films go boom

So I decided on watching Equilibrium. There was something about the whole feeling-for-the-first-time thing that fit today.
It's just gloriously ambiguous, really. I mean, on the one hand the drugged-flat solution is basically cybermen without the clunky footwear, so clearly wrong. But the examples used for the glory of emotion... ( Read more... )

elaborate theories constructed carefully to explain things they pretty much made up

Psychoanalytic theory is very, very silly. Freud and Lacan. Because I'm pretty sure that life, when you get right down to it, is not about wanting to shag your mother. In fact I think that, as a general rule, quite a lot of it is not about wanting to shag *anything*. Sometimes eating is in fact about eating. And not sex. At all.
Or to put it another way, just because sometimes we want sex and don't want to think about it doesn't mean that everything we don't want to think about is sex.

Does actual psychology take those two seriously, or is it just lit theory being a century or so behind the times?

And, okay, Lacan is more about wanting to return to babyhood and being inside your mum in that sense, but I think he radically overestimates the comfortable of being a baby. I mean, he reckons you can't tell the difference between self and not-self and so don't feel lack yet. Well... maybe, but not-self do tend to need voice activation when self gets hungry, so I reckon you figure it out pretty damn quickly. And I don't actually know if being unborn is comfy, but it entirely lacks control whilst still having environment. I mean, what if you don't want to get drunk? Or listen to mozart? So I don't reckon that's all that ideal either. But maybe I'm overestimating babies.

I guess the lack thing seems sensible until it gets too specific. I mean a lot of that stuff does, it all looks perfectly reasonable up until they start talking about mothers and castration, and then you're just *facepalm*.

What has castration got to do with power anyway? Why is there no theory about how sad it is the father has no breasts? I'm pretty sure most babies don't note the presence of penis, but breasts are important.


I'm supposed to be reading up on feminisms. I like feminisms. I spend more time annoyed at patriarchy rather than stupid theorists. But the feminisms chapter started referring back to the psychoanalysis chapter, particularly the Mulvey/male gaze bits, so I ended up reading the whole psychoanalysis chapter.

Mulvey said something about scopophilia and narcisism, or things spelled vaguely like that. Pleasure of looking at and pleasure of identifying with. Reckoned the camera was male and women were constructed as objects to be looked at. And without the details that just sounds silly. But with a bunch of details I can think of, yeah, I can see that. Only lately I think there's quite a few more to be looked at men. I mean the camera move the teacher used to demonstrate the thingy in film noir, starting with the feet and looking up a girl, that's the same camera move Spike gets when he makes his grand entrance to Sunnydale. So the theory needs poking. But happily I think the textbook is about to.

Mulvey also reckoned a thing about how those pleasures need disrupting to stop women being objectified. If pleasure makes of a character an object to be enjoyed then I guess writing books that are no fun at all is a political act, for lo and behold, no objects. Everyone gets to tell their story. But... we don't like any of them, so I think there's a problem there.

I was thinking on this week's book and the whole muckyness problem. It's a bit like, we found an advert that tried to make like pasta sauce was made in domestic kitchens, so we cut the kitchen out and put the humans doing work in big factory places back in. Well, it would have been a factory if we had a factory picture, but the point is, putting the hidden back in. So the way mucky usually gets out is part of the way ideologies make themselves look comfortable and tidy and shiny and suchlike. Leave out the inconvenient and messy and uncomfortable and the people that don't fit, have an ideology with no contradictions. Put the mess back in, suddenly it not looking so very complete. So, okay, I can see that. There's a point there.

... I still don't want to read that. I feel there's a definite problem with attempting to change people's minds by making them uncomfortable. Because on the one side you've got happy comfy ideology and on the other you've got eeeew icky and really, which one are people going back to? So if you want to win then a bit of shiny helps. Same with the visual pleasure bit, it's all very well saying you should make your audience aware of the constructed nature of it all, but if they're bloody bored they're not going to *care*.

So, anyway, back to the book. Have just as much chapter left as I did when I sat down... oh dear, that many hours ago? And, of course, have made no progress on the essay.
Input is always so much more interesting than output. Unless output can happen in the form of amusing stories, which unfortunately is not the case with this particular exercise. *sigh*

(I have a whole bunch of thought. I could write the thoughts down. I just... I have this stuff to read first. :eyeroll:)

Still arguing with the book.

Okay, so some of the feminist theories are irritating me too. Because they're back on that oedipal thingy again. Only with extra added still needing the mother as well. And it seems to me they get in an awful tangle somewhere. It just looks daft.

so, we get a perfectly sensible statement:
[people] continue to require an intense emotional bond with someone who is reciprocally nurturant and protective

That makes sense, right? Everyone needs hugs.

But where it goes manky is when you put the rest of their sentence in, and make it:
women emerge from the Oedipus complex with a triangular psychic structure intact; which means that not only do they need to connect themselves with a member of the opposite sex, but they also continue to require an intense emotional bond with someone who is reciprocally nurturant and protective in a maternal way

And then it leaves me rather blinky. Because where exactly does oedipus come into all that? ... oh dear, I really need to rephrase that. I mean, basically, people need hugs, fair enough. Men need hugs, women need hugs, everyone needs hugs. And it's no fun being the one who does all the looking after. These things are simple and clear. Making it all about wanting to shag one's parents is where it gets very unsimple, unclear, and unsane. IMHO.

If you just phrase it different then you make sense of romance novels in a much simpler way: Men start out being mean and end up being nurturing. Therefore they're all about the kind of men women get turning into the kind of men women want. Tada, sorted, no oedipus required.

Honestly, what is up with all this?

It's because there's a stupid connection between feminine and nurturing (and masculine and not-nurturing) that there's the problem that the romance novels imaginatively resolve in the first place.

... reasons there's a ton of slash fic about cooking and curtains and the guys being all huggy and of course the hurt/comfort stuff etc etc, here we have two guys so nobody is stuck being the nurturing one and they can both make breakfast and they are still manly men blowing stuff up and it's all very simple.

And outside of a few rather disturbing Sentinel fics nobody shags anyone's mother. At all. Ever.


... oh dear, now I'm getting stuck on that point too, aren't I?

... okay, back to the other dozen or so pages.

You can tell just from looking I'm having an argument with this bit. Most of the chapter is highlighted neatly in one color per section with very rarely a word or two in the margin. This page? Three colors so far, and every margin is full. I might have to change pens and write over the top... it's not like I can read my handwriting anyway, half the time...

Feminisms

Finished the chapter! Party!
... okay, there's still the half page on masculinities and the page and a half on queer theory, but I read them already once when I got the book. I, er, have a tendency to start on pages as mention 'queer'. *shrugs*

So, have read many much about feminisms. Methinks my head got full hours ago and most of it will fall out again, but so it goes.
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PS: On fireworks

Have rediscovered that the thing I dislike more than very loud fireworks is very loud fireworks followed by sirens.