Oh, I think everyone should find their role models wherever they can, and if anything I don't even think you need to say "I know this is going to sound like a joke" before saying that you admire all of the men on Drag Race. But don't frame it as if a heteronormative discussion of male role models is somehow rudely ignoring all of the other options out there. I don't think that everything needs to take into account every other thing. It's not weird or incorrect for a specific and personal point of view to overlook the infinite options open to other people. I know that you were not saying that my post was homophobic, but you did bring the word "homophobic" into the discussion through a side door and that is where I think you need to give me a fucking break.
Well, it is like how Tony Soprano mourned for Gary Cooper. He could still draw on his memories of that archetype, but he also recognized that it was disappearing from the world. And honestly, yes, it does go away. You can rewatch Sopranos all that you want, but if James Gandolfini doesn't play any more roles, and that show moves further and further into the rearview, then yes, it loses its power and meaning. If you meet someone on the street who has drawn upon Fistful of Dollars Clint Eastwood as his masculine role model you will laugh right in his very stupid face.
Oh, basically that I now recognize that Nora Ephron's work was so much about how to be a woman in a modern world, and helped to define so many people's ideas about who/what that all meant. Therefore, if I am positing that James Gandolfini (as Tony Soprano) was the last male role model, then I have to also take into account that I was probably insensitive to certain aspects of the public mourning over Ephron's death that I am more sensitive to now. (This is all very general, too, because I don't want to get into comparing the voluminous and varied work Ephron produced to James Gandolfini being an actor on a TV show. That could get sticky and is beside the point. We are just making casual observations to try and pull apart our feelings!)
All of that being said, I still don't think that anyone should ever Tweet anything ever about anything because Twitter is the #1 worst.
@manners, wait, you are seriously going to argue that a word that is in the Merriam Webster Dictionary is not a word because you don't think it's a word because you read something on a different website or someone in college told you it's not a word? Personally, I'm of the school of thought that language is malleable and constantly evolving and that proper usage, while obviously a thing, is a function of rather than definition of language. But even if I did not feel that way, you seem, to me, to be walking on pretty thin ice by discrediting the dictionary (regardless of whether the definition is identified as colloquial, especially considering this website is written in HIGHLY colloquial English) and claiming you are the one who is right just because you found a different source that says a different thing and now you are the Final Judge of right and wrong.
Wait a second. I've been reading these comments and thinking about it and I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept the argument that E! simply had to INSET A PHOTO OF ALEC BALDWIN INTO A PHOTO OF PARAMILITARY FORCES SWARMING THE STREETS OF BOSTON. You can make the claim that E! had little choice but to do something to address the situation, because in a way that is exactly what Videogum has done by criticizing E!, and on days like today no one really wants to think or talk about the things that normally provide such a welcome distraction from all of the things no one really wants to think or talk about (death, absurdity, etc). So maybe they could have just put up a post saying they, too, were thinking about what we were all thinking about, and hoping what we were all hoping, and feeling what we were all feeling, and would continue to publish their regular celebrity gossip throughout the rest of the day in the hopes that an easy distraction or the simulacrum of life going on as usual might provide some comfort to people growing weary of the bombardment of horseshit that is CNN right now. Fine. But the idea that we live in a world where there is no choice but to round up Celebrity Tweets and publish them as an additional piece of "breaking news" in relation to an on-going and horrible situation, and to write headlines like "City On Lockdown -- CELEBS REACT" is garbage.
We can do better. I will fight you all!
I did say that! The one difference between what I was talking about there and what I am talking about here is that these new episodes are being made EXPRESSLY for the original fans, whereas reboots of old classics are an attempt to reintroduce old characters to a new audience. I'm not saying you haven't done an expert job of throwing my words back in my face, but there is a nuanced difference here.
Well, hold on a second! You don't sound like an asshole and there is no need to apologize, but you are actually conflating a few things here.
When I write a post about how a car commercial is racist, that's because that car commercial is racist. It is NOT about how "racism can never be used in a joke." The same goes with calling something out for being homophobic, or misogynistic. What you seem to be interpreting from this post is that I think that it is OK to make fun of women, and that is because I do think that. But you are also incorrectly interpreting my past statements to suggest that I DON'T think it's OK to make fun of black people or gay people. You are wrong. I think you can make fun of whoever and whatever the hell you want. It just happens that when you start making fun of these groups, especially as a white person or as an institution (The Onion), sometimes (most of the times, really) you're going to do it wrong, and in these cases you should apologize.
The argument being had right now about whether or not the word "cunt" is as bad as racial slurs or homophobic slurs is a very valid one, and I would not be surprised if I end up coming away from it with a different opinion about the word than when I came in (although for now I am still weighing all of my options!). But you are absolutely WRONG, not an asshole but WRONG, to suggest that because I have complained about racism in the recent past that I have therefore not written about misogyny, because I have, and I believe the record will reflect that I have spoken out against it just as vehemently. (Although I also have to admit that for as thoughtful and considerate as your comment proves that you are, it's weird that you are somehow making this into an EITHER/OR issue, as if somehow even if I was saying that women's issues are not important, that somehow makes my distaste for racism invalid. Huh?)
But, frankly, I have always found "bad words" to be a distracting semantical straw man that diverts attention away from the much more serious issues of genuine oppression. So yeah, I guess in that sense you are right. I definitely think the word "cunt" is in and of itself less problematic than, say, black face. Words are definitely important and we should all take our time in choosing them, but they are not the root of the problem, no.
Oh! Everything you say about privilege is dead on, and taking the position that my ARGUMENT perpetuates some kind of dangerous patriarchal world view is totally fine and within reason and possibly accurate. I just took issue with the part where you said "Gabe feels that women’s epithets are causes are not as dire, hateful, or important than other disenfranchised groups" because I do not think anything I have ever said or done suggests that I feel that way. I do. I hate women and I hate when they WHINE about everything, but nothing I have said or done would let you know that. It was a leap.
By that logic though you can say the same about the word "dick." Now, before this sets off any alarm bells there are some very obvious differences that I obviously recognize: for one thing, calling a dude a "dick" does not in and of itself dredge up the legacy of when men didn't have the right to vote, or hold jobs, or leave Downton to write editorials for the newspaper, or any of the things that were only recently amended and are still obviously very problematic. Moreover, the word "dick" does not have the same violence or eye-twitchy reflex-hammer of the word "cunt." Agreed! My point is just that there are reductive words all over the place on both sides of the aisle, and unless someone can show me that the word "cunt" was systematically used to encapsulate the genuine legal and social issues of women, then it is going to continue to be a word that I think can be funny or at the very least fine if used in a thoughtfully constructed joke context. (If we're talking about the world outside of jokes then no one should call anyone anything other than Sir or Ma'am.)
I address this a little bit in a comment up above.
If nothing else, I probably need to do some more research on the history of the word "cunt' and its place in the oppression and degradation of women, but the tone of those couple of sentences aside, I will tell you right off the bat that I definitely feel I have earned a little more from you than to simply take my mild defense of the word as a blanket disregard of women.
You will get no argument from me that the history of WOMEN themselves is laden with unhappy baggage, but I don't agree that "cunt" is so widely understood and accepted to single-wordedly encapsulate that history the way that say, "nigger" or "faggot" does. If anything, I think "bitch" holds most of that water, and yet "bitch" is not nearly considered as fundamentally offensive for some weird reason, perhaps because it is jus so widely used in multiple contexts. "Bitch" is basically the "Kleenex" of misogyny.
I think your reading of Zoe's nemesis is overly simplistic. She's using the technology thing to needle Zoe because it's something that she looks down upon, for sure, and maybe (maybe) that's because she doen'st understand it or doesn't want to evolve, but mostly it's the seasoned veteran who has worked hard to get where she is feeling the inexplicable frustration and jealousy that accompanies watching a much younger and much less experienced person have a meteoric rise to the top.
It's not as obvious as what you are saying, though. Like, I tried watching The Expendables the other day and I had to turn it off after five minutes. It was so awful. And Shoot 'Em Up was way to wink-y for my taste. The reason I think something like Fast Five works so well (and also Die Hard 4, which was my favorite trip to the theater that year) is that they DON'T wink at you, or at the very least, you're not sure if they're winking at you or not. It's played 100 percent straight. But also, in general the movie either has it or it doesn't. The Transporter is fine, for example, but I'm not rushing to see more Transporter movies. It's honestly a pretty special combination that fails more often than not.
It's not as obvious as what you are saying, though. Like, I tried watching The Expendables the other day and I had to turn it off after five minutes. It was so awful. And Shoot 'Em Up was way to wink-y for my taste. The reason I think something like Fast Five works so well (and also Die Hard 4, which was my favorite trip to the theater that year) is that they DON'T wink at you, or at the very least, you're not sure if they're winking at you or not. It's played 100 percent straight. But also, in general the movie either has it or it doesn't. The Transporter is fine, for example, but I'm not rushing to see more Transporter movies. It's honestly a pretty special combination that fails more often than not.
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