Dorner: A Real American Hero? (Nobody Wins)

The plot of the upcoming "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" involves the framed "Joe" members
(like Roadblock, pictured above) who have to clear their name.

"The question is, what would you do to clear your name?"
--Christopher Dorner

I wanted to say a few words about the Christopher Dorner situation.

It's very interesting to me that some of the public is so hungry for a hero that now Dorner -- who has allegedly shot up LAPD and their relations & is now on the run -- has now been adopted as such. By both public and media. He now has several Facebook appreciation pages and many supporters.

Apparently tossing in some good words for certain parties (Anonymous, Charlie Sheen, POTUS, etc.) in his 20-page manifesto gave some people the "OK" sign that this guy was a true and legit "anti-hero" on the run, in the mold of Billy Jack, Rambo, and etc. You know: "Fuck the NRA," but love "The Hangover" and Christoph Waltz. I mean, it's fucking adorable almost, right?

A collage of Chrisopher Dorner pics

This is not to minimize his points regarding racism and corruption in the LAPD -- whistleblowers are indeed treated like crap and discredited, and this particular police force has had a terrible rep for many decades. I truly understand his frustration with such a scenario, such corruption unfortunately being the warp and weft of much of our current society.

But the cult that has now formed around him is of the same basic cloth as cults that have built around "right wing" killers such as Tim McVeigh, WTF shooters such as Columbine and James Holmes, and etc. "Folk Heroes"? "Real American Heroes"?

To put it in terms of the popular parlance: is Dorner Bane or Batman?

Doesn't matter, because in the end we all still lose.

Dorner's "Manifesto" is indeed a compelling read, but also quite contradictory. He talks at length about how we should have gun control, but also uses this "Patriot" verbage and quotage that is classic "Tea Party"/Alex Jones:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

Dorner says he is not using this against the U.S. Government, but his talk of righteous vengeance against "dirtbags" (and their families) mirrors a similar viewpoint that members of the extreme "right" fringe express. How is this different than McVeigh bombing a government building, killing not just govt. workers but their children?

"Superhero": Rambo

But regardless of being on the Left or the Right, everybody wants a superhero -- they want a figure to believe in.

And so this isn't a post saying people who support Chris Dorner are idiots. I understand the primal mechanism to find figures to venerate, who represent one's own frustrations & do the things that one can never do.

It's just that Right or Left, we're fighting against each other -- flinging names across the barrier -- and not really looking at the important issues. We want drama and superheroes and saviors too much. And in an oft-dreary world, maybe this constant turnover of such figures -- whether they are made-up or real or "real" or who the fuck knows -- is needed as a catharsis, a palate cleanser, a release valve, a shot of Prozac, something.

Monica Quan, allegedly shot to death by Christopher Dorner

Lost in the media and social media clutter is the fact that a 28-year-old woman has been murdered -- who, according to said Dorner manifesto, "deserved" to die:

" I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own, I’m terminating yours."

Praise for Dorner

And so the "Dorner Manifesto" accomplishes two seemingly disparate goals:

1) Discredit OWS/Anonymous movements by goading them into backing a person who, under scrutiny, really shouldn't be backed or emulated.

2) Discredit NRA/"gun nuts" by making a strong argument for tight gun control laws -- not just by example of violence but actually making a premeditated, long, specific argument in the manifesto itself for said laws.

That's strange and contradictory to me, but that's the nature of Dorner's manifesto. In the end, it's playing both sides against each other. Surely a smart guy like Alex Jones can figure that one out.

Really, if you were writing a movie -- or purposely manipulating the public -- you could not do better than this story of a "modern day Rambo". It is media GOLD.

Dorner sends what is essentially a "PR Package" to Anderson Cooper

Of course, Dorner himself is just being used -- whether as a devil to the Right, or a "hero" to the Left. Being used to sell papers and running up web hits. Used by Charlie Sheen to sell his own fucking movie, a movie that just happens to come out at the same time he makes a public appeal to Dorner to contact him and "talk it out."

And, just as in the James Holmes case and so many others, Dorner's "rise to fame" will doubtless be an example for other unstable people.

Dorner is just another "celebrity" in this TMZ promo montage

And maybe that explains so many references to movie stars and other celebrities in Dorner's manifesto. In the end, not only does the public (feeling helpless and nondescript) "need" a hero -- but individual persons (feeling helpless and nondescript) need to feel popular. Need to feel heard -- but more than heard, need to feel like they are themselves celebrities.

Speaking of which, another sullen "Joker" has turned up causing trouble, this time at Applebees. Hasn't anyone told him of the "New Hotness?" Is this literal clown joining Beyonce with being "behind the curve" on the new zeitgeist?

"Old Hotness":  Jokers

For shame.

Lastly, here's a video from Stench of Truth talking about how the public gets distracted by shit like this and then turns on each other:

"It’s kind of sad I won’t be around to view and enjoy The Hangover III. What an awesome trilogy."
--Christopher Dorner

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Alex Jones, "Holmies," And Celebrity Doubles: Surfing Down The Chapel Perilous

Alex Jones makes the big-time.

"Chapel Perilous is a stage in the magickal quest in which your maps turn out to be totally inadequate for the territory and you're completely lost. And at that point you get an ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand. And then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff? And the people I know who've had that kind of experience, very few of them have come to an absolutely certain conclusion about this." 
-- Robert Anton Wilson 

I've stayed away from this blog for a number of reasons as of late, as several things have depressed me deeply and have shook my decision to continue writing this stuff.


The biggest thing on my radar is the Alex Jones meltdown on CNN recently. What a horrorshow. A friend of mine suggested that he was invited to speak on the Piers Morgan program with the producers specifically anticipating that he would go batshit crazy and make everybody else who is interested in fringe subjects also look like loonies; I partially agree with this assessment. It's almost like I can't completely blame Jones, as I think that the way he acted on that program was pretty much his honest-to-God default mechanism -- a mix between feeling paranoid away from his homebase, the adrenaline pumping from being on national TV, and so on.

But you know, a meltdown such as this doesn't help the thousands of people who do have legitimate questions about the status quo -- who desire to have a rational convo on gun control and whatnot. Doesn't help the NRA, doesn't help the cause of Alex's followers, doesn't help, doesn't help, doesn't help. And then Drudge chimes in with more incendiary headlines featuring pics of Adolph Hitler (which pretty much Godwins the entire discussion). I read these comments on Alex's YouTube, see these headlines on Drudge, read these articles like "The New South" on Salon, and I just think this is all a horrible combination, that's ultimately going to result in some Waco-like disaster.

"They are all the same actor"

Along those lines, at the beginning of the week I had an acquaintance targeted on this massive conspiracy site as the "actor-double" of James Holmes. This was a major clusterfuck nightmare, complete with my friend's contact info right on the website. The site -- which is extensive -- pretty much believes that most major events in the U.S. and whatnot have been staged by using celebrity actors. This site believes that Alice Cooper and Steve Carell are the same person. I had to read this site like 10 times to figure out if it was just an Onion-like put-on. It wasn't. And the fact that my acquaintance -- who, unlike most of the people libeled on the site, pretty much isn't even a celebrity (with celebrity-level security)  -- had his life turned upside-down over this was just horrifying.

An example of James Holmes fan art

Then there was stuff like the James Holmes fan club community coming out in full force this week -- which is another post entirely. They have their own conspiracy theories, which dovetails into these new Sandy Hook conspiracies....this Venn diagram of teenage fangirls and hardcore old-school theorists (some of whom believe that no children were harmed in SH and it was all just a Hollywood production)...

All these things and more makes fringe researchers -- or the merely curious -- look like maniacs, and distracts people from the real issues.

Fuck, it is so depressing. Reading some old stuff from Robert Anton Wilson and Tim Leary that's cheering me up a little bit, as well as a Red Ice Radio interview with Drunvalo Melchizedek that at least gave me some new positive ideas -- I mean, I don't buy everything Melchizedek says, but it was a good change of pace with some insights I haven't thought of before. Stench of Truth as usual tries to refocus stuff on the issues. And I got some good synchromystic notes written out that might make some fruitful posts -- or at least research for shits and giggles -- down the line. But this week was rough, with me questioning a lot of stuff.

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The Obsessed Comic Fan Dream

I had this creepy dream just before I woke up today, and I've decided to record it here while it is fresh. It contains several themes I've discussed on this blog before, notably Neo-Nerdism and James Holmes. It also involves larger themes of becoming obsessed with (in the case of this dream, pop-culture) nostalgia to the point of madness, themes showcased in the recent films "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Looper"; an examination of both movies will require a substantial amount of spoiler-alerts (another "neo-nerdist" term/concept that I think gets taken to too many extremes), so I'll do that in another post.

In the dream, a young man calmly walks into a generic work-space or store-space, hangs up a banner advertising his comics and toys sale, and just sets up his wares on the shelves. Completely with not asking the owners of said space for any permission to do so. It is immediately assumed he has some serious mental condition, and everybody, including me, are all on alert.

The image on the banner is supposed to be that of a sweet red-haired moppet like Raggedy Andy -- but looks more like Chucky from "Child's Play"!

The toys and other "collectibles" he's selling clearly look like memorabilia from his childhood -- action figures, comics, and whatnot, all with little tags hanging off of them with prices far more than any of these things are worth. Some of the objects are broken, and all have that sort of stale, slightly soot-encrusted look of things that have been stored in a basement or attic for a long time.

As for the man himself, I place him somewhere between mid-Twenties to mid-Thirties. Doesn't fit the pop-culture stereotype of the "Comic Book Guy" a la "The Simpsons," but rather is much more like a James Holmes type -- average weight, buttoned shirt, sort of boy-next-door. But the clean-cut look is all rather superficial the closer you look at him: then you notice he's a little "dirty," subtly disheveled, and kind of "off."

The most vivid detail I remember of this character was, though, his smell. If "crazy" had a specific odor, he had it. He smelled like formaldehyde.

The boss/owner -- who in the dream looks more like an older, Perry White sort of guy -- tells us to quietly file out of the space, as to not set-off this strange man who has set up shop out of nowhere and looks sort of quietly insane.

In the next scene, the cops are raiding this guy's house. It looks like the Dahmer house. Bones everywhere, filling the bathtub. But creepiest of all, are these little "ritual" packets he's made with the names of well-known figures in both the comics industry and media. The packets are made of something translucent that looks like rice-paper, and contains bones, feathers, and other crap.

At this point I wake up and am totally skeeved out.

Biggest impression I got about the dream was James Holmes, but a far more "in fandom" comics aficionado than Holmes. This was a person who placed far more worth on the pop-culture icons of his childhood than they deserved, and in the process was sort of stuck in time -- a baby-faced adult, but not in a cute way. All the names on his "hit list" were public figures in comics that he might have "blamed" for changing his characters into ways that he didn't agree with.

Do crazy people in comics fandom who are potentially like the person I've described in my dream really exist? Yes, they do. They send multiple death threats over things like changing the racial identity of a certain superhero, or "breaking up" a prominent comic book couple, and etc. Some have stalked females in the industry and fandom over years, threatening death and rape. Some, on the Internet, offer to rape the wives of editors who allow "travesties" in the comics; offering to cut off the editor's eyelids so he can watch his wife suffer.

fans got violently upset after a storyline where Spider-Man "broke up" with his wife

After my comics came out from Marvel, I was very paranoid about getting shot or attacked at these public comic events, and stayed under-the-radar for a few years. I got those threats, saw that nobody was taking them seriously, and just said "fuck it." Even now, I'm not completely cool about being at a certain venue if it's been publicly announced exactly where I'll be.

These obsessed fans seem, at the core, to have a very deep fear of CHANGE. They want to keep their fandoms, whether it be comics or whatnot, very pristine and untouched. Movies like "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Looper" feature characters literally driven insane in their attempts to bring back the past (although, of course, in "Looper" the idea of the past is relative).

This, coupled with what I feel was more of a James Holmes motivation -- to "be somebody" -- I think is a very dangerous combination. This is something I've been talking about for years, with very few people taking it seriously. "Death threats are common in comics," they tell me. It's like "Internet threats." They're not real.

Well, I hope nothing like what I saw in my dream really does happen. But even if it doesn't, this obsession with nostalgia -- something I've detailed in posts like "Jurassic Park Thoughts: How Dennis Nedry Ruined Entertainment" and "Twilight of the Action Movie Gods" -- strangles creativity and new ideas, the Old literally cannibalizing the Young like Cronus devouring his godlings.

ahhh...NOSTALGIA!

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So. There's Apparently A James Holmes Fan Community.

They describe themselves as (wait for it) "Holmies":

Before I left for San Diego Comic-Con I posted about fans of accused serial killer/cannibal/porn star Luka Magnotta. The post, which was a news round-up of a number of stories, has far-and-away been the most-visited of my entire site -- I'm not sure because of the Magnotta item or the "Chuck Dixon Needs To Learn Karaoke" piece. In light of recent events, the irony that in the post I made a comparison between the Magnotta groupies and the Joker/Harley Quinn relationship is also not lost on me:

Anyway, the online fan community built around James Holmes has the Magnotta groupies beat, especially when you consider that the tragic Aurora shooting happened only 11 days ago. They post fan art on Tumblr, speculate that he really didn't commit the crime or was part of an "Illuminati" mind-control program, organize letter-writing campaigns to Holmes in jail, and fetishize plaid shirts (cuz that's what Holmes was wearing when he got arrested).

Not the place to do a deep sociological analysis of this phenomenon just yet, but just to say: "yes, this too exists." But a couple of interesting points to note:

 1. These fans -- the majority of which seem to be females in their teens or early twenties -- have really sort of picked-up the fringe conspiracy lingo and ran with it. For example:

"do i think james holmes is guilty? that is not my place to assume. i'm not the jury, but i am someone who is fascinated. i've researched the whole illuminati deal and have read tons of articles."

Is this the partial result of the popularity of "Pop Conspiracy" sites like Vigilant Citizen, which focuses a lot on pop stars and youth culture?

2. You'll be reassured to know that apparently Columbine fandom has made a comeback, as well as moldy oldies like Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, etc.

A helpful chart for the noobs

3. Not all "Holmies" should be painted with the same brush: while some seem to actually find him attractive and are "fans," others are into this as just a (obvs, bad taste) joke and are "doing it for the lulz". Some also claim to be genuinely interested because they feel he is mentally ill and didn't get enough help/should not get the death penalty.

As disturbing as all this is, I don't think sites like Tumblr banning these pages is really going to help anything. All it does is drive the "fandom" further underground, and add to the "dangerous" mystique which is probably one of the driving factors in the "Holmies" phenomenon to begin with. Similarly, filling their pages full of angry comments won't really help in the long run, either; they have gone so far as to consider such actions cyberbulling, and claim they have the right to free speech.

If I haven't mentioned this before: having sympathy for, or "being in love with," serial killers is hardly a new phenomenon. The Columbine duo had their fans back in the day, as well as "Vampire Killer" Rod Ferrell, etc. But whereas in the Nineties one might emulate one's fave psycho by wearing black and perhaps wearing an inverted pentagram (a result of the media erroneously labelling such killers as "Goths" and "devil-worshipers") -- if you're a fan of James Holmes, you might dig brightly-colored "plaid shirts and Slurpies" (a motto sometimes used by "Holmies"), post photos of young "mad genius" Holmes hanging out in the science lab, or draw surprisingly-skilled chibi versions of the carrot-topped individual.

How times change...

Postscript: throughout my perusing of many pro-Holmes Tumblrs, I found surprisingly few references to "The Joker," Batman, or comic books of any kind. Not sayin' they aren't there, just saying I didn't find many, and they were certainly not the main thing the "Holmies" were fixated on. This may be the one case where the comic book industry's failure to appeal to young female readers is actually a good thing.

Postscript 2:

Just had to say that.

Also:

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The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning: From San Diego To Aurora

Before I make any commentary on the tragedy at Colorado, I'd like to go back in time and tell you how I spent my "summer vacation." Indulge me, will you?

Menu at the Hilton, SDCC

Last week, I was knee-deep in San Diego Comic-Con. I had been in sunny San D since Tuesday, July 10th. Throughout all the festivities, I felt a sense of...what is the word...objectivity about everything I saw. I just couldn't let myself fall into the "wonder" of the pageantry before me -- instead, looking at the whole shebang with the clinical eyes of a sociologist, not a fan. Maybe I was just too tired from my journey. Maybe I ate too much seafood. I didn't even really drink a lot. I felt bad about my lack of zest, totally Charlie Browning the entire event. As I waited for the taxi to pick me up to go home, a travelling companion even whistled the "Christmas Time Is Here" song from the Peanuts special.

Line for "Hall H" -- SDCC

Anyway, I took about 200 photographs at SDCC, mostly not of cosplayers, celebrities, and various wonders -- but instead, of long lines, advertising signage, people wearing giant billboard-like bags, protesters of various stripes, "Twilight Tent Cities," and the like. I took these photos casually, not really with any end-goal in mind. People looked at me like I was crazy. Why was I taking in-depth photos of a group of tired, twenty- and thirty-something women with Robert Pattinson t-shirts slumped under a tent like refugees; sleeping bags, blankets, water-jugs and shopping carts filled with what looked like their life's possessions strewn about? Why was I carefully photo-documenting the ads for new television shows and movies about the post-apocalypse that plastered the restaurants and sides of buildings...and even covered entire buildings, like the hotel I stayed in, and the one that loomed ominously across the convention center?


"Looper" advertisement, SDCC

Why was I taking photos of people cheerfully standing in line to be literally chained as zombies, or painted to look like zombies, or undergo a simulated alien violation of their body, or be packaged under plastic as an action figure? Didn't I want a photo opp for myself, to share on Facebook?

Con-goer at "Falling Skies" exhibit, SDCC

Throughout it all, I had the following vague idea: our pop-culture both shapes, and reflects back to us, our own selves and the world in which we live in. (It also very occasionally -- in some very strange, somewhat uncanny way -- presages future events.)

Murals on restaurant windows, SDCC

Now, in fan circles, the concept that comic books, movies, video games and the like might have any impact at all on a person's emotions/actions/beliefs is highly taboo. We shan't go into that concept here.

What I would like to talk about instead is my trip to San Diego, and what happened afterward. Indulge me, will you?

So anyway, I took all these photographs, jotted down a bunch of notes -- but that isn't all I took back from San Diego Comic-Con. I also invested $25 -- a huge sum for me -- to buy a cute little stuffed animal of Batman-as-a-puppy-as-a-skull-creature. Part of a toy line heavily promoted at the show called "Skelanimals," I was initially attracted to the doll because he heavily reminded me of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead. I'm a big fan of Egyptian mythology, and I thought this toy was just adorable.

Anubis Batman "Skelanimal" display, SDCC

Anyway, I got home -- and before I even really had a chance to recover from my trip, me and my husband had to make the painful decision to put our eldest cat down. Suffering from hyperthyroidism and rapidly losing weight, we had boarded Simon with a vet who could monitor his condition and give him steady nourishment and meds. Unfortunately, he not only didn't gain any additional weight -- he had a stroke. Near-blind, unable to walk steady, and mostly skin-and-bones, it was clear what had to be done. But it was so unbelievably sad, the type of sadness that I think only cat-owners really understand. At one point I made a drunken Facebook post about how cats really are individuals with their own interior lives...I'm sure some friends and family somberly witnessed the screed and feared I was becoming a Crazy Catlady.

At the very same time, I received a promotional package for "The Dark Knight Rises" movie.

Throughout the last month, I had been reading/reviewing a large amount of Batman-related material. I worshipped Batman in my youth, but never really felt close to the character after that -- with the possible exception of the "Batmania" of 1989 when the Tim Burton movie came out. Recently, I was feeling that very same "Batmania," the hype and ballyhoo surrounding "TDKR" whipping up the same sort of excitement -- to the point that recently I had a dream in which I was the "TDKR" Catwoman being saved by Batman from the Joker. Looking over the promotional materials for the movie, I made a decision right there to watch a screening this weekend, and catch up with the first two via On-Demand.

Admittedly, the recent stories about obsessive Batman fans ganging up in droves upon reviewers who didn't like the movie -- and going so far as to write death treats -- sort of soured the festivities somewhat. But it's the *Internet* after all...

On the night of July 19th, I went to bed with my subconscious swirling in a stew of those pictures from SDCC, memories of my cat Simon, and Batman. And when I woke up, my husband informed me that there was a shooting in Colorado at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises."

While the scope of the massacre was not on the level of casualties of Hurricane Katrina, or 9/11, I still felt that sickeningly-familiar feeling of numbness, depression and utter horror. I spent the day in a daze, unable to write, my eyes glued to the news on my computer and my phone. It was unimaginable to me the sorrow the families of the victims were going through. Lives were not only cut too short, but would be impacted for a long time to come via injuries and post-traumatic stress.

But, according to some fans and even industry professionals, that wasn't the *worst* thing to come out of all this. The very worst thing would be..."letting them take away Our Batman!"

Really, Misters Trey Parker & Matt Stone, get on a cartoon parodying this jaw-dropping lack of tact and empathy, stat!

But I'm not going to get into all that here, or break down for you all the myriad of feelings, theories, interpretations, outrages, and etc. I have regarding this entire horrific incident. I'm not sure if a personal blog that theoretically is "targeted" to comic book fans is the right place to have these discussions. I really want to devote more of my private writing pursuits taking a sociological/psychological/symbolic view at our pop-culture, and I don't know if that's something some "traditional" fans can handle without completely losing their shit. I'm reminded of a particular quote from "Easy Rider" about "freedom" that in itself is, in context of recent events, too incendiary to repeat here. But I am reminded of that quote.

I have nothing against the makers of "The Dark Knight Rises." I don't want to see Batman "banned." I will see the movie eventually, but it won't be any time soon because I'm just so sad. I'm just sad. I'm just depressed and haunted over the loss of life, here -- as I'm sure Christopher Nolan is, and Christian Bale, and Batman's publishers and writers and artists.

What we need to always remember is:

In the end, it isn't about comic books and your favorite fictional characters. It is about the lives and well-being of your fellow human beings.

In the end, it isn't about comic books and your favorite fictional characters. It is about the lives and well-being of your fellow human beings.

In the end, it isn't about comic books and your favorite fictional characters. It is about the lives and well-being of your fellow human beings.



              Batmobile display, the morning after the last day of San Diego Comic-Con

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