On Ridley Scott's Exodus and Bannings

The Washington Post reports that Egypt has banned Ridley Scott's controversial Bible film, Exodus (starring Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, and Ben Kingsley), due to "alleged historical inaccuracies and a 'Zionist' agenda."  You can read the article for more detail, though I would suggest extra care here given the region under discussion and the inevitable spin that will come out of U.S. news sources.  For the record:  the BBC has reported the same thing, more or less.

I should also note that I'm not going to defend Exodus from the charges that it is inaccurate in any direct sense.  Honestly, I don't think the movie should have been made.  Its white-washing of history and clear manipulation of Biblical narrative for "sensationalist imagery" -- not to mention Ridley Scott's absurd defense of the former -- have not endeared the film to me.  In fact, I'm perfectly content with never seeing Exodus, and I sincerely hope it does so poorly that Hollywood thinks again before letting Ridley Scott ruin anything else.  But none of this is a reason to ban the film.  They made it, and if theaters want to play it, then so be it.

Now, to my thoughts:

On The Interview, Terrorism, and the Artistic Expression

By now, you'll have heard that Sony had opted to cancel the release of Seth Rogen and Ethan Goldberg's The Interview (2014)(starring Rogen and James Franco) in response to threats against their employees and movie theaters (many of which have refused to show the film).  They have since announced that the film will play in select theaters on Christmas Day and that they are still trying to find places to play the film so it will have a proper release.  Now, it seems, the film's future is up to theaters.

Update:  On Christmas afternoon, Sony will also release The Interview via several streaming sites, including Google.  So at least we can all see it if we want to.

Chuck Wendig has already written an interesting post on the situation, and if it's not already obvious, I have a few thoughts.  But first, a quote from Wendig:

On Language and Reinforcing Bigotry

[Note:  statistics will vary considerably depending where you are in the world.  I'm using statistics and studies which are mostly relevant to the United States, and so this post will focus accordingly.  This is my comfort zone, but I encourage others to take a look at these same concerns as they relate to their cultural contexts.]

Language is our responsibility.  How we use it determines everything from our ability to communicate with one another to how we talk about other people to how we describe the world we all share.

Gender Essentialism, Genre, and Me

I'm late to the party.  The first major SF/F controversy party.  And while this post won't be about Kemp's argument specifically, it does come out of the discussions about his post -- most particularly the criticisms.[1]

Part of the problem I have with traditional gender roles is the way they assume what manhood (or womanhood) is based on behaviors which are definitively not gendered.  There's nothing explicitly masculine about aggression or nobility.  There's nothing explicitly feminine about child rearing, except insofar as it is currently required for women to be the carriers of unborn children.  Gender essentalism, however, assumes there are definitely gendered behaviors, such that chivalry is read as "male/masculine" and cowardice is read as "female/feminine."  If this association sounds negative, that's because the construction of male/female or masculine/feminine is frequently a negative.  These associations are also oriented around agency, where masculine behaviors are active and feminine behaviors are passive.  There are all manner of gendered constructions, and each is based on arbitrary, culturally-determined factors.

The impact of gender essentialism in this particular context is often unintended, but, by the nature of a culture's ability to transmit its behavioral modes, it is also pervasive.  We are all coded by our

Diversity is Not a Selfie (or, Amazing Stories + Felicity Savage = Here We Go Again)

Apparently Amazing Stories has become a version of controversy bingo.  Attacks on liberals?  Check.  Attacks on subgenres?  Check.  Attacks on women?  Check.  Attacks on people of color?  And check...

I'm obviously not going to link to the story here.  Instead, I'll point you to "Diversity is not Narcissism:  A Response to Felicity Savage" at The Other Side of the Rain, "Mirror, Mirror:  Quien Soy?" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and "False Equivalence:  Selfies and Diversity in SFF" at Radish Reviews.  They've covered much of what I'm going to babble about here, though I'll try to add to that existing discussion.[1]

So here goes.

Savage begins her diatribe by discussing the validity of "selfies," an understandably amusing practice which has become the subject of much parodying.  Of course, Savage doesn't note that selfies have also been used for arts projects, such as the numerous videos on YouTube in which

Jim Carrey, Guns, and Kick-Ass 2 (Late Thoughts)

I said I would throw in my two-cents on this Jim Carrey story.  I realize I'm late to the party on this one, but I feel compelled to talk about the entire issue.  Instead of trying to summarize the whole damn situation, I'll just block quote something from the Guardian:

Postcolonialism 101: Misery Tourism (or, How the Genre Community Still Essentializes Africa)

"What is misery tourism?" you might ask.  At its most basic, "misery tourism" refers to the ways peoples from wealthy, usually Western nations "tour" the "developing" or "undeveloped" world in order to "learn" something.  The process is almost always attached to an assumption of superiority, whether directly acknowledged or buried in the subconscious.  To partake in misery tourism is to justify the superior position of your culture by intentionally subjecting yourself to "lesser" cultures (as a means of justifying the bias embedded in the notion of "lesser" cultures).  To put it another way, misery tourism is what (mostly white) Westerners do to make themselves feel better about their own circumstances.

I bring this up because of the following, which is taken from Bryan Thomas Schmidt's blog post entitled "Broadening the Toolbox Through Cross-Cultural Encounters:  On Resnick, Africa, and Opportunity":

The Weird Tales / Save the Pearls Fiasco: Preliminary Reactions

(Disclaimer:  This post is a preliminary reaction.  I have not read the novel in question and can only respond to what others have said about it.  As such, what follows will not be based on what I know about the book itself, but rather a series of curiosities and questions that I suspect will be answered later this week.  An educated reaction will follow.

Note:  I am collecting links to other responses at the bottom.

Note 2:  The original Weird Tales post has been taken down.  An apology has been put in its place.

Note 3:  Some new details have surfaced.  You can find my update here.)

Twitter was in a rage this morning about this Weird Tales announcement involving the publication of the first chapter of Victoria Foyt's Saving the Pearls:  Revealing Eden.  Authors/bloggers N. K. Jemisin, Celine Kiernan, Martha Wells, Nick Mamatas were among the most vocal hitters, decrying the selection as, at best, a phenomenally stupid choice of publication and, at worst, a throwback to the racism that might have made Lovecraft proud.

If you're not familiar with Saving the Pearls, then you're not alone.  I am writing this post from a position of profound ignorance, having only read reviews of Foyt's novel, and not the novel itself (such as this review or the numerous reviews on the Amazon page). What many seem most bothered by is Foyt's portrayal of a reverse-racist society which uses blackface to make its supposedly anti-racist point (a historically derogatory practice originally used by whites to stereotype and denigrate blacks -- the white-race-glorification film, Birth of a Nation, for example, used blackface in order to portray black males as sexual "beasts," which, as it turns out, is another stereotype that Foyt, according to reviews, unsuccessfully "turns on its head").  Coming from the outside, my first reactions were along these lines:

SF/F Rant of the Day: Privilege is Not Equal

You’re probably already familiar with the shitstorm that erupted on Peter Watts’ blog over acrackedmoon’s “review” of R. Scott Bakker’s novels.  If not, then you should glance through to see what has been going on (this is not the same as the other shitstorm which also involved acrackedmoon’s comments, though certainly the issues are related).

Here, I am interested in one particular issue:  the question of privilege.  But before I do that, I want to say a few quick things:

Duke and Zink Do America -- Where My Politics Go to Live

If you've been a reader of this blog for at least a year, you'll have noticed that I'm rather political.  I'm also hesitant to post about politics on this blog, in part because this is supposed to be a space about genre fiction, writing, and so on.  That doesn't mean I don't talk about things that are political, but it does mean that I try not to talk about things to do with actual politics (Presidential races, etc.).

And that's how it's going to be from now on, because I just started a political podcast/blog with my co-host at The Skiffy and Fanty Show.  What is this new show called?

We describe it as follows:

An Addendum to "The West's Third World Others (or, Hey, Thailand Has Prostitutions, What's the Big Deal?)

The following video might be of interest to anyone who read my previous post.  It's also a video I'm teaching my students this semester in my "Writing About Postcolonialism and Genre Fiction" class.

Anywho!

The West's Third World Others (or, Hey, Thailand Has Prostitutes, What's the Big Deal?)

The latest shitstorm in the SF/F community comes in response to acrackedmoon's criticism of Pat's (of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist) controversial perspectives on Thailand and travel (acrackedmoon offers a counter here).  The short version:

Pat reinforces some stereotypes about Thailand and non-Western culture, some of them through sexist and/or racist lenses, gets called out on it without the bells and whistles of mutual respect, and then posts a rebuttal under the threat that he "will monitor the comment section," which turns out to be code language for "I'll let anyone who wants to call acrackedmoon a dirty name, etc. post whatever they want, even if they're full of shit."

A part of me wants to bring in every postcolonial non-fiction book I have ever read in order to tear apart Pat's original post and his response, but the amount of effort needed to do that should probably be spent on more productive measures.  But I am going to say something here by way of an insufficient summary and an insufficient criticism of my own.

I should note that I don't know Pat.  He may very well be a nice fellow.  But people these days aren't judged by the selves we don't get to see, but by the selves presented to the public.  Any claim that "Pat is a nice guy in real life" seems to miss the point entirely:  if you're not a racist, sexist, or whatever-ist in your personal life, then why would you use your public persona for non-satirical, non-parodic opinions about other people's cultures?  acrackedmoon is right in more ways than one, but the accuracy of her (?) criticisms seems to have fallen victim to the "you could have said this without being a bitch" argument (and the "bitch" is not implied, but spoken -- see the comments on Pat's blog).

Is Pat a racist/sexist/etc.?  Yes.  But so am I, so are you, and so is everybody (don't bother suggesting otherwise; you are and you have to deal with that, and not because you're white or a man -- everyone is racist, sexist, etc.).  Perhaps not to the same degree, but enough to reasonably say that none of us are "pure."  Does Pat know he has racist/sexist/etc. opinions?  No idea.  I know I have them, but because I am aware, I try to challenge them when they spring up, to varying degrees of success.  Is Pat challenging his?  It doesn't seem so.  His response is all defense and no (or few) admissions.

One rather interesting response to this comes from of a literary discussion of Forrest Gander's Core Samples of the World from OF Blog of the Fallen (a.k.a. Larry, the Book Eater):

Crying "Censorship": Why Getting Banned Isn't Censorship

You'll probably have noticed that a lot of crazy nonsense took place here and then migrated over here when Jen and I put our feet in piranha-infested waters.  This isn't the first time Jen and I have played emotional bees and frolicked in the convoluted mess of gender politics.  But that's not really the point of this post.  Rather, I'd like to use the aforementioned links as illustrative examples of my central point:

Deleting a comment or banning a commenter on a private website is not censorship.

Since Liz Bourke's original post, a number of people have almost joyously proclaimed they have been censored when they were banned from Tor.com (or would be banned from The Skiffy and Fanty Show -- one individual on Baen assumed we would delete anything he wrote simply because he would disagree with us; the comment is still there).

Neither of these things, however, constitute censorship, in part because private spaces have specialized rules which determine what can and cannot be said.  If someone waltzes into your house and starts babbling at you about why Obama is a bad choice for President or Gingrich will repeal child labor laws, you have every right to remove that person from your home and prevent them from entering again.  This act is defended by the U.S. Constitution, by our laws, and by our social codes.  Few would call that censorship.  A house is a private space, inside which you make the rules for interaction (provided they follow the rules from the outside -- no murdering in your house).

The same concept applies to websites that are privately owned or run.*  Much like the privacy guaranteed in your home, you equally are guaranteed privacy on your website.  That means that you are able to determine who can and cannot see your posts, who can and cannot comment, and so on.  In fact, Google does much of this on its own by snagging spam comments from the aether and casting them to the dark abyss (the same with Wordpress, etc.).  None of these acts are censorship, since nothing has been done to prevent you from being able to speak on the Internet.  Provided you still have a place to speak, your rights have not been violated.  You are entitled to your opinion and your voice, but not to a listening audience.

Censorship on the web, thus, is rather tricky.  At what point does the removal of content become censorship?  I'm not sure there are any easy answers to this question.  Because the Internet is vast, if not nearly infinite, there are few boundaries to free speech in the U.S.  The tables turn when you go to a place like China, where hackers serve as police officers against online dissent, where content from main sources are removed from Google's search database, and so on.  Is that censorship?

I would argue that the distinction between personal space and censorship seems to follow this logic:  so long as the avenues of discussion remain open, your rights have not been infringed; so long as websites themselves are subject to removal without reasonable cause,** you're looking at censorship.

This seems like a relatively simple concept to understand, but plenty of people cry "censorship" anyway.  Perhaps they do so as an emotional reaction, or because they really believe that the 1st Amendment means you can say whatever you want wherever you want.  The truth is that private spaces come with limitations and rules, many of them unspoken.  Many websites don't have comment policies, running instead on the tolerance levels of the owners.  Those tolerance levels will vary considerably.

In other words, think of your website as a digital house.  If you have no problem letting anyone come in and say whatever they want, then good for you.  But if you want to limit discussions or focus them, doing so in your own space means you're simply taking control of your house.  And if we're being honest, most of us have house rules that we expect others to follow (and house rules we set for ourselves when we visit other people's homes).  The difference between a house and the Internet, however, is that the Internet guarantees anonymity and/or distance.  Bravery is necessarily an attending element.

-------------------------------------------

*I don't know whether censorship applies to government websites, though there aren't many government websites with comment threads, as far as I can remember.

**For example, I wouldn't consider the removal of a website that shares pirated files (not links, but files) as censorship, since free speech does not extend to violating the law.

SOPA and Piracy: A Brief and Random Afterthought

Google, Wikipedia, and all manner of folks have taken up the protest gauntlet against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill that, if passed, would hand over an extraordinary amount of power to the Federal government, restrict freedom of expression (the 1st Amendment), and make life for website creators and owners difficult at best.  As the co-owner of a website for young writers, these things concern me greatly, as SOPA would make me responsible for what a member posts.  That's not to say that Young Writers Online is a haven for plagiarized material, but it is an open website and things sneak through.  The idea that the entire site should be taken down because I didn't find out soon enough is absurd.  But SOPA makes that possible.

I won't proclaim to be an expert in this area.  If you're looking for an expert, Cory Doctorow is probably the best choice.  But I do find the direction the media empires behind laws like SOPA are trying to take us worrisome.  I don't doubt that piracy is a financial problem, but I'm not convinced that the figures thrown at us by SOPA supporters are accurate or necessarily relevant.

What doesn't make sense to me is this:  if piracy really is a problem to the extent that we're told (i.e., that if we don't stop it, the creative industry will go belly up), then clearly the pirates are doing something really well.  Maybe instead of wasting millions trying to create and pass abusive laws like SOPA or crack down on pirates and websites, the media empires could take that money to do the following:

Ponce de Leon vs. Native Americans: Who is happier?

I recently came across this announcement of the University of Miami's 500th Anniversary commemoration for Ponce de Leon's voyages to Florida.  Since I am currently teaching a course entitled "Writing About Postcolonialism and Genre Fiction" (which I'll have to discuss in detail later), the event caught my attention.  Why?  Because the language used to describe the event seems, in my view, offensive towards those who were inevitable victims of Spanish, British, French, and American colonialism (in de Leon's case, we're obviously talking about the first).

Those victims -- we call them Native Americans, which is a pathetic term to describe the enormous variety of tribes/groups that used to live freely in the U.S. hundreds of years ago -- were stripped of their lands, destroyed by colonial hands or disease, and otherwise decimated by the colonial system.  So to talk about Ponce de Leon, an understandably famous explorer, within the language of celebration ("A public conference commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the landing of Juan Ponce de León on Florida shores" -- commemoration associated, more often

Gentle Reminder: Jesse Jackson Isn't Running For President

Amusing as it may be to play the "the liberal media is going after Herman Cain" card when it comes to the allegations recently made against Jesse Jackson, it is also prudent to remember one incredibly important fact:  Jesse Jackson isn't running for President.  Let's also be honest about something else:  if he were running for President, you better believe that liberals and conservatives alike would, in their own way, go after him for his numerous failings as a "moral person."  Jackson is not unfamiliar to the controversy bucket, as his 1984 comments about Jews (shortly after losing the Presidential ticket) and his numerous infidelities make clear.  And I think his history makes him unlikely as a legitimate Democratic candidate for the Presidency in the future.

Of course, The Huffington Post did report on the incident.  But I suppose we can just pretend they aren't part of the "liberal media" or the "media" in general.  Ever so insignificant that Huffington Post... In any case, the predominately right-leaning base will take this oversight as an indictment

Dear Rick Scott: Your (Anti)Education Plan Stinks

(You'll all have to excuse me while I rant about something political on this blog.)

If you haven't heard already, Rick Scott, the governor of Florida (where I live), announced his intention to change the Floridian university system by shifting funding away from the humanities towards "job creating" STEM majors.*  Plenty of folks have poked fun at him for singling out anthropologists (for having degrees in nifty fields, but which (apparently) do little for society).**  But I'd like to talk about a different problem:  Scott's assumption that STEM majors will create jobs or assure graduates that they will be able to find them.  I'll set aside, for the moment, that his program would likely affect me personally, since I am an English major in a field that would inevitably be cut.

To start things off, STEM majors don't produce jobs.  True, putting more funding into those majors will mean hiring more teachers, which would create some jobs, but this is counteracted by all those teachers in other fields who would likely get fired as a result of the budget shifts.  Scott's plan would do little more than produce more graduates in fields that are already overwhelmed with graduates.  There aren't enough jobs in the sciences to begin with.  When graduates in any field aren't able to get jobs in or relevant to their field, it's ridiculous to assume that producing more

Misunderstanding the LGBT (QUILTBAG) "Agenda" -- Or Why It's Not "Bigoted"

(I originally posted this on Google+, but since most of you probably don't follow me there, I figured you'd like to read this.  No, I don't cross post everything.  That would be annoying...)

To this day, I still find statements (or logic) such as the following ironically amusing: "I love you, but homosexuality is a sin." It's similar to "I don't support discrimination against LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, but I don't support same-sex marriage."

Such statements point to a failure to understand the other side. To LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, the various issues they are campaigning for, which extend from the right to marry to the various protections afforded to almost everyone else (job protection, protection against abuse, discrimination, violence, etc. etc. etc.), are all Civil Rights. In other words, regardless of what one might think about these people and their "agenda," they believe to the core of their being that this is a Civil Rights movement.

Within that context, can you really blame them for seeing bigots everywhere? From the mindset ofCivil Rights, any contradictory statement like one of the two I listed above would present a bigoted position: that is that saying "I don't support same-sex marriage because I believe it is a sin" is an dogmatic position, the adherence to which links one to bigotry within the context of a Civil Rightsdiscussion.

The fact that LGBT (QUILTBAG) people are right -- it is a Civil Rights movement -- is secondary to understanding why they are so adamant about their beliefs. Some like to say that these folks are just as intolerant as the people they claim to be against, which is little more than linguistic trickery to support a victim mentality. The reality is that almost all (notice the qualification) LGBT (QUILTBAG) people do not believe they have a right to control what you do and do not believe, just that you don't have a right to impose those beliefs on them by denying them the rights and privileges heterosexuals take for granted on a daily basis. At the end of the day, LGBT (QUILTBAG) people aren't trying to take something away from their opponents. Their opponents, however, are -- that's where bigotry finds a home.

The Children of Tomorrow and What They Will See (or, Obama-mania's Future)

One of my friends on Facebook recently posted this on his profile:

the internet scares me. it makes me think people really would vote for trump. it makes me think people really believe obama is part of a conspiracy hatched decades ago to put a racist homosexual kenyan marxist-anarchist-fascist (say what?) in the white house. i'm losing faith in people with each new facebook group dedicated to shit like this.

I'm not going to give out his name in case he doesn't want it to be any more public than his FB account.  I initially wanted to respond straight to his post, but then decided I should say the following here (after the fold):

Politics: A Critique Deconstructed (Part Three)

(Part One and Part Two)

The third and final part of my long-winded political nonsense is here.  You can read the post that I am responding to here.

Now for part three:


VIII.  Creationism
No matter what you call it, it's not a scientific theory.  It's religion.  Creationism/intelligent design has never become a scientific theory, since nothing, short of theoretical/experimental physics, becomes a theory in science without following the scientific method (and I have a huge problem with theoretical physics using the term "theory" for every crackpot hypothesis that proposes an answer to life, the universe, and everything).  This means that evolution has gone from a hypothesis (a guess or a series of guesses based on evidence) to a theory (an established scientific fact) by means of providing evidence (mountains of it) and proving its case time and time again