You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Culture’ category.
I usually don’t pay attention to the Oscars and other such award shoes. Playing League of Legends, tweezing my eyebrows, cleaning the tiles in the bathroom all are significantly higher on my to do list that giving a frack about the Oscars. This story caught my attention though, provocatively titled “Academy Responds to Diversity Firestorm“.
Unaware that diversity comes in firestorms and how mega-rad that would be, I read on.
“Responding for the first time to the firestorm of criticism over the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations, film academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs says the all-white acting slate inspires her to accelerate the academy’s push to be more inclusive. She also hopes the film industry as a whole will continue to strive for greater diversity.”
Inspires the push to be more inclusive in for the striving of greater diversity… *bleh* I need to strive toward the chamber pot to cleanse my system of the above-mentioned overtly-florid way of saying nothing at all.
All 20 of this year’s acting contenders are white and there are no women in the directing or writing categories. After the nominations were announced Thursday morning, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started trending on Twitter.
Now there is an oopsie. But we need to hear some more doublespeak about the situation first.
“Yet Boone Isaacs insisted the academy is “committed to seeking out diversity of voice and opinion” and that outreach to women and artists of colour is a major focus.
“In the last two years, we’ve made greater strides than we ever have in the past toward becoming a more diverse and inclusive organization through admitting new members and more inclusive classes of members,” Boone Isaacs said. “And, personally, I would love to see and look forward to see a greater cultural diversity among all our nominees in all of our categories.”
I’m not sure what is worse, outright lying or the baffle them with bullshit tactic that Boone Isaacs has clearly perfected. Before you rush me with market theology lets look a bit further…
“A 2012 survey by the Los Angeles Times found the academy was 94 per cent white, overwhelmingly male and with a median age of 62. A more recent survey determined the percentage of older white males had dropped by one point, the Times said. But with nearly 7,000 members and no requirement to retire, diversity is going to take some time.”
Oh damn. Certainly looks like the market deciding in a free and unfettered environment. The sample bias is juuuust about right considering that 94 percent of the US population is comprised of middle aged white dudes.
And here…here is the crux of every fucking debate about thinning out white hegemony in our society. The people who are the movers and shakers – the culture elite – the people that make things happen are predominantly dude and white. Their preferences are translated, projected and ensconced into what gets attention and what doesn’t. The orthodox market argument naively contends that if a good product is made that the people like it will sell well and therefore be popular.
Bullshite. The market is always, always, always, skewed and that bias happens not to favour your particular entry – no matter how qualitviely good your product is, it will fail – too fucking bad for you chum.
I get this argument about the “market deciding” when it comes to video games as well. If women just make video games than weren’t andro-centric testosterone fuelled killing sprees and get them to market then the market would “decide” whether or not the product was good.
Bullshite. This argument is bollocks precisely in the same way the Oscar argument for more inclusiveness is bollocks with its 94% white dude voting pool. The preexisting structural conditions dictate what gets out the public and what is ignored. No frakking market involved in that. You may have the bestest game evar!!! (movie to be produced) just waiting to be published, but if it goes against the status-quo (racism,sexism etc.) you’ll need a lot more than “the market” to see chance of success.
This is what feminists struggle with all the damn time. The standards and norms that implicitly and explicitly favour one sort of discourse/behaviour over another that are almost always conveniently ignored, and instead, “merit” is discussed vis-a-vis the free and open market place of ideas, and if non-status-quo game/movie is actually good, it like creme will rise to the top.
They never-ever mention the 12 filters that the creme has to pass through before even seeing the light of day.
Feminist rants aside, back to Boone and her not particularly pauciloquent way of obfuscating the issue:
“It behooves Hollywood — as an economic imperative, if not a moral one — to begin more closely reflecting the changing face of America,” the statement said.
Boone Isaacs agrees, saying that as the academy “continues to make strides toward becoming a more diverse and inclusive organization, we hope the film industry will also make strides toward becoming more diverse and inclusive.”
Though she repeatedly stressed the Oscars are a competitive process and that she’s proud of the year’s nominees, Boone Isaacs acknowledged that diversity needs to be mandatory in both story and storyteller.”
If you need to see an example of apologia in action, you need not look further that Boone Isaacs and her statement about the great white wave that is the Oscars in 2015.
P.S. I would categorize “The Birdman” as something one would fling over the wall, along with diseased corpses and flaming pitch to scare, horrify and bewilder one’s enemies. Watch it at your own risk.
I know what you’re thinking. “Fascinating subject Arb, do tell us more!”
Okay, perhaps not as gripping the other newsy bits we we have around here but none the less a subject that shouldn’t be casually swept aside. Living in Alberta means that for three to five months of the year, snow will be on the ground. The lovely first fall of snow marks the official end of mosquito season and the transition to having ‘exposed flesh stick uncomfortably to metal season’. Some might balk at all the freezing rain, sleet and snow – but really – it isn’t that bad.
One of the civic expectations of snowy Edmontonian existence is keeping the public sidewalk in front of your place of residence clear of snow and ice. Our civic authorities mandate that from the time of the last snow event forty-eight hours are given in which to clear your walks in order to make them safe for people to walk on.
Sound reasonable?
Seems workable to me and thus after each snow I make my rounds with my trusty shovel and ice-scraper. My goal is to get down to the concrete to ensure a safe and solid footing for all those who would come to see me, or merely have to sojourn past my property. For my work to be done, my walks need to pass the inappropriate winter footwear test. If I can confidently make my way in my sandals –
Then, and only then, my job is done. :)
It takes some time and work, let me assure you. Many factors are working against you in the valiant quest for clean sidewalks it is here my arch nemesis must be named.
Freezing Rain.
A glossy, slippery, unchippable horror that can only be bested by the most potent weapon in my winter arsenal.
Glorious sidewalk-salt. That being said, one must consider the bitter-salty implications of using this dread weapon on icy sidewalks. Salt is not conducive to the growing and maintenance of grass or anything else organic for that matter.
Observe.
The battle for clean sidewalks is necessarily a delicate balance. A fateful alchemy of dedication, perseverance, and Na Cl. It is a fine line that must be walked during snow-season in Alberta.
The so called war on drugs contains so much irony, we’ll need a new solar system to keep it in check.
“As long as demand and prices remain at current levels in wealthy drug-consuming nations, traders will enter almost any potential production area with wads of currency to elicit supply that can meet this demand. Over the past thirty years, the U.S. and UN prohibition has simply served to push production and processing, and smuggling of illicit drugs back and forth across the globe’s three critical trafficking areas – between Turkey and Laos within the Asian opium zone, from Bolivia to Columbia in the Andes coca belt, and from south Florida to northern Mexico along the U.S. border. At each turn and twist in this futile war on drugs, production has ratcheted upward.
Since opium can be grown in any temperate or highland area, crop suppression shifts cultivation elsewhere within the vastness of the Eurasian landmass or to the other continents, such as South America. And since the human brain’s chemistry makes all of humanity potential addicts, repression merely forces traffickers to seek new markets in another neighbourhood, nation, or continent. With such flexible market constraints, the blunt baton of repression has become the wand of stimulus, pushing consumption and production into ever-widening spheres and thereby compounding the drug problem.
[…]
In the last half of the 20th century, drug prohibition thus fostered a global illicit economy that funds criminal syndicates, highland warlords, ethnic liberation movements, terrorist networks and covert operations. Failing to understand the character of these commodities, the United Nations and the United States have attempted suppression with a range of ineffective, ultimately counterproductive, policies that include arresting consumers, pursuing dealers, and harassing growers.
Looking back on this sordid past gives little cause for optimism or celebration. To ordinary Americans who witness the dismal spectacle of the drug traffic at street level, it may seem inconceivable that the U.S. Government could somehow be implicated, directly or indirectly, in the international narcotics trade. During the cold war, American diplomats and CIA agents were involved at three levels: (1) a coincidental complicity through their covert alliances with major drug traffickers; (2) support for known traffickers by condoning their involvement and concealing their criminality from investigation; and on occasion, (3) active involvement in the actual transport of opium. More broadly, Washington has remained wedded to its prohibition policy and refuses to recognize that its attempts at eradication, from Turkey in the 1970’s to Columbia today, have actualy stimulated production and increased the global supply or illicit drugs.
It is ironic, to say the least, that America’s drug problem is of its own making.”
-from The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Alfred W. McCoy. p.22-23
This should be basis for an argument for legalization of all illicit drugs. We should make them available and tax the crap out of them putting the revenue into treatment programs and rehabilitation, rather than incarceration trajectories. I think it would work like gangbusters.
Sometimes you just have to look at the good bits in a situation.
Yes this is a commercial for a life insurance company. Yes it free promotion for them. Yes, if you subtract the commercial bit at the end, this is how life should go.
“White people get so angry at the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people.”I will never understand why. Why are you so angry that you are being treated as actual human beings? You are not reduced to caricatures, but portrayed as characters. You are treated fairly, judged not by your skin tone, but by the ways that you carry yourselves, by your actions.
Why do you want to experience racism so badly? It is not fun to be mocked, dehumanized, attacked, killed, incarcerated simply for daring to exist. It is not fun to know nothing of your history or family because it was torn apart, whether through distance or death. It is not fun to hear, at every turn, comments reminding you of your lesser status as humans.
Do you really want to turn on the tv, open a magazine, watch a movie, play a video game, and not see yourself? Or, even better, to only see yourself as a criminal, as a drunk, a mocking stereotype, or as someone to be killed off? Or would you rather see fleshed out, well-written characters with lives and personalities and feelings? I know which I’d rather pick.
If I were a white person, the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people,” would be the best thing I could ever hear.”
— i finally put some thoughts into words // thedeathcats
The following post has a higher than usual amount of profanity (for DWR, anyway). You have been warned.
Eating right is hard. Eating horribly wrong is so very easy. Are we all doomed to clogged arteries, pickled livers, and malnourished obese children? No! Thug Kitchen is here to save us all! What started as an awesome blog is now a cookbook with it’s own trailer!
What makes Thug Kitchen so special? There are lots of health cook books out there, but you may have noticed a slightly unusual tone in the trailer. From the Thug Kitchen FAQ section:
[Thug Kitchen] is here to help your narrow dietary mind explore some goddamn options so that you can look and feel like a fucking champ. We hope readers reconsider what kind of behaviors they attribute to people who try to eat healthy. Everyone deserves to feel a part of our push toward a healthier diet, not just people with disposable incomes who speak a certain way. So we’re here to help cut through the bullshit. Promoting accessibility and community are important as fuck here at Thug Kitchen. We’ve got a big table and everyone is welcome to it.
Busting up stereotypes, promoting a healthier society, inclusion of people at any income level, a healthy dose of humour, fantastic photography, and delicious food, there is so much here to love. I look forward to learning more fantastic things from Thug Kitchen and I can’t thank them enough for what they do.
So now you’ve learned how to eat like you give a fuck. You’re a healthier you and a goddamn champ. You can’t wait to make more of this tasty, cheap, good-for-you food. But part of you figures you deserve a totally bad-for-you reward for all this progress. You’re damn right you do.
“The Problem with Birkenstocks” by Annie Kreighbaum illustrates so perfectly the fantastical through-the-looking-glass distortions of reality that we collectively we know as “Fashion“. Unpacking this article was kind of fun in the “Wow..really??” sort of way. What wasn’t so fun is that amount of shaming that is going on and the expectations of self-policing and in general the absolute necessity of being hyper-aware of you looks and how others perceive you.
“Birkenstocks are the Chipotle of footwear. Like opting for a burrito bowl and a side order of guac at the end of a long workday, you wear them when you’re in no mood to try. And you don’t feel too bad about it either, because they reek of integrity and liberalism and therefore don’t invite the same harsh criticism as things like foam flip-flops or Arby’s. But still, too much Chipotle is never a good thing.”
Just so we are clear where the biases are, as a person who wears Birkenstocks all the time, the idea that they are somehow the Chipotle of footwear just leaves me scratching my head. That somehow they are a last resort when you are “in no mood to try” – well that grinds against my feminist fancy in an entirely different way and is definitely the topic of another post.
“Your foot might splay a little bit,” said NYC podiatrist Dr. Hillary Brenner in response to a rumor my coworker’s friend, this girl Alison, heard from her shoe sales guy at Jeffrey that all the Birkenstocks and locker room slides women are wearing nowadays are making their feet bigger—thus forcing them to size up on their Fall ’14 footwear purchases. 38? Guess again, now you’re probably a 38.5.”
[Alarm Klaxon] Whoop whoop whoop! Ladies it is with considerable regret that I have to inform you that your feet are getting….*whispers* bigger. You thought Cinderella was just a story! Oh no no no, Double XXers – you have to live by this shit because the grotesquery of moving from a 38 to 38.5 must be considered a horror that should not be named.
Unless of course you’re a bland, humourless, feminist killjoy like myself who lives for blaming on this sort normative buncombe.
“Splay” is a great word, and by that Dr. Brenner simply means that the muscles and bones inside of your feet are getting a nice little stretch and they don’t want that feeling to end. So it’s not like they’re gaining weight—they’re just not as toned.”
Gaining Weight!?! Gaining Weight?!? Good Lard! Anything but that… Is there no hope? Also, how do feet that are squished inside shoes that don’t fit = toned?
“Your foot gets comfortable in these types of shoes and only certain muscles are working. Then when you go into a high heel that’s more narrow and stiff, your foot can’t splay as much. Different pressure points are being loaded, and you’re having to use muscles you haven’t used in a while.”
Wait, what? It sounds like you’re making an argument that it’s just ‘different muscles’ being used when you go from ergonomic brikenstocks to the damaging instruments of torture known as high heels. You’re not actually making that argument against healthy feet and promoting the damage high heels are responsible for?
“But there are abs somewhere under the mushy softness of your lazy Birkenstock feet, and they can be un-splayed and ready for the heel-loving city life.”
Holy hell, you are toe-tally going there. Because having footwear that fits is completely the equivalent of “mushy softness”. Did you feel the lip curl of disgust there? The comparison between flabby abs and now your damn flabby feet? Can we get a little more hate and shame on for female bodies?
What, exactly the fuck, is heel-loving city life? Who loves manoeuvring around in the frigidly winter-dark icy streets in high heels? I want Dr.Brenner to try the icy-fun-dance in high heels – the pain of his twisted ligaments would bring me a great deal pleasure (keeping with the theme of the post, would that be shodden-freude ?).
‘Dr. Brenner suggests training your feet back into a pair of your old heels rather than buying new ones, “You still have the same foot as you’ve always had, it’s not growing wider, it’s just getting put into a different device.”
“Oh,” says the doctor who, in theory. has sworn to do no harm – you ladies just need to acclimatize to having your toes squished and your tendons abnormally stretched. It is like taking a round with the thumbscrews before heading to the rack…you just need to warm up!
“You’ll feel it at first, in the same way that your body will feel sore after the first time of doing a workout tape. But after a while your body gets used to that workout and new muscles are being stimulated. Eventually you won’t feel as sore. It’s a good idea to wear a variety of shoes overall, so that your entire foot is being worked on a regular basis.”
All you need is time to get used to wearing damaging footwear. Awesome.
“So, and correct me if I’m wrong, the takeaway here is that you can eat as many burritos as you like, just do it while wearing heels?”
No. The take away is that you’re advocating against women wearing shoes that properly fit and you’re attempting to shame them into wearing shoes that can potentially damage their bodies.
Did you catch the “subtle” sexist trope?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…