Friday, May 11, 2007
Spider-Man 3 and September 11th
Everyone cries in Spider-Man 3. The good guys, the bad guys, the bad guys with good intentions, you name it. Scooter remarked, "this movie was weepier than Beaches."
And I shed a tear as well.
It was during an early scene, with student/model/daughter-of-the-police-chief Gwen Stacy falling out of a skyscraper. The scene evoked the memory etched into the cerebral cortex of every New Yorker, that of 9/11. People jumping to their deaths from the burning towers. No superheroes catching people on the way down, just ordinary heroes on the way up to rescue ordinary people.
As documented on the comics page at The Authentic History Center, in the December 2001 edition of The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel imagined how Spider-Man would have reacted at the scene of the attack. Spider-Man surveys the burning wreckage, thinking: "Some things are beyond words. Beyond comprehension. Beyond forgiveness."
However, in the 2007 film, the act of forgiveness drives the entire narrative. The traditional dichotomy between superhero and supervillain was swept aside in favor of a simple test: Do you forgive? Take away the costumes and the fancy graphics, and you have a medieval morality play.
In the end, most of the main characters have a good cry, forgive one another and hug it out.
Spider-Man fights the aggrieved Sandman, a shifting pile of sand impervious to brute force, able to regroup even after grievous injury, and able to transform from an amorphous shape to a hammering attacker at will.
I've seen this movie before, and it's on CNN every night.
Peter's wealthy childhood friend Harry Osborn is gregarious, openhearted and loyal when he forgets himself, but turns into a brooding, melancholy, reclusive, misanthropic goblin when driven by his obligations to his deceased father. Spider-Man was able to convince Harry to abandon his father's stern dictates, embrace the doctrine of forgiveness, and sacrifice everything for his friends during the climactic battle against the combined forces of sand and darkness. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but is Osborn a Jewish name? Aren't the Jewish people supposed to play a big role in the eschatalogical narrative of the Left Behind crowd? I almost expected that director Sam Raimi would give Willem Dafoe a long beard and two stone tablets. My semite-senses are tingling, big-time.
As for darkness, Peter Parker's rival in the black spidey-suit refuses to forgive and perishes in flames, an Inquisitorial auto da fé. Embrace forgiveness or die.
How does it all end?
Only through forgiveness and confession does Spider-Man come to terms with the Sandman, who leaves on his own accord with mutual understanding.
In the closing shot of the climactic battle scene, from one of the upper floors of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, the camera faces south towards the Empire State Building and then zooms to the early-morning sky where once stood two tall towers.
In the Marvel Universe, nothing's beyond forgiveness anymore, except those who will not forgive.
[Update1: Edited for clarity]
And I shed a tear as well.
It was during an early scene, with student/model/daughter-of-the-police-chief Gwen Stacy falling out of a skyscraper. The scene evoked the memory etched into the cerebral cortex of every New Yorker, that of 9/11. People jumping to their deaths from the burning towers. No superheroes catching people on the way down, just ordinary heroes on the way up to rescue ordinary people.
As documented on the comics page at The Authentic History Center, in the December 2001 edition of The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel imagined how Spider-Man would have reacted at the scene of the attack. Spider-Man surveys the burning wreckage, thinking: "Some things are beyond words. Beyond comprehension. Beyond forgiveness."However, in the 2007 film, the act of forgiveness drives the entire narrative. The traditional dichotomy between superhero and supervillain was swept aside in favor of a simple test: Do you forgive? Take away the costumes and the fancy graphics, and you have a medieval morality play.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***Most morality plays have a protagonist who represents either humanity as a whole (Everyman) or an entire social class (as in Magnificence). Antagonists and supporting characters are not individuals per se, but rather personifications of abstract virtues or vices, especially the Seven deadly sins.
Morality plays were typically written in the vernacular, so as to be more accessible to the common people who watched them. Most can be performed in under ninety minutes. (That was before computer graphics -I.)
In the end, most of the main characters have a good cry, forgive one another and hug it out.
Spider-Man fights the aggrieved Sandman, a shifting pile of sand impervious to brute force, able to regroup even after grievous injury, and able to transform from an amorphous shape to a hammering attacker at will.
I've seen this movie before, and it's on CNN every night.
Peter's wealthy childhood friend Harry Osborn is gregarious, openhearted and loyal when he forgets himself, but turns into a brooding, melancholy, reclusive, misanthropic goblin when driven by his obligations to his deceased father. Spider-Man was able to convince Harry to abandon his father's stern dictates, embrace the doctrine of forgiveness, and sacrifice everything for his friends during the climactic battle against the combined forces of sand and darkness. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but is Osborn a Jewish name? Aren't the Jewish people supposed to play a big role in the eschatalogical narrative of the Left Behind crowd? I almost expected that director Sam Raimi would give Willem Dafoe a long beard and two stone tablets. My semite-senses are tingling, big-time.
As for darkness, Peter Parker's rival in the black spidey-suit refuses to forgive and perishes in flames, an Inquisitorial auto da fé. Embrace forgiveness or die.
How does it all end?
Only through forgiveness and confession does Spider-Man come to terms with the Sandman, who leaves on his own accord with mutual understanding.
In the closing shot of the climactic battle scene, from one of the upper floors of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, the camera faces south towards the Empire State Building and then zooms to the early-morning sky where once stood two tall towers.
In the Marvel Universe, nothing's beyond forgiveness anymore, except those who will not forgive.
[Update1: Edited for clarity]
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Schizophrenia
Research indicates that children of older fathers may be more likely to develop schizophrenia:
A study on schizophrenia found that the risk of illness was doubled among children of fathers in their late 40s when compared with children of fathers under 25, and increased almost threefold in children born to fathers 50 and older. This study was also carried out in Israel, which maintains the kind of large centralized health databases required for such research.And they've been maintaining those records for a very long time.
- Genesis 16:16 And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
- Genesis 21:5 And Abraham was a hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Madman of a Diary
Some thoughts from a walk with Ratt:
Dogs are the original bloggers. Every day, they mark the same territory with their latest output, while sniffing around at what other dogs leave behind. And then, when two dogs meet, the first thing they do is inspect each other's equipment.
Speaking of dogs talking to one another on their daily walks, I wonder how Gogol's Diary of a Madman
would come across as a blog.
As a blog, the first entry would be the last one from the book:
When I got home, I checked to see if Diary of a Madman was available in translation through Project Gutenberg or other e-text providers. It's not, but I did find someone else looking for it on one of the forums at The Literature Network (online-literature.com), which has an index to e-books and a fairly active community. "Wow," I thought. "What a great idea, just like Shelfari."
Then I saw the site navigation:
... Authors - Shakespeare - Bible ...
That tells you all you need to know about what the average person wants when searching the Web for literature. Sure enough, one of the most popular threads in the forums was the Evolution vs. Creation debate, with 1,440 replies. In the poll, Evolution scored a solid win over Creation by a score of 167-134. However, at 49.85% of the vote, Evolution failed to earn a majority. We're still not sure how it would have turned out in the Electoral College.
Dogs are the original bloggers. Every day, they mark the same territory with their latest output, while sniffing around at what other dogs leave behind. And then, when two dogs meet, the first thing they do is inspect each other's equipment.
Speaking of dogs talking to one another on their daily walks, I wonder how Gogol's Diary of a Madman
would come across as a blog.As a blog, the first entry would be the last one from the book:
As a short story, it starts off on October 3rd:
No, I haven't the strength to endure it any longer! Good God, what are they doing to me? They're pouring cold water over my head!
October 3rdBecause of reverse-chronological posting and the long tail of blog entries through search engines, writers no longer control the order in which their writings are received by readers. This has profound implications for how to write, since any single entry has to be prepared to provide the "It was a dark and stormy night" hook at any time.
Something very peculiar happened today. I got up rather late, and when Mavra brought my clean shoes in I asked her what the time was. When she told me it was long past ten I rushed to get dressed. [...]
When I got home, I checked to see if Diary of a Madman
was available in translation through Project Gutenberg or other e-text providers. It's not, but I did find someone else looking for it on one of the forums at The Literature Network (online-literature.com), which has an index to e-books and a fairly active community. "Wow," I thought. "What a great idea, just like Shelfari."Then I saw the site navigation:
... Authors - Shakespeare - Bible ...
That tells you all you need to know about what the average person wants when searching the Web for literature. Sure enough, one of the most popular threads in the forums was the Evolution vs. Creation debate, with 1,440 replies. In the poll, Evolution scored a solid win over Creation by a score of 167-134. However, at 49.85% of the vote, Evolution failed to earn a majority. We're still not sure how it would have turned out in the Electoral College.
Choose Your Reading Circles Carefully
★★☆☆☆ Good index to e-books, but nothing you can't find elsewhere. Active forums but it's not exactly a literary salon.
This hReview brought to you by the hReview Creator.
Labels: literature, religion, talking dogs, Web 2.0
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