TV Fright Nights

Classes begin again tomorrow, so I've been watching more TV than I ought to. Because I hadn't seen it before, I DVR'd The Day the Earth Stood Still (the recent remake) starring Keanu Reeves, whose acting ability is probably still up for debate. He's an alien who comes to earth in a giant sphere - no doubt metaphorically significant - in order to save it. Not us, it. "It" is dying, says he. But, protests Jennifer Connally, "we can change." Instead of telling him to get his slimy alien ass back to his own planet, that he had no right to interfere with ours, especially since he was planning on wiping out the human race, she pleads like a prisoner up for parole: "If you let me out, I'll be good from now on. I'm all better now." Our alien really loves the earth. The other spheres that accompanied his sphere across the light years turn out to be "arks" for the plant and animal species. As for us? Well, the spheres release what appear to be little metallic cockroaches that multiply by splitting in half, an instantaneous mitosis (or is it parthogenesis?), and before you know it there are billions of them streaking around the planet eating every manmade object in sight - football stadiums, skyscrapers, roadsigns, railroads - and all the people who made them and those who didn't. The earth's going to start all over again without people. But our alien, who really loves the earth (maybe 'loves' is the wrong word - maybe he only finds the earth necessary to a sort of universal ecology that bridges the space-time continuum, or something), finally finds the human inside himself and changes his mind. I forgot to mention that he can heal the sick, raise the dead (as long as you haven't been dead too long), and walk on water. He somehow stops the metal and people-eating cockroaches so that we can have another chance. I suspect that a lot of people were devoured before he got that done, but I also suspect we're not supposed to view him as a mass murderer but as a superior (if not quite Supreme) being entitled to dole out justice and mercy in its measure by virtue of that superiority. And, after all, he showed by the end that he had a heart. Since the Hollywood scenarios generally avoid the question, I've always wanted to ask one of these aliens if he believes in God. Somehow I don't think I'll get the chance. Except for the special effects, the whole thing is preposterous unless you accept the apocalyptic "our planet is dying" scenario, which I don't. The citrus crop was bountiful this year, the trees are still green, the squirrels are happy, I still have to mow the growing green grass once a week, and I ain't having any trouble breathing when I step outdoors.

My wife has become inexplicably addicted to watching a show we ignored for the first, oh, six years of its existence: Criminal Minds. It's about a team of FBI agents who are experts in hunting down serial killers. Being forced to watch them, though, is not as bad an experience as you might first surmise. The shows are so formulaic as to be fun on the surface but forgettable in the end. You can watch them over and over without remembering what happened the first time.

I watched some of the South Carolina Republican presidential debate before I got bored and switched over to Criminal Minds. Or maybe it was Babylon A.D., another sci-fier about the earth's last best hope, which resides in the person of an innocent, virginal young blonde thing with an interesting European accent who was raised by nuns of some stripe in a convent quarried into a mountainside somewhere in the Far East, whose innocence does not prevent her from showing sexual interest in Vin Diesel's torso (her interest goes unfulfilled), and who in the end finds herself miraculously pregnant with twins. That she has done the Blessed Mother one better is probably supposed to be important, but I couldn't figure out why. Oh, and when she finally does give birth (which kills her for some reason), one of the kids is white and one is black. GET IT? I don't.

Anyway and as I was saying, present on the dais for the debate were the unelectable Ron Paul, the unelectable Herman Cain, the unelectable Tim Pawlenty, the unelectable Rick Santorum, and the unelectable Gary Johnson, of whom I'd never heard. Turns out he's a former guv of New Mexico. Not present were the unelectable Newt Gingrich, the probably unelectable Sarah Palin, and the debabatably unelectable Mitt Romney. Am I forgetting anyone? I use the word 'unelectable' in proportion to the frequency with which the American people cast their votes based on a deep familiarity with the issues, an ineradicable moral traditionalism, a hatred for attractive but superficial soundbites, and an equal hatred for attractive but superficial candidates, which, in my opinion, is almost never. Stand these guys (except possibly for Palin) up next to Obama and his charisma will devour theirs like, oh, metallic cockroaches devouring Manhattan. I wish Gingrich, Palin and Romney had been there because I'd like to have heard their take on the current Republican devotion to the doctrine of torture. They like to call it 'enhanced interrogation.' Among radio commentators like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin (two of whom are Catholic), endorsement of the doctrine is rapidly becoming a litmus test of your political loyalty, your true conservatism. This is the result of the revelation that the use of torture by the Bush administration apparently aided in the discovery of Bin Laden's whereabouts. It worked, they say, therefore you must embrace it. Among the panel of present debaters, only the unelectable Ron Paul and the unelectable Gary Johnson were against it. They say it doesn't work, or is at best unreliable. They also make noises about how use of "it" isn't "who we are," that use of "it" doesn't "reflect our values." But mostly we hear of whether it works or it doesn't. I've never understood how the efficacy of an act translates into moral goodness. I remember stealing a tootsie roll from a Woolworth's when I was 8 years old. I knew it was wrong, I felt bad about it later, but I did not get caught and never told my parents. I skated. My thievery "worked." Let's legalize it. Tim Pawlenty took the position (identical to Bill O'Reilly's, if that tells you anything) that permission to use such techniques should be allowed only to the President and only under special circumstances. I guess that means that under ordinary circumstances using them would be wrong. Your run-of-the-mill murder suspect should not have water poured over his face to deprive him of the air he breathes and thus be terrorized into believing he's going to drown. This should be done only to terrorists, because the terrorist wants to kill innocent people. Of course, run-of-the-mill murderers want to kill innocent people too, but maybe not as many. Numbers count. (I'm speculating here; I don't know what motivates muddled morality). The life of the one is of less value than that of the many. Or maybe it's what I heard Sean Hannity screaming about yesterday. He said that you could not justify shooting Bin Laden in the head while protesting the use of waterboarding. It's just plain inconsistent, it just is, it is, it is, he kept shouting. Of course, it's pretty pedestrian traditional morality (Hannity labels himself a "traditonal Reagan conservative") that it is not under all circumstances wrong to kill a human being, as is true of an enemy combatant in war, but that it is always wrong to torture a human being, whether he's an enemy combatant or not. If that latter status describes Bin Laden, then his killing was legitimate. All killing is not murder, but all torture is just that. To even begin to attempt to justify it would require extending the use of 'enemy combatant' to include people who are in fact completely within our power and at our mercy, which is pretty much the antithesis of 'enemy combatant.' It would require a redefinition not familiar to the traditional Western rules of war, let alone to the lowly Army Field Manual.

Ah well. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. That's all the time I have for TV horror shows. Tomorrow I return to the fresh faces of the young, who watch their own fair share of TV. I make them write at least once about a show they either love or hate, and they come up with things I've never heard of. Some of them are cartoons (the only ones I remember having heard of are The Simpsons and South Park), some are talk shows (I have heard of Jerry Springer), but the most remarkable are the reality shows, which are remarkable for their sheer numbers and their apparently depraved situational dramas. The students almost universally claim to hate these shows, but then I have to wonder how they know so much about them. I don't know what proportion of them believe in virginal conceptions and saviors of the earth, but if any do, I know from experience that it will not prevent them from endorsing gay marriage, gays in the military, gays everywhere else, universal healthcare, sex-for-fun out of wedlock, abortion, unhindered access to pornography, legalized prostitution, amnesty for illegal immigrants, embryonic stem cell research, use of frozen embryos for embryonic stem cell research, UFO's as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, and enhanced-to-the-point-of-torture interrogation techniques. Which, in several essentials, makes them like a whole lot of other people, including a fair number of Republicans. They are the future. I like most of them anyway because their souls are not set in stone.