Aquaman: The destruction of Zack Snyder's vision

Zack Snyder had a vision for filming the DC Universe.  The vision centered on the question of how these gods, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc. co-exist with humans, including extraordinary humans such as Batman. The subparts to the vision included questions such as (a) what is the consequence of so much destruction of life, property, and land from the battles among the gods, and those humans using all of the latest and greatest technology attempt to destroy; (b) how do the theological and existential questions of the interaction between gods and human spill over into political, sociological, and economic issues in human societies throughout the planet; and (c) at what point are humans displaced, so that, even the good god, Superman, is an existential threat?  There is another theological aspect to Snyder's vision, which was making the non-Western-monotheistic gods real again, even at the point of denigrating or belittling the Western- monotheistic religious structures.  Wonder Woman did the best in setting up this sub-aspect to the vision, with the sardonic looks Diana (Wonder Woman) gave when people referenced Christianity, and the way in which Diana naively assumes everyone should believe in Zeus and the gods around him.  And, in Suicide Squad, the U.S. government becomes aware that the Egyptian gods are still with us.

I also gave Snyder great props for setting Wonder Woman/Diana's entrance into the human world in the time of World War I, as it is finally becoming clear, as a consensus among political thinkers and historians, how the events a century ago in WWI have been the main springboard for the conflagrations that challenge our lives today. Nearly all of the strife in the Middle East springs from European and American interference in the region during World War I, as one may begin to understand in books, such as Scott Anderson's majestic, Lawrence in Arabia. World War I provided the first example of senseless mass slaughter through modern technology.  The rise of Communism in Russia, and the endless reactions to that rise, come about through that war.  As I am now reading through Victor Serge's Notebooks: 1936-1947, finally and wonderfully translated into English, I am struck by Serge's prescience in seeing how WWI ended the belief that capitalists and revolutionaries could be on the same side in any societal conflagration, and how WWI forced capitalists into turning to modern forms of feudalism, namely fascism, to maintain power.

In Snyder's first DC Universe film, Man of Steel, Snyder, with screenwriter David S. Goyer, re-told the Superman story to set up the vision. The vision was to unfold further as each film was being presented, almost like peeling back an onion. In Man of Steel, we saw how Superman feels his humanness, and is almost embarrassed by his superpowers.  We saw how he hesitates to destroy anything, let alone kill other human beings--and the camera angles show us the destruction and death that results in the epic battle scenes.  We, as an audience, were invited to directly wonder at the human destruction and to be scared that we are relying on the kindness of Superman to save us.  The next film Snyder presented, Batman v. Superman (2016), in retrospect, was perhaps simply too much for audiences, in the way Orson Wells went beyond his audiences with Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1943). As with the studio cutting Ambersons, so that it was even more obscure to those who did not know Booth Tarkington's masterful book, the Warner Bros. suits' edits in Batman v. Superman made the anger Bruce Wayne's Batman had for Superman difficult to follow.  When one views the Snyder director's cut Batman v. Superman, especially in tandem with Man of Steel, one more clearly sees Snyder's main vision in bloom (apart from the Zeus v. Western-monotheistic religions subpart). Snyder also makes the connection of both Batman and Superman having mothers named Martha, which people simply scoffed at as contrived, when one may say, what is the significance for having two iconic DC characters with moms of the same name--if not to use in a moment for a shared experience?  I know I tend toward the sentimental (being a major Frank Capra fan), but I realized, seeing the director's cut, how the Martha connection hit precisely at Batman's despair of losing his parents, and the moment he realizes Superman had genuine feelings for human beings.

By the time Suicide Squad was released, which was a film designed to be an origin story for multiple mutant type characters in the DC Universe, and continued unfolding the implications of gods and humans sharing a single planet, the attacks on Snyder became unbearable for Warner Bros.' studios' suits. I have long had an irrational conspiracy theory that Marvel Studios, acting similarly to the Russians in the 2016 presidential election, sent bots and scammers to destroy Zack Snyder's vision, and that millions of superhero genre fans fell for it--just as Marvel fans fell for the Fox Studios' attacks on X-Men: III, which was a brilliant film highlighting the very gay and disability rights metaphor that makes X-Men films so compelling.  In the publicity run up to Days of Future Past (2014), the publicity machinery at Fox attacked X-Men: III as a film which screwed things up by killing off so many X-Men, and that now things had to be rectified through a time warp. I argued in vain against those who bought into the propagandistic attack, and have sardonically laughed at how, despite the time warp, the last Wolverine film, which so many loved (I did, too) showed most X-Men are killed anyway.  Yet, nary a peep from most X-Men fans, who joined in the derision of X-Men: III. And then, last year, Disney/Marvel Studios killed more superheroes in Avengers: Infinity Wars than Stalin killed Bolsheviks.  It was Thermidor for superheroes.  Yet, nobody is attacking Marvel Studios at anywhere near the level Snyder and Warners Bros. were and are attacked, which again makes me wonder if the attacks against Snyder and his vision were as coordinated as the Fox run-up to Days of Future Past, but done in a stealth manner.

The Snyder Vision's Achilles' heel, to use a Greek metaphor consistent with Wonder Woman's world, appears to have been the lack of wisecrack humor within the narrative. I have defended the humorlessness because Snyder's vision is existential and theological, and therefore requires a level of concern and seriousness that humor would have undermined. However, I must admit a big part of what makes both the Disney/Marvel Studios films and Fox's X-Men series films digestible to mass audiences is the humor--even when most of the audience misses the anti-National Security State plot lines in Iron Man, miss the Holocaust, gay and disability rights issues in X-Men, and the anti-U.S. version of the Cold War in Captain America: Winter Soldier. Still, the Warner Bros. suits were cowards: They failed to allow Snyder to defend his vision, refused to allow his director's cut for Batman v. Superman to be released in theaters, so that the truncated version made Snyder's vision more difficult to follow, and, most importantly, accept.  Worse, the suits refused to stand by Snyder as the attacks became legion. In short, just as the studio system undermined Welles in the 1940s, the Warner Bros.' suits undermined Snyder.

Which brings me to Aquaman (2018).  The Wife and I rented the film from Amazon Prime last night, as we failed to see it in the theaters.  And what I saw deeply saddened me.  Apart from the fundamental plot failure one has seen in the more recent fare of superhero films, which show superhero films falling into the Star Wars trope, where advanced, technologically-based civilizations maintain feudalistic political systems, with kings, queens, princes, princesses, and the like, and where simple brute strength is the arbiter for leadership (see David Brin's brilliant take down of Star Wars, with his explanation as to why Star Trek is the correct way to see technologically based futures), Aquaman represents a retreat from what made the superhero films, starting with the first X-Men film in 1999, so extraordinary.  The dialogue was so bad in Aquaman that it hurt our ability to judge Jason Mamoa's and Amber Heard's acting abilities.  Mamoa grunted his lines, and, apart from his scene with the voice of Julie Andrews (!), exhibited little sympathy in the way Henry Cavil's Superman or Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman did from the start.  

Aquaman's plot line continued the otherwise wonderful recent trend of having villains who recognize climate change and pollution from humans, or the white human race's continued oppression of darker skin races, as the true danger and villainy--so that one wonders how bad the villains really are compared to who are our leaders in our "real" world.  However, unlike in Black Panther, where the Black Panther/king recognizes his now-vanquished American raised black, radical cousin was correct about white oppression of blacks, and other non-white skinned people, one gets no sense Arthur aka Aquaman is understanding how badly humans have behaved toward the oceans, which are 70% of the Earth's surface. The jokes about his being dumb, and the way he himself believes he is little more than a big and strong dope, make it difficult to imagine Arthur recognizing the implications of human self-destruction.* The dialogue in Aquaman strains to be funny, and is at least amusing--but the humor was, in the main, less clever or witty than Iron Man, Deadpool and Ant Man have been.  One can almost hear the Warner Bros.' suits screaming during the filming, "We want it funny!"  Finally, when we reflect on all the destruction of ancient statues, the property and land, and the murder of innocents throughout Aquaman--and how it is presented as mere "collateral damage," something to be easily dismissed or ignored, we see the destruction of Snyder's vision, which was to compel us to look at that destruction and killing.  There is one moment in a violent scene, where Arthur/Aquaman tells a Sicilian woman "sorry" at the destruction of her home, and where he attempts to round up people into a church to save them from incoming Atlantian attackers. However, even that is designed to make us avoid the overall mayhem these superhuman are inflicting.  There is also nothing asking the viewer to consider being afraid of Aquaman's power the way Man of Steel invited us to realize how Superman and Zod are both threats to human authority on Earth.

At the end of Aquaman, what is most destroyed is Zack Snyder's vision. The film filled me with sadness mixed with rage for the major cultural failure which Warner Bros.' suits have wrought. I therefore say again what I have said since the time of Batman v. Superman:  In twenty or thirty years, assuming humanity's presence on our planet is not in dire throes, film historians will begin to see the brilliance and beauty of Snyder's vision.  They will appreciate what Snyder was trying to accomplish, and there will be a final judgment against the Ivy League educated suits who showed they were not only cowards, but arrogant in their lack of literary and philosophical reading and understanding.  Snyder should never have been left nearly alone to withstand the attacks on him and the films he had co-written and directed.  And it is a shame we will never be able to see the fruition of Snyder's vision.  

*I also found it less than amusing that Black Panther's deeply pained and traumatized black cousin was killed, while the creepy white half-brother gets to live in Aquaman, but that is less the point in this moment. And the literally black skinned pirate character was awkward, to say the least. I mean, really, The Black Pirate?  

Obama's gaslighting of the Democratic Party

Here is a dumb political strategist saying dumb things about political strategy. Former President Obama cannot help himself, is perhaps the best defense one may offer. Under Obama's watch, the Democratic Party scarified itself to his aura, lost State house after State house, blew control over the Congress, and is still trying to crawl back from the wreckage of paying undue homage to one individual who simply was not up to enunciating any coherent vision.

How many times do we have to prove that, on issue after issue, the majority of Americans embrace policy solutions that are otherwise called "far left?"  And, if one accepts the polling data year over year on issue after issue, which data is legion and goes across various pollster entities, why is it that the best Obama could push for--as opposed to push through--was Mitt Romney's rickety and Rube Goldberg machine inspired Affordable Care Act aka "Obamacare?"  Obama has never had a policy-based vision for the nation, and, so can only focus on cocktail party strategizing among the rich-set with whom he interacts.  In 2008, Obama sold himself akin to a brand of butter, and people poured all their assumptions behind his unusual name, his physical attractiveness, his glib speaking style, akin to a talk show host, and were therefore led into a media-political consultant-class belief that Obama, upon assuming office, was playing "multi-dimensional chess," when he was just playing, or really fiddling while America descended deeper into economic inequality, and rural America, and the mid-west, continued to fall further and further behind the growing city-states of the coasts and individual areas such as Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Denver.

Obama arrogantly refuses to see the policy and strategy dispute among progressives and the corporate  Democrats. The dispute exists as the result of activists and, frankly, American citizens who are not in the donor class, wanting to promote the public policies pollsters see and know are popular.  Obama, though his words, deeds, and aura, sees politics as the entertainment branch of industry, taking as a guide, instead of a warning, Frank Zappa's trenchant insight. Obama's approach to politics has been, and continues to be, to massage the message, tamper downwards any substantive, let alone stylistic enthusiasm (not for him our wish that he be the Angry Obama), and obscure differences in a fetish for bi-partisanship, when bi-partisanship, since the end of World War II, brought about the demise of unions, the war against Vietnam, the overextended Empire, the corruption of nations we claim to want to help (whether in Pakistan after the Tilt away from a far more open-government and secular oriented India, or with Israel, with Israel returning the "favor" by helping our police behave more like military occupiers), and the trade treaties that sided with corporations, not people or the environment, and decimated much of the Mid-West, while leaving rural America further and further behind.

Back in 1988, it had become clear to activists in the Democratic Party that the Old Time Religion of the New Deal was no longer something a majority of Americans appeared to support.  The majority of voting Americans appeared to have lost faith in those types of policies, and, while that itself could be seen as a product of corporate media and the decline unions had suffered, it was a fact of political life if one wished to move Democratic Party candidates from the Loss to the Win column.  Therefore, people who were neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats, back when the phrases were given a positive connotation, told people such as myself, who believed in New Deal policies, "You and your union friends can no longer drive the bus. Let us drive, and we will secure at least the culturally liberal victories our nation needs to overcome the cultural sins of our past and then present, and we will work to balance some economic justice along the way, if we can."

1988 was the year of Dukakis, and, while Dukakis lost, in a rare historical situation where a sitting Vice President won the office of the presidency, there was momentum for the position neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats were pushing for.  By 1992, that position became dominant in the Democratic Party, and, those of us who were New Dealers, who also wanted to protect the position of reasonable people on the US Supreme Court, and trying to stem the tide of labor union reverses, agreed, however reluctantly, to let neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats drive the bus. In 1992, I supported pro-union, pro-industrial and pro-rural America, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, for president, even though I lived in Southern California.  I worried out loud and with passion about those in the mid-West and rural areas who were being ignored, pushed aside, and undermined by global economic trends, and shouted against the Reagan-Bush negotiated NAFTA (back before many knew what it was), saying it would codify into international law the very trends undermining working class families.* But in the end, I said, No to Ross Perot (perhaps my gravest error of political judgment, as I really did and do admire the Little Texan, who was pro-choice by the way, and not obsessed against gays, contrary to his persona), and, instead, supported the neo-liberal ticket of Clinton and Gore. As I joked at the time and for several years thereafter, it was the only time I listened to Rush Limbaugh and right wing Congressman Robert "B1-Bob" Dornan (R-Orange County, CA), who promised me Bill Clinton was a secret Communist.  And for those who said, "We didn't elect HER!", meaning Hillary Clinton, I was a Hillary fan at the time, based upon her then friendship with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund.  I would answer proudly to those angry at the very idea of Hillary Clinton, "I did!"  Well, that was the last time I listened to right wingers' fantasies about Democratic Party candidates--and Ms. Edelman, and her wonderful husband, Peter, soon saw the error of their trust in Hillary Clinton, let alone Bill Clinton.

It is a funny thing about now.  Now, it is clear New Deal values and policies are back in style and popularity.  And, when progressives say to the neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats, "If you want Democratic Party victories, now is our turn to drive the bus, and restore the economic dignity of the poor and the middle class and finishing the New Deal--especially when you, too, recognize the new Gilded Age in which we live," well, the neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats largely balk and snarl. They act like it is still 1992.  They speak with condescension dripping from the arrogant personas of the professional class, the corporate executive class, the DC-centric high powered political strategy organizations, and use the Human Resource Department language so well honed, to say any demand we jettison the now-old ways are a "circular firing squad," an appeal to division, not unity, etc.  What Obama is doing is gaslighting progressives who, again, per that pesky polling data, speak to the political realities of the current moment.  For, if people like Obama and the Clintons were interested in unity for a successful political strategy, they would say, "Yes, progressives, yes, union leaders, please drive this bus. We agree with you we must get back some economic equality, and leverage our cultural gains to ensure the New New Deal is not mostly geared to the white working class, but to all middle, working and poor classes regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and the like."  

But, no. People like the politically dumb Obama, who knew how to sell himself as a brand in 2008, arrogantly refuse to leverage a successful political strategy to earn the support from what are a majority of Americans, including independents and Republicans. Instead, they, again, gaslight progressives,  presenting an Us v. Them mindset to tell progressives to capitulate to their economic worldview, when the nation is clearly in a New Deal moment.  In doing so, they prove David Frum's famously brilliant dictum about the American political party duopoly:  The Republican Party's leadership fears its base. The Democratic Party's leadership hates its base.

So, former President Obama.  You are the one who needs to stop with talk about circular firing squads.  It's the start of a primary, for God's sake, where policy ideas should be shared and debated.  You, Mr. Former President, are the one who is blind to the moment.  You are the one who already showed, when you were President, a near-complete inability to galvanize coalitions across the nation to rebuild our nation, to rebuild a political party that, for nearly three generations, was a workers' party, and which had bravely overcome a racist past and pedigree.  You want a victory in 2020 in the Senate and in the White House? Then, you should be humbly saying it is time for Democrats across the nation to unite around a new and green oriented New Deal, a set of policies that, for once in American history, attempts to consciously avoid racist compromises and legacies--and makes criminal justice reform and fighting racism in the criminal justice system an equal priority.  It is time to say AOC's and Bernie's policy proposals are those a majority of Americans support, send messengers to the corporate cable news shows who will say out loud and proudly these proposals are the new "mainstream," the new "moderate," and move the Overton Window to where we may all stand in the light. 

*This is why I reject an over-reliance on the City Mouse/Country Mouse or Urban/Rural divide analyses.  There are plenty of people such as me who deeply care about the lives and environment of those who live in rural America and in the Mid-West Rust Belt areas.  The continuing public policy crimes against these people have been inexcusable, and have contributed to the polarized discourse among rural and urban people across our nation.

A political commentary on money hauls and corporate media presentation bias

I was glad to see this grudging article in this morning's Los Angeles Times about Bernie's major money haul of small contributors made the front page of the august paper.  I say "grudging" because the content of the article would have been breathless had it been Kamala Harris or Cory Booker with the big money haul, and there would have been a quote or two from political commentators or strategists about "momentum," and how the party should want to come together early to avoid a grueling primary.  Nope.  None of that here. 

I have a vain hope enough Americans will be able to learn to discern corporate media bias in how information is presented, how information is not presented and hidden, and how much editorializing there is in "straight news" articles in newspapers. Cable news remains a poisonous horror show of noise, with much of the focus on whether Biden should not have hugged men and especially women over the years, and how his "I did not mean anything by it" is just a different generation trying to accommodate to cultural changes that seem, for us older folks, very abrupt--and of course the rest of the time is Trump and whatever Outrage of the Day FoxNews thinks some "libtard" has said or implied.  And I admit to holding little hope that enough Americans will see through "unity" and "biography candidate" rhetoric and not mistake such rhetoric for substance with regard to matters of public policy.  

And really, Mayor Pete gets 35% of the money Bernie gets, and in national polling is at 3%, with larger donations per donor than Bernie's donor base, and, now, Mayor Pete is a rock star? And note how both he and Harris are way behind in the money race, yet still were given hopeful language in the article. Just think about what it would have been for Bernie had it been the other way around. That is how one may also evaluate the manner in which information is presented. The interesting thing is how the article expressed almost surprise that Warren especially, and less so Gillibrand, have failed to catch fire. And there is no mention of Beto not releasing his quarterly haul numbers, or how many donors gave how much to his campaign--just a mention that he raised more than Warren.  It is funny how, overall, the money race was used to promote Hillary Clinton, with her big donor donations, and how the media does not quite capture the miraculous haul Sanders has attained with small donations from regular folks.  The argument I have heard, "We should not talk about money," is largely correct. However, the way in which Sanders has raised money, and his major attendance campaign appearances, are quite extraordinary when we reflect on how this compares to the usual way Obama and the Clintons raised money and promoted their respective candidacies. Funny how we don't quite read or hear that juxtaposition in most corporate media presentations.  We know these corporate media people are not completely stupid, but we do know they are compromised by their positions vis a vis their bosses to whom they ultimately report.

I honestly have no clue whether Biden will announce he is running, but I am intrigued by the pushback on his behalf that has begun among celebrities (Whoppie Goldberg with the wildest comment, which I only saw mentioned in right wing media, which must religiously watch The View, I suppose), and, more substantively, a woman who was outed in a photograph she says was most definitely not a MeToo moment. If Biden announces his latest presidential candidacy, it adds a rancorous dimension to the race of a type perfectly fitted for cable news television and talk radio. Biden remains, with less engaged voters, a liberal shining star in Obama's bigger shining star, which explains how Biden leads or is second in polling in various states, at least per the usually reliable Emerson polling entity. Bernie is right behind, or sometimes ahead, as in New Hampshire. 

I have long said this is a Biden v. Bernie race if Biden enters, and Biden's star falls far more than not as people learn of his public policy record. Bernie has dropped some as the Hillary-bots have done their best to demonize him, and the pathetic way in which Biden advisers were blaming Bernie for the imbroglio their candidate is suffering is par for the course. That other candidates such as Warren and Gillibrand were taking Lucy Flores' side before Bernie finally spoke up about it was completely ignored, as this was a political push from Biden, who knows his opponent is Bernie, not anyone else.

Oh well. The slog has only begun, and we will see how things, ahem, progress.