Can a DC Movie Universe be Successful?

Obviously from prior posts I'm a bit of a comics nerd. I adore storytelling, and the medium of comics lends to storytelling very well. They are the new pulp fiction, the new serial, the new short story; published monthly, and later collected and published in larger volumes. Lately, comics have become fodder for other mediums. We get to watch comics unfold on both the big and small screens, live action and animated. It's awesome.

Of the top 5 comics publishing companies, Marvel and DC have the biggest stakes in licensing material for non-print media, and Marvel has been crushing it with their massively popular shared movie/television universe. I've seen everything they've produced (except Agents of Shield and the Inhumans because I watch good television) and they're stuff is fantastic.

However, I am, and have always been a DC guy. 

Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a plethora of larger than life heroes, several decades older, at times darker and more philosophical than Marvel. They always seemed to me, since I started reading comics, to be more grown up. There are clear analogies to Neitzsche, and Machiavelli in the three major characters. I agree with Laurence Maslon and Dr. Kate Roddy when they claim superheroes are our new mythologies. DC characters specifically fit into the classic myth versions of heroes. They are kings, and princesses, and aristocrats, rich one-percenters with money, and education, and privilege who go through journeys and defeat monsters in order to save the general public. It is a shame Warner Brothers, the DC parent company, is so bad at storytelling.

pulp fiction mythologies

This seems to be the real success with Marvel's shared universe. They write good stories first, and then tie them together. They took their time with the project, a whole decade to make films, and thread commonalities between them. They made good casting decisions, allowed writers and creators to create good plots and interactions for the characters, and never appeared to try to do too much in any one film (except maybe Civil War and Infinity War).

living large

The Cosmonaut Variety Hour put it this way: while Warner Brothers and DC were busy trying to make movies based on a few already existing plots from the comics, Marvel allowed writers with a knowledge of the entire canon to create new stories and plots based on story and character elements. Most of the time the Marvel movie writers get it right, like in Iron Man, and the Avengers, but sometimes we got Iron Man 3. Meanwhile, DC is the complete opposite, creating movies like Justice League, Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman which were colossal messes, but sometimes they make Wonder Woman just to give us fans a little hope. 

The problem seems to be Warner Brothers' decision to do what Marvel did, build a shared cinematic universe. Instead of doing it in the logical way of gradually introducing heroes in their own stand alone films and then connecting them all for a blockbuster crossover event, they decided to do it backwards and introduce all their characters in one blockbuster movie and then break off into solo films. Why would you decide to do that? The only reason I can think of is just to be different, I guess. Overloading one movie with so many major characters makes for a bad movie, and the reason we never had an Avengers or Justice League movie decades ago. Marvel's plan was a huge gamble based on contemporary movie making thinking.

The good news is DC did manage to build a pretty decent television universe on the CW network. The only thing seeming to hold it back from being Marvel-sized is the inability to use Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman on the live-action small screen. I have no idea what the rationale for this decision/rule but everyone would love to see an Arrowverse Batman.

My solution for DC/Warner Brothers... Continue your movie franchise, as it does make money, but put all your effort into television. Comics and television are a natural fit. Comics are serialized issue by issue with large story arcs playing out over several issues. Television is serialized episode by episode, with large story arcs playing out over a season. Bring in Batman and Superman, and Wonder Woman! Give people what they want, not a show like Gotham which is Batman without Batman, or Smallville which is Clark Kent before he becomes Superman, but not really, or whatever Lois and Clark was (literally no one asked for these shows, stop trying to be clever and just do the show we want). Also, Wonder Woman? Can we get a follow up to the 1970s show, please?

Just give them what they want!

DC is actually really good at their animated television shows, it cant be that difficult to do live action. In fact, Marvel has already proved quality television can be done in short miniseries with the Defenders franchise of shows. 

Parodies Piss Off Racists

The other day Frederick Joseph, a Manhattan area activist, went out wearing a Washington football team parody t-shirt. Instead of the Indian head mascot, the logo featured the bust of a white dude with the term "caucasians" underneath instead of the actual team name. He documented it on instagram and twitter.

Joseph's interactions with the public were actually not that surprising. He said himself, the reactions were disappointing, but not unexpected. Sports fandom can be pretty rabid and nonsensical to start with, but the backlash to Colin Kaepernick and the whole national anthem craziness doesn't make rude, obnoxious and ignorant responses to such a subtle parody shocking. You can read all about this public opinion experiment on several news outlets, including The Washington Post, USA Today, Yahoo Sports, YouTube and many others.

Predictably, Washington fans lept to defend themselves. Joseph pointed out a particular poll was cited as evidence that 9 out of 10 American Indians polled think the current mascot name is okay. I posted about this poll before. Joseph points out the poll was debunked by The Nation, and Joe Rosenstein wrote about the dubious poll for the Huffington Post as well. It took me a while to track down these articles, after searching for terms such as "Redskins Poll Debunked", or "false Redskins poll" or other similar phrases. The results were dominated by the original press releases by the Post and CBS, and even ESPN celebrating the original Washington Post poll.

These articles confirmed my earlier suspicions of foul play. It is a bit of a coincidence that the Washington Post, which covers Washington football, conducted and published the poll. But also, the poll, done by telephone, only polled 504 people claiming to be Native, without any sort of background check, or confirmation of actual Indian status. This highly publicized poll attempts to counter similar polls and studies done across the country by various other civil rights groups, and universities.

Once again, it seems that a false or misleading narrative has garnered the loudest, most easily found voice on this subject. The good news is change will come. The right people, in the right places are agreeing with these sentiments. California banned Indian mascots from all high school athletic departments. Lord Jeff is no longer the unofficial mascot at Amherst College. The Laughing Brave and Chief Wahoo are no longer part of the Braves or Indians marketing. These are big strides, and the end game will be a Washington football namechange. It's coming, patience. 

That's What the Papers Say

US Bombs

the World

1999, Hellcat

Duane Peters - vocals

Kerry Martinez - guitars

Johny Two Bags Wickersham - guitars

Wade Walston - bass

Chip Hanna - drums

I always thought this album title was clever. 

The band is US Bombs, a street punk band from the Clash/Buzzcocks school. Punk always championed the independent, band owned record label, ever since Black Flag put together their own SST label in 1978. Hellcat Records was Rancid's label, imprint of Epitaph (Bad Religion's label). The World is the 2nd record the US Bombs released on Hellcat. This record has classic street punk themes coupled with political anti-war themes.

My friend, in high school, got his hands on a US Bombs t-shirt. It was simple, with just the band's wordmark across the chest. I didn't know it was a band, and thought it was a boobs joke. My friend was a guy.

At the time, I was thrilled to add this to my music library. And now, I feel the same. 

The Ministry of Truth is Real Life

I'm sure by now, everyone is quite familiar with the term "fake news".

While I was experiencing the 2016 campaign, a thought occurred to me. No matter what happens on November 4 (spoiler alert: Clinton lost, somehow), Trump has already made a mark on American culture, probably in the worst way. Terms that he coined during the election are going to become buzzwords. Fake news, bigly, convfefe (whatever the fuck that is), and even actual phrases like "some people say", and "believe me", and "its gonna be huge" are all worming their way into the American linguistic culture, and I hate it. Even people who use the terms in jest are helping to feed the Trump influence on our society.

But, let's go back to Fake News.

Back in 1951, after Fascism in Europe was defeated, and the Red Scare and Cold War were ramping up, Hannah Arendt wrote that the Nazis and Communists were not the "ideal subjects of totalitarian rule". She argued that the targets of these regimes are people "for whom reality of experience, and the standards of thought" no longer can be distinguished. Example: people who would be unable to grasp the concept of a stapler painted red, even though we have the technology to paint other things red, because they've only ever seen black staplers. Basically, people who discount facts, reason, and logic, and rely instead on personal anecdotes, and real life experiences put themselves in a position to be easily manipulated by demagogues, cults, and conspiracy theories.

totally made-up bullshit

Humans have figured out how to manipulate Truth thousands of years ago. Mostly through omitting facts, banning things, and limiting educational resources. There is a reason the Catholic Church banned translating the Bible from Greek and Latin into domestic languages. We as a species are not new at this sort of thing. The lie can be very powerful. The idea that a lie, when repeated enough, will eventually be accepted by the masses as Truth has been echoed by many throughout history. Lenin, Goebbels, Willie Brown, Ron Amundson, Laurence Blair all have said similar things regarding fabricating the truth. I find this amazing that after all these centuries, we still get fooled.

A good example of fabrication of Truth can be seen in the "fact" that people swallow on average 8 spiders a year while sleeping. In 1993 Lisa Holst published an article in PC Professional, which included this bit about spider swallowing. Her plan was to see how long it would take to circulate a myth. Not only did we get to see how long it would take for made up "facts" to be accepted as real, but how long those accepted "facts" would remain within the culture even after being debunked. Search "swallowing 8 spiders a year" and see how many recent hits come up.

Getting people to believe they swallow spiders in their sleep is pretty harmless. But what about things that are far less harmless? What about stories and ideas that cause irrational fear, and promote negativity towards entire groups of people?

There are plenty of examples of poor research, fabricated evidence, and outright urban myth lies that resulted in people believing in crazy things. When the AIDS epidemic took off in the 80's someone spread the fear of catching AIDS from toilet seats. It seems pretty ridiculous now, if someone tried to convince you that a sexually transmitted disease can be caught be touching an inanimate object, but back then your average person had no clue. AIDS was scary, and because it was prevalent within the gay community, any misinformation helped fuel homophobic rhetoric. It took years of PSAs, and a generation of public school health classes to educate and overturn this, and other similar misinformation. There are still groups out there though, that believe "the homosexual lifestyle" is unclean, dirty, and prone to diseases and health risks. Some even go as far as to claim AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality, which is nonsense. AIDS isn't sexuality specific.

this helped too

Anti-vaxxers too still cling to evidence from a 1997 paper published by Andrew Wakefield. This paper has been throughly debunked, Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine, and The Lancet Journal wrote a retraction. And yet, people still claim vaccines cause autism. Far more effort was put into debunking these fake stories than was used to create them, which is the dangerous part. Once out there, it can be nearly impossible to truly delete it.

At this moment, the term Fake News is being thrown around a lot, politically. It is used to discredit actual news, and actual inquiry aimed at keeping the powerful accountable. Questioning the Truth of stories has always been important, but now it has been weaponized, and by the very people that need to be held accountable and be questioned.

I believe this started as a backlash to justifiable claims that unabashedly Right wing news outlets were, in fact, Reactionary Right wing biased. As a countermeasure, every other news outlet not espousing toxic conservative sentiment was labeled as liberally biased. This actually grows out of a decades long conspiracy theory that the media is controlled by Jews, and Jews are liberally biased. The actual truth, aside from a few obvious outliers, is that most news sources are not polar opposites of Fox News, Breitbart, and the Blaze. Eventually, this turned into every media outlet who didn't agree with Alt Right sentiment was labeled liberally biased and discounted by the very people most susceptible to Fake News. There are plenty of credible myth busting assets out there, but they are useless when falsely framed as Leftist.

Don't fall for that "both sides do the same thing" nonsense either. It is a false equivalency, and it's used as a weapon to discredit good journalism and inquiries of accountability. CNN, the AP, Reuters, and NPR are not partisan, or deal in politically biased coverage like Fox News and Breitbart have. There is no Leftwing equivalency to the Alt Right.

During the 2016 election, I said it would be impossible to convince a group of the actual Truth using facts and news, history and Reason, when the group believes in none of those things. And so here we are, halfway through a Trump presidency, already witnessing our cultural language change, with no good answer for how we fix the damage done to the confidence in what is True. Just like with AIDS toilet seats, and swallowing spiders, and anti-vaxxers, it will take so much more time and effort to reverse the damage done to the trust in our journalism, and the changes made to our language.

Then and Forever the Andrew Jackson Jihad

AJJ

The Bible 2

SideOneDummy, 2016

produced by John Congelton

Sean Bonnette - guitars, vocals

Ben Gallaty - basses (electric, and double)

Preston Bryant - keyboards, piano, guitars

Mark Glick - cello

Deacon Batchelor - drums

singles: 

• Goodbye, Oh Goodbye
• Junkie Church

This band is pretty slick. I discovered them in 2007 when their song No More Tears appeared on the Plea For Peace vol. 2 comp released by Asian Man Records. They are considered Anti-Folk, a genre that lumps Regina Spektor, Laura Marling, Michelle Shocked, Death Cab for Cutie, and Beck all in the same group. 

A band with initials, or numbers, makes people wonder what the initials or numbers mean. AJJ changed their name right before this album was announced. They are now referred to as AJJ, formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad. This, of course, explains the initials. The original name was super creative, and even though the band explained the official change as a desire to no longer be associated with the "odious" historic figure, nor with the "disrespectful" use of the term jihad (they aren't actually muslim, after all). 

The combination of the 7th US president and a term meaning both a religious armed struggle against unbelievers, and a praiseworthy struggle is a pretty good satirical way to describe Jackson's political career. He publicly waged wars against the budding American aristocracy, the National Bank, and American Indian tribes, and abolitionists. I guess I understand not wanting to be forever linked to America's most famous civil rights violator, and a politically/cultural/religiously charged term. But, changing your name to just the acronym isnt really changing anything, right?

Anyway, this album is pretty good.