The World Isn't Getting Too "Woke"

 

 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

 

 

 

 

 

Every once in a while you'll see someone some where complaining about a wave of woke culture. Matt Taibbi did so in response to the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special, where he wrote on Twitter that Chappelle is "subject to social rules he had no hand in writing." You'll also see it tied to things like the Virginia race, where TV pundits go off about how the Democrats devotion to "woke" policies cost them the election. What's missing from any of this is any definition of what "woke" even means, let alone why it's such a bad thing to be concerned about.

Of course, there's always some idiot who takes things too far. There's always someone, usually white, tripping over themselves to throw all the terms they've learned about white privilege and centering the narrative yadda yadda yadda. Basically, the stereotype of a kid using too many words they learned in college without any wisdom,experience, or self-reflection to make those words meaningful. I'm not arguing that those people don't exist because of course they do. What's more important in this broader conversation is that when people talk about things getting too "woke," what they usually mean is that they have to give basic respect to people they flat out don't want to.

Let's take the nonsense over pronouns as an example. So many people throw an absolute fit over using "they/them" pronouns. They usually make some argument that it mangles the English language, that it's exclusively for plural use only. Except, we use "they" as a singular all the damn time. How many times have you asked your friend after they go to the doctor "Oh, well, what did they tell you?" That's a perfectly reasonable, understandable sentence. Everyone knows who we're talking about, who we're referring to, no problem. The best part is, the first recorded instance of us doing this goes as far back as 1375. Given the fact that if the usage of a singular "they" was common enough to find use in a poem, there's good reason to believe that it was in common usage for years beforehand. Far from being a new trend to bend the language to a small minority, the singular 'they' then is something that's been part of our linguistic framework for almost a thousand years.

But you know what? Who fucking cares about any of that. Why would I need to go digging around the dictionary websites researching the use of a single word in the English language to prove that non-binary people fit comfortably into our linguistic traditions? Why would their identity only be valid if it could be backed up by scholarship? Why is the fact that they exist and wish to express their identity in those terms not enough?

This also brings up another aspect to this argument in that the so-called academic reasons for opposing it are so lazy it should embarrass everyone who lets such idiotic statements fall out of their mouths. You know how long it took me to find out these things? Ten minutes, including the reading time. That's how easy it is to dismiss this attitude, how flimsy it is, how it isn't supported by even the faintest hint of facts or legitimacy? It's almost as if it's just a smoke screen so people who don't want to respect something they don't understand can tell themselves that they just have a logical hangup about it, yeah, they're not keeping themselves ignorant or judgemental, nope.

The laziness of these arguments is ultimately what gets me the most. Framing the issue "Trans people want to control our thoughts" instead "Trans people want to be referred to by their names," hypes up the reaction of people who can't get with the program and treats them as if they have as legitimate a claim on trans or non-binary people's identities as they do. Can you imagine if we did this in any other situation? Can you imagine your reaction if you introduced yourself only for the other person to go "I don't agree with that, so instead of Manny I'm gonna call you Hilary," then refused to alter their behavior. Who, when called on it, defended themselves by saying that "It's just their opinion" and they have a right to express it has much as anyone else does. So they just kept doing that, all the time. Would you feel respected by them? Or would you feel belittled, just that something that stings in the back of your mind because every time he does that he reminds you that he doesn't have to treat you like a human being and there ain't shit you can do about it.

That's ultimately what this fight is about. There are elements of society who, for a variety of reasons, don't want to have respect trans and non-binary people, and they're upset that they get punished if they don't. Well, punished is a relative term here. Yes, some lose their job, some, like J.K Rowling, have people say mean things about online which they equate to real-life harassment and bigotry. These people usually complain that they have lost their freedom or their freedom of expression is being unfairly curtailed, you know the drill. It's true that they've lost something, but it isn't their freedom, it's their power.

What they've lost is the power to denigrate, to dismiss, to demonize without consequence. This is a real struggle for people used to doing so because the ability to ruin other people's lives without penalty is, sadly, a strong emotional metric for how people value themselves. If there's nobody beneath us, we don't feel quite as good because that means we're the ones everyone gets to treat like shit. There's no reason to cry about this loss, because this sort of power is toxic, it corrodes the soul of the people who rely on it until they become nothing more than dried up husks- instead of vibrant, they're brittle, scattered into the wind where all the trappings of their position become moot should anyone even think to question them.

Why would you want this? Why would you want a life so meaningless, so pitiful that the only thing you could do to find any semblance of relevance is permanently press a boot onto someone's neck?

Anyone selling you a version of freedom that depends on your ability to crush someone else under your heel doesn't care about your freedom. They don't care about anyone's, really. All they care about is selling you the idea that it is right and natural for you exploit those below you so will accept your exploitation in turn. 

It's interesting to examine too why this culture fight is reaching such a flashpoint over trans rights. This isn't to say that the fight over gay rights was easy or that cis gay people don't face discrimination anymore, it wasn't and they still do. 

What cis gay couples have though is a way for straight people to paper over the differences their queer identities presented. By misunderstanding things like tops, bottoms, femmes, and butches, straight people found a way to imagine gay relationships in the same men/women gender norms as they were comfortable with. Again, this isn't how any of that works, but it gave people the ability to paper over the differences enough to let it go. 

Trans and non-binary people however, don't really have this option. Their very existence forces people to acknowledge that there's more to sex and gender than false binaries. Trans people also present a policy problem in that, if the point of government is to enable its citizens to live their lives with dignity, what then are they supposed to about trans people therapy? Should the government fund their transition treatments, up to and including their gender affirming surgeries? Obviously the answer is yes, but for governments like ours or the Tories in the U.K., this presents a problem because letting people live their lives with dignity is anathema to both. After all, if trans people are able to get their medical needs addressed by the government, why shouldn't everyone? 

There are some people on the Left too that take issue with focusing on these issues, seeing as unnecessary culture war distractions to economic policy. This is another false dichotomy however, because the same policy goals of ending racial discrimination, enacting single payer healthcare, enacting a jobs guarantee program, all of these have direct consequences on the quality of life of everyone, trans and non-binary people included. 

When these arguments get made, one of their cornerstones is that the world is irrevocably changing, that something tangible is being lost, never to return. As always there's some truth to that but consider, what's so worth protecting about the world that's getting lost? Why is it that when people say "No, you don't get to treat me that way," that the reaction is such spite, such anger? What entitles any of us to have those lesser than ourselves be available so we can pile the scorn and bitterness of our lives on them? 

Clichéd as it is, we're all just people. Rather than thinking of the phrase flattening us all into a blob of sameness, we need to see it as everyone, no matter how different, is entitled to the same level of respect the we treat ourselves. Humanity is a diamond, all one element but with so many facets that catch the light in its own unique way. Our differences shouldn't divide us, they should enlighten us, because each one shows us a different way our world is experienced. 

Funny thing is, this sentiment gets treated as if it's some radical practice of empathy close to godliness when it gets taught in religions and philosophy. Except, it's not that at all, not even a little bit. Ask anyone that knows me to describe in three words and if any of them says "empathy" I'll give you $200. I can comfortably make that bet even though I'm broke because none of the people I know are liar enough to say so. So if I figure this out with my garbage sense of empathy, it's honestly not that hard.

Because honestly, thinking this way is just the baseline. Artificial differences like skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, have become the most important thing to us. In order to free ourselves from these things, we have to acknowledge the world obsessing over these things has built and tear it down brick by brick. 

The world is choking on these limitations, I'm sure you can feel it. Everything feels much more tense, more paralyzed, like we're all sinking into a tar pit. Because the internet has made it possible to see into the intimate details of other people's daily lives, the illusions that we're all fundamentally different have started cracking, along with the power structures built up to maintain those illusions. The mad dash top keep everything as it was even as the justifications for them crumble around us is why the world feels like existing in a tangible sickness. 

Will working to solve those problems get us out of the mess we're in? I don't know. More likely than not, it'll solve some problems, bring up unexpected complications in others, and generate entirely unforeseen problems of its own. 

But if the choice is between doing what we've been doing or building a world where every one gets to live their lives in whatever manner they see fit then, well, I'd rather down swimming for shore than drown on clinging to a sinking ship. 

Marvel is Killing Its Own Movies

 

 

 

Copyright Marvel

 

 

 

 

Writing about Shang Chi is somewhat difficult because well, it's not the worst movie in the world. In fact, it's so aggressively average that it feels somewhat wrong to have strong feeling about it because there's really nothing in the film to feel strongly about. It feels slightly ridiculous to criticize the movie because it's as substantial as a marshmallow but, I still feel it's important to note why this movie is so drained of substance because ultimately, everyone loses in this approach. 

What it comes down to is that Disney isn't really interested in making movies with their Marvel properties. Everything, from the movies to the TV shows, is there to fulfill their obligations to the brand, to propel the overarching story lines spread across as many pieces of media as possible. This style of story telling isn't all that unusual or unprecedented, the studio system of early Hollywood matches the way Disney cranks these movies out at a production line pace. For something closer to home, spreading story arcs out over as many title, requiring people to buy multiple books just to understand the basic plot, resembles the business model the comic industry used in 90's to fuel a massive sales expansion. Both of these systems made their industries piles of money...until they didn't. For the studio system, the trust busting movement born out of the New Deal destroyed studio monopolies. The resulting creative freedom of the 60's and beyond meant that no one was really clamoring for the return of the five major film studios dictating what the public was allowed to see. 

Likewise, when the comics bubble burst, it nearly drove Marvel into bankruptcy, forcing it to sell of the licensing rights for some of their best selling titles to Fox and Sony aka the studios that produced X-Men and the original Spiderman trilogy. 

It's troubling then to see both companies fall back on business models famous for their failures, but to breakdown why it matters to us as audiences, let's talk about Shang Chi.

Naturally, for any martial arts film, the main thing we're going to judge Shang Chi are its fight scenes. Out of all the fight sequences in the film, the only one with any panache or personality is the bus fight scene in the beginning of the movie. It's a tight, enclosed space, we see Simu Liu's face for a large majority of it (which, kudos to him for that choreography) and the geography of the bus makes for some good interactions as the fight goes on. It's not a great fight scene, but it offers enough action and character beats that it at least qualifies as a scene.

The same cannot be said for the bamboo structure fight outside Xialing's fight club. On paper, the fight sounds great- Shang Chi and company battle his father's minions (and perilous heights) as they work their way down through down closer to street level. It's a very Jackie Chan inspired fight, except executed with a thousandth of the effort. There's a great video by sadly defunct Youtube channel Every Frame a Painting that breaks down what makes Jackie's style so fun to watch. A key component is being able to see every bit of the action in as full a frame as possible meaning, we see the full set and the characters at the same time as they move through the space during the fight. 

In Shang Chi, the exterior of the building is shrouded in darkness, the only close ups come in the hand-to-hand exchanges between the cast. This is a dead giveaway that the physical set was maybe three or four sections of the scaffolding with the rest filled in digitally after the fact.

Honestly, it sucks to make any movie this way, but action scenes in particular get the worse of it. Fight scenes get their zing from their physicality, once you remove that, all their power is gone. The key here is clarity, we need to be able to have a good understanding of the lay of the land and how our characters move through it. By muddling the layout in darkness however, we lose track of where everyone is and, because the only time we actually see them up close is again when the camera cuts in close we can't tell what floor of the scaffolding the characters are on. All this means that there's no sense of rhythm to fight, it's all just a jumble of movement with no climax, it just... stops.

Even so, the movie saves the worst fight scene for last. The duel between Shang Chi and his father Wenwu is one of the most boring things I've ever seen on film. Again, on paper, it should be an excellent scene. Here, finally, is the emotional reckoning between Shang Chi and his father, played out through violence because that is the only communication they share any more. It's here I can somewhat see where people can like the movie, because it allows audiences to trick themselves into believing that the movie is doing more than it is.

I call this "projection storytelling," meaning that the movie has just enough depth that you as an audience member can project deeper emotions into the story than what's actually there.  

The Harry Potter franchise is a prime example of this, as well as everything Marvel has put on Disney+ so far. In this case, it has to do with what should be the stakes of this movie which is the relationship between Shang Chi, his father Wenwu, and his sister Xialing. We find out that a gang out for revenge against Wenwu came to their family for something he did when he was still going down the immortal warlord path. The gang kills Shang Chi's mother Li, which sets Wenwu back on the path of embracing the power of the ten rings, returning to his immortal warlord self.

There's tragedy here, obviously, not only in Li's death, but in Wenwu's reaction. Returning to the ten rings, cuts Wenu off from feeling vulnerable ever again. He's so afraid of ever allowing himself to feel weak that he cuts himself off from being the father his children need in the wake of their loss. It's this choice, not Li's death, that destroys their family, what drives Wenwu's grief throughout the movie, driving him to impossibly desperate, mad choices.

All of this is there in the movie, thanks largely to an absolutely heroic performance by Tony Leung, but it isn't a plot or a theme the movie is actively exploring. Like I said, we can put the pieces together, but only because the movie leaves them lying around like scattered Legos. 

Which brings us back to the fight. 

This fight should be sad, a solemn affair between a son desperate to have just one genuine emotional connection with the father he loves. Except Wenwu is too far gone, too lost in his own grief and regret, to accept that vulnerability ever again, leaving no other choice but to put him down.

We've seen this done in other media before. Castlevania did it to heartbreaking effect, as did The Last Airbender. To pull it off though, you have to invest the time to build the emotional stakes via the characters relationships to make it work. Marvel refuses to do this kind of work because if their films are solidly about something, they cease to be blank slates for audiences to consume while projecting whatever depth they want onto the finished product. 

Sure, this leads to success at the box office. The movie also has a 92% critic rating and a 98% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Obviously, in the short term, making such paper thin product is a solid business strategy. Except everything turns, eventually, and a media empire built out of sandcastles is bound to be swept away by the changing tides.

You and the Problem of Serial Killers

 

 

 

Source: Netflix

 

 

 

My girlfriend and I recently caught up on the Netflix original series You. We tried to watch the first season last year as part of our pandemic binging but gave up because the writing is terrible, the pacing is sluggish to near glacial, with characters so paper thin we couldn't even enjoy it as trash viewing. 

The next two seasons make almost no improvements on these problems but we went in to both seasons knowing the major twists which sort of helped. In the second season, knowing that Love is a serial killer, too, added depth to a season that completely lacked it otherwise. Knowing that season three ended with Joe killing Love didn't make the things better but it did at least add a sense of purpose, however misguided, to a stereotypical suburban sitcom.

 

If I had to pinpoint the core problem of You, it'd be that it thinks serial killers are interesting. True crime has warped people's perception of serial killers to the point that we've lost sight of what we find interesting about them, which is figuring out how their lives shaped them into the killers they became. But as for the people themselves, they're nothing, almost universally pathetic losers whose only impact on the world is the destruction they left in their wake. 

At heart, serial killers are little more than flesh suits acting out their obsessions and compulsions. Media depictions of serial killers tend to portray them as addicts, as otherwise functional people consumed by their desires. This is a necessary step because if you portrayed serial killers as they are, they'd be completely unmarketable.

Consider a scenario, if you will. You are out in public when suddenly, your stomach rumbles in the exact wrong way. You scramble, looking for a place to go, wandering, doing a mental checklist of which places have restrooms at all, ones that are open to the public, or ones where you have to buy something to justify your presence. All the while, the pressure continues to build, working its way down your intestines, each step threatening disaster. Finally, you remember where you can go, you work your way there, your every thought on holding it together for just that much longer until you reach the stall, plop on the toilet, then at long last, experience the sweet relief of release. 

This is what serial killers are, all the time. Just the tension and panic over having to take a shit in public until they find the perfect place to release that tension all at once. For all the horror they bring out, that's all every one of them is, nothing more. 

Where this causes problems for You is that it annihilates its capacity for drama. For drama to work, characters have to be put in situations that force them to make decisions that cause conflicts in the core of their identity. Emotional peril, not physical threats, is what drama runs on so, if your main character is an emotional void who doesn't have an interior life, your dramatic options become somewhat limited.

The end result of this is that Joe is forever trapped in a loop. He's always going to be looking for his perfect woman, his perfect "love," except, he never will. Joe's search will never be complete because no woman will ever live up to his fantasy because there's always going to be the pesky complications that all these women are real people. They're always going to have quirks, interests, and goals outside of Joe's need to be the center of their universe so he's always going to reject them.

That doesn't mean that there's no way to make this work. The show could have enough self-awareness to flesh out the characters so we understand what a loser Joe is, that he is essentially a child crying after they threw their favorite toy in the garbage who lashes out at every one who tells him the situation is his fault. Except, they won't. The show really wants us to be on Joe's side and it plays so heavily into his point of view with his constant voice over that everything has to be written to match his perspective. 

Problem is, his view of the world is so incredibly shallow. Every woman is either helpless in need of his protection or the latest backdrop for his mommy projections. Men are universally threats or obstacles. That's it. That is the sum total of his relationships to the outside world. 

If the show had better writing, we could see people as they are rather than filtered through Joe's fishbowl lens, but then the conceit of the show would collapse in a heartbeat. This is what torpedoes the third season, funnily enough. 

 

Love and Joe are living in suburbia, raising their baby in a life Joe says he always wanted. He's with a woman who loves him, who not only knows he's a murderer but completely accepts it. In fact, the fact that Joe's a murderer is why Love loves him- she sees him as a man who will do literally everything to protect what's important to him. Which, in a sense, is true. What Love, and by extension, the writers, miss however is that the only thing important to Joe is Joe. Their relationship falls apart because Joe, by definition, cannot recognize the validity of Love's feelings, let alone his obligation to satisfy them. That Love places expectations on Joe, that she expects to carry his own weight in their relationship and be her partner destroys Joe's fantasy, prompting his rejection and kick starting his search for a new obsession.

 

To be clear, I don't think these events in and of themselves are where the show goes wrong. Joe's failure to be a person is an accurate portrayal of what a serial killer is. We see Joe in the most perfect, ideal relationship he could ever possibly be in which just exposes  how much Joe is missing, how little there is to him, how small and inconsequential he is. Where the show screws up is that it takes Joe's side, framing everything as if Joe is the victim of circumstance, a man doing his best only to be undone by a partner with ludicrous expectations.

 

You wants to have it both ways. They want Joe to be a threat, to be dangerous, but they don't want him to be guilty of anything. The writers go all in on Joe's quest for a soul mate because it papers over his crimes, it makes it easier for us to accept the murders because they're supposedly committed in pursuit of a higher purpose instead of a sad little man compensating for his inadequacies through the destruction of others.

This reluctance to make Joe responsible means that the show lacks any meaningful tension. We know the show has no interest in making Joe face any consequences for his actions so any time Joe's worried about getting caught, we know he's not, that he's going to get off scot-free so, why bother? (To just emphasize this point, Joe kills an enforcer for the Russian mob when he comes to collect a $50,000 debt. It's never mentioned again.) 

In the end, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's only natural that a show so committed to uncritically depicting a serial killer would end up as shallow as its subject. 

Fear and Loathing in Sparta

 

 

Just Some Rich Asshole Image by

Dejan Krivokapic from Pixabay

 

 

 

 

I wanted to do a companion piece to my review of The Bronze Lie because the book gave me a lot to think about but I felt it distracted from discussing Cole's work. Like I said in the review, part of Cole's objective was to break down the myth of Sparta to cut down on how modern day fascist movements use them around the world. This is an interesting political question because to me it says a lot about how the fears that were the heart of Spartan society lay at the heart of our own.

We have to be careful writing about Sparta because, as Cole mentions, we have no first hand account of what the Spartans thought of themselves. There are no Spartan historians, philosophers, poets -the most acclaimed Spartan poet was probably an Athenian - playwrights, basically, every avenue humans have used to express themselves over the entirety of our existent, Sparta leaves us nothing. Everything we know about Sparta comes from other people telling us about them, which means we're getting depictions from people who were contemporaries (Herodotus, Thuycidides, Xenophon) or people writing much, much later (Plutarch). All of these authors have their own agenda's in their depictions of the Spartans, so we have to phase everything we know about them through a filter of "What does this author get from depicting them in this way" and apply it to what we know about human behavior.

What's interesting is that this fuzziness makes the Spartans the most convenient historical analogue we have on hand. The lack of messy, contradictory details means we can project onto them whatever traits we find most desirable. Whatever we're afraid our own culture doesn't have, we can say the Spartans did, because who is around to argue otherwise? Cole rightly calls out the anxiety at the root of this behavior, ascribing to ancient civilizations what we are most of lacking in our own. Still, projections only work if there's something solid behind them which, in my opinion, that something is the fear.

If you're wondering what the Spartans were so afraid of, that's easy enough to answer: it was their slaves. As I pointed out in my review, the helots - Sparta's slave class - made up 90% of Sparta's population. And if that number makes  you question how such a small Spartan minority maintained control over such a massive slave population the answer is simple: murder. Lots and lots of state sanctioned murder. How it would work is that the ephors - a five-member executive council that partly governed Sparta - would declare war on the helots, allowing any Spartan citizen to kill helots at any time without fear of legal or religious sanction. Just to repeat that so there's no misunderstanding, every year, the Spartan government declared war on its own slave class so its citizens could murder said slaves at will with no repercussions.

Another method of control the Spartans employed was the krypteia, the final part of the Spartan agoge where the boys would go out in the fields, hiding during the day, then fan out at night, killing whatever helots they found or ones they had spied on and thought could cause the most trouble. 

Keep in mind, this is usually the fate of helot men. For the helot women, they got to live with the constant wondering if their family members would come home at night, and, of course, rape. We know the scale of this because the Spartans had an entire social class of the offspring of Spartan men and helot women. Called either the nothoi (it translates to 'bastards') or mothax, the men were sometimes sponsored into the agoge by wealthy Spartan families and fought with their masters in the hoplite phalanxes alongside their masters. But again, I feel the need to repeat this because the sheer scale of this problem almost boggles the mind so, one more, with feeling: Spartan men raped their women slaves so much they created a distinct social class as a result.

This then, is Spartan life. A life of leisure built on top of an unrelenting campaign of murder, rape, and terror. But like I said, these campaigns are built to make the helots more afraid of the Spartans than the Spartans were of their slaves. The Spartans lived in constant fear of their helots turning on them, to the point that the first thing the Spartan did after a devastating earthquake in 464 BC was to mobilize the army to quell a helot rebellion. This turned out to be a prescient move, because revolt the helots did.

We tend to limit our understanding of slavery to the concept of one human being owning another, then leave it at that. We don't think about all the cultural justifications that get built up to justify the practice. This usually means our thinking tends to drift into thinking of slaves as accepting of their condition or at the very least attuned to their station. Things get much messier if you consider that slaves apparent complacency was bought by the constant threat (and practice) of murder they lived under.

I feel that I cannot emphasize enough that the Spartans engaged in these barbaric practices because they were utterly terrified of their slaves revolting against them. They would have been keen to avoid any sign of weakness lest they give their slaves the idea that they could be over thrown. This then serves as a good example as to why the brutality of slave societies exists, it reflects the terror the masters live in the shadow of two simple facts: 1. there are far more slaves around then there are masters, and 2. should the slaves recognize this, you can't kill them all.

Slavery is the easy thing to beat the Spartans up about, though. We shouldn't forget that the other thing we should scorn them for is that they, as a culture, seemed dedicated to learning nothing. The bulk of Spartan military history runs from the first Messenian War which started in 743 BC to the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, a period of just under 400 years. Throughout that time, which Cole documents repeatedly, the Spartans are beset by the same tactical and strategic errors, seemingly never implementing any of the lessons their defeats should have taught them. So think that through, almost 400 years of constant fighting and the Spartan army shows no signs of adaptation, improvement, or flexibility over the centuries. There are some individual moments, like one battle where the Spartan general does a valiant job trying to break into the fort his army is seizing. That he doesn't succeed is because the defenders have more options to make their defense last than he has to attack, but, this is the one notable exception and we never see a repeat of this behavior. 

What should we make then, of a society so committed to ignorance that it would rather lose the same battles in the same way over and over again than adapt to its circumstances? On a side note, this is yet another reason why we should discard the idea that the agoge was a military academy - if you don't train your soldiers in the tactics of the battles they're going to be fighting, your goal isn't to train soldiers. If we wanted to emulate the Spartans than Cole's project wouldn't exist, mainly because it involved actual work but also because the bedrock on which the project rests is questioning what we've been taught and testing it against the evidence to see if the story holds up.

The last thing I want to touch on is that what Spartan society shows us is the danger of a society under elite capture. Practically every bit of work done in Sparta - the farming, weaving, smithing, weapon making, every bit of it was done to support the idle Spartiates who remember, literally did no work at all. This funneling of every possible resource into the minority concentration of Spartan hands left Spartan society hollowed out - it had no commerce, no trade, nothing to economically support itself. So when Sparta's power over their slaves broke, there was nothing for them to fall back on save their own image. To be fair, they've successfully sold that image for over a thousand years to every Western culture that's followed them. Still, I think that if all you have to trade in a society is a mirage of its heavily  disputed glory, it's safe to call that society a failure on multiple levels.

Cole has a lot of compassion for the Spartans, a feeling I do not share. The worst thing, in my opinion, about every slaver is that they have but one life to give in return for the thousands they destroy. No matter the personal struggles and triumphs of the individual Spartans, that their lives depended on the misery of literally hundreds of thousands of people makes those personal problems irrelevant in my eyes. On top of all that, the vampiric relationship the Spartiates had with the rest of society left the society powerless to adapt long-term to any of its problems which left Sparta as little more than antiquity's version of Branson, Missouri.

Cole is right though that we should avoid casting the Spartans as monsters. History isn't a morality play for later generations to sift through for heroes and villains to venerate or scorn as we see fit. Everything the Spartans struggled with are things we struggle with now, with much of the same dynamics at play. You can't tell me there are so many industries going on strike because workers are getting fair treatment from their employers. Or that the shortages we're experiencing because of the monopoly consolidation in the shipping industry has made our societies more resistant to systemic shocks.

The problems of oppression and exploitation aren't unique to Sparta. These problems exist in every political, economic, and social system we've ever invented. We need to recognize that the Spartans are all too human, that their failures are our own, failures that we've repeated for thousands of years before and since. Most importantly, we need to recognize the Spartans as human because if nothing else, we need to recognize ourselves in their actions so that, if nothing else, we can resolve to do better than those assholes ever did. 

The Bronze Lie Review

 

Aside from the Romans, there is no ancient culture more lionized than the Greek city of Sparta. The Spartans enjoy the almost unassailable cultural image of badass, ultimate warriors, men who carved themselves out of the brutality of the world into invincible armies who steamrolled all who stood before them. Even when they lose, like the near legendary battle of Thermopylae, they win because they die heroically defending freedom from evil, tyrannical dictators. It's such an intrinsic part of Western culture that French historian Francois Ollier coined the term "The Spartan Mirage" to describe the near rapturous acclaim the ancient civilization enjoyed then and now.

Which makes Myke Cole's book The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy so incredibly refreshing. Cole looks to achieve two things with his work, present an unbiased overview of Spartan military performance, then use the result of that analysis to punch as many holes as he can in the fetishized myth of who the Spartans were. And, for the most part, Cole is successful in this, walking his readers through every battle the Spartans participated in, from the Archaic era when Sparta is enslaving their neighbors, to the final desperate attempts at relevance before settling into their fate as a tourist trap for the ancient Romans. 

As Cole points out, the Spartans legacy rests on their reputation for being a society of professional soldiers who abhorred wealth, lived in a firmly egalitarian society, and defended their fellow man from tyrants both foreign and domestic. Cole abolishes each of these pillars as he goes, showing us a Sparta that often had to be dragged into fighting, who installed oligarchs and tyrants whenever they had the chance to, who won the Peloponnesian Wars on the back of Persian gold. Also, for a people who hated wealth more than anything, the amount of Spartan generals and kings who flee the city after taking bribes from their enemies becomes something of a running joke as the book continues.

The book is incredibly easy and accessible to read. Part of this comes from Cole's experience as a veteran and his personal testimonies from participating in reenactments using the same gear the hoplites themselves used.  His ability to guide the reader through the momentum of a battle, breakdown the tactical and strategic goals of not only the Spartans but the people they fought against gives the reader a clear sense of cause-and-effect out of the chaotic mess of human decisions on the battlefield. Cole's most helpful tool in this is his self-coined Law of Competence, which holds that everyone involved in these battles knew what they were doing, which allows us to discard anything in the ancient sources that depends on the people involved being complete morons. There's a tendency to take ancient sources at their word, completely at face value. We forget that people have always been people, every writer has an agenda and crafts their work to fulfill it. So it's nice to see Cole call bullshit when necessary and present what he is always clear is his own best, and personal, interpretation of the battle and the participants motives.

All throughout, Cole is constantly checking the presentation of the Spartans against their actions, calling them out and giving praise as the situation requires. Which makes the one exception to this stand out all the more. Part of the Spartan myth is that they were raised to be the ultimate warriors through the agoge - basically the school system for Spartan citizens. Cole largely goes along with the interpretation of the agoge as a early military academy except, his own analysis should lead him to question this. The boys in the agoge were separated from their families at the age of seven, were intentionally under fed and sleep deprived, and then encouraged to steal food to make up for the shortfall in their rations. Cole says that the idea of this is supposedly to make the Spartans learn to be stealthy and be fleet of foot around their enemies and that the regular beatings and trauma of going through the program would engender a shared sense of hardship which would solidify unit cohesiveness when battle came. Except, as Cole has regular reason to say, the Spartans almost never scout their enemies or the battlefield ahead of time, and their famed sense of cohesion is much more "touch and go" then everyone has been led to believe.

So if the agoge is a training academy, it abysmally fails to impart the lessons of stealth or unit cohesion and should be rightly brought low for doing so. More than likely though, the agoge was never meant to be a military academy, but a tool to beat adherence to Sparta's social structure into the younger generation. The shared sense of trauma may not have created military cohesion, but it probably did ensure the arch conservative streak that Sparta was famous for continued, even has Sparta itself faded into irrelevance.

Overall, what we see unfold in Cole's pages is a Sparta that did have an advantage in the straight ahead phalanx to phalanx battle that was standard in Greece at the time, but Cole is always insistent pointing out that this advantage came from the Spartans being the tiny aristocratic minority that sat at the top of a pyramid of slavery and oppression. That the Spartans trained at all is what separated them from the other Greek polis' totally amateur armies, but it wasn't regimented training run by the government, it was just aristocratic dandies filling up their free-time. What we also see is that this is also the only area Sparta had any advantage or really even competence in. As mentioned, Sparta almost never engaged in scouting or reconnaissance work before their battles, they are absolutely god-awful at sieges -seriously, the amount of times the Spartans are stopped dead in their tracks by their enemy moving behind a wall is hysterical. 

What especially helps is that Cole doesn't treat this like the Spartans are a sports team. While he does helpfully keep a running tally of their wins, losses, and draws, Cole understands that the numbers aren't the story. Thermopylae for example is one of the most decisive defeats in world history, yet it's the Spartans most celebrated battle. The story is that the Spartans knew the battle was hopeless but went any way, sacrificing themselves to save Greece from the tides of the Persian horde. None of that is true, as Cole lays out. Why send for reinforcements, for example, if the point is to die anyway? The battle of Thermopylae was meant to be the holding point, the best place they could use to neutralize the Persians massive numerical advantage. The Greeks amassed an army of 7,00 men to do this, then got flattened like pancakes in three days. Turning the battle into an intentionally doomed crusade was a propaganda story invented on the fly to keep the Greek morale from collapsing.

And yet, not all defeats are created equal. In a different context, like the Battle of Leuctra which saw the Sacred Band of Thebes completely annihilate the Spartan military and permanently crippled Sparta to the point where their power essentially disintegrated. What Cole does is put each battle in the context of the war the Spartans were fighting along with how they fit into the broader mythology we crafted for them over the millennia.

The picture that emerges of Sparta is a society of aristocrats who were terrified of the slaves who made up 90% of their society. Which, is fair, considering the multiple slave uprisings Sparta would then have to spend years putting down. Over and over, we see Sparta sending out token participation forces, sometimes even only they've been threatened by their allies, offering up one excuse after the other. Cole argues, persuasively, that what lay behind Sparta's refusal to innovate is that they had to constantly keep their defenses turned inward, lest their slaves finally get a chance to make good on their desire to "eat their masters raw." Furthermore, because Sparta was so stingy with who was a citizen, the number of full citizen Spartans continued to dwindle, making the Spartans hold on power more tenuous, more fragile, to the point where they couldn't afford to take any chances with new endeavors because they couldn't risk losing any of their dwindling numbers.

In the end, the effect of all this is that we see the Spartans as just another society. They have their own goals, their own flaws, they have every thing we have, just in a different flavor. Cole says at one point that all he's shown us is people, not evil people but, I have to take a small issue with that. I don't believe you can be part of society that depends on so much slavery and exploitation without being a little evil because of it. But then, what society hasn't been based off the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few? That the Spartans were so excessive about this just makes them different by degrees, not kind. Never mind the fact that we can only have these philosophical discussions when we know the details, when we see different cultures and societies not as some strange alien invention, but as an extension of ourselves. Thanks to Cole's work, I believe we can finally move our discussions of the Spartans out of the hazy mirage of godhood we've cloaked them in into the solid, messy world of humanity where they belong.

Yes, But Also

 

 

 

 Pieces like this one at Naked Capitalism bring out... conflicting isn't the word so let's say split feelings in me. The article is about how communication strategies for getting people vaccinated can backfire, basically for some segments of the population, more aggressive messaging can harden their reluctance to get the vaccine rather than ease it. What I'm split on is that yes, it is important to know how your messaging is effecting people, how it can be better, and to correct mistakes so you can achieve the goal. But on the other hand, I'm tired of pretending that if we tailor our messages in just the right way, then opposition to the vaccine will just melt away.

Obviously, the goal is get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can. So we need to make sure that the messaging is as effective as it can be. Whatever it takes to get people lining up for that jab, right? But at the same time, fuck these people. When we keep  almost weekly news stories about right wing personalities dying because they weren't vaccinated, I honestly struggle to see how it's very news worthy. "Man who refused to get treatment for highly infectious disease dies from that disease," isn't exactly a surprising turn of events. 

Then again, mocking these people's audience and dancing on their hosts grave isn't exactly the best way to make them believe you're on their side. Or that your primary concern is their continued well being. There's a long history of propaganda on the right that their political opponents see them as a mass of sub-human swine who, if they can't be corralled, are only fit for the slaughter. Which, yes, it doesn't help to reinforce this, but the idea that conservatives are under siege from the rest of society is the only story conservatism has about itself. If that hasn't changed over the course of centuries, I doubt a more even tone from newscasters on CNN will sway things very much.

Still, its wrong to treat people, especially ones you don't like, as a monolith. It's hard to convince someone you want them to take an opportunity to change when you're dancing on the grave of their loved one, telling the survivors that they deserved everything they because they believed people like Tucker Carlson. Shoving their family members death in their faces, if nothing else, is not a very good rhetorical strategy which, if your goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible, you need to be careful about how you act because everything finds its way online these days. Someone is going to see you being a dick about their dead mom, so just keep that in mind.

However, it's bullshit that in this setup the "just get the vaccine already," crowd has to keep their emotions in check, or at least as neutral as possible, while the anti-vax crowd gets license to do whatever they want. On twitter the other day, I came across this screen shot of some one asking for legal advice and I think it's good for you to read it in full:

This woman lost her child because her boss not only refused to get vaccinated but refused to protect anyone from catching it once she knew she was diagnosed with COVID. When we talk about people getting mad at others for refusing to get the vaccine, this is what we're talking about. it's easy to frame this conversation in terms of elitist libs mocking homespun conservatives as ignorant hicks because that's a trope we use for everything, all the time. It makes the debate feel familiar, as just one more extension of a never ending culture war that consumes every aspect of our lives. Sure, there are elements of that trope, no doubt, but the prime driver of this rage is the bodies. The thousands of dead or infected who will possibly carry the effects of the disease for the rest of their lives. Why are those seeking to get people vaccinated told that they cannot react on their emotions, that they must keep them in check in order to extend every possible grace and fairness towards those who dismiss them at every turn?

There's also the the problem that vaccines are just the latest front of denial during the pandemic. At first, the disease didn't even exist. Then, it was just the flu. Then, it was nothing to worry about because it only had a 1% mortality rate. Now, it's that vaccines and vaccine mandates are fascist, authoritarian measures anathema to the very idea of American freedom. All these policy stances were ones that conservatives adopted and championed to protect their own political positions, no one on MSNBC or The New York Times made them say these things because they called them names.

The conservative fight against vaccines has nothing to do with science or freedom or anything else that comes out of their mouths. Their opposition comes from the fact that having to wear a mask or get a vaccine violates the one true principle of conservatism. If you're not familiar with it, the one principle of conservatism is that there must be an in group which the law protects but does not bind, along side out groups which the law binds but does not protect. Public health measures shatter this principle because they require conservatives to do things for people who are inherently (in their mind) inferior and imposes consequences for failing to do so. All the talking points, all the lies about the vaccine come from this central violation which means that no amount of messaging or coddling will change the conservative outlook completely.

Even so, it's important to still try. I have no sympathy for those who refuse to get the vaccine and die, but that doesn't mean I want them to. No one should have to experience begging for a vaccine (or really, their lives) before they get intubated a few days before they're dead. It's a pointless, horrific way to die, even if they brought it upon themselves, it still isn't anything to celebrate. Also, and a bit more cynically I will admit, the more people who go unvaccinated, the more it puts everyone at risk as more variants evolve to become vaccine resistant, spreading from those who got their shot and those who didn't with little distinction. Even if you can't empathize or sympathize, which to be clear, I have incredible difficultly with both, paying attention to how vaccine messaging is used is important even if the only compelling reason you can find is self-preservation.

Things I Wished I Loved: Killing Them Softly

I really wanted to like Andrew Dominik's 2012 film Killing Them Softly. The movie was the second collaboration between Dominik and Brad Pitt after the commercial flop of the criminally under seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford- I'm guessing the plan was that a punchier run time paired with a more manageable title would lead to a better box office return. The film is a tight 97 minutes but still manages to pack in the same thematic work of the stripping away the mythology to get to the ugly, mundane realities of a beloved American myth that Assassination was packed to the brim with. Everyone here is stellar, too. Pitt gives one of the best performances of his career with Richard Kind, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Scott McNairy, and Ben Mendelsohn rounding out the cast. 

It's just such a shame that it all goes to waste. 

What kills this movie dead, what made it infuriating to watch in theaters and only gets worse on a rewatch, is the movie's insistence on putting the subtext through a bullhorn. 

The film takes place amidst the financial ruin and presidential election of 2008. Which, honestly, is perfect. The plot of the movie is centered around finding out who is responsible for disturbing the order of the world to set things right again so having the world collapse in the background provides some nice commentary about how performative and improvised these measures of control really are. There's also a nice corollary to the fundamental criminal nature of our financial system and how uncomfortably well it lines up with the kick up tributary system of La Cosa Nostra.

Instead of letting this marinate in the background, though, the movie brings its subtext to the forefront at every possible opportunity. The robbery of the gambling den that sets the plot off has C-SPAN on in the background, Hank Paulson's congressional testimony blares over a montage of two goons waiting to pick up a suspect, the camera lingers on a speech made by candidate Obama even after characters move out of frame, even the final climatic conversation is framed by Obama's victory speech. 

There's a fifteen minute period in the movie where none of this happens, where Dominik lets things lie and the story play out which makes the movie sores during this time. James Gandolfini has one the best scenes of his career wallowing in pathetic self pity, Pitt and McNairy trade one of the best subtly threatening conversations ever put to film and the assassinations that bring the whole sordid affair to a close are so expertly done that there's a thrill to how cold and professional they are. 

Even the movie's closing line, which should be an instant classic, feels more like the film berating you with its point instead of honing the theme to fine, sharp edge.

And yet. I find myself replaying "America isn't a country, it's just a business" and "I'm American. And in America you're on your own," over and over in my head these days. The social fabric of this country is so nonexistent that you can't even get people to wear a piece of cloth over their mouths in public because why should anyone be slightly inconvenienced for another person's benefit without getting something in return? Get a free vaccine? Nope. Texas and Florida are going so far as to ban local governments from instituting any anti-COVID measures because of "freedom" or whatever.

Hell, that isn't even the only thing that resonates in the movie. A huge thread of the movie is that the Mob, the most romanticized criminal organization, symbol of freedom from the drudgery of everyday life, has straitjacketed itself by adopting the structures and strictures of corporate America. For all the talk about self-determination, they're bound by the grind, trapped by the unrelenting need for money to fund our basic necessities. How free are then, if the only way they can live on our own is if they victimize someone else lest they get left out in the cold to hungry?

You have no idea how badly I want to say that Andrew Dominik made not only the best Western of the 21st century but also the best crime movie since Heat and that we should all be kicking ourselves for sleeping on them both. But then I just remember that slow zoom in on Obama as Gandolfini walks out of frame so the movie can grind itself to a halt for a few seconds so all the peasants understand what's happening and I just want to bang my head against the wall in frustration, baffled that a quiet masterpiece of a movie insists on tripping over itself on something so maddeningly trivial. 

If you're bored one night scrolling and these things don't bother you as much as they bother me, check it out. I may have a lot of problems with the movie but I at it'd be nice if people actually saw the damn thing.