Saving Ex Machina

I found this post that I never published from two years ago: I had a morning to my self recently and watched Ex Machina. I found it troubling and haven't read a fair summation of all my feelings towards it anywhere; plenty of reviews thought it was brilliant, a few felt it had some gender issues. this interview with the author alex garland is revealing, but ultimately unstatisfying.

Garland says in the interview “Now, I don't need to contextualize it in the history of science-fiction tropes to make that fucking point.” 

Sorry, you do, Garland. You're a straight white man, making a film about straight white men creating a female-style robot, and you're operating in the same medium as Wierd Science. You do not exist in a vaccuum, and to create a film that draws on so many utterly sexist tropes - apparently uncritically, and that could have been avoided so easily - is itself a message. When Resident Evil 6 came out, and had scenes of the white male player character gunning down hordes of 'zombified' african natives - you can't see that out of the-context-that-we-live-in that makes it unacceptable as entertainement.

It's really difficult to summarise all of the ways that Ex Machina was concerning. I'll try to post a list of things, especially the ones that I haven't seen written up anywhere else (I have looked, but if you know of anything to add or contradict, please leave a comment)

* The Rockstar CEO of Blue Book, Nathan, can apparently not only create the film's google analogy single-handed, and run the company, but also create a walking talking AI in advance of the entire rest of the planet. Isn't it ironic that a story about a robot passing for human buys so wholeheartedly into the myth of the individual? It shows writer doesn't understand what it means to be human; so how can their creations? Of course, we can read the 'self-made man' as a particularly male fantasy; I've no evidence for this sub-point, but it keys in with Garland's quote above about not being a part of history..

* Servant girl Kyoko starts the film as an obvious robot and is later revealed to be a robot. She is mute. She's not really a character as much as a piece of mis-en-scene that reveals more of Calab's character. This would be acceptable in a gender-balanced, not to meantion ethnic-balanced, world, but unfortunately women as set dressing is a real thing, making her appearance a complete insult. 



Both of these problems could have been put into better context by having something other than straightforward gender casting; the 'woman as other' thing is particularly uncomfortable. The film starts trying to unpick what it means to be conscious, but then abandons that for a story about a man that is screwed over by an apparently female character who uses seduction to get what she wants, then abandons him. Bitches, man!  Especially when they work together.

Ultimately, there is a way to save Ex Machina as a valuable piece of art; by styling it as a standard greek tradgedy. Nathan and Caleb were both wrong and their deaths are evidence that the author disagrees with the choices that they made. This is an uneasy ending, as it implies Kyoko also deserved to die (why?) and Ava deserved to survive (also why?).

Garland says he wants to ask questions and  not necessarily provide answers; my problem with the way he does it is that from watching the film it's apparant that the producers don't think the gender issues are enough of a problem for them to work something more sophisticated in. Using any other combination of genders and sexualities than the ones in the film would have improved the story because it would have moved the story away from the sexist cliches the film rests on. 
Garland (in the above interview) says he knows about patriarchy, that it's a buzzword, that he knows its there but isn't interested in it. Which is the whole problem; he benefits from patriarchy, so of course he's not going to see it as a priority. It's a really lame response to a serious problem.

The best example of letting the audience know that the film-makers are "in on it" is in trading places; this is how you tell the audience that you are making a joke about racists, rather than s racist joke:

Letting the audience know that the authors don't condone the awful characters' actions is especially  important when there aren't any sympathetic characters to root for.

I'm not asking to be patronised or have everything explained to me. I don't mind a film that presents a lack of easy answers; of likeable characters; or even relatable characters.

It's not that I have to like every single character in a work of fiction; it's that by stocking your work with idiots, you end up with a plot driven by idiots, like Prometheus, which is unsatisfying because you feel like you're outsmarting the characters and therefore the author. 

It's not that the film itself is sexist, if taken as a work of art, because this means the author does not necessarily approve of their own characters; it's that the film is built entirely out of sexist tropes, with no regard, no commentary, no apparent irony, or no attempt to improve upon them, or any awareness that anyone would have a problem with them. 

It's a film that asks entry-level AI questions, and supplants any investigation of them. It pulls a switcheroo; poses a question, then answers a different one. That's why I feel it's a daft persons idea of a smart film; it offers the veneer of intellect, but at the heart it's not questioning anything. If you thought it was a clever film, you may have been fooled by its appearance, just as Caleb was fooled by Ava's appearance. Actually, if that's deliberate, that is quite clever.

It's really a question of priorities; the creators of the film did not consider any of these problems important enough to fix. It appears that it is a sexist story, rather than a story about sexism. For me, this ruins it. 
Philip K Dick's short story The Golden Man had a pretty similar idea - about attraction making up for actual intelligence - but framed it in an evolutionary light, and with flipped genders that made it, despite it's age, a more novel idea.

That annoying man in the voting booth

So I went a-voting, and it was a council election.

I know that our national democracy is a deliberately-broken sham, but I went in not even knowing what system the local elections use. Often, different elections even in the same country use different systems. Even the political parties don't use first past the post to elect their own leaders.

So then I faced the voting slip: put down two crosses. Each party except the TUSC had two candidates, meaning you could vote for the Sam England party twice.

I backed out of the booth and asked for the system to be explained to me.

How hard can it be, they must have thought - you put two crosses down with the same party. Then these crosses are counted up. Why are you finding this so difficult?

So many questions I had about how this stupid voting system works, and it came across as 'how do I vote?'
I wanted to know if the votes for different councillors from the same party would be counted separately or together. I wanted to know if we were voting in blocks or as a single city. I wanted to know why such an obviously flawed system was being used for a city-wise election, when counting. Why were there two options for the main parties, when this meant I ran the risk of splitting my own vote and having neither vote count for anything.

I had so many questions, but i was answered s someone who'd simply asked 'where do I put a cross' or 'who do I vote for?'

If I came across as stupid, it's because the system was so warped that I couldn't even begin to ask. Or maybe just that the voting help people only ran on certain lines and weren't ready for a discussion about why the whole thing was futile.

Either way, it made me look stupid and annoying and like I was making a fuss out of nothing.

Bear that in mind next time you see someone like that. Maybe they're not the problem.

Boss baby issues

I watched boss baby several times with the children and I need to say a few things about it:

Complete lack of breast feeding. It's bottle all the way in this film, maybe they thought that breast feeding was inappropriate in a children's film, which itself is just a symptom of how wierd our culture is.

You might think this is excused by the 'magic baby formula' plot, but it isn't because at the end, we see the new-born baby drinking from a bottle straightaway. 

This film is such a missed opportunity. It's a great concept, that works as a really great metaphor for a new baby's control freakery, especially seen through the eyes of an older, previously only, child.

That metaphor last until about 20 minutes into the film, for which time it is an effective and heart-rending look at the trials of being new parents for the 2nd time, and the impact on the forgotten first child.

However it is at this point replaced for the remainder of the film by a plot strung together with flimsy dream-logic that is completely meaningless, other than as a bizarre device to allow the two children to get along. The metaphor is completely abandoned, which is a shame because it almost moves into more sophisticated territory by talking about a lowering birth 

-rate. The problem is that apparently this is happening because puppies are so cute.

That's not a real problem. I they had *even metaphorically* referenced the real world it could have been a decent twist, but it's just complete nonsense. So you switch off.

Then I thought, well maybe the dream logic hour of the film could make sense, if this section was actually a dream. Elder child could have fallen asleep at the point they get out of bed and discover boss baby on the phone, up until when he gets up again and goes downstairs. 

Still, doesn't make sense. We see plenty of times the reality, from the parents perspective, where the children are playin mildly - telling the audience 'this is an exaggerated version of reality' rather than just pointless nonsense. We'd also have to accept the baby arriving home twice, since he had already turned up, well before we can establish a dream sequence.

There's no way to save this film. Why is sad, because when you watch something like Inside Out, you have to admire the effort that went into making the cold outside reality parts make sense. You can string together the reality parts of that film and it works as a drama. But nothing makes sense at any level in boss baby.

Also: the boss-as-a-baby metaphor doesn't work, which is sad because there are some decent trump-style metaphors that are missed.

Also, my 3yo son watching it was deeply influenced by the angry boss lady in baby land. That's his first impression of a ladyboss and it will stick with him. That's real harm the film makers have done.

My satan

My Satan is my hero.

I've known a little about 'modern' satanism for some time, but I've known less than i thought. I always thought of satanism as being like Buddhism, where the character is revered but not worshipped. They are seen as an ideal, as an example, but not as a deity. 

Watching 'Silicon Valley', and the 'I'm a satanist, me' character Gilfoyle, gave me the impetus to get off my arse and do my reading. I was disappointed in what the Levyan Sayanists believe, which ends up in Social Darwinism and self-centred philosophies akin to Ayn Rand. 

I was surprised by this, as that's not my Satan. Mine is the Satan of Milton, who fights tyranny. When the rebels are sent down to hell, the first act is to build a parliament, not a dictatorship. Satan is the embodiment of 'you can do what you like to me, but I'm going to do it anyway' punk. 

My Satan is the Orc of Blake - Jesus in his rebellious spirit, and if Blake thought he wasn't shaping this character from Satan, why would he call him a name meaning 'from hell'? My Satan isn't waiting for anybody else to reward him in the afterlife; he's going to build Jerusalem here. Now. My Satan isn't going to wait for the second (or even first) coming; he is his own messiah.

My Satan fights illegitimate authority. My Satan does not ignore the dispossessed, but fights for them. My Satan is not a social Darwinist - that's the establishment mindset. He's egalitarian.

Thinking back, what this tells me that what Satan is, is a blank slate. I see what I want to see, the Levyans see what they want. We make our own heroes by projecting what we want onto legendary figures. What I have done is no different to the tump voters who bizarrely (to outsiders) see a Christian patriot where there is no such thing.  

There is no Satan; my Satan is just as real as anybody else's. The point is about my Satan, is that it's me.

Which is strange, because 'be your own messiah' or 'be your own role model' are maxims I've had for a while. My role model for 'being your own messiah' was Satan. And hear I am, realising that what I mean is 'be your own Satan.'

In other words, be your own hero.

[some credit must go to the book 'tell me a dragon' for the pluralism in this post]

Killing music

Streaming services are killing music

Reissues are killing music

Laptop speakers are killing music.

If anyone wants t-shirts with these slogans, please send me your address.

From an improvised email:

'Reissues are killing music (and they should be illegal)'

I wish there were no reissues/repressing. i wish if you wanted to find that archive record that Mojo magazine had on the cover, you had to get out to a record fair and dig on your hands and knees until you found it (like in that episode of black books), churning up loads of other lost gems in the process.

case in point: I recently acquired an LP of Julie Tipett's record "sunset glow" for the sole reason that it is mentioned in Robert Wyatt's biography as 'a companion to [his magnum opus] Rock Bottom'; perhaps they were written about the same holiday in Tenerife, or just capture the same vibe? Julie tippets seems to have only three mentions in the biography but they appear to have been very close.

According to discogs, the album has only been reissued once during the 90s, and then only on CD. 

The sender included the original inner sleeve, as well a more recent improvement to actually house the disc. It is an utterly excellent record, heavy psychedelic jazz. No-one I know (outside of the bloke in the record shop) has heard of it. It's not on Spotify.

my local record shop is drowning in nostalgic deluxe reissues and carrying very little actual new music. new artists are strangled like by the parasitic vines of their parents' and grand parents' back catalogues. Old records should just https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E54m7vgqXUY. I saw that SFA were putting out a reissue of Radiator, with a 2nd cd of all the bsides. Great, I thought, at last, I could get all the SFA b-sides I always wanted. basketed it. and then... realised I neither needed nor wanted nor deserved it. I decided not to go back, dwell in the past in the familiar warm glow of 90s necrostalgia, but save my money for new and informative experiences. Experiences that make me feel like I'm still alive, rather than that life was something that happened when I was young.

What's more, what you say about the sounds quality is critical, but you forget that 90s records were mastered for 90s stereos and 90s ears. you physically can never hear those records again, even with the unremastered version in your hands. I never heard much of Smashing pumpkins or Manic street preachers at the time; they sound terrible to my new ears now. you can't go back.

CEX have stopped selling CDs. that's how bad things have got. there is such an incredible glut of physical media that it's impossible to even sift through anymore, unless the stock is curated. So reissues are criminal, in a world of landfill-oriented music product.

The same problem in computer games, where backwards compatibiltiy is not remotely a thing; Try to track down Tony Hawk 3 (the best in the series, according to considered opinions); all you can get these days, unless you buy an actual PS2, is the HD remastered collection that grabs bits and bobs from different games (despite this being inferior to TH3). These nintendo things they're bringing out now have an air of completeness, but it's a complete illusion, like the idea that spotify is 'all music ever'. It's not, and it's dangerous to think that it is. it's revisionist necrostalgia. it's how the past gets massaged into an easily digested narrative that ignores the real richness, fertility, of cultural history.

Just don't get me started on streaming music services. They offer all the convenience and none of the support. They are murdering music.

I don't know about Bandcamp. I like what they do, I like what they offer, I like that they stop you freeloading if you try to listen to something more than a few times without paying. But what appended to taking a risk? Buying an album because you liked the singles? I'm inclined to return to an older model with my next release: put up a shareware version, which is the first three-or-so tracks. Buying the record gets you access to the whole thing. This is basically what singles, or radio play, used to function as.

the confounding thing is earache records' "high dynamic range" master series - reissues that are meant to sound as un-compressed as they did back in the day. a brave thing to do in the metal world arms race. 

"what's this? [holds up finger horizontally]"

i don't know..?

"a babymetal waveform".

I think that's actually a very good joke if you visualise it. also it's a reference to a series of jokes in Asterix (where the finger represents a how a very strong man might hammer in a a nail) that might be a bit a obscure.