ClownCarBlog.com

The Sharp Stick of Fun Pointed at Ye

Ahhh, sweet irony.

Fuzzbucket

Just in case anyone thought I was making this stuff up, I present to you ...

Fuzzbucket!

I Will NOT Pay a Lot for This Chihuahua!

Wow ... I really don't know what to say to this one:

Woman uses dead Chihuahua as weapon
A St. Peters woman answered her door early Wednesday morning and was hit over the head with a dead dog.

Lisa L. Hopfer, 33, of Wentzville, allegedly forced her way into the St. Peters woman's home and attacked the victim with a dead Chihuahua puppy.

Police reported Hopfer bought the puppy from the victim after the victim's Chihuahua had unexpectedly become pregnant by a neighbor's dog. The puppies were not full breed Chihuahuas.

I just hope nobody's getting ideas for Halloween based on this.

A Little Test

UPDATE: From the desk of ThrillCo ... it appears there's a quirk in the MT setup that is taking comments from Ralphie (and others) but not automatically publishing them (from anyone). So I'm tweaking the settings and doing some more gadgetry. I've compared the settings on this setup and other blogs running 3.2 ... they look the same, so it's a bit of a quandry for now. More later ... or as Ralphie starts commenting up a storm. A storm that will offend us all very deeply, no doubt.

OK, a new post on a machine with a completely fresh load of an OS (Ubuntu Debian Linux 6.0.6) yields a good initial post but no ability to comment. Comment window, when used, simply returns an identical comment window as if nothing was attempted (no specific error messages this time). No Linux, Mac or Microsoft system returned such result before upgrade.

Oh well.

EDIT: Theories for problem may inclue DNS discombooberances between my provider and the hosting agency, incompatibility of new upgraded code with my provider or something between my provider and the hosting agency, stray laser shot from Elvis in an overflying UFO, squirrels chewing through cable insulation, etc.

EXTENDED EXTENDED ENTRY:

(logged attempt # 257)

Tried to post to Zweibel:

Don't know if this will enter from my location but...
Didn't see the Omen remake, but sounds like a less-educated Hollywood just ripped off a past hit with little to no thought put into it. So of course evil wasn't heavily analyzed. The first didn't analyze it too much either, but at least acknowledged the difference between and battle with the good.

Attempt resulted in:

"Not Found
The requested URL /403.shtml was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.36 Server at www.clowncarblog.com Port 80"

Why The Omen doesn't work... and probably can't anymore.

Is that too strong a title for this post? Perhaps. But a quick glance at the more recent spate of horror movies might give you a clue as to my thinking: The Ring, The Grudge... and then: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, The Hills Have Eyes, etc. There's sort of this divide where on the one hand you have movies based on the "eerie" factor (a technique perfected by the Japanese through the simple art of filming everything in a blue wash, as pointed out by Something Awful) usually involving some sort of ghost, and on the other hand, movies based on Jessica Beil or Paris Hilton being chased by a non-ghostly but usually disfigured monsterman. Neither is a new concept and there's plenty of room for reiterations of both these themes. The problem happens when you take a film concept that has absolutely nothing to do with either of those genres and refilm and remarket it so as to bring teens to the theater - they, the most coveted of the cinema-going demographic. The remake of The Omen is just such a mistake, and the question becomes whether the central concept behind this story can make any sense to a modern audience anymore.

The first release of The Omen had a thoughtful premise: the struggle of Robert Thorn to accept the pre-modern idea that “evil� still exists. That the personification of that evil is his (essentially adopted) son brings other somewhat lesser important but still intriguing elements into play, such as the farming out of children to childcare professionals and newly-recognized reproductive rights. (Leave it to me to see this through a political/philosophical/theological prism. But I’ll get to that later) Sadly, this version doesn't even come close to addressing that central issue. It's just a Boo!-fest trading on the franchise credibility of the first go-round.

This remake isn't interested, I think, in ideas about good and evil, about the seen and unseen. Start from how the part of Damien is played here. This young boy has that annoyingly precocious sense of just-behind-the-eyes maturity. In every scene, this kid looks like he is fully aware of who and what he is, as well as fully prepared to get on with the business of anti-Christing. That's a real mistake. It gives him too much ownership of the evil, whereas the original emphasized more that this kid is the tool by which true evil will be brought about - through the maturity, and corruption of the eventual adult in modern society. The new version has the kid seeming otherwordly and, as such, it takes the horror out of humanity. It's as if the kid has a sign over his head blinking "Devil Boy Here!" What this does is cripple two important elements of the story.

It makes his mother's rejection of him all too palatable for the audience and destroys the tension that ought to exist over her failed maternal instinct to love and protect him. That idea ought to disturb us more than it does here. There is a slight subtext in the original that being upper-class dignitaries meant having little hands-on contact with the children and that that might be cause for some apprehension among upwardly mobile people. In today's feminist world, there's no need to excuse the lack of intimacy with one's child even though Katherine Thorn doesn't appear consumed by any careerism, or even employed at all. They almost deal with this in the remake when Robert tells Katherine perhaps they don't need a nanny, but somehow Katherine makes him look Neanderthal for even suggesting such a thing. It also bears mentioning that the idea of Katherine having an abortion of her natural child was a more controversial piece of the original than here. In a world where even partial-birth abortion bans are serially vetoed or overturned, why should anyone feel anything but empathy with Katherine’s desire to have an abortion? An audience that is unconcerned about a woman who is unconcerned with the personal upbringing of her child, and wouldn’t even bat an eye at her exercising her “right to choose� on another, tells us something about where we are today versus 1976.

The boy’s performance also ruins the tension within Robert Thorn between his rational materialist self and his emerging spiritual self (or possibly mentally disordered self). That's something the original captures quite well that this movie misses. Since the kid in this one is played so overtly demonic-with-a-capital-D, there's no room for sincere conflict on Robert's part. In the original, there's just enough wrong with this kid to get the father off the sane-materialist block, but room for doubt as to whether Robert should believe that the kid is evil, or conclude that he himself may be nuts to even ponder such a pre-modern argument. But THIS kid leaves so little room for doubt that the opportunity for that subtext is gone. It’s evil alright, but transparent goofy ghost-like evil.

Obviously, this story is about Robert Thorn more than anyone else. It is (or at least should be) the story of his spiritual journey from believing in nothing to believing in something. Accepting that the kid is the anti-Christ means accepting that Damien will stand for nothing and that's what will bring society down. He will come to epitomize hedonism and materialism, not a new theism. That's why the kid should NOT be played with horns and a little red cape as he is in the remake. The opposite of believing in something is not to believing in something else; it's believing in nothing. Robert's personal awakening is what spurs him to save the world from that nihilism personified by Damien.

In fact, that's what makes this a modern take on Abraham's tale in the Bible. This man's spiritual devotion to the idea of good and evil (a belief in God, really) is being tested. Robert must bring his only son to the temple and offer him as a sacrifice - except that in this version, the deus ex machina is not Yahweh himself, but a S.W.A.T. team and it isn't the innocent who is saved from death, but the guilty.

Once more, this is why the kid's performance is so ruinous. You get the sense that the kid in the original was told his character was just a brat, to play it that way, and was given no further motivation or explanation. As such, the key scenes are all the more wicked because the kid seemed so disturbed but comprehensible and recognizable to a parent. But in the remake, you feel like the kid was told from day one that he was the STAR of a horror film about the Son of Satan, and the little bastard called Dakota Fanning, talked it over, and went all "method" on us.

One example is the fit Damian throws at being driven to the church. It reeks of "Thou shalt not take me to the temple of my immortal enemy, the Nazarean, and for such a transgression I shall assail thee!" Contrast with the original, where the kid wailed in a way that made him seem indeed berserk, but in a random petulant childlike way. We all understand why kids probably don't enjoy church very much, so we get that. It's this kid's vehemence that makes the scene effective, not his motivation. All Damien knows is that he does NOT want to go to that church, but it's for us to figure out why that is, not for him to telegraph it from a mile away. I prefer the idea that his aversion to God or symbols of spirituality is subconcious, and that that's how materialism overcomes sprituality: not by going toe-to-toe with it, but by subverting it via one's base subconcious urges.

Another example is when Damien knocks his mother over the railing. The original movie I think plays the scene such that Damien is a self-absorbed brat who rides his tricycle wherever he wants, with a level of disregard for others that is abhorrent. When he knocks his mother over, his indifference to her plight reads as a simple “Well, you shouldn’t have been in my way.� THAT’S horrifying. In the remake, it’s a cut-and-dried murder plot hatched with ham-fisted obviousness. This exemplifies the remake’s overall misunderstanding of Satanism. It isn’t the worship of a devil-figure and the carrying out of his evil plan; it is worship of the self at the expense of everyone who gets in the way of one’s own carnal pleasure. That metaphoric idea is personified perfectly in the form of a spoiled little brat, not some cartoonish mini-demon.

How can you tell this remake is failing at getting across any of the ideas I’ve discussed? Well, you can’t get any better argument than all the spook moments tossed in to wake you up. Contemplating the ideas of good, evil and nihilism ought to be frightening enough, but no… we need the fantastic imagery of a cow-skulled beast in the mirror or Damien in a ghoulish mask terrorizing Katherine in her sleep. Rather than exhibit Damien as a human symbol for our own conflict with morality, they make Damien personify a Halloweenish and simplistic version of evil, and when you aren’t scared enough by that, they have to throw a mask on him to boot. Talk about working overtime in the wrong direction.

What I am suggesting is the possiblity that this movie fails because we don’t even have the capacity to debate good and evil anymore. Could we already be so relativistic in our thinking that it’s now medieval to talk about quaint ideas like morality or ethics? The lack of that frame of reference for this movie ought to serve notice as to our powerful modern urge to slay all gods. At least The DaVince Code was upfront and confrontational about its essential atheistic argument over religiousity. The Omen doesn’t even think it’s a conversation worth having anymore.