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shadowkatIt's late and for a while I thought someone was exploding fireworks outside my window.
Lots of banging, but no clue where it was coming from.
Cool too, that weird half chill, where you put a sweater on and look forward to that relaxing hot shower.
I'm about to talk about something in my livejournal that...I'm not sure I should talk about, but it's been hanging in the back of my mind for a bit, festering there. And it seems to hang in the corners of the world I live in like a specter that you don't quite see, just out of reach. It's not in your life, it's beside it. In the corner. And you think if you don't look, pretend it's not there, don't think about it, it won't bother you. But it does.
I wonder sometimes if it is better not to talk about things. I remember several years back telling a woman in a job interview that I had just been robbed, I was in my bed, asleep, when it happened. Someone came into my apartment while I was asleep and stole my lap-top, leaving the windows wide open. The woman told me how she'd been raped and sought counseling and I should do the same. I said that would be focusing on it, and it was better not to. To forget. Besides two different things.
I've never know how to talk about rape. How do you? The word itself feels like an assault on the senses. And I've seen it handled in stories in multiple ways. The papers are littered with reports of sexual assaults - they avoid the word rape and use assault, molestation, attack or groping instead. After a while...you get used to it. What an odd thing.
I find I can no longer watch or read about it on tv or in the papers or in books without feeling a desire to pull inwards, turtle-like. My mind wrestles with it - attempting to turn it into seduction - as Margaret Atwood and Nancy Friday write in rape fantasies, where victims and women often flip rape into seduction, turning the story into a bodice ripper romance, where the rapist is in reality a damaged soul, and is in love to the point of breaking with the heroine. She has the power in the story, and the rape is his downfall not her's. A mental coping mechanism. Or my mind rejects it completely - pushes it away from myself and suddenly I find myself filled with rage, thinking if someone tried that with me or someone I cared for? I would kick him in the nuts or better yet grab his private parts twist and pull, possibly do a Lorena Bobbit. I half-agree with my Aunt, castration is the only solution. Castrate the guy. Clip it off.
It is an unavoidable topic. Particularly if you like genre. Daytime soap operas can't seem to go more than five years without doing a rape storyline. I guess I should be thankful they can go five years. The latest storyline on GH is enough to make me reconsider watching the show. I can't decide if it is exploitative or not.
My difficulty with art imitating life or shedding a bright light on this type of violence be it torture or rape...is I can never quite figure out the motive. It seems odd somehow for something that is meant as entertainment, is made for commercial purposes, to depict things that in reality leave behind deep emotional and psychological scars. I guess it would be one thing if the story-teller were telling his or her own story. Which circles back to that time-old dilemma every writer faces - to what extent should we limit our writing to what we know? Isn't part of the point of writing to delve into that which we don't know - to figure it out, to attempt to understand it and get inside of it? Should we not write about things and people outside of our own circle of experience? If this were true...how many works of great literature would never have been written? Or films for that matter? Or stories?
I remember several years ago discussing a French horror film with a video store geek who was a bit of film expert. He had just seen the controversial art film Irreversible -which many people couldn't sit through and had people throwing up, and many women walked out of in the middle. His co-hort, the other video store geek, creeped both of us out by being turned on by his description of the film - which featured possibly the longest and most graphic rape sequence on record - I think close to 15 minutes or so he said.
He stated that the film was shown in non-linear fashion and the strobe lighting was an issue with motion sickness. I remember saying while it sounded interesting from a structural perspective, I would not be able to watch it. And we were speculating on the purpose - he believed the writer and filmmaker was attempting to depict the effects of violence or the permeation of it and make the audience feel the violence, not just be voyeurs.
In direct contrast...about two years ago, I had a rather violent argument with a close friend...it was the last one we ever had. We have not spoken in three years nor do I see that changing. For a lot of reasons, not just based on this argument nor because of it. The argument was a symptom, not a cause. At any rate the argument was about a video game I'd read about in the paper. The video game...is a sort of role playing game in the same trope as Grand Theft Auto, except it is Rape-Play. The character you are playing is a recently released sexual offender who is pursuing the woman who put him away, along with her mother, sister, and friends - you get points for each woman you "virtually" rape in the game. The existence of this game offends me. It falls into the category of things...that well should be censored because they harm others. My former friend argued that it was harmless, played in the privacy of one's own home. And we should be permitted to play such games or watch such things without someone censoring them. After all she was a libertarian. To this day, I can't decide who was right. I find myself torn - as much as I am against censorship, I don't think that we should to the opposite extreme. How far down that slippery slope do we want to go? And don't games like encourage this behavior? No. I still think my friend's logic on this issue is wrong. And I find myself again wondering what is the point in creating this game? What are the creator's thinking? And how about we create an alternative game - castrate the rapist. You earn points for the number of rapists and sexual offenders that you kick in the balls or castrate.
From these extremes...we go to television dramas...tv shows that are largely made to sell commercials and to entertain. I think if you were to ask most tv writers why they do what they do, they'd state it was to entertain. To a degree they also want to create art, but let's face it - at the end of the day this is a job.
General Hospital, and largely the reason for this post, is currently doing a rape story. It's...I've lost count of how many times they've done these stories to be honest, rape storylines seem to be a soap opera mainstay...which has always annoyed me. It's gotten to the point that I think the soap will do them, even when it decides not to. Sometimes they do a very good job with the storyline, because they can examine every angle imaginable and over a long period of time and in most cases it becomes a survival tale - depicting how the victim comes out ahead and turns things around and the rapist never quite rises above it. The Luke and Laura story oddly ends up that way, Luke in the long-run never quite out runs his own acts, and Laura by forgiving and loving him, ends up in an abusive relationship that eventually causes her to lose her sanity. Over the long-term, it is not a happy ending. The rape of Laura by Luke - also results in the alienation of his kids, who live with its specter.Laura does come out of it, regains her sanity, goes to Paris, reunites with a past love who she knew before Luke and has nothing to do with him any longer. They barely talk or see each other.
The current rape story is gross however...and difficult to describe. After mob hit man, Jason Morgan, marries his one true love, Sam McCall,Franco - the serial killer obsessed with him - drugs them both, puts Jason in a cell with only a tv monitor, and then forces Jason to watch as he takes the "drugged" and naked Sam to bed. He covers the monitor before he...allegedly rapes her. Later Jason, finally freed from his prison cell, asks Sam what she remembers - she remembers being in the shower dizzy, Jason lifting her from the shower, and being in bed with her. Jason informs her that it wasn't him, it was Franco. Sam breaks down. He tries to convince her to go to the hospital, but she just wants to get clean. And scrubs herself raw in the shower. And I find myself wondering why they wrote this story?
GH is not alone in its desire to depict rape. Criminal Minds in its first season, did an episode where a serial rapist was shown paralyzing his victims with spider bites then raping them. I remember thinking - I could have lived a long time without seeing that, thank you very much. Granted, it has moved away from these storylines since.
And of course...there were all those fantasy and sci-fi series written by Ron Moore and Joss Whedon that come to mind. Horror writers love rape stories. Stephen King wrote a short story about a woman being brutally raped by a trucker and it's about her taking vengeance on him or something like that. And George RR Martin's novels discuss rape extensively even if we never actually view it.
The networks do attempt to squash some rape storylines. Whedon and Minear notoriously wanted to do a story for Firefly, the 14-15th episode, according to a recent interview with Minear - it was Whedon's pitch of this episode that sold Minear on Firefly. The story was allegedly one about Inara being raped by the Reavers, and how Malcolm Reynolds handles it. A tale much like GH's Jason and Sam story - about a woman being raped and the guy handling it. Fox canceled Firefly before that episode could be shown. It was written but not performed. And is one of Minear's regrets. Another episode, this one nixed by the WB, was for Angel - and it was written by David Fury, it introduced Kate as an undercover cop, working as a heroine addicted prostitute who gets raped or something like that. Episodes that did make it on the air - included various rape scenarios...such as Seeing Red - Spike attacking Buffy, an episode in Angel S2 - where Angel launches himself at Darla. Xander attacking Buffy in early S1. Willow's mind-rape of Tara. Warren's rape of Katrina. The attempted rape of the female characters by the demon biker gang. In Dollhouse - almost every episode of the entire series featured rape - either sexual or mental. One episode showed a rapist kidnapping his victim, putting her in an insane asylum, mind-wiping her, and placing a new identity in her - that would make her amenable to sleeping with him. She eventually remembers who she is, and what he did to her, and kills him, then is forced to live with it. The only other option? To be mind-wiped again. In Battlestar Galatica - the characters Six and Athena are gang-raped. In Caprica...rape is alluded to.
And again I ask why? Is it about power? Because rape is in the end a power game.
One person asserting their power over another. That's the simplest explanation. But I think the reasons people write about it is more or less the same reason I am at this moment doing so, or I have written about it...to try to put a face and a name on the specter lurking in the shadows. Stories often are about exploring what scares us, what keeps us up at night, our own demons, the dark part of own soul. If we can shed a bright light on that part of our soul...maybe we can exorcise the demon...or maybe squash the fear or impulse? Stories aren't just about survival, they are about well, what-if. If I do this...what will happen? What are the consequences? To get inside the thought patterns of a mind that is not our own. The stories about serial killers are basically ways of exploring the mind of the boogie man, by exposing him, facing him, dead on - he no longer is quite so scary.
I think that is part of it. Whedon when interviewed has stated much as Ron Moore and George RR Martin has that he writes about abuses of power, attempting to understand how and why people use it, and he remains fascinated about those who are appear to be powerless, the victim, how they handle power or the lack thereof. All our stories, it seems to me, are about power. Rape is an expression of power, an abuse of power.
Why some people can't handle power. Can't control the impulse. It's I guess no different than writing fanfic...you write to explore possibilities.
The question is...to what degree should these topics be explored? And is it really better in all instances to squash that creative impulse? Should we edit people like Whedon, King, Moore, Martin? Or will the public and popular opinion eventually do it for us? After all - Firefly could not get an audience, nor could Dollhouse - scaring off many viewers. Irreversible never made it into the mainstream or popular culture.
I'm uncomfortable condemning these works, for much the same reason I'm uncomfortable condemning out of hand the photos by Richard Mapplethorpe. For like all things there are vast number of ways to interpret the writers/artists intentions. I'm not sure it is wise to assume that just because we perceive it one way, everyone else does as well. Art changes depending on the viewer and the mind viewing it. My brother, who is a conceptual artist, once told me, and I think he is right about this, that the viewer or audience interacts with the art, we bring ourselves, our baggage, our issues - we project on it what we want to see. You see this on fan discussion boards, where viewers and readers will often express various and contradictory impressions of the same thing. It feels at times like they've all watched or read different books or tv shows. And they have.
A story about rape is not the same, I don't think, as the rape-play video game. We as viewers, who fall in love with characters, may feel that what the writer is doing to them is painful beyond what we can endure. I am reminded of a scene in a recent episode of Grey's Anatomy...where Lexie, one of the main characters, asks Alfre Woodward who portrays a romance writer, how she can put her lead character with one man over another - when clearly the character would be better off with the other character. The writer states she must go with the needs of the character, what the character wants...as the writer sees it. The writer has a story to tell, I think, and it is up to us if we want to watch or read it. We don't have to.
But I've galloped off topic, haven't I? I don't know why we feel the need to write about a topic we struggle to talk about. Maybe that is why. It is a way to have the conversation. When asked why he did the attempted rape storyline in Buffy, Whedon stated that he wanted to explore the issue of rape from another angle, he felt that too often we demonize the rapist...and he wanted to see it as a human crime, a complicated crime, and determine if it could be a forgivable one. Does it taint you forever? Can you come back from it? As a man, he was looking at it from the male angle, but also from the female one. He wanted to talk about it. But didn't quite know how to. And I know in interviews, Ron Moore explained that in BSG he was looking at torture, why we did it, and crimes against prisoners of war - he was tackling the crimes during the Iraq War by the US, grappling with why we did it.
Why, admittedly has always interested me. But I struggle with art that depicts torture and rape. Sometimes, as in the case of Buffy and even BSG - the storyline did delve into new territory, while at the same time, I felt it repeated old territory to the point of cliche and I wished they'd done it differently or something else. I was and continue to be of two minds on the topic.
It is late. Past one here. And I've rambled on long enough about a topic that I find difficult to discuss. Because it bears such painful scars. Psychological and emotional. And everyone views it from a different angle. It's the specter in the room, the ghost beneath the bed, the shadow stalking us on the way home...lurking in our papers, our media, and on the corners of the internet. We attempt to ignore it, but we can't quite do it. And for those of us who have been raped or sexually assaulted or have had a loved one who was..the specter isn't a specter at all, but a stinky rat that won't go away. Stories may be the only way we can deal with it in all its permutations, and maybe that's why there are so many stories that do?
Lots of banging, but no clue where it was coming from.
Cool too, that weird half chill, where you put a sweater on and look forward to that relaxing hot shower.
I'm about to talk about something in my livejournal that...I'm not sure I should talk about, but it's been hanging in the back of my mind for a bit, festering there. And it seems to hang in the corners of the world I live in like a specter that you don't quite see, just out of reach. It's not in your life, it's beside it. In the corner. And you think if you don't look, pretend it's not there, don't think about it, it won't bother you. But it does.
I wonder sometimes if it is better not to talk about things. I remember several years back telling a woman in a job interview that I had just been robbed, I was in my bed, asleep, when it happened. Someone came into my apartment while I was asleep and stole my lap-top, leaving the windows wide open. The woman told me how she'd been raped and sought counseling and I should do the same. I said that would be focusing on it, and it was better not to. To forget. Besides two different things.
I've never know how to talk about rape. How do you? The word itself feels like an assault on the senses. And I've seen it handled in stories in multiple ways. The papers are littered with reports of sexual assaults - they avoid the word rape and use assault, molestation, attack or groping instead. After a while...you get used to it. What an odd thing.
I find I can no longer watch or read about it on tv or in the papers or in books without feeling a desire to pull inwards, turtle-like. My mind wrestles with it - attempting to turn it into seduction - as Margaret Atwood and Nancy Friday write in rape fantasies, where victims and women often flip rape into seduction, turning the story into a bodice ripper romance, where the rapist is in reality a damaged soul, and is in love to the point of breaking with the heroine. She has the power in the story, and the rape is his downfall not her's. A mental coping mechanism. Or my mind rejects it completely - pushes it away from myself and suddenly I find myself filled with rage, thinking if someone tried that with me or someone I cared for? I would kick him in the nuts or better yet grab his private parts twist and pull, possibly do a Lorena Bobbit. I half-agree with my Aunt, castration is the only solution. Castrate the guy. Clip it off.
It is an unavoidable topic. Particularly if you like genre. Daytime soap operas can't seem to go more than five years without doing a rape storyline. I guess I should be thankful they can go five years. The latest storyline on GH is enough to make me reconsider watching the show. I can't decide if it is exploitative or not.
My difficulty with art imitating life or shedding a bright light on this type of violence be it torture or rape...is I can never quite figure out the motive. It seems odd somehow for something that is meant as entertainment, is made for commercial purposes, to depict things that in reality leave behind deep emotional and psychological scars. I guess it would be one thing if the story-teller were telling his or her own story. Which circles back to that time-old dilemma every writer faces - to what extent should we limit our writing to what we know? Isn't part of the point of writing to delve into that which we don't know - to figure it out, to attempt to understand it and get inside of it? Should we not write about things and people outside of our own circle of experience? If this were true...how many works of great literature would never have been written? Or films for that matter? Or stories?
I remember several years ago discussing a French horror film with a video store geek who was a bit of film expert. He had just seen the controversial art film Irreversible -which many people couldn't sit through and had people throwing up, and many women walked out of in the middle. His co-hort, the other video store geek, creeped both of us out by being turned on by his description of the film - which featured possibly the longest and most graphic rape sequence on record - I think close to 15 minutes or so he said.
He stated that the film was shown in non-linear fashion and the strobe lighting was an issue with motion sickness. I remember saying while it sounded interesting from a structural perspective, I would not be able to watch it. And we were speculating on the purpose - he believed the writer and filmmaker was attempting to depict the effects of violence or the permeation of it and make the audience feel the violence, not just be voyeurs.
In direct contrast...about two years ago, I had a rather violent argument with a close friend...it was the last one we ever had. We have not spoken in three years nor do I see that changing. For a lot of reasons, not just based on this argument nor because of it. The argument was a symptom, not a cause. At any rate the argument was about a video game I'd read about in the paper. The video game...is a sort of role playing game in the same trope as Grand Theft Auto, except it is Rape-Play. The character you are playing is a recently released sexual offender who is pursuing the woman who put him away, along with her mother, sister, and friends - you get points for each woman you "virtually" rape in the game. The existence of this game offends me. It falls into the category of things...that well should be censored because they harm others. My former friend argued that it was harmless, played in the privacy of one's own home. And we should be permitted to play such games or watch such things without someone censoring them. After all she was a libertarian. To this day, I can't decide who was right. I find myself torn - as much as I am against censorship, I don't think that we should to the opposite extreme. How far down that slippery slope do we want to go? And don't games like encourage this behavior? No. I still think my friend's logic on this issue is wrong. And I find myself again wondering what is the point in creating this game? What are the creator's thinking? And how about we create an alternative game - castrate the rapist. You earn points for the number of rapists and sexual offenders that you kick in the balls or castrate.
From these extremes...we go to television dramas...tv shows that are largely made to sell commercials and to entertain. I think if you were to ask most tv writers why they do what they do, they'd state it was to entertain. To a degree they also want to create art, but let's face it - at the end of the day this is a job.
General Hospital, and largely the reason for this post, is currently doing a rape story. It's...I've lost count of how many times they've done these stories to be honest, rape storylines seem to be a soap opera mainstay...which has always annoyed me. It's gotten to the point that I think the soap will do them, even when it decides not to. Sometimes they do a very good job with the storyline, because they can examine every angle imaginable and over a long period of time and in most cases it becomes a survival tale - depicting how the victim comes out ahead and turns things around and the rapist never quite rises above it. The Luke and Laura story oddly ends up that way, Luke in the long-run never quite out runs his own acts, and Laura by forgiving and loving him, ends up in an abusive relationship that eventually causes her to lose her sanity. Over the long-term, it is not a happy ending. The rape of Laura by Luke - also results in the alienation of his kids, who live with its specter.Laura does come out of it, regains her sanity, goes to Paris, reunites with a past love who she knew before Luke and has nothing to do with him any longer. They barely talk or see each other.
The current rape story is gross however...and difficult to describe. After mob hit man, Jason Morgan, marries his one true love, Sam McCall,Franco - the serial killer obsessed with him - drugs them both, puts Jason in a cell with only a tv monitor, and then forces Jason to watch as he takes the "drugged" and naked Sam to bed. He covers the monitor before he...allegedly rapes her. Later Jason, finally freed from his prison cell, asks Sam what she remembers - she remembers being in the shower dizzy, Jason lifting her from the shower, and being in bed with her. Jason informs her that it wasn't him, it was Franco. Sam breaks down. He tries to convince her to go to the hospital, but she just wants to get clean. And scrubs herself raw in the shower. And I find myself wondering why they wrote this story?
GH is not alone in its desire to depict rape. Criminal Minds in its first season, did an episode where a serial rapist was shown paralyzing his victims with spider bites then raping them. I remember thinking - I could have lived a long time without seeing that, thank you very much. Granted, it has moved away from these storylines since.
And of course...there were all those fantasy and sci-fi series written by Ron Moore and Joss Whedon that come to mind. Horror writers love rape stories. Stephen King wrote a short story about a woman being brutally raped by a trucker and it's about her taking vengeance on him or something like that. And George RR Martin's novels discuss rape extensively even if we never actually view it.
The networks do attempt to squash some rape storylines. Whedon and Minear notoriously wanted to do a story for Firefly, the 14-15th episode, according to a recent interview with Minear - it was Whedon's pitch of this episode that sold Minear on Firefly. The story was allegedly one about Inara being raped by the Reavers, and how Malcolm Reynolds handles it. A tale much like GH's Jason and Sam story - about a woman being raped and the guy handling it. Fox canceled Firefly before that episode could be shown. It was written but not performed. And is one of Minear's regrets. Another episode, this one nixed by the WB, was for Angel - and it was written by David Fury, it introduced Kate as an undercover cop, working as a heroine addicted prostitute who gets raped or something like that. Episodes that did make it on the air - included various rape scenarios...such as Seeing Red - Spike attacking Buffy, an episode in Angel S2 - where Angel launches himself at Darla. Xander attacking Buffy in early S1. Willow's mind-rape of Tara. Warren's rape of Katrina. The attempted rape of the female characters by the demon biker gang. In Dollhouse - almost every episode of the entire series featured rape - either sexual or mental. One episode showed a rapist kidnapping his victim, putting her in an insane asylum, mind-wiping her, and placing a new identity in her - that would make her amenable to sleeping with him. She eventually remembers who she is, and what he did to her, and kills him, then is forced to live with it. The only other option? To be mind-wiped again. In Battlestar Galatica - the characters Six and Athena are gang-raped. In Caprica...rape is alluded to.
And again I ask why? Is it about power? Because rape is in the end a power game.
One person asserting their power over another. That's the simplest explanation. But I think the reasons people write about it is more or less the same reason I am at this moment doing so, or I have written about it...to try to put a face and a name on the specter lurking in the shadows. Stories often are about exploring what scares us, what keeps us up at night, our own demons, the dark part of own soul. If we can shed a bright light on that part of our soul...maybe we can exorcise the demon...or maybe squash the fear or impulse? Stories aren't just about survival, they are about well, what-if. If I do this...what will happen? What are the consequences? To get inside the thought patterns of a mind that is not our own. The stories about serial killers are basically ways of exploring the mind of the boogie man, by exposing him, facing him, dead on - he no longer is quite so scary.
I think that is part of it. Whedon when interviewed has stated much as Ron Moore and George RR Martin has that he writes about abuses of power, attempting to understand how and why people use it, and he remains fascinated about those who are appear to be powerless, the victim, how they handle power or the lack thereof. All our stories, it seems to me, are about power. Rape is an expression of power, an abuse of power.
Why some people can't handle power. Can't control the impulse. It's I guess no different than writing fanfic...you write to explore possibilities.
The question is...to what degree should these topics be explored? And is it really better in all instances to squash that creative impulse? Should we edit people like Whedon, King, Moore, Martin? Or will the public and popular opinion eventually do it for us? After all - Firefly could not get an audience, nor could Dollhouse - scaring off many viewers. Irreversible never made it into the mainstream or popular culture.
I'm uncomfortable condemning these works, for much the same reason I'm uncomfortable condemning out of hand the photos by Richard Mapplethorpe. For like all things there are vast number of ways to interpret the writers/artists intentions. I'm not sure it is wise to assume that just because we perceive it one way, everyone else does as well. Art changes depending on the viewer and the mind viewing it. My brother, who is a conceptual artist, once told me, and I think he is right about this, that the viewer or audience interacts with the art, we bring ourselves, our baggage, our issues - we project on it what we want to see. You see this on fan discussion boards, where viewers and readers will often express various and contradictory impressions of the same thing. It feels at times like they've all watched or read different books or tv shows. And they have.
A story about rape is not the same, I don't think, as the rape-play video game. We as viewers, who fall in love with characters, may feel that what the writer is doing to them is painful beyond what we can endure. I am reminded of a scene in a recent episode of Grey's Anatomy...where Lexie, one of the main characters, asks Alfre Woodward who portrays a romance writer, how she can put her lead character with one man over another - when clearly the character would be better off with the other character. The writer states she must go with the needs of the character, what the character wants...as the writer sees it. The writer has a story to tell, I think, and it is up to us if we want to watch or read it. We don't have to.
But I've galloped off topic, haven't I? I don't know why we feel the need to write about a topic we struggle to talk about. Maybe that is why. It is a way to have the conversation. When asked why he did the attempted rape storyline in Buffy, Whedon stated that he wanted to explore the issue of rape from another angle, he felt that too often we demonize the rapist...and he wanted to see it as a human crime, a complicated crime, and determine if it could be a forgivable one. Does it taint you forever? Can you come back from it? As a man, he was looking at it from the male angle, but also from the female one. He wanted to talk about it. But didn't quite know how to. And I know in interviews, Ron Moore explained that in BSG he was looking at torture, why we did it, and crimes against prisoners of war - he was tackling the crimes during the Iraq War by the US, grappling with why we did it.
Why, admittedly has always interested me. But I struggle with art that depicts torture and rape. Sometimes, as in the case of Buffy and even BSG - the storyline did delve into new territory, while at the same time, I felt it repeated old territory to the point of cliche and I wished they'd done it differently or something else. I was and continue to be of two minds on the topic.
It is late. Past one here. And I've rambled on long enough about a topic that I find difficult to discuss. Because it bears such painful scars. Psychological and emotional. And everyone views it from a different angle. It's the specter in the room, the ghost beneath the bed, the shadow stalking us on the way home...lurking in our papers, our media, and on the corners of the internet. We attempt to ignore it, but we can't quite do it. And for those of us who have been raped or sexually assaulted or have had a loved one who was..the specter isn't a specter at all, but a stinky rat that won't go away. Stories may be the only way we can deal with it in all its permutations, and maybe that's why there are so many stories that do?
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Re: Edited comment..I need to learn to proof first.
Date: 2011-11-12 07:44 pm (UTC)Didn't know you were a field medic during a recent up-rising.
It does change you - first hand experience. Also teaches me not to assume things about people ...again. Probably good to be reminded of that.
I think we more or less agree. I've been grappling with the issue in my own head. Writing a rather lengthy sci-fi story about a woman who fought a guerilla war/resistance against invaders, then realized it wasn't working and is trying to find a way to negotiate a peaceful co-existence with them. Was the resistance she fought worth it? Was the price she paid in lives worth it?
As a negotiator, I've been trained to see multiple sides of an issue. You have to. I had to as a litigator as well - although not found of litigation. Prefer advocacy to revolution. I'm not good at revolutionary action. And it is something I'm struggling with right now in my discussions with the social justice/action group that I'm involved with. The thing of it is - I'm not quite sure revolutions result in positive systematic change. True the Bolshevik revolutions and French revolutions and even the American revolution, including the Civil War...did change things, in some respects for the better...economics in each case brought these revolutions about. Marx was right about that - economics does bring about change - it incites people to action.
But...I don't know about the change itself. How do you prevent the repetition of past mistakes? The perpetuation of the violence?
The Bolshevik's automatically lost to well Leninism to well Stalinism. While Napoleon may have had some good ideas (I read the Red and Black and quite a bit on it ages ago), he did try to congueor the world. France in some respects is still struggling with these issues. As is most of Europe.
Have you read Maria Doria Russel's novels The Sparrow and Children of God? In both books she discusses systematic change, and comes up with some interesting questions. In her science fiction novels - people journey to a new world, interfere for the best of reasons with that world's ecological balance and class system, and the result is a War. Is the War justified? I don't know. Hard to say.
As I get older, the answers seem less and less clear cut.
Re: Edited comment..I need to learn to proof first.
Date: 2011-11-12 09:08 pm (UTC)But...I don't know about the change itself. How do you prevent the repetition of past mistakes? The perpetuation of the violence?
The only answer i have is: formalism. Building structures (political and economical) which hopefully are successful "checks and balances". But yes, learning from past mistakes is probably the hardest thing in the world.
The Bolshevik's automatically lost to well Leninism to well Stalinism
This i don't know. Was that really inevitable? I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the world hadn't intervened. In May 1918 seventeen nations (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Romania, Serbia, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, British India, United States, Republic of China, (Poland and Finland later)) declared war on the revolutionary Soviet Union, sending thousands of soldiers and hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as war material to crush the new government.
Without the massive intervention and the disastrous "civil" war - would the Leninists really have ruled the state? People wanted freedom, then and all forms of creative ideas on how to run a society sprung up. From the decentralized system of soviets, to centralized "war communism", to the anarchists of the Ukraine - i think the possibilities were manyfold.
But that is "what if". What the world (and especially the peoples of the Soviet Union) got was Leninism. So, history is on your side.
Have you read Maria Doria Russel's novels The Sparrow and Children of God?
No, i haven't. Will do. :-)
Re: Edited comment..I need to learn to proof first.
Date: 2011-11-12 11:47 pm (UTC)Maybe i seem "more radical" but that's probably due to different life experiences (as well as internet communications). I despise violence. I hate it - too many people, friends and family suffered violence for me to revel in it.
I think it is in part cultural...and also experiences. I am more, I want to say centrist in my views...but moderate may be better? And it depends on who I talk to on how radical I am. In part it is who I am surrounded by. My work-place is a mix, but has quite a few ultra-conservatives. And my church is ultra-liberal at times. For me? I want something in between the extremes...for go too far in either direction and you end up with problems. Balance, I think, is very hard to find in life. Personal or otherwise.
Also...while my family, on my mother's side is largely German and we still have relations in Germany...my mother actually learned German and her grandparents on her father's side spoke mainly German, I cannot imagine what it would be like to live there. I visited Berlin in the 1980s, 1981 to be exact, when it was still split into East and West Germany. I saw communism up close and personal - and it did not look all that different than facism. Wore the same face, in some respects. Remember Check point Charlie well...and the fear we all felt going through it. Also the Berlin Wall. I was...no older than maybe 13 or 14 at the time.
But, I know Communism and Capitalism are economic systems not political ones. And have been told by more than one person that I seem to be leaning more and more towards socialism. I am in some respects more a socialist than Capitalist, but I see issues there as well - I work for a government agency and bureaucracy is a problem. No system is perfect. Capitalism - pure unfettered, laizzez faire Capitalism is insane - and cruel. It eats its young. Economic Darwinism at its worst. While pure socialism leads to an overbearing government, malaise, and repression of human rights.
So how do you find the in-between? I think we are struggling towards it.
The US really isn't pure Capitalism - we have regulations, I know, I deal with them on a daily basis. Some are rather head-ache inducing. Great in theory, bad in practice. It's an odd thing to find out the law you fought to have put in place, does little more than cause mountains of paperwork and slow the process down to a crawl. I find myself thinking, why can't anything be simple? Why does it have to be organized chaos?
I have yet to see an economic system currently in practice that works without a downside. There such thing as a perfect system...for all systems are created by humans and we are fallible beings. Even our language has its limitations. German is more precise than English with all its various uses for the same word. Even French is more precise than English. Yet, this imprecise language is the world's for some reason, not that I'm complaining - considering I do not have much of a facility for learning languages and am relieved the one I do know is the standard at the moment.
Sorry that was bit off topic, I think.
I'm leery of communism in part because of the negative propaganda that I've been the recipient of since I was old enough to walk - that Cold War was most of my youth. We were indoctrinated by our media to distrust the "communist" system. As an adult I read about it and saw gaps in the logic, while I agreed with the thesis, I think Marx missed a few things. It's never the working class or proletariat that revolts, it is the middle class that has suddenly found itself squeezed and falling into the working class. Also human beings aren't well as nice as Marx would like them to be...we tend to give into our competitive and aggressive nature - the desire to succeed to be the best. How much of that desire is pure DNA and how much is taught, I don't know.
Off to make dinner. Thank you for taking the time to discuss this topic, even if we've wandered a bit away from the central or core one. ;-)
Re: Edited comment..I need to learn to proof first.
Date: 2011-11-13 06:58 pm (UTC)It's funny how we both ended up talking about language. :-) Well, i assume language forms in large parts the way how we think and what terms are filled with life, so to speak.
I like that English is a world language, because it is easy to learn (well, for Europeans...) and easy to use (albeit hard to master). It makes it possible that you and me are able to communicate. :-)
Back to what you wrote after that: I tend to think of communism as an idea, the idea that we humans work together to reach our goals, free of oppression and violence. Not so much as a political or economical system. How to reach that? I have no idea.
It's never the working class or proletariat that revolts, it is the middle class that has suddenly found itself squeezed and falling into the working class.
While that's certainly true from the seventies onwards - the "flailing middle class" has traditionally thrown their lot in with the fascists here in Continental Europe.
And, the large working class movements of Continental Europe were certainly driven by the working class, even if some of their leaders were - as you point out - highly educated middle class. The leader of the German Soviet Republic in Hamburg 1923 was Ernst Thälmann, who was a dock worker. He was leader of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) until he was murdered in 1944.
I have little knowledge of today's socialist or anarchist movements in the USA but here in Europe there is a clear break in tradition with the worker's movement of the late 19th and early 20th century: The fascists killed everybody. 50.000 cadres of the social-democrats, the socialists, and the communists were murdered in the death camps of the Nazis. Not much to build any continuation on.
As of today?
You are certainly right, i mostly see disgruntled middle class kids playing at "revolution". The workers just want to get through their days, mostly. maybe a nice car, or a flat TV.
But at least here in Europe there is a clear chain of events which led to the situation we have now: Before 1933 there was a large working class movement in Germany and Austria (see: Austrian civil war in 1934) which was indeed led by workers themselves. (But of course there is a distinction between workers and lumpenproletariat, the latter will never strive for change).
So, this got more political (again!) than i wanted. ;-)
As i said: I don't know the "right" path. I don't even know any "right" outcome, i have no "vision" beyond what i said above: That one day, humans will work together instead of against each other in peace. (And nothing against competition. Did you know that the Soviet Union introduced performance-based loans in 1920?)