The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one. – By Julianna Baggott

Interesting article on an issue near and dear to my heart: misogyny within the storytelling community. Baggott touches on the side of the issue that I find the most disturbing, that recognized books “are not only written by men but also have male themes, overwhelmingly… war, boyhood, adventure.” As if writing about childbirth, love, community, and other “women’s issues” are somehow unworthy of praise.  Not to say that women don’t go to war and men don’t fall in love, but I am sick of living in a world in which to be considered equal, I have to live up to a man’s definition of strength – be physically strong, fight well (kick-ass heroines anyone?… which, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE them, but that’s not the only way to be a strong female character), earn a lot of money, be a CEO…. If I’m strong because I’m mystical, compassionate, and good at working with people instead of mowing them down, clearly I’m not a feminist, or at least not equal to somebody logical, authoritarian, and violent.

James Cameron Hates America – by Tom Shone

Dude, the man who wrote Rambo and Titanic? Did you know he’s a Kanuck?? Yup. And he hates America. At least according to extreme right wing sites such as Movieguide (which I’ll get to in a moment. This might be my new favorite website to mock). I haven’t seen Avatar yet, but so far I’ve heard that while it’s stunning fabulousity is earning bajillions of dollars, it is a desecration of all known human values for its (a) America hating, people hating, God hating, capitalism hating left-wing madness and its (b) white-messiah-complex same old right-wing-racist-in-liberal-clothing storyline. Dude. I totally need to see this movie for myself. How can that many people possibly be offended all at once and it not be a South Park episode?

Movieguide

Umm… Let me start this by saying that I don’t agree with the way movies are currently rated, including items like two uses of “fuck” isn’t, in my opinion, less appropriate for children than decapitated heads being tossed over a castle wall (see http://www.mpaa.org/Ratings_Rules.pdf pg 8 for ruling on cuss words; see LOTR: Return of the King for a PG-13 movie with decapitated heads being catapulted over a wall) and how is it possible that Cassanova and Inglourious Basterds have the same rating? And how is Hostel not NC-17… while Clerks had to appeal their original NC-17 designation to get an R?

So… a new rating system would, in my opinion, not be inappropriate.

However.

Movieguide has a very special rating system for people who want to know if watching this movie may torpedo their chances at heaven. Again, I’m actually cool with this (I certainly wouldn’t mind if somebody put together a pagan movieguide to help me decide what to see and what’s going to just make me angry). What I don’t understand is, why in their Christian guide, they felt the need to warn people if the movies have themes that are: communist, environmentalist, feminist, internationalist, politically correct, and/or socialist. Does Christ hate the environment and love capitalism? I don’t remember that part of the Bible where Jesus said “you’re welcome for the healing; that’ll be $200.”

But what I really love about this site is the rating system they use, a shorthand involving 29 different elements like ‘O’ for “Occult worldview, occult elements or Satanism”, all of which can be increased by adding Os, so “OOO” means it REALLY ups the Occult, as opposed to O which has some occult and OO which is… fair to midlin’ occult? So you can have a movie with a rating that looks like: PaPaPa, PCPC, EE, FRFR, CoCo, AcapAcapAcap, C, B, O, LLL, VVV, S, NN, A, DD, MM (yes, that’s an actual rating… for Avatar) which translates as:

Unfortunately, Avatar doesn’t have my favorite shorthand designation, which is Ho for “homosexual worldview or homosexuality (incl. sodomy & lesbianism)”. I’d really love to see a movie with a HoHoHo rating; that would totally make my day.

And I just heard it for the first time. So here ya go.

I was reading an article the other day about my state’s revamping of history curriculum (which, I think curriculum should be regularly looked at and revamped. I’m good with this so far), and two of the committee chairs are pushing for a history curriculum that teaches the importance of Christianity in shaping America, and how, according to them, our founding fathers wanted a Christian nation. *head to desk* This new wtfery is beyond me.  But some politicians see a lot of power in the religious right and are going to wield it like a club, apparently and, well, maybe somebody actually believes that the people who wrote “freedom of religion” meant “right-wing theocracy”.

Just goes to show that everybody truly does believe their views are the center from which all others are judged.

Anywho, I am jaded enough to know this sort of madness will regularly come from politicians, and feel confident that the majority of the committee will turn down their truthiness version of history. What always bugs me more than politicians, is the people that post comments on them. Somebody actually said something to the effect of  ”Christians help people with Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army; atheists do nothing.”

You know what? As a religious person, I am regularly shamed by the atheists and the agnostics that I am friends with. They are some of the most ethical, fun-loving, least hypocritical people on the planet, and every good act they do has no fear of hell behind it. They are good people… because it’s the right thing to do. I admire them.  (Those screaming people with bad hygiene that you see on TV are about as typical of an atheist as Jerry Falwell is of a Christian)

And so, back to the song, I love it, because it reminds us that the celebration of family and the turning of the seasons is not a religious thing, but a human thing. I can love carols even as I don’t agree with all the words, and this doesn’t make me a bad person… it just makes me a person. Celebrating people, all people, our traditions, our faiths (even if that’s faith in humanity, or just faith that you and your friends can make a difference), this is a human party. And what better season to have one, than the end of the year when so many different cultures from all over the world have found a reason to gather? Christmas, a celebration established from many religions that came before it, is for everyone.

Anyone who follows this blog probably thinks I’m a severe leftists (I swear, I’m not. I just sound like one online.), so if you normally disagree with my politics, well, this might be the post for you.

Why ‘The People Speak’ and the Zinn Education Project May Be Illegal in Public Schools

OK. So… you ever like what somebody’s trying to say and hate the way they’re saying it?

• Education needs serious reform: check!
• History class can (and should) be used as a call to social action: check!
• All history – what we did right as well as what we seriously screwed the pooch on, all the often twisted roads to how we got where we are now – should be taught: check!
• There is no such thing as a non-biased history lesson, so we might as well come right out and say “hey, this is biased”: check!
• Students should be taught to question everything: check!

These are the stated goals of the Zinn project, and I believe with my whole heart that these are incredibly admirable goals. Then I read the lesson plan that’s posted in the article, and while I disagree with nothing in there… well… I guess in my mind there’s such a thing as too biased.

“Unity” – what does that mean? As humans, we are naturally social and we group ourselves.  It’s how we survived as a hunter-gatherer culture whose enemies had better eyesight, bigger claws and thicker skin: we made tribes.

In modern American society, we don’t have the hunter-gatherer collective defending the tribe from panthers, but we have our facsimile standing under the Friday Night Lights watching the local boys defend the home field from the Neighbor HS Panthers. We want a group to root for, to love on, to defend. Take two people who normally wouldn’t say two words to each other, stick ‘em in a stadium, and they’re suddenly wearing similar dress, carrying the same symbols, chanting in unison, and then moshing in the same pit when a field goal sneaks through the uprights to win the game.

We do the same thing with countries that we do with high school football teams: we have symbols and pennants, colors and mottoes, and these things are used to promote tribe unity… and here’s where the idealogical divide seems to split apart, because the same things that are used to promote unity in the form of pride and loyalty (what conservatives typically emphasize, and two things I think are great) are also used to promote conformity and what I’ll call a tribal psychopathy (what liberals tend to emphasize, and two things that I have a huge problem with – and I’ll get to what I mean by tribal psychopathy in a minute).

I will stand by pride and loyalty as good things, provided they don’t swing to an extreme. Pride gives us the confidence to challenge ourselves and dare things that we otherwise wouldn’t. (“We’re going to contest and we’re taking on the bigger, richer schools of Houston – and we’re going to look GOOD doing it! ‘Cause we’re MHS Theater, and we’re awesome!”) And loyalty makes us give people a second chance when they screw up – and we all will screw up. We need loyalty.

On the other side…

Conformity is a mistreatment of members of your own tribe, and I don’t think I need to proselytize on why required (or even encouraged) group-think is bad anywhere outside of a mammoth-hunting party, a sports stadium, or a group artistic endeavor (good actors and techies know that the good of the play is more important than the good of the single performer – you don’t suddenly decide to do your own thing on opening night, no matter how good your idea is).  (Just like pride and loyalty can have their bad sides, conformity, used judiciously and thoughtfully, as much as it pains me to say, does have a good side).

So what is tribal psychopathy?

A psychopath is someone who is incapable of feeling empathy for other people or remorse for their actions against them. According to an article in the New Yorker, pyschopathy could affect up to 1% of American men (women are much less likely to utterly lack empathy… go figure), so it’s much more prevalent than people think and doesn’t usually result in serial killers. It does result in that ass who doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as he gets what he wants. Problem is, with a psychopath, this guy’s not ignoring the feelings of others or somehow squashing his guilt, like most of us tend to assume… it never occurred to his brain to have those feelings. Psychopaths will sometimes seek out useful people to make “friends” with, but when it comes down to it, their tribes only ever have one person in it.

For the rest of us, though, somewhere along the way of developing our natural tribe mentality, we realize that if there is an “us”, then there must be a “them.” And those other tribes are competing with us for the world’s limited resources, like good hunting grounds… and oil. (And while there might be enough to go around for now, our children’s children’s children are going to have a problem, so we should be forward thinking and start staking claims to provide for our children’s futures.) And while, again, it’s very natural to look out for your own tribe, a tribal psychopath is someone who, while likely caring and loyal to people within his/her tribe, feels no empathy towards any other tribes and no guilt for any actions performed against them.

I think tribal psychopathy is not only a lot more common than regular psychopathy (and if you know 100 men, according to some psychologists, you know a psychopath. As a schoolteacher who averaged 100 new students per year, every two years, I taught a psychopath. So…. it wasn’t me! It was them!) but tribal psychopathy is, to an extent at least, socially accepted. Certainly a lot more accepted than the Tribe Me form of psychopathy.

So… back to the article that you probably forgot about since I haven’t mentioned it in ten years… it seems to me, that Zinn is trying to get rid of tribal psychopathy (which is a bad thing that we should get rid of) by getting rid of tribalism. “Imagine all the people, living life as one…” and all that.

I don’t think it’s going to work. I think rejecting tribe goes against the core of human nature, because everyone but psychopaths have a tribe. (Showtime even gave Dexter tribal vestiges so audiences would like him. Imagine Dexter without his confusion over his wife, father, sister, and adopted kids. Yeah. Suddenly he ain’t so cool.) Some people might say they have no tribe, but if you study them, they’ve redirected their tribal loyalties onto an idealogical clique. For example, “I’m an artist/scientist/member of ‘x’ religious group/etc., not beholden to country but to mankind… and my fellow artists/scientists/members of ‘x’ religious group/etc.” Surprisingly, I sometimes find ideological tribes to be the most hateful of others because they (a) often don’t realize that’s a tribe, (b) justify rejecting people whose tribes are anything but ideological in nature as unenlightened or uneducated, and (c) can get the hate on in a spectacular fashion for tribes who are ideologically not aligned with their own – a difference in geography is nothing compared to a difference of opinion on gun control. My favorite true life quote ever of this type was, “I hate Republicans because Republicans hate people.” Seriously? Would you listen to what you just said?

Anyway, everyone has a tribe – probably multiple tribes – and it isn’t all of humanity.  Tribalism is an inherent part of human nature. Tribal psychopathy, however, isn’t inherent to all humanity – a lot of people love their tribe without forgetting the sovereignty and potential efficacy of other tribes – which means we can combat tribal psychopathy. But we need to work with human nature instead of trying to change human nature. Don’t tell people not to group; you’ll fail. Make it not acceptable inside your group to hate other groups. That I’ve seen be successful. Wave that flag… and make sure it stands for something worthwhile. That’s the way to a better humanity.

Ira Glass from a series on writing…

This was really interesting to me, because I had a sort of epiphany. We always talk about “killing our darlings” as in getting rid of scenes that don’t work or whatever, as if we have this feeling like each word from our brains is gold… but that’s not really true. Most writers I know don’t think that their words are all golden. Most writers I know seem to think most of their words are crap (even when they’re not), so why the trouble cutting?

Reminds me of my high schoolers, and sometimes with their writing it would be three pages long, but it would take two pages to get to a point, and I’d be like, “You need to cut the first two pages; they’re brainstorming. They have no meaning,” and I’d get these horrified looks like, “But I did that work! I should get credit for it! How will people know how much work I did if I only show them 1/3 of it??” I think a lot of our reluctance to let go is not that we’re so in love with everything we put down, but that we want ‘E’s for effort; a “what I lack in quality I make up for in quantity” sort of thing. And a lot of the world growing up seems to work that way – from the simple: show your work in math – to the more morally complicated: we don’t ask where the money comes from, we just know that more is better.

But that isn’t the case anymore. As artists, we need to so enjoy what we do that we create without the need for credit. Then every scene we excise, every doodle that ends up in the recycle bin, every camera shot that gets erased was a fun day that we had with our craft, and that is sufficient to satisfy. A little sacrifice to the muses, if you prefer to think of it that way. I realize that that must be damn hard when you’re on a deadline, but I think the principle is sound.

My second creative love after writing, the art of theater, is very frustrating and fascinating at the same time because by it’s very nature, the act of communicating your art is the act of deleting it. Once a performance is done, it will never again happen just that way. Once a show closes, that piece art is gone from the world, and no recording can ever bring it back with it’s true creative magic. (Food and wine are another one of these art forms, though I think mentally easier to deal with the “consumption” thereof). I think those of us that concretize  our work in its creation (by committing it to paper or clay or whatever your medium) have a harder time letting go because we don’t have to. But an actor would scoff at the idea of holding onto a rehearsal. How do you do that? And if you did, what would be the point? All the effort of actors, directors, scene designers, etc. produce a product that is an insane reduction of all the work that went into it. Two hours in the viewing from months of labor by tens to hundreds of people… and then the product is lost to oblivion. But theater artists revel in that ephemeral nature. That “if you weren’t there, you can’t have it.” And I think all of us can learn from that attitude.

Most of the shots Michael Jordan made in his lifetime were not during a game. But each one he made alone, outside of an audience, helped him be the man we loved to watch on the court. And so shall I learn from his example.

And now for something (funny) that demonstrates the importance of letting go of some of those ideas… How to create a weapon that is devastating and unstoppable, from Basic Instructions.

(And I somehow managed to get writing, teaching, theater, basketball, and Star Wars all into one post!!! Hmm… what is missing…. VAMPIRES, VAMPIRES, VAMPIRES!!!… OK, now I think I have all the topics my life revolves around. )

I’ve been running into some awesome quotes and stuff lately, so I thought I’d share a few.

Steve Faber from his article in Script Magazine called Mining for Real Comedy in a Techno-Virtual Lexicon Pit:

Arlie Hochschild from his article in The New York Times called The State of Families, Class and Culture:

In survey after survey, Americans show up as valuing marriage more than people almost anywhere else. Yet at the same time we have the highest divorce — and romantic breakup — rate in the world… Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden… The culprit is not the absence of family values, I believe, but a continual state of unconscious immersion in a market turnover culture. It is this that sets us apart from a more stable Europe.

Not a quote, but if you’ve got a little under and hour and want to see something really cool and hopeful, Rick Steves goes to Iran.

And in case you want to see something less hopeful… you know it’s bad when John Stewart can’t make it all funny: Rape-Nuts.

A totally random new book technology thing called Vook that I’d dying to try. And for $6.99? I guess that’s cheaper than death.

And finally, save Dollhouse! Catch up on hulu.com and keep tuning in!