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We Need Mindset Control: With 300 Million Guns Already in the Country, Gun Control is Not The Answerby GDN Shared Post March 11, 2013
According to the U.S. government itself, there are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States. So is gun control the real answer to the violence taking place today? Of course not! The answer lies not in the weapon, but in the mindset of the person. As humans interact, we hope they see each other as equals and wish no harm on anyone. This is the mindset that would lead to peace. Unfortunately, that is not being properly taught to our children.
Firearms are not killing people; it is the people who want to do bad things that are killing. We have a strong survival instinct and we will act as needed to save our lives. If individuals are put in a situation where they are threatened and cornered, feeling they must do harm or be harmed, there will be violence.
Gun control cannot and will not change anything until the mindset has been changed for the better. Let us strive to teach and promote peace and love. Let's instill these traits into our children now before we destroy ourselves. This is no easy task but we must get to work before there is more needless loss of life from the violence that surrounds us.
The daily headlines remind us of the violence that is threatening to destroy our communities. Removal of weapons does not deter this, for time and again we have seen the mind create another weapon as an alternative. Restrictions on any weapon only allow alternative weapons to be developed into more efficient killing means, thus the harm does not end, it only changes. If I am a violent person, I will use whatever means available to me to satisfy my violent nature. If a gun is available, yes I will use it. I also can use a baseball bat, a knife, a hammer or a vehicle. If no other weapon is available, Iwill use my hands.
Thus, we must understand putting stress on any system will increase the chances of violence. How do we change that? There is only one way and that comes with an early life mindset change. If a person is taught violence or is associated with violence and killing at an early age, chances are that person will grow up to be violent. On the other hand, if a person is taught love, peace and mutual respect from the beginning, that person will likewise follow his early childhood teachings and grow into a kind, peace-loving, respectful, nonviolent adult. A child's mind is like a computer. What goes in their mind stays there. Some learn to work around the violence they experience and become productive members of society.
The chances are great that many more won't and may become burdens on society. Be mindful of what your child is being taught, especially in school and in their various environments! The only way to reduce violence is to reach every individual with the knowledge that violence is not the answer. We must change the culture of violence before it destroys us and steals our children's futures. It's time to get to work! Orrin Hudson is the founder of Be Someone Inc, a life-changing program that uses the game of chess to teach that for every choice we have in life there is a relating consequence.
He has taught thousands of children that they can be a productive, contributing, successful citizen by making the right moves in their the lives. You can find out more about Hudson, who was once an at-risk young person, at www.besomeone.org


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Review: Ghoul
Ghoul is ironically impersonal and perfunctory, suggesting the work of a polished propaganda machine.2.0
With Ghoul, writer-director Patrick Graham takes a premise that might have soared as a lean horror film and stretches it out to a three-episode miniseries. The result is a production that constantly dips into redundant exposition, all the while eliding emotional textures that might complicate the smooth delivery of unoriginal plotting. For a series concerned with totalitarianism and familial betrayal, Ghoul is ironically impersonal and perfunctory, suggesting the work of a polished propaganda machine.
Ghoul is set in India in the near future, and opening text informs us that the government has set up secret detention camps to combat rampant terrorism, which includes possession of "subversive" materials. Nida Rahim (Radhika Apte) is a young woman who works for the military, and is a true believer in its methods of imposing social control, from sudden imprisonment to extreme torture. Nida's father may be potentially connected to one of the government's chief adversaries, Ali Saeed (Mahesh Balraj), who's captured and imprisoned in the production's opening scenes. Saeed, however, isn't really himself anymore, but a shapeshifter who devours its victims and has been conjured to give this government a taste of its own brutal medicine.
Ghoul is a siege drama at heart, in which the protagonists are tasked with holding a prisoner capable of summoning forces that humble his captors. Such a narrative is familiar to both the western and horror genres, and brings to mind films like Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo and John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, and Prince of Darkness. There are also shades of The Dark Knight here, as the titular monster suggests the Joker in his ability to play the law enforcement's corruption against itself, though Graham does surprisingly and disappointingly little with the ghoul's ability to read the minds of the other characters—perhaps because these characters, all essentially ciphers, have little on their minds worth reading.
Hawks and Carpenter indulged tropes and stereotypes as springboards for exhibiting their own worldviews and personalities. For Graham, tropes beget more tropes. Hawks and Carpenter are masters of crisp and flip dialogue, while Graham has his characters speak in generalities divorced of rudimentary emotion. When Nida discovers that she's responsible for her father's grim fate, she barely pauses before marching onward toward the next action spectacle. Even by the relativist standards of extreme circumstances, Nida's automaton-esque insensitivity is galling, though Graham doesn't seem to know it.
The action scenes are competently staged but are all of the jack-in-the-box variety, with a toothy, blank-eyed demon popping up to kill and escape on cue, disappearing into the usual dark and dank corridors. Even Nida's awakening lacks punch, provoking one to wonder why it took her so long to arrive at an inevitable conclusion at such great cost—another irony that Graham leaves hanging. Despite its occasional pretenses of political awareness, Ghoul isn't really concerned with the details of a blossoming rebellion. It's a late-summer time-killer, no more or less.
Cast: Radhika Apte, Rohit Pathak, Mahesh Balraj, Viren Basoya, Diwakar Dhayani, Manav Kaul, Mallhar Goenka Network: Netflix
Review: HBO's Lovecraft Country Confronts the Evil Lurking Beneath American Life
The series eclipses its source material in capturing the omnidirectional dread of Lovecraftian horror.3
The horror of Lovecraft Country, Misha Green's adaptation of Matt Ruff's 2016 novel of the same name, is at first all too real. Set in the 1950s, it introduces Korean War veteran Atticus "Tic" Freeman (Jonathan Majors) as he returns to his hometown of Chicago after receiving news of his father's (Michael Kenneth Williams) disappearance. Left a note pointing to the man's possible location in a Massachusetts town called Ardham, Tic journeys across 1950s Jim Crow America with an old friend, Letitia Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and his uncle, George (Courtney B. Vance), a travel agent who contributes to a guidebook, similar to The Negro Motorist Green Book, of safe places to eat and lodge for Black roadtrippers.
The first episode of the series generates much dread from Tic, Letitia, and George passing through towns as white people turn their heads in eerie unison and police cars seemingly materialize out of nowhere. Close-ups of the white walls of a diner that was previously welcoming of Black customers reveal scorch marks that were barely painted over, telling us all that we need to know about how the locals here felt about integration. Cops pull out their guns the moment they set eyes on Tic and his associates, and conversations between the main characters and white people are marked by eye-averting submissiveness and fear. In fact, when the other shoe finally drops and the monsters we expect to encounter in an H.P. Lovecraft story finally materialize, the additional layer of terror heaped onto the protagonists is somewhat offset by the relief of seeing some of their white tormenters become prey.
As Lovecraft's influence on horror continues to grow in the decades since his death, artists have attempted to reckon with his racism and xenophobia, namely by recognizing that the pagan cults and corrupted humanoid monsters that make the author's work so chilling also provide insights into his pathological hatred of the Other. Lovecraft Country understands that in a world filled with underground occultists who wield strange power, such groups aren't made up of tired and huddled masses, but of folks in the upper echelons of wealth and authority. If anything, the racially and culturally diverse people whom Lovecraft saw as social pollutants would be the most routine victims of these organizations—second-class citizens whose disappearances would never be investigated by the powers that be.
The series has its share of CGI monsters, from many-limbed creatures to undead spirits, but its most compelling visual scares involve the cold framing of remote manors owned by cult leaders like Samuel Braithwhite (Tony Goldwyn) and his daughter, Christina (Abbey Lee). These individuals, with their Aryan features and stiff countenances, never betray any emotion or urgency, for they know that they live in a world where they can have whatever they want. And their sense of superiority informs Lovecraft Country's most blackly comedic moment, when Christina objects to Tic comparing their group to the KKK by saying, "My father and his associates would never fraternize with the Klan. They're too poor."
The first five episodes of the series made available to press branch out from the central plotline to cover such topics as haunted houses and body transformation, which allows Lovecraft Country to change up its scares as well as broaden its allegorical range. The realistic harassment suffered by the Black residents of a boarding house in a white neighborhood, for example, is thrown into even sharper relief by the mutilated ghosts who stalk its halls. And throughout these episodes, characters encounter gruesome objects connected to the order that hunts them, reflecting the long history of slavery and Manifest Destiny.
Green makes some significant changes to the novel, but her most rewarding come in the form of the extra time she devotes to tracking the emotional fallout of the characters' experiences, not only in relation to the horrors they witness, but the everyday degradations they suffer. One can see, for example, how an older man like George is so deeply inculcated in a racist system that, even at the height of his fear, he remains obsequious around whites. Comparatively, there's something rousing, and more than a little funny, in seeing Tic and Leti so addled by the unearthly terrors they face that they become less dutiful in abiding by the mores of Jim Crow. Eventually, they begin to lash out at harassing whites, who are so used to the power dynamics of American society that they're almost too stunned at the backtalk to be enraged by it.
Early in the first episode, a woman riding next to Tic on a bus to Chicago sees that he's reading one of Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter novels and expresses her disapproval of such a work with an ex-Confederate for a hero. "Stories are like people," he says. "Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You just try to cherish them and overlook their flaws." The old woman responds: "Yeah, but the flaws are still there." That exchange could be the thesis of Lovecraft Country, which eclipses even its source material in capturing the all-encompassing dread of Lovecraft's fiction while at the same time confronting head-on the most problematic aspects of his writing. The author feared America becoming infected with evil that would sink it asunder, while Green's series operates from the opposite point of view: that evil was integral to the nation's creation and that it must be fought, however futilely, to be overcome.
Cast: Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett, Aunjanue Ellis, Abbey Lee, Jada Harris, Michael Kenneth Williams, Courtney B. Vance, Jordan Patrick Smith Network: HBO
Review: In My Skin Is a Bitingly Poignant, If Cluttered, Coming-of-Age Story
Though it doesn't provide room for a fully formed character arc, the series is driven by its performances and mordant humor.2.5
Sixteen-year-old Bethan Gwyndaf (Gabrielle Creevy), the protagonist of Hulu's In My Skin, has a lot going on in her life. She's the only responsible member of her household, essentially acting as caretaker for her bipolar mother, Trina (Jo Hartley), and constantly at odds with her layabout, alcoholic father, Dilwyn (Rhodi Meilir). And she's often the only voice of reason among her best friends, Travis (James Wilbraham) and Lydia (Poppy Lee Friar), who seem to always get into trouble whenever she's not around. She's also nursing a desperate crush on Poppy (Zadeia Campbell-Davies), the popular girl at school.
Bethan is a compulsive liar, so obsessed with fitting in at school that she spins elaborate stories of a home life filled with cultural activities and fancy renovations to cover for the reality that she spends much of her time taking care of Trina and tracking down Dilwyn. Her obsession with crafting a perfect external image of herself makes it impossible for her to form emotional connections with anyone, even people who genuinely care for her. Travis and Lydia, for example, want to support her in the same way she supports them, brushing off their questions about her family life and never even letting them inside her house.
Bethan is smart and sensitive, and Creevy makes the character, with her conspiratorial smile and natural aversion to being told what she can and can't do, easy to like—even as Bethan frustratingly and steadfastly refuses to let anyone in. In My Skin's Welsh-born creator, Kayleigh Llewellyn, based Bethan and Trina on herself and her own bipolar mother, and there's a lot of raw emotion in the interactions between the two characters, ranging from tender and loving to harsh and hurtful. The short-tempered Dilwyn, inspired by Llewellyn's late father, has no patience for Trina's unstable mental state, leaving her to wander the streets or tying her to the radiator to make sure she stays in the house. Her parents' combative dynamic often leaves Bethan stuck in the middle of them, attempting to play peacemaker.
As volatile as Bethan's family relationships can be, In My Skin still has plenty of humor, emanating from Bethan's biting wit and frequent flights of imagination, during which she casts herself as the romantic hero in Poppy's life, as well as a poet whose words are illustrated with perfume commercial-style images. Bethan's occasional voiceover narration is an inconsistent element of the series, but her self-aware commentary is a welcome counterpoint to her infuriatingly self-sabotaging behavior. While having Bethan explain her inner thoughts can easily become a narrative crutch, In My Skin could have benefited more from Bethan's reflective observations, which give us a deeper understanding of her often impulsive decisions.
All the more important since the first season's five half-hour episodes don't provide enough room for Bethan's arc to fully take shape, moving her only a short way down the path toward maturity and ending just as she's starting to assert herself at school, harnessing her way with words to run for student body. Her relationships with her fellow teens remain stunted, and her potential coming-out journey takes a back seat to her need to care for Trina and insulate her from trauma. Llewellyn isn't afraid to confront the dark elements of Bethan's life—the way poverty, mental illness, homophobia, and substance abuse combine to weigh her down. That her personality shines through at all is both a testament to Creevy's performance and the character's determination to make a better life for herself, however misguided.
That personality is what drives In My Skin, and Bethan's self-sufficiency is a big part of what makes her so compelling. No matter what delusion or altercation Trina involves her in throughout the show's first season, Bethan always comes back, taking on a responsibility that she never asked for and shouldn't have to handle on her own. If she doesn't always know how to balance that responsibility with everything else going on in her life, at least she's approaching every new setback with appealingly mordant humor.
Cast: Gabrielle Creevy, James Wilbraham, Jo Hartley, Poppy Lee Friar, Zadeia Campbell-Davies, Rhodri Meilir, Alexandra Riley, Di Botcher, Aled ap Steffan Network: Hulu
Review: Peacock's The Capture Wears Its Topicality Impersonally on Its Sleeve
The series sucks the juice out of its pop-cultural reference points, failing to mine our current nightmares on its own terms.2
Ben Chanan's The Capture wears its topicality on its sleeve, principally concerning the CCTV security cameras that monitor London's streets and which number in the hundreds of thousands, averaging out to one camera per dozen or so people. The casualness of the cameras' presence throughout the Peacock series is unnerving, suggesting how easily privacy can be annihilated with little in the way of pushback from the populace.
Chanan's concerns, though, aren't existential ones, as he's fashioned a murder mystery that laboriously connects modern surveillance to social media, war crimes committed in the Middle East, rising notions of fake news, and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden—all of which are referenced explicitly in the show's dialogue. Weirdly, the sociopolitical Easter eggs often feel beside the point, serving as window dressing for an impersonal game of cat and mouse.
Shaun Emery (Callum Turner) is a British soldier accused of killing a member of the Taliban during a tour of duty in Afghanistan after the man had already surrendered. Surveillance footage from a body camera seems to validate this assertion, until Shaun's bannister, Hannah Roberts (Laura Haddock), establishes a lag between the audio and the video feeds of the footage, casting doubt on the evidence. Shaun, Hannah, and others celebrate his acquittal at a local pub, after which the two kiss on the street, pointedly in view of a CCTV camera. She leaves, never to be seen again. When footage surfaces of Shaun hitting Hannah and dragging her out of the camera's sight, he denies any involvement, but he's immediately accused of a second crime that's supported by theoretically objective evidence.
This is all essentially setup, and Chanan threatens to stuff his concept up to the breaking point of contrivance. Investigating the case is Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger), a brilliant and ambitious detective inspector with a stereotypical taste for stylish jackets and a penchant for playing by her own rules. Her superiors and peers castigate Rachel for her drive, which scans less as an acknowledgement of sexist double standards than as Chanan's need to define his characters by signpost dialogue. Shaun eludes Rachel, who's convinced of his guilt, until she begins to uncover a wealth of evidence that connects Shaun's two murder investigations, as well as a celebrated case in which Rachel foiled a potential terrorist attack.
The twist-a-minute The Capture is compulsively watchable, but we've seen much of this before. In addition to 24, which similarly pulled the rug out from under its audience with endless, sometimes ingenious reversals, The Capture also recalls Andrew Davis's The Fugitive, as well as seemingly every jargon-laden investigative crime show on TV.
Shaun and Rachel are ciphers with stock backstories, and the show's dozens of other characters often fit into easily recognizable archetypes, from the jealous sidekick to the estranged, earnest wife, to the icy authority figure with shady motives. As the latter, Detective Superintendent Gemma Garland, Lia Williams acquits herself better than much of the rest of the cast, commanding the screen with seeming ease. And in a small, mysterious role, Ron Perlman revels in a sense of understatement, suggesting a bored, bureaucratic comfort with authoritarianism that's both eerie and funny.
What The Capture doesn't have is the sense of violation that made 24 such an unmooring experience in its best seasons. That show's protagonist, Jack Bauer, was a charismatic hawk who did things that most people to the left of Dick Cheney would find monstrous. Kiefer Sutherland allowed you to see the humanity and the savagery of Bauer, which rendered the character all the more disturbing. Whatever its faults, 24 is a distinctive, authentic reaction to the political atrocities that marked the post-9/11 world.
By contrast, the violence of The Capture is just noise to further the plot. Even the notion of doctored surveillance footage has been examined before and more artfully, especially in Philip Kaufman's atmospheric Rising Sun. A newer element of our surveillance state, social media, is mentioned obligatorily but is barely explored. The Capture sucks the juice out of its pop-cultural reference points, failing to mine our current nightmares on its own terms.
Cast: Holliday Grainger, Callum Turner, Laura Haddock, Cavan Clerkin, Ginny Holder, Barry Ward, Ben Miles, Peter Singh, Lia Williams, Sophia Brown, Ron Perlman, Famke Jansen Network: Peacock
Review: The Optimism of Japan Sinks: 2020 Leads to a Curious Emotional Remove
The show's reticence to dig into hopelessness and pain leaves its admirable optimism to feel strangely artificial.2.5
The latest adaptation of Japanese science-fiction writer Sakyo Komatsu's 1973 disaster novel Japan Sinks comes to us in animated form, overseen by prolific director Masaaki Yuasa at Science Saru, the studio he co-founded. The Netflix series wastes little time dishing out the apocalyptic imagery promised by its title: Soon after a low-level earthquake hits Japan, a stronger one follows, causing buildings to crumble and pound bystanders into a gory paste beneath the rubble. The Earth vomits gas and magma, and the ground violently splits open, only to be jammed back together into new, alien configurations.
Rather than the scientific and political perspectives of Komatsu's novel and its previous adaptations, however, Japan Sinks: 2020 takes a markedly more personal viewpoint of the mixed-race Muto family and the companions they pick up along the way. Coupled with some surprisingly spare and soothing music on the soundtrack, the depictions of the family's early reunion suggest a defiantly optimistic take on the large-scale disaster story, a focus on togetherness and a celebration of the human capacity to adapt even amid utter turmoil. In one scene, the Muto patriarch, Koichiro (Masaki Terasoma), uses colored lights to illuminate some trees the way he once did at their ruined home, guiding the family back together.
As bodies rain from the sky, though, Japan Sinks: 2020 shows its teeth. Characters die in sudden, jarring ways, disorienting the viewer in a similar fashion to these travelers whose only option is to press forward on an island that can offer them no refuge. Throughout the series, these characters are mostly defined by archetypal qualities, with new ones introduced almost as soon as others are lost. This gives the Muto clan's odyssey something of a mythic quality as they make their way through symbolic destinations, from an open, seemingly empty grocery store to a community that practices kintsugi, a Japanese art of pottery repair.
The show's limitations become apparent when it slows down midway through the season, no longer relying on the pure momentum of its plot twists and striking images of environmental devastation. When Japan Sinks 2020 actually allows space for us to absorb the characters' deaths, you may feel as if there's little to mourn. With a few exceptions, they're primarily vehicles for shock and dire twists of fate rather than people to empathize with.
Yuasa's prior Netflix series, the gonzo Devilman Crybaby, injected some disarming positivity into its own increasingly bleak premise, and in a way that made its tragedies feel even more devastating. But the optimism of Japan Sinks: 2020 doesn't function quite the same way since, here, it's the overriding ethos, with characters who are more than willing to come together despite catastrophe and pain and displays of self-interest like nationalism.
While this idea is noble, the series moves on from the tragedy of these characters' lives so quickly that we never get a sense of the totality of their grief. The result, despite no shortage of daring escapes, is a disaster story whose harried pace and reticence to grapple with hopelessness and pain renders it artificial, keeping us at an emotional remove.
Cast: Reina Ueda, Tomomi Muranaka, Yuko Sasaki, Masaki Terasoma, Kensho Ono, Umeji Sasaki, Nanako Mori Network: Netflix
Review: Little Voice Is a Twee, Navel-Gazing Depiction of Creative Struggle
Created by Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson, the series positions its protagonist as a bastion of artistic purity.1.5
As the first episode of Little Voice begins, aspiring singer-songwriter Bess King (Brittany O'Grady) is still traumatized from being laughed off stage after attempting to perform one of her original songs. Bess's fragile ego is a major impediment to the launching her music career, and it takes the rest of the season for her to just feel truly comfortable on stage again, a pretty meager payoff considering it takes nine episodes to reach that point.
Bess's friend and manager, Benny (Phillip Johnson Richardson), assures her in a later episode of the series that artists are meant to be moody, but Bess goes beyond that, as she's an entitled, ungrateful narcissist, petulantly pushing away friends and family if they don't conform to her arbitrary moral standards. Even worse, there's very little about her supposed talent that could justify the behavior that Benny excuses on the basis of artistic brilliance.
Created by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and filmmaker Jessie Nelson (who previously collaborated on the Broadway musical Waitress), Little Voice positions Bess as a bastion of artistic purity, first asserting that she writes songs only for herself, and later fending off industry figures' attempts to have her record songs written by other people or compose music for others. When she gets a chance to record in the legendary Electric Lady Studios, she rebuffs suggestions from a jaded engineer (Luke Kirby) and her guitarist, Samuel (Colton Ryan), to make changes to one of her songs, and both men later acknowledge that she was right.
But there's little sense that Bess has anything of importance to say with her music, which at one point she describes as "Alessia Cara meets Carole King" but just sounds like Sara Bareilles B-sides. Her precious piano-driven dirges all sound the same, which makes it tough to feel the intended emotional impact of songs often written in response to the events of a particular episode. O'Grady, who was a regular on Fox's musical drama Star, has a clear, resonant voice, and it's easy to envision her as a mainstream pop singer, but Bess's songs always sound smooth and polished, which contradicts their supposed purpose as messy personal statements.
The audiences arrives at an understanding of just how messy Bess's personal life is through a tedious dramatization of love triangle that puts her in the middle of two bland, sensitive hunks. She first connects with video editor Ethan (Sean Teale), who works in a storage unit next to the one that Bess rents as a practice space (the series emphasizes her financial hustle with jobs as a bartender, dog walker, music tutor, and busker, but she somehow affords rent for both a storage space and half of a gorgeous New York City apartment). Of course, Ethan has a girlfriend, and Bess is later romantically drawn to Samuel, but both men mostly pine from the sidelines while Bess strings them along for the entire season.
Being inconsiderate and presumptuous seems to run in Bess's family, and the show's most frustrating character is her mentally disabled brother, Louie (Kevin Valdez), who lives in a group home but constantly relies on Bess for every pretty much everything. Louie is obsessed with Broadway and even has his own catch phrase ("Wonder of wonders!"), and his relationship with Bess is meant to display her compassion and dedication, but it mostly just proves that she's incapable of holding him accountable for his behavior. Just as Bess seems to expect her friends to cater to her every shift in mood, Louie expects the same from his sister.
Their relationship comes off as a codependent nightmare, and Louie's blind faith in Bess's talent is as misguided as her indulgence of his every whim. At one point in the series, a music executive condescendingly describes Bess's music as "darling." While that's intended as a dubious insult, it captures the twee, navel-gazing tone of Little Voice.
Cast: Brittany O'Grady, Phillip Johnson Richardson, Colton Ryna, Sean Teale, Kevin Valdez, Luke Kirby Network: Apple TV+
Review: HBO's Perry Mason Examines Power and Faith Amid a Fog of Decay
The series is gory and dour with a bone-deep cynicism, but it's also optimistic in its own small way.3
A dead baby appears not five minutes into HBO's reboot of Perry Mason. Left on a rail car at Angels Flight in Los Angeles, the child's eyes are stitched open in hopes of fooling the frantic parents just long enough for the kidnappers to abscond with the ransom money. The grotesque image is certainly far from the show's last, but it functions as a statement of purpose: Creators Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald intend to grit up the world of Erle Stanley Gardner's criminal defense lawyer, who was most famously depicted on the CBS television series starring Raymond Burr that aired from 1957 to 1966.
The new Perry Mason is set in 1932, and at the outset, the eponymous character is a private investigator, and hardly the respectable kind. Paired up with the sardonic Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham), he's not above taking illicit photos of a movie star at a studio's behest, hoping to prove a morals clause violation. Matthew Rhys brings a thick haze of disillusionment to his character, who wears a lot of stubble and an expression of perpetual weariness. Reconceived in the mold of reluctant prestige TV heroes, Mason is a man adrift, with few opportunities during the Great Depression, and so he tries (unsuccessfully) to squeeze his employers for more cash, though he still misses out on paying the child support he owes.
Mason's lawyer pal, E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow), brings him in to work with E.B.'s associate, Della Street (Juliet Rylance), on the kidnapping case. The law jabs an accusatory finger at the grieving parents, Matthew and Emily Dodson (Nate Corddry and Gayle Rankin), leaving the defense to contend with dirty cops and cover-ups in addition to following a trail of money that loops through the local evangelical church. A lot of the story beats are the usual stuff of noir, with people you can't trust mixed up in systems you can trust even less, but the series uses its central case and characters to tug at the different threads of a rich societal tapestry, deftly posing questions about religion, race, sexuality, and gender roles as the world unravels.
Amid dramatic courtroom monologues from E.B. and various scenes of Mason probing crime scenes, the case quickly becomes a media circus. Reporters mob the courthouse steps alongside throngs of protestors howling for blood; the Dodson kidnapping captures the imagination of the public because, despite multiple scenes that show people gasping at others dropping profanities, their interests run toward the morbid and the salacious.
The spotlight throws marriage dynamics into sharp relief, with Emily Dodson vilified on the stand for displaying sexual agency or disinterest in a husband who keeps her in the dark about their finances. Any guilt or shame over their child's death on her part is framed as a confession in the eyes of the vicious, grandstanding district attorney (Stephen Root). Reactions from the main characters and the general public depict a wider culture of apathy, bigotry, and especially misogyny amid an economic downturn that stokes everyone's most desperate instincts for survival. The show's world is a richly rendered fog of decay and hopelessness; people who can make a living do so off secrets, as with E.B.'s questionable financial records or the compromising photos that Mason develops at his dead parents' desolate farm.
The public hungers for escape, and they get it from the movies, sensational newspaper stories, or from the sense of community provided by a religion that demands their money and devotion in return. They fixate on violence, on victims and victimizers as expressions of their own powerlessness, while others take whatever small power they can, under whatever label. Officially, Della Street is E.B.'s secretary, but it's immediately clear that the scatterbrained old-timer couldn't run the office without her, as she empathizes with and advocates for women like Emily in a way that the men often don't. Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), who goes on to be a frequent investigator in Mason's employ, is here reconceived as a black cop, an outsider in a system that wants little to do with him beyond what it can use. He becomes disillusioned with his place in that system, as the other characters similarly confront their own powerlessness.
Perry Mason's concern with power is most clearly seen in Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany), who gets to stand on the evangelical church's stage and theatrically preach, her position as the church's mouthpiece sometimes clashing with the moneymen who run the place behind the scenes. The show's focus on religion can be strained at times, as the church subplots feel tangential to the main case, but its prominence clarifies Perry Mason as a series that's also about faith, religious and otherwise. Here, faith is eminently vulnerable, often taken advantage of by charlatans but also necessary to keep a person going—a faith in humanity to look beyond societal conditioning and the corruption snaking its way through every angle of civilization. Faith isn't always rewarded. The series is gory and dour with a bone-deep cynicism, but it's also optimistic in its own small way, an origin story that chronicles how its characters find a means to fight rather than serving as dejected, disgusted observers.
Cast: Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk, Shea Whigham, Tatiana Maslany, John Lithgow, Gayle Rankin, Stephen Root, Lili Taylor, Nate Corddry Network: HBO
Review: Season Three of Search Party Embraces a More Madcap Sensibility
Season three rivals its predecessors in its intoxicating blend of bleak cynicism and irreverent comedy.3.5
The third season of Search Party, the exceptionally nimble dramedy created by Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, and Michael Showalter, returns after a hiatus of two and a half years but begins right after the events of the second season's finale. Dory (Alia Shawkat) has just been arrested for the murder of her quasi-associate and ex-lover, Keith, and as a cop takes her mugshot, she chuckles at something he says—resulting in a beguiling portrait of Dory, wearing dark red lipstick, with one eyebrow raised and a roguish half-smile fixed on her face.
The ever-ravenous press and public latch on to Dory's mugshot, turning her and the legal case against her and her boyfriend, Drew (John Reynolds), into a national spectacle. The series, in turn, takes a gripping dive into Dory's psyche, sharply revealing how her place in the spotlight magnifies her anxieties. In contrast to the defining visual of Search Party's first two seasons—a tracking shot of Dory, which prioritized her reactions and impressions over the stimuli eliciting them—season three often depicts her in faux news reels and talk-show clips. Rather than centering Dory as she moves through the world, these sequences freeze her in a still image, embodying her objectification at the hands of the media frenzy. The alienation she feels as tabloid fodder eclipses what she once felt as an aimless personal assistant.
But Dory is far from powerless, as she's remarkably adept at steering the narrative of both her life and the trial. One of her most formidable feats is a television interview alongside her estranged parents (Jacqueline Antaramian and Ramsey Faragallah), which successfully presents the illusion of a unified front. And she seems to like the attention, as when she humors the paparazzi posted outside her apartment, or when she melodramatically regales the partygoers encircling her at a friend's wedding with tales of fame's woes.
Search Party's earlier seasons found joltingly dark humor in the absurdity of four clueless, sheltered, relatively young adults playing detective and then committing and covering up a murder. This season rivals its predecessors in its intoxicating blend of bleak cynicism and irreverent comedy, but embraces a more exaggerated, madcap sensibility. Recognizing that court is an inherently theatrical space—and a magnet for outsized personalities—the series drops Dory down the rabbit hole and surrounds her with near-unbelievable weirdos. Bob (Louie Anderson), Drew's lawyer, spouts a wonderful blend of banal aphorisms and pulpy zingers. "Oh, this city," he drones upon arriving in New York from Chicago, "so much chaos out there." And Bob is joined in court by two other similarly odd and hilarious attorneys: Cassidy (Shalita Grant), Dory's rookie lawyer, and the overzealous prosecutor, Polly (Michaela Watkins). The trial, shepherded as it is by a trio of clowns, drives the season's tonal shift as it quickly devolves into a circus-like farce of shoddy evidence and shaky testimonies.
Dory and Drew's friends Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) are back, but where past seasons deepened their outwardly shallow personalities, this season frequently relegates them to inconsequential, if funny, subplots. The treatment of Portia is particularly disappointing: Previously, a surprising acuity flickered within her, but the series tosses that potential nuance aside, doubling down on the ditzy obliviousness at her surface.
Ultimately, though, the simplicity of the non-Dory narratives is of a piece with the trajectory that Search Party has outlined over its run thus far. The series is Dory's story, told in an obsessive manner as befits her swelling narcissism. And the strangeness of the trial hints, perhaps, at the world as seen through Dory's eyes—and as tinged by her growing delusion. Dory is prone to hallucinations and fantasies, and her mental state only worsens under the psychological toll of the trial. At one point, Drew wonders if Dory's claims of innocence are just a legal strategy, or if she really believes that she didn't do anything.
And she's still keeping her greatest secret—that she killed April, the neighbor who knew about Keith's murder—but Drew is on to her. That Dory remains at least slightly sympathetic throughout all this is a testament to the subtle expressiveness of Shawkat's performance. Dory's torn emotions course through Shawkat's face; the character's survival instincts flash in her eyes when she's cornered, when her control of situations starts to falter.
Rare are the moments, however, in which Dory's power is truly at risk of slipping. One of the season's most striking shots embodies her insidious influence on those around her. Dory, Portia, and Elliot sit and lie down in a line, playing with each other's hair; Dory combs Portia's while Portia runs her fingers through Elliott's. Drew is opposite them, on the couch. They're all quiet, thoughtful, reflective. But Dory, with Portia's hair in her hand, resembles a puppet master. As the camera slowly zooms out, the moody electronic soundtrack kicks in, an echo of Dory's unceasing calculations. Aspects of the blocking recall Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam: Drew's no God, but Elliot stretches out like the first man—and Dory is behind both him and the woman closest to him, plotting, the serpent just off-canvas.
Cast: Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, Meredith Hagner, John Early, Shalita Grant, Michaela Watkins, Louie Anderson, Raphael Nash Thompson, Clare McNulty, Brandon Micheal Hall, Claire Tyers, Christine Taylor Network: HBO Max
Review: Hulu's Love, Victor Is a Likable, If Timid, Exploration of Sexual Identity
The show's episodic sitcom rhythms allow for an easier access point to the narrative about identity and prejudice.2.5
"Screw you," texts 16-year-old Victor Salazar (Michael Cimino) to the mostly unseen Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) in Love, Victor, a spin-off of the gay teen rom-com Love, Simon. The 2018 film's white, upper-middle-class protagonist, with his perfectly accepting parents, had a relatively easy coming-out journey compared to Victor, whose Colombian-American working-class mother and father cling closely to traditional religious values and aren't exactly about to buy him a car for his birthday. "My story is nothing like yours," Victor tells Simon at the end of the first episode of the Hulu series.
Victor reaches out to Simon via text message after starting at Creekwood High School, where his mentor was once cheered on by the entire student body for finally connecting with his secret paramour, Bram. Victor has moved from Texas to the Atlanta suburbs with his parents, Isabel (Ana Ortiz) and Armando (James Martinez), his sullen teenage sister, Pilar (Isabella Ferreira), and his quirky little brother, Adrian (Mateo Fernandez), for reasons that are slowly revealed over the course of the season. Like Simon, Victor comes from a loving home, but his parents' discomfort with non-heteronormative modes of expression—like Adrian's preoccupation with the Disney princess Elsa—are made clear to him.
While the stakes for Victor's coming out are clear, though, that doesn't make his journey of acceptance any less tedious to witness, stretched out as it is over the course of 10 episodes. Created by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (who also adapted Love, Simon, based on Becky Albertalli's novel), Love, Victor was originally slated for Disney+ before being shifted to Hulu due to its supposedly mature themes. But aside from some strong language and pretty vague sex talk, the series could easily be a companion to High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Its upbeat tone keeps Victor's journey from feeling dour and didactic, even though the series is designed to partially provide easily digestible life lessons to a teen audience.
Love, Victor hints at some slightly more nuanced versions of those life lessons in the season's first half, when Victor begins researching pansexuality. Still attempting to convince others (and himself) that he could be straight, he decides to pursue the popular, studious Mia (Rachel Naomi Hilson). But the messy possibilities of a pansexual teen drama fall away the more Victor becomes obsessed with his openly gay classmate and co-worker, Benji (George Sear), who's such an idealized object of affection that he's shown multiple times flipping his luxurious hair in slow motion. In Love, Simon, the connection between Simon and Bram felt genuine and vital, but here Victor and Benji seem destined to get together solely based on proximity.
With its brisk half-hour episodes, and appearances from veteran comedic performers including Andy Richter, Ali Wong, Beth Littleford, and Natasha Rothwell (whose scene-stealing drama teacher from the film has been promoted to vice principal), Love, Victor is structured like your average TV comedy. The episodic sitcom rhythms allow for an easier access point to the narrative about identity and prejudice—both internal and external. But it seems frustratingly hesitant to assert itself as a mainstream teen dramedy with an openly gay protagonist, returning to the starting line of Love, Simon rather than building forward from it.
Cast: Michael Cimino, Mateo Fernandez, Isabella Ferreira, Mason Gooding, Rachel Hilson, James Martinez, Ana Ortiz, Nick Robinson, George Sear, Anthony Turpel, Bebe Wood, Lukas Gage Network: Hulu
Review: Netflix's The Woods Spins a Monotonously Grim but Addictive Mystery
The story's rush of exposition can be dizzying, but the pieces fall into place in ways that aren't entirely unbelievable.2.5
Harlan Coben's work has been adapted across various European markets, always retaining the same commitment to formula regardless of location or language. The American writer trades in superficial but addictive tales about long-buried secrets, mysterious disappearances, and murderous betrayals, and Netflix's The Woods is no exception.
The six-episode Polish miniseries is more streamlined than prior Coben adaptations, spending less time getting sidetracked from its central mystery. The story, based on the author's 2007 novel of the same name, is split between two time periods, opening with a flash-forward to prosecutor Pawel Kopinski (Grzegorz Damiecki) with a gun pressed to his head before flashing back to 1994, when a teenage Pawel (Hubert Milkowski) was at summer camp. Something very bad happened in the woods there, leaving two teens dead and two others—including Pawel's sister, Kamila (Martyna Byczkowska)—missing, and the discovery of a dead body potentially connected to the murders brings Pawel back to the case in 2019.
In the present-day timeline, Pawel reconnects with his former girlfriend, Laura Goldsztajn (Agnieszka Grochowska), who's now a college professor, and the two attempt to figure out what happened all those years ago. Pawel has been prosecuting a rape case in which one of the accused perpetrators is the son of a rich TV personality, Krzysztof (Cezary Pazura), who's vowed to use his resources to ruin Pawel's life if he won't drop the charges. This is all familiar ground for Coben, from the gradual unearthing of secrets that often tie together in unexpected (and unlikely) ways to the rather steady doling out of sudden reversals and revelations.
The change of setting from New Jersey to Poland has little impact on the story. The most distinctive local element here is an exploration of anti-Semitic attitudes as grieving families search for someone to blame following the initial crimes. But even that turns out to be just one of many bits of misdirection, a hallmark of Coben stories that often presents solutions to other horrific crimes in the margins, distracting the audience from the true culprits.
Coben may not have much interest in social commentary, but his characters, even the ostensible heroes, are always morally compromised, and finding out who killed or kidnapped a story's central victim doesn't necessarily lead to catharsis. Here, Pawel's handling of the rape case is especially thorny, and his determination to stand up for the accuser is as much about his own pride as it is about seeking justice for a young woman who's been attacked.
The Woods, part of a 14-book deal between Coben and Netflix, can be monotonously grim, with no mischievously charismatic villains to compare to the antagonist of Coben stories like The Stranger, but Damiecki and Grochowska sharply convey the anguish that their characters have carried with them for decades via haunted glances and halting speech patterns. Pawel and Laura aren't clever detectives spouting off one-liners, and their personal connection to every aspect of the case provides a kind of revelation that feels earned. By the end, the story's rush of exposition can be dizzying, but the pieces fall into place in ways that aren't entirely unbelievable. And the details, remixed from so many other mystery stories by Coben and others, will make sense in almost any language.
Cast: Grzegorz Damiecki, Agnieszka Grochowska, Hubert Milkowski, Martyna Byczkowska, Cezary Pazura Network: Netflix
Review: Crossing Swords's Pleasant Exterior Hides a Predictable Core of Vulgarity
Even the jokes that land mostly emphasize how complacent the series is to coast on its crassness.1
Hulu's Crossing Swords, created by Robot Chicken's John Harventine IV and Tom Root, depicts a beautiful stop-motion fantasy world where the characters have big round heads plastered with simplistic facial expressions. These toy-like peg people have no arms, their swords and such floating in midair beside them as if held by invisible hands. The show's handcrafted animation is charmingly scrappy, from the cardboard textures of the environments to fire being rendered as globs of colored fuzz. But Crossing Swords's pleasant exterior hides a core of vulgarity, alluded to by the sexual euphemism of its title.
This same brand of humor runs through so much adult-oriented animation, where gore, nudity, and profanity is juxtaposed with what might appear to be cuddly and kid-friendly at first glance. Crossing Swords's protagonist, a peasant named Patrick (Nicholas Hoult), represents the perceived experience of watching the show, as his good-hearted aspirations to be the king's squire plunge him into a world of hedonistic nobility.
The series is full of liars, narcissists, and people comedically abusing power to arbitrary, often violent ends. A squire contest in the first episode indulges in what quickly becomes tiresome standbys: Everyone cheats at fighting by kicking each other in the genitals, and one later challenge involves contestants having sex with the queen, who gives them gonorrhea.
Though Crossing Swords is briskly paced and filled with rapid-fire jokes, there's little shock or surprise to be had once a cute little peg man calls someone a motherfucker and then pulls out his penis for the umpteenth time. The show's comedy becomes rote, with a dreary predictability that extends even to more elaborate setups. For example, when one character requires snakeskin for a spell in the same episode where Patrick agonizes over circumcision, it's not particularly hard to connect the dots of the plot long before the script does.
The rest of Crossing Swords's humor hinges on a comingling of the show's medieval aesthetic with consciously modern touches, as in Patrick needing to ask for snakeskin at a pharmacy, or a hippie professor in a tie-dyed shirt using his class to hijack a ship in the interest of saving humongous krakens the way one might try to save whales. Although some of these concepts head in sporadically amusing directions, as when the professor demands to reinstate virgin sacrifices to the krakens, the show inevitably returns to predictable raunchiness (in this case, the promiscuous queen is no good for a sacrifice, so the job naturally falls to Patrick).
In a typical early gag, one character in a runaway wagon veers out of the way of an orphanage only to careen toward…a kitten orphanage. Upon hopping into the wagon, she shouts, "See ya, fucksticks," and then, when she spots the kitten orphanage, she sighs, "Well, shit." On paper, the sheer immediacy of this bait-and-switch is funny, but the dialogue bogs down the pacing for yet another example of how supposedly hilarious it is for these cutesy characters to use profanity. The series isn't without moments of cleverness, but even the jokes that land mostly just emphasize how complacent the remainder of Crossing Swords is to coast on its crassness.
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Luke Evans, Tony Hale, Adam Pally, Adam Ray, Tara Strong, Alanna Ubach Network: Hulu
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 21 The World Economy 466
The West's First Outreach:Maritime Power 466
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Causation and the West's
Expansion 471
Toward a World Economy 472
VISUALIZING THE PAST:West Indian Slaveholding 475
Colonial Expansion 477
DOCUMENT:Western Conquerors: Tactics and Motives 478
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: The World Economy–
And the World 483
Further Readings 484
On the Web 484
CHAPTER 22 The Transformation of the West,
1450—1750 486
The First Big Changes: Culture and Commerce,
1450—1650 487
The Commercial Revolution 492
The Scientific Revolution: The Next Phase of Change 495
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Versailles 497
Political Change 497
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Elites and Masses 498
The West by 1750 500
DOCUMENT: Controversies About Women 501
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Europe and the World 504
Further Readings 504
On the Web 505
CHAPTER 23 The Rise of Russia 506
Russia's Expansionist Politics Under the Tsars 506
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Multinational Empires 510
Russia's First Westernization, 1690—1790 511
DOCUMENT: The Nature of Westernization 513
Themes in Early Modern Russian History 516
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Oppressed Peasants 517
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Russia and the World 519
Further Readings 519
On the Web 520
CHAPTER 24 Early Latin America 522
Spaniards and Portuguese: From Reconquest
to Conquest 524
DOCUMENT: A Vision from the Vanquished 529
The Destruction and Transformation
of Indigenous Societies 532
Colonial Economies and Governments 533
THINKING HISTORICALLY: An Atlantic History? 534
Brazil: The First Plantation Colony 537
Multiracial Societies 540
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Race or Culture? A Changing
Society 541
The 18th-Century Reforms 542
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Latin American Civilization
and the World Context 547
Further Readings 547
On the Web 548
CHAPTER 25 Africa and the Africans in the Age
of the Atlantic Slave Trade 550
Africa and the Creation of an Atlantic System 551
The Atlantic Slave Trade 552
African Societies, Slavery, and the Slave Trade 557
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Slavery and Human
Society 558
White Settlers and Africans in Southern Africa 563
The African Diaspora 566
DOCUMENT: An African's Description of the Middle
Passage 567
VISUALIZING THE PAST: The Cloth of Kings in an Atlantic
Perspective 569
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Africa and the African Diaspora
in World Context 571
Further Readings 571
On the Web 572
CHAPTER 26 The Muslim Empires 574
The Ottomans: From Frontier Warriors
to Empire Builders 575
DOCUMENT: An Islamic Traveler Laments the Muslims'
Indifference to Europe 583
The Shi'a Challenge of the Safavids 583
THINKING HISTORICALLY: The Gunpowder Empires
and the Shifting Balance of Global Power 586
The Mughals and the Apex of Muslim Civilization
in India 590
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Art as A Window into the Past:
Paintings and History in Mughal India 594
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Gunpowder Empires
and the Restoration of the Islamic Bridge
Between Civilizations 597
Further Readings 598
On the Web 599
CHAPTER 27 Asian Transitions in an Age
of Global Change 600
The Asian Trading World and the Coming
of the Europeans 602
Ming China: A Global Mission Refused 609
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viii Contents
DOCUMENT: Exam Questions as a Mirror
of Chinese Values 611
VISUALIZING THE PAST: The Great Ships of the Ming
Expeditions that Crossed the Indian Ocean 615
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Means and Motives for Overseas
Expansion: Europe and China Compared 616
Fending Off the West: Japan's Reunification
and the First Challenge 617
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: An Age of Eurasian
Protoglobalization 621
Further Readings 621
On the Web 622
CHAPTER 28 The Emergence of Industrial Society
in the West, 1750—1914 636
The Age of Revolution 637
VISUALIZING THE PAST: The French Revolution
in Cartoons 640
The Consolidation of the Industrial Order, 1850—1914 644
DOCUMENT: Protesting the Industrial Revolution 646
Cultural Transformations 649
Western Settler Societies 652
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Two Revolutions: Industrial
and Atlantic 653
Diplomatic Tensions and World War I 656
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Industrial Europe
and the World 657
Further Readings 658
On the Web 658
CHAPTER 29 Industrialization and Imperialism:
The Making of the European Global Order 660
The Shift to Land Empires in Asia 662
THINKING HISTORICALLY:Western Education and the Rise
of an African and Asian Middle Class 668
Industrial Rivalries and the Partition of the World,
1870—1914 670
Patterns of Dominance: Continuity and Change 673
DOCUMENT: Contrary Images: The Colonizer Versus
the Colonized on the "Civilizing Mission" 674
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Capitalism and Colonialism 677
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: A European-Dominated Early
Phase of Globalization 682
Further Readings 682
On the Web 683
CHAPTER 30 The Consolidation of Latin America,
1830—1920 684
From Colonies to Nations 685
New Nations Confront Old and New Problems 689
Latin American Economies and World Markets,
1820—1870 692
DOCUMENT: Confronting the Hispanic Heritage:
From Independence to Consolidation 698
Societies in Search of Themselves 701
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Explaining
Underdevelopment 704
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Images of the Spanish-American
War 706
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: New Latin American Nations
and the World 708
Further Readings 710
On the Web 710
CHAPTER 31 Civilizations in Crisis: The Ottoman
Empire, the Islamic Heartlands, and Qing China 712
From Empire to Nation: Ottoman Retreat and the Birth
of Turkey 713
Western Intrusions and the Crisis in the Arab Islamic
Heartlands 717
THINKING HISTORICALLY:Western Dominance
and the Decline of Civilizations 718
The Last Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Qing Empire
in China 723
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Mapping the Decline
of Civilizations 724
DOCUMENT: Transforming Imperial China
into a Nation 732
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Muslim and Chinese Decline
and a Shifting Global Balance 733
Further Readings 734
On the Web 734
CHAPTER 32 Russia and Japan: Industrialization
Outside the West 736
Russia's Reforms and Industrial Advance 737
DOCUMENT: Conditions for Factory Workers in Russia's
Industrialization 742
Protest and Revolution in Russia 743
Japan: Transformation Without Revolution 746
THINKING HISTORICALLY: The Separate Paths of Japan
and China 748
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Two Faces ofWestern Influence 751
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Russia and Japan in the World 754
Further Readings 754
On the Web 755
CHAPTER 33 Descent into the Abyss:World War I
and the Crisis of the European Global Order 770
The Coming of the Great War 772
A World at War 775
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Trench Warfare 776
Failed Peace and Global Turmoil 782
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Contents ix
The Nationalist Assault on the European
Colonial Order 783
DOCUMENT: Lessons for the Colonized from the Slaughter
in the Trenches 784
THINKING HISTORICALLY:Women in Asian and African
Nationalist Movements 792
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS:World War and Global
Upheavals 795
Further Readings 795
On the Web 796
CHAPTER 34 The World between the Wars: Revolutions,
Depression, and Authoritarian Response 798
The Roaring Twenties 799
Revolution: The First Waves 804
THINKING HISTORICALLY: A Century of Revolutions 810
The Global Great Depression 817
The Authoritarian Response 820
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Guernica and the Images
of War 823
DOCUMENT: Socialist Realism 828
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Economic Depression, Authoritarian
Response, and Democratic Retreat 830
Further Readings 831
On the Web 832
CHAPTER 35 A Second Global Conflict and the End
of the European World Order 834
Old and New Causes of a Second World War 835
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Total War, Global
Devastation 837
Unchecked Aggression and the Coming of War in Europe
and the Pacific 838
The Conduct of a Second Global War 840
DOCUMENT: Japan's Defeat in a Global War 847
War's End and the Emergence of the Superpower
Standoff 848
Nationalism and Decolonization in South and Southeast
Asia and Africa 849
VISUALIZING THE PAST: National Leaders for a New Global
Order 852
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Persisting Trends in a World
Transformed by War 857
Further Readings 857
On the Web 858
CHAPTER 36 Western Society and Eastern Europe
in the Decades of the Cold War 860
After World War II: A New International Setting
for the West 860
The Resurgence of Western Europe 864
THINKING HISTORICALLY: The United States and Western
Europe: Convergence and Complexity 868
Cold War Allies: The United States, Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand 870
Culture and Society in the West 872
VISUALIZING THE PAST:Women at Work in France
and the United States 874
Eastern Europe After World War II: A Soviet Empire 878
Soviet Culture: Promoting New Beliefs and Institutions 881
DOCUMENT: A Cold War Speech 886
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: The Cold War and the World 887
Further Readings 887
On the Web 888
CHAPTER 37 Latin America: Revolution and Reaction
into the 21st Century 890
Latin America After World War II 892
Radical Options in the 1950s 894
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Murals and Posters: Art
and Revolution 895
DOCUMENT: The People Speak 898
The Search for Reform and the Military Option 898
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Human Rights
in the 20th Century 902
Societies in Search of Change 905
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Struggling Toward the Future
in a Global Economy 909
Further Readings 910
On the Web 910
CHAPTER 38 Africa, the Middle East, and Asia
in the Era of Independence 912
The Challenges of Independence 913
DOCUMENT: Cultural Creativity in the Emerging Nations:
Some Literary Samples 921
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Artificial Nations and the Rising
Tide of Communal Strife 922
Post-Colonial Options for Achieving Economic Growth
and Social Justice 924
Delayed Revolutions: Religious Revivalism and Liberation
Movements in Settler Societies 930
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Globalization and Postcolonial
Societies 935
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Postcolonial Nations in the Cold
War World Order 935
Further Readings 936
On the Web 936
CHAPTER 39 Rebirth and Revolution: Nation-Building
in East Asia and the Pacific Rim 938
East Asia in the Postwar Settlements 939
The Pacific Rim:More Japans? 946
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Pacific Rim Growth 948
THINKING HISTORICALLY: The Pacific Rim
as a U.S. Policy Issue 950
Mao's China: Vanguard of World Revolution? 951
DOCUMENT:Women in the Revolutionary Struggles
for Social Justice 956
Colonialism and Revolution in Vietnam 958
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: East Asia and the Pacific Rim
in the Contemporary World 963
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x Contents
Further Readings 964
On the Web 964
CHAPTER 40 Power, Politics, and Conflict in World
History, 1990—2010 966
The End of the Cold War 967
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Symbolism in the Breakdown
of the Soviet Bloc 974
The Spread of Democracy 975
DOCUMENT: Democratic Protest and Repression
in China 976
The Great Powers and New Disputes 977
The United States as Sole Superpower 980
THINKING HISTORICALLY: Terrorism, Then and Now 982
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: New Global Standards,
New Divisions 984
Further Readings 984
On the Web 986
CHAPTER 41 Globalization and Resistance 988
Globalization: Causes and Processes 989
DOCUMENT: Protests Against Globalization 996
Resistance and Alternatives 998
THINKING HISTORICALLY: How Much Historical
Change? 999
The Global Environment 1000
VISUALIZING THE PAST: Two Faces of Globalization 1003
Toward the Future 1005
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS: Civilizations and Global Forces 1006
Further Readings 1006
On the Web 1007
Glossary G-1
Credits C-1
Index I-1
Category : Higher Education
Instalant Download World Civilizations: The Global Experience, Volume 2, 6th Edition by Peter N. Stearns, George Mason University Michael B. Adas, Rutgers University Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University Marc Jason Gilbert, Hawaii Pacific University with Paypal
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My second recipe under chutney's, spreads and dips is again a chutney from Andhra cuisine. Brinjal/ eggplant/ vankaya Pachadi is one of the all time favorites in Andhra homes. Not only as a chutney eggplant is a favorite vegetable at home. I used green small variety eggplants for this chutney you can use any variety eggplants for this chutney.
Let's check the recipe
Eggplants --- 5
Green chillies --- 8 or reduce according to your taste
Coriander seeds --- 1 tab sp
Cumin seeds ---- 2 tea sp
Urad dal --- 1 tea sp
Tamarind --- 1 inch piece
Garlic --- 6 cloves
Oil --- 1 tab sp
Turmeric powder --- 1/4 tea sp
Salt to taste
1. Heat few drops of oil in a pan add coriander seeds, urad dal and fry till golden then add cumin seeds and fry for a while remove and set a side.
2. Wash and wipe the eggplants, cut them in to small cubes.
3. Now heat remaining oil in the same pan add green chillies and fry for a while then add eggplant pieces and fry till eggplant pieces are tender, remove and let them cool.
4. soak tamarind in two tab sp of water.
5. First grind coriander seeds, urad dal and cumin seeds in to a fine powder.
6. Then add fried green chillis and eggplant pieces and run the mixe for two seconds.
7. Add tanarind, turmeric powder, garlic cloves, salt to taste and grind in to a coarse paste.
Remove the vankaya pachadi in to a clean and dry bowl and serve with dosa, idli, pongali or with plain rice and few drops of ghee.
Even I like this as a spread on my toast....
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#72


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Just got back from the best polo lesson ever and my inbox is full of Twi-Hard. Apparently there's some drama with the new Eclipse trailer that was just screened on Oprah today..?. I'm not about to break this sh-t down by the second because, well, please, that's Twi-Hard territory. But there are a few very interesting gossip angles to examine.
First – a trailer is usually 2 minutes and 30 seconds which puts this... teaser...whatever... a full minute short. The film drops on June 30th. A final cut should be delivered by the end of May. At this point then they should have more than enough footage for a full 2 and a half minutes. So what's up?
As I reported exclusively a couple of weeks ago, the crew and a few actors are expected to return to Vancouver for 3 days to reshoot – or "pick-up" – a few scenes. Whatever. Not that those two points are related. Not at all...what? A short trailer means nothing. Everything is fiiiiine. David Slade's vision of Eclipse is fiiiiine. It's a zombie movie!
Doesn't it look like a zombie movie?
There was an awful lot of evil vampire team action, non? In fact, there was an awful of Xavier Samuel. He plays Riley. Riley is in, like, maybe 3 scenes in the book. But Riley seems like a big deal in the trailer. A bigger deal than Edward.
And there's the problem. This explains why the Twi-Hards are freaking out. Where is the love, guy? Where is the mooning? Why isn't Robert Pattinson looking all pretty and tortured and kissing? Where is the cheese?
There was some cheese. Taylor Lautner's delivery of that "you're in danger, girl" message was pretty cheese. And whenever Ashley Greene opens her mouth it's cheese too. Overall though, under Slade's direction, the cheese has been remarkably scaled back...
A cheese-free Twilight?
This explains the panic.
Because these losers want to go to the movies and spend two hours watching Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart dry humping each other. After all, that's the original story: 500 pages of blue balls. Slade was working on a potentially campy and enjoyable horror movie. That works for me. But does it work for them?
It certainly doesn't work for Cynthia who emailed earlier. Cynthia is quite distraught:
I know you don't care about Twilight but the fans do! Did you see the trailer? It's terrible and I hate it so much! Not 1 kiss and they don't talk about Bella and Edward's relationship. In Eclipse is when Bella made her choice to be with Edward because he is the One. That is the story I fell in love with and changed my life. Do I have to care about stupid Zavier Samuels? I don't care!!!!! F-ck you David Slade. F-ck you Lainey. They will change this for the fans so don't even bother blog about this, we already know!
Here are Anna Kendrick and Nikki Reed at the Us Weekly Hot Hollywood party last night. Am all over Anna's dress. It's quirky, it's fresh, it's not for everyone but it's definitely for her. But the hair. Not the hair.
Reed on the other hand has had dressing problems for a while now. This is a stagette dress. It's a Woo Girl dress. It's a cheap looking dress. Beautiful girl, terrible taste.
PS. I'm always accused of smacking too hard on Pattinson. How's this? In that brief moment when he's giving Kristen Stewart a ring (?) and looking at her, um, tenderly... yes, he is very handsome there. But I hate the word tender. It's a gag word.
Photos from Wenn.com


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DJ sends Clarets spinning
DJ Campbell lifted Ipswich off the foot of the npower Championship table as his late goal secured a 2-1 win over Burnley.
Daryl Murphy had given the Tractor Boys the lead only for Sam Vokes to equalise before Campbell secured all three points with just three minutes remaining.
The result gives Mick McCarthy two wins from three since taking the manager's job at Portman Road while Sean Dyche suffered his first defeat as Burnley boss.
The home side made two changes with Tommy Smith and Guirane N'Daw brought into the side to replace Andy Drury and the suspended Lee Martin.
Danny Lafferty made his first start of the season for Burnley in place of Ben Mee who sustained a swollen foot in the match against Leeds.
It was a quiet start but Campbell was the first man to threaten for Ipswich as his turn and shot in the box was saved by Lee Grant with N'Daw putting the rebound over the bar.
Martin Paterson tested Stephen Henderson with a shot from a narrow angle but the goalkeeper made a smart save with his feet at the near post.
Carlos Edwards and Richie Wellens then combined well with Wellens' final ball finding Campbell in the penalty area but Lee Grant made a smart save to tip his shot around the post.
Grant had his heart in his mouth as he spilled Aaron Cresswell's cross but the ball was cleared off the line before referee Mark Brown eventually awarded a free kick for a foul on the goalkeeper by Murphy.
But just six minutes into the second half Town took the lead as Grant was not given the benefit of the doubt in a challenge with the Irish striker.
Wellens put a cross into the box and Murphy and Grant went up together with the former Sunderland man heading home.
Grant felt he was fouled and Burnley players surrounded the referee but Brown was unmoved and Murphy was awarded his first strike at Portman Road this season.
The home fans were calling for a red card as Ross Wallace brought down Cresswell but the referee produced a yellow.
Dyche brought on Junior Stanislas and Marvin Bartley as he attempted to get his side back into the game but barring a Stanislas shot over the bar, it was Ipswich who remained in control.
Dyche made his final substitution bringing on Vokes and the striker had an almost instantaneous impact as he levelled with 10 minutes to go.
Stanislas put a cross into the box and Vokes was credited with the final touch as he rose with Danny Higginbotham to meet the ball.
But in the 86th minute substitute Jay-Emmanuel Thomas found Edwards who produced a wonderful cross for Campbell to slot home and secure the win for Town.
Source: PA


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Randolph June 9th 1865==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==
Lizzie & friends at home
As I feel it my duty to write to you, I will try in this sad dark hour of my life. Dear friends little do you realize how dark this world looks to me in the midst of joy & happiness as it were every thing has been turned to darkness. you all well know that my hole life & affetions were scenterd in that dear departed husband. he was dearer than life to me. you all know how good and kind he was & to think he had such a good home and was taken a way from his home to die. it seems as though I cannot have this so and yet it is so. It must be so.
in his last letter he wrote so much about home & that he looked fareward to the time when he should return home as one of the most happy times in all his life. he says to me live happy as you can and pray for my return. but a las he is gone to his long home where we are all hastning. I would gladly go were it gods will but he is a just god. and to him I look for aid in this hour of affletion. I feel that there is no other comforter, that dear wone that has been taken from the embrase of dear friends in this world has gone to a far better world, where beauty cannot fade nor sorrow dim the eye. he is waiting for me to come to him. he cannot come to me. I have evry reason to think he died happy & if I live such a life as is ask of me I know I shall meet him again where parting will be no more, nor sorrow is never nown.
But a gain whin I think of the long lonly years I perhaps may have to spend in dark and dreary world with out that dear wone that I looked to for so much happiness & of this dear home that we were antisipating an enjoying so much & now it is all left for me, not to enjoy but to mourn my life a way. you know not the feelings of my heart. I cannot describe my feeling. could you see me you could now some thing a bout it yet you could not feel nor see this heart a bleeding with anguish.
for four weeaks I was not able to do anything & now am hardly able to sit up. you are all so far a way you cannot realise any thing about this trouble. write and try and comfort me if you cannot come and see me. tell me what I shall do. I feel that I have the sympathy of every boddy in town yet it does not fill the vacancy. Oh how my heart yearns for that dear departed wone. why was this so when I loved him so. I cannot live without him. think of those eyes & those winning ways those hands that that were always so ready and willing to do for me and now I am all alone. no one to do for me and my health is poor. I must Stop for I am so tired. I am over to mothers. she is very kind to me.
Tell Father that Mr Cline has paid three hundred dollars on those notes. he wants to know how he shall Send it in money or get it in bonety. he does not want to keep the money on hand now. write as soon as you get this and let him know. your sorrowing sister Lydia Collins. write soon. good by.
here are some pieces of my dresses & a piese of my bonnet. I wish I could see you all, write to me.
On April 26, 1865 Myron Collins, Lydia's husband, died of illness in a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. Lydia and Myron were married on November 10, 1858.
Lydia says that she is "over to mothers" which I surmise is likely Myron's mother.
See The Berlin Family :: List of The Letters for a complete listing of all of the family letters.


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Aug 28, 2018 | ISBN 9780756409494
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James recently pointed out that 'William Wallace' (seen above) was also the name of one of Abe Lincolns sons. I figured the banner tied in with recent themes explored on this blog and thought that was the end of it.
After finishing the front of the Snowman my daughter suggested we turn the back of him into a Snowgirl. We added some breasts and the lump of snow gradually evolved into a Hermaphrodite: half-female half-male. Once we completed the body I couldn't resist a quick squeeze.
I'm not sure what it means, but I suppose it all points to the (s)NOW.
"The multiple faces on the Lord Marshal's mask-helm represent his all-seeing astral eyes. The spine motif on the back of all Necromonger armor relates to the notion of "Purification" through the spine."
the armor is called Mockodile
from wiki
Janus (or Ianus; "archway") was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings ... you might see I deal with the subject here
Actor Sam Worthington played the character 'Jake Sully' in Avatar. The name Sully entrains with the Blue MONstar (Avatar) called 'Sully' from the movie
Here's another thing. Mel Gibson was bound to a wheelchair in the movie Conspiracy Theory, just like Jake Sully in the movie Avatar.
Jared Leto's latest movie role landed him in a wheelchair.
Jared, who plays John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman in 'Chapter 27', revealed gaining 60lbs to play Chapman left him unable to walk.
He said: "My body was in shock from the amount of weight I gained. I don't know if it was gout - but I had a definite problem with my feet. I couldn't walk for long distances. I had a wheelchair because it was so painful."
The wheelchair points to the Chariot which helps guide us towards/through the Doorway of Duality, overseen by the Two-faced Janus. To me it's about moving beyond previous limitations. Getting back on your feet. Moving forward again after a period of immobility.
I wonder if JANUs has anything to do with the Doorway of JANUary, which has just come to a close.
I posted in the next post too
here's the heads


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Oscar Pistorius wants to train again, according to his agent
JOHANNESBURG -- Oscar Pistorius wants to train again and recently went back to visit his regular track in South Africa's capital, the double-amputee athlete's agent told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
There was still no decision on an exact time-frame for the multiple Paralympic champion's return to regular running, but Pistorius told his agent Peet van Zyl and longtime coach Ampie Louw at a Tuesday meeting that he was "definitely keen to get back on track to resume training," the agent said.
"When, exactly, is his choice," Van Zyl told the AP in Wednesday's telephone interview.
Pistorius had also revisited his practice track in Pretoria on March 24, although he didn't train, the agent said.
Pistorius last trained on a track over two months ago, and his last competitive race was his victory in the 400 meters final at the London Paralympics in September last year.
Van Zyl said Pistorius wasn't ready "mentally" to compete yet after he was charged with murder in the Feb. 14 shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home.
"From our meeting, it was clear and evident it's going to take some time for him (to be ready to compete)," Van Zyl said. "He's trying to process this whole ordeal."
Pistorius had also told his agent and coach that he would only consider going to the world championships in Moscow in August if he was in the right shape to run at the top level again.
"He (Pistorius) stated to me clearly yesterday, for the world champs, first he needs to be in some form," Van Zyl said.
Van Zyl would approach race promoters regarding a return to competition for the world's most famous disabled athlete only when Pistorius indicated that he was ready, he said. The agent had not been in contact with any meet organizers yet.
"There are sensitivity issues, but at the end of the day it's these guys' (race organizers) decisions," Van Zyl said.
Still, Pistorius' first significant move toward a return to the track on his carbon fiber running blades came at the meeting with his management team at the home of his uncle, Arnold Pistorius, on Tuesday night. The 26-year-old Olympian has been staying at the house in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria since he was freed on bail on Feb. 22.
Pistorius denies murdering Steenkamp and says he shot her accidentally after mistaking her for an intruder in his house. Prosecutors have charged him with premeditated murder and say he intentionally shot Steenkamp multiple times through a door inside his bathroom after the couple argued in the early hours of Valentine's Day.
His next court appearance is June 4, where prosecutors aim to serve indictments. Pistorius' murder trial may not begin until the end of the year, or even early 2014.
Pistorius had visited his training track at the University of Pretoria with some other athletes just under two weeks ago, but hadn't worked out properly, only doing a little jogging, Van Zyl said. Although a high court ruling last week eased Pistorius' bail restrictions on appeal and allowed him to travel to compete and earn a living, Van Zyl said it would still take time to be ready for track meets.
"He hasn't trained at all since the incident and you can't expect him to go into competition. More important, mentally he is not there yet, he is some way off," the agent said.
But longtime coach Louw, who discovered the double amputee's talent for running when he was still a teenager, was eager for the athlete to get back to training to help his mental process, and Pistorius' return to track may not be far off.
"Ampie was quite keen for him to start training as soon as possible so Oscar can get into some kind of routine," Van Zyl said.
Also Wednesday, the culpable homicide trial of Pistorius' older brother, Carl, was postponed until April 25.
Carl Pistorius last week pleaded not guilty to a main charge of culpable homicide, or negligent killing, relating to a road accident in 2008. He also pleaded not guilty to two alternative charges of driving his SUV recklessly and without consideration.
He is accused of causing the death of a woman motorcyclist in the road accident in Vanderbijlpark, a city south of Johannesburg.
Carl Pistorius' lawyers say the 36-year-old woman who died, Maria Barnard, was riding recklessly and may have consumed alcohol before the crash five years ago.


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An Acapulco playboy finds a baby on his doorstep, and he embraces his newfound role as a parent while also stumbling into a new career as a Hollywood stuntman after moving to Los Angeles to search for the girl's missing mother. Valentin (Eugenio Derbez) romanced his fair share of beauties, but he never realized he had become a father until a former lover left him with a screaming infant. The mother nowhere to be found, Mexico native...more
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Watch CBSN Live
opposition party leader Yulia Tymoshenko reacts as the parliament approves her
nomination as prime minister - in a 373-0 vote - in Kiev, in this Feb. 4, 2005
file photo.
her conviction and jailing for abuse of power, following a trial that international
organizations (including the European Union) characterized as politically
motivated, Tymoshenko was freed on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014, following months of
unrest in her nation's capital. The parliament also voted to remove President
Viktor Yanukovych from power.
CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
Credit: AP Photo/Sergei Grits
Ukrainian opposition leader Julia Tymoshenko in September 2002.
Born in 1960, Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko was a businesswoman whose ventures included the nation's gas industry. She was elected to the nation's parliament in 1996, eventually becoming a leader in a nascent opposition party against then-President Leonid Kuchma. In 2001 she was fired by Kuchma from her position as deputy prime minister responsible for the gas and energy sector.
During Yulia Tymoshenko's early political career she was arrested and charged with forging documents and smuggling gas; a court found no basis to the charges. Her husband, businessman Oleksandr Tymoshenko, was also arrested and charged with embezzlement. A court threw out the case, but Oleksandr went into hiding, fearing further prosecution. Yulia Tymoshenko maintained the government's cases against them amounted to political intimidation.
Credit: AP Photo
Credit: Anatoly Medzyk/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Genia Savilova/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Gleb Garnich/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov
Credit: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Aleksander Prokopenko/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: AP Photo/Efrem lukatsky
Credit: AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
Credit: Mykola Lazarenko/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Alexander Prokopenko/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images
Pope Benedict XVI meets with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko at his library on October 16, 2009 in Vatican City.
Credit: Franco Origlia/Getty Images
A picture released by Yulia Tymoshenko's press service shows the former Ukrainian Prime Minister gesturing from a prison window in Kiev on November 4, 2011. Tymoshenko egged on her supporters from her prison cell today, in her first appearance since her controversial jailing over abuse of office charges last month. She poked her hand between the bars, waved and blew kisses to a handful of supporters who had gathered outside the prison, chanting "Freedom to Yulia," in her first appearance since being jailed on October 11.
Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images


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Amen, Elvis: Grissom explores King fixation
Doug Grissom had never been a fan, but after reading Peter Guralnick's book, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, the iconic power of the King began to work its magic.
"I became fascinated by what Elvis meant to people," says the UVA drama professor whose new play, Elvis People, will be staged in January at Roanoke's Millmont Theater.
Grissom, 52, is perhaps best known in Charlottesville for co-founding Offstage Theater, whose popular Barhopper Series stages short plays in bars around town. Also, his educational theater piece about acquaintance rape, But I Said No (co-written with Margaret Baldwin), grabbed national attention after its 1990 debut and is still staged on college campuses.
He's also the recipient of both the Virginia Playwriting Award and the Outstanding New Play Award at the Washington Theatre Festival.
His latest claim to fame is that he's an Elvis expert– of sorts.
In the new production, however, "There's no Elvis, and there's no music." Instead, the play consists of series of vignettes and small stories about people who are influenced by the actual man and the celebrity.
There's a story about a Vietnam vet who finds healing with Elvis songs, stories about obsessed fans, a monologue from Elvis' army sergeant in Germany, and an array of composite characters based on manager Colonel Tom Parker and other members of the "Memphis Mafia." Grissom even swings for the fences by including a sketch about a woman who uses Elvis to perform a racist act. And, off course, there's an Elvis impersonator.
"You do see the arm of Elvis at one point," admits Grissom. "He's in bed with a woman."
"The play is less about Elvis than about our relationship with fame," says Chris Patrick, the former OffStage artistic director who assisted with readings of Elvis People at Gravity Lounge. "It's more about myth-making."
Ironically, Grissom's own Elvis story could easily be one of the vignettes.
"My house has been consumed by Elvis while I've been working on this," says Grissom. "Since I've been doing this it's amazing how often I see Elvis in the culture."
Bree Luck, OffStage's current producer/director, says that one of the wonderful things about the play is its accessibility. "You don't have to be an Elvis fan to like this play," she says. "It's really about the way this mega-star has affected the most unlikely folks."
Why do folks become Elvis people?
"There's a religious aspect to Elvis," says Grissom. "I was tempted to subtitle the play, Elvis People: The Varieties of Religious Experience," he laughs.
Long live the King!
Doug Grissom