Yeah, But You Haven't Read the Comics

I'm writing about the new Superman movie this week, because I liked last week's Major Spoiler picture so much, so getting the warning out early:

"That's right, I'm back."

Well, that and the fact that I just watched Man of Steel last night. So it's even topical!

The movie itself is not amazing, although I'll admit I liked it. The effects were mostly pretty good, and I enjoyed Michael Shannon chewing the scenery as General Zod. The fight scenes, on the other hand, were kind of a pain to watch, not just because I didn't have my glasses on, but because Zack Snyder's directing style is clearly a product of the Peter Jackson School of Frenetic Pacing. I was also kind of put off by the ridiculous amount of carnage, which seems a little funny for a movie where they're portraying Superman as some kind of space-Jesus.

Intriguingly, the Kryptonian symbol for "hope" is very similar to the Earth-letter "S". Go figure.

Now, I watched it with my little sister, who hated it. She had the same objections as me, but also didn't like Michael Shannon's performance, which I can agree was hamstrung by a pretty dodgy script. But I do kind of wonder if my appreciation of the movie was also partly informed by the fact that I had the weight of decades of comics history in mind while watching it.

I've never been a huge Superman fan, but I like the idea of the character, and really loved the Bruce Timm-designed Superman cartoon from the 90s. Just like Batman, he's an archetype (I don't like the word "iconic"), and you always know that a Superman story will have crazy things like aliens and giant gorillas and a rainbow of kryptonite.

Just FYI, this is the idea I'm pitching to Christopher Nolan for the second film, so hands off.

I also appreciate the idea of Zod, which is basically the question, what would happen if there was an evil Superman running around? In the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC continuity that I grew up reading, Zod and his minions were so dangerous that Superman was eventually forced to kill them, in order to defend humanity; that act was always presented as haunting Superman, because it was such a betrayal of his ideals that he swore he'd never do it again.

So naturally, in the movie, that's the outcome when he's going hand-to-hand with Zod in the climax. Zod's just discovered that Earth's sun gives him heat vision, and he's preparing to use it to incinerate some hapless family, so Superman is forced to break Zod's neck to save them. It was a satisfying conclusion when it happened, in part because Henry Cavill really sold what a struggle it was for his character to do that. Or at least, that was my first impression.

When my fore-brain took over again, it occurred to me that this movie-Superman doesn't really have that weight of refusing to kill, because we haven't really seen him in action. According to the movie it's his first outing in the cape and tights, so to be honest, for all we know he'll spend the next two movies (I presume it'll be a trilogy) cheerfully slaughtering his way through an endless succession of Lex Luthors, Parasites, Brainiacs and giant radioactive gorillas.

That is to say, it's a powerful moment, but it relies on our cultural understanding of Superman, and how he's the ultimate Boy Scout. I liked it at first, but then a second later I realized that we hadn't really earned it, and that was kind of frustrating. And it must have been even more frustrating for my sister, because she doesn't have the same knowledge of Superman's history as I do.

I kind of wonder how many of these book-to-movie or comic-to-movie transitions rely on the same thing. Obviously, the Red Wedding in the third season of Game of Thrones works regardless of whether you've read the books. But things like Batman, Superman or Star Trek have been around for decades, so they're even more imprinted on the cultural consciousness; everybody knows that Batman brings the Joker in at the end, and that Captain Kirk's going to get his shirt ripped open gratuitously at some point.

This is clearly the fine line that filmmakers have to keep in mind when rebooting a well-known property. You don't want to mess around with it too much, because then it's not Superman or whatever anymore, but you also don't necessarily have time to fully get your character to the point that everybody  recognizes. In this case, I think Zack Snyder probably got the balance wrong.

But then, I hated Skyfall, which loads of other people seemed to like, so maybe my problem is that I can't turn my brain off for these sorts of things.

In any case, I'm hoping the next movie introduces the whole Superman family, ranging from Krypto the Super-Dog to Comet the Super-Horse, fighting against Mr Mxyzptlk. And then the third movie can be Mxyzptlk teaming up with Bat-Mite for a World's Greatest Heroes-style crossover...

Star Trek and the Death of Expertise

Just a quick head's up, there are spoilers in this blog for Star Trek Into Darkness, so if you haven't seen it yet... well, you've been warned.

Not what I originally wanted for this graphic, but how could I not use it?

I think I've already been kind of vocal (on Twitter) about how disappointing I found Star Trek Into Darkness, the second film in JJ Abrams's rebooted Trek franchise. A lot of it didn't make sense (like why the hell were Kirk and Bones stealing that scroll from the aliens in the beginning?), it messed with old Trek pretty clumsily (the whole Khan thing, the way Kirk saves the ship at cost of his own life and then gets resurrected by that tribble), and it just dragged on.

For the record, there were things I liked about it: the rebooted Klingons were pretty cool, it was big and loud and 'splodey, and the civilian costumes didn't look quite as stupid as they did on the TV shows from the 90s. Although I couldn't help thinking that the grey Starfleet uniforms made Kirk and Spock look like they were Imperial officers from Star Wars.

"It's true, Jim, I'm being assigned to the Death Star."

"I don't recall authorizing that."

But one of the things that lost me early on was how Kirk keeps getting reassigned to command of the Enterprise, despite being clearly unqualified; all he seems to have to do is hang around on the bridge long enough for his commanding officer to get killed. It was kind of silly in the previous movie - Captain Pike goes off to be tortured by Nero, leaves Spock in command, Kirk makes Spock show emotion or something, and quickly deposes Spock as captain.

But if that was ridiculous, then how much more ridiculous is the whole business in STID where Kirk gets reassigned to be Pike's executive officer, and five minutes later Khan slaughters Pike and Kirk is once again in the big chair? It begs the question of whether Kirk's been slipping backhanders to all these bad guys, just to get the ever-unfortunate Captain Pike out of the way.

I understand that the scriptwriters needed to get all of the characters in place for the good stuff. In the TV shows, every single one of the captains is smart, competent, with all kinds of experience that led them to the bridge of their respective ships (or space station, in Captain Sisko's case), but that doesn't necessarily make for a good movie. On the other hand, all I could think here was, what exactly makes Kirk (in these two movies) qualified to command the Starfleet flagship, when he hasn't even graduated from the academy or paid his dues through the chain of command? If Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof are to be believed, it's that he's decisive and not hamstrung by logic or procedure.

Sound familiar?

No! Stop asking!

I doubt the rebooted Star Trek movies had any kind of clever thing to say about the state of world affairs. And that's okay, y'know. I still maintain that Christopher Nolan got it so, so right in the Dark Knight - despite the fact that I never once thought George W Bush did a good job handling the War on Terror. But it feels like part of an undercurrent in the media where we don't trust experts to be good at their jobs.

A lot of economists and authors have made a lot of money in the last decade suggesting that even the smartest experts can't predict big, unexpected events. I haven't read Nassim Nicholas Taleb (but I plan to), but based on what I've heard, I kind of take issue with the idea that nobody in charge could have predicted the massive crash we experienced in 2008 - experts could (and should) have predicted that the massive bubble was coming. That's why they're experts: they're meant to understand what the trends in their respective fields mean.

You might say that hindsight is always 20/20, and you'd be right. The real issue is that these things happen, and so normal people come away with the idea that no expert anywhere can be trusted, in any field. I remember talks with a former work friend, years and years ago, who couldn't be proved wrong; it didn't matter whether you'd studied a subject, or wrote about it for a living, he always knew better. He as much as said on one or two occasions that he never believed what "experts" had to say about anything.

In practice, you see this with how people think and talk about politicians. I read somewhere that the prevailing opinion among the electorate is currently that you only go into politics if there's something kind of wrong with you (like, Asperger's syndrome or something, that being the new vogue diagnosis). Those jerks in Washington are out of touch? Let's toss the bums out every couple of years and get someone new in.

The problem is that you start to run out of people who know how to craft legislation, who know how to build consensus, or work with others of differing opinions to get things done. These aren't skills that people are born with, so the less time elected officials have in office, the less time they have to learn these skills. I'm not saying unequivocally that there shouldn't be term limits, but someone needs to think through, for example, how to avoid lame duck syndrome setting in when a representative or senator or MP is on their last term.

Because you know what the real effect of sowing mistrust of "experts" among the electorate or the wider public is? An unengaged public that doesn't pay attention when actors with bad intentions - such as the Koch Brothers or these think-tanks that run around writing the same legislation for multiple states to use in disenfranchising minorities and the poor or in eroding civil liberties.

And that, to bring things back around, really isn't in the spirit of Star Trek. Just like these two most recent movies.

Gender Theory and the Zombie Apocalypse

It seems like lately all everyone is talking about is the end of the world.

Now, I'm aware that's not the most groundbreaking statement, but it's kind of struck me lately. When everybody was talking about the Mayan apocalypse last December, I kind of tuned it out, because that's what you do when people are talking poppycock all over the place. But even though nothing happened with that Mayan business, it's still on people's minds, judging by what's happening in popular culture just at the moment. Exhibit A being two separate comedies (This Is The End, by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and The World's End, from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg) that are getting ready to hit theaters.

Hitting theaters like this! Just like this!

Now, the immediate trigger for me was Joe Rogan's podcast. I downloaded a couple of episodes to listen to while doing data entry at work, because they featured Tim Ferriss talking about his books, the 4-Hour Body and the 4-Hour Chef. The latter book, in particular, also falls into the scope of this week's blog, because Ferriss has a section on living off the land, complete with dire predictions of what would happen if the lights or the water went out for extended periods of time. That discussion, on the podcast, prompted reflections by Joe Rogan about how he'd like to band together with his friends and their families to buy a farm and, I presume, be ready for anything.

I don't know what Rogan's podcast is usually like, since those are the only episodes I've listened to, but it sounds like it's on his mind, much like it's clearly on Tim Ferriss's. Although I'd like to take this opportunity to say that, if society really does collapse, his advice on catching and killing pigeons for food is probably not the most helpful - zombies or no zombies, I wouldn't like to sit around on park benches waiting for pigeons to come near enough to fall into my grasp.

However, mention of zombies brings me to Exhibit B, namely the Walking Dead, and all the other zombie or rage-virus-related media out there (just pointing out, 28 Days Later isn't a zombie movie, because the infected aren't undead). These shows or whatever clearly posit that a zombie outbreak would be an extinction-level event; the Walking Dead goes one step further and asks what happens to our weak and coddled society when - similar to the above - we can't just press a button and have a pizza appear magically 30 minutes or so later at our front door.

"You said 30 minutes or less. That was an hour ago."

I'd say that this is the aspect that sets the current strain of apocalyptic thinking from previous ones. After all, apparently everyone in the 1950's was convinced they'd be incinerated by nuclear war, and by the 90's that had turned into fears about pandemics, whether natural or man-made; well, that or giant asteroids - planetary impacts were big in the late 90's, clearly. In all of those stories, the idea was that the event - nuclear war, pandemic, asteroid strike - would wipe us all out.

Now the stories all seem to start after the event, and focus on how the survivors cope (or don't). The main idea driving a lot of these things is clearly that, since we've swapped chasing antelope on the plains of the Serengeti for sitting in offices and writing about telecoms (to pick an example out of the air at complete random), we're clearly making ourselves prey for anything bigger, faster or meaner that's on its way toward us.

I guess that means that we've all become really insecure, all of a sudden. And by we, it occurs to me that I'm referring to men; these stories are all about bad-ass dudes figurin' out how to hunt an' skin a deer before the zombies get us. Apart from the Resident Evil movies, of course, since their main character is an ever-more-badass Milla Jovovich.

I'm being flippant, but I don't really want to mock dudes' insecurities; though I do think it's important to point out that this rise in survivalist horror is probably linked to the rise of men's rights advocacy groups (although these strains are very different from one another).

We do see a lot of news stories talking about how badly men appear to be doing: grades are down, college graduation rates are down, jobs aren't as plentiful as before (depending on who you talk to, at any rate). Some of the more excitable and maladjusted have started blaming women for these problems, as if allowing half the population to enter the workforce and (maybe one day) paying them an equal wage means that men automatically get screwed.

Other guys, in questioning what exactly a man is good for now that he's not the de facto breadwinner and paterfamilias, have started wondering why they can't do things with their hands the way their dads could. I'm one example, I'll freely admit, and was rather pathetically pleased with myself last summer for figuring out on my own how to replace a light switch and a light fixture; but it's in pop culture, too, with Tim Ferriss, for example, saying at the start of 4-Hour Chef that he took up cooking because he wanted to learn to do something with his hands. And there are other books out there talking about how to do things the way your dad used to - you know, like stripping wires and putting up barns and all of that.

Nabbed off Amazon; clearly a man who knows what he's doing.

So, in some way, this worrying of ours turns into daydreams about grabbing your gun and your wife, hopping in the Winnebago, and carving out a life of safety with your own two hands. The American Dream, except that guys in the UK (and the rest of Europe, for all I know) are also thinking about it.

I won't link these threads any tighter than I've done so far, or imply any further causality; my understanding of men's rights groups is (thankfully) not so deep, and I wouldn't like to ruin my enjoyment of Tim Ferriss's books or the Walking Dead by finding out that creepy survivalist woman-haters are using them as holy texts. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Der Ball ist Rund

Another Champions League has come and gone, and a new club has been crowned the best in Europe, at least until next year. By beating Bundesliga rivals Borussia Dortmund last night, Bayern Munich won its fifth Champions League title, to go along with having won the German championship this season; Bayern also stands the chance of making a sweep of the silverware this year, if it beats Stuttgart for the DFB-Pokal, the German equivalent of the FA Cup.

The game itself wasn't exactly one for the ages; the first half was characterized by dominance shifting from one half of the pitch to the other, while the goals only started coming in the second half. Of course, both of the previous times that teams from the same country faced each other the Champions League was decided by penalties (Chelsea v Manchester United in 2008, and Juventus v AC Milan in 2003), so this was at least an improvement.

More important, though, is what this portends for the European game in general. Last year I suggested that most of the previous decade had been a period of dominance for English clubs, although I also suggested this dominance was slightly illusory, given that no English team had won in open play during that time (including, as I said, in 2008). But I still believe that whenever a team gets to the Champions League final, year after year, win or lose, they are clearly the best in Europe. And by that measure, even if they'd lost last Bayern would still be Europe's strongest team, having reached the final last year and in 2010.

Will the next few years see German dominance of European football? I think it's a good bet (and I'm not the only one), particularly as Germany has finally knocked Italy out of the top tier of Champions League countries, and will send four teams to next year's competition, rather than just three.

It's also worth considering the performance of the German national team over the previous years. Germany's reached the final or semi-final of every major international tournament since 2006, by playing fast, attacking football that relies on carving opposing defenses open with excellent passing and fluid movement. For other countries, the strength of the national team would be less lightly correlated with that of individual club teams, but the Bundesliga is probably the best league for homegrown talent, better even than the Spanish league (notwithstanding Barcelona, which is effectively the Spanish national team plus Lionel Messi). In 2005, for instance, when AC Milan faced Liverpool in the Champions League final there were only three Italian and three English players starting for either team.

The key to this success, of course, has been Germany's excellent youth policy, which allowed the German FA to bring talented young players into the team quickly every couple of years; players like Lukas Podolski or Bastian Schweinsteiger, who made their first appearances in 2004, are now well established in the national set-up. They're unlikely to win next year's World Cup, because it'll be in Brazil, which has been waiting over half a century to win the World Cup on home soil, but look out for them to get to the semi-final again, at the very least.

To sum up, if connoisseurs of football were following Italy's Serie A in the 90s and Spain's Primera Liga in the 00s, then this decade already looks like it belongs to the Bundesliga.

Meeting Your Heroes

This week, the very day I got back to London from New York, I got to catch a show by Chris Hardwick at the Leicester Square Theatre. I heard about it before leaving, and dutifully bought tickets and roped a friend into coming, despite the late hour (10pm). The show itself was lots of fun, as he spent most of it talking to the crowd rather than doing his Mandroid set or testing out lots of new material.

After the show, he came out and talked to the fans, as in a receiving line, so that we could each get a picture with him and get him to sign our copies of his book. Despite the jet-lag, he was able to muster a cheery manner with me (it probably helped I was close to the front of the line), and we chatted a little about the Bay Area. Gratifyingly, I made him laugh a couple of times, at my reaction to our first attempt at a photo (I really need a new phone), and at my description of my own job.

And then it was over. The theater didn't want us hanging around too late, so we kind of had to hurry through the whole encounter. Naturally, I felt like there was loads more interesting stuff I could have said to him, like how I write fantasy and science fiction, so over the last couple of days I've been thinking about how to get across more about myself in a short time.

Now, one of the themes Chris Hardwick himself has talked about frequently on his podcast is how to react when meeting a famous person you like; the two best interviews he did on this subject were with Tom Wilson and Zach Braff. I seem to remember in the latter interview he pointed out how a fan only has a very short time to engage with them, so it's natural to kind of want to throw everything out at once. But, as per Tom Wilson, the problem is that for that fan it's possibly the only time they interact with the celebrity, whereas the celebrity has that same conversation every single day with different fans.

So overall, I feel like I was pretty good about the whole thing: I didn't fawn too much about how much I loved his book or his podcast or his comedy (why would I be there, otherwise?); I was polite to his girlfriend, Chloe, who was kind enough to be taking time out of their (presumably rare) vacation together to be taking pictures of him and his fans; and if I feel like I could have added something clever about my fiction writing, then I console myself with the thought that, for what it's worth, I'll probably be able to mention it to him at another signing sometime in the future (and with luck I'll be a little further along with it than I am now).

Looking back over that paragraph as well, it occurs to me that probably what I wanted was validation, in the form of, "Hey, that's really cool, good job!" Obviously, I got that reaction from family and friends when a story of mine got published online in January, but to some extent I suppose telling it to one of my heroes is probably about showing them that I'm getting to their rarefied level, and not just some wage slave out enjoying himself for a night.

Hopefully that doesn't seem too harsh, but it feels about right. If you meet your hero, you want to know that you made some kind of impression, that the experience was anywhere near as meaningful to them as it was to you; some people do that by trolling online, I suppose. I've resigned myself to the thought that I probably won't stick in Chris's memory (not like the girl who came from Italy dressed as a Weeping Angel, anyway, but I'm not much of a Dr Who fan), but at the very least, I won't be remembered as a complete jerk. And as I said, I'll wow him next time.

In any case, I'll close with these words of wisdom from Tom Wilson himself, or Biff from Back to the Future:

A City Divided

This week I'm writing from (intermittently) sunny New York, where I've been sampling the restaurants, seeing the sights, and getting all three stars on every level of Angry Birds (how's that for productivity?).

My friends know that I have somewhat mixed feelings about this city - I enjoy hanging out with my friends and family who live here, but there are also a lot of things that bother me about the place, from the insularity - it may not be as bad as Los Angeles, but it's there - to the fact that so much of Manhattan, let alone the other boroughs, is so run-down. I remember being a little annoyed when some neighbors in London said the US felt like the past to them, while Shanghai felt like the future, but walking around New York again I begin to see what they mean.

However, the thing that's been bothering me most on this visit is the class segregation. I've been reading a lot of articles recently on how unequal New York is in terms of income, but I feel like few of these pieces have said much about the racial divide. I'm staying in Harlem, about a hundred blocks north of Times Square, but I've ventured downtown every day since landing, and the change is pretty stark.

Walking around up here, most of the white faces you see are what my sister refers to as "gentrifiers" (this is how she refers to herself, btw) - people who live here because they can't afford to live downtown. On the other hand, walking down Park Avenue at rush hour the other day most of the people I saw were in business attire or business casual, and mostly white or Asian. Most of the black or Latino people I saw were blue collar workers.

Obviously, I'm not saying anything new here. America has always been this way, and New York is, in many ways, America in microcosm (except office workers here still don't seem to have a handle on Mexican food). Blacks have always lived in Harlem, Italians in Bensonhurst, etc etc. But in some ways I feel that this situation is getting worse. And ironically, the gentrification of neighborhoods like Harlem hasn't led to more mixing between ethnic groups - just the opposite, in fact.

Even when I lived here, back in 2005-6, there were concerns in the community about Columbia buying up real estate in Harlem to expand its campus. Looking around here, listening to how some people talk about the neighborhood, it's easy to see how right the skeptics were - there are a lot of good restaurants up here now, and nice bars, but they don't seem to cater to the long-term residents so much as the white gentrifiers from downtown.

At the same time, sitting in my sister's living room I can hear a constant stream of either salsa music or religious programming. It's great that nice restaurants are opening up in Harlem, but if my sister's neighbors don't work, how can they benefit?

Now, just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that everybody up here is on welfare, or even that being on welfare is in and of itself a bad thing. But people want to work, and they want access to a better life, however they define it. Between Michael Bloomberg's war on the poor, including regulating what they eat, and longer-standing problems like racial profiling, I don't see how the boom for corporate America - and it's clear that corporate profits are doing extremely well - is benefiting the people who need the most help getting out of poverty.

Mostly Plants: The Medical Edition

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I spend a lot of time reading Tim Ferriss's books. The 4-Hour Workweek was a particular favorite, but I also enjoyed the 4-Hour Body overall, in particular because he gave a chapter to Ben Goldacre, one of the best voices calling for honesty in science and medical reporting that we have these days. I used to love reading Goldacre's Bad Science column, and I still have a lot of time for the guy - not only is he right in calling pharmaceutical companies out on dishonesty in drug trials (full disclosure: I own stock in Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, Gilead and Actavis), but he writes extremely well.

But sometimes I suspect that Goldacre, as well as Ferriss, is a little confused about the difference between homeopathic medicines and herbal medicines. As I say, it's been a while since I've read Goldacre regularly, so I could be wrong about him in particular, but I find this confusion is pretty widespread - I once had to explain the difference between homeopathics and herbals to my editor on the pharmaceutical magazine where I used to work.

I think it's mostly cultural, to be honest - certainly in the UK or the US, if you asked people about herbal medicines, most would probably mention traditional Chinese medicine and/or quackery. I once asked a dermatologist about whether a certain condition could be improved by changing my diet, and she responded by lecturing me about Western medicine. A certain type of person seems to be associated with herbal medicine, in short (hippies, to be blunt).

What annoys me about this is that some of those who are anti-herbal medicine (whether or not they think herbals and homeopathics are the same), are effectively trading one form of dogma for another.

A quick disclaimer before I go on: I don't believe in homeopathics, or at least, I won't until they're proven to be effective in properly designed clinical trials. At the same time, I don't believe that herbal medicines are automatically better or safer because they're "natural"; I'm not the first to observe that shark bites are also all-natural, but they aren't going to do you much good. On a less flippant note, herbal medicines like St John's wort are associated with stomach upset and shouldn't be taken with certain other drugs.

But the reason this pro-"science" orthodoxy bothers me is that it ignores the origins of Western medicine. The example I like to use is that perennial favorite of fantasy authors, willow bark. White willow bark contains salicin, which is similar to the active ingredient of aspirin (acetylsalicilic acid) and is associated with similar pain-relieving effects (note my very scientific hedging there). Another fascinating example is a kind of centipede (or possibly spider) found in Australia, whose name escapes me now but was at the Poisonous Animals Museum in Kuranda, Queensland; according to the folks at the museum, Aboriginal tribes used this animal's bites to treat arthritis.

As I've since joked with Australian friends, it's hard to be too worried about spiders here in the UK when even the scary-looking bugs back there might do you good if they bite you.

In any case, the other point I like to make when it comes to the value or otherwise of herbal medicines is that the European Union actually has a regulatory framework for studying and approving herbal and traditional medicines; these medicines make up a significant part of the OTC markets in countries like Germany, so it makes sense that regulators would want to be sure they actually work (something the US FDA could take note of, frankly).

To sum up, herbals ≠ homeopathics; herbal medicines have roughly the same mechanism of action/delivery method as normal drugs, ie you ingest some of it. It's good to be skeptical of things that come with the all-natural tag, but remember that the point of skepticism is to learn more about something that gives you pause, not to blindly write it off as bullshit.