#values dissonance

[petermorwood]

We've been watching the Pathe Library releases on YouTube, and they're fascinating. However, the attitudes in a lot of them show their age. This one, for example.

Condescension, patronization and a bit of racism (0:40) for seasoning.

OK, at that time there was still no love lost between the UK and Japan - for good reason, 20-odd years back a lot of potential car customers had been unwilling guests of the Japanese Empire, which involved compulsory railway-building, involuntary weight loss and a variety of interesting tropical diseases. A lot of potential customers didn't come back, and those who did had long memories.

However, that snide little remark about Japanese cars was going to come back and bite the UK car industry in the backside with a vengeance.

Also, all the jabber about drinking and driving is because the Road Safety Act 1967 (involving IIRC on-suspicion breathalyser tests) was either recently introduced or imminent.

This was the first ever UK legal enforcement of restriction on blood-alcohol limits while driving. Think about that for a minute, and what it meant for road-users and pedestrians pre-1967.

For the first time, drivers got to think about what might happen to them when driving drunk, rather than what might happen to other people.

[demigodpjbth]

So…reading the odyssey. There is A LOT of values dissonance in this book.

1. Telemachus expected to send his mother back to her father now that her husband is dead.

2. Men sleeping with other women isn’t considered cheating because he didn’t love them (double standard there).

3. Odysseus casually mentions sacking a city after leaving Troy. “We killed the men and split up the women amongst us before taking all of their stuff.”

4. Gets to the island of the Cyclopes, goes inside the cave while Polyphemus is out. Odysseus already warned his crew that Cyclopes are lawless creatures, knows a Cyclopes lives in the cave, the crew offers to steal his cheeses, Odysseus says he wants to wait for the homeowner to return to follow rules of hospitality so he can get a better gift. (Seems kind of stupid to me. You expect these lawless beings to follow the rules of hospitality? I feel like you’re not really guests if you’re intruders…”We entered your house without your knowledge, give us stuff”).

5. Circe gets threatened with a knife by someone who is immune to her magic. “Sleep with me!” (This must be my Asexual self but this doesn’t track in my head). What’s weirder is that Hermes tells him that she will do this to subdue him or control him, but sleep with her anyway??? (This scene was so confusing to me. How do you go Fight—> sex —-> save your men? Was it like bribery? Why would she even want to?)

6. This story has a thing with names, epithets, and lineages. Whenever anyone is addressed they say their father’s name, country, mannerisms, and accomplishments. Whenever someone wants to know who they are, they ask for name, parents, country. How does Odysseus introduce himself, “Odysseus, king of Ithaca, son of Laertes, cleverest of men, lion-hearted God-favoured.” Wow….

7. Odysseus feels it’s necessary to kill all the suitors for eating all the palace food and sleeping with the maids (not trying to marry his wife or kill his son, but wtv), but then it’s necessary to kill all the servants that slept with them or attended them? Penelope didn’t tell them not to (“guest rights” which is weird since they are bad guests so they shouldn’t apply anyway), and I’m pretty sure the servants had no say in the matter since most of them were slaves and under threat of violence by the guests.

I just think that for someone who claims to be a clever schemer, the logic in this story doesn’t seem to track unless you lived in the time period. (Interestingly, Romans and classical writers didn’t really like Odysseus. Not for being violent or bloodthirsty, but for being cowardly and a liar, using mind games instead of brute force and telling lies instead of being honest.)

[hitchell-mope]

Remakes and fans should let things stand on their own.

Now I’ve never watched mash. Up until like last year I always thought that it was an hour long drama and not a half hour comedy. Mostly because I only ever knew about the dead chicken that was really a dead baby. But @rpsocsandcanonohmy told me about Klinger who dressed up as a woman in the hopes of getting Blighty’d out of the army on the grounds of insanity and how today they would probably fuck it up by making him transgender when it doesn’t make sense for the character. Which got me thinking.

In general. I think remakes can be a good thing. When done properly that is. Take the 2016 Jungle Book remake for instance. It gave Mowgli a proper character and agency as opposed to him just being a plot device for the animals

But. With things like mash you really need to remember when the original is set and when the original was made. @rpsocsandcanonohmy telling me about Klinger made me think how Sally Rogers would he ruined by a modern writing team.

Sally Rogers is a wonderful character. Man hungry. Hilarious entertainer. Gifted comedy writer. Wants to get married. She’s also the same height as Dick Van Dyke and has a raspy voice. So knowing a modern writing team’s shaky grasp on why she was groundbreaking. They’d probably make her a man hating lesbian. Either that or they’d turn her into a home wrecker by having an affair with either Mel, Rob or Buddy. All of whom are married.

And that goes for golden girls as well. I’ve seen people on tumblr ship Dorothy and Blanche. Now that in itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not my thing. Ship and let ship you know. But it seems to me that sometimes certain fans try to use shipping as a way to get past things they think unsavoury like Blanche’s man hungry nature. Which kind of befuddles me a little bit because apart from the typical jokes about it, mostly because of Dorothy and Sophia, Blanche was never ashamed of her hobby. So why should the fans be?

It applies to more modern things as well. Supernatural would probably never be made today because Dean Winchester goes against everything modern audiences think a male co-lead should be. And he’d probably be the villain nowadays what with his perviness, binge drinking and his very present Oedipus, Electra and brother complex. That is to say if hellers are rightfully left out of the conversation like they should be.

Take avatar for another example. The Netflix adaptation excised Sokka’s sexism in the early episodes because it was “politically incorrect”. Obviously failing to understand that he worked through that and won over the girl who made him see that he was wrong.

Hell. It applies to modern things set in the past. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen posts either hinting or outright demanding a pride episode from stranger things that blatantly ignore that it’s set in Indiana during Reagan’s America. Aka. A time of sadly rampant homophobia. So frankly I forgive the show for not having Will and Robin be out and proud because it just doesn’t fit either the time period or the genre of the show.

Mash, The Dick Van Dyke Show, the golden girls, supernatural, avatar, stranger things. They’re all either beholden to or a product of either when they were made or set. And trying to change that to make a modern audience at ease is just plain stupid.

TL;DR: it all comes down to it being a feature and not a bug. People should accept things as they are. If you don’t like it then don’t like it. But don’t try to ruin it for people who accept the features as they are just because you don’t like it. Just accept that what it is isn’t for you and please. Move on. This goes for both fans and writers looking to remake. Don’t treat a feature like it’s a bug because then you’ll be getting rid of what made it interesting in the first place.

[crownprincessoftherusalkas]

Real talk, it was such an odd thing, reading about Hades and Persephone for the first time as like, an eight-year-old. A man kidnaps a girl, and also forces her to be his wife? How awful! And her mother is so sad and angry that winter happens? But in the end she doesn't really rescue her daughter, she only gets her back for part of the year.

In my mind, the bad guy had kinda won, which wasn't supposed to happen. And in my mind it corroborated the stranger-danger warnings my mother had already been giving me since I was old enough to understand them.

And then you get older, and you'll see peers adapting it to a romantic fantasy, and you get used to seeing it retold in more consensual ways. Persephone elopes with a man because she's a powerful woman who knows what she wants

But in the back of my mind, I always remembered that odd, twisty feeling in my stomach, that kind of hide-behind-your-mother, hold-her-hand-tight fear

[thicc-astronaut]

Prime example of values dissonance depending on how you've grown up: I've been involved with the Boy Scouts for as long as I've been old enough to get dragged along on camping trips (my dad is the scoutmaster). Because of this, I got into the habit of carrying a pocket knife with me wherever I went, it's incredibly useful on camping trips and I kind of just got used to feeling it in my pocket, much like my wallet or phone.

Anyways one time I was at school studying with my classmates and one of them broke their pencil. And none of us had a pencil sharpener. So I just pulled out my pocket knife and offered it to him and he starts backing up and going "woah woah WOAH WOAH"

and I was like ????? the blade is closed??? what's the matter??? and it suddenly dawned on me that, while totally socially acceptable on a Boy Scout outing, nobody really expected me to even have a knife in the college library, much less that I would wordlessly pull it out of my pocket and thrust it towards somebody to take

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

It was a bit discordant that the Fifth Inspector seemed to have little trouble getting about as a woman in the past,

while her thirteenth incarnation faced discrimination again and again, especially while visiting James IV & I’s England.

[chamerionwrites]

Listen. I’m not saying that people like this don’t exist. But I am saying that you’re the one who appears to believe in original sin, so maybe consider that the call is coming from inside the house:

[sunburstsandmoonshadows]

Man I kinda love these fiancees from Dumb Witness so far. A wild party girl who's been in jail for partying too hard and a young science-obsessed doctor for whom everyone stops a moment to say/think "GOD he's boring" when they mention his name. He talks about dead rabbits in a science experiment and she's dreamily thinking about how she's pretty sure he's the only man she's ever truly loved. It's so funny. I hope they aren't the murderers and get to ride off into the sunset together.

[marzipanandminutiae]

A gritty modern thriller about a woman trying desperately – perhaps a bit unhinged by worry – to get her teenage daughter out of a cult whose leader killed her husband

And then you realize partway through that it’s a retelling of The Magic Flute

[margotstjust545]

When I first read this I asked my teen-in-the-’60s-age relative about that very issue. Received a whole lecture about the differences between ‘going on a date’ and ‘dating’ and ‘going steady’ etc. Social distinctions (apparently less well-defined in modern times) that would allow for Archie to date both Betty and Veronica without ‘cheating’ on either.

General take away was that what Peter is doing here (not telling two ladies about each other) was idiotic, but not necessarily unexpected, or even unethical.

Liz is discovering a woman's desire for a partner who can hold a conversation for more than 30 seconds. Amazing Spiderman 14

[dxxtruction]

Not to psychoanalyze (Yes, to do that), but given Armand's history, his only preconception of what love is, is to view it through pure desire. Love - and more broadly accurate, his life purpose for like half a millenia - as only he's ever known it, has only been experienced through transactional wish-fulfillment fantasies, of which he was the one typically sought after to complete such an exchange. And so naturally, in his own seeking, he replicates it. Though to some degree he also replicates the fantastical existence of fictional romances to compensate.

This lack of true experience of love without desire or fantasy, making his always unfilled 'objet petit a' - his object of desire - (a partner he desires a particular love from but does not receive to his fulfillment) - the catalyst for believing there is no other form of love to be had. That he can simply love the person, and be altruistic to their personhood, without them filling a role or desire for him, just would never occur. He's egotistical and overly pragmatic towards others by the fault of formative experiences denying him his own personhood. In being groomed into the object of desire, he no longer sees anyone else but as such. It's equal parts lack of self-awareness, meaning he simply has no way to counter-reflect upon himself the way one should behave, and developed coping mechanism, either consciously or unconsciously, taking on the role of those who inflicted upon him their desires to gain a sense of control over it.

In never escaping this cycle of love as desire, he always denies himself his full person, and simultaneously denies the personhood of others.

[terrence-silver]

Would old man Terry still smoke his signature Cuban cigars?

---

Why'd he stop?

Because it went out of fashion.

(See the above ads. Can you imagine anything similar today?)

In the 70's and the 80's, a Cuban cigar (or just a cigarette in general) would've been a sign of decadence and masculine power; it is what every Senator in his cabinet during his spare, private time alongside every coked out, upstart Yuppie on Wallstreet, every would-be Gangster Mafioso, every Banana Republic dictator and of course, Terry Silver, would smoke. Politicians, would perhaps, secretly indulge the vice, seeing as how Cuban cigars couldn't even be imported into the US up until a certain time, making them even more of exclusive of a habit. Just look at old advertisements. Men smoking in a manly fashion while, optionally, a nearby woman swoons and looks on. It's fun! It's sexy! It makes the ladies drop their panties, you men! You would be surprised how many plain, old Americana style scenes with Cowboys smoking I've found while researching a reply to this question. It meant something then that it doesn't mean now. Today, it is almost comically associated with the (quite literally cancerous) evils of Capitalism to the degree that if you asked a literal kid to draw you a corrupt rich man, they'd probably draw Monopoly man with a top hat and a cigar. Heck! Most public places don't even allow indoor smoking and you're relegated to a separate smoking area and still, people will stuck their noses up at you the entire time even so. What I mean to say is --- times changed and so did attitudes. So happens that Terry Silver lived long enough to witness these changes and I think he stopped smoking somewhere in between the fiasco that took place between him and John post tournament loss in 1985 and those thirty something years they weren't close. Long enough for cigars to go from a symbol of power to a symbol of something disgusting people collectively would rather not be around because it stinks and makes you sick. Gives you bad breath. And Cancer. It used to be cool. It used to be badass. Nowadays, it comes with a little message on the bottom of the box that says 'Smoking Kills!'

Terry Silver went through a (temporary) re-brand.

He changed the way cultural sensitives changed, as I keep on repeating.

Turned into the image of the ''acceptable'' type of the model rich man for the new, 21st century was meant to look and act like for a brief spell. Mellow. Clean cut. Vegan. Considerate and practicing 'mindfulness'. Someone very much in favor of attending therapy, seemingly sworn off of his formerly rotten ways, and in fact, completely tucking them away. A champagne Liberal fundraising apps for the poor from his multimillion dollar beach patio mansion. You see what I'm saying? Cigars --- they don't fit into that whole image, in fact, they completely clash with it. So, he discarded them, the same way he discarded many things that would come off as 'problematic' in the current day and age, shedding his skin and becoming a 'different' man to hide in plain sight, being the ultimate chameleon that he is, always adapting to his surroundings.

I do firmly believe he still has a stash of vintage cigars somewhere, in some golden or silver elaborate, decorative box he hasn't touched in actual decades, in some locked drawer or safe, as a keepsake. Perhaps he even lights up in his more mature age, for old time's sake, seeing it as a sign of authority, refusing to go down as some sad, old man once his existential crisis kicks in as the years advance and advance, taking the reigns of control and picking a poison of his own choosing to rot him from the inside, kicking up his legs on a work desk and smiling to himself.

Who knows?

Nobody's ever there to see him do it, just the way he would want it too.

[mnemehoshiko]

honestly one of the curious aspects of Solas's origins is the fact that he was a spirit of wisdom and then transitioned to a more tangible non-spirit form arguably discarding wisdom?

Wisdom is driven by experience. He had no experience with being an "elf". A non-spirit creature and in doing so arguably discarded the ability to be wise because he's now in a state where he has no "experience"?

Deciding to create a weapon to tranquilize an entire race is not a "wise-action" per se? Arguably, it's only after years (thousands) that he regains the title of wisdom due to the experience of "life".

[tw1stedthicket]

Re: harry potter shit ,,, I understand growing up with it, really loving it, resonating with it a lot at one point... to the point that it legitimately could've been a means through which you discovered friends, met people from all over, had tons of fun to escape a bad environment, discovered more about yourself, inspired your own path in life.... it can be meaningful i acknowledge but like. Can we at least acknowledge at that point you've integrated it into your personality. And at that point though, you still have an obligation to excise out of you that which ended up being shitty. I sympathize with the idea of having profoundly genuine love there but guys. We're not *that age* anymore, the age you were when you found it. Life has gotten infinitely more complicated and nuanced and sometimes even ppl who are capable of great creativity, imagination, world-building, and fantasy can simultaneously have views as an adult about the people around them they live in this world with that are incredibly bigoted. I get that we associate levels of depravity on jkr's level with some kind of creative bankrupcy toward an artistic imagination of that which we also associate with deep friendship, love, or connection but like... Hence one facet of the insidiousness of bigotry.

The lesson to take from this is the adult moral responsibility we have and if you have to re-frame that as taking what you truly believed to your core as harry potter's message of unconditional love and friendship over fear, then follow that to its natural conclusion with your re-frame that allows you to say, "yeah no, i really wholeheartedly loved indulging in what i viewed as something that brought so many people together in our respective cozy houses, and silly games, and abiding love for all who enjoyed such a fun, comforting story - but jkr's behavior as a human being completely contradicts the message she tried to sell. I can't stand by the product of something made by somebody who clearly didn't see in it what i did, which was an imperative to fight beside the people you call friends, and trans people are unequivocally my friend." Bro the magic of the stories was always in YOU, my homie.

If you made something part of your personality, ofc calls to excise that would feel painful. No one said you can't ever grieve something like that, its potential ties to someone who used to be in your life, or the way life looked back then experiencing it, unforgettable memories, etc. Fandom is a really cool community.

But understand that the well has been poisoned NOT because of the supposed contradictory -multifaceted- nuance of how jkr is simultaneously the author of an incredibly successful, hard-hitting, and beloved series that many, many of us grew up with and yet she also has hosted and fed directly-hp-condemning tribalistic, purist, exclusionary, reactionary transphobia deliberately chosen over a period of years with resistance from others to legitimatize away any goodwill toward trans ppl and in fact actually is emboldened to humiliate them and use her money proudly and vocally to support whatever will make their lives harder and outright deny and erase their existence.... Understand that the well is poisoned because of how deep the cognitive dissonance is for *you*. Because of how interwoven with your past, present, and at one time a future you believed in it is. Because of how conflicted you feel ethically just knowing trans ppl in your life and in her country who will be affected so unfairly, unnecessarily, and painfully by her desires.

A desire to continue latching onto what hp meant to you, fueling the desire for hp, indulging in it, etc is directly supporting her efforts in a way that is different than any dead artist you could say you love the art of but hate their politics. She has deliberately made it clear that attention, time, money, proceeds, downloads, clicks, views, merchandise, and the way it has gone down in history as such an untouchable piece of fiction are supporting what she genuinely feels is her mission. Supported at the same time by her belief that she is under a "witch-hunt"... meanwhile actual trans people are getting singled out for this and will suffer insane consequences in their material day-to-day life. Figure out what you need to and find a different way to be a different person who embodies what you used to like about it.

There are other fandoms, other books. You want classically beloved children's books from the early 2000's? There are lists everywhere and lots of hidden gems. It doesn't have to be a part of your life forever where you put your head between your knees to distract from the fact that ofc you don't support anti-transness.... you just support this thing made by somebody who made it very clear that devotion to harry potter is devotion to her and her causes. You can say all you want that it means what you want, that still loving harry potter and maybe being vocally against her and being pro-trans causes is helping, but you don't get her little women's center plans smashed if you keep giving it attention.

It's fine to still have love in your heart for it..and that it can be legitimately grief to consider abandoning it and moving onward with your life. It's possible to acknowledge the ppl involved who clearly had good intentions in the piece of children's media they were contributing to. And the many, many lives touched by it. But when you keep it sacred to you, you're keeping her sacred too.

You're keeping her on a pedestal of untouchability bc of her great work as she continues to make it clear that she has obviously moved on from whatever pro-acceptance views were part of it, and intends to use generations of loyalty to harry potter to further her vision of the future. Not your vision of the future? Cool. Consider that maybe with jkr you don't have that home for yourself to be the most loving version of you that those first dives into fantasy initially taught you existed in you and were important.

There are so many other things you can resonate with, I implore you not to let your pedestal of significance be mistaken as an altar for continued devotion or loyalty lest you betray it. She betrayed you, not the other way around. Be angry about it, man. Put the magical fantasy aside for a second just to be angry that there is a part of you that never thought a creator who felt as magical and wise as the characters in her books that guided you growing up could harbor such vitriol for a part of the living, breathing world and people who want happy lives as themselves, comfortably reading their own beloved books in a life that feels safe, affirmative, and protected.

The books made you feel that, no? Turn around and give the same support to trans people, pick up some of the other awesome reads out there, mourn your little mourn for your inner child, and teach that inner child how to be an adult who knows in reality, the way jkr clearly fucking refuses, that nobody deserves to be the target of such profound hate - especially from someone so concentradidly, willing-to-sacrifice-others, powerful on the basis of who they are. That was kinda the lesson from hp, right? That's what we call in deconstruction circles "graduating". You took it to heart.

Now lay it to rest. And move forward - with the fullest "fuck jkr and fuck hp" you can - to let her hbo shit die, and her next cash grab, and the next one after that.

[oneknightstand-if]

How do you feel about Camelot the Musical?

Never saw it on Broadway, I've only seen the 1967 movie version lo those many years ago. Since I grew up on Disney musicals, that inclines me to like it by default.

Cool costumes and sets in the movie. Can't say I particularly liked the hyper focus on the Lancelot & Guinevere affair though. Since it's a stage play/movie it kind of had to pick a few things to focus on with it's short run time...

But generally my reaction to all the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot and Mark/Isolde/Tristan and all that courtly love cuckoldry stuff is "f#ck that noise".

[resonancewitness]

Image, persona, and person through the prism of brand endorsements

Continuing the line of thought from “watching ads”. 

When I watch ads looking for values the brand ambassador is willing to give his likeness to, it becomes even more interesting to look at the whole portfolio of brands and to see how the values cluster. Some align perfectly and attenuate each other, and some look like outliers. 

Some values messages are in the text accompanying the ad, and some are in the visual narrative. This is such an exciting “values treasure hunt”. 

Like, when I look at the luxury segment of Xiao Zhan’s brand endorsement portfolio,

I see an image of a “refined gentleman with impeccable taste, aligned with traditional Chinese values”; the only outlier of this persona is Gucci with its shock value doctrine, and possibly Molsion with its accent on “looking/ being a bit dramatic”. 

When I look at the non-luxury brands in his portfolio, it creates a different cluster of values, more related to “ordinary day to day living”. Gentleness and caring, contemplative appreciation of peaceful moments (Hearttex tissues); purity in terms of not taking in toxic stuff and protecting oneself from accumulation of damage (Angel water purifier); comfort and attention to sensory details (Miiow home wear and underwear); being confident and ready to face any challenge, however adventurous (LiuShen deodorant/ mosquito repellant); working hard to overcome challenges, when a goal is set (LiNing sports wear). And If with its creativity and life-work balance. And more, from other brands. 

Really interesting to see how Xiao Zhan wants to be perceived through association with brands and their values. Makes me think about “the quest for truth and the person behind the persona”. When I know that these are the values he has chosen to give his likeness to, to be associated with, is this enough for me to feel like I know him? Do I need to find out more, to be able to appreciate the person that he is and his works, what he gives his time and energy to to bring into the world? 

I do have a “detective streak”, I do love looking for patterns and finding interesting things. But since I disengaged from the fandom and took a “reflective seclusion break”, I realised I have a choice what to apply this detective streak to. The brands give so much freely available data right there on their pages, very interesting to look at. 

PS: ...but the “Honor” smartphone is really funny! It is a masterpiece of naming, from a certain point of view. Honor cannot, by definition, be bought. The jokes just beg to be made, because the cognitive dissonance is jarring. But the message of the ad, especially the visuals, is about authenticity and determination. Can’t stop laughing and thinking.

IF marketing campaign and gift economy

Values in Chi Forest live stream