Collection

That backpack could be saying “I’m about to trek through the jungle for a Louis Vuitton photoshoot” but it could also be “could I get my cappuccino with oat milk and the WiFi password?”

MY NEW FAVORITE BLOG - it has Trek, it has Teh Funnay, it has the subtle joy of yaaaassss-queenisms. It has Picard. It even has the click beyond.

Beautiful photography in Appalachian Ohio. It's not the part of Ohio where I spent so much of my life. It's not where my dad came from either. But Ohio means a lot to me; and some of these are still and perfect and small and exquisite.

How have I never heard of Sapphire and Steel before? Terribly intrigued. DVRing some episodes, I'll report back if it's fantastic.

Collection

When an article features Terry Crews and mentions Rosey Grier, I'm going to be all the way in for clicking THAT. When that article fully displays the principle and ever-perfecting manhood, well pre-dating Crews' current testimony before the Senate, and how sumptuously he expresses not only his humanity but his convictions, I all but weep. He's proving what we know - and most need to know. Additionally, he's funny as hell.

A joke I heard on Twitter once: "White people upset about BET asking, 'Why don't we have White Entertainment Television?' ... We do, it's HGTV." Worth the click because sometimes online discourse is fertile.

In other TV musing, something struck me about Pose recently. Having watched other Ryan Murphy works, I knew early on that the discussion I'd seen regarding how unrealistic Pose is was almost funny: Murphy's not interested in realism, he presents setpieces, and he does that nicely if you choose to take it on his/those terms. (Feud felt intentionally setbound; even outdoors scenes are claustrophobic and closed-in. That plays to the emotional worlds of the Crawford and Davis characters in play.) For Pose, the archness is not as visually obvious, so I've seen complaints about, say, just how glamorous the scene is made to look, or the opening sequence for the series itself, where "real" historical costumes are stolen from a museum for a gay ball. Preposterous! And duh. Here is the thing: Pose is 80s TV. Figuratively (it's set in the late 80s) and literally (its emotional beats are ALL Very Special Episode-worthy). The depth of plotting is *veeeerryyy* much like 80s TV - sitcom or drama. The pacing is extremely 80s; when TV took time to lay things out. For many, this seems slow or dry or even insulting (making the implicit explicit). But this is so, so true to its time. It takes the 80s seriously, AND it tells stories no network (remember, we really had three back then) would have told in the time itself. I kind of think that's genius, and it's not Murphy's first time reining pace enough to slow things down like this. Given his current influence, you wonder how this might bear out in others' work. Imagine a vogue for *less* cinematic TV; imagine the VSE's regaining ascendance. I've seen surprising amounts of ink on VSEs over the past couple of years. My guess is nostalgia is bringing it back, in service of subjects even the original concept never served.

Leaping from television to literature, who has read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? I actually re-read it a year or two ago, and - forget Jurassic Park - this book will scare the willies out of you, in both its plague-ridden timelines. So reading about the extraction of leprosy from centuries-old skeletal remains ISN'T HORRIFYING AT ALL. Just as long as you haven't read the wrong books. Yeep.

Finally ... hmm, and more hmm. Yes, fella babies, it's Adventures in Science Reporting again!

I have written in the past about Penelope's ancestry, and as little obsessed as I am with pedigree, it's not beyond me to admit fascinated with the idea my beloved Pariah descending from millennia of fascinating forerunners. Oddly enough, it seems like cancer is about all we really have left of pre-contact canine breeds. Still - being a critical thinker - it is hard not to wonder about previous DNA studies, pointing to modern Amercan dogs' long history here. Hmmmm. Keep us posted, Dr. Ostrander.

Collection

Costume nerd alert - that thing you see on the back of this seat? The "cracked" appearance in the silk? This is called shattering. Also, is that a stain I see on the front upholstery, under the cushion?

After all my television viewing reviewing of late, I'm interested in others' ethical takes on popular entertainment. Here's an interesting piece from Vulture.com on the fascism of The Walking Dead. I couldn't watch that show past one episode because of the violence, myself - as compelling as even just one show was, but being aware of its force, it's pretty arresting to see who has chosen to advertise with them - and why.

Curiously, and (ahem) blood-related to the diversity issues touched on in the TWD article above, here's a story about Trek's first Woman of Color as a main character. Sad that it's taken 50 years since Nichelle Nichols' turn as "ain't no maid" to reach this point, but Trek has always had a reputation for progressive inclusion and has had POC and women at the fore before. And now for intersectionality.

Today in "calling it Medieval means it's a relic of The Stupid, Stupid Past" news: our American junta. The thing about the stupidity of the past is? Like many artifacts, we DIY things back to life. Just because a dress doesn't fit anymore doesn't mean some asshat isn't going to recycle it as a scarf.

Television Watching 2

At the same time I am eliminating certain kinds of entertainment, I'm also analyzing what stays, and why it's worthwhile. What I'm realizing is it's simultaneously unsurprising and completely unexpected what "works" for me entertainment-wise, ethically speaking. One stupendously trashy show has struck me particularly.

Among the unsurprising keepers - and unembarrassing ones - are Luke Cage, with some of the best women characters I've seen in a long time, a killer soundtrack, and a team of black writers filling out a fully realized world it's exciting to learn about and inhabit for a while. Jessica Jones and Agents of Shield too, yeah. Trek, of course, but I won't bore anyone with the details; that's another tag entirely. On my DVD shelf are the queasily balanced Caprica (strong female characters, sure, but a creepily sexualized teenager at the center, and an entire ensemble of absolutely bat-splat crazy people all-round) and Battlestar Galactica (I am not overjoyed with the gender issues and the fact it's an overwhelmingly white, eurocentric show, though it really began to explore these things at least, which so much television fears to).

Of course, few people embarrass themselves by liking Luke Cage, a well-received entry in a Marvel Universe which has been well loved as well as blockbuster successful.

Meanwhile, few people would ADMIT what I am about to, but I have to for the purposes of this post.

I watch The Royals. I watch it gleefully, in tandem with a friend of mine whom I shall not name unless they choose to out themselves, and reveling in its soap operatics, its tonguey-cheekiness (sometimes exposing actual nether cheeks - so naughty!), and ... well, I mean. Dame Joan Collins.

Here's the thing about The Royals. Lambasted in a hurry by everyone in need of protecting their cred against its excesses, laughed at for being unrealistic (that's the POINT, rather), and avoided by all except apparently enough millions of viewers to keep it afloat, the series is on its way into a third season and shows no sign of dying on the vine.

This show is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it's Grand Guignol. It's sumptuously daft, and not pretending remotely to be anything else. It is stocked entirely with ham in every casting, and home to more pouty lower lips than I've seen anywhere else on TV - and that is saying something. It's actually got a bit of heart here and there, and the delirious sets and costumes and performances are just right for the madness of the politics and deception around which the whole thing swirls prettily, like a gaudy fan.

Politics and deception have always made good tube. Dynasty hasn't even got a patch on Her Joanness in this gig. Most addicting-cinematic-TV of the 21st century has traded in exactly this sort of GOTCHA plotting. Joss Whedon has made a career out of it, and everybody likes him.

Not so The Royals.

Which is a shame. Not only is the show a lot more fun than the darker takes on murder and mayhem currently on offer (it doesn't hurt your heart to watch it), it's just as valid in honest ways.

And some other ways too, where there are dark shows doing the same thing and failing in important ways.

To wit: the women.

The Royals is outright run by women. The Prime Minister, the Queen, the Princess, the scheming would-be consorts of the on-again/off-again male heir, the million thieves and killers and hangers-on and lovers and exes ... the only characters here who actually move any pieces on the board are the women.

Oh, sure, current-King Cyrus is a gas to watch, for his chin alone. He's up there with Bruce Payne for greasily gluttonous scenery sneer-chewing, and I adore him all to bits.

But it's the tragically-eye-makeupped, colt-legged Princess Eleanor who's learning her way around real power. It's her mother, Queen Helena, played (if not simply embodied) by the sounds-Patrician-to-most-Americans Elizabeth Hurley, who has the will to do literally anything. It's the Queen's secretary, Rachel, who will pop your eyes with her understated outrages.

And even more importantly: most of the men are merely sitting around looking pretty. Prince Liam is all but non-present even when he tries to look determined. Jasper, the youngest and most impressively-eyebrowed security detail, who spends his time caroming through multiple roles only hoping to be near the princess, all but has "Mr. Fanservice" written all over his wonderfully cliche'd role as would-be protector. And his chemistry with her works both on the swoony and the emotional level.

Even the older fellows, especially those security gents, are awfully nice to look at, for those of us a bit leery of leering at the twentysomethings.

And all of them exist only in relation to the actions of the women, even the king, even the craggy fall guy so dedicated to The Crown that he sticks with being the fall guy even when he's given a pass.



In terms of its gender prominence and sexual politics, The Royals is an outstandingly progressive show. It's still a bit white (some of the people of color from season 1 seem to have disappeared entirely; including a very nice pretty security guard I rather miss) - I mean, if we've rewritten the royal family this radically, why not break the Caucasian monotony - but at least it's forward-looking on something, anything, in a world where we continually regress, culturally. And it's not a small thing. Women are, after all, a significant part of the world population. At least, two key women in The Royals are Black and Indian.



In a world where embarrassing discussions abound regarding Prince Henry's girlfriend, picking apart her ethnicity as if it is in any way relevant to anything at all, it's not the worst thing to see women in the royal milieu living entirely NOT on the terms of any men anywhere.

Imperfectly acted? At times. Overheated? Yes, please, and do turn it up. Ludicrous? Indeed, and loving it. This is a hilarious show, and means to be. Yet its reputation, as far as I have seen, has been formed by people dumb enough to think it is dumb enough to take itself seriously.

It's also a good laugh, and provides a few wonderful things to guess about along the way.

Television Watching

Television Without Pity was a bit of an addiction of mine in its day, and after re-watching Battlestar Galactica a year or so back, I hit up TWoP for its recaps.

Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...

The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.

(H)is new plan is to strike a chord with the common man, which is funny because he totally had that, by virtue of being a sexy smart celebrity, until he put everybody in concentration camps.

Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.

Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.

Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.

Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.

Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.

Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.

Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.


None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.

I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.



Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."

I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.



The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.

I don't want to be diverted anymore.

26 Tabs

“it (is) like heroin mixed with crack mixed with anime”

I started off several days ago, amused by some link I saw somewhere about The Dung Ages. As my regular readers know, I have a few issues with the whole idea of The Dark Ages, illusions of recency, and The Dirty, Stupid Past. So the link-intensive piece on The Dung Ages led me to Medieval Morons and The DARK Ages.

TV Tropes looks like a lightweight site, but in short order I’ve been through dozens of tabs (part of the addictiveness is the brevity of many of the articles), and I’m extremely impressed with the scholarship here. It’s more intelligent, and far less snarky, than so many “this is how” websites about pop culture, writing, or television. It also goes far, bar beyond “TV” and examines sources back to ancient mythology and oral traditions.

This might not be a site to use for research if you need a depth of understanding, but I’d call it a hell of a reliable one-stop-shop for general understanding of … well, many things. It is great for writers (though dangerous, and filled with The Bunnies of the Plot), or just consumers of entertainment. It’s even responsible and intelligent.

TV Tropes is also an absolutely superb place to educate yourself, if you have a nerd of almost any sort in your life whom you do not always understand. Five minutes’ reading can teach you a lot about their obsessions!

Of course, five minutes reading there is not possible …

I would caution against clicking even a single one of the TVT links (mine are probably safe; I am not addicting except in very limited ways!) for a few minutes’ reading. The very brevity is what makes clicking “just one more” all too easy. You can get a wide array of tabs open, and winnow your way back down to a mere three, the tantalizing promise of “I will stop” so close before you, and that hope will disappear when five more fascinating links present themselves in those three innocuous little tabs. TV Tropes may be a cruel mistress.

But dang. Sure is fun. Enjoy! Carefully …

Born, and the Rest

Mama Ru on the Reagan years, tribe, and mainstreaming the un-mainstream-able (or NOT; for Ru is wise).



He IS an outstanding host, I've said it before, presiding over drag families for decades now and RuPaul's Drag Race for eight seasons and two All-Stars editions as well. Some of the people hes introduced us to mean a lot to those of us who are fans. Alaska T. is the only thing named Alaska on Earth I will ever love, and Katya and (OMG) Latrice Royale.

My friend Kristi and I agreed: Ru's saying recently that he could never go mainstream was marketing brilliance. The media has snapped-to - oh, and look, two Emmy nods as well. Whether you appreciate that sort of thing or not, this is a queen who has EARNED notoriety, and has worked his curvaceous ass off since he was scarcely a teenager. Someone who knows who he is (and does not care whether you call her he or she) and what he wants - you can really see it in some of the vintage vids available on YouTube (bonus if you click: Mama Ru's own mama, BUBBLE WRAP DANCING - and about 3/4 of a second of Ru with a beard - and I mean growing out of his face, not the metaphorical merkin).

Though there is the epic point-missing of not pointing out the incredible transformations on display every single week, times however-many-contestants-remain, take a look at some reasons to love RDR here. Go. Do. Enjoy! Gerald would.

Setting It Right

Yesterday, I ran across a new old-TV channel on the air locally, and saw that one of the shows coming up for the evening was The Lieutenant. This show was EARLY Gene Roddenberry, before he launched Star Trek. It stars Gary Lockwood, who was in the second TV pilot of Trek (ST's FIRST "reboot" - with Captain Kirk instead of Pike), as the bad guy with the silver eyeballs. He also appeared in a little-known sci fi outing called 2001. Look it up, it's tripendicular.

I met Lockwood and Kier Dullea the first year Mr. X and I were dating. They asked us if we were “in The Business” because we were so good looking. Then we met David Carradine, which was a whole 'nother story. Oh the good old days.

Anyway, one of the eps of The Lieutenant on last night was “To Set It Right” – about racial conflict on a Marine base. It includes Dennis Hopper and Nichelle Nichols. This episode was not aired at the time it was made. Too controversial.

Supposedly, this episode’s shutdown was part of the reason Roddenberry conceived of taking the issues and themes he wanted to explore into outer space. So he could get away with it.

Watching the ep now, it almost feels like something that’d have a hard time even today, and not just because of the 50-year-old linguistics. It really is pretty incendiary; I’m fully impressed with how brave a production it was.

Ms. Nichols is terribly young, wonderfully warm, and absolutely, brilliantly intelligent – and, as she remains even today, just a breathtaking beauty. She has some meat in this part, really difficult dialogue and a couple showcase scenes in which her education is on full display. “He’s been a negro a lot longer than you’ve been thinking about his problem.” She gives the would-be liberal white boy some SERIOUS what-for without a shrill note. Without her scenes, what the script has to say would be queasily uncomfortable - dated in the awfullest way - but she provides relevance that lasts and is meaningful *right now*.

I could not find the whole episode, but if you have Get-TV, look up the schedule for "The Lieutenant".

And, if not: here are a few scenes:

This episode does use the N-word, "negro" and "boy" - but not in the casual "well that was how they *talked* back then" way, but in a pointed way, questioning the way they talked, in what was "now" at the time. It also gorgeously deconstructs the White Guy Saves The Day plan, and avoids becoming a Very Special Episode - or making things easy. It looks at the perspectives of multiple minority characters, each of whom has their own voice, and is an actual *character*.  So by the time it does end with a pair of special moments, it feels more earned than a completely pat TV script.

This gets the "save until I delete" treatment on the DVR. And I'll watch more, to be sure.

Collection

It's all History Blog all the time for today, but quite a variety of linky interesting-ness to share ...

Let's kick off with Robert Cornelius, perpetrator of the first daguerreotype self-portrait. And then left dabbling in photography to look into alternative fuels for his family's lamp business. Strangely, pig lard did not take off, at least not long enough for pigs-flying jokes. (I had a crush on a guy named Bob Cornelius freshman year of college - so extra oddness points here for me, because this Cornelius is cute in a very modern way.)

Conveniently dovetailing with my recent reading of H. G. Wells, here we have the sale of the illustrations for the 1897 edition of War of the Worlds almost, but not quite, drawn by a guy called Henry the Dead. All images at the link are worth a click and closer peering. I'd pinch one here, but honestly I'm never clear on the HB what the public domain status of the images is, so just GO! Neato-spedito!

Inevitably, I'm a TCM lover as it is, but a summer full of noir ... is a summer I can get into. Yaaay!

And finally - as if the world needed ANY more examples of the fully OSUM splendiferosity that is George Takei brings to his masses the Japanese American History: NOT For Sale campaign. Historical education *and* preservation from the guy who literally piloted us into the future half a century ago. He's done rather a lot more than that, and almost all of it is fanfooogootastic. More neato spedito, y'all.

OMG - Like a Woman

You have to know you have got. a. lush. case. when watching a RuPaul's Drag Race clip show gets you choked up because you just love Latrice Royale THAT. much.

Saving Some for Later

It is perhaps weak to quit at three queries.  It is perhaps prudent to stop writing crucial correspondence after a day of work and an evening's query-prep.  My instinct is toward the latter.  Deborah Grosvenor will be next up, and there's even a MAN on my list in queue.  Yes, Virginia:  they let men be literary agents, too.

There will be more reason to squee about further progress tomorrow.  For now, I think - a cruise through my Roku box.

Trek Post ...

... just because it's been a while since I geeked out on Trekkery.  From an email I wrote to Mr. X this week - I won't rewrite it for the blog, just edit as needed.  If I rewrite, it'd never be posted.  Right now, I'm too busy being lost in that comic.



Over the weekend I caught the 3-episode arc of Brent Spiner guesting on “Enterprise” (directed by LeVar no less), as Dr. Noonien Singh.  Though of course there’s no appearance by Khan (Noonien Singh), there’s a serious tip of the hat to Wrath in the costume design and hairdos for the “augments” (genetically enhanced human beings the Dr. is working with/”fathering”).  Nobody wears a fake chest, though, of course.  Well maybe the women ...

Of course the whole thing ends with the doc musing about artificial life forms – “it would take a generation or two, but ... cybernetic life forms ...”


It’s remarkable to me how little of “Enterprise” I have recalled, re-watching that series.  It was still on the air when you and I started dating, and I seem to recall deprioritizing its space in my life for other interests at that time.  But I am having a few “oh yeaaaahh - that!” moments.  It’s a good series, but it is interesting to see the gender roles really thrown back to TOS in a lot of ways.  At first they were clearly having a go at the amorous captain thing, recapturing some Shatner fun, and in season one the whole cast’s prettiness is *much* exploited, but it’s fairly strange watching what they did with, of all characters, the Vulcan science officer.  T'Pol ends up reduced to breathy chick status an awful lot of the time as the series goes on.  They even went so far as to explicitly weaken her and make her a drug addict, so as to put her together with another cast member (because, in Trek, outside of DS9, a woman owning her own carnal interests is still impossible to countenance).  The only other female officer, the token Asian, and the one African American man on the crew, have been all but abandoned as I cruise through season 4.  Very subtly, too, the design has slowly crept backward in sophistication from the cinematic look which was so popular at the time production began, as the show swings focus back onto The White Guys (and one horny Vulcan chick).

I recently read, and have been meaning to refer/respond to, an interesting essay about how gender progressive Voyager was, but in a lot of ways (revisiting this series as well) I’m not sure I’m persuaded of that premise.  On the surface, I see the points – female captain, strong focus on female characters who aren’t a bunch of pansies – but my recollection of frothing fanboy-dom over the super sexy avatar of abuse survivorship, Seven of Nine, is still bothersome.  That’s what men remember about that show; if there was a real message about the evolution of women in/and power, it is not what stuck with a significant portion of the audience.  Not to mention, I’ve seen one too many eps of Janeway pining to disappear into the Victorian era – and just watched one where ensign Harry Kim is kidnapped by a planet of women right on the heels of The Lorelai Signal, which doesn’t exactly speak much for the evolution of Trek’s writing/enlightenment over a THIRTY year period.



That post will probably still come; I want to address the points of the essay just to deal with them myself.  For now, this quick infusion of Trek is the offering of the day.

Homework

Okay, so watching The Borgias now qualifies as homework for history.  And not even in Big, Dumb America (being facetious, don't beat me up ...), but in the UK.  And for A-LEVEL history, at that.  This, for those not in the know as to the British educational system, is short for ADVANCED level.

Please stand by while I nip off to go shoot myself in the neck.

I promise, I’ll be very humane …

Arthur Dent, Archaeologist

I knew him first as Dentarthurdent, then Watson, and of course I'm aware he's been a hobbit and an office worker.  Heh.  Now I can know him for the most amazing vest ever, and some unusually tight little cutoff, rolled-up jeans shorts ...



"It's under, so it's older."  Fantastic.

The Borgias

I actually made attempts to watch this, but it was for me so bad as to be alienating.  This review misses some of the worst production/performance/direction issues in favor of being drop-dead hilarious, but it's al*most* enough to make me wish I had someone else to watch it with if only to make fun of the series.  Not really.  It was just too bad to try.  The writing dismissing it is in fact far too good for it.  Still - worth a read.

Geeks Who Make Women Hate Themselves

Food for thought ...
(All images/words above:  Thumbcramps.com)

My friend Leila has a great post up about women (and, really:  men) in geek-dom, which I hope gets a ton of traffic.  I've thought about this topic many times, and it even goes beyond the characters in comics with pneumatic breasts and legs four feet long ... it even goes into those feminine icons in the real world men are given permission to think they are superior for finding attractive.  Women who are supposed to be less threatening to real women but who, if we're honest, still conform to certain weights and other mainstream standards of attractiveness.

Hollywood's idea of the drab, workaday Real Woman
(All celebrity images:  IMDB)

Over the past twenty years, I can't begin to count the number of nerd guys who have congratulated themselves (they like to tell women about this; I've fielded so many of these conversations, and am sure most other nerdy and nerd-adjacent women do) for liking:  Allison Mack, Jeaneane Garofalo, Allyson Hannigan, Felicia Day, Amy Acker, and Tina Fey.  Not one of these women actually fails the Hollywood test of visual appeal - they simply aren't fully plastic bimbettes.  They're all of a certain petiteness - in Day's and Acker's cases, they're ever bit as thin as editorial models (slimmer by far than swimsuit models).  It's as if women are supposed to be grateful that a man can find a woman who is already physically striking attractive because she ALSO is intelligent and funny and Joss Whedon gets her to commit shocking violence.

Because, yes, it's no coincidence I listed three of Whedon's often-cast actresses.  It could have been significantly more.  Joss is one of those guys, I suspect, who thinks himself evolved because he finds women attractive who are not appearing in Playboy.  And he has done a bit, at least, to provide some interesting faces, especially in his work on the small screen.  But he's also got rather a thing about YOUNG women, (a whole different post but not in fact a completely different squick) - and, again, Allyson, Felicia, and so on are hardly ordinary to look at.

NONCONFORMITY IS NOT THE SAME THING AS OPEN-MINDEDNESS.


I can still recall a very old friend of mine, a sometime boyfriend - a boy whose first kiss I was, in fact - philosophizing with me in the early nineties, about the movie, "The Truth About Cats and Dogs", a movie starring Jeaneane Garofalo and Uma Thurman.  He was so proud of himself (a lot of guys were, I remember this movie's reception very well, at least amongst my lot of friends and acquaintances) for finding Jeannine SO much more attractive than Uma.

Well, the fact was, Jeaneane was (a) no uggo to begin with (she still is not, no matter the much-hammered themes of her standup and her own endorsement of the idea she might ever in her life have owned a cell of back fat), and (b) so luminously well styled, lit, scripted, and shot that she was both ethereal and completely lovely.  Add to this that the scripting on Uma was *nice* but not breathtaking, so the character had to lose out to the heroine we were following, along with Jeaneane's glossily dark locks.

At the time, I was still grateful enough for any sign of male attractiveness-egalitarianism, and deeply enough mired in my own sense of how attractive *I* was relative to Jeannine (I thought I was hotter), that I could accept that this guy's preferring her to Uma was some sort of a triumph.

As may be obvious:  over time, I have come to remember this ground-breaking example of male sensitivity in something of a different light.

Enough conversations about how "hot" Gabrielle was on Xena:  Warrior Princess, Mary Ann was, versus Ginger, Betty versus Wilma or even Betty versus Veronica later, and the theme became so obvious even to me that I stopped being impressed when men bragging that they had so generously found it in their libidos to find "UNATTRACTIVE" women attractive.  (My continued attempts to be a Veronica, even to this day, still don't negate how deadly boring a conversation this can be.)

If you can find "awkward" creature appealing - you're the hero ...
(All celebrity images:  IMDB)

Here is the Earth-shattering news, guys.

Glasses do not render a telegenic woman run of the mill.  A tinsey little scar on a lip does not destroy the luminous skin, figure, good hair, and large eyes of a television star.  Being SCRIPTED as "the girl next door" or a neurotic does nothing to diminish the requisite level of appeal a woman must maintain in order to be agented for television work, and cast as a regular.  This is how we get so many former models playing cops and private investigators, and always have.

In Hollywood, she's a second-banana ...
... but even she, eventually, will get an edit to a skimpy costume
so we can admire her exceedingly ordinary six-pack abs.
(All celebrity images:  IMDB)

Not the first beauty queen presented to American men as a girl next door ...
Not even the beginning of this issue, for American women ...
(All celebrity images:  IMDB)

Guys have bragged about finding all sorts of women they consider to be outside the beauty queen mold attractive, expecting this to make them more attractive to the women they brag about it to, and convincing themselves this makes them not only better than other "shallow" men but EXPECTING to be rewarded for their sensitivity.  By real women.  (Here's a thing:  the un-glamorous Mary Ann was a pageant princess.)  I can tell you, too - the woman who dares question a man showing off his crush on Willow, as actually perpetuating the standards held out to real women by an industry not in the business of promoting real women (don't get me started on Hollywood's long affair with increasingly dumpy leading men, at least not tonight ...), will get shrieked at in outrage by the guy who's cast himself as being Above the Whole Looks Thing.  They cannot take the idea they hold an entire gender to a standard they have trained themselves to think - and brag that - they don't believe in.  Hit that "Willow" link above and tell me how totally natural that shot is.

The actresses themselves ... I don't resent them much for making money off this conceit.  (A multi-layered term I'm loving right now.)  They're trading in an industry which, the older I get, the gladder I am I never found my way into, much less suffered success.  What this must do to someone I pity their having to endure.  May none of them suffer the decades of surgeries and ossifying expectations of self-image Joan Rivers and others who once traded on not-being-pretty (but still exemplifying it to such a degree that, past seventy, it's still such an imperative) have forced themselves to endure.  Even Phyllis Diller had some years in the eighties when she put off the fright wig and put out airbrushed photos to rehabilitate her "uggo" image.

I may suffer my own vanity issues - to be sure.  But I'm also grateful for every minute of my age, and the older I get the more I'm concerned about my HEALTH over my ability to make people think I look attractive.  Just today, I finally posted a nice, but not overly made-up image of myself as my avi on Twitter.  Baby steps.

Someone once said to me:  "You use your wit and intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."

That said a lot to me about my looks - which, with this person, even still matters to me.  But it also said something profound about what I have to back up the first impression.  I am so grateful mom and dad girded me with that power.

Side-eyeing the whole dadgum thing

Cable Television

Since getting cable again for the first time in about 15 years, less than two years ago, I've made a running joke about being grateful for my Roku box ... but, the fact is, cable seems to have a special place in the dumbification of our society.  The internet and broadcast are hardly great examples, and reality TV crosses boundaries - but cable generates some of the most shockingly stupid programming it is quite literally terrifying.  In this case, we have two documentaries about mermaids being real.  Why does that matter?  Read the link.

It's not just science, but our society and communities themselves under fire.  For every Housewife (and there are SIX of those series), there's an unmarried person babbling about "connections" and "this journey" under the pretense that game shows can end in "lurve."  And it's not just content; the sponsors have turned me into a middle-aged suburbanite who can't poop without resenting Jamie Lee Curtis and the massive conspiracy to get my obsessed with my own eliminations, losing weight, and an industry of food products designed to promise weight loss (because that is the only worthy goal for a woman) and simultaneously designed to hew precisely to exactly the poor diet issues which have brought my country in the space of half a generation to ownership of the fattest and most risk-ridden bodies in the whole of history.

There is a shrillness in the politics, in the morality, in the gender roles, in the rather overwhelming presence of alcohol in places it will create the most televise-able drama, which goes beyond the anti-science foolery of Animal Planet, Bravo, History, and what have you.  It goes into our PEOPLE, and that is sickening.  When I tell people I earned every minute of my age, I'm simultaneously blessing it.  With age, I've come to a more critical view of the world (even than I trouble to express in this largely non-critical/analytical blog), but a very real gratitude for the fact that I missed out on the rampant opportunities to whore my very "life" out for money in order to entertain and confirm the self-superiority of millions of Cheeto-snarfing strangers.  Because I certainly would have wanted to.  Impossible not to be concerned about the psychological fates of not only those who do it, but the susceptibility of those who consume this from early ages.

But the central problem is the willful ignorance cable so successfully fosters.  Believing in mermaids, but disbelieving climate change.  Taking talking heads of no credible expertise at face value, especially when they are popularly and entertainingly barking mean things about proven science, economics, what have you.  "Fairy tale" gender roles, self-defeating politics, incendiary anger directed not at oppressors, but at those who are different.  Bread.  Circus.

The older I get the more I realize I don't even know how to question our society properly or to any effect.  And the more I see that needs to not only be questioned - but changed.

Frontline - "The Untouchables"

As disappointing a piece of Infotainment for the Underachieving as NPR seems fully to have become in the past few months, PBS is a blissful reassurance.  I'm one of the few non-addicts of Downton Abbey (this may come as a surprise given my histfict-nerdlery - but for those who know my contrarianism, it should be predictable).

Try as I might to keep this blog to the themes I've worked hard to construct, it's a simple fact that fifteen or so years in the financial industry, from the year we cheered when the Dow first topped 10,000 and I helped one of my managers literally write the book on "the Death Tax", to the period of increasingly giddy credit offerings when I worked for the guys saying, "Hey, maybe not?", to working outside the commercial mainstream but at the heart of the economy ... I've experienced the recent history of our greatest crises in ways few people have.

Yeah, yeah.  I'm "just a secretary."  Let it be said:  given that role and responsibility, I have had views pretty rare in this world.  My brain is still perfectly functional (wee and paltry as it may be).  Believe me, chickens.  When, in 2007 and 2008 I was recording secretary for the interdisciplinary Risk committee at one of the largest securities firms in the world, I was listening.  Even if I wasn't talking.  I saw this coming.  And that's only because I had good sense, too.  It hardly took rocket science to see the excesses in lending practices at that time.  Many people I knew who had nothing of the exposure I did knew it.  People aren't stupid, not entirely.

Greed just gets in the way.  For the key few who have the reins.



Al this is to say:  watch this.  Not only the usual magnificent reportage Frontline has traded in for so long, presented excellently - but also about the best editing I have seen in years.  Pay attention to what is said, followed by cuts to facts and findings.

And be outraged.  It's not too late.

Buffy Frustrates Me ...

... as do my Christmas lights.  $33.88 with shipping, two BRAND new strings, I plugged them in and got 45 seconds of light.  I spent that much because these are supposed to be the "one bulb goes out, the rest stay lit" - but NONE are currently lit.  Gah.  Stupid freaking Christmas lights.  (The inquiry is in, yes with the eBay seller.)

But while I am cleaning and putting up decorations, I'm watching Buffy.  Once again, I am struck by the artificial and irritating elasticity of her intellect/education.  In one moment, she says to Xander, "Thank you for the Dadaist greeting" because that is a funny reference.  But three minutes later, he says something about going on reconnaissance and she wrinkles her nose and asks "where we paint and make pottery and stuff" and he has to explain, "That was the *Renaissance*" ...

Because Buffy is selectively dumb, for excessively weak and dumb jokes.  *Sigh*

Umlaut-less Otzi

I should thank JohnJayJay for reminding me, by commenting on my +Ulfberh+t post, that I have failed to point to NOVA's simply jaw-dropping special on Otzi, the Iceman.  Framed as a procedural exploration of a murder mystery, this absorbing episode of the superb series examines everything from Otzi's state-of-the-art gear and garb to his tattoos and last meal (ibex and grain, if you want to know without the laproscopic and laboratory imagery, which might in fact be a bit much for some viewers!).

Image via PBS, of course

If only for the bit about the copper ax, this is a must-watch for history, archaeology, and tech nerds.

Even so, I have to say with a very deep smile that, in the end, my favorite part of this show was discovering a few days later that my mom had watched it too, and reveling in discussion of how exciting it was.  This is the lady who raised me on these things, and I am forever grateful.  Thanks, mom!