What is The Land of Bizarro

I  have not written anything on this blog in more than five months. And it is not like it was a prolific success before. I created this blog to work as an outlet for my various political and ideological thoughts and frustrations. Like so many of us, I had a bad habit of venting online whenever I read or heard about something that rubbed me the wrong way. This is a sure way to make enemies and alienate people, to say the least. This had to change. I decided to channel this energy to blogging.

Creating a blog was an exciting little project. If I bother to start something, I typically give it my best shot. I wanted to make this blog visually appealing and invested hours into the tiniest of details. While a web designer might find my work of art laughable, if not outright embarrassing, I am quite happy with the result. It is simple and at the same time has little elements—including the goofy fonts—that looks just like me. If my mind were a webpage, it probably would look like this.

"I annoyed my friends with my brouhaha."

What I did not think about beforehand was the theme of this blog. This surely is not my online diary. Nor do I have a political or other agenda that I want to advance. In terms of politics, I am neither part of the Left or Right as I cannot make myself think in tribalistic terms and have a tendency to anger both camps with my incessant contrarian nature. But I think about politics and society a lot and often when a powerful person or institution says or does something foolish, I feel the need to express my views. For years, I annoyed my friends with my brouhaha. Then I created this blog and something interesting happened: My need to write about these things went away.

I have always had a strange relationship with writing. If I do not do it, my mind gets cluttered with toxic thoughts. When I do it, I often enjoy the process, but doing it publicly overwhelms me with being overly focused with the minutiae of editorial concerns, such as minor grammar and punctuation issues, and I rarely am happy with the result. Some say that I am a good writer. I see myself as mediocre at best. But one way or another, I have to write. I have no choice. It has been so for the longest time. That is why it is very unusual to go through a period of not needing to do it.

But happen it did. After writing my piece on the Marvel movie Black Panther, I tried to write another criticizing the excesses and aimlessness of the #MeToo movement. That piece never saw the light of day. For the first time in the longest time, I simply did not care anymore. There was no passion in the words, no spirit in my writing, so I gave up. It wasn’t a writer’s block. It was a writer’s demise. Apathy had taken over.

It has been four months now since I decided to discard the #MeToo post. It has also become more clear to me why I did so and what caused my sudden lack of interest in writing. The answer is simple: There is so much more to life. These are petty issues. Hollywood’s becoming a mouthpiece to Social Justice Warrior propaganda is a petty issue. A few more movies and franchises will be morphed into unwatchable, political garbage, but life goes on. It feels almost comical that I managed to get out only three texts and two of them can be classified as movie reviews that are a bit too serious to be taken seriously. Realizing how foolish my online ravings are killed my passion in writing.

But there is another aspect to this. Writing about these issues is also so much fun. Whenever I have rejoiced in writing, it has been when I have just let go and have not cared about what others think about or even what I will think about it. My big problem in life—and it applies to this blog—has always been excessive perfectionism, my search for the Holy Grail. Either my goals are not good enough or I am not good enough. When I look at my Black Panther post, part of me says that the topic was not worthy of my time and another says that the text is ham-fisted and would have needed more editing. And maybe both statements are true. Time could always be used more productively and there is always a better word, a cleverer way to express oneself. So what?

So what indeed. I have no plans to advertise this blog. Chances are that no one will never read a single post. Even if someone did find value in my work, this blog is unlikely to attract any popularity. As far as the world is concerned, my thoughts, written down or not, will inevitably go forgotten. Anything I say is a mere whisper into emptiness. That is what it will forever be.

This banal realization after a long break has made my passion for writing resurface.

There is something comforting about being so likely to go unnoticed. It liberates. There is no need to worry about the quality of the content and much easier to give the boot to perfectionism when I am doing it for my own joy and not for others. That way I do not approach it as I would my job. In practice, this means that I am likely to produce a lot more content in the future. Perhaps a few words should be dedicated to what this content will be about and what is the purpose of this blog.

So, what is The Land of Bizarro? It is a creative project. It is a hobby. It is something not to be taken too seriously. It is a way for me to pass the time. It is a platform for expressing myself. It is something profoundly imperfect, even cringy at times, but if I enjoy the process and get some thoughts out of my system, it is a worthwhile use of my time. With these words, I am saying goodbye to perfectionism. (To prove my point, I decided not to tinker with the post's title picture too much and post it in its current embarrassing beyond amateurish state.)

The name of the blog originates from Superman comics. The Bizarro World is a strange place where everything resembles the world we live in but is inverted or twisted in ways that make it almost unrecognizable. It is a bizarre, unlikely universe. There are days when I wonder has a cosmic wormhole warped me into this strange land. So much is going on that makes little sense.

"Welcome to The Land of Bizarro."

And that is what this blog is about. I will write about things that I find unfathomable in this world. There is no shortage of that. Potential topics are all too abundant. But while the irrationality of our little planet shall be the overall theme, there will be inevitable digressions from it. What those digressions will be, only time will tell, but I have a feeling that I cannot resist the temptation of not adding some snippets from my personal life (case in point).

While I doubt that anyone will ever read these posts, a word of gratitude just in case is in order. If you are an actual flesh-and-blood human being, taking time from your daily life to read my blog, I want to thank you. Hopefully, my ramblings have the power to enrich your life. To sum up my main points, The Land of Bizarro is and forever will be just a little pet project that exists primarily for my own pleasure, and the readers (if there ever shall be any) should take it as such. That being said, if you like or do not like something you read or see, please leave a comment. A petty hobby or not, I won’t say no to good ideas.

Welcome to The Land of Bizarro.

Black Panther Sucks—So What?

I admit to being a heretic. Sometimes a cultural phenomenon arises that everyone is supposed to enjoy—but for some reason, you cannot make yourself feel the hype. I found myself in that situation with the latest installation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther left me unmoved. I was bored.

This blasphemous confession shook the foundations of a friendship between me and a friend of mine who happens to be black. She loved the movie and my lack of enthusiasm had repercussions that I did not expect. "Instances such as things make me realize that we have very little in common," she announced. "I begin to wonder if it is just like that with white men in general." 

Insinuating that the end of the friendship is near is a massive consequence for not liking the same movie. Bringing up my skin color and gender as a figurative gulf between us was shocking. In my desire to stay spoiler-free and blocking all the Black Panther related news, I had not yet realized that this is not just a movie. It is a cultural moment. Black Panther is one small step for a black man, one giant leap for the black mankind peoplekind. The few reviewers who had the audacity to give this movie a bad rating have been digitally castrated by both social and traditional media. Apparently, this is one of those instances when not riding the bandwagon makes the person instantly a Nazi.

"This is one of those instances when not riding the bandwagon makes the person a Nazi."

I hated The Last Jedi because of its overabundance of identity politics propaganda. This was not the case with Black Panther. I did neither hate it nor find its few political messages bothering. I simply zoned out and wanted it to end. Blue-haired feminists may have adopted it as their latest virtue signaling tool, but if the production team wanted to promote a threadbare postmodernist ideology, they did it in a way that was not distracting. And in the end, it was Bilbo Baggins, a small white man, who saved the day. The directors could have made that character black, too, if they really had wanted to make this movie just about the heroics of black people. But they did not. This movie is not about identity politics. It strikes a chord with the black community for other reasons.

Racial divisions have never really registered with me. I have a very naive view of the world where people are "not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said. I have never classified my friend as "a person of color." In my mind, she is a well-educated, funny individual with whom I have in-depth discussions and enjoyable bantering. Reducing her whole identity to her skin's melanin-levels is beneath me (and that is why I loathe identity politics). I have wanted to leave any notion of racially motivated bigotry in the history books where it belongs.

Yet, after some time of contemplation, I started to understand her emotional reaction to my lack of enthusiasm. I have witnessed grotesque racism. Years ago, I was riding my bike and had to stop when I saw a drunken older couple harassing a young black boy. "Go back where you came from," was the kindest cliche that came out of their mouth and everything else is unprintable. This horrified latchkey kid was desperately trying to defend himself by spinning his keychain. He was a boy of 10 years being verbally abused by two 40-year-olds who had not seen a sober day in weeks—and just because they did not like the tone of his skin. I managed to make them to leave the boy alone, but the memory of his terrified eyes will stay with me always. 

Something tells me that the memory sticks with the boy, too. Whether or not he grew up to be a Killmonger, consumed by fantasies of revenge, that I will never know. But I would not be surprised if he did. I have been bullied and vilified by adults for many reasons in my childhood, but not once in my life two strangers have made me fear for my life because of the color of my skin. If this is a common experience for black individuals, I can understand where this collective anger is coming from. 

Buried feelings of collective frustration and anger can erupt in mysterious ways. I certainly did not expect that a lighthearted superhero movie would be that way. I enjoyed the Blade trilogy in my youth. Luke Cage got bad reviews, but I found the show thoroughly entertaining. The Rock has played the role of Hercules, a demi-god. Morgan Freeman has played the role of The God Almighty! I thought that Black Panther is yet another black superhero movie. It completely surprised me that it has become a symbolic game-changer, a bastion of African American identity, and that criticizing it could be read as an attempt to silence the just rage of the black community.

"Wakanda is a futuristic North Korea."

I disliked this movie for a very simple reason: I loved Logan. After seeing a gruesome superhero movie with true emotional depth and character development, I have not been able to fully emerge myself into these PG-13 adventures. I did not enjoy Black Panther because I found myself unable not to take it too seriously. I knew nothing about the character or the fictional nation of Wakanda before the intro. I found Wakanda's backstory silly. The culture and politics of the nation are even more ridiculous and even disturbing.

Wakanda is technologically the most advanced civilization on the planet but the same cannot be said about its human rights situation. Wakanda has no democratic institutions. It is an absolute monarchy where the king makes all the laws—and is the law. There is no freedom of movement, which is implied by the fact that Wakanda is walled by a force field camouflage that keeps the outsiders out. As no one outside knows about the true nature of Wakanda means that it effectively keeps dissident Wakandans in, too. In Wakanda, individualism is shunned and citizens have to belong to a tribe and each of these tribes seems to have a caste-like system, which is enforced by tribal mutilations such as lip plates and scarification. Economic inequality must be rampant as his futuristic nation is filled with third world bazaars. Wakanda is nothing but a futuristic North Korea. 

"Not liking Black Panther does not make anyone a racist."

All that being said, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not known for its commitment to realism. Silliness is a not a deal-breaker. But the implied horrors of Wakandan way of life prevented me from being engrossed in this movie. If anything, I felt grossed out. I found the fictional nation of Wakanda to be savagery. I did not personally relate to the underlying theme of black oppression even though I can understand why others can and why I probably should, too. I did not care about any of the characters. And I do not feel bad about saying any of this.

If this movie empowers black children and offers them relatable idols, that is only laudable—more power to them as far as I am concerned. Although, I find it sad that after all these efforts for equality, people still identify so strongly with their skin color. White nationalism is one of the ugliest movements ever conceived. Witnessing behavior around this movie that can be only described as a black version of it is a sad, retrogressive turn of events. I truly hope that it will be a short-lived, atavistic reaction to whatever racism still remains in the Western society. Whatever it is, not liking this movie does not make anyone a racist. People cannot be demanded to have a good time.

Why Cathy Newman Matters

On January 16, 2018, an English journalist, Catherine Elizabeth Newman, interviewed a Canadian professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson, on Channel 4 News. 

Newman attempted to embarrass Peterson by resorting to a rapid-fire interview style. The style consists of asking a nuanced question and then suddenly interrupting the guest in mid-sentence, shifting the focus to a tangential point, and repeating this until the interview is over. This way the guest does not get enough time to give any question a proper answer. Journalists often use this type of tactic against politicians they wish to undermine, hoping that they would accidentally blurt out something controversial or at least appear uninformed.

"Jordan Peterson revealed himself to be a master of clarity and brevity."

This a nasty, desperate tactic, but it can be effective against those who are not fast speakers, use highfalutin jargon, or speak in long sentences. People who talk in this manner are easy targets for predatory journalists who want to disturb their train of thought by simply cutting them off, restating something they said in a silly manner, thus tricking into talking about irrelevancies. Newman certainly gave this her best shot: “You’re saying women aren’t intelligent enough to run top companies?" To her chagrin, the normally verbose professor revealed himself to be a master of clarity and brevity.

When Peterson gave his opinion on some aspects of dysfunctional relationships, Newman asked, "What gives you the right to say that?" Peterson didn't hesitate to reply, "I'm a clinical psychologist." It is not a strong argument, but if a case has to be made in four words, it is difficult to be more dead-on. This game of verbal ping-pong went on for 20 minutes, during which Newman started to look visibly confused and nervous. Eventually, this exchange of words rendered her speechless:

"Why should your freedom of speech trump a trans person’s right not to be offended?”

“Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. I mean, look at the conversation we’re having right now. You’re certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth. Why should you have the right to do that? ... ... You’re doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell is going on. And that is what you should do. But you’re exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me, and that’s fine. More power to you, as far as I’m concerned."

Newman was not able to recover from this and her talking points became asininely absurd. At one point she retorted, "let me get this straight, you're saying we should organize our societies along the line of the lobsters." Peterson smiled the smile akin to that of a father listening to a child's nonsense while pursuing thoughts of his own. The interview was over and Cathy Newman, deservedly, became a target of online ridicule around the globe.

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Watch the full interview

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"Let me get this straight, you're saying we should organize our societies along the line of the lobsters."

Yet this blunder won't likely hurt her career. Channel 4 News, as a face-saving operation, orchestrated a red-herring type of distraction by claiming that Newman has received credible threats against her character whose nature requires involvement from security experts. By invoking misogyny, some journalists have taken this diversion beyond schizophrenic levels of delusion[1].

I believe that Newman has indeed received vitriolic threats. Unfortunately, the world is full of crackpots who are unable to channel their frustrations in a constructive manner and instead send anonymous death threats. Anyone who has the audacity to express their opinions publicly will likely become a recipient of this art form. At the time of writing this, the interview has earned more than 3.8 million views on YouTube, and if even 0,01% of its viewers are crazy enough to directly abuse Newman, she has received 380 threatening letters. It is a sad but statistical reality. 

Jordan Peterson himself has been a target of malicious bullying that extended beyond the Internet when presumably a radical left-wing supremacist group started posting hateful posters full of preposterous claims around his neighborhood. The underlying message being, "we know where you live."

All that being said, if Cathy Newman will recover from this unscathed and her core audience refuses to take their blinders off, why is this newsworthy? In the end, she is only a failing journalist and even the undoing of her career would have not changed anything had Channel 4 chosen to terminate her contract. But her case has significance because the journalistic backlash, for the longest time, has not been about manipulating the facts and trying to make a dissident professor look like an alt-right shadow figure. Even radical outlets, such as The Guardian [2], have taken steps toward somewhat sober reporting. The Atlantic [3] took a leap farther and flat-out condemned Newman's abusive tactics. Others have fallen somewhere in the middle [4] and only the most cringe-worthy publications have tried to distort the facts.

"Has a seed of sanity started to sprout?"

Has a seed of sanity started to sprout? Less than six months ago, a Google employee, James Damore, was fired over a memo where he criticized the company's diversity program. Damore based his arguments on evolutionary psychology and scientific research, backing everything up with charts and citations. during the controversy, dozens of experts arose to defend him [5], and agreed that he got the science mostly right. The mainstream media ignored the voices of leading academics, distorted the contents of Damore's memo, put words in his mouth, and disparaged him in ways that were akin to a schoolyard bully giving wedgies to first graders. 

Media's treatment of Damore was parasitic and inexcusable—and a huge mistake. Anyone scientifically literate who bothered to read through his memo was able to see that the media was pushing a fictional, anti-intellectual narrative. The memo left plenty of room for disagreement, but even many of those who disliked Damore's proposals also offered words of sympathy for the mistreated underdog. Resentment toward vulturous journalists spread on social media like wildfire.

"Journalists are realizing that it is their job to report the truth—and not to decide what it is."

Yet, somehow, history did not repeat itself. Jordan Peterson seems to prevail against this nonsense that has been for so long driven by political correctness. He still gets a fair amount of criticism, but it is almost like the long-dormant mainstream media community has woken up to the fact that the interview is publicly available on YouTube. Figments of editorial imagination cannot be twisted into public opinion in a world where information is available to everyone. Their deranged bubble is bursting.

Or perhaps they have realized that there is a cheeseburger-loving world leader on the loose who loves to rant about Fake News™. It is in everyone's best interest not to weaponize his empty rhetoric with demonstrable examples. Cathy Newman matters because there is finally a glimmer of hope that journalists and editors alike are beginning to realize the limits of their power and that it is their job to report the truth—and not to decide what it is. 

The Last Jedi

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"Star Wars went from Sith to shit."

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I did not expect to hate The Last Jedi. The original trilogy was a big part of my childhood, but I have never been a die-hard Star Wars fanatic. Also, let's face it, after the prequel trilogy's Jar Jar Binks, Flubber-Yoda, and Darth Vader's cringe-worthy scream of "NOOOO!" the bar had not been set exactly high. But I almost walked out of this movie.

People enjoy Star Wars because it offers an escape from everyday banalities. When the opening credits started rolling, that is what I expected to get. Only fifteen minutes into the movie, I realized that I was being served a ham-handed lesson about Identity Politics™.

I left the theater confused, clinging to the hope that I am suffering from severe delusions, seeing imaginary interstellar chief diversity officers after watching one too many political debates. After all, at that point, I had avoided spoilers like fire. To my disappointment, I soon found out that millions of fans around the world share my sentiment. 

"The Last Jedi is a textbook bait-and-switch."

There is nothing wrong with having a moral to the story. But Star Wars is supposed to be about the Force and not about force-feeding a questionable, intellectually void ideology. The Last Jedi is a horrible movie because it is a textbook bait-and-switch. Fans were promised the return of Luke Skywalker. They got 2.5 hours of feminists fighting against the bourgeoisie.

This was not an accident. Director Rian Johnson probably had the following checklist for his screenplay:

   ♀ Mansplaining
   ♀ Toxic Masculinity
   ♀ Patriarchy
   ♀ Female Leadership
   ♀ Animal Rights
   ♀ War Profiteering
   ♀ Racial Diversity

Yanking in so much Identity Politics™ claptrap makes The Last Jedi a way too conspicuous socio-political statement. Johnson only forgot to include LGBTQ representation into the mess. The funny thing is, I actually support many of these ideals. I have my reservations about the most toxic strains of contemporary feminism, but I have often cheered for taking a progressive standpoint in movies. I certainly have nothing against animal rights. So why did I hate this movie so much?

"Political statements are either painfully obvious or leave the audience blissfully oblivious."

The original trilogy was not by any means an epitome of bigotry and patriarchal oppression. Lando Calrissian was a black leader and hero. Leia Organa is likewise both a senator and general, a personification of female empowerment. Yet if George Lucas wanted to make a statement about racial and gender equality, he managed to do it in a way that was not distracting. It just worked marvelously.

When it comes to making political statements, they are either painfully obvious or leave the audience blissfully oblivious. The Last Jedi is a paradigm of the former case. Johnson's Star Wars is apathetic, characters are flat, and dialogue is lacking in depth, so when the moral lessons come, they stick out like an angry Luke Skywalker drinking raw alien milk.

What makes or breaks the movie are the plot and overall entertainment value. If the thematic underpinnings tickle the rights spots, scenes are mindblowing, and acting outstanding, a lot can be excused. The Last Jedi misses all the marks. The story is boring and makes little sense, and no scene gets past mediocrity. It is just an overlong cinematic failure.

Who is Snoke? And when he arrived, why did Luke and the rest of the then-victorious Rebellion just roll over? George Lucas had the privilege of creating his universe from the scratch, so it did not matter whatever happened before The New Hope. This time, the audience had every reason to come in with expectations and demand answers. After two movies, it is clear that J. J. Abrams and Rian Johnson have their own vision for the franchise and as far as they are concerned, the old trilogy and its fans can go to hell.

The new franchise is pure Disney and those of us who wanted to rekindle childhood nostalgia just have to accept that this is not the Star Wars universe we were looking for. Disney's Star Wars is just another of their many cash cows. They do not make movies to tell good stories. They make movies to sell tickets and merchandise. Marketing departments have their say at every level of production. Even controversies are often designed to get media exposure.

Let's face it, The Last Jedi was not a commercial failure. It is as badly written as 50 Shades of Grey but just like this atrocious excuse for a novel, being asinine fan fiction is not enough to deter CGI-hungry masses devoid of taste for a good narrative. Most people simply do not care that much about neither the mythology of Star Wars nor Identity Politics™. It satisfies the needs of the hoi polloi and the rest is irrelevant.

"This is not the franchise you are looking for."

In the end, Disney is only accountable to its stockholders and all public companies are ultimately in the profit-maximization business. Perverting an established space opera and outraging a small segment of hardcore fans does not make a money-hungry studio blink if the movie is still attractive to the larger crowds. I won't be interested in seeing another Star Wars film after this, which makes The Last Jedi, ironically, my last Jedi. Yet I doubt there will be enough foot voters like me to turn the upcoming installations into box office bombs.

But there is one thing about The Last Jedi that I have thoroughly enjoyed: the ridicule of it. Leia depicted as Mary Poppins is hilarious. Yet what really made me laugh with tears in my eyes was the latest episode of The Manosphere Strikes Back. They published a 46-minute cut titled as The Last Jedi: De-Feminized Fanedit (a.k.a. The Chauvinist Cut) in which the movie is liberated almost entirely from its female characters. The very idea is just wacky and the fan who made this should be very proud of himself (or herself, who knows) as it has provoked a reaction from many of the movie's crucial cast members: 

Yes, editing out women is dumb. It is silly. It is also funny. (Spoiler: It was almost certainly meant as a joke.) Johnson, Hamill, and Boyega all reacted to it appropriately—when you see great parody, feel free to crack up. The Last Jedi is an awful movie and yet it is only healthy to find humor in one's disappointments. There is no letdown that cannot be cured with laughter.