-created by scott peters
2009-2011
Unforgivably bad.
This badness of this remake (i refuse to call it a reimagining, as that would imply imagination) is so pernicious, this is a candidate for worst sci fi show ever. Why? Because the acting and dialogue are so competent, it's hard for the average viewer to notice how unworthy the show is of either science or fiction. The original 1983 mini-series by kenneth johnson was smart and fun. The original series, created after the studio drove off johnson, was deeply flawed but possessed of integrity and charm. This re-boot (or upchuck) has neither - it's like the suits got together and said, "Give us something fifteen year-old boys will love. No, not the smart ones." Am i expecting too much from a network show? Being on a network may be a reason for mediocrity, but it's never an excuse.
An alien invasion arrives, cloaked in the guise of friendship. Nice premise. Yet it's all too clear that the writers are liberal arts majors who don't know hard science from a dental appliance. They focus on the V's obsession with the humyn "soul", a notion that has no scientific underpinning, and ignore the legitimate concept of a war between humyns and a non-emotional species. This would be science-based, as reptiles seem to lack the biological capacity for emotion that makes mammals so fascinating (to other mammals, at least).
One of the regulars is a hunky, conflicted priest. It simply strains all credibility to have him in a terrorist/rebel cell - he serves no function other than hand-wringing. The methodology of the freedom fighters is all over the place, as is consistency of character.
I gutted out the entire two seasons because of devotion to the genre. The only thing that kept me mildly interested was the pandering use of genre stalwarts (morena baccarin, lexa doig, rekha sharma, alan tudyk, ona grauer, michael trucco, paul mcgillion). Grab those paychecks, kids. Original stars jane badler and marc singer provide juice, but it's flushed down a mindless morass.
Original series review: https://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/10/v.html
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
hotbed?
The home of my youth was a hotbed of emotional repression.
So was everyone else's - i know.
Okay, how about this? The home of my youth was a hotbed of sexism, homophobia, and...racism?
Hmmm. Well, i've got MY attention.
The first two conditions are something i rebelled against...though perhaps not as assertively as i ought. Self-image is a tricky thing - we can fool most of the people most of the time, and no one more than ourselves. My self-image as a humyn rights hero might be at odds with the image others have had of me.
And perhaps some were...right?
Let's travel back to a place called 870 Weber. A nice home in the northeast suburbs, with a pool in the yard...a magnet for teenage friends and good times. Among the five kids, there was a choral all-star/academic achiever, an instrumental all-star, three theatrical all-stars, and one guitarist with a basement band. No sports stars, but hardcore play and spectator devotion.
When mom left, the signs had been on the wall and it seemed the only sane choice. I saw it through feminist eyes - mom needed the freedom she'd been denied under both father and husband.
I was eighteen. The split hit my brothers harder, perhaps affecting their ability to form adult relationships. Big sis was already nearly through college, and gone. Thus, 870 became testosterone central - for the next decade, a place of food and funny films, barbs and bros, nicknames and games. I lived there on and off for five years after college, partly to be there for my brothers. Joyous it was...with no dark side, to us. No physical violence. The drug use (alcohol, pot, eventually psychedelics) was the domain of my brothers, and always seemed under control. As for the sexist or homophobic energy, i always assumed it was simply the reality of every suburban home.
Recently though, one of my brothers opined that we had a toxicity conspicuously absent in most of the homes of our peers.
He might be right.
For without a doubt, 870 was a place of aggressive, chauvinist heteronormativity.
Like all boys in a greed-based patriarchy, we'd been taught (inside the home and out) to banish any weakness or differentness. These things were pounced upon. We called it "rikking" - verbal slams crafted with humor and flair...and in retrospect, without mercy. One brother was a bit out of shape, and perhaps overly fond of electronic entertainment. I dubbed him "chair", a name that stuck. Is an apology long overdue?
Being the oldest brother and verbally-inclined, i helped found the rik movement. To me, it was good-natured fun. An expression of love. I'm sure it was, on some level...
But the emotional repression was more pervasive than any of us knew. Males didn't share feelings, they used sports talk to sublimate and impersonalize such things.
And woe unto anyone who strayed from the norm. I tried to craft my riks in a feminist way, but such control was conspicuously absent in everyone else. Much of that stemmed from our father, in the degradation of anything feminine. Equating womynhood with weakness.
"GINA BOY!!" "PUSSY BOY!!" And yes, "GAYBOY!!"
Is it possible i used either of those first two terms (or something similar) in my early teens, before i realized their malevolent underpinnings? One brother assures me i didn't, but i'm not sure beyond a shadow of a doubt. In any event, by the time of the great testosteronization, i was the only one not using any of them. Did my protest extend beyond silence? I'm pretty sure at some point i directed a calm diatribe at father and brothers. Did it have any effect? Maybe. Could i have done more? It's never been my way to correct or control. People do and think what they want. Plus, advice-giving has a pernicious side - we're all constantly trying to re-shape the world in our own image. So i've always tried to maintain a dignified silence, in a world full of people overeager to tell each other what to do. We're all great idiots. I try to shut the hell up.
There is much strength in this approach, yet also perhaps a weakness, in a world so damaged. It's only in recent years that i've allowed myself to be more vocal in expressing what's right or wrong. I still mostly restrict that to impersonal writings, though.
Did mother or sister perceive the female-trashing? How could they not?? Well, no gloria steinems, they.
The homophobia took longer for me to perceive and reject. As a pubescent, i found homosexuality so objectionable i thought i might have a violent reaction the first time i met someone gay.
A violent reaction.
Me.
Avowed pacifist by sixteen. Content to go to jail rather than war. Never struck another humyn in my life (except a bullying older sister when i was nine).
A violent reaction.
Behold the power of cultural taboo, that even as gentle a child as myself, imagined doing violence.
I was seventeen when i finally "met" a gay person. In a community theater production, i found out one of my companions was gay. I had worked joyously with him for many weeks, and the revelation was the least disturbing thing imaginable. Not that i'd suspected, but...he was so wonderful, it was a perfect non-issue.
But Weber would not have been welcoming, i fear. In our circle of friends, there was one who had less-than-macho energy. He was teased. I thought he was great, and would have defended him had anyone earnestly disrespected him...yet nothing seemed amiss to me. Even as a fledgling humyn rights advocate, i couldn't perceive that the ribbing might have been hurtful. Ribbing is how we expressed love. Perhaps he ultimately avoided our house. I don't know.
As for the chauvinism, it's not like there were never any female friends around. There were. Were they disturbed by, or aware of, the sexism? If so, it didn't show.
Rampant homophobic sexism. To me, it wasn't virulent, just annoying.
But...racism?
Our home??
There are some things sitting on the tip of our nose, that we never see.
In my heart, i recall being anti-racist as early as i was anti-feminist. As an adolescent, MLK was one of my heroes. Gandhi, too. By my mid-teens, i daydreamed about an asian womyn being the love of my life.
I'm a white boy from the suburbs - what do you want?
In my twenties, we learned that one of our neighborhood parents had belonged to a white supremacist group. We were all shocked.
There was one black family in our neighborhood, with a son near my age. I might have befriended him, but he seemed way too cool for me.
As a child, i remember being viscerally turned off by my grandfather's racist jokes. I recall a more benign, yet still quite racist joke appearing in our midst years later, perpetuated by my father, or maybe even my mother (Years later, i discovered my seemingly-progressive mom drew the line at interracial babies. Just too problematic for her.).
My youngest brother recently pointed out some of the more unsavory, racist WASP-normativity that went unchecked. One of our friends was from Guatemala. Our father called him "guatemala al". No one else called him that, but we accepted it. We understood that dad was abrasive, but we loved him as best we could, and he could be great fun. Al didn't seem to mind, yet in retrospect, did he ever want to say, "Yes, i'm not from Iowa. We can SEE that. Does it NEED to be pointed out?"
And...
Something i'd forgotten entirely. One of my brothers, for a while, had a set response if someone asked him to do some work. He'd fix a playful eye on you, and say...
"What color am i?"
I cringed, but accepted it. I assumed he was being ironic. He always seemed the gentlest among us.
Can you imagine a bigger "benefit of the doubt"?
We were sheltered kids in a changing world, trying to make sense of everything our culture was throwing at us, in the first full bloom of the mass media age. We knew our grandparent's generation was fundamentally, horribly wrong. We were suspicious of our parents.
And yet...870 was a place spilling with warmth and welcome. Had one of us brought home a non-white lover, they would have been embraced (son/daughter double standard notwithstanding). Had one of us brought home a gay lover...they would have been accepted. Probably. Had one of us brought home a trans lover...brains would have short-circuited.
All this begs the question - was 870 a place of genuine racism, or just clueless, careless language? More the latter. I don't think you'd have found malevolence in our hearts. Ignorance (plus double standards and entitlement, in most of us)...but not malevolence.
Small comfort for those we might have hurt. Nor can i swear that all of us were ultimately able to equally overcome our bad socialization...
So was everyone else's - i know.
Okay, how about this? The home of my youth was a hotbed of sexism, homophobia, and...racism?
Hmmm. Well, i've got MY attention.
The first two conditions are something i rebelled against...though perhaps not as assertively as i ought. Self-image is a tricky thing - we can fool most of the people most of the time, and no one more than ourselves. My self-image as a humyn rights hero might be at odds with the image others have had of me.
And perhaps some were...right?
Let's travel back to a place called 870 Weber. A nice home in the northeast suburbs, with a pool in the yard...a magnet for teenage friends and good times. Among the five kids, there was a choral all-star/academic achiever, an instrumental all-star, three theatrical all-stars, and one guitarist with a basement band. No sports stars, but hardcore play and spectator devotion.
When mom left, the signs had been on the wall and it seemed the only sane choice. I saw it through feminist eyes - mom needed the freedom she'd been denied under both father and husband.
I was eighteen. The split hit my brothers harder, perhaps affecting their ability to form adult relationships. Big sis was already nearly through college, and gone. Thus, 870 became testosterone central - for the next decade, a place of food and funny films, barbs and bros, nicknames and games. I lived there on and off for five years after college, partly to be there for my brothers. Joyous it was...with no dark side, to us. No physical violence. The drug use (alcohol, pot, eventually psychedelics) was the domain of my brothers, and always seemed under control. As for the sexist or homophobic energy, i always assumed it was simply the reality of every suburban home.
Recently though, one of my brothers opined that we had a toxicity conspicuously absent in most of the homes of our peers.
He might be right.
For without a doubt, 870 was a place of aggressive, chauvinist heteronormativity.
Like all boys in a greed-based patriarchy, we'd been taught (inside the home and out) to banish any weakness or differentness. These things were pounced upon. We called it "rikking" - verbal slams crafted with humor and flair...and in retrospect, without mercy. One brother was a bit out of shape, and perhaps overly fond of electronic entertainment. I dubbed him "chair", a name that stuck. Is an apology long overdue?
Being the oldest brother and verbally-inclined, i helped found the rik movement. To me, it was good-natured fun. An expression of love. I'm sure it was, on some level...
But the emotional repression was more pervasive than any of us knew. Males didn't share feelings, they used sports talk to sublimate and impersonalize such things.
And woe unto anyone who strayed from the norm. I tried to craft my riks in a feminist way, but such control was conspicuously absent in everyone else. Much of that stemmed from our father, in the degradation of anything feminine. Equating womynhood with weakness.
"GINA BOY!!" "PUSSY BOY!!" And yes, "GAYBOY!!"
Is it possible i used either of those first two terms (or something similar) in my early teens, before i realized their malevolent underpinnings? One brother assures me i didn't, but i'm not sure beyond a shadow of a doubt. In any event, by the time of the great testosteronization, i was the only one not using any of them. Did my protest extend beyond silence? I'm pretty sure at some point i directed a calm diatribe at father and brothers. Did it have any effect? Maybe. Could i have done more? It's never been my way to correct or control. People do and think what they want. Plus, advice-giving has a pernicious side - we're all constantly trying to re-shape the world in our own image. So i've always tried to maintain a dignified silence, in a world full of people overeager to tell each other what to do. We're all great idiots. I try to shut the hell up.
There is much strength in this approach, yet also perhaps a weakness, in a world so damaged. It's only in recent years that i've allowed myself to be more vocal in expressing what's right or wrong. I still mostly restrict that to impersonal writings, though.
Did mother or sister perceive the female-trashing? How could they not?? Well, no gloria steinems, they.
The homophobia took longer for me to perceive and reject. As a pubescent, i found homosexuality so objectionable i thought i might have a violent reaction the first time i met someone gay.
A violent reaction.
Me.
Avowed pacifist by sixteen. Content to go to jail rather than war. Never struck another humyn in my life (except a bullying older sister when i was nine).
A violent reaction.
Behold the power of cultural taboo, that even as gentle a child as myself, imagined doing violence.
I was seventeen when i finally "met" a gay person. In a community theater production, i found out one of my companions was gay. I had worked joyously with him for many weeks, and the revelation was the least disturbing thing imaginable. Not that i'd suspected, but...he was so wonderful, it was a perfect non-issue.
But Weber would not have been welcoming, i fear. In our circle of friends, there was one who had less-than-macho energy. He was teased. I thought he was great, and would have defended him had anyone earnestly disrespected him...yet nothing seemed amiss to me. Even as a fledgling humyn rights advocate, i couldn't perceive that the ribbing might have been hurtful. Ribbing is how we expressed love. Perhaps he ultimately avoided our house. I don't know.
As for the chauvinism, it's not like there were never any female friends around. There were. Were they disturbed by, or aware of, the sexism? If so, it didn't show.
Rampant homophobic sexism. To me, it wasn't virulent, just annoying.
But...racism?
Our home??
There are some things sitting on the tip of our nose, that we never see.
In my heart, i recall being anti-racist as early as i was anti-feminist. As an adolescent, MLK was one of my heroes. Gandhi, too. By my mid-teens, i daydreamed about an asian womyn being the love of my life.
I'm a white boy from the suburbs - what do you want?
In my twenties, we learned that one of our neighborhood parents had belonged to a white supremacist group. We were all shocked.
There was one black family in our neighborhood, with a son near my age. I might have befriended him, but he seemed way too cool for me.
As a child, i remember being viscerally turned off by my grandfather's racist jokes. I recall a more benign, yet still quite racist joke appearing in our midst years later, perpetuated by my father, or maybe even my mother (Years later, i discovered my seemingly-progressive mom drew the line at interracial babies. Just too problematic for her.).
My youngest brother recently pointed out some of the more unsavory, racist WASP-normativity that went unchecked. One of our friends was from Guatemala. Our father called him "guatemala al". No one else called him that, but we accepted it. We understood that dad was abrasive, but we loved him as best we could, and he could be great fun. Al didn't seem to mind, yet in retrospect, did he ever want to say, "Yes, i'm not from Iowa. We can SEE that. Does it NEED to be pointed out?"
And...
Something i'd forgotten entirely. One of my brothers, for a while, had a set response if someone asked him to do some work. He'd fix a playful eye on you, and say...
"What color am i?"
I cringed, but accepted it. I assumed he was being ironic. He always seemed the gentlest among us.
Can you imagine a bigger "benefit of the doubt"?
We were sheltered kids in a changing world, trying to make sense of everything our culture was throwing at us, in the first full bloom of the mass media age. We knew our grandparent's generation was fundamentally, horribly wrong. We were suspicious of our parents.
And yet...870 was a place spilling with warmth and welcome. Had one of us brought home a non-white lover, they would have been embraced (son/daughter double standard notwithstanding). Had one of us brought home a gay lover...they would have been accepted. Probably. Had one of us brought home a trans lover...brains would have short-circuited.
All this begs the question - was 870 a place of genuine racism, or just clueless, careless language? More the latter. I don't think you'd have found malevolence in our hearts. Ignorance (plus double standards and entitlement, in most of us)...but not malevolence.
Small comfort for those we might have hurt. Nor can i swear that all of us were ultimately able to equally overcome our bad socialization...
Sunday, October 13, 2019
politically incorrectal self-exam
It appears i have three viewpoints that qualify as politically incorrect.
In no particular order...
1
If you were to assemble the hundred least-racist americans, would they have anything in common? As you looked over that enlightened assemblage, would any subtle unifying factors jump out?
You betcha.
They'd be white.
Every single one. How do i know?
Because white people grow up with the luxury of not knowing they're white, and indeed not knowing they're any color at all. Though all this is swiftly (in the big picture) changing, being white in America is normative. Therefore, white people are free to form their points of view from a cocoon of relative objectivity. Non-white folk on the other hand, whether subtly or grossly, have their skin color smacked into their faces virtually every day of their lives.
To wonder whether someone is racist is ridiculous. The answer is YES. Everyone is, in varying degrees.
Including, and especially, people of color.
White people are free to see racism impersonally, and hopefully become intellectually mortified. People of color carry around a blanket of anger/confusion/shame. Their anti-racism is a cry of pain, but visceral rage and objectivity are almost diametrically opposed.
2
Homosexuality/transsexuality are not as simple and inevitable as political correctness dictates. Preference and identity are genetic? Yes, i believe that's true...but in a limited way. Our personalities are profoundly shaped by the constant avalanche of social conditioning we receive from the moment we're born. We live in a culture of sexual repression, and one way this manifests is in how we provide adolescents zero sexual outlet (and often zero input as well). What happens to a humyn denied any expression of so powerful a drive as sex?
Nothing good.
Enter the word "maladaption", used so aptly by desmond morris. We often take our general adolescent sexual embargo and amplify it by keeping males and females apart in non-sexual contexts too. Different locker rooms/bathrooms, gym classes, sports/activities, camps, even schools. As any behavioral anthropologist will tell you, we bond with whatever's available. We imprint with whomever's around. Put anyone in a single-gender environment, and there's gonna be a whole lot of maladaptin' going on.
Baby, we were born that way?
Yes. And no.
3
There's an open mic i attend, with a host i love. One of his recurring intros is "Y'know what we need now? Some feminine energy. So let's bring up..."
I can't imagine ever sexually stereotyping a performer like that.
And yet...
Men and wimyn be different.
I've struggled with this one. Early on, i took the position that gender personality differences were purely cultural. And though that's largely true in the big picture, because all differences overlap...differences are real. And inborn. Wimyn are more verbal and social, men more thing-oriented. There are many fascinating differences, small and large. When are these differences a straitjacket to rebel against, and when are they something to accept, even celebrate? It's going to be decades before there's a comfortable answer to that question, because so much of our society is still enmeshed in patriarchal oppression and repression.
I'm not betraying the PC agenda. I was railing against gender-specific personal pronouns decades before it became popular...and still do.
Yet men and wimyn be different. Having seen maleness from the inside, i prefer the company of wimyn. Yet i know wimyn who prefer the company of men, and that's perhaps a valid response too.
I get the non-binary agenda. I celebrate it. Yet to a certain extent, this is a binary world and always will be, until we evolve past our current reproductive reality.
I often make an effort, in my art, to manifest non-binary language and attitudes. Other times, i go deeply binary, in my quest to make people see or laugh.
So...am i a PC hero? Anti-hero? Both? Who can tell...
In no particular order...
1
If you were to assemble the hundred least-racist americans, would they have anything in common? As you looked over that enlightened assemblage, would any subtle unifying factors jump out?
You betcha.
They'd be white.
Every single one. How do i know?
Because white people grow up with the luxury of not knowing they're white, and indeed not knowing they're any color at all. Though all this is swiftly (in the big picture) changing, being white in America is normative. Therefore, white people are free to form their points of view from a cocoon of relative objectivity. Non-white folk on the other hand, whether subtly or grossly, have their skin color smacked into their faces virtually every day of their lives.
To wonder whether someone is racist is ridiculous. The answer is YES. Everyone is, in varying degrees.
Including, and especially, people of color.
White people are free to see racism impersonally, and hopefully become intellectually mortified. People of color carry around a blanket of anger/confusion/shame. Their anti-racism is a cry of pain, but visceral rage and objectivity are almost diametrically opposed.
2
Homosexuality/transsexuality are not as simple and inevitable as political correctness dictates. Preference and identity are genetic? Yes, i believe that's true...but in a limited way. Our personalities are profoundly shaped by the constant avalanche of social conditioning we receive from the moment we're born. We live in a culture of sexual repression, and one way this manifests is in how we provide adolescents zero sexual outlet (and often zero input as well). What happens to a humyn denied any expression of so powerful a drive as sex?
Nothing good.
Enter the word "maladaption", used so aptly by desmond morris. We often take our general adolescent sexual embargo and amplify it by keeping males and females apart in non-sexual contexts too. Different locker rooms/bathrooms, gym classes, sports/activities, camps, even schools. As any behavioral anthropologist will tell you, we bond with whatever's available. We imprint with whomever's around. Put anyone in a single-gender environment, and there's gonna be a whole lot of maladaptin' going on.
Baby, we were born that way?
Yes. And no.
3
There's an open mic i attend, with a host i love. One of his recurring intros is "Y'know what we need now? Some feminine energy. So let's bring up..."
I can't imagine ever sexually stereotyping a performer like that.
And yet...
Men and wimyn be different.
I've struggled with this one. Early on, i took the position that gender personality differences were purely cultural. And though that's largely true in the big picture, because all differences overlap...differences are real. And inborn. Wimyn are more verbal and social, men more thing-oriented. There are many fascinating differences, small and large. When are these differences a straitjacket to rebel against, and when are they something to accept, even celebrate? It's going to be decades before there's a comfortable answer to that question, because so much of our society is still enmeshed in patriarchal oppression and repression.
I'm not betraying the PC agenda. I was railing against gender-specific personal pronouns decades before it became popular...and still do.
Yet men and wimyn be different. Having seen maleness from the inside, i prefer the company of wimyn. Yet i know wimyn who prefer the company of men, and that's perhaps a valid response too.
I get the non-binary agenda. I celebrate it. Yet to a certain extent, this is a binary world and always will be, until we evolve past our current reproductive reality.
I often make an effort, in my art, to manifest non-binary language and attitudes. Other times, i go deeply binary, in my quest to make people see or laugh.
So...am i a PC hero? Anti-hero? Both? Who can tell...
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Riptide 10
Two new songs, "Sexy Bitch" and "This Song Sucks". On this night, the kerrigan wake descended on the Riptide. Thirty or so semi-inebriated irish folk, making things relentlessly loud. I almost bailed on my originals in favor of crowd-pleasing, mindless covers, but decided to plow ahead. Inside a waterfall of crowd noise, i feared a trainwreck, but viewing it now it came out pretty okay. Still, a lesson learned in keeping your head...i should have placed the readers in a consecutive line, and made sure they understood how to find their mic...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSiBHE32pW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSiBHE32pW0
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