Godzilla: A Review-ette

I want to go into the new Godzilla movie in great detail and I will in a future edition of Monster Movie of the Week, which has been on hiatus while I've been in grad school.  I like to take all of the franchise movies chronologically and I have not even made it up to the first American Godzilla movie yet, so 2014 Goji is still quite a ways off. Anyway, here are some quick thoughts on the new movie now that I have seen it a couple of times:

RETURN TO AWES

The best thing that the movie does is to bring a true sense of awe to the Kaiju genre.  The movie takes itself sufficiently seriously and maintains an appropriately ominous tone from the beginning, especially in its evocative opening credits, which feature Atomic Age imagery mixed with a few quick shots of Godzilla about to surface on a remote Pacific beach.

The movie is very conscientious about sticking with the human characters for perspective even when it means cutting away from the action and I think it gives the movie a terrific sense of scale.  It makes these monsters seem big and terrifying.  It never feels like there is a movie about monsters on a miniature set and another movie about people and you are cutting back and forth between them like a lot of 20th century Kaiju movies did.  Actually this is the legacy of the first American Godzilla which carried the sensibility over to the Millennium Goji movies and it is also a legacy of Cloverfield which more than any other Kaiju movie stuck to a human perspective as part of it's found footage format.

GOODY TWO CLAWS

For all the talk of honoring the original movie and the fact that the new movie is released on its 60th anniversary, the 2014 Godzilla presents a strangely benevolent version of the character, certainly much more so than the 1954 movie.  Over the last 60 years there has been a wide spectrum of interpretations of the character from his overtly cuddly and heroic appearances in the 1960's to his downright malevolent incarnation in 2001's Giant Monsters All Out Attack.  In the 1990's and 2000's, it has been fashionable to show him as a kind of a cranky anti-hero.

I'm the new movie, he's presented in a more heroic way than he has been for decades.  The movie is cut so that on several occasions he actually seems to be saving people and the crowd audibly cheers him at the end of the movie.  Not to mention that earlier in the movie, he is shown swimming in the middle of a bunch of aircraft characters like a damn dolphin.

I really hope those people are in for a rude awakening in the sequel.

GODZILLA BEGINS

As you may know, Legendary is also the production company behind The Dark Knight movies and it has me wondering  if they are approaching Godzilla the same way.  It would explain why Godzilla is a bit awkward and under powered in this movie.  After all, one of Godzilla's defining characteristics  is his toughness and it is very unusual for him to take the kind of beating that he takes in this movie.  Also, when he first used his "Atomic Breath" it barely had an effect on the female MUTO, whereas in the Japanese movies it is usually a very effective weapon.  Also, the fact that after his awesome tail swipe, he knocked a building down on himself was a bit embarrassing.  Godzilla fans are actually quite obsessive over his invincibility and power, which is one of the reasons they loathed the first American Godzilla, who was a weak animal in comparison to elemental and powerful classic Goji.  This new Godzilla shows a lot of promise, but he's not there yet.

I hope over the course of this (hopefully) new film series, Godzilla grows into his more classic character, that he gets better at Godzilla-ing, the same way that Batman got better at Batman-ing.  Hopefully he won't grow a gross beard in the third movie, like Bruce Wayne did.   And maybe as in the  Dark Knight series he will face a more iconic adversary in his second outing.  Who's the Joker of the Godzilla world?  King Ghidorah?  Mothra?  Jet Jaguar?

MO-SU-RA

What as up with all of the subliminal Mothra shoutouts?  Famously, the word "Mothra" is written on a terrarium in the abandoned Brody house but that is only one of many references to butterflies throughout the movie which is particularly loaded when Godzilla's most famous opponent happens to be a giant butterfly.

 Just a few that I noticed:

-In the abandoned Brody house the camera starts its pan on a large caterpillar
-In the classroom, before the reactor collapses there are illustrations of the butterfly life cycle and an image of a large monarch butterfly
-One of Joe's echolocation diagrams features a bat chasing after a butterfly, also Mothra's nemesis is another monster called Batra.
-One of the scientists references a butterfly
-The male, winged, MUTO hatches from a cocoon, like Mothra.  This actually makes me wonder if the male MUTO was actually Mothra at some point in the film's development.  It would have actually been interesting to have Godzilla have been the one who was causing all of the destruction and Mothra and a second Toho Kaiju be the ones trying to stop him, instead of Godzilla trying to stop two new monsters.  There does actually exist some concept art that appears to show Anguirus and Godzilla fighting in San Francisco.

What role would the Earth Defender Mothra have when this Godzilla is already so heroic?  Maybe Goji develops a taste for surface life and begins to menace the Pacific, raiding nuclear sites.  I'm hoping by the next movie, humanity has soured on Godzilla and he resumes his role as nuclear hell beast.

MUTO MADNESS

I was a little nervous having seen the MUTO toys prior to the movie and I still think that they look a little too 90's Gamera but I was happy that they at least possessed some interesting and believable behaviors. I found it particularly interesting that the monsters were literally eating anything radioactive that they could find, cracking open nuclear subs like peanuts to get at the reactor cores. In fact, I wish Godzilla would have possessed some more of those qualities in the movie.  It is stated that he feeds on radiation although he shows not evidence of this in the movie.  In retrospect it kind of irks me that all of the cool ominous things that characters said in the ads and trailers were actually about the MUTOs and not Godzilla.  The MUTOs and their attempts to feed and breed are actually what drives the story, Godzilla really only reacts.

SCREW YOU GUYS, I'M GOING HOME

While I'm quite happy with the new design, which is recognizably Godzilla (particularly the exquisite angry-looking face) I do think that this Godzilla is a little too chunky for my liking.  Not that any of the Japanese Godzilla's were ever exactly svelte. Godzilla has a long history of blegs, canckles, puckered knees, and the Giant Monsters All Out Attack Godzilla even had a distinct potbelly. This new Godzilla is a bit top-heavy and he lacks the upper body muscularity that became a feature of the character from the 1990's on.  This new Godzilla is a bit too whale-like for his own good.  I hope to see a leaner and meaner Godzilla in the next movie.

IN CONCLUSION

Despite my nitpicks, I am very happy to finally have such an awesome and well-received Godzilla movie and happy for the prospects of an even better sequel in the near future.  Kaiju movies are few and far between.  That is especially so for Godzilla movies.  Ones that are actually good are even more rare.

Patrick Garone
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Buddhism and Improv

In my last post, I talked about the the thematic connections between comedy and Buddhism and how comedy is a useful tool for attaining some of the goals of Buddhism.  Another strong connection between the two is in the art form known as improvisation, or improv.  In improv,  groups of actors create characters, scenes, songs or other performance pieces on the spot without any specific preparation. Improv has several remarkable parallels to Buddhist practice.


"Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person – mind, body, intelligence and creativity."
-Viola Spolin

Improv was first developed as a series of games and activities during the New Deal as a part of a larger Public Works project.  It was originally envisioned as a tool which would help learners break down some of the barriers of adulthood and allow them to unlock their creativity through play.  In the years since, it has become primarily associated with comedy.  As a comedic art form, it was developed and flourished in Chicago at places like The Second City and iO.

“I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.” -Tina Fey

In Chicago and other cities with big comedy populations, there is a distinct improv community.  As in Buddhism and other Eastern traditions, improv places a very strong emphasis on teacher student relationships.  Much of a student's experience is dictated by the approach and quality of the instructors.  While many improv teachers simply teach as an income supplement others are dedicated motivational figures.  Some even become guru figures in the community and to scores of dedicated students.  In the 1990's, I was lucky enough to study under the late great Marty DeMaat, a wonderful and gentle man who instilled a sense of ethical and responsible comedy in his students.  I often like to think about improv as being like a martial art as it takes years to master and involves discipline and commitment.  Unfortunately, they do not give out colored belts for attaining competencies in improv.  But they should...

Like Zen Buddhism, improv presents a set of fundamental contradictions and paradoxes at the heart of its practice.  In improv, we are expected to make something out of nothing.  If it is being done correctly,  there is no specific preplanning or preparation in pure improv.  You simple go out and do it.  Mind you, his is not the way that theater is normally done.  Your average play will be rehearsed for several weeks before going up.  Improv presents a very un-Western approach in that it is intuitive without excessive structure or control over the process.

Another paradox associated with improv and comedy in general is that you are expected to create comedy without "trying to be funny."  Good improv instructors will always stress that their students are supposed to be honest on stage, they are supposed to support one another, and they are to remain in harmony but they are never to actively "try to be funny."  Partially, this is because nothing is less funny than someone desperately trying to get a laugh out of you but mostly because if you are onstage focusing on getting a reaction from the audience, you are not present in the scene and supporting your partners.  Trying to be funny is often the sign of a performer with a delicate ego that needs the approval of an audience and that's not fun for anybody.


Is what we're doing comedy? Probably not. Is it funny? Probably yes... What we do is too enchanting to be quantified.
-Del Close


In an improv performance, you are onstage performing in front of an audience (hopefully a big audience) literally putting yourself in a position where you will be judged with not preparation or script to fall back on with only your partners onstage to support you.  Even for people who don't have a problem being in front of an audience, this can be terrifying.  A lot of actors are scared to even try it.  But as an improvisor, you are expected to keep a clear head in the middle of all that.  If you are conscientious and well-trained, you are not thinking about all those eyes on you, or how to get a laugh from the audience, or what you will be doing after the show, or even what you will say or do next.   You are simply out there doing it.  If you are successful, you are not thinking about anything in particular and have achieved a kind of peaceful detachment in which you are almost a spectator.  It's like a meditation paradox in which people are told to "clear their thoughts" or "don't think about anything" both ideas actually involve thinking.  As with improv, once you have "solved" these paradoxes, you have mastered silmultaneously practicing the mindfulness and mindlessness that frees us from over-thinking.

Actors and improvisors are fond of the phrase, "being in your head."  It describes a situation when you are onstage and thinking about everything else in your life, or obsessing over your own performance while you are giving it.  This is perhaps improv's strongest parallel to Buddhism.  In our every day lives, we are often so narrowly focused on ourselves that we are not paying attention to what is really going on around us.  We are often so obsessed with the past and the future that we ignore the present.  In this way, improv is like a creative meditation performed in front of an audience.

Dharma Comedian: A Look at Buddhism and Comedy

Note: This post is based on a talk given at The Buddhist Temple of Chicago in November of 2013

I’ve often had the experience where  I’ve had a bad day at work and I come home in a rotten mood and I am just "not having it."  This is definitely that "disquietude" that Buddhists like to talk about, that general state of unhappiness or dissatisfaction which so much of Buddhism attempts to address.  So, I'll be deep in that nebulous funk but then maybe I will talk to a friend who will crack a really funny joke or maybe I’ll catch an old episode of The Simpsons on TV and I will just have a good long laugh and all of the negativity and tension will fall away.  That’s one of the wonderful properties of laughter:  it has the ability to change your perspective and is therefore of great value to Buddhists as a tool for managing the self.

My perspective on it is a little bit unique as I have been considering and working with comedy for a long time.  I remember watching the original cast of Saturday Night Live when the show was first put in syndication when I was a very small child.  I literally grew up on sketch comedy like SCTV, Kids in the Hall, In Living Color and MadTV.  When I was a teenager, I started taking improv classes at Chicago's famous comedy theater The Second City and was lucky enough to watch people like Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch perform on stage before they moved on to SNL.  Since then I have had a lot of experience writing, performing in, and directing sketch comedy with Chicago groups like Salsation and Wig Bullies.

For me, comedy as the art of using laughter to uncover truths about the human experience in a way that’s inherently fun and entertaining.  That may sound a little grandiose but I am describing the best and most fulfilling kind of comedy.   Think of it like food: there is food that is really nurishingand good for you and there is the food that you may eat because there is nothing else around or you just need a quick snack.  But in really good comedy, truth is a main ingredient: the truer that something is, the more genuinely funny it is.  As a Buddhist, I take that idea a little further.  I believe in comedy that has an ethical framework and something true and useful to say about the world in which we live.

When we are creating comedy, we often talk about “targets.”  Every good joke has a target or an object on which it is commenting.  If I am directing a show and someone brings in a sketch, my first questions will often be “What’s your target?” and “What are you trying to say with this?”   We’ve all probably seen comedy that’s mean-spirited or that relies on stereotyping groups of people or putting them down.  That’s why it is so important that we question the targets and purpose of comedy.  Is it being used to satirize the powerful and the hypocritical to illuminate some truth about our lives or is it being used to make fun of the weak and defenseless to get a cheap laugh?

Sketch comedy duo Key & Peele.

For me, one of the main connections between comedy and Buddhism is that comedy can help you to not take yourself too seriously, which dovetails nicely with Buddhist practice which is concerned with managing the ego/self above all things.  If you can really laugh at yourself, then you have probably cultivated some humility and perspective about your life.  To take that idea further, when I am writing comedy and I start thinking about my targets, I like to start with myself.  To paraphrase RuPaul, if you can't laugh at yourself, how in the Hell you gonna laugh at anyone else?  I find it fulfilling to write characters that exhibit my own worst qualities: arrogance, greed, pettiness, hypocrisy, jealousy…etc.    For me, comedy is a way to take these qualities and pull them out into the light and have a good laugh at them and at myself.  If you've ever been the butt of a joke, you know nothing knocks you down to size like being laughed at.

Family Outting, a sketch I wrote and performed in for Wig Bullies.

Not only is it therapeutic for me but I really do believe that all good and meaningful comedy has to be personal and true.  You may chuckle at a late night TV joke about some celebrity but you’ll probably soon forget it  but comedy that touches you and feels real and true will stick with you. It may also make you think or change your mind or illuminate some truth about the world.  

Good comedy costs something from the person creating it.  For it really to affect other people it has to be personal, maybe even a little uncomfortable.  Maybe you have not given a lot of thought to comedy theory but you know when something feels real and true.  When you can point to a character and say, “Yes!  That’s me!  I do that!” or you hear a joke or a line of dialogue and you think, “That’s exactly right!  That hit it on the head!”

When we are honestly dealing with these more unpleasant parts of the personality, we are venturing into what can be considered Black Comedy, which finds humor in darker subject matter and sometimes has a more biting tone than regular comedy.  This is the realm of Characters Behaving Badly, which is something that as a viewer I really enjoy.  My justification for this is the idea that spending time with these kinds of severely flawed characters has instructional value because it helps to identify those qualities in myself and others in the world.  As a Buddhist and someone who does believe that comedy has a moral dimension, the tension is whether or not the piece glorifies bad behavior or comments on it.  In Shin Buddhism, there is an idea called Shinjin, which describes a kind of small awakening.  Not the grand Awakening that is often thought of in the context of Buddhism but an awakening to the reality of one's entrenchment in the world of petty desires.  For me, comedy-especially Black Comedy-is a way of achieving Shinjin.

I like to use the animated series Archer as an example of this.  Archer features a number of characters who Behave Badly but centers on a James Bond-esque spy, who is pathologically selfish and kind of a jerk.  Archer walks the line of possibly wallowing in being mean-spirited but it has moral value in that the character pays a terrible price for his bad behavior. He never really gets away with it.  While he may be presented as being "cool" in many superficial ways, the show also makes it a point to show that he is actually quite sad and isolated and he can't quite understand why.  In a sense, Archer is a meditation on the perils of selfishness.

From Archer.

SEE ALSO:  Absolutely Fabulous, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, South Park

Buddhists may also find a lot to like in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is a fictionalized account of the life of comedian Larry David.  David was the co-creator of Seinfeld, which was sometimes sometimes given the Zen description of being a  "show about nothing."  The overarching theme of Curb is that the fictional Larry David is prideful and cannot help getting into petty conflicts over  minor differences with people.  For Buddhists, its very valuable to see this play out because in our day to day lives, it really is about the small choices that we make.  Each day does not confront us with epic moral dilemmas about but small decisions about we deal with the people around us.  The fictional Larry David is almost like some stock character that one would create to illustrate the dangers of pride and pettiness.

From Curb Your Enthusiasm

While I wouldn't necessarily lump it with the above comedies in their (likely accidental) take on Buddhism, Louis C.K.'s sitcom Louie manages to parallel Buddhist thought and ideas to a striking degree.  Take this quote from the very first episode:

'It's hard to really, like, look at somebody and go, "hey, maybe something nice will happen." I know too much about life to have any optimism, because I know even if it's nice, it's going to lead to shit. I know that if you smile at somebody and they smile back, you've just decided that something shitty is going to happen. You might have a nice couple of dates, but then she'll stop calling you back and that'll feel shitty. Or you'll date for a long time and then she'll have sex with one of your friends, or you will with one of hers, and that'll be shitty. Or you'll get married, and it won't work out and you'll get divorced and split your friends and money and that's horrible, or you'll meet the perfect person who you love infinitely, and you even argue well and you grow together and you have children, and then you get old together and then she's gonna die. That's the best-case scenario, is that you're gonna lose your best friend and then just walk home from D'Agostino's with heavy bags every day and wait for your turn to be nothing also.'

Disguised as an amusingly cynical thought as part of a stand up session, is the very Buddhist idea of impermanence, the notion of accepting the fact that reality is constantly changing and all things (including our lives) have a finite end.  While his point may not be to embrace or celebrate the idea of impermanence, he is at least addressing it, which is unusual in American society where we tend to ignore change and especially death until it is unavoidable and then it is a unexpected traumatic event.   If you actually are able to watch the episode, it is interesting listen for the audience reaction to this as though he is saying something shocking, proving that we may live in a society where Buddhist ideas are hip and risque.  In any case, Buddhists will want to check out  Louie  and non-Buddhists may find themselves exposed to some concepts that are connected to Buddhism.  

Louis C.K. on Conan discussing cell phones and existentialism.

I have no idea if Louis C.K. has any connections to Buddhism but at least his life philosophy seems to have developed some nice parallels to Buddhism.  One of the great things about Buddhism is that it is not necessary to be a Buddhist to be a buddhist.  The core ideas sometimes separately and spontaneously  manifest themselves in unexpected places, like in the world of comedy.  Independent of there being a lot of Buddhists in the world of comedy, it proves that these ideas are universal and true.

Next: Buddhism and Improv

Patrick Garone

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Khan Game

Is he, or isn't he Khan?  That was the question on every Trekker's mind leading up to the release of Star Trek Into Darkness.  Despite the denials, bold-faced lies, and misdirection on behalf of the cast and crew of the movie, John Harrison does in fact identify himself as Khan midway through Into Darkness.  Personally, I have mixed emotions about this reveal.  Not because I feel that Khan was so amazing that he should never be used again or that the series should stick to all new characters or because I don't think that Benedict Cumberbatch was great in the movie (he was!) but because the characterization just doesn't mesh with Khan as depicted in his appearance in the Original Series episode "The Space Seed" or its cinematic follow-up Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 

Perhaps a flaw with the movie as a whole and the conception of the John Harrison character is the fact that the movie seems to have been written with an eye on the Internet.  Judging by their months long disinformation campaign regarding the plot and villain of this movie, Abrahms and company are very conscious of audience expectations and the role of the Internet leading up to a blockbuster's release.  Also, Abrahms seems to suffer from a compulsive need for secrecy and it almost seems like Star Trek Into Darkness  was partially written in order to create cryptic marketing materials that play with audience expectations.  Cumberbatch himself may have been a piece of stunt casting designed to throw people off, "They'll never guess this pasty Englishman is playing Khan!"  The movie and the marketing for the movie seem preoccupied with playing a tired shell game about with the villain's identity which seems to go along with every filmmaker trying to copy ideas and concepts from Christopher Nolan's Batman movies such as temporary captures or dramatic identity switcharoos (Skyfall is a good example of this, in which they threw in an extra name for the villain apparently just to check off that box on their Nolan checklist.) For a franchise that has been reinvented to get away from being a fanwank, these filmmakers seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time baiting fans about the film's villain.  The way that this character is handled perhaps prevents Into Darkness from being the best of the Star Trek movies.

I understand that this alternate universe is somewhat it's own thing but clearly great pains were made for crew of this new Enterprise to at least be recognizable as their Original Series counterparts.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Kirk and Spock both do a wonderful job of evoking their classic characters in subtle ways and Karl Urban is pretty eerie as Bones.  Obviously some consideration was made with those characters to keep them true and recognizable, so why does Khan, perhaps Trek's most iconic villain, neither look nor sound (nor behave) anything like his classic characterization?  Is it possible that he's actually not Khan after all?

Khan Noonien Singh was first introduced in the classic Star Trek episode "Space Seed" in which the Enterprise comes across a derelict ship containing seventy-two crypods.  We then learn that it is a penal ship from the late 20th Century housing war criminals from Earth's "Eugenic Wars."  In Star Trek lore, this was a war fought in the 1990's between genetically augmented tyrants, the foremost of which is Khan Noonien Singh.  Once unfrozen, Khan attempts to hijack the Enterprise with the assistance of a historian who has fallen for him.  He is narrowly thwarted and Kirk exiles him and his crew to a remote, uninhabited world. 

We later meet him in Wrath of Khan when he succeeds in hijacking another Federation ship to exact his revenge on Kirk for exiling him to that world which later fell victim to a natural disaster.  By this time, Khan has lost many of his people, including the former Enterprise crew member who became his wife, and he is crazed with vengeance.  Instead of escaping to fight another day, Khan is focused on exacting vengeance on Kirk.  We meet other remnants of the Eugenics Wars on Enterprise, which is set before classic Star Trek and they are as volatile and violent as Khan.

In Star Trek Into Darkness,  the prison ship is not found by the crew of the Enterprise but by another Federation ship and it happens off screen.  "Khan" is reawakened and recruited into Starfleet's secret intelligence agency, Section 31 as an agent and weapons designer.  There's no mention of the Eugenics Wars or his 1990's pedigree (they don't find a pager or a Jane's Addiction  CD on him).  He is simply referred to as being from "300 years ago," as though challenging the audience to do the math.  For many people that equation looks like:

FUTURE - 300 = STILL FUTURE

He is apparently made to play nice by the fact that the his fellow ubermensch-sicles are held captive.  He cooperates until, believing his crew dead, "Khan" goes rogue at the beginning of the movie and targets senior Starfleet officers. 

As opposed to the arrogant and mercurial Khan of the past, this character is cool and calculating.  His overwhelming characteristic is one of overpowering intelligence.  While it is not fair to exactly compare him to the iconic Wrath of Khan version of the character who was older and had suffered far more, he doesn't quite match up to his "Space Seed" characterization either, who's vanity and arrogance allowed him to make several tactical missteps that cost him control of the Enterprise. 

As Khan had previously been played by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban, there have also been cries of whitewashing but I'm not sure that's valid since the character's ethnicity has always been ambiguous.  He is referred to as an Indian Sikh in "Space Seed," yet he spoke with a Spanish accent.  I'm more bothered by the fact that he neither looks nor sounds anything like his classic character and I find his Britishness a little distracting (although he is not the only inexplicably British character in the movie). 

But what if he is not really Khan?  After all, we have only his word for it.  Sure, Admiral Marcus calls him Khan also but does he really know?  There's no scene like there is in "Space Seed" where the crew Googles Khan Noonien Singh and looks at a picture of him.  It's interesting that John Harrison's fist target is actually a data archive.  Perhaps it contained rare historical information about Khan that he wanted to eliminate in order to continue using that identity. 

So then, who is John Harrison really?  Maybe he's Joachim, Khan's second in command on the Reliant who bears more than a passing resemblance to Benedict Cumberbatch.  Joachim seemed to possess good tactical skills or at least a bit of common sense when he tried to talk Khan out of destroying their ship in order to pursue the Enterprise.  True, he didn't get to do much Wrath-ing but it's hard to shine when your boss Khan Noonien Singh.

If they ever need to recast the role in a future movie this would be a terrific way out and there would be the excitement of seeing a more traditional Khan.  And then J. J. Abrahms could say, "I told you he wasn't Khan!"  Moreover, if the real Khan is actually in one of those cryotubes that could put Harrison's actions and motivations into a whole new perspective.  Perhaps his overriding motivation was to find and and reawaken Khan.  Or perhaps John Harrison was just a distraction to lead the Federation away from Khan who is now loose in the galaxy planning god knows what?

But if John Harrison is actually Khan, I have to disagree with the way the movie ended.  At the end of Into Darkness, "Khan's" plan to reunite with his crew is foiled and he is defeated by Spohura and put back to sleep.  Maybe he thinks that he fellow augments have all been destroyed.  Maybe.  When and if he wakes up, he'll certainly have a grudge against Spock and the Enterprise crew but it will be the anger of having his plan thwarted, which is pretty weak on the villain scale.  I mean, it's no reason to start quoting Moby Dick.  At the end of "Space Seed," Khan's plan is also thwarted but he's pretty cool about it.  He's looking forward to having his own planet and things are looking good.  Of course, they go to shit pretty fast and he loses his wife and many of his people scraping by for years on a desolate rock.  He has a lot of time to be pissed off have his hatred build.  That's a lot better than being put into storage.

Maybe the sequel will be called The Stuffy Indifference of Khan.

In Defense of Star Trek Into Darkness

WARNING: FULL STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS SPOILERS AHEAD

In 2009 J. J. Abrahms accomplished something very cool with Star Trek.  He took a major science fiction franchise in its most famous and well-loved iteration and managed to create an organic, in-universe reboot with a likeable and charismatic cast of actors.  Now, there are some Star Trek  fans that dislike "NuTrek" for its sleek redesign, its young cast, or the fact that it exists as an alternate form of the beloved Original Series.  Of course, if you have paid any attention to the nearly fifty years of Trek, alternate universe stories are a cornerstone of the franchise and some of the best Trek stories have featured this device in one way or another (TNG's "All Good Things," and DS9's "The Visitor" among them.)  Part of the cleverness of the reboot is in the fact that almost all of the redesign elements (including the much maligned "Apple Store" bridge) can be traced back to the presence of Nero's ship in the timeline.  Maybe the very Trek-like logic is what infuriates some fans so much.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the new follow up to the 2009 movie and with this entry, the NuTrek series really steps out of the large shadow cast by the Original Series and its movies.  Into Darkness is a big action packed blockbuster but one with a determined focus on its characters and relationships.  One can make the argument that these movies treat their characters with more respect and attention than they ever received on the original television show or movies. 

Chris Pine, in particular, has an terrific journey in the movie.  Many people observed after Star Trek that Kirk simply fell into the captain's chair without earning it and much of the plot of Into Darkness deals with this.  By the end of the movie, Kirk is forged into a real captain.  I also admire his lack of vanity as he moves away from being a pretty boy and spends a good amount of time either sobbing or looking bloated and red-faced in a way that would make Shatner proud.  Seriously, though, I hope he continues to play Kirk for a long time.  I'm interested to see him continue to grow into this role and make it his own.

The rest of the cast continues to shine in their roles.  Zachary Quinto is a wonderful foil for Pine and the two have really terrific chemistry together.  The whole cast really work well as an ensemble and now that they are joined as a crew, watching these characters interact is one of the joys of the movie in the same way that it was in The Avengers last summer.

There has been a lot of criticism of Into Darkness about the movie's "military" plot and it is accused of straying from Gene Roddenberry's humanistic themes of exploration and optimism.  In truth, all Star Trek  stories walk the line between thought-provoking stories of science, diplomacy, social commentary and rousing adventure.  In particularly, the feature films have always leaned more toward the spectacular and crowd-pleasing elements.  When studios are spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to produce these movies, they want to end up with an entertaining product with mass appeal.  When the feature films have tried to address Big Ideas, the resulting movies were among the series worst.  This is something that Trek has always done better on television and an argument can certainly be made that Star Trek is best presented on a weekly television show as opposed to big-budget movies that are released every few years but for better or worse, that is where Star Trek is right now.

The issue of militarism in Trek is nothing new and some of the franchise's best stories have explored the conflict between the Federation as a military force and as a force of peace and exploration.  Much of Deep Space Nice was set during the bloody Dominion War and explored the way that the Federation operated during wartime and how it wasn't always in keeping with its values.  DS9 even introduced Starfleet's shadowy Section 31 intelligence service which operates outside of Federation law.  In Into Darkness John Harrison and Admiral Marcus are both working with Sector 31 and the bombing at the beginning of the movie is actually a Sector 31 facility.  This organization even pops up in Enterprise in the 22nd Century after the Xindi attack on Earth.  Enterprise, running concurrently with the events of 9/11 and its aftermath explored this military theme in great detail.  This was even a theme in The Next Generation (much of "Yesterday's Enterprise" takes place in an alternate universe militarized starfleet.)  So this idea runs very deep in Star Trek and is certainly not coming out of nowhere in Star Trek Into Darkness.

And ultimately, the sequel must deal with the events of the previous movie.  With Vulcan having been detroyed by a mad Romulan, Starfleet decimated, and Earth attacked, it would have been almost bizarre not to deal with the militarization of Starfleet.  Into Darkness handles this idea well and it is an active point of conflict for the crew of the Enterprise.  "We're supposed to be explorers!" Scotty laments before resigning in protest when a load of experimental missles are loaded onto the ship.  Spock argues for restraint against their orders to cross into Klingon territory to "drone" John Harrison into oblivion without a trial.  Star Trek Into Darkness struggles with this idea and comes out on the right side in a way that is in keeping with Gene Roddenberry's vision.

I'm going to talk about John Harrison and his stated identity as Khan in a separate entry but I will say that Benedict Cumberbatch plays a wonderful villain who is all Hannibal Lectorish ice and intelligence.  He's a great character in his own right but as Khan he seems to be lacking a little flair and theatricality.  For all of his strength and intelligence, Khan was always a bit unstable and volatile.  Even in his first appearence in "The Space Seed," before stewing in his Wrath for a decade and a half, he was fatally flawed with arrogance.  This is a characteristic of all of the Augments in Trek lore, who have been established as having been prone to violence and insanity.  John Harrison lacks this character trait and is quite disciplined and restrained.  He's great but no Khan.

Many critics have often zeroed in on the fact that the film seems refer to other Star Trek stories, particularly Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, particularly in its final act which essentially recalls the ending of that movie with this movie's Spock and Kirk having switched places with their prime universe counterparts.  The film has been accused of lacking "originality" for this or "fanwanking."  I'm the first person to call out fanwankery and while the idea of Kirk on the other side of that glass is certainly a reference to Wrath of Khan,  it is one that serves the character and the story and also plays with the audience's expectations in an interesting way.  It's also a fun reminder that we are in an alternate timeline and things are not going to play out the way that they did in the original series and movies.  This is supposedly a Khan story but it is neither a remake of Wrath of Khan  nor even "The Space Seed," the events of which would have been roughly contemporary to this story in the prime timeline.

Star Trek Into Darkness is a worthy addition to the Star Trek canon and has the kind of warmth and humanity that Star Trek and science fiction often lacks.  Particularly in a time of increasingly bland and flat blockbusters, Into Darkness focuses on its characters in a really satisfying way.  It also mixes up the Star Trek that we all know and love and with this second movie in the NuTrek series, we see that these stories and characters are fast becoming into their own thing.  Being more of a fan of '90's Trek, I had mixed emotions about abandoning the main timeline and going back to the classic crew in which I had never been particularly invested but I now look forward to future adventures with this crew which is starting to feel like my Star Trek.  While the movie is largely concerned with militarism in Starfleet, the ending has the crew commencing their famous five year journey of the Original Series and going "where no one has gone before."

Four Nights In New Orleans

As we wandered the French Quarter very late on a Sunday night we heard the happy sounds

of a Jazz wedding procession.

I have been infatuated with New Orleans since the 1990's when I first read Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, a supernatural confessional mostly set in and around the Crescent City.  It's Rice's hometown and she's featured it heavily in her books, particularly The Witching Hour and its sequels.   In her fiction, she paints a compelling picture of a city that is both vividly alive and steeped in the past.  It's not for nothing that one of New Orlean's many nicknames is America's Most Interesting City.  In fact, in many parts of the city, it's easy to forget that you are in fact in the 21st Century United States instead of some long ago Caribbean settlement.  After almost twenty years of wanting to visit, I finally made it there for a long weekend in April 2013.

French Quarter building with characteristic lace iron balcony.

I've never been to a city that so vigorously guards and protects its past.  Construction in the French Quarter and the Garden District is strictly regulated to keep with historical aesthetics.  The result of this is a wonderful architectural coherence.  A walk down Royal Street at night is a stroll into the romantic past with its moody 18th Century buildings and pools of soft light from faux gas lamps.  In the Garden District, the 19th Century rules. Here you'll find looming Greek Revival and Italianate mansions.  Even on Canal Street where the French Quarter gives way to Uptown and the modern city, the architecture is carefully managed.  Early and mid 20th Century buildings line the street as though to ease one's transition into modernity while the palm trees  and art deco flourishes give the street a Floridian flavor.

The Greek Revival Garden District mansion formerly owned by Anne Rice 

and the setting for her novel The Witching Hour.

From our hotel in the French Quarter we explored raucus and messy Bourbon Street, which even at a relatively quiet time in April was overrun by loud, drunken tourists wearing belated Mardi Gras beads.  New Orleans has very relaxed alcohol laws and although one is allowed to drink on the street, public drunkenness is illegal. We were there long enough to see a drunken fist fight between tourists and the resulting arrest.

In the French Quarter, even the garbage is festive.

Immediately noticeable in the Quarter are the balconies with gorgeous wrought iron railings and which are on many buildings.  These decorative embellishments are actually a reminder of the decades in the 18th Century during which the city was a Spanish holding.  Despite the dominance of French culture in the city for most of its history, a lot of the characteristic architecture is actually Spanish colonial and for anyone who has lived or travelled in Latin America, the aesthetic of the French Quarter will seem very familiar.

A French Quarter building, with double wrap-around porches and iron lace frames.

Part of the beauty and charm of the French Quarter is in it many architectural levels, lines and embellishments.  The balconies elegantly frame and scaffold their buildings and give them a sense of flourish and depth.  The balconies themselves are not just simple linear structures but are framed by delicate, ornate ironwork and often decorated with antiques and gardens which have grown heavy and lush in the Louisiana hothouse climate.

Sometimes hidden in the shadows behind the main buildings are smaller buildings which were often the slave and servant quarters, themselves elegantly decayed.   One can occasionally see hidden gardens and courtyards glimpsed through iron gates and tropical foliage.  Often, buildings will have a mysterious gated corridor seemingly leading behind the structure to a rear courtyard.  These are carriageways from the days of horse and buggy travel and they lead to what would have been the stables or carriage houses.  There are many reminders of the French Quarter's equestrian past scattered around the neighborhood.

These iron horse ties are all over the Quarter
and reminders of the days of horse travel.
This beautifully weathered one is on Esplande.

There is no need for cabs or cars within the French Quarter, as it is not very big and it's clear that its narrow streets were not designed with cars in mind.  In fact, you do yourself a disservice by not walking through the Quarter as much as possible.  It is one of the most walkable  places that I have ever been to in both its size and the joy of discovery.  New Orleans, as a whole is not a huge city and from what I was able to see, a bicycle would be a great option for getting between the major sites.

As you walk farther towards Canal, the Quarter becomes increasingly upscale and filled with expensive restaurants, boutiques and antique shops.   The opposite, northeastern border of the French Quarter is Esplande Ave, which is quieter and more residential.  A large median which is overgrown with towering trees and greenery separates the traffic lanes.  This stretch of Esplande Ave was very pretty and one of my favorite parts of the city.  As you are walking along you catch glimpses of beautiful old Creole buildings in their pastel glory framed by trees and lush tropical plants.

Building on Esplande Avenue.

As you travel towards the Mississippi, there is a definite funky and Bohemian vibe.  Jackson Square-a Spanish colonial style Plaza de Armas-is surrounded by people selling everything from paintings to  Tarot readings.  You'll also find the kinds of skeevy street kids you find in places like Portland.  Jackson Square is a great place to catch street performers and musicians who do their thing in the shadow of the great St. Louis Cathedral.    Despite all of the chaos going on around it, the actual square is surprisingly immaculate with its clean flagstones and well-trimmed greenery that surround the statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback. 

Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral in the background.

In this part pf the part of the quarter you can also find two New Orleans  institutions: Central Grocery with its famous muffaletta sandwich and Cafe du Monde with its cafe au lait and beignets, which are squared donut-like pastries.  Central Grocery has been around for over a century and is the kind of deli/grocery shop you used to find whereever Italians settled in the U.S. but which are now an endangered species.  Inside, you'll find a wide variety olive oils and Italian cooking supplies in addition to their signature sandwich, which is made of meats, cheeses, and their own olive salad and served on a giant circular loaf.  While not for everybody, it's a must try while you are in town. 

Even older than Central Grocery is Cafe du Monde, a New Orleans institution since 1862.  We tried to go there several times but were put off by the enormous crowds.  We finally found it manageable on our last night there on a Sunday evening.  The menu is essentially limited to coffee and beignets and the servers wear adorable old-fashioned paper butcher hats.  I'm not a coffee drinker at all but I must say I liked the chicory-flavored Cafe au Lait, particularly after I managed to dip the beignets (which are almost absurdly covered in powdered sugar) in a few times.

Cafe du Monde avec crowds.

Cafe du Monde  is located near the French Market which is a tented area where they sell produce and prepared foods and just about everything else.  The area has been a market in one form or another since the 18th Century.  For a number of reasons, this is a great place to hit up if your time in NOLA is short. First, you can pick up any souvenirs you need here at decent prices.  Secondly,  if, like me, you came into town with a checklist of staple New Orleans foods that you wanted to try, you can sample most of them here in a casual atmosphere.  They serve everything from Gumbo to raw Oysters to alligator sausage and pralines.

From the riverfront you can also catch a ride on the Steamboat Natchez, a still-operating paddleboat that takes short cruises up the Mississippi.  A ride on the Natchez is a great way to see the skyline and  a cool reminder of New Orleans maritime past.  If you go at the right time you may also catch a beautiful sunset behind the city.  On the way out you'll probably pass some ships heading to dock and some local landmarks such as the levees that gave way in 2005 during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. 

The boat also features an old-timey calliope organ on its top deck which pipes out tunes from the ubiquitious "When The Saints Come Marching In," to what sounded suspiciously like the music from the underwater levels of Super Mario Bros.  This music often floats over the whole riverfront and convention center giving the area a festive and sweetly nostalgic feel.  

Less sweet is the insanely loud fog horn on the ship.  On our way back into the city, the Natchez engaged in an extended back-and-forth with another passing cruise ship, which sounded a lot like how I imagine two Tyrannosaurs fighting over a carcass would sound.  Its a sound that you feel in the middle of your chest and one that vibrates off the buildings and througout the city like something from a Godzilla movie.

There is also an option to have dinner aboard the Natchez but the food is nothing special.  You're better off spending your money at one of New Orleans fine restaurants or grab yourself a couple of delicious poboy sandwiches.  If you are interested, you can also take a walk down to the steam engine room on the ship.  I highly recommend a ride on the Natchez as it is one of those uniquely New Orleans experiences.

If you are looking to venture out of the city consider a combination swamp/plantation tour like those offered by Cajun Pride Tours. The service includes hotel pick-up and drop-off and a tour of a private swamp in a flat-bottom boat and admission to either Oak Alley or Laura Plantation.  Our shuttle driver was a New Orleans native who pointed out many of the sites on the way, giving a de facto tour of the city and environs. 

The driver also gave us a chance to hear an authentic New Orleans accent.  Because of it's location, people will assume that New Orleanians have a "Southern" or possibly a Cajun accent but the fact is that the characteristic dialect (at least for the working class white population) is one that sounds remarkably like the kind of dialect you would hear on the east coast, particularly in and around New York City.  It actually makes sense as both are large port cities in which settled huge amounts of Irish, Italian, and German immigrants which influenced the spoken English.

A (replica?) Cajun trapper hut.

Cajun Pride has their own section of swampland and even on what was a rather cold day we saw about half of a dozen alligators.  Our swamp tour guide even surprised us with a baby alligator which was basically passed around the boat like a joint.  Alligator culture is big in Louisiana and gator farming is a major industry in the state.  Consequently, you can find gator meat on the menu in many local restaurants.  I had a dish called Alligator Picante at the Corner Oyster House in the French Quarter.  It was a tasty dish and I found the meat to have a fish-like consistency in the sauce.  It wasn't as chewy or substantial as I was expecting.  I also tried the alligator sausage at the French Market and it was quite good, although it has some pork mixed in.

The swamp tour guide even gave us a little background on the Cajun culture of Lousiana and how it was different from the more diverse and cosmopolitan Creole culture of New Orleans.  The Cajun people have a fascinating, globetrekking history that took them from France across the Atlantic to Canada, where they were run out by the British.  These people who originally called themselves Accadians then made their way to Louisiana but purposefully settled away from the French Creole culture.  The Cajuns flourished in the remote, rural parts of the state and they are the last holdouts of French-speaking Louisiana culture, as French has not been widely spoken in New Orleans for a century.

Meanwhile the Creole culture has adapted and absorbed infusions of Spanish, Indian, African, and European immigrant culture.  Creole cuisine, for example, takes many cues from Cajun food and while they may be similar in the broad strokes, Creole food will incorporate ingredients like tomato sauce borrowed from Italian cuisine and one can see the influence of Spanish cuisine in Jambalaya, which is a Paella-like dish.  

While there's a clear marker between Cajun and Creole food, it's harder to put a finger on what the Creole identity really is.  It's not a race or ethnicity or language.  It's more of a beloved set of cultural markers that the people of New Orleans have tacitly agreed upon.  It seems more about lifestyle and food and local pride.  As an outsider, it's a hard thing to get a handle on.

As a Northerner, another thing difficult to get a handle on is the legacy of American slavery.  The second leg of our excursion took us to picturesque Oak Alley Plantation.  Oak Alley is so grand and stately that it is almost the very embodiment of Antebellum Southern American planation culture. It is so beautiful and iconic a structure that been featured in numerous films in which an impressive plantation has been needed.  It was prominently featured in the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, where it stood in for Louis' plantation house.  The plantation is named for the two rows of oak trees that lead to its entrance but which were actually planted one hundred years before the house was even built.

No visit to Oak Alley is complete without being stared at
 by creepy antique dolls.

Louisiana is dotted with old restored plantation houses which are marketed as major tourist attractions, Oak Alley foremost among them in the area.  It's hard to know how to feel about these places.  Oak Alley is undoubtably a beautiful place but it is also a place where human beings were purchased and exploited.  The impulse seems to be to present a romantic picture of the era and to gloss over this fact during the tours and refer to the slaves as "servants" with only a brief reference to the brutal institution of slavery.  Equally uncomfortable was the fact that my entire tour group was white.  In fact, the only black face I saw on the tour was that of a female employee at the plantation dressed in period clothes.

Neoclassical, much?

That being said, at Oak Alley there are some attempts to represent the perspective of the slaves.  They are in the process of reconstructing some of the slave quarters to give an idea what life was like on the other side of the plantation experience.  There is also a large plaque prominently displayed on the path to the plantation house with educational facts about slavery at Oak Alley and with the names of the slaves that were forced to work there.  Still, there is some real cognitive dissonance in visiting a place like Oak Alley and "enjoying" it.  I feel like if they are going to celebrate the experiences of the plantation owners, the only way to present a complete picture is to highlight the experiences of the slaves in equal measure, as unpleasant as the facts are.

Back in New Orleans, we took the famous St. Charles streetcar, which runs from Canal St. through Uptown.  St. Charles is one of the few remaining old-fashioned street cars running in the city.  Of course, the most famous streetcar was the streetcar named Desire from the Tenessee Williams play which was set in New Orleans.  That streetcar line was shut down by the 1950's.  The St. Charles, however, is still operating and remains charmingly retro with its wood interior and benches which faithfully recreate its 19th and 20th Century predecessors-with the exception of the automatic fare box.  A trip on the streetcar is a great way to see Uptown and one of those things you must do while you are in town.

I was on a mission to check out Anne Rice's old house at First and Chestnut in the Garden District, something the 1990's me always dreamed about doing.  After lunch on Magazine Street at a great Caribbean fusion restaurant called The Rum House, we headed to the Rice house guided by the very good Trip Advisor app (and its built in GPS) stopping at some of the beautiful homes on the way.  Fortunately, we also came across Lafayette Cemetery.  Because New Orleans is built on swampy land with a high water table conventional underground burials are not done since the corpses tend to work their way back out of the ground (and they wonder why horror stories are set there).  Instead, New Orleans cemeteries feature veritable cities of above ground-crypts.  

Each cemetery is a kind of necropolis with its own streets and alleyways and even well-maintained little lawns.  New Orleans is one of the few American cities where All Saints Day is widely celebrated, and it is on November 1st that families would traditionally go to the cemeteries and maintain the tombs of deceased relatives.

These cemeteries have also become kind of a macabre tourist attraction, especially St. Louis No. 1, where the "voodoo queen" Marie Laveau is interred.  In any case, I'm glad to have gotten a chance to at least pass through one of these remarkable New Orleans places.

Not only did Anne Rice live in the Garden District but her wonderful novel, The Witching Hour was largely set in her former home, so I was quite interested to see it for myself.  In those early chapters she vividly evokes the florid atmosphere of the Garden District in which the  stately mansions seem to be constantly in danger of being overtaken by wild "gardens" and the massive oak trees intertwine their branches overhead creating a leafy canopy. There are even plants growing on the branches themselves like green feathers.  These ancient oaks push their powerful roots in and out of the ground like muscular tentacles, causing the narrow sidewalks to buckle and break.  It really is a perfect setting for a book that is preoccupied with uncontrolable growth and mutation.

Mighty roots shoulder aside the pavement.

There is so much to do in and around New Orleans that four nights is barely enough time to scratch the surface.  On our trip we missed the Cabildo museum, Laura Plantation, Treme, Gallier House, World War II Museum, Algiers ferry, Bananas Foster, Voo Doo Museum, St. Louis Cemetery, boiled crawfish, the Audobon Zoo, and I'm sure a million other things of which I'm not even aware.  

I'll be back, New Orleans.  That's a promise.

Patrick Garone

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Looking up in the Garden District.