Posts made by insomniac7809

See, with the specific examples given...

I don't know Dr. Who. Never been my thing. Moffat takes a lot of crap, I've seen that much. But a) as I've said, people are allowed to hate things for a lot of reasons. Maybe it's true that he's just not very good, or at least not appealing to very many people (like I said, I don't watch the show). Maybe it's just a bad idea to spend years saying awful things about at least half of your potential fanbase. Who knew, huh? Either way, I'm not really feeling that he's a victim here.

Whedon, meanwhile... okay, there's a fair bit to unpack here. I'm gonna start off by saying that I am, on the whole and on balance, a fan of his work.
That said, a fair bit of his success has always related to his image. Even though he's definitely one of those writers I can fairly clearly hazard guesses at his fetishes, at the time, a show with a feminist theme and a queer woman who was only moderately fetishized for the male audience was a big stride. But you can't take a boost for your persona and then complain if your career takes a hit when the image is, let us say, tarnished.
Even then, as far as his career... he hasn't had any movies come out since the revelations, but then, the last two movies he's had his name on were fair-to-bad. He's co-creator on Agents of Shield, which is wrapping up three years after the revelations came out (a post-cancellation runtime longer than Firefly or Dollhouse lasted). There's a Buffy reboot coming out with his name on it, and he's getting another show about a bunch of women given special powers (who could have guessed?) set to release in 2021? If that's what being cancelled looks like, y'know, sign me up for some of that.

Kate Smith... okay, this is a more delicate case, and if it was parodic then that kinda sucks for herself and her legacy. That said. She hasn't been scrubbed from the cultural canon. She's being re-examined in the context we find ourselves in now; that's what culture and history are, that's what they've always been. The punishment for recording some really racist stuff a while ago is that the Flyers have decided that she no longer gets to have a monument to her cast in bronze outside their stadium,

@surreality said in Separating Art From Artist:

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread, that the Millennial/Zoomer Outrage Machine is going to banish someone's work to the outer dark over a minor infraction? Nah. Not a thing.

...except as someone working in the arts community, I can tell you, it's a thing. It's a thing people are talking about, are actively being threatened about (mostly older artists, yes, mostly boomers, but the point stands).

I see a whole lot more people talking about it and worrying about it than it actually happening. I mean, maybe I'm only seeing the most high-profile cases, but all the "cancel culture" I've seen is just people getting basic consequences for shitty behavior, which wasn't invented in 2016. (Or, at least as often, people suffering no real consequences except a few thinkpieces coming out about them.)

Yeah, sometimes a work ages like milk behind a radiator. And that shit sucks for the creator, but like, if the consequence is that people don't want to consume it anymore, that happens.

Again, maybe this is a whole lot more of a Thing in some smaller artist spaces, but all the examples I've seen are shit like Hart ("he joked about beating his son straight, wouldn't apologize, and didn't get to host the Oscars!") or Rosanne Barr ("so your twitter history is a decade of 9/11 trutherism and racist garbage, but you still have a nationally syndicated TV show as long as you can refrain from saying black people look like monkeys while the show is running. Okay? Rosanne? Can you handle that?"). Or, of course, Weinstein.

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread

Did you actually read what I wrote? And the subsequent... entire end of the discussion?

I admit my eyes kinda glazed over when it derailed into a talk about American party registration. (See, the thing to understand is that American parties aren't technically an apparatus of the US government, they're private organizations--really, they're many private organizations, with the state-level parties organized under the national organizations. But citizens can register as a member with the same forms used to register to vote, which allows us to vote in the party elections; most people do.)

I saw the disagreement over what people's secret agendas were, but it does all still start with the general agreement that "censorship is bad" has become "controversial" at some point. The parts of "cancel culture" that get called out as "censorship" aren't, they're just speech being directed at other speech.

ETA: Seriously, it's the rallying whine about KIDS THESE DAYS where people have something mean said about them so they talk about how they've been rendered unpersons on the national goddamn platform they're provided to whine about how censored they are.

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

Of course, Lovecraft died in 1937, so by buying one of his books you aren't supporting a non-profit dedicated to the removal of civil rights the way you are by picking up Ender's Game.

Fuck. Yea. Dude. Fistbump. Orson Scott Card. Ugh.

As for Twain, I know. I was trying to be a bit more tongue in cheek when I wrote that. Clemens wasn't a hateful racist. In fact, the point of Huck and Joe's relationship was actually intended to be positive, so all n-bombs aside theres this part of me that still kind of feels that changing the writing to Harper Joe doesn't change the story, but it does lessen Twain's often brilliant tongue in cheek wisdom.

I'm not disagreeing with you on that. The contrast of the ugly and reflexive racism in the society with the human relationship between Jim and Huck is a big part of what was being conveyed, and taking it away lessens that.

But when I've heard about the wording being bowlderized, it's (almost?) always been in the context of primary school education. Specifically, the effect of the word being repeatedly used and its discomforting and alienating effects on black students, especially black students in a majority-white classroom.

I don't support making copies of the unaltered text unavailable. Fortunately, no one is doing that or suggesting that be done! In a circumstance where it's less of an issue, or in higher education settings where it's more possible to give the work a deeper investigation and place it in a more complete context, the work can (I'd say 'should' but I have no basis for this but literary snobbery) be taken as originally written. Bowlderizing the language isn't any different from editing the text to clarify the characters' heavy dialects, which I've also seen done in several contexts.

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

That's not Cancel Culture(tm). At least not as far as I understand it. Airing legitimate grievances is one thing. The lightspeed reaction of the internet declaring THIS PERSON IS NOW UNFIT FOR SOCIETY based on nothing other than someone said something to someone once a decade ago and that means they're horrible evil fascists is more what I'm railing against. The speed of outrage is ridiculous, and the drama always flies faster than the correction.

I mean, if we're talking about the ability of the internet to generate shitbag stand-alone complexes who harass, dox, SWAT, and otherwise torment people? Yeah, that is a capital-P problem and I legit have no idea how to fix it (especially as long as legislators and LEOs persist in considering internet crime make-believe).

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread, that the Millennial/Zoomer Outrage Machine is going to banish someone's work to the outer dark over a minor infraction? Nah. Not a thing.

And hey, here's a hot take:

Stop whining about cancel culture, you fucking hothouse flowers. People are allowed to call a work a piece of shit. People are allowed to call out when a work is being racist. People are allowed to decide not to pay for something and to tell their friends not to pay for something, and even to let the distributors know why they aren't paying for something. Creators aren't owed a goddamn audience, they maintain one.

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

So is Mark Twain in the same category as HP Lovecraft?

Mark Twain wrote a polemic on how slavery was wrong, and how, in fact, everything about the antebellum south of the United States was an ever-raging trash fire; the climax of the protagonist's moral development, and what I consider the most profoundly impactful moral moments in English literature, is when Huck rejects what he's been told is moral and Divine law by his society over the love and friendship with a fellow human being. The place of Huckleberry Finn in the Western canon is well earned.

At the same time, Clemens loved him a minstrel show. I can absolutely understand why someone, especially someone who happens to be black, wouldn't enjoy it as a work outside of its cultural significance. And, y'know, when Jim talks like a minstrel extra and grants n-word privileges to a room full of middle schoolers, I can understand the decision made by schools to bowlderize the work in their curricula or remove them entirely.

Lovecraft is so racist that it becomes cartoonish. The Shadow over Innsmouth was inspired by Lovecraft's discovery that what he had thought was his pure Anglo-Saxon heritage had been diluted through miscegenation with the Welsh and that isn't even a joke. His notion of cosmic horror has been key to the development of the genre since his life--you can talk about the fanfiction, sure, but just about anything with cults or gods unknowable and alien is almost certainly going to have some Lovecraft in its literary DNA. I'd put it at the level of Citizen Kane in terms of something that's very significant to a scholar of the work it's influenced, but what had been revolutionary has been copied to the point of being ubiquitous so a modern consumer isn't likely to get anything new from the reading.

Of course, Lovecraft died in 1937, so by buying one of his books you aren't supporting a non-profit dedicated to the removal of civil rights the way you are by picking up Ender's Game.

DEAR ASSOCIATE:

If you're actually sick this often, you should probably go to a doctor; it's concerning. However, since you always seem to be getting sick either the day before or after one of your days off, I might suspect that you're just a lazy malingering asshole who expects other people to pick up the slack or stay late whenever you're not feeling like working. (And since you're a 21-y-o kid who lives in your mom's house, I genuinely suspect you might not be aware that "job" means "you have to go even if you're not feeling it.")

DEAR OTHER ASSOCIATE:

Why. Would. You. Wear. The. Merchandise. You. Stole. Into. Work.

@Groth said in Good or New Movies Review:

@GreenFlashlight said in Good or New Movies Review:

My position is, I don't think you should say you're an ally if you're not willing to do things an ally would do. Lying is generally a bad thing.

When has Disney ever said they are an ally? Their only political position has ever been profit.

They've definitely been trying to cash in on inclusivity--see LeFou from the Beauty and the Beast live-action remake, and also for everything wrong with their approach to it.

Yes, it's true that giant multinational empires are only in it for the profit. Right now they're trying to cash in on inclusivity as a vehicle for it, and they've taken some very big strides for representation (eg, making the main characters of their new Star Wars trilogy a black man and a woman). Media and pop culture do matter; they help shape the way we see the world. (Yes, I know, you (the reader) are super-rational and know the difference between fiction and real life. Apropos of nothing, the "one call from jail" isn't a thing, at all, it was just something writers made up.)

Right now, representation is profitable to Stateside audiences. And that is, on balance, a good thing. But Disney still wants them sweet sweet Singapore dollars so they have to consider the sensibilities of foreign censors for their big tentpole films.

So while it's true that "Disney" (the corporate entity) has no political allegiance, their pursuit of profit has them giving mealy-mouthed deniable inclusions to try and present themselves as LGBTQ allies, while not actually doing anything that would raise heckles in an anti-LGBTQ authoritarian regime (at least not after thirty seconds in an editing room). It's perfectly reasonable to complain that the result is a condescending, underhanded load of taff.

ETA: It is also possible that deniable representation in film is the work of genuine creatives working within the constraints of a studio system that restricts what can be allowed in the text.

@Aria got me a phone (which I really needed anyway) and a copy of Brockway's The Empty Ones, a sequel to The Unnoticables which I'd read when it came out in 2015 and never realized had turned into a trilogy.

My mom got me a Master Class subscription.

@Auspice I like how the baby alligator is just kinda a line item at the end.

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@insomniac7809 I do sometimes get screwed up with Pacific Time and Eastern. To my east is where the Pacific is, so it takes a little mental jiggering to reorient myself.

I mean, from the USA, "the West" is to the east and "the East" is to the west...

@Tinuviel

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Auspice Even better when they don't mention a country.

USA, EST unless otherwise specified.

Get with the hegemony here.

@BlondeBot Assuming that "no sexuality/gender/orientation" means what it says is not a strawman.

@BlondeBot said in Model Policies?:

Shhhhh, it's okay. Show me on the doll where my bad rules examples hurt you...

Your examples are bad policy because

@BlondeBot said in Model Policies?:

No politics
No social justice
No sexuality/gender/orientation

means that, while my saying on channel that I went to see Star Wars with my wife is unobjectionable in any context, there are a lot of people (especially on MU*s) for whom that would qualify as a "political," "social justice," or "sexuality/ gender/ orientation" statement.

@Pandora has the right of it comparing such a policy to DADT. "Don't bring up sexual orientation" has never meant "cishets aren't allowed to mention that they have a spouse/SO." "Don't bring up sexual orientation" always just means "queers, stay in the closet."

A policy tries to force political neutrality, and does so by determining someone's existence to be a political statement, is taking an intensely political stance.

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Lemon-Fox said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker Pitch Meeting

Cool link! Still enjoyed the movie.

Oh, it wasn't meant as criticism anyway. All of the Pitch Meeting videos make fun of the material and find plot holes, even for movies the guy who creates them loves. Watch the Endgame one, for example.

(Except Force Heal isn't a plot hole and he spent way too long on that in the video.)

I mean... maybe not a "plot hole" but it's kind of an ass-pull.

But at least Jjabrams set it up... if kinda... ham-fistedly and randomly and weirdly.

A friendly co-worker had a tragic loss last night.

I want to be clear that I'm not peeving at her, I'm peeving at myself for not being able to figure out what to say about her... I dunno if it's a full "crisis of faith," but definitely "why would this happen, she was such a good person" anxiety along with the grief.

Cheerfully nihilistic existentialism works for me but is incredibly unhelpful as regards comforting rhetoric.

@Ghost said in Random funny:

...the fuck?

https://www.audubon.org/news/when-bird-birb-extremely-important-guide