Passing along more links

[stakebait]

Man from Washington State lynched in Mississippi over oil on the land. My god.

Quebec study urges decriminalization of prostitution

New report shows Bush administration removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau web site, deleting or distorting crucial information (Salon.com, you'll have to view an ACLU ad to get the full story.)

Why fat is not a health risk, and why America is so invested in believing it is.

Clearing out the bookshelves? Books for Soldiers has requests from soldiers serving overseas.

For Angel fans, An interesting analysis of ATS up through Origins by ascian3.

Comments

[fairestcat]

In defense of my home state here, the man who was lynched was from Washington State, the actual lynching was in Mississippi.

Not that that makes the whole thing any less disgusting and disturbing, of course.

[rosefox]

I dunno, I read it and thought "bet his family did it".

I'm naturally suspicious of easy answers, though.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. Will correct. Thanks.

[witling.livejournal.com]

That link to Books for Soldiers is really interesting. I've gone back and forth on so much of it, in my sheltered idealistic Canadian way. I don't support the war. But that doesn't mean I don't realize there are good people fighting it. I know they need the support of their country, even if I don't agree with what they're doing. (Sometimes radically, as in the situation in Fallujah. So I think, I should send books. Then I go to the boards to see what's being requested. DVDs of Three Kings and Reservoir Dogs. Maxim. FHM. Also other stuff, it's not all stuff that freaks me out, but there's a heavy percentage of stuff that I just... I don't know what to say about it, quite. Class politics in this country are so loaded, and if I say I don't think FHM is the healthiest thing for someone to read, I feel like I've painted a big red "feminist intellectual" target on my chest. And not in a good way. And besides...DVDs? The troops are watching Lord of the Rings in their down hours? I just bought a DVD player myself a few months ago. It isn't that I think soldiers, or anyone for that matter, should suffer unnecessarily, but...DVDs are now a basic amenity? And not DVDs of, I don't know, I can't even think of any big American movies that talk about befriending people from other cultures right now--are there any? It must be my mood, but right now it seems like America doesn't make movies like that for entertainment, so I don't even know what to cite, here. Anyway. The requests are for shoot-em-ups and bad guy go boom and, you know, schlock. Daredevil. Comic book worlds. Which God knows, I live in a comic book world plenty of the time, but I don't then pick up a rifle and go sniping "insurgent" women and children in the streets. Just...ugh. Argh.

And then I think, who am I to judge what other people use for recreation? I'm a librarian, I'm not supposed to judge, I'm supposed to provide access. And not just when someone wants something that I agree with and support, like Bill Bryson and Harvey Pekar and Arianna Huffington. To everything that's legal--everything that doesn't actively hurt someone else. And whether or not watching Quentin Tarantino movies causes people to go out and hurt others, well... That's not something I'm prepared to say. That's for Dworkin and MacKinnon to talk out.

Good lord, I'm verbose. I'm pre-menstrual, I blame it on hormones. The world seems so packed with troubles right now, and also with potential for good. And we seem to do the same things over and over and over.

And now I will stop spamming your LJ.

Thank you for the link.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I don't support the war either, but I do support the soldiers. And FWIW I saw some less crude requests in the Army thread. I wouldn't send those things -- I don't *own* those things, so I couldn't. I don't mind sending mysteries and SF books, though. Some people wanted those.

But I don't think comic books and action movies are necessarily bad. These are people who are seeing -- and doing -- a lot of terrible stuff. If what they need to relax and connect to is a story where the good guys are right and the bad guys are wrong and shooting only hits the bad guys and not civilian children, I don't think that's because they're blind to the fact that that's not what's happening in real life.

I think it's because the horror of real life is all they see, and they need to get away from it for a little while or go mad. And maybe to reconnect to the ideal form of what they're supposed to be doing.

I think that's worthwhile. If you're a soldier, you're not there to make friends and it's only rubbing salt in the wound to imagine that you could. But you're supposed to be shooting the right things, for the right reasons, keeping the innocents safe and stopping the guilty and then handing them over to civil authority. Doing a dirty job to keep people safe. And I'd rather have soldiers who believe that's possible, or at least admirable and worth striving for, than soldiers who are so demoralized that they think it doesn't make any difference how they act and it might as well be badly.

America does makes films about connecting to other cultures, but not usually big ones, because big implies big budget and the big budget usually goes for special effects. Movies about talking can be small.

As for the DVDs, they can probably watch them on their computers, and they probably have the computers for non-frivolous reasons. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if they had players. They army adopted film pretty early too, it's a pretty cheap, harmless, and efficient method of keeping morale up.

Mer

[witling.livejournal.com]

Yuh huh. All good points. I'm feeling pretty shaken in my faith that American soldiers are doing good over there at all today, having just read a few independent news articles about Fallujah. But if the system is working right, then maybe those things are all ticking over just fine, the way you describe. I'd like to think so.

Also, I apparently have lost the ability to close emphasis tags. Sorry.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Heh. No problem.

I'm not sure they are doing good. In fact I'm pretty sure they're not, or at least not enough to outweigh the harm we're doing. But I want them to stay as good people as they can, those that are, which is probably most of them. Because I think it will only get worse if they don't. And I think reading comics is as likely to make you a better person as it is a worse one, if it does anything besides provide escapism for people who seriously need it.

Mer

[witling.livejournal.com]

Yes, I didn't mean to slam comics in my first reply--or maybe I worked myself into a position where I was slamming without enthusiasm. Heh. I read superhero comics from time to time (The Authority! Gay superheros!) and I sure did grow up on them, and I have no quarrel with anyone who likes them. I also read graphic novels and consider them a completely valid literary form (I know, thanks, wiseacress, we needed that), and would like to start to build our library's collection there a bit more.

I think where I got myself into a tight spot was in equating low-quality entertainment crap like Daredevil with comics, which was careless. There are wonderful comic, fantastic worlds out there. I just watched Spirited Away and fell in love with it, for instance.

And that's interesting to me--if you sent Spirited Away to the troops, would it answer their need? I mean, who can say, and what's this single, monolithic "need" thing? There are lots of needs. But you say (sensibly) that people at war may have a craving to see clear lines of good and bad, right and wrong, and Gandalf the White coming over the hill at dawn. I can understand that. I can also imagine that some people might have a need to see a complex, ambiguous world presented back to them, to see others try to navigate it. To watch Welcome to Sarajevo, in which people try to do right under terrible, untenable circumstances, instead of Con Air, which is just schlock.

Schlock I've enjoyed, I hasten to add.

I don't know. Being prescriptive or judgmental is worse than useless, I think. But then I think, there has to be some dissension. I just don't believe that True Lies provides a good, healthy model for relating to the world and other people, however satisfying it may be for some folks to watch Arnold machine-gun Arabs and nuke a Florida cay. You know?

I'm also highly conscious of the fact that my little wibbling voice is pretty much irrelevant to the real world, the real situations. Or maybe it's not. Maybe there's room for a BooksforSoldiers2.com, providing alternative sources of entertainment that...I don't know, at least don't perpetuate the racism and xenophobia and greed and fear that got us into this war and will continue to get us into wars just like it until we drive someone to nuke us, world without end.

Um, okay. I'm sorry, Stakebait, I don't know what's got into me today. I'm too emotionally invested. I'm not trying to take over your LJ. Stopping now.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Really it's fine. My LJ is unthreatened. Feel free to stop if this is bothering you, but not on my account.

I'm sure some people do need to see a more complex world presented back to them, but presumeably those people are asking for Welcome to Sarajevo, not Con Air.

I'm not trying to say there is a single monolithic need. I'm just trying to describe, based on the evidence that a lot of people in a certain situation are asking for a certain type of literature, how the one might cause the other without being necessarily a bad influence or a bad symptom. I'm sure there are plenty of people who aren't in this group at all, but then they don't need explaining.

It's true, of course, that there are some things you don't know you need until someone makes you watch them (Brazil, in my case, was one of those), but I think that comes better from a dear friend who has reason to know what you might need than it does from a stranger. There's something disagreeably paternalistic in trying to send people what we think they should have instead of what they say they want. As you say, being prescriptive or judgmental is worse than useless.

I also think that True Lies isn't intended (or, generally, recieved) as a model for relating to the world, healthy or otherwise. I've done this rant elsewhere on topics like rape fantasy, but basically I believe that there's a whole genre of literature and media that exists to bleed off, externalize, play out in a safe environment, impulses which many if not all of us have but it would be bad for society to exercise in real life.

It's like a carnival Lord of Misrule in medieval society -- the idea is not to follow it like a prescription, but to give resentment and envy and mockery a safe outlet, and it actually shored up the regular rulers the rest of the time.

I put action movies and most pornography into this category, so to me, to debate them as models is, to me, like critiquing a roller coaster for it's unsafe model of train construction. If it were such a model, it certainly would be unsafe, but it isn't. It's a sanitized alternative, a way to experience the adrenaline thrill of a runaway train without the real pain, just like a romance is a way to experience the thrill of connection without the real risk.

Mer

[witling.livejournal.com]

I'm going to subside here, because I need to be quiet with my smooth, smooth brain, but just to clarify--I wasn't saying you were positing a single, monolithic need. That was me, talking to myself. Which I do fairly often, in fact.

The bleed-off theory...maybe. I don't know. I'm a fence-sitter, somewhere between Dworkin and you. There are so many studies showing a correlation between viewing violent acts and increased tendencies to violence. It makes intuitive sense, which doesn't necessarily mean it's correct--intuitively, the planet's flat. But there are people out there studying violence in the media, and they seem to keep finding the same things, more or less. Feed your brain a diet of first-person shooter games and Schwarzenegger flicks, and you have a higher chance of being predisposed to violent or otherwise antisocial behavior.

What that says about porn, I don't know. I like porn. Porn is good.

::pets porn::

Thank you for such good points about all of this--it's been very good sharing thoughts with you.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Have a nice quiet time with your smooth brain. Lemme know if you ever are bored and want to talk about those studies.

Mer

[nightstalker.livejournal.com]

Feed your brain a diet of first-person shooter games and Schwarzenegger flicks, and you have a higher chance of being predisposed to violent or otherwise antisocial behavior.

Wouldn't a more reasonable conclusion be that people who are predisposed to violent or anti-social behavior are are more likely to watch action movies and play violent video games?

[witling.livejournal.com]

I'll have to find the studies, I guess. I don't know whether your suggestion is more reasonable or not, offhand.

Sorry it took so long for me to dig it up.

[nightstalker.livejournal.com]

Usually it's the newspapers who distort causation and correlation, but in this case, it seems the researchers did it too.

http://www.rielley.com/sandy/rants/vidgames.html

Re: Movies

[kuzibah.livejournal.com]

So much of military duty is hours of mindless tedium interspersed with getting shot at, that a big dumb action movie or something that can be read in small bits (like a magazine or comic) would probably be a more preferable way to unwind than a heavy drama or a complex novel. As for players, considering they only run about $75, I'll bet a few guys brought them along, or had family send them.

Plus, not to be ageist, sexest, and an intellectual elite, but do consider that we're talking mostly about men in their late teens and early twenties, who if they even have a HS diploma, were probably not in the Chess Club, if you get my drift. It'd be nice if they took the opportunity to broaden their minds, but I kind of doubt it.

But thanks for the link. Grim and are are culling the herd in the next few weeks and this looks like a good place to send things.

Re: Movies

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

There's plenty of smart people in the armed forces, though, both formally educated and not. I think your first point is the key one -- under stress most people want to unwind with something comfortable, easy, and familiar, not be shaken up all over again.

Mer

Re: Movies

[witling.livejournal.com]

Yes, you and Stakebait make a good point about the intellectual fatigue of being in combat or even just in reserve. Totally taken. God knows I come home from a day of just plain work, fall down on the couch, and want to nap. So, yeah. It's a good point that people will want intellectually undemanding entertainment when they're under a lot of stress.

You may be right, pragmatically, that not a lot of people are going to master particle physics in their spare time on the front--but I don't think it's necessarily wise to characterize soldiers as dumb. I mean, my experience with members of the enlisted military is practically non-existent, and when I have brushed up against reserve troops or whatever, it's usually been a reminder of how little we have in common, intellectually and socially. But still. I wouldn't want to default into thinking that people in uniforms are necessarily there because they couldn't get out of the barrio any other way.

However, I'm aware that in a lot of cases, that's exactly the case.

It's interesting--I've been brain-dead enough recently to watch a few eps of King of the Hill, which is sponsored by the U.S. Navy. It's not the wittiest, sharpest show on the air, you know? I know that's subjective, but in my opinion it's just not. And it probably appeals to a lot of pretty conservative viewers. It's interesting to see the armed forces allying themselves with that (presumed) demographic, and actively courting it through repeated commercials through the show. Like recruiting offices and billboards in low-income areas, you know? No surprise, just...class really enters into this. As does race. And income level. And, yeah. No news there.

Aaaaaaand I'm rambling.

But it would be nice if the Army took advantage of that cheap, light DVD technology to provide some more worthwhile, regenerative entertainment than Reservoir Dogs. I mean, wasn't this war about containing aggression? If that's true, then shouldn't our forces be there primarily (ironically) as peacekeepers and protectors of the innocent, until a democratic government can be set up? And if that's true, then shouldn't we have a military agenda of education and rapprochement, rather than aggression?

I mean, I realize how ridiculous that sounds in real life, but look at the justifications for the war. If we follow them to their logical conclusions, that's the sort of activity the soldiers should be engaged in. It's no surprise to anyone that they're not, I don't think. It all just points back (to me, at least) to the corrupt root of the enterprise, and to the failure of the Army and the government to actually support the troops they sent in. We can send them Daredevil and Spaceballs out of our own pockets till the cows come home; if there's no real will at the higher levels, it's a farce.

It makes me angry. And rambly.

Crap. LJ ate my original response.

[kuzibah.livejournal.com]

My point, quickly, was that I didn't mean to imply that soldiers were dumb. Just that they were about on the same intellectual as most folks that age, including, if we're honest, college students. I'm not especially proud of my taste in books and movies at age 21, but, with experience, it got more sophisticated. Which is why I'm not surprised that these guys want Maxim and dumb action flicks, and would probably look at novels and dramas as "boring." Not a judgment, just an observation.

Re: Crap. LJ ate my original response.

[witling.livejournal.com]

Jah jah. You're right, tastes develop.

But still. Maxim? So not going to happen.

Heh.

Re: Crap. LJ ate my original response.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. I don't know that my taste has changed appreciably with age, but then I've always been the anything-within-reach, you're not using that cereal box are you? sort of reader. I loved some trash and some treasures at eight, and was left cold by some of each too, and the same has been pretty much true all the way along, though the exact list varies slightly -- mostly it grows longer.

As for movies, I can't stand to watch violence or people embarassing themselves, which lets out vast swathes of film. And on the other hand I tend to want them to be much less demanding than I do books, not subtitled, and not "heartwarming", which lets out still others. Basically I'm left with teen comedies and Shakespeare adaptations, plus the occasional miscellaneous. It works for me, but I don't know if I'd call it sophisticated. :)

Mer

[batyatoon]

On "Why fat is not a health risk":

Have you seen those "The Ultimate Comeback" ads in the subways lately, featuring before-and-after photos of Anna Nicole Smith?

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I have. I didn't get it. She didn't seem unsuccessful before, and she doesn't seem appreciably less tacky or scary now. I worry about Anna Nicole because she had that deer in the headlights quality. I was never sure she really understood, and consented to, the ways she was being used and mocked. But dieting is not likely to fix that.

[batyatoon]

It's just that she seems to be a perfect example of the point the article was making about how in America it's not okay to despise someone for being lower-class, but it's okay to despise someone for being overweight.

The "before" shot of Anna Nicole does, indeed, look tacky. But it's the clothes and the heavy studded belt and the pose, not the poundage she's carrying. And the overall impression is, if you'll pardon the term and its implications, Trailer Trash.
While the "after" shot has her wearing something sleek and designer-looking, and more subtle makeup, and her hair up artfully, and so forth -- and the overall impression is, well, Expensive.

And I don't know how many viewers of these two pictures would stop to consider how many different changes have been made to this woman's appearance between "before" and "after," and how only one of them is her weight.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Excellent point! I did notice the changes, but I didn't connect them to class markers until you explained it. Of course!