scruta

James Cameron’s newest blockbuster Avatar has elicited a number of comments concerning its plodding, conventional plot. The comparisons to a number of blockbuster movies is palpable. There’s the now famous, Pocahontas reworking. There’s also Dances with Wolves (Cameron himself has interesting words to say about this). Let’s not forget Ferngully, either.

But what about Cameron’s own film Aliens?

There are a number of comparisons that can be made, but the one that intrigues me the most is the one that can be made between the corporate lackeys in each feature:

Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) in Avatar

Carter J Burke (Paul Reiser) in Aliens

Both characters don’t do well with the audience. They are meant to represent what would seem to be the undying greed of the corporate world, even in future scenarios where our technology had advanced deep into the realm of the imaginary. There is, however, a shocking difference between these two characters, which I would argue is representative of a change in the way corporate culture existed in the 80s and the way it exists today.

In Aliens, Carter J Burke acts purely out of a detached self-interest, out of greed in its most basic sense. As the representative of the corporation, he sees an opportunity to be rewarded handsomely by sacrificing the lives of the others on the ship and bringing an alien specimen back to Earth. He is, in a sense, a free agent, the epitome of the 80’s “Me culture”, seeking to use the corporate path as a means to personal aggrandizement.  The greediness he exudes is one of personal choice. We do not feel that he is impelled by anything to make his decision to sabotage the crew, other than his own desire.

Parker Selfridge, despite what the name would suggest, is not as selfish, or at least not knowingly so. Throughout the movie, Parker works to find ways to work around destroying the indigenous population. He doesn’t want to have to deal with the possible turmoil that such destruction could do to the image of the corporation (or its profits). Yet despite his reservations, his mission is crystal clear. He must extract the unobtainium at all costs, and when all other methods to try and get the Nav’i to abandon the area above the unobtainium fail, he feels compelled to use force. His hands are tied. There’s no stopping it.

To my mind, the nature of Parker Selfridge’s selfishness reveals one of the strongest indictments of the corporate culture today. Greed like Carter J Burke’s still exists, but to a wide extent is has been effectively institutionalized. Before greed was an act carried out by an individual, who made greedy decisions knowing that they were greedy (although denying that it was so to others). Now the Parker Selfridge’s of the world make such decisions, but say they have “no choice.” The very idea of being too greedy has completely vanished for the individual, such greediness is assumed to be the norm, not the exception. The inability to acknowledge this has been blurred by fealty to a corporate code. We no longer use corporations; corporations use us.

When we are dismayed as to how wall street bankers can sleep well while giving themselves millions of dollars in bonuses while bankrupting their country, it’s not difficult to see why. They were doing their job and taking their bonus; they were looking out for the needs of their companies. They were trying to be good employees. Wouldn’t you do the same?

I sat in my seat on an airplane, hunched over my tray, writing a poem about you:

You and I made love

In an airliner bathroom

when a giant gust of wind suddenly blew through the stratosphere, knocking the airplane from side to side, causing the pilot to engage in a desperate struggle to right the giant, floating piece of metal, listing like a boat in the swell of a coming storm. I knew it was you coming to scold me. You are a tempestuous lover, for you are the tempest itself. So out of honor and self-preservation,  I put my pen down and grit my teeth for the rest of the flight, hoping that this sudden act of reticence would appease you.

But now I’m on solid ground, and I don’t fear you as much. So I’ll play the braggart, and tell everyone about my conquest:

I made love to the wind in an airliner bathroom.

It was unexpected, I assure you. She blew in quickly through the toilet as I flushed it, materializing before me in a fog, a woman of ineffable proportion, her breasts perked as if shaped by weft of a powerful tornado, areolas wide as the vault of the sky, her skin as light as the lazy clouds on a beautiful summer day, her dark hair fluttering about like snowflakes falling towards the earth, her irises the pale gray of rainclouds, swirling towards the pupils like the eye of great hurricane. She breathed softly in my ear, warm and calm like the zephyr, while I took her in my arms. During the act itself, I swear I felt lighting bolts flow from inside of her throughout my body. Afterward, I trembled, my knees rattling as if possessed by some loud thunder.

It’s been on my mind for sometime now, and I’m glad to get it off my chest. I have a feeling she’ll forgive me because most people will undoubtedly think that this story is just a bunch of hot air.

I recently saw a documentary called Crossing the Line about the US soldier James Dresnok who defected to North Korea during the Korean War and has lived there ever since. The documentary was fascinating not only because of its subject – a 60 something American with a Southern twang continually launching into fluent Korean, but also the strange, aberrant trend that it elicits – the flight from the West to the East.

Dresnok describes himself as a disaffected young man without hope, wanting only a rebirth into a new kind of life. He certainly got what he wanted. He unwittingly became North Korea’s most famous star of anti-American propaganda movies. As an expatriate in my sophmore years, I have seen so many young Americans come to East Asia with the same kind of attitude, a longing for something different and yes, even movie stardom.

Love

Over the course of a hungover morning I got through a graphic novel called Clumsy, the story of a dysfunctional relationship told in a series of intimate and uninspired vignettes. I should note that I don’t doubt the authenticity of these intimate moments. I’m sure as far as the author was concerned they were “inspired.”  Yet, I found it hard to be moved and endless harangue of one awarkward moment after another, mixed with first time phone sex and farting in bed with a lover. It’s just… well… isn’t there more to say about love? What if the answer is ‘No’? This might be the most horrifying, and possibly redeeming point about this book: Actual relationships are depressingly boring.

Anywho, to purchase a copy and view all the works available from the author you can check out his slick website, The Holy Consumption. In my humble opinion, a good deal more riveting than the book it touts.

Cats

While checking a book called Liberation Biology, I learned about the advent of genetically modified, non-allergenic cats from a company called Allerca. Your basic bubble boy friendly feline starts at $6,950, with a premium model at $22,000. The cats have their opponents, including a dedicated blog and a number of claims on consumer advocate websites like The Consumerist (check out the responses from the Allerca-ahem-Anonymous blogger). Although the most wild threats/accusations are found on Allerca’s website itself.

Chocolate

A trip across the Pacific on United Airlines gave me time to read their Hemisphere’s Magazine article on TCHO. Indie chocolate by consumers for the consumers? Break me off a bit o’ that, please.

During one of my more depressed moments, I decided to try my luck on google.com with the following search: “FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.” To my surprise, I came across this entry on a website dedicated to allowing folks to post their own micro graphic novels based around pictures of chainsaws. While the particular entry I found which lead me to the website was a rather dull and uninspired piece of self-loathing (which was, admittedly, somewhat appropriate at the time), a number of other entries on the site were pretty good. I particularly liked the website of one of the authors who has apparently lost his frog.

Anyway, I wrote my own micro graphic novel for the website, which I have included in its entirety below.

A Chainsaw Spirit

By Ferret

http://www.scruta.org

There exists in every man a forest of troubles. It is filled with dark, gnarled trees – the inner thoughts, habits and predispositions that prevent him from seeing the sunlight, the bright lights in himself and the world. Luckily, however, the forest is not impenetrable. There exists in all of us a chainsaw spirit, capable of clear cutting everything in its path, given time and enough fuel.

To take down a tree, you have to start on the smaller limbs first. You may see the trunk, and wishing to get to the heart of the problem, cut there, but don’t. The tree will topple more quickly, but the presence of its many limbs will cause it to become entangled with the other trees around it, far above the reach of your chainsaw.

When you have removed all the branches and limbs, the leaves and sticks, throw them in a pile and start on the trunk. Due to its size, you’ll need something to hold its weight while you cut it into little pieces. Don’t think that you can tackle this problem by simply laying the trunk on the ground. The chainsaw can slip and cut you instead of the wood.

While cutting the trunk, focus. This is the time when the chainsaw exerts the most effort, and you need to apply more pressure to make sure that the cut is straight and true. Focus. At this point, the only things in your mind should be you, the chainsaw and the wood.

When a tree has been cut, burn it in the fireplace of your soul. In its destruction, you can already feel new warmth lingering in the sudden, flickering light where there was once darkness. You smile knowing it’s a change for the better. The forest of troubles now contains one less member.

Complete this task as many times as necessary, and you will see the light.

It seems that the Russian netizens of the world have taken a shine to this particular nook in the interwebs, this half-hearted rambling through the world in all its various aspects, this journal of a maladroit, desperately melodramatic young man on an aeteological quest for the defining principles of the universe, or at least a couple friendly comments.

Unfortunately, it seems that most of these comments have been left in Russian, which this humble author can not read. Judging by the fact the links attached to these comments were for porno or painkillers or viagra, I decided to junk them all. But just to be fair, I decided to ask my Russian friend, Moose&Squirrel, to translate for me.

The following are the original comments with Moose&Squirrel’s translations (plus commentary in parenthesis):

Интересно даже для бухгалтера:

interesting even for an accountant

Информативно,продолжай в том же духе:

informative, continue your work with such a spirit

на края луны, без вины, без вина, она одна о_0 пробило:

at the edge of the moon, without guilt, without wine, she alone exists(this has to do with your blog? i dunno??)

Захватывающе. Зачет! и ниипет!:

breathtaking…… (and i have no idea what this person is trying to say after this point.)

Well, it looks like even with their spam the Russians are still kings of the literary world.

I had a dream recently where I was the axeman for two senior executives at a fortune 500 company, a henchman who always said “yes,” a lackey greasing the floors of their throne-rooms, making them less accessible to the usurpers and the gadflies; in short, I was someone terribly consumed with regret.

And so we sat in their office playing Russian Roulette.

I was compelled to play because a secret had been leaked. I’d failed to do my job. One of us would take the blame. As I played a few rounds I realized that they had conspired against me, as I helped them conspire against others. So I shot one with the only bullet I had; the other fled.

He found a place in the Bahamas though he was legally dead.

I ran a little bit, but then stopped at a fast food restaurant and just sat there, waiting for them to come for me. They’d triumphantly tout the apprehension of a petty thug from the underground attempting to extort money. And oh, I’d extorted, but so much more. That’s when I thought:

I needed to be caught. I deserved the punishments that I got.

When I awoke in the morning, I spent a long time looking in the mirror, wanting to know more how I saw myself behind my eyes, worried that maybe I was loosing the ability to choose what was right, or worse, that I couldn’t tell what was right and what was wrong.

I had a dream that I was James Bond, but old, really really old. I was the kind of James Bond you’d see if Sean Connery came out of retirement here in 2009 to make a flick. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the benefit of stuntmen or wires or makeup. I was actually in the world of the movie, a decrepit James Bond facing trained killers and femme fatales without the benefit of a cut here and there to make my action sequences look cool. And man, they didn’t. Every uppercut was a tear to my muscles, and I grimaced with the aerobic shock that constantly filled my veins. I wasn’t just old; I was in terrible shape too. Later, I would wake up in a sweat, gasping for breath.

I had followed my mark into a place I’d like to call Neo-Columbia, an institution of higher learning similar to that of the real one in New York City in name only. Where the real Columbia is a kind of pastoral respite in Upper Manhattan with its manicured greens and gardened walkways, Neo-Columbia is a decent deeper into the complexities of concrete growing out of the bedrock. It’s as if my mind couldn’t manufacture the unfamiliar splendors of the organic world and sought to entertain itself by feasting on the one that it has known far too well. It is a place I often return to in dreams to take tests whose questions I can’t pronounce and whose answers I cannot decypher; it is a realm where I reaffirm my interest in the deep and the arcane, as strange shapes morph from the molds around me. It has been a setting for poltergeists; it has been the backdrop for romantic interludes; it has been a carnival of shapes behind my eyes, teasing them closed again and again, ever so slowly.

I was on his tail, and I was running hard. The courtyards of Neo-Columbia were vast expanses of sprawling concrete filled and framed by stairways weaving in upon themselves in an ineffable weft. All of my attempts to catch up with my mark left me more confused than the previous attempt, as if the stairways were constantly moving, or that precepts I had developed for reconciling spatial geometries no longer seemed to apply. Somehow I found myself in a wide antechamber next to a research library where several students were arguing technicalities. I paused.

Suddenly, from around the corner I saw him. I was surprised to see that up close he was much shorter than I had realized. Five foot two at most. This strange dilation of space had somehow altered the way I saw him. I relaxed, thinking that he wouldn’t be such a threat, but I was wrong. He came at me with everything he had. The research students stood up gasping, unsure of what to do but watch. He and I fought on the floor like dogs, growling as we scuffled over my gun, yelping with each blow to our vitals.

Then we rose to our feet, and stumbled towards the opening of an atrium, 50 stories high. Too high to be real, the space had shifted again; the floors beneath us had multiplied to add an effect to our blood tattered maws. The presence of a director after all. Camera crews in the cement. My mind, the great arbiter of all.

We were both wearing down now; I could feel it.  This was the last push. The climax. I, a septuagenarian wrangling for dear life, moved at speeds I hadn’t felt in years, wasn’t sure I’d ever felt. He, a squat, nondescript blur, whose features refused to take form, constantly morphing away in the fog of my halting breath, fought with a singular resolve, as if possessed by some demon ideology which had erased any dynamism in him to stop his mind. In a flash, I gained the upper hand and quickly flipped him over the railing, dooming him to certain death.  However, at the last minute, before he slipped away into the abyss completely, I grabbed his hand.

For a moment, all I saw were his pale brown eyes looking up at me from the abyss without glimmer or emotion.  The pair of eyes looked backed hauntingly as if sculpted from the same drab concrete that surrounded us. He struggled under my shaking clutch, not to save himself or even to pull me down with him. Instead, he struggled to deny my efforts to save him, to fall directly into the abyss as I had intended when I threw him. After a moment he succeeded, and I couldn’t hold on anymore.

He fell into the abyss with half a smile on his face.

Afterward I sat there for just a second as the students stared me down, unsure of my relationship to them.  One of them darted away, no doubt to alert somebody.

In that moment, I wondered why I had tried to save him, when he didn’t want saving after all. That’s when I woke up.

Over the past three nights, I’ve had three dreams of Chinese revolution:

1

Everywhere seemed to ring with the sound of shells, the halting cries of the cowering or the weak, and the roars from both sides of the firing line. The major avenues had all been cordoned off as thousands of cadets attempted to cordon the rising tide of protesters, advancing quick upon the government strongholds. The babyfaced cadets fired several times, but to no avail. The people pushed the line to the brink, suffering heavy casualities, but breaking through in a wave of blood and bone and sinew. Brave men and women now no more than a trampled pulp for the vermin. Their lives consumed by that maddening thought – all the time legitimate, but often misconstrued – that gaped from the death rattles around their contorted maws: “Freedom.”

Soon the gates to the government compounds fell. A terrible clamor raged in the city for days. Infighting. New insurgencies. Those hidden dragons, the alliances of power that had slept in the shadows of the cities for so long now raged in a fire unchecked throughout the routed mass of the capital. The madness had grown. No one could hide it now. The revolution in blood had become a revolution in the spirit. The great reigns of power made anything possible. In the vacuum, the citizens were unhinged for great good and for great evil.

Before I awoke, I had a vision of a pair of praying manti mating, the female overwhelming the male with her size, deftly decaptitating him, taking life and creating it at the same time.

2

I was sitting in a bar talking with my friends about the absurdity of violent revolution in China. I felt much older, and my companions looked older too. There were no talks of unabashed drinking contests, no virulent confessions of directionlessness, no t-shirts with inscrutible slogans. Everyone was with a signficant other, or seemed to be unflinchingly comfortable with the fact that they were there alone, as I was.

I was saying how I had once thought that China could inexplicably implode under the weight of its corruption. How the politburo would be unable to manage rampant abuses of power from its local counterparts, sending the country into a massive downward spiral that could only lead to violent power clashes in the capital. I said that I had come to realize that the Chinese people on both sides of the potential firing line had long ago realized that this solution would be untenable for all parties. Then someone else chimed in about the inextricable link between government and society in Chinese culture, and I seconded their point, continuing that the Chinese insight was important everywhere: revolution exists not just at the level of government. It is violent, jarring, and full of uncontrollable effects.

Then someone disagreed. She said: I disagree. What if the Chinese have found a new way?

I said: What do you mean?

What if it were possible that revolution could happen slowly? Silently? Tacity? In small struggles throughout the land? Culminating in changes to the whole?

I’d need proof.

Well, don’t we already have proof. Look at the changes you’ve seen in China in the last 20 years. The press is now completely open. The great firewall has fallen. A legitimate system for fielding government grievances has been established-

You make a good point. There has been change, but it’s been slow-

That’s the point. The West somehow imagines that it’s a sudden change in course, an instantaneous adoption of radical new ideas with a fallout of blood and propaganda, factions and alliances in its wake. Everything quick and fast with side-effects galore. But it doesn’t have to be like that. What if it changed slowly? Progressed over decades or hundreds of years?

Someone else spoke up: That’s what it is. China will change too, but so slowly that it can’t be seen very easily. Like how we all got old! One day we woke up, and said, “How the hell did this happen?”

We all laughed.

That night as I was getting ready for bed, I looked in the mirror at my aged face and my receding hairline, and thought, “Holy shit. I’ve changed, and so has China. Is the revolution happening in slow motion? I haven’t noticed it at all.”

3

I had a dream within a dream.

I had this sudden ability to see myself as I related to everyone and everything else. As if I were suddenly projected at the center of a giant three-dimensional cobweb which I could walk around freely. I was suddenly able to judge the impact of all of my actions upon the rest of the world. Everything I said. Everything I bought. Everything I ate. Every thought I had.

I should note that I could by no means trace everything to its limit. The cobweb seemed infinite, and I inevitably got to the point where I could no longer remember from where I came, or how the chain of events I currently saw related to my life. At this instant I would be snapped back to the center, to myself, as if pulled by a giant rubberband.

The more I explored the web, the more I felt a great joy, but simultaneously a great guilt, a worry. It became clear to me that I needed to focus on one thing alone and change it. Then move on. That if everyone were to find this one thing, to become aware of their own web, and learn from it, study it, grow with it, the world would be better. Like finding a new way of thinking about myself, a revolution in myself, a change in the way I could do things. And all I needed to do was know where to start. But what the hell was it?

I began to get skeptical about the whole web project, and found myself thinking of it as some type of inane kids show. Spiffy the Spider came out and introduced all of the various interactions in my life, like some kind of rhyming game. “Everytime you eat meat, you make your heart lose a beat. Everytime you eat flesh, you hurt this place called Bangaledesh. Water from a bottle? Oil-wasting model! If the government does wrong, help those fellows reform along.” Something that seemed insultingly simple, vapid, moralizing, if anything, something to be overcome.

Still, I found myself returning to the web. I found myself playing in it. I knew exactly who I effected when I bought a new pair of shoes. Or sneezed too loudly in public. And it fascinated me. But still I kept being hounded by this question: What the hell does all this mean? I had this strange feeling that somehow I would know what that was when I woke up.

Then I woke up into another dream.

It was morning, and I was seized by an incredible desire to go outside and walk to the park near my house. I got dressed quickly and made my way out into the streets. There was no one there. It was strange because it was 9:30 in the morning, and my street is usually jammed full of people at this time of day. At this point, I was dreaming, but I continued to walk. When I got to the park, it was completely full of people. Crowds beyond belief. I walked up to someone and asked, What’s going on?

We’re trying to change. We’re looking for what to change first.

What? I don’t understand.

Did you have a dream last night? One that made you want to change things?

Yeah.

We all did too.

[Ferret is dreaming. He sits in a classroom filled mostly with young Korean and Japanese students with several Caucasians dotted here and there like dandruff. Ferret’s Teacher calls out the new vocab words from the book, and the Class mechanically responds in a strange unison that seems to trail off, as several students in the Class begin to early or start to late. There is a sudden, earnest knocking on the door, so direct and forceful, you’d think that whoever was knocking had mistaken the flimsy classroom door of particle board for the giant oak gate of a warlord’s stronghold. The Teacher looks at the Class nervously as they titter with laughter, then she cautiously walks towards the door and opens it up.

As the Teacher opens the door, the Beggar knocking on the door is mid-strike, and almost falls over as his momentum carries him beyond where the door was just a second ago. He stumbles past the teacher fist first into the classroom like a lame superhero attempting to miraculously gain his lost powers of flight. The Class now falls into roars of laughter. The Beggar straightens out his ragged ensemble with a misplaced, self-satisfied grin. The Teacher begins her interrogations:]

Teacher

Who are you?

Beggar

[pointing at Ferret]

I’m his landlord.

Ferret

[adamant]

No, you aren’t.

Beggar

I know I look different, but I’ve lost a tooth.

[The Beggar takes a tooth from his pocket while bearing his teeth to reveal a single, prominent gap from the loss of a bicuspid. He places the tooth back into this mouth and instantly changes appearance the way you would see in an old gag movie where a man takes off his hat, or a woman lets down her hair and is suddenly replaced by an entirely different actor. With the return of his tooth, his facial features, the build of his body, and even his tattered garments all change instantaneously. Ferret exclaims:]

Ferret

Holy shit!

Class

[a la Greek chorus, in the same vein as they were repeating characters a moment earlier]

Who is this man who changes his face?

What kind of body grows at this pace?

Can we believe the testament shown?

That from this tooth, this monster has grown?

Ferret

It looks like he has.

Teacher

He needs to leave. He’s disrupting class.

Ferret

Let’s hear him out.

Class

Yes, hear him out! All need a voice!

Hear him well, then make a choice!

Teacher

Go ahead, sir.

Beggar

[looking like the landlord]

I don’t know how this happened. Ever since I lost my tooth, my whole life has changed. My wife won’t let me in the house. I try to show her how it’s just my tooth, but when I show her, she thinks I’m some kind of spirit that has come back to haunt her. A Japanese solider from World War Two or something. I’m suffering badly. Nobody recognizes me. I’m no longer the locksmith who owns your apartment. I’m now just a lowly bottle collector begging on the streets.  Can you help me, Ferret?

Ferret

What do you want?

Beggar

Money to get the tooth fixed!

Teacher

This is a trick! Don’t trust him Ferret!

Beggar

I assure you that it’s not.

Teacher

How much?

Beggar

200RMB.

Teacher

No way. You could get that fixed for 150RMB, tops.

Beggar

[after glaring at the Teacher, turns to Ferret]

Please. I want my life back. I’d give anything to get it back.

Ferret

Even your two front teeth?

Beggar

That’s just cruel. Even as a joke.

Teacher

I agree. It was also a terrible pun.

Class

Wide eyed dreamer, this is no time for puns,

Just stay the course, stick to your guns.

Will you help this man into shape?

Decide now. There is no escape.

Ferret

I beg to differ.

Beggar

What?

[Ferret wakes up.]