Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Something about the heist genre seriously confuses me.  No no, it’s not the intricate/incomprehensible plots or the way the audience is manipulated into rooting for a lovable bunch of criminals.  Basically, what I don’t understand is why modern remakes like Ocean’s 11 and The Italian Job, and original creations like The Bank Job, exist at all.  I’m not saying they’re bad movies!  Ocean’s 11 in particular is tons of fun, with a fantastic cast and a great finale.  It’s just that, well, they’re all entirely unnecessary, because The Sting perfected the genre in 1973 and there was simply nowhere to go but down.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman star as a pair of lovable con artists — one up-and-coming, one an old pro — out to pull the ultimate grift on uptight Irish mobster Robert Shaw.  Redford and Newman don’t quite recapture the insanely perfect chemistry of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, but that’s the kind of magic that only happens once in a lifetime.  Nevertheless, they both play their characters with easy grins and are a joy to watch.  Newman plays one of the best poker games put to film against an increasingly furious Shaw, while Redford bounces around Chicago looking utterly dashing in 1930s clothing, and boy does he know it.

If the film was down to Redford and Newman as Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorff carrying a heist all by themselves, it would probably still be pretty great.  But the supporting cast comes into play in a big way, and the scope of the con dwarfs anything I’ve seen in another heist film.  The secondary characters like Kid Twist and J.J. Singleton show up, make sure the job sounds good and impossible, then jump in feet first and make it happen.  The Sting portrays an entire culture of con-men, interconnected and operated like a genuine industry.  Kid Twist rounds up recruits to perpetuate a massive robbery, and they’re all, obviously, perfect gentlemen.

That’s really what separates The Sting so profoundly from the rest of its genre — everything works together to project an easy, charming atmosphere of pure confidence, which permeates everything from the costuming to the set design to the intertitles.  The setting feels utterly authentic, even if it’s clearly filmed on sets, and Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece “The Entertainer” add enormously to the 1930s flavor.

The plot carries its weight just like everything else, and strikes a typical balance between revelation and secrets hidden until the grand finale.  And if a twist is a necessary component of any heist movie, The Sting may, again, have the very best.  It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen that begins a con with the opening credits.  But that’s easy to do, when you know you can pull it off.

I likely haven’t blogged about it before, but I’m a big Stephen King fan.  This can be a difficult position, at times — as an English minor, I’ve taken my fair share of literature classes over the past three years, and rarely does an entire course pass without a teacher or student elevating some particular work of fiction by comparing it favorably against “one of those John Grisham or Stephen King novels.”  My first thought is that they’re speaking out of their asses without giving King a fair shake, but even if that’s not the case, they’re clearly missing something.  Yeah, his work is light on the symbolism, and his novels won’t lead you to any cathartic realizations about the human condition.  In fact, in It (coincidentally, my favorite Stephen King) the character of Bill Denbrough channels the author’s intentions by asking his college class why stories can’t just be stories.

But even that statement sells King a little short, because his appeal doesn’t just lie in the fact that he tells a great yarn; it’s the way he tells his stories, with a mastery of English that regularly bounces between lyrical, evocative and intensely imaginative.  Many of his novels are guided by friendly, likable narrators who describe the settings and the events taking place within them with a nudge and a wink, and the pop culture/literary quotations that pervade his novels show how much King loves the craft, in all its forms.

One of my favorite of King’s works, The Talisman, stars a modern-day Tom Sawyer in a dark fantasy.  Though epic in scope, the novel remains riveted on Jack, and King’s affinity for writing children serves the character extremely well.  I don’t know how much of the writing should be credited to Peter Straub, and how much to King; it reads like a Stephen King novel, but clearly the two worked very well together.

A couple years after finishing The Talisman, I was finally ready to delve into its recent sequel, Black House. And even being familiar with King’s penchant for long-winded, fascinatingly-detailed descriptions of the small towns his novels are often set in, the beginning of Black House was far from what I expected.  Though it’s been awhile, I remember finding The Talisman instantly accessible and quick to thrust Jack into his journey.  The sequel…not so much.  In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that took some 70 pages to get around to the protagonist, moseying from one minor character to the next and stopping regularly to admire the scenery.  That friendly, nude-nudge narration is as present as ever, but for the first time it’s almost too much, making me wish for a little less chummy commentary and a little more meaty character interaction.  Thankfully, it does begin to pick up and develop a sense of focus, but even past the 200 mark it’s hard to say the novel’s going places.  It has gotten interesting, but so far Black House has quite a weak introduction to overcome to be the sequel The Talisman deserves.

It took me a solid five months, but I finally (finally) finished Atlas Shrugged at the end of May.  My enjoyment of the book definitely took a downwards turn in the second half; after Dagny left the valley, it was a slow crawl to an inexorable conclusion.  Ayn Rand came up briefly in my Editing and Design class earlier in the semester, and the professor joked that she was an author seriously in need of an editor.  And he was exactly right: Atlas Shrugged struggles under the weight of its own vision, a novel incapable of supporting Rand’s philosophy while simultaneously carrying an appealing narrative.

I’m curious how many people have actually dragged their brains through John Galt’s 80 page speech that endlessly extols the true virtues of man and condemns the mindless parasites of society.  I suppose, in a way, I’m almost proud to have read the entire thing, but by that point I was far past interest and moving forward on sheer stubborn determination.

Now that I’m finished with Ayn Rand, I’ve moved onto lighter, more fun things; I started reading the complete works of Dashiell Hammett, who’s probably most famous for The Maltese Falcon.  Not only is it great pulp fiction from the early years of the 20th century, it’s great fodder for Based on Books.  After Atlas Shrugged, Hammett’s tight, fast-paced narrative and sharp dialogue are a welcome, welcome change.

I happened to notice Malwebolence on Digg the day it was published at the beginning of August.  Typically I skim over headlines and very rarely go for entire articles, but Malwebolence was apparently enough in line with my interests to take the plunge.  And I was very glad I did; for the next 20 minutes, I was enthralled.  The last article I recall being so fascinated by was this one, written by an LA Times reporter about Joe Francis, infamous founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire.  Obviously, there’s a bit of similarity here.  Both stories give a personal, inside look into a very disturbing part of the human mind.

Francis is a simple case: he’s a terrible person who profits off of drunk college students and has raped or molested more than one.  But trolling is a whole ‘nother scenario.  It’s infinitely more complex.  So many issues are tied to this action, and I’d it brings into question human morality more harshly than anything in the past several years, if not decades.  Why do they do it?  What makes certain people have the moral flexibility to do what they do?  Who has the right to tell them to stop?

Some of the cases are pretty black and white.  Posting someone’s phone number and massing a gang to harass someone is clearly a violation of privacy.  Obtaining their social security number and using it illegally?  Same thing.  It’s hard not to see these as completely wrong.  But even believing that to be the case, what can you really do about it?  This is when trolling becomes a real societal problem–when it crosses into the real world.

However, I firmly believe that there is very little action anyone has a right to take against trolls.  Freedom of speech is, as always, something to fight for.  In the cases where trolling leads to real-world privacy invasion, legal action is warranted–but it’s practically impossible to really catch anyone.  Where do we draw the line in governing our own morality?

There’s doubtlessly been talk about trying to shut down places like 4chan and IRC chatrooms where the crueler denizens of the web congregate, but even if such a thing were possible, I think it would be a mistake.  As Schwartz points out, most of these people naturally inhabit these very places, which largely keeps them out of the way of the public…which keeps the largely-unprepared public a little bit safer, too.

Moreover, the aspect of human morality these places represent is no less real than the blog of a disillusioned housewife or raving investor.  They’re absolutely fascinating.  Just as the web has developed its own language in the form of abbreviations and acronyms, trolls, /b/tards, and the like have further morphed English into a perversion of itself.  Memes dominate the flow of conversation; for instance, “an hero” literally translates to “commit suicide.”  It’s kind of like reading a lolcat, only without the funny.

Anonymity has certainly granted anyone the ability to be an asshole if he or she so chooses.  I certainly hate trolls.  I’ve moderated sites and had to deal with them, I’ve seen them ruin discussions, and anyone who has played on Xbox Live can attest to the sheer amount of vitriol that’s spouted over voice chat in practically any game.

But they still interest me.  Weev and Fortuny, for all their maliciousness, have redeeming qualities.  The former thought posting strobing images on a site about epilepsy crossed a moral barrier; the latter feels that his cruelty is teaching people a lesson.  I doubt any of us have impersonated a woman with the express purpose of manipulating an audience and challenging the authority of a law meant to protect people.  But I bet none of us have posted a safe web-surfing guie for epileptics, either.

The quote “This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.” stares into the heart of the issue of why trolls do what they do.  It doesn’t give us any answers, solutions to what could be considered a crisis of immorality and cruelty. But maybe trying to figure out why people act the way they do is more important than knowing how to make them stop.

–Wesley Fenlon