#I watch family/children's media very aware of who the intended audience is

[tallwriter]

I love how much you put in these tags, @miraculouslbcnreactions!

Reblogs appreciated for reach—I’m just genuinely curious! Would love elaboration in the tags but obviously you can just keep your answer anonymous if you want as well

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

When I first saw a Miraculous Ladybug salt post it was the usual Lila takes away all of Marinette's friends Adrien does nothing Marinette becomes super successful Lila gets exposed blah blah blah

When I see posts like the ones you post where people give actual constructive criticism about the characters and not favor one character over the other has made me realize that these are fictional characters and its not their fault they are the way they are. Also they're 14 what kind of 14 year old makes good choice's? Especially when they have the fate of the world/universe on their shoulders

If anything the character I really blame is Master Fu. He was obviously meant to be some sort of mentor figure for them or at least Marinette's mentor. He was the one to tell and encourage Marinette to keep everything a secret from Adrien. Comparing him to other mentor like figures in the world of superheros he isn't really all that helpful.

Compared to DC Ladybug and Chat Noir do not have any adult superheros to help them. In DC younger superheros have entire superhero families to help them out and if not that than they have other adult superheros to help them or they have an actual team. We know that other miraculous holders exist and the order is back I have a vague idea as to why they can't help but I still find it weird as to why they are around if not to help. Like phones and the internet exist do they not?

Sorry for they rant, I want to know what your thoughts are on this?

Your rant was fine! I don't think that I've talked in depth about mentors as a concept and I should both because I love mentors and because Miraculous has completely failed to give us any good ones. This is a writing failure not because good mentors are required, but because the show chose to have mentors characters and then not use them.

Before I get into the topic at large, I want to start with a brief discussion of mentors in shows aimed at young children as Miraculous' intended audience is young children and that fact is worth keeping in mind when discussing what Miraculous did wrong and some of the ways that you can fix it.

Shows aimed at kids generally avoid adult characters in major roles for the very obvious reason that the intended audience is kids, so you want the kid and teen characters to be the stars. This doesn't mean that adults aren't allowed to save the day or have important roles. It just means that they should be used sparingly. This is why mentors are a great addition to kids shows. They allow adult characters to be deeply involved with the plot without anyone expecting them to intervene because that's not their role in the story. They're not here to be the hero. They're here to guide the hero.

One of the powerful things about this setup is that it allows the writers to give the real kids watching at home real advice about real life problems. For example, if Marinette comes to Fu to talk about feeling alone and overwhelmed, then he can give her real, practical advice that would apply to anyone who is feeling alone and overwhelmed, but no one expects him to directly intervene because he's supposed to say hidden.

A lot of these elements apply to mentors in media aimed at older audiences, the rules just apply for different reasons, so I'm going to stop reminding you that Miraculous is for elementary school kids and focus on the failed mentor issue as it would be an issue no matter what Miraculous' intended audience was.

When it comes to bad mentoring, a lot of people focus on Fu and I get why. At first glance, he's the classic wise old Asian man who is supposed to be there to guide the protagonist on her mystical journey (not getting into the racism issue here, just know that I'm aware of it and that Miraculous dropped the ball on this in a lot of ways even though they absolutely could have made it work.) But Fu isn't the main focus of my ire because, while the writers seemed to have designed him around the mystic Asian trope, they never actually wrote him like a mentor.

He doesn't train Marinette and Adrien in the ways of the miraculous. He just sneakily gives them their miraculous and then disappears from their lives for quite some time. So he's not around to get them properly started on their hero journey. That's strike one for the mentor role.

Strike two is the fact that we never actually see him mentoring Marinette. I don't think that she ever went to him for advice? If she did, then it wasn't a big element of their relationship. When I think of Marinette and Fu, I picture her going to him to grab a miraculous or two before booking it back to the ongoing fight and that's about it. The guardian training she supposedly had was all off screen, so we have no idea how close they were or what he even taught her outside of potion making. Even that wasn't really him teaching her something. It was them working together to figure out a puzzle because Fu never completed his own training, making it impossible for him to properly train a successor.

Strike three is the fact that - outside of the King Monkey incident - Fu never gets directly involved in helping team miraculous. He's never gives them feedback on fights or works with Ladybug and Chat Noir to strengthen their bond. He doesn't even help them track down the two missing miraculous or hand out the temporary miraculous on Marinette's behalf, a choice I still find super weird. "This fight is super hard and we need help, so I'm going to leave Chat Noir to fight alone while I go get said help!" is absolutely nonsense logic and one of the many examples of the writers desperately needing to let Marinette hand her responsibilities off. Why wasn't this Fu's job?

This brings us to fix one: if you want the guardian to be a mentor - which is a role they arguably should have - then the guardian needs to be actively involved in Marinette and Adrien's lives in an on screen way. For this to work in the context of Miraculous - a show that really wants to focus on the teen characters - then the guardian probably needs a teenage apprentice who isn't Marinette and that apprentice will be the one doing the mentoring.

My pick for this is Luka for two big reasons. The first one is that his calm personality is perfectly suited to a mentor. The second one is that it seems insane to me to have the snake be a temp holder. The snake should be watching every fight, but staying out of the actual fight so that they can use their power whenever it's needed. That's the perfect role for a mentor character to fill. Someone who is active in the plot, but only ever as a support because their power stops them from getting more involved.

Moving on to the bigger issue.

As I said up above, Fu doesn't actually get my ire. While I wanted him to be a mentor, he never once filled that role and he didn't really need to because the show already had mentor figures that it was actively using and using poorly. Those figures are the ancient magical creatures that follow our heroes around, dispensing terrible advice whenever they feel like it. That's right, as much as it pains me, Miraculous' biggest mentor failures are Tikki and Plagg.

The miraculous did not need to have magical creatures associated with them. They could have just been magical jewelry that Fu handed out and explained. Instead, the writers chose to give us the Kwamis and I don't disagree with that choice. I like the Kwmais! The problem is that they're used in the most lackluster, asinine ways you possibly could.

The Kwamis are not presented as oblivious to the world and unable to give advice. They give lots of advice! The problem is that advice tends to suck! I can think of many examples of times where the Kwamis made everything worse, but let's look at the one that grinds my gears the most: Plagg's actions in season four.

In Rocketear - the episode where Nino gives Adrien an incredibly inaccurate picture of why he knows Alya's secret identity - we get this:

Adrien: I still can't believe Ladybug entrusted Alya and Nino with those Miraculous. Plagg: Of course she did. She's the Guardian. Adrien: But they're a couple and they know each other's secret identities. Plagg: So...? Adrien: So, why does she make it a rule that we can't know each other's identities but it's okay for them? Plagg: She's the Guardian, the Grandmaster Cheese Ripener, and you and I are just cheese on the platter. She decides what's on the menu.

Hey, Plagg, maybe don't tell your clearly upset and vulnerable teenage holder to just suck it up and deal with it when he's feeling alone and betrayed? Maybe encourage him to talk to Ladybug about his feelings so that he can get the full story? Knowing that they learned their identities during the Scarlet Moth incident would probably do a lot to smooth over Adrien's hurt feelings.

What's even more rich is that the episode Kuro Neko lets Plagg go off on Marinette for not appreciating Chat Noir:

Ladybug: What's gotten into him? I didn't do anything. Plagg: Didn't do anything? Well yeah, you did! You've been neglecting a very classy piece of camemebert on your plate for too long! And as a result it got runny, and moldy! Ladybug: What? Cat Noir never gave me any camembert. Plagg: Of course not, Cat Noir is the camembert! For a while now, you've been neglecting this camembert— I mean Cat Noir, and going on adventures with the all other cheeses! Ladybug: But he should be happy about it, it gives him more time off. Plagg: Cat Noir doesn't wanna have time off, Ladybug! He is in love with you! And your persistent calling on all the other heroes has broken his heart.

Dude, if you saw all of this going on, then why didn't you say something??? You and Tikki are in the same location for multiple hours five days a week. Go tell her how your holder is feeling and figure out how to fix the situation! Or be an actual mentor and encourage Adrien to talk to someone about his feelings! At the very least, cut up a wheel of cheese, sit down, and listen to your kid so that he feels less alone!

Also what exactly do you want Ladybug to do to fix the problem you presented? Let Paris burn until Chat Noir decides to show up to today's fight? Refuse to use the temp heroes even if it means losing a fight? None of those are valid solutions when the problem presented in the episode is Chat Noir missing fights. Especially when we know that he's doing it on purpose. Why are you yelling at her instead of working with her to come up with an actual solution? You are such a terrible mentor...

To be clear, I don't think any of this is intentional. I don't think the writers want Plagg and Tikki to come across as actively hurting their teenage charges via bad advice. I think Plagg and Tikki are supposed to be seen as good and helpful, but they can't fill that role because they're tools of the narrative and the narrative has really wacky views on what good advice is. Thus nonsense like the example I discussed above or Plagg and Tikki picking new holders instead of guiding their holders through an identity reveal.

I personally adore letting Plagg and Tikki be good mentors in my own stuff. It falls under the same category as Alya and Nino being terrible friends on screen. I acknowledge the problem and then delight in fixing it by writing the exact opposite setup because what is fanfiction for if not heavy self indulgence?

[justfinishedreading]

I started October thinking ‘man, I have so many manga to review I’m going to be posting stuff every other day!’. Didn’t happen.

A Bride’s Story, Volume 1, by Kaoru Mori

This manga is set in nineteenth-century central Asia, along the Silk Road, it’s the story of a twenty-year-old woman sent from her nomadic tribe to marry a twelve-year-old boy in a settled clan. They arrange the marriage in order to maintain family bonds between the two households.

This was never going to be an easy read but let me start with the positive; visually A Bride’s Story is utterly beautiful, Kaoru Mori draws with a level of detail I have never before encountered in manga. Written literature is often placed above graphic novels with the excuse that there’s more artistry and depth when a world is bring created solely through vast amounts of words rather than images, and yet here is a case where literature could never compete. The written word could never compete with Mori’s exquisite illustrations of nomadic dress, patterned carpets and wood carvings. In A Bride’s Story we get a full visual experience of a culture and way of life that is now rare.

Story-wise this manga falls neatly into the ‘show, don’t tell’ approach of storytelling: lesser mangas would have the characters openly and plainly discussing themes, telling the audience exactly what they should think and what they should take away from the book, but A Bride’s Story presents this time and culture in a neutral way, with both negatives and positives alongside each other, leaving the reader free to assess their own feelings.

Spoilers ahead

Amir, the female protagonist, is warmly welcomed into her new husband’s family. When we think of a young woman having to marry a child in our minds the situation is horrific, to not be able to choose your own husband and on top of that to be forever tied, socially and legally, to a child is the sort of thing made for tragedy. Luckily for Amir her new husband, twelve-year-old Karluk, is good-natured and is full of admiration for his wife. Amir came from a nomadic tribe, she can shoot rabbits with a bow and arrow whilst ridding a galloping horse, she knows how to travel the lands, rear sheep and skin animals. Karluk sees her like a hunter, almost like a warrior, and he sees her like a mother in the way she frets and worries about his health and looks after him.

Amir is lucky because her new family openly accepts her and they view her differences with curiosity and wonder. They are a large family who have created a safe, happy home and together they work to keep it in peace. So the fears that the reader might imagine about an arranged marriage with such an age gap are not necessarily the ones that appear. The antagonists are actually Amir’s own clan, who realize that there’s a potentially more advantageous match to be made and intend to remove her from her current situation and marry her off to someone else.

Another nice surprise is that although this is a patriarchal society in which men make the life-changing decisions, we do a great character in the matriarchal grandmother of Karluk’s family, who displays a strength and resolve that even the men from Amir’s clan revere.

Onto the negatives: there’s a scene in which Amir is telling Karluk to strip naked because out in the desert, in a yurt, it is common practice to sleep nude because it gets very cold and it is warmer to sleep skin to skin. Karluk is clearly uncomfortable with this. Amir’s naked breasts are exposed and sexily drawn. In the next panels we see that sleeping naked together makes Karluk think of lambs sleeping snuggled to their mothers and for him there is nothing sexual in this experience. While the scene is implying that their relationship is more of mother and child, it is still a shock to see Amir’s naked adult body, and it makes us wonder what will happen when Karluk becomes physically more sexually mature but not necessarily mentally mature.

Japan has a deep-rooted obsession with sexualizing youth, it is something that comes up often in manga, anime, literature and media, and I’m always weary of when it might be sneaking its ugly head in more subtle ways. For example a couple of months ago I watched Beastars, which is a anime about anthropomorphic animal-humanoids (e.g. like Zootopia) and while I enjoyed the anime, there was something disturbing about the central couple; a wolf and a bunny rabbit. Compared to the large size of the humanoid wolf the small humanoid bunny looked child-like. The size thing and species thing is done to create sexual tension between the large scary wolf and the cute sweet little bunny, but there was something about the bunny’s small yet sexually developed form, in a school girl uniform, next to an adult-looking man, which just rang alarm bells. Interestingly I think the manga handles this better as the bunny’s body isn’t drawn in such a sexualized and realistic way as in the anime. In the anime there are moments where there is definitely a subtle catering to paedophilic appetites, especially as issues of uncontrollable desire and danger and predator and prey are brought up.

Back to A Bride’s Story, I don’t feel that this is a book that encourages or excuses paedophilia, it is presenting us, in a neutral way, with things that would have happened at the time. When Karluk presents his wife to some distant family members they are shocked, not with the fact that Karluk at age twelve is already married but because a twenty-year-old bride is considered an old bride. The custom is to marry women off young so they have longer to produce children. At the back of the book in the Author’s Notes Mori writes that women would normally be married at the age of 15 or 16, and beside this comment the author has drawn a picture of a young bride, with the following remark “Hey you! Yeah, you, big guy, looking at her like that! Let’s step out into the hallway and have a talk!” So while there’s no direct comment about paedophilia or the sexualization of youth, this one comment does hint that the author is aware of the issue in society, past and present.

One of the things that I am looking forward to in the series is that it will not centre just on Amir and Karluk’s relationship, it seems that other volumes will introduces other bride’s stories, including women who are lesbians or bisexuals and women who perhaps do not identify with a female gender. There is a secondary character in volume 1 called Smith, an Englishman who is studying the culture and customs of Central Asia and I believe that as he travels to different countries this may be how new storylines are introduced to us.

One difficulty I had in reviewing this manga was that I kept wanting to say it is about people from a specific country, however nowhere in the book does it say in which country the action takes place. In a way this is a western problem, it is an understatement to say that many, many a problem has arisen from the West’s desire for defined borders in countries where, at the time, it was not common to have them, places where tribes moved about depending on the seasons and trade. So after some brief research I believe this book explores the cultures of Mongol Nomads, of countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that make up Central Asia, and with the potential of exploring influences from neighbouring countries such as China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan. In the Author’s Notes she also mentions being interested in the Caucasus region of Central Asia, so that may also be countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and the Caucasus Mountains which create a natural border between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

One thing is for sure: since A Bride’s Story follows the path of the Silk Road, the crossroads from which Europe and Asia traded, it promises to be a wonderful melting pot of traditions and ideas.

Review by Book Hamster

[ariainstars]

Did Princess Leia Love Her Son?

Warning: long post. (And possible unpopular opinions ahead.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This entry is slightly more personal than my others; I might be kicking up some dust but I will try to approach a subject that to most people is unthinkable. I went through psychical abuse for decades, so I believe I know what I’m talking about. 

Some mothers don’t love their children. 

I am aware that most people on this planet are convinced that a mother, any mother, will love her child no matter what. Unfortunately, the idea is seen through very rose-tinted glasses.

Some mothers don’t love their children because they can’t. 

The reasons can vary - honestly, I don’t see many parallels between Leia and my own mother. But I know the signs. And the more I think about it the more I get the distinct impression that Leia did not love for her son, if we define “love” as the faith in someone’s goodness. Padmé knew that there still was good in her husband until her last breath, and Luke believed the same of Vader, even though his father had done nothing but hunting and terrorizing him and his friends. Leia, on the contrary, feared her son since before he was born, and her conviction of his evil nature never abated although he never hurt anyone for many years. The fact that her fear runs so deep says volumes; even more so when we consider that she is the only one who did not directly get hurt by him. Han was stabbed through by his son, before Chewie’s eyes; and Luke was left by his nephew for dead, even if the tragedy at the temple had not been intentional on Ben’s side (see The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule, the story therein is officially part of the canon).

I anticipate, again, that I think one of the sequel’s worst faults was to explain so little and leave so much to the audience to deduce from things unsaid, hints, and parallel situations throughout the saga. (One of the reasons being, I guess, the release of The Last Jedi: we saw from the general audience’s reactions on social media what can happen when unpopular though realistic things are said.)

Leia - A Princess Without a Realm

Let us recapitulate what we know about Leia. She grew up serene and protected on a beautiful planet with adoptive parents who loved her and gave her a good education. She is an intelligent, confident woman, strong in her ideals and beliefs. She never shows fear or sorrow, not even when her home planet is blown up before her eyes, when she is held prisoner and tortured, when she has to watch the man she loves being frozen in carbonite before her eyes, when she finds her brother crippled, when she is held by a disgusting lecher like Jabba, or when she learns that Vader is her own father.

Being raised a princess, Leia was probably taught very strong self-control: no matter what she had to endure, she never buckled down or lost her countenance. It cannot be denied however that much of her adult life was traumatic. What we euphemistically see as “adventures” and “all’s well that ends well” in the classic films would leave any person with a huge post-traumatic stress disorder; and Star Wars is, as far as I can judge, a psychologically well-studied story. 

From the novels we learn that Han and Leia got married shortly after the battle of Endor, and that their son was born about a year later. One year is not much to recover after a war that cost so many lives and made all of them suffer so much. Han was probably more resilient than the twins due to the life he led before he met them; but he had been through a lot, too. Even if they loved their son with parental instinct, they both were not ready for the task of parenthood. And Ben was not an easy child: from his adult self we can deduce that he was always oversensitive and very intelligent. His family, like many well-meaning families, chose his future (his profession, we might say) and never explained his family’s past to him. But like any child with an emotional nature, Ben sensed that something was wrong about him; he did not know what it was since nobody told him about his grandfather; and wanting desperately to be loved, he began to blame himself, accepting the connotation “I am a monster” since he was still a child. 

Leia had felt both her son’s power in the Force and Snoke’s influence on his mind since he was still in her womb. Let us only try to imagine the horror she must have felt, knowing that a new Darth Vader might come from her! It is difficult to say for whom she feared most - her son, herself or the galaxy at large. Leia was adamant that he had to become a Jedi, hence her quarrels with her husband, which their son sometimes overheard. But since he was ultimately sent to training with his uncle, he also understood that his father had not managed to prevent his being sent away, like a defective item that needed to be fixed. 

Kylo told Rey that “Han would have disappointed her” and later said to her and Finn “Han Solo can’t protect you”: so, he obviously felt Han had come short of a father’s primary duty, i.e. keeping his child safe. Let us remember for a moment how crucially important this message always was through the saga: Shmi let her son, the only thing that had made her happy, join the Jedi so he could be free. Owen and Beru sacrificed themselves to prevent the Imperial stormtroopers from finding Luke together with the droid. Anakin betrayed the Jedi order in his despair to keep his family (wife and unborn children) safe. And Ben fell to the dark not due to Snoke’s influence, he resisted him for over twenty years; he only rebelled and left his uncle’s temple after an attempt on his safety. 

We do not learn (to my knowledge) whether Ben was in contact with his parents during his years at Luke’s temple. It is not mentioned however, so I assume that even if he was, nothing noticeable happened. Han sees his son again when he is a grown man… and I find it interesting that the scene has a sexual connotation. Ben does not notice his old man at all, although he can sense him in the Force (later on Starkiller Base he does), he only cares about securing Rey. And Han sees him carrying her away like a bride, probably wondering how his little boy grew to be this unknown, dark, hooded figure, who wreaks terror on Takodana yet is surprisingly gentle with a girl.

From The Rise of Kylo Ren we learn that Ben had not intentionally caused the fire at his uncle’s temple; but he had been blamed for it by his surviving fellow students and chased by them off the planet. In TFA, we learn Leia did not doubt for one moment that Luke’s narration of the night at the temple was true. She blamed Snoke, but it never occurred to her that Ben might be innocent - her own son. She did not try to communicate once in all the years he was Kylo Ren but left him alone while he damned his soul committing crime after crime. Luke never told her the truth, even when he met her again one last time, and she did not question it. Leia did send her estranged husband to “get their son back”, but obviously she did not consider actively participating in this task. We only see mother and son “interact” emotionally from time to time; they never meet and never talk. Ben sees his father, has a conversation with him, Han even touches him; Luke does not touch him and they don’t exactly have a dialogue, but at least they meet. To me, that is significant. 

When mother and son sense one another on two different ships at the beginning of The Last Jedi, Leia’s mind is perfectly silent. We merely see that Ben feels his mother is aboard, which makes him pull his finger from the trigger. But his expression changes: from belligerent and angry, he becomes vulnerable, shy. He even looks more boyish. Ben is aware that his mother disapproves of his choices, but he has no chance to explain to her how things could come this far.

„You can’t go back to her now. Just like I can’t.” Kylo (intending Leia) to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker 

Leia does not know her son. She wants him back “home”, but to her, that means fighting by her side; it does not occur to her that her son is fighting for his life, that he became a war criminal without having wanted it, and that he can’t simply go back and put himself to trial: he is aware that nobody would believe him. Fatalism caught up with him and his family the way it already had with Anakin. His mother and uncle always felt that he was doomed; and since they believed it, the galaxy at large believes it, too. Snoke knew that by pushing Ben to patricide he would shut all remaining doors for his apprentice - nothing but self-hatred left for him, no way to go back even if he had found the courage. What was he supposed to do, go back and say, “Hi mom, sorry I killed dad (your husband)”? It baffles me to this day how many fans believe that he that he “chose the Dark Side” and that he could just as easily switch sides, like nothing had happened. 

Leia never trusted anyone who was not on her side. In ANH she immediately hit it off with Luke, who not surprisingly turns out to be her twin brother; and as we learn in TFA, she and Han fought all through their marriage, though that didn’t prevent them from loving one another. Leia either expects someone to think the way she does, or to be only just so different that she can keep him in check. 

“Han - don’t do it.” “Do what?” “Whatever you have in mind - just don’t do it!” Han and Leia in The Force Awakens

This reaches a sad and somehow grotesque turn when Leia takes Rey as her apprentice. With her brother dead, Leia is the only one left to do it; and though it is understandable that someone must carry on the Jedi knowledge, I myself would be extremely wary of training a girl who is none other than the flesh and blood of the man I fought against for years and who caused so much death and terror throughout the entire galaxy. 

Leia had not met Palpatine though; her horror of the Dark Side was embodied by Vader, who had imprisoned and tortured her, forced her to watch while her home planet was blown up before her eyes, frozen her boyfriend in carbonite and maimed her brother. Leia never forgave Vader, and even if unconsciously, she probably blamed him for having somehow come back in the son she was carrying. I doubt whether Luke ever talked to his sister about Vader and told her about the broken, sad old man he found behind the mask. There is nothing suggesting that they did, and besides Luke and Leia both do not seem to me like two people very prone to introspection, they always look to the future. (Which is of course a good thing, but then again denying traumata always backfires.) 

„Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here… The need in front of your nose.” Yoda in The Last Jedi 

Leia did not want to repeat with Rey the mistakes she had made with Ben and that’s good and well; however, she feared her son but was not in the least afraid of Rey. Maybe she “always knew who Rey was”, but she obviously never knew who her own son was. As Count Dooku once said to Obi-Wan, the Dark Side clouded her judgement - preventing her from seeing the human in Ben, and from seeing the monster in Rey. This is not due to their respective bloodlines, but because Rey’s uncompromising attitude is familiar to Leia, while her son’s stormy, questioning mind is unfamiliar and frightening to her. 

Though Leia did not actively order Rey to kill Kylo, they were on opposite sides of the war; and Rey practically kills him with his own mother’s help and thanks to her training. Both women know what they are doing and they are acting on their own initiative. Obi-Wan and Yoda also had wanted to groom Luke into killing Anakin, but this one was not aware of his connection to him; and Obi-Wan in particular was not plotting against his own flesh and blood, even though he did raise Anakin like a younger brother. 

Comparing Leia with the other Star Wars mothers makes her failure even more evident. Shmi was an ordinary slave, probably not even learned, but she raised her son to be a good boy and always believed in him; giving him away was a sacrifice for her. Her son was everything she had, which is why she gave him so much in return. Leia has her background as a princess, her military and political career, her husband, her brother, her friends: so, of course her son wasn’t everything for her. Leia gave Ben away hoping that Luke would form him into a powerful ally for her Cause. The mistake both women made was thinking that growing up as Jedi would be good for their sons. When Anakin left his mother, he had everything to gain: freedom, a place in life, and (he hoped) the chance to come back and free his mother as well. When Ben left home, he had everything to lose: his family to which he most probably had no contact, his wish of becoming a pilot, the chance of a family of his own since a Jedi is not supposed to get married. The ways of the Jedi let each of them down, although their backgrounds couldn’t differ more. 

Many fans criticize that in RotS Padmé, the brilliant strategist and brave fighter of the first two prequel films, is ostensibly reduced to “barefoot and pregnant”. It is true that Padmé has laid down her mandate and of course she wants to protect her unborn, but that does not make her passive: shortly after having witnessed a political putsch and with it the end of all her political aims, she walks into the lion’s den on Mustafar, vulnerable and alone, to get her husband out of there, although she was told that he committed a carnage at the Jedi Temple and knew that he was capable of that (years prior, he had told her about the Tusken village himself). But she still believed in him. 

There is an obscure flashback scene in The Rise of Skywalker, where during their training Leia says to Luke that she will become a Jedi only on the death of her son. This makes perfect sense: a Jedi always must face his own darkness to finish his training. Being in a way the reincarnation of her father, her son is her Dark Side, the one she refuses to face. Leia already knows or senses that she and her son will be on opposite sides, and that in order to become a Jedi and become one with the Force, she will have to confront her own child. The act is physically carried out by Rey’s hand: Rey was her pupil, she was like an adopted daughter in her son’s stead to her, Leia had sent her on the mission to retrieve the wayfinder, she was the one who called Ben when they were dueling, so in a way, it actually is Leia who kills Ben. It is her incapacity to love her son for being himself, as a person and not as a projection of her own darkness, that causes his tragic fate. 

Leia is oddly distanced from her son; she expects him to deliver, i.e. become a good Jedi, or at least submit himself to her mercy. She never understood his dilemma in the slightest - that he never wished to be a Jedi, and that he also had not wanted to become an evil warlord but was pushed into it when there was nothing left for him to do. He had to become a Jedi or nothing; she would not have accepted him simply for being himself (the way his father did). 

 Ben - Child and Grandchild Of War 

Leia and Luke fail to rebuild the “better world” of the Old Republic because they both don’t acknowledge that this world does no longer exist and that it can’t be restored. Leia is a princess, but Alderaan is gone; Luke is the last Jedi, and the Jedi are extinct. It is their refusal to accept that the past is over that ultimately leads both of them to disaster. And in a way, Ben understands that the way Luke does, eventually. 

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi

Ben is a child and grandchild of war; both generations before him had to watch people they cared or were responsible for suffer and die. He grows up in a period of peace, but like any child whose parents have not overcome war traumata, their pain is handed down to him like a cursed heritage. His family keeps him warm and fed, clothed and instructed, but they fail capitally when it comes to his emotional needs; as for any questions he may have, they choose to simply ignore them. They fail him long before the disaster at Luke’s temple: it is only the last drop. Like Anakin before him, he feels betrayed, abandoned and left behind by the ones whom he chiefly ought to be able to put his trust into. 

We are confronted over and over with the strength of the Light in Ben: even when he commits the patricide he hates what he is doing, and afterwards he is traumatized, his self-hatred deeper than ever. While Anakin projected his anger and frustration to the outside, Ben will rather hate himself. But their emotional reaction to their mothers are the same - both could not be by their mothers’ side in her dying moment, and both feel like they let her down, taking the blame on themselves. 

Remember how Ben turns around immediately, on the Death Star ruin, right in the middle of a fight with the girl he loves, who is in the throes of the Dark Side, who he wants to protect from herself at all costs - all because his mother calls him? It looks like she is trying to prevent him from doing evil; but if that is the case, it only proves how little she understands him. Her son was not doing anything bad, on the contrary, he had found the girl whom she herself had trained under the influence of her own malignant self, and was trying to make her reason and accept herself instead of projecting her fears and her anger onto him. 

“The Dark Side is in our nature. Surrender to it.“ Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker 

In TFA, Han faced his son personally; on that fatal bridge on Starkiller base Ben at first walked away from him although he sensed him, when Han called him he did not turn around, and he resisted Snoke’s order to kill him as long as he could; he would not have managed to do it had Han not understood what was going on and allowed his son to kill him so he could save his soul with his forgiveness and unconditional love.

On the bridge of the ruins of the second Death Star, Ben does not struggle at all when his mother calls him. Maybe because he feels that she’s dying; but I also believe that it was what he had waited for all along - his mother finally reaching out to him. In that moment his fate is sealed: Rey stabs him through, annihilating his Kylo Ren persona. From now on, he’s Ben, the name his mother called him by. This is the moment of his redemption and also the beginning of his end.

Ben did need Kylo. Kylo Ren was his Dark Side, and like his grandfather Anakin, Ben Solo was meant to be the Balance. We could already have guessed, in this moment, that he was not meant to survive; in order to live he ought to have learned to reconcile both parts of himself, Light and Dark, not to shed one of them. His moments of heroism on Exegol, thought few, show us how powerful he can be when he is in balance. But neither Rey nor Leia (or Han, for that matter) ever acknowledged Kylo’s right to exist, or understood the importance of Balance for lasting peace. 

This scene just proves how desperate Ben was for his mother’s approval. All it needed was one gesture, one word. He did not want to be a Jedi; my guess is that he accepted to be his uncle’s apprentice in hopes that this would teach him to become more the kind of man his mother wanted him to be. Luke was an unreachable role model before his eyes; no matter what he did, Ben was always aware that he could not come up to his standard. Luke was a galactic legend, a savior, a saint-like figure ever since Ben was a child, and Ben neither was that way nor did he want to: in his heart, Ben is a normal boy who wants to be seen as a person. Anakin and Luke were affectionate and searching for emotional connection, too, but both also wanted to prove themselves. Ben does not strike me at all as being ambitious. He is neither truly hero nor villain but, in the first place, someone who wants to love and be loved. He wants to live his own life, make his own choices, have control over his own fate, protect his dignity as a human being and as a man. This is often misinterpreted as being “power-hungry”, but to me, these are very natural desires. And he has to carve his own way; he can’t simply embrace the path of the follower, because he is by nature both blessed and cursed with an extraordinary power which sets him apart from others. This is nobody’s fault. And it is much more frustrating for him than for the world around him, where, each in his way, everybody seems to think “If only he would behave!” 

Ben is aware of the fact that he never was first for anyone in his life. His parents and uncle were much more attached to one another than to him. Ben is someone who tries so hard to change, only to realize over and over that it’s not enough. And this reaches a sad and terrible peak that night at the Jedi temple, when he has to learn that despite all his efforts, Luke thinks he would be better off dead. No wonder all of his anger and frustration come to the surface when he sees his uncle again on Crait, this is obviously a rage born from a conflict of long standing. From his point of view, Luke destroyed his life. And although Luke had not wanted that, it cannot be denied that in a way he did, and worse, that he ran from his guilt instead of trying to repair the damage. 

The alternative, Ben has to find out, is not better though: the Knights of Ren and Snoke make him give up all the rest of what he is, and Snoke keeps demanding more - the ultimate sacrifice of his father, the person who was closest to him, by his own hand. 

I am aware that many fans find Kylo / Ben “embarrassing” due to his emotional tantrums. His mother, his father or uncle, or his grandfather would never have behaved like this! When they killed someone, it always had style, so it was justified… even if Kylo’s tantrums are directed towards machinery and not taken on people. Few seem to consider that he is not “immature and childish”: he is a man who was pushed to the limits of emotional endurance throughout his life. (This is also a bit personal for me - I know situations like that from own experience, smashing household articles simply because I couldn’t take it anymore. Lifelong abuse is no laughing matter.)

Ben is in a vicious circle: his strong emotionality makes him vulnerable, the abuse makes him even more emotionally unsteady, and so it goes on and on. He has no way out, except for the faint hope to find someone who will see him as a person at last. 

“I have no choice and I never did... Whether it’s Luke Skywalker or Snoke, neither one sees me as a person. I’m just a legacy, a set of expectations.” Ben Solo in The Rise of Kylo Ren, 4

That Ben loves both his mother and Rey despite the fact that one took the other as her apprentice and the other uses this training to kill him only proves the depth of his dedication. At no time we see him being jealous towards Rey, or angry at his mother because of her double standard. Ben’s love for his mother is unconditional. And his love is also unconditional for Rey, whose soul and body he saves giving up his own although she took everything from him, including his life the moment he lowered his defense.

Rey and Leia represent the general audience’s point of view: how could anyone not wish to be someone as cool as a Jedi, and getting the chance to fight against the bad guys? Ben is the other point of view, someone who indeed does not want it at all. It takes him a long time to find out what he actually wants to do with his powers: “Give a new order to the galaxy”, together with Rey. When she refuses and leaves him, he feels not only betrayed but humiliated. All he is left with is the maddening desire to burn the house down for good, the ultimate sin his uncle saves him from by sacrificing himself on Crait.

  Conclusions

One of the troubles with a weak, absent, violent or otherwise dysfunctional father figure is their repercussion on the mother figures: Padmé can’t be a mother because she is physically absent, and Leia can’t because she is emotionally absent. Much as Ben may love Leia, he knows her. He knows that to her he always was more a burden than someone she loved having around; he is aware of her fear of him, which is why he rightly assumes, after the tragedy at the temple, that she will never believe it was not his doing. 

And this is what brings me to my first point: a mother may not be capable of loving her child. She may nourish fond memories of the sweet baby and cute toddler she used to take care of, but the more the child grows, the more a traumatized mother will be terrified by the emerging personality of an intelligent child which might see through her carefully built-up walls, and even more scared of the child’s emotional development into a person she can no longer keep in control, who might doubt her, and want to make his own choices. Of course, being born with the Force is a huge responsibility. However, it cannot be denied that the Jedi Order failed, and that both Leia and her brother did not question their ways; instead, they did everything to prevent Ben from questioning them.

The actual tragedy of a dysfunctional mother-child relationship is that a mother may not really love her child, but a child instinctively loves the mother because its psychological balance roots in its faith in the mother’s love.

If unavoidable, in extreme cases the child can of course learn to let go, accept that its own mother could not love it, and that this was neither her nor the child’s fault in the first place; but that takes time and effort and needs a lot of support from other sources. Things Ben never had, because he had to fight for his life while his own mother was the general of the Resistance, each and every member of which would have killed him in cold blood had they had the chance. (Remember how Poe tried to shoot him in the back in TFA, and Rey shot at him in TLJ when he was in sickbay, wounded and unarmed? And these are the good guys.) He’s the Bad Guy, remember? Not Leia’s son. Just like Rey is the Good Heroine, not Palpatine’s heir. Nobody questions what the Good Guys do.

Leia may have loved Ben to a certain extent, but of one thing I am fairly sure: unconditional is not what her love for him was. Leia knew that there was still light in her son, but she did not realize that he was desperately searching for Balance between both sides. Leia did want him back, but only if he was willing to embrace only the Light Side and to shed the darkness in him, like that was even possible. Luke and Leia, like almost all the Jedi before them, pretended that there was no darkness in them… which made the darkness all the more powerful in someone who was closely connected to with them. 

Ben, like his grandfather, is more honest and authentic with his feelings than the people he knows. That he so often errs results from lack of judgement; Ben reminds me of someone who keeps stumbling because he’s left in the dark. His grandfather’s is also the story of a human tragedy, precisely because Anakin, too, did not know what was going on behind stage. Luke’s story is eventually a success because Vader tells him the truth, which first shocks him but then makes him develop a strong and mature personality. 

Star Wars is about a family made unhappy by a distorted idea of masculinity; an idea mostly brought up and propagated by the Jedi. Both the detached type like Mace Windu, Obi-Wan or Yoda and the cruel and sardonic Vader are a product of this attitude. We have until now never seen a happy family during the course of the whole saga, with a united couple of parents growing and protecting their children together. Anakin became a villain simultaneously with being a father; I find it interesting that his son Luke seems to have escaped this fate partly because he never was confronted with fatherhood. 

Leia wants her son back as her child; she does not expect him to become a grown man who makes his own choices. One of the things that make the final trilogy of the saga so dissatisfying is, to me, that a Skywalker man again was denied the dignity to be on his own, to develop a healthy masculinity and to make his own choices instead of being expected to simply do what he was told. 

Not surprisingly, Ben is saved by his father, the most human of the bunch. Smuggler, adventurer, “nobody”, cheater, thief, war general… Han Solo was always first and foremost himself, which is why he understands his son’s human side best. As Luke is a Jedi, Leia is a princess. She never is a mother above everything else, the way Shmi was. Unconsciously or not, she places power above family. Ben calls his father “Dad” in TRoS (in TFA he referred to him by his name); he never calls Leia “mother”. 

Of course, like Luke, Obi-Wan and all the Jedi before them, Leia has no truly bad intentions. She does want her son to be safe and happy - on her conditions. She cannot understand his desire to reconcile with the darkness inside of him, respectively to take Vader’s skeleton from the family closet; she accepts only a part of him. When Ben finally “comes home”, in death, it is as Han’s and Leia’s child. And this also, unbeknownst to her, causes Rey’s lonely fate since her mate, her other half in the dyad, is gone. 

The heroes of old have proved incapable of giving their son and heir the support he would have needed; when they faced their guilt it was too late; and still after death, none of them accepted the Dark Side’s right to exist. Ben “comes home” purged from his sins, without having integrated the two parts of himself, and leaving the greatest power in the galaxy in the hands of a young woman who is very far from understanding Balance in the Force, or only the necessity and importance of it.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

What does all of this mean for us, as the audience? Maybe that it’s time to grow up. Becoming an adult has much to do with seeing the limitations of the people (heroes) you used to trust blindly when you were a child. Many people never accept that, or feel let down for life. I think the wisest course is to learn how to grow and mature together with your people you used to admire, to learn from one another precisely because none of us is perfect, but we all can grow and mature the ones through the others.

The Rise of Skywalker told us, among other things (though not saying so openly) that even a positive and universally liked character like Princess Leia is not immune to the Dark Side of the Force, and that she may support it fully convinced of doing the right thing. It does not make the good she did undone, and does not deny her positive sides. And it does not say that we can’t love her any more. Anyone is entitled to be annoyed by these revelations. Leia is not a bad person, she’s human. But waking up from our ideals of heroism and happy endings may be more to the point for our own growth. 

Our parents, our heroes, anyone can err for many reasons. To see their mistakes does not mean giving up on their or our ideals; the good things they stand for are still valid. Yet seeing their weaknesses and finding our own way to honor those ideals is perhaps a better way to get on with our lives than thinking that there is someone, anyone in the world we can look up to because they are, and always will be, perfect. 

  Side Note: Speculations 

Although many affronted fans claim so, the heroes of the OT were not dismantled by the ST: Luke, Han and Leia each in his own way show their heroism again in their respective situations. But it is also made abundantly clear that where they failed was their duty towards the next generation. The thought is of course disturbing because a mother is supposed to give affection to a child, a father to offer it protection and advice, a mentor to foster its capacities. In Ben’s case, all three of them failed blatantly. That they managed to do so with Rey, a perfect stranger to their family, would be acceptable if she were not the offspring of Palpatine of all people. As it is, her “inheritance” of the Skywalker legacy feels as unearned as Ben’s failure and death feel undeserved. 

Parents in Star Wars always have failed their children because they were in some way absent. Anakin, Luke and Ben, all three generations of Skywalkers, suffer from a father trauma. Anakin was always a father, never a son; Luke always a son, never a father. Which brings me back to the point I can’t give up on: a healthy father figure, someone who was a son and becomes a father, who went to the Dark Side but came back, who was not only redeemed but also rehabilitated, and finds an equally strong mother figure by his side, is essential if the galaxy is ever to find lasting Balance. I am not giving up hope. 😉

[wikipediaredoengl199fa20]

Kyleigh Burns

Prof. Audrey Golden

ENGL 199

8 December 2020

Wikipedia REDO! Diana, Princess of Wales

Their engagement became official on 24 February 1981.[19] Diana was able to select her own engagement ring.[19] Following the engagement, Diana left her occupation as a nursery teacher's assistant and lived for a short period at Clarence House, which was the home of the Queen Mother.[37] She then lived at Buckingham Palace until the wedding.[37] Ingrid Seward, who wrote a biography on Diana, described the time before the wedding as “lonely” for the princess.[38] Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry the first in line to the throne since Anne Hyde married the future James II over 300 years earlier, and she was also the first royal bride to have a paying job before her engagement.[22][19] She made her first public appearance with Prince Charles in a charity ball in March 1981 at Goldsmiths' Hall, where she met Grace, Princess of Monaco.[37]

Twenty-year-old Diana became Princess of Wales when she married Charles on 29 July 1981. The wedding was held at St Paul's Cathedral, which offered more seating than Westminster Abbey, a church that was generally used for royal nuptials.[22][19] The service was widely described as a "fairytale wedding" and was watched by a global television audience of 750 million people while 600,000 spectators lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple en route to the ceremony.[19][39] They had notable vows, as Diana swapped Charles’ middle names and they has requested that they would not say they would obey each other.[39] .[40] Diana wore a dress valued at £9,000 (equivalent to £34,750 in 2019) with a 25-foot (7.62-metre) train.[41]

The couple had residences at Kensington Palace and Highgrove House, near Tetbury. On 5 November 1981, Diana's pregnancy was announced.[45] In January 1982 — 12 weeks into the pregnancy — Diana fell down a staircase at Sandringham, and the royal gynaecologistSir George Pinker was summoned from London. He found that although she had suffered severe bruising, the foetus was uninjured.[46]Diana later confessed that she had intentionally thrown herself down the stairs because she was feeling "so inadequate".[47] In February 1982, pictures of a pregnant Diana in bikini while holidaying was published in the media. The Queen subsequently released a statement and called it "the blackest day in the history of British journalism."[48] On 21 June 1982, Diana gave birth to the couple's first son, Prince William.[49] She subsequently suffered from postpartum depression after her first pregnancy and[50]  decided to take William on her first major tours of Australia and New Zealand. By her own admission, Diana had not initially intended to take William until Malcolm Fraser, the Australian prime minister, made the suggestion.[51]

A second son, Prince Harry, was born on 15 September 1984.[52] The Princess said she and Charles were closest during her pregnancy with Harry. She was aware their second child was a boy, but did not share the knowledge with anyone else, including Charles.[53]

Diana was an involved mother and gave her children a variety of different experiences while they were growing up. She was firm in her beliefs around parenting and was strong in her role as a mother to William and Harry. Her and Charles worked together to raise them, along with nannies their family hired. Like most parents, she was very interested in their schooling and social lives. She would dress and drive them to school and often scheduled her work in order to spend the most time with them. 

//

Public Image

Diana remains one of the most popular members of the royal family throughout history, and she continues to influence the principles of the royal family and its younger generations.[301][302] She was a major presence on the world stage from her engagement to Prince Charles in 1981 until her death in 1997, and was often described as the "world's most photographed woman".[19][303] She was noted for her compassion,[304] style, charisma, and high-profile charity work, as well as her ill-fated marriage.[157][305] Diana's former private secretary, Patrick Jephson described her as an organised and hardworking person, and pointed out Charles was not able to "reconcile with his wife's extraordinary popularity",[306] a viewpoint supported by biographer Tina Brown.[307] He also said she was a tough boss who was "equally quick to appreciate hard work", but could also be defiant "if she felt she had been the victim of injustice".[306] Diana's mother also defined her as a "loving" figure who could occasionally be "tempestuous".[240] Paul Burrell, who worked as a butler for Diana, remembered her as a "deep thinker" capable of "introspective analysis".[308] She was often described as a devoted mother to her children,[19][309] who are believed to be influenced by her personality and way of life.[310] In the early years, Diana was often noted for her shy nature.[301][311] Journalist Michael Whiteperceived her as being "smart", "shrewd and funny".[302] Those who communicated with her closely describe her as a person who was led by "her heart".[19] In an article for The Guardian, Monica Ali described Diana as a woman with a strong character, who entered the royal family as an inexperienced girl with little education, but could handle their expectations, and overcome the difficulties and sufferings of her marital life. Ali also believed that she "had a lasting influence on the public discourse, particularly in matters of mental health" by discussing her eating disorder publicly.[157] According to Tina Brown, in her early years Diana possessed a "passive power", a quality that in her opinion she shared with the Queen Mother and a trait that would enable her to instinctively use her appeal to achieve her goals.[312] Brown also believed that Diana was capable of charming people with a single glance.[307]

Diana was known for visiting sick and dying patients, and people poor and unwanted who were often seen as outcasts of society. The attention she gave these people increased her popularity with the people, as she was see as being kind and empathetic. [313] She was often thought of as mindful of other people's thoughts and feelings, and later revealed her wish to become a beloved figure among the people, saying in her 1995 interview, that "[She would] like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts."[311] Known for her easygoing attitude, she reportedly hated formality in her inner circle, asking "people not to jump up every time she enters the room".[314] Diana is often credited with widening the range of charity works carried out by the royal family in a more modern style.[157]Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post wrote in an article that "Diana imbued her role as royal princess with vitality, activism and, above all, glamour."[19] Alicia Carroll of The New York Times described Diana as "a breath of fresh air" who was the main reason the royal family was known in the United States.[315] Anthony Holden, a journalist and fan of  Diana, wrote about the ways he thought the period after her divorce was one of  relief and growth in a new, more independent life .[147] Despite all the marital issues and scandals, Diana continued to enjoy a high level of popularity in the polls while her husband was suffering from low levels of public approval.[19] Her peak popularity rate in the United Kingdom between 1981 and 2012 was 47%.[316] In Theodore Dalrymple's opinion, her popularity stemmed from "both her extreme difference from common people and her similarity to them". He believed that by going public about her marital issues and bulimia she won the admiration of "of all those who have been unhappy in their marriages" as well as people who suffered from psychological problems.[317]

Diana had become what Prime Minister Tony Blair called the "People's Princess", an iconic national figure. He had reportedly said that she had shown the nation "a new way to be British".[308] Her sudden death brought an unprecedented spasm of grief and mourning,[318] and subsequently a crisis arose in the Royal Household.[319][320][321] Andrew Marr said that by her death she "revived the culture of public sentiment",[157] while The Guardian's Matthew d'Ancona dubbed Diana "the queen of the realm of feeling" and said that "the impassioned aftermath of her death was a bold punctuation mark in a new national narrative that favoured disinhibition, empathy and personal candour."[322] Her brother, the Earl Spencer, captured her role:

Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.[323]

In 1997, Diana was one of the runners-up for Time magazine's person of the Year.[324] In 1999, Time magazine named Diana one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.[325] In 2002, Diana ranked third on the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, above the Queen and other British monarchs.[326] In 2003, VH1 ranked her at number nine on its 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons list, which recognises "the folks that have significantly inspired and impacted American society".[327] In 2006, the Japanese public ranked Diana twelfth in The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan.[328] In 2018, Diana ranked fifteenth on the BBC History's poll of 100 Women Who Changed the World.[329][330]In 2020, Time magazine included Diana's name on its list of 100 Women of the Year. She was chosen as the Woman of the Year 1987 for her efforts in de-stigmatising the conditions surrounding HIV/AIDS patients.[331]

Despite being regarded as an iconic figure and a popular member of the royal family, Diana was subject to criticism during her life. Patrick Jephson, her private secretary of eight years, wrote in an article in The Daily Telegraph that "[Diana] had an extra quality that frustrated her critics during her lifetime and has done little to soften their disdain since her death".[301] Diana was criticised by philosophy professor Anthony O'Hear who in his notes argued that she was unable to fulfill her duties, her reckless behaviour was damaging the monarchy, and she was "self-indulgent" in her philanthropic efforts.[224] Due to these remarks, the charity organisations that Diana had worked with countered O’Hear’s narrative about her charity work. [224] Further criticism surfaced as she was accused of using her public profile to benefit herself,[107] which in return "demeaned her royal office".[301] Diana's unique type of charity work, which sometimes included physical contact with people affected by serious diseases occasionally had a negative reaction in the media.[301]

Diana's relationship with the press and the paparazzi has been described as "ambivalent". On different occasions she would complain about the way she was being treated by the media, mentioning that their connstant presence in her proximity had made life impossible for her, whereas at other times she would seek their attention and hand information to reporters herself.[332][333] Writing for The Guardian, Journalists like Peter Conrad and Christopher Hitchens analyzed the situation and surmised that Diana was cognizant of the influence the press had on her public standing. She therefore involved herself in public activities, perhaps to her own detriment, and often used them to show her philanthropic work.  

//

Essay

The culture and lore around Princess Diana has been ever evolving despite her death over twenty years ago. Although she remains a steadfast, beloved figure in Western celebrity culture, the narratives and bias surrounding her have shifted her memory farther and farther away from the woman herself. This is understandable and in some ways how the human brain responds to loss - by filling in memories or ideas of who the person might be instead of who they were. Lauded as the “queen of people’s hearts”, she became idolized to the extreme in death by the press, who were once her biggest critics. Thought of as endlessly kind, beautiful, and just an ordinary girl who fell victim to the malicious royal family, much of the dialogue around Diana reflects her idolization and serves to inform it even further. This  rhetoric can become harmful because it conflates the idea of a person with who they actually are, which creates false images and unattainable standards.

Throughout her wikipedia entry, the author(s) bias towards Diana as a selfless saint is seen in both explicit and implicit ways. Selective wording and the inclusion of quotes by many different supporters which describe Diana in loving ways, the author paints the same portrait of Diana painted by pop culture. An example of this would be in the section on Diana’s Public Image, when the Wikipedia article quotes Peter Conrad, who wrote an article on Diana for the Guardian, as saying that she “overburdened herself” with the press. The connotations of “overburdened” imply that she didn’t realize what she was doing, and once she did she was unable to escape. The inclusion of this quote paints Diana as unwitting and innocent to the power of the press, even when she was an accomplished public figure who understood how to manipulate the press.

In order to try and reconcile with the bias shown in Princess Diana’s wikipedia article, I rewrote portions of the text to include less biased language and present a clearer image of the person, not the persona. I used more neutral language which carried less implication and connotation in order to paint a more balanced picture of who Diana really was. Through careful diction and paraphrasing instead of direct quotes, I was able to include the same information but presented in a way which allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the subject. For example, in the passages discussing the way she chose to parent William and Harry, I tried to make the language less aggressive. To think of and speak about Diana in a way that only describes her as a victim or as someone who could do no wrong is not only inaccurate but implies that who she actually was was not enough. The bias’ weaved in throughout the wikipedia article reflects the cultural thought surrounding female celebrities and specifically Diana - although the author(s) are providing an accurate portrayal of her life, they’re approaching the article with pre-formed conclusions in their mind. These conclusions present in the form of bias and influence the reader to think about the subject in a certain tone or light. By approaching this piece with the knowledge that it contained bias language, I was able to identify and correct it in the selected passages.

Bibliography

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Diana, Princess of Wales.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 August 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Diana-princess-of-Wales. Accessed 8 December 2020.

Harris, Daniel. “The Kitschification of Princess Diana.” Salmagundi, no. 118/119, 1998, pp.

279–291. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40549319. Accessed 9 Dec. 2020.

Hobbes, Micheal and Marshall, Sarah. “Princess Diana Part 2: The Wedding”, You’re Wrong About, 5 October 2020, https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ty4blFiX86hMybf1QSkd9?si=vPAtvf1VSAqizSeVh0frLQ.

Mantel, Hilary. “The Princess Myth: Hilary Mantel on Diana.” The Guardian, 26 August 2017,

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/26/the-princess-myth-hilary-mantel-on-diana

. Accessed 8 December 2020.

Saukko, Paula. “Rereading Media and Eating Disorders: Karen Carpenter, Princess Diana, and the Healthy Female Self.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 23, no. 2, 2006, pp. 152-169. Simmons Library, https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.simmons.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=dde5e9f9-537c-4c92-b738-fa172ed177d8%40pdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=ufh&AN=21783111&anchor=AN0021783111-8.

[bestwatchmoviesseriesonline-blog]

10 Best Movies to Watch During Christmas Holidays

Great thing about the product quality holiday movies is that you never get tired of them! I've compiled listing of my favorite films for the 'season of love and understanding ', whilst the song says. I'm aware all of these movies won't interest everyone, but at the very least I am hoping you'll find some of one's favorites included.

It is a Wonderful Life (1946) On Christmas Eve, a man down on his luck wishes he was never born and contemplates suicide. He's rescued by his guardian angel, who shows him what his friends and loved ones could be like without him... 

This Frank Capra's ('Arsenic and Old Lace') classic is known as one of the very inspirational films ever and is really a traditional Christmas favourite worldwide because the 1970's. Interestingly, it had been a box-office flop during the time of its release! To be honest, I can't see why - is has touching story, memorable sing-a-long ending and masterful James Stewart ('Rear Window') in the leading role.

A Groundhog Day (1993) Cynical and self-centered TV meteorologist, while covering the story of the weather forecasting groundhog, gets stuck in time. In the beginning he takes advantageous asset of the specific situation, but soon he decides to create some changes as he starts to fall in love with his co-worker... 

I think the very best romantic comedy for holiday season! Bill Murray ('Lost in Translation'), who's nothing significantly less than perfect in his role, shares great chemistry with lovely Andie MacDowell ('Four Weddings and a Funeral'). Even though you watch this movie lying in bed with high fever and cough, like Used to do last year, you will enjoy it anyway!

A Christmas Carol (1984) Miserly and sullen old man is taught the actual meaning of Christmas by ghosts who visit him on Christmas Eve and show him their own past, present and future. He realizes he's nothing good to expect in the foreseeable future unless he changes his ways... 

Made for television drama is i think the very best and essentially the most faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens'novel, that has been adapted numerous times. This classic tale, set in Victorian England, with late George C. Scott ('Dr. Strangelove') as Ebeneezer Scrooge, will surely put you in the Christmas mood, but the powerful message it carries can be applied to all seasons!

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Pumpkin King of Halloweentown is bored of accomplishing the same every Halloween. One day as he's walking into a wood he stumbles onto Christmas Town. Intrigued with the complete idea of the holiday, he decides to kidnap Santa and do Christmas himself... 

Tim Burton, who became known for his darkish but original fables such as for example'Edward Scissorhands'or'Big Fish'directed this animated musical fantasy. It had been a massive success at the box offices and praised by critics for the stunning originality and visual excellence. In 2006. this film got the complete new dimension when it had been re-released into theaters in Digital 3-D.

Die Hard (1988) Prior to Christmas, New York City detective is here in L.A. to pay holiday together with his wife and children. Unfortunately, a group of terrorists has bought out Nakatomi Corporation building and is holding all employees hostages, including detective's wife...

 For people who can't do without action thrillers during Christmas holidays, this is probably the best choice. John McTiernan's ('The Search for Red October') classic features exciting action sequences, memorable one-liners and a break through movie ดูหนัง role for Bruce Willis ('RED'), which sent this actor to the A-list Hollywood stardom.

Bad Santa (2003) An unhappy con-artist and his friend, a midget, are intending to rob department stores on Christmas Eve posing as Santa and his Little Helper. While they proceeding with the master plan,'Santa'befriends among their customers, an overweight and lonesome boy... 

This Santa is truly bad! He chases women, he drinks heavily and swears about every 3 seconds. But we also learn that beneath the outer lining he hides a heart of gold. Certainly not a video suitable for kids, but if you're adult give this quirky comedy a opportunity for its different approach and great performance by Billy Bob Thornton ('The Astronaut Farmer').

A Christmas Story (1983) America in 1940's. A long time before PlayStation and iPad, 9-year-old boy longs for Red Rider BB gun. He tries to convince his family and Santa the gun would have been a perfect Christmas gift, but everyone keeps warning him that he'll shoot his eye out... 

This family comedy, predicated on Jean Shepherd's semi-autobiographical stories, may be worth watching for many hilarious scenes and its reputation as the maximum American holiday movie of time. Peter Billingsley, who played the little boy, has become successful Hollywood producer, in charge of creating hits like'The Break Up'and'Iron Man '.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (2005) Four siblings are sent to the nation estate during World War II. Playing a game title of hide-and-seek, the youngest daughter discovers a wardrobe which transports her to Narnia, the magical land with eternal winter but without Christmas, ruled by the evil White Witch... 

I've been loving this fable since I had watched 80's tv series version inside my winter holidays. The newest adaptation of C.S. Lewis'book, is aimed mostly at younger audience, but it could be enjoyed by whoever has some adventurous spirit inside! This film was followed by sequel'Prince Caspian'in 2008.

Elf (2003) An individual orphan is located by Santa Claus and raised by elves on the North Pole. When naive adult'elf''discovers he's actually an individual, he decides to attend his host to birth, New York City, in search of his real father, who's on Santa's naughty list... 

The clash od two cultures - human and elfish - produces many laughs in this family oriented comedy. Obviously, a great part of the credits for laughter goes to leading actor, famous comedian Will Farrell ('The Other Guys') and veteran James Caan ('The Godfather'), playing main protagonist's biological father.

Scrooged (1988) A mean television executive, who will do anything just to increase his network's ratings, even it indicates forcing his office staff to sort out Christmas Eve, gets visits from three ghosts - 

The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future... I couldn't resist to place another, modernized and humorous version of'A Christmas Carol'on the list, because this is what's'Scrooged'all about. Once more, Bill Murray is excellent in his role, this time as media world Scrooge in a satire with great special effects, directed by Richard Donner ('Lethal Weapon').

[they-did-what-to-allura]

My letter for the @justice-for-allura project. Posting mostly to remind anybody who might be lurking that this is a thing, and it’s a cool thing. If you feel bad bout how Allura’s story went down and wanna make your points known, this is a great opportunity for it.

Edit: Changed some things, fixed a couple typos and reworded some points for clarification.

To the Voltron Team, DreamWorks, to Any and All Involved with the Decision to Kill Off Allura,

Let me begin by thanking the team for giving us this iteration of Allura to begin with. She is a beloved character to many fans. If she wasn’t such a great character, there wouldn’t be so many of us upset about the way her story ended. So, thank you for Allura. She was an amazing character with interesting layers of personality and a delightful design.

In this letter I will explain not only why I was personally disheartened by her death, but also why I believe it was a poor choice to make in terms of writing and the larger narrative.

On the personal end, I related very much to Allura. I empathize with the trauma of losing loved ones and it was cathartic for me to see a character lose so much, but not be defined by that loss. A character who retained a multifaceted personality that included a playful streak, a love of sparkly things, a sense of justice, and abundant courage. She is not reduced to her loss even though it impacts her journey as a character.

Allura’s struggle with Alfor’s corrupted AI also deeply resonated with me. While this is coming from a rather abstract point, it reminds me of my own struggle with a father who is an addict. Allura had to let Alfor’s AI go in spite of how painful it was, in spite of the better memories haunting her every step of the way. The possibility I will have to let my own father go is a very real one because he has made it clear he will never change. His addiction has effectively corrupted our relationship and fed into my own stints with substance abuse. This will be an unspeakably painful decision for me and we have many happier memories that reel through my mind every moment I even contemplate making it.

To relate to a character, to be inspired by a character and her persistence, and then watch her die…really blows. My stomach sank. I felt like crap. I felt even crappier upon hearing that my friend’s nine year old niece sobbed when she watched the ending. I doubt we related to Allura for the same reasons, but I do know that Allura was her favorite character. So with that, I’ll get into the less personal and more objective reasons as to why I feel Allura’s death was a horrible decision.

Firstly, VLD is geared toward younger audiences. I know VLD has a notable periphery demographic, with many older teens and adults such as myself watching and being in the fandom. I know sometimes this periphery demographic can be louder than the intended audience, which I can only assume is children due to the toys and easy-read supplemental materials. VLD has a Y-7 rating, so even if the volume of the periphery demographic drowns out that of the intended, the rating alone demonstrates that this is a show that’s at the least meant to be accessible to children.

Children are impressionable. Representation is important for people of all ages, of course, but it is especially important to children. Kids connect more easily to media where they can see themselves and for the good or the ill, fictional characters can be role models for children.

Allura was a non-white female leader, described in-universe as the “Heart of Voltron.” That’s amazing! That’s truly rare. It’s sad that it’s rare. It’s 2019 and there should be a plethora of non-white female protagonists for young girls of color to look up to. But there aren’t.

Allura was fantastic representation for young girls of color. Representation they hardly ever get. I cannot see a single good reason to take that representation away from them. In fact, it seems downright mean to take that away from them. I do not want the excuse that the staff weren’t aware of the importance of representation, either. You can’t promote the show with official art like this:

  …and claim you’re unaware of how important representation is. Particularly for children, for whom this show was rated as being appropriate for.

I do not feel the excuse that this show was about war is reasonable either. Yes, in real life, war is painful. Lives are lost indiscriminately. This was one of the justifications cited for Adam’s death when VLD was criticized for portraying the “Bury Your Gays” trope. However, VLD had already made it clear that war had costs. The Arusian village was destroyed purposely to bait the team. Several Blades of Marmora lost their lives aiding the team. The costs of war were very clear early on in the show. Allura certainly didn’t have to die to reinforce a theme that had already been reinforced several times prior.

On that note, it is very telling that an apology letter was sent for the death of a character who had all of two minutes of screen time, but not for Allura, a major protagonist.

Many people are offended by Allura’s death, feeling that it is racist and sexist. I do not want to believe that Allura’s death was intended to be either of these things. However, there are serious unfortunate implications in killing off your only WoC in the main cast that cannot be ignored. VLD is fictional but it exists in a real world, where real people are impacted by these issues.

While Allura’s death ultimately feels disrespectful given what she represented and its sheer pointlessness in the story, I see attempts at respect in its overall framing. Allura is revered as a hero. There is a statue built in her honor. She has a legacy. These are things that generally shape the celebration of a fallen hero. But even within the framing, there are mixed signals. Most notably, her loved ones take cheery selfies in font of her monument. In my personal opinion, that is the antithesis to an attempted respectful tone.

And I specifically use the word ‘attempted’ because despite the framing, Allura’s death does not actually come across as respectful in the least. It is crammed into the last nine minutes of the final episode. It is immediately followed by a flash forward to the future. Neither the characters nor the audience have time to mourn her. I do not want to hear the excuse that Allura’s death isn’t offensive because “she died as a hero.” Simply because something may be framed to be respectful doesn’t mean it actually is. The poor execution of that attempted framing itself is one of the lesser of many harmful messages sent by the decision to kill Allura off.

In a world where representation is important, an importance that is acknowledged by the staff, somehow someone still came to the conclusion that Allura’s narrative should end in death. Intent aside, her death falls into the “Disposable Woman” cliche, and is especially gutting because she is a WoC. I cannot reiterate how rare it is to see characters like Allura, non-white women that serve as major protagonists.

Allura suffered unduly throughout the series. She lost an entire planet, her family, her home, her title, and eventually her life. She was always a giving character. She was willing to sacrifice herself to save the Balmera as early as season one. It is noble of her to have that kind of dedication, I’m not saying it isn’t. But girls are socialized to sacrifice their happiness for others, it is a message they internalize at multiple levels.

Girls are socialized to put others before themselves and to sacrifice, and this expectation is especially pressing for girls of color. The SBW (Strong Black Woman) stereotype is a notably prevalent one because of the expectation placed on black women specifically to always be strong and constantly put their own needs last. While Allura is an alien, she is in-universe a minority post Altea’s destruction and IRL, redesigned to be non-white. And many fans, including myself, do see her as specifically black-coded because of her skin tone, hair texture, and having Kimberly Brooks as her voice actress.

A hopeful ending for any character who sacrificed as much as Allura would be one where that character is rewarded for their sacrifice. Where they’re able to find happiness on the other end. Where the audience feels payoff because a character we’ve seen give for so long finally gets. Where the audience feels fulfilled because a character we’ve seen grieve and grieve finally gets to breathe. For kids to see a non-white female character get this kind of ending isn’t only hopeful, but important. Girls— especially girls of color —should be shown that they don’t have to give up everything. Boys should also be shown these narratives, because they shouldn’t internalize the expectation of the girls and women in their lives to constantly sacrifice.

Allura’s sacrifice stands out as particularly glaring when we take into account that teamwork was supposedly one of VLD’s major themes. In a show entitled Voltron: Legendary Defender, wherein the titular robot must be formed by a team, it seems very out of place that it was up to one person to save the day. What was the point of the team bonding with each other, and with the lions, if all of that was going to be rendered useless in the battle that mattered the most?

None of the main characters we’d been led to believe loved each other made any real attempt to find another solution through teamwork. They more or less accepted Allura’s sacrifice at face value even though she was supposedly important to them. The paladins offered some minimal protest, then each gave Allura a hug and just watched her walk to her death. In addition to undercutting the theme of teamwork in the show, it just felt very strange to watch. I didn’t feel like I was watching a team who fought side-by-side at all. These characters felt less connected to each other than they did during the first season and at this point, supposedly they’ve fought side-by-side for years.

Not only did Allura’s lone sacrifice seem to undercut the theme of teamwork, but it just seemed incongruent to the atmosphere of the series. While loss was depicted and prevalent in VLD, nothing ever indicated that it would be a tragedy. Watching Allura’s death play out feels like watching a show that forgot what genre it was supposed to be. The emotional beats aren’t the right ones.

We feel no payoff from her death because it didn’t accomplish anything of value in the narrative. Allura had something to live for after the war, her newfound family and love interest. She didn’t have anything to atone for, unlike Honerva. At best (and I really mean at best here) one could argue that her death contributed to Lance’s development because he spends his life spreading her message after the fact. However, many viewers understandably perceived this as a demotion for Lance with its own set of unfortunate implications. Even if that was the case— which itself feels like grasping at straws for some kind of explanation —I shouldn’t have to point out why it’s extremely problematic for a female character to be killed for her love interest’s development.

Allura’s death felt as pointless as it did out of place. It felt unsatisfying and frankly, just like someone in the writer’s room wanted to be Edgy™ for the sake of it. It also felt particularly mean coming from a team who acknowledged how important representation was to its viewers and who used representation as a promotion point.

VLD is over. That is clear. I do not write this with the intent to get the “real ending” or anything of the like. I write this to express why Allura’s death effected me personally, why I feel it has harmful messages, and why it comes across both as harsh and as poor writing.

I hope all those who were involved with this decision reflect on the feedback from the way her death was perceived, most important the feedback of the WoC in the audience. Major character death should always be handled with care, especially in children’s programs. Representation should always be handled with care, especially in children’s programs. The way Allura’s story ultimately ended feels careless at best and malicious at worst.

Signed,

An Incredibly Disappointed Viewer

[myaphelion]

On video games, Children’s Lit, and the hatred of new media in academia

"On the other hand, television, movies, and video games have eroded what is expected of children in terms of both language skills and attention span. What these visual media have done is provide watered-down and even simplistic renderings of many classics, as well as privilege plot over characterization, style, and narrative point of view. Video games are the most bastardized of these visual media because the focus lies exclusively with what happens next. Thus, although making children more aware of the world around them has resulted in their beginning to read texts in a different way, the same means by which children have become able to challenge the existing paradigms make it more difficult for them to read those texts."

-  William Thompson, ENGL305, Literature for Children (rev. C4)

So. About this part of the Children’s Lit course I just completed.

I’m not much of a stranger to people crapping on new media—it’s been happening since the beginning of time, and I’ve read about and seen it time and time again. First music, then books, then film, then television, then more new music, then music videos, and now video games and various forms of internet media. Still, in an academic setting, especially in a school that offers courses on gaming, I didn’t expect to see this. But here we are I guess??? (Academia is garbage, don’t ask me.)

Anyway. This gives me an excuse to compare the history of children’s lit to the history of video games directed at children, along with explaining why this quote bothered me so much in a bit greater detail.

Okay, so let’s start with the quote itself and pick it apart a bit. I can agree with the author’s assertion that more easily accessible media makes it harder to sit down and do something like read a book cover-to-cover—I know for a fact it’s happened to me and several other people. On the other hand, having media that’s more easily accessible like movies, TV, and (some) video games can lead people towards reading the source of their favourite things. Not to mention that some stories can’t be told in books—choose your own adventure stories are little substitute for the programming of a game where you can see your actions have consequences in real time rather than just reading about it on a page, which may not have as immediate or as harsh an impact.

“Watered-down and… simplistic renderings of many classics [that] privilege plot over characterization, style, and narrative point of view.” What, course author, have you been watching, besides the oldest of Disney movies, and even then—even then!—they have a style all their own. Just because something is different from the original ‘classic’ that you may love, does not necessarily make it ‘watered-down’ or ‘simplistic’. I do agree that some movies, TV shows, and video games bastardize the works they’re based on. But—and this is an enormous but—books can do the very same for other universes. Have you read some of the worse Star Wars Extended Universe novels lately? God knows they didn’t help the SW canon when they were still considered canon. And your comment about ‘plot over everything’ is just… ridiculous. Some of the books I read in the course, and some of the stories you pointed out from the early days of children’s literature, by your own admission, heavily favoured either plot, characters, style, or narrative POV to the exclusion of one or all of the others. It’s not just new media that do this—any poorly-written or poorly-conceived piece can lack one or more of these things. Even good media can have problems with one or more of these things that are made up by the strength of the other areas. Some media isn’t meant to have amazing characterization, or style, or narrative POV—some media really is all about the plot, and that can be very much a positive thing.

Now, the final bit of the quote that’s relevant. Let me remind you again what it says. “Video games are the most bastardized of these visual media because the focus lies exclusively with what happens next.” As… as opposed to what, author? Do you think that people just pick up books in order to analyze the absolute crap out of them until they can only enjoy them on that level? Hell no! The ordinary person, and especially the ordinary child, will pick up a book because they want to know what happens. Nobody except the person with their head so far up their ass they can see the sun out their own mouth is picking up a piece of media to just see what the writer’s intent was—unless they’re doing an academic course, I guess. Generally, however, if a book or other piece of media is boring as sin and the reader or watcher doesn’t want to see what happens next… they’re going to put it down and not come back. Yes, style is important, and yes, authorial intent and all the rest is important too—but those things are not exclusive to the realm of literature, and they are there in video games, too.

The real point of this, however, is that the author of this course seems to believe that video games are a form of media that can never reach the heights of literature, even children’s literature. Not so. Video games are a very new medium as opposed to any other media that’s current, save for internet content, which is a baby medium even compared to video games. This means that video games are still going through the kind of growth that children’s literature went through, albeit slightly more accelerated given just how many games are pumped out per year.

When literary works for children were first introduced in medieval times, and pretty much up until the eighteenth century, they were intended merely to educate and instruct. These books tended to be directed towards literate young boys, especially in the earliest ones, and were often Christian in nature, urging young lads to follow God’s word lest they be punished in the fires of hell. As such, children’s literature didn’t really exist as we think of it today, and kids were more prone to reading whatever interesting adventure stories or tales they could get their hands on, such as Aesop’s Fables or Robinson Crusoe. These stories were never intended to be read solely by children, but rather intended for an adult audience first. However, given that they weren’t objectionable by nature, kids devoured them because of their adventurous content, and loved that these stories were fantastical and jogged their imagination.

It wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century and John Newbery’s printing company exclusively for children’s literature that kids finally had books to call their own that weren’t just moralistic or educational. While Newbery wasn’t doing it out of some saint-like desire to provide books to children, but for monetary gain, it allowed authors who really did feel like they wanted to write books directed at children that were just for fun to finally have some precedent for their publishing. I could go on from here, but suffice to say that by Victorian times, children’s literature had finally become a full-blown genre of its own. No longer were children forced to read books that could be dry and dull, or books that weren’t really meant for them. Instead, they had books that were all their own, with stories they could relate to and sink their teeth into.

Like I said, though, video games are still new media. Kid gamers haven’t yet had their own John Newbery, but there have been companies and solo developers that have tried. During the 70s, when gaming was the hot new thing, kids’ games didn’t really exist. Everyone played Pong and its ilk, and the educational games on the Magnavox Odyssey were the closest things to kids’ games that existed at the time. Again, a pattern begins to emerge, as we see that the earliest video games either weren’t directed at children, or were mere educational games, intended to serve as teaching tools and nothing more. However, when the video game crash happened and Atari was taken down, Nintendo rose from the ashes in North America to become a video game juggernaut that still exists today. While much of their marketing was directed at kids, with ROB selling the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy rather than the dreaded ‘video game console’, most of Nintendo’s games weren’t directed solely at children either. The developers who focused on kids in the NES days, again, were primarily educational developers, making games like Mario is Missing! that used famous characters to try and teach kids everything from geography to counting.

The PC and home computer market wasn’t much better, though this is where things begin to get interesting. While console gaming soon almost entirely dropped games directed at children, save for a few titles that were mostly tie-ins to existing children’s properties and sold on name brand alone, even if they weren’t very good, computer gaming was more concerned with appealing to children. Given that home computers were sold as devices that were meant for the whole family to use, of course kids were gunning to play games on their new computers. When the multimedia and CD revolution happened in the 1990s, several big companies rose to the top of educational software, as well as true games for children that were not intended to teach, except as a good side effect. Let’s talk about a few of those now.

Knowledge Adventure, Broderbund, and The Learning Company were three game studios that primarily focused on educational games for children. However, each of these companies tried their best to make learning fun instead of dull, like most educational games had been beforehand. One look at KA’s Jumpstart series, or Broderbund’s Living Books, or TLC’s Reader Rabbit, and it’s hard to argue that these games aren’t fun as well as educational. As a kid, I played all three of these series, and while each of them was arguably intended to educate as well as entertain, I hardly noticed. I was having too much fun learning fractions by measuring out ingredients in Jumpstart 2nd Grade, or reading about D.W. The Picky Eater, or trying to find the Math Magician in Interactive Math Journey.

However, the reigning king of children’s software in the 90s and early 00s was undoubtedly the late, great Humongous Entertainment. Their business model was to create point-and-click adventure games for kids, games that educated on the periphery, but were primarily intended to entertain. Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, and Spy Fox have become icons of children’s media from this time period, and each of them is fondly remembered by kids of my generation because of how fun these games were. Sure, they didn’t tell very complex stories, but the down-to-earth problems of Pajama Sam, the detective antics of Freddi Fish and Spy Fox, and the kooky adventures of Putt-Putt and the one-hit-wonder Fatty Bear were all relatable for kids, and took place in worlds that children wanted to explore and visit over and over again. These games had an art style that was instantly recognizable, with animation often rivaling the cartoons of the time, or at least comparable to them. Thankfully, they’ve been rereleased on mobile devices and on Good Old Games and Steam—they haven’t been lost to time.

Still, after Humongous’ dissolution, no companies have come up to take the reins of kid game developer. While kids have been playing games intended for everyone, or even games intended for adults, games directed primarily at kids that aren’t educational have become few and far between again. The 90s had a glimmer of hope that we might get the Newbery of kids’ games, but that glimmer was shattered when Humongous went down. With independent developers and the continued presence of companies such as Nintendo that are willing to publish games for just about anyone, however, it’s pretty much only a matter of time until entertaining kids’ games can take their place neatly in the pantheon of video games.

So what am I trying to say with this whole thing? I don’t know. I guess I’m just trying to dissolve the idea that games are a less important form of media than anything else. Just because they’re new, doesn’t mean that they have no merit. They haven’t had the time to grow like most new media has, and especially in the department of entertaining children, they’re lacking. I say that given a few years—maybe a few decades—we’ll see the Newbery of gaming rise, and children will finally get games of their own that adults want to play too.

Also that that quote is still crap. I’m not going to let that go ever.

[gfiedlerbi214]

Unit 2

Nutrition, Physical Fitness, and Sleep

Go through the lecture. For each item take general notes. Does anything seem important to know?

Prior to deciding to change my degree plan to Early Education, I studied to become a Nutritionist and aspired to become a personal trainer. I also used to work in Nutrition stores as a sales representative. For a number of years, my entire life centered around the multi-facets of fitness. This was a period of time where I felt I was in the best shape of my life and ate very well. I would like to say I have used this unit as a refresher for information I already knew. I can also say I have learned quite a bit of new information as well.

What was the point of the videos? What are a few things I learned on the websites, and might the site be useful in the future? What questions do these resources bring up?  If you were telling someone else about this class, what would you share from this unit.

I found the provided video material per the unit’s lecture extremely fulfilling. I am a kinesthetic and visual learner by nature and I genuinely appreciate a well-constructed instructional video, I also have a new attraction towards podcasts and TedTalks frequent my playlist algorithm. The Dietary Guidelines pdf was excellent and I plan on keeping it stored onto my hard drive for further use. It will be useful when I begin to plan eating regimens for myself and for my family. With the changing society and economic state, I wonder if this will affect the guidelines themselves. It will definitely be something to look out for and stay aware of. The Dietary Guidelines and the information regarding the major components of fitness would be two sets of information that I’d pass onto someone else regarding this unit. It’s super helpful and can easily be implemented along existing lifestyles.

As/after you engage in the Discussion: Can you summarize the question and the conclusions you and your classmates found? How do you feel about the issue now?

My discussion post: The advertisement I have chosen comes from the Always campaign “Like a Girl”. The commercial highlights how the phrase of doing something “like a girl” is used as an insult and as something lesser than the opposing. The producers of the commercial chose to film the responses of both males and females at different ages and ideas of what it means to do different actions “like a girl”. The responses are both expected and unexpected as most of the interviewees took the concept as an insult while the young girls saw it as a positive and powerful statement. The advertisement dissects the phrase and leaves the viewers feeling empowered, especially amongst the female audience. The underlying message behind the ad is that as a female, we should be proud of everything we do and should not feel ashamed of their capabilities. The ad intends to leave people feeling good about themselves and to understand why we feel feelings of bad when the phrase is used in a derogatory way.          

I would let teenagers know that upon seeing this ad, we have to remember that the comparison of actions to the actions committed by a female is not negative nor shameful. Teenage girls are especially more impressionable because at that stage of their life they are still discovering who they are and what it means to be a woman. The struggles between body image, sexuality, and even mental wellness are just a few examples of the factors that the younger generation battles internally. The gender focus on this commercial is important because it’s a message that needs to be heard and stressed upon. It discusses the physicality of the woman; hitting home with those women and those who have a loved one that is a woman. Insults and demeaning intentions are damaging to every level of the human being and can lead to additional damage to that person. Just as the campaign intended, I also hope the female population, both young and old, feel strong and proud after watching this advertisement. I also hope teenagers can view the phrase of doing something “like a girl” as a phrase that can change its context and strike more positivity.

Discussion engagement: “Gabriela, great post! It reminds me of the old saying, "you throw like a girl!" which is an insult in most cases.  I think what we need to do is just focus on being the best person you can be regardless if you're a girl or boy. I wonder if there has been a study on this advertisement to see what people's opinions are about this very topic? It would be interesting to see what the opinions would be on this audience? How do you think teens would interpret this video?” (Michelle Gifford)

Response to Michelle: “Hey there Michelle!Thank you! And I agree with your statement regarding that we simply aspire to be our best selves regardless of gender. I think the statement really has grown from what it initially was intended for upon its creation as an insult.  I think the little boy in the ad represented the male population that are understanding the negative connotation in phrases like, "you throw like a girl". I think it's good to have hope in our society when it comes to equalizing respect on all gender planes. I think we are on a good path and this commercial was good representation. It was actually first featured as a Super bowl ad, meaning it had a great deal of exposure from the start! Meaning teens were most likely responding well to the interpretation. Teens are very impressionable when they find messages and situations that they can relate to.  I also would like to know if there was a study made regarding this ad. It would be interesting to see how each type of individual responded (men, women, teens, seniors).” (Myself)

My summarizing conclusion to the discussion: Body image is an impressionable topic to expose to young adults. Thanks to social media and societal standards conveyed through entertainment, young adults are pushing themselves to be something they are not. We can’t shame those who strive to change their physical image through healthy eating habits and newly added exercises. It’s those that choose the route of body changes that touch body-harming and mental strain and stress. The need to equalize playing fields of gender was something that stood out to me through this interaction initiated by my post.

After you complete the Homework: What did you learn? What do you want to know more about?

The homework required me to engage in research to find all of my answers. I had a number of different sources that I was able to find that described how necessary body fat is to the body. I was able to learn how essential the processes body fat assists with to live a healthy and full life. I would like to know more about these backwards misconceptions and what new information is out there to address it.

After you complete the Project: How was the experience? Any take-aways?

I found using the recommended food tracker very easy to manipulate. I was able to find every food item and was able to break the meal down by ingredient to attempt to get the clearest idea about my food intake. I found no flaws in the program and am attracted to the idea of incorporating this program in my future diet and exercise regimen. I was satisfied with the clarity I received about my diet. From what I was able to see, I enjoy carbs and fats quite a bit. I also liked how the tracker included a water intake tracker. I never used it unfortunately. This project opened my eyes to how poorly my water drinking habits are and where I need to improve in my daily routine. Because I am a breastfeeding mother, the calorie intake necessary to maintain supply is about 2,000 calories. Luckily, I am on track and I am properly aligning my meals to my child’s eating schedule and demand.

General reflection on the unit--is there anything that feels important that you didn't mention above?  If you had free time, what topics might you want to look into further?

I personally have a close connection to the field of nutrition as it was a concentration I took interest in as a career years ago. I aspired to become a Registered Dietician for children. I also aspired to become a personal trainer; meaning nutrition was going to be an important component to my training. This unit inspired me to look into my previous aspirations and incorporate what I have learned into future meal plans and exercise routines for myself and my family.

[olderthannetfic]

There’s a meme floating around in fandom that hordes of impressionable “children” in their 20′s read nothing but slash fanfic and are, therefore, developing a warped view of what it means to be a gay man. Thus, goes the meme, it is the duty of those evil, exploitative “straight yaoi fangirls” to write very dull slice-of-life slash full of PSAs about condom use and a realistic treatment of sexual orientation. As a queer woman who did grow up reading fic from the age of 13, I have to ask:

What kind of fuckhead gets their entire queer education from fanfiction?

Queer media has existed forever. As a teen, in the 90′s, I avidly consumed the oeuvre of Pedro Almodóvar, freely available at my local video store. I remember when Velvet Goldmine came out and fandom just about wet itself in joy. It’s a movie largely focused on men, though as an adult, I definitely appreciate Toni Colette’s put-upon character. I have no idea how that character would identify by the later eras in the movie, but she loudly proclaims herself bi in the flashbacks.

Maurice set a precedent in the 80′s for being the first Merchant Ivory gay film. It’s a gorgeous (if kind of slow) costume drama with all the usual repression and longing of one of their films. I’ve been amused to see fandom rediscover it in recent years, probably by googling “Lestrad naked”. [A pause while all of you who haven’t done so run to google...]

Growing up in the Bay Area, I was surrounded by people who were massive fans of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, including my straight mother. Those books chronicle entire eras of my hometown and all the many varied orientations and types of people found therein. But when I wanted something more exclusively female-centric, my local bookstore carried Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For anthologies. I have to say, I always found Almodóvar’s nutso characters more personally relatable than Bechdel’s banally neurotic lead, but it was nice to have both. Around this same era, riot grrrls were producing all kinds of female-centric media, lots of it about queerness, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

Now, in the era I’m talking about, many people didn’t have the privilege of easy internet access or living near bookstores with gay sections or video stores that carry peculiar European art films. I’m talking about 20 years ago.

In the modern era, however, internet piracy is rampant, half the people I know subscribe to Netflix, and even people who can’t afford to leave a trail on the family computer can watch racy gay art films illegally uploaded to youtube--and that goes for people in many countries, not just mine. I have mentioned a tiny sampling of the media I was personally aware of as a teenager and personally a fan of. There is an entire world out there to explore!

There is no excuse for limiting your media consumption to slash fanfiction.

If you prefer slash to other media, great. You do you! But if, as I keep seeing, you are offended that slash fandom is largely women writing things that appeal to themselves and not constantly stopping to Think Of The Men, then you are in luck: the vast majority of queer media caters directly to queer men, especially gay men. The internet abounds with forums and recs lists aimed at gay men. There is no need to feel like an outsider in girl cootieville. Go where the men are if you prefer that!

Tumblr provides a skewed view of what’s out there, and that goes whether it’s mlm whining about “fujoshi” or people who ship het pairings honestly thinking they’re an oppressed minority.

If you want amateur, free m/m erotica that is most likely written by and for men (just as slash is most likely written by and for women), try Nifty.org. No, it won’t be sweet or nice or well-labeled. It’s trashy free erotica. Fandom doesn’t have a monopoly on that. And if you think Hydra Trash Party fans are the most sadistic or tasteless people on the internet, a day on Nifty should disabuse you of that notion. (Or, conversely, if you’re disappointed by HTP, Nifty is your new best friend!)

If you want writing with central queer characters that actually addresses homophobia in a non-fetishistic way and that is not just about romance or sex, look to a queer press. I don’t mean a publisher of ebook m/m romance novels: I mean a real, traditional, oldschool indie publisher of queer books that are not genre romance. Any recs list of mid-20th C. queer lit will net you plenty of books that are by queer people, for a queer audience, about queerness. Most of this stuff will be either gay or lesbian if it’s pre-90′s, but bisexual and trans* literature saw a big upswing then. It’s not exclusively written by people of the identities the books are about, but there’s a very strong correlation--vastly more so than you find in ebook romance novels.

There’s an entire world of queer media out there. So when I see men on the internet whining that slash fandom is not All About Me, I know that they are choosing to shit on a place women have made for ourselves instead of seeking something they would enjoy more. It’s not a legitimate complaint, even if the women they’re directly attacking are straight. It’s a sign of entitlement, male privilege, and an inability to lift a single fucking finger to help themselves.

I ain’t your Mommy, and I don’t owe you the free labor of my fanfic writing.

I don’t owe you a story in your fandom. I don’t owe you a story about your OTP. I don’t owe you a story with your favorite headcanon. I don’t owe you comments on your own fic--and, conversely, you don’t owe me comments on mine.

I used to be an economic moderate, but the last ten years have made me keenly aware of how much free labor women are expected to do. Well, enough! That kind of entitlement is the worst kind of capitalist exploitation coupled with a steaming dose of misogyny. To top it all off, it won’t work. Yelling at women that they don’t belong in their hobbies won’t make more men join those hobbies. Yelling that you feel alone because slash fandom isn’t about queer identity categories won’t make that any less true.

As a queer person, you do yourself a disservice if you only read slash. Slash and queer media that is intended as queer media have different aims. I have found both valuable in different ways at different times in my life.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Yesterday I finally caught up with probably half of Tumblr and finished watching Sense8 (*hugs my new Netflix account*)... 

I really enjoyed it and I guess it lives up to the hype, though waiting forever to watch it kind of took the edge off, since I was curious enough to examine every gifset on my dash for the last... couple of years? since it appeared. I really like how everyone’s so in love with the characters and their dynamics that despite learning a great deal about almost every character and their relationships, I 1: didn’t even know Naveen Andrews was in it and 2: had no idea what the main plot was and assumed it was mostly just a great big action/romance romp with random soulmate dynamics thrown in to spice it up. :P 

And it’s brilliant as a soap opera ignoring the main plot, as several characters have pretty much nothing to do with it (yet? I started off trying to analyse the plot and linked up Capheus, Kala and Sun as the most important players in an epic biomedical scandal involving the businesses and such they’re tied up in that must surely link further back to all the sinister stuff with the real bad guys, and then of course nothing’s come of that yet in a season + Christmas special...) and definitely one of its main strengths is the characters and their relationships and interactions, especially as with so many ways to sort them, and some plots with a lot of one on one cross over, characters you’d come to know and love were still meeting each other for the first time fairly late on. 

Anyway, Daryl Hannah floating around being the fridged woman with a remarkable resemblance to Mary Winchester aside (I feel so sorry for actresses whose entire role is wearing a dirty/bloodstained nightgown while making spooky appearances for the sake of the main characters :P) the actual plot seems like Orphan Black in many respects, and the more I think about it the more connections I make, aside from the obvious of Weird Science bothering a group of seemingly normal people who then discover they’re actually clones/soulmates with a whole bunch of other people they have uncanny connections to. By the end of the current season of Orphan Black, our protagonist clone is even having sustained visions of the clone who started the series with the suicide of one of their own who, like Daryl Hannah, kicked off the entire plot for the main characters, and her daughter seems to be psychically connecting to the other clones through the same Weird Science as Sense8. There’s a strong focus on life and death and altogether too much childbirth stuff on screen :P

I think Sense8′s advantage is that it’s much less confined by the format not just that it can be absolutely openly as diverse as it wants to be, but because without having to be somewhat procedural or else fitting the regular format of TV shows, you can get the really long, weird sequences which aren’t really doing anything except quiet, meaningful stretches of character stuff. There are story arcs per episode, but the entire thing moves incredibly slowly. I swear Orphan Black made the same progress through the plot in a handful of episodes as Sense8 has done so far in its entire run. 

Obviously neither show is finished yet, and in several important respects Sense8 blows Orphan Black out of the water, with OB being included in the great Onscreen Queer Women Massacre of the start of the year it only just bought my interest but not my trust back by backpeddaling that... and even if they always intended to bring said murdered queer woman back, they’ve not allowed the couple in question to just exist happily and unapologetically, and inflicted that trope on us in the first place... they also DID apologise while at the same time doing it, admitted they were aware they should use a trans actor to play a trans character but because of the clone thing, still used Tatiana to play a surprise brother clone they threw in for one episode basically, I guess, to show something about variation etc, and at this point I don’t know if it’s for the best he’s not in a ton of episodes, although weird they never mention him again after that. 

Sense8 has a much clearer sense of these issues, though its attempt to portray a broad stroke of human existence world wide has netted it a lot of criticism for stereotyping & racist tropes in those portrayals, which I’m not equipped to comment on, but as someone who wearily watches a lot of media, certainly none of the non-western, white, stories felt particularly unexpected or not like something I could see elsewhere... Orphan Black has mostly stayed clear of those issues by just not going near them; the actual cast when you narrow it down away from the character list is still very white. Throw in the dozens of versions of Tatiana and the other clone guy and they’ve got endless room to add in as many more characters as they like, obviously all versions of the same white actors dressed up differently.

... in any case, Sense8′s plot gave me a fair amount of deja vu to the show I’d already watched, but because OB put me off several times (and yet I kept coming back to it :P) I don’t have a very clear memory of the first season’s plot to make a stronger side by side comparison. I’m mostly intrigued by the sense of the huge terrifying rich biotech and medical corporations, doing Weird Science juuust beyond the range of what we can understand now, or with a slight science-fantasy element to it, relying on real world conspiracies or Fortean Times level suspicions of what might possibly be real if you wanted to believe tales of precognition, telepathy, etc. In Sense8 there’s a few mentions of ~real~ stories of such things, but I can’t remember if OB went over it yet. 

Certainly in both there’s a sense of unity and impossible but unbreakable family bonds, and a lot of exploration of who the Self is vs these huge faceless corporations. OB cycles through several villains or weird cults and such as the bad guys, each one in turn unknowable but powerful or embedded in a way with science or military or religious connections that make them dangerous to go up against. It’s hard to tell exactly what message Sense8 has about it because so much less plot involving it has unfurled but it’s obviously not good news with the big corporations, definitions of humanity, and secret conspiracy to police what is human and what is not. It even sets the entire viewing audience against the Sensates as part of a mass of non-sensate people who lack the emotional connection and empathy to feel like they do, implying the whole lot of us are murderous and cold as a result... In this way the evil scientists out to get them are only the very personal version of ALL the struggles they face, represented by that moment in the Xmas special where they all see the writing on the wall at Lito’s house transform into the worst things they have been called. 

It takes a much colder view of humanity, making it us or them, and for us, switching which of those groups we identify with by way of sympathy to the main characters. OB is less personal in that way but focuses on the dangers of science trying to create a better human, and while the clones are supposedly all “improved” humans, they have enough flaws, physically and emotionally (although yikes, Krystal makes me sure they have latent super soldier genes none of the others have properly unlocked except maybe the unkillable Helena :P) that they don’t come across as totally othered for more than the unfortunate circumstances of their births they obviously didn’t ask for. Rachel as the only one raised in the know ends up the most dangerous of them all, perhaps for having her sense of humanity denied to her and knowing for most of her life that she was only an experiment and property of the company. What makes the rest of humans human isn’t in question so much as how much the clones might belong with humanity, and that they could grow up oblivious and fit in emotionally, and still have human values even when they discover they’re “only” property and experimental prototypes who’ve been living almost Truman show lives. In that respect, Sarah as the narrator is the most free and human because she was raised outside of the program with no influence from it whatsoever - narratively it’s not coincidental that she and Helena are also the only clones who are fertile and can have children.

... I’ve been making connections all day but this post is really long now so I’m going to stop here. I want to rewatch Orphan Black now, since I noticed it on the Netflix menu and I’m having a bit of a cackling wildly, world at my fingertips moment here. :P 

[aneeljani]

Privacy issues and why current social networks are flawed.

Social networking sites attract millions of users for their ability to let people stay in touch with their existing contacts. In fact, existing connections are one of the main reasons people join social networks in the first place. A user is able to sign up to one of these sites and can “type oneself into being”, so to speak. But there is a growing concern about how much digital privacy these sites afford users. In fact, the NSPCC conducted a study that shows 4 out of 5 children feel social media companies are not doing enough to protect them. (NSPCC). Additionally, Facebook has played defense on a number of privacy allegations such as whether it scans users’ private messages and indexes the URLS found in those messages.

At their core, social networking sites are very similar. While the interface, and initial setup may be different, users always engage in a similar way. A user becomes “friends” with another person that they may or may not be close with in real life. A user profile is a window into the identity of its author. As the Internet has brought about an unexpected amount of connectedness, social media can feel intrusive at times. This can cause users to ask if privacy really exists on the web. Currently, the top social media platforms fall short because their visibility and privacy settings are inflexible and there is a lack of trust.

The social sphere is in need of a new platform that prioritizes privacy. This is where the LYK application picks up the slack left by Facebook. LYK is a safe social network that connects friends and families all over the world.

Visibility

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even older sites like MySpace have unique visibility settings, yet they leave users in a rigid position in terms of privacy control. To establish understanding, a visibility or privacy setting allows a user to tweak how much of their profile is available to see by the public. For instance, on LinkedIn, a user can either browse in public or in private mode. Once a user selects private mode, their name and information is not shared with those people whose profiles they view. Additionally, LinkedIn’s accounts are separated into two categories. Users can sign up for a free basic account or a paid premium account. If users want to comment or interact with another in privacy mode, they are unable to do so. With LYK, a user is able to have a private chat with others in their network.

MySpace is a popular social networking site that reached its peak popularity in 2008. MySpace allows user to engage with “friends” only. Anyone that falls outside of that category is not able to interact with the user. This means users who do not accept each other’s friend requests are not able to see a user’s full profile. Facebook, on the other hand lets others see connections in a network such as close friends, acquaintances, or family. However, there are concerns that Facebook exploits this data for advertising revenue.

Additionally, Instagram has two settings that enable users to make their profiles either completely public or completely private, with little room to meet in the middle.

Instagram profiles are public by default. The trick with this site is, once you switch over to private mode only users approved by you can see your posts. And if you want to share a post with a select group of people you are unable to do that.

Social network privacy policies can be complex and difficult to comprehend for the average user. For example, how many users are aware that if a user with a private Instagram profile shares their post on Twitter or other social networks, their post may be publicly visible, depending on how their privacy settings are configured on those sites.

There was thus a need for a platform that allows users to establish their own privacy without the threat of someone watching in the background. LYK is unique because it allows users to have unprecedented control over their profile visibility. A user can now control who sees their posts and videos. This is made possible by the ‘choose-your-audience’ feature that a user defines prior to posting.

When a user downloads the LYK app, they can be sure that their posts and comments will always safely reach their intended audience. Unlike Facebook, which could potentially eavesdrop on a user. LYK is safe enough for your family and friends to use.

Facebook is Always in Control

How does Facebook fall short? In December 2017 1.4 billion users were logging onto Facebook daily. That’s a lot of people giving away their data. Not to mention, Facebook continually collects information about its users. This information includes location, relationship status, friends, network, workplace, birthday, not to mention data on a person’s likes and opinions. If all these traits were written on a piece of paper one would get a clear idea of who this person was, based on their profile.

The takeaway is that creating a Facebook profile and interacting with your network comes with little privacy. Liking a person’s status or a certain brand and advertisement lets everyone know a little bit more about you each time.

The same 1.4 billion users who logged into their Facebook accounts are the targets of advertising companies. More recently, there have been allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Facebook ads were purchased by Russians and paid for in rubles, which is Russian currency. However, this number does not take into account the likes or shares of this content, which further increased this number.

One person described Facebook’s ads as follows, “Time spent being on Facebook products including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger is not time spent with friends but time consuming public content, interacting with brands, etc.”

Lack of Trust

In an article titled “America Doesn’t Trust Facebook”, The Verge conducted a survey in partnership with the consulting firm Reticle Research. 1,520 people participated in the survey. In the survey, over 60% of people said they were unaware that Facebook owns Instagram. One reason is because the design and interface looks completely different. And apart from being able to sign up for Instagram with your Facebook account, there isn’t a clear connection between either platforms. Additionally, the survey noted that Americans don’t necessarily trust Facebook, as it ranked lower in trust than the top 5 technology companies. At the same time, participants in the survey said they would care if the Facebook platform disappeared. This means there is a market for another platform that can fulfill a person’s trust and allow them to connect with their friends and family in a healthy way.

There is already enough exploitation and privacy concerns with our existing social media sites. After all, wasn’t Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery pinned to the fact that she posted pictures of diamonds on her Instagram account?

Little by little, security and privacy are becoming common topics of conversation in our new technology-centered society. And it’s because the technology industry is always evolving that we have a hard time assessing the penalty for exploitation.

The LYK app will help restore privacy and trust in your social networking experience. LYK is positioned to be a worldwide sensation. Which is why technology adopters should get on board and download the app now (its available on both iOS and Android). I tried it and still love it today.

www.LYKapp.com

[phaylenfairchild]

Do You Know What A MAP Is? I Just Found Out And Now I’m Warning Friends

It’s not a geographical survey, it’s something much more sinister.

Imagine me, your friendly neighborhood Trans Cat Lady as I sip my tea browsing Facebook, as one does on a warm, summer Friday night, and suddenly discover a plethora of posts across my feed referencing MAPs.

Just when you think you’re an enlightened, modern individual with your finger on the pulse of social matters, something comes out of left field and reminds you that you’re not running in mainstream anymore. I had to look deeper, realizing the context of a MAP was not by any means indicating navigation or a request for directions.

No, it’s something much more horrific than I ever anticipated. MAP is an initialism, self-created by the proud individuals it references, as “Minor Attracted Persons.”

Pedophiles. Adults sexually attracted to and aroused by minor children. This is their self identifier. MAP.

This had to sink in. It wasn’t just one post, but several, in fact, many being shared by people far more alert (Thanks Ambien) than I am to developing news and trends.

Sitka Falardeau

MAP’s have been using social media under this self-identifier for some time, sprouting up and organizing mostly from the blogging site, Tumblr. Currently, there is a petition to have openly expressing MAPs removed from the site.

In one facebook post, a user shared a status of collected photos of the Men and Women who were proudly identifying as MAPs. This is where I learned that a sect of the MAP community also identify as NOMAPs– or, “Non-offending Minor Attracted Persons.” That’s their way of stating that they keep their hands to themselves despite their sexual desires directed at children. Support systems have popped up for MAPs and NOMAPs, seemingly established with the intent of intervening before they can harm an innocent child and there have even been writers who had come to their defense and claimed themselves as allies to the MAP community. They want you to believe it is a mental illness.

Mental illness never has a targeted victim. Mental illness is an affliction of the sufferer wherein we do ourselves great harm. Those will mental illness do not typically seek out specifically defenseless people to harm. Do not let these sympathizers equate mental illness with child rapists- or any violent act that robs a victim of agency. Child molesters actively and covertly plot and design their heinous acts of attack. That is cunning, not mentally ill.

What absolutely blew my mind is that they were sharing their photos and discussing their fears at “outing” themselves as if they were victims of social oppression or religiously motivated constructs of unprovoked fear and hatred. I was startled at how they postured themselves in much the same way the LGBT community had as we squared off with politics and religion to earn acknowledgement, equality and pride. I was overwhelmed by a sense of indescribable dread. Here’s why…

Since the burgeoning of my own self awareness and subsequently imposed shame regarding my gender as a result of seeing anti-LGBT evangelists and politicians behind their podiums using fear tactics to influence their audiences against me, I have lived in fear of this false equivalency. They would typically say things like; “This LGBT community is the downfall of civilized society, soon they’ll be adding a ‘P’ to include and protect child rapists and other atrocious acts like bestiality!”

I remember how scared I was that anyone would ever presume I was, or would advocate for those who victimized children and animals. Still, these influencers with platforms were forming the opinions of millions that I was no different than a pedophile or a person who was sexually drawn to animals. As a Trans woman, this is ongoing, as politicians have been declaring us a threat to their wives and daughters if we want to use a public bathroom. One propaganda film from the hate group Nation For Marriage used the act of implied pedophilia to promote anti-transgender legislation.

I’ve been warning Parents I know about the uprising of MAPs, so that they can both protect their children from predators and prepare themselves for the inevitable onslaught of comparisons that will be made to the LGBT community in November by conservatives looking to be elected and the evangelists lobbying for them.

Let’s simply make this clear now. It is embarrassing that we live in an era where I must differentiate these things.

Pedophilia is NOT a sexual preference. It is not a consensual act with a mutually informed adult. Children cannot consent. Pedophiles are child rapists, full stop.

There is no such thing as a MAP. Do not normalize or sanitize child predation by allowing them the dignity of identifying themselves as anything but a sexual threat to children. They are pedophiles. Child sex offenders. There is no pathway to acceptance by using confusing/deceiving identifiers or disarming the public perception by legitimizing their crimes.

There is no relationship at all between pedophilia and gender identity or sexual orientation. Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, despite how anti-LGBT activists will push this misleading narrative until it fits their agenda. It is a sickness that manipulates and abuses power over vulnerable children and young people who don’t understand what is happening and causes them long-term emotional distress and psychological damage.

Watch how quickly anti-LGBT lobbyists and politicians forget that the biggest pedophilia scandal came right out of the Catholic church wherein thousands of young boys were groomed, not by gay men or transgender women, but by heterosexual religious leaders who they, and their families, trusted.

Here is the bottom line, folks. In the act of sex, there should never be a victim. There should never be engagement with an entity who cannot give- regardless of reason- permission or who inherently cannot understand via means of rationale or awareness the concepts or consequences of sexual activity.

Watching self-described MAP’s discuss the day they can be “Out of the closet” has been one of the most audacious and disturbing things I have ever seen- and I’ve seen a lot. Part of me reacted impulsively, with disgust and disbelief as I flipped through their photos- some of them young, some of them old. Men and women. They looked like typical college students and every day senior citizens you might see sitting on a park bench reading a book. That alarmed me the most. We have this mythology in our minds of what a child sexual predator looks like… it wasn’t any of these people. Then it occurred to me how comfortable they’ve gotten, clearly, in order to have the confidence to share their own photos with each other so casually fearing no judgement or persecution. Utterly enabled. Making their own representative flag.

Yet, LGBT people who harm no one are trying to thrive under this oppressive administration wherein we’re thrust constantly under the foot of moral and religious justice. We transwomen are being persecuted and declared dangerous to women and young girls while these individuals who actually prey upon children with sexual intent are developing active communities and supportive encouragement?

How long before someone declares me intolerant for rejecting criminal behavior or child rapists- active or inactive. How many times have we stood to fight hate and been told “Don’t fight hate with hate” as if defending ourselves against a bile-spewing opposition is the the same thing as inciting hatred toward innocent people. I won’t allow a gaslighting here. I won’t be told that defending marginalized or voiceless communities who stand under assault and terror is reverse-hate. Children have no voice against the pedophiles who place them in their crosshairs.

Showing no tolerance for those who intend to harm children is not hateful- if that is your reaction, you need to deprogram. Your concern shouldn’t be resting on predators; Your concern should be firmly on the children whom it is our duty to protect from them.

A shocking development recently came to my attention via an investigative journalist who shared with me some of her own discoveries. She states that most self described MAPs aren’t, in fact, MAPs at all, but members of a nefarious organization of trolls from the website 4Chan who have, in the past, created and distributed fake posters targeting Oregon Pride by advertising that the organizers of the annual event were suddenly inclusive of NAMBLA- a controversial group of male pedophiles that, in reality, the LGBT community patently rejects. The goal of creating such false and misleading advertisements was specifically to discredit, or call into question the alignment of LGBT Oregonians by deceiving the general public regarding its activities and intentions.

Fake Poster created by anti-LGBT members of 4Chan implying the inclusion of pedophiles at Oregon gay pride

There is no question that it is entirely plausible that MAPs- at least the ones campaigning for visibility and inclusion so vocally online- could be shill groups intent on targeting and damaging the reputations, calling into question the ethics, and creating diversions with the goal of derailing the progressive mission of the LGBT community by feigning inclusivity beneath our umbrella. That would of course, be an ingenious way to mold external perceptions of us, even of our most staunch supporters, by slipping deceptive, toxic propaganda into the mainstream and branding it with our “Pride” message.

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@CandyArachnid very close to literally everything involving “MAPs” is a psyop

 — @Novoselician

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hey yall stop spreading this MAP thing, screenshots from /p ol / have indicated it's a FUD campaign to encourage harassment/violence against trans people due to similar flag colors and fake accounts. sharing callout posts about it is helping that tactic work.

 — @MaxKriegerVG

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Yes, it’s getting more and more challenging, as LGBT people, to filter what is real and what is not. Not only are we under a barrage of attacks daily from political activists, now there are shill organizations pretending to be supporters or members of the community who are intent on maligning us from the inside with the deliberate intention of, not just discrediting LGBT people and advocacy groups, but demonizing transgender people specifically by means of association with pedophiles.

In any case, be aware that MAPs are out there, some fake with an anti-LGBT political agenda, but some, unquestionably, very, very real. 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse. The best course of action for all of us is to continue unanimously rejecting it, because those who put children in danger do exist, whether “Out” or not… and that is a fact we cannot tread lightly on, but instead come down upon with a heavy fist.

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[anthonykrierion]

Customer Theory: How to leverage empathy in your marketing (with free tool)

Think about every marketing message you saw yesterday. Every newspaper ad. Every email. Every sign being twirled around on the side of the street.

Did you stop to read each message? Watch every commercial? Think about the message? Decide if you should go for the call-to-action?

No you didn’t, did you? You ignored the vast majority of the messages. A few you actually noticed and rejected. You consumed less of them. And maybe acted on a handful.

And the reason is, when you saw most of those messages, you probably weren’t waiting to be sold. You were busy doing something else. Maybe something related. At best you were probably looking for a solution to a problem. Or maybe something totally unrelated and didn’t even notice the message.

Now flip the script. That’s how you act as a customer, but when you’re the marketer, account executive, copywriter, art director … how do you approach each piece you create? You likely have a deep understanding of the product, the copy, even little details of the ad. Perhaps even a deep affection for the product, the landing page or the ad — after all, many marketers end up entering their work into awards shows because they’re so proud of it.

Bridging the customer-marketer divide

As a marketer, you need to do the seemingly impossible. You need to bridge this divide for your entire team. The divide between the customer and the marketer.

I found myself in this very situation recently while working on a video script for The BairFind Foundation, a nonprofit that uses sports marketing to raise awareness for missing children. MECLABS Institute has taken BairFind on, pro bono, as a Research Partner to use our conversion optimization methodology and practices, which we usually apply to business challenges, to help this nonprofit meet its own goals.

BairFind has signs in 151 Minor League ballparks across the nation, with pictures of missing children. It was recently featured in USA Today. League and team presidents were hungry for a video to play in their stadiums about the nonprofit organization, and it was my job to deliver.

So this was a quick-turnaround project, and I had little familiarity with the intended audience of the video. Ever find yourself in this situation? Here’s something that might help …

Free customer theory development tool

I took what I learned from  University of Florida/MECLABS Institute Communicating Value and Web Conversion graduate certificate program and began to build a customer theory dossier. I’ll show you how I used it in just a moment, but first — you can download a free version of it as well, and use it as a tool on your next ad, campaign or marketing initiative.

FREE CUSTOMER THEORY DEVELOPMENT DOWNLOAD

Step 0: Identify as many distinct customer profiles as necessary

Before you can even start building a customer theory, you must determine which type of customer you’re building that theory for.

Here’s why this pre-step is so important. If you’re building an ad or other marketing pieces with a strong, unique value proposition, it will speak very directly to a specific type of customer. Boom. Hit them square in the chest, so to speak.

You can’t do that if you try to be everything to everyone, if you’re blandvertising.

This is also important. While there are certain types of customers you shouldn’t try to serve because you aren’t the best solution for their needs, there are other types of customers you can serve.

Some marketing communications will speak to all those types of customers at once. But more likely, for most of your marketing campaigns, you’ll want to zero in on as unique and homogeneous a group as possible.

As an example, here are the possible customer profiles I listed for BairFind Foundation.

Parents at a Minor League Baseball game

Grandparents at a Minor League Baseball game

Children at a Minor League Baseball game

Adults with no children at Minor League Baseball game

Marketer from a retailer or other potential corporate sponsor

Minor league team presidents

MiLB league presidents

Marketers at MiLB teams

MiLB baseball players

Sports and other local and national media

For the video script, I chose to focus on parents at a minor league baseball game. If you watch the video (embedded at the bottom of this article), you can see why that choice is important. I sought to grab their attention from the very beginning and hit them hard with something they could easily relate to.

I couldn’t have done that if I tried to write a video for all 10 of BairFind’s customer profiles. Even just adding a second customer profile would have made that harder.

This doesn’t mean that customers in those other profiles won’t be able to understand and perhaps act on the video. But it means I wrote the video with those specific people in mind.

Step 1: Create a list of preliminary customer insights

For my selected prospect profile, I began to list out some basic insights about the ideal customer — parents at a Minor League Baseball game.

I started with my own gut and intuition, and expanded using some basic internet research. This was, of course, a very small project. And a pro bono one at that. But if you have a larger, higher profile project, you might want to conduct deeper research to get these insights — social listening, focus groups, interviews, surveys, etc.

It helps that I’m somewhat in this demographic. (I am a parent, although the last time I attended a MiLB game was before I became a parent.) But this exercise is all the more important when you’re not in the target customer profile. Marketers often fall into the trap of “I’d want this” or “I’d want that.” But if you’re not the ideal customer for that product, the actual customer might want something very different.

So this tool helps you get as close as possible to a fundamental insight — not what you’d want if you were in the customers’ shoes, but what the customers in those shoes actually want themselves.

Here are the insights I came up with:

Parents age 21-54

Have children 0-16

Limited external funds for entertainment

Focused on having fun at the ballpark, not really thinking about other issues at that time

Family oriented

Diverse level of education

Diverse ethnicities

Don’t have much additional spare time to help community

More likely than the general population to have smartphones

Community minded

Step 2: Categorize these preliminary insights

Next, categorize these preliminary insights into attributes, context, desires and fears. As you do this, it will likely inspire you and your team to come up with new insights you hadn’t considered before.

The context is an important reminder. For example, you may view a print ad in isolation, nicely mounted on a piece of blackboard. However, the customer will view the ad in a newspaper with many competing articles and ads trying to get their attention. In addition to what’s in the newspaper, they may be reading in a crowded coffee shop or subway, or perhaps they’re at home with children who are trying to get their attention.

In this case, we would view the video in a studio on a nice hi-def superwide Apple monitor with superb audio speakers. However, the customer may be viewing it on a washed-out screen in a noisy stadium between innings.

In addition to the context, it’s important to understand your ideal customers’ desires and fears. We all move toward pleasure and away from pain. What are they trying to achieve? What are they trying to avoid?

You’ll note in my example below that not everything I included directly relates to the BairFind Foundation, missing children or the call-to-action. It’s very easy for us as marketers to only focus on what we want customers to do, or the tiny sliver of their life that relates to our product or ask.

However, real human beings aren’t two dimensional. And their experiences in life are much broader and deeper than just those that relate to your product.

And at the end of the day, all those perceptions ultimately affect how they regard your message. After all, as the Talmud says, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Attributes (Demographic Characteristics)

Ages 21-54

Diverse education level

Diverse ethnicity

Moderate household income, however, 29% HH income $100K+

78% own home

Context

Family of four can see ballgame for $62

Some fans attend just a few games per year; some are season ticket holders

Between innings, they are distracted

Receive many promos throughout the game

Children will be going back to school soon

Likely watching on a washed-out screen in a noisy stadium

Common Desires (Moves Toward)

Experience budget-friendly entertainment

Create happy memories together

Be a part of the community

Be the hero to their kids

Be a good parent

Be an upstanding member of the local community

Relax with family

Escape pressures of life

See a future big leaguer

See the local team win

Have a story to tell their friends the next day

Watch the mascot do something funny

Common Fears (Moves From)

Something bad will happen to my children

I can lose my job, and I won’t have enough money to support my family

The home team will lose

Will my kids throw a temper tantrum if I don’t by them cotton candy at the game?

Crowds and traffic leaving the game

Violence will come to my country/my town/this baseball game

Will this game get rained out?

If I text a donation, will I be continually sent text messages

What if I think I know the missing kid, tell the cops, but I’m wrong

Will my kids need a nap at the game?

Step 3: Unanswered questions about the prospect

Generate a list of the most important unanswered questions about the customer’s identity and behavior.

Unanswered Questions about the Prospect (Parents at a Minor League Baseball game)

Will they be too distracted to pay attention to a video between innings?

Will the donate message make them more or less likely to look at the sign?

Do they understand how to text to donate?

Is $2 the right amount to ask them to donate?

Is a video the right way to ask them to donate?

Would they refer a friend to donate?

These first three steps are part of the MECLABS Seven-Step Customer Theory Development Framework that is taught in the University of Florida graduate program. The full framework also includes conducting experiments to build a robust customer theory discovered from customer behavior to answer some of these questions.

In the case of this project — a simple video for a nonprofit — we were unable to go full on through all seven steps and conduct experimentation. However, I still find this step helpful because it instills humility as part of the process. As much as you have certain assumptions about the customer, it forces you to admit there’s still a lot you don’t know.

It also doesn’t hurt to look back at these questions when you’re working on the next project, see what the results of the previous project were, and continue to build a base of knowledge about the customer.

Getting everyone on the same page

In addition to helping the creators of the advertisement (copywriters, art directors, video producers, etc.) get in the minds of the customer, this tool helps everyone working on the project — from an account coordinator to the vice president of marketing, on the agency side and the client-side — get on the same page about which customers will (and won’t) be talked to and what is important to those customers.

This can help reduce rework, and lay the groundwork for successful creative pitches to clients.

Which is what happened in this case. After I filled out the Customer Theory tool, I sent it over to Dennis Bair, Founder, The BairFind Foundation. I asked him for his perspective on the ideal customer as well, before writing the first word in the script.

Once I was able to incorporate his insights, I wrote a script and sent it over to Dennis, and he loved it, providing only minor feedback. Here’s the result:

It’s just an example of how successful copywriting is about so much more than just great writing. So much fantastic writing never sees the light of day because it never gets the green light.

Successful copywriting requires customer intimacy, but it requires client intimacy as well. Get on the same page with everyone you must collaborate with, and have the client share their key insights about the customer before you begin the creative process.

And the same is true in reverse if you’re on the brand side. Be proactive and make sure your internal or agency creatives have the same understanding of the customer as you do. As Sun Tzu has said, “Every battle is won or lost before it’s ever fought.”

If you’d like that free tool to use with your own clients, agencies and marketing projects, here it is again …

FREE CUSTOMER THEORY DEVELOPMENT DOWNLOAD

You can follow Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content, MarketingExperiments, on Twitter @DanielBurstein.

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    Customer Theory: How to leverage empathy in your marketing (with free tool) was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[caredogstips]

Trump’s misogyny didn’t triumph him such elections. But it will change women’s lives

Economics was the reason for Clintons shock defeat. But that defeat will indirectly allow sexism to thrive once more in America

Did Hillary Clinton lose the election because she is a woman? The rebuttal is no, but the reasons behind that no are involved. Its certainly hopeless to reject the presence of extreme sexism in awareness-raising campaigns: the national media narrative of a battle between a hard-working, highly qualified woman and a pussy-grabbing man. Donald Trump substantiated over and over again that he loathes potent women who do not bending to his will, and so did many of his supporters.

Much of his analysi of Clinton often through razzing and browbeat had strong sexist undercurrents. And hitherto, misogyny was not the reason that Clinton was overcome. “Shes lost” because lower- and middle-class white people wanted spectacular change, and these voters felt that, in spite of her gender, she offered them more of the same.

During the election, often was made of the extra pressure that Clinton was under to conform to expectations of impression and action. She received extreme attention to the style that she was dressed and groomed, especially in compare with the dishevelled and orange introduction of her opposing. Notion was cast on the meaning of her controlled delivery. Shows were attained that she shortage passion, as if ardour could only be demonstrated through red-faced screaming at baying audience. Though her ardour was obviou, as was her intellect, it is true that Clinton sometimes seemed a bit anodyne. Not because she is anodyne, but because the nature of awareness-raising campaigns restriction her means and forms of expression.

A woman politician whose figure and bringing matched those of Donald Trump would be unlikely to be elected to city council. A wife who obligated the mistake of be submitted to people substantiating her rival as distressings people who bellowed for walls to be built on borders and for beings to be killed was excoriated, while her male opponent suggested that they come after her with guns. None of this was fair. In a number of countries that holds rapidly to importances of democracy, everyone should have an equal opportunity to speak their thought and, indeed, wear luminous orange foundation, if that is a look they want to go for. But this is not the reason that Clinton lost.

Like numerous leftwing wives, I went to my polling place on Tuesday wearing a trouser suit and a Nasty Woman T-shirt. The hours-long queue was packed out with mothers who had brought their small-scale daughters to watch them vote for the first wife chairman. The background was almost sufficient to make it seem that such elections was about seeking a long-delayed victory for feminism. But this was a side effect. It was a media-friendly narrative harnessed by Clintons campaign strategists to enhanced her firebrand, rather than what such elections was really about.

Clinton won the favourite election, possibly by more than thousands and thousands of. She was, we need to remember, the candidate of alternative for most voters. That is why it is essential to look more deeply into the numbers. The reason that Clinton lost the electoral college, and in turn such elections, was that she failed to appeal to enough lily-white girls, particularly in deciding states.

My moderate enthusiasm in Clintons candidacy was not shared by a majority of women who look like me or Clinton herself. Trump won the votes of 53% of lily-white ladies. They were voters whom Clintons campaign unit likely guessed were an easy acquire because of her calls for fee equality, leave for new fathers, and investing in young children; and for her oft-stated belief that womens privileges are human rights. But Clintons campaign missed the mark with them.

Those women who voted against Clinton did not do so because they are sexist, or because they dont believes in womens ability to lead and reach; they are themselves managers and achievers. Instead, they voted against her since they are believe that her defendant has given them, their own families, and their communities short shrift.

In Trump, nonetheless, they have a future chairwoman who threatens to withdraw their rights, who claims to is also intended to roll back Roe v Wade, to take a womans right to prefer out of the constitution, and to institute certain kinds of punishment for women who discontinue maternities. Trumps have committed themselves to cancel the Affordable Care Act on his first day in office is necessary that unwanted maternities will become harder to prevent, with coverage go for women to get contraception provided free of charge or at low cost.

In addition to policy, it is not feasible to overlook potential impacts that this most misogynist chairman will have on American social standards. Donald Trump has boasted about devoting sexual abuse and has a dozen women with proof that his boastings were more than just locker area talk. He has called wives animals and dogs, said that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous occasion and agrees with his daughter, Ivanka, was a piece of ass. He has described a woman who was breastfeeding as disgusting.

Even if many ladies voters didnt care that Trump belittled Clintons appearance, her stamina, her presidential examine, her ability to satisfy her husband, they might be affected by their country being led by a humankind who behaves as Trump does. If the head of state can consider dames like objectives, why should any other American humankind suffer he should behave differently?

I know that we still have not smashed that highest glass ceiling, Clinton said in her distressing franchise lecture on Wednesday morning. But some day person will hopefully sooner than we might see right now. How soon will that be?

Progressives must be diligent to ensure that the enduring narrative of Clintons failure does not centre on her gender. Simply then will the Democratic party be able to accomplish the drastic reform it needs to build a legitimate programme to take back the White House in 2020. Blaming sexism is not just a too-easy apology: it will mean that ladies are not given the chance to run in the future because they are women. That would be a perversion. America simply cant run another 240 years without a woman president.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Trump’s misogyny didn’t triumph him such elections. But it will change women’s lives appeared first on caredogstips.com.

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[mlonswayfilm-blog]

San Soleil

This week I decided to begin by watching the movie before venturing into the texts, which was not my brightest idea. I have never been one to watch a lot of documentaries as I enjoy fictional drama, but often times documentaries prove to have the most interesting concepts. They step past artificial romance and break into modern and past problems that most of us try to avoid thinking about. As soon as San Soleil started I was a bit lost as the image of three children went across the screen and letters were being read but I figured eventually some main obvious point would be made. 

Instead the entirety of the film followed the same structure of letters being read aloud in a nondiegetic fashion and quick cutaways from one image to another. It seemed to all be shot in a POV perspective as the narrator’s face was never shown, but several times she mentioned her awareness towards the subject she was filming avoiding looking at her or not. It was all as though someone had journeyed around Japan and Africa and the camera was directly shooting what they saw. It was a bunch of history and rituals crammed together with similar themes of time and memory that all lead back to the same image of the children. There was never any character that were shown throughout as the entire film was close ups and middle shots of people that quickly cycled on to the next person. To me, it felt rather impersonal not having a person to connect to. Even the person narrating did not give us much information besides the lessons she had learned in the letters and about a future idea for a movie. Of course there were little snippets throughout such as her favorite creatures being cats and owls (which is obvious as they continuously show up throughout the film) but besides that no character is really focused in on. There were no interviews, no storylines of a specific person, nothing but letters and a lot of people watching. As I come from a family of avid people watching, the film felt very real in the sense that I felt like I was where ever the camera was, observing the same habits and motions of people. It was all very candid, as small moments such as the girls laughing while standing by the robot of a president. So often in fictional movies little bursts of laughter are not seen by the extras, but by having no main subject matter and no acting cues people were able to be people. To an extent these small moments helped me feel more connected, but often I felt lost and wishing for guidance.

Guidance could have been brought to me if I had focused in initially on the readings instead of tackling them after. I began with the article by Daniel Fairfax which directly spoke of Marker’s films and how the quick cuts were a stylistic choice he tended to make in his films. He described this in a term coined by Walter Benjamin as “dialectical image” which in short was fast images coming together as a mix of past and present (Fairfax). Knowing just this term alone helped clarify why everything was seemingly all over the place to me, but to Marker it all made sense as it showed the connections he wanted to portray. To quote Marker he said “attach oneself to details, to the tiniest of things which historians and sociologists hold in disdain, and to arrive through their intermeshing at the portrait of an era” (Fairfax). Small moments that may seem irrelevant to some, were where he found his important clips for films. Compiling this clips brought about the meaning he was trying to get across that one clip may not have shown. For example, in San Soleil as people were sleeping on the train he flashed images of horror movies, which may have seemed unrelated but since he discussed earlier how it felt like the shows were watching the audience, it seems that by flashing horror over sleep it as tv had even intruded people’s dreams. It was a chaotic symbol that tied in well with previous narration. 

But then there is this concept of image and montage which as heavily brought up in Andre Bazin’s book What is Cinema? He begins with a chapter on image and how photography changed the whole world of art as people were able to capture realism like never before. He goes so far to say “photography is clearly the most important event in the history of plastic arts” (Bazin 16). Now as someone into photography this all made sense to me as I enjoy the realism aspect of a photo. As soon as I try to paint or draw something it never depicts exactly what I would like for it to. By taking a photo it is clear to the intended audience what is being represented, rather than leaving room for interpretation. As mentioned by Bazin, they seem to freeze time for a moment as photos leave something in that state forever (Bazin 14). Photos do hold a lot of power in terms of memory as what we wanted to capture stands still perfectly the way it was in that split second. But this is where I find some disagreement with Bazin, as although there may have been a search for perfect painting realism, that now has been fixed by an digital image, which leads to losing some of our creative aspects. Anyone who has a camera phone and an Instagram automatically thinks they are a photographer but when it comes down to it the uniqueness of realism is gone. I am from Oregon, where it never snows, so when it does my Instagram feed is often 30 pictures in a row of front yards with snow. But when painting, a creative aspect of brush strokes, color, abstract aesthetic and much more comes involved that I feel gives the painter more creative power. Bazin finds this to be a negative as he describes “no matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity” but subjectivity is what brings inspiration and movements to the world that a photo of a sunset cannot (Bazin 12). Marker almost contrasts this idea of realism in his film as he uses that machine to change images into abstract colors that hide details. He used this effect over scenes of violence which helped mask what people try not to see. It added an avant-garde effect to something that was originally realism making the clips more unique. But at the same time, the effect took away the power that the clips originally has presented. Marker often spoke of censorship and its commonality but for him to censor such dramatic moments that would likely have stuck with people made the scenes less effective. On the first day of class we had discussed the images in media that stuck with people, and detailed violent images are what were often most memorable.

There is the other whole concept of montage brought up in both Bazin and Fairfax’s work. My previous idea of a montage was just a collage of clips all brought together. Bazin discussed how it all started from silent films where montages were shown to give the audience an idea of what was going on. He used the example of trains coming towards each other, showing shorter lengths to demonstrate their speed (Bazin 25). He also discussed the involvement of juxtaposition which reminded me of Mamet’s article on how images with simplistic juxtaposition spoke more loudly than words. Mamet seems to be supporting the world of silent films as Bazin describes them. Artavazd Pelechian in Fairfax’s article sums up montages as being all about the disconnection of scenes (Fairfax). This concept made sense in Marker’s film as his montages were all about putting dissimilar scenes next to each other to try to spark some meaning. Besides the narration and slightly futuristic sounds, a lot of the film reminded me of silent movies as it was just clips with no talking and occasional diegetic sound. Bazin often discusses how montages demonstrate some sort of meaning but his given examples were more obvious, while personally Marker’s montage was hard to understand for me. There was no flashes of trains getting close like in parallel montage but instead quick cuts between a Japanese celebration and other scenes such as a boat. A mystery was brought into Marker’s film by taking away anything obvious in theme but for me it was too vague as I was uncertain exactly what Marker was trying to get across to the audience most of the time.

Although the meaning was not the most clear to me, the overall aesthetic was very pleasing. There was a lot faded colors involved, fast cutaways and close ups that all did fit together. Even through the immense amount of people and concepts, there was still unity through his editing style. Bazin did discuss towards the end of his chapter that as technology improved so did editing as more depth and better angles became involved (Bazin 33). Stories flowed well together and a sense of real culture was articulated throughout by keeping clips to be POV observational. I went to Japan about five summers ago and it felt like I was back for many clips such as when discussing the dog statue as I can remember witnessing that and a similar crowd surronding it. It was little things such as the dog statue and other continuous themes that brought together the long montage. The narrator had a fascination with animals as could be seen as many were shown and discussed throughout. Again, often the meaning behind things such as the emu went over my head, but the continuity showed emphasis on the subject meaning in someway creatures were very important to the overall idea. Although I really do wish that I had a better understanding of what exactly Chris Marker was going for, the montage style of film was something I had never seen anything like and helped broaden my horizon on different cultures.