The 3 Bullshit Cutters

Here is my take on 3 of the best characters in the entertainment industry currently shining a light on the absurdity of the human condition through their work; House MD, The Mentalist, and Sascha Baren Cohen (Borat, Bruno, Ali G).

I'd group both House and the Mentalist in the same category. They are characters who operate outside of the set of social norms and use their positions and personalities to cut through the bullshit in order to uncover some underlying truth. For House the truth is a medical fact which is both obscured by and linked to the bullshit. For the Mentalist, the truth is a set of circumstances and actions surrounding a crime. Here, human behaviour is composed of a set of strands which are unravelled. Of the two characters, House is the more sardonic, but both are deeply disillusioned by many of their fellow human beings and have crossed some threshold which has liberated them from subjection to social norms. The scales have fallen from their eyes. Incidentally, despite their generally pessimistic outlook on human behaviour, I view them as deeply compassionate and principled.

Baren Cohen's characters likewise reveal the set of human foibles, but his approach is to become a pantomime version of humanities prejudice embodied in a character which reflects and amplifies the foibles of those he encounters. He heightens the existence of charicature present in society and so just as effectively as House and the Mentalist reveals the often absurd conceits and contradictions we operate under.

Man? Woman? Not unimportant questions

Caster Semenya. What to make of the whole bruhaha. It is really interesting how the issue has been interpreted by many South Africans as evidence of European racism, or of gender discrimination. The newspapers are full of invective, both from journalists and letter-writers, insisisting that there is a conspiracy to deprive the African of his/her just rewards because of some racist and jealous agenda.

What has been lost sight of in all this madness is the simple issue of ensuring a level playing field in athletics. Surely athletics is about the fielding of athletes who then compete on this level playing field - whilst themselves displaying the differences in physiology that are accounted for by the "normal" range of physiological difference. I suppose that the definition of this range may be central to the debate, but there are some basic rules which should apply, one being that women participate in women's events and vice versa. In fact this is the interesting aspect to this issue, in how to define gender differences when things start to get blurry, i.e. when one examines ratios of female to male hormones etc. Whilst these questions may be difficult to properly define and answer, it does not detract from the importance of doing so in order to ensure that the athletic contest remains meaningful.

If we simply brush aside these questions, then we may as well abandon competition because it's no longer starting from a nominally fair base. Was there fair ground to question Semenya's gender? I think so. Semenya certainly doesn't look feminine - there are no discernable breasts, and Semenya's build, visage and voice are all very masculine. Then there is the fact that Semenya appeared on the scene out of nowhere and displayed a noticeable, indeed decisive, advantage over other competitors. I don't buy the argument that there is racism involved in the decision to test for gender in this case. Surely "Europe" has moved some way past this form of knee-jerk response. Surely this is, at base, an issue of fairness in athletics, and fear of actions being misinterpreted as racist or sexist should not prevent something being done.

The same thing happened in the case of Oscar Pretorius and his attempt to qualify as an able-bodied athlete. I mean, come on, what is going on? With a few more advances in technology, his "blades" may in fact give him an advantage over able-bodied athletes, they certainly seem to be close to achieving parity. It is absurd to even contemplate putting "blade runners" and "normal" folk together on the same track - and not because of any prejudice, simply because it makes a mockery of the whole concept of competition. You don't put grid-iron football players on the same field as rugby players - it makes no sense. Yet Oscar's campaign became a highly emotional one, and I don't remember seeing an opinion expressed contrary to the "this aint fair" attitude, and rallying around Oscar as "one of our own".

There is the spectre of jingoism in all this, a movement away from thinking sensibly about things and away from deferring to the underlying principles which make competition meaningful in the first place. Sure, other principles get trod upon, most noticeably the principle of privacy and protection of the sanctity of the individuals psyche, but if we continually defer to people's beliefs and insecurities, then the whole edifice crumbles, and there's nothing fun to watch on tv anymore...

I saw "Man on Wire" a few nights ago. A few minutes into the documentary/film, my partner and I had a brief discussion/argument over the source of the footage being shown in some parts. It was obvious that some of it was staged. For instance, there is no way that the team of compelling characters who were to rig a wire between the two World Trade Centres in 1974 had filmed their entrance into the towers disguised as a work crew and a pair of architects. There was no disagreement there. But, whilst she thought the "old" footage of the lead character and wire-walker, Phillipe, and his posse carousing around in fields dotted with flowers or of Phillipe manically juggling in the streets of Paris whilst riding a unicycle must have been re-enactments, I was sure that they were authentic. I can understand her difficulty in accepting that these snippets were the real deal, they were so suffused with atmosphere and the force of their characters as to be almost magical, and therefore surely created through technological wizardry and careful direction. I was right of course, they were real, and they kept coming, like an avalanche of information on the beauty, purity of purpose, and artistic expression which exists in potential within humanity. Sound over the top? I promise you, it's not. I can still scarcely believe that these people exist, really exist, and that they did what they did, really did it. It rejuvenated my sense of what is possible, and of what could and should drive me. Watch it.

Faith and Star Trek

Am I the only one who has a problem with the fact that most of the aliens portrayed in the new Star Trek movie are humanoid? I found this so annoying that it pretty much ruined the film for me, despite some of the best effects and action ever in my favourite genre, science fiction. I'm no Trekkie, but I do feel strongly about this aspect of the Star Trek franchise to want to say something about it. It is logically impossible for any alien species, not to mention dozens, to share anything beyond perhaps an eye or a set of teeth in common with humans. The chances of a species on another planet evolving to resemble humans, down to the limbs and digits, is just not possible. Ruminating on this subject after watching the film, I typed a few search terms into google and found reference to some early episode of Star Trek which sought to explain this phenomenon by way of the much earlier evolution of "humans" on a distant planet in the galaxy, and a subsequent "seeding" of "M-type planets" with the human genome. The problem with this explanation is that humans on this planet are inserted into a complex set of evolving forms, with so many connections and antecedents which make up a consistent framework of evolution. Humans weren't simply inserted into this mix, their form is entirely consistent with the set of other forms related to it. For some earlier race to "seed" the earth could only occur at a much, much earlier stage in the evolution of life, say the Pre-cambrian, when the ancestors of the modern genus of species were formed, or rather selected from a larger set of possible genus(es?). This is impossible too, as the insertion of an earlier set of genes could not be assured of evolving into the human form, as evolution is based on random mutations, and their selection based on suitability for survival in a given context.

Basically, those Star Trek people are retarded if they don't see this as a problem, which I consider to be significant enough to kind of ruin the whole thing for me. But I guess myriad millions of us are ok with implausability, with inconsistencies and illogicalities - observe the faithful multitudes. For me, stuff that doesn't make sense is a big deal and can't just be resolved with faith or forgetfulness. If intellectual honesty was a prerequisite for living, faith would disappear like a life-form ill suited to its environment.

Synecdoche New York

"Synecdoche New York" is a wonderful movie. Its aesthetics and pacing set the scene for a virtually seamless investigation of timeless themes such as death and ageing, love and loss, and the futility of existence. The endless references (subtle and not so subtle) to these themes provide the viewer with opportunties to test their wits and implant their meaning deeper into the mind. Phillip Seymour Hoffman must have gum surgery = a difficulty in communicating; He must use an instantaneous translation device to speak to his dying daughter = an illustration of how parents and childern can grow apart and virtually speak different languages; the building of the giant set and endless rehearsals without ever actually performing = well, the futility of it all. I particularly liked the protrayal of love and the pain and joy it brings (emphasis on the pain). It all seems to be in there, from the distance that can manifest between two people, to the failure to capitalise on a chance at happiness, to inequalities in affection and a final surmounting of the barriers life presents to find real joy. I wouldn't be surprised if movies like this require an auteur at the helm (in this case, Andy Kauffman) to be brought into existence.

Behind the Rainbow

So, the South African national elections 2009 have concluded, and Jacob Zuma is the new president. It is easy to articulate the anxieties which many have over this man as the leader of the country. He has multiple wives, which those of us dedicated to the notions of geese-like, to-the-end partnership, or even serial monogamy, cannot help but associate with a kind of lecherousness and disregard for the subtle interplay of interdependence and attention to the independence of those we love. Zuma's erstwhile financial adviser (Schabir Shaik) was sent to prison based on evidence of his corrupt relationship with the now president, a fairly straightforward indication of Zuma's corruptibility, despite the failure to level these charges in court. Despite the enigmatic quality to the man himself (which stems in part from his seemingly perpetual status as a legal defendant over the past few years, being advised not to comment), Zuma is surrounded by some hideous characters, none more so than the President of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, who combines what is clearly a talent for vivid linguistic imagery with a kind of terrifying loyalty and aggression reminiscent of the lieutenants to ancient warlords of the Asian steppes. Yet there is a willingness to give Zuma the benefit of the doubt, and an almost eager anticipation of a change from the excruciatingly dull Mbeki and dutifully sombre interim President, Kgalema Mothlanthe. Personally, whilst I voted for the Democratic Alliance (DA), mainly out of principled opposition to the devolution in character of the ANC, I still do believe that a mass-movement party with some kind of philosophy or ideology rooted in history (however tenuous and subject to revision that may be) is better suited to the task of "nation-building" (cringeworthy term..) and the kind of large-scale development required here, than a party which espouses rationality and efficiency as the panacea to every ill. To me, the DA is the opposition, and an opposition is important, but I see their insistence on rationality and efficiency as both rootless and inherently racist. The kinds of solutions proferred by the DA, or the Congress of the People (COPE) to problems such as crime, unemployment and poverty are those that any reasonably competent group of students would arise at were they thrown into groups and given 20 minutes to produce a mock-manifesto. The ANC, with all its shortcomings, still gets my vote of confidence as the party which has the best chance to emulate the Asian tigers, as a party which may develop large-scale, successful solutions to the specific large-scale problems extant in the specific context of South Africa. This is a long-shot, especially considering the willingness to compromise and revert to the de-historicised and generic approach illustrated in the ANC's shift in economic and development policies shortly after 1994. However, any other party would have no shot at all. For these reasons, I voted against the ANC at the ballot, but I still have faith, despite the absence of evidence.

Music of the Orbs: The US Election and the Future of Humanity

Why am I so fascinated by election campaigning in the US and the imminent election? Partly it is a function of not having much to do at work at the moment and so being free to surf the news sites. But my free time could be spent checking the latest nba scores or checking out the surf report. There's something so addictive though about the election-related output of the 24/7 news machine. Partly it's because the contest itself is so fascinating. The brash, impulsive ageing ex-navy captain, versus the steady, smooth first term senator makes for a vivid set of contrasts. The awesome scale of investment in proceedings, combined with the continual scrambling for the iconic image, pithy line, or damning bit of evidence make for an endless and gripping narrative. To more clearly express my bias I would further describe the contest as between a candidate who is truly inspiring and one who represents much of what has been wrong about US politics for the past 8 years. Oops, there I go regurgitating one of the key concepts in the Obama campaign - that McCain represents the same economic and other policies as the Bush administration. I'm not even American, and have never put foot on the continent, but I find myself desperately hoping that the American people do not choose someone who may continue in the same vein things have been going for what seems like an eternity. My fascination with the events unfolding must have something to do with the way the world is so inter-connected, as cliched as that sounds. I feel invested in the outcome because I know that America's future is in a way my future, our future. Perhaps it was my introduction to and love for science fiction from a young age that has implanted in me a desire for us humans to live, to survive, to persist - and to do so for a long, long time, preferably till the end of time. I think that is one of the most basic instincts a person can have, and it may seem hackneyed but for the frequency I hear people say things like, "people will die out, just like every dominant species has done so before", or "there's no chance mankind will survive, we will either use up all our resources or kill each other". Hey, what happened to some good, old fashioned American-style positive thinking? I want us to be whizzing around in space ships ala "Star Trek" come the year AD 4522. Why not? I fully believe that's possible. All we need is to master nuclear fusion and we're golden, right? My sense is that, for that vision of a technologically powerful race bravely venturing out into the universe to have a decent shot at coming to fruition, we need to get through this tricky period right now. Sure, there will be delicate times in the future, but this is the most delicate time we have yet encountered, and how we deal with it may determine whether we ever make it to alpha minor, or explore the Milky Way.

Let me explain how all this relates to the US election. War: a McCain presidency is more likely to encourage antagonism towards the US internationally which could spark conflict on a bigger scale than that which is currently waged. An Obama presidency could help to both defuse current conflicts and tone down war-like rhetoric generally. The Environment and International Cooperation: surely the most pressing issues facing the world right now are the interrelated concerns of dwindling resources and the environmental problems which accompany such resource use. For us to make the transition to a post-oil, and then post-fossil fuel system, requires clear thinking, forward planning, massive amounts of investment, and cooperation between nations. An America under clear thinking leadership which recognises the shared destiny of the world's various nations, is more likely to facilitate the meeting of these challenges, instead of stymieing them through a short-sighted scramble to preserve the SUV-driving, criminally wasteful lifestyle many people have become used to.

There is also something harder to define at issue here. It is something to do with the collective imagination of people. As we spin through space on this shimmering orb, so we steadily cover its surface with all manner of edifices, and fill our minds and societies with all manner of beliefs and rules. That is a flexible set of things, it can be moulded and every change reverberates through time. Wouldn't an Obama presidency reverberate through time a whole lot better than a McCain/Palin presidency? I see fields of green... and a red spaceship or two...