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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 10/6/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 14
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@avaya.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@avaya.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@avaya.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. My editorial on romance and selfish genes drew a response from
Dirk Ruiz. I thought his response and mine counter-response might
be of interest. (It also means there will be one less editorial I
have to write.) The following will be entirely his comments except
for my responses in square brackets.
Having spent four years in psych grad school having to put up with
evolutionary psychologists, I developed a strong aversion to this
brand of "theorizing". And so, I would like to present a rebuttal
to the evolutionary viewpoint, in bullet-list format:
[Interesting. I am willing to consider any brand of theorizing. I
probably theorize in many different brands. I don't even mind
mixing brands.]
++ Drawing conclusions from animals is dangerous: they're not us,
and we're not them. Pick a behavior, and you can find lots of
animals who do it that way, lots of animals who do it the opposite
way, and even more animals who never do it at all. Chimps or
Bonobos, which do we most resemble?
[What is the difference between psychology and introspection? In
introspection you look inward and find your own answers about
yourself. In psychology you draw conclusions from others,
conclusions that are dangerous because as you say "they're not us,
and we're not them." Everything you say about animals is true of
humans also. Animals raised in human society may have minds more
alien to us than any human mind, though I am not sure even that is
true. Humans can be very different. But in addition humans
probably are more likely to be intentionally deceptive. If you ask
"Chimps or Bonobos, which do we most resemble" I can return with
Arabs or Indians, whom do we most resemble?]
++ How in the hell do you objectively measure a dog's *happiness*??
Or any other animal behavior that supposedly supports a given
evolutionary viewpoint. These measurements rely on so much
interpretation that they are all but meaningless.
[I would say that if you really are having trouble telling when a
dog is happy or not you are not trying very hard. Dogs communicate
when they are happy or sad very well. Usually it is easier to tell
happiness with a dog than it is with humans. And yes, in both
cases there is a certain amount of interpretation. But I do not
accept an argument that our interpretation of dog emotion is
invalid just because it is a different species. That seems to me
to be on the same level as an argument that dogs don't have
emotions at all because they don't have souls.]
++ Evolution is a very blunt instrument. All these factors that
evolutionary theorists claim are important for the survival of the
species come together in one final decision: live or die. That
does *not* lend itself to selecting out subtle little traits here
and there. Evolutionary pressures impinge on the few traits that
really make a live-or-die difference in the environment. The rest
of the traits just kind of muddle along.
[Even there we disagree. First it is not a live or die decision;
it is a spectrum of fertility with high fertility at one end and
death at the other. And I would say that the Heike crabs, the ones
with the samurai faces on their backs, show how subtle evolution
can be. (In one area of Japan where a sea battle was fought,
fishermen throw back crabs that have what look like human faces on
their shells. Over the years in order to survive the crabs have
acquired very human looking faces on their shells. The more
human-looking the face, the more likely the crab to survive.)]
++ Evolution is not necessarily a gradual shaper, as so many
evolutionary theories seem to claim. Consider the bird's wing. Of
what use is 1/4 of a wing? 1/2 of a wing? Wouldn't the quarter-
winged bird have died out, the appendage being useless (if not
fatal) for flight?
[Your point is correct though your example is bad. Evolution can
be fast. Though even the gradualists do not say that there was
ever one-quarter or one-half a wing. It would have been a more
arm-like appendage that gradually became more wing-like. Hops
became glides and glides became flights as this was happening.]
++ Evolution does not preserve the BEST genes, but rather only
those genes that a) happen to be there at the time, and b)
satisfice the goal of letting the species as a whole exist in this
particular environment. ("Satisfice" here means that the genes
make do; they do not optimize.) If the environment changes, it
might well be bye-bye species! So much for "best".
[When you are a gene, having the characteristics that improve the
odds you get into the next generation is its own reward. If you do
not like the value judgement "best," fine, do not use it. Just say
"best suited to the environment."]
++ The "environment" in which we evolve is largely a social one, in
which we can help "weak" individuals survive long beyond their
"natural" lifetimes. Since social environments are complex
*changeable* responses to physical environments, existing social
circumstances, history, ideas, etc., I would claim the concept of
evolution becomes almost meaningless as a simple explanatory
principle.
[You are right that to a large extent we can compensate for an
individual's weakness. And it helps level the playing fields.
This comes down to the "nature and nurture" question. But there
are families in which genius runs. The Bachs and the Bernoulis are
examples from history. It seems very likely there is a strong
genetic component to the success of so many members of the family.]
++ This current style of pseudo-evolutionary theorizing
(evolutionary psychology, evolutionary sociology, what have you) is
not science; it is storytelling. You observe some phenomenon, and
then conclude that it's there because evolution somehow helped it
get there. So, off you go, looking for some kind of evolutionary
process (preferably one that is shrouded in the mists of time, so
that it cannot be verified) that will explain it. Since you cannot
verify the process, it's just a convincing-sounding story. I could
just as easily come up with another story, equally convincing.
E.g., people who respond to romantic stimuli are more likely to go
home and have sex, which means they produce more offspring, which
leads to their genes being propagated. The unromantic, by
contrast, fail to reproduce.
[Well, admittedly my theory is speculation. That is frequently the
point of this column, to look at different possibilities. To
create seed hypotheses. I had never heard of romanticism as being
a possible manifestation of genetic principles. To me just the
sheer glut of romantic stories in our literature begs a scientific
explanation. I suppose the kind of science fiction that I like
takes some phenomenon around us that has never really been
considered in scientific terms and looks for a scientific
explanation. This is the kind of thing that Nigel Kneale does. If
you look at how powerful evolution is in molding life. It takes
only a few years for moths to change color to adapt to their
environment. Then there are the Heike crabs that in a relatively
short period of time have obliged the locals by displaying samurai
faces on their shells. A force that powerful could have created
our romantic sensibility.]
[-dr and mrl]
===================================================================
2. BICENTENNIAL MAN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Isaac Asimov's story comes to the
screen with the best of intentions, but there
is just a little too much warmth and sweetness
for most adult audiences to fully appreciate
it. A robot who is already nearly perfect
struggles to become human. Robin Williams and
Embeth Davidtz star. Pleasant without being
satisfying. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to
+4).
In the year 2005 a father (Sam Neill) surprises his family with a
new robot (Robin Williams) whom his family dubs Andrew. But there
is more to Andrew than just Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics.
The laws make certain that Andrew is benevolent, but he is
considerably more. He has a streak of creativity and independent
thinking that supposedly robots do not have. Rather than being an
appliance, he has the rudiments of actually being human. The
family has two daughters. One who is simply called Little Miss
(Hallie Kate Eisenberg as a child and Embeth Davidtz as an adult)
immediately takes to Andrew while older daughter Lloyd immediately
wants to see Andrew discredited and destroyed. The father comes to
take a fatherly interest in Andrew. We see Andrew doing some very
human things like showing compassion for a spider and trying to
master the complexities of human humor.
Racial themes enter the story as a human woman comes to love Andrew
and he loves her in return, but Andrew is only a machine becoming
human. It is years before a real romantic relationship is possible
between him and a human. But robots are essentially immortal and
as the title implies, we see Andrew over the course of two hundred
years. This means even though it is a longer than average film,
131 minutes, it still covers superficially mostly only the more
important events of Andrew's life. It seems almost as soon as you
meet characters they are old and dying.
One thing the film does not handle very well is the view of society
during the passage of so much time. Change is coming to our
society at an accelerated rate. One need only look at the rate at
which our own society has changed in the last 40 years. Forced
with showing the changes in society over 200 years or ignoring
them, the producers have almost entirely had to steer clear. We
see minor and superficial changes, but not nearly the amount we
would expect. We are left with an uneasy feeling that society has
stagnated, but for some relatively small advances in the sciences
relevant to the story.
Even when Isaac Asimov's story "The Bicentennial Man" was first
published, it far from original. Asimov had been writing for years
about benevolent robots who were misunderstood. Ray Bradbury wrote
the story "I Sing the Body Electric," produced on TWILIGHT ZONE,
about a family getting a grandmotherly robot and learning to love
her. Asimov combined this and with some more complex themes for
his novel. However, the wish to become human and the slow
transition to fulfilling that wish was plundered from the novel and
used very publicly in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION with the
character Data. The viewer has agonized over Data's attempt to
learn to deliver humor and it seems unfair to make the viewer do it
again. That and much more of Data's difficult road to becoming
human is recapitulated in this film. Like STAR TREK, this film
never questions the smug assumption that being human is the highest
state of being. At its best BICENTENNIAL MAN holds up a mirror to
show us what it means to be human. But where it rings false the
writers fall back on Andrew being a robot. That makes its
observations undependable.
Some of the visuals are very good, but some are surprisingly
flawed. In particular the futuristic skylines are unconvincing.
If Andrew behaves too much like Data, he also looks a little too
much like C3PO. Kudos should, however, go to the design of the
robot makeup and mechanism. The faces maintain the look of metal
and still are expressive to what is perhaps an unrealistic level.
Not surprisingly, this is Robin Williams's film. Somehow his
attempts to be a normal human are touching but never as powerful as
Cliff Robertson is in the comparable film CHARLY. Sam Neill, after
this film and THE DISH, seems to be vying for the title of the
mellowest actor on the screen. Embeth Davidtz has a harder role
than Williams. If Williams does not seem quite right, well, he is
a robot. Davidtz is quite good as a human, which is harder. Young
Hallie Kate Eisenberg, known for Pepsi and Independent Film Channel
ads, is her usual sweet self falling a little short of being
cloying. Oliver Platt is always watchable. Chris Columbus
directed and previously directed Williams in MRS. DOUBTFIRE. James
Horner's score is unremarkable.
While this film does not have all the resonance that a film aimed
at an adult audience should have, it should be good for a young
adult audience. I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. SADE (a film review in bullet list form by Mark R. Leeper from
the Toronto International Film Festival):
Capsule: This is by no means the gore and
sadism festival that viewers may at first
expect. The Marquis de Sade is arrested and in
the hands of the Jacobins in the Terror after
the French Revolution who daily commit more
atrocities than in his fiction. De Sade is
presented as the one great romantic in a
festering world of evil. Rating: high +1
French language
- Film sets the tone at opening showing maggots feasting on dead
bodies
- The Marquis de Sade had been imprisoned for his writings, but
is being transferred to better surroundings at Convent at
Picpus.
- On way he sees a teenage girl in his coach and takes an
interest in her. Her parents have warned her to say away from
him. This piques her interest.
- Sade treated as special case among aristocrats. Arranged for
by his mistress sleeping with Fornier, a deputy of the new
government.
- Fornier is more of a sadist than Sade was.
- Sade tries to improve things at convent putting on a play.
- Slowly gets girl to want sexual fulfillment and ignore her
likely coming execution.
- Images of the terror mirror those of the Holocaust. Several
scenes of disturbing gore.
- Nudity and a little bit of sex, but the point of the film is
the brutality of Robespierre's government.
- Underscored with classical music of Poulenc, Fierenza,
harpsichord music
- Sound of fly used when viewer expects Sade to be working evil.
- Sade loves son, loves life
- Romanticist in brutal society
- Basically old ideas
- Daniel Auteuil (Sade) formerly of JEANNE DE FLORETTE, MANON OF
THE SPRING, UN COEUR EN HIVER (all films I love)
- Other libertines have been made heroes before in books and
film: Don Juan, Casanova, and Francis Dashwood
- Reduces Sade's philosophy to platitudes
[-mrl]
===================================================================
4. URBANIA (a film review in bullet list form by Mark R. Leeper
from the Toronto International Film Festival):
Capsule: This is a film that tries to do too
much and is ham-handed in most of what it
tries. In a sort of irritating bait and switch
it takes a poorly wrought revenge story set in
the gay community of some big city and dresses
it up comedy about urban myths. The main story
might have some power if told more
comprehensively but the mod-film editing and
serious pacing problems get in the way.
Rating: -1
- "Heard any good stories lately?" Question that begins URBANIA.
Don't expect it to raise your average.
- Most annoying film I have seen in a while. Murder in gay
community and jokes about urban myths poorly edited into
uneasy combination.
- Goes back and forth over same scene differently to show going
on in main character's mind, but leaves viewer confused about
what did happen
- Ridiculous that character who had been through such a violent
time would keep mixing in comic urban myths
- Fractured scenes from jerky MTV-style editing
- Telling is muddled
- Pacing way off with some scenes too fast, others dragging
interminably
- Off-putting look at gay community
- Jazz score and source music
- Homosexual kissing used for shock value. Regardless of sexual
orientation this much kissing is just dull and artless.
- Slow build to strong violence
- Gays leading seemingly pointless lives, shown only living for
sex, revenge, and little more
- Well meaning, but surely gays deserve a better cinematic
representation than this
- Central character Charley disintegrates
- Alan Cummins is only familiar actor
- Least convincing homeless man I can remember seeing in film
[-mrl]
===================================================================
5. THE GRIFTERS (a film review in bullet list form by Mark R.
Leeper from the Toronto International Film Festival):
Capsule: A particularly gruesome triangle of
two women fighting over the possession of a
young promising con man. One of the women is
his mother, an expert con on her own, who wants
her son out of the business. The other is a
young gifted con artist who wants him for her
partner. Rating: +2
- Three dishonest people, each pulling a scam
- Roy (John Cusack) is a promising grifter
- Myra (Annette Benning) is young and pretty and wants Roy as
partner
- Lily (Angelica Huston) is Roy's mother, 14 years older
- Lily gets away with it
- Younger two failing in small scams
- Lily and Myra hate each other from start
- Lily screws up badly
- Roy wants to stick to the short con, Lily and Myra prefer the
long con (more involved)
- Dark photography
- Torture scene
- Heavy use of filters
- Elmer Bernstein score now familiar
- Screenplay by Donald Westlake
- Story by Jim Thompson, crime novelist
- Unusual love triangle, two dangerous women love Roy
- Humorous hatred scenes between Myra and Lily
- Lily never says anything but to get some advantage
- Huston does not look young enough for role
- Pat Hingle in role, liking but having to discipline Lily
- John Cusack's best role, quite probably
- Benning not yet in her prime in 1990
[-mrl]
===================================================================
6. THE LEGEND OF RITA (DIE STILLE NACH DEM SCHUSS) (a film review
in bullet list form by Mark R. Leeper from the Toronto
International Film Festival):
Capsule: A Baader-Meinhof style German
terrorist flees West Germany and finds herself
hidden in East Germany where she must live a
like a normal East German. In this unstable
environment she tries to build a life. Rating:
+2
German language
- Baader-Meinhof style terrorist, West Germany in the 1970s
- Remembers exciting days of robbing banks, springing prisoners
- Wants to end government and end injustice
- Caught in East Germany but released as long as they can keep
track of her
- Agrees to tell officials when to go through East Germany
- Forms ties with government agent
- East German communists also against terror, do not really see
terrorists as allies
- Gang chased to East Germany, they want to go to Angola or
Mozambique, not knowing how they would stand out
- East Germany gives them new normal lives separately under
cover, like Terrorist Protection Program
- Working, see the society they idolized warts and all
- Forms deep friendship, Tatjana
- Was a terrorist more for excitement than belief
- East German life ambivalently shown
- Rita shown to be something of a fool
- Eventually wants common life she abhorred
- Pays tribute to her idealism, but wrong-headed
- Bibiana Beglau is very good as Rita
- Director Volker Schlondorff of THE TIN DRUM, SWANN IN LOVE,
THE HANDMAID'S TALE, PALMETTO
[-mrl]
===================================================================
7. TO DIE (OR NOT) (a film review in bullet list form by Mark R.
Leeper from the Toronto International Film Festival):
Capsule: A TV writer tells six stories of
untimely deaths. Then circumstances cause him
to reconsider his morbidity and the stories
change accordingly. This is a gimmick film
that is supposedly telling us something about
death. The message, however, is mostly lost
and the gimmick is not very interesting.
Rating: 0
Catalan language
- Writer with very talkative wife tells stories planned, all
ending in death
- Drug addict and overdoes
- Mother and choking child
- Man in hospital with nurse
- Woman on phone
- Police hitting motorcyclist
- Assassin
- After discussing with wife stories seen differently and
revises to end in life
- Monochrome death stories, color for life stories
- Camera jerky and always at odd angles in death stories, normal
in life stories
- Alternate futures
- Life stories in reverse order
- Individual stories thin
- Gimmick
- Does not really develop characters
- Director thought saying something special about death but does
not convey
- Ending seems rushed, though that makes sense in context
- Tough film to review without giving too much away
- Point is not made until late in film
- Writer/Director Ventura Pons actually shot and thought dead in
Mexico, film from that experience
[-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@avaya.com
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
-- H. L. Mencken