09.07.10
Superhumanly nausea provoking
Good news, lads! Good news! They’ve made The Making of The Claw into a supermovie.
Today’s Culture of Lickspittle vignette comes from the outpour of huzzah for Danny Boyle’s latest pic, 127 Hours, a movie on Aron Claw Ralston and his amputation.
You may have forgotten the name but movie critics at all the big metropolis papers, and their features editors, will guarantee you get the full story. You’ll recall, the hiker who forgot to tell people where he was going, got trapped under a boulder, and cut off his arm with a knife to get out of it.
It was the best career move he ever made. Which we’ll get to in a minute.
First, the Cult of Lickspittle quote, from today’s LA Times Calender section:
[Danny Boyle] says that while it’s easy to look at Ralston’s story as the unimaginable demonstration of superhumanism, he believes that we are all capable of doing the same thing if the situation demanded it.
Unimaginable superhumanism.
I’m sure it seems that way to movie critics at Telluride. After all, it’s where the fancy and fine people go to gasp at the nausea provoking repackaged as inspirational.
Ralston’s story is many things. Something I’d not want to read at length or see a movie about are two of them.
It also seems to be a lesson, albeit an unfortunately cynical one.
If you happenstance yourself into a deadly misadventure and survive in a grotesque fashion, and can get it onto 60 Minutes, because of the pure titillating nature and freakishness of it, your ship just came in.
And from here, it’s to the DD Wayback Machine for what I had to say about The Claw a couple years ago:
Today’s entertainment news amusement concerns the idolatry for Aron “The Claw” Ralston. Dick Destiny blog didn’t know his name, and it wagers others do not either, but it does remember him as the hiker who went into a canyon, had his hand trapped under a boulder, and a few days later cut off his forarm with a Swiss Army knife or Gerber multi-tool or something.
Of this it can be certain, he was stupid but gutsy. He didn’t tell anyone where we was going and when he would be back, a simple enough way to have avoid cutting his arm off when he got into trouble.
Anyway, the Los Angeles Times Calendar section informs Ralston is a semi-celebrity, a pitchman for beer as well as a corporate motivational speaker. One can imagine the hilarity of a Ralston-led inspirational seminar for corporate crooks.
Ralston: “Remember, if you’re really in trouble because of shitty decisions, you have the steel within you to cut off your arm and completely distract everyone from your lack of management skill or ethical lapses! I did it! You can too!”
[Crowd of dumb white men in suits, who look all alike, erupts!]
However, maybe it’s not that motivating. Ralston could say something like this: “I’m convinced that being able to cut off my arm with a pen knife was a miracle and that it was given to me to share with other people!”
From the crowd: “What, your amputated forarm? You brought it along?”
Come to think of it, Ralston did almost say that. It was in the newspaper but I juiced it a little.
Ralston is also known to friends as Captain Fun Hog for his risk-taking and after making the rounds of the newsmedia with his nub healed over, he wrote a book proposal. The title was not “Buy This Book Or I’ll Cut Off My Other Arm” but the less insouciant, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” The Times informed The Claw received a six-figure advance and it is now a bestseller.
The Claw also is a pitchman for Miller beer. “The guy cut off his own arm to save his life,” said a fugelman from Miller. “He knows how men need to act.” Now, Dick Destiny has always enjoyed Miller but no matter how much consumed has never been inspired to cut off a forarm with a pen knife. On the other hand, “Enough Miller and you won’t mind amputation” has an unusual zip to it. (Or, “Miller — your select choice before lifesaving self-surgery.”)
The Los Angeles Times reported that Ralston would never again repeat his hiking mistake. One reckons this is a sincere claim, as it would be tough to cut off the other forarm with only the old stump available to hold a cutting tool. It can be conceded that there is always the wild animal caught in a steel trap procedure: Gnaw it off. That would be good for another book.
It is said, Ralston has spoken to disabled veterans: “If your arm is trapped under the twisted wreckage of the Hummer. . . Oh wait, that’s not quite the same. Forget I said it.”
That last bit is satire, folks.