Well, I am too tired to write anything that matters and I forgot my guitar at home. So I guess I’m gonna write a blog post. Second one in two weeks; I’m on a damn roll. This week’s blog post/rant comes from a Twitter tirade I had earlier today. This is me attempting to put a series of 140 character tweets into a 1,000 word blog post of semi-coherence.

Let’s talk about people and their damn opinions, artists specifically.
For the past few months, I’ve noticed an upswing in social media posts that go something like this, “I really wish X artist would just stick to making art and not politics. If I want politics I’ll go to someone who knows what their talking about on the news.” The specifics can change, but this general posts has been floating around too much.

Sure, it has popped up occasionally. “I wish Dixie Chicks would just shut up and sing songs about murdering their husband,” or “Kanye doesn’t know shit about George Bush and that hurricane,” or “What does Chaucer know about King Richard’s Feudal Rule? He should just stick to trudging down the road naked.” Okay, I may have lost the thread a little with that last one, but you get it.

Anyway, artists are an opinionated bunch of fuckers. Think about it. We believe in ideas so much that we craft and nurture and develop them for public consumption. We all have opinions to share and you, the audience, are taking them in every time you view the art.

“But hey,” you say, “I’m talking about Poppy Popstarbreeches going off about the war in Atlantisgandacrainzia.”

Maybe it’s because I spend a lot of time listening to political music like punk or hip-hop, but that’s bull shit. All right. Everyone has opinions and given how polarizing the last 12 months have been what can you expect?

I am not saying you have to agree with what they say, or even like it. You have to make the choice over whether you can, or even want to, separate art from the artist. If you love every book Luscious Novelicous has ever written and he hops on Twitter and rants about an opposing political opinion you have two options. 1: Unfollow him on Twitter and continue to enjoy his books without the commentary. 2: Unfollow him and never buy his books again because he’s an asshole who clearly can’t see that your decision was properly weighed out by memes and Facebook posts and you clearly have the correct answer to the shortage of toilette paper in Shitshanesburg.

Now, artists have a choice to make.

An artist can choose to be silent on social issues. They can wish for their art to speak for itself. Art is plenty capable of doing this. Is 1984 an less of a social commentary without George Orwell schooling us on how much Commies suck in 140 character vignettes? No, it’s not.

If an artist does remain silent and only focuses on creating and sharing their art, for god’s sake let them be. Some artists don’t want the spotlight. I worked with a marketing manager once who took one look at my platform and said, “Your last two blog posts are political, change that or you will lose readers”. This person was only interested in making and selling books and that’s a-oh-kay. If you come across one of these artists your best bet is to leave them the hell alone and enjoy the art.

On the other hand, creators can choose to share their views. This can be done subtly with, say, a tweet once a day or two that points out that a total lack of balls is really hurting the national economy of Ball Pitlandia. Or this can be done with several tweets a minute stating we need to rise up and start a militia to rise up against McDonalds for using good grease and fancy chicken in their nuggets because we want the shitty less-than-chicken we were raised on.

Choose your adventure wisely because trust me, my friend, there will be consequences.

“But, Alex,” you say, “I was just trying to make the world aware of the plight of the Tennessee Spotted Horny Goat and it’s lack of ability to find a suitable lover to sway with gently through the night while listening to Huey Lewis and the News.”

Sure you were. Like I said, you are perfectly okay to do that, but guess what. A whole lot of people don’t give one single fuck about Horny Goats and a handful of people think all Horny Goat should fuck right off a cliff and die a terrible death you noob with your damn feelings should quit crying and get a real job and while you’re at it moisturize your face with metal shavings because in my day men were real men not these crybaby millennials.

See what I’m saying here? Opinions, all of them, are somewhat polarizing. If you share them, clearly and publicly, there’s a good chance the 20% of people will love you for it, 20% of people will hate you for it, and 60% of people will think, “Whatever, I just wish he would finished the newest Plot of Chairs: A Melody of Hot and Cold book.” So if you are willing to turn off a fifth of your readers, cheers, mate go ahead and tweet away.

But please, please, please be aware that some people are going to disagree with you. And here’s the shocker, they’re allowed to.

To sum things up as a reader (Listener, viewer, whatever) if your favorite artist gets all uppity and starts talking about the quality of sea foam and how it’s effecting the Sea Foam Fairies of the Lesser Barricade Coral here are your options:

*Ignore them and buy their books anyway.
*Ignore them and don’t.

If you’re an artist and you really, really want to tell everyone about how an epidemic of firefeet is scorching toes across the nation here are your options:

*Write a story that is an allegory about the firefeet dealer and how they are striking down the epidermis of too many phalanges in their prime.
*Hop on your social media of choice and say, “Fuck firefeet and everyone who thinks they’re okay,” and understand that you are probably going to piss off a few members of your audience, possibly enough to never buy your work again.

​I’m not saying it’s wrong. If you feel the need to stand up for something, do it. Just understand that someone who believes the polar opposite of you is also standing up by boycotting that hack author who said the president’s tan is awful.

Okay, so I’ve been sitting on this a little while and I know I’m late to the game, but here goes some thoughts about Suicide Squad. I’m going to start off with my general opinion of D.C. screen adaptations. D.C. animated movies: these are highly enjoyable. D.C. television shows: there are some hiccups and occasional cornball, but not too bad. D.C. movies: c’mon guys, what the fuck are you doing?

Suicide Squad falls right in line with this reasoning. IMDB rates it 6.6 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 26%, and Google has it at 86%. I’m going to have to side with IMDB on this one. Six and a half is average and that’s what this movie was, average.

Let’s start with some good things to say because I’ve got a couple of those. If you need an excuse to watch a couple explosions for an hour and a half it fills that gap, I suppose. Margot Robbie portrayed Harley as well as anyone could have and Will Smith was a surprisingly good Deadshot considering the last Will Smith movie I watched was Hitch. Anything including Katana has a special spot in my book, even if she doesn't even say a damn word. Wait, maybe that's a complaint. Umm…that might be all I’ve got.

First off, Jared Leto’s Joker fell flat. Joker is a tough character. Jack nailed it back in the day, enough so that I didn’t even give Ledger a chance. A friend had to beg me to watch Dark Knight. When I finally did watch it, Ledger blew me away. Following up those two consecutive appearances would be a daunting task for anyone and I’ll give Leto respect for trying something different.

This Joker was supposed to be a little scarier, I think. Ledger played off that crazy, but still kind of funny vibe brilliantly. The pencil disappearing thing? Hilarious, but maybe I’m a bit dark. He made jokes that were funny, even to not insane people. Then when he had to be crazy, he did that too.
Leto’s Joker, on the other hand, seemed to be going for that kind of all out crazy that the jokes would only be funny to a sociopath. Maybe the movie just wasn’t dark enough to pull that off. Perhaps they should have gone for an R rating instead of PG-13. I don’t know.

The character who comes to mind as a solid example, Ramsay Bolton. That guy was fucking crazy and he was terrifying. He laughed at jokes that were only funny to him. The guy was evil and you knew it. When someone got on his bad side, you just knew they were screwed. Leto’s Joker, what, shot a guy because he wouldn’t sleep with Harley? The whole thing makes for a big ol’ ‘eh’ for me.
This lack of characterization from the Joker extends to Harley for me. I’m going to put aside the abusive relationship arguments because it was always an abusive relationship. Joker and Harley were never normal. They weren’t Bonnie and Clyde. That being said, nothing about their relationship brought Harley to life. She went through the motions, and played the actions but there just didn’t seem to be any motivation.  

Also, a quick note to screenwriters, when a character's entire backstory consists of, "Hey, this guy can climb anything," we know he might as well be on a hostile planet in a red shirt cause that guy is fucking dead. D-E-D, dead.

Now that all the little complaints are out of the way, let me get to the biggest gripe about this movie.

It didn’t make a lick of fucking sense.

The TV show Arrow did a Suicide Squad episode that was spot on for the concept. The government needed a job done (I don’t remember the specifics at this moment) and couldn’t risk having American soldiers get caught doing it. Solution? Send in the Squad. They are expendable, so if they die it’s no big deal. More importantly, they are rogues. If Deadshot, a contract killer, gets killed on a mission in Russia there is no accountability. Can you imagine the conversation?

Russia: Did you send someone to kill our man?
America: Nope.
Russia: It would have been in your interest to have this person dead and someone tried to kill him.
America: Who tried to kill him?
Russia: Deadshot.
America: *Erupts with laughter* Shit, comrade, that guy tried to kill three different of our super heroes last week.
 
That’s a plausible use of the Squad and it made for a damn good episode of television.

​What did the movie use them for?

To fight a pair of ancient gods.

Do you honestly mean to tell me that in a world where Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman exist A.R.G.U.S. is gonna be like, “Hey, hey, send in Boomerang. He’ll take care of it.”? And Waller clearly knows about these other heroes. And that’s just the heroes that are clearly linked. Supergirl and Martian Manhunter also, theoretically, exist in this universe, but no, really send in a psychopathic ex-psychiatrist with a baseball bat.

The expendable angle doesn’t exactly play an angle in this case either. These beings clearly have the power and desire to destroy/subjugate the entire world. At that point, Superman would be expendable enough to send in. That just doesn’t make any sense. I have the same misgivings about Batman v. Superman. It’s like the studio was like, screw it, people are going to watch it anyway, why bother putting effort in?

I like D.C. characters, really I do. For some reason, however, the studio has had a consistently hard time bringing these characters to the big screen. There are a couple beacons of hope floating out there. Wonder Woman—who I thought was the best part of BvS—has a solo flick coming up and the trailer shows promise. Ben Affleck has the potential to be the best Batman on screen. His solo movie has Joe Mangianelliosaoa…fucking Alcide, playing Deathstroke and I think that’s a brilliant casting.

Time will tell, I suppose.