selling our sex short

I came across some fragments of very old interviews with Hayao Miyazaki today. He was asked, probably for the hundredth time (or maybe not so many times yet, since these interviews were from the 80s and early 90s), why he tended to favor girls as his protagonists.

He expressed a couple of things in response that interested me.

First he rather strongly denounced what he viewed as a troubling tendency for otaku to sexualize and fantasize about young girls in animation. On a semi-connected note, he also said he felt forced by the economic model of things to betray his own artistic vision and create characters that were prettier than he would have liked. He mentioned having a desire to create a story in which a very plain person is the hero(ine), but expressed doubt that such a film would sell. (Perhaps that's in part why he came out of retirement to work on Howl's Moving Castle? Pure speculation on my part, but interesting to think on.)

Secondly, he said that part of the reason why so many of his protagonists end up being female is because when he envisions certain scenes, he often feels it would be too awkward and ridiculous for a boy or man to behave in the flexible/emotional/enlightened way required by the scene. He said that a woman's decision to take up the sword or use a gun or go on an adventure carries with it a sort of depth and sensitivity that wouldn't exist in the same situation with a man. People are more excited, he claimed, to see a woman make that kind of decision because it is easily inferred that the choice was made deliberately, meaningfully, not because of mere cultural pressure or being a brute.

I find that last part very sad. It's a sad cultural commentary (not on Japanese or American culture, specifically, but rather on the vast majority of the cultures that have existed on the face of this planet all throughout history) and it's sad on an individual level.

Really. Think about that. What does it mean to believe of your own sex that it's ridiculous to have depth and sensitivity? Or, conversely, that it is impossible that members of your sex ever act rashly, destructively, or with a strength that others fear?

It's a tragedy. It's poisonous. Bad for the growth of all of us, individually. Bad for the growth of humanity. Especially bad for those of us--all of us--who are at one time or another caught up in the boil-over or explosions caused by all that repression and false knowledge.

And it's none of our fault, paradoxically, even though we've done it to ourselves.

To me, being a progressive person--put aside for a moment the political trappings of the word--is about gradually ceasing to poison ourselves and our children with cultural norms like that one.

(This is not, by the way, even remotely a criticism of Miyazaki, who has my thorough admiration.)

My mind shoots off into so many different directions from this idea, I won't be able to write my full thoughts here (insufficient time).

But, briefly:

1) Fight Club.

I love this movie. But in the film we do kind of see what Miyazaki is talking about. Some really profound truths about our modern life are stated clearly in the film, especially in the first half (and I feel like we didn't fully grasp the weight and terror of those truths until now, actually; today we're finally out the the streets protesting over the arbitrary algorithms used to decide who lives and who dies, all for the sake of the bottom line of a powerful few... and we should have been this angry a long time ago). Then the men start fighting and most of the intellectual analysis and poetry is turned off, replaced with shock value, jokes, locker room talk, and the not-so-original mindfuckery plot arc.

What does it mean for men, if we reduce "real" maleness to grunting, sociopathic brutishness? What does it mean for women, if we refuse to allow any room for thoughtless rage and fighting in our model for "real" feminine behavior? I think the movie, in a way, attempts a weak answer to these sorts of questions, but it's just a start. We need to keep fleshing this out, doing the work, figuring out what our true limits are and refusing to stop sooner just because our cultural values tell us to stop.

Our urge to fight tells us something: it tells us something's wrong, we're unhappy, we don't have enough of something. If we're not allowed to recognize our rage to begin with (because it's unfeminine or not "civilized"), we linger too long with our problems without seeing them for what they are. If we make a war or a bomb or a fight club, or punch someone out or call him a dickwad, I guess we are honoring our urge to fight. But we're still forgetting to figure out what the fuck is wrong and fix it.

2) Dreams.

These mistaken notions are locked deep within us, I think. For example, for many years in my dreams (which frequently involve apocalyptic or dystopian scenarios), I was not allowed to fight while being a woman or girl. If it was just a matter of fleeing, resisting through sneaky or non-violent acts, or peacefully enduring torture, I could be myself or another female. But to stand and fight... I needed to be male. Sometimes my form would shift mid-dream depending on what was going on. Like a reverse Chevalier d'Eon.

I never even recognized this as a problem until it was resolved earlier this year and didn't happen anymore (it went on for almost ten years!). Now my dream avatars still shift around to all sorts of forms, gender identities, viewpoints, and ages, but nobody is restricted to/from battle based on sex or gender any longer. That change corresponded with a shift in my waking self as well, just feeling stronger as an individual.

But... it makes me wonder. Why is there so much fighting in our dreams in the first place? 

It has long been theorized that the purpose of dreaming (and nightmares, particularly) is to rehearse dangerous situations, so that we're mentally prepared. When we dream about fighting perhaps it's because we expect, on some level, to have to fight someday in reality?


Note 11/4 - This week the results of an fMRI study were published, reporting that when a lucid dreamer dreamed about waving his hand, he was using the same part of his brain that he would be using if he were awake and actually performing the same action. No surprise, really, if you think about it... but kind of interesting, all the same.

a moment for someone who doesn't live in the moment

Thinking about simple pleasures lately.

I'm at a point in my life where I don't really know where I'm going. I'm already in the twilight years of my twenties (sounds rather dramatic, doesn't it?). I have a family established. I have many deeds and experiences under my belt of which I feel proud, not-so-proud, or frightened-in-retrospect. But I still have that sense of being unmoored, a bit directionless, that has been with me ever since I was a small child.

These days I'm in the habit of rescuing spiders--excepting the poisonous ones, which I regretfully execute under a quadruple layer of paper towels because I can't bear to look. Sometimes when I go to set a (live) spider down outdoors in what seems to be a safer spot, the spider flails its legs out for a long moment, trying to get its bearings back. And I always see myself there, living my entire life in the spirit of that long moment of flailing about.

I don't know that I will ever stop looking around in every direction, trying to orient myself. I'm not convinced anymore that it's a bad way to be, either. Probably I will never have any worldly ambition other than the ambition to know all I can about the things that interest me, or simply to be a good person.* Probably I will never stop being acutely aware of the precise shape and size of the horrors of the world, either. But in a way these drives (or lack thereof) are freeing. I'm unlikely to achieve worldly success, yes, but I'm also not very attracted to the trappings of success to begin with (often I am pretty much disgusted by them).

Why settle for being a king or queen when you could be a farmer, historian, explorer, or monk? (Or the mastermind behind a political rebellion, perhaps?)

I watch politics and money because I know that politicians and fat cats are dangerous--but they're also gross. It offends every freedom-n-truth-loving, independent bone in my body to watch people caper and smarm about, lying their own pants off, selling themselves like over-priced prostitutes or waiters--for what, ultimately? Money and power, of course, and staying on top rather than falling into the pit o' losers, but--again--for what? To eat a little more caviar than before, tour some obscure island chains, buy a bigger house, pay poorer people for sexual services, send junior to Yale? So junior can eat a little more caviar? Please. There's a lot of research backing me up on this, but it doesn't take a scientist to recognize that hardly anybody who has these things is actually made happy by them.

It's easy to get fooled, though. Mere stuff--above and beyond what's necessary for basic comfort and survival--generally does not improve our quality of life.... but we are told it will, day in and day out. This is the dark end to which our system leads us. Under our present way of life, we live by what kills us. We feed ourselves memes that distort our appetites and keep us always wanting.

I am not immune, either, although my natural resistance grows whenever I turn off the box and unplug. (Almost everyone's does, doesn't it?)

When I was fifteen or sixteen I used to take a bus route daily that involved stopping by an advertising and business center in a haute little city (I swear, every time I go back to visit, I feel like a yokel). There were lots of wannabe bigshot agents and such. One woman made friends with me over a period of weeks, then invited me up into one of those glass towers to take some photos and talk about some possible modeling work. I don't know if it was a scam or "real"--I have never seen myself straight in the mirror. I remember I had a sassy retort when she asked why not: "Because I don't want to be involved in a business that robs people of their self-esteem and sells it back to them." (Her face turned cold and that was the end of our sitting together on the bus.) 

What I said was some cliche I'd picked up somewhere--I am sure you've heard it before. I felt strong and brave saying those words to the modeling agent. The truth was that I only ever owned one beauty magazine and it was hidden under my mattress because my mother had told me it would only hurt me and I shouldn't ever buy one and I disobeyed anyways and she was right--it was a barb in my side every day, the cause of skipped meals and stomach pains, early morning awakenings to do my hair like the magazine told me, bizarre calisthenics, hours on the treadmill, abs held tightly in all day, sexy shoes, assorted baubles, mangled fun-house images of what men and women wanted and should be.

I think it's natural to want to decorate ourselves. Little boys and girls alike love to wear bracelets and paint their skin with brilliant colors (I am truly sorry, dear men, that this drive apparently gets beaten out of you over the years through social disapproval and punishment). But if you watch little children play at this, you will see they love to share and help and to experience these decorations as something that draws them together. They are made joyful and close through the process of adornment. Contrast that with first-world teenagers, who usually groom alone and are often made to feel depressed, powerless, and self-conscious about the whole business.

Anyhow. I guess what I logged on to say tonight is that my natural tendencies plus the journey I've been on have made me just sort of openly pensive lately (I mean pensive in a present, mindful way--as opposed to rumination). I've finally accepted that I'm not interested in reaching for the brass ring, so I've also accepted I shan't be hearing any applause and "GOOD GIRL!" when I [don't] grab ahold of it.

So...?

So, what next?

I don't know all of what's next. But it occurs to me frequently lately that if you're not striving for approval or prizes or power-over... then, really, all you've got to enjoy are the simple pleasures of living.

I am not really a live-in-the-moment sort of person. DFW said in an interview, "I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them." I get that, on an utmost level. But he was talking about not really enjoying the accolades he received after Infinite Jest, about worrying he'd become a douche if he were to allow himself that enjoyment, then admitting he didn't feel that tempted to enjoy it anyways. Me neither. But what about a different kind of enjoyment? What about just being, and being okay with that? That, I think I might be able to swing.

So.

A feeling that warms me lately is the one I get from staying up after the rest of my family is asleep and being the one to lock up the house at night.

I feel like I'm their guardian, doing something important and protective (which I am, and it is). I love hearing my partner's sleep sounds. The children look peaceful and calm, and they smile in their sleep if I rearrange their blankets or kiss them on the forehead. I refill my oldest boy's water cup that he keeps near his bed and set him out a morning snack. I lock the doors and windows. I love feeling of the carpet under my feet as I move down the hallway, and hearing the soft thrum of the appliances, normally covered up with play and conversation. I love how my old cat--a veteran of the woods--climbs onto my lap and purrs in his rattly, old way.

I have struggled with how to replace the almost zen-like peace that I lost when my God perished under the weight of reality.  At this time of night--doing something so simple as locking up the house and taking joy in the action--something in me wants to say: 

"This is our faith. This is the faith of the church. We are proud to profess it."

---

*An atheist with few worldly ambitions! That doesn't augur well, does it? Indeed, we have probably both seen people die of this condition, but I do not intend to go that way (although the club has a tempting list of benefits, doesn't it?).

shell shock everywhere

Glenn Greenwald in his Salon column today:

Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts.

More and more, being an American is feeling like this:

---

Last night, while Muammar Qaddafi* was newly dead or dying, I had an interesting dream.

In the dream I was a young nurse, working her first shift at a hospital. I have no real-life ambition to be a nurse; it's just a symbolic artifact of the dream. The head nurse was teaching me how things were to be done at the hospital. She murdered our first patient of the day--who had complained of pain and asked for medication--with a large overdose of morphine.

As the patient caught on to what was about to happen and she pled for her life to be spared, the head nurse looked at me patronizingly and said of the sick woman, "Do you hear all that nonsense, all that crazy talk it sputters? Do not listen to it. It doesn't know what it needs. I know what is best."** Paralyzed with shock and fear, I watched helplessly as she injected the drug and the patient died.

Later on, another patient--a painfully thin refugee from Iraq who appeared to be wasting away from an AIDS-like illness--whispered to me that the head nurse was abusive toward him, that she made threats to him and pinched him hard enough to leave bruises when no one else was looking. I whispered back that I was sorry and that I would try to help him transfer to a different hospital where no one would hurt him. He laughed bitterly and replied, "Don't you get it yet? There are no other hospitals. This is it. This is all there is."


Is it?

I still hope not. But if that's true... I think it's high time for a little hospital reform.

---
* An undeniably awful leader and a murderer himself, if I understand the situation correctly. [Update, 6/2012: I don't know even that much anymore. I guess I didn't/don't understand it at all. I'm not even sure it's possible to do so when limited (as plebs are) to the information currently available to the general public. Just forget what I said--I know nothing, neither do you... and that really bugs me.]

** On waking I recognized this as a very loose paraphrase of something Jean-Marie Charcot said of a patient he had diagnosed with hysteria: "Note the emotional outburst... Again, note these screams. You could say it is a lot of noise over nothing."

predator drones now patrol us/canada border

(link 1) (link 2)

Hmm.

Hmmmmmm....

Well, there goes my plan to emigrate illegally if my homicidal stalker finds me and I run out of legal recourses.

X_X