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Free Screen-Play: City Of Vampires. (Contact me for rights)

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So this is what’s called “squeaking one in.”

I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks.  A liberty I was forced to take, due to an intesafication of my administrative duities here at the publishing company.  A liberty I was able to take, because Dave Proctor has re broken his blog hymen with a fun little essay on the Miller Test.  I was planing to get six blog entries up this month, though, and I still have thirty-six minutes to make deadline.

I just finished writing a really excellent short story, for the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and was planing to blog about that in a way that would secretly be a love letter to my paternal grandfather.  But my writing process really isn’t that interesting, and the story itself is already a secret love letter to my paternal grandfather, so instead I just threw something together with vampires.

Free Screen Play: City Of Vampires.

By Michael Scott

http://woodenrocketpress.com

Establish: Exterior, lake shore.  Late autumn.  Early afternoon.

TRACY is bundled up, and sitting with her feet dangling over the edge of a peer.  She is scribbling something in a sketch-book.  Occasionally she lifts her eye toward the horizon, studies it, and then returns to her drawing.  At a distance of several metres, LUKE, a stranger, is watching her.  She does not yet see him.  LUKE smokes a cigarette as he watches her draw.  LUKE approaches TRACY.  They pretend not to notice each other.  TRACY becomes more focused on pretending to be focused on her drawing.  LUKE flicks his cigarette into the lake and pretends to be watching the sky line.  He glances down at her sketch pad.  The drawing she’s working on is not a landscape, as we expect, but is of a cat, in a hat, on a mat.  LUKE sits down next to her, maybe 3 feet away.  He realizes, too late, that this means he has to say something.

LUKE

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

TRACY takes a moment to respond to this.

TRACY

(Upon deciding that Luke is not crazy.)

Pardon?

LUKE

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

TRACY

That’s what I though you said.

TRACY closes her book, and gazes out over the lake in contemplation. A long moment passes.

LUKE

Well?

TRACY

The Shadow knows. . . would you like to?

LUKE

(Standing.)

Never mind.

LUKE takes a few paces away from her.  Perhaps walking backward, perhaps turning into her again after moving away.  He looks for a moment as if he will restart the conversation. Then suddenly.  He breaks into a dead run, as if being chased by a dog.  A couple of paces into LUKE’s run, everything grinds into vary slow motion.

TRACY

(V.O)

And that is how I came to believe I was a werewolf, living in a city of vampires.

Back to regular speed photography as LUKE takes the hell off.  TRACY tucks her sketch book under her arm and rushes to her feet.

TRACY

Wait!

She races after him.

End.

It’s Miller Time

WARNING… I may not be treading new ground here. I may be saying old things. The snow beneath my feet is starting to melt and give way to sidewalk, perhaps. Or perhaps it’ll give you something to think about for monday morning.

Been a while. Here goes.

I’ve become quite enamored with the old video-games-as-art argument lately, mostly in the incarnation presented by the guys and girl over at Extra Credits, as we here at WRP are big fans of alternative narrative media and, unfortunately, video games will probably be as alternative as it gets until large-scale larping REALLY takes off. I like Extra Credits’ approach because, to quote a good friend of mine, “good on you for actually WRITING about something.” It takes not much to just blog for 30 words and call it an opinion. It’s something else to actually postulate, proselytize and “publish,” take the time to write a big honking review or theory. Good job Extra Credits, and while I’m at it, good job to Michael, whose reviews have been keeping this page vibrant and interesting.

One of the things brought up by Extra Credits in an argument about how games are tested against the first amendment was the Miller Test, the three-prong obscenity test that all articles of free speech must fail completely in order to be deemed obscene and lose their protections as “free speech.” See, what I didn’t know was what the system was in place that was keeping these things in check. Free Speech has a breaking point folks, and its probably for the best. But what is that point?

The Three Prong Obscenity Test to prove if an article of Free Speech is Obscene and, as such, is ripe for censorship:

1) Whether the average person in the community would find the material offensive and prurient
2) Whether the work depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way*
3) Whether the work as a whole lacks serious literary, artstic, political or scientific value.

I don’t need to get into video games right now. I think even the most violent game is not completely narratively void, even if that is simply aping the story progression of a movie that we have deemed classic, like Scarface (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City) or Menace II Society (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). What I’d like to get into is this**:

Funny, right? But is it obscene? Lets rake it across the prongs, shall we?***

1) If this doesn’t offend women, it sure doesn’t ask them for a whole lot of input. It may not offend a lot of men who aren’t thinking about it critically, but I think that’s an unfair generalization. The Miller Test requires that these things be related to the prurient interest. If this doesn’t scream that it’s entire visual thesis is a coal-powered, one-way freight train to the sexual interests of the brain, I don’t know what does.

2) Does this work affront community standards with regards to the depiction of sexual acts? It’s the girls sexpot facial expressions and placement in a mental facility that calls up old cries of “nymphomania” or “hysteria,” namely that female sexuality and insanity are very much connected. I think we’ve progressed far enough that this isn’t believed ACROSS THE BOARD, right? Does the community in question in Mr. Miller’s test acknowledge that its youngest women and girls are being typified and boiled down to hyper-sexualized mental patients? The girls wear white with black straps: straight-jackets (straight-onesies, whatever). The men around them, dressed in black (doctors? personal demons?) press them into operating tables and metal bed frames, and ultimately goad more sexualized looks out of them from enacting a suppressed-mental-patient power play. I ask whether or not the community finds it offensive that sex is not only being tantalizingly close to being depicted (this video is seconds away from full on ugly-bumping), but it is also being demonized and twisted to be an imbalanced and non-reciprocal depiction of sex! That should offend both the ultra conservative prudes and the do-it-on-the-first-date liberal types.

3) What claim does this have to art, literature, politics, or science?
Art: That it was directed and compiled by a director? Surely no. The most offensive and visceral porn is directed. So it’s not a film…

Is it music? It’s not an iteration of performative music, as the writers and singers are separate entities (check the writing credits). Without saying that the song is starkly unoriginal, it does do all the things that music technically does, but the song does this. The video has to add something to that. If I filmed a disgusting act of violence and set it to “Paranoid Android,” I couldn’t hide the video as art because the song existed first. If anything, trying to lump the video’s artistic intent in with the songs creation draws further attention to the fact that the song was written by a committee and is therefore more a work of commercial advertising than anything.

It’s sure not fucking science…

That leaves literature and politics. Does it have political weight? Only if it proves something positive about the battle of the sexes. If it is setting out to set women back, I think that’s deemed something with negative political value, so no… its not political. At least not in the non-obscene miller-test sense of the word.

And as I reach deeper into my bag of themes can I argue that the straight-jacketed women represent something about repressed female sexuality? Can I argue that there is something there to be said about the treatment of women as objects in unbalanced-power-dynamic relationships? I don’t know. I think the fact that I wrote this essay may push these last few questions at least into the realm of the possible.

But no one has had to come forth to prove that those were the directors’ intent. No one has had to come forth to prove that a statement was being made, because no one has challenged the obscenity of this artifact. No one has tried, and as such this video is on 3 counts MILLER-GRADE OBSCENE. And yet it plays.

People challenge video games, and books, and movies constantly. People challenge the songs, even, but when was the last time an obscenity hearing was held for a modern pop video? I know this is old territory, but do we even care anymore? Its become so that nothing bothers us. We are apathetic because, well, thats just how music videos are. We have no right to want products, even though there are laws in place that specifically seek to not just ban, but demand higher quality of other media for the interest and betterment of the people watching. But no, this case doesn’t matter. It’s just one music video from last year. Why should we demand better now? Lets just see what comes on next.

No answers today I guess. Just some stuff to think about. Lots of definitions for obscenity, it seems.

* According to the Roth standard of obscenity, this clause is phrased as “The material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters.”

** This video came onto my radar because of a comment that a friend made about defunct british pop groups, which prompted an immediate Youtube scour, which of course, produced this gem.

*** The Miller Test’s view on obscenity is immediately skewed because of its almost pathological focus on sex. Of course, why American obscenity laws favour sex over violence isn’t the issue at hand here. The issue is that the tool being used to rate obscene materials is ignoring certain media over others. It doesn’t matter if their laws are sex-obsessed. Their laws are sex-obsessed and DOING A SHITTY JOB AT ENFORCING THEMSELVES. That’s the problem.

Why Magick? An Evangelistic Essay.

http://woodenrocketpress.com

maslows hierarchy of needs. The Hierarchy of Lies is just like this, but upside down.

When I was about fifteen, I got my hands on Aleister Crowley. I don’t remember which essay it was, or what it was about. The only thing I remember about that essay was the spelling. Not magic, magick. Magic is the work of a skilled theatrical artist, an illusion of something impossible. Magick is an act of will that produces a change in nature, the fact of something impossible.

Why Magick? An Evangelistic Essay.

By Michael Scott

http://woodenrocketpress.com

I need a chart. An inverted pyramid graph. On the lowest and narrowest tier, should be the most basic and foundational of human ideas. Upon this foundation there should be ever larger platforms, supporting ever greater numbers of stranger, more interesting, and more specific ideas. The chart must have no crown, but be in a state of infinite upward growth. Always, at the highest frontier, would be the most exotic echelon of human thought. This Gnostic Hierarchy of Lies (working title only) would be a most excellent tool. All human ideas require acceptance of other, more basic human ideas. One, for example, can not subscribe to a political ideal unless they first accept that society needs to be governed. This is the definition of magick.

When I was about fifteen years old, I adopted my first slogan: “If you tell the same lie enough times, it becomes the truth.” I don’t remember where I heard it (likely not from Aleister Crowley, for he was never so clear), but I began repeating it to everyone who would listen. I told this lie about lies so often that it became my truth. Today, when I preach about magick (for one can only preach, never teach) I call this slogan the First Magickal Principle.

When we examine the First Magickal Principle, against the Gnostic Hierarchy of Lies, something amazing happens. Once you have your truth – Windows Vista represents a vast improvement over its predecessors — you can start telling other lies on the shoulders off that truth, to re-enforce the belief in it:

World of Warcraft Plays better on Windows Vista.

Vista surfs the internet with greater ease.

Upgrading to Vista will improve the functionality of your PC.

And with all these lies rapidly becoming truth, you are in a prime position to start telling a third kind of lie. A lie about something new, completely removed from the original truth, but which relies on acceptance of it: the new version of Microsoft Office is effing sweet! My spread sheets are better then EVER!!! Of course, this new version of Microsoft office only works if you’re running Windows Vista, but that doesn’t matter. Everybody already knows you should be running Vista, because Windows Vista represents a vast improvement over its predecessors.

So with a few well placed lies, Microsoft cemented the most frustratingly high density operating system of all time as the new industry standard.  The lie had become the truth. Vista was not inherently better at running programs but, because new programs are all written to be most compatible with the particular quirks of this new industry standard, all other versions of Windows got worse at running programs.

“The first step was admitting that I was powerless against Windows Vista.”

-Graham Porter.

Not only an example of corporate magic — flash, showmanship, misdirection, and surprise — but also corporate magick: an act of will, that manifested a change in nature. In this case, the nature of your software.

So, why magick?

Why not marketing?

Well, way down near the bottom of that Gnostic Hierarchy of Lies, not on the foundational layer, but quite near the bottom, we find that everything in nature follows laws. There are Laws of Physics, Laws of Nature, Mathematical, Chemical, and Biological Laws. There are Federal Laws, Provincial Laws, Civil Laws, Codes of Behaviour, Biblical Commandments. Magickians even have a Law:

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,

Love is the law, love under will,

There is no law, beyond ‘Do what thou wilt.’”

-Crowley, Book Of The Law.

One can learn something of the inherent truth of law by looking at any example of a legal system. It is actually possible to gain an extremely complex understanding of the Big Lie by examining the rules of marketing, rules of war, rules of construction. Pure magick is not strictly necessary when one can easily examine other types of systematic principle, but if your thinking begins with markets, then all things become, in your mind, brands. If your thinking begins with war, then all things become battles. If your thinking begins with construction, then all things become condo developments.

So market your business (act of will), and strengthen your brand (change in nature); practice your shooting (act of will), and improve your gun-play (change in nature); decorate your condo (act of will), and create a home (change in nature). Be amazed when the result of the act is greater then the sum of the labour; when your book review of The Chubby Bounty Hunter, becomes, beyond all reasonable probability, the second result in a google search; when your essay on magickal properties of The Canadian Penny, of which you are so proud, is the eighteenth.

But you are not a brand.

You are not a war.

You are not a condo development.

You are not a magick spell either, but that lie is more complete. You are an act of will (sex), that produced a change in nature (you). Magic is a way of understanding the rules, and telling the lies, that aims at getting closer to the truth. A person is a euphemism, and is a twoot a euphemism for that euphemism.

When you are at work, at play, at church, with your lover, when you sit on facebook, or twooter, or wordpress, your behaviour in those arenas is also an act of will, a magical lie. This lie, though, is about you. It is not about your brand, it is not about your struggle, it is not about your work, it’s about the kind of person you want to become. This is not simply a mater of semantics.

Wizardry is not my brand. Communism is not my brand. Atheism is not my brand. Kindness is not my brand. Watered Down is my brand. Wooden Rocket Press is my brand. Wizardry, Communism, Atheism, and Kindness are not things that I am selling, they are things I am. I tell those lies only to please myself, only because I want to believe in them.

I understand this, because of magick.

By Michael Scott