#upper middle class suburb core

[pool-core]

#outdoor pool #waterslide #waterfall #upper middle class suburb core

[fortheloveofgodidk]

you saw that post to huh

#upper middle class suburb core

[overleftdown]

saltburn and privilege; an investigative tangent

god, where to begin.

i've seen a lot of people discussing this moving and specifically using the word "privilege," along with power, dominance, desire, control, greed, etc. me included. these are all very essential aspects of this movie. what i want to focus on is emerald fennell's nuanced portrayal of how different types of privilege interact. which one trumps the other? which types of privilege are more visible, while others are more subtle? what differentiates different levels and layers of privilege?

when emerald fennell describes the core of this movie, her inspiration for this script, she talks about desire versus untouchability. she chose the most absurd type of wealth to represent untouchability: the british aristocracy. old wealth, generational wealth, so far removed from the majority of their ancestors' sins that they can arguably ignore that the money they're standing on is dirty. and they live in fucking castles. this is one of the most unbelievable, gaudy, visible types of privilege you can imagine. everyone is entirely aware and feels entirely justified to call attention to this type of privilege.

oliver, being the main character, might be considered the least privileged within this movie. i'd like to take a critical look at this. this movie is not a straightforward class commentary; there is no traditional "the poor eat the rich" dynamic. because although some people perceive oliver as the least privileged character in this movie, he is incredibly privileged. oliver comes from a comfortable upper-middle-class home in the suburbs. oliver has two loving parents and two sisters. oliver is white. oliver is a man. interestingly, from oliver's perspective, he's not privileged at all. he hates the cattons because they are more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable. this extends to venetia and farleigh, even though oliver has applicable layers of privilege stacked above even them. he knows he has a certain type of power over them... yet he still hates them because they have one type of power he doesn't have.

that brings me to my next point. the existence of one type of privilege does not negate the effects of another, entirely different, type of privilege (or marginalization) [quote]. this is what venetia and farleigh's characters draw attention to. venetia experiences some of the same struggles as many women; she is ignored in her own household, perpetually existing within her brother's shadow (rosamund pike once lovingly pointed out that venetia does not have a single conversation with elspeth in this movie). she's insecure about her body and her worth, so she takes what little opportunity she has to use felix's friends as a form of self-fulfillment. farleigh is not only half black, but he's also queer, non-immediate family, and unaccustomed to english culture (specifically this type of english culture). farleigh is, in some ways, more financially unstable than oliver's family because his mom was too sheltered to understand money and his dad is, apparently, "a lunatic." (that's not to say farleigh isn't economically privileged because oh boy, he absolutely is).

this movie doesn't intend to incite pity from the viewers for any of these characters, and it generally doesn't. oliver is pathetically greedy, ungrateful, and desperate for a chance to lick the boots (or bathtubs) of those above him. venetia is pathetically bored of the privilege she does have yet is still so entrenched in emotional turmoil due to other areas in which she is marginalized. farleigh is pathetically attached to uninterrupted comfort and arbitrary white-centric expectations, constantly running from or attacking any threat of struggle. none of these people understand, comparatively, what the less fortunate experience. they are so ignorant to the bubble they exist in and just how grateful they should be for what monumental privileges they do have. but... felix.

felix is the epitome of privilege. oliver is specifically obsessed with felix. just like oliver, felix is a white man. but felix is more wealthy, more comfortable, more untouchable than oliver. oliver isn't as infatuated with farleigh and venetia because he's fully aware of the privilege they lack. he's fully aware of the privilege he holds above them, and he enthusiastically uses this power he has against them. to be in the position of oliver is to be consumed by jealousy and greed so bottomless that you will assert your dominance over any group that you're able to. felix doesn't need to do this. he's been handed every privilege under the sun and therefor welcomes the less fortunate with childlike interest and an equally childlike attention span. there's an aspect of farleigh and venetia's marginalization that is so invisible, so quiet and unassuming, that felix doesn't even notice it. he can't possibly be confronted by it. to be in the position of oliver is to understand what power you hold over others, because there is always more power to have.

racism, sexism, wealth, power, control, desire. there are so many facets of this movie that come into play. it may seem overwhelming, but this is... how things work. commentary on wealth is, and should be, equally a commentary on other areas of privilege. to be black and wealthy means different things than to be white and wealthy. to be a wealthy woman means different things than to be a wealthy man. to be rich to some also means you're much less rich than others, unless you're the richest person in the world. and, as this movie so beautifully portrays, to be richer than most doesn't make you less messy. the catton family is an ugly one, but also a complexly human one. each catton (or start) is jealous of someone else for another reason. each catton is emotionally damaged or incompetent for another reason. each catton has a different layer of privilege over the other. and each catton loves everyone in saltburn, because this is still a family, albeit a terrible one.

#saltburn #saltburn 2023 #oliver quick #felix catton #venetia catton #farleigh start #elspeth catton #sir james catton #ahhh to be a rich white man #felix is portrayed as some godlike mythic creature for a reason #he's literally just a guy #oliver is also a rich white man #yet he sees someone more rich than him and starts frothing at the mouth #i know i said all the characters r pathetic but venetia and farleigh are a special kind of pathetic #i could genuinely see those two popping their little bubble and getting a grip #well vee is dead as hell #farleigh though. #or maybe hilton als was fully correct and farleigh will keep being the token non-white LMFAO #als was so real for that #i like to stay hopeful though

[applestorms]

i'm in a bit of a john mood atm, so i wanted to write a post about some of the things that i think fanon gets wrong about him. the biggest thing is that imo a lot of people flatten john a ton in considering him the poster child for Homestuck™ as a story, which sucks because i think it should go the opposite way around. he's the prototype kid, yes, but that just means his unique traits have interesting implications for the rest of the story and homestuck's core themes, not that he doesnt have any unique traits to begin with. john informs homestuck of its themes, the story doesn't inform him of his character traits; sburb gives him the kernelsprite, but he & his friends are the ones doing the prototyping.

so, then, what are those character traits? who is john as a person and how does that inform the story as a whole?

TL;DR: if jade's overarching story arc is about the struggle of loneliness & isolation, john's is about the feeling of falling behind your peers, which is why i think his ending the story depressed works so well

trapped in the s(u)burbs

okay, argument: SBURB is clearly pronounced "sss-burb," like suburb but skipping over the first u. when the kids enter the session they are basically trapped in the world of the game until they can beat it and make the new universe -> they are trapped in the s(u)burbs -> they are home, stuck.

this is a weird line of thought but it's kinda interesting to go through the ways that the (human) kids are trapped in their homes, both physically and emotionally. rose is stuck in that she lives seemingly in the middle of fuckin' nowhere surrounded by a forest, dave is stuck in his apartment due to being watched by an abusive parent, and jade, jake, roxy, & dirk are all stuck in the middle of the ocean. john (and jane) however? they're just in the suburbs.

idk how much this cultural context translates to people living in other countries, but john & jane's original neighborhood is the fucking Epitome of modern american suburbia. i cannot emphasize enough just how much i fucking despise neighborhoods like this: sprawling and empty, they are a modern labyrinth to navigate. every single house looks like it was copy and pasted one spot over, the streets are all named the same thing but with slight differences ("Bluejay Road" vs. "Bluejay Lane" vs "Bluebird Court" HELL), driving through them is agony and walking is impossible. my dad pointed out to me one time that every single house looks like it was painted with a different shade of baby shit and he was correct. and this is not even mentioning the people that live there: i don't want to overgeneralize too much, but these houses are usually pretty big and the fact that they're supposed to be a "safer" place to raise kids makes them decently expensive, so these places are generally very white, very upper-middle class, and you can just. Feel It in the air

so this is where john starts his story. the page (A1:82) was one of the first things that caught my eye when reading homestuck originally, even as a dumb little preteen the age of the characters themselves with barely any greater social consciousness. john starts the story fucking around in his room, talking to all of his friends online, and who could ever blame him when it's such an american wasteland outside. not to get too far into my opinions on american architecture, but if you live anywhere in the united states and ESPECIALLY the suburbs you are basically trapped in the house until you can get your license at 16, transportation entirely at the whims of where your parents can/want to drive you. it makes sense, then, that john's aspect is breath and so heavily tied to transportation, a desire to get out and moving and interacting with the world. the sick irony of sburb, imo, is how that desire is later twisted against him.

when john first enters the session, meteors are beginning to destroy the world and the rest of the entire human population of earth. but to a kid for whom the entire world feels so far away and empty, how much does that really matter? especially when your internet friends, the few people you actually care about, are just going to enter the same game and escape along with you. speaking of,

2. social anxiety & internet friends

one thing i really like about the alpha kids is the fact that you can kinda reverse engineer them and their core character traits from the beta kids, which actually still works within the logic of canon if you consider their biological relationships. not only do the alphas and betas share chumhandle initials, but the person they share with is also the person they are most similar to across generational lines:

rose & dirk are both anal retentive motherfuckers + rose's interest in psychology informs dirk's interest in philosophy/old greek dudes, roxy & dave care about their friends to a fault and serve their needs constantly (emotionally vs. practically, maybe; and also maybe are in love with all their friends to some degree or another too?), jane & jade both have ties with their respective universe-iteration's first guardian and are mentally separated from everyone else at the start of their arcs (jane by not believing roxy and jade by getting prospit visions).

imo rose & dirk have the strongest connection and jade & jane the weakest, and each kid is also pretty unique on their own + informed by their more direct familial relationship too, but i think the chumhandle connection is key in understanding how the characters were initially created in terms of basic personalities, likes, dislikes, etc. since it fits with the stacking nature of how homestuck as a whole functions, both as a story and a world.

so: john & jake. i think fandom has actually done a good job with learning how to appreciate jake better in recent years by figuring out just how much of a persona he puts on to hide his intelligence, but since this is a john post, what's really interesting to me is how that might inform the way we view john.

to start, there are some really obvious connections between john & jake that are as clear as jake's first letter to john (A4:1955): both like pretty shitty movies, are allergic to peanuts, and they're practically identical in terms of appearance. what i see as the key connection however, which informs the entirety of homestuck's medium, is their shared social anxiety.

jake is a very socially anxious dude. all of the alphas are characterized by their inability to communicate and navigate interpersonal relationships, but this is especially true for jake, and i think the most obvious evidence for this is in the specific kind of character that he creates for himself. while realistically we know that jake spends most of his time (pre-brobot, at least) watching movies alone in his room, he specifically likes to take on the persona of an adventurous, extroverted action hero, charming and gentlemanly and generally a dumb jock. it's the dumb part that's important here: jake pretends to be a dumbass himbo so that when he fucks up and hurts people when he manipulates them into doing what he wants, he doesn't have to shoulder as much guilt/blame. he plays up being stupid specifically to avoid the agony of people being mad at him, caring way too much about other people's opinions (A6A2:4587). it's why the trickster arc is so painful for him, and also why he is so non-confrontational.

john is also pretty socially anxious, though i think it's a lot more subtle for him since john's upbeat personality isn't entirely a facade in the way that it is for jake. the most obvious evidence for this is again the fact that he only talks to, like, three people online and his dad. despite being 13, none of these kids ever mention jack shit about school or the other members of humanity about to be murdered by meteors from their own game, and i think that's more than just a necessity of the story considering how much homestuck seems to value realism (at least in terms of characters' emotional reactions & arc). john's dad (as pipefan413) clearly knows the neighbors since in the serious business chatting app you can see fedorafreak & the others also talking about escaping meteors, but the existence of any other kids in the neighborhood is unknown, though i would think likely considering john's early arc is set up to be as normal as possible to set up for the crazy bullshit later. (there's also the whole thing about john's peanut allergy + fear of the "peanut gallery" so)

since homestuck tells almost its entire story through the chatlogs of awkward teenagers, this is one key place where i think john's personality informs homestuck: namely, in its focus on isolation, loneliness, and growing up. SPEAKING OF,

3. childhood ignorance

jake isn't dumb, john isn't dumb, but why do so many people think that they are? for jake it's pretty clearly cause he wants it that way, but for john... i think it's cause he kind of. is? but also, he isn't. let me explain:

john often comes across to me as the most 13 year old 13 year old in the cast of homestuck. he's a sweet kid and intelligent enough for his age, but when that age is 13, there's not necessarily a lot there. john has also had the closest (closest. there's still a lot of weird shit there) thing to a Normal™ childhood out of the entire cast of homestuck (and yes that includes jane, she was the heiress to a corporate empire avoiding assassination attempts at 16, please don't call that shit normal), meaning that, in my opinion, a lot of his (lack of) maturity can be attributed to growing up pretty sheltered. where dave and rose had to contend with overt childhood abuse through toxic/neglectful parents, and even jade had to deal with a dog-parent & dead grandpa, john got a dad that actually cared about him.

this is not a bad thing in and of itself, but john being sheltered does mean that by the time they are actually entering the game and interacting with all these other worlds & alien peoples, he is imbued with a certain distinct ignorance of the greater world that becomes a very significant weakness in a story fucking dripping with semi-omniscient narrators that live to make you suffer. and, from the way he scribbles on the walls (A3:1049), this is something john is both aware of and frustrated with, calling himself a FOOL, tying to the tarot card (#1, his role as protagonist), the harlequin thing (clowns & their incredible pull on the meta of homestuck), & his anxieties (feeling ignorant & out of your depth stepping out of childhood into a world much broader and more complex and cruel than you're prepared for)

4. not a homosexual

i think i'm gonna run out of space here, so i'm just gonna copy & paste some hussie commentary here & maybe reblog this w/ some analysis of john & karkat's dynamic/parallels as "leaders" later (and maybe some june thoughts too):

5. successfully saved the world: the hero is depressed

okay, so earlier in part 1 i ended with a question:

but to a kid for whom the entire world feels so far away and empty, how much does that really matter?

i mostly left the answer to this implied earlier since it made more sense for the transition, but i think homestuck proper does give us an answer to this: it does matter! it just isn't until the end of the story, after they've won the game and finished the session, that it really starts to set in the extent of what they've lost.

so this entire post was largely motivated by another post i read earlier, which questioned why john in the snapchat credits didn't just go to live with the crockers. i gave a long ass commentary in the notes on that post, but my conclusion was basically this: john is depressed (!!!) and depression makes you apathetic & lose all motivation to do anything.

i've focused a lot on john's early life and the beginning of the story in this post, which is maybe in part because i've been rereading from the beginning recently, but also because john kind of loses touch with everyone else in the story as soon as he enters the session.

i think this is often read as just being a product of john's classpect, heir of breath. john doesn't just inherit breath when he godtiers, he also becomes it in a very literal sense (can't fucking find the page where he transforms into wind but ugh, whatever), so he when he literally loses touch with the reality of the story after gaining his retcon powers, it follows with the thematic concept of him being breath. this isn't bad, but i think it also goes further, again connecting with that idea that john is basically the "main character" of homestuck, which is actually a very unfortunate title as it means john in particular gets very wrapped up sburb & the story as a whole in a very literal sense. again: retcon powers.

for all my frustrations with the execution of the retcon, i can't deny that it makes a shit ton of sense for john to get those kinds of powers, since his character and position as the starting kid has always been so closely entwined with the story of homestuck as a whole (see: the entire rest of this post). it also ties back to that idea of john being particularly vulnerable as a naive kid in a world of maliciously omniscient characters (e.g. doc scratch, but also vriska/terezi & all of the trolls to some degree), puppetted around by the story and slowly losing all connections with "reality" and the rest of the cast (his friends!!)

you know all those scenes where john starts interacting w/ the shittily-drawn caliborn versions of all his friends? (or this page: (A6I5:6207)) that has always come across as kind of sad to me, because it feels representative of john's (lack of) connections to his friends by that point in the story. he gets so swept up in Plot Bullshit that he basically loses most of the contact he has w/ the people that were his closest friends for years (ik people hate inversion theory but he & karkat really are complementary in some ways), and that loss of connection just exacerbates his previous anxieties about being ignorant. the conversation between him, dave, & karkat on the meteor is really revealing of this (A6A6I5:7487). where dave & karkat & everyone else got three years to sort through their shit together, john was getting dragged off to make the story make sense again, technically completely losing everyone he had known and grown up with. it's not just that dad crocker is different: everyone is different.

(this also has the kind of even more depressing alternate implication that john doesn't even really get the chance to feel that difference outside of jade, since he wasn't able to connect with "his" original dave, rose, etc. in the pre-retcon timeline regardless. great!)

john's depression has always been one of my favorite parts of his character arc tbh, which ig is a weird thing to say, but it just makes so much sense to me as the next step in his story, if not the true conclusion. it's only after winning the game that john really starts to catch up with everyone else in terms of maturity and understanding, and by that point, when everyone already feels so far ahead, how could he possibly catch up? (the answer is that he can, just not alone, but it is that exact feeling of not being able to that makes him isolate in the first place. depression is a fucking shithole)

so much of homestuck is about loneliness, but in turn so much of homestuck is also about social connections, about the people around you that you love and care about and change your life. where karkat is able to heal the connections of the people around him by helping them through their interpersonal relationship bullshit, john gets caught in the wind of the plot and loses his connections, thus losing his ability to really mature as a person at the same rate as everyone else (not to mention how he might've felt behind in the first place). but still, even w/ john's arc ending on a heavy, perhaps unsatisfying note at the end of homestuck proper, i like to think there's still a lot of hope for him: after all, his dearest friends and family are all right there. he just needs to get off his ass and start talking to them.

(sidenote: while editing this part of the post, i suddenly realized just how sad it is that karkat and john talk so goddamn little in all of the post-canon shit. which fucking sucks actually because karkat would be the perfect person to yell at someone until they finally get off their ass and start trying to be a person again, exactly what john needs after the game imho. pumpkin route you are forming in my mind)

uhh anyways, i don't know how good of a job i did at tying this post back to my original goal, but if you read this far, thank you. i have been typing nonstop for like four straight hours (ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᶦʳᵗᵉᵉⁿ ᵐᶦⁿᵘᵗᵉˢˀ) and i think my right ring finger is about to fall off.

bonus: 6. john is hussie???

OKAY, actual finale, this is quick and dumb but this idea comes pretty much entirely from a couple random lines of hussie commentary from a john & dave conversation on (A2:324):

John makes some pretty sassy quips here. I like the "15th day in a row" line, which makes sense since I was the one who actually said it in a real conversation about this.

most people make the connection between hussie & dave (& dirk, i suppose) since dave's sense of humor is basically just unfiltered hussie, but this comment makes me wonder what was put into john too (though i suppose you could consider all fictional characters imbued with some aspect of their author). i'm not super into psychoanalyzing hussie as a person through homestuck itself, but if you're into that, here ya go.

#the one thing this post is missing is the significance of john's movie taste #but unfortunately i think i'm too young and i grew up on basically none of that shit so :skull: #someone else is gonna have to make up for that #hs #astronaut rambles #super long post #wrote this while procrastinating an actual essay are you proud of me #i like john if you couldn't tell i vibe with june a lot #probably cause i kinda physically look like her + peanut allergy lol #and her childhood is vaguely similar..... idk i just get the arc kinda #shoutout to the homestuck wiki btw #saved my ass #i wrote this all in one sitting and now i kinda hate myself for it #fingers hurt #homestuck #john egbert #The John Post #update: edited!

[radicalurbanista]

“walkable cities” and the “car free” movements sound nice but they’re such jokes because their core is white liberals who despise that the U.S. doesn’t look more like europe. And there’s no real understanding that the reason we have car-centric development isn’t because of “car culture” but because we live in a apartheid state that routinely sells technologies of war and war industries to the (upper) middle class and deploys these technologies to destroy Black and other communities of color!! Let’s think about why cars and airplanes received so much federal $$$ after the growth of their industries in World War II.

So they pursue these neo-liberal measures for pedestrian friendly cities which are often incredibly weak, patchy, ecologically insufficient, and almost always tailing or preceding gentrification and the displacement of POC from the inner city. Or in the case of suburbs, it’s the neo-mall new urbanist movement of simulated urbanism where everything is an outdoor shopping mall with shitty overpriced apartments. All while doing nothing to address settler colonialism, racism and segregation, war, or the oil and mining industries responsible for this in the first place!

#i need to fight everyone in my profession #this bs is so maddening #urbanism #urban planning #car free #walkable cities #using cars as a scapegoat for white supremacy

[triviareads]

I am loving the combo of Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone. My mind auto corrects Christmas Notch to Christmas Crotch.

Can you recommend any similar books? A modern Hallmark movie with a few hard-core scenes?

So in terms of romance novels with Hallmark vibes, I admittedly don't read a lot of holiday themed romances, but I can rec some romance novels with small town vibes that are relatively low-conflict but still have good sex scenes.

There are a few Tessa Bailey books that fit the description. Her newer stuff feels overwhelmingly tame and very made-for-booktok (her next book has a hero who is a... washed up golf pro?), and some of her older stuff is a little bit too intense to be Hallmark-y (she has a series that feels Suicide Squad-inspired; a group ex-cons working on covert ops with cops, also, she wrote a lot of cop stuff back in the day). Here's what I'd recommend from her:

Fix Her Up: This will give you all the Hallmark cuteness of the brother's best friend trope set in a Long Island suburb. Georgie is a children's birthday party entertainer (clown) who's had a long-time crush on Travis, a former MLB player. They agree to fake date in order for her to be taken more seriously and so he can land a commentating gig. There's some great dirty talk in this one, and the very first sex scene ("does underwear count as over-the-clothes?") lives rent free in my head.

Unfortunately Yours: Here is my full review; Natalie is a big city girl returning to her Napa hometown, while August is an ex-soldier struggling to revive a late friend's winery. They agree to a marriage of convenience so they can both get start-up capital. The banter is great in this one, both of them give as good as they get. There's a loooot of foreplay in the build-up to piv stuff, and I personally feel that the culmination is a very emotional sex scene in the middle of a natural disaster. Outside.

Runaway Girl: Naomi is a runaway bride who takes a job coaching Jason's sister for her upcoming pageant. Naomi is an upper class debutante pageant girl while Jason is a grumpy rough-and-ready Special Forces diver so very opposites attract. It has one of my niche favorite tropes of a angsty goodbye sex scene where one of them is leaving AND YET they know deep in their bones she's getting knocked up tonight.

Other recs:

Heartless by Elsie Silver: She's a big city girl staying in a small town for the summer, and she gets roped into nanny-ing for the guy she accidentally dropped her (spare) panties in front of. He's a gruff, older rancher single dad who is initially Not Impressed, but they come around to one another. Also, the spare panties do make a return in a pretty surprising way for a small-town romance.

Forbidden Harmony by Elizabeth Kelly: Another good-girl/bad boy small town romance except with the less-than-Hallmark addition of Addison deciding to rebel against her good girl image by getting a tattoo... and multiple piercings from the hero lolol.

Try Victoria Wilder's Strutt's Peak series; it has small mountain resort town vibes and a pretty wide range in terms of content ranging from more Hallmark-y shenanigans to death threats and corporate drama. Also worth checking out Samanthe Beck— idk how much she fits the Hallmark vibe specifically but she knows how to write a great sex scene as far as contemporaries go.

#tessa bailey #elsie silver #elizabeth kelly #book recs #romance novels #contemporary romance #ask

[olivia-erskine-grad703]

Homework activity - personal positioning

We have been given this worksheet as a starting point in establishing and understanding our personal positioning within our research project. I have filled out the sections that I could, and left blank a couple that I’m not too sure about yet. This is an outline of what each section says (see below):

Political Views: I definitely am more of a left wing individual. I believe in equality and equity between every individual. One of my main political drivers is the need to preserve the environment through sustainability, and this is at the core of my actions and values. I also believe in decolonising society and our way of thinking, returning to more indigenous ways of thinking and viewing the world. This ties in to my project as I begin to research indigenous representation, beliefs and expression of gender that branches out from the westernised view of the binary. 

Religious Beliefs: I am open to the idea of religion, but I am not a follower of any specifically. I like the idea of religions believing in a high power, and if I were to be a follower of any religion it would likely be Buddhism or Hinduism as they align best with my view of the world. I was exposed to Christianity a lot through my childhood, both in the form of church and education at school. However, as I’ve grown up I’ve come to disagree with a lot g the fundamentals that Christianity is built on and the discrimination that it allows and facilitates, e.g. racism, homophobia, and misogyny. - I personally don’t want to be involved with something that allows these things to happen within its community. 

Gender: I believe that gender is a social construct, and see gender as a spectrum. I don’t believe in the gender binary, and believe anyone of any sex should express themselves however they like regardless of the constructs of gender binary. I see myself as an individual first and a gender second.

Sexuality: I identify as queer and part of the LGBTQ+ community. Being a part of this community influences every aspect of my life and view of the world. 

Historical location: I’ve grown up in a generation that has had to come to grasp with the ever changing online world, with a big part of our lives revolving around social media. Gen Z have had more access to the wider world through the internet and online platforms that preceding generations, meaning we have all grown to have our own individual comprehensive world views, and are very aware of events and issues happening throughout the world. 

Geographical context: I grew up in Wellington, and moved to Auckland on my own at 18. I have lived in over 20 different suburbs and communities, but have always lived in a larger NZ city. 

Ethnicity/race/skin colour/Nationality: NZ European/white

Social class: Grown up mostly upper-middle class, have been privileged to always have two parents with stable careers. I am now a student supporting myself off a part-time income. 

Abilities/disabilities: No disabilities 

Personal Values: The environment, human rights, LGBT rights, equality, family, friends, animal rights, education, equity, feminism, women’s rights, indigenous rights, personal freedom, reproductive rights, community, sustainability, ethics, creativity, personal expression and activism. 

Whakapapa: Genealogy/family history originates in Scotland (50% Scottish), England and Germany. 

Research context: With my current idea at the moment of looking at the origins & factors that contribute to creativity within individuals - in particular individuals within the LGBT community - this is related to me as I have always been a creative person, perusing a creative career and a member of the LGBT community. 

Creative practice: Communication design, art/fine arts, photography, UX design, publication/book/editorial design, branding/packaging, social media, website, app, poster, typography etc. 

Philosophical/Theoretical beliefs: Spirituality - a belied that all things are interconnected and hold agency

Previous career: Have worked a number of jobs in hospitality and retail, as well as a couple in design before my current role of juniors designer for Roady NZ. 

Ethic accounts: Unsure what this is might gain relevance as I figure out my research subject

Demographics: NZ European/white, 20 years, female, student, graphic designer, English speaking, live in Auckland NZ. 

Social groups: My flatmates, my friends group, my class, my workplace, my community. 

Personal experiences and upbringing: There's obviously a lot of my experiences and upbringing that will contribute to my positioning but exactly where it relates will become clear once I have defined my subject. I grew up privileged enough to have a financially stable household and access to an education. As I grew up and gained access to social media I started to build my own world views and that is where my perspective on social issues came from. 

Overall, unpacking the different elements of myself in this way really helps in understanding my positioning as a researcher. I think that because the topic I am wanting to study is so personal an applicable to me my personal positioning will be really important and help to contextualise my work and stance a lot. 

[antoine-roquentin]

The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. That’s a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.

In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as “prowess,” was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasn’t an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.

An oral culture, passed around during training sessions and drinking bouts and feasts and military campaigns, produced this culture and inculcated new knights into it. A whole universe of texts, the kinds of things knights read or had read to them, sent the same message, like this 12th-century poem called Girart de Vienne:

When I see the whinnying war-steeds plunge

With worthy knights into a battle’s crush,

And see their spears and cutting blades well struck,

There is nothing on earth I love so much!

These were dudes who loved getting after it, and for them, getting after it meant blood-soaked deeds on the battlefield. It’s not that there was nothing more to it - sure, there were some bits about romance and ladies, debates about religiosity and moral actions, exhortations to do better - but the core was always physical, male violence. And it obviously wasn’t for everyone: Knights were members of a hereditary military aristocracy, and their possession of chivalry was what set them apart from dirty peasants.

Two aspects neatly parallel modern Bro Culture: first, the emphasis on physicality and the body, and how that provided both a sense of the self and secured social status; and second, the restricted, bubble-like world that produced and emphasized it, with its fictional and real heroes, its stories about great deeds, its values, and its models to be emulated. Your average knight would absolutely identify with and appreciate this impossibly toxic meathead sentiment:

Obviously, there are pieces that don’t neatly parallel, the biggest ones being the hereditary and explicitly military nature of chivalry. You don’t have to be a soldier to be a Bro, though it doesn’t hurt. And - much more important - you aren’t born into being a Bro; you become one, by doing worthy deeds of prowess.

That’s a quintessentially American value: the idea that anybody can make something of themselves if they work hard enough, move enough weight, run fast enough, practice enough to shoot a tight grouping, make the right sacrifices. The physical meritocracy (and its potential rewards of fame and fortune) is open to anyone willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Even the least intellectually gifted meathead can make something of himself if he does the workouts, takes the right gear, and builds his audience on YouTube and Instagram. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and smash that follow button.

In a moment of stagnant social mobility, rising inequality, and incredible uncertainty around the future, this strongly visual message of self-betterment and improving one’s socioeconomic status through literal sweat can resonate deeply. It’s all within the individual’s control, if they simply work enough - an antidote to all that uncertainty, everything that’s so obviously beyond an individual’s control and reckoning, no matter how misleading and incomplete the formula actually is.

That’s especially appealing to the many millions of American men who don’t have college degrees (many more of them than women, given the gendered trends in undergraduate enrollment) who are effectively locked out of professional-managerial culture and its straightforward path into the comfortable upper-middle class. Accomplishment through physical prowess is thus a means of building both a sense of self and community.

The connections to this particular moment in American culture and history go much deeper than that, though. This whole edifice of Bro Culture grows out of the broader rise of influencers, performative self-branding through social media, and the construction of identity through consumption.

With the right protein powder, shilled by your favorite strongman, you too can deadlift 800 pounds, or at least tell yourself you’ll get there someday. With the right brand of CBD tincture, which sponsors your favorite Crossfit athlete, you won’t feel that burning pain in your rotator cuff after you clean and jerk too much weight with suboptimal technique. By religiously listening to the right Bro-approved entrepreneurship podcast, hosted by some guy who happened to get booked on the Joe Rogan Experience during a slow week, you too can buy a McMansion in an affordable suburb.

Much of what happens in Bro Culture is driven by lifestyle consumption: ads for sunglasses on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast, brand partnerships between supplement companies and YouTube stars, tactical holsters for concealed-carry that an ex-Marine with a million Instagram followers wants you to buy. It’s self-actualization through sponsor codes.

The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. It’s where entrepreneurial late capitalism and influencer trends meet imperial wars, the militarization of the police, and the emergence of Gun Guys as a default protected class within American society. You’re not a Crossfitter anymore; you’re a “tactical athlete,” doing varied types of interval, cardio, and strength training so you can be a more effective soldier or cop or firefighter or whatever, or you just want to feel like you could be one. The physical training is only part of this, since you can prominently declare your tactical affiliations with a variety of lifestyle products, ranging from coffee mugs to American flag stickers for your car to, naturally, firearms....

Just as much as its coffee, whose quality I can’t speak to, Black Rifle Coffee Company is selling the tactical lifestyle. They offer a staggering variety of T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, thermoses, and stickers, many of them prominently branded with the eponymous “black rifle” of the brand. There are a lot of American flags and pieces of law-enforcement and military iconography, signifiers of the in-groups to whom the consumers of BRCC’s products belong, want to belong, or for whom they want to signal their support. BRCC has explicitly labeled itself as a coffee company for conservatives, an active participant in the culture wars. If you don’t like Starbucks and its effete, refugee-supporting, liberal tendencies, buy some Black Rifle product instead. If you like Trump, you’ll be at home with BRCC. Don Jr. endorsed them.

After the picture of Rittenhouse in the Black Rifle Coffee Company shirt appeared, its founder Evan Hafer quickly disavowed the youthful shooter. Even for an explicitly MAGA coffee company, supporting a teenaged AR enthusiast with blood on his hands was a bridge too far. But Rittenhouse had already been shaped by the world BRCC and its fellow-travelers have made. He got the message, loud and clear: You too can become a hero, or at least dress and drink coffee like one, by purchasing the right products, watching the right videos, and following the same Extended Bro Culture influencers. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

The Veteran-owned piece of BRCC’s appeal isn’t a coincidence. They’re selling a position in the culture wars, a sense of belonging, but also a particular vision of what it means to be American, a man, and an American man. A staggering number of this part of Bro Culture’s key figures are veterans. Jocko Willink, perhaps the best known (and least openly political) of the bunch, was a Navy SEAL officer; he was actually the commanding officer of the famous sniper Chris Kyle during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.

After retiring, Willink turned his SEAL experience into a career as a leadership consultant, motivational speaker, media personality, and energy drink salesman. His intensity, built on his military service, is legendary: His exhortations to do hard things regularly, to live by a code, and take responsibility for oneself, resonate with millions of people. And Willink is far from the only one to do so, turning overseas service in imperial wars, especially as a special forces operator, into a key component of his entrepreneurial appeal. This isn’t a judgement on his military service; it’s a statement of fact. Being an undeniable badass is a the core part of why Jocko Willink is a quintessential Bro Hero.

Imperial wars overseas always come home eventually, and they do so in complex ways. The fact that millions of people listen to Jocko Willink, buy Black Rifle Coffee Company merchandise, and dabble in more extreme fringes is a product of decades spent elevating not just military service writ large but violent combat overseas against ill-defined Others. For every Jocko Willink, there’s an Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who was convicted of and then recently pardoned for war crimes after becoming a cause célèbre for large swathes of the online right.

If these are the heroes Bro Culture puts forth - special operators accustomed to high-intensity, high-volume fighting overseas, who then develop enormous media platforms - it’s obvious what message Kyle Rittenhouse and the innumerable police officers, tactical fitness enthusiasts, and more run-of-the-mill viewers and listeners will take. Millions of people listen to Joe Rogan when he talks to Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy (the Green Beret and MMA fighter and increasingly open right-wing figure), or Cameron Hanes (who advocated for Eddie Gallagher’s release). They’re warriors. Joe Rogan isn’t a soldier, but he’s a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a former competitive kickboxer, a bowhunter, and a firearms enthusiast. If these are the people at the core of Bro Culture, a culture that directly touches tens of millions of American men, then there are bound to be knock-on effects. If they’re constantly telling their listeners to be ready, to be tactical, to be prepared to fight and to be good at it, that means something.

This is why I think Bro Culture, or at least its extended reaches, deserve more scrutiny and attention. The code of American manhood that’s developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who don’t subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you don’t, you’re not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that they’re basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, what’s the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people they’re supposed to serve?

[flufferanian]

The Bluey communit just makes this really horrible, oftentimes arbitrary rule about how we can't have *any* type of discussion about what changes that viewers or their children wish to see in the show (or even things like fan art), yet it's a-okay for crazed *parents* to dissect really meaning episodes and cry about Muffin left and right.

I get that it's mostly a subreddit ran by parents, but having such close-minded views about the world around you based solely on the generational tradition that you grew up with is such a sad way to live and goes against the core values of the show itself.

And just because *your* toddler has a short attention and that you somehow like the show better than your own kids, doesn't mean a non-verbal or semi-verbal autistic child can't use a comfort show such as Bluey as a way to communicate with the world around them.

I get that its Australia and the housing culture might be a bit different there. But just straight up depicting *everyone* to live in these fanciful *condos* in the suburbs is completely unrealistic and really takes away from the child-like atmosphere that the show's main focus.

Nothing against Ludo Studio as the Bluey team is a very hardworking group of people, but it feels like over the went from being just a cute dog cartoon for preschoolers to a cult built by upper middle-class people for upper-middle class parents.

I know it's just a kid's show, but it makes me as a human being feel worthless whenever people bring up how every last house on Bluey is worth millions of dollars except for the token homeless guy, who I'm guessing isn't even worth it to get his own episode.

If Nana and Bob are the rich retirees, where's all the episodes about *Chili's* more "country-like" side of the family? Of course her backstory is fairly new compared to Bandit's relationship with his siblings. Not saying that's a bad thing by any means. But as much as Socks and Muffin are cool, I'm tired of it always switching to the rich cousins, aunts, and uncles who always like to rub everything in your face.

Apparently the real life inspiration behind Bluey and her friend's educational upbringing this is a hidden cumulation of private daycare, bullying, and some uptight religious teachings like some kind of Catholic boarding school. Everything new I learn about this show is a nightmare in the making and I can't just sit back enjoy the talking dogs anymore like all of you want me to. Looks like I'll have to go back to Paw Patrol.

I never had much of anything in school except free lunch everyday and constant bullying and harassment from the teachers. Unlike Bluey, I had no social gateway with the world around me as I was always ingrained that imaginative or constructive play for a "savant" kid like me was wrong and something to be ashamed of.

Most of my early childhood was spent in a rusted junkyard with a good 20 or so disease-ridden cats being my only comfort... perhaps my only *friends* even. The fact that many of you can't seem to put your pitchforks down when we say "give the homeless dude his own episode" or "introduce a character with a physical disability" is exactly what leads to children like me being mistreated into a pit of eternal shame and self-hatred.

I was one of those "gifted kids" that were forced to comply with every single expectation laid out in front of you. God forbid you asked for help or guidance on *anything* ever or you were punished with write-ups and even suspenion at times. I know not everything in the real world is cupcakes and rainbows by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't mean we can't try for a better tomorrow where we won't have to worry about all these horrible things anymore.

But for real, what kind of teacher *is* Calypso and why can't we have that in the more displaced portions of America when kids Bluey's and Bingo's age are already going through so much at home?

Going back on what I just said about my own experiences as a child, it feels like the show itself is trying to force nostalgia when there *is* none for me; only pain and trauma. I enjoyed it cause I think that talking animals are cute but now that my family is falling apart and my parents are rotting away, watching old episodes of Bluey is basically the equivalent of pouring sea water into an open wound.

As "woke" as it sounds, I'd give anything to see a character like me, my friends, or even the local toddler being passed around from foster home to foster home.

Jack was great. Monkeyjocks was great. But with my life falling apart and witnessing the genuine suffering of so many Bluey-aged kids around me, it's not enough anymore.

Including a single episode about donating old toys isn't enough when families like Bluey's are out here going without thinks like ventilation, food, and shelter on *top* of every other socioeconomic conflict or health crisis there could possibly be in the world. I really, really hope in my heart that we get changes like this down the line so that not only the breeds of dogs remain unique, but so does *environment* around them.

Every child deserves a chance in the world and I'm tired of all these kids being shoved away because they aren't conventional when it comes to those who live a more upper-class lifestyle as seen within the show.

I don't care if people here "disagree" with me or don't see me as a person anymore because of this post... I'm more concerned about being banned just for wanting to be seen and heard on the talking dog cartoon.

Thank you for reading and I hope it opens your heart to something today.

[rabbitcruiser]

Food in Malmö

In 1914 (15 May to 4 October) Malmö hosted the Baltic Exhibition. The large park Pildammsparken was arranged and planted for this large event. The Russian part of the exhibition was never taken down, owing to the outbreak of World War I.

On 18 and 19 December 1914, the Three Kings Meeting was held in Malmö. After a somewhat infected period (1905–1914), which included the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian Union, King Oscar II was replaced with King Håkon VII in Norway, who was the younger brother of the Danish King Christian X. As Oscar died in 1907, and his son Gustav V became the new King of Sweden, the tensions within Scandinavia were still unclear, but during this historical meeting, the Scandinavian Kings found internal understanding, as well as a common line about remaining neutral in the ongoing war.

Within sports, Malmö has mostly been associated with football. IFK Malmö participated in the first ever edition of Allsvenskan 1924/25, but from the mid-1940s Malmö FF started to rise, and ever since it has been one of the most prominent clubs within Swedish football. They have won Allsvenskan 23 times in all (as of February 2018) between 1943/44 and 2017.

By 1971, Malmö reached 265,000 inhabitants, but this was the peak which would stand for more than 30 years.(Svedala was, for a few years in the early 1970s, a part of Malmö municipality.)

By the mid-1970s Sweden experienced a recession that hit the industrial sector especially hard; shipyards and manufacturing industries suffered, which led to high unemployment in many cities of Skåne. Kockums shipyard had become a symbol of Malmö as its largest employer and, when shipbuilding ceased in 1986, confidence in the future of Malmö plummeted among politicians and the public. In addition, many middle-class families moved into one-family houses in surrounding municipalities such as Vellinge Municipality, Lomma Municipality and Staffanstorp Municipality, which profiled themselves as the suburbs of the upper-middle class. By 1985, Malmö had lost 35,000 inhabitants and was down to 229,000.

The Swedish financial crises of the early 1990s exacerbated Malmö's decline as an industrial city; between 1990 and 1995 Malmö lost about 27,000 jobs and its economy was seriously strained. However, from 1994 under the leadership of the then mayor Ilmar Reepalu, the city of Malmö started to create a new economy as a center of culture and knowledge. Malmö reached bottom in 1995, but that same year marked the commencement of the massive Öresund Bridge road, railway and tunnel project, connecting it to Copenhagen and to the rail lines of Europe. The new Malmö University opened in 1998 on Kockums' former dockside. Further redevelopment of the now disused south-western harbor followed; a city architecture exposition (Bo01) was held in the area in 2001, and its buildings and villas form the core of a new city district. Designed with attractive waterfront vistas, it was intended to be and has been successful in attracting the urban middle-class.

Since 1974, the Kockums Crane had been a landmark in Malmö and a symbol of the city's manufacturing industry, but in 2002 it was disassembled and moved to South Korea. In 2005, Malmö gained a new landmark with completion of Turning Torso, the tallest skyscraper in Scandinavia. Although the transformation from a city with its economic base in manufacturing has returned growth to Malmö, the new types of jobs have largely benefited the middle and upper classes.

In its 2015 and 2017 reports, Police in Sweden placed the Rosengård and the Södra Sofielund/Seved district in the most severe category of urban areas with high crime rates.

Source: Wikipedia

#Warrior Burger #Malmö Rådhus #city hall #town hall #architecture #Torgbrunn #fountain #public art #travel #vacation #original photography #Stig Blomberg #Helgo Zettervall #Budapest Roll #Malmö Castle #Hight Court #Hotel Anglais #Flensburg House #Sweden #Malmö #Sverige #Scandinavia #cityscape #restaurant #food #fries #dessert #Northern Europe #summer 2020 #Southwest Jalapeño Burger

[what-even-is-thiss]

Since my other post got turned into a test prep post and people seemed to miss the whole point of it, the American school system in the early 2000s almost exclusively taught children how to pass multiple choice tests.

This problem existed before and still exists now, but it peaked during the second Bush administration when George W. Bush set up a system called No Child Left behind where schools were required to get a certain percentage of their students to pass standardized multiple choice tests if they wanted to get funding. Ironically but expectedly, this program left most children behind.

Many people that went to middle school and high school during the Bush administration went into college not knowing how to write academic papers or reports, which is actually a skill that can help you in the real world because many jobs involve some kind of writing.

In my area this problem was incredibly obvious. We have three main school districts. Two that cover the predominantly poor to middle class big city and one that covers the predominately white middle to upper middle class suburb. In the two poorer districts they taught us some writing. Enough to where we could stumble our way through college level classes. But because they spent time on writing not all the time was spent on test prep so our schools got lower test scores and were generally underfunded.

Compare that to the mostly white upper middle class school district who almost exclusively taught kids how to pass standardized tests. The kids that went to these schools excelled. They got a lot of funding, they got high scores on the SATs, they got into great colleges. But I’ve talked to professors at my college since I started and before the late Obama administration when things began to change a bit for the better these kids were going into college not knowing what a five paragraph essay was or how to study for college level exams which are often harder than standardized tests. And they crumpled.

And people from my district weren’t that much better because we were still trying to pass tests but we were able to catch up a little faster because they taught us something else even if it was just a little bit.

And yeah common core annoys like absolutely everyone but guess what happened to me my last two years of high school when we got out of transition mode and it was fully implemented with our standardized tests for the first time? I got a write in question. I had to write down the answer to something. That had never happened to me before on a standardized test and I went into shock.

That is good. That is infinitely better than all the bubble filling I had to do for the first eleven years of my schooling. And the extra writing stuff they added in high school when they were easing us into common core ended up helping me in college so. Much. I was there for the transition and I was old enough to know what it meant. That there are millions of people that went to school in the United States between the years 2000 and 2010-2014 depending on when their schools fully transitioned that were cheated. We weren’t taught how to write, how to think, or how to research or if we were it wasn’t nearly enough.

Maybe the American school system sucked before, maybe it sucks now, but let me tell you. It. Was. Awful. When I was in school. To the point where there were children’s novels about it. I read a bunch of novels when I was a kid that involved students that were angry with standardized tests even if it wasn’t the main focus of the book. Children’s authors saw the problem and used their platform to show us that this wasn’t normal. That our world of #2 pencils and test prep rallys sucked.

TLDR: So yeah. I grew up during the worst of the American school system’s standardized test epidemic and am still mad about it. George W. Bush sucks and don’t you forget it.

#roman said a thing #school #ranting

[pool-core]

#outdoor pool #pool #upper middle class suburb-core

[gschneider21ahsgov]

California Proposition Assessment

Proposition 16

CA Constitutional Amendment—Affirmative Action in Public Education and Employment

The proposal would get rid of the section of the California Constitution introduced by Prop 209 and would get rid of the ban that allows consideration of race, sex, ethincity, and color.

This proposition would have no direct fiscal effect on state and local authorities because the measure would not require any change to current policies or programs but because the specific choices state and local entities would make if voters approved this measure are unknown, the potential fiscal effects are highly uncertain.

Election Results:

This proposition did not win. This did surprise me a little bit because I thought the proposition was a good idea and I felt that the majority of voters would agree.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, California and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont were among the federal officials who supported this proposition. Governor Gavin Newsom also supported the proposition. New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and East Bay Times were some of the newspapers backing this proposition. I am not surprised by the endorsements. By knowing that reliable government officials and newspapers back a proposition it can help show the integrity of the proposition.

Arguments for:

University of California President Janet Napolitano: "It makes little sense to exclude any consideration of race in admissions when the aim of the University’s holistic process is to fully understand and evaluate each applicant through multiple dimensions.

Varsha Sarveshwar, president of the University of California Student Association: "Today, colleges can consider whether you’re from the suburbs, a city or a rural area. They can consider what high school you went to. They can consider your family’s economic background. They can look at virtually everything about you – but not race. It makes no sense – and is unfair – that schools can’t consider something that is so core to our lived experience.

Arguments against:

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in Washington, D.C.: "Because it is much cheaper to provide racial preferences to upper middle class Latino and African American students than it is to do the hard work of recruiting economically disadvantaged and working-class Latino and African American students, I fear that many of these progressive reforms could be diluted if 209 is repealed."

Former Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff (R): "California is the most diverse state in the nation and must step up to the challenges that brings. The real solution for racial equality is comprehensive public-school reform in our K-12 system, not government sanctioned discrimination to create more losers than winners as Proposition 16 will do."

I would’ve voted yes on prop 16 because I feel like it is unfair to not include race. My race is a huge part of my identity and for that to be skipped seems wrong.

The campaign had raised $20.39 million. M. Quinn Delaney was the largest donor, contributing $5.5 million.

[pinelife3]

Sleepless in Seattle

I rewatched Sleepless in Seattle recently on a plane, and now I’ve crawled out of my cave to declare: this movie is not romantic!

Directed by Nora Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle, is regarded as part of the canon of great rom-coms. Ephron and Rob Reiner (who actually appears in Sleepless in Seattle with a great bit about tiramisu) are kind of the big-dogs of rom-coms in that people still talk about the films they made 20+ years ago (some together, some separately):

The Princess Bride

When Harry Met Sally

Sleepless in Seattle

You’ve Got Mail

Rom-coms are tricky to define - for example, is Shakespeare in Love a rom-com? There is romance and comedy, but the lovers are separated at the end. What about Top Gun? There are iconic romantic scenes and the lovers do end up together, but the love is really a conciliatory prize (the real prize is being the best at flying) and the romance is more of a B or C plot in the film, so Top Gun probably doesn’t qualify. People talk about rom-coms as having to posses certain tropes - for example:

A neurotic, highly mannered protagonist (ideally played by Meg Ryan or Hugh Grant)

An argument featuring dramatic irony, where the audience knows more than the characters and sees their misunderstanding unfold

A grand final gesture to win a lover back after a stupid misunderstanding: a last-minute dash to the airport, a last minute dash to a new year’s eve party, a last minute dash to the Empire State Building

But for our purposes, let’s say a rom-com is anything that:

Places the romantic plot at the core of its film AND

Has a happy ending (i.e. the lovers are together at the end) AND

Features genuine attempts at humour along the way. 

LOTR features a romance plot, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on (something about a ring?!), therefore it’s not a rom-com. Same deal with Bridesmaids. I would classify Superbad as a kind of rom-com because most actions taken by the protagonists are to secure love (or at least sex) from the girls they like. The English Patient? Romantic and HILARIOUS but the lovers aren’t together in the end.

So does Sleepless in Seattle qualify as a rom-com?

Yes, the whole point of the movie is to get Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together. This plot dominates the film - but is it romantic? More on this to follow.

Yes, in the world of the film, a happy ending is secured because Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are together

Yes, there are some laughs along the way. Mostly at the expense of poor Bill Pullman who is playing a man with severe allergies. There is also some precocious-child related humour

Back to point one: I contend that the ‘romantic plot’ in Sleepless in Seattle is actually anti-romantic. In fact, there are two romance plot lines (both of which fail to be romantic) because this bitch is engaged to another man throughout the ‘romance’ with Tom Hanks.

Before we get into that though I have another major gripe: at the start of the film, Meg Ryan and her fiancé (Bill Pullman) leave home together to drive to a family Christmas lunch. They leave the same location at the same time and are heading to the same location - no stops along the way. But for some reason they take separate cars. The film provides no reasoning for the separate cars. It is patently odd and really bothers me.

Let’s take a look at the script:

________________________________________________

EXT. BALTIMORE SUN BUILDING - LATE AFTERNOON - CHRISTMAS EVE

As Annie [Meg Ryan] comes out of the newspaper building with WALTER JACKSON [Bill Pullman], a tall, handsome man who wears a hat. They're carrying an armful of Christmas presents. They're walking toward the parking lot.

WALTER

The short one with black hair  is your cousin Irene --

ANNIE

-- who's married to --

WALTER

Harold, who ran away with his secretary but came back --

ANNIE

-- because Irene threatened to put the dog to sleep if he didn't --

WALTER

And your brother Tom is a psychology professor and is married to...Betsy --

ANNIE

-- who is the most competitive woman in the world --

They put the presents in the backs of their two cars and pull out together.

EXT. A HOUSE IN BALTIMORE SUBURBS - NIGHT

Christmas lights twinkling as the two cars pull up in front of a comfortable upper middle-class house and park their cars. They get out assembling presents.

________________________________________________

This whole thing with the two cars was scripted - and even in the script it’s unexplained. My suspicion is that this just a device to get her in the car alone later so she can hear Tom Hanks on the radio - and thereby fall in love with him. This is LAZY writing. Why not just write that she had a premonition and saw a wonderful widow in Seattle and knew that they should be together. That would make about as much sense as the separate cars.

People criticise rom-coms for having unrealistic premises. For example: Last Christmas, in which a woman hangs out with the ghost of a man who gave her his heart - via transplant - the previous year. A ridiculous premise made unbearably kitsch because of the connection to the WHAM song. But honestly that makes about as much sense as an engaged couple taking separate cars for no reason.

Allow that gaping goatse of a plot hole to set the scene for the other major problem with this film: our romantic heroine is already engaged. Engaged to a man she finds boring. She remains engaged to this poor guy throughout her infatuation and pursuit of Tom Hanks. She lives with this guy, sleeps with him, plans her wedding with him: all while she is falling in love with Tom Hanks. She remains engaged until the final 10 minutes of the film when she finally dumps him. She keeps telling this poor guy she loves him. It’s evil. Can you imagine what /r/relationships would say about someone who behaved this way? This is an emotional affair.

As much as rom-coms celebrate the pursuit of love and marriage, they also caution against bad or inadequate love: it is not romantic to settle. A classic example of this is Charlotte Lucas in Pride & Prejudice: she marries the ridiculous Mr Collins to secure her future and avoid spinsterhood - but she doesn’t love him and won’t ever love him because she doesn’t respect him. Readers in Austen’s time may have been more sympathetic to Charlotte’s decision since the nature of marriage was quite different back then and spinsterhood was a seriously undesirable outcome, but contemporary audiences commonly interpret Charlotte settling for Mr Collins as a weakness of character. That decision and her life with Mr Collins only serve to reflect further radiance on Elizabeth Bennet: wistful, bitey, beautiful, beloved for centuries. That’s why no one writes fan fiction about Charlotte Lucas. 

So, in Sleepless in Seattle, the audience sees that Meg Ryan is settling for the wrong guy. This is communicated to us primarily through the visual gags around Bill Pullman’s allergies: he uses a huge number of tissues, he’s allergic to everything from strawberries to bees, he has a special respirator machine to help him sleep. This guy can’t get the girl! He can’t even breath properly. It’s clearly isn’t meant to work out between them. No, no this won’t do at all. 

What is the function of the unsuitable fiancé as a plot device? Why couldn’t this be a romance between two single people? Is it to make her cross-country pursuit seem more whimsical and fun? If it to demonstrate that she can get a guy? I actually think it’s meant to create stakes: it’s so she has something to hold her back from ‘following her heart’. This is a way of adding tension so she’s risking something (normalcy, comfort) by making the last minute dash to the Empire State Building to meet Hanks (who represents the possibility of windswept romance). Never mind that they’ve never actually spoken to each other. He’s a single parent? Um sexy! He’s a widow? Swoon. Seattle is rainy? I’m already wet.

If it’s important to the plot that she is already in a couple when she falls for Hanks, and that she casts aside an unsatisfying relationship for the mere possibility of passionate excitement, then we have had it wrong all along: the grand romantic gesture of Sleepless in Seattle is Meg Ryan dumping her fiancé. Forget the Empire State Building. It’s her telling him that she’s had an emotional affair. It’s her taking off her engagement ring. It’s her blaming him for being boring rather than working on their relationship. It’s her leaving him sat in that restaurant alone so she can go and pursue a stranger.  

This movie is not romantic. 

#Sleepless in Seattle #nora ephron #rob reiner #tom hanks #meg ryan #bill pullman #pride and prejudice #elizabeth bennet #charlotte lucas

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Trump ex-attorney Michael Cohen sentenced: 3 years prison, $500,000 forfeiture, $1.4 million restitution, $50,000 fine

Donald Trump's longtime “fixer” and personal attorney has been sentenced to to 36 months (3 years) in federal prison, plus an additional 3 years of supervised release, in a case in the Southern District of New York.

Judge William H. Pauley of SDNY also sentenced Cohen to 2 months for lying to Congress, to be served concurrently to his primary 36-month sentence.

He also issued an order for $500,000 in forfeiture, payment of $1.39 million in back taxes, and a $50,000 fine.

Judge Pauley also ordered an additional $50,000 fine, for lying to Congress.

There are additional terms of imprisonment, but all will be served by Cohen concurrently.

Cohen will be able to voluntarily surrender, he was not taken into custody as the hearing ended.

— — —

Federal prosecutors asked for a "substantial" prison sentence of about 3 and a half years. Cohen asked for time served. He could face up to five years, based on sentencing guidelines for his crimes.

“We respectfully submit that the case calls for a full consideration of mercy,” Michael Cohen's defense attorney Guy Petrillo said during the hearing.

Petrillo argued that Cohen should receive a lenient sentence in part because Cohen “came forward to offer evidence” against Trump.

"I don't really understand the strident tone of the memo,” Petrillo said, referring to the Southern District of New York's filing.

Implying that his connection to Trump was the reason for the strident tone, Petrillo added, “Mr. Cohen had the misfortune to be counsel to the president.”

This, of course, implies that Cohen's position at Trump's side was not something over which Cohen had any choice.

Petrillo then went on to tell the court that Cohen would be willing to cooperate with ongoing investigations, but that “he is wary of a long term cooperation agreement for personal reasons, and because he wants both to remove himself and his family from the glare of the cameras.”

So, Cohen is unwilling to cooperate.

Petrillo then told the court Cohen could not have anticipated the “full measure of attack that would made against him” by President Trump and supporters, “and those attacks include threats against his family.”

Cohen's attorney ended his remarks asking the judge for leniency: “He's a very good man.”

— — —

Speaking for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Office, prosecutor Jeannie S. Rhee told the court Cohen provided "credible" and "valuable information" regarding "any links between a campaign and a foreign government."

"Mr. Cohen has sought to tell us the truth," Rhee said.

Rhee also said that Cohen provided information to Mueller's team related to the core Russia-related issues under investigation, but due to the nature of those investigations, declined to further detail.

— — —

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos of the Southern District of New York next argued that Cohen's actions harmed the interests of "free and transparent elections, and in committing these crimes, Cohen has eroded faith in the electoral process."

“Deception, brazenness, and greed,” is how SDNY's Roos then described Cohen's conduct, reminding the court of his interference with the election, and long history of willful tax cheating, among other shady business.

— — —

Michael Cohen then stood to speak at the podium, from a prepared statement.

From his speech:

"Today is the day that I am getting my freedom back."

"I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen that I deeply admired."

“I stand before your honor humbly and painfully aware that we are here for one reason.”

“I take full responsibility for each act that I pleaded guilty to,” including those implicating the “President of the United States of America.”

"Today is one of the most meaning days of my life."

My "weakness was a blind loyalty to Donald Trump."

"I have chosen this unorthodox path because the sooner that I am sentenced," the sooner I can return to my family.

"I do not need a cooperation agreement in place to do the right thing."

He then mentions his family members, by name, and says he brought pain and shame on his family. Mentions his mom, dad, and children, and says to them "I'm sorry." Long pause.

"The president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world," Cohen said mockingly, "calling me a rat."

He said Trump tried to influence the proceedings that "implicate" him.

He apologized again to his family before wrapping up. His voice cracked with apparent emotion, as he apologizes to "the people of the United States" for lying to us.

"You deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust."

Cohen then sat down.

— — —

Then, the sentence was imposed.

Judge Pauley spoke about the "smorgasboard" of crimes involving "deception" and motivated by "personal greed and ambition.”

Quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, Judge Pauley said of the tax-evasion charges against Cohen, "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

He said Cohen admitted that he made the illicit hush-money payments "at the coordination with and the direction of Individual-1."

"Each of these crimes standing alone warrant considerable punishment."

Pauley then reviewed Cohen's life, up to the time he began working for the Trump Organization.

"He thrived on his access to wealthy and powerful people, and he became one himself," he says.

Pauley says "the need for general deterrents is amplified in this case."

Pauley, who is from Long Island, adds that Cohen had a "comfortable childhood and had all the comforts of growing up in an upper middle class suburb on Long Island."

Somewhere along the way, however, Pauley says Cohen "lost his moral compass" and chose to "monetize" his closeness to the rich and powerful, via Trump.

Pauley then references the statement from Mueller's team at the Special Counsel's Office that Cohen cooperated on "core topics under investigation," and that the information that he has provided was "relevant and useful."

"Our system of justice would be less robust without the use of cooperating agreements with law enforcement."

Regarding the tax evasion, campaign finance, and false statement charges: "As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better," Pauley said.

Cohen's cooperation "does not wipe the slate clean."

"This court ... believes a significant term of imprisonment" is justified.

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/12/michael-cohen-sentenced-to-36.html

[124globalsociology]

Institutional Racism

Definition: Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism expressed through political and social institutions. It is shown through gaps between wealth, employment, housing, political power, education, etc. and is often implemented against people of color. 

What is the difference between subtle and overt racism?

Subtle racial discrimination is indirect and much harder to identify. Some examples of subtle racism are being accused of something unjustly or being treated suspiciously. Overt racism, on the other hand, is more blatant and direct. Some examples of overt racism are using racial slurs or physically harming someone based on their race. In this project, we will be looking at subtle racism in America. 

Institutional Racism at its Core

Two factors make fighting institutional racism difficult: 

1. The classical American path to mobility is disappearing

Job mobility has disappeared as employers advertise to their target audience, the white working class. The economy is becoming more polarized, meaning that jobs are divided into ones that pay a living wage and ones that are not sustainable to raise a family and maintain daily life. For many people of color (POC), this becomes an inescapable problem. Conquering poverty can appear impossible, and children of low income families also struggle to break out of poverty. This is a downward-spiraling cycle only reinforced by subtle institutional racism. 

2. Job networks

The institutional racism behind job networks is where jobs are divided into two major groups: skillful jobs and unskilled jobs. Part of the issue is that in today’s climate the skillful jobs category is mostly dominated by the white race due to institutional racism. Jobs then spread from a white person to their white friends, family, etc. A similar situation occurs in unskilled jobs, which is primarily full of POC also due to institutional racism. Then the job networks spread through POC communities and stay there for the most part. There has also been legislation in the past designed to prevent POC such as African Americans, Indigenous People, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and other marginalized ethnic groups from being able to obtain jobs in order to keep them from competing in the market with white workers, who were viewed as more deserving than they were. This is clearly not true, but sadly that was the way the world worked back then.

A diagram of the web of institutional racism and who it affects

Impacts on Education  

Educational segregation in history has left lasting effects on the education system. Yet, many people today do not realize that the system is still unequal because segregation is seen as a thing of the past, a past that our nation is not particularly proud of. 

In 1954, after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, the United States was theoretically desegregated. Yet, white Americans expressed their disapproval by resisting de facto segregation, believing that they themselves were the victims. They believed that spots in elite colleges and opportunities were stolen from their white students. Although there have been acts of legislation such as Brown v. Board of Education case, schools around the United States today still remain segregated.

Because public school funding is largely a result of property taxes, as well as financial support from state and federal governments, poorer communities have lower funded schools, less resources, and less qualified teachers. Thus wealthier, and often whiter, communities will spend more capita per person because their communities can afford to do so. This puts students in these lower-income communities at a disadvantage, making it more difficult for them to succeed and be accepted to a university, let alone afford one. For Hispanics and African Americans, dropout rates are much higher in schools and college attendance is much lower than with white students. Often times, students will drop out and get a low-skilled job to help support their families and succeeding at a university can be seen as unrealistic. The institutional educational racism from the past has left a cycle of poverty for many communities today, discouraging youth from moving upwards in life.

Impacts on Housing

In the mid-late 20th century, whites had an advantage in an overtly racist system, which is different than the type of racism we have today. The effects of this more noticeable racism still have long-lasting effects today. When schools became desegregated, white people that were afraid of this change moved from inner cities to suburbs, from public to private schools. They were also able to afford private schools, while most people of color were not. This meant that segregated white communities on the outskirts developed, and they all lived in the same neighborhoods. Housing today is getting more expensive, and gentrification favors the white upper-middle class. Cities and landlords realize they can raise their prices and white people will still be able to pay due to the inherent discord in the education system and how that relates to jobs.

Diagram of gentrification based on annual income for a family of four

It is very difficult for people of color to finance the property they do have. For example, African-Americans, are consistently denied mortgages by lenders, roughly twice the rate that whites are denied. Credit is also harder to establish, and the terms of loans tend to be much more severe. The homes that these poor African-Americans work to finance are often in segregated, destitute, isolated neighborhoods known as ghettoes, which continues to be the most racially segregated residential areas in the country to this day, while many white people live in privileged, suburban areas. The consequences of this disparity are high, as they affect access to education, jobs, and sufficient health care. The absence of a variety of stores to shop from often means that the prices from the ones that are there are much higher, further pushing POC into debt. Because well-paying jobs are difficult to come by, many in ghettos turn to illegal job markets as ways to earn money. Therefore crime rate increases.

   Suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles                                  

Skid Row, Los Angeles

Impacts on Health

Institutionalized racism does have a serious impact on the health and well-being of many POC. They are more likely to live in areas surrounded by highways where they experience significant amounts of noise and air pollution. They are also often times forced to live in proximity to chemical dumping sites, increasing their susceptibility to cancer and other major diseases. Poor people of color also end up being forced to live in areas prone to natural disasters, such as floodplains.

These health risks are especially noticeable in the Latinx community. Many live in cities with buildings not up to code, and high levels of pollution and lead contamination. Because of this, Latinx children often develop asthma and/or cancer and other dangerous diseases.

Latinx people also receive less sufficient health care than white people do- they have less access to health insurance and doctors ethnically similar to them who understand their cultures. The health care they do receive is often less on par than with white patients. For example, they are more likely to be misdiagnosed and undergo invasive procedures such as amputation, and many are not given painkillers for painful injuries such as bone fractures. 

Institutional Racism Today                                 

For many white Americans today, racism is a relic of the past that is an issue people no longer have to be concerned about. To these people, the only racism that exists is overt racism such as slurs and name-calling, rather than subtle institutionalized racism that much more prevalent today. Despite the fact that we are living in an increasingly more liberal society in which more people of color have access to universities, police departments are desegregated, and more POC are seen out in day-to-day life, still we see the implementation of institutional racism, where POC are either consciously or subconsciously prevented opportunities in the workplace, education system, government, and other areas. 

Institutional Racism in Global Sociology

In summary, much of the inequality and racism in our world can be seen over time in our nation’s institutions. The system of institutional racism inhibits progress between people. When the system grants inherent advantages to a certain group of people, progress is stopped regarding relations between countries. People then become distrustful of other groups, and this is only reinforced by the media and institutions.   

Why is the world unequal?

Under the lens of institutional racism, the world is unequal because Europeans a couple hundred years ago believed that people of darker skin were inherently inferior and treated them as such. Instances of this include segregation in the Western world and the slave trade lasting through the 1800s. Even today, the systems of housing, education, and healthcare are unfairly bent towards white people, and the ideal person being white is reinforced throughout the globe. This is obviously unjust and we need to act against this subtle white supremacy 

Application

Today, the long lasting and problems of institutional racism can appear daunting, especially to the people it affects most. However, to make real progress against this injustice, we must gather as one and fight to make change, as did activists who fought for equality among POC. Steps to enact change can start with legislation or even activism in our own communities. Starting small, expanding the knowledge of the privileged, and working to make change in our local institutions are steps we must make to change the norms of our society.

Discussion Questions:

1. Are there other places subtle racism manifests itself? Where are these places and what do they have in common?

2. How can we counteract racism, especially if it’s inherently part of the system? How can we spread awareness of this kind of racism?

Resources: 

#racism #institutionalracism #gentrification #systemicracism #subltevsovert #education #housing #healthrisks #segregation #jobnetworks #jobmobility #whiteprivelige #culturalnorms #changethenorms #fightthesystem #changetheinstitutions 

Peer-reviewed:

Miller, J., & Garran, A. M. (2007). The Web of Institutional Racism. Smith College Studies in

Social Work, 77(1), 33-0_15.The Web of Institutional Racism

Rucker, Julian M, Enrique W Neblett, and Nkemka Anyiwo. “Racial Identity, Perpetrator Race,

Racial Composition of Primary Community, and Mood Responses to Discrimination.”

Journal of Black Psychology 40.6 (2014): 539-62. Web. Perpetrator Race, Racial Composition of Primary Community, and Mood Responses to Discrimination

Not peer-reviewed: 

“Institutional Racism, Part I: The Impacts on Access to Education and Employment.” Nation’s

Cities Weekly 12 June 2000: 1. Business Insights: Global. Web. 7 Nov. 2019. (Institutional Racism Part 1: The Impacts on Access to Education and Employment)

#publicsociology #racism #institutions #norms #activism #gentrification #education #housing #health #jobs #employment #networks #black liberation #submission #human rights #humanrights