Sex Nerd Needed

So there are people who go to orgies, or do poly, or just know a lot about organs and what you can do to em.  Safe sex fans.  Good people, but they are nerds.  They are not cool.

The cool sex people are the ones blowing crack pipes at uncle mike’s highway ribs and catching ultra aids from seventeen freaks through orifices they invented for the occasion.  I don’t make the rules; it’s cooler to not care about anything.  Responsible sex people are inherently less cool than diseased addicts.

Which is fine.  It’s good to be a sex nerd.  Just wanna clarify who I’m talking to before I ask my question.

Any sex nerds in my readership?  I’m trying to figure out these jokers.  Let’s call them sex jokers.  Specifically Dan the Automator Nakamura and his friends, who were responsible for the bands Handsome Boy Modeling School, Lovage, and Got a Girl.  (among others; u kno how hip hop people do)

This isn’t a huge genre of art, but it exists, and Automator isn’t the only exponent of it.  Arguably Edward Gorey’s The Curious Sofa was an example.  Basically they make sexy art that treats sex as a ridiculous joke.

But it is still sexy.  So are these artists actually expressing horniness or are they just doing a comic bit?  Or is it both?  I know Gorey was asexual, I know little about Mr. Nakamura and friends.

How do you laugh at sex while also getting off on it?  Are these sex jokers all on a grade to being litcheral clown sex aficionados?  I feel like I’m missing something.

Maybe I should try to have more sex to figure it out.  Anyway, here’s Lovage sounding like a parody of Portishead for the sex joker set.

As I reflect, there’s probably an explanation in the years of music criticism regarding The Cramps, Mojo Nixon, Reverend Horton Heat…  Still, who wants to dig?  Enlighten me, nerds.

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EDIT to add:  Electric Six, how could I forget?  And that song S-E-X-X-Y by TMBG.  And some unforgivable shit by Jonathan Coulton and others.

The Politics of Not Working, in Song

Hey anybody here remember the Wham Rap?  Is this song for or against leaning on welfare when you’re young and sexy?  I literally can’t tell.  The lyrics about how people should not do things they do not enjoy, those feel earnest.  But the characterization of the narrator, who advocates living off of welfare programs, is as selfish, looking out for number one.  It’s ironic people see social welfare as greedy when the main reason rich people don’t want to pay a reasonable tax to support society is because of absolutely inarguable baldfaced greed.  People “on the dole” need food and shelter.  Rich people don’t need a second yacht.  They just fucken don’t.  Anyway, dubious politics aside, it’s a bop.  Glad I remembered it exists.

One could make a whole study of references to welfare in music, and what they say about social perspectives.  Roots Manuva had a song called Mind 2 Motion with the line “Social survivor still scratching on, I’ll pay that money back when I get my hit song.”  This is eminently reasonable.  Rely on what you need when you are needy, pay your taxes when you are not.  And yet, I heard that he’s just another boring conservative greedlord.  Unsurprising if true.  One day Biggie Smalls was talking about how he lived in the projects and suffered poverty, feels blessed by his wealth.  The next he was literally saying “fuck the world, don’t ask me for shit.”

Sticking to the UK for another moment, commie rapper Bobbi from QELD and Pavlov’s House reliably hates on working for a living.  Warnings for flashing lights, doom-tinged chorus, and tankie feelz.  Austerity politics will get you feelin’ that kind of way.

The USA has its own communist rappers.  Boots Riley from The Coup is the number one guy on that scene, blowing up the World Trade Center on an album cover before that became unpopular for reasons.  But on the topic of social survivin’, I’d like to quote Killer Mike’s guest rap on The Coup’s WAVIP:  “I’m over here with the welfare recipients, we ain’t ever payin’ but we stay gettin’ shit, I am with the people on the bottom fella, we gon’ riot loot rob ’til we rich as Rockefeller… The one percent better learn this shit is VIP, if we don’t nut up everybody gonna D-I-E.”

There are more low-key ways to say Fuck a Job.  In Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s seminal extremely hateable dogshit buttrock classic “Takin’ Care of Business,” the drunk guy on the mic sez, “If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day.”  I don’t know why I find that more offensive than intentionally offensive punk rock on the subject.  All he’s saying is “get an easy job.”  Could be worse.  I just don’t like the genre.  Speaking of punk rock on the subject, little known Desperate Bicycles had a song about making rock, with a very likeable message.  Backup vocals by the literal child on the drums.  “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.”

As for the intentionally offensive punk rock on the genre, the Dead Milkmen have two strong examples.  Nutrition is an all-around classic, covered by other bands, well-liked, and a good tune.  It captures the vibe of feeling like you were born to work but just don’t wanna, feeling simultaneously petulant and ashamed about it.  A lesser tune with a more didactic message, just literally “fuck working,” is Chaos Theory, from a later album.  “I used to get up and do my job, now I enjoy doing nothing better, I think I’ll go bum around, I think I’ll enjoy this lovely weather.  Maybe some day there’ll be a revolution, maybe some day we’ll have meaningful jobs, until that day I’m gonna be lazy, I’m not gonna be no working slob.  I am the god of unemployment, the antichrist of the american dream, I used to fight for church and country, but now I don’t give into the corporate schemes.”

That’s just being a bitch about it.  Not saying that’s my number, but I did spend a few years on unemployment at one point, and spent a lot of time back then walking around under blue skies.  Like the part in One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer when George’s landlady saw him leanin’ up against a post…  This could go on forever.

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Edit to Add:  How in the fuck did I forget Agenda Suicide by The Faint?  Content Warning:  The Obvious, Generally Grim as Balls.

Back to tha Back to tha Old School

Remember this post about Seward Park by Seattle local ’80s rap weirdo Maharaji?  My loving man did me a favor and transcribed the lyrics, so you can get a bit of the flavor even if you can’t figure out how to listen to the song on interwebs.  You won’t find this on genius dot com.

SEWARD PARK

by Maharaji

If you’re searching for a way to reach your peak
Come to Seward park with the pretty little freaks
Lay in the grass, let the sun hit your face
Drink cherry coolers while you listen to my bass

Here’s your chance to make your dream come true
Just hop in your ride when the sky’s plain blue
Roll down your window, let the freaks hear my song
Cuz my voice is really kinky and my beats so strong
I’m Maharaji baby, you know who I am
Come give in to the Seward Park jam
I see you on the sidewalk with your long silky hair
Eyes of light green with your skin complexion fair
Bermuda shorts and those tight, tight jeans
All the guys will name you
the Seward Park queen
Hot hot fun
In Seward Park
Oh girl
You know I want to enter your world

(groaning and heavy breathing)

Oh girl

Seward Park
Freak

You look so good, I can taste you from here
But that’s not the point, let me make myself clear
Oh baby, don’t you know I’m like a lifesaver
Just whisper in my ear if you want a new flavor
Physical changes
Naturally delicious
When you lick your lips, I get real suspicious
Mixed emotion, a climax stimulation
Wonderful memories of fantastic penetration
This brief encounter
The proper vitamin
I can ensure you baby that you’ll be back again
So come on and get it, and don’t waste your time
Cuz a freak like Maharaji you will never find

Seward Park
Gets crazy after dark
Sure enough baby
The dogs will start to bark

(dog fx and car horns)

You’re delicious dirty girl
with all your freaky friends
I see your golden face on the hot weekends
Walking your dogs
Or playing your box
Beads in your hair with your polka-dotted socks
I like to watch you move
To my northwest hot funk energized groove
Make no mistake by staying at home
Come dial a freak on the telephone
So how would you like it if I went and hopped a ferry
I’ll leave my phone number
you can even call me Terry
I think of Seward park on a hot summer day
Come take a deep breath the Cosmic Legion way

(grunting and moaning and dogs fx)

Deep breathing baby

Effective is compassion with universal powers
the feelings flowing through your body each and every hour
Your destiny’s fulfilled so lay on your back
I can help you out with a freak attack
My multi-track funky flex was all you freaks’ choice
It’s absolutely free
You know you feel moist
So let me know
Oh
What’s on your mind
Let me know your true feelings all of the time
Come my desert flower, come plant your seed
So I can eat the fruit coming from your tree
Relax

Ooh
Ooh-ooh

Intellectual essence, and all your finesse
You’re the finest freak in the great northwest
With your hot luscious tongue and your emotion lotion
Your strawberry lips, that’s your freak secret potion
With video cassettes of I Dream of Jeannie
You can sit in my spa with your two-piece bikini
Uhh

My lady Monica kicks
At Seward Park
Sir Mix-a-lot kicks
At Seward Park
Kashay kicks
At Seward Park
Jazzy D kicks
At Seward Park
The Wicked Angel kicks
At Seward Park
DJ Nasty Nes kicks
At Seward Park
Your dog wets a tree
At Seward Park
Your mama barbecues
At Seward Park
Spicy Shannon kicks
At Seward Park
Phantom of the Scratch kicks
At Seward Park
The Desert Sheik kicks
At Seward Park
Lawanda kicks
At Seward Park
I throw my Frisbee
At Seward Park
I steal your girlfriend
At Seward Park
I make love to you
At Seward Park
The Cadillacs ride
At Seward Park
The low riders roll
At Seward Park
Ain’t no dust
At Seward Park
The Central District kicks
At Seward Park
The south end kicks
At Seward Park
Everybody kicks
At Seward Park park park park park

–

Back 2 tha Old School

Occasionally over the years I would remember this song that played on the local radio when I was ten – Seward Park, by Sir Mixalot compatriot Maharaji, who was name-dropped in My Hooptie and Posse on Broadway.  The most recent time I remembered this, I went on a little tear through the internet for it, to no avail.  Seward Park is not on yewchoob, or sheisty downloading places.

But I did find the website of another Seattle rapper, Kid Sensation, and sent an inquiry about Maharaji, because these guys all knew each other.  Mr. Sensation’s publicist(?) got back to me, with a screen cap of a conversation with a Seattle DJ named Nasty Nes, who I realized I’d seen before in the video for Posse on Broadway, as well as a poster in Saap Fusion where I used to get my ube smoothie supply.  Used to!  Why don’t you have the ube smoothie anymore Saap?  wtf.

Anyway, Nasty said something like, that song was produced by Mix and never released, not even as a single, and even tho he has a tape, he can’t do anything about releasing it, outside of radio broadcasts.  His radio show is long gone, however, my boyfriend Mr. The Beast from Seattle is an internet wizard and found Nasty Nes radio shows, so you can hear Seward Park!  It’s just a lil tricky.  Go to https://www.rapattacklives.com/rapatt%20nightbeat/rapattshows/ and scroll down to January 8 2017.  See if you can figure out how to play it because it ain’t working for me on the site, my dude had to do some hack-the-planet junk to get a mp3 of it.  But yeah, it’s about 20 minutes and 5 seconds into this thing. I FUCKED UP!  Read the audio program backwards.  Call it 1 hour 40 minutes 56 seconds in.

The song isn’t exactly like I remember it.  The music is about the same, I didn’t remember how much of it was spent lusting after this Seward Park “freak.”  But the main thing I misremembered is that his voice isn’t quite as Humpty Hump as it was in my imagination.

And what about the man himself, Maharaji, aka Terence Matthews?  In May of this year he had brain surgery, but he seems to be doing fine now.  He’s on facebook and has some kind of affiliation with a food truck called Lumpia King, and a barbecue sauce business called We Be Smok’n LLC, but I don’t have facebook so the deets are a bit unclear to me.  With that, I return to my regularly scheduled eternal sighing.

u___u

–

a song about memory, kinda

500 Words on the Topic of Hellraisin’

My donors are so shy and unimposing.  I have a guess who one of them is, and if I’m right, he might like a word about cenobites…  Jeezis Shit, I just went searching for the origin of the quote “Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me” and the entire internet thinks Rihanna came up with it.  I heard that shit in junior high and I’m forty-seven years old, so … time travel?  I was thinking, maybe Andrew Dice Clay, but that didn’t come back with anything.  Why can I imagine it in Woody Allen’s voice?  Somebody help me.

Anyway, sexy menace.  Tearing your soul apart as a euphemism for the ecstasy of orgasm.  Chains and blades and hooks with a life of their own.  The black-eyed priests and nuns and less specifically gendered clergy of Hell, in sexy leather clothes, ready to give you the business.  You know you want it.

Something about the cenobites from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (original story Hellbound Heart) is just sooo iconic.  They are gods among monsters.  I’d love to come up with something that hits the same way, but is it possible?  Is that kind of idea just lightning in a bottle?  Were they a Platonic Ideal just waiting in the realm of Forms, and Barker just happened to be the first guy to pluck them from that airy plane?

There’s the seeker.  Frank “Come to Daddy” Cotton and his ilk.  Somebody chasing a high that can only be found in transgression, and there’s never enough.  Then there’s the box.  Beautiful, elegant, small, activated by touch, by curiosity.  The cracks in the world, admitting the power of Leviathan.

Then there’s the Apostles of Pain.  The cenobites.  Love those guys.  I’m not into S&M, not really, but the look of it all?  Very cool.  I like cool things.  I like the aesthetics.  Total poser, I know.  I remember being in The Metro on Seattle’s Broadway buying leather accoutrement, and the clerk asked, “Stocking up for a good time?”  I felt so uncool.  Whaddyagonnado?

I guess I could seek the box, do that fiddly hand jive, unlock the lament configuration, and get my cool on.  Or my flesh off, whichever happens first.  I’ll be like the doctor in Hellraiser II, “To think, I hesitated!”

I came up with the core of a formula for trying to arrive at the power of Icon in monster design.  Come up with Sinister Themes of the monster, Visual Motifs, Colors, Shapes, Textures, Powers, and Places associated with them.  You can see some mention of it here.  I still haven’t successfully used it to come up with anything interesting.  Just never got around to it.  Maybe on another one of these posts.

For now, this post will just be a note of admiration for the creation of a master.  Maybe when I’ve sold my screenplay for Gun Lemurs and made a bank full of money, I can buy the time to pursue my own immolation.  To earn that charisma.  Wish me luck?

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Hierarchical Perspective

There’s this concept in art history called hierarchical perspective.  As I recall, before the rules of realistic perspective were worked out from observation of reality, artists would draw character’s and object’s size relationships based on how important they were.  Jesus lookin’ fifty feet tall next to a king who in turn dwarfs the peasantry, that sorta shit.

I wish I had a higher quality version of this music video.  I like it a lot.  The tiny mans always make me feel some type of way about art history.  Or maybe I’m just a giantess fetishist.

 

The Brinkman is Back

FreethoughtBlogs’s own William Brinkman is at it again!  He has a new story set in his Bolingbrook Babbler Literary Universe, and I got an advance reader copy of it.  The rest of you rabble can order it tomorrow, at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.  This is my review.

Like William’s The Rift, A Fire in the Shadows is action-packed genre fiction, set in the Weekly World News -inspired setting of his “Bolingbrook Babbler” articles.  At around 12k words, it’s long for a short story, but only covers a few short events.

There’s a lot of information around those events, and the author wants the story to stand on its own, so the exposition can land like bricks upside the head.  The references to events in The Rift feel particularly unnecessary, beyond the important fact of the weredeer incursion.  I do like being able to include a sentence like that in a review.

Still, as I said before, it’s fun to see SFF genre fiction that isn’t beholden to the conventions laid down by the titans of Intellectual Property.  There’s stuff here to enjoy.  The vampire battle strategizing reminded me of a bit in “From Russia with Love” where James Bond was thinking about how he could totally judo chop through his opponent’s chest if he wanted to, but now wasn’t the time for it.

One thing that struck me odd.  The vampire characters seem to regard their own human ethnicities as a thing to be disdained, and I’m not convinced they’d have any reason to feel that way.  This element seemed like a ploy to spell out the characters’ backgrounds without breaking from the plot and dialogue to do so.  In general, the bitchy attitudes of the vampires were unappealing, and while that may have been intentional, it’s not interesting to me as a reader.  I know some other readers like it, so YMMV.  I did like the main character Lydia being a lovefool like The Cardigans.

William’s writing style spells out a lot.  “Show, don’t tell” is one of the central dogmas of 20th century literature, but there are situations where even back then it was ignored.  Short stories in action-packed genre fiction, well, that’s one place where telling works.  His “The Rift” was short for a novel, and like this story, packed a lot into its length, by merit of willingness to lay ideas out plainly.

This creates a paradox (if I’m using that word right), because sometimes William does not spell something out.  Those can be pretty important themes and ideas, and since a reader gets accustomed to him spelling out the situation unambiguously, it’s easy to forget he might leave something unsaid.  I’m guessing a lot of readers might miss his unspoken ideas.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

Like “The Rift,” I think the main character of “A Fire in the Shadows” has an unreliable perspective.  Lydia is the kind of person who is in love with the world, like a ramped-up high school student.  Like I used to be, once upon a time, wheeling from one crush to the next.

And that’s the exact kind of person that would repeat the social faux pas that exploded the atheo-skeptic community – a poorly timed pass at a person, which would come off as creepy.  Had Lydia followed through with her love confession at the end of AFITS, she would have been an even bigger creep than Tom during his elevatorgatery crime in The Rift.

Who wants to have an age-inappropriate leather-clad stranger confess their love for you, at night when there’s no one else around?  Big yikes.  Interesting to see a story show a character walk up to that edge and come back.

I think it’s funny that a person could miss that whole theme because it’s the source of the title.  “Fire” is vampire slang for your burning soul.  While Lydia is a reasonably good person, she has that fiery passion of a stranger lurking in The Shadows – something romantic until it becomes dangerous.  Something she needs to be mindful of, and that the targets of that affection are probably better off not knowing about.

That’s emotionally sophisticated stuff.  I liked it.  Thanks, William.
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DC TV Extinction

Spoiler Warning for The Flash.  I really profoundly don’t care about spoilers, but hey, here’s a moment’s consideration for those who do.

Not really sure what the new business model at The CW is going to be since the takeover, but it seems like the crossover DC Comics shows are being phased out, bit by bit.  There’s a new DC Comics show that hasn’t premiered yet, but safe assumption it will have little to do with the rest.  It’s easier and more cost-effective to have your shows be modular, not interdependent in any way.  Hey, biz is biz.

Legends of Tomorrow was easily the best thing left in the DC slate and had its last season.  I hope everyone involved is well compensated and living their best life in whatever they do next.  After hinting The Arrow spinoff character Diggle was going to become The Green Lantern in crossover bits for a season, they wrote a weird little end to that plot, like, psych, never mind.  An thus the last of The Arrow‘s existence takes a dirt nap.

Stargirl‘s second season was COVID’d into a strange depressing mess.  They did as well as they could, but you could feel the characters were being isolated from each other for social distancing, the plot written in such a way as to denude the world of extras, leaving everything cold and dark.  Third and final season coulda been worse, but the amazing action of the first Season was almost completely gone.  They just didn’t have the budget for it anymore, I’m sure.

So The Flash is on its last season, which is good.  It’s time.  The most recent two seasons were hobbled by COVID and ended up totally bizarre.  I theorized here that the lady playing Flash’s main squeeze had come to dislike the production in some way, since her character was written out of contact with most of the cast during those seasons.  But she’s back in the house; looks like those strange writing decisions were probably more about COVID issues.  That will let them send the series into retirement with a solid season filmed under less strained circumstances.

The Flash has generally been marketed as less edgy, more superheroic and light than The Arrow.  That marketing was undercut by how grimdark and hopeless the main villain plots have been, over and over throughout its run.  Now that they’re back to their original form, without sensible plague restrictions, will the oppressive atmosphere return?  Who is the big bad of the very last season?

It’s Batwoman!  I did not see that coming.  Batwoman was cancelled and did a very competent job of its last season.  I liked it all well enough.  I think Greg Berlanti (or somebody else in his company) must love his actors, because he keeps giving them chances to show up even after their shows end.  Javicia Leslie is playing an alternate timeline version of Batwoman who became a Jokeresque wildhearted villain.  That means acting like a big campy goofball.  Let this season actually be fun!  We’ll see.

After all of this, I must share an amusing discovery I made.  For all the success of the DC comics shows – particularly The Flash – none of them touched the viewership of The Vampire Diaries.  Whatever big feels they inspire in a certain segment of humanity, the nerd audience is just smaller or less passionate than the romantic girly audience.  Take that, entitled-ass dorks!  And to whatever extent I share an identity with you – not as much as you might imagine – take that, me.

I guess I’ve only been paying attention to the DC shows because of the cultural connection with the comics, the art, the iconic characters in the background of my life since early childhood.  The Superfriends.  The guys on my underwear and my sippy cup, whatever.  If I wanted to pay attention to shows that really matter to most people, I’d skip the dork slate and watch sweet sexy vampires doing their thing…

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The Individual and Society and Kung Fu

revengering

There’s this horrible kung fu movie I keep coming back to, in English called “The Revenger,” starring the lovely Ti Lung.  There are two things that compel me to watch it again.  First and foremost, the voice actor for the lead in the English dub is spectacularly degenerate.  I love him.  I don’t know if I’d even say he’s a bad actor; he can put the emotion on that he’s supposed to be conveying, sometimes even a subtle attitude of sass or menace.  But he sounds like his cheeks are full of cottonballs, and anything that has to be shouted comes out completely bizarre.  My fave line to say in his voice, “I’ve come for my father’s bones!”  Love that shit.  (Spoiler alert?  None of you are going to watch this, or if you start, you won’t make it to the end.)

starring the revengerSecond, it’s a Chinese perspective on individualism vs. collectivism, personal principles vs. social harmony.  I am missing a lot of context, possibly all of the context, but if I can ever tumble to it, maybe the movie will help me understand how at least some Chinese people really feel about all that Confucius shit.  Here’s what I do get…

There were some competing philosophies of how to have the best society, early in Chinese history.  The idea that won out, to the extent it informs people even in other countries of the “Sinosphere,” was Confucianism.  The principles are pretty similar to the Old Testament, particulars about food and slaughter aside.  Obey the government, obey your family, everybody be righteous at all times or get squashed.  If you love Confucius and think I’m getting something wrong, feel free to take a dump in my comments.  I might even allow it out of moderation.

Side note: Western techno-fascist shitbird wannabe cult leader “Mencius Moldbug” named himself after a huge Confucius fanboy that helped his teachings proliferate, kind of the Plato to his Socrates, though I think the relationship was less direct.

Collectivism is a general way of doing things, common in many countries outside the West (especially in Asia, I don’t know about Africa or indigenous America), that prioritizes societal needs over the individual.  The only go-to version from Western culture I can think of is that Vulcan saying from Star Trek, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual or the few.”  It’s telling in Star Trek that philosophy was always being tested and contested when it came up, because…

Individualism is the general way of doing things in the West, especially America since Ronald Reagan, which prioritizes the needs of the individual over those of society.  Within my American heart, this definitely has an edge, though they both exist in a balance.  I love this interview with Einsturzende Neubaten’s Blixa Bargeld where he says, “I was only trying to establish myself and my individualism as anarchically and radically as possible.”  That’s gonna be my excuse for everything for the rest of my life.

memevengeAs much as I’d love to be a radical, almost everything in life seems to have a moderate answer, a question, a caveat, some reason you can’t reasonably be absolute about it.  The well-being of society is crucial to our collective survival.  The well-being of an individual is paramount because we are all alone within ourselves, never having been given a choice about whether or not to exist, and we should be able to live our lives in our own way, as long as it causes no harm to others.

And within SJW circles we are approaching that from a Western perspective regardless of how much we want to “decolonize our minds.”  Self-care babe.  Disability activism is a huge component of progressive discourse, but a seldom discussed aspect of that is conflicting access.  What works for one disabled person may be poison to another, perfect access for everybody at all times is impossible, though it is a reasonable thing to aspire to.  Within that issue of conflicting access, we see this: who’s individual needs are more important?  When is it reasonable to consider the needs of the majority?  What if (this will be utterly foolish, bear with me) the trolley being made accessible to this one disabled guy causes five non-disabled guys to be 25% more likely to get hit by a trolley?

So this has become a recurring theme of art, to the point that it’s a running joke every artist statement claims their piece is about “The Individual vs. Society.”  And “The Revenger,” at least in the first half, is about exactly that.  Ti Lung’s character is a buff kung fu master who lives by his own rules.  When he encounters a religious charlatan taking people’s money to lead them in a hokey ritual, he busts up the joint.  With kung fu.  (This moment early in the film will make all movement skeptics instantly orgasm.)  When he meets young lovers fleeing the gal’s arranged marriage, he busts up the coercive groom.  With kung fu.

naughty revenger, no!Living in this way he makes a lot of enemies.  Those enemies are leaders of men – clans, businesses, religious groups, etc. – and while plotting to get back at him, they make the reasonable argument this is for social order, for harmony in society.  Whether they seem righteous or not, you can’t just have roughnecks busting up the joint.  With kung fu.

Their scheme somehow involved one of their daughters* getting pregnant by the individualist (I don’t remember why), and him getting ambushed and killed with dynamite.  They try to kill the daughter* and her baby, but they get away, and baby grows up to be played by same actor as the dad.  Only now, Ti Lung is a The Revenger.  Meanwhile, the Bad Dudes for Society have parceled up dad’s bones for keepsakes.  When baby Revenger grows up, mom tells him what happened, but makes him swear not to revenge.

He agrees, but he goes out to collect dad’s bones.  While he’s at it, he scares the guys, even wearing a fake moustache to act like dad’s ghost for a minute.  The bad dudes attack him and then it isn’t revenge; it’s self-defense.  Promise to mom kept.

This is Chinese media that shows collective concerns can go too far in oppressing the individual.  BUT it came out of Hong Kong when they were an independent hyper-capitalist colony of Britain.  BUT Cantonese people are still Chinese, still under the sway of confucian ideals.  And other of their movies seem to support those values.  BUT does this movie even directly affront them?  Dude is awfully upset about a dad he never knew, carries out his mission in obedience to that ghost.  Confucian filial piety, right?

I don’t know.  But I do love the first part, where dad version Ti Lung is establishing himself and his individualism as radically and anarchically as possible.  Excelsior!

it's him. the revenger.

 

*I made a mistake here.  I wrote the post before I rewatched the movie and was mostly going from memory.  The character that got pregnant with baby Revenger was the main villain’s sister, not daughter.  I left out a lot of deets that weren’t super relevant to the thesis.  This junk has side characters and side plots galore.

Hellstar Reminism

So I got a philosophy for the end of the world inspired by a Junji Ito comic, Hellstar Remina, in some translations just the less fun Remina.  I’ve still never read the comic in English, so it’s based on my visual read of the story.  I’ll soon check out the translation to see what I’ve missed.  At that time, this idea may face some revision.  By the way, all of the spoilers for Hellstar Remina now, because it’s necessary to explaining the moral lesson I take from it.

Like a number of Junji Ito’s horror manga, Hellstar Remina depicts an apocalypse.  The planet Earth and most of its inhabitants don’t get through the story alive.  But this one was especially interesting to me because it shows different ways to respond to a species-level existential threat.  As a storyteller, Ito has long held an interesting tension between humanism and misanthropy – something shared with filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  I wonder if this is just an attitude some dark-minded Japanese folks have and a known thing there, or if it’s just something anybody in the world might develop at random.

Basically, the way humans can be quite horrible is displayed unvarnished, or even exaggerated, but compassion and sometimes progressive values come through in other characters within the same story.  This isn’t always as simple as good guys over here, bad guys over there.  People start good, go bad, come back, do it again.  Usually you understand why the bad do what they do – see them as human, even when they end up as literal monsters.  Hard to describe, not always the same.  This might be getting off topic, because good and evil are a little more straightforward in this story than the extended canon of Tomie or Uzumaki.  Whatever, moving on…

The plot.  A scientist announces the discovery of a very abnormal new star in the night sky, with his daughter at the press conference.  I believe he named the star after her, causing an association in the public imagination between the girl and the star.  But pretty quickly, the star is revealed to be a possible threat to the Earth – heading toward it at incredible speed.  Is it a star?  Meanwhile, this doesn’t seem to be public knowledge yet, and Remina the girl has developed a fan club.  In particular she has three suitors.  One is a rich kid that shows her to his cool expensive fallout shelter.  But they seem to do a passable job of not monopolizing her affections yet.

The threat of the hellstar becomes apparent to the public and civic unrest menaces the scientist and his daughter.  Her fan club saves her, for the moment, but she’s separated from her father.  When the star slows down to stick out a giant tongue and gobble up another planet in the solar system, the people of the world go bonkers and come for girl Remina’s blood.  They kill the a couple of fan club guys and torture her for a bit.  Her father is killed.

The fanboys help her escape but they fall to infighting.  Seems they got a touch of the same craze as the rest of the world.  One of them has the sense of self to feel ashamed and leaves, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to realize that he left her undefended with the worse guy.  (He shows up later as just another murderer.)  Worse guy is the rich kid, and he hauls her back to the fancy shelter.  He tries to force himself on her, but his parents object.  They just want her dead like the rest of the world.  Mom slaps her around, then the fam drag her out to the crowd.

The story splits here between rich family and Remina.  Rich family theorizes that if they go to live on the Hellstar like fleas, it won’t notice them and destroy them like the rest of the world, so they pack up in a rocket ship and skate.  Back on earth, girl Remina is taken by the people of Earth, who have united in a massive doomsday cult, led by KKK-lookin’ creeps with torches.  She escapes them briefly, running into a solitary homeless man who has no idea what’s going on.  The two of them are tied to either side of the same cross that carries the burned remains of her father.

In space, the rich family set foot on the Hellstar and transform into melty piles of twisted bullshit.  HS Remina opens a second eyeball and licks the Earth.  This causes gravity to go haywire.  The cultists had set a pyre beneath girl Remina’s cross, but the cross gets lifted away.  A cultist cuts Remina loose to abscond with her.  The gravity of the Hellstar and Earth are dueling, which has people able to leap around like they have super strength.  Don’t get at me on the physics of this.  The cultist grabs Remina by the legs and smashes her against the sides of a broken building, like trying to dust a rug.

But he cut the homeless guy loose when he snatched Remina, and that guy comes to save her with roundhouse kicks and such.  Together they flee the cultists.  But as they’ve gotten used to the crazy light gravity, so have the cultists, and now they are being chased by what seems like everybody in the world, all crying for her blood in different languages, wielding any weapon they can find.  They’re flying through the air in a massive swarm.

Gravity shifts again.  The homeless guy and Remina seem to luck out, while the rest of humanity is dashed to the ground, creating an ocean of blood.  Girl Remina blacks out and wakes up in the fancy shelter.  The homeless guy and a few random non-murderer kids found their way into the shelter, and as Hellstar Remina devoured the earth, somehow the shelter was one of the crumbs that broke free to hurtle lonesome through space.  People are surprisingly celebratory about this.

Why are they happy?  They got away from however many billion murderers, and a planet that was just munched like popcorn.  But the room surely doesn’t have the resources to sustain their lives forever.  They’re surely going to die.  And that could well be all of us.  The story ends there.  What do you take from that?

I say, if everybody in the world is doing bad shit, be the one person who isn’t.  If we’re all gonna die, be kind to the people you are with, right to the end.  Ruin is living for hate, the only goodness possible in life is what we make by being kind in the ways we can, in the time we have.  Something like that.  Hellstar Reminism.

One could easily take different lessons from the story, perhaps worse ones.  And maybe there are explicit textual things I cannot understand from reading the comic book by image alone.  I’ll find out soon enough, which is why I’m spelling out this philosophy now before it gets altered by improved understanding of the source.  So there you go.

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