kpduty

How sad am I that I got REALLY excited when I saw this?

Ahhh, boxes of X-Files magazines...how I wish I had you back.

Okay, not really.

Please, New X-Files Movie, I beg of you...please don't suck.

Today, I've run headlong into the hell that is piracy and Hollywood's life in the dark ages.

(This is going to involve me admitting something I'm incredibly ashamed of, but please don't mock me. Or at least, don't mock me a lot.)

For some bizarre reason, I've been particularly determined to watch EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH. I've seen it before, it's a silly movie. But for some reason I've REALLY wanted to watch it. I've been to two Targets trying to find a copy. And wouldn't you know, they had it on sale, but only in full screen.

So I go on the internets and try to find it streaming somewhere. I'm in the Hulu beta, but there aren't any movies there. It's on iTunes, but I need the newest version. There's an entry on Amazon's download service, but I need their player. Same for CinemaNow. I'm like, ALL I WANT TO DO IS WATCH THE FUCKING MOVIE HOW MANY THINGS DO I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD AND HOW MANY HOOPS MUST I JUMP THROUGH!?!?! Like seriously, I'm willing to pay and everything. Just put it on my computer already.

Argh. I was seriously like, fuck it, I'll go on Pirate Bay and get the fucking thing on Divx. But then I was like, fuck it, I'm not going to prison just cuz I'm desperate for some hot Dane Cook action.

So I'm sitting here waiting for some stuff to finish installing. CinemaNow allows you to burn the movie to DVD and it includes all the same extras that are on the store-bought movie. Plus it has a menu and box art if you want to dress up your disc.

I will let you know how it goes.

If I spend an extra couple of bucks, Dane Cook's ass is in GOOD LUCK CHUCK. But I probably shouldn't press my luck right out of the gate like this.

This one's going to be long (bear with me), and most of it will be cut-and-paste from an email to The Best Friend From College, because I just don't feel like going over it again.

So I'd signed up for this class. It was with a woman I'd studied in Library School. Seriously, she's a big name in information science, so I thought it'd be really awesome if I had a class with her.

Big Mistake.

I just dropped the class. I hate doing it, because a) I've wasted a shitload of money that could have gone to the ARCHOS 605 w/WIFI (hint hint) and b) I hate feeling like I'm a quitter.

But seriously, every day before class, I'd go to work...I'd be fine, and then a few hours before I had to leave to go to class...explosive diarrhea. I'm not joking. EVERY WEEK. It was like my body was begging me not to go. But I'd go, and I'd end up getting REALLY ANGRY about everything, and then I'd come home and not do any of the reading, and not write any of the papers because FUCK IT, FUCKER and then I'd rush to catch up which pissed me off even more so I'd just throw my hands up and say FUCK IT, FUCKER until the day of class, when the whole cycle would begin anew.

I thought it would get better, I honestly did. I WANTED to get it, I WANTED to really understand what was going on. But the thing is, I DID get it, I DID understand.

ARGH!!

So here's where the cutting and pasting starts. Let me explain the class as I explained it to the Best Friend...

*********************

I'm taking a class with this woman whose theories I studied in library school. She's a big name in learning theory and whatnot. She's a big ol' feminazi. We're not being graded on anything from class, but on how we think. Seriously, you have to show an evolution in your way of thinking for you to get a good grade. It's not enough, learning things and being able to regurgitate them on paper. You have to learn a new way of seeing things. Which means seeing them like she does.

The first class, we watched Song of the South. I don't think I need to tell you that I cried like a baby through the whole thing. At the end, the professor tells us this story about how she was adopted, and Song of the South was the first movie her new parents took her to, and it was her all-time favorite movie, until she watched it again a few weeks before class, and now she hates Disney for ruining her childhood since all her good memories are associated with a sexist, racist, classist film of pure unbridled evil. So I said (during my allotted one-minute speaking time--seriously, we're there to LISTEN, not question other's ideas: take that shit outside class, if you want to know why someone feels the way they do) that while I get the whole "magical Negro" thing and whatnot, why we can't just enjoy the movie for what it is, which is a silly little movie about an elderly man imparting wisdom to a child through the anthropomorphic stories of his people's culture? And thus, in one fell swoop of a minute, I became the class racist.

It's awesome.

I was telling my boss, you read these stories about David Horowitz and his fight against campus liberals and you're all like, that's man's a total nutcase asshole. But then, I don't think I've ever met anyone so far left that they fall out of their chair. We're talking about body horror: Cronenberg, Barker, Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, stuff I like to think I know a little something about. I have a feeling it's going to devolve into a tirade about degradation of women and Nazis. She is somehow brilliantly able to connect everything to Nazis in some way, I will give her that.

Here's the two things that got me:

1) A black girl in my class raised her hand the week after we saw the movie and said, "You know, I see how you think Song of the South is racist, but seriously, compared to some of the stuff out today, I think it's pretty silly to get so riled up about this sixty year old cartoon." And the WHITE professor tells her that of course she thinks that, because she (the student) was brought up wrong, and has been conditioned to ignore racism, and it's her job as teacher to correct her way of thinking.

2) In one moment, with one word (RACIST), all discussion of the movie stopped. Instead, the class (which is supposedly taking this class to learn to "think for themselves") began parroting "IT'S RACIST IT'S RACIST" and that was the end of it. Nothing about how the Brer Rabbit stories came into being, about the connection to African trickster tales and Anansi spider or anything like that. There's no discussion of the briefly glimpsed layered relationship between the plantation owner and Uncle Remus (who hint that they grew up together), the obviously loving relationship between Remus and slave Aunt Tempy (Hattie McDaniel), nothing. And yes, it paints an unrealistic portrait of slavery, but it's a goddamned children's movie, for chrissakes, not fucking ROOTS. To me, and I could be wrong about this because this whole thing still pisses me off and it's been almost a month so I may not be thinking straight, it's far more racist to just label this movie and that's the end of it, wipe my hands of it there you go.

ARGH!!!

So, I don't know if you're familiar with Henry Jenkins. He's at MIT. He's the first to sort of coin the idea of a "fan scholar" of popular culture. He put out this collection of essays we're using as a text, The Wow Climax, and the essay we had to read is about Matthew Barney, and how art criticism has done a disservice by ignoring his obvious homages to horror movies and splatterpunk and whatnot, but it's part and parcel of the general ignorance of criticism toward "low art" in general. And he's got these interesting theories about body mutilation and the current fascination with visceral horror and torture and stuff, Cronenberg and Barker's Cenobites and all that. And I just KNOW the whole class is basically going to be "horror bad, girls die, grrrr."

Did you ever see Tough Guise? It's this documentary that's basically this talking head blaming pop culture for male violence, and masculinity is an act and whatnot. AGAIN, I outted myself as the closeted woman-hater that I am. NONE of his statistics had ANY attribution AT ALL. It was just one bar graph after another. And since the documentary was from 1997, I'd be interested in seeing related statistics on crime perpetrated by young women (what with all the YouTube videos and stuff). And during my "minute" I pointed out that I had a real problem with this lack of attribution, to which the professor replied, "Oh, those statistics are all correct, I just know it." SERIOUSLY!!! Well, then, okay. That's settled. WTF?!?!?!

The best, that I haven't even told you, is that this class is an exercise in the fine art of busy-work. Seriously, elementary school teachers could learn from this woman. See, you READ the assigned chapters. Then you go to class, and everyone breaks off into GROUPS, in which you're supposed to talk about the reading, but everyone just talks sports and how much they drank last night. Then you FILL OUT A PIECE OF PAPER, noting what you personally shared with the group. Then everyone in the group signs it. This is your TICKET, which means you can now write a three page paper going into the reading in more depth. Without your TICKET you can turn in a paper, but the professor won't grade it. Then we have DISCUSSION TIME, which is basically 30 minutes of the professor explaining AGAIN how the syllabus works what with all these forms to fill out, and fifteen minutes of her talking about Nazis. Then we watch a movie, usually something about how media is evil and we're all ignorant for falling for their evil corporate crap and we're all going to turn into wife beaters and Nazis. As we watch, we FILL OUT A BLUE SHEET OF PAPER, noting our thoughts and feelings while watching the movie. Then we have DISCUSSION, which in actuality is everyone in the class getting one minute to speak into a digital recorder about what we thought the most challenging issue of the movie was for us. As other students speak, we are to record our reactions to their comments on our blue sheet of paper. Then we turn those in for a grade. The grade is based on spelling, and whether we're "getting it," by which she means, and I'm quoting/paraphrasing: if you don't really understand Habermas, I mean, you've completely misunderstood his theory, if you can at least though your writing show me that you're trying to understand it and incorporate it into your thinking, you'll get a good grade. And then we have a presentation we're supposed to give on "something you love that you want other people in the class to love, too" (I'm doing my new obsession, Bollywood movies) and there's a 15-page paper to go with that.

Busy work.

The only reason why I'm still attending is that my boss said, if you end up going to grad school and she's in your field, you're going to run into her sooner or later so you might as well get it out of the way now. But so far all I've managed to do is expose myself as the racist, sexist, homophobic baby-eater I've so cleverly concealed up until now.

It's just insane. I mean, she's all about not regurgitating, but I know what her line is. I get it, Nazis and wife-beaters and violence and rape, oh my. And what do I do? I REGURGITATE that crap back to her because that's what she wants to hear. And there's no discussion, no questioning, nothing that'd inspire anyone to think "outside the box," as she so cliché-ingly puts it. I GET IT. Now try looking at it from my point of view, you old bag of gas.

*********************

The thing that's really funny about this, reading it back now, is how the line jumps out at me: "we are to record our reactions to their comments on our blue sheet of paper." So I write this to The Best Friend, and wouldn't you know it, I go into class and one of the first comments the professor makes is, I'm actually not at all interested in your thoughts and reactions to other people's comments, what I want is the connections you're making between ideas.

Connections you're making between ideas that could possibly be completely wrong (according to her), but at least you're "making connections?"

Every week, it's like this. Every week, she changes her mind about exactly what it is she wants. And there's no room for questioning, no time given for discussion. And everybody seems completely fine with that.

The final straw was when we watched this film called "Dreamworlds," about the images of women in music videos. It was pretty much all stuff from the eighties: big hair bands and the scantily clad women throwing themselves at the band. There were some clips from "no-talent Luther Campbell" (of 2 Live Crew, as the narrator called him) and "King of Sleaze, Prince" (again, quoting the narrator). It was basically an indictment of music videos as setting up this fantasy where all the women are sluts who fight over men who objectify them and discard them after sex like so much wadded up tissue, and the message this sends to kids who watch the videos: that women deserve to be raped, because secretly they like it and are asking for it.

And then there's this awesome scene near the end where the film splices clips from Billy Idol and Kiss videos with Jodie Foster getting raped in The Accused. Because they're exactly the same, get it? (And if we needed to cry because that was so powerful, that's okay, the professor said to the class before the movie).

At the end of the film, the narrator explains that these scenes are not indicative of all videos. Nor is censorship the answer. We just need to become more aware that these scenes are there, and they're desensitizing us to rape and violence against women. Music videos are made by men, for men, at the expense of women. And here are some statistics about how much men want to rape women and how much women want to be raped, because media brainwashes them into thinking it's acceptable. THE END.

So, by the end I'm seething. My blue sheet of paper has hash marks all over it: BIAS!!! So, naturally like the ignorant fool I am, I open my mouth. Correlation does not imply causation and all of that. Can't you SEE, the girl in front of me implored, some people aren't as SMART as YOU. They think these videos are REALITY! And in the back of my mind, I finished her thought for her: what the hell is WRONG with you that you don't GET IT?

Maybe I'm too paranoid. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I mean, she's been teaching this class for twenty-odd years, right? Every class, I walked in immediately placing myself in a defensive position. Maybe I went looking for a fight.

I feel like I've been broken by this class. Why can't I look at things with a critical eye, and still enjoy them? Why is it that so far in this class, EVERYTHING that I love--rap, horror movies, genial elderly black men, pro wrestling--is bad? And that I am, by extension, ignorant and bad? Every time I go to class, I feel like everything I like, everything I enjoy, is wrong. And when I try in my sad little minute to say, hey, wait a minute, good can come of this, too, the air seems to change, like everyone is clicking their tongues and shaking their heads at how sad and stupid I am.

I don't feel like I can adequately articulate it. I'm just totally worn out from the whole experience.

My soul is tired.

I need a vacation.