Andrew Sullivan’s eulogy for Michael Jackson..

I have two reviews over at Metropulse, one of profane girl group Electrik Red (great!) and one of hip dance-pop performer Little Boots (pretty good.)

There’s nothing quite like Japanese feudal nostalgia to make me appreciate the benefits of modernity. Sure, crass capitalist libertines are hard to love…but at least they have no honor. That has to count for something.

I’ve only read the first volume of Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura’s Lady Snowblood, but there’s enough honor here to satiate me for quite a while, thank you. The story, set in 19th century Japan, is a rape-revenge narrative. a genre to which I’m by no means opposed. Koike’s take on rape-revenge here is, however, different in some important ways from that in exploitation films like “I Spit on Your Grave” “Ms. 45,” or “They Call Her One Eye.”

— In most American rape-revenge films, the point of the film is the reversal; you get to see a weak, apparently helpless woman turn the tables and castrate/murder her attackers. You can root for her in part because she’s so clearly the underdog; she’s got to be clever and inventive to turn the tables on her assailants.

In Lady Snowblood, though, the titular protagonist is super-hero tough. She is smart and inventive, sure, but you never actually see her in any particular danger (she does get beaten and tortured in one scene, but her torturer is honorable and its all just a misunderstanding. She never actually gets captured or even touched by any villain, at least not in this first volume.

— In most American rape-revenge films, the revenge is personal. That is, the woman is herself a victim, and then she takes revenge on the person who victimized her, rather than on some random individual. This can be a little complicated; for instance, in Ms. 45, the victimizer is men in general, and that’s who the revenge is inflicted on as well; in Death Proof one group of women is murdered and another group takes revenge on the guy who did it. Still, the mechanics work the same; the films are built around a mechanics which, while not always strictly logical, is grounded in a sense of personal justice, individual trauma, and retribution.

Lady Snowblood, though, isn’t built around personal justice exactly. It’s about a blood feud and familial, rather than personal honor. It’s not LS herself, but her mother who was raped years before LS was born. The mother did kill one of her assailants, but she was unable to kill the rest. So she deliberately offered herself to any man who would have her in order to become pregnant and bear a child who would carry out her revenge for her. To which you’ve got to say…um, yuck.

But that’s not the reaction of any of the mother’s peers. On the contrary, they aid and abet the project; mom dies before she can pass on the details of the revenge to her daughter, but her friends helpfully convey the information. Thus, mom deliberately and elaborately ruins her daughter’s life, and everybody around her is like, oh, yeah, that’s awesome.

Moreover, in order to make ends meet and get some cash with which to pursue her revenge, LS hires herself out as an assassin. Most of the people she kills are not especially sympathetic — gamblers, pimps, murderers and so forth. Still, you almost can’t help feeling sorry for them as Lady Snowblood impersonally hacks them into little quivering pieces.

And then we come to the last story of the volume, where our heroine ambushes a coach with an upper class mother and daughter. She kills the mother, then forces the coachman to rape the daughter. Then blackmails the coachman with the threat that his sperm will lead the police to believe he murdered and raped the daughter.

This is all part of an elaborate plot to shut down the Rokumeikan, an estate where upper-class, pro-Western Japanese engaged in orgies with Westerners. LS’s actions are supposed to be justified, as far as I can tell, because the mother and daughter she brutalizes were (A) sexually promiscuous; (B) overly Westernized; and (C) sexually promiscuous with Westerners.

There are certainly class animosities being played out here as well; the loathing of decadent aristocrats bleeds into the loathing of Westernization and modernity. That was true for the Nazis as well, though, I believe. And indeed, Lady Snowblood really does help to explain why the Nazis and the Japanese were able to find common ground. The loathing of weakness, shot through with racial and national connotations; the fetishization of violence; the belief that a violation of national or familial honor justifies almost anything. Add in the hypocritically decadent exploitation elements here — Lady Snowblood is always battling in the buff, for one reason or another — and the result looks, to me, pretty thoroughly vile. No doubt that makes me a spineless, dishonorable Westerner…but considering the alternatives presented here, I may be okay with that.

This article originally ran in a slightly altered form in Culture 11.

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“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is the ideal American Yuletide legend. Dr. Suess’ fable is set in a perfect, egalitarian world; the Whos of Whoville are an entire nation of deracinated middle-class nuclear families, with houses identical down to the mouses. Their Christmas rituals are defined in terms of amorphously desirable products: “their presents, their ribbons, their wrappings/Their snoofs and their fuzzles, their tringlers and trappings!” Of course, Seuss rushes to assure us that even though the Whos are robbed of their presents, they still wake up happy and singing. Thus the Grinch decides that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store….that it perhaps–means a little bit more!” But what does it mean, anyway? Certainly nothing particularly or specifically Christian — just general good cheer and carols. The evil Grinch who steals all the goodies functions, then, less as an actual villain and more as a catalogue: the whole point is to see him up there on Mount Crumpit, with the gigantic bag full of goodies that shows just how much stuff the Whos have, and how wonderful their Christmas therefore is. Plus, once their aggressive optimism has won over the cranky, cynical Grinch, he brings them all their presents back anyway! The enthusiastic blankness, the aphasiac hypocrisy, the perfect transubstantiation of Christianity into uplift — it couldn’t possibly say any more clearly “Made in U.S.A.” In comparison, the villainous banker and close-knit community of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” fairly reek of imported socialism.

Indeed, the American spirit galumphs and galerks through every one of the Doctor’s works. Like his fellow citizens, Seuss is boisterous, hearty, optimistic, profligate in invention, and not too heavy on the thought. “Yertle the Turtle” a fascistic terrapin, forces all his pond-fellows to stack themselves in a tower so he can climb to the top. The solution? Not collective action, nor courageous resistance, but a single fed-up burp by a turtle named Mack, who just isn’t going to take it anymore. In “The Sneeches,” the sneeches with stars dislike the sneeches without stars. The solution? Not understanding, or non-violent resistance, but simply a machine which removes stars! In Seuss’ universe, there is no problem that cannot be solved by old-fashioned practicality, good will, bizarre new-fangled machines, or some combination of all three.

Perhaps Seuss is most American, though, in his fascination with appetite and production— the two pillars of capitalism. The king in “Bartholemew and the Oobleck” who wants to create a new kind of weather; the nameless narrator in “On Beyond Zebra” who longs for a more extensive alphabet; the titular avian in “Gertrude McFuzz” who dreams of a more feathery tail; Luke Luck in “Fox in Sox” who, along with his duck, ceaselessly licks lakes, the “fine fluffy bird called the Bustard/Who only eats custard with sauce made of mustard” in “If I Ran the Zoo”— who but Seuss could create such a procession of obscure and excessive desires? And who could satisfy them with such a range of bizarre products? “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” reads like an extended surreal advertisement for Voom!, the miracle product that gets pink spots off snow. “Green Eggs and Ham” reads like an extended advertisement for…well, you know. And, perhaps most tellingly, in “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,” an absolute monarch is brought to his knees by a miracle of excessively propagating haberdashery. Feudalism falls before the unlimited power of production, and the zombified slobbering sound you hear off-panel is Milton Friedman rising from the grave to eat his own heart out.

Of course, Seuss never actually comes out as an advocate of the free market and unrestrained trade. On the contrary, when he has an explicit moral, it is as likely as not to be anti-greed. The king who insists on creating a new kind of weather ends up buried in gluey green Oobleck; the bird who wants more feathers ends up with such a profusion of plumage that she can’t even move; the Cat in the Hat is repeatedly chastised for allowing his transient desires (for a bath, for juggling, for kite-flying) to upset domestic harmony. Frugality and moralistic self-denial are standard American virtues, and Seuss, here as everywhere, is in sync with his countrymen.

But, it must be asked, self-denial in the name of what? The Grinch, as we noted, takes the presents away only to heighten their value and then return them. Similarly, though the king may regret having ordered up the Oobleck, the reader doesn’t. The whole pleasure of the book is in watching the kingdom drown in disgusting ichor; the joy in mess is leant piquancy by the knowledge that that mess is itself the righteous ooze of justice.

Part of what is so repulsive about the Oobleck is its suggestion of bodily fluids; it clots and sticks and is colored like snot. The story’s narrative is tied to abjection; the outer world is buried in the body’s waste. At the same time, this is a remarkably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed abjection. There is certainly anxiety in Seuss’ Oobleck illustrations, but there is also charm and gusto and enthusiasm. The way the Oobleck obscures barriers and selves is pleasurable — even titillating. It’s polymorphously perverse.

As, for that matter, is most of Seuss’ oeuvre. You can see it in the furry, genderless, insinuatingly bulbous critters; in the oral appetites for indistinct fluids (“Do you choose to chew goo too sir?”); in the way bodies morph and change dependent on desire (so that when an elephant sits on a bird’s egg, the egg hatches an elephant bird); even in the insistent labial pleasures of the rhyme and rhythm. “Happy Birthday to You” stuffs its birthday boy with hot dogs rolling off a gigantic spool; “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” has the Grinch slide down the chimney into the quiet Who home, sneaking about while the whole Who family sleeps together in a single Who bed. It’s all just a little suggestive.

So is Seuss a capitalist or a sensualist — a bourgie Republican small-businessman or a subliminally subversive Democratic free-love guru? The answer, of course, is that he’s both. In the United States different kinds of lust get parceled out to different parts of the political spectrum; appetite for products and wealth to the business right, appetites for bodies and pleasures to the hippie left. In Seuss, though, the two blur together into one seamless whole. The infinite replication of hats is the delight of the narrative, a kind of sensual pleasure. Similarly, the binding together of bodies in Oobleck satisfies a fantasy of capitalist production — the invention of new and superfluous goods. The entrepreneurial satisfaction of every desire and the polymorphous elision of taboo are really just the same side of the same coin. Love of excess is love of excess; that’s the Grinchiness of Christmas, and of the U.S.

This is another review that originally appeared in the now defunct website, Culture 11. The ending is somewhat different in this original version than in the published one, I think.

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Self-help is about helping yourself to great whopping heaps of stuff . Money, wives, prestige, adoration, a perfect body to house your pristine ego — it’s all yours for the asking if you’ll just turn your frown inside out, let a smile be your bludgeon, and follow our twelve simple steps!

Or, if twelve steps seem too complicated, you can always go see Yes Man and learn how to do it in one. Carl (Jim Carey) is a sad, sad, and lonely guy; his wife Stephanie (Molly Sims) ditched him after six months, and he has responded by going fetal. He is stuck in a boring dead-end job at a bank, won’t answer his phone, barely leaves his house, and spends most nights at home watching rented DVDs by himself, too bored (we learn) to even masturbate. Finally, he admits he has a problem, and goes to a self-help revival meeting of the “Yes-Men” led by one Terrence Bundley (Terrence Stamp). Terrence claims that “when you say yes…you embrace the possible!” Armed with this singular, and indeed, single, philosophy, Carey heads off determined to say yes every time the opportunity presents itself . Soon he’s giving rides to homeless people, learning Korean, sucking up to his apocalyptically nerdy boss, approving dicey loans, and — most satisfyingly — canoodling with the yummy Alison (Zooey Deschanel) who looks (and indeed, in real life, actually is) about two decades younger than him. Who wouldn’t say yes to that?

Indeed, the whole Yes Man concept is charged with a kind of lobotomized libidinousness. Saying “yes” to everything allows Carl to absolve himself of all personal responsibility. By replacing his conscience with an arbitrary shibboleth, Carl escapes from Adam’s curse. He no longer knows good from evil; he now literally knows only what he says. Liberated from moral choice, he is invested with an irresistible prelapsarian glamour. He charms his immediate supervisor, Norm (Rhys Darby) by attending his Harry Potter costume parties; he charms his best friend’s fiancée by agreeing to host her bridal shower; he charms a jumper back from the ledge by leading the onlookers in a rousing singalong. Moroever, Carl’s newfound charisma has a definite erotic edge. Women in bars and in bridal stores swoon and giggle when he flirts, his toothless septuagenarian landlady neighbor gives him a surprisingly skillful blowjob; Alison falls seamlessly in love with him. Even his ex-wife wants to get back in his bed.

Of course, there are some downsides to the yes-man program. If you never say no, people are going to take advantage of you — and, indeed, Carl’s home is virtually taken over by the parasitic Rooney (Danny Masterton.) More importantly, abdicating personal responsibility isn’t much different than abandoning personhood altogether; Carl sets no boundaries on his self, and therefore, his self basically disappears. His appeal is that he is all things to all people — a nerd to Norm; a daring adventurer to Alison; a drinking buddy to his friend Peter (Bradley Cooper); and so forth. The effect is magical, but it’s neither trustworthy nor exactly human; and when Alison figures out what’s going on, she’s repulsed. “How do I know if anything you did was really true?” she asks him in horror before dumping his bony ass.

It is at this point that the movie really reveals its diabolical genius. Losing Alison makes Carl realize that saying “yes” is not in itself a sufficient philosophy. There’s something else…something missing. But what is it? Confused, he seeks out guru Terence again, who obligingly explains that he must continue to say yes…but only when he actually, really want to! “Yes” is simply a step along the way to the goal of a new, exciting, and fully functional self.

But what kind of functional self is this, anyway? Both Peter and Alison mock the “say yes because you really want to” philosophy as an over-obvious tautology — you need a guru to tell you that? When you start to think about it, though, the philosophy is far from obvious. In fact, it’s the opposite of obvious. It’s flat-out stupid. In the first place, there are some things you simply can’t afford to say yes to, no matter how much you want to — Carl and Alison have mysteriously bottomless reserves of cash with which to indulge their consumer flights of fancy, but that’s hardly true for everyone. And in the second place — well, you don’t have to be a Kantian to realize that even the more complicated Yes Man philosophy presents certain moral problems. Even if you really, really want to do so, there are many things you just shouldn’t say yes to — unprotected sex with a stranger, for example, or murdering your boss, or invading Iraq. It is possible to deeply desire to do things that are harmful to others. Because you’re not the only one in the world, you have an obligation not to fuck your neighbors over just because you feel like it.

Of course, Yes Man pretends that it is about reaching out; helping homeless people, organizing bridal showers for friends, being truthful with your lover. Saying “yes” is supposed to be a way to open yourself to life. In fact, though, the opposite is the case: it is not the universe which fills Carl, but Carl who fills the universe. There he is saving the jumper; there he is match-making; there he is on television at a football game; there he is climbing the corporate ladder, there he is romancing a woman who, by all normal standards, is a good bit out of his league. His inner drama, his healing, is the focus of the narrative, and everyone revolves around it. Carl starts out as a failed narcissist; he ends as a successful one.

This is perhaps most clear in the scene in which Carl’s ex-wife asks him to come to her house. She has just broken up with her lover, and is horribly distraught. Weeping, she comes on to Carl, asking him to stay the night. Trapped by his “yes” pledge, he almost agrees — but then he says “no”. Undoubtedly this is the right thing to do for both of them…but Carl doesn’t explain this, or try to comfort her, or show any especial sympathy for a woman who he claims to have loved. Instead, his voice, when he utters the crucial negative, is both triumphal and somewhat sneering. She made him suffer, and now he doesn’t need her.

Carl’s new self-confidence, his new self-identity, is, in other words, built on the most puerile kind of revenge fantasy. He gets to humiliate the woman who broke his heart. And, of course, the best part is that, once he’s free of her, she ceases to matter. We never see her again — she’s out of his life and now he can concentrate on what’s best for him and him alone. Her pain and sadness aren’t real, because nobody is real; they’re all just small cogs in the blandly improbable wish fulfillment that Carey and company have concocted. In this daydream, all that truly exists is Carl, the self he’s helped, and his own oblivious, ravenous chant — “yes, no, yes, no, yes, no” — spoken not to communicate with others, but to efface them.

I’m going on vacation, and before that I’ve got to finish up a bunch of things, the upshot of all of which is that I will probably be out of action the next couple of weeks or so, at least as far as new content goes. But I’ll be back after the 4th. In the meantime, Cerusee and Tom and Miriam will keep you supplied with new bloggy goodness….