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Mar. 27th, 2012 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1.Stories about secret government agencies abusing their power? Sign me the fuck up. - Mark Watches
While my immediate reaction and my brother's was the exact opposite: "I'm so bored. Can we not do this over-done tired stupid cliche again? Besides it's so unrealistic." [Anyone who has ever worked for or with a government agency knows whereof I speak. People, friends of mine, no company is more crippled by bureaucratic red-tape and regulations than government agencies. They don't communicate well. The left hand has no clue what the right hand is doing. The press often knows more than the employees. They tend to be run and mis-managed by nit-wits. Few people have high level degrees - because if they did, why would they be wasting their time working for the government and making no money?? And it is rather a miracle that anything gets done. Government = organized chaos. It's not orderly enough to do all the crap these conspiracy theorists dream up. Seriously, I was bored of the secret government agency abusing their power story trope when I turned 12. Yes, they've been doing it THAT long. In case you haven't figured it out by now, Americans are, generally speaking, afraid of their government. It goes back to the Revolutionary War. We're not a nation that likes authority all that much.]
This probably would explain why I didn't like S4 of Buffy's plot line all that much, found the X-Files general plot line to be profoundly stupid and unbelievable, and struggled with both Fringe and Lost. If you don't buy into the trope - the story isn't going to work for you. It is what it is.
I'm tempted to do a lengthy post on tropes that don't float your boat, but I will refrain.
Mainly because I'm drawing a blank and I've no time.
2. Smash - I like Smash, but it does need work. The personal story lines don't work. But the Broadway bit does. Yet, as bad as it is at times? Still 100% better than Glee. (In that, at least I don't cringe or want to switch channels during it.) Which probably means that I should just stop watching Glee. So, Smash will survive my DVR, Glee is getting cancelled after this year on my DVR. I'm slowly getting rid of Fox shows..which is good, because I sort of want to stop watching Fox for political reasons. I'm renting S4 of Fringe this summer.
3. There's two links I want to share regarding racism and fandom. The first is from Jezebel which is a blog by a Person of Color. The second is a twitter account that was incredibly racist, until the owner ran for the hills because she began to get flamed with hate mail (I think people could have found a better way of dealing with her racism, hate rarely works. Rage doesn't either. All it does is create more rage and hate. Racism is often the result of ignorance bolstered by bad teachers.). At any rate, her account got taken over by a satirist who is satirizing her tweets and exposing in a rather humorous way the stupidity of her ignorance. It's a technique that comics ranging from Mel Brooks to Eddie Murphy have used for ages. Making fun of the racist. Demonstrating through humor how inaccurate and illogical their views are.
* JEZEBEL's POST
* The Racist Twitter Account that Got Hacked and is now a Satire of Itself
Battling racism is hard work. You have to fight your own views as well as society's. I fight mine every day. It took me ten years to figure out that being color-blind wasn't enough and it didn't help. It would be like being gender blind. It's really easy for a white person to be color-blind and state "race" doesn't matter. Just as it is really easy for a heterosexual man to state that gender doesn't matter or sexual orientation doesn't. OR for someone who doesn't have a disability ...to say it's not important. You don't have to deal with the problems or the discrimination. You don't have to fear being beaten up by the police or unlawfully arrested or not given a job because of your gender, sexual orientation or race. It shouldn't matter. But it does. So sorry, color-blind doesn't cut it.
At church this past Sunday, the Minister spoke about the young teen who was killed by a white neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed self-defense. But he went further than that...and spoke about...the status quo. Stating if you find yourself justifying an action with the statement :"well that's the way we've always done it. Or we shouldn't change it because this is how it has been done for 20 years"? Then that's a clue that you need to start questioning your actions and your fear of change. This point was oddly enough echoed in this Sunday's Good Wife, where Alicia questioned the procedural and oddly racist practices of the blue-ribbon panel she was on, and was told - "well, that's how we've always done it, don't rock the boat, you silly female, let the white guys handle it." (Not in those exact words of course, but that was the implication.)
When a "traditional practice" is harming another - it should be stopped. There is no justification for its continuance. No matter how long it has been in practice.
I need to write a post about this past week's the Good Wife, so frigging good and topical regarding US politics and insidious nature of US racism. But no bloody time.
3. Once Upon a Time was also quite good this week.
I loved the Mad Hatter storyline. It worked for me. Clever twist on an old tale. I've seen Alice in Wonderland done in a myriad of ways, but this is the first time - it was told in this manner. Jefferson can travel between worlds with the use of a magical hat. He's done business for Regina in the past. Regina (who has the same name in both worlds) coaxes Jefferson into using his hat to take her to Wonderland. She does it by tempting him with giving his daughter, Grace, the world. For those who do not remember Alice in Wonderland - Grace is the name of the White Rabbit's helper. He keeps asking for Grace. Also Grace Slick did the song - "White Rabbit". Here - it's a toy rabbit that he can't afford, which the queen disquised as toy seller at a bazar refuses to sell to him.
Jefferson agrees to help and ends up stuck in Wonderland at the mercy of the Queen of Hearts, and slowly driven insane by his inability to create a hat that works. When Regina exiles everyone to the real world, the Hatter is stuck in his house making hats and watching his daughter grow up in another families home, not knowing him, from a distance.
He miraculously remembers the fairy tale world and who he is. And manages to finally convince Emma - with the scar around his neck, and his magical disappearance, leaving only a hat behind - something he couldn't do until Emma arrived. Emma the skeptic, ironically, brings the element of magic to Storybrook. She's the only one who can come and go outside of her son Henry and the writer, August. We also get more information on Regina's tomb of hearts - which is oddly the same as the Queen of Hearts. Are the two related?
Hearts...a good metaphor. When you are exiled to Storybrook - what you love most, what made life worthwhile is ripped from you. Your heart is "metaphorically" removed. Rumple created the curse from the power of Snow and PC's star-crossed love and Regina activated it through the sacrifice of her father - the person she loved above all things. Denouncing love created it's opposite - the void. A place without magic.
While my immediate reaction and my brother's was the exact opposite: "I'm so bored. Can we not do this over-done tired stupid cliche again? Besides it's so unrealistic." [Anyone who has ever worked for or with a government agency knows whereof I speak. People, friends of mine, no company is more crippled by bureaucratic red-tape and regulations than government agencies. They don't communicate well. The left hand has no clue what the right hand is doing. The press often knows more than the employees. They tend to be run and mis-managed by nit-wits. Few people have high level degrees - because if they did, why would they be wasting their time working for the government and making no money?? And it is rather a miracle that anything gets done. Government = organized chaos. It's not orderly enough to do all the crap these conspiracy theorists dream up. Seriously, I was bored of the secret government agency abusing their power story trope when I turned 12. Yes, they've been doing it THAT long. In case you haven't figured it out by now, Americans are, generally speaking, afraid of their government. It goes back to the Revolutionary War. We're not a nation that likes authority all that much.]
This probably would explain why I didn't like S4 of Buffy's plot line all that much, found the X-Files general plot line to be profoundly stupid and unbelievable, and struggled with both Fringe and Lost. If you don't buy into the trope - the story isn't going to work for you. It is what it is.
I'm tempted to do a lengthy post on tropes that don't float your boat, but I will refrain.
Mainly because I'm drawing a blank and I've no time.
2. Smash - I like Smash, but it does need work. The personal story lines don't work. But the Broadway bit does. Yet, as bad as it is at times? Still 100% better than Glee. (In that, at least I don't cringe or want to switch channels during it.) Which probably means that I should just stop watching Glee. So, Smash will survive my DVR, Glee is getting cancelled after this year on my DVR. I'm slowly getting rid of Fox shows..which is good, because I sort of want to stop watching Fox for political reasons. I'm renting S4 of Fringe this summer.
3. There's two links I want to share regarding racism and fandom. The first is from Jezebel which is a blog by a Person of Color. The second is a twitter account that was incredibly racist, until the owner ran for the hills because she began to get flamed with hate mail (I think people could have found a better way of dealing with her racism, hate rarely works. Rage doesn't either. All it does is create more rage and hate. Racism is often the result of ignorance bolstered by bad teachers.). At any rate, her account got taken over by a satirist who is satirizing her tweets and exposing in a rather humorous way the stupidity of her ignorance. It's a technique that comics ranging from Mel Brooks to Eddie Murphy have used for ages. Making fun of the racist. Demonstrating through humor how inaccurate and illogical their views are.
* JEZEBEL's POST
* The Racist Twitter Account that Got Hacked and is now a Satire of Itself
Battling racism is hard work. You have to fight your own views as well as society's. I fight mine every day. It took me ten years to figure out that being color-blind wasn't enough and it didn't help. It would be like being gender blind. It's really easy for a white person to be color-blind and state "race" doesn't matter. Just as it is really easy for a heterosexual man to state that gender doesn't matter or sexual orientation doesn't. OR for someone who doesn't have a disability ...to say it's not important. You don't have to deal with the problems or the discrimination. You don't have to fear being beaten up by the police or unlawfully arrested or not given a job because of your gender, sexual orientation or race. It shouldn't matter. But it does. So sorry, color-blind doesn't cut it.
At church this past Sunday, the Minister spoke about the young teen who was killed by a white neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed self-defense. But he went further than that...and spoke about...the status quo. Stating if you find yourself justifying an action with the statement :"well that's the way we've always done it. Or we shouldn't change it because this is how it has been done for 20 years"? Then that's a clue that you need to start questioning your actions and your fear of change. This point was oddly enough echoed in this Sunday's Good Wife, where Alicia questioned the procedural and oddly racist practices of the blue-ribbon panel she was on, and was told - "well, that's how we've always done it, don't rock the boat, you silly female, let the white guys handle it." (Not in those exact words of course, but that was the implication.)
When a "traditional practice" is harming another - it should be stopped. There is no justification for its continuance. No matter how long it has been in practice.
I need to write a post about this past week's the Good Wife, so frigging good and topical regarding US politics and insidious nature of US racism. But no bloody time.
3. Once Upon a Time was also quite good this week.
I loved the Mad Hatter storyline. It worked for me. Clever twist on an old tale. I've seen Alice in Wonderland done in a myriad of ways, but this is the first time - it was told in this manner. Jefferson can travel between worlds with the use of a magical hat. He's done business for Regina in the past. Regina (who has the same name in both worlds) coaxes Jefferson into using his hat to take her to Wonderland. She does it by tempting him with giving his daughter, Grace, the world. For those who do not remember Alice in Wonderland - Grace is the name of the White Rabbit's helper. He keeps asking for Grace. Also Grace Slick did the song - "White Rabbit". Here - it's a toy rabbit that he can't afford, which the queen disquised as toy seller at a bazar refuses to sell to him.
Jefferson agrees to help and ends up stuck in Wonderland at the mercy of the Queen of Hearts, and slowly driven insane by his inability to create a hat that works. When Regina exiles everyone to the real world, the Hatter is stuck in his house making hats and watching his daughter grow up in another families home, not knowing him, from a distance.
He miraculously remembers the fairy tale world and who he is. And manages to finally convince Emma - with the scar around his neck, and his magical disappearance, leaving only a hat behind - something he couldn't do until Emma arrived. Emma the skeptic, ironically, brings the element of magic to Storybrook. She's the only one who can come and go outside of her son Henry and the writer, August. We also get more information on Regina's tomb of hearts - which is oddly the same as the Queen of Hearts. Are the two related?
Hearts...a good metaphor. When you are exiled to Storybrook - what you love most, what made life worthwhile is ripped from you. Your heart is "metaphorically" removed. Rumple created the curse from the power of Snow and PC's star-crossed love and Regina activated it through the sacrifice of her father - the person she loved above all things. Denouncing love created it's opposite - the void. A place without magic.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-28 06:34 am (UTC)I don't mind it, if it's well done (which it can be) - and (to be a little tongue in cheek) The Initiative storyline does rather prove your point about government agencies being crippled by bureaucratic red-tape and regulations, and everything ending up in tears. Anyway, I rather liked Mark's review. There weren't any CAPLOCKS and he was fairly interesting. So much better than the regular shouting.
In case you haven't figured it out by now, Americans are, generally speaking, afraid of their government. It goes back to the Revolutionary War. We're not a nation that likes authority all that much.
Now we over here in Britain are perfectly illustrated by this genius quote:
All politicians are lizards. They're in in for fame and power and all that, and their more concerned with LOOKING good, than doing good. (This is why Children of Earth rang so true - we absolutely believed that this is how they'd behave. And that they'd then try to spin it...) We're not afraid of them, we [generally] despise and/or hate them. Yet we vote for them, because if we didn't, someone even worse might get in...