Daily Archives: June 17, 2008

Che Guevera, Icon?

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Today I saw an older guy with a Che Guevera t-shirt. Che is an icon, in the most real sense of the word. For many people, the reality of Che consists of the image, and the revolutionary feelings it provokes. It’s a very safe level of revolution. While right-wing bloggers and Bill O types blather about how people ignore the “real” Che, and some on the left continue to uphold his brutal life as having some kind of heroic meaning, the image itself doesn’t care. It’s like the pirate flag or a velvet Elvis. Does piracy mean freedom? Or does it mean rape, pillage, and murder? Was Elvis the King? Or was he a crazy fat befuddled drug addict who shot out his television? It doesn’t matter anymore. If you dress up as Elvis or carry around a cup with skull and crossbones, you aren’t entering into the argument, you’re merely buying into the iconic, idealized version. A pure Elvis, a Captain Jack Sparrow, abstracted from all the realities. A Che that can be made with cheap labor and sold to consumerist capitalists.

The Incredible Hulk: Best Movie Line so Far this Summer

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I was ready for this one to fail. The premise is kind of dated, the raging Id as superhero has been done in many forms, plus there’s the stretchy pants problem. Also, I never made it through Ang Lee’s version, even on cable, for free. But it was Saturday afternoon and I needed a little something. I like action movies, and I can enjoy a bad movie for its badness. After all, “Hulk Smash” always works.

Surprisingly, this was really good. Among the things that worked:

  • No tortured origin story. Everybody knows it was gamma rays. (yes, it makes no sense, but what the heck)
  • Stretchy pants. Bruce Banner is always buying pants that can stretch way out. One scene, where he checks the size of a potential purchase against a nearby ass, is priceless.
  • The love story. Once again, no long intro, it’s just given. But Liv Tyler and Ed Norton produce more chemistry than you’d think. I generally don’t like love stories.
  • The action. Hulk is about unstoppable forces smashing into normally immovable objects. They move. It works. There’s a good escalation of conflict culminating in an all-out battle that delivers.
  • But the thing that works most, that starts off the move on the right foot, is the re-working of the most classic Hulk line: “Don’t make me angry, you won’t like me when I’m angry!” Except, there are translation problems. The result is hilarious.