'It's just a game'

My team lost our semi-final game in softball, last night, under some dubious circumstances.

We overheard one of the players on the other team (the only player not in uniform, no less) ask one of his teammates whether sliding was allowed. This was strange, because a) it's a semi-final, and you should know this rule by now, b) sliding is not allowed, and it's treated as a pretty big deal, so it's an easy rule to remember, and c) it's a playoff game, and not knowing the sliding rules suggests that he's a ringer, the use of which is supposed to earn your team an automatic disqualification. And so, after we learned his name I used an iPhone to look up their official roster list on the league's website - and, sure enough, he wasn't on it.

Long story short, our team decided to not report our opponents. I felt obliged, though, to let them know that we knew what they were pulling, even if we weren't going to officially call them on it. (Admission: This was not meant to be wholly selfless. Or mostly, even.) And, so, I got an angry response about how they didn't actually use the website (that's why the one player didn't appear there, evidently) and "it's just a beer-league", anyway.

I hate that response. The people who resort to lines like "it's just a beer league" or "it's just for fun" never actually mean it. And we know that they don't mean it because that statement is never followed by "...and so if it means so much to you, you can have the win". And that's because they're lying.

What "just..." actually means - implicitly, if not explicitly - is that they want to ignore or disregard the rules at will. The problem, here, is that the rules constitute the bare minimum in terms of what we can expect of one another: I can't expect you to be a good sport, but I can expect you know that you shouldn't slide. Except that for the "just..." people, particular rules - and which particular rules is unknown to us in advance - can simply be ignored. And that's the key bit: that we don't know you're ignoring a rule ahead of time. (Which seems like it should be obvious enough, and yet...)

Ironically, in the four years I've played in this softball league, no one who's deployed some variant of "it's just a game" has ever conceded the point that's being argued, much less the game. (If it's "just" a game, you wouldn't know it.) Even more painfully, it's always used exclusively where the arguer is pushing for some sort of advantage - to ignore a rule that would penalize them, rather than one that would reward them.

It's like the person in an argument who announces that they'll be the bigger man/woman by abandoning the fight and not having the last word. And, so, manages to grab the last word. I hate that guy.

Representing 'Evil'

Erin has written this fantastic post on, well, evil in films that ties together Chigurh (from No Country for Old Men), Hannibal Lecter, and black widow spiders. You should read it because, like I said, it's fantastic. If the line "It takes a man to style himself like a seven-year-old girl" doesn't have you wanting to read it right now, then nothing will.

I wrote a comment on Erin's blog, and wanted to repeat myself here, just a little bit. In comparing these three, Erin labels them "creature[s] of nature", though she rightly qualifies and complicates Hannibal a bit - but, at least in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal has no history, and this is just as good as being a creature purely of nature. She also notes that it would be unsatisfying to 'explain' Chigurh, just as the origin provided in the novels set chronologically before Silence of the Lambs only seem to damage Hannibal's character. It seems as if art's most persuasive and frightening villains are diminished in being understandable - in being made human.

For instance, from the pilot of Family Guy, we get this 'origin' for Adolf Hitler:



It's particularly absurd, but I think it manages to express, in 10 seconds, what was wrong-headed about trying to 'explain' where Hannibal Lecter comes from. No matter the explanation, the origin will always be too banal and too mundane, even too relatable or too sympathetic - nothing short of showing Hitler emerging from Hell itself will be satisfying, because we don't want our villains to be explicable - we want them to be exceptional.

And this expectation and satisfaction is horribly problematic. Because this is exactly how politicians and pundits get away with constructing The Terrorists as evil entities that exist somehow outside politics and history. Because our art teaches us that we shouldn't want to know where evil comes from, and that in any case it emerges directly from nature and is merely acting on that nature, like a black widow or a tornado. We don't need to know why a suicide bomber is a suicide bomber anymore than we need to know why Chigurh kills - they just do.

I don't remember where or when, but Geoff once made the comment on his blog that there was something in the hypervisible misogynistic violence of the Sin City film that he found appealing, and it was a bit troubling because it was so gratifying as a film experience and obviously disgusting as a gender politics. And I feel the same sort of unresolvable ambivalence about these evil characters in No Country for Old Men and Silence of the Lambs.

Shit and $#*!

In news that absolutely everyone already knows, the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says has become $#*! My Dad Says in its new iteration as a sitcom. And it stars William Shatner and it will incorporate actual lines from the Twitter feed, which means that, at the very least, Shatner will be hilarious.

But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this only because of the title. Because that has got to be the best-ever use of bleep symbols to spell out exactly what they're supposedly obscuring. (Though I have to wonder who at CBS or the FCC actually thinks that there's a meaningful difference between 'shit' and '$#*!')

[Bizarrely, this post has been referenced on The Book blog, a mostly baseball blog which I read regularly. And it's bizarre because, as far as I know, no one who runs it actually knows that the Neil who writes this blog is the same Neil that posts there. Follow the link to see me argue the merits of using *! over !+, grammar mistakes and all. (I don't really proof-read this stuff.)]

Rihanna has made some strange (dumb?) choices

Rihanna is mostly famous for two things, and not necessarily in this order: "Umbrella" and being assaulted by then-boyfriend and fellow pop-star Chris Brown.

So it's a bit baffling to reflect on some of her recent song choices:

* From the first single following her break-up with Brown, "Russian Roulette":

And you can see my heart beating
You can see it through my chest
And I’m terrified but I’m not leaving
Know that I must must pass this test
So just pull the trigger

* From her recent duet with Eminem, "Love the Way You Lie":

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's alright because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's alright because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie

At my most optimistic, I could maybe see that the first song is trying to celebrate her survival - she's stronger for having had the relationship. (But it feels more like she's rationalizing what happened, almost trying to excuse his behavior, as if in 'testing' her he was ultimately helping her. I think it's fucked up.)

And the new song? I can't see anything remotely redeemable in it. If I'm trying to be optimistic, the best I can do is suggest that she's a masochist. But there's nothing more here that's even remotely recuperable.

Rihanna, though, disagrees: "He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence and it's something that people don't have a lot of insight on. [...] The lyrics were so deep, so beautiful and intense. It's something that I understood, something I connected with."

"Broke it down"? If she means that it's a wholly uncritical stream-of-consciousness first-person account of the ways in which misogynists explain and excuse their behavior, then yes, he did a good job of showing just how an abuser can twist things to try and make their behavior sound reasonable. But to call it "deep" and imply that he shows "insight"? No. There's none of that here. I mean, for fuck's sake - the song is about a guy who hits and threatens to murder his girlfriend, a woman who is seemingly okay with it because she "likes the way it hurts". Who "connects" with that?

(The video is even worse because it a) makes the abuse sexy and b) tries even harder to implicate both of them in the violence. "Deep" and "beautiful", indeed.)

Adventures in TAing, case 8 (in a ? case series)

[In a preemptive effort to stave off boredom, and save you from having to read punishingly bad grammar and spelling, the following has all been paraphrased.]

What the student wrote: 'I didn't understand the assignment and I talked to 5 other people from our tutorial who didn't understand your expectations. 1) Do you want us to give our opinion or to tell you what the authors of our texts say? In my other courses, where I get grades like A and A+, they don't want me to just repeat the people we read and are more interested in my opinion.' 2) You say that you want me to develop my discussion of 'power' and I know a lot about the topic, but do I have to use course texts or can I use other texts that I've read?'

How I responded: 'I'm sorry that you found the assignment so difficult, but if you refer to the list of topics online, you'll see that the professor addressed your questions. 1) "Your evaluation is based on your answer to the question and your knowledge of course readings", meaning that while your argument might represent your own opinion, it must be supported by references drawn from course readings - and more references than the two quotes that you used. 2) "No outside sources are permitted", since, as I mentioned before, you're supposed to be demonstrating your knowledge of our readings and a familiarity with the issues that we've covered.'

How I wanted to respond: 'If you can't read the directions that are printed at the top of the essay topics list - all seven sentences of them - you are screwed. Get out of university. Now.'

The LOST epilogue

Assuming that it hasn't been taken down yet, (as a lot of these clips have been, at ABC/Disney's request) this link should bring you to the complete 12 minute epilogue to LOST. In summation - it's a cute (maybe overly cute) bookend that wouldn't have worked as a part of the final episode but is unlikely to ruin anyone's appreciation of the show. Which is to say that while it doesn't make any substantial contribution to LOST's lore, it's entertaining.

*spoilers ahead*

The first act, which is about 8 minutes long, shows Ben-as-Hurley's-no.2 and, story-wise, is the lesser of the two acts. Ben serves as 'the show', here, to the two Dharma Initiative employees who are 'the fans'. It's part information-drop (for instance, an official explanation is offered for why women can't get pregnant, though I a) don't know why this was necessary, since it was easy to guess, and b) think it creates an additional hole in the writing, since it seems like we're supposed to assume that Ben knew this but he clearly didn't when he recruited Juliet. but anyway...) and part meta-commentary.

This is the part that's probably too cute by half. But at least if the show is telling us to let go, again, it's in a wholly ironic way, as opposed to the too sincere delivery of the same message in the finale. In the finale, the light had all the (ultimately unknowable) answers; in the epilogue, we're teased with Ben's binder of DVDs - a far more appropriate LOST version of the suitcase from Pulp Fiction.

The second, shorter act features Ben's rescue of Walt and a super-brief cameo from Hurley, now seemingly settled into his new role and ready to offer Walt a job - as Hurley's apprentice, presumably. (If I'm being pessimistic, I might ask whether Walt is the best person for the job, given his somewhat malevolent powers - whether he's better suited to be the next Man in Black than the next Jacob.) This is the lore bit of the epilogue, which is nice even if it isn't strictly necessary - the mission doesn't end just because Jack, Jacob, and the Man in Black have died, and it won't ever end - but wouldn't have worked in the finale, and so is perfect as an epilogue for the DVD. It's the lead-in to the Further Adventures of Hurley, Ben, and Walt series that will never happen.

And if it doesn't make you smile, you probably never liked the show in the first place.

Checking out early reviews of the Scott Pilgrim movie

The early reviews are largely good at Rotten Tomatoes - though only 3 'top critics' have weighed in so far, two disliking it and one ambivalent - but here's a negative review from the Hollywood Reporter. And it repeats a lot of my complaints about the characters in the book series, which isn't a good sign:

What's disappointing is that this is all so juvenile. Nothing makes any real sense. The "duels" change their rules on a whim, and no one takes the games very seriously [...] Certainly Cera doesn't give a performance that anchors the nonsense. His character sort of drifts, not really attached to any idea or goal other than winning the heart of an apparently heartless woman...

So, yeah. Doesn't sound like Cera or Wright has tried to do much to address the great big black hole that is Scott's character. Or that the latter has tried to limit the magic realism/fantasy in any way that makes it reasonably consistent and not wholly nonsensical.

My favorite of Damon Lindelof's hate-tweets

"You're a dirty liar. You never knew, you made it all up, you betrayed us all. You betrayed me and I hope you rot, motherfucker."

-J.J. Abrams tweet to Damon Lindelof, following the LOST finale.

The Avengers movie

I realize that it's early, and that there's a very good chance that they're not done putting the team for this movie together... but really? Marvel has already cast 8 people for the Avengers movie, and only one of them - and he's not even an actual member of the team - is not white? And only one of them is a woman? There have been something like 100 members of the Avengers, and you couldn't find room for, like, Luke Cage or Warbird?

And when they realize this and start adding more women and non-white people, it'll look like blatant tokenism and/or an afterthought, since they've already made their priorities and key players clear. My guess? They'll go the route of The Ultimates and kill two birds with one stone by casting an Asian woman as The Wasp. (Cynicism Win.)

The Bechdel Test

I can't believe that I had never heard of this before: http://bechdeltest.com/

In short, it's a quick little test to assess a) whether women are actually present in films, and b) whether they are given a purpose outside of their relationships with men. It sounds like it should be easy enough for film studios to pull this off, right? And, yet, it's amazing to see how many films - especially the stuff that's not explicitly marketed at either men or women, and so usually taken to be gender-neutral - fail it miserably. (Just check out the link.)

Now, it's super-important to add that passing the test doesn't indicate that a film is feminist and failing it doesn't make a film misogynist. Nor does a particular result make a movie good or bad. It simply does what it purports to do - measure the presence of women in our movies.

The test has three questions:
1) are there at least two female characters with names?
2) do they talk to each other, and not only men?
3) do they talk about something other than men?

It's not the most rigorous criteria, and my memory isn't perfect, so there's bound to be some room for disagreement. But let's run the test on the last 10 movies that I've either seen in a theater or rented:

3/3
The Kids are Alright
The Lovely Bones
Zombieland

2/3
-

1/3
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Kick-Ass (I can't recall whether the teenage girls ever talk to one another)
The Messenger
A Serious Man (do the mom and daughter ever speak?)
A Single Man (though only Julianne Moore speaks, so it could just as easily be a 0)

0/3
Crazy Heart
Inception (imho, I don't think that Mol counts)

Fyi, if I changed the test to measure for men, every film would get a 3 out of 3.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour is decidedly not

There's a moment toward the end of the final book in the Scott Pilgrim series when Stacy asks where Scott, Ramona, and Gideon disappeared to during their battle, adding, "What was that all about?" Scott provides a rapid-fire response that sounds nonsensical (because, frankly, the battle was nonsensical), and his friends give the only appropriate response - silence, and a quick change of topic.

They might have been reading my mind - between fights on the astral plane, characters dying and then returning to life via free lives accessed in some space of purgatory, "the glow" on the subspace highway, swords being pulled from chests - twice (but in the real world, not in a psychic one), and Gideon's "cryogenic chamber", it's hard to tell whether there are any rules in the world of Scott Pilgrim. But it's a telling moment, too. Like the cliché says, when the characters seem to be complaining about the plot...

I've made it known that I haven't liked the last few issues of Scott Pilgrim. And I'll go on record in saying that this one is easily the worst - it is, as the kids (ie. me, when I'm pretending to be cool) say, a hot mess. But it didn't have to be. So, at the risk of repeating what I've already written elsewhere, I'll restrict myself to three complaints - two of which encompass the series as a whole, and one of which is the new detail that makes this book the poorest of the series. (My apologies in advance for poor spelling and wonky grammar - this entry seems to be more error-laden than most. That's what I get for not re-reading these things in their entirety.)

Complaint the first - Scott

Okay, I get it. Scott is supposed to be a cipher for the (presumably) nerdy and emotionally-stunted target-readership. He's purposely shallow because it allows us to project ourselves on to him. Because we also realize that we're our own worst enemy (Nega-Scott was a nice touch, though the set-up was awful) and we all want the mysterious hot girl. This is why people see Judd Apatow movies - the lead is usually a loser and a bit of a dick, but there are millions of young guys that find that relatable and want to believe that they can be dickish losers and still get the hot chick. But managing a good approximation of hetero-male-geek wish-fulfillment does not good writing make. And cipher or not, he's also the main character in a 1200 page story. I need something more than wish-fulfillment.

Because Scott is a dick. I was complaining about his character arc to some people yesterday, and said that he gets less likable as the series progresses - and then corrected myself because, in fact, it's more accurate to say that he gets more dislikable. He doesn't just squander the naive-lovable-loser charm of the first book, (or maybe it would be better to say that he tries to hold on to it well past the expiration date) he actually transforms into a willfully ignorant and insensitive prick. When Scott begins shouting at Knives about having casual sex, I want to reach into the comic and punch him in the face. He was a jerk to her when he dumped her in the first issue, but it was at least somewhat forgivable - or, rather, though he handled it badly, I wanted to forgive him. He was torn between his girlfriend and his dream-girl and, while he screwed it up, it seemed like he did it as well as he could have. These are, after all, the sorts of awkward break-ups that one stumbles through in their youth and is supposed to learn from.

Instead, Scott's come-on in the new issue takes insensitivity to new heights - knowing that Knives has never stopped loving him, that he hurt her horribly, and that everyone knows he's still hung up on Ramona, he asks her to sleep with him. That makes him an incredible douchebag, and not someone that I want to root for. At all. (Granted, this is when he has been separated from Nega-Scott, and I think we're supposed to understand that this is also responsible for his douchebaggery. But, a) that's not at all clear at this point in the story, which is a problem, and b) using a device from out of left field in order to undercut the emotion in the intimate personal exchanges that constitute the entire first act of the book is deceptive and annoying.)

I realize that, in real-life, people don't grow linearly - we change, we regress, we grow, we relapse. But books aren't beholden to these requirements, and most would be horrifically boring if they were. That Scott doesn't become a better person - and, in fact, seems even less self-aware and more malevolent - does nothing to recommend this book.

Complaint the second - magic realism/fantasy

When Scott Pilgrim's more fantastic elements are at their best, they're working with the more mundane elements of the story and not against or in-place of them. My favorite stuff is the most dream-like and ethereal magic realism - warp doors and Legend of Zelda dreams that lend atmosphere and depth, respectively. When they're at their worst, they suffocate the story and re/displace it - not magic realism at all, but magic absurdity. Magic nihilism, even. (On Geoff's blog, Dan suggests that it magic so totally overwhelms the realism that the book fully crosses over genre-lines and into fantasy. And so, rather than the magic sometimes encroaching on reality, as in the early books, the book features "realism encroaching on fantasy". I think he might be right, too.)

Take the Save Point from book 3 - faced with an unavoidable and horribly awkward meeting with his ex Envy Adams, Scott looks around desperately for an out of some kind. When Scott's supporters call him relatable, this is the kind of scene that they have in mind - one in which we've been forced into an uncomfortable situation and wish that we could have saved in advance, because a) we know it's going to go badly, and b) we wish we had a do-over. So the Save Point, while seemingly silly and random, is actually wholly appropriate to the scene - it enhances the pathos of Scott's situation and it increases our nervous anticipation, because we are keenly aware that Scott doesn't have a do-over. (And this is important, too - the Save Point 'exists' but Scott isn't able to use it. He, like us, wishes he could, but he can't - because the damned things don't exist!)

But the magic is the story in this final book: from Nega-Scott appearing seemingly out of nowhere to Gideon's cryogenic chamber to Scott's return to life from death to the psychic battle in Ramona's head... the book isn't grounded in recognizable human drama, much less remotely realistic settings. Which, I suppose, I saw coming because the series has tended increasingly toward absurdity and fantasy - so I shouldn't be surprised. Where the clever subtlety in the first book was in using the magic realism to represent what we couldn't have, that subtlety is deployed for wholly different ends, here: instead of failing to reach the Save Point, Scott uses a Free Life to return and fight Gideon again. Magic realism functions as deus ex machina with all the subtlety of a sword to the torso - Scott is killed and ends up in some Purgatory-like space (why? dunno.) where he meets up with Ramona again (how? dunno.) and uses his Free Life. (well, at least that wasn't pulled out of a hat - it was set up several books ago, as O'Malley reminds us.)

And, despite this, I actually don't mind the fight scenes being ridiculous and fantastic - because, at least in the earlier books, it works. But I would like for that ridiculousness to be somehow internally consistent, beholden to some set of self-defined limits, and contained. When it isn't contained, it threatens to turn the entire exercise into some snark-filled, self-reflexive, post-ironic joke.

Take, for instance, the narrator's increasingly explicit presence. Early in the book, Scott has a particularly awkward scene with Knives outside the Cameron House. When Knives and Scott kiss, we can tell for ourselves that it's awful and that they've made a mistake and feel terrible for it. Why the narrator has to tell us this, and tell us in as obnoxious a way as possible, I'm not sure. To undercut its emotional impact, certainly - because it's a painfully uncomfortable moment.

I'm wondering, actually, whether O'Malley's narrator is a sort of reaction to the author's earlier stuff (including Lost At Sea) after finding it, in retrospect, a little too emo, a little too precious. How else to understand his increasingly incessant need to assert ironic distance from the material, to undermine its emotional resonance and make fun of damn near everything? When the narrator appears in book 1, it's to cheer Scott on - to say 'Way to go' when Scott and Ramona kiss the first time; when he appears in book 6, it's to depress us and poke fun - to say that Scott and Knives' kiss was horrible "for everyone" and "that includes you". The problem, here, is that O'Malley isn't just poking fun at his characters - he's also poking fun at me for wanting to be invested in the characters and their feelings. And so it just feels mean-spirited.

(That really wasn't just one point, was it? It kinda veered into a point about self-reflexivity and irony. But there's a connection there, right? Ah, well.)

Complaint the third - Ramona

In my blog on the last book, I said that Ramona had clearly supplanted Scott as the central and most interesting character in the book - and had probably done so a long time ago, too. Ramona is mysterious and seductive where Scott is superficial and obvious. (This is not with the potential for problems, too, though - as Sara suggests on Geoff's blog, Ramona represents "[p]robably exactly how 20-something hetero men (and beyond?) feel about [women]. Complex, interesting/alluring/scary etc... but... vague." She's not really a real person, but more a projection of what a hot girl should be.)

So, clearly, this inequity had to be redressed. The obvious answer would be to elevate the hero, Scott, somehow - to have him grow, make him worthy of his dream-girl. That doesn't happen, though. Instead, O'Malley takes Ramona down a notch. When Ramona is asked, near the end of the book, where she's been the past four months, she says that she's been "dicking around" by watching The X-Files and playing on the internet. Nothing mysterious, no - she's been just as aimless as Scott, doing equally banal things instead of trying to fix her life. And we know that she's been dumbed-down to Scott's level because all the other characters sigh and sarcastically ask when the wedding will be. Here, it feels like the readers are being flipped off, again: "Oh, you guys! You thought that Ramona was all mysterious and deep, but she's not - she likes the internet and X-Files and dicking around and SHE IS JUST LIKE A DUDE."

The thing is, we didn't need Ramona to be reduced to a joke in order to understand that she's flawed. We already know that she's frightened of commitment, that she has a pathological need to drop her entire life when it grows too comfortable and start a new one elsewhere, and that she doesn't particularly like herself very much. This is the stuff of a tragic heroine, and the above reservations aside, Ramona is easily the deepest character the series has (though maybe this says more about the dearth of deep characters in the series...) - why squander that so needlessly?

And lastly

Despite these complaints, I actually have some hope for the movie. Because part of my problem is that Scott has something like 1300 pages within which to stagnate, and O'Malley had 6 years over which his dreamlike magic and precious optimism slowly turns into fantasy-overload and cynical irony. The shorter run-time of a film should make Scott more bearable, even if he similarly learns nothing, and the briefer turnaround of the movie project should at least bring some thematic and stylistic consistency, even if it is consistently absurd and cynical. But that's a worst-case scenario.

Sorry for ranting so long, and probably sounding so grumpy. Was it clear that I was disappointed? Because that's the short version of this review/critique/essay: I was disappointed.

World Cup rules and fitting the penalty to the infraction

Unless you've been deliberately avoiding the World Cup, you've probably heard that Ghana was eliminated from the World Cup a week ago when they should have advanced to the semi-finals. With minutes left, the presumptive game-winning goal failed to count because Suarez, a Uruguayan player who is not the goalkeeper, jumped and batted it out of the air with his hands just before it crossed the goal-line.

Unlike in the NHL, where a non-goaltender's illegal stop of a near-certain goal results in the awarding of an automatic goal, FIFA awards a penalty kick - which Ghana missed. Suarez was tossed out of the game and earned an automatic suspension, but the move was a no-brainer. If he doesn't stop the ball, his team is ejected from the tournament - sportsmanship aside, (and it seems like there's very little value placed in sportsmanship during the World Cup) there was no reason that he shouldn't have had it in his mind to stop the ball by any means necessary.

Over at The Book blog, which is largely a baseball analysis blog but it occasionally covers other sports too, a commenter named Greg Rybarczyk wrote that,

the game has rules, and with respect to those rules, there are violations, and for those violations there are prescribed consequences/penalties/sanctions. [...] If one is outraged at the fact that the Uruguayan player used his hands to stop a goal (which is agianst the rules, and has a prescribed consequence), where is the outrage when a player intentionally kicks the ball out of bounds (which is also against the rules, and also has a prescribed consequence)?

I wrote in response to Greg, and wanted to write here, too, that Greg is wrong because he doesn't account for the degree of the infraction - is it likely to directly affect the score/result? - and whether the penalty to the guilty player/team is of a similar degree - if it is likely to affect the score, does the penalty/reward adequately redress that affect?

Giving possession of the ball to the opposing team when it’s kicked out of bounds in soccer seems like a totally appropriate response - the team awarded the throw, by virtue of gaining possession, has almost certainly improved their chances of scoring. A quick look at the World Cup stats tells me that teams typically turn the ball over about 150 times per game - and if they're averaging about 1.5 goals per game, that means they only score on about 1% of their possessions - so we're talking about an improvement in scoring likelihood, in most cases, that's under 1%. Conversely, the team that committed the infraction has taken a small penalty - not a significant one, given how easily and often the ball is turned-over in soccer, (and even only 70% of throw-ins are successfully corralled by the team throwing the ball in) but it wasn't a significant infraction in the first place.

But the 'penalty' against Suarez, and the kick awarded to Ghana, doesn't make sense when we apply the exact same logic. While the illegal stop was made against a ball that was 100% likely to score, the 'penalty' given to Paraguay was a penalty kick for Ghana that’s only about 80% likely to score. That's a huge difference - clearly, since it led to Ghana's eventual elimination - and should be an obvious indication that the penalty is not appropriate to the infraction. To say that Ghana was 'awarded' a penalty kick or that Paraguay was 'penalized' is euphemistic, at best - in taking a 20% hit to their chance of scoring, Ghana was effectively penalized for Paraguay's cheat. That's just twisted.

Quick update: FIFA has apparently said that they won't review this rule, which is asinine. But they will review goal-line technology of the sort that would have awarded a goal to England when they were eliminated by Germany. One has to wonder whether the rule would be reviewed if Ghana and England were each in the other's position, and England had lost certain victory due to a handball...

Gandhi and 'Terrorism and Espionage'

I wrote just a short while ago about how media coverage in the lead-up to the G20 had likened protesters to animals, non-Torontonians, and, just generally, the Other. I didn't write about it on my blog, but I also noted on Facebook that CTV news used the descriptor "known activist" in a clearly pejorative way, as if it meant the same thing as "terrorist".

But this isn't exactly new or unique and news media is just reflecting wider-held attitudes. Case in point: my friend Sue was at a bookstore - Chapters, at Richmond and John in Toronto - and was looking at their 'Terrorism and Espionage' section. She found Che there, which is unsurprising given his violent opposition to American-backed dictatorships - he fits, and is maybe even a model for, Western images of what a terrorist looks and acts like.

A bit more surprising was Frantz Fanon, who is implicated, I guess, because of his writing on decolonization and his association with the revolution in Algeria. (But Fanon is still primarily a theorist, a thinker and writer - not a revolutionary leader or guerilla-figher like Che. One wonders why Marx doesn't somehow make it into this section, too.) Clearly, though, there's evidence here of a major slippage between a particular sort of revolutionary and terrorism. And to the extent that a difference exists at all, then these guys end up in this section because they're not white and their interests are opposed to those of capitalism.

Because, certainly, the grounds for making it into this section had nothing to do with the advocacy and/or exercise of violence - how else to explain why and how Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi were included in the 'Terrorism and Espionage' section? Seriously. Are there any more famous activists than these two? And they're catalogued under the heading of 'terrorism'? And do we need any further evidence that activism - especially non-white activists - and terrorism are being effectively collapsed into a single entity?

It's no wonder that the casual public has so little sympathy for activists who take their cause to the streets, and for the hundreds of activists who were beat up and jailed by police during G20, only to be released without charge. They were terrorists, after all, weren't they?

A break from politicized posts...

We've lived just on the edge of Toronto's Greektown for almost a year now, and I only just noticed something strange about the strip-mall at the end of the street.

Conventionally speaking, the strip-mall runs north-south. But since it's on the west side of the street, the strip-mall 'reads' from south-to-north. And so the combination of the restaurant on the far left and the one of the far right is suspiciously unlikely and geographically appropriate.

The extreme left/south:


...and the extreme right/north:


What California or Florida have to do with places that serve mostly Greek food, though? I have no idea.

Constructing 'the protesters'

"protesters...are beginning to flood the downtown core" (Toronto Star)
"protesters descend on the city" (CTV)
"Feeding the protesters" (Toronto Star)


I was talking to my students last week about how the G20 protesters are figured as people on the fringe, non-Torontonians, and, implicitly, non-Canadian. The first two quotes make the non-Torontonian and non-Canadian claims, I think. The protesters, who we know to be a menacing collective because the media's occasionally using the definite article ('the'), are not from 'here' because they are flooding or descending from some shadowy place of anarchy to transform the ostensibly safe-haven of Toronto into a zone of danger. (Euphemistically referred to as the 'security zone', of course, because Toronto cops surely aren't prone to violence, and dropping thousands of cops into an urban setting to quell protest has always had a calming effect. Clearly.)

The bit about feeding them also reinforces the sense that these people live dangerously on the margins. 'Feeding the protesters' not only frames a benevolent act of community as somehow brutish - it immediately recalls 'feed the animals', as in 'do not...' - but reminds us of the poverty (and all the things that poverty connotes - laziness, criminality, etc.) that characterizes many of the people who are protesting.


"Dress like a militant protester, you run the risk of being tear gassed" (Toronto Star)
"What the demonstrators are saying" vs. "What the public is saying" (Globe and Mail)


These distinctions also reinforce the split between protesters and the mainstream media's implied audience - non-protesters who are voyeurs and might have a perverse interest in the protesters, but can't possibly identify with them. The first article playfully infantilizes the protesters by reducing them to fashionistas ("militant and fabulous") who can be imitated as if they were Halloween costumes, while the second is even less subtle in drawing a clear distinction between the law-abiding citizen-readers and the fringe.

Because, clearly, one cannot oppose any aspect of the G20 Summit while also being a law-abiding citizen who reads the Globe and Mail or watches the CTV news.

On the BP oil spill

"Gulf disaster needs divine intervention as man's efforts have been futile. Gulf lawmakers designate today Day of Prayer for solution/miracle."
-Sarah Palin, on Twitter

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
-Epicurus

Marketing Canada: fake lakes and 'pristine natural beauty'

1. In the lead-up to the G8/20 summit at the end of the week, most of the Canadian media is focusing on a $2 million space for foreign journalists, where the centerpiece is a fake lake and beach so that the journalists who can't attend the G8 meetings can still 'experience' some approximation of their natural setting.


Needless to say, most people who aren't members of the ruling Conservative party aren't impressed. From The Globe and Mail:

[NDP leader Jack] Layton asked how the Prime Minister can justify the costs. [...] "We’ve got a government here that has to create an artificial lake when Canada has more lakes than just about any other country in the world.”

2. The Conservatives are defending it as a marketing ploy, though it's not clear what they're selling - is Canada a source of plentiful artificial lakes? And do the journalists covering G8/20 even care about Canada's lakes, real or not? From the CBC:

"The Experience Canada space will host over 3,000 media and other guests, and will serve to highlight Canada's pristine natural beauty, as well as promote leading Canadian businesses and industries," according to a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office.

"In fact, it's a $2-million marketing project," [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper said, "We must not miss this opportunity."

3. But the real goal is probably to use the fake lake as a sort of distraction object. Because if you're trying to market Canada, you certainly don't want foreign media to be looking at the streets of Toronto, where the G20 is actually being held. A lot of concrete barriers and chain-link fences, sure, but not much "pristine natural beauty" here:

Unless, of course, the government is trying to sell Toronto as a police-state-themed amusement park.

Does FIFA have any credibility at all?

1.

From the Toronto Star: 'FIFA is preparing to monitor the World Cup’s most vulnerable matches for match-fixing threats. [...] FIFA’s monitoring of legal and illegal betting markets suggests the World Cup has been “clean and clear” so far, with no suspicious wagering patterns identified.'

2.

From Tom Tango on his The Book blog: 'This is FIFA’s recap of the USA Slovenia 2:2 game. You will notice the controversial missing 5th goal is not there. If you want to see the goal, you need to see it on Youtube. And the message board at FIFA is totally devoid of discussions of the non-goal goal.'

Me: A lot of people have also pointed out that the offside wasn't called by the linesman, who typically makes this call, but only by the referee. And this is a problem because while the linesman is positioned so as to have a nearly perfect line of sight, this was the ref's perspective:


If he could see evidence of any foul, one would have to wonder why he didn't appear to notice all of the Slovenian defenders who were restraining the Americans - which were very easily seen from where he was standing. (And there were more of them than are visible in this picture.)

3.

It's possible that the referee is just terrible at his job and made a mistake. It's also possible that there's something shifty going on. And it's possible that FIFA is covering it up - mistake or not - and cares more about not looking bad than they do about entertaining the possibility the ref made the wrong call. Despite the claims they've made regarding match-fixing and how much they want to stop it - which, after all, have to do with betting patterns, right? Regardless, it all looks bad.

A letter to the Toronto Star

Re: New copyright law would cut artists’ earnings (June 9)

I'm not really sure where Sophie Milman sourced her legal advice, but she's wrong when she writes that "just as with vinyl-to-cassette prior to 1997, ripping songs to a DAR is actually against the law". It's generally agreed that ripping music from a CD to your computer constitutes 'personal use' under the law. [Exclusive to the blog!: Nor is it technically illegal to file-share in Canada, as courts have shown unwillingness to find defendants guilty and the police lack the resources or desire to pursue music pirates, especially those who do so for personal use.] It may not be explicitly legal - neither, for that matter, is abortion - but it's certainly not illegal. If Ms Milman was looking to make a legal argument, she probably should have made sure that she knew the law, first.

I suppose that it isn't surprising that the music industry would play the levy card again, but the old suggestion that we be charged repeatedly for the exact same recording is indicative of the lack of creativity that got the recording industry into this mess in the first place. And just as the industry tried (hopelessly, and with still dubious legal grounds) to shut down file-sharing rather than find ways to profit from it, their efforts to police personal use is likely to only further alienate their customers. If only they spent as much time and resources in making these new formats into a unique and value-added experience worthy of our money...

MIA and ethics in interviewing

Really quick bit on the MIA and Lynn Hirschberg interview controversy that's been smoldering for a week or so (in short: Hirschberg portrays MIA as a hypocrite who styles herself as a revolutionary but lives in a mansion with her rich husband). From the New York Observer:

In the published piece, M.I.A. is described as "eating a truffle-flavored French fry" as she mused about what type of artist she is. According to the tape, it was Ms. Hirschberg who introduced the concept of fry-ordering.

"They have, like, truffle, they have like three different kinds, it's very elaborate," Ms. Hirschberg says on the tape, explaining the menu to M.I.A. at the Beverly Hills Wilshire Hotel. M.I.A. said that, yes, she would like a starter. "Can we order the French fries that come on the bar menu, the basket?" Ms. Hirschberg instructs the waiter.

This only came out because MIA was more canny than Hirschberg expected - she secretly taped the interview, probably because she knew Hirschberg has a reputation for doing seemingly innocuous interviews that turn into scathing character-assassinations.

Hirschberg is either lying or being disingenuous when she says that "I don't think the French fries illustrate that much about her character", because it's clearly meant to illustrate something. I would call it Dickensian in its upper-class-is-morally-defunct symbolism, except that I think Hirschberg's unsubtlety would make even Dickens blush. (Hilariously, Hirschberg criticized MIA's immediate response to her profile - MIA posted Hirschberg's phone number on Twitter - as "unethical".)

As a brief aside: The Observer also notes that we might be at a point where journalism needs to tighten its standards, since every interviewee now has the potential to publicly call them on their bullshit. And that might be the most interesting development to follow.

Categorizing Lost's 'mysteries'

This is a cute post from BuzzFeed mocking people who are frustrated that Lost didn't answer many of its questions. It has a point, of sorts - not all mysteries are worth solving, nor are all answers satisfying - but I think that it's worthwhile to separate out the legitimately frustrating questions from those that either don't require a solution or would simply be better off without one.

So here they are - split into 3 larger groups and 6 smaller categories, 2 categories of which are within each group:


GROUP ONE: Questions that don't need to be answered, and may not have answers anyway

1) Questions that shouldn't be answered because we might as well ask why bad things happen to good people:
* Where did The Island come from? What is The Light? Who created it?
* Where did the Island Guardian powers - like hiding the island or granting Richard immortality - come from? And why, if these powers are so wide-ranging, are they also limited - why couldn't Jacob raise the dead? And, for that matter, why and how was Man in Black able to resurrect Sayid when Jacob couldn't?
* Why is Desmond special?
* Why does the Island heal some things - like Rose's cancer and Locke's spine - and not others - like Ben's cancer?
* How does the donkey wheel work to move the island?
* Why do the sonic fences work against Smokey? How was the ash able to keep him at bay?

2) Questions that shouldn't be answered because it really doesn't matter, does it?:
* Did the bomb go off?
* Was it really Desmond's delay in entering the numbers that caused the plane to crash?
* Was the sideways-universe created by The Incident or the bomb?
* What's the origin of the Ben/Charles feud?
* Was Sayid really turned evil, or, as Hurley said, did he simply become what people expected of him?
* Did the psychic know that Claire had to get on the plane? How?


GROUP TWO: Questions that could use answers, and might have answers, but don't require them

3) Questions that don't need to be answered because the answer seems to already be implied:
* Why can't babies be born on the island, and why was there no such problem in the 70s?
* Was Christian always Christian? Was Smokey sometimes impersonating him? Was he always impersonating him?
* Why wasn't Sun transported back in time?
* Why did Juliet's husband die after she wished it?
* What's the deal with the four-toed, Egyptian statue?
* Was the Dharma Initiative a force of good or bad?

4) Questions that probably don't have a good answer, but whose answers probably aren't important, would be contradictory or needlessly confusing, or simply wouldn't be very illuminating:
* Who was shooting at Sawyer and company's boat when they were being chased across the water during all the time-flashes?
* How was Juliet's sister's cancer cured if Ben's cancer couldn't be?
* Was there really a box that granted wishes? And what is it, really?
* What is the Temple, where do its occupants sit in the Others' hierarchy, and what sort of magical powers does Dogen have that could repel Smokey?
* Why does Sayid, who killed dozens of people as a torturer and then as Ben's lackey, get to go into the Light when Michael, who killed two people - one out of desperation and one accidentally, and only to save his son - but also seemingly redeemed himself, get stuck on the Island?


GROUP THREE: Questions that should be answered (even if they can't be answered)

5) Questions that can't possibly have a good answer, and are probably just evidence of bad planning/writing:
* Why would Chang - or whoever else built The Swan - include Egyptian hieroglyphics in the timer, which are displayed only after it reaches zero?
* If Smokey can only appear as dead people, how did he appear to Locke and Shannon as Walt?
* Why was Richard surprised that Ben could see him when they first met? And why was Harper, who was bringing orders from Ben, able to sneak up on Juliet and disappear just as quickly? Were we meant to understand that the Others could become invisible or travel magically?
* Who was asking Locke to 'help me' in the cabin? And why wasn't he asking Ben, who admitted that no one - Jacob, or someone trying to pass himself off as Jacob - ever spoke to him?

6) Questions that have been dangling for so long or were made to seem so important that we deserved an answer, dammit!:
* Why did small animals die when Walt got angry, and what was so wrong with him that even The Others wanted to get rid of him?
* And relatedly - why are the kids so important? Why do we want to kidnap Walt and Aaron? Why did we kidnap those other children? (It can't just be that they can't procreate on the island, right? And it's not like they knew about Candidates at that point...)
* What's the deal with Eloise and her seeming omniscience, in both the living-day present and in the afterlife?
* What's the deal with the Hanso family, who were the financiers behind both The Black Rock and Dharma and were featured prominently in the Lost Alternate Reality Game?
* What's the Man in Black's name? And if he doesn't have one, why? (Because deliberately not mentioning it seemed significant, at first, and just annoying, later.)
* Do The Numbers refer to the Valenzetti Equation or the final six Candidates? Or both? And how are they related? Is it mere coincidence (?!) or fate that the final six Candidates are assigned the same numbers that appear in the Valenzetti Equation? And if it's the latter, how does that compromise Jacob's whole 'i want you to have a choice' speech, or diminish the centuries-long process of finding a suitable replacement and watching most of the Candidates die in the process?

There are probably other categories that we could invent, and some people can probably take issue with where I've slotted particular questions. Let me know.

Reflections on the Lost finale

It's been less than 12 hours since the show ended, so these will be a bit half-baked. I'll keep it to three general thoughts:

1) So the flashsideways is technically taking place after the mainstream timeline, insofar as it's an epilogue set in some limbo- or purgatory-like afterlife that the characters are sharing. I didn't really see that one coming. I'm wondering whether there's a bit of a joke hidden in there, since 'everyone is dead' was one of the theories first offered to explain the mysteries of the island. But the tone of the epilogue would seem to suggest that this isn't the case. (So my complaint that I had no idea what the stakes were ends up a bit off-the-mark, since there really were no stakes.) And it provided the happy ending that would have only been bittersweet otherwise. We know that Kate leaves, Jack dies, and Hurley takes Jack's place - and we don't know what happens to them afterward - but we're told that it basically doesn't matter.

2) Shockingly, and aside from the reveal of the flashsideways-as-afterlife, there were no twists in the finale. Everything we learned about the nature of the island, about the Man in Black and Jacob, turned out to be absolutely true and we really didn't learn anything new about the island. It was straightforward, epic-drama - the world would end if Locke escaped and if Jack couldn't restore the light. And I thought it was pretty effective stuff, too.

3) So whether the show was 'good' or not hinges, I think, on whether you buy the overtly religious ending. That the show moved in this direction wasn't a surprised - the science/reason v. fate/faith opposition that so strongly characterized the first couple seasons was indisputably won by religion/faith side this season, and was probably a foregone conclusion as soon as Jack started to believe he was fated to return there. (Which is to say that, unlike in Battlestar Galactica, it didn't come out of left field.) But the strength with which the epilogue pushed a very Christian - that multi-faith stained glass window aside - resolution to the series was a bit startling. (At least they had the sense to make a joke about it, when Kate comments on the ridiculousness of Christian Shepherd's name.)

I found myself liking how heartwarming the epilogue was, but after this much time I'm starting to feel a bit cheated. I was moved in the moment, but I think that the credit for that goes to the actors and my own substantial investment in the show - I could ignore or miss the larger spiritual politics because I found it so damned pleasant. (This kind of sleight-of-hand is the same complaint I had of the Sun and Jin death scene, in a way - a touching resolution to their story that is at once undermined by the realization that they're abandoning their daughter, and probably abandoning her to Sun's father. Once the emotion of the moment wears off, you realize that they're actually pretty selfish.) I don't know whether there was a way to offer viewers that happy ending without going in the direction of religion, but, as-is, it feels incongruent with the first five seasons of the show.

But the ending on the island, with Jack dying in the field where he first landed, Hurley and Ben panicked about what happens next, and Kate leaving someone behind, again? That seemed more apropos, more like the Lost that offers half answers and an unexpected new status quo. Maybe the pressure to offer an unequivocal ending was too much. Maybe Cuse and Lindelof thought the flashsideways was more subtle than it turned out to be. Maybe the show was so hopeless at points that we needed the finale to remind us that hope and love exist and that the characters really care for one another And maybe the whole afterlife thing was the only way to pull that off. I feel some satisfaction from the characters' happy ending and I'm simultaneously numbed by the particularly Christian-styling of the message. I'm not sure what else I can add.

Quick update on Lost and the Theory of Everything (now at version 3.0)

Once again, I've re-revised my position on how the flashsideways relate to the main Lost U: I'm thinking, again, that the flashsideways follow, narrative-wise, after the resolution of the main story.

The short explanation: If Jacob's Mother was telling the truth when she said that it's bad for humans to capture/harness The Light - and it seems reasonable to suspect that this much, at least, is true - then it's probably also bad that Mother (and Jacob and Smokey) should have it, too. (In brief: Even if they're well-intentioned, there's no reason to think that they're somehow the only people in existence who can't be allowed to have it - that no one else should be allowed to find it or use it because bad things will happen, but these people are an exception. And given all their magical powers, they definitely have it.)

And this is why Jack is a particularly good target to be convinced to accept the mantle - he still wants to fix things, and replacing Jacob essentially makes him the most important fixer in the world. Like Jacob in this past episode, his benevolent intentions make him the ideal, and entirely self-deceiving, candidate.

Why self-deceiving? Because I suspect that The Light should be allowed to leave the island - that the ostensible source of what's good and life-giving probably shouldn't be confined to a cave on an island. So when Smokey-as-Locke finally escapes, it'll be like Pandora's Box, only in reverse, and this is why, for example, the universally bad parents of the main Lost universe will become good parents in the sideways universe, and so on.

And, having written this, I'm at least 95% sure that I'll be proven totally wrong.

Robinson Cano, baseball, and racism

It's been a rather recent development in baseball blogging to note the contrary ways that white and non-white players are generally talked about. I'm actually pretty surprised that sports bloggers would pick up on this, especially since it's relatively subtle stuff. (Or, at least, much more subtle than what typically passes for 'racism' in mainstream journalism.)

Take this bit by ESPN's Jerry Crasnick, in describing the New York Yankees' second baseman, the Dominican-born Robinson Cano:

"[Cano] learned an even more enduring lesson in September 2008, when [manager Joe] Girardi benched him for lollygagging after a ball in short right field against Tampa Bay. Cano, seven months removed from signing a $30 million contract extension, needed someone new to prod him after third-base coach Larry Bowa left the Yankees to join Torre in Los Angeles."

What exactly is Crasnick adding to the story with that second sentence? Why does a report on Cano's benching require that we be told Cano's new financial situation unless we're meant to understanding that getting rich has made him lazy and complacent? And what's his rationale for the claim that Cano requires someone else to keep him focused, as if an elite athlete needs this kind of babysitting?

Moshe Mandel at the baseball blog TYU notes how the subtly racialized characterizations of Cano are especially apparent when he's compared to his white counterpart on the Boston Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia:

The Bronx incumbent is smooth, super-cool and has a hitting DNA to die for. But Pedroia plays harder and has a greater emotional investment in the day-to-day outcome of his team. In other words, he cares more than Cano. From Fox Sports' Bob Klapisch:

"The Bronx incumbent [Cano] is smooth, super-cool and has a hitting DNA to die for. But Pedroia plays harder and has a greater emotional investment in the day-to-day outcome of his team. In other words, he cares more than Cano."

How do we know that Pedroia cares more? That Cano is "super-cool"? That Pedroia "plays harder"? Or that Cano has "hitting DNA"? Who knows? But what we do know is that these associations of success with hard-work and intelligence (Pedroia) or else biology and natural talent (Cano), and the privileging of the deliberateness and accomplishment involved in achieving the former - that is, the natural talent can backslide or grow complacent because he hasn't earned it, whereas the learned talent knows failure and is less likely to take success for granted - are undoubtedly racialized assumptions. (Obviously, I'm thinking about this because of my Lady Gaga post from a couple days ago.)

And this is especially true given that these assumptions rely on supposed 'information' about the players that would be virtually impossible to locate or verify - have the writers run Cano's blood through tests to quantify his ability, or are their assumptions about Pedroia based on the way that he gets down on hands and knees with a toothbrush to clean the kitchen floor? (Though I suppose that being able to 'evaluate' or 'assess' these players is what supposedly makes these writers experts in their fields. Supposedly.)

Mandel also supplies this quote from a baseball talent evaluator, assessing which of two young pitchers who've recently been signed to big contracts - the white Justin Verlander and the Hispanic Felix Hernandez - is a safer bet:

“Now we’ll see what the contracts do to both guys. It won’t faze Verlander, but I guess it’s possible Felix could get a little complacent. His makeup doesn’t suggest it, but you never know."

This quote requires a little less explanation, I think - if his 'makeup' doesn't suggest it, then what does? And why does the white guy get a free pass?

Baseball commentators on TV, I should add, are routinely terrible. (This is why the website FireJoeMorgan was created: because the former players who dominate the jobs, in particular, have a surprisingly poor understanding of how the game works - success rates, probabilities, likelihoods, percentages - outside being able to offer glimpses into player psychology.) That they should be terrible at their job and racist? Ugh.

Lost: stumbling to a conclusion

So I didn't like the last episode of Lost - "Across the Sea", the one that that was purportedly going to fill us in on where Jacob and the Man in Black came from. Two of my friends, though, liked it well enough, and supplied the following comments:

• Alex "finds it incredibly amusing that Lost viewers get disappointed when 'nothing was made clear,' as if that was something that has *ever* happened. From where do they derive this expectation of clarity?"
• Geoff writes that "It would not be Lost without the messy. If you have not come to enjoy the messiness, I am surprised you still watch the show."
  

These are fine points, but I don't think that either really addresses my problem with the episode. And simply, it was this - if this is the big mythology-information-dump leading up to the finale, it should have left me certain that I know what the stakes of the final showdown between Jack's group and the Man in Black are. And it didn't.

Sure, it told me that Jack and MiB are brothers, that the mysterious power source at the center of the island is a light, that MiB simply wants to leave for the sake of leaving... but these were hardly the burning questions that I wanted answered. What I felt that I needed to know was what would happen if MiB were to leave, and why he needed to be stopped. (If, in fact, that needed to happen.) And not only is the 'why' not clear to me, but MiB is made so sympathetic - and Jacob's mission is made so doubtful due to the unreliability of the character whose job he has taken - that I feel less certain that MiB has to be stopped at all.

I should add that Geoff uses gnosticism to provide a plausible answer to my most burning questions. This is what he writes:

the energy at the center of the island is the light of creation, or something like that. The Smoke is the opposite number, split off when the light was disturbed by someone corrupted by men — this is pure Gnostic mythology. Somehow the smoke is or has the light now and if it leaves the island everything goes out everywhere.

Okay, I can buy that. But even if Geoff is right, that particular thought never occurred to me until I read Geoff's review. I didn't even notice that the light went out in the cave, nor did I think, when it was first pointed out to me in an article elsewhere, that a) this would necessarily mean that MiB now has/is the light, and b) the world should end if he leaves with it. If this is true, it actually becomes the entire point of the show. And if I need someone's blog or a thorough understanding of gnosticism to point out something so fundamental to my understanding of the show, then it hasn't been made clear enough.*

* [What's especially annoying about this is that the connection made between 'Adam and Eve' from season one and the bodies of Mother and Brother was drawn in the most hamfisted and patronizing way - with horribly incorporated cut-scenes. Why be so painfully clear about such a minor detail, when you so badly explain something so much more important with the creation of the smoke monster and disappearance of the light?]

The transgressive(?) Lady Gaga

I've been meaning to write about Lady Gaga for weeks. Unfortunately, what I wanted to write grew to this mammoth range of topics that became too daunting to even start. (This is a common problem for me.) So I'm going to try to pick out one specific element.

So for this blog, anyway, it's the recent hubbub over Gaga's lack of self-consciousness regarding her race and the role that race plays in the kind of appropriation that is central to her various art practices.

So why does Gaga get all the love? How much of it is because, as a small young blonde woman she appears to be transgressive in a way that artists like M.I.A. or even Trina cannot be transgressive, because to begin with they are already seen as non-normative, simply because they aren’t white?

This is probably an apt point. By virtue of her whiteness, Gaga is not 'naturally' transgressive - she has to work at it, has to adorn her body and performance with the markings of transgression, and so she gets extra credit for having had to make deliberate, intelligent, and artistic decisions that require her to extend beyond her own bubble of normativity. M.I.A., on the other hand, is already 'naturally' an Other - born into the body of an Other, with links to an Otherized culture, her Britishness notwithstanding - and so we give her less credit for having achieved something, since she presumably had something more transgressive to begin with. M.I.A.'s 9-month pregnant body on the Grammys a couple years back, versus Gaga's varied prosthetics on this year's Grammys, draws this implicit difference out perfectly - the former has an excess of body and nature, the latter an excess of intellect and artifice.

Which is all well and good - and wholly accurate, in isolation - but ignores Gaga's indebtedness to (mostly) white performers like Madonna, Bjork, Abba, Christina Aguilera, and even Britney Spears. My sense is that Gaga is taking a race-blind approach and stealing and mixing from every/any source available. And while race-blind appropriation is definitely problematic, we need to account for these white sources, too, especially when they're arguably more central to Gaga's art.

Clearly Gaga is not oblivious to her own “normativity”; she actually uses it as a weapon, drawing in the viewer with the expectation that she will be blonde and submissive, and then upsetting those expectations by doing intentionally weird, gross things. But while she’s playing with her whiteness, she (& her critic fans) seem somewhat oblivious to her white privilege. And the attendant attention she gets, while women of colour’s contributions to redefining music and gender performance are marginalised.

I'm not quite on-board with this one. The authors recognize Gaga's reflexivity and self-awareness to her normativity, but castigate her for failing to acknowledge that it's her privilege that allows her to subvert normativity in the way that she does. Okay, I'm with them on that - subversion that's undertaken by people who can still pass as normal, as opposed to people whose bodies preclude the possibility that they can be considered normal and so become subversive almost by default, is a particularly safe kind of subversion, and we should account for it. But there's an element of blame, here, too, where Gaga is being faulted for contributing to the marginalization of women of colour in the same field. I have to wonder what else Gaga could do - if she can't help but embody white privilege even as she attempts to subvert or ironize it, what options are left to her?

M.I.A.’s comments seem particularly spot on: while the spectacle of Gaga is dazzling, ironically as a singer, her music is the least progressive thing about her. Especially when you contrast it with M.I.A’s bonkers rhymes and bold call-outs to volatile political conflicts.

Victoria was annoyed particularly by this last section of the blog post, and I feel the same way. There's an assumption, here, that Gaga's pop-proclivities should invalidate the rest of her body of work - that her work in fashion, for instance, is somehow devalued or delegitimated because Gaga writes chart-toppers instead of inscrutable music with politicized lyrics. And that's really not fair, for at least two reasons: for one, we probably wouldn't even be discussing Gaga if her audience was the same (demographically and with respect to size) as M.I.A.'s because her fame and ubiquity are key to her appeal, and two, it just isn't reasonable to expect that every artist is transgressive or obtuse in every aspect of their artistic practice. And Gaga is certainly more obtuse than any other pop-queen, so that's worth something, isn't it?