Wasn’t Koch Bros. on the watch list for like, forever?
Hell, I’m not surprised that they’re in charge of sabotaging the federal and state funded programs to obtain unlimited wealth.
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Lie back and think of England.
I guess to me this looks like it arises out of a change in the balance of duty-to-group vs. individual-actualization. Even if no one had really formed the idea that people were heterosexual and homosexual (and certainly no one used those words) a few hundreds years back, they still had laws against buggery. But similarly there were laws against adultery. What a person desired may not have been tied to marriage, but how a person had to behave seems like it was enforced to a much greater extent. Romeo and Juliet pictures romantic love as a destructive force that ruins lives and families because it gives people desires so strong they can’t behave themselves.
English speaking nations fancy themselves as very individualistic, but we let go of some things faster than others. The linking of marriage to love looks to me like a rationalization for continuing social prohibitions against sexual self-actualization though an individualistic lens - if we can’t justify the harm of adultery based on harm to the community, instead we’ll justify it based on theft; if we can’t do theft anymore (what? women are people?) then we’ll do it based on the harm to the individual by making it about violating the trust and love of your partner. It feels like different ways of translating “having sex with lots of people just because you like seems like a good idea when you are young but you grow up and realize it’s wrong” into the moral language of the day. And all of that connects back to a biblical morality.
I just find it hard to buy that if you go back a few hundred years you’d find less policing of people’s sexuality since I think you’d find more policing of everything. Most people in that era were rock farmers*, and while I’m sure individuals still found ways to find happiness in life where they could, society’s values sound like they were based almost entirely around duty. Go back thousands of years and maybe things were different, but it’s hard for me to believe that sexuality wasn’t heavily policed in any era in which women were regarded as property. I think being violent/oppressive towards people who don’t fit in - regardless of the reason they don’t fit in - has been the norm for a very very long time, and being violent/oppressive towards people specifically because their sexuality doesn’t fit in is a restricted case.
My grandmother-in-law was just telling me this week about how I ought to be teaching my children the story of christmas (she provided a helpful classic Little Golden Book of the christmas story as a present to my 4-year-old). She dressed it up as being important because so much of western culture is based off the bible and allusions to the bible are everywhere - not as a religious thing. But then a minute later we were talking about whether or not Islam was taking over the western world (apparently we’re all converting). I don’t think old morals would have survived as long as they have if there couldn’t adapt to different moral nomenclatures.
Much like the turtles, it’s bourgeois propaganda all the way down.
* This is a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic reference.
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Wake Up to the Sweet Smell of The New Deal
The 65,000 acre Blitzen Valley was purchased in 1935 and added to the refuge to secure water rights for Malheur and Mud Lake. With the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933, the refuge was able to use this additional manpower in 1935 to begin major improvements on the refuge. The CCC constructed most of the infrastructure in the Blitzen Valley including the Center Patrol Road which travels through the center of the refuge.
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I posted this photo as a joke in this thread
But it came with a blogpost
YES. Discourse managed to find the theme of the whole piece! Amazing.
I’m not at all interested in discussing films within the patriarchal construct of film crit, ie let’s take this thing produced within the patriarchy and hold it up to a rubric manufactured by the patriarchy and say some things that are true primarily by the virtue of their being sanctioned by the patriarchy. Crit is boring. Let’s dismantle crit. Let’s look instead at the interesting, hilarious, tragic, eye-opening shit like this that happens when we continue producing art within a suffocating, strange “depoliticized” atmosphere.
And maybe I’m “taking this too seriously.” It’s an indie parody film. It’s by Kevin Smith. But, the thing is, not taking things seriously is kind of a luxury only afforded to a very particular demographic. For a lot of us, there’s just no such thing as a piece of art with no politics, because politics are not something we can separate from our lived experience. We cannot take these things that impact our lives and put them in a box and write about what’s left, and this is something that needs to be recognized in the way that we create, consume, and critique art.
Anyway, she claims
Tusk somehow managed to be the most realistic portrayal of the trauma of sexual assault that I have ever seen in cinema.
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I saw Tusk solely based on that review! And I have to concur with her wholeheartedly! Its amazing.
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My cousin actually did this, when he was seven he upset his class and teacher by calling Santa Claus “Bourgeois crap”, which he had heard from my aunt.
Remember, if you really want your views to be heard, say them in front of a young kid.
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Really?
I suppose I have exercised my patriarchal privilege of rolling my eyes at her tarting up an interesting idea with a whole lot of identity politics.
I don’t understand… did you just post this to mock her feminist take on the movie? Feminist critiques are a thing… or do you just disagree with her premise?
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I thought her take was interesting, and valuable. But it is a stupid walrus movie.
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“You walrus hurt the ones you love”…
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The walrus was Paul.
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It’s a terrific review … esp. her question:
“…Could there be a black Clerks? A female clerks? A LGBT Clerks? Would it have been successful? I severely doubt it, because if you’re making a movie about people who are not straight white men shooting the shit, it no longer looks like “shooting the shit” to mainstream culture. It looks like politics…”
I agree and yet a lot has changed since 1994. It’s more accurate to ask if the alt universe Clerks movies could have been financed. Because now they could be financed and they could find their audience too. Not the same as white guy Clerks … and yay for that.
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I wanted to see this anyway, but now I really want to see it… I really love Smith’s movies… I even like Jersey Girl, actually… I KNOW! Don’t judge.
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I think I might have to commission an embroidery of that and deliver it to Rob.
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I’d feel very compelled to sign them up for Cat Facts.
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Such good band name material in that…
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I want it on a t-shirt.
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Its good, there are some moments that are truly horrific, and not just because he turned a man into a walrus… its… good. Really good. 
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But is it ever really a walrus though, I mean really? 
