a kaddish for captain jack sparrow

Okay. So. Another Pirates of the Caribbean came out today. And I had absolutely no plans to see it. But we happened to be in the neighborhood, and there wasn't a line, and there were plenty of tickets, and the timing was right —

There were also plenty of good seats. Bad omen, right?

Good news: We sat through the whole thing, right down to after the credits for what we expected to be there. And because we sat through the whole bleeping thing, we never ever ever have to watch it ever again.

Bad news: So. Another Pirates of the Caribbean came out today.

Worst news of all: This could have been a very interesting movie. Daring, even. Having something to say, even. Would that be such a problem for Disney or the American mainstream audience? Hey Disney. Guess what? We can handle it. Trust us. We're not fully and entirely morons.

I have to say this:

Don't-get-me-wrong, I-love-Penelope-Cruz-how-could-you-not? And yah, there's plenty of chemistry to fill the screen. But she's got to hold all the female energy for the entire movie. I mean, the only other women of note are lovely killer mermaids with nothing else to do but kill, mope or cry. But 'chemistry' is not enough to hold what feels like an outrageously long movie (or maybe it was just slow). Nor are pyrotechnics, nor the usual bunch of fighting and escape stuff, nor is Geoffery Rush enough this time round to save us from the wobbly Jack, no matter how pretty he might be. Surely by the fourth of these movies, a touch of character dimension might finally reach the screen?

But there is a story in this tale somewhere. And maybe someone was brave enough to write it. And maybe it ended up on the cutting room floor. And maybe it was just inked out of a script. And maybe it's just all my imagination.

So. Yah. There are these pirates. And they're after yet another kind of treasure. Usual greedy stuff. And fending off the Empires.

But they put a missionary in the movie. And while he's a super good and noble character through and through — they made him fall in love. With a pagan, no less. And believe me: he does not convert her.

Now, doesn't that sound promising?

And they put 'the Spanish' in the movie. Fighting for the righteousness of the church (and God) to overcome (read: destroy) the forces of evil (read: pagan). Well, okay now.

And they put 'the British' in the movie. Fighting for the glory of the Crown. And the Brits doing the usual attempt at expropriation of resources from as many corners of the world that they can garner. Hmmm.

But the rest is pretty much crap.

And when this hits home viewing (of whatever your denomination), I'd say just start somewhere in the latter middle, and just keep going from there. And speed-dial through all the yelling and the screaming. There's just nothing to fuss over or savor here at all. And nothing worth seeing twice.

But that missionary is of interest. I wondered what 'they' would do with him. Had the time come at last to expect a Christian holy man savior in a Disney family/kiddie movie? Or would they show him to be as self-serving as everyone else? How could they keep him goody-goody and still have him be compelling? And what does he do with his faith? That part had potential.

The missionary's end is worth the wait. The powers that be must have thought long and hard about what to do with him without inducing the vomit factor of being too pro-church for a pluralistic audience.

And what the Spanish do with pagan treasures. That too is worth the wait.

The Brits, of course, are just-being-Brits.

And the pirates are, of course, just-pirates.

Don't sit around and wait for Pirates 5 to go into any depth or tell a worthwhile story. There were lots of great stories (lost opportunities) that could have been told about the pirates of the Caribbean. And about the Spanish and the Brits. Real stories that are stranger than fiction. Sephardi pirates, enraged at the Spanish for the reconquista, expulsion from Spain, and forced conversions to Catholicism, for example.

And yah, the rivalry between pagan rites and monotheism.

But you know, if you really want any of that, the place to find it (and a whole lot more) isn't another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but BSG. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica (and its prequel Caprica) do justice to all the larger issues — monotheism and paganism; colonialism and hedonism; strong women and men who can weep and moan; sex, violence, and pretty faces, and great music which morphs into a key plot device — BSG does justice to these and more without once blinking or turning away.

If you want an actual satisfying story, and one that delivers salvation beyond the grave, I'm still with BSG.

Oh. And spoiler alert, if anyone cares:

The missionary gets saved. It's nicely done.

a kaddish for Caprica

Something was bound to go wrong on the Tzaddik's first Yahrtzeit.

It was a day I had hoped to bring my mother to the cemetery for the first time — for she herself had been too gravely ill to understand at the time that he had actually died. In the next room. In her house. Though when I told her that day, not knowing if she understood, she suddenly awoke out of her brain damage for the very first time. Her mind began to struggle back to life.

But this year too, the Tzaddik's wife was too ill to be brought to his still unmarked grave.

I'd controlled the tears all day just waiting to unleash them at the right time, the right place. And goddamn it, I still wanted to visit my father's grave, despite it getting dark already, despite it being rush hour by the time I was leaving Berkeley. I got lost, of course. Got hung up in a wrong lane, and ended up heading for Marin instead of wherever it was I was supposed to be. And I started falling into this insanity: Does he mind? Is he upset? Disappointed? Did he expect it? Doesn't he deserve better than this? How could I leave him there alone? Again. Still. Unmarked. All I wanted to do was something completely out of character: throw myself on his grassy mound (if I could even find it) and wail.

Impressions of Irene Pappas as Elektra: I wanted to pour libations upon his unmarked grave. I was born for this role.

It was now pitch black outside. The cemetery, even if I could find it, was already closed.

The Tzaddik lay there patiently, behind those enormous iron gates, alone in his allocated spot — gypped again out of his due. But you know how the tzaddikim are. The lamed-vavniks. They're a very patient lot. They're saints. Literally.

I crawled across the bridge. It took hours. Bumper to bumper. It was a Tuesday. I had worked myself into a raving lunatic, at least on the inside. Started focusing on not cracking up the car, instead.

I thought, okay, I'll go home and wallow in Caprica for a while. Not that Caprica would (or could) lift my spirits.

Caprica was killing off good characters left and right. Bummer. Didn't they have something better to do? And the Adamas — except for Sam — were a whiney lot.

Still stuck in traffic here. With time to think about the Caprican/BSG mystery that bothers me the most. The one I think no one else cares about.

Adama.

For Adama, of course, means earth in Hebrew. Earth.

I mean, did they do that on purpose? I mean, they must have, right?

And throughout BSG I expected this to come up. But no, it never did. Adama searching for Earth. A destroyed Adama, finding a destroyed Earth. A renewed Adama finding a renewed Earth. Adama naming Earth 'Earth.'

And nobody saying a word about it.

So, of course I figured it would have to come up in Caprica. But these Adamas were a snivvely, sorry lot. And why wouldn't they be? Their own land had been heavily colonized (in the old sense of the word) and exploited. This is all so terribly biblical...

And stuck in traffic, contemplating BSG puzzles, and Caprican potentials, my mind began to settle a bit.

At home, for some reason Caprica had not recorded.

Had I screwed something up? Where was my fix on this awful day? Eventually, I looked online to see if it had been preempted. Tuesday night Caprica just wasn't as fun as Friday night Caprica (or BSG). But shit! It was gone. Just frakking gone.

Caprica died shooting self in foot.

I mean, think about it. The post-apocalyptic BSG had had rough times, but an awful lot to laugh about as well. And here was pre-terminal hedonistic Caprica with nothing but angst, desperation and turmoil everywhere you turn. The only character having even a smidgen of fun was the PhD candidate in Graystone's lab — so yah, why not just blow him away in a careless random moment of meaninglessness?

Was there nothing better to do than gratuitously blow away good characters just to what? Wonder who's gonna get axed the following week? Poor strategy.

Rh thinks Caprica got cancelled because it was too queer-friendly. Do you think the show lost viewers on moral grounds? I mean the whole panorama was right out of Ibn Khaldun: Permissiveness gives way to its own destruction...

I didn't cry for Caprica — although my tears had been waiting all day for some good excuse to let loose. No, I didn't cry — I got mad instead. All that great potential — wasted!

As far as I'm concerned, I'd have been just fine if they'd taken the whole cast, one by one, and locked them into those robotic Cylon bodies. Yearning for another crack at resurrection.

David Eick and company aren't crying either, 'cause they too have resurrection in mind. Another spin-off of BSG. This one tentatively called, Battlestar Gallactica: Blood and Chrome. This one is to take place when Adama is in his early 20s — around forty years before the fall.

Can I say for the record: blech.

I guess the problem wasn't so much morality dissonances but that boys just weren't getting their blow-em-up spaceship fix. And I'm sure the costs/benefits analysis concurs. Blowing up shit is literally more bang for the buck.

I still haven't gone back to the cemetery. But it seems to me that each day brings another reason to pour a libation upon a Tzaddik's grave.

When I finally do go, I'm going to tell my dad all about Adama, as he lies there underneath. He'll have a good chuckle about it. And because he can perform miracles, I'm hoping to see the Earth move when I'm there.

If you read of any earthquakes on that day, just know it's the Tzaddik having a little giggle over Adama — and under adama, too.

randy fakefeather and the fakefeather path

Molecular biologist/physical anthropologist Jonathan Karpf has given a talk for me in MSR over the years, part of which examines the principles of Creation Myths. He gives this lecture to his own classes as well. It's a delicious bit in which he tells the tales of the Cherokee, Gond, Yao and Biblical Creation Myths and elicits some hypotheses out of these. Some of his key points are:

First, he says, Creation myths tell of the local origins of a local population.

Second, Creation myths demonstrate why one's own population is better than others — ie. Creation myths are ethnocentric.

Third, that from the outside, these tales seem fantastical and ridiculous, and

Fourth, that from the inside, one's own tale is considered neither fantastical nor ridiculous, nor a myth: People take their own Creation story to be the (gospel) (large 'T') Truth.

He then posits the possibilities.

Maybe they're all right. And each population was created quite separately, and according to radically different cosmological rules, gods and spirits.

Or maybe only one is correct, and that all the rest are crap. (my word, not his).

Or just maybe they're all a load of crap.

Of course, the way Jonathan puts it, with practiced cultural sensitivity, is that each explanation is pre-scientific, and therefore that each population was doing the best that it could in the cosmology department at the time.

He leads up to, of course, that now we have science.

And that science is the best means that humanity has devised to seek understanding of the natural world (which includes us and our origins). He assumes, again, of course, that we humans are part of the natural world. And his point is that science can get to a (small 't') truth that can be independently verified and universally applied.

Every semester that I have him speak, at least some students have a very hard time with his talk in MSR. I've even had students drop the class after he gave his presentation, and come back another semester asking me for warning when he might appear.

The students seem to be fine with the witches, psychics, voudou priestesses, UFO channels, tantric practitioners, martial artists, shape-shifters, shamans, and neo-shamans I bring to class. But the physicists and other scientists sometimes just give them the willies.

We were speaking a post or two ago about Peter Pan playing indigene shaman supreme, and the glorious Tina must be given credit for dubbing him 'Randy Fakefeather', which is absolutely deliciously perfect — a Peter by any other name smells just as fake.

But that's not really fair.

What is the difference between Randy Fakefeather and any other seeker walking that spiritual path? Why do we save our wrath for his inauthenticity, accuse him of insincerity, and then lap it up when the feathers feel a touch more real? Fakefeather's crap, but Harner's okay? Harner's crap but Castaneda's okay? Castaneda's crap, but Starhawk's okay? Starhawk's crap, but the Pope's okay? The Pope's crap, but how can you say no to Peter Pan?

Applying Jonathan's measure, we can say perhaps that all the paths are equally true, authentic and spiritually rewarding.

Or we can say that there is only the One True God (pick one) and that all the rest are crap. This conflict is portrayed deliciously in the BSG/Caprica battle between monotheistic tyranny and terrorism on the one hand, and the tolerance of polytheistic cosmologies on the other.

Or we can say that they're all wrong. And that their adherents are all on the Fakefeather Path.

Why single out Peter Pan of our tale for such reprobation? Why does he anger us so? Especially when he gets the job done.

Now, I feel quite bad defending him in this regard, because my allegiance is clearly on the other side of the tale (see two posts back). And because I so identify with pure-blood systems the same way our Indian friend does, and for exactly the same reasons.

But I'm not sure those reasons are really valid.

This is my song, my land, my ritual, etc. causes terrible strife, and I'm a collectivist at heart. While I too would be offended at the singing of my song in some made-up ritual, I would also be quite pleased that the practitioner bothered to learn it, sings it so well, has found new meaning, uses it in a way that moves people.

And at the same time, I'm cringing inside.

If I believe that all spiritual seekers are on the Fakefeather Path, I have no cause to single out and take offense at one misguided ritual alone.

If I believe in a One True Path/God/Whatever, I give myself cause to take up arms, invade territory, perpetrate genocide and mobilize my own righteous indignation.

If I believe in nothing at all but empiricism, I can (if I don't have a problem with curses) say, a plague upon both their houses. Say, as Jonathan does, that they're all equally wrong, cosmologically speaking. And that they're probably all equally satisfying for their respective practitioners.

From this point of view, I think we should embrace the Fakefeather Path (not for ourselves, of course — we're still purist and empiricist snobs) but for the gentle masses, who take pleasure in the delights of new age ritual, feel good sweating a stolen sweat and singing a stolen song.

We can nod, know the (little 't') truth, stay smug, and maybe just maybe be big enough to let it go.

Right. I know. Not gonna happen, is it?