capri0mni | Long, and in color... but comments are as the balm of Gilead (Reply)

Warning: the following includes politics, discussions of American television, Emo!CapriUni, and another G.I.P..

(these are random thoughts, really, that have been buzzing around my head together for some time now. And rather than spam you with 5 seperate posts in one day, I thought I'd pull them with a reference to a movie that's a dozen years old, or so)

Israel:
Just about everyone in the news media is reporting this story as if Hezbollah's attack on those soldiers, 10 days ago, was totally unprovoked. But two weeks ago, the Israeli government was making no secret of its policy to deliberately bomb Palestinian civilians in Gaza, in order to punish them for voting Hamas into power, and provoke them into throwing Hamas out. ... um ... ... ... 'kay ... That's like:

"I'm going to hit you over the head with this iron mallet until you say I'm a nice person, and deserve to be here!" :::Whomp!::: :::Whomp!:::

Hezbollah's strategy to blindly fire rockets into civilian areas, without caring where they come down, isn't any smarter. Do they really think that will make the Israelis say to themselves: "Gee -- I guess the Palestinians do deserve our respect, and we should give them their land back." All it's really doing is convincing the Israelis that they are morally superior, and can do no wrong.

Everyone, on both sides: Shut off your insanity! Think about what you really want for the future. Do you want peace and prosperity? Or will you feel somehow incomplete as human beings unless you have someone you can hate for all eternity, who will hate you back?

(Oh, and has anyone forgotten that Israel has the atom bomb?)

Reality T.V.:
I've seen bits of a few episodes of America's Got Talent, now -- the "upgraded" version of American Idol. The publicized upgrades include the fact that it's not limited to any one talent, or even an age group. This, I don't mind. But there's another 'upgrade' that wasn't advertised in the promos for this show. The contest has been restructured so that there is at least one truly embarrassing, cringe-worthy act in every episode, instead of getting through them all in the early part of the series. I'm sure this was a calculated decision, to help boost the ratings. But, just.... gah. Why does it build ratings? Why are there so many people who seem to delight in teasing and taunting and watching others make fools of themselves? Why?

The Problem with Academics:
There's another show I've been watching, on the other end of the cultural spectrum, called How Art Made the World. The host is a professor of art, at Cambridge University, I think, but I'm writing this off-line, and so I can't look it up quickly. Mostly, it's interesting; each week, he follows one aspect of visual art through its first appearence in human culture all the way up to the present day, illustrating that the stuff we think of as new and shiny may be shiny, but they're not all that new. The week before last, the episode was all about how political leaders have harnessed the power of the visual image for propaganda. The most recent show annoyed me, however. It was about "visual storytelling," and supposedly traced the evolution of our modern movie techniques, starting with friezes from Ancient Assyria, depicting the king as the lead role in the Gilgamesh, saga, and on through Greek scuptors' techniques for depicting scenes from their myths, and so on. Each fact was all very interesting, as it stood alone.

But he did keep going on about how ancient modes of visual storytelling were all soooo boring, and dry and without feeling, and failed to draw the viewer into another world, the way modern movies do. I wanted to reach through my T.V. screen, shake him firmly by the shoulders, and say, slowly and clearly:

You're forgetting Live Theater, Mister Man! That's the tradition cinema comes out of -- with the costume, and masks, and dancing, and singing... Yes, movies are on a 2-D surface, and yes, modern cinematographers do take advantage of that to frame scenes in ways that the ancient frieze carvers did (though I bet they came up with the idea of an overhead shot on their own, without ever having seen that one bit on Trajan's Column). But movies began as recordings of stage performances. And the ancient mural painters weren't trying to go for the same effect as a stage play. They had playwrights for that.

But, of course, he's a professor of visual art, so all he studies are sculptures and paintings and the like. So he sees everything through that lens. It's the fatal flaw of all academic types, and what makes "the intellectual elite" such an easy target for people like Rush Limbaugh. I love academia, for the most part, but the tunnel vision of most scholarly "experts" drives me up the wall.

My Romance is Pasted on, Yay!
I also like the series Mystery!, and the last couple of seasons, they've been remaking the "Miss Marple" stories. I like the actress who plays her. But they've been mucking about with the scripts -- changing the stories around, and adding details that were never in the original novels "in order to appeal to a modern audience." And NewSchool Marple is just about as shippy as NewSchool Who. Miss Marple's youthful romance with a married soldier (who later died on the battle fields of The Great War) has been mentioned at least once in every episode. And the mystery has never ended when the murderer is brought to justice, we always have to wait until the designated romantic lead (who must always be gently prodded and guided by MarySue Marple, who is wise beyond measure in the workings of the human heart) goes off in the sunset with his dewy-eyed sweetheart on his arm.

I'm sorry. I try to ignore it, and just relax and enjoy the story. I really do. And for the most part, I succeed. If I were in the coveted 18-35 age group, maybe I'd succeed all the way. But ... When I see romance played out like that, it just reminds me of what I don't have, and what I resigned myself years ago to never having. And instead of making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, it makes me sad.

That's a tiny bit of my annoyance. The great, huge whopping piece of annoyance comes from what these pasted on romances are saying about love and relationships: 'Having' someone is the most important thing of all, and it doesn't matter how disfunctional you become when you're together, as long as you're never alone.

I'm reminded of a time when I was in the fourth or fifth grade, and I brought home a special candle we'd made in class, for our mothers. It was a "lace" candle, and we made it by putting crushed ice in the mold, and pouring the hot wax over it. The ice melted, of course, and left this intricate matrix of holes throughout the wax that was fascinating to stare at.

When I showed it to my mother, her immediate response is: "Well, that's a useless candle!"

"But," I said, "it's pretty."

"The beauty of form is in its function," she answered.

I sulked for a bit, after that. But now, I agree with her (I am becoming my mother --yay!!), even when it comes to love and romance. I find two people who work well together -- when one person's strength helps cover for the other person's weakness -- far more romantic than two people who weep and moan to the stars about how angsty and emo they are. That's why I prefer the OTP of Beatrice and Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing) to Romeo and Juliet, even if neither Beatrice nor Benedick ever did get the hang of writing beautiful love poems to each other.

What are those words?
I want to thank

calapine for making that Doctor Who montage video of "What About Everything?" The images are lovely, and I learned a great song to boot. I know it's a great song because it keeps popping into my head when I'm doing other things and I'm glad when it does. But what are the words after "What about the moon and stars? What about old soldiers' battle scars, and all the anger that ____ ___?" Either I'm not hearing the words, or not understanding them, but something's not catching. I know there are people on my f'list who've heard it, so can someone tell me? Please?

Thank you.