DCEU UPDATE, Audience Appreciation Month and Scripts!

Boy oh boy. The DCEU Film & Culture Analysis is getting pretty big. I'm finishing up Part 3 (of 4). It's about Suicide Squad. Part 4 will round out Wonder Woman and Justice League. It's a'comin'. Expect videos to start dropping this holiday season. Scripting is one thing. Editing is a whole other bag.

In case you missed the video on my YouTube, this is Audience Appreciation Month. If you ever wanted to request an episode but felt that the $30 per video level wasn't for you, well, you're in luck. All throughout July, it is cut in half. $15. Go nuts.

I am going to be a featured panelist at ConBravo later this month, but this is not public information yet. So, don't go blabbin'. :)

Finally, here are some scripts from some 2018 episodes. There are some differences between the scripts and what ended up in the videos.

BEST AND WORST MOVIES OF 2017

 Once a year, I take off my philosopher hat and put on my film critic hat. This is that time. My 15 favorite and 15 most disliked films of 2017. First things first, this is not Academy voting. It's just one person's favorites. If you disagree, that's normal. Second, most of the year's best foreign films have not hit American theaters or Blu-Ray yet, so my apologies for a lot of my list being English language centric. Let's start with the best before going to the worst.
 Number 15. Lady Macbeth. Based on the 19th century short story by Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth is a minimalist period piece, a costume drama of only a few characters that tackles patriarchal roles and class systems. What divides us ends up being our undoing. Excellent performances by actors bringing out pain and violence under their proper, fashionable exteriors.
 Number 14. The Beguiled. And speaking of minimalist period pieces with only a few characters, Sofia Coppola's latest is a devastating American Civil War era drama about a woman's only recourse against a dangerous man. The director crafts a film that is restrained, careful and intimate – not to mention both beautiful and purposefully uncomfortable.
 Number 13. I Am Not Your Negro. An excellent documentary on the life of writer and social critic James Baldwin. We receive a deep dive into his life, his thoughts, his passions and his criticisms of American life, particularly race relations.   
 Number 12. The Ornithologist. A Portugeuse film that had its release in its home country a year prior but did not see my home until 2017. A bird watcher is stranded in a forest where he encounters mysterious figures to change his perceptions. Gorgeous, frightening, comical – the movie is everything.
 Number 11. Logan. Easily the best superhero film of the year – sorry, Thor – Logan is a road movie about more than the end of a franchise but about the end of a life. Regrets, mistakes, a single thread of hope. Intense and captivating, more films of its sub-genre should take these risks.
 Number 10. The Shape of Water. Guillermo del Toro does it again. He creates a fairy tale world that is both fantastic and believable. Other worldly and trapped within the confines of our social politics. Deeply engrossing and completely fearless.
 Number 9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi. “This is not going to go the way you think,” says Luke Skywalker. A lesson for those in movie fandoms who attach godhood status to their fictional characters and deify icons. The Last Jedi tears down preconceptions about the franchise and delivers an incredible action-adventure film.
 Number 8. The Square. A Swedish film about the lives of people who work at a museum. It sounds dry, and it is – until it isn't! Dramatic twists and turns, awkward sex talk in public and a real heart makes this film something special.
 Number 7. The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Yorgos Lanthimos has yet to make a bad film. He makes challenging films, he makes films that make not be everyone's tea, but he always reaches for something brilliant. Beginning as a family drama and ending as an honest to God horror film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is deeply disturbing and hilarious at the same time. A difficult rope to walk.
 Number 6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. Quite possibly the best cast of any film of 2017. Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Frances McDormand and Peter Dinklage all give Oscar worthy performances and craft complicated characters on screen. A crime movie that is a gut punch and a belly laugh. So, a Martin McDonagh film.
 Number 5. Okja. Bong-joon ho is one of our greatest living directors – not just greatest Korean directors. Okja is easily recognizable as the director's style – social commentary as told by over-the-top characters and situations. You will never seen Jake Gyllenhaal look like he is having a better time than in this film.
 Number 4. Get Out. Never have I seen a movie theater more invested in what was happening on screen and rooting for the protagonist any stronger than in Get Out. Jordan Peele's social horror film is absolutely amazing and should be on everyone's “best of” list.
 Number 3. Blade Runner 2049. I waited my whole life to see this movie, and it did not disappoint. Visually stunning and gut-wrenchingly painful, Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel that people did not know they needed but was entirely welcome when it arrived.
 Number 2. mother! Terribly divisive and, admittedly, for good reason, Daren Aronofsky's latest in self-indulgent and maddening, and I love it. Rarely have I been so gripped by the events on screen. Love it or hate it, everyone will have a strong reaction to mother!
 Number 1. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. Macon Blair, longtime collaborator of Jeremy Saulnier, completely hits it out of the park in his feature directorial debut. Sad and raw and thrilling, I have never cared more about characters this year than while watching this excellent film.
 AND NOW, the worst!
 Number 15. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Oh, how I wished this could be the spiritual successor to 90's goofball action schlock movie The Fifth Element. Instead it's a meandering mess with of ideas with annoying characters and two leads who have no chemistry. Alright, so it's a little like The Fifth Element...but it's awful.
 Number 14. The Great Wall. Based on the trailers, we thought it might be another insensitive white savior film, but it actually turned out to be Chinese military propaganda. Troubling on another level altogether. It's also dull as dishwater and features some of the worst CGI in a big budget motion picture in 2017.
 Number 13. Kong: Skull Island. Filmed with a shotgun and edited in a blender, the latest King Kong is a blur of fight sequences with an emphasis on style but with no connective tissue that gives that style any weight. In fact, everything feels weightless and empty in this on-the-nose Vietnam allegory slash cinematic universe builder.
 Number 12. Justice League. Based on the troubled production and complete lack of cohesive vision in the previous installments, Justice League was more entertaining than it had any right to be, and it was still terrible. A trainwreck plummeting into the ocean and through the Earth's core, Justice League is only watchable to notice the flaws and erasable mustache lines.
 Number 11. Geostorm. I have my own private joke playing in my head while watching this movie. I pretended the main character's name was Jeremy Geostorm, and he was a loose cannon detective who happened to also be a scientist. It was more fun than following the plot.
 Number 10. King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword. A bad movie music pretending to be an equally bad movie. King Arthur is a bro with a heart of gold who is also the Special, and nobody wants to watch a King Arthur movie in 2017, so just stop, OK?
 Number 9. Fifty Shades Darker. If this film does anything of note, it's that it finds a way to be worse than the original, which is a nearly Herculean feat. “I Can Change Him: The Movie Part 2” is the sex stain on your sheets that won't quite come off.
 Number 8. Underworld: Blood Wars. My friends asked me to come see this with them, and I am still plotting my revenge. The grayest, most washed-out movie of the year, complete with we're-vampires-but-we're-modern-and-cool nonsense that stopped being hip around the time of the original Underworld, which I just checked, and that was 14 years ago. A franchise nobody cares about getting sequels is disappointing as it is inexplicable.
 Number 7. The Mummy. Tom Cruise kisses the Mummy to death, and his best friend comes back to life. Now you don't have to watch it.   
 Number 6. Tom & Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The only reason this half-cooked animated cash-in on a mostly distant property is not higher on the list is because it achieved badness on the level that was at least comical. Everybody is animated like they just looked in the Ark of Covenant.
 Number 5. Transformers: The Last Knight. How can a movie with so much bombast and cacophony and so much going on also, at the same time, have a paper thin plot? There is so much going on, and there is NOTHING going on. Michael Bay has wisely moved on from the franchise, and he left by throwing a grenade in his wake towards whatever credibility it had left.
 Number 4. Bright. Social commentary by centrists. Allegory by brainless hacks. Subversion for people who use the Blues Lives Matter counter-hashtag. We should burn this movie, but it only exists on Netflix.
 Number 3. The Snowman. It's not even done! We're watching the dailies from a movie that isn't finished yet but rushed into the theaters to recoup its losses. I would much rather spend money on a documentary about how this movie even got made than the actual movie.
 Number 2. The Emoji Movie. Not one joke was funny. NOT. ONE. This is the nadir of franchise-building cinema. It's not only dreck in and of itself, but it might be a portent of things to come.
 Number 1. The Book of Henry. A cloying, embarrassingly saccharine family movie that becomes a crime movie but never loses the tone of a cloying, embarrassingly saccharine family movie. If nothing else, people will be laughing at the deep, dark badness of The Book of Henry for all time – stretching out into infinity.
 That's it! If I did not mention a movie you liked or disliked, please don't ask “What about ____?” Just talk about that movie in the comments instead of wondering why it did not make either list. I will see you shortly for a more conventional episode soon. 

V FOR VENDETTA

 AUDIO 1
 [v1] V for Vendetta is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore with art by David Lloyd. [v2] It depicts a near-future England that has become a fascist police state. One individual stands up to the government, known only as V. The limited comic series contains Alan Moore's personal politics, most notably anarchism. The film version, which did not involve Moore, presented a similar fascist government but removed nearly all mentions of anarchism, save for a few oblique references and some of its aspects and features under different names. This was, perhaps, an effort not to disenfranchise its target audience who – in 2006 – were more keen to rebel against the waning George W. Bush administration than adopt anarchism as their political philosophy. Anarchism is seen as an extremist worldview, but much of that is based on misconceptions about what Anarchism actually is. In the graphic novel, V remarks on this misunderstanding, telling Evey that Anarchism is not about chaos. Anarchism does not mean “without laws” – it means “without rulers.”
 Anarchism is not about planting bombs and throwing bricks through windows. V engages in violence, but this is a direct result of living under a fascist government and V's understandable desire to overthrow. In practice, Anarchism is simply a system of voluntary cooperation with a limited or non-existent hierarchy. Chaos is the opposite of what Anarchism hopes to achieve. Anarchism states a social hierarchy, a system that ranks people in various degrees of authority, does not justify itself. The Norsefire Party in V for Vendetta contains a social hierarchy – a leader pictured here in Big Brother vision – his immediate underlings, the heads of various departments, lesser government officials under them like the Fingermen, V for Vendetta's lethal police force, and everyone else – people without authority. Unless justification for a social hierarchy can be plainly given, then it is illegitimate and should be dismantled. Anarchists like V believe that the burden of proof to justify this authority lies with the government, and since the government cannot justify its hierarchy and all the problems that come with it, said government must be removed and be replaced with something more egalitarian.
 AUDIO 2
 “Anarchism” or “Anarchy” or “Anarchist” are often words used pejoratively and as synonyms for chaos or lawlessness. Even I have used it as erroneous shorthand. But philosophically and politically, that is simply not true. Anarchism does not reject all authority, only coercive authority. 19th century anarchist philosopher Emma Goldman once wrote “Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society.” So, what does V believe? Well, as a self-described anarchist, V undoubtedly opposes both capitalism and the state. V for Vendetta was originally written during the days of Margaret Thatcher. Under the tennents of Thatcherism, capitalism was seen as synonymous with freedom, which is a kind of doublespeak. In reality, capitalism grants incredible power and freedom among the few and grants lesser resources – and therefore freedom – to everyone else. The Leader of the Norsefire party – Adam Susan in the comic and Adam Sutler in the film – retains some of these properties from Thatcher.   
 In the film, capitalism in the form of a pharmaceutical company helps usher in fascism. Some would call this an abuse of capitalism, but anarchists would say that this is the standard usage and intended outcome of capitalism: consolidation of power and authority. Capitalism is guided by private ownership of the means of production. Anarchists like V would oppose this because workers are subject to the will of their bosses and because those struggling to make ends meet do not have a perfect safety net. In the comic, Evey is forced to become a sex worker. In the film, she works at a television station and believes that her boss is trying to seduce her. The twist is that she is mistaken – her boss is a homosexual – but this is something workers generally face: exploitation by a capitalist hierarchy. Side note: Anarcho-Capitalism is a misuse of the term Anarchism, has virtually nothing to do with Anarchism and is actually a diametrically opposed right-wing ideology. It's a co-opting of left wing terminology. Capitalism and the state are intertwined. The feed each other, keeping each other in power.   
 AUDIO 3
 In the film, we see this as a rich television host is also a puppet of the Norsefire Party. For anarchists, the state is a powerful institution that monopolizes the use of violence and marks out territory for which it can exercise and maintain that violence. This might seem hyperbolic at a glance, but think about it carefully. The state is allowed to perform violence. The police can arrest us and shoot us. We are obviously not allowed to arrest the state or shoot the state: meaning the police. The military is allowed to invade the borders of other states and kill people who are under the rule of that state. We are not. So, the state monopolizes violence by claiming exclusive ownership of it. In V for Vendetta, the Fingermen use violence against Evey. Later, they use violence against her boss. To anarchists, state violence is unacceptable, and we see an example of the people's breaking point here as they finally exercise violence against a Fingerman who has killed someone. One could argue that the state only uses legal violence, but that is the point. The state decides what they may do. They create the rules...for themselves.   
 And when they break the rules, the power of the same state defends themselves from prosecution more often than not. While the voters in V for Vendetta might believe that electing a new leader with less abhorrent politics is the only answer, V concludes that the state itself is unnecessary and may be causing more harm than good. This is generally what anarchists believe. Not all anarchists believe that the state must be destroyed by violence. Anarchists are typically not, well, V. Anarcho-pacifism is one brand of anarchism, for example. Anarchists, in principle, generally oppose other powerful systems and other negative aspects of society that are sometimes indoctrinated by the state, such a racism, homophobia and transphobia. In V for Vendetta, homosexuality is outlawed. Evey's employer, a homosexual, must remain closeted. Racism and Islamaphobia is also referenced in the film. Anarchism believes in an egalitarian society, and because of this, racism, homophobia, sexism and other forms of discrimination are rejected. V sings of this in “This Vicious Cabaret” a song from the graphic novel that is sadly absent from the film adaptation.   
 AUDIO 4
 Remember, anarchists believe that hierarchies do not justify themselves, which means social hierarchies that create discrimination are rejected under anarchism. So, what does V want? What do anarchists want? Well, in contrast to what popular culture and dictionary illiteracy contends, anarchists do not want chaos. An anarchist is not someone who spray paints an “A” on the side of a building because they think that makes them cool. Anarchists want there to be laws, but they want those laws to be created by consensus. An anarchist society is horizontal, not vertical. Meaning it would aim to diminish or outright dismantle social and economic hierarchies. Anarchism is not a lawless post-apocalyptic, Mad Max world. Anarchism is more like Revolutionary Spain in the 1930's before the fascists took over or the many anarchist communities and cities across the world in the present day. When V believes his work is done and prepares for his Viking funeral, the England that he leaves behind is not meant to be one of disorder. It is simply meant to be one of a new order. Anarchism is not something that happens overnight like at the end of the film.   
 It's more of an incremental process. Anarchism does NOT mean never participating in our current government – like voting – because that would leave it open to greater control by unsavory, dangerous entities. Anarchists vote and participate and try to make the world better. In fact, 20th century anarchist writer Edward Abbey once said “Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.” I hope this has been helpful in defining anarchism and dispelling some myths about what it is. Since the decisions are made communally, there is no one version of what a society built on anarchism looks like. In V for Vendetta, we only know what England will NOT be following the uprising. It will not be fascism. More than anything, fascism runs contrary to everything the fictional V and real world anarchists believe in. England under Norsefire meets nearly all the criteria for fascism as outlined by Dr. Lawrence Britt: Power and continuing nationalism, disdain for the recognition of human rights, identification of enemies or scapegoats as a unifying cause, rampant sexism, controlled mass media, obsession with national security, obsession with crime and punishment and more.   
 AUDIO 5
 People who live under oppression sometimes do not realize it is happening until it is happening directly to them, and even then, some people are – to borrow a phrase – comfortable in their chains. The citizenry in V for Vendetta, according to V himself, believe in what Norsefire did to take power because of the offer of safety. Security is often the rallying cry of fascism. Us and them. V's actions are questionable. Alan Moore originally wanted his readers to wonder whether or not V was justified in what he did. After all, he committed violence. This is a question that has reentered popular consciousness with the rise of people with fascist worldviews attempting to gain power and shift the Overton Window. How can we peacefully coexist with monstrous people who are NOT trying to coexist with us – but rather, eliminate us? Obviously, there is a great deal of middle ground between fascism and anarchism – but presented with the horrors of the far-right extreme of the fascist state, can a moderate position truly be enough to destroy it? Historically, that has not been true. How many criteria of fascism is necessary to be achieved before people are justified in taking greater action? One? Half? Most? At the point of “most” – after power has been consolidated – it may be too late.    

TIME BANDITS

 AUDIO 1
 Time Bandits is a 1981 film directed by Terry Gilliam and co-written by Gilliam and Michael Palin. An eleven year old boy, Kevin, suddenly finds himself traveling across time with a group of robbers. The robbers have purloined a map of all of the holes in time, and with this, they are able to slip in and out of various time periods with stolen riches. The thieves work for the Supreme Being who created the universe. Since the universe had to be made in seven days, the thieves claim that mistakes were made and the foundation has holes in it. Kevin and robbers are pursued by the personification of Evil. The map is extremely valuable and very dangerous in the wrong hands. In the end, Kevin and the robbers defeat Evil, and the Supreme Being retrieves the map, revealing that he allowed the robbers to steal it as a test of his creation. Kevin awakens in his room, at first giving the impression that this was all a dream until he discovers the photographs he took on his adventure. His parents touch a piece Evil and they explode. Towards the end of the film, Kevin asks the Supreme Being why Evil must exist.   
 He thinks about it for a moment and then says it has something to do with Free Will. It's not too dissimilar to another Python-written film, The Meaning of Life, in which one of the great philosophical questions is given a purposefully unimpressive or unsatisfactory answer at the end. In philosophy, the question “How can Evil exist if God is good?” is called The Problem of Evil. I have discussed this from time to time before on this show as the concept touches a lot of popular films, but Time Bandits wraps the whole movie around this question and even attempts to give an answer at the end, provided by none other than God himself. It is the answer that is most interesting. In responding to Kevin, God argues for the Free Will Defense, a classic argument that serves both as a philosophical answer to the logical problem of evil and also as a piece of monotheistic apologetics. So, to summarize, The Problem of Evil goes like this: God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. God is entirely good. Evil exists in the world.   
 AUDIO 2
 If the three criteria for God are true, how can the fourth statement also be true? If God is all-knowing, he would know when and where evil would happen. If God is all powerful, he could always stop evil from happening. If God is all good, he would WANT to stop evil from happening. Atheists sometimes use this alone as proof text that God cannot exist and the very idea is a logical fallacy. Theists, instead, attempt to solve The Problem of Evil in a way that is satisfactory to their beliefs. 20th century philosopher and theologian John Hick famously posited that The Problem of Evil can be solved by explaining the human beings require suffering in order to become fully realized beings. This is sometimes called the Necessity of Suffering or the Soul-Making Defense. Hick would say that Kevin suffers under the thumb of his materialistic parents because it is necessary for his growth. When Kevin meets Robin Hood in Nottingham, he sees something peculiar. As Robin redistributes the wealth to the poor, they receive not just riches but a punch in the face. Robin asks his companion if that is absolutely necessary, and he is told that it is. To Hick, the good must come with the bad. Suffering is necessary for a good life.   
 He once wrote “The value-judgment that is implicitly being invoked here is that one who has attained to goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptations, and thus by rightly making responsible choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue.” There are issues with this line of thinking, though. If suffering is necessary is necessary for a complete life or for human beings to earn their souls or something, that does explain why there is SO MUCH suffering. It does not logically resolve war, famine, disease, sexual abuse and many other things. It is unthinkable that a God who is all good would simply see genocide as basically a good thing for humanity. Theists generally do not believe such things. Logically, God could just as easily have us suffer in less egregious ways like studying for tests and stubbing our toe on the bed. In the film, Agamemnon says that killing is sometimes necessary, but the being he killed was apparently a threat to his people. Innocent people being killed does not seem necessary.   
 AUDIO 3
 A subset of the necessity of suffering answer is the claim that human life is only a test for the afterlife, but that does not explain why non-human animals suffer. In the Abrahamic faiths, animals do not have souls and cannot ascend to Heaven. So, why would they suffer? The existence of suffering outside of human beings suggests suffering is not a test for Heaven. Another way to solve the logical problem of evil is to conclude that God is not what the Abrahamic faiths claim he is. That the criteria for God is false somehow. [False Criteria] He is not one of the three features of God: not all good or all powerful or all knowing. The logical problem with saying God is not all knowing but all powerful is that a being who is all powerful could simply make himself all knowing or all good if he wanted because omnipotence has no boundaries. So, the easiest to take away is just that. God is not omnipotent and cannot possibly be expected to stop all suffering. Napoleon in the film is able to conquer so much territory and kill so many people because God does not have the power to end all suffering. He does the best he can with what he has.   
 The character of Evil in Time Bandits even claims that God did not create him. Evil says he created himself, meaning God does not have complete control over him. Theists sometimes reject the idea that God has great limits to his power because this would contradict God's ability to create the entire universe. Surely a being who can fashion the cosmos out of nothing would also be able to, say, prevent the Titanic from sinking or saving the passengers. The most famous answer to the problem of evil is that of the Free Will Defense, which is referenced in Time Bandits. The idea is that being free simply means that we must have choices, and sometimes those choices lead accidentally or purposefully in disaster. The Free Will Defense posits that allowing us free will maximizes good, that this is the best of all possible worlds. 20th century philosopher Alvin Plantinga famously stated “The existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil. Of course, suffering and misfortune may nonetheless constitute a problem for the theist; but the problem is not that his beliefs are logically or probabilistically incompatible. … The Free Will Defense, however, shows that the existence of God is compatible, both logically and probabilistically, with the existence of evil; thus it solves the main philosophical problem of evil.”   
 AUDIO 4
 In the film, Kevin does not witness too many great evils. The Napoleonic wars are a backdrop. We don't see the carnage. The Titanic disaster is portrayed almost comically, and so forth. The great evil of the film is represented by materialism. The robbers use God's map to loot various time periods. Kevin's parents spend their days worrying whether or not their belongings, particularly their appliances, are good enough compared to the appliances of their neighbors. The personification of Evil strongly believes in technology, always speaking of how computers are the wave of the future. Kevin warns them not to touch the piece of evil that is inside one of the parents' appliances, but they do anyway, exercising their free will, and it kills them. Time Bandits suggests that free will is the cause of all good and all evil. The main issue with this line of thinking is that this only addresses evil that is created by human beings. What about suffering that is brought about by the natural world, like an earthquake that results in death or a volcanic eruption that wipes out a city or the various extinction level events that have occurred throughout the long course of Earth's history? These are natural evils. God has not bestowed free will on a volcano. In the film, the Supreme Being's vague answer could be interpreted a couple ways.   
 One could interpret it as God not willing to explain himself fully explain himself. The dwarfs warn Kevin against asking about the nature of Evil, but Kevin does so anyway. It's a reasonable question, after all. Another interpretation of this scene is that God himself does not know why evil exists. Maybe he doesn't have a good reason. Maybe the real reason God says what he does at the end of Time Bandits is because that's the best Terry Gilliam can determine. Of this, he once said “The big questions are always there for us. Michael and I had solid religious upbringings, so we grew up believing and thinking about God and religion and good and evil. I can't get those out of my system; they're a part of me. The normal approach in a kids' film is to make the final character a wizard. But why not bring God into it?” Some theists do not believe it is necessary to understand why evil exists at the same time a benevolent God exists. They ration that they will figure it out in the end or in the afterlife. But this way of thinking presupposes God and the afterlife, not to mention it's a bit of a leap to assume there is justice in Heaven when there is none on Earth. It's like asking “Is there a God?” and someone responding “We don't have to know, but God does.” An answer cannot be a paradox to the question, and as philosophical thinkers, we should not accept inconsistencies. A requirement of philosophy is honesty.   

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

 AUDIO 1
 Nocturnal Animals is a 2016 film directed by Tom Ford. In the beginning of the film, Susan receives a manuscript from her ex-husband Edward. She has not seen him in nearly twenty years. Opening the package, she receives a paper cut, a kind of warning about what she is about to read. The manuscript is for a novel called Nocturnal Animals. In the novel, a man named Tony, his wife and his daughter drive through Texas. They are run off the road, and the two women are taken, raped and murdered. The husband and a police officer named Bobby try to convict the murderers, but the evidence is not enough. Tony and Bobby decide to track down the murderers and kill them. In the ensuing violence, Tony kills the ringleader but is also fatally wounded. Susan, after reaching the end of the novel, gets in contact with Edward. They agree to meet for dinner, but Edward never shows up, and the movie ends. So, what does this have to do with art besides the fact that we experience a story within a story? Well, the narrative runs in three paths.
 The present day with Susan reading the manuscript, the fiction of the manuscript with Tony and his deceased family and Susan's flashbacks of her previous relationship with Edward. In one flashback, Susan reads some of Edward's early work. She concludes that he should try to write something that is not about himself. Edward responds that all writing is essentially about the author. When reading or watching someone's story, the readers or audience can ask “Which parts of this are autobiographical?” The answer to this is not just one character who might have been inspired by someone the author met or the setting being similar to the town where the author grew up. The answer to what is autobiographical in the story is the author's style. The author's voice. Nobody else shares it because an author, like anyone, is an individual. From this perspective, all art is autobiographical because it would not have been created by someone else.   
 AUDIO 2
 In his essay, All Writing Is Autobiography, Donald M. Murray wrote: “We are autobiographical in the way we write; my autobiography exists in the examples of writing I use in this piece and in the text I weave around them. I have my own peculiar way of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see. My voice is the product of Scottish genes and a Yankee environment, of Baptist sermons and the newspaper city room, of all the languages I have heard and spoken.” Art is not created in a vacuum, and protestations of Death of the Author cannot entirely resolve this. In the film, Edward and Susan eventually get divorced. He writes a novel that is not explicitly about his life but still remains autobiographical. Susan leaves Edward because she believes he is directionless. He takes that to mean what her mother said of him: that he is weak. In the novel, Tony – played by the same actor – is told he is weak by one of the murderers. When suggested he is weak, Edward backs down and grants the divorce.   
 In the novel, when Tony is told he is weak, and he shoots the murderer. For the fictional Tony, the bullet is for this fictional murderer, but for Edward, the “bullet” is for Susan. Bear in mind that we are seeing the novel from Susan's perspective. So, if Tony looks identical to Edward, that is because Susan pictures him that way. She connects that this is a personal story to Edward, even though she wanted him to do the opposite of this. She casts Edward as Tony, but she does not cast herself as the fictional wife. In a flashback, Edward learns that Susan became pregnant while the two were together but had an abortion. In the novel, Tony's daughter is killed. The novel is not a recreation of facts about his failed marriage. It is a reassembly of emotions. Tony losing his wife and daughter in the novel is obviously far more dramatic and tragic than what occurred for Edward in reality, but the feeling may have been comparable. Ray, the fictional murderer, represents real world Susan's new husband, the man who took his wife.  
 AUDIO 3
 Bobby pushes Tony towards seeking out Ray, which means he represents Edward's desire to become stronger. Someone who takes charge. Bobby is dying, and he transfers that strength to Tony – or really, Edward. But there's more. When Susan breaks Edward's heart and tells him that his writing is no good, he is sitting on a red sofa. When Tony discovers his dead wife and daughter, they are on the same red sofa. When Susan finally breaks up with Edward, we see a green car. It's the same green car that runs Tony off the road. Remember, the visuals are presumably from Susan's perspective, so the fact that she pictures that furniture suggests she is connected her guilt about leaving Edward with what is happening in the story – just as Edward intended. Through this novel, Edward is telling his ex-wife that while she displays art, he actually allows himself to be vulnerable and takes the emotional risk of putting himself out there. The novel is a catharsis, and perhaps even a kind of revenge. The film reminds us that art can be a kind of revenge as Susan and a co-worker admire a painting whose meaning is rather blunt.   
 Art is not always meant to be beautiful in the strictest sense of the word – no more than the feelings and origins of the work of art are. In this scene, Susan looks at a painting of a man with a gun. Here she sees a beast with a dozen or so arrows shot into it. Art can come from a place of pain, but that pain does not appear from thin air. It comes from the artist. When Susan sees the revenge painting or any of the other pieces, the audience is given clues about the ending of the film. For Susan, the art world is safe. It does not occur to her that the manuscript is Edward's revenge. It does not occur to her that the manuscript being dedicated to her was an attack and not the praise that one might think it would be. Early on, we see that she has no passion for art anymore. Someone tells her to enjoy the absurdity of the fake world of her art museum and her life. The real world, he says, is so much worse. But her life – within the narrative of the film – is the real world, and the story from the novel is fake. Yet, it feels more real, more raw, than anything else in her life.   
 
 AUDIO 4
 The novel is dark, frightening and disturbing, but it is also full of life and emotion. Susan's real life is filled with luxury, but it is empty. The ending of the film is certainly open to interpretation. The director himself, in an interview, tells us that it could be a number of things. The most obvious way of perceiving Edward ghosting Susan is that this is a kind of revenge – but how far does he go? Was his revenge making her fall in love with him again through his writing and through guilt, only to not show up to their dinner date? Or is his revenge that – right after agreeing to dinner – he commits suicide? Tony dies in the novel. Maybe by the time Susan arrives at the restaurant, Edward is dead too. Some believe Edward was merely too weak to confront her in person, but the novel contradicts this. It's a little hard to swallow because it does not thematically fit in with what happened over the course of both narratives. It seems more likely that, one way or another, Edward leaves her by herself in the restaurant to prove her wrong. The novel was a trap for Susan. A way for her to face her regrets and her past.  
  Susan was wrong about him. She was wrong about herself, about her whole life. He makes her face this – that she is – as Edward always said, a nocturnal animal. Someone with sad eyes and lies awake at night in her sadness and emptiness and regret. When Susan reads the novel, she realizes she was wrong about Edward writing about himself all those years ago. But this is not just some lesson about the connection between art and the artist. Nocturnal Animals is NOT an essay about art or the cheapness of the art world and fashion world. After all, director Tom Ford is also a fashion designer. When asked about how the film portrays that upper crust world – a world he helped create – he responded by letting slip the whole point and message of Nocturnal Animals: “The important thing is to keep it in perspective. While you can enjoy those things, while you can love them, they’re not ultimately gonna bring you happiness. For me, happiness comes from my husband, Richard, our 4-year-old child, and the people in my life who mean something. Those are the things that are really important, and that’s what the movie’s about: not letting those people go.”  
  AUDIO 5  
  See, the art in Susan's life is representative of who she is. It is impersonal. Detached. Nocturnal Animals is a cautionary tale about holding on to the people you live. The art is just...metaphor. During the breakup flashback, Susan says that she loves Edward but claims that is not enough. Edward believes it is. They disagree, and Susan begins a relationship with her soon-to-be-husband. He cheats and does not take her seriously. This is life she made her herself when she left Edward. The women in the beginning of the film are carefree and love life in spite of not being conventionally attractive, but Susan's job is to put them on display and sell them – selling their freedom. The dancing women have let go of what society wants them to be, and then we cut to Susan being exactly what society says she must be – what her mother wanted her to be. This is the absurdity of her world. 

OKJA

 AUDIO 1
 Okja is a 2017 film directed and co-written by Bong joon-ho, as well as co-written by Ron Johnson. Lucy Mirando, the CEO of Mirando Corporation, announces a new super pig. Twenty-six specimens are sent across the world. One such super pig, Okja, has lived with a young girl named Mija and her grandfather for the past ten years. The Mirando Corporation comes to collect Okja, but Mija does not want to give away her loyal pet and friend. With the help of the Animal Liberation Front, Mija travels to America to rescue Okja. The A-L-F wants to use this as an opportunity to expose the inhumane treatment of the super pigs by the Mirando Corporation. After a series of mishaps and false starts, they manage to broadcast the cruelty of the corporation, and Mija escapes with Okja and another baby super pig. There are other movies and television shows in which a child tries to save their pet from some villain who inexplicably wants to capture or kill the pet, but in Okja, the concept becomes politicized and examined in such a way that it brings to mind actual non-human animal ethics.   
 In philosophy, what we typically call “animals” are referred to as non-human animals so that no biased distinction between the “animal” status of homo sapiens and the animal status of other creatures can exist. Ethics related to non-human animals generally follow along the path of this question: “Is there something distinctive about humans that justifies the belief that we have moral status and non-human animals do not?” In philosophical circles, an entity has moral status only if it or its interests morally matter to some degree for the entity’s own sake. Generally speaking, society grants moral status to all human beings, but historically, societies have at times denied moral status to foreigners, racial minorities, women, the physically or mentally disabled and others. This denial has not only happened legally but socially, meaning a society has deemed a group of people as “less than human” and therefore not worthy of moral status. A slaves, for example, is not granted true moral status, meaning the slave's feelings and interests are not taken into any real consideration except as they pertain to the slave's owner.   
 AUDIO 2
 But Okja is about the moral status of non-human animals. Okja, as a pig, is not granted LEGAL status by South Korea or America, but Mija does not see it that way. She believes Okja is worthy of moral status, meaning moral consideration for the pig's feelings and interests. Early in the film, Okja saves Mija's life, suggesting that Okja values the life or Mija and therefore life itself. A pet dog can be similarly protective of its human owner. Those with moral status are sometimes called Moral Persons. Determining an entity's moral status is tricky and will often be met with resistance is the non-moral status of an entity has previously been concluded by a majority in a society. Is Okja a Moral Person? Meaning, does she have Moral Status? For philosophers, that depends on how one judges full moral status. As said, Okja saves Mija. If the capacity to value life were a sufficient ground for having a high degree of moral status, then under what is called Threshold Conception, Okja would be a Moral Person.  According to the threshold conception, if the capacity to value grounds moral status, then any entity that has this capacity, regardless of how often or how well it utilizes it, has the same moral status as any other being with this capacity.    
 In other words, if Okja desires to save the life of Mija – even once – than it can be considered under moral considerations even if the super pig never exhibits this towards others. Under Scalar Conception, Okja has not necessarily attained moral status. Scalar Conception highlights the importance of how often and/or how well one can exhibit or exercise a capacity. In this case, to value life. Okja is seen caring for a super pig that is not her own, suggesting she may meet the criteria for Scalar Conception as well. Common ethical debates related to non-human animals include the treatment of livestock – such as raising calves specifically for veal and burning the beaks off chickens, the management of wild animals such as killing in response to overpopulation, and the management of zoos and other captured non-human animal habitats. In Okja, the most obvious moral debate is over the slaughter and consumption of the world's non-human animals, as Okja and the other super pigs are bred entirely to be eaten.  
  AUDIO 3  
 Some people choose not to eat non-human animals for dietary reasons or ethical reasons. Among the most common ethical choice related to this is the belief that non-human animals have at least some degree of moral status. The ethics of the treatment of non-human animals started to gain steam in the 20th century, popularized in part of philosopher Peter Singer. He believed that the moral status of non-human animals could be easily solved by the fact that they have their own self-interests because they can experience pain and would wish to avoid it. “How far down the evolutionary scale shall we go? ... To answer these questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for other beings is based. The only legitimate boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have interests, in a strict, nonmetaphorical sense, a being must be capable of suffering or experiencing pleasure.”    
  The fact that the film's non-human animal character is a pig is rather telling. Most films in which the animals are in danger are dogs and cats – in other words, non-human animals with whom most western audiences would consider their deaths to be abhorrent due to our close relationships with them. But morally speaking, what is the difference between a dog that many societies do not eat and a pig that many societies do not eat? Does human familiarity with a dog or cat somehow grant those creatures greater consideration, and if so, why? When we watch Mija desperately try to protect her pet, Okja, do we feel for Okja and even consider its moral status or are we really only sympathizing with the feelings of Mika, a human whose moral status is not in question? Does the fact that Okja is a pet grant it greater consideration, and again, if so, why? When we hear about humans who participate in dog fights, we are naturally concerned, but why do we not share the same concerns for chickens or cows? Questions like these need to be answered in a satisfactory way with no noticeable contradictions or else said answers are meaningless – at least to philosophers.  
  AUDIO 4  
 We not only participate in the killing of animals for food but also the treatment of animals for painful cosmetics testing that blinds rabbits...and many other things, and we would never consider doing such things to human beings. How do we morally reconcile our own desire to avoid pain, injury and death with how we allow this to happen to non-human animals? Singer and others would say that while there are obvious differences between ourselves and non-human animals – intelligence, for one -- but there are NO “morally relevant” differences – in other words, differences that make the morality of treating one entity unlike the morality of treating another entity. Such beliefs are held by many modern philosophers as well as groups like the one depicted in Okja: The Animal Liberation Front, who take their beliefs into action. The A-L-F, for the uninitiated, is not an invention of the film. It exists in the real world. In the film, when the members speak of taking all precautions against harming both humans and non-human animals, that is in keeping with their real world philosophy. Though opponents would classify them as terrorists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the A-L-F has never actually killed anyone.     
  So, what “morally relevant” reasons are used as justifications for the treatment and consumption of non-human animals? One is the intelligence defense. Humans are noticeably more intelligent than non-human animals. Mija and every other human character in the film is undoubtedly more intelligent than Okja or any of the other super pigs. That is not to say that they have NO ability to think. They are able to problem solve at least as much as many real world non-human animals, but they are not portrayed as having comparable intelligence to a human. But that defense has a hole in it. Most humans would not remove moral status from another human just because said human is less intelligent than others. It is unthinkable that someone who deem it morally acceptable to murder someone because they believed the victim's IQ was one point lower than their own. The mass murder of the mentally handicapped has historical precedent and is widely considered monstrous. And if that is true, why would it be morally acceptable to treat members of another species badly based on the same criteria? This is what I mean when I say “morally relevant” reasons.    
  AUDIO 5  
  If intelligence is not morally relevant to a human's moral status, then it has no bearing on the treatment of non-human animals either. A Superiority Defense states that human beings climbed to the top of the food chain somehow, and that gives us the “right” to treat non-human animals as we please. The Mirando Corporation can be seen as a representative of this way of thinking. They are on top. Everyone else is on the bottom. That alone is justification for their behavior. Yet, one cannot help but notice some bias there. If we were not on top, we would obviously not think this is a valid defense. If another species on Earth suddenly came to control us, we would probably abandon our food chain defense pretty quickly. Superiority Defense also carries with it some obvious historical baggage, and if one does NOT believe a technologically superior culture has the right to invade and slaughter a technologically inferior culture, then this defense as it relates to non-human animals falls apart. Protestations of “But these are humans, not animals!” is a common reaction, but again, it is only culturally relevant, not morally relevant.    
 But what if the Moral Status of Okja itself is irrelevant to the philosopher? It might be to some utilitarian philosophers, as that system of ethics is about maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Some utilitarians would claim that the amount of overall pleasure on Earth is greater when humans dominate non-human animals for food, clothing, cosmetics and other things, because the increase in pleasure is greater than the increase in pain. However, that is incredibly difficult to quantify, and it contains clear bias in favor of humans. It should be noted that Peter Singer and 18th century philosopher  Jeremy Benthem were both utilitarians and clearly rejected such an idea: “What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?” We are all the same in the sense that we all wish to avoid suffering and death. Okja is captured, made to suffer and prepared for slaughter. Why is Okja's suffering acceptable and ours is not?   
 AUDIO 6
 Other justifications include religion, but supernatural justifications are famously difficult to resolve rationally. Philosophers like Singer and Benthem would say that we must equally consider the interests of non-human animals if only because we have no morally relevant justification that can stand up to scrutiny. At the end of the film, we get a kind of bittersweet happy ending. Okja is saved, and Mija lives with her in peace, but the film can only be so optimistic. Okja is allowed to leave only because of another character's greed, and the other super pigs remain behind to be slaughtered. It would be dishonest to portray the conclusion any other way. Regardless of whether one routinely considers non-human animals as having moral status, philosophy requires consistency of belief – as I mentioned in a previous episode. And the manner in which humans justify treatment of non-human animals contains external inconsistencies in society and internal inconsistencies in the individual – and for that reason alone, it cannot go unexamined.