Black Panther, the New Star Wars? (a movie review post)

I'm not going to try to make a "best movie ever" case for Black Panther. It's quite an excellent movie, but there are movies I think are better, even other Marvel movies, for whatever reason, though Black Panther rather solidly lands in my top five from Marvel. It's hard to argue "best," at any rate; it's too subjective. It's too favorite.

That said, I think Panther may be the most significant movie since Star Wars, and I think, from a cultural standpoint, that Star Wars (I am talking A New Hope here) has been the most significant movie ever made. Initially, the perspective on Star Wars was merely that it had changed the way movies were made, and it certainly did that; however, Star Wars has become a part of the cultural zeitgeist in a way that no other movie ever has, including supporting the Boomer viewpoint of technology being dangerous and suspicious and untrustworthy. Trust the Force, not your targeting computer.

But that's a post for another time.

The thing about Star Wars is that it was different. Not just the technology behind it, but the appeal of the story. And let's not forget the irony of a movie using cutting edge technology to tell a story about the evils of technology and how we all need to get back to our mystic roots. Feel the Force. The story also appealed to a more basic... instinct, the heroic lure of the young male. It was all about how you could make it on your own if you just... trusted. Trusted yourself. Trusted fate. The Force. God. Whatever it is that is bigger than yourself that wanted your success despite your own efforts to derail it. It was different, and it helped to bring about a new cultural viewpoint that elevated the self above all else. Or, at least, it reinforced that Boomer self focus and made it seem not just okay but preferable.

In that same way, Black Panther is different, but Panther is different in the opposite direction. Where Star Wars says it's all about the hero's journey, Black Panther says it's about community. You can't do it on your own. Where Star Wars says it's about magic, faith, the Force; Panther says it's about technology: (See the scene where Ross wakes up from the medical bed.) I suppose it's still about defeating the evil Empire, though, whatever form that takes.

Look, I get it. I get that a lot of you out there don't understand what the big deal is. When Star Wars came out, my grandmother (who took me to see it) didn't understand what the big deal was either. As a movie, all on its own, isolated, Black Panther doesn't cover any new ground. The special effects aren't anything special, which is not to say that they're not spectacular; they just don't do anything new, but, then, I have a hard time seeing how we're actually going to see anything new in special effects any time soon.

The real effect of the movie is the nearly all black cast, and that is an amazing thing. Sure, yes, I get that there have been other movies with all black casts and you can't figure out the big deal. What makes this one different? Unfortunately, if that's a thing you can't see, I don't know how to explain it to you. You just have to realize that it is different and accustom yourself to the idea that things may change. Things may change in the way movies are made, and things may change culturally. Not right away, sure -- it did take 20 years for the full effect of Star Wars to start being felt -- but eventually.

It will be a good thing if, in 20 years, we can look back and say that, yes, Black Panther has had a lasting cultural influence. It opened doors for people of color that has long been closed. It opened doors for women that had long been closed. It helped push open the door to equality for all people that had long been held closed by white men.

Which brings us to the story of the movie, the Make Wakanda Great Again conflict. The conflict of the movie is reflective our current societal conflict and whether or not you should support your country even when it's doing the wrong thing, as if it's some all or nothing choice (as the Republicans seem to believe). This is all summed up in one very powerful exchange which goes something like this:
"If you love your country, you will serve it."
"I love my country so I will save it!"

Speaking of power, I believe the most powerful moment of the movie is possibly overlooked due to how understated it is. So as not to present it in a spoilery way -- but, if you've seen the movie, you should understand the part I mean -- I'll say it this way:
An old white man looks at T'Challa and says, basically, "What do you, a black man, have to offer that can possibly be of interest to us white people?" Yes, I know that's not what he said, but that was the context. It's what white men have been saying to black men for hundreds of years. To all people of color. As Black Panther shows, people of color have more to offer than we can imagine. We just have to give them room to do it.

A Sad Thing

Let's talk philosophy.

But only a little and only bouncing a bit on the surface.

Throughout most of human history, we have operated under this idea of "might makes right." We can talk about the concept from a number of angles, but they all come down to the ability of a person or group to silence his/their opponent(s). Often by death: combat, war, whatever. The stronger person/group then gets to set the rules, the "right."

Frequently, we (as a race) have used "God" as our justification. "I won because God was with me; therefore, I must be right." "God" wouldn't side with a loser, right?

Only, through the lens of history, something previous eras have not had to the extent we have today, we can see that that is, in fact, not true. Or, actually, we can see that "God" certainly wasn't on the side of the winners since they were clearly in the wrong (unless "God" is an immoral capricious bastard). These things we can see even today as the bully beats up the kid in the bathroom and stuffs his face in a toilet. He doesn't have any god on his side; he's just stronger and can, therefore, enforce his injustices on those weaker than himself. Or a group (the Republicans) can make it inordinately difficult for another group (African Americans/minorities) to vote thereby throwing an election in their favor.

And since this is a blog post, I'm not going to run through all of the historical examples of this faulty logic. Might doesn't make you right, but it might just make you an asshole.

As an aside, "might" is the root of racism.
But I digress...

Of course, in our "modern American society," we tend to frown on violence being used as a way to assert might (which is not necessarily so in other parts of the world). Instead, in the US, we tend to use wealth and, well, shouting. Shouting the loudest is our current iteration of beating someone up or challenging someone to a duel. It's this "yelling the loudest" thing I want to focus on.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this "off the cuff" from personal observations and what I already know about psychology (which is a lot considering I have a degree in it). I'm not citing sources, so, if you don't trust what I'm saying, do your own research. (Which is probably a good thing, all things considered.)

One thing that is known about people is that they tend to follow a show of force, which is why bullies tend to gather followers and why gangs attract people. There are too many reasons why to get into that, right now, but you can probably accept that as true. Another thing that is known is that what is true/factual is not of great importance to most people. People want more to follow someone who can "prove" they are right rather than working out what is right on their own. People, unfortunately, don't want to do that much thinking for themselves and most people are perfectly fine with being told what and how to think. Not that they even realize that that is what they are doing.
[The proliferation of fake news, right now, is a good example of people being willing to believe whatever is put in front of them and also an example of the type of people susceptible to it (those on the Right have been shown to be MUCH more susceptible to believing fabricated stories than those on the Left).]

What this comes down to is the person who can yell the loudest being declared the victor even if, maybe especially if, what the person is yelling is false. From experience, people with facts tend to be quieter people. They tend to be the thinkers. And they tend to erroneously believe "the facts will speak for themselves." The facts almost always speak too late or, rather, are listened to too late. Your opinion is only as strong as my fact until your opinion actually runs up against my fact and is crushed by it.

In fact, I think wrong people tend to yell all the more loudly because they know they know they have no facts or truth but want to assert themselves anyway. Having grown up in a household with a father exactly like this (to the point of yelling at me about text books being wrong because he was right because he said so godamnit!), I'm pretty good at recognizing this behavior, and Trump is exactly the same kind of personality.

So, yeah, thanks climate deniers. In four years when the climate is destroyed by Trump and his cronies, you'll know just exactly how strong your opinion was.

The one thing this election proved is that Trump is a blowhard. He relied upon bellowing loudly that he was right without ever having any facts to prove it and, the sad thing is, people swarmed to him. Yes, he proved that he has "might," that he can yell loudly. That he could yell more loudly than Clinton who mostly relied upon statistics and facts and experience, all concrete things that she believed would speak for her.

At this point, you might be saying, "But Clinton won the popular vote," which is true, she did, but she didn't win the EC because Trump cowed so many people into not voting by yelling so loudly about what a horrible person Clinton is. When half of the country doesn't bother to even make a showing, something is horribly wrong.

You know, we like to think we are all enlightened these days. That we are smarter than people of the past. But that is demonstrably not the case. Our technology and progress are not due to "people" but to select individuals who have been building on facts and truths over a long period of time. Quiet people. Thinkers. People who were, in their own times, frequently drowned out by people shouting over them.

"People" are a sad thing. Lemmings. Because Trump is certainly going to lead everyone off the edge of a cliff and, well, most people are not just going to follow willingly but delightfully. The problem is that the people who don't want to follow, people who see Trump for what he is, a bloated sack of flatulence, are going to get dragged off of the edge of the cliff, too. And, well, because it's America, we could actually drag the whole world with us.

[Yes, I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes, right now, and think I'm being "a bit extreme," but I will have another post soon on why this is not extreme but, actually, a clear and present danger.]

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List (an IWM post)

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

* * *

And that elsewhere is Indie Writers Monthly. Sort of. I mean it will be where to look. Today, we're just talking about the elements of fantasy. And there's a list! Everyone loves lists, right? So hop right over and check it out!

Abandoned Places: Xanadu Houses

I'm not gonna lie; X was... difficult. I mean, X is always difficult, but it was difficult enough for this theme that I began to think about cheating. But then! Then I found the Xanadu houses! The Xanadu houses were designed as homes of the future in the late 70s and early 80s. The had computer controlled environments, were ergonomically designed, and, most importantly, were made of polyurethane foam. The foam was meant to allow for quick construction.

Of the three Xanadu show homes that were built, the one built in Kissimmee, Florida, not far from EPCOT, proved to be the most popular, drawing over 1000 visitors a day at its height. However, due to the quickness with which the technology in the houses became obsolete (they used the Commodore 64 (can you imagine trying to run a house, today, from a Commodore 64?)), they never became more than a curiosity. Which turned out to be a good thing in all likelihood as the polyurethane proved to be not very resistant to mold and mildew. After being abandoned for several years at the end of the 90s, the Kissimmee house, the only one left at that point, was overgrown with mold. It was finally demolished about a decade ago.

Unfortunately, I could find no photos of the houses that are available for use, but you can see a gallery attached to the short article about the homes at io9.

For today's photos of abandoned places, I'm actually going to share some images of things that (mostly) have no place to be or I liked but did not cover. Enjoy!

 Above and below two photos by Klugschnacker under the linked license.

This next item is not exactly abandoned, but...

Those are views of the Aral Sea, what was once one of the four largest lakes on the planet. In the 60s, the Russians began diverting water from the various rivers that fed the sea. The view on the left is from 1989, the right from 2008. As you can see, the sea is almost non-existent at this point. It's considered one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Here is what it has left behind:

Aral photos by Martjin Munneke and used under the linked license.

A few other images that escaped posting:

I Can Spell Better Than My Brain

"What are we doing tomorrow night, Brain?"

Apparently, incorrectly spelling words, the same as every night.

I think we tend to give our brains too much credit. I mean, we rely on them to do stuff for us, stuff like thinking and spelling words correctly and remembering stuff. Yeah, I expect my brain to remember stuff, and I used to think it was pretty good at it, but I'm coming to believe that was just me and not my brain.

My brain does things like this:
My kids and I are leaving for school in the morning. My daughter is always the first one out the door. By a lot. I'm not really sure if she thinks that makes her brother (or me) go faster,  but it doesn't. At any rate, she'll ask me to unlock the car for her (which I can do from inside the house, thank to modern technology (AWESOME)), and go sit in it while her brother is still doing things like packing his lunch (which is already made, he just has to put it in his lunchbox), so, sometimes she's out there for a while. I'm frequently standing around in my jacket and my hat trying hard not to say, "We're going to leave without you," because he would just come back with "Okay!" and go back to his DS or whatever it was he was doing before he had to get ready to go. Anyway, we finally get out the door and I'm dreading getting into the car and having to listen to my daughter complain about how it's already 7:53 and she wanted to leave at 7:50, and the boy and I get in the car and she starts in on why it took so long and I start the car and say, "Did I lock the front door?"

One might think at that point that I'm asking Chompyhead (that's what we'll call the boy for reasons I may explain sometime), but I'm not, because I know he wasn't paying any attention. No, I'm asking my brain. Because, see, probably, my brain did tell my hands somewhere in the getting-out-of-the-house part to lock the front door, but I wasn't paying any attention to that part, because I just wanted Chompyhead to get out the door and into the car. And what does my brain say? "I don't remember."
"Seriously? That was, like, 30 seconds ago!"
My brain shrugs at me, "I don't remember."
That, of course, makes me angry, and I have to say, "What's the point of you, then?!" and climb back out of the car to check the door which is, of course, locked.
And I can't tell if my brain is laughing at me and chuckling "got you again" or if it really didn't remember, but, if it's going to go to the trouble of locking the door, it could at least let me know that it's done it. If I have to go back and check, what's the point?

And, so, when I'm writing, I don't want to have to think about how to spell words. Theoretically, my brain should know how to spell all of those words, right? Well, evidently not. And I'm not talking about obvious finger mistakes like "teh" instead of "the," I'm talking about words that my brain misspells over and over again. Especially homophones. Come on, Brain! You should know the difference between "peek" and "peak" and "steak" and "stake" and you shouldn't be "oblivious" by typing "obvious" and it shouldn't be "necessary" for me to stop you from typing "neccesary" every freaking time! I mean, come on! You've been doing this for a long time, why am I still having to remind you that it's only one "c"? Especially when I'm willing to give you a pass on "occasionally;" that one's totally on me.

All I want, and I don't really think that this is too much to ask for after all of this time, is that you get it write the first time. See! There you go again. I bet you thought I didn't see that. And it's that kind of thing that makes me wonder if you're doing all of this on purpose just to see if I'm paying attention. Well, I am! And I don't  much appreciate having to go back and fix your "mistakes," if that's what they are. You can be replaced, you know.

yeah, yeah I hear you laughing, "Science can't do brain transplants, yet." How do you know? Just because it's not being advertised, doesn't mean it's not going on somewhere. Besides, I have a Brain sitting right here next to my computer just waiting for the chance to take over the world!

(My Brain with his pet Yoda.)

Okay, so that taking over the world stuff is why it's still sitting on the computer, because I don't want that kind of trouble, but...

Your job, Brain, is to do the spelling. That's what I have you for. You're supposed to be the one stopping me and saying, "hold on there, buddy; 'necessary' only has one 'c'," not the other way around. If I have to do all the spelling and checking and all of that, what do I even have you for?

You know what, I can, too, get along just fine without you. I think you're really more trouble than you're worth. And, no, they don't check for brains before they give you a driver's license. That's dumb? Well, yeah, I know, but have you seen the other people out there driving around? You, of all brains, ought to be able to recognize brainless driving when you see it, so you can't hold that one over my head. I'll just drive like everyone else; they seem to get along just fine. Oh, I'll be dead within a week? We'll just see about that!

fklg l;jhghh ;zufhkl ;ljsdhg ;zhghg ;[ioghdfs lasdjgiou ;';kzjg ;pjfo ;lajlkhui aldhi0rt ...

Why Skynet Isn't Necessary

Okay, so that may not be exactly what I mean.
What I mean is if Skynet became real and took over everything, it wouldn't need to bother with terminators. There would be no point.

At least not for the "civilized" world.

Seriously, we're all already slaves to the non-existent Skynet. Slaves, I tell you, so why would it want to kill us all?

As far as it goes, I'm non-dependent on technology. I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a tablet. I don't have an i-anything. I'm not really all that "plugged in." I don't want to be. We don't even have TV. No cable, no satellite anything, no DVR. We have a TV set and a Blu-ray player (which we only have because someone gave it to us). We barely have a console gaming system for the kids. We even live as independently from our cars as much as practically possible.

I mean, when I go somewhere, I want to be there, at that place, doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if it's standing around reading a book while I'm waiting for my kids to get out of school. I don't want technology bothering me.

And, although I love video games, I love actual board and tabletop games more. Video games have always been a substitute for when I can't get the actual personal interaction of people for the games I really love. Granted, I haven't really had that since I left my gaming group behind in Shreveport something more than 15 years ago.

All of that said, when my computer died a week ago, I was reminded of just how dependent upon technology I still am even with the lengths I go to to avoid that dependence. I mean, I couldn't work. I couldn't work! I actually do quite a bit of writing on paper, but it just so happened that I had all of my recent stuff already transferred into the computer the week before and had carried forth from there on  the computer, so all of my most recent stuff was IN THE COMPUTER! And it was dead. I mean, sure, I could have sat down and written something else, but I had stuff I needed to be working on, and I couldn't get to it.

I felt like the cat when he wants to go out and there's no one there to open the door for him. It was horrible.

Not to mention the fact that I had to go buy a new computer, but we'll get to that later.

Anyway, the point is that even I am dependent on Skynet. My technology. I don't know what to do with myself without it other than go to bed early, which I actually did a couple of nights, because I had NOTHING that I could work on! Did I mention how horrible that was?

So, yeah, Skynet will have no need to send terminators after us. Skynet will have us all working for it in exchange for technology. In fact, once we have real virtual reality, it might actually be more like The Matrix, except we'll be going in willingly, like I talked about in this post.

I do actually find it distressing that so many people are losing the ability to disentangle themselves from technology. People my age that didn't grow up tied to it even, and it's so much worse for the kids of today that have never been without it. Except for my kids, of course, because they, also, don't have any of this stuff (well, except my oldest, because his grandfather gave him a cell phone a few years ago (which I hate and which causes me to call my son Texty-Boy or Texty-Lad, which he hates, but that's what he gets when he's busy texting his girlfriend during family time or dinner, which is family time)), much to my daughter's chagrin, because at least half of her friends have their own cell phones, and she wants to know why she can't have one, and none of these girls are even 10, and, for the life of me, I can not figure out why anyone would give a $400 device that's smaller than a book to a child. I have no sympathy for any of them (the parents) when they are complaining that their kid lost and/or broke their phone.

This post, today, was originally meant to be the next post in my death series, but this is all kind of a different kind of death, because the loss of a piece of technology can have that same kind of effect upon people. I watched women at my kids' school cry over a lost or broken piece of tech as if their mother just died, which is also why I have no sympathy for them when they give that tech to their kids even just to use for a few minutes and that whatever-it-is get dashed across the playground by a different kid running past and, then, some other kid steps on or kicks it. So it's all just another kind of loss. Hopefully, one we recover from more easily than the death of a loved one, although I'm not sure with some people. There is this one mom that's been going on for weeks now about her broken cell phone. Or, maybe, it's lost. I can't remember, because, honestly, I just turn off my brain when she starts in about it.

It's just a thing!

And that is why I don't want to be so attached to technology. I don't want to feel like I've suffered a death because something breaks.

But, you know, I still need Skynet.
>sigh<

[Note:
Today was supposed to be the release of Part 9 of Shadow Spinner, but, because of the computer problems, it didn't get finished. Well, let me re-phrase that, it's written, but I wasn't able to get it all set up with Amazon and all of that jazz, so it's suffering a slight delay. Maybe Friday. Yeah, I'm hoping to have it for Black Friday, because that seems kind of appropriate for Tib. Black Friday, that it, taken as just a name.
However, to go along with what was supposed to be the release, J. R. Pearse Nelson interviewed me about serials and Tib and Shadow Spinner, and I told her to go ahead and run it today, anyway, even without Part 9. You should all hop over there and check it out!]