#to the reality of how he was viewed and talked to by General Ross

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #267

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

The idea that people are responsible for the oppression of the state is an incredibly regressive one - that actively corrodes solidarity and increases state power. /

I understand that you were asked specifically for your thoughts on the particular twitter thread that anon shared, and that thread didn't make the point I'd like to share, but I do think it's a related, if maybe more nuanced point. I understand (and agree) that people aren't responsible for the oppression of the state, even if they oppose state repression in annoying dickhead ways. But I think there's a difference between holding someone responsible for the oppression of the state, and holding someone responsible for failing to engage with and listen to a marginalized community and then taking an action that, even if done with the best of intentions, harms that community (even if that harm comes in the form of increased state oppression). And i think that's especially true when the person is an outsider and not a part of the community in question (the white British man in Malaysia of it all doesn't help, nor does the fact that in his speech at the show he conflated being religious with being bigoted). It's my biggest problem with Matty Healy's brand of public politics, that he doesn't seem to actually listen to communities he's supposedly advocating for (especially when those communities are communities of color), and I think that failure to listen and respect does more harm to solidarity than people criticizing him on the internet.

I've thought about this anon for quite a few days - and I don't think there's a meaningful distinction - and that what you suggest is still holding people responsible for state repression. I'll explain why and then talk about some other random thoughts.

The first is that it's not possible to engage and listen with a community. A community is not a single entity talking with one voice. I was once involved in a solidarity campaign in Wellington, where there were two families of people from the place we were organising in solidarity with. They hated each other - they disagreed about everything. Sometimes it's a useful fiction that it's possible to engage with and listen to a community (in practice what that means is engaging and listening to formal and informal structures within the community or listening to individuals - or both). But it's also incredibly flattening and doesn't allow space for reality or complexity.

It would be possible for an act to have listened to queer Malaysians and still kiss on stage. Of course there's a wide range of views on queer politics in Malaysia - why wouldn't there be? (There's always been a wide range of views on queer politics everywhere else).

I think to make the idea that you're putting forward make sense, then you would have to be much more specific about what obligations people have. In this particular case (and I suspect more generally) it would very soon become clear that people could still fulfill those obligations and make out on stage.

And you are still blaming people for state repression. You're still saying that people are responsible for the actions of the state. And my politics involves holding an incredibly hard line that they're not.

*******

Another problem with this framing is that it's based on a reading of Matty's intentions that there's very little evidence for. This all hinges on an intention to advocate on behalf of another group of people. I don't think that's how he presented it. If I was asked to summarise, from what Matty said, why him and Ross made out - I'd say it was because Matty Healy was angry.

What if Ross and Matty kissed because Matty was angry - not as an act of solidarity?

*******

I also think the wider context is important. I think some of the criticisms only introduce the power dynamics of the situation when Matty Healy and Ross MacDonald kiss and disrupt the situation - even though those power dynamics always existed.

The reason that the promoter had brought them to Malaysia to play this festival was because they were a western band. They were there because of the long history of empire. They were there because of the global power dynamics. The promoter was trying to make money from that dynamic. To say that this only matters, because they were disruptive - is to I think normalise everything else that was going on.

I am influenced here, by my oft stated belief that artists only have an obligation to avoid playing in a country with a terrible government, if there has been a specific call for a boycott by an organised resistance movement.

BI'm not comfortable saying that it's OK to go and make money in a country with homophobic laws, unless you make a political statement. Or even worse - as long as you don't make out with people.

*******

The other thing I think about a lot is the context I'm writing in - as part of the One Direction fandom. We've watched Harry wave rainbow flags around the world. He's raised a rainbow flag in a country where male homosexuality was illegal. He's raised trans flags in states where terrifying attacks were made on Trans people. I don't think there's any reason to think that he ever talked to anyone locally. In the 8 years I've been here nobody has ever suggested that he should. And I really struggle to come up with a good reason why they would be different.

And I just can't emphasise enough how much I think that saying it's OK to wave a rainbow flag, but not for two men to make out, is not queer politics that I can get on board with.

*******

As is maybe clear from what I've said so far - I've realised that one of the reasons I've been uneasy with the response to what Ross and Matty did is that it fundamentally involves policing the fact that two men have kissed on stage. And I think it's impossible to do that without it being a homophobic act.

I think a discussion that I could engage with would question the political meaning of Ross and Matty making out, not the legitimacy of Ross and Matty making out.

Because a pretty fundamental belief of mine is that men who consent get to make out with each other for pretty much any reason at all, no reasons, bad reasons, and anyone who questions the legitimacy of two men making out is building a more homophobic world.

[tealin]

Cape Crozier: The Spiritual Journey

As usual, please check out http://twirlynoodle.com/blog to see this post and others in their original (functioning) formatting.

Since getting seriously into polar history, I kept hearing the same two things from polar veterans.  One was that I could not possibly understand the story properly, or be able to depict it truthfully, unless I visited Antarctica myself.  The other was that Antarctica changes people.  This was unanimous amongst scientists, historians, and even tourists: one cannot help but be profoundly affected by contact with Antarctica; that is just a fact of the place.

I have certainly been changed by Antarctica indirectly.  The inner kernel of “me” is the same in my earliest memories as now, but the Terra Nova men and their experiences have fundamentally shifted how that kernel views and relates to the world and the people around me.  I am a vastly better person for their influence, and that is a large part of why I have been so dogged in getting their story to a new audience: the hope that, through my work, even one other person might be changed in the same way.

When I finally got the chance to visit Antarctica in person, I had half an eye out for signs something had happened.  Two weeks into my visit, I had learned a lot and had some meaningful experiences, but I couldn't say I had changed at all.  Maybe that initial action-at-a-distance was the change I had been promised after all.

Then I went to Cape Crozier.

As we have spread around the planet, humans have noted certain places as being special in some way, places of some sort of power, or where the spirit world is a little more tangible.  The Celts called these 'thin places', where the fabric of reality is threadbare, and Something Else comes a little closer.  One can have a 'thin' experience anywhere, but certain places seem to encourage them.  They may remain completely unmarked, or may become loci for centuries of pilgrimage, or anything in between, but they exist in some form in every culture except, perhaps, the post-Enlightenment intellectual West.

Antarctica, generally, feels like where the edge of a painting dissolves into brushstrokes. There is a certain unreality baked-in: the sun wheels around the sky without setting, one can count on one hand the species of life regularly seen, and everything – the landscape, the weather, the distances – is so vastly out of proportion to puny humanity.  One could argue that this 'unfinished' feeling is because so much of it is white, but I have travelled through many snow-covered landscapes, and they feel like landscapes covered in snow, not fundamentally blank places with a few suggestive details dropped in by an artist whose main attention was elsewhere.

Cape Crozier was something else entirely, though.  It is, of course, hanging off the edge of Ross Island, but it felt more like it was hanging off the edge of reality itself.  It is a thin place par excellence.  And I had an experience there which I have been trying to process since landing back at McMurdo.  When I tried to discuss it with friends, my ability to speak quite simply stopped.  Then the pandemic, and the new house, and pushing through Vol.1, all rose up and drove it to the back of my mind.  In February I wasn't ready to talk about it; here in October, I worry it's too late.  But I feel compelled to share what happened there, and if I don't do it now, I don't know if I ever will.

If this were a novel, at Cape Crozier I would have felt the thinness of time, and a closer connection to the dead men I had followed there – perhaps almost to believe they weren't dead at all!  In such a place, that didn't seem impossible.  But that is not what happened.  Nor did I have some sort of enlightenment beamed into my head from the heavens.  Even the word 'happened' is too suggestive of some sort of discrete external event.  If you had asked me, there, at the time, I'd have said I was just sitting there thinking. But I sit thinking a lot in life, and this was not the sort of thinking I am used to.  It was more like a revelation.  Not in the trumpets and angels sense, but in a literal one: layers of clutter and gloss were pulled back to reveal a simple underlying truth.  It was, in essence, a dose of perspective, a view from high and far enough away to see the big picture, and not the surface detail.  As I sat at the base of a boulder, gazing at the stone igloo and gawking at how completely insane were the men who dragged their sledges to this desolate nowhere to build it, I suddenly saw my life as it appeared in the Author's notes.

Ever since first getting the inkling that this story would make a good graphic novel, it has felt like a calling.  I said 'no' to the calling for years – some sort of cosmic wrong number – but when I finally said 'yes' everything started falling into place.  That is supposed to be a good sign, for a calling.  And I was happy following it, though it wasn't easy or comfortable.  As far as I could deduce, under my own power, it seemed like what I ought to be doing.  That is not to say there weren't doubts, especially in the grey light of a winter morning when I would lie in my rented bed, looking at my desk and wondering what on earth I was doing with my life.  And I was not untroubled by other concerns: Shouldn't I be more helpful to my family? Why have I been persistently unable to find a tribe, or a relationship?  Will I be allowed to stay in the UK?  Can I do this work and keep myself fed and housed?

Here, on a wind-scoured ridge on the edge of nowhere, reflecting on its history of unbelievable and, it could be argued, pointless hardship, one might expect to realise the folly of one's ways, and to swear off quixotic enterprises in favour of the hitherto unappreciated quotidian stuff that really matters.  But that is not what happened.  Instead, I got this dose of clarity:

I am here to tell this story.  Not here, at Cape Crozier, in this instant (although that too), but here, on this planet, as a human being.  This is what I am for.

Whatever I need to make it happen will be provided.  No less, and no more.

Everything else?  Tangential.  Not worth worrying about.  What needs to happen, will happen, and if it doesn't happen, it didn't need to.  And that's OK.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

When I was young, we had a puzzle of the United States of America.  It was made of Masonite, and the pieces were cut out in the shapes of the states, which would be assembled to fill the recessed outline of the country.  Because they were geographical shapes and not interlocking jigsaw pieces, they would slide and rattle around until the last one got wedged in and locked everything else in place.

Most of my life, I have felt like that rattly puzzle.  I didn't realise it because I had never known there was another way to be.  But there under the boulder it felt like that last piece had been dropped in, that secured all the loose ones.  It was not that Cape Crozier was my missing piece and now that I had it I was complete – that is far too literal.  The missing piece was a something that wasn't even a thing; rather, in that moment of clarity, I felt all the jangling bits come to rest, and a wholly unfamiliar solidity.  At last the clay wobbling around the potter's wheel had been centred, and I felt a metaphysical ground beneath my metaphysical feet that I had not known it was possible to feel.

Ironically, the rest of the day I felt like I wasn't touching the actual ground at all, perhaps because what I was anchored to was on another plane entirely.  The stumbling shamble through the wind back to the helicopter might as well have been happening to someone else.  We took off into the gale, and though the pilot acted as though it was perfectly ordinary, when we were rounding the ridge he said 'wow, that's the rotor all the way to the left' which I didn't understand but didn't sound great.  Nevertheless the sense of peace persisted, and I understood how, in his last letter to his wife, which he knew would be his last, Wilson could have kept insisting 'all is well.'  (I knew why he wrote that: he had read Julian of Norwich.  But now I understood why.)

The journey back was a transcendence all of its own, the beauty of which seemed to be a perfectly natural outward manifestation of that altered state.  We touched down in time for me to make it to the Galley just as it opened for dinner, so we couldn't have been gone two whole hours, and that seemed absurd to me – surely I had sat under that boulder for two hours at least?  Or had we only been at the igloo ten minutes?  It was impossible to tell.

What I wanted more than anything was to go up a mountain and ponder the whole thing, alone, until it sorted itself out and I was ready to come back down again.  I could have gone up Observation Hill, but the weather looked liable to turn into a proper blizzard at any moment.  So, lacking a better option, I went to go eat, and, after having a chuckle at the Cherry Turnovers, slunk to the back where I could usually count on having a small wallflower table to myself, especially this early.  But one of the larger tables was full of young dudes talking about bar fights they'd been involved in, and I just … couldn't.  So I wandered into the main area and discovered the One Strange Rock crew having an early dinner as well, begged a spot at their table, and ate swaddled in friendly natter instead of at one with the universe in a blizzard.  It amounted to much the same thing.

Eventually one of them said, 'You went to Cape Crozier today, didn't you? How was that?'

I made an exploding gesture around my head and said 'Pkhhhh.'

Cherry wrote that the Winter Journey 'had beggared our language'.  I am sure that my inarticulate gesture is not what he meant.  But at the same time, in fact at that very dinner, I realised something about his writing.  The Winter Journey chapter is unanimously regarded as the finest part of The Worst Journey in the World.  Some people question that this otherwise unremarkable country gent, who never produced another book, could have written with such profound and expressive talent, and they posit that his friend and neighbour George Bernard Shaw, who definitely did consult on the book, must have ghostwritten it.  I have read enough of Cherry's writing – in his own hand – to know this is bosh; the voice and the style are distinctly his.  What's more, I was surprised to discover, when going through his journals, that a large portion of the Winter Journey chapter was not written last, despite it being the last to join the manuscript of Worst Journey, but was in fact written in his bunk at Cape Evans while he was recuperating from the experience.  In the published book, he singles out some passages as being from 'my own diary' but great tracts of unattributed narration are more or less verbatim quotations as well.  The experience related therein feels so immediate because it was.

The rest of Worst Journey, while perfectly readable, is largely a narrative rewrite of Cherry's and others' diaries.  Sometimes he lets others carry the story for pages at a time.  His writing is undeniably good, but is often simply mortar, filling gaps and binding sources together to tell a history that no human invention could better.  The Winter Journey chapter, on the other hand, reads like a torrent of pure inspiration pouring through him onto the page.  That such vivid, timeless prose should have come from an exhausted 25-year-old in his bunk in a wooden hut is no less remarkable than from a jaded 35-year-old in the library of his country house.

Artists of all stripes will often say that their best work is not their own creation, but feels like it already existed and came through them from somewhere else. It's as if there's a great Beyond where things that need to come into the world – stories, images, performances – queue up for passage through artists' minds and bodies.  Sometimes one taps into it by luck; usually it's a combination of training and discipline that makes the link traversable, from time to time.  Perhaps artists' minds are their own thin places, in a way.  Sitting there at dinner with my friends, I felt as though I'd brushed against the fabric between this reality and that Beyond, and, like touching the wall of a tent in a rainstorm, broken the surface tension and allowed something through.  I felt like, if I just put pencil to paper, something could flow through me, if only I could narrow down a subject.  With the intensity of his experience, Cherry did not so much brush against the wet tent fabric as punch a hole through it; feeling just a small inkling of that myself, it was no wonder that the creative energy poured into his diary with such intuitive eloquence.

Had I sat down to write this that night, perhaps I could have tapped into that flow, but I didn't feel I was ready.  I can guarantee you that right now I am not tapped into anything but a vague and dwindling recollection.  As vast as the experience was, by putting a box of words around it, I cannot help but reduce it to the confines of the box.  But that is the best I can do under my own power.

Compared to the seismic transformation of character brought about by my first vicarious encounter with Antarctica, the insight at Cape Crozier was very small and personal, but once in place, the ramifications have been substantial.  When I arrived back home, just before Christmas, the world was still as it ever was, but I was different, and I noticed how differently I related to everything.  Things I loved about Cambridge, which previously made me desperate to stay, I appreciated no less, but valued instead as something I had the honour to enjoy for a while, and didn't need to hold on to.  A young-adults group which I'd hung around, formerly a precious simulacrum of a social life, now felt hollow, and I abandoned it in favour of time spent one-on-one with the handful of people who I really appreciated.  They all said I seemed different; one person said I seemed 'sad', but I think I had just taken the mask off the seriousness which tends to frighten people. I have never been afraid to be myself, but in recent years have tried to mitigate that self in relation to others; there seemed no point to that, now.  It was as if my inner gyroscope had finally started spinning, and I had a sense of balance and orientation that I hadn't before.

Holding on to the clarity of that moment, and the centredness it brought me, has not been easy.  It didn't keep me from panicking when my housemate excoriated me back in March.  It didn't focus my mind on my work as soon as I'd moved into the new place, or save me from getting angry and frustrated when battling my tax returns.  Sometimes it's very hard to remember at all.  But I know what happened, and I can remember remembering, even if I can't recapture the feeling itself.  Sometimes, when it's very windy, I seek out a high open place in the hope of feeling it again, but it hasn't worked.  Maybe it doesn't need to.  Having it once was all I really needed, and even if I succeeded in flicking those switches again, what good would it do that hasn't already been done?

I could not foresee, on that windswept ridge on the edge of reality, where the world would be in 2020.  In wry moments I think I was only a few months ahead of a large portion of humanity, who have been forced to sort things out when the pandemic stripped away their preoccupations and illusions.  Maybe you are one of them, and you recognise some of what I've described.  Maybe you feel like you've been running away from it.  Maybe you have been running towards it but have been unable to find it.  All I can tell you is: it's worth the seeking.

I wish everyone in the world could visit Antarctica, even just once, and see how it changes them.  The world would be such a better place.  I am so profoundly grateful that I had the chance, and am determined to pay it forward by bringing some shred of that experience to as many people as possible.  If my communication fails to bridge that gap for you, then take it upon yourself to find your own thin place.  They are all around.  It only requires that you be receptive, and undertake to look.

[diazevan]

vi. dragged away

Every Saturday, Peter joined the Starks for a picnic by the lake. 

Their perfect spot was a ten-minute walk from the house or a three-minute swing. 

Pepper had been dragged into work for mandatory meetings, which meant it was a party of three instead of the usual four. 

Peter sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the bank, his bare feet hovered inches away from the water. He fumbled with his web-shooters, firing practice shots into the lake. It was a new and approved formula, and it needed testing before he could take it out into the field. 

“Petey…” Morgan waddled over, kneeling by his side, “Can I try?”

Peter looked at her, smiling, “Of course.” He clicked one of them off his wrist and carefully wrapped it around hers, the nanotech modified itself, so that it fit her perfectly.

She stared at it, with wide-eyes, “Cool.”

“What’s going on over here, then?” Tony walked over, sitting down next to Peter, “I feel left out.” 

Morgan held up her wrist, parading the web-shooter, “I’m gonna be Spider-Woman!” Peter snorted a proud laugh, it seemed all the time that she’d been spending with MJ was starting to pay off. 

“Now…” Tony’s eyebrows raised in alarm, “That’s a scary thought.”

Peter rolled his eyes, “You wanna see how they work, Morgs?”

“Yes, please!”

“So…” Peter held out his arm, “Hold your hand out, like this.” Morgan mimicked his stance, “That’s it.” Peter hovered his fingers over the trigger, “And then, you press this button, in the middle…” He pressed down, and a web grenade flew into the centre of the lake, “Now, you try.”

Morgan laughed, excitedly; she pushed the button and a web grenade shot out, landing a little short of where Peter’s had, “Wow!”

“It’s fun, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Morgan nodded enthusiastically, “But...I don’t wanna be a superhero when I grow up.” 

“No?” 

“No, I want to be an astronaut. I wanna go into space!” She flew her arms out to emphasise her joyousness, “Like Nebby and Auntie Carol!”

“An astronaut, hey?” Peter grinned, he reached forward brushing her hair out of her eyes, “That sounds amazing, munchkin.” 

“You’ve been to space, haven’t you?” 

Peter felt his stomach give out, it was a seemingly innocent and simple question, which contrasted against the heaviness of the weighted answer. 

Peter died in space. Well, he blipped. That was a ridiculous name for it but it’s what the world went for. He disappeared from reality for five years and came back to a changed world, one where he suddenly had a little sister, who he loved with all his heart straight away. 

Also, America had elected their first female president, and Apple Inc went bankrupt and was brought out by Stark Industries. Peter didn’t know why they were the two things that came to mind first, but to be fair, he was trying to suppress a looming panic attack.

“Kid?” Tony cautiously brushed his fingers against Peter’s hand, “You okay?”

“I’m good.” Peter breathed, “Yeah, Morgs, I’ve been to space before.”

“Daddy doesn’t talk about it that much.” Morgan said, unsurely, “That’s where you…”

Peter let out a hesitant breath, he didn’t want Morgan to tread on glass when it came to talking about the blip. She had a right to be curious. She’d been born into an empty world and then one day, those they mourned, came back. She met Peter, who until then had been a fairytale. A story that helped her sleep at night. He was part of her life now, and as fantastical as that was, it was confusing for someone so young. She grew up thinking that her big brother had died, and she would never get the chance to meet him. The snap gave her a warped view of what death was, and she, and many others her age had to be taught the difference between people who die and those who had blipped.

“It’s okay.” He moved away from the bank, and knelt in front of her, taking her hands, “Space is where I blipped, it was very scary but Dad was there and he made me feel safe.” Tony jumped to his feet and stifled a cry as he looked away from the pair. Peter moved his trembling hand and brushed Morgan's cheek, “Space was pretty cool though, and you’d love it.”

“You won’t... blip again, will you?”

“No.” He shook his head, “You don’t have to worry, Morgs.” He pressed a kiss against her forehead, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The hairs on Peter’s arm stood on end, he bounced to his feet and took Morgan’s hand.

In the distance, he could hear the familiar hum of a Quinjet. It got louder as it flew closer, casting a shadow over them as it circled, trying to find the right space to touch down.

“Who is that?” Peter shouted to Tony, over the chaos, “Are you expecting someone?”

“No.” Tony shook his head, he squinted to get a better look, “Shit.”

He twirled on his heel and hurried to their sides. With shaking hands, he grabbed Peter’s wrist and tore off the singular web-shooter. He did the same, taking the other one from Morgan. He frantically looked around as he was looking for somewhere to hide them, he shot Peter a sympathetic look as he tossed them into the lake. 

Peter’s eyes widened in shock and bemusement, “Hey!”

“We can fish them out later.” Tony’s throat cracked, “You have to trust me.” He got down on his knees, grabbing Peter’s arm, and pressing his free hand against Morgan’s cheek, “Don’t say anything about Spider-Man, okay?” 

“Okay.” They replied simultaneously.

The Quinjet landed and the deafening sound of the engines died down. 

Peter was more than confused, and he needed answers.  Whoever this was, couldn’t know that he was Spider-Man.  Whoever this was, scared Tony.

The ramp dropped down and three men descended down. One of which, Peter recognized immediately. General Thaddeus Ross. The man who hated the Avengers and everything they stood for. Tony had worked with him in the past because he was obliged to, during the Accords dilemma. Tony agreed with the Accords, so did Peter, but Ross, well he was a separate issue.

“Stay here,” Tony told them, as he moved forward, closing the gap between him and Ross.

Morgan grabbed Peter’s leg and hid behind it, “It’s okay, Morgs.”  “Ross!” Tony put up a bravado as he skipped over, “It’s nice of you to drop by!” He gestured his hand back, “But, could you come back sometime--” “Let’s skip the formalities, Stark.” Ross snapped, “I’m not here for a catch-up.” “Oh, I thought you’d missed me.”  Peter took an unconscious step back, pulling Morgan with him when Ross’ two goons started to walk towards them.

“Wait….” Tony turned around, panicked, “Where are you going?” He sprinted over, “Hey, hey, hey--” Putting himself between the goons and his kids, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  “Games over, Stark.” Ross hissed as he stepped closer, “We know.” “Know what?” Tony spat, as he held out his arms, shielding Peter and Morgan, “That I’m a retired man having a picnic with my kids? Because that’s exactly what I’m doing.” “Don’t play dumb, Stark, it doesn’t suit you.” Ross scolded, “Parker is not your kid.” Indescribable anger crossed Tony’s face, he leaned forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with Ross, up in the face, “Say that again…” He raged, “I dare you.” “Spider-Man can’t hide behind you anymore.” “Spider-Man isn’t here, you’re stuck with me.” Tony threatened, “And anyway, he’s under my protection. Those special measures were implemented by King T’Challa himself...” Peter remembered when he was added to the Accords back in 2017, it allowed him to keep being Spider-Man, with a secret identity. He was under Tony’s safety net, which terrifyingly meant his mentor was responsible for every action he made. “Your ridiculously special measures have been overruled.” Ross sneered, “Parker doesn’t need protection. Not when he can bench over three-thousand tonnes. He’s inhuman and has powers he doesn’t understand. That makes him a threat.” “A threat?” Tony barked a false laugh, “From where I stand, that’s you.”  “We can do this the easy way…” Ross offered, “Or the hard way, Stark.” Peter huffed, and rolled his eyes, that was almost too cliché.  “I’m not letting you take my kid.” Ross nodded, “Hard way then.” Peter’s stomach lunged and he held out his hand, “Tony!” Ross pressed a device against Tony’s neck, shocking him. Tony cried out as he collapsed to his knees. “Dad--!” Morgan cried as Peter screamed out, “Tony!” “D...on’t…” Tony gasped out, as he clutched his chest, “Yo..u da..re…” Ross nodded his head forward, and his goons moved, to take Peter. Peter had two choices, let them take him or fight back. The latter was dangerous because if he lashed out, Morgan was in the firing line. He would also prove Ross right. That he was a threat, something to be feared.  His throat tightened, as he loosened his hold on Morgan, stepping away, leaving her standing alone. She stared up at him, with bloodshot eyes, “Petey..” She tried to grab his jacket but he moved away, shaking his head. “Kid…” Tony cried out, trying to move, “No…”  One of the men wrapped a strong arm around Peter’s front and pulled him away. “No!” Morgan stood her ground, storming forward; she repeatedly kicked the man in the shin, while punching his arm wrapped around Peter’s stomach, “Let go!” She tried to pry his fingers back, “Get off him!” The other man advanced, grabbing Morgan’s wrist, he forcefully pulled her back. Peter saw red, and he dug his heels into the dirt, “Don’t touch her.” Ross’ eyes glistened, he smirked, “Was that a threat, Parker?” Morgan tried to break free, “Let him go!” Peter knew he’d regret it but screw it, they were hurting his sister. He lifted his legs and elbowed his capturer in the face, knocking him off-kilter. He launched forward, punching the other assailant in the face, which freed Morgan from his grasp. Peter crouched down, taking her arm. They didn’t have much time, “It’s okay.” “Petey…” She cried. He kissed her temple, as one of the men grabbed him by his shoulders, dragging him away from her, “I love you!”  Tony leapt to his feet, he faltered, weak. Peter was sure he wasn’t meant to be on his feet, but he managed to fight back the pain, “Peter!” “Tony!” Tony charged towards them, grabbing hold of Peter’s arm, he leaned in, close, “Don’t be scared…” The other goon locked his arm around Tony, trying to pull him away, “I’ll get you out... I promise.” Something pricked Peter’s neck and darkness swallowed him whole.

--------------------------

Peter believed Tony’s promise. Tony had never let him down before and he wasn’t going to start now.  It had been twenty-six days. Almost a month in hell. He was in the R.A.F.T, he recognized it from Tony’s haunting descriptions. He was the only prisoner in his section. The other cells were empty. He couldn’t use his powers to break free because there was something built into the walls that dampened them. He wouldn’t try and escape, he knew his family, the people he loved, were doing everything they could to get him out. He knew that Tony hadn’t slept in weeks.  May and Pepper would act strong, and level-headed, but would end up calling each other out for it. Happy and Rhodey would be the ones who acted head-strong and got their hands dirty where they could, but they were probably as equally as concerned.  He expected that in her confusion and worry, Morgan would latch onto Ned and MJ, and vice versa. Peter hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone since he was dragged away from Tony and Morgan. The only human contact he got were the three meals posted through his door each day, but even then, he only saw their hands.  He’d never realised how those with powers were treated until now. He technically wasn’t inhuman but he understood them, they didn’t choose their powers and neither did he, so why were people like him, who were trying to do the right thing with abilities they didn’t want, treated like cattle?’ He wanted to get out.  Most days, he was a panic attack wrapped in a pale blue jail uniform. And then others, he just sat there, counting down the hours because Tony was coming, he knew he was. “Where is he?” Peter was curled in the corner of his cell, cuddling his knees to his chest. Due to his imprisoners not understanding his super metabolism, he’d lost a considerable amount of weight, he was vulnerable to every element.  He was cold, all the time.  He struggled to string a sentence together with falling victim to a violent coughing fit.  He couldn’t stop his hands from trembling. Sounds, like feet scraping across the floor above, were somehow distant and up close, all at the same time.  His powers were unreliable due to the dampeners, but he’d never heard a voice before. Not until today. “WHERE IS HE?!”  Peter sat up, he cleared his pained throat with a forced cough, “Tony…” He rasped as he stumbled out of his seat and limped to the cell door, “Tony!” He smashed his fist against the glass, “Tony!”   “Mr. Stark, we are so…” A new frantic voice called. “Cut the bullshit!” Tony screamed, “Where is my kid?” “Tony…” Peter sobbed, kicking and punching the glass, feebly, as he had no strength left to use, “Tony....” He flipped around, looking at the security camera in the corner, “Let me out, I know you can hear me!” He hit the door with his shoulder, “Let me out…” “Peter!” Tony’s voice was getting closer. Peter could hear his footsteps closing in. Peter pressed his head against the glass as he made as much noise as he could, like a toddler throwing a tantrum, but he didn’t care, he needed Tony to hear him, “Tony!” Tony burst into the room, desperately searching each cell for Peter. The time spent apart had aged him, he had patches of grey hair, his shoulders were slumped, and the skin under his eyes was bruised, from all his sleepless nights. Like Peter, he looked as if he could keel over at any given second.  Peter’s eyes widened in shock when he saw Tony, he punched the door, “Tony!” Tony stopped in his tracks, “Kid?” He uttered, he beelined for his cell, and started to pull on the handle, it didn’t budge. He turned, to the man who’d entered alongside him, “Open this fucking door, right now!” Peter heard a faint click when the door was unlocked, Tony yanked it open, almost tearing it off its hinges, “Tony--” He sobbed as he collapsed into his open arms.  “Oh, okay, okay.” Tony gently guided him down to his knees and held him close in his arms, “I got you. I’m so sorry…” “Mr. Stark?” The unknown man said warily. “I’m getting this place shut down.” Tony said through gritted teeth, “Do you hear me?!”   “Yes, sir.” Tony ran a hand down Peter’s back, and turned his head back, “Did you even feed him? The kid’s all skin and bone!” “Yes, yes...of course.” “Fast…” Peter muttered into Tony’s shoulder, “..Meta..liosim.”  Tony pressed a kiss against his cheek as he got up onto his feet, Peter followed with him, gripping onto his forearms as tightly as he could, “Let’s get you out of here, kid.” Peter fell forward, boneless, nestling his head against Tony’s collarbone, “Hey, hey..” Tony scooped Peter into his arms like he’d usually do with Morgan, “I got you.” “Sorry,” Peter mumbled sleepily. “Don’t sweat it.” Tony eased as he walked out of the room. Peter made himself as small as he possibly could in his arms as they headed out of the R.A.F.T towards the helipad. Tony sat Peter in the corner and took a seat next to him. Peter tucked his head on his chest, while Tony pulled him close, getting him safe. “What happened? I thought..” Peter asked, “...I thought I was allowed to be Spider-Man.” “You are, you always will be, kid.” Tony muttered softly, “The Agreement was drawn up way back in 2017, the one that makes me responsible and liable for your actions. You remember that?” “Yeah.” “This...was my fault.” Tony blurted, Peter sniffled as he shook his head, “Ross did this to spite me. You see, when he took you, he was about two weeks away from being fired, partly because of a formal complaint that I filed against him. He caught wind of that... and wanted me to retract what I’d said. So…” Peter blinked away his tears, “He took me.” “He made it look legal..too. He has people on the inside, you see?” Tony sighed, “They found a stupid flaw in the Accords, and he took advantage. You were gone for five years, kid.” His throat cracked, and he locked his fingers around Peter’s wrist, “Which means all the dates were messed up on the agreement, that gave him a loophole that he needed to imprison you here.” “Oh.” Tony brushed his fingers through Peter’s unruly curls, “He was still in the wrong though. He won't do this again...” His voice wavered, “ It took us so long to get you out because we had to prove that he was guilty. I was gonna break you out but apparently, that would have made matters worse.” “It’s okay.” Peter reassured him, “You’re here.” “I should have been here sooner.” “Not your fault.” Peter settled into Tony’s grasp as the helicopter started to take flight, “Where are we going?” “Home.” Tony answered, “We're going home."

You can follow this month of scheduled Iron Dad Angst on AO3

[oct0lightsquare]

So I was watching Jessie the other day

And I internally just realized something

Most of the time we see the Ross family have an issue, it’s either Luke, Zuri, or Ravi.

Heck, even Jessie or Bertram have a moment or two that involve themselves having a family comforting

But most of the times we see Emma have an emotional take down, it’s either used as a joke or not taken seriously.

For example, In Bunk’D there was an episode that involved Emma getting jealous over Xander and Lu.

However, instead of them all have a general conversation about this, Xander and Lu decide to go to the dance and dance with one another and Ravi only makes the situation worse by stating how well Xander and Lu go together.

I understand in that episode Emma acted very possessive for no reason, and that was wrong on her part since a relationship requires trust and honesty, but Xander, Lu and Ravi have no innocent part in this. In the episode, Xander claimed that he wasn’t going to the dance if Emma decided to completely ignore the situation. However, in the next few scenes we see him at the dance giving a speech about relationships to a group of junior campers. In the next scene we soon see Lu and Xander dancing together, chatting about what would happen if they were to follow into a relationship, and soon almost missing one another before they decide against it once more. Along with this, it’s shown that Emma is watching over the two as they dance to the music, trying to get her point of view across to Ravi. But Ravi, mostly being so caught up in the dance itself, says that it’s her fault - and let’s face it, it mostly is - that this situation happened. In retaliation, she dumps sauce over his head and walks away.

I understand Emma and her reasons. I understand that the situation with her becoming Jealous and Envious over the CPR dummy scene was her overreacting and taking things in the wrong sense of fashion. It was wrong of her to make assumptions and take Lu for a traitor and Xander for a cheater. But if you look back into Emma’s past - and trust me, it’s worth it - could you really blame her for this occurring?

With the episode transpiring, it’s clear that Emma could have most likely developed trust issues. This could have been developed over the time of her small relationships, with her constantly dating bad and disobedient boys, and soon seeing the true sides to them by the end of the episode. However, instead of her getting some sort of talk to her (minus the scenes where she is talked about it by Jessie) she’s either grounded or laughed at.

Lu and Xander doing the CPR training could have caused a lot of memories for Emma to produce. She could have thought that Xander was cheating on her.

“But Xander is loving and careful with Emma! Much more careful than the other guys that Emma has dated!” I hear you say. And I agree, Xander is much more tender and kindhearted than the previous boyfriends that Emma has encountered. However, no matter how sweet Xander could be, it can’t just erase every relationship Emma previously had. Emma experienced emotional effects from the old dates she had in the past. She trusted the relationships she had in the past, but each relationship she experienced had blew up in her face and she ended up single once again.

This hasn’t changed anything. Emma still has some of her teenage personality in Bunk’D, she still feels as though Xander may not feel the same and that was an issue in the beginning of the series. She felt as though her relationship with Xander was slipping, and with Lu and Xander being best friends Emma could easily assume they could develop a relationship over their bonds from previous friendships.

Now the cheating experience, that was too far. Emma made a wrong choice with the cheating and believing Xander would do something as far as lying and cheating on her with her best friend. That was mostly her lesson learned from the episode (well not “learned”, she still acted possessive when the girl eyed Xander).

But Emma having trust issues doesn’t seem too far off for me.

Another example would be in Jessie, where Emma and Ravi both have trouble with Luke and Zuri stealing their identity. In the previous episodes and the series itself it was clear that Emma would portray the fashionable but slightly unintelligent older sister, and Zuri would portray the sassy, prankster and troublesome sister. With Zuri unintentionally stealing Emma’s identity, it could cause some self-purpose problems for Emma. Emma’s main dream when she grew up was to become an inspiring fashion designer, we all understand that. But with Zuri gaining the attention and fame needed to achieve that dream, it is mostly likely Emma will have some problems with her identity. If Zuri is a fashion designer soon, what will she be? Her purpose was gone, taken from her so easily that she could hardly believed it whe it first happened. That was her dream, and Zuri stole it. But we all again - including myself - have brushed it off as Emma once again being dramatic and Zuri just being misunderstood.

Even I have brushed off Emma’s emotions. The only one that has truly understood Emma’s feelings were Jessie and even Bertram. Jessie helped Emma with her social studies project and even was able to help her parents come and see her for her first project. Heck that could even explain why she was so upset to see Jessie leave. She was afraid of Jessie forgetting her, and that’s why Jessie brought up the former social studies project.

Bertram helped Emma a lot of times; Helped her with the play as she let him play a part that he would have enjoyed to play as he was younger, he helped her with her audition by helping with her vocal strategies, and even allowing himself to watch the same reality cooking shows as they both share a trait of design and perfection.

Without those two, along with her parents, Emma’s emotions are mostly ignored during the series of Jessie and eventually Bunk’d. Emma could have a serious depression disorder or something else, however the rest of the Ross family is allowed to have their problems fixed while Emma isn’t allowed to have a problem as she is seen as “perfect.”

What I want? I just want to see the real side of Emma. The Emma behind the make up and smiles and “dumb blonde” foreplay. I want to see Emma vulnerable, and for once I want one of the Ross kids beside Ravi and even Maybelle help her with these issues.

Also, I would absolutely adore to see Maybelle and Emma date sometime. It one of my favorite ships is the show, since they seem to have a great relationship. It’s sad that we only got to see Maybelle for a short time before she got seemingly replaced by Lu.

And if we don’t see Emma and Maybelle reunite, then it’s fine. I just wanna see Maybelle again. I want to see Maybelle be the one to help Emma through her seemingly depression. She always has. I would even be satisfied to see them have a sisterly relationship, that would cheer me up.

If I missed some scenes or misinterpreted Emma’s or any other character’s emotions please let me know. I just want to point this out.

[yasbxxgie]

Traveling While Black: behind the eye-opening VR documentary on racism in America In the Emmy-nominated virtual reality project, viewers are given an immersive historical experience on the depressingly topical dangers of being black in America

The theatre has luxurious red velvet upholstered seats, grand ceilings and gilded trimmings. The rows of chairs stretch back into the ostensible blackness, with light beaming from the projector room. Ahead, archival footage of stylish black travelers pack the screen as an unseen narrator discusses the hardships of mid-20th-century black travel. Enabled by modern technology but trapped by racist social convention, their trips were eventually greatly eased by the publication of the Green Book, which listed safe spaces for black people to sleep, eat and replenish.

A car gradually appears next to the stage in black and white and a Green Book institution, Washington DC’s Ben’s Chili Bowl, comes into view. The seats have dissipated into a silent, empty U Street. For the next 20 minutes, the viewer will journey through the traumatic stories lent to Emmy-nominated virtual reality documentary Traveling While Black, which discusses the agony and trepidation of a people moving through a country that has not fully accepted them.

Traveling While Black is the first virtual reality project by Oscar-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams, in collaboration with virtual reality studio Felix and Paul Studios. Glued together by the deep terror of racism, the documentary relies on a collection of interviews and poetic cinematic recreations to tell the harrowing tale of the danger that comes with having black skin.

Originally developed from a play as a multimedia project, someone suggested it might take better life as virtual reality project. Even so, its initial development was rocky. “It was tough figuring out the landscape because everything is so new,” Williams said. “At one point, this piece was going to be animated. At one point, we wrote a script and were talking to actors...”

But all parties agree that the story works best told through documentary film-making. “Documentaries are a lot more immediately mature as a medium of virtual reality, as a genre, as a format than fiction. We saw that this was too sensitive of a shoot to be experimenting with,” said Paul Raphael of Felix and Paul Studios. “We really wanted to do the material justice. It’s not the kind of subject you want to approach and not be respectful of.”

In the documentary, the aforementioned Ben’s Chili Bowl acts as a heartbeat of black DC, presenting itself as a central location for black travelers and locals alike. The virtual experience elucidates the concept and reality of an enduring safe space, too often stripped from black citizens.

Virginia Ali, the owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl, relays the history of the building as a black space, an old copy of the printed Green Book resting on the table of the booth before her. Ben’s Chili Bowl is the third iteration of the space, she says, originating as a silent movie theatre, then a pool hall, and finally, into the restaurant and institution where Barack Obama once visited for their famous half-smoke.

“From the very day that we opened, until the current time, it’s still a safe haven for people,” she asserts gently. To Williams, Ben’s was a natural choice to set a documentary. Ben’s encapsulates the combination of black ease and discomfort alike. “We wanted to basically take people back to the time when they needed the Green Book and they needed spaces like that. We wanted to connect that to the present because we still need spaces like that to show how much hasn’t changed.”

In the documentary, like in the lives of black Americans, there is nowhere to turn away from the horrors of racism. It besieges the viewer in its inescapable cage.

“If you’re not African American, you get to go into a space and be part of a conversation that you probably normally would not be privy to. If you are black, you get to delve deep into that inner trauma that we all carry with us in America as black people. I think that’s really powerful in the way that 2D storytelling can’t provide,” Williams said.

Raphael agreed, saying: “In virtual reality, you get to actually feel like they are there in front of you, much more strongly than by watching them on a flat two-dimensional rectangular screen. So that really changes how receptive you are to anything that is presented to you.”

But he admits its all-encompassing nature also poses a challenge. “[It] also means you have to recalibrate how you tell the story and what you present to the viewer. You could actually overwhelm a viewer very easily and have them shut down,” Raphael explains. “So it’s a very interesting and beautiful medium to work with. You need to be careful with it, but when you do it right, you can affect people in a way that I think is out of reach for cinema.”

The experience allows for the past and present to be presented in juxtaposition, merging to validate one eery conclusion: the problems of the past have not subsided. Former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist Courtland Cox contends in the documentary: “The assumption is that, at some time, it stopped. And that’s not the case. It never stopped.”

The creator of the Green Book, Victor Green, once said that if the guide went out of print, black people would have reached the proverbial mountaintop of equal opportunity. Traveling While Black directly challenges that. “It’s different, but we are still in danger as black people when we step outside of our doors,” Williams said. “I could be walking down the street in my own neighborhood and be killed.”

Indeed, the fears aren’t exclusively relegated to the bus or the train or even distant travel, says Williams. The documentary highlights one such example: the tragic extrajudicial murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, told through his reticent mother, Samaria, who describes the day for the first time to an audience inside the restaurant.

She was at home, when, only a short distance from his Cleveland home, the officers shot her child within seconds of their arrival on scene. He was unarmed. The video of the entire police encounter only takes a few seconds, wherein the viewer is whisked back to the movie theatre, ushering a sense of disbelief and removal from the horror on screen. When the viewer returns to the booth where Samaria is still seated, several of the patrons and servers are in tears.

“I will never get that vision out of my head,” she laments, telling the somber yet captive audience how she was restrained from being with her child during his final moments by the same force that took his life. Fiddling with her napkin nervously, she continues: “I wasn’t finished raising him. I wasn’t finished nourishing him and America robbed me.” When asked what the American dream is to her, she replies: “A nightmare. Especially if you black.”

“I wonder, when does it end?” Sandra Butler-Truesdale, a fifth-generation DC resident, ponders aloud in the experience.

It’s the kind of question Williams wants the viewers to ask after the experience. He understands the material will not carry the same weight to different groups but does believe in its power to start an honest conversation.

“I think that if you are not a person of color and you watch this film, you walk away transformed. You walk away [and] you feel the sort of empathy and the pain really that black people carry with them in a country that hasn’t confronted the reality of racism, in fact, in a country where racism is on the rise … As a black person, I want you to walk away and want you to have open and honest conversations with people in your community about that trauma. It’s like therapy. We need to talk about it.”

[youtu.be]

Photographs:

Traveling While Black, a virtual reality documentary, discusses the agony and trepidation of a people moving through a country that has not fully accepted them

Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington DC acts as a safe space for black travelers and locals alike

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Black Panther (2018)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, nine times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Six (40% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three (though it’s worth reminding that this rating is based on the positivity of the content in relation to the female characters, not in general - there’s some real top-shelf content in here, otherwise. Still a very happy three for the ladies anyway, for that matter).

General Film Quality:

High-end. The commitment to nuanced storytelling is impeccable, grappling with all angles of a complex hypothetical far better than could have been anticipated. This is a movie which never loses sight of its own importance, while also never getting too bogged down in it to be entertaining. Earns every ounce of the hype.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Nakia gives her condolences to the Queen Mother. The Queen chastises Shuri. Nakia compliments Okoye’s wig. Nakia negotiates entrance to the club with Sophia. Nakia and Okoye conflict over loyalties. Nakia passes with the Queen Mother after Killmonger takes over, twice. Shuri and Nakia go into battle. They pass together later.

Female characters:

Okoye.

Nakia.

The Queen Mother (technically not a name, but I’m allowing it as a title).

Shuri.

Sophia.

Ayo.

Male characters:

Erik ‘Killmoger’ Stevens/N’Jadaka.

N’Jobu.

Zuri.

T’Chaka.

T’Challa.

Ulysses Klaue.

M’Baku.

W’Kabi.

Everett Ross.

OTHER NOTES:

I’m not sure if T’Challa ruining Nakia’s anti-HUMAN TRAFFICKING mission because he wants her around for emotional support is a very endearing intro for his character in this film...I mean, sure, they rescue the people in the convoy, but presumably there was more to the mission (otherwise Nakia wouldn’t complain that it was ruined), and T’Challa prioritises his feelings over both Nakia’s work, and the lives of all the people it effects. Coulda avoided the negative implications there with just a little fine-tuning in the dialogue.

“Nah, I’m just feelin’ it.” Michael B Jordan has such a great energy about him; he’s very, very convincing, in a role which could have broken the film if it were poorly cast.

But you know what? I fucking LOVE M’Baku, he’s my personal fave for the movie. That presence. This is an excruciatingly well-cast film (among other virtues).

I’m Hella into that Lion King vibe when communing with the spirit realm, too.

Erik shoots his unnamed girlfriend for nothing more than the drama of it, and that is not one of this film’s virtues.

Shuri calling Ross ‘coloniser’ is just...so good. There’s a lot about this film that is a reclamation, in big and obvious in-text ways, but there are also these kinds of little impactful choices which contextualise Wakanda’s relationship to the world and its history, and that kind of detailing is the difference between posturing, and playing for real.

The music in this movie? Also great. Traditional African and modern African-American, representing the interweave of themes and ideologies in-story? Fucking gold. They did not skimp on details in putting this movie together with intelligent design, and I am Hella into it.

M’Baku just fucking BARKING at Ross when he dares speak before him is the highlight of the whole film. It’s perfect. 

A friend of mine has suggested that there must be a missing scene or two in this movie, wherein the Queen Mother convinces M’Baku to go into battle after all, since as-is he just kinda...changes his mind off-screen and she serves no narrative purpose at all. It’s unfortunate such a linking scene is missing, as it would have significantly enhanced both characters and helped to emotionally underpin the final act of the film, which is comparatively weak. 

But anyway, M’Baku is my best dude in this movie. I love a huge man in a grass skirt.

The whole idea that W’Kabi and Okoye have a relationship at all is kinda nonexistent; we wouldn’t know about it at all if she hadn’t called him ‘my love’ that one time. Coulda beefed that up better, i.e. at all.

“Bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew that death was better than bondage.” Michael B Jordan delivered every aspect of this character with such raw power and sincerity, y’all. He hits it straight home.

It goes without saying that there was a lot of pressure for this film to be good: a big-budget superhero action movie, part of the most lucrative cinema franchise in the world right now, taking on an afro-futuristic setting with an almost exclusively black cast? The potential for Black Panther to come off as little more than lip service paid to representation, ‘too PC’, lacking the guts to acknowledge the breadth of the racism that inevitably informs it, perhaps even falling dangerously toward racist cliches of its own...there is no other film of its kind, and as such, Black Panther could not escape being judged as more than an individual story on its own, as a representation of an entire continent’s worth of people and culture and what they could bring to an industry which has made an aggressive point of shutting them out in the past. The pressure was well and truly on to provide not only financial success put also critical acclaim, and boy oh boy, did they rise to the occasion or what?

The centrepiece of Black Panther’s success is Michael B Jordan as Erik Killmonger, striking a precise balance between the heat of well-deserved fury, and the chilling calculation of his revenge. Killmonger’s rhetoric is compelling, and it is the meeting point of the film’s threads, of Wakandan tradition, of the country’s privilege in the midst of colonial oppression and the dire morality of its secrecy, of the call of the wider world and the determining of one’s place within it. It’s vitally important that Killmonger makes sense, right up until he doesn’t - a good villain should always feel like someone you could almost follow, if only they weren’t taking things that one step too far - narratively, this is in an important pitch, but it’s also vital for the context of the viewing audience, the acknowledgement and the validation of that rage at injustice (without which, the film would come off as pandering to white guilt), but without the promotion of violent eye-for-an-eye solutions. Killmonger’s anger is never condemned, only the actions he perpetrates in the name of that anger; the viewer is forced to acknowledge the reality that made Killmonger what he is, but without being encouraged to forgive; only to understand.

I am hardly the first to observe that it is Nakia, not T’Challa, who represents the foil to Killmonger’s ideology, recognising and stirring to action at the injustice’s wrought upon the African people, but seeing in Wakanda the potential to offer unprecedented assistance rather than the opportunity for the oppressed to become the oppressor. The film is populated with character counter-balances, and it validates each perspective (while also illuminating shortcomings) to enhance the overall narrative, rather than equivocating too strenuously to make any point; Nakia values people like Okoye values her country, and while Nakia is right that blind patriotism fails the country if it allows tyranny, the strength of Okoye’s conviction is exactly what inspires the loyalty of those who follow her in the protection of Wakandan values; while Shuri ‘scoffs at tradition’ and leans entirely on the unending machine of technological progress, M’Baku and his people are safeguarding traditional practices and keeping ancient knowledge alive, which saves T’Challa when there’s no tech around - by the same token, without the protective blanket of technological progress, the Jabari would not be free to live as they do. There is good sense in the perspective which every character brings, and all of them are required in symbiosis to achieve a full picture of cultural identity. 

In that broad conversation of identity and place in the world, if there’s one weak link, it’s the Black Panther himself, T’Challa. Not that he’s a weak character or that Chadwick Boseman is a weak actor - it’s just that he’s being thoroughly outplayed by all around him. It’s a good thing in regards to how well-cast the movie is and how it fleshes out its supporting players (in spite of the missing pieces pointed out in the notes above); in an overall-lesser film, the lead being the least compelling character - and especially with such a powerfully-constructed antagonist opposite him - could be a crippling flaw, but as-is Black Panther is pulling out enough stops to get away with having an under-sold Black Panther at its head. That, really, is a testament to the power of the story, and the work being done by everyone involved to tell the tale with tact, with dynamism, with all the colour and flavour the white-washed film industry has been denying all this time. We could talk about its flaws, sure, but there doesn’t seem to be much point - none of them are fatal, none are even particularly egregious, and the achievements of the movie far outweigh any quality blips along the way. Black Panther is a measured, sensitive triumph, and there’s a part of me that - in the best of ways - almost forgets that I’m watching a Marvel movie, a cash-grab - sure, they want to make money out of it, but this feels above all like a passion project. Passion like this, so fully-realised, I am not inclined to fault.

[relationshipsandpolitics]

How Much Money is Actually Too Much?

I sometimes think going after billionaires is too easy.  They are too easy to skewer.  Their wealth is so incredibly obscene that it’s almost too easy an argument to make that they need to be taxed more, like way more.  When I read tweets about how Jeff Bezos makes nearly $4.5 million an hour, it’s too easy to throw my hands in the air in disgust.  

And I often wonder if that’s the exact point.   Because so often this narrative of “tax the billionaires” is put forth most vociferously by people and organizations that have a strong interest in keeping the spotlight focused on the billionaires and not, say, the millionaires.

We don’t talk too much about them.  The ones that merely have $100 million in the bank, or even $10 million sitting in a nice hedge fund account.  Because the millionaires are more among us, I suppose.  They are on our televisions.  They seem nice and friendly.  They are the heads of our moderate-sized companies, the men (yes, its always white fifty-year old men) who say hi to us in the hall or buy us all breakfast to say thanks for putting in all those extra hours.  The millionaire seems a bit more real.  Perhaps this is by design, so we don’t take their money, too.

Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax of 2% on wealth above $50 million and an extra 1% on wealth above a billion.  This is a good idea.  But where did $50 million come from?  Is $50 million that policy-wonk cutoff of obscene wealth.  If so, it’s certainly better than $1 billion.  But is even that threshold too high.  We probably would all agree that having a million dollars in the bank makes you rich but not obscenely rich.  But $10 million? That’s a separate discussion.  Sure, buying a yacht is a moral crime.  But why is that not ok but buying a $1,500 Prada handbag perfectly fine?

It’s weird how we look at displays of wealth and assign judgement on certain spending and not others.  Because honestly, it’s tough to justify buying the latest BMW when people can’t afford insulin. But we all do it without much thought, and then shake our fists because other people buy private jets. I’m guilty of this.  I just shamed BMW owners, but I have a nice phone that I probably don’t really need. I can be better.  We all can, but when it comes to a reasonable policy, how do we define who is rich?

The current U.S. government tax brackets lump anyone making $510,301 or more into the same category. These people pay 37% of their income above $510,301 to the federal government.   Some people might look at this and scoff at the idea that someone earning tens of millions a year pays the same rate as someone earning only $510,301.  I take a different view.

I see it as the government determining that, while there may be a vast difference between $500,000 and $1 billion, the lifestyle of the billionaire is not substantially different than the lifestyle of the millionaire.   Both have all their basic needs met and then some.  The millionaire likely knows a lot of the same people as the billionaire and probably exerts political influence in the same realm as the billionaire.  If the millionaire wants something completely frivolous, they can afford it, just like the billionaire.   The billionaire could buy a library for Harvard, and the millionaire cannot.  But both can afford to send their kids there, and both attend the same alumni functions.  They go to the same parties, donate to the same politicians, and eat at the same overpriced Vegan fusion restaurants.  There’s a reason you read about celebrities dating tech CEOs or Hedge Fund managers. Because they operate in the same circles.

The government seems to get this better than us.  But what does that mean in terms of policy?   Should a doctor who works crazy hours but makes $500,00 a year get taxed the same as a famous actor who gets the same for a week’s work?  Do we just look at everyone’s bank accounts at the end of the year and take a cut out of any account over $1 million?

No, I think the answer is more nuanced that that.  It’s a moral failing when certain people can make in one day what a teacher takes a year to earn.  But this is a problem I doubt can be solved.  Capitalism is what it is.  We’re never going to be able to pay a teacher or a home health aide as much as a movie star or tech CEO makes because the teacher and health aid do not directly generate revenue like the movie star or CEO does.  I think it’s disgusting that an actor can earn $50,000 a day in signing autographs, but they make that because people are willing to pay them to do so.  Your average person might see the social value in a teacher, but they aren’t ever going to line up to pay them $60 a pop.  

However, it is both a moral and economic failing when a person can work 40 hours a week and not be able to pay for food, rent and health care.  I think that’s solvable.  I do not believe we can provide free health care, affordable housing, and free education just by taxing the billionaires.  I don’t think we get there by expanding that to those with $50 million in the bank, either.   The buy-in to truly provide a necessary standard of living for every person must come from those thus far not considered “part of the problem.”  

If every person in this country could afford a clean and safe place to live, then I couldn’t care less how much money Jeff Bezos had.  If health care was a right and no one died because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor, then Robert Downey Jr should be able to make $100 million for a three-second cameo in Marvel’s Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man spinoff.  If anyone could pursue a college degree without concern for the cost, then I would fully support the Vice President of some consulting firm going to the club and expensing the bottle service and blow to the corporate card.

But to make those things a reality, we need to re-frame the question surrounding money.  We can’t just look at the billionaires as the problem, because then we’ll just be disappointed when taxing them doesn’t get us the things we need.  It’s great when Bill Gates comes around and asks to be taxed more.  But maybe your kid’s pediatrician needs to say that too. Maybe Ross from Friends should speak up about needing to pay more in taxes on the $20 million he earns each year just in residuals, both because its morally suspect to make that much money for not working, and because Ross was the absolute worst!

We chant “Tax the Rich!” in the streets and it sounds good.  But we do an awful job of defining “the rich.”  We need to significantly expand the definition to include those previous thought to be “one of us.”   For they are part of the problem, as good-intentioned as they may be.  And so am I.  I’m not rich in the slightest, but I do well enough to blow money on frivolous purchases here or there.  I’m not spending $1,500 on a handbag, but I’m sure I’ve dropped $100 on things I absolutely didn’t need.  I need to be taxed more, too.  And I’m willing if it’s to get my fellow citizen health care.  But I understand it’s a big lift to ask of people in my situation. They might have kids and expenses that make our lifestyles vastly different.   But we can agree on the top tax bracket.  Soak ‘em.

[blackfreethinkers]

Robert bowers wanted everyone to know why he did it.

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social-media network Gab shortly before allegedly entering the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 and gunning down 11 worshippers. He “wanted all Jews to die,” he declared while he was being treated for his wounds. Invoking the specter of white Americans facing “genocide,” he singled out HIAS, a Jewish American refugee-support group, and accused it of bringing “invaders in that kill our people.” Then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing that Bowers would face federal charges, was unequivocal in his condemnation: “These alleged crimes are incomprehensibly evil and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation.”

The pogrom in Pittsburgh, occurring just days before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, seemed fundamentally un-American to many. Sessions’s denunciation spoke to the reality that most Jews have found a welcome home in the United States. His message also echoed what has become an insistent refrain in the Donald Trump era. Americans want to believe that the surge in white-supremacist violence and recruitment—the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”; the hate crimes whose perpetrators invoke the president’s name as a battle cry—has no roots in U.S. soil, that it is racist zealotry with a foreign pedigree and marginal allure.

The president’s rhetoric about “shithole countries” invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated. Warnings from conservative pundits on Fox News about the existential threat facing a country overrun by immigrants meet with a similar response. “Massive demographic changes,” Laura Ingraham has proclaimed, mean that “the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” in much of the country: Surely this kind of rhetoric reflects mere ignorance. Or it’s just a symptom of partisan anxiety about what those changes may portend for Republicans’ electoral prospects. As for the views and utterances of someone like Congressman Steve King (“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies”), such sentiments are treated as outlandish extremism, best ignored as much as possible.

The concept of “white genocide”—extinction under an onslaught of genetically or culturally inferior nonwhite interlopers—may indeed seem like a fringe conspiracy theory with an alien lineage, the province of neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers. In popular memory, it’s a vestige of a racist ideology that the Greatest Generation did its best to scour from the Earth. History, though, tells a different story. King’s recent question, posed in a New York Times interview, may be appalling: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” But it is apt. “That language” has an American past in need of excavation. Without such an effort, we may fail to appreciate the tenacity of the dogma it expresses, and the difficulty of eradicating it. The president’s rhetoric about “shithole countries” and “invasion” by immigrants invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated.

The seed of Nazism’s ultimate objective—the preservation of a pure white race, uncontaminated by foreign blood—was in fact sown with striking success in the United States. What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of “race suicide” during the immigration scare of the early 20th century. They included wealthy patricians, intellectuals, lawmakers, even several presidents. Perhaps the most important among them was a blue blood with a very impressive mustache, Madison Grant. He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.

Grant’s purportedly scientific argument that the exalted “Nordic” race that had founded America was in peril, and all of modern society’s accomplishments along with it, helped catalyze nativist legislators in Congress to pass comprehensive restrictionist immigration policies in the early 1920s. His book went on to become Adolf Hitler’s “bible,” as the führer wrote to tell him. Grant’s doctrine has since been rejuvenated and rebranded by his ideological descendants as “white genocide” (the term genocide hadn’t yet been coined in Grant’s day). In an introduction to the 2013 edition of another of Grant’s works, the white nationalist Richard Spencer warns that “one possible outcome of the ongoing demographic transformation is a thoroughly miscegenated, and thus homogeneous and ‘assimilated,’ nation, which would have little resemblance to the White America that came before it.” This language is vintage Grant.

Most Americans, however, quickly forgot who Grant was—but not because the country had grappled with his vision’s dangerous appeal and implications. Reflexive recoil was more like it: When Nazism reflected back that vision in grotesque form, wartime denial set in. Jonathan Peter Spiro, a historian and the author of Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (2009), described the backlash to me this way: “Even though the Germans had been directly influenced by Madison Grant and the American eugenics movement, when we fought Germany, because Germany was racist, racism became unacceptable in America. Our enemy was racist; therefore we adopted antiracism as our creed.” Ever since, a strange kind of historical amnesia has obscured the American lineage of this white-nationalist ideology.

Madison grant came from old money. Born in Manhattan seven months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, he attended Yale and then Columbia Law School. He was an outdoorsman and a conservationist, knowledgeable about wildlife and interested in the dangers of extinction, expertise that he soon became intent on applying to humanity. When he opened a law practice on Wall Street in the early 1890s, the wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe was nearing its height. “As he was jostled by Greek ragpickers, Armenian bootblacks, and Jewish carp vendors, it was distressingly obvious to him that the new arrivals did not know this nation’s history or understand its republican form of government,” Spiro writes in his biography.

Jews troubled Grant the most. “The man of the old stock,” he later wrote in The Passing of the Great Race, is being “driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews.” But as the title of his 1916 work indicated, Grant’s fear of dispossession ran wide and deep:

These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name, and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race. Grant was not the first proponent of “race science.” In 1853, across the Atlantic, Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, a French count, first identified the “Aryan” race as “great, noble, and fruitful in the works of man on this earth.” Half a century later, as the eugenics movement gathered force in the U.S., “experts” began dividing white people into distinct races. In 1899, William Z. Ripley, an economist, concluded that Europeans consisted of “three races”: the brave, beautiful, blond “Teutons”; the stocky “Alpines”; and the swarthy “Mediterraneans.” Another leading academic contributor to race science in turn-of-the-century America was a statistician named Francis Walker, who argued in The Atlantic that the new immigrants lacked the pioneer spirit of their predecessors; they were made up of “beaten men from beaten races,” whose offspring were crowding out the fine “native” stock of white people. In 1901 the sociologist Edward A. Ross, who similarly described the new immigrants as “masses of fecund but beaten humanity from the hovels of far Lombardy and Galicia,” coined the term race suicide.

Grant blended Nordic boosterism with fearmongering, and supplied a scholarly veneer for notions many white citizens already wanted to believe. But it was Grant who synthesized these separate strands of thought into one pseudo-scholarly work that changed the course of the nation’s history. In a nod to wartime politics, he referred to Ripley’s “Teutons” as “Nordics,” thereby denying America’s hated World War I rivals exclusive claim to descent from the world’s master race. He singled out Jews as a source of anxiety disproportionate to their numbers, subscribing to a belief that has proved durable. The historian Nell Irvin Painter sums up the race chauvinists’ view in The History of White People (2010): “Jews manipulate the ignorant working masses—whether Alpine, Under-Man, or colored.” In The Passing of the Great Race, the eugenic focus on winnowing out unfit individuals made way for a more sweeping crusade to defend against contagion by inferior races. By Grant’s logic, infection meant obliteration:

The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew. What Grant’s work lacked in scientific rigor, it made up for in canny packaging. He blended Nordic boosterism with fearmongering, and supplied a scholarly veneer for notions many white citizens already wanted to believe. Americans’ gauzy idealism blinded them, he argued, to the reality that newcomers from the Mediterranean and eastern Europe—to say nothing of anyone from Asia or Africa—could never hope to possess the genetic potential innate in the nation’s original Nordic inhabitants, which was the source of the nation’s greatness. Grant gleefully challenged foundational ideas:

We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America “an asylum for the oppressed,” are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all “distinctions of race, creed or color,” the type of native American of Colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo. His thesis found eager converts among the American elite, thanks in no small part to his extensive social connections. The New York Times and The Nation were among the many media outlets that echoed Grant’s reasoning. Teddy Roosevelt, by then out of office, told Grant in 1916 that his book showed “fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail.” In a major speech in Alabama in 1921, President Warren Harding publicly praised one of Grant’s disciples, Lothrop Stoddard, whose book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy offered similar warnings about the destruction of white society by invading dusky hordes. There is “a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference” between the races, Harding told his audience. “Racial amalgamation there cannot be.”

Harding’s vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, found Grant’s thesis equally compelling. “There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend,” Coolidge wrote in a 1921 article in Good Housekeeping.

The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.

Endorsing Grant’s idea that true Americans are of Nordic stock, Coolidge also took up his idea that intermarriage between whites of different “races,” not just between whites and nonwhites, degrades that stock.

Perhaps the most important of Grant’s elite admirers were to be found among members of Congress. Reconstruction struggles; U.S. expansion in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii; high levels of immigration—each had raised the specter of white people losing political power and influence to nonwhite people, or to the wrong kind of white people. On Capitol Hill debate raged, yet Republicans and Democrats were converging on the idea that America was a white man’s country, and must stay that way. The influx of foreigners diluted the nation with inferiors unfit for self-government, many politicians in both parties energetically concurred. The Supreme Court chimed in with decisions in a series of cases, beginning in 1901, that assigned the status of “nationals” rather than “citizens” to colonial newcomers.

A popular myth of American history is that racism is the exclusive province of the South. The truth is that much of the nativist energy in the U.S. came from old-money elites in the Northeast, and was also fueled by labor struggles in the Pacific Northwest, which had stirred a wave of bigotry that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Grant found a congressional ally and champion in Albert Johnson, a Republican representative from Washington. A nativist and union buster, he contacted Grant after reading The Passing of the Great Race. The duo embarked on an ambitious restrictionist agenda.

As the eugenics movement gathered force in the U.S., “experts” began dividing white people into distinct races. In 1917, overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, Congress passed a law that banned immigration not just from Asian but also from Middle Eastern countries and imposed a literacy test on new immigrants. When the Republicans took control of the House in 1919, Johnson became chair of the committee on immigration, “thanks to some shrewd lobbying by the Immigration Restriction League,” Spiro writes. Grant introduced him to a preeminent eugenicist named Harry Laughlin, whom Johnson named the committee’s “expert eugenics agent.” His appointment helped ensure that Grantian concerns about “race suicide” would be a driving force in a quest that culminated, half a decade later, in the Immigration Act of 1924.

Johnson found a patrician ally in Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, who sponsored the 1924 bill in the Senate. A Princeton-educated lawyer, he feared that America was going the way of Rome, where the “inpouring of captives and alien slaves” had caused the empire to sink “into an impotency which made her the prey of every barbarian invader.” This was almost verbatim Grant, whose portrait of Rome’s fall culminated in the lowly immigrants “gradually occupying the country and literally breeding out their former masters.” (His plotline helped him preserve the notion that fair-haired and -skinned people are responsible for all the world’s great achievements: Rome’s original inhabitants were Nordic, but contemporary Italians were descendants of Roman slave races and therefore inferior.)

Grant’s slippery pseudoscience also met with significant resistance. The anthropologist Franz Boas, himself of German Jewish descent, led the way in poking holes in Grantian notions of Nordic superiority, writing in The New Republic in 1917 that “the supposed scientific data on which the author’s conclusions are based are dogmatic assumptions which cannot endure criticism.” Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was struggling mightily to define whiteness in a consistent fashion, an endeavor complicated by the empirical flimsiness of race science. In one case after another, the high court faced the task of essentially tailoring its definition to exclude those whom white elites considered unworthy of full citizenship.

In 1923, when an Indian veteran named Bhagat Singh Thind—who had fought for the U.S. in World War I—came before the justices with the claim of being Caucasian in the scientific sense of the term, and therefore entitled to the privileges of whiteness, they threw up their hands. In a unanimous ruling against Thind (who was ultimately made a citizen in 1936), Justice George Sutherland wrote:

What we now hold is that the words “free white persons” are words of common speech to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word “Caucasian” only as that word is popularly understood.

The justices had unwittingly acknowledged a consistent truth about racism, which is that race is whatever those in power say it is.

As the Immigration Act of 1924 neared passage, some in the restrictionist camp played up Grant’s signature Nordic theme more stridently than others. Addison Smith, a Republican congressman from Idaho, proudly invoked the Scandinavian, English, Irish, and other northern-European immigrants of his district, highlighting that among them were no “ ‘slackers’ of the type to be found in the cities of the East. We have ample room, but no space for such parasites.” Johnson was prepared to be coy in the face of opposition from other legislators—mostly those from districts with large numbers of non-northern European immigrants—who railed against the Nordic-race doctrine. “The fact that it is camouflaged in a maze of statistics,” protested Representative Meyer Jacobstein, a Democrat from New York, “will not protect this Nation from the evil consequences of such an unscientific, un-American, and wicked philosophy.”

“A fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference” exists between the races, President Harding publicly declared. “Racial amalgamation there cannot be.” On the House floor in April 1924, Johnson cagily—but only temporarily—distanced himself from Grant. “As regards the charge … that this committee has started out deliberately to establish a blond race … let me say that such a charge is all in your eye. Your committee is not the author of any of these books on the so-called Nordic race,” he declared. “I insist, my friends, there is neither malice nor hatred in this bill.”

Once passage of the act was assured, however, motives no longer needed disguising. Grant felt his life’s work had come to fruition and, according to Spiro, he concluded, “We have closed the doors just in time to prevent our Nordic population being overrun by the lower races.” Senator Reed announced in a New York Times op-ed, “The racial composition of America at the present time thus is made permanent.” Three years later, in 1927, Johnson held forth in dire but confident tones in a foreword to a book about immigration restriction. “Our capacity to maintain our cherished institutions stands diluted by a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed,” he warned. “The United States is our land … We intend to maintain it so. The day of unalloyed welcome to all peoples, the day of indiscriminate acceptance of all races, has definitely ended.”

“It was america that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations,” Adolf Hitler told The New York Times half a decade later, just one year before his elevation to chancellor in January 1933. Elsewhere he admiringly noted that the U.S. “simply excludes the immigration of certain races. In these respects America already pays obeisance, at least in tentative first steps, to the characteristic völkisch conception of the state.” Hitler and his followers were eager to claim a foreign—American—lineage for the Nazi mission.

In part, this was spin, an attempt to legitimize fascism. But Grant and his fellow pioneers in racist pseudoscience did help the Nazis justify to their own populations, and to other countries’ governments, the mission they were on—as one of Grant’s key accomplices was proud to acknowledge. According to Spiro, Harry Laughlin, the scientific expert on Representative Johnson’s committee, told Grant that the Nazis’ rhetoric sounds “exactly as though spoken by a perfectly good American eugenist,” and wrote that “Hitler should be made honorary member of the Eugenics Research Association.”

He wasn’t, but some of the American eugenicists whose work helped pave the way for the racist immigration laws of the 1920s received recognition in Germany. The Nazis gave Laughlin an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936. Henry Fairfield Osborn, who had written the introduction to The Passing of the Great Race, received one from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in 1934. Leon Whitney, another of Grant’s fellow travelers, evidently received a personal thank-you letter from Hitler after sending the führer a copy of his 1934 book, The Case for Sterilization. In 1939, even after World War II began, Spiro writes, Lothrop Stoddard, whom President Harding had praised in his 1921 diatribe against race-mixing, visited Nazi Germany and later wrote that the Third Reich was “weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.”

What the Nazis “found exciting about the American model didn’t involve just eugenics,” observes James Q. Whitman, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (2017). “It also involved the systematic degradation of Jim Crow, of American deprivation of basic rights of citizenship like voting.” Nazi lawyers carefully studied how the United States, despite its pretense of equal citizenship, had effectively denied that status to those who were not white. They looked at Supreme Court decisions that withheld full citizenship rights from nonwhite subjects in U.S. colonial territories. They examined cases that drew, as Thind’s had, arbitrary but hard lines around who could be considered “white.”

The Nazis reviewed the infamous “one-drop rule,” which defined anyone with any trace of African blood as black, and “found American law on mongrelization too harsh to be embraced by the Third Reich.” At the same time, Heinrich Krieger, whom Whitman describes as “the single most important figure in the Nazi assimilation of American race law,” considered the Fourteenth Amendment a problem: In his view, it codified an abstract ideal of equality at odds with human experience, and with the type of country most Americans wanted to live in.

Grant, emphasizing the American experience in particular, agreed. In The Passing of the Great Race, he had argued that

the view that the Negro slave was an unfortunate cousin of the white man, deeply tanned by the tropic sun and denied the blessings of Christianity and civilization, played no small part with the sentimentalists of the Civil War period, and it has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church do not transform a Negro into a white man. The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment, he believed, had failed to see a greater truth as they made good on the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal: The white man is more equal than the others.

Grant’s final project, Spiro writes, was an effort to organize a hunting expedition with Hermann Goering, the commander in chief of the Nazi air force who went on to become Hitler’s chosen successor. Grant died in May 1937, before the outing was to take place. A year and a half later, Kristallnacht signaled the official beginning of the Holocaust.

America has always grappled with, in the words of the immigration historian John Higham, two “rival principles of national unity.” According to one, the U.S. is the champion of the poor and the dispossessed, a nation that draws its strength from its pluralism. According to the other, America’s greatness is the result of its white and Christian origins, the erosion of which spells doom for the national experiment.

People of both political persuasions like to tell a too-simple story about the course of this battle: World War II showed Americans the evil of racism, which was vanquished in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act brought nonwhites into the American polity for good. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 forever banished the racial definition of American identity embodied in the 1924 immigration bill, forged by Johnson and Reed in their crusade to save Nordic Americans from “race suicide.”

The truth is that the rivalry never ended, and Grantism, despite its swift wartime eclipse, did not become extinct. The Nazis, initially puzzled by U.S. hostility, underestimated the American commitment to democracy. As the Columbia historian Ira Katznelson writes in Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (2013), the South remained hawkish toward Nazi Germany because white supremacists in the U.S. didn’t want to live under a fascist government. What they wanted was a herrenvolk democracy, in which white people were free and full citizens but nonwhites were not.

“It was America that taught us that a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations,” Hitler told The New York Times. The Nazis failed to appreciate the significance of that ideological tension. They saw allegiance to the American creed as a weakness. But U.S. soldiers of all backgrounds and faiths fought to defend it, and demanded that their country live up to it. Their valor helped defeat first the Nazis, and then the American laws that the Nazis had so admired. What the Nazis saw as a weakness turned out to be a strength, and it destroyed them.

Yet historical amnesia, the excision of the memory of how the seed of racism in America blossomed into the Third Reich in Europe, has allowed Grantism to be resurrected with a new name. In the conflict between the Trump administration and its opponents, those rival American principles of exclusion and pluralism confront each other more starkly than they have since Grant’s own time. And the ideology that has gained ground under Trump may well not disappear when Trump does. Grant’s philosophical framework has found new life among extremists at home and abroad, and echoes of his rhetoric can be heard from the Republican base and the conservative media figures the base trusts, as well as—once again—in the highest reaches of government.

The resurrection of race suicide as white genocide can be traced to the white supremacist David Lane, who claimed that “the term ‘racial integration’ is only a euphemism for genocide,” and whose infamous “fourteen words” manifesto, published in the 1990s, distills his credo: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Far-right intellectuals in Europe speak of “the great replacement” of Europeans by nonwhite immigrants and refugees.

In the corridors of American power, Grant’s legacy is evident. Jeff Sessions heartily praised the 1924 immigration law during an interview with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chief. Bannon regularly invokes what has become a cult text among white nationalists, the 1973 dystopian French novel The Camp of the Saints, in which the “white world” is annihilated by mass immigration. Stephen Miller, a former Senate aide to Sessions and now among the president’s top policy advisers, spent years warning from his perch in Sessions’s office that immigration from Muslim countries was a greater threat than immigration from European countries. The president’s stated preference for Scandinavian immigrants over those from Latin America or Africa, and his expressed disdain for the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, are Grantism paraphrased.

That nations make decisions about appropriate levels of immigration is not inherently evil or fascist. Nor does the return of Grantian ideas to mainstream political discourse signal an inevitable march to Holocaust-level crimes against humanity. But to recognize the homegrown historical antecedents of today’s rhetoric is to call attention to certain disturbing assumptions that have come to define the current immigration debate in America—in particular, that intrinsic human worth is rooted in national origin, and that a certain ethnic group has a legitimate claim to permanent political hegemony in the United States. The most benignly intentioned mainstream-media coverage of demographic change in the U.S. has a tendency to portray as justified the fear and anger of white Americans who believe their political power is threatened by immigration—as though the political views of today’s newcomers were determined by genetic inheritance rather than persuasion.

The danger of Grantism, and its implications for both America and the world, is very real. External forces have rarely been the gravest threat to the social order and political foundations of the United States. Rather, the source of greatest danger has been those who would choose white purity over a diverse democracy. When Americans abandon their commitment to pluralism, the world notices, and catastrophe follows.

[monicalorandavis]

Dear Lora

My grandfather wrote a 6-page typed letter to my mother in 1992. His wife, my grandma, my mom’s mom, had died earlier that year. His letter is in response to a letter my mom had written in which her mom visits her in a dream. Below is the transcribed letter in full:

Dear Lora,

Today is the second day of October. Summer of 1992 is history. Even though I am somewhat reluctant to bid farewell to the warm pleasant days of summer, the unmistakable chill in the morning air is convincing enough that fall has arrived. The morning temperature was in the low forties. The warmth of the furnace felt very good. I am, I suppose, prepared for winter (as if it made any difference whether I am prepared or not). Ready or not here it comes. I welcome the coming of winter as I do with the approach of the other three seasons.

This year my garden crop was very productive. I had carrots, turnips, eggplants, corn, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and green beans. Each year with the beginning of the growing season, I make a solemn vow that I am going to limit my crop selection to just a few items. As the year progresses, the urge to plant just one more thing just simply overwhelms me. It’s fun anyway. The thought of putting a seed in the ground, watching it grow and then getting to eat it holds a certain fascination. I sometimes feel that I am a frustrated farmer. Flowers are blooming at their prettiest. It seems that just before their inevitable doom, nature makes a last ditch effort to make them more beautiful than ever. Could this be nature’s way of burning their beauty into our brain so we will be sure to plant them again next season?

I am doing quite well. Apparently all of the vitals are functioning adequately according to the doctor’s report from my last visit. I hope you are taking care of your health. I recall it was during my forties that I began to realize in an abstract way the possibility that I was not immortal and it was just possible that I could become sick just like old folks often does. During my fifties, I took a step further into reality and faced (however reluctantly) that I was indeed going to someday become old just like those other old folks does. Now that I have arrived, I find that in reality this is not at all as bad as I thought it would be.

A quick examination of the available options and alternatives lead one to the acceptance of life with all of its joys as well as its sadnesses. As I write this page I have one ear focused on my television set. Ross Perot is making a speech regarding his decision to run for President or not...From the drift, as I hear it, he seems to be saying that he is going to run...This will be an interesting election year. I am going to vote for Clinton, not that I think he is the best the country is giving us. I don’t know whether my vote will be a vote for Clinton as much as it is a vote against Bush.

It was a pleasure to have received such a long, informative, neat and well-composed letter. Receiving a letter is always a treat. Although we talk by phone a lot, a letter is always something special. I know with your busy schedule with the wife/mother doings, there is little time left for extracurricular things.

You spoke in your letter of Mom visiting you in your dreams recently. Ironically, just prior to receiving your letter, she visited me in a very vivid dream. Usually my dreams are so vague and scattered that it is difficult for me to form a meaningful recollection of the theme or the contents of the dream. And I must add that I do not have frequent dreams of her. I recall hearing from some leader a theory on dreams involving departed loved ones. According to his theory, if that loved one is at peace in their new existence (their new life) then their dream visits will be few but if there is restlessness and discontent visits will be frequent. In this dream, she was radiant, well-dressed and the picture of good health. We were at home together. She was busy cooking and packing in preparation for a trip to your place. I recall asking her about her medication like I always did prior to our trips. She smiled and said “Don’t you remember that I don’t need to take those things anymore? I had an operation and now my liver does the same for my body as the dialysis did. I feel good now.” It was such a pleasant dream. I feel that somewhere out there that she has found peace and contentment. Of course, I shall cherish the memories of all of those wonderful years we spent together. Over the months, the reality of life and death has been drawn into focus. It is strange that a phenomenon as real and predictable as the passing of a loved one could confuse that reality but time is a healing thing and with the passage of time there emerges an emotional balance, a healing process that draws one back into rational acceptance. However altered, there is a sort of life that can be lived and enjoyed. Life is such a precious gift. A constant concern of mine is not so much focused upon my own life, although I try and take reasonable care of myself, but hoping you, my children, and my grandchildren will be healthy and live long, happy lives.

I am really impressed by the neatness and precision of your word-processed letter. It must be a real aid to letter writing and writing in general. It is hard to master? Could a dummy life me use one? I like to write things. A problem I have is after I write and sleep on what I have written, I have an overwhelming urge to change what I have written. Maybe a word processor would cure that ambivalence.

You made a comment concerning your handwriting. Have you ever seen my handwriting? Yours would put mine to shame. My typing is rather shabby too.

I noticed judging from the look of some of my vegetable crop we have already a frost so soon. There are still a few things I have to do in order to prepare for winter. I had a new door installed at the front entrance and the door to the garage. That are is always like an icebox in spite of my attempts to weatherstrip. Hopefully the new carpet and drapes will help some to keep the place warm this winter. I still have some other things in mind to help keep the heating bill under control this winter.

I talked to Alan and Elfriede recently. They are extending an open invitation to visit them this winter for a few days. I might take them up on the offer. I still haven’t made any concrete visit plans. Hopefully the airlines will throw out some good discounts during October. Then we shall see about the holidays. I think we will make our trek to the southland sometime next year. I don’t think Doris is too interested in going. I understand her lack of interest to a certain extent. If that Alyx is interested, I suppose she and I should make the trip. How about Steven?

Did you hear that Erika is pregnant? Due sometimes early 93. Kim is still pending marriage in April I believe. I hear from Noelle occasionally. She seems to be getting along well, working hard as a nurse in a nursing home in Ft. Collins. I question her selection of a boyfriend (but don’t we all?). She never sounds too happy when she calls. He is going to school, a rather nice fellow but seems so immature to take on marital responsibilities. I hope I am wrong.

Election time is drawing near, isn’t it? Ross Perot is toying again with the idea of reentering the race for President. It is alright for him to play politics so long as he don’t do anything that will spoil Clinton’s chances to kick Bush out of office. In my view, the country has been so fouled up under 11 years of Reagan/Bush policies that it will take a decade of pain before the country is straightened out. I think we will be in real serious trouble if Bush manages to sneak by and get reelected.

It is nearing supper time. Three guesses what I am cooking up today...

I don’t know the name of it but the ingredients are squid, daikon, Konyamu wakame and gobo. It was a family favorite. We are having a district meeting* here tonight so I will share some of it with the WD. I have already tasted it and it tasted real authentic. I am (in my opinion) getting pretty good “international cuisine”. I pick up cooking tips from various sources. Yoshiko’s Chef at her Chinese restaurant let me in on some of his secrets. One of my favorites is a relatively simple chicken dish. It goes like this: completely thaw out a large frying chicken. In a large pan, bring enough water to completely the chicken to a rapid boil and let it cook for about 20 minutes. Remove from the boiling water. In the meantime, prepare a sauce using soy sauce, grated garlic, ginger cut in small strips, a little sugar, and a dash of hot sesame oil. Cut the chicken up into frying sized pieces, place on a platter and pour the sauce over the chicken. Finally, place chopped cilantro over the dish. It is simple and it is good! Note: It is necessary that the chicken not be frozen when it is placed in the boiling water. It is preferable that it be left out for a while to raise the temperature before boiling. On many occasions, I try to recall some of the dishes Mom used to make. She was not keen on letting me know too much about her cooking secrets. My traditional role in the kitchen while she was cooking was sort of like a kitchen helper, relegated to such simple tasks as fanning the cooked rice that she was going to use for making sushi, or slicing vegetables for tempura. None of the technical stuff. However, I did manage to steal some of her prized methods. This comes in handy because I have not lost any of my love for the taste of Japanese foods. I like to cook and also like to eat, so getting a balanced meal is not a problem at this point.

Rather than review my letter in its entirety to correct the misspelled words, I am going to send it on as it is written. In all probability, if I go back to edit it I will end up attempting to rewrite it and never finish. Anyway, you can figure out what I am trying to say. Today is Friday, the 2nd of October, a beautiful day. I have done morning Gongyo*, had breakfast, had a visitor who accompanied me on my walk around Prospect Lake. I plan to visit Richard this evening, perhaps spend the night there. He is so busy with his golf obsession and keeping up with his three business things that time is not sufficient for him to leave his area.

This is a picture I took when the kids were here this summer*. I think it is now time to say goodbye. Don’t you?

Love,

Dad

_______________________________________________________________________

*District Meeting* - Buddhist district meetings were monthly meet-ups for the area in which you lived. In bigger cities, like LA, there were more districts. In a city like Colorado Springs, districts were smaller and Buddhists drove further to get to meetings.

*WD* aka women’s division. The SGI has a long-standing tradition of peer group-led meetings. It’s always had men’s division, women’s division and youth division.

*morning Gongyo* - if you chanted morning gongyo you’re basically crushing it.

*no clue what picture* Oh how I wish I had it now.

[rickrakontoys]

INFINITY WAR Spoiler talk

Random spoilery thoughts and rating of the movie

Things I liked:

- Thanos. This is his movie. A sad, lonely, yet terrifyingly driven villain. His relationship with Gamora helped humanize him, but he’s still a genocidal monster through-and-through… One of the best MCU villains (though I feel Killmonger is more relatable since his motivation is grounded in our reality, and Loki since we’ve spent so much time with him and witness his struggles) - Loki saying “we have a Hulk” - The various team-ups throughout the movie in general. - Tony butting heads with Dr. Strange, and his continued mentoring of Peter Parker. - Dr. Strange demonstrating more of his mystic arts powers, and going toe-to-toe with Thanos and holding his own quite well. - Ebony Maw is the only member of the Black Order worth remembering…. creepy and intimidating. - Thor managing to remain humble and mostly-level headed despite losing everything he was protecting and fighting for in Thor: Ragnarok. His bonding with Rocket of all people was endearing. - Kevin Bacon in the Avengers - Rocket matured a bit since GOTG vol. 2. He’s still Rocket as we know him, but more willing to step up and “be the captian” now than before. - The Invisible Drax. Stupid… but i liked it. - Gamora’s flashback to her homeworld and meeting Thanos, and her scenes with Thanos on his ship. We finally get to see her confront her father directly, and the dysfunction lends weight to both their plot threads. - Thanos to Quill: “I like you” - Seeing Vision and Scarlet Witch’s relationship play out on the big screen. - Hulk not coming out to play due to the beating he received by Thanos. He’s still got a child-like mind, and it’s totally believeable that he’s pout and whine and not want to come out. Banner still gets some heroism in nonetheless in the Hulkbuster. - Seeing Wakanda again with the Avengers there alongside Black Panther and Okoye. - All the cameos… always good to see Pepper Potts. Peter’s friend Ned. “Thunderbolt” Ross has an obligatory scene. The Collector appears. M'Baku returns to help T'Challa and the Avengers. Shuri gets to banter with Banner. - the Red Skull’s return… even though he has only a brief scene, it confirmed he was only teleported away and not killed by the Tessaract. - The entire battle with Thanos on Titan. It’s just cool to see heroes all battling a single enemy as opposed to another faceless army. - Nebula confronting Thanos on Titan, and her inclusion at all in the film. I hope she plays a bigger role in the next part. - Thor’s adventure with Rocket and Groot to get a new hammer. He is still obsessed with hammers…. - Giant Peter Dinklage… - “Thor, you’re about to take the full force of a star… it will kill you.” “ONLY IF I DIE!” …“Yes, that’s what killing you means…” - “WHY IS GAMORA?!” - Thanos getting more and more somber and depressed as the movie went along, especially after sacrificing Gamora, the only person he cared about. - "Tell them about the dance-off to save the galaxy." Footloose. - Quill’s angry reaction to Thanos killing Gamora and screwing the heroes… it’s perfectly in character. He’s always been an immature man-child, even with the development he received in the previous films. Part of his curse of being raised by the Ravagers. Likewise, who would NOT have an emotional outburst like that? Stark had one in Civil War. - War Machine back in action. Blowing shit up. - Winter Soldier/White Wolf alongside Rocket Raccoon……. - Thanos throwing chunks of a moon at the heroes. Tony: “If you throw another moon at me…” - Thanos’ admiration of Stark. “I hope they remember you” - Later he tries to comfort Scarlet Witch after she kills Vision. If he wasn’t a maniac hellbent on universal genocide with a history of child abuse, he might be an ok guy… - Thor’s heroic return with Stormbringer. Seeing him back to full power was great, though… it takes away a bit from his development in Ragnarok… He’s not a god of hammers… why does he need one so much? - Thor keeps calling Rocket “rabbit” and Groot “tree”. Didnt bother to learn names - “This is my friend, Tree”, “I am Groot”, “I am Steve Rogers” - Okoye + Black Widow + Scarlet Witch vs. Proxima Midnight - Vision sacrificing himself, and Wanda having to witness him die twice. - “You should have gone for the head!” - The ending… the fingersnap. The dissolve into ashes… The character’s reactions to these deaths is what makes it all work, even if we the audience know it probably won’t be permanent. - “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…” and “I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go… I’m sorry”…… - Knowing what Tony must have felt when Peter disappeared… probably adds a whole new level to his current PTSD… - Dr. Strange clearly playing the long game, even at the sacrifice of himself and half the universe. “Tony, it was the only way”… Witnessing their deaths 14 million times must have been rough. - Cap gets the last words in the movie: “Oh god….” - The simple end credits, playing almost like an “in mermoriam” - The fact that we have no idea where the heck Avengers 4 is going plotwise…. will those who became dust in the wind return? Seems likely since Homecoming 2 and GOTG vol. 3 are filming soon… and like they’d kill off Black Panther after he made ALL THE MONEY before this movie made all the money again. - “Motherfu-”

Things I didn’t like:

- Heimdall again gets kinda shafted… after getting such a prominent role in Ragnarok. At least he got a last heroic gesture by sending Hulk home. - Loki dying so early to be motivation for Thor. Unless he has more up his sleeve in a long play, having him try to stab Thanos in the face felt like sloppy storytelling. What if he succeeded? The Black Order is RIGHT THERE. They would’ve killed both him and Thor anyways. Loki probably knew death was imminent and wanted one last act of defiance and proof of loyalty to Thor and Asgard. I don’t mind him dying early on, but I feel the writers should have been smarter about his actions. - The GotG felt a bit flanderized. I get it though since they need to share screentime here. Quill remains immature and childish and it leads to disaster. Drax merely spouts comedic lines and is generally useless. Mantis is not much of a fighter but at least managed to subdue Thanos a bit. Groot barely registered at all until he makes the handle for Stormbreaker. Groot meeting Captain America was amusing though. - No one during the Wakanda fight calls attention to the talking raccoon… - Cap, Falcon, and Black Widow also didn’t get a whole lot to do. Their fights seemed to devolve into shakey-cam BS. - Vision was nerfed for sake of the plot. Guess he’d otherwise be too OP. - What was the point of Red Skull being there at all… if you replace him with someone else, would it have affected the plot in any way? Why was he floating like a spectre of Death? - Rocket just gives Thor a new eye…. guess they got tired of CGI-ing that eyepatch on Thor. - The fake-out of Gamora killing Thanos in Knowhere… of course they’re not killing the villain in the first third of the movie. - Gamora’s death… when she asked Peter to kill her, I knew she’s probably going to die. Of course not by Peter… the scene of her, Peter, and Thanos was a good one though. - Something about the scene on Vormir felt… heavy-handed. Maybe the music? The silly fade to Thanos’ crying face when Gamora is falling to her doom? Something just took me out of the moment… maybe the awareness that i was looking at a purple, ballsack-chinned, CGI space man crying CGI tears. - The Black Order… generic looking scary alien people… They didn’t amount to a whole lot. Just excuses for more fight scenes. They all die inglorious deaths. - The final battle in Wakanda was another giant brawl with faceless alien monster people… there’s nothing creative about it. - There is no build-up to that battle either… it just happens. Take a page out of Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers… the build-up is just as, if not more important than the battle itself. - Hawkeye and Ant-Man being convieniently written out of the movie… - Where is Valkyrie? and Korg? Not even enough time to give them a mention? Valkyrie might’ve been helpful in the ensuing fight… - Thanos didn’t seem to use the Gauntlet to its full potential despite demonstrating some wild powers. He mostly just shoots purple beams at people… - Thanos is “burdened with knowledge” and thus knows who Stark is…. ok…. what. - The pacing of the movie felt too relentless. Let the movie breathe a bit dammit. - The CGI in some scenes screamed of “reshoots”… Banner in the Hulkbuster comes to mind. Iron Man and Spidey’s Iron suits looked very cartoonish. The Black Order’s CGI looked very off in a few scenes. Could they not have achieved Proxima, Corvius, and Maw using prosthetics? Thanos looked very convincing though, even if his look was a tad simplistic. - The music… you hear the Avengers theme occassionally… but there’s no memorable new music. We don’t hear any of the respective themes of the various characters. No Guardians theme, no Dr. Strange theme, no Iron Man or Captain America or Spider-Man or Thor themes…. Music should factor into this “culmination movie” as much as the characters. Least we got the Black Panther theme when we see Wakanda again. If somehow the different themes get interwoven into a new melody…. plz Avengers 4? -Knowing that this was a part 1 of a 2-part finale sort of robbed the movie of a sense that the deaths will be permenant… but I would like to be surprised in Avengers 4. The question is seemingly “how” they will defeat Thanos and revive their allies, and not “if” they do…

Overall, there is a lot of good in this movie. It’s not as… “fun” as the previous Avengers movies or even Civil War. They tried to be a lot darker, and for the most part they succeeded. The issues I have are mostly nitpicks to the plot, and minor issues with the craft involved.

After two viewings, I don’t feel the need to really watch it again… until Avengers 4 next year.

8.25/10

[forsetti]

On Defending Misogyny: Ross Douthat Edition

Ross Douthat’s latest nonsense in the New York Times is quite the pile of crap, even when compared to other piles of crap written by Douthat.  Here is my take on the article (Douthat’s article in bold.) One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion. Not one single person with an ounce of credibility thinks that extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world clearly because SEEING THE WORLD CLEARLY IS ANTITHETICAL TO BEING AN EXTREMISTS, RADICAL, OR WEIRDO.  The ONLY way Douthat's statement makes any sense is if he thinks people with enough common sense to know invading Iraq on bogus reasons with zero plan on what to do after the initial invasion was a fucking horrible idea, were extremist, radical, weirdo.

This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.

For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.

A classic Douthat move-lay out a completely bogus claim right out of the block and then construct a whole argument on top of it.

Which brings me to the sex robots. People having opinions about the Iraq war and the European Union logically leads us to sex robots because of course it fucking does.

Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

If you use “libertarian,” you don't get to follow it up with “brilliant.” Never....fucking ever.  As crazy as that juxtaposition of terms is the casual acceptance by Douthat of what “incel” means is even more disturbing.  The idea that women in society have to have sex with men is repulsive on every level.  That someone gives voice to this notion and give it its own term is fucked up beyond reason. Sorry men, women are not here for you to have sex with.  Here's a thought, if men want to have sex with women, then maybe, just maybe, they should behave in ways that women deem appropriate enough to where they will give up their bodies willingly to them.  Anything short of this is misogyny at the least and rape a the most. After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Let me de-fuckify this statement because it is a Ceasar's Word Salad of nonsense.  “Men who don't get as much sex as they want, think they deserve, need to band together to find ways, even through violence, to get women to fuck them against their wills.”

This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.

I can't understand why the “mainstream” would find the unionization of violent, horny men hell-bent on making women their sexual subjects offensive.  But, see what Douthat has done.  He has already constructed his argument where the mainstream is the ones who don't “see the world clearly.”  Since the mainstream has been pigeon-holed as not seeing reality for what it really is, then it logically follows for Douthat that their view cannot be correct.

But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.

There is a lot to unpack here.  First, Douthat uses a philosopher, in order to bolster the credibility of his argument.  As someone with two degrees in philosophy, I can tell you that there are a lot of batshit crazy people with philosophy degrees who throw out outlandish arguments for no other reason than to be controversial and get their shit published in order to placate the Publish or Perish Gods. Second, having sympathy for how a culture views and treats groups outside the accepted norms like “overweight,” “trans,” “disabled,”... who have a difficult time having sex for a host of reasons is, to quote Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, “...ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport.” Third, Douthat, a devout Catholic who has carried water for the patriarchy, for misogynists, for homophobes...for years now doesn't get to pretend he is worried about the very structure he helped build.

Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.

Not only did Douthat use a philosopher to bolster his argument, he completely misused their words in order to do so.  Notice how he uses Srinivasan's comment, “who is desired and who isn't is a political question,” and dovetails his own comment “which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday,” as if they were one and the same statement.  Every culture has their own ideas of what is/isn't sexually desirable.  It has nothing to do with “left-wing” or “feminist” politics.  Some cultures sexually value heavier companions, those with smaller feet, those with longer necks, those with fairer skin...  We can argue the rationality of all of these but none of them are based on leftist or feminist beliefs.  In fact, left-leaning and feminists would argue the fuck against these arbitrary sexual values.

A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal center-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.

By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.

Shorter Douthat: “Smart people reacting honestly to the arguments of a libertarian nut job don't know what the fuck they are doing but I, a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative does because of some magical reason that is never explained.”  If you think placating angry, resentful, horny men is the way to utopia, I'm pretty sure you are either stupid as fuck and/or just about the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever read.

First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration. Douthat's use of “neoliberal” was done on purpose and as meaningless as the term itself.  What Douthat really means by this statement is, “In the past, men could do whatever the fuck they wanted to women, whenever they wanted and women had to take it because that is the fucking way it was.  Now men can't do this and they are having a sad about it so we need to blame the women and those who support them instead of the fuck wad misogynists who were morally wrong 50, 100, 200... years ago for their behaviors.”

Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.

“The sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening up between them.”  Holy Both-Fucking-Siderism!  NO!!!  The “sexes” are not having a problem.  MEN caught up in an archaic belief system are having a problem-a big fucking problem.  Douthat doesn't get to lay the responsibility and consequences of men not adapting to women's rights on the doorstep of women.

Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

So let me get this straight, the problem with sex in America is because of feminists and leftists but, “ the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian.”?  I've never known a single feminist or leftist who was not only okay with the views and attitudes about sex espoused by Hugh Hefner but who used them as the basis of their sexual ethics.   In fact, it has been the direct opposite.   Douthat's view of feminism and left-leaning is comical and beyond conservative stereotyping.  

But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.

In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.

By defacto argument, the sexual revolution was bad so men trying to come to terms with how to really treat women as equals would be a misguided approach to the problem.  We need to go back in time to when women had limited rights and almost none with regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and start from there in order to build a more perfect union where men get to get laid when they want by whomever they want.

But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robotswill increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.

Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

So, for Douthat, the need to address and placate incels is important but we shouldn't do it with legalizing prostitution or other means.  What Douthat is really saying is, “If men cannot dominate and be in control of women, then any sexual solution won't be acceptable.  Not legalized prostitution. Not sex robots.  Nothing short of actual, real women being subservient to men will do.”

At no point in this entire article by Douthat are men held responsible for their beliefs, for their actions.  NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING TIME! “Feminists” and “left-leaning” people are the real reason behind backward thinking, immoral. egotistical men for behaving the way they do towards women. GTFOH!

[aion-rsa]

What If…? Episode 6 Review: Killmonger to the Rescue

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 6.

Episode 6 of Marvel’s What If…?, entitled “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?”, might be the flattest episode to come out of the series so far, but it at least works in the way the other Disney+ Marvel shows work. It takes a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe who didn’t get quite enough time in the spotlight and gives us more. In this case, it’s the charismatic Black Panther villain Erik “Killmonger” Stevens.

As he was only relevant to the Black Panther movie, we get to see the character step out of that bubble and interact with some other MCU mainstays. His connection with Tony Stark cheats the world out of Iron Man, but there’s the question of whether the situation might have a positive effect on Killmonger’s soul, like how his cousin T’Challa inspired Thanos and Yondu to be better people in a different alternate reality. Once that question is answered, the episode meanders until abruptly ending.

If you regularly read our weekly What If…? reviews (try saying that three times fast) you may already know that these pieces have their own unique format. It’s more of a breakdown that we hope will satisfy die-hard Marvel fans but help bring those less familiar with the MCU up to speed.

Alright, let’s get into “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?”…

Required viewing

The two main movies you need to see are Iron Man and Black Panther. The whole nexus event of the episode revolves around Tony Stark’s superhero origin, but you don’t need to check out his sequels (even if the Stark drones resemble Whiplash’s handiwork from Iron Man 2). The scene where we meet Ulysses Klaue is an alternate take on his introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but watching that movie is not a necessity for this story.

Voice cast

As always, Uatu the Watcher is Jeffrey Wright. In the Black Panther corner, we get plenty of returning voices like Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, the late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, John Kani as King T’Chaka, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, and Danai Gurira as Okoye. On the Iron Man side, Don Cheadle is James Rhodes, Jon Favreau is Happy Hogan, Paul Bettany is JARVIS, and Leslie Bibb is Christine Everhart.

For those replacing the original actors, Mick Wingert is Tony Stark, Beth Hoyt is Pepper Potts, Ozioma Akagha is Shuri, Mike McGuill is General Thaddeus Ross, and Kiff Vandenheuvel is Obadiah Stane. I mean, I guess Don Cheadle as James Rhodes also sort of counts here, but that’s just splitting hairs.

What’s different?

The military career of Navy Seal Erik Stevens, codename Killmonger, brings him to infiltrating the Ten Rings and uncovering a plan to capture Tony Stark and use him to arm the terrorist organization. Acting on this information, Killmonger appears during the Ten Rings’ violent attempt to grab Stark. When the Stark-branded bomb lands near its creator, Stark is saved at the last second by Killmonger, who throws the bomb into the distance and outguns the would-be kidnappers.

In this reality, Stark’s heart is never pierced with shrapnel and he never finds himself having to build a robot suit…in a CAVE! With a BOX OF SCRAPS! He also doesn’t learn his lesson as he chooses to continue making weapons and even doubles down on it. Killmonger earns his trust further by exposing Obadiah Stane as being part of the kidnapping plot. Stark chooses to promote Killmonger to Stane’s old position (fitting, since Stane’s villain name is Warmonger) and he invests in an old idea of Killmonger’s to create mech-like drones.

Pepper Potts is uneasy with all of this, feeling that Killmonger is hiding his true intentions.

The drones can’t be completed due to the lack of a viable power source. Stark considers Arc Reactor technology, but discards the idea as a pipe dream. Killmonger talks up how vibranium could do it and sacrifices his necklace heirloom to make it work. Inspired, Stark decides to set up a meeting with Ulysses Klaue to buy more vibranium off the black market. James Rhodes acts on Stark’s behalf and that’s when things break down.

Black Panther interrupts the meeting to take back his country’s vibranium. Killmonger appears, subdues both Black Panther and Rhodes, and kills them both. Though not before he chastises Rhodey for working for a broken system that oppresses people like them. He makes it appear that the two killed each other, visits Stark (who is aware of the truth), kills him, and spells it out that the two never truly shared the same vision. As Stark dies from a vibranium spear, the Dora Milaje is blamed and war begins to brew between the United States and Wakanda.

Killmonger kills Klaue and uses his corpse to enter Wakanda and earn the trust of his estranged royal family. He sets up a battle against the Stark drones and leads the Wakandans to victory.

How does it work out?

It’s very open-ended, but it’s a dour situation. King T’Chaka makes Killmonger the new Black Panther. It’s only a matter of time before Killmonger betrays his uncle and gets his long-awaited revenge, showing that even in this reality, Tony Stark inadvertently sets things in motion for T’Chaka getting assassinated. T’Challa confronts Killmonger in the Panther spirit realm and warns him that his actions will have dire consequences.

Meanwhile, Shuri is not fooled by Killmonger’s charms and works with Pepper Potts in hoping to expose Killmonger and prevent the war from escalating.

Standout moments

One of the absolute highlights is the moment of Stark looking over Killmonger’s schematics for his drone idea, which look very Gundam-like. Killmonger sheepishly admits that he likes anime, which is a subtle, in-universe way for the character to admit that his blue, armored uniform is absolutely him trying to steal Vegeta’s look.

The press conference is incredibly satisfying, just in the sense that Killmonger shuts down Stane’s schemes with receipts and confidence, easily nipping that problem in the bud. Happy punching Stane out cold is the icing on the cake. It makes me think about how the plot of Iron Man is incredibly obvious for those who speak Urdu as the Ten Rings terrorists straight-up tell the viewer that Obadiah Stane is behind the kidnapping.

Speaking of the Ten Rings, their involvement certainly feels like it has more weight to it after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. How fitting that Killmonger would make such a strong foil to the Ten Rings’ leader Wenwu, who is also obsessed with a secretive and fantastic utopian society that considers him an outsider despite a familial connection.

We get our third Chadwick Boseman performance in this series and once again, it hits hard in its own way. The Star-Lord episode was like a celebration of T’Challa that talked up his potential to make the universe a better place. The zombie episode had him give a meaningful speech about remembering the dead and keeping their memories in your heart. Now we see T’Challa’s casket and see him appear as a spirit.

Also, man, for someone who is the key to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man has not been doing so good on this show. He’s made three appearances so far and he’s died each time. The comic version of What If…? was never too kind to the likes of Magneto, Loki, Kingpin, or Beast, and now it looks like Stark is their television counterpart.

I think there’s supposed to be an episode coming up about him ending up on Sakaar, so let’s hope he does better that time around.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

See you next week! Same Watcher time! Same Watcher streaming service! In the meantime, if you want to dig deeper into What If…?, subscribe to Marvel Standom on the Den of Geek YouTube channel, where we dish out weekly episodes on all the new Marvel TV series, trailers and movie releases. Can’t stand our faces? That’s fair! You can listen to Marvel Standom on Spotify and Apple, too.

The post What If…? Episode 6 Review: Killmonger to the Rescue appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3EjfW8O

[architectnews]

Finding Infinity develops $100 billion zero-carbon strategy for Melbourne "that would pay for itself in less than 10 years"

Eco research lab Finding Infinity has been working with architects, investors, developers and councils on a concept to transform Melbourne into a zero-carbon city by 2030, and has unveiled 15 prototypes that could make the plans a reality.

Melbourne-based Finding Infinity has spent the past two years developing A New Normal, a 10-point strategy for the Australian city to become completely self-sufficient in terms of energy, food and water, and to also be zero-waste.

A New Normal is a 10-point strategy for Melbourne to become zero-carbon by 2030

According to studio principal Ross Harding, the plans would not only improve the city's environmental credentials, but also make it more profitable. He claims a switch to clean energy, water reuse and a circular economy would provide over 80,000 jobs.

"It's a $100 billion transformation of the city that would pay for itself in less than 10 years," Harding told Dezeen.

"We're talking about integrating the physical infrastructure that makes the city work with the cultural infrastructure that enables us all to thrive."

Fifteen concepts to make the strategy reality have been unveiled during Melbourne Design Week

For Melbourne Design Week 2021, running from 26 March to 5 April, Finding Infinity has teamed up with some of Melbourne's leading architects to show how the city's physical environment could change as a result.

The designs – which include a sewage treatment plant that doubles as a nightclub, and community hubs in converted multi-storey car parks– explore how sustainable technologies could make the city a more healthy and enjoyable place to live.

Prototypes on show include Ha's proposal to create solar agriculture in Latrobe Valley

Prototypes and pilot versions of these proposals are on show in an exhibition within a former office building at 130 Collins Street. A series of talks have also been talking place in the space, which have been live-streamed to a digital audience.

"We wanted to try and find a way to unlock this strategy," explained Harding.

"A report is something that the world won't really connect with," he continued. "If you want to make radical change really happen, the theory is that you have to make it easy for people to connect with. You have to make it engaging, by connecting it with culture."

John Wardle Architects plans to use solar panels to transform unused rooftops

One of the proposals, developed by John Wardle Architects, looks at activating Melbourne's unused rooftops.

It suggests that, by installing canopies made out of solar-energy-harnessing photovoltaics, these spaces could be used for co-working, community gardening, learning or events. At the same time, they could help to power the city.

"Melbourne has only implemented one per cent of its total solar energy potential. We worked out that, if you put solar energy on every second rooftop, it would generate 40 per cent of the energy the city consumes," said Harding.

Grimshaw, Greenshoot and Greenaway Architects have designed an "electrified vehicle pit stop" where cars can be converted to electric

A team led by Grimshaw has designed "an electrified vehicle pit stop" where people can take their cars to be converted to electric, while Foolscap has looked at upgrading the rail network as a food and drink destination, to encourage people to use trains rather than air travel.

Wowowa suggests installing anaerobic digesters at sites including Fitzroy swimming pool, where it would convert food waste into biogas that would heat the pool and sauna. Similarly, 6 Degrees wants to use the waste generated by Queen Victoria Market to power a moonlight cinema.

Wowowa's proposal brings waste-to-energy technology to Fitzroy swimming pool

Hassell's proposal sees an existing multilevel car park in Little Collins Street become a battery bank, using vehicle-to-grid technology to optimise the use of battery power from electric vehicles. To demonstrate this, the entire exhibition has been powered using two second-hand Nissan Leaf batteries.

Other proposals include a museum that makes non-recyclable waste a spectacle of the past, existing buildings refurbished to meet Passivhaus standards, a social enterprise that teaches repair and reuse, and a hub of solar agriculture in Latrobe Valley.

They are all available to view in detail on the A New Normal website.

Hassell is showing how a car park can become a fuel bank, by powering the exhibition with two Nissan Leaf batteries

Both the strategy and the 15 design concepts were developed in response to consultation with councillors across the 31 municipalities of Greater Melbourne. The next step is to find investment to bring these projects to life.

"These 15 projects unlock $100 billion transformation," said Harding. "The main hook is that we're not just talking about these projects; we're trying to find $50 million by the end of the year to build them at full scale.

A nightclub double as a wastewater treatment facility in this design by Openwork

Harding believes that, following both the recent bushfires and the Covid-19 pandemic, people in Melbourne are more open than ever to the idea of systemic change.

He argues that the only barriers to making these concepts a reality are cultural and political, rather than financial or technological. So by proposing ideas that build on the existing culture of the city, he believes the ideas would be welcomed by citizens.

"Instead of around blaming the government for not doing enough, we can make it easy for them," he said. "We can transform the city to be completely self-sufficient and we can all profit from it."

A car park is transformed into a basketball court, co-working space and market in this design by Clare Cousins Architects

The exhibition title, A New Normal, is intended to reiterate this idea that a more eco-friendly city can be better for everyone.

"A New Normal is not about Covid," Harding added. "We need to create a new normal with a city that had no negative impact on the environment. That's normal."

A New Normal is on show from 26 March to 5 April 2021 as part of Melbourne Design Week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The post Finding Infinity develops $100 billion zero-carbon strategy for Melbourne "that would pay for itself in less than 10 years" appeared first on Dezeen.

[caveartfair]

After 30 Years of Scrutiny, David Salle’s Paintings Still Confound

David Salle, Mingus in Mexico, 1990. Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

It’s only natural to desire a simple, straightforward narrative. Artworks (and people) that seem to proffer easy interpretation, then deny any satisfying conclusion, are eminently frustrating. For over 40 years, the artist David Salle has been making work—and giving interviews—that deny tidy conclusions.  

Though Salle began exhibiting in New York in the 1970s, it was his association with Mary Boone that launched his career. The gallerist first displayed his work in a 1980 exhibition alongside that of painters Julian Schnabel and Ross Bleckner. New York’s critical and financial attention fixated on the trio throughout the rest of the decade.

A widely accepted story developed: the so-called “return to painting” in the 1980s. The Whitney Museum played on this trope when it organized last year’s “Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s.” Tate Modern operated on similarly reductive assumptions in its 2008–09 exhibition “UBS Openings: Paintings from the 1980s.” Both shows romantically posited a decade-long surge in exciting, innovative painting in New York that coincided with an eager, receptive market. The shows alternately grouped together such disparate artists as Mary Heilmann, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Salle himself.

Salle, however, disagrees. “I don’t put a lot of store into art world narratives,” he tells Artsy. “People aren’t very observant. They like to repeat stuff that sounds provocative.” He admits there was a “tremendous shift in emphasis” during the decade, that socio-economic changes during the 1970s led to something in the 1980s, though he doesn’t quite articulate what that is. Salle is content with the slight contradiction.

While he might normally ignore the art world’s narratives, Salle does take stock in the idea of a “Pictures Generation.” In 1977, critic Douglas Crimp organized an exhibition called “Pictures” at Artists Space in Lower Manhattan. In the catalogue, Crimp described our increasing reliance on media images: “While it once seemed that pictures had the function of interpreting reality, it now seems that they have usurped it,” he wrote. A new wave of artists were using found images and photographsin their work to challenge preconceived beliefs about what they signified. The Pictures Generation, which took its name from the show, grew to include such figures as Cindy Sherman (who created “film stills” sans films), Richard Prince (who photographed magazine advertisements, claiming the results as his own artwork), and Salle himself.

David Salle, Ghost 4, 1992. Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

David Salle, Open Boat, 1992. Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

For the first time in art history, says Salle, a number of artists’ orientation to the visual world was “to the page.” He and the Pictures Generation took after Andy Warhol and the Pop artists as they manipulated popular media for their own work. Like Prince, Salle briefly worked at a magazine company in the 1970s. “There wasn’t a single photographer on staff,” he recalls. Instead, they used “slightly campy stock photographs.” These shots were increasingly devoid of meaning; when the magazine shuttered, they literally became trash.

After he left the publication, Salle himself “quoted” found images and other artists’ styles in his paintings, offering little to no hint of where he got them. The obscured sources could turn the works into impossible guessing games.

Take Old Bottles (1995), for example, which is on view at Skarstedt Gallery through June in a new exhibition surveying the artist’s work from 1985 through 1995. Attempt to reconcile, without floundering, the collaged pictorial elements that make up the painting: clenched fists; cups and bottles; butterflies, snowflakes, a train, the backs of two women. Hypothesizing where these images are from, and what they mean, becomes an infuriating exercise. Salle himself has suggested it’s more fruitful to look at a painting’s structure, rather than its component parts. Still, it’s easy to get stumped.

The Skarstedt exhibition highlights works from not just the decade with which Salle is most associated, but from the 1990s, as well. “Life continued after the 1980s, as inconvenient as that might be for some people,” the artist says (he kept painting, disregarding claims that his heyday was over—indeed, he’s still making and exhibiting new work today).

David Salle, Final Cut, 1993. Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

During the late 1980s, Salle turned to new sources; collaborations with the American Ballet Theater generated crucial material and ideas. Salle created costumes and sets for a Mikhail Baryshnikov ballet and a number of other productions choreographed by Karole Armitage (the pair were also romantically linked).

Indeed, a sense of theatricality pervades the works on view at Skarstedt. The depicted folds in Ghost (1992) resemble those of a fallen curtain. It’s divided into three bands of color, suggesting the typical three-act structure of a stage production. Open Boat, from the same year, has the feel of a dark prop closet filled with objects incoherently discarded and jumbled together, seen outside of their original contexts (an apt metaphor for much of Salle’s painting). Like Stephen Crane’s 1897 short story of the same title, which explored the unknowability of the natural world, the painting suggests that interpretation is probably futile.

Salle’s engagement with the performing arts, combined with his predominant interests in simultaneity and juxtaposition, eventually found a natural outlet in film. In 1995, he made his directorial debut with Search and Destroy, a movie about an aspiring filmmaker that featured Dennis Hopper, Rosanna Arquette, and Christopher Walken. Salle had been editing and splicing images together for years; now he was doing the same with live action reels.

The title of Salle’s painting Final Cut (1993) evokes the language of cinema. The vertical bar at the center neatly divides the canvas as though into two still frames. The painting has a sun-drenched, pop-infused look to it, the central text derived from a whiskey ad. With its light tones, depictions of cool drinks, and identifiable source material, the painting is perhaps the most inviting in the show.

There’s a spooky, chilly aura to the others. The most disturbing may be Fooling with your Hair (1985): In three distinct sections within the painting’s lower half, the viewer sees pictures of a woman in compromising positions on a thin table, unclothed from the waist down (except for a pair of shoes). The emphasis on light and shadow reminds us that these representations derive from black-and-white photography. The scenes look staged, eerie, repellent, and ultimately anti-erotic.

David Salle, Fooling with your Hair, 1985. Courtesy of the artist and Skarstedt Gallery.

Such depictions of women (or, depictions of photographs of women) have garnered Salle plenty of vitriol. In defending these works, he returns to his ideas about theatricality and his engagement with the ballet. He describes “directing a performer to occupy space in a certain way,” suggesting that he’s truly critiquing his photographic process, not women themselves.

Critics, including artist Mira Schor, weren’t accepting of such rationales. In a 1986 essay, Schor asked why Salle hadn’t “drawn and quartered” male nudes in the same way as he had female nudes. “Salle uses woman as a metaphor for death; woman has become a vehicle for the difficulty of painting,” she wrote. She criticized his supporters such as writer Carter Ratcliff, who had depicted Salle as “a self-conscious pornographer, one capable of embarrassment.” For Schor, that presented the artist as “a repentant rapist” who could be excused from culpability. Salle’s work, Schor suggested, invoked an exclusively male spectator.

Over the next few weeks, viewers will be able to judge for themselves. Salle himself hasn’t seen many of these paintings for decades, and even he’s not sure how they will fare. What matters to him is whether they still appear alive and vital. As for the show’s overall reception, the artistdoesn’t seem too worried. “It’s difficult to talk about the art world as a whole entity because it’s so fragmented,” he says. “You can’t really find six people to agree about anything.” Perhaps that, for Salle, is also its appeal.

from Artsy News

[tefltraininginstitute]

Why Do We Teach The Way That We Teach? (with Karin Xie)

What shapes the ways we teach? What influences teachers' views and beliefs about language learning? Trinity College London teacher trainer Karin Xie and I discuss what factors we see influencing teachers' ideas about teaching and talk about how our own experiences have informed our views of language teaching and learning.

Why Do We Teach The Way That We Teach - Transcript

 Ross Thorburn:  Today, we have with us Karin Xie. Hi, Karin.

Karin Xie:  Hi, everyone.

Ross:  Karin, do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do? You do teacher training. Tell us who you do teacher training for.

Karin:  I work with teachers who prepare students for exams. It's a graded speaking exam that focuses on communication skills.

Ross:  You were saying also for those teachers, a lot of them end up teaching in a way that they were taught before, right? Which is really quite different to what the exam measures.

Karin:  Yeah. In my experience with the teachers, I found a lot of them, they would still focus on teaching students the knowledge, like the grammar and the vocabulary, so that students have the knowledge for the exam but not really the skills. I wondered why. I found that relates to how they were taught when they were students. How they learned language and how they were trained.

Ross:  That got us into this conversation about all the different things that might affect how teachers teach to them, we just mentioned. One is how you were taught as a student backwash, and then how teachers are trained.

Today, we're going to try and look at what affects how teachers teach. Let's start off by talking about backwash, you mentioned earlier. What's backwash?

Karin:  It's the impact an assessment has on classroom teaching. For example, for [inaudible 1:18] exams, it's a one‑to‑one, face‑to‑face conversation the candidate has with an examiner. There's no script, no question banks.

To prepare students for that, the teacher has to mimic what's happening in the real exam and give the students a lot of chance to use the language at their own choice and express what they want to say, ask questions, etc.

Ross:  I guess a good example backwash, and maybe less good would be what? If your test is a multiple choice, pick the right tense of the verb exam, right?

Karin:  Yeah, exactly.

Ross:  In that situation, people end up just...

Karin:  Giving students lots of words to remember and do a lot of written exams that don't really prepare learners for real‑life languages.

Ross:  It's amazing how much of an effect that they can have on what happens in the classroom. IELTS, for example, the speaking part of that test, this is one of my bugbears is that the students don't have to ask any questions in the IELTS speaking exam.

If you think of what effect is that going to have in the classroom? If you're preparing students for IELTS, why would you ever teach them to ask a question? Because you never need to do that.

Of course, people usually take the IELTS so they can study abroad or so they can move to another country. I think we all agree that if you do move to another country, one of the main things you have to do is ask questions because a lot of the time you don't know what's going on.

Karin:  Yeah. Any kind of speaking exchange requires contribution from both people whereas in IELTS, the examiner is not allowed to contribute to the communication by say, giving comments or giving support.

Ross:  Absolutely.

Karin:  I think maybe we could add one point here...

Ross:  Sure, of course.

Karin:  ...about the materials teachers use, especially with new teachers. Very often you see the teachers fall into the flow, what it says, and just use it as it is.

Ross:  Materials can almost act as a source of teacher training if they're good materials, because teachers will get into the habit, maybe if they're new teachers, of following whatever structure there is in the coursebook.

It's problematic though, isn't it, if the structure in the coursebook may be using ideal or if the coursebook has been written for first year teachers and you never move beyond that.

Karin:  Or if the book doesn't allow a lot of communicative activities, the teacher may not even think about designing any activities for students to talk to each other and work with each other.

I remember you were really excited when you were designing materials. You were like, "If you do a teacher training workshop with the teachers, you are not so sure whether they're going to apply everything. But if you design good teaching materials, you are kind of sure that they're going to use it somehow." I don't know if that's...

Ross:  [laughs] I guess that must be before I'd seen the reality of how teachers use materials.

[laughter]

Ross:  I guess those are both ways of influencing what teachers do, but all of it passes through some filter that the teachers personally have of this is work, does this is fit in with my views of teaching and learning.

I remember in a previous job doing some research where we tried basically introducing different materials in this job. It was all one‑to‑one classes. Because it was online, every class was filmed. You could go back and you could watch and see the effect that the materials had on the teaching.

We did a little bit of research and started including some personal questions in the materials because we noticed in general, teachers didn't ask for [inaudible 4:47] . I remember one word that was a tongue twister.

It said like, "Can you change one word in the tongue twister and make a new tongue twister?" Pretty simple. Not an amazing activity, but some tiny bit of personalization. Afterwards, we watched 20 videos of teachers doing this. 18 of the 20 teachers didn't even ask the question.

Karin:  I found if you have that is often at the end of the unit or of the chapter. You find teachers either saying that we don't have time for that anymore or they go through it really quickly, whereas that's the most important part of the lesson. That's when the students really get to use it.

Ross:  I guess you think that's the most important part of the lesson but maybe the person using the book doesn't see it that way.

Karin:  That makes me think about why we make those different choices. We both have the same course book, but we use it so differently. That, I think, is the beliefs we have towards teaching.

Ross:  Absolutely. Another thing that maybe affects how teachers' beliefs are formed obviously is people's own experiences as a student. I can't remember what the numbers are, but it's something like by the time you graduate from university, you've been a student for something like 20,000 hours.

If do a CELTA course or something, or an initial teaching course, if you're lucky you do like a 120 hours. You're at 120 hours versus 20,000 hours. One month versus 20 years of education. It's very, very difficult to break the beliefs that are formed and how teachers themselves have been taught as students.

Karin:  I always think about the teachers that taught me and the good things that they did that I think made me learn better and the things that I didn't really enjoy. I think that shaped my teaching beliefs.

Ross:  Which is interesting, but it reminds me of the George Bernard Shaw quote, "Don't do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It assumes people's preferences are the same. Obviously, it's worth thinking about what you liked or disliked about your teachers might be different to what the other people in the class liked and disliked about their teachers.

Karin:  I was thinking about the cultural environment behind our teaching beliefs. The one reason that my teachers used to do the lecture style teacher‑centric way of teaching is because the thousand‑year‑old teaching belief of the role of a teacher is to impart the knowledge to the students.

If the teacher doesn't talk enough, you feel like you don't learn enough. Same with a lot of parents today. If they send their students to a class, if the students were doing things rather than the teacher doing all talking, then they have the feeling of they don't get good value for the money. I'm not learning enough.

Ross:  I like your point there about the it's maybe not the 18 years that your teacher was a student...

Karin:  Or 2,000 hours.

Ross:  Yeah, or 2,000 or 20,000 hours. It's actually maybe the last 1,000 years of the culture or something that's affecting how that person teaches. There's also something in there about the culture of the school that you're in, I think as well.

There's a great chapter, I think it's at the end of Jack Richards book called "Beyond Training." He has students who did his [inaudible 7:54] course. All these teachers, after doing the [inaudible 7:58] course, are really brought into communicative language teaching, task‑based learning.

Then they go into these public schools in Hong Kong. The reality in those schools is very different from the context often surrounding communicative language teaching where in those public schools in Hong Kong, there's 60 students in a class. You're next towards others classes, so you can't be too noisy. Your manager expects you to do X, Y and Z in the class.

It's amazing how over the course of a year, you look at these teachers, some of them just go 180 degrees, and go from being like, "Oh, I want my students to communicate. I'm going to speak English in the class. I'm going to make sure students enjoy what they're doing," to being authoritarian, grammar‑based and doing everything in the students' first language.

Karin:  We need to raise teachers' awareness on their own teaching beliefs because that's how they make the choices in lesson planning and delivery, but we often miss out the step of how they can adapt all those methodologies into their own teaching context.

I had a similar experience of training some public school teachers where we talked about communicative language teaching, group work, student feedback and things like that. They were like, "With our learning aims, and the class size and our schedule, it's really hard to do that. We literally don't have the time for that, or if we get the students do that, they won't be able to pass all the exams."

Ross:  Another point here is teachers' own experiences of learning a language. This is something that I personally find really interesting, because I've learned my second language without going to any classes and without studying.

I think I have a very laissez‑faire attitude towards the teaching of grammar, really anything overly formal in the classroom, because I know that's not how I learned. Implicitly, I think that's not important, but I obviously that's not true for everyone.

Karin:  Personally, I like the language awareness approach because my experience with the language learning is that when I was learning English in high school, I never really enjoyed the grammar lessons where we learned the rules. I liked to engage myself with different sources of the language.

In the last two years, suddenly, I just became aware of the rules and I see how it works. I was like, "This is amazing." Now I like to lead my students to be aware of how language or how English works rather than giving them the rules. For example, one day, they were asking me about a brand sly. Like, "How can I say this?"

Instead of teaching them the pronunciation, I said, "Well, how do you say fly?" They were able to say that. Then I said, "Now take another look at this. How do you say this?" She was like, "Oh, sly. I know how to do it. Now I'm going to find more examples of that." I think that sense of achievement as a learner, and for me as a teacher, was really important.

Ross:  Obviously, this end up being very personal. One of the dangers with this is that there's always some learners that will learn regardless of what you do. You could have something which is definitely not the best method of teaching a language.

Let's say audio linguicism or grammar translation. There will be still have been some people that learned like that. They can then use that to justify, "Well, it worked for me, so I'm going to use it for everyone else."

Karin:  Our teachers didn't talk about why they did the things with us. Now, we can get the students to have conversations with us on how we learned the language, how we teach the lessons, and why we did them and how they can discover the ways that work for them the best.

Ross:  The last one we had here was something that affects how teachers teach is their personalities. I'm sure you've heard this before. I definitely have. Saying teachers are born instead of made, or often there's people saying, "So and so, they're just a natural teacher."

That's something that really used to annoy me a lot, because to me, it just seems as devalue all the professional development, qualifications, knowledge, and research. No one would ever say that about a doctor or a scientist. At the same time, I think there are a lot of personality traits...

Karin:  There are.

Ross:  Yeah.

Karin:  Yeah. For example, very often when you ask someone, "What makes a good teacher?" Instead of saying all those skills, people say they need to be patient, they need to care for their learners and things like that. Those were all personality traits.

Ross:  Absolutely. To me, it also reminds me of the nature/nurture debate in psychology. Are we who we are because of our genes, or are we who we are because of our upbringing? Just like that with teachers. Are teachers who they are because of their personality and who they are as a person, or is it their training and professional knowledge?

Obviously, I guess it is both, but it's really interesting to think and reflect on what are your own personality traits that you bring into the classroom, and how do you use them. Overall, it's a wrap‑up. I think it's useful for us to think about who we are and how all these different factors affect how we teach and what our teaching decisions are and what our beliefs are.

Karin:  For me, I think it's the most important thing now as a teacher that we are constantly aware of why we're making the decisions we make.

Ross:  Good. Karin, thanks so much for joining us.

Karin:  Thanks for having me.

Ross:  Great. See you next time, everyone. Goodbye.

Karin:  Bye.