How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

“You are NOT entitled to your opinion; you are entitled to your INFORMED opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”   - Harlan Ellison

Blogs are funny.

It wasn't until I started my own blog that I realized how many truly shitty, godawful ones there are out there. There are also a lot of good-to-very good blogs that are staffed by shitty writers, 'writers' being a term I use largely because it's sunny outside and I'm feeling magnanimous.

Maybe it's my background as a writer that gives me a slight advantage over Joe and Jane Everyblog, or that I love good journalism and have good journalists in my family, or maybe it's simply that I hail from a generation that still reveres certain precepts about expressing one's views. More than anything I think it is my holy reverence for the written word, combined with the fact that I refuse to waste time (mine and my reader's) writing about something – anything – to which I haven't devoted at least 20 minutes and two cups of joe. Now that I am a participant in the sundry arts of the online missive as well as a spectator I find I've grown hyperaware of the volume and caliber of pustulant dreck out there. And while I'm content to let the majority of this sludge wash over me with nary a mark to show for it I sometimes find myself nursing a dull ache from even having to look at it in passing.

But, hey, it's someone's opinion, right?? Can't raise a stink because it's someone's honest-to-gawd opinion, and everyone's entitled to their opinion, aren't they?? 'IMHO', right, man???

Look at the quote at the top of this piece. Think about it. Now read it again. Ellison's words are as true today as the day they were were spoken; they'll continue to be true long after the dust of our bones has scattered into the four winds. Americans – of whose number I count myself – worship at the alter of Sacred Opinion. Opinion is unassailable and beyond reproach. As an American I say 'you bet your ass'. Wouldn't have it any other way. But the digital age has taken that great tenet worldwide, and has given voice to every semi-erect mammal who thinks he or she can string a sentence together (and tons who can't, but blog anyway). It's a great thing, having a voice. So great, in fact, we're now loathe to insert any corollaries or qualifiers into the holy writ that says a person's opinion is as valid as the anyone else's.

But, seriously, have you ever tried reading half this shit? I read it every single day. Blog hubs like ZergNet can be a source of tremendous entertainment, trivia, humor and yes, even the occasional real scoop; but just as often it more resembles sitting alone in a shopping mall food court, eardrums irised to maximum aperture, and finding yourself beset by the dumbest crap to be passed over the vocal chords of homo sapiens. That you're reading it on a computer screen is a mercy to the ears even as it is double-down torture for eyes.

Let me submit to you a sacrificial lamb to which I will note from the outset I have no personal animosity. The morning I penned this piece I happened on a blog post that was gunnels-full of things that pissed me off. It was a compilation of witless tripe and lazy, slipshod conventions I'd seen many times in many other blogs, but this particular gem just happened to showcase an ideal cross-section of things I and every informed writer should find deplorable.

The subject of the post, ostensibly, was the forthcoming sequel to Avatar. It addressed the rumor that Arnold Schwarzenegger may somehow be a part of it, a suggestion not wholly without merit, as James Cameron is known for employing a loose corps of actors with whom he's had prior success (Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen are two other examples). Let's start with the header: “Can The Terminator Save Avatar 2?”.

Right out the gate we have a title that is designed solely to catch the eye and inflame the gonads; it's one thing to refer to Schwarzenegger the actor by his most recognized role (after all, it's still in his contract that only he, and not any other cyborg in the franchise, may be called a 'terminator'), but it's another thing entirely to suggest that (a) Avatar in any way requires saving and (b) that the level of Avatar's peril is such that no less of sci-fi/action legend like the former Mr. Universe is needed to implement its salvation.

At $2.7 billion dollars, Avatar stands tall as the highest grossing film of all time. It was released in over 100 countries, screened at over 14,000 theaters worldwide. It won three Oscars for nine nominations and is widely regarded as the preeminent and best 3D film of modern cinema.

Well, gee, I don't believe a sequel would require 'saving', do you? What gives, fellow scribe?

But wait! Silly me, I forgot to read the second line of the post, typically where one might expect to find a link or citation of where this Schwarzenegger rumor was heard or some hint as to the origin of this scintillating nugget of fanboy intel. Alas, there was none to be found in the second line, or the third, or any line thereafter. Rather the author chose to stray from what I can only assume was his purpose in making the post in the first place – discussing the casting rumor – to wax poetic on the tepid merits of Schwarzenegger in general and to soapbox his opinion of the first Avatar film. Guess what? He didn't like it. And he spends the rest of his post visiting (re-visiting you can be sure, as this doesn't strike me as his first offering on the subject) why Avatar was “overhyped”, “unoriginal” and “a waste of money.”

Illumination! The 'saving' Avatar 2 apparently requires is not an 11th-hour rescue from the production dustbin, or a down-to-the-studs remodeling of the script, but rather a miracle from On High (or Austria, same diff) that will prove the salvation of the franchise in the milieu of this writer's noggin. On the basis that he considered the first film lame, he, like the African missionaries or the Jehovah's Witnesses, believes the franchise's immortal soul can only be 'saved' by accepting Conan as it's lord and savior.

So for a single sentence addressing the 'news' of Schwarzenegger's possible casting we get a post totaling 333 words (and two enormous, glossy photos) heaping more retreaded gripes about Avatar the First. The blogger eschews original thoughts in favor of still another Pocahontas comparison, sparing a line to savage James Cameron for his 'clever' (quotes mine, word the author's) invention of the term 'unobtainium' for the precious material coveted by the humans, implying that Cameron – the writer, director, executive producer and partial funder of the film – was not only uninspired but also lazy. Do I need to actually point to the irony of using the endlessly recycled Pocahontas piss-'n-moan parallel to call someone out on being unoriginal?

You didn't like Avatar? Fine. Lots of people didn't. It weren't no Shakespeare. Hell, from a narrative standpoint it wasn't even on par with Cameron's first Terminator. Yeah, it was a contrived story that resembled Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves and every other tale about an indigenous people warring against technologically superior/morally bankrupt imperialists. I'm not here to defend the film, although as a sidebar I would simply say that it appears trite because it's a classic narrative theme – sticking it to the Man – and you'll never realize how frighteningly easy it is to stray into Avatar territory until you try writing a story about an alien planet (happened to me on more than one occasion; I'd write 3 or 4 pages of notes and suddenly say 'Shit, this sounds too much like Avatar').

But for God's sake, can you at least attempt to have an original thought, a fresh opinion, something new that might have occurred to you between 2009 and now? How about citing the ways either of those other films was better, how their execution of the same story was superior to Cameron's, or how other elements besides writing like photography, pacing, or acting made them more enjoyable? Maybe you could consult the archives of some film critics to see that they had to say about all three films and isolate some factors the professionals felt stood out as examples of superior filmmaking?

This Schwarzenegger rumor – and it is only a rumor, and not a very good one – was simply this individual's gauze-thin excuse to unleash still more rehashed vitriol on a film that clearly wasn't worth his time to begin with. It's bitching for bitching's sake, and that, gentle readers, it what so much blogging is: it's not writing, it's not journalism, and it's not the free exchange of informed opinion. It's complaining; it is something that EVERYONE loves to do, but now their pissant gripes and ill-conceived whining is laid bare for all of us to accidentally click on at 8:15 in the morning.

Oh, but I haven't gotten to the best part.

No, the best part was the bookends of this masterful post, and how they illustrate a feckless inconsistency so harebrained and obvious I have to wonder if the author even proofread the piece before hitting the 'submit' button. In paragraph one he tells us he likes Schwarzenegger “as much as the average person” but that he “...doesn't have the acting prowess of...most other actors...” Fair enough, good sir, although I'd suggest that if they constitute the majority of moviegoers, 'average' people must like Schwarzenegger very much, given his history of box office gold.

The author then waits until paragraph three before dropping this bomb: “I have no intention of seeing Avatars 2, 3 and 4.” Wait for it...we're still fine. I have no problem with folks declaring their intention to NOT see a movie, so long as you stick to your guns, pointedly avoid seeing it, and not dare to criticize it after the fact anyway; many people did that while protesting Tropic Thunder – I considered it cretinous to the extreme. But the author continues: “Would [Schwarzenegger] be enough to get me to see Avatar 2? Yes, he might just be enough.”

Wellity, wellity, wellity! We've seen the light and it's about as purewhite as a bedsheet in a youth hostel. To recap: after luring us in with the prospect of a juicy sequel rumor only to ambush us with tired derisions of an “overhyped”, “unoriginal” Avatar that was a “waste of money” and proclaiming his intentions to never see an Avatar 2, the author concedes that the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dude to whom he admits a torpid liking despite his lack of acting prowess compared to “most other actors”, would be sufficient incentive for him to abandon his prior dictum and indeed darken the door of his local cineplex, surrender some greenbacks and three hours of his time, and actually see Avatar 2. High praise for Schwarzenegger from the author's corner, to be sure, especially since the former governor of California boasts exactly zero movies in his filmography that would EVER be considered overhyped, unoriginal or a waste of money.

People all over the world are going to read that, and by tomorrow they'll be reading another ten thousand posts just like it. Yeah, blogging is funny.

As I said, this particular post from this particular author, who may well have penned many and more perfectly good posts on many and more perfectly good topics, is just a sacrificial lamb, an effigy for my angst. It is an example of the kind of shiftless, unthinking, contrary garbage out there that enjoys the same amount of playtime as a thoughtful, constructive piece that doesn't contradict itself in less than 400 words.

And before you go thinking that it is I who am guilty of the ambush, leading you on with this diatribe only to flare my own neckflaps and hold myself up as the acme of bloggers, fear not. I've been known to shoot from the hip too, however I try to make sure the gun's loaded and the safety is off before I pull the trigger. Today I woke up ugly and this particular piece happened to set me off, dredging some long-simmering discontent with what I see is a grossly misplaced sense of entitlement owing to the digital age, that anyone and everyone can routinely take a hatchet and slop bucket to the landscape of informed discourse, smear their awful ignor-feces across a broad sweep of it, and defend themselves by saying “Hey, it's just my opinion!”

Look, I may not agree with what you say, but if I'm going to defend to the death your right to say it I'd like it to be worth my time. Think before you write. Do some homework. Cite your sources. Think for yourself and don't be that guy who makes the Pocahontas comparison as if you were the first to think of it. Your opinion is your right; don't turn it into a joke. Most of all, refuse to be ignorant.

By the way, additional information for this piece was found on www.boxofficemojo.com and www.imdb.com. Further references available by request.  

Our Mr. Batman

I have been asked by several good folk whom I respect and whose esteem I value what my thoughts are on the casting of Ben Affleck as the next Batman. For two weeks (an eon in an age when opinions fall like rain, breed like guppies, and go stale before they've hardened in their molds) I stubbornly resisted. It wasn't shock or denial that stayed my opinion, nor fear, rage, confusion, depression or any such feelings or others along the emotional spectrum. No, the simple truth is, dear readers, I had a more selfish and puerile reason for not weighing in when the Affleck iron was white hot:

I couldn't bring myself to care.

Stay in your seats, I beg you. This is NOT another anti-Hollywood rant (though I've yet to unload all my ordinance on that subject, I promise), but I'll admit my ambivalence is more easily explained if my stance on Tinsel Town and its ways are already good n' clear to all concerned. In short: I don't like it, I don't trust it, and I wouldn't count on any of these studio bigwigs to sit on a toilet seat correctly, much less at the head of conference table where the future of film is decided by studying columns of digits. The decision to cast Affleck struck me as many things – a compromise and a calculation chief among them – but as something worth devoting a polemic of my own? No. Viewed analytically, Affleck makes an easy kind of sense:

• They were looking for an older actor to stand up and over Henry Cavill's Superman, who looks and seems quite youthful despite his joyless interpretation of the Man of Steel; an actor who would adequately fill a jaded mentor role for a still wide-eyed Supes
• Affleck has been enjoying a resurgent career thanks to Argo, inching his star up to the level of A-lister once more, but on the merits of his directorial skill and general ease with how the system works, not by stalking plumb roles
• Affleck will command a decent paycheck, but not a bank-breaker like the rumored $50 million Warner Bros. was supposedly offering Christian Bale
• Thanks to Argo and the praise/controversy/loathing it generated worldwide, Affleck is now a known quantity in the coveted overseas markets, a benefactor of the old axiom that any publicity is good publicity.

All valid points, all damn hard to argue against, and nine-tenths the reason I was neither surprised nor incensed at Affleck's selection. Hollywood is a business like any other, and businesses like sure things, known quantities, chicken instead of sushi, Sam Adams instead of Ol' Grandad, everyone's second choice. Sure, Affleck doesn't have the glaring, mercurial quality of a Wes Bentley (another rumored choice) and he certainly can't compete with Bale in the intensity department, but he is extremely good at looking bored, acting thoughtful, and furrowing his dark eyebrows down to a vanishing point resembling a quantum singularity. And that, my friends, is a fair quantity of what it takes to be Batman in Hollywood.

You'll note, I hope, the qualifier in my last sentence: what it takes to be Batman in Hollywood. We all know what we want to see from Gotham's defender in an ideal world, a world where they would make a faithful adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, blood, Cold War, Ronnie Reagan as president 'n everything. Or The Long Halloween serialized for HBO a la Game of Thrones. Or any interpretation that allowed Batman to be Batman, free of compromise, free of PG-13 Nerf violence, free of David Goyer and his script-in-a-can formula; a Batman we got to know somewhat in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy but with whom we never really swapped stories because we always had to hurry to the next plot point. Yes, a truly bold, truly patient, truly dynamic interpretation of the Batman might require an actor with more chops, but we'll cross that bridge if ever we come to it.  Hollywood demands something a little more beige, and for that I won't waste my breath with quibbles.

Everything else, the multitude of voices from every which corner portending doom and ruin, the johnny-come-latelys who don't remember the 90's except from the inside of a crib, and the 'real fans' – YES, thank the gods for the 'real fans', the very same who suggested Heath Ledger would 'play the Joker as gay' simply because the Oscar-winner had played a homosexual in another movie – all their shit is just glossy, graphical, World Wide Webbed-up for your protection bellyaching. I won't belabor the point by reiterating the reams of anti-Affleck complaints.  Nor will I, despite the temptation, repeat some of the truly excellent pro-Affleck research that's been cited recalling the horror and vitriol from Keaton's casting back in '88, or Hathaway's for The Dark Knight Rises, two decidedly oddball choices that ended up being home runs. And Ledger? That's too easy – no other actor suffered such a magnitude of discrimination and backlash than he; no other actor unleashed a proportionate magnitude of raw performing power that had even his harshest critics eating crow long after the poor young man was cold in the grave. Suffice to say my fellow geeks have already put in hours of homework refuting the notion that Affleck will do to the Dark Knight what Joel Shumacher did to nipples.

And you know what? All things considered, with these preceding paragraphs as my ballast and counterweights, I'm more than willing to say I'm hopeful about Affleck. Hell, I'll do it one better and say I even like the idea of Affleck. Now I DO care, and no one is more surprised about it than Yours Truly. Am I expecting him to add another golden trophy to his mantlepiece for his performance? Certainly not. But he's got a damn fine performance as the morose George Reeves in Hollywoodland to his credit (I don't think Affleck playing Batman in a Superman movie having previously played another actor who played Superman fits the definition of irony, but it's funny, if nothing else) and he knows his way around a pair of tights thanks to Daredevil.

Ah, yes. He went there. Thought we'd get away easy. But as Biff Tannen once said: “You thought wrong, dude.”

Daredevil has been the sticking point for a LOT of detractors thus far, a plague rat repellently held aloft by the tip of its diseased tail as proof that Affleck 'can't do a superhero' or that he 'ruined the character'. To this I can only say 'what a fantastic windfall for Daredevil!' For if in the intervening years since that masterpiece first grazed the cinema we've managed to forget every other thing that made it eye-watering, knee-buckling bad save Affleck's performance, then we've brought new dimension to the phase 'selective memory'. It was a piss poor movie, folks: poorly written, poorly conceived, poorly executed, slipped somewhere into the middle of the deck at a time when comic movies were still sloughing off the stigma of only being for the glavin-prone. Poor Ben had very little to work with. That he managed to get through it with his dignity and career more or less intact is testament to his ability to roll with the punches, and maybe even learn from his mistakes.

Or have we forgotten that Heath Ledger made Ten Things I Hate About You before he gave us his terrifying vision of the Clown Prince of Crime? Have we forgotten that Viggo Mortensen cut his teeth in big blockbusters not in The Lord of the Rings but in G.I.Jane? Or that before he was the curmudgeonly Dr. House, Hugh Laurie was the hapless dandy fop Prince Ludwig in Blackadder? Shall we speak of one of my very favorite actors, Paul Giamatti, who before winning an Emmy for his brilliant turn as President John Adams starred alongside Martin Lawrence in the Citizen Kane of fatsuit comedies, Big Momma's House? Shall I not? No, I think I've made my point. Writers write better with time. Actors likewise have the capacity to improve.

I know that by committing this piece to the deep of the Internet I'm sticking my neck out there and leaving myself open to backlash should our new Batman truly lay an egg. But for now let's give Mr. Affleck a chance.