Category: rant

Meanwhile, Georgia is Still Fighting Gay Marriage

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In other, less heartening news, I woke up to this in my Facebook feed today (yeah, I know, only old people use Facebook anymore, shut up): the Georgia senate has approved a law which “protects religious freedom”.

God dammit.

Here’s a salient central point from the actual bill (which I looked up and read).

Government shall not take any adverse action against a person or faith-based organization … on the basis that such person or faith-based organization believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief regarding lawful marriage between two people, including the belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a union.

Emphasis mine. The bill in its entirety can be read here.

I’m not a lawyer by any stretch, but I’ve re-read the passage several times and I don’t see where they say that those actions are limited to refusing to perform a marriage, as the header in the bill claims. In other words, you can do or say or believe whatever the fargo you want, as long as you’re doing so because of your religious beliefs about gay marriage.

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Refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple? The Georgia legislature stands with you. Shout and proclaim that gays can’t get into heaven or god hates gays or simply that you don’t feel like serving gays? The Georgia legislature stands with you. Send a homosexual couple a bag full of excrement on the day of their wedding? The Georgia legislature stands with you.

I’m also going to go ahead and point out the idiotic double-talk present in the bill. Up in that section above, see where it says “lawful marriage”? Much as the religious right hates it, chokes on it, can’t stand the thought of it, GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN THIS COUNTRY. This law, and any law like it, is about prejudice and the denial of human rights, pure and simple.

Its proponents are predictably smarmy and blind to the double-edged sword they’re creating. Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle said, “We are simply ensuring that no Georgian suffers at the hand of our government for their view on marriage.” (Torres, Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) No Georgian, of course, except for those who are denied services or basic human decency because our leaders want to pander and wring their hands and stroke the egos of the religious zealots who want the world to bend their way.

I guess southern hospitality is reserved for those who think, believe, and worship the same way you do. Discriminating against a black person will land you in jail. Discriminating against Muslims apparently might get you elected present. But discriminating against homosexuals? Just say it’s a religious thing, and let the hate flow!

On a personal note, I can’t wait for a Muslim or Jew or atheist business owner to start denying service to homophobic Christians under the protection of this law. Because the moment that happens (and it would be LEGAL under this law), the “persecuted” will be shouting about discrimination and religious freedom all over again, except this time, they’ll be doing it to repeal the law they just got done passing.

The bill hasn’t passed yet, but according to the AJC, it’s just about a sure thing that it will.

As an atheist who thinks most religion is focused on a lot of the wrong things; as a teacher who has to turn around and explain things like this to young minds; hell, as a decent human being, I’m appalled at this. I’m ashamed that the people who have worked so hard to get this legislation passed represent the rest of us to the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

In forty years, we’ll be looking back on foolishness like this the way we look back at the shameful history of Jim Crow laws and segregation. Our kids, thank goodness, will think we were insane for having laws like this on the books.

In the meantime, those of us who don’t have our heads up our asses have to live with this crap, and we have to try to explain it to the rest of the world as they laugh their butts off at how bass-ackwards we are.

Not to Harp on a Topic, but…

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Here’s a story I stumbled upon today.

In short, a cleric asked his congregation (is it called a congregation in Islam?) if anybody did not love the prophet Mohammed. A young man, mishearing, raised his hand, and was called a blasphemer by the cleric. In response, the young man went home, chopped off his hand — CHOPPED OFF HIS HAND — and later presented HIS DISEMBODIED HAND to the cleric on a plate. All to prove the depth of his faith.

He is, apparently, being hailed as a hero by his community. The young man. Who cut off his hand. To add further insult to injury (pun seriously intended), apparently the boy’s father is proud of him.

Look.

Obviously this story doesn’t give all the details, but it’s hard to say that this is anything other than a young man who has willfully disfigured himself over a misunderstanding. He is now, and will forever be, crippled by his own hand because he felt so strongly about his religion.

But this is what we do to ourselves. And his community is calling him a hero.

Okay, seriously this time. I’ll get off the (anti)religion kick. Regular programming will resume.

Star Wars Owes You Nothing

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There’s been a lot said about the new Star Wars movie. (Sidenote: Star Wars: TFA originally stood for Totally Fargoing Awesome) And, by the way, it’s been out in the ecosystem chomping down lesser films and records and pooping out money for almost three weeks, so, here’s your SPOILER ALERT: Go see the movie. There are spoilers below. Not big ones. But they exist. Seriously. See the movie.

I will happily place myself in the “loved it” category along with the millions of people out there who don’t have sticks up their butts about movies. Hell, I often have sticks (plural) up my butts (plural) about movies, and I still loved the movie. But, man oh man, the criticisms keep coming. And then the whiners. And then the haters. Even George Lucas has said he felt like he sold the film to “white slavers,” in a WTF moment that seriously just makes me want to sit down and wonder when the man was visited with an involuntary lobotomy. (The comment, of course, indicates that he does not approve of the new direction of SW7, which is fine, except that the mouth speaking the words is the mouth that gave us Jar-Jar, and … yep, sitting down.)

And look, critique is okay. It’s fine. Opinions are like funny uncles and all that. You’re entitled to dislike the movie! Rey’s too capable, too quickly. Poe isn’t featured enough. Starkiller Base is lame. Kylo Ren is too whiny. All this is fine, and maybe valid.

So much of the critique, however, takes on a different flavor than simple pro/con. Many critiques look far beyond what the film is and venture into the murky waters and unexplored jungles of what it could or should be. The plot is too derivative; it should have been more original. Star Wars has already shown us this father/son conflict, it needs to show us some totally new conflict instead. SW7 feels like a remake; we were expecting a sequel.

To any and all critiques in this vein, I say BOLLOCKS.

Finn

All thoughts in this vein share something in common: that is, they bring to bear the viewer’s expectations for the thing, and not just the thing itself. They presuppose that Star Wars, as a film franchise, as a part of their childhood experience, as a story in any shape whatsoever, OWES them something.

But Star Wars owes us nothing. It does not belong to us.

Sure, our experience with it belongs to us. My eight-year-old self, having just seen Empire, wanting an AT-AT walker of his very own to stomp across the neighborhood in was all well and good for me, but it doesn’t mean that George Lucas couldn’t, in Episode VI, drop an AT-AT into the middle of the forest for no goldfingered logical reason at all, just because he felt like doing so. (Seriously. How does that thing deal with trees at all? it corners slower than the Titanic.)

The creators of story are in no way beholden to their readers. We like to think they are, because stories matter to us. Stories which affected us, and especially stories which have aged with us, matter to us all the more. And sure, on some level, there’s a trust established between creator and audience; certain things are off-limits, whether due to constraints of the universe of the story, or out of fear of losing the audience. (We can all, after all, simply stop buying books and going to see Star Wars films.)

In short, the owners of Star Wars (and that’s now Disney, for better or for worse — though I’ll argue, especially with the prequels fading into distant memory, that it’s for the better) are free to do with it what they want.

Now, Disney wants to make money. It plans to achieve that goal through making media that draws people in, media that we want to consume over and over again and own tiny little pieces of. Well, just look at their box-office earnings: MISSION BLOODY ACCOMPLISHED.

But look a little deeper. Disney wasn’t in this just to make a film (or films — there will be two more, you know) to scratch the itch that fans have been picking at for thirty years. Why make a film just for the over-thirty crowd? They wanted to hook new viewers, too, while also keeping those older fans on the hook for a new series. Does it rehash old ideas, familiar tropes, well-visited themes of the original trilogy? No doubt. But it does so in a way that I found fresh and compelling, and that (and here I really apologize to any die-hard fan of the original trilogy) makes for a better film than ANY of the originals.

Seriously. Show any teenager Episode IV, and then show them Episode VII. We don’t even have to talk about which one they would enjoy more. Now, I’m not saying that a teenager is the best judge of a film’s quality (though, if you want to make money, teenagers are the ones to target). But a teenager is able to do something you and I can’t do: namely, view the original film(s) without the rose-colored rearview mirror of nostalgia.

I challenge you: go back and watch Episode IV, having recently seen Episode VII. (I did this when I posted about the similarities between the two films.) Cut the predecessor some slack for technology available at the time (notwithstanding the edits made in the 90s), and then — and this is the hard part! — strip out as much of your nostalgia as you can. What you’re left with is a very pretty action film about a whiny kid who goes on a space adventure. It starts off pretty good, but then the pacing drops out and doesn’t really get going again for about thirty or forty minutes. Then it’s fargoing excellent again until the ending, which features a repetitive and entirely-too-protracted battle in space and an abrupt-as-hell ending. On the other hand, you have Episode VII, which features two protagonists, both of whom have compelling backstories right from the gun (and they’re not white dudes, bonus for that), flung into a story which is paced like a chipmunk that’s been greased up and lit on fire. Sure, there’s a lame samey bit with a planet-sized space base that can blow up other planets. And maybe the last shot with Luke leaves a funny taste in your mouth. But there are multiple simultaneous plotlines. There’s a better, more deliberate sense of mystery. Even the villain is more relateable, whether you find him overly whiny or not — he shows weakness, he shows vulnerability, he has depth (and yeah, sure Vader has depth, but not in Episode IV).

I’ll argue that if you complete that exercise faithfully, you’ll find that SW7 is a better all-around movie than the original.

Kylo Ren

In my mind, the folks arguing about what SW7 should’ve or could’ve been are not so different from the blowhards railing against gay marriage (even after the book has been closed on it). You’ve got this nebulous thing which means something to you and which you probably feel strongly about, but the true meaning of which is flexing and adapting to fit the world we actually live in. The tide is inevitable. Star Wars owes you nothing, just as the institution of marriage owes you nothing. These things are just changing to stay viable for the times we live in. You can either go along for the ride or get trampled by the literal hordes of people getting on the ride without you.

Personally, I’m on board with the new Star Wars, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us … even if we’ve been there before.

 

 

No Girls Allowed – Why Marvel Needs to Take the Next Step

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My wife and I went to see Avengers 2 this weekend, which is unusual. It’s a rarity for us to go see a movie in the theater in the first place (young kids and all), let alone on opening weekend, but the hype was sufficient, we enjoyed the original. Further into the mix, we are both big fans of James Spader ever since his stint as the inimitable Alan Shore on Boston Legal a few years back, so… well, there we were.

And the movie’s great. Exactly what it says on the tin: a good time, tons of action, more than a few explosions, not too heavy on the brain. Good stuff. I pointed out, more or less in jest, to my wife after the fact that for all Marvel’s trying to make itself more female friendly (see the new Thor for example), their biggest franchise in the Avengers doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. (If you can’t be bothered, the Bechdel test is a rule-of-thumb, exceedingly low bar for a film to pass to qualify as not-entirely-chauvinistic-in-its-portrayal-of-women.) Now, you might argue, and you might be right, that the films’ primary audience is men. But you don’t have to look far to find female fans of not just the Marvel universe, but of comics in general, and of popular cinema for that matter. My wife and I are perfect examples; I don’t think I’ve ever cracked a comic book and I’d bet dollars to donuts that my wife hasn’t, but we love the recent spate of superhero movies nonetheless.

So we go home, and my wife discovers the “news” story that Mark Ruffalo tweeted at Marvel calling them out for the lack of gender equality in their Avengers merchandise. Not in so many words. He simply stated that it would be nice for his nieces and daughters to be able to find their favorite figures from the films in the toy stores and on the t-shirts they’re buying. Now, that surprised me, except that it didn’t. Because as much as Black Widow has become a face of the franchise, and as much as Scarlet Witch impacts the new story, they are still girls.

Right? Sure, you say, they’re girls, but only until a certain point. Black Widow single-handedly tames the Hulk, for example, and becomes one of the trainers for the newly reformed SHIELD unit at the end of the film. Not to mention the numerous asses she kicks along the way. Her kung fu is strong. Scarlet Witch manipulates the minds of virtually everybody in the film, including a demigod, for goodness sake, and then is solely responsible for the defense of the MacGuffin at the end of the film, dispatching baddies to the left and the right with little more than a flick of her brain stem.

And that’s awesome!

But.

Black Widow is still exceedingly feminine, in that she tames Hulk with the calming, gentle gestures that only a woman (in the world of this film) could effect. And her primary arc at the end of the film shows her as a lovelorn, heartbroken woman after the Hulk takes off. She’s a badass, but her badassitude is mitigated in no small part by the fact that she still plays into the roles we expect.

Scarlet Witch, too, as part of a genetically-modified duo together with her brother, falls into the same trap. You’ve got twins granted superpowers through some undisclosed don’t-ask-questions science thing. One gets super speed, the other gets the ability to manipulate minds… which one do you think goes to the boy, and which to the girl? You could have just as easily gone the other way and let the girl have the super speed for once (looking at you, The Flash, Superman, Nightcrawler, etc) instead of making her a master manipulator (and there’s nothing woman-phobic in that, promise), but no, we’ll make her eyes turn red and give her these mind powers.

Okay, okay. I don’t mean to deconstruct the film. Fact is, Marvel is trying, and the further fact is, they are succeeding in a lot of ways at giving their female characters depth, realism, dark sides, and the unpredictability that we expect from its male characters. They’re still women, but they’re not “women” the way women are women in movies.

But why, then, are they not embracing the female fans in their audience? Or the males who (rightly) think a character like Black Widow or Scarlet Witch has something admirable or worthy of emulation about her? Sure, we can put those characters front and center when it’s time to put together a promo spot, but let’s not monetize those characters. Who would want that?

Except they don’t even make the ladies front and center. Look at how far from center the women are in this promo! Not one, not two, but three slots away from the place your eye goes to when you look at the picture. They’re there, sure, but they’re so removed from top billing they’re almost an afterthought.

There’s a problem here, and it’s a self-fulfilling problem. The problem is that Marvel thinks they’re not going to make any money on the sale of merchandise that features its females (and let’s not argue that it’s about anything other than money; if they felt it would sell, they would be overflowing the shelves with it). So they don’t make the merchandise, which of course ensures that they won’t make any money on it. And they market the hell out of the male-centric toys and apparel, which ensures that girls buying the stuff are an outlier rather than a focus. But is the problem a real problem, or is it a problem they assume is true? Maybe the audience has evolved; maybe there’s more market than ever for female superheroes, but we’d never know it, because we’re holding onto an outmoded way of thinking. Make hulk hands and replicas of Thor’s hammer and Iron Man gloves so that little boys can pretend to be those guys, but if a girl wants to imitate her favorites, well… send her to the Barbie aisle, point her at the Disney Princess outfits.

I’m reminded of Field of Dreams. Guy gets the idea to build a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere — and, yeah, the idea comes from a disembodied voice in a cornfield, but you know, roll with it — but nobody supports him because there’s no market for it. Nobody’s going to come to a rinkydink baseball diamond on a farm. But in true hollywood fashion, he builds it anyway, and lo and behold, people start to come. Sure, the ghosts of dearly departed baseballers coming to noodle around on the field helps. But the point remains: he didn’t accept the way things were, he insists on at least trying his idea before he’ll take no for an answer.

I have a feeling that we’re having that If you build it, he will come moment here, except it’s a lot bigger than one person — it’s a whole gender. The whole town (the existing industry) is telling Marvel that it doesn’t make sense to market the female superheroes, but I have a feeling that if they can have the courage to build a baseball diamond in the cornfield (roll out some female-targeted merchandise), the consumers will come. And let’s be honest. Marvel has the money for this gamble.

All they need is the courage to phone up a bulldozer and knock down some corn.

Ticketmaster can Shove It

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It’s not as if I learned something I didn’t already know today. The world is driven by money; it shouldn’t shock me to have the fact thrust in my face, but it did.

Back in December, my wife got me tickets to see one of my favorite performers of all time. A guy whose stand-up routines I would memorize entire twenty-minute passages from. A guy whose mannerisms and quirky onscreen personality was the stuff of legend. It was a brilliant gift, the kind of gift I only wish I could think to put together for her, and man oh man, was I excited.

And then, a month or so later, the first allegations came out.

By last count, the number of women accusing Bill Cosby of rape has grown to something like 43. And it immediately put me in mind of the Sorites Paradox. Because when the first woman came out, I thought, surely not, this is just some gold-digger. When the second woman came out, I thought, she’s just trying to piggyback on the first. When the third came out, I thought, they smell blood in the water. Nothing, at first, convinced me that there was anything to the allegations.

Somewhere along the way, though, a few voices in the dark turns into a chorus of accusers, and it’s hard to ignore 43 women claiming the same thing in one form or another. But I’m not here to weigh in on Coz’s guilt or innocence.

My gripe is with Ticketmaster.

Thanks to all the poison in the air around Bill Cosby right now, my wife and I decided that we’re not keen to support the man right at the moment, and asked for a refund or even just a credit to attend another show, but Ticketmaster’s not having it. They’re hiding behind the fact that they don’t sell the tickets, they merely streamline the transaction, and since the venue hasn’t canceled the show, they can’t do anything about my tickets.

Look, language matters, so I’m going to make a big deal about it. Ticketmaster. A billion-dollar enterprise. Claims they can’t do anything about our tickets to this show.

Now, I understand they have to be very careful and very specific about refunding money, because it’s all slippery slopes when you start dealing with people’s moral objections to performers. But the reason this case is different — and why I don’t think any slippery slopes really apply — is because the allegations against Bill Cosby, at least for the vast majority of the public, were a bolt from the blue that nobody would have expected. Certainly my wife and I didn’t when we made plans to go to the show. I don’t think that, if Ticketmaster were to grant refunds for this show, they’d suddenly have a mad dash of customers canceling tickets for all kinds of venues with similar or even related circumstances. This feels like a one-off to me.

But never mind that. They said they “can’t” do anything for me.

Bear in mind that security has been tripled for the event, and a group of protesters has claimed that they will disrupt the show in any way possible, both outside and inside the venue. Don’t worry about the fact that a week prior, local news stations have run stories about protesters ramping up for the event. My only recourse, according to Ticketmaster, is to sell my tickets.

Which would be great and fine if it turned out I had a dentist appointment during the show, but nobody wants tickets to this show now (except maybe the protesters). They’ve washed their hands of the matter; it’s my problem now.

Which I suppose isn’t all that surprising. They got our money, what else should they care about?

It’s just very disappointing. Ticketmaster “can’t help me.”

Never mind the enormous PR service they could do for themselves (who, in the world, actually likes Ticketmaster?) by doing the right thing and making refunds available to the people that ask for them in this case? Sure, they’d lose money on that venture, but think what positive press it would buy them with customers.

Ticketmaster “can’t help me.”

Problem with that is, it’s the wrong currency. They’ve got a chokehold on the ticket business, so why should they relinquish a single cent on any grounds, moral or otherwise?

Truly and honestly, it’s not about the money. Not that my wife and I can afford to chuck $150 away on this event we’re now not going to attend, but we’ll swallow it if we have to. I’m mad — flabbergasted, really — that the company is willing to stonewall me (and thousands of other customers in Atlanta, it turns out) on this no refunds policy despite the morally charged nature of this particular situation.

So if the event does not get canceled, and if you happen to be a protester who wants to get inside the venue — for whatever reason, that’d be between you and whoever you pray to — let me know. Because since Ticketmaster has demonstrated that they don’t give one flying sharknado about me, I think it’s only fair to return the favor.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.