"Cracked" Nails It

Cracked.com, the online humor website run by some brilliant comic minds that Mel Brooks would probably refer to as “Stand-up Philosophers,” is a humor site that I’ve become acquainted with recently for the obvious reason: they make me laugh. Much of the time, they are funny, they do their research, they post articles of interest. They blog with writing that many other blogs probably aspire to being. But one of their articles I didn’t find very funny at all. In fact, I found it rather depressing. How you could title something “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable” and make it the opposite of depressing 100% of the time?

Mostly, the article addresses the Internet culture and why it’s consolidating, why we need more criticism and less insults, why people need more friends... but author David Wong really nails it reason #6: We’re victims of the Outrage Machine

A whole lot of the people still reading this are saying, "Of course I'm depressed! People are starving! America has turned into Nazi Germany! My parents watch retarded television shows and talk about them for hours afterward! People are dying in meaningless wars all over the world!"

But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common. In those days, if your buddy moved away the only way to communicate was with pen and paper and a stamp. We have Iraq, but our parents had Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people) and their parents had World War 2 (which killed 1,000 times as many). Some of your grandparents grew up at a time when nobody had air conditioning. All of their parents grew up without it.

We are physically better off today in every possible way in which such things can be measured ... but you sure as hell wouldn't know that if you're getting your news online.

Why?

Well, ask yourself: If some music site posts an article called, "Fall Out Boy is a Fine Band" and on the same day posts another one called, "Fall Out Boy is the Shittiest Fucking Band of the Last 100 Years, Say Experts," which do you think will get the most traffic? The second one wins in a blowout. Outrage manufactures word-of-mouth.
The news blogs many of you read? The people running them know the same thing. Every site is in a dogfight for traffic (even if they don't run ads, they still measure their success by the size of their audience) and so they carefully pick through the wires for the most inflammatory story possible. The other blogs start echoing the same story from the same point of view. If you want, you can surf all day and never swim out of the warm, stagnant waters of the "aren't those bastards evil" pool.

Only in that climate could those silly 9/11 conspiracy theories come about (saying the Bush administration and the FDNY blew up the towers, and that the planes were holograms). To hear these people talk, every opposing politician is Hitler, and every election is the freaking apocalypse. All because it keeps you reading.

This wasn't as much a problem in the old days, of course. Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. We're talking about the '80s here. So there was something unifying in the way we all sat down to watch the same news, all of it coming from the same point of view. Even if the point of view was retarded and wrong, even if some stories went criminally unreported, we at least all shared it.

That's over. There effectively is no "mass media" any more so, where before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news. When we can't even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable. That constant feeling of being at bitter odds with the rest of the world brings with it a tension that just builds and builds.

We humans used to have lots of natural ways to release that kind of angst.

How did we get to a place in our cultural evolution where the next generation is full of whiny teenagers who want to be Goth because they think the problems they have are the end of the world and the only way to discuss politics and religion online is to end with telling people at least a hundred variations of “Go to Hell?” This is why I’ve stopped hanging out on Instant Messenger programs so much and invested in hanging out with real people more often.

Jaimetud 005: Studying fo the DMV

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Drivers education is a tough deal, and Jaimetud is here to help. Drivers written tests, griping about the DMV and one lousy Drivers Ed game make the grade in this episode. But is it all worth it? Will I pass the written test? Youll see.

Compass Facing South

I’ve seen a number of great movies lately, Wall-E and Hancock just to name a few. I also recently started using my library’s hi-tech movie service to request movies I haven’t seen like Russian Ark and most recently Casino Royale. I even have my own movies I’m working on as you well know such as The Good Sitter, which begins shooting this Saturday.

Last November, I blogged on The Golden Compass being anti-religious propaganda and I said I would probably give it a shot when it came out on DVD. Tonight I watched a downloaded copy, and I thought I’d follow up on the old post with my thoughts on the film.

The fun parts of the film lie within it’s creative usage of the fantasy genre. Talking animals has been done before, but in this movie, people’s souls are represented by daemons who walk beside them and their lifelines are synchronized so that what happens to one happens to the other. The daemon’s take the form of the animal that best resembles the soul of it’s owner and since children’s personalities are in the process of molding, their daemon’s are constantly changing form. Talking bear warriors, flying machines, witches and other fantastic elements take the wheel and are brought to life beautifully here.

The premise of The Golden Compass had promise as well. It exists in a parallel universe where all these things are possible and a governing body called the Magisterium, which wants to take over everything, all lands and all universes. A young girl named Lyra is given a golden compass that leads to the truth and is told to keep it hidden from the officials. This secret causes her to become an enemy of the state. She runs away to the North where she joins a group of rebels and witches who plan on fighting the Magisterium and it’s power.

The bad news is, as toned down as they are, the anti-Christian elements are still there. The Magisterium is like it sounds, a governing church run by priests and the like. Their plan is to indoctrinate everyone to their way of life. Freedom of thought is their enemy and the indoctrination of children while their daemon’s are still changing is imminent. Nicole Kidman’s character, Mrs. Coulter who works for the Magisterium, sends the message home over halfway through the movie when she tells Lyra that their ancestor’s disobeyed authority and thus created “dust” which people have been struggling with ever since as it causes people to do nasty things. It wasn’t in those exact words, but it was there.

What I heard her saying was “Adam and Eve disobeyed God and thus sin was created, which people have been struggling with ever since.” If this is the case, then authority is God. The “dust” referred to is a special dust that somehow encourages the non-believing rebels, or as they call them in the movie, the Gyptians.

All throughout the movie, Lyra has trouble with authority. Everyone who imposes a rule, i.e. the Magisterium and it’s employees, is painted in a bad light and ultimately, Lyra is rewarded by her resistance to authority. She is the good guy for resisting God and the compass that answers her every question guides her to the truth, which taking everything into consideration is that there is no God. If you think I’m overanalyzing the movie, I did do my research on the series. Dust IS sin and made to be the better way to go.

Knowing that this movie was ultimately meant to discourage Christianity really puts a damper on enjoying the movie as a whole, but even fans of the books will tell you that the movie didn’t do the books justice. Coming from a non-religious perspective, even the ending leaves something more to be desired. It’s meant, obviously, to be continued in case of a sequel, but it’s still somehow flat. Ultimately, what you have here is a fantasy film that cost a fortune to make but only turned out adequate and yet somehow managed to turn out a huge profit worldwide. Overall, I’d say this movie wasn’t the worst movie ever made. It was cute, action-packed, had a star cast, had some fun and magical parts in it, but the treatment was poor from all angles. It makes me want to buy Prince Caspian and watch it again when it comes out on DVD. But hey, I was going to do that anyway.