i kind of have a rule for my netflix – i try to arrange things so that i always have one fun movie, one serious movie, and one tv show. this came about because i found that if i had too many “you should really see this!” movies at once, they would often just sit there for weeks because i would secretly be in the mood for buffy reruns, not hotel rwanda, but that would be hard to admit even to myself so i just thought about other things. on the other hand, if i always Have buffy reruns (or actually what i’m hooked on now is 24), i will watch them and then enjoy the more serious options while i’m waiting for replacements to come, so a constant inflow of freshness is maintained, i get my money’s worth, And i am a well-balanced media absorption machine.

psychology is fun!

anyway, sometimes i succeed at diversity within my selections and i Still don’t watch anything for a while, which is the boat i was in this week, so i just made myself sit down and start watching. as a result, i ended up watching Rome (Season 1, Disc 1) and Why We Fight in rather quick succession, and this was an interesting experience.

Rome is a rather new HBO drama about life in the roman empire, and the first two episodes are basically about the events leading up to caesar’s revolt against the republic and establishment of himself as, well, Caesar. that sounds all serious and historical and shit, and i guess it is, but the war and sex and corruption bits make for some rather gritty TV, which is more of what drew HBO to the subject matter, imho. the historical element is just strategy to make people feel classier. those marketing folks are no shirks. and did i mention psychology is fun?

in the other corner, Why We Fight is a prize-winning documentary about the american war machine, and while it doesn’t exactly qualify as piercing cultural commentary to point out the potential thematic similarities between its storyline and the history of the roman empire, the thing that really appalled me was that i didn’t even have to take the time to enter into highschool english class “study questions” mode in order to draw such connections. at several points in Why We Fight, they actually come right out and talk about the fact that we are engaging in strategies to “build the new Rome”, and having just watched the Old rome displayed as blatantly corrupt, warmongering, and the playground of elitist power plays, i could only just sit there and be all “um… you know how that whole approach turned out last time, right?”

the more i thought about it, though, and the more i listened to the speeches from various governmental officials throughout Why We Fight, the more i realized that yeah, we Do know how it turned out last time, but that doesn’t seem to sway us from believing that this time we’ll go all colonel sanders on the whole thing and do empire Right^TM. i might just be slow on the uptake here, or maybe it’s the whole “e”s become “i”s and vice versa when you conjugate it confusion, but somehow hearing “imperialism” bandied around all the time in the media never really smacked me in the face hard enough to realize that this? this is one of those things that isn’t just hype where they borrow words from movies to make things sound flashier on the news. i mean, star wars and age of empires probably doesn’t help our brains much with the “process this literally and not just as a tagline” function, but seriously folks, it really is the same word it always was: EMPIRE. US OR THEM. THIS IS OUR FOREIGN POLICY. NOT FREEDOM. DOMINATION. SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

ok that many caps means i’ve lapsed into “too preachy” mode, but really? i’m just trying to capture that feeling where something completely and utterly obvious blows your mind a bit, and you feel kinda stupid about that but at the same time it really does feel like a little sliver of something new slipped through, and i think blogs are for trying to capture that little sliver, or my blog is for that, or my blog Should be for that, and every day is a new chance to make that more of a reality, and thereby balance that “fluff” tag over there with some other tags of a similar size.

so i guess my blogging strategy and my netflix strategy are kind of the same in the end…

now that we’ve had personal insight time, it is time for tea and princess mononoke. weekend of the netflix ninja continues. they sent me walk the line and some iranian movie to replace the conquered dvds above (I AM BUILDING A CINEMATIC EMPIRE!!! RAAARRRGGHH!!). is there a way to put my netflix queue in the sidebar? hmmm….

officially done typing now. in case you were wondering if i got that i should have stopped already. yep. making up for lost time, i suppose.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 6:59 pm and is filed under movies, politics, ranting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.