Right-wing Men Can't Trope

Yesterday, I posted a Halloween video from Operation Rescue Randall Terry claims is a satire. Because it's about going-to-hell and stars a fat, white, conservative man in sunglasses yelling about burning things in his backyard while mock-praying, I figure Terry doesn't understand satire. Neither does he see irony when he uses it.

Here's Ian Robinson's op-ed in praise of right-wing women, "Right-wing Women Rock". This would-be ode is actually satire. Not only does Robinson not see irony, he doesn't see the satire. I imagine both Robinson and Terry think they're lampooning the left with both works. What we are learning is that right-wing men do not know tropes. (Excerpt below.)


Right-wing women rock Ian Robinson Columnists Comment Calgary Sun

A right-wing woman hits the gym, swings past Sobey's and has dinner on the table by the time you get home ... while her left-wing counterpart is still stuck in traffic listening to Sarah McLachlan on her iPod and feeling morally superior about her carrot choices.

And when that plate of food is put in front of you by the right-wing hottie you had the good sense to marry, it will be 100% tofu-free. If you're lucky, she just remembered to buy steak and forgot about the carrot entirely.

Right-wing women have traditional families, so they want to raise them themselves ... or at the very least by a nanny they've vetted, rather than abdicating that responsibility to the state.

Irregularity: A( )cute Sadness

Cute. Sad. Cute. Sad. Cute. Sad.

From the listing:

Hello. I have a big box of used cat and kitten hats that I have collected over the years for various occasions. As of recently my cat, Snowman, is no longer living and thus I am forced to get rid of these precious memories. I would not feel right asking money for them so I am offering the whole box for free. There are many styles from formal to cute and funny

A Meditation on White Masculinity: Operation (Re)scue

This video, with a well-cast white dude, is almost an explicit confession of the profound sense of loss that all White Power White Guys in their attempts to bring their grotesque worldview and manifest destiny to a community near you. (White guys are only one kind of White Power Guy. They come in all forms.)

Here is a white guy dressed in black screaming at you about hell, praying and burning his known enemies in effigy. There's power in screaming. He's a big guy. He's a beard guy. He's an aggressive guy. He's strong. He's fearless. He's bossy. Preachy. Destructive. He's in control while he performs these traits.

The video is supposed to be funny, I guess. Randall Terry calls it "a satirical clip." White Men often don't understand Irony. As in, "Mr Terry. Why are you producing a satire about members of your own activist movement?" He won't get that. I'm sure most of these men believe that irony is liberal. I suppose it's supposed to be a satire of the left?

The humor is putatively found in what the angry white guy is yelling at the viewer. It's funny that you are going to meet Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in hell. According to this logic, every elected official is going to hell. But that's beside the point. We are all going to hell is, in fact, something this kind of guy hopes for because then possibly we'll fight like hell for redemption and fall in line. Hell is supposed to scare the crap out of you. But when you get old enough to think for yourself and learn that the only people who talk about hell are guys like this, it loses all its luster and the fear of hell becomes a hatred of fear. He's redeemed through our hatred of his fear-mongering. We hate him, so he is justified, persecuted: his loathing, his seething (yet, flaccid, let's admit it) hatred.

I'm begging the question. Who's this video for? It's not for me because I don't believe it. This gets back to satire. Randall Terry thinks this video is funny. What's funny in any given situation depends on who the joke is for. White Masculinity is a slick form of self-indoctrination. It's like a consistent re-initiation into a doctrine of power. This video is for the guy in the video and all the guys like him. They are proud of themselves. It's a not-too-subtle form of affirmation. It's for guys who think setting things on fire is fun. It's for guys who like to threaten people. In other words, the video is a pep rally for the guys who will go out and yell and scream their opposition to any and everyone they think is opposed to whatever they believe shouldn't be opposed.

The threat of violence isn't a simple propaganda tool. It isn't meant to scare the viewer. It's meant to whip up hate in those who are in want of power. It's meant to remind men who look like the guy in the video that they need to reinforce the fucking truth now. It's choral recall.

It's like watching a guy talking about a painful sore on his arm as he sticks a pencil into it complain about the how much it hurts. He tells you that only you can make it better. Only you can make it stop. While he continues to hurt himself, he asks you why you're enjoying his pain.

I remember the first major Promise Keepers rally in Denver, Colorado. After a big prayer rally in a big stadium in downtown Denver, the men took to the streets, got drunk, yelled at people, started fights, and vandalized property.

White Masculinity is all about reclaiming, re-initiating, retaining, reinforcing, resisting, and relocating. It's about returning and recollecting. It's about emotional rescue.

Here is "the satire":




and a little medicine:

Talk of the Nation: Another Opportunity Missed

On a recent Talk of the Nation of NPR, Neal Conan discusses Bob Elston's trip to a local Hooters with his son.

And wouldn't you know it? In a discussion about his son's emerging sexuality and exploitation, only women and women's bodies are spoken about. How do men get away this? We must talk about men and women together. Feminism, or practices like this father's weird attempt to educate his son, shouldn't be permitted to be ghettoized by mainstream culture. Sorry, Neal Conan but you could have made this a much better interview by getting this dad to actually talk about how men look at women.

One caller, Jennifer, asks if Mr Elston is really addressing anything useful about human relationships. I agree with her concern. And it made me focus on this: We continue to discuss sex, gender, human sexuality, exploitation as a women's-issue-without-men. This isn't the best way to put my thought. I haven't worked the language out yet, but go with me.

Bob Elston takes his son to a Hooters to sate--that' the appropriate word here--his and his son's curiosity. Curiosity about what? I don't think it's crass to wonder, as a blog commenter did, if he's going to take his son to a prostitute when he thinks it's appropriate for the boy to engage in sex. The father finds that ludicrous. But the father isn't actually addressing his son's sexuality at all. And he's almost entirely ignoring his own. OK, he's addressing the way we look at women. But only sort of and it's a half-assed sort of at that.

I think the important moment in this story is: a father and son walk into a Hooters after football, one Saturday afternoon, and find that many football coaches and fathers take their sons to Hooters all the time. If Mr Elston is trying to provide a teaching moment for his son, he overlooked it. The teaching moment is: men are accustomed to looking at women this way when they eat chicken and drink beer, and watch sports. And they do it without critically thinking about it. For crying out loud, both Mr Elston and the NPR host miss out on an opportunity to discuss why Hooter's waitresses would comment on the father's blog that they aren't bad people for working at Hooters. That's another teaching moment: society insists many women exploit themselves for money. How did that get missed?

Oh I know. Somebody wanted to address SEX ED. A hot topic. That's how.

We do nothing to cultivate equality when we talk about women and not men, men and not women. The world will be a much healthier place when we can talk about women and men together. We still actively separate and segregate the sexes. This explains the necessity of feminism. Mr Elston could have said, "This is why feminism is important." Men and Women may not be biologically the same, but that doesn't mean we cannot create a society in which we are equals.

Ok. Dads. Get talking.

Bob Elston's blog.
Mr Elston's op-ed piece in USA Today

Posted with this three-part, critique of Satoshi Kanazawa in mind from Echidne of the Snakes.

Matt Lewis Rides A Sarah Palin

If Obama is going to be tough to beat, the question becomes almost a philosophical one: If you’re going to lose anyway, is it better to lose atop the horse you really want to ride?

--Matt Lewis, 10/20/2009

Matt Lewis's horse is Sarah Palin. Maybe he'll be riding Mitt Romney later on. Whose to say? Follow the link to his Politics Daily post.

Thanks FIREDOGLAKE!!!


Morrissey Rides a Cock Horse

Where the Bored Children Are, Part III: Fantasy Island

I'm liking this developing discussion with James Griffioen, the father who CNN decided would represent all parents pissed at Spike Jonez's, David Eggar's Where the Wild Things Are. So, I'm promoting his comment and responding within a post. Maybe we can broaden and develop this talk a little bit. We're on to myth and fantasy.

James wrote:

it's always easy to call individuals names on the internet, and I was never actually "offended"; the guy 4,000 people were calling an idiot on the CNN site wasn't me, just a name CNN attached to some comments cobbled together in a way to make the whole issue seem more controversial. I felt no ownership over any of it other than the idea that this book is for kids and the movie should appeal to them too.

I've seen your attitude displayed on several other sites: "WTWTA (the book) is not for children, it's just a book for adults with a few words per page, and some pages that only have pictures." (?) I can only assume that no one saying this actually has children. Try telling my son, who drags that book over to me 10 times a day begging for "wilds" that the book is not for him. you might, but I have this absurd desire to make my kids happy. Crazy, I know.

I think what got lost in CNN's reporting is a subtle distinction. Sendak was telling parents to go to hell if they thought the film was too scary. I am saying the film fails because it's not scary enough: it was watered down by studio execs WHO WANTED TO MAKE SURE KIDS WOULDN'T BE SCARED. the end result is a beautiful, boring film. and frankly, really young kids are not hard to entertain. they will put up with a lot of boring stuff if scenes designed to capture their wonder and imagination come with it. this movie failed to capture the easiest audience: my daughter, who has gone with me to three charlie chaplin films and two buster keaton marathons at the art theater and sat entranced without complaining. she's never seen anything by pixar. she doesn't watch television. she WANTED to like this movie. but it was just too confusing and dull.

as for the lack of myth, perhaps I didn't explain myself well. I am a former classicist, and I am a strong believer in the use of myth to teach moral lessons and as a tool for development. all that joseph campbell stuff (star wars succeeds not just because of the cool costumes and the hackneyed dialogue, but because the story resonates with us on a level we don't even really understand). kids love the wild thing book because every element of the story, from the illustrations to certain words chosen by Sendak, resonate with them. As they get older, the story takes on even more meaning. And when we are adults, we see Max is the ultimate child archetype. He reminds us that we used to be wild and that we learned to be tame and that's probably a good thing; most of all Max returns to where we'd all like to return, a warm bedroom
"where someone loves us best of all" and where there are good things to eat. does it get any more primal than that? the book is genius as myth (and art) because it operates on all these levels and appeals to so many age groups.

The movie fails as myth. it does not capture the imagination. the fundamental themes of the book are absent or tangled in the psycho-babble brier patch. it is sickeningly hamfisted in its psychological portrayal of Max. this Max is designed solely to appeal to adults with injured children inside them, or (on a superficial level) people nostalgic for the book they had read to them as children. The former will find it speaks to them, the latter will find it a corruption of the fundamental story that spoke to them as kids.

trust me man, we didn't show up at the 10:30 a.m. show on the Friday it opened because we wanted this film to fail. we were sure the people involved were going to get it right, and that's why we were so disappointed when they got it so horribly wrong.

October 22, 2009 9:11 AM

First, you video-taped your kid, published his likeness on the Internet, and made him a case-study. Your children and their reactions to Where the Wild Things Are are not exactly the only reason why people are calling you an idiot. Let's be fair. But I have said that it's apparent you aren't an idiot. However, you are responsible for the creation of "the guy 4,000 people were calling an idiot on the Internet."

Now onto the more interesting issue:
I'm surprised you call yourself a classicist yet simply refer to it as "all that Joseph Campbell stuff." But not too surprised, I guess; after all you say you use it, myth, to teach moral lessons. I haven't met a classicist even amateur department classicist in the English Depts and Philosophy Dept where I have lectured who would do that. I don't find Campbell useful at all; to be honest, I'm wary of his work and its application. I'm sure some of my readers disagree, and I welcome the difference.

Well, I'd say he created his own myth of myth in order to teach moral lessons. And I don't like that. He's very convincing. But, you know, I'm no fan of the archetype-view of narrative. That's a kind of structuralism that offers a world-view that is most accessible and useful to the most powerful, good or evil tho they may be.

I find your use of two words engaging. Can you define what you mean by "resonate" and by "the imagination" before I write about what you've said? What is it to have something resonate? How does that process come to be? Is it a revelation? Is it a form of energy? Is it a form of reflection? Is it a knee-jerk reaction? (I tease, but you accused me of knee-jerking my initial response to your statements about the film and well I'm telling it's not a knee-jerk.) Is it gas?

Resonate is one of those abused words that people use to address a matter worth talking about because it's supposed to illustrate its own process. It sounds like it does a lot of critical work on its own, it sounds meaningful, but it really simply sits there standing in place of a lot of ideas and it's those ideas I'm most interested in. (Technical shorthand: the word resonates points to the meta- without actually doing the work of digging in and thinking about the meta-.)

In addition, I'm sure you're aware that your interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are is just generic enough for most people to find something in it to agree with. Another thing Joseph Campbell and his disciples are good at doing. It may have no substance. I don't mean this in a snarky way at all. In fact, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

You write:

Max returns to where we'd all like to return, a warm bedroom
"where someone loves us best of all" and where there are good things to eat. does it get any more primal than that? the book is genius as myth (and art) because it operates on all these levels and appeals to so many age groups.

My emphasis shows your critique, which I insist is nothing more than a "hey, you all isn't it cool that so many of us find this cool" statement--a recognition of similarity but nothing approaching a critical address of its subject. Your critique sounds meaningful, but so much is assumed that I'm not willing to accept without some discussion first.

Significantly, I disagree that I want to return to that bed and that it represents something primal about me. (Whatever primal is supposed to mean here.) I think I had parents who would hope but sometimes doubted that I was a kid who wanted to find that bed warm, who wanted to be satisfied with where I was with them. But we know for a fact that "the bed," your example of primacy that is as a matter of fact not a primal image but a highly and socially constructed concept, "the bed" while it may be warm is not always where the child wants to return to but often must return to and is forced to find warm in need of warmth, at a loss for articulating the subtle alienation he or she feels from the obligations his parents insist are attended to. I'll agree with an implication: we all want to find warmth sometimes and somewhere and often that place is a place we find in return. As in when I return somewhere there is usually a purpose and if that purpose is achieved, I might find it warm. But I'm not prepared to call this a journey with a capital J and compare it to a quest for a grail and tie it all in nice and tidily to every western tradition since, say, Ovid.

So I'd argue it's not myth, it's fantasy. That's a start.

And really, I don't think you want the film to fail, but I do need to understand what you have to say about this at all that goes beyond the video, the bored kids, the fans not happy with an adaptation of a loved work, and a shitty CNN article.

It's been years since I read Campbell as an undergraduate student in introductory literary analysis classes. I watched the Moyers' specials, of course, but I read what I wanted to of Campbell sometime before 93 and after 90. Look, I was born in 1970. I was raised on Joseph Campbell to some extent. And for me, he is a pop icon as much as he is a classicist. A celebrity scholar. I can't pull quotes, but I can handle a serious discussion about The Imagination and Myth. I can tell you I've always been skeptical of Campbell's worth to a study in Classics.

My suggestion is that you're not considering the social construction that quite forcefully because of the book's popularity insists how we should read Max and his monsters. In fact, I think you accept that construct quite willfully and uncritically, which is how I see people treat Joseph Campbell, too, btw.

Off to teach: I write these posts between my classes, so you know I beg your patience. And I'm rusty. Please stay in touch. Let's continue thinking about this.

Evolutionary Psychology: Literally Nutty

Echidne of the Snakes has had a good series of posts on a wing of evolutionary biology called evolutionary psychology. I'm not capitalizing it either.

It's well worth the read. The whole thing, links and all. I guess I'm not surprised about the problems. But to find such mainstream acceptance of crap science is always sad, especially when it's purpose appears entirely sexist. Professor Satoshi Kanazawa is a super-freak; he wears his desire to put women in their place on his sleeve.

Should come as no surprise that the Men's Rights crowd loves the guy and his work.

Don't we all know a guy who finds feminism evil and sexual harassment natural. Then again Kanazawa thinks that such -isms are unnecessary and illogical.

Here is Satoshi Kanazawa's bio on the Psychology Today web site.

Republicans For Rape

Where the Bored Children Are, Part II: Electric Boogaloo

James Griffioen is upset that I called him an idiot and attempted to comment on my initial post about his interview with a CNN journalist. I work on a buggy PC from Seoul, Korea. His comment never made it to my blog, though I tried to publish it. I'm sorry for that. So here it is:

Idiot James Griffioen here.

I talked to the CNN interviewer for more than half an hour and she apparently scrawled some notes summarizing what I said, and I'm not happy with the results nor the kneejerk reaction of people calling me an idiot for bringing my kids to see a movie based on a book they love.

I wrote an explanation of why I REALLY felt the film was a disappointment. if you're interested you can read it here:

http://www.sweetjuniperinspiration.com/2009/10/no-escape.html

best, Idiot James Griffioen of Detroit, Michigan.

I appreciate the comment very much actually and have taken the time to visit Mr. Griffioen's blog. I should admit that I knew about the video of his youngest child reacting to the trailer for the Spike Jonez movie. I found it cute but even commented, then, that I think it's weird that people are expecting a film adaptation of Sendak's grotesque childlike, not children's, tale to be something kids are going to like. I think it's typical that he is not happy with the public's response to his POV. Nevertheless, my opinion is not that he is an idiot for taking his kids to a movie.

Please visit his blog and read how CNN took his comments out of context. I reread the CNN piece and, in context with Mr. Griffioen's response to it, the article reads like it's trying to fuel controversy and generate readers for the CNN site, which is good for revenue. In other words, many people are criticizing the film and the CNN piece--its tone--encourages the criticism from parents whose children won't like the film. The CNN piece is not about the film and has nothing to add to any intelligent discussion about the film, the book, or parenting.

All of that is fine. Why am I annoyed? I'm saying this as both an author and teacher of literature: people place ridiculous notions of responsibility on artists. Just because children love Where the Wild Things Are doesn't mean it's theirs now and how they feel about it matters. Readers' responses to text inform how we read the texts: thus, Where the Wild Things Are is shelved and sold as a book for children. It's reviewed in this manner. It's discussed, outside of technical discourse communities, in this manner. However, it's not strictly a book for children. We'd certainly agree that there is no code for understanding what the story is about or how one might interpret it. Many things are assigned to Max and his monsters. You'd think that adult readers of the book think that Max's monsters were real. Anyway, I'm not going to discuss Maurice Sendak, his book's popularity, because I think people already know why it remains a bestselling book. I'm simply stating that this book does not belong to any one reader or group of readers. Therefore, the adaptation is another interpretation of the initial work. Actually we know that Spike Jonez and David Eggars created a story to accompany the initial work. Whether of not Sendak likes the result, the film is not the book and nobody intended for it to be a book. I suppose the best thing it could be is a homage.

I'm most annoyed at the parental criticism the film is receiving based on the reactions of young children. Good thing food isn't reviewed in the mainstream media like art. Kids would be eating fish sticks and chicken fingers and anything with sugar in it. Who gives a crap what children think of a Spike Jonez film? Really. I think it's a sign of how we consume products and speaks to how we decide what to permit our children to consume more than it does speak to the merits of the film itself.

Mr. Griffioen put a video of his kid being cute on the Internet and received a bit of notoriety for his work. No, let me get that right: received a bit of notoriety for his child's cuteness. And now I have an image of a kid-who-doesn't-exist--an image I have of him does exist but he is rather different and more of a complete child than that image is--and this image is rattling around my head all upset because Spike Jonez took a big shit on his expectations? No. No. His parents put that image of him into my head--an image the child certainly is not capable of communicating to me and certainly not mature enough to relate to his later experience being bored in a movie theater.

I'm not a child psychologist but being the oldest of six children as well as having helped raise a 20-month old myself, I can tell you from experience that a child's expectations while significant and well-formed (and expressible via language and acts) are not like his parents' expectations.

When I wrote IDIOT JAMES GRIFFIOEN I was being a turd and participating in the curmudgeon-like behavior of Maurice Sendak when he told parents to "go to hell" if they or their children don't like the film. I should have thought that Mr. Griffioen would see my post.

I guess, I too, let you down James. I hope this helps clear things up. I'm sarcastic, but not a complete asshole.

ADDENDUM: by the way, I don't deal with JG's review of the film here because that's not the issue. Although, I don't agree with him and wonder about what he can possibly mean by referring to the failure of the film being that it fails "as myth." Whatever that means, it's the idea that children know myth so well that they don't like this film because it fails at it that I find entirely absurd. Once again, it isn't for kids nor does it have to be. In the same manner, that the original book is not for kids nor does it have to be. Maybe we can examine our own expectations as parents, adults and children, kids as well. What is it that we want to see in Sendak's work that isn't necessarily there? Whatever it is, I can say one thing about it: it will say nothing about the work itself.

Drill Baby Drill. Bad for students, too.

Did you know that students learn better when permitted to fail.  More importantly, the research discussed supports the idea that when we attempt to generate answers on our own we can improve our recall. (Link to summary article from Scientific American.)

It goes like this.  If I'm permitted to make attempts, whether or not they are successful attempts, I'm more likely to remember the correct answer when I find it or it is given to me than if I'm prohibited from making unsuccessful attempts and simply given the correct answer.

We know that in primary and secondary schools, drilling is the order of the day.  Unfortunately, most teachers drill.  I've always thought it makes their jobs more difficult, but they drill not only for the standards but because a lot of teachers absolutely love being correct.  Anyway, more on this study as I look closely at the research, but this is a good thing.

If we think about it pedagogically, for a moment, I'll summarize my initial feelings.  This is unrehearsed, so please permit me a little wiggle-room with my improvised technical jargon.  Not only unrehearsed, but I'm writing this in the twenty minutes before my classes:  it's also rushed.  My thinking about this is clear, though.  I've felt this way since I was in high school and am going to use some language many humanities teachers have come to know quite well. 

I believe that students learn better when they confront conflict.  The conflict surfaces in moments where original social difference and practical experiential difference students and teacher bring to class generates tension between the ideas students and teacher discuss on a given question at issue.  I like to think the teacher can resist doing things for the students when conflict arises.  Rather than giving the most correct answer for the moment conflict arises, a teacher may step into the middle of things and work with the students to encourage and cultivate more discussion.  Teachers can resist making authoritative statements rather asking questions that can further generate tension.  The tension generated presents teacher and students with the ability to improvise and explore the relationships between their own and others' ideas.  Teachers can work in media res to help maintain focus on the issue at hand but can refrain from answering the question.

I'm discussing this from the Humanities perspective: in the sense that we discuss issues that are problematic and may not have a definitive and/or quantifiable answer.  Just like in the sciences, though, a Literature or Philosophy teacher is often encouraged to drill students in order to promote correctness whether or not it is applied to finding correct answers or correct thinking about possible answers.

Personally, I think this process promotes Democracy and proscribes Authoritarianism.  In addition, it renders unnecessary the practice of prohibiting kinds of dialogue.  For example, I know many composition teachers prohibit certain kinds of topics in their classes.  In the US, this always pisses off the conservative students who enjoy using the classroom as a place to scold liberals.  I find the hard-headed and traditionalist (read, bullshit) a conservative brings to my classroom useful.  It instantly creates conflict.  And it makes it much less difficult to generate tension in any discussion when a fundamentalist bemoans progressive values or a jock from the suburbs introduces his classmates to unconscious sexism or racism.  In addition, when a liberal insists that all is relative, somebody with more conservative values can bring some discipline to the discussion.  Let the class handle this.  What happens when I do this?  The students find the most correct answers for themselves in a manner that is most memorable and, more often than not, most pleasurable.  As an added note, my students write more in this environment.

Research like this is never surprising to me.  We know these things.  But we simply get a kick out of oppressing students (and teachers.)  As I study the research a bit more, I'm sure to have something to say about the drilling in the Korean classroom.  Please help me think about these issues and feel free to comment.