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1. Can't decide if watching The Great British Baking Show is torturing myself or comforting myself. (Since I can't eat any of it or make it, on the other hand, it's on tv, so can't do it anyhow. I find cooking shows and demonstrations relaxing.) It's called Great British Baking Show in the US, not Bake-Off, because Pillsbury has trade-marked Bake-Off in the US, and they'd have to pay Pillsbury royalties for its use.
Don't you love Intellectual Property Law?
Oh, speaking of trade-mark law, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of trademarking politically incorrect or offensive trademarks. Such as "The Redskins" - baseball team wanting to copyright their name. (I actually agree with this -- freedom of speech. I think all speech should be permitted. If we prohibit one type, we risk prohibiting others.)
2. I'm putting off watching the second season of Sense8 until the weekend. It's hard to stop watching. That's how compelling it is. Wish it wasn't cancelled, I drug my feet on watching it, because it was and it had allegedly ended on a cliff-hanger.
(So I looked up information on it -- to ensure the Whispers/Will issue was resolved.)
I can see why it was -- very expensive series to produce. $4 Million per episode. And, it took two years for the second season to air after the first. That's a large gap to retain cast and audience. They already had to recast one of the cast members.
It's a shame, because this series is possibly the only sci-fi series on television that has a strong message of love, unity, empathy and kindness behind it. It's also by far the best written and produced. Most sci-fi television series, let's face it, are a bit of a mess. You have to be a bit tolerant of well messy writing, to be a genre television fan.
Hmm...best written and most innovative sci-fi series that I can think of and have watched?
* Farscape
* Star Trek the Next Generation
* Babylon5
* BattleStar Galatica (v.2)
* Lost
And Sense8 is very different from all of them. It really is a unique take on the television serial. Reminds me a little of Game of Thrones in the multiple character point of views and multiple location shots, with a large diverse cast. I'd say it is a lot better than GoT - the writing is more nuanced, it's less violent, the message is more positive, it flips gender and takes more risks.
It is however difficult to rec to people, because of the explicit sexual content and the type of sexual content - group orgies, homosexual sex, and explicit. Didn't bother me, but most of the people I know wouldn't be able to watch it. My parents -- no. My coworkers -- no. Shame. Again I ask the question, why as a culture are we more comfortable with graphic violence, shoot-outs, screaming hate, and fight scenes, then watching two people making love to one another? It boggles my mind that people have no problems watching someone stab someone but can't watch a sex scene, regardless of the genders involved.
Sense8 to be fair has a lot of graphic violence as well. Although it's fairly tame in contrast to the other sci-fi series I've seen. And no where near as violent as well, GoT, Walking Dead, American Gods, Supernatural...so.
I think it took some insane risks. The Wachowskis and the creator of Bab5, wanted to do something no one else had done before. Something that changed the boundaries of television like the Matrix did with film. Which is ambitious. There's 450 scripted television series.
If it weren't for subscription channels like Netflix, Sense8 would never have been made. HBO passed on it, as did Showtime.
3. Character Shipping or rather "Anti-Shipping" in Fandom
There's nothing more off-putting than someone seriously anti-shipping a character you happen to enjoy or find interesting. And people are oddly hypocritical about it. Now, to be fair, I've despised characters on television shows and books that others loved. Although I prefer not to talk about them too much. Also, usually they are supporting or just recurring characters, or I would not be watching the show or reading the book any longer. If the characters don't work for me, I'm gone. Seriously life is too short.
Like on Buffy, I disliked Andrew, which it turned out wasn't a big problem. I could ignore the characters for the most part.
Or on Lost...well there wasn't any characters I disliked. A rarity. Same with BSG, no characters I disliked.
In the X-men? I liked all the characters.
Doctor Who? Can't remember disliking any character intensely.
But the fandom? Oh dear.
Apparently in X-men, the most hated hated character happens to be my favorite. Which is annoying and why I steered clear.
Doctor Who? one of the most despised characters is among my favorites. So steered clear.
Buffy? It was difficult, for the most part I loved all the characters (except for Andrew), and many fans hated at least one of my favorites. And by hated -- they felt the need to rant, and yell about them.
Don't you love Intellectual Property Law?
Oh, speaking of trade-mark law, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of trademarking politically incorrect or offensive trademarks. Such as "The Redskins" - baseball team wanting to copyright their name. (I actually agree with this -- freedom of speech. I think all speech should be permitted. If we prohibit one type, we risk prohibiting others.)
2. I'm putting off watching the second season of Sense8 until the weekend. It's hard to stop watching. That's how compelling it is. Wish it wasn't cancelled, I drug my feet on watching it, because it was and it had allegedly ended on a cliff-hanger.
(So I looked up information on it -- to ensure the Whispers/Will issue was resolved.)
I can see why it was -- very expensive series to produce. $4 Million per episode. And, it took two years for the second season to air after the first. That's a large gap to retain cast and audience. They already had to recast one of the cast members.
It's a shame, because this series is possibly the only sci-fi series on television that has a strong message of love, unity, empathy and kindness behind it. It's also by far the best written and produced. Most sci-fi television series, let's face it, are a bit of a mess. You have to be a bit tolerant of well messy writing, to be a genre television fan.
Hmm...best written and most innovative sci-fi series that I can think of and have watched?
* Farscape
* Star Trek the Next Generation
* Babylon5
* BattleStar Galatica (v.2)
* Lost
And Sense8 is very different from all of them. It really is a unique take on the television serial. Reminds me a little of Game of Thrones in the multiple character point of views and multiple location shots, with a large diverse cast. I'd say it is a lot better than GoT - the writing is more nuanced, it's less violent, the message is more positive, it flips gender and takes more risks.
It is however difficult to rec to people, because of the explicit sexual content and the type of sexual content - group orgies, homosexual sex, and explicit. Didn't bother me, but most of the people I know wouldn't be able to watch it. My parents -- no. My coworkers -- no. Shame. Again I ask the question, why as a culture are we more comfortable with graphic violence, shoot-outs, screaming hate, and fight scenes, then watching two people making love to one another? It boggles my mind that people have no problems watching someone stab someone but can't watch a sex scene, regardless of the genders involved.
Sense8 to be fair has a lot of graphic violence as well. Although it's fairly tame in contrast to the other sci-fi series I've seen. And no where near as violent as well, GoT, Walking Dead, American Gods, Supernatural...so.
I think it took some insane risks. The Wachowskis and the creator of Bab5, wanted to do something no one else had done before. Something that changed the boundaries of television like the Matrix did with film. Which is ambitious. There's 450 scripted television series.
If it weren't for subscription channels like Netflix, Sense8 would never have been made. HBO passed on it, as did Showtime.
3. Character Shipping or rather "Anti-Shipping" in Fandom
There's nothing more off-putting than someone seriously anti-shipping a character you happen to enjoy or find interesting. And people are oddly hypocritical about it. Now, to be fair, I've despised characters on television shows and books that others loved. Although I prefer not to talk about them too much. Also, usually they are supporting or just recurring characters, or I would not be watching the show or reading the book any longer. If the characters don't work for me, I'm gone. Seriously life is too short.
Like on Buffy, I disliked Andrew, which it turned out wasn't a big problem. I could ignore the characters for the most part.
Or on Lost...well there wasn't any characters I disliked. A rarity. Same with BSG, no characters I disliked.
In the X-men? I liked all the characters.
Doctor Who? Can't remember disliking any character intensely.
But the fandom? Oh dear.
Apparently in X-men, the most hated hated character happens to be my favorite. Which is annoying and why I steered clear.
Doctor Who? one of the most despised characters is among my favorites. So steered clear.
Buffy? It was difficult, for the most part I loved all the characters (except for Andrew), and many fans hated at least one of my favorites. And by hated -- they felt the need to rant, and yell about them.
no subject
This makes a lot of sense. And you've managed to address several issues that I've been struggling to articulate.
To me that is the opposite of porn, because it gives the characters agency.
The problem I have with most porn is not the sex, or that people feel stimulated by it, its the dehumanisation. And Sense 8 does the complete opposite. Which in this day and age is borderline revolutionary.
I'd agree. In porn, there's relatively little plot or none at all, no character development outside of archetypes or tropes, and often one or the other is objectified. It's okay to an extent...ie to titilliate, but when taken too far it dehumanizes and results in well behavior that is sexist and demeaning. Whenever you dehumanize someone, you block empathy and desentize yourself and others to any horrors done to them.
Also sex with another person-- that is devoid of "feeling" and/or "intimacy" tends to be aggressive, cruel, competitive, and often painful in the long term if not the short term. It rarely satisfies. And porn can often lead to that type of sex.
. It creates a stifling atmposphere, where people desperately try to appeal to different identity groups instead of acting with true and individual empathy.
I agree with everything you stated above. Seen it happen a lot in the last few years. Where identity politics is used as a moral weapon to denounce an opponent or to twist something they said, which meant one thing in context, but out of context is demeaning and cruel.
Seen people do this a lot in fandom. In which they'll grab a sentence or a word and condemn a 500 word or ten page essay based on that alone. Shows an inability to grasp contextual meaning of words. I often blasted them for it, by reposting the entire paragraph. Annoyed the heck out of me. They will also do that with stories or characters, take one action, bit of dialogue or scene, pull it out of context, and condemn the whole thing. People online did that with Whedon's Wonder Woman script, missing subtext, etc, and nitpicking at bits and pieces here and there -- also ignoring the fact that it was rough.
Yesterday was reading a Wiki entry on Fred Newman, who is Jewish, but got into trouble and accused of Anti-Semitism for writing a series of plays that were a critique of the Zionist movement in Israel. Identity politics used as a weapon to quell criticism. I've seen this done a great deal.
And the Sanders/Clinton divide is an excellent example. Sanders supporters utilized negative rhetoric from the Right to denounce Clinton. To the degree that I found I could not abide Sanders. And saw his supporters as sexist and misogynistic. They weren't. Not really. But they used the wrong rhetoric and didn't delve deeply enough into the facts. They also utilized negative campaign techniques that were being used by the opposite side...instead of focusing on the issues. If they'd focused on the issues and less on bashing the other candidates, like Trump was doing, they may have won. Instead they alienated people.
Too often "moralizing about identity politics" has been used as a weapon to denounce or undermine the other side. It's been used a lot in the US and often to detrimental effect. Also, in most cases those who do it, are guilty, possibly more guilty of it than those they've accused.
no subject
And I think the uncompromising mentality of shipper wars and so on has sipped into leftwing politics. This sense of "have completely the same opinion as I do or be my enemy". No middle ground.
And there is a lot of cowardice in that, of course it is easier to attack someone of racism, misogyny and so on, who actually cares about that thing. But people harp on some people, who made a small mistake in wording or something like that, while they silently condemn the true hatefilled white male supremacist trolls, without engaging them.
This makes it impossible to form a strong movement. For that people need to lift each other up internally and put their aggression into the fight against the actual other side.
I do think though that the renewed oppression vis Trump is going to stop the infighting on the left. It is horrible though, how much suffering is necessary for that to happen.
no subject
I wonder sometimes if it isn't so much fandom but the internet. People for some reason or other are more prone to say things that they wouldn't face to face.
And often over-react to innocent comments. I got attacked for using the word gypped once. It was completely innocent. As a result, I worked hard to remember to use a substitute or synonym. Such as swindled.
Politics was always nasty, but being able to spread information like wildfire across the world had made it lethal.
This makes it impossible to form a strong movement. For that people need to lift each other up internally and put their aggression into the fight against the actual other side.
I do think though that the renewed oppression vis Trump is going to stop the infighting on the left. It is horrible though, how much suffering is necessary for that to happen.
This has been gradually happening. I'm thinking that a lot of the voters who voted against Hillary and Trump are realizing they have to reach across to the Hillary supporters and vice versa. It's no longer about the candidates, it's about the issues. The problem with the US elections is they are about the "candidates" not the issues. And often the issues get lost. People end up voting against their own views, because they get caught up in the political rhetoric.