History Recap: The Boston Massacre

I swore my next blog post was going to be a book review. I am still working on that book review, but I've also recently been hit with the Revolutionary War Era feelings, so here's another history post. Please enjoy!

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Today we're going to start with a story. 

Once upon a time, there was a town. Not a small town, but not a huge town, either. Recent events meant that the inhabitants of this town--mostly blue-collar workers without a ton of money to their names--were, well, disgruntled with the law enforcement in their town. For the most part, this disgruntlement had resulted in some heckling of the local law enforcement officers--kids yelling things and throwing snowballs, people grumbling under their breath and glaring whenever an officer passed. 

Then, things escalated. 

There was a gathering--ostensibly a peaceful gathering, a legal gathering, but bordering on a riot in some places. People were getting violent, pressing in a couple of officers, yelling things at them, threatening to get violent. The officers called for backup. A higher-ranking officer showed up with reinforcements, but ordered his men not to get violent with the crowd, as that wouldn't end well for anybody. The crowd, though, was determined to provoke a reaction. They continued to act up until--and no one exactly knows why or how--one of the officers fired his gun. 

Some of the other officers fired, then, though none of them would later recall hearing the order to fire. The crowd scattered; when it was all over and the smoke had cleared, eleven people had been shot. (If I'm remembering this incident correctly, five died and two more died later of injuries.)

This broke the floodgates. The people of the town were enraged. Some of them held funerals and wakes and protest marches. Some of them formed violent mobs, seeking to take out their fury on any scapegoat they could find. The government sent in more law enforcement officers, which only aggravated the situation. 

Eventually, the officers involved were indicted, taken to court, for murder. Their lawyer crafted a compelling case--the situation really wasn't as cut and dry as it first appeared, and the officers weren't directly at fault. They were found not guilty; but this, too, aggravated the people, because at the end of the day, sons and father and brothers had been killed by the very people who were meant to protect them. Law enforcement fired on a crowd of citizens, and no one was going to let that go. 

The story doesn't end there, of course, but I think it's a decent stopping point. Now, thanks to the title of this post, you've probably figured out that all that up there is the story of the Boston Massacre of 1770. However, that's not all the story is. I deliberately used vague terminology to re-tell the story, because I want you to be able to look back at it and see the story of Ferguson, of Baltimore, of the all the communities that have been in turmoil recently. 

Recently, we as a country have been more aware than ever of the misdeeds and unclear decisions of our police forces. There's been a question, recently, of just what racial biases are embedded in our law enforcement system. I'm not here to answer that question; there's a lot of evidence and argument and rhetoric on either side, and I am far from the most educated person on any of that. 

But I have been thinking about history lately. And I have been thinking about parallels lately, and I've been thinking about how messy--muddy and unclear and divisive--the Boston Massacre really was. It came at a time of palpable tension--economic tension, not racial tension, but tension all the same. Both sides debated it, trying to twist it to fit with their own narrative. Loyalists said that the crowd was a mob on the verge of attacking soldiers who didn't have the option to fight back. Rebels said that armed soldiers had fired into an innocent, peaceful gathering of civilians. Neither narrative was completely correct. The truth is, the people were angry and the soldiers were scared and a horrible, irreversible mistake was made. 

I'm the last person to try to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm the last person to say that we need to tear down our police departments. But I am the person to say that we need to be better, we need to work our hardest to ensure that our neighborhoods are safe--that all neighborhoods are safe, regardless of who lives there--and that our cops are doing their jobs to the very best of their abilities. I think, in the end, the lesson of the Boston Massacre is that we need to be able to look rationally at both sides of a conflict, since it's rare that only one side is in the right. 

(We tend to empathize with the members of the crowd in the case of the Boston Massacre, yet in a modern-day rehashing of the story, the cops are often the ones who receive the most empathy. Just something to think about.)

So, yes. Does the Black Lives Matter movement have a valid point? Yes, I think they do. Nothing has ever been accomplished by people staying silent about the issues they see affecting their communities. However, I also think that we need to listen to police officers and their advocates, since it just isn't fair or right to target an entire group of people without at least hearing them out. In conclusion, I think the only way for us to resolve this issue is to impartially listen to both sides and try to come to an equally impartial conclusion. If we can't do that, I don't think we'll be coming to a solution any time soon. 

History Recap: The Alien and Sedition Acts

I've been doing some history reading recently. I've been learning about the American Revolution--the political atmosphere surrounding it, the men involved with it, and the construction of a country from the ground up that came afterward. It's all very fascinating stuff. And one of the most fascinating things that I've found is a little incident called the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

First, let me give you some background.

In 1798, a few things were going on at once. For one thing, John Adams, a member of the Federalist party, had been elected president and was doing his best, no doubt, to iron out the wrinkles in a government that hadn't quite figured out how to work smoothly yet. For another thing, across the Atlantic Ocean, French peasants were rising up and slaughtering every member of the upper class they could get their hands on, and England was making a stand against the country that killed its own king. The fledgling United States had already made a statement of their neutrality in this conflict under Washington, but the prominent politicians of the day had still taken sides. The Federalist party (Adams's party, if you'll remember), led by Alexander Hamilton, was squarely on the side of the English. The Jeffersonian Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, supported the French.

All this was tumultuous enough for a new country with a new president. But this wasn't all that was going on. You see, because of the aforementioned slaughtering of French aristocracy, many French noblemen and Catholic priests (who were also targeted by the revolutionaries) were fleeing to America. This sudden influx of French refugees/immigrants, combined with statements by the French revolutionaries that they would spread their brand of "freedom" to the rest of the world, made the American government--particularly the Federalists--very nervous.

(Is any of this starting to sound familiar?)

This is the political climate that President John Adams found himself in. And this is the political climate that eventually motivated Mr. Adams to sign four Congressional laws collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Alien Acts encompassed three laws. To summarize, these laws basically stated that the President had the power to deport any foreign immigrant, for any reason. They also made it much harder for foreigners to become American citizens. The Sedition Act was the fourth law, and it made it illegal to publish anything "false, scandalous, or malicious" about the government.

As the Jeffersonian Republicans were quick to point out, these Acts ran roughshod over the First Amendment. Adams & co. ignored these protests; they felt that, given what was going on with the French, these acts were the only way to keep their new country safe. Also, given the amount of muckraking, slander, and attacks the newspapers of the day published against their politicians, the Federalists felt perfectly justified in restricting what could be said about the government.

In the end, no immigrants were deported because of the Alien Acts. Only twenty-five people were arrested for Sedition, and of those people, only eleven were tried and only ten were convicted. (And those ten were pardoned by Jefferson at the start of his presidency.)

However, the fact that these acts were passed at all cast enough of a shadow on the Federalist party to eventually cause their demise. Adams wasn't re-elected after his first term. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1800 and 1801, and Congress didn't try to renew them. The only man who might have rescued the Federalists--Alexander Hamilton--was killed in a duel in 1804. The Federalists faded into obscurity, the Alien and Sedition Acts being their only lasting legacy.

Now, all this makes for a very interesting and even entertaining story, but what's the moral behind it all? What are we to learn?

Well, first of all, the situation with the French revolution has, I would say, several fascinating parallels with our current problem of ISIS and the Syrian refugees. We today also have a problem: evil, bloodthirsty "revolutionaries" are tearing a country apart. Refugees are flooding from that country, trying to find safety in Europe and America. And all those refugees are making our politicians nervous, because what if some terrorists sneak in with all the innocents?

Of course, our government hasn't yet gone as far as the Federalists did in 1798. We haven't totally destroyed our credibility with immigrants and refugees. (Although it's happening. Our immigration system is pretty much shot to hell, and we do already have a strenuous system for vetting refugees.) And we haven't made it illegal to speak against the government.

But I think the Alien and Sedition Acts are something of a cautionary tale, particularly in what they have to say about refugees and immigrants. After all, we're in the midst of a presidential campaign right now, and the Republican candidates seem to enjoy nothing more than promising to deport great swathes of people, or cut off immigration altogether. (You could also argue that the Sedition Acts mirror the current railing against "PC culture", but that's a whole other blog post.) I think these candidates would do well to remember that such actions were what heavily contributed to the destruction of the Federalist party. And I think these candidates would do well to remember that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Thank you.

The Comparison - Part 4

*Warning: Spoilers. Probably nothing that I haven't yet spoiled in the rest of this series, but you never know.*

Well, here we are, in the final installment of The Comparison--where I finally get around to the actual comparing of the two things I set out to compare. I've talked about Treasure Island (in two separate installments, no less!) and about its less-well-known adaptation, Treasure Planet. I've given an overview of opinion on both pieces of media, and now I'm going to compare and contrast them. As with both of the preceding reviews, this will be divided up into Plot, Characters, and Setting. So here we go with the thrilling conclusion...

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First up: Plot.

As I mentioned in the last post, Treasure Planet is a movie, and not a particularly long one, so it didn't have the space to really stretch the story out the way the book did. This is actually a common thing; most book-to-movie adaptations have to cut some details for the sake of time. (Unless you're Peter Jackson, in which case you add details in order to take up more time. I'm still bitter.) Generally the question isn't whether the adaptation cut anything, but what they cut and how well they did it. 

In this case? I think Treasure Planet did a good job of condensing the plot. 

For one thing, they cut out the overly-long beginning, which I was really glad for. In the movie, Billy Bones shows up, he gives Jim the map (actually gives it to him!), mutters a vague warning about "the cyborg", and dies. Bam, we have kickstarted the plot.

This continues throughout the movie: everything that happens happens for a reason, to advance the plot somehow. Either it contributes to what's going on, or it gets cut. And it works.

Probably the biggest difference of all from book to movie is that the movie added an emotional subplot/arc that was not there in the book. This actually tied in well, I think, with the direction the adaptation was going. See, if you'll remember, back in my first Treasure Island post I talked about how Long John Silver's betrayal doesn't seem to have a lot of emotional effect on the characters. I also mentioned how the author didn't seem sure of how he was trying to portray Silver/build up the betrayal. Of course, both of these things were done fairly well, and I think in the context of the longer book they worked out. However, these creative decisions wouldn't have worked for a simplified, faster-paced version of the story, and I think the screenwriters knew this. Thus, I really like how it worked out in Treasure Planet.

You see, in the movie, the first mention of Silver we hear is Billy Bones telling Jim to "beware the cyborg" just before he croaks. Shortly afterward, we see a mysterious cyborg-looking shadow lead a group of pirates in burning the Benbow Inn. Thus, when we first meet John Silver, he's already been established as a very shady, if not outright villainous, character. That makes it all the more touching/suspenseful to watch him and Jim form a father-son bond, and that, in turn, makes his subsequent betrayal all the more terrible.

As a side note, in the movie, I feel like Mr. Arrow's death was tied into the greater plot in a way that made more sense. In the book, as I've said, Arrow is a drunk loser who falls overboard during a rainstorm and nobody cares. In the movie, Mr. Arrow is an upstanding first mate--a good friend and confidant of the captain--who is killed by Scroop, who then makes it look like it was indirectly Jim's fault. This ties into Jim's arc and his relationship with Silver, but it also establishes just how far Scroop is willing to go as a villain, and it's a genuinely tragic moment, since Arrow was such a great guy.

And of course--spoiler warning here--the ending of the movie is vastly different from the book. Flint's trap is a big difference (that wasn't present in the book), as is the treasure being destroyed and the last-second escape from the treasure horde place.

Silver still gets away from the good guys and escapes justice in the book, though.

(There you go. I just told you the whole ending. Now you don't have to watch the movie.)

Next up: Characters.

The characters in Treasure Planet are mostly similar to those in the book. However, there are some differences here worth talking about, so here we go.

First up: Jim Hawkins. Jim Hawkins, in the movie, is older than his book counterpart. (He's fifteen in the movie, if I'm remembering correctly.) He's very smart, but he's also reckless and sullen, feeling he has no future worth considering.

The main difference with this character is probably his recklessness. As I said in my first Treasure Island post, I feel like Jim's impetuousness wasn't a very consistent character trait. This isn't the case in the movie; Jim is very reckless and while it sometime helps him or works out in his favor, other times it's purely self-destructive. It's also part of his character arc: over the course of the movie he learns to harness his impulsiveness and think through his actions more.

Next is Dr. Delbert Doppler, who as far as I can tell is a composite character, a cross between Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey from the book. He's got Trelawney's naivete about the workings of the world, but he's also got Livesey's intelligence and doctorate. (He's not a medical doctor in the movie. So that's different.) He occasionally functions as comic relief, but he's also a character in his own right. (He's also, in the movie, an alien that kinda looks like a dog. It's a little weird.)

I already talked about Captain Amelia, who's different enough from her book counterpart that she counts as her own character. I don't want to repeat myself, so all I'll say is: I really like Captain Amelia and I'm glad she's in the movie. She's a great character.

The other female character in the movie is Jim's mother, Sarah Hawkins, the sole proprietor of the Benbow Inn. Yes, that's right: the movie removed the character of Jim's father, and they did it for a few good reasons. A) Jim's dad doesn't do much in the book other than get sick and die in the beginning. B) Jim's abandonment issues concerning his father tie into his emotional arc and the relationship he has with Silver. C) It's just all around a more economical use of a character. In my opinion, anyway.

And then, of course, there's Silver, the villain.
Silver is... well, he's actually pretty similar to his book incarnation. He's smart, fast-talking, eloquent, ambitious, murderous, and he hides it all under an exterior that's kind, friendly, and respectful of authority. However, in the movie, his relationship with Jim is a lot more pronounced, and a lot more integral to the story. Also, as far as I can tell, he never knew Captain Flint personally in the movie.

And... I think that actually wraps it up for the Characters section. I'm running short on space here, so let's move along to Setting.

The settings... well, whether you're in the book or the movie, the settings are beautifully imagined and communicated to the audience. The scale is much larger in the movie (they're travelling between planets, through space), but that comes with the territory in a sci-fi film. Obviously the movie is inherently more visual, but if you've read the book you know that Robert Louis Stevenson held nothing back in his descriptions of his settings. (Especially the island itself.) So I actually think the book and movie are pretty similar in that respect. And I think it's somewhat indicative of the overall spirit of the adaptation: there are several changes in terms of aesthetic and scale, but the overarching plot and characters are pretty similar to those in the book.

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So that's The Comparison! I have to say, I'm glad this series is over, but I haven't regretting writing it. (Remember, folks, this was originally all supposed to be one post.) Actually, I'm largely glad this is over so that I can get to posting about other things. I've got some good things in the works, including a book review and a particularly relevant history post. So stay tuned for that stuff... and feel free to come bug me over at my newly minted Facebook and Twitter pages! And as always, feel free to leave any thoughts, questions, or critiques in the comments section.

Until next time: adiós!

Treasure Planet - The Comparison, Part 3

*Warning: Spoilers. You guys know the drill by now.*

Aaaand we're back, with part three of the comparison! It's been kind of a crazy few days since I last posted, but the good news is that my library request came in, I watched it, and now I'm ready to review Disney's 2002 sci-fi adaptation of Treasure Island.

So here we go.

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To start: Treasure Planet is one of Disney's early-2000's movies, and it isn't well known for a few reasons. For one thing, the premise is a little weird and doesn't appeal to everyone. (It's Treasure Island, but in a setting that's a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars. Like I said, weird, and that's coming from someone who really likes it.) Another reason is that it did terribly at the box office, meaning Disney didn't have much incentive to spend a lot on post-release merchandising or a sequel. 

All that said, it's a weird, mostly unknown, pretty underrated movie, but the writing is pretty solid and the visuals are gorgeous. 

First up for me to talk about is the writing, otherwise known as the plot. Treasure Planet is a movie, and not one of those crazy three-hour movies, so the screenwriters naturally had to compress the story somewhat. And, in my opinion, they did it well; overall, the story is tight, with a logical, emotional character arc, and with plenty of action. It doesn't drag at all. (Remember when I was complaining about the beginning of the book being too long? Yeah.)

The story is still presented from Jim's point of view, with a few deviations. (And by deviations, I mean scenes that are used to establish the villain and maintain tension.) Also, everything that happens to move the plot happens for a reason; there's a nice tension between characters making choices and movements for themselves, and characters being forced to move because of something the villain(s) did. 

The movie also remedied the lack of tension in the latter third of the story. (Remember that? Where there was pretty much no chance that the pirates were going to win?) In the movie, it looks like the pirates might just win, right up until they trigger the trap that starts destroying the treasure. 

Also, everything in the plot moves faster from a physical standpoint, because space travel. 

Moving on: Characters!

Treasure Planet maintains most of the main characters from the book, with the caveat that most of them are aliens or robots (or both). This is because of the setting. It's a little strange at first. Whether you get into it or not as the movie goes on is up to you. This is where the movie deviates from the book a good deal; I'll reserve my thoughts on that for the next and final installment in this series. For now, since you've heard my thoughts on most of the characters, I'll just talk about the original(ish) characters that the movie added/played around with. 

The most prominent original-ish character is Captain Amelia, who replaces Captain Smollett in the story. (Also, as a note, the ship's name in the movie is the Legacy, rather than the Hispaniola. Make of that what you will.) Amelia basically serves the same purpose as Smollett: she doesn't like the crew, she's an iron-willed leader who helps fight the mutineers, she gets wounded and sorta taken out of commission during one of the fights. The main things that make her distinct and original are a) she's an alien, b) she's involved in a romance (of which there was none in the book), and c) she's the only main female character in the story (this is related to point b). This is refreshing because in the book, the only female character was Jim's mother (who is also in the movie, and is a bit more fleshed out). I guess you could say that Amelia is proof that you can have female characters in your story without compromising the way you were planning to characterize them.

The other character that was pretty much just made up for the purposes of the movie is Scroop, a.k.a. the really unsympathetic guy you're supposed to hate because he's a terrible person. (Most movies have one of these. On one hand, I know it's often a necessary storytelling technique, but on the other hand, it just bugs me so much. No one in real life is that one-dimensional!)

Anyway, Scroop is a spider-like alien who, as far as I can tell, is a composite of several one-off, villainous pirates from the book. He largely exists to create extra conflict and to do the stuff that would make our sympathetic villain look bad. (Like killing people.) He also ends up dying, in a manner suspiciously similar to the way Israel Hands from the book died, which leads me to believe that that's his closest counterpart. But again, it's debatable, since Scroop is probably a combination of several. 

So that covers the semi-original movie characters. 

Finally, we have Setting, and this is the part where I'm really going to rave about the movie. (So if you really didn't like it or something, you can skip this part. I guess.)

Treasure Planet was made as Disney was beginning to experiment with 3-D animation, and it's revolutionary in its own way, in that it's one of the first movies where 2-D and 3-D animation were blended. You can still tell where the 3-D animation is, but for the most part the two styles mesh very well and don't distract from the story. And the designs--the designs for everything, but especially for sets and backgrounds, are breathtaking and gorgeously animated. From the busy spaceport of Montressor to the Legacy itself to the titular planet, everything is wonderfully designed and animated. What's most impressive to me is the design for Long John Silver, who's a cyborg in the movie. He's mostly animated in 2-D, but his cyborg parts--a leg, an eye, and an arm--are all 3-D, and they're seamlessly animated. Seriously, this is one of those movies that you could watch on mute just to look at how beautifully it was done. 

Additionally, the scope of the story is expanded in the movie, which is a normal thing in sci-fi. Rather than various geographic locations, the different settings are planets. I think this expansion was particularly well-handled in the case of Treasure Planet itself. The fact that it's an entire planet rather than--I don't know, a moon, or something--factors nicely into the plot.

As a final point, event though the movie has a sci-fi setting, it still has many of the trappings of the traditional 18th Century Piracy genre. The Legacy looks and acts like an 18th Century sailing ship, with modifications for space travel. (A warning: almost nothing in this movie is scientifically accurate.) It even has barnacles, cannons, and longboats. The stationary settings, like the Benbow Inn and Montressor spaceport, also look a lot like 1700's locales, but they're populated with aliens and have just enough futuristic tech to support the sci-fi image.

So that's the setting. In my opinion, Treasure Planet is high on the list of Disney's beautifully designed films, and the way both kinds of animation were used is truly impressive.

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That more or less concludes my review of Treasure Planet. You'll notice that it's shorter than my review of Treasure Island. This is because I'm saving a lot of my opinions for the straight-up comparison of the two, which will be in the next post. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you at least try watching Treasure Planet. (It's unfortunately no longer available to stream on Netflix, but it is available in DVD format. Also try your local library.) If you like Star Wars, there's a good chance you'll like it. And if you don't, you might also try muting it and enjoying the animation and design. 

So that's Treasure Planet. Tune in next time for the thrilling...ish... conclusion of the ridiculous and long comparison series. Adiós!

(To Be Concluded...)