(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2005 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistLast night as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theophile picked me up at the train station, he said "I saved a horror movie for us to watch." Naturally, I scowled at him, because I figured he was just being sadistic and everyone who knows me knows my complicated relationship to horror movies, which, 98% of the time can be practically articulated as "I don't watch them, and even when I do, I really shouldn't." No no, he said. He said it was a zombie movie (which is a subcategory of supernatural horror I can watch OK) and that he was going to watch it by himself until he saw it being flamed on conservative websites, where people were saying "fucking liberals" and "George Bush isn't really like that."
OOOOOOOOOOHHHHH.
So, a little while later, fortified after my travels with some stir fry and a Bloody Mary, I celebrated my own homecoming by watching "Homecoming," adapted from Dale Bailey's short story "Death and Suffrage" by Joe Dante, one of the one-hour segments featured as a part of Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series.
What can I say? Except that it was the best thing ever. Few things are as satisfying as seeing your own deepest beliefs adapted for a pop culture medium and featuring zombies. I am going to tell you the plot because it's not like I can ruin it, because it's just the narrative of the first Bush "presidency," I mean, I guess if you were hybernating from March 2003 through the electoral fiasco last year, beware of the "spoilers." Other than that, it's all Allegory, except that Ze Semiotic Collapse of Ze Zeitgeist pretty much ensures that allegory is verite now.
So, the story is about a Republican presidential speech writer, whose mentor is "Karl Rove" (the character's initials are KR, I can't remember what his name is in the script), and his lover is Ann Coulter ("Jane Cleaver"). He goes on some weasel-pundit type show and faces off with "Cindy Sheehan," who was arrested for asking the President why her son had died. They talk about how no WMDs have been found, and the host "Marty" asks if the GIs are dying for nothing, and the speechwriter says "no, it's not like that...my own brother died in vietnam...if I could have one wish, I wish that woman's son could come back..." At this point he sort of spazzes and blanks out, then catches himself and blah blahs about how if the GIs came back, they would tell everyone how important it is to serve their country and how proud they were to make the sacrifice.
Less than 48 hours later, on an air base where flag-draped coffins have been delivered, a soldier patrols, hears noises that he things are photographers, yells that no photographs of dead soldiers are allowed, US Army policy, but instead is confronted by the sight of zombie GIs rising out of the coffins.
What do they want?
They want to vote. After they vote, they really die, for good.
At first "Ann Coulter" and "Karl Rove" are all over that, "Ann Coulter" goes on the talk show with some religious troglodyte and they are all, like, this is a miracle, and as per legality schmegality, who is going to tell these brave formerly deceased veterans that they can't vote?
Until, of course, it turns out they are not voting for "Bush." They are voting "for anyone who will end this evil war."
Then they get quarantined in orange jumpsuits and declared a public hazard and the same troglodyte and "Ann Coulter" are all, blah, gates of hell spewed them out, braaaaaaains.
Because the speechwriter is having "complex" "character development" issues, he ensures that they can go to the polls, though.
Then there are some really touching moments (like "Karl Rove" emotionally blackmailing "Cindy Sheehan" using her resurrected son as bait or a couple whose son is in Iraq giving shelter to a zombie GI in their diner), some WHOA plot twists and at the end when the election is STOLEN (which is explicitly copped to), the zombie soldiers realize that their votes were not counted and "call for reinforcement." "Ann Coulter" gets her brains blown out while she is screaming "bring it on." By the end they take over Washington with the help of dead vets from WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam and the speechwriter has joined them as a zombie, to fight for justice beside his dead brother, whom he apparently shot as a child with his Vietnam gun but then repressed the memory. The zombies take over DC to ensure that never again are soldiers set to die for "horseshit and elbow grease." (Dissent is) Patriotic coda, which I took to be a homage to Dr. Strangelove.
Seriously. I have not seen anything I enjoyed so much, well...ever.
Also there is a sex scene with "Ann Coulter" as a dominatrix marking her "talking points" in hot wax, which, of course, we all knew was true already.
(Zombie GI being experimented on in a secret government lab, while the speechwriter and "Karl Rove" look on).
theophile picked me up at the train station, he said "I saved a horror movie for us to watch." Naturally, I scowled at him, because I figured he was just being sadistic and everyone who knows me knows my complicated relationship to horror movies, which, 98% of the time can be practically articulated as "I don't watch them, and even when I do, I really shouldn't." No no, he said. He said it was a zombie movie (which is a subcategory of supernatural horror I can watch OK) and that he was going to watch it by himself until he saw it being flamed on conservative websites, where people were saying "fucking liberals" and "George Bush isn't really like that."OOOOOOOOOOHHHHH.
So, a little while later, fortified after my travels with some stir fry and a Bloody Mary, I celebrated my own homecoming by watching "Homecoming," adapted from Dale Bailey's short story "Death and Suffrage" by Joe Dante, one of the one-hour segments featured as a part of Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series.
What can I say? Except that it was the best thing ever. Few things are as satisfying as seeing your own deepest beliefs adapted for a pop culture medium and featuring zombies. I am going to tell you the plot because it's not like I can ruin it, because it's just the narrative of the first Bush "presidency," I mean, I guess if you were hybernating from March 2003 through the electoral fiasco last year, beware of the "spoilers." Other than that, it's all Allegory, except that Ze Semiotic Collapse of Ze Zeitgeist pretty much ensures that allegory is verite now.
So, the story is about a Republican presidential speech writer, whose mentor is "Karl Rove" (the character's initials are KR, I can't remember what his name is in the script), and his lover is Ann Coulter ("Jane Cleaver"). He goes on some weasel-pundit type show and faces off with "Cindy Sheehan," who was arrested for asking the President why her son had died. They talk about how no WMDs have been found, and the host "Marty" asks if the GIs are dying for nothing, and the speechwriter says "no, it's not like that...my own brother died in vietnam...if I could have one wish, I wish that woman's son could come back..." At this point he sort of spazzes and blanks out, then catches himself and blah blahs about how if the GIs came back, they would tell everyone how important it is to serve their country and how proud they were to make the sacrifice.
Less than 48 hours later, on an air base where flag-draped coffins have been delivered, a soldier patrols, hears noises that he things are photographers, yells that no photographs of dead soldiers are allowed, US Army policy, but instead is confronted by the sight of zombie GIs rising out of the coffins.
What do they want?
They want to vote. After they vote, they really die, for good.
At first "Ann Coulter" and "Karl Rove" are all over that, "Ann Coulter" goes on the talk show with some religious troglodyte and they are all, like, this is a miracle, and as per legality schmegality, who is going to tell these brave formerly deceased veterans that they can't vote?
Until, of course, it turns out they are not voting for "Bush." They are voting "for anyone who will end this evil war."
Then they get quarantined in orange jumpsuits and declared a public hazard and the same troglodyte and "Ann Coulter" are all, blah, gates of hell spewed them out, braaaaaaains.
Because the speechwriter is having "complex" "character development" issues, he ensures that they can go to the polls, though.
Then there are some really touching moments (like "Karl Rove" emotionally blackmailing "Cindy Sheehan" using her resurrected son as bait or a couple whose son is in Iraq giving shelter to a zombie GI in their diner), some WHOA plot twists and at the end when the election is STOLEN (which is explicitly copped to), the zombie soldiers realize that their votes were not counted and "call for reinforcement." "Ann Coulter" gets her brains blown out while she is screaming "bring it on." By the end they take over Washington with the help of dead vets from WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam and the speechwriter has joined them as a zombie, to fight for justice beside his dead brother, whom he apparently shot as a child with his Vietnam gun but then repressed the memory. The zombies take over DC to ensure that never again are soldiers set to die for "horseshit and elbow grease." (Dissent is) Patriotic coda, which I took to be a homage to Dr. Strangelove.
Seriously. I have not seen anything I enjoyed so much, well...ever.
Also there is a sex scene with "Ann Coulter" as a dominatrix marking her "talking points" in hot wax, which, of course, we all knew was true already.
(Zombie GI being experimented on in a secret government lab, while the speechwriter and "Karl Rove" look on).
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:13 pm (UTC)This sounds hilarious!
I have to see it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:18 pm (UTC)It seems like that 45% of the time in Zombie movies, the military is blamed; in another 45% it's animal liberation front for wrecking some dangerous science project, and the remaining 10% is "other"--like the poisonous bite of the Sumataran Rat-Monkey from "Dead Alive".
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 11:29 pm (UTC)Zombie movies about Bush's "presidency" are the kind of social realism art that I can get behind.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 11:25 pm (UTC)http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3416815
that's a link to one of the better public Bittorrent communities' download site for it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 10:57 pm (UTC)http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3416815
that's a link to one of the better public Bittorrent communities' download site for it. and I could always burn the file onto a CD for you.
(comment updated because I realized the other link went to the wrong episode. the episode 6 torrent doesn't currently show any seeds, but they'll probably come back, or you can search for episode s01e06 on any other torrent site.)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 08:12 pm (UTC)Every time I hear about it, I automatically think about the following lines from Shakespeare's Henry V. Before the battle of Agincourt, king henry dresses up like a common soldier and goes around his camp at night. At one point, he has the following exchange with some veterans camped out by a fire:
KING HENRY V (disguised)
... methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king's company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS
That's more than we know.
BATES
Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know
enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes
the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
...that image of dead soldiers crying out against their unjust deaths when joined together for judgment day sounds an awful lot like this zombie movie.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 11:27 pm (UTC)... methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king's company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
makes me think of the movie where Karl Rove wonders why all the dead GIs are voting for the opposition and the speechwriter says, because the soldiers who really believed in the cause are staying dead, they are at peace. Of course, at the end, all of Arlington Cemetary rises up anyway.
Also see
no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 04:37 am (UTC)Diebold Democracy again
Date: 2005-12-07 10:13 pm (UTC)I picked up Steal This Vote yesterday at the library.
I hope you're doing well, all things considered. :)
Re: Diebold Democracy again
Date: 2005-12-07 11:24 pm (UTC)If not, I will link you to the posts. If you did, many of the links went to websites that were dedicated to being metasources for electoral fraud and have surely been updated since then.
There is an lj community stolen_election
Also I find Democratic Underground to be a smart and very helpful resource, even as the rhetoric/arguments often leaves me frustrated, but it's as good as a wiki for data compilation and good people have been working over there on electoral fraud for a long time now. Check out the "electoral reform" forum there:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203
Re: Diebold Democracy again
Date: 2005-12-08 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-01 07:58 pm (UTC)Based on nothing but this post, I'm adding you to my friendlist, because I'd like to read much more from you, both in style and content. I hope you'll find this addition inoffensive ... but if you'd prefer to be dropped, I will do so.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:22 am (UTC)I would have been introduced as Thud or Ted -- I answer to both equally.
If I've just placed you rightly in my own head -- near the end of the night, while you and 4 or 5 others were putting a certain social-work master's student into a state of bliss, I was at the other end of the kitchen island...
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:53 am (UTC)I am fairly certain I got introduced to you at some point earlier in the evening, but maybe someone just told me your name. Anyway, nice to "meet" you!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:45 pm (UTC)I don't think we were properly introduced -- for I remember noting your name during that bliss-session. But I'm pleased to have "met" you now!