Batman vs. Superman: Ultimate Cut

 

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate the theatrical cut of this movie. It is all wrong. All of it. There's not a frame that makes sense, not a line of dialogue that adds up, it's a nihilistic mess of a movie. Just writing about it makes me want to spit on my screen, just in pure rage. Now, yes, I've got some attachment for Batman and Superman, but just the craft of the theatrical cut is beyond awful. On a technical level it is an incoherent mess.

You may have noticed I hate this movie. 

And, let's get this out of the way, I like Man of Steel. Clark being portrayed as a person who needed to figure out how to forgive humanity for being shitheads is an incredible thing to portray. Most of the flaws people point out about the movie are overblown, at best, petty and spiteful at worst. It's not my favorite movie ever, but it's definitely a good movie, showing a Superman that I, personally, can believe would exist. My hatred of Zack Snyder's other work is probably to the amusement of all my friends, who periodically poke me, just to see the explosion of spite that results.

And then one day someone told me the Ultimate Cut was coherent. They didn't like it, but it was coherent. Turns out that the corporate morons had completely screwed up the cut.  I was asked if I wanted to watch it. 

And, to be honest, I didn't, not at the time. I still had the words from HiTop in my head: Batman does not kill. Batman is a symbol, symbols teach us how to behave. Batman is all about not repeating the action of losing his parents, all over again, by having some little boy wake up without those parents.  I wanted to believe that Batman's willpower was immaculately iron. Now, all my other ideals are totally incoherent with that. I think people are not invincible ideals, that they're barely capable of good on a good day, nevermind a bad one. The Joker is right: all it takes is one bad day.

In the intervening years my trust in the American mythology of superheroes has faded. Perpetually stuck in a corporate death grip, unable to move on and become something different, these characters are a hollow reflection of what we are: controlled by corporate interests, unable to move on. They're not human, and we don't allow ourselves to be human either. Why I hadn't connected that before, I don't know.

Afghanistan happened.

"Not our country," is a phrase I've heard tossed around. As in, actually spoken. Aloud. The world shook its head sadly and said the most damning words I've ever heard: "Well, it was inevitable."

No, it was not. Damn your ideas right to the hellhole they belong, that was not inevitable, just convenient. Not to mention cowardly.

Something broke inside me, watching the whole thing. Turns out that casual cruelty isn't just limited to fetuses and folks of minority ethnicity, a fact I've experienced far too often, but just hoped that my self-hatred could explain the seemingly boundless cruelty of humanity.

Nope. Turns out people are just cruel, as a matter of course. It's the human condition.

That weekend my family went to the zoo. I love tigers. Thank Calvin and Hobbes for that, I suppose, but man they're majestic things. And they're killers. Born killers. Made to eviscerate and terrify and stuff raw meat down their throats. "God's tenants", as per Psalm 103. A tiger knows what it is. It's a killer. It has no issue with this fact. If a tiger denied what it was it would die, as it's literally made to only eat meat. It's honest because to be honest is to live.

Staring at this magnificent picture of death, a thought began to form in my mind. I didn't quite know what it was until about an hour later, when I was sitting down at a playground with my wife. I tried to bat the thought away. I really didn't want to go where I was going, but an entire generation of people were being left to suffer under a terrorist organization. All 'cause of the red, white, and blue. Reality no longer matched my model of it. And I had to give in. Had to. 

"I can't like superheroes anymore. Because of Afghanistan."

My wife, as thoughtful and quiet as she is, let those words hang in the air a moment, as they mixed with the sounds of laughter and creaking playground equipment.

Me being anxious me, I mistook the silence. "Does that make sense? I don't know how else to explain it right now."

Those green eyes can just cut my soul to ribbons. She looked at me, and as she always seems to, saw straight into the cloud of grief. And through it. "It does."

I sat there, trying to figure out what had just happened. What I had just said, why I had just said it! And somehow I knew. It was time to watch this movie.

I thought I was ready. I was not. 

First off, folks, there is a plot to this movie. And I actually like it. Motivations are clear, the action flows from one beat to another. There's a healthy amount of inference going on, but the movie does actually set up the points to connect between.... unlike the theatrical cut. Which does not. I like having to put the pieces together myself, so long as there's something to assemble with. I mean, I do like Terrio's work in general, so it was nice to return to his plotting.

Superman's depression, as a result, makes sense. Continuously mistrusted and hated for doing the right thing will do that. And Clark needing to figure out he was going to do with his "just rewards" was a compelling hook. The movie paints Clark's deteriorating outlook as a natural progression someone would go through. Clark does his best to fight it, but there's only one rule to the universe, and that's down! By the time we get to the end Clark has been psychologically manipulated and battered.

Now we come to Batman. I'm not going to try to convince you why I like this character now. Tigers are killers, and if you don't like that go get in the enclosure and let me know what happens when mealtime comes up. Bruce has collapsed under the weight of his own failure, something repeatedly brought up, time and time ago. Only one rule to the universe, folks! Bruce is human, he's going to collapse. After twenty years, Bruce had given up. And so Lex pushes him, manipulates him, sets him up.

Yes, the Martha moment actually makes sense in the movie. Move along.

The ending of the theatrical cut was actually my favorite part of the movie. The whole movie goes bonkers, I love the turnaround from Batman after the Martha moment as it's portrayed by Affleck, Gal Gadot is always amazing to see as Wonder Woman. But Clark's arc always felt hollow. It doesn't here. Clark's last moment of trying to reach out to the best in someone else paid off. He finally got through. 

And, with Lois there, Clark realizes that she is his world, and therefore the world must be saved.

Bruce is rejuvenated. Superman sleeps in his tomb.

As I've stated before, there was a hole in my soul, where a narrative of some cultural significance should be. You can't make it up, you must receive it from others. Making up your own narrative is a fabrication of the modern era.

What did I receive from this movie? Which pretty much no one else likes?

That people are horribly flawed, and that if you keep looking at the big picture it's going to destroy you. Either you'll get addicted to changing the world and become a psycho like Lex or Batman at the beginning of this movie, (SJWs/alt-right this is your fate) or you'll drown in despair, like Superman almost did (which is what I'm trying to get out of). There is no way to fix the big picture. Too many profit off of it being wrong to be able to change it. It's just that simple. I can't change the reward system of the world, because entropy is a guarantee and one can always set themselves up to profit off it.

But if you forgive the world? Forgive it for being screwed up, irredeemably so, and find someone to love? You may have a chance. It won't be easy, because you have to give up being addicted to a cause. You have to cut yourself free of the dopamine rush, entirely, and just see the world around you.

Notice I didn't put this in "I've done it" terms. Of course I haven't. I so badly want to fix things, to get that dopamine hit, to feel important. And I've been trying to rectify that need with what this movie showed me. Why on earth should this be sufficient?

The other day I was walking to Walmart and I saw a man trying to carry some furniture out of a store. I could tell he was having a rough time. I just stopped, held the door, and then carried a few things out with him. We laughed about how bulky things were, and then moved on. When I got into Walmart I saw an aisle covered with cans. Employees were scrambling around with a panicked looks, trying to pick it all up. As I went past I bent over, grabbed a bunch of the cans, and helped them get it into their carts.

I didn't even realize what I'd done until I got home and realized I was feeling peculiarly hopeful for someone of my disposition. I just felt... light. Free. I'd seen someone who needed help and I helped, simply because that was right in front of me.

I didn't hear the dopamine scream in my head, demanding I change the world.

I saw someone. I helped. And that was it.

For once I wasn't scared of where things were going. It wasn't loud and noisy like thinking about how to save "the world", it sure wasn't sexy and glamorous.

But at that moment I believed that a man could fly.

I don't know if that's sufficient, but dopamine ain't the way to go. Especially if it does no one else any good.

Which I assure you, screaming into the echo chamber doesn't.

The Mighty Rio Grande Is Bound By Its Bed

 This post is a direct sequel to "The Report of Misery Must Be Full."

 

 

I've been preoccupied with my death for years. People with PTSD usually are. Life can get so painful you can't help but wonder what it's like to die, just as a release valve. The idea that this world is something worth holding onto is a relatively new one to me. It began to sneak up on me when I began dating my wife. After I married her this idea began to invade, in full force. 

I did not take kindly to the intrusion.

I did not want to change.

What if my wife died? What if she left me alone? What would I be left with then? All that work to integrate her and my child into my life.... and if they died I would be even worse off than when I started. How was I supposed to trust that this would be worth it to me? It was a problem I didn't really have much of an answer for.

Well, as God would have it, I was placed on gate guard detail, for six months. Most of the time I was placed on a gate where this was around, far as the eye could see:

Yes, Oklahoma really can get that pretty.

I was sitting in air conditioning, for the most part. I'd sit and read for hours at a time, surrounded by prairie. It was peaceful. I really needed it. I still miss those days, sitting out there, more or less alone. Of course I'd have my music.

The Mighty Rio Grande, by This Will Destroy You, is one of the most important songs in my life. It got me through the horrors I endured in Atchison. And then me playing that song in my head during boot camp got me through there.  And then me listening to the song got me mostly through deployment. It's a song that I had used to attempt to accept the lack of control I had over my life, and to accept that controlling said life would lead to disaster. I had to sit and wait for all of the garbage I was going through to pass, like a virus. 

And then my brain broke on deployment.

And then they sent me home.

But before they sent me home they put me through three psych wards. And I couldn't listen to my song. And if there's anything you should be listening to in the middle of three different psych wards, it's the freaking Mighty Rio Grande! So I sat and pined. One day, in one of the groups, the nurse asked us to say what some of our favorite songs were. She would look them up on Youtube with her phone and play them for us, right there.

Of course I knew what to ask for.

The whole room was filled with peace for five minutes. And then the nurse turned it off. I couldn't blame her, The Mighty Rio Grande is about eleven minutes long! She had to get to other songs. But everyone was different after hearing the song, including the nurse.

But then I'd remember that I got six straight months of being able to listen to it without interruption, out on the prairie, and I would feel calmer.

Because I was so freaking lucky for those six months.

And during that time, I would think about death. And try to contemplate what life would be like without my wife. Like, I really sat and just cracked it out in my head. I knew that, if I was not the first to go, I probably wouldn't last too long after that. No matter what had changed for me during that time, my wife will always be the lens I experience God's mercy through. All the weird things that I write about on this blog? 

Those are when the machine stops working and I can't get summon the willpower to get back to her. 

One smile, one laugh from that woman is enough to make me decide to live another five minutes, just to see it again. Sometimes it burns my soul, but the burn cauterizes whatever's bleeding deep in the unconscious and, as much as it hurts, I know there's a lot more down there that's hurting and needs more of that type of pain.

So what happens if that stops? And if there's more? And I'm tired and old? I realized that I'd want to just die and get it over with. Part of that would be coming back to Oklahoma and sitting under this wonderfully large sky. I'd sit and just be at peace, feel the oppressive sun, smell the prairie, and just take it in. Sit. And just be, once again.

Time for the hard left hook.

What does this have to do with last week's post? 

Everything. 

There's this gaping hole in my soul. Turns out we use mass narratives as part of our identities. And we're designed to do that, that's what religion is for. 

By writing the above I was trying to convince myself that would be enough.

It's not.

You can't just take out the American narrative, one which includes the luxury of being able to pick the cause you're angry about, even if it's not healthy You can't leave a void, nor should you put the wrong type of narrative in. I was hoping, hoping, hoping that by writing the above it would be able to undo my need for the lies of the American narrative. And make no mistake, every single narrative I've found in America is fundamentally wrong. Not one of them passes any litmus test I have. Period. The basis of American narrative (secular humanism) is so fundamentally poor in describing life that anyone who takes it on or who teaches it is doing harm, to themselves and to others.

But at this point I'm not sure that leaving a void, or to forcefully cram in something else, is any better. And from what I can feel it is worse to have a void than a lie. That void hurts even worse than the knowledge of Afghanistan. It hurts so much to not have any collective narrative there's times I just wish the earth would swallow me up and get it over with. There are precious things worse than not being a part of the whole; choosing deliberately not to be in synch with the whole  is one of those few things, at least for one so extroverted as myself.

This is too much. So I tried to unblink it. Maybe, just maybe, just maybe I can unsee it. People do this, right? Everyone else seems "fine", if you count SJW/Alt-right rage culture -they are two sides of the same coin- as fine. Maybe I can just keep my doubts under control with a series of finely cocktailed drugs and stimuli, like everyone else! It works for others, why not me???

Nope. I can't go back. Won't. No thank you. Never, ever, ever again will I knowingly embrace a series of lies that lets me excuse what we excuse. If there is anything I loathe it's the lies that we feed ourselves.

God, nothing new is under the sun, and this song, as wonderful as it is, cannot patch the hole in me that was left from the ripping out of a lie. What I'd built to keep me from running away from my marriage is not enough here. Individualism and hedonism isn't a counter to the need for a collective narrative, it's just a pretty little lie that we use to not look at the narrative we pretend doesn't exist.

Now what?

How does one actually exist in a society so inherently toxic that the individuals in it can't think there is anything better? I don't know a single American who would say our situation is good, but it is a dramatic failure of imagination that most cannot say anything better exists.

But that doesn't answer my question this time, doesn't it?

The Report of Misery Must Be Full

 

God smote Sodom and Gomorrah because their injustices were so deep, so awful, that "the report of misery had been filled". It was time to pay the piper. St. John Chrysostom said that Sodom and Gomorrah was so evil that all God had to do was just stop telling the earth to not destroy them. The Golden Legend states that the earth itself will accuse us of our sins more harshly than anyone, and demand of God the justice long withheld.

I'm not on the ground in Afghanistan, nor have I been in any real battle. I've never been. I never will be, God willing. I am your typical government employee. I sit at a desk, doing tech support for the U.S. military. When COVID hit I had to make sure that first responders had VPN accounts, so they could get into our federal system. I've also been called to help out with tech failures in national emergencies and warzones. I do not say this to boast. Where I sit allows me to see these problems from a more organizational standpoint, is all. When you, the average reader, hear about a hurricane you say "That's awful!" As well you should, for the record.

When I hear about a hurricane I pray to God that everyone's cellphones are working, because if they're not a lot of people can die needlessly.

If we didn't troubleshoot properly and someone dies was it the hurricane that killed those people, or operational incompetence? Can you blame the mugger for actually killing someone, if you didn't do anything to actually help the victim? I mean, obviously the mugger is at fault for wanting to hurt that person in the first place and attempting it, but actually stopping him from accomplishing his goal is a different moral question.

I ask because, in the waning days of the "evacuation" of Afghanistan, I received a call. One of the people who was handling the evacuation of Afghanis who had helped U.S. forces was having technical issues. He was completely  dead in the water. I wish I could have told you that I helped him. God, I wanted to.

But I couldn't. Not wouldn't, because there's a lot of times when I "can't" do something, and what I actually mean is that I shouldn't do something.

No, folks I genuinely couldn't do anything. This would have been a situation where I gladly would have cheated our Godforsaken bureaucracy if I could. There are people who literally would die if this guy couldn't get access to his systems. So I did what I could. I brought folks on to consult. I checked. Quadruple checked. Asked questions I'd normally feel like an idiot for asking, all to avoid what I knew to be the truth: it wasn't enough. A half hour later I was explaining to him why I was helpless. It went along the lines of "The DoD isn't a monolithic entity and the stuff you're trying to access I have no way of accessing. At all. I have no idea who may actually be able to help you, but here are my best guesses. Try these folks."

Turns out he'd been to a few of those folks already. They'd sent him our way. I have no idea why, beyond the obvious incompetence and immunity to reason and logic that pervade most government employees.

He then begged for help. Actually begged. People were dying because he couldn't do his work. But I could do nothing. I tried, tried, tried, tried tried tried tried tried to communicate there was no cheat, no workaround, nothing I had in my toolbox to address his problem.

I finally got him to believe me. Government does that to you; it makes you a cynic of the truth, gets you used to lies and falsehoods and doublespeak.  It took me a hot minute to break through, and by that point I was close to tears. That may have been what did it: my voice, choked with sobs. I was at the end of my rope. And he finally knew it.

He thanked me for my time, and gently told me I was more helpful and had spent more time on his issue than the nine previous people he had been forced to talk to that day, combined. One of my supervisors had given him an idea he was going to try. He thanked us for our time and hung up.

I walked out of that call choking back tears. When I drove home the floodgates opened and I sobbed all the way home. And then entered a world totally apathetic. Folks were arguing about the Texas abortion bill, mask mandates, and more. All of it was chosen by them. They had the luxury to ignore Afghanistan. Their powerlessness didn't lead to the butchering, rape, and indoctrination of a people. They could wring their hands dramatically at the causes fed to them by our soft totalitarian society. Nothing's on the line, not really. No actual choice is present. You may think you know what helplessness feels like. What it feels like to watch helplessly as the innocent suffer.

But do you?

Have you faced a moment where your inability (not apathy, inability!) to act leads to unspeakable tragedy?

I now have. God knows how many didn't make it because of that wasted call to me. It burns in my gut. I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder about the people I couldn't help. I can't help but remember these Afghanis in my happiest moments with my family, in my dreams, when I eat, when I sit down to type on this blog, when I'm playing games, when I shit, when I argue with my wife, when I listen to music, etc etc etc etc ETCETERA. The light my family and friends give me is fuel to this fire; because of the goodness shown to me I can never forget. The happier I become the more I must remember.

When I ask the next question, do not think I ask it happily. I am a citizen of the United States, this will always be my country. I once swore an oath to defend the United States. I consider that oath to be eternally binding, even if I am released from it. I will always be American, even if I fly to the ends of the earth.

So if you take the next question as treasonous that's your own idiocy. Probably should look into that problem.

How long, Lord? 

How long until you smite the sinners from the land? Which I just so happen to be a part of? And belong to?

How long?