Thursday, June 10, 2010

Happy Endings

I find it funny that most movies end with everyone pairing up like the nuclear apocalypse has rained down upon us and they need to repopulate the planet.

It may seem strange and bizarre, but two people can work together and not hook up. It happens quite often. Half of my class of sixty or seventy people are single, after being in the same classes for the past five years. And most of the rest are with people they happened across one day.

I came to this revelation while watching 'Toy Story 2' on Disney the other day. Woody the cowboy had Bo Peep. And suddenly, Buzz had the Jessie the cowgirl, and Mr. Potato Head got the Miss Potato Head. Looking at the third in the series, we get the irritating pairing of a Barbie doll (a character which had little if any exposure in the previous movies outside of cameos) and Ken. I say irritating because almost all commercials focus on this, as if 'love at first sight' is completely new to writing.

It would be refreshing to see one movie where the leading actor and actress do not fall in love. Doubly so for movies where the two only just meet for a few days and share maybe three pages worth of dialogue.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Men in Skirts

Some newspaper recently decided that the best way to lampoon the Philadelphia Flyers (who are off at the moment chasing the hockey championship) was to [poorly] photoshop one of the players in a skirt. With the caption, "Looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane."

The initial reaction will probably be, "oh, but who cares about that ol' rag?" Well, that 'rag' just happens to be the Chicago Tribune, which just so happens to be eighth largest newspaper circulation in the United States. And this article managed to slip between the collective cracks of quite a few editors. The writers, the editors, and god knows who others looked at this article, and gave it the seal of approval.

Are we really in an age where it's still considered an insult and a slur to call someone a woman? The worst way that this paper could think of to debase the man's athletic ability is that... he plays like a woman? Oooo, scary. 'Plays like Jane' ignores the fact that women do play hockey, and with a good amount of skill.

Their apology reeks of the tired 'it was just a joke, loosen up!' excuse. It's so damn easy to sit from your position of privilege, where your gender, race, and sexuality isn't used as a general epithet for weakness or deviance or what have you, and say unto others that it's just a joke. You don't have to live with it and deal with it every day of your life.

I could go on and on, but I won't. I know most of my readers are not low watt bulbs, no, you guys are like those fancy new ones which are 50% brighter while using 30% less power. But that here, 2010, the staff of a large newspaper saw no inherent problem with using sex as a means to insult someone, and then apologised half-assed, shocks me.

Almost as bad as the completely stupid coverage of what Elena Kagan was wearing and whether she crossed her legs or not.