Farewell Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert gave Tomb Raider a good review.  “Here is a movie so monumentally silly,” he writes, “yet so wondrous to look at, that only a churl could find fault.”  I suppose that makes me a churl.  Reviews like that one, especially over the last decade or so, helped earn Ebert a reputation as something of a “soft” critic, one who refused to hate popcorn movies just because they were popcorn movies. 

Sadly I was in college when the Tomb Raider review came out, suffering from the same pretension imbalance that affects all too many twenty year olds, and I might have jumped on board the anti-Ebert bandwagon for a little while.  But only a little while.  The thing about Ebert’s reviews, about his writing in general, was that it was honest.  When he hated a movie, he let you know why, and when he loved it, you couldn’t help but feel the excitement.  Make no mistake, Ebert was a master of snark, and his negative reviews make for fantastic reading.  But in an age when effusive praise is considered less intellectually sound than brutal criticism, Ebert had the courage to love the movies he loved. 

No matter what he thought of a movie, he was always fun to read.  Like most I was introduced to Ebert through At the Movies.  I remember being thrilled at the idea of a show where people just talked about movies, then so disappointed when it turned out they hated all the best movies:  Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II:  The Secret of the Ooze, The Addams Family.  Then to cap it off, they liked a bunch of boring adult movies that nobody I know had seen. 

But I kept watching, when I could.  Since the show was syndicated, it tended to jump around in the schedule a lot (as it sadly continued to do until the final version ended two years ago), so it was always something of a treat when I could find it.  As I got older and started to see more of the movies they were talking about, I valued their opinions more and more.  The show helped me learn that film criticism wasn’t about being negative; it was the practice of thinking critically about movies as art.  Re-watching Ebert’s commentary on Dark City today, I was struck by just how much the guy thought about movies.  The man could probably have written an essay about each and every frame. 

At the dawn of the internet age I discovered Ebert’s reviews online, and made it a habit to check them out almost every time I saw a movie.  He was the one and only critic I almost always read.  In high school I would often manipulate assignments so I got to use his movie reviews as a source.  Even when we disagreed, like on Tomb Raider, it was always fun to read his writing, and great to know that someone out there was giving Tomb Raider the same chance, the same opportunity to provoke thought, that he gave to Oscar winners.  He helped me conquer my snobbery towards popcorn movies at a time when I was way too full of myself, helped me get back in touch with the kid who’d hated him for giving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II:  The Secret of the Ooze a bad review.   

More recently, after he lost his voice to cancer, he began blogging about a whole host of topics and encouraging lively feedback in the comments section.  He wasn’t just a movie reviewer, I realized, he was a writer, in the best sense of the word.  Freed from the newspaper word counts he had lived with since the 60s, he wrote a lot, to be sure, but it was almost always snappy, funny, and worth reading.  Even when he made arguments I find ridiculous, like the whole “video games can never be art” kerfuffle, he made the argument interesting.  I especially enjoyed his essays on God and his cultural Catholicism.   Given my own background the latter hit me on a personal level, but Ebert wrote so much about so much that he probably hit just about everyone on a personal level at least once. 

In his memoir Life Itself he goes into even more detail about his love of a particular hotel in London, a love of Illinois’s popular Steak n’ Shake fast food chain, the love he had for Siskel, for his wife, for the movies.  Even when cancer made it impossible for him to speak, he found ways to keep talking about the movies.  The Onion article on his death just hit the nail on the head.  What a great time he must have had.

Sadly we won’t get to read his reaction to any more movies, but he reviewed so many there will always be a new one to read.  Whenever someone watches a movie made between the late 60s and the end of 2012, they’ll still be able to check what Ebert thought, hear his voice as clearly as ever.  That’s the power of the printed word, and few have had as much fun with the medium as Roger Ebert.  Also, he sang on an episode of The Critic, which I think we can all agree will prove his most powerful legacy.

Whoops!

I was cautiously looking forward to the new SimCity game.  Sure, the always-online requirement was troubling, especially for a game series that’s been single player for 25 years, and most of the previews complained about the small city size, but really, how can you screw up SimCity?  
 

As it turns out, pretty easily.  While I haven’t played the new game, by all accounts the launch was horribly mismanaged, with the “always-online” requirement locking players out and even erasing entire cities.  Though forced online play was an advertised part of the game from the start, it’s an unfortunate situation when you’re paying fifty dollars to effectively lease a game from a company, a company that can refuse to grant you access to the game whenever they feel like shutting down their servers.  This created a huge fuss when Blizzard tried it with Diablo III last year, but at least Diablo III worked (eventually). 

The problem is the multiplayer angle was never right for SimCity.  Multiplayer games are generally about competition, about maxing stats and staying ahead of other players.  SimCity is a game about screwing up.  In the previous games, only an elite few could make a fully functioning metropolis.  For the rest of us, the game was about filling in the map with junk until you gave up and summoned aliens to wipe it out.  The fun of SimCity comes from the joy of unfettered creation mixed with the utter frustration of watching your creation refuse to behave as planned.    

Though for many SimCity 2000 remains the ultimate version of the game, I have the fondest memories of the original game.  My first exposure to the game came not on the PC but the Super Nintendo, and my child brain was utterly fried by the possibilities.  For kids who had grown up playing almost only side scrolling action games, those first generation Super Nintendo games were a breath of fresh air.  Sure you had traditional games like Super Mario World, but there were also outside of the box titles like Actraiser (an action game mixed with an early RTS) and SimCity.  These were the kind of games you could only dream about on the original Nintendo; games where the player actually got to design and create their own world.   

Sadly, I didn’t actually own a Super Nintendo, and spending hours constructing your own city at a friend’s house isn’t exactly the most sociable of activities, so I eventually got the game for the PC.  The original 1989 PC version and the 1991 SNES version are essentially the same game, though the SNES version has a few more bells and whistles, along with a rather clumsy control scheme.  The PC version also had cool alternate graphics options allowing you to build a medieval or wild west city, something I would love to see return.  

Though fairly simple by the standard of later SimCity games, all the gameplay basics were there from the start:  worrying about money, worrying about crime, worrying about pollution, worrying about traffic, worrying about population, and summoning monsters.  Patience, almost incomprehensible patience, was the only way to win.  Or, like me, you could just hit SHIFT+FUND to build up a huge treasury, then build until the map was full, then spend a few minutes wondering why your city was a post-apocalyptic hellscape before starting it all again.

Whereas other games are all about instant gratification, SimCity is a game of small victories and slow progress.  You can spend hours upon hours just trying to balance the budget.  Even with SimCity 4 in 2003 (the most recent game before now) the formula was basically unchanged.  A SimCity fan who fell into a coma in 1990 and woke up in 2003 (thus missing the entire run of Batman:  The Animated Series) would be able to pick up and play the newer games without a hitch.  There was something constant and familiar about SimCity.

I’m not saying that change is bad or that innovations should be avoided, but SimCity was the absolute last series that needed to be online only.  The entire premise is that the player is a mayor of unstoppable god-like powers, free to do whatever she or he wants with the world.  By limiting city size and encouraging cooperative play, it seems like Maxis has removed an essential part of what makes SimCity so much fun.  Hopefully, once all the anger over the completely botched launch fades away, players will be able to find the appeal in the underlying game. 

 
For the rest of us, it sounds like the older games may do a better, more stable job of scratching the SimCity itch.  The original game is probably free at this point, SimCity 2000 can be bought from GoG.com for $6 dollars, and SimCity 4 is on Steam for $20.  Thanks in part to the problems with the new game, they’re selling quite well.  In the next SimCity game, perhaps “SimCity 2013 Release” can be one of the optional disasters.  As long as they keep the aliens.

Dear Mr. Watterson

For a comic strip that was so enormously popular in its time, there has been surprisingly little public discussion of Calvin & Hobbes.  There are no huge web communities, no toys, no video games, no $300 million Hollywood reboots staring Shia LaBeouf.  Of course, this is partly because of creator Bill Watterson's notorious refusal to merchandise his strip, but it also has to do with the medium itself.  Because Calvin & Hobbes is only the comic strips themselves, it was something we all experienced individually.  The world existed only in the headspace of the individual readers; like Calvin, we were free to see the strip's world any way we saw fit.



It's always surprising, then, to find out that this individual, personal part of your childhood was in fact an individual, personal part of everyone's childhood.  Though we were there separately, so many of us were there together.  For the generation of kids growing up in the 80s and 90s, Calvin was the comic.  For many, it was how we learned to read.  I was burning through Calvin & Hobbes books before I could pronounce most of the words.  The strip captured a vision of childhood (and adulthood) that resonated with any kid who had ever been misunderstood, bullied, marginalized, or denied access to Cannibal Stewardess Vixens Unchained by philistine parents.  Calvin & Hobbes, through gorgeous drawings and hilarious dialogue, proved as only the best art can that Hobbes is real, that the world is infinite and inviting, and that reality is optional.

Though Dear Mr. Watterson (at least from the trailer) looks to be little more than a bunch of people talking about how much they love Calvin, it may not need to be any more than that.  A few years ago a book, Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, covered similar ground, but the author put too big an emphasis on finding the strip's reclusive creator.  We don't need to search for Calvin & Hobbes, we have it, and getting an interview with Bill Watterson won't unlock any secrets.  The best creations are bigger than their creator, and the best way to appreciate Calvin & Hobbes is not to go looking for the creator, but instead to talk to the people who loved it.  It's amazing how many of us there are.
     

You Have Your Moments, Lucas. Not Many of Them, But You Do Have Them

In honor of the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back I thought I’d post some thoughts on the movie. Since this is almost certainly my favorite movie of all time, I could go on for infinite pages about every single shot and how each one affected me personally. I won’t go quite as far as that, though nearly every frame of this movie has been hanging in the main gallery of the art museum of my mind since I was eight years old. The cold comfort of the Hoth base, learning the odds of dying in various ways, the thunderous reveal of Darth Vader and the massive Imperial Fleet, the epic scale of the Hoth battle, meeting Yoda, Han Solo and Princess Leia’s asteroid field inspired romance, Yoda schooling Luke in the ways of the force, the calm of Cloud City replaced by the excitement and terror of the heroes desperate escape, the final clash of the lightsabers in the hellish carbon freezing chamber, and, through it all, one of the most powerful and romantic music scores ever written—these are the things I will try my best to avoid gushing over.

There’s nothing new to write about this movie that hasn’t already been written. Everyone knows that this was the Star Wars movie that had the least Lucas involvement (though he deserves as much credit for the movie as anyone), everyone talks about how powerful the “I am your father” reveal was in 1980, everyone talks about how the more mature, “dark” tone made for a much more interesting movie, and how traumatic it was that the good guys lost. And look no further then Princess Leia's horrified reaction to the THUD frozen Han Solo makes when he clangs against floor to know that this movie cared about the little details in a way few have before or since. Empire was the first Star Wars that was really Star Wars—it took the simple story from the original movie and transformed it into an epic saga. Everything said about the movie is true, and when kids growing up in the 80s and 90s thought of Star Wars, it was this movie that laid the foundation for what Star Wars was.
It’s a shame they show it on TV so much nowadays, and that the prequels and subsequent media inundation have made Star Wars less magical and almost banal. I know the movie so well that I’ll never be able to experience like I used to ever again, and new generations will never experience the way we did. Kids today turn on their Xboxes and have a lightsaber fight without understand the awed silence in which we sat when Luke turned on his saber in the carbon freezing chamber. So much of what was wonderful about Star Wars has been sucked away, for me and for millions, by unceasing overexposure.

Just for today, though, I will try to forget what Star Wars has become and just remember what it was. Oddly enough, Empire was the last of the original Star Wars movies I saw. Therefore it was always somewhat mysterious and epic, even before I watched it. I knew what happened in Star Wars, and I knew what happened in Jedi, so I therefore knew that the events that joined those two very different movies had to be explosive indeed. How did Luke Skywalker go from naïve farmboy to calm and collected Jedi knight? Why was Han Solo frozen? How did Luke meet Yoda? Where did the Emperor come from? Darth Vader was Luke’s father? And who was Lando?

So I never got to experience Empire the way older people experienced it, as a cliffhanger, as a struggle that the heroes largely lose, as the anticipated sequel to the original Star Wars. I knew that everything turned out okay in the end, so I never thought of Empire as “dark.” (And I’ll be honest, I still think the term “dark” in conjunction with any Star Wars movie is a bit much. I think I once heard Empire called the saga’s “dark opus of ever building despair” on a forum once. Whoever said that must have been thinking of the scene where Yoda beats R2-D2 with a stick. I still get chills.) But even with all that baggage, I was still struck by just how different Empire was from the much more tonally similar Star Wars and Jedi.

My reasons for liking it back then were a bit more simplistic than they are today. Luke and Darth Vader finally had a proper fight (something I was expecting, but never got, throughout all of Star Wars), Yoda was a lot more fun to look at than old Obi-Wan, and Han Solo was the coolest man in the universe. Really. Empire Strikes Back Han Solo could walk into any room today, right at this moment, wearing that stupid 80s navy blue jacket, and get every woman there to go home with him. Young boys could only watch him in jealous awe. It might be hard to understand or even remember, but for young 80s kids raised on Spielberg and Lucas, Harrison Ford was the absolute last word on movie stars.
What resonates with me now, and why, despite all that the Star Wars saga has endured in the last decade or so, people still love Empire, is the story. The simplistic values of the original film might work when you’re a kid, but when you get older you realize life doesn’t quite work like that. Empire takes the traditional hero’s journey story of the first film and asks “what now?” So you’ve proven yourself and saved the galaxy. So what? To quote Princess Leia, despite everything that happened in Star Wars “The Empire is still out there!” Nothing our heroes accomplished mattered much in the end. Empire is a story about those times when dreams don’t come true, when we fail to rescue the princess, when no matter how hard we try nothing seems to go right. Yoda taught Luke the old Hollywood standby “Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything!” and so Luke, full of confidence, goes to Vader and gets his ass handed to him.
We didn’t realize it as kids of course, but The Empire Strikes Back essentially makes a mockery of the value system in the first film, the value system spat at us, cynically, by so many movies. “Believe in yourself” “Good wins out in the end” "That evil guy you're after isn't a corrupted cyborg version of your father" “Love conquers all” “The hero gets the girl” (Remember, pre-Return of the Jedi, Han Solo was stealing Luke’s girl right from under his nose) Empire says “nope” to all of these old Hollywood themes. (And despite my oft maligning it, Jedi, when it’s good, takes this thematic evolution a step further, but more on that another time)

This is the opposite of the hero’s journey. The story where all your training and preparation amount to nothing. The story that forces you to face up to the fact that no matter how good you are and how hard you try, there are going to be times when you’re left without a hand dangling from the bottom of Cloud City. Empire shows that when everything else has left you, faced with terrible options, you still have the chance to be brave and good. What makes a hero in Empire is not traditional heroics, but the simple choice to do good. Leia’s choice to go back for Luke, Lando’s choice to help save Leia and Chewie, and of course, Han Solo’s choice to face the certain death of carbon freezing with a brave face and an immortal line. Luke’s sacrifice in choosing to jump to his death at the end of Empire is far braver than anything he accomplished in Star Wars.
Life is more complicated, so much more complicated, than staring out at the setting suns wishing for your dreams to come true until, one day, they do. A lot of times, dreams don’t come true, or when they do they prove to be nothing like we imagined. That’s why the ending to the movie is still so beautiful and powerful, because in suffering the characters have found a goodness that transcends fate: compassion and friendship and loyalty—these are the things that save our heroes in the end, not their skill, not their courage, not their hard work. As Luke and Leia stare out at the impossible vastness of space as the Millennium Falcon turns into a spec in the distance and the powerful Han and Leia love them builds to a crescendo, we’re left not sad but hopeful, knowing that these characters have stared the devil in the face, as it were, and they’re still standing arm in arm.
The enduring theme of The Empire Strikes Back, then, is a very brave one for such a mainstream movie. Genuine goodness, far from being rewarded, is often punished with increased suffering and hardship; it is worth pursuing not because it’s beneficial, but because it’s right. Beyond all the nostalgia and special effects, it’s this idea that makes Empire Strikes Back legendary.
I don’t expect there will be another movie quite like Empire in our lifetimes. Sure, “better” movies might come along, but with the amount of media out there today there will never be a movie that defines fantasy for an entire generation again. There will never be another sequel that lives up and surpasses its predecessor with quite the same energy. Empire wasn’t “Star Wars 2”, it was Star Wars times 1000. Perhaps, many years from now, when the Star Wars marketing blitz finally dies down, these movies will be discovered again and seen the way they were to our generation, the way the Wizard of Oz continues to speak to people generation after generation. Maybe, when I write my Psycho-Cosmo-Blog on the 60th anniversary of Empire, such a magical film will no longer be held prisoner by merchandising gluttony: Lightsabers will be a rarity, Darth Vader will be scary, the battle of Hoth will be epic, Yoda will be wise, and Han Solo will, once again, be the coolest man in the universe.

"Those Who Will Not Live By The Law...WILL DIE BY THE LAW!!!!!"

Another Easter is upon us, though it might be tough to notice. Unlike Christmas or even Halloween, Easter has never been fully commercialized, and without a glut of TV commercials and specials (and days off work) it can come and go without much fanfare. While we can enjoy the exchange of Christmas presents or dressing up for Halloween well into adulthood, most Easter traditions are largely kid’s stuff—I see few adult Easter egg hunts. Thankfully, one Easter tradition from my childhood is still blissfully intact: The airing of cheesy biblical movies on TV.

Though it might fall by the wayside eventually, for now ABC still airs The Ten Commandments every year on the Saturday before Easter. When I was a kid, I thought a movie like this was the pinnacle of filmmaking: Huge sets, huge crowds, and huge acting. Though it all might seem a bit over the top and cheesy now, it has a charm all its own, particularly in the way it pads up the rather thin biblical story into a four hour movie.

It’s funny how much of the pop-culture impression of the biblical story of the Exodus actually comes from this movie. The Ten Commandments is so influential that the far superior animated film, The Prince of Egypt, though it claims to be based on the book of Exodus, is actually just a remake of the 1956 film, right down to the bald Yul Brynner hairstyle of Ramses II. Moses’ time in Egypt in the Bible boils down to about a paragraph. We only know that he was raised in the house of some pharaoh and is exiled after killing a slave master. The movie, however, makes Moses the adopted younger brother of Ramses II and spends a lot of time on the shirtless Charlton Heston’s role as prince of Egypt.

A highlight of the film is Anne Baxter as the sultry queen Nefretiri, a beautiful testament just how much 1950s America hated women. In the Biblical story, the Pharaoh is actually pretty eager to let the Hebrews go once Moses starts pestering him, but every time he tries God hardens his heart so God can show off with more plagues. The God in the story’s purpose is to show how powerful he is, not to free the Hebrew slaves. They’re simply an accessory to his display of machismo. Naturally, a realistic depiction of the story would never fly with middle American Christians of the 1950s, so instead of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart against the Hebrews, the work is done by his scheming wife Nefretiri.
Indeed, without Anne Baxter’s feminine meddling, the whole Hebrew slavery crisis might have blown over without a lot of trouble. Pharaoh would have let Moses and the slaves go before it ever came to murdering the firstborn sons, and he might have gone on to rule a successful kingdom as an equal partner with the Hebrews and many other races. Instead the evil Nefretiri manipulates poor Ramses at every turn. In one memorable effort to stir Ramses against Moses and the Hebrews, she rubs Ramses' face in the fact that she threw herself at Moses. "All that you wanted from me, he would not even take!" she sneers. That's just cold.

The lesson, for all the would be pharaohs or Hebrew messiahs out there, is simple: Never listen to women—they’re evil monsters who make a mockery of the very will of God. Audiences of the era weren't willing to accept a scheming, self-involved, and cruel God and the theological implications of such a deity, but a scheming, self-involved, and cruel woman? That's no problem.
I can’t leave this movie without mentioning the line so silly that it made it to the title of this post. If you thought ridiculous action hero lines originated with the Stallone and Van Damme films of the 1980s, you’ve obviously never seen Charlton Heston literally murder a crowd of apostate Hebrews with the Ten Commandments. There are few things more entertaining than watching Charlton Heston, in a ridiculous beard, raise the tablets above his head and shout out “Those who will not live by the law…” (Pause for dramatic emphasis) “…WILL DIE BY THE LAW!!” before throwing the Ten Commandments into the crowd. Never mind that it makes no sense. Never mind that it’s a complete twisting of both Jewish and Christian religious philosophy. I can’t think of a better phrase to utter when preparing to murder a group of people with a copy of a law code.
My other favorite Hollywood Easter Epic is 1961’s King of Kings, starring Captain Christopher Pike as Jesus. Though it’s less famous, I think this movie is actually a good bit better than The Ten Commandments. It’s tough to stay true to the Biblical story of Jesus (which unlike The Ten Commandments, King of Kings actually makes an effort to do) and keep things interesting. The guy basically walks around talking for three years and then has a pretty hectic final week. King of Kings makes up for this by providing a (wildly historically inaccurate) depiction of the socio-political climate during the time in which Jesus lived. So while Jeffery Hunter’s Jesus does little more than walk around speechifying in a deep and powerful voice, we get scheming politicians, lots of background on the Roman Empire and the occupation of Judea, and actual battle scenes between the Romans and Jewish rebels. That’s right: Battle scenes in a movie about Jesus, decades before Mel Gibson ever thought of picking up a camera.
Special mention needs to be made of young Brigid Bazlen's performance as Salome. She brings an evil malevolence to the spoiled palace brat. When asked why she wants the head of John the Baptist, she replies simply “I want to look at it” in a voice so haughty and matter of fact that it becomes chilling. It’s easy to believe that this girl would derive pleasure from looking at a severed head. More importantly, her seductive dance to convince King Herod to give her the head showed just how much sex you could get away with if you were willing to creatively push the bounds of the old Motion Picture Production Code. There’s nothing as titillating as actual nudity, and nothing overt, but just by dancing around in a gold bikini Salome proved now and forever that sexiness is all about attitude.
There’s a lot more I could write about both of these movies, so perhaps I’ll write a full discussion of them at some time in the future. In the meantime, as this particular Easter winds down, I’ll leave you with the excellent main title music from King of Kings. Nothing sums up the spirit of Easter more than this bombastic composition from the golden age of Hollywood epics. It's too bad they don't make movies like these anymore--the world could always use a little more over the top earnestness.

Medusa and Me

Thanks to the upcoming release of the CGI monster-fest Clash of the Titans, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of my favorite mythological characters, the gorgon Medusa. Like most people my age, I was first introduced to Medusa in the famous scene from the original 1981 Clash of the Titans. And like many children, I was scared to death. It wasn’t the cheesy stop motion effects that got me, though the slow, methodical way Medusa tracked down her prey and the eerie rattle of her serpent tail was certainly frightening. It wasn’t even, necessarily, the fact that she could turn a man to stone with a single look, though that was terrifying too. With most monsters, even the most horrible, there was some possibility of escape. With Medusa, there was no hope. If you ever saw her, it was too late. But what scared me most about Medusa was that, unlike other monsters I’d encountered up to that point in my life, she was real.

After watching Clash of the Titans, I was unable to sleep for weeks. Even though Medusa died in the movie, her head still had the power to turn anyone who looked at it to stone, and her head was still out there! Perseus (portrayed by Harry Hamlin) had not destroyed it; he had simply tossed it into the ocean. Who knew when a simple day of playing at the beach could result in the dread artifact washing ashore and turning some unsuspecting vacationer into a life sized statue? That fear was an entirely justifiable one, because, as I said, Medusa was real.

I discovered that fact when flipping through the 1968 World Book Encyclopedia at my grandmother’s house (Yes, I was the sort of kid who spent his free time looking through the 1968 World Book.) There was no World Book article for Skeletor or Mum-Ra, not even for Darth Vader, but there was one for Medusa. She had really lived, really fought Perseus, and, since Clash of the Titans had to be a perfect retelling of the story, I knew her head must still be floating out at sea somewhere. Medusa was not just the fantasy of some filmmaker; she had been known for thousands of years.

Medusa is one of the oldest characters in Greek myth. There are two basic versions of the Medusa character, though the 1968 World Book Encyclopedia only focused on the more modern, Roman version. In the oldest version, Medusa is a hideous creature with wings, claws, and snakes for hair; a gorgon, one of three sisters whose gaze could turn men to stone. Nothing is known about the other two gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, only that they were immortal, while Medusa was, for whatever reason, mortal. Like the second and third members of girl groups everywhere, from the other two members of The Supremes to the other two members of Destiny’s Child, the stories of their exploits have been lost to history.
This version of Medusa was the child of the gods Phorcys and Ceto, two children of the very first being, Gaia. That makes Medusa’s pedigree ancient indeed—she is of the same generation as Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. She was an ancient, primal being, and her stories are perhaps older than those of the twelve Olympians.

In the second version of the story, originating hundreds or even thousands of years later with the Roman poet Ovid in the time of Augustus, Medusa was a mortal woman, a beautiful priestess of Athena. She was renowned all over the ancient world for her gorgeous blond hair, and obviously attracted a great deal of male attention. Poseidon was particularly enamored with her, so much so that he ended up raping her on the altar of Athena.

Athena was infuriated at this outrage in her own temple, and, true to ancient Greek morality, punished Medusa for being raped. From that moment on, anyone who looked at her would turn to stone. There is some debate on whether Medusa stayed beautiful—ancient art, and modern Dungeons and Dragons fantasy art, gives her the face of a normal woman. If she stayed beautiful, the punishment was ironic—she remained the most beautiful woman in Greece, but no one would ever be able to look at her again. If part of the punishment was to make Medusa hideous, it may have been the intensity of her ugliness which turned people to stone. In any case, her beautiful blond hair was transformed into a nest of poisonous snakes.
Some feminist scholars like to think of Medusa as a remnant of an earlier, female worshiping cult, and the later story as an indication of just how far the role of women had fallen during the course of classical civilization. They certainly have a point; going from one of the eldest gods to a rape victim who is punished for being raped is hardly a promotion. But I have a certain affinity for the second story—it was the first one I heard, after all, and it makes Medusa a tragic figure indeed, tortured to her death by the gods for absolutely no good reason.

Whatever her background, Medusa’s story always ends the same: Her head gets lopped off by Perseus and put to a variety of purposes. When Perseus is done with it, he gives it to Athena who makes it into a shield to ward off evil. Or, in Clash of the Titans, he tosses it carelessly into the sea, where it remained to frighten terrified children for millennia to come.

I don’t remember learning Medusa wasn’t “real” with nearly the same clarity as I remember learning that she was. I must have figured it out eventually, because at some point the terror stopped, and when I go to the beach I’m now reasonably sure her head won’t wash up on shore.
But I’m still not convinced she doesn’t exist. Myths are fascinating because they exist in a place between what is and what isn’t. They will be around long after most of us are forgotten, and their stories, while maybe not factual in the strictest sense, can hardly be called false. Medusa’s story is thousands of years old at the youngest, yet in a few days she’ll be onscreen in 3D to once again have her head lopped off by Perseus as it has been for thousands of years, as it will be forever. It's a tired point, but one worth making: “Real” things involve worrying about money, relationships, your career, and other dull nonsense. I like to think of Perseus, Medusa, and all the other gods and goddesses, as being a bit more real than that.

Congrats Ferngully II !!

My feelings about the Oscar noms are a bit mixed this time around. Last year I thought it was ridiculous that The Dark Knight wasn't nominated, so to ameliorate concerns like mine the Academy doubled the number of nominations from five to ten. That translates to five movies that would have been nominated anyway (Up in the Air, Precious, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, and An Education--remember how much fun we all had seeing those with our friends?) and five "bonus" movies (Inglorious Basterds, Avatar, Up, District 9, and The Blind Side--really, The Blind Side? Okay.)

By my count, Avatar and District 9 are only the 3rd and 4th sci-fi films ever to be nominated, if we stretch and count Star Wars and E.T. as science fiction. While some of those latter nominees are obvious pandering so that the telecast gets higher ratings (Blind Side, I'm looking in your direction), it's great to see the nomination lists expanding to included movies that audiences actually saw. My own favorite is easily District 9, though if there was a category for "Best Use of a David Bowie Song" (and why in God's name isn't there?) I'd go with Inglorious Basterds all the way.
District 9 is proof that there is tons of creativity still out there in the film industry. I was too busy to blog about it when it came out, but trust me, I was through the roof for several days. Ditto Inglorious Basterds, but it was more zany than serious. Sure, District 9 was zany, but there was real emotional and intellectual depth there as well.

Avatar and Up sit less well with me--they're both great movies, but there's not a lot of originality there compared to some of the others. Up shouldn't be nominated for Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. I hate to say it, but Pixar films are starting to feel a little rote to me--Up was just a very touching short film about a couple growing up and growing old together accompanied by a fun but silly adventure that was nothing special. Coraline was, for me, a more inventive and exciting animated movie, and The Secret of Kells, so far seen only by the makers of The Secret of Kells, looks like nothing I've ever seen before. It's too bad most of us won't get to see it until March. (Maybe that's just the medieval history geek in me talking.) I say this with love, but Pixar films are starting to look too much like committee filmmaking to me--a little too neat, a little too predictable.


And Avatar? Good old Avatar. Where would we be without you? It's about to topple Titanic, yet it isn't half the cultural phenomenon that movie was. I can't say it's a bad movie, or that I didn't enjoy it, but it's one of the most predictable movies out there right now. (So was Titanic, I guess, but that was my generation's predictable James Cameron blockbuster!) Technically it's a masterpiece, but the story never gets anywhere beyond Dances with Smurfs. Again, it's a great movie, but I think the money and accolades it's raking up are a little excessive.

As for the others, well, I guess I need to see more movies, but movies about things that could just happen in real life never excites me the way fantasy nonsense does. So I haven't see the other five. Maybe I should. Hmm...
How about those Grammys, though? Lots of great performances there. That crazy Lady Gaga, right? You just never know what she's going to do next.