Yesterday I re-watched Martin Scorses’s Casino, which may be my favorite of his films. You may be aware of a scene towards the end of the film generally held up as one of the most graphically violent in film history. I want you to trust me when I say that it’s worse than you’ve heard. I’m going to try to talk about it without spoiling the film for those of you who haven’t seen it, which may not be the most effective way to go about this, but: The first time I saw it, since I had my own experience with the kind of relationship shared by the two people on the receiving end of the attack, I broke down and sobbed. Each time I’ve seen it since then, my gut tightens in anticipation, and then when the scene is actually in progress it’s so disturbing I can feel it all through my body, from my head to my throat to my stomach to my genitals. It’s beyond appalling into the almost overwhelming.

And yet I think it’s entirely appropriate. The characters who are attacked have been repeatedly shown to be the absolute scum of the Earth. Most viewers would, by that point in the movie, welcome their deaths. Scorsese was faced with the challenge of depicting a death so horrific that it would shock the audience out of their too-comfortable endorsement of gangster’s justice and into a realization of just how terrible this lifestyle really is. I also believe that this and indeed the whole of Casino was a reaction to its more warm and humorous predecessor, GoodFellas, in much the same way that the relentlessly grim Godfather Part 2 was Coppola’s attempt to prove to his audience that his intent with the first Godfather movie was not to romanticize the mob. In Casino, Scorsese wanted to make his characters hard to love, hard to enjoy. I think he wanted to make the film that way, too. He succeeded in no small part because of that final act of violence.

My point is that extreme, graphic violence often does serve a purpose in filmmaking. Barker and Cronenberg use it to comment on the relationship between mind and body (Barker somewhat more positively than Cronenberg). Tarantino uses it to reflect on what constitutes honor, loyalty, a life well lived (people miss this since it’s layered with pop-culture irony, but it’s there). The indie horror cycle of the early 1970s (beginning in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead) used it to comment on the horrific injustices of that era, and to break through audience resistance to them.

Mel Gibson is different. He’s not making a filmic point. He’s not making a thematic point. He’s not even making a political point. He’s making a life-philosophy point. He wants his viewers to internalize the violence in The Passion of the Christ, take it upon themselves, feel that they are the people wielding the whips and the scourges and driving the nails. I think he knows full well that in addition to the guilt and shame that this will produce (as it must: guilt and shame are integral parts of his vision of Christianity), it also produces a vicarious thrill, a sado-masochistic charge, and a desire for collective expiation of those feelings against a similar scapegoat. That feeling you get in your gut and your balls when you see that beating in Casino? He wants that to be the basis for how you live your entire life. He wants that to be the basis of your relationship to God Himself.

That’s sick.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to have an emotional basis for your faith. In my opinion, no other basis for faith is possible–an intellectual basis misses the point of faith, an inherently non-intellectual value, altogether. The problem is that this is deeper than emotion, into a physical reaction of revulsion and disgust, which since they cannot be indefinitely borne, are translated into emotional/intellectual actions–in the case of Casino, condemnation and rejection. In the case of The Passion, it’s supposed to translate into adoration and obedience, an ever-present knowledge that this happened because of you, that your only salvation is following the man this happened to, and that those who do not follow him are committing the kind of sin that caused this man to be brutalized so in the first place. There are other mass movements in recent times that tried to bridge the physical and emotional in worship of an extraordinary man and his extraordinary ideals and in fanatical opposition to those who opposed him. I need hardly mention the names.

In my original post on The Passion I stated that I doubted the anti-Semitic nature of the film because I trusted the judgement of American critics and pundits like Ebert & Roeper and the God Squad. But Gibson is not a film critic or an ecumenicist, and neither is his target audience. His loathsome political leanings are clear enough: His throwback anti-Vatican II “Catholicism,” his damnation of all people not of his denomination, his homophobia, his flirtation with Holocaust revisionism. I say we take Gibson at his word, and believe that his faith is what motivates his every action. His faith, therefore, is what leads him to make these grotesque statements and hold these awful beliefs. His faith is one of cataclysmic violence and pain–violence so profoundly all-encompassing that he felt the need to continuously one-up the Gospel descriptions of it. Torture, maiming, and killing aren’t just a facet of his faith–they’re central to it. And the film’s Jews are central to that central point. That’s the faith he’s promoting.

That’s why I will not see his movie.

Mission accomplished.

I am very proud to have participated in the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth (LIGALY) drive for equal rights under the law. In a genuinely impressive caravan, we travelled to the town halls of Babylon, Brookhaven and Islip, where committed couples (some with children) attempted to apply for marriage licenses. They were turned away (reluctantly, it appeared). They won’t be turned away forever.

For news on today’s attempts to get the government to acknowledge the right of all its citizens to marry, you can click here, here, or here.

Mark Grunwald at Slate has a list of John Kerry’s reversals on every conceivable policy from affirmative action to gas taxation. As tired as I am of Bush’s culture-war sabre rattling, I can’t possibly support Kerry, because who the hell knows what side of that war–or The War–Kerry’s actually on?

What a loser. Bush’s political tactics of late do not exactly inspire confidence, but I can’t see how he won’t eat Kerry alive.

Alan David Doane continues his string of amazing gets with a 5,000-word interview with Mr. Alan Moore. It occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve ever read an interview with the writer before, but this one’s a great place to start. Moore talks about his new prose novel Voice of the Fire, the legal machinations surrounding his old superhero book Miracleman, the pros and cons of his influential work on Swamp Thing and Watchmen (including a tip of the hat to Frank Miller), and more. He comes off both intelligent and warm. Check it out.

NYTimes.com Ends Publication of Painfully Unfunny, Indescribably Poorly Drawn, Tediously and Self-Consciously “Shocking” Political Cartoons; Ted Rall Hardest Hit (Link courtesy of Kevin Melrose.)

In life, three things are certain: Death, taxes, and people trying to make themselves look smart and with-it by bashing superhero stories. Interman creator Jeff Parker is the latest entrant into the third category; Steven Berg takes him down.

Tackling a subject Jim Henley and yours truly have wracked our brains over for some time now, Tim O’Neil analyzes the trouble with Captain America. Money quote:

Why is it so hard to strike the balance between Captain America the moral idealist and Captain America the professional asskicker?

Or as I put it the other day, “It just shouldn’t be that hard to come up with a vaguely realistic fictional milieu for the character (i.e. one where he isn’t fighting Avengers-style supervillains) while simultaneously avoiding the sense that the writer is vaguely embarrassed to be writing the character.”

Finally, is it just me, or does Artbomb‘s slogan (“A GRAPHIC NOVEL EXPLOSION. PULL THE PIN”) remind you of that old line “SUCH-AND-SUCH FEVER–CATCH IT!”?

Happy International Read A Comic Book Naked Day from Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat!

A whole bunch of stuff impressed the hell out of me today.

Alan David Doane asks 5 Questions of Dave Sim, who, get this, answers them comprehensively but succinctly. I learned more about Sim and his work (as opposed to what he thinks of homosexuals, say) in these 5 Questions than I have in years of reprinted screeds and nasty exchanges that go on for page after page in the Comics Journal.

Bruce Baugh offers his own thoughts on Sim in a “What Went Wrong” kind of piece. I know next to nothing about Cerebus, but even given that I know these quotes from Bruce are true:

when the author is himself a character and routinely interjects real-world commentary, sometimes without any veiling at all, then it’s not being unfair to reject the story because of disliking those elements of it.

Thank you, Bruce, for summing up why I myself can sometimes read the work of someone whose politics or personal philosophy is diametrically opposed to my own, while other times I can’t. Oh, and this:

I haven’t read the last 70 or so issues, and I don’t have any plans to change that. Not all knowledge is worth the price it takes to acquire it, and in this case, whatever I might learn about characters I used to care about is not worth the pain of engaging with this man’s collapsing soul.

Yes, again. I hate to single out the Comics Journal (honest!) but the way they use their letters pages for disgruntled Sim readers to pick fights with the man, who is clearly mentally ill, and then reprint ten pages of hateful ideology from him whenever he provides them with it, teaches us nothing about anything, except about the casual cruelty of the Journal itself.

Now here’s something so good I can’t even quote from it: David Fiore‘s latest batch of Dark Knight Returns blogging. So good it makes my head hurt. I’m actually jealous. (I’m also jealous of his summary of the problem with the way the Comics Journal currently covers the superhero genre. But at least I inspired Dave to go get Teratoid Heights–I wonder what the Nabob of Narrative will make of that?)

WARNING: It’s incredibly spoiler-rich, but if you’ve read Jason’s Hey, Wait…, you must read Steven Wintle‘s analysis of it. It reveals something I would never in a million years have noticed myself, and I’m completely gobsmacked. You will be, too.

Jim Henley, Steven Berg, Steven Berg again, and Franklin Harris do battle over whether or not it’s good that the X-Men will be back in spandex again. (I know they’re still in spandex in the non-New X-Men books, but c’mon, Franklin–those don’t count!) I think it’s bad, but that has nothing to do with me feeling some sort of embarrassment about superheroes (please)–it has to do with how well the non-spandex outfits worked in the context of Grant Morrison’s brilliant run. They were part and parcel of the thrilling complexity of his ideas about change, difference, “villains” and “heroes” (to break out the Bowie quotes–and again, you know these aren’t things I’m embarrassed to enjoy!). Anyone who thought the black leather was merely a superficial, cosmetic change missed the point.

Finally, let’s all wish a happy blogday to Bill Sherman, the Pop Culture Gadabout! In many ways Bill is my blogfather; his ability to wax erudite on nearly every facet of pop culture is an unceasing inspiration to me. Long may he gad about!

I guess the comics creators of the world should thank their lucky stars that The Return of the King isn’t eligible for Ignatzes, Harveys, and Eisners.

On Friday I reviewed Mat Brinkman’s Teratoid Heights, a book that deserves a lot more attention than it’s gotten. If you missed it, click on that link and check it out.

Alan David Doane interviews Johnny Ryan, creator of the incredibly offsensive and hilarious humor series Angry Youth Comix. A lot of people think that publishing this title calls everything else Fantagraphics does into question. Those people are probably right, which is exactly what makes this stuff so goddamn great. If you’re looking for proof that humor comics can actually be, you know, funny, look no further.

David Allison of Insult to Injury sings the praises of Jeffrey Brown’s Clumsy, astutely pointing out how well Brown navigates material that in lesser hands could be either self-indulgently maudlin or voyeuristically creepy. Even if autobio isn’t usually a turn-on for you, I think Brown’s stuff will be.

Rich Johnston makes with the gossip about Marvel, saying that new kid-friendly directives are forcing all the New Marvel mojo that remains into the Marvel Knights and MAX imprints. Johnston also reports that Captain America writer Bob Morales, who did a great job with the concept in the miniseries Truth and a not so much job in the actual series, has been axed. As the two-year experiment with a Marvel Knights-style Cap comes to a close, I think it’s safe to say the concept failed, which I just don’t understand. It just shouldn’t be that hard to come up with a vaguely realistic fictional milieu for the character (i.e. one where he isn’t fighting Avengers-style supervillains) while simultaneously avoiding the sense that the writer is vaguely embarrassed to be writing the character. Right?

David Fiore continues to make up for what he’s wrought on the Comics Journal messboard with some excellent Dark Knight blogging:

Bruce asks us to accept his version of things: he’s just a man, ready to battle God (“There’s just the sun and the sky and him, like he’s the only reason it’s all here.”) if he must, in the pursuit of justice. But I think that there’s a way to enter this text in the guise of Superman (through Clark’s “nuclear epiphany; or, how I learned to cease striving for the sun and love the earth”, in Bk 4)–and it’s a reading which offers a very interesting critique of Batman’s Promethean/Ahabian project…

I’d never thought of Miller’s Superman in those terms before. Great stuff.

J.W. Hastings submits capsule reviews of various titles that I’m interested in but, for primarily financial reasons, am not buying, which really are the best kind of capsule reviews. Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Punisher, Wanted, Y: The Last Man. Enjoy.

Christopher Butcher reports that Del Rey has backed down from its decision to preemptively censor its imported manga, thanks in large part to what Franklin Harris calls “The Power of Reasonable Bitching.”

Mike Sterling defends Grant Morrison from the more-pretentious-than-thou criticism he’s been getting from certain quarters of the artcomix commentary world lately. But I’d suggest that after reading a few of the threads from the board where these folks hang out, the stuff refutes itself….

Clean sweep.

Amazing.

A memo to the people who make the “we may be a beer company but we’re responsible” commercials for Anheuser-Busch:

I’m glad you’re trying to encourage parents to keep tabs on what their kids are doing. But so help me God, if this commercial inspires a single kid to leave the ringer on on his cellphone while he’s in the movie theatre, and then to actually start talking on the goddamn thing once it rings, I will literally find you and kill you.

Mitch and Micki in character? Huge.

“Wait–are we supposed to clap for Leni Riefenstahl?”

I’m glad to see Errol Morris finally win an Oscar, but not, apparently, as glad as Morris himself, who made sure to let everyone know how much he felt he deserved it. And oh so humorously thanking Robert McNamara for a war that, as he said just a couple sentences later, killed millions of people, so you could make a movie about it–charming, just charming!

Some folks are down a rabbit hole, that’s for sure.

It’s about 10:25pm EST right now, and so far it’s been a good night for The Lord of the Rings, which, given the way its installments have absorbed my movie-going budget for the past three years, is really the only dog I have in this race. I think The Return of the King is four for four right now, and I’m just ecstatic. I think only life-long Tolkien fans can know what I’m talking about: “My God–Alan Lee is onstage at the Oscars!” “A big famous actress just said the words ‘Middle-earth’ in front of a worldwide audience of one billion people!” It’s amazing.

Am I 100% happy? I guess not. I don’t understand why the movie was nominated for Best Sound and not Best Sound Editing, and why it was nominated for every visual award and Best Director and Best Picture but not Best Cinematography, and obviously the cast (especially Sean Astin) was completely robbed. But so far we’ve got a sweep going, and that’s really nice. If by the end of the evening I can truthfully refer to the Academy Award-winning director of Meet the Feebles, I’ll be very happy indeed.

Robin Williams’s date to the Oscars is apparently Bobcat Goldthwait.

Johnny Bacardi has posted his much-anticipated David Bowie retrospective. And… well, yeah, there it is. Turns out Johnny and I don’t have much in common in terms of our ideas about Bowie. (For example, I think Bowie’s 90s output is thrilling, that the instrumentals from Low and “Heroes” are gorgeous, that there’s a lot more going on on albums like Station to Station and Diamond Dogs than just “a couple” of good songs, that there are a few factual errors in the retrospective that a Bowiephile like me can’t help but quibble over, and so on.) But don’t lean on me, man–check it out yourself and see what you think. And while you’re at it, vada Bill Sherman‘s take on the former David Jones, centering mainly on an appreciation of the astounding album Aladdin Sane. Oh no, Bill, you’re not alone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Oscar-winning writer-director of Brain Dead.”

You know, if you had told me that less than three years after the most horrific attack on American soil in history, I’d be looking at an MSNBC graphic reading “Culture Wars” with a picture of Janet Jackson and intertwined male-male and female-female symbols… I don’t think I’d have been surprised at all, actually, because the fact is that this country, and all countries, really, will never want for busybody idiots.

It’s gratifying to see that, according to OxBlog, Bush’s proposed religious-right Constitutional graffiti doesn’t stand a chance of passing the Senate. (Link courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.) My hope is also that the hypocrisy inherent in this administration’s endorsement of an apparently pornographically violent film, coming as it does at a time when they’re using the power of the government to intimidate companies into cracking down on exposed tits and the use of dirty words, will be apparent to everyone.

Regarding the Howard Stern situation itself, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as people are acting. I think Stern is an unfunny moron who basically got in trouble with one of his bosses, so Jeff Jarvis‘s high dudgeon over the issue strikes me as hubris in the extreme. However, people in the “it’s no big deal” camp, like the inexcusably oblivious Glenn Reynolds, are glossing over the fact that this corporate crackdown, while not technically censorship, is only happening because the government is using its muscle to bully the companies into doing the censoring so the feds won’t have to. By the letter of the law I suppose this is okay, but the words “congressional investigation” or “government hearings” are ones I never want to see in near proximity with speech issues. When that happens, you get travesties like the Comics Code, which destroyed publishers and gutted the medium for decades, or the music industry’s Parental Advisory stickers, which are treated like the Scarlet Letter by some of the country’s largest music retailers. It’s grotesque to watch my tax dollars at work forcing entertainment and media moguls to abase themselves at the feet of Congress, and restrict speech in their products out of fear of the wrath of the government.

The only culture war I’m interested in fighting right now is the one between freedom and tyranny, democracy and theocracy, equality and bigotry, liberty and terror. I don’t want to have to guess as to which side my own government is on.

Superhero “realism”: the case against. Zed of MemeMachineGo points out the big problem with realistic takes on superheroes: The more a superhero world looks like our own, the easier it is for us to notice when the things that happen in that world don’t make any sense. Zed focuses on the exercise of political or military power by and/or against superheroes in fictional worlds–the Authority taking over the world in the Wildstorm universe, supervillains destroying whole cities in the DC Universe (Coast City was destroyed back during the Death/Return of Superman saga; I think San Diego was just dumped into the sea in Aquaman (where will the intra-DC comics industry have its big conventions, now?)), the U.S. government deploying a covert ops consisting of both ridiculously powerful superbeings and a guy with a bow and arrow in the Ultimate universe, and so forth. Paradoxically, these companies’ efforts to deliver a recognizable world heighten our ability to detect their failure to do so. Events like 9/11 and the Iraq War have given us crystal-clear demonstrations of how the world would react to an unexpected and massive slaughter of civilians, or the use of force to right a wrong despite the disapproval of international institutions. We know things don’t just go back to business as usual. Now imagine that instead of destroying a few buildings, the bad guys wiped out all of New York; or that instead of a country using its superior power to topple a dictator, five or six people in costumes did so. The political crises engendered by these situations would be near-apocalyptic. The reason a book like Watchmen (or even Squadron Supreme) worked was because they weren’t set in an ongoing universe, where the need to keep the stories coming necessitated a glossing-over of consequences for the actions of its superpowered beings. And even in those types of limited series, your mileage may vary. Basically I think this isn’t an argument against “realistic superheroes” as much as it’s an argument against embedding them in a universe-style framework where the realistic consequences of those superheroes’ existence and behavior can’t be fully and honestly explored. (Link courtesy of Jim Henley.)

Is Bruce Wayne the Marlowe to Batman’s Kurtz? Did young Bruce’s trauma create Batman, or, like Spider-Man, did the birth of the extraordinary creature within him predate that trauma? Is Batman’s war on crime really a quest to find the right mirror to view himself in? Yes, it’s Dark Knight Returns blogging as only Dave Fiore can do it.

Speaking of Dave Fiore, good Lord. Ritual messageboard suicide is always breathtaking to behold.

J.W. Hastings says that modern-day PCisms are ruining Kurt Busiek’s alternate-history-fantasy WWI story Arrowsmith, and also defends the comics marketplace. No, really.

Christopher Butcher does more than decry sneaky corporate censorship of manga and other imported comics: He points out that this is one area where informed and vocal customers really can make a difference, and really have made a difference in the past.

Finally, Dave G. at Simply Comics has devised a Comics Blog Update Page that automatically monitors when nearly all of the sites in the comicsphere have last updated. Mine’s not working, though. I’ve got my tech guys working round the clock, rest assured!