stunt_muppet

1. One of our local indie theaters is showing the entirety of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, a five-movie...something-or-other that is supposedly about change and differentiation and the parallels between fetal development and human potentiality. Or something.  I've been curious about it ever since the last movie in the cycle came out a couple of years; even when I don't understand it (and I usually don't) I find the images involved, and the seeming gulf between the images presented and what the artist is trying to say, fascinating, not to mention I just like to mull over the images and symbols themselves. I don't know why, but I've never been able to dismiss the more opaque modes of art.

Adding more urgency to my decision on weather or not to go see the films is the fact that they're only showing for about a week and they're not available on DVD unless you're willing to pony up half a million dollars for the super-special art-critics-only box set. And I'm not. So this is probably the only chance I'd get to witness this weirdness for myself and pass my own judgment on it. On the other hand, that's five movies in one day - I think the cycle goes from 1:00 p.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. Granted, it's shown in parts - Part 1, then Parts 2 and 3 together, then Parts 4 and 5. Technically, I could see 1, 2, and 3 one day and then 4 and 5 the next. But that's still almost forty dollars that, in truth, I probably shouldn't be spending on movies that I'd be dropping on this thing. More if I get popcorn, but these aren't really movies you can eat popcorn to.

Dammit Barney, just put them on DVD , it's not going to compromise your artistic integrity that much to let us plebes see it.

2. Speaking of movies, over the weekend my uncle took me to see It's Kind of a Funny Story, which I enjoyed - I'm ashamed to admit it did hit just a bit close to home, but I also thought it was pretty good about finding the humor in its situations without actually making fun of the patients' problems. It was more about seeing the humor in a sometimes sad situation instead of "ha ha look at the freaks, isn't it so strange that people act like that?", if that makes any sense.

I did have a little bit of a problem with the way the main character was such a catalyst for change in the ward. It came across as a little bit Mighty Whitey: the kid with comparatively few emotional problems comes in and makes everyone's lives better, that kind of thing. But at the same, the film did emphasize that Craig didn't immediately make everyone better, not even himself; Bobby is still in the hospital in his flash-forward. And I get that the film did have to show some sort of progress (especially for Craig) to be dramatically satisfying, but it still seemed a little pat, to me.

The other thing that bothered me was that one of the things that seems to serve as a lesson to Craig (it doesn't immediately turn his attitude around or anything, but it's clearly a turning point) is being told by Bobby that he has a great life, and objectively he has nothing to be depressed about. Which sounds very nice, but...okay, I'm probably over-reacting because of my own experiences, but having that played as a way of lifting Craig out of his suicidal state kind of annoyed me because it doesn't work that way. I don't know if this is a common experience with depressed teenagers who are otherwise quite privileged (and maybe it isn't, and thus I have no reason to whine about it), but when I was at my most depressed, I knew I had a great life. Part of the problem was that I knew I had no real problems, I had a perfect life with a supportive family and friends and everything I could ever want, so why was I still unhappy? And that led to guilt, and the feeling that I did not deserve to have these problems, that being unhappy and lethargic and perpetually afraid were just laziness because what could I possibly have to be depressed about?

Plus, it led to the sensation that, well, if I can't be happy when all my needs are being met and I'm in a great place in my life, then obviously I'm just too bratty and lazy to be happy with anything at all short of complete atrophy. I'm spoiled; I'm just trying to get out of having to work. Which in turn leads back to the cycle of "I'm useless, I'm lazy, I'll never be any good to anybody, I may as well get rid of myself and stop taking up everyone's time and money and care."

I don't know. That was just a little personal for me.


3. M, J, and I went strolling in Downtown today, since the downtown area near where I'm catsitting is actually very interesting and vibrant and has a bunch of galleries and niche shops for every conceivable interest. And we spent a lot of time just walking and talking and being ridiculous, which is what I like to do when I'm with M and J. And on the way there, before they arrived, I found a tiny little comic book shop. It was literally one room, which I do believe was smaller than even my smallest college dorm. I think it might have been a tiny bit bigger than the campus singles, though it was jammed tight full of books and the bookshelves that contained them, so that probably made it look a lot smaller than it was.

But anyway, I tried mightily to resist buying All The Comics, but I did walk out with two: Deadpool The Heroic Age (an issue of a story arc wherein Deadpool tries (with very little success) to be a good guy) and G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers Black Horizon Vol. 1, which I thought was a reboot since it was a whole new story; seeing as I had no idea where the actual G.I. Joe Vs. Transformers line began and I was vaguely aware there were two different crossover continuities, that seemed like a good place to start.

Except it turns out that it actually was part of a continuing story, not a reboot, and thus I had little idea what was going on or what people were talking about for most of the time. I've never been more grateful for an introdump. 

Also SNAKE PEOPLE. There are actual, like, prehistoric snake people in my TF/GI Joe crossover. right when I thought this franchise could not possibly get sillier.

Also, Hot Rod shows up in maybe four panels and still manages to antagonize people.

Optimus: So I'm heading off for Earth. Whatever's happening down there's my responsibility.
Hot Rod: Is this because Bumblebee's dead? Are you afraid someone else is going to die? Is that why you won't let anyone else go? 
Optimus: OF COURSE NOT. Now go away, I angst alone. *stalks off*
Ultra Magnus: *facepalms*

Poor Hot Rod. Even when you're right you say it at the wrong times.

Aside from being dropped into the middle of a plot, I quite enjoyed this volume. It didn't take itself too seriously and seemed quite willing to point out how over-the-top this whole business is, i.e. when Bludgeon is straight-up referred to as a giant zombie samurai. It's nicely drawn, the action is clear and colorful, and even if it took me a minute to catch the Joe's names their characters were distinctive enough that I could still tell who was who and who was doing what. Also I am very fond of Firewall and her watching fashion TV with Eject, who gets so adorably into it.

Also, this comic involves Cosmos playing a major role. Speaking as the one Cosmos fangirl ever I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. He's so polite! D'aaaw. :D


4. So I went back home over the weekend in order to do laundry and things before I went back for my second week of catsitting, and one evening my family and I sat around watching CSI: Miami, as we do sometimes.

I have spoken, before, on how the series just gets more and more over-the-top the longer it goes on, which is one of the reasons I don't watch it that much anymore. However, at one point, a very familiar siren sound went off and I, only half paying attention, declared "Oh no! They're entering Silent Hill!"

My brother, equally casually, declared "I'd watch that show."

And then I got an idea.

CSI: Miami, as a show, has gotten much more color-saturated and bright over the years, from vivid but somewhat realistic colors to palates not normally seen outside of a completed coloring book. 

And when Silent Hill moves from the normal world to the grey world, where the monsters start to come out and the town starts to reflect the visitor's fears and anxieties, it turns grey and featureless, right? And obscured with fog?

Miami is the anti-Silent Hill. If Silent Hill preys on the fears and sins and flaws of its visitors, TV!Miami preys on their feelings of accomplishment and triumph, feeding them until the visitors in question concoct increasingly impossible scenarios to live them out in, until the world they imagine becomes too big, until the person imagines themselves the only thing keeping it in order. And then at the slightest mistake, and the tiniest tremor in their triumph and certainty, the city devours them, collapsing their fantasy around itself.

That's what's been happening since Season 3. Miami is becoming brighter and bigger and more exaggerated, with more spectacular crimes and more shallow, contemptible victims in order to feed into the investigator's (specifically Horatio Caine's) need to be heroic, to be larger than life.

And when I've written Horatio in fic before (particularly in that long-ass backstory fic that I really should get back to because I quite liked it), I've never taken his outsize quasi-vigilante heroics at face value - I don't know why, but combined with the backstory we're given of him, he always seemed to me like a person who needs to fit into that heroic mold, who needs to be the one who protects and comforts others in order to have any idea of what to do with himself. He doesn't know who to be if he's not Supercop. Look at his relationships with women - the only time he seems comfortable is when he can provide them with a shoulder to cry on, be the solid comforting figure in the relationship. (Which possibly explains his discomfort with Yelina - she doesn't need him that way.) Given that we know his father abused his mother, I've tended to see that as a perpetual re-enactment of his interactions with his mother, either because he made sense of his world by being his mother's support and protection, or because in assuming the role of protector to all these other women he is somehow symbolically "saving" his mother.

Conclusion: TV!Miami is Horatio's personal anti-Silent Hill, and everyone else is steadily getting caught up in it. Ryan has found himself screwing up where he didn't before for the sake of the necessary drama (his sudden gambling problem in the later seasons), and has responded by drawing closer to Horatio since he's the only one who seems to know how this world works. Alexx got out while she still could, before this world could bleed any further away from reality, possibly killing off her husband and children for the sake of that same necessary drama. Eric has found himself unable to quit, unable to leave no many how many obstacles are thrown in his way, unable to even die despite being shot in the head twice and having shrapnel in his brain.

And it's only a matter of time before the world becomes too impossible to maintain and falls down around everyone's heads.

...wow, that was bizarre even by my own standards. D:

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Why can I not even write an LJ entry unless it's 3 in the morning. THIS IS IRRITATING. Also the Ficlet Project Ficlet has broken 1000 words. I think I might have missed the point a tiny bit.