posted
Warning: large segments of this essay are not really about what the title would lead you to believe. If you know that Mr. Card's typical political sentiments and means of venting them are likely to cause you to snarl vulgarities at your computer screen, you should give this editorial a pass.
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: ...you should give this editorial a pass.
I've been doing more and more of that lately. I don't know why I try. I read a few paragraphs, and he derails himself, and I get angry, and then I stop reading.
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The oh so heavy-handed judgment in his reviews seems kind of strange when he's saying things like: ""Any movie where you know when you're being told the moral is bad."
His last few books have shouted the moral from the mouths of more than one character, and then he's written afterwords that have reiterated the moral over and over again... I don't know what to make of that? Brilliantly subtle disguise of the *actual* morals? Honestly, some of his lines in Ender's Exile looked like they were criticisms of himself taken from this forum.
quote: And it has been given the mission of protecting America. Only it decides that because the President made a decision to strike against a suspected terrorist and turned out to have guessed wrong, which provokes revenge attacks by terrorists, the administration poses the greatest threat to the American people.
Wow, does that sound like this film was made by the Central Committee of the Democratic Party in order to remind people how evil George W. Bush is?
I snorted at this because he's describing the plot of Irobot, which he actually liked.
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posted
Two points: 1) OSC has terrible taste in actors. Shia? Really? Still? 2) He seems upset about the fact that Eagle Eye posits a scenario impossible with today's technology: a supercomputer granted access to all humanity's information traffic gains sentience and decides to protect humanity from itself by replacing its leadership. He argues that something so transparently unlikely is evidence of a liberal Hollywood bias against the outgoing Bush administration.
And yet....Isn't this a common sci-fi plot? Isn't the supercomputer who decides to conquer humanity for its own good a trope of the genre? Isn't that basically Jane? Or Skynet?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: But it's sure a good thriller, with some terrific performances. So you can watch this movie, be vastly entertained, and get a dose of malicious stupid juice all at the same time. One-stop shopping, folks!
As with WALL•E, OSC spends most of his time criticizing the absurdity of the premise, but concludes that it's an entertaining movie. He seems to have a habit of picking apart premises that are particularly ridiculous.
Just a little fact-check, Orincoro, it was OSC's daughter Zina that said "Any movie where you know when you're being told the moral is bad." Not that I'm trying to argue with you or anything (if I wanted to do THAT, I'd ask what the morals of all of OSC's latest novels are), but give proper credit where due. I actually think it's a wise statement, open to interpretation.
Tom: Did you just skim the essay? He makes the "bad technology" and "bad politics" arguments in two separate points, relating them to one another only in his summary of what's wrong with the movie. It's not one, therefore the other, it's one and the other.
DIsclaimer: I have never seen any of the movies that OSC reviewed in the current essay, so it is not my place to analyze his interpretations of certain plot points, especially the politics. I don't know whether the Eagle Eye computer was more characteristic of Jane or of Hal, but if it is indeed the latter then I share Card's sentiments about such a premise.
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posted
The Eagle Eye computer was the personification of Deus ex machina, and miles away form either Jane or HAL9000. By the end of the movie you've either turned your brain off or the movie has done permanent damage to it.
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quote:Originally posted by The White Whale: The Eagle Eye computer was the personification of Deus ex machina, and miles away form either Jane or HAL9000. By the end of the movie you've either turned your brain off or the movie has done permanent damage to it.
And left visions of Circuit City in its place.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The White Whale: The Eagle Eye computer was the personification of Deus ex machina, and miles away form either Jane or HAL9000. By the end of the movie you've either turned your brain off or the movie has done permanent damage to it.
In which case there is little room to argue that this is a coherent or concerted attempt at a liberal agenda, when what it probably is, is stupid writing by lazy, derivative writers looking to please an audience that is, by most indications, looking for reasons to dislike our current government. Still, that's all it is. A movie that sells or doesn't sell tickets. I wonder at why OSC remained silent as the McCain-Palin camp took a very similar tack in running as "Washington outsiders," who were going to be "mavericks" and "reformers."
OSC gets to claim it as an important point about liberalism in America just as he is dismissing it as lazy and unrepresentative of American values. And he gets to laud and praise the conservatives who do the same things. So, I have a hard time looking at the two points of his argument, and seeing a way in which anything he is saying really matters: either it's bad populist writing that has no useful meaning, (and can therefore be dismissed) or it's representative of something negative that does have appeal, and is therefore effective... you can't exactly have both. And you can't exactly like only one of two groups of people for doing the same things to appeal to the same constituencies.
Oh, well, you can if you want to write a tirade that no one will be able to argue with, because the whole thing depends on your assertions of motivations you cannot know, and character attacks you cannot prove. I think I'm getting it.
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posted
"a supercomputer granted access to all humanity's information traffic gains sentience and decides to protect humanity from itself by replacing its leadership."
quote:He makes the "bad technology" and "bad politics" arguments in two separate points, relating them to one another only in his summary of what's wrong with the movie. It's not one, therefore the other, it's one and the other.
But the "bad politics" argument is irrelevant; rhe politics are just meaningless background color to the film. The "concept" of the movie is that an quasi-omniscient computer decides to run our affairs for us; all that's required is that it have some reason, and the reason in this particular B movie happens to be that it thinks it can do a better job of foreign policy. Twenty years ago, it would've been the Cold War; in fact, you can argue that, in a number of movies and stories from that period, it was. Five years from now, it'll be something else.
I'm sure Eagle Eye is a bad movie; that Shia LaBoeuf's acting is put forward as its saving grace is condemnation enough. But a forward agent of liberal hatefulness I'm sure it's not.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Honestly, some of his lines in Ender's Exile looked like they were criticisms of himself taken from this forum.
Super-seriously, I want to see some side by side comparisons. If you can readily match up lines in Ender's Exile with people's criticisms of OSC from here, that would be astounding.
quote:In which case there is little room to argue that this is a coherent or concerted attempt at a liberal agenda, when what it probably is, is stupid writing by lazy, derivative writers looking to please an audience that is, by most indications, looking for reasons to dislike our current government. Still, that's all it is.
screw you and your 'occam's razor,' i want to call liberals ninnies.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Honestly, some of his lines in Ender's Exile looked like they were criticisms of himself taken from this forum.
Super-seriously, I want to see some side by side comparisons. If you can readily match up lines in Ender's Exile with people's criticisms of OSC from here, that would be astounding.
Unfortunately I don't have the book on hand, (listened to the recording), but there was one line in particular about how the character or persona of Demosthenes was unlike the reality of Valentine, that struck as an incredibly odd and self-undermining thing OSC to say in light of his online writing. I wish I could remember it in better detail.
As for line by line comparison- I just don't want to do that. And I didn't mean to imply that I thought he had lifted criticisms from this site directly into the book. I find that unlikely.
::::SPOILERS:::: (Sorry KQ)
Edit: I must admit when OSC got to the part of the story where Valentine and and Peter were working out what was going to happen to Ender, whether he would stay in space or come home, I did get a glimmer of my own contribution to the thread he cited in the afterword. The part about it possibly being Peter's ultimate advantage to make Valentine insist on banishing Ender, even though he really doesn't want Ender home either, was something I wrote there. I was kind of disappointed that OSC didn't use my Pompeii Magnus analogy... but that would have been asking a bit much.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: The oh so heavy-handed judgment in his reviews seems kind of strange when he's saying things like: ""Any movie where you know when you're being told the moral is bad."
His last few books have shouted the moral from the mouths of more than one character, and then he's written afterwords that have reiterated the moral over and over again... I don't know what to make of that? Brilliantly subtle disguise of the *actual* morals? Honestly, some of his lines in Ender's Exile looked like they were criticisms of himself taken from this forum.
The one thing I regret most about Mr. Card's evolution into political extremism over the past 8 years, is that it doesn't just show up in his World Watch Essays or Reviews of Everything, it has had a real and very negative impact on his fiction. He is guilty of exactly what he criticizes in this essay and he is correct. It results in bad novels.
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posted
OSC is getting preachier and preachier in his later books, much like Heinlein did, lecturing the reader through the mouths of the characters, at the expense of the story.
Unlike Heinlein in his old age, OSC isn't advocating things like father-daughter incest and other moral offenses, so I can still enjoy his stories despite fourth-wall breaking lectures.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The one thing I regret most about Mr. Card's evolution into political extremism over the past 8 years, is that it doesn't just show up in his World Watch Essays or Reviews of Everything, it has had a real and very negative impact on his fiction. He is guilty of exactly what he criticizes in this essay and he is correct. It results in bad novels.
I have stopped trying to rationalize the process you're describing. I used to think it was a deep game on OSC's part, but there are things about his writing in, for instance, Empire, that are just deeply weird. I do suppose that his earlier fiction may have predicted and foreshadowed the shift in style though. When you consider that a master narrative that runs through OSC's entire catalog is about the power of rhetoric and public identity formation, the destruction of the individual by society, and the formation of society's views of individuals, it does follow that OSC would run afoul of mainstream society in this way. The power of personality and reaction formation are revered in his novels with an obsessive focus. When you read books like, say, Lost Boys, you get a sense that although the story is mostly fiction, OSC sympathizes deeply with the alienation, will to power and paranoia of his main characters. Of course, they are always justified in all of these things, when in real life smart people are capable of poor motivations.
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posted
I'm going off of OSC's review, minus the political spin he attaches to the writing. So I don't even really know if the movie is bad or not- just that it's unlikely to be both badly written and effective as a piece of propaganda... the two don't go together that well unless the message is of a somewhat more populist nature.
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posted
Maybe Orincoro's right and it's all an elaborate Peter-and-Valentine-like plot to draw support one way before eventually turning about!!!11onecos(0)
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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OSC has trained his readers to react as if any inference into his motivations reflected in his characters is ridiculous, and automatically deserving of your scorn, even as we point out how obviously his opinions are being mirrored. Gee-wiz, I tend to think that if there is one overriding theme in pretty much all of your writing, it's also something you have deep and personal convictions about. Far be it for me to suggest that could have some effect on *who you are.*
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