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margridarnauds · 4 years ago

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Wtf is with the Tudor fandom?? Those are the same people who have “cancelled” Isabel and Fernando lmao for their colonization of America. Why are they so mad when we talk about Elizabeth I + colonization then? who tf do they think they are by saying “social justice warriors”?

I feel, personally, like the weaponization of serious issues for the purposes of ships and stanning various figures has kind of brought us to this point, ngl. Anne Boleyn supporters bring up the Inquisition, bring up slavery, bring up the colonization of America, while KOA supporters toss Ireland and the treatment of black and Jewish people around like a ping pong ball, on and on, back and forth, pettier and pettier with each exchange. There’s no real room to discuss anything, because it’s inherently polarized, and the only ones who really lose are the ones in the fandom who wanted to discuss it from the beginning because it reflects some part of their lived experience, only to find themselves used as pawns and then discarded when they’re no longer of use. And, in that area, as a white American Celticist, I got off fairly clean. I haven’t had to deal with the constant harassment that others have had to deal with. I’ve just been lied about and ignored, which, in many, many ways, is better. Annoying, but better.

I’m personally at an odd place with Ferdinand and Isabella given that I do live at Ground Zero of the Spanish colonization of America - The people of Florida have, for the most part (though not uncontroversially), begun to seriously question the narratives that we were always fed about Ponce de Léon and the “Discovery” of Florida, taking into account more re: his treatment of the Táino people, who were exploited, enslaved, and butchered by Spanish forces who were paid with Ferdinand of Aragon’s gold, working under Ferdinand of Aragon’s authority. We are starting to question what, exactly, it means when we talk about having the oldest continuously occupied city in the nation, along with the question of where the legendary emeralds of the lost Plate Fleet (that, let’s be real, we ALL want to find) came from, which hands mined them before they were put into crucifixes, whose blood stains them. I’m not going to pretend I have any personal love of them, though I recognize their overall historical importance. I think that, like any other historical figures, we can talk about the good and the bad, along with the lasting effects, both good and bad, of them and their reign.

That being said, the blatant hypocrisy of the Tudors fandom to criticize one fandom when, the second the spotlight is turned on them, they suddenly demur and claim that, actually, that doesn’t MATTER anymore, it was centuries ago, is galling. Either we critically analyze history like adults for both sides of the Catholic VS Protestant debate, acknowledging that both sides committed atrocities that echo down to the present, or we don’t. We keep brushing things under the rug, keep trying to argue why our faves were the most pure, keep trying to enter into a dick measuring contest with a thin veneer of academism. (And, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, in my field, I have just as much standing as they do. I’m not asking for people to bow down or even to take what I say uncritically, since I hate elitism in the field, but I AM asking, if they’re claiming to be academics and using that to swing their weight around, to give me the same respect as another academic. You can’t have the respect that comes with the position without acknowledging the responsibility.)

All I ever REALLY wanted was for people to talk about the darker side, not to permanently #Cancel anyone (the past is a fucked up place—If I didn’t feel like I had to constantly defend my field’s existence constantly from people wanting to paint the Irish as barbarians, I could tell you some REALLY fucked up things from Irish history/literature. Especially the literature), but to TALK about the nuances involved, only to find that, on both sides, people only really cared about boosting their own pet faves. I’m not saying “You can only post a gifset of Elizabeth/Isabella if you include a dissertation tacked on at the end of how they weren't #GirlBosses", rather that the general perception of them needed to become more nuanced, and yet, somehow, that led to me becoming one of the black sheep of the Tudor fandom. (That and, admittedly, mentioning the very true fact that one British Dynasty has received more media attention in 20 years than the entirety of Irish history’s received in cinematic history…..which I stand by, not the least because I didn’t mention WHICH dynasty, since it applies, in fact, to multiple, including the present ruling dynasty.) (Okay, and calling an ugly fraud of a portrait an ugly fraud of a portrait. Which I also stand by.)

One thing that I appreciate with the saner parts of, for example, the French Revolution fandom is that, while it can still be quite polarized, there is, essentially, at least the IDEA that both sides fucked up and did fucked up things. The idea that, even though you can appreciate that certain figures, like Robespierre, like Marie Antoinette, like Philippe Égalité (though I’m still working on that one) were slandered in their time, they ALSO were complicit in some terrible, terrible things. I haven’t really seen any Robespierre fans defending, say, the September Massacres, the Vendée, or the suppression of the Brezhoneg language. (I’ve gotten more mixed reviews from the pro-Royalist side, but at least the understanding that the Ancien Régime and the people in it weren’t ideal, which is more than I’m getting on this side.) Is the Frev fandom ideal? No. It isn’t. It suffers from many of the same shortcomings as any other historical fandom, and there are quite a few people I utterly refuse to engage with because I find them to be too extreme on one side or the other (being the one Orléanist Stan™ does help things along), but, that being said, at least they’re having SOME historical perspective.

I made the unfortunate mistake of thinking that, when people said “Oh, yes, we can appreciate these things in the context of their time, with critical thinking!” They actually meant it, as opposed to just wanting an excuse to shut us up until we’re useful again. Instead, I quickly realized that people only cared so long as it bolstered them and their side, not about the people who were actually harmed, and if we bring THEM up, we’re SJWs. No need to argue with what we’re actually SAYING if you can just lie about us repeatedly. And, frankly? I’m utterly disgusted at the number of blogs that I thought would know better, who I respected for their nuanced approach to history and the study of it, humoring them. I’m utterly disgusted at how their narrative of “Evil SJW”s has actually gained currency from people who have based their entire reputation, sometimes their careers, on critical thinking and analyzing biases.

#long post #and i'm absolutely sure they're going to find this and find SOMETHING to use against me #Anonymous

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cardentist · 4 years ago

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this isn’t a proper discourse post, I Agree with a lot of what the op said but there’s specific things about it that get under my skin in a way that makes me want to talk about it, but I don’t want to engage with that post both because I don’t want to speak over the point that’s being made and frankly because I don’t want to be misinterpreted because of the point that’s being made in it.

so for context, I’ll just say that it was a long post about how a lack of engagement with women characters in fandom spaces is tied to misogyny. just be aware that I’m responding to something specific and not criticisms of this in general. (feel free to dm me if you want to see the post for yourself)

the rest of this is going to be rambly and a bit unfocused, so I want to get this out the door right at the top: it is not actually someone’s moral obligation to engage with or create fan content. all other points aside, what this amounts to is labeling people as bigoted for either not creating or engaging with content that you want to see, and while the individual may or may not be a bigot it’s not actually anyone’s job to tailor their fandom experience to cater to you.

fandom is not activism. it’s not Wrong to point out that a lack of content about women in fandom is likely indicative of the influence of our misogynistic society. and suggesting that people examine their internalized biases isn’t just fine, it’s something that everyone should be doing all the time. but saying that it is literally someone’s “responsibility” to “make an effort” by consuming content about women or they’re bigoted is presenting the consumption of fan content as a moral litmus test that you pass and fail not by how you engage with content but by not engaging with all of the Correct content.

judging people’s morality based on what characters they read meta for or look at fanart for is, a mistake. it Can Be Indicative of internalized biases but it is not, in and of itself, a moral failing that has to be corrected.

if you want more content to be created about women in fandom then you do it by spreading content about women in fandom, not by guilting people into engaging with it by saying that they’re bigots if they don’t. you encourage creation Through creation.

okay, now to address what Mainly set me off to inspire this post.

this post specifically went out of it’s way to present misogyny as the only answer for why this problem exists in fandom spaces. and while I absolutely agree that it’s a Factor, they left absolutely no room for nuance which included debunking “common excuses.” which, as you can probably guess, contained the things that ticked me off.

first off, you can’t judge that someone is disconnected from women in general based on their fandom consumption because the sum total of their being is not available on tumblr.

people don’t always bear their souls in fandom spaces. just because they don’t actively post about a character or Characters doesn’t mean that they see them as lesser or that they don’t think about them. the idea that you can tell what a person’s moral beliefs are not based on what they’ve said or done but based on whether they engage with specific characters in a specific way in a specific space can Only work on the assumption that they engage with that space in a way that expresses the entirety of who they are or even their engagement with that specific media.

what I engage with on ao3 is different from what I engage with on tumblr, youtube, twitter, my friend’s dms, and my own head. people are going to engage with social media and fandom spaces specifically differently for different reasons. you can’t assume what the other parts of their lives look like based on this alone.

second off, there can be other factors at play that influence people’s specific engagement with a fandom.

they specifically brought up the magnus archives as an example of a show with well written women. which while absolutely true, does Not mean that misogyny is the only option for why people wouldn’t engage with content about them as often. for me personally? a lot of fan content is soured because of how it presents jon. I relate to him very heavily as a neurodivergent and traumatized person, and he faces a Lot of victim blaming and dehumanization in the writing. sasha and martin are more or less the only main characters that Aren’t guilty of this, and sasha was out of the picture after season 1.

while this affects my enjoyment of fan content for these characters To Some Extent on it’s own (I love georgie, I love her a lot, but I can’t forget that she looked at someone and told them that they were better off dead because they couldn’t “choose” to not be abused), the bigger issue is fan content that Specifically doesn’t address the victim blaming and ableism as what it is, even presenting it as just Correct.

this isn’t exclusive to the women in the show by any means, this is exactly why I avoid a lot of content about tim, but it affects a lot of the women who are main characters. that isn’t the Only reason, there’s more casual ableism and things that tear him down for other reasons (the prevalent theory that elias passed up on sasha because he’s afraid of how she’s More Competent In Jon In Every Single way. which comes with the unfortunate implications of jon being responsible for his own trauma because he just wasn’t competent enough to avoid it) but that’s the main one that squicks me out.

of course not all fan content does this, and I Do engage with content about these characters, but sometimes it’s easier to just stick with content that centers on my comfort character because it’s more likely to look at his character with the nuance required to see that it is victim blaming and ableism.

it’s not enough to say that the characters are well rounded or well written and conclude that if someone isn’t consuming or creating content about them then it has to be due to misogyny and nothing else.

there’s also just like, the Obvious answer. two most prominent characters are two men that are in a canonical gay relationship, which draws in queer men/masc people on it’s own but the centering of their othering and trauma Particularly draws in traumatized queer people that are starved for content. georgie and melanie are both fleshed out characters in and of themselves, but their relationship with each other doesn’t have nearly as much direct screen time. and daisy and basira have a lot more screen time together and about each other, but their relationship is very intentionally non-canon because of its role as a commentary on cop pack mentality.

people are More Likely to create content for the more prominent relationship in the show and be drawn into the fandom through that relationship in the first place. I have no doubt that there Are misogynistic fans of the show, but focusing on the relationship and the characters that make you happy isn’t and indication that you’re one of them.

which brings us to the big one, the one that sparked me into writing this in the first place (and the last that I have time for if I’m being honest). the “common excuses” section in general is, extremely dismissive obviously but there’s only one section that genuinely upsets me.

without copying and pasting what they said directly, it essentially boils down to this: while they recognize that gay and trans men are “allowed” to relate to men, they’re still Men which makes them misogynistic. Rather than acknowledge Why gay and trans men would engage with fan-content specifically that caters to them they present it as a given that it’s 100% due to misogyny anyways. they present queer men engaging with content about themselves as them treating women like they’re “unworthy of attention,” calling it a “patriarchal tendency” that they have to unlearn.

being gay and trans does not mean that you’re immune to misogyny, being a woman doesn’t even mean that you’re immune to misogyny, but that’s engaging in bad faith in a way that really puts a bad taste in my mouth.

queer men aren’t just like, Special Men that have Extra Bonus Reasons to be relate to boys, they’re people who are more likely to Need fandom spaces to explore facets of themselves. and while you can Relate to any character, it feels good to be able to explore those aspect with characters that resemble you or how you see yourself.

when I first started actively seeking out fandom spaces in middle school I engaged with content about queer men more or less exclusively. at this point I had no concept of what trans people were, and wouldn’t begin openly considering that I might be a trans person until high school. I knew that I’d be happier as a gay man before I knew I could be a gay man, and that’s affected my relationship with fandom forever.

I engage with most things pretty casually, reblogging meta and joke posts when I see them, but what I go out of my way to engage with is largely an expression of my gender identity and sexuality. I project myself onto a comfort character and then I Consume content for them because that was how I was able to express myself before I knew that I needed to. it’s not that girl characters aren’t “worthy” of me relating to them, it’s that I specifically go to certain fandom spaces to express and work through my gender and sexuality. that’s what I use those fandom spaces For.

I imagine that I’ll need this crutch less when I’m allowed to transition and if I ever find a relationship situation that works out for me. but also like, why should I? it’s not actually hurting anyone for me to explore my gender and sexuality through fanfic until the end of time. nor does it hurt anyone for me to focus on my comfort characters.

fandom is personal comfort and entertainment, not a moral obligation. people absolutely should engage with women in media and real life with more nuance and energy than they do, but fandom spaces are not the place to police or judge that.

#discourse #I've been writing and rewriting this for 4 and a half hours instead of going to bed before 9 am #I already know that absolutely no one is going to read this so I don't know why I did this to myself #also I couldn't find a place to fit this in so I'm just gonna say it here #sometimes people just engage with fandom based on characters that they find attractive #and if that means boys then that means boys #it doesn't have to be more complicated than that

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velveetacrackncheese · 5 years ago

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The whole "forced diversity" shit is so stupid and it really makes zero sense to me considering the points made by geeks either refer to the bad writing independent of whatever race of gender said character is, or referring to something that necessitates the need for a poc to be in a film which shouldn't have to be the case. Women and poc shouldn't have to justify their existence in popular media. I'm sorry to say this but black people weren't invented in 2019. Gay people were not invented in the 21st century, the real world really do be like that and it's fine for there to be shitty gay romcoms as much as it's ok for there to be good films with gay characters in it without people feeling the need to point at those bad films and say "See this is forced diversity. This is why we shouldn't make gay movies anymore" like it makes no fucking sense. That's not to say there isn't a such thing as hollow representation and being disrespectful of the people trying to be represented, but that's more or less an executive decision made to try and appeal to more audiences for marketing purposes (Le Fou from Beauty and the Beast) that at times can be tone deaf or just so shoddy that whatever representation was there was probably only implied or just in the background somewhere, but I don't know a single person who thinks tokenism is a good thing, and even if tokenism is what "forced diversity" is, then why is the term "forced diversity" used to refer to other instances of supposedly unjust casting then? Who's a fan of queerbaiting? I don't get it because even then, it comes down to how it's written and framed. A gay character simply being "That one gay" is typically the result of bad writing and honestly I'd very much call that half-assed diversity since clearly they don't care about their gay characters that much aside from having "the gay" in it and nothing else. But like I said, that's tokenism, and for some, the mere sight of gay characters in nerd culture is enough for the anti-woke police to come and arrest you for inclusivity crimes. Diversity itself isn't even the problem.

Nothing is even wrong with diversity for diversity's sake. Doesn't inherently have to damage a narrative, and if we're talking "agendas" the agenda first and foremost is to make money. Their little faux progressivism is just a marketing tactic. There's no secret coalition of people in Hollywood "forcing the gays in" because they just really like the gays. They don't care THAT MUCH. Queer Eye doesn't exist because imaginary cultural marxists exist in Hollywood to reinforce "the gay agenda". Queer Eye exists to perpetuate the whole "conventionally attractive, flamboyant, gay friend trope" that's tired since it exists to hit a certain itch for straight audiences. Same shit with RuPaul.

"Ah but they wrote this character as being a black woman."

Ok.

"But see they did that because they wanted to really be inclusive and have some black casting."

Aight.

"They did this because they wanted to promote a super duper communist sjw agenda"

Cool. Why is this a problem? What makes any of this "forced". Have all the past instances of progressive messaging in other forms of media not counted as forced or "sjw?" If they come off a certain way with it's themes, that's probably intentional. That sucks. Guess Star Wars was sjw propaganda all along since it's about killing space fascists.

"But that character used to be a white man that's forced :c"

Like idk what to say to this other than the fact that inclusion and the changing of races for the sake of inclusivity is fine as long as that character is still well written, and even if it isn't, shouldn't mean to condemn the changing of identity of said character. Although there is a point to be made regarding creating new diverse characters instead.

"They hired that actress because she's black."

As long as they hire her while concerning the significance of her skills and talents and use that for a stunning performance featuring a black woman, then I'm cool with thinking about inclusivity in the hiring process.

This whole thing about promoting diversity somehow meaning not being able to write something well is nonsense, because at a certain point you aren't even talking about diversity anymore, so why bring it up? Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and if you want to get mad at executives for not giving the minorities they're representing the genuine care and fine touch they deserve, wouldn't it make sense to demand they write these diverse characters better? This especially matters if the narrative you're telling heavily relies on the identity of your cast, and is thus key to write those aspects regarding your characters well. A lot of this "forced diversity" talk just seems like lazy criticism while avoiding any substantial counter-criticisms by pretending to be nuanced about a very non-issue.

You'll have that one guy who goes on about how some scripts explicitly mention the identity of a character and it's like.... Do you think casting wonder woman as a literal woman, because her role necessitates she be a woman, is also forced diversity? It's literally in her name. What if there's a movie exploring themes of female identity and such. I feel like even if it isn't relevant, people just vaguely describe certain characters as male, female, whatever. When did scripts or directors stating that they wanted a woman playing a lead all of a sudden constitute as somehow forcing diversity LMFAO. "Oh well one is artificial while the other isn't" uh, what? Last time I checked all fictional narratives are artificially written and made into products for people to enjoy and consume. Nobody looks at the numerous bad films featuring straight white dudes and go "This is forced caucasity, this is why whites shouldn't be in movies" like what. I don't remember anyone making that argument when Samurai Cop or The Room was made.

I wish the people who complain about forced diversity would just say they don't like seeing certain demographics in their movies instead of playing 32-dimensional chess as a way to avoid getting called mean words. Like just peel the mask, this is so tiring. I'd rather you just say you don't agree with certain characters representing minorities you don't like instead of spawning a pointless debate. That's not to say everyone who pulls up the whole "forced diversity" schtick is bigoted, but y'all pls. The mask comes off when y'all claim Hollywood is "far-left" when the most left leaning thing in Hollywood is Mark Ruffalo.

#forced diversity #not a thing sorry #star wars #the room #samurai cop

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bertha-mason-discord-tag · 4 years ago

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Northanger Abbey Response

First off, I really like how experimental Northanger Abbey is. The way that Austen "breaks the fourth wall" in order to poke fun at the tropes of Gothic literature, and defend the novel as an art-form, is so unusual and surprisingly engaging. I'm thinking particularly of the joke at the end, where Eleanor Tilney's husband is revealed to be the one who left the receipts behind in the chest in Catherine's room. It's a really interesting approach, and it lets her keep the novel a loving pastiche rather than a mean-spirited parody. I could definitely tell that this was written by fetus-Austen; for example, she often puts quotes around instances of free indirect discourse, which I don't remember seeing in her later work. I'm not sure if this was insecurity on her part (about whether readers would "get it"), or if it was to maintain a separation between the speaker's voice (which is unusually present) and the character voices. Either way, I found quotes around free indirect discourse confusing, and am glad she later dropped them.

The experimental nature of Northanger Abbey is a good reminder of several things. First, that the timeline of art history, while useful, is artificial; writers in the past were capable of the kind of sophistication we associate with modernity. Second, that stuff written by amateurs and young people is often experimental (even if unintentionally!) in interesting ways (see fanfic). Third, that the early days of a medium are often experimental and forward thinking in ways that are rediscovered later (I'm thinking of how Orson Welles' video essays prefigure YouTube video essays). Fourth, that the "rules" of writing are just suggestions, that can be disregarded if they get in the way. And finally — most importantly — it’s a reminder that Jane Austen does not miss.

I'd like to also comment on Austen's defense of the novel as a medium, in conversation with "A Paradox at the Heart of Jane Austen's Defense of the Novel." Austen's take on the value of the novel is quite measured, which I suppose is related to the grounded, observational nature of her writing generally. I had the criticism of fiction (particularly, YA fiction), which Austen makes through Catherine; I grew up reading a lot of novels, and while I never thought they were accurate to real life, I do remember wishing they had addressed real life more directly. You can only read so many novels about teens being turned into child soldiers before you wonder, what am I supposed to do with myself outside an active war zone? That being said, I'm a fan of fantasy and science fiction, as well as the Gothic, and my feelings now are that it's great to be campy and unrealistic because real life is often stilted and boring. You can even see that in Northanger Abbey; it's a testament to Austen's prowess that the novel manages to be entertaining, when the story itself is pretty messy and large parts of the novel are unsatisfying. This is especially true right now, with the plague on: sometimes, I just want to read about necromancers. So, I'm left with a pretty nuanced take on the issue, which is where Austen and Merril's analysis of Austen ends up.

This is a discussion too big for one blog post, but I think the question Austen raises in Northanger Abbey ultimately cuts to the heart of what art — with the novel as a subset of art, and the YA novel a subset of that — is for. Should books be entertaining or instructive? One answer to that question, which I've been playing with, is to argue that all stories are didactic. This is trivially true, in the sense that reading a book involves learning the details of the story; but, often, people describe how they enjoyed "learning about the characters, and the world" of a story. There's a bias against art made for didactic purposes (I think as a reaction to Chick Tracts, after school specials, and lots of "bad" didactic art), so maybe that argument is a little heretical. But think about how much time people invest in learning about "lore": I think it's reasonable to say that at least one of the pleasures of reading is learning.

Plenty of "educational" content is also entertaining and artistically complex; in fact, I think that books are one of the best ways of broaching certain topics with kids/teens. (I'd even go so far as to argue that teaching is a kind of performance art, but that's way off topic.) Personally, I think the reason for the current bias against explicitly didactic art is a side effect of the way that children and teens are constructed by the mainstream. Stories are about nuance, and complexity, but if you're not allowed a more interesting take than "drugs are bad lol," it's going to be difficult to make something interesting. And that's an issue with all media made for children and teens, not just didactic media. I think this is why Austen's nuanced take on the value of the novel is so often misinterpreted. Austen's construction of the child is much more realistic than most during her time period (and ours); this keeps her honest in her appraisal of the novel as an art form.

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sights-on-the-scifi · 5 years ago

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The role of lore in MASS EFFECT for me.

Lore is a fascinating thing in science fiction, it can expand impossible worlds with deep complexities that paint their absurdities with a strange believability. But lore can also be restrictive, cumbersome and dry that it saps out all of the thematic/artistic nuance of media.

You need a careful balance of specific detail and room for inference.

Franchises I feel that become too drunk on lore can fall apart in spectacular ways. Sometimes there is just so many books, comics, wiki pages and supplementary material that any coherency a general audience can reasonably fathom is thrown directly out the window as the ball of superfluous information reaches such a critical mass it annihilates anything in its direct path.

HALO 5 is an obvious example of the worst excesses of required lore that I have ever seen in a big budget follow up to a successful franchise, especially one that I loved so much. The plot makes absolutely no fuckin sense unless you have read several books, watched a very terrible movie, played certain spin off titles etc and a whole page of a website is dedicated to telling you what exactly you need to buy. The original games let the players discover the deep intricacies of the lore in their own time through terminals and perhaps reading or watching the optional supplementary material, but the bulk of the games primary focus was on the main plotline dedicating all the art, love, music and care into making it as meaningful as possible. 5 flipped that on its head and created an inferior experience as a result, it became a history book...

What reason is there to infer, speculate and reflect on if everything is just spelled out to you plain as day like an encyclopedia entry. Detail matters in a plot to make sure its fluent and coherent but as said, too much of it can pretty much derail the experience.

The goal becomes “How much do players know?” Rather than “How do we tell a great story?”

Hideo Kojima is one of the worst offenders when it comes to this practice of relying so much on a deep canon while also spelling it out all to the audience in dialogue. MGS4 is a complete and utter mess of subplots and long winded dumps of exposition that its cut-scenes have become infamous for being the longest and most boring in any game.

Death Stranding looks to be no different...

MASS EFFECT is full of deep and complicated lore. You can find it in the codex, comics, animation and more but the great thing about it was that it served as a skeletal structure for the flesh of the universe to hang onto and evolve on. When it needed to be changed or broken Bioware could do so easily sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. But still It allowed for a creative freedom, letting the series communicate its themes and messages clearly in a entertaining format without getting bogged down in superfluous nonsense only a small percentage of people would really understand or care about.

Part of the fun of hybrid pop/hard scifi, is its distinct ability to be both believable and flexible at the same time. You can play the whole of the trilogy and not once have to open up the codex to understand what the hell was going on, and this is becoming rarer in media as time goes on.

You are having to spend more of your time and money on understanding the mechanics of a single piece of media and i’m quite frankly sick of it.

#Mass Effect #Halo #lore #hideo kojima #story

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a-duchess-and-a-prince-wk · 6 years ago

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A very interesting read

Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton’s fans are fighting a fierce new royal feud

In the world of British duchess fandom, there’s no room for divided loyalties: praising one means automatically 'hating' the other, writes Patricia Treble

A new war started in 2018, and it’s a take-no-prisoners affair with major implications for the future of the royal family. The once-genteel, even genial, online world of royal watching has been turned upside down and inside out as fans of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, duel for social media supremacy and, in the process, tear down anyone who dares to challenge their view of the royal world. There’s no room for divided loyalties: praising one means automatically “hating” the other.

Signs of the slagging aren’t hard to find. Just dive into the royal family’s own social media accounts, then follow the online infection trail. “Please give us MORE MORE MORE of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Sick to absolute death of fake narcissistic MeAgain Markle,” a commenter wrote on a photo of Prince William and Kate on the royal family’s Instagram account. Kate is “clinging to dear life to Willnot [sic]. His attention is on HRH Meghan,” says another beside a Kensington Palace photo of Kate at a laboratory. “Kate will never be on Meghan’s level, all that lazy consort did was marry a Prince, she don’t know about working, and connecting with others, don’t disrespect Meghan like that,” writes @HRHmegh on Twitter. “Meghan speak so bad and she was fake and she is an actress she know who act. But Kate always is natural,” comments another.

“It is really unbelievable,” says Susan Kelley, who is near the epicentre of the Kate vs. Meghan fan wars because of her two popular royal fashion websites—What Kate Wore, which she started in 2011, and What Meghan Wore, which she co-manages with Susan Courter. “Every time I tell people about it who aren’t in the Kate-Meghan world, they are incredulous.” While the two Susans, as they are known, approve comments before they are posted on the Meghan and Kate sites, “on certain days you can’t go 30 to 60 minutes without checking” Facebook to delete over-the-top comments, Kelley notes.

The reason for the sudden increase in vitriol isn’t hard to find. Seven years after marrying Prince William and being the only leading young female royal, Kate has “competition” in the form of a beautiful American former actress, Meghan Markle, who married Prince Harry in May. William, Kate, Harry and Meghan may be known as the “Fab Four,” but to fans, it’s an either-or choice. The Meghan and Kate acolytes appear to be very young, and accustomed to a social media world that not only condones but seems to encourage anonymous insults. It’s not for nothing that such devotees are known as “stans,” a combination of stalker and fan.

The fans aren’t living in an “and” world but in an “or” one. “Don’t get out of your lane, don’t be coming into my lane,” is how Kelley sees them. “This has been just extraordinarily troubling to me,” she continues. “This is 2018. If this was two men, this would not be happening. I thought we were beyond this…There is something so off, the level of hatred and how intense it is, and the volume.” Perhaps most disturbing for everyone is the level of intolerance, even racism. Not only is Meghan, the daughter of a black mother and white father, the focus of racist attacks, but her fans, in turn, quickly toss the “r” word at perceived Meghan opponents.

Susan Kelley isn’t alone. Everyone reports the same thing—a sudden, disquieting increase in harassing attacks that seem completely over-the-top given the rather sedate royal topics being discussed, including fashion, engagements, living arrangements, protocol and even the state of a curtsy or bow. “I have witnessed what amounts to be roving Twitter gangs that find a tweet/blog post about Meghan and kind of rally the troops and stoke up the fires and suddenly you have a hail storm of abuse flowing at you,” explains Jane Barr, who runs the From Berkshire to Buckingham fashion site, which focuses on Kate. “For me, it is very frustrating to write a nuanced analysis and have people just take a black-and-white interpretation and run wild with it.”

“I think it is indicative of a larger societal problem,” says Barr. “We have an inability to listen to other people, and reason and debate together as a community. The ramifications are obvious for free democratic societies, and very concerning.” In seven years of blogging, Barr has blocked two people for foul language. In the past year, she’s blocked between 15 and 20 for “completely out of control behaviour.”

Royal outrage is complicated by a transatlantic culture clash. Many intense Meghan Markle fans are Americans who don’t understand the monarchy, its place in British society and how there has always been criticism of the family, royal author Victoria Arbiter told the Express. “The American community doesn’t have anything like the royal family so they can only liken them to celebrities or politicians,” she explained. Their lack of knowledge of the intricacies of royal life, protocol and history explains some comments. For instance, they can interpret a photo being posted on a royal feed as a sign of the Queen’s personal approval for Kate or Meghan, their clothes or their behaviour, rather than the work of a member of the royal media department.

“Celebrity rivalries are always conducted by us, the fans, the people who buy the concert or theatre tickets, the records, the merchandise and who send the memes through social media,” contends Ellis Cashmore, a sociology professor at Aston University in England whose book Kardashian Kulture will be published in early 2019. “It helps if there is genuine animosity, but it’s far, far from essential—or even necessary. As long as we think they’re fighting, that’s enough to sustain the feud. We enjoy the feuds so much, we’re tempted to take sides and engage, albeit vicariously. Today, social media has made this easy; so much so that fans can keep the fight going independently of the principals.”

Many stans believe that Meghan and/or Kate don’t like each other and are coming between the close relationship of brothers William and Harry. The reality that the two brothers now have their own families and own priorities doesn’t appear to factor into their online fights. Every new bit of information—Harry and Meghan leaving the tiny two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage around the corner from William and Kate’s London residence for a larger house on the Windsor estate, or reports that they are ending their joint staffing arrangement, established when they were teens—is fought over. To some, the former Meghan Markle is the Yoko Ono of Kensington Palace: “Megan [sic] is the reason for the split between William and Harry,” commented one fan on the royal Instagram feed.

And in the busy autumn season of royal engagements, the war may be at a tipping point. Earlier in 2018, the work schedules of the two popular duchesses didn’t overlap. At the beginning of the year, the focus was on Kate while Meghan slowly dipped her toe into royal engagements. Then, when Kate went on maternity leave in late March, the focus swung back to Meghan, who married Harry in a wedding watched by billions. Kate stayed largely out of the public eye until after Harry and Meghan completed their high-profile tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.

But now, both royal women are both doing royal work, both based in their London home of Kensington Palace. And that’s setting up an inevitable “showdown” between how the media covers them—who gets top billing, who gets criticized? The palace, no doubt aware that social media is swimming in bile and acid, appears to be trying to mitigate the intense fan reactions. On Nov. 21, both Meghan and Kate were out and about in London, yet their schedules were carefully timed to not conflict with each other. As well, neither event touched on the subject matter of the other, and neither was announced to the public in advance.

In the morning, the Duchess of Sussex went to the Hubb Community Kitchen. Meghan had been making private visits there since January and, with the help of funds raise by a charitable cookbook she helped create, the women are making 200 meals daily for local groups in the area, devastated by the Grenfell Tower fire. A few hours later, Kate arrived at University College London’s developmental neuroscience lab to be briefed on the latest “research into how environment and biology interact to shape the way in which children develop both socially and emotionally.” Coincidently (or not), both wore outfits in shades of burgundy and plum. The preparations paid off. The Express put the two on its front page with the headline “Double duchess: Kate and Meghan’s copy-cat fashions.” For the record, the large photo was of Meghan, the inset of Kate.

The irony is that the Kate and Meghan stans are engaging in behaviour the royal women they profess to adore would find abhorrent. All four of the young royals are committed to raising the profile of mental health issues, including the negative effects of social media. On Nov. 15, William gave a powerful speech about the harmful effects of cyberbullying: “When I worked as an air ambulance pilot or travelled around the country campaigning on mental health, I met families who had suffered the ultimate loss. For too many, social media and messaging was supercharging the age-old problem of bullying, leaving some children to take their own lives when they felt it was unescapable.”

“I am very concerned though that on every challenge they face—fake news, extremism, polarization, hate speech, trolling, mental health, privacy, and bullying—our tech leaders seem to be on the back foot,” William continued before issuing a challenge: “You have powered amazing movements of social change. Surely together you can harness innovation to allow us to fight back against the intolerance and cruelty that has been brought to the surface by your platforms.”

Cashmore doesn’t see the Kate/Meghan social media battle stopping any time soon. “The beauty of our screen society is that, once people get on their phones or laptops, they become a force majeure—nothing and no one can stop them,” he explains. “If they say there’s an argument, then there’s an argument. Meghan and Kate can deny it all they like; it won’t alter a thing!”

There seems little room for neutral observers. Journalists are taking it from all sides. Any criticism—real or imagined—of one duchess is perceived by many fans as an attack, and also favouritism for the other royal woman. In the past year, virtually every full-time royal correspondent in London issued a plea for tolerance on Twitter. After being accused of everything from bias to racism, Richard Palmer of the Daily Express wrote, “We have all faced unpleasant and unfounded accusations of racism towards Meghan.” He pinned a tweet to the top of his account stating that “with the exception of a few I have known for years, I’ve decided I will only now engage with those who share their real identities.” Some journalists are also blocking extreme fans.

And the attacks don’t just stop at those who critique. The fans demand total loyalty. As Richard Palmer commentedon Twitter, “As far as I can see the pitchfork brigade have just regarded anything not 100-per-cent gushing as racist ever since with no evidence.” Susan Kelley has seen the same: it’s not enough to speak the truth, but they many readers accept only “complimentary, laudatory things.”

Netty Leistra, a veteran Netherlands-based royal journalist and blogger, has tried to avoid the Kate vs. Meghan fight, but an online critic called her a racist a few months ago for saying “absolutely nothing special.” For Leistra, the current phenomenon brings back memories of around 15 years ago, when Australian Mary Donaldson married Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. In the era before Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, she and a few others ran an online forum about the couple. Soon, the anti-Mary folk were battling with the pro-Mary fans. “The bad thing to us was that we tried to be objective, and in the end we were the ones being attacked for not protecting any of the two sides,” she recounts. In the end, they stopped the forum.

Today, no one thinks things will improve any time soon. Both Kate and Meghan are full-time working royals, both gearing up their charitable activities, Kate after her maternity leave, Meghan as she settles into her new royal role. Perhaps a break will come when Meghan gives birth in the spring and steps away from the public spotlight to concentrate on being a mother. Meanwhile, royal watchers who want to engage in polite conversations and debates are trying to block the more extreme commenters, and hoping tempers will cool—or interest will die down.

#duchess of cambridge #kate middleton #british royal family #prince william #duke of cambridge #prince harry #harry and meghan #meghan markle #duchess of susex

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mcmansionhell · 7 years ago

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Looking Around: Reflections on Preservation

If you, like me, happen to follow architecture rather closely, you may have recently noticed several folks in the community talking about their Johnson. Always fond of puns, it’s the 20th-century American architect Philip Johnson they’re referring to, rather than, well, you know.

Two weeks ago, it was announced that the Norwegian firm Snøhetta revealed plans to overhaul the front facade of Johnson’s iconic 1984 AT&T building, a Postmodern skyscraper located at 550 Madison Ave in New York City.

Philip Johnson’s 550 Madison Ave (formerly known as the AT&T building). Left Image by David Shankbone, CC BY 2.5. Right Image by Matthew Bisanz, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Proposed changes by Snøhetta. Via Dezeen.

While this is not the first renovation to the tower (Charles Gwathmey did a less invasive but, in this writer’s opinion still problematic rehab in the 90s), architects and critics, famous and obscure alike, were quick to decry the changes. Olly Wainwright, architecture critic for The Guardian, in no small words, called the plans “vandalism.” Mega-architect Norman Foster, no friend to Postmodernism, said on Instagram that the building was nevertheless “an important part of our heritage and should be respected as such.”

Image by Anna Fixsen, Metropolis Magazine. Via Twitter.

A protest was organized, seen above. On the far right, you can see the famous Postmodern architect and former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A.M. Stern, holding a model of the building.

A hashtag, #SaveATT, was created, alongside a Twitter account, @Save_AT_T, and a Change.org petition shortly followed.

You may be wondering why all of these architects and critics are losing their minds about a renovation of an 80s building that looks relatively sleek and contemporary. It’s not so much that the proposed renovation in and of itself is objectively bad, it’s about the building for which the renovation was proposed.

The Lowdown on Johnson’s Highrise

Before we get into the details, I’ll say it straight-up: the AT&T building, including its lobby, should absolutely be saved. Why? 1) Because it is probably the most famous example of Postmodern architecture, and 2) because it caused the biggest architectural hissy fit since the birth of Modernism.

Philip Johnson was, until the AT&T building, a high-modernist architect who built a large number of corporate headquarters and a famous glass house. Always a controversial and infuriating character, he decided, seemingly on a whim, to take a Postmodern turn in designing his tower for AT&T.

The Glass House by Philip Johnson. Photo by Staib (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1979, when the AT&T tower was announced, Postmodernism (a movement characterized by the revisiting, distorting, juxtaposing, and recontextualizing of historical architectural forms within a contemporary philosophical and aesthetic context) was a relatively theoretical movement, not yet thrust into the eye of the general populus.

Postmodernism had a certain critical eye that cast its gaze at (what was seen at the time as) the stifling hegemony of Modernist architecture, which the Postmodernists found cold, technocratic, and corporate. That the style was appropriated by Johnson for a major corporate building, made a few theorists rather angry, as corporatism was one of their key criticisms of Modernist architecture.

Johnson on the cover of Time Magazine holding a model of the AT&T Building.

To rub more salt in the critical wound, the AT&T building was Postmodernism’s first big media moment, obscuring the smaller, more nuanced works of the movement’s first five years, which added to the hissy fit. Charles Jencks, the eternal gatekeeper of the movement, was so in crisis at the ruining of his nuanced art by a particularly vain starchitect, that he had an existential crisis, asking “Is Postmodernism Dead?” Jencks would continue to see the building as a transition from “real” Postmodernism and “PoMo” aka Postmodernism that Jencks does not like.

Don’t worry, it’s probably all explained in one of his extremely great charts.

After AT&T, Postmodernism exploded in popularity and quickly replaced Modernism as the hegemonic architectural style, endlessly replicated, splayed across a landscape of gabled museums and courthouses; shopping malls and parking decks. RIP to theoretical purity, born: 1968, died: 1979. Cause of Death: Philip Johnson.

While it may be startling that a building completed in 1984 is already in existential danger, such danger is becoming more and more common, sooner and sooner after the building is completed.

Preservation itself is always a difficult topic, one that raises many questions: Why should we save buildings, and what makes a building worth saving in the first place? Why should we save just the exterior of the building? Why not the interior or landscape as well?

Why Should We Save Buildings?

Buildings are worth saving for several reasons. Sometimes, a building has an interesting cultural history - perhaps an important person was born there, or it was the site of a burgeoning subculture, or an important historical event. Sometimes a building is worth preserving because it is a particularly good example of its architectural style, or because it’s the only example of its particular style in the surrounding area.

Sometimes a building is worth preserving simply because it is beautiful, old, or built by a famous architect. Sometimes, like in the case of Johnson’s AT&T building, the building should be preserved because it had an important role to play in architectural history, theory, or criticism.

My own story of how I began writing about architecture is one that opens with loss - the kind of needless loss that should never happen again.

Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center. Via Library of Congress.

When I was little, I was a house fanatic. (As we can clearly see, not much has changed.) Whether it was watching the then-nascent HGTV channel, or dirtying my mother’s station wagon windows with nose-prints watching yard after yard scroll by, I could not get enough of houses. For most of my young life, architecture was defined by houses.

My mother grew up in Goshen, New York, and we would occasionally go up there to visit family and friends. When I was around thirteen or fourteen, we took a wrong turn looking for a Dunkin Donuts, allowing me to stumble upon the building above, Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, built in 1967.

This building was unlike any building I had ever seen before, and in the few minutes we stopped by, it had transformed my ideas about what a building was, what it could be. It was the building that introduced me to architecture.

Around 2010, when I finally figured out what building it was, I learned that it had been threatened with demolition. My first ever snippet about architecture I had written was a letter pleading the National Trust for Historic Preservation to intervene. Throughout high school, I wrote at length about the need to save Modernist buildings so that they could have the same effect on future generations as they had on me.

In 2015, my junior year of college, it was announced that the fight for preservation had been lost, and Paul Rudolph’s masterpiece was mutilated beyond repair. I will never be able to revisit the building that inspired me to begin writing about architecture. If I’d never gotten to see that building, it’s unlikely that McMansion Hell would have ever materialized. I can say with some certainty, at the risk of being melodramatic, that had I not seen that building, I would be a completely different person than the one sitting here writing this.

Orange County Government Center during its Demolition. Photo by Daniel Case. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Now, others won’t be able to have that experience. What’s left of Rudolph’s work is beyond uninspiring, a shell of what used to be an innovative, form-defying building. What could have inspired many to make deeper inquiries into their built environment has been reduced to a non-place housing the DMV.

We don’t like to think of buildings as being non-permanent. When a building is constructed, there’s an expectation that it’ll last forever. Buildings seem monolithic, stable, permanent. It’s in a building’s very design to be anchored firmly to the ground, to be able to brave the elements, withstand the years. While natural disasters are responsible for the destruction of a great many buildings, the fickleness of the aesthetic tastes of human beings has felled a great many more.

After around the 70-year mark of a building’s life, it becomes significantly more at risk of demolition. Several books have been written about lost buildings in many cities, sparing few details about how needless some of these losses were. In Baltimore, as in other cities, many a masterpiece was felled in the mid-20th century to make room for a rather infamous building sniper: parking decks and parking lots.

Maryland Casualty Building. Demolished in 1984 in order to build a parking lot.

When it comes to pre-20th century buildings, whose preservation is argued for far more often than buildings like AT&T or Rudolph’s Government Center, the argument isn’t necessarily that these buildings are somehow superior architecturally to others because of their age, but because they are totally irreplaceable.

Even if you wanted to build a full-scale replica of a demolished building from, say, the 18th century, it’s likely that the materials needed to rebuild it are no longer around. Most of the marble and stone quarries that brought us styles like Richardsonian Romanesque or Gothic Revival, were completely depleted. In addition, the construction methodologies required for pre-industrial building practices are either not likely to get approval because they aren’t up to modern building codes or because some of those trade skills are simply lost. Regardless, the cost of replacement materials, as well as the labor needed to build these historic buildings, are both economically unviable.

On a more surface level, old buildings are snapshots of how people once lived, and saving them is an important part of charting the history of human development, historically and technologically.

Mechanics Theater, Baltimore, MD. Demolished in 2013 and replaced with a festering open pit.

A common fallacy of preservation is that it is reserved solely for the oldest, most ornate buildings, especially those relevant to the heavily sanitized version of American history taught in primary schools. I would argue that preservation is even more important for those buildings we find difficult to like, those that challenge us architecturally, like Rudolph’s Government Center.

There is always a point in time where a style of architecture is loathed by its successors. Many a Queen Anne Victorian house was razed because people at the beginning of the 20th century found them both dowdy, dusty, and plain unhygienic. Modernism was loathed by Postmodernism. Postmodernism is loathed by today’s architects who grew up in its shadow.

That which is loathed is not always that which is not worth preserving, but by the time we realize this, it’s often too late. Only after a building is threatened do people come rallying to save it, when these preservation efforts are more successful when they start long before the first threat. This is perhaps why so many houses by Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers remain for people to enjoy.

Interiors

TV AM building interior by Terry Farrell. Remodeled, mid-1990s. Via Dezeen.

People go to visit old buildings (especially places like Museum houses) because they want to experience life as it was in a different era. The exterior is one part of this experience, but it’s the interiors which give people the sense that they are not merely looking at history but are instead enveloped in it.

Though there has been some progress over the last few years, interiors and landscape architecture have not been as high of a priority for preservation as a building’s exterior architecture, and because of this, there have been great losses, like the TV AM building above, in which I’m sure many 80s and 90s children would love to bask nostalgically.

I’m always delighted when, in my searches for this blog’s house of the week, I come upon a time-capsule house, that is, a house that hasn’t been remodeled since it was built. As the years go by, these houses have become less and less common, and their interiors have been replaced with today’s white furniture, contractor gray walls, and sparkling white trim.

Interior of a house in Florida built in 1980s from the archives of the author.

It’s hard to describe the feeling of loss that comes with looking at a house built in 1980 and discovering an interior fresh out of last month’s HGTV Magazine. Do I really think the world needs more overstuffed chintz sofas or shag carpeting? No, but the idea that a world without a single room decorated like it’s fresh out of a Laura Ashley catalog seems like quite an erasure of the pop cultural history of how everyday people decorated their houses.

I’ve devoted a large bookshelf to old catalogs, renovation books, interior design magazines, and other resources about how people decorated their homes partially out of personal obsession and partially because I’m afraid that someday that history will be lost in the material world and will only exist in the glossy imagery of those pages.

Conclusion

What deserves to be preserved and how that preservation is executed is in the eyes of the people. While that idea sometimes gets abused by ruinous people who use historic preservation designations to protect parking lots or empty spaces to prevent affordable housing from being built, or use preservation as a means of proving the superiority of one group of people over another, these bad eggs should not give us the idea that preserving or documenting our important spaces is somehow politically toxic.

Cottonwood Mall Demolition by Mike Renlund (CC BY 2.0)

The “our” is key. People experience architectural loss on an individual level. We can see this when the news reports a mall or shopping center is to be demolished - the comments on such stories are almost always people sharing their fond memories of school shopping, birthday parties, comings of age. When someone moves out of their house or apartment, there’s always a lingering sadness that whoever lives there after you will completely alter that place into their own small piece of the world.

While highly public campaigns like #SaveATT are one method of preservation, they aren’t the only way people like you or me can contribute to saving our collective architectural memory. Documenting and archiving one’s own life is, in itself, a way of preservation.

Inside Today’s Home, a 1979 decorating book from the collection of the author.

Got old catalogs or maybe photos of your parents’ house with all of its tacky decorating laying around? Consider scanning them and maintaining an archive or contributing them to one of the many online groups on places like Flickr or Archive.org devoted to maintaining collections of primary sources from certain time periods.

One of the most remarkable aspects of social media is that people are creating their own ethnographies, their own archives of collective memories through Facebook groups like one I’m in called “Old Baltimore Photos”, where participants get together and tell stories of how they experienced the city and its buildings as it used to be, on a scale past historians could only dream of.

As losses like the Orange County Government Center, barely in its fifth decade of existence, tell us, the time for preservation is not tomorrow or in a few years. The time for preservation is right now. If there’s a building that means something to you, take pictures, visit often, tell people about it! While it might take time and effort to make sure a building is protected for future generations, the first step of the process is always, as cheesy as it sounds, love.

HEY FOLKS! IT’S MY BIRTHDAY THIS FRIDAY!

Here are a few things you can do if you want to celebrate with me!

Sign the Petition to Save the AT&T Building!!: http://bit.ly/SaveATandT

Make a donation to DoCoMoMo US, the organization leading the fight to preserve important landmarks of Modernist and Postmodernist architecture: https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/docomomous/donation.jsp

Consider supporting me on Patreon! I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content!

If you’re feeling particularly nice, you can view my book wishlist here: http://a.co/j5LNE0R

See you tomorrow with our Ohio McMansion of the week!

Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email [email protected] before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

#architecture #history #preservation #historical preservation #philip johnson #att building #postmodernism #modernism #paul rudolph #orange county government center #brutalism #late modern architecture #postmodern architecture

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threewaysdivided · 6 years ago

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Quality Should Not Be Binary

In my wanders through life in general - and the internet in particular - I’ve noticed a strange mindset regarding the quality of media and the people who produce it. It’s this weird idea that something is either 100% perfect, flawless and ‘how dare you claim to be a real fan while suggesting there’s anything wrong’, or that it’s completely awful, valueless and ‘you’re a terrible person for enjoying that or thinking it has anything to offer’ - sometimes flipping from one to the other as soon as a ‘flaw’ is revealed, or a ‘bad’ work does something suitably impressive.

This mindset has never really made sense to me. Maybe I’m a just habitual over-thinker who spends unhealthy amounts of time analysing things, but I can’t see how this sort of absolutist approach would do anything other than shut down discourse, limit the value to be had from a piece and maybe make people angry.

So in honour of that please enjoy some indulgently long navel-gazing about critical analysis and media quality.

Disclaimer: This post is going to summarise my personal philosophy. Everyone approaches life - and especially art - in their own way and far be it for me to say you’re wrong if you prefer a different approach. You do you.

Blindness Hurts Both Ways

To an extent I get the simple yes/no mindset. Analysis takes time and it would be exhausting to give an extensive, nuanced breakdown on your view at the start of every discussion. Plus the whole ‘dissecting the frog’ thing can definitely apply to enjoyment of media.

However, taking it to the point where you’re denying the positive side of things you dislike or refusing to acknowledge faults in works/people you enjoy has the potential to swing around and bite you in the butt.

Why deny yourself a useful experience? I think there’s an important distinction to make between being good and being useful. Subjective, technical or, ethical ‘badness’ is not the same as having no value. Similarly, being touching, entertaining or otherwise enjoyable doesn’t preclude something from having genuine problems.

Personally, I can find it difficult to work out exactly what’s going right in a generally positive piece. After all, ‘good’ doesn’t hinge on a single point - it’s usually the product of a lot of things working well together, and it can be hard to figure out cause and effect in a system like that. It’s much easier to look at a failed attempt and identify the specific elements that caused problems, where it had the potential to recover, and places where it might be succeeding in spite of those issues. Similarly, some works can be very strong except when it comes to ‘that one thing’, which in itself is a useful reference. Negative examples can be just as beneficial as positive ones, and turning a blind eye to a piece’s weaker aspects just denies you that tool.

On the other hand, sometimes a piece and/or creator can be ethically awful while being technically strong or succeeding at its intended purpose. In this case, while they’re not positive it can certainly be valuable to analyse the techniques they use, and even apply those tools when selecting and creating things for yourself.

It’s important to remember that acknowledging where something is strong isn’t the same as endorsing or supporting it, and that there’s a huge difference between pointing out a genuine weakness or failing and maliciously hating on a work or creator.

Why give something that much power? Starting with the gentler side, I think it’s important to remember that a work being ‘good’ on the whole shouldn’t be an excuse to gloss over possibly troubling elements or to give creators a free pass on their actions. Sure, even the best-intentioned artists make bad PR and creative decisions sometimes but it’s also valid to acknowledge and call out possible misbehaviour when it crops up, rather than blindly playing defence until it reaches critical mass and undermines the good of their work (or worse, actually hurts someone).

There can also be a danger to simply writing off and ignoring ‘bad works’, especially if you dislike them based on ethical grounds. If something ‘bad’ is becoming popular it’s usually a sign that it’s getting at least one thing right - whether that be plugging into an oft-ignored hot-button issue, or simple shock-value and shameless marketing. Attributing the success of such pieces to blind luck and ignoring any potential merits that got them there opens up the potential for other, similarly objectionable works to replicate that outcome.

Not to mention the issues that can come from letting these things spread unchecked. Think about how many crackpot theories and extreme notions have managed to gained traction, in part due to a lack of resistance from more moderate or neutral parties who at the time dismissed them as ‘too stupid’ or ‘too crazy to be real’. Unpleasant as it may be, I think there’s some value in dipping into the discourse around generally negative media. If nothing else, shining a spotlight on the misinformation or insidious subtext that a work might be propagating can help genuine supporters notice, sidestep or otherwise avoid the potential harms even as they keep enjoying it.

Why lock yourself into a stance like that? Maybe it’s just my desire to keep options open, but it seems like avoiding absolutist stances gives you a lot more room to move. Publicly championing or decrying a work and flatly rejecting any counterpoints runs the risk of trapping yourself in a corner that might be hard to escape from if your stance happens to change later. If nothing else, a bit of flexibility can help you back down without too much egg on your face, not to mention shrinking the target area for fans or dissenters who you might have clashed with in the past.

A little give and take can also help build stronger cases when you do want to speak out. Sometimes it’s better to just acknowledge the counterpoints you agree with and move on to the meat of the debate rather than wasting time tearing down their good points for the sake of ‘winning’. The ability to concede an argument is a powerful tool - you’d be surprised how agreeable people become when they feel like they’re being listened to.

Finally, from an enjoyment perspective, is it really worth avoiding or boycotting what could otherwise be a fun or thought-provoking experience just because you don’t 100% agree with it or have criticised it in the past? Sure, there are absolutely times when a boycott is justified but why deny yourself a good time just because it involves an element that’s been arbitrarily labelled ruinous. ‘With Caveats’ is a perfectly acceptable way to approach things.

Existence vs Presentation of Concepts

A rarer argument that occasionally pops up is the idea that certain works are inherently ‘inappropriate’, ‘distasteful’, or should otherwise be avoided purely based on their subject matter. Usually this revolves around the presence of a so-called ‘controversial’ topic; things like war, abuse or abusive relationships, sexual content, bigotry and minorities (LBGT+ relationships being a big one right now).

Personally I think this is a reductive and pretty silly way to choose your content. No topic should be off-limits for any kind of media. (With the possible exception of holding off until the target audience has enough life experience and critical thinking skills to handle it. There is some value in TV rating systems.) Yes, some concepts will be uncomfortable to confront, but they are part of life and trying to keep them out of mainstream art simply stifles the valuable real-world discussions and conversations they might spark.

What we should be looking for is how a work handles the concepts it chooses to use. There’s a world of difference between presenting or commenting on a controversial topic as part of a work, and misrepresenting or tacitly condoning inappropriate behaviour through sloppy (or worse, intentional) presentation choices. The accuracy of research and portrayals, use of sensitivity and tact, consideration for the audience and overall tone with which a topic is framed are much more worthy of consideration than simply being offended that the idea exists in media at all.

‘Bad’ Art, ‘Good’ People and Vice Versa

I think it’s important to remember that our content creators are, well, people. They’re going to have their own weird taste preferences, personal biases and odd worldviews that will sometimes show through in their output. They’re also going make mistakes - after all, to err is human. Unfortunately, in the creative pool you can also find some genuine bigots, egotists, agenda-pushers, abusers and exploitative profiteers who don’t care about the damage their work might be doing.

It can be discomfiting to notice potentially negative subtext in the work or actions of a creator you like, and upsetting to realise that a work you love is the product of a person who you can’t in good conscience support. Which of course leads to the discussion of art, artists, whether they can be separated and what to do when things go wrong.

Obviously I’m going to be talking primarily about the ethical/moral side of things, as I think most of us are willing to forgive the occasional technical flub, production nightmare or drop in outward quality from creators we otherwise enjoy.

It can also be a touchy subject so I’d like to reiterate that this is just an explanation of my personal philosophy. My approach isn’t the only way and I won’t say you’re wrong for taking a different stance or choosing to stay out of it entirely.

‘Bad’ art from an apparently ‘Good’ person In general, when it comes to apparent bad behaviour or negative subtext from otherwise decent creators, I favour the application of Hanlon’s Razor.

Hanlon’s Razor Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence - at least not the first time.

Art is a subjective medium, with multiple readings and interpretations being possible from the same piece. It’s definitely possible for an author to lack the awareness or experience needed to notice when unintended implications or alternate readings have crept into their work. Sensitive topics are tricky to handle at the best of times and seemingly harmless edits or innocuous creative choices can stack into subtly nastier tonal shifts. Similarly, being a good creator doesn’t automatically make them good at PR or talking to fans - it’s easy to get put on the spot or to not realise the connotations of their phrasing and how it may have come across. Of course this still means someone messed up, and it’s totally reasonable to call them out for ineptness, but I’d take an unfortunate accident over malicious intent any day.

Then there are times when the negative subtext is a lot less unintentional. In that case I think it’s important to make the distinction between creator sentiment and the sentiment of the work, character or their production team (if collaborating) before making a judgement on them as an individual. For example, the presence of casual bigotry might be justified in historical piece that’s attempting to accurately portray the culture of the time, and a creator/actor might write/portray a protagonist with biases and proclivities that they personally disagree with for the sake of a more compelling story. The presence of a worldview within a work doesn’t automatically translate to the opinion of it’s creator.

Similarly, when considering a problematic production or team it’s worth acknowledging which positions hold creative power, if every member is complicit and why a dissenting individual might stay silent; whether out of contractual obligation, a desire not to throw colleagues under the bus or just because they don’t have the financial security to risk rocking the boat or walking away from the role. It’s important to figure out who the buck stops with before we start pointing fingers.

Overall, I don’t think there’s much value in passing judgement on an artist for the troublesome content in a single work. You’ll get more mileage and a fairer assessment from looking holistically across their collection and personal/private channels for telling patterns of subtexts and behaviours. For the most part I prefer to offer the benefit of the doubt until there’s enough supporting evidence or they do something to definitively out themselves. Speculation fuelled witch-hunts are no fun for anybody.

‘Good’ art from ‘Bad’ people Exactly what defines a ‘bad’ creator will vary (there’s a reason I’ve been putting the terms in inverted commas). Whether it’s a disagreement with a key opinion/ creative philosophy/ method, that they’ve done something actually heinous/ illegal, or anywhere in between, enjoying a work while being in conflict with the creator can be a difficult situation to reconcile. Personally I think there's power to the Death of the Author argument in these cases:

Death of the Author An author's intentions and biographical facts (political views, religion, race etc.) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing.

If you’ve found value or enjoyment in a work then you’re well within your rights to enjoy the work on those grounds, even if the message you’ve personally taken from it runs counter to the original author’s opinions or intentions.

It’s also important to remember that a creator’s personal and/or moral failings don’t retroactively invalidate their skill and achievements in their field. It’s possible for a person to continue offering valuable insights, observations and lessons on their chosen speciality in spite of their other behaviour or stances. Their work can have value in isolation, although it may be worth taking the information with a grain of salt when it comes to possible biases.

This becomes a little harder when the disagreeable sentiments bleed directly into their creations but, again, there’s no reason why you can’t decide that the strengths of a work are worth looking at even if they take some squinting past uncomfortable elements to appreciate.

The question should never be ‘can I still enjoy the art?’ because that answer is always yes - if you liked it before learning about the artist then you’re allowed to keep doing so afterwards. The new context may add caveats to the discussion but it doesn’t demerit the existing positive aspects.

However, Death of the Author runs into problems when the creator is still alive. If the artist is out of the picture then you can engage freely without any financial support or publicity going back to them. When they’re still around the question becomes ‘do I still feel comfortable supporting them?’ This is particularly relevant when it comes to online creators, as just interacting with their content can generate passive ad revenue, increase view counts and contribute to algorithm boosts.

I honestly don’t think there’s any one answer to this particular question. It all comes down to a personal case-by-case judgement; weighing the severity of the conflict against how much you value their work and, in the case of creative teams, whether you think their colleagues are worth supporting despite them. Even if you decide to pull back there are soft options before going for a full boycott; using ad-block to limit passive financial contributions, buying physical media second-hand or lending/borrowing hard copies to avoid generating any new purchases.

There are creators that I disagree with politically but continue to enjoy because their stance isn’t especially harmful or is relatively minor compared to the value of their work. There are creators who I no longer want to support but whose pieces I like enough that I don’t regret having purchased from them in the past. On the other hand, there’s a creative team whose content I adore in isolation but who I’ve had to drop entirely after their leader was outed as an emotionally manipulative office bully. Where someone else would draw that line comes down to their own personal standards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if another person took a completely different approach.

Don’t be a Jerk

I feel like this should go without saying. Rational discussion is great. Being able to have a critical discourse - even one that’s focused on the more negative sides of a work - is wonderful. Opinions are fun.

However, the thing with opinions is that a lot of them differ. We aren’t always going to sync up and there are times when you shouldn’t, and won’t be able to, force someone to agree. In that case, please don’t attack them over it. You don’t have to like or respect their views but some basic civility would be appreciated. You’re trying to have a conversation, not win a catfight. Condescension, derision, high-horsing, ad hominem and otherwise getting personal doesn’t tend to win many friends or endear them to your perspective. And to the rare few who go so far as to threaten or harass fans, creators and their families; that’s an awful, completely unnecessary, out of line thing to do. (Seriously, never do this, it won’t help and just makes you look crazy. Also, it can be considered criminal behaviour.)

It’s also important to know when to let things go. You’re not always going to be able to turn the tide and constantly chasing the argument, stirring the pot and fighting waves of push-back eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. No matter how important the issue is there’ll be times when you’re just screaming into the void. The best you can do is make your peace, say your piece and take your leave. After all it’s not the school playground. And unlike the playground, we’re not obliged to stick around.

Value Judgements: It’s Good to Examine Your Tastes

At the end of the day I think you get more mileage from reaching an opinion based on a value judgement of a work’s positive and negative sides than you do from just bandwagoning into blind adoration or hate. ‘Perfect’ and ‘Unsanctionable’ aren’t binary boxes - they’re points on a scale, and figuring out where you stand on a piece can be a useful mental exercise. Even if your opinion ends up matching the general consensus, at least you know how you got there and can defend yourself if challenged.

If nothing else this kind of thing can help you figure out what elements you like, dislike and prioritise in media, and where your personal boundaries lie in regard to different issues.

Still, even after all this there are plenty more factors that determine whether or not you’ll enjoy something. I’ve dropped way more pieces for not being to my subjective liking than I have due to technical or ethical flaws. Your tastes are your own, and if needed you can stop the conversation at ‘it’s just not my thing’.

In the end there’s no ‘correct’ way to be a fan of something. We’re all just here to have fun. So try not to be an ass when you run across someone who does things differently.

#Scattered thoughts #thinking about media #examining your tastes #acknowledging flaws doesn't make you less of a fan #no work is perfect #your tastes are your own #and that's fine #critical thinking #long post #really long post

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forsetti · 7 years ago

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On Racism: Racists Are As Racists Do

When Donald Trump referred to countries like Haiti, El Salvador and those in Africa as “shitholes,” in a meeting at the White House, he did it in front of an almost exclusively older white audience. His description wasn't a “slip of the tongue.” It wasn't a “misrepresentation” of how he really feels. It wasn't an “unfortunate” use of the term. It was exactly what it was-a racist description by a racist man.

Trump being a racist is nothing new and it isn't surprising (no matter how many in the media act like it is.) He has a lifetime of racist behavior and words. He was heavily fined for housing discrimination against blacks in the 70s. He demanded the execution of five young black and Latino men who were falsely accused of attacking and raping a white woman in New York. He has referred to Mexicans as “rapists.” He mocked Nigerians as “living in huts.” He has pushed for a ban against Muslims. He was the loudest proponent of the birther movement against the first black president. He has surrounded himself with self-proclaimed white supremacists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. Referring to some mostly black or Hispanic countries as “shitholes” is just another brick in the Great Wall of Racism that is Donald Trump.

The real problem isn't Trump being the racist he is. The problem is a media that gives him cover by refusing to label what he and many of his supporters do or say as “racist.” It is the media's pandering and profiling his supporters and excusing their beliefs and attitudes with endless puff pieces. The problem is Republican leadership who ignores, denies, justifies...anything other than taking a stand against him. The problem is the Republican base who either agree with him, rationalize what he says or are willing to look the other way. The problem is racism has always been and continues to be a topic that is as avoided as it is ignored. The problem is America was built on racism and we've never, ever come to terms with it, as a country.

One criticism I hear when I point this out from both progressives and conservatives is, “Calling people racists is a bad political strategy.” I don't give a fuck about offending racists. I don't need or want their votes. In fact, I have serious problems with any progressive who thinks differently. Racism is the direct opposite of progressivism. The ONLY way you can get a racist to vote for you is if you are willing to cater to their racist ideas. What progressive ideas/policies are you willing to give up to earn a racist's vote? Which part of your base are you willing to throw under the bus in order to get Johnny Reb’s vote? What civil rights are you willing to ignore in order to win an election? Progressives have the demographic advantage. They don't need a single conservative vote in order to win national elections and in many swing states. What progressives need and what is a better strategy is getting progressives to get out and vote and vote smartly. I'd rather make racists politically irrelevant than cater to them and try to make them part of our coalition.

Of course, the number one complaint I hear from both the left and the right about discussing the racism coming from Republicans is, “You can't label everyone on the right as a racist. All Republicans are not racists.” I've never said all Republicans are racists. I know reading comprehension is difficult at times but if you take the time to actually read, you will see I always say, “The problem is the Republican base WHO...” Republicans who don't agree with Trump's racist statements, don't rationalize/justify them, don't look the other way...aren't going to be labeled as racists (at least not in this context.) However, many Republicans have made it nearly impossible to tell who is and who isn't a racist because of their actions.

Think about the Confederate statue protest in Charlottesville. It is easy to look at the center of activity, the khaki-wearing, tiki torch-wielding white men chanting, “Blood and soil!” and accurately label them as racists. What about the non-torch-wielding protesters who marched with them for the same cause? What about the ones at home, watching, approving of their actions? What about the ones who voted for politicians who supported the march? Aren't they all varying degrees of racists? Isn’t everyone on this list a racist on some level? All I've heard the past couple of months since the Me Too Movement took off is how all sexual assault isn't the same (a claim no one has ever made) and how important it is to make distinctions between a rapist and someone who makes inappropriate advances. Fine. Let's do that. No matter how nuanced you want to get, no matter how many different degrees of sexual assault you arrive at, on a fundamental level they are all sexual assault. There are varying degrees of murder-second degree and first degree. They both are a form a murder.. At no time is there a debate about whether a murder happened, just what kind of murder. Someone who lynches a black man is a racist. So too, is someone who won't rent to minorities. So too, is someone who uses racial epithets. They are all racists. Calling someone who refers to blacks using the n-word a racist doesn't mean they are a racist in the same way as the Grand Wizard of the KKK but make no mistake they are a racist. Trying to claim differently or arguing they aren't is as wrong as it is fucked up.

There is another similarity between the Me Too Movement backlash and defending/denying racism-intentionally grouping all acts together in order to excuse the lesser ones. Men who inappropriately touch women, abuse their positions of power via sexual acts/words get excused because they aren't rapists because rapists are the REAL sexual assaulters. NO! They are sexual assaulters too! Just not bad as the rapists. The “Don't label everyone as a racist” crowd is doing the same thing by using the worst racist behaviors to be the standard by which someone is allowed to be labeled a racist. “Grandma Milly isn't a racist because she isn't a member of the Klan.” Does she believe blacks are naturally inferior to whites? Would she disown one of her children or grandchildren if they married someone black? Does she use racial slurs? “Yes.” Then she's a fucking racist. It doesn't matter how much she loves you or how good her cookies are or how sweet she is towards the neighbor's cat when assessing whether or not she is a racist. If you want to have a discussion about what kind of racist Granma Milly is, fine. But, let’s stop pretending she isn’t one. Let’s stop making excuses for her behavior.

Trump is a racist. A very adamant one at that. When he pushes racist policies, makes racist statements, and his base says nothing, makes excuses for him, or cheers him, calling them “racists” is completely appropriate. The burden of proof isn't on the ones calling them “racist.” The burden is on those who say it isn't. So far, those saying it isn't racist are failing miserably. There is a good reason why. THEY ARE FUCKING RACISTS! My “favorite” excuse for Trump calling certain countries “shitholes” is, “That's kitchen table talk.” It reminds me of how his “pussy grabbing” comment was deemed “locker room talk.” It's like Deplorable Clue-The Racist, in the Kitchen with the Noose; The Misogynist, in the Gym, with the Rohypnol. If you are a member of a gym that is predominately misogynists or have a lot of racists hanging out around your kitchen table, then these might be true. This says more about you than it does excusing Trump's comments. It says, “The people who you workout with and have in your home are not very good people.” What it doesn't say is, “Trump isn't a racist.” Of course, it doesn't help to have a media willing to excuse and give him cover. Peter Baker at the New York Times wrote this, “The United States, which continues to struggle with its legacy of slavery, is now led by a president who, intentionally or not, has fanned the fires that divide white, black and brown.” It walks up to the calling Trump a racist but gives him the out with the notion of intentionality. “Grandma Milly isn't intentionally bigoted...” So..the..fuck...what? Intentionality is a dodge. “I drove home drunk and got into an accident. I didn't intend for someone to get killed.” Okay, but they are still dead and you are still a killer, intentions be damned. You are who you support, who you stand with, what you stand for, what you say, what you do. If you support a racist, it isn't unreasonable to question whether or not you are one as well. If you stand with people like David Duke, Richard Spencer, Milo...why shouldn't you be considered a racist? If you are okay with the Muslim ban, building a wall on the border of Mexico, gutting assistance that heavily impacts minority groups...why shouldn't you be labeled a racist? If it marches like a racist, talks like a racist, votes like a racist...it is probably a racist.

Until the media starts calling out racism when it rears its ugly head, nothing is going to change. Until Republicans start standing up and calling out those in their party for their racism, nothing is going to change. Until progressives stop giving racists a “Get Out of Racist Jail Free Card,” nothing is going to change. Words have power. They help frame how we think and believe about things. If you don't believe or want others to believe you are a racist, then perhaps you should spend more time doing some serious self-reflection on what you believe, how you behave, who you support, who you stand with... This applies to many progressives, as well. America's demographics are rapidly changing in favor of people of color. No amount of tiki torches are going to change this. No amount of deportations or immigration policies are going to change this. No amount of hatred or violence or number of white supremacy groups are going to change this. The train of progress is coming and people can either get on board or get run over. Those who choose to stand on the tracks either spouting racist garbage or giving cover for those who do as the train bears down on them don’t deserve sympathy, empathy, pity, compassion... They deserve to be run over by progress because far too many people have suffered needlessly for far too long in order to protect the feelings and belief systems of racists.

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rdclsuperfoods · 4 years ago

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We’re in the midst of a global pandemic and national political upheaval unlike anything we’ve seen in the past 150 years. Still, wellness influencers, major news outlets, and even the CDC are finding plenty of time to fret about dieting and weight gain. In response, anti-diet nutritionists, therapists, and activists have taken to social media to point out that a too tight grip on your eating habits can cause anxiety and unhealthy patterns that leave you frustrated and physically uncomfortable.

I agree. In April I wrote about how quarantine-induced worries linked to food and exercise can backfire, and why a more relaxed approach to food leads to better health. However, this is easier said than done. Our relationship with weight and diets is complex, and it can be tough to distinguish a healthy habit from an unhealthy one. If you’re working toward a healthier mindset about food, a good first step is to identify your own food rules and then challenge them.

A food rule is any kind of black-and-white thinking about food. Some might be holdovers from a specific diet you’ve tried in the past, like the idea that you should avoid carbs, or that there’s a static number of calories you should eat in a day. Others are extreme versions of generally sound advice, like the idea that you must only eat whole foods, or that sugar and processed goods are explicitly off-limits.

Some of these ideas are grounded in evidence, but there’s a critical difference between food rules and healthy eating habits. The latter are flexible: you prioritize nutritious ingredients but don’t agonize over what to eat and aren’t stressed if you go a day without vegetables or finish a meal feeling overly full. Food rules are rigid: you have strict parameters around how you should eat, and feel guilty or anxious (or like you need to compensate) when you don’t eat according to that plan. “Following food rules can be physically, mentally, and socially exhausting, which impacts overall quality of life,” says Taylor Chan, a dietitian and certified personal trainer. Here are six new anti-rules to learn in the new year.

There Are No Bad Foods

Morality has long snuck into the way we talk and think about eating. Look at the way that various foods are marketed: something low in calories, sugar, and fat might be labeled “guilt-free.” High-sugar, high-fat, and high-calorie foods are deemed “sinfully delicious,” an indulgence to feel a little ashamed of. It might seem normal to think of certain foods as good or bad, seeing as how moralizing eating patterns is a natural product of our culture’s fixation on healthy living. But that doesn’t mean it’s helpful, says Chan.

If a certain food is deemed inherently bad, and eating it is bad behavior, it isn’t a huge leap to think you’re a bad person for eating that way. Food quickly becomes a source of stress and shame, rather than nourishment and pleasure. Dalina Soto, an anti-diet dietitian, expertly called out the problem in an Instagram post: you aren’t a horrible person with no self-control because you ate some ice cream; you just ate something delicious because you wanted it. Thinking of it this way makes it easier to let go and move on. The point isn’t that ice cream is nutrient packed or that it should be the cornerstone of your diet—those wouldn’t be accurate or helpful, either! It’s that there’s never a reason to feel guilty about eating, no matter the nutritional value of the food.

Forget About Clean Eating

Clean eating is such a common phrase that it might not raise an eyebrow, but it’s problematic, too. It implies that other foods and ways of eating are dirty, which falls into the same moralizing trap mentioned above. Plus, there’s no real definition of what “clean” means. “People start developing arbitrary rules about their food, which leads to restrictive and unhealthy food patterns,” says Heather Caplan, a dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating and sports nutrition.

There’s evidence to back this up. A 2020 cross-sectional survey of 1,266 young adults published in the journal Nutrients found that over half the participants had heard of clean eating and thought of it as healthy, but that their definitions of clean were all over the place. The researchers pointed out that while clean eating is often portrayed as healthy, it is often linked with disordered eating. It’s a dichotomous way of thinking, “characterized by extreme ‘all bad’ or ‘all good’ views toward food,” the paper states. Additionally, someone can use clean eating to mask behaviors like severe calorie restriction, claiming that they’re avoiding various foods for health reasons when in fact they may have an underlying eating disorder or disordered-eating behaviors. The researchers also found clean eating to be associated with nutritional deficiencies, since restrictive behavior can go undetected and unchecked for so long.

If you want to eat healthfully, a better approach is to prioritize nutrient-dense foods—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, healthy oils, and lean proteins—without vowing to only eat these foods. It’s a flexible and realistic approach that won’t have you constantly questioning whether certain foods are clean enough or not.

Stop Tracking Your Intake

Religiously counting calories or macros (carbs, fat, and protein) probably isn’t going to have the effect you want it to. One 2013 review of 25 existing studies published in Frontiers in Psychology found that restricted eating habits rarely led to weight loss and, in fact, often corresponded with weight gain.

There’s no consensus on why exactly this happens, but a 2015 article in the International Journal of Obesity explains that the body is designed to protect against weight loss. Restriction-induced weight loss precipitates physiological adaptations, including fewer calories burned overall, less fat oxidation (converting stored fat to energy), a decrease in the fullness-signaling hormone leptin, and an increase in the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin. Even if someone who has lost weight successfully manages to override their hunger signals, their metabolism may still be slower than before, making it increasingly harder to keep burning fat. This might be why many dieters don’t see the results they want from calorie counting.

Soto instead encourages an intuitive eating approach: eat what you want, when you want it. Our bodies know to seek out the variety of nutrients that they need to function, and proponents of intuitive eating explain that paying close attention to your cravings will naturally lead to a nutritious diet. When it comes to gauging how much food your body requires, it’s far easier to eat until you’re satisfied than it is to count and track calories.

Don’t Demonize Macronutrients

Popular as the keto diet may be, there’s no evidence that a low-carb diet is any healthier than one that includes a balance of all macronutrients. The same goes for low-fat diets. A 2020 review of 121 previously conducted, randomized controlled trials published in The British Medical Journal found that none of the diets limiting certain macronutrients like carbs or fats are any more effective at improving health than a regular, varied diet.

Still, it’s common to demonize certain carbs or fats, even if you aren’t on a particular diet. Maybe you pass on the bread basket because you don’t want to eat too many carbs, or always use nonstick cooking spray instead of oil because you’re wary of adding too much fat to a meal. Soto says this isn’t necessary. All three macronutrients play an important role in health and function. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend getting anywhere from 45 to 65 percent of your calories from carbs, 10 to 35 percent from protein, and 20 to 35 percent from fat. There’s a lot of wiggle room there. Most people’s intake already falls within these ranges, so striking the perfect balance of macros day after day isn’t something you should overthink.

You Don’t Need to Burn Anything Off

Food is more than just a source of energy, Chan says. “We eat food for so many reasons, and it’s important to honor those,” she says. “We connect with our culture through food, we connect with others over a good meal, and we eat for pleasure and nostalgia, all of which supports overall well-being.” But the idea that you must earn food with a grueling workout is still pervasive.

Trying to compensate with exercise when you feel you’ve eaten too much can have a significant negative impact on your quality of life, Chan says. At worst, it sets into motion a cycle of overeating, compensating, and overeating again. Instead of beating yourself up, or trying to atone for eating more than feels comfortable, just let your body do its thing and digest. You’ll feel fine again soon, and chances are you’ll feel less hungry later on.

Yes, there’s nuance here. Food still fuels movement, and there’s nothing wrong with adjusting your intake accordingly when you’re training. The important thing is to not be too rigid or punish yourself for eating too much. A strict calories-in, calories-out approach to fueling isn’t very effective anyway. There’s strong evidence refuting the popular idea that eating 3,500 calories leads to one pound of weight gain, and equally strong evidence that fitness trackers are notoriously terrible at measuring the actual number of calories burned during a workout.

Be Mindful and Flexible

“Ditching food rules opens the door for nutritious foods, not so nutritious foods, and everything in between to be enjoyed,” Chan says. The goal isn’t to give up on good nutrition but to make it less stressful and more sustainable. If your intention is to feel your best, be mindful of how different foods affect your mood and energy levels. Use that to guide what you choose to eat, instead of sticking to black-and-white rules that set you up for failure.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

#IFTTT #Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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iluvtv · 4 years ago

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Still Watching: A Love Letter to my Mom

The content below has not been censored for your consideration as neither the Real Housewives nor my mother would have approved of such blasphemy.

The decline in blogging was conveniently intentional.

There were other projects.

My career as a TV critic wasn’t exactly gaining steam.

My readership technically wasn’t booming.

For a time there had been an unmistakable fulfillment in my blogging habits.

Full disclosure: this work held undeniable titillation, provoked as it were by the vain echoes of my own subconscious. It was too enticing not to indulge the ego, booming, unselfconsciously through the page as I “eloquently” deciphered probable intentions of a writer’s room.

But was this self-aggrandizing, albeit surely intellectually stimulating task truly worthwhile?

I kept falling back on this tricky notion of time management. Was taking copious amounts of notes regarding my viewing habits (a laborious task which required endless rewinds and thusly an inability to watch TV with others) coupled with the studious investment of actually researching and writing a cohesive piece which included a clear argument for television as a medium and thereby proving a consistent thesis, truly a valuable use of my time?

Not to mention, of course, the added effort of finagling my mother to invest her energies toward a strong copy-edit.

It was an investment, sure. But then again none of it was necessarily difficult at least in the classical sense of the word.

Actually, the engaging my mother bit was sort of easy. Not only was I skilled at the subtle art of stroking of her ego; “Your attention to detail is just so much better than mine. You are so smart…” I also possessed a valuable trump card which, admittedly, brought as much pleasure as my own voice: she actually liked my writing!

To have known my mother is to know what a huge compliment this fan-dom truly was.

My mother was proudly authentic. She had no shame over her inability to “fake it”.

This personality trait demanded a certain dedication on her part. She was famous for telling my girlfriends they looked like sluts at our eighth-grade dance and embarrassing fits at the market while her younger children tried to disappear into the kid’s seat of the shopping cart. Patronizing eye rolls were par for the course. When a third grade Hebrew School teacher lauded my literary skills my loving, supportive mother made it abundantly clear she didn’t think I was a bad writer but maybe just too… precious?

Admittedly, poetry about attempted genocide from an eight-year-old may hold some tonal issues.

No matter, after 30 years of practice I had found my niche. I was everything she seemed to be looking for in a writer: I would rather drink turpentine than emote and I like really “got” satire. Finally, my words were funny and thusly, the woman who had helped foster this cynical humor had little trouble understanding my intentions.

We fell into lockstep. Her killer, critical eye and unparalleled editing skills were a welcomed privilege. I was no longer precious. A trait which carried over in my ability to “take a note.” I fully understood the value of a critical red pen from a grammar die-hard. Particularly one, who not only had a deep ceded appreciation for my style (she helped cultivate it, after all) but also a keen understanding of the objective, which only a mother could boast.

I was fully aware what a priceless service this was.

And so, I kept watching. My notetaking became obsessive. Whenever I pondered this expense of time, I considered the reality: rewriting dialogue was improving my own. I was becoming a better writer.

Since both my mother and I were committing countless hours to the free and underappreciated service of my viewing recommendations, it didn’t take long for the shows and topics I bothered dissecting to be unequivocally dictated by her unapologetic tastes. Or better stated, my own experience of such.

As an aside, I’d be remiss not to note that in losing both my parents it has become abundantly clear that one’s guardians (especially good ones) mostly exist in relation to ourselves and our already noted inflated egos.

Basically, the television I studied, the theories I pondered, the conclusions I drew had to appeal in large part to Dale Allen Boland. This was a nuanced role. An honest woman of remarkable talent she also happened to be the strict television gatekeeper of my childhood. Back in the 90’s a desire for this blue light pulsed through my veins like an addict in search of her next hit. I hadn’t been picky at all back then. This was a time in my life when even Jerry Springer reruns in black and white, streamed through bunny ears in my Jr. High weight room took the edge off.

To be frank, while at first her editing felt crucial so as not to embarrass myself on the interwebs it soon became clear that the bigger part of my ask was just any sort of consistent audience. In time it became obvious that my mother hadn’t only become a fan, but she was, in fact, my blog’s only fan.

And as any good writer knows, you gotta’ appeal to your base.

It helped, of course, that my mother had been my earliest educator (dictator) of media. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook and the New Yorker were mainstays next to the can, meaning my earliest poos were made all the more pleasurable by the accompaniment of Adair Lara and John Carrol. By 34 I was not only well versed in what she found tolerable, but also possessed a keen understanding of how to stylize this appeal.

Simpsons? Yes. Danielle Steele? Not so much. Had she given Danielle an opportunity? Of course not! But I was willing to play her game.

We both were expending a lot of energies at this point and since any real readership was in the slim to none margins it was crucial that we at least reward ourselves.

In retrospect I understand that this was actually how we enjoyed time together.

After she died my father noted that my mother and I had always shared a very special intellectual connection. A greater compliment than sharing a literary bond with Dale had never been given. In fact, in my father’s wake it is easy to see that this final gift from him may have been the most important. In saying so, he finally acknowledged what I’d always longed to hear. He respected, perhaps even envied not only my intelligence, but my mother’s too.

While I had given up on blogging years before their deaths, my diligent notetaking continued up until them. I accepted that my time critiquing television for free to a marginal audience had not been without purpose (though I missed the motive of the maternal connection it fostered until just now). I am well aware that through my efforts I had gained the confidence to write a novel. I understood that to maintain this skill set a continued attention to television’s minutia was critical.

But then, she died. Suddenly, grief allowed me space to achieve an entirely different and antithetical goal I’d set years earlier and had made no real efforts to achieve: to do less.

Finally I was able to let thoughts wave over me. I allowed flashes of “brilliance” to be fleeting. I relaxed into a space of agitated ease. I exclusively sought joy. In doing so I concurrently and without coincidence leaned into a brand of watching which had always been considered “just desserts.”

Bravo TV became a life raft. I watched Real Housewives and Summerhouse with a certain amused stillness I hadn’t exhibited since my complacent years as a co-ed.

The day following my mother’s memorial I listened to “Radio Andy” on Siris XM in a monotonous loop throughout the entire 6-hour drive home. I slept to Bravo podcasts. I read tweets from Bravo fan accounts during session breaks.

I noticed Bravo was keeping me smiling. The network and commentary was rewarding me with a source to which I could focus. I appreciated the humor.

Two months later my father died. Mind blank I leaned in harder to the quiet blankness this watching served.

But then, I noticed something.

Watching Kathryn Dennis of Southern Charm open a coke can with her teeth in a loudly expensive living room, next to her foam roller it occurred to me that these women were the antithesis of my own mother.

Vicky Gunvalson whooping it up at a classy resort represented everything my mother had no tolerance for.

To see these women as satirical requires a certain level of empathy for their antics that would have eluded Dale.

Their bad behavior was just too black and white. For my mom there would have been nothing charmingly relatable about a woman like Lisa Barlow of Salt Lake City, placatingly sipping a constant stream of fountain soda through a plastic straw while proudly bragging she wasn’t “like a regular mom,” proving this factoid by feeding her children drive through fast-food for every meal and ignoring their calls when she was at a party.

These are women that bat fake eyelashes and scream at each other through plastic pumped lips. They float effortlessly in azul pools in Mexico boosted by the silicone in their tits.

My mom also wasn’t a regular mom but she wouldn’t have found this indulgent brand of opulence at all inspirational, aspirational or relatable. She did not identify as a “powerhouse” or a woman who needed to tell other women that she “lifted up other women” over an expensive cocktail brunch with “40 of her closest girlfriends” all of whom wielded designer purses like coats of armor.

This trope, repeated often throughout every Housewives franchise for the past 20 years would have just pissed my mother off.

It’s not that she didn’t relate to women behaving badly this just wasn’t her brand of bad behavior. She maybe could have sympathized if they’d been wearing Walmart rather than Prada.

Lorelai Gilmore? Sure, why not? Emily Gilmore? Definitely not.

It’s funny because in a certain sense my mother’s proud authenticity and lack of shame in her outbursts would have made her an ideal housewife. But the weight these women put on things and beauty would have been too damn distracting to her.

In spite of being a woman whose love language was often a good screaming match she would have found any and all of the dramatic fights on Housewives absolutely insufferable.

And in spite of my deep love for the genre, convincing Dale that any of this was actually satire worth watching would have been an exercise in futility.

I embraced this factoid quietly and with little work on my end (other than setting the DVR to catch up on back seasons of Atlanta) I leaned into a space which never would have been tolerated.

It felt good.

It was my own.

In doing so, I came up with a million things about Bravo to share. Perhaps one day I will. God knows I need to create a new fan base.

But before I could even consider either changing the channel or sitting down to a blog analyzing how one housewife’s ludicrous and racist notion that eating chicken feet was somehow any different than eating chicken nuggets, I got this text from my mom’s best friend: “have you seen Derry Girls.”

Maybe an audience was asking for a resurrection, after all.

But as I flipped to Netflix and started a new note labeled “Derry Girls” it occurred to me that I first must come to terms with how much things have changed.

There is a certain level of self-actualization left amidst the cluttered grief of losing my parents. As I write this, I am continuously tempted to take a break for “Mom’s consideration”. Her feedback would have supplied an unrequited serotonin boost, like a gentle promise to my oh so evasive ego that there was purpose in my efforts, that the writing I was doing was valuable. When my mom was alive I always knew that someone would appreciate my continued efforts, making it tolerable to finish, and tidy, and publish. My mother was like a promise that not only my words but also I myself was worthwhile.

This chore of loving, maternal reassurance is, of course, now my own. A truth my mother, who never needed to brag about lifting up other women, would have celebrated.

Nothing would have made my mom happier than me making my own choices, editing my own words and being my own cheerleader Perhaps she died just to prove it. To know Dale Allen Boland is to suspend belief that she maybe could have made her last stubborn point through such dramatic means.

And to be totally frank; that is a storyline not even a housewife could pull off.

Thank you for being my greatest cheerleader. I love you Mom.

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poorquentyn · 7 years ago

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I'm re reading IT right now (slowly, as adult life is getting in the way) and was wondering what other bad storytelling choices you thought king made besides the. Uh. Sewer scene? Its been years since ive read it and nothing else really stood out to me as poor storytelling that i can remember. I'll read it for myself eventually but was curious of your thoughts. Love your blog!

Thanks! Stephen King often veers into caricature with his supporting characters, and It is no exception. The way he describes Eddie’s mom and wife physically goes well beyond the narratively useful purpose of establishing how their weight disorders have intertwined with Eddie’s hypochondria and into “ugh fat people are gross” territory. I don’t think King has conscious malignance in this area, because he finds a proper balance with Ben: the latter describes in realistic detail how he lost weight over time, his mom is upset that he’s eating less but is presented humanely (as someone who associates her son eating a lot with her doing well as a single mother), and King manages to avoid shaming Ben for his weight while also acknowledging that Ben personally feels a lot better about himself after having shed it–or rather, because of the confidence he gained in himself by taking charge of the situation. The idea here is not “Ben needs to lose weight because gross” but rather “Ben needs to be in control of his body.”

The good doesn’t wipe out the bad, nor vice versa; gotta consider them both in context. Main characters are naturally going to get more nuance than supporting characters, but necessary shorthand can easily turn into harmful caricature. And of course, a storytelling choice that seems solid in isolation can become a problem within the work as a whole. Beverly is sexualized throughout It in a way that’s often very unpleasant to read, associated throughout with violence and misogyny. Sometimes this works, as a way of peeling back the layers of petty ego driving a man’s man like her husband Tom; he explodes at her in their introductory scene because her paying attention to Mike’s call instead of him makes him feel like he’s literally not there. Other times it doesn’t, like when King lingers on the “smell” that Bev and her father “make together” now that she’s reaching puberty. We don’t need that to get the point that Bev’s father has inappropriate feelings for her–we got that from Bev’s mom asking if he ever touches her. When you put both sides of the coin together with the infamous sex scene in the sewers and the amount of time spent on whether Bev will choose Ben or Bill, it starts to look less like King was taking a stand against objectification by showing its omnipresence than that he simply didn’t know what to do with Bev as a character without constantly making reference to sex, rape, assault, and molestation. While she does get some right to response on these matters, I don’t think it’s nearly enough. It pushes back against a mindset that casually treats women like objects, but fails to establish a counter-narrative rooted in the female characters as individuals, fleshed out beyond their relationships to the men around them. It’s less a question of Does Stephen King Hate Women than one of imagination and empathy.

Of course, some flaws are lessened by context, rather than enhanced by it. Take, for example, our protagonist William Denbrough, a blatant author insert. Bill is a popular horror author (check) whose books are increasingly being adapted for TV and film (check) and who has a rather tense relationship with critics and academics (double check). The latter is spelled out in an extended flashback to Bill’s college days, in which he takes a stand that ought to be very familiar to anyone steeped in modern media discourse:

Here is a poor boy from the state of Maine who goes to the University on a scholarship. All his life he has wanted to be a writer, but when he enrolls in the writing courses he finds himself lost without a compass in a strange and frightening land. There’s one guy who wants to be Updike. There’s another one who wants to be a New England version of Faulkner-only he wants to write novels about the grim lives of the poor in blank verse. There’s a girl who admires Joyce Carol Gates but feels that because Oates was nurtured in a sexist society she is “radioactive in a literary sense.” Oates is unable to be clean, this girl says. She will be cleaner. There’s the short fat grad student who can’t or won’t speak above a mutter. This guy has written a play in which there are nine characters. Each of them says only a single word. Little by little the playgoers realize that when you put the single words together you come out with “War is the tool of the sexist death merchants.” This fellow’s play receives an A from the man who teaches Eh-141 (Creative Writing Honors Seminar). This instructor has published four books of poetry and his master’s thesis, all with the University Press. He smokes pot and wears a peace medallion. The fat mutterer’s play is produced by a guerrilla theater group during the strike to end the war which shuts down the campus in May of 1970. The instructor plays one of the characters.

Bill Denbrough, meanwhile, has written one locked-room mystery tale, three science-fiction stories, and several horror tales which owe a great deal to Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson-in later years he will say those stories resembled a mid-1800s funeral hack equipped with a supercharger and painted Day-Glo red.

One of the sf tales earns him a B.

“This is better,” the instructor writes on the title page. “In the alien counterstrike we see the vicious circle in which violence begets violence; I particularly liked the “needle-nosed” spacecraft as a symbol of socio-sexual incursion. While this remains a slightly confused undertone throughout, it is interesting.”

All the others do no better than a C.

Finally he stands up in class one day, after the discussion of a sallow young woman’s vignette about a cow’s examination of a discarded engine block in a deserted field (this may or may not be after a nuclear war) has gone on for seventy minutes or so. The sallow girl, who smokes one Winston after another and picks occasionally at the pimples which nestle in the hollows of her temples, insists that the vignette is a socio-political statement in the manner of the early Orwell. Most of the class-and the instructor-agree, but still the discussion drones on.

When Bill stands up, the class looks at him. He is tail, and has a certain presence.

Speaking carefully, not stuttering (he has not stuttered in better than five years), he says: “I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics… culture… history… aren’t those natural ingredients in any story, if it’s told well? I mean… ” He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. “I mean… can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”

No one replies. Silence spins out. He stands there looking from one cool set of eyes to the next. The sallow girl chuffs out smoke and snubs her cigarette in an ashtray she has brought along in her backpack.

Finally the instructor says softly, as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, “do you believe William Faulkner was ‘just telling stories’? Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in making a buck? Come now, Bill. Tell us what you think.”

“I think that’s pretty close to the truth,” Bill says after a long moment in which he honestly considers the question, and in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.

“I suggest,” the instructor says, toying with his pen and smiling at Bill with half-lidded eyes, “that you have a great deal to learn.”

The applause starts somewhere in the back of the room.

Bill leaves… but returns the next week, determined to stick with it. In the time between he has written a story called “The Dark,” a tale about a small boy who discovers a monster in the cellar of his house. The little boy faces it, battles it, finally kills it. He feels a land of holy exaltation as he goes about the business of writing this story; he even feels that he is not so much telling the story as he is allowing the story to flow through him. At one point he puts his pen down and takes his hot and aching hand out into ten-degree December cold where it nearly smokes from the temperature change. He walks around, green cut-off boots squeaking in the snow like tiny shutter-hinges which need oil, and his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary, the way it needs to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape by way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be concrete. “Going to knock the shit out of it,” he confides to the blowing winter dark, and laughs a little-a shaky laugh. He is aware that he has finally discovered how to do just that-after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn’t careful, it will knock him down.

He rushes inside and finishes “The Dark” at white heat, writing until four o'clock in the morning and finally falling asleep over his ring-binder. If someone had suggested to him that he was really writing about his brother, George, he would have been surprised. He has not thought about George in years-or so he honestly believes.

The story comes back from the instructor with an F slashed into the tide page. Two words are scrawled beneath, in capital letters. PULP, screams one. CRAP, screams the other.

Bill takes the fifteen-page sheaf of manuscript over to the wood-stove and opens the door. He is within a bare inch of tossing it in when the absurdity of what he is doing strikes him. He sits down in his rocking chair, looks at a Grateful Dead poster, and starts to laugh. Pulp? Fine! Let it be pulp! The woods were full of it!

“Let them fucking trees fall!” Bill exclaims, and laughs until tears spurt from his eyes and roll down his face.

He retypes the title page, the one with the instructor’s judgment on it, and sends it off to a men’s magazine named White Tie (although from what Bill can see, it really should be titled Naked Girls Who Look Like Drug Users). Yet his battered Writer’s Market says they buy horror stories, and the two issues he has bought down at the local mom-and-pop store have indeed contained four horror stories sandwiched between the naked girls and the ads for dirty movies and potency pills. One of them, by a man named Dennis Etchison, is actually quite good.

He sends “The Dark” off with no real hopes-he has submitted a good many stories to magazines before with nothing to show for it but rejection slips-and is flabbergasted and delighted when the fiction editor of White Tie buys it for two hundred dollars, payment on publication. The assistant editor adds a short note which calls it “the best damned horror story since Ray Bradbury’s "The Jar.” He adds, “Too bad only about seventy people coast to coast will read it,” but Bill Denbrough does not care. Two hundred dollars!

He goes to his advisor with a drop card for Eh-141. His advisor initials it. Bill Denbrough staples the drop card to the assistant fiction editor’s congratulatory note and tacks both to the bulletin board on the creative-writing instructor’s door. In the corner of the bulletin board he sees an anti-war cartoon. And suddenly, as if moving of its own accord, his fingers pluck his pen from his breast pocket and across the cartoon he writes this: If fiction and politics ever really do become interchangeable, I’m going to kill myself, because I won’t know what else to do. You see, politics always change. Stories never do. He pauses, and then, feeling a bit small (but unable to help himself), he adds: I suggest you have a lot to learn.

You can easily imagine this argument–a timeless appeal is being ruined by lefty college kids and their postmodern analyses–being made today by an alt-right YouTuber out to cleanse the game industry of SJWs. Throughout It, King keeps cutting back to an image of a librarian reading “The Billy Goats Gruff” to a group of kids, the latter enthralled (King tells us) by the primal purity of the kind of monster stories upon which both King and Denbrough have built their careers. “Will the monster be bested…or will It feed?” That’s King declaring that Bill’s his professors were wrong to wave aside his short horror stories. See? See?! I made it, and you pretentious eggheads were wrong to ever doubt me! This aspect of It is frankly embarrassing, especially as time marches on and we see how this mindset has taken root in the next generation.

But! While King very clearly believes this stuff, he’s also self-aware enough to include auto-critiques in his writing. Stan’s wife Patty picks up one of Bill’s novels and dismisses it as practically pornographic in its horror imagery. King goes too far in casting Patty’s dislike of Bill’s work as reflecting a lack of imagination on her part, but he then goes on to sympathetically explore how the grounded relatable struggles Patty has faced (anti-Semitism, her father mocking and dismissing Stan, their inability to have children) have led her to consider “horrorbooks” as shallow escapism. The real world, It admits, has horrors beyond anything the Kings and Denbroughs can come up with. “Werewolves, shit. What did a man like that know about werewolves?”

Later on, when Ben is telling his triumphant story about calling out a high school coach who taunted him for his weight, Bill gently notes that as an author, he has trouble believing any kid really talked like that. That’s King using his self-insert to wryly poke fun at his own oft-overheated dialogue. Self-awareness and self-deprecation are absolutely vital to making a book as thematically and structurally ambitious as this one work.

And while some of It’s politics make me cringe, other aspects make me perk up and take notice. King wrote It over the course of four years in which HIV and AIDS became a national crisis that was being largely ignored by said nation’s government. There was a growing conventional wisdom that the afflicted deserved their punishment and should be more or less left to rot. This was all part and parcel with the ascension of the religious right in American politics, especially within the Reagan White House. A huge part of the Reagan narrative (as we see in the “Morning in America” ad, also released while King was writing It) was a portrait of lily-white small-town America as a social ideal being beset by all sorts of ills that the left was either letting happen or actively supporting, and The Gays were most certainly among them.

It opens with a scene that seems to dovetail with that narrative: an idealized ‘50s small town in which an adorable innocent white boy from a good Christian family is horribly murdered by (what seems to be) a nightmarish external force that takes advantage of that innocence. Already, you can see a potential Reaganite spin–It as the Other, the “bear in the woods” threatening the ideal of Derry.

But that’s not what It is about. The second chapter jumps forward a generation, into the mid-1980s in which King was writing, and onto a scene of violence that cannot be wrapped into the meta-narrative of the religious right. Three men attack a gay man on a bridge, their delicate sensibilities offended by his flamboyance. They beat him within an inch of his life and toss him over the side…where he finds It waiting for him with a gleaming sharp-toothed smile. Both the victim’s boyfriend and one of the assailants tell the cops and lawyers involved about the demon clown who finished the victim off, but the powers that be cover it up for the sake of a successful prosecution.

The idea being that they’re dealing with the symptoms, not the disease–the violence, but not the hand-me-down hate driving it. The bereft boyfriend tells the cops that he tried to warn his new-to-town lover that despite its cheery appearance, Derry is a “bad place,” one positively crawling with “AIDS is God’s punishment” homophobia. Moreover, he whispers through his tears, he realized while staring into Its silver eyes as It ate his true love that “It was Derry…It was this town.”

So while the first chapter seemingly wrapped the era’s conservative politics in a cozy semiotic blanket, it was only baiting the hook so that the second can rip that blanket off like a Band-Aid. As Reagan strolled to re-election with 49 states at his back, as the Democrats’ convictions wavered and they began to drift rightward, as thousands of Americans wasted away while their government and so many of their fellow citizens watched pitilessly, here comes Stevie King to stick his middle finger in the Moral Majority’s face and say: gays aren’t the monsters, you are the monsters, you are the ones eating your children. He built a thousand-page Lovecraftian epic around that idea, and made it a bestseller. How fucking awesome is that?

Again, it’s all always going to be complicated. The good not only coexists with the bad–they’re often inextricable. The author who slipped a rant against leftist academics ruinin’ his storybooks into It is also the guy who now declares his support for BLM and his disgust for Trump, and It is both a deeply flawed work and one of my very favorite novels.

#it #stephen king

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anneapocalypse · 8 years ago

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[tone of genuine curiosity, as clarified in an elcor-esque fashion because the internet renders all emotion an uncertain factor] You're welcome to skip this ask if you ain't up for it, but re: the perpetual debate over Problematic Subjects In Media, I've seen you in the past write many a critique on how fandom writes/treats women / BDSM / etc. Does this not fall under the idea that the writer has a responsibility in how they handle / frame certain issues in their writing?

Hi Silt! I’m up for it, but buckle in, because this is gonna get long. :)

Okay so the thing is, this is a broad topic and these days I try to resist treating it as a zero-sum game with “No Critique Allowed” on one side and “Relentlessly Harass People Who Make Bad Content According to Our Arbitrary But Obviously Correct Standard” on the other.

Let me state clearly for the record: both of those options are terrible. Fortunately, it’s not all or nothing, and those aren’t the only horses in the race.

The way that female characters, characters of color, disabled characters, and other representations of marginalized groups are treated in media remains very much of interest to me. That hasn’t changed. My approach has changed somewhat over the years (as I’d hope it would, if I’m continuing to grow as a person), largely due to understanding that some rhetorical styles are more effective than others when you actually want to reach people or change something.

If I gave the impression that I want to absolve creators of all responsibility, that was never my intent. In fact, I mentioned critique and growth as part of the process in one of my recent posts. I do critique the media I regularly consume, and in fact the more heavily I am immersed in something, the more in-depth my criticism, because we’re best able to examine the things we know best.

What I do feel is that creators need room to grow, and fandom can be a great test bed for exploration, where creators work with elements of established media to explore different ideas and techniques. I’m not saying fandom is only a test bed, or like, a trial run for original work, because I don’t think that; I think fanworks are worthwhile in their own right, written for enjoyment and personal indulgence. But the fact is that many of us do or will create original work, and for many of us, creating fanworks helps us build a skillset we’ll use for original work too.

That said, the cultural impact of fandom is more limited than that of popular media. I’m not saying it has no impact–and indeed, in a time when we have multiple known works of popular published fiction that are retooled from fanfics, when TV writers are on twitter regularly interacting with their fanbases, it’s probably safe to say fandom has more impact on popular media than it ever has before, but neverthelesss, its impact is still limited. The average piece of fanfiction does not reach an audience on the scale of a piece of popular media, that’s just a fact.

Does that mean we shouldn’t bother looking at patterns in fandom and fanworks? Hell no! Fandom is a microcosm–the patterns we see in fandom do absolutely reflect wider social patterns and in fact for very immersed fans it can make those patterns more apparent. And I think it’s good for us to discuss them, address them, become more aware of how we play into them–especially if we’re creating or planning to create original work.

Because these kind of discussions, when they are actually discussions, do work. I talk about the season 10 climate in the RvB fandom a lot, but even back then, I saw people change their minds about Carolina, not because they were accused of internalized misogyny or told to feel guilty for not liking her (shockingly, shaming people for their taste doesn’t have a high success rate in changing their minds), but because someone presented them with a compelling case for a more nuanced reading of her character. My experiences in past years led to me almost checking my watch to see fans turn on RvB’s newest female character this season, and you know what? It hasn’t happened. Things do change, and I don’t think fandom turnover is the sole reason. I would love to see some shifts in other patterns as well. For example, I would love to see trauma in female characters given as much weight as it is given in male characters. I would love to see more artists willing to draw Tucker with brown eyes. Those will be discussions, and we’ll continue to have them.

What I’ve seen happening in recent years, though, is a turn toward a certain ideal of purity in fanworks. It’s not an ideal of working toward more complex and thoughtful portrayals of characters; rather, it’s an all or nothing attitude that says some characters and ships and topics are Good and worthy to be explored in fanworks, while other characters, ships, and topics are Bad and anyone who touches them or likes them is Bad, and also fair game for targeted harassment.

I keep drawing comparisons between fanworks and original work for a reason–the attitudes that I find most unsupportable in fandom are the same ones I find untenable when it comes to original work, and when you apply them to the latter, their limitations are far more obvious.

One example: the idea that it’s wrong to find any reasons to sympathize with an antagonist, or to look for an interesting and complex backstory, one that might make sense of (not even to say justify) their actions. That’s all well and good when you’re engaging purely from a fan perspective I guess, but what happens when you want to write a novel? If it’s morally wrong to find complexity and interest in villains, are you morally obligated to make your antagonist as bland and cartoonish as possible, to be sure no one could possibly relate to them? Is that good writing? Is that what we want?

Or take the idea that it’s morally wrong to ship unhealthy ships–and this attitude in fandom goes that shipping certain ships is wrong regardless of how or why, to the point that people will proudly identify themselves as “anti-[ship],” thus building a kind of identity around not shipping a Bad Ship (and giving rise to the umbrella term “antis” to refer to this attitude). Carry this into original work and… you’re not allowed to write unhealthy relationships? You’re not allowed to write any conflict into a relationship between two “good” characters lest it be perceived as “abusive” or “toxic?”

Then there’s the idea that it’s morally wrong to write fic with dark subject matter, which is what my most recent posts were about. I’m never going to argue these things can’t be done badly but I’m absolutely going to push back against the idea that they can’t be done at all. And I could write paragraphs more about how incredibly reductive I find the whole idea that certain topics are just off-limits for fiction, that art isn’t allowed to be catharsis (especially in a tiny niche setting like fandom, for corn’s sake) but this post is long enough, so I think I’ll put a lid on it here. ;) But frankly, if someone’s going to write dark fiction insensitively, in bad taste, or just plain poorly, there are worse places for it to exist than on AO3 tagged with content warnings, where nobody’s paid a hot cent for it and the way out is just clicking the back button.

#writing #fandom #sedimentarydearwatson #ask anne

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theadmiringbog · 6 years ago

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*wakes up and looks at phone* ah let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device

–@MISSOKISTIC IN A TWEET ON NOVEMBER 10, 2016

A more recent project that acts in a similar spirit is Scott Polach’s Applause Encouraged, which happened at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego in 2015. On a cliff overlooking the sea, forty-five minutes before the sunset, a greeter checked guests in to an area of foldout seats formally cordoned off with red rope. They were ushered to their seats and reminded not to take photos. They watched the sunset, and when it finished, they applauded. Refreshments were served afterward.

—

Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online.

They write: If you can have your time and work and live and be a person, then the question you’re faced with every day isn’t, Do I really have to go to work today? but, How do I contribute to this thing called life? What can I do today to benefit my family, my company, myself?

To me, “company” doesn’t belong in that sentence. Even if you love your job! Unless there’s something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning—and in my opinion, no one should accept this, not now, not ever.

Audre Lorde meant it in the 1980s, when she said that “[c]aring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

As Gabrielle Moss, author of Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious (a book parodying goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-priced wellness empire), put it: self-care “is poised to be wrenched away from activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.”

Thinking about sensitivity reminds me of a monthlong artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other—that wasn’t the point—but we listened to each other, and we did each come away different, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position.

The life force is concerned with cyclicality, care, and regeneration; the death force sounds to me a lot like “disrupt.” Obviously, some amount of both is necessary, but one is routinely valorized, not to mention masculinized, while the other goes unrecognized because it has no part in “progress.”

Certain people would like to use technology to live longer, or forever. Ironically, this desire perfectly illustrates the death drive at play in the “Manifesto of Maintenance Art” (“separation, individuality, Avant-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path—do your own thing; dynamic change”)30. To such people I humbly propose a far more parsimonious way to live forever: to exit the trajectory of productive time, so that a single moment might open almost to infinity. As John Muir once said, “Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment.”

Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: “I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more time with your friends.”

... he said, with an epiphany he had while accompanying a fellow clergyman on a trip to Louisville:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

My most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.

Obviously these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.

Our aimless and desperate expressions on these platforms don’t do much for us, but they are hugely lucrative for advertisers and social media companies, since what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement. Meanwhile, media companies continue churning out deliberately incendiary takes, and we’re so quickly outraged by their headlines that we can’t even consider the option of not reading and sharing them.

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one.

Standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the “wrong way”: a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it.

A crowded sidewalk is a good example: everyone is expected to continue moving forward. Tom Green poked at this convention when he performed “the Dead Guy,” on his Canadian public access TV show in the 1990s. Slowing his walk to a halt, he carefully lowered himself to the ground and lay facedown and stick-straight for an uncomfortable period of time. After quite a crowd had amassed, he got up, looked around, and nonchalantly walked away.

So to a question like “Will you or will you not participate as asked?” Diogenes would have answered something else entirely: “I will participate, but not as asked,” or, “I will stay, but I will be your gadfly.” This answer (or non-answer) is something I think of as producing what I’ll call a “third space”—an almost magical exit to another frame of reference. For someone who cannot otherwise live with the terms of her society, the third space can provide an important if unexpected harbor.

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself.

Facebook abstention, like telling someone you grew up in a house with no TV, can all too easily appear to be taste or class related.

We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating, to closely study the ways that media and advertising play upon our emotions, to understand the algorithmic versions of ourselves that such forces have learned to manipulate, and to know when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted into reactions that come not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety.

“In short, when the inattention stimulus falls outside the area to which attention is paid, it is much less likely to capture attention and be seen,” the researchers write. That’s intuitive enough, but it gets more complicated. If the briefly flashing stimulus was outside the area of visual attention, but was something distinct like a smiley face or the person’s name, the subject would notice it after all.

As an artist interested in using art to influence and widen attention, I couldn’t help extrapolating the implications from visual attention to attention at large.

In a post about ad blockers on the University of Oxford’s “Practical Ethics” blog, the technology ethicist James Williams (of Time Well Spent) lays out the stakes: We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

In an effort to make the user aware of persuasive design, Nudget used overlays to call out and describe several of the persuasive design elements in the Facebook interface as the user encountered them. But the thesis is also useful simply as a catalog of the many forms of persuasive design—the kinds that behavioral scientists have been studying in advertising since the mid-twentieth century.

Vivrekar lists the strategies identified by researchers Marwell and Schmitt in 1967: “reward, punishment, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking/ingratiation, gifting/pre-giving, debt, aversive stimulation, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altercasting, positive esteem of others, and negative esteem of others.”

Vivrekar herself has study participants identify instances of persuasive design on the LinkedIn site and compiles a staggering list of 171 persuasive design techniques.

“knowing your enemy” when it comes to the attention economy. For example, one could draw parallels between the Nudget system, which teaches users to see the ways in which they are being persuaded, and the Prejudice Lab, which shows participants how bias guides their behavior.

Or that the woman in front of you in line who just screamed at you is maybe not usually like this; maybe she’s going through a rough time. Whether this is actually true isn’t the point. Just considering the possibility makes room for the lived realities of other people, whose depths are the same as your own. This is a marked departure from the self-centered “default setting,”

Last week, after a meeting, I took the F streetcar from Civic Center to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s a notoriously slow, crowded, and halting route, especially in the middle of the day. This pace, added to my window seat, gave me a chance to look at the many faces of the people on Market Street with the same alienation as the slow scroll of Hockney’s Yorkshire Landscapes. Once I accepted the fact that each face I looked at (and I tried to look at each of them) was associated with an entire life—of birth, of childhood, of dreams and disappointments, of a universe of anxieties, hopes, grudges, and regrets totally distinct from mine—this slow scene became almost impossibly absorbing. As Hockney said: “There’s a lot to look at.” Even though I’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street.

When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to “be yourself,” what it really means is “be more yourself,” where “yourself” is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital.

In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgments: “I like this” and “I don’t like this,” with little room for ambiguity or contradiction.

The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

(“bland enough to offend no one”)

The professional social media star, a person reverse-engineered from a formula of what is most palatable to everyone all the time.

Everybody says that there is no censorship on the internet, or at least only in part. But that is not true. Online censorship is applied through the excess of banal content that distracts people from serious or collective issues.

Our interactions become data collected by a company, and engagement goals are driven by advertising.

Mastodon... They allow more granular control of one’s intended audience; when you post to Mastodon, you can have the content’s visibility restricted to a single person, your followers, or your instance—or it can be public.

... forming any idea requires a combination of privacy and sharing. But this restraint is difficult when it comes to commercial social media, whose persuasive design collapses context within our very thought processes themselves by assuming we should share our thoughts right now—indeed, that we have an obligation to form our thoughts in public!

A counterexample would be the sparse UX of Patchwork, a social networking platform that runs on Scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt is a sort of global mesh network that can go without servers, ISPs, or even Internet connection (if you have a USB stick handy). It can do that because it relies on individual users’ computers as the servers, similar to local mesh networks, and because your “account” on a Scuttlebutt-powered social media platform is simply an encrypted block of data that you keep on your computer.

In #NeverAgain, David Hogg writes that “[a]nger will get you started but it won’t keep you going.”

Before long, the conference would be over, and I would have missed most of it. A lot of things would have happened there that are important and useful. For my part, I wouldn’t have much to show for my “time well spent”—no pithy lines to tweet, no new connections, no new followers. I might only tell one or two other people about my observations and the things I learned. Otherwise, I’d simply store them away, like seeds that might grow some other day if I’m lucky.

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die—I would know that I spent that day on Earth.

“I would prefer not to.”

#How to Do Nothing #books

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