2020 has been an difficult year for all of us as Covid 19 turned lives upside-down. Here at Writing to be Read and WordCrafter, we saw some great accomplishments, in spite of the fact that my genre theme schedule fell apart half-way through the year on the blog and content was a little more sporadic. I had to figure out how to adjust to my own “new normal”, which life changes brought my way, but they also led me to remember who I am. Now, I’ve analyzed and regrouped, and I’m ready to head into the new year with new ideas and projects.
WordCrafter’s 2020 Virtual Writing Conference
One of the biggest things for WordCrafter was the 2020 Stay in Place Virtual Writing Conference back in April. We ended up with twenty-two distinguished authors, offering live stream and video lectures, and interactive workshops and discussion panels, with free content for the Facebook event and a Zoom platform for the interactive stuff. We had a good turn-out with only a few glitches, and we’re preparing to do it again in 2021.
WordCrafter Press releases in 2020:
Ask the Authors
In April, the Ask the Authorswriting anthology was released after two years of compilation. This book is an ultimate writer’s reference with tips and advice from twenty-two authors, and it started right here, from a 2018 blog series of the same name. In November, the print edition of this book, (and all WordCrafter Press books), became available, as well.
Two of my own books were also released. Last Call and Other Short Fiction is a collection of my short stories, and my paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, is now available in print on Amazon, but the digital edition can be purchased through other retailers. In the coming year, I will have a story in the Where Spirits Linger anthology, and I’m working on a new book, The Outlaw and the Rockstar which I hope will be ready to release before the end of 2021.
Raise the Tide
WordCrafter Press‘ first stand alone author’s book was released in December, Raise the Tide, a devotional book by James Richards. We also look forward in anticipation to adding the January release of a massive poetry collection by Arthur Rosch, Feral Tenderness, to this list.
Feral Tenderness
Writing to be Read 2020:
We had some great guests on Writing to be Read. On “Chatting with the Pros”, my author guests featured Diana Raab, Amy Cecil, Cherokee Parks, L. Deni Colter, and Kevin J. Anderson. I’m hoping to transform this blog series into a podcast, which can be accessed through the blog, in the coming year, and I hope you all will join me there. Other authors interviewed in 2020 included Mark & Kym Todd, Jade C. Jamison, and Alan Dean Foster. The most viewed interview was with erotic romance author Nicky F. Grant. Interviews fell by the wayside along with the genre themes, but I’m planning to bring back author interviews for 2021, and I’m working on a new blog segment, “The Authors’ Covid Coffee Clache”, which will address issues of the pandemic specific to authors.
I was also honored to be a judge for the Writers of America’s Spur Awards and I reviewed my top six picks, and the winner of the western romance category, The Yeggman’s Apprentice, by C.K. Crigger. These were the best of the best, and I was honored to be given the opportunity to read and review them.
WordCrafter Book Blog Tours
Also, in 2021 Writing to be Read will be a host for the WordCrafter Book Blog Tours, so we’ll be keeping you up to date on several new releases as they come out. Robbie Cheadle will bring us a new blog series on nursery rhymes and fairytales, “Dark Origins”, and I plan to bring in a new series, “Writer at Work”, which will talk about different issues that writers face. Subscribe to this blog with one of the buttons in the upper right-hand corner to be sure not to miss this great new content or the tried and true content of continuing series on Writing to be Read in the coming year.
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Jazz has been one of the great loves of my life. I know, I get it. Jazz is not popular music. Jazz appeals to musicians and people with unusual tastes. It can’t be forced on anyone. It’s pointless (as I learned painfully) to throw it into the mix at a party. It’s a good way to get thrown out of a party.
It’s possible that you know nothing about Jazz. You might have seen films like “Bird” or “Round Midnight”. In spite of its relative obscurity, Jazz has nonetheless crept into our Pop Culture like the ink from a cephalopod. That is…an octopus or a squid.
Jazz has been for me a lifelong experience. I first heard Louis Armstrong when I was twelve. I was in the sixth grade! I had joined the Capitol Records Club, and ticked Jazz as my favorite category. I don’t know why. I had been listening to classical music, especially that of Richard Wagner, and I was getting a bit bored. Thank you, Capitol Records Club, for sending me this LP in the mail. I eagerly withdrew the vinyl record from its sleeve and put it on my blue and white Zenith Portable Stereo Record Player. This rig was built like a suitcase. There were snap-locks on each side and those opened up to become speakers that deployed to the left and the right. For a kid in the early sixties it wasn’t a bad place to start with regard to sound systems. The MacIntosh and Dynaco amps and pre-amps were cool as hell, but I could wait. In a couple of years I would be all over amps and pre-amps until my basement began to look like a used electronics warehouse.
I put on the Louis Armstrong record and held my breath. The music began with a blare of brass. At first it sounded like some kind of Asiatic music, it was alien and incomprehensible. I heard charging rhythm and thickets of notes. My confusion lasted about half a minute. Then, as if someone had rotated my brain, I started to hear that shining trumpet of Satchmo and it started making sense. I’d been playing trumpet in the school band since I was in the fifth grade. Okay, that’s only a year. I hated practicing and did as little work as possible. I was a Natural and I could coast on my good ear. I could play a little bit.
The Atomic Mr. Basie
The next album I acquired was recorded by Count Basie And His Orchestra. The album cover was a photo of a mushroom cloud, all scarlet shades and orange flame. It was called, of course, Count Basie Explodes! I put that on the record player. I oh so carefully lowered the tone arm with its precious cartridge transducer until the needle hit and the speakers went “hissssssss” for a second or two before the wildest most confusing outburst of twenty two instruments raged forth and I thought, “Aww shit. Asiatic music only bigger.” Again, it took a little while for the music to come around and reach my precocious ears.
The mail man drives down the street in his little cart. He’s bringing another record from Capitol Records Club. Miles Davis’ “Birth Of The Cool”. This is one of the most important jazz records ever recorded. Miles had organized a curious group, an eight piece band otherwise known as an octet.
I didn’t have many friends in the fifth and sixth grades. I had Jay, who was a fellow musician and jazz fan. His mother was a jazz fan. This was in suburban St. Louis in 1962. It was rare but it happened.
My mom, on the other hand, wasn’t gonna support this shit at all! If I had to play the goddam trumpet, she often screamed; at least I would play respectable music like Mantovani or Andy Williams.
No mom. No. Not happening. I’m going my merry way and you can screw yourself.
My bedroom was at the far end of the house. I had some distance. Some. I could play what I wanted while my mom popped Seconal and slept away her life.
By this time I’m fourteen and I’ve moved into Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly and…ultimately…John Coltrane. If there is a magnificent Ganesh-Guru Hindu Monster Elephant Deity of Jazz Music it is John Coltrane. He was doing the impossible. His ideas were so deep and complex that they became equal to the founding of a neo-Buddhist philosophy. A School. A dynastic lineage of Consciousness.
Coltrane became my teacher. He became thousands of musicians’ teacher and remains so to this day. Get on Youtube and join the session. It’s alive and well. The young musicians, the ones who are serious, want to study and learn. And music’s everywhere. It’s in the air. Then it’s gone. That’s what Eric Dolphy, one of the unsung monsters of Jazz, said at the end of one of his precious recordings. Both Trane and Dolphy passed in the sixties. They were young. We don’t really know what happened. How did these magnificent musicians leave the scene so suddenly? It was shocking and it knocked me off my feet. I had yet to understand how dangerous was the jazz life, how stressful it was to make a living play Jazz.
Fortunately, we were left with other dynamic musicians. We had Charles Mingus and his epochal release of the album “The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady.” This is some of the most sensual music ever recorded. It outrages church goers, it shocks listeners who aren’t prepared for music so graphic as to be well….erotic.
I developed new Jazz heroes. Ornette Coleman was sawing his way through musical tradition and his ideas caused fights on the Lower East Side. Imagine that: ideological fistfights over varying philosophies of Jazz. Strange but true. Jackie McLean kept the tonal orthodoxy but added intensity and adventure. I was pushing sixteen at this time and my world was filled with all this musical color, all these vibrant creative characters who courted addiction and death to get through the pressures of the jazz life.
By the age of sixteen I had acquired a set of drums and my instrumental voyages took on the nature of a student: a dedicated student of a peculiar art form. That was my jazz. That was my passion and I was about to leave home in the summer of ’65. I was determined to meet the by-now world famous Ornette Coleman. And so I did…but that’s another story. It’s in another book.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.hn
Part Two: The Later Seasons of THIRTEEN REASONS WHY
The story is told. Hannah is dead. The series is popular enough to warrant funding for more seasons. I’m reminded of the Road Runner cartoon, where Wily Coyote follows Road Runner off a cliff. Road Runner doesn’t fall. He just stands there and says “Beep Beep”. Wily zooms over the edge of the precipice, stops dead still…and doesn’t fall. He stands next to Road Runner. He’s about to grab Runner in his evil claws but then he looks down. Way way down there is the bottom of the gorge with a teeny strip of road. When Wily realizes that he is standing on empty space, only then does he fall! EEEEeeeeeoooop! Puff of distant dust down below.
The three following seasons of “13 Reasons Why” bring to mind the dilemma of Wily Coyote. The first season received critical and audience acclaim. The series was banned by numerous school districts and libraries, the putative reason being “that it glorifies suicide”. This smacks of the disingenuous (I think it’s really about the sex, lots of it) but it put a rocket under the series’ ratings and created a demand for further content. Imagine telling an adolescent that a “hot” series is banned and forbidden. That’s like leaving a mouse trap sprung with the bait still in it. What an insult to the inventive intelligence of today’s teenagers. The writers and producers of this series got the funds to make yet another season. And another. And, yes! Another! Three more seasons! They’ve run off the cliff and don’t know yet that there is no ground under their feet. Netflix is usually so canny with regard to marketing and deploying content. That doesn’t mean they don’t stumble occasionally. Everything that follows season One is a reason to allow the characters to utter the same dialogue, hundreds of times.
“Are you okay?” asks Clay’s mom. “I’m fine,” says Clay, all surly and concealed. He is clearly not fine. His teenage brow is wrought, his eyes are tormented. “You can tell me anything, Clay” says mom. “Absolutely anything. We love you unconditionally. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done”
Mom has no clue what Clay has done. No one knows what anyone’s done. Has Jessica fucked Bryce without Justin knowing? Has Justin robbed a bank in the next town and raped a prostitute? Has Clay masturbated in front of the school principal? No one knows but people will say anything about anyone to get revenge. Teens live in a hot mess of drama like an X-rated Shakespeare play fueled by hormones. They’re dripping with pheromones and committing real crimes. Anyway, it isn’t about what anyone’s done. It’s about what they’re capable of doing. Bryce has raped Hannah, Jessica, maybe Clay’s mom. Bryce is a real villain who provides a lot of emotional energy to the series. Bryce has raped just about everybody, including the dog. Justin’s a drug addict, but now he’s clean. Uh oh. He’s not clean. He just bought a bunch of dope from his mother’s boyfriend.
There’s a curious variation of competence and skill in the casting. The actor who plays Clay Jensen couldn’t act his way out of a police lineup. That’s an apt metaphor because Dylan Minette has trapped himself in a repertoire of basic emotional modes. He plays “sensitive teen stricken with guilt” until I want to strangle him. I wanted to like him. He’s so nobly protective of Hannah. His obsession and unrequited love are sloppy sausages filled with angst. In the end it just seems like he’s fishing for credibility. He’s the series’ star but he’s also the worst actor in the ensemble. Whose decision was that? Most of the others fare pretty well. The roles aren’t terribly demanding and that strikes to the core of the problem with this as drama.
This is really a soap opera. It’s about bad decisions and catastrophes. The drama is predictable and sour. The plots are so thin that if they turn sideways they become invisible. We can speak the coming lines before the characters get to utter them. After the first season, the stories are fatuous and boring. They are soaked with the psychological arrogance of the writers and producers. “We know what’s going on with high school kids.” They seem to say. “These kids are the same age as our kids. We’re good parents; we’re Woke. We understand their issues.”
Season One was a siren and a rotating red light on an ambulance roaring down the street. The episodes reek of parental terror. “Our kids are dying!” they scream. Seasons 2.through 4 are a paper whistle from a carnival. The terror is gone.
Fuff! Tweet! The ragged ass follow-on seasons of Thirteen Reasons Why can’t stand up under their own weight.
Watch the first season of this teen-angst drama and leave the rest alone unless you’re a glutton for punishment. (See my review of season 1 here.)
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
Suicides are complex events. They can be acts of rage, despair, even noble sacrifice. There’s no way to generalize suicide. I spent six years as a hotline volunteer, counseling those who were thinking of ending their lives. I was trained to never be judgmental. I was trained to listen. Sometimes that’s what it takes: someone who listens.
Thirty years ago I discovered my mother’s lifeless body lying sideways across her bed. Her lips were blue, her face the color of a bruise. There were two empty bottles of Nembutal on her night table. She had taken her own life.
I reveal these personal experiences because I’ve just finished watching the Netflix release of “13 Reasons Why.” It’s a dramatic series about suicide, adolescent bullying and rape. I have a familiar relationship with suicide. Watching the series, based on the book by Jay Asher, shook some bones in my own closet of secrets. It made me realize that secrets can be dangerous.
The TV series is not only powerful, but it occupies a unique niche as entertainment. The episodes are never repellant, though they can be brutally heavy and painful. I was glued to the story as it dealt with traumatic issues without getting preachy or sentimental. I am aware that people are upset about the series. They fear ‘copycat’ suicides, they fear that opening the subject will encourage more adolescent suicides.
I worry that we’ll lose more of our children if we don’t engage in discussion about bullying, rape and suicide.
The book/TV series involves the suicide of fifteen year old Hannah Baker. Before taking her life Hannah leaves a box of cassette tapes. This is her legacy, her suicide note. On these tapes she describes the people and events that lead to her death. These tapes are narrated in Hannah’s voice as the series proceeds. They single out key people who betray, misunderstand or criminally abuse Hannah. By the end of the series we have heard and witnessed her story.
The teenagers in this series are portrayed as emotionally isolated. Each character inhabits a solipsistic landscape full of intense but unexpressed feelings. These kids can’t or won’t talk to their parents. Their parents may as well be from another universe. The kids can barely talk to each other. It seems as if American teens are the loneliest people in the world. The stress on them piles up. They’re supposed to be preparing for college, right? Then what? The job market? There are huge demands made on adolescents to prepare for the world’s chaos, for a job market that may change beyond recognition by the time they’re ready to look for work. Sprinkle in a ton of sexual angst. Are these kids depressed? Hell yes, they’re depressed! Where does an adolescent get help for such lethal depression?
The French have a pithy folk saying. “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. This is true at a basic level, but things HAVE changed and changed profoundly. When I compare my experience of high school with today’s high school, I have to wonder: what happened?
The Internet happened. Smartphones, laptops, and tablets happened. The effect of having these tools and toys is that gossip travels with the speed of light. It travels fast and it travels far. Gossip is a staple of interaction among high school age people. Girls gossip ferociously. Boys lie shamelessly. Digital media can transform an ordinary event into a ruinous assault on one’s reputation. An adolescent’s reputation is crucially important. Reputations are built on perceived sexual behavior. Sex is now everywhere. Children have sex younger and they have it more promiscuously. They are oblivious to the emotional consequences of sex until they’re embroiled, confused, deeply hurt and maybe pregnant.
Adolescents face a different world today. In my time at high school the great threat was nuclear annihilation. Today such threats are multiplied. The teenage imagination must deal with a world where politics is so rotten it’s seen as a futile joke. An atmosphere of threat is pervasive. We face unpredictable, but real disaster from climate change, terrorism, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues natural and plagues man-made. The earth is moving under our feet. How does a young person come to grips with the future if the future is so uncertain? The pace of change is dizzying. The nature of the future is beyond imagination. How does anyone think rationally in such an irrational world?
THESE ARE IMPORTANT ISSUES! We need to talk to our kids. We need to be available to our kids and we need to train people to help our kids. We’re not doing any of these things. The funding for counseling in school is vanishing along with funding for band and arts programs. Parents are so busy coping with economic pressures that they have no time or energy for their children. This is tragic and points to a fundamental flaw in our culture. Time is money and money is time spent away from our kids. I don’t know what to do. Circle the wagons. Slow down. Pay attention. Now I’m guilty of being preachy and I apologize. Watching “13 Reasons Why” scared me.
I fear that in our short-attention span culture, these issues will reach a media peak, the fuss over “13 Reasons Why” will reach a crescendo and then disappear. We can’t afford to let that happen.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
When Breaking Bad appeared on television it became a peak moment in the history of the medium.
The world may be fucked up but television has never been better. If you use your remote with discernment, you will find incredible things to watch through your three hundred channel cable box. In its seventy year reign over the American psyche, there has never been more or better television. Nor has the human race been closer to mass tragedy. The importance of television expands as we get quarantined in our homes. TV’s always been important. Now it’s running a close second to Survival itself. I’m not sure we wouldn’t go insane as we wait for the stay-at-home orders to lift. We need TV. Desperately.
The Arts often flourish in times of decadence and turmoil. When a civilization becomes ill, a host of artists arise to attempt its healing. When Breaking Bad ascended to the pinnacle of great art, it created a new space for the production of yet more great TV.
I refer to the spin-off of Breaking Bad, the superb series, Better Call Saul.
We first met Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad. He turned up as the criminal defense attorney for Walter White and his confederates. His character was somewhat clownish. I made the unconscious surmise that series creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould did not take Saul Goodman seriously.
I was wrong. When Breaking Badwas seen and done I grieved because there was nothing as great to continue watching. Then Better Call Saul appeared and once again I was taken into the wry, dark, ironic world of Gilligan and Gould.
Better Call Saul has just completed its fifth season and may be ramping up for the sixth. Saul Goodman is the sly pseudonym taken by attorney Jimmy McGill. “It’s all good, man.” Jimmy himself explains the pun of his name. He’s a bit of a wild man, an outsider in his profession. Some would call him a shyster or ambulance chaser. He gives himself to the lost souls of the streets. He represents clients who are too dirty to be touched by more principled attorneys. For “principled” read snobbish. Saul doesn’t mind getting grubby.
The story arc of Better Call Saul is one that exposes the inner workings of two distinct worlds. One is the world of the drug cartel. The other is the world of middle class America. It is Saul Goodman who provides the bridge between these two worlds. In Breaking Bad it was Walter White who played the fulcrum character who bridged those worlds. Walter was a high school chemistry teacher who, when diagnosed with terminal cancer, turned to the manufacture of methamphetamine to provide for his family when he’s gone.
Saul is pressured into representing a Cartel lieutenant, a terrifying character named Lalo Salamanca. It is the Salamanca Cartel that is at war with other cartels for control of the drug trade in the Southwest. The series takes place in Albuquerque and the scenery is full of vast desert tracts. Out there, in the desert, dead bodies routinely disappear.
Albuquerque is a pleasant city, but its location makes it a prime route for drugs smuggled through Mexico. It’s home to the drug barons who maintain operations on both sides of the border. Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, is drawn inexorably into the cartel’s workings. In the first few seasons the conflict centers around Jimmy’s relationship with his brother, Charles “Chuck” McGill. Chuck is a famous and powerful corporate lawyer who is afflicted with a bizarre form of OCD. He’s allergic to electricity.
Jimmy takes care of Chuck when his allergies render him completely helpless. Jimmy wants to emulate his big brother. He’s put himself through law school and waits to pass the Bar Exam. Chuck does everything to sabotage Jimmy. From Chuck’s lofty position in the world of the courts there is no place for a clown like Jimmy McGill. Chuck’s brother is an embarrassment. Jimmy is hurt and bewildered by Chuck’s hatred and malice.
Lucky for Jimmy, he forms a relationship with attorney Kim Wexler. It’s Kim who keeps Jimmy grounded. Without her steadying influence he might spin off into some outer limits of legal brinksmanship. It is in fact Jimmy’s “edge” that attracts Kim. Behind her business suit and neatly wrapped pony tail is a wild child who savors the antidote to boredom that Jimmy provides.
Like Jimmy, the relationship itself often flirts with disaster. In spite of Jimmy’s ‘danse macabre’ the couple survives with their love intact. This love, this loyalty and unconditional regard, is the glue of the series. As long as Jimmy and Kim love each other, things will be all right.
Things will work out.
Tune in to Part Two of my review of Better Call Saul on the last Friday in May.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
Showtime’s National-Security thriller, “Homeland”, is a Monster. It’s intense, cerebral, nerve-wracking, absorbing and addictive. It’s just the kind of stuff we like. Claire Danes is either a genius or the world’s most egregious over-actor since Adolph Hitler. Her eyes bug out of her head. She gives Bipolar Disorder a new public face. Her gaze darts everywhere in fits of paranoia. Claire is sensing the facts as they are: everyone is out to get her. Playing CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, she’s in disgrace. The agency to which she is devoted, the CIA, is also in disgrace, thanks to flubs, fumbles, the 9/11 disaster and political turf wars. Carrie’s the scapegoat. Everyone in the Intelligence community knows she’s a nut case. The thing is, she’s a nut case who is RIGHT. It takes a crazy person to identify the deeper reality. It takes a slobbering paranoid to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together in ways that no sane person would dare. This is a new era, a new paradigm. The Cold War is over. Hawkish right-wingers have spent the last decade enhancing the power of the Presidency, ditching congressional oversight and accountability. There is political and moral turmoil. A real President is never mentioned; there is just “The President” and he is kept out of the picture. How do we handle such issues as torture, assassination, domestic surveillance and murder-by-drone? The gloves are off. We do the expedient thing. If we have to kill people to save an intelligence operation, we do the killing. The operation is all-important.
There isn’t much ideology in “Homeland”. The characters are mostly driven by ambition, greed and ego. Carrie has given up trusting anyone. She’s fallen in love with Nick Brody (played by Damian Lewis). She doesn’t trust Brody, she’s “playing” him, but still she loves him. She suspects that he’s an agent of Iranian Intelligence, and she’s right. Nick Brody has endured eight years of torture by the Taliban. Now he’s a secret Jihadist. He’s been “turned” by his captors. He prays to Allah in his garage, out of sight of his family. He’s the Trojan Horse who’s going to wear a suicide vest. He’s going to blow up the political leaders of the U.S.A. in a single fiendish blast. He’s been elected as a Congressman on the basis of his heroic persona and is now being touted as the Vice Presidential nominee for the next general election.
“Allahu Akbar” he mutters reverently, bowing into his garage-floor prayer rug. His sixteen year old daughter, Dana, catches him in the act.
Oops.
She doesn’t say or do anything. She’s confused. She’s scared. She wants to love her father, the father who’s been gone since she was eight, who was declared dead before his dramatic recovery from the Taliban.
What do I know? Mandy Patinkin shrugs.
.
Shouldn’t everyone be suspicious of Nick Brody? But..but…he was a Marine, he survived eight years of captivity and didn’t break! He looks damn good in that uniform! Why shouldn’t he run for Congress? CIA sub-chief Saul Berenson is plenty suspicious. He’s played by a wooly faced Mandy Patinkin. He looks like the rabbi who presided over my Bar Mitzvah. I want him to embrace me in a bear hug, I want him to smell like cigars as his beard scratches my boyhood cheeks. He seems to be the only CIA officer who believes in Carrie’s crazed perceptions. He’s her mentor and protector. We, the audience, want to believe in his integrity. When he (apparently) succumbs to external pressure and betrays Carrie, it looks like he’s been lost as the story’s only honest character. Well, Carrie’s honest to a fault but she’s loop-dee-loo manic when she’s off her medications, which is most of the time. She’s a dedicated operative, her life and her family are the CIA. She’s on/again off/again with the CIA because she kept her Bipolar Disease a secret. Yet she’s so valuable, her results so palpable that she’s allowed to remain a kind of house pet with access to most of the deep secrets. In time she herself becomes one of the CIA’s secrets. She doesn’t know that she’s a secret, maybe the most important secret of them all. Well, I told you, she’s crazy!
Damian Lewis looks like Steve McQueen. His pursy little mouth is so McQueen. I know, it’s irrelevant, but it drives me crazy. I don’t know if he’s that good an actor. I just don’t know. The important thing is that he’s good enough. If he’s confused as Nick Brody, he damn well ought to be confused. He went to war as a gung-ho Marine and was taken prisoner and thrown into a hole. He spent five years in the hole and then was let out to be manipulated by arch-terrorist Abu Nazir. It was Stockholm Syndrome with full maple syrup. Devil-faced Abu Nazir played Good Cop on Nicholas Brody and converted him to Islam.
How confusing would it be if you came home to a wife, two kids and a nice suburban house, masquerading as a war hero while plotting to become a Martyr to the cause of global Jihad? Pretty damned confusing. Damian Lewis plays confused to the point of impenetrability. We don’t know who he is. His aberrations are written off to PTSD. As Congressman Brody he has access to all kinds of people and places. How lovely for terror chief Abu Nazir, who employs a full-time suicide vest maker: the little tailor who runs a small shop in Gettysburg with a sideline in explosives.
Nick Brody before cleaning up
“Homeland” is scary because we live in a scary world. An all-pervasive war is being fought everywhere, invisibly. It’s a war of computer hackers, Special Ops raids, spies, spooks, moles, rats, safe houses, cover identities, drone strikes, satellite imagery, surveillance at every traffic light and Seven Eleven. Nothing is too far fetched in today’s world. By creating a lead character who suffers from Bipolar Disorder, Showtime has pulled the band-aid off the wound. Ow! That hurts! It’s disturbing to contemplate Carrie Mathison running around, defying orders, blowing covers, making extremely risky decisions while her “handlers” in the communications van chew the ends of their fingers with anger and frustration. “Carrie, stop! Get back under cover!” Carrie doesn’t stop. She’s off her meds. Her judgment is impaired. This is the kind of spook in whom our trust resides, the spook who holds the safety of our nation in her agile but deeply warped mind.
I don’t recommend watching “Homeland” before bed time. We do it anyway. We dream freaky dreams.
There was a time when watching television would make people feel guilty…as if they had nothing better to do. I have something better to do. I can watch better quality TV instead of the ubiquitous TV crapola. These days we have choices in TV-Land. Sometimes my wife and I watch TV all day and all night. I admit to some exaggeration here. I don’t watch TV all day; not any more. There was a time when I was pretty unmotivated and I watched TV around the clock…and I felt guilty about it. Fortunately that time is passed. I watch TV judiciously, choosing carefully what I expose myself to. There are as many TV universes as there are significant demographics. There are ravening people who feast on Jerry Springer and gentle wine-drinking people who watch PBS-only docs and dramas. I fall somewhere towards the latter. My spouse is more broadminded; she helps me expand my range of experiences. She’s addicted to The Home Shopping Network. We are both addicted to shows about animals and veterinarians.
I’m a keen observer of TV-as-cultural phenomenon. It’s the most powerful thing in the world outside of the Hydrogen Bomb. Television has dominated our experiential landscape since the early fifties and never more so than today. We have emerged into a golden age for television. There’s immense variety, convenience, amazing quality and the television sets have become so smart that they require control like a rowdy drunk at a party. It took me days to figure out how our new device functions. I still haven’t conquered the remote control. I can talk to it and it often responds. I’d be screwed if I couldn’t talk to that thing. It wouldn’t surprise me, if, some day soon, the remote responds with something like “Hey, I’m busy, asshole. Try again later.” I would expect rudeness from a television device. After all, this is the thing that brought us “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” Sometimes I hear my wife talking in the bedroom. Is she on the phone? No. She’s talking to the remote. Begging, pleading, bargaining with the remote.
We love to binge. That sets the tone of our lives. What will we binge tonight? It’s not easy to find binge-worthy stuff. Thank god for National Geographic, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Between Mrs. Maisel, Dr.Pol and Fleabag we have a good time. Fleabag is the work of actress/director/writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge. When we saw the last episode of Fleabag I shouted “Magnificent!” I don’t always offer such spontaneous accolades. Phoebe plays the character known only as Fleabag. She’s a fairly gorgeous creature in her gawky comical way. She’s maybe too tall, her nose is a little skewed, but these aspects are essential to her character. She would be boring if she had all the beauty conventions. The stories revolve around the Search For Love. Who isn’t searching? This quest is especially powerful in the young. It surges in women who are reaching a certain age, an age when their mothers are asking “When are you going to get married?” Fleabag is precisely that age and her obsessions are pulling her puppet strings. If she weren’t wryly self-aware she’d be suicidal. She is recovering from an awful trauma. Her best friend committed suicide over a breakup. She walked out into traffic and gave up her life. This grief haunts Fleabag and steels her determination to continue living. She too has ended a long relationship. Now she’s thrust into the world of men, those strange groping creatures who don’t understand women. Sound familiar? That’s US! The thing is, Phoebe/Fleabag is funny! Her wit is corrosive yet compassionate. When the two seasons were over we were gasping for more. Alas, Phoebe is moving into new productions. Watch her!
We binged on the two seasons of “You”. It’s gripping, but it’s also repugnant. In the beginning of the series the protagonist, Joe Goldberg, seems to be a likeable fellow. He develops into a monster as the tale unfolds. I’m holding back the spoilers here. The story hangs on Joe’s transformation into something sinister. His obsession is, again, Love. Or, more specifically, Women. The show gives us Joe’s thought processes. The narration is Joe’s self-talk and he has a one track mind.
I must remind my readers that I have a “writer’s rule” that I scrupulously observe. “Is this story worth telling?” I have three criteria that stories should encompass. They should be entertaining, insightful, and, if possible, inspiring. If they can’t reach the level of inspiration they should at least not leave us depressed. We get enough of that shit all around us. After watching every episode of “You” and being entertained, I still have mixed feelings as to whether or not we should have gone through the experience. There are plenty of shows about dark characters. Darkness is important to drama. It’s like death itself. Without death there would be no passion in life. All of life’s tensions and excitement are generated by the clash between light and dark. Is this oversimplified? Perhaps. I’m left with a slightly sour feeling about “You”. If I had eaten Joe Goldberg for dinner, I would have gas and diarrhea in the morning. Watch the series, by all means. It’s very good, well acted, well written…but I’ve warned you. Take some Pepto Bismol to bed, put it on your night table.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s “Mind Fields” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
Actor Tim Roth is an odd creature. He can divide his face into zones and create two or three expressions simultaneously. He can be smiling and tender with his eyes while his lips and teeth express a feral snarl. It’s unsettling. In the TV series “Lie To Me” it’s supposed to be unsettling. Roth plays psychologist Cal Lightman. The character is a knock off of Dr. Paul Ekman, the innovative explorer of human body language. Dr. Ekman is the shrink who can read every tiny twitch of a person’s face. Termed Micro-Expressions, these muscle movements can be revealing of a subject’s inner state.
In Jungian psychology the mask that people wear for social interaction is called The Persona. It is just that, a mask. It’s essentially false, a place in which to hide our true anguish, guilt, depression and fear. It is a Lie, and we put it on our faces without knowing what we do.
In the series “Lie To Me” Dr. Cal Lightman is often dubbed “the human lie detector.” He sees through the Persona to the core emotions. This is a great device upon which to build a crime thriller series. It’s got enough of the cerebral to be interesting. It’s virtually shorn of physical violence. There are no car chases or fist fights, and guns are drawn only occasionally. It nearly makes me sigh with relief.
In short, there’s none of the usual crap.
Dr. Ekman was a consultant for the show. Nothing happened without his approval, including the casting of Tim Roth as his alter ego. Tim Roth bears no resemblance to Dr. Paul Ekman. Casting an Ekman lookalike would have been a dismal failure. Roth plays a feral, slouching, Cockney hoodlum with a lot of Phd’s behind his name. He works closely with the FBI and local police. He goes wherever he wants, barges through crime scene tapes, gets in people’s faces and stares into their eyes. Though Roth is guilty of many excesses (what actors call ‘carpet chewing’), these excesses work to keep the viewer fascinated. After a couple dozen episodes his mannerisms can get wearying. But Roth and the cast were having so much fun making the show that no director stepped in and said, “Tim, ease up on the ball scratching, eh? ‘Nuff sliding off couches in the conference rooms of posh developers eh?”
There’s method to Cal Lightman’s madness. He wants to push people out of their comfort zones. He wants them to get angry, to flip out and reveal the TRUTH, that they’re murderous scheming bastards. His mannerisms are a technique to break down the Persona.
Actress Kelli Williams (The Practice) plays Dr. Gillian Foster, Lightman’s business partner and possible love interest. Do they? Or don’t they? Will they or won’t they? Kelli Williams is a fine actress who looks like one of CNN’s high-end newscasters: model-perfect, every hair in place, always simmering with understated sexuality. She has a wonderfully kind face and is the perfect foil for Tim Roth. Chemistry makes for a good production and this is a cast that’s loaded with chemistry.
“Lie To Me” uses standard police procedural plots, but skews them just enough so that the detective (Dr. Lightman and his staff) work these cases using a different set of tools. Their skills may be exaggerated, but that’s TV, innit? Footnote: the “innit” I just used is an emulation of Roth’s cockney accent. That’s his back story. He is a one-time thug and petty criminal who lifted himself out of that scene to become the world’s foremost body-language theorist and human lie detector.
Dr. Lightman and his staff are called The Lightman Group. They catch serial murderers, thwart abusive psychiatrists, forestall assassinations, bombings and biological attacks. The stories are pretty good. The work of Brendan Hines as Eli Loker and Monica Raymund as Ria Torres keeps the ensemble small and tight. Cal Lightman has a teenaged daughter, Emily, played by Hayley McFarland. Emily’s presence helps to humanize the abrasive Dr. Lightman. Emily gives as good as she gets. To Emily the almighty Dr. Lightman is just her dad. She can mock him, annoy him and tease him. with hints at sexual liaisons. As the father of a teenaged daughter, Cal Lightman is hovering, hyper-protective and infuriatingly paranoid. Little Em knows how to drive her dad nuts.
The three seasons of “Lie To Me” satisfy like a good burger. They are sturdy and hold up well over time. Tim Roth shows that you don’t have to be good looking to be a leading man. You don’t have to be a Kung Fu master, you just need a healthy dose of confidence and aggression. You must be ready to wade into a brawl even if you’re really intending to sneak away from it at the first opportunity. When push comes to shove, Cal Lightman displays abundant courage. ‘E just ain’t stewpid, oi?
I enjoyed “Lie To Me”. I give it four and a half muskrats.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’sVisual Media Reviews? You can catch them the last Friday of every month or subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
Looking back, I can remember when I first started this blog, back in 2010. I really had no idea what I was doing, or even what blogging was all about, but I knew I wanted to write andWriting to be Read offered a platform where someone might actually read what I wrote. Back then, I really struggled with what to write. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would care to read what I had to say.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot. Acquiring an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, along with my experience as The Southern Colorado Literature Examiner, gave me the knowledge, skills and confidence to imagine that I could create content that people would want to read. I write about what I know. My passion has always been writing, thus that is what I write about.
In 2016, I decided that there was no way that I could produce enough quality content to keep fresh content and keep readers visiting the blog, so I began recruiting other talent. My knowledge was limited to my own writing experience and I wanted to expand the scope of the content. With the help of others who knew more about areas which I wasn’t versed in, I was able to do this.
My first team member was Robin Conley, and her “Writing Memos” are still bringing viewers to the blog, although she is no longer an active team member. Next, Jeff Bowles was added to the team, with two segments. Although he no longer does his “God Complex” segment, you can find “Jeff’s Pep Talk” on the first Wednesday of every month, and “Jeff’s Movie Reviews” posts on the third Friday. Jeff is great at writing motivational posts and he writes killer movie reviews, so if you haven’t checked out his segments, I recommend that you do.
This year, Art Rosch joined the team with his “The Many Faces of Poetry” segments the last Wednesday of each month, and he recently began posting for “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” on the last Friday. Both segments cover subject matter Art was versed in and his reviews are both interesting and entertaining. Also, joining the team in 2019 are Jordan Elizabeth, with her “Writing for a Y.A. Audience” segment on the third Wednesday of each month, which explores Jordan’s inspirations and writing experiences, and Robbie Cheadle with her “Growing Bookworms”, which emphasize the importance of reading for children and explores children’s literature.
In 2018, I ran two twelve week segments of “Ask the Authors”, which was quite popular, where I interviewed an author panel on the various aspects of writing. Although it was fairly successful, it was also a lot of work, and it required a lot of time from each of the authors on the panel in order to respond to my questions with depth and knowledge. The compilation of those segments is currently in process for the Ask the Authors anthology, to be published by WordCrafter Press.
In 2019, we’ve seen a little more structure as I added monthly genre themes to focus on specific genres, and added my “Chatting with the Pros” segment in coincidence with those. We also saw the first “WordCrafter Paranormal Story Contest”, which will result in the publication of the Whispers of the Past paranormal anthology, also by WordCrafter Press. (Jeff Bowles was the winner of the contest for his short story, “A Peaceful Life I’ve Never Known”. He received a $25 Amazon gift card and his story will be featured in the anthology.)
Writing to be Read is growing, and recently had its 500th post. View numbers are up, as well as followers, and I attribute it to the quality content posted by both myself and my team members. Of those 500 posts, 100 of them were made by Writing to be Read team members and I want to take time now to acknowledge and thank them for the quality contributions that they each make to the blog. Writing to be Read is a labor of love and team members don’t receive compensation for the time and dedication they put into their segments, so they really do deserve kudos for the content they provide. To show my appreciation and bring them and the blog segments each one contributes, I’ve created a “Meet the Writing to be Read Team Members” page, and I hope all of you will check it out and learn more about those who provide such great content.
This new page comes along with other new changes as I prepare to launch WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. I’m happy to say that although some parts are still under construction, the website is now live. Write it Right Quality Editing Services, which used to be found here on this site, is now housed on the WordCrafter site, so if you are looking for it, you can now find it there. Other changes you may notice in the near future include the migration of my “Copywriting and P.A. Services” to the WordCrafter site, where it will become WordCrafter Social Media Copywriting and Book Promotions.
These are the most immediate changes which have taken place or are expected to before the end of the year on Writing to be Read. Closer to that time, I’ll be posting another update that will tell you what you can expect in 2020. Can you believe it? It’s just around the corner. So until then…
In early October, 2005 my partner and I were driving our new 38 foot motorhome from Ft. Lauderdale to Petaluma,CA. It was going to be a four thousand mile drive on I-10, the southernmost of our nation’s interstate highway system. As we drew into the outskirts of Pensacola we noted the ravaged condition of the trees, fences, billboard signs and the Interstate itself. The campgrounds were jam packed. We only found a site because someone had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital twenty minutes before we pulled into the Pensacola KOA.
We were in the zone of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath and the next four hundred miles would be like driving through a poorly kept secret. Along the highway were big plywood signs done in red magic marker: FEMA, they said, and sometimes an arrow pointed the way down a dirt road. These signs were emblematic of the slipshod management of a terrible disaster. Imagine, plywood planks with red magic marker: this way to the internment camp of white trailers.
Ahead of us lay New Orleans. We saw the city only a few weeks after it was submerged and torn all to hell. When we began watching the TV series Treme (trem-may), we had a visceral sense of connection to the experiences of the characters.
TREME is producer/director David Simon’s series about post-Katrina New Orleans. Simon is the creator of crime masterworks like HOMICIDE and THE WIRE. TREME is something different. It is a filmic mural that depicts conditions in a ravaged community. Suspense is not what draws the viewer into the show. It’s the characters that keep us watching.
One of the major characters of the series is New Orleans itself. There is a depth of culture in this city that is unmatched by any other American city. Treme is one of the neighborhoods in this town, an area where musicians live and form their community. They play at one another’s gigs. They do funerals, following wheeled black carriages in stately slow-march. They play at nightclubs where the patrons and musicians alike are having so much fun that it seems almost unreal, as if there can’t possibly be so much joy in this troubled world. But there it is: real music, dancing, carrying-on and everyone is having a freaking great time.
There’s nothing strident about Simon’s portrait of New Orleans. It’s a town trying to bounce back, but the bounce is a little flat. People want to rebuild their homes but the promised insurance checks and subsidies keep getting lost in bureaucracy. A man has spent three years rebuilding his home with his own money and his own skills. Suddenly a city inspector appears and cuts off his water and power. “The City” wants to see the original deed on the property. It’s a document whose origins go back two hundred years. It’s lost in history, lost in the flood. Can he PROVE that his family has occupied this parcel of land since 1824?
Photo by Art Rosch
He forgot a payoff to someone. He’s lost track of the fifties and hundreds he’s hemorrhaged to fees and penalties.
New Orleans has become a scene where politicians and developers gather like ghouls to create a theme park where there was once a city. If they have things their way, it will be resurrected as NewOrleansLand or Cajun-O-Rama. The citizens of New Orleans are fighting back. They know their city will never be the same. But the disaster has made them aware of themselves as an extended family. There is something special about being a New Orleans native. There’s a terminology, a language, a history and a lot of blood that goes into the making of a citizen of New Orleans.
TREME is strangely relaxing to watch. Real-life characters like musicians Carla Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and Allen Toussaint thread through the plot playing themselves, providing a sound track of amazing skill and vivacity. TREME is loaded with top of the line music.
“Let the good times roll”, or “Laissez le bon temps roulez” is the unofficial motto of Mardi Gras. The good times may roll but a new motto is emerging from the frustrated natives of New Orleans.
I will paraphrase the words of Sofia, the sixteen year old daughter of civil rights lawyer Toni Bernette, played by the fantastic Melissa Leo. Every day Sofia retreats to her bedroom, closes the door, aims the laptop camera at her face and uploads to YouTube a monologue of rage and bitterness.
“Fuck you, man, fuck you!” she says. “If you’re not going to help us, at least don’t hinder us. Just get the fuck out of our way!” THAT is the new motto of New Orleans.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
There was a time when watching television would make people feel guilty…as if they had nothing better to do. I have something better to do. I can watch better quality TV instead of the ubiquitous TV crapola. These days we have choices in TV-Land. Sometimes my wife and I watch TV all day and all night. I admit to some exaggeration here. I don’t watch TV all day; not any more. There was a time when I was pretty unmotivated and I watched TV around the clock…and I felt guilty about it. Fortunately that time is passed. I watch TV judiciously, choosing carefully what I expose myself to. There are as many TV universes as there are significant demographics. There are ravening people who feast on Jerry Springer and gentle wine-drinking people who watch PBS-only docs and dramas. I fall somewhere towards the latter. My spouse is more broadminded; she helps me expand my range of experiences. She’s addicted to The Home Shopping Network. We are both addicted to shows about animals and veterinarians.
Writing to be Read 
Homeland: An Over(re)view
Posted: February 28, 2020 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Commentary, Television review, Thriller | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, CIA, Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Homeland, National Security, Showtime, spy thrillers, Television review, TV reviews, Writing to be Read | Leave a commentHomeland: An over-review
Showtime’s National-Security thriller, “Homeland”, is a Monster. It’s intense, cerebral, nerve-wracking, absorbing and addictive. It’s just the kind of stuff we like. Claire Danes is either a genius or the world’s most egregious over-actor since Adolph Hitler. Her eyes bug out of her head. She gives Bipolar Disorder a new public face. Her gaze darts everywhere in fits of paranoia. Claire is sensing the facts as they are: everyone is out to get her. Playing CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, she’s in disgrace. The agency to which she is devoted, the CIA, is also in disgrace, thanks to flubs, fumbles, the 9/11 disaster and political turf wars. Carrie’s the scapegoat. Everyone in the Intelligence community knows she’s a nut case. The thing is, she’s a nut case who is RIGHT. It takes a crazy person to identify the deeper reality. It takes a slobbering paranoid to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together in ways that no sane person would dare. This is a new era, a new paradigm. The Cold War is over. Hawkish right-wingers have spent the last decade enhancing the power of the Presidency, ditching congressional oversight and accountability. There is political and moral turmoil. A real President is never mentioned; there is just “The President” and he is kept out of the picture. How do we handle such issues as torture, assassination, domestic surveillance and murder-by-drone? The gloves are off. We do the expedient thing. If we have to kill people to save an intelligence operation, we do the killing. The operation is all-important.
There isn’t much ideology in “Homeland”. The characters are mostly driven by ambition, greed and ego. Carrie has given up trusting anyone. She’s fallen in love with Nick Brody (played by Damian Lewis). She doesn’t trust Brody, she’s “playing” him, but still she loves him. She suspects that he’s an agent of Iranian Intelligence, and she’s right. Nick Brody has endured eight years of torture by the Taliban. Now he’s a secret Jihadist. He’s been “turned” by his captors. He prays to Allah in his garage, out of sight of his family. He’s the Trojan Horse who’s going to wear a suicide vest. He’s going to blow up the political leaders of the U.S.A. in a single fiendish blast. He’s been elected as a Congressman on the basis of his heroic persona and is now being touted as the Vice Presidential nominee for the next general election.
“Allahu Akbar” he mutters reverently, bowing into his garage-floor prayer rug. His sixteen year old daughter, Dana, catches him in the act.
Oops.
She doesn’t say or do anything. She’s confused. She’s scared. She wants to love her father, the father who’s been gone since she was eight, who was declared dead before his dramatic recovery from the Taliban.
What do I know? Mandy Patinkin shrugs.
.
Shouldn’t everyone be suspicious of Nick Brody? But..but…he was a Marine, he survived eight years of captivity and didn’t break! He looks damn good in that uniform! Why shouldn’t he run for Congress? CIA sub-chief Saul Berenson is plenty suspicious. He’s played by a wooly faced Mandy Patinkin. He looks like the rabbi who presided over my Bar Mitzvah. I want him to embrace me in a bear hug, I want him to smell like cigars as his beard scratches my boyhood cheeks. He seems to be the only CIA officer who believes in Carrie’s crazed perceptions. He’s her mentor and protector. We, the audience, want to believe in his integrity. When he (apparently) succumbs to external pressure and betrays Carrie, it looks like he’s been lost as the story’s only honest character. Well, Carrie’s honest to a fault but she’s loop-dee-loo manic when she’s off her medications, which is most of the time. She’s a dedicated operative, her life and her family are the CIA. She’s on/again off/again with the CIA because she kept her Bipolar Disease a secret. Yet she’s so valuable, her results so palpable that she’s allowed to remain a kind of house pet with access to most of the deep secrets. In time she herself becomes one of the CIA’s secrets. She doesn’t know that she’s a secret, maybe the most important secret of them all. Well, I told you, she’s crazy!
Damian Lewis looks like Steve McQueen. His pursy little mouth is so McQueen. I know, it’s irrelevant, but it drives me crazy. I don’t know if he’s that good an actor. I just don’t know. The important thing is that he’s good enough. If he’s confused as Nick Brody, he damn well ought to be confused. He went to war as a gung-ho Marine and was taken prisoner and thrown into a hole. He spent five years in the hole and then was let out to be manipulated by arch-terrorist Abu Nazir. It was Stockholm Syndrome with full maple syrup. Devil-faced Abu Nazir played Good Cop on Nicholas Brody and converted him to Islam.
How confusing would it be if you came home to a wife, two kids and a nice suburban house, masquerading as a war hero while plotting to become a Martyr to the cause of global Jihad? Pretty damned confusing. Damian Lewis plays confused to the point of impenetrability. We don’t know who he is. His aberrations are written off to PTSD. As Congressman Brody he has access to all kinds of people and places. How lovely for terror chief Abu Nazir, who employs a full-time suicide vest maker: the little tailor who runs a small shop in Gettysburg with a sideline in explosives.
Nick Brody before cleaning up
“Homeland” is scary because we live in a scary world. An all-pervasive war is being fought everywhere, invisibly. It’s a war of computer hackers, Special Ops raids, spies, spooks, moles, rats, safe houses, cover identities, drone strikes, satellite imagery, surveillance at every traffic light and Seven Eleven. Nothing is too far fetched in today’s world. By creating a lead character who suffers from Bipolar Disorder, Showtime has pulled the band-aid off the wound. Ow! That hurts! It’s disturbing to contemplate Carrie Mathison running around, defying orders, blowing covers, making extremely risky decisions while her “handlers” in the communications van chew the ends of their fingers with anger and frustration. “Carrie, stop! Get back under cover!” Carrie doesn’t stop. She’s off her meds. Her judgment is impaired. This is the kind of spook in whom our trust resides, the spook who holds the safety of our nation in her agile but deeply warped mind.
I don’t recommend watching “Homeland” before bed time. We do it anyway. We dream freaky dreams.
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