Henry Rollins on Globalization for Vanity Fair

In today's "Straight Talk Espresso" for Vanity Fair, Henry Rollins writes a snark filled indictment of the banality of Globalization masked as travelogue. In today's post, Rollins shares in typical "Rollins-rantese" an experience he recently had in Jakarta. The center piece of the post is his sighting, and subsequent photographing, of an elderly female vendor on the streets of Jakarta who happened to be wearing a Black Flag t-shirt. It happens that she has no idea who Henry Rollins is or what Black Flag was, and Rollins uses this as an opportunity to contrast the ubiquity of American iconography with the lack of any real cultural understanding.

Rollins lets the facts stand as they are and presents the global encounter with American pop-culture as so much absurdist flotsam and jetsam -- pop culture as pollution.

The irony that Rollins mentions, but seems to fail to grasp himself, is that the young couple with whom he shares the absurdity of the moment are themselves the perfect example of more meaningful globalization. The couple both recognizes Rollins and is able to communicate the humorous situation to the older woman, a fact that speaks more genuinely to a flattening of the world.

What Rollins presents as an "ironic" encounter that supposedly demonstrates the lie of the emergence of a genuine global culture -- influenced by American culture -- instead becomes only slightly more incongruous than some American Gen-Xer's grandmother wearing a Black Flag t-shirt while grocery shopping. In both cases, a younger individual would likely be necessary to explain the history of the seminal punk band's history to the woman.

While Rollins may be missing some of the point of pro-globalization arguments, he is certainly right in reminding us that American culture is not world culture. Even when you think about our most monolithic pop-culture globalization industries, film and television, one can see that other cultures have influence American film making as much as we have that of other cultures. American film wouldn't be what it is today without the French New Wave, the Hong Kong Wave of the 80s and 90s, or the increasing influence of Bollywood. American television is filled with content influenced by the television of other nations, Britain in particular.

But the globalization of culture is only possible, and meaningful, when it comes with global experience. Americans spend to much time navel gazing and not enough time looking out at the world. Rollins is right when he hints at that necessity.

More genuinely ironic is that Henry Rollins is writing posts for a magazine that once featured articles by T.S. Eliot, P. G. Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley, and Thomas Wolfe.

An icon of my rebellious youth, okay the rebellious youth of some of my best friends, now writes for Vanity Fair. What is up with that?

[For full disclosure, I am a big fan of Rollins. He doesn't just talk the talk about the things he believes in, he acts on them as well. That deserves respect, that and the fact that he can rip my head off with one hand tied behind his back.]

Titan Books to Release The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds

In 1975, Warner Books released two wonderful, but tragically overlooked, volumes of Sherlock Holmes inspired speculative fiction. The first was Avram Davidson's The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, a distinctive character of charm and grace who is an original creation for all that Davidson was inspired by Doyle's Consulting Detective.

The second book is a collection of tales by Manly Wade Wellman featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Professor Challenger as they deal with the Martian invasion previously chronicled by H.G. Wells entitled Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds.



This "fix up" novel collects six short stories and combines them into a novel length adventure. The first of the stories, "The Adventure of the Martian Client" was originally published in the December 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The other stories in the volume either appeared in later issues or were written specifically for the Warner volume.



"The Adventure of the Martian Client" begins brilliantly with Watson informing us of how tragic it is that society has chosen to follow H.G. Wells' account of the Martian invasion while totally neglecting the contributions of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. As Watson puts it, "H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds is a frequently inaccurate chronicle by a known radical and athiest, a companion of Frank Harris, George Bernard Shaw, and worse. He exaggerates needlessly and pretends to expert scientific knowledge which he does not possess. Yet scientists and laymen applaud him, while scorning the brilliant deductions of Sherlock Holmes and Professor George Edward Challenger."

I initially found Watson's tone to be a little stronger than I am accustomed to reading, but quickly caught on to what Manly Wade Wellman -- and his son Wade Wellman -- were up to with the story. It is really quite brilliant. The Wellman's are using the lens of Holmes pastiche through which they are applying the modern scientific understanding of Mars over the representations of the Martians and their technology in the Wells novel. By doing so, they eventually add a greater possibility to further stories of Man vs. Martian than would have been allowed under the Wells model. The Wellman team do a good job of presenting the strengths of both Holmes and Professor Challenger, and of conveying the tension of the Wells story while still following the Holmes model of "a client arrives."

In the post script to "The Adventure of the Martian Client" published in the December 1969 issue, the younger Wellman sites a viewing of A STUDY IN TERROR as the inspiration for writing a Holmes meets the Martians tale. In A STUDY IN TERROR Holmes applies his detective skills against Jack the Ripper. The younger Wellman also expresses a certain amount of disdain for the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS film. His primary complaint was that it was unnecessary to update the classic story to place it in contemporary circumstances and by doing so the movie makers overlooked the point of the story. I disagree that the 1953 film is weak, but agree that "updating" the story changed the underlying philosophical discussion. Wells' underlying message was one of the possibility that mankind might meet a being who thinks of us the same way we think of farm animals. The filmmakers of the 1953 story were grappling with the destructive power of nuclear weapons and had an opportunity to demonstrate their "ineffectiveness." I would argue that the most recent Spielberg version, which also updates the tale, keeps Wells' original philosophic statement, but is a worse translation of the story even so.




The stories in the Wellman Holmes vs. Mars cycle are entertaining and we can be thankful that Titan Books is releasing a new edition of this collection of the stories on the 17th, timed to feed off of the upcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr. Hopefully a large number of people will read this collection of stories and discover the joy that is Manly Wade Wellman. He was one of the great voices in Fantasy fiction, a voice that wandered roads not typically encountered by the modern Fantasy reader.

Time Travel Clichés: Funny or Dull?

Thanks to John DeNardo of the ever informative SF Signal website for pointing us to the latest video by the folks over at Funkanomics.com.

As DeNardo noted in his pithy post title, "Every Time Travel Cliché in 3 Minutes," the "Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" video by the aspiring internet comedy crew at Funkanomics is not treading much new ground when it comes to the metaphysics of time travel. To be fair, dissecting the various connotations of time paradoxes in great detail isn't the point of the video. Funkanomics are trying to give us a few laughs and build a comedic reputation online.

Do they succeed?

Is "Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" funny?

Watch the video for yourself before you read my thoughts. It won't be the worst 3 minutes you have experienced.

"Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" is certainly passable as a 3 minute sketch, and I was impressed with how natural the insertion of additional time travelers looked in the film, but it's stuck on "amusing" and doesn't quite leap into "funny." I think that the greatest flaw of the skit is its lack of depth when it comes to its subject matter. We all get the BACK TO THE FUTURE and TERMINATOR references, but I'd have liked to see some A SOUND OF THUNDER, A GUN FOR DINOSAUR, MIMZY WERE THE BOROGROVES, or TIME COP (with regard to the existence of time police) thrown in for good measure. If you're going to go for the cliché gold, you have to have at least one reference to a dinosaur and one to time police. Otherwise, you're just not doing it right.

The basic comic beats are on cue in the piece, but the writers forgot one key point -- comedy is irony. I would have loved for the last time traveler to walk on the screen to be one who says, "you were right, I didn't set my clock forward for Daylight Savings. I guess it didn't work." Then have that character look down, bewildered, as he has to help his roommate clean up the mess left by the other travelers.

All that aside, I do think the film was entertaining and I will definitely be going back to Funanomics.com.

What are your favorite Time Travel stories and clichés?

[Blogging Hammer's Slammers] -- "Under the Hammer"

I can remember the first time I saw David Drake's name in print, it was in the Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn collection of stories in the Thieves' World shared universe fiction series. I enjoyed his story, Goddess, but didn't read anything else by Drake for quite some time. In fact, it was about a decade later when I read his foreword -- and story -- in Baen's Cormac Mac Art volume in the excellent Robert E. Howard series they put together in the 1990s. It would be a few more years before I started reading Drake's excellent Lord of the Isles series, a rich fantasy series that wanders away from the typical medieval European mythological base and toward Sumerian myths for inspiration.

I have always found Drake's writing engaging, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he had been friends with two figures who loom large in Fantasy fiction -- Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner. Even though I was a fan of Drake's Fantasy writing, I hadn't read any of his Science Fiction. Most of Drake's SF falls into a sub-genre that I don't often find myself wandering into, namely Military SF. I have no moral objections to Military SF stories. I have read Dorsai, Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Old Man's War, but I haven't wandered far from those literary entries into the genre.

Based on a conversation I had with a friend last week -- a portion of which was dedicated to the aesthetic failings of the covers decorating the majority of Baen's book line -- combined with my recent foray into the Science Fiction of the 1930s and the October Baen release of The Complete Hammer's Slammers vol. 1, I have decided to begin an exploration of Military SF starting with David Drake's classic "Hammer's Slammers" series of stories.

Like Haldeman's Forever War, Drake's "Hammer's Slammers" series of stories are (at least partially) informed by the author's own military experience. Both Haldeman and Drake spent time in Vietnam. The "Slammers" stories share many qualities with the Military SF that has preceding and succeeded them, but they also have some distinct and unique qualities that set them apart.

Case in point, for this post, is "Under the Hammer." This story was the second "Slammers" story that Drake wrote after returning from Vietnam, and it was the second story rejected by Fredrick Pohl for publication. Pohl did not see a need for a third author writing "essentially the same kind of fiction" he was receiving from Pournelle and Haldeman -- a statement that seems bizarre to this particular modern reader. The story was eventually published in the October 1974 issue of Galaxy under the editorship of Jim Baen. According to Drake, Baen didn't really like the story either, but it was better written grammatically than the majority of Galaxy submissions. Pretty humble beginnings for what has become a major entry in a genre sub-category.

"Under the Hammer," gives us a glimpse into new recruit Rob Jenne's first day on the job with the "Hammer's Slammers" mercenary outfit. The story is a stark presentation of on the job training in the middle of a conflict with guerrilla forces on an agricultural planet, a planet so far from civilization that most "modern" means of transportation and communication are completely lacking. It is an environment where the soldiers of "Hammer's Slammers" far outgun the guerrilla's they are fighting, but still find themselves mired in a struggle where victory is less than guaranteed. It's pretty clear that the setting is Vietnam as SF outer rim world, tunnel rats and all.

The story is quite short, but within its pages Drake manages to do a couple of groundbreaking things within the genre. First, he immediately separates himself from Heinlein and Haldeman by not providing a representation of Basic Training. We are reading the story of a recruit showing up "on world" who is on his way to be trained, any training Jenne receives in the story will be provided only as much as it will help him survive the next 20 or so pages. The next difference between Drake's story and others is the almost complete lack of discussion for the "why" of the conflict on the planet. The readers are placed into the circumstances in media res without much context discussing why the "Slammers" have been hired to fight the guerrillas. There is some brief discussion why the "Slammers" might be hired in general, but few specifics about the current engagement. The stress in the story is on the characters and their immediate circumstances, and not on any global (galaxy-wide?) political/ideological struggles. The men presented are real men, who behave realistically, and who aren't doing anything particularly noble or ignoble.

This last point is made particularly poignantly early in the story. One of the first characters Jenne encounters is a priest of The Way who questions Jenne about his enlistment and how the military life may/may not conflict with a peaceful religion. For a story that on the surface lacks any philosophic commentary, the priest's initial comments and his two layered involvement with the "Slammers" made this story stand out. The priest's two layered involvement with the "Slammers" might seem a little heavy handed on the "melodrama tear-jerk inducement index," but it plays a very necessary role for the proper framing of the story.

This is a tightly written story that's only weakness is the thinness of the sfnal veneer. My hope is that as the stories play out, they will be able to keep the strong writing style while adding more SF elements.

Hulu Recommendation Friday -- Enter the Ninja

The classic Bond film You Only Live Twice, may be the first example of ninjas being featured in mainstream Western cinema, but it was the Sho Kosugi vehicle Enter the Ninja that captured the imagination of a generation. I can still remember sitting in my 7th grade Drama class, having just finished performing a monologue from The Glass Menagerie, as a group of my classmates enacted a sequence from Enter the Dragon.

The instructor wasn't very impressed, but I was and I immediately hunted down the Sho Kosugi film and experienced pure viewing pleasure.

Enter the Dragon follows one of the standard Golan and Globus action storylines. In this case it is the "old army buddy comes to visit an old friend who he served with during some military exchange or another, only to find out that the friend is in trouble with the local (criminal underworld, greedy land grabbing corporation, or both)." It's up to our protagonist to kick ass, take names, kick the asses of the people whose names he took, and save the day. Enter the Ninja adds ninja techniques to our protagonists usual repertoire of skills, which naturally makes him invincible as only a ninja can kill a ninja.

Franco Nero (Django and Camelot), our protagonist, has less than stellar martial arts skills, most of the acting is horrible, and the film suffers from Samurite syndrome. The film often borders on the ridiculous. For example, there is a point when Christopher George is calling out stating, "I want my ninja now!" in a manner that can only be described as extremely homoerotic -- an extremely incongruous moment in the film. Any one of these flaws could have ruined the film for all time, yet none do.

Why?

Sho Kosugi. The moment Sho Kosugi hits the screen, the viewer is in for a treat. Even while covered head to toe in his ninja costume, Sho Kosugi brings charisma and power to the screen. Yes, ninja costumes are inherently cool, but Sho is cool beyond the outfit. He is a joy to watch, which is likely one of the reasons Revenge of the Ninja drops the Samurite aspects of narrative and let's Sho carry the film. Sho Kosugi was the quintessential ninja throughout the 80s, and I cannot wait to see him in the forthcoming Ninja Assassin -- even in a small role.

Coming Up on Cinerati

As you may have noticed, I have been running a series of posts discussing the Northwest Smith stories by Catherine Lucille Moore. In the coming weeks, the next 8 weeks to be exact, I'll be finishing the series. I am very much enjoying writing my thoughts down as I read through each of Moore's tales, and have decided that I want to make [Blogging X] a regular weekly entry here at Cinerati. After finishing the Northwest Smith stories, I'll move on to Moore's Jirel of Joiry tales, Kuttner's Gallagher tales, and the Healy/McComas compilation Adventures in Time and Space.

I'll be doing at least one [Blogging X] a week and will move on to other stories (like the stories of Robert E. Howard) eventually.

I'll also be including more movie reviews, television reviews, and game reviews, as time permits, as well as posting random thoughts about events and products throughout popular culture. I will also be keeping Hulu Recommendation Friday's for as long as Hulu keeps offering wonderful entertainment.

I'm really enjoying the direction this blog has taken of late and look forward to your comments.

[Blogging Northwest Smith] "Julhi"

The March 1935 issue of Weird Tales featured "Julhi," the fifth of Catherine Lucille Moore's Northwest Smith tales. That same issue also featured Robert E. Howard's "Jewels of Gwahlur," a classic Conan tale.

After a year of writing Northwest Smith tales, Moore's "Julhi" manages to integrate what are now the "old stand-by's" of the Smith series with an energy that keeps the repeating narrative devices feeling fresh -- and to be fair, some of what is going on in this tale is quite fresh. Like in the first Northwest Smith tale, Moore gives us a brief introductory paragraph reminiscent of a campfire story. It's a device that Moore had abandoned in the prior three stories, but it helps to set the tone here and notify the audience that we are going to be reading an event that transpired in Smith's past.

The tale of Smith's scars would make a saga. From head to foot his brown and sunburnt hide was scored with the marks of battle...But one or two scars he carried would have baffled the most discerning eye. That curious, convoluted red circlet, for instance, like some bloody rose on the left side of his chest just where the beating of is heart stirred the sun-darkened flesh..."

The "campfire" paragraph provides Moore with a couple of advantages, and one major challenge, as the story unfolds. First and foremost, this preamble let's us know a little bit about the story we are about to read, we will be learning just how Smith acquired that "bloody rose" scar. Fans of Smith will be getting a glimpse into his, as yet, largely unrevealed past. Second, our curiosity as readers is piqued as we wonder just what kind of beast or device would leave such a wound. As mentioned earlier though, these advantages don't come without a price. By revealing to the audience that the story takes place at some point in Smith's past, any fear that Smith will fail to overcome the challenges within the tale can be easily cast aside. We know he survives because we know he bears the scar.

It's harder to create an aura of mystery and weird terror when the audience knows the outcome, but Moore knows what she is doing. She immediately disorients the reader, by inserting them in media res -- along with Smith -- into an unknown environment. As the story begins we find Smith literally in the dark without "the faintest idea of where he was or how he had come there." Adding to his mysterious surroundings, Smith is immediately attacked by some unknown and unseen foe and falls unconscious. The reader may know that Smith will find a way out of the situation, but the reader also feels the urgency of the situation in which Smith has found himself.

As a side note, as in other Moore tales, much could be made in this story about the use of light and dark and how she uses them to create discomfort for the reader. Much of this story takes place in the dark and the majority of the references to light are referring to one character's ability to open a portal between worlds.

When Smith awakens from his unconscious state, he finds once more that he is not alone. Moore's descriptions of movement are identical to the ones she used to describe the unseen assailant, maintaining the uncomfortable anxieties she created earlier as long as possible. This time, Smith takes action and finds -- much to his pleasure -- that this time it is a fellow prisoner and not an unknown horror who has joined him in this mysterious place. Smith's new companion, the fair Apri, knows where Smith is and why he is here and quickly shares what information she has with Smith and the audience.

Here Moore exhibits one of the least appreciated skills in writing. She deftly provides the audience with much needed exposition in the form of natural dialog. When Apri is discussing the "haunters of Vonng," who are the slaves of "Julhi," it is conversational rather than expository, yet it fills in all of the necessary information to inform the audience how dire the circumstances are and how mysterious the place Smith has found himself in is. One of the ways Moore accomplishes this is to have Smith's thoughts interact with Apri's dialog to fill in the blanks.

For example, when Apri mentions that Smith is in Vonng the reader is immediately granted access to Smith's thoughts, rather than having to read Apri explain what and where Vonng is. And it is a place reminiscent of sunken R'lyeh, "The stone had been quarried with unnamable [sic] rites, and the buildings were queerly shaped, for mysterious purposes. Some of its lines ran counter-wise to the understanding even of the men who laid them out, and at intervals in the streets, following patterns certainly not of their own world, medallions had bedn set, for reasons known to none..." Like many of the locations in H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, Vonng is a city that exists at a nexus of worlds, where the geometry of the universes allow one universe to affect others...if they have the proper means of communication. We quickly find out that Apri is a vessel through which Julhi, a horrifying being from another world, can bring people into her own "Vonng" to serve as food.

As I wrote earlier, Moore is using many of the narrative elements from prior Smith stories in this piece. In "Scarlet Dream," Smith found himself transported to another universe. In "Black Thirst," Smith found himself in a vast and unending castle/city whose ruler could manipulate the geography to make it a prison. In all the prior tales, save "Dust of the Gods," the villain was some form of vampiric inspiration for a creature of classical myth. Shambleau was the vampiric origin of the Gorgon, the Alendar was the elemental horror version of Dracula, and the very planet in "Scarlet Dream" was a blood feeding terror. In "Julhi," the eponymous villain seems to be the vampiric inspiration for the Siren or Lorelei.

Like most of Moore's vampires, Julhi feeds on something other than blood -- in this case in addition to blood. The Alendar fed on beauty, Shambleau fed on sexual pleasure and desire, and Julhi feeds on emotion, "but to experience the emotions we crave we must have physical contact, a temporary physical union through the drinking of blood." Julhi is a traditional vampire, in that she drinks blood, but a non-traditional one in that she feeds on the experiences, sensations, and emotions of the victim -- all kinds of emotion, save possibly one.

Of all of Moore's creatures, the Julhi is the most interesting to date and quite unique. I was taken aback by Moore's description of the creature and how she managed to bring horrifying imagery to my mind while describing the creature as one of beauty.

He caught his breath at the sleek and shining loveliness of her, lying on her black couch and facing him with a level, unwinking stare. Then he realized her unhumanity, and a tiny prickling ran down his back -- for she was one of that very ancient race of one-eyed beings about which whispers persist so unescapably in folklore and legend, though history has forgotten them for ages. One-eyed. A clear eye, uncolored, centered in the midst of a fair, broad forehead. Her features arranged in a diamond-shaped pattern instead of humanity's triangle, for the slanting nostrils of her low-bridged nose were set so far apart that they might have been separate features, tilting and exquisitely modeled. Her mouth was perhaps the queerest feature of her strange yet lovely face. It was perfectly heartshaped, in an exaggerated cupid's-bow, but it was not a human mouth. It did not close, ever. It was a beautifully arched orifice, the red lip that rimmed it compellingly crimson, but fixed and moveless in an unhinged jaw. Behind the bowed opening he could see the red, fluted tissue of flesh within.

Sexual imagery aside, this description is highly disconcerting. When added to the slightly serpentine arms, indescribable lower half, and feather crest above the head, we have a truly haunting creature. In fact, the imagery in my mind was a kind of combination of the monster from The Man Trap, a serpent (diamond shaped head and all), a lamprey, and a peacock. Not something I would want to meet while trapped in an alternate dimension. It's also a creature I would love to see illustrated.

Though Julhi cannot speak she can, like the Lorelei, sing, and her song creates a hypnotic state that manipulates the emotions of the listener. Smith is run through the gamut of emotions and the ride only stops on two occasions. Once, it is stopped because Julhi has experienced more powerful experiences than she has ever experienced before. The other time Julhi withdraws, without comment I might add, is when Smith remembers his first (and likely only) true love -- a love that hints at horrible loss in this tale. This love is a place where it seems Julhi will not go, and is evidence of another recurring theme in Moore's tales. She often places love in a favored, though typically tragic, position over sexuality. Sexuality and sexual desires are more base than the love she often presents, as was evidenced in the earlier discussion of beauty in "Black Thirst."

While Julhi herself may be the inspiration for the Siren or Lorelei, she is not representative of her eerily beautiful race. As the story unfolds, we learn that she is an aberration among her people...a corruption if you will. This makes her markedly different from Shambleau and the Alendar who were representative of their respective species. Here Moore might be commenting on humanity itself and how those who live vicariously through others, and to the destruction of those others, are a kind of leech to be shunned by society.

Previous Blogging Northwest Smith Entries:

4)[Blogging Northwest Smith] "Dust of the Gods"
3)Blogging Northwest Smith: "Scarlet Dream"
2) Blogging Northwest Smith: "Black Thirst"
1) Blogging Northwest Smith: "Shambleau"