Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Well it’s July so it must be time again to condemn. Here’s a twenty second open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this month so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except short films from Auckland about monsters.
One of the interesting aspects of the Democratic Presidential primaries has been that, whilst older women voting in the primaries are supporting Hillary Clinton, younger women prefer Barack Obama. The Chicago Tribune reports that the younger women who support Obama are also more likely to be tertiary educated, and more likely to identify as “liberal” rather than “moderate” or “conservative”.
This is an interesting phenomenon. Younger women, who are tertiary educated, identify as “liberal” in the US political context, and are sufficiently politically engaged to voluntarily register as Democrats and vote in the primaries, could be expected to be the demographic most likely to have strongly feminist sensibilities. And yet they are voting for Obama, and not for the great symbolic light on the feminist hill of “a woman in the White House”.
Feminist bloggers Kimberle Crenshaw and Eve Ensler offer a spirited defence of young feminists who are supporting Obama, and of their own support for Obama. The article, and the subsequent blog comments, reveal something of the nastiness which the Clinton/Obama contest has generated. Amongst other things, it also highlights the bitterness of the generational war between some (by no means all) feminists of older generations, and young women who, the dreary mantra would have it, “don’t understand”.
Continue reading ‘Obama, Clinton and feminism’s generation wars’
Like the writer of this piece, I can get falling for a replicant, but what ever possesses people to fantasise about falling in love with robots? What’s with that?
I went as Pris from Blade Runner for Halloween. For those not familiar with the film, she’s a “pleasure model” replicant–created specifically for human “entertainment.” Little did I know that my Halloween costume represented a predicted reality of the near future. David Levy, a British AI researcher, has predicted that people will be falling in love with, having sex with, and even marrying robots within the next few decades. Can you imagine robot-human marriages being universally legal before same-sex marriage? And what about same-sex-robot-human marriages? But I digress.
The representation of people with disabilities in cinema has long been a bone of contention with both cultural critics and people with disabilities. [There’s a nifty bibliography with many links here.] Too much of the time, disabilities are portrayed within the bounds of three narratives - the evil crip, the super crip and the piteous crip. More recently, questions have been raised about why able bodied actors are used to portray people with disabilities. For example, there’s an interesting testimony by amputee actress Anita Hollander on how she got bounced from the Sopranos cast and ended up as a “consultant” and a “stump double” for the actress who portrayed the Russian amputee hired as Tony’s mom’s nurse. There are some notable exceptions - such as the casting of Amy Purdy in What’s Bugging Seth, but you wouldn’t have seen that film outside the North American indie film festival circuit.
At the San Diego Comic Con recently, Lacey Henderson got a fabulous reception from the assembled geeks for her portrayal of Cherry Darling with the machine gun leg from Grindhouse. Which kinda begs the question - although she doesn’t have the star power of Rose McGowan, wouldn’t she have been a better pick to portray Cherry Darling in the first place?
Well just three decades really. And not so much in a galaxy far, far away but in just 32 theatres in the US on May 25, Star Wars made its cinematic debut. At that stage no-one had any idea what was to come.
Taking bits from Joseph Campbell, Akira Kurosawa and the stylings of World War II dog fights, created a cultural phenomenon that shows no signs of slowing down - even after the atrocious to middling “prequels.” It is hard to believe that the same person how gifted us Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and half of Return of the Jedi also tormented us with half of Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Oh, and the Star Wars Holiday Special. Forgotten that one, hadn’t you?
While there have been better science fiction movies, none have ever approached the giddy, wondrous sense of adventure that characterised Star Wars. It is a movie that has transcended cultures and generations.
But instead of heavy going critical analysis (you can do that in the comments if you like) I’ll simply relate a tale of seeing Stars War just a decade ago.
As is well known, the execrable Difference of Opinion is a direct response to the ABC balance police agenda. (Coming to a tiny audience tomorrow - are the kiddies connected or disconnected to phones and those intertubes and “what sort of adults will the digital generation become?”). I’ve heard it suggested it should be retitled “Moral Panic Monday”.
I can’t help wondering, though, if the rather intriguingly bizarre appearance of Dolly for two episodes of Australian Story (yes, the incredible true story of Dolly and his staffers and how funny Condi finds his wit!!!) is some sort of sop to compensate the Foreign Minister for the absolutely excellent Curtin. After all, we know that Dolly has strong views on the wartime PM.
Incidentally, how good was Geoff Morrell as Chifley?
“This is a nice piece,” Morrell says. “The writing doesn’t get in the way of the story. And there’s an interesting parallel to present-day politics. At that time we really were just the providers of fodder for the protection of the Empire. To have a prime minister who stood up to these foreign leaders and who genuinely had the interests of the people at heart, that really does bring into perspective some of the stuff going on today.”
And also not quite incidentally, can anyone imagine today’s men of steel straw facing the sorts of challenges our WW2 pollies met?
The recent open condemnation thread was popular. Bloggers like nothing more than condemning stuff, or asking why others haven’t condemned stuff. Personally, I condemn the fact that I have to look at photos of that Borat character every time I want to go to a news site.
What’s with that?
So here’s a second open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this week? Which evil political, cultural, social and religious phenomena need condemnation? You can condemn anything you like, except Beth Orton.
Continue reading ‘I won’t add my condemn to your condemn… II’
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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