Category: Miscellaneous

Doctor Strange is the latest film in the Marvel Studios series of comicbook adaptations, in this case featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as Marvel’s “Sorcerer Supreme”.  The character is probably lesser-known than Iron Man and Spider-Man, but still has a serious following as the Marvel Universe’s primary mystical hero.  When the character was first introduced (by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the anthology comic Strange Tales #110), he was a vaguely Chinese-looking mystic with a Tibetan guru (The Ancient One) and a four-color morality in keeping with a superhero dedicated to fighting supernatural evil.

In this regard, the interesting thing about Doctor Strange was his origin story, which wasn’t revealed until five issues after his debut.  As it turned out, Stephen Strange was a doctor, in fact one of the top surgeons in New York, but was consumed by ego and greed, refusing to see patients who couldn’t pay his fees.  (Cumberbatch has a history of playing arrogant geniuses, so this was great casting.)  But Strange’s career ended when he got in a car accident that caused nerve damage to his hands which prevented him from doing surgery again.  Such was his reputation that he still could have made a decent living as a consulting surgeon, but his pride refused to let him work under another doctor.  He wasted his fortune on fruitless leads until at the end of his rope he traveled to the Himalayas in pursuit of “the Ancient One” and a miracle cure.  It was also at this point in the comics that Strange met his future archenemy, Mordo, who was the Ancient One’s main student.  Strange refused to believe in magic until he discovered that Mordo was using spells to try to murder the Ancient One, and when Strange tried to warn the old man, Mordo used another spell to silence him.  Strange realized that he would be helpless against Mordo unless he learned magic himself.  So he petitioned the Ancient One to become his new disciple, and at that point the archmage revealed that he was aware of Mordo’s evil but preferred to keep him at his monastery where he could watch him.  But from that point, Doctor Strange became the Ancient One’s new pupil, and eventual successor.

The movie changes this story significantly.  Not only did Marvel Studios famously “whitewash” the Ancient One from an Asian man to the Caucasian Tilda Swinton, Mordo (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a polite, low-key disciple who ends up being Strange’s main friend in the monastery as he begins mystic studies.  The relationship between Strange, Mordo and the Ancient One is complex and changes significantly over the movie.  In the meantime, Strange gets involved as the mystic community has to defend against Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), an evil ex-pupil of the Ancient One whose exposure to the Dark Dimension has given him the worst case of pinkeye in the Multiverse.  Other characters include Benedict Wong as… Wong (who in this version is not Strange’s butler but one of his tutors) and Rachel McAdams as Dr. Christine Palmer, Strange’s colleague and ex-lover, who doesn’t really figure into the main story but is symbolically significant in being Strange’s only emotional connection to the human world, even when he was still a surgeon.

The movie is not especially original – the fabulous “space folding” effects were more famously used in the movie Inception, although not so extensively.  And the story is a bit familiar in being a Hollywood version of “the Hero’s Journey” where an arrogant person is brought low, forced to adapt to a new environment, and then turns out to be a Chosen One who learns great abilities that take other students many years to master.  But it’s all very well done and very well-acted.  And in terms of the broader universe, just as Guardians of the Galaxy introduced a whole space-faring civilization of humans and other races that the people of Marvel Earth are totally unaware of, Doctor Strange introduces the mythology and magical elements of the Marvel Comics to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which of course means that in the end the movie ties into the larger narrative that will lead to Marvel Studios’ “Infinity War.”  So as both an action movie and a comicbook movie, I highly recommend it.

 

And remember: Driving while distracted can be hazardous.  Please drive responsibly.

Another apropos-of-nothing post, but out of the many, many famous and semi-famous people who have died in 2016, Jack Chick died on Sunday October 23.

Chick was famous, or semi-famous, for being the author or at least publisher of a vast number of little cartoon booklets printed very cheap and en masse and laid around at various places so that people would pick them up and maybe learn the Gospel, or at least Chick’s version of it.  These tracts varied wildly in artistic quality between fairly realistic comic-book style and childish-attempt-at-velvet-painting style, but the tone was always very consistent: Repent and accept Jesus (the REAL Jesus, not the fake Catholic or Episcopal Jesus) or Burn In Hell.  Not only did this tone, along with the childish art, undermine the evangelism, it also demonstrates the main flaw of so many evangelists’ approach: Not that Jesus is a loving God, but that people must be scared into submission by telling them that if they don’t obey orders in this life, they will spend Eternity in a roasting pit filled with thieves, drunkards and prostitutes.

I live in Las Vegas.  It’s not THAT bad.

But I figured I should at least share the particular Chick tract that made the strongest impression on me.

A few years ago I’d gone to the South Point hotel to attend an event, only to find that the admission line was so damn long that I couldn’t attend and still get up in time for work the next morning.  So I walked back out to my car in the parking lot, and nearby my car, on the ground, I found a Chick tract, “on the ground littering the parking lot” being the place where most of us find Chick tracts.

This particular tract was called “Who Is He?”  If you want, you can follow along.  It’s one of the free samples on Chick’s website: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1049/1049_01.asp  But I read it, and here’s the part that got me thinking:

Look at the power Jesus holds… IT’S AWESOME!

“For in him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: All things were created by him, and for him.”  (Colossians 1:16)

What keeps the universe from flying apart?  IT’S JESUS!

“And he (Jesus) is before all things, and by him all things consist (are held together).”  (Col. 1:17)

Jesus is in complete control.

And this really explained a lot to me.

I realized why the universe works the way it does.

You remember, when you were a kid, and you prayed that you would get a puppy on Christmas?  And you didn’t get one?  And later, you remember praying to God so that your Daddy wouldn’t lose his job so that you wouldn’t have to leave your nice home and go to a cruddy apartment, only he did lose his job and you did have to move?  And you remember years after that, when your Mom was dying of cancer, and you prayed and you prayed and you bargained and pleaded, and finally screamed for God to save her?  And she died anyway?

Well, as it turns out, there’s a reason that God didn’t answer your prayers.

It’s because He was busy keeping the universe from flying apart.

And that’s a tough job.

I mean, you know how hard it is to multitask.

Like, you’re working at your cubicle on Monday and you have to catch up on the backlog over the weekend, and you’re trying to concentrate on that, and one of your co-workers comes up to your desk asking you to look into a request he wants you to forward to HR, and you can’t handle both things at once, and you get thrown off.

Now, imagine that you’re up in Heaven, and you’re doing your job, holding the universe together, keeping all physical phenomena in maintenance, and on a stray impulse, you pick up on some frightened Yazidi girl praying over and over again that ISIS won’t capture and enslave her, and all of a sudden- WHOOPS! There goes Alpha Centauri.

So on this somber occasion, I would like to look back at the life of Jack Chick and thank him for giving Christianity some necessary perspective.

On this, our country’s Independence Day, let me tell you a story about America.

Several years ago, my long-lost brother Brad got back in touch with me. Technically, my stepbrother, because he was the child of my Dad’s second wife, but everyone in my family is only half-sibling to each other anyway, so we don’t pick at the technicalities. We had online correspondence for a while and then one year he offered to pay for a vacation for me to see him back where he lives on the East Coast. This was shortly after my Mom died, and I needed something to clear my head, so I said yes. Besides, as it turned out, after Dad and his wife separated, Brad wound up moving to a small town in Maryland not too far removed from where my Dad’s sister and brother (my aunt and uncle) live. How Brad ended up there is a rather odd and involved tale in itself, and unfortunately I can’t remember most of it. But he didn’t even know that Dad’s other relatives were nearby, and this also served as a means for us to meet them, since I hadn’t seen my aunt and uncle in years either.

What does this have to do with America? Well, this part of America is right outside Washington DC, and not too much drive from the Gettysburg battlefields. So in addition to Brad and I meeting my aunt and uncle (and their spouses) we toured the sites. Brad took me to Gettysburg. My Aunt Pat and her husband Joe took me to Arlington National Cemetery. And Brad and I met my Uncle Mark in Washington, after doing a short tour of the Smithsonian.

The last time I was in Washington was as a kid, maybe before high school, when Pat and Joe took me to the Smithsonian then. And I remember seeing the giant flag that was flying over Fort McHenry, during the War of 1812 battle that inspired the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When I was a kid, the flag was displayed vertically, well lit, in such a way as to convey its size and importance. But as it turned out, being exposed to light that way damaged the fabric of what was already a very old piece. When I went to the modern flag exhibit, that giant wall display wasn’t there anymore. There was a set of dark, walk-through corridors showing the history of the Fort McHenry flag, its public displays and the attempts at restoration. And in the middle of the exhibit, one of these darkened corridors had an angled display of the flag remains they were trying to preserve, under ultraviolet light. And that light made the white of the stripes and stars look more twilight purple, and the field of blue look more night black.

Then one of the last things we did before I had to go home was when Pat and Joe took me back to Washington to see the National Archives, where the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are kept. I’d remembered seeing those too. And when I was younger, those were obviously fragile copies, but they were still legible. But a similar concern with light and deterioration has caused the government to move the documents to a new building, and when I made the tour this time, the room was in a normal, but very dim, light, and it was all I could do to read anything on the documents.

And part of me thought, if it’s like this now, how long is it going to be before these artifacts are so fragile that they have to be taken away from public display? And will that be enough to save them?

It was a sobering experience. I can actually say that I got to see the foundations of my country’s democracy fade away before my very eyes.

As far as the political stuff, I need a little more time to articulate my first idea, so let me start this blog with a small review of the  May 22 Game of Thrones episode, “The Door.”

For those who for some reason don’t already know this, Bran Stark was continuing to develop his psychic powers within the great tree, as he had been doing in previous episodes.  In one of his visions, he’d gone back in time and seen the younger version of his father, Ned Stark, Ned’s sister Lyanne, and “Wyllis,” a stableboy who Bran realized was Hodor, but still normal and able to talk.  In the present, Bran tried to find out what happened to make Hodor “Hodor,” but of course Hodor couldn’t tell him.  In this week’s episode, Bran’s psychic travel took him into the present where he confronted the White Walkers and their zombie horde, and at this point, their leader, the Night King, grabbed Bran’s arm.  When Bran woke up in the tree, he realized the armprint was still on his wrist.  Bran’s mentor, “the Three-Eyed Raven”, told him the Walkers were now able to enter their sanctuary and that he should go back in the past to learn as much as he could while there was still time.

So Bran’s mind goes back to the Stark estate while Meera and the tree spirits vainly try to fight off the zombie hordes.  Meera desperately tells Bran to wake up and “warg” into Hodor’s body so he can use his strength to help fight.  So Bran, while still watching Wyllis in the past, possesses Hodor’s body, creating a link between himself, Hodor and Wyllis, and as the Raven, the tree spirits and Bran’s direwolf are killed, Hodor covers Meera’s escape to an exit corridor as she drags Bran off on a sled.  And as he closes the door behind him, the last thing Meera says to Hodor is “Hold the door” – while in the past, Bran watches Wyllis suddenly collapse.  As Hodor is being ripped up by zombies, Bran sees the other peasants gather around Wyllis as he goes into convulsions, screaming over and over again, “Hold the door, hold the door” – which eventually gets turned into “Hodor.”

This climax has staggering implications.  Not only has Bran demonstrated the power to affect the past (though he’s not in much position to do so right now), in the process of doing so, he created (or resolved) a time paradox in which he turned Hodor into “Hodor” before Bran was even born.

Personally, the horrific manner of Hodor’s death means I’ll never be able to think of that line in the same way again.  It was of course a joke.  Like, some of us were wondering if Martin was ever going to publish that next book so that we would finally get the Hodor point-of-view chapters.  There were some fans who would actually carry on online conversations using just “Hodor.”  The thing was, if the word didn’t really mean anything, then really, it could mean anything.

Throughout the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series, the recurring mystery has never been, “Who were Jon Snow’s real parents?”  It was always “What the heck does ‘Hodor’ mean, and what happened to make him that way?”

And now the Great Mystery is finally revealed.  And now all the suspense is gone.