New Year Predictions for 2016

Happy Holidays to all of you out there in Inter-webs Land!

It's been a great holiday season here in Oz. The roast turkey trees have been plucked clean and we are all in a tryptophan and carbs induced stupor which induces a kind of mystical trance state in those residing in magically imbued realms. In this condition we are able to peer through the temporal fog and glimpse the major happenings of 2016 and reporting them back to you.

January: UK Prime Minister David Cameron will be discovered to be the source of numerous anonymous obscene emails to Muppet star Miss Piggy. This will lead to a major religious tumult as the nation's leading imams and rabbis will be forced to declare Britain non-halal and non-kosher. The Queen will ultimately step in and citing obscure, historic law to have Cameron locked away in the Tower of London, where he is forced to pose with tourists from Texas for the next 6 months. Stepping into the leadership void for the Tory party will be London Mayor Boris Johnson.

February: The GOP primary will be in a neck-to-neck tie forcing candidates to become ever more creative in their efforts to stand out from the pack. Donald Trump will begin dressing his campaign in brown shirts and finance an expedition to the center of the earth to find the Aryan Supermen of Thule to solicit their endorsement. Neurosurgeon turned delusional maniac Ben Carson will claim to have appointed Jesus Christ as his campaign manager. Not to be outdone, evangelical bigot and former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee will have himself crucified at a campaign rally by Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris.

March: British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will be scandalized by The Daily Mail when a picture of him eating falafel on its front page is used to validate previous claims that he is a terrorist sympathizer. This is seconded by Tony Blair and both Milliband brothers.

April: GOP presidential candidate and failed CEO Carly Fiorina drops out of the race after claims of having video of Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump harvesting organs at an ObamaCare death panel party are proven to be only old VHS tapes she used to record NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night line up in the late 1980s. Everyone is impressed by how young Woody Harrelson is in those old Cheers episodes.

May: Under pressure from Euro Skeptics and a resurgent UKIP (with the new slogan of "Now with 25% more racism!") Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a referendum on the UK's remaining in the EU. The NO vote wins by a landslide mainly because the ballots intended for Scotland were accidentally dumped into the North Sea.

June: The GOP will hold its first brokered election in decades - resulting in the party establishment nominating a Jeb Bush/Haley Barbour ticket, causing Trump to run as a 3rd party candidate with Ann Coulter as his running mate/future wife. Meanwhile, The Democrats begin preparing the victory party for the Clinton/Sanders ticket.

July: Vladmir Putin agrees to support the removal of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria if US president Barack Obama can pin him three times in a best of five tournament. Obama manages to do it in four matches, in spite of the fact that Putin's manager Nikolai Volkov snuck into to the ring with a metal folding chair and hit the Commander in Chief across the back with it. Luckily, Obama's manager, Joe "The Delaware Demon" Biden was able to intervene and toss Volkov out of the ring.

August: Scotland overwhelmingly votes for independence - in spite of England's promise to dismiss the Scots even more than ever in the future if they stuck together. Wales offers to facilitate couples therapy but England says the one that needs therapy is Scotland for being such a "crazy bitch" and refuses to attend. A long, drawn out custody battle for the Isle of Man commences.

September: At a presidential debate featuring GOP candidate Jeb Bush, Democrat candidate Hilary Clinton, independent Donald Trump and Libertarian candidate Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Trump announces his intention to build "nice, beautiful gated communities" to house the American Muslim population. He also suggests that these communities would be hot beds of cheap domestic labor that will help "us finally beat Mexico and China". The other highlight of the debate is a pink feathered boa sporting Ventura elbow dropping Bush off the stage for refusing to reconsider the American "war on drugs".

October: Most of the media now refers to Hilary Clinton as Madame President. Meanwhile, Fox News begins running marathon footage of Jeb Bush's campaign speeches - putting nearly all of its viewers into comas. Joe Biden announces plans to open up a hydroponics shop in Washington DC following his exit from the vice presidency in January.

November: The UK leaves the EU. Prime Minister Boris Johnson spends the rest of the year sitting next to his mobile phone telling people that in any second Brussels would be calling to beg them to come back.
Clinton/Sanders win the US presidency in a massive landslide that sees the Democrats take both the House and Senate. After much consideration, the GOP decides that the reason they lost was because the party was not blatantly racist enough and changes the party mascot from an elephant to a German Shepherd attacking a civil rights activist.

December: Refusing to believe he lost, Donald Trump still campaigns, seeing a real upsurge in support from red-necks with middle school educations and neck tattoos.

Out of the Fundamentalist Planet - C.S. Lewis' "Space Trilogy"

So, A year or two after reading the Narnia series, an elderly neighbour moved out of their home and gave my parents a cardboard of dusty paperbacks. Sitting on top of the pile of books was a copy of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. It had a trippy, psychedelic cover and was supposedly set in space (just like Star Wars!). Best yet, the back cover blurb described it as an "adult novel" or some such wording. Well, being a worldly sorta of boy on the cusp of full on puberty, "adult" meant sex! I was expecting a sexy space adventure - something like the movies they showed on Cinemax late weekend nights staring Laura Gemser. Star Wars with lesbian orgies! Hotcha! Well, I was in for a shock. What I discovered was an at times perverse and bizarre anti-secularist screed disguised as a Nigel Kneale-esque science fiction thriller.

Old paperback covers were the best.

I didn't get it but I did see that it was the final book of a trilogy and decided that Return of the Jedi was not to be fully appreciated without the previous two Star Wars movies and sought out the first two instalments: Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.

You really needed to see the first two to get this. Really.

Out of the Silent Planet introduces the series' protagonist, Cambridge philology professor Elwin Ransom, who is kidnapped by dedicated humanist scientist Dr. Weston and his sidekick, the materialist Dick Devine. The pair drag the traditionalist Professor Ransom with them to the planet Malacandra (Mars) in a homemade space ship to work as their interpreter (due to his skill as a philologist) and slave. Weston is working to discover new lands for humanity to expand to while Devine is only interested in laying claim to the copious amounts of gold that litter the Martian soil.

Hiya?

Once on the planet, Ransom escapes and is taken in by the anthropomorphic beaver people, the hrossa (on whom The Martian Invasion of Mars' Hiya Duwin is based on). Also residing on the planet are the tall, slender race of scientifically advanced people known as the Seroni. The two races live in harmony under the guidance of Oyarsa - an eldila, a race of cosmic angels that rule over every planet. Turns out Earth (AKA Thulcandra was under the rule of a fallen eldila (AKA Lucifer) and, to prevent the contamination from spreading to the other planets, Earth was isolated from the rest of the cosmos.  Eventually, Weston and Devine (and secular humanism in general) are put on trial by Oyarsa and expelled from the planet.

Ugh! He lumps secularism in with greedy, unchecked materialism and associates it with the "bent" nature of the human race because of Earth's fallen status. This view that humans are corrupted and can only be straightened out by becoming Christians is one of the most dangerous fundamentalist views Lewis expresses - since it paints those not Christian as being of lesser worth than the faithful. This is the kind of thinking that allows Fundamentalist Christians to rationalize bombing abortion clinics or preventing same-sex couples from getting married.

Venus infers?

This bigoted strain of Christian thought continues in the second instalment of the trilogy - Perelandra. This time, Oyarsa sends Ransom on a mission to Venus (Perelandra) to prevent Satan causing that planet's version of Adam and Eve from falling out of grace. The Venusians are green-skinned humans - that being the form of choice in the cosmos since Jesus showed up on Earth. The facilitate his aid in the plot is Satan, who has possessed Weston and goes about promoting a vague kind of "spirituality". Of course, Ransom stops The Devil from causing a second "original sin" from taking place and the pleased Oyarsa sends him back to Earth to carry on the battle against Satan.

Lewis is again banging on the original sin drum and by doing so endorses the basic misogyny inherent in the premise. Venus' Eve, Tinidril, is who Satan intends manipulate to create the "fall" of her race. The possibility of Tor, the Venusian Adam, succumbing to The Devil's scheme is never really considered. Once again we see Lewis presenting women as inferior as their male counterparts and reinforcing the notion that Eve, and by extension all women, are responsible for the "bent" nature of humanity. This is the kind of logic used by fundamentalist groups like the loathsome Quiverfull movement  to justify diminishing women.

Mr Bulitude, no!

Things get even more bizarre on Earth during the events of That Hideous Strength. Richard Devine has gotten to work under an alias to set up a scientific research organization that is a front for a Satanic secular humanist revolution. A young professor with a troubled marriage to an independent minded doctoral student is offered a position with the organization - National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (NICE). Meanwhile, the institute is attempting to buy land from a local university on which is supposed to reside Merlin's grave. The wife, Jane, has nightmares about the institute and in her attempts in seeking help is brought to the home of Ransom - now The Pendragon (King) of Logres (Britain), heir to King Arthur. How this happens is never really explained.

Ransom is in constant contact with Oyarsa and his people in order to prevent the evil NICE from overthrowing Christianity. Things get weirder from there. The husband, Mark, is framed for a murder by the NICE secret police, headed up by a butch sadist named Miss Hardcastle - who derives sexual gratification from torturing women prisoners. The murder charge is used to blackmail Mark into participating in a series of bizarre rituals designed to make him "truly objective". Meanwhile, we learn the head of NICE is literally the disembodied head of a French scientist and hang out at Ransom's house with his band of disciples, including a bear the Pendragon tamed named Mr. Bulitude.  Eventually, Jane converts to Christianity and becomes a good, obedient wife. Merlin rises from the grave and feeds the NICE staff to the institute's lab animals. With that out of the way, Jane and Mark live happily ever after in a Christian marriage and Ransom is shipped off to Venus. The end.

Weird stuff and actually kind of fun if you can look past the vileness of the underlying message. Science is portrayed as evil. Independent women are either vicious dykes or sad, unfulfilled harpies. There is also the old school nationalism on display, with Britain being the defender of the Faith when it comes time to battle Satan. This one has it all - attacks on science, attacks on humanism, homophobia, the justification of killing for one's faith, misogyny and nationalism. If Lewis could have put in a bit about the right to bear arms, it would be a perfect depiction of the Republican Party's world view.

The American Pendragons?

The Curse of C.S. Lewis

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center have to make a confession - we used to be fans of C.S. Lewis. When we were young, we found his Narnia books quite enjoyable and a damned sight more fun to read than Tolkien's Middle Earth stuff. But we were just children then. What did we know?

The Narnia books are Christian propaganda wrapped up in a package designed to lure young minds to it. There's epic quests, witches, knights, monsters and incredibly resourceful children saving an entire world of fantastic beings. It's like a delicious cake filled with every kind of western mythology with a great big dollop of Jesus in the center.

It's not that the stories are Christian allegory that's the problem, but it's the kind of Christianity that they promote that is most disturbing. Lewis is promoting Christianity at its most paternalistic and authoritarian - no better demonstrated in the last book of the series, The Last Battle, when we learn that Susan Pevensie can not enter the kingdom of Aslan (AKA four-footed Jesus) because of her interest in boys - hence punishing her for discovering and embracing the power of her female sexuality.

Tilda Swinton as The White Witch in the 2005 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe film

 In Lewis' Christianity women are to be chaste and meek little things that do as their told. It comes as no surprise that Narnia's greatest villain (appearing in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew), The White Witch, is an ambitious, strong woman. Another popular Narnian baddy is The Lady of the Green Kirtle - the villainess of The Silver Chair, who like kinswoman Jadis of Charn (The White Witch's true name) is a powerful, ambitious woman who dares defy the natural role women are meant to play in society. To underscore how unnatural these women are, Lewis explicitly states in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe that Jadis is descended from a union between Adam and his first wife, Lilith.

The Lady in the Green Kirtle illustration by original Narnia illustrator Pauline Baynes

According to Medieval Jewish mythology and folklore, Lilith was created from the mud alongside Adam in Eden. Because they were both made from the same stuff at the same time, Lilith quite reasonably assumed that she and Adam were equals and refused to submit his will. Adam didn't take to kindly to this and rejected Lilith. To make it up to Adam, God plucks out one his ribs and creates Eve, who, because she is formed from Adam's rib, is naturally inferior to him and is expected to behave accordingly. The one time Eve does take the initiative, she gets her doofus of a husband to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and we all know how that played out. Meanwhile, while Eve was original sinning and condemning all women to menstrual cycles for her fruit picking ways, Lilith went off and became a demon/witch that goes around the world filling men with lustful thoughts and killing new born babies.

That darn Eve!

Lilith was a popular subject for European painters and poets. Being the educated man that he was, Lewis would have been very familiar with the common depiction of Lilith as a beautiful seductress using her sexuality to ruin men. So, when he says that Jadis is not a "daughter of Eve" he is saying that she and, by extension, all women like her are a separate, unnatural race from those of us derived from the union of Adam and Eve. Yikes!

Lilith by John Collier (1892)

This is pretty ugly stuff that is being delivered in the guise of a children's adventure story. So, while children may initially pick up the Narnia books for things like the swashbuckling mouse, Reepicheep,they are being indoctrinated with Lewis' seriously skewed views on women and sexuality. For this reason alone these books should be kept out of the hands of children.

But (like the used to say on the old TV commercials for Ginsu  Knives) wait there's more!

Not only is Lewis promoting an especially sexist form of Christianity, it is incredibly intolerant. This is demonstrated in how he deals with the people that live in the Narnian world that are not followers of Aslan - The Calormenene.

The desert nation of Calormen is inhabited by dark skinned people described as having long beards, wearing robes and turbans. Their money bears the image of a crescent and they have an opulent aesthetic sensibility. In every sense the Calormenene fit into the stereotypical image of Middle Eastern people and Lewis makes no attempt to hide it

An original illustration of Tash by Chronicles of Narnia illustrator Pauline Baynes

The Calormene  worship the god Tash - depicted as a multi-limbed, vulture-headed demon with a skeletal body. A key component to Tash worship is human sacrifice
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It's fairly creepy stuff but what makes it worse is that the worship of Tash is very similar to Medieval Europe's beliefs regarding Muslims. Several Christian sources stated that Muslims worshiped a monstrous entity that required human sacrifices as part of their ceremony. A common deity credited to be the god of the "Mohammedans" was Termagant - often depicted as a kind of goat-headed entity in long robes. Termagant is the seeming inspiration behind the depiction of the demon/god Baphomet. One of the key charges levied against the Knights Templar when they were being persecuted and suppressed by the Vatican was that they went native and began worshiping the goat-headed god of the Muslims, Baphomet.

Baphomet by Eliphas Levi

Termagant and Baphomet often showed up in Medieval and Renaissance literature, two things Professor Lewis was quite familiar with. By giving his Muslim stand-ins, the Calormene, a monstrous demon as a god, he was tapping into the same anti-Islam sentiment and fear that those much older works did.

A couple of Calormene nobles in an illustration by Pauline Baynes

It was bad enough that Lewis depicts the only other belief system in his fictional world as being corrupt and evil, but he goes further and plays into the racism and xenophobia of his day by having the dark skinned Calormene plot to destroy Narnia - which represents an idealized Britain filled with Aslan fearing, tea sipping White folks and their equally British animal and mythological creature pals. The dusky Calormene wish to wipe the worship of Aslan from the earth and replace traditional Narnian society with its own. This is essentially the view of contemporary Islamophobes the world over.

In Lewis' Christianity as presented in the Narnia books, there is no room for other belief systems. In fact, any other belief system seeks to destroy the very civilization in which his target audience was a part of. It is not hard to imagine that Lewis wanted this message to penetrate deeply into the minds of the little boys and girls across the English speaking world he wrote the books for.

As if Islamophobia, misogyny and racism were not bad enough, the Narnia books argue for a violent defence of Christianity by focusing on the faith as being under constant siege. Over and over again the followers of Aslan have to pick up weapons and kill in the name of their saviour. This bunker mentality of having to withstand steady assaults on their faith is a common trait throughout Christian fundamentalism as practiced in America. Christian conservatives are constantly harping on about there being a "War on Christmas" or that their religious freedom is being robbed of them by the Supreme Court making marriage equality the law of the land.

An original illustration for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by Pauline Baynes, showing Santa Claus handing out weapons to the children with which to slay Aslan's enemies with. Christmas has declared war on you!
 

Perceiving oneself as being under attack and persecuted allows someone to justify any actions they take to defend themselves against these imagined threats. Religious fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim and Jewish) operate from this point of view and that is how they are able to justify the use of terrorism against who they believe are their enemies. Lewis' Narnia books feed into this delusional mind set.

Mike Huckabee and Kim Davis - This is what you get if you let your kids read the Narnia books!

To be continued . .  .



 

Books to help shape your kid into an awesome person

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center are aware that ours are not the only books out there. In fact, there are like thousands of great reads out there and many of them are for children. Now, anytime a kid reads, great, but some books are like fast food for the developing brain - enjoyable but not really sustaining, and others are akin to the fully balanced breakfast they used to always go on about during the commercials between the Saturday morning cartoons. If you have already read A Zen Master In Oz and The Martian Invasion Of Oz to your offspring, here are some more excellent reads to share with them.

Little Kids -
 Farmer Duck (1991) Written by Martin Waddell and Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

This little books tells the story of a fat human farmer who forces his duck to work as a virtual slave while he grows fat off of the little fowl's labor. Outraged by the farmer's treatment of the duck, the barnyard animals band together for a proletarian revolution. Fantastic stuff to teach your children about collective action, fairness and decency.

The Lorax (1971) Written and Illustrated by Dr. Seuss

The most genius work of the genius Theodore Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss) lays out the horrors of unchecked capitalism and pollution in a rather grim tale of what happens when people put profit before anything else. While the book seems to end in a quite desolate place, this little subversive tome ends with hope in the hands of a child - demonstrating that our hope for a better tomorrow lies literally in the hands of the next generation. Empowering, silly and a bit revolutionary.

The Paper Bag Princess (1980) Written by Robert Munsch and Illustrated by Michael Martchenko

This gently feminist story turns the princess stereotype on its head. Princess Elizabeth looses everything, including her clothes, when a dragon destroys her kingdom and steals her prince. It is up to Elizabeth, dressed in a paper bag, to rescue the vain and stupid Prince Ronald by using her wits to outsmart the dragon.

Big Kids -

His Dark Materials Written by Phillip Pullman
Vol 1: The Northern Lights (1995)
Vol 2: The Subtle Knife (1997)
Vol 3: The Amber Spyglass (2000)
This series directly challenges the patriarchal, Christian version of the fantasy novel as developed by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis by presenting a story spanning multiple realities in which humanity's freedom is threatened by a God, who is not a creator but a kind of conqueror that uses the Church as the mechanism to control His empire. The fate of sentient beings on countless realities rests on the shoulders of a plucky twelve year old orphan named Lyra. This series does not just challenge the well worn tropes of the fantasy adventure genre, it goes on challenges some of the most damaging heterodoxies of Christianity (such Original Sin) while telling a story filled with witches, proud polar bear kingdoms, intelligent roller skating elephant creatures, angels and so much more. A rather weak big budget film version of the first book was released a few years back. It failed at the box office and may have turned people off to the series. Please, don't let the movie paint what is one of the finest series for any age group ever written.



 

We're back from our spring retreat on Europa and ready to get our blog on!

All of that space travel and meditation has our minds filled with sci-fi thoughts. While The Martian Invasion of Oz has a sci-fi inspired plot, its real inspiration was the work of L. Frank Baum and the wonderful fantasy worlds he created. It is kind of a fantasy adventure with some science fiction frills attached. The sci-fi films that we have been most grooving on since touching down at the ol' Emerald City Zen Center have been ones that we think of as "Sneaky Sci-Fi" - movies that are actually science fiction but are disguised as other genres.

Here are our recommendations for some high quality "Sneaky Sci-Fi".



1. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) Director Colin Trevorrow
What appears to be a comedy about a sarcastic, burn out reporter (Jake Johnson) dragging along two college interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) to write a magazine piece on a small town eccentric (Mark Duplass) who placed a personal ad seeking someone to accompany him on a time travel adventure, becomes a funny, poignant reflection on loss, regret and why being able to correct the mistakes of our past via time travel is such a tantalizing concept. It's a movie about why we are attracted to the time travel genre that has nothing to do with hover boards and Deloreans and everything to do with the burden of guilt and regret.



2. Daybreakers (2009) Director Michael & Peter Spierig
At first glance this movie looks like it's going to basically be a Resident Evil movie with the zombies swapped out for vampires, but this dystopian look at a future where humanity has been transformed into vampires by a viral outbreak is about a whole lot more than cheap fang-filled thrills. The protagonists of the film (Ethan Hawke) is a vampire scientist racing against time to create a blood substitute before the world's supply of viable human blood is used up. What he discovers along the way is a human resistance movement, a cure for vampirism (in the form of Willem Dafoe) and a plot by his corporate scumbag boss (Sam Neill) to use the blood shortage to his benefit. It's a film about human mismanagement of natural resources and socio-economic inequalities in our health and justice systems. Good stuff.


3. The Prestige (2006) Director Christopher Nolan
In between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale got together to make this movie that initially appears to be a mystery designed to pay homage to the great Victorian stage magicians. Instead, this story of rival magicians (Bale and Hugh Jackman) being destroyed by their shared obsession for their art has a secret sci-fi heart beating the form of David Bowie as legendary inventor/scientist Nikola Tesla. The film ruminates on obsession, love, sacrifice, art and duality in a package that is a thousand times more satisfying than anything with a guy dressed up like a bat punching a clown can ever be.


4. Robot and Frank  (2012) Director Jake Schreier
Set in the not too distant future this film films finds former, dashing cat burglar Frank (Frank Langella) struggling with the onset of dementia and at odds with his son (James Marsden), who has bought a robot companion (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to look after him. At first Frank resents the presence of the robot but soon a kind of friendship evolves when Frank realizes that his new mechanical friend is just what he needs to get back into his old career. This funny and sad character piece treats future technology, such as the robot, in such an off handed, mundane manner that you lose any sense of wonder of it and just accept it just as you accept your smart phone and tablet nowadays. This allows the audience to be submerged in the world without being distracted by the bells and whistles that so often accompany looks into the future.


5. The One I Love (2014) Director Charlie McDowell
A married couple (Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss) on the verge of divorce are sent to beautiful coastal retreat by their creepy marriage counsellor (Ted Danson). Once there, they discover doppelgangers of themselves that represent their ideal version of the other. The movie uses this premise to explore a deeply troubled relationship and how our expectations and desires are often in stark opposition to the reality we live in. While the film sometimes feels like a Twilight Zone episode that has ran too long at times, as well as having a couple niggling plot holes, I guarantee that you will be thinking about it for days to follow - which is a sure sign of good art.

Listen, Bud, he's got radioactive blood!

 In A Zen Master in Oz and The Martian Invasion of Oz we meet Captain Pug, who explores the multiverse from the helm of his reality hopping steam ship, The Laughing Tortoise.
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Another hero has been in the news lately on account of doing his own leaping from one reality to the next.

Our hero!

The internet has been whipped its collective self into a tizzy over the news that Spiderman will be appearing in the superhero blockbusters produced by Marvel/Disney. Prior to the announcement this week by Sony Pictures and Marvel that the Web Head will be hanging out with Captain America and the Black Widow on screen, such a prospect was a pipe dream for fans of the Marvel comic books and films.
The path towards this announcement is pretty twisty (as I supposed any journey from one universe to another should be). It starts in about 1984, when legendary low-budget film maker Roger Corman was able to secure the film rights for Spiderman from Marvel Comics. Unable to get his web slinger flick off the ground, Corman let the rights to the property lapse.

Corman says "hi".

In 1985, mid-budget studio Cannon Films, headed up by shlock peddling Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (if those are not the names for a couple of super villians, what is?), secured the rights to Spiderman, with the understanding that if a film did not appear by 1990, the rights would revert back to Marvel.

Golan/Globus have some time shares they want to sell you.

The cousins did not have a clue about the character and thought they were going to make a horror film. So, they hired legendary horror director Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre1-2 and Poltergeist to name a few). Hiring Hooper seems to be about the only good idea Cannon Films managed to have. Golan/Globus commissioned a script in which Peter Parker gets the ability to transform into an eight-armed spider mutant and spends the film fighting an army of other animal themed mutant monsters. 


Freaked out by what was about to happen to his most famous creation on the big screen, Stan Lee stepped in and forced a new script to be commissioned that would more faithfully adapt the comic book character. Golan/Globus had a new script that now featured a much more familiar Peter Parker in college gaining his powers in the same accident that gives Doctor Octopus his. While this sounds like it might be on the right track, the fact that low-rent action hack Joe Zito was hired on as director is evidence that this would have been a pretty bad movie.

This is the kind of magic Joe Zito creates!

That bullet was dodged by all Spiderman fans when the budget for the proposed Zito-helmed flick was cut significantly due to Cannon losing a fortune on the failures of Superman IV and Masters of the Universe (a movie that we here at the Emerald City Zen Center have a great deal of undue affection for). This caused Zito to leave the project, making room for the king of modern day low-budget crap cinema, Albert Pyun.

This is Pyun's really terrible Captain America. What atrocity would he have inflicted on Spidey?

Before what could have been the worst superhero movie ever could be made, Cannon went bankrupt I 1989 and Golan/Globus split up. As part of the split, the company that bought Cannon gave Golan 21st Century Film Corporation and the movie rights to Spider-Man and Captain America.


Wanting to make good on this really excellent severance, Golan continued his efforts to get a Spider-Man picture made. In 1990 he managed to bring together up and coming independent film studio Carolco Pictures and big Hollywood studio Columbia  Pictures for a big budget adaptation of the comics, to be written and directed by James Cameron, that would have featured some seriously PG-13 language and a steamy sex scene between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Carolco was so jazzed about the proposed film that in 1992 they paid Marvel to extend Golan's film rights for Spider-Man character up to 1996.

James Cameron also knows where Jesus is buried. For real!

It looked like smooth sailing, but everything was derailed in the courts. As part of his contract, Cameron had the right to determine who received credit on his movie and he did not want Golan's name on it. In retaliation, Golan sued Carolco and Columbia. 20th Century Fox got into the game by suing Carolco and Columbia for using Cameron, because they believed he had an exclusive agreement with them. 21st Century Films and Carolco went bankrupt. MGM bought the assets of 21st Century Films and sued Viacom (who had bought Carolco's assets) and Marvel. Needless to say, no movie got made and in 1998 the courts gave the film rights to Spiderman back to Marvel.


In 1999, Marvel sold the film rights to Spiderman to Columbia, now owned by Sony. MGM intervened and threatened legal action, since it still considered itself the legal owner to the film rights. MGM and Sony then cut a deal in which Sony would give up its attempts to make its own James Bond film series and MGM would lay off its Spider-Man claims.

Admit it, you totally thought this was kind of hot when you first saw it.

With the legal wrangling out of the way, Sony pushed forward with its movies and finally, in 2002 (18 years after this saga began) Sam Raimi's pretty much excellent Spider-Man was released to huge box office returns. This was followed by Raimi's awesome Spider-Man II (2004) and the not-really-all-that great-at-all, but not as bad as some people make out, Spider-Man III (2007).

Yeah, the Green Goblin in these movies does look pretty goofy.

Meanwhile, Marvel set up its own film studio and got out of the business of licensing its characters to other studios. The first film it released, Iron Man (2008), was way better than anyone could have anticipated and laid the ground work for a series of faithful adaptions of Marvel characters to the screen, all of which occurring in the same shared universe, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Each film put out by Marvel has been pretty damned good, except for Iron Man II, which is really problematic.

They turned this into cinematic gold, what can they do with Peter Parker?

Marvel was striking gold for itself with films about Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and The Hulk, Sony was fumbling the ball pretty badly. In 2010, the cancelled Sam Raimi's proposed Spider-Man IV and announced that they were going to reboot the franchise with the aim of creating an expansive universe based around Spider-Man and his supporting cast, with spinoffs etc. coming to a theatre near you in order to emulate the MCU.

Are they about to kiss? Now, that would be an interesting movie!

The result of this was 2012's thoroughly forgettable The Amazing Spider-Man, perhaps only notable for its excellent casting. While not as successful as the previous Raimi films, Sony remained optimistic and brought back director Marc Webb to make the universally panned The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and announced plans for a spinoff film starring the Spider-Man villains The Sinister Six. Unfortunately for Sony, the second Amazing Spider-Man film did not generate the money anticipated, throwing all of the studio's Spider-Man Cinematic Universe plans into chaos.

This is why you get to watch a movie with Spider-Man joining The Avengers!

Meawhile, Sony was producing another movie titled The Interview (2014), starring James Franco (who played Harry Osborn in the Raimi Spider-Man movies) and Seth Rogen, who was also the co-director and writer. The premise of the film is that two goofball American journalist get enlisted by the CIA to kill North Korean despot Kim Jung-un. When North Korea's Supreme Leader heard about the movie, he lost his shit. He saw the fact that a Japanese company funding an American film about his assassination as an act of war. In retaliation he had hackers break into Sony Pictures' computers and leak all sorts of information about the goings on of the studio onto the internet. In retaliation for an attack on an American film studio, The American government used its own hackers to shut down access to the internet in all of North Korea.

"Tell everyone on Ain't It Cool News that Set Rogen is so gay!"

What was revealed was that Sony Pictures was completely in panic mode over the less than stellar performance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and were now discussing bringing back Sam Raimi to save the franchise with a new trilogy. It was also revealed that the studio heads had been in talks with Marvel/Disney (who had purchased Marvel Comics) to bring Spider-Man into the highly coveted MCU family of films. But, negotiations were stopped by Sony Pictures heads that did not want cede any creative control to Marvel.


When the heads of the Sony Corporation in Japan got word of this, they were plenty pissed. Why would a studio haemorrhaging money not want to partner up with the undisputed kinds of making superhero movies?  The email leaks were in December 2014 and the announcement that Sony and Marvel/Disney were now going to partner up to make Spider-Man's cinematic outings came in early February 2015, shortly after some serious shake ups at Sony Pictures. Seems like somebody came from Japan and made heads role in Hollywood.


The plan is now for Spider-Man to appear in Marvel/Disney produced films set in the MCU and for Sony to make Spider-Man solo films set in the MCU. It also means that all of the continuity that Sony was building up for its proposed Spider-Man Cinematic Universe will be scrapped, with the strange caveat that The Sinister Six movie is still in the pipeline, only to be delayed.


So, we are going to get new directors and new actors but Spider-Man will still be Spider-Man. It's a heck of a long way to go to get form one universe to the other, but at least he made it all in one piece. We hope.

Let's talk politics - Libertarianism and perpetual adolesences.

In The Martian Invasion of Oz, the Parliament of Oz's committee on lunches is stuck in a stalemate over whether to serve parliament's lunches buffet or family style. The reason for this is the philosophical disdain Prince Rand of Pauland has for family style dining. The Prince comes from a nation of small, anthropomorphic, naked mole rat people that live according to a Libertarian philosophy that dictates doing anything for anyone else demeans the person having the thing done for them and steals from the person doing that thing, since it should not be anyone's responsibility to do anything for anyone else. Of course, the other members of the committee, being right-thinking Ozites, are opposed to Prince Rand's selfish world view.

Prince Rand of Pauland?

The King of Pauland!

Prince Rand is modelled after the American senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator Paul is the son of former congressman Ron Paul of Texas and to understand the son you first need to understand the old man.

Ayn Rand - Advocate for open marriages and rape

Ron Paul was a doctor in Texas seriously enamoured with the writings of Ayn Rand, who espoused her philosophy of Objectivism through her work, most famously in the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Objectivism basically states that there is nothing more important than the individual and that the purpose of life was to pursue your own individual happiness and any systems that impede achieving this happiness are immoral, this includes any political systems that focus on the collective of whole of humanity, such as socialism, communism or any kind of political restraint or oversight. Rand and her philosophy venerate unfettered capitalism as the ultimate system to allow people to achieve their individual greatness. Any closer look at this belief system reveals that it is codified selfishness but it appeals to a lot of people.



Rand's philosophy is especially appealing to adolescent boys who feel that they are being held back by their schools, parents, society etc. from being really bitching and awesome. If only everyone would just get off their backs, they'd show everyone how amazing they are! One day, when they get out of their folks' house, you'll see.


Luckily, most of us grow out of this state of mind. We realize that we need the rest of society to help us achieve happiness and that a lot of the things that we were getting so pissed off about were really there to help us develop into decent human beings and not sociopathic jerks. In other words, we grow up.

Not all of us do though. Some people never leave that perpetually agitated and selfish adolescent state of mind. One of these poor developmentally arrested folks was comic book legend Steve Ditko (co-creator of Spiderman), who created the characters The Question and Mr A to embody Objectivists philosophy in the superhero world. It's no surprise that a person who spends their life writing about men who buck the limiting laws of society to implement justice at a level governments can not would be drawn to Objectivism. Mr Ditko never got over his love affair with Ayn Rand's thinking, but thankfully the comics industry did. In the 1980s, DC Comics transformed The Question's violent Objectivism to a more mystical Zen-influenced outlook.

Mr A. - Ron Paul's secret identity.

Ron Paul is another person stuck in perpetual adolescent angst and holds tightly on to Rand's wish fulfilment narrative. When Richard Nixon ended the dollars' direct association with gold, mild mannered obstetrician Ron Paul decided he was the one who had fight a gallant crusade to defend holy Capitalism from destruction. After a couple of defeats, he entered the House of Representatives in 1976. From 1976-1985, Paul became closely associated with fellow Rand devotees, the billionaire capitalists Koch Brothers and their organization Citizens for a Sound Economy, which pretty much created the whole anti-Obama, pro-angry white man Tea Party movement.

The Koch Brothers - Beware!

In 1985, Ron Paul lost his bid for a senate seat. Not one to sit on his laurels, he began publishing his Objectivist/Libertarian newsletters, The Ron Paul Report and Ron Paul Survival Report, through which numerous homophobic and racist articles were printed. In 1988 Dr Paul joined the Libertarian Party and for President, ostensibly to promote his Objectivists ideals on a bigger stage. In 1992 he opted to stay out of the Presidential elections and instead through his support behind former Nixon speech writer/TV personality/Holocaust denier Pat Buchanan's failed effort to challenge George Bush the Elder in the Republican primaries.


Paul returned to the House of Representatives in 1997 as a Republican and served until stepping down from office in 2013. In 2008, he decided to have another go at the White House and this time he hit pay dirt. The guy became an internet sensation with angry white guys obsessed with 9/11 conspiracies and pot heads who ignored all of the horrible things he wanted to do, like end social security etc, because he would end The War on Drugs. He became a kind of icon to the stoned and paranoid set and gave GOP frontrunner John McCain quite a lot of grief and exposed the alleged war hero as the weak national candidate he really was, setting up Obama for his victory in the general election.


Having planted the seeds of Rand inspired political selfishness, Paul made another bid for president in 2012.  Again, he made life miserable for another weak Republican front-runner, this time the hapless Mitt Romney. Of course, he loss and Romney wobbled into the general election to be clobbered by Obama. But the damage has been done. The senior Paul left the national political scene with the stage set for a new generation of Objectivist demagogue in the form of his son, Randall "Rand" Paul.

Social Security, Mocial Mecurity, he will legalize weeeeeeeeeed!!!!!

The younger Paul was raised in his father's cauldron of White privilege, greed, self-aggrandizement and moral self-righteousness. A doctor like his old man, Rand Paul became popular with his father's followers while giving speeches on the campaign trail in 2008. He was embraced and in turn embraced the Koch Brothers' Tea Party madness and was elected as a Senator for Kentucky in 2010.


Combining his father's Objectivist influenced philosophy with the more socially conservative mindset of the Tea Party base, Rand Paul has become a hot item in Republican circles. He is intent on ending all restrictions on Capitalism; such as the EPA, FDA, gun control and basically any oversights on how business is conducted in the United States of America. At the same time, being the politically astute heir to his father's throne, his Objectivism ends when it comes to the government intervening in a woman's reproductive rights and supports legislation to outlaw abortions. Likewise, the right of an individual to achieve happiness ends when it comes to Gay people marrying. Rand Paul is opposed to legalizing Gay Marriage, because you know, its icky or something.

With the 2016 presidential elections looming, Rand Paul is being spoken about as a serious contender for the Republican nomination. He is sure to appeal to a lot of those angry white guys worked up over conspiracies about 9/11 and false flag operations at school shootings while they listen to Rush and smoke bowls full of low grade weed bought off of their neighbor's stepson. I just hope the rest of the nation does not get sucked into his con.