All our Heroes are Pyrrhus

That crunching sound is the new meta-narrative
crushing your nostalgia.

A while back I blogged about the summer blockbuster, Man of Steel. Jessie asked for a follow-up:

I want a post about people's oddly consistent reaction to how many extras died in this movie.

To really address this topic, I think we need to look more broadly at action and adventure movies. [I should mention at this will be a spoiler-filled post for any movies that come up, and that I will be talking about some movies I haven't seen.] Two movies this past summer have been particularly  criticized for their portrayal of successful attacks of mass destruction: Man of Steel and Star Trek Into Darkness. Tor.com has a recent post discussing the new perspective on warfare portrayed in these films:

The most disturbing thing to me about both Star Trek: Into Darkness and Man of Steel was the collateral damage in both films and the rather blasé treatment that it received. [...]

We’re not reminded often enough that thousands have died in drone strikes in Pakistan over the past 9 years. It’s not stressed that over a hundred of those deaths were children. They are not important to the narrative.

That narrative tells us that these things happen, that sometimes mistakes are made. That in order to protect our security and get the bad guys, sometimes innocent lives are lost. They’re unfortunate accidents. Incidental. It’s the cost of our freedom.

The whole post is worth reading, and I agree that these films highlight a major difference in the way we tell action stories now compared to previous decades. But I think it misses a critical detail of the destruction in these movies, and therefore a critical part of the narrative they create.

The incredible levels of destruction don't happen to civilians in the enemies country / planet. They happen here. When San Francisco and Metropolis are decimated, the movies are not making a reference to deaths overseas. Not to be completely cliché, but it really is all about 9/11.

Now, action movies have always required a certain degree of collateral damage, both to prove the situation is serious and to motivate the heroes to fight back. Often a close friend of the hero has to die in order to justify the heroes being callous about slaughtering the enemy; as Mark Millar would say, "It’s just a horrible act to show that somebody’s a bad guy."

What, a fiendish mustache isn't enough?

But mass destruction was typically been restricted to disaster movies or has taken place before the heroes get a chance to fight back. In both cases, a fair amount of attention was paid to the fallout, and the heartache of massive losses of life and property were kind of the point.

I think that changed after 9/11. Consider the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000 and featured the villains almost killing all of the world's leaders. In the end we had one dead senator and a broken torch on the Statue of Liberty. In contrast, the third X-Men movie came out in 2006, and resulted in dozens or hundreds of death, and the complete destruction of an equally iconic national landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge. Some of this is a matter of sequels escalating, but I think there's something different here than what we see going from Die Hard in 1988 to Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995. The process has continued over time, with city-wide destruction the heroes are powerless to prevent in 2012 in The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.

What people have been commenting on the most, though, is not just the level of destruction, but the fact that the heroes don't even make it a priority to try. These days, movie action heroes have accepted their inability to save large numbers of people, and the filmmakers want the audience to play along. We almost don't notice until we are looking at long-standing franchises like Star Trek and Superman, where we've seen the heroes fight and overcome these sorts of world-destroying dangers before with far less collateral damage.

So what does this say about us? Again, I don't think it's about our drones killing civilians. It's about the fact that our real-life heroes--the soldiers, political leaders, police officers, firefighters, etc--couldn't do much except get out of the way while the iconic monument of the World Trade Center towers collapsed. They helped after the fact, but they were powerless to prevent the tragedy. That's the new narrative I see: not just that heroes don't always prevent collateral damage, but that heroes can't prevent it, and we shouldn't expect them to.

Gone are the days where Superman can conveniently discover the power to turn back time if the villain succeeds in sinking the West Coast and killing Lois Lane. This time, the best we can hope is that Superman uses whatever is at his disposal to stop Zod from making it worse, even if it requires him to kill. Even the most powerful on-screen hero must accept that they are sometimes powerless, because the audience needs to accept that our off-screen heroes are sometimes powerless.

this is what victory looks like in the 21st century

The backlash this year might mean this is changing. As the narrative has escalated what our heroes can't do, we've also gotten further removed from 9/11. We might finally be reaching the stage where it's not enough to see the side of good win only by sacrificing much of what the hero protects (Man of Steel & Star Trek Into Darkness). Or it could be that the new narrative has run against our nostalgia for these franchises and the narrative won. Only time will tell.

Friday Links

Actually, this is a pretty good idea.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury wants to help not-for-profit credit unions put payday lenders out of business:

I said to him quite bluntly, ‘We’re not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we’re trying to compete you out of existence’.

He’s a businessman, he took that well.

Test scores are bad at predicting performance at Google... but probably not for the reason you think:

Google likely doesn’t have much variability among those hired with respect to test scores and grades. And when there is no variability, there is no correlation with anything. [Furthermore,...] If someone is hired despite their lower test scores, it usually means some compelling compensating characteristics made that person look like a good bet. That is why the correlation between a valid selection instrument and job performance can be dramatically depressed when only looking at the hired sample.

Finally, here's a pinterest page that blurs the line between pop culture and fine art.

In Post-Soviet Russia,

photo captions you!

Stephen Fry thinks the UK should boycott the Sochi Olympics:

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

 At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.

He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. 

Read the whole thing. He makes an interesting case. George Takei has made a similar call.

On the opposite side is many Olympic athletes. Not too surprisingly, people who have worked for years and may only make it into the Olympics once don't want them to be cancelled or boycotted. "The Olympics are not a political statement," said openly-gay figure skater Johnny Weir.

I can see both arguments here. I lean towards favoring the relocation idea. What do you think?

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world. - See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world. - See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/#sthash.dkpUsBXV.dpuf

Some Comic Creators Don't Want Your Money

Gail Simone will go Red Sonja on the next
fool who says comics aren't for women.

Not if you're a woman, that is. A group of well-known comic creators made comments at a panel discussion about how women are neither the target audience nor the protagonists of superhero stories, and to the extent they're in the stories at all horrifying things that happen to them aren't that big a deal.

I'll give you a second to finish your epic eye roll.

Here's Gerry Conway, known for creating the Punisher and killing-off Gwen Stacy, among his accomplishments:

I think it’s a mistake to sort of, like, pigeonhole superheroes, or to add so much to superheroes that you’re missing the fact it’s a genre within itself. It’s like saying, ‘Why are there no medieval stories about female knights?’ Because there was only one, you know, Joan of Arc. … It’s an inherent limitation of that particular genre, superheroes.

How the guy who invented Punisher doesn't know that these stories are made up, and therefore can be whatever people want, is really beyond me.

We also have Mark Millar, who wrote one of my favorite comics, Superman Red Son:

The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know? [...] I don’t really think it matters. It’s the same as, like, a decapitation. It’s just a horrible act to show that somebody’s a bad guy.

Wait, what? If it's the same as a decapitation, why not use decapitation? Just to mix it up, keep the frivolous violence from becoming stale? I think Laura Hudson (@laura_hudson) responded best: 

If you don't understand how a rape scene is different from non-sexual violence, psychologically and culturally, you shouldn't be writing one. That's not just going to affect your writing, it's going to contribute to a culture where rape is endemic, misunderstood and even tolerated.

Now, I like darker & edgier comics. I've been known to enjoy Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Mike Grell, and a host of others. But if you're not going to treat the darker subject matter with the seriousness the topics deserve, it's not edgy. It's tawdry.

Finally, there's this gem from Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn (Image comics represent!):

[...] the odd character that is a minority that works is the one that is just a good strong character. They've tried to do minority characters and bring that label and that surrounding [debate] into it. You're aware that you're reading a minority comic book. I think it's wrong.

Crap, all this time they've been trying to make female and minority characters, and they forgot that they have to be good characters, too! It's a good thing we have McFarlane to clue us in. Seriously, though, the implication is that a straight white male character is inherently more likely to be a good character. It might be the case that it's easier for straight white male writers to do a good job with straight white male characters. But to suggest, even slightly, that this has anything to do with the limitations of minority characters and not the limitations of the straight white male writers is pretty ridiculous.

Sometimes I'm a little embarrassed to be a fan of superhero comics.

Humanities and Uncertainties

Thanks. We'll try.

John Horgan at Scientific American has some thoughts about the intellectual contribution of the humanities and social sciences. His basic thesis:

In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you’re given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism.

This is one of the major objectives of the courses I teach, in statistics and economics. In economics, I want students to realize that when they (or anyone else) suggests there is a simple, easy to understand solution to a major problem the world is facing, it is going to be wrong. We don't have the information to reach easy answers, and in general the easy answers aren't there to be found in the first place. I like to quote Thomas Sowell: "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs."

In statistics, I want students to think in terms of probability rather than certainty, and realize that we can be confident in our beliefs while still being willing to learn. I like to quote Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."

I also agree with Horgan that science education is increasingly dogmatic, and this is a major problem. Science educators have gotten so frustrated with 'evolution is just a theory' that they fight back with the same fundamentalism, insisting that science gives us things we totally, definitely know for sure:

[...] science if properly taught should incorporate skepticism. But science is becomingly increasingly dogmatic and arrogant in our era, which is why we need the humanities to foster a healthy anti-dogmatism.

So if the humanities are teaching students to be more questioning, and to be comfortable in a world of uncertainty, then more power to them. It's nice to have allies.