Ruminating On FilmCritic Hulk; Thoughts On Criticism

HULK ESSAY YOUR ASS: TANGIBLE DETAILS AND THE NATURE OF CRITICISM.

Some people will not like the written style of the essay, some may not enjoy reading it, due to said style. I've done my best to c/p the parts I find most relevant to the dynamic I see often between readers, authors and book critics, especially the divide between readers and 'professional' book critics. And most especially between authors, professional book critics and readers with a particular perspective and the language to express it aka social justice readers.

I am aware of the words just before I start c/ping that discuss bias involved in opinions. I believe having a bias towards social justice and non invisibility of minorities is NOT actually a bad thing and counters the bias against paying attention to these matters as all, as if the world were a contextless, historyless rainbow farting magic bunny land.

Bold and italics (strong and emphasis) as originally posted. Things in colour are my emphasis.

YET HULK DESPERATE KNOW WHY PEOPLE RESPOND TO MOVIES WAY THEY DO. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY HOW THEY THEN PROCESS AND EXPLAIN THOSE RESPONSES. THE ANSWER NOT JUST RELATE MOVIE CRITICISM, BUT UNIVERSAL CRITICISM. HULK BELIEVE CENTER AROUND ONE THING:

TANGIBLE DETAILS....

OK. HULK KNOW YOU THINKING “TANGIBLE DETAILS? DUH, OF COURSE! WHAT YOU IDIOT? OF COURSE THE FREAKIN’ DETAILS MATTER!”...

OUR ABILITY PROCESS THINGS INHERENTLY LINKED TO AMOUNT OF INFORMATION WE UNDERSTAND...

IT OKAY IF NOT KNOW LOT ABOUT CERTAIN SUBJECT. THERE ACTUALLY SUBCONSCIOUS WAY IN WHICH MOST OF US ABLE PROCESS SIMPLE GOOD OR BADNESS OF JUST ABOUT ANYTHING: MOVIES WORK ON LARGELY VISCERAL LEVEL. FOOD CAN TASTE GOOD OR NO TASTE GOOD. SPORTS TEAMS HAVE WINS AND LOSSES. PRODUCTS CAN SIMPLY WORK OR NO WORK. THERE WAY WE UNDERSTAND SOME FORM RELATIVE VALUE OF ALL THESE THINGS.

BUT WHEN COME TIME ACTUALLY EXPLAIN THEM, NOT EVERYONE HAVE LANGUAGE/VERNACULAR TO BEST EXPRESS WHAT AT PLAY. SO ONLY WAY CAN EXPLAIN ANYTHING BY PRESENTING EVIDENCE. AND EVIDENCE 100% DEPENDENT ON THINGS WE NOTICE. AND THOSE THE TANGIBLE DETAILS.

… and FOR MOST PEOPLE, IT NOT ALWAYS THE RIGHT DETAILS PER SAY, BUT INSTEAD THE ONES THAT SIMPLY STICK OUT MOST....

BEING “EXPERT” JUST MEAN YOU ABLE MAKE THE LESS TANGIBLE DETAILS, WELL, TANGIBLE...

THIS MEAN FILM CRITICISM MORE DEPENDENT ON WHAT OTHER FILMS SEEN AND PROCESSED BEFORE IT AND HOW FAMILIAR CRITIC WITH FILMMAKERS. WHICH JUST MEAN ANY INTANGIBLE DETAILS IN MOVIE SEEM EVEN MORE IRRELEVANT TO CASUAL OUTSIDER. BUT OF COURSE SEEING TONS MOVIES = CRITICAL. IT ALLOW CONSTRUCT PERSPECTIVE. A SENSE OF FILMIC TRENDS. NARRATIVE. UNDERSTANDING. ALL THAT GOOD STUFF...

BUT EVEN IF THE “EXPERTS” = THE QUALIFIED ONES, EVERYONE STILL HAVE RIGHT THEIR OPINION ON MOVIES. IT ULTIMATELY JUST A CONVERSATION AFTER ALL....

IT HARD LEARN HOW DIGEST WHAT OFTEN EMOTIONAL REACTIONS.

BUT EVERY YEAR HULK GET SHARPER IN ABILITY TO EXPLAIN IDEAS, THE VISCERAL REACTIONS, AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS FEELINGS THAT MOVIES ALWAYS ELICIT. THE EDUCATION NEVER STOP.

Do note, I will laugh at anyone who comes away from this thinking I'm describing activist reactions to exclusion as purely emotional, and thus untrained and in need of processing. Emotions aren't separated from the insult of invisibility, no. But people capable of having an actual conversation (however highly peppered with cussing) have long since processed all that they can bear, and then some.

I will also laugh at anyone walking away from this thinking the only reason these things are seen, is because people are looking for them, with some kind of 'Playing The Race Card Super Cool Spectacles'. You don't look for invisibility, invisibility slaps you in the face - which oddly enough makes me think of that so and so who was all 'Straight White Male Gamers Are Being Oppressed' at the Bioware Dragon Age 2 people. Not being specifically catered to - nay, exclusively catered to, felt like invisibility to him, and thus like a slap in the face.

A Letter

Dear Orcing Hordes,

I wish we could all go out to dinner. I wish we could meet up, and have curry and wasabi and blueberry shortcake and lassis(es?) and mango chutney and fried dumplings and more. I wish we could hug each other and make jokes about hair petting and maybe sigh a little that 2009 is not even a 1/3 done and OMGWTF.

I wish we could squeeze hands and roll our eyes and talk pretty man-flesh, and pretty woman-flesh and giggle and be ridiculous. I wish we could MSTK POTC and Chronicles of Riddick and who knows what other shows, with the actual popcorn.

I wish we could have a reading of the many wonderful stories from The Rymyth Project. And we could hear each other's SF short stories and maybe play a table-top game run by (Cool As Fish) Bankuei, from one of the incredible worlds he builds up.

We are only likely to meet in two's and fives throughout the year, maybe tens at WisCon. Still, I hope that the big dinner meet environment is there, whenever groups of us meet, wherever we meet and that we continue to cut a path for those who follow behind and beside us.

Thank you my sisters and brothers (in the Horde) for your strength, humor and buoyant voices saying "Oh Hellz Nah!" whether or not you found the patience of Job to try and talk to some individuals.

Thank you for taking time out of your life to write all you have written and to read all you've read and to put forth energy in raising a voice.

---

______________

POC In SF & F Carnival: Intra-POC Dialogue / De-colonizing The Mind - Deadline March 27th 2009

Asian Women Blog Carnival: 1st Ever! - Deadline April 3rd, 2009

______________

12th POC in SF & F Carnival. Now Live! @ Hathor Legacy

MIA?

Uhm, Bankeui? Where are you? What happened? Does anyone know?

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/

ETA: Been contacted. Far less 'OMG? Hack? Illness? What?' flaily.

Announcement / Thoughts

Ami of Ami's Rants of Doom, which was linked in my post Re: The Femiblosphere Better Put On Some Damn Pants - is going to post her rant in her public blog. I'll link it here and mention when she does and change the link on the post itself.

2nd Announcement.

Bellatrys' - The Intersectionality of Hate: Name Magic in the 21st Century. It's a long essay. It's a really long essay. And it's taken me a day to work up to reading it.

Bellatrys often has interesting things to say. But she doesn't blog; she doesn't write conversationally. She writes thesis papers. There's always a little of classical greek philosophy in her essays and more than a touch of history. There are essays to make you think about the world and the places in it where everyone stands and how we got to those places and who put us in those places. This last essay especially does so.

It's spawned a bit by Helix and William Sanders and a couple other names in the mess that keeps on revealing self-inflated bigots who won't listen and will likely never change. I found it very insightful, though I seriously had to put on my thinking cap to read it.

The most interesting part of her essay is about Name Magic, a concept most SF fans know; the power of one's true name gives an opponent power over you. However IRL, in 'meat space' so to speak, Bellatrys argues that in our day to day lives the true power is in not using the real and proper name. That in fact the institutionalized power hierarchy is set up so that individuals who want to belittle or silence you or make you not exist will constantly not use your correct name, bitch about using said correct name, bitch further about having to call you by a group name you specify (ie; blacks, African Americans, African Europeans, Asian Canadians, of Polish Descent), etc...

I hadn't really thought about that before but it pinged to me of my mother being insistent that in America I never let anyone give me any sort of nickname, that my birth name was important and shouldn't ever be set aside. I was pouty and furious because nicknames seemed to be an inclusive thing and not using one seemed to be voluntarily labeling myself an outsider. But now I see that as an adult my mother had far more experience with how teachers and others could have tried to erase me by giving me some diminutive little name, as if I were a pet - or a slave.

There's so much respect involved in naming. We don't call our parents by their first names, in general, and if we do it's not until we're adults ourselves. Mr and Mrs are titles of respect. There was a big deal back in the day about Ms vs Miss and what that said about the speaker and the named. There's the fact that for years white children were expected to call white adults Mr and Mrs, but encouraged to call black adults by their first names or by terms like 'boy'.

Bellatrys even touches on language as a living thing that can be co-opted or twisted and how modern times are times filled with buzzwords and sound bytes that everyone's expected to understand but which actually are codewords or have meanings that are different depending on who started using them, who co-opted them, and who's listening and which meaning they know - the original or the co-opt.

Example:

"Women's Issues are about ALL WOMEN."

Sounds the same as it did at the first stirrings of the feminist movement and women fighting for equal rights and the vote. But along the way of said movement, the women of colour were left by the wayside, forgotten by history, shoved in a corner.

Are there women today who say "Women's Issues are about ALL WOMEN" and they actually mean all women? Sure. But the majority of people using that phrase are white women and the issues they're referencing are white women's issues and when someone really does start bringing up an issue that's more relevant to ALL women than one portion (small portion) of the women in the world - they get told to form their own damn movements and leave feminism to feminists.

Which, by the way I have done. Secular Womanism for me. Hurrah.

But naming and the power of names and the power grabbed by abusing names and not using names and the upset folk have at being called a racist vs having actual concern about BEING a racist - Bellatrys is right, I think. It is all name magic and it is a type of modern sorcery and chicanery that's used to hide hate.

Most potent to me was this bit here that she takes from Alice in Wonderland:

Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right --' he began.

'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.

'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right -- though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now -- and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents--'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.'

The added emphasis is mine, btw.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

Now, doesn't that sound familiar?