The Passage On Fox TV

I just watched the trailer for the Passage. Fox made a TV show out of the story. I love those books by Justin Cronin. Three long-ass novels, full of spectacular action and great characters. I was dreading the day when someone tried to squeeze it all into a video format. I was right to worry.

As I feared, it looks like an attempt to force a size 14 foot into a size 8 ½ shoe, where the effort has badly damaged both objects.

But it's early for a full critique. The show just started on the air in mid-January, 2019, and I won't lay eyes on it for a long while yet. Maybe Netflix will pick it up, who knows? For now I'm going to complain about casting. One specific bit of casting.

They took Amy, “the Girl from Nowhere, The One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years,” who “was just a little girl in Iowa,” and turned her from an obviously white girl into a black girl. Yes, I know that there are black girls in Iowa, but Amy's parents are described in considerable detail in the first book. (I'll bet that they changed the Iowa bit too. You know, something urban to go with the black character.)

How could they do that? We live in a world where you are severely criticized if you make a movie out of a book and change an Asian character in the book into a white character in the movie. Black to white, same deal, which is no deal. So, is it still okay to change white characters into anything that you think will help your product? Well, it looks like the answer is yes.

The books are full to the brim with good, solid black characters, and they get a lot of page-time. There was no need to look for a character to turn black to achieve some kind of balance. They went with the black Amy for commercial reasons, probably tinged with racism. The Amy character turns out to be tremendously powerful, and she does, indeed, live for 1,000 years. Maybe they thought a black girl would convey that power better. She's older, too. That really steps on the story line though, because the contrast between her looks and her abilities is part of the story. She's a poor, skinny little white girl from Nowheresville who saves the fucking world. What are people thinking? They probably tested it with audiences who cheered more for the black girl, or were confused about the innocent little white girl. I guess they paid for the rights fair and square, and I have no right to stop them from making whatever mess out of the story that they see fit.

The whole changing the race of characters kerfuffle breaks my heart. Shouldn't Asian actors think twice about opposing the very idea of a white girl playing an Asian girl in a movie or TV show? Certainly, there are more white or black or Hispanic characters than Asian characters in American video products. Shouldn't Asian actors be allowed to play any one of those characters? It seems unfair to play the race card only in one direction. In fact, it seems unconstitutional on Equal Protection grounds.

Let actors play characters, period. Many times the results are spectacular. Harry Belafonte, in the Bedford Incident, played a role that was written for a white character. He did a great job, and it made the movie a very important part of the incorporation of progressive racial ideas into naturalistic settings. It was remarkable in 1964 to see a strong black man being a hard-ass with the officers on a United States Navy destroyer, where the officers mess was still being served by Filipino stewards in starched livery. But no one knew that character before that movie. Same with Ripley in the Alien franchise. That part was written to be played by a man, and not a word of the script was changed. Sigorney Weaver hit it out of the park, but the character was hers to create, having never existed before. Amy exists. People know Amy, and they know the story.

Honestly, I don't think that it will make any difference, nor even rise to become part of the great debate about who can play whom. The Fox show looks awful, and from what I've seen in trailers they've thrown away the source material entirely, grafting some kind of vicious creatures onto a lame detective plot.

May I add that I am not demonstrating in favor of the rights of white actors to play Asians, or Othello, or any Goddamned thing. Let's just leave the small stuff alone, shall we? Can we let actors play characters without restriction while respecting that some characters are part of existing stories? Can you imagine Scout as a nice little black girl whose black father is a lawyer defending a black defendant? No, you cannot. It's all part of the story. That's exactly what is happening here with the Passage.

But like I say. It's probably crap anyway, so who cares?

Political Poetry Incorrectness

Anders Carlson-Wee had a fourteen line poem called “How-To” published in The Nation magazine on July 24, 2018. Should we say, “good for you, Anders! What a coup!” Why no, we should not. We are not allowed. If we congratulate Anders, or if we have enjoyed the poem in any way, we are as bad as he is. The preferred response these days is to throw up one's hands and shout, “j'accuse!” Such a poem is no longer to be tolerated.

Here is the offending poem, in its entirety:

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,

say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower

themselves to listen for the kick. People

passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee

funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely

to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know

you is. What they don’t know is what opens

a wallet, what stops em from counting

what they drop. If you’re young say younger.

Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t

flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough

Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,

say you sin. It’s about who they believe

they is. You hardly even there.

(My sincerest apologies to the Copyright Gods, although I don't think that Anders would mind. I'm on his side, after all.)

The poem caused a giant shit-storm in multiple communities and among desperately sincere social justice warrior wannabes. There were letters to the editor and torrents on social media, and the kerfuffle made the New York Times this morning. The two main problems were identified as: 1) a white poet attempted to use black vernacular; and 2) an able person included the word, “crippled.”

Let's look at the cripple problem. The complaints seem to have revolved around the mere use of the word “cripple,” which is now judged to be disparaging and ableist language. Ableist! Can you even imagine? That is a word now! For all I know, poor Anders may himself have a limp, or even mild cerebral palsy, but I don't think even that would excuse him in today's hypercritical climate. No, the world must be purged completely of such words, all of them. I have never seen a list published; please let me know if there is such a list. Let me know so that I can ignore it, when appropriate.

I would probably use the term “handicapped” myself, at least in my personal discourse. Or maybe “disabled.” Handicapped, after all, includes mental and emotional conditions that rise to the level of pathology. Even there, one could be mentally handicapped without being mentally disabled. There are gradations to everything. What's a poor writer to do?

How about the cultural appropriation problem? How about it? Is it a cultural emergency when a white writer attempts to use “black vernacular?” That is a slippery slope. Does that mean that we must remove “Huckleberry Finn” from the catalog? Or must we only purge it of all dialog sections. How about a suburban, Harvard educated black American poet? Would she be able to use the black urban vernacular of big city thug life? That's a serious question. Here's another one: if she were writing a novel, would she be able to use the vernacular English of a white housewife from another part of the country? How about the broken English of a recently arrived immigrant? Would the ethnic information about the immigrant have any bearing on her permission to “attempt to use” it?

What a fucking mess.

The poem is a first person narrative. Are we now to impose all of the constantly shifting rules of political correctness on every character in every fictional narrative? Oh, honey, that ain't going to happen.

Can we agree that there is a difference between using offensive words in personal conversation, live presentations, dialog presented in quotes in fiction writing, and third person fictional narratives? There is also a difference when the word is used in poetry, with similar gradations if the word is used in the first, second, or third person. Each situation requires viewing through a different lens.

If I write a novel, and one of the characters uses the totally offensive term, “nigger,” in quoted dialog, am I to be publicly condemned and required to apologize from the deepest depths of my heart and soul? That is going to happen within a year or so. You may wish to begin sharpening your knives in preparation.

I think that it's a pretty good poem. I'm no critic, but if I were assigned to debate the proposition, I'd rather have the “this poem is fine” side than the “this poem is a racist, ableist abomination” side. I've written poems myself that are a lot more offensive than this one. I wrote them for effect; I chose the words carefully. I stand before you now as a licensed, experienced attorney, and I've been some kind of junior academic for over ten years, teaching university classes. Before that I was a worker at various jobs, many unsophisticated. Before that I was a teenage borderline hooligan in the Borough of Queens. Before that I was a boy in a very rough working class neighborhood of New York City. Which of these vernaculars am I still permitted to use? How about in fictional narratives or poetry? How about in blog posts about the old days? In my own speech, I was never comfortable with “nigger,” but it was a commonly used word in my milieu. Not only as a noun, but as an adjective, “niggerized,” which applied to anything that had been decorated in an elaborate way, no longer being limited to having anything to do with black Americans. (A white man could have a niggerized motorcycle, with lots of chrome and extra lights and reflectors.) We definitely called stupid people stupid back then, and cripples were cripples, and that was universal. Interestingly, faggots were not homosexuals. They were boys who would not fight back or stand up for themselves. Am I barred from reminiscing about these old customs? It's my own vernacular, after all.

I stand four-square for artistic freedom. Anders Carlson-Wee should be free to write his poem in any manner that he sees fit. It's his Goddamned poem! Those are his words! To oppose his right to express himself in his own art is nascent fascism. It's a mini-book-burning. Leave the man alone. Making him, and the poor poetry editors at The Nation, grovel, begging for forgiveness, makes you look ridiculous. That our culture has descended to embrace this kind of drum-head rhetorical criminal trial makes us all look ridiculous.

So, that's how I really feel about it. Some days I'm very happy to have a blog.

The Blind Spot In Politically Correct Culture

Political correctness is a relatively recent term that is “used to describe some language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society.” (From Wikipedia.) The proscription against giving offense has been getting stronger, and the list of “particular groups” has been getting longer. In my own life, I have tended to avoid giving offense to anyone from an early age. I did this without outside direction. This was partly because I have always thought that it was not nice, and partly because I didn’t want to get my ass kicked.

By now, Stephen Colbert saying that (redacted’s) mouth isn’t good for anything other than as Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster” gets a furious reaction. This even though (redacted) is himself so rude and offensive that no one should consider his feelings at all. The reactions came not only from the gay community, but also from conservatives in general and on anti-crudeness or blasphemy grounds from the overly sensitive. So we can be sure that Political Correctness can be expressed not only on protective grounds, but it may also mask an aggressive desire to condemn political opponents. Admirable flexibility, that.

But, P.C. We must be alert not to offend homosexuals (“faggots,” “. . . his butt plug came lose at this point”) lesbians (“dykes”), the handicapped (“retards,” people who “stu . . .stu . . . stutter,” “oh! I don’t know what I said!” [Donald Trump, mimicking cerebral palsy]), minorities (“beaners,” “rag-heads,” “sand-eaters”), Jews (“good with money”), and others. The list now includes fragile students at our universities who must be protected from “trigger words.” That just seems to me to be a doomed attempt to protect them from the true nature of the wider world, which is volatile and senselessly cruel.

I don’t mind this effort to be solicitous of the feelings of others, but I do wish that the program was more careful not to exclude groups from the protected circle who obviously qualify for our consideration.

Senior Citizens

At least one group is still fair game: the elderly.

(Disclaimer: If I am not elderly already, I will make the cut within six to eight weeks. These days, I don’t feel a day under 100.)

Here Donald Trump is a victim as well as a bully. He has dementia! (Never mind that he’s always been this way.) He can’t get it up! (Viagra jokes in general are offensive to older Americans.)

Jimmy Kimmel chose last week to follow his triumphant speech about his son’s difficult birth with a sketch called “the Cane Cane.” That would be a device that would prevent a dropped cane from falling to the floor. The bit featured Kimmel and others made up to look like old folks dropping their canes on the floor, and then having huge difficulties picking them up again. One faux old lady fell down on her face! Hilarious! (Not.)

The whole thing made my knees hurt just thinking about it. Believe me, picking a dime up off of the floor becomes a challenge at some point. There’s not a single thing funny about it, not after you reach that point, anyway.

These slurs and digs against the elderly are thrown around willy-nilly. Older Americans are routinely spoken of as though they were useless-eaters. There are casual suggestions that the elderly are hogging all of the assets, you know, the things that they worked so hard to acquire when they were strong in an effort to avoid destitution in their old age.  They are presented as a drag on the social-safety-net, as though there were still such a thing! Same goes for the medical system, the elderly cost us a fortune with their damned maladies! There’s anger and viciousness in these in this treatment of our senior-citizens, and it doesn’t make much sense.

Bear in mind that the elderly are just like those other protected groups. Like them, the elderly are our own beloved family members, friends and neighbors. They are our fellow citizens. They raised subsequent generations, worked and paid taxes, fought in wars, and created art and music. Is no one disposed to be grateful?

More importantly, they are us. They are me, soon, and they are you, in the near or distant future. That’s if you are lucky. “As you are, so I once was; as I am, so you will be,” said the statue of a skeleton in the graveyard.

Fate Has Your Number

People under forty-years-old are the worst offenders. They, most of them, have not yet achieved the basic understanding that old age will someday overtake them. Perhaps they are just ignoring the possibility, or perhaps they think that diet and exercise will prevent the worst of it. Either way, many of them feel a misplaced sense of immunity to the problem.

But no one is immune, and no regimen of diet and exercise can protect you. We are, for better or worse, machines. And just like the best maintained car, if our machinery is run at full power, all day, every day, it will someday wear all the way out and die on the road. It’s no different for us. Systems from skin, to heart, to eyes, wear out over time. Our very skeletons wear out! Knees and hips only have so many shocks that they can take. Shoulders, elbows, fingers, all of that friction adds up. Even if you take superb care of your teeth and drink your milk there will be bone loss in your jaws and your teeth will suffer. No vitamins or supplements can prevent some degree of osteoarthritis, eventually. There’s a reason that the doctors call these things, “normal degenerative changes.”

One day a key system fails, or a terrible disease overtakes us, and the writing on the wall bursts into flames, “it’s (almost) over, Johnny!” And that’s only if you didn’t get hit by a bus in the meantime. No one is guaranteed the “Golden Years” of retirement.

Sometimes I wonder if these whippersnappers are just whistling past the graveyard to calm their fears about getting old. Then I remember, no, they just don’t know shit about life.

Someday they’ll figure it out, just like those of us on the ebb-tide of life have done. They’ll undergo the same process of education that we did. I sincerely hope for their sake that following generations are gentler with them than they are being with us.

A Generous Offer

So can we just put the “elderly” on the protected list? Can we cool it with the jokes about Depends and Viagra? Jokes about canes and memory loss?

Geezers have feelings, too.

In return for you all laying off the wise cracks, we older Americans would be glad to stop asking you troublesome questions like:

“Who was president in the 1980s?”

“Who did we fight in World War II?”

“Who won the Civil War?”

“Which country gave America the Statue of Liberty?”

And, the really tricky one,

“Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?”