Forever Isn't Over Yet

The opening scene of this latest Indiana Jones installment is terrific. To the strains of Elvis’ “Hound Dog,” you’re plunked squarely into 1957 America, an era of the cold-war, the red scare, and hot-rodders. A jalopy full of exuberant teenagers is tearing down a New Mexico highway alongside a long green convoy of army trucks and jeeps. The soldiers’ reactions range from grim shakes of the head to one young jeep driver, barely older than the teenagers, who’s delighted and plainly longs to hit the gas and race with them. It’s a fun, adrenaline pumping sequence that effectively lays the groundwork for the action scene that follows. (The teenagers in the jalopy, by the way, seem to be lifted from a classic Life Magazine shot of a group of 1950's kids playing “chicken.”)

So long as the film is set in 1950s America, it works. Lucas does a great job of neatly and vividly distilling that era. Leather clad, switchblade wielding bikers with DA haircuts duke it out in diners with the “squares,” and KGB agents and the FBI/MIB bedevil a noticeably older and more cranky Indiana Jones. The blacklisting of academia, the sterile rise of middle class suburbia, nuclear testing, Roswell, and Soviet psychic research are invoked and in a neat bow to the 21st century, Swift-boating is briefly touched on. The feel of that section of the film is similar to the best of that sadly short lived and intelligent Young Indiana Jones television series.

Unfortunately, once the action moves to South America, that kind of detail vanishes, and Lucas relies more and more on special effects, puzzle solving, and non-stop chase scenes. It turns, essentially, into a huge non-interactive video game. It’s not a bad film by any means, but I found myself thinking wistfully of the first movie, when Speilberg had to rely less on CGI and more on making the interplay between his villains and his heroes and their environment interesting. Kate Blanchett is fun in a Boris-and-Natasha sort of way as a spooky, sabre-wielding Soviet agent, but she can’t compare with Belloq (who could?) or even with the Nazi blonde from The Last Crusade. As glad as I am to see Karen Allen again, the father/son interaction between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in that same film was more complex and engaging.

Watching this movie in the wake of seeing some of the trailers and commentary about the new computer game Grand Theft Auto IV raised an interesting point. It seems to me that the rise of computer generated images is causing a shift in story-telling genres. Filmmakers are relying so heavily on CGI that even action movies are getting dumbed down while at the same time, computer games seem to be getting more intelligent. I was impressed by what I saw of Grand Theft Auto IV. With its embittered greenhorn protagonist and gritty landscape of urban posers and dreamers, it's a computer game with characterization that goes beyond bad guy/good guy. It’s too bad that so many action films are abandoning that level of nuance.

Perhaps because it's a new medium, computer game creators seem to be in the process of figuring out that spectacular CGI functions best as a backdrop, even as filmmakers struggle to cope with a changing industry by relying on it more and more. Until filmmakers stop looking for easy and quick answers to the shift in audience viewing habits, CGI will continue to be more of a detriment than an asset in Hollywood.

In the meantime, an entirely new and exciting form of fiction may be evolving on home computers, a hybrid of gameplay and genuinely complex storytelling.

It’s always risky to read what a fiction writer Thinks About Things, “things” being issues in the real world. It’s especially risky when that writer writes science fiction, a genre that often involves some weird takes on the real world and society. Larry Niven has written some of my favorite science fiction short stories, but this, which I got courtesy of Sadly No, qualifies as one of those head-slapping, groaning moments. His suggestion for dealing with the healthcare crisis? Read it and weep.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.



“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

I know, I know, it’s not news that Niven is a flaming right-winger. It’s just that the freight of astounding cluelessness, not to mention callousness carried in this brief statement is a reminder of the overlap between right-wing politics and some areas of science fiction and fantasy. Norman Spinrad (who has written his share of head-slapping, oh-dear-God takes on the real world) dissected this brilliantly in The Iron Dream.

It’s a connection that most frequently comes out in discussions with right-wing libertarians. After a few posts, you begin to realize that this person’s vision of an ideal society is closest to some post-apocalyptic science fiction novel or high fantasy, and involves him/her striding through a crowded and dangerous marketplace, wearing either an automatic weapon and military fatigues or a sword and a rippling cape. Never, never do they seem to imagine themselves as one of the hoi-polloi in such a world, part of the struggling masses whose misfortunes form a colorful backdrop to the ubermensch main character.

And so you have a millionaire like Larry Niven suggesting a good way to control hospital costs is to frighten the low income Latino community in general (all of whom he apparently defines as “illegal aliens) from availing themselves of medical care. Presumably all these grubby peasants will find some place to bleed or cough themselves to death out of sight or earshot from folks like Mr. Niven.

And no doubt any contagious diseases they contract will thoughtfully refrain from spreading as these unvaccinated and untreated people clean, cook, and baby-sit for the rest of us.

“I see you’re a fellow I can talk plainly to, Jaggar,” Waffing said in a deep, bluff voice. “A man much like myself. I like what you’re doing. As I’ve said many times myself, the only way to treat enemies of genetic purity is to smash their skulls.”
From The Iron Dream, by Norman Spinrad

Linda Vester: You say you'd rather not talk to liberals at all?


Ann Coulter: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days.
From FOX News Channel, DaySide with Linda Vester, 10/6/04

So we've been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming… You know, I'll tell you what works on a crowd like this -- a machine gun, that always works very well...You must have order, you cannot have a civilized society without order and if that means cracking a few skulls, so be it. A good ole boy network is what you need and hand out some ax handles.
Chris Baker KTLK radio morning show, 4/4/08

Most of Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream consists of the posthumously published novel of that famous Golden Age science fiction writer, Adolf Hitler. As any science fiction fan knows, Hitler relocated to the United States shortly after Germany won the war in 1919. His final work was the Hugo Award-winning novel and cult classic, Lord of the Swastika, a bizarre meld of hard science fiction and high fantasy that tells the story of Feric Jaggar, a genetically pure “trueman” in a post-apocalyptic world polluted with evil, foul-smelling mutants. “Let Adolf Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGAR and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control.” reads the intro. Lord of the Swastika is a retelling of the rise of the Third Reich, as filtered through the lens of an Adolf Hitler who never became chancellor of Germany.

( Read more )