Band Review: The Further

Keeping with this week's theme of reviewing bands where a member followed me, one member of The Further is guitarist Barrington Mole.

Barrington is in three bands, which means that even though I reviewed Whitemoor back in August (and while I certainly can't rule out a future review of Ejectorseat), today is all about The Further, a Derbyshire-based indie rock band.

Songs have a quality of creeping desperation, but that doesn't stop them from being poignant and beautiful.

Despite the band's description of their sound as "Three friends making a forlorn racket", "Ordinary" is energetic, even if its rhyme scheme pulls in "obituary" and "cemetery". "Cling 2 Me" pulls in some good funk. That being said, "The Other Side of the Valley" and "Suffocate Yourself" are pretty forlorn.

That is not a problem. Life can get dreary, and music is sometimes the best way of facing that.

Worth checking out.

https://www.facebook.com/TheFurtherUK/

https://soundcloud.com/thefurtheruk

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCic1W0603VhwlKKppjoC7AQ

https://twitter.com/TheFurtherUK

Band Reviews: The Hotel Robbery, 57 Down, and A New Nowhere

When I have bands without very much music I worry about being able to provide a worthwhile review. Sometimes I just go for it anyway, but today I have three where I was followed by a member of a band without very many songs, and I decided to combine them.

The Hotel Robbery (Lucas Ludwig)

I can only find one song by Lucas, "Drive", released in January around the same time he followed me.

"Drive" is pretty good. It has interesting synth accents and shifts in the delivery that gives complexity to the emotional effect, which is full of frustration and longing. There is a break near the end of the song, where you think it's over. It picking back up works, and makes the song more than it was.

It would probably be easier for The Hotel Robbery to find their niche if "Drive" were a straight dance tune. Also, maintaining momentum is going to require more activity, with new releases or videos or something. There is still potential here, and it merits attention.

https://soundcloud.com/thehotelrobbery

https://twitter.com/Lucas_Ludwig0

57 Down (Billy Bass)

57 Down has two tracks available: "A Fool And His Corpse" and "Need It Kind Of Real". The band takes an interesting approach by having two bass guitars and no 6-strings.

Melody is generally carried more by vocals than guitar anyway, so that is not what you notice. Instead the double bass leads to a stripped down, raw feel. It may make the music more in your face, or that could just be them.

The group self-describes as stoner rock. I don't feel like their music would be greatly improved by the use of substances (I'd say that's more of a house/ambient thing), so I may be missing a reference. Tracks are fun and energetic, especially "Need It Kind Of Real".

http://57down.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/57Dwn/

https://soundcloud.com/57down/a-fool-and-his-corpse

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_u05f8FyDCiVsXbYHGbBhw

https://twitter.com/Gruffinnit

A New Nowhere (Kev)

A New Nowhere is a rock band from Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Lightening moody chords with harmonic vocals, they should be easily enjoyed by fans of the Seattle grunge sound, perhaps even more for feeling a little lighter.

That's not that there is no darkness in the music, but it is dealt with in a way that doesn't bring the listener down. Sometimes that's due to the beauty, but it can be humor too; their video for "You And I" verges on the absurd.

Spotify only has three tracks, but you can find a few additional via the Youtube Channel. I recommend checking these out as well, especially "Scream".

I don't want to take anything away from A New Nowhere by harping on the grunge similarities, but I know there are huge fans of Nirvana and Pearl Jam out there who will groove to this band, and those connections should be made.

It's always good to find a new band.

https://www.facebook.com/anewnowhere/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHMQJOtbWnJvPILIzcMINZg

https://twitter.com/ANewNowhere

Regrets

As I was writing about my body as something that performs (rather than appears), I couldn't help but think about a lot of the things that I used to be able to do and can't really do now. I have written about this before somewhat, but I want to spend a little more time on it.

My grade school had an after-school sports program. We did things like basketball and soccer, but also dodgeball and playing with a giant parachute. Often they were things that we did in PE, but instead of your class, there were different grades represented and it was voluntary. I loved it. I had to be really sick to miss it. For a while I was also the only girl playing basketball at recess. I didn't think of myself as someone who loved sports, but the evidence was there.

I never tried out for school sports teams. There were concerns about time and money, but I was also sure that I could never be on a team that had tryouts. I did do church sports teams: volleyball, basketball, and softball.

I did not consider myself to be particularly good at any of them. If I could successfully serve the ball over the net when it was my turn in the rotation, that was good enough. Mainly, I was just used to thinking of myself as clumsy and not athletic.

The problem with that (like with so much of my self-perception growing up) is that it was not accurate.

No, I was not great at any of it, but I did sometimes make shots, or return a volley. Beyond that, there is some achievement in playing a game of full-court basketball, running up and down the court over and over again (especially if no one is great at shooting or rebounding).

One of the stories in Beauty Sick  was about a woman who as a child was both fat and athletic. She would do great at various sports, but would still always be picked last when the time came to pick teams again.

I remember being picked last, but I can't remember if I was actually the worst athlete. I assumed I was; I was fat and obviously everyone else seemed to think so, but now I question it. Yes, I could not do the flexed arm hang or climb the rope, and I was horrible at lap running, but I was above average in all of the other Presidential Fitness tests.

I have said before that there was a sense of the inevitable; you either were a good athlete or you weren't. Also, if you were a good athlete you looked like it. That is so wrong, and so unhelpful.

They might have told us that practice would help, though I don't really remember that. Practice isn't enough if you are doing it wrong, and no one ever talked about form. I have to wonder how much of that is that they didn't know anything.

This matters, and not just because all bodies are different, with capabilities that cannot be determined merely by the shape of the body. If you are teaching elementary and junior high kids, their bodies are changing all the time. I have heard of breast development throwing off girls with pitching and things like that, but there are women who have breasts and play sports. It must be possible to adjust. Shouldn't there be tips available?

I feel this loss, because when my mental picture was always that I was fat and clumsy, I didn't appreciate that I would go for a 5-mile bike ride for fun, or that I went roller skating every week. The roller skating couldn't have meant I was athletic because I never skated backwards or shot the duck - all I did was skate around for a couple of hours without falling.

I was a better dancer once too, but I never gave myself any credit for that. Someone even told me that this thing I did with my shoulder during one tango was just the epitome of grace. I had no idea what she meant.

These are frustrating things, because I don't know that I can get them back. It's not just being older - Skateworld is gone, and I no longer own a bike, and also my time is not really my own right now.

Despite that, part of appreciating my body now - and holding onto that strength and fitness that I do have - is recognition. It is necessary to see when I am doing something well or ably, or at least for a sustained period of exertion where I am sweaty and tired but still moving. It is important to acknowledge what is right with my body.

There are reasons that is harder than it should be, and that's where I intend to pick up Monday.

Less encouraging

The question on "What kind of person do you want to be?" was the first one I did, and it was the best experience.

That left the beauty audit (which I also wrote about yesterday), the self-compassionate letter to my body, writing about thinking about my body as something that performs rather than appears, but also that other question paired with the first...

"How do you want the world to be different when you leave it?"

That was discouraging because I don't think I can make that much difference. I would like to restore the environment so that global warming is no longer a danger and that this time period does not become the fifth mass extinction. I would like to eliminate racism and poverty. I do not believe I can do these things.

One of the points I wrote about yesterday that did make me feel good is that I do help people now. I know I have an impact on individuals through kindness. I am also aware that my blogging is helpful to some people in terms of helping them figure out ways to say what they want to say, whether that means talking about their feelings and motivations or politics. Without debating the size of the impact, those people will die too. To have an impact that goes beyond the length of our lives seems very unrealistic.

On one level I was prepared for that obstacle. I am constantly aware of how much humans mess up, but also I have a faith that God will heal it, on a schedule that I don't know. Because my religious beliefs include a belief in the great worth of a soul (and each soul), then I do believe that helping an individual matters, for their sakes. Thinking about making the world a better place, though, on a global scale, there I have some doubts.

Still, I take questions seriously, almost compulsively so. I had to think about this one. I found three areas of focus.

One of them is more religious, in that I want the family history and temple work for my family caught up before I die. That shouldn't change the world much, as it focuses on those who are already gone. I still believe it's important. Also, it's practical for me to be the one who completes it, because no one in my family is reproducing.

The other two things come from my "47 uses for a billion dollars" thing. I still haven't come up with a full 47, but someday I am going to focus on that and do some pertinent blogging.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/03/an-open-letter-to-chan-zuckerberg.html

Without having completed that yet, there are still two areas that are especially important to me: permaculture and diverse books and movies.

These are topics that speak to my heart and excite my brain, but they are also very reasonable ways of improving this world. Diverse books and movies are important for creating empathy between different people and building acceptance. That would be reason enough, but a beautiful side effect is that working on it encourages individual creativity and self-expression. That is something that makes a better world. If the only thing I can do now is appreciate and recommend diverse works so maybe a few other people check them out to, I will do it. That might not be enough to end racism on its own, but I do believe it's a step in the right direction.

Spreading permaculture would be so good for the environment. You can create carbon sinks and support pollinators, purify water, provide local food, and make a better world. There are so many good applications. Right now, I am just learning about it and not even implementing it on my own land yet, but I hope to create something beautiful here, and inspire other people to try.

Is that encouraging? Not completely. It is realistic. Also, (crucially) this is being true to myself.

Surprisingly good

I finished my assignments from Beauty Sick  this weekend. They ended up being pretty affirming.

That was not a surprise so much in itself - they are designed to get you looking inside, and a lot of the pressure that is harmful to women comes from focusing on the outside. However, because I have spent so much time doing that already, I didn't expect anything huge - been there, done that, you know? Perhaps I should have guessed that if it felt like it would be valuable to do them it might indicate there was something unexpected there.

The first question I did was "What kind of person do you want to be?" I knew immediately that I want to be a person that helps, and I want to be strong.

Last Monday I wrote about feeling weak. I have been strong in the past, but I don't feel that way now. That feels like it has a negative impact on the amount of help I can give. I am barely holding myself together currently. At the same time, that meant that I basically wanted to be me, just with better resources. That could be worse.

Then I remembered that recently I'd had two friends call me needing someone to listen. One literally called while I was talking to the other, so I had to call her back. I still helped both of them, solely by listening.

Recently on Twitter someone (I thought it was Sydette, but I can't find it) was posting about how that can be enough - not solving problems for someone else, but merely holding their problems in your hands while they catch their breath. I can still do that.

I have been pretty open about this not being the greatest time in my life. Even so, there are accomplishments. I can also acknowledge that a lot of what is draining me now is that I am helping others. Maybe tired isn't exactly the same as weak.

It was something to realize at a time that is so stressful and discouraging - when there are so many areas when I feel inadequate - that I am whom I would choose to be. Yes, I'd like to have more money, but if I had been the kind of person that was accumulating it, maybe I wouldn't be me anymore. I still don't know how all of this is going to come out.

The beauty audit was helpful in a way that I didn't expect as well. I know there are areas where minor changes could be helpful, improving my general level of attractiveness. It appears that I don't care.

I am looking at some ways to make addressing the most pressing issues more convenient, like keeping cuticle cream in my purse. Still, that is because my cuticles are bugging me right now, not because anyone pays any attention to my cuticles.

I had thought that doing beauty things for me could be validating as a form of self-care, but they still can't be nearly as interesting to me as things that would result in better rest or better nutrition or relaxation. That works too. Better health and happiness can deliver a beauty boost, but it's for me, and not for anyone else.

It is not my job to be attractive. What I do need is what I am already working on.

I may not be quite the wreck that I always feel myself to be.

Band Review: Aree and the Pure Heart

I swear Aree and the Pure Heart followed me on Twitter back in early February - that's how they ended up on the review list - but I cannot find a Twitter account for them now. I know tweeting's not for everyone, but I have to be glad they at least tried it, because I really liked the band.

Based in Atlanta, the band identifies as rock and roll/punk. Despite the location, I don't hear Southern rock influences. Rather, there is a musical joy that reminds me of Bob Seger.

That is only in instruments and mood; Aree's voice is completely different. There may be some reminders of Marshal Crenshaw and Fee Waybill there, but I could reasonably just say that vocally Aree is unique. Regardless, his voice fits in perfectly with all that PJ is doing on guitar, and Chris on bass, and Dave on drums. (The band does not appear to be into last names.)

Together they create a sense of celebration. Their Heartsongs EP is more than fun; it's uplifting.

Really recommended. I'm glad I had a chance to check them out.

https://www.facebook.com/Areeandthepureheart/

https://areeandthepureheart.bandcamp.com/

Band Review: Dreamer & Son

Dreamer & Son is a Boston-based band that describes themselves as nostalgic dream-rock.

While I am not sure I recognize any elements of nostalgia, I cannot deny a dream-like quality to their music. This is especially true on "Cheat", their single released in February. Using hints of echoes and a soft touch on the instrumentation, the overall mood can well be described as dreamy. The intro to "Tension" approaches it differently, but still has similar results. There are lovely musical accents on "Sweep".

I do find Dreamer & Son difficult to categorize, so perhaps new vocabulary is a reasonable response. In any event, I enjoyed listening. They make a good contribution.

http://www.dreamerandson.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dreamerandson/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsi5SiSQk9EmdA3X3IkyuFQ

https://twitter.com/dreamerandson

Assignments again

As I work on this list of things I need to do, I never really thought that there would never be any other steps. Often my big step is reading more, but sometimes as the knowledge accumulates, a task of some kind takes form.

This was somewhat easier with one of the more recent books.

Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Renee Engeln, Harper Collins 2017.

The currency of it is really refreshing; I don't read books in their publication year that often. Even though a lot of the concepts aren't completely unfamiliar, some of the examples are really recent and fresh in memory, which is kind of cool.

Engeln is aware of the general familiarity, and it influenced the book in her desire to not simply do more hand-wringing. There is information on techniques that are working better, from something as simple as aerobics instructors focusing on strength and function instead of appearance when they are leading their classes.

There are also some interesting ideas from research by Eric Stice at the Oregon Research Institute on intervening with cognitive dissonance. In an attempt to help someone else struggling with body image, participants explain the dangers and costs and impossibility of trying to meet these ideals. That makes it harder for the participants to fall into that same thinking, because of the sense of hypocrisy.

I believe that looking out for others can do a lot to help us see ourselves more accurately, but I also know it is completely possible to somehow retain the thought that everyone is worthy of love and understanding except you. Those ideas are interesting, but not something I am working with now.

I am going to write a self-compassionate letter to my body. You can learn more about this at self-compassion.org

I will also be going through two questions: "What kind of person do you want to be?" and "How do you want this world to be different when you leave it?"

I will also be taking a beauty inventory. That means going over the time and money that I spend on beauty. Often this is a situation where someone might decide that certain practices are not worth the cost. I may decide to do a little more, just based on not doing much already.

For some of the other suggestions, I am not sure how to apply them.

·         Be gentle with yourself - I can try and remember that more. There are certainly times when I am worse than others, but I don't have a concrete idea in mind for how to achieve it. Sometimes the more abstract concepts get applied as I work on other things, so that is not a worry yet.

·         Move toward thinking about your body as something that does instead of something that appears - There could be another journal session here. Actually, even just after reading I remember correcting some things my sisters were saying, because we do have some good physical abilities, regardless of size. That goes along with...

·         Watch your words - I have already gotten a lot better at this.

·         Mind your media - I feel like I do pretty well here. I know that a lot of it is subliminal, but I do limit my media intake and I have a lot of awareness because of what I have read.

·         Vote with your wallet - An empty wallet could seem like an obstacle here, but I am generally low consumption and unaware of advertising, making me the worst person to speak via boycott. That may be an area for change, but it doesn't feel like a priority at this time.

Anyway, those are some of the things that I am working on.

There is also a vague feeling that someday a crucial step will be trying dating again, and I hope if that does arrive I can feel something more enthusiastic than "Oh, barf."

Emo update

Yesterday was so heavy that I need to not be heavy today, so I thought I would catch up on my Emo listening, where I listen to all of the bands and songs mentioned in Andy Greenwald's Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo.

For my first-time through listening, I am on Chapter 13. For finishing the entire book, there are 39 bands left, including Judas Priest who is playing right now. No, they are not emo, but I always used to think "Highway to Hell" was them; it's AC/DC. I have heard their song "You've Got Another Thing Coming", but I never thought much about whom it was by. I am learning non-emo things too.

Once I have finished those, I will go through the twelve bands listed in an Alternative Press article, as well as listening to Ash and The Saddest Landscape. They have come up with some of the other bands, and I'm not sure how relevant they are, but I like to be thorough.

At some point I will also be listening to a bunch of bands who at one point were very important to my various teen friends. Some of them don't seem that important anymore, and I don't know if that's because they have broken up, or their fans aged out of freaking out over bands, or if some of the fans have aged out of Twitter. It's probably a combination. It was just that I noticed a level of passion that seemed similar to how the fans of the emo bands felt.

The other thing is that I have been keeping a tally of the bands that I think I like, and I will listen to them again to see if I want to do a full review. That list is currently 22 bands long (mostly emo, but also Nelly and The Hives), so that would almost double my recommended list.

On the other side, for posting daily songs from what I have already listened to, I am working on Chapters 9 and 10. I think it will go through to almost the end of summer, and then I will probably have about two months' worth of songs from reviewed bands.

Chapter 8 took the longest to get through, both on the original listen and for doing daily songs. That is because it was in Chapter 8 that Greenwald briefly mentions Deep Elm's series The Emo Diaries and Drive-Thru's Welcome to the Family samplers. I doubt Greenwald has listened to them all, but I have.

In general I found Deep Elm's offerings more interesting. There was definitely more variety. Drive-Thru repeated bands a lot, whereas it appears that Deep Elm didn't need to. That being said, Drive-Thru had Finch, New Found Glory, Allister, Something Corporate, and The Starting Line, which is not a bad roster.

Still, Emo Diaries 10: The Hope I Hide Inside was pretty good. I listened to it again. That being said, it was sandwiched between the two worst ones, following Sad Songs Remind Me and followed by Taking Back What's Ours. It's weird that a genre based so much on emotional openness over musical skill could produce such uneven results.

The worst obstacle was knowing I would need to delve into Dashboard Confessional and just dreading it. Early mentions would involve some listening, but then Chapter 12 is such a love song to Chris Carrabba that it was going to take more. I finally decided to methodically go through each album from Further Seems Forever (Carrabba's other band) and Dashboard Confessional chronologically, doing one a day. I survived, but I did start wondering if he ever got into some kind of therapy. He's touring again, so it would be interesting if he could do that without being so anguished.

The most annoying thing is that delving deeper I am more aware when Greenwald misses something, and some of this is really interesting. I wish there was a better book.

Maybe I will write it.

Weak

I have gone through rough periods in my life before where I was stripped of things I had taken for granted.

Once upon a time I had always been able to earn decent money. I was never rich, but I could do things I liked, and it allowed me to help other people. Then I lost my job, and had a really hard time finding a new one. Even once I did, I never really regained my old footing. Things have never been financially comfortable since. A lot of reexamination went along with that.

Some time before that, I fell into a deep well of pain. I had been carrying it around with me, and I thought I was successfully holding it at bay, until I wasn't anymore. That cheerful disposition that had been the core of my personality was gone for a long time. What came back was worth having, but the struggle in between was really hard.

It appears to be time for another round of loss.

When I first got back from Italy - especially after the trip home - I was really tired, and having a hard time shaking it off. I attributed that to the extra strain of looking out for Mom under unusual circumstances, without any real breaks. I figured it would just take some time to catch up.

I can go for longer than three hours now, but "normal" does not seem to be in sight. And normal for me always meant strong.

It was one of the consolations for being fat, that at least that solidity came with some toughness. People have called me a rock. I have thought of myself as a workhorse. Maybe those aren't the qualities that make you the heroine in a romantic comedy, but they were practical assets and they would come in really handy in times like these.

I am always so tired and low now.

There is an emotional toll to being a caretaker that I haven't been giving enough credit. I mean, I've heard that it's hard, and known that it's hard, but I am only starting to realize how much it is draining me, and how much I am not overcoming it.

There are so many things that I should be doing to try and bring in some money, because I am out. There are also so many things I should be doing to provide enrichment for my mother and make sure she has good quality of life. There is all of this fear and this grief and they drain, but then there comes the sense of guilt and lack of accomplishment too.

As I recognize it, I am trying to honor it. Okay, I am only getting about a fifth of the things that I think I should do done; can I give myself credit for that? Maybe, but the mortgage payment is still due in five days and I don't have it.

That may be going about it the wrong way; in my previous examples I don't think I really learned anything from the experiences until it was all hindsight. Perhaps I should just struggle and keep beating up on myself now, as if I had never learned anything from struggling before, but it would take so much effort.

So it's just limbo - an uncomfortable, miserable limbo - but something has to happen sooner or later, and even terrible changes could remove some burdens, maybe. It's a rough spot to be in.

And the only smile in all of it is a sardonic one at how unfair it is that I should be feeling so delicate without at least having turned slender and pretty.

Band Review: Jaiz

Jaiz is the hip hop persona of Jeremy Gentile.

His most traditional hip hop track is probably "Attention Whore". Other tracks are frequently driven more by melody than beat. "My Brother" is more sung than spoken, though there is more traditional rapping in the bridge. That might be a nice change for hip hop fans who are looking for something different.

The best track may be "Break Free", featuring Ashleigh Munn, but overall the music did not make a strong impression.

http://jaizmusic.com/

https://soundcloud.com/JaizMusic

https://www.reverbnation.com/jaiz

https://twitter.com/JaizMusic

Band Review: Scarlet Kill

When you first go to Scarlet Kill's main page, there are three videos, one of which ("My Dear") shows the lead singer with his face covered in blood. Between that and the name I assumed that it would be some sort of metal or hard core band.

Instead, the video for "My Dear" follows the crash that ends the video for "Don't Wake Up", where a young couple had been driving along blissfully right up until the blaze of lights and shattering glass.

That immediately reminded me of Brand New's video for "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows", but also many '60s ballads of young love being cut short by death. Those seemingly disparate musical moments have intersected before, like when Pearl Jam covered "Last Kiss".

Scarlett Kill falls a little closer to the 60s sound, though it does not appear that all of their songs have fatal themes. It still tends to be more melodic and earnest than punk (without sounding quite emo, either).  Bands they cover include Ed Sheeran, Goo Goo Dolls, and Green Day, so still going back and forth between sentimental and punk.

Songs are well performed and the band (composed of friends and brothers) appears to be having a good time. They may still need to dig a little deeper to find their own unique sound.

http://scarletkill.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ScarletKill

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg2sQ8cENGhA3AiKFLN2bCw

https://twitter.com/scarletkill

Representation

Recently the Decider polled LGBTQ entertainment professionals to create a list of the 50 Most Important LGBTQ TV Characters of All-Time. Decider staffer Brett White tweeted his own top 25, which has helpfully been gathered as a moment:

https://twitter.com/i/moments/872560796257189939

http://decider.com/2017/06/07/deciders-50-most-important-lgbtq-tv-characters-of-all-time/

Brett's list included guest characters, and he referenced Jean from the "Isn't It Romantic" episode of The Golden Girls. That is an excellent episode.

I never saw it back then (1986), but I have seen it many times now. They do a beautiful job of handling the issue sensitively and balancing it with humor and playing to the characters' strengths. Someone being homosexual was often a punch line back then, in general and even sometimes on The Golden Girls, but not that episode.

(When I watch "Sick and Tired" where they address Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and think maybe they shouldn't have bothered trying to address special issues ever, "Isn't It Romantic" and "Have Yourself A Very Little Christmas" remind me that it can be done.)

It started me thinking about when I had first seen LGBT characters on television. It was the "Big Disease With a Little Name" episode of 21 Jump Street (1988).

I have only seen it once, but I remembered it as being well done. Hanson's assignment was to protect a teen with hemophilia who had contracted AIDS and who people did not want at school because of their fear of the disease. Naturally, other students assumed Harley was gay, and so that when Hanson was hanging out with Harley that they were dating, and you saw a lot of prejudice. Later we learned that Harley was gay; his parents made him blame it on hemophilia because they wanted to avoid the judgment that came with that. (That didn't really pan out.)

Looking back I am sure that there were things that weren't portrayed accurately. Harley died during the episode, not long after he had been attending school and riding his motorcycle. I'm just not sure it would have happened that fast. At the same time, the treatment that he faced (surely inspired by Ryan White), the fear to be open about his sexuality, Hanson's reluctance to drink from an unopened milk carton that Harley had touched (and how much that hurt Harley), and Harley thinking about killing himself instead of letting the disease take its course all felt pretty real. In the last scene, when Harley's mother called Hanson to tell him that Harley had died, and that Harley had said to tell him it was okay about the milk, that was pretty devastating.

I started wondering if other people had remembered it and been affected. I did find one post on it, but the writer spent a lot of time on the prejudice people with hemophilia face. A commenter asked whether she'd missed that he was gay, and the writer was really mad about that. She thought they took the easy way out.

https://rubyslife.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/21-jump-street-aids-episode-rant/

I disagree with her characterization of it as the easy way out, but it only reinforces the point about representation. It had meant something to her to see parts of her struggle there, and then it felt like they took it away. It has become somewhat easier for LGBTQ people to find their stories, but it's still not that easy. I left off the IA because there is not much representation for them at all. That doesn't mean that if you are straight but have a dangerous disease or disability that the straightness is enough to feel included.

That goes back to what I wrote yesterday about needing many different movies with many different stories being told. It's important for us to see stories that are not like ours to have empathy, but it is also important to see stories that are like ours to know that we are not alone. It's not even necessarily representation for a small group, because what if there are lots of people who have the same struggle but they are all scared to talk about it? Or can't get anyone to listen?

Let me take one more side trip, and then I am going to circle back to Monday's post too, with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Recently on The Talk they were talking about Shonda Rhimes, regarding her recent weight loss and her saying she was invisible before.

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/06/28/scandal-creator-shonda-rhimes-says-no-one-saw-her-as-a-person-until-after-she-lost-weight/

Guest host Carnie Wilson kind of contradicted her. Even though she admitted that people treat you differently when you are fat, Carnie said she has always had boyfriends and men interested in her. It kind of seemed that she wanted to make sure that was known. And yes, that is true, there are men who don't worry about that, or like it, or are at least willing to consider it, though certainly having a famous parent and some amount of fame helps.

Back to the ride. I am a straight white woman, and I am also fat. Fat women are used as a punch line a lot. The original version has a fat woman being auctioned off. Although the more conventionally attractive women are scared or sad, the fat women appears to be good with it. Still, none of the pirates want to bid on her, so when the other women are running away from pirates she is chasing one who is scared of her.

That was just one more reminder that I could never be sexually desirable. Plenty of other entertainment messages backed that up, so I closed myself off to that. It was not always effective, and there were some ways in which it was freeing, but there was damage from it.

It was also not the only possible true story, as Carnie Wilson and others have pointed out, but it was the most common and I bought it.

What we see has an effect on what we can imagine and how we feel. We should be making room for everyone in that.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/07/reading-diverse-characters-and-authors.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/03/being-strong-female-character.html

Thoughts on Moana

Recently I mentioned paying a compliment late, and that directly related to Moana.

I had read many complaints about how the culture is represented in Moana, and problems people had with it. This made me reluctant to see it, but then someone I follow who has some Polynesian ancestry tweeted about it, and some of the things that she liked about it. It reminded me that there can be multiple views. Going back to yesterday, we can both appreciate and be critical of things. We should.

It was a good reminder for me that even when you are trying to do better you will make mistakes. That doesn't completely eliminate the value of the effort. There is some comfort in that.

If you are interested in more about the controversy, this is a pretty good article:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-story-moana-and-maui-holds-against-cultural-truths-180961258/

This does not include all of the complaints I have seen, and am going to go over a few. It can be okay to disagree with any of them, but it is important to listen, and not automatically discount something just because it didn't bother you.

The ocean is an important part of the movie, and it will be polluted with highly disposable merchandising from the movie. That is true. That is more about a need to step away from conspicuous consumption than any one individual movie, but Disney is a big part of that.

The movie does what it wants with what for some people is sacred religion. I had not thought of that. I think of those stories as a mythology, and one that has developed a little differently among the different islands, which I would think of as a reason for being able to assume some liberties. However, it not being sacred to me doesn't mean that it can't matter to anyone else, nor that their reverence should not matter to others. There may be a need for more sensitivity there.

These movies are always about casting off tradition and breaking with the past. There is a point to that, though that happens with European-centric characters too. Of course, in this case Moana was going against the rules of her father to go back to an even earlier tradition.

Another point was made about romance being de-emphasized with heroines of color that ended up leading to a pretty interesting discussion. Beauty standards are often held against non-white women, and it does affect who gets love scenes across a wide spectrum of entertainment. However, there has also been a tendency to counter sexist tropes by having current princesses get rescued less and be less about the prince.

That of course is a reminder that you can't represent everything in a single movie. We need to have many movies, and they need to not all be the same movie so that we can see many different things and understand many different situations better. Representation itself will be the main topic tomorrow.

For now, I have finally seen Moana and I really liked it. I ended up being more taken with the environmental aspects. If you remove the heart from great power, and the power to create, that can become both a source of violent danger and something that will slowly poison all life. It can easily happen due not to any bad intent, but simply due to a quest for glory (or money) that doesn't get well thought out. That there is hope for restoration, and how beautiful that restoration was, is again something that was a hopeful sign for me.

Disney is right to change the Pirates of the Caribbean ride

I realize this is a controversial opinion. Still, for those who haven't already heard of it and started gnashing their teeth, here is a brief overview.

http://micechat.com/165272-breaking-news-final-auction-coming-soon-pirates-caribbean-disneyland-magic-kingdom/

I had to search a little to find an article that didn't make a lot of disparaging references to Disney being politically correct. Now, some of you could very reasonably be thinking that of course Gina, with her bleeding heart liberal ways, is in support of this politically correct move. That would be an oversimplification anyway, but also this news dropped at an interesting time.

I have been reading a little about pirates. It was because of a book, Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath. There were more women pirates than I suspected.

I always knew about Mary Reade and Ann Bonney - they are depicted on the walls for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride queue. They weren't even in this book. I knew about Ching Shih (who was in the book) from a Feminist Frequency video, but there were so many others I had never heard of: Alfhild, Grace O'Malley, and Sayyida al Hurra, (as well as some seafaring women who were not pirates) until I was wondering exactly how common it was to be a pirate and a woman.

That is hard to answer, because you really only get known if you were a captain, but there are estimates that it was as many as 1% during the Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1650 - 1730). This at least makes the "redhead" being a pirate reasonable enough.

That led to me thinking about the question of historical accuracy in general. Even if wench auctions were common, there could be valid reasons for not depicting them in a ride that is taken for fun and does not delve into the issues of what is being represented. However, the more I read, the less likely a wench auction seems.

This is not a testament to the chastity of pirates; they used brothels all the time. Knowing how some people respond to fleet week even now, you know, I'm sure they could get company. However, it appears that they were much more likely to loot a ship than a town (completely logical), and at least during the Golden Age if the ship surrendered they just took the goods without killing anyone. If it didn't surrender and they fought they were likely to kill a lot of them, with captive most likely to be pressed into service on the ship or sold as slaves, and predominantly men. None of this is making pirates good people, but it's still not coming up with a lot of raping and treating women as chattel.

This means that if you are sold on historical accuracy the entire ride needs to be changed. If you are just sold on women being property, existing solely for the use of men, I would like to hear your cogent arguments for why Disney should continue that legacy.

Not long ago I wrote how the women of Hidden Figures should have been around in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, but there are people who would argue that the inclusion of women (especially Black women) there would have been political correctness gone wild. In actuality that would have only been honesty and giving of proper credit.

I know there are people who resent the imposition of modern values on something classic, but I'm not sure that's what this is. First of all, if something that was once widely accepted is clearly wrong, we not only can say it, we must say it. The rise of neo-Nazis and slavery apologists makes that more necessary, not less.

In addition, there are times when it seems like 1960s America was more sexist than the 18th-century New Orleans. Granted, that's not a full picture either, but it's at least worth thinking about.

Remember, the 1960s came not long after World War II. Magazines and products were trying to push women away from factories and military positions back into the home, to have no other aspirations than being good wives, mothers, and shoppers in a way that had not been the case before the war. In addition, Freudian psychologists had fled Europe and brought all of their stupid ideas about penis envy and icebox mothers here. Men from that time period were quite capable of getting it wrong. We can move past that and still have a good time, I promise.

Back to Feminist Frequency, one thing Anita Sarkeesian regularly points out is that you can appreciate something while still being critical of it. That is worth keeping in mind. I'm glad if you have had fun on the old ride, I have too.

That being said, if no longer having images of women in a coffle - some weeping, some scared - with no control over their fate unless they can escape... if that being gone ruins it for you, why is that? That's worth thinking about. If it's just a knee-jerk reaction to any change, even one for the better, that's worth thinking about too. Those thought patterns will come up again and again.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/09/ableist-language.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/05/asian-pacific-american-heritage-month.html