Four years ago, I stopped into a Toys R Us and noticed how little innovation there has been in the basic categories of toys -- action figures, board games, video games, building sets, mini-vehicles, and so on. There doesn't seem to be a fundamentally new type of children's toy since the explosion of action figures and video games in the late 1970s and '80s.
I stopped in again and took another good look around, and that seems just as true four years later. The trend toward recycling older brands of action figures (etc.) was even more obvious. Star Trek is now in, thanks to the new movies, and so is ThunderCats -- apparently based on a reboot / re-whatever of the original cartoon. It boggles the mind to walk into a toy store looking for stuff for my nephew and see basically nothing new in terms of the type of toy, and even the brands within each type, compared to when I was his age.
But something else struck me that I didn't notice before -- whether it's old or new, it seemed like everything was based on a strong brand already in existence, with the toys being a kind of spin-off and cash-grab. There was hardly any toy line that was created to be a toy line first and foremost -- it had to be parasitic on some mega-franchise.
This marks a real decline in the imagination of children over the past 20 years. They don't want to play with toys whose elaborate backstory they do not already know, more or less. The unfamiliar does not provoke a feeling of curiosity but of boredom. "Oh, I don't know what that is. Hey look, trains from Thomas and Friends!"
Back in the '80s, when the toy culture was at its most recent peak, there were very popular toy lines that were launched alongside a cartoon or comic book series. However, for a lot of those multi-pronged attacks, most kids didn't see the cartoon or read the comics, whether because they were poorly advertised, were only around for a few episodes / issues, or whatever else.
For example, I never even knew that the Inhumanoids was a cartoon when I was little -- not until I read about it in Wikipedia. It only lasted 13 episodes and must have been on at a weird time or only in certain parts of the country. But those toys were really popular. Every major toy store carried them, and my two brothers and I had a variety of them. Ditto for the Dino-Riders -- instantly recognize the toys, no clue that there was a cartoon to promote the toys. Starriors had some kind of limited comic book tie-in, but again, I never knew about it, even though every kid would have recognized and probably owned some of the toys. And so on and so on.
If anything, it appears as though the toy lines were given the most emphasis, and the cartoons, comic books, movies, etc., were solely intended to promote the toys -- not to stand alone as cartoons, etc. Today it's the exact opposite: the movies and TV shows are highly developed, and the toy lines are cheaply and thoughtlessly spun off of them.
Sure, there are exceptions from the good old days. Everyone who was a child then remembers the cartoons that tied in with the toy lines for Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man, ThunderCats, and a handful of others. Not to mention the ubiquitous Star Wars toys.
But when I look through Wikipedia's category page for 1980s toys, and weight each entry by how popular it was back then -- like, do I remember it, did I own the toys -- the general picture is that we were interested in toys that were not spin-offs of some brand or franchise that we already knew a lot about. Give us something new and exciting, dammit.
This is even more striking outside of action figures. Boglins, Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears, Construx, Garbage Pail Kids cards, Madballs, My Pet Monster, Pound Puppies, Teddy Ruxpin, the Koosh ball, the Pogo Ball, Skip-It, Lazer Tag... It's hard to find examples of stuffed animals or dolls that actually were based on an existing franchise. Whereas now the plushies have to be instantly recognizable -- Mario, Sonic, or some other popular video game character, Disney / Pixar blockbuster characters, etc.
I became too old for toys during the '90s, but my sense is that this independence of the toy world from other worlds of entertainment had already begun to decline by then. When I was right on the edge, around 12 or 13 (circa 1993), there didn't seem to be line after line of toys whose brand was unfamiliar from the broader culture of TV, movies, and video games. But there were still things later like the Furby and tamagotchi, which weren't based on existing mega-brands. By now, there's not even that minimal level of unfamiliar toy lines.
I know even less about the toy culture of the mid-century, but my vague impression is that, like the Millennial era, it was more dependent on huge familiar brands. The Davy Crockett hat, the Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon ray gun, the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, and so on. I'd have to look more into it to be sure, but I'm not that interested right now. It would go along with the broader cultural inertia of the time. Like how everybody had begun to complain about how nothing new had swept popular music since the Jazz Age, and how dull and degenerate it had become by the 1950s. (Sound familiar?)
All kids really need is a basic sense of who the good guys and the bad guys are. Let their imaginations fill in the rest on their own. Maybe my idea of what some action figure was like differed from what my brother or my friend thought they should be like. Well, OK, suit yourself. Kids don't suit themselves anymore, do they? Every last little detail has to be fed to them pre-digested.
Have you ever seen them open up a new toy set, something with many different pieces, and the first thing they rush to do with them is re-create the way they're pictured on the box? Like, the same exact configuration. My nephew got some kind of vehicle and location set (like gas trucks and a gas station), and that's immediately what he did. My brother reassured him that he didn't have to just duplicate the picture on the box, y'know, encouraging him to have a little more fun with it. No, my nephew was dead set on it looking exactly like the box first.
Even worse with Legos -- there are no more blocks that you build into whatever you want. Everything is a part of a playset with a specific theme and specific final form to... I was going to say "achieve," but more like "snap into place." It's like coloring by numbers.
Children's toys are of no great cultural importance, but they do give us insight into the mindset and behavior of young people, especially as it changes over time. The fact that they still insist on not using their imagination when given explicit encouragement by their parents, just goes to show that this shift is not merely the helicopter parents warping and stunting their kids' minds. Somehow the children themselves, since the 1990s, have sensed that they're growing up in a world where OCD is the winning strategy, and not flexible thinking and curiosity.
Children are more perceptive of the world around them than we give them credit for, and are more active in creating their identities than the blank slate view would have it. Unfortunately in this case, that means a lot of the blame lies with the kids themselves when they turn out so rigid, boring, and incurious.
June 19, 2013
June 14, 2013
Man of Steel and dissipated visual tension
Updated
I haven't seen the movie yet and probably will not, mostly on the basis of the dull-looking visual approach that's evident in the trailers -- monochromatic, desaturated, uniform lighting, deep focus (information overload focus), jarring action tempos that you can't get into the groove of, and so on. "Bombastic" keeps coming up in reviews, both about the look and story.
I had hopes for this one looking cool, given Christopher Nolan's influence as producer. But his cinematographer Wally Pfister is absent, and pinch-hitting for him is Amir Mokri, known for such sublime-looking films as The Joy Luck Club, Coyote Ugly, Bad Boys II, Fast & Furious, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. And with the director of the hit video game 300 at the helm, a nerdy in-your-face overload look must have been inevitable.
Again, I haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to make too much out of a single frame, but it represents a larger problem with the movie's visual style. Now, we don't know exactly what's going on plot-wise in the image below, but it's clear that the butt-kicking babe type on the right is physically threatening Lois Lane on the left, with Lois' partner Superman looking on anxiously from further back.
Superman is the protagonist, the character we're supposed to identify with the most. We are meant to feel how tense he must be right now, not knowing how far the man-woman is going to escalate things. With her larger size, dark armored clothing, and colder stare, she looks like she could just snap Lois' neck if she wanted to. How far is she going to take it?
Since all of the action is taking place between the two women in the foreground, our attention should be concentrated there, and Superman should be far less intrusive visually. He is too in-focus -- more or less as in-focus as the foreground characters -- and we can read too much detail on his face. The shadows thrown on his face don't do enough to hide the details of his expression.
Instead it needs to be blurred enough so that we can tell in what direction his head is pointing, which tells us who he's looking at, and only the vaguest hint of what expression he's making. We assume that he's feeling worried and watching carefully for the slightest sign that things are taking a turn for the worse before he jumps in to save Lois. We don't need to have that telegraphed in crisp detail from the background -- it's a natural, normal reaction to the action in the foreground. Reactions that are not noteworthy or surprising do not need to be focused on, pulling our attention away from where it should be building up.
In addition to keeping our attention where it should be, a blurry focus on Superman would also heighten our concern for him. We assume that he has that look on his face, but by obscuring the focus enough, we don't get 100% confirmation. It keeps us anxious and uncertain ourselves.
We also would not feel complete reassurance that there's a deus ex machina waiting in the wings to rescue Lois if things go horribly wrong. With his determined, ready-to-sacrifice expression so clearly in focus, we're never in doubt that Lois is safe. I mean, just look at that face -- one false move, and that chick's ass is grass. We need to see a blurry face instead, just to keep us guessing about how prepared he is to intervene. It would feel like something bad could happen, that something is at stake, and worth getting on the edge of our seat about. As it stands, it looks like Superman is Lois' spotter at the gym.
This is such a glaring mistake, and the fix so obvious, that it leaves little hope for the rest of the movie's visuals.
To see what I mean, let's revisit an image from an earlier post on The Parallax View and sublime visual style:
The placement of characters within the frame is similar enough to the Man of Steel image, with the background figures looking on and from between those in the foreground. Since most of the action is going on in the foreground, those two are in good focus. But since there's little going on in the background, those two are out of focus. We can tell that the background character on the left is watching the foreground characters, sizing them up, biding his time until he sets a trap for them. And we can tell that the man on the right is turned toward him in a show of deference, so he must be the subordinate going along with whatever his boss' plan is.
All of that hits us immediately without being able to clearly read the faces of those in the background. Indeed the blurry focus heightens the menacing atmosphere of the bar, making the boss man look more shadowy and difficult-to-read.
The background character looking on does not always have to be blurred out of focus, though. Here is a shot from The Dark Knight Rises, where the Batman suit is staring at Bruce Wayne, practically calling out to him to put it back on:
Notice how sharply in-focus the suit is. Now if it were a human face in the background, this "calling out" image would feel too on-the-nose. But since it's a mask that has had most of the fine details of human facial expression stylized out of it, we don't attend to it that much, even though it's in crisp focus. The apprehensive look on Wayne's face provides more expressive detail, so we attend more to his face than the mask.
Particularly in action movies, a genre that should be about building up and releasing tension in catharsis, we need to feel a sense of mystery, uncertainty, and menace just from looking at the setting and the people and things moving around in it. If everything is so clearly in focus, anxiety cannot build up in the first place. Thus with nothing at stake, the action scenes are like watching a child swinging his action figures into one another.
The simplest way to fix these problems is to shoot with an anamorphic lens, which brings the things being focused on into even sharper clarity, while throwing everything in front of and behind that distance into a blur. And also refraining from racking focus so often -- that is, shifting focus from one distance to another, typically to focus on one character and then another within a single shot. That works well enough when it's shifting between two people chatting inside of a car, with one closer to us than the other, and switching focus to whoever is speaking at the moment. But when a sense of uncertainty is called for, we need for the character to remain blurry throughout the shot.
Probably the best use of these focus techniques to build and release tension in an action movie is Die Hard, but that's a topic for a post of its own. Aside from more effectively giving us the right emotional response to the plot, it helps to give the movie a striking visual style that has been lacking in the kickass summer action genre of the past 20 years, and that was absent before the rise of sublime-oriented filmmaking during the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
Update: It appears that Man of Steel was shot with an anamorphic lens after all... not that you can tell from looking. It takes a special skill to deaden the shallow-focus effects of shooting in Panavision. I should have looked it up on IMDb first, but if it's used the way it's supposed to, it should leap out and not be something you have to look up to confirm.
Going back to the first image, and contrasting with the one from The Parallax View, it's not only the depth of focus that's off, but also the depth of staging. Superman is standing too close to the foreground characters, again as though he were spotting Lois Lane at the gym. It's too close for the shallow focus to work its magic. He should be placed 5 to 10 feet farther back, close enough to still be connected to the foreground action, but far enough that he'll be blurry and not acting as Lois' training wheels.
And of course all the CGI stuff is deep-focus and information overload, not real things seen through the camera lens. CGI is either incapable of mimicking shallow focus, or its creators and consumers do not resonate with that kind of look, and dig the boring crappy look instead.
I haven't seen the movie yet and probably will not, mostly on the basis of the dull-looking visual approach that's evident in the trailers -- monochromatic, desaturated, uniform lighting, deep focus (information overload focus), jarring action tempos that you can't get into the groove of, and so on. "Bombastic" keeps coming up in reviews, both about the look and story.
I had hopes for this one looking cool, given Christopher Nolan's influence as producer. But his cinematographer Wally Pfister is absent, and pinch-hitting for him is Amir Mokri, known for such sublime-looking films as The Joy Luck Club, Coyote Ugly, Bad Boys II, Fast & Furious, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. And with the director of the hit video game 300 at the helm, a nerdy in-your-face overload look must have been inevitable.
Again, I haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to make too much out of a single frame, but it represents a larger problem with the movie's visual style. Now, we don't know exactly what's going on plot-wise in the image below, but it's clear that the butt-kicking babe type on the right is physically threatening Lois Lane on the left, with Lois' partner Superman looking on anxiously from further back.
Superman is the protagonist, the character we're supposed to identify with the most. We are meant to feel how tense he must be right now, not knowing how far the man-woman is going to escalate things. With her larger size, dark armored clothing, and colder stare, she looks like she could just snap Lois' neck if she wanted to. How far is she going to take it?
Since all of the action is taking place between the two women in the foreground, our attention should be concentrated there, and Superman should be far less intrusive visually. He is too in-focus -- more or less as in-focus as the foreground characters -- and we can read too much detail on his face. The shadows thrown on his face don't do enough to hide the details of his expression.
Instead it needs to be blurred enough so that we can tell in what direction his head is pointing, which tells us who he's looking at, and only the vaguest hint of what expression he's making. We assume that he's feeling worried and watching carefully for the slightest sign that things are taking a turn for the worse before he jumps in to save Lois. We don't need to have that telegraphed in crisp detail from the background -- it's a natural, normal reaction to the action in the foreground. Reactions that are not noteworthy or surprising do not need to be focused on, pulling our attention away from where it should be building up.
In addition to keeping our attention where it should be, a blurry focus on Superman would also heighten our concern for him. We assume that he has that look on his face, but by obscuring the focus enough, we don't get 100% confirmation. It keeps us anxious and uncertain ourselves.
We also would not feel complete reassurance that there's a deus ex machina waiting in the wings to rescue Lois if things go horribly wrong. With his determined, ready-to-sacrifice expression so clearly in focus, we're never in doubt that Lois is safe. I mean, just look at that face -- one false move, and that chick's ass is grass. We need to see a blurry face instead, just to keep us guessing about how prepared he is to intervene. It would feel like something bad could happen, that something is at stake, and worth getting on the edge of our seat about. As it stands, it looks like Superman is Lois' spotter at the gym.
This is such a glaring mistake, and the fix so obvious, that it leaves little hope for the rest of the movie's visuals.
To see what I mean, let's revisit an image from an earlier post on The Parallax View and sublime visual style:
All of that hits us immediately without being able to clearly read the faces of those in the background. Indeed the blurry focus heightens the menacing atmosphere of the bar, making the boss man look more shadowy and difficult-to-read.
The background character looking on does not always have to be blurred out of focus, though. Here is a shot from The Dark Knight Rises, where the Batman suit is staring at Bruce Wayne, practically calling out to him to put it back on:
Notice how sharply in-focus the suit is. Now if it were a human face in the background, this "calling out" image would feel too on-the-nose. But since it's a mask that has had most of the fine details of human facial expression stylized out of it, we don't attend to it that much, even though it's in crisp focus. The apprehensive look on Wayne's face provides more expressive detail, so we attend more to his face than the mask.
Particularly in action movies, a genre that should be about building up and releasing tension in catharsis, we need to feel a sense of mystery, uncertainty, and menace just from looking at the setting and the people and things moving around in it. If everything is so clearly in focus, anxiety cannot build up in the first place. Thus with nothing at stake, the action scenes are like watching a child swinging his action figures into one another.
The simplest way to fix these problems is to shoot with an anamorphic lens, which brings the things being focused on into even sharper clarity, while throwing everything in front of and behind that distance into a blur. And also refraining from racking focus so often -- that is, shifting focus from one distance to another, typically to focus on one character and then another within a single shot. That works well enough when it's shifting between two people chatting inside of a car, with one closer to us than the other, and switching focus to whoever is speaking at the moment. But when a sense of uncertainty is called for, we need for the character to remain blurry throughout the shot.
Probably the best use of these focus techniques to build and release tension in an action movie is Die Hard, but that's a topic for a post of its own. Aside from more effectively giving us the right emotional response to the plot, it helps to give the movie a striking visual style that has been lacking in the kickass summer action genre of the past 20 years, and that was absent before the rise of sublime-oriented filmmaking during the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
Update: It appears that Man of Steel was shot with an anamorphic lens after all... not that you can tell from looking. It takes a special skill to deaden the shallow-focus effects of shooting in Panavision. I should have looked it up on IMDb first, but if it's used the way it's supposed to, it should leap out and not be something you have to look up to confirm.
Going back to the first image, and contrasting with the one from The Parallax View, it's not only the depth of focus that's off, but also the depth of staging. Superman is standing too close to the foreground characters, again as though he were spotting Lois Lane at the gym. It's too close for the shallow focus to work its magic. He should be placed 5 to 10 feet farther back, close enough to still be connected to the foreground action, but far enough that he'll be blurry and not acting as Lois' training wheels.
And of course all the CGI stuff is deep-focus and information overload, not real things seen through the camera lens. CGI is either incapable of mimicking shallow focus, or its creators and consumers do not resonate with that kind of look, and dig the boring crappy look instead.
June 13, 2013
Pictures of teenagers in the good old days
Was just browsing through the photography section of the library stacks and saw a book called Teenage by Joseph Szabo, with an intro by Cameron Crowe (the writer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High). You'll have to find it at a library, too, since it was released in such small numbers.
Luckily Szabo has a website where he's put up a selection of teenage life during the '70s and '80s around Long Island, New York. See here, here, and here.
You don't see pictures like that from when the Silent Gen were teenagers in the mid-century, and you don't see them for Millennials either. Even Gen Y has pretty lame pictures from their teenage years -- the mid-'90s to early 2000s. I must emphasize this because so many people look at these as shots of a constant presence in the world called "teenage life." But they capture a very specific moment in the oscillating zeitgeist.
Perhaps the most succinct way to describe the differences between the '70s / '80s atmosphere and the mid-century before and Millennial age after is wild vs. tame, or animalic vs. machine-like. The teenagers in Szabo's pictures don't look like they've been programmed by engineers or trained by a team of handlers.
No entirely blank faces, nor caricatured kabuki masks to emotionally distance themselves from the viewer, whether by under-stimulation or over-stimulation. It's just the right level to engage a fellow human being. Even the goofballs aren't distorting their faces that much. They're all animated around their friends and peers, unlike today's and the mid-century's teenagers who sat still and showed little excitement in the physical presence of their friends.
But if they were looking at the photographer / viewer as outsider, they have this look like a feral animal has toward anyone who tries to approach it. Everybody looks streetwise. Slightly, not comically narrowed eyes, direct stare, inner eyebrows slightly raised in suspicion, corners of the mouth in a slight frown.
And look at how touchy-feely they were -- especially the girls. I sure was born about 10 or 20 years too late. It's not all exaggerated and hammed up purely for the camera or to whore for attention from the onlookers (that's more '90s and 21st century). It's more like the creatures you'd see in a nature documentary, entirely lacking in self-awareness and just going for it.
The strangest feeling you get looking at old (but not too old) pictures of teenagers is how mature their facial expressions are, yet how adolescent their bodies look. Some dude with hardly any hair on his chest has a genuine thousand-yard stare, and some babe with tight, glowing skin on her legs has a pensive mid-life-crisis look on her face. Teenage body and grown-up behavior -- that heady combination must have made heads spin among the older generations. (Though maybe it looked familiar to the Flaming Youth survivors of the Roaring Twenties.) You can see why there was such a fascination with them when the youthquake was in full swing.
I wonder if that's how the prevailing parenting style changes direction -- when a generation that grew up so quickly has kids of their own, they remember their own hurried youth and try to put the brakes on their kids' development. Then when the sheltered and stunted have kids, they want them to have the more footloose and fancy-free social life that they never got to enjoy as youngsters themselves.
Luckily Szabo has a website where he's put up a selection of teenage life during the '70s and '80s around Long Island, New York. See here, here, and here.
You don't see pictures like that from when the Silent Gen were teenagers in the mid-century, and you don't see them for Millennials either. Even Gen Y has pretty lame pictures from their teenage years -- the mid-'90s to early 2000s. I must emphasize this because so many people look at these as shots of a constant presence in the world called "teenage life." But they capture a very specific moment in the oscillating zeitgeist.
Perhaps the most succinct way to describe the differences between the '70s / '80s atmosphere and the mid-century before and Millennial age after is wild vs. tame, or animalic vs. machine-like. The teenagers in Szabo's pictures don't look like they've been programmed by engineers or trained by a team of handlers.
No entirely blank faces, nor caricatured kabuki masks to emotionally distance themselves from the viewer, whether by under-stimulation or over-stimulation. It's just the right level to engage a fellow human being. Even the goofballs aren't distorting their faces that much. They're all animated around their friends and peers, unlike today's and the mid-century's teenagers who sat still and showed little excitement in the physical presence of their friends.
But if they were looking at the photographer / viewer as outsider, they have this look like a feral animal has toward anyone who tries to approach it. Everybody looks streetwise. Slightly, not comically narrowed eyes, direct stare, inner eyebrows slightly raised in suspicion, corners of the mouth in a slight frown.
And look at how touchy-feely they were -- especially the girls. I sure was born about 10 or 20 years too late. It's not all exaggerated and hammed up purely for the camera or to whore for attention from the onlookers (that's more '90s and 21st century). It's more like the creatures you'd see in a nature documentary, entirely lacking in self-awareness and just going for it.
The strangest feeling you get looking at old (but not too old) pictures of teenagers is how mature their facial expressions are, yet how adolescent their bodies look. Some dude with hardly any hair on his chest has a genuine thousand-yard stare, and some babe with tight, glowing skin on her legs has a pensive mid-life-crisis look on her face. Teenage body and grown-up behavior -- that heady combination must have made heads spin among the older generations. (Though maybe it looked familiar to the Flaming Youth survivors of the Roaring Twenties.) You can see why there was such a fascination with them when the youthquake was in full swing.
I wonder if that's how the prevailing parenting style changes direction -- when a generation that grew up so quickly has kids of their own, they remember their own hurried youth and try to put the brakes on their kids' development. Then when the sheltered and stunted have kids, they want them to have the more footloose and fancy-free social life that they never got to enjoy as youngsters themselves.
June 11, 2013
Female heroines are boring who lack maternal motivation
Via Steve Sailer, here is an NYT article by some clueless queer about persistent sexism in American culture. He thought things would have changed so much in the past 20 years, i.e. as men cut off their balls and began to let pushy women get their way.
All of the lame female lead characters fail to resonate with us (unless we're social retards) because they don't provide a convincing motivation for why a woman is so gung-ho and daring, when they typically are non-confrontational and cautious.
Perhaps the strongest motivation a woman might have to assert herself in a confrontation is her maternal instinct. In the feminized and faggotized culture of the past 20 years, that simple insight has vanished from common understanding. Hence she's given motives that are typical of men and totally out of character for women, like bold exploration for its own sake (Tomb Raider), honor and vengeance (Kill Bill), exercising authority to uphold justice (Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU, who should have been a social worker), et ceteraaaaaaa...
The most believable and memorable female characters who risk violence in pursuit of their goals are all motivated by maternal instinct, whether toward their own offspring or toward others who push their maternal instinct buttons. Most notably, the Faye Dunaway and Isabella Rossellini characters from Chinatown and Blue Velvet. They represent a skillful and humbling subversion of the femme fatale archetype, where we're led to believe that she's going to be yet another one of those destructively self-focused women we've seen so many times from mid-century film noir. Yet it turns out that they are among the most praiseworthy characters in the movie, and have been acting all along out of a drive to protect their children -- among other, more questionable motives, of course. Wouldn't be interesting if their motives had no complexity and contradictions, would it?
The Rachel Ward character from After Dark, My Sweet is an interesting, though less successful example of this subverted femme fatale type. She hasn't been motivated by maternal instinct all along, indeed she feels callously toward a child she has helped to kidnap and hold for ransom. However, she does have a change of heart that introduces new tension among the criminal characters, and her change is believable because it stems from an irrepressible maternal instinct. This movie was made a bit too late within the heyday of neo-noir movies, 1990, to have been executed as well as Chinatown (1974) or Blue Velvet (1986), but the character is not unconvincing.
In fact, Ripley from Aliens doesn't feel so outrageously unbelievable because there's such a strong maternal motivation driving her to do anything in order to protect a small orphan girl whose entire family and community have been destroyed.
Even when they are not the lead characters and do not face so much danger, a mother whose child has been taken from her can still deliver a convincing damn-the-torpedoes approach to action, such as those from Poltergeist and Child's Play.
And then there are the female characters who are motivated to protect and mother those who are not their own offspring, but who they feel a big sisterly or surrogate motherly relationship with. Sarah Connor nurses Kyle Reese in The Terminator, where she is also motivated to violently confront an enemy that wants to kill her unborn son. The "final girl" archetype who survives at the end of the slasher flicks tends to be a babysitter (Halloween), camp counselor (the Friday the 13th series), and so on. The female protagonist in Labyrinth is driven to rescue her baby brother from a goblin king before it's too late.
The only real counter-example of a convincing female character who doggedly risks violence to pursue her goals, without maternal motivation, is Princess Leia from the Star Wars movies. She isn't acting on behalf of her kin, or to protect surrogate children. The character succeeds, though, because she isn't the primary or even secondary line of defense -- that would be all the male warrior types from those movies. And she relies less on physical strength or prowess with weaponry, and more on the forcefulness of her personality. Women have been known to be pushy and aggressive when you give them power.
And with human beings, it's not like with gorillas where it all comes down to brute strength -- having social influence and a dominant personality can take you pretty far without having to back it up with the threat of personal violent retaliation. Humans are more like chimpanzees, where politicking plays a much greater role than violent confrontation. And women have been known to be good at politicking.
Perhaps most importantly for the success of that character, Leia never reduces herself to petty cattiness, bitchiness, and pissiness. Getting easily offended, showing thin skin, and generally getting all huffy when something thwarts her goals would mark her as an immature middle school girl, incapable of rising to a position of power. No, she's more like the bossy Catholic school nun who ain't gonna take any shit from you buncha brats.
Although half-Jewish, Carrie Fisher did not tap into that side of her personality by portraying a guilt-tripping and castrating Jewish mother type, but something closer to a dominant Irish or Italian martinet mama bear. She's also part Scotch-Irish, so I'm guessing that's where she summoned that forceful rather than bitchy attitude from.
Well, now we're getting off onto another post altogether, so I'll end it there. But you get the idea: female characters who risk extreme violence must have some kind of strong maternal motivation, or else it will fail to convince an audience. I mean, an audience that isn't retarded about what men and women are like.
With higher levels of social isolation, more and more of the society is totally clueless about what women are like, and has no trouble consuming cultural products that feature butt-kicking babe types. That's just as true in our cocooning Millennial era as it was during the asocial mid-century, when butt-kicking babes were a staple of popular culture, most notably in the widespread comic book and pulp fiction media, and to a lesser extent in film noir. Once people start to come out of their shells again, they'll learn more about basic truths of human nature and find it unappealing and even off-putting to see warrior princess schlock.
But what about movies? It was all the way back in 1986 that Sigourney Weaver trounced “Aliens” and landed on the cover of Time, supposedly presaging an era of action heroines. But there haven’t been so many: Angelina Jolie in the “Tomb Raider” adventures, “Salt” and a few other hectic flicks; Jennifer Lawrence in the unfolding “Hunger Games” serial. Last summer Kristen Stewart’s “Snow White” needed a “Huntsman” at her side, and this summer? I see an “Iron Man,” a “Man of Steel” and Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Channing Tatum all shouldering the weight of civilization’s future. I see no comparable crew of warrior goddesses.
Heroines fare better on TV, but even there I’m struck by the persistent stereotype of a woman whose career devotion is both seed and flower of a tortured private life. Claire Danes in “Homeland,” Mireille Enos in “The Killing,” Dana Delany in “Body of Proof” and even Mariska Hargitay in “Law & Order: SVU” all fit this bill.
All of the lame female lead characters fail to resonate with us (unless we're social retards) because they don't provide a convincing motivation for why a woman is so gung-ho and daring, when they typically are non-confrontational and cautious.
Perhaps the strongest motivation a woman might have to assert herself in a confrontation is her maternal instinct. In the feminized and faggotized culture of the past 20 years, that simple insight has vanished from common understanding. Hence she's given motives that are typical of men and totally out of character for women, like bold exploration for its own sake (Tomb Raider), honor and vengeance (Kill Bill), exercising authority to uphold justice (Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU, who should have been a social worker), et ceteraaaaaaa...
The most believable and memorable female characters who risk violence in pursuit of their goals are all motivated by maternal instinct, whether toward their own offspring or toward others who push their maternal instinct buttons. Most notably, the Faye Dunaway and Isabella Rossellini characters from Chinatown and Blue Velvet. They represent a skillful and humbling subversion of the femme fatale archetype, where we're led to believe that she's going to be yet another one of those destructively self-focused women we've seen so many times from mid-century film noir. Yet it turns out that they are among the most praiseworthy characters in the movie, and have been acting all along out of a drive to protect their children -- among other, more questionable motives, of course. Wouldn't be interesting if their motives had no complexity and contradictions, would it?
The Rachel Ward character from After Dark, My Sweet is an interesting, though less successful example of this subverted femme fatale type. She hasn't been motivated by maternal instinct all along, indeed she feels callously toward a child she has helped to kidnap and hold for ransom. However, she does have a change of heart that introduces new tension among the criminal characters, and her change is believable because it stems from an irrepressible maternal instinct. This movie was made a bit too late within the heyday of neo-noir movies, 1990, to have been executed as well as Chinatown (1974) or Blue Velvet (1986), but the character is not unconvincing.
In fact, Ripley from Aliens doesn't feel so outrageously unbelievable because there's such a strong maternal motivation driving her to do anything in order to protect a small orphan girl whose entire family and community have been destroyed.
Even when they are not the lead characters and do not face so much danger, a mother whose child has been taken from her can still deliver a convincing damn-the-torpedoes approach to action, such as those from Poltergeist and Child's Play.
And then there are the female characters who are motivated to protect and mother those who are not their own offspring, but who they feel a big sisterly or surrogate motherly relationship with. Sarah Connor nurses Kyle Reese in The Terminator, where she is also motivated to violently confront an enemy that wants to kill her unborn son. The "final girl" archetype who survives at the end of the slasher flicks tends to be a babysitter (Halloween), camp counselor (the Friday the 13th series), and so on. The female protagonist in Labyrinth is driven to rescue her baby brother from a goblin king before it's too late.
The only real counter-example of a convincing female character who doggedly risks violence to pursue her goals, without maternal motivation, is Princess Leia from the Star Wars movies. She isn't acting on behalf of her kin, or to protect surrogate children. The character succeeds, though, because she isn't the primary or even secondary line of defense -- that would be all the male warrior types from those movies. And she relies less on physical strength or prowess with weaponry, and more on the forcefulness of her personality. Women have been known to be pushy and aggressive when you give them power.
And with human beings, it's not like with gorillas where it all comes down to brute strength -- having social influence and a dominant personality can take you pretty far without having to back it up with the threat of personal violent retaliation. Humans are more like chimpanzees, where politicking plays a much greater role than violent confrontation. And women have been known to be good at politicking.
Perhaps most importantly for the success of that character, Leia never reduces herself to petty cattiness, bitchiness, and pissiness. Getting easily offended, showing thin skin, and generally getting all huffy when something thwarts her goals would mark her as an immature middle school girl, incapable of rising to a position of power. No, she's more like the bossy Catholic school nun who ain't gonna take any shit from you buncha brats.
Although half-Jewish, Carrie Fisher did not tap into that side of her personality by portraying a guilt-tripping and castrating Jewish mother type, but something closer to a dominant Irish or Italian martinet mama bear. She's also part Scotch-Irish, so I'm guessing that's where she summoned that forceful rather than bitchy attitude from.
Well, now we're getting off onto another post altogether, so I'll end it there. But you get the idea: female characters who risk extreme violence must have some kind of strong maternal motivation, or else it will fail to convince an audience. I mean, an audience that isn't retarded about what men and women are like.
With higher levels of social isolation, more and more of the society is totally clueless about what women are like, and has no trouble consuming cultural products that feature butt-kicking babe types. That's just as true in our cocooning Millennial era as it was during the asocial mid-century, when butt-kicking babes were a staple of popular culture, most notably in the widespread comic book and pulp fiction media, and to a lesser extent in film noir. Once people start to come out of their shells again, they'll learn more about basic truths of human nature and find it unappealing and even off-putting to see warrior princess schlock.
June 9, 2013
Standing your ground against the killjoy hag army
Women are touchier and bigger control freaks than men, and they act more shrill and pissy when upset. So, places with at least a good minority of women, let alone half or a majority, will necessarily become joyless and soul-crushing.
Anything fun-loving and lively trips off the "Danger: chaos imminent" alarm located within the over-mothering lobe of the female brain. After pitching a little fit to the management, especially after recruiting a few other cackling hens to her side, the operators will bow to their pressure and extinguish the flames of fun before they begin to rage out of control (always just around the corner, don'tcha know).
At least, that's usually how it goes because no one bothers to stand up for themselves anymore. The current level of oppressiveness must be an overshoot if it represents zero force pushing back in the other direction. Start pushing back, and down it goes -- how far, you can't predict, but you'll never find out how low it can go until you begin to hold your ground. Women get away with so much, in part, because men allow them to.
There's also a strong age dimension in this struggle, with menopausal women being the worst offenders. The more childless, unmarried, and therefore bitter they are, the more strongly they'll channel their nagging and badgering instincts in anti-social directions -- that is, outside of their own domestic sphere, and into public spaces where they don't belong.
Virtually every temperance movement has begun this way, and became effected in public policy once the hausfraus with too much time on their hands managed to organize themselves and lobby the government.
Well, today I got a chance to strike a blow against all this oppressiveness, and I couldn't have asked for better results!
I brought some music to play at Starbucks to fit the leisurely, lazy Sunday afternoon atmosphere, so after sitting down with my drink, I started to play New Miserable Experience by the Gin Blossoms -- perhaps the last great all-American rock album, full of catchy riffs, melodic songwriting, real human feeling behind the vocal delivery, and spirited guitar solos. It spans such a range of emotions and styles that it's impossible not to groove to it, whether or not you'd rank it among your favorites.
And being recorded in 1992, it doesn't sound "dated" -- not that that's a bad thing in an era of crappy contempo culture. You don't hear infectiously enjoyable music like this anymore, but it doesn't sound like it belongs to an alien age. It ought to be a total audience-pleaser. Furthermore, I only had the volume at about 4 or 5 out of 10 on a portable speaker, in a fairly full room where in-store music was already playing, so it's not as though I'd be disturbing anybody, right?
Unfortunately I had chosen a spot near two fat, perpetually dateless hags, one of whom didn't even make it through the first 30 seconds without shouting out, "That's, REALLY distracting!" I was surprised she could even hear it -- she was obviously high-strung and over-sensitive, because it wasn't even very loud to me. At with sound decaying according to the square of distance, she definitely did not perceive it as loud either.
When I looked at her kind of puzzled, she spat back with "When there's ALREADY music playing… the two kinds, it's REALLY distracting." In a perfectly cool smart aleck tone, I enquired, "…and you don't like this one better?" Like, c'mon, it was the typical mopey lullaby music that Starbucks plays -- of course "Hey Jealousy" is superior. She almost laughed herself, and said, "No. I don't."
I was about to go back to reading my book, when she barked in addition, "You know, that's what HEADPHONES are for." And in that same cool irreverent tone, and without even acknowledging her with eye contact, defended myself with, "Nah man, you gotta share good music…"
Holy shit, she just could not sit still, she was fuming. She was one of those laptop drones who have slowly corrupted what should be a lively public hangout space like a coffee house into a dull, alienating computer lab. She couldn't get back to her busy schedule of posting micro-aggressions, I guess. The other fatso nearby was also a laptop drone, and she went over to ask if she could hear it too, to which she said yeah. In the busybody's mind, getting two huffy hags to feel upset at the same time constitutes majority rule, but I just shrugged that off too.
So then she storms over to the bar to complain, where luckily there were three young dudes, and not another fat woman or castrated husband who would have reflexively answered, "Yes, dear." None of them even bothered to come over to me, probably because they gave things a listen and determined that they could barely hear it, if at all, so obviously this neurotic old broad is just over-reacting.
Plus I've been a regular there since 2009, and they give me free drinks every now and then because they say I'm one of the most likable customers. And I've brought them free goodies too on occasion, to help them get through a day full of dealing with annoying dingbat shrews like this one.
They probably gave her a pro forma response about we'll see what we can do, or something, but again they didn't even give me a dirty look, let alone approach me and politely ask me to turn it off.
Reality check, honey: in the real world, victory does not go to whoever gets the pissiest.
She marched back to her seat and sat stewing in toe-curling rage for another 30 minutes, or however long until I'd finished my drink and left for the mall. I could see her shaking, fidgeting, or whatever she was doing out of tension, and heard her occasionally raise her voice to herself about "I can't BELIEVE bla bla bla."
Toward the end, another middle-aged female acquaintance of hers stopped by, and she started quietly bitching to her about the whole thing. But her friend didn't say anything to me, or try to frown as she walked by me -- not noticeably anyway, since I wasn't paying them much attention. I'm sure she felt similarly to the complainer, but figured that there was no point after I and the staff had already put an end to her silly little crusade against uplifting and life-loving music.
Now, I could see if I'd been blaring it really loud, or if it had been awful rap music, ranchero, stuff with offensive lyrics, or even something that was a bit too niche for a general audience -- Sisters of Mercy, or something like that. But the fucking Gin Blossoms, man? Get real. If you can't enjoy catchy all-American rock music, then you're incapable of feeling any pleasure in life, and your vote does not count in how we all decide to set the atmosphere in our public spaces.
This is an aspect of joy-killing that we ought to emphasize more -- the utter lack of discrimination among cases, and the rigid insistence on no fun of any kind whatsoever. As though blaring reggaeton out of your car window is the same as playing catchy, jangly rock music at half-volume. Use you brain for a change -- that's what it's there for.
I also reminded her, during her fit, that it wasn't any worse than when there are four or five spirited conversations going on in the room. She thought it was different because I could have at least silenced my noise with headphones -- the implication being she wished everyone else would keep their big traps shut and be miserable like her forever and ever, just that unfortunately no one's invented a gizmo to confine the noise of a conversation only to its participants.
Seriously, lady, if you can't handle a basic level of liveliness in a coffee house, then go back to the library or computer lab that you probably work in. Or just stay home. Don't you dare disturb the carefree vibe that a coffee house should have on a leisurely Sunday afternoon.
I invite readers to try this out in their own neck of the woods. Large changes have small beginnings.
June 8, 2013
The demise of sensitive guys
If you haven't been there in a long time, it's worth looking around a Marshalls just to hear the most reliably upbeat '80s in-store music. They're guaranteed to show you something you haven't heard in years. Yesterday it was "Pure" by the Lightning Seeds.
This dude defines the shy, sensitive type of guy from the pre-cocooning era, when he would have transformed into a mumbling mousy type, a la John Mayer, or an affectedly cutesy-kiddie type, a la Jason Mraz. Those are two different ways to loudly broadcast your non-threatening nature to girls, both relying on the suppression of signs of a healthy libido.
Not like the guy from "Pure" is a balls-to-the-walls hair metal singer, but still notice the basics of normal human nature being intact:
- A willingness to open up, shown by at least a minimal range of intonation, rather than a straight monotone delivery (contra the mousy type).
- Doing so without resort to kabuki caricature (contra the cutesy type).
- And delighting the listener with something catchy -- the bouncy synth riffs throughout, and the New Order-esque guitar strumming at about 2:30 that's meant to tug just a bit at the heart-strings (contra today's music that avoids making such gestures for fear of appearing overly forward and eager to connect).
He clearly comes off as an introvert, but girls -- at least back then -- would be willing to give him a pass because he's making an honest effort to be social, engaging, and interactive. Not some off-puttingly mousy mumbler, or some spastic Peter Pan dork. Interestingly, he doesn't come off as gay either -- not spastic and childish, not whining and wailing a la the big gay singers of the time like Boy George or Morrissey. He's more of an awkward teenager than a bratty child.
He would hardly be at the top of their list of desirable dudes, but he passes the basic test, and there would have even been a small niche of girls who would've been really into this type of guy.
So what killed off the sensitive guy? The man-hating witch hunts of the early-mid-1990s, quite clearly. In an environment full of suspicion about the slightest signs of male advances toward females -- which were only two steps away from date rape -- you'd have to be out of your mind to open up to them. It's unwanted exposure, like some creepy flasher dropping his raincoat. And "shooting stars around your heart"? -- it doesn't get much more imposing and threatening than that, does it?
That's one of the greatest ironies of Millennial-era relations between the sexes: it was the guys who were the least threatening to begin with who were the main targets, while alpha males like President Bill Clinton got a pass from liberals and feminists, despite far sicker behavior like cigar-banging some fat Jewish broad at the office. O.J. Simpson did even better, getting off with double murder.
A typical feature of witch hunts is that the stronger groups team up against the weaker ones. If you think only in terms of male and female, then the '90s panic looks abnormal -- women teaming up against men. But if you look at all the variation in male status, then it becomes clear -- it was low-status and less desirable males who were the targets, not "males" in general.
Sure, there was also a hysteria surrounding date rapist jocks, but on an everyday level, it felt like it was the clingy-needy sensitive guy, or the desperate schlubby guy in his frat house, who girls saw as the most menacing. In the back of their minds, they thought the jock could get girls without resorting to date rape, while these eager virginal shy guys were more willing to go for broke.
So if you've been wondering why today's male singers practice such extreme musical hover-handing, that's why. Female audiences are just too easily creeped out by normal displays of human emotion, especially coming from males. In 1989, that was only beginning, and there was still room left in pop culture for endearingly awkward expression.
This dude defines the shy, sensitive type of guy from the pre-cocooning era, when he would have transformed into a mumbling mousy type, a la John Mayer, or an affectedly cutesy-kiddie type, a la Jason Mraz. Those are two different ways to loudly broadcast your non-threatening nature to girls, both relying on the suppression of signs of a healthy libido.
Not like the guy from "Pure" is a balls-to-the-walls hair metal singer, but still notice the basics of normal human nature being intact:
- A willingness to open up, shown by at least a minimal range of intonation, rather than a straight monotone delivery (contra the mousy type).
- Doing so without resort to kabuki caricature (contra the cutesy type).
- And delighting the listener with something catchy -- the bouncy synth riffs throughout, and the New Order-esque guitar strumming at about 2:30 that's meant to tug just a bit at the heart-strings (contra today's music that avoids making such gestures for fear of appearing overly forward and eager to connect).
He clearly comes off as an introvert, but girls -- at least back then -- would be willing to give him a pass because he's making an honest effort to be social, engaging, and interactive. Not some off-puttingly mousy mumbler, or some spastic Peter Pan dork. Interestingly, he doesn't come off as gay either -- not spastic and childish, not whining and wailing a la the big gay singers of the time like Boy George or Morrissey. He's more of an awkward teenager than a bratty child.
He would hardly be at the top of their list of desirable dudes, but he passes the basic test, and there would have even been a small niche of girls who would've been really into this type of guy.
So what killed off the sensitive guy? The man-hating witch hunts of the early-mid-1990s, quite clearly. In an environment full of suspicion about the slightest signs of male advances toward females -- which were only two steps away from date rape -- you'd have to be out of your mind to open up to them. It's unwanted exposure, like some creepy flasher dropping his raincoat. And "shooting stars around your heart"? -- it doesn't get much more imposing and threatening than that, does it?
That's one of the greatest ironies of Millennial-era relations between the sexes: it was the guys who were the least threatening to begin with who were the main targets, while alpha males like President Bill Clinton got a pass from liberals and feminists, despite far sicker behavior like cigar-banging some fat Jewish broad at the office. O.J. Simpson did even better, getting off with double murder.
A typical feature of witch hunts is that the stronger groups team up against the weaker ones. If you think only in terms of male and female, then the '90s panic looks abnormal -- women teaming up against men. But if you look at all the variation in male status, then it becomes clear -- it was low-status and less desirable males who were the targets, not "males" in general.
Sure, there was also a hysteria surrounding date rapist jocks, but on an everyday level, it felt like it was the clingy-needy sensitive guy, or the desperate schlubby guy in his frat house, who girls saw as the most menacing. In the back of their minds, they thought the jock could get girls without resorting to date rape, while these eager virginal shy guys were more willing to go for broke.
So if you've been wondering why today's male singers practice such extreme musical hover-handing, that's why. Female audiences are just too easily creeped out by normal displays of human emotion, especially coming from males. In 1989, that was only beginning, and there was still room left in pop culture for endearingly awkward expression.
June 5, 2013
Gay potpourri
These don't seem to merit posts of their own, but still contribute to my ongoing project of explaining male homosexuality as psychological and physical pedomorphy (infantilization).
Before that, though, do you ever wonder what would happen if some group burned the rainbow flag in the midst of a Gay Pride Parade? Would the ACLU step in to defend the flag-burners' right of free speech, or would they help to indict them for a vile hate crime / veiled threat / etc. and hence beyond the protection of free speech? Google shows several results of people burning the gay flag, but not at a major demonstration -- just randomly in front of a gay center. With all the Pride Parades coming out this summer, there's only one way to find out for sure.
* * *
Speaking of Pride Parades, how do they fit into the big picture of the homophile movement being a surrogate save the children movement for childless women? Well, first note that unlike other marches about "We're here, deal with it" by minority or not-so-minority groups, the audience for sissies mincing around in their underpants are largely out-group members -- fag hags, supporters, enablers, doofus dad types, and so on. The audience at a Black Pride march would not be 99% white, nor would the Womyn's Lib army march before a mostly male audience.
Gays have accomplished nothing to deserve the applause they're receiving, so it's not like a standard awards march. They're all glitzed up and in full exhibitionistic mode, though again not in a way that deserves special praise -- unlike a ballet recital, a fashion show, etc. They get a free pass for dressing up like clowns and awkwardly shaking their butts before a crowd.
The closest analog seems to be the holiday pageant that elementary school children put on for their parents and teachers. The audience doesn't care that the performers look weird and showcase no talent -- the point is simply to make them feel comfortable performing before an audience, without feeling judged or criticized.
Children feel awkward before a group, and in the years leading up to puberty start to become anxious about whether or not a social group will accept them. The holiday pageant is meant to alleviate their anxieties, give them some safe training experience with group interaction, before the real deal confronts them in middle school. That way, they'll be prepared.
Neurotic faggots require the same amount of constant reassurance about being accepted, because their minds never matured to the point where they can sense whether they are or are not accepted by some social group, and what they can do to fix the problem of rejection. Gays are still stuck in that childish mindset of, "Well if you don't want to accept me, then you're all just a bunch of stupid-heads! Who needs you and your stupid group anyway?!" Rather than, y'know, make themselves likeable enough to merit acceptance.
Adolescents take it for granted that others are going to judge them, and that they'll judge others in their turn, as part of enforcing norms of group membership and cohesion. They occasionally bitch about the harsh atmosphere of all that judging, but they accept it and eventually get over it. Only pre-pubescent children stubbornly insist that no one ever judge them. "Well I'm not judging youuuu, so shut up!"
The Gay Pride Parade as a great big soothing head-pat for emotionally stunted brats. That also explains why liberals are so drawn to these things, even if gay rights are not a high priority for them in general -- it's that paternalistic attitude. They feel a rush from doling out reassurance because it pushes their helicopter parenting buttons -- "Awesome job, buddy!" Only here it's misdirected toward freakish man-children instead of actual children.
* * *
Why don't fag hags take it personally that their gay bffs are viscerally disgusted by the woman's sexual nature? Gays don't merely have a "preference" for dudes, the way that some people prefer Thai food over Japanese food. It's the squirming revulsion of the 6 year-old boy -- "Ewwww! You put your pee-pee in her vajayjay?! Gross!!!"
Women are into taking things personally, especially rejection, so why not in the case of such unforgiving repulsion coming from their little gay chia-pets? The "fag hag as allomother to Peter Pan" theory provides a simple answer -- the incest taboo. Mothers expect their sons to be grossed out by their own female sex organs. Indeed, they'd feel positively creeped out if their sons showed any other reaction. They understand that it's nothing personal.
The same goes for when the faggot expresses his disgust for female sexuality in general. To her, he feels like a son or a little kid brother, so it's only to be expected that he feel that way about "yucky" girls. However, in the case of mothers and big sisters, they let it slide because they figure he'll eventually grow out of it.
Do gay enablers really have that long-term forecast in the back of their minds -- that if she can make him comfortable interacting with females in a safe situation (with kin or imagined kin members), he might eventually grow up and appreciate female sexuality? Whether or not he chose to remain behaviorally homosexual, that is -- at least appreciating female sexuality instead of recoiling in disgust?
We'd need some kind of in-depth confessions, memoirs, or clinical interviews with chronic fag hags to get a better understanding of what motivates them to keep socializing with someone who finds their entire demographic group disgusting.
* * *
When I looked into the anthropometry of gays, there wasn't a whole lot to be found, and it mostly looked at standard measurements like height, weight, BMI, and so on. I noted that they need to look at waist-to-hip ratio because gays have totally straight hips like a pre-pubescent boy, whereas adolescent and adult men have hips (though not as pronounced as women).
How about an even more out-there measurement -- butt volume? Haha, no amount of "no homo" will ever scrub this blog clean after that. In all seriousness, I was at a second-hand clothing store where a real flaming Peter Pan type of faggot was working alongside two girls in their 20s. One girl said she tried on a maxi dress, but felt that it wouldn't work because it would show her pooch. The gay tried to commiserate by telling her that, "Yeah, I know -- if I actually had any ass, I'd have no problem finding jeans. But I just have like no ass." Something to that effect.
After he mentioned that, I drew up my stereotypical gay image from memory, and then checked it against reality from the thousand queers I have to be around every day. His remark was not unrepresentative -- gay guys don't have a normal adolescent or adult male level of volume, whether from fat or muscle. You don't have to look very hard to see it (thank god) -- the back of their jeans or shorts are often totally flat, and kind of hanging down because there's no butt there to hold them up.
This is probably just one aspect... er, one piece... I mean, one chunk... or whatever, of a larger pattern of gays having less musculature. Yeah, there are a few gays that have a normal level of fat and muscle, but most of them look not only thin but also having nearly no muscle. They don't look slim and wiry like gymnasts, dancers, or lead singers. They look like a pre-pubescent boy whose hormones don't allow him to build any muscle just yet, blown up to adult-like size.
* * *
As another way of evaluating these ideas about gay pedomorphy, when have you ever heard a girl say that "gay guys have such better" body part? I've heard girls spontaneously get all excited about "omigosh, ballet boys have the nicest butts" (and few of them are gay). And though I've never heard them in person, women do discuss online about which groups have bigger or smaller dicks, and can agree on the rough outlines of who goes where. Or that Italian or French or wherever men are better in bed than men from some other country (you don't hear much about Swedes, for example).
With all their desire to praise gays being so much more sensitive, caring, and understanding than straight men, why do they have nothing to say in favor of faggots physically? Handsomer faces, stronger brows, more angular jaws, nicer butts, male presence and charisma, arms, legs, feet -- anything? Not as obese, sure, but that's only an advantage over lardass males, not straight males in general.
Women show a variety of tastes in male physique, from lean lead singer to mesomorphic athlete to big cuddly teddy bear. But all of them fall within the adolescent-to-adult range. Even teenage girls, let alone older women, aren't attracted to kiddie-looking anorexic types with weak bone structure, unless they're only looking for a "practice boyfriend" or a "non-boyfriend."
So, women have nothing good to say about the homosexual body because it's all so undeveloped.
* * *
Hopefully these extra links in the chain will serve to establish male homosexuality as a syndrome -- not just an error in some single, tiny circumscribed part of psychology, but an entire suite of abnormalities that all appear to stem from a disruption to normal psychological and physical growth. Not throwing it off onto an entirely novel developmental path, but simply freezing it in place in the childhood stage.
Before that, though, do you ever wonder what would happen if some group burned the rainbow flag in the midst of a Gay Pride Parade? Would the ACLU step in to defend the flag-burners' right of free speech, or would they help to indict them for a vile hate crime / veiled threat / etc. and hence beyond the protection of free speech? Google shows several results of people burning the gay flag, but not at a major demonstration -- just randomly in front of a gay center. With all the Pride Parades coming out this summer, there's only one way to find out for sure.
* * *
Speaking of Pride Parades, how do they fit into the big picture of the homophile movement being a surrogate save the children movement for childless women? Well, first note that unlike other marches about "We're here, deal with it" by minority or not-so-minority groups, the audience for sissies mincing around in their underpants are largely out-group members -- fag hags, supporters, enablers, doofus dad types, and so on. The audience at a Black Pride march would not be 99% white, nor would the Womyn's Lib army march before a mostly male audience.
Gays have accomplished nothing to deserve the applause they're receiving, so it's not like a standard awards march. They're all glitzed up and in full exhibitionistic mode, though again not in a way that deserves special praise -- unlike a ballet recital, a fashion show, etc. They get a free pass for dressing up like clowns and awkwardly shaking their butts before a crowd.
The closest analog seems to be the holiday pageant that elementary school children put on for their parents and teachers. The audience doesn't care that the performers look weird and showcase no talent -- the point is simply to make them feel comfortable performing before an audience, without feeling judged or criticized.
Children feel awkward before a group, and in the years leading up to puberty start to become anxious about whether or not a social group will accept them. The holiday pageant is meant to alleviate their anxieties, give them some safe training experience with group interaction, before the real deal confronts them in middle school. That way, they'll be prepared.
Neurotic faggots require the same amount of constant reassurance about being accepted, because their minds never matured to the point where they can sense whether they are or are not accepted by some social group, and what they can do to fix the problem of rejection. Gays are still stuck in that childish mindset of, "Well if you don't want to accept me, then you're all just a bunch of stupid-heads! Who needs you and your stupid group anyway?!" Rather than, y'know, make themselves likeable enough to merit acceptance.
Adolescents take it for granted that others are going to judge them, and that they'll judge others in their turn, as part of enforcing norms of group membership and cohesion. They occasionally bitch about the harsh atmosphere of all that judging, but they accept it and eventually get over it. Only pre-pubescent children stubbornly insist that no one ever judge them. "Well I'm not judging youuuu, so shut up!"
The Gay Pride Parade as a great big soothing head-pat for emotionally stunted brats. That also explains why liberals are so drawn to these things, even if gay rights are not a high priority for them in general -- it's that paternalistic attitude. They feel a rush from doling out reassurance because it pushes their helicopter parenting buttons -- "Awesome job, buddy!" Only here it's misdirected toward freakish man-children instead of actual children.
* * *
Why don't fag hags take it personally that their gay bffs are viscerally disgusted by the woman's sexual nature? Gays don't merely have a "preference" for dudes, the way that some people prefer Thai food over Japanese food. It's the squirming revulsion of the 6 year-old boy -- "Ewwww! You put your pee-pee in her vajayjay?! Gross!!!"
Women are into taking things personally, especially rejection, so why not in the case of such unforgiving repulsion coming from their little gay chia-pets? The "fag hag as allomother to Peter Pan" theory provides a simple answer -- the incest taboo. Mothers expect their sons to be grossed out by their own female sex organs. Indeed, they'd feel positively creeped out if their sons showed any other reaction. They understand that it's nothing personal.
The same goes for when the faggot expresses his disgust for female sexuality in general. To her, he feels like a son or a little kid brother, so it's only to be expected that he feel that way about "yucky" girls. However, in the case of mothers and big sisters, they let it slide because they figure he'll eventually grow out of it.
Do gay enablers really have that long-term forecast in the back of their minds -- that if she can make him comfortable interacting with females in a safe situation (with kin or imagined kin members), he might eventually grow up and appreciate female sexuality? Whether or not he chose to remain behaviorally homosexual, that is -- at least appreciating female sexuality instead of recoiling in disgust?
We'd need some kind of in-depth confessions, memoirs, or clinical interviews with chronic fag hags to get a better understanding of what motivates them to keep socializing with someone who finds their entire demographic group disgusting.
* * *
When I looked into the anthropometry of gays, there wasn't a whole lot to be found, and it mostly looked at standard measurements like height, weight, BMI, and so on. I noted that they need to look at waist-to-hip ratio because gays have totally straight hips like a pre-pubescent boy, whereas adolescent and adult men have hips (though not as pronounced as women).
How about an even more out-there measurement -- butt volume? Haha, no amount of "no homo" will ever scrub this blog clean after that. In all seriousness, I was at a second-hand clothing store where a real flaming Peter Pan type of faggot was working alongside two girls in their 20s. One girl said she tried on a maxi dress, but felt that it wouldn't work because it would show her pooch. The gay tried to commiserate by telling her that, "Yeah, I know -- if I actually had any ass, I'd have no problem finding jeans. But I just have like no ass." Something to that effect.
After he mentioned that, I drew up my stereotypical gay image from memory, and then checked it against reality from the thousand queers I have to be around every day. His remark was not unrepresentative -- gay guys don't have a normal adolescent or adult male level of volume, whether from fat or muscle. You don't have to look very hard to see it (thank god) -- the back of their jeans or shorts are often totally flat, and kind of hanging down because there's no butt there to hold them up.
This is probably just one aspect... er, one piece... I mean, one chunk... or whatever, of a larger pattern of gays having less musculature. Yeah, there are a few gays that have a normal level of fat and muscle, but most of them look not only thin but also having nearly no muscle. They don't look slim and wiry like gymnasts, dancers, or lead singers. They look like a pre-pubescent boy whose hormones don't allow him to build any muscle just yet, blown up to adult-like size.
* * *
As another way of evaluating these ideas about gay pedomorphy, when have you ever heard a girl say that "gay guys have such better" body part? I've heard girls spontaneously get all excited about "omigosh, ballet boys have the nicest butts" (and few of them are gay). And though I've never heard them in person, women do discuss online about which groups have bigger or smaller dicks, and can agree on the rough outlines of who goes where. Or that Italian or French or wherever men are better in bed than men from some other country (you don't hear much about Swedes, for example).
With all their desire to praise gays being so much more sensitive, caring, and understanding than straight men, why do they have nothing to say in favor of faggots physically? Handsomer faces, stronger brows, more angular jaws, nicer butts, male presence and charisma, arms, legs, feet -- anything? Not as obese, sure, but that's only an advantage over lardass males, not straight males in general.
Women show a variety of tastes in male physique, from lean lead singer to mesomorphic athlete to big cuddly teddy bear. But all of them fall within the adolescent-to-adult range. Even teenage girls, let alone older women, aren't attracted to kiddie-looking anorexic types with weak bone structure, unless they're only looking for a "practice boyfriend" or a "non-boyfriend."
So, women have nothing good to say about the homosexual body because it's all so undeveloped.
* * *
Hopefully these extra links in the chain will serve to establish male homosexuality as a syndrome -- not just an error in some single, tiny circumscribed part of psychology, but an entire suite of abnormalities that all appear to stem from a disruption to normal psychological and physical growth. Not throwing it off onto an entirely novel developmental path, but simply freezing it in place in the childhood stage.
June 3, 2013
Impaired sense of smell by race / ethnicity?
I've been trying to find out how racial groups differ in their sense of smell. Anosmia is lack of smell, hyposmia an underdeveloped sense. Nothing leaps out at me from googling around, or looking through books on olfaction.
There are cross-cultural Smell Identification Tests, but they seem to give conflicting stories about which groups have a better overall sense of smell, i.e. if you tested every odor possible, and not only those that one group has lots of experience with and other groups little.
But, I haven't devoted research-project time to sifting through everything here. Anyone who wants to find out and broadcast something exciting and new in the world of human biodiversity should look into it and write it up.
I have this vague hunch that modernizing is causing us to lose our sense of smell, as part of the broader pattern toward becoming more cerebral and less corporeal. I also get the impression that pastoralists are more likely to wear cologne and perfume, suggesting they have a more developed sense of smell than folks in agrarian societies. Then again they may have the same olfactory sensitivity, but just more of a flair for living.
Any anecdotes you guys have, or patterns that are well known but little talked about?
There are cross-cultural Smell Identification Tests, but they seem to give conflicting stories about which groups have a better overall sense of smell, i.e. if you tested every odor possible, and not only those that one group has lots of experience with and other groups little.
But, I haven't devoted research-project time to sifting through everything here. Anyone who wants to find out and broadcast something exciting and new in the world of human biodiversity should look into it and write it up.
I have this vague hunch that modernizing is causing us to lose our sense of smell, as part of the broader pattern toward becoming more cerebral and less corporeal. I also get the impression that pastoralists are more likely to wear cologne and perfume, suggesting they have a more developed sense of smell than folks in agrarian societies. Then again they may have the same olfactory sensitivity, but just more of a flair for living.
Any anecdotes you guys have, or patterns that are well known but little talked about?
June 2, 2013
When to step in
One of the most understandable yet still bewildering effects of a falling crime rate is how invincible people come to see themselves, especially women. There were no glib girl-power martial arts or self-defense classes in the '80s because women had learned enough through personal or indirect experience about what they would actually be up against if the shit hit the fan.
So, why bother trying to become G.I. Jane when you could just hang out with a guy, or a group of guys, who would provide a way stronger deterrent to potential harassers? A two-bit punk is going to go after the isolated woman, not the one with several males around her.
Or how often you see 19 year-old girls jogging alone at night on city streets -- with earbuds jammed in their head to even further weaken their situational awareness. But, if there aren't as many bad guys roaming the streets as there used to be, they never get that reality check and learn to go out in social groups, like human beings were meant to.
Last night at a crowded train stop, some wino bum came up to a woman and started mouthing off -- I couldn't hear what, probably his standard crude attempts at pick-up lines. It wasn't clear if he was insulting her, too. But still being very confrontational, loud, and pushy. She looked like in her 20s, very tall, maybe 6'2 or 6'3, and with a statuesque build -- so, not some petite little thing that he could have easily intimidated. She was unaccompanied. He was in his 40s, fat, maybe 5'10, and drunken / surly.
She must have felt incredibly uncomfortable, and wishing someone would put a stop to it, though again because of her size she seemed to hold it together while looking nervous. It's always a tough call to make on the spot, but I figured she was in no real danger, and that I'd only move in if he started touching her or darting his arms and hands in her personal space.
As long as he was just up close but staying put, I figured it would be good for her long-term character to get harassed by some disgusting wino with no friends there (male or female) to back her up -- then she'd learn a valuable lesson for the future about how vulnerable you make yourself by choosing social isolation. Unwanted attention is just part of the price you pay by going out in public, and you can easily diminish it by going out in a group. You're supposed to get a feel for that logic during adolescence, but the satellite children of helicopter parents never quite got it.
Anyway, so some white knight dude steps in pretty early -- after only 20-30 seconds, and again when the wino hadn't touched her or moved his hands in her personal space. He was in his early-mid 30s, also about 5'10 and fat, and dressed like a well-meaning, meek schlub. With "Date Rape" by Sublime running through his mind, he goes up to the wino and tells him that he's bothering her, and bothering everyone else around.
So then the wino gets all in the guy's face, cussing at him to shut the fuck up, I'll kick your ass, etc. He even shoved the guy, with no response. The intervener just says that he doesn't want a fight, OK I'm walking away, etc., instead of sticking up for himself. Fuck the girl at that point -- it was a matter of personal disrespect. I halfway felt like moving in at that point, because he shoved the guy a second time, but it looked to be a mere shoving match to establish the pecking order, not an imminent fistfight.
A couple minutes later a cop drove by and several bystanders waved and pointed at the wino, who sensed some heat about to come down and made up some excuse about wanting to leave all of a sudden. The cop sat him down and probably didn't even haul him in or rough him up a little -- I couldn't stick around to see because my train showed up just then. But he'll probably be at it again next weekend.
So what did the white knight get for all his troubles? Verbal and physical harassment by drunken parasitic scum, no applause from the other bystanders, and in particular no word or gesture of gratitude from the woman for drawing fire away from her and onto himself. She was just relieved that once the schlub stepped in, the wino had locked onto another target and she could coast through the rest of the night in mere discomfort, rather than outright fear that he might escalate to groping her.
I don't think most people appreciate how thankless the Millennial generation is, how reluctant they are to ask for help when it's clearly needed, and how insistent they are on not accepting it when offered unsolicited. I don't even bother anymore. I only extend a helping hand to Gen Y, Gen X, Boomers, and even the odd Silent Gen member who's venturing out in public. Millennials just want some deus ex machina to swoop in and make everything go away, and breathe a sigh of relief that their stress level can go back down now. It's total self-absorption from beginning to end. They show so little appreciation for their fellow man, and are devoid of gratitude.
You have to know when to step in to fight someone else's fight. You don't want to jump in too quick if it's two guys, since the one you're stepping in for won't get a chance to redeem himself. Just shoving -- let them sort it out themselves. And if it's for a woman, you don't want to encourage her anti-social parasitic tendencies. If she expects an army of schlubby white knights to swoop in if called upon, yet refuses to go out in groups with males, then she's just trying to get all of the benefits of male protection without giving anything in return, like providing some fun female company, making her male companions look normal and even desirable because they've got girls in their group, and so on. You gotta give in order to get. Short of the harasser laying hands on her, poking / stabbing / waving his arms or hands in her personal space, or shouting right in her face, let her learn her lesson.
Somehow you're more likely to step in when it's a carnival atmosphere, like at a dance club. I've stepped in a lot more to displace pushy loser males from girls, whether I was with them or not, when they were making them uncomfortable. It's like the party atmosphere is so fragile that even small ruptures in the skin of trust threaten to dissolve the entire social tissue. (Or something.) And girls are a lot more grateful in those situations -- even the Millennials. I don't mind helping them out then. And I think that's the one place where they're more aware of the reality of traveling in groups rather than showing up alone.
Those places also have more security guards roaming around, unlike train stops, because the patrons are letting their guard down so much by submerging themselves into the action of the crowd.
But, with people cocooning so much over the past 20 years, they spend a lot less time in nightclubs than they used to, and a lot more time in generic open public spaces like a train stop, supermarket parking lot, jogging around the block, etc. Sure, they occasionally get harassed by bums or losers while waiting for the train or on the way out to their car in the parking lot, but it's not very often, not very intense, and not that alarming since they didn't really let their guard down in the first place. They're choosing situations where they won't learn very much from experience.
So long as the crime rate keeps falling, they won't care -- they'll act even more recklessly, in fact. Once that naivete becomes widespread enough, the predators or parasites will pick up on it and start driving the crime rate up again. In its own sick way, that's what restores people's awareness of what human nature is like, and how human behavior ought to be -- social and supportive, and humble, not glib and isolated, with a phony hubris of invincibility.
So, why bother trying to become G.I. Jane when you could just hang out with a guy, or a group of guys, who would provide a way stronger deterrent to potential harassers? A two-bit punk is going to go after the isolated woman, not the one with several males around her.
Or how often you see 19 year-old girls jogging alone at night on city streets -- with earbuds jammed in their head to even further weaken their situational awareness. But, if there aren't as many bad guys roaming the streets as there used to be, they never get that reality check and learn to go out in social groups, like human beings were meant to.
Last night at a crowded train stop, some wino bum came up to a woman and started mouthing off -- I couldn't hear what, probably his standard crude attempts at pick-up lines. It wasn't clear if he was insulting her, too. But still being very confrontational, loud, and pushy. She looked like in her 20s, very tall, maybe 6'2 or 6'3, and with a statuesque build -- so, not some petite little thing that he could have easily intimidated. She was unaccompanied. He was in his 40s, fat, maybe 5'10, and drunken / surly.
She must have felt incredibly uncomfortable, and wishing someone would put a stop to it, though again because of her size she seemed to hold it together while looking nervous. It's always a tough call to make on the spot, but I figured she was in no real danger, and that I'd only move in if he started touching her or darting his arms and hands in her personal space.
As long as he was just up close but staying put, I figured it would be good for her long-term character to get harassed by some disgusting wino with no friends there (male or female) to back her up -- then she'd learn a valuable lesson for the future about how vulnerable you make yourself by choosing social isolation. Unwanted attention is just part of the price you pay by going out in public, and you can easily diminish it by going out in a group. You're supposed to get a feel for that logic during adolescence, but the satellite children of helicopter parents never quite got it.
Anyway, so some white knight dude steps in pretty early -- after only 20-30 seconds, and again when the wino hadn't touched her or moved his hands in her personal space. He was in his early-mid 30s, also about 5'10 and fat, and dressed like a well-meaning, meek schlub. With "Date Rape" by Sublime running through his mind, he goes up to the wino and tells him that he's bothering her, and bothering everyone else around.
So then the wino gets all in the guy's face, cussing at him to shut the fuck up, I'll kick your ass, etc. He even shoved the guy, with no response. The intervener just says that he doesn't want a fight, OK I'm walking away, etc., instead of sticking up for himself. Fuck the girl at that point -- it was a matter of personal disrespect. I halfway felt like moving in at that point, because he shoved the guy a second time, but it looked to be a mere shoving match to establish the pecking order, not an imminent fistfight.
A couple minutes later a cop drove by and several bystanders waved and pointed at the wino, who sensed some heat about to come down and made up some excuse about wanting to leave all of a sudden. The cop sat him down and probably didn't even haul him in or rough him up a little -- I couldn't stick around to see because my train showed up just then. But he'll probably be at it again next weekend.
So what did the white knight get for all his troubles? Verbal and physical harassment by drunken parasitic scum, no applause from the other bystanders, and in particular no word or gesture of gratitude from the woman for drawing fire away from her and onto himself. She was just relieved that once the schlub stepped in, the wino had locked onto another target and she could coast through the rest of the night in mere discomfort, rather than outright fear that he might escalate to groping her.
I don't think most people appreciate how thankless the Millennial generation is, how reluctant they are to ask for help when it's clearly needed, and how insistent they are on not accepting it when offered unsolicited. I don't even bother anymore. I only extend a helping hand to Gen Y, Gen X, Boomers, and even the odd Silent Gen member who's venturing out in public. Millennials just want some deus ex machina to swoop in and make everything go away, and breathe a sigh of relief that their stress level can go back down now. It's total self-absorption from beginning to end. They show so little appreciation for their fellow man, and are devoid of gratitude.
You have to know when to step in to fight someone else's fight. You don't want to jump in too quick if it's two guys, since the one you're stepping in for won't get a chance to redeem himself. Just shoving -- let them sort it out themselves. And if it's for a woman, you don't want to encourage her anti-social parasitic tendencies. If she expects an army of schlubby white knights to swoop in if called upon, yet refuses to go out in groups with males, then she's just trying to get all of the benefits of male protection without giving anything in return, like providing some fun female company, making her male companions look normal and even desirable because they've got girls in their group, and so on. You gotta give in order to get. Short of the harasser laying hands on her, poking / stabbing / waving his arms or hands in her personal space, or shouting right in her face, let her learn her lesson.
Somehow you're more likely to step in when it's a carnival atmosphere, like at a dance club. I've stepped in a lot more to displace pushy loser males from girls, whether I was with them or not, when they were making them uncomfortable. It's like the party atmosphere is so fragile that even small ruptures in the skin of trust threaten to dissolve the entire social tissue. (Or something.) And girls are a lot more grateful in those situations -- even the Millennials. I don't mind helping them out then. And I think that's the one place where they're more aware of the reality of traveling in groups rather than showing up alone.
Those places also have more security guards roaming around, unlike train stops, because the patrons are letting their guard down so much by submerging themselves into the action of the crowd.
But, with people cocooning so much over the past 20 years, they spend a lot less time in nightclubs than they used to, and a lot more time in generic open public spaces like a train stop, supermarket parking lot, jogging around the block, etc. Sure, they occasionally get harassed by bums or losers while waiting for the train or on the way out to their car in the parking lot, but it's not very often, not very intense, and not that alarming since they didn't really let their guard down in the first place. They're choosing situations where they won't learn very much from experience.
So long as the crime rate keeps falling, they won't care -- they'll act even more recklessly, in fact. Once that naivete becomes widespread enough, the predators or parasites will pick up on it and start driving the crime rate up again. In its own sick way, that's what restores people's awareness of what human nature is like, and how human behavior ought to be -- social and supportive, and humble, not glib and isolated, with a phony hubris of invincibility.
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