Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Selfie Abandonment

Earlier this week, I updated the operating system on my phone. Karen always says that I should block off two hours for such an event, because I like playing with shiny new things. She’s not altogether wrong (although I think that two hours might be stretching it a bit). In browsing through some of the changes that this particular update brought about, I landed upon something unsettling.

There’s a new album in my photos. It’s called “Selfies.”

I feel a bit…ill.

Because the selfie isn’t something that I do, nor will I ever, it’s interesting to see what this “intelligent” album is including…candid photos of me in a funny hat, for example, that Karen took with my phone one day while we were shopping for something. I mean, if it includes only my own face, then it must meet the definition of a selfie, at least by the software’s calculations, right?

Except I’ve seen this thing in the wild, and this isn’t it.

A few weeks ago, we were visiting family in a different state and were out to dinner. It was Sunday afternoon, and the restaurant was a bit busy. Another family sat in the booth just to the left of us, grandparents and a teenage grand-daughter if appearances were accurate. During a break in our conversation, my attention drifted over to them. Their conversation was still moving along, and I noticed the grand-daughter slip her phone from her purse, smile into it, snap a photo of her face (it was a phone the size of a tablet, so it was difficult to miss what had happened), and begin typing whatever message that was to accompany its posting to whichever medium she was choosing.

https://twitter.com/truthscribe722/status/648196662125547520

What was disturbing about this to me was the alienation, however momentary, of the people with whom she was sharing this moment, in order to, it would seem, take the opportunity to propagate her likeness to people with whom she was not in “real” contact. I struggle with having to keep my back to television screens when I’m in a restaurant so that I can focus on those with whom I’m eating. I don’t need to distract myself further by even considering what my Twitter followers might think of where I am, or whether or not I’m smiling while I eat my food, or whatever. I’m there with people, interacting interpersonally. Isn’t that a larger priority?

Fast forward a couple of weeks, when Karen and I were eating with our daughter during a Saturday afternoon shopping excursion, and I saw a group of teenage girls outside the restaurant window pausing at a set of steps in the mall to snap a quick selfie, taking time to compose the photo just right. That day was the first time I actually saw the “selfie stick” phenomenon in use.

I was equally disturbed.

Now, I know the literature and opinions that claim that the selfie is simply a controlled form of expression of one’s image. There’s actually some research that claims that this is a healthy expression, a way to take back control of one’s image within one’s social circles in a way that one can choose, that one can control, that is not objectifying and is thus empowering. I’m afraid I must disagree. The selfie is the height of narcissism, and it’s distasteful to me not even because I don’t (and don’t think anyone should, in the interest of good health) love myself nearly that much, but because I believe that we should love those around us more.

I see the selfie, however, not as a surprising cultural event, but rather as the natural result of a market-driven society, a society reduces everything and everyone to being a “brand.” Acceptable, perhaps, when marketing a product. Dehumanizing, however, when applied to our interpersonal…and intrapersonal…existences. The selfie is something flat, something one-dimensional, something lacking substance, because it is focusing on image-management, presenting a crafted representation of how the individual wishes they were. I suspect that this gives the person the escapist ability to avoid considering their true condition, to dance around the existential questions that we all grow as human beings for asking.

My goal is not to sound curmudgeonly. I don’t wish everyone to go through life examining their every flaw with no joy or escapist outlets whatsoever. I’m human, and I’m as escapist as anyone else. I’m concerned, though, at the painfully inward, selfish focus that our culture not only permits, but rewards. The less we know…or care about…our neighbor, the further we sink as a people. The less concern with others that we permit ourselves, the less human we become.

I complained on the night that I wrote this that I didn’t get to buy something that I had wanted because we needed to spend the money on our daughter’s educational supplies. I groaned that I feel I don’t get what I want because others need what they need worse.

The more inwardly focused I become, the more miserable I become.

I don’t really want to be miserable while masking it under the guise of a well-planned photo of myself in various surroundings.

I don’t want to be miserable at all.

I certainly don’t want to fake it, either.

Image attribution: Yasmeen under Creative Commons.

Artificial Intelligence

In Brian Michael Bendis‘ story arc for Marvel’s 2013 graphic novel Age of Ultron, we are presented with an unexpected present that one would initially guess to be an alternate future. The artificial intelligence run amok known as Ultron has succeeded in destroying most of humanity. The handful of people who have survived in the world’s major cities have an even smaller handful of heroes among them, hiding underground and attempting to form a strategy to overcome Ultron. While Bendis deals with many themes in these pages, one of the most prominent is the need for what we view as progress. Bendis makes us privy to the internal dialogue of Hank Pym, the Avenger known as Ant-Man and the creator of Ultron, as he wrestles with the potential to benefit humanity that he sees in the concept of the Ultron artificial intelligence. The reader is left feeling…skeptical…of what Pym wants to achieve, understanding that his hopes are mis-placed. However, his motivations are clearly pure. He wants to help.

When faced with this extinction of humanity, Wolverine makes a more difficult choice. He wrestles with the decision of whether or not to travel back in time and end Pym’s life before he can create Ultron. The reader is even more dubious of these intentions, but Wolverine sees no other real alternative. The choice between one life or millions of lives is clear to him in that moment.

In the 2015 cinematic version of Age of Ultron, Tony Stark encourages Bruce Banner to assist in exploring the artificial intelligence that will become Ultron. He presses Banner to accept that this is who they are, the “mad scientists,” and must do what they do.

That is the intelligence that I would find artificial.

C.S. Lewis points out a sound philosophical truth: just because we can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. Yet, the logical fallacy that “can” must necessarily lead to “do” drives much of what we view today as progress. Humans as a race are always pressing forward, always confronted with our own mortality, seeking to make life more palatable not only for ourselves, but for our successors, our children. Once we discover that we are capable of something that we perceive as good, we feel an overwhelming drive to do that thing, hang the consequences.

Part of the tragedy of the character of the mad genius is that s/he works in isolation much of the time, experiencing an absence of feedback from other people about their plans. No one can see all of the failings of their own plans…everyone needs another party to hear their ideas, to proofread their work, as it were.

I think that our decisions, sometimes very important decisions, are becoming rushed. A desire to help others is a noble thing, but not every wonderful idea to better mankind turns out to be such a wonderful idea. In short, innovation must be checked by wisdom, and that wisdom is in short supply when crowd mentalities rush to gather around what is popular, without giving careful thought to what it is that they might be supporting.

I’ve been accused of being a futurist, because I become excited about the potential of what new discoveries and technologies can offer us. I see the problems that they solve, and dream of how much simpler life might be with that problem solved. Then I have to pause, I have to step back and examine whether or not my excitement is equivalent to Pym’s excitement as he dreams of Ultron. Sometimes I continue to see minimal negatives, and sometimes I feel uneasy, a misgiving that gives pause, and is usually justified when I think the issue through carefully. I’m no inventor…I don’t build exciting new things. I’m certainly no entrepreneur…while I dream of new stories and worlds, I don’t formulate new strategies to change the world as we know it. So, granted, I’m not in a position to truly understand many of these things. I am, however, a critical thinker. I believe in examining things through a lens of close observation. I think of what great science fiction writers have written, warning us of the potential outcomes of some of our innovations, and I recall Tillich’s observation that artists are the prophets of our time, warning of dangers before the rest of us can see them.

And I wonder about the dangers, unseen in the excitement over the good.

I wonder.

Photo, by Pascal, is public domain.

Superhero Role Models and Censorship

When I was in elementary school, society was in the era of “don’t do drugs.” Each generation seems to have its own popular message that all school children must hear, and this was ours. Drugs symbolized all that were evil, and, like all important cultural messages, we entrusted this to our fictional role models to reinforce. I remember the day well. We were in my 5th grade classroom, and the teacher passed out the anti-drug-use comic books. They featured the New Teen Titans. Many of the kids in this classroom hadn’t heard of these characters, as they weren’t what one would really consider mainstream superheroes at the time. Having already developed my passion for the mythology, though, I thought that this was the perfect group to tell us the story that we needed to hear. I wasn’t in any sort of risk group to abuse substances, but eagerly dug into the pages to see how these heroes dealt with the problem.

Comic books provide us with a snapshot of where we are as a culture at any given point. They give us insight into ourselves, both our self-perception as well as our perception of others. They show us that to which we can aspire, an image of a larger truth, something outside of ourselves that is good, something in which we can believe. This is why superhero mythology is so powerful, why it has been so powerful long before the current trend in popular films, and will remain so when this trend has passed.

We need to believe in good. We want to believe in someone good who will defend us from the evil that we cannot overcome ourselves. We need a symbol of a light in our darkness. This is especially true of certain groups and populations that are a bit more deprived of strong, hopeful role models than others.

Because I believe that this is bigger than just pop culture, and gives us a window into that hope…that it contains a theological insight that will only serve to spark positive discussions lasting far beyond mere entertainment value if it is truly engaged…that I become so frustrated when some treat this as a trivial thing, as a problem, as something subject to censorship.

Because I believe this, my shock and frustration are beyond words at the ignorant and narrow-minded reaction of an elementary school who considered a girl’s Wonder Woman lunchbox a dress code violation. I would think that the public education institution…an institution in which I increasingly lose faith (a reaction only strengthened by news such as this)…would choose to engage this, to discuss it, to help students begin to formulate their own reactions and thoughts to the mythology at whatever level they are capable. Obviously, if a student is recognizing Wonder Woman as a strong female role model, which is an excellent choice, then she is already engaging the subject and identifying with positive aspects of the character. I would think that this sort of critical thinking would be encouraged early in education. Obviously I’m mistaken.

And, while I’m particularly frustrated with this situation because I hold superhero mythology so closely, I would have this reaction to the censorship of any fictional character.

Wonder Woman is known historically for her bracelets which defend from attack, and her Lasso of Truth…neither of which are offensive weapons. Captain America’s symbol is a shield, something that stands between evil and it’s victims. Superman, arguably the most well-recognized superhero, is an upright symbol of strength, having no aggressive imagery about him. Batman abhors firearms and refuses to use them. Blanket policies and so-called “zero-tolerance” mentalities, being void of critical thinking themselves, only serve as a barrier to developing critical thinking in an educational setting. In this case, defining (arbitrarily, it seems) all superheroes as violent characters simply ignores too much evidence to the contrary in the literature, to say nothing of examples specific to educational settings.

Certainly, superheroes engage in violent actions. They take extreme actions to handle situations that cannot be handled otherwise. The actions of superheroes would place them on the wrong side of many viewpoints in our modern culture, as a well-respected comics author points out.

Would the gun advocates mock Batman's position? Would liberals decry the existence of the JLA or Avengers? I think they would.

— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) September 2, 2015

The value in this is the healthy ideas and discussions that come from engaging in the material, from thinking it through. None of this can occur when we prohibit our children from engaging their role models.

It seems that the public education system would have larger priorities.

Image of the actual lunchbox, from Imgur.

A Review of “Fantastic Four”

I’ll confess that I didn’t know what to think when I saw the trailer for Fantastic Four a few months ago. My initial reaction was one that I’ve had more than once previously…something to the effect of, “Didn’t we just do that?” At the same time, it seemed to hold some promise…a darker take on the story of Marvel’s First Family could help to balance out the campy side of more recent attempts to place these heroes on film. Of course, darker can be a problem, because it seems that the trendy way to make super-heroes relevant again…as in Man of Steel…is to make them…darker. Nothing like some gloom, shadows, angst and avoidance of primary colors to achieve relevance, or so it would seem.

And so, I played the flirtatious game of cautious hope that I’ve played with many super-hero films. I became excited when I saw images of the Thing for the first time, I read the interviews explaining the very non-canonical choice to cast the Human Torch as African-American (which worked quite well, I think). The lengthier the trailers as we neared release, however, the more concerned that I became. Mr. Fantastic looked to be about sixteen (a suspicion that turned out to be not far from accurate), and the overall pacing of the trailer left me concerned. There was much, it seemed, that could go very wrong with this.

I was pleasantly surprised recently after having similar suspicions about another movie. I was hoping that this would be the case again. Alas…

Josh Trank can do better, and, because he contributed to the writing as well as directing this film, I think that the blame rests there. I liked Chronicle, but Chronicle was a YA story. And, while I will fully admit that I don’t particularly like YA, I do respect it as a genre. It’s just that the Fantastic Four has no business being YA. Reed Richards is a respected and published scientific authority…that is, an adult. His character, at least post-acquisition of his powers, just doesn’t work as a teenager, no matter how you write it.

What I think Trank missed entirely in the film conceptually is the family aspect that makes the Fantastic Four so different from every other super-hero story arc. While there is a (forced and completely unrealistic) attempt to develop Reed and Ben’s childhood history together, the relationship between Reed and Sue never develops, and is reduced a brief scene of laughter as the two work together in the lab. Connections between Johnny and Reed are passing and rushed, and none exists between Ben and anyone other than Reed. Robbing the story of these relationships reduces it to a one-dimensional trope of people given extraordinary powers. The compelling through-line to the Fantastic Four is the worldview that their family relationships brings, the manner in which it leads them to interact with the crises that they face. Before they are heroes, they are husband and wife, brother and sister, best friends. Fighting to keep their family intact is often the more triumphant battle than those with Dr. Doom of any of their other rogues’ gallery.

Should the writer manage to keep these family relationships intact, then a lot can be done, but he didn’t, and so everything else fell apart. Instead of traveling to space and experiencing the accident that gives the group their powers, they travel to another dimension. This can be accepted as artistic license, and likely could have worked, except that Doom accompanies the group instead of Sue, and they all go…drunk. Their transformations in no way parallel Sue’s, leaving a strong female character as an afterthought. If there is a more egregious mistreatment of the story than weakening a strong female character, it is making the villain flat, unconvincing, rushed, and generally without substance. I guess I don’t have to say anything further about Dr. Doom. His character would be funny were this movie intended as a farce.

The story is rushed, lost in its mis-guided attempts to re-invent an origin story, leaving no room for the group to develop as heroes. This is especially true given the very non-canonical twist of the group being drafted into military service so as to have their powers weaponized. This couldn’t be more out of character for the team as they are written in the literature, but those original characters obviously aren’t of concern here. We’re working with a group of unknown kids with the same names and powers as the team well-known to comics readers, but not the team itself.

Apparently, that’s okay, though, as long as we make it dark and moody.

The climactic fight between the “heroes” and “Doom” is rushed and poorly scripted, the visual effects lackluster and bordering on cliche. The rare moment of brightness in the film is that some of the actors, specifically Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, give solid performances, managing to wring some life out of a script that felt as though it were thrown together in a weekend.

The logo of the “4” never appears on the costumes of the characters, and that is appropriate, because whatever this is…a group of unlikely geeks and misfits banding together through fate in good YA fashion…it is not the Fantastic Four. It seems that every Marvel film coming from Fox is destined to be a tragedy lately. The Fantastic Four is no exception. If you haven’t seen this, don’t bother. Go read some of the comics instead.

Image attribution: Day Donaldson under Creative Commons.

Blogging Nostalgia

Perhaps it’s my age, but I’m prone to nostalgia lately. More, in fact, than I would care to admit over the past couple of years. It’s not just music, mind you, although I’ve pined my share over that. It’s not just old Saturday morning cartoons, or even old breakfast cereals, though I’ve certainly found myself drawn to those quite often of late. No, the chronology of my longings isn’t nearly so narrowly defined. In fact, other things, things from barely a decade ago, have piqued my reflective longings recently.

And yes, I do realize just how much I’ve dated myself in that last statement.

Is there a point to this? Yes. The point is this post from a blog that I began following years ago when I was writing prose more than code (and beginning the novel that I swear I’m going to finish at some point). As the comments poured in over the subsequent weeks, it became obvious that I wasn’t the only reader with whom Mr. Bransford’s thoughts had resonated. I’ve enjoyed reading those thoughts. I always have enjoyed reading others’ thoughts. That’s what was always so powerful about the blog.

I began writing a blog as an experiment back in 2005, and, although I rarely read that first post, when I do, it makes me pause to think about what’s changed about the writing and the writer over that decade. The purpose of this space changed as my focus and interests became more defined (“faith, art, and culture” came more than two years after I began blogging), an epiphany that happened in large part because of my writing here. I found my voice as a blogger…so different from that first post…along with that focus. Simply, I came to call myself a blogger, to take this seriously. Certainly, I’ve waxed and waned a bit in my frequency of posting over the years, but I’ve never left. I’ve waxed and waned in my reading of others’ blogs, as well, no longer finding the time to peruse my feeds every day, but more likely once weekly.

I initially found these blogs through a bit of a curated experience, of course. I began, as many bloggers did, with Blogger (I was writing there before it’s acquisition by Google), and, like many bloggers, I outgrew it. Like many bloggers, I used blogrolls to discover and be discovered. I was always looking for a new blog to add to my reading list, because the things that you discovered, the things that you learned, by reading the thoughts of people from all over the globe, was so amazingly enriching, so profoundly important.

I met friends through blogs. People passionate about blogging, and passionate about writing. People passionate about faith and theology, about the arts and so many of my other interests. Some faded away over the years, and I’ve lost touch. Others I’ve met in person and continue to communicate with to this day.

I commented on posts. I subscribed to comments. My posts received comments. We interacted, those other bloggers and I. We discussed, almost always civilly, and, in doing so, we learned things and grew.

This wasn’t just about entertainment. It never was for me. It’s more important than that. More profound.

So, nostalgia. Nostalgia because I miss what it was. I’m not saying that blogging is no longer existent, or no longer important, or that it’s only on the fringes and important to only a few writers who refuse to accept change. There are those who say that, and I couldn’t disagree more. Blogging isn’t the only option, now, and it isn’t the only way to discover other people and discover their thoughts. I don’t comment nearly as much as I used to, nor do my posts receive as many comments, even though the number of you reading these posts has only grown. That’s okay…it’s the evolution of the medium. I sort of miss it, though, because the discussion is what made this so special, so different from the streams of consciousness that are social networks, for better or worse.

What feels most void is that I miss the discovery of other’s blogs. I miss going looking for new blogs. I miss not having the discovery process dominated by the algorithms of Facebook or Twitter. To be honest, I miss having the time to do this discovering.

Many of the blogs that populated my feed years ago are no longer active. They exist, but with most recent posts of two or three years past. Some no longer exist at all…they’ve been taken down, domain names now belonging to others. I’ve no intention of doing that for some time to come, although I’m not nearly naive enough to believe that this medium will never be replaced by another and that this will never cease to exist at some point, replaced in the evolution of technology. There are, however, a lot of very active blogs out there, and I don’t fall into the “it’s over and I’ll always miss it” sort of nostalgia of many of the commenters on Bransford’s post. There are fewer personal blogs, perhaps, as more have become focused on what we do for our livings as professional and personal are tragically forced to meld beyond healthy boundaries. But there are still blogs, good blogs, waiting for readers with the time to engage in the writers’ thoughts.

Not just their in-the-moment impulses. Their thoughts. The stuff that makes us grow, that expands who we are as people, that helps us to know each other better…and hopefully even, in an ideal circumstance, hurt each other less.

That’s why this is so important, and why I’m nostalgic for what it was, even while being fascinated by what it becomes.