Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: March 2021

• Classic Overload

  Posted at 5:16 pm by kayewer, on March 27, 2021

  Hollywood is over 100 years old, but sometimes it feels as if we are living in a limited world with few choices because there aren’t enough to go around. While temporarily imprisoned at home recently, I found myself unable to use the DVD player and, since I don’t have the TV hooked up to online streaming, I was left with the choice of looking at entertainment on network TV or on my computer.

  I could almost make a bet that, if I turned on Paramount network, I would see an Indiana Jones movie; TNT would have something directed by either George Lucas or Peter Jackson; SciFy might have something either Harry Potter or Twilight and at least one network would make a run at Pretty Woman.

  Sure, that’s a good 21 movies right there, but not when you’ve already screened them 21 times yourself and you’re seeking something a bit more exciting.

  I ended up selecting the music channel and enjoyed Eighties tunes while I sorted my wool and yarn.

  Meanwhile the industry is mulling over what to do about movies which contain references to historically valid content which is frowned upon today, including slavery in Gone With the Wind and perceived stereotypes in shows or adapted movies such as South Pacific (particularly now that a gunman has killed several Asian women and the focus of inclusion has turned to Asians and Pacific Islanders). A high school canceled the musical because of the depiction of an Asian character as a huckster speaking broken English. Nobody, however, ever notes that we Americans often learn to speak poorly in most other international languages, but natives appreciate the effort when somebody tries their language, as should we when they do the same. After all, we went there first (in terms of colonizing Hawaii), not they here.

  After going over what has been going on lately with stale movie marathons and inclusion issues, I have come to the conclusion that my best bet is to go with TCM. That network does an intro for every movie, and explains things to the viewer to give them a sense of what they are about to experience. Why can’t networks do that to other movies and programs? It takes airtime (networks must end on the hour or half hour, while TCM has fillers for space past a film’s true running time) and money to research and find a narrator (TCM has Ben Mankiewicz).

  Recently the amorous skunk Pepe LePew was booted from WB cartoons and an upcoming cameo in a feature film because his advances are shown to be unwanted from his love interests and is alleged to resemble stalking or predatory behavior. The generations that grew up with this culture, however, do not appear to be the ones perpetrating the offenses: it’s a much younger line-up of questionable characters, deprived of satirical education in how not to behave, who seem to be the cause of all the uproar.

  When I was growing up, we had lots of old educational films about dating, hygiene, safety and general knowledge issues. They never got remade. Maybe a few marathons of those would help straighten a few generations out.

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• Turmoil Talk

  Posted at 10:32 pm by kayewer, on March 20, 2021

  Ask yourself questions. It’s important to do this whenever you are faced with conflict or a change or an issue to resolve. The media tend to give us plenty of reasons to examine ourselves lately, and I’ve done it, too.

  This past week I read about more cancel culture and scandal about what is okay if you’re not caught doing it when people are hyper aware of what is being morally challenged at present. Once it’s a hot topic, you are doomed. We tend to light the torches and storm the castle long after much damage has already been done. Naturally what was accepted in the past may not be accepted today, but now the prevailing solution is to find, microscopically dissect, judge and then banish the people and things, rather than logically examine and settle the issues so they serve as our history before progress. That is to say, one cannot change without having had a reason to do so, and that reason is as important to display as how we achieved the improvements which made them no longer relevant. That is how we keep statues to flawed historical figures: put the good and bad on the brass plaque.

  I asked myself if I should judge people like the current New York governor who is developing an accusatory queue of women saying he was acting in an inappropriate manner with them. One noted, however, that he asked her if he could kiss her: that does not appear on the surface to make him, by definition, a full-fledged jerk. Most of the men with groping on their minds simply zero in on their target and ask no permission. That doesn’t mean he is not guilty there or elsewhere, but it does possibly indicate his character may not be without redemptive qualities. I was always taught to expect men to treat me with respect, but that was decades ago, and I’m not so sure that such advice is offered to young women now (and who knows what guidance young men get these days). Our world still has a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude about relationships, but we only know the attitude goes astray when we read that something has gone wrong.

  Then a supposed Christian with sexuality issues suddenly targeted several businesses where he had received massages from women, opened fire and killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent. The developing story is that he felt addicted to sex, being in his twenties, and an official speculated that he had a “bad day.” His church is appalled, the Asian community is aghast, and the society of white people–in which I include myself–sit and read what is provided to us about how this accused killer may have taken a wrong turn at a fork in the road we all seem to know exists but do nothing about. Becoming a man (or woman)* is part of our biology, but at that point the when and how become a gray area. Here seems to be a man at the start of his adult life, who apparently feared his sexuality more than his creator who gave it to him. Being a sexual human became a problem for which nobody may have offered a solution. He may have decided to remove the problem by getting rid of what made him feel good and guilty at the same time. The women provided a service he did not have to use, but what were his other choices?

  I asked myself if I have an issue with Asian women offering massage services, and the answer was no; if they didn’t offer it, somebody else would. Massage is not an exclusive Asian specialty any more than Chinese takeout is (the takeout concept was domestically developed, but we expect the restaurants to be run by who we want to assume prepares the food: if a German man in lederhosen was cooking at a pizzeria, would you do a double-take?)

  Just as genocides have happened, so did Dr. Seuss, whose books sometimes contained drawings which, at the time they were written, were interpreting culturally familiar figures which today would be considered stereotypes, and so did cigarette machines in restaurants and hotel lobbies. The Pep Boys no longer smoke in their corporate logo, but not because there are no cigarette machines: people still smoke.

  A television news reporter named Jonathan Pie lost his cool back in 2018 while reading copy concerning issues with the “Little House” stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. He went on a tear because the idea was to not continue publishing works referencing slavery, while he stressed that slavery happened and we abolished it but don’t want to remember that testaments to our history help us not repeat the same mistakes in the future (the video is called “Oppression Obsession,” and though it is laden with colorful language matching his ire, it is just as relevant now as then).

  So I did ask myself who I am, and the answer was a living person still learning. We should all keep remembering what we can improve, but remember where the improvements came from. Church groups may be where the subject of sexuality should be a topic in some way. young men and women* should still get the sex education films as soon as possible. We should review when to keep our hands to ourselves. And a guy in lederhosen should make my next Kung Pao chicken.

  *(For purposes of clarity, my posts will refer to the two basic biological genders of male and female, but you should not feel that I have excluded you if your identity is not of these two choices: it’s just that we have not improved that terminology beyond “non-binary” yet.)

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• Lost Time

  Posted at 4:18 pm by kayewer, on March 13, 2021

  Daylight Saving bugs me. You lose a whole hour of your life in the spring because 2:00 AM becomes 3:00 AM as we “spring ahead.” Most of us aren’t even awake for it, and when we do finally awaken we don’t want to get out of bed because we’re still tired.

  The concept is an anachronism, and I hope to write to our new leader and ask him to do the country a favor and abolish it during his term in office. I plan to wait, though, until he gets us back to something like the new normal. This year DST will enable longer daylight hours to get everybody inoculated, but all bets are off after that. Also, unfortunately, last year many people worldwide who were under the thumb of DST did not live to get their hour back in November so we need to remedy that for the rest of us now. Calendar and programmed alarm clock companies will need time to update their layouts. 2022 sounds like a good year to start forgetting about the whole thing.

  That extra hour of daylight means that most of us rise because the sun has gotten into our eyes and we can’t turn over and go back to sleep. Trying to get kids to go to bed when it’s still light out is a challenge, too. The natural order of our days have been in an upheaval for generations, and it’s time to stop the madness.

  When I (finally) get to go on my trip to Hawaii, they don’t observe DST, so I get to add the time zones up and subtract one hour. Imagine that! Of course, they have island time, which is no time at all when you’re under a tree sipping a cool drink by the ocean. It will feel good to have a good time without having to watch time.

  Some folks may ask about the companion reminders to replace batteries in smoke detectors, which seems, like a padded senate bill, to be written in like a package deal. My advice is to simply write it into the block in your calendar which will have an open space where “Daylight Saving Time Begins” used to be.

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• I Am a Potato

  Posted at 5:06 pm by kayewer, on March 6, 2021

  Gender problems spiked recently when Hasbro and Playskool, the company behind the building toy Mr. Potato Head, announced that their titular character would be rebranded as a non-gender-based toy. This means that future packaging will not use identifying terms such as Mr. or Mrs. and instead focus on allowing the user to create any Potato Head character with the supplied parts.

  There are two interesting things to note about this. First, the original concept for the toy was that Hasbro supplied the parts and the users broke out their own potatoes to festoon with feet, hands, eyes, etc. The whole idea behind building as play is to allow children in particular to explore their understanding of how the world works and see what new things they can discover. I have not recalled ever seeing a study in which scientists were worried if children put hands where legs should be, or gave Mrs. Potato Head a pipe to smoke. Nobody rolled out a tape measure to see if the eyes were inserted levelly. It was play building, for heaven’s sake!

  The second thing about removing the names of things is that nouns are a necessity, and children who are learning about the world need solid parameters by which they can identify that world, and the toy company seems to want to remove those definitions in favor of appealing to an audience that should not have cause to fret about such things. Not everything is tailor made for individuals. Except for men’s clothing, which requires a tailor.

  Let’s go out on a limb and say, for sake of argument, that there is a sect out there that eschews shoes; when they visit the department store, do they avoid the shoe department like vampires avoid the garlic in the produce aisle? They probably just don’t venture down that aisle. In the same manner, if a child wants to build Sam and Marsha Potato Head, and not have them be Mr. and Mrs., what harm does that do?

  This news came along with the bombshell dropped on readers of Theodore Geissel/Dr. Seuss’s classic books, announcing that several of his tales will no longer be published because they depict racial stereotypes. One example was of Asians with pointed hats. Folks, hate to point this out, but those hats were worn by farmers for generations (and, I’ve read, even by Samurai); it’s not a stereotype, but a historical reference. Some people wince when reading how Dr. Seuss referred to a “china man,” but we’re looking at old things with eyes directed by a brain from another era. Another example was of African natives hauling things strung on poles; that too has historical basis of fact. Natives didn’t have Jeeps or flatbed trucks. Check out any old (and I mean before WWII) National Geographic and you’ll see actual photos of these.

  Maybe our problem is that everybody wants to be included, but on their own terms. Being white is problematic because we don’t often become a party to observations about what makes us the subject of study or jokes. However, I remember Eddie Murphy doing a damn good stint in full white person makeup a few years ago, and he used white humor in his comedy routines, and I laughed until my tummy hurt. It was refreshing to take a ribbing about being. . . .how do I say this? . . . .the broth in the soup pot. Think about what goes into a soup; the broth is the major component, and then other things are added to bring individual character to the whole concoction. Nobody would pick on half a chunk of carrot; it’s a carrot and it’s in the soup. We should be more diligent in defining our own history, rather than trying to conceal it or change how we categorize it. What is, is. What was, was. What our future is, will be built on what we learned then and do now.

  Like poking features into a potato.

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