About the Schulman quote below, it’s interesting that the wokesters and the gatekeepers both gravitate towards the idea that any art that challenges == bad.
It’s almost like there’s some attractor there causing that. (Spoiler alert: it’s capitalism.)
“The long-term effect of such a condition is that gatekeepers (producers/agents/publishers/editors/programmers/critics, etc.) become narrower and narrower in terms of what they are willing to present, living in a state of projected fear of ever presenting anything that could make someone uncomfortable. There is a dialogic relationship with the culture when consumers learn that uncomfortable = bad instead of expansive, they develop an equation of passivity with the art-going experience. In the end, the definition of what is ‘good’ becomes what does not challenge, and the entire endeavor of art-making is undermined.Profit-making institutions then become committed to producing what the Disney-funded design programs call ‘Imagineers,’ the craftsman version of Mouseketeers, workers trained to churn out acceptable product, while thinking of themselves as ‘artists.'”
-Sarah Schulman in The Gentrification of the Mind
LOL my kids just have zero experience of broadcast TV.
Oldest: “OMG we’ve seen this ad FOUR TIMES now!”
Youngest, trying to figure out DIRECTV in the hotel: “Mommy I clicked on this movie but it keeps starting in the middle.”
— jonstokes.(eth|com) (@jonst0kes) November 24, 2022
Welcome to the old days. But it used to be worse: adjusting rabbit ear antennas and a lot of the channels used to go off the air after midnight. Those weren’t the days.
I wonder if it’s because a recession is nigh that the Fat Acceptance/food consortium propaganda is ramping up about how it’s impossible to be anything but the size of a house, that nothing is effective against obesity, it’s impossible to control your own bodyweight, etc.
They do it because it works.
I had a dream that someone shaved off my beard and mustache against my will and then I called him a “smooth-philtrum pistachio brain.”
That’s a new one.
When a polyamorous relationship blows up, we tend to say it was the fault of polyamory; when a monogamous relationship blows up, we tend to say it was the fault of anything else *but* the monogamy – even though in many cases it was *directly caused by the structure of monogamy*!
— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 21, 2022
I’ve noticed that too. It’s extremely strange. This is something Aella is totally right about.
A lot of culture war stuff over fake meat, transgenderism, and future tech presents as a clash between traditional forms of living vs. technological transhumanism. But I think the real debate is over the steepness of our societal adoption curve given only partially working tech.
— shako (@cauchyfriend) November 25, 2022
That’s a thought I’ve been having too. A lot of all that is just forms of cosplay and pretending. The truth is that biology is real and that we just do not have the tech yet to make fake meat, to truly transform a woman into a man or vice versa, nor to understand how to use CRISPR.
Our ambitions are far ahead of our capabilities. If that becomes untrue, a whole lot (but not all) of the so-called culture war will simply fade away.
I think something I really like in movies is when they take on the mantle of storyteller explicitly and deliberately.
"A beginning is a very delicate time." pic.twitter.com/gEk4D3FIMx
— Misha – Visiting the bay area Nov 19 – Jan 3 (@drethelin) November 25, 2022
Me too. I love the Dune (1984) opening.