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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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Bon Iver’s hauntological i,i (William Fleming)

Image Copyright: Bon Iver / Jagjaguwar

In this essay, William Fleming takes a detailed look at bon iver’s new album, i,i: through acid communist hauntology to oedipal melancholia and the future’s cybernetic fracture.

> This week I’ve been reading Mark Fisher and listening to Bon Iver’s new album on repeat so I combined the two.

> Mark Fisher, in his Ghosts of My Life (2014), laments the dearth of creativity in popular music after the turn of the century, the loss of experimentation and of hearing something New and Radical, and the persistent replication of past methods, sounds and images. Fisher was no Adorno though (I don’t think anyway?). His essays are emotive and developed from a deep desire for a compassionate politics; Ghosts evokes the pathos of his seminal Capitalist Realism (2009). One of the key themes associated with his work on pop culture, is the use of the Derridean term ‘Hauntology’: the haunted ontology of futures that never came to be, the spectral disturbance of time and place as the possibility of political becoming dissipates. As he details in Ghosts, Fisher initially used hauntology as a genre-defining term for music. He identified artists which were 'suffused with an overwhelming melancholy; and they were preoccupied with the way in which technology materialised memory', this results in us being made 'conscious of the playback systems’ and of ‘the difference between analogue and digital’, 'hovering' out of reach behind the media’. Fisher uses this conceptual framework to analyse a raft of musicians and their work but there is a consistent emphasis on the political narratives of class and race which shape these cultural offshoots.

> Despite being one of the biggest records of this summer – and thus perhaps a bit bait for me to discuss? – Bon Iver’s i,i bares all the hallmarks of the hauntological genre: melancholia, the clash of digital and analogue, anachronism, the suggestion of political solidarity, artistic experimentation.

> First a confession: I first listened to Bon Iver because, in 2011, there was a girl on twitter I fancied who posted a video to Birdy’s Skinny Love. Birdy’s rendition is a wisp of a song, sad and grasping and completely lost on a shallow sixteen-year old and probably rightfully so. Failing to select the next song, I’m guessing Bon Iver’s original version played. For the first time I felt I’d discovered adult Sad Music. None of the ghd straightened, dip-died, angst-ridden emo tunes I’d gotten into a few years prior to impress my first girlfriend; or the one ballad acting as the penultimate track on one of the indie-rock albums from my older brother’s excessive collection. (- Does anyone know how to recycle these properly?). I would wallow in performative sadness playing immediately gratuitous and instantly gratifying XBOX games, quickly repeating the heartbeating guitar of Lump Sum on For Emma, Forever Ago or the wails of Holocene from Bon Iver, Bon Iver as I pined for my yet-to-be second girlfriend.

> I went off Bon Iver for a few years: these days, the quiet acoustic melancholia of these first two albums doesn’t fit with any aspirational sense of masculinity of mine. Being a man and being non-toxically emotional isn’t about listening to acoustic guitars and barely audible snares whilst you lie sulking in your room or on the drizzled walk to the library or job you hate. Instead it’s about communication, solidarity and empathy – ‘I’d be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea’. And so, when 22, A Million came out I was into it. Everyone thought it was a bit shit the first time few times they listened to it but this gave me cover to pretentiously purvey that they just didn’t get it and listen to it over and over. It was still the same anguished voice of Justin Vernon – but it was finally coming to life. Revived through stretched synthesizers, neologisms which made you question the contributors on A-Z Lyrics, and deconstructed bass. The piano riff on 33 “God” interrupted by alien helium-infused voices and the stammering, looping saxophone of 45 are still highlights. Listening now, 22, A Million initiated the hauntology of Bon Iver.

> At times, i,i feels like Bon Iver’s latest album is a playback of their first album, but one done through a signal sent by an analogue walkie-talkie found on the abandoned spaceship from Alien: Isolation – itself maybe the most harrowing video-game I’ve ever played, one which is played in constant anticipation of being found. Listen to the intermittent signal of Holyfields,: the bleeps and radio fuzz a beacon we sent out into space, only for it to sporadically and hauntingly talk back at us – a cultural SOS signal.

> i,i is the same guitar riffs from albums one and two but cybernetically fractured through time. The same syncopated kick drum but ripped out from the mid noughties and dumped in a Iain M. Banks novel or an episode in Love, Death + Robots. Fisher, quoting Derrida, quoting Hamlet: ‘the time is out of joint’. In these time fractures, it’s not just the music’s original location which is torn into the future, but also objective fragments of past culture: the sax (Sh’Diah) and violin strings (Faith) torn from eras when politics and music were still intertwined.

> The first track on the album, Yi, is garbage. But it is orbital astro-garbage – a notable anthropocenic feedback loop! – sitting uncomfortably at the stratosphere of an album which explicitly reflects on ecological destruction. Yi’s inaudible conversation and the ‘Are you recording, Trevor?’ set it up as a soundcheck for the album too. Including a soundcheck evokes Vernon’s emphasis on the album as a performance piece in the accompanying mini-documentary Autumn. In the doc, Vernon mentions the problem of ‘How is it going to be played live?’. Immediately, we are forced to imagine i,i as more than just another album on Spotify.

> Yi bleeds into iMi, a psychedelic echo of a track built from interspersing a melancholic vocals/arpeggio combo and an encroaching synth/dub beat combo. We is similarly eclectic, digitalised vocals juxtaposing with endearing, major-key sax. Following is Holyfields,, perhaps the most alien but most beautiful song on the album.

> Hey, Ma is the headline single from the album. An ode to Vernon’s mother and a sense of the sunrise walk home after the summer party (I’ll try and avoid further seasonal references: the four albums are set up to represent the four seasons, i,i being autumn, but IMO this is pretty naff).

> There is a sense of time passing in Hey, Ma, a nostalgia for the yet to be – ‘Well you wanted it your whole life’ – but with this passing is a sense of desire – ‘I wanted all that mind, sugar / I want it all mine’ – and of becoming or evolving – ‘You’re back and forth with light’. Becoming is the famous Deleuzean postmodern motif; i.e. being is constantly flowing and reforming. Bon Iver’s becoming, however, is not a flow, but a hauntological wrench into the future state. The entire album feels as though you’re experiencing the tech-enhanced evolution of Bon Iver’s music. That skipping between soft indie and futuristic synth reminiscent of the OG Pokemon games when your Pokemon was evolving and it would flicker between its past and future states. But becoming is never complete. As Fisher highlights, ‘futuristic’ no longer refers to a time/space but is now merely an adjective. We’ll never hear the Bon Iver made entirely on digital tech.

> For Fisher, melancholia is a productive force of political resistance. He distances his ‘hauntological melancholia’ from that of Wendy Brown’s ‘left melancholia’ which ‘seems to exemplify the transition from desire (which in Lacanian terms is the desire to desire) to drive (an enjoyment of failure)’. Fisher’s melancholia, ‘by contrast, consists not in giving up on desire but in refusing to yield'. Under scrutiny, Bon Iver’s first two albums fail this melan-test – they are a spectacular, self-pitying self-indulgence. Self-pity as a common form of masochism. For Deleuze, thinking through Jung, thinking through Bergson (yeap, I know), masochism is always regressive, flipping the Oedipal on its head as a form of un-becoming.

> Is Vernon’s song to his mother a masochistic form of melancholia; a self-pitying reversal of the Oedipal? ‘I wanted a bath / “Tell the story or he goes”’; ‘Tall time to call your Ma / Hey Ma, hey Ma’. The type captured by Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts (2015) when reflecting on Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, which is dripping in, in Nelson’s words, ‘misogynistic repulsion’. Or is Bon Iver’s a hauntological melancholia? One of stubborn resistance. The type of mother-son relationship photographed by Donald Weber in his response to Alison Sperling and Anna Volkmar’s conversation on the post-atomic (Kuntslicht, 39: 3/4). Weber’s photographs were taken over two years in Chernobyl. The, now fetishised, explosion in Chernobyl perhaps the example of the nuclear, a hauntological theme post-WWII, made material. The bursting of a political, biological and biopolitical reality which was never meant to be. Weber’s photo of a middle-aged man and his elderly mother is captioned: ‘Mothers sought to be photographed sitting close to their sons, in domestic scenes of proud companionability. Their eyes signal an unalterable communion. And more – elevation. A man’s mother transcends the material order, and rises easily above even the most squalid circumstances. It is the frank declaration of her biological supremacy: This is my child’. If it is this relationship captured in Hey, Ma, it may promise a spectre which can be made material. An artefact which can continue its evolution, its becoming. ‘Let me talk to em / Let me talk to ‘em all’.

> Finally, that Hey, Ma’s nostalgia is a culturally productive one is suggested by one of its more memorable lines: ‘I waited outside / I was tokin’ on dope / I hoped it all won’t go in a minute’. In Fisher’s posthumously published Unfinished Introduction to Acid Communism, he, when imagining the process of resistance and a new politics whilst citing Jefferson Cowie, writes 'these new kinds of workers – who “smoked dope, socialised interracially, and dreamed of a world in which work had some meaning” – wanted democratic control of both their workplace and their trade unions’. The curious, outdated use of ‘dope' in Vernon’s lyrics then mirrors Cowie’s use of 'dope', echoing Cowie’s nostalgia for a lost working-class culture of 1970s America. Fisher uses Cowie’s argument to piece together an acid communism, which I will return to, but this, surely consequential, similarity further constructs i,i as a contemporary hauntological album.

> Following Hey, Ma comes the Sunday-school piano of U (Man Like). Raising an image of a crisply ironed, white America, like that depicted in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), which acts as a reminder that nostalgia isn’t always productive. However, the nostalgia is continued with Naeem ‘Oh, my mind, our kids got bigger/ … / You take me out to pasture now’. Fisher asks ‘is hauntology, as many of its critics have maintained, simply a name for nostalgia?’. However, he argues that it is not a ‘formal nostalgia’ but one of solidarity and of a longing for the process of social improvement. Naeem, despite its nostalgia, continues the flickering between hope and despair. The joyful ‘More love / More love / More love’ and ‘I can hear, I can hear’; the anguished ‘I can hear crying’ and ‘What’s there to pontificate on now? / There’s someone in my head’. The latent and angelic child-like choir on Naeem another hauntological theme. As Fisher declares, ‘no doubt there comes a point when every generation starts pining for the artefacts of its childhood’. However, Vernon’s evoking of childhood is one perhaps linked to the, at times damaging, trope of ‘future generations’ in environmentalism. It is still a political longing though – ‘I’d Occupy that’. Occupy: that great post-2008 political uprising which dissipated into a mere exemplar in an undergraduate geography textbook.

> Next, Faith brings back the aliens from 33 “God” but this time, for attention, they’ve brought their clean guitar and slowly morph into the catholic choir we began to hear on Naeem. God died and, despite the sexy, liquidity of our modernity, we miss him.

> Marion momentarily brings us back from the cybernetically fractured semi-future. Back to the £3-coffee coffee-shop where you’re telling your friend that you think you and that girl will probably get back together but you need the time to be right. The hope is sucked back out; we’re back in capitalist realism and Arctic Monkey’s fourth (fifth?) album. Luckily, Salem restarts the signal to bring us back from our self-pity, dragging us to the obfuscation we were enjoying. Salem’s witches are still here and they’re pretty good at Ableton.

> Next, Sh’Diah grows from an autotuned prayer – ‘Just calm down (calm down) / And she’ll find time for the Lord’ - into a yearning saxophone riff/rift. But, alas, RABi, the album’s final song, returns us to a blues guitar and Vernon’s vocals. If the oscillation between past and future throughout i,i was a dialectic, the depressing outcome is ‘consumer capitalism’s model of ordinariness' (Fisher) of the neoliberal present. As in Fisher’s hauntology, the technologically-infused creativity of i,i is a lost future. Watching Vernon being interviewed feels like this. He’s got the Pacific-North-West hipster look: vegan but drives a V6 truck. Goes to the craft brewer’s bar and talks about that latest public health campaign to encourage men to talk about mental health over a pint but refrains from actually talking about depression. (Maybe serving beer in 2/3rd schooners means you never end up getting to the important part of the conversation?)

> But why does it matter? Because it’s about political and cultural (and creative) imagination. Fisher’s last big, and tragically but appropriately unfinished, philosophy is that of Acid Communism. Maybe there is a future !

> Fisher mourned not only the flattening of pop music, but also the ‘culture constellated around music (fashion, discourse, cover art)’. In contrast to a digital album which you never perceive in any physical manner, Bon Iver have emphasised various forms of art in their work, ensuring a communal creativity. There are multiple iterations of the album cover art on public posters and on social media. More excitingly though, is the collaboration with WHITEvoid, a Berlin-based sculpture group/company, which is discussed on Autumn. Prepared for live performances, WHITEvoid have constructed an ensemble of floating mirrors and kinetic lighting made from ‘space-age metal’ and motion tracking sensors. An artistic contribution as ethereal and tech-enhanced as the accompanying music and one which aestheticises our material sciences. The lighting provided by WHITEvoid in collaboration with the experimentation in sound system, similarly shown on Autumn, constructs the performance of i,i as an ongoing innovation and experimentation. The effort put into the upcoming live performances of i,i ensure that it is a music to be experienced not merely consumed. In another discussion on Autumn, Michael Brown, Bon Iver’s Artistic Director, says ‘you have to be in the moment with other people, you have to be able to know that the person next to you is having the same communal experience’.

> In Krisis (2018:2), Matt Colquhoun sees acid communism as a “project beyond the pleasure principle” (2) and of an “experimental” politics. If the sounds of i,i are hauntological, then the spectre it suggests is one of acid communism. The acid is provided by its accompanying artistic experimentation and the communism is its emphasis on the political and the communal.

Text: William Fleming

Published 30/8/19

#SPAM #essays #music criticism #bon iver #ii #Mark Fisher #acid communism #hauntology #Derrida #capitalist realism #ghosts of my life #William Fleming #essay

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canvaswolfdoll · 5 years

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CanvasWatches: Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan

Not going to do a Summer 2018 write up because I only lasted through one anime, and Chio’s School Road had… issues I don’t feel like discussing.

Also, haven’t had time to continue the Digimon Rewatch (which is exclusive to the Patreon until I finish season one).

Doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking! Netflix’s most recent license camping for it’s tedious binge watch format is Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan, which was a delight to watch! Go watch it, right now! Do it!

Anyways, time for my… whatever this thing is... on it.

Hisone is a woman who joined the airforce because, near as I can tell, she didn’t have any other ideas for what to put on her school’s career plan worksheet that shows up in every anime, and she saw a fighter plane soar by.

There’s… worse motivations, I guess?

Anyways, while working a desk job, she’s invited to an interview at a far away hangar.

She goes to the hangar and is promptly eaten by a dragon.

But it’s okay! The dragon just wanted to eat her old flip phone! And the crew got her thrown up pretty quick! And now they want her to pilot the dragon.

By getting swallowed and controlling the thing but prodding its soft innards.

Anime

So, Dragons are a thing that exist, and the world governments have been helping hiding them because… that’s the deal they made? Anyways, Japan hides their dragons as fighter planes, and has their air force manage them.

Because we need to explain this bizarre premise somehow.

Dragons are selective about who they will swallow and not digest, and Hisone is one of those lucky few. So she’s a D-Pilot now, which is probably a promotion from her ill-defined desk job.

Also, now she has to put up with Nao Kaizaki, initially the only member of Gifu Base’s D-Pi program, and a woman who couldn’t get the dragon to swallow her, so her position is more theoretical.

Kaizaki is introduced exhibiting the mannerisms of your typical High School Thug boy character, so you know she’ll be interesting.[1]

Hisone’s superior officer, Remi Kakiyasu, was also once a candidate for dragon piloting who couldn’t get the dragon to accept her. So the entire program is kind of low on practical experience.

Then there’s the woman selling yogurt who is clearly important, but it’ll take a few episodes for yogurt woman to reveal her purpose.

So Kaizaki and Kakiyasu train Hisone up as she comes to grips with her new responsibilities.

Hisone finds a plaque embedded in the dragon to learn his name is Masotan.

And so, the title is complete.

Then three more pilots fly in in episode 4, and the main plot starts to meander in a direction.

Let’s meet the other three team members!

Elle Hoshino: Enlisted to become the first female fighter pilot, and is displeased to have been placed on the OTF (Organic Transformed Flier) program instead. So her dragon, F-2/Norma, refuses to leave it’s plane form to please its partner. Eventually Elle comes around and loosens up. She’s fine.

Mayumi Hitomi: A matronly shaped pilot. She’s soft-hearted and soft spoken. Flies a large, goofy looking dragon named Futomomo. She’s fine.

Lilico Kinutsugai: Winner of the Canvas’s ‘Wait, I want more’ award, Lilico is a shut-in with a wry sense of humor and love of manga. Her dragon is the samurai-looking Akemi. Lilico is also apparently asexual, something I wish they’d given space to explore a little more.

She could’ve been my favorite pilot,[2] but the show didn’t commit enough.

So the pilots are placed through a couple adventures to become friends as the creepy Iboshi (some vaguely defined government guy) watches and plots.

Iboshi is the closest thing the series has to a villain, despite it being more of a Man vs. Nature affair. He possesses a callous disregard for the people of the D-Pi program, focused on the looming Ritual the D-Pi are needed for.

This cold-naturedness made me dislike him, but also allows the series to run relationship drama in a really interesting direction.

Because, guess what? If the D-Pi fall in love, the dragons will instinctively reject them. And they need the D-Pi to keep the Dragons healthy, and also escort a giant dragon to ensure it doesn’t destroy Japan in its wake! Oh dear. This frames the ‘will-they, won’t-they’ of Hisone and Haruto of the maintenance team into an major conflict with dramatic consequences and justifies a dumb ‘misunderstanding’ plot with one of the other D-Pi.

This shows builds a very grounded, mature, and compelling view on romance, and I am super game for it. And super down to sing its praises.

I’ve found that the sweet spot for making me care about a romance plot isn’t tsundere antics, or fear, or dumb misunderstandings, because there’s nothing I crave in my media more than emotional honesty.

No, the slow burn I crave is sheer ignorance. It takes several episodes for Hisone to understand she may have feelings for Haruto beyond friendship, then more for her to actually accept and admit her feelings to herself, then the fantasy takes over to prevent a tedious ‘Oh, will you two just talk’ subplot, because Hisone can no longer do her job lest she get digested by her dragon! So the conflict of “How does Hisone deal with her feelings” becomes augmented to “How does Hisone do her freaking job now!?”

The answer, seemingly, is just have a level head on the topic: Mayumi Hitomi also has plenty of ship teases with another character, but never is at risk of being eaten. It doesn’t get examined, because Hitomi’s ability to just kind of… casually acknowledge it and not let the Doki-Dokis mess up her stride doesn’t draw attention.

And because Hitomi’s resolution to the conflict eventually comes down to “I don’t want to abandon anyone ever” means her love for Haruto[4] is just added to the pile of things Hitomi is just anxiously passionate about, in equal measures to her love of flying Masoton, and that seems to work out.

Which, I guess means the secret to flying the dragon’s isn’t a creepy expectation of a pure heart, Iboshi, but emotional maturity.

Which brings us to the jerky, playboy wannabe breaking Elle’s heart. Like a monster.

Take note, writers: this is the first time ‘I broke your heart to protect/save you!’ has ever been successfully executed without one or both parties catching a case of the stupids! Watch this and learn!

So, early in the series, we meet Yutaka Zaito, a wannabe womanizer who has no success, but maintains his illusion of charisma nevertheless. Then he meets Elle, whose serious attitude and cold shoulder grabs his attention, and he suddenly abandons his swarm and tries to, gently, ingratiate himself to Elle, who gradually warms up to him.

It’s nice.

But then the whole ‘Dragon digests those with unsteady hearts’ plot point happens, and Elle is in a position where she can’t even fly her dragon, sending her ambitions even further away. And she hasn’t realized it’s Zaito causing her heart flutters.

But Zaito, upon learning the situation, does understand. And knows that it’s either him or Elle’s career.

So, he turns up the creep, approaches Elle, and proposes a friends-with-benefits arrangement, claiming not to want a serious relationship, and subtly mocks Elle’s dragon rejection. This breaks Elle’s heart, of course, but resolves the matter. She can fly Norma again, and Zaito is left to bite his tongue and let his crush pursue her best life.

The sequence is well executed. It’s a misunderstanding perpetuated intentionally, knowingly, and selflessly by one party, and exists for reasons beyond ‘Neh, let’s have some dumb romance drama now’. Zaito knows what he’s giving up, but still breaks Elle’s heart because she legitimately needs him to so she can pursue her dreams. There’s no other timely way.

On the other end, the show introduces Natsume,[5] a childhood friend of Haruto, who comes in to be Hisone’s rival!

Except Hisone is too oblivious and all-loving to care, and Haruto is straight disinterested in Natsume. And Natsume is a shallow Tsundere and lacks any appealing characterization. They could’ve given her role to Nao, who desperately needs something to do in the later half of the series, or, better yet, just have Haruto be the human sacrifice.

“But you need a girl for the sacrificial beauty role!”

Okay.

Make Haruto a girl.

“Are you proposing the show suddenly swerve into Yuri?”

I mean, Yogurt lady’s backstory is literally a Tragic WWII-era Yuri love story.[6]

Sada Hinomoto shows up selling yogurt and being charming and mysterious so you know there’s something deeper going on.

Turns out, she’s the last D-Pi from the last time they did the ritual, so she actually has proper experience to teach the new kids, and, oh yeah, she hates Iboshi, resents the entire procedure, and carries a lot of trauma from when her friend Yae was chosen to be the human sacrifice last time, and though the show doesn’t spell it out, the intimate blocking and their schemes to flee to Paris paints a super clear picture about what that relationship was about and, gosh dangit, is she one cool grandma.

All she wants to to get back to the giant dragon to find closure with what happened to Yae and force an alternate solution.

Fortunately, Hisone is just the sort of loveable goofball to find an alternate to the Giant Dragon’s bedtime snack!

So there’s another reason why Hisone’s love interest should’ve been a girl.[8]

Now, practically this could’ve been accomplished a couple of ways: gender flip Haruto, cut Haruto and use Nao, pr combine characters. Point is, no matter how you do it, this hypothetical female love interest is now the human sacrifice for Mitatsu-sama.

With this change, there is a new parallel drawn between Hisone and Hinomoto,[9] further underlines Hisone’s tendency toward heartfelt dedication to unconventional methods, and Hisone’s desire for saving the sacrifice changes from an impersonal “Human sacrifices are wrong”[10] to “Human sacrifices are wrong, and also screw you I love that girl!”

And if that girl had Tsundere tendencies (like Nao or Natsume), that’d make the pairing even cuter.

Also, points for the entire D-Pi team unambiguously disbelieving Hisone’s ambiguous fate at the end. It’s fun to see such trope-awareness.[11]

In conclusion: Dragon Pilot is super adorable and sincere, the premise is quintessential anime, and it’s just fun. Sure, most of the characters deserve more depth and exploration, but that’s always my complaint and it’s only a 12-episode series. Plus, it very good at portraying mature characters without stooping into immature means.

And it’s really cementing my love of BONES as a studio.[12] I need to put more effort into seeking out their work.

So go watch it.

Thanks for reading my review! These do tend towards inconsistent release, but they’re fun to do. Consider checking out my other reviews, essays, and the rarer original work. I’m also nearing the end of my Muffin Comics experiment, so catch those while you can! If you really like what I’m outputting, I’ve got a Patreon, set on a monthly schedule so you know what you’re committing to.[13]

Next time: a Netflix Original of a magical tone! (And hopefully more Digimon)

Kataal kataal

[1] At least, that’s the hope. Gets dashed once the other D-Pi arrive on base and Kaizaki slips out of the spotlight. [2] The title goes to Hisone herself.[3] [3] Anyone else have troubles saying the main character/romantic lead are their favorite? Like it’s too easy an answer or something? Because I do. [4] All these H names are raising the hackles of my Mug Rule… [5] Presumably so they can localize Harvest Moon games. [6] Which means we were this close to a Yuri anime not about assaulting high schoolers and creepy family dynamics,[7] but one about Dragons pretending to be a spitfire and historical context and and light-hearted comedy and I honestly would trade this show for that and I love Hisone & Maston! [7] Citrus did not sit well with Canvas. [8] Canvas’s full tilt idea, by the way, is to combine Haruto, Nao, and Natsume. Condense characters and keep them all relevant longer. [9] Way too many H names. [10] Not that Hisone being a goofy all-loving hero isn’t super endearing. [11] Though it’d be nice to know what Hisone and Masoton were doing. Had Hisone ejected out of the dragon at any point during the… months(?) long time jump? [12] Wolf’s Rain notwithstanding. [13] Not going to lie, nothing deflects me from lending support quicker than a ‘Per Update’ schedule.

#CanvasWatches #dragon pilot #anime #CanvasReviews

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dgcatanisiri · 2 years

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I’ve spoken about my frustrations with David R George III getting the primary duties of the DS9 novels in the post-Star Trek Destiny timeframe of the Litverse. I feel like he had no particular interest in several story and character threads that were left unresolved before the time jump of around Voyager’s seventh season to post-Nemesis, and, in particular, I HATE how he approached Sisko in Rough Beasts of Empire, to the point where the whole book leaves me saying “this is NOT Benjamin Sisko.”

Oh, and don’t START me on Vedek Kira Nerys. I’m with Nana Visitor, that is NOT a fit for Kira’s character, and it should never have happened.

And it doesn’t get helped when he DID have a story segment set in that pre-time jump setting, where he basically seemed to be trying to retroactively justify that change for Kira by basically saying “see, the thoughts were there before!” when all he’s really doing is putting them there and saying they were always there.

Anyway, the part I’m really here mulling over is the Typhon Pact duology of Plagues of Night/Raise the Dawn.

It’s the one where he blows up DS9.

And the thing here is that, having gotten about one and a third of the way through... First of all, in general, I don’t like his writing style, where he stretches things out over five hundred pages that could happen in two hundred. Secondly, though, this “duology” is at least three different and distinct stories that SHOULD be unrelated, but he’s wrapped them together despite them not meshing. They only vaguely intersect, in the way that, say, two different WWII movies show parts of the same battle.

He did this in Rough Beasts as well - the cover features Spock and Sisko, which would give the reader the impression of a team up, but the two NEVER MEET, and the only intersection of their stories is that Spock suggests that the Federation send a ship to speak to a prominent Romulan leader, and Sisko is the one who commands that ship and does so. Otherwise, the two stories have NOTHING to do with one another. Oh, and there’s also some flashbacks to Sisko during the conflict with the Tzenkethi that don’t really serve any point in this story, which seem like leftovers from a prospective Lost Era novel on the subject.

But here, it’s even worse, because there are MULTIPLE potential stories here. One is the political situation, of the Federation and Typhon Pact coming to the brink of war. One is the set up of the new DS9 status quo, which is being upended anyway with the station being destroyed (I’ll get to my thoughts there, just wait). One is the continuation of that Sisko storyline, which also basically has the feeling of resolving it in the name of fan backlash to the idea, since the big issue, the separation of Sisko and Kasidy, is resolved in the end. And then there’s also some elements that involve the Enterprise, but do so in a way that doesn’t even really make them NEED to be the crew involved, aside from some interaction with Tomalok.

Each of these could and probably should have been their own novels - use the destruction of DS9 as the central event, and then build up stories around them, you could have a solid enough loose trilogy. Hell, these books introduce a new character into the TNG’s status quo, a Cardassian officer who joins as part of officer exchange as Cardassia signs into the Khitomer Accords, and he’s barely even ACKNOWLEDGED in things. There is a solid book right there in his joining the crew. DS9′s been through a time jump, why are we not spending a serious amount of time on the establishing of the station, reminding the audience of what we love about this place before it’s destroyed.

Hell, if anything, in Plagues of Night, I felt almost like DRG was expressing DISDAIN for the station, having a Bajoran’s internal monologue have him correcting himself about the Captain’s office in Ops not being “the prefect’s” office, despite how the Occupation has been over for fifteen years and this character has been serving there for a good six or seven, and the whole time he’s actually been serving on the station, it has been a wholly Starfleet station, since he joined the crew after Bajor joined the Federation, this is pointless. There are also some additional narrative text that draw attention to DS9′s Cardassian design being unwelcoming and such, and just... I honestly start feeling like HE, the writer, does not like the station, especially when the novel ends on a new, Starfleet designed station being built to replace it (which, honestly, doesn’t even stick in my mind when it comes to anything to do with DS9 - I will still picture the classic Cardassian designs in the new location, because THAT is DS9).

Destroying DS9 is something that comes across as pointless in story terms. There is a reason in the story, sure, that it’s an act that brings the two powers of the Federation and the Typhon Pact near to war that cooler heads must act to avert, but... Nothing about this makes it NEED to be DS9, other than the fact that we the audience know and love the station. But this could have been a major brush up at a significant planet across the Federation and it would have the same results to the political situation. DS9 is destroyed because it’s there, not because there’s a message with its destruction.

I honestly half get the impression that someone had said “okay, we’re not doing more DS9 books, just blow up the station and scatter the crew to the winds” during the approval stage of the outline of Plagues of Night, only to backtrack that IMMEDIATELY after that manuscript was already approved, so Raise the Dawn had to hastily bring back A DS9.

Just... So much of this, despite being a momentous event in universe just... feels like padding. Like it’s only got enough story for maybe a book, while being contracted for two, and yet the story feels like it could easily be stretched out to three or four.

I don’t like DRG’s writing, and while I am going to miss the ongoing Litverse of the last twenty years of Trek novels, I will NOT miss him having the primary authorship of the DS9 books.

#dg rambles #dg rants #star trek novels

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popwasabi · 5 years

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“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” Review: Kaiju WWE Match Barely Rises Above Script

Directed by Michael Dougherty

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe, and Milly Bobby Brown

The term “dumb fun” gets thrown around a lot when describing a film like “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” It’s often a blanket defense to shield a movie of this kind from any legit criticisms as unnecessary because “you’re supposed to turn your brain off.”

While I’m certainly not against indulging in cheap escapism I feel this defense often misreads the quality of a “dumb” movie as there are tons of films with bonkers plot-lines and themes that still hold up to strong criticism. A movie can be dumb and still make sense and an action movie can still be bombastic without bludgeoning a viewer with poorly contrived plot devices.

(A large percentage of super hero films and the MCU as a whole fall under this category.)

While “King of the Monsters” certainly isn’t short on spectacle and dazzling visual effects, its plot is more than just a little half-baked; it’s raw as hell with little coherence that will do more to takeaway from the movie’s best moments than enhance them.

The dazzling, kaiju-sized action will be enough for a large percentage of fans I imagine, and certainly kept me mostly entertained throughout the two-hour, fifteen-minute run-time but it’s not enough to lift the final product beyond being just ok.

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” takes place five years after the events of the first film as we are introduced to Dr. Mark Russell a former Monarch scientist who specializes in animal behavior and communication. Russell has fallen out with his wife and daughter after Godzilla’s attack on San Francisco tragically took the life of his young son but after an eco-terrorist group bent on reviving the other titans of the Earth kidnaps them both Russell is brought back into the fold to help save the world.

The one big takeaway I’m sure most fans can agree on after leaving the theaters is quite clearly the giant monster scenes are some of the best in the genre’s history.

(I mean, nothing against traditional dude’s in rubber suits, of course.)

The special effects team which combined some motion-capture suit acting along with stellar CGI creates hyper realistic giant monster movement while also hearkening back to some good ol’ fashion WWE style kaiju on kaiju brawling. Yes, again, the plot leaves a lot to be desired here but the kaiju action more often than not starts before your brain hemorrhages too hard from trying to make sense of character motivations and thematic messaging.

Though I would’ve preferred less of these battles in the dark and/or rain the cinematography does create some truly awe-inspiring moments that will wow even the most uptight of viewers. It’s truly impossible not to find some joy in these scenes and for most die-hards fans this will be more than enough to satisfy.

(Me often times during the battles in my theater seat.)

Unfortunately for this die-hard the screenplay is lacking to say the least.

First, before I continue, I want to make something very clear; I have no problem with a film being “dumb.” More specifically I don’t have a problem with it being “unsophisticated.” A film like “John Wick” for instance is not a very sophisticated movie. Hitman loses wife, then dog gets killed so he goes on a murderous rampage to avenge both. The difference is despite “John Wick” having no art house message to tell at least you are never confused and/or irritated by the messaging and motivations of the characters in that plot and it never distracts from the meat of the film which is of course the action.

Many of Godzilla’s Showa era films (which this movie mostly pays homage too) are like this and they work fine because again the plot moves the story along in a simple but effective way without detracting from its best parts, namely the Kaiju-sized wrestling matches.

“King of Monsters” unfortunately mostly fails on this level.

(I can honestly say the same thing about “John Wick Chapter 3″ as well but I’m not going to get into that today *sigh* but hey pew, pew!)

About a third of the way through the film the plot’s wheels spin wildly out of control and the mostly cognizant story up to that point goes up in atomic flames. You’ll spend more times asking questions than just sitting and enjoying yourself and it’s a real detriment to an otherwise spectacular giant monster throwdown.

The film largely wastes the talents of a hugely talented cast because of this between Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Milly Bobby Brown and Ken Watanabe. All of them do well with what they have to work with but the script really needed far less characters to work efficiently and unfortunately the acting talent here alone is not enough to lift a script that has very little clear direction. Character motivations and pathos seem to be dropped at a whim and the film’s final moments contradict a lot of the plot movement from earlier in the film.

(The ending of this film in a nutshell...)

Again a plot doesn’t need to be sophisticated to be good but it should AT LEAST make sense and work with the action, not against it.

There’s some interesting world building here and there but large sections of it are inexplicably and quite literally blown to smithereens on occasions and it will make you wonder if there was more fascinating story layered underneath it all.

Despite my gripes I would say it’s still mostly forgivable how bad the story is because of the aforementioned kaiju brawling but there is one unforgivable moment in this film and it symbolizes a much larger issue I have with the American interpretation of Godzilla.

(SPOILERS ahead)

Godzilla is often viewed in a pretty straight-forward manner by most fans; he’s a giant, fire-breathing reptile here to wreck cities for two hours and not much more than that. For the longest time I mostly saw the big G-man in that way as well and for what it’s worth I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying Godzilla films on purely a superficial level. After all, a large percentage of Godzilla’s filmography is largely schlock.

(Fun schlock, of course.)

But eventually as I got older and grew more into my half Japanese-American identity my view on Godzilla became a lot more nuanced especially after seeing the 1954 original without the American re-dubbing and editing.

If you haven’t seen the original Japanese “Gojira” do yourself a favor and give it a watch right now. The 1954 classic is a masterpiece of post-atomic bomb era story-telling in Japan and at the time a long overdue allegorical discussion of what happened during WWII in that country. However you may feel about the use of the atomic bomb to end the war you cannot say that the results weren’t horrifying and tragic and its radioactive aftermath is still felt in Japan today.

In the US radioactive waste creates super heroes like the Hulk, Spider-man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In Japan it creates Godzilla, a monster that is less a force of nature as these newer films describe him as but more the embodiment of dread, a vengeful God looking to bring about Armageddon to the sinful world. It played on very real fears about the hydrogen bomb and the escalation of weapons of mass destruction at the time and its message is still relevant.

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(The 1954 film is not meant to be “dumb” and/or “fun.”)

Now, I don’t have a problem too much with changing Godzilla into a super hero for this series. Afterall, the Showa era films it largely takes inspiration from depict Godzilla mostly in this light anyways but if you’re going to do that you can’t go slapping the face of the darker, more vindictive “Gojira” and its theme in the process and it does that in just one scene.

About half way through the movie, Godzilla is duking it out with King Ghidorah off the coast of Mexico when the US military gets involved by unleashing their brand new weapon: the Oxygen Destroyer. Those who have watched the 1954 original know this as the weapon that eventually kills Godzilla.

Those that understand the original will probably see why I find this scene unforgivable.

The use of the Oxygen Destroyer in the original 1954 film is not supposed to be a triumphant moment even when it kills Godzilla; it’s supposed to be a dark moment that gets to the core messaging of the film’s story. The Oxygen Destroyer represents the next level in mass destruction in the movie; a weapon more powerful and more terrifying than the atomic bomb that created Godzilla. Its creator Dr. Serizawa (who is NOTHING like the Serizawa in this series) is reluctant to use it because he understands what terrible power it carries and what it might do in the wrong hands. In the end he sacrifices himself and his research by purposely detonating the weapon along with himself to kill Godzilla.

The way this weapon is brought up and tossed out immediately in this story feels like a cheap fan servicey moment that winks at the audience going “hey remember the Oxygen Destroyer?” It is both shocking and frankly a tone deaf and fundamental misreading of what that weapon is supposed to represent in the larger Godzilla canon.

(What I felt like doing to the writers after this scene in the film...)

It might seem small to other fans but it really speaks to how America has misappropriated Godzilla each time they have gotten their creative hands on him to fit a comfortable narrative regarding weapons of mass destruction. Just watch the dubbed version of the 1954 film and you’ll understand what I’m getting at.

It’s extremely problematic, even it represents a tiny moment in the larger and again confusing plot of the movie and would’ve been better off left on the editing room table.

(Thank you for baring with my mini rant here if you read this far...)

It should be said that I don’t hate this movie, however, warts and all. The kaiju-sized action set pieces make the price of IMAX largely worth the money and I certainly enjoyed it more than the 2014 film at least. I feel “Kong: Skull Island” is a superior modern monster flick in almost every way but as far as cheap escapism goes you could do far worst “King of the Monsters” at least.

But the plot’s often baffling, confusing and problematic choices unfortunately keep the film’s best parts from being enough to rise above simply mediocre and that’s a real disappointment.

I’m still waiting for a truly satisfying high production value take on Godzilla but given the fundamental misreading of the big guy’s much more nuanced background by Hollywood perhaps I should stop looking to the West to figure it out.

Welp. At least there’s always “Shin Gojira”…

VERDICT:

3 out of 5

Hopefully Kong adds some much needed charisma to this franchise once he gets his big ape hands on Godzilla...

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