Contrariwise

Sometime last weekend I clued in to the fact that the big Cultural Appropriation Discussion of DOOM had come around on the ol' guitar again, but I was only catching the edges of it, and I thought, aw man. That again. Do I want to even know? No, I really don't.

And then I realized that, you know: easy for me to say. It's the usual exercise of privilege to be able to say "nah, don't feel like paying attention to the latest racism-in-fandom imbroglio". And thanks to the indefatigable rydra_wong, all the links were there. So I read. And read. And my jaw dropped on the floor. And I kept reading, and OH MY GOD.

I don't want to say a lot, because this is a thing where for me, listening is more important than talking. And Rydra has posted links to a lot of people saying very smart things; a lot of fans of color saying extraordinarily important things, and I shouldn't even attempt to co-opt their voices when it'd be better to go read them saying it.

But I did think of two things I wanted to say.

One is just to point to the lyrics of the They Might Be Giants song "Your Racist Friend". That song absolutely gobsmacked me when I first heard it in 1990. It's not just a song about racism being bad. It's about not being silent and tolerating others spewing racist crap in your hearing, and what it says about you if you do tolerate that. I believed it was a searingly brilliant song then, and I still believe it now.

The other: you know what phrase I really despise right now? "Throwing under the bus". It came up in the fallout of the CADD, very much in a "Your Racist Friend" context -- yeah, my friends might have said racist crap, but I'm not going to *throw them under the bus* by making a statement that condemns the crap (if not the person).

You know why I decided I really despise it? Because it embodies, to me, the last 8... no, maybe make that 16 or more years of American politics. The willful characterization of all criticism -- even necessary, deserved criticism; even LOVING criticism -- as the equivalent of "throwing under the bus", and NO. NO IT IS FUCKING NOT. But I guess that's how it looks to people who practice what they preach, by which I mean -- hate the sin AND hate the sinner, and don't try to tell me they don't.

I'm so fucking tired of that, macro level and micro level. I'm so fucking tired of the idea that it isn't "patriotic" to criticize things that my country does -- NO, it's the MOST PATRIOTIC thing I can do, dammit! I'm tired of the basic notion that if you love someone, you can never, ever criticize what they do, you can never tell them they're fucked up, you can never give a child anything but an A+ or a trophy. NO.

When I post the words, "I love you like a brother, but you're FULL OF SHIT" here, I know that there's a bunch of people reading this journal who are going to nod along and suddenly have a whole bunch of very vivid memories associated with that, and the thing is, YES. Criticizing someone, telling them they're full of shit, telling them that what they just said is racist crap? Or, being gentle about it if you must -- but if you don't do it, who will? That is still being loving. That's being a friend. That is NOT "throwing people under the bus".

Because it's not about making yourself look good by condemning them. It's not about saving yourself by offering them up for sacrifice. That's not why you should do it. It's about YOU knowing what's right, and what's wrong, and about saying something when *even your friends* do something or say something toweringly, gobsmackingly wrong. Doing it *because* you love them, and because they might listen to you when they won't listen to strangers. The time to defend your friends no matter what, right or wrong, is when their lives, their well-being are truly in danger, NOT when the worst that's happening to them is that people are pointing out they're being kind of an asshole.

If you won't even point at something to say "that there is wrong", then how the hell can you ever work to FIX it?

I will not *BE* in this fandom. Seriously. No.

Yet, nel_ani linked to this fic today and for some reason I clicked it and read it, and yes dammit, it's a really good fic. Great humor, great voices; eventually, hot sex, for those whose cup of tea that is. ;-)

"Papparazzo" by basingstoke (Iron Man/Spiderman).


Also... All I have to say is that there HAD BETTER BE a metric ton of Tony/Rhodey fic out there.

I recently linked telepresence to the blog of a film/popular culture professor who wrote several long and quite fascinating essays on the history of the Iron Man comic, and I would just like to point out that in Part Two, Doan writes:

"But minor chronological quibbles aside, Rhodey was a great addition to the Iron Man cast-- smoother, funnier and more capable than Happy Hogan, and a much better love interest for Tony than Pepper Potts. Without the heavy-handedness of O'Neil and Adams on those Green Lantern/Green Arrow tales, and without the "he's just a regular joe" begging the question of Lee and Kirby introducing the Black Panther in the 60s, Michelinie and Layton effortlessly integrated the book and gave Marvel an African-American hero whose popularity immediately rivaled Stark's among the book's fans.

And make no mistake: for all the women Stark has bedded and dated over the years, and despite the pathos of his relationships with Madame Masque or Bethany Cabe, his longest and most important love is with Rhodey. It is a homosocial love, to be sure, and only metaphorically becomes sexual (when Rhodey "possesses" Stark's body by donning the armor begnning with issue #170), but it is the deepest relationship in the book, and the arguments between the friends that power the second half of O'Neil's run on the book are the longest and most wrenching "lovers' quarrels" the title will ever see (it is not a girlfriend Tony reveals himself to in the page up-top, after all, but Rhodey-- a confession before a final battle). In many ways, O'Neil's lengthy run is about the nature of this platonic love, and just how far one will go for it."


Well, yeah.

... and then will be replayed any number of times, so don't stress if you miss it. But first airing is 9pm EST on the Discovery Channel in the U.S.

I mentioned this recently in troyswann's comments, which reminded me to go check the Mythbusters website to see if this ep (mentioned recently by Adam in a bumper on the show) would be coming up soon. (In the bumper, Adam said they were going to do a whole "MacGyver" themed episode "soon", and then he tested out the thing where MacGyver used a spray bottle of, like, windex to make a light-bulb explode and plunge a room into darkness; and hey, it worked!).

Well, set your TiVos, my friends! Next Wednesday, Feb. 20th, at 9pm EST on the Discovery Channel in the U.S., "MacGyver Myths" premieres! From the Mythbusters description: "This reverential episode of MythBusters pays tribute to the man who made something really useful from out of almost anything-MacGyver!"

As I was remarking to Sal, I had heard that the show started leaving stuff out of the description of what Mac was making, so as to make it unlikely for impressionable kids watching to be able to do some of the dangerous stuff he did. That being the case, it'll be interesting to see what things Mythbusters chooses to try to duplicate, and whether they mention this at all.

If you miss it, fear not -- the Discovery Channel reruns these eps approximately a skillion times each, so you'll surely be able to find it airing again. Folks who don't get that channel (esp. if you're not in the U.S.) may want to alert people they know who tend to be those who get things uploaded for *ahem*ing. I'm sure that DVD copies (from those of us with TiVos that can copy to DVD) will be quite possible, too.

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html (click on "TV Schedules" at upper left)

Should be entertaining! I loves me a good Mythbusters ep in which they tackle movie and tv stuff. (The "Jaws" two-parter remains a big favorite. Which reminds me -- ROY SCHEIDER! *sniff*!)

Half of my flist will scratch their heads at the subject line, but over on the more fannish side of things (relative as that is), today has been declared "More Joy Day!", meaning, try to bring a little more joy than usual to the people around you. This is not particularly creative of me, but what I've decided to do is share with all of you some fun stuff that I've come across, that gave me a little bit of joy, and that I thought some of you might like as well.

Such as...

I was pointed to this YouTube clip by Mimi-Na on deviantArt, who did a piece inspired by it -- but I thought a number of folks here would enjoy seeing the original. This is Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews at Carnegie Hall in 1962, performing a ~10-minute long duet, and it is hilarious and wonderful, and I defy you not to feel joy watching it:




I enjoy the work of Mimi-Na in general; she does a lot of fun cartoons, often with a fannish bent. Aw, Red Dwarf!


Commission: Red Dwarf by *mimi-na on deviantART


Mimi-Na is the person who did those wonderful "The Doctor's Girls" and "The Doctor's Boys" cartoons of all the Dr. Who companions a bit ago, which I believe I posted about. Here, she does "The Monsters of Whodom" in a similar vein:


Monsters of Whodom by *mimi-na on deviantART


She also recently did "The Women of 'Angel'" (though this was done as a commission, and thus the selection of who to include was at the behest of the commissioner, which is the answer for "why that one?" and "why'd this other one get left out?"):


Commission: Women of Angel by *mimi-na on deviantART


And finally, Rufftoon gives us "What if the cast of Kim Possible was trying out for roles in a Harry Potter movie?"


The Casting by *rufftoon on deviantART

The great thing is, not only is that subject line an attention-getter, but, it's completely accurate and germane to the subject of this post! :D

If you have never heard of THE DESERT PEACH, how to explain it? A b&w, small-press comic by Donna Barr that debuted in the late 80s, it's the story of Pfirsich Rommel, "the Desert Fox's pretty younger brother", and the most femme gay colonel of a Germany Army unit in the North African desert in WWII that you can possibly imagine. It is, needless to say, completely satirical (not to say, more than occasionally outright farcical) fiction; but underlaid by an impressive knowledge of period detail and an IMO gorgeously kinetic art style. The PEACH seems like it started off as a joke that was trying to see how broadly offensive it could possibly be, both dancing along with and puncturing stereotypes, but as issues went on, Barr's writing and treatment of Pfirsich and his supporting cast became more complex, and in ways more thoughtful and serious, though always bitingly funny.

Well! If you *have* ever heard of the PEACH, but never read it because you couldn't be bothered to track down back issues (or even the compilations that have been occasionally put out), you're in luck! And so are those of you out there who just read my description (or maybe just the subject line) and said "I've got to see this with my own eyes!"

Donna Barr has just announced (via her deviantArt account, http://rummelhart.deviantart.com) that she is scanning and putting up all the issues of THE DESERT PEACH for FREE DOWNLOAD at the following site:

http://www.wowio.com/index.asp


Issues #1-5 are there already (including the one to which my subject line refers, #3). She says she has scanned up to issue 10 so far. She's planning to put up all PEACH material, and when she's done that, she'll move on to posting all STINZ material (another comic by her about, um... centaurs... sort of 19th century German rural-farmer centaurs... and believe me, no comics artist draws horses as gorgeously as Donna Barr does).

I don't know much about Wowio. Looks like you have to register. Barr reports that downloads are free for us, and that she and her publisher make a little cash on each download you do, from ad revenue or something. I'm going to play around with it when I get home -- because yes, I own all the PEACH run and all the STINZ run in various formats, but I sure as heck wouldn't mind having a backup of all of them on my hard-drive, no sir!

Enjoy!

I've seen this linked in a few places now (including Making Light, and Henry Jenkins, both in comments), and it's probably been on my flist already, but in case anyone hasn't seen it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

"A Fair(y) Use Tale"

A carefully edited montage of clips from Disney movies that functions as a simple (and not unbiased) primer on copyright law. It's a little over 10 min. long, and it took me a bit to get used to the format, to really hear what was being said (because it's a mish-mash of voices and intonations, not to mention images) -- but I thought it was worth sticking with it. It's clever and sometimes quite funny, and it must have been such a pain in the ass to put together.

It wasn't created by a fan, in case you're wondering. It was produced by Prof. Eric Faden of Bucknell Univ., and it credits the Stanford Fair Use Project, a part of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/hijacked_disney.html