I’ve taken a long time to write about this because I wanted to make sure I had my thoughts on it sorted out. This article by Naomi Klein finally brought me around to the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) campaign against Israel. (Note: as you can probably tell, I’m very new to BDS, so this post is directed at other people who are new to it, too. I realize that many readers have been working on this for a long time.) This passage was what turned the lightbulb on for me:

Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work. (Emphasis hers.)

The problem, up until I read the article, was that most of the calls for boycotts I read were the dogmatic kind. Boycott Israeli academics! Boycott Israeli artists! Boycott non-Israeli Jewish business owners! Why? Because we hate them, that’s why! Because Zionism is racism! Even the ones that didn’t come off as dogmatic - or that made passing references to tactics - failed to address Jews’ concerns about anti-Semitism, and that turned me off to them. Was that irrational of me? Yeah, sometimes. But Jews have good reason to be wary.

I know, of course, that BDS will continue to attract anti-Semites, and I still fear that anti-Semitism will drown out pragmatism. I don’t know how to solve that problem - but we can address it by emphasizing, as Klein does, that it’s a tactic, not a dogma. We’re doing it because it works. We’re doing it out of love (for Israelis, too!). And, as Klein says, we’re targeting “the Israeli economy but not Israelis.” Strategy, not punishment.

Do check out the whole article - she responded very effectively to almost every concern that I had.

The Global BDS Movement’s website is here.

Thoughts? (When you comment, please remember that this is a very sensitive and complicated subject. Rude or hostile comments will be deleted.)

(Cross-posted at Alas, A Blog.)

Here’s an email I just sent to the ISP that hosts “Alas, a Blog.” This is regarding the cartoonist Donna Barstow, who work has been criticized on “Alas” here and here. Donna sent an email to the ISP, which the ISP forwarded to me.

Part of Donna’s complaint is that two of her cartoons have been reproduced on “Alas” (which I think is fair use). However, it’s clear that her complaints relate to the entire posts, not just the copyrighted cartoons. For example, she complains about the charge of racism, calling it “defamation.” She also quoted some other ISP’s policy against “Threats & Harassment,” which I think is misplaced, since criticizing her work is not a threat nor harassment.

The email I sent the ISP:

Dear Ben,

Thanks for forwarding Donna Barstow’s email to me.

I believe I have a first amendment right to criticize Ms. Barstow’s cartoons, including reproducing a cartoon of hers under the “fair use” provisions of copyright law.

However, I hope it will help your situation that neither cartoon she refers to is currently hosted on your server. They are both “hotlinked” from the blog but hosted on another web server. So you can honestly tell Ms. Barstow that neither of her cartoons are on your servers, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with your ISP. I hope that will convince her to stop bothering you.

It is my understanding that political criticism of published, publicly available cartoons falls squarely under the “fair use” standard, and that I’m well within my rights to show my readers a political cartoon in order to critique its politics. As a professional political cartoonist myself, I’ve had the same thing happen to me countless times. Donna Barstow is attempting to use bullying and legal threats to shut down legitimate, legal criticism of her publicly displayed political cartoons.

I really hope you’re not going to give in to something like this. It’s a real threat to freedom of speech if ISPs are willing to remove political criticism removed from blogs if the person being criticized sends a strongly worded email.

I am certainly willing to discuss this further with you. Please email me if you have any further questions or concerns.

Best wishes,

Barry Deutsch

Related.

This is a guest post by Nezua, cross-posted from The Unapologetic Mexican.)

OVER AND OVER we hear about The Hispanic Vote™ and The Latino/a Vote® and it is a real thing we are talking about in all of this. Our people—nuestra gente—have long been a force in this land, be it under the golden sun harvesting the corn that has for thousands of years fed our antepasados (ancestors) or away from the sun and working hard in US places of business or doing so much to build strong familias together, as las mujeres—the women—among us are known for historically. We are a beautiful and long enduring people, and responsible for so much creation here that sustains us today: Art, Literature, Food, Clothing, Song.

And yet, our voices have yet to be utilized and enjoined in a way that can efficiently organize around the issues that affect our communities. Don’t mistake what I say: the Latina/o (or “Hispanic”) community is famous for its ability to organize on the local level, and we are proud of this. And that is why it is time to continue to tie this ability and history together and bring it to an even higher level.

It’s true that while so much joins us, we do come from many different backgrounds and hold varying views on the issues that affect us. We will not always agree, nor should we. What we can agree on, though, is that we should have a way to centralize and engage the politics that affect us on so many levels.

I am involved in launching a site called presente.org that is determined to achieve this very goal. Please stop over and check it out. If what I have written above interests you, please sign up.

Hasta luego!

• One note: On my own blog I do tend to speak more to Mexican@s and Latin Americans, because that’s the point at my place. But Presente.org has a much wider focus as “Latinos” and “Hispanics” can come from a wide range of origins. As far as some of my words above, not all of us have come from farming families, or the hot climates! Though many traditions and struggles do overlap. I just wanted to make clear that while I am involved in the organizing of this effort, there is a variance between my readership and presente.org’s intended audience.

Read the rest of this entry »

Is it me, or is Our Michele suddenly everywhere? And can we get her to not be?

Taking it in reverse order, earlier today she launched into a hateful anti-gay diatribe, which, while overshadowed by Rep. Virginia Foxx’s lies, still managed to draw the tired comparison between homosexuality and pedophilia.

That statement came a day after Bachmann noted how interesting it was that the last swine flu outbreak came during the Carter Administration, which was a) not interesting and b) not factually correct, since the outbreak started during the Ford Administration.

But really, nothing could top This grand history lesson:

Yes, that’s Michele Bachmann talking about how Franklin Roosevelt signed the Hoot-Smalley act, which destroyed our nations and gave the Russians our precious bodily fluids. Of course, the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs were signed into law by Herbert Hoover, but as noted with regard to swine flu, the Gentlelady from Stillwater isn’t so clear on when things happened.

Incidentally, then-Sen. Reed Smoot, R-Utah, the co-author of the bill, also was a great opponent of pornography. This predilection inspired Ogden Nash to write one of my favorite poems, which is included below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re still at it!

Image description: Protesters in orange T-shirts reading "PJA" picket outside of a carwash.

This Sunday, May 3rd, the CLEAN Carwash Campaign and Progressive Jewish Alliance will be picketing the Vermont Hand Wash at 1666 N. Vermont Avenue from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Although no carwash in Los Angeles can be described as “good,” the owners of the Vermont Hand Wash in Los Feliz are among the worst in the industry. By protesting the Vermont Hand Wash, we hope to send a message to other carwashes throughout the city. For more information, visit cleancarwashla.org.

Please repost or link to this message on your blog, or forward this to any Los Angeles residents you might know.

Also, please leave a comment if you or someone you know plans to attend. Thanks!

Racist cartoonist Donna Barstow, who is here seen being responsible for racist cartooning on the subject of swine flu, has unsurprisingly dabbled in racist cartoons before.

In the following cartoon, she shows herself as unsavvy about race politics affecting African Americans as she is about race politics affecting the relationship between the United States and Mexico:

As we all know, the only real, good hair is the hair possessed by white people — smooth, silky, shiny, straight, lushly falling whitey white hair. Hair possessed by black people is funny. It’s not like hair at all. It’s like plant growth!

Of course, it’s been well-documented by many bloggers of color that the politics of hair are used to suggest that black people cannot maintain a decent or professional appearance if they wear natural hair, that their hair is something abnormal that needs fixing, and that their appearance is deviant in comparison with the white default. Black people are sometimes charged more for styling their abnormal, so-not-white hair. Kinky, nappy hair is ugly and insulting. And of course, black-looking hair is “bad hair” and white-looking hair is “good hair.”

But I’m sure the observation that our first African American president “looks like a Chia pet” is totally race-neutral, and nothing to do with making fun of him for looking so blatantly non-white, just like all those other totally non-racist visual dog whistles.

From an Associated Press story, reporting on the widespread objections among mom-bloggers to the “new Dora” doll planned for October:

Mattel and Nickelodeon both say there are two major misconceptions about the new Dora, which is not replacing the “Dora the Explorer” cartoon, but will be a new interactive doll aimed at the five-to eight-year-old, or tween market.

“People care so deeply about this brand and this character,” Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products, says. “The Dora that we all know and love is not going away.”

“I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this,” Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. “Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don’t understand. . . . I think they’re going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn’t what they are conjuring up.”

Part of the confusion stemmed from the silhouette that was released, which made Dora look more like a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than a young girl. For the record, the doll does not wear a short dress, but a tunic and leggings. And while she looks older (she’s supposed to be about 10), with longer jewelry and longer hair, she doesn’t have makeup and seems pretty much like a 10-year-old girl.

Nickelodeon and Mattel say that as part of unrelated research, they found parents wanted a way to keep Dora in their children’s lives and have their daughters move on to a toy that was age appropriate.

“The idea is Dora for more girls,” Brodsky says. “The whole point was this was created because moms said help us.”

Oh, those silly, silly moms! When will they realize that Nickelodeon and Mattel only want to help?

But then again… compare and contrast:

(Also, it looks to me like maybe the image on the left is wearing a dress, which cuts off at knee-level, as opposed to the tunic on the right which cuts off much higher and is worn with leggings. Silhouette found here and here.)

Confusingly, there’s another silhouette illustration of the New Dora I’ve seen, which is just the non-silhouette illustration with the details blacked out. As far as I can tell, Mattel released two different teaser silhouette drawings, but I’m not sure of the timing.

Honestly, assuming the newer illustration reflects what the doll will look like, things could be much worse. The original Dora will still be on TV. Dora’s new outfit is funky and fashionable, without being overly sexualized as the Bratz outfits are. And I’m always happy to see a mainstream doll that’s not white. There’s still a ton wrong, but there are way worse dolls on the market.

But still — the original Dora was ever so much cooler.

More blogging about “New Dora”:

Womanist Musings: Dora The Explorer Matters To Boys
Sociological Images: Seeing Is Believing
Viva La Feminista: Why Mattel and Nick Have It Wrong (Highly recommended. Check out her Dora tag as well, for more Dora-themed posts.)
The Hand Mirror: Dora’s new silhouette announced
Embrace Your Age: Keep Dora Exploring!
The Mommy Files: Dora The New Sexy Explorer
Feministing: The New Dora
Shakesville: Sooo

Finally, let me link to my own post from 2007, to make the point that this isn’t the first time Dora’s owners have thought “boy, if we could only sell a thinner, more girly Dora doll, we’d make a killing!”

Too busy for analysis right now, but submitting this for your consideration. I think most of us have noticed how right-wing pundits are using racist fearmongering tactics to blame the swine flu on illegals from Mexico — even to the point of referring to it as the “Mexican flu.” The fact that the carriers were actually a bunch of prep-school kids from Queens who went to Cancun for Spring Break seems to have been lost on them. Anyway, the Guardian notes another possible source:

Early today the US owner of an industrial pig production facility around 12 miles from La Gloria said it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of swine flu in its herd or Mexican employees. The world’s biggest pig meat producer, Virginia-based Smithfield, said it is co-operating with the Mexican authorities’ attempts to locate the possible source of the outbreak and will submit samples from its herds at its Granjas Carroll subsidiary to the University of Mexico for tests.

…

Smithfield, which is led by pork baron Joseph W Luter III, has previously been fined for environmental damage in the US. In October 2000 the supreme court upheld a $12.6m (£8.6m) fine levied by the US environmental protection agency which found that the company had violated its pollution permits in the Pagan River in Virginia which runs towards Chesapeake Bay. The company faced accusations that faecal and other bodily waste from slaughtered pigs had been dumped directly into the river since the 1970s .

The outbreak of respiratory illness in the area of the Granjas Carroll plant was first detected at the beginning of this month by Veratect, a company based in Washington state which monitors the spread of disease and pandemics around the world for corporate clients.

If this is confirmed, what will the Repundits call it then? “Colonialism Cough”? “Greedy Gringo Fever”?

1. LGBT murders in Brazil up 55 percent. Trans people and sex workers have been particularly targeted: “‘A transvestite is 259 times more likely to be murdered than a gay man,’ says the study which is based on media reports, since there are no official statistics on hate crimes in Brazil.” I’d assume a study based on media reports is understating the true extent of the problem, since not every murder is reported.
2. Meowser’s post on airlines charging fat people extra is the best I’ve read on the subject. Go read this is you have any interest in the issue at all. She also brings up a factor that I haven’t seen any news reports mention: this is an issue in part because the airlines have been making the seats narrower and narrower in recent years.
3. Slut-Shaming From Sextexting Leads To Teen Suicide. So horrible. And as Renee says, “This is not about sextexting, this is about gender based harassment and slut shaming.”
4. Define Rich! “We have lost our definition of rich and I believe it was done intentionally. If you are rich, then what better camouflage is there than to undefine “rich”? And, what better way to undefine “rich” than to have an argument accepted that “rich” can not really be defined?”
5. Malcolm Gladwell, “Black Like Them.” “The success of West Indians is not proof that discrimination against American blacks does not exist. Rather, it is the means by which discrimination against American blacks is given one last, vicious twist: I am not so shallow as to despise you for the color of your skin, because I have found people your color that I like. Now I can despise you for who you are.” Via Ta-Nahisi.
6. It’s too cute, my brain may just explode.

Dear Washington Post blogger,

A photograph is not a caricature, so please don’t put it in a “what’s the best caricature?” poll, okay? Because the fact that a plurality of readers of a blog about cartooning, voted for the photo as the best caricature, is just embarrassing.

Via: Kevin Moore and Matt Bors, both of whom recreate John Sherffius’ feat of caricature in about five minutes.

ETA: Just to be clear, I’m not anti- using photos. I use photos all the time. But it’s not caricature.

Digby:

When asked on CNN about whether or not the Republicans regret taking out the pandemic money in the stimulus, Michael Steele said “we didn’t know there was going to be a flu pandemic! You can’t make that link!”

Dan Nadel’s post “Dave Stevens and Nostalgia” is very interesting, although “Alas” readers hoping for a feminist critique of Stevens will be disappointed. (And really, what would there be to say that wasn’t incredibly obvious? There was nothing layered or subtle about Stevens’ objectification of women, so it just comes down to how bad you think objectification is.)

Stevens was a much-celebrated comic book artist best known for his retro-style drawings of pin-up women, and for creating “The Rocketeer.” I always assumed that Stevens never wanted to do anything but pretty-but-shallow retro drawings, but apparently he was unhappy with the limits of his work, but never found the drive/visions/opportunity to do more.¹

There’s an interesting discussion of being someone drawing in a very retro (and time-intensive) pulp style decades after the time and market for it has evaporated:

Ironically, the guys that came after Wood and Kane and Toth, like Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Barry Smith, and Jeff Jones, followed them right down the manhole, dabbling in independent publishing but basically choosing to be pulp artists at a time when the pulps no longer existed. They chose to be willfully anachronistic. That helped make their work popular to a generation of guys who’d been children (if that) when the ECs came out and were now 20-something fanboys eager for more of the same, but, with the exception of Smith, who really brought a new kind of ferocity to his mark-making, it also severely limited the work. There was nowhere for it to go except for further wallowing in nostalgia – it would never transcend its nostalgic origins. The idea was to just make the best version of Arthur Rackham or Joseph Clement Coll as possible. There’s nothing wrong with that, really—it’s just rather limited.

It’s not that nostalgia is necessarily limited; Seth’s work is full of nostalgia, but it’s also some of the most vibrant, fresh cartooning out there. But Seth’s vision, while nostalgic, isn’t limited to the desire to recreate  great works he read as a kid.

Nadel says at one point that Stevens had “the all-important illusion of technical proficiency (here defined as a late 19th century notion that conveniently ignores 20th century art history).” That really intrigues me, and I hope he develops that thought more in a later post.

1. Self-indulgent comment: As a cartoonist currently deep into doing a light-hearted fantasy adventure graphic novel, but who thinks he can do more someday, I find that kind of a depressing thought. (back)

Yesterday coffeeandink pointed to this amazing Dollhouse vid set to the tune of “It Depends on What You Pay” from The Fantasticks. It’s so spot on I can’t even describe. Go watch, if you’re inclined, but be aware that it could be triggery. C&I mentioned in her post that the vid author warned that it could be, while whoever posted it at Whedonesque warned that it might be offensive. Lordy. I should not have looked at the comments over there because, well, it’s Whedonesque. And yet.

Lots of varying reactions, but one of the opinions I’m seeing over and over is that people who hate the show and hate the rape and are just haters do not understand the subtlety going on in it. That we need to have the idea that the Dollhouse people are bad overstated or spoon-fed to us, etc. And to that I say: bullshit.

The problem here is not that I don’t appreciate subtlety and I don’t need a show to explicitly point an arrow at a character and scream, “This person is BAD OMG, hate hiiimmm!” After all, I watch Doctor Who, a show about the subtlest subtle asshole who ever subtled through time. I also love Dexter, another show one of the commenters brought up. In the latter, the wrongness of the main characters actions is perhaps a bit more obvious (he’s a serial killer, can’t get much more wrong than that) and with the former there are differing opinions on whether the show’s opinion is that the Doctor is a jerk. In both cases I watch and enjoy because I trust that the show’s creators/writers know what they’re on about. The bottom line is: I don’t trust Joss Whedon.

I don’t accept his feminist cred as a given. I don’t accept his talent/genius as a given. And that colors all of my reactions to Dollhouse — both the premise and the actual episodes I’ve watched.

Perhaps this is wrong and unfair of me. But consider this: I started watching Dexter knowing nothing about the show creators or writers or about the author of the book the show is based on. I didn’t know their stance on serial killers except to assume that it was similar to mine: serial killers (really any killers) are bad. And watching that show, I never once find myself thinking that serial killing would be okay if Dexter did it. Or even that killing is okay because he kills people who are criminals. And yet, with every season, I love the show and the character more and more. I find it awesome the way the show gets me to identify with and root for him without ever making me feel like everything he does is okay. That’s part of it — it’s not okay. And yet I am complicit. Crunchy!

Dexter earned my trust based on the strength of the episodes and writing. Joss Whedon has not yet earned my trust. Therefore, I don’t read all the good intentions into Dollhouse as other fans do. Even without trusting him at the outset, Joss still could have earned my trust by the way the premise was handled. He didn’t, he hasn’t, and I refuse to give it to him just because he created Buffy and Angel and Firefly. I don’t owe him anything.

So again, it’s not about my lack of appreciation of the subtle. I get subtlety. I just don’t don’t believe the show is as nuanced as fans want it to be. I didn’t assume it would be super nuanced and complex from the beginning. Did you?

Auguste is right — this really might be the dumbest cartoon ever in the history of the entire universe. And this is not just the universe where Chris Muir lives, but the one Bruce Tinsley lives in, too!

I’m not sure what my favorite part of this little slice of wingnuttery is. I think it’s the implication that these are things unique to Mexico. I mean, it’s not like America lacks drug gangs, kidnappings, unemployment, poverty, or even swine flu. And I thought conservatives liked guns! I mean, it’s not like America is anti-gun. Indeed, most of the guns in Mexico are coming from the U.S.

I can only conclude that we’re also bad neighbors. And we’re still here, because…um…well, I don’t know really where either America or Mexico is supposed to go.

In other news, the wingnuts have started calling the flu outbreak in Mexico the “Mexican Flu,” because, you know, the wingnuts are a bunch of racist assholes.

[Postscript from Ampersand: The cartoon Jeff criticizes was written and drawn by Donna Barstow, whose work can be found on the web here and here.]

The anti-choice activists have completely dispensed with reality, and have gone on to just making stuff up:

The Obama administration’s actions to respond to the outbreak of swine flu, including its declaration of a public health emergency, smacks of an attempt to cover up this week’s Senate vote on the confirmation of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) as secretary of Health and Human Services, a prominent anti-abortion-rights activist told the Washington Independent.

“Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through,” Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright told the website’s Dave Weigel.

Okay, it’s tempting to think that’s just a bit of isolated wingnuttery from the CWA, but apparently it isn’t:

Look likes like the swine-flu-response-equals-cover-up-for-Sebelius meme is working quickly through the right wing. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins weighed in via an e-mail sent to supporters Monday. “[L]iberals are already scheming how they can use the health scare to win the confirmation of pro-abortion extremist Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kans.) as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” he writes

Just who are these liberals who confide the truth about their secret conspiracies to prominent national conservative leaders? Perkins leaves us hanging on that one.

That is surprising — when you’re that deep into tinfoil hat territory, it’s usually easiest just to start making more stuff up. I would blame George Soros, myself — he’s usually to blame.

At any rate, what the anti-choicers expect you to believe is that the United States only is concerned about a flu outbreak and possible epidemic in a country that sits on our southern border because it allows them to get Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan., into the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services approximately one week earlier than they otherwise could.

That’s a pretty lame conspiracy. Unless….

…Unless maybe, what they’re saying is that Barack HUSSEIN Obama secretly engineered the flu virus and started spreading it in Mexico, so that he could get Sebelius through to get mandatory, free, universal abortion going even sooner! Yes, it’s all so clear now. Wheels within wheels, man, wheels within wheels.

Use this thread to discuss whatever. Self-linking is as welcome as hot chocolate on a cold day.

* * *

Okay, the smarmy news guy is annoying (especially at the end, when he gets all Paul McCartney on us). But I nonetheless found this story irresistible.

Also: Advertising photography, circa 1962. Then as now, the most common strategy seems to be: show happy thin white people possessing product, “good life”.

Also: The trailer for Charlyne Yi’s Paper Hearts, a semi-not-really documentary is astonishingly cute-looking (much discussion of this in the comments there). Via.

Okay, there’s no need to panic, but the H1N1 outbreak in Mexico may well be cause for concern. But hopefully not too much of one:

So swine flu has come out of nowhere. It has unfortunately killed some people, and analysis shows it’s a brand-new virus with unknown potential to kill many more.

That doesn’t mean we can kiss civilization good-bye, or damn and blast the World Health Organization for not doing what we think it should. This strain of H1N1 is an interesting, and probably serious, new virus. The Mexicans seem to be doing the best they can, with limited resources and in a bad recession. We may end up thanking them for courageous decisions that cost them dearly.

But thanks or blame are both premature. We have only a handful of cases, and an even smaller number of deaths. In tracking H5N1, I’ve always thought: As long as we can count the dead, we’re OK. We can still count the dead, and mourn them.

We can also count the living, including eight kids in New York City. Every one of them is a promise that this may be less than a catastrophe…maybe even a wonderful anticlimax, where we all, around May 30, ask ourselves: “What were we so upset about?”

That’s the hope. And it’s important to keep things in perspective. So far, 81 people are dead, and roughly 1500 people are infected worldwide. Those numbers aren’t remotely close to pandemic levels. The fact that we’ve identified this outbreak this early gives us a chance to get it locked down and keep it from becoming a serious health concern. We hope.

Of course, because the outbreak started in Mexico, Michelle Malkin is sprinkling her bile into the discussion:

I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration. We’ve heard for years from reckless open-borders ideologues who continue to insist there’s nothing to worry about. And we’ve heard for years that calling any attention to the dangers of allowing untold numbers of people to pass across our borders and through our other ports of entry without proper medical screening — as required of every legal visitor/immigrant to this country — is RAAAACIST.

Sigh. As Crawford Kilian notes, “Cases outside Mexico have all been brought home by legitimate tourists who could afford travel to Mexico from places as remote as New Zealand and Israel.” This has absolutely nothing to do with immigration. I suppose we can quarantine Mexico completely — though frankly, the train’s out of the station here — but to what end?

It’s remarkably hateful that someone can look at what is, at best, a catastrophe that has killed dozens, and see only a tool to use against Mexican immigrants. There is a word for that kind of worldview, and yes, Michelle, it is racist, a word that describes you to a T.

As for those of us who view this public health crisis as a public health crisis, the smart things to do right now are the smart things to do all the time. Wash your hands, use a hand sanitizer, be conscious of illness and go to the doctor if you’re sick (unless, of course, you don’t have insurance — then feel free to spread it willy-nilly to everyone and their twin sister). And take a deep breath, because this probably is not the long-feared flu pandemic. Or so we hope.

Found this good report on Al Jazeera English.

When it comes to comedy, Bea Arthur could bring it. Her career is a testament to that; few actors can boast a career that spans one decade, let alone seven. The woman was a fantastic talent, and she’ll be missed.

And of course, who could forget…

Requiescat in pace.

Earlier this week, one of my radical writer friends alerted me to the existence of a little-known but award-winning Mexican sci-fi film called “Sleep Dealer”. So some of us went to see it this week — and I was blown away.

The story’s premise is simple. In the near future, the border between the US and Mexico is closed, fenced, and heavily armed. This doesn’t prevent US corporations from exploiting Mexican labor, however, as Mexico is now full of factories in which workers with cybernetic implants do “virtual labor” via a global network, connecting their minds to robots in faraway cities to do the same jobs in construction, nannying, orange picking, etc., that migrants and illegal immigrants used to do.

Memo (Luis Fernando Peña) is an idealistic young man who lives on a milpa with his tradition-loving father and family. The milpa is struggling, however, because a corporation has dammed up the river and now charges the local citizens for every gallon of water. Memo’s father, who once militantly resisted the dam and still hates it, settles now for trying to inculcate his values into his son. But Memo isn’t listening. He dreams instead of escaping his boring, simple life — so he hacks into the global network to hear of distant cities he will never be allowed to visit in person. Unfortunately, this earns him the attention of the US military, and they send armed drones to destroy his house and kill his father, whom they assume is an “aqua-terrorist”.

Memo is thus forced to travel to Tijuana to earn money for his family, where he moves into a slum and ekes out a living working in one of the factories. The locals have dubbed the factories “sleep dealers”, because the workers often grow so exhausted during their 12-hour shifts — using unsafe equipment that gradually blinds and occasionally fries them — that they collapse. Here, though, Memo meets Luz (Leonor Varela), a young woman trying to survive in the city too. Luz is a writer, and to earn money she sells her memories on the global net. Meanwhile both of them are being investigated by Rudy (Jacob Vargas), the Mexican-American soldier who cybernetically controlled the drones that killed Memo’s father. Rudy’s agenda is unclear as he first purchases Luz’s memories of Memo, then crosses the border into Mexico, looking for them.

This synopsis fails to capture just how powerful the film is, however. The messages about globalization and the exploitation of the poor are more subtly done than I’m describing here; that’s just the part that captured my attention the most. But it’s just done so beautifully. When Memo arrives in Tijuana, he needs to have cybernetic implants installed before he can work in the sleep dealers. So he seeks out a “coyotek” — the futuristic equivalent of today’s coyotes, who smuggle (and often prey on) would-be illegal immigrants. When Rudy crosses the border, he speaks with a robotic sentry being cyber-controlled by a customer service representative who speaks with a distinct Indian accent. Memo’s father is murdered on live TV, via a lurid “America’s Most Wanted”-like show (complete with John Walsh lookalike), the host gleefully glamorizes the military strike as “blowing the hell out of the bad guys!” At every level the American appropriation of Mexico’s resources, from water right down to the people’s thoughts, is shown as simply an extrapolation of what’s already happening today, carried to a logical — and chilling — conclusion.

But what makes this message sink in is that it’s so deftly delivered. Since it’s science fiction, special effects matter, and the ones here are mostly CGI. Obviously low-budget, but still well-done. I barely noticed the CGI, though, because the actors are so fantastic — especially Peña, who’s a newcomer to US film (but a veteran in Mexico), and Varela, who’s had a number of parts in US sci-fi TV and film (Blade II, Stargate: Atlantis, Jeremiah). The cinematography is subtly effective — for example, though natural lighting is used in most scenes, the factory scenes are eerily lit with fluorescents and washed-out colors to emphasize the dehumanization of the workers. The movements of the workers as they go about their virtual labor evoke an “exotic” dance, implying a unity between workers in Mexico and those in Asia, Africa, and other parts of the “Third World”. The plot moves slowly and delicately when dealing with its weightiest messages, such as the parallelism between Memo (a Mexican yearning to see the US) and Rudy (a Mexican-American who goes back to Mexico). The bulk of the plot is given over to the relationship between Memo and Luz, as she struggles ethically with her need to exploit him for her own survival, even as she grows to love him. I have to admit I found her story more compelling than that of Memo, the doe-eyed idealist, though it’s Memo who (fortunately) grows up over the course of the story.

All of this is especially impressive given that it defies the standard message of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction (SF). The most popular fantasy novels are those in which a deposed king is rescued or hidden, and the heroes fight to defeat the evil usurper and put the king back on his throne. The most lauded science fiction stories (and TV shows, such as “Star Trek” and “Stargate”) are written from the perspective of the colonizer who lands on an alien world and masters or helps the natives, rather than the perspective of the natives — who may not need mastering, or want help. Truly progressive speculative fiction, in which these old paradigms are challenged and new ones postulated, is comparatively rare (and becoming more so). So I can’t help hoping that more sci fi like “Sleep Dealer” — emerging from a non-American perspective, capable of looking frankly at issues like racism and classism and imperialism — will eventually help to reboot the genre. This, IMO, is what speculative fiction should be.

So go see “Sleep Dealer”, and help make it a hit.