In Which We Talk About This Like Men

Isms of the Dead

by DICK CHENEY

The Walking Dead
creator Frank Darabont

Not a single person has had consensual intercourse in this abbreviated mini-season of The Walking Dead. There was some sexual violence in the diegesis, which incidentally was the title of my first novella: Sexual Violence in the Diegesis. After society breaks down, things begin to revert back to how they were before people like Simone de Beauvoir and Mariah Carey changed the world as we knew it. There are lessons to be found in the grain.

In my last look at the series, I was heavily criticized by those who disagreed that the show's only African-American character, the so-called "T-Dog", was portrayed by veteran comic Anthony Anderson. No. I was making a highly subtle point about inability of The Walking Dead's writers to care about a character of color. I don't know if I exceeded Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal in the process, but how many comments did he get on his blog posts? None. Also, my name-dropping of Anthony Anderson allowed him to get a gig with The Golf Channel, and I wish him the best of luck in that venture.

the way they were

It's unclear what T-Dog stands for, or if Frank Darabont just looks at his script for The Shawshank Redemption and takes all his names from there. Glenn (Steven Yeun) has gotten slightly more attention this season, although his main storyline was "being a coward" and that he was spiritually weakened by the love of his new, white girlfriend Maggie (Lauren Cohan). Her father Hershel, the owner of the farm the castaways survivors came to in a time of need, has warmed up to his future Asian son-in-law over time. When a man earns your daughter's love, he is permitted your most valued pocketwatch.

Last week's show ended with the death of Dale Horvarth (Jeffrey DeMunn), the group's oldest member, when he was surprised by a stray member of the undead while observing a deer carcass. Since Dale had spent the previous 40 minutes of the episode whining about how they shouldn't kill a member of a rival gang they had taken prisoner, his passing was a welcome development, if a bit anticlimatic. The only irony that sustained the moment was the fact that 12-year old Carl could have killed the zombie earlier in the episode, but ran away. Then again, it took them this long to learn that mercy is the second most useless human emotion, after empathy?

it's good to see Mark Hamill still finds work where he can

There is a LOT of talking on The Walking Dead. Men and women rarely talk to each other, but within the sexes, there's a lot of dialogue. It mostly sounds like this:

"What kind of example are you setting for your boy?"

"Keeping your humanity - that's a choice!"

"Where's Carl?"

"Um, how are we lighting this house?"

"You guys."

"Do you want to become like THEM?"

a world without Juicy Juice

"She has to find her own way."

"Glen, get me a pregnancy test but don't tell my husband, you meek little fuck."

"Where's Rick?"

"I can no longer live in a world without juiceboxes. You guys."

"What was it like, before all this?" (Answer: It was Georgia.)

just another dead Democratic voter

Rick's wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) has an extended argument with Andrea (Laurie Holden) about the latter's dismissal of the housework and cooking. "It puts a bigger burden on all of us," she tells her blonde rival, perhaps picking on her because of her increased closeness with Lori's former paramour, Shane (Jon Bernthal). Conflict between women is all fine and dandy - The Bold and the Beautiful ran for a long time, didn't it? - but not one of the women seems particularly concerned that the men are making all the life and death decisions while they hold society together. For this reason, The Walking Dead is a constant reminder not of how much it sucks to be a woman, but of how blissfully indifferent men are to anything that doesn't concern them directly.

Then again, as I type these words, Lynne just put some clean underwear next to me with a note that said, "Love you."

this turned into the food fight from "Hook"

To save costs, the vast majority of this season has taken place on Hershel's slave plantation family farm. The Walking Dead has badly missed the feeling of the open road, the possibility of happening onto some new and exciting relationship between the undead and the humans they hunt. Coming across other, more doomed people gave the show's main characters Shane and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) hope to go on. Now they just seem super pessimistic, their faces covered with the blood of friends and loved ones. I could make a joke about the Republican primaries, but then I would be no better than David Brooks.

"please God let my dad give Glenn a pocket watch"

I have been asked again and again to give up blogging and return to the political world, where amazingly I was able to get a majority of Americans (don't start) to elect me to the office of president. But I keep on doing what I do for the people that I love. Rick is the leader of this group for some strange reason, and whenever he's questioned, someone quietly whispers, "Rick's our leader." Shane's more prominent jawline and protruding schnozz seems to weigh in his favor, but I guess he's their G. Gordon Liddy?

sexist foregrounding

Given the ratings success the show has enjoyed a little more money in the budget should allow this awkward little family to get out on the open road again. There they will see the same old malefactors arranged in new settings. The real plague is the resurgence of racism, sexism, ageism. The weakness of the body is the only thing to prey on in these times, the facile and malleable nature of the body's features. Each time the undead reveals itself in the uniform of the mortal container it inhabits, we receive a delicate reminder, as here:

not casting seth green was a missed opportunity

So much time is spent reflecting on shared tragedy that the events themselves lose meaning. What we were before the bad thing happened is no longer of any relevance. Reminders of it take us back to that time and place, but the journey our mind takes is completely a fantasy. I am no longer the Vice President, and no matter how many times I see myself on the news I can never be the man who fit in that tiny little suit.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Tiger Shopping" - Tim Fite (mp3)

"Because I Was Scared" - Tim Fite (mp3)

"Telephone Booth" - Tim Fite (mp3)

In Which We Search In Vain For The Dragon

Waif in Ascent

by DICK CHENEY

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
dir. David Fincher
158 minutes

At my age it's very difficult to follow The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Facts refuse to cohere, statistics are my only refuge. After my second viewing of David Fincher and Steven Zaillan's adaptation of some Swedish novel, I was able to put together numbers that come close to representing the whole. Don't see the movie, just read this list. You'll save over two hours of your life, and when an enterprising detective asks if you have ever witnessed a rape, you'll be able to truthfully say, "Only metaphorically."

Number of times:

Rooney Mara raises her rear end ever so slightly in the air: 7

Rooney Mara acts like something doesn't hurt at all when it really hurts a lot: 24

Rooney Mara acts like something hurts a lot when it really hurts a lot: 1

David Fincher makes a character wear Nine Inch Nails merchandise in order to fatten his lover Trent Reznor's bank account: 2, but an annoying 2

Number of times:

You are reminded that Rooney Mara isn't a victim of sexual abuse and is actually heir to one of America's oldest fortunes: almost constantly

Robin Wright Penn's neck looks like what you might see inside the Grim Reaper's hood: 1, she wears a turtleneck for the rest of the movie (Sean Penn did this to her)

I whispered to Lynne, "the patriarchy did it" while we sat in the movie theater: 12 and once in the bathroom after the movie

Rooney Mara helpfully notes, "Harriet isn't a Jewish name" and Daniel Craig meaningfully nods: more than I could count

Number of times:

Lynne asked me what libel was: 1

A child appears in the diegesis: What's a diegesis?

Lynne made me revise my fanfic description of the sex between Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara before she would admit it was better than the original: 5 ("His coarse face brushed her face, and her face touched the place where she had stitched him up with dental floss, and she whispered, "The patriarchy", and his hands lingered on a copy of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, and he told her of how his hands had felt as they had gripped Robin Wright's neck, and how he would, in a moment, flip her into missionary because it was the only way he could come...")

Millennium magazine favorably compares itself to a print version of The Awl: 3 (it's also implied twice)

Number of times:

Rooney Mara gives a fawning interview about how Daniel Craig is super cool because he let her keep pens and lipstick in the massive crevices of his dimples: 161

David Fincher succumbs to the vicissitudes of Scott Rudin's verbal tirades ("YOU FUCKING MUSIC VIDEO SHITFACE!") and prominently features McDonald's product placement: 4

Mark Zuckerberg's Asian girlfriend cries herself to sleep: never

David Fincher regrets the third Alien movie: always

Number of times:

Daniel Craig smokes a cigarette and looks off meaningfully in the distance as if he is just newly apprised of the fact tobacco is a laxative: 15.5

I myself wept while thinking about what Daniel Craig did to Darren Aronofsky: 76

Lynne asked me "If that was libel, why isn't David Corn in jail?": 1

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States and a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Impossible Spaces" - Sandro Perri (mp3)

"How Will I" - Sandro Perri (mp3)

"Changes" - Sandro Perri (mp3)

In Which We Ride On God's Great Motorcycle

Love of Leather and Country

by DICK CHENEY

Sons of Anarchy
creator Kurt Sutter

I always wondered what happened to the British kid in Undeclared. (I assumed porn.) Then I was gchatting with Grover Norquist last year, and he was telling me about his favorite show, Sons of Anarchy. On Sons Charlie Hunnam portrays Jackson Teller, the vice president of his motorcycle gang and the practitioner of the worst American accent outside of Simon Baker. Grover bought me the show's first three seasons on DVD as a thank you present for a bunch of jokes I wrote him about Ezra Klein. That gift changed my life.

where are all the girls, did they attend West Point or something?

At base, Undeclared and Sons of Anarchy showcase essentially the same concept. Both concern groups of friends a little too overeager to explain how virulently heterosexual they are, adding up to something of a these ladies protest too much, methinks type situation. Each show concerns a counterculture not commonly exposed to the mainstream light; in the case of Undeclared the fact that college is a gigantic scam perpetuated by Fredric Jameson and Judith Butler, and in the case of Sons of Anarchy the fact that a motorcycle gang is basically an enigmatic cover story for a bunch of guys to ride on big metal phalluses.

I never understood the appeal of a motorcycle before, and I still don't. For a show concerned only with people devoted to the speedy vehicles, Sons of Anarchy hardly ever shows the members of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original (SAMCRO) admiring or enjoying their motorcycles. As transport, the devices are convenient because they can be ridden fast and hidden easily, but these jockeys don't seem to care much for their steeds. They're more into quietly serving out jail time and absolute monogamy.

"Do they force you to read The Daily Beast in here?"

Hunnam's Jackson Teller had a high school relationship with Tara (Mad Men's Maggie Siff) that engendered a love that never abated. Despite the fact that he turned into a drug-running, guns-abusing freak like his father, she's still attracted to his hard pecs. Even after he cheated on her with an adult film performer, she was still fine with it and raised his children without complaint, then went to her job as a hospital surgeon. And that's not all!

Listening to the British Hunnam pridefully spout the various details of the arms trade is about as believable as imagining that a University of Chicago educated doctor would ever copulate with him, but that's part of the fun of Sons of Anarchy. As the show's current season came to a close, the union has been so insanely ludicrous that the Sons of Anarchy writing team has the couple communicate only through cliché, as with this charming exchange from the penultimate episode of the season:

TARA: Tell me you love me.

JACKSON: I love you, Tara.

(pause)

Do you love me?

TARA: If you make it stop I will.

(pause)

I love you Jackson.

Jesus, did none of these people watch Tell Me You Love Me? Clearly not, or they would have cast Adam Scott as a rogue biker named Frederick de la Santos and I wouldn't have to watch him tongue kiss Amy Poehler anymore. Why not embark on a crossover episode, like when Urkel hit that girl on Step by Step with his car?

the fact that Ed Bundy remarried is the cherry on top of this situation

Jackson's mother Gemma Teller is played by Married... with Children's Katey Sagal as an aggressive, controlling presence in the lives of her son and husband. She reminds me of my wife Lynne if every third sentence out of Lynne's mouth was, "Don't hurt my baby." Her ongoing feud with Drea de Matteo was the highlight of the show's first season, although the fact that Drea did not get naked and that they never showed her shooting up heroin or bearing Jackson's baby somewhat lessened my interest in the storyline. 

"Tell me what you really thought of the second Hellboy."

Sagal's first serious dramatic role is a mixed bag. (I'll be scrambling my metaphors a lot in this paragraph.) Her ongoing marriage to show creator Kurt Sutter has hardly engendered goodwill among the fanbase, and including her original music was another fly in the ointment. The fact that her husband (Ron Perlman) beat the shit out of her and all she did was frown a lot constituted the final straw for me, however. Sagal actually enlists her son to kill her husband, but he has to leave him alive because of the CIA. Fortunately this storyline doesn't seem likely to go all Boardwalk Empire but I still get kind of creeped out by the way she looks at Hunnam.

just tell everyone you got into INXS there for awhile juicyEven when Sons of Anarchy gets silly, like when they debuted Tom Arnold as a wacky pornographer, the show usually redeems itself. There are actually many moments when Sons of Anarchy crosses conventional lines, such as when valued club member Juice tried to hang himself from a tree with a steel chain. You don't often see a suicide attempt on cable television these days, although god knows the British host of The X Factor should give it a shot. Also, there should be a specific viewer warning for having to see Ron Perlman's exposed belly.

To join the Sons of Anarchy, a member has to get a back tattoo. If they leave the group, they have to get it inked over or removed. I believe the Church of Scientology and the Heritage Foundation have a similar policy. The most common method of leaving the SoA is by death, and this season's death march has already claimed club founder Piney (William Lucking, not that it matters now). Ron Perlman shot him in the chest with a shotgun because he had an incriminating letter, setting up the weathered veteran as the show's biggest heel.

Also on the death list was poor Herman (The Shield's Kenneth Johnson) whose main crime was being cast on the doomed NBC version of Prime Suspect. Most of The Shield, Deadwood and Oz have taken their own place in Sons of Anarchy; you'd be surprised to know how few actors there actually are in the world, maybe 600 total not including Tom Cruise or his wives. They get thawed out of cold sleep every Tuesday.

get it????

Last night the show's many concurrent storylines converged in a not-so shocking season finale. When we had last left club president Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), he was lying motionless in a hospital bed after being shot in the stomach by Piney's son Opie (Ryan Hurst). Instead of actually having the balls to kill off the most famous actor on their show, Sons of Anarchy creator/actor Kurt Sutter (below as incarcerated member Otto Delaney) chickened out and left Clay alive.

Jackson Teller had long calculated a plan to leave his club in the dust, move to Portland and start up a bed & breakfast with his wife. Instead, in the season's climactic finale scene, he ascended to the presidency of his little club. He explained the change of heart by saying that it would be one thing to simply abandon his club, but another to destroy it completely. I sympathized with him for the first time then because it's the same way I feel about having to watch the second season of Game of Thrones. Then again, how could it be as bad as A Dance With Dragons?

Jackson's tough decision is the exact same as Kurt Sutter's. When you make a beautiful piece of art, the second hardest thing to do is to leave it behind entirely like Larry David and Seinfeld, but the most painful thing to do is turn it into something unrecognizable. Sons of Anarchy lost its way a little bit this year by not changing enough in seasons past. Any character, no matter how finely drawn, becomes stale after we see them in identical situations over and over again. Consciousness change through repetition is only another myth perpetrated by the American political process.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about The Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Honey Girl" - Jolie Holland (mp3)

"Little Birds" - Jolie Holland (mp3)

"The Devil's Sake" - Jolie Holland (mp3)