Ready Player One

Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline

     In the near future (only a few decades ahead of our own), Wade Watts is living with his aunt in the "stacks" in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, hiding out every night in his hideout comprised of abandoned cars, siphoning off wifi signals and using a generator to plug into the OASIS. The OASIS is the logical next step in instant technological interactivity, developed by James Halliday, and coming to be the single most important facet of life in a post-apocalyptic, fossil-fuel-depleted world. Schools, entertainment, currency, relationships, pop culture, politics---all of it is filtered and experienced via the OASIS system. And Wade (whose online avatar persona is known as Parzival) has become obsessed with its developer, his life, and his every single 1980's-centered interest. Because at stake is the fate of the OASIS, multi-billions of dollars in assets, and his very way of life.
      James Halliday has died, inviting players of the OASIS to take part in the largest video game "Easter Egg hunt" in history.
     And Wade Watts, poorer than dirt, has spent five years studying the entire life of Halliday. And, despite clans of online gamers teaming up and collaborating, and despite the leader of Innovative Online Industries, Halliday's competition, using every means at their disposal to win the egg, he becomes the first player to solve the first of the three riddles to lead him to the goal.

     That is the gist of this novel, and at first I thought the meta-nature of this book (references upon references; character names, and settings, taken wholesale out of books, movies, television shows, songs, comics...you name it) would work against its very nature. But damn if I didn't finish this book enjoying every single instance of it.  By using Wade as the narrator, we come to understand this future world much more fully, until ultimately each chapter flew past. It became easy to picture the narrative as a massive MMORPG, with the reader observing every single instance and event; and Cline's descriptions of post-oil America were resonant and (hopefully) quite fanciful, if probable. There is such a love for every single reference (in particular, the Atari game "Adventure", the films WarGames, and Monty Python And The Holy Grail, and Dungeons and Dragons), as well as an innate understanding not only of geek culture, but also of why geek culture is so strong in the current era. And that's really the point here: geek culture (in particular comic book and gamer culture) has risen to not only be given a modicum of respect, but have proven to be enormously profitable. That literature can now easily exploit that culture is heartening for my own upcoming works, which likewise reference much more successful instances of science fiction and fantasy. This is a novel written for people exactly like me.
     And it is telling that up until the moment I finished this novel, I did not fully view myself as a geek. Sure, in some senses I always have, but not in the way I always thought. Of the plethora of references in this novel (and there are way, WAY too many to count. Every other sentence seems to have a character from one of my favorite films---"Sam Lowery", "Harry Tuttle"---or a throwaway reference to Cowboy Bebop, or Supaidaman, or the cartoons from the 1980's that I watched as a kid), only the ones intrinsic to table-top RPG and super-old-school video games confused me (and even then, some of the games were those I played on my dad's old ColecoVision, which is still sitting in their basement). I was almost annoyed that there weren't more references to escape my notice.
     I guess...that makes me a geek?
     And this novel helped me realize that. In many ways, this novel transcends the "man-on-a-quest" narrative while simultaneously conforming to it, and is resonate in its exploration of online life, and the identities we each build for ourselves (which eventually lead to startling revelations in the novel). In the way that the term "catfishing" is in reference to how an online identity can sometimes be unlike anything our "real" selves are, Cline's novel takes that concept to the next level, where the online reality is much more important and intrinsic to one's identity than the real, physical life is. And the lengths to which Wade goes to more completely and fully immerse himself in the OASIS...hell...I wish I had some haptic connections and optic visors sometimes. In many ways, I felt the same way reading this novel that I had when I saw Spike Jonze's Her, that this was a squinty-eyed vision of a future of post-human, post-physical relationships, where technology can be used to attract and connect people on a purely intellectual level. And I love the sociological and psychological questions this raises, because they cut right into the core of what constitutes attraction, and friendship, and love. And how physical qualities, and even our own senses, can essentially be inconsequential when it comes to the core of a person. And that's a very hopeful thought.
      Having grown up in the tail end of the 1980's, and been in love with pretty much every single item thrown into the novel (such as virtual giant robots teaming up to try and defeat and even more giant MechGodzilla), and now finding myself wanting to dig up the old ColecoVision and throw it on, and play the shitty Commodore 64 game versions of "Ghostbusters" and "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom", I cannot possibly recommend this novel enough to anyone who might be reading this blog still.
      This novel helped me meet new friends the other night (at a bar. A guy pointed at my worn copy and said, "That book is amazing!" and then proceeded to describe the plot to his wife. The night ended with us buying each other shots. And then more. And then more.) And it made me realize my girlfriend is perfect (she practically threw the book in my hands and forced me to read it the second she finished it).
     I hope this novel never becomes a movie. Ever. It would be impossible, simply on a legal and rights standpoint, to do it justice. And it has done something I wouldn't have thought was possible: it combined multiple mediums and, using the power of the written word, breathed an entirely new life into them. This novel is perfect as is.

     And now, today, a good friend of mine is making steps to create something very similar to the OASIS. A...pre-OASIS if you will. My best friend Robert Lockhart is starting work on his educational video game, Codemancer, designed to teach children computer coding and programming. If you would like to know more, or perhaps even help Kickstart his project, just click the link below:

Codemancer: The game that teaches the magic of coding!

The Act Of Killing

The Act Of Killing (2013) by Joshua Oppenheimer

The night my grandfather died, I spent the evening alone watching Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru. A week later, when my dog of 13 years died, I watched Vittorio deSica's Umberto D. While I had seen both films dozens of times before, it was these viewings that had produced the most profound reaction in me: I wept.Having experienced what the characters in these films had experienced, and felt a semblance of what they felt, I was able to really express myself and let out what I had kept inside. And that is one of the fundamental powers of film.

I do not usually watch documentaries, unless the subject matter really speaks to me, and that is my own mistake (especially having worked for 2 years in the news field). I first heard of Joshua Oppenheimer's feature début over at Badassdigest.com, and was absolutely riveted by the subject.

In the late 1960's, Indonesia had experienced a political upheaval, with its government replaced by its military and a dictatorship eventually being established. President Haji Suharto, having taken control of Indonesia, had recruited several low-level gangsters into running death squads, among them Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry. It is these two gangsters who are the focus of the film.

Unlike the "talking heads" style of documentary, Mr. Oppenheimer (after initially interviewing surviving, and relatives of, victims of the political purges) allows unusual method of having Anwar and Adi devise and direct their own interpretations of the killings. Using any method they wish, Mr. Oppenheimer had them recreate their atrocities. This unique method does something that so few documentaries of this sort accurately do: truly get into the mind of perpetrators of crimes against humanity, at once humanizing and dehumanizing them; not for empathy or sympathy, but to understand how it is that these people can not only get away with they did, but sleep at night.

The film crosses many surreal thresholds, opening on a dreamlike image of dancers emerging from a lakeside building shaped like a giant fish, all the while we hear the directions of Congo Anwar over a megaphone. From this, we are introduced to Anwar properly, as he recalls---with a hint of pride---his time spent in the Pemuda Pancasila, the formal name of the death squads that continue to run and attract the youths of Indonesia today. These are the "good old days", with Anwar and his compatriots excitedly recalling and recreating the various methods of murder. "I would never wear white pants," Anwar says at one point, pointing to a picture of himself. The reason, he reveals, is that they stain too easily from the blood. Blue jeans work better.

Atop what is today a second-hand thrift store, Anwar demonstrates the most efficient way of garrotting a victim, with a willing demonstrator. How does he live with himself? How did he face the horrors of his actions, Mr. Oppenheimer asks? Good food. Good drink. Marijuana. Dancing the cha cha; and with that, Anwar breaks into an impromptu dance to demonstrate his coping method. This is the surreality of the documentary: one moment we are witnessing a horrifying re-enactment, the next we are witnessing a dance. As the re-enactments continue, they grow in complexity, requiring the cooperation of other former death squad members, and the current members of Pancasila, who eagerly and excitedly don costumes and make-up.

The method in which Anwar and Adi tell their stories brings to the forefront a larger dialogue, not just about the nature of memory, but also about the impact of film on that very notion of memory. Anwar says that his demeanour and attitude during his tenure in the death squad was influenced by films starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and John Wayne (in fact, Anwar's first duties as a gangster was to sell bootleg tickets to the local cinema). Anwar's actions predate the proliferation of mob films like The Godfather, and Scarface, of which he is surely thinking. However, when recreating his atrocities, he riotously costumes his extras in clearly cinematic and outlandish clothing, saying that this is how he would have dressed. In his unconscious, of course this is how a gangster dresses. To think otherwise is ridiculous.

Despite all these surreal moments, eventually Anwar and Adi begin to question their own actions during this period. At first, it dawns on them just how prolific their "secret" actions were: while interviewing a newspaper editor who worked during the regime, an assistant editor says "You guys were having interrogations right in that room, and no one knew! It was amazing!" "What do you mean 'you did not know'? Everyone knew. Your boss knew. There is no way you could not have known what we were doing" Anwar counters, to a dumbfounded and silenced response. Later, while filming the re-enactment of an interrogation, Adi points out that, if they recreate their crimes as they remember them, then people will know that those they deemed "Communists" were innocent, and that they, the perpetrators, were in fact guilty. At no point prior (and this is about an hour into the film) had this thought crossed their minds. To the gangsters, these old monsters, what they are doing is reliving their glory days, their fond memories. They were bragging and showing off to the younger generation. But at this, they start to realize exactly what it is they have done.

Anwar's realization begins when he plays one of his own victims. He sits in a chair, made up, "bloodied", and intimidated by his colleagues, who hold a knife to his face. "No, you have to be rougher. Louder." they say, shoving his head around. And in his face, you can see Anwar losing his composure. He was always the man in control, the one with the knife and the threats and the power. And here, for the first time probably in his entire life, he knows what it is to be powerless. When he re-watches the scene later on, at home, with his grandchildren, he shuts it off halfway, visibly shaken. And when speaking to Mr. Oppenheimer, this exchange occurs:

Anwar: Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here? I can feel what the people I tortured felt. Because here my dignity has been destroyed, and then fear come, right there and then. All the terror suddenly possessed my body. It surrounded me, and possessed me. 
Joshua Oppenheimer: Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse, because you knew it's only a film. They knew they were being killed.
Anwar: But I can feel it, Josh. Really, I feel it. Or have I sinned. I did this to so many people, Josh. Is it all coming back to me? I really hope it won't. I don't want it to, Josh.

He has just felt, for the first time, the last emotions his victims all felt. But for us, the viewers, the realization hits in much more visceral way. It comes through with a sound.

Anwar, in the last scene of the film, is recounting the story of how he would execute his victims. He sits in the same building, the same renovated thrift store we'd visited earlier in the film. And he begins to tell a story, the same story he'd told earlier. Only at this point, he begins to gag. It's an odd sound, a dry heave of a grunt, sounding a bit like a cough and a fart, but coming very deep from the gut. He stops, apologizes, spits, and begins again. He stops again, gagging. And stumbles out of the building. The enormity of his actions, of everything he had done, the pain and death and crimes and atrocities, has finally hit him after nearly fifty years. And his body is rejecting it. The truth comes vomiting up out of him, ugly, painful, and very visceral.

When this moment occurred, I wept.

Anwar had faced his past, not when he spoke about it. Not when he re-enacted it. Not when he acted as his own victims. No, he faced it when he watched himself playing the victim. And this is the power of cinema. Knowing where he came from, the power he had and the gravitas he carried, Anwar's realization came in watching all of that ripped from him. Even made up, even pretending and acting in a scene, the very act of seeing something as profound and disturbing as the truth can bring someone as sociopathically inhuman to tears. Cinema shaped his life (how he conducted himself as a gangster), his memories (retrofitting his own chronology to believe that certain films were a "guideline", despite the impossibility of that), and finally his own understanding of himself. He has seen the truth, as well every person who watches this film and goes through this horrendous journey.

When the death of my grandfather, and dog, occurred, and I watched those films and empathized, it was because they had the power and ability to help me cope with my pain. For Anwar, that confrontation with himself, self-initiated by the very mthod of storytelling he employed, uncovered the demons he'd hoped to bury. And the ghosts of his victims are burned in his memory as readily as his image is captured in celluloid. It is not just his crime that is revealed, but that of an entire nation, one that is still run by self-proclaimed gangsters.

But if one criminal can come to face his own reality, perhaps there is still some hope.
All it takes is to sit alone in the dark, watch images on a screen, and realize the truth about yourself.

Please, everyone, watch this film.

Her

Her (2013) by Spike Jonze

From my sophomore year in high school (back in 2002) until around 2008 or so, I had what I can only describe as an online "relationship" with a girl I'd met at a camping trip.

We'd met and seen each other only once, for a few brief hours, and reconnected online using AIM (remember when that was a thing?) Every evening she and I would go online and converse for hours, talking about our days, our struggles, and our feelings. We grew to really care about each other. We came to love each other, in that stupid high school "it probably doesn't even matter" sort of way. When I graduated high school, she mailed me a graduation card with a picture of herself. When she graduated, I sent her one. Gradually, as the years passed, we spoke less and less. Until one day, she graduated college. I sent her a graduation card and a handwritten letter. We'd been in each others lives for about six years, and in that time only had those brief hours together when we were teenagers. I wrote her a goodbye, saying we'd always be friends, and she'd never be forgotten.

Her is the movie that reminded me exactly how that relationship, looking at it now, really did mean something.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly,  a forty-something living in a Los Angeles that is not too far off into the future. He is going through a divorce with Catherine (Rooney Mara), works at an online "handwritten card" company ascribing feelings and emotions to other people's relationships, and is desperately lonely. He lives his little life, playing video games and being introverted, a timid man living a comfortably uncomfortable life. Intrigued by an artificially intelligent operating system (known simply as "OS"), Theodore makes the purchase, tailoring the program to fit and meet his personality. The two are "introduced" as the OS is adapting itself, choosing a female voice and personality, and dubbing itself "Samantha" (voiced by Scarlett Johannson). As Theordore tries (and fails) to commit and connect with the women around him, he finds that most of his needs are met by Samantha, and the two fall in love. Their relationship grows, yes, and they have their hangups, but Samantha is always with him, always interested in him, and pushes him to grow. She improves his writing (both grammatically, and stylistically, as his muse), and through him, Samantha learns what it means to have emotions, and what it means to even have consciousness. But, ultimately, they both prove too limiting to each other. They've grown together because of and in spite of each other.

This is an extremely sublime film.

Theodore and Samantha's infatuation relates perfectly in today's climate, where so many of our daily interactions are digital and rooted in a wireless existence. The paradox of being alive now is that for how interconnected and instant our lives are, so many remain disconnected emotionally, unable to relate to anyone in person. Even Theodore's job itself is a replacement for daily interactions: people pay a company to create heartfelt messages, dictated by a third person, and printed to appear handwritten. Emotions are an afterthought to be considered only after the fact, and that itself is a concept I myself feel. On the train ride home today, nowhere was there a headphone not in someone's ear, or a phone in someone's hand.

Again, that interconnectivity becomes all-empowering and extremely hindering simultaneously. Samantha knows everything about Theodore, based on his contacts, emails, daily interactions and, when he is able to carry her around on his phone, she can even see and travel with him. She hires a surrogate body to act as her and carry out her physical will; but she can never be someone physical, someone Theodore can lean on or hug. In return, Theodore is limited by his own mind and mortality; in later scenes he tries to read about psychology and philosophy, and theoretical mathematics, and tells her "after reading this a day, I'm almost done with this one page. This is way beyond me." As much as they love each other, there is too much of a gap, and in this case, love just isn't enough.

And the sublime qualities and philosophical implications of the movie come into play with these quandaries. Can a program become self-aware enough to genuinely feel? Even Samantha wonders about this, wondering if she is capable of love and emotion, or if she is just processing information in a way that is pre-programmed, and reacting in kind? Is it possible for her to grow into something far beyond even she imagined? And, finally, is it possible for Theodore to be so transformed by an artificial entity that he is never the same? Is it possible for him to exist beyond his own physical limitations (much like the OS-created Dr. Alan Watts, a program based on a philosopher dead from the 1970s and voiced by Brian Cox)? So much is brought up, and I love this movie for it.

Director Spike Jonze and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema create a palette that is both lush and warm in color and sterile in its composition (at least early on, prior to the depth of the Theodore/Samantha relationship). Theirs is a Los Angeles blanketed in neon and primary colors, a post-Tokyo environment with sterile, IKEA-apartment rooms. It is a future only about 5 years removed from the present. The camera follows Theodore, holding for long takes that would seem to mimic Samantha's seeming omnipresence over him as well, while intimacy is always hinted at but never explicitly shown (such as Theodore and Samantha's...intimate scene. You'll know what I mean. It's actually quite beautiful).

The score by Arcade Fire is a perfect counterpoint to the tone and beauty of the film, while Karen O's songs, sung by Johannson in that uniquely deep voice are actually quite haunting and extremely touching. The cast and supporting characters (particularly Amy Adams, who plays Theodore's friend Amy) are all terrific. Amy's character develops a relationship with her own OS, a situation that, as is revealed, becomes more common with the populace as the OS grows and evolves. But ultimately, Amy and Theodore, for all their introversion and solitude, find that they need the interaction that could only be found in other human beings. While they might not fill each and every one of their needs, they fill enough of each other's to matter. And my God...Scarlett Johannson is absolutely amazing in her role, imbuing Samantha with so much personality that she sits right beside HAL 9000 and GERTY in regards to amazing, resonant computer characters. She (Samantha) is perfect.

I could go on and on about how this film provoked so many questions about philosophy of mind, and memories of discussing David Chalmers in college, and debating whether physical experience is nothing more than an illusion, or whether we are all just processing and reacting to electrical impulses (much like Samantha.) This is a film ripe for discussion on so many levels, and equally as heartbreaking on so many levels.

My girlfriend cried twice. At the end of the film, all I felt was that if this film were a physical thing, I would hug it. This is one of the best films I've seen in the last 3-5 years, and definitely one of the most rich.

This is a film that reminds me why sometimes the only thing I need in life is a good movie. I love this film, and in watching it remember what it was like to really fall in love for the first time. I will definitely be seeing it again.

And you know what? I still have that card tucked away somewhere.