When Arguments Attack

I hate it when people exploit positions of power to run other people through the ringer. It’s something that happens in divorce cases, where one parent is trying to gain as much custody of their kid as possible, so they hire lawyers to dredge up all the bad behavior they can find on their spouse to use it as ammunition in court hearings. A lot of the mistakes people make in everyday life, including while raising their children, are trivial and forgivable, but get compounded and amplified when examined in a legal context. As a result, parents are forced to review these mistakes and humiliate themselves because they have to fight for the right to continue seeing their children. During these proceedings, if one spouse has a cleaner record or access to more money and therefore better lawyers, they’re in a position of power, where they have the opportunity to drag the other spouse across the coals. It’s an abuse of power.

People can abuse power on many levels. There are grand levels, like child custody battles. There are also more common abuses of power, like when someone claims a small victory in an argument and uses their victory rush to censure their opponent. It’s as if these people are incapable of being gracious. It’s the reason why, if someone’s getting shit from a group of people, I’ll take their side, because nobody deserves to feel that alienated, especially if it’s from their friends. I don’t know if people pull this kind of bullshit because they love to feel righteous, or they’re too lazy to figure out how to admonish someone instead of lambasting them, or they’re just insecure and trying to shift attention away from themselves or boost their ego by bringing someone else down.

I guess I’m not only mad that people abuse power in these ways, but also that they’re so petty about arguing. I don’t enjoy most arguments, because most arguments are founded upon lies. Most arguments happen because one or more people can’t admit the plain truth, so they deny the truth, and the argument isn’t a healthy debate at all; it becomes an endeavor to convince someone that they’re totally wrong. This type of argument is almost pointless, because if someone refuses to admit the truth, it’s probably because of pride in the first place, and the argument is wounding their pride, and someone with a wounded pride is highly unlikely to admit they’re wrong — the theoretical goal of arguing. The only way someone will admit they’re wrong, in this case, is if someone diplomatically helps them come to the conclusion beforehand, or they cool off afterward.

Another dumb part about these arguments is that the people who are mostly on the right side of the argument make silly mistakes while arguing. Listen up: If you’re arguing with someone, and they’re right and you’re wrong, and they slip up and say something in haste and make a logical fallacy, it doesn’t destroy their position. It was just a stupid mistake. I’ve learned, for the most part, to avoid these stupid mistakes, because they give fodder to people who don’t have a leg to stand on otherwise, so they’re searching for morsels of errors in what I’m saying, even though what I’m saying, at large, is perfectly sound.

I’m reminded of Lewis Black — who, like most of this rant, fails to provide enough examples, but kiss my ass, it’s late — and something he once said, and I paraphrase: One day the Democrats and Republicans are going to have to sit down and watch a video of something happening and agree on what the truth is (end paraphrase). Basically he’s saying that people will sit in boldfaced denial because they refuse to agree on the truth. It astounds me that people will deny the truth for so long, for the sake of argument. And before the thought even crosses your mind, Yes, I know the difference between an argument for real and an argument for fun. Also, this turned out to be a rant, but my original intent was just to plead with people to be cool to one another, instead of being petty meatheads who jump on the self-righteous bandwagon every time it passes by. It’s not something that’s rampant — people are usually decent toward each other — but it happens often enough to irk me, apparently.

Dramatic irony

In high school I learned that dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something the characters don't. So you're sitting there, watching the people on the stage or the screen carry out their lives, and you already know that he has cancer or her boyfriend is cheating on her before they know it themselves. Meanwhile, they're saying stuff like "I'm fit as a fiddle" or "Tom's so faithful to me," and you're in on the joke because you know better.

So am I party to dramatic irony when I watch Journeyman every week, knowing full well it has a less-than-even chance of surviving on broadcast television? Every time Dan unwillingly travels to the past, should I wonder if he's going to get stuck back there — not because he lost his power but because NBC pulled his budget out from under him? Time travel doesn't operate on money, it operates on science! And tachyons! You can't fight tachyons, NBC! You can't even see them! But I digress. Why do networks that greenlight these great shows let them fall by the wayside?

When networks run promos for their fall premieres, they're showing you a menu full of delicious dishes of food. You read the descriptions of all these dishes, choose one — or a few if you're feeling hungry — and order it. Time passes and your server brings your food and places it on your table. You sit there in your comfortable chair, excited because this thing you have yet to taste is new and unknown, and contented because you know at the very least, you're about to enjoy a relaxing meal. You grab a piece with your fork and put it in your mouth and bite down and it's great, the best thing you've tasted in a while, you were hungry and this thing came along and satisfied that void of hunger and you forget how stressful and confusing life is and you simply enjoy your sublime meal.

Then the people from the bank barge into the restaurant and point their fingers at the chef and scream at him about loan payments. One of them whips out a gun and shoots the chef in the head but not before he sends you a fleeting apologetic glance that conveys his sentiments: "I hope you enjoyed what I made. I put a lot of time into it. I'm sorry!" Then the bank people storm over to you and unveil a blend of vomit, horse piss and rat shit (Deal or No Deal, if you're still following the metaphor) and cram it down your throat while coaxing you to buy a Nissan. And just as your gag reflex kicks in and you start hurling all this tripe back at the people from the bank, you catch a glimpse of the restaurant's kitchen door swinging open, and behind it … what's that? … oh, it's Matthew Perry, chasing a Vicodin with a swig of Jack while weeping over a tombstone that reads STUDIO 60 ~ TV'S STILLBORN CHILD.

The point to take home is this: Please don't cancel Journeyman, NBC. I'm a sap for time-travel plots and I took your bait and now I'm hooked, so don't haul me out of the water just to let me suffocate on shore; at least take me home and fillet me and maybe serve me with some wine, or throw me back in the water. Wait, no, Bionic Woman is waiting in the water. Just kill me.

Ode to Abner

Was it hard growing up, with no lower jaw?
I remember the undead children, the way they ridiculed you.
They called you Waggy Tongue and Licky.
How much were they laughing on the day,
after you had spent your life training
in the ways of the warrior,
in the method of the blade,
in the three sacred stances of battle,
when you brought the honed edge of your axe to their necks and relieved them of their jeering heads?

You precocious fool.
We would no sooner be conversed in the trade of unrefined ore,
than I would hear tales of you slapping your sword on the ass of a dragon ten times your hunched stature.
Fozruk himself,
contented daily in his peaceful walks through the highlands of Arathi with his friendly guild of three bumbling kobolds,
was not safe from your unbiased aggression.
Nor were hundreds of bright-eyed Alliance champions,
low in level but high in ambition,
whom you felled with your ranged weapon,
a murderous method meant to teach them humility.

And how could I neglect to mention
our journeys through the gloomy, wet subways of Ironforge and Stormwind.
I learned all I ever needed to know about the perils of a leap to and from a speeding train,
by your side.

If I should speak for someone whose voice is not heard in this ode,
it would have to be the scores of piteous fools who watched in disbelief,
and confusion,
and frustration,
as you carried their blue banner across the bloody gulch of the Warsong Woods,
you alone without a healer,
and them stricken with a petrifying fear
as you showed them what their insides looked like
and spit on their fresh corpses
and rubbed the cloth bearing their alliance symbol on your rotting crotch,
in a gesture of mockery.

The halls of Blackwing Lair will forever ring with your name.
The searing lava flowing through Molten Core will illuminate the faces of adventurers who will follow in your path but never truly embrace it.
C'thun will continue to sow his whispering seeds of subversion in every soldier of fortune who enters his ancient temples to steal his treasures,
but as he tires of his routine over the ages,
he will glance over at his nightstand from time to time,
where, to this day, he displays a picture of you,
stabbing his kidneys from the inside.
"There's Abner, the most able warrior who ever stabbed my kidneys," he will say, and then he'll shed a giant tear of remorse from his huge eye.

And etched in my memory,
like grooves on a record,
are the sounds of your mad, cackling laughter
as dozens of Darkshire night watchmen,
under your provocation,
pursue me through the haunted forests of Duskwood
as I run, screaming your cursed name, and helplessly watch you ride into the sunset.

Through it all, these things remained true:
You are a warrior among warriors.
You are my oldest companion.
I will miss you.

The strong, silent type

A man of few words, one who commands attention when he speaks, because his listeners value his rare morsels of exposition. A man who has a skill and does a job and does it well; he's either an indispensable part of a working system, or a self-sufficient loner who can spend eternity by himself without feeling a pang of longing for human company. In short, the "strong, silent type."

For a time, that's the kind of image I envisioned myself embodying. Like Robert Redford in Out of Africa, or the fat driver guy in Ronin. These are men of strong character who don't lie and never need to. Friendly extroverts who are easily swayed by social influences would look at these men and wish for the strength to be like them, wish for the patience to live a life that draws respect and admiration and occasional pity. I've known people like this in real life, people of frustrating brevity who compelled me to pester them into conversation, a task at which I rarely succeeded.

I can never be such a man. When I sit with a group of friends and the opportunity arises to make an obscene or painfully corny joke and run the risk of embarrassing myself, temptation overwhelms me, and fulfilling an ideal image of myself isn't enough motivation to stifle my social compulsions. My quest to become the strong, silent type has led me to believe that such people are either A. Miserable on the inside because they're faking it, or B. Borderline sociopaths.

The strong, silent type, as I've described it, is an extreme. There are midpoints along the spectrum, a spectrum that ranges from stoic recluse to Paris Hilton. Most personalities fall on these midpoints. It's natural for most people to desire to be the strong, silent type, but like I said, it takes patience. And sacrifice.

What needs to be sacrificed as you get closer to the strong, silent type? Catharsis. On second thought, catharsis is too wholesome a word. More like, satisfaction. Personifying the strong, silent type requires sacrificing the satisfaction you get from perverse social exchanges. These exchanges include telling someone their loved one died, your loved one died, or someone else's loved one died; betraying a friend's confidence in order to use their secret to deprecate them, make conversation, or just make yourself seem more interesting; and flirting with someone who's spoken for, just to flatter yourself and, if you're lucky, get them to admit that they'd rather be with you. The strong, silent type doesn't meddle with these selfish endeavors. It's not that he's totally selfless; that side of life simply doesn't concern him. Social deception, petty feuds, all that crap isn't important. He lives in a different perspective.

Sadly I can't think of a way to conclude this now, so I'll have to settle with leaving it at this. My point was, people who engage in the aforementioned perverse social exchanges are people who possess an extreme unwillingness to sacrifice their social satisfactions. They cannot satisfy themselves with being good, quiet people. And yes, this post is heavily influenced by my disdain for these people, or more accurately, this personality type. It's a fast, easy and weak way to live, and one which I find myself embracing on occasion, to my regret. That's what I'm thinking.

postscript: I just wanted to post something since it's been so long since my last post. Maybe this wasn't the most appropriate cessation of my blogging moratorium? ergo vis-a-vis concordantly

Don't tell me, show me

First off, this is a good time and place to mention that this blog may contain movie spoilers, big and small. I'll try to get into the habit of listing the movies I spoil at the beginning of each post.

In movies, like in any medium, there are many ways to get an idea across. Say, for instance, you're directing a film, and you want to let the audience know that your main character, Harry, is angry. How would you do it? You could show Harry red-faced and grinding his teeth. You could have him say "I'm angry." You could have a narrator say "Harry was angry." You could even show Harry looking calm but have a subtitle below him read "Harry's angry."

The best way to let your audience know Harry is angry is the first method: show him red-faced, grinding his teeth, veins popping out of his forehead, one eye twitching. And why not? You have a camera! Yes, you have sound too, but film is primarily a visual medium. Yet too many filmmakers turn portions of their movies into plot exposition diatribes and I really don't know why. Maybe they weren't clever enough to concont a way to visually explain their idea, or maybe their plot became convoluted in the scripting phase but they didn't correct it so they were left with too many ideas to get across and not enough time.

My favorite example of a painfully long monologue is toward the end of Vanilla Sky. Tom Cruise's character gets the entire damn movie explained to him by some guy while they're riding an elevator to the top of an impossibly tall building. I understand that the guy's presence fits in with the plot, but I just hate the way all of the movie's secrets are blown away in a single conversation. Think about the ending of The Usual Suspects. Did the filmmakers decide to explain everything with a drawn-out dialogue exchange? No, they opted to use visuals, combined with brief audio and visual flashbacks, to help the audience understand the secret of the movie. That's the way to hit your audience with a powerful revelation, instead of a huge speech that could be summed up in a pamphlet.

Another example of visual vs. verbal plot exposition would be the games in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Casino Royale. In Pirates, Will Turner plays liar's dice with his father and Davy Jones. I had no clue what liar's dice was when I saw the movie and I still don't know how it works, but I knew who was winning, who was losing, and what was at stake during that scene because it was well shot and acted, not because a spectating character was explaining the game. Such subtlety is not present in Casino Royale, however: during one of the poker scenes, one character keeps leaning into another to whisper things like "Now Bond has to go all in if he wants to stay in the game." Don't tell me that; show me. It doesn't even matter if I can't follow every subtle nuance of the game, as long as I know who's dominating and who's getting grilled.

I have more to write on this topic but I'm tired so that'll come later.

Don't judge a movie...

The Prestige was fantastic, a fine example of a movie matching the tone of its trailer. I saw TV promos for Lucky Number Slevin that touted it as a thriller even though most teasers and trailers for the movie made it clear it was a dark comedy.

There's something else that bugs me about movie distribution. Have you ever browsed a video rental store and noticed striking similarities between video covers? I'm not sure which came first, but the covers for the home video releases of Highball and Swingers are a good example; one is obviously ripping off the other. I'm sad to admit that when I see a lesser-known movie with a cover design resembling one from another more popular movie, it turns me off from wanting to see that lesser-known film, even though the covers of both films are almost definitely designed by advertising companies or an artistic arm of the distributor. I shouldn't let the zeal of marketing people influence my decision to watch the movie, a decision which should be based on the merit of the movie itself and the people who produced it. I just can't help it; cheesy cover-ripoffs make me lose respect for a movie.

Speaking of The Prestige: I loved it, but will people please stop heralding Christopher Nolan as the second coming of Christ in filmmaking? He's made four great movies in the last six years but his style needs a lot of work. The fight scenes in Batman Begins were too muddled. Filmmakers should adhere to two tenets: the camera doesn't always need to be zoomed in so far, and most scenes don't need a musical score. Less is more, people. Less is more.

One last note: this Blogger text editor is a pain in my ass, probably because it's editing the HTML formatting on the text as I type it and it's getting the tags all screwed up. It's funny how I complain about Internet nuisances even though the Internet makes finding information 100 times easier than it was a decade ago.

First post of the spooooky month

What should I write about? I know ... MOVIES!

Netflix is great because it tracks all my returned rentals. I can refer to it to see what I've watched lately and help myself come up with easy fodder for this blog!

Brick was great, as was Dog Soldiers. My Summer of Love was as good as its perfect trailer. Ghost in the Shell made me wish someone would adapt Snow Crash as an anime. Red Eye showed off more of Wes Craven's deft use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio (called "Scope"). Immortal Beloved was sad, as I expected, but had a couple moments of technical folly that ruined the moment. The Illusionist was really good; its only sin was the use of the terrible type of slow motion that looks choppy because the crew didn't shoot the scene at the right film speed for slow motion but decided to slow it down in post production. Alas, the movie was enchanting, even if parts of the plot were inexplicable.

I watched Palindromes tonight. It was wonderful. It was truly off the edge of the map, a surprising movie that defied convention, which, you might recall, is a quality I prefer films to have.

Speaking of defying convention, I read some movie reviews by Pauline Kael recently; she was a professional film critic. Her review of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels made me desire a sequel, but here's the catch: It would be totally serious. It would be a clever, noirish con-artist movie in the vein of The Spanish Prisoner. I don't think I'd be happy with a sequel in the spirit of the first movie, but changing the genre would be acceptable. And I believe Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenne Headly are up for the challenge. It would be time and money better spent than on Cheaper by the Dozen 5. It baffles me to think of all the daring, original ideas Hollywood could produce instead of wallowing in the security of lame-ass teen comedies (Mean Girls) and bad thrillers (Taking Lives).

I really need to do some research on an important topic and write an editorial in here, but ranting about movies is so much easier.