So I wish I could like Inglorious Basterds. I do. I really do. But I can’t. The movie goes down like stale bread. It has a chance of being nourishing, but it will more likely break your teeth or stick in your throat and kill you. If there are reasons for the misspellings in the title, no one knows them.

It is a measure of how really lame this year’s summer movies are that Inglorious Basterds sort of kind maybe lights up the screen but is totally devoid of even the glimmer of an idea, other than getting us to the next bit of gore. Tarantino runs through genres when he is out of ideas. Admit it: Grindhouse — a genre film — was a totally forgettable. Then there was that embarrassment that had Harvey Keitel at a vampire blood feast? Some die-hard Tarantino fan will want to praise Basterds as moviemaking for its own sake: but don’t buy that. This is a bankrupt imagination at work, and the stab at significance to have the alleged plot resolve at a movie theater—in Paris, where they take directors seriously—will get tongues wagging at film festivals, but nowhere else.

This time the genre is the WW II flick, sort of the circumcised Dirty Dozen meets impossible revenge fantasies with a boffo ending that only surprises because the script decides to ignore history. There’s blood; a lot of it. If you want blood, see Reservoir Dogs.

Tarantino learned to frame a shot by reading comic books, and his movies have high production values. They are easy on the eyes. The opening sequence of this film is genuinely chilling, so to see the Gestapo detective transformed into the village idiot by the film’s end is mildly appalling. There are Chapters in this movie, but they are in chronological order, and serve no discernible purpose.

Save your shekels, or go rent Pulp Fiction and notice the reverence and love with which every woman in that film is treated by the men, all of whom are killers.

Today’s Wall Street Journal headlines the purchase of Marvel Superheroes by the Walt Disney Company.

The timing is weird, as we overdosed on comix in the multiplex LAST summer. This summer, the box office blockbuster themes were about … well, not much. Adolescent wizards, lovers set loose in time, and a blood-soaked revenge fantasy in which pissed off Jews immolate Nazis — something like finding Kevin Youkilis charging the pitcher’s mound. I mean, how could that ever happen?

With Obamaman in the White House, fantasies of American omnipotence and invincible power just do not fit the zeitgeist, that being more the style of the torture twins, Georgie Bush and his sidekick, “Deadeye” Dick Cheney.

But the Disney Marvel merger suggests new delights in our future. Oh, sure, it won’t be long until some depraved adolescent is encased in a Hulk costume and set loose to silently grope children who await Mom and Dad’s fumbling with the camcorder, but my mind is far more boggled at the thought of the new shows based on character pairings never before possible.

I mean, let’s bury Prince Charming and have Sleeping Beauty awakened by the Silver Surfer. The film will be great box office, and then the musical can run in London and New York for a bazillion years.

It’s time for the Seven Dwarfs to retire; can we have sleeping Beauty hanging out with the Fantastic Four?

The hallmark of the Marvel hero is brooding neuroticism, a strain so popular in our over-medicated era that over at Warner Brothers, where the DC Universe now resides, they have been for a few decades plaguing Superman and Batman with guilt, doubt and depression.

I don’t miss the old DC guys, though. I never got it. I mean, if those heroes and the busty, leggy, rope-bearing Wonder Women, star of a million boyhood heated dreams, were so damn wholesome, what were they doing wearing tights and capes?

No, wait, wait…that was The Dark Knight.

Uhmmm…. I mean the Hulk.

Whatever!

Where have all the super-heroes gone? Maybe they were less than super.

Comic-based superheroes are childish dreams of invincibility. Those have their place—as childish dreams. So recall that last summer Georgie Bush was still prosecuting wars on goatherds, and his knee-breaker public servant, “Dead Eye” Dick Cheney was making torture, phone-tapping, and random imprisonment Amurrican policy.

Now we have Obamaman in the White House, and our priorities have shifted—and with it the cultural whiskers of Hollywood. We don’t want cinematic displays of testosterone poisoning right now. Heck, we don’t even have any disaster flicks, just a few spatter sequels.

Who knows? We may see a return to human plots and human characters any day now.

What will the goonguys do fror jollies?

Guyland

The Cassandrist points out that a smart book has been published by a smart writer. Guyland is by Michael Kimmel. Kimmel takes a hard look at how culturally imposed Dickiness is turning young white suburban men into perpetual boys addicted to beer, pornography, video games, spectator sports and subdued homo-erotica while trapped in meaningless jobs. They lack all vision for a fulfilling future. Guys in Guyland are clueless about how to pursue anything like adult aspirations, though they have vague ideas about making something of themselves. They fill with simmering hostility, espcially at women who seem so available on Internet porn sites but who in reality (gasp!) want affection.  Bros before Hos…sigh.

Twenty-five is the new fifteen, so if you’ve been wondering why the snickering idiot who is 20-something is still sitting in your living room with a game controller or his cock in hand, Kimmel points out that our culture has failed to alert these feebs that raising children, work, and the love of a good woman are even more cool than knocking back a few brews with the buds.

You’d figure a million years of evolution and such ideas need not be explained in detail to all but chimpanzees, but when the only source of information a techno-geek has is his peers who are other techno-geeks, you have to expect very little text-messaging about holding hands and falling in love.

The only media models for “guys” are beer-swilling, chest-thumping, cap-backward pinheads who litter TV ads. The Cassandrist, as usual, asks “Cui bono?” and once again casts a baleful eye on the post-corporate capitalist state that LIKES having a generation of jag-offs with too much money and no purpose and time on their hands. Who else buys the phones, the game stations, the 40″ TVs, or the rest of the crap no guy can live without? They stand on line to get it first! They stand on line to get stadium tickets! They camp out in the streets! 

Cripes, even the Cassandrist can figure out that a man with children to feed and clothe just might deny himself the next must-have toy or a seat at the paly-offs, so in a world of cultural Dickiness, emotionally retarding Guys means gathering much coin. Bravo Dickiness!

Now, not so incidentally, as testosterone, celebrity culture, the techno-illusion of centrality, and the prolongation of adloesence goes on, these guys are getting angrier.  The Cassanddrist asks: who shall they blame, and what action shall they take?

Well, they will never blame themselves.  This is 21st century America and every one of these guys has grown up with his worst efforts pinned to the refrigerator by a magnet. Quality has nothing to do with accomplishment. So it is imperative to blame someone else for insignificance–Mom and Dad could not have lied–and with the technology and all their culture telling them that success and effort are unrelated, as they wait…and wait…and wait…and wait… for their 15 minutes, they just might be seduced into being little proto-fascists.

They will awaken at 30 and be consumed by rage. It will be outwardly directed.  When they come to the door, maybe they will wear brown shirts.

–The Cassandrist

You don’t need testosterone to be a dick, and political paranoia is bread and honey to Dickiness.

With the convergence of telephony and the Internet, nothing casts the illusion of centrality more forcefully than cellphones. What could be more reassuring? Voice and text messages from a vast network of friends and colleagues come personally to a handheld device.

Never mind the actual message—the real message is “You are at the center and everyone else is an outsider.”

The Obama campaign played into this illusion last week. If you signed up, the moment the candidate announced whom he’d chosen, the news came by text to millions of cellphones. Screw privacy—so what if the Democratic National Committee now has a cellphone directory to use again and again?

Be the first to know! Be cool! Trade away your independent right to think!

The Cassandrist does not believe Obama is a fascist, not yet, anyway, just a clever manipulator of youth who rather than use information technologies to deploy information, uses them to enforce emotional loyalty. Leave it to people who read to ascertain who Joe Biden has been and may be.

For the rest–he must be a good guy because he personally told me by cellphone he is running for VP!

–The Cassansdrist

In this summer of the superhero, we have The Dark Knight. Before the film’s midnight opening, eager teens and 20-somethings stood in long lines in darkness. This time around, Batman is no Baby Boomer nostalgia-trip evoking well-remembered comic book panels to life. Audience reviews were texted from cellphones and posted on the Internet even before the film ended. They cheered every explosion. “Wow!” “Cool!” “W00t!” The Dark Knight raked in more cash on its first weekend of any film, ever.

When people urgently smash their piggy-banks to view a film a second and third time, they are voting with their wallets. But why not Hancock, Iron Man, Hellboy, or the Incredible Hulk? Just what are we endorsing with our cash? Does The Dark Knight tell us anything about who we are right now?

It can’t be the plot. The story line of The Dark Knight is an embarrassing muddle. Plagued by crime and disorder, the people of Gotham demand action. The criminal enterprises that have produced a hoard of cash the bad guys keep in a vault. Just where those profits come from is left to our imagination, though anyone smarter than a carrot knows it can’t be the smash and grab street crime that sent the original Batman on a career of vengeance to honor his parents slain by a common mugger. No, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky invented the modern crime family by supplying an acquiescent society services unavailable legally: prostitution, pornography, drugs, and gambling. Just what is scandalizing the people of Gotham?  And how stupid are bad guys who keep their profits moldering in a vault waiting for a criminal to rip them off?  Why not stuff their cash into their pillows? If the bad guys of Gotham are infiltrating labor unions, we don’t see it. If they are extorting shopkeepers, we don’t see it. If the good people of Gotham are being abused, robbed, or are unsafe, we don’t see it.

What we do see is a psychotic master criminal able to command to-the-death loyalty from henchmen despite the fact that he not only murders them himself, but sends them to certain death when they do his bidding. They go gleefully. We learn that the Joker attracts a special kind of psychotic, fearless homicidal maniacs. The Joker’s origins are mysterious: we get two plausible versions of where the Joker came from. All that is certain is that the Joker has no motive other than “some men just like to watch things burn.”   

Excuse me. Did I say, “the Joker?” I meant “Osama bin Laden.”

Less than a decade after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the trauma of 9-11 is still with us. Yet despite deploying whole armies to foreign lands, despite reordering our entire intelligence community, despite debates on the efficacy of torture for hostage situations, and despite having put the Bill of Rights into cold storage, we have neither revenge nor justice.

And boy oh boy, how want justice.

Like the people of Gotham, we want action! Now! No excuses! We want a potent vigilante with infinite resources, someone willing to pursue evil to wherever it festers, someone unrestrained by law, someone we can publically deplore by privately worship, someone willing to beat the living crap out of a prisoner, someone with a raspy voice and unswerving gaze, someone who will protect us!  What we want is…Vice-President Richard P. Cheney.

Never mind polite debate about how to conduct the War on Terror or whether it is possible to export democracy by force of arms. The Dark Knight reveals who we are and what we want right now.

We want to kick ass. Audiences are cheering.

For whom do you think they will vote?

– The Cassandrist

And soon.

So devoted readers, who so far seem to be one quasi-literate and a few fly-bys who perhaps stop to read, may wonder just what Celebrity has to do with the establishment of the Fascist mind.

The Fascist mind sees enemies everywhere and the elevation of self to be an entitlement. The individual’s lack of success or happiness is never explained or remedied by identification of inadequacies in the self or by a program of self-improvement. To the contrary. The identification of a conspiracy devoted to depriving the fascist-peon of is far easier than self-discipline. It is far easier to kick the crap out of the weak than it is to make oneself strong. When intimidating or kicking the crap out of the weak, it is far safer to do so in groups.

Yes, well, sigh readers, you’ve told us this before, Cassandrist. We recognize the plot of Fight Club and the rise of National Socialism in Germany to be one and the same. We understand Hitler’s title, Mein Kampf  translates to My Struggle and this is nothing less than the first rule of Fight Club. We even see the direct line from the homo-erotic thugs of Hitler Youth and the homo-erotic thugs of Project Mayhem.

But, cripes, Cassandrist, what Dickiness and New Fascism to do with the likes of Brittney Spears?

We live under a constant barrage of seductive, soothing lies. Thousands of hours of TV time are devoted to slavish reporting of the comings and goings of the winners of the genetic lottery. Whole forests in Maine and Canada have been eliminated to create the tabloid paper to tell us who is pregnant, who is married, who is sleeping with whom—provided the subjects of these breathless reports are beautiful winners.

There are only rare reports of citizens who struggle to enhance their lives. Why care about the weak trying to become strong? The simpleminded who call themselves Born Again have turned their fates over to a higher, imaginary power, a spiritual parent they believe cares and is invested in their protection and redemption. Abandoning the struggle, they repeat the mantra of a text, they declare themselves happy, and they retire from thought.

How liberating.

Celebrity culture underscores the soothing whisper of Dickiness.

You are special. Everyone is special. Being special is an entitlement. Be special, Be special. We may grant specialness to you, though not real soon—just give us all your rights and do our bidding and look, here, see how we have made the ordinary lives of ordinary people special.

—The Cassandrist

But the Cassandrist also notes that while the Cassandrist enjoys the democratization of publishing via blog, the Cassandrist sees social networking, cellphones, and all manner of electronic media as being just the culture’s magnet-hung refrigerator door for narcissism. 

And narcissism is a prerequisite for fascism.

Cui Bono?

Who benefits?

The illusion that all of us are at the center of things makes the New Fascism and Dickiness possible. Instead of needing to work to penetrate the hot center, the naive and young hear a siren that sings to them of their assumed importance.

All that personal news, moment-tomoment text messaging, the barrage of email, Twitter notes (as if others could or should care what one is doing from moment to moment) amount to the same thing, electronic ego-stroking. By bestowing celebrity status on the most mundane, ordinary, and puerile, the New Fascism leeches into our minds, preparing us for the thousand contradictions required for the establishment of the Old Fascism, the permanent loss of liberty, diversity and freedom.

At the center, we hold in contempt everyone at the periphery. We exalt ourselves as special. We laugh at the poor jerks who are not as cool as we are. Eventually, we can define them as sub-human, round them up, and if not exterminate, at least terrorize them.

You know. Like Fight Club.  We’re cool, we’re tough, we are the people who matter, you’re soft, you’re a joke. We worry about consumer-shit taking over our minds and that some guy’s name is on our underwear, but we bitch about this electronically using any product made by Apple, ’cause, see, Apple is cool and we are devoted. Apple is us. Microsoft is them, those soft-bodied jag-offs. We drink PBR ’cause it is working man’s beer, not a multi-million dollar corporation that has figured out that being a cult is better than advertizing. 

–the Cassandrist

Celebrities are just like you and me, but more so, right?

As New Fascism preps the culture for the advent of Old Fascism and the elimination of individual rights and diversity, every citizen needs to be assured he or she is special. Fame is an entitlement, not the product of effort and ability. If you are not famous or rich or beautiful, it is someone else’s fault. Blame them. Elect politicians who promise you that you will be given what is due you. Crack another PBR in the trailer park and bitch about them folks makming your life a living hell.

Look at alleged “reality” TV. Here’s a spectacle that exalts the ordinary and mocks failure.

There are no complicated dramatic questions; no competing claims to virtue based on a scripted plot. On cheap-to-produce reality TV, ordinary people are put into games and competitions. These folks want their houses remade, to pursue a spouse, to survive on an island, to race around the world with their families, to plot against competitors, are to have dieticians and personal trainers, to throw themselves into vats of mud and vermin. Ordinary folks, just like you and me.

TV producers want folks that will exhibit the worst in human nature, not the best. Saints just don’t draw an audience and human frailty panders to an audience that needs to feel superior. The voyeurs out there mock weaknesses and willingness to endure humiliation, while assuring themselves that had they been fortunate enough to have been chosen to appear on a show that calls for no talent, they’d do far better. Gimme another PBR while I explain. Look, any jerk can see how it is done. You grab the rope here, you push off from there, you tell her this, and you deny that. Lie if you have to. Boy, those people on TV are stupid! Thanks, maybe one more PBR. I’d get up to get it, but I think I pissed my pants…

The Cassandrist notes for simpletons in the audience that these “real” people have been screened by programming personnel for the qualities that build audience. Depending on the TV game, those qualities may or may not include geniality, beauty, strength, ability, and perhaps a streak of meanness.

Why is This Entertainment?

In his darkest moment, the Cassandrist does not doubt that the votes of judges in the final stages of elimination on American Idol are determined by Nielsen, and the on-stage stooge judges are instructed to vote for the “talent” most likely to bring the audience back a week later.  For the TiVo Generation enchanted by the 21st century update of the radio show, Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, American Idol needs plenty of contestant fodder who are delusional about their abilities, probably feeble-minded, as well as a cast of judges that can be snide and bitchy, like Caesar at the Coliseum able to cast a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and grant life or death. The audience loves those judges, so like themselves, sp powerful, so knowledgeable, so arbitrary.

Genuine accomplishment can be achieved by real people. This week, we are watching Olympic athletes. Every performance we see is the product of years of dedication, hard work, arising at ungodly early hours, sweat, discipline, and an obsessive pursuit at excellence. These athletes accept responsibility for the self—they know that a lucky break is the consequence of diligence.

But in the New Fascist state of mind, that reality is unacceptable. In the New Fascism, or failures are always some other power’s fault.

— The Cassandrist

Throwing critical rocks at movies designed to be nothing more than high revenue spectacles is easy, but the Cassandrist feels compelled to explore this one. The Summer of the Super Hero is upon us, and we are in steeped in Dickiness and the New Fascism. The Dark Knight is not bad spectacle; it’s just pandering stupidity.

A few years after the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nascent Japanese film industry invented Godzilla, a creature who rose from the ocean depths to level cities with his radioactive breath. The response to national trauma becomes national myth.

Now consider the alleged plot of The Dark Knight. Once we overcome the vertigo induced by director Christopher Nolan’s merry-go-round dolly shots and of cityscapes as seen from Batman’s roof-top perspective, we can try to untangle the premise.

Problem is, the premise has holes large enough to drive the Batmobile through.

The Crime Wave.

Gotham (read: New York City) is in the grips of a crime wave. The indignant population demands action. Mind you, the film has no time to show us any of that crime, just indignant, frightened citizens. We are left to guess, but we have some clues, as to what is going on. The crime wave cannot be crimes of violence, because this crime wave has brought a huge pile of cash into the hands of various crime families, and anyone with an IQ higher than a carrot’s knows that much cash does not come from muggers and liquor store thefts. In fact, that much cash flowing into criminal pockets requires an acquiescent population, the kind of people who think prostitution, gambling, and drugs are public services. What’s all the indignation about? Who is getting hurt?

The Dark Knight has no time for such logic. Never mind that the original Batman was motivated by revenge, the death of his parents at the hand of a mugger. The Batman for the post 9 – 11 culture is out to restore Order. Crime has been redefined.

The crime that propels this plot is that the Joker robs a mob bank, a place where they keep cash in a vault, rather than get crazy and, maybe, invest their cash in ways that makes the money work. Maybe build a casino? Maybe buy Gotham real estate? How about buying poppy fields in Turkey, cut their costs on heroin production? Nope, not these criminals—they’s rather store their money in pillowcases, maybe sleep on it. Still, the Batman needs to pursue the Joker and the money through the hands of a Hong Kong money-launderer. How or why these gangs of idiots upset the population of Gotham is a mystery, and once they agree to give the Joker half of all they have to be rid of the Batman, they would never, ever, go back on their word!

Shit, the Cassandrist know the point is to get the Caped Crusader onto the Bat-Cycle, get some cool car chases. He’s not a fool, but he does wonder at all the cheering pinheads in the audience who don’t need a smidgen of sense but just want to see the bad guys—any bad guys—made into toast.

You know, like conflating the Iraq War with revenge for the Twin Towers bombing. Fuck, let’s just kick ass!

History will sort it out later.

Criminal Enterprises.

These exist in the real world. In a film with even a tenuous connection to reality, we might hope to explore the basis of loyalty within those enterprises. Character and motivation are the stuff of art that make an audience think. But like the James Bond epics, which were parables of the Cold War made hot for cinematic purposes, in the Dark Knight our post 9-11 nightmares are made into easy enemies. Not only are the bad guys betrayed by their boss, the Joker, but whole armies of them doing the Joker’s bidding at risk—and loss—of their lives. What exactly is the source of such loyalty? Has anyone noticed that if you accept pay from the Joker you do not live to spend it? How does he recruit such people? They must all be crazy.

You know, like Islamic terrorists.

The Joker.

No question, Heath Ledger does a brilliant job. The Cassandrist notes that the Joker gives contradictory tales of his own origin, and that the final motivation given the character is that “some people just like to watch things burn.”

You know, like Osama bin Laden.

The Batman.

Batman is the epitome of the New Fascist Dickiness, that adolescent wet dream of power, being unburdened by law, the necessity for making a living, or even romance. Gone is the Batman with homo-erotic attachments to a boy, the old comic book’s Robin. The new Batman had a girlfriend, Maggie, but she is dead by the end of this Fascist mess called The Dark Knight, thus clearing the decks for sequels in which Batman can masturbate joyfully alone. Maggie has to die: we require the post 9-11 Batman to be unencumbered by any human attachments. We want our anti-terrorists to be unfeeling, dedicated automatons who can protect us without the complications of law. The message of The Dark Knight is that we are helpless in the face of Evil, and so we must have vigilantes whom we secretly admire and a publically despise. To defend Order, The Dark Knight accepts ostracism, works outside the law, pursues Evil wherever and whenever it appears, and pursues it with whatever means necessary.

You know, like Dick Cheney.

Fuck the Constitution. Bring out the water boards. We don’t need no stinkin’ rules! We are helpless!

Thus the New Fascism prepares us for the Old Fascism.

We will never lose liberty and freedom to foreign forces—but we will give liberty and freedom away.

—The Cassandrist