How do I know I am a millennial? I require no explanation for anything entertaining. I show my folks a funny video of a cockatoo having an argument with a dude jumping on its empty cage, and they’re like, Where did you find this? Why is that happening? I don’t know. I don’t care. It was on the Internet. That’s the only context I can give you.
Nisi Shawl, the founder of the Carl Brandon Society, author of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award-winning Filter House and the upcoming Everfair has done us all a great service! She shared “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction” that provides a decade-by-decade outline of Black science fiction and fantasy novels that could be the basis of the best literature class you’ll ever take… or an essential guide for your TBR stack.
Shawl organized the list by author rather than title (so a few names appear more than once) beginning with Martin R. Delany, who authored Blake: Or; the Huts of America in 1859, and bringing us to 2015 with Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown, the editors of Octavia’s Brood. After outlining her methodology, she gives short blurbs for each author, and discusses why particular titles were chosen. While big names like Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler are well represented, Shawl also digs further into the past to share the work of SFF pioneers like Martin Delany, Charles Chesnutt, and Pauline Hopkins. She highlights the speculative work of W.E.B. DuBois and Lorraine Hansberry, and points toward a future where authors like Balogun Ojetade spins steampunk fantasies from stories of Harriet Tubman, and Kai Ashante Wilson creates modern horror as he delves into the massacres of Rosewood, Tulsa, and Wilmington.
Shawl talks about her initial inspiration for the list:
In 1909 Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, issued a 51-volume anthology he claimed could provide its owners with a complete liberal arts education. In the same vein, I’ve pulled together an annotated list of 42 black science fiction works that are important to your understanding of its history. You’ve got the rest of 2016 to read them. That’s doable, isn’t it?
She also speaks to the way genre itself becomes fraught when your dealing with a history of oppression:
…some of these works could be construed as fantasy rather than science fiction. The distinction between these two imaginative genres is often blurred, and it’s especially hard to make out their boundaries when exploring the writing of African-descended authors. Why? Because access to the scientific knowledge from which SF often derives has been denied to people of the African diaspora for much of history. And the classification of what is and is not scientific knowledge hasn’t been under our control — it’s frequently a matter of dispute. Also, it’s sometimes difficult to understand the history of black science fiction without reference to the history of black fantasy.
One of the most exciting aspects of the list is seeing the way Black SFF begins incorporating African and Caribbean mythic traditions, tapping into a rich vein of lore that offers readers a different perspective than the Eurocentric, vaguely Celtic fantasy that has been the genre’s standard. Head on over to Fantastic Stories of the Imagination for the full reading list! You will thank us.
It says a lot about this country that universities won’t advise professors to modify their behavior to protect students with PTSD, but will advise professors to modify their behavior around a student open-carrying a gun.
It’s almost like we respect violence more than the survivors of it.
Do you need a little inspiration to get to the end of this week? the wonder infographic-slingers over at Electric Literature have you covered! They’ve rounded up words of wisdom from some of our greatest fictional sages, from Mary Poppins to Master Spinter, and Mufasa to Charles Xavier, and put it all into a handy poster format so you can reference it whenever you feel down. Be inspired by the whole graphic here!
In 2015, the Wall Street Journal posted a wonderfully heartwarming video about a retired bricklayer named Joao Pereira de Souza who lives off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the unusual friend who visits him every year from colder Patagonian climes. The visitor is a fiercely loyal Magellanic penguin named Jinjin whom de Souza rescued from an oil spill on the beach four years ago. Ever since that time, love between bird and man has become more and more mutual. de Souza spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how Jinjin behaves when he returns.
When he returns he’s so happy to see me. ..he comes up to my neck and hoots. …He’s jealous for me…He doesn’t let any dog or cat near me or else he goes after them and pecks. …I never saw a critter get so attached. ….You can let him go wherever you want, but he’ll come right back.
I'm safe, but only because I can explain the computers to the people, and the people to the computers. It's that second one that's crucial.
Remember travel agents? Or Victrola repairmen? Their jobs disappeared as society became more technologically advanced. And a new study shows that most Americans believe robots will replace many human workers soon. But they overwhelmingly think their own jobs are safe.
“I would be curious to see how many times a pure, sober sexual assault happened,” Myra Crownover, R-Denton, said during a House Committee on Higher Education discussion on college sexual assault. “The best chance is being sober.”
How about the best chance is men not raping?
It’s true, of course, that alcohol often is a factor in rape, but the answer is not “women should never drink because then it’s their fault.” The answer is men shouldn’t use alcohol as a weapon to incapacitate women. Men shouldn’t use women’s drinking as an excuse to rape. Men shouldn’t drink themselves if they’re going to get rapey.
It should not be on women to avoid rape. It should be on men not to rape. And we definitely don’t need lawmakers suggesting that criminals are not the ones responsible for crimes.
laughing because “the triggering,” an event for dumbasses to post things that would usually be “censored by the government or feminists” (censored apparently means receiving any backlash for your own racist or sexist opinions), all over tumblr and other social media, is happening today.
but they’re tagging all of their posts with #thetriggering
imagining rey bringing gifts back from her ‘find luke’ trip for finn really warms my heart
Rey trying to think of how she’s gonna present it to him, like,
“Finn, no big deal but I found this rock and it was so beautiful and it gave me a warm feeling that made me think of you, so… too strong. That’s way too strong. Um… Finn, this stone symbolizes constancy through adversity and love in spite of… Still too strong, ohhhh why is this so HARD…”
I feel like there are probably too many people just scrolling past this so let’s go through everything that’s going on here.
1. With Roger’s voice actor standing off camera, Bob Hoskins acts into empty air and frantically sawing at his handcuff, continually looking up and down at different visual marks of various depths. Look at the slow pan up of his eyes in gif 4, and then the quick shift to his side. Think about how, on set, he was looking at nothing.
2. Starting in gif 2, The box must be made to stop shaking, either by concealed crew member, mechanism, or Hoskins own dextrousness, as he is doing all of the things mentioned in point 1.
3. In all gifs, Roger’s handcuff has to be made to move appropriately through a hidden mechanism. (If you watch the 4th gif closely you can see the split second where it is replaced by an animated facsimile of the actual handcuff, but just for barely a second.)
4. The crew voluntarily (we know this because it is now a common internal phrase at Disney for putting in extra work for small but significant reward) decided to make Roger bump the lamp and give the entire scene a constantly moving light source that had to be matched between the on set footage and Roger. This was for two reasons, A) Robert Zemeckis thought it would be funnier, and B) one of the key techniques the crew employed to make the audience instinctually accept that Toons coexisted with the live action environment was constant interaction with it. This is why, other than comedy, Roger is so dang clumsy. Instead of isolating Toons from real objects to make it easier for themselves, the production went out of its way to make Toons interact more with the live action set than even real actors necessarily would, in order to subtly, constantly remind the audience that they have real palpable presence. You can watch the whole scene here, just to see how few shots there are of Roger where he doesn’t interact with a real object.
The crew and animators did all of this with hand drawn cell animation without computerized special effects. 1988, we were still five years out from Jurassic Park, the first movie to make the leap from fully physical creature effects to seamlessly integrating realistic computer generated images with live action footage. Roger’s shadows weren’t done with CGI. Hoskin’s sightlines were not digitally altered. Wires controlling the handcuff were not removed in post.
Who fucking Framed Roger fucking Rabbit, folks. The greatest trick is when people don’t realize you’re tricking them at all.
Let’s also not forget that writing. “Only when it was funny” isn’t just hilarious, it’s great comedy theory. It lampshades the joke, but also serves to remind the viewer that Toons have a separate set of physical laws they adhere to, mostly revolving around comedic value. Roger cannot remove his hand from the cuffs… until it’d get a laugh from an audience.
Everything about this movie, EVERYTHING about it, is so finely crafted. I could wax lyrical about it for days.
Artificial intelligence is here, and now it’s hanging out in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel as a robot concierge: IBM’s AI software Watson has been put to use powering a an electronic helper focused on hospitality.
Connie — named after the hotel’s founder, Conrad Hilton — is an Aldebaran Nao robot standing at two-and-half-feet tall, and for now, she’s working at the front desk at the Hilton McLean Hotel in Virginia, reports Mashable.
She gets her brains from IBM and WayBlazer, and can answer all those questions common for hotel guests to ask (in many languages): where’s the pool? Where’s the best place to eat near here? She can’t check guests in yet, however.
“It’s not just about questions and answers, it’s about having a conversation,” explained IBM Watson CTO and VP Rob High to Mashable. “We’re using this period to learn to observe, to gather and better understanding of what guests actually need, to understand what is more natural for them,” he added.
Connie also uses her head, body, and arms to gesture or explain her answers to guests, to help get her point across.
She isn’t the first hotel robot out there, of course. Starwood hotels currently have a robot bellboy from Savioke that helps guests at their rooms and gathers Tweets as tips. And in Japan, the Hen-na hotel only employes 10 humans, with the rest of the staff filled out by robots. The concierge of that hotel is a velociraptor sporting a blue bowtie, notes Ars Technica UK.
You know what’s weird? Now that superhero movies are so popular, I keep hearing people say things like this: “Objectification is equal now! Guys have to be just as attractive as ladies on film, and have to go shirtless!”
And then I tilt my head sideways like a confused puppy because… that’s not how objectification works. We all know that, right?
I get where this sentiment is coming from, of course. It’s not just that we see more objectifying of men for the female gaze (hey there, Magic Mike XXL!); our definition of the “ideal male body” has altered in recent years to play more into female desire. You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stalone were tough-looking dudes when they were leading action men of the 80s, but it’s safe to say that most women weren’t weak at the knees over those guys. They were huge and unapproachable, much like the names of the characters they played—Rocky, the Terminator. They were male power fantasies meant to appeal to male fans.
The advantage of guys like Chris Evans and Tom Hiddleston is that they are less intimidating in their physiques and seemingly sweet, no matter how much damage they can do on a fictitious battlefield. They have an element of charm that action movie guys, from cowboys to bodybuilders, didn’t worry much over in the past. Even the bigger buff guys today seem super cuddly personality-wise; practically everyone loves The Rock and Vin Diesel.
It’s not difficult to figure out why this new brand of leading man is popular—having a mixed appeal to both male and female viewers is going to grant you a bigger audience. But throwing in a scene of a shirtless guy (or allowing the camera to linger on his bum)… does that really mean that we’re getting equal opportunities for objectification? Are men and women the same now in the eyes of Hollywood?
Here’s the thing: Objectification is not just a question of who has to look prettiest on film. It’s also a question of how these pretty people are presented to us. Is this person a fleshy equivalent of wallpaper or the coveted Main Character? What are they doing when their shirt rips and we glimpse skin? Because being objectified is primarily about being an object to the viewer. And if you’re a multi-faceted character, it’s going to be harder for people to ignore your personhood and think of you as a piece of sexy scenery.
As it appears right now? Sure, male actors have more rigorous standards in the looks department than before. But this new brand of objectification never makes them out to be cardboard cutouts for staring at. In fact, the current realm of male objectification is primarily concerned with making sure that the audience engages with their actions and humanity, even while we’re staring at their abs.
Sound improbable? Here are a few current examples—
Everybody loved Guardians of the Galaxy, and Chris Pratt got a heavy round of applause from fans for getting fighting fit to play Peter Quill. He looked handsome, to be sure, but does anyone remember his single shirtless scene in the film?
He’s angry about disinfectant. I think. Maybe.
Wait. Wait, he’s getting hosed off in prison. And he doesn’t look happy about it either. Kinks are a thing, and this might be a specific fantasy for some, sure—but it doesn’t change the fact that something awful is happening to Quill, and we’re meant to engage with that as much as his lack of shirt. He can’t simply be eye candy because we have to consider his surroundings and their affect on him at the same time that we’re appreciating his love of sit-ups.
What about our poor woobie Bucky? The Winter Soldier had everyone crying buckets as he tried to remember his long-lost childhood friend. Bucky had an even harder time of it than Captain America, forced to kill for Hydra (and get thrust back into cryo-freeze) over the course of decades, brainwashed and alone. When do we get to see more of fandom’s favorite Almay eyeliner-loving fella?
“…but I knew him.” *SOBS FOREVER*
Oh. Oh, good god. It’s right before they put him through another round of shock therapy to erase his reemerging personality. So while you’re busy considering how well that metal arm goes with his pecs, you’re also reminded of the regular torture this man has endured at the hands of his captors. His personhood is reenforced to the audience as it’s obliterated by Hydra once again.
Hey there, Daredevil. Charlie Cox is a gorgeous man, okay? He really is. And we get more than one shirtless scene for Hell Kitchen’s vigilante in the lauded Netflix series.
Everything hurts, please love me.
I am shirtless, but you should be focusing on the fact that I’m about to cry, really.
But practically every time we view Matt Murdock sans clothing, he has been beat to hell. He’s recovering from massive injuries, he’s getting stitched up, he’s swollen and bloody and near-to-tears, or plain exhausted. And it’s a common trope, of course (hurt/comfort is a whole subset of fan fiction for a reason), but it’s also preventing us from simply staring and enjoying. When Matt Murdock isn’t wearing his shirt, it’s because he’s in unbelievable pain—and the audience has to think about that. They have to acknowledge what he’s putting his body through every times he dresses up as Daredevil. When Matt Murdock is shirtless, we’re meant to think about what makes him a hero.
What about Deadpool! Deadpool will fix everything, right? The film was Rated R, which means we actually get to see something more than a six-pack. Wade Wilson is gonna fix this up for us:
We see his naked butt! It’s out there! (I’ll get you more relevant screencaps once the Blu-Ray is out, but for now we’ll have to settle for the above butt GIF.) Wait, but we see his bare posterior in the very scene where he passes out, thereby learning that he has cancer. So our one “fun” moment of dude-butt is waylaid by a horrible, deeply sad revelation.
There’s always this horrific scene! Wait, what?
He gets totally naked, too, though! Whoa, but it’s not for the purpose of titillation at all, it happens when Wade is fighting to break free from the installation that has tortured and transformed his entire body in order to make him into a slave. It is a painful formation sequence, where Wade is forced to endure even more suffering as a building burns down around his ravaged body. When we see full frontal male nudity in a superhero film, it isn’t about giving the audience a thrill—it’s meant to highlight everything that the (anti)hero has to endure.
And that very same movie proves my point in the other direction as well. Because when we see female nudity in Deadpool? They are strippers.
Oh. Right. Because Rated-R.
Yup. These women are not meant to be thought of as people—they are set dressing. There’s not even a good reason for us to see them plot-wise; though this is meant to be where Wade’s girlfriend Vanessa works, the film never needed to show the entirely of the club, or any of these women naked. (Tellingly, Vanessa herself is clothed in this scene. She is mostly naked earlier in the movie when she and Wade are having sex, which doesn’t much contribute to her character at all, though it is a funny montage.)
Oh hey, and here are some set photos for April O’Neil in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel:
In various set photos, she makes this change while she’s walking somehow. And no one notices, I guess.
She’s in disguise as a blond! Aaaaaand then she takes off the wig, undoes some buttons and ties up her shirt to be certain that she’s showing maximum cleavage and midriff, and she’s wearing… thigh-highs and a plaid schoolgirl skirt. Because this is how very professional reporters change undercover costumes? (And don’t say “it’s Michael Bay, what do you expect?” That doesn’t mean it gets a pass. In fact, it gets less of a pass because of how many people go to see his films.) This does not contribute to April’s personhood. It’s there to remind you that she’s not a character you have to take seriously. She is there to dress like a very boring sex fantasy. That is the whole reason she’s in the movie.
What about Bryce Dallas Howard’s character Claire in Jurassic World? Sure, objectification isn’t going to go too far in the family film, but the ways in which she gets “dressed down” are particularly telling. For those who don’t remember, she starts the film like this:
“I don’t know what you mean. It’s not even hot right now.”
Super professional if not at all practical for working at a tropical amusement park with live animals. (I’m not saying she should have been dressed like safari guide, but the stilettos, the long unworkable skirt, and the white button-down blouse? Does she never sweat or walk anywhere? In 500% humidity?) As the movie continues, we get something more like this:
Am I flushed, or is there dirt on my face? TRICK QUESTION.
So her hair gets all “naturally” wavy and tousled (though her bangs stay magically perfect), she forgoes her extra accouterments for her underlayer tank top, and though the above pic doesn’t show it, her skirt rips all the way up above her knee. More functional, for sure. It’s not super-sexy, but meant to be appealing in a “sweaty action heroine” sort of way. It’s still a far cry from Dr. Ellie Satler’s completely functional, no-nonsense garb in the first Jurassic film.
But the part that really stings is what this slow undressing means in regard to Claire’s character; after all, she is not heroic in the standard sense up until the very end of the film when she calls on the T. Rex to save her family. And this gradual peel-back of her clothing layers just serves to highlight out how ill-conceived her wardrobe is, how disconnected she is from the living creatures in the park that she holds no respect for, how cold and business-minded she is, how distant. The point is that as Claire gets “sexier” looking, she also becomes less of a stereotyped “frigid bitch.” Which is plain insulting.
And that’s without even considering this horrible deleted scene from the film, where she is told by Chris Pratt to rub dinosaur shit all over herself to “get rid of the smell of her vanilla lotion.” Yeah, that was actually in the script and filmed, and I can’t even touch that, it’s too gross on multiple levels:
She also rubs it all over her chest and face. In case you were wondering.
So, you know, there’s a marked difference here.
There are very few examples of men in these stories being objectified just for the sake of it—or in a way that directly undermines their power and authority as a heroic figure. Thor: The Dark World is a notable exception. (Sponge bath. No reason. Just ’cause.) In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Thor: The Dark World as an entire film caters beautifully to female gaze and female fandom at large. Jessica Jones is another good example, and notably also caters to the female experience and gaze. So we’re meant to look at Luke Cage and find him attractive, but when Jessica takes her pants off, it’s usually because she has to pee—not exactly the sexiest of actions. (Pointedly, the one time we’re meant to wiggle our eyebrows over Jessica going pants-less, it’s because she’s flirting… with Claire.)
But more to the point, these are merely recent examples. When you look back over the past decade or more, this particular mode of male objectification is all over the place. It’s our new normal. Let him take off his shirt—but only if something deeply important or painful is happening, something that reminds you of why this guy is a hero. We’re starting to see it for female characters in more recent years, but it hasn’t caught up yet. It’s still thought of as a subversion of the trope.
So let’s maybe take a step back on the “equal objectification” front. Though we’re seeing a lot more in the realm of biceps and cut hip muscles, it’s still a far cry from how women are depicted.
Emily Asher-Perrin is completely fascinated by how many superhero films use this male objectification trope (nearly ALL of them), to the point where she’d like to deliver a class on it complete with a Powerpoint presentation or something. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
ok so this is something everyone on tumblr should know
imagine dragons was hired to write demo tracks for spiderman turn off the dark (aka the spiderman musical on broadway) in order to get people to invest in it and have enough money to hire someone more famous to write the musical
then the people who hired them thought, “hey, these are actually good songs we should make a cd of them and sell it”
so imagine dragons changed the words a little so they weren’t about spiderman and became famous
radioactive was originally about THE RADIOACTIVE SPIDER THAT BIT SPIDERMAN
name one native american intellectual off the top of your head, name one native american actor or actress off the top of your head, name one native american senator, one native american news anchor, or an author or a tv personality or a singer or a poet or a comedian, name a single native american teacher you’ve had, can you? probably not
ok so now think of one native american cartoon character you know of or a sports team relating to native americans whether it’s their actual name or their team logo, or a town you live in or near with a “native” name bet a lot of these things came to you right away i bet you didn’t even have to think
needing native representation in media, education and government are not decoy issues, the commercialization and appropriation of native cultures are not decoy issues, the lack of native representation is institutional oppression at work
