Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION , page 2
May 18, 2025
AS I PLEASE XXXII: REMEMBER THE INFOBAHN?
Well, I lied. I said I'd get this blog back up and running last Sunday, and Sunday and came and went to the accompaniment of...crickets. The truth is I am still adjusting to working full time again. Six months off is apparently just long enough to forget how to adult. But you didn't come here for my worn-out bag of excuses, so let's get down to business.
I recently had occasion to stumble over the corpse, or rather the tomb, of a 1990s-era computer. You know, the type with the solid steel body and enormous, hernia-inducing monitor, equipped both with a CD-ROM tray and a 3" floppy disc drive, and driven by a Pentium I or thereabouts? I couldn't resist firing the old beast up, and wouldn't you know it, I was immediately transported back to some nebulous period around 1998, when I first began, however grudgingly, to move into the era of the internet.
My first encounter with anything approaching the modern internet occurred in childhood, or perhaps tween-hood, when I saw my father set up an old-style telephone modem in the den of our home in Maryland. He explained to me -- this would have been sometime in the mid-late 1980s -- that he could write an article for his newspaper on our home computer, plug our telephone into the modem, and send the story downtown to his office in Washington, D.C. To me, this was practically science-fiction, and I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. A few years later, when I was a freshman in college, say 1991, a friend of mine showed how he could access library resources from the comfort of his dormitory computer. This was if anything even more shocking: the idea of remotely accessing a database made a mockery out of years of me thumbing tediously through dusty card catalogs for school assignments, though I confess at the time I did not envision how rapidly such "old" systems, which had been around for decades if not generations, would be wiped out by this new invention, which yet to have an actual name.
It was this time, the time right around my extremely belated college graduation in 1997, that I began to hear the first wave of a great torrent of computer-inspired verbiage which annoyed the shit out of me. I heard about websites, and www.this and www.that, and e-mail and @ symbols, and pentium processors and routers and ethernet cables, all of which were related to this place that was not a place where you could go via a computer, if you happened to have one, and it had the right gizmos and gadgets. The word "chatroom" seemed to dominate conversations, though I couldn't quite understand what the hell a chatroom was supposed to be. One issue which rankled in particular is that nobody really knew what the hell to call the thing which had just been created or how to describe interacting with that thing: web, net, infobahn, going online, jacking in, information superhighway, surfing the net, surfing the web, cyberspace, etc., etc. And initially, what we now refer to as "the internet" was a bit of a joke, the province of nerds like The Lone Gunmen on "The X-Files" or Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons." A place where you could look at highly pixilated images of naked women which very, very slowly downloaded onto your monitor, or get into arguments about television shows or sports with faceless people hiding behind fake names, or try and fail to watch something called "streaming" because your computer didn't have enough bandwidth, or had the wrong Flash player, or some fucking thing. In short, the interwebs, the infobahn, the web, the net, it seemed like a bit of a gimmick. It was kinda cool in its own way, but it was also kinda trash -- a product in its infancy, riddled with bugs, suggesting great possibilities without delivering them.
I am naturally resistant to change, especially technological change, and it wasn't until 1998 that I bought a Gateway PC which was equipped with the now-infamous 56K modem, the one you ran through your landline telephone jack, and which not prevented you from using the phone, but made that horrible computer shreik, accompanied by weird gonging noises, which everyone who lived through that era will remember with a shudder. I will not lie and say I didn't enjoy the hell out of that thing, especially in regards to playing video games like "Doom," "Panzer General 2," "Blood," "Resident Evil 2" and so forth, but my memories of the internet from that period are curiously sketchy. In retrospect the reason why is obvious: the internet itself was sketchy, and in more than one way. The late 90s and early 00s were a time when (to continue the metaphor) we had only the barest outline of what we now consider "the internet." The shading-in process was steady, but not particularly fast; or if it was fast, the area it had to cover partially defeated the speed. I have memories of going on Amazon for the first time in 1998; of visiting a boxing forum similar in a primitive way to Reddit with its topics and threads; of individual forays to places like Mapquest, and so on, and of course of using e-mail to communicate with friends and family. For me, however, the internet remained more of a toy than a tool. The huge computers of that era, sucking in power and blowing out heat through dust-caked vents, the squealing modems, the annoying 3" floppies that had virtually no storage memory, the whirring CD-ROM trays that broke so damned easily, the monitors heavy enough to cave in desktops, the cables that invariably stripped themselves from use and prevented the fucking printers from working, and the printer cartridges that cost a fortune and lasted about a week, are all far more vivid and clear in my mind than any direct benefit the internet gave me. Indeed, I have trouble remembering it even as a diversion. PCs were incredibly useful for games and word processing and printing things, and I was quite devoted to e-mail, but their larger dimensions were mostly wasted on me.
I am not writing, even in this slipshod of a fashion, a History of the Internet. I'm not qualified to do so. I'm speaking here only of my own initial forays into it, into cyberspace, through that clunky old technology. But lest you think I'm making fun of it, I want to stress that the feeling encountering that old beast of a computer engendered in me was actually a nostalgia -- not for 56K modems or Pentium I processors, but rather for the internet during its first decade or so, the period of the late 90s and early 00s. What distinguished this internet from the one we have today is not size, speed, complexity, depth, or any of that (though all of that applies); no, the main difference was that the pre-social media internet, the internet that died around 2006 or so, was not dominated or even much influenced by social media. (Myspace was not social media as we understand it today.) In these Old West days of the net, we saw the possibilities of the medium but not most of its pitfalls; we enjoyed some small benefits and few if any risks. The massive toxcicity that exists nowadays was not foreseen or feared: in its place was a feeling that we were entering the "information age" in which information would be totally democratized. Ignorance would disappear. Humans would have virtually free and unfettered access to the knowledge, the art, the literature of the ages...surely a golden age was coming? And in the meantime, the in-between time, we had fun, especially when instant messaging became popular. The internet was a mixture of convenience, silliness and pleasant diversion, which seemed to be growing into much more practical applications for conducting business.
I'm unashamed to say that I dearly miss that internet. I dearly miss the time when we looked at it with hope and wonder and humor, instead of dread and disgust. When the net was a toy becoming a tool, not a tool mutated into a weapon. When the nickname (how brief it was) of "infobahn" actually applied...as opposed to now, when aside from porn and malware, it's mostly a disinformation superhighway. I realize there is no going back, the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's Box is open, but damned if I wouldn't like to turn the clock back a little, and recapture a little of that wonder, a little of that awe. There are times (it's maudlin but I admit it) when I'd like to see if my old AOL/IM accounts from, say, 2006 are still working, and see if long-silent friends I used to chat with are somehow still there, waiting to resume those rambling, silly conversations made to the sound of chimes, that we had back when the internet was fun...a long, long time ago.
I recently had occasion to stumble over the corpse, or rather the tomb, of a 1990s-era computer. You know, the type with the solid steel body and enormous, hernia-inducing monitor, equipped both with a CD-ROM tray and a 3" floppy disc drive, and driven by a Pentium I or thereabouts? I couldn't resist firing the old beast up, and wouldn't you know it, I was immediately transported back to some nebulous period around 1998, when I first began, however grudgingly, to move into the era of the internet.
My first encounter with anything approaching the modern internet occurred in childhood, or perhaps tween-hood, when I saw my father set up an old-style telephone modem in the den of our home in Maryland. He explained to me -- this would have been sometime in the mid-late 1980s -- that he could write an article for his newspaper on our home computer, plug our telephone into the modem, and send the story downtown to his office in Washington, D.C. To me, this was practically science-fiction, and I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. A few years later, when I was a freshman in college, say 1991, a friend of mine showed how he could access library resources from the comfort of his dormitory computer. This was if anything even more shocking: the idea of remotely accessing a database made a mockery out of years of me thumbing tediously through dusty card catalogs for school assignments, though I confess at the time I did not envision how rapidly such "old" systems, which had been around for decades if not generations, would be wiped out by this new invention, which yet to have an actual name.
It was this time, the time right around my extremely belated college graduation in 1997, that I began to hear the first wave of a great torrent of computer-inspired verbiage which annoyed the shit out of me. I heard about websites, and www.this and www.that, and e-mail and @ symbols, and pentium processors and routers and ethernet cables, all of which were related to this place that was not a place where you could go via a computer, if you happened to have one, and it had the right gizmos and gadgets. The word "chatroom" seemed to dominate conversations, though I couldn't quite understand what the hell a chatroom was supposed to be. One issue which rankled in particular is that nobody really knew what the hell to call the thing which had just been created or how to describe interacting with that thing: web, net, infobahn, going online, jacking in, information superhighway, surfing the net, surfing the web, cyberspace, etc., etc. And initially, what we now refer to as "the internet" was a bit of a joke, the province of nerds like The Lone Gunmen on "The X-Files" or Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons." A place where you could look at highly pixilated images of naked women which very, very slowly downloaded onto your monitor, or get into arguments about television shows or sports with faceless people hiding behind fake names, or try and fail to watch something called "streaming" because your computer didn't have enough bandwidth, or had the wrong Flash player, or some fucking thing. In short, the interwebs, the infobahn, the web, the net, it seemed like a bit of a gimmick. It was kinda cool in its own way, but it was also kinda trash -- a product in its infancy, riddled with bugs, suggesting great possibilities without delivering them.
I am naturally resistant to change, especially technological change, and it wasn't until 1998 that I bought a Gateway PC which was equipped with the now-infamous 56K modem, the one you ran through your landline telephone jack, and which not prevented you from using the phone, but made that horrible computer shreik, accompanied by weird gonging noises, which everyone who lived through that era will remember with a shudder. I will not lie and say I didn't enjoy the hell out of that thing, especially in regards to playing video games like "Doom," "Panzer General 2," "Blood," "Resident Evil 2" and so forth, but my memories of the internet from that period are curiously sketchy. In retrospect the reason why is obvious: the internet itself was sketchy, and in more than one way. The late 90s and early 00s were a time when (to continue the metaphor) we had only the barest outline of what we now consider "the internet." The shading-in process was steady, but not particularly fast; or if it was fast, the area it had to cover partially defeated the speed. I have memories of going on Amazon for the first time in 1998; of visiting a boxing forum similar in a primitive way to Reddit with its topics and threads; of individual forays to places like Mapquest, and so on, and of course of using e-mail to communicate with friends and family. For me, however, the internet remained more of a toy than a tool. The huge computers of that era, sucking in power and blowing out heat through dust-caked vents, the squealing modems, the annoying 3" floppies that had virtually no storage memory, the whirring CD-ROM trays that broke so damned easily, the monitors heavy enough to cave in desktops, the cables that invariably stripped themselves from use and prevented the fucking printers from working, and the printer cartridges that cost a fortune and lasted about a week, are all far more vivid and clear in my mind than any direct benefit the internet gave me. Indeed, I have trouble remembering it even as a diversion. PCs were incredibly useful for games and word processing and printing things, and I was quite devoted to e-mail, but their larger dimensions were mostly wasted on me.
I am not writing, even in this slipshod of a fashion, a History of the Internet. I'm not qualified to do so. I'm speaking here only of my own initial forays into it, into cyberspace, through that clunky old technology. But lest you think I'm making fun of it, I want to stress that the feeling encountering that old beast of a computer engendered in me was actually a nostalgia -- not for 56K modems or Pentium I processors, but rather for the internet during its first decade or so, the period of the late 90s and early 00s. What distinguished this internet from the one we have today is not size, speed, complexity, depth, or any of that (though all of that applies); no, the main difference was that the pre-social media internet, the internet that died around 2006 or so, was not dominated or even much influenced by social media. (Myspace was not social media as we understand it today.) In these Old West days of the net, we saw the possibilities of the medium but not most of its pitfalls; we enjoyed some small benefits and few if any risks. The massive toxcicity that exists nowadays was not foreseen or feared: in its place was a feeling that we were entering the "information age" in which information would be totally democratized. Ignorance would disappear. Humans would have virtually free and unfettered access to the knowledge, the art, the literature of the ages...surely a golden age was coming? And in the meantime, the in-between time, we had fun, especially when instant messaging became popular. The internet was a mixture of convenience, silliness and pleasant diversion, which seemed to be growing into much more practical applications for conducting business.
I'm unashamed to say that I dearly miss that internet. I dearly miss the time when we looked at it with hope and wonder and humor, instead of dread and disgust. When the net was a toy becoming a tool, not a tool mutated into a weapon. When the nickname (how brief it was) of "infobahn" actually applied...as opposed to now, when aside from porn and malware, it's mostly a disinformation superhighway. I realize there is no going back, the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's Box is open, but damned if I wouldn't like to turn the clock back a little, and recapture a little of that wonder, a little of that awe. There are times (it's maudlin but I admit it) when I'd like to see if my old AOL/IM accounts from, say, 2006 are still working, and see if long-silent friends I used to chat with are somehow still there, waiting to resume those rambling, silly conversations made to the sound of chimes, that we had back when the internet was fun...a long, long time ago.
May 10, 2025
BACK FROM HIATUS
I think this might be the longest break I've ever taken from writing Antagony since I started it eight or nine years ago. For those who follow or otherwise tune in here, I apologize. The fact is I have a new job, and as everyone knows, the only thing more stressful than a transitional phase in life is when the transition ends and the new beginning, well, begins. And that's where I've been for the last month or so. Nearly everything not related to hammering myself into shape for this new gig has been neglected, including my fiction-writing, YouTube channel, and various human relationships, so yeah, I have a lot of making-up for lost time ahead of me in the coming weeks.
I will resume my regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow. I plan on rattling off a review of three books by Charles Bukowski, another "As I Please" entry, a discussion of a fascinating, forgotten WW2-era book compiled for servicemen called The Psychology of the Fighting Man and a visit down Memory Lane to discuss yet another television show I think worthy of revisiting. So if you're still here, stick around, and if you've left, well, I hope you come back.
See you tomorrow.
I will resume my regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow. I plan on rattling off a review of three books by Charles Bukowski, another "As I Please" entry, a discussion of a fascinating, forgotten WW2-era book compiled for servicemen called The Psychology of the Fighting Man and a visit down Memory Lane to discuss yet another television show I think worthy of revisiting. So if you're still here, stick around, and if you've left, well, I hope you come back.
See you tomorrow.
April 19, 2025
HOW TO USE (AND NOT USE) MAGIC
I have had a "full, rich day" and as I begin to wind down for the evening, cold beer in hand, I want to discuss an oft-neglected aspect of storytelling, one which I feel is extremely important despite that neglect, and indeed, if properly addressed, would right much of what is wrong with books, TV series and movies which have supernatural and magical elements or themes.
If you read this blog -- and it's been years since Goodreads allowed us, the authors of G-reads blogs, to see a "view" count, so I have no idea how many do so anymore -- you know that one of my favorite TV shows is FRIDAY THE 13th: THE SERIES, which ran from 1987 - 1990 and had enormous, if usually unacknowledged, influence on many shows which followed it. I've discussed the show at least twice before so I won't do so again, except to say it's about a trio tasked with hunting down antiques whcih were cursed by the devil and each have unique powers which give something to the user...but expect (and demand) something in return. Well, today I watched a first season episode from that show called "Bedazzled." The cursed item in question is a brass lamp whose light can locate treasure buried at sea, but which demands in turn that the user shine the light on an unsuspecting victim, who is promptly, if painfully, incinerated. I enjoyed the episode, but I had to laugh at the numerous plot holes. They did not relate to the object, but to the bloodthirsty bad guys trying to retrieve it from our heroes. By the end of the story five people have been killed, including a power company lineman and a police officer: indeed, our heroes shop, Curious Goods, is a veritable battlefield, with corpses sprawled in and around it, not to mention the now derelict vehicles of the police and power company. Yet the next morning everything is presented status quo ante, as if nothing of import happened. No army of cops and crime scene investigators is present documenting the massacre. No newsmen are crowding outside the shop looking for a scoop. It's as if the horror-movie storm of the previous night simply washed away all the evidence.
To quote Thomas Magnum: I know what you're thinking. It's a show about antiques cursed by the devil which possess evil powers. The audience knows that going in. So why bother making the heroes worry about police interrogations, or pesky journalists, or even neighbors exasperated by the constant mayhem going on in Curious Goods? If the central premise is fantastical, it doesn't have to be realistic in other ways.
If you think that, you're wrong. The prosaic details that govern everyday life matter on a supernatural show as much -- no, even more -- than in one based in ordinary reality. I'll say this again: The more magic and so forth you have in a world, the greater the urgency to get the nonmagical things right. This is the bedrock of making the unbelievable, believable.
Years and decades ago, probably around 1985, I read an article in a film magazine ridiculing INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM not for its supernatural flummery, but for the fact things like the laws of gravity and physics are simply ignored throughout the film whenever convenient for the writers. Specifically, the writer referenced the "jumping out of the airplane in a rubber raft" scene, and the scene where a coal car, packed with our heroes, jumps its track at high speed, flies in the air, and then lands perfectly on a completely different set of rails and continues on its way. Both sequences are preposterous, but why should they matter in a movie whose central premise revolves around magical objects?
Well, the gist of his article was that we can accept the existence of magical happenings in movies, but not resistance to ordinary physical laws in nonmagical moments. A man can jump off a 20 story building and land soft as a feather if he has a magic amulent: we accept this sort of thing in fiction. Indeed, half the reason to read fiction (or to see it on screen) is because things can happen in it that cannot happen in the real world. But we also understand that if our man lacks this amulet, he cannot survive the fall, which is what creates dramatic tension in stories where there are powers which supercede the natural laws by which we normally operate. A man without the amulet is just a man; he is subject to gravity, physics, entropy, and all the rest of it. Shylock's famous rhetorical rant -- "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" -- applies doubly to ordinary characters in a world in which magic or the supernatural exists. By balancing the "rules" of magic (its scope and limitations) with the rules which govern the real world, we help establish not merely boundaries, but that crucial sense of limitation, which fuels a sense of realism.
I wish I knew who wrote the article or what magazine it was featured in -- probably "Cinemafantastique" -- but I will say that I've kept this principle as a sort-of amulet of my own, to the point where I operate, in my own writing, from its principles, often without consciously thinking about it. Take my own novella, “Wolf Weather” as an example. This is a story about werewolves, or more specifically, about men fighting werewolves. There are supernatural creatures like Arabeth and Wolfgod in the story, and the very premise of werewolves is rooted in the supernatural, but the protagonist, Crowning, is anything but supernatural. He is subject to all the rules which govern the human being and the human body. In other words, he lives in a real world intruded upon by magic, but still has to cope with the woes and limitations of the real world. He must eat, he must sleep, he must relieve his bladder and worry about slipping on the ice and breaking his arm. The fact he is besieged by monsters does not mean he doesn't have to worry about drinking his posca every day to prevent scurvy. By keeping Crowning grounded in the physical world, one where cuts bleed and hurt and lack of sleep makes you stupid, the werewolves seem all the more abominable and horrifying. They are outside, like the Agents in THE MATRIX, operating by a different set of rules; you, the ordinary human however, do not have that luxury. Only intervention of magic can allow you to cheat the laws that govern existence. Where there is no supernatural, there is no super. You fall from too great a high and splat you go, whether magic exists somewhere else in the world or not.
The inversion, however, also obtains: I'm convinced one of the reasons BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was so damned good is because although Buffy herself is supernatural, or rather in possession of supernatural powers, she resides in the real world and is constantly vexed and bedeviled by real-world problems. Her super-powers avail her nothing in the realm of dating, or schoolwork, or popularity, or her ability to make or keep friends or maintain a healthy relationship with her own mother. By tying her to the prosaic, petty, frustrating, and the tedious -- in short, by making her human despite being extra-human in ability -- Buffy's war against "vampires, demons and the forces of darkness" becomes relatable, and thanks to that genuinely magical power, "the suspension of disbelief," believable. It has a hard foundation, a clearly-painted backdrop. Buffy can save the world on Thursday night, but on Friday she's still got a pop quiz she didn't have time to study for and no date to the dance and a mother who wants to ground her anyway because her grades are no good.
All this is my way of saying that storytelling -- the sort of storytelling with magical or supernatural elements, or even storytelling which is drenched in all things fantastical, such as the works of Tolkien -- still has to operate by a two-tiered system of laws. The first governs the fantastic. It establishes that, say, vampires exist, but it also sets up boundaries for the vampires: sunlight, crosses, holy water, stakes through the heart. The second governs the real world, where we have to pay taxes, get our hair cut, sleep at least six hours a night, obey the laws of thermodynamics, and explain dead police officers on the floor of our antique shop. So long as the storyteller keeps this system in mind, he cannot go far wrong: his audience will happily and enthusiastically suspend disbelief. It's when he is slovenly with the rules he sets up for magic, or allows characters to break the laws which administer everyday existence without magical intervention that eyes begin to roll.
If you read this blog -- and it's been years since Goodreads allowed us, the authors of G-reads blogs, to see a "view" count, so I have no idea how many do so anymore -- you know that one of my favorite TV shows is FRIDAY THE 13th: THE SERIES, which ran from 1987 - 1990 and had enormous, if usually unacknowledged, influence on many shows which followed it. I've discussed the show at least twice before so I won't do so again, except to say it's about a trio tasked with hunting down antiques whcih were cursed by the devil and each have unique powers which give something to the user...but expect (and demand) something in return. Well, today I watched a first season episode from that show called "Bedazzled." The cursed item in question is a brass lamp whose light can locate treasure buried at sea, but which demands in turn that the user shine the light on an unsuspecting victim, who is promptly, if painfully, incinerated. I enjoyed the episode, but I had to laugh at the numerous plot holes. They did not relate to the object, but to the bloodthirsty bad guys trying to retrieve it from our heroes. By the end of the story five people have been killed, including a power company lineman and a police officer: indeed, our heroes shop, Curious Goods, is a veritable battlefield, with corpses sprawled in and around it, not to mention the now derelict vehicles of the police and power company. Yet the next morning everything is presented status quo ante, as if nothing of import happened. No army of cops and crime scene investigators is present documenting the massacre. No newsmen are crowding outside the shop looking for a scoop. It's as if the horror-movie storm of the previous night simply washed away all the evidence.
To quote Thomas Magnum: I know what you're thinking. It's a show about antiques cursed by the devil which possess evil powers. The audience knows that going in. So why bother making the heroes worry about police interrogations, or pesky journalists, or even neighbors exasperated by the constant mayhem going on in Curious Goods? If the central premise is fantastical, it doesn't have to be realistic in other ways.
If you think that, you're wrong. The prosaic details that govern everyday life matter on a supernatural show as much -- no, even more -- than in one based in ordinary reality. I'll say this again: The more magic and so forth you have in a world, the greater the urgency to get the nonmagical things right. This is the bedrock of making the unbelievable, believable.
Years and decades ago, probably around 1985, I read an article in a film magazine ridiculing INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM not for its supernatural flummery, but for the fact things like the laws of gravity and physics are simply ignored throughout the film whenever convenient for the writers. Specifically, the writer referenced the "jumping out of the airplane in a rubber raft" scene, and the scene where a coal car, packed with our heroes, jumps its track at high speed, flies in the air, and then lands perfectly on a completely different set of rails and continues on its way. Both sequences are preposterous, but why should they matter in a movie whose central premise revolves around magical objects?
Well, the gist of his article was that we can accept the existence of magical happenings in movies, but not resistance to ordinary physical laws in nonmagical moments. A man can jump off a 20 story building and land soft as a feather if he has a magic amulent: we accept this sort of thing in fiction. Indeed, half the reason to read fiction (or to see it on screen) is because things can happen in it that cannot happen in the real world. But we also understand that if our man lacks this amulet, he cannot survive the fall, which is what creates dramatic tension in stories where there are powers which supercede the natural laws by which we normally operate. A man without the amulet is just a man; he is subject to gravity, physics, entropy, and all the rest of it. Shylock's famous rhetorical rant -- "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" -- applies doubly to ordinary characters in a world in which magic or the supernatural exists. By balancing the "rules" of magic (its scope and limitations) with the rules which govern the real world, we help establish not merely boundaries, but that crucial sense of limitation, which fuels a sense of realism.
I wish I knew who wrote the article or what magazine it was featured in -- probably "Cinemafantastique" -- but I will say that I've kept this principle as a sort-of amulet of my own, to the point where I operate, in my own writing, from its principles, often without consciously thinking about it. Take my own novella, “Wolf Weather” as an example. This is a story about werewolves, or more specifically, about men fighting werewolves. There are supernatural creatures like Arabeth and Wolfgod in the story, and the very premise of werewolves is rooted in the supernatural, but the protagonist, Crowning, is anything but supernatural. He is subject to all the rules which govern the human being and the human body. In other words, he lives in a real world intruded upon by magic, but still has to cope with the woes and limitations of the real world. He must eat, he must sleep, he must relieve his bladder and worry about slipping on the ice and breaking his arm. The fact he is besieged by monsters does not mean he doesn't have to worry about drinking his posca every day to prevent scurvy. By keeping Crowning grounded in the physical world, one where cuts bleed and hurt and lack of sleep makes you stupid, the werewolves seem all the more abominable and horrifying. They are outside, like the Agents in THE MATRIX, operating by a different set of rules; you, the ordinary human however, do not have that luxury. Only intervention of magic can allow you to cheat the laws that govern existence. Where there is no supernatural, there is no super. You fall from too great a high and splat you go, whether magic exists somewhere else in the world or not.
The inversion, however, also obtains: I'm convinced one of the reasons BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was so damned good is because although Buffy herself is supernatural, or rather in possession of supernatural powers, she resides in the real world and is constantly vexed and bedeviled by real-world problems. Her super-powers avail her nothing in the realm of dating, or schoolwork, or popularity, or her ability to make or keep friends or maintain a healthy relationship with her own mother. By tying her to the prosaic, petty, frustrating, and the tedious -- in short, by making her human despite being extra-human in ability -- Buffy's war against "vampires, demons and the forces of darkness" becomes relatable, and thanks to that genuinely magical power, "the suspension of disbelief," believable. It has a hard foundation, a clearly-painted backdrop. Buffy can save the world on Thursday night, but on Friday she's still got a pop quiz she didn't have time to study for and no date to the dance and a mother who wants to ground her anyway because her grades are no good.
All this is my way of saying that storytelling -- the sort of storytelling with magical or supernatural elements, or even storytelling which is drenched in all things fantastical, such as the works of Tolkien -- still has to operate by a two-tiered system of laws. The first governs the fantastic. It establishes that, say, vampires exist, but it also sets up boundaries for the vampires: sunlight, crosses, holy water, stakes through the heart. The second governs the real world, where we have to pay taxes, get our hair cut, sleep at least six hours a night, obey the laws of thermodynamics, and explain dead police officers on the floor of our antique shop. So long as the storyteller keeps this system in mind, he cannot go far wrong: his audience will happily and enthusiastically suspend disbelief. It's when he is slovenly with the rules he sets up for magic, or allows characters to break the laws which administer everyday existence without magical intervention that eyes begin to roll.
April 10, 2025
AS I PLEASE XXXI: WW2 EDITION
Just a quick note to let anyone who is interested know that I'm still here. Recent evens in life kept me away from the keyboard for almost a month. They are positive events, but have filled my time and mind to the point where all the intentions I had about keeping up with this blog got sent to wait at the back of the line. But like Douglas MacArthur or a bad check, I have returned with an especially neurodivergent edition of As I Please. Here goes.
* I just referenced MacArthur. Well, I also just watched a John Wayne war movie called "They Were Expendable," about a PT boat squadron based out of Hawaii in WW2. The movie is interesting because it is much less rah-rah than I was expecting for a wartime-produced movie starring the Duke, and therefore more realistic and gritty. The film follows the squadron as it fights the Japanese at sea in the early months of the war, and is finally whittled down to a few ragged survivors on Battaan and Corregidor who have to fight with rifles as they no longer have any boats. Most of the characters die or are left by the movie in positions where they are certainly doomed. In one scene, for example, a bunch of officers are awating evacuation to the States via the last cargo plane, but there is not enough room and several are pulled off the aircraft to meet their fate. Grim, grim stuff, but one thing that stuck in my craw was the depiction of the sailors as they evacuated General MacArthur from the Phillippines so he could fight another day. The sailors look joyfully privileged to be escorting their general to safety while they must return to the lost battle to die or be captured -- a fate equivalent to death, considering what the Japanese did to POWs. In reality, MacArthur was hated by many, perhaps most, of his troops, partly because they blamed his decisions for their defeat in battle, partly because he left them to their fate. This song, meant to be sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," was popular among them as they defended Bataan from the Japanese while he was assumed safe on Corregidor Island:
Dugout Doug MacArthur lies a shaking on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid
He’s protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made
Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug is ready in his Kris Craft for the flee
Over bounding billows and the wildly raging sea
For the Japs are pounding on the gates of Old Bataan
And his troops go starving on…
I mention all this because myth-making is a fascinating process both during and after the creation of the myth. Often it involves taking a disohonorable or cowardly action and turning it upside-down, so that it refracts the glow of military genius and civic virtue. It is an illusionist's trick which throws off a dazzle which, if you squint a little, allows you to see that it's all just stagecraft. But most of us do not squint. It is easier to applaud the illusionist than to point out the flaws in his trick. MacArthur is defeated in battle, runs away while his troops are left to die, and then goes on to crown himself, and to be crowned, as a kind of American Caesar, the man who won the Pacific War, ruled postwar Japan as unofficial emperor, and masterminded the Inchon landings in Korea. At any point this narrative falls apart under even the most cursory scrutiny (please see "The Legend of Dougout Doug," Episode 103 of the Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast if you want details delivered by historical experts on the subject), but how often do we subject our national myths to even cursory scrutiny? In this age, it is more important than ever to put any narrative through a scientific wringer before even tentatively accepting it is true.
* I also watched another WW2-era war movie starring Errol Flynn called "Objective: Burma!" Now this was a really excellent film. Flynn gives a surprisingly warm and understated performance as an Army captain tasked with leading a raid on Japanese radar installations in Burma in early 1945. The grinning swashbuckler of Hollywood puts his grin and his swashbuckling aside to portray a quietly professional officer who does everything right, only to discover that everything goes wrong anyway. "Burma!" is surprisingly skilled in the craft of its narrative, bait-and-switching the audience by having our heroic paratoopers pull off their coup with ease. The movie seems complete a third of the way through, and then, well, shit goes south in a hurry, and instead of a smooth plane ride back to base, they must make a hellish 200 mile trek on foot, through malaria-ridden swamp in blistering heat, while being attacked and ambushed every step of the way by irate Japanese who show them no mercy. A "men on a mission" commando flick becomes a cinematic study in survival under pressure, as Flynn's character, fighting hunger as well as exhaustion, disease, despair and the Japanese army, tries to get his dwindling survivors to safety. I really enjoyed this movie, not merely because it is a surprisingly realistic depiction of battle for its time (1945), but because unlike John Wayne, in actuality a gifted actor yet who made a career playing essentially the same character over and over again, Errol Flynn sets aside his usual rakish grin and devil-may-care antics to show the burden of command on a well-trained professional struggling not to succumb to despair.
* I just finished "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," a memoir by Captain Ted Lawson, of the famous surprise "Doolittle Raid" on Japan carried out by the US Army and US Navy on Japan in early 1942. As an account of a carefully and meticulously planned military operation, carried out in uttermost secrecy as a means of boosting American civilian morale during a period of defeat and despair, it is very interesting, but where the book is truly remarkable is in Lawson's depiction of the aftermath. His bomber, "The Ruptured Duck," crashed in China after the raid, and his crew were all badly injured, worst off himself -- he was thrown through the bullet-resistant windshield at 110 mph into the water, then washed up on the shore. His face caved in and his leg badly injured, he and the others had to be carried by friendly Chinese peasants from village to village over several hundreds of miles without any anesthetic or medical care, all the while being hunted by Japanese patrols. Then Lawson's leg became gangrenous and had to be amputated...it just goes on an on, bad to worse, to worse yet. A truly astounding story of human endurance and survival, and also of the human ability to suffer, and to endure, pain in every form. Indeed, when Lawson finally returned to the States, the plastic surgeons discovered the impact had driven some of his teeth into his sinuses, and when they were removed, the astonished surgeons found beach sand in the wounds. How he made it through all of this is beyond me, but Lawson, incidentally, lived to be 74 years old.
* In the back of my copy of "Tokyo," which is an original (1943 publishing date), there is an advertisement for a book called "Psychology For The Fighting Man." This is an interesting book which you can peruse for free on the wonderful Internet Archive (archive.org), cobbled together by a whole slew of psychologists, psychiatrists, military men and spies, to help the American fighting man, regardless of branch of service, cope with some of the challenges he faced during wartime: not just physical challenges posed by military life and combat, but loneliness, sexual starvation, resentment against superiors, et cetera and so on. A lot of the topics seem to fall far afield from psychology, venturing into things like sight, hearing, noise, color sense, use of camouflage, etc., but are eventually shown through a psychological lens, such as "how to find your way when lost." There are also chapters on leadership and organization, and how psychology plays into each. I found the book quite interesting simply as a discussion of the human condition, but also because it shows how science, biology, psychology and other disciplines come together to create a better fighting man. The great body of knowledge which exists in a society is harnessed to the goal of training men for war. When the book discusses caloric needs, sexual hygiene, colds and flus, temperatures, oxygen requirements, tolerances for noise, and so forth, it is all in the service of making the better and more efficient soldier. On the one hand, tremendous thought and care, and on the other, the full knowledge that all of this thought and care will be put into a body which may soon be blown to bits. The ethical and moral problems raised by this are fascinating, and it is interesting to ponder whether much of the knowledge we have, whether industrial, technological, psychological, medical or what have you, would have come about so quickly or at all if we did not spend so much time, money and effort figuring out ways to kill each other.
And with that, I bring "As I Please" to a close. If you noticed my absence from the platform, I apoligize; if you didn't, that is still my fault.
* I just referenced MacArthur. Well, I also just watched a John Wayne war movie called "They Were Expendable," about a PT boat squadron based out of Hawaii in WW2. The movie is interesting because it is much less rah-rah than I was expecting for a wartime-produced movie starring the Duke, and therefore more realistic and gritty. The film follows the squadron as it fights the Japanese at sea in the early months of the war, and is finally whittled down to a few ragged survivors on Battaan and Corregidor who have to fight with rifles as they no longer have any boats. Most of the characters die or are left by the movie in positions where they are certainly doomed. In one scene, for example, a bunch of officers are awating evacuation to the States via the last cargo plane, but there is not enough room and several are pulled off the aircraft to meet their fate. Grim, grim stuff, but one thing that stuck in my craw was the depiction of the sailors as they evacuated General MacArthur from the Phillippines so he could fight another day. The sailors look joyfully privileged to be escorting their general to safety while they must return to the lost battle to die or be captured -- a fate equivalent to death, considering what the Japanese did to POWs. In reality, MacArthur was hated by many, perhaps most, of his troops, partly because they blamed his decisions for their defeat in battle, partly because he left them to their fate. This song, meant to be sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," was popular among them as they defended Bataan from the Japanese while he was assumed safe on Corregidor Island:
Dugout Doug MacArthur lies a shaking on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid
He’s protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made
Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug is ready in his Kris Craft for the flee
Over bounding billows and the wildly raging sea
For the Japs are pounding on the gates of Old Bataan
And his troops go starving on…
I mention all this because myth-making is a fascinating process both during and after the creation of the myth. Often it involves taking a disohonorable or cowardly action and turning it upside-down, so that it refracts the glow of military genius and civic virtue. It is an illusionist's trick which throws off a dazzle which, if you squint a little, allows you to see that it's all just stagecraft. But most of us do not squint. It is easier to applaud the illusionist than to point out the flaws in his trick. MacArthur is defeated in battle, runs away while his troops are left to die, and then goes on to crown himself, and to be crowned, as a kind of American Caesar, the man who won the Pacific War, ruled postwar Japan as unofficial emperor, and masterminded the Inchon landings in Korea. At any point this narrative falls apart under even the most cursory scrutiny (please see "The Legend of Dougout Doug," Episode 103 of the Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast if you want details delivered by historical experts on the subject), but how often do we subject our national myths to even cursory scrutiny? In this age, it is more important than ever to put any narrative through a scientific wringer before even tentatively accepting it is true.
* I also watched another WW2-era war movie starring Errol Flynn called "Objective: Burma!" Now this was a really excellent film. Flynn gives a surprisingly warm and understated performance as an Army captain tasked with leading a raid on Japanese radar installations in Burma in early 1945. The grinning swashbuckler of Hollywood puts his grin and his swashbuckling aside to portray a quietly professional officer who does everything right, only to discover that everything goes wrong anyway. "Burma!" is surprisingly skilled in the craft of its narrative, bait-and-switching the audience by having our heroic paratoopers pull off their coup with ease. The movie seems complete a third of the way through, and then, well, shit goes south in a hurry, and instead of a smooth plane ride back to base, they must make a hellish 200 mile trek on foot, through malaria-ridden swamp in blistering heat, while being attacked and ambushed every step of the way by irate Japanese who show them no mercy. A "men on a mission" commando flick becomes a cinematic study in survival under pressure, as Flynn's character, fighting hunger as well as exhaustion, disease, despair and the Japanese army, tries to get his dwindling survivors to safety. I really enjoyed this movie, not merely because it is a surprisingly realistic depiction of battle for its time (1945), but because unlike John Wayne, in actuality a gifted actor yet who made a career playing essentially the same character over and over again, Errol Flynn sets aside his usual rakish grin and devil-may-care antics to show the burden of command on a well-trained professional struggling not to succumb to despair.
* I just finished "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," a memoir by Captain Ted Lawson, of the famous surprise "Doolittle Raid" on Japan carried out by the US Army and US Navy on Japan in early 1942. As an account of a carefully and meticulously planned military operation, carried out in uttermost secrecy as a means of boosting American civilian morale during a period of defeat and despair, it is very interesting, but where the book is truly remarkable is in Lawson's depiction of the aftermath. His bomber, "The Ruptured Duck," crashed in China after the raid, and his crew were all badly injured, worst off himself -- he was thrown through the bullet-resistant windshield at 110 mph into the water, then washed up on the shore. His face caved in and his leg badly injured, he and the others had to be carried by friendly Chinese peasants from village to village over several hundreds of miles without any anesthetic or medical care, all the while being hunted by Japanese patrols. Then Lawson's leg became gangrenous and had to be amputated...it just goes on an on, bad to worse, to worse yet. A truly astounding story of human endurance and survival, and also of the human ability to suffer, and to endure, pain in every form. Indeed, when Lawson finally returned to the States, the plastic surgeons discovered the impact had driven some of his teeth into his sinuses, and when they were removed, the astonished surgeons found beach sand in the wounds. How he made it through all of this is beyond me, but Lawson, incidentally, lived to be 74 years old.
* In the back of my copy of "Tokyo," which is an original (1943 publishing date), there is an advertisement for a book called "Psychology For The Fighting Man." This is an interesting book which you can peruse for free on the wonderful Internet Archive (archive.org), cobbled together by a whole slew of psychologists, psychiatrists, military men and spies, to help the American fighting man, regardless of branch of service, cope with some of the challenges he faced during wartime: not just physical challenges posed by military life and combat, but loneliness, sexual starvation, resentment against superiors, et cetera and so on. A lot of the topics seem to fall far afield from psychology, venturing into things like sight, hearing, noise, color sense, use of camouflage, etc., but are eventually shown through a psychological lens, such as "how to find your way when lost." There are also chapters on leadership and organization, and how psychology plays into each. I found the book quite interesting simply as a discussion of the human condition, but also because it shows how science, biology, psychology and other disciplines come together to create a better fighting man. The great body of knowledge which exists in a society is harnessed to the goal of training men for war. When the book discusses caloric needs, sexual hygiene, colds and flus, temperatures, oxygen requirements, tolerances for noise, and so forth, it is all in the service of making the better and more efficient soldier. On the one hand, tremendous thought and care, and on the other, the full knowledge that all of this thought and care will be put into a body which may soon be blown to bits. The ethical and moral problems raised by this are fascinating, and it is interesting to ponder whether much of the knowledge we have, whether industrial, technological, psychological, medical or what have you, would have come about so quickly or at all if we did not spend so much time, money and effort figuring out ways to kill each other.
And with that, I bring "As I Please" to a close. If you noticed my absence from the platform, I apoligize; if you didn't, that is still my fault.
March 18, 2025
OH, CANADA
Canada is much in the news lately, and for once I feel as if I am ahead of the curve on a news trend, because Canada has been much on my mind for some years now. Unlike many people here in the States, I make a point of trying to consume quite a bit of foreign media and opinion, so I can get a better understanding of the wider world I live in, and this includes a great number of news shows, podcasts and entertainment coming from The Great White North.
The US - Canada relationship is a curious one, because it reminds me of the mountains I used to see every day from my front porch in Burbank, California. They were so present that I usually failed to notice them. It was the same during the month I spent in Tucson, Arizona: the first few days they were the only thing I saw, and after that they may as well not have existed. I had to be reminded of them and always had the same startled reaction -- "Look at those things!" They were simply too big for my eyes to see. For most Yanks, by which I mean Yanks who do not live in the border states or in close proximity to them, Canada is like that: the massive neighbor we never really think about until we have some cause to do so.
Although recent events have shown some Americans can be horribly condescending about Canada, there is nothing condescending in this particular attitude. Excepting Quebec, where the language is French and much of the architecture much more old-world European than modern North American in style, Canada is sufficiently similar to the States as to feel less like a foreign country to us than, say, Britain does, and of course it is hell of a lot closer than Britain, or Ireland...or Australia or New Zealand, for that matter. When a Yank is in Vancouver, he will certainly notice little differences here and there, but he will never experience the disorientation or discomfort he will certainly encounter if he is in France, or Italy, or Mororcco, or Japan, and he does not speak the language. Put simply, he is away from home but does not feel away from home. Part of this rests in the famous and largely well-deserved Canadian kindliness, which is so much like American Midwestern kindliness except even more pronounced; but most of it rests in the fact the cultural differences are small and pleasing rather than large and jarring. They are just obtrusive enough to give the Yank a romantic sense he is "somewhere else" without oppressing him with the scary knowledge that he is "somewhere else."
Now I must make a full and immediate confession. When I was in high school in Maryland, knowing nothing about Canada except that it existed, I occasionally made jeering remarks to a Canadian kid in my school that Canada was, you guessed it, the 51st State. This is a common American insult leveled at Canadians, though in my case it came from stupidity and not malice. Knowing jack-all about Canada's history, I viewed it as a kind of giveaway of the British Empire, the colonies that did not rebel, who were granted independence rather than taking it for themselves, and who were otherwise culturally indistinguishable from Americans. The existence of Canada, insomuch as I contemplated it at all, seemed weird to me. They were foreigners, but not really. They spoke our language, played our sports, shared our continent, watched our television, and exported large quantities of their citizens to work and play within our borders...citizens you didn't even know were Canadian until they told you, because what we refer to as "The Canadian accent" in the States is actually only the accent of certain areas and classes in Canada. Indeed, outside Quebec Province, where you naturally hear a lot of Quebecois-accented English, I can recall hearing only one "Great White North" accent anywhere in British Columbia when I was working there. Literally only one.
Please note my use of the word "our." It assumes an ownership of things which in fact I as an American do not own, such as the title of "American" or the English language. This Americocentric view of the world is one of the outstanding characteristics of people from the States, combining an ignorance of the rest of the world with a distinterest in learning anything that could be called stupidity, salted heavily with the arrogance of being born, post 1945, into a superpower, or, post 1991, a hyperpower. The reasons for this are complex, but they lie on a bedrock of geography which far predates our status as a great power. The United States, massive as it is, has exactly two contiguous neighbors, Canada and Mexico, neither of which have ever presented a military threat to us. Because of this, because to the north and south we have only neighbors and not threats, and because our flanks are protected by two mighty oceans, Americans have always been more occupied with themselves than anyone else. Our interest in Europe is really a modern, 20th century phenomenon, and then only the result of world wars, and then only a reluctant one. Our interest in Asia, outside the considerations of a handful of military strategists and diplomats, is purely commercial. Americans, as a rule, care about America and absolutely nothing else.
This attitude is partially forgivable, because the size of the United States allows an American citizen to see pretty much every known climate and geographical feature without leaving even our contiguous borders; throw in Alaska and Hawaii and some of the territories, i.e. Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands, and there is just about nothing you cannot experience right here in the USA.
Nevertheless, this attitude is aggravating and insulting to foreigners and deeply dangerous to ourselves. American conservatism, which finds its deepest root in the isolationist philosophy of George Washington, still clings to the idea that America can ignore the rest of the world -- that we neither need, nor need respect, dem forriners. The main trouble with this attitude is that we no longer live in the 1700s -- or the 1800s or early-mid 1900s, for that matter. Technology has for practical purposes shrunk the size of the planet while also dissolving its made-up frontiers. The global economy, an almost incredibly complex interweaving of stock markets, trade deals, military partnerships, cultural exchanges, mass migration and all the rest of it, none of which could have been anticipated by George Washington, is a fact of life, and short of an nuclear war it is not going anywhere. Isolationism is an effective emotional appeal, but it has no basis in economic, military or political reality: the world has grown too small, and its parts are too interconnected. What effects one effects all, no matter how hard you happen to sing "America the Beautiful."
And this brings me back north, to Canada. Until Donald Trump came back to the White House, the relationship of Canada to the United States could, I would argue, be likened to that between brothers who settle next door to each other. They have history, and history includes baggage; they have a definite hierarchy in the way that big brothers have with little brothers, which can prove insulting, exasperating or merely annoying; and their interests occasionally conflict. Each has a somewhat different way of viewing the world, of conducting their personal business...and each has its own individual tastes. Taken at a glance, however, they are remarkably similar, generally enjoy a friendly relationship, and whenever they sense a threat, immediately come together, sleeves rolled up, fists clenched, ready to handle their bloody business if need be.
Trump's "51st state" rhetoric strikes many Americans, by which I mean mostly the Americans who voted for him, as amusing. It is in their minds simply a verbalization of what many in the States have long thought about Canada. But there is a critical difference, actually several critical differences. Firstly, it is not a snarky remark uttered by a drunk from Newark at a Canucks - Devils game and therefore meaningless. It was made by the President of the United States, and moreover, by a President who has a habit of disguising very definite, concrete plans inside of hyperbolic rhetoric, and whose lack of understanding of domestic and international law is matched only by his lack of respect for it. In short, it is not merely an insult, it is a threat, and a very specific and alarming one at that. But let us discuss the insult first, because it is folly to assume that the primitive emotions aroused by being insulted do not play into international politics.
For the last nine years, Canada has suffered under the misrule of Justin Trudeau, a globalist whose stated intention was to turn Canada into a "postnational state." In Trudeau's vision, Canada would cease to be a sovereign nation and transition into an economic unit of the global economy, one which, through the process of mass immigration, would also lose any sense of cultural identity. Canada, in short, would flee into a post-national world-citizen identity identical to the cosmopolitanism of aristocrats two hundred years ago. The effects of Trudeau's policies are outside the scope of this essay but manifestly clear to anyone who can read a spread sheet on this like the effectiveness of Canadian health care, the power of the Canadian military, housing costs, rental prices or the number of hours of work is necessary for the ordinary person to work in order to keep a roof over their head. I mention them because the course Trudeau embarked upon, the course which would erase and was erasing Canadian identity, has been violently altered on an emotional level by the contemptuous threats of an American president. Canadians who understand American history have long harbored suspicions about America's ultimate motives for Canada vis-a-vis her natural resources, including water -- one of the better TV shows I ever saw, "Intelligence" which was created by Chris Haddock, tackled these topics in such an uncomfortably forthright way the CBC canceled the show rather than ruffle American feathers -- but the ordinary Canadian viewed 51st state talk as no more than cheap shot talk from their sometimes obnoxious but generally caring brother next door. Trump's rhetoric changed that. He not only insulted every Canadian, he said, in essence, that he wasn't sure little brother should have his own home, his own car, his own wife, his own kids, or his own dog. He said, in essence, that he didn't feel any particular need to respect the property line or little brother's status as an adult -- his agency, his independence. He said, in essence, "nice country you've got there, be a shame if someone came along and messed it up."
Trump's tarrifs and threats of tarrifs are proof that the 51st state talk is not merely the hyperbolic, trolling rhetoric Trump has often employed to please his base, but a definite statement of intent. Most Americans do not know this, but Canada was twice invaded by the United States, once during the Revolutionary War, and once during the War of 1812. Both invasions failed, which is of course why Americans don't know about them, and both invasions failed because they underestimated Canada's sense of identity, which existed long before Canada had been granted her independence from Great Britain. Notwithstanding a small minority of citizens who would find it convenient for personal reasons, Canada has never wanted to be part of the United States, and it understandably resents being denied recognition that it is indeed a very separate entity both politically and culturally. Now, Trump's
threats don't mean he necessarily intends to send the troops rolling over the border, but it does mean he understands that economic warfare is warfare and like conventional warfare can be employed to break the political will of the enemy...and like all warfare presupposes there is an enemy. And the effect of declaring Canada an enemy has been to erase nine years of Trudeauism, at least as it applies to Canada's sense of national identity. Canadians are not only mad as hell, they are conscious of being Canadians in a way that they have not been, collectively anyway, since Trudeau tried to brainwash them into thinking they were global citizens. When Canadians say "elbows up" they are referring to the fighting pose of a hockey player. They are saying that they are ready to drop the stick, toss the gloves and start throwing punches. It's sad that they have had to adopt this posture. It's sad that a country with whom we share a 5,525 mile border is now looking to the EU for its security guarantees and to China, India and Europe rather than the States for economic trade agreements when we are its largest trading partner and vice-versa. And it is even sadder for me as an American citizen to feel embarrassed at the clumsy, reckless, bullying, ham-fisted methods that have been used on our inoffensive neighbor. When I was in Montreal and Quebec City last year I could not have been treated any kindlier by complete strangers than if I were staying with old friends. Canadians have always taken for granted that whatever stupid jokes or insults we might periodically exchange, when push came to shove, America -- their fellow Americans from the States -- would be by their side, ready to fight with them and for them. Few of them ever dreamed we would be doing the pushing and the shoving. But here we are.
Kind of makes you think, eh?
The US - Canada relationship is a curious one, because it reminds me of the mountains I used to see every day from my front porch in Burbank, California. They were so present that I usually failed to notice them. It was the same during the month I spent in Tucson, Arizona: the first few days they were the only thing I saw, and after that they may as well not have existed. I had to be reminded of them and always had the same startled reaction -- "Look at those things!" They were simply too big for my eyes to see. For most Yanks, by which I mean Yanks who do not live in the border states or in close proximity to them, Canada is like that: the massive neighbor we never really think about until we have some cause to do so.
Although recent events have shown some Americans can be horribly condescending about Canada, there is nothing condescending in this particular attitude. Excepting Quebec, where the language is French and much of the architecture much more old-world European than modern North American in style, Canada is sufficiently similar to the States as to feel less like a foreign country to us than, say, Britain does, and of course it is hell of a lot closer than Britain, or Ireland...or Australia or New Zealand, for that matter. When a Yank is in Vancouver, he will certainly notice little differences here and there, but he will never experience the disorientation or discomfort he will certainly encounter if he is in France, or Italy, or Mororcco, or Japan, and he does not speak the language. Put simply, he is away from home but does not feel away from home. Part of this rests in the famous and largely well-deserved Canadian kindliness, which is so much like American Midwestern kindliness except even more pronounced; but most of it rests in the fact the cultural differences are small and pleasing rather than large and jarring. They are just obtrusive enough to give the Yank a romantic sense he is "somewhere else" without oppressing him with the scary knowledge that he is "somewhere else."
Now I must make a full and immediate confession. When I was in high school in Maryland, knowing nothing about Canada except that it existed, I occasionally made jeering remarks to a Canadian kid in my school that Canada was, you guessed it, the 51st State. This is a common American insult leveled at Canadians, though in my case it came from stupidity and not malice. Knowing jack-all about Canada's history, I viewed it as a kind of giveaway of the British Empire, the colonies that did not rebel, who were granted independence rather than taking it for themselves, and who were otherwise culturally indistinguishable from Americans. The existence of Canada, insomuch as I contemplated it at all, seemed weird to me. They were foreigners, but not really. They spoke our language, played our sports, shared our continent, watched our television, and exported large quantities of their citizens to work and play within our borders...citizens you didn't even know were Canadian until they told you, because what we refer to as "The Canadian accent" in the States is actually only the accent of certain areas and classes in Canada. Indeed, outside Quebec Province, where you naturally hear a lot of Quebecois-accented English, I can recall hearing only one "Great White North" accent anywhere in British Columbia when I was working there. Literally only one.
Please note my use of the word "our." It assumes an ownership of things which in fact I as an American do not own, such as the title of "American" or the English language. This Americocentric view of the world is one of the outstanding characteristics of people from the States, combining an ignorance of the rest of the world with a distinterest in learning anything that could be called stupidity, salted heavily with the arrogance of being born, post 1945, into a superpower, or, post 1991, a hyperpower. The reasons for this are complex, but they lie on a bedrock of geography which far predates our status as a great power. The United States, massive as it is, has exactly two contiguous neighbors, Canada and Mexico, neither of which have ever presented a military threat to us. Because of this, because to the north and south we have only neighbors and not threats, and because our flanks are protected by two mighty oceans, Americans have always been more occupied with themselves than anyone else. Our interest in Europe is really a modern, 20th century phenomenon, and then only the result of world wars, and then only a reluctant one. Our interest in Asia, outside the considerations of a handful of military strategists and diplomats, is purely commercial. Americans, as a rule, care about America and absolutely nothing else.
This attitude is partially forgivable, because the size of the United States allows an American citizen to see pretty much every known climate and geographical feature without leaving even our contiguous borders; throw in Alaska and Hawaii and some of the territories, i.e. Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands, and there is just about nothing you cannot experience right here in the USA.
Nevertheless, this attitude is aggravating and insulting to foreigners and deeply dangerous to ourselves. American conservatism, which finds its deepest root in the isolationist philosophy of George Washington, still clings to the idea that America can ignore the rest of the world -- that we neither need, nor need respect, dem forriners. The main trouble with this attitude is that we no longer live in the 1700s -- or the 1800s or early-mid 1900s, for that matter. Technology has for practical purposes shrunk the size of the planet while also dissolving its made-up frontiers. The global economy, an almost incredibly complex interweaving of stock markets, trade deals, military partnerships, cultural exchanges, mass migration and all the rest of it, none of which could have been anticipated by George Washington, is a fact of life, and short of an nuclear war it is not going anywhere. Isolationism is an effective emotional appeal, but it has no basis in economic, military or political reality: the world has grown too small, and its parts are too interconnected. What effects one effects all, no matter how hard you happen to sing "America the Beautiful."
And this brings me back north, to Canada. Until Donald Trump came back to the White House, the relationship of Canada to the United States could, I would argue, be likened to that between brothers who settle next door to each other. They have history, and history includes baggage; they have a definite hierarchy in the way that big brothers have with little brothers, which can prove insulting, exasperating or merely annoying; and their interests occasionally conflict. Each has a somewhat different way of viewing the world, of conducting their personal business...and each has its own individual tastes. Taken at a glance, however, they are remarkably similar, generally enjoy a friendly relationship, and whenever they sense a threat, immediately come together, sleeves rolled up, fists clenched, ready to handle their bloody business if need be.
Trump's "51st state" rhetoric strikes many Americans, by which I mean mostly the Americans who voted for him, as amusing. It is in their minds simply a verbalization of what many in the States have long thought about Canada. But there is a critical difference, actually several critical differences. Firstly, it is not a snarky remark uttered by a drunk from Newark at a Canucks - Devils game and therefore meaningless. It was made by the President of the United States, and moreover, by a President who has a habit of disguising very definite, concrete plans inside of hyperbolic rhetoric, and whose lack of understanding of domestic and international law is matched only by his lack of respect for it. In short, it is not merely an insult, it is a threat, and a very specific and alarming one at that. But let us discuss the insult first, because it is folly to assume that the primitive emotions aroused by being insulted do not play into international politics.
For the last nine years, Canada has suffered under the misrule of Justin Trudeau, a globalist whose stated intention was to turn Canada into a "postnational state." In Trudeau's vision, Canada would cease to be a sovereign nation and transition into an economic unit of the global economy, one which, through the process of mass immigration, would also lose any sense of cultural identity. Canada, in short, would flee into a post-national world-citizen identity identical to the cosmopolitanism of aristocrats two hundred years ago. The effects of Trudeau's policies are outside the scope of this essay but manifestly clear to anyone who can read a spread sheet on this like the effectiveness of Canadian health care, the power of the Canadian military, housing costs, rental prices or the number of hours of work is necessary for the ordinary person to work in order to keep a roof over their head. I mention them because the course Trudeau embarked upon, the course which would erase and was erasing Canadian identity, has been violently altered on an emotional level by the contemptuous threats of an American president. Canadians who understand American history have long harbored suspicions about America's ultimate motives for Canada vis-a-vis her natural resources, including water -- one of the better TV shows I ever saw, "Intelligence" which was created by Chris Haddock, tackled these topics in such an uncomfortably forthright way the CBC canceled the show rather than ruffle American feathers -- but the ordinary Canadian viewed 51st state talk as no more than cheap shot talk from their sometimes obnoxious but generally caring brother next door. Trump's rhetoric changed that. He not only insulted every Canadian, he said, in essence, that he wasn't sure little brother should have his own home, his own car, his own wife, his own kids, or his own dog. He said, in essence, that he didn't feel any particular need to respect the property line or little brother's status as an adult -- his agency, his independence. He said, in essence, "nice country you've got there, be a shame if someone came along and messed it up."
Trump's tarrifs and threats of tarrifs are proof that the 51st state talk is not merely the hyperbolic, trolling rhetoric Trump has often employed to please his base, but a definite statement of intent. Most Americans do not know this, but Canada was twice invaded by the United States, once during the Revolutionary War, and once during the War of 1812. Both invasions failed, which is of course why Americans don't know about them, and both invasions failed because they underestimated Canada's sense of identity, which existed long before Canada had been granted her independence from Great Britain. Notwithstanding a small minority of citizens who would find it convenient for personal reasons, Canada has never wanted to be part of the United States, and it understandably resents being denied recognition that it is indeed a very separate entity both politically and culturally. Now, Trump's
threats don't mean he necessarily intends to send the troops rolling over the border, but it does mean he understands that economic warfare is warfare and like conventional warfare can be employed to break the political will of the enemy...and like all warfare presupposes there is an enemy. And the effect of declaring Canada an enemy has been to erase nine years of Trudeauism, at least as it applies to Canada's sense of national identity. Canadians are not only mad as hell, they are conscious of being Canadians in a way that they have not been, collectively anyway, since Trudeau tried to brainwash them into thinking they were global citizens. When Canadians say "elbows up" they are referring to the fighting pose of a hockey player. They are saying that they are ready to drop the stick, toss the gloves and start throwing punches. It's sad that they have had to adopt this posture. It's sad that a country with whom we share a 5,525 mile border is now looking to the EU for its security guarantees and to China, India and Europe rather than the States for economic trade agreements when we are its largest trading partner and vice-versa. And it is even sadder for me as an American citizen to feel embarrassed at the clumsy, reckless, bullying, ham-fisted methods that have been used on our inoffensive neighbor. When I was in Montreal and Quebec City last year I could not have been treated any kindlier by complete strangers than if I were staying with old friends. Canadians have always taken for granted that whatever stupid jokes or insults we might periodically exchange, when push came to shove, America -- their fellow Americans from the States -- would be by their side, ready to fight with them and for them. Few of them ever dreamed we would be doing the pushing and the shoving. But here we are.
Kind of makes you think, eh?
March 13, 2025
GOODREADING 2025
Whenever I neglect this blog for any length of time, I experience the most curious resurgence of a feeling I used to endure regularly as a delinquent college student. It's a feeling of not knowing how I can walk back through that classroom door when I didn't show up for a month. I have indeed been remiss in my duties here at Antagony, so I guess I'll do what I did back in the 90s when a girl or a drinking binge kept me away from the books for way longer than any excuse could explain: grit my teeth, rush through the door, and get busy. Since we're on Goodreads, let's get busy talking about books. Specifically the books I've read so far as part of the yearly Goodreads Reading Challenge.
As you know if you visit this place regularly, my taste in books runs the gamut. I will read literally anything that is written well, and failing that, which tells a good story (one does not have to be a skilled writer to be a first-rate storyteller). In recent years I have shied away from novels more than I should have, finding history, autobiography, and memoir to use less of my imagination and therefore less of my energy, so I'm making an effort to read five per year regardless of how many other books I chalk up in the "read" column. Anyway, here is the unusually random selection (even for me) of what I've read to date:
"The Garner Files" by James Garner. I generally really like actor's autobiographies, because actors tend to have great backstories as well as plenty of interesting anecdotes from their professional lives. And the interesting parts of this book are very interesting. Garner, who is best remembered for his roles in "Maverick," "The Rockford Files" and "The Great Escape," was a Depression-born kid who walked away from Korea with two Purple Hearts and ended up, almost accidentally, as a contract player in Hollywood. His rise to fame and fortune came as much from his scrappy, principled, workmanlike attitude as his talents, and once he had established his success, he used it to indulge his hobbies (golf, racing) and fight for his causes (civil rights, fair play), never forgetting the little guys on set, either. Having worked in Hollywood myself in a pencil-sharpening capacity, I found his egalitarian, anti-bullying attitude refreshing. But the book can be a slog at times because, well, I don't give a shit about golf and if this age has proven anything, it's that a man's politics tend to be boring when discussed in public. Still, you can't put this book down without coming away with a healthy respect for Garner and the improbable and decent life he lead.
"On A Chinese Screen" by Somerset Maughm. I read this book because Orwell repeatedly mentioned it in his writings, and I'm glad I did so. Maughm was a high-level British spy in two wars, whose formal occupation was writing novels and travelogue. He did not both very well. "On A Chinese Screen" is a series of fifty-seven character and scene-sketches he drew up while living in China in the 1920s. It is beautifully written and paints lovely and brutally honest portraits of Chinese culture, British colonial culture, and all manner of eccentric individuals -- philosophers, rickshaw drivers, petty officials, businessmen, sailors, soldiers, wanderers and wives. It is a terrific book, full of weighty but easily readable insights into human nature and all of its absurdities and beauties and paradoxes. Maughm is one of those writers who allows his subjects to hang or exalt themselves, and doesn't tell the reader what to think. A few of the sketches bored or confused me but the majority are simply wonderful and I can't recommend this book highly enough as a kind of literary photo album of an extinct world, but a world whose existence can be plainly felt today.
"The Wager" by David Grann. This is what I call a Christmas Book, meaning not merely that I got it as a Christmas gift but that it's the type of book I'd never have read if it weren't handed to me free of charge by someone else, as it's not quite in my usual area of interest. I found it a superb read, better than many novels though it is pure history. It is the story of the HMS Wager, which shipwrecked in the 1700s in the treacherous waters between South America and Antarctica, and the almost unbelievable story of what followed -- the survivors found themselves on a near-barren rock without food or water or clothing, yet somehow managed (mostly), to survive for months despite a mutiny which broke the group into two warring factions a la "Lord of the Flies," and on top of that, to escape in jerry-rigged boats and make a perilous second voyage to Brazil...only to face court martial when the few who remained finally returned to England, because mutinity. These poor bastards survived rogue waves, storms, plague, scurvy, shipwreck, civil war, starvation, thirst and a Hail Mary journey over murderous seas on what amounted to a raft, and it's a shining testament to human ingenuity and the will to live. Grann does a lovely job of explaining what seafaring life was like in the 1700s (brutal, hazardous), and also delves into Byzantine Royal Navy politics and ocean combat. A terrific book.
"Over the Front in an Aeroplane" by Ralph Pulitzer. The name "Pulitzer" is an esteemed one in letters, and indeed, Ralph was the brother of Joseph Pulitzer, the man for whom the great prize is named. This forgotten little book, which I bought at a book fair in Miami when I (cough) was there to get the Reader's Favorite Gold Medal for "Sinner's Cross" (coughs again), is an account of Pulitzer's tour of the Western Front during WW1, specifically 1915 in the French sector. I found it quite readable and very detailed and interesting, because it gives a fascinating look at the mechanics of warfare at that time. Ralph flies over the front in a two-seater, visits the trenches and various headquarters and a training school, hangs out with artillery batteries and supply troops, and wanders devastated towns and villages which are still under fire. It's obviously pro-French and pro-Allied, presenting only their points of view, and there is a faint touch of naivete in some of his conclusions, but very little. He tries to be purely journalistic and mostly succeeds, and his general predictions for the war's future course were accurate. I found it a very interesting time capsule of a terrible time in history, and I was struck by some of the included photographs -- men dead 100 years at this point but whose humanity shows in the weariness of their faces.
"Post Office" by Charles Bukowski. I read this evil gem of a book in a single day. It was my first encounter with Bukowski's work but will not be my last. In this mostly autobiographical novel Bukowski, via the character of "Henry Chinalski," recounts the 14 1/2 wretched years he spent in the Postal Service in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s, while simultaneously indulging his passions for the ponies, women, and most importantly, booze. Imagine Hemingway slamming into Henry Miller, and the two of them falling headfirst into any good pulp novel you care to name, and you have Bukowski: witty, immoral, contrary, lascevious, misogynistic and irresponsible, with just enough unwanted decency and sensitivity to make him (mostly) sympathetic. Bukowski uses that relaxed sort of style, a kind of stylishly sloppy prose, which is so easy to employ as a writer and follow as a reader, but he is also a keen if ruthless observer of human nature and modern society -- it's inhumanity, its pointless ugliness and mindless routines. Anyone who has suffered through bullying bosses and soul-crushing work routines will relate to his misery and his perpetual desire for escape through horseracing, sex and drunkenness. I loved this book, wicked though it is.
And that is where I have landed so far in the GRC of 2025. I don't use this platform anywhere near enough to talk about books, so I am recifying that mistake starting now. Among those slated for finishing or possible reads this year include:
Jackboot - James Laffin [currently reading]
Ashes to Ashes - Tami Hoag
Soul Boom - Rainn Wilson*
The Eldorado Network - Derek Robinson
Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Undisputed Truth - Mike Tyson
True at First Light - Ernest Hemingway
Harry Sullivan's War - Ian Marter
The Infernal Machine - Steven Johnson
* When I met Rainn Wilson two years ago after his one-man show, I promised to review his book, which, since I haven't finished it, is a promise I've yet to keep. But I will.
Of course, like most bibliophiles/bibliomaniacs, I have far more books on hand than I will ever read, because I both buy books on a fairly regular basis and receive books yearly as gifts, and this in addition to the huge trove of books I inherited from my father, who was a voracious reader of history, biography and political science, and also read many historical novels. And on top of this, as if it weren't enough, there are the stacks of mysteries which are to be found everywhere in my mom's house. So this little list is neither inclusive nor definitive. The important thing is that I have managed, with some effort, to restore my habit of reading reflexively in my spare time, something I lost for several years. Interestingly enough, the reading muscle is like any other -- if you exercise it, it will stay healthy and strong, and will also twitch unpleasantly if you don't get it to the gym. If you let it atrophy, it will take some doing to get it back into form. So here's to me getting back in the ole reading chair. I hope you never left.
As you know if you visit this place regularly, my taste in books runs the gamut. I will read literally anything that is written well, and failing that, which tells a good story (one does not have to be a skilled writer to be a first-rate storyteller). In recent years I have shied away from novels more than I should have, finding history, autobiography, and memoir to use less of my imagination and therefore less of my energy, so I'm making an effort to read five per year regardless of how many other books I chalk up in the "read" column. Anyway, here is the unusually random selection (even for me) of what I've read to date:
"The Garner Files" by James Garner. I generally really like actor's autobiographies, because actors tend to have great backstories as well as plenty of interesting anecdotes from their professional lives. And the interesting parts of this book are very interesting. Garner, who is best remembered for his roles in "Maverick," "The Rockford Files" and "The Great Escape," was a Depression-born kid who walked away from Korea with two Purple Hearts and ended up, almost accidentally, as a contract player in Hollywood. His rise to fame and fortune came as much from his scrappy, principled, workmanlike attitude as his talents, and once he had established his success, he used it to indulge his hobbies (golf, racing) and fight for his causes (civil rights, fair play), never forgetting the little guys on set, either. Having worked in Hollywood myself in a pencil-sharpening capacity, I found his egalitarian, anti-bullying attitude refreshing. But the book can be a slog at times because, well, I don't give a shit about golf and if this age has proven anything, it's that a man's politics tend to be boring when discussed in public. Still, you can't put this book down without coming away with a healthy respect for Garner and the improbable and decent life he lead.
"On A Chinese Screen" by Somerset Maughm. I read this book because Orwell repeatedly mentioned it in his writings, and I'm glad I did so. Maughm was a high-level British spy in two wars, whose formal occupation was writing novels and travelogue. He did not both very well. "On A Chinese Screen" is a series of fifty-seven character and scene-sketches he drew up while living in China in the 1920s. It is beautifully written and paints lovely and brutally honest portraits of Chinese culture, British colonial culture, and all manner of eccentric individuals -- philosophers, rickshaw drivers, petty officials, businessmen, sailors, soldiers, wanderers and wives. It is a terrific book, full of weighty but easily readable insights into human nature and all of its absurdities and beauties and paradoxes. Maughm is one of those writers who allows his subjects to hang or exalt themselves, and doesn't tell the reader what to think. A few of the sketches bored or confused me but the majority are simply wonderful and I can't recommend this book highly enough as a kind of literary photo album of an extinct world, but a world whose existence can be plainly felt today.
"The Wager" by David Grann. This is what I call a Christmas Book, meaning not merely that I got it as a Christmas gift but that it's the type of book I'd never have read if it weren't handed to me free of charge by someone else, as it's not quite in my usual area of interest. I found it a superb read, better than many novels though it is pure history. It is the story of the HMS Wager, which shipwrecked in the 1700s in the treacherous waters between South America and Antarctica, and the almost unbelievable story of what followed -- the survivors found themselves on a near-barren rock without food or water or clothing, yet somehow managed (mostly), to survive for months despite a mutiny which broke the group into two warring factions a la "Lord of the Flies," and on top of that, to escape in jerry-rigged boats and make a perilous second voyage to Brazil...only to face court martial when the few who remained finally returned to England, because mutinity. These poor bastards survived rogue waves, storms, plague, scurvy, shipwreck, civil war, starvation, thirst and a Hail Mary journey over murderous seas on what amounted to a raft, and it's a shining testament to human ingenuity and the will to live. Grann does a lovely job of explaining what seafaring life was like in the 1700s (brutal, hazardous), and also delves into Byzantine Royal Navy politics and ocean combat. A terrific book.
"Over the Front in an Aeroplane" by Ralph Pulitzer. The name "Pulitzer" is an esteemed one in letters, and indeed, Ralph was the brother of Joseph Pulitzer, the man for whom the great prize is named. This forgotten little book, which I bought at a book fair in Miami when I (cough) was there to get the Reader's Favorite Gold Medal for "Sinner's Cross" (coughs again), is an account of Pulitzer's tour of the Western Front during WW1, specifically 1915 in the French sector. I found it quite readable and very detailed and interesting, because it gives a fascinating look at the mechanics of warfare at that time. Ralph flies over the front in a two-seater, visits the trenches and various headquarters and a training school, hangs out with artillery batteries and supply troops, and wanders devastated towns and villages which are still under fire. It's obviously pro-French and pro-Allied, presenting only their points of view, and there is a faint touch of naivete in some of his conclusions, but very little. He tries to be purely journalistic and mostly succeeds, and his general predictions for the war's future course were accurate. I found it a very interesting time capsule of a terrible time in history, and I was struck by some of the included photographs -- men dead 100 years at this point but whose humanity shows in the weariness of their faces.
"Post Office" by Charles Bukowski. I read this evil gem of a book in a single day. It was my first encounter with Bukowski's work but will not be my last. In this mostly autobiographical novel Bukowski, via the character of "Henry Chinalski," recounts the 14 1/2 wretched years he spent in the Postal Service in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s, while simultaneously indulging his passions for the ponies, women, and most importantly, booze. Imagine Hemingway slamming into Henry Miller, and the two of them falling headfirst into any good pulp novel you care to name, and you have Bukowski: witty, immoral, contrary, lascevious, misogynistic and irresponsible, with just enough unwanted decency and sensitivity to make him (mostly) sympathetic. Bukowski uses that relaxed sort of style, a kind of stylishly sloppy prose, which is so easy to employ as a writer and follow as a reader, but he is also a keen if ruthless observer of human nature and modern society -- it's inhumanity, its pointless ugliness and mindless routines. Anyone who has suffered through bullying bosses and soul-crushing work routines will relate to his misery and his perpetual desire for escape through horseracing, sex and drunkenness. I loved this book, wicked though it is.
And that is where I have landed so far in the GRC of 2025. I don't use this platform anywhere near enough to talk about books, so I am recifying that mistake starting now. Among those slated for finishing or possible reads this year include:
Jackboot - James Laffin [currently reading]
Ashes to Ashes - Tami Hoag
Soul Boom - Rainn Wilson*
The Eldorado Network - Derek Robinson
Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Undisputed Truth - Mike Tyson
True at First Light - Ernest Hemingway
Harry Sullivan's War - Ian Marter
The Infernal Machine - Steven Johnson
* When I met Rainn Wilson two years ago after his one-man show, I promised to review his book, which, since I haven't finished it, is a promise I've yet to keep. But I will.
Of course, like most bibliophiles/bibliomaniacs, I have far more books on hand than I will ever read, because I both buy books on a fairly regular basis and receive books yearly as gifts, and this in addition to the huge trove of books I inherited from my father, who was a voracious reader of history, biography and political science, and also read many historical novels. And on top of this, as if it weren't enough, there are the stacks of mysteries which are to be found everywhere in my mom's house. So this little list is neither inclusive nor definitive. The important thing is that I have managed, with some effort, to restore my habit of reading reflexively in my spare time, something I lost for several years. Interestingly enough, the reading muscle is like any other -- if you exercise it, it will stay healthy and strong, and will also twitch unpleasantly if you don't get it to the gym. If you let it atrophy, it will take some doing to get it back into form. So here's to me getting back in the ole reading chair. I hope you never left.
February 21, 2025
AS I PLEASE XXX: LAWS OF POWER
This, the thirtieth installment of "As I Please," finds me in a ruminative state of mind. It was a brutally cold, nerve-fretting, and in many ways disappointing day, the sort which brought out the worst in me and in the end could only be salvaged by eating hot food, drinking cold beer and watching episodes of KOJAK. But salvaged it was, and as I sit here, having my ruminations, I find a lot of unrelated thoughts which need sharing. So here they are:
* I have finally figured out that the difference between the cell phone/internet era and the era I grew up in is "atomization." The cell phone allows an individual to stay an individual at all times: he never submerges into the crowd of humanity, into the tribe. He is always individual and therefore always alone. No longer does the world go to public places for company or crowd around television sets in times of crisis: everyone has “company” online and everyone has their own television set in their purse or pocket. Go to any restaurant and you'll see five people at a table, and three of them are staring into their phones the entire time. Sometimes it's all five people simultaneously. Conversation is a stopgap between feeding the dopamine addiction. Even when I go down to the bar for a drink at night, I don't watch the television screen above me: that would be too communal of a well. Instead I nurse my drink and stare into my own little screen. We're only physically in proximity: we are not together. We've atomized society through – ironically enough – social technology. And then we wonder why people are lonely.
* R.U.R. is a 1920 Science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, which is best remembered for introducing the word "robot" into the English language. It is fascinating to me that in R.U.R., which was written thirty or forty years before the first industrial robots were actually invented, the robots choose to exterminate their human creators. Why, going back 104 years, do humans always assume in fiction that robots will turn against humanity and try to exterminate us? I think I have the answer: because we know we've got it coming. We know that our technology, meant as a tool, will ultimately master us, and like all masters, will exercise its power through violence. It's a variation on Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, a novel people forget was subitles THE MODERN PROMETHEUS: the idea that, like Prometheus, we're playing God, but woefully inadequate to the role, possessing only the power without the widsom and forebearance that goes with it. This thought has been much on my mind of late, in part because I've been slogging through various TERMINATOR films, and in part because every day I become a little more defeated and depressed by the existence of A.I. Which brings me to....
* George Orwell. You may think linking Orwell to JURASSIC PARK is a weird turn for this ramble to take, but nope, not a bit of it. In his book ON THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER, Orwell bemoaned what he called the human “instinct to improve." He pointed out that this instinct, which developed only recently in terms of humanity's existence on this planet, has lead to an increasing tendency to develop technology for its own sake, independent of the consequences the existence of that technology will have on the human species. That humanity, unique among all species, strives to create systems which make itself redundant. He examples the idea of a machine which performs a function which used to require, say, 10 human beings. Now only one is required -- to operate the machine. The other nine are "terminated" from employment. And with each new labor-saving device more humans are "terminated" until at last millions languish without work, without a meaningful direction for their lives or a means to make those lives bearable or even liveable. He also noted that if humans can overcome this obstacle and mate with technology, the tendency will be toward what he called "the brain in the bottle" -- a transhumanistic being, more machine than man. Either way, technology trumps flesh, science trumps spirit, and we are left with Jeff Goldblum's immortal words in JURASSIC PARK: "You were so busy figuring out of you could you never bothered to ask whether or not you should."
* A.I. frightens me, in case you haven't figured that out, not only because it will make huge sections of the human population redundant, but because those who will not be redundant will only be so because they can service the machines. The "Morlock class" is already upon us: go on Linked In, and you'll see 80% of jobs are for humans to train A.I. to replace humans in various positions. What will become of singers, songwriters, poets, novelists, movie-makers, artists, and all the rest when machines can, by stealing the work of human beings and sythesizing it on a grand scale, produce simulacrums of creativity in an instant? They will lack soul, they will be works of plagiarism, they will be morally and aesthetically disgusting, but the public won't care, which in a sense makes me wish the real Terminators would show up and get down to business.
* I'm listening to Jordan Peterson psychoanalyze Donald Trump. Peterson at least understands the man is a “13 year-old bully” and amusingly remarked the American people “preferred the spontaneous lies of Donald Trump to the calculated lies of Hilary Clinton,” which is a wonderful remark becuase it is absolutely true. However, the underlying admiration a towering intellect like Peterson has for Trump is a little disappointing. (Not surprising, because he can't see through Elon Musk either, but disappointing.) There is a tendency among humans to admire genius for its own sake, regardless of what kind of personality and character that genius may be attached to, and I think Peterson admires Trump and Musk in the wrong ways. Both men are geniuses of a certain type, and both men are deficient in common humanity to a shocking degree. Both men are figures within a democratic government, and both men are threats to democracy. And a threat to democracy is no less a threat to democracy because the threat is presently giving the high hard one to people you dislike rather than you and yours. Peterson's own experience being mauled and slandered by the Left has clearly blinded him, consciously or unconsciously, to the lack of charracter in Trump and Musk, to their inability-cum-unwillingness to behave with ordinary human decency or respect for the law or the unwritten laws that allow democracy to survive. It's only natural, of course: Peterson was so viciously attacked in his own country that it's only natural he should seek any port in a storm. It's sad, however, that politics in the West have finally deteriorated to the point where it's little more than “let me get my hand on the whip this election cycle so I can thrash the daylights out of my enemies until the electorate or a term-limit pries my fingers off the handle.” Like we're all in some hideous turn-based video game where you have to grit your teeth while your opponent attacks you, until at last he's exhausted his offensive options and now it's your chance to be the aggressor.
* Having said that, and while stating for the record that I did not vote for him, I must be intellectually honest and say that Trump, for all the things I revile about him (including his disgusting admiration for the war criminal Putin, his enabling of the war criminal Netanyahu, and so forth), is where is for a very good reason. Half of that reason is what I call "butter and eggs," meaning that Americans knew that Bidenomics was a failure because their wallets told them so regardless of what the legacy media was claiming; the other half is that Americans have had quite enough of Woke, thank you very much, and this includes many millions who are not Republicans either in voting habits or even sentiment. The fact is that the Left overplayed its hand. In 2014, the exact moment it seemed they had won the culture wars and landed "on the right side of history," they violated the 47th law of power: "In victory, know when to stop." Having crushed their cultural opposition, the Left decided to keep grinding the boot against the necks of their seemingly defeated opposition. For ten straight years -- perhaps not coincidentally, the length of Justin Trudeau's reign of error in Canada -- we saw the hard, common-sense principles of the the Democratic Party sold out to a rainbow-haired, pronoun-wielding, neo-Marxist, joyless, vengeful, intolerant, weak-minded globalist mob, many of whose members were only dubiously sane, until at last those with sense were themselves being "canceled" by the monsters they had created and empowered. The question of "how far left is too far left?" was never answered because those on the Left were too frightened to do so: they had yielded their power and agency to this lunatic fringe. And in 2024, they were handed a crushing defeat of their own by a majority of the American voters. Whether they will learn anything from it is extremely doubtful. As I said in a previous blog here on Antagony, back in 2016 ("Why Trump? Why Now?"), the problem with the American Left is that their response to defeat is invariably to insist that the reason they lost is because they weren't Left enough. The fact is that a sharp move toward the center, towards "common centrism," quite possibly could have defeated Trump's bid to regain the White House: at the very least it would have salvaged the integrity of the Democratic Party. As it stands now, the Democrats are without power or integrity, and they have no one to blame for that but themselves.
On that snarky and self-righteous note, I exit "As I Please XXX." When I began this blog eight (or was it nine?) years ago, I never believed I'd last this long in the public space, however modest and shadowed that space might be, but here I am -- and if you happen to be reading this, here we are. And I'd like to say that that it is unimportant whether we agree on everything, or even anything: what matters is that, for now at least, that we remain free to disagree.
Until next time.
* I have finally figured out that the difference between the cell phone/internet era and the era I grew up in is "atomization." The cell phone allows an individual to stay an individual at all times: he never submerges into the crowd of humanity, into the tribe. He is always individual and therefore always alone. No longer does the world go to public places for company or crowd around television sets in times of crisis: everyone has “company” online and everyone has their own television set in their purse or pocket. Go to any restaurant and you'll see five people at a table, and three of them are staring into their phones the entire time. Sometimes it's all five people simultaneously. Conversation is a stopgap between feeding the dopamine addiction. Even when I go down to the bar for a drink at night, I don't watch the television screen above me: that would be too communal of a well. Instead I nurse my drink and stare into my own little screen. We're only physically in proximity: we are not together. We've atomized society through – ironically enough – social technology. And then we wonder why people are lonely.
* R.U.R. is a 1920 Science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, which is best remembered for introducing the word "robot" into the English language. It is fascinating to me that in R.U.R., which was written thirty or forty years before the first industrial robots were actually invented, the robots choose to exterminate their human creators. Why, going back 104 years, do humans always assume in fiction that robots will turn against humanity and try to exterminate us? I think I have the answer: because we know we've got it coming. We know that our technology, meant as a tool, will ultimately master us, and like all masters, will exercise its power through violence. It's a variation on Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, a novel people forget was subitles THE MODERN PROMETHEUS: the idea that, like Prometheus, we're playing God, but woefully inadequate to the role, possessing only the power without the widsom and forebearance that goes with it. This thought has been much on my mind of late, in part because I've been slogging through various TERMINATOR films, and in part because every day I become a little more defeated and depressed by the existence of A.I. Which brings me to....
* George Orwell. You may think linking Orwell to JURASSIC PARK is a weird turn for this ramble to take, but nope, not a bit of it. In his book ON THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER, Orwell bemoaned what he called the human “instinct to improve." He pointed out that this instinct, which developed only recently in terms of humanity's existence on this planet, has lead to an increasing tendency to develop technology for its own sake, independent of the consequences the existence of that technology will have on the human species. That humanity, unique among all species, strives to create systems which make itself redundant. He examples the idea of a machine which performs a function which used to require, say, 10 human beings. Now only one is required -- to operate the machine. The other nine are "terminated" from employment. And with each new labor-saving device more humans are "terminated" until at last millions languish without work, without a meaningful direction for their lives or a means to make those lives bearable or even liveable. He also noted that if humans can overcome this obstacle and mate with technology, the tendency will be toward what he called "the brain in the bottle" -- a transhumanistic being, more machine than man. Either way, technology trumps flesh, science trumps spirit, and we are left with Jeff Goldblum's immortal words in JURASSIC PARK: "You were so busy figuring out of you could you never bothered to ask whether or not you should."
* A.I. frightens me, in case you haven't figured that out, not only because it will make huge sections of the human population redundant, but because those who will not be redundant will only be so because they can service the machines. The "Morlock class" is already upon us: go on Linked In, and you'll see 80% of jobs are for humans to train A.I. to replace humans in various positions. What will become of singers, songwriters, poets, novelists, movie-makers, artists, and all the rest when machines can, by stealing the work of human beings and sythesizing it on a grand scale, produce simulacrums of creativity in an instant? They will lack soul, they will be works of plagiarism, they will be morally and aesthetically disgusting, but the public won't care, which in a sense makes me wish the real Terminators would show up and get down to business.
* I'm listening to Jordan Peterson psychoanalyze Donald Trump. Peterson at least understands the man is a “13 year-old bully” and amusingly remarked the American people “preferred the spontaneous lies of Donald Trump to the calculated lies of Hilary Clinton,” which is a wonderful remark becuase it is absolutely true. However, the underlying admiration a towering intellect like Peterson has for Trump is a little disappointing. (Not surprising, because he can't see through Elon Musk either, but disappointing.) There is a tendency among humans to admire genius for its own sake, regardless of what kind of personality and character that genius may be attached to, and I think Peterson admires Trump and Musk in the wrong ways. Both men are geniuses of a certain type, and both men are deficient in common humanity to a shocking degree. Both men are figures within a democratic government, and both men are threats to democracy. And a threat to democracy is no less a threat to democracy because the threat is presently giving the high hard one to people you dislike rather than you and yours. Peterson's own experience being mauled and slandered by the Left has clearly blinded him, consciously or unconsciously, to the lack of charracter in Trump and Musk, to their inability-cum-unwillingness to behave with ordinary human decency or respect for the law or the unwritten laws that allow democracy to survive. It's only natural, of course: Peterson was so viciously attacked in his own country that it's only natural he should seek any port in a storm. It's sad, however, that politics in the West have finally deteriorated to the point where it's little more than “let me get my hand on the whip this election cycle so I can thrash the daylights out of my enemies until the electorate or a term-limit pries my fingers off the handle.” Like we're all in some hideous turn-based video game where you have to grit your teeth while your opponent attacks you, until at last he's exhausted his offensive options and now it's your chance to be the aggressor.
* Having said that, and while stating for the record that I did not vote for him, I must be intellectually honest and say that Trump, for all the things I revile about him (including his disgusting admiration for the war criminal Putin, his enabling of the war criminal Netanyahu, and so forth), is where is for a very good reason. Half of that reason is what I call "butter and eggs," meaning that Americans knew that Bidenomics was a failure because their wallets told them so regardless of what the legacy media was claiming; the other half is that Americans have had quite enough of Woke, thank you very much, and this includes many millions who are not Republicans either in voting habits or even sentiment. The fact is that the Left overplayed its hand. In 2014, the exact moment it seemed they had won the culture wars and landed "on the right side of history," they violated the 47th law of power: "In victory, know when to stop." Having crushed their cultural opposition, the Left decided to keep grinding the boot against the necks of their seemingly defeated opposition. For ten straight years -- perhaps not coincidentally, the length of Justin Trudeau's reign of error in Canada -- we saw the hard, common-sense principles of the the Democratic Party sold out to a rainbow-haired, pronoun-wielding, neo-Marxist, joyless, vengeful, intolerant, weak-minded globalist mob, many of whose members were only dubiously sane, until at last those with sense were themselves being "canceled" by the monsters they had created and empowered. The question of "how far left is too far left?" was never answered because those on the Left were too frightened to do so: they had yielded their power and agency to this lunatic fringe. And in 2024, they were handed a crushing defeat of their own by a majority of the American voters. Whether they will learn anything from it is extremely doubtful. As I said in a previous blog here on Antagony, back in 2016 ("Why Trump? Why Now?"), the problem with the American Left is that their response to defeat is invariably to insist that the reason they lost is because they weren't Left enough. The fact is that a sharp move toward the center, towards "common centrism," quite possibly could have defeated Trump's bid to regain the White House: at the very least it would have salvaged the integrity of the Democratic Party. As it stands now, the Democrats are without power or integrity, and they have no one to blame for that but themselves.
On that snarky and self-righteous note, I exit "As I Please XXX." When I began this blog eight (or was it nine?) years ago, I never believed I'd last this long in the public space, however modest and shadowed that space might be, but here I am -- and if you happen to be reading this, here we are. And I'd like to say that that it is unimportant whether we agree on everything, or even anything: what matters is that, for now at least, that we remain free to disagree.
Until next time.
February 4, 2025
STORYTELLING AND THE MORAL COMPASS: THE EAGLE HAS LANDED VS. WHERE EAGLES DARE
Today I want to conduct a bit of a thought experiment. The issue is the moral compass as it works in storytelling. The subjects are both bestselling novels which also became hit movies -- "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Eagle Has Landed." I selected these films because of their very close similarities both in terms of genre, setting, time period and general plot points, and because of the sharply different way in which they behave on a purely moral scale. I am interested in the issue both as a storyteller myself, and as a consumer of stories in all formats, and because for some time now I have sensed a general decline in the efficiency of the moral compass as it relates to storytelling, and worry that the audience, too, is losing its ability to make moral judgments -- that it has become morally blind.
To begin with the basics:
"Where Eagles Dare" is a 1968 action suspense film, based on a novel of the same name by Alistair McLean, about a group of Allied commandos who dress up in German uniforms and parachute into the Third Reich, ostensibly to rescue an American general captured by the Nazis.
"The Eagle Has Landed" is a 1975 action suspense movie, based on a novel of the same name by Jack Higgins, about a group of German commandos who parachute into England dressed in Allied uniforms, ostensibly to kidnap Winston Churchill.
The similarity is obvious, but the films differ in two distinct ways. The first is in terms of realism, and the second is in terms of morality. Let us tackle the differences in order, because as it happens, the realism is to some extent an element in the morality of the stories.
"Where Eagles Dare" is realistic at first. The aim of the Allied team is not beyond belief -- commando raids are daring and improbable by nature, after all, which is why the men who carry them out are usually picked so carefully and so highly trained. Nobody exhibits any super-human characteristics, and things go very wrong early on for our putative heroes -- one of their number is murdered by a traitor or traitors within their ranks, and later, the location of two of the commandos, Smith and Schiffer (played by Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, respectively) is also betrayed by the double agent/s. Things going wrong, especially in military operations, is more likely than things going right, so the first act of the movie seems as realistic as can be expected given the demands of the genre and the movie business generally. However, beginning with the second act, where our protagonists begin making a bloody nuisance of themselves to the Germans, realism goes over the horizon and is ne'er seen again. The Germans, and the British traitors in their pay, prove to be completely helpless once all the scheisse hits the fan: they cannot shoot straight, their guns run out of ammunition at critical moments, they are cowards, they are foolish, they fall for every ruse and feint, leave themselves utterly vulnerable when they should be suspicious, blunder into every ambush, fail to heed any warnings, and die in droves. A more hapless group could not be found outside of the Three Stooges. The needs of the plot simply crush logic at every step. At one point, for example, Smith is shot through the hand by a German soldier. He wraps his hand in a bandage and then, mere minutes later, manages to A) leap off a rapidly moving cable car to another car passing at a slower speed; B) dodge a salvo of bullets fired through the car's roof at point blank range (the traitor conveniently runs out of bullets, something we never see the Allies do though they never stop shooting for the last half an hour of the movie), C) defeat both men in hand to hand combat despite having a bullet smashed hand, D) fix a bomb to the car, and E) leap back to the other car before the bomb goes off. I could go on, but you get the point. A movie that began more or less grounded in the believable becomes a kind if ultraviolent kill fantasy, a first person shooter on God mode with infinite ammo. What does this have to do with morality, you ask? We will answer this in a moment. Let us first go over the second of the two stories.
"The Eagle Has Landed" is as realistic as this sort of film can possibly be. The German commandos, recruited by a character played by Robert Duvall, are under suspended sentence of death from their own government because they tried to save Jews being sent to concentration camps. They are embittered men, now only loyal to their commanding officer, Steiner (Michael Caine), but they are promised a pardon if they pull off their improbable kidnapping mission. Aiding them is an Irish nationalist spy, Devlin (Donald Sutherland) who doesn't care for Germans all that much but hates the British far more. Opposing them are
American Rangers led by the oafish Col. Pitts (Larry Hagman) and his competent underling, Capt. Clarke (Treat Williams). Unlike "Where Eagles Dare," the Germans themselves in "The Eagle Has Landed" are depicted as first-class soldiers with a first-class officer, determined and efficient, even ruthless, but also humane -- their true identity as spies is discovered when one of their members sacrifices his life saving a British child from drowning. Indeed, "Landed" uses the moral compass frequently to remind the audience that while they may not be in sympathy with the Germans' aims, the Germans themselves are quite sympathetic. When combat breaks out between the two sides, the Americans are initially massacred, only the turning the tables when Pitts is mercifully killed off by a German spy and the competent Clarke takes over. This is a realistic depiction of warfare rooted in logic -- the Germans are well-trained, well-lead, and experienced, while the Rangers are well-trained, ineptly lead and inexperienced.
And this leads me to the moral element. "Where Eagles Dare" is a film which takes the stance that the heroes, by virtue of their affiliation (the Allies), are exempt not merely from the rules of war, but from all forms of basic human decency. The putative hero, Smith, seems to be a void of emotion when it comes to slitting throats and shooting people in the back, whereas his sidekick, Schiffer, shows distinctly sadistic qualities, which includes saying smiling and saying "Hi!" before he shoots some unarmed, unsuspecting clerk in the guts, and mocking a German he stabbed in the back for bleeding to death faster because he was afraid. The film's infamous climax features an almost incredibly drawn-out sequence in which Smith kills a double agent who is begging hysterically for mercy: there is even a close up of Smith smashing his boot into the man's face so we can see the blood on his teeth before he falls to his death, his last work, of course being a deafening "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!"
"The Eagle Has Landed" does not merely contain a moral element, the moral compasses of its various characters are central to the entire story. Devlin, an otherwise rather cruel IRA gunman the Germans employ as their local agent, is partially undone because he falls in love with a local English girl: he should kill her when she tumbles to his identity, but he does not. Steiner, the German commando officer, ends up forced into his role as an assassin for trying to save Jews being sent to extermination by the SS. Sturm, a German sergeant, drowns trying to save an English child from drowning. And -- and this one is crucial -- Steiner instructs his men to violate orders and wear their own German uniforms beneath the Allied ones, so that in the event of discovery they can fight as soldiers and not as spies -- which is exactly what they do. And the final act of the German commandos is to sacrifice themselves so their commander can slip away to make a final effort to get to Churchill. As for the Americans, the Ranger lieutenant makes a brief if impassioned plea to the Germans to surrender without further bloodshed, noting "there's no such thing as death with honor -- just death." He respects his foes and wants to save them if he can, though he is quite willing to kill them if they refuse: a realistic and reasonable attitude.
These contrasts may strike some readers as naive. War, after all, is not conducted entirely, or even partially, according to any conventions or codes. In all wars without exception, all sides bomb civilian targets, murder prisoners of war, employ forms of torture to obtain information, and clothe agents and spies in enemy uniform to seduce, extort, blackmail, and assassinate enemies. The idea that all parties are equally cruel in war is, however, often manifestly untrue, and in any case, for the purposes of fiction, it is always necessary to establish differences between the hero and the villain, or the protagonist and the antagonist. "Where Eagles Dare" assumes that since the heroes are Allies, they can commit any outrage without compunction, where "The Eagles Has Landed" makes sure to let us know from the beginning that the German characters, though technically the bad guys, abide by a strict and uncompromising code.
Now we return to the element of realism, which as it happens is one and the same as morality, though this is hardly obvious at first glance.
I already noted the profound incompetence, cowardice and stupidity of the Germans and their agents in "Where Eagles Dare,"
but this goes hand in hand with the utter invincibility and perfection of the Allied characters, who never miss, never reload, never fail in their courage or resourcefulness, and exhibit super-human qualities whenever super-human qualities are called for. The character is Smith is not only fearless, immune to pain, and able to outfight two men on top of a cable car in freezing temperatures while nursing a bullet wound in his hand as I said before; he is always three steps ahead of all of his enemies and at least two steps ahead of his friends. There is no curve thrown at him he hasn't seen coming and no twist in the story he does not engineer himself. He is all-knowing as well as invincible. And this godlike mix of perfection and power make nonsense of the entire purpose of the story, which is to keep the audience in suspense. How can suspense exist when the hero is on, if I may be permitted to repeat myself again, God mode with infinite ammo? What's more, how can morality exist when the opposing party in a conflict are made up of extra-fallible mortals who not only won't likely win, but cannot win? The entire basis of heroism is courage, but Smith has no fear, so there is no "dare" in this particular eagle. Likewise, the entire basis of morality in film is the redress of power imbalance, i.e. the bullied and downtrodden fighting back, overcoming odds, and finally triumphing materially or morally over those who oppress them. In "Where Eagles Dare" it is not the Allies who are the underdogs, but the Germans. There is no hope for them: they cannot win, cannot even get some of their own back. The last act of the movie reminded me strongly of a bully brutally beating a helpless victim on a playground over and over again, but without even the belated intervention of an adult. It is a fulfillment of a masturbatory power fantasy, indistinguishable in a way from sexual sadism, and, ironically, just the sort of entertainment that would appeal to a fascist mind.
Let me linger on this point for a moment. If we accept Orwell's definition of fascism as "the worship of power" then "Where Eagles Dare" is a fascist film. In it the heroes are not invincible because they are right, they are right because they are invincible. Their legitimacy derives entirely from that invincibility. This is out and out Nazi logic. Ironic, no?
"The Eagle Has Landed," in contrast, presents the German case as nearly hopeless from the outset. The commandos themselves are doomed men already, having been sentenced to death for trying to aid the Jews: their mission, though basically suicidal, offers a glimmer of a chance at pardon. Steiner agrees to the mission only on that basis, and though he handles himself brilliantly, his insistence that his men fight as Germans and not spies ensures that the odds against him will lengthen even further. That pesky sense of morality again! That insistence that honor is more important than the mission, or even survival! This is not a thought that would occur to Major Smith, and certainly not to Lieutenant Schiffer, who in one scene shoots a woman (albeit a nasty one) in the back as she tries to run away from him.
The task of "The Eagle Has Landed" is to make the reader/viewer sympathetic with the German goal -- which is to kidnap Churchill and kill him if he won't be kidnapped. This is a monumental task for an English-speaking audience and the fact it is carried out so successfully comes entirely from fact that Steiner and Devlin are men of honor, even if they are fighting on the wrong side of the line. They are sympathetic because they are human and fallible, because their plans sometimes go awry, because not all of their bullets hit their targets, and because their enemies are not fools. In short, they are the underdogs, and audiences who not worship power for its own sake respond instinctively to the struggle of an underdog. They are not "right" per se, but they are right enough to root for, because they are not invincible.
The decline of morality in society was something Orwell constantly railed about, noting ascerbically that "we root for the big man over the little man, the overdog over the underdog." This, too, was a fascist outlook, a worship of success and power for their own sakes. He saw it metastisizing into the literature of the day, but did not live long enough to see it dominate film, as it did after World War 2 ended. It took some time for the film industry to smash its own moral compass, but it was well on its way to doing this by the time "Where Eagles Dare" was turned into a movie.
It's worth noting that McLean's novel, though convoluted and silly enough in its own right, is not as violent nor as cruel as the film adaptation. As I noted in another blog, Major Smith is considerably less eager to kill people in the book -- he drugs two Germans rather than kill them, and evem pulls an unconscious German soldier out of a burning car (in the movie, Clint Eastwood's character throws an unconscious soldier into that car and then blows it up.) I believe this is because McLean understood that heroes have to behave heroically, which in practical terms means more than just being able to kill large numbers of the enemy -- heroes, by dictionary definition, require a "noble quality," and there is no more noble quality than mercy. Caine's Col. Steiner is described by a Nazi in "Landed" as "intelligent, courageous, ruthless, and a romantic fool." Smith, if similarly appraised, would be all of that minus the "romantic fool" element. But its precisely that element which makes Steiner moral; it is precisely that element which makes him human. The entirety of his nobility lays in the fact that he has limits -- there are things he simply will not do, no matter how much they would help his cause, because either code or conscience will not permit them. Most heroism comes with a tragic element, and Steiner, too, checks this box. Smith, on the other hand, does not have limits, his ends justify any means whatsoever, and in lacking scruples he surrenders all claim to morality, humanity, and nobility. He is simply an infallible killing machine, and therefore neither relatable nor interesting, much less any type of hero.
Now, it may seem that I am making too much of action adventure novels turned into popcorn entertainment films. I disagree. The morality of a society is culturally indicated. Our books, our television shows, our movies, our music and all the rest of it are the best indicators of what we value, and what we abominate. The seeds of an utterly amoral, power-worshipping movie like "Inglourious Basterds" were laid with "Where Eagles Dare" and its ilk. The ectsatic public reaction to that film -- in which, again, the protagonist has no noble qualities, no morality or decency, no sense of honor, and will do anything no matter how bestial to achieve an end, because after all, might makes right, or as the Nazis would say, Sieg Heil! -- goes a long way to showing why the old-fashioned notion that something should differentiate the good guy and the bad guy besides who wins in the end, is very nearly dead indeed.
To begin with the basics:
"Where Eagles Dare" is a 1968 action suspense film, based on a novel of the same name by Alistair McLean, about a group of Allied commandos who dress up in German uniforms and parachute into the Third Reich, ostensibly to rescue an American general captured by the Nazis.
"The Eagle Has Landed" is a 1975 action suspense movie, based on a novel of the same name by Jack Higgins, about a group of German commandos who parachute into England dressed in Allied uniforms, ostensibly to kidnap Winston Churchill.
The similarity is obvious, but the films differ in two distinct ways. The first is in terms of realism, and the second is in terms of morality. Let us tackle the differences in order, because as it happens, the realism is to some extent an element in the morality of the stories.
"Where Eagles Dare" is realistic at first. The aim of the Allied team is not beyond belief -- commando raids are daring and improbable by nature, after all, which is why the men who carry them out are usually picked so carefully and so highly trained. Nobody exhibits any super-human characteristics, and things go very wrong early on for our putative heroes -- one of their number is murdered by a traitor or traitors within their ranks, and later, the location of two of the commandos, Smith and Schiffer (played by Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, respectively) is also betrayed by the double agent/s. Things going wrong, especially in military operations, is more likely than things going right, so the first act of the movie seems as realistic as can be expected given the demands of the genre and the movie business generally. However, beginning with the second act, where our protagonists begin making a bloody nuisance of themselves to the Germans, realism goes over the horizon and is ne'er seen again. The Germans, and the British traitors in their pay, prove to be completely helpless once all the scheisse hits the fan: they cannot shoot straight, their guns run out of ammunition at critical moments, they are cowards, they are foolish, they fall for every ruse and feint, leave themselves utterly vulnerable when they should be suspicious, blunder into every ambush, fail to heed any warnings, and die in droves. A more hapless group could not be found outside of the Three Stooges. The needs of the plot simply crush logic at every step. At one point, for example, Smith is shot through the hand by a German soldier. He wraps his hand in a bandage and then, mere minutes later, manages to A) leap off a rapidly moving cable car to another car passing at a slower speed; B) dodge a salvo of bullets fired through the car's roof at point blank range (the traitor conveniently runs out of bullets, something we never see the Allies do though they never stop shooting for the last half an hour of the movie), C) defeat both men in hand to hand combat despite having a bullet smashed hand, D) fix a bomb to the car, and E) leap back to the other car before the bomb goes off. I could go on, but you get the point. A movie that began more or less grounded in the believable becomes a kind if ultraviolent kill fantasy, a first person shooter on God mode with infinite ammo. What does this have to do with morality, you ask? We will answer this in a moment. Let us first go over the second of the two stories.
"The Eagle Has Landed" is as realistic as this sort of film can possibly be. The German commandos, recruited by a character played by Robert Duvall, are under suspended sentence of death from their own government because they tried to save Jews being sent to concentration camps. They are embittered men, now only loyal to their commanding officer, Steiner (Michael Caine), but they are promised a pardon if they pull off their improbable kidnapping mission. Aiding them is an Irish nationalist spy, Devlin (Donald Sutherland) who doesn't care for Germans all that much but hates the British far more. Opposing them are
American Rangers led by the oafish Col. Pitts (Larry Hagman) and his competent underling, Capt. Clarke (Treat Williams). Unlike "Where Eagles Dare," the Germans themselves in "The Eagle Has Landed" are depicted as first-class soldiers with a first-class officer, determined and efficient, even ruthless, but also humane -- their true identity as spies is discovered when one of their members sacrifices his life saving a British child from drowning. Indeed, "Landed" uses the moral compass frequently to remind the audience that while they may not be in sympathy with the Germans' aims, the Germans themselves are quite sympathetic. When combat breaks out between the two sides, the Americans are initially massacred, only the turning the tables when Pitts is mercifully killed off by a German spy and the competent Clarke takes over. This is a realistic depiction of warfare rooted in logic -- the Germans are well-trained, well-lead, and experienced, while the Rangers are well-trained, ineptly lead and inexperienced.
And this leads me to the moral element. "Where Eagles Dare" is a film which takes the stance that the heroes, by virtue of their affiliation (the Allies), are exempt not merely from the rules of war, but from all forms of basic human decency. The putative hero, Smith, seems to be a void of emotion when it comes to slitting throats and shooting people in the back, whereas his sidekick, Schiffer, shows distinctly sadistic qualities, which includes saying smiling and saying "Hi!" before he shoots some unarmed, unsuspecting clerk in the guts, and mocking a German he stabbed in the back for bleeding to death faster because he was afraid. The film's infamous climax features an almost incredibly drawn-out sequence in which Smith kills a double agent who is begging hysterically for mercy: there is even a close up of Smith smashing his boot into the man's face so we can see the blood on his teeth before he falls to his death, his last work, of course being a deafening "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!"
"The Eagle Has Landed" does not merely contain a moral element, the moral compasses of its various characters are central to the entire story. Devlin, an otherwise rather cruel IRA gunman the Germans employ as their local agent, is partially undone because he falls in love with a local English girl: he should kill her when she tumbles to his identity, but he does not. Steiner, the German commando officer, ends up forced into his role as an assassin for trying to save Jews being sent to extermination by the SS. Sturm, a German sergeant, drowns trying to save an English child from drowning. And -- and this one is crucial -- Steiner instructs his men to violate orders and wear their own German uniforms beneath the Allied ones, so that in the event of discovery they can fight as soldiers and not as spies -- which is exactly what they do. And the final act of the German commandos is to sacrifice themselves so their commander can slip away to make a final effort to get to Churchill. As for the Americans, the Ranger lieutenant makes a brief if impassioned plea to the Germans to surrender without further bloodshed, noting "there's no such thing as death with honor -- just death." He respects his foes and wants to save them if he can, though he is quite willing to kill them if they refuse: a realistic and reasonable attitude.
These contrasts may strike some readers as naive. War, after all, is not conducted entirely, or even partially, according to any conventions or codes. In all wars without exception, all sides bomb civilian targets, murder prisoners of war, employ forms of torture to obtain information, and clothe agents and spies in enemy uniform to seduce, extort, blackmail, and assassinate enemies. The idea that all parties are equally cruel in war is, however, often manifestly untrue, and in any case, for the purposes of fiction, it is always necessary to establish differences between the hero and the villain, or the protagonist and the antagonist. "Where Eagles Dare" assumes that since the heroes are Allies, they can commit any outrage without compunction, where "The Eagles Has Landed" makes sure to let us know from the beginning that the German characters, though technically the bad guys, abide by a strict and uncompromising code.
Now we return to the element of realism, which as it happens is one and the same as morality, though this is hardly obvious at first glance.
I already noted the profound incompetence, cowardice and stupidity of the Germans and their agents in "Where Eagles Dare,"
but this goes hand in hand with the utter invincibility and perfection of the Allied characters, who never miss, never reload, never fail in their courage or resourcefulness, and exhibit super-human qualities whenever super-human qualities are called for. The character is Smith is not only fearless, immune to pain, and able to outfight two men on top of a cable car in freezing temperatures while nursing a bullet wound in his hand as I said before; he is always three steps ahead of all of his enemies and at least two steps ahead of his friends. There is no curve thrown at him he hasn't seen coming and no twist in the story he does not engineer himself. He is all-knowing as well as invincible. And this godlike mix of perfection and power make nonsense of the entire purpose of the story, which is to keep the audience in suspense. How can suspense exist when the hero is on, if I may be permitted to repeat myself again, God mode with infinite ammo? What's more, how can morality exist when the opposing party in a conflict are made up of extra-fallible mortals who not only won't likely win, but cannot win? The entire basis of heroism is courage, but Smith has no fear, so there is no "dare" in this particular eagle. Likewise, the entire basis of morality in film is the redress of power imbalance, i.e. the bullied and downtrodden fighting back, overcoming odds, and finally triumphing materially or morally over those who oppress them. In "Where Eagles Dare" it is not the Allies who are the underdogs, but the Germans. There is no hope for them: they cannot win, cannot even get some of their own back. The last act of the movie reminded me strongly of a bully brutally beating a helpless victim on a playground over and over again, but without even the belated intervention of an adult. It is a fulfillment of a masturbatory power fantasy, indistinguishable in a way from sexual sadism, and, ironically, just the sort of entertainment that would appeal to a fascist mind.
Let me linger on this point for a moment. If we accept Orwell's definition of fascism as "the worship of power" then "Where Eagles Dare" is a fascist film. In it the heroes are not invincible because they are right, they are right because they are invincible. Their legitimacy derives entirely from that invincibility. This is out and out Nazi logic. Ironic, no?
"The Eagle Has Landed," in contrast, presents the German case as nearly hopeless from the outset. The commandos themselves are doomed men already, having been sentenced to death for trying to aid the Jews: their mission, though basically suicidal, offers a glimmer of a chance at pardon. Steiner agrees to the mission only on that basis, and though he handles himself brilliantly, his insistence that his men fight as Germans and not spies ensures that the odds against him will lengthen even further. That pesky sense of morality again! That insistence that honor is more important than the mission, or even survival! This is not a thought that would occur to Major Smith, and certainly not to Lieutenant Schiffer, who in one scene shoots a woman (albeit a nasty one) in the back as she tries to run away from him.
The task of "The Eagle Has Landed" is to make the reader/viewer sympathetic with the German goal -- which is to kidnap Churchill and kill him if he won't be kidnapped. This is a monumental task for an English-speaking audience and the fact it is carried out so successfully comes entirely from fact that Steiner and Devlin are men of honor, even if they are fighting on the wrong side of the line. They are sympathetic because they are human and fallible, because their plans sometimes go awry, because not all of their bullets hit their targets, and because their enemies are not fools. In short, they are the underdogs, and audiences who not worship power for its own sake respond instinctively to the struggle of an underdog. They are not "right" per se, but they are right enough to root for, because they are not invincible.
The decline of morality in society was something Orwell constantly railed about, noting ascerbically that "we root for the big man over the little man, the overdog over the underdog." This, too, was a fascist outlook, a worship of success and power for their own sakes. He saw it metastisizing into the literature of the day, but did not live long enough to see it dominate film, as it did after World War 2 ended. It took some time for the film industry to smash its own moral compass, but it was well on its way to doing this by the time "Where Eagles Dare" was turned into a movie.
It's worth noting that McLean's novel, though convoluted and silly enough in its own right, is not as violent nor as cruel as the film adaptation. As I noted in another blog, Major Smith is considerably less eager to kill people in the book -- he drugs two Germans rather than kill them, and evem pulls an unconscious German soldier out of a burning car (in the movie, Clint Eastwood's character throws an unconscious soldier into that car and then blows it up.) I believe this is because McLean understood that heroes have to behave heroically, which in practical terms means more than just being able to kill large numbers of the enemy -- heroes, by dictionary definition, require a "noble quality," and there is no more noble quality than mercy. Caine's Col. Steiner is described by a Nazi in "Landed" as "intelligent, courageous, ruthless, and a romantic fool." Smith, if similarly appraised, would be all of that minus the "romantic fool" element. But its precisely that element which makes Steiner moral; it is precisely that element which makes him human. The entirety of his nobility lays in the fact that he has limits -- there are things he simply will not do, no matter how much they would help his cause, because either code or conscience will not permit them. Most heroism comes with a tragic element, and Steiner, too, checks this box. Smith, on the other hand, does not have limits, his ends justify any means whatsoever, and in lacking scruples he surrenders all claim to morality, humanity, and nobility. He is simply an infallible killing machine, and therefore neither relatable nor interesting, much less any type of hero.
Now, it may seem that I am making too much of action adventure novels turned into popcorn entertainment films. I disagree. The morality of a society is culturally indicated. Our books, our television shows, our movies, our music and all the rest of it are the best indicators of what we value, and what we abominate. The seeds of an utterly amoral, power-worshipping movie like "Inglourious Basterds" were laid with "Where Eagles Dare" and its ilk. The ectsatic public reaction to that film -- in which, again, the protagonist has no noble qualities, no morality or decency, no sense of honor, and will do anything no matter how bestial to achieve an end, because after all, might makes right, or as the Nazis would say, Sieg Heil! -- goes a long way to showing why the old-fashioned notion that something should differentiate the good guy and the bad guy besides who wins in the end, is very nearly dead indeed.
January 29, 2025
MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "A FAMILY AT WAR"
Memory Lane is a long and winding road. Some of the houses that stand alongside it require only a short walk; we can visit without breaking a sweat, have a faintly nostalgic look around, and be home before the sun goes down -- indeed, before lunch is on the table. With others, however, it's best to pack that lunch, along with a thermos, a lantern, and a sturdy pair of walking shoes, because they do not reside in this millennium. Indeed, they are to be found near the end of the Lane, in that frighteningly long-ago decade known as the 1970s. When we visit such places, we'd best be prepared to come home in the dark.
A FAMILY AT WAR is not likely to trigger the memory of Americans reading this. It was a British production produced by Granada Television, which ran from 1970 - 1972 on the BBC, and until recently it was incredibly difficult to find: even now, most streaming services idiotically only carry the first of its three series (seasons, in American lingo). If you are willing to make the effort, however -- and I did, obtaining bootleg Region 1 DVDs which had to be shipped to me from Australia -- it is well worth your time. FAMILY is a near-perfect representation of what British TV did regularly for decades before it succumbed in part to the bizarre ideologies of today: make damned good entertainment on a shoestring budget.
A FAMILY AT WAR chronicles the lives of the sprawling Ashton family, a lower middle-class clan from Liverpool, before, during, and immediately after World War 2, focusing on the hardships of "the home front" -- bombing, rationing, shortages, war profiteering, and the collapse of moral standards -- rather than combat, though a handful of memorable episodes do take us to places like North Africa, Spain, France, the North Sea and the flak-filled air over Germany. It was created by John Finch, who, IMDB tells us, "states he only wrote the original treatment as a ruse to be invited to the annual Granada conference where new drama ideas were discussed." Well, the ruse worked. Essentially a wartime soap opera, FAMILY boasted a huge ensemble cast, and was shot mostly -- but not entirely -- on soundstages, seldom venturing on location. Many of the best British productions of the 60s, 70s and 80s were remarkably low budget, with the delightful side-effect that the plots, dialogue and acting had to be first-rate to retain audience interest.
There are too many characters in FAMILY to list in detail, but in essence the story was held together by the Ashton patriarch, Edwin (Colin Douglas): a kindly, forebearing, hard-working man who married above his class when he wedded Jean (Shelagh Fraser), his seemingly doting wife. The two have five children, the oldest of which, David (Colin Campbell) is an absolute menace -- a selfish, philandering, drunken, self-pitying, rage-filled skirt chaser who bristles with class resentment and naturally volunteers for the Royal Air Force when the war breaks out, proving to be a much better soldier than he is a son, husband or human being. The others include Margaret (Lesley Nunnery), whose husband goes MIA in France while she is pregnant; and Philip (Keith Drinkel) a thoughtful veteran of the Spanish Civil War who finds the British Army somewhat more difficult to deal with.
A great deal of the conflict in the series, as well as much of its humor, is provided by Sefton Briggs (John McKelvey), Jean's cheap, scheming, greedy older brother, who cares not one damn about the war and lives to increase his wealth in underhanded ways. He's the sort of manipulative sneak who will steal your fingers while you're shaking hands. Sefton is continually opposed by his exasperated son Tony (T.R. Bowen), who always hovers on the brink of estrangement from his wicked old man, but can never quite make the break.
FAMILY is of course a soap opera, so there are tawdry affairs, abortive pregnancies, long-missing spouses thought to be dead who turn up at inconvenient moments, and a certain amount of drama for drama's sake. However, beneath the surface there is a great deal going on. The war is presented as it really was to working and lower middle class people in Britain: a calamity, and the attitudes of the Ashtons and their friends, lovers and in-laws reflects the full range. Edwin, a veteran of WW1, is both patriotic and deeply dubious of the necessity of war. Philip is so opposed to Fascism he fights for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, but returns confused and disillusioned, a feeling that persists when he joins the British army. Sefton regards the war as an opportunity to make money, while David sees the RAF as the means by which he will escape the drudgery of his working-class existence. Some of the female characters, like David's wife Sheila (Coral Atkins), suffer agonies trying to keep their families intact as social roles shift and already shaky marriages are tested by separation, scarcity, and in Jean's case, by the revelation of long-buried secrets. Other characters are conscientious objectors, pacifists, socialists, communists, fascist sympathizers and war profiteers, and each is given a full and reasonably fair hearing for their viewpoint. The whole "greatest generation" myth which is sold in America like a commodity is not so much exploded here as simply ignored. The Ashtons are not heroes. They are not villains. They are wholly ordinary people subjected to a catastrophe which was not of their making and which they try to navigate as best they can. Sometimes they cheat the ration system. Sometimes they question the need for the war. Sometimes they feel disgust at the bombing of German cities or pine or a negotiated settlement with Hitler which will end the carnage and return them to normal life. But of course there will be no return to normalcy for the Ashtons when the war ends. They have lost too much, suffered too much, grown and changed and experienced too much, to ever be the same again, and in that sense they are quite deliberately a metaphor for Britain itself.
I would be remiss if I didn't give special mention to Colin Douglas for his earthy, workmanlike, quietly charming performance as Edwin, the son of a dirtpoor coal-miner who married above his station and discovered, 30 years into the marriage, that his wife rather looks down on him, some of his kids are really screwed up, and his brother-in-law/boss Sefton has been grifting the bejeezus out of him since B.C. Throughout the calamity of the war, which visits every form of personal agony upon him, Douglas portrays Edwin as a good and kindly man, decent to the bone, not a saint by any means, but with an essential dencency and dignity which is deeply touching to witness. Douglas, a real-life WW2 vet who saw some the heaviest imaginable combat in Sicily and Holland, manages to hint at Edwin's deeper trauma without ever discussing it. It's a quietly masterful performance, complimented by the delightful, cartoonish villainy of McKelvey's Sefton, and the fiery mix of self-pity, class resentment and selfishness that Campbell's David brings to the table.
One of the great nerdly pleasures of watching FAMILY is picking out the faces of actors who later appeared on much more famous programs and movies. Fun fact: a staggering number of people who would perform important roles on other classic series, including:
Colin Douglas - Doctor Who
Shelagh Fraser - Star Wars
John Nettles - Midsomer Murders, Bergerac
Patrick Troughton - Doctor Who (the character himself! #2)
Wanda Ventham - Doctor Who, Invasion: UFO
Kenneth Colley - The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
Mark Jones - The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who
William Marlowe - Doctor Who
I could go on, but you get the point. There's a ton of talent here, much of it seen at the beginning of its career. Afficianados of sci-fi in particular will delight in this.
So...where does that leave us? What is the legacy of A FAMILY AT WAR, a half-century after it drew its final curtain? Why are we here in this drafty old house in Liverpool, hiding under the dinner table while the German bombs fall around us?
I have no idea what influence FAMILY had (or did not) on British television. I can say that it had a great influence on me, because it presented a glorified and much-mythologized war in a realistic way, a sort of low-budget cinema verite that showed that for most people, the war was dreary, frightening, boring, frustrating, anxiety-inducing, and seemed to be ripping the fabric of society apart. That it was an opportunity for some and a tragedy for others but almost everyone wanted to it end, preferably at once. That the people who fought it came home and often discovered, and right quick, that they were already in the process of being screwed over and forgotten by the upper classes whose power they had fought to maintain.
It proved as well -- as if the thing needed proving, though it does need periodic reminder -- that dialogue-driven, character-heavy stories can be just as entertaining as those driven by action and sex. And that big budgets are completely unnecessary if you have the right idea, the right script, and the right actors. That human stories will always beat CGI. This is a lesson Hollywood would do well to take to heart, and for that reason alone, A FAMILY AT WAR is worth a watch.
A FAMILY AT WAR is not likely to trigger the memory of Americans reading this. It was a British production produced by Granada Television, which ran from 1970 - 1972 on the BBC, and until recently it was incredibly difficult to find: even now, most streaming services idiotically only carry the first of its three series (seasons, in American lingo). If you are willing to make the effort, however -- and I did, obtaining bootleg Region 1 DVDs which had to be shipped to me from Australia -- it is well worth your time. FAMILY is a near-perfect representation of what British TV did regularly for decades before it succumbed in part to the bizarre ideologies of today: make damned good entertainment on a shoestring budget.
A FAMILY AT WAR chronicles the lives of the sprawling Ashton family, a lower middle-class clan from Liverpool, before, during, and immediately after World War 2, focusing on the hardships of "the home front" -- bombing, rationing, shortages, war profiteering, and the collapse of moral standards -- rather than combat, though a handful of memorable episodes do take us to places like North Africa, Spain, France, the North Sea and the flak-filled air over Germany. It was created by John Finch, who, IMDB tells us, "states he only wrote the original treatment as a ruse to be invited to the annual Granada conference where new drama ideas were discussed." Well, the ruse worked. Essentially a wartime soap opera, FAMILY boasted a huge ensemble cast, and was shot mostly -- but not entirely -- on soundstages, seldom venturing on location. Many of the best British productions of the 60s, 70s and 80s were remarkably low budget, with the delightful side-effect that the plots, dialogue and acting had to be first-rate to retain audience interest.
There are too many characters in FAMILY to list in detail, but in essence the story was held together by the Ashton patriarch, Edwin (Colin Douglas): a kindly, forebearing, hard-working man who married above his class when he wedded Jean (Shelagh Fraser), his seemingly doting wife. The two have five children, the oldest of which, David (Colin Campbell) is an absolute menace -- a selfish, philandering, drunken, self-pitying, rage-filled skirt chaser who bristles with class resentment and naturally volunteers for the Royal Air Force when the war breaks out, proving to be a much better soldier than he is a son, husband or human being. The others include Margaret (Lesley Nunnery), whose husband goes MIA in France while she is pregnant; and Philip (Keith Drinkel) a thoughtful veteran of the Spanish Civil War who finds the British Army somewhat more difficult to deal with.
A great deal of the conflict in the series, as well as much of its humor, is provided by Sefton Briggs (John McKelvey), Jean's cheap, scheming, greedy older brother, who cares not one damn about the war and lives to increase his wealth in underhanded ways. He's the sort of manipulative sneak who will steal your fingers while you're shaking hands. Sefton is continually opposed by his exasperated son Tony (T.R. Bowen), who always hovers on the brink of estrangement from his wicked old man, but can never quite make the break.
FAMILY is of course a soap opera, so there are tawdry affairs, abortive pregnancies, long-missing spouses thought to be dead who turn up at inconvenient moments, and a certain amount of drama for drama's sake. However, beneath the surface there is a great deal going on. The war is presented as it really was to working and lower middle class people in Britain: a calamity, and the attitudes of the Ashtons and their friends, lovers and in-laws reflects the full range. Edwin, a veteran of WW1, is both patriotic and deeply dubious of the necessity of war. Philip is so opposed to Fascism he fights for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, but returns confused and disillusioned, a feeling that persists when he joins the British army. Sefton regards the war as an opportunity to make money, while David sees the RAF as the means by which he will escape the drudgery of his working-class existence. Some of the female characters, like David's wife Sheila (Coral Atkins), suffer agonies trying to keep their families intact as social roles shift and already shaky marriages are tested by separation, scarcity, and in Jean's case, by the revelation of long-buried secrets. Other characters are conscientious objectors, pacifists, socialists, communists, fascist sympathizers and war profiteers, and each is given a full and reasonably fair hearing for their viewpoint. The whole "greatest generation" myth which is sold in America like a commodity is not so much exploded here as simply ignored. The Ashtons are not heroes. They are not villains. They are wholly ordinary people subjected to a catastrophe which was not of their making and which they try to navigate as best they can. Sometimes they cheat the ration system. Sometimes they question the need for the war. Sometimes they feel disgust at the bombing of German cities or pine or a negotiated settlement with Hitler which will end the carnage and return them to normal life. But of course there will be no return to normalcy for the Ashtons when the war ends. They have lost too much, suffered too much, grown and changed and experienced too much, to ever be the same again, and in that sense they are quite deliberately a metaphor for Britain itself.
I would be remiss if I didn't give special mention to Colin Douglas for his earthy, workmanlike, quietly charming performance as Edwin, the son of a dirtpoor coal-miner who married above his station and discovered, 30 years into the marriage, that his wife rather looks down on him, some of his kids are really screwed up, and his brother-in-law/boss Sefton has been grifting the bejeezus out of him since B.C. Throughout the calamity of the war, which visits every form of personal agony upon him, Douglas portrays Edwin as a good and kindly man, decent to the bone, not a saint by any means, but with an essential dencency and dignity which is deeply touching to witness. Douglas, a real-life WW2 vet who saw some the heaviest imaginable combat in Sicily and Holland, manages to hint at Edwin's deeper trauma without ever discussing it. It's a quietly masterful performance, complimented by the delightful, cartoonish villainy of McKelvey's Sefton, and the fiery mix of self-pity, class resentment and selfishness that Campbell's David brings to the table.
One of the great nerdly pleasures of watching FAMILY is picking out the faces of actors who later appeared on much more famous programs and movies. Fun fact: a staggering number of people who would perform important roles on other classic series, including:
Colin Douglas - Doctor Who
Shelagh Fraser - Star Wars
John Nettles - Midsomer Murders, Bergerac
Patrick Troughton - Doctor Who (the character himself! #2)
Wanda Ventham - Doctor Who, Invasion: UFO
Kenneth Colley - The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
Mark Jones - The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who
William Marlowe - Doctor Who
I could go on, but you get the point. There's a ton of talent here, much of it seen at the beginning of its career. Afficianados of sci-fi in particular will delight in this.
So...where does that leave us? What is the legacy of A FAMILY AT WAR, a half-century after it drew its final curtain? Why are we here in this drafty old house in Liverpool, hiding under the dinner table while the German bombs fall around us?
I have no idea what influence FAMILY had (or did not) on British television. I can say that it had a great influence on me, because it presented a glorified and much-mythologized war in a realistic way, a sort of low-budget cinema verite that showed that for most people, the war was dreary, frightening, boring, frustrating, anxiety-inducing, and seemed to be ripping the fabric of society apart. That it was an opportunity for some and a tragedy for others but almost everyone wanted to it end, preferably at once. That the people who fought it came home and often discovered, and right quick, that they were already in the process of being screwed over and forgotten by the upper classes whose power they had fought to maintain.
It proved as well -- as if the thing needed proving, though it does need periodic reminder -- that dialogue-driven, character-heavy stories can be just as entertaining as those driven by action and sex. And that big budgets are completely unnecessary if you have the right idea, the right script, and the right actors. That human stories will always beat CGI. This is a lesson Hollywood would do well to take to heart, and for that reason alone, A FAMILY AT WAR is worth a watch.
January 18, 2025
AS I PLEASE XXIX
My first "As I Please" of 2025 finds me digesting the dinner I cooked (mashed sweet potatoes with fried onion crisps, roasted broccoli, roasted BBQ chicken), and reading the weather report. We're due for something like 5" - 7" inches of snow tomorrow. This got me thinking, in the rambling, ADHD, stream-of-consciousness manner of writers, about a whole slew of nonsense which I will now share.
* When I lived in California, the thing I most missed about the East was the change of seasons. In Southern California, there were only one and a half seasons. One I called Summer, and the other, Not Summer. Summer was what you'd expect. Not Summer was a kind of slovenly version of autumn -- autumn with most of the virtues left out. A sloppy, wet, coldish, bleak half-season which wanted to be something definite but never quite achieved that definite status. Now I'm back East, and we're getting the most definite winter I've experienced since 2007, and boy, am I a mess. My skin is powder. My sinuses ache. My eyes have Samsonite luggage beneath them, which seems to be caused by allergies, though nobody can tell me whatallergies since all the goddamn plants are dead. The snow and ice from the last storm hasn't melted and now we're gonna get slammed again. "Be careful what you wish for" is perhaps the most useful of all the ostensibly worn-out, dumb, overused cliches in existence.
* Yesterday I went hiking in the Nature Preserve. I go there a lot because it's wild country, full of hills and streams and little ponds, and generally empty. The first time I went hiking there I go so lost it took me hours to find a road, any road, that I could follow back to my car. That was in summer, and I've been very careful to pay attention where I am at all times and memorize numerous landmarks. Unfortunately, this technique is useless in winter when the trees are bare, some have fallen, and snow covers everything. I got very, very lost, and just before sunset, no less. I won't say I panicked, but I will say being lost in the deeps of the woods when it's just above freezing, the ground is icy, you don't know where you are, your cell phone is at 42% so the flashlight feature won't burn long, etc., etc. definitely knocked on some primal fears of mine. I love the woods, I love nature, I actually enjoy being muddy and don't mind bruises and cuts on my knuckles, but I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a woodsman or a country boy. I'm a suburban kid who has spent adult life in big cities or large towns. When I finally found the right track, the relief I felt was comical, as I had visions of becoming the picked-over heap of bones and moldering deer fur I use as a landmark.
* Speaking of demise, among the celebrity deaths of the last few days were David Lynch, Bob Eucker and Christopher Benjamin. All of these saddened me for different, selfish reasons, so quick note about each:
* Lynch was a cinematic icon -- perhaps iconoclast might be a better term, since he hardly fit the mold of a "Hollywood director." Indeed, he was anything but Hollywood. Quirky, offbeat, original, totally uncommercial, he was one of those artists whose impact was felt the most keenly by people who didn't know who he was or watch anything he made. They just loved the things those he influenced made. TWIN PEAKS was bizzare, discursive, inaccessible, occasionally incomprehensible, and in short, destroyed the prefabricated concept of what a network television show could be. For that alone he is owed a huge debt. He also had one of the best reputations in the business, and I have that on very good authority -- from crew members who worked with him.
* Bob Eucker was the Rodney Dangerfield of baseball. A former pro player who became a commentator, actor and de facto comedian, he made a second -- third? fourth? fifth? -- career of making fun of himself in commercials, especially the legendary "I must be in the front rowwwww" Miller Lite commercial that is branded on the cerebral cortex of every Gen Xer out there. We just loved that guy.
* Christopher Benjamin was a British character actor with a list of credits that goes back to Christ. He was one of those guys who was in everything, and always gave a great and memorable performance, but never extruded into the script or got in the way of the stars he was supporting. He managed to stand out without upstaging, which is goddamned difficult to do. He was in ZULU with Michael Caine back in the 60s. He chewed scene for scene (with absolute genius) with the great Tom Baker in the all-time classic DOCTOR WHO episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" in the 70s. He managed to easily hold his own against the megalithic talent of Jeremy Brett in the Grenada SHERLOCK HOLMES in the 80s. He provided a kindly, Fezziwig-type figure in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in the 90s and showed up in FOYLE'S WAR and THE MIDSOMER MURDERS in the 00s. The list of classic films and television shows he appeared in was staggering, as was the list of stars and top flight actors he worked with, and toward the end of his life he even cranked out 55 episodes of the DOCTOR WHO spinoff Podcast series JAGO & LITEFOOT, reprising his "Weng-Chiang" character of Henry Gordon Jago. Just an absolute legend in his field.
* When I was in college, I quite literally couldn't boil water. I didn't know how to use a hotpot or even make Ramen noodles. It was pathetic. By my junior year I was a fair hand in the kitchen or at the grill, but only in the last three or four years have I learned to elevate my skills to the point where I can cook a turkey without giving anyone salmonella, have a thick recipe book, and feel comfortable tackling more complex dishes without the fire department showing up. I mention this because it's proof of how much we limit ourselves in life by starting sentences with "I can't ----" or "I'll never ----." For years I dreamed of having a YouTube channel, but I kept telling myself there was too much technology involved, that I didn't know how to edit, that I didn't understand keywords or hashtags or search optimization, etc. and so on. Then one day I took the first small step. Then another. Then another. Before long I was there -- idea had become very modest reality. And now my little hobby channel, which I anticipated might have 100 subscribers by the end of this month, is one short of 400 and has over 40,000 total views -- a going concern, however modest. There is no task that cannot be completed if you break it down into small enough components.
* One interesting thing about YouTube is you open yourself to all sorts of commentary and attack, some of it quite vicious. It doesn't bother me in the least. I thank my writing experience for this. When I first began publishing in 2016, I tried to steel myself against the inevitable reader who came away less than satisfied by my work. I got considerably less hate, or even dislike, than I was expecting, but the random flak bursts I did receive always hurt. Over time, I came to see a lot of this criticism as a gross positive. Not only did it thicken my skin -- and thick skin is something every writer needs -- it opened up my mind to the idea that some criticisms are valuable even if tactlessly delivered. On a petty level, it also gave me the satisfaction of knowing that anyone who is trying to get under my skin is only doing so because I got under theirs first.
That about empties the brain bucket for today. But I'd like to accounce that SOMETHING EVIL: VOLUME I: BOOKS 1 & 2 are now available on Amazon for pre-order. I am going to write a separate, dedicated blog about this in a day or so, but feel free to check out the link below. As some of you are already aware, I am an afficianado of sorts of horror, but I haven't delved too deeply into it myself as a writer -- my short-story collection DEVILS YOU KNOW was a Hoffer Award Finalist, and I'm quite fond of my independent short story "The Brute," but SOMETHING EVIL is quite different -- a full-on assault on the genre, inspired by Stephen King's IT and Clive Barker's BOOKS OF BLOOD, it's a three volume, six-book series which pits a large cast of characters against an ancient, supernatural evil. Combining supernatural and slasher vibes with a more philosophical exploration of the nature of evil and the way evil plays out in each of us (even "good people"), it was a work a quarter century in the making. Anyway, if you've a mind to scare yourself, links are below.
SOMETHING EVIL: VOLUME I: BOOKS 1 & 2
Devils You Know
The Brute
* When I lived in California, the thing I most missed about the East was the change of seasons. In Southern California, there were only one and a half seasons. One I called Summer, and the other, Not Summer. Summer was what you'd expect. Not Summer was a kind of slovenly version of autumn -- autumn with most of the virtues left out. A sloppy, wet, coldish, bleak half-season which wanted to be something definite but never quite achieved that definite status. Now I'm back East, and we're getting the most definite winter I've experienced since 2007, and boy, am I a mess. My skin is powder. My sinuses ache. My eyes have Samsonite luggage beneath them, which seems to be caused by allergies, though nobody can tell me whatallergies since all the goddamn plants are dead. The snow and ice from the last storm hasn't melted and now we're gonna get slammed again. "Be careful what you wish for" is perhaps the most useful of all the ostensibly worn-out, dumb, overused cliches in existence.
* Yesterday I went hiking in the Nature Preserve. I go there a lot because it's wild country, full of hills and streams and little ponds, and generally empty. The first time I went hiking there I go so lost it took me hours to find a road, any road, that I could follow back to my car. That was in summer, and I've been very careful to pay attention where I am at all times and memorize numerous landmarks. Unfortunately, this technique is useless in winter when the trees are bare, some have fallen, and snow covers everything. I got very, very lost, and just before sunset, no less. I won't say I panicked, but I will say being lost in the deeps of the woods when it's just above freezing, the ground is icy, you don't know where you are, your cell phone is at 42% so the flashlight feature won't burn long, etc., etc. definitely knocked on some primal fears of mine. I love the woods, I love nature, I actually enjoy being muddy and don't mind bruises and cuts on my knuckles, but I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a woodsman or a country boy. I'm a suburban kid who has spent adult life in big cities or large towns. When I finally found the right track, the relief I felt was comical, as I had visions of becoming the picked-over heap of bones and moldering deer fur I use as a landmark.
* Speaking of demise, among the celebrity deaths of the last few days were David Lynch, Bob Eucker and Christopher Benjamin. All of these saddened me for different, selfish reasons, so quick note about each:
* Lynch was a cinematic icon -- perhaps iconoclast might be a better term, since he hardly fit the mold of a "Hollywood director." Indeed, he was anything but Hollywood. Quirky, offbeat, original, totally uncommercial, he was one of those artists whose impact was felt the most keenly by people who didn't know who he was or watch anything he made. They just loved the things those he influenced made. TWIN PEAKS was bizzare, discursive, inaccessible, occasionally incomprehensible, and in short, destroyed the prefabricated concept of what a network television show could be. For that alone he is owed a huge debt. He also had one of the best reputations in the business, and I have that on very good authority -- from crew members who worked with him.
* Bob Eucker was the Rodney Dangerfield of baseball. A former pro player who became a commentator, actor and de facto comedian, he made a second -- third? fourth? fifth? -- career of making fun of himself in commercials, especially the legendary "I must be in the front rowwwww" Miller Lite commercial that is branded on the cerebral cortex of every Gen Xer out there. We just loved that guy.
* Christopher Benjamin was a British character actor with a list of credits that goes back to Christ. He was one of those guys who was in everything, and always gave a great and memorable performance, but never extruded into the script or got in the way of the stars he was supporting. He managed to stand out without upstaging, which is goddamned difficult to do. He was in ZULU with Michael Caine back in the 60s. He chewed scene for scene (with absolute genius) with the great Tom Baker in the all-time classic DOCTOR WHO episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" in the 70s. He managed to easily hold his own against the megalithic talent of Jeremy Brett in the Grenada SHERLOCK HOLMES in the 80s. He provided a kindly, Fezziwig-type figure in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in the 90s and showed up in FOYLE'S WAR and THE MIDSOMER MURDERS in the 00s. The list of classic films and television shows he appeared in was staggering, as was the list of stars and top flight actors he worked with, and toward the end of his life he even cranked out 55 episodes of the DOCTOR WHO spinoff Podcast series JAGO & LITEFOOT, reprising his "Weng-Chiang" character of Henry Gordon Jago. Just an absolute legend in his field.
* When I was in college, I quite literally couldn't boil water. I didn't know how to use a hotpot or even make Ramen noodles. It was pathetic. By my junior year I was a fair hand in the kitchen or at the grill, but only in the last three or four years have I learned to elevate my skills to the point where I can cook a turkey without giving anyone salmonella, have a thick recipe book, and feel comfortable tackling more complex dishes without the fire department showing up. I mention this because it's proof of how much we limit ourselves in life by starting sentences with "I can't ----" or "I'll never ----." For years I dreamed of having a YouTube channel, but I kept telling myself there was too much technology involved, that I didn't know how to edit, that I didn't understand keywords or hashtags or search optimization, etc. and so on. Then one day I took the first small step. Then another. Then another. Before long I was there -- idea had become very modest reality. And now my little hobby channel, which I anticipated might have 100 subscribers by the end of this month, is one short of 400 and has over 40,000 total views -- a going concern, however modest. There is no task that cannot be completed if you break it down into small enough components.
* One interesting thing about YouTube is you open yourself to all sorts of commentary and attack, some of it quite vicious. It doesn't bother me in the least. I thank my writing experience for this. When I first began publishing in 2016, I tried to steel myself against the inevitable reader who came away less than satisfied by my work. I got considerably less hate, or even dislike, than I was expecting, but the random flak bursts I did receive always hurt. Over time, I came to see a lot of this criticism as a gross positive. Not only did it thicken my skin -- and thick skin is something every writer needs -- it opened up my mind to the idea that some criticisms are valuable even if tactlessly delivered. On a petty level, it also gave me the satisfaction of knowing that anyone who is trying to get under my skin is only doing so because I got under theirs first.
That about empties the brain bucket for today. But I'd like to accounce that SOMETHING EVIL: VOLUME I: BOOKS 1 & 2 are now available on Amazon for pre-order. I am going to write a separate, dedicated blog about this in a day or so, but feel free to check out the link below. As some of you are already aware, I am an afficianado of sorts of horror, but I haven't delved too deeply into it myself as a writer -- my short-story collection DEVILS YOU KNOW was a Hoffer Award Finalist, and I'm quite fond of my independent short story "The Brute," but SOMETHING EVIL is quite different -- a full-on assault on the genre, inspired by Stephen King's IT and Clive Barker's BOOKS OF BLOOD, it's a three volume, six-book series which pits a large cast of characters against an ancient, supernatural evil. Combining supernatural and slasher vibes with a more philosophical exploration of the nature of evil and the way evil plays out in each of us (even "good people"), it was a work a quarter century in the making. Anyway, if you've a mind to scare yourself, links are below.
SOMETHING EVIL: VOLUME I: BOOKS 1 & 2
Devils You Know
The Brute
ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION
A blog about everything. Literally. Everything. Coming out twice a week until I run out of everything.
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