Capricorn One

I saw Capricorn One in the van on the way from some British town to another, and then I forgot about it, and now I am blogging about it, begrudgingly.



You would think that a movie about a stage Mars mission by NASA starring Elliott Gould and OJ Simpson would be amazing, but unfortunately is pretty boring. It's a decent conspiracy theory, but it doesn't do much to make the form unique to its particular story. Basically a mad genius NASA scientist realizes that the Mars mission won't work, so he blackmails his astronauts into staging the mission, and then has to keep them from revealing the secret when their conscience gets to them. Elliott Gould is an archetypal investigative reporter, close to losing his job, pursuing a tip and the mysterious death of a friend who worked at NASA while his life falls apart.



OJ Simpson has like two lines, and I'm pretty sure they're problematic.




I watched a few episodes of X-Files when I was a kid, but as I've said before, this space shit just doesn't really interest me.

Astronaut Buzz

It's kind of sad that the only times I've paid attention to NASA since the Columbia Shuttle exploded in 2003 (which led me to wonder if there were any Columbia Shuttle conspiracies which led me to this gem) is the diaper murderer thing. But recently NASA has made it back into the news in the form of former Astronaut and sixth man on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, and the interview in which he exposes his and NASA's knowledge of extra terrestrials (he even has his own website). The blogs have been buzzing.

Typically I don't care much for extra terrestrial theories, and if you check out the YouTube page for the guy who made the Columbia conspiracy video, you will understand why. Unlike certain 9/11, JFK, New World Order, etc etc, conpiracists, these guys are so crazy that you can't even pretend to take them seriously, and then it's just no fun. But, for those of you who are interested here's a video with the interview.



It has some funny captions and typical extra terrestrial imagery, but is really pretty boring. There's also a recording of the same guys calling NASA, who apparently wasn't aware that this was going on at all. I can't find any official response from NASA, and there's a rumor that the whole thing is a big media hoax, which is pretty funny, but I doubt it, considering how boring this is compared to all the other possible hoaxes out there. It would explain why Mitchell's personal site doesn't have any content about aliens, though there is a bunch of new-agey cosmic weirdness that's kind of funny. Mostly it just seems like he's an old guy who lost his marbles.

Better luck next time.

Rockets

David Hoffman’s film, Sputnik Mania, has a lot to say about the collective American psyche, but does so without being heavy handed. By interpreting the narrative that it constructs, and the roles that America plays in that narrative, the viewer understands why the space race was so important to Americans. Though, the visual metaphor of phalluses being launched into the stratosphere over and over again may be more than enough explanation.

In the beginning of the film, America is represented as a geeky adolescent, whose first rocket explodes before leaving its launch pad. America’s first satellite is also criticized for weighing only thirty lbs. while the Sputnik weighed eighty. But the story of the geek’s triumph over the bully through smarts is the obvious trajectory for the film—one that it subverts in the end. Unfortunately for America, it is not quite the lovable, innocent geek you might expect from The Mighty Ducks etc. As the film shows, America had little sympathy in the eyes of the rest of the world, due to coverage of racist protests at Southern schools after Brown vs Board of Education, the decision reached three years before the launch of Sputnik. One archival film of three young, white and attractive female students trying to give rational reasons why blacks should not be allowed in their schools, was particularly disturbing. So America seems more like the kind of geek that grows up, founds a multi-million dollar software company, but is still an asshole. Russia on the other hand is portrayed as a big, silent bully, and stock footage of Khrushchev only adds to the effect, not to mention the part where they send a dog into space to die.

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s speech in which he warns Americans about the “military industrial complex,” appears in just about every political documentary that comes out these days, but in Sputnik Mania, which uses Eisenhower as its protagonist, the speech is absent, though not irrelevant. The film follows the decision making process of Eisenhower, who is pressured more and more to escalate funding and research due to fear of attack from Russian satellites. Both the military and put pressure Eisenhower, while the country experienced mass fear and paranoia. Eisenhower resisted at first, reluctant to give Russia a reason to expand their arms productions, then acquiesced to the demands of the military, giving them the funding to build the first successful rocket. But in the end, he took the responsibility away from the military and put in the hands of civilians through NASA, a truly astute move, which makes one cringe when thinking about all the presidents that have followed him, other than Carter, and I guess Ford.

On a cynical note, you can’t help but think that given control over space travel, the military would have taken it much further than NASA has, given the string of failures and bad press that has plagued NASA for as long as I can remember.

According to Elena, potential reasons not to see this film are a) you’re not American, and b) you’re a girl. She slept through a lot of it, and when I made a lot of jokes about rockets and penises afterward she said, “No wonder I was bored.”

In relationship to other documentaries reviewed on this blog, Sputnik Mania is an interesting example of a work that has no political vision, it's simply a good story. If anything, its slant is promoting peace and the pursuit of science of nuclear holocaust and irrational fear. So the film is really more about making art and telling a story than it is about trying to get across a political message, or inspire political action. And admittedly, it was a little boring. No conspiracy, or corruption, scandals. But it is an astute approach to a bizarre time in American history that has become romanticized, and sort of a worthy homage to Eisenhower.