Adam-Troy Castro

Writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Stories About Yams.

 

“Have A Nice Day” Considered As Assault

Posted on July 10th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

I’m holding the clipboard, clearly marked REGISTER TO VOTE.

The guy comes over and says, “For what party?”

I say, “For any party.”

“Really?”

“Yes. By law I am required to account for every form and submit your application exactly the same way, whether you want to be Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, or what have you. Any party that’s on the ballot, I can register you for it.”

“But who are you working for?”

“I have a personal party affiliation, but right now I am registering anybody who wants to register.”

“What organization?”

“Reiterating that what I’m doing today favors no party, I am working for the Florida Democratic Party.”

“A-HA! I KNEW IT! YOU’RE WORKING FOR THAT THIEVING C***!”

“Actually, no, she’s not even officially nominated yet. If you want to register as a Republican, I can help you.”

“I’M ALREADY REGISTERED AND VOTING FOR TRUMP! I CAN’T BELIEVE ANYBODY’S OUT HERE COLLECTING SIGNATURES FOR THAT TRAITOROUS BITCH! YOU MUST BE CRAZY! F— YOU AND YOU SECRET AGENDA!”

(As he storms away) “Have a nice day.”

(Believe it or not, he comes storming back) “WHAT’S THAT? HAVE A NICE DAY? WHO THE F— ARE YOU TO TELL ME TO HAVE A NICE DAY! WHAT IF I TOLD YOU IT’S NOT YOUR F—ING BUSINESS WHAT KIND OF DAY I HAVE?”

“Then, sir, I would tell you to feel free to have the kind of day you seem to prefer.”

He storms again, I wipe the spittle off my cheeks, and continue to offer registration to anyone who passes.

Tags: , , , , , | Category Politics

Why George Takei, Of All People, Is Now Wrong about Hikaru Sulu

Posted on July 8th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

To everybody’s surprise, George Takei is not happy that the new theatrical STAR TREK movie will establish Sulu, once and for all, as gay.

Told about this a year ago, he asked them to please establish a new gay character instead.

 

What this says to me is that we are all afflicted by head canon. For fifty years he had a mental image of his life’s central fictional character as being a collection of certain traits, and now he finds that the character must possess one he never considered. He thinks it’s a betrayal of the character’s history, over the past fifty years; never mind that the character on screen has never had a love interest, and only expressed interest in a woman when he was out of his mind and harassing Uhura as an imagined D’Artagnan.

 

George is absolutely right to have his preferences, ironic as they are. And I absolutely understand why he takes it so seriously. For an actor to do his job well, the role must hijack some of his gray matter, becoming a virtual person inside the real one; a person who may be evicted when the role goes away and another one must be prepared for. Part of George Takei has been Hikaru Sulu for decades; it is likely impossible, and to a large degree undesirable, for the scrutable helmsman he imagined to be evicted, in any real way, now. This is why he famously took a genuine, personal pride in the revelations over the years that Sulu’s first name (never mentioned on the original series) was officially Hikaru, or that he had advanced in his career to become Captain in the Excelsior, or that he had a daughter who also joined Starfleet. This is why Jimmy Doohan felt violated when the screenplay of a late STAR TREK film required Scotty to do a slapstick head-bonk in the corridor. The actors know the difference between reality and fantasy, but characters that near and dear to their hearts blur that line mightily, and this is for the most part a good thing.

However, he’s wrong on this, and this is why.

 

His proposed alternative, the introduction of a new gay character, does not work.

Imagine we meet a new guy named Lieutenant Whatever who is clumsily, pointedly introduced as gay. This character will be entering an ensemble of characters who have been honed over decades. He will appear in a story driven, as all New Trek is, by nonstop action, which means that the story will likely pause to say, okay, here’s this guy, and that this will then fade into the background, as more important, explodey stuff takes the forefront. What are the odds that he will not last, as a character? That he will be as memorable as Franklin, the black kid belatedly introduced to PEANUTS, whose one personality trait against that gallery of marvelous eccentrics was that he was The Black Kid? Seriously, the motive behind creating Franklin was an excellent one; the execution, delivery of a character who had no other organic reason to be there, was miserable.

Now imagine you could reboot PEANUTS — itself a terrible idea, but imagine you could — and make Linus black.

Some will cry, “Blasphemy!”

But can any of you think of any reasons why that should not be so? Linus is great. He’s a neurotic intellectual, a believer in cult religions, a fool in some ways and a sage in others: really, the best friend that Charlie Brown, a kid who considers himself friendless, could possibly have. And he’s a human being with his own set of concerns and problems. He doesn’t just exist to serve the white protagonist. He would be a guy with his own personal set of issues. A black Linus would be beautiful. So would a black Schroeder. (Indeed, the only cast PEANUTS cast member I would balk at providing this racial shift is Pig Pen, for obvious reasons.)

Returning to Hikaru Sulu: this heroic and dedicated man, this proud father, this good friend, this trained helmsman, this eccentric hobbyist, this great fencer: declaring as gay would not be inconsistent with any of that.

Plus the official declaration has the important and necessary subtext for those who doubt: as much as you think you’re repelled by gay people, you likely know and treasure some, whether you know it or not.

The corollary of “We’re Here, We’re Queer,” is “The Queer are Already Here, Just Look.”

You know some. You’ve loved this guy for fifty years. Finding out that he goes home to a man and not a woman doesn’t erase everything he’s already meant to you.

It’s more powerful, more real, more important, if it’s someone we already know.

It means more if it’s someone we already know.

I’m not in George Takei’s head, but he’s also likely a little self-conscious about the way that the re-imagination of Hikaru Sulu as gay seems to have as much to say about his own cultural footprint as it does about the character. It’s his life, bleeding into a fictional life. And yes, if George Takei were not such a prominent gay man, and Hikaru Sulu up until now such a cypher away from the helm, this would likely never have happened. But George Takei is a prominent gay man, one who has made a disproportionate difference in the national perception of gay men. And George Takei is now, separate from the character he’s portrayed off and on, for so long, beloved. (I cheerfully confess, I’m second to none.) So this reflects Takei’s influence, and the regard the current creators have for him. It’s life feeding back into art, which is the way art is supposed to work — and frankly, I’m willing to take it, and ignore whatever brief indications to the contrary might appear in this tie-in novel, or that one.  It’s a good thing.

In the days to come we will hear from a number of fans barking — verb very much deliberate — that this is a horrible manifestation of political correctness on the part of social justice warriors, raping their childhoods. I don’t want to hear from any of them.  The only person with anything negative to say about this, whose opinion I care about, is George Takei. And while I believe he’s wrong, I believe that’s because he’s so close to it, so invested in the work he’s done that he’s for the moment missing what the landmark has to say about the terrain. It may be a while before this good and brave man sees what the re-invention portends and what it has to say, for all of us. It may indeed be a while before he’s no longer sputtering, “But that’s never been the way I –”

And that’s okay.

Until then, I intend to be proud for him.

 

Tags: , , , , , | Category Commentary, Life Wisdom, Movies, Science Fiction

Sorry, Legion of Offended. There’s No Unfit Subject for Humor.

Posted on June 19th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

Originally published on Facebook 20 June 2013.

The biggest and most fallacious enemy of humor is that certain subjects are too serious to be appropriate targets for it. That there’s a list of such subjects. A fuckin’-ass LONG list.

Example: the suffering of burn victims is no fit subject for humor.

Response: Watch RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP. He will tell you what it felt like to be sponge-bathed when covered with horrific burns and you will laugh out loud.

Point: Between Murder and Rape, Murder is clearly the more serious crime. Am I right? This is no slight against rape. Murder is WORSE. And multiple murder is heinous.

Response: Any number of haunted-house comedies where bodies turn up in closets. Or, specifically, the absolutely hilarious ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.

Human Grief is not funny. And yet I recall any number of comedy skits where funerals went disastrously awry. Second City has one where the guy died by drowning in a gallon tub of baked beans and the mourners sit there politely and try without success to refrain from giggling at every reference to it.

The Holocaust is not funny. Honestly not funny.

I have heard drop-dead funny Holocaust jokes. Some of them from survivors. Who exchanged them in the camps, for crying out loud. (None come to mind right now, but I recall them and know they exist; and the point is never to yok at those silly, dying Jews; it is to find humor in other bits of behavior surrounding an unspeakable moment in history.) (I omit the several Holocaust comedies that were made in one year a while back, of which none struck me as advancing the idea that the Holocaust itself was funny; but that the behavior of human beings in unspeakable circumstances could be. And then there’s THE GREAT DICTATOR and TO BE OR NOT TO BE, neither of which knew that the Holocaust was a Holocaust but *did* know that the Nazis were killing people for being Jews, and used the human response to that for hilarity.)

Nuclear War isn’t funny. Oh, wait. DR. STRANGELOVE.

I was once told that homelessness is never funny.

Evidently, the person doing the telling had never seen Charlie Chaplin.

Now, I do happen to agree that the suffering of rape victims should not be made light of. And yet I have heard rape jokes that were honestly funny, and a number that were actually illuminating.

What do you think Harpo Marx is doing, really, when he chases pretty ladies up and down the decks of a ship? What is his character after? Does anybody actually NOT realize that in the real world this is a sexual assault? Does anybody really contend that what he’s doing is the real world?

Ringo Starr made a largely awful movie called CAVEMAN where his lust-driven character, who occupies the lowest rung on his tribe’s social ladder, attempts to molest a woman while she’s asleep. In fact, he is so inept about it — and her various sleepy movements so violent — that she beats the crap out of him. It was the few funny bits in a largely dreary mess. And yet, does anybody not realize that he was attempting a rape? The movie was widely criticized for glorifying rape, but no rape took place; nor did the character experience any glory from it.

I have even heard a couple of rape jokes that were appeals to absurdity. Years ago comedian Rick Ducommon convulsed me with this one.

“Did you hear about the passenger jet that fell ten miles and then pulled out of it less than a thousand feet above the ocean?

“They were falling, thinking they were all gonna die, for TEN MINUTES.

“That’s scary shit, man. And it’s my worst fear, because I’m ever on a plane and that kind of thing happens, SOMETHING’s getting fucked.

“And then you DON’T crash?

(Very sheepish look). “Sorry, ma’am. Apologize to your grandchildren for me.”

NOBODY took offense at the joke. It was a rape joke but it was less about the horror of rape than poor impulse control and the inadequacy of the apology.

One of the problems with such emotionally sensitive subjects is that you have to be personally very aware of what point your joke makes; such as whether it targets the victim, or (worse) suggests the crime for people (either bitch women or asshole men) who “deserve it.” What comedian Daniel Tosh did that was so offensive was respond to a female audience member who objected to a joke about rape, by jokingly suggesting that she should be raped herself. THAT was a terribly ugly moment. THAT is the kind of humor all too prevalent in stand-up clubs, where comedians often derive comic energy from their own aggression, and that aggression can take the form of the ritual verbal mounting of their targets. In the absolute worst examples, the result can be winking at rape. Or suggesting that such a person should be raped. THAT is objectionable and that is wrong.

This is my thesis: NOTHING is ultimately off the table for humor. NOTHING. Not rape, not murder, not people in wheelchairs, not people in deathbeds, not AIDS, not horrific crime, not catastrophes that kill thousands of people. NOTHING. EVER. PERIOD.

By definition, it is humor’s job to help us deal with upsetting shit. All that happens when a subject gets more emotionally wrought is that the target that renders humor defensible gets smaller and harder to hit. Anything outside that bullseye is either unfunny or more offensive than funny. But blanket rules about the things that should never, ever, ever be laughed at — if we start making that list, I promise you that by the time we were done, nothing would be on it but LOLcats.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Category Commentary, Humor, Life Wisdom, Writing

 
 
 

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