So I disappeared again, real life exploded on me, blah, blah, blah. I could go on and on about why, or why not, but not only does nobody care, it wouldn’t even really be true. The truth is, I got a bit fed up with the Internet, blogging, everything computer-related (rather ironic for someone whose future career relies almost entirely on computers…). I burnt out without the excuse of having burning sufficiently beforehand.

About three months ago, I even made a blogging schedule – one day I was going to write about technology, one day politics, one day crosspost from Fourth Wave. It lasted for one day. Lovely. General weirdness/fights across teh interwebs only made things worse, first with a bunch of feminist blogs shutting down or going on hiatus (I know, I know…), and secondly the weirdness surrounding the lesbianish web-sphere (someday I’ll put all my feelings on Afterellen vs. Shewired vs. Autostraddle vs. the world down, but not now…)

I still haven’t completely gotten over it all, either, but I also miss writing rather badly. So here I am.

At the risk of setting myself up for failure, I’m going to set a goal – write something, anything, every day. Just to do it. I think the problem with my previous schedule was that it was too complex to make a habit of it (it involved rotating weekly schedules!). Perhaps I’ll do better if I just go for regularity. Or not. But I’m going to try. (Aviva – if you’re still subscribed to this, I’m going to get something up on fwf soon too, I promise…) I’ve got a ton of more-to-less interesting ideas, as usual. I just need to put them to work.

So in the interest of putting something in this post not completely introverted: I think one of the big fears I have about writing on the web is, well, sounding stupid. It’s not as silly as it sounds – I think a good deal of the failed attempts, the blogs with 30 posts, the video blogs with two episodes, the podcasts that last all of a week, are caused, not by a lack of time, but by the author’s suddenly realizing that there’s a dozen people on the internet, working on the same subject. Except, they’re an order of magnitude more intelligent, interesting, and so on. It’s enough to make anyone want to spend all their free time staring at the ceiling.

Actually, this is true of everything everywhere. I even ran across it in local volunteering of all places. You’d think a small non-profit, in need of endless amounts of help, would welcome anybody and anyone. Not so much. Instead, the two or three highly competent people unintentionally make everyone else feel useless. Now the organization is nearly gone from a lack of help.

According to lots of people, the antidote for all this is to specialize, to make sure you’re so good at what you do that you stop feeling so inadequate. But then, you end up looking stupid unintentionally. Worse yet, you don’t know it – you’re the expert, after all. Take ‘Joel on Software’, one of my my favorite examples. Joel’s blog was a big deal – it still is, for that matter. But I, and thousands of other people, won’t touch it with a very long stick. His various dogmas and strange ideas built up over the years make him impossible to take seriously, even if he is some sort of software expert. This isn’t new or special, of course. The story of Einstein’s various errors (and failure to see them) while working on a unified theory of physics is well known. And on and on it goes. The lesson, I suppose, is rather nihilist – the wise person really is the person who realizes they know nothing.

Not that it makes me feel and better about my own personal failings, of course.

I was going to end this by working collectivist cultural theory into it (less judgment! less stress! more productive!), but I’m just rambling anyway. More coherence tomorrow.

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 refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I sat down and listened to the “I have a dream” speech today – and realized that I had never actually heard it before! Sure, I’ve read the speech, and others of his perhaps a dozen times, but I never actually listened to it, all the way through, as spoken by the man himself.

It was surprisingly enlightening.

I spent most Martin Luther King holidays during my teenage year angry, not perhaps at MLK himself, but at the importance that people attached to him. It seemed completely justified at the time – he was a plagiarist, a hypocrite in a variety of other ways, etc. (and I was influenced by my moderately racist local culture). After I became a feminist, I added his occasionally poor attitude toward women to the list.

Eventually, of course, I realized that most of his supposed failings were either fabrications or exaggerations made by a rather nasty group of people (there’s a nice write up here, if you’re curious). But even more important, I think, was realizing who Martin Luther King Jr. actually was.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a great speaker. He wasn’t a philosopher or a scientist who single-handedly discovered some great truth. And while he was an excellent leader, I don’t think that’s really why he’s important. Martin Luther King Jr. real impact was that when he spoke, he wasn’t just speaking for himself – he was speaking for an entire community. Even more, perhaps – he spoke for a whole group of people, black, white, women, men, who had one thing in common: they cared about equality.

MLK didn’t just speak about race either, as some would have us think, he spoke about war, about poverty, even about technology. His genius was that he said what the people said; in listening, we can hear the people (including, perhaps, ourselves) speak.

And we would do well to listen.

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave Feminism)

Once there were ordinary websites (okay, there were other things first, but that’s beside the point). After a while, the media people caught on, and made sites about their products. But by this time, media pioneers and bored teenagers had started blogging. Blogging was different for a while, but soon many of biggest blogs were written by corporations. So the bored teenagers et al moved to myspace and facebook, but the media companies followed them there, too. Around this time (roughly), online video caught on, and the line between producer and consumer began to blur.

Anyway, myspace wasn’t so cool anymore, or at least was too much trouble. So the bored teenagers moved to text messages and twitter. And now, twitter is being adopted by online and offline mediaish personalities. And the president. Not to mention every celebrity ever. Since I thoroughly hate twitter, this makes me sad… but I guess I’ll have to get used to it.

The latest twist: Anyone but Me, the best web series yet is twittering live from the set. And I’ll bet others are doing it too. Which is… cool, I guess, but I can’t help but feel we’re a long, long way from those ‘making of’ segments on the tail end of VHS movies. Or even from, say, Lord of the Rings special features. Where will it end? How close will the media get to the consumer?

I can see it now:

autowin: @MamaC: thefarmmakeup just said Betty showed up on set. Make them leave!

MamaC: what does everyone else think?

The Entire World: DO IT!!!

Okay, maybe that would be rather awesome…

I think I’m bothered by the mechanics behind the magic.

Let me explain: I’m not usually given to fanboy tendencies (You know the type. “Spiderman is way cooler than the Incredible hulk, and here’s why!”, or “The Enterprise could totally beat the Battlestar Galactica,” or “Here are all of the different types of Pokeman, organized by color, personality and intelligence.”) I do care about realism, though. Not of the ‘that couldn’t really happen’ type, but of the ’suspension of disbelief’ type. So despite all of Xena’s crazy physics, random messing with the show’s mythology, and out-of-character comedy moments, it still suspends disbelief, because at the end of the day, Xena and Gabrielle are still soulmates – and that makes sense.

The plots of Charmed revolve around various magical events. Those events usually involve some random new demon with some random new ‘power’ who is stopped by the sisters’ reciting a silly rhyme! The extant of the sister’s power are never really explained. The way by which the spells work are confusing, and seemingly made up for each given plot. What saves the show is that whatever demonic threat they face,it makes sense to them, and helps them grow as people/overcome some personal problem/generally serve some emotional point. So, you just have to go along with the cheesy magic, and enjoy the characters! Or so I thought…

I noticed something, oddly enough, while watching Bound the other day. Several people get shot in Bound – but curiously, the victor in the fight is not the strongest, the smartest, or even the best prepared. When Caesar kills the mafia bosses, he wins, simply because he got his gun out first. It was three against one (I think), and he was rather whimpy – but he shot the others without much difficulty because he made the first move. This, of course, is a feature of most movies that contain violence, but which are not action movies., In an action piece, it takes forever to kill someone – giving lots of time for explosions, taunting, and cool poses. Buffy, for example, alternates punches with quips, faces reoccurring trouble without any sense of closure, and generally seems to be in one continual fight. Xena comes back from the dead whenever she pleases. Even your random cop show has extended gun fights for coolness’ sake. But that’s not how real violence usually works. It only takes one moderate wound to incapacitate a person for days. Most serious fights – gun fights in particular – are over before they begin. And the person who was goes first usually wins.

It’s gunfights vs. stickfights. In an action piece, the character’s might as well be fighting with sticks, for all the damage they do – but we like it, because it looks cool and doesn’t remind us of real violence.

Real violence isn’t pretty, it’s sudden and horrible.

And that was my problem with Charmed. I expected another Buffy-type show. It’s magical, it’s semi action oriented, and the character’s generally kill (demons, of course!) without compunction.

But Charmed is really more realistic than I thought. Sure, the rhymes are still cheesy, but the suddenness, the thin line between being killing and being killed, the fear of the moment that the sisters exhibit, is perhaps more realistic that the vast majority of shows. The real fight of the show, is to be ready for the actual fight.

Either that, or they cut fights short because their effects budget really sucked…

Misfile is a pretty good example of the weirdness that you can get in a webcomic. The basic idea of Misfile is this: There’s a pot smoking angel. He gets high, screws up some heavenly files, and gets kicked out of heaven before he can rectify the situation. As a result, a boy get turned into a girl, and a girl loses the last year. Silliness ensues. When I first found the comic, I thought it would be pretty stupid – and there are lots of pointless jokes about feminine hygiene products, not to mention the rather regular ‘Oops, I forget I had boobs!’ jokes.

But ignoring the juvenile humor, the comic actually works rather well. Somehow, the author has managed to present the weirdness of the situation in a way that’s believably humorous without making it completely unbelievable. I suspect that the author’s wife/gf (I can’t remember which, she handles the business end of the site) acts as ‘girl talk editor’, and when the strip is not so good, it’s because she missed something.

It’s not perfect. The girl who lost the year sometimes acts out of character, and the stories are often rather boring, especially the ones involving the pot-smoking angel. Also, the angel has a brother who is very, very annoying, and not funny at all. The strip is certainly not one of those ‘must read’ sorts – the characters are not particularly easy to relate to, so the strip fails to really hold my attention. Still, the odd plot ideas and the well-thought out semi-lesbian relationship that has been developing make it fairly unique.

In reference to the AE post, this is a pretty good example of a male writer writing queerish characters and doing an okay, but not perfect, job.

Oh, and I actually enjoy the car race scenes – and I really, really hate cars. That’s got to be worth something!

With inspiration from The Hathor Legacy.

First of all, I must admit that I’m a huge Buffy/Angel/Firefly fan. Note, thought, that I only think Whedon is okay. Honestly, I’m not really sure what exactly he thinks, except that he says he’s a feminist, and that he creates TV shows with strong female characters.

Here’s the thing, and this is important: A TV show is not a novel.

When you read a novel, you are reading the work of one, or maybe two, authors and an editor. When you watch a TV show, you are watching the work of dozens of people. The exec. producer (Joss’s job), may be in charge, but ultimately they can only influence the show so much. Every episode has a couple of writers, a director, and an editor. The exec. producer only writes or directs a tiny number of the episodes. The actors interpret the characters in every episode – they are responsible for the long-term portrayal of the characters. And etc., etc., etc., through the DP and wardrobe and makeup and lighting and music and casting, and last but not least, the studio executives.

In other words, no matter how good the producer’s intentions are, the sheer enormity of a TV production can cause almost anything to happen without the producer noticing until it’s too late. As long at the culture is sexist, racist, etc., you are going to hire many, many sexist and racist people, who will influence the show both intentionally and not.

For example, much has been made about the clothes that Buffy and friends wear. Buffy’s clothes, especially, seem to undercut the image of a strong character. There is a simple explanation for this: Marketing. The clothes Buffy wore were (are?) being sold – and this, I’m sure, is out of the control of Joss, and the writers too.

Casting is a similar situation. While the producer has a hand in the main actors’ casting, other actors will almost certainly be cast by someone else – thus revealing bias in the industry at large.

One last general observation, and I’ll move on to specific buffyverse-related comments: With regard to fantasy shows, you must keep in mind that they are not meant to be realistic! While they may apply to real life in many ways, the absence of traditional power structures, conditioned cultural responses, and so on, are not valid grounds for criticism.

So, with regard to Buffy, there are some critics who disagree the Spike attempted rape scene – they say that Buffy did not respond correctly, that it made light of the rape issue by having her shrug it off so easily, and later, nearly blame it on herself. If Buffy had been a realistic person, I would agree. But Buffy is not. She is, apparently, quite immune to the common female fear of rape. This was made clear in Helpless, where Buffy loses her power temporarily. She is whistled at by some men hanging out by a car, and it is obvious that Buffy is never even the least bit concerned about that kind of situation. So, Buffy’s reaction to Spike was different than any other woman would have had. Essentially, she had the same reaction that most men would have had – it was just scary – not the fulfillment of deep-seated cultural fear.

Another example: Inara in Firefly. Her character is a prostitute. Now some people have a serious problem with that. From the quoted article:

The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy?

Now if this had been a realistic show, this criticism would be valid. Not irrefutable, but valid. The trouble is, the show takes place hundreds of years into the future. It is fantasy. Joss could posit flying kittens that emit purple rainbows if he wanted to. Saying that women who sleep with men for money are powerful and respected is not much of a stretch of the imagination. In fact, the above critic answers her own question:

In Joss Whedon’s future world prostituted women are powerful and respectable.

So, if they are powerful and respected, they are not really prostituted, are they.

Unless, that is, you believe that women are always ‘fuck toys’ when they sleep with men, not by culture, but by biology!

Kaylee’s introduction – having sex with a guy in the engine room is part of the same concept. Firefly is obviously a world where women are sexually as free as men. And that brings me to the worst episode in Firefly – Heart of Gold. If these this episode was in a series that had a more modern sex culture, it would have been wonderful. The trouble is, that the presence of a ‘normal’ brothel, supported by a misogynistic local culture. This undermines the normalized female sexuality of the rest of the series. (There are a few other instances, mostly directed at Kaylee, but most of these can be put down to writer oversight.)

At the risk of arguing with an immovable force, I’d like to address some other criticisms given in the above linked article. First, when Mal says ’shut up’ in the first episode, it is NOT directed at Zoe, but rather at both Jayne and Zoe, and Jayne was the one who spoke last. Zoe also tells Mal off several time throughout the series.

The primary criticism of Whedon’s work is that it is racist. I think that this is an overstatement. I am curious that people are so concerned about this; it is not as if there are no people of color at all. Certainly, it would be nice if there were more, but they do exist, and often as main characters. (In other words, Whedon is not anti-racist, but is not racist, either) Now, if someone would only make a show that focuses on not being racist, as Buffy does on being feminist. (Any year, now!)

There is one serious exception in this regard. In last episode of Firefly, Objects in Space, the main villain is an incredibly sociopathic black man. I really don’t understand why they would do this – it reinforces all kinds of stereotypes, and is generally terrible.

Back to Buffy – I think that having Buffy and Willow portrayed as more emotionally weak than Giles or Xander is caused primarily by their having a more important role in the show. In addition, by the end of the series, Buffy is shown to be more emotionally mature than Giles – in fact, he is ridiculed rather often. (especially in the gotta-kill-the-ensouled-Spike storyline.) Angel also has more emotional problems than all of the women in the show put together.

In conclusion, I think one of the most interesting aspects of analyzing the Whedonverse, is to see where the problems are caused by real bias or oversight, and where they are only products of the viewers’ bias, due to the fantasy setting.

Side note:

I think that it is interesting that people claim Xena as being more race-inclusive than Buffy. This is simply NOT the case. Buffy had a few main characters, many reoccurring characters, and many one-shot characters. Xena had two main characters, only a handful of reoccurring characters, and tons of one-shot characters. A few POC in one-shot roles on Xena have caused a biased perception. A quick look at IMDB:

Buffy, POC characters reoccurring in 3 or more were in: 14,13,12,8,7,5,3 episodes each.

Xena, POC characters reoccurring in 3 or more were in: just one character, who was in 4 episodes. (Even Marcus was only in 2 episodes!)

Counting characters or any race, Xena has only a total of 9 characters who occur in 10 or more episodes each. Buffy has 27 in 10 or more.

You notice the random one-shot POC more when there is no competition from reoccurring characters.