Suderman makes a good point over at Culture11 (fast becoming the best blog for conservatism):

The attacks in Mumbai were stomach-churning to follow while they were happening, and good information was hard to come by — there’s a good case to be made that the best reporting on the scene was done via Twitter — but the Wall Street Journal has now put together an excellent, thoroughly reported rundown of the whole harrowing affair. One of the things that always strikes me when reading accounts of terrors like these is how eerily cinematic they are. I find it difficult to contextualize violent massacres without some sort of silver-screen reference point — and I suspect that’s pretty common. There are multiple reasons for this, of course: For one thing, most of us have no frame of reference for anything like this except what we’ve seen at the movies, so it’s natural that we make those comparisons. After 9/11, The Onion grimly compared the attacks to action-maestro Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies. And it makes sense: Violence on that scale, in an American city, is something that most of us have only ever seen in movies. But the thing is, most casual movie goers have seen scenes like that repeatedly; spectacular death and destruction is one of the movie industry’s specialties.

Hollywood exploits these sorts of events for their inherent tension, repackaging them as exciting and thrilling adventures rather than ugly massacres. It usually makes me queasy and unsettled, to some extent, because I’m an unabashed fan of violent entertainment. I’ll admit: I love onscreen gunfights and shootouts, the more over the top the better. I’ve waxed ecstatic over the bullet-ridden 45 minute finale of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, which includes one of the highest death tolls of any movie in the last few decades (the sequence is set at a hospital, and at one point, the film’s bad guy walks into a room full of hostages and mows them all down with an automatic weapon). Watching a sequence like that in a movie is exciting and fun; watching a similar scene in real life is deeply disturbing. Part of me thinks this is a problem; action movies train us not to react with horror to these sorts of events. But I also wonder if it isn’t natural, a release of some sort, a way to indulge violent urges without resorting to real violence, or a way for human beings to understand the daily, life-and-death struggle for existence — long before movies, human stories revolved around death and violence, and often involved heroes who slayed all those in their way. For whatever reason, we, as a species, seem to be drawn in by narratives of calamity, destruction, and bloodshed.

This has long been my issue with those who would restrict or ban movie violence. I believe that human beings are a violent species. We have to be. We are carnivores who have come to dominate the planet. The quest of civilization is not to end those violent urges, but to channel them into less destructive paths. Hence, the pretend violence of movies or video games, I believe, is a good thing. It satisfies our violent urge without doing any real harm.

People who think that violent entertainment is new need to get some historical perspective (in fact, everyone needs to get some historical perspective about just about everything — but that’s another post).

Two thousand years ago, entertainment consisted of tossing Christians to lions. Real people, real lions, real screams, real blood, real suffering. And the Romans considered it good for children to watch — it built character.

Five hundred years ago, the Spanish were torturing heretics as entertainment. Real people, real hot irons, real screams, real blood, real suffering. And they considered it good for children to watch and see the fruits of blasphemy. Around that time, cat-burning was popular in France. This consisted of lowering a bound cat over flames and laughing and feasting as it screamed. The medieval world and parts of the modern world are replete with similar examples.

A hundred years ago in this country, we performed executions in public. It was considered good entertainment if the noose failed to snap their neck and the condemned kicked and struggled while slowly choking over hours or days. It was considered good for children to go and see the fruits of criminality.

In light of this bloody history, I just can’t get worked up over two guys firing blanks at each other on TV or some kid blowing away pixels on a video screen.

As I get older, I find myself getting more and more bothered by the casualness of movie violence, identifying with the secondary and tertiary characters who just killed as if it’s nothing. But I don’t think I will ever fail to get that visceral thrill from pretend violence. It goes right to my nature as a human being.

O. K.:

Ever asked an academic about their research only to be subjected to 20 minutes of nonsensical droning? Thanks to YouTube, it just got a whole lot easier to explain a complicated thesis at a cocktail party. In early October, Ph.D. students worldwide were challenged by Gonzo Labs/AAAS to re-create their dissertations through interpretive dance and post the videos on YouTube. Dozens of performances were submitted, ranging from tangos to Lindy Hops to night-vision hula-hooping. The choreography was scored on its ability to bridge the gap between art and science, though you should feel free to judge based on levels of jubilation and pure absurdity.

An interpretive dance of my thesis would have to involve a lot of beer and a lot of broken furniture. It’s difficult to describe a thesis that could be summed up as, “Eh, maybe.”

OK, I understand that not everyone has the same taste in music. For some people, mariachi music is charming, entertaining and fun. Fine.

But, please, if you are in a crowded restaurant, could you please PLEASE for the love of God limit yourself to three songs or fewer? Having the band surrounding your table for an entire hour is just begging to have a chair thrown in your direction.

If I’d had cash, I would have paid the guys $20 to go away. Just for a few minutes. My entire dinner conversation consisted of this:

Dad: Do you want flu shots when you’re in Atlanta?

Me: Do I want to do shots with the nanny?

The economy must be really bad. Amazon.com is slashing DVD prices to levels I had not even imagined. Batman Begins for $4, Spiderman 2 for $2. Seasons of the Simpsons for $15. That’s 60% off or more.

My cursory glance at other categories doesn’t show nearly as incredible deals. Of course, I’m not looking too closely. I’m buying a house and moving, so a $2 DVD is the extent of my splurging ways. But what’s up with the DVD sales?

Part of this is must be that the sellers have massive inventory. DVD sales have been slumping for reasons having nothing to do with the economy. I think a lot of stores have stacks of unsold DVDs that they ordered in anticipation of the DVD revolution continuing for all eternity. It may finally be dawning on them that no one needs two copies of Happy Gilmore; in fact most people don’t even need one. So they’re desperate to shed them.

Selling DVDs dirt cheap will obviously solve this. I normally wouldn’t have bought Spiderman 2, which I thought was a mediocre movie. But at $2, slightly more than a 16-oz coke, I’m willing to get it just in case I have a son who gets into Spiderman or my nephew visits or I feel the sudden light night urge to see Kirsten Dunst “act”.

I also think the sellers are, mistakenly, thinking that Blu-Ray is going to be their next big thing. So if they can clear inventory to set up Blu-Ray sales, that’s a win. However, I agree with Beradinelli’s that the sellers are overestimating the potential of Blu_Ray. I’m a semi-technophile and have yet to buy a Blu-Ray player. I probably will, but even then, the only movies I’ll buy in Blu-Ray will be new ones. I might replace some visually spectacular titles in my library (LOTR, The Godfather, etc.) but I see absolutely no reason to plonk down $20 to get a slightly nicer version of This Is Spinal Tap.

The next big collapse is going to be video stores and big box stores like Best Buy. It’s already started, with Circuit City and Hollywood Video scaling back. But Best Buy, in particular, is overbuilding. They just opened a store here in New Braunfels despite having stores in San Marcos and Schertz (15 miles either way). That’s a company long overdue for a market correction.

The Russians are apparently white-washing their history. Of course, I’m saying this in a nation where the #1 radio talk show host had a hissy fit because someone suggested that the European settlers brought diseases that inadvertently wiped out the Native Americans. But the Gulag is something in modern memory with living survivors. Putin and his cronies are trying to erase a holocaust.

If you haven’t read Anne Applebaum’s Gulag or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, do so. While the memory is still here. And remember that little blonde girl who died of loneliness in a Gulag nursery. Remember all of them.

I love maps. I can spend hours pouring over them. I could spend days taking sporcle’s geography quizzes. Here is a map of all American streets. Identify the cities.

My favoritest sci-fi show turns 45 today. Wow.

Still, it’s disappointing that the 50th anniversary won’t see David Tennant in the title role. I’m hoping that David Thewlis is his successor.

You know, I understand that apologies are difficult. But apologizing for institutionalized racism is pretty straight-forward, no? No excuse making necessary, right?

I have to agree with this. Due to our financials, it’s going to be a very cheap Xmas this year. But we’ll get a lot of time to spend with friends and family. I’ll take that trade.

Someone has too much time on their hands and thoughts in their head.

Reading Ross Douhat’s excellent post on the new Trek movie, I had a revelation. Many of the stories we are familiar with — the Arthur legend, ancient mythology, the Iliad, etc., are version of stories that were being continually reinvented. The Arthur legend, for example, passed through many many versions to and beyond the one crystallized by Mallory. The Iliad shows signs of having been revised many time before it was written down.

We’re seeing that process applied to modern pop culture. Many of the stalwarts of comic books and movies are reinventing themselves to shed the labyrinthine continuity with which they are shackled. James Bond, Batman, Superman, X-Men and now Trek retain the forms but dance differently, rediscovering the story in a new way.

I’m not saying that 3000 years from now, people will still be watching Batman Begins as a classic of 20th century film. But it’s amazing to see the pattern repeat and to know that it has been going on, not just for the last few years, but ever since human beings began telling stories to pass the time.

Still more stunning photos from the past, this time of WWI.