Heroes 2008: Season III Close-up Part I

Heroes continues to be…well, it continues to be, that’s the thing. It’s a show designed to keep you coming back for more, and that’s a good formula for any show. However, this is season 3, and we’re still going around the barn about what’s going to happen. Theories about what’s going to happen abound, as in one theory for every man, woman and child in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Hong Kong. Indeed, it’s a global kind of show with zippy action and multiple story lines. This also keeps it all interesting. You have to keep it interesting if you don’t really come to any concrete conclusion for awhile.

Our little group that meets on Monday nights quickly dwindled to only 5 of us, all of us sitting around and watching the weekly ongoing mystery adventure on the 61” Plasma screen in the ETC, most of us snacking and surfing. Me, I play Mute Man. My super power is the ability to anticipate when the commercials come and go with accuracy and hit the mute button on the remote for the amp so we don’t have to listen to those continuing useless arguments between PC Guy and Mac, and the benefits of Cialis. We hold some of the most profound and sacred kind of conversations about things between us during those muted commercials. They are usually laced with or begin with words like “that was not believable” or, “wow, that was a twist”.

This season does seem to be turning things upside down. Syler is loose and under orders to cooperate with HRG, and failed his first test, so he had to go back in a cell and put his prison garb back on. He voluntarily does so, it seems, like some kind of rehab for habitual murderers, hmmm. Someone seems bent on the idea that he can be reformed, healed, fixed. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Dr. Suresh seems to be completely turned around, so much so that he’s now got super powers that appear to be turning him into a fly or something, who-knows-what. The formula finally comes out of the safe in a comic moment when Sulu, ah hem, George Takai comes back on the screen for his son’s benefit and tells him, “I told you not to open the safe.” That was a good comic moment.

So theories about what’s going to happen are everywhere. But my theory, as you know if you read my other rambling entries on this show, is not about what is going to happen, but what the show is about. Now THAT I CAN respond to. My original theory still holds good water. I’ve always said that the underlying meaning to this story is all about genetics, and the dangers of genetic manipulation. Still true. But a dear colleague brought up a very important distinction. Does the writer believe in a dystopia, or a utopia with regard to the outcome? I went with utopia as a first response. I was believing that Tim Kring and others involved in writing under him, are on a course that must say, inevitably, that messing around with genes can be great as long as it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. That would preclude any involvement in experiments by those who want to control the formula and the results for selfish gain. The principles involved in this process are willing to accept losses to mankind as well, it seems, in order to get this job done. We just still don’t know which side the “company”, HRG, Mrs. Petrelli, and others, are really on. The main reason for this continual march of decisions between good and evil is helping to make the case for an ethical-based society, the hallmark of most humanist visions and utopias; people making choices to live in harmony. So we must dispense with all those things which hold us back from evolving into the ideal; violence, greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, prejudice, ethnocentrism, etc.; healing Syler, like I said I would come back to. But here is the problem: Mankind is not ready for a mass-distribution of the formula that will fast-evolve us into the ideal mankind. Genetic tricks and hoops and jumps through chemical changes must first be worked out to make it all happen. Suresh’s dream will ultimately crash under the weight of human flaws without a revamp of what amounts to ethnic cleansing. So we’re back to Nazi Germany again. In the end, it seems it can only be dystopic, and we must decide to do away with the super powers and live with us just the way we are.

God is now firmly in the mix. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with that. Will the show allow the existence of a real God? Will God be relegated to the imaginary subconscious, controlled by guilt? Will he/she be created in our image? With the return of Linderman as a ghost that only Nathan Petrelli can see, and Nathan’s subsequent conversion back to his religious roots, praying now on a regular basis, this should be an interesting twist.

But as I said at the beginning of this review, we’ll just have to keep watching to see if these things come true. And if I’m right about the show, we still will not know for some time. Keeping in that spirit, I will write more details about my personal theory on the genetics theme and provide some evidence from the show itself…next week that is, when I write part II of this review. Thanks for tuning in.

Ben Stein for President

This title may be somewhat misleading in that it’s really not about Ben Stein running for president, because he’s not. But as far as I’m concerned, IMHO, after seeing his movie “Expelled”, he could. I am seriously thinking of writing him in, just so someone can be said to have done that. Somehow I believe I would not be alone.

The Movie: It has quite a few great points. Ben’s movie is at once funny, brilliantly written, wonderfully edited, with just the right amount of pathos and humor. It was very well balanced. It is a documentary style, and if you know me, you know I don’t even believe in documentaries. There is no such thing as a true documentary. If you were in my “Wag the Dog” class a couple of years ago you would remember that as a keystone to understanding the material of the class. Documentaries don’t exist because it is impossible to turn on a camera without having a point of view. Instead, what we have is a documentary STYLE, and there are certain characteristics of that style that place it in that category. But all films have a point of view, and the truly artful filmmaker in the documentary style will craft a work that demonstrates their point of view in such a fashion that will completely convince us of that point of view, and challenge opposing notions. This is done via the Interview, the reality shot (or cinematography that comes from the “live” event), the structure of opposites which places opposing material side by side for what appear to be glaringly different comparisons, and appropriate music and sound that is not obtrusive or overly dramatic or draws attention to itself, and matches the subject matter. Expelled meets all of these qualifications.

Although it employs artfully persuasive tactics, I don’t know how anyone could possibly conclude that this movie was anything but fair. Here before our eyes and ears are the words and representations of BOTH sides of an issue; the issue of freedom of speech, and the squelching of that freedom by the bureaucracy of the official Scientific establishment, protecting their multi-billion dollar industry. Expelled clearly and succinctly draws the picture for us of the situation that we face in our particular culture of the impending loss of our freedom due to the overwhelming presence of the staunch belief in Darwinism, not just as a worldview, but as policy and law. One particularly astute observation by the representation of the scientific community in Poland stated that the problems we face in the US over the issues in science is directly because of the representation that science has in our legal and political structures. The point is taken to the extreme near the 2/3 crux of the film (where all great filmic stories take on their most powerfully prominent moments of truth) when we visit the results of Darwinistic thought in the remnants of Nazi Germany. The most powerful moment in the film, I thought, was after that whole sequence.

Ben Stein is visiting the large shrine and museum of Darwin’s thoughts and writings, called Down House, and is facing the seated statue of Darwin at its entrance, staring Charles in his stony face, and there is silence. Very powerful, and compelling us to draw the conclusions for ourselves of the “origin” of his thinking, and where it might lead us to if allowed to go unchecked by the freedom to investigate as we please, speak as we please, and in the words of one scientist interviewed, “..follow the evidence wherever it may lead us”.

There could be no more perfect comparative metaphor than that of the Berlin Wall, as used by Stein in this film. The two different sides of this issue are truly at that great of a distance from one another, yet also in close proximity, and the results of the division are showing themselves to be exactly the same. I believe what Stein is attempting to take on here is not so much the “proof” (such a scientific word in itself) of the legitimacy of the particular claims of Intelligent Design theory or its constituents, or Creationism, as he is simply pointing out the dangers of the persecution and hostility towards those who openly investigate ID, site ID scientific-based research or conclusions, or espouse ID-ology as part of the basis for their work. Ben Stein is clearly on solid ground in his understanding and portrayal of the particular American situation within our scientific policy and community, and potential effects that it has on not only our decisions regarding the legal treatment of professors or the inclusion of alternative ideas in the classroom, but is striking right at the heart of who we are as a people and a nation; a nation founded on the ideas of freedom, and what taking those basic freedoms away could mean.

Ben Stein for president? Maybe he’ll read my blog and consider it. He would do much better than Michael Moore, I’m sure.

SC

I'm away for awhile. I'm writing a novel. Steeped up into it. No going back now. No direction home. Trying to set the night on fire. Breaking on through to the other side.

There's just so many hours in the day, and right now there are none for writing a blog.

I have movie reviews and comments on culture here from days gone past, if you'd like to read them. That would be swell. But for now, I must be off.

That's what my forehead tells me as well, for trying to write a novel....I must be off.

I'll be back, God willing.