrustworthy reality.

The film begins with a group of American soldiers in Korea in 1952. They come home and one of them, Raymond (Laurence Harvey), wins the Medal of Honour. The group's leader, Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), meanwhile, starts to have terrible nightmares about a boring lecture on hydrangeas randomly changing into a brainwashing demonstration for a group of high level Soviet and Chinese officials.

Sometimes the dialogue seems to be coming from the boring hydrangea lady, other times it seems to be coming from the Communist brass. Director John Frankenheimer and his editor, Ferris Webster, do a good job blending the two scenarios without too much fanfare--there's no musical sting when one environment switches to the other, it's all done very casually.

And this blends nicely with the rest of the film which is peppered with small, linguistic pieces of destabilisation, making it all seem so horribly credible. Raymond's stepfather is a Joseph McCarthy-ish senator who, when asked multiple times, gives out different numbers of the "card-carrying Communists" he knows to be embedded in congress. His familiar political vehemence comes with an equally familiar, shameless obfuscation. But there's even subtler instances of confusion.

I love the meet-cute on the train between Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh though I imagine a lot of people might see the scene and whole subplot as superfluous. But in addition to their flirtation having the great, multilayered sexiness of that cinematic era's high-brow flirtations, it also fits in with the abundant examples of life's strange coincidences and inconsistencies. She jokes about being a Chinese railroad worker and her name happens to be inexplicably French sounding, Eugenie. That's what she tells him her name is but later admits her friends usually call her by her middle name, Rose. She says Eugenie sounds vulnerable and when asked why she'd given him that name she confesses maybe she felt vulnerable. That's flirtatious but it also feeds back to the film's general sense of vulnerability about one's own unstable identity--because, of course, if we can't correctly perceive the world, we can't correctly perceive the meaning of our own actions in it, and so we can't correctly perceive ourselves, insofar as our actions define who we are.

It's Laurence Harvey's character who really has this problem. The same kind of moody performance he gave in Room at the Top as an "angry young man" translates perfectly here into a man whose whole reality conspires against him. Angela Lansbury (who manages a better American accent than he does) deservedly won Best Supporting Actress for her role as his domineering, manipulative mother who also happens to be mixed up with the domineering, manipulative political forces. It sounds crazy and logical at the same time which makes it perfect.

Altogether, the film is pretty grim, not the least because of how clearly insightful it is.

The Manchurian Candidate is available on The Criterion Channel until March 31.

Finding Witches on a Hell Mouth

Whenever I think of screenwriter Jane Espenson, I tend to picture Joyce Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe it's because of "Gingerbread", a 1999 episode Espenson co-wrote with Thania St. John, which features Joyce prominently. It's really not fair to Espenson that I imagine she looks like Joyce because Joyce is my least favourite character and Espenson's scripts are often good. "Gingerbread" included.

It begins deceptively bad. When Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is on patrol for vampires to slay, her mother, Joyce (Kristine Sutherland), shows up unexpectedly with snacks. Buffy tells her slaying is something she needs to do alone but only manages to convince Joyce to try to stay out of the way. What Buffy ought to have said is that it's dangerous for Joyce to be wandering about in the dark, vamp-infested park, that Buffy has enough to worry about looking out for herself. The whole segment lacks a necessary sense of mortal danger.

Maybe that was done intentionally to dilute the shock of Joyce coming across the corpses of two young children. This kicks off a thought-provoking episode about mob mentality and witch hunts--symbols drawn on the kids' hands leads Joyce and the other neighbourhood moms to blame witches.

As things ramp up, Joyce founds a MADD-like organisation called, amusingly, "MOO"--"Mothers Opposing the Occult". There's a joke only female screenwriters could make. And they're merciless with the frightened moms in this story, who incite book burnings and locker inspections with all the casual cheer of a bake sale. Kristine Sutherland, who plays Joyce, is a terrible actress, always giving the one-note, supporting role sitcom mom performance no matter how serious or complex the show got. But she's kind of well suited to this except I think the story might have been more effective if it had granted some better sense of legitimacy to the initial fear that kicks off the paranoia. But there's also some pleasure in seeing nitwits like this getting lampooned.

This episode marks the one and only appearance of Willow's mother, Sheila (Jordan Baker). She plays a feminist theorist professor who's totally out of touch with her daughter, hilariously spouting theory as she attempts to confront her daughter on the issues. Now there's a character I doubt anyone's allowed to write these days.

SHEILA: Identification with mythical icons is perfectly typical of your age group. It's a classic adolescent response to the pressures of incipient adulthood.

WILLOW: Oh. Is that what it is.

SHEILA: Of course I wish you could have identified with something a little less icky but, developmentally speaking--

WILLOW: Mom, I'm not an "age group". I'm me. Willow group.

...

WILLOW: How would you know what I can do? Last time we had a conversation over three minutes it was about the patriarchal bias of The Mister Rogers Show.

SHEILA: Well, with "King Friday" lording over all the lesser puppets . . .

Alyson Hannigan as Willow really shines in this scene though her "rebellious" turn at the end feels a little rushed and is part of the reason I feel like this story would have been better off as a two or three part episode.

I really like the scene where Buffy realises no-one knows the kids' names and no-one knows who their parents were. Those are some pieces of information one might chalk up to bad writing of the episode--it would be pretty typical of bad television writing--but this show turns it on its head to give the viewer a little lesson on remembering to think critically. And, of course, such witch hunts often do get momentum by maintaining awareness of only a very narrow set of facts. One could look at the recent cancellation of Joss Whedon himself and point to all kinds of obvious details that are consistently absent from articles and opinion posts.

This is also the episode where Amy (Elizabeth Anne Allen) accidentally turns herself into a rat, one of my favourite ongoing plot threads. It's a good thing the actress was always evidently willing to return to the show.

Sparks Fly Between the Lamb and the Diva

Which gets you further in life, maintaining a spirit of benevolence while enduring catastrophe, or exploiting your charm and friendships to ruthlessly destroy your enemies? 1958's Afrodite, dea dell'amore (Aphrodite, Goddess of Love) presents this question in the form of a melodrama about Christian slaves in Greece during Nero's reign. As sand and sandal movies go, this one's much more about admiring the scantily clad stars than brutal sword fights but it also presents a story that's both delightfully trashy and somewhat intelligent.

In the U.S. it was released as Slave Women of Corinth, which drastically changes how you're likely to interpret the film. The plot does centre on two beautiful slave woman--Diala, played by Irene Tunc, and Lerna, played by Isabelle Corey(both French actresses).

Lerna, along with several other slaves, is secretly a Christian while Diala is the diva, personal slave of their wealthy owner. She seduces their new Jewish owner only to betray him so she can get herself and the rest of the slaves confiscated by Antigonus (Ivo Garrani), Archon of Corinth. Then she gets to work seducing Antigonus in the hopes of ruling the city by his side.

Antigonus brings the famous sculptor, Demetrius (Anthony Steffen), to town to make a statue of Aphrodite for the new temple. Demetrius chooses Diala as his model--and actress Irene Tunc does look remarkably like a Greco-Roman sculpture.

Aphrodite herself doesn't appear in the film so the original title draws your attention to this subplot, inducing you to view Diala as a representative of Aphrodite in the underlying thematic argument. Lerna represents the rising power of Christianity. The two are portrayed as friends until both of them fall in love with Demetrius and Diala's method of handling the situation is pretty much what you'd expect from Aphrodite.

The story is a melodrama, relying on improbable circumstances to get from point A to B, like the fortuitous (for Lerna) power shift occurring in Rome at the same time, not to mention the fact that Demetrius is a pretty influential guy to have infatuated with you. So the movie doesn't exactly present a rock solid argument but never underestimate the appeal of watching drama between two beauties in tiny diaphanous tunics.

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love is available on Amazon Prime under the title Slave Women of Corinth.

Twitter Sonnet #1434

The paper plane attempts a clumsy course.
The weaving clouds reveal a knotty sun.
The headless paper clip felt no remorse.
Distracted words would clog the water's run.
The sleeping dog was meant to call the time.
Unbidden clocks arranged a breakfast job.
A posted pass reports the doctor's rhyme.
We glued the kernels round the barren cob.
In sleepy thoughts the dreaming house awoke.
The timer ticked across the kitchen floor.
The feeling came that something scaly spoke.
A shadow fluffed its hair behind the door.
Preparing lunch condensed the sink to slice.
A dicey choice reduced the roll to rice.

Metal Wings and Battleship

My expectations for Falcon and the Winter Soldier were pretty low. I'd never been particularly interested in either character despite the fact that Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of my favourite MCU films. But I liked the first episode of the new series which aired a couple days ago. It's not as intriguing as WandaVision, it's even kind of boring, but I appreciate it for not being obnoxious or egregiously stupid.

The episode, like, apparently, several upcoming episodes, was directed by veteran television director Kari Skogland who also directed an episode of the Netflix Punisher series so this is her second outing in the MCU. She does a decent enough job--the action scenes are fast moving, if a little predictable--the moment I saw the helicopter with the open sides, I knew Falcon was going to fly through. I saw someone on Twitter describe the opening as a military recruitment ad. I guess if the military had guys with wings, sure.

He doesn't really have a superpower, does he? Just mechanical wings? I never read any of the comics with Falcon. According to Wikipedia, he was briefly a mutant. Maybe the MCU will reintroduce that idea as part of their interminable X-Men teases. At the moment, he's just a guy with mechanical wings, which makes him a less powerful version of X-Men's Archangel, I guess.

As a character in the MCU, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is kind of a blank slate. He's always just been around either to react as the normal modern human guy to Steve Rogers or to be part of the CG super-mob in a busy Avengers fight scene. This episode opens him up a little, giving him a sister and nephews (who amusingly call him "Uncle Sam") and a family legacy involving a mouldering old boat. There's a kind of interesting scene where they try to get a loan from the bank for the boat. I like how the bank employee is insensitive but not cartoonishly horrible when he's oddly focused on taking selfies instead of talking about loans. Still, the scene feels truncated, as though there was a longer version where he actually explained why Sam's government contracts were insufficient. The episode handles The Blip a little better than other things in the MCU--certainly better than Far From Home--and there was just the barest hint of how billions of people suddenly turning up might have affected financial institutions.

Sam still feels insubstantial but I can see him possibly becoming interesting. Bucky (Sebastian Stan) has a lot more baggage to work with and I liked his awkward date. Though actress Miki Ishikawa reminded me of the typical MCU child actors--as seen in the Ant-Man movies and WandaVision--whose flatly chipper line deliveries make them seem manic and partially deaf. Sebastian Stan isn't bad though I don't understand why so many Star Wars fans want him to play Luke Skywalker so badly.

I think there's reason to hope the series will improve in quality once we get to scripts by John Wick's Derek Kolstad. I'll tune in in any case.

Fisherman versus Nazis

As if life isn't hard enough for world-weary fishing boat captain Harry Morgan, he finds his job expanded to include ferrying French resistance fighters in 1944's To Have and Have Not. A great movie that diverges wildly from its superior source novel by Ernest Hemingway, it stars the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, their first of many films together.

There are several viable ways to interpret the title of the novel, few of which are as applicable to the film. There's the difference between economic "haves" and "have nots"--the likes of working class Harry versus wealthy vacationers--and there's also the depiction of wealthy people whose torrid personal lives essentially leave them having and not having relationships.

Instead of a man turned into a murderer due to desperation and opportunity, Bogart's Harry Morgan, despite rough edges, is an unmitigated hero. He puts up a mercenary front and expresses reluctance to do anything without getting paid but eventually he's aiding the French underground gratis. The film lacks what's really interesting about the novel, which is its remarkably clear-sighted portrayal of human beings boiled down to animal instincts. But the movie was directed by Howard Hawks with a screenplay by Jules Furthman and William Faulker--supposedly with some input from Hemingway himself--so naturally it's pretty good.

The first portion of the film somewhat faithfully adapts the novel. Harry takes a wealthy tourist fishing and when the tourist loses a fishing rod by acting like an idiot Harry demands compensation. In the book, the wealthy guy promises to pay but skips town instead. In the movie, his pocket is picked by Marie "Slim" Browning (Bacall) who's nabbed in turn by Harry--who makes her return the wallet in which Harry finds travellers checks worth more than the amount the guy owes him. But even here, movie Harry's sense of honour prevents him from robbing the man outright.

For all the talent behind this movie, its chief virtue is in Bogart and Bacall being fascinated by each other's sly, sardonic demeanours. It's a real delight watching her aggressively come on to him while the two grin like cats, exchanging trivial nothings and double entendres they each wear like thin veils.

And it is a pretty exciting World War II adventure film. It's a bit disappointing for a singular novel on human nature is used to make a second rate Casablanca but even a second rate Casablanca is pretty damned good.

The Detective, the Dog, and the Robot

I was excited when I learned "Mind Over Mayhem", a 1974 episode of Columbo, featured Jose Ferrer as the killer. I hoped this would be one of the more serious, dramatic episodes that would make good use of the legendary actor.

Or, well, have him use Robbie the Robot in the murder. I guess that works, too. Ferrer really isn't challenged as a performer here but he always comes up with effective ways to deliver lines about how he doesn't know how his colleague's body got moved from the driveway to his living room, or how the burglars recognised the heroin they stole when it was labelled only with the chemical formula.

Ferrer is in charge of a think tank that runs sophisticated war games with cutting edge 1970s technology, which naturally also includes the robot from Forbidden Planet. The episode also features a kid genius named "Spelberg" (apparently an homage to Steven) and Columbo's dog. It's that kind of story. It's fun.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

Pookas and Changelings, Day II

I'm calling to-day the second day of Saint Patrick's Day--yesterday was March 17 here in Japan and now that it's the 18th for me it's the 17th for the western world. So I'm calling this a two day event. I indulged in the popular fantasy of Ireland last and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I still marvel at the effectiveness of the special effects to make the leprechauns look small.

The Lord of the Rings movies really owe a huge debt to this one.

One of the few things I know how to cook is boxty--Irish potato pancakes made by mixing mashed potatoes with flour, grated potato, and egg, and frying the batter like normal pancakes (but five minutes for each side of each pancake). Last night I experimented and boiled and mashed cabbage along with the potatoes. I added lemon, thyme, and diced raw onion to the batter. As usual I splashed the finished cakes with Tabasco sauce and added butter and cheddar cheese. They were really good.

It's a bit ironic I'm enjoying a double Saint Patrick's Day for living in Japan since most people seem never to have heard of the holiday around here. Many people don't even distinguish Ireland from England--the Japanese word for Great Britain is イギリス--pronounced "Igirisu" or "English", something many people from Scotland or Northern Ireland might not like (I can imagine what Malcolm Tucker would say) and of course there's little awareness of the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But then again, I'm sure many people in the west can't point to Kyushu on a map of Japan.

I was thinking about all this last night when I was talking to a woman in an online chess club about Saint Patrick's Day. Over the course of the conversation, I realised she had no idea the Republic of Ireland wasn't part of the U.K. This was especially strange because she's claimed to be an Englishwoman living in England ever since I met her some years ago. I've long suspected this was an act--she was always up at the wrong hours and she mentioned the fact that she was English just a little too often. Last night I saw her confidently asserting that all of Ireland was part of the U.K. She also told me that all the Irish people in England are comfortable calling themselves British. Even if that's true, the fact that she felt comfortable speaking for all the Irish people in England was a bit silly, even if she personally knew more than twenty and had spoken to each of them on the topic.

Part of me wonders if she is English because it seems like a fraud would have taken the time to do some minimal research, particularly when this was an online chat with long pauses in the conversation during which she could have easily googled the information. The thing is, this isn't the first time I've run into a young person who seemed ignorant of aspects of the nationality they claimed to be. When I was getting my certificate to teach English as a second language, there was a guy in the programme who claimed to be Australian, despite not having a trace of an Australian accent--he sounded American. Sure, maybe he lost his accent somewhere along the way but there were all kinds of other little signs that he was a fake. One day, I heard someone ask him if Australia really had the enormous spiders people see in viral videos and memes about the country and he replied, "Yes, we have the . . . brown recluse." The brown recluse is native to North America. Like the "Englishwoman", he showed again and again that he was so badly informed about his supposed country of origin as to defy belief, not only that he was from the place in question but that he was actually attempting to pull off a charade with this level of research and preparation. It's led me to believe that this isn't so much an attempt to deceive people as it is an attempt to assert an identity, I guess not unlike Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who claimed to be black for much of her professional life.

It's like people are treating real life like a role playing game. The feeling I have is that it's much more widespread--I mean, I can see the inept pretenders. It stands to reason there must be some people who are good at it.

Twitter Sonnet #1433

We searched for suits to end the day in green.
The strangest pair reduced the deck to chips.
Potential dwells in some enchanted bean.
Across a sea the rain refuses tips.
A wild wave reports against the cliff.
In older pictures green resembles black.
The grains have bloomed in ev'ry graphic gif.
The words were writ upon the barley sack.
Reluctant nets would sleep instead of load.
The time a slide would take we'd browse a store.
And on and on, the train retook the road.
Romantic books occasion something more.
A wish from Reaper's coach was granted late.
With gold and whiskey, glad the poacher ate.

It's a Harsh, Unforgiving Day in the Neighbourhood

You think you've got it bad, try living on one of the Aran islands, like 1934's Man of Aran. Shot entirely on location on the Irish island of Inishmore, the footage remains incredible. The harsh living conditions are impressively enough conveyed--and then there's an amazing shark hunt.

Shot very much like a silent film, all the sound is dubbed over. The dialogue isn't relevant to understanding the events unfolding--much of it is incomprehensible if you don't speak Irish, anyway. But it's easy enough to understand the woman trudging across a landscape of jagged stone, bowed under the weight of a massive bundle of kelp.

Meanwhile, her husband is busy with a sledge hammer, pounding away on the rocks. Title cards explain this is how they plant potato crops--they have to batter ditches out of the ground and put kelp and soil in them. A hard enough job becomes a feat of strength, endurance, and patience for them.

We also meet their kid who fishes with a crab for a lure. He's caught off guard, though, when a basking shark nabs his bait.

Yeah, basking sharks eat plankton, not crabs, but the film doesn't mention this--nor does it mention the creatures are of no threat to humans. But that's okay, it helps the drama a lot if you can put this out of your mind. I don't think I'd ever seen footage of a basking shark so the kid's first sight of one was a bit of a shock for me, too.

It looks really alien. Director Robert J. Flaherty (who also directed Nanook of the North) wisely cuts the musical score, leaving eerie silence as we watch the behemoth cruising under inches of water. We don't really get a sense of scale, though, until the film cuts to the men hunting it with harpoons.

And then we realise this alien thing is bigger than their boat. When it gets away, the man retrieves a hook and incredulously holds the big thing up, showing it's been completely bent.

Flaherty apparently invented quite a lot for the film, actually, though, according to the Wikipedia entry, there's some debate over some items. Shark hunting for lamp oil was no longer practiced by the people and whether or not the people of Aran had ever hunted them is a point of contention. Of course, this is why fiction is usually so much better than fact.

Man of Aran is available on The Criterion Channel.

Teens Graduate and Go to the Mall

I'm seeing more and more signs of spring around here. A really big sign was the graduation ceremony I went to to-day for one of the junior high schools I've worked at. I watched third year students I'd gotten to know over the past year file into the gym, sit down, and each be called by name. Parents and teachers were there, it was beautiful. I can't believe I won't see these kids around school anymore. I hope I see some of them around town.

Junior high school in Japan is three years, for students from 13 to 15, and then high school (which isn't compulsory in Japan) is three years. So working at a junior high school really feels like the bridge between worlds--the first year students are like little kids and the third years already seem like young adults. Normally first and second year students attend the ceremony, too, but, due to the Corona virus, couldn't this year. And everyone wore masks, of course.

I live in Nara prefecture which hasn't been in a state of emergency since early last year. I haven't even heard anything about getting vaccines around here. The mall's not even closed.

How are malls in America doing? I watched this new Billie Eilish video this morning in which she's wandering around the empty Glendale Galleria.

Looks like it was shot after hours but the shops had food ready for her. Chipotle had takeout ready to go for her, making me think the video's not so off-the-cuff as it looks. Though maybe having takeout bags ready is just normal during the pandemic now? Anyway, I like the energy of the video. It's a decent song, though I'm not a fan of Eilish's outfits. But I gather I'm kind of not supposed to be. Now that's punk.

Over 140 million views on a video of a girl wandering around the mall, shot on an iPhone. Hopefully this does something to reinvigorate malls in the US.

Twitter Sonnet #1432

Our smokey thoughts return to reddened trees.
For after blunted dreams we rolled a die.
However ants would fain disparage bees.
They dwell below the same collector's sky.
Guitars are stacked beside the burning grill.
A burger brain is writing songs of meat.
The story turns against the cheapest bill.
Expensive butts contend to take a seat.
For eyes, the dripping glass supplied the flame.
Electric dances charged the floor for gas.
Remember tiles swapped a shingle's name.
The sunny train redeems a drunken lass.
The crooked flower watched parading shoes.
A silver letter brings the gilded blues.

A Star with a Garnish of Film

Why is Brigitte Bardot so perfect? That's the chief question to recur in my mind as I watched 1957's Une Parisienne. The plot of this otherwise disposable comedy is as generic as its title--people running around houses and bedrooms to discover or conceal adultery. Or to languidly pontificate on the necessity of adultery. None of it manages to exceed the allure of Bardot's physical proportions.

I guess she's most famous for her posterior but in this movie my eye was caught mostly by the juxtaposition of her shoulders, bust, neck, and chin.

After a complicated misunderstanding, she marries the government secretary she'd had a crush on (Henri Vidal). But, suspecting him of keeping a mistress, she starts fooling around herself with none other than His Highness, Prince Charles, played by none other than Charles Boyer.

He's clearly in this movie for one reason and one reason only; to make out with Brigitte Bardot. Their energy doesn't exactly crackle but each always seems sweetly delighted by the other. That was another thing about Bardot, maybe the more important thing, likely the thing that inspired philosophical essays about her--she was so self-possessed. She could play innocent (better when she was younger) but she never had that deer-in-the-headlights look or the confused panic affected by most leading ladies in the situations Bardot was typically placed in.

It's her lips, too. With the chin and the shoulders and the . . . Well, it's everything.

Une Parisienne is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Wholesome

Since I was a senior in high school, I've tended to regard Marilyn Manson fans as kind of the Trekkies of Goth. In the sense that Star Trek was a more commodified, mainstream version of harder sci-fi by the likes of Isaac Azimov or Harlan Ellison. Now I look back and feel mildly amused that I spent any time thinking about what "Goth" really was. It hardly seems to matter when, like most art/subcultural movements, there are so many vague boundary lines. Now, for Goth, all categories seem to be watered down into a distant memory, something safe for the picture frame, to borrow a line from an old Tori Amos song from when she was dangerous.

Society is so over dangerous. This morning I read this article about Marilyn Manson and the death of the "bad boy". The irony this article succinctly describes had occurred to me, too:

20 years after religious groups picketed Manson’s concerts and blamed him for the corruption of America’s youth, one millennial woman has accomplished what a million pearl-clutching warnings from the likes of the Parents' Television Council could not. In the weeks after Wood leveled her accusations, Manson was dropped; first by his label, then his agent. The new Creepshow TV series, for which he had already filmed an appearance, announced that his segment would be scrapped. The denunciations from fans-no-more are still rolling in.

He's officially too creepy for Creepshow.

I certainly don't agree that the "bad boy" is dead, though. The purpose of the bad boy has changed. He's no longer the sexy Satanic sage, here to lead you on a path of delicious mayhem. He's the fresh faced, heartbroken, Korean popstar, who only needs your love to be redeemed from a life of delinquency. The point of the bad boy is not to be delivered of stifling convention, it's to present the story of a misfit being saved. If he can be saved, so can you.

Being accused of sexual abuse has made Marilyn Manson the most interesting he's been in decades. His shock cache seemed to dissolve at the end of the 90s as atheism became more mainstream. The new religious faith that has emerged in recent years is in the accuser. If Manson were a truly devoted performance artist--regardless of whether or not he's guilty--he'd lean into this now. He'd confirm everything Wood says and probably claim he'd done much, much worse. Maybe if he were a younger man, he would. But now he's the man who kicked long-time collaborator Twiggy Ramirez out of his band because of allegations early in the MeToo movement.*

What's really changed? It's the same reason Death Metal is popular in Scandinavia and chipper Bollywood musicals are popular in India--the more economically secure your country is, the more willing you are to indulge in dangerous thoughts. The things that get called transgressive now--like The Last Jedi--are done in the name of justice and wholesomeness and everyone's as eager to disassociate themselves from mayhem for mayhem's sake as James Gunn is eager to disassociate himself from ten year old jokes about paedophilia. It's not safe to be triggery--and the best defence is the preemptive denial in the form of strident denunciation.

I'd lost interest in Marilyn Manson by my senior year but I did like him before that, I had his first three albums. The shift in my interest arose not so much because of a change in my moral perspective but because I became more interested in more complex art--I realised Trent Reznor was the real genius at around the same time my interest in Star Trek was being supplanted by David Lynch and Akira Kurosawa. It's not the loss of brash contrarians that distresses me as much as the loss of intellectual, nuanced art, which tends to get tossed out at the same time. Moral contrariness is bad, but at least it's click bait--intelligence takes time to process and has a tendency to be disappeared entirely before the good people inadvertently like something that may be interpreted as unwholesome.

A Twenty to Twenty Five Percent New World

Who could possibly expect a penniless street urchin to make it with a girl who grew up in wealth and splendour? Anyone who saw Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, and possibly The Rescuers and The Black Cauldron, I guess. So while the third film in the Disney Renaissance (I'm not counting The Rescuers Down Under) in some ways continued the path into new territory, 1992's Aladdin was also a return to some very familiar territory. What sets it apart, and makes it part of the Renaissance, was that its story was very focused on human characters and their romance. With Tim Rice taking over for a deceased Howard Ashman on lyrics, Alan Menken returned once again for some fantastic songs and the animation is generally better than in Beauty and the Beast--its cgi is present but less conspicuously dated. Glen Keane animates Aladdin, the character with the most screentime, and all the other animators seem well matched with their characters. Altogether, Aladdin is an exciting romantic adventure film with enough heart to easily overshadow the weaknesses in its screenplay. And it has a great voice cast.

For many people, the movie's best known for Robin Williams in his role as the Genie. I like Robin Williams though I actually like Gilbert Godfried as Iago a lot more. Godfried was really inspired casting.

Williams' improvisational style and rapid pop culture references present a tonal difference to earlier films in the Disney canon and are somewhat at odds with the rest of Aladdin itself. Though the Genie's spontaneous use of anachronistic props like cars and microphones don't undercut the tension as much as the inconsistent rules regarding the power of genies.

Aladdin (Scott Weinger) amusingly tricks the Genie into saving him from the Cave of Wonders without using up a wish but then later it's not clear why the Genie has to use up a wish when rescuing an unconscious Aladdin from drowning. At the end of the movie, Aladdin outsmarts the villain, Jafar (Jonathan Freeman), on the premise that turning into a genie would trap Jafar in a lamp, despite the fact that being trapped in a lamp is not a consistent feature in genie mythology.

But that sums up all the complaints I have about the film and not one of them is a deal breaker. The songs are fun, the characters are sweet, and the romance is sexy. This was my favourite Disney Renaissance movie when I was in high school because I thought Jasmine (Linda Larkin) was the hottest Disney princess. Nowadays, I'd give that crown to Ariel, but Jasmine has a fetching slyness about her. I love her animation when she uncovers Prince Ali's secret identity.

Ah, an apple, your classic symbol for female misbehaviour, tongue in cheek or otherwise.

She doesn't grab your interest as much as Ariel does, but that's fine, because the movie's more about Aladdin, but her motives are a lot clearer than Belle's. Jasmine wants the freedom to choose her own husband and is generally sick of the rules imposed on her. That's a lot clearer than Belle's vague desire to escape her charming little village in the French countryside. Considering Prince Eric wasn't a very well established character in The Little Mermaid, and Bianca was pretty one-note in the Rescuers movies, Aladdin is the first Disney animated film since Lady and the Tramp that really feels like it's about a relationship, about two people who are attracted to each other and discover an unexpected sympathy.

Mostly it's the sexual chemistry, the way the two physically play off each other, but there is a moment in Aladdin's shabby--but admirably spacious--cobbled together apartment where they both say the word "trapped" together. Both of them seek freedom and both of them initially see that freedom in the other's world. The "Whole New World" sequence gives them a breakthrough where they discover the freedom they seek doesn't exist in a life of poverty on the streets, or in a life of wealth in the palace, but on a magic carpet high above the clouds. That's how you get away from it all. How does this apply to me or you, watching the movie? Well, your creative interpretation is certainly free to provide the answer.

As in Lady and the Tramp and The Aristocats, Aladdin introduces the idea of class economic disparity without really doing anything with it--the solution in the end is to make the poor character rich, just like in Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, Oliver and Company, and Beauty and the Beast. It's a nice dream, as far as it goes.

Something that really drew my attention this time was Aladdin's propensity for lying, his reluctance to reveal the truth behind the "Prince Ali" facade. This may be just an idiot plot device but I've met so many young people who constantly lie about themselves now that it kind of resonated. And I don't just mean people from L.A. lying about the extent of their Hollywood connexions (I've met a few of those). Just about any college aged kid or recent graduate can't wait to really obviously inflate their resume as just part of a casual conversation. It's kind of exhausting. Maybe Aladdin will help me to be a little more patient with them in the future.

I thought it was a little known fact that Disney's Aladdin cribbed a lot from the 1940 Thief of Bagdad but references to this are all over the Wikipedia entry, including cited sources showing the film's screenwriters and producers quite candidly talking about it. The Thief of Bagdad is a much more beautifully written film, though. Jafar's desire to marry the Princess in The Thief of Bagdad is much spookier and more fascinating and Conrad Veidt gives a magnetic performance. And Sabu as Abu is so much better than a monkey could ever be.

The monkey is one of the things that make me think this film drew quite a bit from the Indiana Jones movies--he reminds me of the monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a lot of the Cave of Wonders stuff is reminiscent of Temple of Doom.

It all ties together, though, for a unified style in Aladdin. The film presents a delightful Arabian fantasy world, a wonderful place to go for about an hour and a half.

Aladdin is available on Disney+.

...

This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast