boys and guns

the media has rolled out the carpet and begun the fetishization of today's horrific murder today at the elementary school in connecticut.  they are giving the american psyche some feeling of control as they give minute by minute updates as to the names of the victims.  they are interviewing bus drivers who knew the students.  children are being shoved in front of cameras to talk about how frightened they were.  you can hear it in the scripts of the stations- in the voices of the anchors and correspondents- they are desperate to make something new out of this.  something that will make this a worst or a most or an extreme.  sensational.  sick.

and everyone online is horrified and giving their children extra hugs tonight.  and i do not blame them.
and everyone online is asking for god's healing for the families and victims.  and i judge them.
and everyone keeps stuttering, in chorus like stupor, "i just don't understand why."

my usual response would be:  there is no why.  there is no comfort.  we live in an absurd world.

but a few days ago, i turned in a paper about the social constructions of masculine identity, and the devastating effects these constructions have not only on women, but on the men themselves.  i was writing on gods go begging, concerned with soldiers in the Vietnam War.  i dove into some writings by wollstonecraft and woolf who undermine the stability of a patriarchal hierarchy, particularly in regards to gender, war, and heroism defined by violence.  all that to say...  it's got me feeling differently about what happened today.

i would like to point out that all of the recent mass shootings- schools or theaters- have been committed by young men.

and i would like to suggest that there is something terribly wrong with the way that we are raising boys.  we breed soldiers.  we put toy guns in the hands of kids who aren't even able to talk through problems.  we glorify and justify acts of violence in the name of patriotism, and expect that only actual soldiers will be influenced by that image of courage and power and bravery.  men are aggressive. men protect.  men shoot guns.  there is something wrong.

current definitions of masculinity do a terrible disservice to boys and men.

there is a difference between physical exertion and violence.
there is a difference between competition and domination.
as a culture, we can barely articulate a difference.

rings

If you've ever had a confrontation that made clear the people's enormous capacity to justify incredibly unjustifiable things and believe incredibly incredible things... if you've ever had the terrifying experience of realizing your very own power to delude yourself- to believe with a whole heart and a suppressed mind in the outrageous and illogical things...

you know, then, that you can never quite look at the world with quite the same amount of belief or trust again.  you can't quite greet humanity with the same sense of applause for our elevated ability to reason.  once you have had to recognize the giddy willingness with which humanity throws itself toward the fantastical, the comforting, the mystical, the self-assuring without regard at all for plausibility, the hollowness of all dogma seems to echo off even the most sound-seeming doctrines.

i feel that way about all things christian. among many other things

show me a truth and i will show you a price tag.

i've been thinking about that in regards to our culture's dependence and immersion in/abhorrence and distrust of media.  the internet has given us greater access to the world- more readily available technology has given us access to changing that world.

photoshop lays bare the strings that pull at miracles

i think that the acknowledged capability to manipulate and alter images has made everyone a bit more leery of taking visual proof as proof at all.

we crave it- we seek it- we still compare ourselves to the people on magazine covers- we still crave the satisfaction of the visual represented world- a world we can hold in our hands or call forth at a whim-

but deep down, we don't believe it.

hence a predominant sense of isolation.  little whispers of despair, if you listen.  a desperate, quiet confusion.  we know we are immersed in the unreal.  we know that we are informed by it, that we cannot untangle the strings enough to live apart from it.  but the unrealness of the unreal... the hollow... mars every clear ring of truth or beauty or stable promises in the world.

there is no euphony in the postmodern world without some reminder of the hollow it sprang from.

ho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvzsZCJjZ0

Culture is so weird.
So weird.

grin and bear it: emo female takes on Brave

SO, a few days ago I was almost lost to a sea of depression after watching a man wait for his dog to poop.

Yesterday brought another installment in the ever exciting series of Girl* Meets Emo as I found myself crying big old tears watching Brave.

At one point I said out loud, "if that bear doesn't turn back, I'm going to lose my shit."

SPOILER ALERT shit was not lost.

Although I expected to latch right on to the character of that little fiesty redhead who wants nothing to do with marriage and defies cultural traditions and expectations (gathered all from the trailer!), it was the big ol queen turned bear that I found myself emotionally bound to.

this person who is changed utterly through no fault of their own now finds themselves unable to function in their world- unable to communicate- even the easiest tasks become unbearable obstacles (pun kind of intended but it doesn't really make sense)- and is now dependent on the ability of another person to grow if they have any hope of returning to their previous state.   

hm.

And it's that kind of connection that had me crying about a big cartoon bear.

The good news is:
1. Disney didn't totally screw it up by demonizing nature...
2. that even IF Merida hadn't learned her lesson and hadn't reversed the spell just-in-the-nick-of-dramatic-disney-time, I'm pretty sure Elinor would have been alright.  There were already signs that she was learning to function well in her new state, and that communication and understanding between the bears and humans was actually improving... that a terrible traumatic experience can be used to transform not only the understanding and perception of the individual, but to impact the understanding and empathy of their entire community and culture.  psychobabbleonandon
4.  A lot of the artwork I've seen has linked Merida and hermominbearform as a sort of shared identity... that their struggle is shared... that Merida recognizes her responsibility... that the restoration of her mother is necessary for her own restoration.  i like that.
4.  Despite these little emo episodes, I can usually quickly turn around and laugh at it.  So, that's good.

Going to see Silver Linings Playbook today.  Emo episode entirely possible.

*Should it be Woman Meets Emo?  I am 30 now, afterall.  At what age is girl not so appropriate?