Sonic the Hedgehog and Led Zeppelin

Listen to Led Zeppelin's "Achilles Last Stand." Now, the song stands on its own merits as an example of Zeppelin's formidable awesome-ness just shining through its latter-day bloat. But when I listen to the song--particularly the bridge, when the drums kick in, from 4:09 to 5:15--I can't help but hear the familiar, soothing rhythms of Sonic the Hedgehog. 

I'd draw particular attention to Sonic 3's final boss fight and Sonic & Knuckles' Sandopolis Zone Act 1 (which is also kind of reminiscent of "Kashmir"). And the aforementioned drums make it very clear to me that Dr. Robotnik is approaching.

My grasp on music theory has never been very strong--and it was once stronger than it is now--so I'd like to get a more learned opinion on this, if I could. But I detect some distinct similarities. The mile-a-minute percussive beats and the quick, leaping bass lines; these create the sensation of speed. The melodramatic thumping undercut by zippier guitar overdubs; these invoke fun, but momentarily important fun. And, yes, the repetitiveness; evocative of tunes composed for levels that could be completed in a minute or two, but which gave the player a max of ten. Speed, fun, repetitiveness. Any child of the early nineties should immediately think of the same blue spiny mammal.

Anyway. Something to think about.

A Talking Point I'm Not Seeing

"Congressional Republicans care more about putting the president out of a job than they do about putting Americans in one." 

I'll take cash or check, DNC.

When The Walking Dead Shows Promise

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

The problem with The Walking Dead has always been one of expectations. The show as a whole was probably never going to live up to that amazing pilot that set the bar so high, but neither was it totally unfair of us to expect that it would. The conceit of the show promises one of two things, either of which could make for great television:

1. A sustained psycho-drama focusing on the slow deterioration--and possible resuscitation--of the human spirit in the face of crushing apocalypse.
2. Straight-up zombie-killin'.

Sadly, TWD never really succeeds at either of these. Not consistently, anyway. The show occasionally finds time for really creative zombie kills (such as last season's "Triggerfinger," when the walker came for Lori, while she was trapped in an upside-down car). However, those comprise about ninety seconds out of fifty-two minutes. The rest of the run-time is often devoted to Rick's vacillations about what the group should do next. That in itself could be worthwhile if it didn't stretch for ten episodes. And if the creators had better staged the Rick vs. Shane, good vs. evil struggle for the group's soul. But they never could and the group went nowhere. And then Shane was dead.

Meanwhile, characters bicker back and forth and engage in aimless relationship squabbles--yes, relationship squabbles, because no one on this show has a sense of perspective. And that's how, like any other soap opera, all the characters become unlikable no matter how much you really want to like them. Well, not "all the characters;" the show could improve immeasurably if they kill off every character whose name doesn't rhyme with "barrel." 

And this disappointment is made worse because it's borne out of frustration. Because every so often, TWD demonstrates what it's capable of.

The first season--limping some after the pilot--ended with the destruction of the CDC and a group of survivors on the road, with no safe haven. That could make for some great drama in the second season, with these people moving into new, hostile territory every week and learning about the post-zombie apocalypse world. Then the whole group is consigned to The Farm. Promising new arcs were teased there, only for most of them to fizzle out, if they got that far. Lori is pregnant and Shane is dead. You're caught up.

Then, the climax of "Pretty Much Dead Already" capped off a half-season-long arc about Sophia's whereabouts in an earth-shattering way. It was stunning. And heartbreaking. Yeah, the slow-burn reveal came about two episodes later than would've been ideal, but we could let that slide. After all, this meant they finally got to leave The Farm. It meant several characters confronting new realities and new roles within the group. It meant that the writers were finally done biding their time. And then... they stayed on The Farm. And nothing changed except that instead of talking about "finding Sophia," they were talking about "remember how Sophia used to be alive?" It was remarkable how fast the show fell back into a rut.

Then there was that season's finale, which opened with a literal barnstorming: a big, lengthy group kill-in of invading walkers. It was exciting and satisfying in every way that this series had missed out on being since the pilot. Now they had to leave The Farm. And now the group was split up, promising new drama. But, just moments after Rick is breaking down over the fact that his wife is missing and his group has splintered, most of the group rolls into view, hugs are exchanged, and nothing more is said. Andrea is missing, I guess, but she runs into Michonne, who--even for those (like myself) who haven't read the comics--already looks crazy badass. Meanwhile, back at the group, people are getting hyper-pissy about Rick keeping secret the thing about everyone being infected. Which, yeah, dick move. But, really, what were you going to do with that information except moan? You know, like you're doing right now. Just twenty minutes previously, we were wallowing in zombie-rific action and now we're mired in the same old go-nowhere muck, with a slight hint at an exciting new direction. Like the direction we've been promised before and have yet to see the fruits of.

And yet we tune in. Because we know the tools are there. We know the material exists in abundance because we've seen them tease some truly great stories and we can't help but think about the possibilities. As Cracked's Dan O'Brien has written:

The Walking Dead is successful because people are tuning in but watching a different, better show in their imaginations, every single week.

Which leads us to last night's season three premiere. The Farm is a (bad) memory. The group is on the move and Rick is finally looking assertive and decisive; nothing like killing your former best friend/cuckold/would-be murderer to get the blood flowing. The introduction to the prison has pitfalls of its own, but it might be worthwhile for the introduction of a new crew of survivors, assuming they don't squander that opportunity, as they did in "Nebraska" last season. The Governor may force some interesting character choices.  And T-Dog got more than half a line. There are a lot of places to go from here, most of them good. Things might finally be looking up for The Walking Dead.

But I think I've said that before.

The Teddy Curse Begins

I take no pride in having pointed this out. I was cheering for the Nats, I really was. I might've enjoyed seeing the Cardinals get denied, anyway, but for Washington to do so would make it extra sweet. I know how horrible it is to lose this way. But by giving into the mob and allowing Teddy to win on the final day of the season (and then each home game of the NLDS, taunting the gods that much more), the Nats opened the door for this possibility.

Most laugh at the idea of a curse until it hits them square on this chin, repeatedly, for decades; evidence needs to build. The trouble is, once evidence builds, the curse is self-sustaining. As soon as it's big enough for no one to laugh at, the damage is already done, the weight too much to bear.

So go ahead: search for some other superstitions. Sacrifice chickens from now until Spring Training. That's already one step closer to admitting that curses are possible. But before next season, before the losses begin to mount and the curse becomes the defining feature of the franchise,consider this: what else do you call giving up four runs in the ninth--one run for each Teddy win--in an elimination game at home?

British vs. American Dystopia

The other day, a friend asked me about British writers and their fascination with dystopia. She referenced a scene in the television show Sherlock, which included an observation on CCTV cameras. That thought having been sparked (one might blame the framing of the question), a slew of synapses started firing, recalling works from Brave New World to Nineteen Eighty-Four to Lord of the Flies to A Clockwork Orange to V For Vendetta. These British works seem to come at a rate disproportionately greater than the dystopian output from American literature. Why?

The simple answer is that the Brits have more personal experience with dystopian hellscapes. The aforementioned surveillance cameras, the long history of British intelligence networks. There's the still barely-fresh memory of the dismantling of the Empire; all of that power--minus all but the ceremonial glory--turning inward, now bitter for what once was.

Then there's the way that British government seems to act so smoothly on matters of national security as to make our own post-9/11 measures seem like a Keystone Cops production. Americans will hyperventilate for a bit about the newest piece of Homeland Security meddling until the energy escapes our systems and we find another shiny object to focus on (seriously, though, when was the last time you heard anyone wring their hands about the full body scanners?). But the Brits, with that Keep Calm, Carry On ethos, prefer to stew in grim fascination with the creeping menace.

Maybe there's a vestigial American libertarianism at work: we understand government to be a blundering, inefficient thing. It might be a cumbersome, better-door-than-a-window type obstruction for many of us, but we're not exactly worried about a well-oiled Big Brother, are we? Only a misguided, paranoia-mongering ideologue could believe in an incompetent government that is also somehow all-powerful. But in Britain--where "socialism" is not so scary a word--they have a different relationship with government and, if asked to think about it, might nod their heads and say "yeah, I could see that happening" before shuffling on with their lives. This is the psychological aspect of it; the bit that, it seems to me, is the most decisive between American and British attitudes toward dystopia. 

See, the Brits have a greater comfort with grim subject matter and a more natural skill for dark, observational humor. Not that there aren't plenty of American artists who excel in these fields, but the subjects tend to play better with British general audiences than they do with American ones, so you get more of it over there (see Bill Hicks' success in Britain). British culture was incubated over thousands of years on a relatively small island, where there are few places to hide from the near-constant rain. The only attitude that survives something like that is: "well, what can you do?" The Brits, then have less qualms with fatalism, a concept that is anathema to most Americans. Indeed, the philosophy of fatalism--the lack of individual agency--almost rebuts the American Dream. The attempt by American culture to embrace a British-view of the dystopic has two potential outcomes:

1. (Not so likely, in my opinion) The rejection of some near-sacred American values, precipitating the collapse of moral, civic, and economic society. One must clap to keep Tinker Bell alive.
2. (Much more likely) We just won't buy it. A co-worker has commented to me that she could never enjoy dystopian works because she cannot fathom that a society would be allowed to degrade that far, that efficiently. Such a force would naturally be fought against, or crumble under its own weight, or any number of other factors that would keep a Big Brother from being so imposing.

As a dystopic tale gets moving, the Brits roll with the punches and more readily accept the premise. Americans must wonder "how was this allowed to happen?" And American stories often like to provide the answers (think on the V For Vendetta film adaptation, with its more explicit telling of the rise of neo-conservatism fascism, something Alan Moore preferred to leave to implication). I attempted similar explanations in Nos Populus, before I realized that the exposition was getting out of hand. Americans want the background, but that background takes up precious time that can better used on the story itself, a problem even the specifics-demanding reader will concede. We prefer a dystopia that shows us something more familiar.

You've probably seen this comic, outlining the differences between Orwell's fears as he explained them in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's fears, as laid out in Brave New World. They're arguments I've covered before. And I must agree, however strong my love of Orwell, that BNW is the superior dystopia. One of BNW's most intriguing conceits is the character of John the Savage, an outsider who can observe all the shallow and materialistic horror of the World State that the reader might. A British writer, authoring a classic of the genre, depicting a surviving mode of thought that rejects all the assumptions of a terrible future. It's almost enough to upend this theory of mine, if not for the fact that things don't end well for John; death is preferable to the loss of freedom and dignity--at least there's some agency in that. And interestingly, Huxley spent the last 25 years of his life living in California, attempting to attain U.S. citizenship. I'm speculating, but it seems likely that Huxley felt more at home among a less fatalistic bunch.

One can point to other exceptions. Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here (which was no small influence on a teenaged-me; Lewis is still one of my favorites) is a lesser-revered work among the dystopias, largely for the aforementioned problems of exposition. Lewis does his due diligence in transforming his contemporary American polity from the New Deal to the total takeover of the Huey Long-esque Buzz Windrip. No far-flung, sci-fi speculation in this one. As with much of Lewis' work, ICHH gets most of its mileage out of broad caricatures of middle-American nastiness, a farcical formula that works for a while, but quickly starts to hit too close to home, begging on the last nerve of the reader. And while ICHH is a thorough and convincing narrative of demagoguery, one has to want to believe in the possibilities, as I did in those nauseating Patriot Act days. It should be no surprise that the book experienced a significant revival during the Bush II Administration.

The Handmaid's Tale nearly fits, too. However, 1), Margaret Atwood is Canadian and, culturally speaking, Canada has nearly as much in common with the U.K. as it does with the U.S. And 2), Handmaid is mostly notable for its feminist take on the dystopic, an angle that at times seems more relevant than what most of the rest of the genre has to offer (the stream-of-consciousness crutch notwithstanding).

The Hunger Games seems to fit the bill. But how much of it's monstrous success is owed to the fact that Katniss Everdeen is exactly what Americans want to see in that situation, or imagine themselves being: an able and eventually-willing freedom fighter. A little bit of pathos goes a long way. Though, as I've explained before, I still have not read the third book, so I'm ready to take another hit to my theory should the book end poorly enough.

I may have to concede the point on Fahrenheit 451, pending a re-reading. However, it's not like we can't accuse Bradbury of just being a crotchety old man. 

As for my own work (just for comparison; my work has not earned mention alongside these others), Nos Populus started out as a dystopia of sorts--the idea first sprouted after reading It Can't Happen Here. But those elements were ratcheted back over the drafts, as I focused more on the building of a potential dystopian society and the struggle against that construction. Some of this was because of the verisimilitude I had striven to set up; Nos Populus takes place in something of a separate time-line from our real world, but the line only split a few years ago and it remains recognizable to us. I hope. There was only so much--logically and narratively-speaking--that I could allow President Ward to do while suspending the reader's disbelief. And I had included a fair amount of exposition as it was. So we get a despot who's only a fraction as powerful as he was originally conceived, but perhaps all the more terrifying because of it--we recognize Ward.

And perhaps some of it was also my American brain getting in the way, never allowing me to slip too far into bleak paranoia and cynicism. To recognize, at the very least, that I needed readers not to throw down the book in disgust. When my friends/editors commented that the book was rather bleak, I took it as a badge of honor (no pandering crowd-pleaser, me). And yet I still found myself fixing that where I could, attempting to balance plausibility with palatability.

And it's the plausible and the palatable that mark the difference. The Brits have a different sense of the plausible when it comes to government overreach (if that phrase means anything within the dystopic realm). So, too, their stronger palate for grim fatalism, which allows for a less diluted--or alternately less labored--realization of the dystopian state. With these elements working together, their dystopic myths can stretch and grow in ways that American literature won't equal. Not that we're interested in trying to.