The Sluttification of Halloween

"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total
slut and no other girls can say anything about it."
- Line from Mean Girls (2004)

[FYI: I don't particularly like the term "slut", due to its obvious sexist connotations and implications of a double standard between men and women regarding sexual promiscuity, but due to its prevalence in popular discourse and the fact that women probably use it more than men, I thought it an appropriate term to use for the title of this post.]

A couple of days ago I went shopping for Halloween costumes with my significant other. As I perused the store's offerings, a discernible pattern quickly emerged among the female costumes. Specifically, almost all of them included tiny microskirts, revealing cleavage, and - in case we didn't get the idea from the bustier - accessories such as a badge that read "Officer Naughty." Of course, if a woman didn't want to dress in such revealing attire, there was always the choice of going as an outhouse, or a giant whoopee cushion, i.e. no choice at all unless she wanted to socially ostracize herself by going to the other extreme with a patently ridiculous joke costume.

Now, I'm no prude, but this whole phenomenon resulted in mixed emotions for me. On the one hand, as a heterosexual male, of course I'll be slow to object to any holiday tradition that results in an increased number of scantily-clad women. On the other hand, I've read far too much feminist literature to dismiss the larger societal implications of this, perhaps best summed up in another line from Mean Girls, which isn't even a movie I like all that much.

Karen: Why are you dressed so scary?
Cady: It's Halloween.

Basically, if every single costume available for women is a variant on sexy cop, sexy nurse, sexy witch, sexy nun, the range of possible female costumes becomes much more limited. If a woman feels that she doesn't want to dress in a revealing, sexy costume, perhaps because she's self-conscious or simply doesn't want to come off as some kind of sex object, then it's that much harder for her to find something she likes. Beyond that, when the celebration of Halloween virtually obliges women to dress in skimpy clothing, the whole world becomes one giant Playboy Mansion. Again, while that can be a good thing for straight men looking for eye candy, it ultimately objectifies women in the same manner as Hugh Hefner's lad rag.

Of course, I could be completely out of my league here. I'm sure that at this point in history, plenty of women would tell me that they have no problem with this trend, that they agree 100% with the quote at the beginning of this post, that it's "empowering" to be able to dress as sexy as they want on Halloween and have nobody say anything about it. Leaving aside for a second the implications of people criticizing them for dressing sexy on the other 364 days of the year, there is the possibility that they are merely confirming Ariel Levy's thesis in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture - i.e., when popular culture dusts off old sexist stereotypes like the Playboy bunny and reframes them as edgy and "empowering", women are merely buying into a cartoonish, consumerized version of sexuality perpetuated mainly for its greater commercial potential. It sends the message to other people that they are comfortable flaunting their sexuality, in a Maxim culture that demands women do this.

These are just random thoughts and for now I'll have to leave the issue unresolved, but there are scads of female writers who can address these topics far better than I. For now I'll point you to an incisive article by Stacie Adams in which she lays waste to some sacred cows in our popular discourse - words that have been largely drained of all meaning by overuse. Among them:

Feminism – Feminism is about equality, unless it’s about empowering women.
It can also empower men, but that usually involves being falsely accused of rape
or losing custody of your children. Feminism is about embracing your womanhood, but sometimes it’s about rejecting that womanhood as a society imposed gender constraint. Feminism is also about sisterhood, unless you disagree with some aspect of the ideology, then it is about lambasting your sisters for daring to
question hallowed mama feminism.

Thoughtless ladies have tried to use feminism to justify every behavior
imaginable. Everything from icy celibacy to wild nymphomania has been held up as typifying feminism. There simply is no consensus, which is why you have people
like Sarah Palin using the term as a means of garnering support. Since it’s been
so loosely defined for so long, it is essentially up for grabs.

Empower – Women today think wearing high heels with jeans or sport balling
a pro surfer count as empowerment. Well, why shouldn’t they? Empower is a trite
and over used word indicating that some powerless segment of society can fortify
itself through meaningless maneuvers and trends. The only real way to empower
oneself is financial. The people holding power in society are not necessarily occupying their positions because they are white or men, as there are scads of
white men living in slums right along side us women and various
minorities.

3 Inches of Awesome

Last night I attended a show featuring my favourite contemporary metal band, 3 Inches of Blood. And what a show it was. I recorded two songs on video ("Execution Tank" and "Night Marauders"), though the sound quality is so abominous that the clips aren't good for much more than historical recordkeeping.



This was easily the most intense concert I've ever been to. Although I've gone moshing before, the sheer ferocity (and velocity) of the moshpit in front of 3IOB was enough to tell me that I need to incorporate more cardio into my exercise routine, and I spent much of today fighting inexplicable abdominal pains. It was certainly a great way to relieve stress, though. In my opinion, the high points of the night were "Night Marauders", "Wykyrdtron", and of course, "Deadly Sinners." That said, there were a few questionable omissions; where was "Destroy the Orcs", for instance? The biggest disappointment had to be their failure to play my favourite 3 Inches of Blood song, the anthemic "Crazy Nights." But other than that, it was a perfectly worthwhile show which I was able to enjoy from the front row, clad of course in a freshly-purchased t-shirt adorned with the cover of the band's new album.

In keeping with metal's tradition of revolving door lineup changes, the latest 3IOB effort, Here Waits Thy Doom, has new drummer Ash Pearson filling in for Alexei Rodriguez, who was fired from the band after a punchup with the drummer from Saxon. But the most notable change is the absence of hardcore screamer Jamie Hooper, who, failing to recover from throat problems that had put him in danger of permanently damaging his voice, was forced to leave the band. In place we have guitarist Justin Hagberg taking over harsh vocal duties. Hagberg is not as strong as Hooper in the screaming department, but ultimately, the decreased scream factor does little to damage the band's status as a powerhouse of traditionally-styled heavy metal. In the end, the heart and soul of this band is lead singer Cam Pipes and his piercing, Halford-esque falsetto wail.


Full disclosure: I was first introduced to 3 Inches of Blood three years ago by a former roommate who, while a fellow metalhead, typically listened to bands like Lamb of God, Opeth, and Children of Bodom. At the time, I was still firmly entrenched in the old school; while I had progressed from my high school infatuation with 80s hair metal to embrace harder bands, I was still reluctant to move beyond the clean vocals of bands like Iron Maiden and Megadeth. When my roommate began playing the band's second album, Advance and Vanquish, it was Cam's screeching falsetto that immediately drew my attention. Truly, it was love at first listen.

The beauty of 3IOB for me was how they effortlessly straddled old and new metal sounds; while they retained the high-pitched operatic vocals and Dungeons & Dragons fantasy themes of yore, they also employed a highly aggressive, thrashy musical style and, more specifically, had in Jamie Hooper a screamer that could hold his own against any modern-day metalcore act. When the band lost Hooper, they largely lost that unique quality; although Hagberg gamely fills in on screaming duties, he is primarily a guitarist and can't hold a candle to Hooper in terms of sheer harshness.

Yet perhaps the most surprising thing about 3IOB's new album is how little the loss of Hooper affects the music. Right from the start of the air-punching opening track, "Battles and Brotherhood", this is unmistakably 3 Inches of Blood, with Cam Pipes dominating the proceedings and guitarists Hagberg and Shane Clark providing an impressive array of fleet-fingered riffery that harkens back to the twin leads of Priest, Maiden and Thin Lizzy. The next track, "Rock in Hell", is another top-notch headbanger that could have stopped with the title, but pushes on through a cavalcade of riffs that dare the listener to keep the volume below 11.

The rest of the album is a mix of typical 3IOB thrashers and a few interesting genre experiments, such as the bluesy stomp of "Preacher's Daughter", delicate acoustics of "12:34", and epic pretensions of "All of Them Witches." In summary, it sounds like a 3 Inches of Blood album, which is higher praise than it might come off as, given the absence of Jamie Hooper. With this album, Cam Pipes has established himself as the preeminent vocalist in metal today. 3 Inches of Blood, I salute your ability to withstand numerous lineup changes and keep churning out top-quality traditional metal. Now advance, and vanquish the competition!

Militarism Old and New

Apologies for the lack of posts in recent days, but I was fighting a bad cold that now appears largely vanquished. I passed some of the time watching World War II documentaries on the Military Channel, which like the History Channel seems to be on the verge of embracing the slogan "All Nazis, All The Time." Last night I caught Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil on late-night television - in case you forgot, that's the film with Brad Renfro as a high school student who befriends a Nazi war criminal played by Ian McKellen. Singer appears to be obsessed with the Nazi period; not only did he direct Apt Pupil and the Hitler-assassination thriller Valkyrie, but his first X-Men film opened with the young Magneto utilizing his powers in occupied Poland. Now there are rumours that Singer could take the helm of possible prequel X-Men Origins: Magneto, despite his admission that he might need a break from all the Nazi stuff.

Why the ongoing fascination with the Third Reich? On one hand, the answer is obvious: World War II was the largest armed conflict in human history, and Hitler's Germany was its principal antagonist. In addition, the appalling Nazi atrocities that culminated in the Holocaust provide a visceral example of a demonic ideology responsive only to military might - in other words, an ideal villain for the military-industrial complex. Is it any wonder that since 1945, almost every leader of a country deemed an official enemy by the United States or Russia has been compared to Hitler?

The glorification of World War II by the victors is as much about legitimizing those states' own authority as it was about defeating Hitler's regime. Especially once the full extent of Nazi war crimes became known, it became almost impossible to argue against the decision of the American, Soviet, British or Canadian governments to send their armies to Europe. Although the Nazis' crimes against the Jews were downplayed by Western governments at the time - to avoid portraying the war as a strictly "Jewish problem" - in retrospect the discovery of the concentration camps provided the ultimate vindication of the Allied war effort. Since then, WWII has became indelibly known as the "good war" in Russian and Western thought.

Unfortunately, this idealized view of the conflict belies the less romantic reality that, like most wars, World War II was fundamentally a struggle between opposing world powers with competing geopolitical interests. Such a notion is incompatible with its depiction in the West as a grand contest between "freedom and democracy" and totalitarian fascism. There is little room in this conception for moral complexity and the shades of grey that also characterized the Allied war effort - the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in internment camps, the segregation of black and white American soldiers into distinct units, the firebombing of Dresden, and most controversially of all, whether the United States was justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In similar service to jingoistic nationalism, the role of the Soviet Union is often downplayed, as in the preposterous assertion of some conservative U.S. commentators that it was the United States that defeated Nazi Germany. Rather, it was the Soviet Union that truly defeated the Nazi war machine; by the time of the Normany invasions, Hitler's armies had been largely decimated in the meat grinder of the Eastern Front.

All of these skewed depictions of the war have one thing in common - to justify our own war policies, to bolster national pride and provide a legitimacy to our governments that has lasted well into the 21st century. After all, if your opponent is Nazi Germany - indisputably one of the most odious regimes in human history - it's easy to promote your own side as morally superior. This is why the Nazis have remained ideal villains in Hollywood films. But as the past recedes further and further into history, we remain focused on it to our own detriment.

It's 2009. To still dwell on Hitler and the Nazis more than 60 years after their defeat - as is all too common in our political discourse - is ludicrous and dangerous. The world has changed immeasurably since then, and the main foreign policy of Western nations is no longer the military defeat of comparable adversaries, but rather the exploitation and subjugation of impoverished Third World nations. By continuing to paint ourselves as the heroic adversaries to a more despicable, militarily comparable rival, we distort the current state of world politics.

I remember well the onslaught of Nazi and Holocaust-themed films that cropped up in the multiplex during the 2008 holiday season. While the Israeli war machine slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and committed its own Naziesque war crimes, we were treated to films such as Valkyrie, The Reader, and most notably, Defiance - the latter, in its focus on Jewish partisans fighting Nazi aggressors, remarkable for its ironic timing. The distorted claims of the Israeli far right that its war crimes in Gaza were a defensive action found their support, as always, in reversion to a World War II mentality, a time in which Jews were the victims of ethnic cleansing rather than its perpetrators.

Let me finish by pointing you to a spot-on article by a German professor in which he examines the difference between American conceptions of WWII as the "good war" and German views of it as the "bad war". Most notable are his comments on postwar militarism. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are some crucial passages to whet your appetite and establish the critical points:

In 1955 an Austrian member of Parliament shrewdly observed that the most significant developments in the international arena were "the Americanization of Germany and the Prussication ["Verrpeußung"] of America."

[...]

The most important legacy of the postwar occupation may well have been an ever more prevalent German pacifism in all political camps (not only in the Green Party where it is strongest). Only in the post-Cold War era have Germans begun to participate in "out of area" Western military interventions (Kosovo, Afghanistan). Young Germans abhor war and would rather not serve in the military and since the Vietnam War have become ever more critical of American military adventures abroad. The formerly deeply rooted Prussian military tradition was obliterated by the highly successful Anglo-American postwar occupation regime that produced prosperity and the "Wirtschaftswunder" instead of resentment and rejection.

[...]

Meanwhile the United States has become a militarized society in peacetime and sports a martial pride and attendant hyperpatriotism in its mainstream culture and ethos that is reminiscent of old Prussia. As the leader of the Western world, the U.S. has built the most powerful armed forces and destructive weapons systems the world has ever seen. During the Cold War the Americans spent up to 30 percent of its budget on the military. They established an awesome global base system that allows the U.S. to project its power swiftly and devastatingly when needed. It has fought long wars in Korea and Vietnam and intervened dozens of time around the world when it saw its national interests threatened.

This acceptance of a permanent peace-time military establishment and global power projection after World War II has much to do with the hard-won victories and the subsequent American memory regime of the "good war." Actually, the cultural production in the years after the war maintained an ambivalent and darker view of the war which had dehumanized so many of its young soldiers in the epic battles in the Pacific and in Europe. Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and Joseph Heller's Catch-22 stand for this darker view.

But since the 1980s D-Day commemorations turned uncompromisingly patriotic and the cultural production celebratory of the "greatest generation" that lived through the Depression and rose to victory during World War II. Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and the ten-part TV series "Band of Brothers" signify a patriotic memory of World War II that celebrates the "good war." The late historian Stephen E. Ambrose has done more than anyone to enshrine this new view in his books and in the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. In the words of historian Chad Barry "the good war thesis became a powerfully seductive and intoxicating view of an idealized past and a golden age."

War is Peace

My first reaction upon discovering that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize was stunned disbelief - until I remembered that this is the same award that went to war criminal Henry Kissinger in 1973. The notion that a sitting president of the current United States, the world's most aggressive rogue state, could be awarded a prize for promoting world peace is laughable. It's a slap in the face to the families of slaughtered civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Gaza, and I'm sure it will reassure the Iranians that Obama, who still pushes the notion that "all options are on the table" regarding the American right to bomb their country, is more than just a fresh coat of paint on an old imperialist aggressor.

Obama's win makes a mockery of the Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee awarded it to Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." If pretty words are all that is required to win the world's most prestigious award for promoting peace, then any tin-pot dictator who proclaims himself to have peaceful intentions while engaging in a war of aggression is equally eligible. Paul Craig Roberts masterfully highlighted the difference between what the president says and what he actually does:

Obama, the committee gushed, has created “a new climate in international politics.”

Tell that to the 2 million displaced Pakistanis and the unknown numbers of dead ones that Obama has racked up in his few months in office. Tell that to the Afghans where civilian deaths continue to mount as Obama’s “war of necessity” drones on indeterminably.

No Bush policy has changed. Iraq is still occupied. The Guantanamo torture prison is still functioning. Rendition and assassinations are still occurring. Spying on Americans without warrants is still the order of the day. Civil liberties are continuing to be violated in the name of Oceania’s “war on terror.”

[...]

The non-cynical can say that the Nobel committee is seizing on Obama’s rhetoric to lock him into the pursuit of peace instead of war. We can all hope that it works. But the more likely result is that the award has made “War is Peace” the reality.

Obama has done nothing to hold the criminal Bush regime to account, and the Obama administration has bribed and threatened the Palestinian Authority to go along with the US/Israeli plan to deep-six the UN’s Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes committed during Israel’s inhuman military attack on the defenseless civilian population in the Gaza Ghetto.

The US Ministry of Truth is delivering the Obama administration’s propaganda that Iran only notified the IAEA of its “secret” new nuclear facility because Iran discovered that US intelligence had discovered the “secret” facility. This propaganda is designed to undercut the fact of Iran’s compliance with the Safeguards Agreement and to continue the momentum for a military attack on Iran.

[...]

“War is Peace” is now the position of the formerly antiwar organization, Code Pink. Code Pink has decided that women’s rights are worth a war in Afghanistan.

When justifications for war become almost endless--oil, hegemony, women’s rights, democracy, revenge for 9/11, denying bases to al Qaeda and protecting against terrorists--war becomes the path to peace.

The Nobel committee has bestowed the prestige of its Peace Prize on Newspeak and Doublethink.

Glenn Greenwald takes a slightly more ambivalent view, pointing out that Obama inherited much of these problems and, in any event, presides over a war-making state that accounts for 70% of worldwide arms sales. It's difficult to get past that kind of institutional inertia, and Obama should be commended for his efforts to adopt a more multilateral approach to foreign policy. But true efforts for peace require more than mere words, and thus far that's pretty much all Obama has had to offer.

Nothing of substance has changed in U.S. foreign policy. We have seen a cosmetic change in the country's approach to dealing with Iran, one that has already produced more dividends in one day than eight years of neoconservative threats. But the overall American tone remains one of aggressive bullying, where Obama embraces the Washington consensus of a supposed Iranian "threat" that has little basis in reality. It's an open question at this moment whether the U.S. or Israel will engage in military strikes on Iran; I'm guessing not, since any such action will cause the Middle East to explode and widen the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq into a horrific regional conflagration, but I could be wrong. Hopefully not.

It's true that Obama has only been in office for nine months and can't be expected to solve all of the myriad problems bequeathed to him by the criminal Bush administration. But the bottom line is that little has changed. Once you get past the rhetorical flourishes in his speeches, where Obama has demonstrated a consistent knack for saying one thing while doing the exact opposite, it's clear that he will prove no impediment whatsoever to Wall Street and the Pentagon devouring what's left of the American economy, nor to the continued waging of perpetual war. Again, credit must go to Greenwald for cutting to the heart of the matter:

That was from a May airstrike in which over 100 Afghan civilians were killed by American jets -- one of many similar incidents this year, including one only a week ago that killed 9 Afghan civilians. How can someone responsible for that, and who has only escalated that war, possibly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the very same year that he did that? Does that picture above look like the work of a Nobel Peace laureate?

Let me be clear: any man who escalates one war, refuses to end another, orders drone attacks on a supposedly allied country, constantly threatens war with yet another nation, and says absolutely nothing while his country's proxy commits war crimes against defenseless civilians in a virtual open-air prison, slaughtering hundreds of children and unleashing white phosphorus on the population, is not a man of peace. He is a warmonger, plain and simple, once you get past the slick gauze of corporate PR. To see such an individual awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is an insult to peace-loving peoples everywhere, and merely confirms the enduring wisdom of George Orwell.

Clash of the Titans

Michael Moore took on Sean Hannity the other night in a no-holds barred round of verbal fisticuffs. Truth be told, I found the exchange surprisingly polite and good-humoured, although part of that is undoubtedly because Hannity (sadly) won his bet with Moore on whether Bush would be impeached or prosecuted by the end of his term. At any rate, it's a damn good discussion, at least in terms of overturning Hannity's usual RNC-approved talking points which are usually allowed to go unchallenged. Moore is no pushover and, just based on the facts, he wins this bout hands down:



Speaking of puncturing Republican talking points, Crooks and Liars highlighted some great reporting by Shep Smith, the only journalist at Fox News with any integrity (or, to be honest, the only journalist at Fox News). Interviewing Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barasso, who tries to jam every overused Republican talking point on health care into his allotted time in a flurry of self-contradictory nonsense, Smith comes out strong for the public option, correctly pointing out that if Barasso and conservative senators are so concerned about rising health care costs, why do they refuse to support the only solution that will actually lower costs - a public option to compete with private health insurers?

The unspoken answer, which Smith explictly points to, is that they are paid off by the insurance companies and Big Pharma. Barasso is slippery and evades the subtle accusations with as much canned blather as he can, but Smith's inquisitive questions - as opposed to the right-wing propaganda we generally expect from Fox - makes me wonder how much longer Roger Ailes will keep him there. On the other hand, Smith is pretty much the only real asset Fox News has to back up its laughably false slogan, "fair and balanced". I assume that's why they keep him covering more apolitical news events.

Cognitive Dissonance

Whaddya know...Our Glorious Leader does a damn good Beatles cover. Musical talents aside, does anyone else find it a little odd to see Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a reactionary opponent of cannabis decriminalization, sing about getting high with a little help from his friends?

A Tale of Two Movies

This weekend saw me shell out $20 at the downtown movie theatre to see two films, only one of which I would have had any interest in seeing on my own, but which itself was not necessarily the kind of flick you need to see on the big screen. In the interests of full disclosure, I present to you my take on two very different new releases:

Love Happens
More like "Shit Happens." I saw this movie as a selfless act of chivalry on a double-date, and was one of approximately five males in the whole theatre. Expecting a typically bland romantic comedy, what I actually got was a depressing romantic drama that, despite the best efforts of leads Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, failed to save itself from a cliché-ridden script.

Eckhart plays self-help guru Burke Ryan, who has attracted millions of converts with his book A-Okay!, written in the wake of his wife's death. It turns out, however, that Burke has not been entirely honest with either his readers or himself, and has yet to properly deal with the circumstances surrounding his wife's demise. Ultimately, Aniston's character Eloise is secondary to the plot, which was fine by me, since she seemed to again be playing an unlucky-in-love single woman whose philandering ex-boyfriend will no doubt remind many viewers of Aniston's neverending tabloid adventures. Eckhart gives a strong performance as Burke, and special praise is due to John Carroll Lynch as Walter, a man palpably griefstruck over his son's death, whom Burke attempts to help.

Ultimately, however, the film is just too bland and too reliant on ancient genre conventions (such as Burke and Eloise meeting when they accidentally bump into each other - GROAN), making it easy to dismiss this as a strictly-for-chicks weepie. Nevertheless, I must add one more complaint - the film's crass commercialism and way-too-obvious product placement. Aside from Burke's iPod and a major on-screen role for Qwest, Walter's grand, character-defining moment of redemption occurs when he goes shopping at a Home Depot. Yes, the filmmakers seem to say, happiness is only a $3000 shopping spree away, complete with loving shots of a hammer and a DeWaal power drill. Pass.

Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day
I'm actually somewhat late to the Trailer Park Boys phenomenon. Although my friends have loved it for years, it took me a long time to embrace the show, even after seeing Randy and Mr. Lahey live at the Alehouse (a show consisting entirely of them getting wasted onstage). It was only in the past few months that I finally "got" the show, growing to love its unique characters and off-the-wall sensibilities. Having devoured as many episodes as possible and seen part of the first movie, I approached the debut of this second and, it appears, final Trailer Park Boys epic as a must-see event. That said, it took me about a week after release to actually get my ass into a movie theatre.

So was it worth the $10? Well, it's like this: if you like the Trailer Park Boys already, you'll certainly get your money's worth. It's essentially an extended episode of the TV show, and I wouldn't expect anything less in this venture. Suffice it to say, our favourite characters are all there, and they develop in interesting new directions. Jim Lahey may be my favourite, and I've never seen him as drunk and messed-up as he is in this film, shortly after going back on the liquor and hitting rock bottom. We see Bubbles get lucky in love with a girl who works at the animal shelter, J-Roc and Tyrone facing creative disagreements (I enjoyed the title of J-Roc's hit single, "Can't Not Be Feelin' Dis"), Randy getting a tough new haircut, Julian attempting to start a legitimate business, and an explosive climax featuring the most piss-drenched car chase I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

BONUS - Clerks II
Saw a version of this on the internet as a post-screening antidote to Love Happens, and all I can say is, Kevin Smith is the MAN. After seeing this and the classic Mallrats, I definitely need to delve back into his ouevre. While I'm sure the original Clerks is far superior, the pop-cultural references alone make its sequel a worthy way to spend a couple hours. And I'm glad they acknowledged the fact that Dante, while a great character, is probably way too schlubby to have two hot chicks fighting over him in each movie.

Mao's China Turns 60

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China from atop Tiananmen. Sixty years later, the Chinese Communist Party retains its iron grip over a country that has changed immensely since its birth following a protracted civil war, brutal Japanese occupation during World War II and more than a century of humiliation at the hands of colonial foreign powers. Today, on the PRC's 60th anniversary, it's worth taking stock of the country's accomplishments since that fateful day.

Few leaders in world history have proved as controversial as Chairman Mao. Although he remains officially venerated by the Communist Party of China, Mao's grotesque failings as a statesman have been evident ever since his hugely ambitious yet tragically misguided Great Leap Forward. In an attempt to instantly propel a poor, largely rural nation to great power status through large-scale collectivization of agriculture and forced industrialization, Mao took all the worst aspects of the Soviet experiment under Stalin and brutally enforced those radical policies on the Chinese people. Collectivization in the Soviet Union caused widespread famine in rural areas, especially the Ukraine, but what historians of the Soviet period referred to as the "man-made disaster" wrought even greater havoc in China, where it has been estimated up to 30 million people died in the worst famine in recorded history.

The Great Leap was constantly marked by boneheaded administrative delusions, such as Mao's desire to overtake the United States in steel production within ten years. To that end, he forced at least 90 million people to build backyard furnances in which all available metals - dining utensils, doorknobs, whatever was at hand - were melted down to create "steel", in reality useless slag that would later cause the collapse of bridges and other large-scale construction projects. Reality was never an impediment to Mao, and he was notoriously dismissive of human life. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography Mao: The Unknown Story, banned in China because of its unabashedly negative view of the communist leader, is rife with examples of Mao's callousness. Upon being informed that one county was doling out food to people too ill to work, he responded: "This won't do. Give them this amount and they don't work. Best halve the basic ration, so if they're hungry they have to try harder." He freely allowed that "half of China may well have to die" in order to fulfill his policies.

When the failures of the Great Leap Forward could no longer be hidden, Mao was largely thrust aside by the party apparatus, who aimed to reduce his influence and transform him into little more than a figurehead. That proved a disastrous decision as Mao used his burgeoning personality cult to destroy political enemies and bring chaos to China in the Cultural Revolution. Employing legions of teenage followers as his weapon, Mao turned the Red Guards on any and all manifestations of authority other than himself. The result was a virtual lost decade for China, as students killed their teachers, children turned in their parents, schools and hospitals shut down operations, and cultural life atrophied into banal revolutionary propaganda under the influence of "Madame Mao", Jiang Qing. The wave of violence intensified as Red Guard factions turned on each other, and it was only with Mao's death that the Cultural Revolution could be said to have truly ended.

Since then, the free-market reforms of Deng Xiaoping have turned the economy of China around through an embrace of once-taboo capitalist policies. Despite the fact that the country is suffering from an array of problems associated with capitalism - rising inequality between rich and poor, rampant corruption, ethnic uprisings, and severe pollution - the engine of Chinese economic growth has never been more powerful. China's rise, especially in the period following Deng's reforms, provides one of the more challenging refutations to conventional Marxist dogma. Under Mao's extreme version of communism, millions died and the country almost tore itself apart (a serious charge given Mao's reputation for uniting China after its disarray under various warlords and the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek). It was only following Mao's death that a generation of more pragmatic leaders forged a new path in which, to paraphrase Van Jones, they could substitute the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.

Ultimately, what can we say about the China of today? The country is far more prosperous and stable than it has ever been, and yet the Communist Party is well-aware that its claim to power rests on its ability to deliver economically for its people. Unlike in the USSR, the Chinese communists were unable to disassociate themselves from a mass-murdering despot in the same way that Kruschchev embarked on his campaign of de-Stalinization. The Soviet leadership could portray Stalin's rule as a perversion of the communist ideal by pointing to his predecessor Lenin, who they claimed represented "true" communism. The Chinese leadership did not have this same luxury. The party had gained power through Mao and was indelibly associated with his name. To renounce Mao would be to dismiss the party's entire claim to legitimacy, and so they settled on a compromise policy in which Mao remains officially revered, though his flaws are acknowledged. In an approach characteristic of the post-Deng leadership, it is a highly...pragmatic decision.

We should not forget that there was much that was admirable about Mao's achievements. Aside from uniting a broken country and restoring its sense of national pride (a feat at odds with notions of proletarian internationalism), he also raised the overall standard of living - promoting universal education, increasing life expectancy by decades, serving as an outspoken opponent of Western imperialism on behalf of developing nations, and, it should not be forgotten, breaking down barriers to women in society and overturning repugnant, misogynist cultural traditions such as foot-binding. Mao famously said, "Women hold up half the sky," and Chinese women can surely count themselves as far more liberated since the foundation of the People's Republic.

But like so much of Mao's life, his views on women were fraught with contradictions. As documented in Jung Chang's biography, he treated his wives horribly and in old age had many dalliances with younger women. It's a microcosm of the larger contradictions of Mao and the People's Republic of China, a booming capitalist country administered by an entrenched communist party, founded by a prophet of equality whose ruthless desire for absolute power drove his country into totalitarian misery, horrific famine, cultural indoctrination and virtual slavery. Figures like Mao remain the most difficult obstacle to promoting socialism in capitalist countries where that ideology is viewed as synonymous with Maoism and Stalinism. Only when we reclaim socialism through a grassroots-organized, decentralized movement, dominated by workers and regular people, can we have a valid response to critics who raise fears of despotic, centralized, old-school "communist" tyranny like Mao's.