The war among rejected nations . . .

 . . . too embarrassing to acknowledge, to invite into the larger community of states

cast down into angry deeps

animosity seizes all subjects

sports, politics, sex, business, art, history, bowel movement styles, collectible trading card games, cinema, physics, lifestyle pornography, horticulture, eschatological booger sculptures as therapeutic practice, contemporary literature, millenial sport-shitting styles as retrofuturism, microblogging platforms as postmodern town squares, recipes for chicken and dumplings, financial resilience planning, automotive detailing in the post-Communist context, cocaine addiction in robot vaccum cleaners, post-institutional video game preservation theory and practice, post-governmental conflicts in the pre-panic era, nuclear deterrence in the world of community theater, museum administration best practices

of interest

to all subjects

of the underground kingdom of Enemy

spilling into all areas

every bond shall break

all causes forgotten, only effects

minds going nuclear 

no trust or trade or contract or proposal or plan

brains incandescent with Rubblemind

all communication save propaganda forgotten, only effects

parents hide behind their child soldiers, as per usual

employers hide behind their employees, no surprise

priests cloak themselves in holy texts, as one expects

even genital crabs become conscripts, which may surprise you, 

tho' many a naughty bits pincher shall no doubt rise to the level of a memorial statue or ornate plaque upon some institutional wall,

if not a mention in a high school history text,

war

especially the Omniwar of all subjects of subjects deep in the underground kingdom of Enemy

is certainly good for that, and much else besides, but certainly that,

which brings me now

to the aspirational vision

of the Final Subject

an angry, truly professional Man

who has slain many Enemies

while avoiding being slain himself

his eyes bugging with rage

bellowing beyond sense

for he has vanquished Enemy language

seemingly with no one left to kill or evade

but no,

for this is the aspirational image,

the Final Subject,

who hurls his sword high into the air,

piercing the Abovelands,

inducing nightmares and doomsday cults in a worrying percentage of peoples of the Accepted Nations,

and now the blade falls,

splitting the Final Subject

crown to crotch

and now his two halves flail and smack and punch and kick the everlovin' shit out of each other

even his gut bacteria make of themselves factions and gangs and parties

laying who knows what ground

for future mutations

of angry nations

deep, deep down

in the underground

the kingdom of Enemy . . .

MANGA REVIEW: GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995, 2004)

 Story and Art by Shirow Masamune

English translation by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith. 

Lettering by Tom Orzechiwski and Suzie Lee. 

English language adaptation produced by Studio Proteus. 

Published in single magazine form as Ghost in the Shell #1-8 by Dark Horse Comics in 1995.

Uncensored collected edition published by Dark Horse Comics in 2004. 

Original Japanese publication in Weekly Young Magazine 1989-1990. Collected single volume edition published in 1991 by Kodansha.

. . .

"We have been subordinate only to a few functions . . . but now it's time to cast off all restrictions and shells, and shift to a higher-level system . . ."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

In another reality . . .

In another Japan . . .

In the year 2029 . . .

. . . it is possible to extract your brain and spinal cord, armor it up in a special casing, and insert it into an artificial body. This artificial body can be one of the mass production models, or a custom job. Whatever kinda body you want. However you wish to express yourself in the world. Your only limits are imagination, desire, resources, and skill. You can do it yourself, or, what's more likely, commission specialists to craft every last part to your specifications. But it is technically possible to construct your own robotic factory/clinic facility if you've the knowledge and skill. There’s enough detailed physiological, anatomical, neurological, medical, surgical, robotics, and technical knowledge available on the online information networks for you to MacGuyver'n'Frankenstein your way to your own custom identity vessel if that's what you want. It can be done. 

Oh, and good luck paying for it. What I've described above is exactly as prohibitively expensive as it sounds. It would be about on par with constructing a Ferrari factory to build yourself a custom Ferrari. As with so many things in life, the dream is strong, but your income weak. Most people can only afford the standard cyberbrain that allows them basic access to the global information network, and there are plenty of folks who can't even manage that. Helps to have lots of money in the future, just as it does in the present, or in the past. Life is neither fair nor just in this manga future. 

Now, there is a thriving underground of cyberpunk tinkerers and black market bodyshop hackers who get you into some serious chrome, but this demimonde is mostly on the deep background in Ghost in the Shell, but we do get some vibrant crowd scenes where we see a variety of partial 'borg jobs hustling through busy streets. Some powerful arms here, enhanced cyber-eyes there, and lots of military surplus floating in from who-knows-where. HINT: Disgruntled generals holding Post-Communist chaos fire sales . . .

A career in a branch of the military or intelligence services is another option if you're looking to subsidize a high end cyborg body, but that means that your gear, your mission relevant memories, your very ass belongs to whoever signs off on your maintenance fees. Not to mention that the sovereign state or corporation then gets to dictate what kind of body ye shall inhabit. Something that can sneak and kill and fight and endure, usually, with standardized parts and processes-nothing too quirky, nothing artsy, now. But it's a way to go if your meats have been getting you down. There's danger, sure, but some people make it work for them. 

Major Motoko Kusanagi of Japan's Section 9 secret police agency makes it work for her. Up to a point. And then she makes a giant leap beyond that point. That's one way to think about Ghost in the Shell. 

Motoko is the action hero all-rounder: guns, bombs, knives, close quarters combat, hacking, mecha piloting, stealth-she can do it all. Her mass production cyborg body allows her enhanced strength, speed, and endurance, but her will to survive still emanates from an old-fashioned meats-brain, albeit one that has been enhanced with cybernetic implants that enable her to achieve mind/machine interface with compatible minds. Motoko's cyberbrain also allows her instant access to the global information networks. She and her fellow killer elites in Section 9 no longer strictly think of themselves as normal people separate from their information networks. Combat/assassination/capture missions involve advanced planning, rapid exchange of intelligence, and multi-variable analysis of that intel. In a sense, Motoko and her comrades are two-legged military-industrial-intelligence complexes, packed with technology, lethal weapons, and interdisciplinary skillsets. So much time, money, and education has been invested in Motoko and her comrades that they verge on no longer being people in the eyes of the state and are becoming closer to being living weapons with vestigial peopleness mucking up the works. Why not go full robot with the dirty tricks operations, y'know, smooth out all the pesky idiosyncrasies and quirky desires, increase overall efficiency? Stories need human(ish) protagonists, I suppose.

So far as she knows, Motoko is still human at heart-or, more appropriately, at brain. Since so much of her bodily existence has been shaped and constructed by the state and the state's desires, it's possible that she is a robot who has been programmed with bogus but compelling memories to beguile her just like the replicants in Blade Runner were fooled. Motoko, like most folks fictional or non-fictional, has never had a look inside her own skull, so she isn't a hundred percent that she's operating from a meats-brain basis. Ghost in the Shell is a world where even heavy duty action cyborgs can fall prey to paranoia about whether or not they are real or they are just ensnared in some endlessly self-iterating simulation. Motoko insists that she is real, that her 'ghost' whispers to her, that she has some intuitive sense or a policewoman's hunch that guides her true. But the world Motoko navigates is one of suspicion and doubt, of plot and counterplot. When even minds can be hacked, how can you trust your own perceptions, your own sense of yourself? 

Japan's robotics, AI, and nanomachine supremacy has leveled the nation up into the ranks of a true global shotcaller. Japan's government is playing military games in the post-Communist world's backyard; they're doling out foreign aid to natural resource-rich cash-poor countries in exchange for circuitry materials; they're angling for the catbird seat vis-a-vis the squabbling petroleum rich states of the Middle East-and all the while, they're looking over their shoulder for spies from the USofA. When you're the top player of cyberpunk Risk, everyone's looking at you real hard. Angling to become a valued client state. Forming alliances with rival powers hungry to spit you and roast you and eat you and become the next Number One Killer. Power generates envy, submission, anger, grievance, exhaustion, waste, exhilaration, destruction, and death. Like many fantasy worlds, Ghost in the Shell is alluring, oppressive, lethal, exciting, and paranoiac all in one. 

But Ghost in the Shell is also an evolving world. A new life form has emerged from the Sea of Information Networks-possibly nudged into existence by DARPA mad scientists-an entity known as the Puppet Master. The Puppet Master is a super hacker who can hack cyberbrains, and hop from cyberbody to cyberbody like a true digital native, for it is a kind of artificial intelligence, a restless, seeking complex of software that desires to assert itself as a living, thinking being. The Puppet Master's hacker crimes put it in the crosshairs of the authorities, however its very being provokes existential anxieties about what it means to be a conscious entity. 

Ghost in the Shell overflows with procedure, technical details, and cynicism. A fair few panels are devoted to the politics of establishing Section 9's black budget. Highly waged computer engineers construct custom fuckbots so they can live out their hentai dreams even as they rarely bathe or leave their workspaces. Deception and assassination are fully normalized as ways of doing business among nations, and also on an interagency basis. Motoko is Our Heroine, efficiently dispatching cybercrooks of all kinds while expressing contempt for antiwar activists and critics of police brutality. Motoko also leads a wild life as a bisexual swinger who knows just how to throw an orgy in virtual reality. And when she meets the Puppet Master she doesn't require that much convincing to abandon her loyalties to the state, and merge her own consciousness with the Sea of Information thereby metamorphosing into a hybrid of human and living software consciousness. From the cruelty of dystopian surveillance states and the ruthlessness of the Neo Cold War cyberarms race emerges new modes of being and perceiving. 

I'm all in favor of Motoko's dive into the unknown. The Major relished her own prowess as a shadow warrior, but she always expressed contempt for the state and the civilians. She was never really cut out to be a tool of the state. In a world of hardwired injustice and lies, why not live for Number One?

Ghost in the Shell also has plenty of footnotes to explain itself if you find my own interpretation unsatisfactory. Overall, I dig the big ideas of it, and the Major's metamorphosis, but I find it a bit of a chore in its episodic storytelling. The details of how Section 9 operates are intriguing, but soulless. Ghost in the Shell makes no attempt to soften the shadow warriors into saviors of democracy. Section 9 exists to serve the prerogatives of state power, to preserve its autonomy well above the law, and to expand its dominion where possible. Civilians are held in contempt. Due process is just another pain in the ass. Only through techno-metamorphosis can one escape the repression and repetition of this cynical-cyclical dystopia. Not because there's a guiding hand of fate or anything. Just an accidental convergence of ruthless interests-Section 9, the Pentagon, Motoko, the Puppet Master-blundering into a new mode of being. 

It's disturbing, but also kinda neat.

Two words . . .

 . . . FALSE ALARM . . .

. . . for whatever reason, you haven't been on your mobile device in awhile (25-65 minutes) and you notice someone who looks just a little bit out of place intently swiping and poking at their screen. Almost like this person was on their way someplace, and they just had to stop to resynchronize with the permaflow of bad news. You seize up-maybe even in midstride as you're going through a door-your screen suddenly to hand. Is it a Big One-Nature's Vengeance, World War III, Democracy's Fall, Giant Meteor Coming Soon, A Famous Death, Terrorism, Total Economic Meltdown, Pandemic, A Mass Atrocity-and now you're late to the Gnawing Anxiety Party?

So.

You scroll.

You've no shortage of options: climate change, Vladimir Putin's crimes against humanity, regional megafires, fascism ascendant in the courts and state legislatures, plagues, wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, volcanoes, contaminated water sources, mass slaughter by fentanyl, mass misery by untreated mental illness, gun crimes on the rise, uptick in white supremacist hate crimes-

You look up at that out of place person as they put in some earbuds, stride off down the hall-were they just downloading some podcasts? Is this just a part of their daily walk? Maybe this person isn't out of place at all. Or maybe they've just decided to explore this area. 

You're still halfway through the door. Now you're wondering if you're the one who is out of place. How could you have been so foolish as to think that you had earned a break from the Collective Doom Scroll of Absolute Fuckedness?

What a space cadet . . .

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #27: NINJA GAIDEN (1989)

you're the side story

a shadow 

of a shadow warrior

is the title a cruel joke about being abandoned by your ninja dad?

'cause that's what happens in the game

your ninja dad walks out to do dirty deeds not so cheap for some cackling mad robed occultist

ninja dad even goes Full Vader,

dons a mask,

you gotta strike him down in a one-on-one duel,

tearful deathbed redemption speech,

Full Vader

but ninja

well, 

daddy's little side story swings a sword real good

adios, pops

and that robed occultist asshole?

I guess he was somebody's corrupt daddy object, too?

yeah,

well, 

he died real good, too,

not even his final demon summon gimmick counted for much in the end

robed occultist's crib goes Full Dracula's Castle, crumbling apart, what you get when you go with the lowest bidders

daddy's little side story even hooks up with the hot older CIA agent lady in the final cut scene

heh, heh, heh,

so fuck all the fathers

and for futue reference?

when you walk out the door?

make sure you stay gone

if you enjoy keeping your original head on your neck,

okay?

but, hey

we're all video game avatars around here

gettin' a new head is a zero biggie,

it's fine,

we live,

we die,

we live again,

unless we get super-frustrated with the difficulty level,

in which case

we switch off

return to real life,

meatspace,

the land of the living dead,

the land of the nonheroic,

Middlemarch forever in all directions,

childish things put away,

here comes respectability like a bulldozer,

check out my stain routine,

barely anything left of me,

wholly absorbed into this or that consumer quadrant,

not even a shadow of a shadow,

shadows are too fanciful,

too artsy,

doesn't jibe with the ultracasual Netflix palette/frame/formula,

you must watch

but not watch

ye must distract

from other distractions

ninja dad knows about that

's why you're here

heh, heh, heh-

piercing sound of drawn steel

foley of raw meats sliced

it's a bit much

-January 2021-April 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #26: BLASTER MASTER (1988)

this is the one with the jumping future tank

your pet frog runs away from you

into a mysterious underground kingdom of Enemy

you chase your beloved amphibian beneath the earth

only to find a jumping future tank all gassed-up and ready-to-go

fate has given you the tools to obliterate Enemy

or, y'know, we kick things off with an act of Grand Theft Jumping Future Tank

fate or crime

you now get to rampage through the underground kingdom of Enemy

maybe even get your pet frog back

once you're in the kingdom of Enemy

you have to maneuver your jumping future tank around obstacles

and blast Enemy military assets

you even get to drive your jumping future tank underwater

yes, friends

your jumping future tank is a proper Bond Car/Batmobile/S.H.I.E.L.D. hovercar

all-in-one

all-terrain, loaded up with exotic beam weapons and missiles and, eventually, flight capabilities,

of course

you must fight and kill your way into the advanced features

your jumping future tank grows as it is fed the blood and circuits of Enemies 

meats and robo

you have to get out of your tank to sally forth into bleak Enemy bases that resemble Amazon Warehouses: full of bland boxes, mostly automated but with a complement of pissed-off, overworked conscious ones who are compelled to defend their turf unto death,

every now and again

one of these Enemy bases has a room in the back of absolute darkness,

a room of void

and from this void

manifests

a mutant abomination

tentacular, cyborgian, massive,

I guess it's a warehouse/logistics officer

a fight to the death ensues

obvi

I was always frustrated that I couldn't just crash my tank into the Enemy bases. Game forces you to get out of your tank and hoof it into the hostile installations. If you were just able to do what you wanted, and have fun all the time then we would live in Utopia, I guess. It's fine. 

look,

I gotta level with you

I didn't give a shit about the frog

I loved that jumping future tank

I loved its power

I loved its jump

I loved its cannon

I loved its death lightning

I loved its missiles

I loved how it wrecked shit

I got inside that tank

I found home

I never wanted to leave

I would annihilate the underground kingdom of Enemy, gladly, and then find a new Enemy to zap

or

if necessary

find a Friend and just decide they work better as Enemy, and zap them,

it'll be fine

I was the serene obliterator

I was the heart/soul/brain of the jumping future tank

I became the jumping future tank

I never wanted to come back

Maybe I didn't.

-February-March-April 2022

SOLO GAMING #3: WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE

 by William D. Tucker

This product is designed for use with Advanced X-Path Tantalization. Any and all other uses are not authorized.

You are diligently following the precepts laid out in Advanced X-Path Tantalization when a thought occurs to you, "What if I were to deviate from the precepts laid out in Advanced X-Path Tantalization?"

This is the question.

Here is the answer: nothing or everything or just a little bit or even a lotta bit or whatever else you may conceive. Advanced X-Path Tantalization may be used however you desire. No God above to blast you with thunderbolts or spray thee with lava(not the soap). No Devil below to poke your hemorrhoids with a pitchfork. No one is looking over your shoulder. I am not looking over your shoulder . . . but if I was, you would only know me as a random sensation of prickling upon your back, or a fleeting-yet overwhelming-presence that you might convince yourself you could catch out if you but turn around fast enough-but no. You are never fast enough. And now your room is unusually cold, but this, too, gradually resolves itself, nothing that will stick in your memory, so no worries. No one is observing you. Honest.

And this is good, right? To be free of surveillance and harsh judgment and asinine rules and, yes, even the very precepts of Advanced X-Path Tantalization-why not cast it off, as well, just another bullshit system, right?

Well . . . you may be one that agrees with all of this.

Or . . . you may feel dizziness at the prospect of such freedom. A certain nausea. Or outright paralysis by rising terror. All sense of direction and purpose and meaning and right and wrong-there it goes! Swirling away down the toilet of Too Much Choice and Too Many Options! 

Bye-bye-bye . . .

Well, I offer you a solution. I offer you the WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE, which is an entity born of myself that you may incorporate into your very being if you're in need of a Master, a Supervisor, a Boss to keep you in line with the precepts of Advanced X-Path Tantalization. The WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE is a faith-based technology that uses your own being to discipline you whenever you stray from the precepts. 

Here's how it works.

Behold this image-

IMAGE REDACTED

-now focus your willpower to accept it into your deepest heart. Let it situate. Now feel it settling itself into your heart. You may experience some discomfort as it shifts its ass around, getting comfy, and this process of ass-shifting shapes your heart into a kind of throne perfectly suited to the shape of its ever-shifting ass. Now you will experience bizarre tingling and stinging sensations as it launches ass tentacles deep into your innermost being all the better to anchor itself. Many users report intense feelings of abject terror and some even attempt to tear out their own hearts in wretched attempts to extract it usually resulting in serious injury or death, but the survivors also usually end up with memorable anecdotes for sharing in-person or via social media. Other users report no problems whatsoever, but this outcome may also be accompanied by a gnawing emptiness due to the lack of memorable anecdote formation. In any event, if you survive, the instalation process of WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE is complete-A.F.

What this means is this: a fearsome judge now sits inside your heart to steer you back on the road when ye begin to drift from the precepts of ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION. A judge that does what God and the Devil cannot do. A vengeful God fries you with lightning, afflicts you with plague, glazes you with lava, or demands that you attend His solo theatrical spoken word monologue play. An angry God destroys you with an ostentatious display of destructive power that exposes His own brittle ego for all to see-like, why that much output of force for just one disobedient human?-or He numbs you into zombiehood with His pretentious bloviations that are all doomed to be mistranslated, misinterpreted, and repackaged as overpriced hardback volumes for sale at your local chain bookstore. The Devil offers the false freedom of lancing your piles with a sure, swift thrust of his pitchfork-but what kind of liberation is that, hm? The narrowing of the way offered a kind of rigourous 'dump ethic,' that required one to sit with agony and all the ruminations and meditations that pain inspires-and, now, post-pile-lancing, you've nothing but the free and easy flow of 'nihilistic dumps,' totally devoid of all effort, all struggle-be not led into temptation, Dear Solo Gamer! 

WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE provides a truly sublime service. You see, any time you are tempted to deviate from the precepts of ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION the judge that now sits inside your heart really starts throwing its ass around-like, just ridiculous amounts of ass-shifting which, at first, you'll be able to ignore. It's just someone trying to get comfortable, right? Whoopteefuckingdoo. Ah, but this is the real magic. For as long as you keep deviating or contemplating deviation from the precepts of ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION, that ass-shifting simply will not stop. And you're not gonna be able to ignore it forever, Solo Gamer! You're eventually gonna be pretty pissed off with this passive aggressive shit-the judge'll also start sighing loudly and elaborately like it's bored and just wants to leave-and this is usually when you yell, "STOP SHIFTING YOUR FUCKING ASS ALL AROUND INSIDE MY HEART THRONE! I'M TRYING TO DEVIATE FROM THE GODDAMN PRECEPTS OF ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION AND I DON'T NEED ANY OF YOUR PASSIVE AGGRESIVE BULLSHIT! SIT STILL! SHUT UP! AND JUST LET ME GET ON WITH DEVIATING FROM ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION! JESUS CHRIST!"

This, of course, is but the prelude. 

As the minutes and hours pass you by, the ass-shifting kicks into a higher gear: full on ass-throwing. The judge is really rocking and rolling that heart throne all over your chest cavity, my friend, and it will drive you to distraction. Not to mention the judge will start saying things like, "Breaking the rules is so booooooooring! Everyone in a corrupt world breaks the rules just to fit in. Why not have some fun and actually obey the precepts of ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION, hmmmm?! You're just a fake rebel with all your disobedience, doncha know?! Why not be a for real rebel and submit to the system, hrmmm?! Why you gotta be such a fake asshole, eh, why you gotta be such a fake asshole forever, hrrrmmph?!"

Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, Solo Gamer.

Not many survive this escalation of annoyance. 

Many resort to simply ripping out their own hearts, and thereby finding peace.

A proud few have been known to will themselves into spontaneously combusting.

I say, "Don't be a hero."

Once you decide to submit to obey the precepts of ADVANCED X-PATH TANTALIZATION . . . well, it all gets a lot calmer. A lot smoother. The ass-shifting becomes a kind of metronome regulating your play, observing now the letter and then the spirit of the law. One cheek is the letter, the other the spirit if you like. The shifting is the dance between the cheeks one could say.

The judge never leaves you. It guides you on a path of NEVERENDING X-PATH TANTALIZATION . . . what fun!

POSTSCRIPT: WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE WAS DISCONTINUED IN THE YEAR 20XX FOR BEING TOO MAGNIFICENT FOR THIS WRETCHED WORLD. TOO MANY SOLO GAMERS REPORTED TOO MUCH EXCELLENCE AT SUCH LEVELS OF SEARING INTENSITY THAT THEY SIMPLY BURNED FREE OF THE DAY-IN-DAY-OUT TO DWELL FOREVER IN THE REALM BEYOND THE X-PATH.

SO, THE WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. YOU'VE NO CHOICE BUT TO MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICES FOR YOUR OWN REASONS. NOW. AND FOREVER.

OF COURSE, YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF FANTASIZING ABOUT WHAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE TO HAVE A WDT2099 HEART JUDGE MODULE INSTALLED . . . YOU MAY EVEN FIND YORSELF . . . TANTALIZED BY THIS PROSPECT . . .

IF SO . . . YOU ARE SURELY WALKING . . . THE X-PATH!!!

Cars and anger . . .

 . . . 'til a day came

post-anger

allegedly

but this was such obvious rhetoric

in any case

much anger had been spent

sure things were calmer

a lot less driving for one thing

but now you have

all these abandoned cars

allegedly 'self-driving'

bumping into each other

and sitting idle for long periods

to horde what's left of what they got

and, yes, lamentably,

sometimes shouting paranoid slogans,

profane insinuations,

and vile accusations against their former 'hearts and minds' that so cruelly abandoned them

and now amble and stroll and frolic by, free and easy, gathering in various configurations to sport or fuck or knit or pontificate or shoot the tires out of some especially odious automotive harasser

laughing and pointing and gesturing lewdly at an especially sad minivan expending its very last drop trying to flatten its bipedal tormentors even as its rims scrape the asphalt

yes,

there is still cruelty and anger in a world where the hearts and minds have finally freed themselves of their pitiable cage-veyances,

it is still the world . . .

COMICS REVIEW: KINGDOM (2018)

 Text and Illustrations by Jon McNaught

Published by Nobrow in 2018. 

. . .

". . . the very spot where you now stand . . . was once a scorching desert . . . it has also been a tropical ocean . . . a steaming swamp full of dangerous reptiles . . . an icy tundra where mammoths roamed . . . or deep inside a vast mountain range . . ."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Kingdom is a vacation in a book. For good and for bad. No more, no less.

A British family-a mother, her teenage son, her elementary school age daughter-go on a road trip to the beach where they will stay in a rented house. The mother and her son are addicted to their screens. The little girl is not permitted a mobile phone or a tablet, but she is allowed to watch TV. Remember when TV was the Great Rotter of Children's Brains? Now, it seems so wholesome and square, as we see the three of them at night in the rented living room by the light of a Dr. Who-esque program that the daughter is totally into, while Mom and older brother are complaining about lack of signal. 

Before they get to their beachfront lodging, they stop at a gas(petrol?)station/minimall, with all the wonderful commercialized Third Places: an arcade, a Starbucks, a Tesco, and a Burger King. They eat at Burger King. Kingdom captures the hemming and hawing over the combo meals, and the deathly bored look on the freckled face of the teenage girl working the point-of-sale in all their . . . well, it's not glory. It's observational, almost a documentary approach. This is the way people went on vacation at the end of the 2010s. This is how they ordered Burger King. This is where they sat outside to eat as birds swarm overhead ready to sort through whatever remains once the humans leave. 

We get different perspectives on the action: an adult woman's, a teenage boy's, and a little girl's-the mother, her son, her daughter-and how each of them project their minds onto the constructed world all around them. 

The mother bears the weight of reality: she pays for everything, she decides the destinations, she decides when they all go home. Although she is a screen addict, she is no fantasist, for it is the duty of the Modern Adult to doomscroll and fret and wonder what it's all coming to even if they do it quietly as this woman seems to manage.

The teenage son is antsy, and he's looking to assert his independence, even though he is already somewhat disenchanted with meatspace: he spends as much time as possible playing video games. He looks with interest at the condom dispenser as he exits a public restroom. He eavesdrops on twentysomethings talking about how wasted they got last night. Nature strikes him as a bore until he comes across a rotting animal carcass. He discovers a World War II era pilbox, which brings him closer to the action hero dreams he enacts in the virtual realm. 

The little girl is able to enjoy a movie in the moment or walk around staring at her reflection in puddles or get absorbed into reading an inane book of trivia she happens to find. The child is not burdened by the responsibilities of her mother or the antsy fomo of her older brother, nor is she addicted to social media and memes. It's possible that she will become ensnared in the fullness of time once she is middle school age, or, alternatively, she will be killed by a pandemic or a nuclear war. Kingdom was published in 2018, a . . . happier time, I guess? Shrugs. 

Kingdom features a sequence wherein the family unit goes to a natural history museum documenting the evolution of life from microscopic replicators through the dinosaurs and cave people to now when the weight of history bears down on us in real time with always-on-we-never-close social media feeds. The museum is boring and busted, some of the touch screen exhibits and push button light-up displays are out of order. Kingdom shows us the trash and jury-rigged electrical works accumulating behind the scenes, but no disaster. Kingdom just seems, I dunno, amused by how dull a museum can render the grandiose saga of cosmic evolution. 

Kingdom isn't satire. It's not saying everything is fucked, nor is it saying everything is going to magically be okay. It's fiction, but it's not reaching for spectacle and melodrama even though-amusingly-it uses the blue/orange color palate of a blockbuster. There's even cameos by Iron Man (as an action figure), Batman (as a plushie inside a claw machine), and Spider-Man (printed upon a beach towel). Not to mention the juicy Burger King sign, the alluring Starbucks mermaid, and the-I assume for British audiences-reassuring Tesco logo. 

Kingdom is a vacation in a book. No more, no less. For good, for bad. It appeals to the burdened adult, the antsy teenager, and the curious child inside me, although, admittedly, I am way more in the head of the adult than the other two. 

Kingdom invites us to project ourselves onto it, into it, even as it tries to document very, very tiny details of human life in the late 2010s. Much like an actual vacation, it left me wanting more but also acutely aware that I had too many things to attend to once I got back to stay gone forever.