More from Don Hall! (You know you want it.)

Long time readers know that one of my flaws is that I simply enjoy belligerent stupidity too much to leave it alone. Indeed, I almost savor it. Yes, I know this is wrong - and I know someday I'll be in some circle of Purgatory blogging for Isaac Butler or something to atone for my sins. But in the meantime, the flesh is weak. And my inherent love of pleasure - even this perverse form of pleasure - is strong.

So I have to go back and make some more fun of Don Hall, a.k.a. "The Angry White Guy in Chicago" (above left), with my only justification being that he keeps sending me the material himself! I was good earlier today - you have to give me credit; I didn't publish the ridiculous comment that purported to justify his previous outbursts, but soon devolved into calling me a "douche." That's right. Ouch, that really hurt, Don! Stop it, you big bully! I did at least allude to the pointlessness of protesting one's reputation for homophobia by means of a slur against women. But somehow I think that was all lost on the Chicago blogosphere's answer to Einstein.

Because the funnyman is back! I got the follow-up below earlier today:

What a complete coward. And a douchebag.

I encourage you to admit openly that your argument about Tarantino/Thomas has nothing whatsoever to do with politics and that it has everything to do with your own Deadly Theatrical tendencies of artistic taste.

I understand that you are caught up in that conundrum of being so invested into [sic] an argument that you realize is false that it’s hard to admit your error. Do it anyway. The homophobe thing is a dodge and you know it.

This is pretty good, isn't it. Like so many commenters, Hall seems to feel that if he simply repeats himself he will somehow transcend his offensiveness, or the holes in his logic. And if that doesn't happen? Well, he just repeats himself again.

Also - note the intriguing capitalization of "Deadly Theatrical" (we'll ignore the misuse of "conundrum," and the ungrammatical "invested into," for the time being). Do I sense a theory of sorts banging around in that cute little pink tutu? Yes, I think I do!

But let's leave that hobbyhorse for another ride, too. In the meantime, let's simply savor the sheer blindness of the post - what I love about it most is Hall's claim, which sounds rather like a child singing to itself in the dark, that I "realize my argument is false but can't admit my error." Uh-huh. I hate to tell Hall that in fact, I'm just getting started. I've yet to really work out the parallel between Tarantino and Reifenstahl, or - better yet - the fact that Tarantino anticipates, even invites, the parallel himself, as evidenced by the many refs to Reifenstahl in Inglourious Basterds. In short, the meme has just begun, Bozo. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

As for whether you are aware of your own homophobia - please, who cares. Likewise your dependence on reverse class snobbery (and ageism!) as replacements for thought. That's how you run your blog, obviously - it's how you went so wrong on Under Milk Wood, for instance. How could I change you? I can't, and I'm not interested in doing so. You've served your purpose as Exhibit A, now move along.

"I'm not a homophobe, you aging queen!" Chicago's angry, dumb white guy lets out his inner bigot

What was that old Laurie Anderson line? "Oh boy, I said, right again?" I've been feeling like that quite a bit recently, as I've skirmished with various Quentin Tarantino fans around the web. My thesis on Tarantino, as you may recall, was that his aesthetic of torture and vigilantism might have primed us to accept the torture regime of Dick Cheney - confirmation of that idea came quickly, in various right-wing blogs applauding the film's politics (a typical line: "Tarantino has a message for everyone . . . enhanced interrogation works.") Meanwhile the Atlantic Monthly fretted over what the movie's sadistic, empowered Jews might mean for the Palestinians. Quentin apparently has something for everyone.

Most Tarantino fans, of course, just kept happily watching the torture and munching their popcorn. But some have been actually irritated by anyone pointing out that what they were doing was a bit like sliding into a red-velvet seat next to the Führer at the premiere of Triumph of the Will (excerpt below) and telling themselves, "Hey, it's only a movie!"



Because after all, it was only a movie, wasn't it? (That's what Leni Reifenstahl always said!)

No one's been angrier, however, than the eponymous Angry White Guy in Chicago, blogger Don Hall (above left), who has been tangling with me, in a rather discombobulated fashion, here.

Hall's "arguments," such as they were, ran along the following lines:

"I believe that Great Art asks questions that can be interpreted a variety of ways and I see Leftist interpretations of "Basterds" as valid as Rightwing views [sic]. That's why I love Tarantino."

Uh-huh. Now I'm not making that up, that's really what he wrote. Great Art. Shakespeare. Rembrandt. Quentin Tarantino. Yesssssss. Sensing a strong streak of inner stupid in Hall, I pressed on, and got huge geysers of idiocy for my pains:

You compare Tarantino's work to a recognized Nazi Propagandist yet won't admit you are then placing it upon the same cultural and political pedestal. You say it isn't "art" because we're all of a different generation than you - what're you - 70? Because I'm 43 and I think the man is a filmic genius. (Just btw, I'm only a few years older than Hall, and perhaps the only really interesting thing about Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's seeming identification with Riefenstahl!]

Now I couldn't follow that last bit, either, but there was more wackiness to come - and things took a turn for the worse once I began to look around his site. Because, of course, if someone declares that he can perceive Quentin Tarantino is "Great Art" than you're kind of curious about what else he might think is "Great Art."

This search was not edifying. Immediately I came upon Hall's review of a Chicago production of Under Milk Wood, in which he compared the Dylan Thomas classic to the "oozey, drippy unending sweetness of Hummel figurines and commemorative plates." Hall went on to apparently try to ape one of the twentieth century's greatest poets thus:

Anger Angryson and the Devil Vet saunter,
like two patrons of the Arts, the Theatrical Arts,
with their words and actions and motivations, costumes,
sets made of wood and rope and paint,
curtains, stools, steps and craft,
into the Storefront Theater, eager for an evening out.

The Actors, filled with Joy, Nerves, Sweat, and the Fulfillment
of a House Sold Out
take the stage slowly and with method, like
Cats or Slow Birds on the Prowl for Sustenance
and Begin the Play That is Not a Play
but a long series of behaviors described
and lists of details and metaphors and poetic statements.

Uh - what? Here's a stretch of Under Milk Wood, that I guess Hall imagines he is parodying:

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear
the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir
of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark,
Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,
the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional
salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row,
it is the grass growing on Llaregyb Hill, dewfall, starfall,
the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.


Dylan Thomas.

Pretty wonderful, huh. James Joyce might have had a quarrel with it, but I don't.

So okay, Don Hall doesn't have an ear for poetry, or a hand for it, either (to him, the play's "beautiful language" is like being "beaten in the face with a thesaurus"). But he also doesn't seem to have a brain: "Baby, this shit is like staring at a beautiful Hummel figurine for 90 minutes," he insists, even though almost nothing in Under Milk Wood is sentimental or cloying in any way. Then again, he also seems to imagine that Dylan Thomas is Irish! Obviously he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a theatre, and I hope no one's wasting press tickets on him.

But back to Tarantino. See the problem for Hall's "Tarantino is Art" argument is that in his Dylan Thomas review, he reveals that he doesn't know art from a hole in the ground. This seemed to me pertinent, so I brought it up, and that's when things got really interesting:

Given that you have no more credential than I, you can stuff [that] up your lofty ass . . . why not just own up to the fact that your argument about "Basterds" is merely one of an effete poo-pooing the poor taste of a filmmaker [you despise] rather than all of your nonsense political right wing-sponsored horseshit?

I can just as easily make the claim that you are put off by Tarantino and love the nuance of Thomas because Thomas satisfies your Deadly Theatrical notions of what art should be rather than what art is, you aging queen.

Again, yesssss. Readers of this blog no doubt remember that one of my secondary points about Quentin Tarantino is that his fans tend to be homophobic. And what was that line from Laurie Anderson? "Oh boy, right again!"