1. Gerard Perry and I discuss Maleficent -- and
the far larger issue of “spoilers” (Gerard doesn’t care about them) in our
latest YouTube chat.
The movie wasn’t all that great, but one of several neat
things about it is that it replaces this classic version of the song
“Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty
with this Lana Del Rey
version. Long may she mope.
2. I see a
HuffPo piece suggested the loss of Maleficent’s wings is comparable to a
rape -- and they’re right. It’s another reminder the culture rightly treats
such acts as abominable, despite the recent weird pretense by feminists that
the culture glorifies them.
3. Speaking of sex and assault: the grotesque spree-killer last month (not to be confused with a couple of them this month) was not a real exemplar of the so-called PUA (“pick-up artist”)
philosophy, which, crucially, counsels flirting (however cynical or calculating
it may sound) instead of whining and fuming about loneliness and then killing
people -- but how does one even begin to defend such a reviled philosophy
without immediately being accused of being one of its adherents?
It’s a bit like trying to tell people that Timothy McVeigh
wasn’t actually in a militia. They
wonder why you would even care about the
truth if someone that awful is under discussion. But the truth always
matters, especially in a crisis. (That is the genuinely non-partisan assumption
underlying all I do and say.)
4. The alternative is the often-incoherent maintenance of
taboos, the marking off of subject areas where nuance and doubt and rational
inquiry are not allowed. Rape is now a sacred topic of that sort among the
feminists, judging by the anger directed at Miss Nevada for suggesting self-defense
is a good thing (since that reasonable claim excuses the attacker, claim
the feminists -- though one never hears anyone say this about, say, advising
people to defend themselves against murderers).
One has to wonder if feminists would even stick to this
bizarre position if they had a chance to do this one over. They may now just be
acting stubborn. And while we’re talking about conflicting and confused
feminist messages, is this
song celebrating non-anorexic body types considered empowering or evil this
week?
5. Maleficent is faux-medievalism,
and faux-medievalism isn’t always pleasant (see: Game of Thrones, which has its season 4/book 3 finale this coming
Sunday and will probably include violence). We in the modern world haven’t yet
escaped violence, of course, sometimes in forms dating all the way back to
medieval times.
Indeed, a Business
Insider piece (h/t Walter Olson) notes communistic
Belarus is bringing back serfdom
-- legally forbidding workers to leave their jobs. Hayek was more right than he
knew! But then, there was always a sense in which the communists (not to
mention nineteenth-century Tories and some faux-traditionalists of the
antebellum American South) felt more at home in an imagined Middle Ages than in
capitalist modernity.
6. And what of Catholics, so fond of the thousand-year
period when their Church reigned in Europe? Can
they now be libertarians? Despite this Pope and his socialistic advisors, I
hope so.
7. Even the Palestinian
Authority is more fond of capitalism than some of the
West’s leftist activists and would like those activists to stop
being obstacles (h/t Judith Weiss).
8. I am happy to live in a modern world of markets and
technology instead of one that believes in witches with familiars disguised as crows,
but ours is still a world that must be on guard against a sneaky kitten pouncing on
dog.
9. Modernity also enables us all to watch as “Tiny Kitten Wrestles Big Dog”
(and goes after his butt!).
10. Sorry if I sound like I took a turn for the juvenile there,
but I did see Maleficent with my
parents -- on a trip home that revealed Mom has placed tiny bunny slippers on
my childhood teddy bear, Roy (see photo).
11. Such is the Seavey household. And if all goes according
to plan, the parents are also getting a second cat this week (to join Salty and
Mac the dog), and the cat’s prior owners have named him Bobcat Bob.
12. If Maleficent
and animals aren’t entertainment enough for you, though, you could follow my
example and attend a
screening (this Thursday 7pm at the Galapagos art space at 16 Main St. in
DUMBO) of the booby-related short comedy film The Slip-Up by Matt Brandenburgh (who directs the
aforementioned YouTube chats in which I appear).
13. And if you tire of silliness and magic, find me at a
showing of the highly scientific documentary Particle Fever this coming Sunday the 15th at Symphony
Space (or attend on either of the two Sundays thereafter, with tickets
available at that link circa the 11th or so).
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