I am extremely pleased that somebody realises this. In fact the evolutionary psychology that irradiates premodern - especially classical - mythopoeia is the key to ‘getting’ soap operas and indeed pop culture in general.

No, you’re extremely pleased that you’ve managed to frame a basic truism about storytelling that everyone, from producers to consumers to academia already gets in one way or another, as some kinda profound insight. I mean what the yellow rubbery fuck do you think is the morpheme of mythopoeia anyway?

…has taken a creepy lien…

So where’s the collateral for that statement?

Too Ann and Norma,…

Another egregious typo. Normally pointing this kinda thing out is just nitpicking but since you make such a heavy-handed fist of calling others on their imprecise use of words, then it’s worth noting that if language is a tool, you frequently hit your thumb while hammering in screws and screwing in nails. Hard to have much confidence in the rigour of any etymological or indeed ontological argument assembled by such a clumsy craftsperson.

…and one of Catullus’s Latin poems - Lesbia)…

As opposed to his non-Latin poems? You do realise he translated from and not wrote in Greek? Another pointless piece of fustian fluffing.

While I am in a sapphic state of mind […] have any of you ladies read La Greer’s The Mad Woman’s Underclothes?

And the point of that non sequitur is what?

Like so many other informed yet unformed intellectual striplings you mistake breadth of knowledge for application of intelligence.

Pack it in mate. If you really want to pleasure yourself online, there’s plenty of sites out there, where for the right fee, the talent only admires your shortcomings.

This is part of a larger campaign against “victimhood”, which is also an assault on therapy, as assisted by the extraordinary Spike.

What is it about white bourgeoise males period, John. Tee hee.

Go see the movie and let me know what you think. Yes, Anna presents it in a very entertaining way. I suspect your view of Norma might be changed by watching it, but we will see.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/neverending-storys-secrets-and-lies/2007/09/11/1189276712534.html

I saw Anna Broinowski interviewed recently (The Movie Show?) and she struck me as a top bird! However, SMH Boss of the Yarts, Malcolm Knox, has taken a creepy lien over the Khouri “event” and tries bitchslapping La Broinowski for her doco.

As I mentioned above I love Anna’s energetic and more phenomenological take on the story than Knox’s po-faced sanctimony. Knox is turning into a Mini-Manne.
What is it about white bourgeois males of a certain age who write for Fairfax and their mawkish Presbyterian moral vanity.

Too Ann and Norma, I say You Go Girls!

But, see, I never said that only leftists participate in this discourse, or that everyone who does participate is by definition a leftist. I suggested that the left had proposed a certain discourse of victimization, and that the discourse mutated and expanded, and eventually became a Received Idea. Now that it is a Received Idea — an unquestioned, unconscious assumption — anyone can participate in it, regardless of their political views.

Thank you, Helen. You just illustrated the idea of ‘intellectual drift’ far better than I could ever do.

begin to detect something Sophoclean if not outright Homeric behind all these incessant coincidences and singularities.

I am extremely pleased that somebody realises this. In fact the evolutionary psychology that irradiates premodern - especially classical - mythopoeia is the key to ‘getting’ soap operas and indeed pop culture in general. All these kids studying Gender/Culture/Media Studies under faculties bereft of training in Biology, Psychology, and Classics are really doing their minds a great disservice.

“I meant more that there is a certain subpopulation of sexual assault victims who will and do find those stories empowering because they show that they didn’t do anything to bring about their own assault, and the stories section is valuable for that reason alone. I could well imagine that not all victims would find it equally empowering, but also that some non-victims (â€?potential survivorsâ€? if you like) could also find it empowering in reinforcing that if it does happen to them in the future, they won’t have deserved it and that they can survive it.

I don’t think such shared stories have to cater for everyone’s sensibilities to be worthwhile.”

That’s fair enough, as long as there is acknowledgement that such a response isn’t for everybody.

Yeah, a website devoted to Bold. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I meant more that there is a certain subpopulation of sexual assault victims who will and do find those stories empowering because they show that they didn’t do anything to bring about their own assault, and the stories section is valuable for that reason alone. I could well imagine that not all victims would find it equally empowering, but also that some non-victims (”potential survivors” if you like) could also find it empowering in reinforcing that if it does happen to them in the future, they won’t have deserved it and that they can survive it.

I don’t think such shared stories have to cater for everyone’s sensibilities to be worthwhile.

Have a look at the TBTN website and the stories on it. I feel disempowered by just reading it.

I don’t feel disempowered by them, but I do feel that they’re not especially aimed at me.

They’re more a catharsis for actual victims, and displayed for the benefit of those who are still blaming themselves for being attacked, to let them know that they aren’t freaks who somehow “asked for it”, but just ordinary women who didn’t do anything wrong.

I think that simple realisation can be more empowering than many realise, in a culture that still is too quick to ask “well, what was she doing there anyway?” but simultaneously chastises women who are wary of being vulnerable around men as “tarring all men with the same brush”.

I am a victim of viral marketing. And aliens.

For my own taste and types of people I like, I would rather stick hot needles in my eyes than go anywhere near the tedious melodrama queens.