edited, fucked up, strangled, beaten up

[intertribal]

I love Hail to the Thief, it's the first album of theirs I got and I have a certain fondness for it... I bought it in a Borders in Wall Street that we entered to take refuge from the downpour.  I associate Hail to the Thief, thus, with a cold and dreary, ambitious New York.  A gray romanticism.  Anyway.  Here's the full lyrics of the above song - a very, very good song about a very, very sad disease that kills bunny rabbits.

the mongrel cat came home holding half a head, proceeded to show it off to all his newfound friends
he said, "I been where I liked, I slept with who I liked... she ate me up for breakfast, she screwed me in a vice
but now I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied"
I sat in the cupboard, I wrote down in neat, they were cheering and waving, cheering and waving,
twitching and salivating like with myxomatosis
but it got edited, fucked up, strangled, beaten up
used as a photo in Time magazine, buried in a burning black hole in Devon
I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied, don't know why I feel so skinned alive
like my thoughts are misguided and a little naive, I'm twitching and salivating, like with myxomatosis
you should put me in a home or you should put me down, I got myxomatosis, I got myxomatosis
no one likes a smart ass, but we all like stars
(for a reason) that wasn't my intention (for a reason) I did for a reason (reason)
it must have got mixed up, strangled, beaten up, I got myxomatosis

- Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

Before I went on that tangent, this post was supposed to be about this infuriating thing I read last night.  Well... is it really infuriating?  Maybe only to me.  I have serious psychological issues, clearly.  But for some reason I have this irrepressible need to defend violent movies, especially graphically and unstylistically violent movies.  Stylistic violence - i.e., most American action movies that involve action heroes and squeaky leather capes and shooting guns sideways, etc.... a good example of this is The Matrix movies and Equilibrium - is something I detest. 

Maybe it's because I learned from a YouTube post that FUNimation thought it would be clever and sensitive of them to cover up collisions with "ugly white flash marks".  Maybe it's because of this post that I read last night... criticizing the movie Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah) for its portrayal of women.  It was one of those "angry feminist" blogs.  It was very angry that the character of Amy is shown to enjoy being raped - the first time that is (the second time can't be mistaken for that, but it's edited out of the cut version, so most people don't see it) - and you know, this is a horrible thing.  Also, she screams and is helpless.  But not every movie can be made to your liking, and I do think that rape is frequently not cut and dry.  The man that raped her was her ex-boyfriend.  She was distanced from her husband.  I'm not saying that's an excuse but I think it should be mentioned.  And not every woman would react to attack by putting up a huge fight.  See "A Streetcar Named Desire"'s end scene, where Blanche essentially just shuts down, physically and mentally, when she realizes that it's hopeless. 

I also have decided that I'm not really so much an angry feminist, or an angry Asian, or an angry college student, or an angry brunette - if anything, I honestly believe that I'm an angry organism.  That's it.  Because I really hate it when people have button issues that forbid them from considering that something that is contrary to that issue might have some merit.  I know I rant about colonialism all the time, but I don't go around screaming that Joseph Conrad is racist because of the way Africans are depicted in Heart of Darkness.  It's still a great book.  Same with Catch-22.  I mean, Lewis Carroll - unhealthily obsessed with little girls - but Alice Through the Looking-Glass is amazing.  Or the people who decide DBZ is racist because of some unfortunate artistic design.  And then they get hung up on it.  They can't get past it.  I really think, however, that you have to look at the entire message of a work instead of one snippet about its creator or in the work itself, a snippet you might object to. 

Is the point of Heart of Darkness that Africans are savage, emotionless, faceless dark shapes?  No.  Absolutely not.  If anything white people are.  I've never understood this criticism myself.

Is the point of Catch-22 that women all act the same - like whores or crazies - and are sex objects?  No.  Yeah, the characters might think that.  They're also in World War II at the time.  Instead of getting uppity about the way women are portrayed, maybe wonder if your grandpa or whoever who served in World War II didn't think the same way when they were overseas. 

I only dislike movies for their messages when I dislike the entire message.  I could have liked A Clockwork Orange, but the message was that criminals should not be blamed or punished for their actions, and should not be made to change.  And I disagree.  I could have liked V For Vendetta (well... actually, the movie was made pretty poorly, so maybe not quite), but the message seemed to be that you can shake up the system through blowing up buildings and detaching from everyone, and I just can't support that perspective. 

And I can't stress this enough.  I feel like most of the things that actually get banned or edited or censored are mangled because they tell the truth.  And you know what's weird?  Almost everything is the truth.  White supremacy is not the truth, but the existence of white supremacists is.  I'm really into the first amendment.  I really think that if you don't want to listen to it/see it, just don't.  I would actually suggest you do.  My mother always said to know your enemy.  I'm also really against protective bubbles.  Like, I just can't take it, don't show it to me.  I feel like no one has the right to not be able to take it, not unless they're saying that from personal trauma (which is a different matter entirely).  Pretending that the world is not ugly, short, and brutish, as Hobbes put it, is just deluding yourself.  And if you delude yourself, you'll never know the extent of the problem, you'll never know the entire truth of the matter, and you'll never find the entire solutions.  Ever. 

Banned Videos That Are Banned Because They Tell The Truth:
* "Mein Teil" - Rammstein
* "Closer" - Nine Inch Nails
* "Jeremy" - Pearl Jam
* "American Life" - Madonna
* "What It Feels Like for a Girl" - Madonna

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

This reminds me a little of the stuff I'm reading and the paper I wrote about banning hate speech. I agree with Charles Lawrence and others (critical race theorists...) that it's not just words or just speech or just a representation of ideas, so I understand where they're coming from with not wanting it protected under the First Amendment. It's not fair or just or...yeah. BUT, banning it, criminalizing it, doesn't solve anything, might even make it worse, and that is why I'm opposed, not some bullshit racist 'free speech' argument. I actually have like 5 or 6 reasons it's 'potentially' a bad idea, but yeah. Because I think the silence of subjugated/minority/dominated/etc. groups is more of a problem; because banning hate speech creates the illusion that you've solved the problem of racism when you haven't; because harrassment (speech or otherwise) constitutes a threat and is therefore hard to speak out against or turn in the perpetrators of; because insults are only that effective in the way Lawrence describes (silence-creating, illness-inducing, psychological disorder-creating) if you, however subconsciously, sort of believe them; because no one does anything about "microagressions" and if they didn't exist, none of the rest of it could; because the power of enforcing such legislation is in the hands of the very group whose members are able to commit the crime and Lawrence himself documents how such regulations end up turned against those they're meant to help...sigh. But mostly because of the silence, of the "If don't have to see it, we can pretend it doesn't exist," because of the lack of anyone speaking up for themselves against the hate speech--because what that sort so speech does is tell a person what it means to be themselves without admitting what it's doing, and a better solution gives the ability of self-definition to the 'victim.' Judith Butler agrees. I think...

Okay, wow, sorry for ranting. That's much more controversial...

Basically, yeah, I agree, what people want is to cover up all the uncomfortable realities so they can pretend they don't exist, and it makes me mad. Like conservative Christians who want to cover up the reality of teenage sex or homosexuality, get "offended" at the "insulting speech" of people who are just saying what they do or who they are. And I don't know wtf happened to my mother, but she is waaay too affected by such things. But the religious folk are much easier to pick on and art is much easier to defend... things like pornography blur the line a lot more, but banning pornography will not get rid of it or eliminate sexist view of women, so what, exactly, is the point? Go for the source of the problems, not the symptoms, not the representations of them, and certainly not art/literature/movies/etc. that bother to oppose them, even if they have to represent it in the process...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

yes