From the Bookshelf: High Weirdness by Mail
A little while ago, I bought an official collection of PDF-formatted issues of twenty-nine years of the "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine. (This inclination, perhaps towards "counter-counterarguments" in general, seems to come from when I was a kid and my grandmother kept getting me books about "the unexplained"; instead of being intrigued by intimations of "things I wasn't mean to know," though, I was just terrified by the pictures.) Working my way through them, I happened to notice an approving book review in an issue from 1989 of a book called "High Weirdness by Mail" by the Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the SubGenius, which offered mailing addresses and capsule descriptions of "strange organizations." Among promises of "Weird Science," "UFO Contactees," "Jesus Contactees," and "New Age Saps," the review also mentioned the book covering "creativity outside the mainstream" and tossed "Japanese animation" right in the middle of that subsection. I admit that caught my attention. Wondering if used copies of the book could be bought online, I started looking into it, and noticed another brief review mention the book covered the perhaps unfortunately named author of a conspiracy I'd written a MSTing of. That added fillip was enough to make me place an order.
As I read through the book, though, I did begin to wonder if the descriptions added up to "you might be foolish to believe this, but you'd be even more foolish to believe what the mainstream tells you." All-encompassing cynicism and suspicion might be comforting in its own dark way, but I'm inclined to wonder if it also just might amount to an abdication from doing anything, surrendering to the people who do react to gut-level appeals and back things you disapprove of. Or, perhaps, someone might come out of the book believing some of what's in it: right at the end, there's an extended excerpt from one particular source to write away to, which begins with a forceful argument to "mistrust authority," one that left me worrying it was one of those arguments resisted because believing it would be too troubling even as it got to the point of saying technological utopia would be within grasp save for the malice of our controllers. By the time the excerpt pushed on to "underground nuclear testing can be timed to create earthquakes," though, I was starting to think it might need some sober second thought, and mused a bit on how conspiracy theories get to be unfalsifiable with evidence against them always dismissed as "the next layer of misinformation" after the usual "evidence of fakery" pointed out using simplistic common sense.
Anyway, the book's section on "Comics," right among the assorted arty and gross-out entries, included an entry for "The Dark Knight Returns"; that caught my attention if only by the juxtaposition of a work that now seems well accepted. One entry in "Great Badfilm and Sleaze" did have an address to write away to get information on Japanese animation, calling it "a formidable new genre of psychedelia that American cult audiences have only begun to bootleg!" It did, though, toss off a disparaging reference to Robotech only to hold up Lensman (a very loose adaptation of the E.E. "Doc" Smith original, or so I've heard) and "Warriors of the Wind" (the infamous cut-down dub of Nausicaa), both perhaps falling in their own ways into the "so bad it's good" category." This disparagement might not have to do with the usual objection today, given a second entry in "Great Catalogs" disparaged "Macross (Robotech)" only to then enthuse about Buckaroo Banzai, which I'm wondering just a little if it might be called "the 'Firefly' of the 1980s." In any case, I did muse on the conspiracies packed into Robotech and Macross (proof of alien life appears to be officially acknowledged in the series, but as soon as more of it starts shooting a cover story is thrown together), but wound up thinking Macross would be sincere enough in its own way to perhaps not meet with the Reverend Stang's approval.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/191039.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
As I read through the book, though, I did begin to wonder if the descriptions added up to "you might be foolish to believe this, but you'd be even more foolish to believe what the mainstream tells you." All-encompassing cynicism and suspicion might be comforting in its own dark way, but I'm inclined to wonder if it also just might amount to an abdication from doing anything, surrendering to the people who do react to gut-level appeals and back things you disapprove of. Or, perhaps, someone might come out of the book believing some of what's in it: right at the end, there's an extended excerpt from one particular source to write away to, which begins with a forceful argument to "mistrust authority," one that left me worrying it was one of those arguments resisted because believing it would be too troubling even as it got to the point of saying technological utopia would be within grasp save for the malice of our controllers. By the time the excerpt pushed on to "underground nuclear testing can be timed to create earthquakes," though, I was starting to think it might need some sober second thought, and mused a bit on how conspiracy theories get to be unfalsifiable with evidence against them always dismissed as "the next layer of misinformation" after the usual "evidence of fakery" pointed out using simplistic common sense.
Anyway, the book's section on "Comics," right among the assorted arty and gross-out entries, included an entry for "The Dark Knight Returns"; that caught my attention if only by the juxtaposition of a work that now seems well accepted. One entry in "Great Badfilm and Sleaze" did have an address to write away to get information on Japanese animation, calling it "a formidable new genre of psychedelia that American cult audiences have only begun to bootleg!" It did, though, toss off a disparaging reference to Robotech only to hold up Lensman (a very loose adaptation of the E.E. "Doc" Smith original, or so I've heard) and "Warriors of the Wind" (the infamous cut-down dub of Nausicaa), both perhaps falling in their own ways into the "so bad it's good" category." This disparagement might not have to do with the usual objection today, given a second entry in "Great Catalogs" disparaged "Macross (Robotech)" only to then enthuse about Buckaroo Banzai, which I'm wondering just a little if it might be called "the 'Firefly' of the 1980s." In any case, I did muse on the conspiracies packed into Robotech and Macross (proof of alien life appears to be officially acknowledged in the series, but as soon as more of it starts shooting a cover story is thrown together), but wound up thinking Macross would be sincere enough in its own way to perhaps not meet with the Reverend Stang's approval.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/191039.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.