Posts by Kracklite
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Sure they may obsess over things we might not be interested in, but then we all have our own obsessions. So what's the harm?
I'm afraid that this is the problem that I have with much of the left, which Orwell had too - it was their damned moral earnestness that all too easily slips into authoritarianism. Litterick is demonstrating this all too well: 'you must talk about only what I consider relevant and if you do not, you are not SERIOUS, you are a backslider, an instrument of the reactionary forces, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.' Such attitudes are inherently authoritarian, and whatever the virtue of any cause, once someone starts dictating parameters according to what they claim are absolute principles, it's time to pack your bags and head for the border. Saying that something is only of value if it is only directed into 'concrete political action' (which of course they reserve the right to define by themselves for everyone else's benefit and enlightenment) is a sure sign that someone will, if given the power, not tolerate dissent.
I have pretty strong left wing sympathies and connections myself, but I've seen enough of the dynamics of such organisations to know that if anyone starts to set themselves up as moral/cultural arbiter and judge of what's appropriate according to doctrine, it's time to leave.
And as for the 'geek' remark, as an aspie, I find that crap as offensive and as cheap a shot as 'kike'.
You think I'm rude, Litterick, then you're a bigot.
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In any case, most geek culture enthusiasms are really not that profound. It is just that most geeks have not read anything outside their preferred genres, and that most geeks are very literal-minded.
Yes indeed, you have demonstrated that very well.
And what the hell do you know about my reading? Pot, kettle, black, you pompous ass.
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I'm not one to rain on anyone's parade, but what is it with this BSG lovefest?
It made me think that alligators look cool because they resemble the eponymous vessel.
From a dramatic point of view, one of the things I like most about it is that it ended. Fans of the sort who want more of the same <i>ad infinitum</i> regularly howled about 'jumping the shark' moments, but it was good because it showed actions having consequences, good people making stupid decisions with the best motives, bad people doing good things, reprieves retracted and changes that were irreversible. Not only were there hotties and things blowing up, there were good actors and writers working on it.
As the piece I linked to above about the UN panel indicates, there was deliberate and deliberately multi-sided treatment via allegory of real world political and social matters. One of the stars, Edward James Olmos, has had a long career outside of acting in political activism - largely Latino rights - and is frequently forthright on the parallels and synergies between his political work and his acting in BSG.
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... and my insomnia and Asperger's conspire to make me obsessive when I should be... finishing writing a lecture or something:
They may not have been watching BSG in Washington DC, but it appears that they were in New York.
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Not only did National not see the crash coming, they still have NO idea what caused it.
That much-used term 'cognitive dissonance' is probably useful...
'We have thrown a dozen virgins into the volcano and the rains have not come, therefore we must throw two dozen, a hundred in next time!'
And you've got to love the delicious irony that the most sophisticated and nuanced exploration of religion in American television was cooked up by two avowed atheists...
Hey, wanna geek out over Babylon 5 ? Or the complex exploration of the problem of pain and the nature of forgiveness in the context of Jesuitical theology written by a Jew that is The Sparrow ? Yep, love the ironies...
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Oh yeah, and Peter Cook didn't see any point in doing satire, did he? He gave it all up and became an accountant.
Apologies to all accountants. I had a girlfriend who was an accountant who looked like Lucy Lawless (Xena/Number Three), was bisexual and liked bondage. She wasn't at all boring. She still isn't.
You probably didn't need to know that.
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As Peter Cook once said, "The best satire of the 20th century was the Weimar cabaret, and they managed to stop Hitler in his tracks."
Oh yeah, and Peter Cook didn't see any point in doing satire, did he? He gave it all up and became an accountant.
Or more bluntly, argument of the excluded middle. Satire did not stop Hitler, therefore satire is wrong/worthless. Er, nope.
Somehow I think that Kafka's fantasies actually did have something to say about Europe in the thirties and afterwards, and maybe, just maybe, Eric Blair's stories of talking farm animals and the far-off future of the nineteen eighties may just have entered public consciousness and added some much-needed scepticism to the minds of 'realists' in the West who wanted to establish a utopia that was in fact a far more absurd fantasy?
people in DC were not watching Battlestar Galactica; they were watching Fox News.
So your point is that they should have been watching Battlestar Galactica?
anything that threatened authority.
You should have a look at the death lists that dictators compile. Quite a few writers of 'irrelevant' fantasies appear on the list of dangerous intellectuals that Hitler wanted killed after the invasion of Britain. Edward Teller always threw temper tantrums when the name Strangelove was mentioned in his presence. I wonder why?
Friends of mine who have lived under dictatorships have always appreciated 'fantasy' because it was the only way to express dissent.
Doubtless, allegory is a wonderful thing, but it does not change anything
Oh, why a dry, condescending soul you have. Have you not read Shelley's statement that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world? Granted, a sonnet will not feed a starving child, but it will tell someone that it is wrong and that does make a difference in the end. That is what stories and art do.
And you think that indulging in and daring to enjoy and think about what you define as irrelevant is a moral failure causing the decline of western civillisation? I'm reminded of the most sanctimonious and authoritarian extremes of the left who shout, 'How dare you listen to Beethoven when there are puppies being mistreated in Finland! Stop right now or you are responsible for it continuing!'
Or, as Tolkein (of whom I am no great fan myself) put it, 'What sort of mind is most obsessed with and most hostile to the idea of escape? A jailer.'
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Maybe, just maybe, if people were more interested in history than fantasy then we might not be in this mess.
Gradgrind, cheap shot or troll?
Certainly I can see no causal link.
The best fantastic art is always throwing the present into sharp relief, from Swift's satires of the absurdities of his society to Wells' inversion of British Imperialism with a Darwinian spin in The War of the Worlds (Wells loved Swift, by the way).
To grumpily imply that because someone likes Battlestar Galacrtica the world's gone to Hell in a handcart is a non sequitur - especially so since that show was so clearly aimed at thoroughly demolishing the 'us versus them' ethos of the Bush administration.
If more people actually paid attention to what art is saying, maybe we wouldn't be so deluded by the fantasy of instant riches?
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Agreed. In 2 years time as the chickens start to come home to roost, maybe they'll start to recognise the last lot weren't completely divorced from reality.
I remember an earnest bit of satirical dialogue in the 2000 film, Traffic, which earnestly and with great earnestness scorned the 'War on Drugs.' The outgoing drugs Czar gives advice to his successor on the nature of crisis management: the disgraced leader writes two letters to his successor to be opened on his first and second major crises. The first letter says, blame everything on your predecessor. The second says, write two letters...
At the moment the government has the recession as a clear common enemy and Key can spin sunrises as part of his stimulus package, but I expect the first two years of this administration to move from Key's emotional neediness to English looking stern, and then in two years, they'll open the first envelope and repeat its contents at every opportunity. The second will be ignored.
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And even if that movie hadn't been a great steaming shit-pile
Dodged the attack of that killer turkey, fortunately.
"OMFG -- Jekyll just arse-raped the Invisible Man to death!"
You might say that he gave him a right Hyding [rimshot].
Personally, I feel that is sf and fantasy aren't being creepy and making one think, "well that was fucking weird, but if you look at it differently, it kinda makes sense", then they're not doing their job. I'm very over sanctimonious Californians with pointy ears talking about logic or Californians with bumpy heads talking about honour.