17 thoughts on “Utilitarian Review 12/15/12”

1. There’s a lot of crackpot evolutionary psychology but I like http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/ – only presents the results of peer-reviewed studies into alternative treatments, doesn’t advocate them as a replacement for DRUGS or FAMILY or SPIRITUALITY or anything else that might help.

   My great-grandmother was also heavily involved in Jewish (women’s) issues. There’s a picture of her somewhere with Elanor Roosevelt. Agreed with your points about intolerance of antisemitism in America and about America’s pro-Israel stance. It’s not like religious discrimination isn’t still an issue, but it’s not a mainstream position and hasn’t been for a long time. My mom was born before 1965 through, so she still remembers being personally held responsible for the death of Christ. Anyway, thanks for the article.

   Ke$ha is adopting Iggy’s masculinity in the interest of getting it on with herself, or himself, or whichever self it may be. It’s not convincing; Ke$ha is a far cry from the Stooges, just as Iggy was a far cry from the blues. But the distance is the point, which is why, these days, it takes a woman to rock like a real (i.e. fake; i.e. real) man.

   It’s so true. The edgiest hip hop artists these days are the transgender ones. Or someone like Chief Keef, who has Asbergers. And it’s because those are the people who enjoy the performance of power, swag, charisma, the most. Who are the most gleeful about subverting your expectations that they belong lower down on the socioeconomic ladder.

   I haven’t read any books this week, I’m an illiterate bum >_>

2. HTML ;_;

3. I read the latest Carl Barks reprint from Fantagraphics, which was splendid, of course. One oddity — Huey, Dewey and Louie seem much less competent and mature in these earlier stories than in later ones. There’s a whole strip, for instance, organised around a cascade of mistakes they cause through lack of common sense and general knowledge; there’s another strip where they’re decidedly reluctant to join Donald on an exotic adventure. Curious — not kvetching, just curious — as to why this wasn’t discussed in the supplementary material. Maybe they’ll do that when they go back to the very early years in later volumes.

   And I finished reading Fanta’s new Wally Wood anthology. This was one of the two launch titles for their EC Library, the other being a collection of Kurtzman’s war stories, but I don’t understand the logic behind choosing this one. Kurtzman’s war stories, sure, but a collection of Wood’s non-scifi, non-fantasy stuff? It’s not a great sales pitch for Wood’s supposed genius, at all. (I should obviously read the solicitations more closely when preordering, or I wouldn’t have bought it sight unseen). But neither of the two volumes has been persuasive as to the genius of EC in general.

4. That still reflect the anarchic Huey, Dewey and Louie from the animated films which, by the way, were created by Barks when he worked at Disney’s story department.

5. Oh, and, what am I reading? IJOCA again, sigh…

6. I’m also reading Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland. Pekar was an important figure in the maturing of American comics. He helped to put the alternative in the underground. I find his last books uninspired though. The graphic novel wagon was not for him. Even if Our Cancer Year is his last major work he should have sticked to the short story, methinks. I also finished reading Mara by Spaniard (Catalan) Enric Sió. Not my cup of tea, but quite an impressive effort, nonetheless. Google him to see some of Sió’s baroque compositions and photo referenced art.

7. subdee, what’s your source for saying that chief keef has aspergers? that’s a fact i’ve seen repeated a bunch of places but without being verified. not saying it’s true or not, just that i’m wondering where this information comes from.

8. I read it on ILM (http://ilxor.com), but I’m not sure whether they had a source.

9. Thanks for commenting on those two pieces, Subdee! They didn’t generate a lot of comment over at Splice, so it’s nice to hear someone found them interesting.

   About rock…I didn’t quite get this in the piece, but it’s interesting to think that a lot of the energy there comes essentially from leveraging inequities. So in some sense, if the inequity is gone, you don’t have the music; there’s no rock music in utopia.

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chief_Keef
    looks like the asperger’s thing is a hoax. i do agree that Keef’s music is weird and compelling in a lot of ways though.

11. Ah, I see. Yeah, that makes sense.

    The Fader had a good (attempt at an) interview with him: http://www.thefader.com/2012/08/21/chief-keef-lost-boys/

    Lots of things going on. He also doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d be interested in an official diagnosis.

12. @Noah I think Rock is mainly about surprise. You don’t expect a white man (Elvis) to sound like a black man, you don’t expect British working class guys (Beatles, Stones) to worship black blues musicians, and you don’t expect women (Ke$ha) to be openly sexually voracious alcoholics. When you can do something unexpected and devalued, and make it look cool, that’s a testament to your personal charisma – your power comes from you and not from the socially unacceptable thing you’re doing. Rock is about personal (sexual) charisma.

    I sort of think Kanye West was onto something when he wore a skirt (kilt?) on stage at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert (surrounded by old, white, mainly British, aging rock stars). If Kanye can pull off a skirt, he’s a bonafide rockstar. (See also.)

13. The line between what’s you and what isn’t can be a little fuzzy though. And I don’t exactly think it’s just surprise…it’s borrowing someone else’s mojo, too.

14. I finished the Harvey Kurtzman volume from Fanta. There were some good comics in there, and some not so good ones, but even the best kind of have to have a “for their time” qualifier. It’s easy to see how these were influential, but I’m definitely starting to get on the bandwagon that says they’re overrated.

    For movies this week, I watched Mission Impossible 3, which was the only one of that series I hadn’t seen. It was pretty good, with some solid action and high-stakes dramatic stuff. I’m of half a mind to write a blog post or something about the series, but then I come to my senses and realize it really wouldn’t be a very good use of my time.

    I also watched Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, The Dictator. It was pretty funny, full of the same dumb/offensive jokes he does so well, but there was a great speech at the end that compared the US to a dictatorship, mentioning stuff like leaders lying in order to go to war, prisons being disproportionately full of one race of people, etc. As much as his antics are all about being outrageous, he lands some solid points that I can get behind. Not that it’s going to change anybody’s mind or anything, but for people of a certain mindset, it makes for a nice pat-yourself-on-the-back-for-getting-the-joke moment. I guess I’ll take it?

15. Jesus, I thought The Dictator was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen–I didn’t laugh once. I also find Sasha Baron Cohen’s obsession with anti-Semitism kind of annoying. “Wah wah wah, everyone hates my people. Now please excuse me while I shit all over every other ethnic and religious group on the planet.”

16. Well, for one example of a joke that I liked, and one that’s not just a mean-spirited stereotype, the bit where John C. Reilly was torturing Cohen, and he managed to take all the fun out of it by pointing out how all his tools were cheap, basic models without any of the pricey upgrades. I also liked the way he turned the organic market where he worked into an ultra-efficient dictatorship of his own, which was a sort of subtle (for this movie, at least) point about how hippie nonconformity can be leveraged into totalitarianism too. I dunno, you pretty much know what to expect with one of his movies, and if you find that kind of thing funny, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.

17. That “Feminist underwear prank on Victoria’s Secret” certainly displays the muddled “thinking” and “have it both ways” attitude (like the women who wear push-up bras and low-cut blouses, then sneer at the “pigs” who ogle them) that I’ve regrettably come to expect from the movement.

    —————————-
    Victoria’s Secret[‘s]…current designs seem to lean more toward rape culture than consent. Their PINK brand, marketed at high school and college-aged women, sports thongs with the slogan “SURE THING” printed right over the crotch. Young women across the country are wearing underwear with “SURE THING” literally printed over their vaginas. We can think of one circumstance where a vagina is treated like a “SURE THING”: rape.
    ——————————

    Uh, how about when the woman is extra-horny and not too finicky? Or ready to “do it” with the guy? (Since rape is considered the exclusive domain of males, I’m leaving lesbianism out of it.)

    Do women go out in public with their panties showing? No, aside from strip-searches and medical examinations, the only time the typical guy gets to see a woman’s panties on the woman is when she undresses for him.

    This message would make sense if worn on t-shirts and other “outer” garments. But when a woman takes her clothes off for a man, it’s pretty evident that pinochle, or cuddling, are not what’s on her mind.

    Not too mention that, as one woman writer mentioned in her book, sometimes women say “no” when they mean “yes,” because they don’t want to be thought “easy.” (It goes without saying that it’s better to take her at her word; better “blue balls” than the prison sentence that this supposedly overwhelmingly prevalent “rape culture” — even the advertising is pushing rape, they claim — would condemn you to.)

    And, unnecessary as it should be, in expectation of the predictable reaction: no, I’m not in favor of rape; it’s an odious, hateful crime.

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