The French-Indian War: A Historic Review

Running Time: 1756 to 1763

Setting: North America; or, most of the world. The French-Indian War is a name that really only exists in the United States (as a reference to the two peoples facing British colonists). Everywhere else, the “war” was actually just a part of the much larger Seven Years War—a mess that touched and torched parts of Europe, Africa, India, Canada, South America, Pacific islands and other lands over a period a bit longer than seven years. It’s like calling World War II the “War of North Africa.” But if a naming error is the worst part of this war, that’s pretty good.

It’s not.

Concept (for the French): The British moved into the Ohio Valley and have simultaneously hindered our trade with the Natives and turned several tribes against us. And then some British Major and an Indian chief tomahawk-ed French soldiers.

Concept (for the Americans): The French are building forts in the Ohio Valley and have simultaneously hindered our trade with the Natives and turned several tribes against us.

Concept (For the British): The French attacked Fort Necessity and we don’t play games.

Before the War: At every stage from the 16th century to the Declaration of Independence, it's important to note that nobody saw themselves as “Americans.” The British and French colonists were still very much British and French. But as far as origins go, this war is something pretty crazy. For years the French and British traders and small military units got into squabbles but then in May of 1754, Major George Washington (yes, that one) teamed up with Indian Chief Tanaghrisson to surprise attack a French scouting party. During the battle, Tanaghrisson split open the head of French Commander Joseph Jumonville. Tanaghrisson, to his end, claimed the French had previously ate his father—which, even if not true, is quite traumatizing.

Plot: In retaliation, the French attacked Fort Necessity and on July 4th, George Washington surrendered. The message of surrender was written in French and included the point that George Washington’s party had assassinated Old Joe Jumonville. Washington was told that a failure to surrender would result in mass scalping. Washington was 21 years old. And he couldn’t read French. The accepted surrender terms basically made Washington a loser and a war criminal—humiliating and enraging the British. The British sent a larger garrison of troops and attacked the nearby French fort and both countries formally declared war. Here, things can get long-winded, but eventually the British and French signed bi-lingual treaties.

After the War: The British, despite winning the war, were plunged into debt and felt the colonies, for gaining peace, land and prosperity ought to pay for some of the costs. This outraged the richest colonists and smugglers who went about stirring up images of British greed and religious fear mongering. Boom. American Revolution. The French, though, are not a side to be envied as their war debt crippled their country while their top leaders (Louis XV and others) claimed that they had essentially won the war by giving away Canada. Then the French went around saying they never really wanted Canada in the first place.

Contemporary Controversy: To this day, the countries involved don’t agree on the intentions of the French scouting party that Washington and Co. took out. Was the party looking to negotiate a territorial peace, as the French argue? Or were they spying on the newly constructed Fort Necessity? Perhaps the party was just acting like a bunch of jerks and scaring away the game in the area.

Film Adaptation: Obviously, Michael Mann’s film, “Last of the Mohicans” is set during the war and commendable for its prop/costume authenticity. The same cannot be said for Mann’s, 2006 film, “Miami Vice”--wherein characters drove cars and used technology that wasn’t actually around in the 1980s. In terms of cultural resonance, I think Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” would be a good comparison to The Seven Year’s War: it's big, slow and contains names and scenes people are familiar with, though usually not in full context because it is overshadowed by later works/wars.

Foreshadowing: The French-Indian War was one of the first examples of two global powers fighting and basically set the foundation for how world wars could be, and would be, fought. This war was a local issue that got ballooned into a world crisis. The Europeans' inability to distinguish separate, and often conflicting, Indian nations was a constant source of head aches/scalpings and led to the Pontiac Rebellion. Inspired by the senseless difficulty some 150 years later, General Motors honored the brutal conflict with their, now defunct, performance car division.

Glory Level: It started everything we know about America. This did more than any jerk’s self-Xeroxed pamphlet. Unfortunately, few iconic images or stories came from the war, largely because all sides felt disheartened, rather than invigorated, at the end.

Influence Level: Basically, kids, don’t be like George Washington: pay attention in school and learn a foreign language. It might stop a war.

"Put your hands down! You haven't had a correct answer all day!"

Chances of a Sequel: What would a sequel even be? Neo flying around like a techno-Superman? You know what would have been really great? If “The Matrix” sequels would have been one prequel (as teased in “The Second Renaissance”) and one sequel. That way, the trilogy has a beginning, middle and ending in a unique way, it would have allowed technology to advance for the third movie and the second one wouldn’t have to be a cliffhanger.

I’m just saying.

History of the Dollar: Grave Robbers and Lincoln

A normal person stops having adventures when they die. And as if his entire life wasn’t evidence enough that he wasn’t “a normal person,” President Abraham Lincoln’s complete biography can’t end until 1901, 36 years after he was assassinated. Witness the absurd connection between money counterfeiters, grave robbers, moles, the other moles and the bizarre epilogue to America’s 16th President.

The first half of the 19th century is generally referred to as the Antebellum (Latin: “before” “war”) but the U.S. Treasury was in the midst of its own controversies. Simply, the banks were eventually united under an independent bank system but each bank, or system of banks, was responsible for printing its own money—money just being an arbitrary marker of gold, and gold being the one metal on Earth that people use for fuel, crafts and food. So there was no standard bills with Washington’s face and the like. Which actually makes sense because if they had Lincoln or Grant on the $5 and $50 bills, respectively, why would any opposing candidate bother running against those men?

So there were thousands of banks and thousands of different forms of currency which was all very confusing for people. Was the money from the Wells Fargo banks still good? If my bank goes under, does that mean my money is gone forever? Is the Fakey Bank a real bank? Money counterfeiting was as easy as writing a number on a piece of paper and the whole economy struggled and in fact underwent numerous “crises.” Counterfeiting aside, the legal tender from hundreds of banks was impossible to keep track of for anyone who ever traveled outside of their hometown, for instance, in the case of war.

Cue the Civil War. For or from slavery, those soldiers may have been fighting for freedom but they weren’t fighting for free. And munitions manufacturers don’t exactly hand out guns and ammo on the street corner (though the NRA might have people believe that’d make the country safer). Lincoln brings all the states under one currency and creates the U.S. Secret Service—in the few days between war’s end and his own assassination.

After the death of Lincoln, the U.S. Secret Service immediately got to work tracking and arresting money counterfeiters. One of the counterfeiters caught was Benjamin Boyd and in 1875, he was sentenced to ten years. Months later, in an Illinois bar, two of Boyd’s friends and cohorts lamented that they didn’t have the knowledge to properly counterfeit money like Boyd. These two men were Terrence Mullen and John Hughes—not to be confused with the other criminal credited with shaping your childhood. Mullen and Hughes remembered the spectacle eleven years earlier when Lincoln’s body was transported from D.C. to Illinois, with stops in 12 cities for opening viewing by the public, totaling more than 5 million people. Even when Lincoln’s body was back in Illinois, debates raged over who had the right to bury Lincoln anywhere.

It seemed as if Lincoln had been thrown into the highest levels of American mythology and his body alone had substantial value. Which was a ridiculously rare notion at the time, not that a body had value—but that one body was more valuable than any other body. And really, bodies did have some value, specifically to the emerging anatomical sciences. Unionization of the medical practice—that is, people had to be certified before performing surgery (ridiculous!)—had sparked the need for medical schools and, by extension, cadavers. For this reason, grave robbing was a crime as enforced as modern day pot possession (for Senators’ children, that is.) Medical schools and practitioners needed bodies but rarely had the money to buy them from families—which actually made grave robbing a viable, albeit illegal, enterprise that can "pick you up."

Also, has there been a Star Trek movie with zombies yet?

Again in a public bar, the would-be corpse thieves decided they could break into Lincoln’s unguarded tomb, steal his body and hold it for ransom. Their foremost demand would be an immediate release of their friend Boyd and pardon for all previous illegal acts for all three of them so they could continue about their counterfeiting schemes. Then Mullen and Hughes decided Lincoln’s body might be worth even more than that, so they planned to also demand $200,000—because, really, $250,000 would have just been ridiculous. Aside from figuring out how to spend the money, the pair’s next self-admitted problem was that they didn’t know HOW to steal a body. Did they need shovels? Horses? It’s all very confusing.

Never did it occur to them that the U.S. Secret Service (again, part of the Treasury Department) had pinned them as Boyd’s accomplices and was watching them this entire time. In fact, one of the undercover agents (Lewis G. Swegles) was actually drinking in the bar when Mullen and Hughes discovered neither of them knew how to steal a body. With more balls than a bowling alley, Swegles picked up his beer from the bar and approached the men, saying that he had overheard them talking about stealing President Lincoln’s body. As it turns out, said Swegles, I am a grave robber and would be delighted to help you guys out. What are the chances, laughed Hughes. What are the chances of that.

The men agreed to commit that body-lifting on November 7th, 1876—because that was the night of the presidential election and thus the cemetery would be unusually empty…or something like that. (This really isn’t a true story about logic.) To make their grave robbery even easier, Swegles (undercover agent) suggested the group also employ his “friend,” a fellow “grave robber.” At this point, Swegles had might as well have introduced the other undercover agent as “Uncle Sam” or “Fakey McFakerson.”

So on Election Night, the four grave robbers (two of them undercover agents) went to the cemetery, sawed the lock off Lincoln’s tomb, walked into the tomb, pushed the lid off Lincoln’s sarcophagus and attempted to lift the wooden coffin out. But the four of them could not lift it. Swegles said he’d go get the horses to help (what?) and ran outside. Breaking his word to the money counterfeiters, Swegles tried to find the USSS, detectives and city police that had surrounded the cemetery and tell them to arrest the criminal duo. Unfortunately, in the dead of the night, some cop saw Swegles running around in the cemetery and screamed out, “They’re running away!”

Shots were immediately fired and chaos ensued. Cops and officials from across the cemetery started shooting at each other and the actual criminals just ran away, baffled as to where it all went wrong.

A few days later, Mullen and Hughes were spotted in Chicago and arrested. Robert Lincoln, son of Abe, hired the best lawyers he could to make sure Mullen and Hughes would be locked away so long that they’d miss the first three Kansas Chief Superbowl victories. Unfortunately, the law was barely on Robert’s side as the maximum prison sentence for grave robbing in Illinois was one year. The duo got the maximum sentence but you can bet the President’s decomposing ass that the law was changed a week later.

As for Lincoln, his body was moved around a couple of times while a more secure resting place was constructed and completed in 1901, 36 years after his death. The place was sealed with cement, steal bars, locks and cement, again, to keep anybody from getting in. Or out.

And just to make sure that the oldest heist trick in the book--the old, “dumb criminals” act, coupled with a “switch-a-roo”--hadn’t been pulled on them, the men who moved Lincoln for the last time actually opened up the coffin. And saw the least likely thing any idiot would expect:

Lincoln’s corpse.

How ironic...

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: That Film is Bananas

What a stupid title. Why be in-line with other stupid 1970s sci-fi titles such as "Beneath the... Conquest of... Escape from the Planet of the Apes?" Better titles would have included "Rise of Ape Planet" and "Those Wacky Monkeys." My love for the original is self-documented, so that might be a consideration to bare while reading this review. Then again, few people would challenge my displeasure with the Tim Burton remake in 2001; so maybe I'm in the best position to say the latest re-imagining of the franchise is bland, annoying and yet viscerally rewarding.

I mean we are talking about almost two movies in one--and a rather brisk one at that.

Over the course of the first fifty minutes, James Franco wins over the audience's confidence that he will remember all of his lines...and little else. His science-ish lines range between mumbo and jumbo and are eventually replaced with meandering moral superiority. He steals experimental medicine, steals a missing monkey (that nobody ever asks him about), conducts his own tests (unaware that experiments are only experiments in a controlled environment) and injects his own father with the experimental medicine over eight years, with no real chrono-logic. I guess he's the villain.

Our secondary, in every way, villain is Steven Jacobs, a suit on the Big Pharmaceutical payroll. Literally every line is a variation of "I like money" and delivered with such mustache-twirling gusto that'd one would believe privatized medical research need never bother with moral justifications. There is no insight or twist on reality but rather a complete disregard; an effort to flatten reality so that the audience can be drugged and assured Hollywood is on the side of the little guys and not billion dollar corporations. While the original film discussed nuclear holocaust through the lens of individual misanthropy, this film discusses "science" through the lens of gibberish cruelty.

Other villains include the maniacal Dodge Landon--the name a double reference to the original film--and incomprehensibly pointless Caroline Aranha. Caroline is played by Freida Pinto, notable for her (realistic?) depiction of a virgin, teenage prostitute from Mumbai in "Slumdog Millionaire." That so much detail was given in the performance of the apes, it appalls one to consider how many creative minds labored over the writing, direction and acting of any of the truly inhuman characters.

Here's as good as any point to mention the nods to the first film are numerous and inconsistently enjoyable.

"So are we going to take over this planet or what?"

Then...something curious happens in the movie. Something risky, in how it assuredly divided the audience. A commentary on the original film. Strange, yet intriguing. Audacious, in the best way.

Do you care about spoilers?

I mean really.

Like, as in, plot twist of the year.

This review is over for some people.

I personally don't care about spoilers because I'll watch a good movie twice.

But I'm not like some people.

Those “some people” who listen to songs to get to the end.

I want to have a necessary discussion.

Okay?

Okay.

Caesar drops the n-word.

And by n-word, I obviously mean "no." At this point, the film comes to a screeching halt and realizes that Caesar, and not James Franco, is the hero of the story. I can't think of another (non-Korean) film that flips identity so quickly—much less for so much improvement. Caesar has the audience's attention, admiration and sympathy. And by speaking, Caesar stops playing the part of a cute pet and instead becomes a flesh and bone computer image. Animals communicating with humans (via sign language, toys or staring) is a parlor trick to get more treats, we tell ourselves. Speaking, using language, is the final frontier in achieving humanity.

When people on the news are protesting down some street in Iraq, it is too easy to block out their outrage. They may be passionate and have some technology like us, but their signs, chants, and websites are all gibberish. "We are real," say the xenophobes, "they are The Other." Increased communication decreases violence because it humanizes the respective parties. Caesar, the ape, is not a stand-in for any particular minority, but rather a representation of any outsider. And that is a planet-size concept.

When Caesar becomes a real character, so do the other apes--even if they somewhat embody war movie cliche characters (the brainy sidekick, the muscle bodyguard and the crazy former-competitor). This development increases the emotion just in time to create thrilling and inspired action sequences.

I once heard the advice, "Wow the audience at the end and you'll have a good movie."

I never realized how far a film could be in the hole and have that still be true.

Also, here's another spoiler.

Ready?

The planet was Earth all along.

"Pulgasari": True Escapism (part 3)

Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee. Paid prisoners of Kim Jong-il for four years after four previous years of starved imprisonment after separate, violent kidnappings. No communication with the outside world. No freedom to travel or do anything not directly related to staying alive and making movies for the benefit of the North Korean military-state. Over the eight years, the couple was given millions of dollars and attempted suicides.

In 1986, after the “success” of “Pulgasari,” Shin suggested that the next film be a retelling of Ghengis Khan’s life. Kim jumped at the idea and agreed that this would be North Korea’s breakout film. Shin and Choi were sent to Vienna, Austria to meet with a European distributor, under the “protection” of North Korean armed guards, of course. Before meeting with the distributor (who only may have ever existed), Shin and Choi got lunch with an old friend, a Japanese film critic who had heard of “Pulgasari” and, more importantly, his friends’ shoot-on-sight tail. This Japanese man has since been referred to as “K” in official government correspondences, foreshadowing some serious shit went down.

Pictured above: (another?) government official referred to as "K"; not Japanese.

And went down it did. During their lunch, “K” sneaked the couple out of the restaurant and the three of them got into a taxi—it’s unknown if this was a taxi-driver’s dream-come-true or if “K” just went ahead and hot-wired the ride. We’ll go with “hot-wiring” because the three of them raced through the streets of Vienna, that were inches wider than the car, with the North Koreans chasing in pursuit. Considering “K” was a film critic and the other two were a married couple, the equivalent scene in “The Bourne Identity” is actually a water-down version of this real life chase scene.

Eventually, “K” Tokyo-Drifted his way to within a foot of the U.S. embassy and everybody got out and pled for asylum, having it granted at least quick enough. It can also be assumed the North Koreans growled from across the streets with the driver slamming his hands on the steering wheel of the taxicab they ACTUALLY STOLE. Or perhaps the North Koreans simply crashed their cab in the most cinematic way possible at some point towards the end of the race. Also, do you think there were any Austrian police cars involved? Because I think so.

For reasons defying logical explanation, Shin and Choi were not immediately embraced by their home country of South Korea and instead stayed in America for some time. The South Korean government was skeptical why it had taken the couple eight years to escape and why they had accepted payment for making movies in North Korea. Furthermore, they would not allow Shin to show the movies he had made (and smuggled with him through Vienna?), because they MIGHT display the cinematic prowess of North Korea.

America, to our own end, has spent decades deciphering and hypothesizing the thought process, mental capacity and overall sanity of Kim Jong-il. In most regards, it seems this man was, and is, a paradox of power. More so than in any other recent example, Kim was dependent on his prisoners. He was so adamant that North Korea’s failing was in logistics, not message, that he was willing to sacrifice (or at least risk) the purity of his message. Notably, he did not kidnap European, American or even Japanese filmmakers, but rather South Koreans; indicating that perhaps Kim sees Koreans as one people and that the South Koreans are not so much “enemies of the state” as they are innocent Koreans who have been led astray by capitalism and/or democracy.

At no point is Kim’s insanity predictable, though, as in response to the escape of Shin and Choi, North Korea claimed the couple were con artists who embezzled $2.3 million out of the government. And, afraid that the story had a few holes in it, North Korea issued another statement claiming that the couple voluntarily worked for Kim but were kidnapped by Americans while in Vienna.

Continuity the baffling international relations, when the Japanese film-going audience heard about “Pulgasari,” they begged Kim Jong-il to release the film beyond his borders. Despite his archival-knowledge, Kim had not heard of “camp” films (Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the like) and eventually gave in to international cinema pressure in the late nineties. The film was received on par with a plague of locusts in some circles and snickering riots in other circles. Had the monster movie, released in 1998, been received any worse, it would have starred Matthew Broderick. (Boom!) Kim then, essentially, screamed that only people who liked the movie are invited to his birthday party. Jeez, the guy handled criticism worse than Kevin Smith. (Boom! Two in a row!)

To this day, North Korea’s film industry still pumps out about 60 films a year but it is very unclear what the movies are about, who is making them and what they are like—as Western culture is still non-existent outside of Kim’s palaces. Kim, to his credit, now says cartoons are his favorite movies.

So, uh, word of advice to my animation friends: don’t pursue job offers that take you to Hong Kong.

"Pulgasari": True Escapism (part 2)

Try to imagine all this. Your film studio was ruined. Your actress-wife divorced you. You both got separately kidnapped and then placed in North Korean prison for nearly five years. Then you receive a completely out-of-the-blue invitation to eat dinner with the future ruler of North Korea. He promises you a sizable financial offer to go back to making movies—or face execution. And then the man, who reportedly believes he can change the weather with his mind, asks that you remarry your ex-wife. That is where we last left off.

While at the dinner table for two hours, Kim Jong-il explained his cinema dilemma to his South Korean prisoners/guests Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok. North Korean filmmakers were limited in education and inspiration because many of the global filmmaking industries (U.S., England, France, Japan, etc.) were enemies of the state. Kim himself knew of North Korea’s shortcomings because he owned, in 1983, 15,000 films—in reel form, stored in a three-floor archive. Kim’s discussion with himself, witnessed by Shin and Choi, took a nosedive into a diatribe and has since played a major role in American-Korean relations.

How? Choi smuggled a tape-recorder into the meeting. The 45-minutes captured provide an unparalleled window of frankness into the unusually candid thoughts of the dictator. The tape has since been circulated among international intelligence agencies not solely possessed as the Dr. Claw to Fidel Castro’s Inspector Gadget (“I’ll get you next time!”). Indeed, that tape is really what spurred the image of Kim Jong-il that Westerners have come to see/parody, topping out in the 2004 film “Team America: World Police”—a film Kim, in all real likelihood, saw and owns.

So Shin and Choi got to making movies again, with mid-level budgets, no expectations and a staggering amount of creative freedom. It almost sounds like a good couple of years, and even was during the smallest moments. Shin held periodic story conferences with his sole producer, and world leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Nah, just kidding. It was Kim Jong-il. Shin and Kim found some cultural overlap and appreciation for historical dramas. Shin worked behind the camera and Choi worked in front—at one point creating the first on-screen kiss in North Korean cinema. With no less than a literal arsenal to his head, Shin’s first 6 films pleased Kim.

Despite the ultimate creative freedom and spouse-reunion afforded to Shin and Choi, they frequently discussed escaping, though perhaps none as urgently as on their trip through Berlin. Shin and Choi, like always, were ushered to the designated destinations by an entourage of armed guards. At one, point they were within a block of the U.S. embassy and Choi tried to make a run for it. Shin tackled her right there, saying that he would not allow the two of them to try an escape unless they were 100% certain to get away with it. 99% certainty wasn’t good enough for Shin, who had not only spent over four years in prison for his last escape attempt but also already underwent the pain of losing Choi once before.

Back in North Korea, during one of the film shoots, Shin realized it’d be kind of cool to blow up a real train in a movie and tentatively asked one of his assistants to pass along the requests to his unstable, military-minded, film producer. Within days, Shin got the go-ahead. The go-ahead to blow up a North Korean train. For a film nobody would see outside of North Korea. As Shin and Choi were far from content in their employed imprisonment, it’s possible that Shin was just having a little bit of fun with Kim—asking to destroy North Korean military property under the guise of filmmaking. Best. Sabotage. Ever.

Inspired by this (minor) act of destruction against the regime, in 1985 Shin took up Kim’s suggestion to do a Godzilla-esque monster story, called “Pulgasari.” This gets a little confusing (oh, NOW you tell me), but this idea of a monster growing large and desecrating an Asian population was something of a story-telling staple over there. In fact, there was a Godzilla-esque monster movie called “Bulgasari” released in 1962. And even now “Pulgasari” (1985) is frequently (yet incorrectly) referenced as “Bulgasari”—again, despite any production relation to the real “Bulgasari” (1962).

As a film, “Pulgasari” just may well be the Fran Tarkenton of insane Korean films. 1970s gibberish, occasionally separated by screams of extras—mostly farmer-clothed North Korean soldiers. While “Godzilla” may be bold and stirring with its sardonic parody of U.S. nuclear power flattening, then eventually saving the Japanese population, the symbolism of “Pulgasari” is so formless yet heavy-handed that you’d swear that Kim Jong-il threw mud at the camera lens and Shin just kept it there out of spite. Pulgasari is a monster born of rice balls and blood who eats metal to grow big and protect the poor peasants of Korea. Seeking justice, or perhaps just food, Pulgasari launches a series of arguably coherent attacks on the military-industry centers of society, only to grow larger. With the former (capitalist?) regime in ruins, Pulgasari turns on the peasants and just all around acts like every step he takes crushing the villagers stubs his toe.

"I am not a Pokemon! And I am freaking out!"

Had Shin, South Korea’s own Orson Welles, gone insane? Only as insane as the smartest fox, apparently. Because Kim Jong-il absolutely LOVED “Pulgasari.” After seeing the film, Kim threw the entire film studio a feast, likely totaling some 60% of the nation’s daily food supply. Kim praised “Pulgarasi” as the best film ever made, which is ridiculous because it was not named “The Lion King,” nor starred Robert Duvall.

The next movie, Shin promised Kim, was going to be something special. And Kim agreed. It was time the world saw the brilliance of North (but actually South) Korean cinema. But for such global reach, they’d need to team up with an international film distributor and so, for the second time in their eight years as royal artists/prisoners, Shin and Choi got to go to Europe.

Taking a cue from the movies, the South Korean couple would save their best scenes for the end.

To be continued…

"Pulgasari": True Escapism

I have a confession. South Korean films baffle me. They are not entirely bad by any means, but rather just confusing—mostly because of their seeming disregard for genre. “Host,” for example, is a light-hearted, dysfunctional family story until a giant Godzilla-type monster starts terrorizing the city. And from monster genre, it turns into this police-state allegory, then character-drama with a family being torn apart (emotionally, then physically). Then it’s a comedy again. Anyways, the most baffling aspect of South Korean cinema is that nobody has made a film about the most incredible story that ever fallen into an industry’s collective lap. This is the—I swear to God—true story of director Shin Sang-ok and his collaborations with North Korea’s batshit insane dictator, Kim Jong-il.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Shin Sang-ok was one of the few critically renowned South Korean film directors, in a nation less than a generation out of the bi-Korean cease-fire. In the mid-1970s, Shin let it slip that he was critical of the repressive South Korean government and was promptly shut down by said sensitive government. By any measure, Shin was ruined by, and pissed at, his militaristic government. Doubly unfortunate, Shin was not alone in this sentiment and his famous actress-wife Choi Eun-hee divorced him. While packing her bags, Choi told him that she was going to Hong Kong, hearing about some filmmaker who wanted to work with her, specifically. In all likelihood, Shin collapsed in his chair, gave one of his Joe Every Man-thousand-yard stares and wondered how his life had become the first one-fifth of a Steven Spielberg movie.

In Hong Kong, Choi met with the filmmakers and, in an unusual casting technique, was kidnapped and smuggled to North Korea. Yeah, still think your job interview went bad? While Kim Jong-il wasn’t yet the head leader of North Korea (that position belonging to his father at this time), Kim was the director of propaganda and other spheres of political/military influence—including the filmmaking-arm. And the wheels in Kim’s head had been spinning for some time. As a young man, Kim Jong-il literally wrote the (or at least “a”) book on the relations between film art and spreading the greatness of North Korea. For years North Korean filmmakers disappointed him, despite all his threats, imprisoning, physical/psychological abusing, kidnappings and executions. So Kim, in all his batshit craziness, decided to import the best Asian filmmakers he could (this side of Akira Kurosawa, of course).

In South Korea, Shin Sang-ok hears rumors about his ex-wife being kidnapped and possibly killed in Hong Kong. Unlike The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden, who might celebrate some relief from his wife, Shin booked it to Hong Kong to start his own investigation. Amazingly, Shin found the kidnappers and they, appropriately, kidnapped him, too. In North Korea, Shin was placed in a pretty fancy hotel and even received his own guards who wanted to protect him so much that they stopped him from leaving, making phone calls or asking too many questions. Despite his eagerness to see the sights of the foreign city, they assured him, no, there was nothing to see or do and to stay in his room. Before long, Shin attempted to escape the premises but was caught. Insulted, the North Korean guards moved Shin and decided to put the film director somewhere really safe…prison.

In the North Korean prison, Shin ate grass, salt and the occasional side dish of rice. To be even bigger jerks, the guards told Shin that his kidnapped wife was dead. Reflecting on his time there, Shin has said, “I experienced the limits of human beings.” And that is how he spent his life for the next FOUR YEARS.

Then something strange happened. (Finally!) In his jail cell, Shin received a dinner invitation to the grand palace of one Kim Jong-il. Starving, grieving and otherwise losing his mind, Shin was taken to the palace and led to a large dinner table, set for three. Kim Jong-il takes the head of the table and across from Shin sat somebody even more heart stopping: Shin’s wife, Choi Eun-hee.

Besting the imagination of any sitcom, this dinner was about to get a lot more awkward. Politely, Kim Jong-il apologized to both of his guests for their, separate, four-year imprisonment. Kim laughed to himself, embarrassed that he and his subordinates had mis-communicated a while back. Apparently nobody had caught the mistake earlier because it had just been “chaos back at the office.” Ah, well, Kim assured his undoubtedly speechless guests, the important thing is that we are all here and can talk about a future together. Specifically, Kim wanted Shin and Choi to creatively reunite and make movies for North Korea. They’d be paid well, have over 200 employees, and thousands of soldiers to use as overly synchronized extras.

"Do you need ridiculous marching? Because we got that shit covered!"

It’s unclear if Shin and Choi ever really ate at their dinner with Kim Jong-il, but what is certain is that the dictator rambled for over two hours about communism and cinema. And then, as if to gently blow over a woozy opponent in lieu of a knockout-hit, Kim Jong-il asked the divorced couple, Shin and Choi, to get remarried.

I’ll give you a couple of days to think about that scene.

To be continued…

The Car: America’s Love Affair

What is American culture? Historically, we are the land of refuge. Indeed, the absence of an obvious, unique culture is what makes the United States a welcoming place. Yes, some may have just scoffed hard enough to choke on their own tongue, but it’s the explanation all the same. America has size and unlike similarly sized nations, America is entirely habitable. We go all across our nation because there is reason to go all across the nation. New Yorkers want to go to California, Texans want to go to Washington, D.C. and Missourians want to leave Missouri. This mobility—while always an element of our collective ideology—became possible, predictable and just wildly profitable in the second half of the 20th century because our nation fell in love, and that love’s name was the automobile.

Cars were a part of American society before World War II but much in the way the Internet was a part of American society before the millennium. That is, both were immediately useful to peripheral sectors of American culture—some trading, military services and vice. And as most people know, WWII helped lift America, if not the entire world, out of the global depression. Specifically though, it meant that the federal government starting buying vehicles (jeeps, tanks, trucks, airplanes and numerous short-lived amphibious endeavors). This meant a huge boom to the few car manufacturers that existed, but not just in having the biggest buyer of all time. For the United States actually paid car manufactures to build more factories because—and this is truly American logic—why not buy two for twice the price? More than just the factories built, the government also paid the manufactures to create test vehicles and ultimately let the corporations keep ownership of the factories and all patents developed for the war efforts, as a thanks for the patriotism.

Well, (spoiler alert!) the Allies won the war (end spoiler) and the car companies had way more supply than there was demand, so they made the demand by buying up mass-transportation systems in the late forties. Not unlike Chevron buying carbon credits as early as the 1990s, these businessmen showed how rampant capitalism could motivate the devastatingly smart among us. The car companies destroyed their competition buying them, and then pushed for the creation of Levittowns.

Levittowns were the original name of what we now know as sub-urban areas—neighborhoods of single-family homes built outside of big cities. Because these neighborhoods were built for individual families, nothing was within walking distance anymore. Just a generation earlier, people went their entire lives without owning any transportation, but now, with no consistent public transportation, such a life was impossible. The Levittown homes were cheap and promised to go up in value, as original locations were ideally placed and each neighboring area would become father away from, yet still outside of, the city and major roads.

Majors roads may have been an understatement. President Dwight Eisenhower’s proposed Federal Highway Defense Act was the largest development of infrastructure ever undertaken by any nation—only to be bested over the last couple of years by the Nigerians (just kidding, it’s actually the Chinese and we’ll come back to this). But in the 1950s, Eisenhower was adamant that America fix the highway system that took his convoy 16 days to transverse from Oregon to D.C. in the 1930s (and two months to transverse in 1919). Keep in mind, Congress was suffering a little bit of a spending hangover since FDR’s New Deal 15 years earlier (helluva hangover, right?) but—and this is also pretty American—Congress always opens its purse for defense spending. In fact, Congress will usually just add on an extra zero or two for any defense budget just to prove to the American public that they care just that much.

Eisenhower, in probably his most political maneuver ever, argued that an Interstate Highway system would allow the U.S. to move troops and supplies across the country in lightning speed in the (inevitable?) event of a USSR invasion. In some respects, the German autobahn influenced Eisenhower in that the Germans really did use their highway system to facilitate the Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland and France. So, you know, thanks for the idea, Hitler. Regardless of influence, America connected dozens of major cities with 41,000 miles of new road…road that needed to be conquered.

And if something can be conquered by flamboyant consumerism, you can bet the Baby Boomer Generation bought it, used it, forgot about it, found it, repackaged it and sold it back to Generation X—who would sarcastically deride it. The car was a necessity in the immediate years after the war, but then it became a sign of upward mobility. Cars weren’t a luxury by 1960, but rather an expectation. A rite of passage into adulthood. They were mobile, miniature apartments—if not extensions of the driver themselves. This was a freedom of spatial mobility more unifying, social, and unique than cars before WWII or horses before that.

All of society felt reverberations from the auto-boom. Fast food became faster with drive-thrus. After eating dinner in your car you could watch a movie in the car at a drive-in movie. Car got dirty? Drive through a car wash. Still bored? Race other people with cars. Or just use your car as a hang-out location and drive around the city in endless loops finding other people doing the same because cars provided that feeling of “doing something” with the freedom to listen to rock and/or roll music, or use curse words. Feeling romantic? Drive to a make-out location. Need a bed? Most cars were intentionally built wide enough for a person (or two) to lie length-wise across the seats. Feel like you’ve done everything you could do in life in your car? Well, you’re in luck because eventually people could just use their cars to commit suicide.

“Thank God we have a car or this would have sucked.”

So where does this all take us? Well, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. Because as mentioned earlier, China’s highway system has ballooned for the last decade—much in the vein of America in the 1960s. Similarly, Chinese cities seem to be growing outward at the rate of America’s waistline and they have a growing middle class that will require, and then eventually just want, cars. For the comparison to go much further, though, China will need to move away from grand displays of choreographed automatons and just allow the people to authentically create art. Perhaps I’ve strayed from the point.

But back in America, we are living in a backlash reaction to this love affair with cars. The American Dream still exists but it doesn’t involve owning a home anymore. It doesn’t involve moving out of the city, but rather (more and more) moving into the city. And this may spell the decline of suburbia in a generation and, with it, car ownership.

Most simply, Pixar’s “Cars” are more like Andy’s toys than they even know.