Month: May 2023

The Ecstasy of Guns

Trigger warning: guns and gun violence is discussed.

America has a gun problem. That much is obvious. Death by guns is the leading cause of death for our children; the NRA has bought and paid for politicians who continually block sensible gun control legislation; and one can barely turn on a television without seeing something gun related on the screen.

It is this last part I want to discuss today: the rampant image of the gun on screen. I am old enough to have been a teenager when the Columbine school shooting occurred and I remember then that many people blamed the violence on video games. I believe that myth has since been debunked, that violent video games do not directly cause gun violence, but I think it is still a related topic.

Guns are glorified in America. They are made to appear “cool” and “desirable” and as positive means of solving problems. Their aesthetic design is one such to make them as slick and natural an extension of the hand and arm as possible. The sound design of films and television shows is done in such a way as to enhance that glorification. Have you ever noticed someone in a movie using hearing protection when firing guns? I can count on half a hand. Guns are loud. I can tell you this from experience, but guns are never really that loud in film, unless it is germane to a funny plot point. Everything about the way guns are presented is to minimize their faults and maximize their luster.

That simply cannot be an ancillary fact, ignorable to the overall desirability of gun shaped weapons. And when a gun is seen as “cool”, and shown over and over again to be the solution to, dare I say, any problem on screen, then it cannot be coincidence that guns are turned to as the solution to many real-world problems as well.

I watched a mid-grade science fiction film the other night, the new 65 starring Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt. Driver is a pilot of a spacecraft that crashes on a world of dinosaurs, and quite unbelievably to the plot, he has a convenient locker filled with survival gear including, you guessed it, a futuristic assault rifle. The rifle is the solution to the dinosaur problem, it makes a nifty sound when fired, and looks amazing when the rounds explode from the barrel. Without it, the marooned pilot and friend would surely have perished. Not only is the rifle a lazy solution to a light plot, but it is also just one more example of guns superseding ingenuity in a difficult situation, cinematically.

A popular film franchise starring Keanu Reeves, John Wick, I believe exists solely because American, and to be fair, world wide audiences as well, love gun play and gun violence. In fact, John Wick is lighter on plot than 65 is, and almost the entirety of all four Wick movies to date are almost entirely comprised of various gun battles. The camera lingers on the guns themselves and shows them in the best of lighting and situations so as to amp up their already prodigious role in the films. This is nothing new. Guns and gun violence have been apart of cinema since the beginnings, with western films and others. The 70’s and 80’s were heydays of “action” movies, with “action” being a codeword for “gun violence” in many cases.

Before 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there existed three ratings for movies: G, PG, and R. G for General Audiences, PG for Parental Guidance suggested, and R for Restricted, meaning 18 and older only. Steven Spielberg wanted another rating between PG and R to keep his younger children from asking to see Temple of Doom, and he petitioned for, and received, the first ever PG-13 rating. Suddenly a new genre of film was born that could include much of the violence (read: guns) of other films, some non-graphic nudity, and swearing (without more than one fuck) and be acceptable for children 13 and older.

There is much to say about the ratings system, but for now my point is that gun violence, which primarily had been restricted to adult audiences, was now widely available to teenagers for the first time. Temple of Doom didn’t have a whole lot of gun violence that wasn’t cartoon-y, but it had some. But many, many other movies have had a lot more. John Wick is still an R-rated flick, but others with only slightly less gun violence are not. What have we unleashed with this bright, technicolor tableau of silver screen gun violence? I don’t believe it directly causes real world gun violence, but I believe it is contributory to an overall culture that glorifies the gun.

Such horrific weapons as guns should not be glorified at all, should not be presented as solutions to problems in fictional stories, and should not be desirable objects to possess. They are far too destructive. As our stories take us as humans, there our hearts and minds go. Make something “normal” or “acceptable” on screen, and we will start to normalize it in real life as well. Usually, I would champion this for acceptance, for representation, and for many other things, but when used to negative effect, I must condemn it.

To take another example for a moment: show characters making racist jokes in a positive light in a popular movie and wait and see how long it is before you hear those same jokes in your world. Our former president unleashed a slightly hidden part of our culture by making sexual harassment, racism, and all sorts of evil acceptable from our highest political office and the effects are still tearing America apart. Presidents, and movies, can do that very well.

I don’t have an immediate solution to Hollywood’s obsession with guns, but I can do one, small thing and that is this: I will no longer glorify guns. I find myself doing it in a small way: one is when talking about photography. For some reason that I have not researched, gun metaphors are used for photography. Shooting film, getting the shot, taking a shot etc are all code for taking a picture. As much as possible, I don’t use these phrases. I don’t use a film camera, but I can get a picture or take a pic instead of a “shot”.

Another example is in my toy photography. I love Star Wars as a franchise (despite it, too, glorifying shooting weapons to a degree) and take a lot of pictures of Star Wars action figures. Almost every single figure comes with, or has a place for, a gun shaped object. To display or photograph them naturally is to have a place for their tiny plastic gun. Going forward, I want to only take photos of the figures in positive aspects, and to minimize or remove entirely their weapons. This will be difficult in a conflict heavy galaxy far, far away, but I believe it can be done.

The journey towards de-glorifying guns starts with personal choice and action, much like the decisions to reject sexism, racism, homo/trans/etc-phobia and many other evils. It some ways, it starts with me. I want to see positive change, therefore it is incumbent on me to evidence that positive change. I stopped going to gun ranges for fun a while back, I am choosing less violent (gun-centric or otherwise) movies to enjoy, and changing my photographic vocabulary and the object of my photographic endeavors is a part of that. Ultimately I believe positive change is possible, but it takes many small steps along different paths than have been previously traveled.

Rugged

I need to see rugged places,
where untamed things are;
invigorate my soul.
(a wild thing, trammeled
in some hutch-)

Breathe crazed currents deep,
and waken the were-beast
behind my bones:
quiet, small,
domesticated me

molting to craggy unrefinement
jumping out of freckled skin,
free to roam the reaches
of stretched sky
above ginger mop and red beard.

But if I do,
I may never be the same.
Dragonslayers rarely return home
unscarred and nicely kempt
to chat up the neighbors.

My horizons coalesce back
into sheetrock walls and paint.
The only roaring is the AC.
My heart halts its stirring
and drifts off again to shaken sleep.

Still, jagged scenes pause
behind night black heavens
waiting to be taken by the dawn,
cracking through rock and stone,
precipitating splendid life.

I need only to see the rugged places…

Love of Words

I saw an advert the other day for an AI powered writing service: it promised blog posts for any website quickly and on-demand. While I would hope that it would be SEO friendly and have the technical side of things in order (after all, what’s the point of machines if not to make drudgery and technicalities easier?) mostly it just made me sad.

I suppose that if someone were to be running a purely marketing focused blog, or something where blind and abundant content is the point, then maybe such a thing would be useful, but for anyone else, I just don’t understand a bot writing in place of a person.

I don’t find writing a chore. In fact writing is one of the purest pleasures I have. I love arranging words just so, and making sentences to craft coherent paragraphs joining up to make something unique to present to the world, and hopefully fun to read as well. I love imagining that I am talking with someone, albeit a little one-sidedly perhaps. Writing is communication, a transfer of ideas and thoughts from one person to another. It is personable, immediate, and effervescent. No matter when I write, or when another person reads my words, communication is possible. The conversation can carry itself across time and space.

To replace that human interaction with a bot, a machine, no matter how sophisticated, would defeat the purpose. Until we have true AI, true intelligence, then why would a person want to talk to a robot? Call me no luddite, I embrace new technologies and machine shortcuts to an easier life, but this isn’t that. This is a cheat, a scam, a flim-flam. It is an advanced algorithm spitting out words without soul, without heart, without any real meaning behind them.

I grew up reading Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, and in particular was delighted by the stories of Andrew Martin (no relation) and R. Daneel Olivaw, two robot persons. The first was the robot who became, at great and ultimate cost, a true person. The second is the robot detective who solved some of the most famous murders across the galaxy. These are the machines I would love to talk to, to engage with, and to communicate with. These are AI in their purest form: brand new beings constructed mechanically and artificially, but who are, nonetheless, real intelligence (though R. Daneel might disagree with me). However, these are only stories thought up by a grandmaster of science fiction. This blog writing “AI” is nowhere close to these two mechanical men I mention.

I hid the ad and blocked it from ever showing up in that particular feed ever again, but with the advent of machine learning and these rudimentary “AIs” it won’t be long before more and more artificial writing services pop up and seek to garner money and interaction. Count me among the ones who will never use or pay for such a service. My words will always be home grown, purely human fashioned. From my mind to the page or screen and into another’s mind, without artificial intermediary.

I love words too much to sully them with the metallic taste of machinery. Far from being warm, soft, and delicious, they would smack of oil and metal and angles too harsh to swallow. I was taught that language, especially written language, should seduce and envelope the reader like a luxurious bed in a warm room on a cozy day. Writing should delight and entice. I don’t believe in spewing words on a page in order to merely create content. That galls me and irritates my senses, hardly a delight or a wonderful seduction. As long as I am able, I will write my own damn words. When I am no longer able, I hope to die in peace and leave my words behind for another to read.

To this end, I have taken a step towards what may be an ongoing community of writers around me: I have signed up for my first event through Art House Dallas. “For the Love of Words” will be held in a month at a coffee shop nearby, and is for and by writers. I am nervous. I don’t normally put myself out into new and unfamiliar situations. I don’t just go and do things like this. But I seriously want to write, and be a “Writer” and part of that is learning from and rubbing shoulders with other writers. I must get out of myself and into a wider group of people who are doing what I do: write. I have the escape valve of “if it doesn’t work, I can always leave” and that gives me some comfort. The event, while ticketed, is free, so I haven’t paid much out for this experience. But I am excited. I think this will be a good thing for me and my writing growth. Out of the vacuum of my own space and into the world of other minds focused on the singular goal of crafting the written word.

Of course, there is no telling what the future holds. I may fail at this grand experiment of writing; I may run out of words or ideas, or fail at making them communicate with others I may never meet. That isn’t really up to me. What is my domain is doing the work to put the words out there on a regular basis, and to toil diligently to shape those words as best I can. The results will either be productive or fall flat, but I believe that if I do my job well, something must come of it. I would love to make a career out of writing, to earn a living smithing ideas. I am aware that is more difficult that it may seem, and with the influx of writer bots it may be hard to rise above. Ultimately, I also believe the human generated word will become more valuable than the algorithmic essay. To be clear: AI is not going away. The robotic cat is out of the virtual bag. However, that only gives authentic artisans a greater chance to shine. Far from being an obstacle, this is an opportunity.

Opportunities are to be grasped. Challenges are to be accepted, and overcome. I’d put my sentences up against any fabricated conglomerate of phrases any day. I am not the best or the most polished writer, and that may be what shows me to be a real one. Computers are good at doing things perfectly, within their programming, but cannot, and I don’t think ever will, create with authentic flaws. And that is what will set human art apart from that of a computer every single time: the little imperfections that reflect the truest soul of humanity. None of us are perfect, but we are each of us unique. And that singularity is what is at the heart of human expression and what makes any person want to hear from another in the first place. Since my dream is to communicate well with others, I believe I am in a good place to do just that.