Under the Influence

I’ve been hearing lately about a video game that people seem to be excited about, called “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.” Apparently it’s the latest of many installments of the Legend of Zelda series, which dramatizes the adventures of a young hero named Link and a wise princess named Zelda.

As someone who has never played video games — apart from some brief sessions of Pong, which came out when I was in college — I’m unable to comment on the merits of the Zelda series or its newest iteration. I do, however, have two reactions. First, a princess named Zelda? The name Zelda, for me, doesn’t conjure fantasies of medieval kingdoms; it makes me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mentally unstable spouse or some Long Islander’s Jewish grandmother. But my more significant beef is with the full name “The Legend of Zelda.”

The story of Zelda, whatever it may be, is not a legend. A legend is a tale that has come to us from so distant a past that we have no way to trace its beginnings. In fact, it’s so embedded in our culture that its historical accuracy — or lack of it — has become irrelevant; the fact that it has been retold over so many generations grants it its own sort of authenticity. King Arthur’s court is a legend. Robin Hood’s band of merry men is a legend.

Zelda, by contrast, was invented (according to Wikipedia) by a pair of Japanese game designers in 1986, and her adventures have been made up as they go along. If her story is referred to as a legend, then it’s a faux legend, an imitation of a legend.

So why is this series of games called “The Legend of Zelda” rather than “The Story of Zelda” or “The Adventures of Zelda”? Obviously, it’s for reasons of marketing. The use of the word “legend” gives the series a feeling of weight and significance that it doesn’t actually merit. If I were a game player, my realization that the marketers of Zelda are trying to manipulate me by using that emotionally resonant word would immediately put me on my guard and make me less likely to want to buy the product.

I admit that most people would consider this an overreaction. I do confess to being unusually sensitive to the idea of being manipulated, and becoming more so as time passes. Most recently, I’ve become irritated by the use of underscoring in movies to tell me how I’m supposed to feel about a scene.

If you watch the earliest sound films from the late 1920s and early 1930s, you’ll notice that there’s no background music at all. Partly this is for reasons of technology — originally, there was no way to add music to a scene after it was shot — but it was also because filmmakers were concerned that if music was heard behind the characters’ dialogue, audiences would wonder where the music was coming from. A film’s score, if any, was limited to “diegetic” music, which is music that comes from a specific source in the world of the film — such as a band in a nightclub or a phonograph in an apartment, which would almost always be shown onscreen.

I’ve really come to appreciate the spare sonic landscape of those early films, where often the only extraneous sound is the random crackle of the soundtrack. It gives the film a feeling of immediacy and authenticity that’s missing from the carefully crafted sound mixes that came later. When I watch a modern film, I often find myself mentally filtering out the background music to sense whether the scene works dramatically without it. Much of the time, it doesn’t — which makes me resent the director who, in my mind, is cheating by using music to manipulate my emotions in a way that the scene doesn’t accomplish on its own.

Given my feelings about manipulation, you can imagine how mystified I am by the fact that “influencer” is now an accepted job title in the world of social media. Of course, celebrity endorsements have always been used to market products, but the intent to manipulate wasn’t nearly as overt as it is now. If anyone came to me and said, “I am an influencer, and I’m here to influence you,” I’d run the other way. So who are the people who are agreeing — nay, demanding — to be influenced, and thus, by definition, handing over their free will? And why would anyone choose to be one of them?

Posted July 12, 2023 by Mark S
Category: Society
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Double Door

As my old friend Regina could tell you, I’m usually able to appreciate a good pun. But there’s one pun-based riddle that has always annoyed me: “When is a door not a door?” The answer is, “When it’s a jar (i.e., ajar).” When I was a child, the riddle was incomprehensible and hence not funny, simply because I was unfamiliar with the word “ajar.” Even when the word eventually entered my vocabulary — in a house shared with cats and kittens, a door that’s ajar can be a bad thing — the riddle still irritated me, because its premise is clearly untrue. When a door is ajar, it doesn’t stop being a door. It’s a door and it’s a jar.

As unintuitive as it seems, two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. The difference lies in the context. For example, in the context of ethnicity, I’m Jewish. In the context of religion, I’m not. A Nazi would say that I’m Jewish, a Hassid would say that I’m not, and both would be correct.

I belong to a chorus whose music, with few exceptions, is arranged for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. My voice would normally be classified as baritone, but that’s not one of the options, so I found my home in the tenor section. In the context of the chorus, I’m a tenor; in the context of solo singing, I’m a baritone. Both can be true at the same time.

These examples — to me at least — feel uncontroversial. So I wonder why cases involving gender can’t be equally straightforward. My chorus (if I may use it in another example) used to include, in each season’s repertoire, one song performed just by the men and another performed just by the women. There’s a long tradition of this in choral music: Men’s voices and women’s voices have such distinctively different qualities that songs are often arranged for one or the other. (Think of the contrasting sounds of the Mills Brothers and the Andrews Sisters.) But a few years ago, we permanently dropped the men’s and women’s songs in order to avoid discomfort for gender-nonconforming people.

I’m all for sparing people unnecessary discomfort. But is it really necessary to eliminate entire categories of music? Just about every person I’ve ever met, regardless of their gender identity, has what is traditionally considered a man’s voice or a woman’s voice. Can’t we say to someone, “In the context of society, you’re a trans woman/nonbinary person/gender-fluid individual, but in the context of choral music, you’re a man”? (In cases of people whose voices are not neatly categorizable, they can choose the group that they fit into more comfortably, just as I, a baritone, chose tenor over bass.)

I hesitate to wander into politically disputed territory, but can’t we say the same thing about restrooms? I’m a great fan of urinals. They use less water, take up less space, and require fewer surrounding walls than toilets. Practically speaking, it makes sense for anyone who can physically use a urinal to use one. Perhaps one day there will be one big room where everyone can urinate into the fixture of their choice, but for now, urinals are almost universally found behind the door marked “Men.” So can’t we say, if only for environmental reasons, that — strictly in the context of elimination — anyone who can make use of a urinal is considered a man?

I understand that there is more at stake here than practicality. I can see how for someone who has been has been maligned, demeaned, threatened, or attacked for not conforming to traditional notions of gender, the idea of being asked to accept a label that they have so long fought against would be abhorrent. But if we could break from the habit of assigning a single label to each person, to recognizing that everyone can have multiple labels in multiple contexts, the meaning and force of any individual label would be reduced. If a door can simultaneously be a door and ajar, can’t a person simultaneously be a man and a woman, depending on the context? And wouldn’t that then be true of most of us?

Posted May 31, 2023 by Mark S
Category: Society
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The Deal of the Art

Among the newsworthy events during our stay in the UK (such as the death of the Queen and the self-destruction of the Prime Minister) was the attack on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” by soup-wielding climate activists at London’s National Gallery. Debra and I happened to be in the National Gallery a few days after the incident, and we were surprised to see “Sunflowers” looking as good as new, with not even a residual mark on the wall to which the perpetrators had reportedly superglued themselves. Still, each succeeding attack on a piece of art increases the danger that permanent damage will be done.

Climate change is the most urgent crisis facing humanity, but doing anything about it has proved to be politically challenging. The protestors’ aim was clearly to shock our leaders (or to shock us into pressuring our leaders) into taking action, but — as with most such stunts — they don’t appear to have succeeded. Everyone was shocked, all right, but the outcome has not been bold action against climate change; it’s been bold action to curtail the smuggling of groceries into art museums.

I remember, about twenty years ago, hearing an interview with a skateboarder on public radio. At the time, many people were upset about the damage done to public and private property by young people doing tricky maneuvers on skateboards. The skateboarder being interviewed said that he had no desire to cause harm. “Look, all I want to do is skate,” he said. In short, if skateboarding caused property damage, that was regrettable; but if the alternative was not to skate — that was unthinkable.

I think of that skateboarder when I consider the tactics used by climate activists. I know that they have no real desire to ruin priceless works of art. But if the alternative is to let the world continue burning fossil fuels as if there were no consequences, then that alternative is unacceptable.

Of course, in each case we’re being presented with a false dilemma. In the case of the skateboarder, it turned out that the options were not limited to skating or not skating. The problem of property damage was largely solved by cities building skateboard parks that were designed to accommodate skaters’ needs. In the case of climate protests — or, for that matter, any political protests — there must be other ways to draw the public’s attention to an urgent cause.

Here’s my idea: Every day, a variety of serious crimes make their way into the news media. Theft, assault, vandalism, fraud — local TV newscasts love them! For obvious reasons, the people who commit these crimes generally prefer to remain nameless. So, why not set up a registry that allows activist organizations to attach their names to otherwise unattributed criminal acts? Imagine, for example…

  • “This is Channel 11 news, live on the scene at an Exxon-Mobil gasoline station that was robbed earlier this evening. Three intruders made off with an estimated $2,000 in cash. The identities of the robbers are unknown, but the advocacy group Just Stop Oil later took credit for the robbery in an effort to call attention to the dangers of fossil fuels.”
  • “Police now believe that the fire that consumed a suburban convenience store last night was intentionally set. While arson investigators continue looking for definitive proof of how the fire began, an organization called Extinction Rebellion has claimed responsibility for the blaze, citing it as a warning of more fires to come if global temperatures continue to rise.”
  • “A spate of carjackings that have roiled the downtown area in the past two weeks have led to an increased police presence on city streets. Although the carjacking incidents appear to be unconnected, the environmental group Climate Emergency Fund claims to be behind them, hoping that they will encourage commuters to abandon their cars in favor of public transportation.”

If more than one group wants to attach its name to an event, a system could be set up that allows naming rights to go to the highest bidder. The result would be better all around: Rather than engage in further lawbreaking to get the public’s attention, activist groups could concentrate on fundraising to sponsor criminal acts that have already been committed. The money raised could go toward compensating the victims of those crimes. And the public would be forced to take notice of environmental and political issues that they might otherwise ignore.

Am I totally serious about this? Of course not. But I hope that similarly outside-the-box thinking will lead to a way for us to curb humanity’s worst instincts without causing unnecessary harm to some of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Posted January 4, 2023 by Mark S
Category: Society
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All Bets Are Off

I’ve written previously about how puzzled I am by the use of walkathons, bikeathons, and similar events as a way of soliciting charitable donations. If a friend were to come to you and say, “I’d like you to demonstrate your loyalty to me by contributing $50 to cancer research, which is a cause I strongly believe in,” I think most people would consider that rude —taking inappropriate advantage of a friendship. Yet if the same friend were to say, “I’ll be walking ten miles in support of cancer research, and I’d like you to sponsor me at a rate of $5 per mile,” that would be considered perfectly legitimate. I’m not sure why, since the only difference between the two cases is that the latter one requires the friend to engage in a thoroughly unproductive activity that does nothing to contribute to curing cancer.

Lately I’ve been having a similar reaction to the many requests I’ve been receiving — by email and, increasingly, by text — from political candidates asking me to contribute to their campaigns. That’s certainly considered legitimate, but I’m not sure why.

A contribution to a political campaign is not the same as a charitable gift. If I donate to a charity, it’s because I know that my contribution will support work that I consider valuable. But in the case of a candidate, even if I think that the candidate intends to work toward noble goals, my contribution does nothing to advance that work — it only indicates my wish for the candidate to be elected. If the candidate is not elected, my money has accomplished nothing.

You would probably object that my contribution doesn’t merely represent my desire for the candidate to get elected; it actually helps the candidate get elected. If that’s the case, perhaps my contribution should be thought of as an investment rather than a charitable donation. After all, if I invest in a business venture, I have no assurance that the venture is going to be successful; it’s quite possible that I’ll lose my money with nothing to show for it. But a campaign contribution is different from an investment in two important ways.

First, if I do invest in a business, it’s because someone has shown me exactly how my money is going to be used, and has demonstrated to me in detail how their plan for building the business is likely to pan out. With a political campaign, I have no idea how my money will be used, and I have no reason to be confident that my contribution will change the outcome of the race.

Second, my investment in a business buys me something. I become a part-owner of that business, and therefore benefit directly from its success. My contribution to a political campaign buys me nothing. You might argue that if my candidate wins, I will benefit from the policies that elected official will put in place, and that would constitute the payoff from my investment. But people who didn’t contribute to the campaign would get exactly the same payoff, so what is the benefit to me of making that contribution?

Well then, if donating to a political campaign isn’t equivalent to a charitable contribution, and it’s not equivalent to an investment, what is it? Perhaps it should just be thought of as gambling. I put down my money, and I either get the reward that I want, or I don’t. The outcome is a result of pure luck, or more accurately, a complex interplay of forces beyond my control.

You might say, as before, that the money I put into the system affects the outcome, and that therefore what I’m doing is technically not gambling. But there are plenty of other situations that are similar. If I buy more raffle tickets than any of the other participants, my chance of winning is better than theirs. If I drop quarters strategically enough into a Las Vegas quarter-pusher machine, I have a better chance of making a bunch of quarters spill over the edge. But in both cases, what I’m doing is still considered gambling.

As a rule, I don’t gamble, and so it would be easy enough for me to say that I therefore will ignore all of those requests for campaign contributions. And yet, that conclusion doesn’t feel right, either. As much as I believe that political candidates shouldn’t have to raise huge amounts of money to run for office, and that some sort of public financing is the best solution, it seems unlikely that any such thing will come about in the foreseeable future. We have a rotten system, but it’s the only system we have. I only wish that people would stop accepting it as reasonable and normal, in the way that they so inexplicably have accepted walkathons.

Posted October 4, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Society
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Take Me Out From the Ball Game

Despite my complete lack of interest in sports, social circumstances have required me, every ten years or so, to attend a major-league baseball game. This isn’t as horrible as it sounds, because — thanks to my dad dragging me to Mets games when I was a kid — I at least understand the rules of baseball. Football by contrast, is a complete mystery to me. It appears to consist almost entirely of men piling on top of each other, with the piles occasionally migrating toward one goalpost or the other.

As frequent commenter John Ozment has pointed out, unfamiliarity with the game was a liability in childhood phys ed classes. The gym teacher would never explain how to play football; it was just assumed that everybody knew. We were just told to go out on the field — shirts vs. skins — and play it.

Even if I’d had some insight into the game, I completely lacked the skills to do anything about it, so I was generally assigned to the position of linebacker. My teammates would patiently show me how to fold my arms in front of me, and then explain that the players from the other team were going to run toward me, and that my job was to keep them from getting through the line. That, of course, was a crazy idea. It was clear to me that if a determined, physically fit body was charging at me, there was no possible way I could impede its progress. So when said body was in fact hurtling toward me, I did the sensible thing and stepped out of the way. I have no memory of what sorts of things would happen after that, although I assume that they involved people piling on top of one another.

Baseball is a different story. Although I lack the ability to throw, catch, or hit a ball, I at least understand what it means when other people do it. So when I make my decennial visits to a major-league ballpark, I’m at least theoretically equipped to cheer and hiss at the appropriate times. What I wasn’t prepared for was the crowd’s behavior at my most recent Oakland A’s game. (This was well over ten years ago — I’m long overdue for my next baseball experience.) When the members of the opposing team made their entrances, each introduced by name, the Oakland fans booed them. Not because of anything they’d done — the game hadn’t started yet — but simply because they belonged to a rival team.

I was appalled, as I explained to a friend later. “I thought baseball was supposed to be about good sportsmanship!” I said. “Aren’t the players on the other team professionals, deserving of respect? And when people from somewhere else visit your city, aren’t you supposed to make them feel welcome?” My friend looked at me as if I were a space alien in a human-skin suit.

But it used to be about good sportsmanship, didn’t it? I don’t remember any Mets fans booing the teams who visited Shea Stadium in the 1960s. For that matter, I don’t remember such a thing happening when I made my first visit to the Oakland Coliseum thirty-something years ago. The only explanation I can think of is that baseball players didn’t make as much money back then, so maybe there was more of a sense that they were people like us, who could be our friends or neighbors.

This is all brought to mind by an article I recently read in the New Yorker about a game called pickleball, which I’d heard of but knew nothing about. According to the article, pickleball started as a tennis-like game that anyone — children, adults, senior citizens in retirement communities — could play and win, even in combination with each other. It was suffused with good humor and community spirit. But in recent years, pickleball has become professionalized, with official leagues and big-money contracts. There’s a growing gap — not just in skill level, but in attitude — between the professionals and the amateurs, and between members of the two national leagues. Pickleball isn’t just for fun anymore; it’s serious.

Is this sort of devolution inevitable? Outside of the sports world, the closest analogue I can think of is the World Wide Web. The invention of the website and the browser brought the internet — previously reserved for nerds and academics — to everyone. The online world was a shared space, where anyone from goofy kids to specialized scholars could set up a site, and where everyone’s site was equally available to visit. A good website back then was considered to be one that had lots of links, giving the reader plenty of opportunities to encounter things they never would have come across otherwise. (The expression “web surfing,” now considered quaint, referred to the addictive practice of jumping around the web from one site to another, following wherever the ever-inviting links led you.)

That vision of the internet is gone. Sometime around the turn of the century, the model of a good website was no longer one with lots of jumping-off points, but one that was “sticky” — one that kept the visitor on your own site for as long as possible. How else could you make money? Sharing was out; ads (measured by eyeballs) and paywalls were in. Anyone who didn’t have a plan to monetize their site couldn’t be taken seriously. (That awful word “monetize” originally meant to convert something into money, as in creating a currency; the present meaning of “turning something free into something that earns a profit” is entirely a recent invention.)

The one thing that all of these examples have in common is the corrupting influence of money. As much as I hated phys ed classes, I can appreciate that they weren’t intended to train us for careers as professional athletes; they were just about play for its own sake.

Posted September 22, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Society
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