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Imagine my surprise when I saw that, as I had guessed writing a review of Superman V Batman, there is already a Justice League film. Not very surprised. Like I said at the time there’s so many of these things coming out I can’t notice them all. But when I did, and the divine Gal Gadot is involved, I thought I’d have a look. How can I make this review different from the last? Reviewing Cars 3 was more of a platform for a discourse on reality and narratology, BVS was a reactionary take, and I am Dragon a more literary practice than review. What Deleuzian assemblage of criticism and media can I find to keep a freshness to these forays into films? Criticism can come from many different angles and focus on any number of things between symbology, scene and story. Which Lego pieces shall I combine here? As yet, I’ve touched upon these films with broad sweeping strokes and not got down and dirty with the details. What I am looking for here is how the elements work together. As inspiration comes from Lego then as Lego combines itself, what is the significance of certain pieces. I cannot and do not want to look so deeply into the structure but pull from it moments that speak to me as a neo-pragmatist and explain why they called to me. Yet what would I be if not a little contradictory, Superheroes are what people aspire to be. Those great and noble beings who have risen above the world and taken the mantle as honourable defenders of justice. But, I am no hero. Not at all. So to adopt a neo-pragmatist angle and to understand what I am not, this review takes the form of three fears drawn out by the film. Three very personal fears and ones that are raw to my being. These are part of my origin story. Moment one – The homeless man (Fear as motivation) In the picture is a homeless man and his dog sitting dejectedly. His sign simply reads “I tried”. Throughout the film I doubt I shall find a better likeness to myself, I understand this man. The superheroes, those who we wish to emulate are beyond me but sitting dejectedly with a dog and the hopeless failure of a man who has tried and failed is something I can strongly connect to. When I was younger, and older pretty much from my teens to my mid-twenties I had a serious addiction to butane. It offered something that wee, pills or any harder drugs couldn’t. Each drug has its different results and each addict their different desires. Mine was simple, I wanted to be away from the world and the people whom I could never understand. To say the school system failed me is an understatement. I left secondary education with grades far worse than I was capable of. For most of the last year of school, I was banned from attending my English lessons because my “presence instigated misbehaviour”. I was banned because other students would mess around, in my teacher’s opinion, to impress me. Rather than deal with the symptoms she cut out the source, so for over six months I was passed between different classes or the exclusion unit without ever actually having misbehaved. No teacher ever took the time to tell me we had coursework and so I only took the exams and my grades were based solely on them. Similarly, in Science, I got banned from doing experiments – acid tastes like lemons but don’t drink it, especially not when it is strong enough to make your stomach bleed (they charged me for the milk they told me to drink as a way to lessen the symptoms) – I was inquisitive and misguided. It wasn’t until I entered my beloved Doncaster College did one young teacher take the time to concern herself with me and through her efforts I was referred to psychologists and they realised I was a high-functioning aspie. I was disillusioned with the world and its people, I treated them with contempt that was bred from hundreds of hours writing numbers over lunch breaks. A contempt only the truly frustrated can come to have. I had to accept that I wasn’t like other people and that was bad. I thought of what I called the ‘prime contradiction’ the anti-thesis of reason. If my thoughts were inherently wrong because of bad neural wiring, then how could I ever trust my own understanding. So, I escaped, I sat in a world made entirely of my own imagination. A world of smoke and mirrors, more accurately, of gas and vacant stares. And that was years of my life. Strange things happen to a mind so detached from reality and one especially inclined to devour itself in boredom. My dream-world became nightmares. My vacant stares became mad ravings and my mind began to lose the shape of reality as the outer-world surrendered itself to my construction. The lines blurred, and I found myself in a constant war with darkness and fear. This isn’t a story of me overcoming my addiction, of becoming a hero and making myself better through sheer force of will. The opposite is true, I became so terrified of what my mind was creating I fled the inner world and resolved to subjugate myself entirely in the real. To escape my dream and never imagine. Thus, I dedicated myself to academics, thought without need of dreams. To see this homeless man, sat with a look of hopelessness and I sign reading “I tried”. It speaks to me more than I assume it would to many others. Because, it would very easily have been me had I not been so afraid. I never stopped trying to understand people and even know as I must deal with the hardest separation of my life, I still desperately try to understand. But the more I realise about the world, the more I read and learn, the less people are like me. My road is full of drug addicts, shoes dangle from the phone lines in the alleyway. I am among the people I was most like and yet I am no closer to them than I am to people on the other side. I can entirely relate to the struggles of a trans person as for me, academic society is what I identify as but my body and my life are engendered to the bottom of the social scale and the denizens of deprivation. Though at least I can hold a different sign, one that reads “I’m trying” because that is all I can do. Keep going, it doesn’t matter that I may never escape the bottom of society, so long as I can die and say to whatever comes after life “I tried.” Moment 2 – The aim of journalism (Fear of the unknown) This speaks to me because in my self-imposed hermetism, I have found myself watching a fair amount of commentary on the news. Tim Pool, Sargon of Akkad, Steven Crowder (not so much) are regular faces on my YouTube feed now. I’m not into politics but this recent trend away from what I would deem reason and into a ‘progressive’ mindset has left me very confused. Naturally as someone with what some have considered ‘extreme male brain’ syndrome, it would seem likely that I’m anti-SJW. They’re a little creepy, a little too zealous, flying in the face of my hegemonic British conservative veneer. What these YouTube commentators have made clear to me though is that the once banal left and right leanings of certain newspapers has been replaced with something entirely more sinister. Lois’ comment speaks to what journalism should be, not what it currently is. The journalists of today are not interested in understanding this great engine of society, they are in the business of trying to man-woman-nonbinary the controls of a machine they cannot ever really comprehend. I had pause to consider the ideology that resulted in me acquiescing to raise my daughter ‘gender neutral’ for a time. I wondered about the future, a future my former partner did not once consider. To understand this future, I looked to the past; to polonium, radiation and the society that saw no ill in this wonderful new energy. This is the worry, and this is another embodiment of my fears. I would prefer my daughter be sure of herself and oppressed than be in an ontological crisis and even more oppressed. Better the devil you know, they say. I fear greatly how I am going to deal with her schools when I tell them I’m not sold on their ideology, that I’m not convinced by the Emperor’s new clothes. My Ex will undoubtedly turn this into the exact narrative the SJWs would; misogyny, fascism, bigotry or whatever other term they decide to throw at a man who loves his daughter and doesn’t want her to grow up, let alone change into a new person. Moment 3 – Using a truth rope on prisoners (Fear of freedom) As someone whose struggled with their own freedom, I can honestly say I fear it. I am terrified of what people are capable of when not under the benevolent panopticon. As covered in ‘Moment One’, I had some real difficult times with my mind when I was growing up. I was raised Catholic but there was one thing I could never relate to; not that there couldn’t be a God, not that the morals were particularly wrong (a little dated certainly, but good intentions). No, it was the whole Eden fiasco. It completely baffled me. It made no sense, still makes no sense. If I don’t want my daughter to drink Bleach, I don’t leave it where she can get it. What father would do such a thing? Nope, that was the one deal breaker for me. It was stupid, and God can’t be stupid. Unless it was God’s plan to be defied and get a good reason to punish the entirety of humanity for the rest of time with sin, suffering and death. Which is a strange thing for a father to do. (I use father only because that’s what it’s called in the bible, not as some ode to patriarchy.) But what about free will? Free will is the greatest travesty in the world. What do we have free will for, so we can do anything we want if we want? Literally, the majority of people live in fear because of crime and why? Because criminals have the right to commit crime? That their right to privacy is more potent than my right to feel safe? I read the Circle, it’s not as dystopic as many would consider it. Granted if I had to spend more than ten minutes in the company of that main character woman I’d exercise my free-will to throw myself from a cliff (it’s been a while since I read the book and I’ve not watched the film, so I can’t remember her name). But, what is wrong with accountability?
Honestly, if a crime is committed nearby and you get asked “hey did you see anything?” Would you say “no, I’m not helping you find that guilty individual because I don’t want you to know I was walking my dog.” If you are not a criminal, you don’t have anything to fear from your information being used to prevent crime.
You may think this is madness but I’m not the one advocating people’s right to rape, pillage and plunder, without guaranteed prosecution. Like they say in BVS about Superman, if you know that something is going to happen, and we all know more crimes are coming, are we complicit if we do nothing to stop it. Is the whole world complicit in the murder and terrors caused by people because we do nothing and accept it?
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