Kind of a quick one today because I don't love talking politics these days, but I wanted to muse a little on the concept that the Democratic Party is particularly spineless compared to the Republicans. I won't say the reputation is entirely undeserved, but it feels at times like kind of a double standard.
The one example that really comes to mind is the 2000 election, which was the first instance in decades of the electoral college result canceling out the result of the popular vote. Notwithstanding the recounts and all that back-and-forth in Florida, Michael Moore also criticized the party in general (and Al Gore in particular) for not pursuing an enquiry into the voter suppression that took place in Florida in that election.
I still remember the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 where he showed various Democratic lawmakers bringing some motion relating to that on the floor of the Senate, but Al Gore not admitting any of them. It's designed to piss you off, and in my case at least, it worked.
What changed my mind is the latest election cycle, where the current incumbent threatened to call into question the result if he didn't win (something that he did actually do with regard to the discrepancy between electoral college and popular votes). On my side of the aisle there was the usual appalled protest at how he could subvert the democratic process, but it also made me think of Gore's actions/inactions back in 2000.
The other thing that put this thought into my head was a blog post by Mark Manson where he tried to lay down some truth about a variety of things, including noting that Trump is not actually the devil incarnate, just a shockingly corrupt and incompetent person. What he said was that the climate was at least forcing the Democrats to show some spine, which is always welcome.
It got me thinking about 2000, and it occurred to me that not pursuing the question back then may have been Gore's attempt to stop a worrying precedent, namely that of questioning every election result that doesn't go your way. If all you care about is power or winning, then you might want to fight everything in the courts as long as possible, but it's not a good way to run a republic, and I expect that it wouldn't be long before partisans on one side or another start to take up arms in favor of their candidate.
Perhaps it's reductive to focus on this one aspect of the Democrats' spinelessness, but it's the most obvious example that comes to my mind. The fact is that in a functioning democracy, eventually the loser concedes, with the knowledge that he or she won't be thrown into jail for daring to run against the person who won.
Where the double standard comes in is in the Republicans' insistence on winning at all costs. Of course neither John McCain in 2008, nor Mitt Romney in 2012, contested the elections, in part because they lost by much clearer margins than in 2000. But if you look at the GOP's behavior in blocking Barack Obama from filling Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court, as well as bringing in or blocking incoming senators for votes depending on what they were trying to pass.
What I'm getting at is that the narrative appears to be criticizing the Democrats for not doing things to weaken democracy and rule of law, while we criticize the Republicans for doing those things. I don't know that we can have it both ways. Which is why I'd love for someone to come and give me some further examples of Democratic spinelessness.
Now, just to be clear, I do have some problems with the Democratic Party at the moment. Let's start by dismissing the preposterous claim that they're veering to the extreme left. The most unpresentably left-wing Democratic lawmaker I can think of from the past few years is Dennis Kucinich, who was only a little bit weird but not agitating for class war or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Jill Stein has some definite problems, but I'm talking about the Democratic Party, and even if she were a Democrat, she'd still be an outlier. No, the Republicans are getting away with fielding a lot more far-right and unpresentable candidates than the Dems, hands down.
The big complaint I have about the Democrats is the smugness and clear cozying-up to big business. I'm sure I've said before that Hillary Clinton dismissing Bernie Sanders as a "one-issue candidate" was the low point for me, because she was dismissing the issue that everyone cares about. Even Obama evinces that, in part by today's news that he's signed a content deal with Netflix. I mean, that's great for him and his family, but it's a long way from the candidate who talked in 2008 about how he'd only just finished paying off his student loans.
So those are my thoughts on the "spineless Democrats" narrative. They may not have the iron discipline and will to win that the Republicans do, but given how that's leading to a perversion of democratic process and rule of law, I don't think the country would be well-served by having two parties trying to win at all costs.
The right number is zero - anything more leads to nationalism, populism and lost generations like what Argentina had. We can't afford to be distracted like that.
Monday, 21 May 2018
Monday, 7 May 2018
Some Thoughts on Headphones; or, In Praise of Boredom
For all that I talk about all the podcasts I listen to, it may interest you to learn that there are certain settings where I don't listen to them, or to music, at all. The main ones are when I'm walking or when I'm exercising - whether that's running on the treadmill at the gym or out for one of my usual walks around the block.
In fact, I tried listening to a podcast on a walk recently. Mainly because Tim Ferriss's ads for Audible audiobooks suggested that he likes to listen to books on otherwise "wasted" time, i.e. when he's taking his dog for a walk or something. So I gave it a try, putting on one of his own podcasts while I did a circuit around the block.
And I hated it.
Part of it is that I'm not used to it. I don't like having to deal with the cable or the volume, and the damn earbuds keep falling out of my ears. But the other thing I didn't like about it was that instead of my usual deep thoughts (mainly replaying old conversations as I'd have liked them to go, or trying to figure out what I should be doing with my life), I was listening to Tim Ferriss and his guest.
That's why I listen to these podcasts, so it's not such a bad thing, but I do really appreciate my walks precisely because I'm not listening to anything else and I'm allowing my brain to spit ideas or whatever at me. I'm not getting any external stimulus, so I remember things I need to do, or make connections, or just practice whatever language I'm studying at the moment.
It's a similar thing when I'm running. If I'm on the treadmill, then it'll be a pain keeping the earbuds in, and ensuring that I don't drop my phone, that the volume isn't too loud because I'm trying to drown out the music at the gym, and so on. If I'm running outside, then I've got the additional worry of keeping the volume at a level where I can hear bikes or cars, or any other vehicles that can cut my run short.
But a lot of people I know insist on having music or podcasts when they work out. And a lot of people walking around, or on public transportation, are using it precisely to drown out the outside world. And here's where I think it gets unhealthy.
I understand that for women the headphones can be a way of signaling that they don't want to be bothered, and I respect that. But in general I think it's worrisome that we're so desperate to not engage with our surroundings, in situations where we're not necessarily expecting to be hit on or harassed.
In a way, I see it in a similar light to drug use, which is after all just a way to get out of our heads and get away from whatever problems we're experiencing. I already mentioned in a previous post how the messaging around alcohol and soft drugs, both in advertising and how we interact socially, emphasizes that you're supposed to use this stuff to disengage from your problems. But I think our minds need to be engaged from time to time, allowed to run free and turn up odd associations or ideas.
I suppose what I'm arguing for is boredom. When I was in London a friend made an interesting point about smartphones, which is that we're never bored anymore, because a smartphone provides instant gratification whenever you want it. You can dick around on the web, or on social media, or put on music or videos, or look for a sex partner, or play games, among a million different uses. You can even use your smartphone to increase mindfulness or meditate, which is just another way of quieting the mind, but it's a little ironic when you think about it.
My friend mentioned how when we were teenagers, there were just times when we were bored, and there was nothing to do about it. There were distractions, like TV or music, but if there wasn't anything to watch, or you were bored with your music collection, then you ended up spending a certain amount of time (especially on weekends, in my experience) lying around moaning about how bored you were.
Like everything, it's not such a bad thing, in moderation. And it's a good skill to be able to amuse yourself without a phone: I used to spend long training runs doing simple math in my head, just as a way to keep focused. I suppose that's a little weird, but why does it have to be? I wasn't doing differential equations, just figuring out how much of my run I was done with.
My impression is that people turn to drugs and smartphones because they're conditioned to be afraid of being alone with their thoughts. A different friend insists that she can't run on a treadmill because it'd be too boring. While not everybody responds to exercise the same way, it seems a lame excuse not to use a pretty handy piece of gym equipment.
I think it would be good if people embraced a little bit of boredom and spent a little time alone with their thoughts, whether while out walking or while exercising or something. I expect that the feeling of being rushed and overwhelmed comes from being constantly "on", constantly chasing self-improvement and using every waking moment "wisely".
Other people talk about screen less Saturdays or unplugging or something like that, but I find that for myself it's enough to have some parts of the day where I'm listening to my brain. Because if I only take in outside stimuli, then I don't get the chance to take stock of what I need to do, and then I really do feel overwhelmed.
In fact, I tried listening to a podcast on a walk recently. Mainly because Tim Ferriss's ads for Audible audiobooks suggested that he likes to listen to books on otherwise "wasted" time, i.e. when he's taking his dog for a walk or something. So I gave it a try, putting on one of his own podcasts while I did a circuit around the block.
And I hated it.
Part of it is that I'm not used to it. I don't like having to deal with the cable or the volume, and the damn earbuds keep falling out of my ears. But the other thing I didn't like about it was that instead of my usual deep thoughts (mainly replaying old conversations as I'd have liked them to go, or trying to figure out what I should be doing with my life), I was listening to Tim Ferriss and his guest.
That's why I listen to these podcasts, so it's not such a bad thing, but I do really appreciate my walks precisely because I'm not listening to anything else and I'm allowing my brain to spit ideas or whatever at me. I'm not getting any external stimulus, so I remember things I need to do, or make connections, or just practice whatever language I'm studying at the moment.
It's a similar thing when I'm running. If I'm on the treadmill, then it'll be a pain keeping the earbuds in, and ensuring that I don't drop my phone, that the volume isn't too loud because I'm trying to drown out the music at the gym, and so on. If I'm running outside, then I've got the additional worry of keeping the volume at a level where I can hear bikes or cars, or any other vehicles that can cut my run short.
But a lot of people I know insist on having music or podcasts when they work out. And a lot of people walking around, or on public transportation, are using it precisely to drown out the outside world. And here's where I think it gets unhealthy.
I understand that for women the headphones can be a way of signaling that they don't want to be bothered, and I respect that. But in general I think it's worrisome that we're so desperate to not engage with our surroundings, in situations where we're not necessarily expecting to be hit on or harassed.
In a way, I see it in a similar light to drug use, which is after all just a way to get out of our heads and get away from whatever problems we're experiencing. I already mentioned in a previous post how the messaging around alcohol and soft drugs, both in advertising and how we interact socially, emphasizes that you're supposed to use this stuff to disengage from your problems. But I think our minds need to be engaged from time to time, allowed to run free and turn up odd associations or ideas.
I suppose what I'm arguing for is boredom. When I was in London a friend made an interesting point about smartphones, which is that we're never bored anymore, because a smartphone provides instant gratification whenever you want it. You can dick around on the web, or on social media, or put on music or videos, or look for a sex partner, or play games, among a million different uses. You can even use your smartphone to increase mindfulness or meditate, which is just another way of quieting the mind, but it's a little ironic when you think about it.
My friend mentioned how when we were teenagers, there were just times when we were bored, and there was nothing to do about it. There were distractions, like TV or music, but if there wasn't anything to watch, or you were bored with your music collection, then you ended up spending a certain amount of time (especially on weekends, in my experience) lying around moaning about how bored you were.
Like everything, it's not such a bad thing, in moderation. And it's a good skill to be able to amuse yourself without a phone: I used to spend long training runs doing simple math in my head, just as a way to keep focused. I suppose that's a little weird, but why does it have to be? I wasn't doing differential equations, just figuring out how much of my run I was done with.
My impression is that people turn to drugs and smartphones because they're conditioned to be afraid of being alone with their thoughts. A different friend insists that she can't run on a treadmill because it'd be too boring. While not everybody responds to exercise the same way, it seems a lame excuse not to use a pretty handy piece of gym equipment.
I think it would be good if people embraced a little bit of boredom and spent a little time alone with their thoughts, whether while out walking or while exercising or something. I expect that the feeling of being rushed and overwhelmed comes from being constantly "on", constantly chasing self-improvement and using every waking moment "wisely".
Other people talk about screen less Saturdays or unplugging or something like that, but I find that for myself it's enough to have some parts of the day where I'm listening to my brain. Because if I only take in outside stimuli, then I don't get the chance to take stock of what I need to do, and then I really do feel overwhelmed.
Monday, 30 April 2018
Catching up with Classic Justice League from the 80s
In my ongoing campaign to reread and rewatch and generally re-experience the media I liked when I was a teenager, I've hit on a new campaign since returning home from London, and have started rereading my old comics.
I don't exactly know what the impetus for this was, except that while I was in London this winter, I was taken by a craving to read my old Justice League comics, in particular. One factor that I can identify is Tim Ferriss's latest book, Tribe of Mentors, in which he interviews a number of famous people about their routines and what-not; one of these people said he re-reads his old Archie Comics before bed, to keep in touch with who he was as a kid, and this appealed to me too - it's just interesting that I seized on my old Justice Leagues and not, say, X-Men.
Anyway, I had a look at some of the collected editions at the Forbidden Planet, but they didn't have the first volume on the shelf, so I bided my time until I could get home, and when I did, one of the first things I accomplished was to bring the box of Justice League comics out of my dad's garage.
They've been sitting there for a few years, at this point, as I moved my comics to his place in around 2002 or 2003, but they'd been sitting around for a bit longer, as I hadn't read them since high school. The nice thing is that I managed to box them roughly by title, so I have my classic JLA comics, going from the 1960s all the way to the end of the first book, as well as the Giffen-DeMatteis JLI books and the Grant Morrison-era JLA. There are a couple of other oddities and things I stuck in there at random, but the box is dominated by Justice League.
I've spoken before about the pleasures of reading old comics, or more accurately the ads, and I'm experiencing that again now. Because I started with Justice League of America #45 (the first appearance of the "classic" villain Shaggy Man), I was able to see how these ads changed between the 60s, 70s and 80s. For one thing, ads in early issues were a lot more likely to be comic strips themselves - the late 70s and early 80s featured ads with DC heroes using Hostess Twinkies and the like to foil villains, which is achingly naff, if you think about it, but also strangely charming.
(Incidentally, for American readers, here's the definition of naff, which is a word you really only find in the UK)
The other thing that's interesting is seeing how well the books themselves hold up. I actually think the last few years of the JLA weren't that well-written, especially when DC decided to jettison the marquee characters (i.e. the ones that people cared about and wanted to read) in favor of under-powered newcomers like Vibe, Gypsy, Steel and Vixen, and move them to the mean streets of Detroit. That lineup didn't last very long, but I remain intrigued by the fact that the Arrowverse shows on the CW have resurrected all of them, along with a bunch of other obscure DC characters, and actually made them fairly cool.
But the main event for me is the JLI era, because it's fair to say that those blew my mind when I discovered them in middle school. I was a couple years into my first comics mania, having gone first through Disney books featuring Carl Barks's Donald Duck stories, and then having discovered Marvel through Claremont and Lee's run on the X-Men (specifically the end of their run, as Chris Claremont left after a couple issues and Jim Lee left after that to co-found Image).
But among this box of random comics I'd received in the mail was Justice League America #33, which featured Guy Gardner using his ring to tickle Kilowog. I didn't know who these characters were, but I clearly responded to the humor and the art (this was Adam Hughes's first big gig, and he'd just started it two issues prior), and quickly snapped up all the back issues I could find. That led me into the never-ending labyrinth that is the history of DC, and I've been hooked since.
It's worth noting that this incarnation of the league wasn't very iconic either. There were some big-hitters, like Batman and Wonder Woman, but also a lot of second-stringers like Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, who anchored their own books at the time but are mostly forgotten now. But, in contrast to the Detroit League mentioned above, this team had good stories - what's forgotten now, when people talk about the "Bwah-ha-ha" era of the Justice League, is that Giffen and DeMatteis started out telling really grounded stories, where a big concern looming over whatever the JLI did was the politics of the Cold War.
The second and third issues, for example, feature some obscure heroes (based on Marvel's Avengers, it turns out) coming from an alternate dimension to try and save Earth from itself, by destroying all of its nuclear missiles. It's maybe not as deep a treatment of this theme as, say, FX's The Americans or Sundance's Deutschland '83, but it's also not completely stupid. And I think that's one of the key things I loved about DC's books from the 80s.
What I'm finding on this reread is that some of the "hilarious" banter is a bit forced, but I also remember that as the books went on they could still tackle serious stories, like when Despero came back, or in both of the storylines that featured the Extremists.
So overall I'm happy that I've dug these old comics out. It's appropriate given last year's Justice League movie (which wasn't amazing) and given the renewed popularity of DC's deep bench, particularly those characters from the 80s. And to return to the point I made above about ads, it's also fascinating seeing mentions and ads for what would turn out to be era-defining comics, like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. There was a lot more experimentation going on at the time, which is what also led to the runs on Sandman, Animal Man and Swamp Thing that gave us Vertigo comics.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but this run on Justice League has to count as one of the things that made me want to be a writer. It was the first time I, as a comics fan, really appreciated the writing of a book, which led me to other well-written comics and to good writing in general.
Anyway, now that I've developed a taste for it, I'm planning on checking out the other series I loved at the time, which was the rebooted version of the Legion of Superheroes that Keith Giffen was plotting at the same time that he was doing Justice League. And from there, who knows what other delights I'll find...?
I don't exactly know what the impetus for this was, except that while I was in London this winter, I was taken by a craving to read my old Justice League comics, in particular. One factor that I can identify is Tim Ferriss's latest book, Tribe of Mentors, in which he interviews a number of famous people about their routines and what-not; one of these people said he re-reads his old Archie Comics before bed, to keep in touch with who he was as a kid, and this appealed to me too - it's just interesting that I seized on my old Justice Leagues and not, say, X-Men.
 |
| "Justice League #1". Greand Comics Database Project |
Anyway, I had a look at some of the collected editions at the Forbidden Planet, but they didn't have the first volume on the shelf, so I bided my time until I could get home, and when I did, one of the first things I accomplished was to bring the box of Justice League comics out of my dad's garage.
They've been sitting there for a few years, at this point, as I moved my comics to his place in around 2002 or 2003, but they'd been sitting around for a bit longer, as I hadn't read them since high school. The nice thing is that I managed to box them roughly by title, so I have my classic JLA comics, going from the 1960s all the way to the end of the first book, as well as the Giffen-DeMatteis JLI books and the Grant Morrison-era JLA. There are a couple of other oddities and things I stuck in there at random, but the box is dominated by Justice League.
I've spoken before about the pleasures of reading old comics, or more accurately the ads, and I'm experiencing that again now. Because I started with Justice League of America #45 (the first appearance of the "classic" villain Shaggy Man), I was able to see how these ads changed between the 60s, 70s and 80s. For one thing, ads in early issues were a lot more likely to be comic strips themselves - the late 70s and early 80s featured ads with DC heroes using Hostess Twinkies and the like to foil villains, which is achingly naff, if you think about it, but also strangely charming.
(Incidentally, for American readers, here's the definition of naff, which is a word you really only find in the UK)
The other thing that's interesting is seeing how well the books themselves hold up. I actually think the last few years of the JLA weren't that well-written, especially when DC decided to jettison the marquee characters (i.e. the ones that people cared about and wanted to read) in favor of under-powered newcomers like Vibe, Gypsy, Steel and Vixen, and move them to the mean streets of Detroit. That lineup didn't last very long, but I remain intrigued by the fact that the Arrowverse shows on the CW have resurrected all of them, along with a bunch of other obscure DC characters, and actually made them fairly cool.
But the main event for me is the JLI era, because it's fair to say that those blew my mind when I discovered them in middle school. I was a couple years into my first comics mania, having gone first through Disney books featuring Carl Barks's Donald Duck stories, and then having discovered Marvel through Claremont and Lee's run on the X-Men (specifically the end of their run, as Chris Claremont left after a couple issues and Jim Lee left after that to co-found Image).
But among this box of random comics I'd received in the mail was Justice League America #33, which featured Guy Gardner using his ring to tickle Kilowog. I didn't know who these characters were, but I clearly responded to the humor and the art (this was Adam Hughes's first big gig, and he'd just started it two issues prior), and quickly snapped up all the back issues I could find. That led me into the never-ending labyrinth that is the history of DC, and I've been hooked since.
 |
| ©DC Comics, 1989 |
It's worth noting that this incarnation of the league wasn't very iconic either. There were some big-hitters, like Batman and Wonder Woman, but also a lot of second-stringers like Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, who anchored their own books at the time but are mostly forgotten now. But, in contrast to the Detroit League mentioned above, this team had good stories - what's forgotten now, when people talk about the "Bwah-ha-ha" era of the Justice League, is that Giffen and DeMatteis started out telling really grounded stories, where a big concern looming over whatever the JLI did was the politics of the Cold War.
The second and third issues, for example, feature some obscure heroes (based on Marvel's Avengers, it turns out) coming from an alternate dimension to try and save Earth from itself, by destroying all of its nuclear missiles. It's maybe not as deep a treatment of this theme as, say, FX's The Americans or Sundance's Deutschland '83, but it's also not completely stupid. And I think that's one of the key things I loved about DC's books from the 80s.
What I'm finding on this reread is that some of the "hilarious" banter is a bit forced, but I also remember that as the books went on they could still tackle serious stories, like when Despero came back, or in both of the storylines that featured the Extremists.
So overall I'm happy that I've dug these old comics out. It's appropriate given last year's Justice League movie (which wasn't amazing) and given the renewed popularity of DC's deep bench, particularly those characters from the 80s. And to return to the point I made above about ads, it's also fascinating seeing mentions and ads for what would turn out to be era-defining comics, like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. There was a lot more experimentation going on at the time, which is what also led to the runs on Sandman, Animal Man and Swamp Thing that gave us Vertigo comics.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but this run on Justice League has to count as one of the things that made me want to be a writer. It was the first time I, as a comics fan, really appreciated the writing of a book, which led me to other well-written comics and to good writing in general.
Anyway, now that I've developed a taste for it, I'm planning on checking out the other series I loved at the time, which was the rebooted version of the Legion of Superheroes that Keith Giffen was plotting at the same time that he was doing Justice League. And from there, who knows what other delights I'll find...?
Monday, 23 April 2018
Football as Shared Culture in Post-War Europe
My latest sojourn in the UK is finished, I'm back to semi-normalcy in Palo Alto (apart from the fact that I still need to find a job), and I've been reading some of the many books I picked up while I was out there.
Now, as I'm sure I've noted here before, one of the nice things about spending three months in London this time was that I could finally indulge my addiction to buying books, and also I could finally buy some books from my beloved Big Waterstones, on Piccadilly. It was one of my first stops when I arrived in January, and in the (many) subsequent visits it was driven home for me just how different the selection of books is there compared to here.
Part of that is, of course, that the Bay Area doesn't have any bookstores nearly as large as Big Waterstones, or Foyles, so the selection is always going to be a little worse. But there's also a clear difference in the types of books and authors you get there vs here, and the main one is books about football.
I spent a lot of time in the football section this year, because I had decided it was going to be my year to finally buy that history of Italian soccer that I'd been eyeing up for, I kid you not, years: Calcio, by John Foot, a magisterial and expensive tome that I'd never felt able to sufficiently justify on previous trips.
And naturally when I went looking for it in its usual spot in the travel section, it was no longer there.
It took me a couple of trips to various bookstores to find it, but I did, and I finally got to go through its 500-odd pages and learn about the origins and currents of Italian football, told from the perspective of a foreign and therefore (mostly) impartial observer. As I read it I was reminded of Sid Lowe's Fear and Loathing in La Liga, which provided a history of Spanish football seen through the lens of the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry, and that brought me to the realization that histories of European football are essentially histories of post-war Europe.
This is an impression borne out by finishing Calcio, and Brilliant Orange (a similar book about Dutch football by David Winner), and by what I've read so far of Tor!, Uli Hesse's history of soccer in Germany.
That last one is particularly important, because as I've noted before, it's frustratingly difficult to find any books that talk about German history after the Second World War. Germania, Simon Winder's otherwise excellent non-Nazi-focused history, ends in 1933, while Philip Oltermann's also excellent Keeping Up with the Germans does talk about Baader-Meinhof, football and Volkswagen, but it remains a bit too fragmented to really give a sense of the flow of things after 1945.
I did pick up an e-book copy of Norman Stone's history of the Cold War, The Atlantic and Its Enemies, because it promised a look at Germany, but what struck me is that the Cold War notwithstanding, the lack of histories of the period is probably due to the fact that not much has actually happened in Western Europe since the end of WWII.
That's not to slight the end of Communism, the end of Franco's fascist regime, or the years of lead in Italy's undeclared civil war. But the fall of the Soviet Union is something that happened on the edges of Western Europe, while the lingering effects of fascism ending or resurfacing somehow gives the impression of flying under the radar - these are all things that were of paramount importance in those countries, but haven't really had such a global import. After all, how many foreigners would know about Italy's years of lead if they haven't actually studied the country's history?
So that's one reason why I suggest that football histories can take the place of proper histories; the other reason is that of course these political currents affected what happened on and around the pitch. In Fear and Loathing, Sid Lowe starts by taking apart the myth of Real Madrid being the "right-wing" club and Barcelona being the bastion of resistance against Franco's regime. John Foot, meanwhile, talks in Calcio about how far-right politics have been a mainstay of large parts of fandom (particularly among Lazio and Inter fans), as well as giving a view of how the paranoia of the 70s led to the death of Lazio player Enrico Re Cecconi when he tried to play a prank on a shopkeeper in Rome (look it up, it's fascinating).
And it's a truism to suggest that what's happening on the pitch reflects what's happening in society. Soccer's maybe a little conservative when it comes, for instance, to racial integration, but John Barnes signing for Liverpool in the 1980s, or France dominating with its multicultural team in 1998 and 2000, indicate ways in which British and French society were opening up (though not always unopposed). Another truism is the way in which globalization's acceleration after the fall of Communism has echoed in the way footballing dominance has come straight to Europe, after decades of alternating with South America.
In graduate school I was a bit miffed when a friend suggested that Europe wouldn't be important in the decades to come, as China came into its own power. As a conversation, it's stuck with me ever since, because she was both right and wrong. In a lot of ways you can say that Europe is making itself irrelevant in geopolitics, given its position between the US, Russia and (figuratively) China. But culturally Europe is probably even more important than it's ever been, in part because of football.
After all, US fans (at least the white ones) typically have their local team and their European team (usually English, and usually Liverpool or Manchester United), while trips to Asia have become mandatory for European clubs to top up their coffers every season. The fact that so many Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires are buying up European clubs suggests that they see more upside there than in trying to buy NFL or NBA teams (though I'm aware that these are the nationalities that are probably less favored to buy US sports teams).
As far as the history aspect, I haven't been totally disappointed. Brilliant Orange, for example, linked the emergence of the Dutch national team and its Total Football with the Provo art movement of the 1960s, and interestingly links the Dutch national character to why the Netherlands never quite wins tournaments. I'm also seeing how the rise of Nazism and the progress of the war affected German football, so I look forward to seeing what Uli Hesse can tell me about the post-war period and the tension between East and West Germany.
Though as a final thought it's interesting to note that there isn't a similar book about English football. This is probably understandable when you consider that most of these books I've mentioned are written by Englishmen (except for Tor) and are aimed at explaining the local variety of football to British readers. As such an all-encompassing history of English football is probably superfluous, because everyone already knows the story - but as a non-Brit I'd find it very interesting if someone did write such a book.
One last point that's occurred to me as I wrote that last paragraph. The fascination of British readers/viewers for a specific brand of European football comes, again, from the increased globalization of the game, where you could suddenly watch Italian or Spanish football on TV in the 80s and 90s. But even before that fans would take to a specific team from memorable World Cup or European Championship performances - David Winner talks about falling in love with the Dutch team in 1974, and when I mentioned the book to my dad he also remembered their place in that tournament.
Which perhaps demonstrates my central thesis of football as being the binding cultural force of post-war Europe.
Now, as I'm sure I've noted here before, one of the nice things about spending three months in London this time was that I could finally indulge my addiction to buying books, and also I could finally buy some books from my beloved Big Waterstones, on Piccadilly. It was one of my first stops when I arrived in January, and in the (many) subsequent visits it was driven home for me just how different the selection of books is there compared to here.
Part of that is, of course, that the Bay Area doesn't have any bookstores nearly as large as Big Waterstones, or Foyles, so the selection is always going to be a little worse. But there's also a clear difference in the types of books and authors you get there vs here, and the main one is books about football.
I spent a lot of time in the football section this year, because I had decided it was going to be my year to finally buy that history of Italian soccer that I'd been eyeing up for, I kid you not, years: Calcio, by John Foot, a magisterial and expensive tome that I'd never felt able to sufficiently justify on previous trips.
And naturally when I went looking for it in its usual spot in the travel section, it was no longer there.
It took me a couple of trips to various bookstores to find it, but I did, and I finally got to go through its 500-odd pages and learn about the origins and currents of Italian football, told from the perspective of a foreign and therefore (mostly) impartial observer. As I read it I was reminded of Sid Lowe's Fear and Loathing in La Liga, which provided a history of Spanish football seen through the lens of the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry, and that brought me to the realization that histories of European football are essentially histories of post-war Europe.
This is an impression borne out by finishing Calcio, and Brilliant Orange (a similar book about Dutch football by David Winner), and by what I've read so far of Tor!, Uli Hesse's history of soccer in Germany.
That last one is particularly important, because as I've noted before, it's frustratingly difficult to find any books that talk about German history after the Second World War. Germania, Simon Winder's otherwise excellent non-Nazi-focused history, ends in 1933, while Philip Oltermann's also excellent Keeping Up with the Germans does talk about Baader-Meinhof, football and Volkswagen, but it remains a bit too fragmented to really give a sense of the flow of things after 1945.
I did pick up an e-book copy of Norman Stone's history of the Cold War, The Atlantic and Its Enemies, because it promised a look at Germany, but what struck me is that the Cold War notwithstanding, the lack of histories of the period is probably due to the fact that not much has actually happened in Western Europe since the end of WWII.
That's not to slight the end of Communism, the end of Franco's fascist regime, or the years of lead in Italy's undeclared civil war. But the fall of the Soviet Union is something that happened on the edges of Western Europe, while the lingering effects of fascism ending or resurfacing somehow gives the impression of flying under the radar - these are all things that were of paramount importance in those countries, but haven't really had such a global import. After all, how many foreigners would know about Italy's years of lead if they haven't actually studied the country's history?
So that's one reason why I suggest that football histories can take the place of proper histories; the other reason is that of course these political currents affected what happened on and around the pitch. In Fear and Loathing, Sid Lowe starts by taking apart the myth of Real Madrid being the "right-wing" club and Barcelona being the bastion of resistance against Franco's regime. John Foot, meanwhile, talks in Calcio about how far-right politics have been a mainstay of large parts of fandom (particularly among Lazio and Inter fans), as well as giving a view of how the paranoia of the 70s led to the death of Lazio player Enrico Re Cecconi when he tried to play a prank on a shopkeeper in Rome (look it up, it's fascinating).
And it's a truism to suggest that what's happening on the pitch reflects what's happening in society. Soccer's maybe a little conservative when it comes, for instance, to racial integration, but John Barnes signing for Liverpool in the 1980s, or France dominating with its multicultural team in 1998 and 2000, indicate ways in which British and French society were opening up (though not always unopposed). Another truism is the way in which globalization's acceleration after the fall of Communism has echoed in the way footballing dominance has come straight to Europe, after decades of alternating with South America.
In graduate school I was a bit miffed when a friend suggested that Europe wouldn't be important in the decades to come, as China came into its own power. As a conversation, it's stuck with me ever since, because she was both right and wrong. In a lot of ways you can say that Europe is making itself irrelevant in geopolitics, given its position between the US, Russia and (figuratively) China. But culturally Europe is probably even more important than it's ever been, in part because of football.
After all, US fans (at least the white ones) typically have their local team and their European team (usually English, and usually Liverpool or Manchester United), while trips to Asia have become mandatory for European clubs to top up their coffers every season. The fact that so many Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires are buying up European clubs suggests that they see more upside there than in trying to buy NFL or NBA teams (though I'm aware that these are the nationalities that are probably less favored to buy US sports teams).
As far as the history aspect, I haven't been totally disappointed. Brilliant Orange, for example, linked the emergence of the Dutch national team and its Total Football with the Provo art movement of the 1960s, and interestingly links the Dutch national character to why the Netherlands never quite wins tournaments. I'm also seeing how the rise of Nazism and the progress of the war affected German football, so I look forward to seeing what Uli Hesse can tell me about the post-war period and the tension between East and West Germany.
Though as a final thought it's interesting to note that there isn't a similar book about English football. This is probably understandable when you consider that most of these books I've mentioned are written by Englishmen (except for Tor) and are aimed at explaining the local variety of football to British readers. As such an all-encompassing history of English football is probably superfluous, because everyone already knows the story - but as a non-Brit I'd find it very interesting if someone did write such a book.
One last point that's occurred to me as I wrote that last paragraph. The fascination of British readers/viewers for a specific brand of European football comes, again, from the increased globalization of the game, where you could suddenly watch Italian or Spanish football on TV in the 80s and 90s. But even before that fans would take to a specific team from memorable World Cup or European Championship performances - David Winner talks about falling in love with the Dutch team in 1974, and when I mentioned the book to my dad he also remembered their place in that tournament.
Which perhaps demonstrates my central thesis of football as being the binding cultural force of post-war Europe.
Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Some thoughts on the British Museum
I'm getting to the end of my time in Europe on this work contract, and with that in mind I decided to visit one of my happy places in London: the British Museum.
Now, it's slightly less of a happy place for me these days, since it started doing bag checks in its forecourt. I understand that London's a bit tense these days, thanks to various terrorist attacks in the last couple of years, and I understand that as a free museum it has to control the ever-increasing number of tourists that flock to it. But there's something about the way it's implemented the bag checks, where it causes long lines to get in on weekends, and the unfriendliness of the people doing the searches, that makes it less fun.
And the new entry requirements mean that the museum no longer does the garden exhibitions it used to do - one of my favorites was a replica Chinese garden, right there in the forecourt, with small recreations of a bunch of different Chinese ecosystems laid out next to each other. They later did one for Indian plants and one for African plants, and I remember enjoying those a whole lot too, so it's a shame that they won't be providing that anymore.
On the other hand, the inside is still great. Just today, among the temporary free exhibits, I had a look at a gallery on Toussaint Louverture, the hero of Haitian independence, and one on the friendship between artists Niko Ghika and John Craxton, and author Patrick Leigh Fermor, all centered around their time on various Greek islands in the 1950s and 1960s.
I also had a closer look at the redone Chinese gallery, which I got to check out back in January when I first arrived, having missed out on it and the adjoining Indian gallery after their refurbishments of the past year or so. Disappointingly, the Japanese gallery is closed for refurbishment until September, but at least I got to see my other happy place within the museum, which is the Korean gallery's sarangbang.
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with the place, but for the past ten or so years, I've always felt the need to stop by and have a look. I think on one hand it's because it's so cozy and perfect, with a bed and stuff for writing and stuff for reading and stuff for tea. Somehow I'm just drawn to these well-designed, self-contained little living spaces.
On the other hand, it occurred to me today that I think I'd have taken well to being a Confucian scholar-gentleman. From what I've been able to understand, they basically took their examinations, figured out what level they'd occupy and then just hung around for the rest of their lives writing poetry, painting landscapes and playing music.
None of those things is completely in my wheelhouse, but the lure of being able to sit around all day doing whatever intellectual thing takes my fancy, without worrying about, y'know, supporting myself, is pretty attractive. Though to be honest I'd probably spend a significant part of each day playing video games (I'm assuming I'd get to be a gentleman-scholar in modern times).
It's kind of too bad there's no scholar class like that anymore. The people who might be interested in writing treatises on random stuff don't really have the money to do that, while the people who have the money for it seem to be interested more in subverting democracy and corrupting political processes. Or, at the very least, in accumulating more money, which, again, leaves precious little time for important things like calligraphy or vertical landscape paintings.
My aim is to become so filthy rich that I can afford a sarangbang myself (along with a tea room like they have or had in the British Museum's Japanese gallery), and then to actually spend time in it. Probably playing video games, sure, but also likely learning languages and working on my latest disquisition on proper orchid-growing techniques.
Or this blog, who knows?
Now, it's slightly less of a happy place for me these days, since it started doing bag checks in its forecourt. I understand that London's a bit tense these days, thanks to various terrorist attacks in the last couple of years, and I understand that as a free museum it has to control the ever-increasing number of tourists that flock to it. But there's something about the way it's implemented the bag checks, where it causes long lines to get in on weekends, and the unfriendliness of the people doing the searches, that makes it less fun.
And the new entry requirements mean that the museum no longer does the garden exhibitions it used to do - one of my favorites was a replica Chinese garden, right there in the forecourt, with small recreations of a bunch of different Chinese ecosystems laid out next to each other. They later did one for Indian plants and one for African plants, and I remember enjoying those a whole lot too, so it's a shame that they won't be providing that anymore.
On the other hand, the inside is still great. Just today, among the temporary free exhibits, I had a look at a gallery on Toussaint Louverture, the hero of Haitian independence, and one on the friendship between artists Niko Ghika and John Craxton, and author Patrick Leigh Fermor, all centered around their time on various Greek islands in the 1950s and 1960s.
I also had a closer look at the redone Chinese gallery, which I got to check out back in January when I first arrived, having missed out on it and the adjoining Indian gallery after their refurbishments of the past year or so. Disappointingly, the Japanese gallery is closed for refurbishment until September, but at least I got to see my other happy place within the museum, which is the Korean gallery's sarangbang.
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with the place, but for the past ten or so years, I've always felt the need to stop by and have a look. I think on one hand it's because it's so cozy and perfect, with a bed and stuff for writing and stuff for reading and stuff for tea. Somehow I'm just drawn to these well-designed, self-contained little living spaces.
On the other hand, it occurred to me today that I think I'd have taken well to being a Confucian scholar-gentleman. From what I've been able to understand, they basically took their examinations, figured out what level they'd occupy and then just hung around for the rest of their lives writing poetry, painting landscapes and playing music.
None of those things is completely in my wheelhouse, but the lure of being able to sit around all day doing whatever intellectual thing takes my fancy, without worrying about, y'know, supporting myself, is pretty attractive. Though to be honest I'd probably spend a significant part of each day playing video games (I'm assuming I'd get to be a gentleman-scholar in modern times).
It's kind of too bad there's no scholar class like that anymore. The people who might be interested in writing treatises on random stuff don't really have the money to do that, while the people who have the money for it seem to be interested more in subverting democracy and corrupting political processes. Or, at the very least, in accumulating more money, which, again, leaves precious little time for important things like calligraphy or vertical landscape paintings.
My aim is to become so filthy rich that I can afford a sarangbang myself (along with a tea room like they have or had in the British Museum's Japanese gallery), and then to actually spend time in it. Probably playing video games, sure, but also likely learning languages and working on my latest disquisition on proper orchid-growing techniques.
Or this blog, who knows?
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
The Joy of Listening to LPs and Drinking Wine and Hanging with Friends
Just spent this past weekend visiting friends up in Norwich. It was fun, and when I suggest that there are certain rituals to be observed (bringing wine for my friends, and multiple boxes of the same candies for the kids), that shouldn't be taken as a criticism. It seems eminently fair that I should try to get the children on-side, as guests coming to stay usually means having to be on your best behavior and maybe doing boring stuff, like going to cathedrals.
At least, that's how I remember it from my own childhood (minus cathedrals, which we don't have in Palo Alto).
But I'd say my big highlight was listening to records - honest-to-gosh LPs on a turntable - after the kids had been packed off to bed. It helps that my friend has good taste in music (even if I'm a bit less keen on Bob Dylan than he is), but what struck me was how pleasurable the physical act of choosing a record, putting it on the turntable and listening to it properly (with some interludes for chatting and for topping up the alarming amounts of booze we drank).
This is something that's struck me recently at my own house, as well - last year I rediscovered the pleasures of CDs when I started listening to them on the Bose sound system we have at home. After years of listening to music on Apple laptops or on Apple headphones, it was like the first time I put on a pair of eyeglasses... everything suddenly jumped into focus.
I sometimes wonder if that lack of sound quality on digital has something to do with how most people listen to and value (or more appropriately, don't value) music now. The obvious thing is that streaming services and YouTube commoditize music by making it "free", but I feel that in itself isn't a strong enough motive to reduce music purely to background status, as most people seem to want it for nothing more than background noise for reading, cooking, driving, whatever.
Heck, I love having music on while reading or writing, so I'm not innocent of the charge myself.
But when the music is nice and clear, so that you can hear each note and each instrument properly, and when you're spending time with friends, the music becomes the objective. We listened to Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, and so on, and it all sticks with me because for once we were paying attention to it.
It reminds me of a news story I once read about the placebo effect. The ritual involved makes the placebo more effective - so taking a fake pill is more effective than drinking a liquid, but a fake injection is even more effective than that. So I wonder if the pleasure at listening to music, and the sound quality, reflects the ritual of selecting the disc, putting it on the turntable and, ever so carefully, placing the needle.
Or, you know, maybe I only think I notice it because it's how I grew up with music. Who knows?
Though now I'm thinking about buying a turntable of my own...
At least, that's how I remember it from my own childhood (minus cathedrals, which we don't have in Palo Alto).
But I'd say my big highlight was listening to records - honest-to-gosh LPs on a turntable - after the kids had been packed off to bed. It helps that my friend has good taste in music (even if I'm a bit less keen on Bob Dylan than he is), but what struck me was how pleasurable the physical act of choosing a record, putting it on the turntable and listening to it properly (with some interludes for chatting and for topping up the alarming amounts of booze we drank).
This is something that's struck me recently at my own house, as well - last year I rediscovered the pleasures of CDs when I started listening to them on the Bose sound system we have at home. After years of listening to music on Apple laptops or on Apple headphones, it was like the first time I put on a pair of eyeglasses... everything suddenly jumped into focus.
I sometimes wonder if that lack of sound quality on digital has something to do with how most people listen to and value (or more appropriately, don't value) music now. The obvious thing is that streaming services and YouTube commoditize music by making it "free", but I feel that in itself isn't a strong enough motive to reduce music purely to background status, as most people seem to want it for nothing more than background noise for reading, cooking, driving, whatever.
Heck, I love having music on while reading or writing, so I'm not innocent of the charge myself.
But when the music is nice and clear, so that you can hear each note and each instrument properly, and when you're spending time with friends, the music becomes the objective. We listened to Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, and so on, and it all sticks with me because for once we were paying attention to it.
It reminds me of a news story I once read about the placebo effect. The ritual involved makes the placebo more effective - so taking a fake pill is more effective than drinking a liquid, but a fake injection is even more effective than that. So I wonder if the pleasure at listening to music, and the sound quality, reflects the ritual of selecting the disc, putting it on the turntable and, ever so carefully, placing the needle.
Or, you know, maybe I only think I notice it because it's how I grew up with music. Who knows?
Though now I'm thinking about buying a turntable of my own...
Sunday, 18 February 2018
Spoiler-filled Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery
So I finally finished Star Trek Discovery, thanks to Netflix's content deals that mean I can watch it there abroad but not at home. I started it when I was in Japan, and resumed when I got here to London, neatly sidestepping the issue of the mid-season hiatus.
I have a few conflicting thoughts and feelings on Disco, as I've seen it called, so I'll try to lay those out in some more-or-less coherent form. But that'll be difficult, because just like my feelings about the show, Disco itself is a bit all over the place.
Let's start with a positive, though. The show looks great. There's clearly been a lot of time and money spent making the sets and uniforms and effects look not only good, but also distinctive. This doesn't look like JJ-verse Trek, which is neither a good thing nor bad, as the reboot movies have always looked amazing. It's done a good job of setting itself apart, visually, from everything that came before, while also looking appropriate to what you'd expect.
The uniforms are well-done, looking like they belong in the same universe as other Starfleet uniforms, and the ship looks like a Starfleet ship. The effects are also subtle, avoiding the early-CGI cheapness we got with Voyager (to take an example at complete random). For example, the tardigrade of the early parts of the series looks like it's actually in the room with the actors - even recent shows like the CW's Flash sometimes look like they've lifted footage from video games.
Plot-wise things are a bit more of a mixed bag. An uncharitable part of me wants to quote an old joke my dad always tells, that "there are good things and new things here, but the good things aren't always new and the new things aren't always good". But I think it's more complicated than that.
Instead, I'd like to quote the AV Club's definition of fan-fiction, from a recap of episode 13:
The overall story, of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation, is told well, and resolved in a manner that fits with the vision of Star Trek. It's too bad that the Klingon messiah, T'Kuvma, is eliminated in the first episode, and that his second-in-command, Voq, also disappears early on, to be revealed as Lt. Ash Tyler.
But the plot about Tyler being a vessel for Voq to infiltrate his enemies and sow chaos is a neat idea, though like many things on Disco, it's not clear where it should lead. There's no indication that he's waiting for a time to kill Michael Burnham or Captain Lorca, and he doesn't transmit details of Discovery's spore drive to the Klingons. There are reasons why, as he's ostracized and exiled from the Klingons, but the sense is that he's inserted himself into Tyler's psyche so that the show can have that reveal and also Burnham's conflicted feelings about having bonked a secret Klingon.
Lorca's also an interesting character, though again, I'm not sure how well his plot line holds up. The questions of how trustworthy he was as a captain were well-handled at the start, but once he's revealed as the Mirror Universe version of himself he just becomes an asshole. I'd have liked to see more fallout from Starfleet (especially the admiral he bonked, as there's clearly a lot of bonking on this show) on the fact that they didn't detect him for so long.
Burnham has a good arc, overall, but in those first two episodes I actually found her to be even more annoying a character than Neelix, from Voyager (who's just awful and such a drag on what that show could have been). She gets better, although in the end I'm not sure how earned her progression is - remember that it took the Next Generation seven seasons to show us how much Captain Picard had changed.
The one character I'd hold up as being really well done is Cadet Tilly. She's introduced as the kind of scatter-brained younger woman that seems to be in vogue in entertainment these days (Exhibit A is Felicity Smoak on Arrow), but the writers gave her a lot to do, starting with assisting with the spore drive. By letting her get good at something, the show also let her become the conscience of the show, espousing the values that Star Trek represents when other characters are toying with ignoring them.
The rest of the cast ranges from underdeveloped to "meh". It's a shame to relegate Doug Jones as Saru here, because I like him as an actor, but I hold out hope that as the show continues it'll develop him further.
Back to the fan-fiction stuff: though it was kind of neat to see Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, in the context of the overall story it didn't add much. And the spore drive thing was a neat way to move the plot along, but even in the first half of the season, it felt inconsequential, given that we know Starfleet doesn't use spore drives in the later/earlier shows (this reboot business is confusing).
I'd also like to single out how stupid killing off Commander Landry in the early episodes was. Not that I had any real interest in the character, since she was underdeveloped to begin with, but opening the tardigrade's cage and standing in front of it has to be one of the most pointless deaths in the history of television. They clearly had to get the security chief role open for Tyler, but it would have been good if they could have found some way to do it that was more organic. Also because the reveal of her character in the Mirror Universe fell a bit flat - she was so underdeveloped to begin with that it's not much of a shock. She's an asshole in the regular universe, and she's a follower of Lorca in the Mirror Universe (so, an asshole). Big whoop.
The tardigrade storyline was also disappointing, and a case of the "good/new" dichotomy. You don't have to be ridiculously well-versed in Star Trek to have seen immediately that the poor tardigrade was misunderstood, and that by using it to power the spore drive Starfleet was enslaving it. This is a trope that's been explored before, multiple times, and almost always to better effect (see: Devil in the Dark). The time resetting plot that marked Harry Mudd's second appearance was also kind of blah, as again, other Trek has done it better.
As for the structure, I'm ambivalent about the switch to serialized storytelling. It seems to have become the default way of doing TV, without regard to whether it suits the story being told. And while the old model, in which shows could be aired out of order for syndication, was a little cynical from a money perspective, there are pleasures to dipping into an episode at random sometimes and enjoying a complete story, with at least some closure. And more to the point, Trek has balanced standalone stories with serialized stories before, with Deep Space 9's Dominion War plot. It's one wish I won't get, but it'd be nice for season 2 of Disco to build its overarching storyline through multiple shorter episodes, so that the rest of the cast can develop.
When this show first came out, but before I saw it, I saw a number of folks online calling it the best Trek, or saying it stood up with the best. I can't agree. In terms of story quality, it's behind DS9, TNG and TOS, in that order; in terms of how Star Trek it is, it's also fourth, behind TOS, TNG and DS9. The storytelling wasn't as sophisticated as the very best Trek (and wasn't helped by randomly throwing in swear words, which I guess was to show how cool and with it this new Trek is), and as I said, the plots didn't always bear close scrutiny.
But... I didn't give up on it midway through. There was a lot to like, and it was interesting to see how the crew would react to a given set of circumstances. The other thing Disco has going for it is that Trek shows usually don't pick up until the second or third season, so as the writers better understand how the universe they're playing in works, I'll expect the show to get better too. And I have to give it credit for looking at the philosophical questions, which Voyager and Enterprise didn't always do well.
So it's not a perfect show, but I'll be looking forward to next season. I might even pay for CBS All Access, to watch it in the US.
I have a few conflicting thoughts and feelings on Disco, as I've seen it called, so I'll try to lay those out in some more-or-less coherent form. But that'll be difficult, because just like my feelings about the show, Disco itself is a bit all over the place.
Let's start with a positive, though. The show looks great. There's clearly been a lot of time and money spent making the sets and uniforms and effects look not only good, but also distinctive. This doesn't look like JJ-verse Trek, which is neither a good thing nor bad, as the reboot movies have always looked amazing. It's done a good job of setting itself apart, visually, from everything that came before, while also looking appropriate to what you'd expect.
The uniforms are well-done, looking like they belong in the same universe as other Starfleet uniforms, and the ship looks like a Starfleet ship. The effects are also subtle, avoiding the early-CGI cheapness we got with Voyager (to take an example at complete random). For example, the tardigrade of the early parts of the series looks like it's actually in the room with the actors - even recent shows like the CW's Flash sometimes look like they've lifted footage from video games.
Plot-wise things are a bit more of a mixed bag. An uncharitable part of me wants to quote an old joke my dad always tells, that "there are good things and new things here, but the good things aren't always new and the new things aren't always good". But I think it's more complicated than that.
Instead, I'd like to quote the AV Club's definition of fan-fiction, from a recap of episode 13:
It’s a show that uses the tropes of an established franchise without any real understanding of how those tropes work; and it’s written without the craft or patience necessary to tell a story that means something outside of our recognition of those tropes.I hadn't even finished watching the show when I first read that, but it sums up perfectly my thoughts on what they've done with it. Although even that feels a little harsh, given that I liked a lot of stuff about it.
The overall story, of the first war between the Klingons and the Federation, is told well, and resolved in a manner that fits with the vision of Star Trek. It's too bad that the Klingon messiah, T'Kuvma, is eliminated in the first episode, and that his second-in-command, Voq, also disappears early on, to be revealed as Lt. Ash Tyler.
But the plot about Tyler being a vessel for Voq to infiltrate his enemies and sow chaos is a neat idea, though like many things on Disco, it's not clear where it should lead. There's no indication that he's waiting for a time to kill Michael Burnham or Captain Lorca, and he doesn't transmit details of Discovery's spore drive to the Klingons. There are reasons why, as he's ostracized and exiled from the Klingons, but the sense is that he's inserted himself into Tyler's psyche so that the show can have that reveal and also Burnham's conflicted feelings about having bonked a secret Klingon.
Lorca's also an interesting character, though again, I'm not sure how well his plot line holds up. The questions of how trustworthy he was as a captain were well-handled at the start, but once he's revealed as the Mirror Universe version of himself he just becomes an asshole. I'd have liked to see more fallout from Starfleet (especially the admiral he bonked, as there's clearly a lot of bonking on this show) on the fact that they didn't detect him for so long.
Burnham has a good arc, overall, but in those first two episodes I actually found her to be even more annoying a character than Neelix, from Voyager (who's just awful and such a drag on what that show could have been). She gets better, although in the end I'm not sure how earned her progression is - remember that it took the Next Generation seven seasons to show us how much Captain Picard had changed.
The one character I'd hold up as being really well done is Cadet Tilly. She's introduced as the kind of scatter-brained younger woman that seems to be in vogue in entertainment these days (Exhibit A is Felicity Smoak on Arrow), but the writers gave her a lot to do, starting with assisting with the spore drive. By letting her get good at something, the show also let her become the conscience of the show, espousing the values that Star Trek represents when other characters are toying with ignoring them.
The rest of the cast ranges from underdeveloped to "meh". It's a shame to relegate Doug Jones as Saru here, because I like him as an actor, but I hold out hope that as the show continues it'll develop him further.
Back to the fan-fiction stuff: though it was kind of neat to see Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, in the context of the overall story it didn't add much. And the spore drive thing was a neat way to move the plot along, but even in the first half of the season, it felt inconsequential, given that we know Starfleet doesn't use spore drives in the later/earlier shows (this reboot business is confusing).
I'd also like to single out how stupid killing off Commander Landry in the early episodes was. Not that I had any real interest in the character, since she was underdeveloped to begin with, but opening the tardigrade's cage and standing in front of it has to be one of the most pointless deaths in the history of television. They clearly had to get the security chief role open for Tyler, but it would have been good if they could have found some way to do it that was more organic. Also because the reveal of her character in the Mirror Universe fell a bit flat - she was so underdeveloped to begin with that it's not much of a shock. She's an asshole in the regular universe, and she's a follower of Lorca in the Mirror Universe (so, an asshole). Big whoop.
The tardigrade storyline was also disappointing, and a case of the "good/new" dichotomy. You don't have to be ridiculously well-versed in Star Trek to have seen immediately that the poor tardigrade was misunderstood, and that by using it to power the spore drive Starfleet was enslaving it. This is a trope that's been explored before, multiple times, and almost always to better effect (see: Devil in the Dark). The time resetting plot that marked Harry Mudd's second appearance was also kind of blah, as again, other Trek has done it better.
As for the structure, I'm ambivalent about the switch to serialized storytelling. It seems to have become the default way of doing TV, without regard to whether it suits the story being told. And while the old model, in which shows could be aired out of order for syndication, was a little cynical from a money perspective, there are pleasures to dipping into an episode at random sometimes and enjoying a complete story, with at least some closure. And more to the point, Trek has balanced standalone stories with serialized stories before, with Deep Space 9's Dominion War plot. It's one wish I won't get, but it'd be nice for season 2 of Disco to build its overarching storyline through multiple shorter episodes, so that the rest of the cast can develop.
When this show first came out, but before I saw it, I saw a number of folks online calling it the best Trek, or saying it stood up with the best. I can't agree. In terms of story quality, it's behind DS9, TNG and TOS, in that order; in terms of how Star Trek it is, it's also fourth, behind TOS, TNG and DS9. The storytelling wasn't as sophisticated as the very best Trek (and wasn't helped by randomly throwing in swear words, which I guess was to show how cool and with it this new Trek is), and as I said, the plots didn't always bear close scrutiny.
But... I didn't give up on it midway through. There was a lot to like, and it was interesting to see how the crew would react to a given set of circumstances. The other thing Disco has going for it is that Trek shows usually don't pick up until the second or third season, so as the writers better understand how the universe they're playing in works, I'll expect the show to get better too. And I have to give it credit for looking at the philosophical questions, which Voyager and Enterprise didn't always do well.
So it's not a perfect show, but I'll be looking forward to next season. I might even pay for CBS All Access, to watch it in the US.
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