Film Fixation

By C.A.  Tokay

 

Ghost in the Shell, the original animated version ranks among my favourite films. A dense movie, it saturates each scene with layers of symbolism and meaning. In addition to an intellectual challenge, it’s fun in its own right, and has proven worth returning to time and again. And it’s because of the esteem in which I hold Ghost in the Shell that I refused to watch the recent live action adaptation.

I never bought the argument that re-makes or adaptations cheapen the original. If done properly, an adaptation can either enhance the original piece of art or share its message with a new audience. Even Ghost in the Shell itself was originally adapted from a comic. But while adaptations don’t detract from an original work, they do distract from it. Time that goes towards a sub-par or un-necessary remake is time wasted that could instead have been spent with a beloved original. And while I suspect, although I won’t independently confirm, that the Ghost in the Shell remake falls into the sub-par category, I can say with certainty that it’s un-necessary.

The constant barrage of adaptations currently coming from Hollywood is annoying enough, but what makes it even worse is when they try doing so for movies that are already as close to perfect as it’s possible for them to be. And while the cash-grab motives for doing so are obvious, there are other and subtler motives at work. A trend I’ve noticed in recent years is the frightening pre-occupation with live action film adaptations. Phrases like “I’ll wait for the movie,” have become cliché, and fan support for movie adaptations of treasured works, even before such adaptations are announced, run rampant across the internet.

Film, like all art forms, has its strengths and merits. There are, and have been, amazing film makers and amazing films. Individuals who are able to use their medium to inspire their audience to experience something far greater than just what’s shown on screen. But such film makers are an exception. Film itself has limitations. The greatest of which is that it requires little engagement. Everything is shown, everything is made real and handed to us. In this sense film can be manipulative, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s an effect, one which skilled film makers can use this to their advantage, forcing attention on or away from certain details. But such effects are not the norm. Too often film requires the audience to do nothing, and the manipulation isn’t meant to direct focus or evoke reaction. Instead it’s meant to keep the audience entertained, but not to encourage any further reaction or thought. While any artist working in any medium can be guilty of this, the passive, visual, nature of film makes it easier to fall into such a trap.

It’s because of this that enthusiasm for live action adaptations seems, at best, odd. While the prospect of seeing a character literally come to life may seem exciting, it doesn’t account for the ways in which the adaptation fall short. The greatest flaw is that the version brought to film doesn’t, and cant, match our mental image. No matter how skilled the director, actor, costumers and make-up artists, the final image can never match the one imagined by every viewer. Each person experiencing a story brings their own imagination to that story. And while all narrative forms require some imaginative engagement, some require a greater commitment.

Animation requires that we invest qualities of the real into often abstract and distorted figures, while comics require us to interpret how the pace and tone of speech and action affect the scene. Plays don’t show everything, and even when they try, no camera tricks enable directors to take short cuts to emphasise key details, instead relying actors’ skills and stage craft. Finally there’s print – a medium which just uses words to present its message, and somehow those words are able to craft detailed scenes and worlds in our minds.

Because each medium does different things, the reason for adapting from one to another should at least consider these differences. It can serve as an enhancement, a way of building on what the original established and strengthening its message. When done properly, such adaptations often rank among the best arguments for adapting works at all.

Where problems arise are when we encounter mindsets like the one we currently face – where one medium is somehow treated as superior, and adaptations to it serve as the ultimate validation of a work’s value. First off this is insulting, but more importantly it’s limiting. While it’s fine to have preferred mediums for experiencing narratives – my own is literature – to completely ignore others or to treat them as less important limits how we experience art, ideas and, as a result, life. Focusing exclusively towards one type of storytelling deprives us of so many opportunities to grow in other ways. But when we create a strange hierarchy where adaptation to one medium is the only way of validating works in others that is exactly what we do. Narratives stand on their own. The only validation they should need is audience approval, not adaptation. But when we make such adaptation the greatest measurable measure of a piece of arts value then we fail on some level. We fail to expand our horizons, to consider other points of view and to value hard work and talent. And if we want to continue enjoying art, if we want to continue receiving the benefits art brings, the joy and enhancement it brings to our life, then we need to appreciate art for what it is and not for the way we can see it fulfilling an arbitrary criteria.

Power of Print

By C. A. Tokay

 I recently read It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. A good book, and one which is relevant in light of current politics. It’s a layered narrative about the rise of a dictatorship, life under the dictator’s rule and the effects, both socially and personally, of such events coming to pass. There are many thoughts to take away from the book, and one which I found particularly insightful was the importance of print as a means of political protest.

When I say print I don’t mean news media. I literally mean print in the sense of ink and paper publications.

Our current world is a digital heavy one. Digital technology is so far reaching as to be taken for granted, and many forms of media – from videos to written words – are now accessed largely through digital means. Even this article is digital, having been published on a blog instead of in a magazine or traditional newspaper. While there are many advantages to digital publication – ease and distance of dissemination being two of the greatest – it does have its flaws as well. Flaws we tend to ignore when we take the format for granted. Specifically, just how vulnerable digital communication is.

I have internet access through both household internet and a smartphone. But regardless of how I access the internet, it still needs to come from somewhere. Whether in wireless or wired form, digital communication is only available through the existence of a complex infrastructure. One which always has the capacity to be taken over, controlled and shut down. The internet doesn’t exist from nowhere, and for any would-be dictator seeking to limit or eliminate communication it really is a matter of finding the right button to push.

It’s in such cases where print’s importance asserts itself.

Unlike their digital counterparts, print publications leave no trace of their origin – online anonymity being a myth – and don’t need a complex infrastructure to exist. A piece of paper contains no code, no digital fingerprint to trace. And one person, alone, with a printer or press, or even a pen can reproduce hundreds of copies. Like the internet, the ubiquitousnes of pens is taken for granted. Unlike the internet, ceasing the functionality of all pens isn’t as simple as cutting power to the right piece of machinery.

Print has weakness. Without a complex network it can only reach so far, and even if distributed there is no guarantee that copies will reach everyone who wants or needs to read them. Despite this print has one great strength: it is resilient. This seems like a strange idea. Few things seem less challenging than destroying a sheet of paper. Paper burns, it can be torn and shredded, and ink fairs poorly when exposed to water. But all any of these acts achieves is the destruction of a single copy, not the ideas it expressed. And a single copy is all that’s needed to produce more. Regardless of the approach taken, producing copies of any paper document only requires a single one. It doesn’t even need to be the original. Any edition of a document, so long as it contains all of the material it was meant to share, can serves as the base from which others are made. Once made, a single document doesn’t need to be constrained to a single reader. It can be shared between as many readers as are willing to pass it along, a single copy reaching and inspiring many minds.

This element of contact is perhaps print’s greatest strength. To reach anyone it needs to be shared. While this is true of any form of communication, few embody the idea as literally as paper documents. To be shared, not only does someone need to produce a document but someone else needs to feel it’s worth sharing. Whether the impact of what we read is profound, amusing, insightful or even just novel, the act of sharing it says that we feel it’s worth reading, that its ideas are ones to which we think others should be exposed. Again, this is true of any means of communication. But what separates print in this instance is its physicality. To post a link on a message board, or to offer a verbal recommendation takes effort, but not in the same way as sharing a physical object. Handing someone a physical thing takes time, commitment and will, and doing so under dictatorial circumstances also presents a risk. We interact with people, our presence and the risk it presents communicating the importance of ideas in ways our words alone are unable to. It’s one thing to have an idea, but to have or hold an idea which influences us enough that we want to share it is even greater. Print isn’t just important because, when all other means are gone, it gives us a way to reach the world. Print is important for how it connects us.

Handing out pamphlets on a street corner won’t reach every mind in the world. But it will reach those we meet, those with whom we take the time to share them and to convey the importance of the belief we try to share. It’s a physical link to our community, to those with, and for whom, we would protest. While standing on that street corner may only reach a few minds, it still reaches some that need to be reached. When all other means of honest and free discourse fail, print provides the base from which we can begin. A means to change our immediate world before we set out to change the larger whole.

 

Someone Else’s Villain

C.A. Tokay

 

We’re all the heroes of our own story. Every person views themselves as a protagonist, the main character in their own adventures. The measure for judging ourselves is usually in the context of this image. And even if we may not always achieve our objectives, we’re still heroic for pursuing them. Or for thinking about pursuing them.

In this context, as our own heroes, we inevitably perceive our own villains. Those who stand between us and our desires or goals, doing so out of spite, those who disagree with us, wanting us crushed and held back if not destroyed. In popular culture, literature and storytelling, we see this pattern repeated. The noble hero setting out to vanquish evil and restore peace to the realm. An evil that is evil for its own sake, cackling maniacally as it contemplates new and innovative ways of tying damsels to train tracks.

It’s cartoonish. And yet we’ve become so used to viewing it as if it is reality. We’ve encountered so many stories which would have us believe in heroes that the image can’t help but become a part of our self-perception. But if we’re going to view the world as being that simple, as everyone being either a hero or villain, then someone needs to fulfil each role. This means that for all of our own notions about being our own heroes, it’s just as likely that we’re someone else’s villain.

The idea of being a villain, a “bad guy,” is unsettling. We know who we are, how nice we are, how hard we work, how caring, how focused, how good. So the only way someone else could possibly view us as a villain is if they’re actually the evil ones. It’s they who oppose our goodness, and only by destroying them can we possibly succeed.

To call this thinking melodramatic is probably an understatement. Yet it happens. Every day we see it played out on the news. Disputes, whether between people or nations, stem from this kind of thinking. Not from one party being right, while the other party is wrong and pursuing wrongness for its own ends. Both parties cast themselves as the hero, claiming the moral high-ground as a step towards eventually claiming victory.

Think of the person or people you consider the most evil. For me, at the moment, that’s Donald Trump. His actions have made it quite clear to me that he places little value on the lives of those who don’t support him, and that he seeks absolute dictatorial power. Now here’s the scary part: he thinks he’s doing the right thing. As the hero of his own story, he views his actions not as vile, but as noble. And he isn’t the only one. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein – history doesn’t lack for examples of disgusting, reprehensible human beings. And yet each of these individuals was one who thought they were the good guy.

Humans are storytelling creatures. Narrative is both how we learn and how we view the world. But rather than being passive assimilators of stories, we also have the ability to shape them – to be both audience and storyteller. This is a great power, but one which is far easier to exercise than we might think. Not all stories are large affairs, but when those which are come across as typical examples it can be difficult to think otherwise.

We tell stories every day. Conversations with those we meet or with friends in which we recount the events of our lives, whether experienced firsthand or to share something in which we were the audience. In telling such stories we share more than just a record of events. Each telling is shaped by our perceptions and opinions. Knowing this provides a freedom to how we tell stories, and with this freedom we have a choice. WE can choose to tell stories as we’re accustomed to – stories with black and white moralities in which heroes overcome villains. Or we can shape new narratives. Stories which account for a wider perspective than just good versus evil, which acknowledge that the world is more complex than a binary. And even if we somehow can’t tell that type of story, we at least have the power to shake up the traditional formula. If we can’t stop people from viewing themselves as heroes, then we can at least tell stories which change what it means to be heroic.

Fear Itself

C.A. Tokay

Phrases such as Muslim Extremist or Islamic Terrorist annoy me. They annoy me because of where they place the emphasis, front loading it to focus on religion rather than act. In doing so, treating terror from one source as somehow worse than from another. But terror is terror and extremism is extremism. Ascribing a particular religious title to it only serves to create a narrative in which millions of innocent people are demonised because of the actions of a few idiots. The actions that millions are in turn appalled by. In this type of narrative, blame is not placed where it belongs – on small groups of individuals – but on all of those with whom they share a single common trait. It’s precisely this type of logic that has placed millions of people under the malignant scrutiny of the Trump regime, and it was this type of logic which could be seen at work in Alexandre Bissonnette’s alleged attack on a community peacefully in the midst of evening prayers.

And just so there’s no confusion if the charges pass, Bissonette is a white man, born and raised in Canada.

In the wake of the attack, a lot of media attention, at least here in Canada, has focused on the climate that led to such an event. To my eternal shame, it seems Islamophobia is alive and well in Canada.

I’ve never understood this type of attitude. But that’s supposed to be the nature of phobias: they’re irrational. What separates Islamophobes is that their fear, at least in their own minds, is not irrational. Various sources have encouraged this attitude in recent years, including political figures, as if there were legitimate reasons to fear. As a result, a climate where feeling such fear is both accepted and encouraged has been fostered. People have been encouraged to fear differences, to demonise a separate culture merely because it isn’t their own. And instead of calling this what it is, intolerance and hate, an elaborate euphemism was created to hide the attitude being encouraged.

It’s an attitude I still don’t understand. Hate is not something casual. It’s an all-consuming, a state of dislike focused to the point of destructive obsession. I could, maybe, grasp the idea of having this attitude to one or two people. Individuals who’ve harmed you so deeply, so profoundly, that no other emotional response will suffice. I can understand feeling this way towards terrorists who’ve taken a loved one from you. But the actions of a few individuals are theirs alone, and those who are uninvolved shouldn’t suffer our wrath because of it.

And yet this seems to be exactly what is happening. Because of fears whose roots can be traced to acts of terror, innocent people were made to suffer.

Fear is what leads to this kind of violence. Fear of those who are different, fear for our place in the world and fear of confronting what in us leads to such views. What scares me is those who are deluded by their own fear. There’s an old saying, used so often as to be cliché: there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. Based on their actions, based on the pain they’ve caused and hatred they’ve incited, I think a better version might be there’s nothing to fear but the fearful.

Canadian What Now?

C.A. Tokay

Canada turns one hundred and fifty this year. Among other planned celebrations, this means increased funding for the arts in the form of grants. A friend of mine, a very talented musician, is working with a composer and applying for one such grant. Their plan is to write a song cycle, and she explained how if the lyrics they choose reflect Canadian content, they are more likely to receive their funding. This makes sense. It’s a grant created to celebrate Canada, so it should go towards art meant to do so. Unfortunately while these should be unique circumstances, they aren’t. And Canadian art has always been plagued by Canadian content.

I first encountered the phrase, the concept, of Canadian content in university. I needed three credits in Canadian literature for my degree, and took a course in Canadian plays (it was that or read a bunch of Atwood novels). A repeated point of discussion was the continual push, from various points of authority, for Canadian plays to feature Canadian content. In a country whose art scene is largely – not exclusively, but largely – dependent on grants this inevitably means that the concept is defined from the top-down.

The course was on theatre, but substitute theatre for any medium and you find the same problems to some extent.

I like grants. I like the idea of a government investing in its society, and in this case its society’s cultural heritage. But I don’t like that receiving such grants is inevitably tied to an artist’s ability to cater to an arbitrary set of criteria. But since definitions, and as a result funding, are controlled from the top, this means that the problem continues.

My view of Canadian content is simple: if art is produced by a Canadian, the content of their work is Canadian content. Regardless of the subject matter or setting – whether reflecting a realist depiction of a snowy field, or a half-mythic space opera set light years away – art is inevitably influenced by the surroundings and background of the artist. And if part of that background includes an identity as a Canadian, then that identity will be present in their art.

In attempting to create a rigid definition of Canadian content at least two main problems arise: you end up with sterile art, and you ostracise artists.

If somebody, somehow, dictated that Canadian content was hockey (they haven’t, but something so quintessentially Canadian provides a great example) then only art about hockey would be funded. This would mean we’d have books about hockey, plays about hockey, songs and paintings and probably even operas about hockey. But nobody likes hockey that much. Even the most diehard fans like other things and need a break from hockey on occasion. Making things worse, all of those artists who would inevitably choose not to focus on hockey would find themselves ignored. Excluded, by official definition, from their own culture, their work deemed irrelevant and refused admittance, at least by some higher authority, into the cultural consciousness.

Tying funding to a mythologised sense of identity leads to an inadvertent form of censorship. And while I want my friend to succeed – as I said, she’s incredibly talented, and whatever the result it will be worth listening to – I also want to see a world where she and other artists don’t need to cater to bureaucratic pressure for recognition. A world in which those with the authority to hand out grants are capable of appreciating a broader range of views, and in which content is defined by artistic inclination from the bottom-up.

Politically What now?

By C. A. Tokay

I saw a patch for sale the other day featuring the words “politically correct” surrounded by a red circle with a red line striking them out. I don’t think I’ve seen a better summary of current political discourse. While politics always contains an element of disregard for your opponent’s ideas, good politics at least recognizes that the ideas need to be presented and argued, not completely ignored.

If those who oppose political correctness are to be believed, all of the concept’s advocates are merely overly sensitive wimps in need of thicker skin. What makes the issue problematic is that this view has some merit. There are individuals who look for excuses to be offended.

An important thing to remember about offence is that it can be subjective to those feeling it. If someone claims offence at our words or actions, we don’t get to decide whether or not we were being offensive. We can claim our intent, the spirit in which we meant something, but not the result it has. Especially not when seeing how people actually feel.

Offence is not a meaningless word thrown about just to censor someone – at least it shouldn’t be. And if someone’s truly offended it’s not because they detest our exercising rights to free speech or expression, but because the way we’ve expressed ourselves has directly attacked their value as a person. It’s directly attacked and dismissed them, claiming they are worthless and unimportant, and that their concerns and values don’t matter. This doesn’t mean we can’t have opinions or should be afraid, or even hesitant, to express them. It does mean we should be aware of the powers our use of language has. It also means we should be willing to listen when someone claims offence – to at least attempt to understand their perspective. We don’t need to agree with it, or change our own. But we do owe it to other people not to dismiss them outright, if only because we hope to be treated with similar courtesy should we find ourselves being the ones insulted, dismissed or in a word: offended.

I find I encounter many people who understand this. Those whose opposition to political correctness is not from a desire to harm, but a belief that more good is done through uncensored speech. They speak their minds not to offend but educate, listening as openly as they speak. In doing so they are able to find a balance between what they say and how it’s said.

Unfortunately, not every opponent of political correctness seems to take this attitude. It seems many people do want to offend. What I find interesting about such cases is how many of them appose political correctness not as opposition to censorship, but as a tool of it.

The phrase politically correct carries certain connotations, few of which are positive. Because of this, the phrase politically correct has become a great way to censor opposition. Instead of arguing the points of disagreement labelling them as an attempt at p.c. shuts down any need for dialogue. Responsibility is placed on the “offended,” instead of their opponent, to prove that their complaints matter and are worth arguing. Instead of discussion the result is that bigots can rest secure without ever having to worry about subjecting their ideas to any kind of argument or scrutiny.

Thin-skin isn’t found on just one side of any argument, and if we don’t take the time to ask if we’re the ones in need of growth then we lose out on any chance of making any kind of progress. But a simple label has become a way of avoiding such discussion and analysis, and only by refusing to let people get away with such behaviour can we have truly open discourse.

Stop, Think, Listen.

 

By C.A. Tokay

 

It’s easy to attack people, to ridicule those we disagree with for holding ideas we view as flawed, foolish or simply stupid. Easy, and tempting. And it’s such an instinctive reaction. We see something wrong and we have to defeat it, to crush it under assault and ridicule. But the problem is that in doing so we pursue the wrong target, the wrong approach and, ultimately, achieve the wrong result. Minds aren’t changed through ridicule.

This seems like a straight-forward idea. But what makes sense on a mental level isn’t always what occurs in practice. And while it can be painful to have this reminder arise in a personal interaction, seeing it play out in the political sphere has been nothing short of devastating.

Following Donald Trump’s presidential win the left seems to have gone into a kind of post-mortem. There’s been a massive effort to understand not how a hateful, bigoted, xenophobe could win, but how those opposing him could possibly lose.

One of those reasons is fear. For everything horrible he said, one thing Trump seemed to figure out was how to tap into fear. The collective fears of a nation regarding its own safety and security. Personally, I don’t think many of these fears are warranted, but that doesn’t change the fact that many people do. And where the challenge should have been to dispel the fear, the action taken was to dismiss the fearful.

People don’t like being dismissed. And yet far too often this seems to be the focus of discourse, ridicule and dismissal the reaction to those we disagree with. The refusal to entertain not just what’s being said, but a person’s right as a person to speak at all. This is not how minds are changed. And the painful lesson that must be learned from this, the lesson that needs to be embraced by all those who care about equality, is how, once again, to listen.

By no means does this mean you shouldn’t disagree or argue – even passionately – against those you disagree with. But it does mean that a new effort needs to be made. An effort to remember that no matter how wrong, detestable or even evil you find a person’s views to be, only by treating them as a person can you hope to change their mind.

It’s not easy to validate your opposition. Especially not whey they espouse something as toxic as hatred. But what a person says isn’t always a reflection of the core beliefs which are integral to who they are. More likely, such views are born out of fear. But only by taking the time to listen can we determine the truth. If we shut down all discourse before it’s even begun, if we refuse to listen to or validate those with whom we speak, then they have no incentive to even consider our perspective. Only through treating people as deserving of respect, and making it clear that we are questioning not the validity of them but of their ideas, can we hope to achieve any kind of positive progress.