America's Mask Tradition

Throughout history, mankind has been fascinated with the mask. We've fashioned them out of everything from animal hides and bone to wood to high-quality polyurethane, for dozens of purposes. Most often, masks have been associated with a performative aspect of a culture, be it the Japanese art of Noh or the Italian (and later European) theatrical style of the Commedia del Arte. Each mask is associated with different characters, and each has codified factors that denote who the character is and what they do in the world of the play. Masks are so common, in fact, that they've been found in almost every culture around the world.
What is odd, though, is that modern America has no unique or formalized or accepted form of masked performance. We are obsessed with realism, thanks to film, and masks on stage strike us as odd and off-putting. We want to see the actor's face to understand the emotions. Seeing something like this:

doesn't register to us as realistic. Bear in mind, that is the same mask shown at three different angles. Masks can give a wide range of emotional performances, but they require a certain style of training that is exceedingly rare in our commercialized entertainment industry.
But wait. There are plenty of masks on American stages. They just tend to look more like this:

or this:

and they're far more often associated with spectacle-heavy, art-light shows. Granted, Commedia in its original context had little to do with art, but it has become a theatrical tradition rather than simply a mode of entertainment. Mask work now is typically seen as either kitschy and child-friendly, or arcane and "artsy."
All of that discounts one thing, the true American Mask Tradition. I speak not of Julie Taymor-esque spectacle or Halloween antics, not of Hollywood slasher flicks or murder mysteries, but rather the Masked Hero. We see them all the time in movies and television, but we don't often associate their masks with their performance for the simple reason that the character is aware he is wearing a mask. Still, while America may not have originated the masked hero, we've certainly perfected it. For example, take Zorro. One of the earliest examples of a masked antihero in popular culture, he laid the groundwork for popular icons like Batman, the Phantom, and countless others. One man dons a mask to hide his identity and fights crime and corruption. It doesn't matter if the man behind the mask is a billionaire playboy, reclusive photographer, or sign-carrying lunatic in the street; when he's in the mask, he's the hero and we want him to win. We've also seen a great evolution of what a mask can become. For example:

As you can see, I've only included masks from film versions, as I am talking here about a more theatrical or at the very least performative mask tradition. However, what I want you to look at is the vast difference between some of these masks, from the foolishly simple to the elaborately obscuring. In every case, the mask augments the character, never detracting. That is the main objective in every situation. If the mask takes away from the character, it has failed. But Zorro's lends a vague anonymity (even though we can all see Antonio under there), The Phantom's gives a sense of unreality, Batman's strikes a certain sort of insane fear, Spider-Man's completely hides his identity, and Iron Man's serves as the hub of his tactical battle armor that he calls a suit. Each is best suited to its purpose, each designed for a reason just as much as the Noh or Commedia masks.
So, theatre scholars, eat your collective hearts out. Or, rather, nod your heads questioningly and proceed with your day.

Idea Snippet: The Lightning Rod

The lightning rod is a magical item that sits somewhere between the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons-style high fantasy and Dresden Files-esque urban fantasy. In truth, it could be easily justified, and created, in either world. It functions essentially as follows, and is on the surface quite simple.

First, one fashions their rod. For many this is a staff of some kind, typically a hardwood or metal, usually five to six feet long. On one end, the "top," a connecting port is fastened. This port uses gold filaments and a simple screw-in system found with most modern bottles, but could also connect to the bottle (which I will mention soon) in a variety of other ways. Once the connector is attached to the rod, a special bottle can be connected. This bottle is a vacuum tube with a gold filament coming out the top that serves as the current connection to the rod.

Now comes the tricky part: catching lightning in a bottle. This can be done in multiple ways, with two being most common. The first involves the already-connected rod and bottle. The user enters a clearing during a natural thunderstorm and extends the rod above himself. When lightning strikes the rod, the energy is stored inside the bottle for later use. The second method fills bottles without using the rod, and allows multiple bottles to be filled at the same time. Using an apparatus similar to an upside-down umbrella, the user sets out the bottle beneath the apparatus with its own extended lightning rod. Each bottle is connected to a wire that is connected to the rod. There should also be an extra grounding wire, unless the user plans to collect every bottle and dismantle the apparatus in the midst of the storm. Each lightning strike fills one bottle with one charge, which can then be magically unleashed using the lightning rod.

Alternatively, the bottles could be thrown. When they strike a hard surface, they will shatter and release all of their energy in an undirected blast, either escaping in a bolt toward the closest conductor or simply exploding in a sphere of electrical power. The rod is used to direct this energy in a single bolt at a specific target, though proper aim is incredibly important, and environments with multiple powerful electricity conductors or strong sources of ambient energy are likely to tamper with even an experienced user's aim.

Writers, creators, artists, what have you: Feel free to use this. Just thank me when you get published.

It's Time to Prepare for a Regime Change [APR 13]

Hello again, dear friends. How are you enjoying your day? Has it gone well? Good. I'll just leave this here...

Oh, wow. What's that? A little upset by what you just saw?
Good.
This video was brought to my attention by Wil Wheaton via his twitter feed (@wilw), and there was an article that accompanied it that laid out the facts nicely, but the long and short of it is basically as follows. A family from Kentucky were returning home from New Orleans when their six-year-old daughter was selected for additional screening. The TSA agent who performed the screening was very polite, explaining everything that she was doing very calmly to the girl, but apparently there was a supervisor on hand (maybe visible briefly in the background?) who adamantly refused the requests that instead of an actual pat-down, the young and confused girl be given another scan instead. The family has since been on television to talk about their experience, and young Anna has become something of a symbol for just how strangely far the government will go to "protect" its citizens.
Now, first and foremost let me say that we should not vilify the agent who performed the screening, nor even the supervisor who enforced it. They were both doing the job that has been laid out for them by people with access to information that isn't readily available to most people, and they've been tasked with a difficult job that doesn't earn them many hugs or high-fives. That said, the system that allows this sort of conduct is so obviously out-of-touch, so broken, that it must be and will be overhauled.
We, as Americans, have been living for the past ten years in a culture of fear. Actually, we've been taught and conditioned to fear everything for most of the lives of the oldest people in the nation, but that's a different story. Since 9/11, we have been told that there are enemies of America who will stop at nothing to destroy us, and that they will use absolutely any method that they can to do this. Thus, we submit to invasions of our privacy ranging from the inconvenient to the downright offensive in the name of "homeland security." Many of us hoped that some of this fear-mongering, often associated directly with the Bush administration, would subside with Barack "Hope and Change" Obama. This has obviously not happened. Technology is advancing to the point where a machine can get an accurate image of your naked body no matter what you're wearing, and those immediately went into airports for security purposes. We've heard about the Muslim Brotherhood, a Middle-Eastern political organization with heavy anti-West values, and they've dominated many stories coming out of the recent string of "Twitter Revolutions" happening in countries with oppressive regimes. We are safe from terror attacks, yes, but they still happen. Are we safer because of these screening and security measures, or are we not the biggest target anymore? I don't have an answer to that, yet.

Anyway, to get to my point, it's time to finally cast off this "culture of fear" mentality. A big part of that comes from tribalism, the idea that "our guys" are intrinsically different from "their guys" and thus "their guys" must be bad. For a lot of people, this is not the case. However, there are very vocal minorities that thrive on promoting this idea that America is the greatest and everyone else hates us because we're the greatest and they don't understand/ are jealous/ think we're hedonistic devils. I would posit that those in the international community who hate America (which I believe is just another vocal minority) are just reacting to our boastful proclaiming that we are the best and that all other nations should aspire to be like us. If Saddam Hussein had invaded America in 2003 with the promise to free us from our dictator, there would have been citizen insurgents fighting back here as well. Sure, Bush didn't commit the same sort of atrocities, and certainly not on Americans, but the idea of reciprocal situations should be taken into account. When we stormed into Iraq as "liberators" we caught a lot of flak from Islamic nations that saw it as an attack on their way of life. When we stayed back from Libya recently, showing support but not leading the charge, that did a lot to alleviate some of the fear of us that other cultures have. We are no long the nation that blindly rushes in to every conflict. We are no longer the great imperialist devils (and we really never should have been).

As for the title, I'm not calling for a new American revolution. I'm calling for a mass immigration to the land of sensibility, away from the jingoism and nationalism that is holding back the human race. Let Obama do his thing for now, and if he gets into his stride and continues to improve, I say let him keep the job for a while.

Just, dear god, please don't elect the Tea Party.