On Subtle Discrimination and On Paranoia

It is my firm belief that the average person is not malicious at heart. Despite the sheer number of dickheads perpetrating dickheaded acts on a daily basis, it gives my mind a degree of stability to believe that these trespasses against reason and my own comfort and convenience stem more from ignorance than any actual desire to inflict harm. You can't really hold something against someone when they didn't even know it was a problem... they're not psychic or anything, because no-one is, because psychics are a bunch of frauds from A through to Z. People's ignorance means they might not know what constitutes dickheaded behaviour, and given sufficiently terrible information, one could come to believe that dickheaded behaviour is actually positive and helpful and so continue to perform acts of subtle, well-meaning dickheadry.

If you're having trouble conceptualising that, imagine someone who, having been raised in a racist household, was under the impression that non-whites were subhuman. From birth, their home environment was quietly antagonistic to non-whites and they had never had enough exposure or interaction with non-whites to realise at a young age that they're people too. However, they grow up to be a pretty nice person (save this one serious character flaw) and as an adult, having internalised this bias to the point that they accepted it as a truth of the world, they meet a non-white person. Now, if they were an otherwise decent person, they probably wouldn't lash out at them, especially if they saw other white people treating them with kindness. However, they also view them as subhuman, so how do you reconcile that? What you get is the most subtle kind of racism, wherein they treat the person perfectly pleasantly, but with an almost dismissive condescension. Shit like walking on eggshells, clarifying stuff to them needlessly, not really listening to what they have to say... that kind of thing. It's the same for basically any bias, against homosexuals, the handicapped, people of different faiths... any bias you can think of.

What sucks about this specific kind of prejudice is that it seems to come from a good place. To the person committing it, they aren't being racist, they're being tolerant and accepting. The problem lies not with their intentions but from the misinformation they've been fed. It's upsetting that some prejudices, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance in particular, are so ingrained in certain parts of the world that these little subconscious biases are more common than one might think.

On a completely separate topic, I'm finding it harder and harder to believe the world is getting more free given how willingly people seem to want to give up their freedoms. Rationalisations like "if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about" are a nonsense, assuming a concrete definition of "wrong" and also assuming a completely fair and impartial law enforcement system that has no agenda or biases. Both of these assumptions are inherently flawed. This is purely personal, but I've never understood why people were so comfortable being filmed without permission, particularly in public space.

Food for thought.

I Can Think Of At Least Two Things Wrong With The Title Of "The Hunger Games"

I'm gonna head this off at the pass before it gets brought up; I haven't read the books, I don't care if they were "better" than the movie, I don't care if it explores the characters better. I don't care. Lately the hot ticket has been movie adaptions of incredibly popular books and series marketed directly at fans of the books. This wasn't always the case. Did you know Fight Club was a book before it was a movie? Yeah, true story. The movie has to be one of my favourite films of all time yet I haven't read the book, because I don't need to, because they are two separate pieces of art. Film is a different medium to books, with different strengths, weaknesses and approaches. A good adaption stands alone from the material it was derived from. With that in mind, let's review The Hunger Games, shall we?

The Hunger Games is a beautiful film to be bitchy about, because it did a lot of little things badly. Overall it was an enjoyable film, and by all means I encourage you to see it if you have nothing better to do, but it's the little things that prevent me from saying it was actually "good." It was shot quite nicely, especially the archery scenes. I liked how personal it felt when Katniss shot arrows, in such a way that it wasn't mechanical, nor aggressive. The close angles and avoiding the whole "camera following the arrow really fast" gimmick really gave you a sense of control and calm that reflects Katniss' personality. And on the subject of Katniss, can I get a hell yeah for positive female role models? Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Katniss Everdeen (what a stupid fucking name) was a high point for me, largely because of the fine balance she struck between vulnerability and strength. It would have been very easy to portray her as an aloof ice-queen, but instead Lawrence gives the character incredible depth. Her Katniss is incredibly warm and almost maternal in her interactions with her younger sister and later a young tribute in the arena, strong and independent in hunting/battle scenes and awkward yet oddly endearing in personal scenes, especially with the character Peeta. The result is that she comes off like a real person, with complex underlying motivations, opinions and feelings. She's scared shitless of what she faces, but isn't a whiny bitch about it. Admittedly near the end the movie drops the "strong female character" ball, but that's a fault of the writing and not the performance.

That ball-dropping is one of the major issues I had with the film, however. Pretty much up until the final quarter of the movie, Katniss is everything you could want in a female heroine. Strong enough to go toe to toe with any other competitor, never in thrall to some dude, never a damsel in distress even when she is in distress... then Peeta is wounded and oh, what's that? She loves him now? Since fucking when? You just spent the entire previous part of the movie establishing that she doesn't feel about Peeta the way he feels about her, that she has a guy she likes back home, that she's a strong independent woman who don't need no man, but then suddenly, for no reason other than he apologises for something awful he did to her in the past (I won't explain what that is but it was seriously a dick move), oh shit, love happens. I shit you not, it's like the writers realised that they had written themselves into a corner in that there was no obvious resolution to this weird romantic subplot they tried to shoehorn in, so they just defaulted to her falling in love with the only dude in the area that wasn't trying to kill her. She had quite literally tried to kill him in the previous act for professing to have a crush on her. I'm not saying that her character would never fall in love, we had previously established how empathetic she can be, but the way the romance was established and executed was... well, it was a detriment to an otherwise incredibly strong character.

When I said the movie was shot well, that doesn't mean it necessarily looked good all the time. Any scene with CGI looked about as smooth and elegant as the fucking Phantom Menace, which is pretty much unforgivable in 2012. The outside shots of the airships looked so out of place to the organic feel of the trees and woods that surrounded them, the futuristic city was had no depth or feel in panoramic shots and seriously, how hard is it to make a convincing flame effect these days? The two scenes that involved clothes with flames on them looked like a friggin' 1st year computer animation student's last-minute-final assignment. For a movie with such hype and budget, it was disappointing to say the least.

Speaking of aesthetic inconsistencies, this movie has a love affair with them. I'm more than willing to accept the whole "it's the future and people dress weird" thing, but why then do Woody Harrelson's and Christopher Plummer's characters dress really... normally? Everyone around them is dressed in clothes of weird colours and cuts, with both genders slathered in foppish makeup, yet two of the main characters that you see quite regularly dress in modern-day suits and waistcoats. Why? Why would those clothes be available in this clearly very bizarre time? It just makes them look... well, out of place, really. Despite being experienced denizens of this future world, their costumes don't reflect it. That's a very specific nitpick but I just can't believe it fell through the cracks. Even Wes Bentley's character dresses tastefully, albiet with a weird beard design, so I guess it's OK? Maybe? The food was strangely schizophrenic as well, flitting between weird futuristic pastel coloured goops and more standard, traditional fare like fish and roast chicken, although food doesn't evolve like fashion, so it's probably not a fair and equivalent bitch.

I'd like us all to admit right now that shakey-cam fight scenes are the worst kind of fight scenes. "But Last Whiny Man! They give you a sense of being in the battle! It's immersive and you feel every clang of the swords!" Hey, guess what? Go fuck yourself. It's not fucking immersive when I'm sitting in an uncomfortable chair, sipping watered down Coke Zero and getting dizzy because I can't focus on any action whatsoever. The final battle on the Cornucopia (I did like that they used that word, then designed a giant metal one... that was nice) is a particularly seizure-inducing clusterfuck. Three people in a space that couldn't be more than 5 square metres and the camera is still flying around like a housefly on PCP. I literally had no idea what was happening to who until it abruptly stops so Katniss, Peeta and obligatory-Aryan-beefcake-villain Kato can have a Mexican standoff. Then Kato, a trained killing machine from birth, who has joked about killing children earlier in the movie, gets his first piece of character development to tell us that he's dead inside? What? You spent absolutely no time establishing his character as anything but heartless killing machine, then expect us to accept that he actually feels remorse and now doesn't want to win The Hunger Games, the exact thing he's been trained to do since birth. Sorry dude, no sale.

Also, what the fuck is the point of making a "game" out of something where oustide entities can assist players? If people like players enough, they can send them shit to help them win... so wouldn't the favourites always win (assuming no freak accidents or the favourites just sucking at staying alive)? It makes no sense.

So yeah, a few glaring faults, sure, but other than everything I just mentioned, the movie is a pretty fun time. Definitely not in the "great" pile, but certainly not in the "suck" pile.

Soundwave 2012: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Yep, it's that time again. First, the good.

With the exception of Dream On, Dreamer, every band I saw played an excellent set. I'm sure Dream On, Dreamer's fans thought they did an excellent job, but metalcore is not my scene and I despise the stupid straightened-hair-and-fringe look so I suppose I'm a tad biased against them. Saves The Day were pretty shameless in their use of one of the best albums ever (the first 40 minutes of their set was Weezer's Pinkerton in its entirety) to promote their relatively bland emo-pop, but they played it pretty respectfully so they are forgiven. Gojira and Meshuggah were tight and mercilessly heavy, In Flames were a pleasant surprise for a skeptic, Mastodon remain a favourite for anyone who likes their metal to be interesting and Slipknot were at their most camp, over the top best. The act who takes the day was, as they always are, The Dillinger Escape Plan, whose destructive antics were matched only by the incredible tightness with which they played. Most disappointing show goes to headliners System Of a Down, who played a functional but relatively uninteresting set. Great songs, sure, but nothing to write home about.

The inevitable bad.

The Perth organisers of Soundwave 2012 must have been huffing some sort of industrial solvent, because changing the timetable after the program has been printed, then changing it again the evening before is, without a doubt, the most retarded shit any organisers could pull. It was effectively impossible to properly plan your day and led to people missing the first few songs of bands they wanted to see all day. You dropped the ball, you pack of spastics, don't do it again.

Although it was no-one's fault, the heat put something of a damper on proceedings, with my pale companion getting some vicious sunstroke. To be fair, it's partly his own fault for drinking nothing but Coke and Lift all day when water was free, plentiful and better for you, but I'm not a complete arsehole.

Now, the serious part, the ugly.

I understand that working security is a tough gig. I understand the pay isn't great and you have to deal with drunk idiots. I understand you're under some pretty strict instructions to not let anyone get on stage and to eject potential trouble makers. I get it. But seriously, don't be a dick, security guys. If the band says to let a guy come on stage, just let him. Seriously, it's one guy. If a guy is getting rowdy, don't four of you jump on him and start kicking him while he's on the ground. That probably won't calm him down. Quite the opposite, in fact. Security is (to my understanding, at least) about keeping people secure, not giving fans a hard time just for getting excited. Chill the fuck out, guys.

Nintendo Made Me Into A Man.

Man, kids these days? Friggin' soft. Bunch of whiny, entitled pansies with no exceptions. And the reason for this? Video games.

"Yeah, fuckin' vidjagames! Kids should be out playing football and punching each other in the sun and shit!" No, shut the fuck up. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The reason this generation is soft is because they never had to truly experience the vicious, mind rending frustration that was true "Nintendo Hard."

P.S. people pointing out that this flies straight into the face of an earlier post of mine, that post was about each generation sucking to approximately the same degree. I'm just getting stupidly specific about one aspect of the iGen-crowd's particular brand of suckiness.

See, back in the day, you didn't pass videogames while baked on a weekday, oh no. They required concentration, rationing and some pretty inspirational speeches from friends to pass. I personally remember the joy and fanfare experienced when I watched a young friend finally conquer Megaman 7 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. That final boss was a colossus and he was toppled, toppled I say! Defeating Bowser in Super Mario 64 for the last time, after you've chased that fucker around for 120 stars worth of gameplay and you could finally rescue the Princess... that was some heavy shit. People spoke of that as if they'd seen a fucking yeti. Where's that sense of achievement now? Where's the intense sense of accomplishment that used to come with conquering a mighty Nintendo game?

The kids these days, they pass 4 games a day. I quit gaming last generation back (save every new Pokemon game) when I got to the end of the latest 007 title in one sitting. I got to the last level and had to put the controller down. I hadn't achieved anything... I'd just sauntered to the last level. Remember GoldenEye? If you passed the Control level where you had to protect Natalya in one go, you must have been some sort of autistic videogame savant, because that was not made for normal human beings.

I know it seems petty, but when you think about it, if someone had never experienced the intense sense of achievement at the completion of an incredibly difficult task as a child, why would they have any incentive to try hard at anything as an adult? Muse on this...

On Professionalism.

I did want to write a nice two part entry on why exactly the music industry is as ostensibly terrible as it is, but my preparation for that particular endeavour has been... sporadic. Rest assured, it's in the works, being worked.

Anyway, to avoid completely immolating myself with shame, here's another set of samples from the cognitive bowel that is my brain.

The Labor Party should just re-instate Kevin Rudd. Just boot Julia out of the offices, ignore she ever existed, and just let Rudd manipulate the media the way you wished Julia could. Yeah, it'd make them look like slimy, backstabbing corporate whores, but the honesty would be refreshing and it should a ridiculous amount of guts on their part. Additionally, there's no way Tony Abbott could compete with that, he'd barely get a look from broadcasters.

Weezer's first album is really good. I won't post a full review because it's been out since 1994, but the songs are catchy and they just sound so very slack... great lazy tunes.

I was playing a card game with a friend a few days ago, and the instructions were written such that "he" was the pronoun used to describe the player, rather than "he/she" or "they" or something else gender neutral. Now, I'm guilty of doing this as well occasionally, but I found it slightly unnerving to read for some reason. I felt irritated the writer had used "he" exclusively. Signs I've completely internalised feminism, perhaps?

I sometimes wonder if the incredibly liberal among us look weird to the incredibly conservative among us. Personally, I tend to view the particularly conservative with sympathy, thinking "oh, I'm sorry you get to miss out on some cool stuff" but it occurs to me that to them, someone like me must look completely unfocussed and undisciplined. I suppose it's just a case of different points of view.

...and that about covers the amount I felt I needed to write to overcome guilt. 'til next time, friends.

On Terrible Art.

Let it never be said that I'm fair and even handed when talking about art I like or dislike. I can put together a fair and pretty objective description of an album, movie or book, and I've had enough experience (with movies and music at least) to know the basics of the language and describe them in a way that other fans would understand, but that isn't liking or disliking something. The enjoyment you derive from something is completely subjective and largely pretty capricious. You could make the argument that it's more about the precise and unique mix of specific elements than the specific elements themselves and that you could potentially enjoy anything, but then it would make a nonsense of analysis of art in the first place. Not every artist is unique and there are a whole bunch of forms that art conforms to, yet people's tastes can run the gamut from completely exclusive to one form all the way to liking basically everything you experience. Your taste in anything subjective is subject to so many internal and external factors that trying to pin down who would like what and why is an exercise in futility.

From an analytical perspective it's a huge bother, but from an "enjoying life and experiencing new thoughts and emotions" perspective, it really makes appreciation of art one of the best things you can do with your time. Whether passively absorbing something or actively thinking about or participating in the creation of something artistic, it's pretty much a part of everyone's life, you can't avoid it. Hell, as you read this right now, you're taking part in said process. However, what this also means is that discussions about the quality or perceived value of a piece of art are about as stupid a thing to do as trying to figure out just how many apples you'd need to make an orange. Sure, it's interesting and fun, but it doesn't necessarily go anywhere or mean anything.

From a purely objective standpoint, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears is just as important and influential as anything done by The Smiths or Nirvana. That's my hypothesis and I'm sticking to it. Hell, I remember being filled with tremendous disappointment when an ex-girlfriend considered The Vengaboys to have been a more important group than Smashing Pumpkins in the 90s. At the time, I implored her to at least listen to Siamese Dream, or concede that they had more integrity and talent, but looking back, that was retarded. For one thing, she didn't like rock, she liked bubblegum pop and dance-y stuff, so even if she did listen to the record, odds are she would have told me it was too distorted, too depressing and she hated Billy Corgan's voice. As much as I'd like to think I'm on the all important cusp of whatever is new and fantastic, the fact is, as long as people are listening to, absorbing the message or aesthetics of and telling other people about a certain song, it's important.

That's kinda disheartening, isn't it? You'd like to think that stuff you find to suck is somehow objectively sucky and that you picked it, even though no-one ever defines what it means for something to suck in the first place. You can bitch about the execution or the message or the budget or whatever, but in the end, people still saw Transformers and were excited for the sequels. That shit made money, despite the fact that anyone with even the most paltry education in the art of cinema could tell you exactly what it did wrong.

Any time I write a review of something, or even express my opinion on it, there should be a big, unspoken caveat to all of it that reads something like "Every view expressed on this subject is, at its core, based on something purely subjective anyway, so all discussion is done for the enjoyment of discussion, not some sort of universal taste precedent." Yeah, you could spend hours extolling the virtues or failings of a particular piece, but in the end, that's still just technical stuff that has no bearing on how much an individual person may enjoy it. Sure, YOU might only like movies that are well shot from a technical perspective and written with the grace and delicate touch of a truly talented and educated writer, but something shit could just as easily turn out to be a classic... sometimes things are greater because of their flaws, rather than in spite of them; pretty much the entire 90's alt rock scene was built on relatively poor production, unusual equipment and a rejection of technical excellence, yet I'm listening to Failure right now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, unless you're me, your taste in everything is shit and you'll never convince me otherwise.

Devil's Advocate: I Don't Care If You're Offended Edition.

When folks talk about human rights, I personally find that they speak of rights in a very odd sense, as if rights are something you can put on a mantlepiece and admire for years to come, something you earn in one massive battle and then everyone will respect them. These conversations are irritating partly because of the binary that creates between haves and have-nots; we, the white folks, the haves, must fight for the rights of the have-nots, the minorities and immigrants and so on, but they're mostly irritating because, and again this is all in my experience, a lot of people don't even know what rights they're talking about, or what qualifies as a right at all.

To use a very broad example, consider the gay community and their ongoing (and occasionally heartbreaking) quest for equality. The oft-quoted mantra is some variation on "we just want the same rights as you." That's a fair comment and personally, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't have the right to get married, to seek employment or promotions based on their performance alone, to adopt, all that shit. What you're talking about there are rights that other groups have that are denied to a certain subset of humanity because of something that is neither immoral nor a choice. In this specific argument, the rights the gay community are seeking are valid and currently being denied to them.

Unfortunately, not every cause is as justified as the gay community's. A friend on Facebook sent me a request to join the group "Join my cause: Remove Group F**k Islam from facebook," which I won't link anyone to because I don't want anyone to join it. Admittedly if you really wanted to it's not as if it's hard to find or anything, but my point is, don't join it, the group makes no sense.

Already I can hear the chorus of indignant caring folk. "Why do you hate Islam!? They have a right not to be persecuted!!1!" Just stop it. Stop that right now, and think about what you're saying. The group isn't beating up people of the Islamic faith, nor is it inciting people to do the same. Yeah, it's racist, islamophobic and pretty tasteless, but that description could also be attached pretty accurately to most American television. This group is, at it's core, the association of people who share a common belief. Kinda similar to a church.

See, things like "right not to be offended" are nonsensical concepts, impossible to enforce and based on this idea that a Utopian society would feature no hatred, persecution or offense. Bull-fucking-shit, I say. You can't legislate how people feel and exchange ideas. You can legislate against actions or attempted actions, but anything beyond that is an attempt at thought policing.

As much as it may shock the caring individuals out there, freedom of association, freedom of belief and freedom of speech are very important rights for a society to have; without them, the people in charge would have control over who you associate with, what you can believe and what you say. You know, the kind of America that the Republicans want to create, which I'm certain all you caring, sensitive liberals out there want to avoid.
(Sidenote, I am still a liberal, just not a whiny, new-agey wuss of a liberal.)

One cannot deny that groups like this on Facebook are racist and offensive, but unfortunately, it's also well within their rights. You have to take the bad with the good; the reason that you can freely associate with other people who want that page removed and express your ideas free from persecution is also the same reason they can make the page and attract followers in the first place. Swings both ways.

If anything can be taken out of this, it's that while both groups have every right to exist, it's the attempt at caring and sensitivity that flies directly into the face of human rights, while the racist pieces of shit (yeah, I hate racists. Like, really hate racists) that started their hate group are just exercising the rights that the good and caring individuals are fighting for in the first place. Ethics are challenging and ironic.

**If anyone's wondering, I'm more a moral nihilist than relativist or absolutist. I understand that my moral code is a construction of my own thoughts, feelings and experiences and that, ultimately, they just boil down to something subjective. However, and maybe this is just the empiricist in me talking, I also believe that we can create a kind of shared social morality by the application of logic, reason and science, starting with the premise that all people are equal from the start and that pain and suffering are to be avoided or minimised. Whether or not either of those starting conditions accurately reflect the nature of reality is a philosophical question that I simply don't have the brain power to tackle.**