I am not the fine woman you take me for (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} wrenlet) wrote,@ 2005-02-05 14:05:00 |
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"Leeloo Dallas, multi-post"
*cough* Yeah. So lately I've been having Severe Focus Issues (see: post asking about Strattera) and what this mainly means is that I have bits and pieces of posts-I-want-to-make scatteredhither and yon on my new thumb drive and I think it's time now to acknowledge I will never fully flesh out these thoughts and release them...
... into the wild by inflicting them on you in a single post. Muhahahaha.
The Function of Wrongness
So, this thing happened on Lost and apparently a goodly portion of the fandom Lost Their Shit. "OMGhowdaretheythatissoWRONGhowcantheysu
It's fiction... and this is (part of1) what fiction is for. We want, we need for fictional characters to Do the Wrong Thing, Make the Bad Choice, Fuck Up On An Epic Scale, because -- to paraphrase Firefly -- it's when we see people in extremis that we really find out what they're made of, who they really are inside2. And that's when we start figuring out who we are inside. We don't want people to do the wrong thing, because that would suck. But fiction that is Bad and Wrong and Goes There isn't just valuable, it's damn near necessary. (Whether or not a particular piece of fiction approaches this value, succeeds as a story and doesn't just piss off the audience, is at least partially a matter of personal taste and very much a subject for a post that's not this one. But there's a world of difference between, "The producers of Lost should not have done this" and, "The producers of Lost took this leap and failed.")
And consider this: a show where every character makes the Right and Proper Choices at all times? Would be boring as shit3. A show in which every instance of a character Crossing the Lines is summarily followed by whackage with the Morality Stick and the Object Lesson? Preachy, and also boring as shit.
Stop confusing fiction with real life, yo.
Perfectibility
Scott Rosenberg on Peggy Noonan on Bush's inaugural speech: "The Bush inaugural marked the final transition of the Bush-family ideology from old-school conservatism, with its abhorrence of abstract schemes of human perfectibility, to a messianic idealism so divorced from reality it gives even sympathizers like Noonan the willies. Bush's vision of human perfectibility may be shaped by born-again fervor rather than socialist theory, but that difference doesn't make its collision with reality any less dangerous."
And this may be the source of the Itch I get regarding Bush and other right-wing conservatives: the divide between perfectibility enforced from without and perfectibility from within. ... this is totally one of those thoughts that needs fleshing, but remember the Focus Problem? Yeah. Let's just say, Bush's idea of human perfectibility is that there is one way to live perfectly in the eyes of God, and earthly government exists to see that everyone conducts themselves in that one way. In my view, government should exist to support every person in the search for his or her own perfect life, free of oppression both of the body and of the spirit. And y'know, I'm not talking "perfect lives" in the sense of, I have no worries, am fantastically rich and successful, and my son potty-trained himself on his third birthday. I guess what I'm getting at is the notion that at our core, each of us has a "perfect" way of being in the world, relating to it and the people around us and handling all the shit that life can toss our way, and that my perfect way is not necessarily your perfect way, or my uncle's perfect way, or Jon Stewart's perfect way.
... or something like that.
The New Revisionism
The Difference Between Politically Incorrect and Historically Wrong: "It is not surprising, in the current political climate, that liberal pieties are being challenged, and many of them ought to be. But the latest revisionist histories are disturbing both because they are so extreme - even Ronald Reagan called the Japanese internment a "grave wrong" and signed a reparations law - and because they seem intent on distorting the past to promote dangerous policies today."
Oh, good lord and butter... remember my big "People Suck" post a while back? I need to add to it: There is no ideology, no historical fuck-up so provably wrong that some nutjob won't one day try to whitewash history in the attempt to resurrect it.
*grumble*
--
1. Fix-it-fic is, naturally, a whole 'nother beast.
2. F'r instance, if not for the colossal string of Wrong Choices in Shattered, we would never have known that, deep inside, Lex Luthor really wants to be on his knees worshipping Clark. ... well. Some of us would have suspected.
3. Conversely, characters who fuck up all the time, and/or in the same way every time, run the risk of losing reader/watcher sympathy. And being boring as shit.
*cough* Yeah. So lately I've been having Severe Focus Issues (see: post asking about Strattera) and what this mainly means is that I have bits and pieces of posts-I-want-to-make scattered
... into the wild by inflicting them on you in a single post. Muhahahaha.
The Function of Wrongness
So, this thing happened on Lost and apparently a goodly portion of the fandom Lost Their Shit. "OMGhowdaretheythatissoWRONGhowcantheysu
It's fiction... and this is (part of1) what fiction is for. We want, we need for fictional characters to Do the Wrong Thing, Make the Bad Choice, Fuck Up On An Epic Scale, because -- to paraphrase Firefly -- it's when we see people in extremis that we really find out what they're made of, who they really are inside2. And that's when we start figuring out who we are inside. We don't want people to do the wrong thing, because that would suck. But fiction that is Bad and Wrong and Goes There isn't just valuable, it's damn near necessary. (Whether or not a particular piece of fiction approaches this value, succeeds as a story and doesn't just piss off the audience, is at least partially a matter of personal taste and very much a subject for a post that's not this one. But there's a world of difference between, "The producers of Lost should not have done this" and, "The producers of Lost took this leap and failed.")
And consider this: a show where every character makes the Right and Proper Choices at all times? Would be boring as shit3. A show in which every instance of a character Crossing the Lines is summarily followed by whackage with the Morality Stick and the Object Lesson? Preachy, and also boring as shit.
Stop confusing fiction with real life, yo.
Perfectibility
Scott Rosenberg on Peggy Noonan on Bush's inaugural speech: "The Bush inaugural marked the final transition of the Bush-family ideology from old-school conservatism, with its abhorrence of abstract schemes of human perfectibility, to a messianic idealism so divorced from reality it gives even sympathizers like Noonan the willies. Bush's vision of human perfectibility may be shaped by born-again fervor rather than socialist theory, but that difference doesn't make its collision with reality any less dangerous."
And this may be the source of the Itch I get regarding Bush and other right-wing conservatives: the divide between perfectibility enforced from without and perfectibility from within. ... this is totally one of those thoughts that needs fleshing, but remember the Focus Problem? Yeah. Let's just say, Bush's idea of human perfectibility is that there is one way to live perfectly in the eyes of God, and earthly government exists to see that everyone conducts themselves in that one way. In my view, government should exist to support every person in the search for his or her own perfect life, free of oppression both of the body and of the spirit. And y'know, I'm not talking "perfect lives" in the sense of, I have no worries, am fantastically rich and successful, and my son potty-trained himself on his third birthday. I guess what I'm getting at is the notion that at our core, each of us has a "perfect" way of being in the world, relating to it and the people around us and handling all the shit that life can toss our way, and that my perfect way is not necessarily your perfect way, or my uncle's perfect way, or Jon Stewart's perfect way.
... or something like that.
The New Revisionism
The Difference Between Politically Incorrect and Historically Wrong: "It is not surprising, in the current political climate, that liberal pieties are being challenged, and many of them ought to be. But the latest revisionist histories are disturbing both because they are so extreme - even Ronald Reagan called the Japanese internment a "grave wrong" and signed a reparations law - and because they seem intent on distorting the past to promote dangerous policies today."
Oh, good lord and butter... remember my big "People Suck" post a while back? I need to add to it: There is no ideology, no historical fuck-up so provably wrong that some nutjob won't one day try to whitewash history in the attempt to resurrect it.
*grumble*
--
1. Fix-it-fic is, naturally, a whole 'nother beast.
2. F'r instance, if not for the colossal string of Wrong Choices in Shattered, we would never have known that, deep inside, Lex Luthor really wants to be on his knees worshipping Clark. ... well. Some of us would have suspected.
3. Conversely, characters who fuck up all the time, and/or in the same way every time, run the risk of losing reader/watcher sympathy. And being boring as shit.
