"If your boyfriend's a tool, don't give up! Send him to the Tool Academy!"
Excuse me?!
Did Vh1 just encourage womankind to have blind faith in the enlightenment and reform of spoiled controlling alpha-males who will never change?
God.
Reality t.v. is so disgusting that I've turned to hoping against hope (the way that women who are dating tools hope to change them) that it's all scripted so that I can retain a shred of dignity in regards to the entire human race.
If it is real it's worse...The last thing I need is to become convinced that we need to wipe our species off the planet and be stuck in nihilistic fantasy.
No, genocide is not the answer.
God damn Vh1...drawing in the children of parents who are enslaved by false ideals...praising women who deal with difficult men who don't deserve them by rewarding them with false hopes, suitcases full of money and glittery plastic keys...
The last thing women need is to be told--especially by people who they have somehow come to look up to and justify their actions by, people who are in the spotlight due to a greed-driven producer's twisted idea of entertainment--is that it's okay to be owned. That it's okay to be in a dead end relationship with someone who doesn't respect you. That he can change...especially when the problem is that he can't change.
Sure.
He might be a little better behaved when the cameras are rolling and America is expecting it. The show must go on, after all. But what will happen when the audience is gone and it's back to being the two of you?
Honestly?
If anything he'll have a swollen ego and you're going to bear the brunt of it. And you're going to remember that he pretended to change while the cameras were on him and hold onto the hope that maybe he doesn't mean it.
That maybe he really does love you.
And maybe if you believe that, you're a tool too.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Questioning Kung Fu Catfights
So tonight I was comforting my little cousin who had gotten hurt pretty badly "play fighting" on a trampoline, and as he became more calm, we turned on the t.v. to cartoon network. Now, seriously, there are a thousand and twelve things about children's television that bother the hell out of me, and I've decided to start speaking out about them when they catch my attention.
Tonight, well, we were watching some Scooby Doo movie butchering the awesomely retro 70s animation with computerized modern technology called "Scooby Doo and the Samurai Sword." Typically, Scooby Doo is not really my preferred cartoon. I'll be honest. It was okay when I was little but I was never a fanatic. However it proves better than go-to fart jokes and repetitive nonsense repeating itself so rather than voicing a vociferous protest, I decided that I was lucky and kept my mouth shut. For some reason I assumed that whatever made the little guy feel better would be fine by me.
As you can probably guess...I was wrong.
First, I was disturbed almost immediately by the dehumanization of a man, tied up to a post and acting like a dog. Not like, "Oh, look at me, I'm carefree and innocent! Let us frolic and be merry!" It was more like, "I've been brainwashed by the government and will bite out your jugular if you get any closer to whatever it is I've been trained to protect." It's not that I lack humor. I don't. It just seriously made me stop and go "What the fuck!?" I don't know what society could possibly have against large brutish bald men but apparently they've been demoted to attack dog. Maybe that's what bothers me so much, everywhere I look it's like these kids are being prompted to be violent and sexist, and here a cartoon is throwing it in my face how the greedy corporate assholes in power view many of the young boys watching that very show: ready and willing to take orders blindly and attack on command. I guess the subtlety of the imagery is what kind of turned my stomach. It also made me deeply sorry that my already accident-prone 6 year old cousin is being fed that kind of brutal propaganda on an every day basis.
Unfortunately that's not all. I kept my thoughts to myself and continued watching with him. What I saw next made me wish we had turned the channel.
After being commemorated and highly praised for "displaying the heart of a champion," and defeating "the mighty Sojo" Daphne Blake (who--after spending her entire cartoon career as the gang's main "Damsel in Distress"--is finally rocking the image of a woman capable of taking care of herself) is called on to fight an obviously well-trained woman who had accompanied the gang earlier in the movie. As they each test their skill against the other in a grueling Kung Fu match, the movie cuts to Shaggy and Scooby, who are watching from the sidelines.
"Like, meeeoooow! Talk about a 'Kung Fu catfight,'[I assume this to be some sort of clever allusion to an established pop-culture point of view considering any display of aggression between women to be taken lightly...after all, how much damage could a woman do?]huh?!" Shaggy asks Scooby with exaggerated arm movements, to which his dog obligingly replies;
"Meeeoow!"
Are they serious?
I was disgusted. I don't know how they manage to justify dragging a Kung Fu match between two experienced and skilled women (whether cartoons or not!) down to the level of "cat fight." It's so degrading! Do you think that if Fred were battling the behemoth that Daphne defeated that there would be time for snide comments, or would the audience be left enraptured by his cunning skill and fueling his bravado by taking his match completely seriously? Would Shaggy be saying to Scooby, "Hey, Fred's such a sucker for a chance to flaunt his testosterone!" No! They would be rooting him on, no fail, and promoting his display of masculinity...not belittling his achievements and meowing suggestively. But since it was not a behemoth that she was fighting, but a woman, there wasn't any hesitation about questioning the authenticity of the whole fiasco. When she was fighting a big fucker, her life was in danger. But when she was fighting a woman trained better than the big fucker, it was no big deal. She lacked a penis and was hence no real threat.
AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF... it ends with Daphne's hair band being pulled out by the other woman. Not a kick in the face or even a headlock. Daphne's long feminine hair falls into her face, inhibiting her performance, and victory slides through her manicured fucking fingers. They're not even being subtle now. It's blatantly telling these kids that if you pit a woman against a woman, whether they're champions of a particular style of fighting and could kick Fred's ascoted ass any day or not, they're still going to resort to hair-pulling.
The world is a clusterfuck, and somehow, Scooby Doo made my shitlist.
Tonight, well, we were watching some Scooby Doo movie butchering the awesomely retro 70s animation with computerized modern technology called "Scooby Doo and the Samurai Sword." Typically, Scooby Doo is not really my preferred cartoon. I'll be honest. It was okay when I was little but I was never a fanatic. However it proves better than go-to fart jokes and repetitive nonsense repeating itself so rather than voicing a vociferous protest, I decided that I was lucky and kept my mouth shut. For some reason I assumed that whatever made the little guy feel better would be fine by me.
As you can probably guess...I was wrong.
First, I was disturbed almost immediately by the dehumanization of a man, tied up to a post and acting like a dog. Not like, "Oh, look at me, I'm carefree and innocent! Let us frolic and be merry!" It was more like, "I've been brainwashed by the government and will bite out your jugular if you get any closer to whatever it is I've been trained to protect." It's not that I lack humor. I don't. It just seriously made me stop and go "What the fuck!?" I don't know what society could possibly have against large brutish bald men but apparently they've been demoted to attack dog. Maybe that's what bothers me so much, everywhere I look it's like these kids are being prompted to be violent and sexist, and here a cartoon is throwing it in my face how the greedy corporate assholes in power view many of the young boys watching that very show: ready and willing to take orders blindly and attack on command. I guess the subtlety of the imagery is what kind of turned my stomach. It also made me deeply sorry that my already accident-prone 6 year old cousin is being fed that kind of brutal propaganda on an every day basis.
Unfortunately that's not all. I kept my thoughts to myself and continued watching with him. What I saw next made me wish we had turned the channel.
After being commemorated and highly praised for "displaying the heart of a champion," and defeating "the mighty Sojo" Daphne Blake (who--after spending her entire cartoon career as the gang's main "Damsel in Distress"--is finally rocking the image of a woman capable of taking care of herself) is called on to fight an obviously well-trained woman who had accompanied the gang earlier in the movie. As they each test their skill against the other in a grueling Kung Fu match, the movie cuts to Shaggy and Scooby, who are watching from the sidelines.
"Like, meeeoooow! Talk about a 'Kung Fu catfight,'[I assume this to be some sort of clever allusion to an established pop-culture point of view considering any display of aggression between women to be taken lightly...after all, how much damage could a woman do?]huh?!" Shaggy asks Scooby with exaggerated arm movements, to which his dog obligingly replies;
"Meeeoow!"
Are they serious?
I was disgusted. I don't know how they manage to justify dragging a Kung Fu match between two experienced and skilled women (whether cartoons or not!) down to the level of "cat fight." It's so degrading! Do you think that if Fred were battling the behemoth that Daphne defeated that there would be time for snide comments, or would the audience be left enraptured by his cunning skill and fueling his bravado by taking his match completely seriously? Would Shaggy be saying to Scooby, "Hey, Fred's such a sucker for a chance to flaunt his testosterone!" No! They would be rooting him on, no fail, and promoting his display of masculinity...not belittling his achievements and meowing suggestively. But since it was not a behemoth that she was fighting, but a woman, there wasn't any hesitation about questioning the authenticity of the whole fiasco. When she was fighting a big fucker, her life was in danger. But when she was fighting a woman trained better than the big fucker, it was no big deal. She lacked a penis and was hence no real threat.
AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF... it ends with Daphne's hair band being pulled out by the other woman. Not a kick in the face or even a headlock. Daphne's long feminine hair falls into her face, inhibiting her performance, and victory slides through her manicured fucking fingers. They're not even being subtle now. It's blatantly telling these kids that if you pit a woman against a woman, whether they're champions of a particular style of fighting and could kick Fred's ascoted ass any day or not, they're still going to resort to hair-pulling.
The world is a clusterfuck, and somehow, Scooby Doo made my shitlist.
Questioning Katy Perry
Once I can turn the radio on without rolling my eyes after five minutes, I think we will have reached a new era of progress. I’m not holding my breath though. That this day will come soon is doubtful. It seems as though all that mainstream music attempts to do is glorify superficiality, conformity and monotony; stealing beats the same way that Vanilla Ice ripped off Queen and splicing genuine inspiration with failed attempts at drollery or overly serious (and often egomaniacal) soliloquies. People are heavily influenced by the music playing in the background of their lives, and it suggests how they should perceive the world around them. The media is an oppressive and powerful tool structured to make money...not empower people. Knowing this makes it a little hard to expect that the music playing on the radio will be very progressive. Degradation and exploitation somehow became a lucrative art form.
Sometime last year though, I heard a song that took my inner cynic by complete surprise. It symbolized to me, at first, progress to the very definition. It was a song by a girl, Katy Perry, about kissing another girl. Hell, she even liked it! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not because I find it strange that girls kiss girls. I listen to songs with lesbian undertones all the time. I was surprised because of where the song was being played. It was a radio station dominated by songs demanding that females shake their asses and be possessed. I was stunned and thrilled by the apparent turnaround. I felt I was witnessing a landmark. Progress! The Russian pseudo-lesbian duo t.A.T.u. had been a bust, but here was their retribution. The gay community was finally being represented in mainstream media!
Unfortunately my exhilaration was short-lived. Upon listening more closely to the lyrics my relief turned to disgust. Perry was completely missing the point. She was not doing the gay community a favor in any way. Instead, she was reinforcing the same harmful stereotypes that have been scaring people away from an in-depth observation of homosexuality since the beginning. When people hear gay, what they think (assuming it’s not in a context meant to convey one’s contempt toward a thing’s apparent worthlessness) is sex…capital S. It’s not an exaggeration that when typing the word “lesbian” into a YouTube search, rather than finding progressive lesbian artists like Alix Olson or the Good Asian Drivers and valuable lesbian entertainers like Ellen Degeneres and Bridget McManus, YouTube presents us with pages and pages of pornography; videos with artistic titles such as “HOT LESBIAN SUPER SEX.”
“HOT LESBIAN SUPER SEX” is not a fair representation of my community. If my niece were to have questions one day about what it means that I am a lesbian, and rather than talking to me she relied on the media and mainstream interpretations of homosexuality to attempt a deeper understanding of it, she would be horrified and sadly mislead by the supposed information that she would uncover about the gay community. Most of the information floating around out there is not information at all, but rather biased and ignorant opinions or stereotypes. The focus on sex when the issue of homosexuality comes up is deeply detrimental to the general perceptions people have of the LGBT community. That homosexuals are human beings with the desire to be loved is often a factor that is overlooked in lieu of a perverse fascination with the sexual expression of love--a perverse fascination that Katy Perry is capitalizing off of. Not that there aren’t any superficial gays out there, one look at the character Shane on the L Word is proof enough of that, but the privacy of the members of the gay community is constantly violated. Knowing sexual things about people is typically an uncomfortable thing, so it’s not really surprising when people feel uneasy upon discovering that someone is gay. Many people feel they are automatically targeted as potential sex-interests, a presumptuous fallacy that came about because so many people are led to believe that there’s nothing genuinely emotional about homosexuality. What happens in a same-sex bedroom becomes the perverse focal point of most of the overly sheltered people who are confronted with homosexuality, due in large part to the effects of misleading mainstream portrayals of the gay community.
Songs like “I Kissed a Girl” don’t do anything to disassociate “gay” with inappropriate carnal desire. They reinforce the harmful assumption that to be gay doesn’t necessarily mean to be able to love someone of the same gender, which leaves the LGBT community in a light that portrays them as sexual deviants and guilty of sodomy (which is a term also related to the inexcusable act of turning animals into sexual objects) while dismissing the emotional aspects altogether. Katy Perry takes same-sex experimentation into the same field as anyone with ignorant assumptions about the gay community. She reduces her alleged feelings toward the same sex into nothing but carnal desire. In fact, she does everything she can not to acknowledge the fact that the girl she’s kissing might have legitimate feelings. Perry describes this girl as her “experimental game,” something that she just wants to “try on” and, presumably, be admired in.
There are a lot of dimensions (most of them overlooked by people like Katy Perry) that come with the territory of being a member of the LGBT community. I personally grew up in a small oppressive town where I couldn’t even take a girl to the prom if I wanted to. I was completely isolated from anybody that I could relate to (which isn’t one hundred percent due to being a lesbian but it definitely didn’t help) and, considering I was a particularly angst-filled teenager, it was nearly unbearable. It felt like no matter what, I wouldn’t be able to find happiness in a relationship that wasn’t hindered by barriers of every kind; extreme distance, familial opposition, and the distinct possibility of being a target for cruelty and violence.
My little sob story is nothing in comparison with the thousands of other stories out there told by less fortunate members of the gay community. Even so, the misery I experienced was real and is shared by countless others, which makes me wonder about the girl that Katy Perry targeted in her song. Was she someone like Perry, who uses alcohol as an excuse to do things that aren’t “what good girls do,” without having to take responsibility for them or deal with a few societal reprimands? Or was she someone like me, who had been forced to endure her adolescence locked inside of herself throughout the terrifying stages of self-discovery?
If Katy Perry’s “experimental game” was a legitimate member of the gay community, unless she was dismissive of emotional relationships it’s doubtful that she would brush off Perry’s advances as merely “human nature” and worth no further exploration. The victim of Perry’s saliva, if she is a lesbian, would more likely than not want the chance to develop some sort of connection with her. If this was a girl seeking a valid emotional relationship, it’s impossible to assume that she’d be able to dismiss that kind of attention, which might explain why Perry is so quick to state that she isn’t “in love tonight” and altogether avoid the complications that arise when you integrate sexuality with love, especially when it comes to the same sex. In fact, she belittles the concept of a relationship with the same gender by throwing in the fact that she has a boyfriend, and the time and physicality she invests in her “game” are never going to compare to what she considers a real relationship.
Assumptions like this are everywhere in the media. Shows like Nip/Tuck are constantly reversing the roles of women who proclaim they are lesbians or in strictly lesbian relationships and back track these statements with supposedly irresistible flings with men, making the label of “lesbian” appear to be nothing but temporary sexual insanity. It seems like nobody believes in the emotional validity of same sex relationships, and those that try fail when confronted with the choice between the same or the opposite sex. When it comes to lesbians, men absurdly are always still an option, most lesbians just need a good romp in the sack with the right guy. Hoping that her boyfriend won’t mind that she has objectified and used a woman in a sexual way while staying emotionally dedicated to him implies that there’s nothing about being with a woman that compares to being with a man in a socially acceptable relationship. (Ironically it’s more socially acceptable to cheat on your boyfriend with a girl than to be in a monogamous same-sex relationship.)
Katy Perry goes a step beyond this implication by dedicating an entire verse to objectifying women. It seems like a pathetic appeal and a veiled threat to straight men, maybe even directed at her boyfriend in a “Can you blame me?” attitude. She reinforces the assumption that many men have that it’s okay to see women initially for nothing but their physical traits. It’s an idea that these kinds of men will find sickeningly affirmed coming from a woman herself. At the same time though, she seems to be teasing the men, attempting to make them feel insecure and threatened by women and homosexuals and view them as further competition.
Katy Perry reduces same-sex experimentation into a superficial mockery and harmful emulation of the gay community. Her music, because it is popular, influences the way that people who learn how to live and act from MTV view and treat members of the gay community. There is no hope for a widespread acceptance of homosexuality if we keep allowing harmful generalizations to persist. A small way that we can help is by spreading awareness and boycotting harmful portrayals of the gay community by the media (like, for example, Katy Perry’s song) and working to disassociate homosexuality with sexual deviancy and perversion. The cheapening and exploitation of homosexual lifestyles has got to stop. The only difference between homo and heterosexuals is in an arena that shouldn’t be scrutinized by the public anyway. It is essential that homosexuals become acknowledged as people as opposed to the sexual objects that Katy Perry implies that they are.
Sometime last year though, I heard a song that took my inner cynic by complete surprise. It symbolized to me, at first, progress to the very definition. It was a song by a girl, Katy Perry, about kissing another girl. Hell, she even liked it! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not because I find it strange that girls kiss girls. I listen to songs with lesbian undertones all the time. I was surprised because of where the song was being played. It was a radio station dominated by songs demanding that females shake their asses and be possessed. I was stunned and thrilled by the apparent turnaround. I felt I was witnessing a landmark. Progress! The Russian pseudo-lesbian duo t.A.T.u. had been a bust, but here was their retribution. The gay community was finally being represented in mainstream media!
Unfortunately my exhilaration was short-lived. Upon listening more closely to the lyrics my relief turned to disgust. Perry was completely missing the point. She was not doing the gay community a favor in any way. Instead, she was reinforcing the same harmful stereotypes that have been scaring people away from an in-depth observation of homosexuality since the beginning. When people hear gay, what they think (assuming it’s not in a context meant to convey one’s contempt toward a thing’s apparent worthlessness) is sex…capital S. It’s not an exaggeration that when typing the word “lesbian” into a YouTube search, rather than finding progressive lesbian artists like Alix Olson or the Good Asian Drivers and valuable lesbian entertainers like Ellen Degeneres and Bridget McManus, YouTube presents us with pages and pages of pornography; videos with artistic titles such as “HOT LESBIAN SUPER SEX.”
“HOT LESBIAN SUPER SEX” is not a fair representation of my community. If my niece were to have questions one day about what it means that I am a lesbian, and rather than talking to me she relied on the media and mainstream interpretations of homosexuality to attempt a deeper understanding of it, she would be horrified and sadly mislead by the supposed information that she would uncover about the gay community. Most of the information floating around out there is not information at all, but rather biased and ignorant opinions or stereotypes. The focus on sex when the issue of homosexuality comes up is deeply detrimental to the general perceptions people have of the LGBT community. That homosexuals are human beings with the desire to be loved is often a factor that is overlooked in lieu of a perverse fascination with the sexual expression of love--a perverse fascination that Katy Perry is capitalizing off of. Not that there aren’t any superficial gays out there, one look at the character Shane on the L Word is proof enough of that, but the privacy of the members of the gay community is constantly violated. Knowing sexual things about people is typically an uncomfortable thing, so it’s not really surprising when people feel uneasy upon discovering that someone is gay. Many people feel they are automatically targeted as potential sex-interests, a presumptuous fallacy that came about because so many people are led to believe that there’s nothing genuinely emotional about homosexuality. What happens in a same-sex bedroom becomes the perverse focal point of most of the overly sheltered people who are confronted with homosexuality, due in large part to the effects of misleading mainstream portrayals of the gay community.
Songs like “I Kissed a Girl” don’t do anything to disassociate “gay” with inappropriate carnal desire. They reinforce the harmful assumption that to be gay doesn’t necessarily mean to be able to love someone of the same gender, which leaves the LGBT community in a light that portrays them as sexual deviants and guilty of sodomy (which is a term also related to the inexcusable act of turning animals into sexual objects) while dismissing the emotional aspects altogether. Katy Perry takes same-sex experimentation into the same field as anyone with ignorant assumptions about the gay community. She reduces her alleged feelings toward the same sex into nothing but carnal desire. In fact, she does everything she can not to acknowledge the fact that the girl she’s kissing might have legitimate feelings. Perry describes this girl as her “experimental game,” something that she just wants to “try on” and, presumably, be admired in.
There are a lot of dimensions (most of them overlooked by people like Katy Perry) that come with the territory of being a member of the LGBT community. I personally grew up in a small oppressive town where I couldn’t even take a girl to the prom if I wanted to. I was completely isolated from anybody that I could relate to (which isn’t one hundred percent due to being a lesbian but it definitely didn’t help) and, considering I was a particularly angst-filled teenager, it was nearly unbearable. It felt like no matter what, I wouldn’t be able to find happiness in a relationship that wasn’t hindered by barriers of every kind; extreme distance, familial opposition, and the distinct possibility of being a target for cruelty and violence.
My little sob story is nothing in comparison with the thousands of other stories out there told by less fortunate members of the gay community. Even so, the misery I experienced was real and is shared by countless others, which makes me wonder about the girl that Katy Perry targeted in her song. Was she someone like Perry, who uses alcohol as an excuse to do things that aren’t “what good girls do,” without having to take responsibility for them or deal with a few societal reprimands? Or was she someone like me, who had been forced to endure her adolescence locked inside of herself throughout the terrifying stages of self-discovery?
If Katy Perry’s “experimental game” was a legitimate member of the gay community, unless she was dismissive of emotional relationships it’s doubtful that she would brush off Perry’s advances as merely “human nature” and worth no further exploration. The victim of Perry’s saliva, if she is a lesbian, would more likely than not want the chance to develop some sort of connection with her. If this was a girl seeking a valid emotional relationship, it’s impossible to assume that she’d be able to dismiss that kind of attention, which might explain why Perry is so quick to state that she isn’t “in love tonight” and altogether avoid the complications that arise when you integrate sexuality with love, especially when it comes to the same sex. In fact, she belittles the concept of a relationship with the same gender by throwing in the fact that she has a boyfriend, and the time and physicality she invests in her “game” are never going to compare to what she considers a real relationship.
Assumptions like this are everywhere in the media. Shows like Nip/Tuck are constantly reversing the roles of women who proclaim they are lesbians or in strictly lesbian relationships and back track these statements with supposedly irresistible flings with men, making the label of “lesbian” appear to be nothing but temporary sexual insanity. It seems like nobody believes in the emotional validity of same sex relationships, and those that try fail when confronted with the choice between the same or the opposite sex. When it comes to lesbians, men absurdly are always still an option, most lesbians just need a good romp in the sack with the right guy. Hoping that her boyfriend won’t mind that she has objectified and used a woman in a sexual way while staying emotionally dedicated to him implies that there’s nothing about being with a woman that compares to being with a man in a socially acceptable relationship. (Ironically it’s more socially acceptable to cheat on your boyfriend with a girl than to be in a monogamous same-sex relationship.)
Katy Perry goes a step beyond this implication by dedicating an entire verse to objectifying women. It seems like a pathetic appeal and a veiled threat to straight men, maybe even directed at her boyfriend in a “Can you blame me?” attitude. She reinforces the assumption that many men have that it’s okay to see women initially for nothing but their physical traits. It’s an idea that these kinds of men will find sickeningly affirmed coming from a woman herself. At the same time though, she seems to be teasing the men, attempting to make them feel insecure and threatened by women and homosexuals and view them as further competition.
Katy Perry reduces same-sex experimentation into a superficial mockery and harmful emulation of the gay community. Her music, because it is popular, influences the way that people who learn how to live and act from MTV view and treat members of the gay community. There is no hope for a widespread acceptance of homosexuality if we keep allowing harmful generalizations to persist. A small way that we can help is by spreading awareness and boycotting harmful portrayals of the gay community by the media (like, for example, Katy Perry’s song) and working to disassociate homosexuality with sexual deviancy and perversion. The cheapening and exploitation of homosexual lifestyles has got to stop. The only difference between homo and heterosexuals is in an arena that shouldn’t be scrutinized by the public anyway. It is essential that homosexuals become acknowledged as people as opposed to the sexual objects that Katy Perry implies that they are.
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