While Rudy Giuliani’s image as hero of Gotham gets snuffed by the International Association of Fire Fighters with Democrats all too happy to help douse his flame, the FX’s “Rescue Me” about life in a New York firehouse after 9/11 also has viewers evacuating.
The TV show, now in its fourth season has suffered a Nielson meltdown with Ad Age’s Brian Steinberg saying it’s in need of triage.
That both stories converge now is telling on a few levels.
Rudy’s remark, “I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.” may have singed him, but it wasn’t fatal. Rather, the back draft from it is just part of the now standard media cycle.
Gaffes get gobbled down so fast and digested into the meat grinder of news they pass through like bland chopped liver. They’re fuel for a few runs around the news track, and then become heartburn. First the faux pas. Then the daily feeding frenzy. Then the endless spin cycle. All are typical of our magnified media endoscope. In time, it will be one more stone that future historians will have to turn over and piece together never able to find the original cause.
Rudy’s bigger misstep is linking himself to W and trying to take ownership of an event that for each of us holds a sacred place. Just as no one individual can own The Holocaust because it is larger than any one person, to brand oneself as the savior of 9/11 is a shaky scaffold to support.
W’s leaned on it so heavily over the past six years that it’s bowing. Using it as a hook to hang your Uncle Sam hat on is, well, old.
As a culture, while we feel an emotional bond with that day, we also feel it was leveraged against us and our sympathy used for a war we’re sick and tired of watching.
It’s the reason shows like “Rescue Me” are flaming out. Rescue me from “Rescue Me”.
It’s the sheer exhaustion with the constant state of alarm we’re in without finding the match that started the whole thing. It feels like we’ve been blown plenty of smoke. But where’s the spark that started it all?
Where is bin Laden? He’s a ghost. An apparition.
Similarly, the TV shows that were so rooted in the ground of 9/11 have evaporated. Gone are shows like “The Nine” and “Vanished” which tapped into a realistic sense of danger.
Replacing them are fantasies based on the metaphysical that picked up from the phenomenon of “Heroes.” I’ll have more to say about them once they start to air, but look for shows this fall like ''Pushing Daisies'' a forensic fairy tale that focuses on Ned, a piemaker with a mysterious ability to make the dead live again and “Journeyman” about a time traveler.
Last year’s hit show “Heroes” depicts various people around the world who discover they possess real superpowers from instantly healing physical injuries to manipulating time in order to travel through it.
But all these shows reflect more than just the state of anxiety that pervades a post 9/11world. They are a backlash against the very shows that picked up on that tension.
The ratings war is picking off the shows that were the first responders to the cultural chasm.
In the arrangement of Aristotle’s treatises, his Metaphysics follow his Physics and are so called as they literally follow, though some have interpreted that to mean they go beyond.
Likewise, if television is any indication of the times, with a season of shows that tap into the metaphysical, perhaps it’s also time pols do the same and move beyond the ground war and continuously trying to lay claim to lower Manhattan.
While we remember the past, the country is tuned into a different frequency, one on a higher, more spiritual level.
Abe
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Comic Relief
Captain America is dead and now buried. He was killed earlier this year by a sniper’s bullet on the courthouse steps in New York. He died just as he lived, a hero, when he stepped in front of a bullet that was aimed at him but was going to hit a police officer. He’s now supposedly laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Or is he?
That Cap has occupied space in our collective pop-culture consciousness for some seventy years is a tribute to humanity’s spiritual quest for something greater than ourselves. Just as Greek gods and biblical heroes were vital to their epoch, Cap and assorted comic book stars have woven into our lives, enveloping us like a super suit.
First created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in December 1940, Cap’s what Gerard Jones in his book, Men of Tomorrow called, “the passion of the immigrant, of the Jew”. Both Simon and Kirby are of course Jewish (Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917, the same year Steve Rogers AKA Captain America was born). In the first issue, even before the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor, they had Captain America punch Hitler in the jaw. Way to go boys!
That he’s dead now serves as a metaphor. At a time when civil liberties are curtailed and one’s identity is being monitored by the government, never mind an unpopular war in Iraq, his current animators aptly iced him. But as Joe Simon, said in reaction to the news, “It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now.” Doing a little research I learned that he’s actually been reported deceased some dozen times and will probably resurrect again.
In the meantime, all is not lost. Just last night (Thursday) a super mensch made his debut on the Sci Fi Channel. His name is Mr. Mitzvah aka (Ivan Wilzig) and like Cap, uses a shield, but in the form of a Star of David, as he’s described as a direct descendant of the biblical King. His super powers include flight, night vision and super-strength while his vulnerability is Non-kosher foods.
The show is called “Who Wants To Be a Superhero” and is co-produced and hosted by legendary comic creator Stan Lee and picks up on the reality TV trend by with an hour-long weekly competition series.
If all sounds a bit silly and a little too fantastic, it’s nothing new. After all, it’s a story that’s been told, re-told and remolded out of Golem-like clay going back thousands of years to the prophetic, Messianic age.
From Bar Kokhba (not an east village pub, though that’s a great name for one), the leader of a revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE to Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994 and who still has followers who believe he will be the messiah and reveal himself, Jews have been in search of heroes for, well…ever. We’ve found ways to either fictitiously create them or truly actualize them by anointing them with god-like powers.
I suppose one reason we do it, is that we find we are constantly in peril. We’ve been able to disguise ourselves blending into every culture on the face of the earth and have assimilated more times and into more cultures than Clark Kent has business suits. Eventually too, we have to reveal who we are. And if for some reason, like supers we have to keep our identity hidden, then our true identities must find a way out in storied manifestations and through actions.
While Captain America might be gone for now, the need for someone to come along and punch out the next Hitler won’t disappear. Last night’s Sci Fi renderings were only the latest in a long line of wishful projections onto an imaginary screen––a screen that we’ve used to both hide behind as well as reveal our true selves.
That Cap has occupied space in our collective pop-culture consciousness for some seventy years is a tribute to humanity’s spiritual quest for something greater than ourselves. Just as Greek gods and biblical heroes were vital to their epoch, Cap and assorted comic book stars have woven into our lives, enveloping us like a super suit.
First created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in December 1940, Cap’s what Gerard Jones in his book, Men of Tomorrow called, “the passion of the immigrant, of the Jew”. Both Simon and Kirby are of course Jewish (Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917, the same year Steve Rogers AKA Captain America was born). In the first issue, even before the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor, they had Captain America punch Hitler in the jaw. Way to go boys!
That he’s dead now serves as a metaphor. At a time when civil liberties are curtailed and one’s identity is being monitored by the government, never mind an unpopular war in Iraq, his current animators aptly iced him. But as Joe Simon, said in reaction to the news, “It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now.” Doing a little research I learned that he’s actually been reported deceased some dozen times and will probably resurrect again.
In the meantime, all is not lost. Just last night (Thursday) a super mensch made his debut on the Sci Fi Channel. His name is Mr. Mitzvah aka (Ivan Wilzig) and like Cap, uses a shield, but in the form of a Star of David, as he’s described as a direct descendant of the biblical King. His super powers include flight, night vision and super-strength while his vulnerability is Non-kosher foods.
The show is called “Who Wants To Be a Superhero” and is co-produced and hosted by legendary comic creator Stan Lee and picks up on the reality TV trend by with an hour-long weekly competition series.
If all sounds a bit silly and a little too fantastic, it’s nothing new. After all, it’s a story that’s been told, re-told and remolded out of Golem-like clay going back thousands of years to the prophetic, Messianic age.
From Bar Kokhba (not an east village pub, though that’s a great name for one), the leader of a revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE to Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994 and who still has followers who believe he will be the messiah and reveal himself, Jews have been in search of heroes for, well…ever. We’ve found ways to either fictitiously create them or truly actualize them by anointing them with god-like powers.
I suppose one reason we do it, is that we find we are constantly in peril. We’ve been able to disguise ourselves blending into every culture on the face of the earth and have assimilated more times and into more cultures than Clark Kent has business suits. Eventually too, we have to reveal who we are. And if for some reason, like supers we have to keep our identity hidden, then our true identities must find a way out in storied manifestations and through actions.
While Captain America might be gone for now, the need for someone to come along and punch out the next Hitler won’t disappear. Last night’s Sci Fi renderings were only the latest in a long line of wishful projections onto an imaginary screen––a screen that we’ve used to both hide behind as well as reveal our true selves.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Color My World
We live in a consumer culture whose appetite thrives on brands for survival. And if you’ve got a cause, it needs to find its way into the brand stream of our collective conscience. It needs marketing.
These days everything is a brand, from people and places to politicians and products. Causes are no different.
From the moment we awake and turn off our buzzing Sony clocks, to brushing our teeth with Crest to pouring the Kellogg’s…well, you get the picture. Consumers come across over 3000 brand messages a day.
Finding a way above the pack has always been a challenge, but in a glutted world of media overload, how does a brand rise above? One way is to attach itself to a cause that is higher.
If it sounds crass, have a look at the most recent edition of Vanity Fair, now on newsstands. It’s the Africa issue, edited by Bono. Bono’s cause has been third world debt with a focus on Africa. Pictured on the current cover lying in front of me is Alicia Keys whispering in the ear of the supermodel, Iman. It will be one of twenty covers by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. Photos will also include some of the most famous celebs (brands) around. Like Bono and Iman they’re so famous, they need only one name (Oprah will soon be another.)
To read Bono’s Guest Editor’s Letter is like being punched in the gut in terms of the dire situation that exists (10 million children’s lives will be lost next year to extreme poverty, half in Africa due to HIV/AIDS.) What he’s done, is link that crisis to a brand simply called Red. Red is the color of emergencies. Tied to his cause however, are marketing’s All Stars at their best including corporate partners Amex, Apple, Armani and more. Red lifts their brand and the profits they make leveraging it, goes to fight the world’s ills. Win/Win.
On the other side of the color spectrum of red, every other brand is green. With global warming rising like the tides onto the mainstream surface, due in part to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, so called green marketing is all the rage.
I don’t have to tell you about the plethora of colors adorning wristbands.
For Jewish philanthropic organizations, gaining an understanding of the power behind branding and linking their message with the sway of the other kinda green is key if they are to maneuver their message to the forefront.
Perhaps, had this kind of thing been around in the 1930s and 40s who knows what might have been.
Ironically, advertising as an industry grew out of that era. Today it’s so enmeshed into pop culture that corporate iconography is worn like a badge of honor.
Are there dangers in lending an institution’s prophetic message to the world of profit? You bet. A thin line exists. Carefully managing it is key.
Read Tova Reich’s My Holocaust for a satirical send up of how the philanthropic Holocaust industry “Make Your Cause a Holocaust” gets diluted and exploited and goes haywire from over exposure.
But while most advertising is derivative, taking its cues from pop culture and using them to sell stuff, in a world where advertising needs to be entertainment and important information needs advertising, the lines flow both ways.
Advertising, while a flimsy medium on its own, actually benefits by the weight of the world’s problems but has the pockets sewn in to help sustain it.
Brands, while possessing an ephemeral essence were at one point only figments of some creative director’s imagination. Now however, they live in the same world that we do and they’re here to stay. They’re as tactile as the Apple I’m pounding this out on.
Finding the right way to use them, for the benefit of humankind, is a notion that can go right to the heart of Judaism’s central belief in Tikkun olam. Again, like a brand, a metaphysical notion but grounded in the real world.
These days everything is a brand, from people and places to politicians and products. Causes are no different.
From the moment we awake and turn off our buzzing Sony clocks, to brushing our teeth with Crest to pouring the Kellogg’s…well, you get the picture. Consumers come across over 3000 brand messages a day.
Finding a way above the pack has always been a challenge, but in a glutted world of media overload, how does a brand rise above? One way is to attach itself to a cause that is higher.
If it sounds crass, have a look at the most recent edition of Vanity Fair, now on newsstands. It’s the Africa issue, edited by Bono. Bono’s cause has been third world debt with a focus on Africa. Pictured on the current cover lying in front of me is Alicia Keys whispering in the ear of the supermodel, Iman. It will be one of twenty covers by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. Photos will also include some of the most famous celebs (brands) around. Like Bono and Iman they’re so famous, they need only one name (Oprah will soon be another.)
To read Bono’s Guest Editor’s Letter is like being punched in the gut in terms of the dire situation that exists (10 million children’s lives will be lost next year to extreme poverty, half in Africa due to HIV/AIDS.) What he’s done, is link that crisis to a brand simply called Red. Red is the color of emergencies. Tied to his cause however, are marketing’s All Stars at their best including corporate partners Amex, Apple, Armani and more. Red lifts their brand and the profits they make leveraging it, goes to fight the world’s ills. Win/Win.
On the other side of the color spectrum of red, every other brand is green. With global warming rising like the tides onto the mainstream surface, due in part to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, so called green marketing is all the rage.
I don’t have to tell you about the plethora of colors adorning wristbands.
For Jewish philanthropic organizations, gaining an understanding of the power behind branding and linking their message with the sway of the other kinda green is key if they are to maneuver their message to the forefront.
Perhaps, had this kind of thing been around in the 1930s and 40s who knows what might have been.
Ironically, advertising as an industry grew out of that era. Today it’s so enmeshed into pop culture that corporate iconography is worn like a badge of honor.
Are there dangers in lending an institution’s prophetic message to the world of profit? You bet. A thin line exists. Carefully managing it is key.
Read Tova Reich’s My Holocaust for a satirical send up of how the philanthropic Holocaust industry “Make Your Cause a Holocaust” gets diluted and exploited and goes haywire from over exposure.
But while most advertising is derivative, taking its cues from pop culture and using them to sell stuff, in a world where advertising needs to be entertainment and important information needs advertising, the lines flow both ways.
Advertising, while a flimsy medium on its own, actually benefits by the weight of the world’s problems but has the pockets sewn in to help sustain it.
Brands, while possessing an ephemeral essence were at one point only figments of some creative director’s imagination. Now however, they live in the same world that we do and they’re here to stay. They’re as tactile as the Apple I’m pounding this out on.
Finding the right way to use them, for the benefit of humankind, is a notion that can go right to the heart of Judaism’s central belief in Tikkun olam. Again, like a brand, a metaphysical notion but grounded in the real world.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Jewlaska
Glad we Jews don’t dwell in Alaska. I for one have too much chicken fat clogging my hardened arteries from generations of Litvaks who gorged on the Jewish ambrosia preventing the warm flow of blood from my heart down to my toes.
But what if, instead of singing Ha Tikva, we were chanting Ha Sitka? In his new alternate reality novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon charts Alaska as the homeland for the Jews (“Sitka”) instead of Israel and the Chosen have chosen Yiddish as their vernacular.
Rather than winning the 1948 Arab-Israel war, we lost and are given a section of the 49th state. In a revamping of history, after 60 years up there, we now have to give it back in what’s termed a Reversion.
While the real artic is melting, imagining Israel’s defeat sent chills down my spine in the southerly direction of my cold feet. Call me a Zionist, but I’m really just a desert loving, warm and sandy, beach bum with a built in thermostat for Mediterranean temps over the cold Kodiak. (I could never bear watching Northern Exposure even though I liked Rob Morrow’s quirky, comedic style.)
Basking in the late heat of spring, I was cracking the new book open when, around the same time I came across a news item on the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) which equally got my heart beating, eliciting a reverb on my dangling Mogen David. The headline read, “Jews question flying Israeli flag” which details how a number of Jewish organizations, student groups and synagogues are questioning how appropriate it is to display the kahol and lavan.
According to Benj Kamm, a former Hillel Student President at Brown who got quoted in the wire story, “Most people, but not all agreed that the flag was an Israeli nationalist symbol, although people disagreed about to what extent we as a Jewish community were obligated to support Israel, and in what ways.”
Ostensibly, there’s a debate over whether it’s too potent and nationalistic a symbol in its appearance. Does it convey the same emblematic message it once did or are the six points a flashpoint and lightning rod for a hotly divisive issue even among Jews?
Having been a part of similar discussions, I was aware of the banter when it comes to banners. I’m one who favors the presence of the Israeli flag on the bimah. I grew up with it. Literally, looked up to it and cannot imagine what, in a Chabonian world, the Alaskan flag with its eight gold stars and North Star would be like to gaze on.
It’s that “what if” scenario and that altered state which his novel shakes up and dislodges, creating an avalanche of emotions that makes for a heated debate. By crossing the border of reality, I was made to think of what it would be like if there were no Israeli flag to discuss. What if there weren’t one to get wrapped up in and wrangle over? Maybe then, its absence would make our hearts look yonder?
The repeated refrain in the book reads, “These are strange times to be a Jew”; a universal statement transcending time that could be uttered now or at any point in our history. But as a Jew today and with a sense of Eretz Yisrael, such a tectonic shift forced me to reach out and grab hold of something to ground me. Absence of a flag and pole to base me, I’m off kilter. It’s world shattering to my sense of earthly balance.
Yiddish was the language of the Diaspora, a non-territorial lingo with a romantic lilt woven into it. Having practically vanished, it’s finding a revival stitching together diverse textures of Jewish culture throughout the globe. It’s something that, in its absence, paradoxically makes us long for it more.
For those who wish to remove the Israeli flag, perhaps truly imagining no flag is a terrain worth envisioning.
But what if, instead of singing Ha Tikva, we were chanting Ha Sitka? In his new alternate reality novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon charts Alaska as the homeland for the Jews (“Sitka”) instead of Israel and the Chosen have chosen Yiddish as their vernacular.
Rather than winning the 1948 Arab-Israel war, we lost and are given a section of the 49th state. In a revamping of history, after 60 years up there, we now have to give it back in what’s termed a Reversion.
While the real artic is melting, imagining Israel’s defeat sent chills down my spine in the southerly direction of my cold feet. Call me a Zionist, but I’m really just a desert loving, warm and sandy, beach bum with a built in thermostat for Mediterranean temps over the cold Kodiak. (I could never bear watching Northern Exposure even though I liked Rob Morrow’s quirky, comedic style.)
Basking in the late heat of spring, I was cracking the new book open when, around the same time I came across a news item on the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) which equally got my heart beating, eliciting a reverb on my dangling Mogen David. The headline read, “Jews question flying Israeli flag” which details how a number of Jewish organizations, student groups and synagogues are questioning how appropriate it is to display the kahol and lavan.
According to Benj Kamm, a former Hillel Student President at Brown who got quoted in the wire story, “Most people, but not all agreed that the flag was an Israeli nationalist symbol, although people disagreed about to what extent we as a Jewish community were obligated to support Israel, and in what ways.”
Ostensibly, there’s a debate over whether it’s too potent and nationalistic a symbol in its appearance. Does it convey the same emblematic message it once did or are the six points a flashpoint and lightning rod for a hotly divisive issue even among Jews?
Having been a part of similar discussions, I was aware of the banter when it comes to banners. I’m one who favors the presence of the Israeli flag on the bimah. I grew up with it. Literally, looked up to it and cannot imagine what, in a Chabonian world, the Alaskan flag with its eight gold stars and North Star would be like to gaze on.
It’s that “what if” scenario and that altered state which his novel shakes up and dislodges, creating an avalanche of emotions that makes for a heated debate. By crossing the border of reality, I was made to think of what it would be like if there were no Israeli flag to discuss. What if there weren’t one to get wrapped up in and wrangle over? Maybe then, its absence would make our hearts look yonder?
The repeated refrain in the book reads, “These are strange times to be a Jew”; a universal statement transcending time that could be uttered now or at any point in our history. But as a Jew today and with a sense of Eretz Yisrael, such a tectonic shift forced me to reach out and grab hold of something to ground me. Absence of a flag and pole to base me, I’m off kilter. It’s world shattering to my sense of earthly balance.
Yiddish was the language of the Diaspora, a non-territorial lingo with a romantic lilt woven into it. Having practically vanished, it’s finding a revival stitching together diverse textures of Jewish culture throughout the globe. It’s something that, in its absence, paradoxically makes us long for it more.
For those who wish to remove the Israeli flag, perhaps truly imagining no flag is a terrain worth envisioning.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Jew.0
Recently I flew with my son to grandma’s house. Upon boarding the plane, once the doors were sealed like a tomb and my son was settled in next to me, I noticed Southwest’s magazine Spirit poking out of the seat pocket in front and on the cover was an article that got me thinking.
If the world is flat, are we about to fall off the edge into an unknown universe? The article was about Second Life.
While it’s debatable if Jewish souls live forever in an Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come), Jews have clearly found a Second Life.
If you’ve haven’t been transported yet, Second Life (SL) is a virtual world which exists on the Internet and according to its website has over 5 million “residents”. Some accounts report that number to be greatly exaggerated as several residents might belong to one person. In the world of second life, residents are avatars or animated characters that embody characteristics of your own choosing.
As God made man in his own image, so man plays God recreating another version (usually more buff than real life or RL.)
Second Life has a synagogue, a yeshiva as well as a Holocaust museum. It also just published its own Jewish Magazine 2Life. Separately, I looked over the first issue which seeks to cover “the multiple Jewish aspects and developments on this virtual platform with news, background reporting and features on a monthly basis.”
I’d previously read some articles about Second Life and even poked around a bit, but flying over the real world and above the clouds at night watching the sunset next to your child is a RL experience that’s hard, if not impossible, to replicate. Okay, avid users would disagree and would remind me that in SL, you don’t even need a plane to fly. The main mode of transportation is teleporting where your avatar can float above like in a Chagall painting.
Staring out the airplane’s window in RL gazing at the lighted cities also got me thinking about the dangers this world offers. It made me wonder if Second Life is a kind of fallout shelter for our society at a time when we’re in need of a place to hide.
It’s no such thing. Second Life is created by humans and retains the same good, bad and ugly aspects.
For example, Reuters, which has a news center in SL (no kidding), reports that weaponry is a booming business. There have also been reports of terrorism and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which established a virtual HQ, has rioted with Leftist organizations.
While nobody really gets physically hurt, you can lose money and lots of it. SL includes a virtual exchange center, where real dough can be converted into Linden dollars for use on the site and as of this writing $1,744,027 has been spent.
It’s fascinating to observe and wonder why we go to such lengths to dream up such fantastic worlds.
Judaism’s guiding principles are to value this life, as both The Torah and Talmud focus on the purpose of earthly life. SL seems to be an attempt to find the spiritual world. The schism between RL and shadows on the wall is as old as Plato and Aristotle and in fact Tehiyat Hameitim means the Resurrection of the Dead and is a concept that entered Judaism under a Hellenistic influence long after the Torah was completed.
Second Life is no afterlife, but perhaps it’s our all to human attempt at it.
Returning to the place of my birth with my son was a kind of spiritual journey. Not long into the flight home, he took out his Superman book where we played and read all about that other strange visitor from another planet.
That’s when I figured, if a nice Jewish boy from Krypton can find and make a second life here on earth, so can we.
If the world is flat, are we about to fall off the edge into an unknown universe? The article was about Second Life.
While it’s debatable if Jewish souls live forever in an Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come), Jews have clearly found a Second Life.
If you’ve haven’t been transported yet, Second Life (SL) is a virtual world which exists on the Internet and according to its website has over 5 million “residents”. Some accounts report that number to be greatly exaggerated as several residents might belong to one person. In the world of second life, residents are avatars or animated characters that embody characteristics of your own choosing.
As God made man in his own image, so man plays God recreating another version (usually more buff than real life or RL.)
Second Life has a synagogue, a yeshiva as well as a Holocaust museum. It also just published its own Jewish Magazine 2Life. Separately, I looked over the first issue which seeks to cover “the multiple Jewish aspects and developments on this virtual platform with news, background reporting and features on a monthly basis.”
I’d previously read some articles about Second Life and even poked around a bit, but flying over the real world and above the clouds at night watching the sunset next to your child is a RL experience that’s hard, if not impossible, to replicate. Okay, avid users would disagree and would remind me that in SL, you don’t even need a plane to fly. The main mode of transportation is teleporting where your avatar can float above like in a Chagall painting.
Staring out the airplane’s window in RL gazing at the lighted cities also got me thinking about the dangers this world offers. It made me wonder if Second Life is a kind of fallout shelter for our society at a time when we’re in need of a place to hide.
It’s no such thing. Second Life is created by humans and retains the same good, bad and ugly aspects.
For example, Reuters, which has a news center in SL (no kidding), reports that weaponry is a booming business. There have also been reports of terrorism and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which established a virtual HQ, has rioted with Leftist organizations.
While nobody really gets physically hurt, you can lose money and lots of it. SL includes a virtual exchange center, where real dough can be converted into Linden dollars for use on the site and as of this writing $1,744,027 has been spent.
It’s fascinating to observe and wonder why we go to such lengths to dream up such fantastic worlds.
Judaism’s guiding principles are to value this life, as both The Torah and Talmud focus on the purpose of earthly life. SL seems to be an attempt to find the spiritual world. The schism between RL and shadows on the wall is as old as Plato and Aristotle and in fact Tehiyat Hameitim means the Resurrection of the Dead and is a concept that entered Judaism under a Hellenistic influence long after the Torah was completed.
Second Life is no afterlife, but perhaps it’s our all to human attempt at it.
Returning to the place of my birth with my son was a kind of spiritual journey. Not long into the flight home, he took out his Superman book where we played and read all about that other strange visitor from another planet.
That’s when I figured, if a nice Jewish boy from Krypton can find and make a second life here on earth, so can we.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
HyperEvil
Some movies stick with you for days, weeks and sometimes, a lot longer. They can occupy a space in your mind that provokes a sudden chuckle while driving alone in the car. Other times, they reinforce the creepy realization that the world is filled with despicable souls, buttressing the presence of evil in the world.
Lost in the Cineplex this past week, I was caught in evil’s grip. I took in the epic Battle of Thermopylae, between East and West in 300 and the trail of a serial killer in Zodiac.
Both films were based on historical facts. Both are stories that resonate today.
One was a large-scale projection of a gruesome war and a film adaptation of a graphic novel shot against a Bluescreen to duplicate the imagery and style of the original book.
The other, a tighter, more focused lens on the evil of one depraved man, a demon who embodied a killer.
One was the socio-political battle between good and evil on a grand scale. The other, a psychologically twisted mystery, almost unbearable to watch, because it was so real in its depiction.
Both, while just movies, smacked of today’s headlines bringing them that much closer to home (literally, on my driveway.)
At the bus stop where I drop my son off and as I waited on the corner with all the children, I started to describe to a neighborhood mom the effect Zodiac had on me. In one particular scene, the murderer endangers a child. Her reply was, “I can’t watch those kinds of things.” I understood. In the theatre, there were times I had to turn away and not look.
But when I came back home and picked up The Baltimore Sun, my eyes were met with a monster’s and a headline that read, “Killer casts a shadow of violence.” According to The Sun, Lawrence Banks was convicted of shooting to death a friend in Pasadena and then his own son in Baltimore on the same day in 1991. He killed his son because the son and a daughter claimed that Banks had abused them, the daughter sexually and both of them physically.
In 1976, he had been sentenced to 15 years for throwing that daughter, then a 7-month-old, through a glass door during an argument with his wife. Just before Banks went to trial in that case, his wife was found dead in an East Baltimore apartment. Her body was so decomposed that the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death.
Reading this news I was stunned at the malevolence. I had to read it again; to be sure I was soaking it in. Moments earlier, describing what I thought was distant celluloid and so easy to dismiss, seeped back into my doorway.
That was the front page. On the one where movies are listed, I found that
300 has angered Iranians who say the action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran. Remembering what happened a few years ago, after Danish cartoons set off riots throughout the Muslim world, I wondered, given the tension today, how “epic” things could get.
Our world is like one of those overhead projectors we had in high school. We read the news and think reality couldn’t get any worse. Then we layer on top it another sheet of cellophane causing us to see that same image, in a completely different, often more distorted, way.
Earlier this month, the French critic and theorist, Jean Baudrillard died. He theorized a world of hyperreality. Wikipedia defines hyperreality as a world of simulation where illusion is what is real and where a consciousness loses its ability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Spliced between headlines and movielines, where global conflicts and metro crime are across the aisle, one can’t escape the intersection these parallel worlds pull us down into.
The reel is real and the real is reel.
Lost in the Cineplex this past week, I was caught in evil’s grip. I took in the epic Battle of Thermopylae, between East and West in 300 and the trail of a serial killer in Zodiac.
Both films were based on historical facts. Both are stories that resonate today.
One was a large-scale projection of a gruesome war and a film adaptation of a graphic novel shot against a Bluescreen to duplicate the imagery and style of the original book.
The other, a tighter, more focused lens on the evil of one depraved man, a demon who embodied a killer.
One was the socio-political battle between good and evil on a grand scale. The other, a psychologically twisted mystery, almost unbearable to watch, because it was so real in its depiction.
Both, while just movies, smacked of today’s headlines bringing them that much closer to home (literally, on my driveway.)
At the bus stop where I drop my son off and as I waited on the corner with all the children, I started to describe to a neighborhood mom the effect Zodiac had on me. In one particular scene, the murderer endangers a child. Her reply was, “I can’t watch those kinds of things.” I understood. In the theatre, there were times I had to turn away and not look.
But when I came back home and picked up The Baltimore Sun, my eyes were met with a monster’s and a headline that read, “Killer casts a shadow of violence.” According to The Sun, Lawrence Banks was convicted of shooting to death a friend in Pasadena and then his own son in Baltimore on the same day in 1991. He killed his son because the son and a daughter claimed that Banks had abused them, the daughter sexually and both of them physically.
In 1976, he had been sentenced to 15 years for throwing that daughter, then a 7-month-old, through a glass door during an argument with his wife. Just before Banks went to trial in that case, his wife was found dead in an East Baltimore apartment. Her body was so decomposed that the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death.
Reading this news I was stunned at the malevolence. I had to read it again; to be sure I was soaking it in. Moments earlier, describing what I thought was distant celluloid and so easy to dismiss, seeped back into my doorway.
That was the front page. On the one where movies are listed, I found that
300 has angered Iranians who say the action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran. Remembering what happened a few years ago, after Danish cartoons set off riots throughout the Muslim world, I wondered, given the tension today, how “epic” things could get.
Our world is like one of those overhead projectors we had in high school. We read the news and think reality couldn’t get any worse. Then we layer on top it another sheet of cellophane causing us to see that same image, in a completely different, often more distorted, way.
Earlier this month, the French critic and theorist, Jean Baudrillard died. He theorized a world of hyperreality. Wikipedia defines hyperreality as a world of simulation where illusion is what is real and where a consciousness loses its ability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Spliced between headlines and movielines, where global conflicts and metro crime are across the aisle, one can’t escape the intersection these parallel worlds pull us down into.
The reel is real and the real is reel.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Iranna
Combining the hoopla of Anna Nicole with the seriousness of Iran, I came up with ––Iranna.
Like one of Anna Nicole’s spaghetti straps hanging on for dear life, support for Bush’s war is being stretched to its limit. America is ready to snap.
The heavy weight of what was an inflated false reality possessing a serious lack of intelligence, has become a pathetic attempt at propping up a vapid, apparitional illusion.
Observing the deceased starlet pose and preen for the cameras, knowing there was nothing in the way of integrity behind her empty veneer, only brought to light how the war, like she, was manufactured synthetically.
Underneath this garment of death that’s Iraq, has been a tabloid media unwilling or unable to stop itself on the catwalk to perdition.
This was made evident last week on PBS when Frontline’s News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin reported how the press created an echo chamber for an administration intent on war. Courageously, Frontline also collapsed the image of the gallant reporter from revealer of truth to lapdog.
In an online discussion after the program and sponsored by the Washington Post with Producer Raney Aronson, one viewer wrote, “Bob Woodward -- perhaps the most eminent American journalist – was shown in the program last night saying “there was a zero percent chance that there are no WMDs in Iraq.” The MSM (main stream media) journalists like Woodward were so taken in by the Administration that they lost their independence and judgment – perhaps forever.”
That’s a serious disintegration of trust. Yet that response wasn’t the only one expressing such a concern and with a majority of Americans disapproving of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq, the feeling of being duped and mislead by our government is only part of the story. By threading the false line from Al-Qaeda to WMD in the drumbeat of war, the media became the enabler to the fabrication.
Of more serious concern today is how that same media loop, that swirls celebrities like Anna Nicole at us on an endless cycle, is caught pumping out more of the same lines when it comes to Iran.
The run-up to Iraq is back. After reacting to the boy who cried Wolfowitz, a skeptical country––one marred by four years of war, over 3,100 dead soldiers and a burned media––is suspiciously turning its camera gaze on Iran.
Rewinding the tape back, Iraq certainly seemed for many of us an ominous threat. We were still in a daze after being hit, followed by the jingoistic jolt of war’s intoxicating lure.
But now, with the clearer distance of time and analysis to tame us, wrestling with Iran in light of Iraq, has become a far more cautious exercise and one we’re unwilling to race toward even with the gun ready to go off.
Ever so soberly, walking a dangerous line we ask, “What if Ahmadinejad is the real wolf––his casual look only a sheep’s disguise? What if his promises of wiping Israel off the map are not false threats but replicas of Hitler sketches?”
We’ve sewn ourselves into a tough spot.
American’s are in no shape, nor do they have the stomach for a war with Iran. Hawking a sequel, when most of us want to return the original version, we’re caught, frozen in frame.
Cosmetic surgery, like a quickie air-war to take out the nukes may sound revitalizing, like a weekend at Canyon Ranch, but is it really the way to deal with the fundamental problem? (Temporary fix. What’ll it look like after?)
Long-term, like any celeb entering detox, we need to wean ourselves off the oil drug and whip ourselves into ecological shape by getting rid of the flabby dirty pollutants rife in our system.
Anna Nicole was clearly the embodiment of something unreal and phony, yet we couldn’t seem to get enough of her. (No wonder Jewish mothers warned us of latching onto big blonde shiksas!)
Her recurring phantom specter the last two weeks, left me wondering how we ever became wedded to this war through an overblown and puffed up media and why, another romp with the wrong bombshell, should be avoided at all costs.
Like one of Anna Nicole’s spaghetti straps hanging on for dear life, support for Bush’s war is being stretched to its limit. America is ready to snap.
The heavy weight of what was an inflated false reality possessing a serious lack of intelligence, has become a pathetic attempt at propping up a vapid, apparitional illusion.
Observing the deceased starlet pose and preen for the cameras, knowing there was nothing in the way of integrity behind her empty veneer, only brought to light how the war, like she, was manufactured synthetically.
Underneath this garment of death that’s Iraq, has been a tabloid media unwilling or unable to stop itself on the catwalk to perdition.
This was made evident last week on PBS when Frontline’s News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin reported how the press created an echo chamber for an administration intent on war. Courageously, Frontline also collapsed the image of the gallant reporter from revealer of truth to lapdog.
In an online discussion after the program and sponsored by the Washington Post with Producer Raney Aronson, one viewer wrote, “Bob Woodward -- perhaps the most eminent American journalist – was shown in the program last night saying “there was a zero percent chance that there are no WMDs in Iraq.” The MSM (main stream media) journalists like Woodward were so taken in by the Administration that they lost their independence and judgment – perhaps forever.”
That’s a serious disintegration of trust. Yet that response wasn’t the only one expressing such a concern and with a majority of Americans disapproving of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq, the feeling of being duped and mislead by our government is only part of the story. By threading the false line from Al-Qaeda to WMD in the drumbeat of war, the media became the enabler to the fabrication.
Of more serious concern today is how that same media loop, that swirls celebrities like Anna Nicole at us on an endless cycle, is caught pumping out more of the same lines when it comes to Iran.
The run-up to Iraq is back. After reacting to the boy who cried Wolfowitz, a skeptical country––one marred by four years of war, over 3,100 dead soldiers and a burned media––is suspiciously turning its camera gaze on Iran.
Rewinding the tape back, Iraq certainly seemed for many of us an ominous threat. We were still in a daze after being hit, followed by the jingoistic jolt of war’s intoxicating lure.
But now, with the clearer distance of time and analysis to tame us, wrestling with Iran in light of Iraq, has become a far more cautious exercise and one we’re unwilling to race toward even with the gun ready to go off.
Ever so soberly, walking a dangerous line we ask, “What if Ahmadinejad is the real wolf––his casual look only a sheep’s disguise? What if his promises of wiping Israel off the map are not false threats but replicas of Hitler sketches?”
We’ve sewn ourselves into a tough spot.
American’s are in no shape, nor do they have the stomach for a war with Iran. Hawking a sequel, when most of us want to return the original version, we’re caught, frozen in frame.
Cosmetic surgery, like a quickie air-war to take out the nukes may sound revitalizing, like a weekend at Canyon Ranch, but is it really the way to deal with the fundamental problem? (Temporary fix. What’ll it look like after?)
Long-term, like any celeb entering detox, we need to wean ourselves off the oil drug and whip ourselves into ecological shape by getting rid of the flabby dirty pollutants rife in our system.
Anna Nicole was clearly the embodiment of something unreal and phony, yet we couldn’t seem to get enough of her. (No wonder Jewish mothers warned us of latching onto big blonde shiksas!)
Her recurring phantom specter the last two weeks, left me wondering how we ever became wedded to this war through an overblown and puffed up media and why, another romp with the wrong bombshell, should be avoided at all costs.
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