Game of Thrones vs. People Who Only Threw a Fit After-the-fact
George Bush is in the HBO production of Game of Thrones (season one). Not really. A replica of his head was dressed up in a manky wig and put on a spike to represent one of the heads King Joffrey lobbed off towards the end of the first season. Said replica was on the screen for such a short amount of time that nobody figured it out until someone made a passing comment in the commentary on the DVD suggesting as much. Oh. My. God. The world has just ended. It’s over. Hollywood wants to kill George Bush. It’s finally true! The liberals have come to kill our babies and eat our brains using parasitic tube monkeys. And then they’re going to cut off George Bush’s head and put it up on a spike with a nasty black wig! None of that is true. Well, except everything before “Oh. My. God.” In truth, this is one of the stupidest things people have gotten upset about in Hollywood this year, let alone this decade (and the one before it). There are a lot of more important things to get pissed about. Such as how women are portrayed in films and TV. Or representations of people of color. Or the fact that most of the crap they put on TV looks like it was written by a 5-year-old missing half a brain. But this? Please. Grow up. And, yes, contrary to what some of a different political persuasion than myself might say, I would not have cared either if the bust was Barack Obama, except for the fact that there are almost no black people in Game of Thrones (season one) to begin with. Putting him up on a spike wouldn’t make any sense, and I might get a little annoyed at that if I actually noticed it. But would I have? No. I didn’t notice George Bush either, and I don’t even like him as a President. That said, I don’t really know where I stand with the producers’ rational for why they used a replica of his head. Is it possible they couldn’t afford to rent or make a whole bunch more body parts and heads? Maybe. Could it also be a veiled political statement? I guess. But that would assume David Benioff and D. B. Weiss are stupid enough to a) put it in their movie knowing some place like Big Hollywood will scrutinize everything they do, and b) mention doing so in the commentary. If you wanted to make a political point, I’d think you’d take the moment to say something in the commentary. Maybe they’re that dumb, but I find that hard to believe, and I don’t feel like making that judgment right now. So I will officially file this in my “stupid crap that the world got upset about” bin. Do with it what you will.
Film Crit Hulk on the New Yorker? Dumbest Thing of the Week…
(Originally on Google+; cross-posting to amuse myself.) Excuse me while I call this the dumbest thing to hit Geek culture all year that happens to not be some racist or sexist rant of doom. Seriously? Your idea of how the Hulk would speak is to give him remarkably sophisticated diction…but in ALL CAPS? Because ALL CAPS = The Hulk, right? Because The Hulk is a privileged white male teenager having a temper tantrum, but who is remarkably aware of himself as a literary cliche? Here’s how the Hulk would assess Mark Ruffalo’s performance in truth: Funny jokes. Smash good. That’s about it. He’s a man/creature of few words for a reason. That’s why he says all but one (maybe more if you count grunts and roars as words) line in the entire Avengers movie. Pah! This is why Film Crit Hulk works on Twitter, but not on a blog. On Twitter, he seems like he’s actually in Hulk character (or she, if the person behind the persona happens to be a woman). On the blog? Not so much. He’s using “Hulk” as a justification for putting things in all caps (i.e., to be annoying as hell). Meh.
I Would Ride a Unicorn (Maybe Even in a Dress)(Or, Hey, Gender Paradigms in SF/F!)
Fantasy Book Cafe has been releasing some fascinating articles in celebration of its “Women in SF/F” month (thing, event?). One such article by the always-compelling N. K. Jemisin, entitled “Don’t Fear the Unicorn,” concerns Jemisin’s personal struggle with the culturally-imposed gender paradigms in genre fiction. Specifically, girly unicorns of girly-ness on the cover of Steven R. Boyett’s Ariel. I recommend you read the entire article, but for the sake of context, here’s a juicy quote: So I wasn’t going to pick up Ariel because OMG unicorn no. But there was something else on the cover of that book next to the unicorn: a boy. I remember staring at that book for several seconds of full, total “does not compute” shutdown. My brain just couldn’t handle the paradox. Unicorns equalled girliness. Boys, however, signalled action and adventure and toughness and purpose. Boys don’t do unicorns. Girliness =/= purpose. Danger, Will Robinson, danger. Then I clearly remember thinking, but I’m a girl. And that was it. It wasn’t an especially shocking realization, but it was a profound one. In that moment I began to understand: the problem wasn’t that some books were infested with girl cooties; the real problem was my irrational fear of girliness. And myself. Hopefully that explains why the title of this post involves the willing emasculation of my male self both by unicorn riding and cross-dressing. Not that I would ever do either (we live in the real world, folks, so this whole cross-dressing unicorn rider of doom nonsense is just a fantasy I will never see fulfilled). But the point is that I too find these paradigms rather disconcerting, except in retrospect. While Jemisin seems to have discovered the idiocy of the girl/boy split and the wickedness of girl cooties at a young age, I didn’t discover such a thing until maybe my early twenties. I blame part of that on the culture around me, wherein being an RPG-playing, video-game-loving, Magic-the-Gathering-obsessed super geek (we drank Citra by the box — you remember Citra, right?) constituted some kind of penis-wearing female surrogate monster (like an android without genitalia, or, maybe, with male genitalia, since we menfolk have this odd obsession with feeling inadequate to the task of “mating”). Growing up, then, put me in a bizarre position of trying to pretend that I was “man enough” to be considered a “man” (or young man, depending on my age), thereby legitimizing my hard rejection of anything associated with the female species (even when such things are, in fact, gender neutral — dancing, for example, is only “girly” because men are too damned stupid to realize that most forms of dancing don’t actually work without a partner; partners could very well be of the same sex or either sex — such is the silliness of girl cooties). Today, I’ve thankfully set a lot of this crap aside. Perhaps it has something to do with recognizing (and learning) patriarchy in our culture. Perhaps it has something to do with a desire to access “girly things” because I happen to like them (hey, a good romance is, well, good, and I’m going to cry at the end of a tragedy or whatever because it’s sad; so bite me). It might also have something to do with my semi-bi-sexual-ness (yeah, I’m admitting that in public on a blog; I’m as confused as you). Whatever led me to this conclusion — to the desire to ride a unicorn in the dress because I should be able to do so without getting ridiculed for being “a girl” (because it ain’t a girl thing; it’s a human thing) — I am thankful to see people like Jemisin challenging the assumptions of gendered identity. There’s no such thing as a “domain of *insert sex here.*” Women like sports; men like sports. Men like cooking; women do too (and on that front, I have to ask: has anyone else found it utterly absurd that the most sexist of us all can say “women belong in the kitchen” without recognizing the irony that some of the best cooks are men? Some are women too, of course, but anyway…). Jemisin, of course, is right. We’re all sexists. We’re raised in a sexist society. And we should challenge those behaviors when we become aware of them, not because it will suddenly make us non-sexist, but because it will help us make a fairer world. That applies to our reading practices. If a book has a unicorn on it, give it a shot. You never know. It might be the most amazing book you’ve ever read. But you’ll never know if you don’t pick up that book, look at the blurb, and give it a shot. That’s what I’ve got to say on that. The comments are yours.
Basic Conference Etiquette: Don’t Be THAT Guy
Anyone who attends conferences (academic or otherwise) knows there are three kinds of annoying people who attend: People who run way overtime. People who do not come prepared to give a talk. People who don’t actually ask a question during the Q&A. There are probably more, but I’d like to talk about just these three for anyone thinking of attending a conference. There may be a bit of snark to follow… STFU Already When I say that people who run way overtime are annoying, I am not referring to people who add 3 minutes to a 15-minute presentation. That’s practically normal, in all honesty. Rather, I’m referring to douchebags who run 5-10 minutes over time. Because when you run over time, you’re in fact saying “I did not prepare at all.” You’re saying “I’m more important.” “Who cares if I suck time away from the others? They’re dumbasses anyway.” And here’s the truth: you’re not that interesting that we want to hear you talk for longer than the allotted time. Really. You’re not. While you drone on and on about your topic, we’re hoping you’ll shut up so we can get a drink, or shift in our chairs, or move on to another person with a different topic. Some of us even hope you fall down so we can laugh. Others hope for worse things (perhaps you’ll catch an STD from the chair, or one of the lamp fixtures will accidentally fall on you, or a gorilla will run into the room and kidnap you…if only…) If you go to a conference, don’t be that guy. Practice. It’s okay if you go over a little bit. It happens. Things never go exactly as planned. But don’t bring a 20-page paper to a conference where you’ve got 20 minutes to present. 3 minutes a double-spaced page — that’s the average. Rambling About Nonsense Does Not a Talk Make Let me tell you a story about an annoying person. This person happened to have flown all the way to Florida from a foreign university (no, the foreign-ness isn’t relevant except to say “he came a long way for a conference”). He came with some papers in hand — presumably his presentation. And so, when said person went up to give his talk, you’d assume he gave something like a talk, right? Wrong. Said person decided that he’d ramble about a famous philosopher for close to 20 minutes (5 minutes over time; see previous point), read three paragraphs from his presentation, and decided his presentation would be a good time to hawk his book and the conference he’s putting together elsewhere. Oh-ho! You sly devil. People come to conferences for two main reasons: To meet people (network) To hear new ideas They don’t go to conferences to be lectured to about things that make no sense, nor to be inundated with advertising. When you go to a conference, it is essential that you actually have something prepared. It need not be an essay proper. I’ve seen great talks given by people working straight from notes, and people working from PowerPoint. But you have to have something to say, or you’re wasting everyone’s time. And that pisses people off, especially if they have academic standards. Is There a Question in There? I once suffered the consequences of a rambler at an academic conference. Ramblers are a kind of pernicious virus that can’t actually infect anyone with anything but annoyance. This rambler decided to use all 15 minutes of the Q&A section to launch critiques at one of my fellow panelists. No questions. Just “I disagree, and here’s why, and also there’s this, and here’s why that is relevant. Oh? You answered? Well, how about this…” If it takes you more than one minute to lay out your question, then you should save it for afterwards. Q&A is about getting answers; it is not your soapbox. We don’t want to hear your voice for 15 minutes. Get your own panel! If you want a soapbox, get a blog (hey, look at that — I’ve got one!). Otherwise, ask your question, sit down, and shut up. And Moving On Don’t do these things. If you want to be taken seriously. If you want people to be interested in what you have to say. If you actually want people to respect your opinion (that doesn’t mean they like you, but it does mean that when they listen, they actually want to engage). If you want all that, then you have to act like a professional. Come prepared with an appropriate-length presentation. And make sure that you don’t spend forever trying to ask a non-question question. Or you can be a douchebag. Up to you… Any questions?
Things a $5 Bill Can Do (or, A Random Event in My Life That Violates Nature)
Nothing about the story I am about to relate has anything to do with genre fiction, unless you consider bizarre events related. But it’s a story I have to share anyway. The history: Last week, I returned from my trip to visit my girlfriend in England to find that the bus from the airport had stopped running minutes before my arrival. This meant I had to get a cab. The driver of said cab, however, forgot his credit card machine, and so we had to stop at a gas station so I could get cash from an ATM. This left me with $15 in my pocket. The event: The morning after I got home, I went to collect my wallet and so on in order to buy milk and other essentials. Upon removing the $10 and $5 bills from my trousers, the $5 decided it no longer wished to be in my possession and promptly disappeared. I searched all over the place, figuring it landed in a pile of papers, or under my file cabinet. In truth, it was not only in the last place I would have thought to look, but also the only place the darn thing shouldn’t have been able to find its way into. The end result: While cleaning out my large luggage roller thing, I discovered the $5 bill. Why is this so strange? In order for it to end up where I found it, it would have had to fly three feet, wiggle its way into the closed-but-unzipped luggage roller thing, around the compacted clothes, and then into the middle of the pile. As far as I know, this violates physics or some other natural law. It’s impossible. How could it get into the luggage roller thing when it was closed, even if it wasn’t zipped? And then how did it get underneath the clothes? I have no idea… So there you have it: a random, weird event in my relatively uneventful life. What weird thing has happened to you recently?
Things I Write on Google+ When I’m Bored
Sometimes I get incredibly bored when I’m at home. Usually this occurs when I’m between things I’m supposed to be doing. And when I’m like that, I tend to write nonsensical weirdness. For example, I wrote this on Google+ yesterday: Some day, there will be a giant robot in my sky. And his name shall be Morglefish the Destroyer. He will shoot bubbles. Or none of that will happen and I’m just being silly. Up to you how you interpret that. Don’t ask me what that’s all about. Adam Callaway tells me I’m just creative. Really, this is what happens when I finish a 3-hour seminar on Jame Joyce’s Ulysses and am supposed to be reading a novel for an interview today (Stina Leicht!) and scheduling interviews and discussions for later in the year. What do you do when you’re bored?