December Wolves:We Are So Fucking Witty

Fuck nostalgia. I am alive in this moment and no other. Now, excuse me while I update my facebook status with that. This is another blog about how stupid and short-sighted I am.

Congratulations on complaining about reposting on a useless facebook group.

Really, I was moments away from commenting that on a thread but luckily, I realized I had nothing to say except berate other people on a thread for berating other people. Realizing this, I felt like a real winner.

It goes like this. One of the people is super catty about making sure there aren't reposts in a Facebook group with over 9000 pictures on it. So, she and this other guy (both friends of Eleven Names, by the way) constantly post on the thread that the picture is already here. Infuriatingly, they don't provide links. It's frustrating to have someone tell you it's already there and not have the courtesy of showing where.

But yes. Posting on a facebook thread and being smug about how people are wasting their time seems lie a bad way to go about the business of the entertainment in my life. It's not like I'm contributing anything. Snark is a vessel for showing how intelligent you believe yourself to be. And in a conversation where people are already getting out of hand, it's unwise.

Beyond that, it's more embarrassing for me that I was actively searching for that thread so I could look smarter. I had to look for that picture at work and then type something into that little text box and look for a way to put those people down. I should be bigger than that. I've been on the internet for a good decade of my life now and I'm reinforcing this tendency for replies and attention?

I'm a college graduate, man. I'm too old for shit like this. But I'm not, really, am I?

I want other people to see how intelligent I am, damn it! I want to be recognized, by the universe at large, I suppose. I reinforce this dumb cycle of hate with everyone "in before Person X says Y" or every witty comment I feel compelled to make. I know it's a larger part of the game of top dog, but for whatever reason, I'm hesitant to walk away from it. (I mean, I just love Courage Wolf!) It's one way of staying in touch. But reading it I just feel like I'm done.

That's it. Simply fed up and tired. This feeling might pass in the morning. I hope it does, but if I take nothing else from it, I guess I'm just going to try to leave positive messages or none at all. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar. What's old is new.

(And no, I'm not going to end the blog on that note. I've done that too many times before and by now that's one of my tropes. The other, in case you're wondering, is trying to connect myself to a larger idea.) Life is short and I should have better things to do than prance around on the internet showing off my presumed plumage. And if I don't, frankly, I ought to shut up and create them. So I'm going to go do that.

Marathon: Pernicious Parting Gifts (3 of 13)

I finally think I have somewhere to go with this one. I was reading a thread on Facebook that grew out of a bunch of ex-Eleven Names (Thomas, Cathleen) people talking about how, looking back, Disney movies were steeped in some pretty backward and scary thinking. The heroes, looking back, aren't so heroic and have been lionized in a way that obscures what they're doing.

The villains, more and more, start to look like they're the ones being wronged. The princesses have less and less control and are acting in ways that aren't so rebellious. And while I feel mad snarky (can I copyright that phrase?) watching the same people talk about "society" who criticize me listening to punk rock, I feel like..maybe Disney's the one getting the bum rap here.

Maybe we're putting too much on the back of something that's designed to give youngsters a primer on how to act in the culture we've created.

Also, I used the word youngsters. I'm proud of myself.

Then again, this kind of stuff is pernicious precisely because it comes under the radar and because it gets passed off as reasonable and normal. It's only by looking into it that we see what's going on under the surface. And it's that questioning that leads me to track three on the Marathon record, Some Lovely Parting Gifts, a song about all the lies taught as lessons to us, which lead to bad ways of thinking. All the things that taught us to think straight, of which Disney had to be one.




First, I'm not sure what I took from the Disney movies I saw as a child. I was influenced by other things also. I was influenced by books, video games and other movies, I think. So my learning doesn't stop with them. Im also unclear on the idea that kids took anything more from Disney than "other people say these things are good, so do good things," which is a lesson that's significantly larger than Disney.

That said, there's a good chance a number of early Disney movies are trojan horses bringing in other ideas with them that we don't recognize.

All of that says, those are still the tools that taught us to "think" straight. What did we win as a result of playing Disney's game?

And, is it fair or reasonable to ask Disney to create something that's meant to inspire people to do more when they're younger than 14? If, after you saw some Disney programming, did you as a child continue to absorb media? Books? Movies? Games? Did you fling yourself down that path as a result of seeing something there? I can only speak for myself, and while I don't remember Disney movies well, I know I watched a couple and I took a lot from them. Is it because I'm white, male and straight? Possibly? I don't know.

This begs the question: What did you (or I) do after we consumed Disney media? Did seeing Disney media lead you to consume more and more media until you learned things were not as pretty as they seemed? In other words: Did a Disney film or TV show foster a life-long love for things that have expanded your mind? Do they get credit for that? Do they deserve credit (for better or worse) for beyond that? Perhaps not, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibilitiy to write something that's centered more carefully now. A lot of their now "classic" material was written sixty or seventy years ago so it's long since time to write different stories, more inclusive ones.

We grow, I think, when we're brought face to face with what came before and realized how far it is from what we believed. We change. We see more things. Those are the powerful moments in our lives, I think. It's only when we look into the mirror and realize, with horror the things that lurk behind what we took for granted that we grow.

We learn more sophisticated lessons as we get older. Life gets complicated and messy.

I don't want to say Disney is a necessary evil. But if it wasn't called Disney, it'd be called something else and be close enough to the same thing: Teaching kids the wrong right ways to go about living their lives.



In Some Lovely Parting Gifts, the focus is on the instruction of students and classrooms.

Disney is emblematic of the stains left on our psyches from childhood. They're a cheap tool to help kids make sense of the world around them. These tools leave impressions that looking at the Disney princesses reveal. We learn that the world is vast and frightening. In those moments of realization, we reach out for something. The song itself finds a kid running into a broom closet with words he's supposed memorize. I infer that to mean that he recognizes something is Very Wrong, but can't vocalize quite what it is yet.

Black mortarboard, a wooden ruler, and papers marked with A's The tools that taught me to think straight
In some schools, thinking the right way is done with carrots. In others, it's done with sticks. The A's, for thinking the same way as the teacher are the carrots. The wooden ruler (used in Catholic schools to beat pupils) are the sticks. Disney is a carrot. Cool things happen to people that do "good" actions.

We learn from Disney's instruction how to behave on a basic level. Some of these behavior patterns are unhealthy. Many of the lessons are suspect. But we get rewarded for them all the same. Our reward doesn't come in confetti falling and a game show host, but the rewards come all the same. Sometimes, it's getting into a conversation with someone that you have no affiliation with otherwise. It's a "oh, you watched Disney movies as a kid, too?"

Disney might be one of the grinning showmen in the center of Some Lovely Parting Gifts, the man who'se eyes we ought to watch. Are the eyes twinkling? If they are, do we even know what that means?


Remember when I talked about other things in the culture that surrounds us reinforcing what we've learned from Disney? Marathon has a line about that, too. Letters validate the tests numbers to see who'se the best.

To go pop culture on you: Twilight's a book series where the main character is being stalked by someone who is literally hundreds of years older than her and hangs around a high school. And this is romantic and not worthy of a restraining order and To Catch A Predator. Frankly, I view this is a particularly post-Disney story. If you want a story that justifies this kind of fantastical romance, look at Beauty and the Beast. The Beast is a semi-abusive misanthrope, to use Thomas' words.

The two stories share a basic premise: An innocent woman gets caught in the spell of a potential lover that while perhaps honestly loving her exhibits characteristics that have the potential for violent, non-proportionate response to "things that could make them angry."

Beast's behavior is being smoothed over by larger social forces calling it part of love. While the concern and desire to care for the partner may be authentic, the potential for spousal abuse remains and it's whitewashed.

We grow and we learn. In both cases, (whether it's the Facebook comment tree or Some Lovely Parting Gifts OR re-viewing Twilight or Disney) there's a bit of the horror of realization. I'm not sure I'm horrified. I just knew this before.

Strangely enough, I'm left with an appropriate pithy parting sentence: What's old is new.

Demos: In A Million Pieces

The title is a bit of a double entendre. In A Million Pieces is a record by the Draft, which I heartily endorse, but the name still might ring a different bell. A Million Little Pieces is a book that lots of people read, only to find out the author lied, fabricated or distorted much of his own life in the book. In a piece about reading and literacy, it's fun to echo a book that many people have read and been excited about only to be disappointed.

Plus, there's been a post...three out of the last five days. Can we keep it going?

In 2003 the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) put out a list of 100 of England's favorite books, based on a poll of their viewers. Now, in 2009, it is getting reborn as a Facebook meme.

The Facebook-spread meme heading states that the BBC believes people will read only six out of the 100 books. A quick Google search yields nothing from the BBC's perspective, so this heading sounds fictitious. (I think I saw this float around Livejournal once back in the earlier part of this decade. What's old is new again.) But that's not the real issue. The real issue in my mind is that this seems to be interpreted by otherwise intelligent people as a sign that we are living in illiterate times.

They might be right, but not for the reasons they think.

One, they're just going along with something they saw on the internet, but more importantly, that list isn't the arbiter of who or what is literate. (There are reading comprehension problems because until recently United States schools were not promised a lot of money—especially those that did not teach white kids.)
The list wasn't meant to be definitive, but even if it was trying to be, it never could be. There is always going to be something important left out. The list is written from one perspective, which privileges one form of expression over another.

White people writing in a traditional manner are overly represented and graphic novels are non-existent. But what's important to me is the reactions.
Many of the responses on Facebook I see appear to be a variation of the following: "I haven't read enough of these" or "based on the fact that more people haven't read these books, we live in illiterate times and that's depressing" and "I've read this many!"

That second response infuriates me. First, it's narcissistic and self-centered. It privileges the social class that has the time and energy to read these books by assuming that the list is definitive and applicable for everyone, everywhere else. They decide what is on that list. Mastery of it constitutes literacy. They ignore other forms of the written word, whether in newspapers, ads or printed on the internet.

What makes someone literate is how deeply they can read into the material, not how far they've gotten on some viral reading list, using the BBC’s coattails as a shield. Reading half or none of these books at age 22 (or 88) doesn't make you literate. It just shows you different ways to use language. Put me in a Staten Island high school and (if I’m lucky) I might recognize half of what's being said or expressed. The language of “Pride and Prejudice” isn't going to help me there. For that matter, neither will “Dune” by Frank Herbert.

Language is about expressing yourself with the written word regardless of what form you choose. All of the BBC’s books will help you, but what will help you more is knowing what to use and where and how to make connections between people and ideas that would otherwise remain distant from each other, lessons which doesn’t have to come from that list.

That experience and that knowledge doesn’t have to come from books. Illiteracy isn’t when people aren’t reading classics. Illiteracy is when people aren’t reading at all.

THE MACHINE IS MANKIND'S MADNESS

Fake friend accumulator and glorified address book Facebook (also social networking, where I guess you network your socials. Mine is a lvl 73 Venusaur. LET'S DANCE.) has been on my mind lately, if only because it's become the latest useless, flailing appendage of my online persona (insert self-aware pause here). I scarcely use it anymore, save to upload embarrassing pictures of myself, red-faced and four sheets to the wind, at some dive bar with my disreputable pals; this phenomena is, in itself, worth analysis, though maybe later. I've got complaining to do. And did you know that 30 Rock is watchable, like, for free? And legal? THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD OR AT LEAST REALLY REALLY DISTRACTING.

Instant online communication, (OH LIZ LEMON YOU'RE SO FUNNY) whether it be through our own tawdry AIMing back and forth (Keep an eye open for the glorious return of chat transcript Fridays!) or the glorified note-passing that comes with Facebook and Gmail, is typically grounded in real life communication. At least anecdotally, all of the people I know solely from the internets have very little influence on my lifestyle - my fabulous lifestyle. Contrariwise, even with people that I know temporarily or, say, from High School, I tend to at least humor. The aggregation of social capital may be modified by online mediums, but it is still, gratefully, grounded in real life communication.

Which can be distressing for a young blog out on the mean streets of Technorati Town (the meanest part of Internet City), because with you, our reader, our influence is, at best, only third or fourth place in how you schedule your lives. The rapid access to communications from all around the world mean that someone from Zimbabwe can become a rabid devotee of beardo and ur-nerd Warren Ellis as easily as the next skinny pale kid (kaff kaff Zachary kaff). Social capital (OR IS IT CAPITULATION?) has become a global thing, then, when one weirdo can influence another from around the world! It's a mixed bag, of course - scientists (and their science) have seen that this becomes a normalizing force in small doses, i.e. that sure, students will do well in the areas of their focus in areas with high social capital, but also that deviance and creative endeavors will suffer. Culture spreads, and Ellis is suddenly effing everywhere.

Speaking of which (science, not Ellis), one prominent Scientician of the sociomological subcategory (IT'S IN THE WIKIPEDIA AM TOO LAZY TO LINK WAAAH WAAAH) stated his belief that this social capital is, in the United States, decreasing. As a whole. The ramifications for this are strange - does it mean that influence is more tangible than previously thought? Is it being disseminated about the rest of the world on strange trade winds of Myspace and Facebook? Or are we just becoming a nation of sociopaths, unable and unwilling to consider our fellow man as anything other than a walking meat puppet?

I can personally hope not. Scorn is the appropriate response to anyone who has 300 facebook friends but still has loneliness. They are treating online personae as cosmetics, a way of appearing healthier than they really are. It's not so much that the tangible measure of our friendliness is decreasing, says I, but rather a sign that the convenience of easy online contact has made us socially lazy (in addition to physically and mentally. Michelle Obama speaks sad truths sometimes.), and that has, in turn, made us kind of crazy. Crazy enough to say that we have 500 friends around the world when OMG wouldn't that make you insane? I can barely stand talking to three people per day, much less more than a dozen.

I am certain that more severe authors would make mention of the castration of modern mankind, but it's nothing so severe. Like so many things, we simply need to work at it, to do silly things, to like or like to hate (in a productive way, like how I feel for Zachary!) someone, and find other people who feel the same. While it is certainly callow to quantify your relationships with other people, on the other hand, it's naive (and arrogant) to presume that people will like you simply because of the your own sparkling personality; a happy balance in any relationship must be reached between giving and taking, as with all things. And while social networking websites are a nice and easy (and riddled with STDS DON'T BE FOOLED) way to meet new people, they still do not replace the quality work out there in the trenches of actually saying hello to strangers, and the giddy rush that goes along with it.

The internet is a marvelous tool, but it is far from a foundation upon which lives should be built. Go forth, then, gentle reader, and at least be more aware of balancing your life between sitting in front of a glowing screen and sitting before another human being. I mean, come on, I know we're pretty awesome here, but resisting the siren song will make you a more interesting person.