So there has been Christmas and Wales and New Year and some parties including togas and running practically naked in the snow and punch with fully seven types of alcohols (a.k.a. 7-Alcy Punch). Standard nights involve bellowing, beer and Zone Horror. I wish the last sentence could have been alliterative but it just wasn't.
Sometimes I think that I really like being in the countryside because when I am there I always read loads and eat loads (I had a 9 course dinner) and have a great time not worrying about the matrices of urban social dependency.
Last night we went out for Secret Santa Dinner and afterwards in the pub there was a group of drunken louts and one said 'Say happy birthday to my friend, it's his birthday' and the little 'WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO CLAIM SPURIOUS AUTHORITY OVER ME/PRESUME THAT I WILL RESPOND TO YOU IN THE WAY THAT YOU WANT' switch triggered, and I predictably refused, and so predictably the situation escalated with various drunken men coming over to make nice before reiterating the demand. It could have been nastier, there was some muttering about feminist dykes (I assumed they were talking about some very intelligent modern geography), but the main problem was in the drawn out length of the whole non-event. Obviously it would have been easier to just say it, so everybody could move on with their lives. But I just can't help analysing these things in terms of social power structures and fuck me if I'm going to concede to a presupposed gendered power dichotomy in the way required. That probably makes me a massive dick.
I have also realised that Andrea Dworkin is in fact AMAZING and massively misrepresented. Her book 'Woman Hating' is pretty much spot on. Simplistically, she links the regulated enforcement of gender roles to traditional fairytale mythology, and advocates replacing this understanding of gender with one informed by androgyne mythologies. And she has some hard-hitting (Daddy would say 'knockabout') stuff about foot-binding and witch burning. And also advocates the destruction of the family, incest and bestiality.
I basically love you Andrea.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Yes I Make Post Hi (Knights at Danielle's)
Avatar: America Bashing at its Hollywood Finest
This is not meant to be a movie review because that’s not what TLT is all about.
Although I consider myself somewhat of a movie buff as demonstrated by the movie clips I’ve post on my blog, I can’t help but give an opinion of what I just saw this afternoon.
It’s usually my practice to read a movie review of flicks I’m interested in seeing. However, it’s been especially busy this week at week and I didn’t have the time to follow up on the latest James Cameron movie since Titanic.
Big mistake!
From what I’d seen of coming attractions of Avatar, I foolishly thought this was Cameron’s version of Lord of the Rings. You know, fantasy stuff with strange creatures in a forest setting with humanoid beings involved in some sort of power struggle with evil critters that want to destroy them.
None of these things were close to the mark except for the abundance of trees, strange looking creatures with blue skin, and the evil ones that wanted to do harm happened to work for a cooperation that very much resembles an American corporation.
Then the plot lines became pretty blatant.
These humanoid creatures, called the Na’vi clan, lived on a planet called Pandora that was 6 light years away from earth. These Na’vi or Avatars lived peacefully on the planet and had a very tight spiritual bond with all the plants and animal life sharing the same energy-force that flows from plant to plant, and animal to animal, and back through the Na’vi in one circular the force is with you, Luke!
Sorry, different movie. But, you ge the idea.
For Conservatives like myself, the writing was on the wall and James Cameron doesn’t spare an opportunity of throwing into the subtext of the evil American cooperation wanting to extract a voluble mineral (not oil this time) that happens to be under the Na’vi land. And they didn’t care if they had to destroy the indigenous creatures to get it.
Yes, Americans were the bad guys!
Halfway through the movie, I kept checking my watch to see how much more of this pro-environmentalism, pro-socialism/communism, anti-cooperation and definitely anti-Americanism bullcrap I could take.
Of course I’m sure James Cameron would deny any such inferences existed in his movie and that anyone who reads these things into his film must have their own personal hang-ups.
It’s only a movie meant for entertainment purposes.
Yeah, that’s what they always say.
See Big Hollywood
From The Last Tradition
Friday, January 1, 2010
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