Babel babble

Over the holidays I saw "Babel," a film that's sparked a lot of critical conversation--good and bad--since its release. Dana Stevens (of Slate.com) has it on her top ten list and calls it "virtuosic," while David Denby of the New Yorker calls it "hopeless," despite "fearless [acting] performances." The film's basic theme (although the review itself is far more superlative than necessary) is best summed up, I believe, by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone:

“The Bible says God was angry when man tried to reach heaven by building a tower (later named Babel); he stopped the work by devising different languages that made understanding impossible. Babel came to mean noise and miscommunication.

Some things never change. The gifted Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and his remarkable screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga - this film completes the brilliant trilogy they began with Amores Perros and 21 Grams - have applied the concept of Babel to the way we live now, in a world threatened by terrorism and divided by language, race, money and religion.

Visually, linguistically, physically, everything in "Babel" is about miscommunication, spoiled intentions, and missing pieces. Unlike other reviewers, what struck me about "Babel" was its ultimate optimism. Despite all the noise, individuals in "Babel" form deeply affectionate bonds. After their tour group strands them in a remote Moroccan town, Richard and Susan (played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett respectively) are forced to trust their caretakers despite their differences. Understanding, Inarritu tells us, is forged not by speaking, but by listening to what is fundamentally similar underneath all our linguistic differences.

Much has been said about Rinko Kikuchi's stunning performance as Chieko, a deaf-mute Japanese youth whose mother's suicide has forced her to move in with her distant father. Much of "Babel" surrounds familial relations as a method of uniting characters in common experiences. Inarritu even alludes to economic/post-colonial divides by creating hope for the American and Japanese players while destroying the lives of Amelia (the Mexican caretaker of Richard and Susan's children) and of Yussef (the young Moroccan boy who shoots Susan) and his family. "Babel" is heavy and even burdensome, well-crafted and stunningly directed and acted, heart-wrenching and beautiful. If you don't buy that, at least believe me that it's worth seeing.

The Case of the Cranky Critic

I just finished Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson. I had hoped Emergence would go further than it did, but overall, I liked the book. Everything Bad was a completely different experience.

Before I go on, I want to say that I agree with Johnson's main point: TV, video games, and other visual media aren't inherently bad for us, and they aren't growing worse with time. I concur that popular media can make you smarter, and that they have a significant effect on human sociocultural growth. In all fairness, Johnson addresses a few of my complaints in his Afterword. None of that changes the fact that reading it was like pulling teeth. Aside from the hit-you-over-the-head-until-you-like-it tone and the (I'm sure unintentionally) snarky intonations of "indeed," "to be sure," "no doubt," and "to be certain" (not to mention incessent "I think," "I suspect," and "I imagine" phrases), I have two major criticisms, and it seems I'm not alone. Dana Stevens, also known as Slate's "Surfergirl" of pop culture, said this of an excerpt printed in the New York Times before the book's release:

“Not only does Johnson fail to account for the impact of the 16 minutes' worth of commercials that interrupt any given episode of, say, 24 (a show he singles out as particularly "nutritional"), but he breezily dismisses recent controversies about that program's representation of Muslim terrorists or its implicit endorsement of torture, preferring to concentrate on how the show's formal structure teaches us to "pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships." Wait a minute—isn't a fictional program's connection to real-life political events like torture and racial profiling one of the "social relationships" we should be paying attention to? 24 is the perfect example of a TV show that challenges its audience's cognitive faculties with intricate plotlines and rapid-fire information while actively discouraging them from thinking too much about the vigilante ethic it portrays. It's really good at teaching you to think … about future episodes of 24.

Johnson certainly has a point, and I do think visual media have the ability to push our cognitive boundaries...but "smart" and "good" are hardly synonymous. Heck, bombs have gotten "smarter" in the last half century. "Smarter" isn't "better" unless there's an accompanying interest in using those newly improved problem-solving skills to solve, say, the immensely complex social and environmental problems facing our world.

I'm with Stevens on the second point, too: Visual media may encourage us to seek out new challenges, but that's not always a good thing. Challenging ourselves to regularly use our problem-solving skills is one thing, but the addiction Johnson associates with constant challenges in video games is, well, addiction, and like any other it has the potential to seriously disrupt an otherwise well-organized life. If you're bored to tears by menial tasks, you'll likely have trouble starting out in the workforce, especially if you're also very good at higher-level cognitive skills. It's good to have those skills, but I'm not so sure it's good to require mental exercise at all times, largely because menial chores will always be necessary for society to function.

So I'm sorry to "Heroes" and "Smallville" for taking my Johnson-inspired frustrations out on you. Each showcases social commentary in its own way. Whether that commentary is always forward-thinking or agreeable to this particular critic is a different issue which I'll happily discuss in-depth later.