Stop or Myanmar will shoot! or You don't bring a bible to a gun-fight

Ring around the rosie - pocket full of posies. And to hell with Snopes. In the last days something historical happened - a black man formally accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. In the days (not many) before that Russia (I hesitate here, in such a meager place, to be as bold as to name directly either Putin or Medveded) ran roughshod over much of the paltry country - only recognizable because of the resources (piped across or otherwise) and the fanciful support given in the War on Terror - of Georgia. If you made it through that torturous sentence I tip my cap for it was not rhizomic but it was from the side of things. There is a bitterness here and I admit that I am not entirely sure of its source so I will beg the indulgence of any and all that happen across here - it is likely to be a long and bumpy ride. For all the history that was made that night, and the history that was made the next morning (also appropriately acknowledged on all sides), let us not talk of change; let us offer our honor to the many more than 90% of the globe for whom it does not matter whether their taxes are cut or maintained or gathered at the end of a governmental form, a machete, a cudgel, a kalashnikov, or a NATO sanctioned weapon. Let us leave aside the sour local moments for now and turn to the test at hand. John Rambo, a man who walks alone, his only companion is death. The character of Rambo is hardly new, Sylvester Stallone has seen him through four iterations of the character(and there might be a fifth?) and there is much here. Stallone has worn himself broad, and we will leave aside the issue of HGH (ab)use, and it works. What, you figure a minimum of 56 yrs old for Rambo (Sly is a wealthy 61/62) and the verisimilitude is there. With that pauper's coin purse taken care of there are other matters to be taken hold of.

Who would have thought, lo those many years ago that we could lay hold of so much of the country's issues by way of John Rambo when the first movie came out in 1982? Aiming for some measure of brevity, let us bother ourselves here with no more than the fact that for all the appropriate ennui that was coughed up in that first film Sylvester's Rambo was guilty of a disproportionate response. Yes, it was a decidedly untoward action when Brian Dennehy's sheriff treated him poorly, but he DESTROYED the town in response. In the second, he was tasked with the most obvious fantasy of a Vietnam Vet - the bringing home of someone held for upwards of 20 yrs. - of course he also takes the argument, very physically, to a handful of the busy-bee bureaucrats who got in his way in the first place, what with not letting him win in the first go-round. In the third, doing a favor for his old commander Col Trautman, he was made a tool of the Afghan mujaheddin, complete with the playing of a round of buakashi. And it is here, after completing his mission that he returns, apparently worn from it all, to the only place he now feels comfortable - the Southeast Asian bush where Rambo IV takes place.

It's a simple story really, and you can find write-ups of it (however poor) just about anywhere on the 'net. Again, for the sake of brevity, always topical, Stallone's still muscled - if not rippling and looking like nothing so much as if he should be saving on car insurance - Rambo finds himself caught in the mix of missionaries and (evil, evil) mayhem in Myanmar/Burma - which, as he so adroitly grumbles to the head missionary attempting to hire him and his boat to go "up river," is "a war-zone." Much was made of the fact that the movie actually opens with real footage of the political mess (to put it lightly) and even carnage (somehow still doesn't do it justice) that has been going on in Myanmar since long before the West generally paid much attention. Though, aside from an oddly positive review from the New York Time's generally persnickety A.O. Scott, most other concerns have been on the hyper-violence of the (frankly well-hemmed) 90+ minute film. And it is indeed bloody, many of the scenes of violence (there seems an almost adolescent and fetishistic concern with beheading, decapitation, the blowing up of heads, etc), were they to appear in the sketchbooks of a quiet teenager in a high school art class would, in today's climate, likely land the school on alert and the student in some sort of supervised suspension. In fact, it apparently has even broken the record for being the most violent film ever shot - a record it claimed from Rambo III - with an average of 3.2 kills per minute. But to reduce the movie to that alone is to miss the potency of the thing - and frankly, there is much evidence (and little of it new) that Stallone had little need of revving up the violence machine to make the Myanmar authorities seem like bad guys. The character of John Rambo has entered into the cultural lexicon of the United States, whether it be the simple-minded idea of "going Rambo" or the confused expressions of conflicted feelings that the nation still carries from our poorly thought-out and mishandled involvement in Vietnam. Put simply, Rambo has become a powerful figure of tropic mimesis for American culture - one that allows the ambivalence of our political culture to draw itself out in a pitiful shadow on the walls of Plato's cave to consider what it sees - not in a mirror, but in the fuzzy contours of a back lit Leviathan both puzzled and awkwardly sure of itself. He has become an ur-figure who stands in for America in both his grizzled countenance and his willingness to engage in brutality to achieve an end that seems better than current situations, at least in the short-term. He is, not just this to be sure, but that sentiment in the country that saw it as not only justifiable but right to attack Afghanistan after 9/11. The violence is part of that, and given the context of the current film, it would be hard to avoid. I could imagine, frankly, that if the movie had been less violent that Stallone might have been accused of making light of a serious and real situation for his own benefit - and those who accuse him of being exploitative because of his use of real footage at the film's opening seems, in a world of less than subtle simulacra, its own pious canard. As is the complaint that it takes a pretty little white girl to get John Rambo's attention - for everything else he is, he is still an American and nothing gets an American going like a white woman's purity imperiled.

What I have not seen much of is a willingness to take the movie on for what it is. Rambo is placed not simply in a geographic crux of shitty geopolitics as a single character, again he serves as a tropic figure of American sentiment (if not sense) regarding both concern for the plight of others as well as the well-heeled perception that sometimes you must meet the baddies on their own level. Is it because he is not a billionaire playboy industrialist by day that he is not better regarded? No doubt he is as morally ambivalent in action as America is and he sometimes makes mistakes but, to paraphrase Scott here, Stallone is willing (and in this I think he might be alone among American film makers today) to present his character with a surprising lack of irony. And let us be honest about this, the painful inter mixture of missionary and mercenary in the movie is likely more to the point about what often occurs than most bits we have seen in the media - cinematic or otherwise. Wealthy (white) volunteerism is both a psychological balm for the members of Wallerstein's core while also being (if we wanted to be kind we would add "unwittingly") a central part of a 21st century imperial policy of maintaining periphery dependence on said core - a new narrative dependent on faith-based organizations and various other NGOs. The other side of this coin is the role of those other non-governmental actors who are coming to play an increased role in social and foreign relations politicking, only these guys carry guns. Can we even pretend that mercenaries are not important in 21st century global affairs? They are currently being used to supplement "coalition" forces in Iraq and provide governmental security in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Without them, even the increased troop numbers of the Iraq "surge" would be no where near enough forces to deal with the situation on the ground.

One more turn with the violence - yes, the particular brand doled out by Rambo is decidedly hands-on and robust in its visceral execution but is it not time to disengage with the myth of cleanliness and the trust we place in our aimed "smart weapons"? The technical virtuosity required in making such machines as well as the precise manner in which we tell ourselves we use them are integral parts in our own narrative of cultural and political superiority, and by way of that our moral superiority. And yet, no matter the technology, any such tool requires, at the very least, human intelligence to plot its coordinates and whatnot and how often has that been found wanting? And now the possibilities of such weapons have become patently frightening on a positively Orwellian scale. I have little truck with those who raise the most meager of oppositions to the stylized presentations of these concerns only to excuse it because, and I quote, it "abounds in that rarest of superpowers: charm." Violence is, or at least it should be, a caustic and costly option; here again, Rambo (both the film and the character) is at least passingly honest concerning such.

Oh yeah, one more thing, John Rambo knows who and what he is and let us make one thing absolutely and fundamentally clear, book, magazine, spatula, or whatnot he would kick Jason Bourne's ass.

Rhizome Reasoning

Dirk Nowitzki is not a Nazi.

Steve Kerr's father was killed by terrorists.

If Ariel Sharon were still sentient, it is possible that he would favor the sonic stylings and collages of DangerMouse.

sum' er fare

The old Appalachian jest, as appropriated by the band Wilco, is likely appropriate here. Valuations have been held as they regard the notion of Chomsky's liberal warrior and "Iron Man" (though how much was saved by the studio as they did not have to provide the full backstory to Tony Stark as the past and public history of Robert Downey offered such up on a platter for them?) the blank story of the merged Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde as relates the latest Ed Norton (no curbing of black men necessary - there is a pasty Englishman to take the place) has been ignored, and the water chumming work of "The Dark Knight" still has something to offer and we shall at some point address it to be sure. But if we are to ask, if we are to question, if we are to ponder and wonder as we wonder about the new season of both that prison break show and Jack Bauer we wonder what might be made of Jason Stratham and the new "Death Race" 2008. There are collapsed narratives here and I might suggest that in many ways it is more honest and forthright than "Seabiscuit" and likely moreso than "Fourth of July." We shall soon see.