The Antisocial Socialist

I'm not having the greatest day and I have so much to do but also I have completely burnt out on being a responsible adult and I need a break, so I'm going to shitpost.

Confession time: I have never successfully finished the first Dune book. I'm sorry frandroid ! I tried! I will probably try again! On paper it sounds like everything I like but for some reason I bounced off of it. I did see the David Lynch adaptation and of course the Denis Villeneuve adaptation and for some reason I was Googling about it when I came across spoilers for the thing that happens later in the series.

Which is to say—and sorry to spoil a 43-year-old book for y'all—in Children of Dune, Leto II Atreides, son of Timothee Chalamet, realizes through his prophetic visions that the only way to stop all of humanity from dying is to fuse with a larval sandworm, and by God Emperor of Dune he is almost all sandworm except for his head and arms, and has been ruling for 3500 years. Obviously the idea of a giant sandworm guy with a tiny little human head and arms is the most hilarious and perfect thing ever and also I think he eats all the other sandworms??? maybe?? If I'm wrong about this don't correct me.

Listen if Villeneuve doesn't give me a giant sandworm with a tiny head and arms eating all the other sandworms what is even the point of adapting this series, I ask you?

Anyway being a visual sort of person I had to go look up how artists had portrayed this fellow over the years and I was not disappointed. I mostly stuck to actual covers but there were a few pieces of what might be fanart that I thought were cool so I left them in.

I tried to credit as much as I could but also I'm very tired and lazy, so if you happen to have more information, let me know and I'll edit it in.


( God Emperor of Dune illustrations, ranked from worst to best )

Anyway, that is my ranking; let me know if you agree, disagree, or found even cooler ones that you'd like to discuss!

 So because I'm off work (which means working 4-6 hours a day on course planning), I've been marathoning Queer Eye at night. It's a silly makeover show and it frequently made me cry. Go figure. I mean, it's not a perfect show, but it's really, really good, and transcends the medium in some fascinating ways.

I'm not the first person to notice its model of non-toxic masculinity—arguably, that's its greatest appeal. Most of it is about how to be a man—the main difference from the original show is that the category of man is much more broadly and realistically defined than in the older version of the show, encompassing queer men, trans men, and men as a community (the firefighter episode and the one where they makeover a woman). It's much more overtly political, addressing racism, police brutality, transphobia, and homophobia. But at its heart, it's a show about how to be an adult—dress your age, learn to cook for yourself, walk tall, and clean your room.

Clean your room? Sounds familiar.


(There's actually a Queer Eye reference in there, so I'm clearly not the only person to notice.)

The thing is, when you hear a certain segment of J*rd*n P*t*rs*n fanboys talking, excluding the overt incels and MRA and fascist types, "clean your room" is the advice he gives they seem to find most important and powerful. And it's one of the bits of advice that I happen to agree with. I liked the kid who said that his mother had told him to clean his room for years and he didn't listen until JP told him too, which sums up why JP and his fans are garbage humans. But it is good advice.

But unpacking it further, you see why the same advice is given by one of the most famous advocates of toxic masculinity active today, and five famous advocates of non-toxic masculinity. JP's focus is on dominating others, particularly women—see also lobsters. But moreover, he would like young men to "set their own house in order before trying to change the world." This is one of those woo bits of advice that sounds good when written in a fancy script on the background of a sunset but is actually terrible. No one ever has their house in order. Ever. Therefore, no one can ever change the world. Contrast with what, say, Karamo Brown would say—not to speak for him, but you can paraphrase what he says on the show as a need to "be a man" for other people in your life and for your community. While it's usually an individual who gets made over in the show, a lot of the focus is on the relationships between the guys and their loved ones, their work, and their towns. 

The other thing that occurred to me is how much of contemporary discourse around masculinity posits the crisis of white, het, cis men as some kind of a new problem. White men, we are told, increasingly feel that they have no place in the world, and that's why they turn to fascism. Which, okay, but isn't the white, het, cis male crisis of identity the basis of essentially every work of literature ever that is considered important? 

Which is why I think it's so important to have alternative, better models of masculinity. Not JP's hyperindividualistic (except for sex, which should be collectivized) Fascism Lite, but a masculinity that is a broad umbrella for diverse identities and emphasizes strength through responsibility and compassion (and you will note that these are qualities also necessary in femininity and everywhere else on the gender spectrum). And that's why a silly makeover show made me cry a bunch and why I'm working on keeping my room a little cleaner for the revolution.

It seems vaguely horrific to be writing about anything other than politics right now, but someone requested awhile back that I do a master list of all of the movies and TV that I watched so that you don't have to. And to be fair, we all need distraction now and then—perhaps now more than ever.

(All links go to LJ; sorry DW people, but there are a lot of reviews and I don't have time to do this twice.)

Current (good) TV reviews: I review The Magicians, Preacher, and Luke Cage for terror_scifi. My reviews are all tagged with my name there, but if you're looking for specific shows:

The Magicians (currently posting!)
Preacher
Luke Cage

Bad Movie Reviews: They are all tagged (along with the odd bad book and other things) under Cheatsheet of Freedom. If you're looking for specific things:

This Revolution (the one that started it all; a movie about anarchists that sounded really good and even starred Rosario Dawson, but spoiler, it is not very good)

Left Behind (Jesus takes all of the good Christians to Heaven, leaving Kirk Cameron to fight the Antichrist)

Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1 (John Galt takes all the good capitalists to Heaven, I mean capitalist paradise, leaving some actors you've never heard of to fight the socialists)
Atlas Shrugged Pt. 2 (second verse, same as the first)
Atlas Shrugged Pt. 3 (yes I watched the whole fucking thing, why do you ask?)

American Sniper (smug jingoism with a fake plastic baby. I was super drunk the whole time.)

50 Shades of Grey (bad softcore porn, but don't worry, I fixed it.)

The Fountainhead (a rapey Ayn Rand movie about architecture)

Red Dawn (communists invade middle America and are repelled by the high school football team. Note that I have somewhat revised my opinion of the film since I wrote this review, and now view it as a clever satire.)

Rambo III (the one where he joins the Taliban, who are the good guys.)

Battle In Seattle (it is about the Battle of Seattle and is exactly as good as you would expect a movie about the Battle of Seattle to be.)

X-Files Season 10 (okay, not a movie, and not a proper screenshot review, but it was really bad)


Good Movie and TV Reviews: I also sometimes review things I like that are kind of obscure, in the hopes that someone else will watch them and squee with me.

Enthiran (this is my favourite movie of all time and objectively the best movie ever made. It's a 3-hour-long Tamil musical about a killer robot and you should watch it at least 70 bazillion times)

Seventeen Moments of Spring (a Soviet-era miniseries about a Russian spy undercover in Germany during WWII)

Cambridge Spies (a BBC miniseries about the Cambridge Five, a bunch of upper class British kids who spied for the USSR for decades without getting caught)

Babylon 5 (some people found out that I had never seen the show and made me watch the whole thing, so I did. Spoiler: Vir is my favourite and Susan Ivanova is my other favourite)

So yeah enjoy.

So I accidentally-except-not-really made fengi aware of demisexuals on Tumblr and discussion ensued. literarity made an interesting comment:

May be wishful thinking and hyperbole on my part but how dope would it be if a lot of this kind of argument was "merely" a backlash against an oversexed media by teenagers who have been exposed much earlier than we were to the vocabulary of sex & gender politics?

Which made me happy for a few minutes but then I was on my way to work and another thought occurred to me. It's this: Demisexual describes the sexual orientation of nearly every female character in popular culture that I can think of. I am actually wracking my brain for an example of a female character in media for a younger audience who is shown:

a) Having sex outside of the context of a long-term, monogamous, romantic relationship, and
b) Not being punished by the narrative for it.

I mean, granted I don't watch all that much telly (well, I do, but it's usually HBO stuff and the standards are different), or read much kid lit, and maybe it's just a genre thing, but if I think about the characters that the teenage girls I know could conceivably think of as role models—the Bella Swans and the Katniss Everdeens and the Alison Argents—they are all, as far as I can tell from an audience perspective, only attracted to men they want to be in a long-term, monogamous, romantic relationship with. And when I think of the counter-examples—Faith Lehane, Inara, that one time Buffy had a one-night stand—they're all punished for their transgressions in ways ranging from heartbreak to season-long comas.

So, can you argue that demisexual is a marginalized sexual identity when it's so reinforced in popular culture? Or am I wrong about just how hypersexualized kid media is or is not?

I should add that I'm in no way interested in policing anyone else's sexuality, and everyone ought to be free to identify however they like, obviously. But in response to Tumblr discussions wherein demisexuality is referred to as a site of oppression, I am wondering whether a sexual identity/orientation can be both celebrated by the dominant culture and marginalized.

I had to get some new shows because Doctor Who is over for awhile, I think I will cry my eyes out if I watch Sarah Jane Adventures. My other shows right now are Treme, Mad Men, Leverage, Borgias, and Game of Thrones—you may notice a theme here, and it is that the new seasons have not started. (I'm terrible at keeping track of when seasons start.) Community is still good but it's only half an hour a week. I'm still watching Fringe (still great) and Castle (still sometimes good—I liked the superhero one), but that's still two hours a week and a girl sometimes needs more brain-dead time than that.

Accordingly, my new shows are Lost Girl and—finally—Breaking Bad.

I resisted watching Breaking Bad because it is seriously everything I hate to watch on TV: drug dealers, drug addicts, fuck-ups, cops, and cancer. You could not come up with a more concise list of Things I Don't Need To See. So while various friends whose opinions I trust tried to get me to watch the show, and I politely watched a few episodes, I didn't get into it.

Okay. You win. I'm into it.

Reasons I'm into it: With all of the strikes against it, it has something that is firmly in the camp of Things I Always Want To See, which is Crossing the Line Twice. The show is so over the top it's not even funny. Well, it is funny, because really early on there's a sequence involving the disposal of an inconveniently dead body that goes on for far too long, portrayed in far too much disgustingly graphic detail, and that's honestly what got me hooked. I also really like the idea of having a show where none of the characters are sympathetic. Mad Men had that at the beginning, but the characters slowly became more human. On Breaking Bad, everyone just gets more awful and I love it.

Also, the cinematography is something brilliant. I watch shows for cinematography now. I mean, it's technically magnificent, with shots of beautiful landscapes and ugly buildings and people.

I'm partway through the second season now. I'm told it gets worse but in a good way.

I resisted watching Lost Girl because it looks stupid and it totally is. But I needed something to watch that wouldn't depress me, and it's pretty good for that. It's less well-known than Breaking Bad (well, and deservedly), but the concept is that all mythology is true, and attributable to the Fae, who come in a variety of interesting species and are divided into Light and Dark. The main character is a succubus with a track record of killing anyone she kisses. When she becomes aware of the supernatural origin of her powers and how to control them, she decides against choosing a side and becomes a private detective helping the hopeless or some such. In short, it is exactly the sort of thing I used to write when I was, like, 11, which was fortunately before the internet happened.

Reasons I'm into it: Okay, first of all, a relatively high-budget production of the shit one wrote when one was 11 is awesome and much like eating a gigantic vat of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Second of all, it's unabashedly filmed in Toronto, with no attempt to disguise Toronto landmarks. Towards the end of the first season, they at least admit to being in a Canadian city. At least one scene in every episode is filmed in an alley that my old office overlooked.

On a less superficial level, it is Bechdel win according to both the letter and spirit of the law. Half of the main cast is female, and of those, only one is the stereotypical genre hot chick kicking ass. The main character has both male and female love interests, but the most important relationship on the show is between her and her platonic best friend, an adorable gothy thief with a staggering collection of wigs. In between bouts of supernatural menace and romantic angst, there's a good deal of screen time devoted to discussions of feminism and standing up for the oppressed.

So, not great art, but really fun.

Book-wise, having finished Volume 1 of Das Kapital, (go me!) I am now relaxing with Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I don't remember the last time I related to characters as much as I relate to these ones. Seriously, Chabon writes smart books that hit every single one of my narrative kinks to the point where I can barely appreciate them on an intellectual level.

Treme: I finished watching the second season of Treme so, for the three of you who also watch the show, you may now analyze it to bits in the comments without fear of spoiling me.

If you're not already watching, read this interview with David Simon. He highlights what I like most about the show:

But it's not that it lacks plot. What it lacks is the life and death stakes of the television trope. If you tell me that somebody is going to lose the love of her life, which is a restaurant, and it's going to happen in real time, and we're going to see them make a choice to abandon their city - that's an awful lot that's happened to a character. On the other hand, are you measuring it by asking, "Did I see a gun put to this person's head? Did I see them raped? Did I see them wreck their car drunkenly and end up in the hospital? Were they put on trial for their life? Were they sent into an ER and the doctors hovered over them making life and death decisions? Were they hurtled into the West Wing where they had to consult on a decision that would mean the lives and deaths of thousands?" Those are the standard tropes of a standard television drama. I'm uninterested in telling a story that is a lie, and those are not the stakes of post-Katrina New Orleans, and I'm interested in post-Katrina New Orleans.

There are more dramatic stories in Season 2 than in Season 1, with more of an emphasis on crime (the cop story was, to me, the least interesting), but the best stories were the subtle ones. An accomplished musician attempts songwriting for the first time. A previously irresponsible man helps to teach a high school band class where most of the kids do not have instruments. A man tries to reconcile with his father and his city through music. These are not the kinds of stories that I am used to seeing on TV—perhaps one might see them in a very literary sort of novel—but in many ways, they're quite well-suited to serial, visual storytelling. I found myself incredibly invested in these stories (at some points talking to my TV—yeah, I know).

( cut for spoilers )

Next season, please oh please do a story focusing on the schools. They teased me with the bit where Desiree talks to her co-worker about the attacks on the public education system. Now there are three characters (Desiree, Antoine, and Sofia) in high schools, and a plot about the destruction of all public schooling in New Orleans would be amazing.

Torchwood: Miracle Day: It seems like as the plot of this gets better, the characterization falls by the wayside.

( spoilers for that as well )

Not telly related but while I'm going on about pop culture, check out eumelia's post about X-Men: First Class, because it's really damned good.

zingerella and I have determined by skientifical research (a.k.a. polling a bunch of our friends at Stitch n' Bitch) that two iconic movies of the 80s and 90s, Terminator 2 and Aliens, have helped a lot of lesbians figure out their sexuality and have nudged otherwise straight women just a little farther along the Kinsey Scale. All of the women involved in this conversation of a certain generation who had seen said movies agreed.


Oh, admit it.

But what we also realized was that we have no idea whether the equivalent sorts of movies exist for men because, well, male sexuality is very confusing. We sort of figure that there are certain Kinsey-shifting actors and movies out there, but we're not entirely sure what they are.


We think that this guy would probably do it, though.

So we require your input, O Livejournal friends and acquaintances. Which movies and actors made you gay(er)?

I saw the X-Files movie with utterly no expectations. I don't know if a lot of you know this, but I was—surprise!—completely obsessed with the X-Files when it was on the air, right up until it really went downhill and my eyes were starting to hurt from rolling so often.

( cut for spoilers and people who rightly don't care )

Since I know that there are fellow Spiegelman fans about:

He's brilliant, really, and very funny. The event itself was sponsored by Hillel, which gave me pause (and was interesting, since their politics are substantially to the right of Spiegelman's) but my love for Maus and underground comics in general outweighs my being very, very uncomfortable in that audience. Also, there were a fair number of comic book geeks in attendance, which balanced things out a bit.

The subject of the talk was "Forbidden Images." So he began his talk with this slide:



...and went on to relate it to the caricatures of Mohammad, and Iran's anti-Semitic cartoon contest, and horror comics from the 1940s, and the New Yorker, and Mad Magazine. (And his own work, of course.) He talked a bit about semiotics and the relationship between words and images: how images become shorthand for concepts, except of course that's problematic because of how shorthand transmits cultural norms and stereotypes.

Probably the most interesting bit was about how Mad Magazine changed the cultural landscape. He talked about his own discovery of horror comics that had since been banned (comics were sanitized in the 1950s, but his father was cheap, so he bought Wee Art old comics with damaged covers that happened to be about playing baseball with human heads), so when Mad came out with its blatant agenda to shock, it gave an entire generation counter-cultural ideas. It introduced irony and anti-authoritarianism to the visual landscape.

And so, he said, it was read by people who later created underground comics. But it was also read by Karl Rove and people who would eventually become advertising execs. Irony becomes co-opted, and now we're in a post-ironic era.

He also pissed off a few in the audience, I think, by bringing up Palestine by Joe Sacco as an example of the brilliance of the new breed of comics. (Persepolis as well, of course, which was very much influenced by Maus.) You could hear the gasps; it was very funny.

Anyway, I wish he'd put the slides online because it's really much easier to analyze controversial images when they're actually in front of you. I've been on a comic-reading binge lately (The Watchmen, DMZ, and Transmetropolitan, all of which do very interesting things with the genre) so I'm all about babbling on the subject.

When you look at a work of art and don't understand it, you think you're stupid. When you look at a comic and don't understand it, you think the cartoonist is stupid.

So you’ve written a screenplay or a pilot for a television series or a book. It has a great plot and character development and superb dialogue…but it still sucks. This is probably because it doesn’t have anything in it that makes it worth watching or reading, like a stampede of flaming Rottweilers. You need to put something in it that is actually good. Fortunately, I have been compiling a list of really good things to put in books, movies, and TV shows, and I am sharing my secrets with the world because honestly, I want to see more of this stuff. I’m also using primarily cinematic examples because this whole entry was inspired by a discussion I had with rohmie about Hellboy. If you can figure out how many of these things showed up in that movie, you win the internet for the day.

Although I think my favourite genre of all might be titled Post-Apocalyptic Social Commentary With Zombies, these suggestions work for all sorts of stories. For instance, Libertarias has anarchists, Fascist and Nazi villains, occult moments, Gay! text, stuffy academics, different languages, and killer robots...and it's not even a sci-fi movie.

Actually, just kidding. It doesn't have killer robots. But it's still a great flick and you should watch it if you haven't seen it already.

Disclaimer the first: Just because you randomly stick something on this list in your work doesn’t guarantee that it’ll actually be good. Writing does count for something, and some of these things I’ve added just because they are so rarely done. (Example: “Islam as a theological or moral base” worked great in Pitch Black but not in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves because the latter movie pretty much sucked in every other way.)

Disclaimer the second: I liked From Dusk Till Dawn. All of them.



( and away we go, matey! )

Did I miss anything?