In Boozo Veritas #22: A Pig in Wolves’ Clothing

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Martin Scorcese, Teege Braune, The Wolf of Wall Street

In Boozo Veritas #22 by Teege Braune

A Pig in Wolves’ Clothing:

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

If you are a cinephile like myself, you may have spent three hours in the middle of Christmas at a movie theater watching Martin Scorsese’s new film The Wolf of Wall Street. Based on the “real life” memoir of criminal stock trader turned motivational speaker Jordan Belfort, Wolf has already taken its place as Scorsese’s most controversial film since The Passion of the Christ. Some reviewers and bloggers hate it. Others love it for the wrong reasons. The problem is simply this: that the billionaire Belfort spends the entire three hours of the film exploiting others to fund a lifestyle of absolute depravity and self-indulgence and never receives his comeuppance. Okay, so he loses his trophy wife and spends about thirty seconds playing tennis in a white collar prison. Shortly thereafter he’s back on his game as a highly respected sales trainer, less rich perhaps and sober, but satisfied and successful all the same.

I realize that’s a lot of spoilers for the opening paragraph of a movie review. Perhaps you’ve already read Belfort’s book of the same title on which the film is based. I read part of it and found it as tedious as Scorsese’s three hour movie would have been had it been fifteen hours long. Belfort has claimed that he was inspired to write the book by his prison cellmate Tommy Chong who purportedly found his new friend’s stories of depravity hilariously entertaining. It is certainly telling that Belfort, despite the smug posturing at regret he poses in interviews, composed the book not as a story of redemption, not as a tale of a good man’s fall from grace and road to salvation, but as a fun account of his hedonistic glory days. The movie is largely criticized for focusing solely on Belfort and failing to tell the stories of the people from whom he swindled his millions, but this isn’t a problem for me because his victims were never the inspiration for his memoir in the first place. Their stories are the stuff of drama and tragedy and this is not what The Wolf of Wall Street is. This movie is black comedy sweetening its bitter spoonful of scathing social commentary, and on that level it is unparalleled.

Few readers of contemporary American fiction will fail to draw comparisons between Belfort and Bret Easton Ellis’ millionaire Wall Street playboy Patrick Bateman.

While Ellis’ indictment of greed and excess exists in a hyperbolic parallel dimension, the central difference between Belfort and Bateman is not that the former doesn’t actually murder people. Unlike Bateman who is born into his position and exorbitant wealth, Belfort grew up in a middle-class family. Had he made some different choices, had some cards fallen another way, he may have ended up like you or me. Whereas Bateman sees his social privileges as his inherited birthright, Belfort sees them as something he has earned, and though he may have willed them by any means necessary, they are all the more his due because he took them by his own volition. Whereas Bateman sees the world split into the haves and have nots simply by chance, a fate he never bothers to question, Belfort sees the economic divide as something anyone can traverse if they merely possess the grit to do so. In a telling speech, Belfort slams his critics saying, “Do you think I’m materialistic? Fuck you! Go get a job at McDonald’s.” His unlikely success doesn’t render him sympathetic to the less fortunate; on the other hand, his achievement is his license to behave in any way he chooses.

Nevertheless, this sense of superiority shouldn’t imply that Belfort lacks generosity. On the contrary, to those he deems worthy, he gladly lets the jewels slip through his fingers, but even his charity has a sinister edge about it, for it becomes painfully obvious that Belfort is merely buying and selling friends and loyalties, allegiances he will cash in on when he needs his colleagues to lie to the feds for him and then sells the same colleagues out when the court finally has him up against the wall and pressures him for testimony. Take Kimmie Belzer, one of Belfort’s original stockbrokers who becomes fabulously wealthy working, lying, and cheating for her equally dubious boss. We come to find out Belfort gave Belzer a gift of $1200 to get her on her feet when she first joined his then-tiny organization. The two tearfully profess their love for each other two thirds of the way through the movie. Before this moment, Belzer was nothing but an extra in another man’s story. She’s only given a name when her example legitimizes Belfort’s own ego. Afterwards she’s cast back to the sidelines and doesn’t reappear again until she, along with the rest of the office, is arrested based on evidence provided by Belfort himself, but this time she isn’t lauding the praises of her former employer; instead, she rails at her arresting officer to get his hands of her Chanel suit.

The comedic aspects of Wolf are personified nowhere better than in the character Donny Azoff portrayed brilliantly by Johan Hill.

Azoff is a fictionalization of Belfort’s one time partner and get out of jail free card Danny Porush who has unsuccessfully attempted to sue Belfort for his less than flattering characterization in the book. Though Porush’s son has written an article denouncing the film and proclaiming his dad father of the year, Hill’s Azoff is an utterly depraved and demented individual, the kind of guy who marries his first cousin, pees on subpoenas, swallows an underling’s living goldfish, and openly masturbates at an office party. With his bug eyes and overbite, he lacks Belfort’s physical attractiveness and even his preternatural ability to lie. More unhinged than the protagonist for whom he makes the perfect foil, Azoff is the character Joe Pesci would have played had this movie come out twenty years ago. In one of the most disturbingly hilarious scenes in the movie Azoff and Belfort, both of them overdosing on quaaludes, get into a slurred, stumbling fight during which Azoff nearly chokes to death on a piece of ham before Belfort, who had previously attempted to strangle him with a phone cord, saves his life. Its delightfully awkward physical comedy is more reminiscent of Tim and Eric than Raging Bull, and I, knowing nothing of the film’s backstory, was completely convinced that Azoff was going to die, if not there then at some point before the end of the movie, but Azoff doesn’t die because Porush didn’t die and is still alive making a decent living for himself in the pharmaceutical business of all places. Wolf isn’t a cautionary tale. Despite having no redeemable qualities outside of his ability to entertain an audience, Azoff like Belfort always lands on his feet, that is of course until Belfort sells him to the feds to save his own skin. In the end, Azoff is punished less for his crimes than he is for trusting in Jordan Belfort, but we never see his trial nor his time in prison. The moment Belfort no longer needs him, Azoff like everyone else in the movie, simply disappears.

If this is how Jordan Belfort handles the people he’s closest to, then how does he feel about the rest of us? His memoir is the same swindling lie he used to sell over the telephone, sold now in the form of a book and a movie. He has so little regard for his audience that as soon as he starts to get into the mechanics of stock trading he interrupts himself, reminding us that we don’t understand what he’s talking about anyway, nor are we likely care as we are came to the theater to see sex and drugs, not a lesson on the financial sector. This from a man who has failed to pay back the entirety of the reparations the court has mandated, further litigation still pending.

Scorsese, at least, isn’t hiding his protagonist’s unreliability. DiCaprio’s Belfort should be suspect from the very beginning, changing the color of his ferrari from red to white “like Don Johnson’s in Miami Vice” at his own whim. If Belfort’s tales of drugs, sex, and hedonism smack you as harder to swallow than those of Raoul Duke’s, you’d be wise to listen to that nagging doubt. After all, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol tend to impair an individual’s ability to remember, and furthermore, we are talking about a person who made billions of dollars as a professional liar. Neither Martin Scorsese nor Jordan Belfort need to tell us the stories of his victims’ heartaches because those victims are us, his audience. The economic divide between us and Belfort is represented by the gap between our seat in the theater and the movie screen through which he continually breaks the fourth wall, talking disdainfully down at us as we gaze with disgust and admiration back at him. If this pisses you off, then its because he’s indicting you in his own crimes. He knows that many, if not most of us, are going to watch him behave like an orgiastic Caligula suffering only the minimalist of consequences and some part of us, whether or not we wish to acknowledge it, is going to wish we could be just like him. At the very least, any audience member sitting in the theater on Christmas day is going to consider the cost of everything they bought and received that morning and know that it doesn’t even compare to the kind of money this man makes and spends with the wink of his eye. The moment you envy Belfort, even if it is just for a moment, you are culpable in his materialism, and love it or hate it, you have justified Scorsese’s delightfully difficult masterpiece. Of course it is going to piss you off, but the cinephiles among us will also acknowledge that within that moral conundrum lies filmmaking at its very finest.

Interestingly enough, one of the harshest, albeit most misguided, critiques of The Wolf of Wall Street comes from Christina McDowell, the daughter of Tom Prousalis who isn’t portrayed in the film but worked for Belfort in his heyday and went down with the rest of the crew when his former boss’ testimony sent them all to prison. Overnight McDowell went from being the daughter of billionaire to the daughter of a penniless convict. Unlike Porush’s kids, McDowell is more than willing to condemn her father for his involvement in Belfort’s empire, but it’s Belfort and even Scorsese himself to whom she lashes out the bulk of her ire. She sees Wolf as nothing more than the glorification of a man who’s legacy was nothing but greed. While the film’s moral complexities are completely lost on her, it’s important to remember that McDowell isn’t viewing it through the same eyes as the rest of us. At the cusp of adulthood when her father went to prison, McDowell laments the same service industry job she was forced to take to make ends meet that many of us go to everyday. While she criticizes the movie for failing to focus on Belfort’s victims, her article dwells on the sorrow of her own family alone. Even as she demonizes Belfort’s hedonism, she romanticizes her debauched youth claiming, “I drove a white Range Rover in high school, snorted half of Colombia, and got any guy I ever wanted.” She plugs her own upcoming memoir and practically dares Hollywood to make it into a movie, comparing her mother to a cross between Sharon Stone and Michelle Pfeiffer and at the same time failing to mention the dozen or so movie and television appearances she has made as a semi-successful actress with her own IMDB page. Though her article is hand tailored to garner sympathy, McDowell is completely unaware that it ultimately isolates her from the normal people to whom she’s pleading her case. Her inability to understand how The Wolf of Wall Street could be anything more than a glorification of a lifestyle she spent most of her childhood taking for granted is exactly what separates her from us. If anything, Belfort understands us better than McDowell ever will because he grew up just like us. If this makes McDowell simply delusional, it paints Belfort all the more unforgivable, but Scorsese has made a career creating antiheroes, some of them fictional, others with one foot in reality, and Belfort can now take his place alongside Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, and Henry Hill, characters we love perhaps, but men we love to hate, a position in culture and history which few, if any, would envy.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

Episode 78: Edwidge Danticat and Koren Zailckas!

28 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Miami Book Fair

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Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat, Fury, Koren Zailckas, Miami Book Fair International, Mother Mother, Smashed

Episode 78 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I present my interview with Edwidge Danticat,

and my interview with Koren Zailckas,

Photo by Tammy Taylor.

plus Samantha Stemler writes about Neil McKenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

The Drunken Odyssey now has a youtube channel.

Here is my video of Edwidge Danticat’s event at Miami Book Fair International:

According to the Kids’ Right to Read Project, 2013 has been a record year for attempts to ban books in libraries in schools. The Diary of Anne Frank, you know, is too pornographic for American children to be exposed to. This was reported in The Guardian.

The Heaven of Animals, the forthcoming collection from friend-of-the-show David James Poissant, is available for pre-order. Please support the launch of his book, which is wonderful reading.

Episode 78 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #21: New Year’s Evil

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #21 by Jeffrey Shuster

New Year’s Evil: Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

New Year’s Evil is movie about a psychopathic killer who calls himself “Evil” and murders women on New Year’s Eve. That about sums it up.

It would seem that this is the first slasher movie to be put on display in The Museum of Schlock. However, this one is only on loan. I didn’t actually requisition New Year’s Evil for the museum’s collection. It is streamable from Netflix. New Year’s Evil is also available for streaming on Amazon Instant Video.

Funny how much these streaming services remind me of the old Mom & Pop video stores from the 80s. Sure there’d be heavy hitters on display front like Rocky IV and Cocoon, but if you ventured into those isles, you’d find movies you’d never heard of before with the enticing box art. Renters beware, though. Sometimes you’d get suckered. You’d be so desperate for another Indiana Jones movie that you’d pick up Golan & Globus’s King Solomon’s Mines thinking it had to be at least be half as good as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom before realizing it wasn’t even half as good as Cocoon.

But Golan & Globus didn’t just produce cheap Indiana Jones knock-offs. They also produced the occasional low budget horror film, and New Year’s Evil was one such horror film. Released in 1980 and directed by Emmett Alston, New Year’s Evil is unique in that it shows the audience what the killer looks like from the very beginning. No elaborate masks or hiding his face in the shadows. This killer is right out in the open. Granted, he does disguise himself in other ways, dressing up as a priest or a doctor when it best serves the kill.

In one scene, Evil has to dress up in a swinging leisure suit in order to sell himself as Erik Estrada’s financial guru manager something something. A couple of women buy it and it’s not long before they’re in his become his next victims. You see, Evil must kill when the clock strikes midnight for each of the four time zones in the United States. He screws up when on the hunt for victim number 4. Evil accidentally runs over a member of a biker gang and the rest of the gang doesn’t take to kindly to this. They chase him all around town, eventually cornering him in a drive-in.

This reminds of how that other biker gang kept going after cannibals in Cannibal Apocalypse. What’s with these bikers and their harassment? Cannibals and psychopathic killers are people, too. They need to know they can walk the streets safe at night.

Ten Things I learned from New Year’s Evil

Fake mustaches really work!
Nurses in mental institutions can be bribed with expensive champaign.
Lounge ladies can be bribed with Erik Estrada.
Bikers will a flip off a priest without hesitation.
Covering your head with your mother’s nylon stocking is perfectly normal and don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Bikers don’t mess around. They’ll chase you and chase you and prevent you reaching your third victim in time.
Wearing a Stan Laurel mask only serves to infuriate the police officers that are already shooting at you.
Setting up an elaborate elevator death trap for your fourth victim will seem like a cool idea until your victim manages to survive unscathed.
Four victims is not too impressive for a psychopathic killer who calls himself “Evil.” Jason Voorhees had four times that number by the end of Friday the 13^th Part III.
Don’t be upset if you fall to your death while evading capture by those pesky police officers. Your psychopathic son lives on to carry out your legacy.

___________

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

Gutter Space #20: Holiday Bullshit

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Gutter Space

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Cards Against Humanity, Comics, Funny Pages, gutter space, Holiday Bullshit, leslie salas, Sequential art

Gutter Space #20 by Leslie Salas

Comics in the Real World: Funny Pages as a part of Holiday Bullshit by Cards Against Humanity

This Christmas, my brother did something awesome and—without telling me—signed me up to receive 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit, as presented by Cards Against Humanity.

Imagine my surprise (and confusion) when I got the first cleverly-decorated envelope with a cleverly illustrated re-imagining of a Partridge in a pear tree. The contents of the envelope chastised me for trusting total strangers with $12. Since I hadn’t given anyone online $12, I quickly deduced this must be the work of my brother—who managed to get me on the list before it sold out (after only 6 hours!).

While the arrival of my gifts wasn’t exactly punctual (USPS is slammed this time of year), I did have a lot of fun getting presents via snail mail: surprise expansion packs for Cards Against Humanity, a lump of coal, a new card game, some posters of artistic interpretations of trump cards, a donation to public school classrooms, and best of all, a one-shot publication of a Funny Pages zine.

The Funny Pages features some of my favorite cartoonists—Allie Brosh, Jess Fink, Zach Weinersmith, John Allison, Sam Brown—and also introduced me to some new names and comics I’ll definitely be writing about in the new year.

I’d like to talk about the publication as a whole and the potential consequences of sending 100,000 people this print comic (and making the entire publication available online via tumblr). I’m sure each of these cartoonists donated their work for the cause—it gets their name out into the world and can help increase their readership.

For instance, Allie Brosh (of Hyperbole and a Half) has the entire back cover of the zine. Since she just published her first book, this is like free publicity and/or a collector’s item for hardcore fans. Other cartoonists, like Erika Moen, have taken this opportunity to educate a widespread readership, in this case, about safe sex. Many of the cartoons offer cultural critiques about the holidays, while others comment on Cards Against Humanity as a game.

Overall, the collection of work is eclectic and fun, and I highly suggest reading it. If you’re one of the 99,999 other people who got the zine in print—keep it! If only for a lovely memento of seeing some of the best-known webcartoonists’ work in print.

Happy holidays, everyone.

___________

Leslie Salas (episode 75) writes fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and comics. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida and attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute. In addition to being an Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Leslie also serves as an assistant editor for The Florida Review, a graphic nonfiction editorial assistant for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and a regular contributing artist for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Heroes Never Rust #21: Roles and Expectations

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Gødland, Heroes Never Rust, Joe Casey, sean ironman, Tom Scioli

Heroes Never Rust #21 by Sean Ironman

Roles and Expectations

In the first issue of Gødland by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli, the hero, Adam Archer, fights Maxim, a dog-like alien creature who had just arrived on Earth. Like superheroes such as Spider-Man, Archer taunts the alien. But then he thinks, “Christ…Why do I keep talking smack like that?” Archer is an American astronaut, who was the lone survivor of Man’s first trip to Mars and gained his powers from an alien ship found underground there. He’s not hotheaded. He’s not really out to prove himself. He’s a scientist and a mature adult. He gained his powers from the Cosmic Fetus Collective and was sent back to Earth as the first person to be touched by universal enlightenment. Yet, he falls into the role of the action hero and what a person expects from a superhero.

Gødland is heavily inspired from Jack Kirby’s Eternals and The Fourth World series, with a bit of The Fantastic Four thrown in there. Humanity isn’t trusting of Adam Archer and his newfound abilities upon his return to Earth and the American government keeps an eye on him, giving him the Infinity Tower, similar to the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building, The comic itself (the art, the layout, the coloring) takes after Kirby and other cosmic comics from the 1970s. In the past decade, there seems to be a lot of comics that are going back to the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s for inspiration. The 1980s pushed superhero comics into darker and more challenging areas with stories like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Daredevil: Born Again. Now, they seem to be coming back, finding a middle ground. Genres always seem to be searching for a new avenue.

Re-reading Gødland has me wondering if we can ever find something new, or if we’ll always come back to what we know. Not only is the comic itself going back to decades-old sources, but the characters inside purposely act like the superheroes we know, like Adam Archer’s taunting. Years ago, the comedian Drew Carey had refractive surgery to correct his vision and no longer needed his glasses, but he continued to wear them so that the audience knew who he was. Could we recognize a superhero without the superhero tropes we have been raised on? Adam Archer is the perfect human being, yet he falls back into the role of a protector who is feared by those he is protecting. Is it possible to be a superhero where a hero only has superpowers? Or must they have a high-tech base of operations, a small family, work from a government that they both love and hate, and even an alliterative name?

When I think about superheroes in the real world, which will happen one day, I think society will eventually force them into the role of what we think of as a superhero. They would be required to wear a costume, which will be called a costume, even if unofficially, instead of a uniform. We will expect them to be our superman, to save us, to be morally greater than we are.

For the past few months, due to other creative works I’m exploring, I’ve grown curious about this idea of the institutions we create ultimately confine us, and I can see that in superheroes. Even supervillains. The supervillains in volume one of Gødland are a good example of creatures being placed in the role of comic book supervillains. Basil Cronus, a skull with a robotic body that can be controlled remotely, is on a quest for the ultimate high, just a really enhanced drug addict in a way. Discordia, who tortures her victims only because she derives so much pleasure from it, states during a trail, “I am a super-villain. I’m fairly certain that anyone who knows me…knows that.” She says that to the attorney defending her as well as that she “merely want to inflict pain upon him” in regards to one of his defense strategies. She plays into the idea of being a supervillain. She’s proud of it. Basil and Discordia are not the gray characters who are doing bad for good reasons. They are bad just to be bad. This is not a complaint about Gødland, just an observation. I think it works quite well within the confines of the Gødland universe.

If a superhero will come one day, in the real world that is, then a supervillain will comes as well. Like comics have explored for many years now, there will be an escalation. Superheroes may start being just a person who helps others and eventually be taken over by the superhero concept of a base of operations, a costume, a cool secret identity. Supervillains will follow suit, it seems. Life will be like a comic book. I wouldn’t live in New York City. They seem to get the worst of it.

___________

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

In Boozo Veritas #21: Mickey and Donald, The Tragic Heroes of Christmas Cartoons

23 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Christmas, Disney, In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Mickey's Good Deed, Teege Braune, The Clock Watcher, Walt Disney

In Boozo Veritas #21 by Teege Braune

Mickey and Donald: The Tragic Heroes of Christmas Cartoons

After trimming the Christmas tree to a soundtrack of Andy Williams, watching Disney holiday cartoons was an annual tradition for my siblings and me when we were growing up in Indiana. “Pluto’s Christmas Tree” always made me wonder what kind of winter wonderland our own tree might be from the inside were I able to explore its decorated branches like Chip and Dale, and “Donald’s Snow Fight” made our own snowball battles, on the rare occasion we were lucky enough to have a white Christmas, seem paltry by comparison. Both of these animated shorts are visually stunning, full of hilarious gags, and despite Disney’s squeaky clean reputation, at times oddly violent. While my family continues to carry out these traditions, texting me pictures of our favorite ornaments as they do so, I am mournfully absent from the festivities, transplanted down south as I am. Nevertheless, I keep one foot in the magic of my childhood and continue to watch my favorite cartoons on youtube. Among them I find two particularly subversive. Whether or not “The Clock Watcher” and “Mickey’s Good Deed” purposely meant to challenge viewers by criticizing greed and consumer capitalism, one cannot help but notice these themes in the scathing satire of the former and the downright heart-wrenching pathos of the latter.

“The Clock Watcher” finds Donald Duck at his very best. He appears in this 1945 cartoon as a gift wrapper for an unnamed department store. Whether attempting to wrap a football in a package that is much too small for it or trying to keep a jack ‘n the box from bursting from its lid, both frustrating circumstances and his own attempts at laziness ensure that Donald’s misadventures go from bad to worse. Furthermore, his every move is being monitored by an unseen manager who is personified by an intercom that begins to take on dystopic qualities by the end of the short. While the sexless manager can’t exactly see Donald, its constant goading commentary on his performance smacks of Orwellian malevolence. The intercom’s technology might be unfamiliar and out of date to today’s viewer, but its maneuvers take on an almost android-like quality resembling the Martian probe from War of the Worlds. Though self-defeating as always, Donald is more sympathetic than ever in the role of the hyperbolically enraged everyman fruitlessly rebelling against a totalitarian system through explosions of wrath, exhibiting every negative emotion Winston Smith attempts to hide from Big Brother.

1932’s “Mickey’s Good Deed,” on the other hand, is a dramatically different, but equally challenging take on Christmas. Though it is less than fifteen years older than “The Clock Watcher,” this cartoon is the product of a radically different time. All the way down to the primitive animation, it is a masterpiece of depression era social commentary, and even its conclusion, though positive on the surface, is not without a bitter pang. The short opens on Mickey the street musician playing a melancholy rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful” on his cello while Pluto howls. Their world is hopelessly desolate; Mickey suffers stroke after stroke of bad luck, and the worst aspects of human nature thrive. Despite being mistreated by passersby, Mickey, ever the perfect boy-scout, makes the ultimate sacrifice and sells Pluto, his one friend, to the father of a spoiled child in order to purchase Christmas gifts for a poor family whose patriarch is in prison. While Mickey doesn’t hesitate to offer up his only source of comfort or companionship in order to help the family who, with a ramshackle roof over their head, have that much more than he does, his loss is no less painful for that reason. The use of humor and the fact that Mickey’s misfortunes and Pluto’s torture at the hands of the pig child all take the form of slapstick only help to make the cartoon that much more tragic and disturbing. If the climax finds circumstances rising one step above the status quo, we are reminded that these characters’ world is so bleak that the improvement barely qualifies as a happy ending. Though the pig child is finally disciplined, his cries at being spanked are so pathetic, one can’t help but feel saddened at the empty joylessness of his wealth. While Mickey and Pluto are reunited and even get to enjoy a Christmas turkey that was tied onto Pluto’s tail to torment him, they remain impoverished, homeless vagabonds. Far from being rewarded for his good deed, Mickey’s modicum of good luck seems to occur in spite of it.

What could Disney have been trying to convey through these cartoons? Could a corporate empire that has come to represent excessive consumerism actually be criticizing its own modus operandi? I seriously doubt it. Was Disney suggesting that, like Mickey, we ought to be charitable to the point of near self-annihilation during the Christmas season? I have trouble believing this as well. While drinking at the Disney World resorts, John King and I discussed the archetypal role of trickster in a place that attempts to control every detail down to the smallest molecule. Despite the enormous manpower and billions of dollars spent to create the illusion of perfection, something will inevitably go wrong. Perhaps it is this same trickster spirit alive in Disney’s cartoons, tragedy and self satire inadvertently working their ways into animation that was intended to be merely entertaining. On the other hand, I might not be giving an organization that has shaped popular culture in some of its most fundamental and recognizable aspects enough credit. It is entirely possible that Disney is as capable of being self-reflective as it is as at making huge amounts of money. I’m sure John, the walking Disney encyclopedia, could add incredible insight and historical footnotes to the discussion. Maybe if I listen to episode 77 of The Drunken Odyssey one more time I’ll find the answers hiding within its three hour runtime, but it’s the day before Christmas Eve, I have a million chores to do, and desperately need a nap, so as always I’ll ask more questions than I’m capable of answering. Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.

___________

Like a Geek God #15: The Legend of Korra Season Two (A Post Mortem)

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Like a Geek God, Television

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The Legend of Korra

Like a Geek God #15 by Mark Pursell

The Legend of Korra Season Two: A Post Mortem

Sequels can be tricky. Many times, the attempt to preserve the spirit of the original object while also striking out in a new direction leads to one of two extemes: transcendance, or catastrophic failure. Aliens, The Godfather: Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Road Warrior capitalized on their progenitors and catapulted their franchises to greater heights of artistic achievement.

On the other hand, we have…The Matrix Reloaded, Jaws 2, Basic Instinct 2, and any number of direct-to-video Disney follow-ups.

It’s hard to say why there’s rarely a middle ground for sequels. Maybe it’s due to the fact that—unless an intellectual property (IP) is conceived with sequels in mind—the existence of a sequel only comes about because the original IP has been commercially successful. This sometimes coincides with critical acclaim and sometimes doesn’t, and it’s hard to say which is the worse offender: a bad sequel to a bad movie that was, despite its badness, financially viable, or a bad sequel to a good or even great movie that squanders exciting storytelling opportunities and tarnishes the franchise/IP’s name.

Television has to deal with this, too. There’s hardly any data for television shows that attempt to be sequels. Spin-offs are more common, and though they can hardly be referred to as sequels in the most accurate sense, conventional television wisdom holds that a spin-off series is an equally-risky bet that rarely pans out well (here’s looking at you, Joey and Golden Palace and Joanie Loves Chachi and The Lone Gunmen). Fortunately, geek television culture is littered with spin-off success stories. Angel and Torchwood, though you may argue the finer points of their worth, extemporized from their source material (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who, respectively) with enough elan to distinguish themselves and establish their own fan bases.

So, the question of a sequel series to Nickolodeon’s hot-property Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion on the side of the negative. Actually, it seemed like both a good idea and a novel one. Airbender is one of the most cohesive and satisfying storytelling experiences in modern serialized television, though often overlooked because of its animated nature and its youthful target audience. Creators and lead writers Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko proved again and again during the series’ original run that they were worldbuilders, screenwriters, and showrunners of not only competence but complexity. Though Airbender as a series ended with that most rare of commodities—a satisfying finale—its universe was ripe for further exploration. When Nickoloden announced The Legend of Korra, a sequel series set seventy years after the events of Airbender and starring the next incarnation of the Avatar—a belligerent teenage girl named Korra—Airbender fans across the globe rejoiced.

With the Airbender IP in place and DiMartino and Konietzko once again taking the reins, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Korra would live up to, possibly even surpass, the original series. Early press made much of the fact that the creators had asked for and been given a smaller number of episodes per season to write, allowing them to discard stand-alone episodes and subplots in favor of telling a serialized story arc with precision, focus, and momentum. A dream come true, especially for those of us (*raises hand*) who rant regularly and with passion about how the network standard of twenty-two episodes per season is an enemy to great art, whether it is comedy or epic fantasy.

And things started well enough last year when Korra’s first season aired. The discrete nations of the Airbender world, depicted in the original series as being in the infancy of an industrial revolution, coalesce in Korra to a Gotham analogue called Republic City where the different strata of the Airbender world gather in one place, with the result that—as in most melting-pot metropolises across our actual history—the clash of cultures has led both to advancement (Republic City is essentially a steampunk Shanghai, with zeppelins and metalbending police officers) and antagonism. When the show opens, the mix of elementally-powered benders and “normal”, non-bending people has led to a wave of anti-bending sentiment among Republic City’s ungifted and disenfranchised populace. This idea is embodied by first season villain Amon, leader of an anti-bending organization (the Equalists) and a revolutionary firebrand with, naturally, more than equality on his mind. It’s a relevant, contemporary tableau. Then you have Korra herself: she’s an admirably flawed character, tough and empathetic but headstrong and impatient. She makes an effective contrast to the first series’ Aang, whose airbender serenity, cheerfulness, and insight into human nature is offset by occasional arrogance, reluctance to “grow up”, and fear of his own destiny.

Unfortunately, the very storytelling element that Korra’s shorter season run was supposed to enhance—plotting—emerged as the show’s weakest aspect, against all expectation and logic.

A strong initial salvo of episodes degenerated into a tired love triangle (can we just put love triangles away for a few decades? Bella and her monsters, Katniss and her male damsels-in-distress…leave it alone, please). Then, bizarrely, the show seemed to change its mind about the identity of masked villain Amon, having seemed to set up “his” identity as supporting character Asami and then, in the eleventh hour, pawning the villain’s role off on a previously-unseen/unknown character in whom the audience had no interest or investment. Then the plot was all neatly wrapped up, even though the creators had already been guaranteed a second season (and later signed a deal for three more seasons). They then announced that they had decided to dispense with the overall serialized arc of Airbender and that each season of Korra would feature a discrete arc. Oooookay. Buh?

Whatever floundering marred the end of Korra’s first season continued (and how) with his year’s second season run. The overall conceit of the season was a focus on the spirit world (a running worldbuilding element in the Avatar universe) and the origins of the Avatar’s singular ability to manipulate, or “bend”, all four of the primal elements. However, the first six or seven episodes of Season Two frittered away screentime on a too-obviously-villainous waterbending leader and his engineering of a civil war among the Southern Water Tribe. By the time the season got around to its main point in the “Beginnings” two-parter, this writer’s disinterest had reached eye-rolling proportions. Did we learn nothing from The Phantom Menace? Bureacratic and political machinations can certainly be interesting, but you have to know your brand. I mean, it’s Star Wars, it’s Airbender, it’s high fantasy adventure. This isn’t fucking House of Cards. I suppose it might be different if the political intrigue was written well, but it wasn’t. It was mostly a hash of first-thought “revelations” and betrayals which could have been tossed out completely, being beside the point as they are. The back half of the season was somewhat stronger because the focus shifted to the spirit world and Korra’s relationship with it, ending with a *SPOILER* intriguing development that saw a reentry of the spirits into human society and Korra’s loss of ability to connect with the spirits of her Avatar predecessors. However, even these more exciting story elements suffered from the kind of logical inconsistencies and unforegrounded developments that rarely plagued Airbender. (It should be noted that DiMartino, who co-wrote every episode of Korra’s first season with Konietzko, wrote only a handful of episodes for Season Two; Konietzko wrote none at all).

Why the faltering quality? If I had to spitball, I’d say it has to do (and it usually does, when things like this happen) with the creators and showrunners. DiMartino and Konietzko wrote all twelve episodes of Season One by themselves; while I normally advocate for this kind of writing set up, to avoid a “too many cooks in the kitchen” lurch in quality and tone from episode to episode, they seem to have grown fatigued by the end of the Season One run, a supposition further supported by Konietzko’s lack of writing credits in S2 and DiMartino’s limited participation. For all of Korra’s interesting and complex ideas, and the fantastic, wide universe of Airbender to explore, these guys seem tired of their own show.

In the end, Korra is a rare exception to the general sequel rule. It isn’t devastatingly awful so far, but it doesn’t really live up to Airbender, much less expand on it successfully. It’s possible that, having flushed some unsteadiness from their pipes, DiMartino and Konietzko will find their feet with the in-development third season. Time will tell. At least Korra is better than the live-action Airbender movie (a cinematic abortion for which M. Night Shyamalan should be jailed). And if you’re an Airbender fan, like me, and Korra frustrates you by not capitalizing on its potential brilliance, revisit some of your favorite episodes and story arcs from the original series. After all: we’ll always have Aang.

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Mark Pursell (Episode 75) is a lifelong geek and lover of words. His publishing credits include Nimrod International Journal, The New Orleans Review, and The Florida Review, where he also served as poetry editor. His work can most recently be seen in the first volume of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology from Burrow Press. He currently teaches storytelling and narrative design for video games at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

Episode 77: The Monorail Line Pub Crawl!

21 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Disney, Drinking, Episode

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Tags

15 Views of Orlando, Bright Lights Big City, Celebration, cormac mccarthy, Diane Turgeon Richardson, Donald Duck, Florida, Jay McIrney, Maleficent, Mark Twain, Mary Blair, Mickey's Good Deed, Mickey's Nightmare, Microchips, Monorail, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Nathan Holic, Neal Gabler, P. L. Travers, Ryan Rivas, Saving Mr. Banks, Skumps, Sleeping Beauty, Ted Hughes, Teege Braune, The Contemporary Resort, The Grand Floridian, The Great Dark, The Magic of Walt Disney World, The Mickey Mouse Review, The Polynesian Resort, The Three Caballeros, Walt Disney, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Wholly Smokes

Episode 77 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, my friends Teege Braune of In Boozo Veritas fame, Ryan Rivas of Burrow Press fame, Nathan Holic of American Fraternity Man fame, and MFA candidate Dianne Turgeon Richardson join me along the monorail line for an epic-length pub crawl across the Magic King resorts at Walt Disney World.

Ryan Rivas, Diane Turgeon Richardson, moi, Nathan Holic, and Teege Braune on the Polynesian’s monorail station.

A stanchion at the Polynesian Resort, this tiki appears to be licking its torch.

BOOKS DISCUSSED

The Devil’s Race-Track: Mark Twain’s “Great Dark” Writings”> The Devils Race Track

MOVIES DISCUSSED

NOTES

The Heaven of Animals, the forthcoming collection from friend-of-the-show David James Poissant, is available for pre-order. Please support the launch of his book, which is wonderful reading.

Episode 77 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #20: Santa Claus, The Movie

20 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas movies, David Huddleston, Dudley Moore, Jeannot Szwarc, Jeffrey Shuster, John Lithgow, Santa Claus the Movie, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #20 by Jeffrey Shuster

Santa Claus, The Movie

If you hate this movie, you hate Christmas

I took one look at Santa Baby 2 starring Jenny McCarthy and put my foot down. Enough made-for-TV Santa Claus movies! Even the Museum of Schlock has standards! It was time to watch something with a little more scale. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Santa Claus, The Movie, from two of the the writers behind Superman, The Movie!

I must have missed this one growing up. Released in 1985 and directed by Jeannot Szwarc, Santa Claus The Movie strives to do for Santa Claus what Superman, The Movie did for Superman: create an epic out of something that was typically reserved for children. It largely succeeds. We get an impressive origin story where we learn that Santa Claus (David Huddleston) was a woodcutter from the 1300s who used to carve wooden toys for the children in his village every Yuletide. After getting lost in a snowstorm, he and his wife get rescued by a bunch of elves (known as the Vendequm). They see him as their chosen one. The elves believe in a prophesy about an artisan who would deliver toys to all of the children of the world. Claus and his wife agree to this destiny and he sets to the task of bringing comfort and joy to all of the good little boys and girls throughout the centuries. The End.

Oh wait. Fast-forward to modern times and Claus is getting a bit tired. Seems he can’t keep up with the workload like he used to. Apparently, there are too many children in the world he has to deliver presents to in the late 20^th century and he needs an assistant. An elf by the name of Patch (Dudley Moore) desperately wants the job and proves his worth by creating a mechanical assembly line up at the North Pole. Unfortunately, the machine malfunctions and creates a bunch of defective toys unbeknownst to Claus and his elves.

That Christmas Eve, Claus befriends a street urchin named Joe and a little rich girl named Cornelia. Joe and Cornelia are friends despite their class differences. This may have something to do with that fact that Cornelia leaves plates of food out for Joe since he’s always starving in the cold. Claus promises to take Joe along for the toy run next Christmas.

Christmas morning comes and Patch’s assembly line junk breaks apart ruining Christmas for all of the good little boys and girls in the world. Angry parents start sending back Patch’s defective toys to the North Pole and Patch resigns from his position in shame. Patch leaves the North Pole for New York City hoping to redeem himself by partnering up with a toy company tycoon named B.Z. (John Lithgow) who also happens to be Cornelia’s step uncle. B.Z. is in trouble with the Senate Subcommittee on Evil Toy Manufacturers. It would seem that his dolls are highly flammable and his teddy bears are stuffed with glass and nails. B.Z. decides to let Patch distribute his special lollipops through his company in an effort to improve the company’s image.

The lollipops are a big hit with children the following Christmas due to the fact that eating them allows kids to float in the air. You see, the lollipops are infused with magic elf dust, the same elf dust that allow the reindeer to fly. B.Z. declares that Santa Claus is finished and that he’ll be in charge of Christmas from now on. Joe overhears B.Z.’s evil plans and gets held prisoner by B.Z. as a result. Will B.Z. triumph? Will Joe be rescued? Will Patch redeem himself? Will Santa Claus save the day? You know the answers to these questions.

Ten Things I Learned from Santa Claus The Movie

Movies are more impressive when they have movie in the title.
Dudley Moore plays an awfully pleasant elf.
Santa Claus hates celery.
Being Santa Claus is a pretty good gig when all is said and done.
Consumers would actually return shoddy products back in the 80s.
John Lithgow can be really scary when he wants to be.
Reindeer are able to fly by eating magic food.
Santa Claus is able to teleport with a snap of his fingers.
Santa Claus’s beard is gray not white.
Santa Claus is a superhero in his own right.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

Heroes Never Rust #20: The Future

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The Fantastic Four

Heroes Never Rust #20 by Sean Ironman

The Future

I keep coming back in my attempt to define a superhero to it being a person with superpowers who saves people. That is the most basic answer I can find. But what does “saving people” mean? Save them from what? In what way? Most superheroes seem to see a bad guy doing something bad, harming people or robbing a place, so the superheroes step in and put a stop to it. The end. It’s pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys when a bad guy is riding a monster and smashing buildings in the middle of New York City. Where’s the line with protecting somebody? If a boulder is falling and you push a person out of the way, that’s good. If a robber fires a gun when rushing into a bank and you step in front of a someone so they don’t get hit, that’s good. Like I wrote about last week, there are actions that take away from a person’s choice and it becomes a gray area.

There are other ways that can save somebody though, outside of physically stopping some other force. A doctor may save my life by giving me suggestions on how to live in order to not have a heart attack. Whoever invented the seatbelt has saved lives. The D.A.R.E cop, from my elementary school, Officer Davis, may have saved lives. Really anybody who gives somebody else knowledge of any kind may save that person’s life. We live longer on average than people a thousand years ago because of the accumulation of knowledge in our society.

There are superheroes who are different from Spider-Man and Bat-Man. Those guys prowl for bad guys, street-level guys who are committing crimes in the moment, or possibly planning their next attack. But there are other types, like the Fantastic Four, who don’t seek out danger. The Fantastic Four don’t patrol at all really. They are more interested in gaining knowledge and exploring the possibilities of the universe, and beyond. But through their research, they will most likely end up saving more lives than all those street-level heroes put together.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the group in 1961, the beginning of the Marvel Universe as we know it. The roster has changed a few times throughout the past fifty years, but the classic team consists of the same four. Led by Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) is a scientist who can stretch his body into any shape. By the way, a scientist in comics means the person has a mastery knowledge of electrical engineering, chemistry, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, and any other thing the writers need the character to know. Susan Storm (Invisible Woman) was introduced as his girlfriend and later became his wife. She renders light waves allowing her and others to become invisible, as well as create fields for defensive and offensive purposes. Her younger brother, Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) can burst into flame and absorb fire. And the final member is a pilot and old college roommate of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm (The Thing), who looks like he’s made of orange rock and shouts, “It’s clobberin’ time!”

What people forget about most of the Marvel heroes of the 60s is that their creations were usually warning messages about what was going on in America at the time. In the 60s, we had the space race against the Russians. In 1961, the Russians put a man into orbit, the first human spaceflight in the history of Mankind, with Vostok I. The Americans didn’t put a man into orbit until the following year. Lee and Kirby had Reed Richards, supposedly one of the smartest people in the world, get caught up in trying to beat the Reds and he spent his private fortune on building a spaceship. He rushed the test of his rocketship, along with Sue, Johnny, and Ben (who Sue called a coward when he initially thought it was too dangerous). The ship’s shielding did not prove enough to stand against the cosmic rays, which is what Ben warned Reed about.

The ship crashed to Earth, and the four passengers were mutated due to their exposure to the cosmic rays. Ben receiving probably the worst of it, being hideously transformed into the Thing. The film version sidestepped the big issue with the Fantastic Four that they get their powers, not trying to cure diseases or do something good, but trying to get around the government and beat the Russians. The Fantastic Four is part morality tale and part cosmic adventure.

The four represent the American family—Reed Richards and Sue Storm as parents, and Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm as the children. Even once Reed and Sue started to have kids, they had a boy and a girl, Franklin and Valerie. The American family. They squabble. The Thing and the Human Torch play pranks on one another and argue like two brothers. Most of it has very little to do with the cosmic rays accident. They are the American household, and even with their accident, they move forward. They explore and invent and discover the future. When Earth doesn’t hold what they want, they go to other planets, go to the Negative Zone or other realities. Nothing can stand in their way when they work together. If you want to see ideas, just crazy shit happening with comic book science and weird worlds, read The Fantastic Four.

It’s a book about the future. Look at the Thing. He’s seen worlds we can only imagine, yet he’s been deformed by a mistake. He should have fought Reed harder, not get so upset by Sue when she called him a coward, perhaps he’d have never become the Thing. But he uses that and does what we will never do. It’s the American dream, isn’t it? To disregard what has happened to make a life for yourself, a life of possibilities? Isn’t that why the team are superheroes? Not because they stop the Mole Man or Dr. Doom, but that they’ve taken the hand they’ve been dealt and they do the impossible?

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