Combat Queer Online

Terminator Salvation: Fan Fiction Drinking Game

Well friends, I spent the afternoon of my Memorial Day at the movies. It was either that or go to my unit's Bar B Q, and as much as I love those folks, I see plenty of them without spending my days off with them. 

I was trying to decide whether I wanted to catch the Wolverine movie or the new Terminator one. I went to see Terminator. It was upsettingly bad.

Seriously, how do you spend that much money to make a movie with absolutely nothing new to offer? And I don't mean that it was the standard old "Hey, these ideas and basic story elements have worked in the past, why don't we use them again" kind of thing. No, no, this movie was straight up fan fiction.

It took me about half an hour to realize it, but that's what was going on with the movie. If you happen to watch this, this... thing, here's a little drinking game for you: 

First, sneak in a couple of beers(you're going to need six or seven per person) and take a very small sip anytime a famous line from one of the original two Terminator movies is awkwardly used. Take a second drink if the actor emphasizes the line in a way that makes absolutely no sense in the context of the story, just to make sure the audience hears it. 

Second, take a drink when a character makes decisions that make exactly zero sense from a tactical perspective, despite that character having been made out as a tactical genius. This might include the robots not killing their big, game-winning target even when there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing so. This might include the human tactical genius making an open, worldwide radio transmission outlining the details of the big, secret attack that was about to go down on the robots. This might include... well, almost every element of this movie's idiot ball plot.

Then, take a drink when you recognize a robot from another big name, non-Terminator movie or television show. This is really where you might want to think about bringing along the second six pack. You're going to see Transformers, Cylons, the weird hunter-killers from The Matrix, and others besides. Somehow director "McG" forgot the clunker from Lost in Space, but I'm pretty sure he'll showed in the DVD extended cut.

And finally, take a drink when the movie is doing everything it can to tell you that there's a big, emotional moment happening, but once again it is utterly unclear why you as a viewer should care. The last fifteen minutes in approximately 97% comprised of such moments. 

You very well might need your stomach pumped after this one. It just, it hurts me.

GI Joe Resolute: WTF?

So, there's a new GI Joe cartoon out there. As a cartoon loving child of the 80's, I'm pretty excited about this.

Now, I know I should really be using this as opportunity to talk about how American culture glorifies war and violence, cleans it up and sells it to children with colorful, safe-seeming toys, but you know what? I really enjoyed the old GI Joe cartoon. The GI Joe movie was pretty fantastic, what with the giant mutants and all. Also, the bit where Cobra Commander gets turned into a snake? Beautifully weird and creepy.

But the new GI Joe cartoon... I'm about halfway through the first episode, and I felt like I need to take a break and write something about this.

Seriously, what the fuck is this? <Get read for some spoilers>

 The cartoon starts out by killing to main characters from the 80's cartoon. Major Bludd and Bazooka, they're just dead. What is that? GI Joe's supposed to be kind of ridiculous, kind of comic. There's suppose to be some possibly unintentionally hilarious sexual tension between Bazooka and Alpine.

No one is suppose to be killed right off the bat. If someone does get killed, you damn well better have a big lead in to it, you better make it mean something. I don't like the idea of main characters getting used like cannon fodder. 

Oh, also, what the hell, Cobra kills ten million people? In the first episode? Really? Cobra? The guys who thought Cold Slither was a good idea? 

I don't know how much I like this... I mean, I get it. Their trying to present a realistic version, a version that communicates some of the hard, ugly truths about war that America has learned in Afghanistan and Iraq. They're trying to undo thy myth of the safe, fun, adventurous war.

And that's probably a good thing.

But fuck man, they better not kill Shipwreck, Tunnel Rat, or Roadblock. They just better not. This show's already a little to hard to watch.

So, Battlestar Galactica Ended

It's always a little hard on me when a long running, somewhat tightly plotted science fiction series comes to an end. All too often, a smart, beautiful story gets summed up in the stupidest, tritest way possible. The story just feels like it ran out of gas, ran out of ideas. It can be a real scar on the story. You just know that no matter how good the work was to begin with, well, it's not leading anywhere pretty. 

So lets look at a couple of examples of scifi stories that ended well and poorly.

The Dark Tower- For me, there is no more perfect instantiation of the "bad ending" form that The Dark Tower. I mean, there is some platonic shit going on with this one. The first book of the series, The Gun Slinger is one of the finest American novels, smart, dense, lovely in its strangeness, but by the seventh book, well, Dear Reader by the end the story is nothing more than a giant quivering mass of plot tumors.

The last books are just packed full of robots, teleporters, psychics, Very Special Appearances by the author himself, commentary on what it means to write a book like The Dark Tower, it just, it just wasn't about a lone hero setting out across the wilderness on a quest of questionable meaning. No, it was something else, something stupider. 

And then the author ended the series in a way that provided as little resolution as possible. 

<Spoiler Alert> 

Infinite Time Loop. It just keeps happening. It never ends. Boo Stephen King, Boo. That's not a proper ending. And yes, I know that the situation was ever so slightly changed on the next rotation, and that leaves open the possibility of some real conclusion in the distant reaches of time, but seriously, that's not an ending. That's a cop out.

Y: The Last Man-  Now, YTLM does it better. A lot better. Some how the series remained largely free of ridiculous late stage plot points. It even took the time to make fun of the ridiculous late stage plot point. Remember when those assassins tried to convince action girl 355 that the whole "death of all men" thing was really the Greek gods retribution for the Trojan War? Yeah, I liked 355 yelling at them about what a silly, asinine idea it was. Good stuff.  

But the end, it really worked for me. All those little plot lines, ideas, and tensions that had been with the series in the beginning got tried up in pleasingly messy ways. We got to see the world that women had built after the deaths of almost all men. We got to see the ways that they continued the species. We got to see where the main character's relationships took them. 

It wasn't just that we got to see cloning growing to meet the needs of civilization as a means of procreation, it was also that we got to see Yorick's daughter still being a little sad and angry with him. It was that we got to see old Yorick complaining about how all the monkey's were too well behaved. It was that Yorick never stopped trying to escape.

Just what the book deserved.

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- So Douglas Adams' masterpiece, the five part trilogy. Those books go around and around and around, and well, the fifth book gets the story to a place where the story can't easily go for another spin. 

The characters have gone out, done their things over and over, trivia's been provided, ideas have been tossed around, the story doesn't have much else to do. The last book, Mostly Harmless, it's a surprisingly sad book. Arthur, the main character, has lost the person he loved, the person who made the universe make a little much-needed sense. 

The book is grinding down to nothing. There's nothing left for the characters. It feels like the end. It's over.

But here's the thing. Like the much-loved FireFly, the story wasn't really over. Before his death, Douglas Adams began the process of writing a sixth book. I don't know much about that next book, you can't call it last because there might have been a seventh, an eighth, but it was almost real, a fish in the sea of possibility. 

Knowing that that sixth book almost existed, I can't accept that Hitchhiker's Guide is really over. The world ended the series, not Adams. But, I don't know, we have a hope is resurrection. Death has been defeated. Maybe one day in the celestial future, maybe there I'll get to find out what happens to Arthur Dent next. 

Hitchhiker's Guide is different from Dark Tower in that it does have a real ending, a good one, but then it still may go on. It's good.

But I haven't talked about the ending to BSG yet.

I'll get to it next time.

Author's Note: It looks like I accidently posted this blank before I had the chance to write it. Sorry about that.

Watchmen Movie

Before I left for basic training, the last movie I watched was Forest Gump. 

See, when you leave for basic, you have to show up at MEPS, the Military Entrance Processing Station. The day I got there to leave for basic, well, there was a lot going on. Lot's of people joining, leaving for various schools, doing every little thing that a person can do at MEPS. The place was swamped.

So there I was with a group of young men who were about to head out to our training base. Some folks were excited. They'd never ridden a plain before. It was a big deal for them. 

But everything was taking forever. Some sergeant there decided that we couldn't be left to our own devices, so he pulled out a television on a rolling cart and turned on a movie to keep us pacified. 

That's how I saw Forest Gump for the last time before basic.

Over the never couple of months, I thought back to that movie often. I had a hard time at basic. I bumbled a lot. I tripped up. I made mistakes. But something about the memory of Gump saying, "Because you tols me to, Drill Ser-geant," I don't know, it helped.

That movie connects history to character, forces it to make some sense.

And that helped me some.

Now, Watchmen tries to be the same sort of movie. Both films try to explain what it means to be American through the adventures of odd-balls through time. Both talk about Vietnam and what it meant to America. Both ask questions about what it means to be a hero. Both a little sad and a little hopeful. Sure, there's a whole lot more sex and violence in Watchmen, but what can you do? Zach Snyder didn't direct Gump. 

Now I'm standing on the edge of another cliff, about to be tossed into another big adventure with the military. A much bigger adventure than any I've yet been on. 

I wonder if it's going to look more like Gump, sweet and meaningful, or like Watchmen, angry and heavy-handed.

I think that the biggest difference between Gump and Watchmen is that the newer movie is surer of itself than the older one. Gump never claims to have the answers. He's just a dim witted, oddly kind person who happens to along for the ride. The characters in Watchmen, they act like they know the deal, they know the solution. Maybe the points the same, that nobody has all the answers, and that anyone who thinks they do is dangerous, but... I don't know, I think Gump might make the case a little bit better.

So, am I going to Iraq because I think I know how fix the world, or am I participating in something beyond my reckoning? Beyond my horizons?

I wish I knew.

Battlestar Galactica, Deadlock

So, lot's of folks seem to be unhappy with this week's new episode of BSG. "It's too melodramatic" they moan, "Too much exposition" they cry, "It's a little ridiculous" they grumble.

Well folks, I got news for you, BSG has been pretty ridiculous all along. Remember, this is a show about the remnants of humanity fleeing across the star because a) their home was blown up by killer robots and b) their president was having drug induced visions. There's been weird, religiousy, mysticy shit all along, and guess what? That's been one of the strengths of the show.

Oh, oh, and complaining about how the question everybody is asking is not just "how will these people survive," but also "do either of these two cultures deserve to survive?" Well friend, that's been the question of the show all along. It was brought up in the miniseries, it was brought up when Roslin split the fleet and went back to Kobal, It was brought up on New Caprica, and it's the question now. It's just part of the show.

And this week's episode, this week's episode was great. Why? Because it looked at another one of the big themes of show, "all this has happened before, all this will happen again." Cylons were built by man, almost wiped out the colonies, but then the colonies won the war. Things started to go better, future looked bright. Oh, until the Cylon's showed back up and nuked them 'til they glowed in the daylight. Ellen Tigh treaten and worsened Saul Tigh's life until she was died. Saul Tigh suffered, but then life moved on things started to look u, bright hope for the future, then Ellen comes back and fucks it all up. Cycles and cycles and cycles.

And yeah, it sucks that there are only a few episodes left, but the show's always been about the people in extraordinary situations, and that's what it is now. 

I can't wait to see what happens next 

Revenge Of the Fallen Trailer and GI Joe Trailer

So, Super Bowl commercials, eh? I didn't actually see them, but instead of watch the Big Game, I was making a Hnefatafl set for a friend of mine who was hurt falling on the ice. Also, I thought it was next week. Me and calenders... not so much.

Anyway, I've caught up on the two most important commercials of the night. That is of course the trailers for the new GI Joe movie and the new Transformers movie. Holy shit, it's like a my childhood threw up on the internet. I feel like I should be back at my grandmother's house sitting in the den eating a grilled cheese(fired in butter, the only way) and playing with whatever Hasbro was selling this year.

Now, as I said before, I really, really don't like Michael Bay's first Transformers movie. And it hurts me to say that. Dear reader, you don't know how long I waited for that movie to come out. You don't know how much I wanted it to be good. You don't know how much evidence I ignored in my quest to arrive at that midnight opening with an optimistic, open mind. But Michael Bay failed me, failed Transformers, failed everyone except that small slice of the population who finds the very mention of masturbation funny. Arrrg, I hate that movie.

But, everybody else loves it. Well, in my family at least. Past two Christmases, the only thing the family could do without fighting was all come together to watch Michael Bay's Transformers and a giant screen and talk about how good it was. So, I do my best to enjoy it. I once spent a few hours a night for a week making my own cut. I nipped out all the scenes with the hackers, with John Voit, and with mentions of masturbation. It's not perfect, but it reflects the genre of movies of the 1980's, so in a way, it's fine. I guess. (Oh how I hate that movie)

But Revenge Of The Fallen, that movie is going to rock. You just watch. I don't care how much evidence there is to say that it's going to be miserable, I'm excited. I'm pretty sure I saw Devastator in that trailer. Devastator.

So, clearly, this next movie is going to focus far more on the Transformers, hopefully killing off most of the small, annoying human characters early in the first act. That's going to be fucking awesome. And hey, it looks like The Fallen is going to be a main bad guy. Why does that make me happy?

Well, The Fallen is not only a product of Simon Furman's imagination, he's also one of the most Furmany characters in Transformers lore. He's super old, has something to do with Primus, something to do with Unicron, is only featured in a canceled comic, and he's sounded by space bridges and time travel. It would be quite difficult to be more Furmany. 

So, again, why is that good? Well, my favorite piece of Transformers fiction is the Generation 2 comic published by Marvel. It was great. It sort of redefined the origin story of the Transformers, but it went new places while maintaining what had already happened. If there's one thing that plagues Transformers fiction, it's that almost every story is a reboot. It always has to start at the beginning so it doesn't have much time to explore the universe. G2 explored the universe a little, and it was awesome.

Oh, and it start in Marvel GI Joe comics. And GI Joe has a trailer up as well tonight(SEGWAY POINTS YEAH). 

So, here's what worries me. GI Joe is pretty ridiculous in cartoon and comic forms, and if they try to make it too serious, well, it just wouldn't be GI Joe. Fortunately, the folks making this movie seem to realize this. We start with Destro destroying the Eiffle Tower(Aka the only thing is Paris most Americans can recognize on sight) with plants and continue with some ninja fighting. 

That, well, that says everything's gonna be juuuuust fine.

(Oh, and y'all know Snake-Eyes is a Vietnam vet, right? Everything I remember that, I imagine my aging dad trying to fit into that costume. It ain't pretty.)

Final Battlestar Galactica, Part 1

So, Battlestar Galactica is possibly the finest television show I've ever scene. It's hard to put it in front of M*A*S*H, The Simpsons, Gargoyles, I, Claudius, and so many others, but... BSG is up there. It is thematically braver than almost any other piece of scifi I've looked out.

Let's talk about the first episode of the last ten. 

Oh, and spoiler alert. If you haven't watched it yet, I suggest you go do so. It's there, up on Hulu. 

So, where we last left off, after years of searching, struggle, and anguish, with nothing to lead them but faith, the crew of the Galactica had found Earth. There was great rejoicing, their hopes made been fulfilled, they were safe and had found a new home.

But oh, oh, what's that's? Earth was a nuked out shell. Everyone's disappointed. They're all kind of fucked. 

The one thing that has held everybody together for the past four years has turned out to be an empty bucket.

So, why is this amazing story telling? Well, much of the show has played on being a retelling of the story of the twelve tribes of Israel looking for the promised land. Not only is that an important part of the Hebrew Bible, it is a massive influence on almost every story of searching, of yearning, and family, of politics, of all that to come after. 

The idea behind the story is that with enough faith and righteous action, you and those you love will eventually come to your home, a land running with milk and honey. Sadly, friend, sadly, for the folks in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, they had just as much trouble after gaining the Holy Land as that had had before. Now, it was a different kind of trouble, but the suffering kept up. When they were in the land of Egypt, the people of Israel were held prisoner by old man Pharaoh.   Once they reached their own land and had their government up and running, the people of Israel were held prisoner by their own kings. Later, due to the incompetence of their leaders, the people of Israel were scattered, many of them ending up the prisoners of the Kings of Babylon.

Over and over, the suffering kept up.

Most fiction that tries to retell this story has the characters learning to have faith, learning to cooperate, forgive, love, take part in all sorts of positive social behavior. Eventually, the characters sort out their lives and are rewarded with a beautiful and wonderful happily ever after.

But that's not how it works in Battlestar. No, despite their faith and good works, despite their following the trail of clues to their promised land, it's all a bust. They find themselves in a situation deeply similar to their original crisis, they find themselves will nothing more than a nuked out shell of a world, and they have a massive, militarily superior force snapping at their heels. They've crossed the galaxy, grown, learned changed, but for the most part, they're back to where they started. 

I've never seen another television program explore this kind of disappointment, this kind of failure. None of the characters seem to be handling it very well. Discipline seems to have completely broken down, the urge for suicide is bubbling up everywhere. At least four of that main characters want nothing more than to give up.

But ah, ah, the story says, even here, even in Valley of the Shadow of Death, there is hope. Even in the despair, in the desire for oblivion, things are happening, growing. Just as I have never seen another television program explore that kind of despair, I've also never seen a television program be able to look for the glint of love and hope that still exists there, the hope that brought the children of Israel out of exile, that kept them going time after time, struggle after struggle.

I'm excited to what's coming next  

The Worst Batman Comic I Know

So dear reader, Christmas movies. Or rather, Christmas time movies. As everyone exposed to the evils of marketing knows, a film came out on Christmas day called The Spirit. It's the movie version of Will Eisner's master piece. Now, I've read a little of the comic, and it's a good comic. I haven't read enough of it to talk to you about it, but you know what I can talk about? Frank Miller.

Frank fucking Miller.

Look, dude used to be an amazing, amazing writer. To say nothing of his other works, let's talk about his best and worse stuff.

 Dark Knight Returns? Amazing, amazing book. Recreated the comic book genre. Batman Year One? Beautiful work of noir. Wayne's humanity in BYO is more interesting than all the special effects in the world. One of the best pieces of noir to come out of the last twenty years. 

On the other end of the spectrum you going to find The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All Star Batman And Robin. Look friend, comics aren't a perfect medium. They are an imperfect medium in which to express ideas and ideals, and they have been imperfectly used in the past. I'm not going to argue that. What I will argue is this: At their best, comics are capable of honestly expressing the soul of humanity, however imperfectly. Comics are capable of giving form to internal realities of human existence. It's been said before by folks bette at saying things than I'll ever be, but, well, your hurt, your heartbreak might be a single ounce of worry to me, single moment of empathy, but to you, well, that heartbreak is a monster, a thing with spears coming out of its fists, something that could kill superman. My queerness might be a passing oddity to you, but to me, it's being a super-powered mutant in a world afraid and envious of mutants. Comics allow us to see each other's truths. 

But Frank Miller, he forgot that along the way. Maybe I need to read more of Miller's work from the 90's, maybe it happened there. I don't know. All I know is that between the writing of Batman Year One and The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller's understanding of comics had changed significantly. When Miller was writing his heart-breakingly human Batman comics in the late 80's, it seems to me that he not only loved comics, loved their potential, loved their subject matter, but that he also loved the audience. In The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One, Miller shows his love and respect for the audience by creating a dark, dense, compelling story worthy of people with intelligence and heart. He creates stories where flawed characters take imperfect actions for the right reason. He leaves it up to the reader to decide if the imperfect actions of the characters are in the end the right actions. The Clark Kent of The Dark Knight Returns is frankly one of the two or three best versions of Superman that have ever been. The imperfect Superman, the Superman failing while doing the best he can, this is the sort of character superhero comics need and deserve. This version of Superman is the sort of character that can only come from a writer who loves and respects both the material and the audience.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again is the single worst comic book I've ever read. It is a comic the sneers at the idea of comics. It is a comic that sneers at the idea that a comic can be a mechanism of truth, that a comic can have any importance beyond being a cheap, disposable entertainment. Miller intended DKSA to be this. On it's publishing, Miller talked about his dislike of realism is comics. He complained, "People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don't need to see sweat patches under Superman's arms. I want to see him fly."

This radical turn around from exploring a character's specific modivations to despising the idea of characters having specific modivations or character traits not only prevents Miller from being able to explore the world of the superheroes, it prevents him from being able to tell a story. The Dark Knight Strikes Again functions poorly as a story. The superheroes refuse to stay in character. What motivates him or her at one moment, well, there's no reason to suspect that that is motivating her or him at the next moment. In DKSA nothing happens in the story for any reason. There is almost nothing holding the chain of events in The Dark Knight Strikes Again together. Anything can happen at any time because nothing grows out of anything else. The best Miller can do is come up with ways to show the characters at their worst, wholly divorced from any stories that might have brought the characters to those places. Ralph Dibny, the long time happily married character? Single and selling sex drugs. Martian Manhunter? Lost all will to live? Superman? Killing people, going again whoever he feels like, in a major reversal from his characterization in The Dark Knight Returns. In All Star Batman in Robin, a prequel to The Dark Knight Strikes Again written by Miller after DKSA, Batman is re-envisioned as a verbally, and possibly sexually abusive kidnapped of his sidekick Robin. For whatever reason, MIller has clearly come to hate comics.

If the poor story telling is not enough of a sign of Miller's loss of respect for the art form and for the art form's audience, in The Dark Knight Strikes Again Miller includes several mean spirited parodies of comic fans. In all cases these are stupid, deluded individuals too in love with the heros to realizes that the heroes are worthless, false. If the audience of comics was as bad as he there presents them, than I guess we wouldn't deserve any better than the dreck Miller spat out for DNSA.

So, dear reader, where am I going with this bashing of Frank Miller? Back to the movies, where we started. Whatever The Spirit might have been in comic form, being written by Will Eisner, it was something completely different put on screen, being written and directed by Miller. Much like The Dark Knight Strikes Again, nothing the characters do has any meaning. A character can express great motivation, then act against it for any reason. It doesn't matter who the characters are, because they really aren't anyone specifically. It's not really any time specifically. The characters all have trendy cell phones, but everything else looks pretty much like a 30's period piece. The main character has several romances going, and the movies asks the audience to believe that each is the real, transcendent romance. It is a ridiculous, stupid movie that shows no respect for the source material, the medium, or the audience. 

Miller needs to sit out for a while.

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

A Cinematic Metaphor, Pt 1

So, I tend to compare everything to one of my five or so favorite movies. With the Presidential campaign raging, well, you might think I could find a way of relating it to Casablanca, maybe with a beautiful Libertarian girl walking back into the life of a sullen, cynical Democrat in a deep South state controlled by the Republicans, but meh, I haven't really seen anything like that.

And of course, I could try to compare the undecided vote to that black enamel painted statue in The Maltese Falcon, imagine John McCain as the rotund Casper Gutman, and Palin as the deceitful Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and Sam Spade, as played by Bogart, as the intrepid undecided voter. The problem with that of course is, well, where’s Obama? He’s certainly not Peter Lorre. No, Lorre’s character would be Lindsay Graham. Both of them are weasely, worthless henchmen.

 

See, the problem is that you need a movie with two fairly equally match sides, one good, one evil, both full of colorful, ridiculous characters. So ridiculous in fact, that they could be described as cartoonish.

 

Where am I going with this?

 

Transformers: The Movie. Not the live action, CGI heavy piece of Michael Bay nonsense they put out last summer. No, I mean the real one. The 1986 movie. It really works perfectly. It’s about individuals looking for leadership while dealing with crisis.

 

Let’s look at the opening scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EpwGaJbZq0

 

Now imagine is instead of a vaguely Japanese looking robot, the fellow shouting and running from the ships was Chairman Bernanke, and instead of “Unicron” he had shouted “Look, it the Financial Crisis,” and instead of a planet getting eaten, it was out economy.

 

 Next time, we’ll talk about the characters.