Combat Queer Online

Battlestar Galactica, Final Episode 3

Wow. Once again, Battlestar Galactica thrives in that is it able to do what other serialized works of popular fiction only hint at. 

Spoilers, spoilers.

Now, in many shows, the legislature of the fiction world might be threatened, but what was remarkable here was that the threat never came. Zarak moved directly from checking to see if the old folks were on his side to having them executed. One to the next. Most shows could never get away with the suddenness of that action, the horror. The villain would need a long, fairly ridiculous monolog to even think about doing what Zarak did.

But, that's the only remarkable thing about this episode. Gaeta's character really shined. Yes, he acted wrongly, and certainly there were negative consequences, but man, he got a swan song. Rarely can one character effectively act as both the hero and villain, but Gaeta did it beautifully. I'm glad they let him show remorse. I'm glad that he was the one who stopped the violent confrontation between Galactica and the basestar. If he hadn't redeemed himself, this episode would be a lot less fullfilling.

Also, did Anders live? I wasn't clear on that.

Best Part Of This Week's Battlestar Galactica

So, this week's Battlestar Galactica. Man, how awesome can you get? A wide spread mutiny? Civilians and marines rising against their leaders? Starbuck and Apollo teaming up to try to save the day? Oh, BSG sure is giving Lost a run for the "best serialized television show" money.

But you know what my favorite part was? When Starbuck got the drop of the mutineers holding Apollo, she immediately dispatches one of them, let's them know they're caught, and when one tries to resist, immediately, no hesitation, blasts him in the head. 

That's story telling, that's a character, that's awesome television. 

Christmas Movie Magic

Hey remember when America's economy collapsed? If you've been wondering what America's president has been doing about it(when not dodging shoes), well, he was hammering out the script for this doggy-based nightmare.

And when I say nightmare, I mean that I'll be waking up at 2am tomorrow morning screaming about a tiny, poorly animated scotty dog winning the Olympics.

Anyway, the Bush family levity has got me thinking about one of the greatest holiday traditions, avoiding the extended family for a few hours via watching a Christmas movie. This'll be a list of, let's say, my top twelve favorite Christmas movies. Twelve for the tribes of Israel, the disciples, the months... the Olympians? No wait, that's not a Christmas thing

Will I be able to think of twelve Christmas movies I like? Will I be able to think of twelve Christmas movies? Will cut off early, and edit down the number before putting this post up on the blog? Anything could happen.

Anyway, the list:

12) A Muppet Christmas Carol - Now dear reader, I am well aware of the manifold Muppets Christmas specials. Those Muppets, they're always getting caught in a blizzard with the fraggles or Big Bird or John Denver. They even put a new one out this year, although it was entirely empty of a soul or any but the blandest of meanings or messages.

But Muppet Christmas Carol? Fine movie version of the Dickens. It plays into what makes the Muppets themselves. What really makes it work for me is the sad but hopeful Kermit as Bob Cratchit. Rarely can the image of a puppet facing the early death of his son be so moving. You'd never catch Kermit reminding the audience of who made crippled beggars walk and blind men see in this year's Uma Thurman heavy nonsense.

11) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - Do I really need to explain?

10) Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the RIng: Extended Edition - Man, is there a better way to avoid the fundamentalist aunt and uncle for four hour? The extended version of the first third of LotR is beautiful. While the second two movies are, of course, also fantastic, I alway felt like the extended versions of those were worse than the normal versions. the story lagged, the characters stood around, looked at each other. They just, well, the editors did a fine job getting them down to about three hours. Fellowship of the RIng, though, the movie makes more sense. You have all the heros in one place, the story does flit off into too many tangents. It's a fine, fine movie.

9) A Claymation Christmas - When I was little I'd watch this with my dad. Both of always been sort of fascinated by stop motion animation, and this is a neat example of it. Also, hey, California Raisons singing Christmas songs.

8) Transformers: The Movie - The 1986 version, thank you very much. My favorite movie as a child, my younger siblings and cousins seem to like it, so yeah, it's gonna get watched in the next few days.

7) Gremlins - If a midnight showing of Gremlins isn't a standard Christmas tradition yet, it really should be. It's a trashy movie lover's Christmas movie(in that it's for lovers of trashy movies and for trashy lovers of movies). The monsters, little more than ugly Loony Tunes characters, attack on Christmas Eve, the mean spirited banker gets catapulted out of a second story window, a badass mom kills a couple of the little green men with both a blender and a microwave. Really folks, what more do you want out of you holiday movies?

(Halfway there. I'm pretty pleased with the list so far. I mean, sure, National Lampoon's in on there, but it's a fine movie, and I'm trying)

6) Pan's Labyrinth - Now I hear you saying, "CombatQueer, Pan's Labyrinth is in no way a Christmas movie. It doesn't even get the childhood magic pass that Transformers does. That movie came out like two years ago. If I, the fine and studious reader, let you get away with such nonsense this time, who know what morally bankrupt directions with blog will go spinning off in." Well dear reader, you know I can't really argue with you. Thing is, this story of the abused Spanish girl imagining a gloriously dangerous fantasy world is of such high quality, I feel like it can and should be watched whenever. Also, hey, there's a big to do over a baby. That's kinda Christmasy, right?

5) Waterworld - Twice, twice God help me, the stars have aligned to prevent from having a single cool thing to do on New Year's eve, and I've gotten stuck watching Waterworld with my cousins. And yes, dear reader, I know it's not a Christmas memory, but hey, holiday memory, and I've got to hold to good stuff in reserve for further down the list.

Actually, I can't think of a single clip from this movie that anyone should ever need or want to watch. Give that, here's a clip from "The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause" the oddest Christmas movie I've ever seen.

Ok, that counts as #5, not Waterworld. Just pretend Waterworld was never on this list.

4) Christmas With the Joker - The episode of Batman: The Animated Series when Robin's trying to get Batman to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" because it's Christmas. Basically, Robin thinks that people will stop doing harm to each other for Christmas, but Batman wants to go out on patrol anyway. Robin is annoyed at Batman's lack of faith in the common man, and Batman is annoyed that Robin has failed to notice that they spend all their time trying to prevent the common man from murdering his neighbor for a few bucks. The Joker's just being an ass.

The Joker escapes Arkham Asylum, holds Gotham ransom. Batman saves the day, but decides to believe in a humanity a little bit, for the sake of Christmas. Yay for everyone. This episode came early in the series run, back when animated Gotham was nothing but an art deco dreamscape. The whole place seems to be a run down 1940s version of the future. Though he did some fine work of "Justice League Bruce Timm has never quite managed to top what he was able to do in those early days of BtAS.

3) Independence Day - Oh wait no, that's a 4th of July movie, and it isn't very good.

2) It's A Wonderful Life - What am I, made of stone? As some have pointed out, "It's A Wonderful Life" is actually a lot darker than people remember it being. Also, I don't know what it is, but something about that movie seems familiar...

And finally

1) A Charlie Brown Christmas - Oh man, nobody could articulate sadness, alienation, feelings of failure, and the hope of Christ quite like Charles Schultz. Charlie Brown despairs at the state of the world with its selfishness, greed, and consumerism, but well, he still finds hope.

The Queerness of Gargoyles, Pt 1

So, I heard an interesting question earlier tonight. I was at a sort of informal question and answer session over at Venerable University here in Liberal Icebox. The person being questioned was a famous trans academic, and one of the students asked her who her queer heroes were growing up. She spoke about the characters on the show Bewitched, the student asking the question talked about Tim Curry in Rocky Horror, and I tried to think of what characters that were important to me growing up might have also been queer heroes. 

Now, it took a little thinking on my part. Sadly, cartoons and comics from the 80's and 90's had a sad vacancy of strong trans characters.I mean, I was always a huge fan of the Transformers growing up, but... can you really say that those giant alien robots were queer? No. 

But then I remembered my favorite cartoon from the 90's, Gargoyles. For those of you who missed it, it was absolutely amazing. In my opinion, it is the greatest animated work ever to come out of Disney that did not have a theatrical release. The show follows a group of six gargoyles, creatures of legend that live by night and turn to stone during the day. These six gargoyles have been trapped in stone for a thousand ye... you know what? It'll be easier if you just watch the opening credits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygrEVnrg3Ic. 

These six gargoyles, they believe themselves to be the last of their species. Other than the whole turning to stone in the day thing, they aren't particularly magical. They eat, they drink, they get old, they don't come back when they die. 

The show plays on a lot of tropes. First you have the fish out of water story, the story of the characters sometimes clumsily interacting with a world a thousand year ahead of them. Surprisingly, the show moves past this bit pretty quickly in the first episode or two the gargoyles show some amazement at the concept of television or robots, but they soon settle in.

The real themes of the show rest in the otherness of the gargoyles. The protagonist, the leader of the gargoyles, is named Goliath. Voiced by Keith David, Goliath is a strong, thought leader, rarely above kicking large quantities of ass. Through out the show he demonstrates a lack of trust in humanity and in the world built by humans. Above all else, Goliath is committed to the ideal of protecting his home. Early in the show, Goliath's concept of home moves from his ancestral castle to the whole of Manhattan island. He is the embodiment of protective morality.

The six sleeping gargoyles are awaken by the show's antagonist, David Xanatos. Xanatos is a brilliant billionaire industrialist. He employees Machiavellian ploys to arrange the world as he sees fit. Weirdly for a purported children's show, Xanatos is not entirely unsympathetic. Xanatos is the apotheosis white male capitalism. In an attempt to break the spell the keeps the gargoyles in their stone sleep, he has their entire castle moved from the coast of Scotland to the top of his Manhattan skyscraper. He lives, both literally and figuratively, at the top of the economic world. Though not entirely amoral, his schemes rarely leave room for the good of anyone but himself and his interests. Originally he claims to have woken the gargoyles for their sake, but he soon makes it clear that they are nothing more than tools to some great to objective to him.

Now, let's look at the conflict between Goliath and Xanatos. It means something to name the good guy Goliath and the bad guy David. This naming convention not only subverts the Biblical narrative, but also the hero/monster dynamic. Xanatos is in many ways the perfect hero. He is a smart, strong, handsome doer of deed. To combat a creature with the gargoyles' strength, he builds himself a robotic suit of armor. It turns out that he, through a time traveling adventure, is wholly responsible for his own massive wealth. He is, in many ways, a superman, the ultimate version of white, heterosexual normativity. 

Goliath, on the other hand, is a monster. He is a giant, horned, blue, winged thing in a loin cloth. In public, Goliath receives horrified screams even from those he saves. His one truly positive relationship with a human is with Elisa Maza, the beautiful New York city police detective who comes to investigate one of the gargoyles early fights after being awaken in New York. The relationship between Elisa and Goliath develops almost parallel to the standard Disney romance. Not only are both partners strong, independent characters, the tension at the possibility of romance is exacerbated by the fact of the difference in species of the two. Goliath is a rejection of he version of normativism that Xanatos represents. 

But even then, with both David and Goliath holding onto many traits of their Biblical counter parts, Goliath remains the hero and Xanatos remains the villain. Why?

The thrust of the show is that despite everything, Goliath's simple, unstoppable morality, his commitment to serving the people people of his adopted city, is superior to Xanatos' complex, self-serving amorality. This bends the message of the show in a very queer direction. It says that it doesn't matter what we are, what sort of horns or halos are growing out of our heads, but rather what choices we make, what sort of people we decide to be. All the benefits of the world of capitalism, says the show, can't buy goodness. 

More later

Who's Using The Tools Of The Terrorists? (OMG!!!)

So Fox News is once again looking out not only for our Freedom and our Traditional Values, but also for our very safety. According to this story, the military believes that The Terrorists may use Twitter to communicate right here in the Good Old US of A. They don't explain exactly why The Terrorists would be communicating on their secret plots and plans via a public blogging site, but let me tell you, this has be scare. Scared Feces-less.

Why am I so deeply frightened? Just listen to the other sorts of people using Twitter: “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists* and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” according to the report.

Oh. My. God. Communists? And Anarchists? And Sweet Lord Protect Us VEGETARIANS??! How have we not already sent the FBI to round all these degenerates up. Can't the Rule of Law take any steps to protect us? Clearly, a system that allows anyone to say anything to like to wide a audience must be dangerous.

What this country needs, and I think you'll agree with me here, is an organization that makes sure only Pro-American Speech(the only kind of Free Speech we're interested in at my house) is allowed to be published on our precious internet. If we're not careful, pretty soon The Terrorists and The Atheists and The Political Enthusiasts will start thinking that just because we let them get away with saying any ol' thing, they have SOME KIND OF RIGHT TO IT!

Monstrous and terrible, monstrous and terrible.

.....

Seriously though, what would FoxNews and the rest of The Right do without the boogyman of The Terrorists to cast aspirtions on various people, places, things, and websites?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*I thought it said Slacktivist, and was disappointed when I realized it didn't. Also Slacktivist, if you're reading this, please start writing Lef Behind Fridays again. I need it. Need it bad.

Fox News Takes Hard Stance Against... Fox

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,441301,00.html

So yeah, Fox News is attacking Family Guy for making fun of McCain/Palin.

And yes, Family Guy is aired by Fox.

I'm not going to write any more because you should be able to figure out what's wrong here yourself. I have faith in you.

In Latest Onanism News

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/16/people.megan.fox.ap/index.html

So apparently, it's international news that an attractive actress "who appears on the October cover (of GQ) in a black bikini"(and was in one of the worst movies of the past decade) has had a relationship with another (presumably attractive) woman, and has crushes on other attractive women.

Is it just me or could the headline just as easily read, "Actress Attempting to Raise on Stock by Getting Men to Fantasize About Her."

Way to bring news to the world CNN.