Third Person Existential » Skool

Three Movie Pitches

Mojo — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In the genre of alternate history, World War Two is a staple, and almost always involved the tired question: “What if the Nazis would have won?” The Empire of the Setting Sun takes an entirely different tack, asking: What if two beleaguered and honor bound former empires would have put aside their differences— and won?”

This film would take place in a world where Britain and Japan, sensing their waning global power, regardless of which side won, join up with one another, and betray their former allies, catching both sides completely off guard at key moments, and emerge from World War Two victorious.

The Empire of the Setting Sun doesn’t concentrate directly on the actual events of World War Two, but like many alternate history films and novels, on their eventual repercussions. The film takes place in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and is about a young man coming of age in a post-war world, where Britain and Japan have divided the globe into hemispheres of influence. Britain rules over Europe, Africa, and much of North America, including its former colonies in Canada, the Eastern United States, and the Caribbean. Japan’s empire contains all of Asia, most of Russia, and the rest of the Pacific rim, including the West coast of the former United States. There in what was once middle America, the two great empires butt heads, and subtle conflicts abound throughout the Midwest. The audience learns through the main character that although these polite empires depend upon honor and observe tea time above all else, beneath soft white gloves, lies an iron fist!

Science fiction is often thought to mean rocket ships and space aliens, but what it is truly about is how humanity reacts to change and discovery. The best science fiction involves simpler, more realistic technologies, that leave more room for humanity in the stories. One holy grail of both science and science fiction has been more efficient transportation, from faster-than-light space travel, to outright teleportation; high tech traveling is often at the crux of sci-fi.

The Occident Express uses a much more down to Earth form of transportation. In the not-so-distant future, a generation that has been raised on the Net their whole lives grows to expect their physical world to keep pace with their virtual worlds. This leads to a giant network of vacuum tubes criss-crossing the United States between major cities. Inside these vacuum tubes are bullet trains, hauling freight across the country while levitating on magnetic rails. Without friction, or human cargoes to risk, these robotic trains zip parcels around as quick as data could be moved two generations ago.

The film takes place on the maiden voyage of the first passenger tube train, traveling at supersonic speeds from New York to Los Angeles, in just three hours. Some nefarious act has taken place upon the train, and the passengers must solve the mystery, before the train reaches its destination.

In this modern world, sovereignty is often seen as the provenance of great nations. In earlier times, any tribe, village, or city could declare itself sovereign; remaining independent through luck, diplomacy, or force of arms. The Little Coup tells the story of a modern tribe that declares its independence.

The Northwest Angle, separated from the rest of Minnesota by the Lake of the Woods, and only accessible through Canada, have tired of this inconvenience and disconnection. After a heated election, a referendum to leave the United States and join Canada has passed. However, Canada is reluctant to directly take territory from the US, so the citizens of the Angle must formally succeed from the United States before they can be accepted into Canada.

A small Indian reservation located on the Northwest Angle, again mistreated and ignored, sees this as their chance to take back one small piece of their territory. With the aid of members from other nearby Native American tribes and First Nations, they wage a coup on the fledgling nation of the Angle, after succession, and before their entrance into Canada.

The tribe now occupies a sovereign micro-nation wedged between the United States and Canada, with both sides hesitant to press the other’s interest. Meanwhile, The Little Coup, explores this newly independent tribe’s bid for recognition internationally by the United Nations.

This is more recycled content from school, but it was interesting to actually write out some ideas that I have had kicking around in my head. Maybe it will make room for new, better ideas…

Peak Oil

Mojo — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Our modern lives are greatly dependent on petroleum; as President George W. Bush phrased it in his 2006 State of the Union Address, “America is addicted to oil.” Nowhere is his cliché more applicable than in agriculture. Starting in the the 1940s, the Green Revolution introduced hybrid cereal crops to farming. Known as high yielding varieties, these plants are only part of the transformation from agriculture to agribusiness. To produce these higher yields the crops need more energy, yet the sun shines no brighter and the soil’s wealth only diminishes. Hydrocarbon fertilizers provide this energy.

“Food is oil,” insists Richard Manning in Harper’s Magazine, “every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten.” Industrial agriculture also relies on vast amounts of petroleum for pesticides, irrigation, farming equipment, transportation, and food processing. Depending on fossil fuels for our food supply means that the United States is trusting petroleum exporting countries to keep us fed.

The idea that oil will someday run out is as old as the first oil well, but Peak Oil is a much younger concept. Peak Oil’sconcern is running out of cheap oil as demand continues to rise while the supply steadily drops. As a proper noun, it refers to the point at which the Earth reaches its maximum oil production capacity. This world event is both the definition and focus of Peak Oil, but oil can peak on a lesser scale as well. An oil well’s production typically follows a bell curve, slowly building in capacity until it reaches peak production and then tapers off.

M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist with Shell Oil in the 1940s and ’50s, studied fossil fuel prospecting and production. Through his research he found that individual oil field discoveries, when combined together as a reserve, also formed a bell curve. The discovery curve of those oil reserves mimicked the eventual production curve of the oil fields. Hubbert soon applied his curve theory to fossil fuel reserve data from all around the world. In 1956 he compiled his findings in a paper titled: Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Hubbert predicted in his paper that oil production in the United States would “culminate at about 1965 and then must decline at a rate comparable to its earlier rate of growth”.

Ultimate United States crude oil production.

Hubbert’s research was soon validated. The Energy Information Administration(EIA) lists the U.S. daily production rate at nearly 7 million barrels in 1956. By 1970, U.S. oil production had peaked at over 9 million barrels per day. From there U.S. production began its slow descent down the opposite slope.

The Yom Kippur War raged as a post-peak United States saw its first spike in oil imports. To dissuade the U.S. and its allies from supporting Israel, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries(OAPEC) began an oil embargo. So began the 1973 oil crisis. The oil embargo would last only six months, but its effects would be far reaching.

Oil prices doubled—twice. Long lines formed at the pump and gasoline was rationed. Speed limits were lowered and thermostats turned down. On Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange took a serious hit. The U.S. was beset: inflation, unemployment, and recession. But the other shoe would not drop until 1979; the Iranian Revolution would spark a second oil crisis.

Americans would soon forget these crises as the 1980s began and Reaganomics took hold. Europeans reacted differently to the 1970s oil shocks, investing in alternative energies, primarily nuclear and wind power. They also reduced their fossil fuel needs through increased sustainable agriculture. Huge investments were made in mass transit and Europe’s towns have largely remained focused on the pedestrian. This all adds up to a more self-reliant economy that may better insulate itself from fluctuating energy prices on the world market. Are Americans equally prepared to weather such storms?

Human beings—globally—consume 84 million barrels of oil on a daily basis according to the EIA. Here in the United States we account for 21 million barrels, one fourth of total world oil consumption, yet we only produce 5 million barrels domestically. This leaves the U.S. as a net importer in a global market that has an ever tightening margin between supply and demand.

Ultimate World crude oil production.

Hubbert’s paper also prognosticated Peak Oil “at about the year 2000”. His world estimate has proved to be less accurate than his U.S. estimate. Undoubtedly the ’70s oil crises played a significant role in this, slowing oil production growth, thereby stalling the world peak. His global data was also less reliable. In 1956 the U.S. had been more thoroughly prospected than other regions of the world. Hubbert’s failure to more accurately predict Peak Oil has left a power vacuum with scientists, con-artists, activists, and politicians all vying to fill his shoes.

Many Peak Oil proponents are ignored by the mainstream media as little more than cranks akin to wild-eyed men wearing sandwich boards proclaiming that “THE END IS NIGH”. And not without reason. Peak Oil’s ranks are filled with Luddites, conspiracy theorists, and survivalists. These doomsayers predict a litany of cataclysmic events: depression, famine, war, and die-off. Author Jim Kunstler, himself an ex-Y2K nut, refers to life after Peak Oil as the “Long Emergency” for which “Americans are woefully unprepared”.

Credible voices are starting to emerging though; voices that cannot be so easily derided. “There’s a good chance that these people who made a living all these years studying petroleum deposits know what they’re talking about,” Bill Clinton acknowledged on MPR, “and we may not have as much oil as we think.” At a World Environment Day speech, Al Gore asserted that “we almost certainly have reached so-called Peak Oil.” Yet this is a non-partisan problem whose strong political supporters extend beyond the left.

Although he suggests in Harper’s Magazine that Peak Oil is “a liberal apocalypse,” Bryant Urstadt admits that ”true right-winger,” Congressman Roscoe Bartlett is Peak Oil’s staunchest political ally. On May 2nd, 2006, Representative Bartlett spoke before Congress:

I think [a program] needs three qualities if we are going to make this transition in any acceptable way. First, we must have everybody involved, a total commitment like World War II….It needs to have the technology focus of putting a man on the moon, because we are going to have to have a lot of technology breakthroughs and applications here if we are going to make it. Thirdly, it needs to have the intensity of the Manhattan Project….We should have begun 26 years ago.

The Congressman believes that a serious level of effort will be needed to overcome the problems that will arise out of Peak Oil. The United States, as a post-peak nation, will have an even greater difficulty meeting this new global challenge.

Bartlett’s opinion is echoed by the U.S. Department of Energy. In February of 2005 the DOE released a report titled: Peaking of World Oil Production. The report suggests that “problems associated with…peaking will not be temporary, and…oil peaking deserves immediate, serious attention, if risks are to be fully understood and mitigation begun on a timely basis”. The Department of Energy cautions that “without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented”. Three mitigation scenarios were considered in the report. In the first scenario mitigation starts at peak and causes a global energy shortfall for over two decades. Starting a decade prior for the second scenario halves that shortfall to a decade. Scenario number three starts mitigation two decades before Peak Oil and “appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall”. So there may be a workable solution to these problems, but it will require substantial effort well in advance of Peak Oil.

Time is the true adversary. Only sometime after global oil production has peaked will it become apparent. By then it will be too late for action. Europe started nearly thirty years ago, Representative Bartlett thinks the U.S. should have started over twenty years ago, and the DOE advises that the U.S. prepare twenty years in advance. But do we even have twenty years left? “A number of competent forecasters project peaking within a decade,” the DOE report states, “others contend it will occur later”. This projection is most unsettling.

Is Peak Oil a serious problem, and if so, whose? Placing the peak at 2000 makes it something our parents should have dealt with, if that peak falls closer to 2050, it becomes the responsibility of our children. But if that peak is coming in the 2010s and ’20s—it’s our job. Doomsayers and Pollyannas aside, it isn’t unreasonable to expect a petroleum shortage to negatively effect the economy. Peak Oil, at the very least, could spur a global recession on par with the Great Depression.

And from this revelation comes the stark reality that all these other problems shrink to insignificance when faced with the prospect of starvation. “The age of the three thousand mile Caesar salad,” Jim Kunstler emphasizes, “will soon be over.” Can we refuel the Green Revolution, or will the Information Age expire as well?

Baddest Motherfucker in the World

Mojo — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Neal Stephenson, in his seminal cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, observed that, “Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

Is this attitude propagated by action figures such as G.I. Joes? Coined in 1964, the term action figure was first used by Hasbro as a euphemism to make dolls more acceptable to boys. From the very beginning G.I. Joes mirrored the most popular girls’ dolls of the era—Barbies.Constructed of stiff, hollow plastic and about a foot tall, the only difference between the two was the greater articulation of the G.I. Joe. Did this reflect the supposedly greater capabilities of males? Or just illustrate the economics of big hair versus ball joints in toy manufacturing?

Like their female counterparts, only one G.I. Joe was needed. Different personas and functions were achieved with a wardrobe change. And outfits weren’t the only similarity; G.I. Joes also came with plenty of accessories. But those didn’t include little shopping bags, condominiums, or any other trappings of consumerism. Not a chance. G.I. Joes came with the accouterments of death and destruction: combat knives, pistols, machine guns, grenades, bazookas, and flamethrowers.

The G.I. Joes of my youth bore little resemblance to those first action figures. Influenced by Japanese toys from the 1970’s, my G.I. Joes were shrunken down to less than four inches, and built from solid plastic with the clothing molded right in. No longer could you change their outfits, instead each was highly specialized. You were expected to collect a variety of G.I. Joes for different tasks: ninjas, scuba divers, pilots, and sailors to name just a few. Were these miniature action figures still dolls? Their reduced stature and greater variety are more akin to those classic little green toy soldiers, army men.

Advertising for G.I. Joes, ostensibly referred to as cartoons, was careful to separate conflict from injury. Try as they may, no bad guy was ever permitted to kill or seriously injure a G. I. Joe. There were no bullets in the realm of Hasbro, only innocuous laser beams. I never saw a character shoot at another; an intermediate device was always used to attack the enemy. Most commonly a G.I. Joe would use his gun to blast at a cliff, and the opponent would be buried in the ensuing landslide. This obfuscation of cause and effect between violence and death is what separates G.I. Joes from traditional toy soldiers. Cheap, green army men are imminently expendable; kids quickly learn that war is dangerous. Rarely did the heroic G.I. Joes fall prey to the magnifying glass or firecracker. This confusion instills kids with a false sense of immortality.

More recycled content; this was an essay for College Composition. Think it got a B—not bad considering the F-bomb I dropped in the first paragraph…

BRAAAAINS?

Mojo — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Are scary movies just gory splatter films filled with gratuitous sex and violence? Of film’s many genres, only pornography is generally held in lower regard than horror films. Other genres that have their roots in ‘50s B-movies and ‘60s exploitation cinema, such as science fiction and fantasy, enjoy much greater success and esteem. The Wizard of Oz and Flash Gordon bring back fond childhood memories, while Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have found modern mainstream success. Only so-called thrillers like M. Night Shyamalan’s films and the many Japanese remakes of recent years usually have similar financial support from Hollywood.

Even within the genre of horror there is a pecking rank. Elegant and erotic, vampires have the charisma to attract Francis Ford Coppola, Neil Jordan, and other quality directors. Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito have both been drawn to the primal energy of playing a werewolf. Buried at the bottom of this heap lies the zombie.

Slow and ponderous, a zombie does not easily invite fear or admiration. Only as a faceless mob do these undead assailants pose a threat; this anonymity, and distorted humanity, is what makes zombie movies so imposing and effective. Zombies transcend other archetypal monsters because they are representative of a true threat—ourselves. At their best, zombie films do not celebrate violence, they merely reflect reality.

Just as his literary counterpart Stephen King will never be honored with a Pulitzer Prize, filmmaker George A. Romero is not likely to garner an Oscar for his mantle. But with his first film in 1968, Night of the Living Dead, he left an indelible mark on cinema. Independently produced on a modest budget of $114,000 according to Internet Movie Database, this film is often cited as the progenitor of the modern zombie movie. Romero never actually used the word zombie in Night of the Living Dead; instead the reanimated corpses are referred to as ghouls. Shot in black and white, the film’s grainy texture and high contrast gave it a sense of intense candor.

Shortly after Night of the Living Dead’s theatrical release, Variety dubbed it “pornography of violence” and questioned the “moral health of filmgoers who cheerfully opt for this unrelieved orgy of sadism.” Knee jerk reactions of this type fail to recognize that the film was not made in a vacuum, but had to be a product of its time. Elliott Stein, writing for The Village Voice, astutely observed that “the zombie carnage seemed a grotesque echo of the conflict then raging in Vietnam.”

Closer to home, Night of the Living Dead resonates the darker moments of the civil rights movement. Most of the film takes place in an isolated old farmhouse, which becomes a haven for a middle aged couple with a young daughter, a teenaged couple, and a lone woman; all white suburbanites. They are soon joined by Ben, the hero, who is—in Romero’s most subversive action—a black man. Feminists have, justifiably, been critical the film’s weak and helpless female characters; this critique could also be directed at most of the male characters as well. These characters behave this way not to denigrate women, but to illustrate the breakup of the nuclear family. Radio and television broadcasts are used to insinuate the collapse of American society outside of the house.

Romero saves his most depressing parallel of the 1960s for last. Ben, sole survivor of the Night of the Living Dead, is shot by the authorities; another black man dead.

George A. Romero’s original film spawned a veritable horde of zombie movies: spin-offs, rip-offs, re-makes, parodies, and homages. Romero himself made three sequels. The first, Dawn of the Dead, also featured a strong black man as the hero, and this time, stronger women as well. This 1978 film had the characters take refuge from the undead in a shopping mall, and delivered a timely diatribe against consumerism. Shot in color this time, Dawn of the Dead gained a disturbingly visceral edge from its expanded palette. Romero’s sequel “pummels the viewer with a series of ever-more-grisly events,” according to Variety.

His latest sequel in 2005, Land of the Dead, took place in an urban environment retrofitted to mimic feudal defenses and hierarchy. The wealthy elite had retreated to their ivory tower, a luxury high-rise, where they ruled over the masses, huddled in barricaded slums below. In Land of the Dead, Romero provides a sound social commentary on gentrification and the increasing class stratification in America. “Romero,” Peter Hartlaub writes in the San Francisco Chronicle, “lets the walking dead illustrate post-Sept. 11 paranoia.”

A big budget Hollywood re-make of Dawn of the Dead was released in 2004. This film was, in the words of Roger Ebert, “instructive in the ways that Hollywood has grown more skillful and less daring over the years.” Dawn of the Dead is a beautiful film. The wholesale mayhem is gloriously cathartic, the movie exudes style, but without Romero’s direction, it has a serious deficiency of substance. Removing the satirical aspect of zombie films to dumb them down makes their violence utterly senseless.

Just as the zombies in this Dutch cartoon hunt for brains, good zombie movies seek out an intelligent audience. These films act as a sort of feature length political cartoon, offering social commentary and macabre humor. Humanity has achieved such a thorough worldwide domination that our fears—genocide, nuclear war, or a pandemic—are now manmade.

The walking dead themselves pose little danger in many of these films, provided that the survivors stick together. Many of the characters in zombie flicks meet their grisly end not at the hands of the dead, but the living. It is the zombies though, that allow us to dispense with social niceties and explore our true potential for greatness and depravity. Zombies allow us to literally get under our skin and pick our brains.

I recycled some of my hours wasted on schoolwork into some content for 3PE. This was my final paper for my College Composition class. I managed to pull a 93% even though my instructor was kind of a Jesus freak. I thought some of you might dig it…