Quando se começou a usar o vídeo-árbitro no futebol, um dos efeitos secundários mais interessantes foram as discussões que houve aqui no facebook, muitas delas feitas com o apoio de imagens. Faziam-se gifs a demonstrar que tal jogador estava em fora de jogo, comparando com uma paralela à linha da baliza, depois vinha alguém que contrapunha que não podia ser uma linha paralela porque em perspectiva as paralelas convergem para um ponto, ao que outra pessoa acrescentava que a perspectiva linear é uma abstracção porque a lente da câmara somava a sua própria distorção que encurva as linhas, e visto isso tudo, com que parte do corpo do futebolista se mede a sua posição, sobretudo se está a saltar? A mão? O pé? Ou pelo contrário a bola? Assim, uma coisa que parecia certa e científica estava sujeita a uma multiplicação de significados antagónicos que nunca se poderiam resolver.
A mesma coisa se passa com a discussão se dado cartoon é ou não racista. Em qualquer um dos casos, mesmo sem formação, usa-se o tipo de método dos diversos especialistas em análises de imagem. Procura-se perceber se é razoável que tal imagem possa ser interpretada ou não como racista.
Alguns vão pela cor dos personagens, uma análise que anda próxima da que é praticada pela iconografia em arte. Assim concluem que Serena e Osaka até têm a mesma cor de referência. Infelizmente, a mesma cor, como já sabia Josef Albers, pode ser percebida de modo muito distinto por causa das cores que a rodeiam. E mesmo o contexto altera a percepção da cor. Há uma experiência onde simplesmente se pede a alguém para escrever vermelho com uma caneta azul e vice-versa. É difícil. Há uma resistência.
Outros vão pelo traço, contrastando o tipo de fisionomia usado para representar Williams e Osaka, e como essas representações se aproximam ou não de outras representações ao longo do tempo. Uns dizem que Williams se parece com as representações racistas de negros em cartoons da época do Jim Crow. Outros contrapõem que já houve caricaturas semelhantes de McEnroe que é branco. Os primeiros respondem que representar um branco como um macaco não é o mesmo que representar um negro, porque há todo um historial de representar negros como macacos por defeito.
Há depois os que ironizam ou protestam que já não se pode fazer caricaturas de negros, ou que pelo menos um branco não as pode fazer, e a isso responde-se que é possível mas que é preciso algum cuidado, porque o próprio campo da caricatura tem um passado racista que se confunde com a própria história da disciplina. É preciso ter consciência do que se faz. Já pouca gente faz caricaturas de judeus com o nariz encurvado e agarrados a um saco de dinheiro. Em tempos, era a maneira convencional de representá-los. Hoje já se consegue caricaturar um judeu, Netanyahu por exemplo, sem lhe realçar ou impôr os supostos traços de um judeu. É perfeitamente possível representar um afro-descendente sem fazer dele o desenho típico de um negro.
Porque, como acrescentam outros, também é possível aferir se o cartoon é racista pelo modo como o seu desenhador representa negros, e depressa se descobriu que tem o hábito de usar afro-descendentes quando quer representar assaltantes, gente que se está amotinar, etc.
Pode-se também discutir se o racismo é intencional ou não, e se pode ser racista se não houver intenção. Aqui, contrapõe-se que mesmo não sendo intencional é possível que um dado cartoon tenha, por acidente, uma leitura racista. Os designers riem-se muito daquelas senhora que foi apoiar o Clint Eastwood com um cartaz com as letras tão juntinhas que se lia «Cunt». Foi sem querer mas é mau na mesma e a culpa não é de quem lê mas de quem fez o mau lettering.
Tudo isto são noções que se aprende quando se lida com imagens, tanto produzindo-as como analisando-as. São instâncias de iconografia, de semiótica, de teoria do autor, de ética da imagem, etc. E é bastante interessante. Faz-me pensar que nesta época em que cada vez mais pessoas produzem e consomem imagens, onde se discute não apenas imagens mas com imagens, seria muito útil haver mais consciência destes métodos. Não sei se na escola ainda se dedica mais tempo a analisar textos do que a analisar imagens. Ou se a análise de imagens ainda é uma especialização enquanto a análise textual é considerada cultura geral.
De tudo isto, o único discurso pouco produtivo é o do «já não se pode dizer nada», «ai a ditadura do politicamente correcto», «vem aí a polícia do pensamento». Em qualquer um dos casos acima, tanto do lado do pró como do contra, apresentaram-se argumentos. Do lado dos que se queixam que já não se pode dizer nada, temos gente que não tem argumentos nenhuns mas acha que, em sua homenagem e por respeito, os outros deviam estar mais calados do que eles.
Howdy, folks! My poor teeth are finally all healed up, so in celebration, I have decided to sink them Sunny Baudelaire-style into this ridiculous house:
This 1995 “Victorian” features 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, totaling around 6700 square feet. It can be your humble abode for a modest $1.7 million USD.
Lawyer Foyer
Seriously, I don’t know why they didn’t just enclose the staircase, because that lone beam looks both anticlimactic and structurally unsettling. Also it doesn’t line up with the post at the top of the stairs. I am unusually frustrated by this.
Office
Whomst among us did not have binders full of women in middle school and by binders full of women I mean trapper keepers full of Bleach yuri fanfic? (clears throat) anyways, happy bisexual visibility month
Great Room
Okay so the other two walls in this room are covered with unsettlingly HUGE family portraits that would have taken a lot of time and effort to block out the faces. Anyways, I just want you to know that this is only 1/3rd of the total family portraiture in this space.
Dining Room
i don’t even see any coasters for drinks. i have never before witnessed such recklessness.
Kitchen
ok so I watched an entire week’s worth of HGTV at my parents’ house after getting my wisdom teeth pulled and literally every kitchen has to be white or gray. this pearlescent nonsense has to be a global conspiracy orchestrated by none other than,,, mr. clean.
Den
Oreo cookie commercial: you’ve heard of stuffed. but have you heard of “double stuffed?” Sofa designer for La-Z-Boy: go on
Master Bedroom
(philosopher voice): what is the point of a mirror if you are facing away from it?
(sadly there are no pictures of the master bathroom, so we’re moving on to the last room of the house)
Rec Room
the fifties were lame, (slowly making the entire internet mad) like come on brutalism was barely even a thing then
alright alright, time to wrap this bad boy up:
Rear Exterior
is this technically a 3 car garage? can a car even fit in that garage? next time, on The X Files (theme plays)
Well folks, that does it for Utah! I’m heading to Finland next week (!!!), but stay tuned for Vermont upon my return!
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O pior que se pode dizer de um texto crítico aqui em Portugal é que trata da espuma dos dias. Que trata daquilo que é passageiro, momentâneo, sujeito às modas, daquilo que não merece ser lembrado. Até se acusa que há críticos que preferem tratar desses assuntos passageiros, dessas modinhas, e não do que é realmente importante.
É comum as críticas de cinema terminarem com um lamento e uma sentença que o filme se esquece mal se sai da sala. É comum quem escreve sobre design desdenhar o trendy. Na arquitectura, por medo de cair no supérfluo e no quotidiano, fala-se do Siza e do Souto Moura. Há umas tantas outras entidades de que se fala à experiência, não vão elas também ser apenas um fogo fátuo. Na arte, as cautelas são ainda mais. Chega-se aos sessenta anos e ainda se é um artista a descobrir, mesmo que uma vez por mês se apareça nos jornais.
A crítica portuguesa acredita que a sua função é a consagração, a legitimação. Dedica-se afincadamente a construir e administrar cânones.
Ora a grande maioria da crítica que eu mais gosto não seria considerada sequer crítica aqui em Portugal. Seria considerada apenas opinião, porque se centra não no cânone mas na espuma dos dias. Mesmo o cânone é interpretado em termos da pertinência que tem agora mesmo. Não se tira do relicário um dos tesouros da Cinemateca para lhes rezar umas novenas, para celebrar a sua pertinência eterna, mas para perguntar que sentido faz hoje. Wichita, de Jacques Torneur, é convocado pelo crítico Richard Brody como parábola sobre a luta para controlar a proliferação de armas. As melhores críticas de televisão de Emily Nussbaum não se perguntam se uma série é memorável mas se é pertinente, se se liga à arena política, ao metoo, a Trump.
Aqui, é ao contrário, quanto menos pertinente for, mais probabilidade tem de passar à história. É verdadeiramente triste como se tenta desculpar com banalidades como a força formal, a arte pela arte, o cinema pelo cinema, etc. o simples pecado de um objecto dizer algo de importante.
É lúgubre ler gente a tratar filmes, arte e livros como um cangalheiro que lhes tira as medidas para ver qual é o melhor caixão onde podem passar a eternidade.
Partilho esta imagem com uma dedicatória a todos os que aqui em Portugal acham que se deve lutar contra o politicamente correcto porque é uma forma de censura, que leva ao estalinismo, etc. Só para lembrar que o Presidente Trump foi eleito precisamente numa plataforma de luta contra o politicamente correcto, em particular no que diz respeito à imigração. Prometia ele acabar com o politicamente correcto nesta área. E, nessa luta sem tréguas contra a censura e o estalinismo do politicamente correcto, agora chegamos àquela fase em que se internam crianças em campos de concentração.
Da próxima vez que vos der vontade de repetir asneiras propagadas pela extrema direita americana, nomeadamente andarem a queixar-se do politicamente correcto, lembrem-se de quem anda realmente a pôr crianças em campos de concentração e em nome de quê.
Sou a favor do politicamente correcto em dois sentidos.
No sentido de uma forma de educação ou de cortesia para com minorias tradicionalmente oprimidas. Parte dessa tradição é oral e iconográfica. Toma a forma de anedotas, de frases feitas, de caricaturas, etc. Chamar cigano a um ladrão, judeu a um ganancioso, mulher ou maricas a um cobarde, não são só vestígios mas formas activas dessa opressão, atribuindo as mesmas más características a um grupo inteiro. Não se faz isso por falta de educação mas porque ainda se foi educado assim. Quando as pessoas protestam contra o politicamente correcto é porque percebem que foram mal educadas. Que a sua própria cultura os educou mal. Mas a educação pode mudar se assim a deixarem.
E aí chega-se ao segundo ponto, sou a favor do politicamente correcto no sentido do Estado e das suas instituições usarem de uma linguagem inclusiva e praticarem o mais possível a igualdade de género, étnica, etc. Porque é a maneira mais eficaz da educação mudar.
Compara-se muito a liberdade de expressão a um mercado das ideias, onde as melhores, se deixadas circular em liberdade, virão ao de cima. Um dos problemas desta metáfora é que isso nem sequer acontece com os mercados a sério. A electricidade liberalizada ficou mais cara, os correios ficaram pior. Há até quem diga que os afrodescendentes tendem a viver em más vizinhanças por causa da economia, das pressões do mercado, do rating social, etc. Mas se o mercado consegue separar brancos de negros de um modo tão eficaz e natural, é porque o próprio mercado, agindo sem regulação, é racista.
A solução tanto no mercado como nas ideias é a regulação. Essa regulação vai simplesmente no sentido do Estado usar e promover de uma linguagem inclusiva, e de garantir que minorias lhe possam aceder, tanto como cidadãos, como enquanto funcionários e representantes. Porque também cumpre a função de dar acesso à discussão a quem não o tem. Há quem ache que está a ser censurado quando é criticado por dizer uma coisa que sempre disse – uma anedota de pretos, uma comparação deselegante sobre homossexuais, etc. Mas se está a ser criticado é porque começou a viver numa sociedade que se preocupa com o que afrodescendentes e homossexuais pensam. Até aí, quem estava a ser censurado, por norma, eram eles e outros tantos.
Até aí, aquilo que um homem, branco, heterossexual, assumia como uma sociedade liberal era na verdade uma sociedade com gradações sucessivas e crescentes de opressão – uma democracia onde um cigano, ou uma mulher negra vivem no que um homem branco consideraria ser um regime autoritário, se passasse pelo mesmo.
“Coimbra, 28 de Maio de 1942 – O dia foi um boi que morreu aqui ao pé, num lameiro. Andava a lavrar, e de repente caiu redondo no chão. Tiraram-lhe a pele e enterraram-no ali mesmo. A charrua a brilhar em cima da sepultura foi o seu ramo de flores.”
Our canon of sad white men’s literature reinforces the idea that male sexual deprivation is a public concern
One month ago yesterday, Alek Minassian drove through a Toronto shopping district in a rented van, killing ten people and injuring sixteen more. Analysis of Minassian’s online activity — where he participated in forums for the involuntarily celibate, or incels — quickly revealed the attack’s motivation: he was avenging himself on the women (apparently all of us) who had rejected him. He declared that with his act of terrorism, the “incel rebellion” had begun — although he was not the first self-described incel to use his sexlessness as an excuse for acts of mass violence.
Though the subsequent rash of media analysis might lead you to think otherwise, none of this is new — not even the term “incel,” which was first coined in 1993 by a queer Canadian woman when she created a website for people who identified as involuntary celibates to share their thoughts and feelings. The incel community that exists today on reddit, 4chan, and incel.me is an inchoate and ever-evolving group, which seems to change shape with every attempt to characterize it. The genealogy of today’s incel grows more complex the more you dig (he is descended from both the aggressively misogynist Pick Up Artist community and the slightly more sympathetic “love-shy” community). What members of all these groups share, of course, is their sense of their own alienation from women and their (almost always deeply misogynistic) conviction that this alienation has negatively affected their lives in myriad profound ways.
I am writing this on May 23rd, the fourth anniversary of Elliot Rodger’s Isla Vista spree killing, a set of murders explicitly motivated by the perpetrator’s extreme hatred of women and the men he perceived as more sexually successful than he. As of the time of writing, 10:09 am, there are multiple posts on the front page of incel.me celebrating Rodger as a hero (many more will surely show up throughout the day). Posters are discussing what kind of vanilla latte Rodger would have liked (hot or cold), congratulating each other on the anniversary (which they’re calling “The Supreme Gentleman’s Day” and “The Day of Retribution”), and making playlists of his favorite songs (they call these ’80s pop songs “Elliotcore”). Where did these young men get the idea that male pathos (stereotypically defined by them as sexual frustration) is so pathetic, so worthy of tribute? One possible answer to the question, one we don’t discuss very much, is our culture’s literary history. The incel isn’t just a monstrous birth of our casually cruel and anonymous internet culture. He is also a product of Anglo-American literary culture, which (particularly in the twentieth century) treats the topic of male sexual frustration as if it is of prime importance to us all.
The incel isn’t just a monstrous birth of our casually cruel and anonymous internet culture. He is also a product of a literary culture that treats the topic of male sexual frustration as if it is of prime importance to us all.
Think of the literature you read in high school. One source of Hamlet’s insanity, those around him find it natural to assume, is his sexual frustration with Ophelia. Multiple characters in the play scheme to bring the two together, hoping that if she puts out he’ll calm the fuck down and not kill everyone. The plots of a number of other “classic” novels, from Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities to The Great Gatsby, are driven by a (white) male character’s frustrated desire with a remote woman. Holden Caulfield’s ramble through New York is punctuated by his obsessive recollections of Jane Gallagher, the girl he respected too much to try to fuck. Tim O’Brien’s collection The Things They Carried lingers on the story of Jimmy Cross and his obsession with a woman named Martha, whom he knew before he was drafted. Cross is depicted as a genuine figure of pathos: a normal, relatable man caught in a terrible position who uses fantasy as a way to manage the horrors of his war experience. He remembers touching Martha’s knee one night, and how she had recoiled. As he recalls this scene, he fantasizes about having “done something brave.” “He should’ve,” he thinks, “carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long.” That his fascination with her takes the form of a rape fantasy is later revealed to be doubly significant. It is not just evidence of his resentment towards her for rejecting him, but also, we later learn, proof that he has somehow intuited the history of sexual trauma that lives behind her veneer of disassociation, her eyes which are always “wide open, not afraid, not a virgin’s eyes, just flat and uninvolved.”
I choose The Things They Carried to pick on here because it’s a favorite of mine. I think it’s brilliant, but it offers a prime example of the way our literary culture has long treated rage and aggression as if they are normal features of (white) male sexuality. (The racial component is of course significant here, since the exact opposite has long been true for depictions of black male sexuality, which have been represented as essentially and problematically aggressive.) The literature we choose to teach our children evidences how untroubled we are by this disturbing cliché that rage and a fascination with violation are characteristic features of (again, white) male sexuality. This is of course one of the main points of O’Brien’s beautiful book, but it doesn’t change the fact that as a teenager I had read many fictional accounts of men’s rape fantasies long before I had ever read a literary account from the woman’s perspective of rape, or even of consensual sex. I was trained to accept that male sexual frustration was a serious issue because I read hundreds of pages about it before the age of 20, far more than I read about issues of undoubtedly greater social import, like the legacy of slavery, the alienation of women and people of color from public life, or the violence of the settler colonialism on which the United States was founded. Perhaps these novels even coached me into taking male sexual frustration seriously through a kind of frightful education: look what happens, they seemed to say, when men don’t get what they want.
The plots of a number of “classic” novels, from Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities to The Great Gatsby, are driven by a (white) male character’s frustrated desire with a remote woman.
And these are just the books I read in high school. Don’t even get me started on D.H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Harold Pinter, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Bret Easton Ellis, or the patron saint of elevating male bullshit: David Foster Wallace. (Don’t @ me; I don’t care.) Though many of these authors are justly celebrated, they have all repeatedly treated male sexual frustration as if it deserves pride of place among the great issues of Life. Lolita even succeeds in conjuring sympathy for the desires of a pedophile. (Gregor von Rezzori famously called it “the only convincing love story of our century” in Vanity Fair, a quotation which has long been emblazoned on the cover of the Vintage edition of the novel.) By contrast, novels of women’s frustration with society — not sex — like those of Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin, are classed as special interest pieces: feminist fiction, or women’s fiction, not Great American Novels.
This all becomes even more ironic when we consider the history — not literary, but real — of identifying women’s sexual frustration as the psychological problem of hysteria. For hundreds of years, women were literally committed because of a “disease” that male doctors attributed to a handful of sexual causes: women with hysteria were either not getting fucked enough, had been fucked by the wrong people, had wanted to fuck the wrong people, or had just plain wanted to fuck too much. It’s hardly an insight to say that men have been telling women about how they should behave sexually forever, and that usually their instructions are geared to benefit their own pleasure or politics. That today’s most visible forms of misogyny, however, reverse the traditional rationale about female sexuality — it’s not that we need to get fucked more for our own good, but for the good of a nation plagued by mass shootings perpetrated by lonely men — just goes to show that this kind of misogyny cuts across political and ideological categories. I think our most celebrated and most taught literature also shows that. After revisiting the books that I was first introduced to as “great novels,” I see that many of them rehearse and even promote the idea that male sexual suffering (often represented by deprivation) is a public concern, while female sexual suffering (often represented by trauma) is a private, psychological issue. In literature, time and again, men — both writers and characters — elevate their pathos by revealing it. By contrast, female pathos marks a text as niche, as “confessional,” as minor.
The books that I was first introduced to as “great novels” rehearse and even promote the idea that male sexual suffering is a public concern, while female sexual suffering is a private, psychological issue.
This is more extreme version of a broader phenomenon described by Rebecca Solnit (among others): “A book without women is often said to be about humanity but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.” This is the same logic that allows us to unreflectively give teenagers The Catcher in the Rye instead of The Bell Jar, because Salinger’s book seems to have universal appeal, while Plath’s is an account of pathology (when in reality, of course, both books tackle the protagonist’s mental illness). It is the same logic that meant I wasn’t exposed to the novels of Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, or Toni Morrison until college. It is the same logic that recently allowed Gay Talese to argue publicly that he had not been influenced by any female writers (as if that’s possible). In short, literary culture has long been complicit in upholding the structures by which we imagine men to be more worthy of attention and thus more human.
In both life and literature, we lock up women who are dangerously sexually frustrated for the (supposed) good of themselves and the good of the community, but we ask the community to adapt to and accommodate male sexual suffering. We regularly ask teenage girls to read books in which characters degrade women, expecting them to understand that the book’s other merits outweigh its misogyny. To set such an expectation and not consider its effect on young woman is foolish and hypocritical; we rarely expect young men to do the same, and hardy ever expect young white men to read extensively in traditions where their identities aren’t represented or are degraded. We need to reflect on the way the literature we celebrate supports the idea that women who are sexually frustrated create problems for themselves, while men in the same situation create problems for the world. Though the links are subtle, our celebration of a canon of sad white boy literature affects the way we think, and how much tolerance we offer to men like Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger.
Our celebration of a canon of sad white boy literature affects the way we think, and how much tolerance we offer to men like Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger.
We have been told recently that there is a crisis in masculinity in America, and that we should be worried about it. We have been subjected to ideologues using this “crisis” as impetus to consider radically regressive ideas about sexuality. We can counteract this fearmongering by remembering the misogyny of the canon, which reveals to us that we have always worried about male sexual frustration more than we need to (or at least, more than we worry about more widely devastating social issues). We have always treated the alienation of men as if it deserved thousands of pages of analysis, perhaps because we feared it had the power to endanger us all. (Because, as Margaret Atwood famously put it, “men worry that women will laugh at them, and women worry that men will kill them.”) Reassessing the canon allows us to see that one of the reasons why “he was a lonely virgin” sounds like reasonable justification to us for a spree killing is that we have long valorized male isolation. Our literary canon treats such desire as if it is a (if not the) central topic in the lives of white men. It treats the frustration of male desire as if it merits exploration time and again. Maybe people like Jordan Peterson and Ross Douthat (two mainstream writers who have recently entertained the possibility that society would benefit from “sex redistribution”) wouldn’t think male isolation was a privileged social problem (rather than an individual psychological problem) if our literary culture didn’t also support that idea. Maybe Donald Trump wouldn’t have won the presidency in a country that didn’t worry so much about what white men think all the time.
I’m not saying that we need to divest entirely from the mid-century authors like Pinter, Bellow, Updike, and Roth who have so shaped American literary culture (though I’d personally be cool with letting Hemingway, Ellis, and Wallace drift into obscurity). But I do think it’s time to be done with this particular story, which treats white male rage as a ceaseless source of interest. Perhaps we already are done with this story, and instead of representing a generation-wide crisis in masculinity, the incels are just the dudes who haven’t gotten over the fact that we’ve gotten over them. In that case, we might view their terrorism (or even the affront to civil rights represented by Trump’s win) not as the beginning of an uprising but as the last gasps of a defeated army.
It’s time to be done with this particular story, which treats white male rage as a ceaseless source of interest.
I’m not naive enough to think that we will ever read or write misogyny out of existence, but I hope that more of us (especially men) will start reading more widely, start balancing books like American Psycho with books like Chris Krauss’s equally nimble satire of American life, I Love Dick. If I am right that there are subtle but real connections between mainstream literary structural misogyny and violent subcultures like that of the incel, then perhaps our lives actually depend on it.
Representation in fantasy literature is a problem. The heroes tend to be white, relegating people of color to roles as sidekicks, villains, and the soon-to-be-killed-to-allow-for-another-plot-point.
The problem is exacerbated when adaptations of fantasy works portray characters of color with white actors. This may partly be a result of who’s writing those adaptations: a report last year from Color of Change found only thirty-five percent of writers’ rooms had even one non-white staff member.
With numbers like that, it’s not hard to imagine how adaptations get whitewashed. But it’s wrong — it diminishes the creative vision of the original work, and distorts the message an author means to convey. In case I’m not being clear: whitewashing is a fuck-fucking travesty. (Extra “fuck” added for good measure.)
Perhaps one of the most glorious failures of television history is the Sci-Fi Channel’s 2004 miniseries adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea saga. Spread across two awful episodes that make no attempt at fidelity to the original, also cast Shawn Ashmore, white actor perhaps best known for playing Iceman in the X-Men movies, as Ged, the wizard-to-be at the center of Earthsea, whose skin is described as “red-brown.” Le Guin published a characteristically eloquent response at Slate, decrying what she called “a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.” She explained:
My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”). It didn’t even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now — why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
But as Andrew Liptak reports for The Verge, there may yet be Earthsea redemption in the offing! In a new, illustrated, omnibus edition of the series, Saga Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) will attempt to restore Le Guin’s vision for Ged.
In a collaboration that took four years, Le Guin and artist Charles Vess extensively considered the world—and the feel—of Earthsea. Eschewing Eurocentric portrayals of medieval castles and stone chambers, Vess worked to create an atmosphere dominated by gardens and a middle-class lifestyle.
“She definitely wanted more showing that the people lived on the land, that they were farmers, peasants, and common people tilling their gardens,” Vess says. “She wanted very little of the Great Golden Hall of Wizardry, [with] princes and kings. So there’s quite a few drawings that are inside of a garden, or tending goats or whatever.”
The illustrations sound great, depicting scenes like the Island of Roke, where young wizards are sent to study, and the dragon Orm Embar confronting Ged at sea. Importantly, they may be the first visualizations of the work made with Le Guin’s approval.
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition will be published in October to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the series. If you can’t wait until then, take a peek at Vess’s Facebook page. He’s posted early pencil sketches that’ll make your heart glub-glub with joy.
Existe um princípio elementar no marketing que afirma o seguinte: um produto deve «prometer» mais do que aquilo para o qual foi feito, deve proporcionar uma «experiência». Quer dizer, se um consumidor acreditar que ao comprar um gel de duche está a comprar, sobretudo, uma maneira nova e mais excitante de tomar banho, o marketing e a publicidade foram eficazes. Ao assistir a muito do teatro que se faz hoje entre nós, fico com a sensação de que uma boa parte dos criadores acompanha este princípio de proporcionar uma «experiência» ao público. Claro que o teatro é, por definição, uma «experiência». Mas que «experiência»? Parece-me que vivemos um momento em que se recorre a todos os truques - bons e maus - para transformar qualquer peça de teatro numa «experiência espectacular». Por vezes, parece que a relevância de uma peça se mede pela intensidade das gargalhadas e dos aplausos do público, como num programa de televisão emitido em prime time, mesmo que a peça seja o mais ibseniano dos dramas. Compreendo a angústia dos criadores: o mercado é a mais perversa das ditaduras. A sempiterna necessidade de «chamar público ao teatro» explica toda a espécie de artifícios e truques. Mas essa necessidade justifica ou legitima todos os truques? Shakespeare será mais compreensível e estará mais próximo de nós se, por exemplo, se utilizarem referências que encontramos no teatro de revista? Timão de Atenas será mais amado pelos amigos se lhes oferecer sem critério ouro, jóias, festas e cavalos? Todos sabemos como a história acaba: Timão morre desiludido, arruinado, sem amigos e a amaldiçoar a humanidade. Se o teatro deixar de bajular o público com ouro, jóias e festas, o público abandoná-lo-á?
TIMÃO
(...) Quem ousará, quem ousará erguer-se da sua alma, e dizer: Este homem é um lisonjeador? Ora se um o é, todos os são, pois cada grau de fortuna é adulado pelo que lhe é inferior. A cabeça do douto baixa-se perante o tolo dourado: tudo é oblíquo; nada está a nível da nossa maldita natureza senão a infâmia manifesta. Portanto, festas, reuniões e turbas de homens, sede todas malditas! (...)
«Os livros são em muitos países, e para alguns autores, uma indústria que movimenta milhões. Uma indústria assente em vendas milionárias e milhões de leitores. Existem autênticas legiões de fãs, que atingem níveis de obsessão doentios. Mas à elite de escritores que vendem dezenas de milhões de livros, e facturam milhões de euros/dólares, pertencem muito poucos.»
(Feliciano Barreiras Duarte, «Livros e cultura», Sol, de 30/3/2018)
During a recent night out drinking and scouting for hookups with his buddies, white man Preston Fisher told his friends he “would never date a black woman,” while remaining blind to the fact that no black woman would ever date him.
“I’m just not attracted to black chicks,” said Preston, who has attracted the romantic attention of exactly zero black women in his dating life.
“I just kind of have a type,” said Preston, who brushes his teeth every other day or so. “There are just certain features I like in a woman, so I’m just less inclined to date women who don’t have those.”
“Also, black girls also have such an attitude all the time,” added Preston, who spends most of his nights insulting strangers in Youtube comments. “I guess they just don’t do it for me.”
“I get that he has a type, but it seems unnecessary to really call it out, considering that not one black girl has ever really looked at him,” said his friend Garrett. “Also it’s super racist.”
Black women don’t seem bothered by Preston’s taste in women.
“Writing off an entire group of people as dating partners is inherently rooted in racial bias,” explained Lianne Barbosa, who is of Cape Verdean descent. “But also, that dude is wearing Crocs at a bar, so I’d be impressed any woman would date him.”
“Who the hell cares what that neckbeard has to say about dating black women,” added Sade Adeyemi, a Nigerian-American. “Like, I don’t really have a ‘type’ but I can unequivocally say that if I did it would be ‘not that dude over there.’”
While he is unaware that the feeling is mutual, Preston is holding onto his hard-line stance.
“It’s nothing personal – black women just aren’t my type,” said Preston. “I haven’t even really met that many of them, though.”
We’ve decided to give away free e-books of our edition of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, following Donald Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to be CIA Director. As was reported last month, Haspel appears in the report as the “chief of base” at a black site in Thailand. Here, she assumes oversight of the brutal torture of two men who will go on to become two of Guantanamo’s most famous prisoners: Palestinian-born Abu Zubaydah and Saudi citizen Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
Our own Peter Clarkwrites of the torture to which Zubaydah was subjected:
In one episode, following more than a month of complete isolation, Zubaydah was beaten by interrogators and forced to watch as a coffin was prepared for him. After being unable to answer the interrogator’s questions, Zubaydah was slapped. He was then alternatively placed in the coffin and waterboarded.
…. Zubaydah provided no useful information. Nevertheless, he was “subjected to the waterboard ‘2–4 times a day … with multiple iterations of the watering cycle during each application.’” … In total, he was waterboarded eighty-three times, and beaten so badly that he lost an eye.
And here’s what he says about al-Nashiri:
“At DETENTION SITE GREEN, al-Nashiri was interrogated using the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, including being subjected to the waterboard at least three times.”
Beyond waterboarding, those enhanced interrogation techniques included beating, binding the hands and feet in stress positions, hooding, blasting loud music, sleep deprivation, walling, and sexual humiliation. Al-Nashiri went on to be tortured for another two years at various facilities. When he went on hunger strike, he was force-fed through his anus.
The Torture Report records that “only the… chief of Base”—Haspel—“would be allowed to interrupt or stop an interrogation in process, and that the chief of Base would be the final decision-making authority as to whether the CIA’s interrogation techniques applied to Abu Zubaydah would be discontinued.”
When Haspel was appointed to her current position as the CIA’s deputy director, she met widespread resistance. One US senator called her “unsuitable” for that job. Now that she appears poised to advance to an even higher command, the Torture Report may prove crucial reading.
In 2014, we published the only section of the report that had been de-classified, although it was still heavily censored by the CIA — of which the report was highly critical.
“The Torture Report is one of the most important public documents of our lifetime,” our co-publisher, Dennis Johnson, has explained. “We felt that reading even this small part of the report was revealing — it is the ten percent of the iceberg that bespeaks the missing ninety percent. It will make the hair on the back of your head stand up and leave you wondering: What on earth could be so much worse than this that they won’t release it?”
The full committee report is 6,700 pages long.
As you may have heard, we went all-hands-on-deck to make a book of the report when it was released as a blurry PDF on a Friday afternoon in 2014 just before Christmas, getting print and digital editions out in an astonishing three weeks.
“One of our key goals was to make this a searchable digital book, which the government version really wasn’t,” Dennis says. “That took some grueling, round the clock work re-making the core document—including replicating the CIA’s innumerable black redactions—but lots of researchers and legal organizations such as the ACLU thanked us for that later, so we know this is a thing of meaning and import to circulate.”
Se Portugal é sensacional, FátimaExporte será, digamos, piramidal. Não é a toda a hora que, no final do dia, terminamos a jornada cívico-laboral com confiança acrescida e redobrada nas potencialidades do sector exportador nacional. O País é hoje, vai para cerca de 100 anos, líder de mercado nos artigos fatímidios. Para este sucesso muito têm favorecido o empreendedorismo e o espírito de liderança e inovação de startups como FátimaExporte (só com a categoria «Galo», atençãozinha, vão para cima de 30 artigos variados). Ao comprar produtos FátimaExporte, o adquirente nacional está a contribuir para a empregabilidade no sector do religioso, ainda que com ligeiras derivações ecuménicas e até heterodoxias quiçá censuráveis para solteiros, casados e recasados. Sim, que me está a fazer no mostruário piedoso esta figura lúbrica cato cerâmica 9x9x25cm, a 10,50 €?
E, mesmo sabendo que o actual Vigário de Cristo é fofinho e mainstream, não será ousado em excesso, nas raias da apostasia, o Peluche Francisco, 25 cm de pano e pêlo a 15,01 € preço unitário? Já agora, senhores bendilhões do templo da fátimaéxpórte, quem foi o marreta do departamento de vendas que se me lembrou de colocar 1 cêntimo a mais no bonequito do nosso Chicco Multiópticas?
Para os segmentos C, D e pobretanas rendimento mínimo, há sempre a opção modesta Lenço Adeus Fátima C/2 Past. X-001-B, com uma Nossa Senhora e Pastorzinhos todos embrulhaditos num cylofane a euro e meio a dose. Ei-lo, ca lindo:
Também para bolsas espoliadas de suor e lágrimas, um Top de Vendas: 60 cêntimos. O radiante Terço Plástico Luminoso. Convenhamos, irmãos, que não deve alumiar grande coisa, porquanto, em direitas contas, o Terço Plástico Branco (ou seja, sem instalação eléctrica) custa exactissimamente 60 cêntimos também. Isto é, ambos os dois custam o mesmo P.V.P., caraças.
Enternecedora e pipoca, a Caixa MúsicaPapel c/Avé Maria, abrilhanta qualquer cómoda de quarto ou aparador de sala. Quando em mãos de menores de idade, inferniza, com eficácia comprovada, a paciência de tudo quanto é progenitor adulto, de ambos os sexos e géneros.
Para o frio, que é tempo dele, Peúga Símbolos Católicos. Estamos esclarecidos? No mesmo segmente pedestre, o sempre prático Cristo Purificador. Que todos precisamos da purificação de Cristo, só os descrentes duvidam. Mas para quê, amigos fátimos exports, colocá-Lo, logo a Ele, na secção Têxtil/Peluches/Chapéus?
Agora em jeito olé sevillano, o leque Portugal/Fátima. Pois Fátima, como Salvador Sobral, é mais que Portugal inteiro, é Mística Eurovisão (da Virgem).
Homenagem derradeira a Santa Joana Vasconcelos, de Barcelos. Na Categoria Têxtil/Peluches/Chapéuus (?), catorze centímetros de resina sob a forma de galo, por sinal tristonho. A Refª é o 151.80140.
Fátimaexporte? Artigos Religioso, Regionais, Brinquedos e Decorativos. Encomendas online, outro conforto. O Glovo da Fé.
Na recta final do Adeus à Virgem, olhar derradeiro pra esta quinquilharia toda, versão Ali Bábá na Cova da Iria:
‘Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.’
The Only Story, set in 1963, in and around London. Paul, the narrator is 19. He meets Mrs Susan MacLeod, when they become tennis partners at the local surburban tennis club. A relationship develops that lasts for 10-12 years.
Several themes in response to lines within the novel were worked up (shown above).
Paul kept a hardback notebook for decades in which he wrote what people said about love. He assembeled the evidence, then went through it, and crossed out all the quotations he no longer believed to be true. One phrase, ‘It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all’ is crossed out, only to be rewritten by Paul. This idea developed as a possible cover approach, but having the title appear twice on the cover, is inheritably complicated and the design needed to feel natural. It required a lot of thought to achieve this.
When Susan finds the notebook she writes…‘with your inky pen to make you hate me’. This helped evolve the cover further, and the smudges and waterstains also convey mood and narrative. The back cover uses the quote that inspired the cover design. The main edition was set against a Basildon Bond blue.
Susan is pictured sitting on a Chintz sofa and wearing a flowery dress. She declares… ‘I’m doing my disappearing act’ The issue with this layout was how would you get lettering to read on the chintz and flowery backgrounds and without revealing Susan’s face. A Fellini film poster inspired these layouts.
Susan is described as having unusual ears, that were discreet with almost an absent lobe. ‘This was all part of her absolute distinctiveness.’ For an authentic period feel 1960s book covers were used as an inspiration for the layouts.
‘Things aren’t what they look like Paul. That’s the only lesson I can teach you’ The 1960s saw the growth of colour printing and abstract art. A series of abstract covers were devised, influenced by the work of Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig, both of whom are design legends and were profilic during the 60s. These visuals played on the idea of theorizing about love and that first love fixes a life forever.
“Na casa ao lado era a corte da cabrada. Diante deles os cabritinhos abstiveram-se de tocar nos úberos maternos por discreção ou natural reserva, em contra dos cordeiros. Mas aproximaram-se de Luzia a lamber-lhe a fímbria da saia com a língua vermelha e estreita como malagueta enquanto outros olhavam para ela estarrecidos. Ao cabo dum instante, porém, familiarizados, romperam a todo o largo do estábulo em saltos e gambérrias de acrobatas incipientes. E eram encantadores como figuras de presépio com o seu pelame às malhas, o rabito alado, os botins luzentes, e no focinho um ar de esperteza e graça.
– Êstes bichinhos são os meus amores – disse ela. – Compreende-se o apêgo dos poetas antigos à vida pastoril. Na criação há lá nada mais vivo, diabólico, dinâmico que um chibato? Repare como são mais interessantes que os meninos embrutecidos por séculos de civilização, que acima de tudo tem o efeito de destruir no instinto, tenaz e sistemàticamente, o que possui de belo e autónomo. Não se sujam, não trazem ranho, não contraem doenças, não precisam de parteiras nem de médicos. Onde o espírito chegou… estragou...”
Aquilino Ribeiro, “Quando Ao Gavião Cai a Pena”, pp. 31-2, Livraria Bertrand, Lisboa, s/d.
Walt Peregoy’s hand-painted backgrounds for Disney’s 101 Dalmatians (1961).
Peregoy used two ingenious techniques while creating the backgrounds to 101 Dalmatians. The first technique was to paint his watercolors directly onto a large Xerox of the thick, sketchy black lines seen in the backgrounds. (Pic 1)
Peregoy’s second technique was to paint almost ‘abstract’ buildings, landscapes, etc. using watercolors, and then – on a separate piece of paper – loosely sketch the black lines. The black lines would then be Xeroxed onto a transparent animation cel and laid on top of the original watercolor. (Pics 2 + 3)
“Quando uma creança nasce, entra no seu primeiro anno de existencia… de publicação, dá-me vontade de dizer. No seguinte anno do calendario, entra no seu segundo anno de existencia. O dia do anno novo é, pois, de certo modo, um anniversario impessoal, o anniversario de toda a gente. De maneira que, por exemplo, o menino nascido no dia 31 de dezembro, entra no dia 1.º de janeiro no seu segundo anno; a mãe dirá que tem dois annos, e nós… que tem dois dias. Em geral, quando um japonez nos diz a sua idade, convém descontar-lhe um anno, pelo menos, reduzindo assim a cifra á nossa maneira de contar.”
Wenceslau de Moraes, “Cartas do Japão”, pág. 166, Imprensa de Portugal-Brasil, s/d, Lisboa.
Representation in fantasy literature is a problem. The heroes tend to be white, relegating people of color to roles as sidekicks, villains, and the soon-to-be-killed-to-allow-for-another-plot-point.
