(Famed director Quentin Tarantino whose hyper-violent comic book movies have inspired a generation. Photo AP).
There is cold weather coming this way. It is snowing in Mississippi, they tell me, and in between, the Ninjas may take advantage of the drying air mass to slap more paint on the balcony at Big Pink.
It will be good to get that project done, but if it is not one thing, it is another. We had one of Arlington’s aging water mains go bust in the night, and there is no water, much less hot water, and that makes a great start to the working day. I stand four-square for improved water pipes.
I confess I was puzzled by the President’s announcement on one of the elements of the Continuing Crisis yesterday. There did not seem to be a great deal of substance in the recommendations, if you subtract the things that he asked the Congress to do. Well, it was $3.4 billion worth of stuff, but the numbers don’t seem to make anyone blink anymore.
My sources tell me a much more aggressive plan to control Gun Violence was going to be rolled out yesterday, but the Senate Democrats were very nervous about it, and it would have been a non-starter in the House.
Most of the 23 Executive Orders are happy-thinking along with some good ideas with which I have no problem. Naturally, the part of the NRA’s widely castigated “put armed guards in schools” suggestion actually turns up in the EO as the provision of 15,000 federally-funded police officers at the state and local level.
So, rather than expend his political capital for the second term in an effort that was going to go nowhere, the President elected to play “small ball,” and tinker on the margins. The real emphasis of the second term is going to be placed on a comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill and revisiting the carbon tax. Of course, we need to get past the Debt Ceiling and Sequestration Artificial Crises first.
This is not shaping up as a happy time for everyone, except maybe the Hollywood execs and the NASCAR track owners who scored big time on the Fiscal Cliff legislation.
You noticed, I am sure, the complete lack of reference to violent content in media in anything that was said or proposed yesterday.
I am reminded of the Christmas Day screening of “Django Unchained” film by famed director Quentin Tarantino I attended with my son. I was both entertained and repulsed by the gratuitous violence wrapped around fantasy in the film, not to mention the fuzzy historical context. In addition to the use of the N-word (more than a hundred times) were the fifty-odd graphic gun homicides.
I gather the use of the forbidden word is intended to desensitize us to its use- or use it, rather, to decrease its power. The shooting just seemed to be for fun, like the violence in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.
Mr. Tarantino had been on the PR circuit to flak the film at the beginning of the awards cycle, and talk about his artistic vision, but he has a thin skin. I heard him wax indignant on NPR when quizzed about the relationship between his art and the actions of some of his viewers. After all, said Mr. Tarantino, “I am an “artist.” He doesn’t see any connection between the desensitization to gun violence of disturbed young men and the content they watch on the screen and the games they play on their consoles.
I am a huge First Amendment fan, of course, but the whole chicken-and-egg thing about gun violence is…well, inconvenient.
Rather than discuss the matter of the impact of Hollywood does though hyper-violent plots and special effects magic to influence the culture, Hollywood bought itself a free pass. The film industry has done pretty well in the continuing crisis. Hollywood was rewarded with hundreds of millions of tax breaks (“The American Taxpayer Relief Act,” hahahah) and no mention whatsoever in the President’s small-ball 23-point initiative.
So, it is definitely business as usual here in Washington.
Maybe coming to a theater near you, soon.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com