As, If and When

(almost) 10 Werewolf Hotties

2010-07-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

(in response to this)

James Spader, Wolf

Micha Bergese, The Company of Wolves

Hugh Jackman, for about five minutes towards the end of Van Helsing

Seth Green (and Paige Moss), Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Russell Tovey, Being Human

Eddie Munster, The Munsters (who can resist that Little Lord Fauntleroy get-up?)

Any more suggestions?

2010-01-08T09:18:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I'm not dead, I just haven't had much to write about over the last five months or so. Plus there was about three months in there where I was just travelling around Australia and henceforth not really focusing on blogging.

Still, just to prove that I'm still about in 2010, and to keep a promise I made last year, here's a photo of myself with a Buffyfest bag, courtesy of the lovely peeps at Buffyfest, which they gave in return for some writing I did for them last year. Thanks again, y'all!

Red Hot Riding Hood

2009-08-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

I just happened to come across this whilst searching for material for a certain other blog of mine and I thought I'd share it here. This article is about a Russian strip club that caters to het women. It raises some pretty interesting questions about "the gaze", the role of feminism and consumerism in sex culture and the essential differences (or lack thereof) between men and women.

The thing that really stands out to me is that the article constantly asserts that this whole thing 'isn't gay', which to me implies that we've come so far from being able to accept the female erotic gaze that we automatically see male nudity or male displays of sexuality in terms of homosexuality. See also this SocImages post on a related topic.

Jaws

2009-08-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

At about 18 seconds in, a slow-motion sequence starts that shows this beast doing something that I honestly thought no real creature could actually do!

Yes, that's right, this thing shoots its own mouth outside of its head, Alien-style. I think what's so impressive about this is the scale; this is the sort of thing that I can imagine insects doing, but not notably larger animals like sharks. Eww.

Skin trade

2009-08-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

This video from The Onion neatly captures exactly what I hate about PETA. Like the very best of satires, this sketch is only a hair's width away from the bizarre truth. Incidentally, PETA's "response" at the end of the video practically had me in tears from laughing so hard.

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Really? My toaster is a power bottom too! What a coincidence!

2009-08-10T19:17:00.001-07:00

Random thoughts on "Obsessed"

2009-08-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's another Mariah Carey "what the?" moment. In her latest video (which I'm not going to embed as I can't find a decent embeddable version at the moment, but here's the link to her official site where it plays within a little widget on the left), Mariah Carey not only dresses up as a man and plays her own stalker (a nice way to get double the screen time for MC, as opposed to say, what would happen if she brought in David Boreanaz to play the part, and also giving the whole video an Austin Powers/Dr Evil vibe), but we then see him/her get run over by a bus. Now that's a surprisingly violent climax for a Mariah Carey video, no?

Incidentally, I've always been fascinated by the presentation of Mariah Carey's race in all of the media pertaining to her. Mariah Carey is mixed race, with Irish-Caucasian on the one side and Black-South-American on the other, yet was famously made to "play down" her "blackness" (as well as any explicit portrayals of adult sexuality) whilst working under husband/manager Tommy Mottola. Upon her separation - personally and professionally - from Mottola, you suddenly see a massive upswing in the amount of cultural signifiers of "blackness" in Mariah Carey media, including a great deal of collaborations with rap/hip-hop/r&b artists (and hey, Spike Lee too). I also find it telling that Mariah's "evil alter ego" - appearing in the videos for "Heartbreaker" and "Boy" - is called "Bianca", although maybe that's a bit of a stretch.

The reason I'm thinking about all of this? Simple. When watching the video for "Obsessed" I couldn't help but wonder, Mariah Carey can certainly get away with playing a white man, it seems, but if she'd been playing a black man, would she have been accused of 'blacking up', despite her own black heritage? It's all a moot point, obviously, as she's not done so, but still, it makes me wonder.

And in case you're wondering why she gets hit by a bus in the new video, well, it's all a big "fuck you and I hope you die" to Eminem, apparently.

Meet Buddy

2009-08-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how long it would be before I'd come across a picture of a gender-reversed Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast on deviantart. A certain section of fandom loves to play around with cult media archetypes, amalgamating them, reimagining them as part of different genres (I've also seen pieces that show the Buffy cast as bona fide spandex-clad superheroes) and yes, gender-reversing them. Just go and search for "gender reversed Teen Titans" and you'll see that I'm not kidding. Again, all I'm saying is, I'm surprised it took me this long to find an image like this.

Incidentally, I'd be horrified if I found that someone had written gender-reversed Buffy fanfiction. The reason being that, hopefully, any amount of thought on the part of the author would make them realise that a gender-reversed version of the BtVS plot would be exactly the same, unless of course one happened to hold some bizarrely sexist beliefs about the differences between the sexes. 'Alexandra' would still be a clumsy, horny teen; 'Will' would still be a shy geek with an interest in the mystical... And yet, a part of me just knows that some idiot somewhere has written this thing, and that it features tonnes of purple prose about how the newly-female characters are just "so much more sensitive" and other puke-worthy rubbish.

So yeah, this works as a visual experiment, but please tell me there isn't crazy, sexist fanfiction about all this stuff.

Whoever wins...

2009-07-20T18:00:00.001-07:00

I promise I'll do a more substantial post sooner or later, but this just made me laugh, so it gets posted.

Crazy Mariah Carey art

2009-07-19T16:43:00.001-07:00

Bonus! One of my favourite weird Barack Obama images:

That Mitchell and Webb Post

2009-07-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

This is just far too good...

2009-06-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

...and, as one commenter on Pandagon put it, also "sadly appropriate," considering how Edward's stalkerish actions are commonly construed as so utterly romantic. Oh, thank you Rebellious Pixels for reminding me how - even though it may not have been perfect - Buffy was still head and shoulders above a lot of similar shows out there.

P.S.
Oops, sorry about the weird size of the thing.

A very 'not good' comic

2009-06-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember that bit in Kill Bill where Bill (speaking of whom, let me just say "RIP, David Carradine") says "This is me at my most masochistic?" Well, for some reason that quote just kept popping up in my head while I was reading through the latest volume of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic. 'Cause yep, masochism really is the only way I can explain why I'm reading it at all, really.

It's not to be wholly unexpected. A common, if unfortunate side-effect of any fandom is that sometimes one will continue to invest in something long after one has become no longer, well, invested in it, just as a way of supporting it, or perhaps just out of habit, or some kind of anterograde amnesia-style perpetual forgetting of just how bad it's gotten. Perhaps it can just all be chalked up to a very misguided sense of what exactly 'fan loyalty' means. Maybe it's just Emotional Branding.

Anyway, to sum up, what I'm getting at here is that I really did not enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Time of Your Life. To summarise, ToYL is a story in which Buffy is brought into the future by a centuries-old and apparently evil (although in actuality, really just very confusing and seemingly confused about her own motivations) version of Willow, who, for some reason or another, opts to start a fistfight between Buffy and her far-future counterpart Fray. Buffy then kills future Willow before coming back in time, the end. Somehow this took four issues and for some more apparent reason, I felt a little ripped off. You know what's a good deal if you like both superhero-versus-superhero punch-ups and Joss Whedon? That Astonishing X-Men special he penned a short for a little while ago that also collecteda bunch of old comics in which the X-Men met, fought and then teamed up with other Marvel super-heroes like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers or Spider-Man. This new, Buffy/Fray one on the other hand, is a confusing mess that seems to ultimately lead nowhere and really perhaps is just an excuse to get people to shell out $15 for a very brief and poorly justified fist fight.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the non-entity that is the story's so-called sub-plot. Some magical monsters attack our heroes, who then fight back and win. Yes, it really is that simple, and yes, it somehow took four issues to tell. Damn you, decompression!

One interesting curiosity though is that this collection also contains a one-off story based around the Buffy animated series that never was, which is slightly weird, because surely that makes it a spin-off of essentially nothing. Sure, the unaired pilot is still floating around the internet for those who wish to find it, and yeah, I think they may have released some toys/statuettes/maquettes 'based on the series' before, but those may have just been solicited and then disappeared into the ether like that BtVS tarot deck that was solicited a while back (and I must admit, I so would have bought, in probably not my wisest of purchases), but still, I find the whole thing a little odd. So yeah, there's that little curiosity there.

Anyway, I guess that's me done until I inevitably buy the next volume of this stuff and then begrudingly review that.

Ooh, luckily I picked up the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen too to help cleanse the pallet (ThreePenny Opera references for the win!).

"How do you like my new uniform?"

2009-06-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

Get a load at the new look Harley Quinn, as redesigned for the upcoming video game Batman: Arkham Asylum . (Her old look is featured below, in case you need a reference.) Personally, whilst I can kind of understand the thinking that must have gone behind the redesign (a mix of "we need a more realistic costume," and "we need to turn her into something that'll make her more evidently appealing to teenaged boys."), I still think it all looks a little American McGee's Alice for me. And hey, whilst I enjoyed that game back when it came out, now I think I'm more inclined to go with the line of thinking that brought about this particular Penny Arcade parody. Sometimes Todd McFarlane-ising things is not the most sensible way to go.

Consider it just the grumblings of a comic fan, but I just don't think putting a girl in a corset and leather boots compares to the simple yet dynamite design work on display in Bruce Timm's original creation. And hey, if they were worried that people wouldn't find the look realistic, they probably should have checked to see whether people have actually tried to pull it off in real life...

Haskins! Fairy tales! Feminist criticism!

2009-06-08T03:49:00.000-07:00

A Mimi joint

2009-05-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, you know what's weird? That a couple of years ago, Spike Lee made a short film about/starring Mariah frickin' Carey.

I mean, am I the only one who finds this odd, who doesn't immediately lump those two together in their head? I mean, I just find it jarring considering some of the subjects of Lee's other, feature films, no?

Oh, and ignore the bullshit about a free iPhone too. Sorry, but this is the only version of this video that I could find online.

Meh, it's ok. Provided you don't get motion sickness...

2009-05-07T09:09:00.001-07:00

Ah, fuck it. That new Star Trek movie absolutely defies any attempt to take it seriously at all.

Also, I just want to do my part to make sure that this is making the rounds:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Trekkin'

2009-05-06T20:19:00.001-07:00

Ok, I just wanted to quickly jot down some of my thoughts regarding the new Star Trek film before I actually see it later today (I may do a follow-up post once I have actually seen the thing).

Firstly, I imagine that, judged purely on its own merits, this new film is going to be a great success indeed. I can see it being a slick, exciting and fun example of action-scifi-blockbuster fare.

However, my main issue with the film lies more at the conceptual level. In that respect, this film kind of reminds me of Gus Van Sant's Psycho: it's a perfectly good film, as far as films go, when judged on its own merits, but the real headscratcher is why the film even exists at all. Who the hell thought that the world desperately needed a remake of Hitchcock's Psycho?

Indeed, whilst a bold, new direction was very much needed in order to bring life and public interest back to the Star Trek franchise, I do wonder about the wisdom behind harking back to the franchise's Kirk-and-Spock origins, which almost seems to ask us to imagine this film in the same vein as other classic-TV-show-reimagined-as-modern-film releases of the last several years. Is that what Star Trek needs, not a Grace Park Battlestar Galactica but a Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson Starsky and Hutch?

Ok, that was perhaps an unfair comparison, I admit, but my main point remains: what does it say about the future of the franchise that the only way to bring it forward is by looking back, by fetishising the past? Is this 'reinvention' really just a way to sell us on old ideas a second time around? Will we be seeing Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Next Generation twenty years from now when the whole thing goes full circle?

Still, I see that sacrifices have to have been made in order for the money-men behind all of this to have even signed off on making this new film. The thing does have to be saleable, after all. But still, that worry is there: can this new direction actually bear interesting fruit in years to come (they're already working on Star Trek 2, you know) or will the whole thing prove to be a shiny-but-shallow excercise in wistful nostalgia taken to infinite regress?

It's good to see a Nazi and a Communist getting along

2009-05-01T02:10:00.000-07:00

Wow, comics sure are awesome, aren't they? You know, I recently discovered a comic book idea so absolutely insane I simply had to bring it up here. Now, I know that using real-world figures as comic book villains is nothing new, but for some reason this particular variation on that old chestnut strikes me as particularly weird for some reason. Readers, meet the Lethal Legion...

Zyklon (Heinrich Himmler), Axe of Violence (Lizzie Borden), Cyana (Lucrezia Borgia (Lucrezia Borgia? Really?!)) and Coldsteel (Joseph Stalin. JOSEPH FRICKIN' STALIN!).

Also: "Zyklon"?! Holy insensitivity, Batman! Did I mention that his superpowers include actually firing poisonous gasses at people? Also: Lethal Legion Lizzie Borden totally has an axe for a hand.

I now know that I must own Avengers West Coast #98-100, which introduces these guys. Luckily, Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow, so I imagine I'll be in the vicinity of a comic book shop.

Real Riot Grrls

2009-04-27T19:28:00.001-07:00

Pussy Superstar

2009-04-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Tsk, that's annoying. One of my all-time favourite fan-made music videos has apparently disappeared from the internet. If anyone finds a surprisingly well-edited-together music video for Jack Off Jill's "Strawberry Gashes" featuring Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel (note: not this one) please send it this way.

In the meantime, I did discover this video that I'd somehow never seen before whilst I was searching.

Too angry to blog properly (probably #1 in a whole series)

2009-04-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

God, I go away for a weekend and when I return all hell breaks loose. I'm too angry/tired for a real blog post but here are the headlines.

Texan politician says that Asian Americans should change their legal names to more Westernised ones in order to make things "easier for Americans to deal with." (I'm pretty sure that the Americans who are Asian American deal with it just fine, thanks).

Stupid films still think that rape jokes are ok.

And oh yeah, amazon.com have completely fucked up by basically lumping in books by gay authors (such as Jeanette Winterson and Stephen Fry) in with erotica and pornography and tried to make the whole lot invisible to users. This reeks of censorship and homophobia. I've been meaning to write a full-scale post on this, but things are developing too quickly for me to really dedicate a whole lot to what I think without some new detail cropping up. All I know is that amazon aren't going to be getting any medals for the piss-poor way they're handling this, either.

Word!

2009-04-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I am so sick of being called close-minded because I don't believe in ghosts or whatever, especially considering the absolute irony that most people who hold supernatural beliefs unconditionally are practicing a kind of absolute close-mindedness themselves.

But hey, why listen to me when you can listen to this:

Politicomics

2009-04-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

Pro-Obama merchandise is the new anti-Bush merchandise. Anything that can have his face on it is now getting his face on it. Check out this series of "Barack-sploitation" videos (nice title there. It may be an obvious pun, but it also serves as a reminder of how Obama is frequently tied to mainstream concepts of blackness). Still, comic books are really exploiting Obama-mania. This is partly because comic book companies are usually quick to try and exploit popular fads anyway, and secondly because of the fact that it's made just oh so much juicier by the fact that Barack Obama is actually a self-confessed comic book fan. Check out this wikipedia page listing (some of) the comic books that feature Obama.

Supposedly, Obama's favourite comic book characters are Spider-Man and Conan. The Spider-Man connection has already been somewhat exploited to death. If you can (it doesn't work in Britain, the country that I live in), check out this clip from the Colbert Report where Stephen leaves out a copy of the Spider-Man/Barack Obama Marvel comic book, signed by both Colbert and current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada as "Obama bait". Still, the Conan the barbarian connection has been somewhat less utilised...

...Until now, that is.

Yes, that's Devil's Due Press' solicitation for some Barack comics that include Barack the Barbarian. I could spend hours unpacking all the ideas about black masculinity that the cover image presents (an unavoibale side-effect of combining the popular image of the president with the world's most famous Cimmerian, perhaps?), but I also want to point out that DDP have proved unable to resist the temptation to create a "Red Sarah" (a take on Red Sonja) variant cover that ties into all of the sexist "sexy Sarah Palin" nonsense that has surrounded Palin ever since she first stepped out onto the world stage. *Sigh*.

Does anyone else find her somewhat static and lifeless face in this image absolutely terrifying? That is some seriously not great comic art right there.

Still, on the positive side, it's good to be reminded that a certain other Sarah is still about.

Going back to the subject of Barack Obama and comics though, I just want to remind everyone about this Sinfest comic strip from November last year that posits Obama as the latest chapter in a history of black super-heroes (Black Lightning, Green Lantern and Steel). There's a nice pun on Washington DC/DC comics (no Marvel or other super-heroes are represented) and I like the fact that here, Obama isn't just standing in for some black superhero (honestly, non-comics fans, had you even heard of Black Lightning or Steel before just now?) but has in fact stepped into the role of the new Superman, a clear metaphor for a black man finally gaining the highest political office in the U.S. A black man is now finally a leader of heroes, not an also-ran.

I'm not a huge fan of the common Barack-Obama-as-a-superhero conceit, though. Like a lot of his fans, I'm worried about the man becoming lionised to some ridiculous extreme, which only feeds right wing concerns about Obama as some kind of vacuous celebrity/false prophet (Sinfest also dealt with the image of Barack as a rockstar ("Barackstar") here, amongst other instances). It's great to have a charismatic, popular individual in such an important political role, but still, a lot of the popular imagery surrounding Obama has that same aura of incredulity that those "Bush/Hitler: same old shit" t-shirts had. Cashing in on Obamania may just have the unfortunate side-effect of turning Obama merchandise into the twenty-first century equivalent of the Che Guevara t-shirt; which'd be a real shame.

Now, just so I don't end on too dour a note, let's remind ourselves of what would be on t-shirts everywhere had a certain other individual won the U.S. Preseidential election:

Grade-A bullshit

2009-04-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

I simply can't do enough to point people in the direction of this Sociological Images post. Ever wonder what astonishingly rigid gendering in children's books looks like? Wonder no more! This one features gems such as "Boys build houses/Girls keep houses," "Boys fix things/Girls need things fixed" (WTF? Being useless and needy is considered a role now?) Don't let me spoil it all for you though, hop over and discover it yourself.

(Dresden) Doll parts

2009-04-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not quite certain what's going on with Amanda Palmer right now. It appears she is still with Roadrunner Records, but is actively trying to get dropped by them. Hey, she's even written them a song to that effect:

One thing that this song does address is the fact that the Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer really don't fit with Roadrunner Records' overall style, which is something I've noted since I first started listening to them/her. After all, does she sound like she belongs on the same label as Slipknot, Killswitch Engage and Hatebreed?

Oh, and just for fun, here's the Dresden Dolls being interviewed by Simon Amstell at the 2005 O2 Wireless festival, where I actually saw them performing the song that they sing here.

Tasteless

2009-04-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

The designers of this particular IMVU ad were obviously going for a kind of softcore "in the throes of both agony and ecstasy" pose from the female figure here. It's a shame that instead, she looks as dead-eyed and lifeless as a fresh corpse, giving the whole thing an unsettling necrophiliac aura. Not to mention ties with the grotesque misogyny of the "ooh, aren't recently-murdered women hot" tradition.

Still, I can't fault the advertisers for their choice of location for this vamp-themed ad, even as I'm damning the execution (no pun intended).

Update: Just so we're clear, I'm not criticising erotic vampire imagery as a whole. I just think that this is an astonishingly poor example of it.

Still up to their old tricks, I see

2009-03-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

PETA already have an established history of acting like insensitive jackasses, but this German campaign, which exploits holocaust imagery and directly compares slaughtered cattle with concentration camp victims just takes the sodding cake.

Local colour

2009-03-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

Recently a great deal of the shops in my local area have been going out of business. Faced with the daunting prospect of having several major consecutive high street/mall landmarks look desolate and abandoned, some bright spark has decided to "beautify" the window displays of otherwise vacant shops. In some cases ironically (though with a clear economic purpose in mind) transforming the shops into veritable advertisements for consumerism itself, as long as you spend your money within the (remaining) local high street shops. Rather than distract, these aesthetic eyesores only serve to underscore the problem, making themselves and the problem that they represent, that of absent actual shops, all the more apparent. Still, I guess someone thinks it's better to have 'pretty' signs of an economic depression. Maybe the plain frontispiece above could stand to learn a lesson or two.

I worry about whoever makes these sorts of decisions sometimes.

Below is the absolute worst offender. It's colourful optimism a stark contrast to the blank space it tries to distract from. Below that is my local (ex-)Woolworths, now a sad testament to Chelmsford high street consumerism, which it still finds itself trying to push.

It wasn't until I blew it up that I realised just how unbelievably pointy Poison Ivy's face looks in that pin-up

2009-03-25T06:19:00.000-07:00

Above: if you can twist so that we can see both of your boobs and both of your butt cheeks at the same time, you've probably done some damage to your spine, Harley.

June will see the debut of new Batman spin-off comic Gotham City Sirens, a series focusing on "the bad girls of Gotham City!"

"Sirens," seriously?

I understand the fact that a lot of the Batman mythos has its roots in the noir genre, including a hefty amount of femme fatale characters, but honestly, they're callng a title based around the female members of Batman's supporting cast Gotham City Sirens?!

Two things to note. One: this new series is clearly influneced by Gotham Girls (is the new name supposed to imply that the 'girls' have now grown up, and are now full-fledged sexual, alluring threats?). Two: that this essentially replaces the previous title about the various women in Batman's supporting cast, Birds of Prey (which not only had a generally very positive portrayal of women, but was notably written by one of the most successful female writers in modern comics, too).

I have to say I'm in a bit ambivalent about this. Creatively this new series looks interesting as it's being written by Paul Dini, who does tend to make really good use of Batman's quasi-noir roots in his stories, leading to some usually very readable tales. On the other hand, I just can't get over the inherent sexism of the femme fatale trope.

Also, note that there is no Boys of Gotham/Gotham City Incubi title coming out. The companion title - also written by Dini - is called Batman: Streets of Gotham.

Am I kicking up a storm in a comic-book-shop teacup over a title I haven't even read yet? Perhaps. But I'd feel remiss if I didn't at least comment on this little pop-cultural trend.

Man-eaters

2009-03-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

I could go on for days about all of the nonsense presented in the first clip above. As for the second, that bell idea is so weird that it absolutely intrigues me. Imagine if they still employed that in cinemas today. It's pretty distractingly fourth-wall-breaking though, no?

A couple of videos that have me practically wetting myself

2009-03-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

"Exploring" a mall near you, soon

2009-03-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is my fourth post today, so that must mean I'm eating well but infrequently (my brain goes a mile-a-minute when I'm really hungry but have otherwise been eating healthily). I just wanted to link to this post over at the best blog discovery I've made in quite some time: Sociological Images. I highly recommend reading through and pondering over their entire output, but this latest post was one I found to be of particular interest (especially when paired with this one about the gendered packaging (and, more importantly rebranding) of the charming Dora the Explorer).

Ok, so I did end up watching Watchmen...

2009-03-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

...and hey, did anyone else notice that that's fuckin' My Chemical Romance covering a Bob Dylan song?! What the hell, people?

That's not to say I don't actually find this song not completely unpleasant, though.

Also...

2009-03-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Virgin1 for reminding me how completely crush-worthy Nicole de Boer is.

That is all.

Thinking too much about things that don't bear thinking about (Death Note edition)

2009-03-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Today I watched the two Death Note films back-to-back. I found the first one thoroughly enjoyable, the second one less so. However, something that struck me during the course of these films, and in particular the second one, was the over-reliance on completely made-up mystical rules (or as one imdb commentator put it: "the intriguing mystical lore"). Now, I can understand the appeal of universe-building, and of trying to make whatever magical/science-fiction-ey elements you're introducing make some sort of workable plot sense. Introducing limits is a very good way of controlling whatever non-real element you've introduced, so as to try and ensure you don't get into some kind of Superman II situation where absolutely anything goes, sense be damned ("and then Superman spits himself into three people...because, you know, he can totally do that...now"*). However - and keeping with American superheroes for the moment - I'm reminded of an assertation I first remember being made by David Mazzuccheli, although I'm sure it's been said hundreds of times by hundreds of different people, that the more realism you apply to something that is blatantly not realistic, the more you only serve to highlight the absurdity at the heart of the genre. You'll never see Robin in the Christopher Nolan Batman films, for example, because brightly-coloured boy sidekicks would simply jar with the more realist world that Nolan et al. have generated. All criticisms of the Schumacher films aside, it could hardly be said that Robin's was distinctly out of place in them (he was played as an infuriating, unrepentent jackass, but that's beside the point).

I guess what I'm getting at is that, with the Death Note films, I really resented the over-use of completely fictional magical rules and regulations, because the more they cropped up, the more I couldn't resist thinking about them and what might be the cause of them, only to be frustrated by remembering that, of course, there was no cause to them as they were completely made up. For those who don't know, Death Note is a manga/anime/film series that follows a young man who one day stumbles upon a mysterious note book. Whenever this young man writes a name in the note book, that person dies shortly afterwards. The young man thus decides to use said note book to help rid the world of criminals. This is actually a really interesting concept, and it all serves - perhaps fairly obviously - to lead into a neat fictionalised look at the corrupting influence of absolute power versus the possible good that might come of this form of extreme vigilante justice.

But here's the thing. I can very easily buy the central conceit, that there's this magical note book that can be used to kill people. The strength of such a concept lies in its simplicity. It's got a nice fairytale quality to it ("this lamp will grant you three wishes," "these boots will allow you to travel seven leagues in a single step," ...). What I find problematic though, is the fact that, no doubt forseeing that fans would seek to pick holes in this concept ("what if two people have the same name? Do they both die?"), the author saw fit to include all sorts of rules and caveats ("the person writing the name has to have the victim's face in mind at the time of writing, so the book 'knows' not to pick someone else with the same name"). Now, there are quite a few of these rules, and after a while they all get quite convoluted. There's this whole thing about losing your memory and regaining it once you've touched the book again (but only if you're actually holding onto the book, if it's not one you've used before...or something) that really takes the fucking overcomplication cake, as far as I'm concerned. However, my real problem isn't with these made-up rules themselves. I'm not here to pick holes in them. The problem for me really is the fact that they exist at all, as - and maybe I'm alone in this - every time these rules about the way life, death and these note books comes up, I'm left wondering where the hell these rules came from and who on Earth put them there in the first place.

Fairytale concepts thrive on their simplicity. If one wondered why the hell the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood could talk, one would likely go a bit mad (could the cows whose milk made the butter that Red is transporting to Grandma's place also talk and think? If so, what the hell were they doing being farmed in the first place?)** However, one simply tends not to think about these things at all unless the rules and the universe behind them is explored. But, as I'm arguing here, any such hard look into a completely fictitious world will no doubt ultimately be frustrating and fruitless as of course it leads into a big bottomless pit where of course, there are no ultimate solutions because it's all totally made-up; d'uh! I don't go about reading into the whys and wherefores of science fiction and fantasy concepts as I please, in fact quite the opposite is true, that's the whole point of this post. I once chewed a guy out for getting all concerned about why the mechanics of the Matrix universe wouldn't work, arguing of course that in something like The Matrix, the point of the story lies far, far away from the strict mechanics of the universe. In Death Note, however, so much of the plot involves utilising/abusing a knowledge of these rules in order to create intricate plans and schemes that take advantage of them. They're always in the spotlight. As I said, maybe other people don't think like me, but to me, all this served to do was highlight the fact that the rules made no sense. It's not so much that they were gobbledegook (the author clearly had done some thinking when coming up with them), more that the very fact of them was nonsense. Who the hell made them up, why, and how?!

Maybe all of these are addressed in the manga. I don't know. Either way, I suspect that any solution would only lead to a kind of infinite regress wherein whatever magic rule-maker exists must also adhere to some other magical set of rules or whatnot.

To summarise, whilst I enjoyed Death Note thoroughly, watching the films simply served to remind me that while establishing a set of rules to dictate fictional powers & abilities is important (otherwise you risk ending up in "My magic is stronger than yours." "No, my magic is stronger than yours; just because" territory), I wish writers would avoid relying on these rules as plot points, as focusing on them only serves to illustrate their ultimately contrived and constructed nature. Remember in Ang Lee's Hulk where he explained why the Hulk can just spontaneously grow muscle mass even though biological growth doesn't work that way, and all it did was open up a new can of worms? I guess that's my point in a nutshell. Sometimes, the magic of a concept is lost when you look at it with too analytical an eye (or more specifically, when the plot itself forces you to look at it with that critical eye).

*Not to mention the infamous "then Superman throws his suit's logo at the bad guys and it turns into a huge net, because yeah, I'm sure we meant to establish somewhere that Superman can do that. We're not just pulling random super-powers out of our collective asses, honest!"
**I'm channeling a little bit of Gregory Maguire here, who asks such questions of animals/Animals-with-a-capital-A in L. Frank Baum's land of Oz in his Wicked novels.

Quick hit

2009-03-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

To use the modern parlance: made of win.

As a follow-up to my earlier, bitchy Watchmen movie post...

2009-02-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

...This pretty much encapsulates my fears regarding a big-screen Watchmen adaptation...in the most hilarious way possible.

You can probably guess which recent event got me thinking about the Joker

2009-02-23T22:36:00.001-08:00

The target audience for Dresden Dolls/Batman the Animated Series mash-up fanvids must be pretty niche, but I happen to be in that niche.

Dresden Dolls: Half Jack (Batman-Mad Love)

Buchanan angrifies up the blood

2009-02-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

Shorter Pat Buchanan: "Hey, I heard somewhere that some black people live in ghettos and then shoot at each other. That means they're racist and pro-segregation, as they're separating themselves off from us blameless white folks, who have only ever tried to help them!"

Nobody puts themselves in a situation like that, dumbass! Black communities like that aren't like those gated, white-only communities you've heard about, they were formed under circumstances so entirely different that I'm genuinely shocked that I'm even having to type this sentence in order to try and explain something so patently obvious.

To me, Buchanan's way of thinking ultimately traces back to a very common conservative fallacy: the idea that people's social status is informed by their nature, not the other way around. Put in the very simplest terms possible: people are poor because they are bad, not bad because they are poor. In his worldview, the state of black people in America today is entirely the fault of black people not pulling themselves together and trying harder. This is such a completely myopic worldview that I barely know where to begin, and yet I see it everywhere. I talk to (totally abhorent) anti-feminist women who insist that sexism doesn't really exist and in actuality is just a complaint thrown out there by whinging women who don't try hard enough to be successful (they owe nothing to women's lib, I suppose). The very idea that there aren't innumerable social barriers to success is one based on total naivety.

People don't just wake up one day and decide to start a revolution (whether that be overthrowing Batista or busting up Sal's). Circumstances beyond these people's control squeeze them to the point where they explode and simply have to act out upon the system that's put them in the godawful position that they're in. Crime in the black community of contemporary America is so clearly a result, not a cause, of a legacy of second-class citizenship that is not even close to coming to an end (you know they're only just phasing out segregated prom nights in some Southern schools? Way to keep the rest of your country behind, South!).

Just because

2009-02-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Not really a "debate" as such

2009-02-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

An oldie but a goodie, this video. I very well may never have seen such a great discrepancy in intelligence between two adult human beings.

There are so many things to criticise here that I barely know where to begin, although the "yeah, I can say that Hitler is representative of all atheists [??] but you can't say that the Inquisition is representative of all Christians, that's just fairness" shtick that O'Reilly brings up at one point is pretty remarkable. OMGWTFBBQ!?

Also, check out this amazing blog for some atheism/lolcat fun.

On bad films - 2009

2009-02-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

Just a quick hit from me, paragraphs four and five in particular are right on the money when it comes to the upcoming Watchmen film.

Most of the time, I don't feel the fannish/masochistic need to expose myself to what I have no doubt will be a terrible adaptation of a comic that I love. I haven't seen a single "Alan Moore film" in the cinema since League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But then again, I can't decide where I fall when it comes to Watchmen. I may very well be tempted after all.

And incidentally, that masochistic urge is still driving me towards the upcoming Star Trek film, despite my better judgment.

Don't go to sleep, you may wake up a hero

2009-02-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about Batman recently (no doubt inspired by some truly astonishingly long sessions on my flatmate's copy of Lego Batman for the XBox), and have honestly been meaning for quite some time to turn a lot of my half-baked thoughts on the character and his history into a full-fledged post here on the blog, but I've been having some difficulty. The issue at hand is essentially my inability to reconcile my desire to do a full-on, fully-researched, post-grad level essay on the political/social underpinnings of the character and his fictional universe, a lot of which have re-entered public discourse since the debut of The Dark Knight and its at times sledgehammer-subtle allusions to the Bush doctrine; and my desire to simply rabbit on about some of the sillier comics/videogames that I like and post some pretty pictures (except that I never really like adding pictures in blogger, it really is too much of a pain).

Above: the source of so much recent consternation for me.

Still, I imagine I'm not going to be able to write about anything else until I've at least got this one out of my system, so here goes a pretty half-assed post about a 70-year old superhero (I mean that the comics have been around for that long, not that Bruce Wayne is a septuagenarian, obviously) written almost solely so that I can then go on to write about other things.

Firstly, to sate the former of the two desires outlined above in quite possibly the laziest way possible, here's a pretty neat sixty-second summary of why Batman is at heart a character straight out of Conservative fable (courtesy of Reginald D. Hunter):

I've honestly tried to elaborate on Hunter's point, but every time I do, I read my words back and realise just how incredibly pretentious they sound, so I end up scrapping the whole thing. Needless to say that I think that I'm going to need to have a good, long look at superhero fiction as a whole, and wonder whether there can be any way around the political paradigms so deeply embedded into the narrative that makes up the backbone of the genre.

Then I might make a start on analysing that whole "women in refrigerators" thing, too.

One thing I would like to point out though is a specific Batman comic book I read recently. "Urban Legend" was written by Bill Willingham and was published in a 2003 issue of the Batman comic Legends of the Dark Knight (I could spend entire posts looking at Willingham's own politics, but that's not the point of this post), although I read it as part of the "and Other Tales" of the Batman Begins: The Movie and Other Tales of the Dark Knight collection. The story begins with a beaten and brusied Batman, shown to be suffering from amnesia, all ailments apparently resulting from a recent fight against some unknown criminals against whom Batman clearly came out the worse off. Still, despite his lack of knowledge about his whereabouts, his secret identity, or even his specific mission, and with some really remarkable physical injuries slowing him down, Batman takes one look at himself and realises the superhero he must be, and sets off to find and mete out justice to the villains whom he works out must be responsible for his current condition. The whole thing reads like a bit of a darkly comic farce, to be honest, with Batman phoning the Gotham City police from a payphone, calling a cab because he cannot locate his Batmobile and getting brained by a prostitute that he actually manages to save from a vindictive pimp. Still, when Batman finally reaches the headquarters of the gang of criminals he has spent the last twenty-or-so pages searching for, the twist is revealed as the real Batman shows up and dispatches the criminals, exposing the Batman that we've been following as merely a confused amnesiac who woke up in a Batman suit (for reasons that are explained within the comic but are mundane and incidental, really) and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Above: Urban Legend

The whole thing has echoes of everything from Memento to Dark City, but a more specific mirror can be found in Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's 1999 Greyshirt short "Amnesia" from the pages of Tomorrow Stories #1. Whereas "Urban Legend", despite its occasional comic turns, seems ultimately an optimistic piece about the innate goodness that could be awakened in us all ("what if, tomorrow, you woke up believing yourself to be a superhero? Maybe you too would act upon all that that role bestows," the comic seems to be saying), "Amnesia" looks at this same concept from the other side of the looking glass, imagining instead an amnesiac who wakes to find himself surrounded by just the right clues to make him believe that he is in fact a certain notable serial killer. In his quest to flee the police, whom he believes are after him, he kills another couple of people, before it is of course all revealed to him that, before those murders, he was in fact a completely innocent man, and actually received his amnesia-causing injury in an altercation with the real serial killer (if memory serves me correctly, that is. It's been a while since I've read this one).

The two tales may, on the surface, appear to be telling the same story, but it's hard to ignore the ultimately far more optimistic note of the former (although that was published later and may, perhaps, have actually been inspired by the Moore tale). An idea central to the Batman mythos is that fact that he really is just a man (a concept from which Batman Begins extracts a lot of mileage, emphasising the difference between a mortal man and a faceless figurehead, the darker side of which is explored in that film's sequel), but one whose 'powers' come from the fact that he has spent years building himself into a very different kind of 'superman': the unspoken implication being the supposedly inspirational message that anyone of us could do the same if only we had the will to do so; if only we could also spend years training our minds and bodies the way that Bruce Wayne did. Of course, this is once again where the spectre of the underpinning right-wing politics of superhero narratives begin to show, as such an assertion renders totally invisble the phenomenal privelege that Bruce Wayne enjoys. Despite what certain people would have you believe, we literally cannot all afford to become superheroes.

Edited to add: there are of course exceptions to prove every rule. For a great example, I'd highly recommend immersing yourself in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta as well as almost any comic featuring transparent V knock-off Anarky. Also, while we're on the subject of Mr Moore, don't forget to go out and read Watchmen right now, before the film comes out and potentially ruins any chance that you might be tempted to read it. Hurry, the film's release is only days away!

I'm so predictable...

2009-02-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

Blah blah Buffy blah blah

2009-02-03T00:37:00.000-08:00

I am large in the Walt Whitman sense. I'm big enough to contain contradictions.

One amusing aspect of not only my personality but the personalities of humans worldwide is that I can give a damn about the big and the small. Just because I think and talk about the huge, obvious evils of the world such as rampant sexism and racism doesn't mean that I can't occasionally get caught up in a three hour conversation about everything that is wrong with the new Star Trek film. I can be petty sometimes. I'm a human being. Vice versa, just because I talk about the ups and downs of DnD 3.5 doesn't mean I don't care about the larger issues.

All of this really is just a preamble to the fact that I'm now going to start ranting about fandom, so beware, you're opinion about my values may just be about to plummet (as if it was particularly high to start with). That's kind of why I've put that big disclaimer up there.

You know what I hate? These kind of Thomas-Hobbes-as-applied-to-geekdom way of thinking that says that if you are a fan of something, you're not allowed to criticise it. "If all you do is say 'I hate this' and 'I hate that' then you're not a true fan" cry some idiots, completely unaware that showing an inclination towards something does not mean I get to automatically switch off my critical faculties and disregard anything that it might do that is patently wrong or stupid. Yes, some people may bitch to high heaven all the time and may never seem to have a positive thing to say about their chosen fandom. I agree, that's fucking irritating. But that's different from, say, being a fan of a director/writer/actor/artist/TV-show producer and blindly saying that you really really love everything that they've ever done when as a matter of fact, that likelihood is that not only will they occassionally fuck up (remember, they're human too) or else do something that doesn't appeal to your particular taste or what you otherwise really like about that person's work, but that you as a fan are more likely to be aware of said missteps and will typically have the appropriate knowledge and vocabulary to explain what it is that you particularly dislike about these aspects of your pastime and/or passion gone wrong. Although - again, as a disclaimer - this does not mean I'm aware that some people truly are idiots who do nothing but complain about the most moronic things for the most stupid reasons.

That said, I just want to get it off my chest that whilst I'm generally a massive, feck-off huge fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise, here's a list of a few things I just can't stand.

- Spike. Honest to god, I could dedicate an entire blog about the many and various ways that I do not like Spike. To be honest, I actually really liked him during season two of the show. In the sense of full disclosure, I'd actually rank him amongst one of my favourite things from that season. But god damn, why the hell did they have to go and bring him back in just the most appalling way(s)? Almost any and all appearances by Spike have that reek of insincerity and money-men dictated decisions; "hey, this character's popular, why don't you put him in the show some more?" rather than including him for reasons that, say, make any kind of story-sense. The biggest culprit here is obviously his inclusion in Angel season five, where he not only shamelessly brought back from the dead following what was supposed to be a heroic sacrifice, but his sacrifice was essentially nullified by the amusing geek-history footnote that the WB had started promoting Angel season five before UPN aired Spike's supposedly big, important sacrifice, making it all seem rather muted and pointless in the eyes of the viewers who watched it, as we all knew he was coming back. Oh yeah, the episode "Chosen" should probably make this list of BtVS things I could spend all day criticising too.

- The fallacy that states that if you like BtVS and/or Angel, you must also like Firefly. The other thing that I could easily dedicate an entire blog towards is my many and varied criticisms of the show Firefly, which, for the uninitiated, was a thankfully short-lived science-ficition television series (which later scored a spin-off film) produced by a lot of the same people behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I do have some good things to say about the series, but a lot of that is buried under the fact that I think much of it is hackneyed misfits-in-space/Western stuff that was getting old and done-before long before Joss Whedon took his hand to it. Many place the blame for Firefly's demise on the shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes: the networks' continual fucking around with the show. This no doubt contributed greatly, but I also think that, in no uncertain terms, it simply was not a particularly good show.

Ok, well, it looks like this list is going to end at two for now as I'm kind of running out of bilious steam and I don't like it when I don't finish a post in one sitting so I'm really not going to come back to this post and add to it, so that's really it for now. Once again, I just want to reiterate that I freakin' love BtVS. As shows go it may have a rather considerable series of ups and downs, but most of these I simply take as idiosyncracies or interesting faults that are natural symptoms of what the show did really well at least 50% of the time. I'm not for a moment going to say that it's the best work of art to ever come out of the Northern Hemisphere. That would be stupid. But the nature of fandom is that I still really like it, warts and all ("Where the Wild Things Are" and all), and that I'm willing to engage with other fans about the various bits that I like and dislike.

In the interest of fairness, here are some things that are popularly disliked about BtVS/Angel that I actually really like:

- Connor.

- "The Girl in Question".

- Riley Finn (although only in season five. I mean jeez, I'm not crazy. Seriously though, having him become a depressive, sympathic perpetual outsider (the same mould used for all of Buffy's major paramours) was a really good turn).

Just so that I can at least pretend I've done something more than talk about trivia I happen to be particularly passionate about, here's a link to the latest weekly round-up at feministing. Go, think about public attitudes to breast-cancer survivors and women over 50 in the modelling industry, go! Then come back and maybe we can chat about Buffy some more. After all, how astonishingly unfun would fandom be if these minor disagreements didn't open to door to discoure amongst peers, eh?

I've got to sit down and do another proper post soon...

2009-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

...But in the mean-time, please enjoy The Breeders' cover of "Wicked Little Town."

I'm totally stealing this from Siskoid, but...

2009-01-12T14:53:00.001-08:00

The Psychocrystals...

...they glitter with death!

GLITTER with DEATH!!

(more ridiculousness, plus a hat tip)

Youtube vidoes connected by nothing other than the fact that they amuse me

2009-01-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

As a child of a single-parent family, all I have to say is...

2009-01-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

"Fuck off, Ann Coulter, just fuck off."

Falwell would be proud

2009-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

Correction: the funniest two minutes of your week may just be the CDAC's top ten instances of Christian-bashing in America. Apparently, the fact that Barack Obama isn't a Christian (note: he is one!) actually qualifies as a veritable attack on Christianity itself! Fantastic stuff.

#1 is my favourite though. Oh those poor American Christians, so oppressed by the gays...

Haskins!

2009-01-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

Yay! The latest infomania is out! It's been far too long since I've been exposed to some new Sarah Haskins hilarity.

You know what, I haven't even seen her latest video yet, and still I'm linking to it, so convinced am I that'll it'll be the funniest two minutes of my week (and possibly yours, too!).

On close-mindedness

2009-01-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

Wow, I haven't updated this thing in ages. This is probably due to that massive downturn in the amount of insomnia I've been suffering lately; seeing as how insomnia is the number one cause of content being generated on this blog. Well, here I am in the middle of the night, after having - possibly unwisely - watched some of those films that I got in the January/closing down sales back-to-back and late into the early hours (including the weird combination of watching Aliens vs Predator: Requiem followed by the 2007 version of Hairspray) and it seems like it's time for another post, perhaps another atheist vignette.

One of the most ludicrous arguments against atheism that I've ever heard, and that I also keep hearing, from numerous sources and in numerous ways, is that atheists are all incredibly close-minded, that we're just so completely closed off from any ideas other than those immediately apparent to our limited senses that we just can't see the bigger picture, we just can't open our minds to the grand, supernatural reality of things, that if we just all stopped being so incredibly myopic and intellectually shallow we'd see the awesome reality that is the existence of god(s).

This, of course, is the most bullshit piece of reasoning I've ever heard.

I think the particular iteration of this argument that got me riled up enough to actually come out and write this post is the one that I heard expressed by this guy (little note to that guy: the fact that you happen to disagree with atheism does not technically in any way make atheism "self-refuting.") Still, this post is going to deal with a more general version of this argument than the one that guy presents. This isn't just a response to that one particular little vid, but that vid sure did make me angry.

At first it's easy to see the appeal of this whole "atheists are close-minded" argument. After all, atheists do not typically appear to be open to the idea of the existence of god(s) any more than they are to the idea of the existence of werewolves or wood nymphs. This must surely mean that they're just close-minded, right? They're just all Scullys, all totally closed off to the idea of anything existing beyond what they can see, hear, smell, taste and touch, right? All they need is some nice, religious Mulder to show them the way, right? Wrong. Atheists are probably some of the most open-minded people you'll ever meet, as they are typically the kind of people who embrace scientific reasoning, which highly values an openness and acceptance of all sorts of information. The truth is, if tomorrow, someone found absolute, indefatiguable proof that evolution is wrong, then all of those godless, anti-creationist scientists would have to say "well, what do you know, looks like we were wrong" and accept this new information. This is the way scientific reasoning works: by being fluid and succeptable to change. After all, when was the last time you went to your doctor only to be told that you were having an attack of bad humours? Doctors and scientists are not so stubborn as to believe in such outdated theories. Scientific theories are always only as good as they need to be until new evidence comes to light.

Take religious thinking on the other hand. Religious thinking is stubborn, totally resistant to change, revision or acceptance of new information that might actually broaden one's horizons somewhat. If someone believes that the first man was constructed out of the dust of the Earth itself, then no amount of reasoning will change that person's mind. To paraphrase a classic Jonathan Swift quotation, you cannot reason someone out of a position that they did not get into by way of reason.

Religious thinking is the ultimate in close-mindedness. It is "my religion is right and yours is wrong." People may be accepting of people of other religions, but they're really not being very good religious people if they give other religions equal weight in their heart of hearts. Being religious requires being biased. Atheism, on the other hand, views all religions with an open mind. The atheist says, "ok Hindus, Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc" (sorry to brush off so many religions with a mere "etc" there, I feel like Rev. Lovejoy when he did that whole "or miscellaneous" thing) "come to me and tell me what your religion has over every other one, that makes yours more sound and reasonable over all of the others" and of course, all the religious mind can offer in response to that is a pathetic "well, it's obvious, isn't it? Mine is just right and the others are just wrong!" In the eyes of the impartial atheist, all religions are of equal validity.

Open-minded does not mean automatically being willing to accept without question the existence of angels, demons, fairies or whatnot. Open-mindedness is when one does not stubbornly stick with outdated modes of thinking that have been shown to be lacking when compared to actual evidence and knowledge of the world and the way that it works time and time again. When the world has been shown to not fly through space by riding on the back of a giant turtle, it might be time to give up on that belief, rather than being close-minded and refusing to let any alternative idea into your head.

This is, as these things so often do, turning into a rant. Still, I'm just so sick of being called "close-minded" because I do not accept the existence of things that are literally impossible. It's far more close-minded to believe that your impossible set of beliefs has some sort of special status that elevates it above other people's impossible beliefs, as you're just showing a clear bias and unwillingness to accept information that really is just as valid and acceptable as what you're already going on. To paraphrase someone else, all people are atheists of a sort, in that they vehemently deny the existence of thousands of gods, atheists just take it one step further.

I am an open-minded atheist. I accept all possibilities, but naturally, I gravitate towards those that actually seem grounded in the reality that I know and that we all share. I would gladly accept any religion, if I believed that any religion were founded on greater validity than "well, isn't it obvious this one is the right one?" Not if you're being open-minded about it, no.

Heh, maybe I'll write about something less heavy next post, I promise. Maybe Sinfest again. Or hey, maybe Penny Arcade.

Why So Hilarious?

2008-12-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how I'm simultanesouly an American politics junkie, a comic book fan and a Christopher Nolan whore, I'm finding just so many things to love about this neatly satirical strip from Sinfest, which expertly mines some key imagery from The Dark Knight and uses it to some rather dazzling and hilarious effect, all in the space of a mere twenty panels.

I've been thinking this for years, but Sinfest-creator Tatsuya Ishida is freaking awesome.

LGBT issues in 20th century/contemporary Unites States...

2008-12-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

...presented in the form of a pair of musicals. Enjoy!*

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

That "what else does the Bible say, Jesus?" cracks me up every time.

*but more importantly, learn!

Trektacular

2008-12-03T08:05:00.001-08:00

Over at Siskoid's Blog of Geekery, the always eminently readable Siskoid has just finished up his two-year (or so) blogging project of reviewing every single episode of Star Trek from beginning to end, posting a new review every day. Just so we're clear, that's over 700 episodes of Star Trek in all its various television and movie incarnations (bar the new film that doesn't come out until next year, of course). An incredibly geeky "bravo" to him, not just for this achievement, but for making it so enjoyable and interesting for his readers throughout.

[Insert witty segue into loosely connected youtube vid here]

Tara trouble

2008-12-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

A commentator over at another blog, making a note about the current ridiculousness surrounding Amanda Palmer, reminded me of a certain other completely ludicrous "fat crisis":

Above: Amber Benson at the 2003 BtVS wrap party (photo: Patrick Lee).

Yup, Amber "Tara" Benson, the woman who was 'too fat' to be on TV, according to some chowderheaded BtVS fans (not representative of the majority of BtVS fans, I can assure).

Again, the most important thing to remember is that, regardless of her size, people shouldn't have been making idiotic and frankly insensitive comments about her anyway. The fact that she is not even a large woman only helps illuminate how totally absurd the whole issue was.

Still, we evidently live in a world where our media feeds us some pretty skewed values if the woman above is 'fat'. The sword does cut both ways, though, and I've honestly met some people who considered Benson an inspirational "role model" to the larger women out there, who weren't being represented on TV (and as far as I'm concerned, really still weren't, not by her anyway). I still see it as symptomatic of some pretty odd ideas about body size, but if you took something positive away from viewing Ms Benson in such a way, then good for you in that regard, I suppose.

*Sigh* Sometimes I long for the days before I discovered the dark side of online fandom, complete with all its infantile rantings and moronic delusions. Then I remember that it's merely the current price to be paid for the far more positive side of fandom (online and otherwise), which is ideally intelligent, community-based and ultimately fun and interesting. That helps to take the sting out just a little.

Shaftin' Africa

2008-12-02T16:27:00.000-08:00

Christ on a bike! Have you seen the new Pirelli calendar? Jeez!!

Bank of Boston Beauty Queen

2008-12-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

Above: Amanda Palmer (second from right) with Tegan & Sara and Amy Cook (photo: Roger Erickson)

Thanks to the people at Feministing and The F Word, I recently became aware of the controversy currently surrounding Amanda Palmer, one half of "Brechtian Punk Cabaret" duo The Dresden Dolls as well as an acclaimed solo artist. Amanda has supposedly been effectively sacked by her record label for being "too fat."

I was actually lucky enough to have been at an Amanda Palmer gig a few weeks ago. Palmer is one of those extraordinarily talented and charismatic people who just seems to attract other talented and interesting, like-minded people to her side. On the night, for example, she actually had award-winning author Neil Gaiman accompanying her on the tambourine!

She brought up this issue at the time: that her record company had taken one look at the music video for her single "Leeds United" and basically declared it unmarketable because it featured her supposedly unattractive belly. However, back then it wasn't obvious that this would ultimately lead to her leaving her label, Roadrunner Records.

Above: Amanda Palmer performing (with a broken foot) in London (photo: me).

Now, some commentators have noted that the rift between Palmer and Roadrunner may not ultimately be one about her body, and that it is instead to do with more general issues to do with her marketability and also her open criticism of Alaskan governor and anti-feminist, perpetual foot-in-mouther and over-promoted dunderhead Sarah Palin (I'm not a huge fan of that woman either, to be honest with you). I concede that this is more likely than not, but at the same time I think it's unwise to simply ignore the underlying issues here, or to write-off the outrage that fans and others are experiencing as some sort of mindless, knee-jerk reaction. Whether or not it was ultimately the primary reason for her split with Roadrunner, the fact remains that Amanda Palmer is an extremely talented woman who was rather incredibly and shallowly criticised by her record label for not following strict industry codes on how to market women and women's bodies.

[I could easily do a whole series of posts on the packaging and marketing of women within the music industry, especially when it comes to issues of the representation of race, but I'm going to stick predominantly to the Amanda Palmer story for now.]

It's almost immaterial to note that, by any sane or reasonable definition of the phrase, Amanda Palmer is actually not fat at all! The point remains that she is apparently "too fat" to be a successfully marketed artist, because things like how much you look like some poorly photoshopped, navel-less waif are more important than anything else in an industry that is primarily based on aural media anyway, apparently.

Let's not forget the inherent sexism at the heart of this, shall we? Try to recall that Roadrunner Records is a label where "you can count the number of women on the fingers of one hand and most of the people on the label are decidedly chunky hairy dudes." It's almost redundant for me to point out that RR would quite simply not have this issue with Ms Palmer where she in fact, a man.

But no, Amanda Palmer is a woman, and one who routinely challenges and queers acceptable and traditional gender roles and presentation (one of my favourite photo sets of her is the "John/Yoko" set featuring her and bandmate Brian Viglione; naturally, Amanda is the "John"), this apparently means that she is wicked and must be punished, or at least, must be criticised by her own damn label. Unfortunately, I also hear a fair bit of criticism of her body and the choices that she makes regarding it from her own fans. A common criticism is of the fact that Palmer typically is not completely shaved, meaning that an unsuspecting fan might (gasp!) catch an unwitting glimpse of Amanda Palmer's underarm hair during a gig(!). Oh woe is them! I simply cannot play a violin small enough for these people. This MSpaint image, cribbed from the Dolls' own "hatemail" page, is a pretty typical example of the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Luckily enough though, this is going to be one of those rare posts where, rather than just bitching and moaning and griping, I actually suggest something positive and productive. One of the neat things about the Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer is an incredibly creative and active fanbase. This fanbase, upon hearing about the shameful treatment of Ms Palmer by her record label, decided to set up a "Rebellyon" of sorts: a protest of Roadrunner records that primarily involves fans taking photographs of their bellies, big or small, and posting them on the web, all in solidarity to Amanda/protest of Roadrunner. It's one of those wonderful bits of fan activism that is simultaneously very sweet and all a bit tongue in cheek and silly, but at the same time carrying an important message to Roadrunner; a message written in permanent marker on the bellies of dozens of fans.

Yes, my belly is going up on the Rebellyon site soon. I'm not going to post it up here because I'm sure my readers would not appreciate it. But still, as I was taking a photo of myself, I was again struck by the double standard of it all, the fact that I, as a male, was enjoying some invisible male privelege that meant that I was not as likely to receive outright and candid criticism of my "non-standard" body as a woman in the same situation. I'm slightly bigger than most, so there's the fact that most people out there on the internet probably don't want to see my exposed flesh, but then again, that's partly what the Rebellyon is about: the fact that some things are more important than the size of one's midriff. Anyway, if you feel you'd like to get involved, please feel free to add your belly to the group.

Now, again, "Rebellyon" is all slightly silly in nature, but try not to forget the real issues that underlie the problem at hand here. Amanda Palmer is a serious musician and should be judged according to her talent, not her (much smaller than all this furore might lead you to believe) waist size.

P.S.

Also, enormous kudos to Amanda Palmer for writing so frequently about her own body and sexuality in ways that, yet again, challenge the typical presentation of female bodies and female desire. I have never heard so many songs about female masturbation before (oh wait, maybe I have. Thanks, Jezebel).

Evelyn Rydz as She-Hulk...

2008-12-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

...as part of The SuperHeroes Project, a fairly neat endeavour apparently designed to raise the profiles of contemporary artists.

Also, just so we're clear on this: my love of She-Hulk knows almost no bounds (I say "almost" because even I can't stomach Peter David's take on the character).

Yet another "also": Ria Brodell makes a really cute Flash.

Some franchises don't need your money, only your love

2008-12-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, despite what people may say about supposed new spin-offs, new tv series, movies or comics...

...I think that Buffy doesn't really need any more "official" material. The fandom is keeping it alive and well all by itself.

(Suggested further reading)

Far too many words (and too few eloquent ones) about War & Pieces

2008-12-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

((warning: spoilers ahead for Fables: War and Pieces))*

Something occured to me while I was reading The Good Prince, Fables' tenth volume. I realised that, for a series supposedly entirely based around the concept of some kind of Israel parable, wherein a tiny nation is surrounded by larger, hostile nations (and indeed, this is a reading supported by interviews with series creator Bill Willingham), the "Fabletown" that is the focus of the series really is a place populated by people who could probably each take out all of their opponents single-handedly, so why the hell is there supposedly an ongoing war between the people of Fabletown and the much-feared "Adversary?" I mean, as excellent a read as it was, with shadows of some exciting and suitably epic Arthurian tales (helped of course by some actual appearances by Arthurian knights), The Good Prince was a story in which Fabletown's resident janitor strikes up some kind of incredible magical powers that basically grant him an invincible army of ghosts and the ability to seemingly do whatever the hell he wants, all because his cause is deemed "just." Hence, he takes a sizeable bite out of the series' key antagonist.

Now, this "simple but honest young man makes good as a swashbuckling hero" formula (here also given the classic fairytale twist of the royal prince disguised as a mere unsupposing serf) is the stuff that makes for great fairy tales, and therefore I suppose should be Fables' bread & butter, and it was genuinely impressive the first time Willingham handled it, back in Homelands, but by the time it was repeated, with the scale greatly increased, in The Good Prince, it only served to raise one big question: if one man can be so powerful can do so much against the Adversary, why on Earth haven't the combined forces of Fabletown completely overcome him yet?

Clearly, Willingham either did not want this question hanging over the remainder of his series, or else The Good Prince was designed from the very beginning to lead into a conclusion for the series; a final, fateful battle between good and evil and the conclusion to over six years' worth of this multi-award-winning comic book franchise, because Fables' eleventh volume - War & Pieces - is precisely the one that wraps up this long-running arc with a bang.

That's not to say that further volumes aren't coming. This is simply the end of this particular chapter in Fables' history. Whether the series can continue without its primary antagonist and main plot device or whether this will become regarded as the moment when the series "jumped the shark" remains to be seen.

To be honest, I'm reasonably optimistic about the series' future, whilst at the same time cautiously keeping a couple of reservations about me, and really, the reasons for both my positive and negative thoughts about the series can be found within War & Pieces, for it really is a rather messy beast of good and bad ("Pieces" indeed, it seems) that perhaps represents a little of what is right and a lot of what is wrong about Fables.

First, let's examine what Fables even is at the generic level. First presenting itself as an anachronistic fish-out-of-water tale and perhaps immigrant parable about a collection of fairy tale characters living in modern day New York, Fables soon revealed itself to in fact be a war story of truly epic proportions. 'Epic' gets bandied around an awful lot, but considering the scale of the story at hand, I feel it is more than justified in this instance. With an ensemble cast of both considerable size - constructed as they are from the massive tapestry of all of Western (and later, middle-Eastern, too) storytelling - and also such strength that each could likely support a series all to themselves (although the not-quite-as-good Fables spin-off series Jack hints that that may not be such a good idea), Fables really is a grand project.

This war narrative though is equal parts Ian Flemming Cold War spy thriller and Lord of the Rings-style fantasy adventure. The first part is well represented in the story that makes up much of the first third of War & Pieces: a tale that sees Cinderella, having honed the skills of the spy trade over several lifetimes (the fairytale characters in Fables are, of course, as old as the classic stories that feature them), jetting around the globe and taking out nameless henchmen in a story that borrows as much visually as it does plot-wise from a Sean Connery Bond thriller. The bulk of this volume though tends towards the latter part of this equation, and perhaps suffer for it. After all, magical or fantasy writing can, in the wrong hands, easily descend to the playground antics level of "my magic is more powerful than your magic," "no, my magic is more powerful than your magic," with no clear rules other than those of poor plotting deciding which way any battle or confrontation should fall; sometimes magic just works and sometimes it doesn't, it's magical that way. Considering how much of Fables is entirely predicated on characters with magical abilities squaring off against one another, it's honestly surprising that Fables isn't a much weaker series for it, with Willingham revealed as some kind of master illusionist who's somehow tricked us all into not noticing just how bare some of his plots are. Again, I stress that for the most part that's because his plots are not so thin at all, but in fact fleshed out by fascinating takes on familiar characters as well as labyrinthine plots based around Cold War-era paranoia and counter-counter-espionage.

However, that trust really is stretched to its limits in this latest volume, which features scenes in which we are presented with magical arrows that, so we are told, always kill their intended targets (after all, they're magical), only to see said arrows limply fail to kill their intended targets, seemingly because their target was in this instance a popular character. Or perhaps, like I said, it really was magic. "Magic," of course, being some sort of code-word for convenient but inexplicable plot developments or catches.

Far too much of War & Pieces continues in this vein, with our multiple heroes apparently beyond any fear of death or retribution thanks to their "powerful magic" and general incredible popularity (which actually, in the Fables mythos, really does amount to the same thing, as characters cannot die so long as their tales keep on being told en masse). Perhaps this is the real reason the series cannot go on as a war tale and is instead attempting to reinvent itself. When your heroes are, rather miraculously, armed with the entire arsenal of all of Western and Middle Eastern literature, from magic carpets to Vorpal blades, any army that stands against them seems to do so in the face of truly ludicrous odds, making the series' main arc of the Adversary threat seem increasingly redundant as the series continued and revealed more and more about our heroes' hidden powers and abilities.

Fittingly then, in an era that seems to spell the end of Fables as we have known it, the series does give us one prominent character death, apparently standing as a metaphor for the end of the series as it has run up until that point. Indeed, none other than Prince Charming himself meets his end in this volume, perhaps implying that a certain classical, fairytale, "magical" type of Fables story really is over. There'll be no more Pince ex machina coming to save the day. No more simple love stories. Of course, in Fables true love never has been simple, or else the late Prince would not leave a veritable gaggle of widows behind.

War & Pieces is at once a suitably large in scale story of love and war, yet at the same time a wonderful display of the kind of ridiculous storytelling that has largely up until this point been hidden behind spy tricks and plot twists, and yet stands a little barer than usual in this volume. I'm still very much looking forward to the next chapter, though.

*I tend to loathe spoiler warnings, but happen to know that one of my readers may well appreciate this particular one.

I know I'm a sinner but I can't say "no..."

2008-12-01T16:27:00.000-08:00

It can hardly be said that I'm a "fan" of Tegan & Sara, although this is predominantly through my incredible ignorance of almost all of their body of work, rather than any kind of actual distaste for what I've heard. No, my own taste in music seems to hover between the obscure-and-probably-rightly-so and the actually-very-popular-yet-maintaining-illusion-of-obscurity stuff, I never seem to get right down the middle and hit that vein of indie rock royalty, which is where acts like Tegan & Sara seem to lie.

Still, I recently stumbled upon several youtube vids of them performing covers of a certain Weezer song which is definitely my current earworm du jour. I pretty much could not have asked for a more entertaining match of song and cover artist.

Loving this (and other vids featuring the same phenomenon) so much!

The Sublime Beauty of Polish Film Posters

2008-11-27T03:36:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, in which Kirk, Spock et al traverse an Escher-esque landscape. Good times.

I deserve rainbows

2008-11-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not usually a huge fan of these "answer a handful of questions and we'll tell you everything you need to know about your personality by fitting you into one of these dozen neat categories" things. There's a number of reasons why I don't like them. However, I've never had the opportunity to put one up onto my blog before, and I'm still a massive sucker for "ooh, something new that I can do with this techy thing!"

Happy Thanksgiving! No, I don't celebrate another country's national holidays

2008-11-26T16:56:00.001-08:00

At my University there were a great many non-British students. However, some, it seems, never quite cottoned on to the fact that Britain, despite speaking the same language that they do in the United States (although that much is debateable), is not actually the United States. Hence, I sometimes seemed to find myself incredulously fielding questions about what I'd be doing to celebrate a coming Independence Day or Thanksgiving.

I do occasionally get asked about Guy Fawkes Night (although Americans almost always call it a Day), but that seems to be primarily because of the influence of a certain film...

Anyway, it may not be Thanksgiving over here, but it is in a certain somewhere in the world (or will be soon, when they catch up to today). Happy Thanksgiving, whatever American readers I may have!

More Divynls!

2008-11-26T16:41:00.000-08:00

Mighty J_0 Off

2008-11-26T09:00:00.001-08:00

How many video games can you name that have only female characters?

Now, there are a number of games with female protagonists, from the Tomb Raider series, of course, to a sizable chunk of the Resident Evil games (perhaps most of them? all of them? I'm not so up on RE lore). However, these girls are still in the minority, and there are whole genres that are still predominantly based around the masculine hero. Games like the Final Fantasy series in particular, with its affinity for phallus-wielding heroes and sacrificial girlfriends springs to mind.* A lot of games provide the option of playing as a male or female protagonist: Niobe or Ghost, boy Pokemon trainer or girl Pokemon trainer, but that really seems to sidestep the issue, and here, I want to focus on games where one is not given a choice, and ideas of gender are hard-wired into the story and make-up of the game itself.

Some games get the idea of a female protagonist totally wrong. This is often because of a "hey, let's put a heroine in here instead of a hero," way of thinking, which often still normalises a male hero and views female protaginists as exceptional. And often, these female characters are still tied into the gender dynamics of a male-dominated game. Take the relatively recent Princess Peach platformer, for example, which came under a lot of critical fire. The game supposedlyclaimed it would present Peach finally as a strong leading woman, but actually presented her more as a hysterical mess of emotions prone to fits of histrionic bawling.

The problem here is that, quite simply, Peach is not leading woman material. It's not her fault. It's the fault of the fact that she was created a long time ago (in terms of video game history) for a game that had her simply as a damsel in distress; a prize for the hero to obtain through his trials. Peach wasn't even animate, she was a single-sprite object; a sleeping beauty, of sorts. And indeed, that fairytale analogy really isn't too much of a stretch. A great many games, from Super Mario through to Prince of Persia (yes, even the modern updating where the princess is at least given some lines), are based on models/myths of masculinity and feminity cribbed from fairytales. Mario's story is ultimately one that posits him as a white knight** who must slay vicious dragons in order to save his beautiful princess - the object of his affections - from the castle tower.

So yes, ultimately, a character born from such a scenario may in fact not make the best leading heroine material, unlike those who are created quite a way from such a storytelling tradition. And yes, video games do, of course, tell stories.

I have to give a massive hat tip to the wonderful auntie pixelante, for inspiring me to even think along these lines (this blog post could not have come to be without her and her unknowing influence on my thought processes). Her creations, like the game Mighty Jill Off or the story "the princess is in another castle" are neatly subversive in their approach to classic video game storytelling in the Mario mold. They illuminate the inherent supposed gender roles whilst simultaneously irreverently perverting them.

There are many things to like about Mighty Jill Off. There's the fact that the "princess" (in this updated to "queen") is no passive victim but instead a demanding domme who insists upon our protagonist's dangerous journey to the hights of the tower in which she keeps herself (she is not "kept") in order to prove her worthiness. Again, this explodes the themes underlying certain classic games at the same time as it playfully messes with and reinvents them.

Another is that this is a game that has an entirely female cast, and for me, what that does is illuminate just how many games there are that feature the exact opposite, to the exclusion of women or the total reduction of their roles in gameplay that they ultimately become nullified completely. I hate to keep harping on Mario, but really, can Peach even be called a "character" in that game, in any real sense of the phrase? It's much easier to see the conflict and antagonism between Mario and Bowser (or, in the earlier Donkey Kong, between Mario and the eponymous antagonist of that game) than it is to see the relationship between Mario and Peach (Rose). You can't have a relationship with a single sprite. In Mighty Jill Off, the queen is in fact the one playfully antagonising the heroine. She is both Peach and Bowser and she is also neither.

The relationship between Jill and the queen is seemingly mirrored in the only other females-only game that I can think of, and another that features only two characters at all: Portal***. In this game, GLaDOS is literally testing the protagonist, putting her through her paces and determining her worth. All the while she teases and provokes the heroine, too. I know for a fact that I'm not the first person to see this relationship between the characters and again, I imagine that if one goes through the archives on auntie's own site one will see her own ruminations of Portal and the relationships presented within.

Classic video games are like fairy tales in that they tend to tell seemingly simple stories of love, desire and struggling through hardships, all mitigated through the technology/economics (another quarter buys you another chance) of the era, but also some very simplified gender roles, too. I'm so glad that there are those who realise this and seek to exploit/undermine/reimagine this.

Can you believe that I originally intended to insert a mini-essay about women in film, too? Another day, perhaps...

P.S.

Much love to auntie pixelante

*And even then, there was of course the female-heavy Final Fantasy X2, but isn't that simply a case of the exception proving the rule/trend?

**When fully powered, Mario does indeed become clad in mostly white, but that's a total coincidence.

***The only "male" in Portal is a brief sound of a disembodied snarl, supposed to represent a part of GLaDOS' whole personality. It's only slightly less of a "character" than the original Peach.

Just a little atheist vignette

2008-11-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

"Societies [are] worse off 'when they have God on their side'" claims this article (found via here) and to be honest, I can't say I'm much surprised. Firstly, I've seen reports and articles that've come to much the same conclusion before. Secondly, I've believed for quite some time that people are more likely to have a decent grasp of right & wrong (which would then, presumably, bring down rates of major crime, one of the factors mentioned in the article) if they actually think about why certain things are right and others are wrong. And of course, no, "because [x holy book] says so" does not qualify as thinking. Then again, that's probably fodder for a whole other post, really.

But one additional thing that caught my eye is this bit towards the end of the article, where the idea of "scientific proof" of God is mentioned. The person bringing up the idea is evidently not religious, but lots of people in the past - from Anselm to Aquinas - have claimed to have discovered rational "proof" of God. Now, I'm certainly not the first atheist to bring this up, but doesn't it entirely undermine your entire anti-atheist argument of "you can't apply scientific thinking to God" (i.e "don't expect to understand God; he's magical") if you do evidently bow down to rationalist, scientific evidence? Again, I'm not the first person to bring this up, but if someone found absolutely definitive proof of the existence of God tomorrow, would religious people stick to their guns and ignore it?

Why?

2008-11-22T01:10:00.001-08:00

Two very different takes on Sleeping Beauty

2008-11-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fairy tale geek and a Queen Adreena fan, so this music video by Daisy Chainsaw - the proto-Queen Adreena - for "Hope Your Dreams Come True" is pretty much one of my favourite things ever. The story is taken from Angela Carter's subversive take on Sleeping Beauty: "The Lady of the House of Love" aka "Vampirella," in which the vampiric Beauty is essentially asleep until a fresh, virginal victim boy awakens her.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous, here's a slightly different take on a more "adult" Sleeping Beauty:

Buffy the ubermensch

2008-11-21T07:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, I just finished reading "Wolves at the Gate," the latest volume in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer "season eight" comic book series and it got me thinking.

The comics seem to be treading ground that is a lot closer to superhero terrority than what was dealt with on the show itself. I'm not saying that people are gearing up in capes and tights or anything, but the whole idea of Buffy leading a team of super-powered warriors is now looking a lot more like something out of a Wildstorm comic than it ever did back when the characters were three-dimensional and attending high school.

One of the weird things about this, though, is that these characters do have a background in something more "real." Something that seems tangible and three-dimensional, even if it essentially is just as fake. More importantly, the series did have its roots firmly grounded in reality - despite having its branches far above it - and ultimately was a series that was primarily about a group of young people growing up, not a bunch of people fighting monsters.

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that all of this makes you think about the events of the comic somewhat differently than how you might otherwise be inclined to think. You see events that don't seem particularly out of place in superhero fiction and you find yourself looking at them through a somewhat more realist lens. Or perhaps I really can just never look at superhero fiction the same way again after it was pretty much thoroughly dissected in The Dark Knight.

As has been expressed before, though, there comes a point where you realise that the more realism you insert into the superhero genre, the more you simply serve to highlight the depths of absurdity that lie at the heart of that genre (and now, I suppose, I've given up on the idea that it's possible to not think about the Buffy comics as superhero comics, by value of their generic traits). Additionally, in things like The Dark Knight, you end up explicitly raising questions about what the real-world implications would be if people started acting the way that people like Batman do. If Batman really existed, would he be right to do what he did?

If we keep the realm of the superhero a completely fantastical one, then one could make the case that questions like this hardly matter. After all, questioning the morality and the political and polemical implications of superhero comics might become like pointing out that fairy tales - which are heavily based on themes of murder, child abuse and cannibalism - might be just a little bit violent (I'm no stranger to fairy tale studies, but there comes a point when one really is just pointing out the absurdly and harmlessly obvious). But still, when things are not only grounded in a certain degree of realism, and additionally, when the creators involved have explicitly said that they're approaching a piece of work with a specific political agenda, it becomes difficult to not think about things in real terms rather than as simply the way a particular genre simply is.

All of which brings me to my point about the Buffy comics, which is this: whilst I understood the basic message of the series, that Buffy was supposed to represent the "everygirl," and her gradual coming in to her own was supposed to represent the growing up processes of many girls and boys worldwide, how can one possibly apply that same message to a comic that instead seems to have at its centre the message of "these people are the ubermensch, so to them, the rules do not apply?" I mean, seriously, has anyone even checked to see what is going on in these comics? Buffy has set up an army of supergirls and goes around doing what she wants and answering to no-one, and all just because she has superstrength. I really hate to find myself siding with the villains of a series, who have pointed out much the same, but really, this is just absurd. I guess ultimately, any superhero fiction is like this in a way. To whom are the JLA accountable? Are they not equally a bunch of renegades who've placed themselves above the law? Why is it that Superman can do whatever the hell he wants, just because he can fly? It's questions like this that lead to things like Civil War being written.

But ultimately though, things like this only get considered when you decide to utilise that realist lens; when the veil of fantasy drops away. There's nothing wrong with thinking about the fiction you're consuming and questioning it's inherent morality, in fact it's something I highly recommend. However, I think there's a vast difference between Green Lantern fighting killer bugs in outer space and a 2D Sarah Michelle Gellar running a fascist society where the rules don't apply to those with superior physical abilities. When I look at a comic and can only see the real world impications and how stupid/scary they'd be, the comic is either being very clever or really is rather fundamentally flawed.* I really, honestly enjoyed Wolves at the Gate, but it still looks like I'm leaning towards the latter.

Plus, the added realism only makes me question the truly bizarre bits all the more. Would the series ever pull a giant Mecha-Dawn out of thin air?

Seriously though. GIANT. MECHA. DAWN. What the hell?

*I'd cite Millar's Wanted as a good example of the "Hey, look how scary this'd really be" thing done quite deliberately.

Facebookism

2008-11-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a few different posts here and there recently (in particular, one at feminist website feministing and another at comics & feminism blog Occasional Superheroine) dealing with the same topic: the bizarre nature of the highly gendered ads on facebook.

Now, the idea of using the internet to gather personal information about potential consumers so that you can then market stuff to them more effectively is nothing new (once again, I'm going to heavily suggest the (sadly out of print) novel Nearly Roadkill, which deals with a lot of these themes) and its not just an internet-only phenomenon, either. Flicking through magazines or switching between channels also gives an insight into this sort of thing, and for the most part, it's simply sensible, intelligent marketing. Countdown is - supposedly - primarily watched by older viewers, so they advertise things that are aimed at primarily an older audience.

However, when it comes to advertising, one of the clearest divides is between items aimed at one gender or another, and frankly, often this extremely gendered advertising strays into just transparent sexism, or simple idiocy and naivety. Sarah Haskins has a great series of videos over at Current.TV dealing with exactly this, in particular the absurd and frequently patronising undertones of adverts in the U.S. that are aimed at women.

Facebook though really has taken this to an extreme, as their adverts, based on the information provided by users, often seem to only look for one particular criteria: "has vagina: yes or no".* And, as the commenters I mentioned above have discovered to their dismay, it seems that as far as facebook's advertising clients are concerned, women are primarily concerned with only one thing: losing weight. Now, I really can't add to much to the Feministing post linked above, which deals with just how bizarre this is, and how it's a sign of an all-pervading attack on women's self-esteem and body image, but I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts.

What first struck me about this issue was how, if no women had brought it up, I genuinely might never have noticed it. Facebook advertising isn't like television advertising, where one could easily not fit into the desired demographic that the advertisements around a particular show are clearly aimed at (doesn't Countdown also attract a large student audience, for example? And what about the straight men who watch Sex and the City? I know that they exist), and therefore might be easily exposed to "other people's" adverts. With facebook, it selects the advertisements to show you based on something a little bit more sophisticated than "watches [x programme] therefore must fit into [demographic y]" as you've given the damned thing your details. I identify as male on facebook and therefore have never once seen the ads in question when logging in to check my account. I don't make a habit of looking over people's shoulders when they check their accounts, either. So really, this was an essentially invisible to problem to me until someone else brought it up (talk about invisible male privelege). I've noticed trends in the adverts that I've been exposed to myself, but I was obviously not really paying them much attention, as it took me a while to realise that they must be tailored to my demographic. Ironically enough, it was the homogenous nature of the ads that I received that at first led me to believe that they must in fact be just generic ads that everyone gets.

When I finally did start to notice the ads, I realised that with me, they all seem to focus on two things: a) that I am male, and b) that I am single. Hence, I've been bombarded with guilt-tripping, self-esteem attacking ads along the lines of "[my age] and still single?" (said, no doubt, in a voice equal parts surprise and pity, or like a sterotypical Jewish mother).

One could of course always simply not tell Facebook one's gender. It's not like that isn't a viable option (thankfully). However, I really am split on this one. On the one hand, I encourage those who refuse the gender binary, but on the other hand, I can't help but feel that this sort of action is just a kind of closeting oneself rather than addressing the real problem. Idiocy in incredibly and ludicrously gendered advertising isn't going to go away just because a bunch of people decide not to look at it (despite what a certain Treehouse of Horror might tell you), at least, not unless everyone looks away, and I can't see that happening anytime soon.

So yeah, facebook advertisers assuming that all women need to be told how to diet. I realise can't argue with Valerie D'Orazio's conclusion on this one.

*Thanks to Cruella, via Feministing, for that one.

Ok, I lied about that being my last post for today

2008-11-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

Troma-tastic.

Carey vs Marcotte

2008-11-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm posting a lot of things in quick succession here, so I promise this'll be my last one for now. I just wanted to point out how weird it is that Pandagon, one of my favourite progressive blogs, have put a post up about Mariah Carey and her attitude to sex/marriage.

Now I'm not saying for a second that this sort of thing is innapropriate for a political blog, as even - in fact, often especially - pop culture is responsible for a lot of the prevailing attitudes that a society has, so I'm not for a second asking, as some of the commenters have, "why are you even bothering with this?" No, I'm bringing this up because I actually consider myself a not-so-closeted Mariah Carey fan.

Now, just a caveat, I swear that I do like other, better types of music too. Just a little bit of discretion, my favourite band in the whole wide world are the wonderful The Dresden Dolls (perhaps not better than Mariah Carey, dependent on one's personal taste). But what can I say? I suppose I just have a soft spot for polished pop-ballads performed by someone with an unmistakeable natural talent.

Still, sometimes I do wish that she would just keep her mouth shut when she's not singing, as otherwise I find myself doing ever more complex feats of cognitive dissonance to keep myself liking her while a lot of her admitted ideas and politics are so transparently slightly backwards and/or stupid. Pandagon has just gone and underscored a great example of this.

Bizarre amazon review of the day

2008-11-17T21:30:00.001-08:00

David Cross' "Shut Up, You Fucking Baby", reviewed by L. Hicklin

"As an Arrested Development fan, I bought this just for David Cross, but there's no Tobias here! It's funny, sometimes extremely so, but I think he gets too involved with politics, somthing dangerous for comedians."

Ok, let's look at that last line again, shall we? "...He gets too involved with politics, somthing (sic) dangeorus for comedians." Frankly, this deserves a massive "what the hell?" Since when was political satire off the menu? Since when did it not in fact often serve to raise a comedian's profile? Everyone from Stephen Colbert to Rory Bremner might not agree with this guy.

On internet anonymity and avatar attachment

2008-11-17T20:54:00.000-08:00

I keep toying with the idea of setting up a blog that would deal with things that I'd rather not publish on a blog that I know has been visited by people that I know in real life. I.E. a blog that would deal with some more clandestine things.

Bizarrely though, one thing that keeps tripping me up - aside from my own shyness and ambivalence about the whole process of writing and/or archivism - is my attachment to my own net avatar, the inauspicious "Jayunderscorezero" or "J_0". The other day, I tried to utilise a brand new handle and found that I just simply couldn't. I went back and changed what I'd put down to "Jayunderscorezero". It's a weird little phenomenon, probably revealing a deep ambivalence about my own net handle: I don't want to go by my "irl" name, but I don't want to go by a name other than the one I've carved out for myself in the virtual space of the internet.

I'm the same in video games. My friend's copy of Rock Band being a great example, as in that I've developed a great attachment to my avatar, and have spent some time in the game deciding how best to outfit them. It's weird the little emotional attachments we invest in these things, isn't it?

Anyway, loads and loads has been written on the subject of online avatars, the relationships we have with them and where they fit within our wholesale models of ourselves. Personally, I'd particularly recommend Stone's "The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age" as well as the novel "Nearly Roadkill" by Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan. Bring a handy knowledge of/interest in postmodernist attitudes to identity and the body to both.

Not funny

2008-11-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm a lot funnier than I think I am (despite the best efforts of this very blog to ptove otherwise).

The reason I say this is because I just had the rather odd experience of seeing a comment on an old post at someone else's blog and thinking "Hey, that's pretty funny," sometime before noticing that it was in fact I who had written the original comment.

I'm not at all surprised that I had written a comment and then forgotten about it. After all, I must have written thousands of the things over the years. What surprised me was my reaction to my own writing, which seemed so alien to my reaction to my own writing when I know that it's my writing.

I guess that typically I view my own writing with so much ingrained self-criticism and doubt that I of course find myself totally unable to judge my work objectively. My writing for this very blog is no exception. As a matter of fact, it's for this very reason that I tend not to write so much here. It's also the reason that I am yet to find a discernable theme for this blog and also why every single post (as if there are enough for me to come out with a statement like that) ends up becoming somewhat of an essay on the blog itself mixed with a self-deprecating apology of sorts.*

The weirdest thing? I was thinking about writing a post about a writer's inability to be objective about his own words just the other day, before the above event happened. Jungian synchronicity, perhaps?

*In the words of Mike Sterling, "blogging about blogging is a sin."

On starting off on the wrong foot

2008-11-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, now I feel like a dick for starting off my posting with such a bitchy little dig at a series of books I haven't even read. Still, I know my own writing style, I come off as bland and insipid when I'm trying to be "nice". I'm usually only ever inspired to write anything at all when I'm some variation of angry or pissed off. Still, elation, total fannish geekery and nerdy crushes of all sorts tend to get me in the writing mood, too, so I hope to see more of the latter, more positive type of posting in the future.

Although that doesn't mean that there won't be any venting from now on. However, I'll try to keep the angry venting to actually important things like, say, politics. Man could I have written a lot on here during certain recent political events. Still, luckily I did all that writing on facebook where some people I know actually read it. I might want to wait until a little trickle of readers comes in before I start putting things on here that I actually want to be read. Though maybe that's a chicken & egg scenario and I need to put the important stuff on here first...

Either way, I can't guarantee that every post on here will be either important or positive. Expect me to be capricious in my posting, I guess. ("Expect capriciousness?" What the hell am I even typing?)

I have a theory about the Twilight books...

2008-11-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

...Which basically boils down to the idea that the reason they're as successful as they are is primarily because they are aimed at a teenaged audience, which means an audience likely too young to realise just how incredibly cliched and done-before the ideas within are.

Case in point, a conversation I had with someone about the books in question:

Other person: Hey, you know the Twilight books?
Me: Aren't those the ones that are just Kelley Armstrong and Lauren K. Hamilton books but with all the sex removed?
Other person: Who?

Exactly.

Just a test post, nothing to see here.

2008-06-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

See the title, really. This post is honestly just a placeholder for now until I find something worth putting up here. Although of course, since this is likely to become simply a library of my varied and random musings, "worth" is naturally a relative term.