In Defense of Poppery, XVI: Saws 1-7

Pop example: Saw film cycle, I-VII

Problematic critical reception: “The Problem of Saw: ‘Torture Porn’ and the Conservatism of Contemporary Horror” by Christopher Sharrett – excerpts:

“Most important, [in the 1960’s] the horror film began to eschew the supernatural in favor of the psychological, as the genre looked to horror as the product of middleclass life, not caused by external demons or a mad scientist's freak accident. The genre investigated the neurosis that is basic, as the heirs of Freud inform us, to the creation of notions of normality and otherness.”

“The psychological themes of the horror film, with their adjacent social criticism, became grossly transmogrified into the misogynist teen-kill "slasher" films of the Eighties, the most degraded example being the Friday the 13th cycle.”

What redeems it: Oh, how sad for us. All the “good” horror happened in the 1960’s and had socially liberal messages. And now all we have is this unreasonable, meaningless Saw cycle and its subgeneric cohort to watch.

Anyone who cannot see a reason for a horror film or, even worse, a series of horror films, is not thinking creatively enough or is too elitist to see the truth. Christopher Sharrett seems to be both: calling a horror subgenre “misogynist teen-kill ‘slasher films of the Eighties” and then citing its ‘most degraded example,” the Friday the 13^th movies, implies that those films weren’t expressing a real fear felt by people (perhaps particularly teens) at the time they were produced…and implying that there are fears that are somehow more worthy of expression.

Really? Fears that become ‘worthy’ of horror flicks? How does that work, exactly?

Acting as though certain types of fear are somehow more civilized than others, perhaps even assuming that on viewing these movies we’ll all instantly give in to our ids and become serial killers (assuming also that we’re all, at heart, serial killers minus opportunity), is acting as if we are all basically evil and must, even in our expressions of primal fear, strive to “rise above.”

We, the horror viewers, are not children. We know that this is make believe but also that it in some way reflects our reality. If there is misogyny in our horror films, that’s probably because misogyny exists and has to be dealt with. Showing women tortured may titillate as well as horrify, but if it does so, that’s because the problem of torturing women being sexy already existed. The job of horror is not to pretend these issues don’t exist, but to draw them out and resolve them.

This is not a problem, because horror isn’t an Aesop fable. Horror films are not normalizing. We do not learn how to be by watching horror films, not directly. Everyone knows you go to a scary movie to be scared and confront yourself and fears, not to figure out how to function properly in society.

Horror is a subversive genre, and while Sharrett says “the subversive component nearly vanished, as the genre was relegated to a lowbrow vehicle for shouting "boo!" that its snobbish attackers accused it of being since its inception” way back in 1980, I say this in reference not only to the “great” horror movies of the 1960’s (some of which are definitely great: Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, for instance. Watch them), but even to the “torture porn” we’ve been seeing recently.

Horror is about showing the unshowable truths that comedy and drama reign in. Our bodies degrade. We die. Time never returns us to where we think now we probably were happiest. And when we were there/then, we weren’t as happy as now we think we must have been. The things we love flee from us, somehow or other. We don’t get beautiful monologues on our deathbeds, declaring “the rest is silence” – it just is. Saying so subverts those narrative myths and the politenesses that allow us to live narrated lives.

Horror is unruly, and that should make analysis of it that much more rich. There are narratives that “don’t work,” that don’t function as they should, because those are controlled accounts of our lives (or the lives of characters), but horror films that terrify – ones that are popular being the best guess as to which ones definitely do terrify us – do “work.” They obviously work. They’re meant to scare us, and if they do, they’re working.

So this brings me to my defense of the Saw movies, which I believe this reviewer has completely – perhaps willfully – misunderstood. The premise of the cycle of films is, more or less, that a serial killer called Jigsaw has begun setting traps for his victims that end up with most of those victims murdering themselves, mainly through failure to adhere to the extremely rigid rules set by Jigsaw, or by being physically incapable of fulfilling them. (Spoilers to follow) Each movie reveals more about the previous movie’s events as well as furthering the torture in what becomes a smorgasbord of physical torture; Russian doll style, these films nest together such that layers of information filter down through the viewer’s understanding of each previous movie to change “what you know” to “what you thought you knew.” Jigsaw’s original intent, the one he repeats throughout, seems to be to teach people to “truly live,” in a needlessly complex set of Raymond-K.-Essel scenarios. What took Fight Club thirty seconds takes the Saw franchise seven movies.

Sometimes this seems ridiculous. And young teen boys, which over and over again I see listed as the supposed audience for these films, probably do have a stake in proving their nascent manliness by being “less scared” or “less grossed-out” than their friends at the extremely torturous traps set by Jigsaw, making the torture for them an end in itself. But set those imaginary boys aside for a second, and set aside the visceral gruesomeness of the movies, and take a look at what’s going on with Jigsaw’s supposed motivations, an “inane morality” that Sharrett dismisses without even bothering to interrogate it. You’ve missed the point, fellow reviewer. This statement of motivation, and Jigsaw’s moral system, is the point of these movies. The torture is about the morality, not the other way around.

Specifically, the torture is the effect of the stringent and extremely specific morality of Jigsaw. He creates these traps assuring the audience, whatever audience he can get, that if they play by the rules, his victims will emerge victorious and more full of life than they ever were. Most don’t survive, which he sees as weakness deserving of death.

But here’s the kicker, and for my part the whole meaning of the cycle (and a major spoiler): some appear to survive the torture. Some appear to go on living after their ordeals. But none of them do.

In the end, the Russian dolls, so brilliant in their constant re-framing of the events of previous movies, reveal the truth about Jigsaw’s hard-ass morality, which is that nobody ever survives it. Ever.

Jigsaw doesn’t survive, obviously, because he had cancer when he started his escapades. But every single victim he puts through “a test” or “a game,” as he likes to call them, either becomes one of his cohort, putting others to constant tests and being tested themselves, committing the same atrocities he does, in fact; or they die. Once you have started down the path of an absolutist morality that “takes no prisoners” and shows no mercy, you have already sealed your doom. You are already either also evil or dead by your own hand.

The fact that his victims die by machines, or die by their own hands in some way or another, or that they’re willing to kill others once they’ve been traumatized by their own horrible experiences, supports my hypothesis that the films are about the personal standards we hold ourselves and others to...and in fact the horror of believing that (in this modern, machine-filled, medically supported world) we have the choice to be perfect, but somehow can never make that choice, can never achieve it. If we could, somehow we could have lived forever.

No killer needs to lay a hand on us for us to “die” psychologically in this way. This level of stringent morality, this perspective on life, is suicide.

Jigsaw fails. He fails every single time to produce the effect he says he seeks, which is the production of a fully alive, grateful, absolutely moral human being. His failures betray the principle he adheres to. They show that such mercilessness cannot help but destroy.

And from that perspective, I can see the point of the torture. It’s a physical manifestation of a psychological reality – a physical inducement of that psychological reality, in fact. The physicality is not the point. “Mortify the flesh”: that is the point. "Mind over matter" is the point. The point is the psychological and metaphorical link between the body and “the flesh,” the parts of us that keep requiring critique, that keep failing at perfection, and the supposed liberation of the mind from that flesh that can only/supposedly be achieved through torture.

But then we torture ourselves, and the torture always fails.

My point, here, is that this is to me a revolutionary message for a horror film to be sending, that a judgmental eye will always end up gouging itself out. And it does not, definitely does not, read as a conservative message to me, something that Sharrett accuses it of doing.

In fact, to the contrary: I'd say Saw is one of the most effectively liberal cycles of film I have seen in a long time – more effective even (perhaps) than bleeding-heart documentary because, like a good bleeding-heart documentary, it gets us mad, but unlike many of those documentaries, it also makes us fear for our lives in our guts and not just in our brains.

What could be more internal and psychologically basic than that?

In Defense of Poppery, VIII: "RoboCop"

Pop example: Kanye West's "RoboCop"

What redeems it: This song is misogynist. Let's get that out of the way, first thing.

That said, we've likely come to expect this from rap in general, if we've read any feminist writing on the subject at all (or ever listened to any rap), and from Kanye West in particular. I mean, no one that I know of has ever said of "Gold Digger," "well, at least it's not sexist."

This isn't necessarily the best context to look at any popular song in, but it is worth mentioning -- if for no other reason than to set "RoboCop" against the more serious backdrop of, for example, El-P's "The Overly Dramatic Truth," in which the singer describes exactly what he'll do to the subject of the song if she doesn't "jet."

My defense of "RoboCop" comes down to one two-word sentence: It's funny.

From the sound of a sci-fi-like factory machine affixing rivets or bolts to an unidentified product (a car, maybe?) that's supposed to be the moving joints of Kanye's "RoboCop" girlfriend, to the soaring, pseudo-epic orchestration of the chorus, this song is clearly designed to make fun of overbearing women -- in particular, the "L.A. girl" Kanye finds himself involved with.

The question of whether Kanye's parole-officer-like girlfriend has a right to question his activities isn't presented seriously in the song. Kanye admits that he's made mistakes in the past, and reprimands his gf in part because she just "get[s] mad" when he tells her where he's been -- presumably with another woman. His answer is that she should stop asking.

Monogamy factors into many (or most) of Kanye's songs, though it's usually presented as an untenable or problematic setup for relationships. In "See You In My Nightmares," for instance, the narrator finds himself in the position of being cheated on, and protests -- but his "I thought we were committed" is spoken in such an Urkel-esque voice that it satirizes itself even as it expresses real pain. In "Gold Digger," Kanye's ode to the prenup, women are depicted as enemies to men's success...until the last verse, when Kanye joyously crows (or admits) that if she sticks by her man, the faithful woman is likely to be dumped "for a white girl."

This is the context for Kanye's "let's keep it lighthearted" perspective on his relationship with the "L.A. girl": Not keeping things lighthearted leads to trouble and heartbreak.

And in this way, form fits content. The "RoboCop" sounds are obviously meant to mock the girlfriend, but they also mock the song, whose premise is ridiculous to begin with. The addition of an orchestra adds gravitas and the sense that the song transcends its cultural milieu and immediate context (the way an emotional film score helps the viewer to suspend disbelief enough to become absorbed in the picture); the funny thing about this is that the song never does transcend its subject, which is quotidian, tedious and narrow.

The girlfriend's obsessive focus on Kanye's activities, set into the expansive orchestral background, seems even sillier than it does as Kanye sings about it.

Kanye sews up his diminution of his gf and her concerns with his talking at the end: "Just an L.A. girl / Just a spoiled little L.A. girl...[Laughing] That was a good one. You haven't had a good one in a long time."

But Kanye's singing about this issue, despite his lightheartedness and ironic take on it, makes him complicit in treating it like a serious situation, too. His mockery of his girlfriend for what he says is not an issue proves that it is. He satirizes himself by making much of the chorus, set over the epic orchestral lines, a repetition of the word "okay." The narrator is portrayed more as flabbergasted by his girlfriend's behavior than hostile.

This self-satirizing doesn't go so far as to admit that Kanye is just as much involved in the situation as his gf is, but it is present enough to allow listeners to transcend the song -- "wow, this is a silly song on a silly subject, and involving silly people" -- while still being able to identify with Kanye (or, alternatively, with his girlfriend).

3.5 trips around the Sunset Strip.

In Defense of Poppery, III: "Handlebars"

Pop example: Flobots, "Handlebars"

What redeems it: This defense of poppery is a bit of a departure from past defenses, in that I've chosen for my subject a song that needs absolutely no defense at all.

Anyone who's heard the Flobots' "Handlebars" on the radio for the first time, surrounded by White Stripes and One Republic, knows the chilling genius of this song -- and I mean "chilling" in its original, running-down-your-spine sense, not as in "we wuz all chillin' in my crib."

But let me expound on its perfection, anyway.

"Handlebars" starts out with a simple plucked guitar intro, followed by a canned voice singing "I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars." A light drum comes in before the rapping begins.

I laughed aloud the first time I heard this intro. It was so childlike that I just about forgave the surely false stipulation that the bike literally had no handlebars. (What the singer meant, I figured, was "look Ma, no hands!" but saying "I can ride my bike with no hands" would have been much worse.) The apparent mistake added to the childishness, and the distance of the through-an-old-radio mixing makes it seem somehow quaint, but also ironic.

The first verse follows, which in its entirety reads:

Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it's good to be
ALIVE
and I'm a famous rapper
even when the paths are all crookedy

I can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record
I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together

I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to "De Colores"
And I'm proud to be an American

Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:

Again, I laughed aloud. Imagine any small child you know saying "Me and my friend..." and you'll likely start laughing, too.

This verse, though, relates almost entirely to the singer's status as a "famous rapper," and where it diverts attention from that, it's clearly intending to show devolution on the part of the mind of the narrator -- again, childishness takes control, to the point where the things the rapper brags about are increasingly unrelated to any actual accomplishments: "Me and my friend saw a platypus" is charmingly irrelevant, and the exact type of thing a child would brag about. (Having not yet had the chance to do anything substantial in life, kids focus on what they've seen.)

"Guess how long it took" implies that the singer is seeking approval -- but the pace of the verse is frantic enough (though very controlled, and this is important) that there's no chance for any adult to answer. (This is also important.)

The overexcited, childish narrator goes on to point out that he can "keep rhythm with no metronome" and "see your face on the telephone" in the second chorus.

The second verse builds more frenetically than the first, which was all more or less the same pace -- where before you might imagine a child who'd just eaten too much cake, now you're picturing an adult who's begun to experience mild delusions:

Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say that it's good to be
ALIVE

In such a small world
All curled up with a book to read
I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline

I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers survive aquatic conditions
I know how to run a business
And I can make you wanna buy a product

Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance

The content is different, as the tension ratchets up thanks to a faster pace and higher tone of voice on the part of the rapper -- this verse is about technology and business, building a better engine or medicine, or marketing something so that everyone will want to buy it -- but there's still something disturbingly childlike in the way the content is expressed.

This was when I stopped laughing. The danger of someone who has a "look at me! Look at me!" attitude and either is capable or believes himself capable of inventing and wielding this kind of technology is obvious.

Obvious to the listener, but also obvious to the singer. From the first line, the irony of the song's lyrics has been obvious. At first, the danger of a childish approach to life isn't clear, since the stakes are so low -- so you know the words to "De Colores" and can tell me about Leif Ericson, eh? Well, isn't that cute.

There's an element of cute in the second verse as well (why a thrift store? And isn't it funny that he's claiming to do all this stuff he obviously can't do?), but by the time he claims that "me and my friends understand the future" and that he can "see the strings that control the system," and that he doesn't need "assistance," that's scary.

A trumpet comes in at this point and gets a pretty sweet interlude. Go trumpets in popular music. I'm sure it was a practical consideration -- the group might have a trumpeter, or might just like trumpets -- but I also think there's something to be said for references to trumpets throughout the books of the Apocalypse, and angels often being depicted with trumpets, particularly when the final judgment is at hand.

The second verse's chorus has the singer claiming he can lead the nation with a microphone and split the atoms of a molecule -- what seems to me an obvious reference to a nuclear bomb, especially considering the final verse.

The third verse, the loudest of all, is the scariest:

Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won't stop
And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top

My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble
My power is pure

I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let 'em all die in exasperation
Have 'em all healed of their lacerations
Have 'em all killed by assassination

I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don't like 'em and
I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command

The forced slow-down of the four-word lines emphasizes them -- and the horror of the next stanza negates them. Handing out a million vaccinations would be a great thing to do, sure -- but it seems equally likely that the narrator might choose to "let 'em all die in exasperation." Power is the point, not healing or helping. The childishness falls away to reveal a lunatic.

Here's where I'd like to remind us all of the first verse, where it said "I'm proud to be an American."

If you haven't been thinking about it all along, start now: This song seems to be commenting not only on personal hubris -- of a kind particular to individual Americans -- but also on American foreign policy. With a Unabomber-like perspective on the world, the narrator of the third verse indicts our country, for making unilateral decisions regarding other countries' status as our enemies ("with no permission"), for detaining prisoners (at Gitmo and elsewhere: "I can make anybody go to prison / Just because I don't like 'em") without trial or charge, for not insisting on vaccinations going to countries whose people can't afford them because profit margins are more important.

I also read into the song an indictment of the Bush administration, under which we've seen all these things happen. (Minus, perhaps, the reluctance to hand out vaccinations, which was around before the current president.)

The final chorus is extended and increasingly frantic, though the singer never loses control -- making the effect even more chilling (because he's not just plain crazy):

I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
And I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope
And I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust

Heightening the tension further, the climactic "I can end the planet in a holocaust" line is finished by the sound of a roar, as if from a crowd. The word "holocaust" is followed by this roar each time, but it begs the question: Is the crowd cheering for the holocaust to come, or is it screaming in agony because of it?

The ambiguity works perfectly. Either answer is unconscionable. We can't let this happen.

The line "in a holocaust" is shouted every time, amplified as though by a microphone into a fascist crowd. We're reminded of Hitler, of course, and the memory of the Third Reich is now imposed on the vision of current-world America we got from the second and third verses.

The song ends the way it began: "I can ride my bike with no handlbars," piped in as though through an old-tyme stereo, and childlike -- as though to remind us that horrible, nuclear ends like the climax of the song, start with the individual personal hubris of bragging about riding bikes.

If we don't grow up as a country, in other words, we'll end up destroying the world, or ending up responsible for something far beyond what we thought ourselves capable of (our "power is pure").

The personal interests of each enlightened, individualistic citizen of the U.S. (or the world) may add up to mayhem.

Or derive your own moral.

What a relief that there are pop artists out there concerned enough about the world situation and talented enough to not resort to didacticism, to create this song. I've only briefly touched on the several layers of political and ethical statements going on in this song, and it changes -- and changes me -- every time I hear it. (And there are layers -- for instance, think of "I can take apart the remote control" in the context of setting off missiles, or in how it relates to the claims for mastery of technology in the second verse. It's packed with this stuff.)

The only way to "get it" is to listen; so do.

10 stars on the Richter scale.

In Defense of Poppery, IX: "Lessons Learned"

Pop example: "Lessons Learned" by Matt & Kim

What redeems it: This is the second time I've defended a piece of music that I actually believe needs no defense at all -- but while "Handlebars" by The Flobots is arguably a serious and potentially disturbing song (it always gives me chills) as well as technically flawless, "Lessons Learned" is just plain fun, and the messy kind.

Like all of Matt & Kim's music, "Lessons Learned" is sung by Matt and features only the instruments played and music created by Matt & Kim, two Brooklynites (transplanted there, like all Brooklynites) who decided to start a band with that DIY small-things-are-important ethic that practically defines Brooklyn these days...or at least defines its artisanal foodie culture.

In concert, Matt plays keyboard and Kim plays drums. On their sophomore album, "Grand," though, their production is much more layered and complex than in their previous work and than in their necessarily stripped-down concerts.

True to their aesthetic and Brooklyny ways, Matt & Kim produced the album in Matt's old bedroom in Vermont.All these details are important to understanding what makes the unfettered enthusiasm and joy of Matt & Kim's music so appealing.

It also contextualizes the All-Girl-Summer-Fun-Band-like "messiness" of their instrument-playing and production, the overextension of Matt's voice and the tendency to put Kim's drum-playing on overdrive. It explains why Matt harmonizing with himself is not quite perfect, and yet all the more electrifying. These are the imperfections and flaws in your hand-blown glass one-of-a-kind artifact from the third-world country you've chosen to patronize -- minus the guilt of buying from the third world, where your artisan earns pennies a day.

These are the marks of a genuine product. Except for housewares sold at Target, you can't find this kind of idiosyncrasy in the corporate world, making it all the more fascinating and charming, here.

So the voices that begin "Lessons Learned," likely Kim's, that don't harmonize quite perfectly, that don't quite hit the notes you think they're probably trying for, in this context, are invigorating rather than off-putting: And Matt & Kim have a knack for being a bit off without putting you off. (They know where to draw the line on being off key, for instance.)

And by the time you reach the chorus, something crazy has happened. They've managed to make a song out of the sounds you'd been hearing as relatively spare, the sum of separate parts.

“And so I stayed up all night
Slept in all day
This is my sound
Thinking ‘bout tomorrow won’t change how I feel today”

Matt & Kim's songs are always manic in exactly the way you'd want a band made up of a keyboard player and drummer to be manic. Add a few more instruments, another voice to the one-singer-at-a-time harmonies in "Lessons Learned" or other songs on "Grand," and it would be overwhelming and oppressively heavy. As it is, Matt and Kim manage in their best songs to invoke the feeling of an impending spring, or the desperate joy of cramming in those last hours of fun in the fall before winter hits.

They’re great songs for driving on the highway with the windows down – great songs for driving to something rather than away from it. This is part of what makes Matt & Kim post-punk rather than plain punk. (The themes they sing about, which are almost relentlessly positive, are another part.)

The genius of "Grand," and in particular of "Lessons Learned," unlike the genius of the barebones approach of their self-titled debut album – which sounded like it had been produced by elves set loose in a factory, with its frenetic and big-open-space/exposed-brick-and-pipe sense of energy – is the use of layering in production.

The songs sound richer than their previous "Yea Yeah" and "It's a Fact," and the build-up to their more lyrically complex choruses is superbly done. Yet the mixing puts all the sound on one level, making each element sound equally important – making it sound, in fact, like a wall of sound, industrial and almost inescapable.

The elves have learned how to use the machines, in other words, and are busy making whatever elves make.

Cookies, probably.

Even destruction and apparent apathy in Matt & Kim songs seems creative: In "Daylight," the singer doesn't pick up the phone because everywhere feels like home; in "I'll Take You Home," he's going to take the blinds down from his window, but only so he can see the light better. Every time they destroy something in true-punk fashion, Matt & Kim create something new and better from it – in true Brooklyn artisan fashion.

They just seem to be determined-to-be-happy people.

This will cause one of two reactions, at least in most New Englanders: longing for the same, or loathing.

For those who loathe happiness, I can't say anything to convince you that this album deserves a shot.

For those who wish they were happy, too, there's Matt & Kim.

The equivalent of 5 kittens

In Defense of Poppery, XIV: Bed Intruder song

Pop example: The Autotune the News "Bed Intruder" song, featuring Antoine Dodson, his sister, and the news team and footage from the incident of attempted rape in Huntsville, AL

The issues: Because of some of the popular and critical reception of this song, it seems important to me to address the reasons we might need to defend this song, on at least two levels.

First, it's popular, and pretty much anything popular seems to need a well-rehearsed defense to make people think it might also be significant.

Second, it's a video made by two white boys about a violent incident in an impoverished and largely black community. It practically screams "exploitation."

Some critics have pointed out the exploitative potential of the video -- see the Wikipedia critical reception section for this song -- and its problematic use of Antoine's words and look as a possibly comic aesthetic, without consideration for the actual events that inspired Antoine's passionate speech. Making attempted rape the subject of a popular song is fraught with obvious issues, particularly since this song wasn't confined to its usual "gangsta rap" home.

What redeems it: Some people may be laughing at Antoine Dobson, in which case, some of these critiques are necessary and valid. I furrow my brow to think that two white boys made the video that caused Antoine's words to become the household catchphrases they are now. And it is problematic to make a joke out of attempted rape.

But here's the thing: I don't think people are laughing at Antoine. Anyone laughing at Antoine is completely missing the awesomeness of his speech, which is that Antoine is laughing at and standing up to a potential rapist.

On the one hand, Antoine warns of the pervasiveness of violence in "the projects," implying that rapists are everywhere, and that people should "hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husbands cause they're raping everybody out here." But rather than being the histrionic cries of the cartoon white people in Bowling for Columbine (the South-Park style insert on why white people like guns so much), Antoine's warnings come with enough self-possession to continue on, explaining to the intruder how dumb he is.

As alarming as it would be to have someone enter your home and make an attempt to do violence against you, Antoine's reaction to the situation when it happened was similar: he and his sister fought back, and the attempt failed.

Now that is a narrative that we need. Not the all-knowing horror-movie manipulator (a la The Collector), who is already in your bedroom before you even know it, whose whims must be obeyed to the letter, or you die, but the bumbling, stupid criminal who can be thwarted by people willing to take immediate action to stop him.

Not that all criminals can be thwarted by unexpected and immediate action -- but I bet most can be.

And then Antoine, clinching his and his sister's victory over this idiot, gives a television interview in which he repeatedly mocks the potential rapist. "You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real."

This is how every rapist should be treated. He should be mocked in a national venue.

Obviously, rape is serious, and as a crime it should be taken very, very seriously -- in part because it strips women of power and their choice in an extremely intimate and personal context. So what better response than to do the same to the rapist, exposing him for the idiot he must be? If rape is about power, it seems to me the best response is to forcibly and immediately strip that power away. Antoine's speech and the subsequent video do that extremely effectively.

We're not laughing at Antoine. We're celebrating with him, and admiring his victory, and his attitude toward a situation that could have seriously traumatized his family, and the rest of us if it had happened in our homes.

Now if this victory makes people say to themselves "see? People living in the projects are fine! We don't need to do anything about poverty!" then that is a serious problem.

Maybe Autotune the News and Antoine can make a video mocking those people next.

Note: This defense of poppery refers only to the Autotune the News and Antoine Dobson version of the song. While "researching" this video (that is, listening to it repeatedly and head bopping along), I also found a version done by a choir at Liberty University for their Christmas coffee house. It's entertaining -- particularly at the end, when they sing "you are so dumb" to the tune of "Carol of the Bells" -- but it substitutes the word "taking" for "raping," which I find both inevitable (considering the university context), and offensive (considering the original context).

Subtracting the idea of rape from Antoine's speech completely nullifies the victory I outlined above, making the song into a mere meme instead of a personal and political statement of strength, and I wish someone had problematized this hammy and milquetoast (I might even say cowardly) version of the song before it was performed at Liberty -- but that may be a gripe for a different blog post, perhaps on the exigencies of working at or attending an evangelical institution.

In Defense of Poppery, VII: "The Mae Shi vs. Miley Cyrus' 'See You Again'"

Pop example: The Mae Shi vs. Miley Cyrus’ “See You Again”

What redeems it: “Mae Shi,” or “mei shi” in Chinese, means “it’s okay.” The band’s name is the equivalent of the Hitchhiker’s Guide’s “Don’t Panic” cover – and a good thing, too.

The Mae Shi are an anxiety-producing band for an ex-evangelical. In (what seems to be) their most recent album, “HLLLYH,” they sing on religious themes explicit enough to refer to God directly and remind all of us who did this sort of thing, of the “secular music” purges that used to leave us with nothing but DC Talk and Church of Rhythm in our music collections – minus the Alanis and Counting Crows and Right Said Fred we might have been listening to before (with an exception for Creed and, more recently, Evanescence).

Most of us probably shudder to remember these times. I know I do. I’ve rejected those Christian bands now with almost the same amount of conviction I had when I rejected the secular ones.

So when I heard “HLLLYH,” I was worried that I’d accidentally stumbled back into a Christian music scene I thought I’d left behind. But that anxiety was soon replaced by actual anxiety, because The Mae Shi don’t sound anything like the Christian bands we considered “safe” back in youth group. If you listen closely, they’re actually mocking God, or at least organized religion, or at least Christianity.

“Run to Your Grave” is the closest I’ve heard to a God-mockery song, though I don’t listen to Marilyn Manson, and The Mae Shi bring an admirable sense of humor to the whole thing. They parody the “heaven is our home” theology that comforts Christians who are struggling in “this life” -- but that’s historically kept repressed groups repressed, rather than revolting. (This theology is the “opiate of the masses” Marx was referring to.) They complicate the theology by pointing out (satirically) what's wrong with its focus on the afterlife to the detriment of this one. And their songs never resolve the complication: There's no "homerun Jesus" for The Mae Shi.

The effect of the use of this theology in the parody is to make real Christians nervous, the way other Jews were probably nervous when the sons of Aaron were offering “strange fire” to God: You know something bad is going to happen, but you don’t know what, and you can’t stop yourself from watching.

At the same time, even while they’re singing “turn, burn, soil the flesh; God will do the rest,” the song is really FUN – which just makes you all the more anxious. You’re having fun! You’re worried God will smite you! Fun! Smiting! OMG!

All of this is important context for my defense of The Mae Shi’s singing Miley Cyrus’ teenybopper song “See You Again.”

First of all, the title I give as “pop example” is exactly the title as I downloaded it off the web. The Mae Shi set themselves up from the beginning as antagonists in the “we’re on the side of right” war against Miley Cyrus, the same way their lyrics set them against God in “Run to Your Grave.”

But the lyrics for The Mae Shi’s version of “See You Again” are exactly the same as Miley’s lyrics. This would leave them very little room for satire if the lyrics didn’t satirize themselves simply by being sung by non-teenagers who aren’t named Miley:

“I just kept looking down,
st-st-st-stuttering when you asked me what I'm thinkin' 'bout
Felt like I couldn’t breathe, you asked what’s wrong with me
My best friend Lesley said ‘she’s just bein’ Miley.’”

Of course, “she’s just bein’ Miley” was a silly lyric to begin with; with The Mae Shi singing it, it reaches new heights of ridiculousness. In the original song, you get the impression that Lesley is kind of a jerk. (Who didn't have jerk friends when they were 13?) In The Mae Shi’s version, you see how ridiculous the entire situation is.

The Mae Shi further subvert the song by adding what seems to be characteristic “video game” sounds – think Atari or the tinny tones of Tetris themes, but unspooled into non-melodic one-note-at-a-time frills on top of the punk guitars – and by adding a “breakdown” point in the middle, so popular with indie bands who want to reflect on “what music IS” or “what melody MEANS” or “what people will PUT UP WITH.”

But as with the sense that even their mocking of God is actually an engagement with God that most songs don’t attempt, or don’t manage if they do attempt it, the Miley mockery only works because the original song is catchy-and-stupid. The version of the song as done by The Mae Shi is catchy-and-sarcastic, which lets us all off the hook of needing to feel guilty about liking a stupid Miley Cyrus song.

When I first heard the song on the radio last year, the original, I didn’t know who was singing it, but I was perversely pleased that a song about a thirteen-year-old’s concerns – acting like a mute imbecile in front of her “crush” – existed. Then I found out it was Miley and realized I couldn’t stomach the onus of liking anything by her. I gave up my delight with the song reluctantly.

By externalizing the perversity -- the conflicts inherent in being an indie music fan who appreciates a Miley Cyrus song -- by complicating and satirizing the lyrics and melody, The Mae Shi frees us all (internally) to like the song uncomplicatedly. They’ve already done the work of hating on it, so now we’re free to like it.

If a spoonful of sugar is how to get medicine down, this is the equivalent of adding a bit of salt to your saccharine.

After all, as I always say, if it works for chocolate chip cookies, it should work for Miley.

5 chocolate-chip cookies.

In Defense of Poppery: Inception

Inceptinated!

This defense of poppery won't include a score or a reasoning for my opinion on the recent "summer blockbuster" Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, a bunch of other guys who did a really decent job, and Joseph Gordin-Leavitt, who finally seemed to come into his own as the possible-next-Heath-Ledger I've always felt he could be. (Go find a DVD of Manic, people, and tell me how it ends; my Chinese copy never included the last chapter. That movie also includes the awesome Don Cheadle. It's as far from Third Rock from the Sun as that third rock is...uh...from the sun.)

Instead, I will use this first defense in a long while to knock down a straw man: the idea that movies (or stories of any kind) should have morals to them, and as a bonus, the idea that they could possibly be "without morals."

I'm responding, in short, to this comment posted at the NYTimes review of Inception:

"What exactly is the moral of this overly-complicated tale? The essential question of the ethics and morality of invading and manipulating the dreams of others is simply ignored, and we are left with the moral relativism of pure empty spectacle.
— TM, New York, NY"

That first question I think is a well-stated version of what I sometimes wonder about life itself. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as aptly applied to the question of what the "moral" is in movies.

When people refer to "the moral of the story," they usually mean they want to be told outright what the writers/actors/directors believe about a certain topic (Revolutionary Road's abortion, The Beach's drug lording, Inception's dream-stealing), so that we can agree with them and love the movie or disagree with them and hate it.

Any film critic will tell you this adherence to a didactic morality that determines likes and dislikes will only impede the "true" experience of the movie/story. I'm not going to go that far, since I suppose people who limit their likes and dislikes in reference to a moral compass have every right to do so -- like people who read books to see how many times the word "the" is used -- but I will say that they're doing something different than people who watch for other purposes, aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual.

To be fair, TM isn't necessarily eschewing an aesthetic reading of the movie in deference to a moral one. But TM does use the buzzwords "moral relativism" in a way that enforces the idea that TM expects the movie to offer a "moral."

(It's particularly odd to me that this is TM's criticism, as Inception seems to go out of its way to establish that meddling with other people's minds is very dangerous, criminal, and ultimately self-defeating...but then, this isn't actually a review of Inception, but a review of expectations and viewing habits.)

What TM wants, somehow, is an Aesopian statement at the end of the film, insisting that "it's not good to meddle with other people's minds." Which TM already knows, and which is otherwise peppered throughout the film in more subtle ways. So what TM is asking for, what TM needs to feel safe experiencing this "empty spectacle," is reassurance that Christopher Nolan (who directed Memento, you'll recall) believes the same thing TM believes.

Movies, like the Bible, are not designed for reassurance of preconceived notions. They're challenging, like all the stories we tell -- even the ones with interpretive "moral" statements at the end. Only "Christian fiction" "art" or similarly didactic genres fall into the trap of trapping the subjects absolutely, so that the good always ultimately win and the bad are appropriately punished.

Those genres are about a specific fantasy, and I would like to use this opportunity to suggest that no matter what the subject matter ("romantic," "tragic," or otherwise -- Christian fiction rarely delves into comedy, which usually works by irreverently upsetting the status quo), they should be grouped together under one generic umbrella. Some attempt at this has been made by designations of "family films," though this is not satisfactory to everyone.

Creating this genre would mean the end of statements like "where's the moral of this story?" It's not that the movie is "bad"; it's that you went to the wrong kind of film. I don't expect my romantic comedies to all have shoot-em-up scenes in them; it's inappropriate to the genre. So let morality mongers stick to their own genre, too, and stop complaining when they don't get what they're looking for from other films.

From now on, those who look for other things should be free to reply "you should have gone to the "moral films" section and rented something from there."

In Defense of Poppery, VI: "Dog Park"

Pop example: "Dog Park" by Saturday Knights

What redeems it: "Dog Park," as one online reviewer states, straddles rap and rock -- with, I'd say, an occasional hint of much-hated reggae. It's shamelessly themed, discussing the abandonment of the singer in terms of the dog his (now ex-) girlfriend also left behind.

Everything in the song is sung in terms of the dog -- which is what redeems it.

The humor inherent in discussing your girlfriend's leaving you in terms of having to take her Chow Chow (my most hated of dogs) to the dog park causes "Dog Park" to be the essential opposite of Across Five Aprils' "A Year from Now" (see "In Defense of Poppery, V"). Where Across Five Aprils laments in glorious, melodramatic detail, the loss of the singer's first (AND ONLY, EVER) love, the Saturday Knight's singer is mainly concerned with the practical ramifications of his girlfriend leaving -- like his having to take care of her stupid dog.

Except that the dog isn't stupid. The singer takes the dog to the dog park, in fact, and meets someone new. He suddenly becomes a very enthusiastic dog owner. Promising to shower the dog with gifts, he says to the dog:

I wouldn't trade you for a stone fox terrier
I wouldn't trade you for a Spanish waterdog

This is where the song goes from maintaining a metaphorical thematic connection to dogs to a ridiculous, LOLly reference-on-every-line preoccupation with them. The singer begins chanting "best in show" in the background, presumably about both the dog and the woman the dog has allowed him to meet.

The references become so hyperbolic that by the end, the song ends up having an "It's Raining Men" optimism without even the seriousness included in that song. (Recall that in "It's Raining Men," the single-girl angel had a problem that she ultimately solved by "raining men"; plus, if you think about it, men falling from the sky is a scary rather than a fun-and-fancy-free proposition, and wouldn't be very sexy if it actually happened).

The song satirizes itself -- which is the best kind of satire.

Rating: Three whippets.

In Defense of Poppery, XIII: The Human Centipede

Okay, disclaimers: I'm not saying that anyone should watch this movie. In fact, only two-point-five of the people possibly reading this should consider picking it up at the local Blockbuster, or putting it into their Netflix queue -- you know who you are. If you think it might not be you, it's not.

I'm not even particularly interested in "redeeming" The Human Centipede, any more than I would try to redeem the equally-tellingly-titled Snakes on a Plane. I'm more interested in discussing where Centipede fits into the generally available oeuvre of horror films, why it has a spot there (why that spot exists), and in proclaiming my disappointment with less-well-done horror films, such as the movie so bad I can't remember its title (IMDB reveals that it's called The Fear Chamber, and shockingly came out just last year).

The plot of The Human Centipede is simple: there's a mad scientist doctor who's only recently gone mad, who wants to sew three people together, mouth to anus, into a "human centipede." He was previously a world-class surgeon who separated conjoined twins. Spoiler alert: He succeeds.

P.C. and I chose to rent this movie (from the local, now bankrupt Blockbuster) because I felt it had been following me around for a few months; perhaps it was first hearing about it on NPR-like Sirius radio on the way to friend Becca's wedding in part of a comedy routine. Perhaps it was having it somehow pop up in ads online or somewhere I can't quite identify. Maybe it stuck with me because it's such a simple and grotesque idea. But yesterday, after an afternoon of reading about the "philosophy of horror," I felt ready to descend into the macabre world of a torture-film, and The Human Centipede seemed as good as any other.

In fact, it's better than most others, which was a pleasant surprise.

The front of the DVD quotes Eli Roth saying the movie made him sick, which was a high compliment for horror, and it's reviewed as being "surprisingly straight-forward," which is exactly what it is. Unlike The Collector, which makes a small attempt to explain the sadistic torturer's motives for entering the homes of families and then butchering them slowly ("he collects people" -- but what this means is never exactly clear), The Human Centipede has a certain elegant lack of explanation that is only elegant because an explanation is unnecessary.

In addition to the austerity of exposition (or lack of it), there's a modernist aesthetic to the German (of course German -- also, it's an apparently Dutch director's movie, though mostly in English, and subtitled, making the Japanese businessman's "Nazi!" epithet even more interesting) doctor's home, where most of the action takes place. The co-eds who find themselves victims to the doctor's plan aren't as stupid as they usually are in these movies, nor as deserving of torture, and that also streamlines the plot somehow. In general, this is a well-wrought, spare movie that revolves around a simple and simply revolting premise.

The Fear Chamber, a movie I picked up with seven others for less than a dollar each (a pack which includes the great classic Night of the Living Dead, making the other hideously bad movies worth the purchase), is the opposite in every way of The Human Centipede. The premise is so unclear that I can hardly state it here: there's a guy who likes to butcher women, for some reason, and later on he shows up in clown make-up. He stabs the detective-hero in the heart, but magically the detective doesn't die, even though he went to chase the killer alone on an abandoned roof in L.A. without calling for backup (but then, there are only 2 other cops on the LAPD force in this movie, anyway, and their investigative headquarters look suspiciously like a janitor's closet), and even though he got stabbed in the heart. But this all adds up at the end when it's revealed that the killer was selling organs on the black market, but that somehow the heart he'd removed from a psychic had been the transplanted heart that saved detective-hero's life.

In other words, it's a poorly written, poorly directed, slightly more macabre version of Return to Me.

But it's convoluted, non-sense-making movies like Fear Chamber (the title is never referenced in the movie, and its location is unclear; is the "fear chamber" the weird warehouse space the killer uses to kill victims, even though his locations appear to change? Or is it the janitor's closet where the 3 members of the LAPD meet?) that make The Human Centipede stand out. And for that, I suppose we must thank those movies that fail in their badness even to become fun camp films.

But in general, torture films do need an apologetic, even if I can argue successfully that The Human Centipede is a "good" version of such a genre. And the arguments in favor of the moral possibility of torture films (or the possibility of torture films being moral) are on about as wide a spread as the quality of the films themselves.

The best argument I've read so far, and the one that echoed in my brain as I looked over the Blockbuster's selection last night, finally to settle on the Centipede, is that great horror films -- particularly ones featuring sadistic torture scenes -- recognize, exploit, and make the viewer aware of the deep ambivalence in the human soul. While we feel the terror and pain of the victim, we are also often led (and Human Centipede is no exception in this; it dwells at length on the doctor's maniacal smiles and at times almost orgasmic pleasure with his creation, and also on the signs of his loneliness) to feel the sadistic pleasure of torture with the torturer.

This is disturbing. But it's supposed to be disturbing, and for me, that's the key. You're supposed to be disturbed by horror films.

People who don't like being disturbed, or perhaps more importantly people who aren't disturbed (but are instead turned on or made curious by these movies), probably shouldn't be watching horror films.

The most convoluted argument I've read in favor of allowing for torture films brought in the question of pornography (apparently relevant since these movies are often referred to as "torture porn"), comparing arguments about the suggestiveness of pornography (i.e., feminist argument that seeing women as objects in magazines will cause viewers to want to treat women the same way in real life) to supposed arguments about the suggestiveness of torture movies (i.e., you see someone pulling out another person's teeth in the movie and think "hey, that might be fun").

The author of that essay then spent a few sentences "debunking" the arguments against pornography, then attempted to apply the same logic to torture films, despite the fact that a few sentences don't suffice to redeem all porn from the arguments listed, and that if we agree that torture films aren't pornography, then the correlation in arguments is moot to begin with.

It was like Fear Chamber all over again; because I'm familiar with the genre, I can kind of see what he was trying to do, but it was clearly unsuccessful.

So if you like theorizing about, or pointing out the flaws in, badly made torture films and arguments about them, see The Fear Chamber and then read the third essay's final page in The Philosophy of Horror.

If, on the other hand, you like a good, well-founded disturbance now and then, but you want to feel okay about it, read the first essay in Philosophy of Horror and then catch a showing of The Human Centipede.

I can't say you won't regret it, but I can say that I didn't.

In Defense of Poppery, IV

Pop example: Vampire genre fiction

Note: I've decided to take "Defense of Poppery" to the next level and defend an entire genre this time, instead of one particular example of it. Any future suggestions for songs, books, TV shows, etc. that could use an apologetic, may be submitted to me via email or comments.

What redeems it: Beyond Stephenie Meyer's recent success and "Trevor the vampire" Strongbad email, beyond even the many, many remakes of Dracula/Nosferatu, vampire genre fiction has been around since villagers strung the first cloves of garlic around their necks.

And I think that's okay.

Setting aside the Freudian overtones -- but actually, let's not. The Freudian overtones are, after all, the whole point of vampire literature.

Male vampires are, as a rule, dangerously and hypnotically seductive, and heterosexual. The best way to test the rule is to imagine an alternative -- like a football player (not hypnotically seductive at all, though aggressively hetero -- right?) attacking a teammate's neck on the field after the requisite congratulatory ass-slap, for instance.

Female vampires are femme fatales, and though they may branch out from heteronormative behavior, that can almost certainly be ascribed to the idea that it's "sexy" for an attractive female to be bicurious -- and the point of being a femme fatale is overwhelming sex appeal.

There are exceptions to these rules out there: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance, is about a teen girl who stakes vamps without breaking a sweat, reversing the typical Freudian who-stabs-who scenario. On the other hand, she does get involved with a dangerous and hypnotically seductive male vampire...twice.

But my perspective on these stereotypical gender relations -- I'd usually be against 'em -- is tempered by the fact of its genre.

Science fiction -- or in many vampire genre examples, fantasy -- has an excuse for being so archetypal. It exists completely in the world of the mind.

Of course, all fiction exists completely in the mind; otherwise, it would be nonfiction.

Science fiction, though, admits that it's not real. It doesn't try to tromp l'oeil us into thinking we're reading about real people -- it convinces us instead that we're reading about real emotions or internal experiences.

Vampires are obviously metaphorically male, though in a twist, they steal something instead of expelling -- in that way, as well as in practical terms, they also represent death.

There's no way to read a novel about death. There are only novels about other people's reactions to death. Vampires personify not only Eros, with a vampiric attack an obvious metaphor for sex, but also Thanatos, allowing readers (or viewers -- a stipulation that goes for all instances of "reader" or "novel/book/literature") to deal with fears or fascination with sex and death more directly.

And isn't that what literature is supposed to do? Why would we bother arranging scenarios and creating characters and settings exactly like the lives that we already lead?

Don't we already experience fears related to Eros or Thanatos indirectly, in terms of the circumstances of our everyday lives?

Rather than being escape literature, then, my position is that vampire genre fiction deals more directly with the archetypes and psychoanalytic issues in our lives than other literature. Yes, putting those fears into monster form is a kind of repression of emotion -- but it's the kind of repression that allows us to get perspective, to step back and deal with things on a manageable level.

And then, also, see my post about repression being sexier.

In Defense of Poppery, XV: Why Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting matters to us.

Pop example: Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting, and subsequent media coverage of said ranting

What redeems it: Well, nothing. It's crazy ranting.

Okay, then what makes it important, or why do we want to watch it?:
I've seen two kinds of media coverage of Charlie Sheen's recent claims to being from Mars (a claim John Gray would probably back him up on, though I haven't seen that angle covered), having tiger blood, and doing more cocaine than the human body can handle.

I've seen the actual Charlie-Sheen ranting in highlight reel forms (such as with bunnies or on autotune), and I've seen the semi-ranting meta-coverage of the media and commenters asking us all why we're so interested in the crazy ranting of Charlie Sheen.

It's the second kind of coverage I want to discuss first, and then I'll justify our possible collective interest in the first kind of coverage.

Most people who are upset with Charlie Sheen coverage (we'll call it CSc) claim to have one of two reasons (or both) for annoyance:

1. Charlie Sheen is clearly mentally deranged or ill (either from drugs or a pre-existing condition, such as bipolar disorder), and we need to pity him -- or ignore him. (Odd combination of prescribed responses, but there it is.)

2. Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting is not "real news" because "real news" is hearing about unemployment, the unrest in Libya, etc. Under this umbrella falls also laments that CSc is taking up time that should go to those topics, as well as protests that "it's just TV" and so we shouldn't care.

To the first objection, that Charlie Sheen is mentally deranged/ill, I honestly see no way in which either pitying or ignoring him would actually help Charlie Sheen. Perhaps it's schadenfreude for us to be so fascinated by his rants (though I'll discuss later why I don't believe it is), and perhaps we should "be better than that," but neither pity nor ignoring actually make us "better than that." The fact is that no collective attitude we take toward CS or CSc will improve Charlie's chances of rehabilitating himself or finding an appropriate cocktail of prescribed medications to deal with whatever disorder we've decided he has.

Pity and ignorance don't help people, and pretending that our pity or ignorance is morally better than our fascination is kind of silly.

To the second objection, that CSc is preempting more important coverage of more important events, I would say that the news people wish we would be hearing more about is either boring, difficult to watch, or both. This is the trap that environmental groups and human rights organizations and Tea-partiers all fall into: no sense of humor, and an urgency that implies no time to develop one.

People can't be constantly being reminded that polar bears are about to become extinct without either becoming apathetic or blowing their brains out. You need to give people some down time.

[Tangent 1: The Middle East has not been giving us very much down time in this 24-hour news cycle. We're obviously not living it (making the caring actually a lot more difficult to sustain), but we've been through a change of regime in Egypt, political unrest in several other countries, and (still) the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In other words, if you want us to care about Libya and unemployment and the crushing federal deficit, you need to let us watch Charlie Sheen for awhile to clear our brains.]

To the related objection that "it's only TV," and so we shouldn't care, I say that I agree that Two and a Half Men, as far as I can tell from the few five-second blurbs I've seen while changing channels, is a crappy show. But TV is the touchstone for all generations born since 1950. Saying that it's "only" a TV show is like saying "what's the big deal? He's just a famous person everyone in the realm recognizes and normally pays homage to, the modern equivalent of the king!" or perhaps more pointedly, "what's the big deal? It's just the English language, the mother-tongue through which we understand the world!"

We all speak TV. That's how you know that you wish evening news shows would show what you think of as serious evening news instead of Charlie Sheen rants. You weren't born thinking "the evening news should be about crime, the economy, politics, and other boring serious things, only." You know that because TV taught it to you. Your elitist expectations actually came from TV.

Which brings me, I think, to my observations on the bifurcation of the American mind when it comes to television. We all think it's important, and we all also know that we "shouldn't" think so because other things are "more important." (I mean, when people actually like a TV show, they describe themselves as helpless in relation to it; "I'm addiction to X show" they say. As though TV is a drug that we'd quit if only we had the moral fortitude.)

We watch CSc, and we simultaneously gripe about the fact that we're watching it.

I believe this relates directly to capitalism, since television is one of capitalism's greatest inventions -- a tool of the economic system from the start -- and the way capitalism needs us to be simultaneously consuming a massive amount of product, and also dissatisfied with the products we consume so that as soon as we're "finished" with the first thing, we move on to consume the next one.

[Tangent 2: The fact that TV is so obviously a capitalist tool is what makes it seem "low class." Low class things are characterized by their exposure of/to the mechanics of capitalism: the prototypical lower class people are factory workers, even though farmers may make about the same amount of money (or less). Farmers are portrayed as having "other benefits," ones indigenous to the countryside that disintegrate (literally) the closer they get to the city -- pastoral scenery, simplicity, nutrition, "down home" wisdom, etc. -- and that are viewed as "outside" the capitalist structure and the hurly burly world of money.

"They're poor in money but rich in spirit," we say about farmers. Those who leave the land for mechanized labor are "selling out"; those who stay on the land but begin to use factory-like mechanized labor devices are also "selling out."

How would a factory worker "sell out"? Would it even be possible?

Think about it for a minute. I'll wait.

If you thought of a way a factory worker could sell out, it probably involved some vestige of human bonds, like betraying a union or coworker. But the point is that machines and mechanical labor cannot be "sold out" -- they are the sellout. And so it is with TV.]

The complex structure of our society relies on urban spaces, factories, and television, and it so obviously relies on those things that they become the "low" -- while objects, people, artists and media that appear not to rely on those "low" things give the illusion of "rising above" and managing to be "high class." (In modernism, at least...where cities necessarily also produce the "high class," which is partly defined by its association with human production, standards, and "cultured-ness." If capitalism defines the lower class, so does it define the higher within its own workings, leaving farmers out of the spectrum despite/because of their supposed spiritual riches.)

So here's my long-awaited point: Charlie Sheen is a lunatic. And I think part of the fascination with his particular lunacies is that he has been completely unpredictable in a high/low kind of way.

He is a "low" kind of guy, in that his fame comes mainly from TV and some Oscar-unworthy movies. And he's acting "low," in that he claims to have done a ton and a half of drugs, and in that he is clearly bragging about himself, and in that he may be mentally ill.

But he's refusing to apologize for all those things in the way that "low" things should -- Charlie Sheen doesn't have a bifurcated mind about CSc, loving it and hating it at the same time. He just freaking loves it, as he tells us again and again. And instead of the usual apology, he's saying things that are actually out-of-control, insanely creative. They're far more like poetry than any script of Two and a Half Men.

Tiger blood? Adonis? One-armed children?? Where is he getting this stuff?

That's what everyone wants to know. That's why we keep listening. That's why it seems like such a killjoy when others attempt to diagnose him (again making him "low," controlled, in need of our help), because it seems to explain what's going on when he opens his mouth.

And maybe it does.

But maybe we also see our own possibilities and servitudes exposed in some of the craziness Charlie has been exhibiting. We are, after all, a nation that both polices the world and polices our policing of the world (that watches TV and says "we wish we didn't"). In Charlie Sheen, we see the specter of that hubris if it were unleashed, if we stopped policing ourselves. We see the destruction and creativity unleashed by that kind of arrogance.

I think we see both what we have created as the (semi)omnipotent audience and what we fear we could become as Americans. We are the crazy ranters who never thought we could be taken down, that we were "too big to fail" -- and here we are in a recession. Charlie Sheen stinks of impending disaster because we can smell it on ourselves, not because he's actually faced any disaster...because he's very specifically not facing disaster and is blissful in what we feel must be his ignorance. He's a metaphor for us that we created by our attentions. In a way, the narrative of his "breakdown" proves our power; in a more literal way, our attention to his recent crazy ramblings allowed more crazy ramblings.

And I think we can't look away because both halves of our capitalist minds are attracted to these rantings: reveling in the low, low class obsession with and proximity to bald power, and also the implied freedom in the creative claiming of that power -- without apology, as if Manifest Destiny had come back into vogue. Charlie Sheen seems to be rising above us as he speaks, not in the ways he describes (he's not actually from Mars, he doesn't have only one speed [Go], and he probably doesn't really have any tiger blood), but in his descriptions themselves. He is free from our capitalist anxiety and obsessive self-consciousness (though not our self-obsession).

He makes us wonder what "winning" means. Could he be winning? Could it be that this nut-casery is what we are exhibiting when we say we're winning? In the split seconds between watching a video of CSc and making an amateur diagnosis and dismissal of him as "crazy," Charlie makes us think about what winning is.

And therein lies the value of CSc, I believe.

In Defense of Poppery, II: "Sweetest Girl"

Pop example: Wyclef Jean, Akon, Lil' Wayne and Niia's "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)"

What redeems it: "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)" is a typical example of its hip-pop genre: semi-rapped lyrics give way to a melodic chorus featuring a female background singer. This song falls into the category of a modern-life-fable, too -- the moral of the story being (as is also typical) that prostitutes live a hard life.

"Sweetest Girl," only the latest in a string of pobrecita-prostitute (aka "po' ho") songs, is remarkable because it's a collaboration. The first verse mentions a few of the artists given credit for singing and writing the song: Wyclef (Jean), Akon, and "Weezy." The Internet credits Lil' Wayne, Niia and Wyclef. Whatever the list and street-name-show-name-real-name combination, it's obvious that a bunch of music celebrities worked on this song.

Think of the other song collaborations you've heard of -- beyond the recent awesome Coldplay-Brian Eno partnership, think of songs where pop singers banded together to sing about some global issue. Usually "Heal the World," "Imagine," "let's end world hunger"-type stuff, right?

"Sweetest Girl" falls into this category. The melody is smooth and driven by (and intended to cultivate) sentimentality. The collaborative artists sing in turn. It's clear both that this goes beyond Jamie Foxx's cameo in "Gold Digger," and that the point of the song is to garner sympathy for a plight.

Here's the extraordinary part: By collaborating on a pobrecita-prostitute song, Wyclef, Akon, Lil' Wayne and co. have proposed that the daily-life woes of prostitutes and their pimps deserve the same sympathy as people starving, or dying in wars.

The first verse pities the prostitute:

She had a good day, bad day, sunny day, rainy day
All she wanna know is (where my money at?)
Closed legs don't get fed, go out there and make my bread
All you wanna know is (where my money at?)

The second verse, hinted at in the change from "she" in the first refrain of the first verse to "you" in the second refrain (so "you" may be the pimp), seems to be on the pimp's side, though, making this more a song of "what's this world coming to?" than pro-prostitute:

Pimpin' got harder 'cause hoes got smarter
On the strip is something they don't wanna be a part of
Rather be up in the club shakin' for a thug
For triple times the money and spending it like they wanna
They got they mind on they money, money on they mind

The end of the second verse clinches the "we're all in this together" sense that comes from seeing both sides of the equation -- the Djay, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" side and the pobrecita-prostitute side:

See everyday they feel the struggle, but staying on they grind
And ain’t nobody takin’ from us, and that’s the bottom line

An awareness that cops can lock them up ("25 to life's no joke") comes up at the end of the section, and along with the word "us" (who nobody's takin' from), the song is form-fits-content at this point. The singers are collaborating to sing; pimps and prostitutes collaborate to make their money-gathering system work effectively.

We're supposed to be paying attention to the system -- the way, in a "feed the world" song, we'd be asked to pay attention to, if not the systemic issues that create or propagate world hunger, at least the large-scale acts of charity that could alleviate it. This song aspires to look at the system as a whole and sympathize with the people within it, more even than with any individual or role. The chorus is explicit in this, and details what appears to be the problem with the world that creates this system:

Cash rules everything around me
Singin' dollar dollar bill y'all (dollar, dollar bill y'all)

Money -- the desire and ultimate need for money -- is what created this system.

The final verse goes back to prostitute-specific sympathy, with a dig at the church for being ineffective against the system they find themselves a part of:

She used to run track back in high school
Now she tricks off the track right by school
She takes a loss cos she don't wanna see her child lose
So respect her, and pay up for the time used
And then she runs to the pastor
And he tells her there will be a new chapter
But she feels no different after

The song doesn't mention how the prostitute makes her money in this verse -- instead, it uses a passive-voice euphemism ("time used"). I think this is particularly effective, in that it not only draws our attention away from the mechanics of the prostitute's questionable calling, but it deliberately pays her the respect of modesty -- especially remarkable considering her immodest work and the other terms usually used in place of "prostitute," none of which are particularly respectful.

Unlike many "let's get together" songs, "Sweetest Girl" doesn't offer us a solution...in fact, it almost fails to offer us a problem. Because we feel sympathetic toward both prostitutes and their pimps, we have trouble identifying anyone within the system to blame for their situation, and the song is unclear on how the outside-the-system problem of always needing cash can be handled. We're left with a statement of a problem, but not a proposed solution.

Still, the song effectively portrays, in anecdotal though broad-stroke terms, a set of circumstances that leave only victims behind, and it does this regarding an issue that most Americans wouldn't think twice about, morally speaking.

I'll be interested to see what's next for Lil' Akon Jean.

4 stars out of whatever.

In Defense of Poppery, XI: Movies based on self-help books.

Pop Example: Movies based on self-help books, such as "He's Just Not That Into You" and "The Ugly Truth"

What redeems it: I’d intended to defend movies based on self-help books a few months ago, when I saw “He’s Just Not That Into You,” but I let it go – until this week, when I saw “The Ugly Truth.”

To be clear, some movies based on self-help books are better than others, and “He’s Just Not That Into You” is better than “The Ugly Truth.” But that may be part of why this subgenre of film deserves our attention: These films offer a bit of a book review in advance of our actually buying copies of books to live our lives by. It would be like seeing workout videos used and populated by people on the South Beach diet, or Atkins, before trying those diets out on your own digestive system, or watching a video of a Weight Watcher’s meeting that would help you understand both how supportive and how excruciatingly boring such meetings can be in advance of paying for the plan. This is all useful information.

In the case of movies based on self-help books, though, plots are necessary. What would normally be a list of Do’s and Don’ts has to be put into narrative practice for a Hollywood blockbuster – a recitation of principles would amount to an instructional video, and nobody past their first day at Drugstore USA wants to watch a whole bunch of those.

Self-help movies, then, end up showing a Hollywood version of how these books would theoretically work out in “real life” – in other words, they espouse the harsh critique of male-female relations the books they’re based on do, but then they undercut that message with a Hollywood happy ending.

Thus, self-help romantic comedies end up critiquing the books they’re based on – but because the majority of the movie is intended to narrate and support the principles of the book, the movie also critiques itself.

At the end of “He’s Just Not That Into You,” for instance, Justin Long’s character realizes that the girl who according to the book’s principles should stop obsessing and just get a life (Ginnifer Goodwin), is right. He is, in fact, THAT into her, and he needed her to point it out in order to realize the truth.

At the end of “The Ugly Truth,” Katherine Heigl and her “Ugly Truth” host (Gerard Butler), who’s been spouting an “everything is sex and sex is everything” view of men (and women), realize they’re in love with each other. He admits that it’s happened for no reason, which just makes her happier. Apparently, love is beyond reason – even beyond the reason of the self-help book the movie is based on.

And that’s the crux of the matter, the answer to the questions “how did that couple in that movie end up together?” and “what are principles I can live my life by in order to trick love into finding me?”: It’s a mystery. Nobody knows. It seems astonishing yet inevitable when it happens, and no two stories of how it happened are the same.

In the end, the one consistent message these movies send, despite themselves and despite the books they’re “based on” is that you might as well just keep being yourself. Ultimately, that’s what’s most likely to make you happy and get you into a satisfying relationship.

I can buy into that.