#shirley schmitt

[thee-rat-king]

Suits fans, I have not seen much of your show, however the draw appears to be morally ambiguous lawyers, interpersonal office drama, and homoerotic subtext. If this is the case, may I present

✨BOSTON LEGAL✨

It ran from 2004-2008 (5 seasons) it’s technically a spin off of The Practice but you do not need to know ANYTHING about that show to watch Boston Legal.

The revolving cast of Main Lawyers are varying degrees of morally ambiguous, many of them commit crimes at some point. There’s so much fucking office drama and 90% of it is actually engaging. And while there is A Lot of homoerotic subtext, there’s also a decent amount of homoerotic text. “I love you” and “you’re the most important person in my life” and “we’re sleeping together” and “will you marry me?” type homoerotic text.

^^ these quotes are all canon, and are between the Main Character and his best friend/mentor/life partner/the man who hired him when no one else would/the proposal is not a joke they get married in the season 5 finale.

I’m not kidding Boston Legal is like. THE best rep of a QPR I’ve even seen on television.

It’s also fun and goofy, has some great dialogue on living and aging and how people respond to terminal diagnoses, and a really interesting time capsule into early 2000’s American politics.

It also has NO CURRENT FANDOM! (other than me). And since Suits appears to be its closest cousin in television that does have fandom i’m very politely beseeching that some of you jump ship to one of the other deranged lawyer shows.

This is Alan! Main character. Main lawyer guy. He’s funny and irreverent, does whatever he can to protect the disenfranchised and at one point he beats up a man for committing elder abuse.

This is Denny! Denny Crane. He’s a named partner at the firm (Crane, Poole and Schmitt). He’s also Alan’s soulmate, and a republican which is so that the more liberal Alan can debate him, usually on The Issue Of The Episode. He also has early stage alzheimers, which develops over the course of the show. And yes, him and Alan are the most important relationship of the show. And they do get married in the finale. (Yes that’s William Shatner).

This is Shirley!!! In Crane Poole and Schmitt, she’s Schmitt. She’s one of the most competent lawyers at the firm, and some of the best “women over 25 are hot and desirable” writing I’ve ever seen. (Most of the other main characters on the show are legitimately attracted to her, and it’s never treated as a joke. And she’s dated a lot of different men over her life and the narrative doesn’t slut shame her for it - the characters that occasionally do are always framed as In The Wrong.) she is very much The Voice of Reason to a lot of Alan and Denny’s antics.

There’s also a vibrant cast of partners, associates, assistants, clients, judges, exes, and cameos.

(Content Warning for This Was Written In 2004 And Some Things May Have Aged Poorly.)

Please dear god someone take the bait and watch this the cases are interesting the characters are funny I need the fandom to be more than Just Me.

Is there anything else I can add?

Alan tells the Supreme Court to go fuck itself in two seperate episodes. (There’s a lot of other stuff send me an ask if you want more Boston Legal is the best propaganda I fucking love this show)

Happy viewing! (It’s on Disney+. Or wherever you get your shows.)

#boston legal #suits tv #suits #mike ross #harvey specter #denny crane #shirley schmitt #alan shore #queer representation #queer rep in media #qpr #thoughts on television #unoriginal thoughts #early 2000s #tv recommendations

[heavenlyyshecomes]

u dont have to answer this but i was wondering if u had quotes or book recs (fiction or nonfiction) about, concerning, or centered around ghosts?

hmm I haven't read a lot about ghost theory bc there's a lot of facets to it like there's different types of ghosts, different types of hauntings (the haunted house, the body itself, also whether the ghost lingers or 'leaves a trace' as leila taylor calls it bc of trauma, grief, loss, memory etc etc) but some readings:

“I think ghosts are memory—memory haunts bodies, haunts places, haunts the narratives that hold our minor and miraculous lives together. Ghosts are that which return and return and return. The body has its own hauntings, too: phantom limb sensation, organ transfer memory, the traumatic self. And others.”

— Shastra Deo, interviewed by Sumudu Samarawickrama in Liminal Mag

Underneath the mask, there is nothing at all, no identity, no face, nothing apart from an uncovered, naked simulacrum. While the ghosts are endowed, undoubtedly, with a kind of form, however uncertain […] becoming-ghost, becoming-haunted is nevertheless a process of becoming formless, of abandoning one’s own form so as to become inundated with liquidity. — Adam Lovasz, ‘Would you like to meet a ghost?’: Repetition and spectral posthumanism in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo, 2018.

We do not believe in ghosts, we are haunted by them. We do not see ghosts. Rather, our senses of vision and perception are brought to a crisis by them. As revenants of things past, ghosts make vivid to us the pairing of memory and forgetting. The ghostly returns even after being shown the door, even after death, just as the metaphors of the phantasmatic endure after scientific explanations seemingly triumph. As Jean-Claude Schmitt shows us, to forget the dead we must first remember them: traditionally, hauntings are the result of an inability to forget, due to an incomplete process of memorialization. As harbingers of the future, ghosts show what we are to become in minatory mode: as they are now, so we shall be

— Tom Gunning, To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision in The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, 2013.

One of my favorite explanations for the existence of ghosts is the trace. Some events are so powerful in their violence or anger that it leaves behind a remnant of that death, like the debossed imprint left through the pages when you press too hard with the pen. The ghost hasn’t come back to visit us in the present, rather we are seeing a glimpse of past. I like to think that instead of the spirit invading our space, we have temporarily gained access to theirs. Like the shadows of Hiroshima, it takes an atomic level of anger and pain and fear to leave behind such substantial vestiges, some- thing powerful enough to leave a handprint in a cake, to crawl through the bathroom cabinet.

— Leila Taylor, Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic

What is a ghost?

Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 1997

To Be Haunted, Jessie Lynn McMains

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, Colin Dicky

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Ghostly Times in Lake Mungo (2008)

See also: the house has it's ramifications, and ghosts

#this isn't a lot sorry although i can try giving more specific recs if u want <3 #asks #ref: mine #my blog for horror is @ inmagicmoon although my tags are a mess

[spiffy-sea-dragon]

Being a writer like...

#imagine #moodboard #gifs #moodboards #writing #writing moodboard #unbreakable kimmy schmitt #uks #arrow #bo burnham #parks and rec #parks and recreation #gif #chuck shirley #chuck shurley #spn #supernatural #tv #fandoms #april ludgate #peter parker #spider-man #hermione granger #harry potter #reading #read #books #write #hobby #awkward

[leoninapelliolovesconchitawurst]

TRADUCTION FRANÇAISE (de moi)

"FAZ" Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung 01.12.2019

INTERVIEW de Tobias Rüther

Photo de Tobias Schmitt

Je m'aime incroyablement

  Pourquoi la vérité est dans le costume? Une conversation avec l'homme qui est devenu célèbre en tant que Conchita Wurst - et amène maintenant des Drag Queens à la télévision allemande

  "Je savais que j'étais une star dans mon enfance", explique Tom Neuwirth, alias Conchita Wurst. "Maintenant je le sais à nouveau." La photo a été prise dans les coulisses du bâtiment où répète l'orchestre symphonique de Nuremberg

Nuremberg. Fin novembre: Tom Neuwirth, connu dans le monde entier sous le nom de Conchita Wurst, est en ville pour jouer avec l'arrangeur symphonique et de jazz Thilo Wolf à la Meistersingerhalle. En 2014, il a remporté le concours Eurovision de la chanson en tant que magnifique chanteuse barbue, Conchita avec "Rise Like A Phoenix". Maintenant, l'Autrichien de 31 ans aux cheveux courts et en combinaison noire vient pour l’interview qui se déroule entre les murs de plusieurs mètres d'épaisseur de la salle des congrès où les musiciens symphoniques sont chez eux. "Truth over Magnitude" (Sony) vient de paraître. Sur son troisième album, l'artiste utilise le nom: Wurst.

FAZ: Vous faites de l'électropop maintenant. Néanmoins, sur le nouvel album, cela vous ramène toujours à la théâtralité de "Rise Like a Phoenix". Vous voyez-vous comme un artiste?

  Mes intérêts musicaux vont de Céline Dion à Björk. Il y a beaucoup de possibilités. Mais ce côté dramatique ne sera jamais perdu. C'est comme ça que je joue, c'est comme ça que je vis la musique. J'aime beaucoup l'électro-pop, mais au final, c'est toujours la même voix qui chante.

  FAZ: N'avez-vous pas une image de vous quand vous chantez?

  Non, je vois l'émotion qui déclenche la chanson en moi et j'ai des images en tête. Pour certaines chansons, j'ai besoin de vitesse dans ma façon de bouger, de regarder le public. Je traduis ça. Et parfois, ce sont de grands gestes. Et parfois de plus petits.

FAZ: Vous avez créé un personnage artistique, mais en montrant toujours vos sentiments. Cette tension entre - je joue un rôle, mais j’ai des choses importantes à dire: comment vous y prenez-vous?

Bien sûr, cela n’est pas authentique, surtout en ce qui concerne le visuel. Et peut-être que c'est la langue parlée par Conchita. Mais c'est une partie de moi. C'est tout moi. Je peux être n'importe quoi, de la personne la plus amicale que l’on puisse croiser sur son chemin, au plus désagréable de tous. C'est pourquoi je suis parfois extrêmement théâtral et parfois pas du tout. C'est pourquoi je pense moins à savoir si c'est une contradiction. Je suis juste comme ça. Je fais ce que mon corps me dit.

FAZ: Il existe une tradition artistique selon laquelle il est possible de jouer un rôle pour se produire sur scène, quelque chose que vous ne pouvez pas montrer dans la vie quotidienne - et d’être ainsi simplement protégé dans ce rôle.

Bien sûr, mon attitude est différente lorsque je porte une perruque à cheveux longs ou des cheveux courts. Mais je ne me restreins pas. Pas en privé. Si cela se produit, je peux aussi divertir les gens au supermarché. C'est pourquoi c’est moins dépendant de la surface, bien que l’intérieur et extérieur se mélangent bien sûr.

FAZ: Vous dites souvent comment, en tant que petit garçon, vous portiez les vêtements de votre mère avant même que vous ayez un mot pour dire ce que vous ressentiez, que vous êtes gay. Mais le costume vous avait déjà donné une forme, comme s'il s'agissait d'une libération.

Ce que je ne savais probablement pas auparavant. C'est probablement ça. Quand je tombe sur les premières interviews, je me dis souvent: «Ah, j'ai vraiment appris ces dernières années. » Aussi à propos de moi.

FAZ: En ce moment, vous faites partie du jury du "Queen of Drags" de Heidi Klum, dans lequel dix candidats se font concurrence. Les drag-queen ont joué un rôle important dans l'émancipation des homosexuels. Encore une fois, cette tension: la vérité est dans le costume. Personne ne reste assis avec une guitare autour du feu de camp et chante son âme à corps perdu. Une façade est créée, et pourtant il s’agit de l’intérieur du plus profond.

Mais elle a exactement la même authenticité que la musique au feu de camp. Les mondes que ces dix artistes ont créés, qu’ils ont imaginés. C'est leur vérité de beauté et d’esthétique et de forme. Oui, cela a absolument quelque chose d'inauthentique, mais en même temps quelque chose d'incroyablement authentique.

  FAZ: Quand vous étiez petit garçon, vous avez joué à Shirley Bassey, vous vous êtes glissé dans une image, également pour découvrir une vérité sur vous-même. Ce conflit est-il terminé?

Pour moi, tout est positif. Parce que je connais tellement de facettes de moi-même et que j'apprends peut-être beaucoup plus que ce que les autres peuvent ou veulent. C'est pourquoi je ne vois pas le conflit. Je peux être ceci. Et je peux être cela aussi. J'ai une variété de choses qui sont bonnes pour moi, où mon cœur me dit quelle est la vérité. En tant que jeune enfant, j'étais incroyablement confiant. Et puis viennent toutes ces normes que la société nous impose et alors vous devenez si incroyablement mal à l’aise. Revenir de là-bas pour dire: je savais petit enfant, je suis une star, maintenant je le sais à nouveau.

FAZ: Vous avez également dit que vous vouliez devenir célèbre parce que vous êtes le meilleur pour ça.

Là aussi, j'ai appris qu’être célèbre est en soi totalement sans valeur. Mais je me sentais comme ça, parce que c'est aussi du vécu: tous ceux qui sont célèbres sont heureux. Bien sûr, cela n’a rien à voir avec cela. Au fil du temps, j'ai compris que pour moi, le plus important était de s'amuser dans la vie. Je veux pouvoir être assis dans un avion qui s’est écrasé, être assis dans une atmosphère détendue et dire: OK, quand c'est l'heure, c'est l'heure. Je n'ai pas encore atteint cette condition. Mais: c'est ce qui me motive. J'aime mes amis à propos de tout, j'aime ma famille - et je m'aime incroyablement. Incroyablement.

FAZ: Félicitations, cela ne réussit pas pour beaucoup.

Oui merci. Et tout ce que je fais, je le fais, car le chemin vers le produit final, comme le nouvel album, est le plus amusant - et cette sortie est l’autre chose. C'est comme respirer. Je ne peux pas l'exprimer moi-même. J'ai aussi une opinion sur tout. Je ne le dis pas toujours. Mais c'est le moteur qui me motive. Mon but dans la vie est de me rendre heureux. Je ne dirais pas que je suis égoïste, mais je suis incroyablement égocentrique.

FAZ: Vous avez déjà qualifié Conchita de "femme du président". Le personnage ‘plus grand’ que vous avez créé est-il devenu un fardeau pour vous?

Entre temps, oui.. C'est là que la femme du président intervient: elle peut faire certaines choses, pas d'autres, elle doit faire certaines choses. Je me suis réduit extrêmement à cette couleur de mon caractère. Cela m'a rendu malheureux et malade, cela m'a rendu paresseux, je me suis lamenté - et pendant longtemps je n'ai pas compris que je suis responsable de la façon dont ma vie se passe. Je n'ai jamais rencontré d'inconvénient à ce que des personnes s'associent autant à ce personnage, car je prends toujours du recul et dis, je dis ce que je dis et je fais ce que je fais. Mais plus maintenant.

FAZ: Conchita a tout de suite été comprise comme un représentant du mouvement grandissant en faveur de l’égalité des minorités. Vous ne l'avez pas planifié exactement?

  Non, je n'avais pas de plan. J'ai grandi dans une auberge. La culture de bienvenue fait partie du travail, et je n’ai donc pas été éduqué avec des préjugés. Au contraire. Si quelqu'un n'était pas traité correctement, mes parents étaient les premiers à dire que chez nous, ce n'est pas possible. Cela peut ne pas encore être compris quand on est un petit enfant. Mais plus je vieillis, plus je réalise que je suis aussi le produit de mes parents.

FAZ: Lorsque Conchita est entrée en scène, elle avait évidemment une responsabilité, qu'elle le veuille ou non. Et doit maintenant faire face aux souhaits et demandes.

  Oui. D'autres disent ça. Je ne dis pas ça. Je n'ai rien à faire. Je dois faire ce que mon coeur me dit.

  FAZ: Mais vous comprenez le souhait? Vous avez créé un personnage qui fournit un tel potentiel d’identification que les désirs viennent automatiquement.

  Bien sûr que je comprends ça. Mais c'est là qu'entre en jeu l'égocentrisme.

FAZ: Ces revendications sur Conchita sont également fortes à "Queen of Drags" à nouveau. L'émission a été critiquée pour avoir utilisé une sous-culture pour le divertissement, présentée par Heidi Klum. Et Conchita s’y joint. Cela vous a-t-il gêné? Ou avez-vous pensé: la prochaine étape pour rendre quelque chose visible?

En attendant, je vois aussi que la communauté exploite Heidi Klum. Cela nous a donné cette niche. Bien sûr, c'est du divertissement et non un spectacle scientifique. Mais il montre cependant aux gens. Tout commentaire que je vois sur les médias sociaux et qui dit, hé les gars, je ne l'aivais pas encore vu ainsi, c'est déjà pour moi: "Oui!" C'était la première saison. Bien sûr, tout le monde de la production pense: «C’était un processus d’apprentissage, nous savons déjà ce que nous pouvons faire mieux. Mais je pense que nous allons dans la bonne direction.

FAZ: Une exposition scientifique est une association intéressante. Parce que la question qui se pose est de savoir à quel point vous devez être précis et à quel point ça peut être populaire si vous avez une scène aussi raffinée ....

  ... bien sûr c'est une scène. Mais "nous", je trouve cela difficile. Même si c'est une communauté, il y a des branches qui sont du divertissement. Et puis il y a des branches qui sont sérieuses. Respectueusement sérieuses. Et ce spectacle veut éclairer les gens de manière ludique.

FAZ: Alors s'il vous plaît éclairez-moi: où est l'art dans le fait de mettre une robe et de chanter?

  Être drag-queen signifie tout faire soi-même, au moins au début. Et vous devez le faire pendant un certain temps afin d’avoir une certaine notoriété, un succès, afin de gagner sa vie à la fin. Vous devez avoir un sens de l'esthétique, être capable de faire les cheveux, le maquillage, la chorégraphie, vous devez être capable de danser et, si ce n'est pas chanter, au moins comprendre comment faire semblant. Au mieux, on est assez bon pour négocier des contrats. C'est une accumulation de talent et de savoir-faire, de diligence et de persévérance. Et que vous ne vous arrêtez pas, même quand les vents contraires arrivent. Et ensuite, vous devez inviter des gens dans votre propre tête.

FAZ: "Queen of Drags" est la prochaine émission de télé-réalité qui apporte une minorité ou une sous-culture au grand public. Il n'y a pas de show Drag Queen sur ARD ou ORF, qui ferait la même chose, mais le format "Reality TV" reste suspect.

  C'est l'esprit du temps, non? Nous ne savons pas quel sera le levier dans cinquante ans. Kim Kardashian est le visage de cette décennie. Avant c’était les muses. Mais je pense que je ne prends pas tout cela au sérieux.

#conchitawurst #wurst #tomneuwirth #singer #artist #esc2014 #escwinner #music #performer #celebrity #lgbt #interview #traduction

[ericfruits]

America’s prisons are failing. Here’s how to make them work

SHIRLEY SCHMITT is no one’s idea of a dangerous criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, she started using methamphetamine. Unable to afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to make the drug, for their own personal use. She was arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along with previous convictions for drug possession and livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. When she gets out she could be old enough to draw a pension.

Barack Obama tried to reduce the number of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners (who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is neither.

More is not always better

Prisons are an essential tool to keep society safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish would prey on the weak, as they do in countries where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice system.

But as with many good things, more is not always better (see article). The first people any rational society locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as murderers and rapists. The more people a country imprisons, the less dangerous each additional prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. And—crucially—locking up minor offenders can make them more dangerous, since they learn felonious habits from the hard cases they meet inside.

America passed the point of negative returns long ago. Its incarceration rate rose fivefold between 1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now locks up seven times as many people as France, 11 times as many as the Netherlands and 15 times as many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, unintentionally violating incomprehensible regulations) and imposes breathtakingly harsh penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life.

A ten-year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year sentence, but is nowhere near ten times as effective a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the future. If they did, they would take up some other line of work. One study found that each extra year in prison raises the risk of reoffending by six percentage points. Also, because mass incarceration breaks up families and renders many ex-convicts unemployable, it has raised the American poverty rate by an estimated 20%. Many states, including Mr Sessions’s home, Alabama, have decided that enough is enough. Between 2010 and 2015 America’s incarceration rate fell by 8%. Far from leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by a 15% drop.

America is an outlier, but plenty of countries fail to use prison intelligently. There is ample evidence of what works. Reserve prison for the worst offenders. Divert the less scary ones to drug treatment, community service and other penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, family and normality. A good place to start would be with most of the 2.6m prisoners in the world—a quarter of the total—who are still awaiting trial. For a fraction of the cost of locking them up, they could be fitted with GPS-enabled ankle bracelets that monitor where they are and whether they are taking drugs.

Tagging can also be used as an alternative to locking up convicts—a “prison without walls”, to quote Mark Kleiman of New York University, who estimates that as many as half of America’s prisoners could usefully be released and tagged. A study in Argentina finds that low-risk prisoners who are tagged instead of being incarcerated are less likely to reoffend, probably because they remain among normal folk instead of sitting idly in a cage with sociopaths.

Justice systems could do far more to rehabilitate prisoners, too. Cognitive behavioural therapy—counselling prisoners on how to avoid the places, people and situations that prompt them to commit crimes—can reduce recidivism by 10-30%, and is especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It is also cheap—a rounding error in the $80 billion a year that America spends on incarceration and probation. Yet, by one estimate, only 5% of American prisoners have access to it.

The road to rehabilitation

Ex-convicts who find a job and a place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In Norway prisoners can start their new jobs 18 months before they are released. In America there are 27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs such as barber and roofer. Norway has a lower recidivism rate than America, despite locking up only its worst criminals, who are more likely to reoffend. Some American states, meanwhile, do much better than others. Oregon, which insists that programmes to reform felons are measured for effectiveness, has a recidivism rate less than half as high as California’s. Appeals to make prisons more humane often fall on deaf ears; voters detest criminals. But they detest crime more, so politicians should not be afraid to embrace proven ways to make prison less of a school of crime and more of a path back to productive citizenship.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Jail break"

http://ift.tt/2rCNI6s

#IFTTT #Feedly

[lhisafans]

Quilt Fever from Olivia Merrion on Vimeo.

Every year, thousands of quilters descend upon Paducah, Kentucky for its annual quilt competition, doubling the town’s population. “The Academy Awards of quilting” is a weeklong spectacle in which quilters from all over the world vie for the coveted Best of Show award. Beyond the competition, the film weaves through stories of individual quilters to reveal deeper motivations behind the art.

2020 SXSW Official Selection 2019 WINNER Reel South Short Award, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2019 DOC NYC Official Section 2019 St. Louis International Film Festival Official Selection 2019 AFI DOCS Official Selection - WORLD PREMIERE

DIRECTOR Olivia Loomis Merrion

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY John Picklap

EDITORS Nico Bovat Olivia Loomis Merrion

ORIGINAL MUSIC Aled Roberts Sam Simkoff

FEATURING Bobbe Green Irene Reising Vicki Reiter Janet Grawe Linda Job Schmitt Alan Jackson Pat Holly Anita Huber Eleanor Burns

QUILTS (in order of appearance)

“Blossoming into Warmth and Brightness” By Harumi Asada

“My Checkered Past” By Sherry Rogers-Harrison

“Ice Fishing Village” By Les Amies du Quilt

“A Wedding in Baltimore” By Patty Lennon

“You Know What?” By Hiroko Miyama

“Daisy Field Exploration” By Robbie Porter

“OR-7” By Christina McCann

“For the Wedding of my Beloved Daughter” By Keiko Morihiro

“Majestic Flight” By Joanne Baeth

“Always” By Sachiko Yamaji

“Flower News” By Sachiko Chiba

“Celebration #2” By Caryl Bryer Fallert

“Champagne Supernova” By Marilyn Badger

“Let’s Play With Friends” By Candy Hargrove and Diane Juranich

“A Charming Autumn and the Deep Valley” By Dong Jin

“Peloton” By Valli Schiller

“Tropical Rain Forest AKA Finally Finished” By Karen Oliver

“Turkish Treasures” By Pat Holly

“Boudinet Clan” By Anita Huber

“Modern Movement” By Rachelle Denneny

“Hwasung Fortress: Suwon Hwasung Version 2” By Mikyung Jang

“My Town & Country Quilt II” By Shirley Guier

“Small Happy Crazy Quilt” By Aki Sakai

“Noodledoodle” By Claudia Clark Meyers

COLORIST Sean Wells

POST-PRODUCTION SOUND Berkeley Sound Artists

DIALOGUE EDITOR + RE-RECORDING MIXER Bijan Sharifi

SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR William Sammons

SOUND COORDINATOR Jacob Bloomfield-Misrach

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Aubrey Aden-Buie Elisa Gambino

SPECIAL THANKS American Quilter’s Society Making Memories Tours Hancock’s of Paducah The National Quilt Museum Paducah Convention & Visitors Bureau The Carson Center Bonnie Browning Meredith Schroeder Voyager Ashley Rodholm Brandon Tauszik

MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF Glassbreaker Films

[d4tc-f17-blog]

Week 3

MODERATOR ESSAY

This week’s reading are concerned with the politics of design: how the physical world imposes politics on its inhabitants, in which ways concerted action creates space and politics, and how the politics within media are created and perceived.

Bentham’s Panopticon is not just a prison design. It is one of the first examples for how technology in general can be designed in a way that it reflects certain political strategies and imposes them upon the people affected by the technology. In my opinion, however, the example’s enormity is weakened by the context it was invented for. In our mental images, prisons ought to be filled with criminals. It is easy to accept the prisoners’ fate of being subjected to total surveillance as a rightful consequence of their crimes.

Looking for other examples, one doesn’t even have to gaze beyond Manhattan: The New York subway is plastered with the slogan “If you see something, say something”, as part of a post-9/11 safety campaign by the MTA. Besides possibly increasing the safety in the city, the campaign fosters suspicion towards fellow citizens. By extending the exercise of surveillance from the state to everyone, it supports a system as in the case of the Panopticon where everyone is constantly observing, and thinks they’re constantly being observed. Taking Barthes’s model of semiotics, the signifier (campaign images/text) and the signified (“be suspicious!”) create a sign that evokes feelings of fear and danger. It has been argued elsewhere that the US government has purposefully manufactured this sense of imminent danger in the population in order to legitimize the expansion of surveillance.

Let us look at another example that embeds politics in architecture. In his 1986 book, “The Whale and the Reactor”, Langdon Winner proposes a philosophy of technology and at one point brings up several examples for how ‘artefacts have politics’: Long Island has around 200 unusually low overpasses which, at first, wouldn’t appear striking. However, their design follows specifications by famous New York builder Robert Moses, deliberately designed so that cars (upper and upper middle class owners) could pass underneath, but buses (lower class, black travellers) could not access the parkways. This is an architectural manifestation of Moses’ social class and racial prejudice, dictating the politics of how and by whom a space can be accessed. [1]

Finally, I want to present an example that closes the gap between the politics of space as illustrated by Foucault and Butler, and the politics of imagery illustrated in “Practices of Looking”: So-called ‘Shirley Cards’ were used by Kodak engineers in the 1950s to 1970s to calibrate analog film. They were named after Shirley, a white, female, blond model who was photographed for the test card. As a result of using this image, Kodak films at the time were unsuitable to depict people of different color together, as one skin color would always either be over- or underexposed. [2]

I find this especially interesting because it extends some of the ideas introduced in “Practices of Looking”. Images are not objective representations of reality, but biased cultural images that need to be interpreted in context and with caution. What the Shirley-Card-example adds to that is the consideration that even the medium itself has politics embedded within itself. As designers this means that we don’t just need to be aware of political implications inside the designs we produce, but that even the tools and methods we used to arrive at that outcome impose upon us the political context of their creation.

QUESTIONS

Q: What do you think of the thesis that semiotics was used to create a sense of threat in the American society?

Q: Many design methods strive to create objective insights and ultimately objective, good solutions. How do you feel about this in relation to the reading?

Q: Knowing that all design is political, should we instrumentalize this to embed our own politics within the designs we create?

REFERENCES

[1] Winner, Langdon. The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. University of Chicago Press, 2010. Page 22-23. [2] Pater, Ruben. The Politics of Design: A (Not So) Global Manual for Visual Communication. Bis Publishers, 2016.

— Philipp Schmitt.

[danielschmittandco-blog]

1982 Excalibur Series IV Roadster Walk Around & Start Up from Daniel Schmitt & Co.

https://schmitt.com/inventory/1982-excalibur-series-iv-roadster/

Taking inspiration from the classic pre-war lines of Mercedes-Benz sports cars, the Excalibur Automobile Corporation was established in 1964 by Brooks Stevens in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They produced what was at the time labeled “The Contemporary Classic” automobile, with classic looks and modern reliability. All cars were built on custom steel frames and utilized Chevrolet Corvette drive train and suspension. Then company Vice President William Stevens told the New York Times in 1975 that their product was “for the man or woman who wants a fun machine with antique class.” At its peak Excalibur was the fourth largest automobile manufacture in the United States and the company produced a little over 3,200 cars between 1965 and 1989. Their quality and class attracted numerous famous owners including Roberto Duran, Dick Van Dyke, Tony Curtis, Shirley Jones, Sonny and Cher, Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, Paul Harvey, Jay Leno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Foreman, and numerous more.

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[thee-rat-king]

Shirley and Paul are the co-founders of the “I had a torrid affair with Denny Crane and all I got was this broken heart and a lifetime of sexual tension with my friend” club. They are waiting patiently for Alan to become an eligible member.

#boston legal rewatch #boston legal #shirley schmitt #paul lewiston #alan shore #denny crane

[leoninapelliolovesconchitawurst]

ENGLISH TRANSLATION (by me)

"FAZ" Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung 01.12.2019

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/pop/conchita-wurst-tom-neuwirth-ueber-drag-queens-16511939.html

Interview by Tobias Rüther

Photos by Tobias Schmitt

I love myself incredibly

Why is the truth in the costume? A conversation with the man who became famous as Conchita Wurst - and now brings Drag Queens to German television

"I knew as a young child, I'm a star," says Tom Neuwirth, also known as Conchita Wurst. "Now I know it again." The picture was taken behind the scenes in the rehearsal building of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra

Nuremberg. End of November: Tom Neuwirth, world famous as Conchita Wurst, is in town to perform with the symphonic and jazz arranger Thilo Wolf in the Meistersingerhalle. In 2014 he won the Eurovision Song Contest as a beautiful, bearded singer, Conchita with "Rise Like A Phoenix". Now the 31-year-old Austrian with short hair in black overalls appears for discussion, which takes place between the meter-thick walls of the Congress Hall where the symphonic musicians are at home. Just now "Truth over Magnitude" (Sony) has been released. On his third album, the artist operates under: Wurst.

FAZ: You're doing electropop now. Nonetheless, on the new album, it always draws you back to the theatricality of "Rise Like a Phoenix". Do you see yourself as an artist?

My musical interests range from Céline Dion to Björk. There is a lot possible. But this drama will never be lost. That's how I perform, that's how I live music. I really enjoy electro-pop, but in the end it's always the same voice that sings.

FAZ: Do not you have a picture of yourself when you sing?

No, I see the emotion that triggers the song in me, and I have pictures in my head. For some songs, I need a speed in how I move, how I look at the audience. I translate that. And sometimes these are big gestures. And sometimes smaller ones.

FAZ: You have created an art figure, but wearing your heart on your sleeve. This tension between - I play a role but I have important things to say: how do you deal with it?

Of course it is inauthentic, especially in terms of the visual. And maybe it's the language that Conchita spoke. But it is a part of me. That's all me. I can be anything from the friendliest person who can cross your path, to the most unpleasant of all. That's why I'm sometimes extremely theatrical and sometimes not at all. That's why I think less about whether that is a contradiction. I'm just like that. I do what my body tells me.

FAZ: There is an artistic tradition of being able to play a role in order to act out on stage, something that you can not show in everyday life - but then just protected in this role.

Of course I have a different attitude when I'm wearing a long-haired wig or short hair. But I do not restrict myself. Not in private. If it turns out, I can also entertain people at the supermarket. That's why it is less dependent on the surface, although of course the inside and outside mix.

FAZ: You often tell how you, as a little boy, wore your mother's clothes even before you had a word for what you feel, that you are gay. But the costume had already given it a shape, as if it were a liberation.

What I probably did not know before. Probably that's it. When I come across early interviews, I often think, Ah, I've really learned in recent years. Also about me.

FAZ: At the moment you are part of the jury of Heidi Klum's "Queen of Drags", in which ten candidates compete against each other. Drag queens have played an important role in homosexual emancipation. Again, this tension: The truth is in the costume. No one sits there with a guitar around the campfire and sings his soul out of his body. A facade is created, and yet it is about the innermost of the innermost.

But it has exactly the same authenticity as campfire music. The worlds that these ten artists created, that they have come up with. That is their truth of beauty and aesthetics and form. Yes, it has absolutely something inauthentic, but at the same time something incredibly authentic.

FAZ: As a boy, you played Shirley Bassey, you slipped into a picture, also to find out a truth about yourself. Is this dispute completed?

For me it's all positive. Because I get to know so many facets of myself and perhaps learn much more than other people can or want. That's why I do not see the conflict. I can be this. And I can be that too. I have a variety of things that are good for me, where my heart tells me what the truth is. As a young child, I was incredibly self-confident. And then come all those norms that society puts on us and then you become so incredibly insecure. To come back from there, to say: I knew as a little child, I'm a star, now I know it again.

FAZ: You also said that you wanted to become famous because you are the best at it.

Also there I learned to be famous is in itself totally worthless. But I felt that way, because it is also lived: All who are famous, are happy. Of course that has nothing to do with it. Over time, I have understood that for me the most important thing is to have fun in my life. I want to be able to sit in a crashed plane, sit back in a relaxed mood and say: Okay, when it's time, it's time. I have not reached this condition for a long time yet. But: That's what drives me. I love my friends about everything, I love my family - and I love myself incredibly. Incredibly.

FAZ: Congratulations, that does not succeed for many.

Yes, thank you. And everything that I do, I do, because the way to the final product, like the new album, is the most fun - and this output is the other thing. That's like breathing. I can not express it myself. I also have an opinion on everything. I do not always say it. But that's the engine that drives me. My life goal is to make me happy. I would not say that I'm selfish, but I'm incredibly egocentric.

FAZ: You once called Conchita a "president's wife." Has the over-figure you created become a burden to you?

In between already. That's where the President's wife comes in: she can do certain things, not others, she has to do certain things. I reduced myself extremely to this one color of my character. This has made me unhappy and sick, that has made me lazy, I have lamented - and for a long time did not understand that I am responsible for how my life is going. I've never had a problem with people associating so much with this character because I always step back and say, I say what I say and I do what I do. But not any more.

FAZ: Conchita was immediately understood as a representative of the growing movement for equality of minorities. Did not you exactly plan it?

No, I did not have a plan. I grew up in an inn. Welcome culture is part of the job, and so I was not educated with prejudice. On the contrary. If someone was not treated properly, my parents were the first to say that in our house, that's not possible. This may not be understood as a small child yet. But the older I get, the more I realize that I am also the product of my parents.

FAZ: When Conchita came on stage, she obviously had a responsibility, whether she wanted it or not. And now has to face wishes and demands.

Yes. Others say that. I do not say that. I do not have to do anything. I have to do what my heart tells me.

FAZ: But you understand the wish? You have created a figure that provides such an identification potential that desires come as automatically.

Of course I understand that. But that's where ego-centric comes into play.

FAZ: These claims to Conchita are also loud at "Queen of Drags" again. The show has been criticized for using a subculture for entertainment, moderated by Heidi Klum. And Conchita joins in. Has that bothered you? Or did you think: the next stage to make something visible?

Meanwhile, I also see that the community exploits Heidi Klum. That gave us this slot. Of course it's entertainment and not a science show. But still shows people. Any comment that I see on social media and that says, hey people, I have not seen it that way yet, is already for me: "Yes!" It was the first season. Of course, everyone in the production department thinks: It was a learning process, we already know what we can do better. But I think we are going in the right direction.

FAZ: Science show is an interesting association. Because the question arises, how accurate you must be and how popular it can be, if you have a scene that is so refined ....

... of course it's a scene. But "we" and "the", I find that difficult. Even if it is a community, there are branches that are entertainment. And then there are branches that are serious. Respectively serious. And this show wants to enlighten people in a fun way.

FAZ: Then please clarify me: what's the art of putting on a dress and singing playback?

To be a drag queen means to do everything yourself, at least in the beginning. And you have to do that over a period of time in order to have a certain notoriety, success, in order to earn a living with it at the end. You have to have a sense of aesthetics, be able to make hair, make-up, choreography, you have to be able to dance and, if it's not singing, at least understand how to look at it. At best, one is also good at negotiating contracts. It is an accumulation of talent and know-how, diligence and perseverance. And that you do not stop, even when headwinds come. And then you have to invite people into your own head.

FAZ: "Queen of Drags" is the next reality TV show that brings a minority or subculture to the wider public. There is no Drag Queen show on ARD or ORF, which would do the same thing, but the format "Reality TV" remains suspect.

That's the spirit of the time, right? We do not know what the lever is in fifty years. Kim Kardashian is the face of this decade. It used to be the muses. But I think I do not take it all that seriously.

#conchitawurst #wurst #tomneuwirth #singer #artist #esc2014 #escwinner #music #performer #celebrity #lgbt #interview #translation