In my post Sarah Palin: Why They Hate Her Part 1, I discussed how the political hatred of Palin's positions stems from the age-old conflict between the Eastern elites, who favor expensive land and cheap labor, and the Western populists, who favor expensive labor and cheap land. But there is something new, and personal, in the hatred of Palin, that is not political at all. It's related to her personal life.
There's been a lot of straight out hatred, directed at Sarah Palin, often from people who have not felt the need to unburden themselves of any particular issue relating to the Presidential election before her selection as McCain's running mate. Singer Pink says Sarah Palin hates women and is not a feminist. Faded actress and sex tape entrepreneur Pamela Anderson says she can't stand Palin and tells her to "suck it." Forgotten movie critic Roger Ebert weighed in on Palin's glasses, dress, and general appearance (he's since taken it off his website). Forgotten cheesecake 1970's actress Lynda Carter confesses her hatred and fear of Palin. "North Country" screenwriter Michael Seitzman lets us know how much he he also hates Palin for being ordinary and "stupid."
Added to this are constant smears, insinuations, and lurid tales, about Palin's pregnancy, her daughters, sons, husband, and marriage, from the most "enlightened" side of the aisle, the Left. Which is instructive. It is not just, or even mostly, her politics that some "liberated" women and men feel threatening. Rather it is her life itself that is the most threatening, and creates the most bile since that vitriol directed at first, Andrew Jackson, in 1824, and again in 1828, and Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Sarah Palin is a direct and pressing threat to the current model of female empowerment, probably best symbolized culturally by television's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Worse, Palin could actually slay Buffy's model of female empowerment, just by example. Hence the venom.
Like Andrew Jackson, orphaned at 14, and from a poor family, and Abraham Lincoln, another poor and up from his bootstraps politician, Palin comes from a modest background (though not quite as poor as either Jackson or Lincoln). Her parents, like most "middle class" Alaskans, hunted regularly to supplement their food budget. While good money can be made in Alaska, high transport costs make it more like the Tennessee in the 1780's or Illinois frontier of the early 1800's. Hunting is not a mark of wealth and leisure, but a matter of economic necessity in a place where a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter can cost $12. Both Sarah Palin's parents were school teachers who coached track on the side, but lacked money and connections for expensive schools like, for example, Occidental College, and then Columbia (where Barack Obama attended as an underclassmen and transfer, respectively). Like both Jackson and Lincoln, Palin steadily climbed the socio-economic ladder, working a variety of jobs, but that does not account for the rage directed at her. Americans are familiar with all sorts of politicians from modest backgrounds. Neither ex-Wrestler Jesse Ventura (of Minnesota) or celebrity-actor-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger generated this level of bile. Despite being larger than life, outlandish characters from modest backgrounds. Initially, most found them entertaining. No, it is not Sarah Palin's modest beginnings and rise up the social and economic and political ladder that enrages her mostly non-political critics.
Rather, it is her choice of husband, and her decision to have five children, starting at an early age, that really enrages her critics. Who find that a dagger aimed right at the heart of the traditional view of female empowerment. Simply because people can see her advantages in her choices, and might seek to copy her path.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has five children. However, not only was she born to wealth and power (her father, Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr), was a Maryland Congressman and Mayor of Baltimore, but significantly, she married into wealth and power. Her husband Paul Pelosi is a wealthy businessman. Significantly, Todd Palin is not a wealthy businessman. Though a champion snowmachine racer, he remains blue collar in appearance and status, as a seasonal oil field worker and commercial fisherman. He even retains his United Steelworkers union card.
Unlike TV's Buffy, Sarah Palin married her High School sweetheart. And not to a man resembling hunky TV-vampire "Angel" either, source of much misery mixed with romance and passion. Nope. Sarah Palin married "Xander." Todd Palin's Wikipedia entry may be found here and the actor Nicholas Brendon's (Xander on Buffy) entry may be found here.
Whether it's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," or "Sex and the City," or pretty much any female oriented television show, the model for female empowerment is pretty much the same. Have a boyfriend, but for heaven's sake don't get married young (Palin married at age 24). Make sure the boyfriend is powerful, or wealthy, or both. Don't have children, particularly when you're young (Palin's first child was born at age 25). Since youth is best spent "exploring" in eternal adolescence. Above all, avoid supportive, steady men in favor of volatile, but high in status and power alternatives. Make sure your parents and family are kept at a distance, since they only limit your endless romantic life and professional growth. These are the rule of female empowerment, adopted by cultural consensus over the years.
Palin violates all those rules. Unlike TV's Buffy (and also Sex and the City's Carrie), she chose a supportive, steady man whose character and good points, flaws, and idiosyncrasies were well known to her. Rather than sacrifice career for family, she chose family first over career. Buffy, like most of TV's empowered heroines (Xena, Veronica Mars, Carrie on Sex and the City), is often alone, between vampires boyfriends, and has no prospect of a family of her own. Even worse, the advantages Palin had over Buffy were obvious. Her husband was steady and supportive, not competitive with her own efforts. Though their family still had to hunt, as most Alaskans do, to supplement their food budget, Todd Palin's financial and emotional support was critical to Sarah Palin's advancement (much as Rachel Jackson's emotional support was critical to Andrew Jackson's political rise in the chaotic politics of Tennessee). Politics, particularly in the rough and tumble small town Alaskan variety, is not easy. Those most successful in it, usually need a supportive partner. The parallels with other career paths for women are obvious, and threatening.
Thus Palin committed three great "sins" against the conventional wisdom of female empowerment. She first chose to marry, not a powerful, "impressive" short-term romance that brings constant heartache. Buffy is often noting that love for her equals physical passion mixed with pain and misery, and reliably chooses men who will give her the heartache she craves. Sarah Palin compounds this by putting family first, starting hers early, when it's much easier to conceive, and also care for, children. But even worse, she becomes a full adult, early in her life. Instead of age 35, or later. Trading testosterone and power for comfort, stability, and support; choosing family over career; and becoming adult early. These are her sins.
They are considerable, given the threat her existence poses to the Buffy model.
Just taking her decision to have children early, which is a massive challenge to the status quo. By having her children at a relatively young age, her parents are still young enough to help out with child care, and they do by all accounts, along with Palin's sisters and brother, who are all close by. The value of the extended nuclear family, as contrasted to the chaotic, divorce-driven single, lonely family of Buffy (or TV's Veronica Mars) is striking. Palin could afford as many children as Nancy Pelosi (five), with a tiny fraction of her wealth. Rather than the prison that feminism and in particular, Buffy the Vampire Slayer depicted, the nuclear family enabled Palin to have her children first, and later her career. "Having it all," is indeed possible, but only if your parents stay together, you have a sibling or two, and you have children at a relatively young age with everyone in the same geographic area, willing to help out as part of a close-knit family.
Then, there is Todd Palin. Sarah Palin's husband. A blue collar man who earned enough working the oil fields and fishing boats, to support a family early. A man who quit his job of 17 years in the oil fields to both avoid conflict of interest (when Palin was elected Governor) and help care for the children while Palin focused on her transition to Governor. Todd Palin later took considerable time off (without pay) to help care for the family when Trig (Palin's Down Syndrome child, her youngest) was born. Todd Palin no less than Sarah Palin is a threat to the model of female empowerment, which panders to the idea that there are no trade-offs in pursuing the high-status, high-powered, high-testosterone men, or no advantages to be found in choosing comfort, stability, and character instead by women considering marriage.
Can one imagine Bill Clinton, John Edwards, or San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome acting in any similar manner? Much less any of Buffy's high-powered but unreliable boyfriends? Hollywood no less than politics has a stake in this election and the prominence of the Palin family. It's why so many made so many negative, personal, and mean spirited comments. They felt profoundly threatened by Palin's examples, and their own choices seemed shallow and shabby.
Pamela Anderson's disastrous personal life, rivals fictional Buffy's for depressing chaotic sadness and bad choices. Lynda Carter married Washington DC attorney and fixer Robert Altman, who was tried and acquitted by Jury in connection with the BCCI securities fraud scandal. Carter has admitted she has undergone treatment for alcoholism. Pink is divorced from Motocross racer Carey Hart, and rumored to be involved in Scientology. Both Roger Ebert and Michael Seitzman work in an industry that is built on pushing positive images of the choices of women like Anderson, Carter, and Pink, and negative ones of the nuclear family choice that Palin made.
Sarah Palin and her family, by demonstrating without a doubt that the nuclear family, and the stability and comfort it brings, can allow ambitious women to achieve great things instead of preventing it, is a massive threat to the conventional idea of female empowerment. She just might slay Buffy's standard in that regard. No wonder Hollywood reacted so badly. People might have to start working for a living, instead of vomiting out the old, stale ideology of 1968. We can't have that!
...Read more
Monday, September 15, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Real Meaning of 9/11: Our Science Fiction World
What are the real lessons of 9/11? The same, sadly, as the lessons of Feb 26. Remember that date? How about the full date of February 26, 1993? The FIRST World Trade Center attack? The one that killed six people? Sound family? The lesson of 9/11 is the same as the lesson of 2/26.
We live in a Science Fiction World.
We live in Science Fiction World, because we don't live in the certainties of the Cold War anymore. No stable duopoly, no "leash" on the proxy forces of each superpower, to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In itself, a good thing. But the forces of globalization, trade, economic growth, and the availability of technology coupled with "just enough" but not "enough" cultural change in failing, tribal societies guarantees major Western (and other) cities will be destroyed by nuclear devices. A truly, Science Fiction world.
First, let's examine the motives of the 1993 WTC bombers. They marked a sea-change in what was attempted, in terms of casualties and operations, and what was desired. The 1983 Beirut Barracks bombings, and other terrorist actions against the US in the 1970s and 1980's, including the Tehran Hostage Crisis, were all designed to get the US to simply LEAVE certain regions. Which, largely, the US did, in areas it had no compelling interest to stay. Such as Lebanon. The US itself was off-limits, for fear of provoking a response too unhealthy for the terrorists, who were in turn sponsored and trained, and largely controlled by various states. Hezbollah controlled by Iran and Syria, was the culprit responsible for the Beirut Barracks bombings which killed 241 US servicemen. Terrorists wanted something. They picked targets outside the US, designed to create public pressure to withdraw US forces domestically, with either hostage taking, or attacks on US forces, or bombings of jetliners (Lockerbie Scotland, Pan Am Flight 103). An ugly business, of brutal men killing Americans to use US domestic politics to achieve specific ends. But ultimately, one that did not threaten intrinsic US interests.
The 1993 WTC bombers, by contrast, planned to topple one tower onto another, and kill 50,000 people. Think about that. The plan intended to kill 50,000 Americans, in a few minutes, on US soil. What was the motive?
The motive was simple, and it was not intended to seriously influence US public opinion on any particularly issue. "Do this or more attacks." Rather, the motive was to kill as many Americans as possible. So that the plotters would have fame, fortune, and many jihadis flocking to their organization, and receive much money also. Likely masterminded by the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, though he was never charged, his "Islamic Group" sought to be the Number One Jihadi organization, over Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad (it's main Egyptian competitor, headed by Abdel-Rahman's main rival, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahari).
Conservatives say, jihadis hate us for our freedom. Very true, but then Jihadis hate the Chinese, the Thais, the Russians, and each other's rival and splintered groups. It was widely suspected among Jihad groups in Pakistan that Ayman Al-Zawahari was the man responsible for assassinating one of the original leaders of Jihad in Pakistan-Afghanistan against the Soviets, Abdullah Azzam, along with his sons. Liberals ask, "why do they hate us?" and call for dialog and "understanding" in the desperate attempt to make some "deal" to stop further attacks.
Neither is helpful. Each jihadi, and each Jihadi organization, is in competition with others. For men, for money, for power. All of which flow to men and leaders and organizations capable of killing lots of Americans. And which wither away when such men and organizations prove themselves incapable of providing ever increasing body counts of dead Americans and spectacular scenes of destruction.
This accounts for what otherwise makes no sense: Al Qaeda's increasing attacks on the US, with no attempt to manipulate US domestic opinion to achieve concrete but limited goals. There were no hostage taking, with demands for money and concessions that an administration, eager to put the episode behind it, would concede. No actions aimed at simply pushing the US out of areas it never really cared about in the first place. That was not the goal. Instead, the goal was simple: kill lots of Americans, and gain money and men and power. Given enough of that, a man such as bin Laden might even overthrow the House of Saud. Or Zawahari the Mubarak regime. Or perhaps the Islamic Group, still led by the Blind Sheik, would do it first.
The reason this creates a Science Fiction World, is that we have a modern equivalent of the Vikings, raiders who cannot be bought off, for whom there is no "deal" to be made, and who will keep attacking, out of their own internal dynamics and with no real center of command. To whom does the Blind Sheik answer to? What about Ayman Al-Zawahari? Or Osama bin Laden? Or the leaders of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat? Or any number of obscure, Jihadist organizations and leaders.
The second part of this Science Fiction world is nuclear proliferation. Currently, the nations of Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have nuclear weapons. Short of invasion and extensive bombings, Iran will join them very soon. It is very unlikely that Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, or Israel will give or sell nuclear weapons to Jihadists. The Ukraine and South Africa voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, the Ukraine to the Russians, and the South Africans after the fall of Apartheid, dismantled (they claim at least) their own nuclear weapons (which were of the simple, "gun-type" Uranium variety, which Oppenheimer did not even bother to test, so certain was he in 1945 that the device would work).
But Pakistan, and North Korea remain problems. With Iran another problem on the horizon. North Korea will sell weapons and has, to just about anyone. They live under the Chinese nuclear umbrella, so do not fear US response. Which in any case has amounted to bribes to stop their nuclear program, without any verification. Since North Korea has nothing to sell other than weapons to trade for food, and it's population subsists at starvation level, it's unlikely they've given up all their nuclear weapons. More disturbing is the fact that a nation where many subsist at near or below starvation levels, can construct nuclear devices (and working Ballistic Missiles). Even if they don't always work, that they work at all shows how common, simple, and affordable nuclear weapons (and Ballistic Missiles) have become. From Hitler's crude V-2 rockets, and the Manhattan project, nuclear weapons and ICBMs have made the same transition that modern computers have. Affordable commodities.
Pakistan, of course, is a set of squabbling tribes with a flag. Divided along linguistic, tribal, regional, and factional lines, with Army and Intelligence service deeply divided itself and factionalized into pro-Jihad sentiments, the nation is a mess. Whole regions have been ceded to the Taliban and Jihadist movements, because the divided and ineffective Army cannot maintain control in those regions or defeat the Jihadis. Much of the Army and Intelligence service are in fact, Jihadis, and view them as an essential part of the nation's and Islam's struggle with Hindu India. The new President of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower, has reported mental problems including depression, thoughts of suicide, and voices in his head. At any rate, he is viewed as incredibly corrupt, and detested by the military which does not respect him nor follow his orders. His rival, Nawaz Sharif, is a pro-Jihadist and makes no attempt to hide his sympathies. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is distributed about the nation, the harder for the Indian forces to destroy in a decapitation attack, but easier for Jihadis to gain access to. Given the primacy of tribal and clan loyalties, in a nation where the rule of law is an interesting theory never actually put into practice, it is questionable how long the Pakistani government can keep Colonels and Majors from handing a few to their cousins or brothers in influential and powerful Jihadi movements.
Iran is nearly as bad, with nearly as much factional struggles, and each eager to provoke a war with the US to discredit and destroy their rivals. The Hostage Crisis 1979-80 was about the Ayatollah Khomeni's desire to destroy any pro-Western forces as it was "anger" about America's sheltering the Shah. At a time when the USSR and it's client Saddam menaced Iran (and about a year AFTER the Hostage taking, Saddam did in fact invade and nearly destroy Khomeni's regime), the Khomeni regime picked a fight with the US to destroy internal opponents.
You can see echoes of this strategem with Pakistani jihadis attacking Chinese engineers on critical infrastructure projects inside Pakistan. China has been Pakistan's ally against India, for about 35 years. That these attacks have continued show the depth of the factionalization inside Pakistan, and their effectiveness.
We live in a Science Fiction World, when the internal dynamics of crude, organized crime gangs with religious aspirations, guarantee they will attempt mass murder attacks on the US. We live in a Science Fiction World when these crude groups can gain access by kin and tribe networks, to nuclear weapons created by states that exist only as polite fictions. We live in a Science Fiction World where the fear is not of world-wide Armageddon, but rather a city dying in an instant. Just so a few thugs can gain more power.
That is the meaning of 2/26, and the true meaning of 9/11.
...Read more
We live in a Science Fiction World.
We live in Science Fiction World, because we don't live in the certainties of the Cold War anymore. No stable duopoly, no "leash" on the proxy forces of each superpower, to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In itself, a good thing. But the forces of globalization, trade, economic growth, and the availability of technology coupled with "just enough" but not "enough" cultural change in failing, tribal societies guarantees major Western (and other) cities will be destroyed by nuclear devices. A truly, Science Fiction world.
First, let's examine the motives of the 1993 WTC bombers. They marked a sea-change in what was attempted, in terms of casualties and operations, and what was desired. The 1983 Beirut Barracks bombings, and other terrorist actions against the US in the 1970s and 1980's, including the Tehran Hostage Crisis, were all designed to get the US to simply LEAVE certain regions. Which, largely, the US did, in areas it had no compelling interest to stay. Such as Lebanon. The US itself was off-limits, for fear of provoking a response too unhealthy for the terrorists, who were in turn sponsored and trained, and largely controlled by various states. Hezbollah controlled by Iran and Syria, was the culprit responsible for the Beirut Barracks bombings which killed 241 US servicemen. Terrorists wanted something. They picked targets outside the US, designed to create public pressure to withdraw US forces domestically, with either hostage taking, or attacks on US forces, or bombings of jetliners (Lockerbie Scotland, Pan Am Flight 103). An ugly business, of brutal men killing Americans to use US domestic politics to achieve specific ends. But ultimately, one that did not threaten intrinsic US interests.
The 1993 WTC bombers, by contrast, planned to topple one tower onto another, and kill 50,000 people. Think about that. The plan intended to kill 50,000 Americans, in a few minutes, on US soil. What was the motive?
The motive was simple, and it was not intended to seriously influence US public opinion on any particularly issue. "Do this or more attacks." Rather, the motive was to kill as many Americans as possible. So that the plotters would have fame, fortune, and many jihadis flocking to their organization, and receive much money also. Likely masterminded by the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, though he was never charged, his "Islamic Group" sought to be the Number One Jihadi organization, over Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad (it's main Egyptian competitor, headed by Abdel-Rahman's main rival, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahari).
Conservatives say, jihadis hate us for our freedom. Very true, but then Jihadis hate the Chinese, the Thais, the Russians, and each other's rival and splintered groups. It was widely suspected among Jihad groups in Pakistan that Ayman Al-Zawahari was the man responsible for assassinating one of the original leaders of Jihad in Pakistan-Afghanistan against the Soviets, Abdullah Azzam, along with his sons. Liberals ask, "why do they hate us?" and call for dialog and "understanding" in the desperate attempt to make some "deal" to stop further attacks.
Neither is helpful. Each jihadi, and each Jihadi organization, is in competition with others. For men, for money, for power. All of which flow to men and leaders and organizations capable of killing lots of Americans. And which wither away when such men and organizations prove themselves incapable of providing ever increasing body counts of dead Americans and spectacular scenes of destruction.
This accounts for what otherwise makes no sense: Al Qaeda's increasing attacks on the US, with no attempt to manipulate US domestic opinion to achieve concrete but limited goals. There were no hostage taking, with demands for money and concessions that an administration, eager to put the episode behind it, would concede. No actions aimed at simply pushing the US out of areas it never really cared about in the first place. That was not the goal. Instead, the goal was simple: kill lots of Americans, and gain money and men and power. Given enough of that, a man such as bin Laden might even overthrow the House of Saud. Or Zawahari the Mubarak regime. Or perhaps the Islamic Group, still led by the Blind Sheik, would do it first.
The reason this creates a Science Fiction World, is that we have a modern equivalent of the Vikings, raiders who cannot be bought off, for whom there is no "deal" to be made, and who will keep attacking, out of their own internal dynamics and with no real center of command. To whom does the Blind Sheik answer to? What about Ayman Al-Zawahari? Or Osama bin Laden? Or the leaders of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat? Or any number of obscure, Jihadist organizations and leaders.
The second part of this Science Fiction world is nuclear proliferation. Currently, the nations of Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have nuclear weapons. Short of invasion and extensive bombings, Iran will join them very soon. It is very unlikely that Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, or Israel will give or sell nuclear weapons to Jihadists. The Ukraine and South Africa voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, the Ukraine to the Russians, and the South Africans after the fall of Apartheid, dismantled (they claim at least) their own nuclear weapons (which were of the simple, "gun-type" Uranium variety, which Oppenheimer did not even bother to test, so certain was he in 1945 that the device would work).
But Pakistan, and North Korea remain problems. With Iran another problem on the horizon. North Korea will sell weapons and has, to just about anyone. They live under the Chinese nuclear umbrella, so do not fear US response. Which in any case has amounted to bribes to stop their nuclear program, without any verification. Since North Korea has nothing to sell other than weapons to trade for food, and it's population subsists at starvation level, it's unlikely they've given up all their nuclear weapons. More disturbing is the fact that a nation where many subsist at near or below starvation levels, can construct nuclear devices (and working Ballistic Missiles). Even if they don't always work, that they work at all shows how common, simple, and affordable nuclear weapons (and Ballistic Missiles) have become. From Hitler's crude V-2 rockets, and the Manhattan project, nuclear weapons and ICBMs have made the same transition that modern computers have. Affordable commodities.
Pakistan, of course, is a set of squabbling tribes with a flag. Divided along linguistic, tribal, regional, and factional lines, with Army and Intelligence service deeply divided itself and factionalized into pro-Jihad sentiments, the nation is a mess. Whole regions have been ceded to the Taliban and Jihadist movements, because the divided and ineffective Army cannot maintain control in those regions or defeat the Jihadis. Much of the Army and Intelligence service are in fact, Jihadis, and view them as an essential part of the nation's and Islam's struggle with Hindu India. The new President of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower, has reported mental problems including depression, thoughts of suicide, and voices in his head. At any rate, he is viewed as incredibly corrupt, and detested by the military which does not respect him nor follow his orders. His rival, Nawaz Sharif, is a pro-Jihadist and makes no attempt to hide his sympathies. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is distributed about the nation, the harder for the Indian forces to destroy in a decapitation attack, but easier for Jihadis to gain access to. Given the primacy of tribal and clan loyalties, in a nation where the rule of law is an interesting theory never actually put into practice, it is questionable how long the Pakistani government can keep Colonels and Majors from handing a few to their cousins or brothers in influential and powerful Jihadi movements.
Iran is nearly as bad, with nearly as much factional struggles, and each eager to provoke a war with the US to discredit and destroy their rivals. The Hostage Crisis 1979-80 was about the Ayatollah Khomeni's desire to destroy any pro-Western forces as it was "anger" about America's sheltering the Shah. At a time when the USSR and it's client Saddam menaced Iran (and about a year AFTER the Hostage taking, Saddam did in fact invade and nearly destroy Khomeni's regime), the Khomeni regime picked a fight with the US to destroy internal opponents.
You can see echoes of this strategem with Pakistani jihadis attacking Chinese engineers on critical infrastructure projects inside Pakistan. China has been Pakistan's ally against India, for about 35 years. That these attacks have continued show the depth of the factionalization inside Pakistan, and their effectiveness.
We live in a Science Fiction World, when the internal dynamics of crude, organized crime gangs with religious aspirations, guarantee they will attempt mass murder attacks on the US. We live in a Science Fiction World when these crude groups can gain access by kin and tribe networks, to nuclear weapons created by states that exist only as polite fictions. We live in a Science Fiction World where the fear is not of world-wide Armageddon, but rather a city dying in an instant. Just so a few thugs can gain more power.
That is the meaning of 2/26, and the true meaning of 9/11.
...Read more
Sarah Palin: Why They Hate Her, Part 1
It's surprising, the amount of sheer hate directed at Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's pick for the VP slot. Hate, over and above that directed at George W. Bush, or John McCain himself. Viewed without context, it's inexplicable, since Palin herself is fairly obscure, and relatively uncontroversial. While Palin certainly has attacked Barack Obama's qualifications for the Presidency, the attacks were certainly expected, and in line with normal partisan appeals in past elections. Nothing Palin has said, for example, would be surprising to anyone who followed Lloyd Bentsen's attacks on George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988, or Al Gore's in 1992. Palin has been absent from the great political battles of the 2000's era. Not an advocate of the Iraq War, nor a participant in any of the debates on the proper bounds for the NSA, Guantanamo Bay, or any other hot-button issue, can account for all sorts of people expressing such a strong dislike of Palin. Nor the spontaneous admiration by many people for her either.
Politics as conventionally understood, don't explain why Palin generates such rage by her political opponents, the Media, and the Cultural Left. There are really two main reasons for such rage (and various personal attacks). This post will focus on one reason, which is the eternal struggle in American politics between East and West.
Europeans and Eastern intellectuals often have a hard time understanding what really drives American politics. What they fail to understand is that the conflict between Easterners and Westerners, broadly understood, has shaped American politics since the adoption of the Constitution in 1788.
Easterners, since the first few settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, have wanted expensive land, and cheap labor. Expensive land, since they already owned land, a great deal of it, and hoped to use the land to generate even more wealth. By use of cheap labor. Slaves, Indians in forced labor, and indentured servants (such as Benjamin Franklin), could be used in the fields or nascent factories, producing everything from corn, to molasses, to tobacco, to firearms, for export to England and the Continent. Easterners wanted money spent by the government to improve their own lot, including their ports, cities, factories, and subsidies in one form or another for their export-oriented businesses.
Westerners, from the first, rebelling against the men who ran the first colonies, favored cheap land, and expensive labor. Ideally, the land would be "free," and taken from Indians who could not hold it, while their own labors would be expensive. Thus the relatively poor Westerners hoped to raise their own station in life. They favored restrictions on imports of labor, and generally despised taxes and regulations that fell upon them and took money from them to interests in the East. The Shays Rebellion, in President Washington's first term, epitomizes this conflict. Western Pennsylvania farmers wanted no taxes on Whiskey, made from the corn they grew themselves (and far more profitable to ship than the perishable raw corn). Easterners wanted taxes raised, and certainly not on themselves. Thus the conflict.
While other issues such as Slavery, Segregation, and the Cold War have colored the domestic US political struggles, this conflict remains at the heart of what Americans really argue about. Westward expansion, starting before the War of Independence, after the defeat of the French in the French and Indian War, meant a loss of influence and political control for the Eastern elite. Which fought Westward expansion at every turn. Without the threat of French allied Indian tribes posing serious threats to settlers, men and women streamed West to settle new lands and pose competitive threats to the Eastern Plantations and Estates, at least as far as agricultural exports were concerned.
This conflict came to a head, in the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson's supporters wanted Westward expansion, which meant spending money on Westward transportation and communication links, and expelling the Cherokee Indians from the Southeast, the current states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Easterners wanted to keep the Indians in place, for obvious reasons. Easterners also wanted the strong, centralized Bank of the United States. The Bank of the United States provided expensive credit, to only the most credit worthy. Which was generally, the Eastern elites, who held title to expensive Eastern Seaboard property. Westerners, who lived often a "cash-less" life of barter, wanted inflationary currency (easier to pay off their debts).
Jackson, as the symbol and leader of the Westerners, was subject to personal attacks familiar to any who've followed those on Palin, and fought a number of duels over this matter before assuming the Presidency. Jackson's wife, the state of their marriage, speculation about his adopted children, and other rather base attacks, even by the standards of the 19th Century, portrayed Jackson as an uncouth, unlettered, barbarous, and vile Westerner, unfit for office and lacking the sophistication of such men as John Quincy Adams. Sound familiar?
That is the case today. Palin, like Jackson, is a Westerner. Thus, she is certain to favor policies that Easterners hate. Such as cheap land. This means, in practice, relaxation of federal regulations restricting the use of federal lands, and a general opening of the lands for resource extraction, including fishing, lumber, ranching, and of course oil and gas exploration and drilling. All of which will shift money and power from the East to the West. Diminishing the power of places like New York City and Washington DC, and raising in importance cities such as Boise, Idaho, or Fairbanks, Alaska.
Palin is also likely to oppose immigration amnesty and "reform" that would allow any more immigrants into the US. Her Alaskan power base consists of mostly Blue Collar and lower White Collar workers, who absolutely require expensive labor (meaning, effectively, limiting the supply of workers) to raise their living standard. McCain's "radio silence" on the subject of Immigration, Amnesty, and so on, reflects the reality of his mostly Western base, Obama's promise to enact "Immigration Reform" shows the priorities of his own, Eastern base. Eternally, cheap labor and expensive land.
Palin is also likely to favor greater transportation links to the West, especially Alaska. Anyone who has followed National Geographic Channel's "Tougher in Alaska" with host Geo Beach, knows that living expenses are quite high in Alaska. Remote villages endure sky-high prices, such as jar of Skippy Peanut Butter at $12. Given the extreme Winter cold, much of Alaska's cities cannot have water mains (which would simply freeze) and thus expensive water delivery trucks fill home tanks. Alaska's rail, air, highway, and sea links with the rest of the United States are limited, making exports of their resources more difficult. Just as Lincoln, domestically, was elected in part in 1860 because he favored more railroads to the West, Palin is likely to favor spending more money on transport links to the West and Alaska, instead of Eastern cities. Meaning less money for block grants (aka patronage in Eastern Cities), welfare, etc.
Westerners of course are often characterized as "libertarian" and favoring small government. This is false, Westerners simply want money spent on things they favor, rather than on Eastern cities and the interests of Easterners. This includes regulations. Westerners do not like regulations that hurt their own economic interests, such as forbidding drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, they are quite happy to see quotas on imports from foreign agricultural or commodity competitors that lower the prices they can charge and thus reduce their wealth. Westerners almost always favor regulations to make labor expensive (agricultural businesses are the exception here).
[The Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, are odd beasts. Part "Eastern" and part "Western." California's population center, roughly from Santa Barbara south to San Diego, reflects the oddity of the Pacific Coast. Only the coastal zone is desirable, the inland areas are too hot and dry for comfortable and high-density housing, unlike the East Coast. This makes the coastal counties very "Eastern" and like the metro areas of New York City and Washington DC. Meanwhile, the inland areas of California such as Temecula are solidly "Western." Oregon and Washington repeat this pattern — expensive coastal areas of cheap labor, high land costs, and interiors of cheap land. To the extent that the Front Range limits Denver and Boulder and Colorado Springs expansion, this also characterizes Colorado, and explains why it is an exception among it's Mountain West neighbors of Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming. A look at the 2000 and 2004 electoral maps of the Pacific Coast states and say, Utah are instructive. Salt Lake City voted solidly Democratic. As did Los Angeles County, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. The difference between Utah's overall vote for Republicans in both elections and that of California, Washington, and Oregon's Democratic votes is that in Utah, the majority of the population lived in smaller cities and suburbs. Thus tipping that state solidly "Western."]
This conflict is as old as the struggle between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. The struggle, however, in the long run favors the Westerners. The "center" of American population has been moving ever Westward since 1755. Exceptional Eastern politicians and political coalitions may be able to delay this process, but it is only a delay. The Wikipedia link to the mean center of US population shows how people have moved ever-westward.
Westerners, with cheap land and expensive labor, are able to form LARGER families than Easterners. Steve Sailer's "Affordable Family Formation" formula in action. This forms the other basis for the complete horror that Sarah Palin and her family induces in the Media, Democratic Party, and Cultural Left (but I repeat myself). This will be discussed in greater detail in Part 2.
...Read more
Politics as conventionally understood, don't explain why Palin generates such rage by her political opponents, the Media, and the Cultural Left. There are really two main reasons for such rage (and various personal attacks). This post will focus on one reason, which is the eternal struggle in American politics between East and West.
Europeans and Eastern intellectuals often have a hard time understanding what really drives American politics. What they fail to understand is that the conflict between Easterners and Westerners, broadly understood, has shaped American politics since the adoption of the Constitution in 1788.
Easterners, since the first few settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, have wanted expensive land, and cheap labor. Expensive land, since they already owned land, a great deal of it, and hoped to use the land to generate even more wealth. By use of cheap labor. Slaves, Indians in forced labor, and indentured servants (such as Benjamin Franklin), could be used in the fields or nascent factories, producing everything from corn, to molasses, to tobacco, to firearms, for export to England and the Continent. Easterners wanted money spent by the government to improve their own lot, including their ports, cities, factories, and subsidies in one form or another for their export-oriented businesses.
Westerners, from the first, rebelling against the men who ran the first colonies, favored cheap land, and expensive labor. Ideally, the land would be "free," and taken from Indians who could not hold it, while their own labors would be expensive. Thus the relatively poor Westerners hoped to raise their own station in life. They favored restrictions on imports of labor, and generally despised taxes and regulations that fell upon them and took money from them to interests in the East. The Shays Rebellion, in President Washington's first term, epitomizes this conflict. Western Pennsylvania farmers wanted no taxes on Whiskey, made from the corn they grew themselves (and far more profitable to ship than the perishable raw corn). Easterners wanted taxes raised, and certainly not on themselves. Thus the conflict.
While other issues such as Slavery, Segregation, and the Cold War have colored the domestic US political struggles, this conflict remains at the heart of what Americans really argue about. Westward expansion, starting before the War of Independence, after the defeat of the French in the French and Indian War, meant a loss of influence and political control for the Eastern elite. Which fought Westward expansion at every turn. Without the threat of French allied Indian tribes posing serious threats to settlers, men and women streamed West to settle new lands and pose competitive threats to the Eastern Plantations and Estates, at least as far as agricultural exports were concerned.
This conflict came to a head, in the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson's supporters wanted Westward expansion, which meant spending money on Westward transportation and communication links, and expelling the Cherokee Indians from the Southeast, the current states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Easterners wanted to keep the Indians in place, for obvious reasons. Easterners also wanted the strong, centralized Bank of the United States. The Bank of the United States provided expensive credit, to only the most credit worthy. Which was generally, the Eastern elites, who held title to expensive Eastern Seaboard property. Westerners, who lived often a "cash-less" life of barter, wanted inflationary currency (easier to pay off their debts).
Jackson, as the symbol and leader of the Westerners, was subject to personal attacks familiar to any who've followed those on Palin, and fought a number of duels over this matter before assuming the Presidency. Jackson's wife, the state of their marriage, speculation about his adopted children, and other rather base attacks, even by the standards of the 19th Century, portrayed Jackson as an uncouth, unlettered, barbarous, and vile Westerner, unfit for office and lacking the sophistication of such men as John Quincy Adams. Sound familiar?
That is the case today. Palin, like Jackson, is a Westerner. Thus, she is certain to favor policies that Easterners hate. Such as cheap land. This means, in practice, relaxation of federal regulations restricting the use of federal lands, and a general opening of the lands for resource extraction, including fishing, lumber, ranching, and of course oil and gas exploration and drilling. All of which will shift money and power from the East to the West. Diminishing the power of places like New York City and Washington DC, and raising in importance cities such as Boise, Idaho, or Fairbanks, Alaska.
Palin is also likely to oppose immigration amnesty and "reform" that would allow any more immigrants into the US. Her Alaskan power base consists of mostly Blue Collar and lower White Collar workers, who absolutely require expensive labor (meaning, effectively, limiting the supply of workers) to raise their living standard. McCain's "radio silence" on the subject of Immigration, Amnesty, and so on, reflects the reality of his mostly Western base, Obama's promise to enact "Immigration Reform" shows the priorities of his own, Eastern base. Eternally, cheap labor and expensive land.
Palin is also likely to favor greater transportation links to the West, especially Alaska. Anyone who has followed National Geographic Channel's "Tougher in Alaska" with host Geo Beach, knows that living expenses are quite high in Alaska. Remote villages endure sky-high prices, such as jar of Skippy Peanut Butter at $12. Given the extreme Winter cold, much of Alaska's cities cannot have water mains (which would simply freeze) and thus expensive water delivery trucks fill home tanks. Alaska's rail, air, highway, and sea links with the rest of the United States are limited, making exports of their resources more difficult. Just as Lincoln, domestically, was elected in part in 1860 because he favored more railroads to the West, Palin is likely to favor spending more money on transport links to the West and Alaska, instead of Eastern cities. Meaning less money for block grants (aka patronage in Eastern Cities), welfare, etc.
Westerners of course are often characterized as "libertarian" and favoring small government. This is false, Westerners simply want money spent on things they favor, rather than on Eastern cities and the interests of Easterners. This includes regulations. Westerners do not like regulations that hurt their own economic interests, such as forbidding drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, they are quite happy to see quotas on imports from foreign agricultural or commodity competitors that lower the prices they can charge and thus reduce their wealth. Westerners almost always favor regulations to make labor expensive (agricultural businesses are the exception here).
[The Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, are odd beasts. Part "Eastern" and part "Western." California's population center, roughly from Santa Barbara south to San Diego, reflects the oddity of the Pacific Coast. Only the coastal zone is desirable, the inland areas are too hot and dry for comfortable and high-density housing, unlike the East Coast. This makes the coastal counties very "Eastern" and like the metro areas of New York City and Washington DC. Meanwhile, the inland areas of California such as Temecula are solidly "Western." Oregon and Washington repeat this pattern — expensive coastal areas of cheap labor, high land costs, and interiors of cheap land. To the extent that the Front Range limits Denver and Boulder and Colorado Springs expansion, this also characterizes Colorado, and explains why it is an exception among it's Mountain West neighbors of Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming. A look at the 2000 and 2004 electoral maps of the Pacific Coast states and say, Utah are instructive. Salt Lake City voted solidly Democratic. As did Los Angeles County, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. The difference between Utah's overall vote for Republicans in both elections and that of California, Washington, and Oregon's Democratic votes is that in Utah, the majority of the population lived in smaller cities and suburbs. Thus tipping that state solidly "Western."]
This conflict is as old as the struggle between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. The struggle, however, in the long run favors the Westerners. The "center" of American population has been moving ever Westward since 1755. Exceptional Eastern politicians and political coalitions may be able to delay this process, but it is only a delay. The Wikipedia link to the mean center of US population shows how people have moved ever-westward.
Westerners, with cheap land and expensive labor, are able to form LARGER families than Easterners. Steve Sailer's "Affordable Family Formation" formula in action. This forms the other basis for the complete horror that Sarah Palin and her family induces in the Media, Democratic Party, and Cultural Left (but I repeat myself). This will be discussed in greater detail in Part 2.
...Read more
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Vampires and Women: Why the Fantasy Has Turned Scary
Recently, the Washington Post had a story on how vampires have become Hollywood's new leading man characters. While the article has plenty of typical press-release hype over HBO's "True Blood" the story does touch on the popularity of the current "romantic vampire."
Which is scary. Because of what this particular form of vampire shows about what Hollywood is peddling as a romantic fantasy for women and girls, and the market for it. The problem is, the current vampire fantasy is a highly aggressive, violent, testosterone fueled man who will be meekly under the romantic and sexual power of the female lead. This is both a huge departure in the vampire fantasy as it formerly existed, and disturbing in the messages that inevitably push women and girls towards bad choices that they are already prone to make.
First, it's time to review just what the vampire fantasy has been. Almost every culture has vampires as a folklore culture, fear of the undead is a common human fear. What jump started vampires into the modern media era was Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.
The novel dealt with Victorian fears about the stability and endurance of the nuclear family under threat of foreign immigration and contact with the wider world. Fears that were not unfounded, as we can see with today's Britain having 50% of births illegitimate, and not unreasonable either considering the history the Victorian reformers always had in mind. It was not unusual during the Georgian era to encounter 12 year old prostitutes in most major and many minor cities, including their fashionable districts. Most of the cities were hell-holes of drunken behavior, prostitution, thievery, and murder. Gin was the drink of the day, and most English were drunk most of the time. The same Christian reformers who formed the anti-Slavery movement, such as Wililam Wilberforce also endorsed attempts to reduce drunken behavior (encouraging beer consumption instead of gin, limited drinking hours, drinking in pubs instead of the streets, etc.) and public morality to reduce prostitution's acceptability, and encourage the nuclear family, rather than debauchery and patronage of prostitutes.
Thus, when the novel's proper Victorian middle class gentlemen Jonathan Harker, finds his fiancee menaced by Count Dracula, who seeks to turn her into a vampire and make her his bride, the novel's concerns resonated with Victorian reformers who felt several generations of efforts could be undone by menacing foreigners with ways that could corrupt the English back into their old vices. It's interesting that Dracula is presented as smooth, charismatic, attractive to women and able to influence men, but in the end is both revealed to be a monster in his behavior and appearance, and destroyed by a very middle class group who work together, in middle class cooperation and friendship: a doctor (Van Helsing), Harker the lawyer, an American, and a man of minor nobility. Dracula in the end is killed (really) with a Bowie Knife. The symbol of the American frontier. The novel ends with Mina Harker married to Jonathon, and with a child named after a friend who died fighting Dracula.
The stage versions of this novel was a smash, producing a number of films, including notably the 1922 silent German version by F.W. Murnau (name changed from Dracula due to a lawsuit by Stoker's widow) and the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi. It established the Vampire as sexy, but monstrous underneath, though limitations in effects and the Hays Code meant violence and gore had to be implied rather than shown.
This portrayal of the Vampire as sexy but underneath, monstrous, soon changed into the Vampire as a joke. The deepening Depression, and subsequent War Years, led to audiences demanding comedy rather than horror — their own lives were filled with enough during that time, thank you very much. Films such as "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" with Dracula and the Wolf Man along for the ride, and Lugosi once again playing Dracula, were common.
Hammer's 1958 version of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, resurrected the Vampire as both sexy and monstrous, instead of a joke. This particular cycle saw the last "sexy but monstrous" version in 1979's "Dracula" starring Frank Langella, who had also played the role to considerable acclaim on Broadway. The same year, the Vampire was once again, a joke with "Love at First Bite" starring noted champion tanner, George Hamilton.
This cycle has repeated many times: Vampire as monster (to be defeated, by a middle class man, and his wife/girlfriend saved), Vampire as sexy but a monster, Vampire as a joke (Count Chocula, Blackula, etc.). So it was that the somewhat mixed humor and horror versions of this treatment "Fright Night" (1985) and the "Lost Boys" (1987) were succeeded by "Near Dark," a fairly brutal treatment of the Vampire, and 1992's version by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Gary Oldman ("Dracula.")
One thing has always remained the same: Vampires are either straight out monsters who menace middle class men's girlfriends/wives (or, in "Fright Night" and "Lost Boys" their divorced mothers) and must be killed, or they are sexy rivals who are underneath, monstrous, and must be killed, or jokes for our amusement.
The Vampire took a new, somewhat scary turn, with 1997's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." While the movie (fairly unsuccessful) had vampires as somewhat icky jokes, the TV series had the Vampire presented as both monster, and romantic boyfriend, in the same package. Buffy's sexy Vampires, both foreigners (keeping that part of the tradition), were preferable to the middle class, brave, nice, but "boring" men who sought her. Even though her Vampires kept, well slaughtering people, Buffy presented the disturbing fantasy that a beautiful and "special" young woman could, by power of her beauty and sexuality, control a testosterone-driven, violent, aggressive man and domesticate him into her lover and intimidator. Even after one Vampire boyfriend slaughters some of her friends, and another rapes her ("Spike"), the title character keeps coming back for more, even to the point of professing her love for "Spike" and having implied off-screen sex with him.
Following TV's "Buffy," the 2001 "Sookie Stackhouse" series, by Charlaine Harris, and 2005's "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer, continued in that mode, i.e. a beautiful young woman controls a violent, dangerous man, by virtue of her beauty and sexiness, in novel form. The former is now an HBO series, by openly gay writer-producer Alan Ball ("American Beauty") called "True Blood." The latter series has sold 7 million books in the US, and reportedly 50 million world wide. Of course, a gay man understanding, let alone having anything meaningful to say, about the ways in which men and women interact romantically, is about the same probability of my winning the lottery next week.
The success of this type of Vampire character is disturbing. For obvious reasons, the Vampire only appeals to women (and well, gay men). The Vampire is stronger, more violent, more aggressive, older, and longer lived than the "boring" ordinary middle class men he's compared to. He promises immortality, eternal youth and beauty (which has a power, a definite power for women, but does not last). The idea that a woman might extend (even forever) her beauty, sex appeal, power over men, is certainly understandable. The trillion dollar beauty industry caters to this desire, among women, and anyone who's seen an "invisible" woman, i.e. one over age 50, ignored by waiters, waitresses, clerks, and so on knows how cruel a youth-obsessed society can be when women lose their youth and beauty.
[Only "Near Dark" out of all the Vampire Films explores the "relationship" of a female vampire and young man. And there, it's reversed. The young man rejects vampirism, saves his family, and "rescues" the girl from vampirism, restoring her to humanity. Obviously, men only value beauty, intelligence, character, and compassion in women as love-interest fantasies. They don't need power, aggression, and violence in their fantasy partners as women do. They'd also rather be the heroes themselves, and don't see themselves as monsters. For obvious reasons (no children, love, marriage) a female vampire is useless as a romantic fantasy for men, since there is no happily ever after.]
However, this fantasy of young women "controlling" aggressive, violent, hyper-testosterone men, through the power of their beauty comes at a price. While women might like this fantasy, in real life men filled with high levels of testosterone and aggression generally lack control, unless it is directed in careful competition such as football, Mixed Martial Arts competitions, and the like. Which in turn are the result of literally years of training and control. Real life analogues of "Edward" from "Twilight" or "William" from "Dead Until Dark" would resemble Johan Van Der Sloot (suspected by some of killing American tourist Natalee Holloway in Aruba) or Scott Peterson.
If Pornography is bad for men, giving them wildly unrealistic ideas about women, their bodies, and sex, these Vampire fantasies are just as bad for women. Power, status, and above all violent aggression in a fantasy where the woman controls the Byronic Vampire? It's as puerile as the nerdy guy fantasy of the super-heroine who likes blowing up stuff too (see any movie with Milla Jojovich or Kate Beckinsale in black leather). However, that fantasy won't lead to nerdy guys making disastrous choices. At worst they'll waste money on the Special Edition DVD, and the video game.
For women, and particularly younger women, something has been lost. Good judgment about men, including the natural trade-off between intelligence and testosterone. It's true, that there is a correlation between higher IQ and lower levels of testosterone and aggression. Making smarter men who are less aggressive less sexually and romantically desireable for women. But women far too often, in our politically correct society, overestimate their ability to exert control over men with high levels of testosterone and aggression. Writer "Theodore Dalrymple" (his pen name) in "Life at the Bottom" recounts a conversation with one of his patients, in the hospital in London where he worked. A girl of 17, who had her arm broken by her boyfriend. He questioned her, and she admitted she knew the boyfriend was violent and prone to abuse when she started dating him. That was the attraction, the danger, and the excitement. Dalrymple's question was what if that aggression was turned on herself? Her response was that she could look after herself. Dalrymple's reply that men are stronger than women (as her broken arm indicated) produced the retort that such words were "sexist."
This pattern persisted even with Dalrymple's educated, professional nurses. Who chose men who abused them, even at work. They confessed to Dalrymple that they knew the men were violent, they could see it at a glance from the scars from fighting, the tattoos proclaiming a love of violence, and their behavior, dress, and friends. Still they chose them, because ordinary, decent men were in their words, "boring."
These Vampire fantasies are disturbing, because they are both a cultural marker (women have responded to the fantasy of testosterone laden men, with violent pasts and tendencies, as fantasy figures, with sales figures for the books through the roof) and a cultural shaper — it encourages young women to indulge in this fantasy even more. At best this will produce more alienation and distrust between the sexes. The number of men who can meet the criteria of the sexy, brutal, strength and testosterone filled, but controlled, figure of the Vampire is approximately two: Mixed Martial Arts Champion Randy Couture, and Chicago Bears Linebacker Brian Urlacher. No others need apply. At worst, more young women will end up like Natalee Holloway, overestimating their ability to control the aggressive young men around them.
Can't we just move to the Joke phase of vampires now?
...Read more
Which is scary. Because of what this particular form of vampire shows about what Hollywood is peddling as a romantic fantasy for women and girls, and the market for it. The problem is, the current vampire fantasy is a highly aggressive, violent, testosterone fueled man who will be meekly under the romantic and sexual power of the female lead. This is both a huge departure in the vampire fantasy as it formerly existed, and disturbing in the messages that inevitably push women and girls towards bad choices that they are already prone to make.
First, it's time to review just what the vampire fantasy has been. Almost every culture has vampires as a folklore culture, fear of the undead is a common human fear. What jump started vampires into the modern media era was Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.
The novel dealt with Victorian fears about the stability and endurance of the nuclear family under threat of foreign immigration and contact with the wider world. Fears that were not unfounded, as we can see with today's Britain having 50% of births illegitimate, and not unreasonable either considering the history the Victorian reformers always had in mind. It was not unusual during the Georgian era to encounter 12 year old prostitutes in most major and many minor cities, including their fashionable districts. Most of the cities were hell-holes of drunken behavior, prostitution, thievery, and murder. Gin was the drink of the day, and most English were drunk most of the time. The same Christian reformers who formed the anti-Slavery movement, such as Wililam Wilberforce also endorsed attempts to reduce drunken behavior (encouraging beer consumption instead of gin, limited drinking hours, drinking in pubs instead of the streets, etc.) and public morality to reduce prostitution's acceptability, and encourage the nuclear family, rather than debauchery and patronage of prostitutes.
Thus, when the novel's proper Victorian middle class gentlemen Jonathan Harker, finds his fiancee menaced by Count Dracula, who seeks to turn her into a vampire and make her his bride, the novel's concerns resonated with Victorian reformers who felt several generations of efforts could be undone by menacing foreigners with ways that could corrupt the English back into their old vices. It's interesting that Dracula is presented as smooth, charismatic, attractive to women and able to influence men, but in the end is both revealed to be a monster in his behavior and appearance, and destroyed by a very middle class group who work together, in middle class cooperation and friendship: a doctor (Van Helsing), Harker the lawyer, an American, and a man of minor nobility. Dracula in the end is killed (really) with a Bowie Knife. The symbol of the American frontier. The novel ends with Mina Harker married to Jonathon, and with a child named after a friend who died fighting Dracula.
The stage versions of this novel was a smash, producing a number of films, including notably the 1922 silent German version by F.W. Murnau (name changed from Dracula due to a lawsuit by Stoker's widow) and the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi. It established the Vampire as sexy, but monstrous underneath, though limitations in effects and the Hays Code meant violence and gore had to be implied rather than shown.
This portrayal of the Vampire as sexy but underneath, monstrous, soon changed into the Vampire as a joke. The deepening Depression, and subsequent War Years, led to audiences demanding comedy rather than horror — their own lives were filled with enough during that time, thank you very much. Films such as "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" with Dracula and the Wolf Man along for the ride, and Lugosi once again playing Dracula, were common.
Hammer's 1958 version of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, resurrected the Vampire as both sexy and monstrous, instead of a joke. This particular cycle saw the last "sexy but monstrous" version in 1979's "Dracula" starring Frank Langella, who had also played the role to considerable acclaim on Broadway. The same year, the Vampire was once again, a joke with "Love at First Bite" starring noted champion tanner, George Hamilton.
This cycle has repeated many times: Vampire as monster (to be defeated, by a middle class man, and his wife/girlfriend saved), Vampire as sexy but a monster, Vampire as a joke (Count Chocula, Blackula, etc.). So it was that the somewhat mixed humor and horror versions of this treatment "Fright Night" (1985) and the "Lost Boys" (1987) were succeeded by "Near Dark," a fairly brutal treatment of the Vampire, and 1992's version by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Gary Oldman ("Dracula.")
One thing has always remained the same: Vampires are either straight out monsters who menace middle class men's girlfriends/wives (or, in "Fright Night" and "Lost Boys" their divorced mothers) and must be killed, or they are sexy rivals who are underneath, monstrous, and must be killed, or jokes for our amusement.
The Vampire took a new, somewhat scary turn, with 1997's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." While the movie (fairly unsuccessful) had vampires as somewhat icky jokes, the TV series had the Vampire presented as both monster, and romantic boyfriend, in the same package. Buffy's sexy Vampires, both foreigners (keeping that part of the tradition), were preferable to the middle class, brave, nice, but "boring" men who sought her. Even though her Vampires kept, well slaughtering people, Buffy presented the disturbing fantasy that a beautiful and "special" young woman could, by power of her beauty and sexuality, control a testosterone-driven, violent, aggressive man and domesticate him into her lover and intimidator. Even after one Vampire boyfriend slaughters some of her friends, and another rapes her ("Spike"), the title character keeps coming back for more, even to the point of professing her love for "Spike" and having implied off-screen sex with him.
Following TV's "Buffy," the 2001 "Sookie Stackhouse" series, by Charlaine Harris, and 2005's "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer, continued in that mode, i.e. a beautiful young woman controls a violent, dangerous man, by virtue of her beauty and sexiness, in novel form. The former is now an HBO series, by openly gay writer-producer Alan Ball ("American Beauty") called "True Blood." The latter series has sold 7 million books in the US, and reportedly 50 million world wide. Of course, a gay man understanding, let alone having anything meaningful to say, about the ways in which men and women interact romantically, is about the same probability of my winning the lottery next week.
The success of this type of Vampire character is disturbing. For obvious reasons, the Vampire only appeals to women (and well, gay men). The Vampire is stronger, more violent, more aggressive, older, and longer lived than the "boring" ordinary middle class men he's compared to. He promises immortality, eternal youth and beauty (which has a power, a definite power for women, but does not last). The idea that a woman might extend (even forever) her beauty, sex appeal, power over men, is certainly understandable. The trillion dollar beauty industry caters to this desire, among women, and anyone who's seen an "invisible" woman, i.e. one over age 50, ignored by waiters, waitresses, clerks, and so on knows how cruel a youth-obsessed society can be when women lose their youth and beauty.
[Only "Near Dark" out of all the Vampire Films explores the "relationship" of a female vampire and young man. And there, it's reversed. The young man rejects vampirism, saves his family, and "rescues" the girl from vampirism, restoring her to humanity. Obviously, men only value beauty, intelligence, character, and compassion in women as love-interest fantasies. They don't need power, aggression, and violence in their fantasy partners as women do. They'd also rather be the heroes themselves, and don't see themselves as monsters. For obvious reasons (no children, love, marriage) a female vampire is useless as a romantic fantasy for men, since there is no happily ever after.]
However, this fantasy of young women "controlling" aggressive, violent, hyper-testosterone men, through the power of their beauty comes at a price. While women might like this fantasy, in real life men filled with high levels of testosterone and aggression generally lack control, unless it is directed in careful competition such as football, Mixed Martial Arts competitions, and the like. Which in turn are the result of literally years of training and control. Real life analogues of "Edward" from "Twilight" or "William" from "Dead Until Dark" would resemble Johan Van Der Sloot (suspected by some of killing American tourist Natalee Holloway in Aruba) or Scott Peterson.
If Pornography is bad for men, giving them wildly unrealistic ideas about women, their bodies, and sex, these Vampire fantasies are just as bad for women. Power, status, and above all violent aggression in a fantasy where the woman controls the Byronic Vampire? It's as puerile as the nerdy guy fantasy of the super-heroine who likes blowing up stuff too (see any movie with Milla Jojovich or Kate Beckinsale in black leather). However, that fantasy won't lead to nerdy guys making disastrous choices. At worst they'll waste money on the Special Edition DVD, and the video game.
For women, and particularly younger women, something has been lost. Good judgment about men, including the natural trade-off between intelligence and testosterone. It's true, that there is a correlation between higher IQ and lower levels of testosterone and aggression. Making smarter men who are less aggressive less sexually and romantically desireable for women. But women far too often, in our politically correct society, overestimate their ability to exert control over men with high levels of testosterone and aggression. Writer "Theodore Dalrymple" (his pen name) in "Life at the Bottom" recounts a conversation with one of his patients, in the hospital in London where he worked. A girl of 17, who had her arm broken by her boyfriend. He questioned her, and she admitted she knew the boyfriend was violent and prone to abuse when she started dating him. That was the attraction, the danger, and the excitement. Dalrymple's question was what if that aggression was turned on herself? Her response was that she could look after herself. Dalrymple's reply that men are stronger than women (as her broken arm indicated) produced the retort that such words were "sexist."
This pattern persisted even with Dalrymple's educated, professional nurses. Who chose men who abused them, even at work. They confessed to Dalrymple that they knew the men were violent, they could see it at a glance from the scars from fighting, the tattoos proclaiming a love of violence, and their behavior, dress, and friends. Still they chose them, because ordinary, decent men were in their words, "boring."
These Vampire fantasies are disturbing, because they are both a cultural marker (women have responded to the fantasy of testosterone laden men, with violent pasts and tendencies, as fantasy figures, with sales figures for the books through the roof) and a cultural shaper — it encourages young women to indulge in this fantasy even more. At best this will produce more alienation and distrust between the sexes. The number of men who can meet the criteria of the sexy, brutal, strength and testosterone filled, but controlled, figure of the Vampire is approximately two: Mixed Martial Arts Champion Randy Couture, and Chicago Bears Linebacker Brian Urlacher. No others need apply. At worst, more young women will end up like Natalee Holloway, overestimating their ability to control the aggressive young men around them.
Can't we just move to the Joke phase of vampires now?
...Read more
Monday, September 8, 2008
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 2
In my prior post, Why Is It Always 1968 Part 1 I discussed some of the factors accounting for the astonishing fact that culturally, from music, to food, to dress, to politics, to entertainment (with some exceptions), twenty year olds from 1968 (that's a full forty years ago folks) share the same tastes as twenty year olds from 2008. [Men and women who are Sixty Years old do not generally play any video games save the Wii sports games. Finding the games too difficult and boring.]
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
| Previous (1935-54) | Age in 1954 | Year of Birth | Years before WWI End |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Ford | 60 | 1894 | 24 |
| Samuel Goldwyn | 75 | 1879 | 24 |
| Louis Mayer | 70 | 1884 | 34 |
| Jack Warner | 62 | 1892 | 26 |
| Orson Welles | 39 | 1915 | 3 |
| Preston Sturges | 56 | 189 | 20 |
| Howard Hawks | 58 | 1896 | 22 |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 55 | 1899 | 15 |
| Frank Capra | 57 | 1897 | 21 |
| Anthony Mann | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Charles Laughton | 55 | 1899 | 19 |
| J Lee Thompson | 40 | 1914 | 4 |
| John Huston | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Average | 56 | 1898 | 20 |
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
| Person | Age in 2008 | Year of Birth |
|---|---|---|
| JJ Abrams | 42 | 1964 |
| Joss Whedon | 44 | 1964 | Steve Soderberg | 45 | 1963 |
| Jerry Bruckheimer | 63 | 1945 |
| Josh Schwartz | 32 | 1976 |
| Chris Nolan | 38 | 1970 |
| Sam Raimi | 49 | 1959 |
| Alan Ball | 51 | 1957 |
| Seth Rogen | 26 | 1982 |
| Judd Apatow | 41 | 1967 |
| Kevin Williamson | 43 | 1965 |
| John Hughes | 58 | 1950 |
| George Lucas | 62 | 1946 |
| Steven Spielberg | 64 | 1944 |
| Tim Burton | 50 | 1958 |
| Average | 47 | 1969 |
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 1
Recently , Ed Driscoll linked to my post, Comic Books Dirty Little Secret, noting that:
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968.
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Chemistry.com's Big Gay Blunder
Recently, Chemistry.com ran the following commercial, on various cable networks. I've seen it on Discovery, BBC America, History Channel, and Food Network.
Now, color me surprised when this ad got pulled fairly quickly.
Do women generally like this sort of thing? Yes. Go check the comments at the Youtube site, see for yourself. I'm sure it's "cool" with the trendy set as well.
Do men who are likely to want to use Chemistry.com like this sort of thing? No. They'll hate it. Desperate, lonely guys wanting a girlfriend get ... gays on the screen?
Chemistry.com just killed their brand. Since men make up the paying customers. Women don't need and don't form the majority of the customers of dating sites.
Dating sites generally fail, because it's like that "nude beach scene" in "Eurotrip." A total "sausage fest." Far too many men, not very many women. Men can need dating sites, it's hard for some to meet women, particularly those shy, without much of a social network, and new in town. Women don't need dating sites and therefore mostly don't use them, except occasionally as either an ego booster, or more often as a screening device (and that only for income, really).
This stands as another monument to the lack of competence in the creative class. It should be a simple task: sell lonely, desperate guys that Chemistry.com will solve their romance problem. Instead, the ad agency made a "statement" which no doubt made all their ad buddies proud and boosted their own status in the ad business.
But now, for every guy who saw that ad, Chemistry.com is not for them. It's for gay men. Not straight guys looking for a date. Made worse of course by the choice of the actors, who resemble the target market of cube dwellers too much.
More evidence of lack of simple competence among the creative class. Even simple things can't get done right, because no one has a clue about the social realities beyond the terminally trendy.
...Read more
Now, color me surprised when this ad got pulled fairly quickly.
Do women generally like this sort of thing? Yes. Go check the comments at the Youtube site, see for yourself. I'm sure it's "cool" with the trendy set as well.
Do men who are likely to want to use Chemistry.com like this sort of thing? No. They'll hate it. Desperate, lonely guys wanting a girlfriend get ... gays on the screen?
Chemistry.com just killed their brand. Since men make up the paying customers. Women don't need and don't form the majority of the customers of dating sites.
Dating sites generally fail, because it's like that "nude beach scene" in "Eurotrip." A total "sausage fest." Far too many men, not very many women. Men can need dating sites, it's hard for some to meet women, particularly those shy, without much of a social network, and new in town. Women don't need dating sites and therefore mostly don't use them, except occasionally as either an ego booster, or more often as a screening device (and that only for income, really).
This stands as another monument to the lack of competence in the creative class. It should be a simple task: sell lonely, desperate guys that Chemistry.com will solve their romance problem. Instead, the ad agency made a "statement" which no doubt made all their ad buddies proud and boosted their own status in the ad business.
But now, for every guy who saw that ad, Chemistry.com is not for them. It's for gay men. Not straight guys looking for a date. Made worse of course by the choice of the actors, who resemble the target market of cube dwellers too much.
More evidence of lack of simple competence among the creative class. Even simple things can't get done right, because no one has a clue about the social realities beyond the terminally trendy.
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