trueisms and axiums

I forgot, forgot the 5th of November. Someone on Facebook mentioned it in an status thingy. The end result was to mark the day by watching the first 45 minutes of V For Vendetta. Maybe it's not so necessary to remember the 5th of November. But a better way to mark the day might have been to look up the Toronto G20 documentary.
I didn't realize really how bad it went. This clip is especially interesting.



"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people
always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can
become great."
- Mark Twain

If your ambition is to become a great blogger, I guess it's tough to stop that.
I don't have that ambition, personally. But it is an axium that resonates as
true, so I gues then it gratuates to "trueism" or truism however that should be spelled. Which every spelling is true.

"One man's food is another man's poison." Or one man's meat is another man's poison.

What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, though I've heard that quote wrong for years as "IS good for the gander." In that case someone is being classed as gander, so it's not really fair.

When people hear One man's food is another man's poison" the message they seem to take away is that we should all tolerate each other's differences. But I see it as meaning that there will always be inherent conflict. If your office is ordering food and the money spent is on something you can't eat for medical reasons, or religious reasons, that's a problem. If you are watching a movie about something you find beautiful and all of a sudden you have to sit through something you find disgusting, that's a problem of a diffent sort. There is really no such thing as "fun for the whole family."

Whether it's the G20 or Toronto's Mega City amalgamation, we keep seeing that having something in common or common turf does not mean it is necessarily fair and accurate representation to create a false umbrella that claims to encompass us all. There is Rob Ford Country and then Smitherman country. There is an attitude that it is okay to work in the core of the city but your identity is defined by where you sleep and park your car between shifts. It's not to say that it's a matter of "emphasizing differences" to pick a fight. But we have to acknowledge those issues and ensure that someone isn't making decisions for you impating your life based on someone else' values system or geographic or financial circumstances. Suppose two tribes live alongside the same river and those upstreme decide to use it as a toilet and those downstream are expected to accept that. Such a system is an invitation to inevitable conflict and/ or disease.

There is occasionally a "community of emotion" in movie theaters, but even this is being compromised. But I have a dim memory of that period. The fact is that audiences did laugh out loud at Vice Vaughn's line in a trailer for The Dilema, "Electric cars. . .are gay." And also the follow-up line, "Not gay as in homosexual, gay as in my parents are chaparoning the dance." Unfortunately, people can't make up their own minds about it because the line can't be found in any trailer for the film as they exist online. Is "gay" a pejorative ? Yes. In common usage, it is. A character in a movie or a teen is likely to say it. I personally don't, though that isn't evidence of kindness to gays or open mindedness on my part. It's just self-preservation. Here's the existing trailer for what looks like a good, funny flick anyway:



Of course the timing was unfortunate for the early trailers to make any mention of anything gay-related or gay word related at a time when Hollywood has finally chosen to acknowledge a handful of recent gay teen suicides. I don't want to seem sarcastic but this is something that has gone on for years with no such effort. How long has Ellen DeGeneres been on TV? How long has GLAAD existed? Are kids still allowed to be called "Emo?" It's tempting to initiate a trend toward expressing hatred of behaviours, as opposed to social groups or human beings. I HATE cattiness, and snooty, affected ways of talking. That doesn't mean that I fear it or condone someone being abused physically. The person behaving that way is hoever due to receive a retort or equal or greater value. If a man behaves like Lovey Howell on Gilligan's Island, that's his life and I couldn't care less. It's not much different than a man self-consciously standing up straighter and sucking his gut in when a girl goes by. But in either case I might either break out in laughter or work on my poker face because I know that is expected. I don't think people should be judged for flinching or shuddering or involuntarily laughing at the sight or sound of something unusual. I also think it is peeing in the wind to go after high school students and ask one group to reign in its nature.

We only know the official version of what happened in any suicide case. We don't know that someone who has been bullied or feels like an outsider wasn't considering other options than suicide. The 1999 Colmbine massacre was perpetrated by two guys who had been called gay. Even Gus Van Sant's movie closely following those events depicted those boys as gay and having a relationship. I am concerned that the appeasement of lobby groups and organizations like GLAAD (which may be well-meaning) gets in the way of useful study of these dynamics. Does the outsider or the outcast gain a polish if there is an insinuation of his being gay? Is the herd picking up on something less benign than gay identity when it rejects someone? I don't know. Most of the people I consider friends are creative types who may choose to stand out or stand up and have sympathy for the traditional outcasts. But I work with people who tell gay jokes and has told the following joke he laughed at proudly:

"What did the deaf, dumb and blind retarded kid get for Christmas? Cancer."

Something like that. But is it my duty to speak up and cut him down? I don't know. This is a person breathing dust and gas fumes most of the day, better paid than me, but not with much interest in comprehension or self-improvement. So the emphasis on these kinds of things really should be on reminding the non-bullies and non-idiots that it is okay and cool to intervene. In an internet poll, nobody is a racist or prejudiced. But when it means stepping away from the anonymity of group think and defending someone you DON'T hang out with and whom you don't want to give your home phone number and who you don't really want to see kissing his lover, there is a lot loaded in any moment of defending that other person.

Marc Lepine killed 14 young women at Ecole Polytechnique around the same time as Colmbine, and John Salvy shot the RECEPTIONIST of an abortionist. Whatever their stated motives, these people are outsiders. Had they just killed themselves, larger tragedy might have been averted. Some people may know that a screw is loose and that they are due to cause harm. They might not have been formed right. If they were fetuses that miscarried, we could take it for granted that something in that organism wasn't growing right and it stopped living. There might be a mental equivalent in grown adults or teens. If that is the case, we might be less likely to catch it and examine it if we write off these acts as someone who could not take bullying. We are somewhat responsible for the image we project. We are marketing ourselves to others. We are deciding either counciously or unconsciously who we want to blend in with and who we want to keep a distance from.

In grade school, there were two TV movies by Mickey Rooney, Bill and Bill: On His Own. He had a catch phraise "My name is William, Bill for short." For any kid named Bill, this was the annoying gift that kept on giving. I remember a girl named Gwen who later became a friend was a pest sho sat at the back of the school bus and when I got on to take a seat she would make laser-gun sounds and there would be laughs because I was still a Star Wars fan and its hipness was in a lull. But even through that, by grade eight I managed to be President of the student council which is the high point of my brief political career.

Apart from being short and chubby, I remember seniors at my high school calling me Radar O'Reilly and singing "Turn on your radar, radar, radar" but even though it was partly because I wore glasses and was quiet and had a mole (which is now gone) I have to take some responsibility because on Frosh day or initiation day when we all had to wear togas, I had a MASH t-shirt under mine. It's funny now, but I remember my guidance councillor actually visited my dad to talk to him about it at our house so I must have been disproportionately bothered by that. I still continued wearing the MASH t-shirt when not at school, but I think I put that away for a year.

It would be cruel to say to someone persecuted, "man up" I believe the current phrase goes. But it just seems to me that in high school and in childhood people have their own problems fitting in without being Jesus befriending the leppers. It asks for a lot of sophistication from people who are all about announcing confidence and attractiveness and athletic skill so they can get the social perks that are so urgently sought. What does it mean for the Breakfast Club jock to befriend the geek? What will they talk about without the contrivance of Saturday detention and marijuana? And even if they recount the detention, when does that bubble burst? What if the job was less multidentional than Emillio's character in that film? What if he actually did just care about the team and winning? That describes most of the jocks I've known. I was involved in theater so I side-stepped a lot of that. There were terms like Dramoids or drama-fags, but I didn't hear any individual called either and I don't think anyone was offended. Every line from The Breakfast Club was like an axium though, as commonly referenced as Shakespeare, the Bible or Star Wars.

I think there is more than one scale of bullying. What if Ron Howard's new film was damaged by - who? Anderson Cooper or some name like that - griping about the gay joke on Ellen and then GLAAD's Ellen-watching department springing into action to denounce the use of the word gay and damaging their claim on that brand? I think there are some "activists" who get a lot of miliage by claiming that movie stars have to have thick skins and should be able to take punishment. They also benefit from the falsehood that calling someone gay is not derogatory. They are supposedly against defamation, but make defamation possibly legal by stating that what they accuse someone of being is not a step down. In fact, in a market where 18-35 year old males are the ones buying movie tickets much of the time, it is very easy to be branded uncool. They should not be in the business of outing people and are no different than the teens who uploaded video of their classmate in a gay situation and causing a humiliation that lead to his suicide. The fact is that equality isn't something imposed. It exists. Each person has the same vote. But SPITE and jealousy motivate a lot of the supposedly proud gay reportage out there. As if there is something necessary about exposing married ostensibly heterosexual stars for some gay act they believe to have happened. There is no good reason for it. And I'll be honest - I hate that. Call it hate literature that I'm writing it here. Hatred of outing people against their will. And these are the people preaching at us in the media about how we can speak and what words we can give a character in a comedy?

Although I've noted the blurbs here and there about the guy Perez Hilton recognizing that he has been a bully and planning to correct that, I think there is ongoing nastiness. Not just on that issue. There are some truly scummy things being said in an effort to keep Mel Gibson down, for example. There is just careless reporting and editorial snark that really pisses me off. And it comes from people who don't care to know the facts and just want to do damage. I can do without propaganda. I'm waiting to see Mel Gibson's movie about depression by Jodie Foster, The Beaver, and also his movie about wrongful imprisonment How I Spent My Summer Vacation. I've learned a lot about the media and the community of people who like to blog or post their opinions on message boards. A lot of gay people hate Mel. They may say it's all about "antisemetism" but it's not. I never heard him say anything about gay people, but apparently if anything was ever said it becomes your defining characteristic. I think those people are Melphobic.

I look forward to seeing Kevin Smith's Red State which is somewhat about the people who picket funerals. I'm interested in what a creative person has to say, but not the guardians of taste who are themselves annoying and should be irrelevant. I expect the wider the audience the more thin a movie is going to be, so I think all great comedy and movies in general that piss some people off are actually brave and more worthwhile than safe cowardly movies with token side-kicks built in to appease lobby groups instead of demo-graphics. People might not want a theater charged with an awkward vibe or some anger and maybe some walk-outs. I remember the n-word used by Dennis Hopper in the famous True Romance 'Sicillian" scene. That got walk-outs when I saw it. Malcolm X was a charged movie to watch. Milk was uncomfortable, but it was half way between a full-on Gus Van Sant and his more commercial films. I didn't feel like he was testing the audience; that film had more to get on with. My feeling is always if you don't like what you are seeing then make your own film.

There is really no such thing as totally blending in, whether it be a person in a high school or a movie that pleases "the whole family" or a mega-city that serves the suburbs the same way it serves the core. If an actor or a student wants to be seen as straight, let them be. Any organization preaching against bullying and yet strong arming actors and moviemakers is an organization vulnerable to be dismantled or disregarded. ASAP.