beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

You know there's foods where if you don't process them right they're actually pretty poisonous?
But when you're used to them you just routinely throw out the stones or soak them or boil or whatever?
So there's people right next to you going 'poison!!!' but you haven't thought about it for so long because of course you just strip the poison out along the way.

That's what we do with a lot of stories.

We've got these interpretative filters that make it possible to watch or read or listen a story that doesn't centre or respect or acknowledge us, stories that try and shove us in boxes piece by piece, show us ugly where we know it not to be, hide the ugly we're well acquainted with.

And sometimes we swallow a little poison without thinking about it. Cultural studies spends a lot of time showing students where the poison is, and there's always some who think it's just making too much fuss about that bit, that bit's just normal.

But a lot of readers know perfectly well it's not pure goodness and light, they just filter so routinely, even if they're harvesting for scraps, they can get what they need and move on.

Different reading styles get very different things out of the same story.

And to those that heavily reprocess things? It don't much matter what the makers thought they were doing.

So when someone says something that could leave a whole lot of their work open to reinterpretation... yeah, that's probably all there. Or you can go through counting the ways it's not serving the good stuff. Valid criticism is always possible.

But we can still get what we want out of the stuff.

Whatever they spun the story with, we can respin it from fluff if we want.




And we frequently do want.

Hence fic.



Wanting better source text is important, but there ain't no pure product, so throwing it all out along with the stones? Gets boring.


I'd rather keep trying to find the good bits.

... and yelling into the echoing internet that we need more.

I get cranky about stuff lately and it's pissing me off. Which obviously leads to a crankiness spiral. Which is unhelpful.

It's things where I can see systemic inequality and oppression in real life in the present day here and now, but everyone around me seems to be attributing things to individual causes and coincidence, or implying that it's not really bad because over there in the distant past or far off places, that's the real bad things.

So a novel that turns out to be about sci fi slavery kind of pisses me off because you don't need to literally reprogram and meat puppet people when you can keep them scrabbling for scraps while heavily in debt and trying to live on zero hour contracts somewhere the minimum wage isn't enough to get by on.

And novels about oppressed monotheists in a polytheist society would only not piss me off it they had kinda muslim trappings, but no, it's always secretly oppressed xtians.

And yesterday I got in a pub discussion about systemic inequalities in education and (though I didn't fully articulate this) how capitalism and economic pressures leads to the convergence of media companies into monopolies which control every level of production and distribution, all adding together to mislead voters even before you factor in how money is deliberately going back into the political process to systematically campaign on false premises. I stopped because we were there to talk about science fiction, but I started because someone made a joke about stupid Americans and then wouldn't let it drop. Apparent stupidity and ignorance has a whole lot to do with systems. You can't just call an individual stupid and make out like it's their individual problem with an individual solution. All the solutions cost money, resources, and time, and systems collude to make sure most people don't have those.

Access to information is a hugely political topic. People not knowing stuff is not just about the choices of that individual person.

Nothing is just about the choices of that individual person! People exist within systems and their actions contribute to those systems, whether they consciously will it or not!

And yeah, I go to media texts looking for things to be annoyed at. Eleven years of further and higher education have kind of got me in the habit. Because once you open your eyes to it, sexism, racism, and all the other ugly isms are sodding everywhere.

Someone yesterday was arguing the 'it's just the best person for that role' angle about Dead Bro Walking trope. Yeah all the black guys die but it's just because individually they were the best actor for the role of screaming dying person. How can anyone actually believe that and not see how it adds up?

Also, I feel it is derailing and irrelevant to start picking apart my pub level accuracy on quoting media creators, when I was trying to list dead lesbians in TV shows. The problem here isn't precisely what is said about dead lesbians, it is that all the fictional lesbians are in fact dead. I feel it reasonable to be annoyed about that. And again they argued the 'best character for the role' angle, that just coincidentally the TV show went and brought in these characters to kill them off and it has nothing to do with them being lesbians. Even if that's now 100% of the lesbians dead, that's just luck.

And I'm not arguing that content creators sit there all *evil laugh* and pick a minority to kill off this week. That's what's always being defended against, as if that's an invisible accusation, and it's entirely irrelevant. What they thought they were doing isn't the point. The point is there's a whole lot of dead bros and dead lesbians, and that is a problem. They're a bunch of individual choices of best for that five minutes that somehow coincidentally adds up to meaning black guys and lesbians are all killed off. Which is creepy and bad.

Also, if the problem is dead lesbians, pointing out how many strong women there are on a show is also irrelevant. Unless they're dating each other, they are not the current point.

And I am so wound up and frustrated about this stuff.

And it feels like it's all of a piece, like people are trained into thinking things one at a time, attributing things to individual one off choices, and not looking at the systems and aggregates and big picture.

And I know that sitting there telling them elsewise four at a time is very nearly no help at all but
I'm
just
so
cranky.



I can see so many problems, I know there's more problems I don't see, and I can't see how to get other people to see it let alone solve it.



And this is without getting into the sort of real world problems with a real world body count. Those are just horrifying and terrifying and leave me somewhere between really angry and awful hollow.


Especially the science based stuff. It's really quite a large problem when science can spend my whole adult life pointing at something and saying with some authority 'unless we do the thing we are going to die' and yet we don't do the thing. Humans are actually killing the whole planet. We could well render it uninhabitable. We're causing a mass extinction event and the Earth, as a whole, may not survive it. This is a problem.

And my individual choices for doing anything about said problem are... limited.



I mean I'm sitting here somewhere all western educated industrialised rich developed, with all those years of degree behind me, in a position of in some respects massive privilege, in one of the countries eating the world. But I don't see how to stop just by changing my individual consumer choices. They're not enough of the problem to make much of the solution. I don't know how to get at the levers. So I'm benefiting from systems of power and oppression, but feel pretty powerless to stop them or get out of the train, so to speak.

... this is why I daydream about space colonies. new place, new systems. also, my author brain knows that the point of the story will turn out to be that even in a new place humans are still human so we'll have to deal with our shit or live with it longer, and the suddenly concentrated nature of society would highlight everything.




Plus of course I feel powerless to do anything because I'm disabled and have had no support for a year and a half and it is in fact bloody difficult to do anything. Including shopping. Or the house viewings that are part of the plan to get me somewhere I can cope with better.

And then I feel weird about what I am getting that other people don't, like I should be guilty about having plus stuff, except I'm kind of stuck with the bits i'm not getting, and then it's all problem and no solution.



Everything all problem no solution.

Massive collective action is only way to make changes.

Except I've seen massive actions, protests, all sorts, and it don't seem to do any good.




So then I hide under a blanket and play Sims a lot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/01/parents-guide-girls-ambitions-women

Government to tell parents how to make their children "aspirational" and "ambitious for themselves".
Because clearly the solution to structural inequalities is to tell individuals they need to try harder.

I guess this may not be obvious to people who have achieved the sort of power that can make this stuff happen, but: sometimes, wanting is not getting.
Telling girls to want more... have we not been asking? Have we not been trying? I rather thought we were.

But no, not according to this bollocks. Apparently we hold ourselves back.

This is not feminism. This is the same old same old in high heels.

( Read more... )

I have seen a lot of argue about IM3 on a topic that didn't even ping me, despite being relevant to my interests
spoilers go under the cut
( Read more... )

this is an important topic and I want to go over this and make it make proper sense.
but it's five in the morning, so this is the best sense available right now.

That essay I was highlighting this afternoon, where the myth reference nagged at me?
Had probably got Promethean and Protean mixed up.
The Doctor as Promethean figure actually kind of fits, but it was in a paragraph talking about the very changeable nature of both the character and the show, so probably it meant the other P.


also in this afternoon's reading: social moors. Probably means mores.
less amusing than the sexual morays I have previously read of.

I am cranky, coughing, and nauseous, and I had to go back to bed in the middle of trying to make notes because I felt too ill. This is highly inconvenient. I don't have the time for this. So then I get more cranky, and aim it at texts.

I have been reading

Garner, Beattie and Mc Cormack (2010) Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things : Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
Cambridge Scholars publishing.

The Regeneration Game: Doctor Who and the Changing Faces of Heroism
John Paul Green

This chapter focuses on the articulation and rearticulation of masculinity and British heroism through the use of 'regeneration' in the popular science fiction series Doctor Who.

I'm very glad to have got hold of this book because it gives me something to argue with, ( Read more... )

Each of the Doctor’s regenerations offers a performance of masculinity, although rarely does the Doctor fulfil (thankfully) dominant images of masculinity. It is still a case of intellect over might, although throughout the series the Doctor has aligned himself with male companions who have been, or are, in active military service.

This is the bit I want to poke quite a lot. Because at first glance I felt like agreeing, but then I had a think about it. Because by what definition is the Doctor's masculinity not the dominant model?
( Read more... )

I feel, since the rise of the Detective, the triumph of intellect over might is the standard model. And the dominant model of masculinity, at least in a ton of the media.

( Read more... )

So the flaw in this argument is once again the thing where women are also doing the same things. If and when they are. Women are being detectives, but are they being this kind of cranky intellect detective? I don't watch detectives (unless they're steampunk RDJr ) so I don't have a great deal to draw on.

but I'm going to bet they are, even if you need to watch the numbers carefully before making an argument about the 'rise of' or the 'era of'. Because most things, lately, women get to do. They even on occasion get to do them in networks of other women that talk to each other. Which is pretty cool.


Gender is a stupid game I don't wish to play, so it irritates me when so many things do. ( Read more... )

I'm not saying there's equality. Just counting and Bechdel consistently shows actually there's less women and they don't get to talk to each other about the same range of things. But the borders of possibility are nice and wide now, and I reckon numbers is most of the remaining difference.

plus how things get seen. where's my stereotypes icon... nope, doesn't seem to be here... well it wasn't very good anyway. But, stereotypes: People can see the exact same things done by a man and a woman and they'll read them differently through the filters of pre-existing stereotypes. ( Read more... )

... the cake jumping thing could not be called stereotypically masculine. And while both RDJr's Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor dress up as women that one time, that's not exactly part of the standard model either. So there's quirky bits.

Plus the times gender as a discourse gets raised within the text it's all about how bad the Doctor is at performing it. Trying to be a 'normal bloke' with Craig in The Lodger? Hilarity ensues. But what you really see there is the masculine version of how gender performance is always class specific. ( Read more... )

So what I've been arguing I guess is that the Doctor is a particular stereotype of masculinity, and a socially and culturally dominant type. Not even getting into the 'Time Lord' / Lords Temporal House of Lords hence aristocracy connection, he's a knowledge professional of independent means who never has to worry where the next meal is coming from. He assumes the right to talk to Monarchs, is friends with Prime Ministers, and his best mate is a Brigadier (not a Sergeant he also spent time with). He acts like he owns the place and backs up that authority by knowing more than you do. His intellect is the boss of, well, everyone. And that's a kind of masculinity. Compared to the Sherlockian detective, it's a very common kind of masculinity that is the boss of all it surveys. And he's friends with people in military service because he's being the kind of person who traditionally aims them.




Thoughts? Discussion? Telling me I'm wrongity wrong wrong?

I'm likely to get in an argue with myself later anyway.


... quite a lot later. I'd rather like to go back to bed again. Or at least get another paracetamol.

M1058 (1112) National Cinema 10 Credits
Essay (Essay): 80% Pass (Provisional)

80%
!

(The grade boundary to get a First is 70%. A 2:1 is 60%, etc etc. So I'm doing quite a lot well to get 80%.)

My essay on the significance of Dr Caligari's glasses was a resounding success.

In a semester that also saw my worst mark ever, both for a single assignment and a unit, this is somewhat of a relief. Have not lost brain. *phew*

(I have had this window open half an hour while I poke the page with my grades on just to be sure it hasn't changed.)

okays, happy dance time, :-D

The BBC are moving all their children's TV to the children's channels after digital switchover is complete.

( Read more... )

Now all the Children's content will be on the Children's channels that ratings say are what all the children are watching anyway.

There will still be children's tv and it'll get the same amount of money.

This is non news in a news wrapper.


The really interesting, newsworthy, squawk now stuff is all hidden much further down the page, where all the things that will get their budgets cut, be reduced by such and so percents, broadcast fewer hours, or simply cease to exist, are all bundled together.

So why is the headline children's TV?


*stage magic hands*


I'd go poke the details but I should be doing my essay right this minute. Also I spent those minutes comparing the bits about children's tv to see what they actually meant. Clever.

I have finally watched the last ten minutes of Vertigo, when he figures it out and reacts.
bit awesome, bit shiny, bit make you jump
:-D
I liked how there were a whole bunch of possible endings right up until the last second, and then once the ending happened, click, it was The ending, the only inevitable one.
I must watch again, maybe with a commentary on or something.

Now I am watching The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
( Read more... )

That was quite fun. Now we get to study it in class until it's not fun at all.



Today I did the laundry, did the dishwashering, hung up the laundry, let the cleaner in and out, remembered the bins, and ate soup for lunch.
I feel this makes up for yesterday, where I messed around on the internet, slept between 7am and 7pm, stayed awake until 0300 mixing a bit of the college reading with the internet some more, and then slept from 0300 to 0900.
Now I have to stay awake until 2100 because that's the last minute my food can arrive.
... am hoping it arrives at 1900 instead. Sleepy now.

I still have a bazillion pages of reading.
And all the lessons are on the same day so it's hard to prioritise.
There's a gap before the cinema lesson though. I should do short story first and risk last minute library use for the cinema stuff.

I've been reading about the disabled people protesting in London today.
I keep wanting to tell campaigns, not is a very weak word.
If you say Becca is not a cow then what image do you have in mind? Becca and cow, right there together. You have linked the very things you are denying.
This lets you manage some very elegantly polite insults - 'the right honorable opponent is not stupid' is a nice starter.
But if you're doing a campaign? Don't shoot yourself in the foot with it.

So: "We're not scroungers or fakers"
true, but it's letting the Tories and the tabloids steer the discourse.
You have still positioned disability, scrounging, and faking, right there next to each other.

Saying what you're not isn't going to work.
( Read more... )

Okay, so I can point out the problem but not really formulate a solution.

There's a bit in Highlander when a teacher says "Choose your ground, choose your weapon, and face what is to come."

The way politics chooses its ground is to choose the terms its using, the discourse it will engage in.
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And I have absolutely no idea how to choose solid ground of our own.

We need pretty simple things. Being clean, fed, safe. Getting to places and communicating with people.
Already there were tests and definitions. I can't understand how they can tighten them and then look at the people who won't fit the new boxes and actually believe they'll now magically be able to do all the things.

I do know that the arguments from cost and from fairness are absolutely poisonous.
Need remains.

Lots of headlines about the 24 hour strike today. On the BBC at the moment there's a curious thing happening to the numbers. The My Yahoo news feed says Thousands on strike over pensions, though the headline on the webpage is "Tens of thousands in England on strike", but the very first line says it's about "More than one million public sector workers in England". Another Yahoo page link says Up to two million set to strike, though again the on page headline is different, "Public sector strike set to be largest for a generation", which is sort of noncommital as to absolute size since at least a generation presumably don't know how big that strike was.

Okay, so, it's big. But the headlines appear to be having an order of magnitude problem.

And it seems to me that the more people are likely to see a version, the less people it says are involved in the strike.

There's a basic built in problem with the Arthur story, the way its been told lately. It's about a good king and a wicked witch. And it worries me greatly that this remains popular. Two different tellings lately focus on Arthur and Morgana both claiming the throne through their father. Both of them have Arthur be The Good One and Morgana be The Bad One. Arthur has his supporting cast of knights, and Merlin, and Gaius, and Gwen who has very few lines lately but pouts and worries very prettily in low cut dresses. Which is pissing me off. Morgana had women on her side once, but this season she killed them and there's more men everywhere. Does that make it better or worse? That she can't claim power on her own, she just messes around with a man doing all the doings? Worse, I think. It's all about how her claim to power isn't legitimate and Arthur's is. Why? It keeps on being gendered. With Merlin there's a whole theme of oppressed magic going on, and Uther was plain evil, and freeing the magic users would seem like a good idea if there wasn't a new and different deadly magical threat every week. Then it just looks like he had a point. Stupidly messed up telling, that. But this week ( Read more... )

No, it pretty much looks like one side is all blokes, and they're rejecting this uppity woman.

I don't know what story they're trying to tell, but with the structure of the setup, that's the story they're telling. Woman trying to claim power? Eeeeeevil! Stop her! Go work for the bloke, even when they're oppressing people, because hey, still got the important qualification for the job.

If there were an equal number of stories about a queen trying to hold on to a righteous land while her evil brother plotted against her, it wouldn't be a Thing. But are there even ANY stories like that? Not so much. Not on TV. Not in popular culture.

And it remains so popular.

I know, I watched it, why watch when I always end up complaining? I watched this season of Merlin because it was on the recorder box and I wanted to wash my brain out. Well, it didn't do that. This isn't a story of good vs evil. It just pretends to be. And who gets painted as evil? Every bloody time?

I need things to watch where women get to be strong and not be punished for it. Where women get to be strong and its a legitimate and valid occupation. Where women get to be strong and get celebrated for it in their own culture.

It would really really help if right now I could think of any.



PS: there's a secondary rant about black people, invisibility of, reduction to serve story of angsty white dude, etc etc et bloody c. One of the knights is black, yaays. Is that the knight that gets all the stories? Is that the knight that gets any of the story? Is it heck. And it's not like there's a shortage of bits with knights in them. I could go on at length, but, you know, second verse, same as the first. It's always the same.

You know, I think calling the money we get from the government for the safety net 'benefits' is unhelpful, maybe misleading. Does that say 'bare minimum to live on' to you? Because that's all it's meant to be, enough to survive on. If they called it 'minimum survival money' and then talked about cutting it by a third to pay criminal fines, there'd be a whole different debate.