One of my favorite Onion headlines of all time is this, which so perfectly captures the struggle of pretty much any weekday morning: “Man Says ‘Fuck It,’ Eats Lunch At 10:58 A.M.” Local man Kyle Dunedin, who, the Onion writes, “reportedly decided at 10:58 a.m. Wednesday that, fuck it, he...More »
As of this writing, there are 183,727 “fapstronauts” subscribed to r/NoFap, a subreddit dedicated to not masturbating. The top two “hottest” posts are “Not fapping is the definitive confidence-booster” and “Pornography obstructs the ability to evolve into a deeper manhood.” It dovetails with an argument that seems to always be...More »
Aunque suelo hablar a menudo de Mindgeek, porque es el mayor monstruo detrás de lo que se suele llamar “el porno”, hay más jugadores en el porno. Se le llama “el porno”, pero en realidad, debería ser “porno gratuito online en plataformas comerciales… porque lo hay de pago, porque también se puede encontrar en torrent. Algún día traduciré ese artículo sobre los hombres y mujeres (casi) invisibles que hay detrás de los mayores portales de canales porno. Pero antes de eso tengo ganas de traducir la entrada de la wikinglis dedicada a Mindgeek. Increíble que una entrada sobre una empresa tan fundamental en “el porno” siga sin tener su entrada en la hispawiki.
¿Y por qué no hago la traducción y la cuelgo en la hispawiki, en lugar de dejarla aquí en el blog? Pues porque he intentado varias veces publicar cosas en la hispawiki y era un horror, complicadísimo, borrándome lo que publicaba. Y mira, si además de trabajar gratis —y es un placer hacerlo— tengo que dedicarme a convertirme en “profesional de la wiki”, pues mira, no, paso. Lo pongo aquí y si alguien que publique en wikipedia quiere publicar la traducción, que me escriba y lo hablamos. Pero yo ya le dedico tiempo a la traducción como para echar horas intentando averiguar por qué me borran en cada ocasión las cosas que escribo.
“Un reportaje esta semana por ABC mostraba cómo los informativos buscaban quien pudiera hablar desde la industria del porno. De todos modos, cuando el tema pasaba a ser la piratería de los portales porno gratuitos, de repente se negaban a hablar.
“No puedo hablar sobre ESE tema”, dijo una actriz mientras se alejaba de la cámara. “No quiero decir nada porque no quiero que me prohiban trabajar para ellos”.
“Ellos” en este contexto es Mindgeek, el operador de los portales porno gratuitos que ofrecen copias no autorizadas de películas porno subidas por quienes usan esas páginas”
(…) “Alguna gente me ha llamado hipócrita por trabajar para empresas de Mindgeek”, comentaba una actriz a ABC. “Como actriz, boicotear esas empresas no va a hacer que tengan menos dinero, tiempo o lo que sea, porque si digo que no, aparecerán otras cien rubias dispuestas a hacerlo”.
(…) Tasha Reign, que también trabaja para Mindgeek admite que “es estar entre la espada y la pared, porque si quiero grabar algo tengo que hacerlo con Mindgeek porque es la empresa que me contrata porque… lo tienen… casi… todo”.
Y ahora en 2016 volveré sobre el tema, pero como he dicho, traduciendo algo que parece tan básico como una entrada traducida sobre la empresa, y no sólo sobre opinión, testimonios y demás. La intención, al menos por ahora, es hacer esa traducción e irla actualizando según vayan cambiando la entrada de la wikinglis… si es posible. Pero es algo necesario, imprescindible, porque venden y compran productoras y empresas cada año, con lo que, lo que es cierto hoy, deja de serlo mañana. Y me parece un tema suficientemente importante como para tener esa información actualizada.
Así que el siguiente post será el comienzo de esa traducción :-)
Y sobre “el porno” en general, una idea que comenté en la presentación de porno feminista: Mindgeek… ¿a qué se dedica en realidad? Pues al posicionamiento en internet, a que te aparezcan sus webs antes que ninguna cuando buscas en google, a la publicidad en internet (como Google, la mayor agencia de publicidad del mundo hoy día). Eso quiere decir que cada vez que busques porno, te aparecerán siempre las mismas empresas la misma empresa. Algo que conviene recordar: Lo que te encuentras en internet NO es lo que hay. Hay cosas que cuesta más encontrar. Por eso es mejor buscar otras etiquetas como porno ético, o bajárselo de torrent en lugar de en los canales habituales. De verdad, id a Torrent, recomendación de estrella porno.
Las imágenes que acompañan el post son capturas de la web de Mindgeek. Me parece un ejercicio excelente de camuflaje esconder semejante bestialidad de empresa, que tenga semejante tamaño, mueva tal enormidad de dinero… y tenga una web con semejante aspecto intencionadamente amateur. Aprendieron de los errores de su jefe anterior, Fabian Thylmann (“el tipo más odiado por la industria del porno“) cuando la empresa se llamaba Manwin, cuando tenían unas oficinas que lo que transmitían era más parecido al poder real que tienen. Ahora lo disimulan muchísimo mejor.
Celebrities switch boyfriends, bags, and outfits at the drop of a hat, but ever since celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears started bringing trembling Chihuahuas on to red carpets, stars have been using living mammals like disposable accessories.
"People, whether they are celebrities or not, should only adopt an animal if they can provide a permanent, loving home where the animal will be part of the family for the rest of her or his life," says Renee Saldana, the Entertainment Relations Coordinator of the Humane Society of the United States.
The designer nature of celebrity pets can often create bad matches between stars and the pets they've purchased. When breeders sell to celebrities, they sometimes prioritize a sale over a great match. "We understand that pet-related problems can be frustrating, and some may feel that giving up their pet is the only solution," Saldana says. "But before pet owners take that step, we urge them to check out the resources available to help resolve problems that may seem overwhelming."
Here are a few of the celebrities who have returned the animals they once proudly toted about town.
The Kardashians are the most famous serial pet consumers. Radar counted no less than nine pets that have passed through the Kardashian home only to be given away, including Bengal kittens, a peacock, and multiple dogs named after designer handbags. The most famous abandoned Kardashian pet is Mercy the Kitten. Kanye West gifted the white cat to Kim during courtship. "With me being in Miami, Kanye knew I would need some company when he wasn't around so he surprised me with her," Kim wrote, despite the fact that her sister Khloe also lived with her.
via Kardashian's Instagram
Kim famously knew little about caring for a kitten. She lost Mercy after getting drunk and carried the cat over water. Eventually, Kim discovered she suffered from a cat allergy—a recurring theme with celebrity pets—and gave the kitten away to a friend. A month later, Mercy tragically died from a "cancer-like" virus. Kim blamed her death on the breeder. "My heart is completely broken," she wrote on her blog. When reached by Broadly for comment about Mercy's tragic demise, Kardashian's publicist answered via Blackberry: "She gave her comment in 2012."
The family record seems to be improving, with Kylie Jenner keeping up with her dogs, Norman (a.k.a. Normie), Bambi, and Odie, despite concern from trolls that the teen underfeeds her pets. "Right now I'm in the middle of trying out a bunch of different organic dry foods and a wet food, too," she said last December.
Image via Bieber's Instagram
Justin Bieber made international headlines when German customs seized his baby capuchin monkey, OG Mally, Bieber had brought the animal into the country on his private plane, without official permission to take the monkey across the border. Authorities put the pet in quarantine but Bieber never returned to collect it, stiffing Germany for the $8,000 he owed for its care. The German zookeepers who adopted the monkey have clowned on Bieber ever since. "I believe that Justin Bieber probably only ever interacted with .'"
The dog's name offered great soundbites but created real-world complications for P!nk. She made headlines when she lost the dog in a restaurant and had to call out, "Fucker!' in front of shocked patrons. P!nk eventually tired of the gimmick and gave the dog away to her dad. She told a reporter, "My dad adopted him and changed his name to Fred. He is a much happier dog now. He still responds to both names, but he's happier."
Image via Twitter
Fans know Miley Cyrus as a mostly responsible dog lover, with at least four dogs to her name. When coyotes killed her puppy, Floyd, the singer went into an elaborate phase of mourning. Cyrus created an enormous shrine to the dog, sang with a giant inflatable Floyd on stage, got a tattoo of the puppy, threw a one-year memorial for the dog, and even titled an album "Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz." Possibly sensing this emotional overkill, Cyrus's mother Tish gifted the singer with a fresh puppy named Moonie. Moonie lasted ten days in Cyrus's menagerie of animals before being given to a friend. Cyrus tweeted, "Moonie, thank you for giving me so much love, comfort, & peace. It's just to soon for me right now #missingmoonie."
What's the easiest way that stars (or anyone) can avoid some of the pitfalls of animal ownership? Adopting from shelters and rescue centers.
"Most shelters and rescue groups conduct thorough behavioral analysis of each pet to ensure that they will be the right fit for your family," says the Humane Society's Saldana. "We also want to remind people, that adopting a pet is a lifetime commitment, and shelters and rescue groups can provide advice on making your relationship with your pet the best it can be for the rest of his or her life."
En su libro sobre la figura histórica de Jesús de Nazareth,
en las conclusiones que el ídolo extrajo del estudio durante más de dos décadas
del personaje junto a expertos en la materia, Paul Verhoeven, ateo, admitía que
existió. No en la forma que la Iglesia ha ido diciendo para montar y sostener
su cortijo piramidal pero sí de una manera bastante aproximada. Verhoeven
admite que varias curaciones y exorcismos fueron plausibles gracias al poder de
persuasión y sugestión que Jesús operaba con su sola presencia frente a quienes
en él creían, algo muy similar a cuando Lana Del Rey confiere sentido vital a
la existencia de una fan con sólo decirle Holi y firmarle un autógrafo; criba
las palabras que sí que pronunció Jesús de las que considera que son ulteriores
invenciones de Pablo (el principal mercachifle de la Iglesia Cristiana, el ex
negacionista converso) para adecuar el personaje al emporio que estaba expandiendo
ya muerto el nazareno, fundamentando esto en las poderosas analogías que era capaz
de cascarse Jesús con un claro estilo definido y sostenido en hipérboles; insinúa
que quizá más que lo que él puede determinar por documentos de la época,
evangelios apócrifos y demás mandangas lo más interesante de Jesús reside en lo
que se desconoce, en esos meses de los que no se sabe qué hace o en qué
consisten los cargos que le imputa el imperio romano para sentenciarle a morir.
Porque Verhoeven, sobre todo, dice que Jesús fue alguien revolucionario -con su
modo de ver las cosas y movilizar a la gente de forma viral- que de buenas la
otra mejilla, un piti, cinco minutos a solas con su hermana y lo que tú quieras
pero que a malas, ay, lo mismo echaba a correr y no para huir, sino para
mejorar la eficacia de una patada voladora. Un revolucionario en toda regla
según el holandés capaz de rodearse de apóstoles pescadores no por la proverbial
casualidad, sino porque la tenencia de barcas, cuando montas un pifostio en la playa
y te sitian las autoridades romanas, se hace esencial para huir. Que Jesús era
un Dios, vaya.
En Hors Satan bien se pudiera tratar la segunda venida a la
tierra de Cristo bien pudiéramos estar asistiendo a las acciones de un renegado
cero de divino en la campiña francesa. Bruno Dumont no permite esclarecer nada a
través del curso de los acontecimientos que muestra. La plausibilidad de que
David Dewaele sea un Cristo ya descreído de los humanos –y, por lo tanto, dispuesto
a hacerles cero concesiones a la presunta bondad que habita en su ser- es
exactamente idéntica en probabilidades a que represente a un chamán, a un normal
de a pie corriente y moliente o a una versión redux del Michael Landon de Autopista
Hacia El Cielo. Es un ser de clara inspiración pasoliniana en su forma de aparecer
en la campiña para luego irse a otra a quedarse
(de hecho su presencia evoca mucho a la de Terence Stamp irrumpiendo en casa
ajena en Teorema), un chavea bressoniano en su forma de posar las manos sobre
otros y en la manera de llamar a las puertas, un hombre de mirada tarkovskiana
al enfocar a donde confluyen tierra y cielo con la expresión de Hans Topo
leyendo las letras aleatorias de una revisión de la vista, un caminante siempre
en contacto con la naturaleza a lo personaje del primer Albert Serra o Apicha Weerasethakul,
un futuro medallista olímpico de marcha por Francia porque si cuentas los pasos
que da anda no menos de 60 kilómetros diarios y no echa el bofe. Pero sobre
todo, lo que es es un trasunto de esos juegos morales que Verhoeven tan bien
hila, un reflejo de que toda buena acción conlleva una mala y viceversa, un alegato
anti absolutos polarizadores: David hace el bien a través del mal. Es decir,
sustenta el dicho que una acción no es ni buena ni mala por sí misma, sino que
esa valoración la dará un observador según en la posición en la que se
encuentre. Para su protegida a buen seguro es la transfiguración en corporeidad
humana del bien absoluto, ya que mejora su vida eliminando a un padrastro –de familia,
no el de las uñas- y a un individuo que la ronda sin quererlo ella y, ojo a
este detalle, le devuelve la vida después de muerta. Obviamente, desde la perspectiva
de los anteriores apaleados David es el mal supremo, pues les roba la vida. Hay
algo tangencial a las perspectivas vertidas por Maquiavelo en El Príncipe en la
manera de conducirse por la vida de David, aunque él nunca lo verbalice, él es
más de actuar sin dar el sermón, de obrar sin evangelizar, de partirte la
cabeza de una pedrada si considera que eso supondrá la mejora de la vida de un
tercero.
Los paralelismos con la figura de Jesucristo son abundantes,
Bruno Dumont juega con ello de forma clara. La vida trashumante cuasi de
vagabundo de Jesús de aquellas sólo podría darse hoy de la forma en la que acontece
acá, y era notorio en la época que sus fieles le proporcionaban alimento y
acudían a él cuando precisaban de ayuda. El pasaje del cobete con la
excursionista para además de curarle la epilepsia drenar las gónadas toca un punto
de no consenso entre los estudiosos, pues aún admitiendo que sí que sanó a
gentes con esa enfermedad no se ponen de acuerdo sobre si Jesús lo hizo usando
esta técnica por tampoco poder consensuar si fue más de follar o de matarse a pajas.
La ejecución del padrastro, a lo Charles Bronson o Chuck Norris circa Desaparecido
En Combate, es la transposición a nuestra época de las armas de fuego de lo que
fuera en beef con los mercaderes del templo, que se conoce que lió una Jesús
que ni un yorkshire con la rabia. Y la curación de la posesa, lejos de hacerlo
con la mesura plástica del padre Fortea, David la resuelve con lo que
entendemos es una violación de las de toda la vida. Aquí Dumont pisa terreno
Verhoeven de nuevo, no sólo por la ambigüedad de que algo tan reprochable como
es una violación traiga precisamente lo mejor a la persona violada, sino porque encima al salir de casa a
la madre de la chavala sólo le falta ponerle un piso a David en agradecimiento
a lo que acaba de hacer dentro con su hija. Una violación, todo sea dicho, que
tiene mucho que ver con otra obra maravillosa del enorme Dennis potter,
Brimstone And Treacle. Obra en la que un extraño irrumpía en una casa para
sanar a la hija catatónica de un matrimonio violándola, ojo a eso, y en la que
encima se daban los suficientes indicios como para inferir que dicho extraño en
realidad era Satán. Aquella era una película hermana de esta, una película también
sobre la moral que en su primera y excelente versión televisiva la BBC prohibió
su emisión.
Decía también Verhoeven en la introducción a su libro que
toda su fascinación innata por Jesucristo se acrecentó conforme investigando para
El Libro Negro un señor al que en Holanda se le consideraba héroe de la resistencia
de forma indiscutible a él la verdad que le chocaba que no hubiera mácula
alguna en toda su trayectoria vital, que no apareciese para nada y p or ningún
lado ese elemento caótico que rige la existencia humana. A los años se descubrió
que lejos de ser un héroe el muy hijo de puta tenía el carnet nº 002 de
colaboracionista con los nazis, y con todo esto Verhoeven, de nuevo, lo que planteaba,
además de su sempiterna lucha contra los absolutos morales, era que cualquiera,
hasta el mismísimo Jesucristo, es capaz de lo mejor y de lo peor y de
alternarlo e incluso simultanearlo durante toda una vida.
Por primeira vez, identificáronse iconograficamente todas as esculturas extraídas da fachada exterior do Pórtico da Gloria. Estas pezas permanecían anónimas en museos e coleccións privadas. O achado fíxose grazas ao proxecto de restauración do Pórtico da Gloria en que traballan investigadores de todo o mundo.
Os traballos de restauración do Pórtico da Gloria, que comezaron no mes de maio, estanse a converter nunha fonte inesgotable de descubrimentos históricos. O último, a identificación iconográfica de todas as esculturas que conformaban a súa fachada exterior.
Grazas a este achado, puido facerse a primeira reconstrución completa da fachada románica deseñada polo mestre Mateo. Ademais, o estudo dos materiais permitiu a reconstrución virtual das diferentes policromías que decoraron o pórtico dende a súa construción.
A restauración do Pórtico prolongarase ata finais do vindeiro ano. Ata entón, seguro que o traballo dos investigadores vai achegar máis descubertas importantes sobre a catedral e a súa historia.
En 2016 se cumple el centenario del nacimiento del autor de libros para niños más imprescindible del siglo XX. Mi amigo el gigante une el genio de Roald Dahl con el de Steven Spielberg y añade otra pieza al grueso de adaptaciones de su universo. Repasamos una selección heterogénea como muestra de su versatilidad, con las adaptaciones más exitosas o las que resultan representativas de algunos aspectos menos conocidos de su trabajo.
Roald Dahl poseía una sensibilidad especial para conectar con las ansiedades e imaginación de los jóvenes y explorar los lados más oscuros de la infancia, pero a menudo se suele pasar por alto su trabajo como guionista, e incluso sus inquietantes relatos dirigidos a lectores adultos. Su obra ha transcendido el negro sobre blanco para dejarnos adaptaciones de todos lo colores y sabores. Aquí te traemos diez de ellas.
10. 36 horas (1965)
En su primera etapa como guionista, Dahl llegó a firmar el libreto de uno de los episodios de la serie Bond más populares, Solo se vive dos veces (1967), pero su primera aparición en las créditos de una película sería como autor del relato Cuidado con el perro (1944). Este thriller bélico se inspiraría en el mismo, pero su desarrollo sólo conserva la premisa principal: un hombre despierta en un hospital tras un coma de seis años para encontrarse que hay una conspiración para hacerle creer que la guerra ha acabado y se encuentra en Alemania, con el objeto de conseguir información de su misión. En la película se desarrolla el conflicto como un juego del gato y el ratón en el que nunca se sabe si el paciente se ha dado cuenta del montaje y, por tanto, si la información que proporciona es la verdadera o no. Una intriga de espionaje ambientada en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, toda una guía para hacer un filme bélico sin mostrar batallas o escenas de acción.
9. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Sólo un año después de su adaptación de Bond, Dahl se volvería a encontrar con Ian Fleming, el creador del agente secreto, en la adaptación de una novela infantil con su firma. El material de partida se acerca ya mucho más al universo Dahl que conocemos y el guión se toma algunas libertades para encajarse dentro de las propias obsesiones del escritor. Los niños protagonistas son el prototipo de niño pobre y bueno de las novelas del británico. Viven en una casa llena de inventos estrambóticos de su padre, con su abuelo y huérfanos de madre. Hay un coche mágico, una fábrica de caramelos y viajes a pueblos de Alemania en donde una especie de hombre del saco hipersiniestro se encarga de robar a todos los niños. Toques que podrían haber salido de cualquiera de sus trabajos y que, además, se presentan con una paleta de colores acorde con otras visiones de algunas de sus obras. Aunque es muy larga y le pesan un poco las intenciones de ser la nueva Mary Poppins (1964), es un viaje fantástico a la imaginación y la aventura con una espectacular estética de toques steampunk, en contraste con sus colores explosivos.
8. Relatos de lo inesperado (1979-1988)
Las dos primeras temporadas de esta modesta serie británica adaptaban todos los relatos imprescindibles del volumen Relatos de lo inesperado (1979), al estilo de las producciones televisivas de las islas por aquel momento: pocos medios, pero guiones impecables. Un formato de antología similar al de La dimensión desconocida (1959-1964) en el que el propio escritor hacía una presentación de cada historia como si fuera el mismísimo guardián de la cripta de los cómics EC. Todos sus relatos tuvieron adaptaciones que recogían con efectividad el suspense de los textos originales: Cordero asado, La subida al cielo, Jalea real, Edward el conquistador y otros muchos buenos ejemplos del potencial de Dahl como autor, también para adultos, tan deliciosamente macabro como La hora de Alfred Hitchcock (1962-1965), pero con el sustrato inquietante de las creaciones de Rod Sterling.
7. Un mundo de fantasía (1971)
Adaptada para la pantalla por el propio creador, esta versión de la película fue bastante ignorada en su momento, pero el tiempo ha convertido en un título de culto, por encima de la aparatosa y descafeinada visión de Tim Burton. A pesar de llevar el sello de Dahl, el escritor no se mostró satisfecho con su propio guión, que además sufrió algunas reescrituras que la alejaron algo más del material de partida, aunque por suerte, no se apartó de los aspectos más oscuros del mismo. Willie Wonka y la fábrica de chocolate, el título original, es la película que mejor representa los aspectos fantásticos y oníricos de la obra del británico. Notas psicodélicas y surrealistas a lo Lewis Carroll y la atmósfera de pesadilla pop propia del Dr. Seuss crean el contraste perfecto con la perversa animadversión infantil de los estrictos relatos morales marca de la casa. A parte del memorable logo, que ilustra ya sus propias chocolatinas, lo que más ha perdurado es la ambigua interpretación de Gene Wilder como Wonka. Capaz de ser el loco divertido que todos quisiéramos haber tenido como tío, el típico genio encantador que es capaz de trasformarse en el tipo más creepy en segundos. Imborrable su cara demente, impasible, cantando in crescendo durante el viaje por el túnel lleno de imágenes chungas: un pollo decapitado, insectos gigantes, ojos vigilando y lagartos comiendo niños.
6. El enterrador nocturno (1971)
Otro de los guiones de Dahl, aunque esta vez no basado en ninguna de sus historias. Un trabajo particularmente oscuro, muy alejado de sus obras infantiles, en forma de drama con cuerpo de psychothriller gótico, que evoluciona de forma única hasta su demoledor clímax. La rutina de una mujer de mediana edad, soltera y sin hijos, que vive esclavizada por su madre ciega, es alterada por la llegada a su casa de un empleado del que no saben mucho, pero por el que ella se siente fatalmente atraída. Una historia con sutiles detalles de perversidad propias del autor, llevadas al terreno de las tensiones y deseos no resueltos, en especial al describir la caída de la protagonista a sus pulsiones sexuales reprimidas, exponiendo el conflicto frente a la información de la que dispone el espectador sobre el turbio nuevo ayudante, creando un suspense típico del Hitchcock más malintencionado. La fantástica banda sonora de Bernard Herrmann refuerza el escarceo con las ficciones de Robert Bloch.
5. B.A.G. El Buen Amigo Gigante (1989)
Esta, primera adaptación animada del libro El gran gigante Bonachón, antes de la nueva versión de Spielberg, es también la primera visión de Dahl con animación. La historia de una chica huérfana, “adoptada” por un gigante de buen corazón, es una pieza no del todo recomendable para niños de todas las edades. No solo por estar centrada más en los diálogos que en la acción, sino porque sus secuencias con los gigantes malvados son bastante oscuras, y su diseño lo suficientemente bizarro como para dar pesadillas. El mundo fantástico en el que se desarrolla, con acceso al mundo de los sueños, es una bomba de fantasía en estado puro, con secuencias alucinadas de lógica especialita, muy de producto europeo de los ochenta. Detalles de humor idiota, como la canción de los pedos del gigante, o cáusticos, como la explicación de porqué los gigantes prefieren el sabor de los niños turcos, la convierten en una de las adaptaciones más valientes y fieles del británico.
4. La maldición de las brujas (1990)
Probablemente, la mejor de las traslaciones del autor a pantalla. Con un equipo que une al director Nicolas Roeg con Jim Henson y Anjelica Huston como jefa de las brujas, no era extraño que el resultado fuera oro puro. A finales de la década en la que era fácil encontrar atmósferas góticas y monstruos viscosos en el cine infantil, la más terrorífica de las novelas de Dahl no podía tener mejor embajador que el director de Amenaza en la sombra (1973) o El hombre que vino de las estrellas(1976). Roeg se encargó de trasladar al cine los macabros aquelarres de las brujas, en los que muestran sus verdaderas caras. Aunque nada es tan perturbador como la historia de la niña encerrada en el cuadro o la escena en la que una bruja trata de convencer a un niño para que baje de su caseta del árbol ofreciéndole chocolate. El final de la novela no era típico y forzado, pero en general, es una película infantil suficientemente extraña y oscura como para hacer de programa doble perfecto con El carnaval de las tinieblas (1983).
3. El hombre Hollywood en Four rooms (1995)
Dentro de Relatos de lo inesperado, tanto en libro como serie, había un cuento llamado El hombre del sur, adaptado en La hora de Alfred Hitchcock en los años sesenta, y otra posterior en los ochenta. La sencilla historia de la apuesta de encender el zippo diez veces sin fallar se convirtió en tal objeto de culto que hasta Quentin Tarantino la eligió como punto de partida de su segmento de Four Rooms. El director lleva la historia original al terreno del mundo del cine, interpretándose prácticamente a sí mismo y retando a los personajes a jugar al desafío que conocen gracias al famoso episodio. Su tratamiento cambia para moverse al terreno de la comedia, siendo más un ejercicio de homenaje en el que poder ejercitar sus marcas de estilo: en sus veinte minutos consigue encajar 193 “joder”, dos planos secuencia, una copa promocional de las hamburguesas Big Kahuna y hasta unos pies femeninos desnudos. Como adaptación de Dahl no ofrece mayor interés, pero es una muestra valiosa de la irrigación de otra faceta más del escritor en la cultura popular, que llegó incluso a inspirar el relato Cut de la película de terror asiático Three... Extremes (2004).
2. Matilda (1996)
Cualquier niño con dificultades de adaptación que creciera en los noventa debe encontrar en Matilda su Los Goonies (1985) particular. En pugna con La maldición de las brujas como adaptación más cercana al espíritu de Dahl, esta es una muy notable adaptación de su, casi considerada por unanimidad, mejor novela. Danny DeVito consigue trasladar el trazo afilado de los diálogos y conservar la sutilidad y malicia del humor con el que el escritor trata temas de calado más bien trágico, como el de ser una persona válida e inteligente abocada a la incomprensión por adultos egoístas e ignorantes. El escape a través de los arquetipos y la fantasía, sin volver la cara al mensaje subversivo y la descripción de adultos que, como Mrs. Trunchbull, pueden ser monstruos verdaderamente terroríficos. Matilda no es cine infantil al uso: es una película oscura, una versión familiar y alternativa de Carrie (1974) en un mundo dickensiano y expresionista, bizarro y fascinante.
1. Fantastic Mr, Fox (2010)
El stop motion es un estilo que cuaja muy bien con algunas de las obras más fantásticas de Roald Dahl. Henry Selick hizo una disfrutable versión de James y el melocotón gigante (1996) con su particular estilo de captura de movimiento y miniaturas, pero el tratamiento Disney decoloró las características más definitorias de la obra original, eliminando lo más oscuro de sus personajes. Selick iba a colaborar con Wes Anderson en la confección de las aventuras de El superzorro pero la producción de Coraline (2009) le impidió continuar. El resultado de Anderson es delicioso en todos los aspectos. El gurú del indie comprime la novela en ochenta minutos de ritmo frenético, usando animación deliberadamente retro y low-tech. Nunca deja de ser fiel al texto, creando espacios para dar alguna pincelada de su característica mirada a la disfunción de las relaciones familiares, y presentando un guión plagado de momentos ingeniosos con el ímpetu de una comedia física de Buster Keaton bajo una espesa ensalada de colores opresivos y supersaturados, creando la sensación de estar viendo un libro pop up en movimiento.
You’ve been dying to know why people from the Slavic countries wear Adidas. Did you even know this was a thing? That’s pronounced “oddy-DAHS.” And he’s not talking about just the shoes, but the whole tracksuit and shoes.
Boris is here to explain to explain this Slav fashion choice. It’s part of his series of videos explaining life in the Slavic nations. You can see more at the YouTube channel Life of Boris. -via reddit
Philando Castile, 32, was shot dead tonight after being pulled over by a Minneapolis cop for a busted tail light. His girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, captured the aftermath of the shooting via Facebook Live video. She says he was shot while reaching for his wallet to produce identification.
Her daughter, 4, is reported to have been seated in the back seat of the vehicle when the police officer shot into it, striking Castile in the arm. The victim died of his injuries within hours at Hennepin County Medical Center nearby. (more…)
Also known as “Sexism & S6 Part 1,” for those who like repeating series.
Months ago before Game of Thrones (GoT)’s sixth season aired, many of us here at Fandom Following were a bit horrified by the show’s EW Magazine marketing campaign. As a happy refresher for those who don’t remember, these were the magazine covers with “DAME OF THRONES” written in big letters and promises of “WOMEN ON TOP.”
For me, GoT’s fifth season was almost defined by its misogyny, a conclusion I came to after writing a nine-part essay series detailing the sexist tropes and storytelling conventions used by showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and their staff writers Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill (all of whom will be referred to as the monolithic “D&D”), which utilized the framework of ambivalent sexism. This framework allowed for the conclusion that while I strongly believe D&D have no malicious intent towards women and may even think their narrative is progressive, the results and implications of their writing betrays a sexist lens:
“But the thing is, I don’t have to assign malice in this case. Look at the pattern. These sexist tropes used in the Season 5 narrative are a product of D&D’s writing…they are all the result of alterations to the source material.
So there is simply no other explanation for their liberal employ than that this must be how D&D think men and women act, or that this is what they find to be entertaining. Which means that they understand human behavior from a fundamentally sexist position. Because they are sexists™.”
Too often, complains about GoT’s sexism are dismissed with the “but that’s how it was back then!” argument. However, as I also explained in my pre-Season 6 piece “The ‘sexism debate’ about Game of Thrones is anything but crushed,” there is a difference between a sexist setting and a sexist narrative, and my problem with GoT is firmly the latter.
I personally find George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) to have incredibly feminist takeaways for readers, as he uses the setting of Westeros to really highlight the issues that arise from the characters navigating such a toxic patriarchy, as well as the inherent hypocrisy that comes with the worship at the altar of the “chivalrous knight” and the “maiden fair.” Chivalry, despite being all about “treating women right” and placing “virginal” women on a bizarre pedestal, is sexist. Benevolently so, yes, but still sexist.
ASoIaF has little and less to do with GoT these days, but I do find the contrast a constructive way to clarify my issues with the show. In the books, Martin is able to utilize close-PoVs so that we the reader can juxtapose the thoughts of his characters. We see Cersei’s internalized misogyny and how such self-loathing has this corrosive influence on her psyche to the point where she believes she should have been born a man, not because of a dysphoric discomfort, but simply because she feels that she possesses positive qualities and women are idiots, so therefore she must be a man and the gods were stupid to have given her a woman’s body. At the same time,we have characters like Catelyn Tully, who accepts her relegation from leadership and never once thinks that she’d be a more suitable heir to Riverrun despite being able to run mental circles around her younger brother, yet holds no hatred for her gender or other women; in her view, it is simply her lot in life to wait for her men, and she will push for her political aims from that place of disempowerment.
Examining just these two characters as literary foils allows the reader to explore myriad issues, from female sexual agency, to women obtaining power and control. And hopefully I don’t need to point out that these are issues which still matter quite a bit in today’s society. As I’ve said before, this is the power of speculative fiction: to be able to distance yourself from your cultural understanding so that you can truly dig deep at the issues raised. Plus, in my opinion, it’s no coincidence that Martin picked a setting uncomfortably evocative of our own history, as there is a base familiarity we could latch onto, while it also forces us to think of the evolution of such gendered dynamics.
Add to this the wide array of PoVs Martin provides: there’s Brienne, who is so absolutely uncomfortable with her place in this world yet simultaneously unapologetic for who she is; Arianne, who by being raised as heir to Dorne, has a deeply ingrained sense of authority and leadership and spends her entire plotline claiming her political space in a staunch refusal to be infantilized; Asha, who sees the futility of the reaving lifestyle yet knows she must play into it to achieve any sort of power; Arya, who though she presents and finds herself more comfortable living in a less conventionally “feminine” way, holds absolutely no contempt for women or devaluement of their place in the world; Sansa, who actually draws her strength from “feminine”-coded skills and uses the societal obsession with a demure, courteous woman as a mask while she reclaims as much agency as she can…
I want to also note that Martin is not at all shy in his exploration of how sexism hurts men. Westeros, for the most part, is about as toxically masculine setting as you can find.
As a quick clarification, “toxic masculinity” refers to the socially constructed assumption that masculinity, viewed as the compulsory gender presentation for men, is unemotional, sexually aggressive, and violent. Men who eschew these gender norms are emasculated, and thus not “real men.” To simplify, toxic masculinity is the school of thought from which bullshit concepts like “Men Don’t Cry” are born.
This is not to say that men shouldn’t be masculine, that anything is inherently wrong with masculinity, or that there aren’t men who happen to be aggressive and stoic. The issue is that this constructed gender expression is viewed as the only viable option for “real men” in society, and that can have incredibly damaging consequences. For example, the assumption that Men are Tough gives rise to abuses against men not being taken seriously, especially if the perpetrator is a woman. Even worse, men may be blamed for their own victimization.
If I may, sexism is a sword without a hilt.
It’s really no coincidence, therefore, that Martin goes above and beyond to highlight how this celebration of one type of “strength” is first of all, incredibly hypocritical, and second of all, quite damaging. We’re in Jaime’s head as he’s unable to cry for his father’s death, reflecting on how Tywin always told him tears were a weakness. We see the way the loss of his sword-hand (and thus ability to fight) fills him with this intense anxiety where his conception of self is thrown completely into chaos. Heck, we even see how Jaime totally buys into “All Abusers Are Male,” continually romantizing his relationship with Cersei in his head despite us seeing his mistreatment first-hand.
Of course it’s not just Jaime; Sam may be the clearest PoV through which Martin examines the harm such a sexist society has on men. Though we the reader see Sam prove his bravery time and time again, he cannot allow himself to feel strong, as he doesn’t live up to the toxic ideal of manhood that was literally beaten into him. The thematic climax of his arc in A Feast for Crows was “lying” to someone (as he was instructed) to say “I’m not a coward.” It’s not that he believed it…it’s that he was able to say the goddamn words.
We’ve also got Tyrion, whose internalized ableism in such a martial world can be paralleled to his sister’s internalized misogyny; Victarion, whose terror of emasculation is basically his driving motivation, at times to terrible ends… Even minor characters offer this same criticism, such as how everything we know about The Mountain confirms what a farce the chivalrous institution of knighthood is, and how physical strength and fighting prowess in and of itself is hardly praiseworthy.
So I will staunchly defend such a setting where we do see troubling things—things that are often difficult to read about—as that exploration is done in such a way that there are feminist take-aways and an underlying sensitivity. I am sympathetic to the argument that George R.R. Martin does not do well enough in some regards, and I’m certainly in agreement with the sentiment that he is far from perfect. But he does pretty dang well, and I would not be so engaged with his book series if I thought otherwise.
However, that’s A Song of Ice and Fire. What the hell is there to be said about how GoT characters they navigate their setting?
This was a conclusion fellow Fandom Following author Julia and I came to after we spent more hours than we’d like to admit going back through Season 5 and writing our series of retrospectives. You see in this, we noticed something that we liked to call D&D’s “magically disappearing patriarchy.” The patriarchy would exist so that Sansa could have no recourse to escape her “gothic horror” storyline, but then magically vanish the second D&D thought it would have been better for the audience to see a sex slaveoffer free-sex to Tyrion for being quippy. And why not make Olenna the official negotiator of House Tyrell despite the fact that at the same time (and in the same city), Cersei was being told by her uncle that she was the “Queen Mother, nothing more,” and that he would not respect her authority?
This is why my initial reaction to the “Women on Top!” campaign was a bit of anger. To me, it looked like shameless pandering in an attempt to win back the audience who may have found the fifth season—you know, the season wherein Sansa was illogically raped to motivate Theon into action, Dany was a fickle moron whose only plans that were presented in a somewhat positive light were the ones suggested by men, an entire plotline revolved around hysterical hypersexualized brown women overreacting to events while the men calmly discussed politics, Arya was thrown into a bizarre cat-fight with another woman, and a small girl was burned at a stake because of flurries—a touch off-putting.
“Women on Top”? This was how D&D were fixing their “women problem”? With a vague reference to a sexual position and the promise that it’d be **Dame of Thrones** in their setting where they do whatever the hell they damn please based on the needs of the scene? Because seriously, how can there be any triumph of *women* on this show when the manner in which women are mistreated and/or relegated from power is inconsistent?
Well as it turns out, there can’t be.
This might seem like a bizarre statement, and certainly based on the press coverage surrounding this season, an unpopular one:
Mission accomplished, guys! Women on top!
I don’t want to be insincere here: I see how on the surface, Season 6 was really appealing. It gave us women in positions of power. It gave us women exacting revenge on their abusers. It even gave us less far less nudity and objectification, now that I think about it. There were two queens (but not three) and maybe a princess (still not sure of Ellaria’s actual title), Sansa “Boss Ass Bitch” Stark, the sassy ladies of Horn Hill refusing to cow to Randyll’s tirade against Gilly and calling him out, and even a ten-year-old girl with a deeply ingrained sense of authority and the capacity to wield it over her subjects.
And it was all meaningless.
Seriously, each situation in which we saw women “triumph” was completely contrived, and how they all played out was simply disingenuous to the “historical-ish realistic-ish” setting D&D have been so careful to pretend they cultivated. As I said of Horn Hill’s Empowered Dames:
“You can’t expect me to believe that the world in which Walder Frey can pull a child-wife onto his lap is the same damn world where Talla feels comfortable asserting herself, or where Melessa Florent can knock her husband’s honor without any fear.
And this really wouldn’t be the same world where Randyll Tarly’s response to this would be, “Your mother’s a fine woman.” Is he so terrified about the idea of emasculation given his “unmanly” son that he threatened to kill him, or does he have respect for these “fine women” sassing and standing up for themselves? Because those two sentiments sit in contention.”
This same carelessness applies to those other Women on Top.
Let’s take Daenerys, who burnt down Vaes Dothrak. Takin’ on that patriarchy, right? Except the Dothraki culture adapted to the needs of any given scene. First, the Dothraki wanted to rape her, but only after checking with their khal. Dany, who should know the culture based on her Season 1 experiences, decided to withhold information about who she was to immediately neutralize this threat (and probably get a horse!) because…I guess she thought it wouldn’t have been a dramatic enough reveal? When she finally told the khal who she was, he promised that no one would touch her, but that she had to join the Dosh Khaleen, the literal ruling group within Dothraki society. Except once Dany gets to Vaes Dothrak, we’re suddenly told that the Dosh Khaleen don’t actually have any real authority, and that this random group of khals decides who joins them, even though it was established that this is the fate of former khaleesis.
So then to have Dany in this room where they’re all basically telling her “oh well now you will be raped because it is decided”… What the hell is going on here? You can see how this is beyond the book-reader nitpick of “in the books, the khalasar finds Dany when she’s leaning against her dragon eating rare meat like a badass,” right? The patriarchy against which she triumphs is ridiculously mercurial, and all she manages to do is successfully burn down strawmen.
Then to add insult to injury, we’re seriously supposed to accept, as viewers with working brains, that burning down the holy place of a group of people who already sort of consider Dany a “witch” would earn her their loyalty. Guess they just didn’t even understand their oppression ‘til that white woman showed up!
Maybe that’s what happened with Cersei blowing up the sept too? Wendy already covered how ridiculous her ascension to the Iron Throne was. But seriously, my dudes, we cannot be expected to swallow the idea that this same institution, which was so important to pacify to the point where the Tyrells didn’t even want to think about freeing their two heirs (one of whom was being held for the crime of perjury), could suddenly get blown up without there being mass riots. What are we to make of this? That people just over-estimated the importance of the Faith? Was every single member of the Faith Militant in the sept at that one time? That all the High Sparrow’s remarks about “we are the many, you are the few” was hot air and Olenna Tyrell was a big moron for taking it seriously? Does this also make the High Sparrow equally stupid for being so brazen in his attempts to go after the Tyrells and Lannisters, or is he secretly some kind of genius that was running a fool-proof Batman’s Gambit until the plot required him to assume Cersei would show up for her trial (despite already having murdered one of his Faith Militant)?
So much for that “new King’s Landing”
Yay, Women on Top! Cersei won the game of Idiot Ball! Of course, to even back her into the powder-keg corner D&D had to randomly have the Faith outlaw trial by combat, which was literally presented to us as the “gods choosing the fate of the accused” in Season 1. It’s almost as if the High Sparrow had anachronistic concepts about feudal order. So once again, we get someone triumphing against an erratically penned strawman. I guess it’s fair to say that he was at least consistently sexist, but then blowing up the sept also blew up sexism for *reasons*? No seriously, how else can you explain Cersei being coronated to calm applause when her brother was still alive for one, when she had no claim to the throne for two, and when she is also considered “old” by Westerosi standards—succession is generally something people keep in mind with their rulers. Because that’s kind of why wars are fought.
Speaking of keeping succession in mind, we have the North where absolutely no one thinks to question the authority of a ten-year-old girl making war-time decisions, but then every single person conveniently overlooks the fact that Sansa Stark would be Robb Stark’s heir (as they don’t know about Bran’s survival). Then they elect a bastard because Lyanna says “I don’t care.” Cool. I mean, it’s not even worth mentioning that this is supposed to be the same world where five Blackfyre Rebellions were fought over the issues that can come as a result of bastards and their claims…I’m talking about the fact that a person who has the support of the Vale army (which they know because she literally arrived with it) and a far better claim to Robb’s throne is sitting right there. And no one says boo. That makes the sense. And Lyanna is so feminist being the mouthpiece for this turn of events too.
Please tell me that I don’t need to explain how seeing a horribly violent hypersexualized brown woman who spent all last season determined to murder an innocent white girl (only to do so in the final episode) go on to murder her kind of!brother-in-law and his son because they were “weak men” who valued conciliation and prudence and be rewarded with the support of an entire kingdom was not an example of feminism. Please tell me that…
No, I mean, I’ll get into Ellaria’s scripting and her violence in the other two parts of this series, but once again, she’s “on top” for no discernable reason. The idea that every single guard in Dorne would back a coup by this woman is beyond ridiculous. The idea that a bastard would be ruling Dorne is beyond ridiculous. There’s a reason power comes from marriages and the family name (D&D’s excuse when they were trying to explain the idiocy that was Sansa marrying Ramsay) in a feudal society and that’s heavily because of succession. Are we to assume there is a House Sand? Are we to assume Ellaria has been legitimized (and by who)? And just pragmatically, we’re talking about someone who only had any sort of “say” in Dorne because she was the paramour to a prince; you mean to tell me there wouldn’t now be this inherent ambiguity in who would be next in line under this system: Obara (the oldest) or Tyene (Ellaria’s oldest)? Especially given how well they all get along…
Women on Top. On top of what? We don’t know. They’re in power! How did they get there? We don’t know. What is this challenging? We don’t know.
I’m sorry, but this is a child’s understanding of feminism. D&D (or at least most media critics) seem to be laboring under the delusion that if they just go ahead and stick women in positions of power, or have women sass-talk men, no matter how unearned, no matter how out-of-place, no matter how disingenuous to the reality of the situation, then it’s progressive. That they are doing right by these female characters, and doing right by women.
No. This is pandering, it’s a bit infantilizing truthfully, and it’s simply pathetic given how thoroughly and progressively Martin managed to explore gender dynamics and feminist issues with his setting. To put it simply:
“At this point, after so many years writing for these characters and spending time in George’s world, we had to be able to walk on our own feet. A lot of people go in and have to create their own characters and they do fine with it. At a certain point, if we weren’t able to do it, then shame on us. George gave us an incredible gift with probably more fantastically drawn characters than I’ve seen in pretty much any book ever. If we weren’t able to do that, we weren’t the right people to be running the show here.” —D.B. Weiss
Yeah, you weren’t.
Part 2 of this series is going to cover how each female character in and of herself is hardly a shining example of empowerment (Sansa “stuffed silently in a corner” Stark is a more accurate descriptor, let’s be honest), and we’ll close out Part 3 by discussing how each woman’s “triumph” this year seemed to be the result of a horrible act of violence, and how it really is more of a parody of feminism than feminism itself.
Atlanta resident Jennifer Mulford does not look like someone the Daily Mail would describe as the "woman who shocked the world," save one detail: She likes to breastfeed her boyfriend. In interviews given to tabloids like the Sun and the Mail in June, as well as Australian radio show Matt & Meshel, Mulford described how much she loves feeding her 36-year-old boyfriend with her breast milk—and how much he enjoys it, too.
Fetishes, for the most part, aren't all that shocking anymore; you can read about anal sex on Buzzfeed and get BDSM tips from Women's Health. But something about this fetish was too much for people to deal with. Online comments ranged from "disgusting" and "grotesque" to "this makes my skin crawl and I'm dry heaving." Mothers on Twitter and Facebook accused Mulford of sexualizing and degrading something beautiful and natural (Mulford does not have a baby; she uses hormone pills and pumps to artificially stimulate lactation). Nothing goes viral quite like outrage—the Mail article was retweeted 2,734 times.
There are numerous online communities for ABF (Adult Breastfeeding), where people can share their collective interest in a safe environment and reassure one another that they aren't alone. It's also a place to swap tips on how to induce and maintain lactation if you aren't pregnant.
This is a lengthy and complicated process that can take up to three months to produce any results. One common tip is to stimulate the breasts around four times every day for 20 minutes at at time by using a low voltage TENS machine, which is commonly used to relieve muscle pain by passing small electrical currents through the skin.
It doesn't exactly scream sexy, and neither does the heaviness and tenderness women describe once they'd succeeded in producing milk. But this isn't a particularly rare fetish. Adultbreastfeeding.org has 3,425 members and there are many more people talking about it on blogs, forums, Tumblrs, and private chat rooms.
Kate* says that her relationship with her husband has only grown stronger since they got into adult breastfeeding. "It's definitely brought us closer," she told me. "We have sex more often now, but we also feel better in the every day; more connected." Breastfeeding, she explains, leads to sex most times, but not every time. "Sometimes we just do it in front of the TV."
Not breast milk. Photo by Daniel Hurst via Stocksy
Now in her 50s, she remembers enjoying a sense of nurturing while feeding her children. "I cried when my eldest daughter finally weaned herself. I guess I missed it. My husband was the one who suggested we try it and we both love it. I feed him maybe four times a day."
This is a common sentiment about adult breastfeeding—people talk about the sense of closeness and intimacy that it cultivates with their partner.
Other women who breastfeed their significant others claim that sex doesn't come into it at all. On an online members-only forum, one female enthusiast says that breastfeeding her partner helps to soothe his panic attacks.
In fact, when my husband's suckling, that's when we're most equal.
"Psychologically speaking it's way above my head," she writes, "but it works, and it works on a primal level that is engrained into who we are as people. This kind of breastfeeding/suckling has absolutely nothing to do with sex at all but only the mind's place and where it needs to be or do to feel loved, safe, and to be able to grow and regroup."
For those who aren't already in long term relationships, an interest in ABF is a lot more complicated. Twenty-seven-year-old Redditor Dan feels embarrassed by his interest in breastfeeding, and still hasn't been able to try it. "I'd just have no idea how to bring it up," he said. "I'm worried they'll think I'm gross or weird. I've never had the guts to raise the subject—maybe I never will."
Dan got into it after stumbling across a video online of a woman squirting breastmilk. "I clicked on it expecting to be grossed out. But it really turned me on, I don't really know why. After that I started looking for more videos. I wish I could try it."
There are, however, options for people who want to explore the fetish but feel they can't (or don't want to) ask a regular partner. Mommy Madelaine describes herself as an "adult babysitter" who has made a full time living since 1999 by role playing fantasies that have included breastfeeding. But even with her roster of thousands of clients, she says the subject of breastfeeding rarely comes up. Adult babies, for the most part, appear uninterested in breastfeeding.
Mommy Madelaine believes this is because the practice is so taboo sexually. "Breastfeeding's an intimate bond between mother and child," she said. "Any fetish that relates to infancy or childhood (e.g. age play, diaper lovers, breastfeeding) is taboo, because folks mistakenly associate it with pedophilia."
"It's a perfect storm of a fetish because it combines two things that make us, as a society, very uncomfortable," explained sex educator and phone sex operator Tonya Jone Miller. "First, there's the idea that a man shouldn't be dependent on a woman, that he shouldn't be vulnerable and a woman shouldn't be stronger than him.
"Second, it's the idea of a woman sexualizing the thing that's thought of as the most sacred thing about her body and her femininity."
I ask Kate if breastfeeding made her feel like a stronger woman, or if it makes her husband feel weak and vulnerable. "I wouldn't say that, no. In fact, when my husband's suckling, that's when we're most equal. We can both share that feeling of nurturing."
For many adult breastfeeders, traditional narratives of age or power play doesn't enter their kink. Those that I spoke to did not mention wanting to feel like a child, or conversely, wanting to feel like a mother. The desire to revert back to childhood—common in adult babies—is also rarely mentioned on any adult breastfeeding sites.
The two fetishes may seem related, but seldom play out in tandem. What's clear is that people in adult breastfeeding relationships get something out of their kink that trumps society's judgement. "I don't think there's another way to get ," Kate told me. "It's unique."
Desde que en 1997 publicaron su primer álbum, aquel celebrado Simpathique y la canción del mismo título que invitaba a la pereza como ejercicio vital, la banda capitaneada por el pianista Thomas M. Lauderdale y las voces, primero de China Forbes y más tarde, de Storme Large, no ha dejado de seducir y hacer bailar con sus propuestas musicales. Pink Martini o la vuelta al mundo en ochenta ritmos: Mambo, swing, cha-cha-cha, samba, polka o aquel “Tuca Tuca” que volvía loca a Raffaela Carrá en la televisión italiana de los años 70. La única orquesta del mundo capaz de tocar melodía en technicolor. Éstos son algunos de sus mejores temas:
Moon River. La balada de la señorita Holly Golitghtly.
La alianza de un músico como Henry Mancini y de un letrista como Johnny Mercer tuvo como resultado una de las baladas más recordadas de la pantalla. Himno a la belleza y el recuerdo de las cosas amadas y quizás perdidas, la canción “Moon River” queda para siempre unida a la figura de Audrey Hepburn y la película Desayuno con diamantes (Blake Edwards, 1961). La protagonista de Vacaciones en Roma (William Wyler, 1953) y Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) le ponía alma y chic a la nueva heroína contemporánea paseándose por la Quinta Avenida mientras la ciudad de Nueva York abre sus ojos de par en par. Nunca un vestuario, desde la “petite robe noire” al vestido cocktail de color rosa o la clásica gabardina, recogerán tantos elogios y comentarios, tributos y referencias. Audrey Hepburn y el diseñador Givenchy alcanzaba su Everest estilístico.
Amado mío. Bailando nació el mito.
Desde que la canción irrumpiera en la voz-y playback- de Rita Hayworth en la película Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946) no ha dejado de viajar con diferentes equipajes e intérpretes. Rita Hayworth codifica su figura de nueva diosa del erotismo hollywoodense. El diseñador Jean Louis perfila su imagen de sex-symbol y reposo del guerrero que vuelve del frente bélico. En otra secuencia musical de la película, la canción “Put the Blame on Mame” provoca con un casto strip-tease- un solitario guante deslizándose de su brazo- a un atormentado Glen Ford. Enfundada en un vestido largo y sin tirantes de raso negro nacía el icono. La actriz une su figura con el personaje de Gilda. Como declarará años después, no sin cierta amargura: “Los hombres se van a la cama con Gilda, pero se despiertan conmigo”.
Quizás, Quizás, Quizás. El bolero siempre llama dos veces.
Cuando el directort Wong Kar-wai incluyó el bolero Quizás, quizás, quizás en su película In The Mood for Love sellaba ese sublime ejercicio de estilización –con el apoyo de la voz de Nat King Cole– que había creado sobre la historia de un amor imposible. También de amores imposibles y juegos melodramáticos respira la voz –donde siempre menos es más– de Sara Montiel cantando el tema creado por el compositor cubano Oswaldo Farrés. Exportadora de un star-system hollywoodense, Sara Montiel condensaba erotismo y glamur en el cine español rompiendo de paso algunos tabúes. Pedro Almodóvar le da a la canción y al mito y personaje una nueva vuelta de tuerca en La mala educación, ahora con el actor Gael García Bernal transformado en una drag queen que sueña con una imposible Sara Montiel versión blonde.
Santa Baby. La diva que sedujo a Santa Claus.
¿Las canciones navideñas pueden ser sexy? Respuesta afirmativa. Y si no escuchen a Eartha Kitt cantando al bueno de Santa Claus .Cuando apareció la canción “Santa Baby” en el año 1953 a más de uno se le atragantó la comida familiar navideña. La voz sugerente y felina de la cantante Eartha Kitt parecía barrer de un plumazo todo el almíbar melódico navideño, poniendo un manto de picardía sobre la hasta entonces blanca e inmaculada navidad. La señorita Kitt que en el futuro habría de distinguirse por sus osadías y voluptuosidad, reclamaba la atención del vecino del Polo Norte con una serie de extravagantes demandas. Para su volumen dedicado a las melodías navideñas Pink Martini incluye su versión en la voz de Storm Large, como no, cargada de sensualidad.
Que será, será.El icono doméstico.
El canto angustiado de Doris Day en la película El hombre que sabía demasiado (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) en el papel de una madre que busca a su hijo secuestrado fue compartido solidariamente por los espectadores de los cines de todo el mundo. La canción, “Que será, será” acabaría escapándose de celuloide para convertirse en uno de los temas más populares de la década de los años cincuenta. Estrella del musical y de la comedia, Doris Day, con sus peinados, vestidos, abrigos, sombreros y otros accesorios, crea un estilo al gusto de toda la familia convirtiéndose en uno de los iconos más populares de la pantalla entre los años cincuenta y sesenta.
Get Happy/Happy Days. Judy Garland & Barbra Streisand. El dúo que hizo historia.
Entre las secuencias históricas de los shows televisivos el encuentro entre una jovencísima Barbra Streisand y una leyenda del espectáculo como Judy Garland sigue figurando como uno de sus momentos más intensos y electrizantes. La primera, Barbra Streisand, está a punto de embarcarse en el musical Funny Girl , la obra que la confirmará como la nueva estrella del espectáculo, Judy Garland, por su parte, lejanos los tiempos de los grandes musicales de la Metro, encuentra en el teatro y los conciertos en directo, una segunda edad de oro. Ahora, las dos juntas, frente a la televisión, unen sus voces en este canto a favor del derecho a la felicidad encadenando la propia historia del espectáculo y su presente continuo.
* Pink Martini actúa el 7 de julio en las Noches del Botánico en el Real Jardín Botánico Alfonso XIII y el 9 de julio en Castell de Peralada. Auditorio Jardines del Castillo.
-Hace algunas semanas, usted manifestó el deseo de ver de nuevo en el centro “al sacramento de los sacramentos”, es decir, la eucaristía. ¿Por qué?
-Quisiera suscitar una gran reflexión sobre esta cuestión, con el fin de poner de nuevo la eucaristía en el centro de nuestra vida. Muchas de nuestras liturgias se convierten en espectáculos. Con frecuencia, el sacerdote ya no celebra el amor de Cristo a través de su sacrificio, sino un encuentro entre amigos, una comida de camaradería, un momento fraternal. Intentando inventar liturgias creativas o festivas, corremos el riesgo de un culto demasiado humano, a la altura de nuestros deseos y de las modas del momento. Poco a poco los fieles se alejan de lo que nos da la Vida. ¡Para los cristianos, la eucaristía es una cuestión de vida o muerte!
-¿Cómo se pone a Dios en el centro?
-La liturgia es la puerta de nuestra unión con Dios. Si las celebraciones eucarísticas se transforman en autocelebraciones humanas, el peligro es inmenso, porque Dios desaparece. Hay que comenzar por colocar de nuevo a Dios en el centro de la liturgia. Si el hombre es su centro, la Iglesia se convierte en una sociedad puramente humana, una simple ONG, como dice el Papa Francisco. Por el contrario, si Dios está en el corazón de la liturgia, entonces la Iglesia reencontrará su vigor y su savia. “En nuestra relación con la liturgia se juega el destino de la fe y de la Iglesia”, escribía de manera profética el cardenal Joseph Ratzinger.
-¿Qué remedio aconseja?
-El reconocimiento de la liturgia como obra de Dios supone una auténtica conversión del corazón. El Concilio Vaticano II insistía sobre un punto principal: en este ámbito, lo importante no es lo que hacemos nosotros, sino lo que hace Dios. Ninguna obra humana podrá jamás realizar lo que se encuentra en el corazón de la misa: el sacrificio de la Cruz.
»La liturgia nos permite escapar de los muros de este mundo. Reencontrar la sacralidad y la belleza de la liturgia exige a los laicos, los sacerdotes y los obispos un trabajo de formación. Se trata de una conversión interior.
»Para devolver a Dios al centro de la liturgia también hace falta el silencio: esa capacidad de callar para escuchar a Dios y su palabra. Solo encontramos a Dios en el silencio y en la profundización de su palabra en las profundidades de nuestro corazón.
-¿Cómo hacerlo, en concreto?
-Convertirse es volverse hacia Dios. Estoy profundamente convencido de que nuestros cuerpos deben participar en esa conversión. La mejor forma, ciertamente, es celebrar –sacerdotes y fieles- dirigidos conjuntamente en la misma dirección: hacia el Señor que viene. No se trata, como se escucha a veces, de celebrar de espaldas a los fieles o de frente a ellos. El problema no es ése. Se trata de volverse juntos hacia el ábside, que simboliza el Oriente o trono de la Cruz del Señor resucitado.
»Celebrando así experimentaremos, también corporalmente, la primacía de Dios y de la adoración. Comprendemos que la liturgia es ante todo nuestra participación en el sacrificio perfecto de la Cruz. He hecho personalmente la experiencia: celebrando así, la asamblea, con el sacerdote a su cabeza, se ve como aspirada por el misterio de la Cruz en el momento de la elevación.
-¿Está autorizada esta forma de celebrar?
-Es legítima y conforme a la letra y el espíritu del Concilio. En cuanto prefecto de la Congregación para el Culto Divino y la Disciplina de los Sacramentos, suelo recordar que la celebración versus orientem está autorizada por las rúbricas del misal, que lo que precisan son los momentos en los que el celebrante debe volverse hacia el pueblo. Por tanto, no hace falta ninguna autorización particular para celebrar cara al Señor. En un artículo publicado en junio de 2015 por L’Osservatore Romano propuse que los sacerdotes y los fieles se vuelvan hacia Oriente al menos en el rito penitencial, en el canto del Gloria y en la plegaria eucarística.
-Muchos creen que el cambio de orientación del altar está vinculado al Vaticano II. ¿Es así?
-¡Más de cincuenta años después de la clausura del Vaticano II, es urgente que leamos sus textos! ¡El Concilio jamás pidió que se celebrase cara al pueblo! La constitución Sacrosanctum Concilium ni siquiera aborda esta cuestión… Los Padres del Concilio querían subrayar la necesidad para todos de participar en el misterio celebrado. En los años que siguieron al Vaticano II la Iglesia buscó los medios para llevar a cabo esta intuición.
»Así, celebrar cara al pueblo se convirtió en una posibilidad, pero no en una obligación. La liturgia de la Palabra justifica que el lector y los oyentes estén cara a cara, el diálogo y la pedagogía entre el sacerdote y su pueblo. Pero al llegar el momento de dirigirse a Dios, a partir del ofertorio, es esencial que el sacerdote y los fieles se vuelvan conjuntamente hacia el Oriente. Esto se corresponde plenamente a lo que querían los Padres conciliares.
»Creo que hay que volver a los textos del Concilio. Probablemente algunas adaptaciones a la cultura local no se han madurado suficientemente. Pienso en la traducción del misal romano. En algunos países se han suprimido elementos importantes, sobre todo en el momento del ofertorio. En francés, la traducción del Orate, fratres ha sido mutilada. El sacerdote debería decir: “Orad, hermanos, para que este sacrificio mío y vuestro sea agradable a Dios Padre todopoderoso”. Y los fieles deben responder: “El Señor reciba de tus manos este sacrificio para alabanza y gloria de su nombre, para nuestro bien y el de toda su santa Iglesia”. [N. del T.: es la traducción española, correcta por tanto.] En la audiencia que me concedió el Papa el sábado 2 de abril, me confirmó que las nuevas traducciones del misal romano deben imperativamente respetar el texto latino.
-¿Qué opina de la participación de los fieles?
-La participación de los fieles es primordial. Consiste ante todo en dejarse llevar en seguimiento de Cristo al misterio de su muerte y de su resurrección. “No se va a misa para asistir a una representación. Se va a participar en el misterio de Dios”, recordaba el Papa Francisco recientemente. La orientación de la asamblea hacia el Señor es un medio simple y concreto de favorecer una auténtica participación de todos en la liturgia.
»La participación de los fieles no podría entenderse así como la necesidad de “hacer algo”. Sobre este punto, hemos deformado las enseñanzas del Concilio. Al contrario, se trata de dejar que Cristo nos tome de su mano, y asociarnos a su sacrificio. Sólo una mirada empapada por una fe contemplativa nos librará de reducir la liturgia a un espectáculo en el que cada cual desempeñe un papel. La eucaristía nos introduce en la oración de Jesús y en su sacrificio, porque sólo Él sabe adorar en espíritu y en verdad.
-¿Qué sentido da la Iglesia a esta cuestión de la orientación?
-En primer lugar, no somos los únicos que rezamos con una orientación precisa. El templo judío y la sinagogas siempre han estado orientadas. Al reencontrarnos con esta orientación, volvemos a nuestros orígenes. También los no cristianos, los musulmanes en particular, se orientan para rezar.
»Para nosotros, la luz es Jesucristo. Toda la Iglesia se orienta a Cristo. Ad Dominum. Una Iglesia cerrada sobre sí misma en un círculo habría perdido su razón de ser. Para ser ella misma, la Iglesia debe vivir cara a Dios. ¡Nuestro punto de referencia es el Señor! Sabemos que Él vivió con nosotros y que volvió al Padre en el Monte de los Olivos, situado en el este de Jerusalén. Y que volverá de la misma forma. Seguir dirigidos al Señor implica esperarle cada día. No hace falta que Dios se queje constantemente: “¡Me volvieron la espalda y no el rostro!” (Jer 2, 27).
"What, exactly, is a women's picture? It's a genre that lasted from 1930 to 1960 during Hollywood's golden age. [...] for less than a buck, you could go to a theater and watch Hollywood's greatest actresses transgress the ever-present social norms that suffocated women in real life. [...] Hollywood's film industry is no longer interested in producing the sort of films the genre turned into a curious art, or backing stars like Bette Davis, whose prowess and willingness to portray female anger still frightens audiences when they discover her. Instead, a new form of the genre is emerging on television." Including The Good Wife, UnREAL, Jane the Virgin, Outlander, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Scandal, Orphan Black, and more.
1. Touch him, but don’t grope him. Put a hand on his shoulder when you say hello. Slap his arm when you laugh at one of his jokes. Sit so close that your thigh brushes against his. Subtle touches make the biggest impact.
2. Draw attention to your lips. Lick them, touch them, or reapply your lipstick in front of him. Make sure he notices how smooth and soft they are, so he’ll have no choice but to imagine kissing you.
3. If you’re sitting down, cross and uncross your legs. This is especially effective if you’re wearing a dress, because he’ll be trying to catch a flash of your underwear.
4. Get his mind on sex. You don’t have to walk around, spouting out dirty jokes that would make your grandmother blush. Instead, try to make comments that are vaguely sexual. Comments that hint at something naughty, but aren’t blatantly obvious. Of course, if you’re comfortable blurting out how horny you are, that works too.
5. Play with your hair. Don’t twirl it around your finger like you’ve seen in the movies. Just brush it down every once in a while or push it behind your ear.
6. Work on your posture. If you keep your spine straight and your shoulders back, your boobs will be pushed out more. It’ll do wonders for your cleavage.
7. Wear the right perfume. Try something that smells of vanilla or lavender. Men are a sucker for those scents.
8. Don’t cross your arms. It’ll create the same illusion as staring at your phone or glancing at the clock. Basically, it’ll make him think you want him to leave you the hell alone.
9. If you aren’t against the idea of using your beauty to get what you want, then you should rest your elbows on the table and lean forward when you’re talking to him. It’ll give him a better view of what’s hidden beneath your shirt.
10. Again, if you’re comfortable with using your sexuality to attract men, you can always bend over in front of him. Remember the bend and snap from Legally Blonde? That shit really works.
11. Face your entire body toward him when he’s talking to you. He doesn’t want to see you glancing around the room, checking out other men. Playing hard to get rarely works.
12. Smile. It sounds simple, but if you make eye contact with a stranger while rocking your resting bitch face, he won’t know if you’re interested in him or if you’re warning him to stay away.
13. Compliment him. Guys usually have a hard time figuring out if we’re actually flirting, but if you tell him that he looks sexy in the color blue, then he’ll understand you’re interested.
14. If you’re wearing a necklace, play with it. It’ll draw attention to your chest.
15. Wink at him from across the room to encourage him to walk over. You might want to practice the move in the mirror though, because winks are either super sexy or incredibly awkward.
16. When you say hello or goodbye to him, give him a hug. Make sure it lingers. There’s a clear difference between a friendly hug and a flirty one.
17. Actually pay attention to what he’s saying. Men aren’t all that different from us. They want to be heard, too.
18. Wear an outfit that shows off your favorite body part. You don’t have to spend hours on your appearance. Just put in a little effort.
19. Use your eyes. When he walks by, establish eye contact and smile. When he’s standing across the room, make sure he catches you checking him out. When you’re lucky enough to have a conversation with him, glance down at his lips, so he knows you’re thinking about kissing him.
20. Ask him out. Men love women with confidence, so if you’re interested in him, just hand him your phone and ask him to type in his number.
Honestly, doing a post like this on Archer, a show which is deliberate in its dark humor, is a bit hard for me. Not because I like the show, but because I think there’s true validity in the argument that humor and narratives about really messed up, problematic stuff has its place. The show exists to be as outlandish and absurd as possible. The extremes and the awfulness of the characters’ personalities and their actions is the point.
“I VUZ BORN IN DUSSELDORF AND THAT IS VY THEY CALL ME ROLF!”
Joking about awful things, awful circumstances, and awful people is hardly new ground for comedy to cover, nor does it send a poor message, necessarily. Mel Brooks wrote a movie in which one of the characters was a Nazi, who wrote an overblown pro-Nazi musical produced by men deliberately trying to make a flop. Springtime For Hitler, as it exists in our universe, is not problematic. The Nazis are the butt of the joke, in which any pro-Nazi sentiment can only function if it is wildly fabricated and over-the-top, and even then, it will still be taken for satire. Because Nazis are utterly terrible, they built their movement on total bullshit that they dressed up in shiny boots and Hugo Boss uniforms and German exceptionalism and “glory”. This song-and-dance number about “Don’t be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Nazi party” only ever deserves to be a joke, as the Jew who wrote it can tell you. Nazis fucking suck and it’s hilarious that anyone would ever suggest otherwise.
There’s justice in reducing Nazis to self-parody, and doubling down on that by making a joke about them being reduced to self-parody. Especially when said self-parody and depiction of it is crafted by the very people Hitler tried to destroy. No one enjoys or masters mocking Nazis like the Jews. Plain and simple.
Joking about awful things and how terrible they are can be a good way to process things and not allow them to hurt you anymore. Comedy, at its core, is a defense mechanism against horror and pain. There’s a reason slapstick is a classic subgenre of comedy that people have built entire careers around. Laugh at terror and pain to make it go away. Unfortunately, some of the things we manage to find humor in can really make you wonder if we’re all just terrible and have no limits.
Angela’s Ashes is a memoir by Frank McCourt about his impoverished, abusive, dangerous childhood in Ireland. In it, he chronicles his own starvation, life-threatening illness, abuse, and suffering at the hands of alcoholism and brutality from adult authority figures. He was a child laborer who went days without food while his father drank away the family’s money and abused the rest of the family, who often came down with horrifying illnesses as a result of the terrible conditions he lived in, and spent his formative years suffering along with all the people he loved. Three of his infant siblings die within the space of a chapter. We get a glimpse of the time when his father, overjoyed at the birth of his daughter, finds the will to stop drinking, stop mistreating his family, go to work, provide for his family, and just generally be a better person so that his children don’t have to suffer. For a short period, the McCourts have food, heat, and happiness. Then the baby promptly dies and Frank’s father is back in the pubs, once again squandering any pay he manages to acquire on alcohol and returning home at three am to scream at and beat his wife while his remaining children try to cover their ears and sleep on the cold ground.
Along with being praised for it being a both an unflinchingly brutal depiction of poverty and a testament to the triumph of the human spirit, the book is also praised for its humor.
Remember: Angela’s Ashes is a true story written by the very man who suffered through all of these horrible things. And it’s considered a pretty funny book. And the author who, once again, is the person who actually suffered all of these horrible things, actually did intentionally try to make people laugh as they read about that time he was in the hospital with Typhoid Fever and enjoyed it because it was the first time he’d been in a place where he was fed regularly and got to sleep in a warm bed.
Hilarious.
That being said, there’s satire and dark humor, and there’s just gratuitous, shock-jock bullshit. There are jokes that are terrible simply because of what they’re about and how they’re handled. George Carlin said that anything can be made funny, even rape, if you imagine Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig.
If we can build entire films and musicals about how any pro-Hitler sentiment can only ever be taken as satire, isn’t that proof that you can joke about anything?
Yes, you can, but that doesn’t mean you should try, that the joke is funny, or that it’s alright, necessarily. Maybe Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and Springtime for Hitler prove that anything can be made funny and that’s okay. But if that’s true (and no, I’m not saying that it is), that still doesn’t mean every attempt at making something funny is either acceptable or funny.
Springtime for Hitler is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for any attempt to make a terrible subject the object of humor. Standards need to exist.
Unfortunately, the line between good or acceptable dark humor and simply gratuitous, insensitive, inherently problematic jokes can blur. The excuse of humor can only go so far. Yes, make light of Nazis. But there’s still a point where “humor” is used an excuse for people to act like assholes. And it’s an excuse that is used all too often. Radio Shock Jocks have been using that excuse to help reinforce racism and rape culture for quite a while. Whether certain dudebros like it or not, there’s a point where it stops being gross-out and just starts being gross.
Which brings me to Archer, the animated spy comedy on FX that premiered in 2011. Like many comedy series like Seinfeld or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a major part of the premise is that certain characters are, quite simply, terrible people. These characters and their abhorrent behavior is the joke. And, as the show is about spies, these terrible people are often put into highly dangerous, outlandish, and traumatizing situations.
So, the main characters, by virtue of their profession, spend a lot of time killing people in cold blood. Or trying to seduce or manipulate enemies. Or engaging in clandestine operations of sabotage that harm a lot of people. Horrible, violent things are going to happen, things violent enough to serve as narratives on their own. But most of the characters are as awful as the situations they encounter, so the horror is amplified. And it’s a comedy.
Indeed, in the first episode of the fifth season, we get the whole main ensemble recounting all of their actions and experiences working for the spy agency ISIS that we’d witnessed over the course of the show’s run at that point. Drag racing with the Yakuza, knee-capping the Irish mob, encountering human traffickers, 30 year affairs with the head of the KGB that only ended when the guy was blown up because one of the ISIS members had choke sex with the victim’s cyborg replacement, actual piracy, paying homeless people to fight for spectators, defling a corpse, defiling a different corpse, sexual assault, kidnapping the pope, blowing up oil pipelines, “smuggling Mexicans”…
Yeah.
There are comedic arcs about cancer, illegal immigration, kinky S&M bondage murders, cocaine addiction… a lot of stuff, basically.
Now, take those situations, and add in characters who get aroused by things like homeless people, being choked, sex with food, and the thought of their mother dying. Who spend their weekends starting fires, making hybrid pig-people, rubbing sand into the eyes of their employees, competing in underground Chinese Fighting Fish tournaments, and calling in bomb threats so that they can get a table at a fancy restaurant. You get the idea.
And it’s all totally awesome and hilarious and god damn it I kind of love these characters.
This show has a season-long sub-arc about one of the main characters getting so aggressively addicted to cocaine that she not only consumes (literally) half a ton of it in the space of a few months, but almost gets her head chopped off for buying amphetamines from the Yakuza with counterfeit money. It’s one of the most incredible things the show has done.
Pictured: An absurdly self-centered man feeling genuine dismay and concern over his friend risking her life to achieve an unrealistic standard of beauty.
The title character has a butler named Woodhouse who practically raised him. One of the first interactions we witness between them is Archer not only threatening to rub sand into Woodhouse’s “dead little eyes”, but making him go out and buy the sand himself and check if they grade it, because he wants the sand to be coarse. He’s also done things like make the man eat a bowl of spiderwebs and deliberately keep him in the dark about his brother’s death and funeral.
Another character is a mad scientist and possible clone of Adolf Hitler who kills a young intern by giving him a drug designed to turn him gay. That’s one of the less disturbing things Dr. Krieger has done.
Frequent gags on this show include one guy repeatedly getting shot, another character repeatedly getting paralyzed (it’s complicated), people trying to remember the inappropriate puns that they wanted say as one-liners, the horrific abuse and neglect Sterling Archer has received from his mother his entire life, and basically everyone being a sex-maniac.
There are plots revolving around mind-control, drugging people, and hypnotism. You can imagine the paths some of those episodes go down. Yes, there is a character that has tried to sexually assault one of her sleeping co-workers. And later deposited two unconscious, naked coworkers in a bathroom stall with an octopus, in an episode that has already made tentacle hentai jokes. Yes, the openly gay character on the show is often the target of jokes about him being gay or a woman from his coworkers. Yes, the female lead, a black woman, is referred to as a “quadroon” at one point by one of the characters.
Yes, the following exchange of dialogue does take place in an early episode:
“Oh my god, you killed a hooker!”
“Call-girl!”
“No, Cyril, when they’re dead, they’re just hookers!”
And yet… Oh my god. How it manages to play around with stuff in an amazing fashion. For one thing, it is amazing how often this show skewers micro-aggressions and fucks around with stereotypes. And, despite how unabashedly messed up it is, the writing in it actually manages to be oddly pro-social progress in ways that most modern media doesn’t even seem to be aware of.
“I take pride in my sex work and I will not put up with your bullshit!”
For instance the “hooker” referred to in that exchange? (spoiler alert: she wasn’t really dead) She’s Trinette, and she an unbelievably refreshing and strangely progressive depiction of a sex worker. While she’s a minor character, every time she shows up, it’s awesome. Trinette is a sex worker who is unashamed of her job, a woman who truly does take pride in and enjoy her work, who does not put up with poor behavior from her clients, and is just generally awesome. She call people out and makes them pay for any mistreatment she receives, from calling out micro-aggressions by insisting on her preferred terminology for her profession (“Call-girl, you puke!”), shaming men for their sexual misdeeds (“How can you cheat on Lana bare-back?!”), demanding restitution for any injuries or threats she’s suffered (Threatening Archer into giving her his car after he fakes her death and stuffs her in a rug to fool Cyril into thinking he killed her), and determining her work and clients (“What about Trinette?… She said that? Damn it!”). When she has a baby, she gives it her last name along with his father’s (“Magoon-Archer”) and she unapologetically proud of her Irish heritage. She’s easily one of the most functional characters in the show, and every one of her appearances on the show manage to defy at least one whore-phobic trope a minute. She’s the best.
Then there’s the show’s handling of race, which is mixed. While arguably the most important female character in the series (the show, despite its name, is very, very much an ensemble, especially as the series progresses. But in the early episodes when they focussed on fewer characters, she was the one who got the most screentime) is Lana Kane, a highly-competent (for ISIS) African American woman who is really, really well-developed, there is also the fact that she’s the only POC in the main cast. Granted, part of that IS the point. One of the earliest episodes is “Diversity Hire”, where, aside from Lana, the spy agency is so overwhelmingly white that they hire a “diversity double-whammy!” Conway Stern, a black Jew.
“Sammy Gay-vis Junior!”
Now, granted, that doesn’t sound great the way I describe it, but there are so many great moments in this episode alone. For instance, when Mallory Archer, terrible woman and owner of the spy agency mentions their lack of diversity, Cyril, the tragically white accountant and “nice guy” puts his hands on Lana’s shoulder and says he thinks they’re pretty diverse, a statement Lana finds hilarious. Cue Sterling Archer, other horrible person, telling Lana she’s “black-ish”, then responding to her offense at this with “Well, you freaked out when I said quadroon!”. The framing of this entire discourse is that Cyril and Archer are fucking idiots and Lana is of course taking offense because, duh, she should. The episode proceeds with a lot of references and discussion about racism, highlighting casual racism in a nuanced, funny, and organic way. For instance, Archer’s relief that Conway didn’t sleep with his mother. While Archer freaks out about anyone sleeping with his mother, regardless of race, Conway believes it’s racism on Archer’s fault. And in no way does the narrative act like he’s overly-sensitive or irrational for thinking that. Because the stereotype about black men seducing white women and fear from white men about this is still a very real, pervasive thing that has somehow managed to survive in our “enlightened” times. Of course Conway encountering a guy who displays a downright violent fixation on whether or not his new black coworker is sleeping with his mother will assume it’s a race thing. Because why would anyone be so preoccupied with such an idea? In that situation, it’s almost certainly based on the long-standing paranoia white men have about black men’s sexuality “conquering their women.” It’s one of the most common varieties of anti-blackness in existence.
Of course, since it’s Archer, who has kidnapped a LOT of people under the suspicion that they were having sex with his mom, we know this is the one case that it isn’t racism. It’s Archer’s disturbing, Oedipal relationship with his mother. He even kidnapped and threatened his role model, Burt Reynolds, for dating his mother. When he says “Not in a racist way” to Conway in this episode, it’s actually true. He’s just honestly that screwed up where his mother is concerned.
Conway’s conclusions on this, regardless, are still framed as a totally understandable. To the point where the episodes suggests that it would make no sense for Conway to think otherwise. Part of the joke is that no, Archer isn’t a horrible racist at all. He’s way too screwed up for his actions to be motivated by racism.
And before anyone asks, no, this wasn’t the “episode that acknowledges that racism is a thing.” You know the ones… The episodes that talk about race and why racism is bad to prove to the audience that they’re not racist, then proceed with the rest of the show, which never acknowledges race and racism again. There are frequent instances of highlighting racism, from violent outright bigotry to common micro-aggressions to clueless white people demanding how the thing they just did/said could POSSIBLY be considered racist! They’re not racist! How is THAT racist?! Cue Lana face-palming.
Lana makes this face a lot, and she should.
I just really, really like this. It doesn’t just end there, either. Racism is called out pretty frequently on this show, and not in a cliche, strawman way. Nor is it treated like something that only exists in the form of aggressively bigoted bad people shouting slurs and holding cross burnings. Nope. The “heroes” of this show just say shit that you could easily imagine someone saying in real life, shortly before getting defensive about any racism on their part. It’s treated as a common, pervasive thing that Lana and other PoC have to deal with every day, and the offense they take at it is treated as nothing short of sympathetic or justified (even in the cases of misunderstandings, like with Conway). This includes Mallory telling Lana to “put [the race card] back in the deck!” as reminder of how much of an unapologetic douche Mallory is.
It’s made clear: people say and do some super racist shit on a regular basis with realizing it or meaning to, and regardless, it’s still uncool and people have every right to get upset and call you out on it. See: Ray’s bionic hand at the end of season six.
Lana’s reactions and how they’re framed is usually pretty awesome. Mostly they come in the form of small, reasonable confrontations, which are never framed as an overreaction on her part. The fact that she “freaked out” when Archer called her a quadroon is framed as “well, duh, of course, she should.” Then there are instances like when she, Archer, and their child visit a high-end nursery school where they encounter a pretty obvious racist. The guy ignores and dismisses Lana at first, then expresses surprise at the fact that she’s the mother of the child (despite the baby being black), remarking about the “times we live in” and telling Lana “good for you!” when she informs him that yes, she is the mother, not the nanny or the maid.
Not all of the racism stuff stems from Lana being back, either. They skewer bigotry against Latinos on a pretty regular basis. When an Irish mobster rants about Latinos (he doesn’t refer to them by that name) “taking American jobs!”, Archer immediately calls bullshit, recalling actual history of the Irish being accused of that exact same thing during the mass immigration of the Irish to America during the potato famine, and it’s just as shitty and bigoted to say such things about immigrants now as it was in 1842. He is extremely irate about a mission ISIS is assigned to do on behalf of border patrol to arrest people who just want to get a job, and he ends up siding with and befriending the Mexican illegal immigrants he encounters. All of this while aspects of certain Latinx cultures are often highlighted, often very favorably (“Ramone is Latino, so he’s not afraid to express affection.”)
That being said, there are still a lot of issues in the show. The lack of diversity is definitely an albatross around this show’s neck. Especially so many seasons after the “Diversity Hire” episode. While I do praise Archer for not treating racism as a thing that is rare and only needs to be addressed in one twenty-minute block of time, it is telling that the lack of diversity at ISIS is never addressed again.
Then there’s the approach to sexuality. The show loves gross-out sex humor, especially regarding Krieger. And the depiction of sexuality is actually pretty mixed. On one hand, the openly gay character in the show adheres to a lot of stereotypes about gay men: he mocks Lana about her “knock-off Fiacci drawers”, his go-to alias is “Carl Channing”, his free time is spent at raves, and he loves to make effeminate poses. He’s also a frequent target of homophobic jokes and remarks. His outrage at this is treated as being every bit as valid as Lana’s, but it doesn’t change the fact that their main gay character is basically ALL of the stereotypes, as are a number of the other gay characters.
“Alright! We’re off to get our scrotums waxed!
Then there is the sexual assault. Which, once again, is called out for being what it is, in defiance of many common biases (such as the idea that female-on-male sexual assault isn’t a thing). But this show is way too flippant about this.
While I consider Archer to be very sex-positive, allowing every character, regardless of sex, age, or orientation, to be comfortable and expressive about their sexuality without judgment (a lot of jokes, yes, but not any that come off as particularly shaming). Almost every character, male or female spends a fair amount of time naked or scantily clad. We see Archer stripped down just as often as Lana. And the fan service isn’t relegated to just women who adhere to the typical youth and weight obsessed eurocentric standards we all know and hate.
Pam, who is a big woman (and often the target of fat jokes, which the show always treats as nothing short of detestable) is a total sex goddess who grows to be utterly confident in herself as a woman to the point where she’s giving Mallory (one of the most desired women on the show) advice. When she reveals that she keep ingesting cocaine because it’s made her thin with big boobs, Archer is utterly dismayed, telling her she was way better off the way she was, acting horrified that she’d risk her life to be “hot”, and just generally freaking out about Pam’s desire to be thin. It manages to avoid being cliche or empty given that Archer considered Pam the best sex he ever had before she got thin, to the point of blowing off assignments just to have sex with her, because she’s just that awesome. After she gains the weight back in season six, she’s still sexy, making Archer’s jaw drop in the episode “Edie’s Wedding.” She’s also unapologetically pansexual, which is awesome.
Mallory, meanwhile, is still actively sexual and treated as desirable. While sex and sexuality are always sources of gags and jokes on Archer, never do the jokes about Mallory’s sexuality ever come across as ageist. Sure, some characters make ageist comments on the show, but it’s never treated as valid. Mallory is still treated as being extremely sexy and confident about it. While Mallory is generally a horrible person, her enthusiastic sexual agency is never once treated as a flaw or something disturbing or gross. What’s disturbing, gross, and worthy of ridicule is her son being so preoccupied and reactionary about his mother having a sex life. It’s clear: if you have a problem with Mallory having a lot of sex and enjoying it, you’re the one with issues.
Even the one young, thin, white woman in the main cast gets to be unapologetic about her kinks. It’s really only a problem when her desire for choke-sex motivates her to lead a KGB cyborg to the ISIS safehouse. Or when she coerces Cyril into sex. And generally acts like a violent, awful person.
Essentially, there’s no tolerance for shaming women for being sexual. All of it, regardless of preference, age, size, or race, is nothing but fun and should be enthusiastically represented. “Can’t talk, got a pussy to break!”
Being a predator is shameful. Having belly rolls is not.
Who on Earth finds this funny?
But, then there’s the flippancy about sexual assault. There ARE gags about Pam and Ray dropping their pants when encountering an unconscious Cyril. And sorry, but the framing of it is all manner of screwed up. There’s tons of sexual coersion as well. Another one of the most problematic instances comes in an episode of season two, where Archer is repeatedly sexually assaulted by a sixteen-year-old German socialite. The show goes out of its way to make it clear that Archer explicitly refuses consent, that he’s being violated, yet the show treats this as funny.
While I get that this is a comedy show and that in-depth exploration of the trauma of sexual abuse isn’t going to be something they can spend a lot of time on, the option they should have gone with is, you know, not base an episode around a german schoolgirl raping the main character. It’s not funny, guys. It’s not necessary. It’s actually just uncomfortable and off-putting.
The show mentions things like alternative gender identities, emotional triggers, and sexual exploration in ways that treat these things as totally valid, which is good. It also frequently portrays poor people as jokes in and of themselves, which is a lot less good. While materialism is lampooned frequently, it’s not treated as a joke in and of itself the way poverty is.
The way the show often portray legitimate abuse for laughs also often goes overboard. While the show does a good job of exploring and following through on all the ways Mallory’s abuse screwed up Archer, there’s a point where the volume of “abuse humor” gets to just be downright gross. Dark humor is one thing, not being able to go an episode without a “Haha, ten-year-old archer was abandoned in a train station at Christmas!” joke is, uh… Not great.
Archer is an awesome, immensely watchable show. But it’s not one I always feel clean watching. It’s a show that celebrates extremes, yes, but there’s a point where certain lines are crossed and it’s just problematic rather than gallows humor.
Archer is one of those series that really makes me struggle to distinguish the gallows humor from the simple tastelessness. To give pause to the idea of problematic content being the “point.”
The line blurs with Archer. A lot. It often manages to distinguish itself with the things it gets right, especially since they often do well on things that most shows, movies, and books are often terrible at. And that’s enough to buy it some goodwill for when they screw up.
But seriously, guys, please stop treating sexual coercion and child abuse as bottomless gag wells. I would have really preferred to have Pam and her awesome sexuality without her sexually assaulting Cyril and Ray. It’s not funny or clever or edgy. It’s just gross.
Images courtesy of FX, Embassy Pictures, and Paramount Pictures
Nuclear Family uploaded a sketch recently that pokes fun at the tiring female tropes Hollywood loves to recycle. Written by Bree Essrig and Dani Rosenberg and directed by George Nienhuis, the fake movie trailer begins with beret-wearing Lola, AKA our manic pixie dream girl played by Essrig, getting dumped now that her sensitive boyfriend knows how to experience life and doesn’t find her library screaming cute anymore.
Now that she no longer serves any worth to the male protagonist, she’s kidnapped by “mama bear”(Ceciley Jenkins), the sassy over-supportive black friend (Shannon Malcolm), and “eye candy”(Ana Cheri), who recruit her into the UFC squad.
Just read this description and tell me this premise isn’t what you wish would happen every time you watched an indie romance or Hollywood action blockbuster with mediocre female characters:
It’s sassy comic relief meets eye candy, in a sketch that brings together the all-stars of insulting roles for women. These are the characters who either exist solely to prop up more important characters, deliver exposition, or fulfill diversity quotas—and now they’re working together like a band of superheroes. Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the free-spirited Zooey Deschanel-in-2008 type, is recruited into the fold by a bunch of other ambulatory stereotypes, and together they’re out to, well, exist. They’re not really up to much of anything here besides establishing a broad sketch of who they are, which is a 100% accurate portrayal of way too many women in movies.
Her training consists of learning to pass the Bechdel-Wallace test, acknowledging an Asian-American actress (Jenny Yang), and ordering a cup of coffee without interacting with sad, broken, Beach House-listening flannel-clad men at the cafe.
Does anyone else want to see this made into a full-length film?
No game has ever launched for iOS which more perfectly suits the desires Pocket Tactics was founded to serve than Twilight Struggle. It shares a designer with XCOM, held the top spot on BoardGameGeek's list for ten years, is wargame-adjacent, plays best when both players are fairly experienced (and is thus difficult for many of us to find ideal opportunities to play), and was developed by Playdek. Tournaments are already planned in the forums. Seven years ago, my friend Mike and I set aside a month to learn two two-player games, and for seven years I have wished we had enough time for a third, because Twilight Struggle was both of our second choices. After so long a wait, I've lost my taste for suspense--this is a five-star game. You'll be seeing it mentioned again in December.
A detailed rules explanation would be tiresome, but the basics are that this is the Cold War played out on a world map using cards. Each card depicts an event which favors one side or is neutral. These events are generally valuable, but you may play the card for "Ops Points" instead, which gives you a few ways to gain power over the countries of the world, and you'll often prefer this option. However, if you do that with a card which has an opposing event, the event also happens. Much of the game involves managing your hand so that you slap yourself as little as possible. I'd like that to have been a reference to Dr. Strangelove's alien hand syndrome, but really I just had an older brother who went through an immature phase.
Unlike chess, you're allowed to make a move which dooms you immediately (and, in rare circumstances, you may have to). In one early game, with tensions running high, I decided to host the Olympics. A little international understanding, friendly competition, some positive PR--I figured it was a nice, safe play. The trouble is, the Soviets boycotted, which presumably drew enough attention to the behavior of my CIA that meant, long story short, I caused a nuclear war. If I had reflected on what I know about hockey, this might not have come as such a surprise. As a result of that blunder, every move I've made since has been fraught with a little extra stress. It's exactly how a game about trying to navigate the Cold War ought to feel--push too hard, and nature starts again (with the bees, probably), but don't push hard enough, and your way of life will vanish from the earth just as completely.
"See that sign up here…'DEFCON'? That indicates our current defense condition. It should read 'DEFCON 5', which means peace." - John McKittrick
Another painfully clever bit of design is the China card. Unlike all the other cards, if you use the China card, your opponent gets it for the next turn. So you'd think you'd just hang onto it and gain the bonus for holding it at game end. But it has four ops points (five if they're all used in Asia), so it's one of the most powerful cards in your hand at any time, and situations constantly crop up in which that power is tremendously tempting. Since you know it'll be just as tempting for your opponent, you might as well use it, because you're virtually certain to get it back. Of course, if you do get it back, that means your opponent just used it to do something pretty powerful, and you probably need to respond, which renews the temptation. Not only that, you're also always wondering where to use it--if it were always sensible to use it in Asia, where it's most powerful, it would just bounce back and forth between players essentially spending more and more resources just to maintain parity there, and would accomplish nothing. But if you spend it anywhere else, your opponent will be able to use it to gain the upper hand in Asia. It puts me in mind of my father's maxim about windfalls: "I have to hurry up and spend it before I don't have it."
That same tension, in which the desire to avoid falling behind in any critical way constantly pulls you away from your goals, is present throughout. The Space Race, for example, is mostly a way to throw away all but the weakest cards with events which benefit your opponent, but it does have some benefits for whichever player is ahead. Left unanswered, those benefits can become very powerful, so once your opponent starts committing to space, you have to either let them snowball that into some frightening gains and hope to make it up by a similarly lopsided win elsewhere, or you have to overtake them. Of course, if you do gain the upper hand there, your opponent is in the same position and may well prioritize taking back the lead.
Whether or not this is genuinely realistic, it evokes the tragic dynamics reported about the Cold War--brinksmanship, limited control, gradually escalating commitments to wars or competitions of little inherent value to either side. Even the use of famous events and references to popular media reinforce the impression that what you're playing isn't a game about the crucial (presumably often secret) occurrences of the actual conflict, but is instead a game about the war we saw on TV and in movie theaters. There are occasional audio cues which evoke those media: snippets of famous speeches, the sounds of various machines of war. I panicked momentarily the first time I heard a low-altitude overflight by warplanes, thinking it must be a sign of something terrible happening. And then, like children coming out from under their desks following an air-raid drill, I realized it was nothing--I was as safe as I'd been before I heard anything. It was a brief comfort before the realization that this was not very safe.
Previews of the consequences of your actions are really helpful.
As a source of insight into history, what Twilight Struggle does better than any other game I've played (as if it needs more trophies on its mantel) is provide some perspective on how different it felt to live during the Cold War. The world contained exactly one enemy worthy of the name, and everything bad that happened seemed to either be authored by that enemy, or so quickly be co-opted that it made no difference. If it seemed paranoid to regard the election of a new president in Egypt as a plot to undermine the one true ideology, the forces of the evil ideology of deception would quickly work to make that fear seem justified. There was no way to praise the virtues of your opponents, to seek any but the most fragile compromise, without risking apostasy at home with some quite frightful consequences. It leaves me wondering whether our modern political polarization is just the attempt to fit politics into a mold developed during that unrelenting opposition in which generosity and understanding became taboo, and all events were simplified to their impact on the balance of power.
The few concerns I have about the app, that it doesn't support multi-tasking and that there is only one level of AI, simply cannot outweigh its excellence. Also, Playdek have their exterminators at DEFCON 2, and deployed their rapid bug-response teams already just three days after launch. With response time like that, I'm inclined to believe their claims that they're working on exactly those concerns. Their long investment in their own multiplayer system has paid off with what has, for me, been a flawless cross-platform experience. This game makes me feel, not just like the world is walking a tightrope and it's my job to hurry it along, but also like the pressure of grappling with another mind for the highest of stakes is irresistible to me. In real life, I'm a stay-at-home dad who reviews games and largely shuns power, but in Twilight Struggle, I'm arrogant enough to think the world is safest in my hands, and aggressive enough to enjoy it.
The Best illusion of the Year Contest (previously 1, 2) is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world's premier illusion research community. Contestants from all around the world submitted novel illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2015), and an international panel of judges rated them and narrowed them to the top ten.
The countless billions of dollars poured into the War on Drugs has resulted in mass incarceration, corruption, political destabilization, violence, the rise of drug cartels, and systemic human rights abuses around the world. The one thing the War on Drugs hasn't done is stopped people from using drugs. The animated video series, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, explains why the problems associated with drug use are caused by the war against them.
In 2003, Colombians began to report encounters with the wild hippos that escaped from Pablo Escobar's private zoo after he was killed by police and his estate was left to rot.
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Pam, who is a big woman (and often the target of fat jokes, which the show always treats as nothing short of detestable) is a total sex goddess who grows to be utterly confident in herself as a woman to the point where she’s giving Mallory (one of the most desired women on the show) advice. When she reveals that she keep ingesting cocaine because it’s made her thin with big boobs, Archer is utterly dismayed, telling her she was way better off the way she was, acting horrified that she’d risk her life to be “hot”, and just generally freaking out about Pam’s desire to be thin. It manages to avoid being cliche or empty given that Archer considered Pam the best sex he ever had before she got thin, to the point of blowing off assignments just to have sex with her, because she’s just that awesome. After she gains the weight back in season six, she’s still sexy, making Archer’s jaw drop in the episode “Edie’s Wedding.” She’s also unapologetically pansexual, which is awesome.
