Meanwhile, there are robots everywhere. They’re pretty typical Asimov-style three laws-type robots – the catch being that very few of the cast are human, so it doesn’t actually affect them much. Eventually, we’re introduced to a sort of robot rebellion, and it gets really interesting.

Florence, you see, is technically an AI, with a similar status (even if she’s not quite three laws compliant) as ordinary robots. She even has an on-off switch, etc. All this really bothers the reader, of course – she the most human-like character around. Obviously, it’s wrong for her to be constrained like just another ordinary AI! A few comics later, the characters discover that the other robots are made using the same ‘brain’ technology as Florence (with a rather pleasant and non-fake-jargony technical explanation), and it seems we’re all set for a full-blown robot self-realization, sympathetic with robot’s point of view.

Freefall shows us see AIs that are ‘morally’ (for lack of a better word) equivalent to humans (unlike Asimov, etc.) without sidestepping the issue and simply anthropomorphizing them (al la Star Trek to a large extent, Battlestar Galactica, etc.)

Very, very interesting. (And the comic as a whole is pretty funny, too…)

Echildne wrote a good (if very angry) bit about treating the pro-choice movement as if it was some sort of for-profit corporation, and loosing sight of well, a woman’s right to choose.

I’m going to suggest a slightly different take; the problem is all in the framing.

Isn’t it ironic that this is all about a Super Bowl ad? Think about it: the Super Bowl is, well, football. The game that consists of large, muscular men crashing into each other. The Super Bowl is perhaps the archetypal symbol of hyper-masculinity. And that’s the context in which we’re discussing women’s rights.

This is a problem.

Now, I don’t have and thing against men – or women – playing football. At the end of the day it’s just another sport. But the sport has a long history of sheer hatred toward women, from the beer ads all the way down to the attitudes of the players and coaches (remember all those instances of college coaches hiring strippers with public money). That the Super Bowl is far and away the most watched sporting event – no, televised event period – in the United States says something very significant about our culture (for the record – the most watched event worldwide is the World Cup – that’s no better. But I digress).

And here we are, arguing about an anti-abortion commercial which will be played during an overwhelmingly masculine, patriarchal event. So I’d like to suggest this: The commercial doesn’t matter. While Kissling and Michelman suggestion for a counter-commercial is certainly apt, and would no doubt have a positive effect, so long as women’s issues have to hitch a ride on bigger, more expensive, and more (in the public’s mind) important essentially masculine events, there something very, very wrong with the picture.

That’s what we need to fix. As long as we look at this as some sort of big commercialized game (Oh dear – support for abortion rights is down slightly, but hey! Support for gay marriage is up! High fives all around!) we’re simply doing it wrong. We need to be about cultural change and ideology, not politics, ads, and entertainment money.

(Crossposted @ Fourth Wave Feminism)

I actually had hope for this lovely bit of… supposed director criticism, given that it was linked from Afterellen, where writers usually have good taste. Except Mr. Shapiro isn’t really criticizing the various director’s, well, directing (remember, people – they don’t actually write the film, they just tell the actors what to do…). Instead he’s taking random jabs at their films (writing, acting and all!), and than yelling that they suck. Wonderful, isn’t it?

And, you know, it could have been a good article. For one thing, all the directors he goes after are, y’know, famous white guys, who are after all consistently overrated. He’s not going to go that route, of course! His criticism of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise “… is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.”

Yeah.

Some of his targets could be considered moderately overrated for their directing abilities, of course – David Lynch only really appeals to people who like weird surreal stuff, for instance, and Tarantino, despite frequent moments of genius is so offensive as to balance his work out to only ‘decent’ (entirely my opinion, of course!) But all the same, every director he mentions both created unique works, and is quite influential. If that’s not criteria for a proper ‘rating’, I’m not entirely sure what is.

In any case, all this vitriol made me wonder what kind of directors and movies Mr. Shapiro actually likes. So I clicked over to the blog’s front page. Which is almost entirely occupied by articles praising the great and glorious wonderfulness of former President Bush.

Perhaps the whole thing is an elaborate parody?

Salient features of the AE list:

• Portia is #1!
• Lena Headey’s request was answered (#3).
• The separate 10 hottest WOC, woman over 40, and out women lists predictably caused the 100 list to contain more people from those categories.
• Jill Bennett’s stay in the top 5 was short-lived. (Yes, it was a bit weird having her there, but I’m still sad!)
• Math Geek alert! I think Jennifer Beals and Leisha Hailey are now tied (at 3.33) for highest average.
• This page contains the hottest photo of Lucy Lawless ever!

I’ve already commented on the futility of comparison between the AE and Maxim lists, and I still think it still stands. Yeah, yeah, we know, gay women watch gay TV shows, and Maxim editors make their picks while drunk. (Another interesting tidbit from that page – one of their criteria is ‘hotness’ as in ‘how hot is their career?’ So… the popular people are guaranteed to win!)

I have just three further observations:

A. Certain AE readers: It’s just a couple of silly lists. There’s no way anybody can say that one list is ‘hotter’ or ‘narrower’ than the other. And the relative hotness also is not a personal insult to you! So just look at the pictures and be happy, please?

B. All of the Maxim pictures were of the women in lingerie. Which isn’t as hot as they think it is. It’s just boring. And objectifying.

C. Sarah Warn must feel really weird counting the votes. AE staff exclude themselves from the list, of course, but you just know people vote for her (and Lori), anyway. I’m imagining her sitting in front of her computer, deleting her votes, <Sarah Warn voice>”Dammit people! Stop voting for me!</Sarah Warn voice>

I’ve always been fascinated by these ‘most beautiful’ lists. Ignoring the whole problem with judging people based on beauty (which is a horrible, horrible way of doing things), how does one actually decide who should go on such a list? How do you make beauty into anything like a quantitative measurement? There are millions of women whom the average observer would call ‘beautiful’. Thousands of those women are so beautiful as to defy comparison. But most of those women are not known publicly, and thus won’t be on the list. Many of the rest are little known actors, or little to well known models. Only a fan would recognize the actors, even if they are in commercials, have minor roles in movies, etc. As for the models, only a connoisseur of such things would ever remember them enough to recall their names.

So, we’re left with a handful of moderate to well known actresses and musicians, a few media personalities, and a few super-models. Who, taken together, don’t represent anything resembling the most beautiful, hottest, or any other criteria, of women. So a magazine likes Maxim picks the most well known women who fit the cultural stereotype of ‘hotness’, and then fill out the rest of the list with women who need the career boost and who have fast talking agents. That’s how Maxim’s ‘hottest woman’ last year came up an unknown model, if you ask me. See – the magazine can then do a cheap(er) photoshoot with her (since she not well known), bill her as the hottest woman, and everyone makes lots of money. But as far as the list goes, no one woman on the list is any ‘hotter’ to the casual observer than any other!

Afterellen, on the other hand, votes on the list. There’s no opportunity for commercial considerations, and the famous people whom nobody likes (Brittney, Paris) are automatically excluded. The remainder of the famous stereotypes (Angelina, Cate Blanchett) are included, as are the lesbian icons (Jennifer Beals, Ellen). The balance of the list is the interesting part – Queen Latifah and Helen Mirren, for example. Last year, of course, the afterellen [vb]loggers made 7 spots on the list, which rather weirded everyone out in a gah-self-promotion sort of way. (I still can’t believe that Bridget made no. 4, by the way – sorry Bridget… but also good for you!), This just illustrates how much of a ‘who have you heard of’ contest this is. Again – Maxim does it too: Who works at Maxim? Photographers and other industry types. Who do those people know? Models. Thus their list…

In terms of self-promotion, it’s a tie between AE and Maxim.

We (I mean the lesbian/bi community) would also like to think that our choices are more inclusive of WOC and older women, but that’s hard to do when voting, while for Maxim it’s just an editorial decision away, a decision they made rather easily last year. Maxim wins. (and that’s why we have the hot 10 lists this year…)

So the afterellen.com list has already lost. Any ‘hot’ list is irrelevant and intrinsically biased, and it’s all just a big, objectifying, judging game anyway. And Maxim has more readers.

On the other hand, I probably shouldn’t talk. I just spent 20 minutes deciding who to vote for. My criteria? Cool=Hot. And Angry=Sexy. Go Jill Bennett!

I don’t understand why, though. Sure, I get that the networks wouldn’t fund it. They were scared of trying something new in this economy. Etc. Etc.

What I don’t understand: Why didn’t 3way blow up on the Internet? Why didn’t it ever really became popular? The people involved keep saying how much they appreciate the fan’s support, how they never thought it would get so big, and on and on, but was it really ever that big of a deal?

The season finale only got 12,000 views on youtube. It got a few more elsewhere, but how is it (just to pick a random video for comparison) that a samsung ad involving LEDs on sheep can get 5,000,000 views, while 3way only got roughly 100,000 per episode? Yes, the sheep thing is admittedly clever – but also pointless. It’s a dumb trick, paid for by a big company to sell something. And what about all of the videos of people falling on their faces, dancing animals, not to mention dancing people? Those aren’t clever or smart or funny. And people still watch them.

It’s not as if 3way was too intellectual, or was aimed at a unusually narrow audience like some shows. The target audience was lesbians, sure, but it was funny, cute, the actors were pretty, and it was different and clever and non-political. I kept expecting to go to the youtube page and see 700,000, 800,000 views at least. Heck, they should have gotten that much just from the straight guys who were watching to see girls make out! (Which they did almost every episode, come to think of it.) I wasn’t sure that they’d make it past the first season, even if they had gotten that many views, (heck – Imaginary Bitches racked up 750,000 views on their first episode, and they still failed, down to only 120,000 by the last. (Imaginary Bitches wasn’t that great in my opinion, so I’m not surprised, but still…) But I feel sad, betrayed almost. I thought it was so good – why didn’t anyone else?

I guess people really are like sheep.

I’m working on a post (which I’ll probably never finish) called ‘Fragmentation is Good’. The basic idea is that people only put up with mass-produced culture because there’s no other option. Once they find media they *really* like, they’ll drop the lowest-common denominator stuff like so much trash. That’s what *I* did, anyway. It only makes sense, right?

Yet 150,000,000 people still watch American Idol, while more than 150 vocal students at my university, most of whom could sing circles around 99% of the Idol contestants, will never record a song, let alone be on TV. And the same is true all across the country, in every sort of media. People go with the boring.

After 3way died (and motivated by watching old episodes of Girltrash), I went looking for other webseries, just to see what there was. Guess what? Even non-LGBT series’s can’t make it work! The few that still keep going have private money behind them, or delusional sponsors. Take a look at the Streamys, a web series award site. It’s all Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Horrible, and talking head shows. PINK (a show about a female assassin) got one award. There is perhaps one other worthwhile one. By and large, it’s just more status quo.

Perhaps it will change someday. Anyone But Me is currently on the front page of blip.tv, along with 7 talking heads, one (bad) comedy series, and an okay-ish drama-type show. I don’t know how many people use blip.tv, but there’s still hope.

Maybe.

Or maybe people just suck. Oh, well.

Watch Anyone But Me! And We Have to Stop Now!

There are three types of podcast, from best to worst:

Type 1: Podcasting personality

My new favorite podcast is Speaking of Gay Shows, formally Going South (a South of Nowhere podcast). In a word, this podcast is completely unprofessional. And that makes it amazing! Codey and Sky ramble endlessly about whatever comes to mind, and although they may not have a very high ratio of brilliant insights on the human condition to time, who really does? They’re having fun, we’re having fun, they’re not limiting themselves to a specific amount of time or to a specific subject, they don’t care about ‘keeping things moving’, they giggle infectiously, and they’re just generally hilarious. This is what podcasting is.

Type 2: Podcasting topics

Since this is the last season of Battlestar Galactica, which I rather like, I’ve been listening to Galactica Quorum. Galactica Quorum is about as professional as a podcast can get without getting annoying. They have a specific subject. They edit the longer rambles, and they keep it focused on the topic enough that someone could enjoy listening to the show, even if they didn’t especially like the people involved (unlike Type 1!). And yet, they’re still personable enough, and the format simple enough, that it still feels friendly.

Type 3: Podcasting ego

After hearing about it on Galactica Quorum, I thought I’d listen to the TERMINATOR Podcast. Big mistake. First strike – the title is SHOUTING AT ME, and the website is ugly. The show descriptions are pretentious. And the show itself is like an ordinary radio show, complete with the loud-mouthed hosts who talk too fast, make fun of people, are bombastic and rude, and who are certain that they have the last word on everything. They tell us how to feel, instead of feeling it themselves and letting us listen. And, they’re not funny. At all. This is not what podcasting should be.

Never mind about that. I do have something to say about all of the films:

There was too much music!

I never thought I’d hear myself say that – I am a semi-professional musician, after all! How can there be too much music? Especially if it is good music – and most of the music in these films was at least fairly good. Music makes everything better, right? (A la Jackie Primrose Monahan…)

Nope, it certainly doesn’t.

Problem #1 with music: Using it to create artificial emotion.

The writing and acting in a film must be able to create emotion on its own. The music is only useful for heightening existing emotion, not creating it! Girl Talk was the worst in this regard: I don’t know these people, I’m not identifying with them, and indie rock music isn’t going to make me care if they’re kissing! Simply having them kiss in silence would have improved it tremendously, mostly because:

Problem #2: Good music makes your average film look awful!

I used to play in a small youth orchestra. It was an informal group, and the director was more of an organizer than a musician. I was always having to convince her that having a pianist accompany the orchestra was a bad, bad idea. Why? Because the piano always sounds good! It’s always in tune, it has a good tone, and it’s usually play by an extremely competent player. In comparison, the orchestra, while quite good by itself, suddenly sounded out of tune, error prone, and generally made up of absolute beginners. It almost sounded as if we needed the piano to keep us together! Of course, if an orchestra is sufficiently talented, a piano can be a good addition – but as a member of the group, not as accompaniment.

The same thing happens with these films. Look – nobody expects them to be wonderful, but adding goodish music makes them seem worthless by contrast. In some of the worst cases, I found myself completely ignoring the picture and just listening to the music.

Perhaps I’m just in a Anyone But Me is the greatest web show ever – partly due to its economy with music – induced haze. Still, I can’t help but think that all of these films abused music. Even having no music at all would have been a great improvement.

I just couldn’t stand them anymore.

There didn’t seem to be any obvious reason why. The writing is good on both sites and they post about subjects I’m interested in. I read many blogs of far, far worse technical quality.

Jezebel, of course, annoys with their occasional feminist-who-aren’t-us are stupid attitude. But the above-mentioned post was merely the last straw. The real problem? They post too much crap! They post random celebrity photos, aimless, unfocused entertainment commentary, and random semi-feminist ideas, seemingly without any goal. Sure, once in a while there’s a flash of genius, but I don’t have time to wade through the crap to find it. Besides, Feministing links to almost all of their interesting stuff.

wowOwow, on the other hand, is… far too impersonal. The writers are almost (or all they all?) professional journalist/writers, and they seemingly have no idea how to write a blog. Reading wowOwow mostly just reminded me why I can’t stand to read a traditional newspaper or watch TV anymore. They occasionally post something – like the interview with Rachel Maddow – that can’t be found elsewhere, but once again, it’s just not worth the effort.

In retrospect, the trouble with both of these blogs was simply that they posted too *much*. Jezebel posts around, what, 50, 60 posts a day? And wowOwow posts around 30 – I just get the feeling that neither of them can decide what is really important or interesting, so they just throw it out there and let the reader wade through it, just like a news magazine, or the evening TV news does. Put something in there for every kind of reader/viewer, and hope you get enough right to keep people watching. But on the Internet, we can all the options on earth. We don’t have to read anything that is uninteresting.

In other words, traditional publishing techniques simply don’t work on the web! Why do they even try?

(Side note – I wonder if that’s why small volume magazines, i.e. Bitch, some of those women-in-music ‘zines, etc. are having so much trouble? Perhaps they’re still thinking in paper print terms, even when they try to move partly to the web.)

SheWired.com launched this week, the new home of all things Jill Bennett and Cathy DeBueono, and… lesbian media destination? It’s like they’re trying to out afterellen afterellen, except all of the non-Jill content is cloned from LesbiaNation! Great idea, folks! (Not)

The site itself reminds me a bit of good old OurChart – it’s really nebulous and busy, but finding the actual content is a big chore. The one (potential) bright spot is the forum – since it’s new, and there is a pre-existing audience, maybe it will turn out to be interesting. (That’s the only problem with afterellen – the forums are really boring!)

Anyway, they tried, but I’m disappointed. When it was announced, I was under the impression that it was something that Cathy and Jill and some of Cathy’s friends (she named names at one point, I think) were putting together on their own. That would have been pretty cool. Instead, it’s an extension of here! network’s existing stuff – and the quality suffers as a result.

Oh, well.

An aside: Why, in the name of professional lesbians everywhere, doesn’t anyone give Tellofilms some love? It’s basically a lesbian youtube – they seem willing to foot the bill for hosting, and it’s easy to use, and fast (youtube clone, like I said) Afterellen and Shewired and TheSmokingCocktail and everyone else should put their stuff on there! (But that likely wouldn’t please the parent companies, now would it?)

Another aside: I just used a record number of parentheticals in this post, didn’t I? (Yes, yes, I did!)