Move!

I succumbed. Stark Raving Sane is moving to my LJ account. I might cross-post 'cause I love my blog but most likely I'll be way too lazy.

Attention Brandeis D+D Crowd

You will all be learning Bridge upon returning to school. I have decreed it, so it is written and so it shall be done. I'm really sick of only playing for one week a year with my dad the former champion as a partner, so I'm teaching you all. Don't worry, I'm really bad at it (lack of practice). I barely know more than the basics so we'll all learn together.

You'll all thank me some day, trust me.

Update, In Manner of Bridget Jones

Weight, 160 (approx), alocohol units, 1 (v.g.), cigarettes, 0 (although not surprising as don't smoke), calories, way too many but am climbing mountains so alright.

Hurrah. Have achieved the impossible: I have found the perfect pair of jeans. To make it even better, they were a discontinued line on the clearence rack, so did not have to starve bank account. Must call Spaz to have Perfect Jeans Party. Am shopping genius.

I'm It!

So Ed tagged me awhile ago with a meme, so I figured I'd better be a good sport and do it, lest I be smote by the Gods of Internet Etiquette

[MEME] What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs. (I'm not tagging anyone, just do it if you want).

The Magic Flute
The Marriage of Figaro
Beethoven's Sixth Symphony
Jupiter from The Planets
Chocolate
Dancing like and idiot around my room in my underwear (with the door locked and the window shades pulled down)
Dancing like an idiot around my room with other people (fully clothed)
Eating out
Cheesecake
Red Dwarf
Long, early morning walks
Karate
Chai
Movie nights
The Imposters
Dungeons and Dragons
The Philadelphia Story
Hot Chocolate
Apples to Apples
Jasper Fforde
Terry Pratchett
Calvin and Hobbes

The Sean Bean Syndrome Deconstructed.

As an avid movie goer and connoisseur of the PG-13 brainless action film, I've noticed a pattern emerging among the various villains: they tend to be European, oftentimes British. Sean Bean, in particular has mastered the art of the Generic European Villain. His credentials on this side of the Atlantic include Patriot Games, Don't Say A Word, Goldeneye, National Treasure, The Island and the upcoming Flightplan. In all of these films he is clearly English and clearly up to no good. The interesting thing is that there is no reason for any of these characters to be anything other than American (Goldeneye is the exception, his character is James Bond's ex-partner). So that got my sister and me thinking: why are so many action movie villians British?

Well, let's start answering this conundrum by asking the opposite question; why aren't they American? Giving the bad guy an accent lends a touch of exoticism to a film. Generally these sorts of projects are pretty by-the-book as far as the plot goes so anything that will set this movie apart has to be in the characters. Making any character foreign is an easy way to make things a little bit more interesting, but making the protagonist foreign alienates him or her from the audience. You can also set up a nice 'us-versus-them' dynamic by further removing your villain from your audience's sympathies.

I also firmly believe that Americans have a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to the rest of the world. For all our blustering and boasting, we freely admit that our culture is severely lakcing in anything truly unique; I mean how many times have you heard the good ol' U.S. of A. referred to as a melting pot or an amalgam of cultures? We are also a relatively young country. Where most every place on the other side of the Atlantic has a history spanning at least a millenium or so, we're just barely past our bicentenniel. We don't have nearly the artistic, intellectual or historical richness of a lot of countries. All this cultural baggage makes it all the more satisfying when an American hero outwits his foreign opponent.

Okay, so now we know why the villain should be some foreigner, but which country should he or she be from? Well, these villains are for the most part, conniving, power-hungry meglomaniacs with delusions of grandeur and no redeeming quality other than maybe being kind of pretty, if you're into that sort of thing. You can therefore rule out any ethnic minority because the second you cast anything other than a Caucasian in the role, someone's going to cry racism. The entire continents of Asia, Africa and South America are consequently pretty much off limits.

Penguins aren't really that threatening so you can take Antartica off the list as well.

That leaves us with Europe and Australia (Canada isn't exotic enough and anything south of Texas you run into the racism problem again). Australians just aren't believable as villains. The stereotypical Australian is the laid-back, out-doorsy type who really just wants another beer while he throws another shrimp on the barby. I mean, why would an Australian want to take over the world when, dude, he has Australia? Faced with a choice of invading LA, NYC, Boston, or any American city for that matter versus just chilling in Australia, which would you choose?

So we are left with Europe. That gives you are myriad of accent options to choose from. Or does it?

You could try German because, let's face it, everyone hates a Nazi. However, what if you don't want the World War II connotations? Being Americans, we always tend to assume that a villainous German is automatically a Nazi, and this is a summer flick, not some kind of dark oscar-grasping September movie. Plus, good German accents are hard to find and when you find someone who can do it convincingly, it usually comes out incomprehensible. Therefore, Germans are out.

How about French? No one likes the French. Unfortunately, Americans tend to think of the French as extrordinarily silly, and as such they are not terribly threatening. The French accent in particular is oftentimes used for comic effect, rendering it ridiculous in our collective cultural consciousness. You can't expect your audience to both laugh at your villian and be genuinely concerned for the safety of the protagonist without more effort put into the script than you're usually willing to give, so no French.

Russians make great villains though, right? Too cliche. The Cold War's over, remember? Russian villains are somewhat out of fashion at the moment. This goes for any nation that was part of the USSR.

Okay, so Italien then? Nope, not unless you want the mafia connotation, in which case it's too cliche. Italiens are also barely below the French on the silliness scale. Anywhere else on the Mediterranean is considered an ethnic group and as such, out of bounds.

What about Spanish? You're treading dangerously close to racism threshold with that one. If a villain speaks Spanish, all spanish-speakers are potentially implicated. If you were dead set on having your villain based on the Iberian Penninsula you could make him Portugese, but who the hell knows were Portugal is outside of a few dorks and your Geography teacher?

Alright, but there's always Scandinavia. Nope. Two words are enough to discount the possibility of a northern European villain: Swedish Chef. 'Nough said.

I suppose you could use a small country no one's ever heard of, but that's likely to confuse your audience. You've got a fifty/fifty shot of having people think you made the country up just for your movie and that's kind of lame unless you're a major comic book character.

Therefore, English it is. It's foreign enough to be slightly exotic without offending anyone. Plus you've got the whole former colonial tension thing going on, and if there's any country that inspires a cultural inferiority complex in an American, it's the UK.

Sean Bean, eat your heart out.




Thanks to Abby for many of the ideas in this post.

I've Become a Feminist in my Old Age

This is very distressing. I used to consider feminism a sort of antiquated, quaint old philosophy because men and women truly were treated equally in today's society. Then I took a class last semester called "Queer Readings After Stonewall" which, along with being an English class and a Queer/Gender studies class, puts on a cape and mask at night and masquerades as a Women's Studies class. Ever since then I've been seeing a slight misogynist tilt to the world, popular culture in particular. I've started wincing every time someone equates courage/gumption/chutzpah/audacity with male sexual organs (man! that takes balls!) because it implies that to posess any of those traits requires a Y chromosome. I've not yet gone so far as to reprimand someone when he (or she) says that, but I'm getting close. I also now rather like the idea of calling someone a dick because it implies that penises are stupid.

It goes beyond the vernacular. I've been having regular movie nights with my high school friends, all of whom happen to be guys. None of them are particularly misogynist, in fact they are all very pro-women's rights, anti-women-stay-in-the-kitchen kinda guys. Still, the movies we've watched are, in chronological order, Boondock Saints, The Untouchables, Batman: The Movie (starring Adam West) and The Godfather Part I. Batman being the notable excpetion, these movies have a lot in common: very bloody, a lot of guns, the mob, cops versus the mob, and ordinary people taking the law into their own hands (not The Untouchables I know, but the police definately disaproved of Kevin Costner and Sean Connery's method of police investigation). Also, not a woman with a back bone in sight. All the women are regulated to the 'wife of' parts meant to humanize (The Untouchables) or dehumanize (The Godfather) their husband. Boondock Saints has only one scene with a woman and she is ridiculed for being a butch lesbian. There was a scene in the movie where the boys' mother calls from Ireland, portraying a nasty Irish matron, but it was cut (you can still see it on the dvd). The closest we've come to seeing a woman with any semblence of (cringe) 'balls' Is Catwoman who is an oversexed plaything who's only useful because she's beautiful. Granted, I did enjoy her duping Bruce Wayne into thinking she was a helpless namby-pamby victim. However, the fact that it didn't take much to convince Mr. Wayne of 'Kitca's' apparently helplessness is telling of A) just how bad that movie really is and B) how women are viewed in our culture.

Superheros in general are mostly men as well, with women being either sidekicks, love interests or both. The notable exception is Wonder Woman, but she was the only one to come to mind immediately. When I thought harder I came up with Invisible Girl (of the Fantastic Four), a handful of x-men, Elektra (a former sidekick), and Catwoman (a former love interest). No one who really fit the bill of strong, indepenedent woman with a mind and attitude of her own.

The fact that women in the action genre are either portrayed as sexpots (Charlie's Angels), treated with indifference (The Untouchables) or ridiculed (Boondock Saints) shows me that our culture doesn't approve of strong women. I want to see a movie where the women uses something other than sex to acheive her means. I want to see a women blow someone's brains out in cold blood for no good reason, and then have you sympathize with her. I want to see a woman not just slap her unfaithful lover pathetically, but beat crap out of him (or her). It's telling that the few strong women I can think of exist in fantasy universes as if these kinds of characters aren't real. Still, I want Princess Leia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Aeryn Soong (Farscape) to take over the world.

As an after thought, I'd like to add that this is not to say that I don't enjoy these movies. I love Boondock Saints as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although my god does that show emasculate men). I just notice these sorts of things now.

Stranger Than Fiction

I was discussing the movie Amadeus with a few friends of mine and in explainging the movie, someone remarked that it was about Salieri and Mozart. I quickly jumped in to correct him. No, I said, the movie is about what mediocrity does in the face of genius, Mozart and Salieri are just incidental. I immediately got lambasted by the room which was brimming with future computer scientists and engineers for my comment. How like an English major, they said, to try and find some kind of pretentious deeper meaning into a simple story. That's all English majors did; tell you that you were wrong and find some kind of bullshit beneath the apparent. I held my peace for the rest of the discussion and did not venture another comment.

Then I discovered this wonderful phenomenon of pop-culture philosophy. Basically, this is when a group of academics with a guilty pleasure get together and decide that said guilty pleasure has some kind of intellectual merit and proceed to write critical essays on it. Consequently, my recent book list has consisted of critical essays on Winnie the Pooh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Harry Potter, and I'm still trying to get my hands on the collection on The Matrix. I've found collections on things as banal as The Simpsons and Seinfeld.

This is very exciting. I no longer feel alone in the world. I thought I was the only person who considered herself both an intellectual and an avid fangirl. Turns out there's hundreds of people like me, all pretentious and loving it. We see the subtext clear text and we know every single allusion and we know the mythical significance of any given action or turn of story.

It's like having x-ray vision, albeit significantly less cool. It's one thing if you can spot the subtext in great works of literature or film, but it takes an entirely different kind of mind to find Freud or Kierkegaard (which, by the way, I spelled correctly on the first try without having to look it up) in, say, cartoons. I love analyzing everything, every move a character makes, ever situation they find themselves in, the literary tradition behind it and the mythical tradition behind that. The sillier the subject of my analysis, the better.

I know it's pretentious and I know that I'm reading meanings into everything that the author may or may not have intended. That's not the point. Intelligence in any area of study is the ability to see what no one else, or at least very few others, can, whether it be a theorem, invention, or the meaning of Hamlet-or Buffy.