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Books Lying Open:
Soul-Devouring Worry:
Answer of the Day:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment -- PotM
Archive Flux:
How do you feel about the cat? Yes, we're easily amused by each other. -- April 27, 2005 |
Monday May 2, 2005 | |
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD
Archives "I would argue that the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance. Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?" --US Senator Rick Santorum | ||
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We had a relatively eventful weekend, with a trip to The City, via BART, on Saturday night, the gym and shopping with weird social interactions on Sunday, and much, much more! Well, not really, "more." That was pretty much all of it. More on the weekend stuff below; up here there's reader mail and news.
Long time reader Caaroid sent a pair of interesting mails last week; the first about Star Wars and Paris Hilton, and the second about King Arthur, which I foolishly watched and reviewed on Friday. Here's part of his first mail, which begins by quoting me from Wednesday's blog.
The fact that she always looks like she's stoned or horny, and is usually falling out of her clothing doesn't hurt either. Caaroid's email continues:
He's essentially correct, except that Paris' daddy didn't do shit except have slut daughters and manage not to entirely piss away the family fortune. The Hilton money is two generations old, earned by granddaddy back in the early 1900s when robber barons were running amok and there were fortunes to be taken. Also, I'll give Paris some credit; there are hundreds of very rich trust fund daughters out there, girls who have no talent other than rich parents, and how many of them have achieved the A-list celebrity and fame they all so desperately crave? Being that famous is damn hard, even with tabloids and America's ongoing love affair with sluts. Britney Spears had it a few years ago, but she married Cletus and got fat and vanished from the radar. Pam Anderson has it, largely based on giant implants and a succession of freak show boyfriends. Christina Aguilera has never quite had it despite trying really, really hard. Anna Kournikova had it and might still, though I've seen far less media obsession over her of late. Lots of actresses (Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, JLo, etc.) have it and lose it over time, depending on how their careers are going, but compare Paris to the rest of those people and realize that she's never actually done anything! Kournikova never won anything in singles, but at least she was in tennis tournaments and on TV for those. Paris is entirely a media construction, famous for being at every movie premiere and party, along with sucking cock on video, and now she's done a couple of reality shows and has a bit part in an upcoming cheesy horror movie, but with her the cart came before the horse. Most people become famous from a movie or TV role, and then go to premieres and maybe become really famous if they have a look and attitude. Paris did that backwards; she became a celebrity out of thin air, and then got a TV show and movie role based on her illusionary fame. The famous last name doesn't hurt, but really, how much is that helping? It's not like she's the daughter of some famous celebrity, Liv Tyler style, and her last name isn't a hot celebrity or designer brand. I could see free fame for Paris Abercrombie, or Paris Gucci, or Paris Jolie... but Hilton? I think of old, stodgy brick hotels when I hear that name. It's like if Suzie Travelodge, or Jane Howard-Johnson, or Mary Ramada suddenly popped up as a minor celebrity, and then became a mid-range celebrity, and then somehow started appearing on every single tabloid and entertainment TV show without actually having done a damn thing to deserve the attention.
Caaroid also commented on my King Arthur review:
The dumbest thing about the battles in King Arthur were that in the end it was the invading army of Saxons, who are all well-equipped mercenaries, against a bunch of blue-painted Woads, who as Caaroid points out, are basically farmers and peasants. (Though they are never shown doing any actual farming or peasanting, or in fact doing anything whatsoever other than hiding in the woods and attacking the Romans and then the Saxons. What do they eat?) At first the Woads had great success with their archery, which was somewhat plausible: okay, I can buy the forest people being very skilled archers, even though Kiera Knightley's arms were far, far, far too thin to pull a simple wooden bow string hard enough to fire the long arrow shots she was supposedly making. But they were winning with their bows, as they rained down devastating waves of arrows on the Saxons, an invading army that displayed all the war strategy of six year olds playing Risk (let's walk forward all in a huge group and get shot a bunch, guys). Arrow after arrow fired, most of them striking the stationary bad guys, until suddenly the Woads, who were basically naked and carrying daggers at best, threw down their bows and charged in for hand to hand combat with great howls of blood lust. And I thought the Saxons were the ones without intelligent strategy! Up close the Saxons were all larger, more skilled, had longer swords and better armor, and had spent their entire adult lives fighting in armies. Needless to say, the outnumbered Woads won, though as I described in my review, the battle never showed any ebb and flow. It just went on in the background while the heroes had their solo fights, and then suddenly after Arthur killed the head bad guy everyone else was dead and thousands of corpses were artfully-strewn across the grass that was thriving and green in the dead of winter. Anyway, it wasn't much of a movie, even with the added violence of the director's cut. Incidentally, why is it that I always end up talking at far greater length about bad action movies than good movies? I've written pages and pages about junk like Underworld and King Arthur and The Punisher, while hardly mentioning or never even getting around to reviewing movies I've long enjoyed and wanted to discuss? Aliens, Terminator 2, Crouching Tiger, The Road Warrior, Gladiator, and many others... It really is easier to tear things down than to build them up, isn't it? To the news...
€ I loved this story about amateur criminal masterminds.
Well, it was fun while it lasted, but now not only do they have no profit from their find, but they're going to get criminal records and will likely be blackballed from their profession. All because they couldn't pick a story, and stick to it. Or just sell the damn money and keep their damn mouths shut. What did they actually find?
There's no word on where the money came from initially. I mean sure it was in the attic of some house, but who saved it up, way back then? We'll probably never find out, unless someone's got a story about their great grandfather's eccentric saving habits. I wondered what sort of investment this was. I mean actually keeping the bills for nearly a century, as opposed to investing them. Going by what they were being offered, $7000 turning into $125,000. Using this handy compound interest calculator, I learned that $7000 would turn into $134,000 in 100 years at 3% interest, annually compounded. So even though the original $7000 increased in value around 18x, it needed 100 years to do it, which is actually a pretty awful rate of return. For the sake of comparison, $7000 earning 5% annually for a century would turn into $920,508.80. And if you had great investments and made 10%? $96,464,286.38. Yes, that's almost 100 million dollars, just by increasing the compound return from 3% to 7%. Financial lessons for beginning investors aside, I also checked to see what $7000 from that long ago would be worth in today's dollars. Here's the calculator for that, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Since the bills went from 1899 to 1928 it's hard to know when to calculate it from, but I just went for the midpoint and said 1914. And as it turns out, $7000 from then is worth $136,710 in today's dollars. Or just about what the actual old dollars themselves are worth to a collector. It's an essentially pointless comparison, since the money's value is all based on the condition of the notes and how rare the notes are, and I imagine the 1899 bills are worth far more than the 1928 bills, being 30 years older. But clearly you'd be far better off finding the deed to some property from 100 years ago than finding enough money from then to buy the property itself. Or the stock for some company, assuming it hadn't gone bankrupt decades ago. And if you do find such a deed, and you're a big dumb blue collar drunk, just sell it and keep your damn mouth shut, no matter how many teevee shows you think you might get on by talking about your find/theft.
€ It's coming about 5 years late, but it's nice to see various state attorneys general starting to prosecute spyware and adware companies.
True, all of these problems can be avoided by the end user by just not downloading the software, and/or by keeping firewalls and internet security and antivirus programs up to date, but since the vast majority of surfers don't or don't know how (witness your parents), it would be nice if this shit wasn't around in the first place. And if they have to reinterpret laws or write new ones to ban it, who's going to object? It's not as if anyone doesn't hate spam and pop ups and spyware. The thing I always wonder is how these companies are actually making money. Who in the hell clicks pop ups or reads spam? Even if I saw a pop up ad for something I actually wanted (which I do not believe has ever happened in my dozen or more years on the Internet), I wouldn't click it, since I wouldn't want to reward the pop up ad people. I'd seek out the item from some other source. I guess they just serve so many ads, and for almost no cost, that eventually they pay off. Hell, they say spammers actually make money through quantity, and if those Nigerian scam emails actually net millions a year, it's obvious there are people online who will click on or believe in absolutely anything. |
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activities and gender and race issues. Yes, all that, in one.
Saturday night I accompanied Malaya to a community theater play in The City that a friend of ours was working on. We could have driven, but it's an expensive pain (toll bridges, parking fees, $2.75 gas, etc) to drive into San Francisco, and BART is easy and fast and cheap, so to the train we went. We had to walk four blocks from the BART stop to the playhouse, and it was in a semi-slummy area, so that was fun. You see tons of homeless people in downtown SF, and the air always feels sort of dirty and greasy when there's nothing but concrete and tall buildings in every direction. And this is in SF, one of the most beautiful cities in the US, and one with ocean and bay all around it for ventilation. Plus there are hills and lots of old, quirky buildings. I can't imagine the hell it would be to live in some flat, ugly, landlocked downtown area. Deep in the heart of Detroit or Saint Louis or wherever. Anyway, our walk wasn't dangerous or anything, we're just used to our clean, civilized suburbs, and we don't like going slumming. We hardly even saw any street people, just a few holing up in storefronts, and there was a flophouse right around the corner from the theater, with various poor and miserable looking people standing around out in front of the metal grill doorway. There was nothing on the street, but I'm sure it beat the stink of misery and sweat inside the cheap rooms. As for the theater, it was um... interesting. The "play" was held in a room that was maybe 25x20 feet, at most. We're talking racquetball court size. One corner housed the " stage," which was just a black square of cement floor with various plus-shaped bits of white tape for blocking purposes. There were heavy black curtains behind the stage to give it a softness and through a gap in them one entered the backstage area, which looked like a glorified closet. The entire performance area was about 12x12 feet. In the opposite corner was a very homemade looking scaffolding, with a three-person sound and lighting booth on top of it. It looked like about a double-size DJ's station, elevated perhaps a dozen feet in the air. To the left of that booth were 3 rows of chairs on risers, with maybe 6 chairs per row. To the right were some scavenged bleachers that completely blocked the fire door, extending to just below the "These doors must be kept unlocked and unobstructed" sign. In the center of the room was a huge pillar, and on both sides of it, extending from in front of the chairs to the edge of the stage, were various blankets and beach throws, with a scattering of pillows. There were about 30 chairs, and about 80 people in attendance, which meant most of us were sitting on the floor, in a very hippie/communal style. Best of all, the theater group was a Filipino Lesbian association, and the audience was 90% lesbian and about 60% Filipino. I saw 2 other men in attendance, one of whom was obviously gay, and the other one is a guy I know since he's the fiancι of a sister of a friend of Malaya's. Which pretty well explained his presence there, as well as mine. Theater nay-saying aside, I actually enjoyed myself, though I would have been much happier with a decent seat, or at least a pillow. I don't sit on the floor well, mostly since my back and hips aren't very flexible and I can't lean forwards while sitting cross-legged for long. We did manage to get a spot against one wall, and I had the edge of a pillar for partial back support, while Malaya curled up beside or in front of me. Other people, lesbian couples mostly, were all around us, so there was literally not room to even straighten my legs out. As for the play, it was more a series of sketches, some humorous, some musical, but all set in the everyday lives of the people acting them out. A common theme was family life, which is obviously touchy when you're an artsy bohemian lesbian aspiring actress, raised in a culture that demands you respect your parents, who are invariably conservative Catholics who will only be happy when their children get good jobs and start pumping out apos (grandchildren). Other issues were the whole "take a box of stuff back to the Philippines for your less-fortunate cousins" thing that goes on constantly when people travel back home. The performers also played around a lot with gender issues, since several of the performers were butchy women, who wore men's clothing and had shaved heads and such. I liked those and the couples issues, never before having imagined what it's like for lesbian couples to pick a therapist from their health care system. Imagine showing up with the woman you're sharing your life with, and your therapist assumes you two are sisters, or mother and daughter, is soon shocked and disapproving when she finds out, and then starts lecturing about how "you're just going through a phase," when you want counseling about relationship issues? I had some experience with gay and lesbian issues growing up, but I knew next to nothing about Filipino culture or the Philippines before I started dating Malaya, so while I didn't get every reference, a lot of it rang true for me. I also found it interesting in a sociological sort of way. What's it like to be born in the US, from first generation immigrant parents who speak with a heavy foreign accent and refuse to speak to you in Tagalog so you won't pick up their accent since accents are bad in America? What's it like to return to the homeland with only halting language skills, and have everyone know you for an outsider from the rich US? One of the actresses talked about how great it was to be in the Philippines, since while everyone there was staring at her bald head and men's clothing, they were curious about her being a "tom boy" from the US. It beat being in the US, where all the white people stare at her and look down on her for being female, brown, and a lesbian.
The Philippines is a very poor country, and a great percentage of the money there is sent home by immigrants who work in other countries. In the US Filipinos have been established for long enough to achieve some upward mobility, and there are lots of well off children who are doctors and lawyers and teachers and such. In other countries though, especially in Asia and the Middle East, Filipinos are very much still the poor immigrants, and they get stuck with all the shit jobs; maids, nannies, janitors, etc. Not to mention the sex trade. They're treated poorly and paid like shit, but it's still a lot more than they could earn at home, plus they know they've got a big family with little money back in the RP, and the pressure to keep earning and sending money and clothing home is strong. Especially with younger relatives, since they all watch cable TV and just eat up the American shows and the crass consumerism on them. Everyone there wants brand name Nikes and Reeboks and Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, and even if you were been lucky enough to grow up in the US and you know better than to follow the stupid overpriced clothing trend of the day, your advice not to worry about that is going to mean nothing to your RP-dwelling cousins, who want nothing more than to live where you live and wear the clothing you're telling them they shouldn't care about wearing. Not that it's all that different for kids growing up in the US, especially if they're living in the Midwest or other areas self-perceived as being behind the times and trends set on the coasts, but in Kansas you can go to the mall or mail order. In the Philippines those clothes are impossible to find, and cost a week's salary anyway. Aside from fashion and income, I had some laughs from the skits when the actresses dealt with older relatives, or their mothers. Especially their mothers, and the tone of resigned exasperation was identical to the one I sometimes hear in Malaya's voice when she's on the phone with her mom. Nagging, overprotective mothers are certainly not uniquely-Filipino (they're an Italian and Jewish stereotype too) but I have no experience with that sort of thing in my life, so it's odd to hear other people driven crazy by a relative they love dearly. The second half of the show wasn't so great, with an excess of musical numbers. I know karaoke is in the culture, and I know the actresses really wanted to put on a musical. Unfortunately, I also now know that they aren't really that good at singing or dancing. The last fun of the night came on the walk back to BART, when we walked past a nice hotel and saw a real live whore standing outside. She had on a very short mini-skirt, a hip-length fur coat, and very tall transparent plastic boots. I would have walked over to take a cell phone picture and get a better look at her and try to guess her prices, if Malaya hadn't kept me moving in the other direction. Paying for or charging money for sex is such a fascinating topic to me, since I've never been casual about it and can't quite imagine what it's like to treat such an intimate act as a commodity.
As for the play, I did leave with some new thoughts about culture and race and sex, and while sitting there surrounded by so many enthusiastic lesbians and feeling like the minority, I got some perspective on what it's like for non-whites and non-males and non-heterosexuals to live in the US. As well as engaging in some musings on the absurdity of homophobia. Why does that hatred of gays persist? Why does it matter to anyone what anyone else's sexual preference is, so long as it doesn't tend towards children or livestock? They're just people, living their lives and doing what their natures lead them to do, and if they feel romantic love towards other people of their own gender, so what? How is that your concern? No, their culture's not exactly the same as yours... neither is the culture of people from other areas of the country, or other generations, and you don't automatically hate them for being different. It really is amazing how much humans define themselves by their differences, and I suppose the current anti-gay backlash in the US is fueled by that being the last legitimate prejudice. Racism is on the way out, (Well, overt racism; cluelessness and non-bigoted racism will persist forever, as described below.) sexism is dwindling, religious intolerance isn't anything like it was in the US in decades past, and so on. The only way a person can still publicly proclaim their hatred of an entire subset of the population is by being homophobic, and with a few vague biblical quotes to fuel them, Christians are doing all they can to halt an inevitable cultural shift. (I don't have a link, but as best I recall the Bible has something like 5 mentions of homosexuality being a sin and 100+ about adultery and divorce being worse... funny which one the Christian Right chooses to campaign on.) It's also interesting to be in the minority. I get that feeling at various parties and social events with Malaya's family where I am the only or one of the few white people there, and I definitely got it at the play where I was almost the only man and one of the few heterosexuals of either gender. I don't mind it, and no one at events with Malaya or at the play has been nasty or anything, but it's interesting to feel what it's like for other people who aren't of my race, gender, sexual persuasion, etc to live their lives. Besides, the worst assumptions that might be made about me, based on my appearance, is that I'm a sexist, or racist, which is to say I think I'm better than other people. I can't really imagine what it's like to be a woman or person of color in an all-male or all-white area, where not only do you feel very different, but you know that some of the people there are automatically assuming you are stupid, or weak, or dirty, based solely on what you look like. One reason racism and sexism live on in the US is that white people, and especially white men, simply have no idea what it's like not to be the chosen ones. We grew up seeing people like ourselves in every job, in every position of power, on every TV show, in every sporting event, everywhere in the media, etc. After growing up in this culture, we simply can't imagine what it's like not to have the assurance that our kind is as good as or better than anyone else. As an extension of that, we have no idea why Blacks or Hispanics or Asians or women or homosexuals feel differently. "America is the land of opportunity! I didn't get any special preferences being white!" and so on go the comfortable, reassuring lies white men tell themselves. And now that our society is growing more mixed, and the white supermajority is starting to vanish in places, you see the inevitable fear-driven reaction in many forms. I'm going off topic, but I don't think you can ever really know what it's like to be the other, once you've grown up in whatever group or culture you are in. You can gain some insight, and you can behave appropriately, but the best you can really hope for is that you'll have some empathy, feel some sympathy, and do your best to think outside the box that you were raised in.
€ The other cultural event of the weekend came at Trader Joe's on Sunday. We were safely back in our lily-white bourgeoisie upper class suburb, shopping peacefully, when some 50ish white guy came up behind Malaya and asked her if she was Filipino. She said yes, and when he asked if she was with me (I was standing a dozen feet away picking something from a shelf.) and she said yes, he smiled and actually said, "God bless you." Fortunately she got away from him, and after scolding me for failing in my perpetual assignment of keeping her from having to talk to or interact with anyone in public in any way not initiated by her, we finished our shopping and got in line. There, much to our mutual horror, the same guy slipped into line behind us and soon tapped me on the shoulder. I managed to ignore the first tap, hoping the cashier would speed up since we were third in line, but when he tapped again I turned around and received his extremely-unsolicited story, told very slowly, in the very mellow voice of an AA counselor. I'm not going to quote him since I've been doing my best to forget what he said since even before he began saying it, but to paraphrase, he launched immediately into a parable. He said that there was once a man who worked very hard and earned millions, but that one day he returned home and found a note from his wife saying that she'd left him. He was unhappy, but he didn't give up and became a traveler, searching for the perfect woman. Finally he found her, a woman with strength of character and self-made success to match his own, and when they grew to knew each other and fell in love, all before sleeping together (he repeated that and said it was a key), he knew they were perfect for each other. The punchline, delivered at least 2 minutes after he'd begun this endless tale, was that she was Filipino. The implication, obviously, was that we were brothers of a kind, and that I was very lucky to have found a Filipino woman of my own at such a young age. His intentions were obviously good, but the whole speech and way he delivered it, first to Malaya and then to me, was so obliviously-racist that it simply boggled the mind. Malaya was listening with one ear, standing as far away from us as she could, and by the time we left the store she was laughing so hard she could hardly unlock the car and stick the key into the ignition. My urging her to hurry before he came out and started talking again only got her laughing harder, but I was so ready to not be there. His whole tale, and the closing line, reminded me of the following brilliant quote:
I was actually actually thinking of this while he was talking. And talking. And talking, all in the most gentle, mellow, sincere voice, as if his words were going to go straight to my soul and perhaps even change my life. I let him talk, even though it was remorselessly-obvious what the point of his story was going to be, and simply hoped the line would move quickly, or that he would get to the dιnouement sooner if not interrupted. Fortunately our time at the cashier came just as he finished, and after I mumbled something vague in response we paid and got the fuck out of Dodge. He meant well, and was very sincere (which was half of what put us off so much, since we don't deal well with people who operate on that level of non-snark) but honestly, what a tool. First of all, he was astonishingly white. Degree of whiteness is hard to define, but it's a very tangible thing to non-whites, and it's got very little to do with intentional behaviors. You can listen to nothing but soul music, or worship Manga, or eat only Mexican food, but you might still be shockingly white in your mannerisms. It's got something to do with how you grew up and who your peers were and how your parents behaved, but it seems to be somewhat genetic or internalized on top of that. It's also not necessarily a bad thing; my dad has a couple of friends in the Bay Area who are very nice and sweet and would be happy to let Malaya and I stay at their large home if we needed an overnight... but they are so white it's amazing. I guess the easiest definition is the country club vibe, with the pink Izod sweater, uptight, stiffly-formal stereotype. It doesn't mean the white person in question is a racist or bigot or whatever, but it's just how they are, and it flavors everything they do. The guy in the store was super white, Filipino bride or not, and as he stood there, gumming away with his variegated moustache and his long white nose hairs (matching perfectly the white hairs scattered through his blonde and brown moustache) bristling in every direction, I just waited for him to finish and hoped to God he'd shut up soon. I have no idea what his point in talking to me was; if he thought we'd bond and go hang out, or if I would see some amazing truth in his words, or whatever. And while I'm sure he would be shocked and strongly disagree if told he was a racist, there's no arguing that he was. I'm using the term as the dictionary defines it here. People, myself included, generally use "racist" when they mean "bigot," but the terms are not identical. To cut and paste from The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary:
Leaving the superiority aspect aside, what Mr. White Guy in the store was doing was exactly this. Relating to Malaya solely by her ethnicity, and assuming she could be so easily slotted into a role by it, and assuming the same about his wife. (He never actually said the parable was about him, but it was pretty obvious.) His wife is Filipino, so therefore she must be just like all other pinays, and since Malaya is a pinay she must be just like his wife. It's not especially pernicious racism, and it's certainly not bigotry, but if you're the person being so referred to, it's got to feel very condescending, if nothing else. My shorter verison/cynical translation of his story would go as follows: "I was a workaholic negligent husband and when my white wife finally got sick of it and took half my money I sought out a woman who would put up with my bullshit and still love me and I heard Filipino women were docile and subservient and I married one and you're very lucky to have one too." I didn't know much about Filipino culture before I met Malaya, and I didn't know or care anything about her race when we met online, two years ago February. I did not know the stereotype of Filipino women either, and if I had it would have worked against Malaya, since I don't like it. The stereotype, if you don't know either, applies to the women in lots of Asian and Hispanic cultures for that matter, with variances, of course. Basically it's that they are sweet and loving and like to please their man, which translates in reality to mean they are subservient and docile and loyal. That's not true of all pinays, of course, and certainly isn't true of Malaya's character (Not to say that she isn't sweet and loyal, but she's that to me because we're in love and I've earned her loyalty; she's not some weak victim I could push around and cheat on and mistreat even if I wanted to.) and I wouldn't want a relationship with a woman who was like that. You hear this sort of thing about women from lots of Asian cultures, and from Latino cultures too, where Patriarchy still reigns and women are expected to submit and know their place. It's making a comeback in white culture in the US too, with male groups like the Promise Keepers and other Christian associations of men who want women to submit to them and trust in God and all that other bullshit weak men use to try and make themselves feel strong. The bonus with Filipino women, for men who are seeking that sort of thing, is that they have English language skills, know about American culture, and have a strong element of Catholicism in their country, which encourages them to be docile and submissive to power figures such as their husbands. Plus they're in a poor country and want to get out to America, and their parents are likely conservative and will order them to obey their husband. As a result, they're excellent wives for men who can't handle a woman who is their equal or superior, and by saying how lucky I was to have a Filipino woman, without making any remarks about her character as a unique individual, the guy in the store was basically endorsing and reinforcing all of this baggage. If you need further examples, switch the races around. Imagine if I'd been a black man with a white woman, and he'd told me how lucky I was to have her? Etc. Malaya wasn't angry, and in fact thought his earnest cluelessness was hysterical, but if you look at it from a deeper angle, you can see why his well-meaning comments could have been taken as an insult, and how he would have been completely confused if Malaya had gotten angry at them. She didn't, but a less forgiving friend of hers heard the story and basically said, "So he wanted you to know that he'd fucked a Filipina and is proud of the fact?" Years ago, a Chinese female friend of my dads was in the store with her mom, on the laundry aisle, when some white woman came over to her and asked for advice on which detergent was best to remove stains. The woman's mom got so pissed the daughter had to literally drag her away, and through it all the white woman was completely perplexed. After all, don't all Chinese women work in laundromats?
€ Our store encounter, and some of the skits from the play, are making me think about cultures and the way people interact with a lot of interest. Not that I'm having an epiphany or anything, since I've long known what I'm thinking about now, but in working on my novel so much lately I'm creating a whole world (literally, I've got like 10 different maps of cities and lands and continents and oceans, and will have a hell of a job integrating them all eventually) and it's occurring to me that I really should spend some more time developing the different cultures of my fantasy world. Not just putting people from different parts of the world into different clothing, but working out how their cultures are formed, and how they think based on how they were raised. My novel is mostly an action-filled fantasy adventure, and it's not going to support any huge ethnic studies subplots or clash of cultures discussions, but I might work in some aspects of cultural misunderstandings, and it's definitely something to think about for future novels, fantasy or otherwise. I'm not doing anything revolutionary here; lots of novels, even some fantasy series (Wheel of Time) have had this sort of plot element, but they've never really affected me on a personal level or seemed that real. When I've read it it's been very superficial; some character was raised without violence and won't pick up a sword, or another culture shows up and they have no mercy because they don't understand the concept. I thought Orson Scott Card did some interesting stuff with this in Ender's Series, where the Buggers killed people without a thought since to them individuals were meaningless. The Buggers had no value on individuals below the queen, since everyone else was just a worker drone with no real thought of their own self. Taking prisoners or sparring human lives simply didn't exist in their frame of reference, which made them seem cruel and torturing. Novels obviously have cultures or groups with opposing points of view, but generally they're all pretty much the same, aside from their goals. There's an interesting culture clash going on in the last few books in Jordan's Wheel of Time, but it's presented mostly as a freak show. The people from across the sea are just like everyone else on a peasant level; it's only their rulers who have an elaborate code of honor and chivalry that has brought them to think of people below themselves as barely human, a classification they are happy to assign to everyone on this side of the ocean. There's lots of stuff about obeying and never speaking back and acting with discipline, but it's basically just extremely formalized courtly mannerisms, like you'd see in some old Japanese movie about the Emperor/God King. I'm not saying this as a criticism either; it's just my evaluation of how Jordan is approaching his work, and I don't know if it would be better or worse if he really had the other culture behaving in completely incompatible ways, and totally misunderstanding and being misunderstood based on that. I'm not even sure if it would be a good idea to go that far with the concept; it could get very frustrating for the reader. In conclusion... I have no conclusion. Just like always. These are thoughts and observations, take them for what you will and feel free to mail me your agreements or disagreements or personal experiences. I'd open up the comments here if I had comments to open. |
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onday,
and May. How did that happen?
