The Meaning Behind Violence

Fight Club provides a very interesting movie experience. Throughout the entire film, men are beaten, bruised and bloodied as they fight each other to the point of needing hospitalization. However, there is more to the fighting in Fight Club than sheer violence. Unlike Reservoir Dogs, where violence was excessive and unnecessary, the violence in Fight Club is a direct result of the repressed emotions of the fighters. For example, the main character has been forced into a cookie cutter life where he is only a cog in the corporate machine. The most expression that he has is his furniture, but even then, his furniture is also a product of the corporate world that he cannot escape. Because he feels he cannot escape from his problems, the main character and the imaginary personality Tyler Durden create a fight club. The fight club is a place where oppressed men can release their true emotions through fighting. In coming closer to death, men can feel more human than they ever could by remaining white collar workers. At first, the heavy fighting of the men is nothing more than an emotional outlet, but as time goes on, it starts to devolve into a kind of sinister insanity aimed at destroying the corporate world. However, whether its part of emotional expression or insane subversion, the violence in Fight Club is necessary to truly see the motivations behind the characters. Through their illegal acts, viewers of the movie can feel what the fighters feel and think. This kind of connection makes the ending of Fight Club extremely intense, as the main character's actions are both seen and felt.

Another aspect of Fight Club that is important is the way that it targets the corporate world. In the view of the main character, corporations are the most horrible thing that has happened to the world. He believes that the best way for humanity to proceed is to abandon our reliance on modern life and simply return to a state of primal harmony. Although the methods of the main character are quite clear, I must question the reasons for why he wishes to destroy the modern world. It is true that living as a white collar employee has done a large amount of damage to the main character's emotional state. Because he is treated like a small part of the corporate machine, he has no individuality, making him feel entirely alone and unnecessary. These feelings of worthlessness is what prompted his mind to create Tyler Durden. Although the creation of a fight club as an emotional release is a rational decision, the main character's descent into corporate subversion is not. Corporations do indeed make people into cold machine slaves that toil to maintain the modern world. However, by destroying the order of the modern world, the main character simply makes white collar workers slaves to his decisions. Another more rational decision for the main character to make (although it would have made a very boring movie) would have been to escape the city world and move into a more rural part of the country. By leaving, he would have been able to live a life of perfect nonconformity. Luckily, the film follows a path that allows us to see both Tyler Durden and the insanity of the main character, making Fight Club a truly excellent movie.

So What if he Can't Draw, it's Still Cool!

Reservoir Dogs brings with it the concept of cool literacy. While being able to read is an almost certain thing within our society, I feel literacy has moved beyond its basic definition to simply mean that being literate is having an understanding beyond the aesthetic in multiple areas while being able to see the connections behind those areas. For example, a mechanic may know the intricacies behind how a car engine works, but without knowledge of other diverse subjects like science, literature, and politics, he would have a low literacy level. In Reservoir Dogs, the main characters all know the way that crime works. In addition, in scenes that are spliced throughout the film, we see the characters talking about various other subjects like pop culture that add depth to their personalities. For viewers of the film, a certain level of literacy is required to understand the film beyond the seemingly random conversations and violence. Having the ability to see the cultural understandings that the characters make through their conversations makes the film much more powerful, especially in terms of the betrayal and Mr. Orange. The betrayal goes from an undercover cop performing his duty to a scene of a friend completely destroying his relationships and condemning his friends to death.

Literacy is cool for a very simple reason. Without literacy, only aesthetic observations can be made about things, meaning that content that would otherwise be known is lost through the fog of illiteracy. XKCD requires at least some literacy in order for it to be funny. The comic strip, in the words of the creator, is "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." Because XKCD assumes the literacy of the reader, it can make jokes about anything including current politcial news, pop culture trends, and even math. Because the comic strip transcends all areas of knowledge, it becomes funnier with the more things that the reader knows. For example, before becoming versed in technological jargon, this strip would be meaningless. However, when it is known that sudo is a command in Linux operating systems that forces the computer to do something regardless of the circumstances, then the strip becomes a quick laugh about Linux. Overall, I highly recommend XKCD to anyone who can read English and has at least a little bit of literacy. It is a very fun experiance.

Unfortunately, a lack of literacy amongst most people has caused our entertainment to decline in recent years. Although we have not slipped back into the practice of bear baiting, our entertainment is growing considerably more vulgar as a result of a lack of literacy. One example of this is the cartoon Family Guy. While Family Guy does have some funny moments, it is plagued by a type of humor that is characteristic of the rising vulgar movement. However, even though vulgarity is on the rise, there has also been an increase in literate entertainment. The Discovery Channel boasts many programs designed to entertain and educate the audience. Shows like MythBusters, How It's Made, and multiple specials on everything from science, art, and history are far from vulgar, but they can retain their quality as good television shows. My hypothesis to why there is both a rise in vulgar and literate entertainment is the diversity of entertainment sources. Because of cable television and the Internet, anything that a person wants to watch is available. Therefor, because the source is unlimited, it is ultimately up to people to make the decision to whether or not they wish to have literacy co-mingling with their entertainment.

Cool and Uncool, Brought to you by 8-tracks!

Here are a few pairings of things that are cool and things that are not.
Cool/Uncool
Stephen Colbert/Larry King
Facebook/E-Mail
Moderates/Extremists
Marijuana/Tobacco
Soldiers/The Army
Metal/Emo
Wikipedia/Encyclopedia
President Obama/Speaker Pelosi
Christian/"Hardcore" Christian
Evolution/Intelligent Design
Internet/Computing
Socialized Medicine/Socialism
IHop/Waffle House
Hacking/Network Security
Pirating/Buying
Star Wars/Star Trek
Spending/Saving
Gay Marriage/Gay Sex
Fluent Spanish/Mandatory Spanish
Promiscuity/Male Virginity
Contraceptives/Unplanned Pregnancy
Windows XP/Windows Vista
Linux/Windows and Mac
Cassettes/.mp3
World of Warcraft/Dungeons and Dragons
Indifference/Obsession
Retirement/Work
Pride/Humility
Relaxation/Ambition
Power/Submission

This list of cool and uncool things shows something about the state of coolness in America. Much has remained unchanged for coolness in the past few decades in the realm of cool. Extreme socialists and hyper-conservatives are still uncool in politics, however, despite a distaste for socialism, people want the government to provide health care as a universal service. In addition, having sex with multiple partners is considered cool while boys who are virgins past the age of 16 are uncool. Power has maintained itself as a necessity for cool, but this power is especially cool when it allows a person to delegate tasks while relaxing on a boat. However, there have been some changes in coolness that are mostly due to the education process. For example, while having a lot of sex is cool, unprotected sex has become uncool. This is a result of increased education over sexually transmitted diseases and sexual education in general (except for abstinence programs). After seeing videos of men and women with herpes, unprotected sex suddenly becomes much less cool. Another aspect of coolness that has changed because of education is the acceptance of evolution as a valid idea. As more school children learn of evolution, they begin to shun the idea of intelligent design as wrong. Regardless of the actual truth behind the past (which is hard to uncover without one of these), evolution will continue to be cool as long as it is taught as correct.

One part of cool that will always change but be cool in the same way is new technology. Ever since the widespread use of new technologies past World War II, every piece of new meaningful technology has been adopted as the coolest thing to have for that time. The easiest way to see this is the evolution of musical storage and playing devices. Records and record players were around for long enough to simply be considered a static presence in the method of listening to music. However, with the introduction of the cassette tape, people began to get rid of records and replace them with the newer, smaller format. With a cassette deck in a car or a boom box on a shoulder, people could listen to music while traveling around. This trend continued further with the introduction of the Compact Disk (CD), and in recent years, CDs are being replaced with portable media devices capable of storing entire discographies and hours of videos while being smaller than a CD case. Ultimately, new technologies are cool because they offer a greater capacity for more fun and less work. E-Mail was very cool in the 90's because it offered a quicker way to send information than with a phone call or letter, but Facebook is now cooler than E-Mail because Facebook allows people to communicate socially with even less effort than E-Mail. As we roll into the 2010's, our current technologies will be swept into the realm of uncoolness as newer technologies give replace them as material representations of coolness.

Its Really About Determination

Although the documentary Paris Is Burning is about the struggles of transvestites in the late '80s, I believe that the coolness that is generated by the characters in the movie is truly a result of both their struggles to remove themselves from poverty and to be accepted by mainstream society. Like I said in my last blog post, people like Willi Ninja are cool because they use their own skill and determination to make their lives better. Because coolness can be directly generated by working hard to achieve a good goal, these people are cool. One movie where this kind of effort is seen is Pursuit of Happyness. In this film, Chris Gardner is a poor man who spends his family's life savings on bone-density scanners in an attempt to sell them and turn a profit, but because the scanners are not in high demand, his family is brought into poverty from the resulting debt. The financial stress that this brings leads Chris's wife to leave him, leaving him to raise his son by himself. Soon, without a source of income, Chris and his son find themselves to be homeless, but they are not without hope. By a stroke of luck, Chris makes it into an internship at a stockbroker firm. Throughout six months, he balances homelessness, daycare for his son, and his unpaid internship in order to get a better life for him and his son. At the end of the film, Chris finally finishes his internship, and as a result, he is finally able to provide from him and his son. This kind of determination and effort makes Chris Gardner a very cool person. Although Chris is also black, his ethnicity has nothing to do with his coolness. Instead, his coolness comes from him working hard and achieving against all odds to make him and his son rise out of poverty. It is this kind of tenacity at working at a just goal that can make someone cool.
Another aspect of the transvestites' coolness (although not as cool as those who were attempting to work out of poverty) is the fight to become more accepted in society. Throughout history, both black and homosexual people have been outside of the mainstream white culture. However, the fight to become accepted as equals is also a fight that gives these two groups coolness. One film where acceptance is prominently featured is Blazing Saddles. In this movie, Bart, a black man who becomes sheriff of an Old West town, struggles to become accepted by the town, as most of the townspeople would rather just hang Bart than have to deal with having a black sheriff. However, over time, he is able to win the townspeople's trust as sheriff. In a way, the coolness that comes from overcoming racial injustices is the same kind of coolness that is generated from overcoming poverty. In both cases, people use hard work to overcome horrible problems to reach a much better state in life. Ultimately, the kind of coolness that is shown in these three movies can be broken down into a simple formula: Coolness can be made by determinately working hard at improving the life of the self or of others.

Groups of People are not Cool

Although there are a few cool people within Paris is Burning, no one is cool because they belong to a society of people. Homosexuals and African Americans are not cool because of their sexual identity or their ethnic heritage. Although both of these groups have been historically oppressed by the white mainstream, they do not become cool simply because they are oppressed. I do not mean to say that the oppression of any people by another is right, but an oppressed group is not cool simply because they are oppressed. Take the example of Pepper LaBeija. Although LaBeija is both gay and black, he is not cool for either of these qualities. The coolness that comes from LaBeija is generated by his power and strong motherly qualities. By controlling the House of LaBeija, he is in command of a large group of baller queens. Additionally, he uses this power to spread his help amongst his daughters in the House. Whenever one of his daughters needs advice on anything from clothes to dancing to life related issues, LaBeija is there to provide help. Another person from the film that is cool because of factors other than race and gender was Willi Ninja. Ninja's coolness had nothing to do with him being either black or gay. Instead, Ninja's coolness came from his path in life. He started out as a very poor man. However, through hard work and determination, he took his personalized version of vogue dancing to the mainstream. Before he died in 2006, he had even made television appearances and owned a modeling agency. The way that he rose from poverty and became a wealthy and well-respected man is what made him cool-not being gay and black.

Documentaries themselves are not very cool. Although the people within documentaries may be a little cool for their own personal achievements, documentaries and the people who make them are generally considered to be very uncool and boring. The reason for this is the lack of entertainment in documentaries. Movies that are cool like Star Wars, Terminator, and Casablanca would not be cool if we came out of the movie theater thinking, "Wow, that movie was boring." However, documentaries are not without merit entirely. Through using investigative techniques, important issues can be explored and introduced to the public through the easy to digest medium of film. Unfortunately, the boring nature of these films often means that people are not willing to see them because the primary reason to go to a movie theater is to be entertained. As a result, people who make documentaries are often either completely ignored or looked upon as uncool. For example, Michael Moore is not a cool person. Even though he is well known for his work in making documentaries, he is not cool because he does not have the kinds of determination that we consider to be cool as a society. Willi Ninja is cool for rising out of poverty and becoming a successful person through his own sheer will and determination. Michael Moore is simply a documentary maker who is arrogant enough to feature himself in his own films, and there is no way a combination of arrogance and documentaries is cool at all.

Action Coolness

Although the topic for this week is cool satire, part of the coolness that is generated by RoboCop is the action that permeates the film. Although the satire definitely delivers a compelling message, action is an exclusive part of RoboCop that is cool regardless of a person's ability to understand the satire that is in the movie. Scenes of explosions, gunfire and car chases are cool because they allow the viewer to experience a world of excitement and danger from the safety of a movie theater seat. RoboCop is designed as a great action film. By discarding the normal conventions of science and technology, machines like RoboCop and Ed can battle each other with maximum explosive power. If this scene was to be reproduced in real life with a viewer of RoboCop as a participant, the viewer would most likely be scared and run away in horror. However, because of the safe barrier of fiction, any viewer who suspends a little bit of disbelief can revel in the exiting scene.

One film that masters the art of the action film is Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In this film, the shape shifting robot T-1000 is attempting to kill John Connor. In order to save his life, another terminator and John's mother flee from the T-1000, but upon realizing that it needs to be stopped, they arm themselves to the teeth and destroy it in a blaze of fire. The coolness from this movie is generated through the sheer amount of action that is present throughout the film. For example, in one scene, John Connor and his terminator guardian free his mother and narrowly escape from the steely death of the T-1000. Although the evil machine is very powerful, the three heroes are able to escape when the T-800, John's protector, uses his body as a shield against bullets. In a very similar way to how RoboCop and all action movies entertain us, the coolness of action films is generated by incredibly exciting scenes that would be horribly frightening in real life. I can guarantee that if most people saw a real T-1000 advancing with quasi mercuric limbs shaped as knives, then they would cower in absolute fear instead of handling the situation in an exciting manner. Another aspect of Terminator 2 that is also mirrored in RoboCop is the use of special effects. Although special effects are nowhere near our current level of computer-generated special effects, the use of explosions and robots in both films adds to the coolness of the action. Without special effects, the action becomes closer to real life, and as a result, the movie becomes less exciting and cool.

Ultimately, action films serve as more of an escape than anything else. By presenting us with incredible scenes of action that would normally strike fear into our hearts, we are able to enjoy the excitement and thrills that can never enter our own lives without also introducing tragedy. Without action, our lives would be horribly boring. Because we are able to sit back and experience the kinds of excitement that we can never have in our real lives, action movies are definitely cool.

We Interrupt this Blog to bring you...

Although the movie RoboCop is filled with an extreme amount of satire from beginning to end, the commercials and news breaks that occasionally occur throughout the film are the most concentrated source of commentary on our society. The news break itself is definitely a foreshadowing to 24 hour news dominating America as our primary source of news. In the short news breaks in RoboCop, significant information is quickly spewed out at viewers for a quick burst of information, and it is usually paired with an irrelevant but entertaining news piece to balance it out. For example, in the start of the film, the news break starts out by showing a rebel insurgency in Acapulco, but a humorous piece on the president floating in space quickly follows it. RoboCop's portrayal of the news has come to pass in recent years. A great example of this is the coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith in 2007. Another important element of the news clips is how the manner in which the anchors speak. Showing absolutely no empathy in their voices, they report the deaths of hundreds of people in nearly the same way as they talk about RoboCop visiting school children.

In the middle of news breaks, commercials advertising the futuristic products of RoboCop's Detroit are the norm. Verhoeven packs more concentrated satire into these commercials than anywhere else in the film. Each one stands alone to provide a look into the things that are wrong with America. The most powerful commercial throughout RoboCop is the commercial for a new line of artificial hearts. On the surface, the technology of artificial hearts is a noble endeavor that could save countless numbers of people. Unfortunately, in both RoboCop and the real world, research for artificial hearts is driven by the desire for profit. In the dystopia of RoboCop, the capitalistic market for artificial hearts is incredibly similar to the market for buying automobiles. Hearts are produced by a number of different companies, and with a little extra cash, the heart can be covered by an extended warranty in case it happens to fail. The selling of artificial hearts for profit creates an interesting conundrum. In a society where medicine and by extension artificial implants are not driven by profit, then the primary drive defaults to saving lives. In a system driven by profit, the companies that own the technology to produce artificial hearts can charge whatever price will generate the most profit. In essence, it requires money to purchase the ability to live and even more money to guarantee it with a warranty. Ultimately, the heart commercial is a warning against pure capitalism. In a world driven by profit, only those with money can survive.

World of Escapism

World of Warcraft has become a gaming phenomenon that has captured an audience approximately the size of Ohio. With so many followers, it has become a part of our culture, but how did this video game sneak into the hard disk of so many Americans? The primary culprit is the game's use as an escape from real life. While playing World of Warcraft, users suspend disbelief as they are whisked away into the magical world of Azeroth. Inside this world of fantasy, players act as elves, dwarves, orcs, and even humans to slay dragons, find treasure, and protect the kingdom. However, just as in the similar world that is associated with the Lord of the Rings, players must bind together with their allies to accomplish amazing feats of valor.

The entire experiance of World of Warcraft is very fun. However, because the world is a game, a set of rules govern it just as the real world is governed by rules. For example, just as we must save thousands of dollars to buy a new car, players must save gold coins in order to buy a horse. Because the game is carefully constructed to allow players enough freedoms to have fun while having enough restrictions to make the world at least partially mimic the way the real world works, many people slip into Azeroth as a way to escape from their normal lives. In Saturday Night Fever, Tony slips away from his mundane life by disco dancing to his heart's content on Saturday night. In a very similar manner, World of Warcraft players play the game in order to leave their regular lives behind. For most players, their normal lives are nowhere near as interesting as a life of using ancient magic and enchanted weapons to slay horrible beasts. At its core, disco dancing and World of Warcraft do almost the same thing for people; they both provide a setting where all participants are living a much better life filled with fun.

Although Tony definitely used disco as an escape from his life, he was willing to admit that disco could not completely replace his normal life. Unfortunately, many players of World of Warcraft let their playing experience turn into an addiction. At this level of escape, the real world ceases to be important as Azeroth becomes the only thing that the player cares about. Regardless of the source of escape, completely running away from the real world is a horrible thing. Although escape such as disco dancing and World of Warcraft may not be directly harmful to the person engaging in these activities, when a person's life becomes consumed by these things, the people that are close to that person can become hurt. Whenever a person becomes so engaged in escaping from the trials and tribulations of real life that he begins to neglect his responsibilities to others, then legal and safe forms of escape become just as dangerous as drugs and alcohol. Although everyone needs to have an occasional escape from real life to unwind and relax, a complete escape is a horrible thing that should be avoided at all costs.

Why I like Star Trek

I have always been infatuated with Star Trek ever since I was a child. However, throughout both my childhood and my experiences in college, I have found that most people frown upon Star Trek as a horrible television show that symbolizes the idea of a 35 year old virgin living at his parent's house while fantasizing about having sex with Uhura. Although there are definitely some Trekkies who fit this stereotype, Star Trek and the culture that surrounds it is not how most people perceive it to be.

Star Trek itself fills a spot in the mind that is completely vacant in the current world of realism in television. At its core, Star Trek is a completely fictional universe. Created completely from imagination, the universe of Star Trek does not follow the normal constraints of our real universe. Within the outer space ream of the Enterprise, travel to distant alien worlds and interaction with the inhabitants there provides stimulation to the minds of the viewers. Even though the personalities of the aliens are often simple and one-dimensional, the strange and exotic nature of these aliens can provoke imagination. Another aspect of the show itself that is unique to Star Trek and its lesser known cousins is futuristic technology. While some advances in technology that are presented in Star Trek are based on real science and engineering to some degree, other technologies are completely based on fiction. However, regardless of an origin of either science or imagination, the technology in Star Trek is very fantastic and can provide hope for the future in a world filled with inefficient technologies like coal-fired power plants, internal combustion engines, and Windows.

The culture that surrounds Star Trek is not quite as bad as its portrayal by most people. For the majority of people who like the television show, it is nothing more than an entertaining television show that is much more imaginative than most television. Unfortunately, Star Trek and its fans have gained a bad reputation because of the few fans who have taken their love of Star Trek too far. Instead of simply enjoying a television program and delving into the fantasy of the future only occasionally, some Trekkies become so infatuated with Star Trek that their lives are consumed by it. While Star Trek can be a very entertaining show that is can provoke the imagination, an entire life dominated by Star Trek is definitely uncool.

Being completely consumed by a pop culture genre is never cool. This holds true for groups of people other than Trekkies as well. For example, Tony in Saturday Night Fever is uncool for his complete obsession with disco. Although he is cool at first for his extreme skill at dancing, the dance floor completely dominates his life. Because he is inept at all other areas of life, he will always be a complete failure outside of nightclubs. If Tony had the ability to do reach outside of his closed life and make something of himself, he would have been a very cool person, but because his only skill is dancing, he is doomed to only be cool amongst his fellow dancers in the same way that extreme Trekkies are only cool amongst fellow Trekkies. Ultimately, although the average Star Trek fan or disco dancer may simply enjoy a cool slice of pop culture, the few extreme members of a group can turn a cool idea into a horribly square pastime.