THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/01/02 -- Vol. 21, No. 18
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
Correction
Radio Show on Lord of the Rings
Tuber Intelligence? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Brooklyn Bridge (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
KEN PARK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
MAN WITHOUT A PAST (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
Member David Goldfarb sends some mail to keep me honest:
"You quote Damon Knight's definition of SF as being, 'Science
fiction is what I point to when I say, This is science fiction.'
This is a common misquote, but it's wrong -- and from what I've
heard, Knight himself strongly objected to that phrasing. What
he actually said was, "Science fiction is what we point to when
we say it" -- the difference between first person singular and
first person plural is subtle but crucial.
"What Knight *meant* by that was that science fiction, like all
genres, is a fuzzy collection of tropes, settings, trappings,
and modes. There is no way to obtain a single totalizing
definition; rather, we each tell if something is SF by comparing
it to the models in our heads of what is SFnal and seeing if it
has enough family resemblance." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Radio Show on Lord of the Rings
Public Radio International's "Sound & Spirit" radio show (with
Ellen Kushner) will feature music and myth inspired by Tolkien's
"Lord of the Rings." Check http://www.wgbh.org/pri/spirit for
stations and schedules near you. (There is no webcast. If anyone
in New Jersey is taping it, please let us know, as we will be busy
being Guests of Honor at Windycon that weekend.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Tuber Intelligence? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I don't know if you ever gave much thought to the intelligence
of a potato. I cannot say it has ever impressed me much. I
just think of the interior of the potato as being a harder
version of what I get in a mashed or baked potato. You burn the
outside in oils and you get a French fry. It is more or less
inert matter that is somewhat tasty. Then I took a potato to
cook and found it had sprouted roots. That got me thinking
about a potato itself. That root is made of stuff that was
inside the potato last week. At that time it was distinctly not
root-like. Something in the potato activated--turned on. It is
not inert matter at all. It is pre-programmed with a kind of
intelligence. You take a human intelligence organ, a brain.
(This may be slightly gross, but to make a point.) Take a human
intelligence organ and mash it up it will also seem like an
inert paste. Now I have to say it kind of bothers me to eat a
potato and just chew up that biological programming. I suppose
it is better than eating a chicken or a steak. But if you think
too much you cannot eat anything animal or vegetable. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Brooklyn Bridge (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Because New York City is really a World City, its landmarks have
really become world landmarks. The city has several of these
landmarks that are familiar worldwide. I have been to most in the
twenty-four years I have lived near the city.
There are two great classic wonders in the city that are both
quintessential examples of the fusion of art and of engineering.
Each was built in controversy and each was victorious, capturing
the imagination of the publics of their respective times. One is
the Empire State Building. The other is the Brooklyn Bridge. I
have been to the Empire State Building. I had never crossed the
Brooklyn Bridge, even in a car. I determined a year ago that when
the weather was right, Evelyn and I would walk from Manhattan to
Brooklyn and back again on this majestic old bridge. And that was
what we did one Sunday morning in early October. Well, sort of.
Our plan was to drive to the New York City Hall and park and walk
over the bridge. We had, however, reckoned without the peculiar
signage and traffic patterns of Manhattan. New York City would
like to discourage people from bringing their cars into the city.
They do this by playing with the tolls sometimes. But that is not
going to have a whole lot of effect. If people are willing to
brave the traffic and the bad signs, a little toll is not going to
be discouraging.
One minute we were driving by City Hall looking for a place to
park, the next we were on the bridge itself. Okay, so we would
walk toward Manhattan first, and then back.
Looking for a place to park, Brooklyn looks a lot like an
extension of Manhattan, which is essentially what the Brooklyn
Bridge intended to make it. I guess in my mind's eye I pictured
something more nostalgic, perhaps with Ebbett's Field in the
background and some Dodgers running around. Of course, I know it
isn't really like that any more and I have been in Brooklyn, but
somehow near the bridge it seems like it should be that way. It
isn't.
The Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River. That is a misnomer in
itself. The East River is not a river and neither is the Hudson.
The East River is really a tidal straight and the Hudson south of
Albany is an estuary. But to a New Yorker this is hairsplitting.
The bridge is 3461 feet long, rising 133 feet high over river from
the car deck. To give pedestrians a better view, they have their
walkway something like twenty feet higher than the two separated
roadbeds. The problem is that are crosspieces above the two
roadways and they are high enough that they block much of the
pedestrian view, at least of the water. Don't worry, there is
still enough to see.
In a way when you are walking you see the water directly below the
bridge. The walkway is made of wooden beams with eighth inch gaps
between them. Standing still and looking down you see very little
of what is below the beams you are standing on. Not even enough
to even make out if you are over water or land. But as you walk
looking down, changing your angle to the gaps, they sweep by and
reveal different lines of the image of what is below the bridge.
It works like a TV screen scanning lines that your mind, using
persistence of vision, integrate into a whole picture. So one
gets a view of the water beneath and of the Manhattan skyline.
But the view is only one of three very different elements
contributing to the beauty of this bridge. The gothic towers with
their cathedral arches also contribute to the beauty. At the time
they were built, they were higher than any towers in Manhattan.
But in those days functionality was not everything. Style was
important also. These columns have Gothic cathedral-like arches.
There isn't as much Gothic design as you would find in a good
cathedral. There is only just enough to give it a Gothic feel.
But ironically, neither of these elements adds so much to the
majestic view as the skein of cables. Steel cables are usually
not a medium for great beauty, but engineering follows the laws of
physics. Physics follows the laws of mathematics. Nature says
that the two major cables will hang in three perfect catenary
curves. Catenary curves are similar to parabolas and hanging
ropes and chains hang in catenary curves. Down from these cables
hang a network of smaller cables etching perfect mathematical
curved surfaces as they support the roadway. This is not done
because it looks nice that way. The physics dictates the surface
as it is in turn demanded by the mathematics. Just as the physics
of soap bubbles dictate beautiful mathematical minimal surface
forms. The art of the bridge is a fusion of old gothic forms of
the towers with timeless mathematical elegance.
The pleasure of walking the bridge is in large part really the joy
of walking so close to the immense planar curves whose simple
mathematical perfection is forged by the physics. Mathematics has
beauty and everything else inherits the beauty of the math. The
three kinds of beauty come at the walker from three different
realms. You have the beauty of the nature. You have the beauty
of the stonework which somehow is built on top of nature. And you
have the beauty of the mathematics which underlies even nature.
Cables were where it all began. They are the heart of the bridge.
The bridge designer was John A. Roebling who had invented and made
his fortune from "steel rope," what we would call cable. Roebling
was also the major manufacturer of this steel rope and was he was
the leading expert on practical applications of cable. However,
part of the contract Roebling made for building a bridge using
cable was that he would not use his own company's cable. When the
cable he had contracted for proved to be brittle and unusable,
Roebling's company supplied the cable that was actually used. And
cable is really where the bridge derives its beauty. John
Roebling did not live to see the bridge even started. He had a
foot crushed in a bridge planning related accident and it led to
his death. His son Washington Roebling continued in his stead.
It is not hard to design a tower in water. It is not hard to
design a roadway, but how does one get the towers to support a
roadway? Most bridges to this point were short arches, which were
limited in length. Some worked by the stiffness of the roadway,
like putting a board across, and these were even more limited in
length. Then there were rope bridges that hung from the sides.
They all depended heavily on support coming from the two ends.
With the new invention of cable you could make a bridge that was
not really dependent on the two ends for support. The Brooklyn
bridge could have been built on flat ground and supported a
roadway hundreds of feet above the ground because of the use of
cable. In incompressibility of the towers pushes up and holds the
structure up. The incompressibility of the roadway keeps the ends
out. The suspension cables are caught in a tug of war between the
towers pushing up, the roadway pushing out toward the ends, and
gravity pulling down. The smallest energy curve is the catenary
and the lessor cables curve-stitch to that boundary. The roadbed
is hung from the two towers sort of like a painting with a wire in
back is hung from two nails on a wall. When you hang a picture
that way, the wire really hangs in three catenaries. But the
weight of the wire is small so the segments look more like
straight lines.
But as we walked across the bridge, we realized what a miracle it
must have been like. Before the bridge it was a long, long
commute to go from New York City to Brooklyn. I don't know how
long, but I suspect in those days it might have been hours. On
the day we went we walked from Brooklyn to the heart of New York
City in about an hour (rubber-necking). In Manhattan we had a
nice Vietnamese lunch, shopped a bit and looked at the decoration
inside the Woolworth Building. Then we walked back to Brooklyn.
The walk back took about half an hour and had we set our mind to
it we could have done it in twenty minutes. On foot.
Construction was started in 1870 and was completed in 1883,
opening on May 24 of that year. Getting into Manhattan so quickly
must have been like teleporting in those days. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The title tells more than expected. A man with amnesia
tries to get along in a world that depends on people's memory.
The accent is not on piecing together the past, it is on how he
survives without a memory of the past. Perhaps his new life is
better than the old. In spite of a brutal mugging this becomes
one of Aki Kaurismaki's most pleasant films. Rating: 6 (0 to
10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
A man gets off a train, rests in a park, and is brutally mugged.
In the hospital he dies. Then a few minutes later he comes back
to life but with no memory of his past. He must start his life
anew in a society that is not geared to someone who cannot
identify himself. THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST was written and
directed by Aki Kaurismaki, perhaps the best-known name in
Finnish film. Frequently Finnish films are bred of the moods
that seem caused by winter light deprivation. In THE MAN
WITHOUT A PAST once the initial mugging is over, the tone is
mostly upbeat and even whimsical as the man puts together a new
life. The title tells much of the premise of the film. It is
not so much piecing together his past and just looking at how a
man functions without benefit of a past. With no past he cannot
identify who he is. He cannot get credit. Nobody knows if they
can trust him. He knows a little about his previous self but
pieces together that he was a laborer who worked with his hands.
He finds he has skills, particularly welding that he must have
learned at some point from his previous self. The film has sort
of echoes of BAGDAD CAFE where a stranger brings a different
attitude and viewpoint to the people she meets.
First the man (the credits call him M) must find a place to
live. He is shown an abandoned storage container, possibly for
freight, but to him it is a new home. He is living in trash,
but is able to form camaraderie with his neighbors. He has to
find ways to get food and cook it. So he will have food he
plants potatoes and steals electricity.
M finds the charity of a local Salvation Army troop. Their band
plays spiritual and uplifting music that interests nobody. M
convinces them to try a bit of rock music and it transforms the
whole purpose of the band. With one woman he forms a close
bond. M is able to make the best of his circumstances and find
a positive side while others around him are finding life
grimmer. The theme is really rebirth and finding a place to fit
into the world when you have lost your own. At the center is
the search for dignity and confidence in the midst of
undignified circumstance. This film makes it look almost easy
and rewarding, which is surprisingly optimistic for a Finnish
film.
Kaurismaki tends to linger on scenes slowing the pace of the
story much in the style of Jim Jarmasch. Still this is one of
Kaurismaki's more pleasant and likeable films. The spirit is
upbeat and whimsical rather than brooding. It almost is of the
style of Frank Capra. I rate THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST a 6 on the
0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: KEN PARK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Not the most uplifting film I have ever seen. From
the director of KIDS comes another story, or set of stories, of
teens growing up in a permissive society without direction or
values. The film is fascinating, but sort of like watching a
road accident. Rating: 5 (0 to 10), high 0 (-4 to +4)
From co-directors and co-cinematographers Larry Clark, the
director of KIDS, and novice director Ed Lachman comes a film
like KIDS set in a more suburban setting. KEN PARK is pretty
nihilistic stuff. It is a view of sixteen-year-olds (or about
that) growing with no values beyond hedonism. It is also very
frank and explicit stuff.
The film takes place in the suburban town of Visalia, California
and follows four friends, Shawn, Claude, Peaches, and Tate.
Shawn (James Bullard) has been seduced by his girlfriend's
attractive mother. She uses him as a sex toy and he enjoys
comparing sex with mother and daughter. Claude (Stephen Jasso)
is bullied and accused of being gay by his bully of a father.
Peaches (Tiffany Limos) is kept on what seems like a short leash
by her Christian fundamentalist father, but she still manages a
very active sex life. Tate (James Ransone) is just weird. He
is being raised by grandparents whom he makes no secret of
loathing by cussing them out explicitly to their faces. The
fifth musketeer is the title character Ken Park who shoots
himself through the head in the first sequence of the film.
Supposedly everything that happens in KEN PARK is taken from a
true incidents. However, this appears to be a sort of High
School Sodom concentrate. The director, who presented the film
at the Toronto Festival was quick to say that all the actors
engaging in sex were over eighteen, but they look younger and
the film is very explicit. Very, very explicit. Many of the
actors in the film are first-time performers whom the directors
found in a skateboard park in Visalia. And were naturals before
the camera.
There could be said to be three or four story threads. One
could question whether they are really stories since they do not
necessarily conclude. Each is more a portrait or a situation.
The threads are not particularly good as narratives. Even if
the stories are all based on real incidents their density, all
happening at the same time to small group of friends, seems
unlikely. Three or four stories reach a climax in one night.
They include murder, incest, pederasty, and a couple things not
in my thesaurus. Not all films based on true incidents are
necessarily realistic. If this is a realistic portrait of youth
today we are all in trouble.
Whether this film has any real message or is just an exercise in
bleak nihilism leavened with teenage pornography is a moot
point. The film is intended to shock and drew mostly a younger
audience anxious to be shocked. I rate KEN PARK a 5 on the 0 to
10 scale and a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. Whether or not KEN
PARK is pornographic is a question not of the facts but of
interpretation. The film features not simply nudity but male
masturbation, cunilingus, and urination. Cheers. [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
It is better to deserve honors and not have them
than to have them and not to deserve them.
-- Mark Twain
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