Of course, if you were never a kid, or if you're devoid of imagination, you won't know what I'm talking about, and this clip will mean nothing to you. More's the pity.
Talk Amongst Yourselves
More Later
KCD
Please visit www.theworkofart.net
Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Up, Up, and Away
This has been viewed 700,000 times. If you have a kid or ever were a kid, you will thrill as this 16-month old does watching the Man of Steel take flight. Something in you soars no matter how many times or in how many ways you watch Superman lift off. It doesn't really matter who's wearing the "S" and the red cape, be it George Reeves, Christopher Reeve (may they both rest in peace), Brandon Routh, or Henry Cavill, there's nothing quite like it.
Of course, if you were never a kid, or if you're devoid of imagination, you won't know what I'm talking about, and this clip will mean nothing to you. More's the pity.
Talk Amongst Yourselves
More Later
KCD
Please visit www.theworkofart.net
Of course, if you were never a kid, or if you're devoid of imagination, you won't know what I'm talking about, and this clip will mean nothing to you. More's the pity.
Talk Amongst Yourselves
More Later
KCD
Please visit www.theworkofart.net
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
The Latest Late Stuff That Happened Lately
Well, folks it's been quite the summer, hasn't it? In rapid succession we had the latest opinions from the Supreme Court, the non-resolution of the Trayvon Martin "Stand Your Ground" case, a taste of what it might actually be like if a kid from another planet landed here, grew up in KS, got super powers and had to mix it up with his own people, and finally what it really takes to beat the monster that stepped on Cincinnati. By the way that's not actually a movie, so don't go looking for it.
So let's see. I had this great post planned about upheaval in terms both figurative and literal. For example, Metropolis (not a real city) has to get used to being in constant re-build since a certain strange visitor from another planet started flexing his muscle ostensibly to help people, which he does, but not without the kind of real estate damage FEMA usually gets called in for. The Supreme Court decides the DOMA makes no logical or constitutional sense, but the VRA needs "adjusting" because we don't live in the same country that we did a half-century ago, completely ignoring what just happened last year in a bunch of states. Then of course, the crown jewel of bewilderment was set in place on July 13th, as George Zimmerman got to walk out of a FL courtroom a free man after admitting to killing an unarmed teenager who wasn't doing anything except walking home in the rain.
Yeah...we're not gonna live that one down for a while.
Oh, and there was the woman in TX with the orange sneakers (or were they pink?) who stared down a room full of politicians (mostly men) for nearly 12 hours while she lectured them about how creepy and wrong it is to treat women as if they had no other purpose on earth but to be breeders.
Somewhere in the midst of all this I became enamored with a show on PBS that almost nobody watches called "Downton Abbey". It's about the lives of a high-born English family and their servants (yes, they had those) in a grand estate around the turn of the 20th century before World War One. Just when I'm getting down in the mouth about the world comes a piece of magnificently done period drama, with marvelous performances, well-drawn characters, and more compelling plots than a J.J. Abrams' show. Since this is a slice of life from roughly a century ago, it shows how far we've come technologically and socially, and how far we still have to go. This is what art does. It shows us ourselves, and makes us better for the reflection.
Now I hear that the Smithsonian may want the hoodie that Trayvon Martin wore the night he was killed. It's an important moment in our culture and an interesting way to commemorate it. I think about the movie I referenced, Man Of Steel, which of course is the freshest redux of the Superman story, and one of our best cultural fantasies, that someone can impose himself into our lives and save us from our worst aspects, our worst instincts. Superman is just one icon. We have others. But the truth is not so easy. It's closer to the reality of Downton Abbey, where sometimes our demons win, and our reptilian id gets the better of us. But also, we can learn from the signs around us and become more than we were and rise up to the moment when we need to. We can evolve, and our uniquely human capacity for story and creating meaning allows us to do that. We use art to do this. So we have heroes: Superman representing what could be transcendent in all of us. State Senator Wendy Davis who represents what we can be when we need to be. We have villains: the TX state legislature, maybe the US Supreme Court, a jury in Sanford, FL that allowed a man to get away with murder. Then we have somewhere in the middle, the residents of Downton Abbey, the parents of Trayvon Martin, and the rest of us. Getting it right. Getting it wrong. Learning and evolving as we go. Hopefully.
More Later
KCD
So let's see. I had this great post planned about upheaval in terms both figurative and literal. For example, Metropolis (not a real city) has to get used to being in constant re-build since a certain strange visitor from another planet started flexing his muscle ostensibly to help people, which he does, but not without the kind of real estate damage FEMA usually gets called in for. The Supreme Court decides the DOMA makes no logical or constitutional sense, but the VRA needs "adjusting" because we don't live in the same country that we did a half-century ago, completely ignoring what just happened last year in a bunch of states. Then of course, the crown jewel of bewilderment was set in place on July 13th, as George Zimmerman got to walk out of a FL courtroom a free man after admitting to killing an unarmed teenager who wasn't doing anything except walking home in the rain.
Yeah...we're not gonna live that one down for a while.
Oh, and there was the woman in TX with the orange sneakers (or were they pink?) who stared down a room full of politicians (mostly men) for nearly 12 hours while she lectured them about how creepy and wrong it is to treat women as if they had no other purpose on earth but to be breeders.
Somewhere in the midst of all this I became enamored with a show on PBS that almost nobody watches called "Downton Abbey". It's about the lives of a high-born English family and their servants (yes, they had those) in a grand estate around the turn of the 20th century before World War One. Just when I'm getting down in the mouth about the world comes a piece of magnificently done period drama, with marvelous performances, well-drawn characters, and more compelling plots than a J.J. Abrams' show. Since this is a slice of life from roughly a century ago, it shows how far we've come technologically and socially, and how far we still have to go. This is what art does. It shows us ourselves, and makes us better for the reflection.
Now I hear that the Smithsonian may want the hoodie that Trayvon Martin wore the night he was killed. It's an important moment in our culture and an interesting way to commemorate it. I think about the movie I referenced, Man Of Steel, which of course is the freshest redux of the Superman story, and one of our best cultural fantasies, that someone can impose himself into our lives and save us from our worst aspects, our worst instincts. Superman is just one icon. We have others. But the truth is not so easy. It's closer to the reality of Downton Abbey, where sometimes our demons win, and our reptilian id gets the better of us. But also, we can learn from the signs around us and become more than we were and rise up to the moment when we need to. We can evolve, and our uniquely human capacity for story and creating meaning allows us to do that. We use art to do this. So we have heroes: Superman representing what could be transcendent in all of us. State Senator Wendy Davis who represents what we can be when we need to be. We have villains: the TX state legislature, maybe the US Supreme Court, a jury in Sanford, FL that allowed a man to get away with murder. Then we have somewhere in the middle, the residents of Downton Abbey, the parents of Trayvon Martin, and the rest of us. Getting it right. Getting it wrong. Learning and evolving as we go. Hopefully.
More Later
KCD
Monday, May 20, 2013
On A Day in April; A Meditation on Superheroes
Here in MA we have a holiday called Patriot's Day, and it usually falls somewhere around the time of the end of tax season. This year, Tax Day and Patriot's Day were the same day. So was the annual Boston Marathon. Whilst watching the goings on from our accountant's office, there was an explosion near the finish line. Shrapnel shot out everywhere with deadly intent. An 8-year old boy was killed. Two young women were killed, a student and restaurant manager with a bright smile and a sweet nature. Others were maimed and still others wounded. First responders raced to the scene to help. Runners in the race came to help including a doctor who finished the race and then ran over to treat the wounded. Ordinary people became superheroes on that day in April. But they weren't the kind who could repel bullets or scale walls or even fly or run at incredible speeds. And whether Superman or Spider-Man or the Flash could've gotten there in time to stop the carnage is an open question. It's always great when these things are averted, and we've been incredibly fortunate. But it was really only a matter of time. We wouldn't be able to get to all of them. Stop all of them. That may be too much to ask even of mythic characters like Superman.
So since we don't have super speed, X-ray vision, or the proportionate strength and speed of a spider, we have to rely on our ability to be one step ahead of people like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his brother Dzhokar, a couple of homegrown terrorist wannabes who learned how to build pressure cooker bombs on the internet and used an international gathering as practice for more disruptions later. This time, we didn't get all the intel we could have gotten and we didn't connect the dots fast enough. And the attack went off. Even the Batman might not have been able to stop it in time. The device was activated with a cell phone as the two brothers walked calmly away. Is the Flash fast enough to outrun the signal? That's the problem with superhumans. They're still human in the end, and humans miss things. But what makes the folks who rushed in to help super is the strength of their connection to each other, amplified by the communal energy from all over the world gathered in one place at one moment. In moments like that, we're as powerful as any strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. That's why these two losers were taken down before the week was out. Tamerlan was killed in a gunfight with Boston PD, and Dzhokar finally surrendered and is in prison at Devens, awaiting trial. That's why they won't get a chance to try anything else in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or anywhere else.
Margaret Thatcher, who was committed to the ground in England while we were here chasing down bad guys seemed in her life a proponent of a very rigid kind of individualism. But it wasn't individualism that took out the Tsarnaev brothers. It wasn't an individual superhero who stopped them. It was a collective will and consciousness that demanded they be caught and held responsible for trying to terrorize us into paying attention to their half-formed, ill-advised political discontent.
And no less a superhero than David Ortiz, Big Papi himself arrived just in time to give us all a sense of closure when he said, his uniform saying Boston in big red letters, "This is our !@#$^& city!"
So say we all.
It's going to take a damned sight more than a couple of junior jihadi apprentices to take us down.
And Admiral Adama, along with all of Boston and the whole Commonwealth of MA said:
SO SAY WE ALL!!
I should add here that Edward James Olmos' remarks here at the UN sort of explain why there are people who need to do what was done in Boston on that day in April. As long as this need to "otherize" people exists, there will be acts of destruction of this type or another, and it's also why we will continue to need heroes, super or not, to remind us of what we all have in common.
More Later
KCD
So since we don't have super speed, X-ray vision, or the proportionate strength and speed of a spider, we have to rely on our ability to be one step ahead of people like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his brother Dzhokar, a couple of homegrown terrorist wannabes who learned how to build pressure cooker bombs on the internet and used an international gathering as practice for more disruptions later. This time, we didn't get all the intel we could have gotten and we didn't connect the dots fast enough. And the attack went off. Even the Batman might not have been able to stop it in time. The device was activated with a cell phone as the two brothers walked calmly away. Is the Flash fast enough to outrun the signal? That's the problem with superhumans. They're still human in the end, and humans miss things. But what makes the folks who rushed in to help super is the strength of their connection to each other, amplified by the communal energy from all over the world gathered in one place at one moment. In moments like that, we're as powerful as any strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. That's why these two losers were taken down before the week was out. Tamerlan was killed in a gunfight with Boston PD, and Dzhokar finally surrendered and is in prison at Devens, awaiting trial. That's why they won't get a chance to try anything else in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or anywhere else.
Margaret Thatcher, who was committed to the ground in England while we were here chasing down bad guys seemed in her life a proponent of a very rigid kind of individualism. But it wasn't individualism that took out the Tsarnaev brothers. It wasn't an individual superhero who stopped them. It was a collective will and consciousness that demanded they be caught and held responsible for trying to terrorize us into paying attention to their half-formed, ill-advised political discontent.
And no less a superhero than David Ortiz, Big Papi himself arrived just in time to give us all a sense of closure when he said, his uniform saying Boston in big red letters, "This is our !@#$^& city!"
So say we all.
It's going to take a damned sight more than a couple of junior jihadi apprentices to take us down.
And Admiral Adama, along with all of Boston and the whole Commonwealth of MA said:
SO SAY WE ALL!!
I should add here that Edward James Olmos' remarks here at the UN sort of explain why there are people who need to do what was done in Boston on that day in April. As long as this need to "otherize" people exists, there will be acts of destruction of this type or another, and it's also why we will continue to need heroes, super or not, to remind us of what we all have in common.
More Later
KCD
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