Shannon Love

American Superman

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(Note: While googling to research this essay, I learned that Christopher Reeve had just died so perhaps it was somehow fated to be written this day.)

I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this weekend. It’s a great romp if you’re the kind of person who like retro golden-era style science fiction pulp adventures that features amphibious P-40 Warhawks. Before the movie, the theater showed “The Mechanical Monsters” one of the great Dave and Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from 1941.

The cartoon got me to thinking about what it says about America that Superman is our archetypical hero.

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The McGuffin Delusion

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The McGuffin Delusion arises when someone argues that an instance of technology, and not the individual who controls the technology, represents the source of a problem. I think this delusion shows up in a lot of technology-related political discussions.

I named it after Alfred Hitchock’s description of his plot device, a McGuffin, that every character in the story searches for believing it will solve their problem. In Hitchock’s movies, however, the real issues are the relationships between people, not the physical objects they seek.

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The Choice of Cheney

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I didn’t watch the vice presidential debate. I have taken to reading such things online by preference but in thinking about the two men involved I am struck by what an odd choice Cheney was for vice president. I think this says something about the way that Bush views the Presidency.

Historically, VPs are chosen primarily for political reasons. Usually, they balance the ticket regionally or are a sop to one wing of party. The VP is there largely because the Constitution requires it. The VP is an outsider to the President’s inner circle. He has a role and is consulted and kept apprised but he is not core.

Cheney is rather unique among VPs in that he was selected not as a Constitutionally mandated spare president or to placate some faction of the Republican party. Cheney is Bush’s right-hand man. He is a member of Bush’s inner circle and a core team player.

I think Bush constructed his administration the way he set up a business team. A vice president of a corporation has definite responsibilities and power devolves though them from the president. Bush seems to view Cheney in this role of a manager or administrator, not in the role of a political associate. Cheney is probably the first VP to have the full trust and confidence of his president and vice versa. He is directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the Administration.

Bush seems to have a ruthlessly practical approach to problem solving. I don’t think theory interests him much. He set up his administration to get things done managerially, not to accomplish some short-term political goal. Cheney gets things done so Bush put him in the VP slot while ignoring the traditional political wisdom.

In the process he may have permanently altered the office of the Vice Presidency.

Hunting With Cripples

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Such strange things you encounter while surfing.

So, there’s blogger who has dubbed Kerry “Senator von Munchausen” due to Kerry’s Christmas-in-Cambodia story and now he his trying to fact check a story Kerry told Field and Stream about hunting deer on Cape Cod. Kerry claims to have come-this-close to bagging a 16-point buck out on the cape. The blogger is dubious so he’s turning the distributed intelligence of the internet lose on Kerry’s hunting story.

That’s not the strange part.

Another blogger mentioned in same post is trying to confirm if Kerry ever ran in the Boston Marathon.

That’s not the strange part either.

The strange part is in a table of deer hunted in the state of Massachusetts that the first blogger links to. It really has nothing to do with Kerry other than to prove that people do actually hunt deer on the cape. The strange thing is the headings for the table. The columns are headed: shotguns, muzzleloaders, archery, unknown and …

…Paraplegic.

That’s the strange part.

Saddam’s McGuffin of Power

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In Lord of Rings, the plot revolves around an attempt by all parties to control Sauron’s ring of power. The ring is an item unique in all the world. Whomever controls that one item rules the world.

This plot device of unique item is fairly common in literature and movies. Hitchcock called it a McGuffin. Every character has to be looking for that unique item.

It’s not just fantasy items like magic rings and swords that get that treatment. Technology does too. Most James Bond movies feature some piece of technology so unique that control of it will lead to world domination.

All this would just be of interest to students of fiction, except that for a large section of the population the gut feel for how technology actually works comes from works of fiction. Most people in the contemporary world have no direct experience with researching, creating or manufacturing actual technology. They may use it but they don’t understand how it comes to be. It is very easy for people to think of technological items like nuclear reactors or computers in the same way as they see them portrayed in the movies.

It’s very clear from reading the ongoing debate about the extent of Saddam’s WMDs that most people have absolutely no idea of the technological issues involved. Most people, even major politicians and media figures talk about WMDs as if they were McGuffins. They act as if we expected to find a giant throbbing orb in an underground base under Baghdad that had WMD written on it. They think that WMDs were discrete objects or things that could be located and controlled.

Technology doesn’t work like that.

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