Fri, 26 Sep 2003

Boston area note. Howard Dean is giving a major speech, titled "Democracy, Freedom, and Action," in Copley Square on Tuesday. Now's a good chance for Boston area folks to give this guy a lookover. Not sure I'd vote for him, but a friend of mine is Dean's web-monkey, so he can't be all bad.

And on another note, (gotten from Boing Boing), important consumer information for those of you wanting to pop p1lls to gr0w y0ur p3n1ses.

Sat, 20 Sep 2003

The cinematic crimes of Mel Gibson.
It's time to get this rant out of my head. I'm not sure when or if Gibson's new film The Passion will be played in theaters in the US. No actual showings are indicated in the fan website. There's plenty of bloviation on the web on the questions of whether the movie, or Mel Gibson, or both, are antisemitic. My call is for neither, but that doesn't mean Gibson should have made this movie, nor that he should be free of suspicion. There are two reasons to criticize Gibson for making this movie and claiming he is not using it to advance his own hate.

In the Middle Ages, the Church used morality plays and passion plays to teach its doctrine to a largely illiterate laity. The practice has declined in our day since the laity can read the Bible for itself and is less in need of this form of instruction. And it can also visit the video store. But there was also another problem with passion plays. Their re-enactments of the crucifiction would rile up the audience, which would then riot and attack whatever luckless Jews happened by. In this century, Catholic doctrine emphatically does not blame The Jews for the crucifiction, and the Catholic Church is fervently opposed to anything that might cause it to be associated with an act of violence. The Catholic Church does not want Passion plays to feed anyone's hate, and so it has published Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion. At least some folks are saying that these criteria have not been followed. But another reason to be suspicious about Gibson is that he has, in the past, made movies to cater to an undeniable pet hate of his. The dude has a bee in his bonnet when it comes to the English, and it's because of the whole Henry VIII thing.

Consider the following synopsis of Braveheart: a young Scot returns from a grand tour of Europe, including pilgrimage to Rome, to his Scottish hometown, to discover that the Scots are straining under the English and are preparing to rebel. On his first day back he witnesses as a young Scottish woman is carried away by soldiers, to be raped by a skanky English nobleman because of the law of prima nocta. On her wedding day. In full view of her impotently furious newlywed husband and the entire wedding party. Does the young Scot decide to join the rebels? Nah. She isn't his girl. But he does make changes to his own wedding plans and has it done in secret. But that fails, and an English soldier molests his new wife, she resists, and is killed for it, and now our young Scot is angry.

So soon he gets some of his fellow Scots, gives a speech, the gist of which is "I didn't care then, but now they killed my girl, and I want to kick ass, and I know a thing or too about how that can be done. So, how about it?" And the Scots say "cool. How about you be our leader?" Butt kicking ensues. Our young Scot dies. Butt kicking resumes. Fade to black. Roll credits. Vile. Braveheart is a completely and utterly vile movie. And then, Gibson does it again in The Patriot. Read the link. It's what I'm paraphrasing in my description of Braveheart. And the Brothers Judd echo the same issues.

So what is the lesson learned from Braveheart and The Patriot? The English suck. They're terrible people. They kick dogs and eat kittens, and leer lecherously and their mothers dress them funny. They suck. They really really really suck. Gibson clearly believes this. He believes this so strongly, that in order to demean the English, he demeans the American colonists and the Scots. In both movies a man joins an ongoing struggle in a way that demonstrates that his motives are personal and therefore he should not be trusted. Nevertheless, the Scots and the colonists are stupid enough to put the Gibson character in command. He also demeans the enemies of the English by protraying them as such worthless murderous lecherous scum, implying that if the English were just slightly less heinous, only raping innocents but not massacring them (for example), then the colonists and the Scots would not have fought against them. That is certainly not the case when it comes to the American Revolution. The colonists were far quicker to rise against the Redcoats, and that is a compliment of sorts. They demanded high standards of conduct from the Redcoats and they were quick to fight against them for far milder infractions. The Patriot carries the strong implication that only Nazi-like behavior would have caused the rebellion. That is an affront to the men who fought in Lexington. On both sides.

Mais revenons a nos moutons. I hope this post shows just how low Gibson chose to sink in two previous movies, to indulge his pet hatred. In so doing, he managed to malign two groups he supposedly admires: the Scots and the Americans. He also managed to debase the notion of patriotism. Can anyone seriously think that a movie he makes of the Passion of Christ will treat the subject with any more thoughtfullness?

Thu, 18 Sep 2003

MIT-bloxsom is now close to up and running.
I just have to add a few things to it to make it a little more user configurable and then I can announce it.

posted at: 00:19 | path: /Main | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 17 Sep 2003

Dear Diary...
This is a test of the bloxsom web diary system. I installed this in the MIT Outland locker and added several of the plugins that are floating around. It will take a little more to make this fully useful. Among other problems is the over reliance on file time stamps and the bloxsom script not realizing that changes to the templates are another issue entirely. Another is the calendar plugin that needs some way to relay font management. But that can wait a while.

posted at: 20:20 | path: /Main | permanent link to this entry

Foo.


posted at: 19:23 | path: /Main | permanent link to this entry