This Exploitation Might Not Be the Kind You're Thinking of

National Identity and a Pageantry of Stereotypes

When discussing his motivation for making the movie Desperado (2010), director Robert Rodriguez said he was interested in giving people a similar experience to one he had watching John Woo's The Killer:

Rodriguez says that when he got to Hollywood to make Desperado he wasn't trying to make a Latin film but a film that was entertaining just like when he saw John Woo's, The Killer and he thought, "Damn I want to be Chinese." With Desperado he liked the idea of people watching it, who would say, "Wow I want to be Mexican." [sic] (source)

Recently I've been thinking about the relationship between identity/community and the sort of quilt of stereotypes that define exploitation flicks like Rodriguez's later Mexploitation flick Machete (2010), as Rodriguez's quote exemplifies.

(I'm drawing my knowledge of exploitation flicks from these sources: Wikipedia's page on the genre; TVTropes's page on the genre; my own viewings of Coffy (1973), Undercover Brother (2002) (which is really am affectionate parody of Blaxploitation rather than an example of it, despite the fact that Blaxploitation was self-parodying from the outset), Kill Bill I & II (2003, 2004), the Grindhouse movies Planet Terror and Deathproof (2007), and Machete; and conversations with friends on these and other exploitation flicks. Take my interpretations with the grain of salt designed for opinions based on insufficient evidence.)

Exploitation flicks are often described as containing some kind of exploitation (a gimmick to draw in audiences) rather than high-quality plot, acting, or cinematography, but since things like action sequences, romance, horror, and comedy count as exploitation, this definition reduces the term to something as vague and unhelpful as "genre movie." Sometimes definitions insist that two particular exploitations--graphic violence and nudity--must be present, which does narrow the definition considerably but still includes everything shown on HBO (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you). To narrow the definition so that it actually approaches common use, I would say that an exploitation flick must 1. use at least one of graphic violence and nudity/explicit sex to draw audiences; 2. promise some other material that will play on specific conventions and/or stereotypes and violates a contemporary taboo, such as religion/sacrilege, racism/racial identity, Nazism, or cannibalism; and 3. be notably or seemingly low-budget (though not necessarily poor quality). Often the element in the second qualification places the film in a particular subgenre: among the subgenres, Blaxploitation (which draws heavily on stereotypes of and societal problems for black Americans), nunsploitation (which often shows nuns exhibiting sexual behaviour we don't expect of nuns), and kung-fu movies are perhaps the most well known.

Exploitation flicks tend to incorporate as many stereotypes and associations connected with their chosen theme as they possibly can. For instance, Machete, which I will use as my example throughout, is mainly about illegally-immigrated Mexican Americans ("We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us!") and it has redneck border patrols, cockroaches, taco stands, semi-mythical revolutionaries, high Catholicism, street fighting rings, chop-shops and pimped-out cars, corrupt Federales, bandannas, and people brandishing rickshaws, hoes, and shovels. Plot devices include Mexican immigrants using publicly subsidized health care, Mexican characters getting construction work, Mexican characters infiltrating houses by doing yard work ("You ever notice how you let a Mexican into your house just because he's got gardening tools?"), and American-raised Mexican-Americans struggling to balance American and Mexican identities. It is almost as though the script writers made a list of all possible stereotypes that Americans have of Mexicans, strung them into some kind of order, and wrote a plot around that. Most of these stereotypes are presented as blatantly as possible. Subtlety is not highly valued.

Given the genre's focus, exploitation flicks usually privilege a pageantry of associations over the linear logic of tight plot. There is something carnivalesque and anti-systematic about them (though, of course, it is not necessarily the case that they don't have some kind of deep order). Part of this might come from the fact that the exploitation flick's very name implies an emphasis on immediate experience--pleasure, outrage, shock, tittilation, excitement--over a more considered or analytic engagement. It assumes that an exuberant display of taboo topics will be pleasurable to its intended audience, perhaps in part because of the imagined or documented outrage of a putatively unintended audience of social censors (but of course this unintended audience is really intended if their outrage is a real source of pleasure). However, there's something more to this than just the pageantry and the pleasure of taboo. These films use the play of stereotype and the overabundance of flavour to explore, if not always articulate, a certain kind of collective identity. In my flagship example, Machete, this is especially obvious; Rodriguez has said that he wanted to make his national/ethnic identity attractive, so Machete must display something that is recognizably Mexican, even if Mexican-ness is not clearly articulated in the film. (Of course it couldn't be; it, like any national identity, is imaginary.)

This leaves me with five directions for further questioning.

1. There must be a considerable difference between an emic (insider's perspective) and an etic (outsider's perspective) exploitation flick. Were Machete an etic film rather than an emic film, we would be quite right to consider it an act of appropriation at best, derogatory patronizing at worst. As much as I'm tempted to subscribe to the death of the author, it is clear that an author-figure (or author function) of some kind is still hugely important to an interpretation of a text. If an exploitation flick plays with the identity of a community, how much changes depending on whose community it is?

2. Exploitation flicks play on a confusion of identity or affiliation as well as an exuberant expression of one. I am not Mexican; it is unclear what affiliation I am supposed to have with this film (or it would be if Rodriguez hadn't helpfully told us that we're supposed to want to be Mexican). In etic exploitation films, we're often encouraged not to affiliate with the thematic group; from what I can tell, hixploitation films do not want you to want to be a hick. But more often than not it's unclear: what does Coffy think of race in America? The associative rather than linear focus makes it hard to pin down.

3. Identity must be somehow related to association. I might want to say that my identity as an academic, for instance, is based on a set of values or a set of practices, but if you were to make a gradsploitation flick the salient features would be much less logically coherent ones: all-nighters, useless erudition, endless arguments, grading papers, probably some seductive co-eds (which have nothing to do with my life as a grad student but would be conventional in such a film), etc. Is this a good way of imagining identity, "good" meaning either "accurate" or "admirable"? What does this tell us about how to strengthen our communities? Or does it say something very bad about the communities in question? Is it just a clumsy genre? Of course we should remember that in the case of things like Blaxploitation and Mexploitation, which focus on minority communities, there's a jocular reclaiming element to the stereotyping. The pleasure may come from claiming certain identifiers that were thrust upon them. These films might be excellent examples of the post-modern sense of irony, in that they balance self-conscious parody with sincerity.

4. If an exploitation film is the vehicle for making Mexican identity desirable, this might suggest that violence and nudity make identities desirable, which I find disconcerting. There's a lot in our culture to suggest this is true, but it's worth thinking about why. There are some obvious answers: violence implies that the protagonists are strong and capable while sexuality implies that the protagonists are desired by those who are desirable and desire those who are desirable (and thus have ideal normative sexualities). I'm sure this has something to do with masculinity et al., which makes me suspicious. But I'm also suspicious of those who would ban exploitation flicks as a prudish reaction to violence and nudity/sex; I suspect that filmmakers can use both exploitations to make intelligent and valuable commentaries, even if they have not ordinarily done so.

5. This is probably a coincidence, but to what extent does the term exploitation, which as an industry term does not refer to oppressive practices, relate to exploitation in the sense of oppressive practices? Exploitation in the latter sense has played a role in the history of black Americans, Mexican Americans, etc.; it might be argued that the nudity in these films is an exploitation of women; the violence in these films might reflect the violence needed to enforce the exploitation of oppressed populations. It is probably a coincidence, but it does seem a terrible irony that the method by which filmmakers "exploit" an audience entails or reflects the presumed audience's own exploitative practices. (It also gives a certain linguistic legitimacy to the Marxploitation flick, a genre I made up.)

The Invisible Colour?

The last time I was volunteering, I read an article called "White" by Richard Dyer. In it he argues that whiteness is largely invisible in our society, apparently constituted as "not non-white." Of course, "white" is designated as a race in our society and is therefore ideologically constituted like any other designated race. Whiteness has cultural meaning; whiteness is culturally performed. The trouble is that white is taken as the "default" or "normal" race. What is seen as normal is seen as neutral, and what is seen as neutral needs no explicit definition.
The article was written in the 90s, and I think that there has been some progression since then in defining whiteness (or finding the cultural definition on whiteness). For example, Stuff White People Like might be one attempt to constitute whiteness (though a particular kind of whiteness). However, when I say "some progress," I mean "a little tiny bit of progress." While I have a reasonably good idea of some of the ways I perform my maleness or my heterosexuality, I do not know how I perform my whiteness (though obviously I know how to perform my whiteness as I surely succeed in doing so). I might have some theoretical sense of my whiteness, and I try to remember that I am white as often as it comes up so that I am aware of my privilege. But I do not know how I perform whiteness (or how my behaviour, within our culture, partly produces my whiteness).
I am aware, of course, that my racial designation exists without my needing to act it out. Part of my privilege comes from not having to claim it. But I suspect that I have learned to behave in accordance with our culture's unspoken definition of whiteness, and that my behaviour in part helps to constitute the cultural definition of race.
What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that I shall try to be aware of the way I perform my whiteness, but that I don't suppose it will be easy, especially since I do not have many ideas about where to begin. Does anyone else know?
(Of course, it's also worth asking how I perform my economic status, my education, my ability, my language, my religion, my psychology, and so on.)

Def Poetry: Knock Knock

If my last post discouraged you (and I could see how one might find it discouraging), may I suggest you listen to this def poetry, Daniel Beaty's "Knock Knock":

7 Quick Takes (77)

1. The folks and I went to Ontario to see my brother graduate. If you are a reader in Ontario and you are wondering why I didn't visit, it's because my schedule was very full. We visited family and friends of the family. We ran some errands. We poked around Stratford, the city where I went to high school.

2. For my birthday, my brother gave me a painting, among other things. You can see it here. It is entitled Calliphoridae Megacephala (I assume). I think you'd have to be in our family or a close friend to fully understand why this is a real present.

3. We also learned about Justin Bieber. You see, The Biebs hails from Stratford, Ontario, my maternal homeland. We even went to the same high school, albiet not at the same time. It was a little odd to see that Stratford has to a small extent been made over with a Bieber geography in my absense: Rheo Thompson Candies (a well-known chocolatier in the Stratford tourist industry) now has a Justin Bieber box, Bieber collector's cards and other paraphenalia are available in most retail locations, and places like his favourite restaurant (Madeliene's) which were previously understood in terms of family and friend's connections to it are now labeled as part of the Bieber landscape. Stratford was already a tourist town due to its theatre and arts scene--and its shops and restaurants--but now it has been remade again. I think I prefered Shakespeare-themed tourism to teen idol-themed tourism.

My brother and I discussed the young man in question and determined that he is not at fault for the silliness that surrounds him (though asking the mayor of Stratford to do something about the fans mobbing him was a bit out of touch with reality). The real issue lies with the obsessed fans--hyperventilating because a mediocre singer is in the same city as you? really?--and with the media outlets that encourage this behaviour, typifying it as a valid developmental stage in young women as opposed to teaching girls to make good choices in who they bestow their affections on and how they do it.

4. On Monday I bid Fort McMurray farewell and flew to Vancouver. That makes three provinces in a handful of days and three flights in just over a week. I've maxed my annual allowable environmental damage right there, I think. The weather, scent, and vegetation that greeted me was wonderful.

5. Wednesday evening some friends and I went to see The Merchant of Venice at Bard on the Beach. Other friends would have gone were it not for Game 7 (see next entry). It was an interesting production. Off the top, I'll say that the costumes, acting, and music were as good as one could want. Shylock was especially wonderful. But as with any production of Merchant, there are some particular problems that are hard to overcome. Portia is racist. In order to mitigate this, I think, they really played the suitors from Carthage and Aragon as ridiculous figures, but with the culturally and racially sensitive dialogue, this verged on being racist in and of itself. Further, Shylock's forced conversion is horrifying, but not as horrifying as the audience's laughter at it. One of the more interesting choices, I think, is to make the homosocial relationship between Antonio and Bossanio an unreciprocated romantic relationship: Antonio clearly loved Bossanio as something other than a son, and his melancholy was "explained" by Bossanio leaving him. However, I like a tinge of sorrow in fictions, so this lingering plot, coupled with other moments of sadness and discomfort in the midst of the comedy (including a really uncomfortable Jessica), gave the play a depth and self-consciousness that I think was necessary. As one of my friends said, you can't really play it as a straight comedy any more.

6. There were riots in Vancouver that night. If you've been following Canadian news or coverage of the Stanley Cup, you may know what I'm talking about. Post-game rioters turned and torched sixteen police vehicles and looted numerous businesses in the Vancouver district. Also in attendance were riot police.

While waiting outside during the intermission, I suddenly noticed and called attention to a plume of smoke rising from the downtown district across the water. I hadn't paid mind to it at first because I was so used to smoke in Fort McMurray. A quick check on assorted Internet-connected gadgetry and my friends had the story. Since we knew people who had been at the game, we were a bit worried. Fortunately, all such friends were safe.

I've been distressed by the coverage of this event. The city officials have been blaming anarchists, which is ridiculous. While the blatant disregard for law shown by the rioters has a surface resemblance to anarchy, it is no more than surface. On Facebook I saw people writing that they were down there and there was no riot, only riot police. This is also ridiculous, considering ample first-person civilian reports of rioting. Beyond which, I don't think the riot police set their own cars on fire. Others are trying to deflect criticism from hockey itself, but of course there are problems with that, too: riots have occured in Vancouver before following big hockey games, but not following much else. What's most concerning, though, is the increase in sexual predation and harassment following hockey games. There are two articles that I found especially helpful. This one explains what happened and what has been said about it; this one looks closer at hockey itself and what gender has to do with it.

7. On Thursday I bought a new camera. I was quite pleased with it in the store, if leery of the touch screen, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not comfortable with its supermacro. I'll play with it a bit, continue trying this supermacro, and if it's not as good as my previous camera's, I'll go exchange it. I have two weeks to exchange, so long as I don't damage it. I'm sure I could live with this camera, but I'd rather have one I'm comfortable with considering that I expect it to last me a few years. It does have some nice features, mind you, including underwater photography and scrolling panoramics.

That is all! Please visit Conversion Diary, host of this blog carnival.

Happy Thanksgiving!

...while I try to think of today as something other than a commemoration of horrific colonial violence.

Sexy Body, Disfigured Body

Aimee Mullins, who I have referenced here before, asked a question in her TED talk on her 12 pairs of (prosthetic) legs. Actually, she asked three questions. They are, "What does a beautiful woman have to look like? What is a sexy body? And interestingly, from an identity standpoint, what does it mean to have a disability?" I started to think about this over the course of about a week. Not only was I wondering about the answers to her questions, but I also had a few questions about her questions. I'll try to explore these with you here.

1. What is a sexy body? What is a disabled body?

The most obvious way to answer this question is to Google these terms. But I don't think you have to. I think you'll know what you'll find, especially in the case of the former. This won't answer our questions, though. Neither question--sexiness, disability--is easily answerable. Likely, neither is answerable at all, in the end.

First: sexiness. Or, if you prefer, beauty or physical attractiveness. (If you don't want to follow my reasoning, jump to the next bold point.) They say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and, whatever that person who originally minted this phrase meant, it has a truth different from that most people accept. Most people think it means that everyone has their own standard of beauty, which is of course somewhat true. However, there is another interesting element to this which I think becomes more clear if I say, "Beauty is in the mind of the beholder." Beauty is not, at least as we experience it, a quality inherent in an object or person. Rather, it is an interpretation of that object or person. People have said this before of all sorts of things, such as colour, but this is really a different matter than colour. A thing, of course, is not red itself. That is a psychological interpretation of the lightwaves we receive. But all things that we experience as red do reflect that particular wavelength. They are in a sense red after all.

In other words, our brains see a person and think, based on assorted qualities our sensory receptors pick up, "That's a sexy person." (If you want to hold onto an essentialist theory of beauty, you of course can. God or Platonic principles or what ever defines universal beauty can make a thing beautiful--truly, inherently beautiful--and then allow our brains to perceive that. Or, there is such a thing as beauty, somehow, derived from something, and it is to our reproductive advantage, somehow, to be able to perceive that, and we have evolved to be able to perceive it. The relevant point is that it's still a process that goes on in our brains.) In this sense, beauty is in the eye of the beholder--but that doesn't mean it's entirely subjective. To the extent that our brains operate the same, sexiness, even though interpreted, is objective; to the extent that our brains operate differently, it is subjective. The degree of difference isn't just genetics, of course, but also individual personal experience and cultural factors (and I'd argue that culture factors are way bigger than most people think). Anyway, the upshot is, 'sexiness' is partly universal, partly cultural, and partly individual. So we can answer 'what is a sexy body' in part, but only in part.

Now, there are all sorts of theories about facial symmetry and hip-waist ratios and things. I don't want to get into those, because I think that they are no more than contributing factors. A girl whose enormous, unibrow-laden, protuding forehead is perfectly symmetrical isn't going to win any beauty pagents. Meanwhile, I wouldn't say Helena Bonham Carter is the most beautiful woman in the world, but she's made it pretty well in Hollywood. But her face isn't perfectly symmetrical. Not at all. So I think we can say these sorts of things contribute, but aren't absolute.

I think here we need to fall back on what I said before. A lot of it is cultural. We are trained to think of particular people--often whole, 'healthy,' young, thin people--as beautiful and others as not beautiful. There was a time when overweight girls were considered sexy by some (Renaissance). There was a time when husky women were desirable (frontier, pre- and revolutionary Russia). There was a time when effeminate men were considered beautiful (ancient Greece, some Renaissance). Sickly girls also had a vogue (Victorian). It is true that some people we just won't find all that attractive anyway for biological reasons. But I don't think that's the case for people without legs. So long as we aren't actively repulsed by them, there's no reason we can't find them attractive. Listen to Aimee Mullins talk--just the first few minutes--on training repulsion.

That's not a real answer, but it's all I've got for now. I'll also note that I purposely trained myself not to be repelled by people with prosthetics and people with assorted facial disfigurations, etc. As a kid, I simply couldn't deal with anyone who looked 'disfigured' or 'deformed,' as I put it.

So what is disability? You'll notice I used "disfigured" in my post title. This is to emphasis a point: disability suggests a definition which rests on whether a person can perform as well as a typical person can in those tasks deemed part of everyday life. So we have people with missing limbs or people who are shorter than usual or what have you or blind people. This definition works well if you're only thinking of amputees, but it breaks down in other areas, at least if you want to talk about attractiveness. People with albinoism are not in any way less able to perform typical tasks, but they are often considered unattractive. Conjoined twins are often less able to do particular things, but they aren't always. Sometimes the only thing they are less able to do is to be alone, and I hardly think that counts. Aimee Mullins points out that people without legs are far from less able. They have now become more able. And then blind people, one of the largest demographics of people who are part of the disability--or different ability--activism movement, are often indistinguishable from sighted people, including in the realm of attractiveness. Disability is not the issue; it's 'looking weird' that is.

What definition can we use, then? Well, one possibility is, People who are visually atypical in some significant anatomical or pigmentational way, which is distinct from race, gender, or age. Another, less politically correct but I think more to the point, definition would be, People who would fifty years ago have been in a freak show, and now would be on the TLC network.

Where am I going with this? Good question. This is where: the fundamental question is, can a person who stikes us as so visually atypical also strike us as attractive?

Of course they can. If you care to, you can find all sorts of fetish literature about amputees and conjoined twins and human-animal hybrids (not possible yet, I know, but they would fit in this class if they did exist--and they were once thought to exist) and goodness knows who else. There is fetish literature about dragons doing R-rated things with luxury vehicles, so I guess we oughtn't be surprised.

But what about a 'normal' person, who doesn't have such fetishes? Well, I hope by now the pictures I've been putting in have answered that for you. There's no reason they can't, so long as we don't allow ourselves to be repulsed by them. And those fetishes may not be so off topic. I wonder if the forbidden-ness, the taboo, even the repulsiveness itself contribute to the fetish. If you look it up, people can be attracted to some pretty repulsive things. A Freudian analyst might talk a lot about the repression of certain disallowed desires being exagerated through a fetish. My point being, we might be naturally inclined to feel that these people are attractive--that these are sexy bodies--but we think we shouldn't feel so, and are as a result confused and repulsed. Consider the on-going cultural debate about whether the Medusa was beautiful or hideous. C. S. Lewis, for instance, calls the Medusa beautiful long before Cixous does. The classical painters painted her as such. And yet she's also a figure for ugliness--and disability.

Can a disfigured body be sexy? Sure it can. But we must let it be so.

2. Who becomes sexy?

And, of course, unless we find ourselves desiring that element which is different, the body must be sexy even without the disability. By now you'll likely have noticed that most of the people I've shown on here would have been attractive without their particular difference (or not, if you don't find them attractive). A 500-pound person will likely not be considered sexy, unless obesity turns you on. That's just a fact. And if a person is just generally what we'd consider unattractive, whether for cultural or hardwired reasons, then that they have a plastic arm isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another. If they could somehow grow that arm back, it won't help.

Which begins to put stress on Aimee Mullins implication that allowing the disabled to be beautiful is a victory. It seems that it's only a victory for those who are beautiful.

And I don't think this is going to push us into saying, Well, now that the legless are beautiful, people with distortions on their faces can also be beautiful. Because, I'm sorry, but by standard societal definitions, they can't. Not yet.

[I recognize that someone will come around with the argument that, if you fall in love with someone who is unattractive because of their personality, you will begin to find them physically attractive by magic, almost. I am absolutely sure this is true. Love is magic. I think we can also agree that that is beside the point. We already said we're not talking about the subjective. We're talking about quasi-objective attractiveness, in as much as it exists.]

So, if only some disabled people get to be beautiful, why should we value it at all?

3. Why sexiness?

Two reasons.

First, that there is no reason we can't bestow a privilege on some when we are unable to give it to all. It's not fair, but it would be ridiculous not to push for empowerment when not everyone in the demographic will be able to share it. It would be like saying, Let's give women the right to an education, and then someone saying, No, you can't, because those women over there are too old to start learning new things, and those women over their are so mentally handicapped that they wouldn't benefit from that education. (They have advanced learning disabilities or something.) It makes no sense.

And sexiness can be empowering. As much as people talk about beauty being a limit for women in some fields, I'd suggest you try being really downright unattractive before saying that. If you think you aren't taken seriously when you're pretty, at least people listen to you (or pay some sort of attention to you). At least people don't openly mock you for how you look, which I've seen happen.

Second, if we see some disabled people as attractive, we might be more willing to think of them--and by extension their whole demographic--as people. That is, we might think 'disabled person' over 'disabled person.' Grammatically, that is rendered 'a person with a disability,' which is the language differently-abled activists are pushing for. Hopefully, if we see a really hot albino guy walk down the street, we're less likely to think of people with albinoism as 'freaks.'

4. Why not sexiness? (I'll tell you.)

Notwithstanding what I've said so far, I think there's still a problem a number of problems, and I'm likely missing some.

While we're busy training ourselves to think of some disabled/differently-abled/disfigured/anatomically-or-pigmentally-atypical people as attractive, we're simultaneously training ourselves to think of being attractive as an important goal. That is, we're educating ourselves in the culture that worries about how people look in the first place. We're not breaking out of the system which discriminates by appearance. And before Jon breaks in here, I'm not talking about the movies. Whether we agree with Jon or not on cinema (and if you don't know Jon or what he thinks about cinema, don't worry about it) doesn't matter: I'm talking about real life here. I think it's fair to say that while enjoying an attractive person's appearance is not culturally destructive, discriminating based on it is. So we need to be careful when worrying about who is sexy that we don't by mistake brainwash ourselves into thinking that sexiness is somehow more important than, or even worse a contributing factor in, a person's humanity and their right to respect and compassion.

I revealed a particular issue earlier indirectly. There is a sort of thin edge where people who are too attractive aren't taken seriously and people who aren't attractive enough are avoided or ridiculed. Even if you found that happy medium, it would only be successful in that context; presumably, you'd be still unable to compete with those who were 'too attractive' in the other context when it comes to romantic rivalry, etc. In the end, the only thing we can say for sure is that we don't want to be in the lowest half of the attractiveness food chain. The hope, of course, is that we can somehow get out of this scenario, but if that is possible (which you might have cause to doubt), we certainly can't do it if we're at all worried about whether we're sexy when have a disability.

And then there's the issue of encouraging lust. At this point some of my readers will likely be thinking, Uhp, he's playing the prude card again, and from those readers' perspectives that would be somewhat true. There are a number of reasons why I think encouraging lust is problematic, but since some of them are religiously derived I won't fool myself into thinking that they'll be persuasive to someone outside of that context. I want to clarify here, though, that I'm not condemning the experience of physical desire. In the right situation, physical desire is a good thing--and that's biblically supported, in case you were unaware of that. But, at least from a Christian perspective, there is a problem with putting all this focus into making yourself (as a person with an atypicality of some sort) sexy, into discerning who is and who is not sexy, into allowing/encouraging/forcing yourself to feel physical attraction toward a person with a disability; the problem is the encouragement of an over-active libido. In our culture, there's already that threat. We don't need to fan the flame. But I think you can make secular arguments against allowing ourselves to be too sexually active, having to do with destroying our relationships, driving our desires into unattainable fantasies, and hampering our abilities to be romantically and sexually loyal to our partners. I haven't developed these arguments largely because I haven't seen the need to on a personal basis. They exist, though. I've heard about them.

(And in case you're thinking that I'm thus a hypocrit for writing this at all and for putting up all these pictures selected for their ability to arouse you, I say this: you're likely right. I do hope I'm making a point in all this that transcends that, but that's not to say on some level I'm not doing this just so I can think about pretty girls. The naked vanities, and everything, right? My only answer can be, "Orges and onions.")

This, then, is the crux of the question I have about Aimee Mullins' question: If we do allow that a disabled body can be a sexy body, then we are forced with a particular dilemma, which is between choosing the short-term empowerment of sexiness at risk of keeping ourselves in a destructive and discriminatory culture, or striving for other forms of empowerment which have concerns like ability and accessibility, added perspective, inherent worth, compassion, and meaningful relationships. Do we feel that worrying about sexiness as empowerment is in the end empowering, or does it just cause more problems?

There are some further lines of inquiry which are pertinent, but not so directly related that I will give them the space here (as I've so clearly gone well beyond the reasonable length limits of a blog post). You'll notice one of my photos is of an African-American woman who has albinoism. There is no way to discuss her attractiveness without bringing up race--is she beautiful because she is 'white'? The on-line discussion about the attractiveness of the Hensel twins (a pair of dicephalic conjoined twins) has, if not been exhausted, at least been exhausting. The first picture shown on here is of a prosthetic designed to be and marketed as 'sexy.' It avoids what is apparently called 'the uncanny valley'; that is, things which are close enough to looking real to sometimes 'trick' us but not close enough to really convince us are uncanny and make us uncomfortable, and the designers tried to avoid that when making this arm. Other designers strive for something verisimilitude instead, as you can see in other images. The point, then, is that whatever we decide about the moral worth of this question, in the end we cannot stop at the general principle but must then begin to untangle it on a specific level--race, uncanniness, privacy and individuality. These questions are not inseparable.

Which would be a perfect segue into the one problem I have with the feminist movement (Jon and I have discussed this), which is that there are so many other facets to identity that to focus on gender alone for your emancipation seems like a case of poor resource management. But that is getting off-topic and must be saved for another post. This one is way too long as is, and I need to go to bed.

A Moment on Racism

(Alright, so it's well more than a moment.)

I'm going to spoil a story that I some day intend to write by telling you something I heard today. If you really care about not having this story spoiled, I suppose you oughn't read this.

Today during break my co-worker and I were in the galley where we usually take break when the supervisor comes in. We start chatting, and my co-worker, with his usually blithe unconcern for whoever we're having a conversation with, starts telling racist jokes. Not racist in a sort of silly sense that makes fun of racism more than a race, but the sort of joke which actually targets an individual. To his good luck, the supervisor finds it funny. The talk turns to race and to the degree to which affirmative action has gone too far, and my co-worker says something which comes off as more racist than anything anyone has said so far. (Incidentally, I am withholding names on purpose, not that who these people are couldn't be deduced by those in the know; I am not, however, being deliberately vague about what has been said. I actually cannot remember the jokes or the comments I'm alluding to.) The supervisor then said that he has no problem with Indians, Mexicans, etc., but... the most racist he has ever been was after 9/11. He does not trust Moslems. (That's how he pronounced it-- MAWS-lems.) Then he adds, "Not after what I've seen."

This struck an odd cord in me; what had he seen? Later on in the conversation he told us what he had seen to make his opinion of Muslim people change.

There was some preamble, but the brunt of the story is this: in the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, the streets of Fort McMurray were dead. He, knowing full well what the events of the morning were, happened to drive by the local mosque on an errand for his friend. Along the street next to the mosque, a half-dozen or so cabs were parked (as in many multicultural locations, taxis are often driven by people of some visible minority; I'm not sure why, come to think of it). In the soccer/picnic/recreation field behind the mosque were a half a dozen people, dressed in traditional Muslim clothing.

And they were celebrating.

Dancing, kissing, hugging, shaking one another's hands, pumping the air. Celebrating.

My supervisor told other anecdotal things afterwards which did not pertain much to the story or his feeling so much as allow him to vent some frustrations. His story is not actually what I am blogging about. I am more blogging about my reactions. At first I was skeptical that anything he saw that day would really be all that bad. His concerns about the events of the morning were colouring how he saw things for that afternoon. When I heard what he had seen, though, I was horrified. That there are people, living among us (that seems to be what angered him most), who would celebrate the deaths of thousands of presumably innocent people, is truly sickening. Of course, they may not have viewed these people as innocent...but in that case, who else do they think worthy of violent death? What are they celebrating?

Of course my supposedly rational, university trained, liberally biased, PC mechanism in my brain kicked in right away and said that what he saw was no reason to distrust all Muslim people. The rest of my brain agreed immediately. What I did feel, though, is an added sympathy toward someone who does harbour these feelings. I, after all, did not actually see people celebrating the deaths of people who could have including myself, or my loved ones. I was not in a moment of cultural shock and then witness to the depths of human depravity. Presumably particular chemical emotions flooded my supervisor's brain which are not flooding and have not flooded mine. I have not met a single Muslim person who was in any way hostile or unfriendly to me. Indeed, my interactions with Muslim people have been more uniformly positive than with almost any other religious or ethnic group, barring only Buddhists. My response to the Ontario Science Centre having a Muslim science exhibit thrilled me. I'm about as pro-Muslim as a normative Christocentric Christian can be (if you care what normative Christocentric salvation theory is, ask me). So of course I will respond with a sort of anti-racist response to his story... and recognition of the fact that my political correctness is, in this case at least, a knee-jerk response allows me to also recognise that if I were brought up in a different generation and saw different things, it wouldn't be. If I were in his shoes, I hope that I would not allow my experiences to negatively taint my perceptions of Muslim people; I hope this, but I know I would have to at the least fight myself to attain this fairness. I grew up pretty colour-blind, but that's easy to do when you can count all the non-white kids in your elementary school on one hand and you know them all by name. Going and putting it in practise in the multi-ethnic world can be harder if this is your situation, and having to deal with a mass of people who were all Muslim and who were all defined primarly by hatred in my mind would not be condusive to loving everyone equally.

To cut the rambling, I mean to say that, while I do not believe my supervisor is justified in mistrusting all Muslim people because of what he saw, I can approach understanding how he might respond that way. On the one hand this makes him fundamentally more human to me, which is important to me both as an author-aspiring and as a Christian. On the other hand, realizing I work with racists makes me uncomfortable, and the thin line between political correctness and bigotry is scary in itself.

As is, by the way, the fact that eight years ago there were at least two dozen people who were overjoyed by the news that terrorists had killed thousands of Americans--and these people lived here in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Home of the oil fields and largest distributer of oil to North America. One of the highest Canadian targets of terrorist attack. (I have heard that the 'sands and the bridge in town are on North America's top ten, but I'm not sure how true that is.)

Question: How does one love these people? How?

Tentative answer: Try to sympathize with them the way I sympathized with my supervisor?

(I had another rant to post today, but I forget what it is. Sorry. Was it something literary-theory-ish? I'm not sure.)

(I am labelling this with "hope" not because I feel hopeful, but because I need it.)

7 Quick Takes (I)

Over at Conversion Diary, Jennifer Fulwiler does 7 Quick Takes on Fridays. I'm not promising I'll keep this up, but here's one for now (since stuff's happening).

1) We've moved. My Dad, brother, and I used to live in an apartment; now we live in a duplex a few blocks away. It means slightly earlier buses to get to work on time, but also less time to the grocery store (Safeway is literally across the street), less walking time coming home from the bus stop, and far fewer stairs. While the place still looks post-move (boxes, ad hoc furniture, disorder), it's getting more together as the days go by. There's still some stuff in the apartment, but not much: it looks more like some rooms with random stuff in the corners or boxes on the floor and not like somewhere someone has recently lived.
As you may know, in a few weeks time my mother and dog will be coming to join us out here.

2) I am getting to know a co-worker. By "a co-worker," I of course mean, "my only consistent co-worker." He is not someone I am used to socializing with. For instance, he is somewhat racist. This does not make him remotely out of place in Fort McMurray, nor does it make him out of place in the Maritime population of Fort McMurray. If you want to get on here, you just learn to deal with racism. It's not manifested in discrimination (that I've seen) so much as implicitly attributing a person's behaviour to their ethnicity/nationality. For instance, "That f**king Somalian just cut me off!" This is true of many people here. But back to my coworker. He also likes to talk a lot about music (about which I know too little to follow what he says) and events that take place in the bathroom (about which I have no interest whatsoever) and combat sports (about which I know too little to follow what he says) and movies and TV shows I haven't seen. However, we are on the same page when discussing animal behaviour, movies and TV shows I have seen, and (to some extent) theology. I'm not 100% on Calvinism or the difference between Calvinists and Armenians in the churches he attends, but I get the drift.
Virtually every workplace interaction is with the supervisor, who I don't find opens up much, except in anger (not at me, at people who aren't around), and with this co-worker. Whether I like him or not isn't something I've decided for myself, or even thought about. I don't think I can decide that in this circumstance. The case is simply that I'm getting to know him.

3) I am thinking that if I ever write something in the vein of the Narnia books, I want to include talking dinosaurs.

4) My father got my brother the movie Dragon Hunters for his birthday. It's made by a European studio, but is in English. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of it. Anyway, last night we watched this Dragon Hunters movie. I enjoyed it. The story is intriguing enough not to disappoint, but the true strength of the film is in its layout and environments. The character animation may have been a bit sub-par, but the backgrounds and the world concept were breath-taking. I think it was a solid movie, and I'd suggest you watch it--if you can find it.

5) While work is getting mind-numbing, I have increasingly found interest in the Nomenclaturcon. I have no idea why I am getting so fascinated by these lists of categorized objects. Perhaps it is a boredom-induced hypnosis. I want to write books where the title is the category and the chapters are all titled as objects from these lists. Ceremonial Artifact would be one novel, with chapter titles like "POLE, TOTEM" and "PYX" and "FONT, BAPTISMAL" and "BAG, TRICK-OR-TREAT." Protective and Regulative would have the chapters "BALLOT" and "NOOSE, HANGMAN'S" and "ALARM, SMOKE" and "BELT, CHASTITY" and "HANDCUFFS." I don't even want to think about Chemical Tools and Equipment. Half of those things sound like they come from an episode of Buck Rogers. Anyway, I feel vaguely like I'm in Gertrude Stein's worst nightmare: lists of objects she can't contort, but just stare with their naked, uninterpreted identities.

6) I had to dispose of some pornography today (speaking of naked identities). We found some on the boats, and I finally got around to asking the curator what I should do with it. On the one hand, there's the question of whether or not we should keep it or make it disappear. And if we do decide to keep it, there's the other hand, which is whether or not it's archives or artifact. If it counts as archives, then I send it off to a bunch of people who will be far more embarassed and offended by it than I will be. If it's an artifact, than I have to accession it. Well, I likely would never have to accession it. It's on the D250, in the cabins, and I may not ever get that far. But anyway, as we were discussing how I was to deal with assorted things I came across (post-it notes with tallies scribbled on them, cobbled-together operation manuals, etc.) I said to the curator, "I have a somewhat awkward question. What do I do with pornography?" Thankfully she didn't take that question out of context. She wasn't sure, so she promised to ask the executive director about that (I hadn't really wanted to ask the exec director or the archivists myself, as they're maybe more likely to be awkward about it than the curator would be).
Anyway, the word came down that I was to dispose of them. So that's done. It's just that it seems very weird to me. I had to handle pornography both in the variety store where I worked and at Roger's video, and it has never affected me. I have never responded with lust--at least not to these images--and it's getting to the point where I'm no longer disgusted or curious. It just seems very odd to me, that people desire looking at pornography. This likely makes me the odd one, though, at least among guys.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting question: what do we do with pornography, at a museum? We can't display it, so is there any point in keeping it? Unless it was locally produced or featured an article about a person who lived in the area, it would be an artifact, not archives, so it's not even like it would be available for future research purposes. But it is part of our society, and future history. What do we do? Apparently, we make it disappear. My co-worker was then prompted to ask what other parts of history just conveniently 'disappear' in the same way that this part did. Which means, actually, that I took part in white-washing history. Huh.

7) There was a fire down the road from where I work. There's this trailer park along the river which is a disaster area. It's Fort McMurray's third world. The place has been condemned for months, but the tenants threw up a fit and got their notice extended by a few more weeks, so they can find places to live. The problem is that no one in that trailer park can likely afford anything else, so they'll never find another place to live. But the municipality cannot allow this trailer park to remain--it's a hazard. The place is literally falling apart. Across the front of one trailer is graffiti'd "The end is near", and under that, "here." Every trailer has at least one pile of garbage leaning against it, and that pile consists entirely of pieces of the trailer it is up against. It's a mess.
Anyway, my coworker came up to the wheelhouse where I'm currently sequestered to tell me to look out the window and call 911 (his phone died). There was a huge plume of smoke coming up from the trailer park. So I called and was put on hold. Of course tons of other people were also calling about the fire.
And then, later in the day, as we were headed to Heritage Park for payroll stuff, another plume of smoke rose from roughly the same area. I have to wonder where it was from.

So that's my Quick 7. Not so quick after all, I suppose.

My Campus Has Exploded

That investors are apparently not investing in my university at the rate they used to could easily be attributed (I think) to the economic downturn and everyone playing safe and stupid with their money. However, the campus bubble seems intent on blaming it on a number of factors, most of which seem reason enough to withdraw funds. Overall, you see, it seems as though my campus is going insane.

Want to know what happened lately?

[NEGATIVITY ALERT: the following contains little happiness. Do not procede if of a sensitive constitution.]

There. Now everyone will read this.

If you're from the area (or anywhere in the country, apparently), you'll have heard of the Homecoming street party fiasco back in my first year. In September of '05, there was an unprecedentedly large illegal street party on Aberdeen Street, which involved abuse against paramedics (I'm serious), abuse against a police animal (someone punched a horse), trespassing, numerous incidents of public and underaged drunkenness, arrests for selling liquour without a license, lacerations from thrown and shattered beer bottles, and most spectacularly, a flipped and flaming car upon which people danced. Until about 10:30, so I hear, people stayed on the sidewalk, but with cries of "F-ck the police!" students swarmed onto the street itself, which has become the default mode of the Aberdeen Street Party in the years since.

This warranted national news, apparently; people got uncomfortable calls from their parents back in BC who saw their child's drunken disorder in a special edition of whatever their closest major paper happened to be. It was on the cover of the Toronto Star and warranted a full report in the Edmonton Star as well.

Since then, donations have been a little slower coming in.

And since then, campus newspapers CANNOT stop talking about Aberdeen. It's almost as though there isn't anything else to talk about, except the flagrant misuse of student fees and tuition, which is hardly new.

Then, last year, some students in Engineering jackets (read: some Engineers) forced a female, Middle-eastern professor off of the sidewalk and made slurs of some sort towards her. The campus rags wouldn't actually tell anyone anything about the professor, of course, which was acceptable in this case--but it will be less so later on.

There was a students-against-racism rally that year. Someone pointed out that it was a few montsh too late, and then the rest of us pointed out that rallies usually take months or so to plan anyway, and that's when you know you're going to have a rally. When some incident happens, there won't be a rally the next day. Maybe it could have been a little sooner, but this particular student was being an idiot about it, and it seems he set the tone for the rest of the school ever since.

All of this was bad enough, but this year...

1) Some AMS employee left the T4s of ever student who worked for any AMS-affiliated business that year in the hallway, unguarded and unlocked, in a couple boxes label TAX RECEIPTS, for the entire summer. Someone code-named "The Cold Canuck" took one of these boxes and delivered it anonymously to the 'official' student newspaper, the Journal, so that they could deal with it. At this point, the Journal decided that the best course of action was to 1) not ask the AMS about it, 2) not publish anything about it, and 3) ask their lawyers to get back to them in a few weeks about any ramifications it might have if they did anything about this. After a few weeks, The Canuck, apparently seeing three Journal editions go by without a single response, left a sampling from yet another box for The Golden Words, the campus comedy paper, to deal with. The GW did an admirable job. They went to the AMS, made sure they dealt with the issue, and then printed a full expose on it, legal ramifications be damned. Once this happened, the Journal decided that maybe it ought to run a piece, and so it did, and then alternated between slamming the AMS and glossing over the issue. Talia Radcliffe, the AMS prez, decided not alert former employees about the problem, though, and so a friend of mine, who worked in an AMS business last year, found out through the newspaper that all of her personal information--name, SIN, date of birth, credit card numbers, everything required to perform identity theft--could have been compromised. Radcliffe has still not seen fit to apologize for this gross misconduct. The Journal refuses to call her out on it. No one's quite sure whether the Journal controls the AMS (whichever candidate the paper endorses always wins) or the AMS controls the Journal (they can cut the paper's funding whenever they want), but it seems like there's some serious puppetry going on. Diatribe, an anarchic-libertarian student-submitted magazine, has frothed about how badly both papers handled the situation, which I read as whining about not getting to be the one to do the expose. GW has gone back to comedy. Nothing happens about this issue ever again.

2) The Queen's University Muslims Students Association prayer-space gets broken into several times. A QUMSA banner is burnt. Student-aged individuals (presumably students) publically heckle a female Muslim student walking down the street with religion-derived insults. What's being called Islamaphobia seems to be writhing in the campus' bowels. Muslim students are obviously not happy. I am not happy.

3) Strange banners which may have been homophobic are found in the student ghetto during the Aberdeen street party. People don't know how to respond, largely because the slogans on the banners don't make any sense. No one knows what the creators of the banners were trying to say, other than that homosexuality has something to do with it. It fizzles after a bit, because it's so weird.

4) Jacob Mantle, the ASUS president, makes a remark on someone's photo on Facebook. Within hours, the paper finds out. The remark is, "Nice Taliban picture." The Journal says that he comments on students wearing headscarves. Because the Journal refuses to mention people's ethnicities, everyone assumes that these were Muslim students. They were not. They were white. He knew them, and knew they were not Muslim. However, most of the campus, thanks to the Journal's negligent journalistic practices, thinks that he said that to Muslim students. It hits the Globe and Mail. There's an explosion. People from left, right, and centre are asking him to step down. He refuses to apologize. The AMS announces that they would like him to step down, but cannot constitutionally impeach him. People yell and scream and want him impeached anyway. Then people figure out that the Journal misrepresented the event, and, despite it being an ignorant comment, swing to support him en masse. The Journal cannot report on anything else. It's crazy, and blown well out of proportion. People start hollering about racism at Queen's, despite the fact that the comment was not racist but Islamaphobic. Then things get even stupider.

5) On Hallowe'en, there was graffiti on campus. One incident said, "Expect Resistance." Another said, "Kill the cracker in yur head." White paint was dumped on the Queen's sign. People are obviously put off by this, and Mantle gains more public support. Yes, there's a culture of whiteness at Queen's (well, white-ness and Asian-ness--there are more Asian groups than any other category of club on campus). But the other two I don't understand. Does "cracker" help anti-racism? I don't think so. And what's this resistence? Should I wear a vest? What? This is why we have twenty-odd campus papers: if the bleeding-heart Journal won't publish your opinion (and they'll publish pretty near anything), then surely the hell-bent-subversive Diatribe will. I mean, somebody, somewhere, will publish what you want to say, and, if they won't, you can actually start your own newspaper whenever you want around here. Expressing yourself is easy. Being intelligent is apparently a lot harder. So let's avoid graffiti, shall we?

6) There's some sort of public forum about whether Mantle will step down. Word has it there might be a referendum, where members of the Queen's electorate can impeach him or something. I'm not sure what it was; I do know it was unconstitutional and would have had no binding power. The meeting exceeded fire capacity and was filled with angry people from both sides of the issue. Someone pulled the fire alarm, and everyone had to leave. The meeting was not resumed later. Mantle did not step down.

7) Radcliffe publically criticizes Mantle for not apologizing. A letter to the editor in the Journal rightfully points out that Radcliffe has yet to apologize for a much more heinious offence than Mantle.

8) Swastikas and the phrase "Dirty Jew" are soaped onto a Jewish student's car. That she was targeted implies that the culprit knows her. People really start freaking out. The Journal doesn't get around to mentioning that the student in question is Jewish on the front page, which is where the story featured, but part-way through the continuation of the story inside. I think this is relevant information, personally. The targeted student says she no longer feels safe here. Queen's Hillel says that they've never seen this before on campus; this was formerly one of the most Jewish-friendly campuses they know of. Everyone is shocked and appalled. And rightly so. This is disgusting behaviour, and I would break the perpetrator's knee-caps if I knew who he was.

9) The Journal editor, likely feeling under attack, writes a column about the paper's struggles with journalistic integrity and how it's easy to come and talk to her about the problems in a rational manner. She is right about most of it. The problem is not (entirely) with her editorship. It's with the structure of the paper, its reporters, and its over-developed sense of self worth.

10) The new principal, Tom Williams, cancels the Aberdeen Street Party, following conversations with donating alumni and, get this, a student plebiscite which supported the cancelling. Students are outraged. "How dare Mr. Williams," they say, "cancel Homecoming just because it's worsening town-gown relations, alumni have stopped donating, our degrees are worth less, and the majority of the voting student body wants it cancelled? That plebiscite shouldn't be binding, they say. You know the partying demographic doesn't vote (even though that that issue would be on the ballot was published in the Journal weeks in advance and there were Facebook groups exhorting you to go and vote against cancellation). It's not fair!" Stupid people. If you haven't figured it out, I support the cancellation whole-heartedly.

11) People from within the university and without are calling for Queen's to be more proactive in fighting racism. That the incidents have been entirely religion or sexual-orientation based seems to be lost on these individuals. Let me repeat: racism is not the problem; religious and sexual intolerance is. DO NOT CONFUSE THESE!

11) The university introduces a new task force of facilitators whose job is to listen in on conversations taking place in public spaces and interject if they hear gender slurs, homophobic language, racially-tinted insults, or the discussion of "social issues." Yeah, that's right. "Social issues." Now, these conversation cops (as they've been dubbed by the Globe and Mail) have no authoratative power besides publically confronting and "sensitively leading the conversation," but I don't think we should be surprised that the G&M has name-dropped Kafka and that students are voraciously arguing about this. Now it's not student stupidity that's dropped the reputation of our school, but the actual adminstration. Great job, guys. Just great. Now, I understand what they wanted out of this program and that they meant well. However, I'm also sure it's an immense screw-up. It'll be terribly ineffective, it will make people angry and confrontational, and it will at best drive racism 'underground' instead of dealing with it openly. Also, I love the blanc carte with "social issues." What does this cover? Can I talk about, say, creationism or abortion without getting molested by the thought police?

Apparently not...

12) In the most recent Diatribe, which was way better than usual, a submission pointed out that a particular Canadian university student union that is campaigning for lowered student fees and other student "rights" has as one of its issues the banning of pro-life groups from campus. That's right. If you're group is anti-abortion, this student union thinks that you shouldn't be eligible for your cut of the student fee dollars--or university recognition, for that matter. Pro-choice groups are still OK, though, and this union is in fact in the works of distributing pro-choice kits and helping with abortion advertising on campuses. Why is this the case? Well, apparently pro-life clubs espouse violence. Somehow. Despite being, you know, pro-life. Oh, and they're woman-haters. Despite being usually more than 50% women themselves. The submitter, pro-choice herself, thought this was stupid and inexcusable in a university, which was supposed to be about discussing ideas. Disallowing one of the members in the discussion to talk is not exactly the way to espouse conversation. And, yet, no one seems to be opposing this platform of the union. People just see "lower student fees" and jump on board.

Remember when I complained about Internet commenters? Apparently receiving an education only ensures that your idiocy is more articulate, more complex, and more in line with the rabidly liberal dogma of Canadian academia.

And let me be clear: I do not endorse Islamaphobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, sexism, or any other form of repression. Neither am I a fan of unrestricted free speech. I think the stupidest and most hateful people involved are the ones making the slurs and comments. However, I think the reaction to it has also been moronic, lamentable, and not even well-meant, for the most part. I am frustrated with most of those involved, but I have no idea how to make a change myself. My fear is that, even if I did articulate this, no one would be able to hear in the media frenzy that's taking place right now.

Also, I've just stripped another layer of anonymity by revealing which school I attend. Oh, well.

Mandeville

Have you ever heard of Mandeville?

He's a semi- or entirely fictitious mediaeval English knight who did not go on a voyage across the world, though a mediaeval author wrote an evidentally fictional but professedly autobiographical narrative in which he does. It fits in the travel narrative conventions of its time, complete with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, savage races and lavish sultanates, distant empires, fabulous beasts, mysterious islands, dangerous wastes, and, eventually, Paradise itself. If you've read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you would recognize some of the locations Mandeville visits. Any narrative about people who've sailed to marvelous lands reach back to narratives like Mandeville's and Marco Polo's (a rough contemporary).

Anyway, here is a sampling of the incredible things 'witnessed' by Mandeville on his travels:

"And he [the king of the isle Calonak] hath also into a 14,000 elephants or more that he maketh for to be brought up amongst his villians by all his towns. For in case that he had any war against any other king about him, then [he] maketh certain men of arms for to go up into the castles of tree made for the war, that craftily be set upon the elephants' backs, for to fight against their enemies. and so do other kings there-about. For the manner of war is not there as it is here or in other countries, ne the ordinance of war neither. And men clepe the elephants Warkes."

"After that isle [of Tracoda] men go by the sea ocean, by many isles, unto an isle that is clept Nacumera, that is a great isle and good and fair. And it is in compass about, more than a thousand mile. And all the men and women of that isle have hounds' heads, and they be clept Cynocephales. And they be full reasonable and of good understanding, save that they worship an ox for their God. And also every one of them beareth an ox of gold or of silver in his forehead, in token that they love well their God. And they go all naked save a little clout, that they cover with their knees and members. They be great folk and well-fighting. And they have a great targe that covereth all the body, and a spear in their hand to fight with. And if they take any man in battle, anon they eat him."

"In that country and others thereabout [that is, the island of Silha, which is filled with dangerous beasts called "cockodrills"] there be wild geese that have two heads. And there be lions, all white and as great as oxen, and many other diverse beasts and fowls also that be not seen amongst us."

"In one of these isles be folk of great stature, as giants. And they be hideous for to look upon. and they have but one eye, and that is in the middle of the front. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw fish.
"And in another isle toward the south dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed kind that have no heads. And their eyen be in their shoulders."
"...
"And in another isle there be little folk, as dwarfs. And they be two so much as the pigmies. and they have no mouthl but instead of their mouth they have a little round hole, and when they shall eat or drink, they take through a pipe or a pen or such a thing, and suck it in, for they have no tongue; and therefore they speak not, but they make a manner of hissing as an adder doth, and they make signs one to another as monks do, by the which every of them understandeth other.
"And in another isle be folk that have great ears and long, that hang down to their knees.
"And in another isle be folk that have horses' feet. And they be strong and mighty, and swift runners; for they take wild beasts with running, and eat them.
"And in another isle be folk that so upon their hands and their feet as beasts. And they be all skinned and feathered, and they will leap as lightly into trees, and from tree to tree, as it were squirrels or apes.
"And in another isle be folk that be both man and woman, and they have kind of that one and of that other. And they have one pap on the one side, and on that other none. And they have members of generation of man and woman, and they use both when they list, once that one, and another time that other. And they get children, when they use the member of man; and they bear children, when they use the member of woman.
"And in another isle be folk that go always upon their knees full marvellously. And at every pace that they go, it seemeth that they would fall. And they have in every foot eight toes.
"Many other diverse folk of diverse natures be there in other isles about, of the which it were too long to tell, and therefore I pass over shortly."

"In that country be white hens without feathers, but they bear white wool as sheep do here."

"In that country be many hippotaynes that dwell sometime in the water and sometime on the land. And they be half man and half horse, as I have said before. And they eat men when they may take them."

I think these are all marvellous. Note how he describes some of them; most are without judgement, and some are actually complimented. This is highly surprising, I think, from a mediaeval Christian author.

I tried to find the woodcuts that accompany my version of the text but, alas, could not.

The Misunderstanding of English Criticism I

OK, bulky title, I know. I've added the 'I' because I oughtn't write this whole thing tonight; I should either do work or go to bed. However, I want to get at least a prelude out before I forget...

I read this in the comments on one of the latest Freakonomics blog posts:

"Complaining about word parsing is equivalent to blaming your ignorance on others. If you said what you meant, it wouldn’t be possible to parse your words.
These politicians simply need to learn how to speak and this won’t be an issue.
— Posted by Ryan"

Sorry? Someone doesn't seem to understand the fundamental characteristics of language. Let me enumerate the relevant ones.

1) Words/language cannot ever perfectly map onto the potential of human ideas.
2) Everyone attaches a slightly different signified to any given signifier.
3) Because of 1 and 2, it is impossible to say exactly what you mean so that everyone can understand it, though there are ways that you can get very close.
4) Parsing is more than just straight-up comprehension. We hide nuance between words (a fancy way of saying that word choice reveals more than just denotation and connotation--why did he use this word when that one might seem to do?), and part of parsing is pulling that out.
5) Learning to speak well is not the same as learning to speak so that all meaning rests on the surface, because, in light of #4, some meaning will always lurk deeper if you look for it.

The point is, if you use those techniques to say what you mean as closely as possible, there are always still ways of pulling more meaning out through careful analysis. And this process need not be ridiculous, tortured, obscure, or Freudian (which are probably all pretty equivalent). It certainly can be, but it needn't be. If you want examples, look at feminist, Marxist, or eco-critical theory. In these schools, the meaning often floats pretty close to the surface, but is generally ignored. If you look for it, it's obvious and pretty concrete--though you can get terribly esoteric, too, if you are silly enough to try.

I have seen similar ideas in assorted places, such as the introduction to Ender's Game and, sadly, in some of Stephen King, especially Danse Macabre (though he redeems himself in places by dissing the truly ridiculous criticism and owning up to/committing less ridiculous criticism himself).

Maybe more will come of this, but that's all literary theory, which is likely not the best topic of blogosphere conversation. But, hey, you can read it or not, so I suppose I might as well post it if I ever feel like it.

And I'll just point out that this whole conversation on the blog was in response to one of McCain's aide's public statement, where he likely misspoke. The person Ryan accuses of complaining about parsing was appalled by the amount of discussion that revolved around the meaning of his mistake, and also his choice of the word "lame" to describe something as not very funny. I think a lot can be said about that particular word choice, and not enough has been yet. Other than that, yes, there was too much 'parsing' of the phrase. My complaint is not about whether this parsing is necessary, but what role parsing plays at all. I think Ryan got it wrong.

And while I'm speaking of McCain and the election furor, let me just point out that history might be made tomorrow night. I suppose history is made every second of every day, but this is something that'll hit the books--and of nations other than the great and terrible US, at that.* It could be the case that in the next few days, a man who is not entirely Caucasian will be elected into office. He is not, of course, entirely black, as he is often billed. It seems to be the case--have I said this before?--that if you are mixed, (white) people will generally slide you as a default into whatever part of your lineage is not white. So your mother is white and your father is black. You're black (like Obama). Your father's Irish but your mother's Cree? You're native. No, not Metis. Native. It's just easier to classify you that way. I'm not sure it is why we think that way--and, I'll be honest, it's my habitual cognitive mode--but it seems to be the case and it's not quite fair. Something else to work over. The point is, at least genealogically speaking, Obama is as white as he is black. Maybe that's not culturally the case, though I'd have to say it'd hard to believe a college-educated senator who claims to be seperate from white culture. Anyway, tomorrow we will see whether there will be a paragraph about the first not-entirely-white American President attached to the date of 2008.

And then we'll have four years to find out what, exactly, this man means by 'audacity,' 'hope,' and 'change.' Because, really, I have no idea.

*That's a pun AND an allusion, folks, if you haven't picked it up. Parse that!

Journal #6: The Paralyzing Grey

The Lives of Amphibians and Chimæras:

Journal #6

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The Paralyzing Grey

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In Anna Deavere Smith's "Twilight: Los Angeles," a character who calls himself Twilight plays an important role. He exists only at the end, and describes himself as a liminal figure, one who walks in limbo, one who walks between day and night. He says that he comes from night because his skin is black, and he gives positive connotations to that darkness. However, he also says that his people must move into understanding and enfranchisement, into the illumination of the day. Being ahead of his time and ahead of his people, he is trapped between night and day. Thus he calls himself Twilight.

It is common wisdom that being part of two entities is essentially the same as being separate from both. Witness Aesop's fable of the Bat: in the war between Animals and Birds, the Bat tries to be friendly with both sides and ends up the enemy of each, henceforth banished into the night. From each side you are branded for fraternizing with the enemy and are labeled a traitor: from each you are an outsider.

Bill Watterson's Calvin observes a similar phenomenon. When his morality and opinions are clear and distinct--in his words, black and white--decisions are simple because you avoid the black and stick to the white. Further knowledge about the issues, he worries, creates areas that are grey, and he claims that grey paralyzes. The choice is no longer clear and decisions become difficult. Too much grey, and decisions become impossible, or, at best, random. Calvin of course prefers the fairy tale of black and white morality over the more realistic grey, but the reader has likely come too far into the grey to turn back.

Los Angeles is captured in this limbo in Smith's play: it belongs both to the first world and the third world. The internal frictions erupted into riots, essentially a civil war, and in this war morality was coated with a grey fog. The rioters were undoubtedly repressed and suffred injustice in the unfair trail of Rodney King, and so their roar is understandable. Their response, however, overflowed justifiable bounds: the violence and destruction that came to the Vietnamese community and to innocent passers-by, such as the beaten and abandoned truck driver, was obviously wrong. On the other hand, many of the people who considered themselves innocent victims were not so innocent--their lifestyles allowed and even necessitated the existence of a repressed lower class. The city was thus striken with grey, with moral complexity: blame cannot easily be assigned and restoration may not even be desirable.[1] Los Angeles is caught in twilight.

I believe that there are ways to live in twilight successfully, but I also acknowledge that it does not at first glance appear to be the most attractive of real estate. The ability to see from multiple perspectives sometimes makes defining yourself difficult and can complicate decision-making. I do hope that it is ultimately possible to reconcile black and white; if not, borderlands will also be no-man's-lands.

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1] Restoration, as in a return to the previous status quo. The repression and imbalance of the former situation is not something to which return may be desirable.