Category Archives: Popular Culture

Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Irritating Little Honor Student

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“John Boot” isn’t as impressed with Harry Potter as he’s supposed to be:

Why don’t kids notice that their heroes get everything handed to them on a levitating platter? Because, I guess, they think it’s really cool to imagine themselves riding a dragon as a huge building collapses all around them. A better question is why so many adults seem so intrigued by all things Harry, lining up next to eighth-graders for midnight showings. The answer is: Because as kids have gotten more and more grownup, adults have become children. Tech companies like Pixar and Google fill their offices with game rooms and cereal dispensers. Soon your office will have a 17-year-old guidance counselor on staff to advise you on how not to be so, like, ancient.

I haven’t seen one since (I think) the third one. I haven’t read any of the books. But then, I was just never into magic, except the kind provided by a sufficiently advanced technology.

[Update mid afternoon]

Some commentary on the movie patrons, from Laura Ingraham:

Unless you’ve been contacted by the film’s casting director, there is no reason for you ever to come to a movie in costume. We don’t think you’re cute. We don’t think you’re artistic. We do think you’re a nerd. And the moment you leave the protective company of the other crazy people at the cineplex, you look like a complete idiot. The robe and the wand are not working for you.

For the record, I have never been to a movie in a costume. I actually hate costumes (and Halloween, which seems to have evolved from a childrens’ holiday when I was a kid to an adult one, apparently as a result of many of my age cohorts never growing up). Of course, I have also never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I take no small measure of pride in that, after all these years. I was completely put off it by the rabid fans.

[Saturday update]

I know, I probably shouldn’t give him the traffic, but once again Mark Whittington displays his endless talent for hyperbole (and inability to actually detect people’s emotions or read their minds, despite his continuous attempts), fantasizing that I am “heaping disdain” on Harry Potter. And that I’m doing so to “pretend to be cool.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

On Being A Non-Leftist SF Writer

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An interview with Sarah Hoyt:

…like all the arts, writing is a liberal’s game. Science fiction, too, I think encourages extreme ideologies, which almost inevitably default left. It’s part of creating a world. You start thinking you could create “logical” rules for “this” world. (I tell you, if Lenin had written SF instead, we’d all be happier.) The climate in the field can best be judged by the fact that I could stand up tomorrow in the middle of a conference room full of my peers and announce I was a communist and they’d all applaud. However, if I announced I’m anti-communist, they would laugh. Some of them might laugh nervously and sympathetically but they would laugh.

Anyone clinging to Marxist theory is immediately believed to be very smart, and someone who goes against it is considered a lightweight.

Do they intentionally discriminate against Libertarians and conservatives? I don’t think so. Not the vast majority of them. The vast majority of my colleagues are decent people. They are also, like the vast majority of the human race, conformists. Most of them attended good schools and grew up in upper middle class neighborhoods (at least most of them who came into the field in the last fifteen years. Yes, there are reasons for that, which I’ll mention rapidly later, if I have time.) Their parents were taught in college about class struggle and that money was evil. They got it at home. They got it from schools. They got it from magazine articles and newspapers. The books they read growing up were infused with unconscious Marxism. OF COURSE they assume anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either stupid or evil. And would you give a leg up to the career of someone who is evil? Would you help them?

The funny thing that always startles me a little is hearing myself addressed as a “conservative.” I’m full of wild-eyed radical ideas not proposed out loud since Thomas Jefferson talked in his sleep, and I’m a “conservative” because I am, ultimately, anti-communist. This is a through-the-looking-glass world, since the establishment is as close to soft — (and sometimes hard) — communism as someone can go without sewing hammers and sickles into all their undies.

And that’s part of the problem there too — I don’t think any of them means to discriminate against me. Some of them even like me, in a slightly bewildered way, but they don’t know what to do with me. I was born in a Latin country, I am female, and yet I don’t consider myself a victim and you truly don’t want to get me going on a-historical theories of great mother goddesses. They don’t know what to make of me, or what to do with me. I make them uncomfortable, and it’s easier to ignore me or not to have me around too much.

It’s always been a little weird, being into both folk music and science fiction, because the prevailing political attitude in both has been leftist, at least for most of my life. One does have to be a little careful of what one says in such groups. And of course, it’s always amusing to see the confoundment on some peoples’ faces in the space activist community, who read my blog and fantasize that I’m a conservative or Republican (or worse, like RAH, a “fascist”), and see me defend Barack Obama’s space policy.

[Update a few minutes later]

For those who haven’t read Darkship Thieves, for which she just won the Prometheus Award, please give me a cut if you decide to buy it (it doesn’t seem to be available in hardcover any more).

Media Criticism, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Thoughts On Southern Accents

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…and northeastern bigotry:

I get no less than 3 comments a week regarding the way I talk, coming in the form of “you are not from here” or “where is that accent from” or “I like your accent”. In fact, the accent of native Hoosiers is so homogeneous that I can now hear my own accent, which is more annoying than I expected. I have never enjoyed hearing myself recorded and I really do not like hearing my own accent when I talk. It is strange.

The good news is that no one has called me a hick, redneck, hillbilly (not an insult, by the way), or moron, yet. Unfortunately, in northeastern and some mid-atlantic states (I shall not name names to protect the guilty) I have endured rather cutting and insulting comments about my accent. I was once told by a dude in a NYC diner that I “must be a bigot based solely on how I talk”. Needless to say, our conversation was cut very short. Even worse, a store clerk in a town 3 hours from my hometown once sneered at my accent and insisted that “it could not come from a place that close”. It is sad, but in some quarters of the country, a southern accent is considered dumb, ignorant, and/or backward. Luckily, NE Indiana and the Midwest so far is not part of that contingent. And, for that, I am very thankful because I plan on keeping this accent.

I hope you do, darlin’.

One thing you learn pretty quickly in the aerospace industry, because of Lyndon Johnson’s determination to use NASA as a Marshall Plan for the south (literally, in the case of Marshall Space Flight Center) is that just because someone speaks slow, doesn’t mean they are slow…

And I actually never learned growing up to be prejudiced against southern accents, in southeast Michigan. It might be because in an auto town like Flint, you grew up with a lot of people who migrated up from the south to work there. A lot of the people I went to school with were from a poorer east-side neighborhood, whose parents were from Kentucky and Tennessee, and worked in the shop. Some of them might could have had better home lives, but most were damned good people, and not afraid to work, or fix things, and would give you the shirt off their back. And I noticed that they got along with the blacks a lot better than many of the native-born. Because they knew how to.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Heinlein, Fascist

112 Comments

The LA Times interviews some young idiots in fandom:

As the literary and academic worlds open to science-fiction and genre writing, Heinlein lacks the cachet of J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson and others. Films based on Dick’s books, good and bad, keep coming. But Heinlein’s film adaptations, in the last half century, since 1950’s “Destination Moon,” culminated in 1997’s “Starship Troopers,” widely disliked by his fan base.

Non-SF writer William Burroughs probably has more influence inside the genre’s literary wing than Heinlein, who won four Hugos (the award voted by the fans), sold millions of copies, and was termed the field’s most significant writer since H.G. Wells.

“His rabid fan base is graying,” said Annalee Newitz, who writes about science fiction for Wired and Gawker. “To literary readers, the books look cheesy, sexist in a hairy-chest, gold-chain kind of way. His stuff hasn’t stood the test of time,” because of characters’ windy speechifying and their frontier optimism.

“Here at the store I actively resist promoting him, because he was a fascist,” said Charles Hauther, the science fiction buyer at Skylight Books. “People don’t seem to talk about him anymore. I haven’t had a conversation about Heinlein in a long time.

And you’ve obviously never had an intelligent one.

Popular Culture

I Did Not Know That

26 Comments

Shari Lewis co-wrote Star Trek episodes? Does Lileks know this?

I watched it last night before going to bed. I didn’t think it was particularly well written.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speak of the devil — he has a fresh review of the first episode of TNG.

It holds up, with some caveats. Still seems odd that Geordi had to wear that thing; surely they’d fixed blindness by then. Picard dismissing WW2 as those stupid days when humans fought over stupid things was an eye-roller, and reflects poorly on his historical knowledge. The limitations of Troi are on display from the get-go: SHE FEELS PAIN. GREAT PAIN. And later, she senses that the creatures are very, very happy. The graphics look cheap, and the bridge is lit wrong, but they’d figure that out. My main problem: it is ridiculous to attempt a saucer-separation at warp speed. Once the saucer exits the warp field it will have a catastrophic deacceleration, and don’t tell me the inertial dampeners can handle it. They’re designed to minimize fluctuations in normal-space speed and compensate for power rerouting when the shields are absorbing energy weapons. I mean please.

Didn’t Picard also have one of his many surrenders of the Enterprise right from the get go?

Well, he was French.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Where’s The Outrage?

21 Comments

The supposed artist formerly known as Prince made a little news over the weekend, when he said that:

…blacks in the deep south forced to drink from separate fountains and ride in the back of the bus were “happy” to do so.

“It would have been fun being in Mississippi, to know there’s only one correct social order,” Prince told the British newspaper. “There was order. You ride in the back of the bus. There’s no choice. People were happy with that.”

The Guardian pointed out that perhaps not every black forced to drink from separate fountains was thrilled with the idea. The singer acknowledged: “There are people who are unhappy with everything. There’s a dark side to everything.”

Oh. Wait. He didn’t say that? You’re right. Here’s what actually happened.

…women forced to wear burqas in Islamic countries are “happy” to wear them.

“It’s fun being in Islamic countries, to know there’s only one religion,” Prince told the British newspaper. “There’s order. You wear a burqa. There’s no choice. People are happy with that.” (Burqa bans grow fashionable in Europe)

The Guardian pointed out that perhaps not every woman forced to wear a burqa is thrilled with the idea. The singer acknowledged: “There are people who are unhappy with everything. There’s a dark side to everything.”

And here I thought he said something outrageous. Never mind.

[Update a few minutes later]

The idiot political hack formerly known as Speaker of the House said something interesting over the weekend, too. Referring to the summer of 2008, she said:

“When the … unemployment rate is high, it’s hard for the incumbent to win,” Pelosi said in an interview with CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. “I remind you though, the Republians weren’t the incumbent. We were the incumbent.”

Well, that makes sense, right? I mean, after all, the Democrats had held the entire Congress for over a year and a half. Why blame George Bush?

What? She didn’t say that? She actually said…?:

“When the … unemployment rate is high, it’s hard for the incumbent to win,” Pelosi said in an interview with CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. “I remind you though, we’re not the incumbent. The Republicans are the incumbent.”

Well, that would be consistent with what she said in 2008, even though, of course, the Republicans only control the House, and they’ve only done it for six months or so.

What? She didn’t really say that in 2008? She campaigned as though the Republicans still controlled the government, and blamed everything on George Bush? That can’t be true. If that were the case, she’d be a rank hypocrite.

Oh.