Post whatever you like, for as long as you like, with whomever you like. Self-linking is encouraged.

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Amazon readers review a gallon of milk.

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Some library patron objects to “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a children’s book which includes a same-sex marriage. Her librarian, Jamie, replies with unusual thoughtfulness and thoroughness.

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Punkass Blog argues being anti-war is feminist

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And if that’s your cup of tea, be sure to check out “Ode To Joy” (love the detail of the top-left Beaker being frightened of the lower-left Beaker’s drumming) and “The Blue Danube Waltz.”

And then, for geek heaven, watch the Star Wars episode of “The Muppet Show.”

The current ReadComics Podcast includes a two minute discussion of my comic book “Hereville,” which they liked (phew!). The “Hereville” talk begins at about 42:15. This is, as far as I know, the first time “Hereville” has been mentioned on a Podcast.

One host, Marty, bought a copy of “Hereville” with a sketch on the title page. I’m pretty sure this is the sketch he bought; I’m glad to hear he liked it. (You can see a whole bunch of title page sketched I’ve done here.)

One of the hosts, Florence, mentions that she read “Hereville” (as well as Castle Waiting and The Underburbs) as an antidote for her depression after reading a ton of Warren Ellis and Walking Dead comics, which really amused me.

I haven’t heard this podcast before, but I enjoyed it, largely because they discussed several comics that I’ve actually read and heard of, so this doesn’t make me feel quite as outdated as some other comics podcasts I’ve heard. To make sure that I did feel old, though, the hosts spent a while discussing if Frank Miller drew “Daredevil” and “The Dark Knight,” before concluding that he didn’t.

So, people, do you remember Larry Summers? Poor, poor Larry Summers, who was attacked mercilessly by those humorless feminists, just because he said women weren’t as good as men at math? He’s been held up by the gender essentialist set as a martyr to the cause of political correctness, convicted in what professional concern-troll William Saletan called a “pseudo-feminist show trial” for daring to give voice to the truth: that women are simply inferior to men when it comes to math. Though they do, I’m told, excel at baking.

This was all very horrible for poor Larry, except for the fact that he was absolutely, categorically wrong. As most of the feminist meanies already knew, women aren’t inferior to men in ability to learn math, science, or anything else. And now we have the data to prove it:

Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, “Math class is tough!” girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys.

In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.

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(SYTYCD spoiler under the cut.)

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My introductory posts always seem a bit awkward and forced. It’s easy to write a post decrying a little bit of horrible, or to write something pleasant and hopeful about news that’s pleasant and hopeful, or just write something snarky and random. But for some reason, I always feel kind of foolish when I try to introduce myself in a new forum. And so I apologize in advance for the forced, awkward nature of this post, but it was never going to be otherwise, and perhaps it’s best I just accept that.

At any rate, hello. My name is Jeff Fecke. If that name sounds familiar, you probably tripped across something I wrote while I was posting over at Shakesville, or perhaps you have accidentally come across my “home” blog, Blog of the Moderate Left. I’ve been blogging since just after the 2002 mid-term elections, and given that I seem unable to give up the habit, I’ll probably be blogging for years to come; I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, but it’s almost ceratinly true. Read the rest of this entry »

The Bechdel test asks if a movie (or play, in this case) has 1) at least two female characters, with names, who 2) speak to each other about 3) something other than a man.

From The Mind of Genevieve:

In Stephen Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music, Fredrika and Madame  Armfeldt are frequently talking between themselves.  Their main topic is Fredrika’s mother, Desiree, though there’s other stuff as well.  There’s also a conversation between Petra and Anne which touches on sex and theoretical men, but no concrete men.  It’s much more about their owns sexualities.  And in Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town, sisters Ruth and Eileen are constantly talking about jobs, food, life…it’s their story.  And I love finding plays, and particularly musicals, which pass so well.  It’s often a crapshoot.  Wicked, for example, passes with flying colors (Elphaba, Galinda, Nessarose, Madame Morrible…yeah).  Avenue Q passes by the skin of its teeth (one tiny conversation between Mrs. Thistletwat and Kate allows it, but I still love it anyway).  I don’t know how well the stage version of Rent does; the film passes only due to the song ‘Take Me Or Leave Me.’  The Producers does not pass.  Spamalot does not pass.  I believe Aida, Mamma Mia, Gypsy, and Chicago all pass by some degree, but I’d have to revisit them all to be sure.

I’m positive that Gypsy passes, and so does Chicago.

Since I’m a Sondheim fanatic, this made me think of how other Sondheim musicals fare:

Assassins: Passes (the two female assassins have a conversation at one point. They talk about killing President Ford, of course, but also about other things.)

Sweeney Todd: Fails.

Into The Woods: Maybe the only Sondheim musical, other than A Little Night Music, to pass by a wide margin.¹ Cinderella and the Baker’s Wife talk about the Prince, but also a bit about other things, and Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella get a scene together in “No One Is Alone” that’s not about a man. Plus The Witch, Jack’s Mother and the Giant argue a bit. And in many productions, the Narrator is cast as a woman, which adds a couple more female/female conversations to the list.

But alas, most Sondheim musicals fail: Sweeny Todd,² Bounce, Sunday In The Park With George, Passion, and Merrily We Roll Along all fail the Bechdel test. And so does Company, I suspect — there are lots of female characters, but do they ever talk to each other about anything but Bobby? Ditto for Follies. (UPDATE: As folks point out in comments, I was wrong about Sunday – it passes.)

It’s not a Sondheim show, but for anyone looking for a cutting-edge, smart musical that passes the Bechdel Test by a mile, I’d recommend picking up the cast recording for Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite. (This is one of those cast recordings that you can listen to and follow the story very well, even without having seen the musical.)

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In the same post, Genevieve also writes:

Now, for a pet peeve of mine when I’m seeing plays…particularly those set between 1920 and 1960 or so? (This isn’t specific to this festival; I’ve seen this at local theaters, on Broadway, and at my high school.) The ‘bimbo accent.’ If there is ever a character in one of these plays who’s supposed to be a lower-class woman of ‘low morals’ (and possibly small brain capacity), the actress will adopt a high-pitched, nasal, giggly voice which sounds totally unnatural.[...]

The voice itself annoys me, the redundancy of it moreso, but what is it saying? That women who have (premarital, ‘promiscuous’) sex are lesser. That we’re dumb and can be taken advantage of, easily. Because these characters aren’t going to turn out to be geniuses. They’ll sometimes end the story married and in love, but the audience knows the man is with them for their body, not their brain or personality, and not a combination of the three either.

She’s right — this is an overused cliche that should be allowed to die. But having said that, I have to admit, I still love Lesley Ann Warren’s performance in Victor Victoria, and Jennifer Tilly’s sublimely over-the-top moll in Bullets Over Broadway.

1. There’s also Gypsy, but since Sondheim just wrote the lyrics to that, not the music, it’s often not considered a “Sondheim musical.” (back)
2. I don’t think Lovett throwing the Beggar Woman out of her shop really counts as the two characters talking. But props for the part of Mrs. Lovett, arguably the best female lead in any musical. (back)

And that’s not even the oddest thing about the town. From the official Baarle-Hertog website:

It is unequivocally the most remarkable village in the world: 30 bits of Belgium and the Netherlands, interwoven with each other, together form this two country puzzle. Some kilometres north of the official state border between Belgium and the Netherlands, the Belgian municipality Baarle-Hertog nests itself as 22 loose puzzle pieces in the Dutch municipality Baarle-Nassau. The latter has on its turn 8 such puzzle pieces in Belgium, of which 7 in the Belgian puzzle pieces.

These puzzle pieces are called enclaves. All together, both Baarles are constituted of 30 enclaves: 22 Belgian enclaves, 1 Dutch enclave and 7 Dutch sub-enclaves. [...]

In medieval Europe, feudalism as the predecessor of the nation-states, was an all-round system of land exchange and granting, in exchange for protection or lordship. However, land owners always kept those lands to themselves from which they could raise tax money or other earnings. Due to this feudal system, territories became split up in a patchwork of parcels that belonged to different owners (dukes, counts, landlords, …).

In Baarle at that time, things were not different: parts of the territory were owned by the Dukes (“Hertog”) of Brabant (Baarle-Hertog) and others by the Lords of Breda and later the House of Nassau (Baarle-Nassau). After the Middle Ages however, the distinction between these various parcels remained unchanged throughout history.

Wikipedia adds that “The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.” The Financial Times (quoted at Bldgblog) reports that mothers select which room to give birth in according to what nationality they’d like their newborn to be. And in Bldgblog’s comments, a reader quotes from a “freely translated” Dutch news account:

The police found a body directly on the border in a old bank. Turned out to be a murdered woman. At first the belgium police was alerted, since the front of the building was in belgium. After closer inspection the part of the building the woman was found in, was on dutch soil.

I’d love to run an RPG set in a town like this. Curtsy: Kottke.org and Bldgblog.

Two more good posts critiquing Dr. Horrible from a feminist P.O.V.: one at The Hathor Legacy, and one at Rebecca Allen’s place. There’s a lot of good discussion going on in their comments, as well.

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Here’s a relevant quote, from an interview with Joss:

Q: I’ve been reading some criticism (insert audible gasp here!) of “Dr. Horrible” about the lack of a strong, empowered female lead. They claim that Penny is merely a prop for Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer to fight over.

What are your thoughts on that?

Joss Whedon: [...] Yeah, Penny is not the feminist icon of our age. And yes, she does exist in the narrative as part of Doc’s fate — but everyone in the story is there to move the story. Is she less real than Hammer? (Is ANYTHING?) We gave her a cause so she wouldn’t JUST be the Pretty Girl but the fact is, neither Doc nor Hammer gives her the attention she deserves — Doc’s crush comes before he has the slightest idea what she cares about. Which is not uncommon. It reminds me of “Sweeney Todd,” the Judge and Sweeney singing “Pretty Women” — a beautiful duet with no insight whatsoever. Just images.

But we shoulda gave her more jokes.

Joss is right that Penny needed more jokes. Dr. Horrible’s mocks the cliches of supervillains, and the cliches of superheros — but there are practically no jokes about the cliches of the Polly Pureheart girlfriend. It ends up feeling as if the video sees that the supervillain/superhero roles need to be questioned critically (by which I mean, “pointed at and mocked”), but takes the Polly Pureheart cliche seriously.

In a story that’s all about the funny, Penny never gets to be funny. I don’t think the feminist audience necessarily wanted to see Penny kick ass, or to live happily ever after, or not to make stupid choices about men (like sleeping with Captain Hammer). I myself would have been happy if her character was as funny as the other two leads. (And the normal-human, straight man role can be made funny; think of how hilarious Jane Curtin was on Third Rock From The Sun).

Joss is right, of course, that all characters are there just to serve the story. And given this story, it would have been hard to make Penny as rich¹ a character as Dr. Horrible or Captain Hammer. So yeah, to avoid making Penny a sort of boring would have required a bit of above-average writing. But there’s nothing wrong with the audience expecting and wanting above-average writing.

(By the way, Felicia Day is completely capable of being funny — check out the internet sitcom The Guild, which Day writes and stars in, if you haven’t already).

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Finally, the official online comic book, which was written by Joss’ brother Zack, and beautifully drawn by Eric Canete. It’s got a “funny” prison rape joke — Captain Hammer warns readers not to be criminals, or else you’ll “go to prison… with this guy” (illustration shows freakishly huge, muscular prisoner, telling his much smaller cellmate “you have good bone structure.”).

A few points:

1) People might be tempted to defend the rape joke on the grounds that it’s told by Captain Hammer, and that’s just the sort of boorish humor we expect from CH. That’s true, but in the video the humor in all of CH’s comments is that CH is a total ass and saying utterly appalling, awful things. In the comic book, it comes across as the comic book telling a generic prison rape joke, rather than making fun of the person telling the joke.

(Compare this to the prison rape joke Faith makes early in the Buffy episode “Who Are You?,” in which the joke is played as unfunny and appalling.)

If the intent was to make fun of how boorish Captain Hammer is, then the script failed to get the point across.

2) As Liss says, “the jokes normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape and thusly perpetuate the rape culture.” Why would anyone want to contribute to that? Similarly, from the SAFER blog:

You know why we can’t make fun of rape? Because doing so trivializes the pain inflicted by rape, and that contributes to a general cultural attitude of not taking rape seriously or holding perpetrators accountable. That type of culture makes rape more common.

3) Even if you don’t give a shit about all that, why would any writer who’s not a hack tell a prison rape joke? I can’t imagine a duller, more played-out cliche.

1. Note that rich doesn’t mean “realistic” or “deep,” which none of these characters were! (back)

This is one of my favorite pages.

Have you heard of Fat Princess? It’s a new video game,¹ which Feminist Gamers ² describes as “a TF2-like³ capture-the-flag game where the point is to feed your princess enough cake so that she grows really fat so that the opposing team can’t carry her back to their castle.” Apparently the game mechanics are well-designed and innovative.

Liss at Shakes is pissed. (Curtsy my friend Bill, who despite being fat himself is pissed that Liss is pissed.)

As I said in Bill’s comments, I guess I should be pissed by Fat Princess, but honestly I have a hard time giving a shit; it’s just people trying to be immature and offensive, because that kind of thing is funny. (And it is.)⁴

These kind of fat jokes are rebellion for the gutless — offensive enough so that people can pretend to be daring, but not so offensive that they’re risking pissing off anyone who matters. Fat jokes today are what Polish jokes were in the 1970s.

Fatophobic crap like “Fat Princess” is more effect than cause; it’s a reflection of an anti-fat culture, and when the culture changes then the sheep who made “Fat Princess” will move on to some other target.

UPDATE: Excellent post at Feministe, by a game designer.

1. By the way, I’ve got no patience for the people who say “c’mon, it’s just a game.” So if that’s all you’ve got to contribute, then take your anti-intellectual cliches elsewhere, please. (back)
2. In the thread at Feminist Gamers, I thought the folks discussing creating a game called “Arm the Princess” were on to something, but it would be better if instead of the Princess just fighting to repel invaders, she was fighting to kill off her parents and rule the land herself (that’ll teach them to try and marry her off). And why is the princess in “Arm the Princess” so thin? Make her fat, please! (back)
3. For the record, I have no idea what TF2 is. (back)
4. Years ago, someone — I think it may have been bell hooks — pointed out how ridiculous it is that people argue about “is ____ offensive or funny,” as if these are mutually exclusive categories. (back)

This is the second poll I’ve seen recently showing that California voters may not want to amend their constitution to keep marriage bigoted. If this remains true in November, then we’ll have two states in which same-sex marriage is legally recognized.¹ That’ll be two states in which lesbians and gays married and the sky didn’t fall.

I wonder which state will be next? New Jersey? Connecticut?

Quote from the article under the fold.

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1. Two and a half, if you include New York. (back)

Mandolin’s poem “The Oracle on River Street” has won third place in this year’s Rhysling Awards, for the category “short poem”! Congratulations, Mandolin! Yay!

Ta-Nehisi discusses why race matters when people address Blacks as “nigger”:

I never thought that because Toby Keith made a record called White Trash With Money, that somehow gave me the right to address random white people in the fashion. I never thought the fact that there was a magazine called Heeb gave me the right to address my Jewish buddies as such. More to the point–I never wanted to. So this is what I don’t understand–What’s the big beef? Why is that in “Blackworld” the normal laws of human interaction somehow don’t apply? I don’t get white people who have a hard time with this–you call your mother “Mom,” I call her Ms. Phillips–same deal here. Nigger means one thing when used amongst a group of people with similar experiences, and something else when used by people outside of that experience.

In a follow-up, Ta-Nihisi quotes one of Megan’s comment-writers:

The only reason the word “nigger” is such a taboo — and yet is used freely among blacks — is because keeping it a whites-only taboo is a way for blacks to intimidate and dominate whites.

All this reminds me of this cartoon of mine, from years ago:

(Larger version of cartoon here.)

When I say there are spoilers, I mean it. Go and watch Dr Horrible before you read this post.

I’m still very unsure how to read Dr Horrible’s Singalong blog, and the thread at Feministe reveals that there are many ways understanding Dr Horrible’s story.

As an origin story I appreciate it; I’d even say it was well done. Not just that there was a lot of the funny clever stuff that I’d expect (the appearance of Bad Horse was pure genius), but showing villains as having origin stories as well as heroes is a cool way of undercutting many of the tropes of an origin story.

I can also appreciate a straight political reading of the story (which is encouraged within the storyas both Penny and Dr Horrible directly discuss how to create change). I don’t really mind that the wet liberal who gets sucked in by those in power dies (although not necessarily realistic, as a metaphor it shows the likelihood of that strategy working). I also don’t disagree that nihilist, individualists often put their ego before the change they are trying to create and do harm without doing any good. But I don’t think any of that says anything particularly substantial, without an alternative (The Chain, Chosen, Graduation, Anne, Prophecy Girl, Jaynestown - Joss does know the alternative).

One of the big questions for me is the depiction of Penny, as the only substantial female character (and it didn’t pass the Bechedel test). I actually dislike the ‘Joss writes strong female characters’ idea, because it is so often referring solely to the female characters who are capable of beating someone up. As someone who was always more interested in Willow than Buffy and Kaylee than River, I appreciate his ability to write interesting female characters, more than his tendency to write so-called ’strong’ ones. The idea that the most important female characters to depict are those that can beat up the men who are trying to abuse them, comes perilously close to victim blaming. It’s very satisfying to watch Buffy killing Angel at the end of Becoming II, but the death of the robot at the end of I Was Made to Love You, is just as true statement about relationships.

So I have no problem with Penny dying, because women do die when men fight over them (this is from the New Zealand news media today, it’s being called a ‘crime of passion’). I don’t even really have a problem that she is so one dimensional, as we see her through Dr Horrible’s eyes, and it is clear that she is just an object to him.

The one thing I did object to was the shot of her in the laundromat with frozen yoghurt, presumably waiting for Billy. The idea is that Billy could have got what he wanted if only he was prepared to treat Penny like a person. If he’d talked with her, rather than built a freeze ray, she would have returned his affections. I really dislike that aspect of these sorts of geek stories, because sometimes people don’t love you back. As written it plays into Billy’s entitlement over Penny.

I do think that Penny’s death and Dr Horrible becoming actually evil was the only way the story could end, and I can see the importance of it as a story. To take us in through the eyes of a low-rent villain, and have us believe him that he’s actually the hero, until he’s not.

But ultimately, it’s not a story that interests me that much. A death ray may be a substitute for a rocket-launcher, but this story didn’t have any emotional resonance. The only person whose path was real enough to resonate was Dr Horrible. His loneliness in the last shot, and even the hollowness of getting have truth in them, but for me that is undercut because Dr Horrible’s feelings for Penny didn’t resonate, and must be, on some level, creepy.

Even more fundamentally, I come back to Grace Paley - because this story was lacking both blood and money. Now Joss has always been kind of shaky on the material reality of his stories (which was what made Firefly so strong), but he’s always written about family - actual and created. Without blood there is not heart to his story.