Who is Curating Your Shared Space ?

Mental illness (no matter what the onset) has a stigma, despite the efforts of Carrie Fisher and others to reduce that and allow it to be addressed as just part of life. So the mention of it here is not intended to increase stigma, even if that is an un-intended side effect. Should the mentally ill be the ones to curate cultural content? Should the raging, angry people with life-long aftershock of trauma have the deciding vote as to what the rest of society can enjoy and what what radio stations or broadcasters can play without fear of blow back or advertiser boycott? Should the mentally ill and their mates or family and friends who are obligated to attempt to make their world a safe space be the last word? Because they are already assuming that position. Expect each side of these debates to assume the tactical position of victim, to be as critic-proof as possible, so that any question could be looked at as insensitive. It may strike at the heart of concerns about open spaces left under-populated and urban centers over-populated. It may touch upon scarcity (which will become a more realistic view than plenty as years roll on). We will be at odds over what it means to be a community rather than factions and individuals. If it isn't race or culture that divides people, it can be our opinions and priorities as to what to do about complaints. In the case of a woman who has suffered rape in her past, there may not be a therapy that gets her over a re-living of that. She may claim that hearing the song "Baby it's Cold Outside" is her trigger to anxiety and memory flashbacks to her attack. While this may be true in her case, it raises questions for the rest of us (maybe to politely ask behind her back). When did she begin to associate this song with "date rape" ? Was it some time after it was used in Elf ? Was it after assault survivor Lady Gaga recorded it twice? Was it after some activist on a twitchy website looking for a fight first offered the dark interpretation> If the lyrics are the trigger, then are we being told that instrumental muzak in a shopping mall will cause the anxiety or full breakdown? If so, then how many notes? Would a ringtone of Baby it's Cold Outside cause an episode? How can the entire world change and adapt itself to make sure nobody is triggered? And then, what is the next song or movie we can wipe from the face of the earth? Because some ear jacks can still be heard in a quiet moment, and your neighbour's music can get pretty annoying sometimes, so it isn't even a matter of the "public space" as the final frontier. Does it matter who makes a complaint? Is removal of a song really sparing someone a trauma? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11731348 Nobody wants to be perceived as "blaming the victim" but it has been a long established principle of psychology that victims are ticking time bombs. While having compassion for someone abused, raped, assaulted, or enduring battle fatigue, or any form of PTSD, it is also worth remembering that untreated this can result in acting out in ways that harm others. In the case of an inherently non-violent person, there may be more subtle ways of acting out: attempting to re-assert control over the world when it can't be retroactively asserted over the attacker who is no longer around. It may even be focused upon the issue of demanding that a song be removed from the public sphere (or altogether). A victim may claim the reason to get rid of it is so that it won't dredge up memories of the abuse or rape or trauma, but all the while she or he will be constantly discussing the issue, searching the topic on-line and posting about it. This feeds into the movement of social media (if not the real world at large) to get rid of all things from the past, especially content that is deemed to stem from the male gaze, the patriarchy, colonialism, or just plain whiteness or maleness, or dated chestnuts that have been a tradition and comfort food for many on the common road to the grave. The conceit is that how great music, media and television will be when it is entirely given over to the whims of the Bollywood and Chinese finances behind it or when we finally have abolished the idea that a movie star must be what most people consider sexually attractive or photogenic. Is the history of cinema no longer important? Is the craft of directing - film grammar - no longer part of the communication? That's another issue and another rant. But there does seem to me a wide swath of encroachment pending and already gathering steam if the social media bubble I'm in is to be believed. Some of the most outspoken are the ostensibly Woke super-progressive types who think Social Justice Warrior (SJW) is not something to be used as a pejorative despite its inherent sarcastic intent. In China they call it beizuo.

I don't want to ping-pong in discussions all day. What I don't want to say is that the PoundMeToo movement (despite some incidental good coming from it) has too easily caused programmers to cave. It is in itself the untraceable gun being passed around. False binaries rule. "Oh, you won't ban that song? You and your sponsors must be pro-rape. You insensitive bastards!" People have been radicalized beyond reason. And I say this on principle. Baby it's Cold is not my cup of tea - I didn't get exposure to it until a few years back. On principle - and this makes me look like an arsehole at first blush - I passionately resist letting things go at the behest of or ostensibly to protect unstable people. And I celebrate provocative material. I make sure to show people Team America: World Police or The Dictator (genius hybrid of rom-com format and scathing satire of evil and idealism at once), and Heathers. My own writing stomps on eggshells. When last year I realized Dave and some support structure for Porno the Clown would steer away from my writing and not vindicate 10 years (off and on) of work, that was largely the same issue. My glib fidelity to my drawings and inflammatory rejoinders versus what the kids today sarcastically call SJW sensibility watering it down. That would have been a nightmare. So I don't want to be disingenuous. I recently wrote a rant about the dynamic of victims becoming offenders in many cases and how their acting out these days may only be imposing control over what the rest of us can see or hear. I have attended on air show to cover it for community TV - nightmare for the neck and eyes. Not a dog in this fight. But advocates for the triggered immigrant have their argument and I may be in favor of the conflict as natural but not necessarily a contrived resolution to the conflict. As for muzac of Baby it's Cold Outside I call bullshit. I would not have likely recognized the melody in 50 years on this earth, and it is only some "busybody" kicking off a dark interpretation that gets folks like Chae affronted and taking it personally. Months back I realized she was chiming in a lot and personally triggered and she disclosed her personal trauma so since I had not added her in the first place I blocked her because I expected I might answer future posts on Angela's FB. Didn't bother bringing it up when I was one of two audience members for the Pirate Ship show, but no doubt Dave read her a post on your thread. To be honest I suspect her influence on Dave doomed the planned version of PTC. Sorry this note is long. This is how my day starts. I like movies and music to kick people in the ass. A makes person walking down University may not be appropriate but it is the germ that tests the immune system. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A few people got it into their heads that I have suggested funds are being raised to bribe radio stations to ban the song Baby it's cold outside. That is an example of someone interjecting bat guano into a discussion. It would be redundant to bribe a radio station to ban a song after the down hill momentum of social media frenzy has gotten rolling against it. Some otherwise intelligent people have embraced the idea that one person's alleged bad reaction to a song on mall musac is everybody's problem. I can understand a boyfriend taking that on as his protective mission for his perpetually triggered girlfriend. But no doubt hearing the melody of a song that SOME people have officially misinterpreted can't be so upsetting as my own (often strained polite) social media posts which are text that merely fail to parrot the popular lies of the day. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Clarification/correction. Meg Lily put a spin on my words, "When certain slacktivists begin to lobby.... Money talks". Does NOT mean they are bribing programmers. They don't need to be bribed. Lobby can mean e-mailing or boycotting - actions that can detract or distract and cause mischaracterization of a station or studio and hurt the bottom line and life's too short. They have other songs or shows. So again, not money coming in but lack of profit coming in is the meaning intended for money talks. All the google hits I got got for " Ban Baby its cold outside" were each a report of a different radio station dropping the song "in the wake of the PoundMeToo movement." I say that's preemptive action and FEAR of being perceived as on the wrong "side" of that hashtag / lightening rod.

The Big Chill (2019)

Trigger warning: This blog is not romancing, placating, or marketing. It is resigned to inevitable alienation, and that is what this entry is about. It is also inherently hypocritical because blogs are crap and "part of the problem." It may even be boring. And also please excuse the formatting. I NEED, NEED, NEED paragraph breaks and haven't figured out how to avoid how Blogger crams everything together. Other than maybe adding videos or pictures. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Most controversial thought: Victims are ticking time bombs. If they don't have guns like Halloween (2018)'s Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) they will gravitate toward whatever forms of weapons are available, even social media networking, to take something back and feel effective instead of powerless, maybe in perpetuity, whether they realize it or not. Only they may not be I have to examine and question the whiff of radicalization that permeate social media, and I am totally inept at maintaining a bubble of protection against bullshit. Lately what comes to mind is a Lawrence Kasdan film released back in 1983 - the same year as the last Original Trilogy Star Wars film Return of the Jedi which Kasdan co-wrote if that helps give younger people context. I had assumed for years that the title The Big Chill referred to death, because the premise is old friends coming together at a funeral over the suicide of their most charismatic friend. But special features on the DVD have Kasdan explaining how years after college he met an old mate of his whose youthful idealism had changed over the years and his politics had become repugnant to him and that is what Kasdan calls a big chill. Today, I think most fragmentation happens over sub-issues. There are many people I like with whom I might not get along. Would I get into a tiff with him because I think his son Jon is too SJW ? It has come to that. I may respect Oprah Winfrey for many things she has done. She did after all receive a Schindler ring from Steven Spielberg. But more recently she failed to do her due diligence as a broadcaster with such reach; she jumped onto the post PoundMeToo freight train with Dylan Farrow, as did her chum Gayle King, without having read the copious fact-checking articles by Robert Weide that would have caused any reasonable person to look elsewhere for a case study to examine and make an example of. The BelieveHer movement also decided to ignore Soon-Yi Previn's claim that Mia Farrow had abused her. It didn't fit the enforced narrative any more than Moses Farrow making the same claim. Can't question Mia - the blind spot of Ronan. He can joke, "Aren't we all?" as a reply to whether he might have been conceived by Frank Sinatra, even if someone else was allowed to pay his child support. But I digress. There is no point in paraphrasing the well put writings of Robert Weide on the subject. Here is just one sample. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// https://ronanfarrowletter.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/qa-with-dylan-farrow/ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// That saga alone can be the wedge that separates friends or causes them to fill in the blanks of verbal DNA to construct your character as a human being. Common social media topics that have engaged chilly debate may be Terrorism and Rape - two crimes that nobody on either "side" of the argument would ever support. If the argument splinters for either, it is either "Keep living exactly as you do, or that is how the terrorists win" or "here are some safety tips to minimize vulnerability to crime A or B." In either case, even discussing (on-line especially) with a reasonable person who knows you as a three dimensional human being, you can have your head bitten off by a shrill creature on the sidelines. People on the right think I am a bleeding heart liberal or SJW and people on the extreme left think I am a regressive conservative. Just left of the middle is about correct, and I reject package deals because each case under discussion deserves its own respect. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Consider any victim of a tragedy or a crime or trauma. Is it likely that someone raised with alcoholic or physical abuse might grow up to act out in similar behaviour? That had been a taken-for-granted danger for decades. If someone loses parents at an early age, will he/she grow up to be Batman or a criminal having had to fend for themselves or deal with instability? I can only say anecdotally that I have clashed with one con artist whose parents died in an explosive car crash when she was five. I am inclined to believe that violence begets violence. Surely not all victims of child molestation end up offending as adults, but many do. Victims of rape may spend their whole lives trying to fend off or get revenge upon an attacker or violator who is long gone. That energy and indignation has to be vented somehow. Don't take my no-nothing word for it -- look it up. That hostility can become the eggshell-paved floor of a dysfunctional home or it can be a twitchy existence on Twitter. There was a tag line for the Louis Malle film Damage, "Damaged people are dangerous because they know they can survive." It may not be in fashion to suggest that the victim-offender continuum still exists, because that would be called "blaming the victim." /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "I was raped," someone can say to shut down a conversation or make any follow-up seem cruel. "The United States bombed my town and killed many of my family," another person can say with similar impact. Nightmares. Either a true mike drop or akin to Al Franken calling 9/11 George W. Bush's "Little Black Dress." How do you best control the discourse? And what value is the discourse? And is it THE discourse or merely A discourse? I once had to unfollow someone who was constantly posting about rape and rape culture and I had tried to contribute to discussion and get to the bottom of it as politely as possible but it was a distraction. I won't say trigger. More like just one more thing I can't do anything to help. Once she tried to describe her frustration with an anecdote that she once reported her apartment had items stolen after a party and she was affronted that the police asked questions and checked out the place. Nevermind that plenty of insurance fraud cases would love to be furnished with a police report, so police do have to vet information. If that robbery represented a rape, the Crown Prosecutor needs to know there is a chance at conviction so the questions had better be asked at the outset. And yet people can be demonized for asking questions. I have encountered some vile people, many of whom like the same films and espouse similar political positions. It is fairly easy to find people with a healthy hatred of Doug Ford or the forty-fifth "President" of the United States. But wow, under the surface of a so-called liberal can be a seething control freak sending a cyber swarm after someone who disagrees on a point. To paraphrase the villain Phillip Seymour Hoffman played in Mission: Impossible III, "You know someone's character by how they treat someone they don't have to treat well." That can be a guy who is all about posturing and telling women what they want to hear. It can also be about the victim of past trauma who will never meet her attacker again and must find a substitute. I was once in a play where the woman playing my wife was really punching me and it hurt. She admitted she was actually losing control because she was thinking of her real husband. In the absence of a true monster, people are often looking for micro aggression or signals -- anything that can take as a tip of the iceberg indicator or dog whistle that this person is "the other" infiltrating a conversation and must be shamed instead of having their views absorbed and actually assessed. If you belong to a critic-proof permanent victim class, what may even be a psychotic pattern of mind-fuckery can be masked as a showy social activism. Never mind that it intrudes on others and what they do or what they like, because that is the point. It may only be unconscious abuse but it is still abuse. It is still following through on the cycle. The world did something to you and now you will do something back. A friend of yours died in a pool, so nobody should have a swimming pool. You had an abortion, so the sound of someone else's baby is triggering. Caucasians historically have kept others down, so their success or the appearance of it is triggering. Have a spite against the Catholic or Christian Church? Down with Nativity scenes. (No, there's not a war against Christmas but there are some griping and badmouthing only because those are the weapons available.) The inmates - at least on-line - run the asylum. You read a tweet of a blog about Baby it's Cold Outside and some twisted victim or self-styled white-knighter told you it was rapey so now you can take mall musac as an insensitive act against you. Because it may trigger memories of rape or if you are just a sensitive soul it evokes the terrible social ill of rape that you definitely don't want to think about in those spare moments between Googling "rape culture" and insisting that back to the Future would play far better for everyone if it started with a rape trigger warning over Biff's attack on Loraine. You are not a fan of RoboCop, so it means nothing to you to forbid the best scene where he shoots a rapist's balls off. Just as it is reasonable for the pro-choice movement to say, "keep your laws off of my body" it is also fair to say "keep your agenda out of my movie enjoyment." The iconic death of Chrissy (Susan Backline) at the start of Jaws unnerves me to this day. But it is part of the contract with a storyteller and the engagement and stakes of it. So much of the discussion and debate in issues of the day have to do with TRASHING a craft and an art ostensibly to protect the fragile minds of a few. It is no different that the right wing constantly saying "what will we tell the children?" when confronted with gay or transgender people they would rather sweep under the carpet. As I said at the outset, a victim can be a ticking time bomb. If someone is selflessly feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, that is genuine commendable heroism. If someone is merely expressing anger and letting fly with rage and looking to make enemies ostensibly for the sake of social justice it may not be so remarkable. It may be a pathology. The instinct is to show empathy and offer to solve the problem but even reaching out can be like diving in after someone who is flailing around in the water. They can pull you under or it turns out they are in the jaws of a shark. I don't know that plane crash survivors go on to try to crash planes, but the movie Fearless does explore some of the psychological fallout people can suffer. The reality is that I may have to just accept that some people I like (or whose facades I like) may not consider me part of the tribe. I had someone with a hostile edge who chimed in on a few of my comments and so I blocked her. Too much work to do a back and forth, like answering washroom graffiti. I find I spend far too much time on-line visiting with people I don't like instead of those I most care about. Anyway, I blocked this person. . . even though her boyfriend is also someone I know and had not needed to block. . . but he must have shown her a post on his phone when I answered a comment of his about Baby it's Cold Outside and the rush to abandon all things that aren't deemed "relevant" and "okay" by bat-shit people and she had a discussion about it and a common friend remarked how surreal that was. Not my finest moment. It is almost better to not know people and let them rant and rave and splash in the water. A few years back, I neglected to disable FB alerts on my cell phone and ended up idly replying to useless things while watching a movie at home. Not worth it. Better to leave a comment and then unfollow the thread if possible. A statement is a statement. Someone had posted a blog railing against the male gaze in movies and used as its examples of this Fifty Shades of Grey (neglecting its director and author/boss were women) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (omitting that Joss Whedon was a high profile feminist-- who hadn't been embarrassed publicly just yet), and then as a positive example it threw a bone to Mad Max Fury Road but then jumped through hoops and offered charts to prove that its female focus was forced by the frame. . . . I had to address that and also note that if you like Imperiator Furiosa you can thank the 70 year old male gaze of George Miller because she is his baby girl. I let myself get drawn away from those specifics to a wider sphere of discussion where I had no real opinion and did not realize it was basically a tactic like Bruce the shark leading the Orca further out to sea. People will test the water to put your name out there and make it about you when it is not. To make matters worse, an actor I had to unfriend for abuse the previous year chimed in with shade for me because I had neglected to block him. The sort of guy who likes to use terms like "mansplain." The sort who might not make it to the end of this longer-than-planned post. I don't see this as explaining much, but more trying to reach into the dirt and chaos of life and work out what it is about and name the demons. Social activism (charity, kindness) is not a symptom of anything but someone who wears the sarcastic term Social Justice Warrior as a badge of honor and spends their time on such missions as coloring those of us who in 2016 preferred Sanders over Clinton as "BernieBros" or those of us who wanted a continuation of the Eighties iteration of Ghostbusters as GhostBros to help Sony spin their bad remake idea into something about sexism. . . and then to get rid of any song or film or cultural touchstone that may trigger your girlfriend or your own wounded bird self is to encroach and to take and to invade and undervalue and ultimately to harm or abuse. It is just another form, and it is apparently a perfect crime because they are getting away with it. That is the activism or slacktivism that stands in for physical attack. It completes the circle. It may not satisfy the victim-centered person but it will give them a jolt of "so there - take that." Every now and then I can feel that actress from a community theater play, Dark of the Moon, still jabbing my arm just under the shoulder. It is annoying. All I can say is keep your hard copies of old movies or music or everything that needs to be protected until after the storm where people are constantly spattered with bat-shit.