Oh, good.
Because the problem with purebred dogs is that they're not inbred enough, let's start thinking in terms of "endangered" breeds that should be rescued by breeding lots and lots of dogs from just four ancestors.
I'm a serious dog people, as those who know me will attest. But breed-fetishization holds no appeal for me. We've been mixing dogs' genes for thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of years, to meet our needs and desires at the time. There's nothing sacred about the sub-speciation that happened to be in effect when the Kennel Clubs came into existence. The otterhounds are cute, sure. But if we've inbred the otterhound to the point of epilepsy, and we no longer need dogs to hunt otters, why on earth should we go on inbreeding them and trying to create demand for them where none exists, instead of reshuffling the genetic cards and getting some healthier mutts and, eventually, new breeds? The need to have dogs available as props for historical reenactors and cosplayers doesn't really strike me as compelling. If there are enough of the cosplayers to sustain demand, that's fine, but if there aren't, I don't think the extinction of the breed would be an object of great concern. (The life of each individual dog is an object of concern, but not the fate of the breed.) Dogs' genetic differentiation and specialization is a human creation for human needs; the otterhound- polar bear analogy doesn't hold. And we will, happily, go on having, and making, lots of different kinds of dogs for the foreseeable future.
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Blogging on jet lag and 2 hrs sleep in the last 2 days
You know, it's remarkable how entertaining and enjoyable and rewatchable I find Shrek, given that its moral is "It doesn't matter whether you're beautiful or ugly; all that matters is that you're not short."
By contrast, no matter how much fun I found watching Legally Blonde once in my life, I'll never watch it again. Its moral that "people who are beautiful and rich and popular but don't work very hard on their studies have it unfairly tough, until such time as the rest of us realize that their beauty entitles them to academic success" is too execrable to put up with twice.
You know, it's remarkable how entertaining and enjoyable and rewatchable I find Shrek, given that its moral is "It doesn't matter whether you're beautiful or ugly; all that matters is that you're not short."
By contrast, no matter how much fun I found watching Legally Blonde once in my life, I'll never watch it again. Its moral that "people who are beautiful and rich and popular but don't work very hard on their studies have it unfairly tough, until such time as the rest of us realize that their beauty entitles them to academic success" is too execrable to put up with twice.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Elsewhere
Via M. LeBlanc, the Bechdel Rule, from Alison Bechdel, the creator of Fun Home.
I'd never heard this articulated in this way before, but LeBlanc is right-- it gets at something important, and remarkably few mainstream movies satisfy it. I can't offhand think of any recent genre film besides "Stardust" that qualifies-- not even any of the X-Men movies, even though they had a number of women and weren't romance-focused. (Most conversations in those movies were with Wolverine, Magneto, or to a lesser extent Xavier, weren't they?) I guess the Next Generation Star Trek movies probably did, since Beverly and Deanna had an established friendship, but I can't think of the scenes offhand. If little girls count, then "The Golden Compass" and the Narnia films qualify.
I'm not going to use the Bechdel rule as a way to judge whether to go to a movie, but I do find it (and LeBlanc's discussion of it) immediately helpful as a way to think about what's often missing from movies.
Via M. LeBlanc, the Bechdel Rule, from Alison Bechdel, the creator of Fun Home.
The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.
I'd never heard this articulated in this way before, but LeBlanc is right-- it gets at something important, and remarkably few mainstream movies satisfy it. I can't offhand think of any recent genre film besides "Stardust" that qualifies-- not even any of the X-Men movies, even though they had a number of women and weren't romance-focused. (Most conversations in those movies were with Wolverine, Magneto, or to a lesser extent Xavier, weren't they?) I guess the Next Generation Star Trek movies probably did, since Beverly and Deanna had an established friendship, but I can't think of the scenes offhand. If little girls count, then "The Golden Compass" and the Narnia films qualify.
I'm not going to use the Bechdel rule as a way to judge whether to go to a movie, but I do find it (and LeBlanc's discussion of it) immediately helpful as a way to think about what's often missing from movies.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Mac users...
can now force themselves to be free, or bind themselves to the mast with a timed release from their restraints-- chooseyour preferred traditional imagery. Hat tip: aufheben.
can now force themselves to be free, or bind themselves to the mast with a timed release from their restraints-- chooseyour preferred traditional imagery. Hat tip: aufheben.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Race, privilege, and humor
On the one hand, there's something kind of precious (in the bad way) about the self-conscious, self-congratulatory way that members of a privileged group can enjoy humor at their own expense: think Eddie Murphy's "White Like Me," or Martin Mull's book- and video-series "A History of White People in America Today, or the newcomer to the genre, the "Stuff White People Like" blog. Being able to chuckle at that kind of thing seems to show some self-awareness about one's privileged position ("it sure is telling how much comedy value there is in racializing whiteness!") but it also confirms it.
On the other hand, well, all three of those examples are pretty funny; and it's probably better to have that bit of self-consciousness about privilege than not to have it, right? And, after all, the #1 thing the blog says white people like is hardly something I can argue about.
(It's not quite clear to me whether "Stuff White People Like" was ever really being written primarily for an Asian audience's amusement, but by now, I think it's pretty clearly being written to prompt self-bemusement from a white audience.)
Compare also: any humor for a mostly-straight audience about straight men's poor fashion sense and inability to dance (Queer Eye undoubtedly counts), or for that matter any humor for a mostly-white audience about white people's inability to dance. For that matter, I kind of think that the classic sitcom bumbling paterfamilias is an example. Of course, the genre is old-- the class-inversion humor of the servant who's more clever than the master was a staple of the commedia dell'arte tradition as well as Shakespeare, and was meant in large part to amuse the masters who could afford to laugh at themselves.
Update: Ah. Not sure where I'd gotten the impression that SWPL's author was Asian-American, but he's not-- he's white. The site is self-conscious self-mockery a la Martin Mull.
On the one hand, there's something kind of precious (in the bad way) about the self-conscious, self-congratulatory way that members of a privileged group can enjoy humor at their own expense: think Eddie Murphy's "White Like Me," or Martin Mull's book- and video-series "A History of White People in America Today, or the newcomer to the genre, the "Stuff White People Like" blog. Being able to chuckle at that kind of thing seems to show some self-awareness about one's privileged position ("it sure is telling how much comedy value there is in racializing whiteness!") but it also confirms it.
On the other hand, well, all three of those examples are pretty funny; and it's probably better to have that bit of self-consciousness about privilege than not to have it, right? And, after all, the #1 thing the blog says white people like is hardly something I can argue about.
(It's not quite clear to me whether "Stuff White People Like" was ever really being written primarily for an Asian audience's amusement, but by now, I think it's pretty clearly being written to prompt self-bemusement from a white audience.)
Compare also: any humor for a mostly-straight audience about straight men's poor fashion sense and inability to dance (Queer Eye undoubtedly counts), or for that matter any humor for a mostly-white audience about white people's inability to dance. For that matter, I kind of think that the classic sitcom bumbling paterfamilias is an example. Of course, the genre is old-- the class-inversion humor of the servant who's more clever than the master was a staple of the commedia dell'arte tradition as well as Shakespeare, and was meant in large part to amuse the masters who could afford to laugh at themselves.
Update: Ah. Not sure where I'd gotten the impression that SWPL's author was Asian-American, but he's not-- he's white. The site is self-conscious self-mockery a la Martin Mull.
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