Medawar/Benjamin/HemlockGrove

Today I read the next fifty pages of Mardi Oakley Medawar’s 1998 novel Death At Rainy Mountain. The novel heads in a major new direction at this point when Tay-bodal is chased and attacked while investigating the murder. He must be getting closer to the truth (perhaps having something to do with White Otter’s former suitors?) but we have no way of knowing because Medawar’s focus at the moment is not on why Tay-bodal was shot, but instead on his rescue by Union soldiers. Medawar’s description of the interaction between Tay-bodal and the Union doctor and the interpreter Billy allows her to develop the theme of cross-cultural interaction between Indians and whites (and how fraught with difficulty it is) and also underlines the fact that the novel up to this point has taken place within an entirely Native American context. It’s not immediately clear why Medawar has chosen to introduce a white perspective into the novel at this point.

I also read the next fifty pages of Medea Benjamin’s Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control. In this section of the book, Benjamin concentrates on a number of different subjects: 1. The increasingly global spread of drone technology: more and more countries are producing drones and consequently drone technology is less and less under the control of the US. 2. Following on from #1, there is a growing potential for drone-related blowback against the US—non-state actors could easily adapt drone technology to attack targets within the US. Moreover, Benjamin emphasizes the extent to which the US is increasingly using drones domestically for surveillance purposes. (Although Benjamin does not do this, I must say that I really hate discussions of drones that state either explicitly or implicitly that the issue of drones is somehow ‘more serious’ when US citizens are targeted). 3. The situation of drone pilots, especially those located thousands of miles away in the US. On the one hand, they are so separated from what is happening that they might as well be playing video games (and the relationship between gamer culture and drones is a fascinating subject in its own right) but on the other hand they experience great amounts of stress from the fact that, unlike conventional pilots, they get to see very clearly the consequences of the strikes they order. I’m not going to lie: I’m sure that PTSD among drone pilots exists but I find it difficult to have any sympathy for them.

I also watched the next two episodes of Hemlock Grove. Shows of this kind have a sort of grace period that lasts for the first couple of episodes. During this time, they can pile up any number of assorted mysteries without even hinting at a resolution of any of them because this part of the series is all about generating the requisite atmosphere. After this point, however, the show has a problem. On the one hand, it has to start uncovering some of the mysteries and it has to do so quickly enough to hold the viewer’s interest (nothing worse than those episodes that just seem to tread water) and yet not so quickly that the mysteries are all used up by mid-season. One way to delay/complicate this process is by introducing a new character and in Hemlock Grove that character takes the form of Doctor Chasseur, the improbably mysterious National Fish and Wildlife Service agent who comes to investigate the second death. The other thing to note about this part of the show is that we’re starting to see a line drawn between a supernatural and a rational explanation for the events. Oh, and then there’s what the show does with its Gypsy characters. That’s best saved for the next post.