Don Henley May Have Been on to Something

  I don't  make a regular habit of watching broadcast television, for a variety of reasons.  It's a huge time-sponge for starters, and then there are concerns about content, obviously. I especially avoid  news reports though.
  Does anyone else think  its a  little  psychotic the way  television news is delivered?  It's all soft lights and  exciting theme  music and color  coordinated ties and teleprompters. Its so  much pageantry and theatre over substance as to stagger the imagination, and the easiest way to see it is to abstain from it for a length of time, and then watch a broadcast.  If you stay away from the shiny box for a while, and then  take a peek, you'll begin to understand why they call it 'programming'.
  If you flip through the channel;s during news time you'll see the  exact same stories covered in the exact same  order with the roughly the same amount of time given to each and sometimes  all of these independently talking heads will all use the same  buzzwords and catchphrases, as if they are issued from on high by some  TV news fatwah.  If you then listen to the conversations of people who  get their news this way, you'll hear them repeat these  viewpoints and phrases in parrot-like fashion with no thought as to what they are saying and no  conscious realization that they  were spoon-fed that opinion.
  Every story covered is  in its own little self-contained pre-packaged universe. That's how the news anchor can report on tornado deaths in Oklahoma with a  sad look on his  face and literally seconds later turn to another  camera,  put on a smile and talk about how baby pandas were  born at the  local zoo.  Real people are incapable of compartmentalizing all the  happenings in their life that neatly, that succinctly, but broadcasters do it for a living, and in doing so they present to you a neat compartmentalized, emotional vapid reality that has no bearing on your day to day life. They regularly  spin you half-told tales about people you will never meet. The  goings on and bed-hoppings of  celebrities (whose only skills are their  physical attractiveness and their ability to pretend to be somebody else all day) are treated as if they matter.They mention tragedies that not only have nothing to do with you, but that you are incapable of affecting one way or the other.. They manipulate your emotions  with close up shots of grieving widows and burned out  school houses.  They adopt a worldview and narrative about an event  and  all reporting is filtered through that worldview and   edited to fit the narrative. By doing this , they crowd out valuable brain space and trick you into investing emotional capital in all the wrong places. Filling your head with trivia and banality,  they hope to keep you from thinking too much or looking too closely at what's behind the window dressing, My question is always not 'what did they say?' but rather 'what are they not telling us?'
 "Hey, your government has  declared for itself the ability to kill you without a trial, but look, Angeline Jolie had a double mastectomy! Isn't she brave? Isn't she pretty?  And now  a word from our sponsors."
  Our local news has real  problems with the English language.  During a recent tragedy they reported that  'approximately 15 were confirmed dead'. In my mind, the words 'approximately' and 'confirmed' sort of cancel each other out. How many dead are there?  Are there 'approximately' 15 or  have you confirmed that there are 15?  Doesn't matter, we've got an ad for  Pop-tarts to show you. 'Approximately 15' could be as  high as 20 or as low as 12. But let's not think about that, let's move on to who wore the  most low-cut dress to the Oscars.
  During the 2012 presidential campaign, word came from the fatwah that Ron Paul could not win. The reasons  given were never reasons of substance, to simply declare him unelectable was enough. Step one is to declare his defeat and then step  two was to ensure it by ignoring him and marginalizing his support. Over and over again durng the campaign people were told things like "He's too old", or "he's too extreme" or "He can't possibly win". Both  Democrats and Republicans joined in this chorus until eventually the man on the street would say to you "He too old, he's too extreme, and besides, he can't possibly win".  The shiny box told you that supporting him was  'throwing your vote away', and pushed the idea of 'the lesser of two evils'.  Thousands of people gathered to hear him speak  even as  'conservative' Fox News   reported the decline of his campaign. You see, truth is secondary to the agenda. The agenda is  to keep you rooted on your couch and give you just  enough information to make you think youre informed.  Give you a few talking points that you can recite if the topic comes up around the water cooler, and let's move on to the advertising.
  The advertising's whole point ( and to be honest, I find marketing fascinating) is to make you discontent with what you have, or what you are, and then propose their product or service as a solution. The point is to emotional  manipulate you in order to provoke a controlled response. Too fat? We can fix that.  Old car?  We can fix that.  Never mind that your husbnad   still adores you and thinks you're all that, the shiny box  says you're fat, and here's how you fix it.  Never mind that by keeping your current car ( which runs)you can stay out of debt. we need you to be in debt, we need you to live beyond your means. On and on and on drones the shiny box, 24 hours a day 7 days a week , talking when there is nothing more to say, and slowly  liquiifying your brain.
  Stay with us, the shiny box says. TV time is family time. Oh look, a train wreck in Nebraska, and some celbrity was arrested for driving drunk. Look at those scary peopll with their  AR-15's. They shouldn't have those guns, should they? After all, you don't need an AR-15, do you?  Wouldn't some popcorn be good  right now?  Only cultists homeschool their kids. Police are heroes.Hours slip away, precious precious time, and still the box never stops pumping out nonesense.
  But hey, people love dirty laundry, right?
 
 

Nothing New Under the Hollywood Sun

  I was watching the Magnificent Seven (one of my favorite movies) and I made the comment to my oldest, who is  almost 11, that this  movie always made me think of the Steve Martin movie ‘The Three Amigos’.  Robert had never seen The Three Amigos, and I tried to explain the plot to him.  Halfway through my explanation he said “oh, so it’s 'Galaxy Quest' set in the Wild West.”  I sat back and marveled at his brilliance.  Here I was, a supposedly educated person who had seen all 3 of the movies discussed who knows how many times, and I had never made the connection that Three Amigos and Galaxy Quest are the exact same movie!

  This is made all the more embarrassing by the fact that I have espoused a theory for years now that there are only about 30 plots in any movie, book or TV show, and these plots are tweaked,   scrambled, and recycled over and over again.  Most if not all of these plots have their precedent in  the Bible. Some  accomplish their ends by being the exact opposite of the Bible precedent. Despite rattling on about this theory at every opportunity (yeah, I’m one of those guys), I had never made any sort of attempt to catalog any of these plots and give specific examples.  I will now attempt to do so, as many as I can think of , and let my readers be the judge of whether or not I know what I’m talking about.

(Note: While composing this, somebody asked what I was doing, and when I told them, they informed me that such a list already exists.  One Google search later, I’m forced to concede a certain amount of ground in this area, but I still think my list will be more entertaining)

1) The best and the brightest of an organization betrays the organization and becomes their sworn enemy.  This shows up in everything from Star Wars  to The Last Starfighter to the fall of Lucifer in the Bible.

2) A fair maiden is threatened by the chief villain, and is rescued by the hero (who everybody thought was dead) at the last possible moment, usually on a white horse.  Think of almost every Western you’ve ever seen. This also shows up in the book of Revelation.

3) Two siblings are polar opposites in temperament, and their destinies collide, ending in a face-off some kind.  Jacob and Esau or Cain and Abel are the Bible examples.

4) A man shows his devotion to his bride by risking life and limb for her.  The story of the crucifixion is the original, almost every romantic comedy you've ever seen fits this  type to a lesser degree.

5) An innocent man  sufffers willfully for the guilty.  Charles Dickens took this plot device  for Tale of Two cities directly from the story of  Christ at Calvary

6) An enemy of an organization becomes its most fervent  convert.  Saul of Tarsus anyone?  Some would argue that this is simply a reversal of  #1, and my counterpoint would be: Leave me alone or write your own list.

7) A murder is commited and hidden, only to be revealed later. Moses did this

8) A female of modest  origins  marries a man of immense importance. This is an easy one.  Cinderalla is the   most obvious example, along with its scriptural parralel of  Christ the redeemer  taking lost sinners to himself to be his bride.

9) A female is rescued from self-inflicted damage by the true love of a prince or king. Snow White eats the poisoned apple, and  'dies', but is ressurected by her Prince.  Genesis  3.

10) A man kills another man (or somehow disposes of him) to hide an affair.  David did this to Uriah the Hiitite centuries before  the first murder mystery was written.

11) The novice becomes the  master , (and only hope) after the master dies or disappears.  Luke Skywalker took on Yoda's mantle just like Elisha took on Elijah's mantle. 

12)The bad guy steals from or defames the  good guy in order to promote himself, than later is exposed and punished.  Here the movie Big Fat Liar coincides with the  story of Haman and Mordecai in the book of Esther.

13) A creation turns on it's master and  has to be destroyed.  There are elements of this in the biblical story of man's fall and God's susequent dealings with  him. This plot  mirrors itself in everything from Frankenestein to Mimic

14)  A chosen one  dies or disappears and re-emerges exercising great power.  The life of Jesus Christ would be the precedent with movies like The Matrix borrowing from it.

15) Somebody gets the blame ( or credit) for something they did not do. Joseph goes to  prison in Genesis while Jimmy Stewart's character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance gets accolades. Both become powerful political figures.

16) An unlikely champion vanquishes a larger opponent.  David and Golaith is the template for a  score of movies and books in this area, including  almost every 'feel-good' sports movie you've ever seen.

17) A cursed person is restored by the love of another.  Beauty and the Beast reversed the genders, but it's the Bible story of salvation in a nutshell.

18) A group of people ( usually 5)  goes on a quest.  I dont really have any  Biblical example here, but it happens  so often in everything from Scooby Doo and Star Wars to Lord of  the Rings that there must be something to it.

19)  A person violates their conscience and suffers the consequences. Let's see,  there's Pinnocchio for starters.  In some  works of fiction, the  guy that violates his conscience ends up in  a #13 scenario. the Bible example would be every person who ever lived.

20) The most unlikely  person arises as the champion.  The book Ender's Game  may be  my favorite non-biblical example of this plot stolen from the  life of David, Joseph,  and Jesus Christ.


Let's see, that's 20 so far. I now open the floor to contributions, with worthwhile ones being added to the list ( and full credit given) thanks to the miacle of the 'edit button'.