I had to do an online sexual harassment training today for work (bc I'm now a supervisor) and it was just as aggravating as you'd expect it to be.

I desperately wanted to smash my computer screen when the training told me that a pat on the back was not considered inappropriate, even though the person being patted has one of those fake smiles and the lesson directly before had featured a guy telling a joke and coworkers with mixed reactions, including one coworker faking a laugh.

Of course, their point in the previous lesson was that you can't tell by how someone reacts what they are really thinking about the joke. But since I correctly guessed what everyone was thinking, I think the more important lesson was "learn to properly read facial expressions, you idiots."

and that was just the beginning.......



I am so effing sick of people using the word "offensive" when it comes to harassment and discrimination.

1) Learn to use a thesaurus people. Legal term or not, there's got to be a few others that you can use without confusing the lawyers.

2) That really isn't the fucking point. The frickin' point is that it's disrespectful. I am not offended by porn. I think that's it's disrespectful and inappropriate to look at it in the workplace. I am not offended that you notice my DD's. I think it's insanely self-absorbed when people can't keep such observations to themselves or need to be told that they ought to do so.


Also, that "pat on the back" thing is still bugging me. Keep your hands far away from my neck people, or I will go apeshit.


On a related note....wow. Free Credit Report Dot Com just went from illogical to...just...wow. (and yet.....still illogical) "If I had gone to some stupid website I would have found out that my girlfriend had horrible credit and I could have left her before we got married!" (did you just not bother to ask your future wife what her credit was, or was she lying and yet you still decided to stay with her?)

Number One Theme of This Year's ALA

Reading (storytelling/information gathering) is at it's heart a social activity.

If you want to get more people (kids/teens) reading, give them opportunities to share books with other people. Let them join (listen) to books group discussions/activities/etc. even if they haven't read the book. Chances are at least a few of them will find it interesting enough to read

Keep reading to your kids. Harry Potter was popular not just because the kids made it so (by word of mouth - ie socializing) but also because parents and kids read them together/simultaneously. At the very least, show an interest in the stories they are reading, not just the amount and level they are reading.

Librarians Invade Disneyland!

Despite the fact that ALA wasn't any more useful professionally than CLA (possibly less), it was vastly more entertaining.

Largely because

1) Holly Black is completely awesome and I am so very cool bc I (and several dozen other librarians) own signed ARCs of her new book - which isn't out until October.

2) Cory Doctorow is even more awesome in person than in cyberspace. I did not think such a thing was possible.

3) Publishers love to give away free books (and posters) to librarians. (or sell them so cheaply they may as well be) We love publishers back. (our feet and back both disagree, however)

4) Authors like to sign the free books. We already adored the authors. We're not sure we can possibly adore them more than we already do.

5) Disneyland!

and best of all:

6) Book Cart Drill Team Championship. This so needs to be an Olympic Sport. I'd travel to another country to see that event.

Things I Would Not Recommend Doing:

* sneaking into mgg's house and dyeing all of his socks the same color

* setting your comments to "moderate before publishing" and then completely forgetting that you have done so, and wondering why no one is commenting anymore

* getting a hold of the first season of Supernatural and deciding that the best time to start watching it is at midnight, in the dark, alone

* saying bloody mary three times in front of a mirror

now guess which of these I've done lately

The Bad, More Bad, The Good, and The Messy Aftermath

So, this crap annoys me. Obviously.

******

Also, regarding the idiocy found in this article (linked to in the comments of the post above) about how they just don't make kids like they used to -

Who cares if kids nowadays don't yet know what an old-fashioned trolley is. Do you think I knew what one was when I was 5? Do you want to know how I learned what one was? By going to Disneyland every year. So, really, I think Disneyland of all places might just survive having some old-fangled machine that kids don't recognize right away.

******

However....

.....this? Is just so cute its completely distracting me from all my justified annoyance.

Help! I don't know what to do or how to feel!

(and I'm a little worried that I'm a bad person for thinking it's cute. the cultural appropriation smells a bit too fishy to me to completely pass the sniff test.

but..but...but...they remind me of those key rings they sell at my local comic shop! how cool is that? plus...her ears are crab claws. OMG!!!! I think my brain just exploded from the sheer awesomeness of ears that are crab claws!!!!!!!!)

Selective Memories

Now, I'm not going to argue that the plethora of remakes and sequels is a good thing.

But I do have to point out the idiocy of complaining about people destroying your childhood memories by remaking/doing a sequel to an R rated movie that came out when you were nine, and then using a quote from the director about how 12 year-olds today are a fresh audience for the remake/sequel/reboot to claim that the director is going to water down the movie in question.

If you didn't see it as a child, then it's not your childhood that they are messing with.

If you did see it as a child (as did, by the way, a great number of us) then one ought to allow for the possibility that the director is being refreshingly honest rather than planning on remaking it as a G movie. Especially seeing as how the director also talks about seeing the R rated original as a kid as well. At the very least, doing so would be less self-contradictory on your part.

The Problem With Feminism Lite

I'm not yet done watching all of the Christy episodes, but it's already pretty clear where the shows version of feminism fails.

The best example is in A Man's Reach, the episode where Christy helps Rob Allen prepare for a test that could win him a scholarship to Fordham University. The subplot of the episode revolves around Zadey Spencer, the daughter of Fairlight Spencer and a fellow student in Christy's class.

Zadey is a foil for Rob Allen. While Rob has a tremendous talent for the written word, Zadey is gifted in math and science. Rob faces prejudice from a culture that sees high literature as unmanly and unproductive. Zadey must deal with a society that not only sees her talents as unfeminine but that also often fails to believe that she even has them.* Rob is on the cusp of adulthood; in the end he decides to stay in Cutter Gap because of the responsibilities he has to the family that depends on him. Zadey is just entering adolescence, which means she is suddenly misbehaving and acting selfishly in ways that she never even did as a young child. Rob story ends with him deciding who he is and the kind of person he wants to be. Zadey's story is all about how adolescence is a time of uncertainty of identity, and the confusion and possibilities that brings.

Zadey's subplot also revolves around Christy learning a lesson as well (of course). In this case, it's that becoming too focused on any one student makes it hard to see when others need her too. Zadey's is hurt at being left out of the older girls giggles and confidences. Which is made worse by Christy ignoring her need for validation and purpose in her schoolwork. This is resolved at the end with Christy apologizing to Zadey, admitting that she still has a lot to learn as well, and promising to help her study when it's her turn "to go to college."

The first part of Christy's apology to Zadey, where she does the actual apology and admits that she is still learning herself, is very sweet in the sappy way that makes me love the show. It's very nicely done in that "gosh I wish I always knew the perfect thing to say" way.

It's the last bit that turned the light bulb on for me as far as exactly why the show gets feminism wrong.

Because, of course, knowing what it's like to female and talented at math and science at the turn of this century, my first thought was "And who's going to offer her a scholarship to study math - in 1912?!?!"

It's not entirely impossible, but it's a lot less likely than Rob Allen's offer, and that was rather unrealistic itself. (Rob Allen entered a writing contest. He didn't win, but one of the judges was a professor at Fordham University and wrote offering him a scholarship - if he passed the test.) It's not like newspapers hold math contests, and science projects usually take a lot more capital than writing stories.

But there is no mention of that, or reassurances from Christy - who has just spent the past episode pressuring Rob Allen to go to college - that she will take the time to try to find a scholarship for Zadey Spencer, who, unlike Rob, is expressing interest in college long before an out of the blue offer to go.

Most of all though, lets not mention that the University that was so generous to Rob won't even admit women until Christy's great-granddaughters are ready to matriculate.

This is the false feminism that makes people think that feminism is no longer needed. The feminism lite that pretends that Christy promising Zadey Spencer an equal amount of time in tutoring her for college scholarships equals an equality of opportunity for Rob Allen and Zadey Spencer, even back in 1912.



*No one tells Zadey that she can't do math, but there are lots of comments about how girls aren't good at math. In Zadey's presence.

The way Zadey reacts to this felt very real to me, but I was frustrated with how the adults handle it. Fairlight has a great handle of how adolescence is affecting her daughter, but her response to Zadey's confusion about her gender identity and her frustration at sexism is to say (to Christy) that John (Zadey's oldest brother) being a boy isn't ever going to change. And while Fairlight and Christy can see that the age difference is part of why the older girls are leaving Zadey out of their talk of boys and the like, they fail to see or address how the girls use Zadey's lack of gender conformity (minor as it is, Zadey's never shown as a tomboy) to imply that her problem is not the age gap, but instead that she isn't "girl" enough.

Also, they left out the scene where the other kids ignore Zadey's right answer. And instead put in a scene where Zadey strives to get Christy's attention every time she knows the answer, which is always. Which, again, not very realistic. If Zadey actually did that regularly, she never would have been friends with the older girls in the first place; she would have been shunned long ago.

Zadey is much too old to want to always be the one that's called on in class. She's already at the age where her issue is that her peers don't respect her talents, not that she feels shunned by the teacher. Which Christy does make mention of at the end, but she suggests that the solution is that she calls on Zadey more in class in order to let her show off, which isn't really the problem that needs addressing or the solution that Zadey needs.

Comment Policy - Or Lack Thereof

I've never felt it necessary to have any kind of comment policy. Mostly because hardly anyone reads this and even fewer people bother to comment.

But this is the second time in as many months that a newbie (in the case of #2, a drive-by, most likely) has left a comment that discusses a woman's looks in a way that is absolutely irrelevant to the point of either my post, their comment, or both.

So, oh wise and benevolent ones that are gracious enough to grant me the honor of your fine words, to you I say:

It's not just that you insult how a woman looks, or that your manner of doing so make you look like a petty high school bully, it's that you say it as if it has any bearing on the worth of her actions or words.

It's not just that you are crude in your appreciation of a woman's looks, nor just that you try to preempt criticism of such behavior (on a feminist blog, no less) by being "cute." It's not even that you think I give a shit, it's that you have the audacity to come to my blog and make it clear that you don't give a shit about anything that I have said at the same time.

I'm hardly above caring how people look. I have the tag "pretty boys" for a reason.

But there are plenty of places where you can discuss to your hearts content whether or not a woman turns you on. Most of the places I have to spend my time in are places where you can discuss to your hearts content who turns you on.

Just in case the "feminism" in the subtitle didn't make it clear - this blog isn't one of those places.

If you want to comment here on how a woman looks, it had better be relevant to the actual post in question*. Otherwise, expect deletion without prior warning.

*gushing about grand dames like Tyne Daly - even if it's include looks - are considered on topic. Comments that subsist of nothing more than "All I know is that Kellie Martin is hot. Hubba-hubba." do not. Especially when the only sentence in the post about Kellie Martin herself is on her acting abilities.

Random Thoughts on Christy

Was I really already in high school when I first watched this? I didn't think I was so old.

Wait, high school? God, I was so young back in '94.

Speaking of being young, it's really weird watching it now and getting what the doctor is saying from the start, rather than agreeing with Christy all the time. I mean, I get where she's coming from too, but he seems like less of a cynic/stick in the mud this time around. And not just because I know how it ends.

Watching the scene where they talk about the moonshine in the pilot episode is very different when one has yet to ever drink, versus watching while drinking a White Russian (with ice cream, yum). As a member of Friday Night Live, you are pretty much just thinking "alcohol bad!". As the Kalua drinker, you mostly just feel bad that they had to make do with moonshine.

I find it intersting that this is hailed as such a Christian show. I know it's mostly because the book is (books?) but this particular adaptation? Aside from Christy's internal monologues and her conversations with Alice, not a resounding endorsement for organized religion. There's a reason Christy picks the doctor over the preacher.

Also, there's just too many parallels between the doctor's arguments in favor of the moonshine and the situation of the modern poor, whether it's farmers in Afghanistan growing poppy or kids in "inner cities" that get involved in selling drugs. That's not really a perspective that the bulk of those that speak for American Christians and "family values" really get behind.

Wow. I can't believe I liked the preacher more than the doctor the first time. He's so young! Oh wait, that makes sense. And Christy is really young too.

Wow is this a surprisingly feminist show.

No wonder why I liked it. Now I feel less bad that I completely missed Buffy when it first aired. I'd recently abandoned fantasy/scifi for romance novels and historical fiction, and horror would not be on my list of things I liked for several more years. Buffy completely passes me by until the sixth season or so when I caught a rerun of Hush on FX. But Christy was totally on my radar.

Why is it feminist? Well, aside from the part where Christy not only says that she wants to do more with her life than keep home and have babies, the show lets her qualify that statement by explaining that it's the lack of purpose of being a female member of (high?) society that feels pointless to her, not the raising kids part. The mothers in Cutter Gap are all shown sympathetically (if at times cowed) and often as important members of the community, albeit not officially.

Most importantly though, there is Christy's relationship with Alice, which is just awesome. How often do we get to see older women mentoring younger women? Especially when the women are not related? This is a professional mentoring relationship, which grows to include the spiritual and emotional. I just love it so much. In no small part thanks to the fact that Tyne Daly is perpetually awesome. And Tyne Daly with a shotgun, more than awesome.

(Oh, wait, I need to add Cagney and Lacey to the list of dvds I need. I think I'm going to forgoe getting cable - or even any kind of broadcast television - when I move, and just spend the money on buying shows on dvd instead.)

And Christy's friendship with Fairlight? Very cool as well. I mean really, how many shows that aren't about Housewives or girlfriends in the City (and their relationships) do we have on now that center around a female character, her job and the people around her, with half of the main people around her being female?

Yes, sadly, there is a reason why it was shortlived. And Kellie Martin's sophmore acting wasn't it reason. (I think Kellie Martin can act, but Christy was not her best work. Not the pilot anyway.)

I hated David's sister the first time I watched this. Now I just hate him. Manipulative, self-centered asshole. I doubt she had very many other prospects, and what kind of a bitch would people think of her if she left her poor brother to fend for himself in the wilderness? As I said, not resounding endorsement of organized religion.

PS - it's hot. I hate trying to get to sleep when it's hot.

Can You believe That One of My Friends Once Called Me Unromantic?

I was in the middle of a Buffy marathon (quite literally; I was about halfway through the fourth season) when what do I spy at Target?

Christy!



OMG!

I loved this show back in the day.

I was so pissed when they started making the preacher guy not the love interest, but by the end I was as love with the doctor as Christy was.

God, I loved this show.

(I just hope I still do.)

So...the Buffy marathon has been interrupted and the Christy marathon begins in it's place. :)

(now all i need is Avonlea, the Cadfael Mysteries and that Heidi sequel on dvd, and I can die happy)

Interesting Sidenote

The LA Times has an article today about Susan Kare, designer of the icons for Mac Classic and more, and it not only mentions that she graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1975, which is normal enough, it also points out that MHC is an all-women's college - without that fact being referenced anywhere else in the article.

Which, I just find kinda funny for some reason.

It's like, "so and so went here. Oh, and by the way only girls go there isn't that weird?"

And omg, I want, like all of these.

Not only are they cool, they are from an MHC alum. Double cool!

Ooooh. and they are on sale. Which means they may be gone soon. I should buy myself an early birthday present. Or two.

There Are Times When Being a Supervisor Sucks

One, I hate disciplining my employees.

Unless they've pissed me off. Which isn't really the best way to handle things.

And oh, completely unrelated (NOT), coming up to a coworker and rubbing their shoulders, aside from being inappropriate* to begin with, is sexual harassment, even if the person getting the shoulder rub never complains. At least, it's sexual harassment if person doing the rubbing is male, the person being rubbed is female, and the person doing the rubbing would never dream of doing that to a male coworker. (vice versa, as well, of course)

And really, when how often is that "if" not true?

And why the fuck can't my supervisor see that?

I'm almost happy we didn't deal with this already, bc I'm totally making that point before we talk to the employee in question. I'm ok with the talk being more of a heads up than a warning, because of how the policy is written and because of how we generally deal with other types of disciplining. But only if my boss is agreed that it's not just inappropriate but also sexual harassment even if no one ever complains.

And yeah. I'm going to be a bitch about this - fuck, I'm going to be a man-eating cunt about this - because the other employes that this particular person works with the most also happen to be my youngest and least assertive employees.

And having people assume your body is community property because it's female not only sucks, but is really hard to fight when you are 17/18/19, don't have the language to describe any of this properly, and your bosses don't address the problem properly.

*perhaps in some workplaces - especially those that don't involve the workers being out in pubic view at the time - this is not true, but it is at my workplace.

Libraries Aren't for Playing on myspace!

If I hear read one more animal rights activist argue that yes! animal rights are just like children's rights! I am going to fucking scream.

The point of the title? I'm guessing a strong overlap between these kinds of people and those that are shocked that some crazy libraries/schools think that they are there to serve children themselves, and not just their parents.

Is Rainbow Brite Scifi?

(A question from this thread, via the Hathor Legacy)

The thing about "girls don't like [X]" is that they are always redefining what [X] is until that statement becomes partly true.

The Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Strawberry Shortcake are all very much fantasy stories, and, aside from a few fangeeks that are very into one and not the other, most people see SciFi and Fantasy and so analogous to be practically interchangeable. Certainly more interchangeable than Mysteries and Romance novels anyway.

Yet, somehow, I have a feeling that Rainbow Brite would not be on anyone's list of '80s scifi cartoons. I'm willing to bet it wouldn't even be on most people's lists of '80s fantasy cartoons.

Certainly there is a difference between ray-guns and the Care Bear Stare, but the biggest difference between "girl" and "boy" cartoons is not in the storyline or even the amount of action vs. drama (was any '80's cartoon more melodramatic than Robotech? Any 90's cartoon more soap opera-ish than Gargoyles?), but in who the story is marketed to. Which boils down to mostly window dressing and the number of times the weapon of choice is wielded by female characters.

This isn't to say that He-Man was really all that much like Strawberry Shortcake or vice versa, just that they both have equal claims to the fantasy genre, but only one gets used as an defining example of the genre. It gets to the point where The Smurfs and The Gummi Bears are not considered to by definitive examples of fantasy cartoons for kids either, despite the obvious untruth to that statement, simply because they are both less violent and less reflective of stereotypes of adult fantasy than Dungeons and Dragons.

Obviously, all of these strategically shifting definitions make for very circular logic when one then turns around and claims that boys are more into fantasy or scifi.

It's the same kind of effect we get from pretending that women played no part in history until we gained the vote. Ignoring girl's and women's experiences makes it really easy to flat out lie about what girls and women do and like.

Likewise, when one ignores or glosses over the connection between Lord of the Rings and Victorian fairy tales like The Princess and the Goblin, it's really easy to pretend that modern fantasy is completely disconnected from the princess stories my niece likes to act out. Which in turn makes it sound completely ridiculous to suggest that Rainbow Brite was Fantasy (rather than fantasy), much less science fiction.

Kind of the same way that ignoring scientific data makes it really easy to pretend that evolution is all made up.

And yet, aside from the flying horse, is there anything (other than gendered assumptions made by people that never watched the show) that cause us to define it as fantasy, rather than scifi? Or worse yet, fantasy-lite? What makes Teenage Mutant Turtles scifi for kids, but not Rainbow Brite?

Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles featured a bit of comic book inspired* radioactive gook in their origin story (which itself is very much a rip-off of the magical elixirs and pools in myths, which is why faatasy and scifi are so often lumped together). But ignore for the moment the rainbows and the martial arts, ignore your prejudices that says that boy = scifi and girl = fantasy. Which of the two characters below looks like they belong in a fantasy? A science fiction story?




Which of these two characters lives on another planet? Cavorts with friendly aliens? Uses technological tools? Fight enemies that use technology as well? Whose story features intergalactic travel? Uses basic physics (light and color) as a thematic metaphor?

Which character uses weapons designed centuries earlier? Whose story features lots of mystical sayings spouted by a Wise Old Man? Who fights enemies that wield mysterious powers? Even the very idea of animals that talk is a very fantasy-like element - despite the scientific origin story.

I like action, adventure, and even violence. And I think that a lot of "girls" cartoons could have done with a bit more actual action and a bit less less running around. More importantly, the writers could have bothered to give their audience more credit for being intelligent. But lets not pretend that quality is what defines something as scfi or fantasy. (If it was, we could simply pretend that the Gor novels have no connection to the genre either.)

Most all, lets not forget that Gummi Bears was not only vastly better than Dungeons and Dragons but also a much better example of Fantasy cartoons for kids.

PS - if anyone feels in the mood to add some more arguments for why Rainbow Brite - or any other "girl" cartoon - was really scifi and not fantasy or anything else, I may feel grateful enough to go digging through old photos and find the one of me all decked out in the incredibly awesome Rainbow Brite costume my mom made for me in third grade. :)

*appropriately enough, since it was originally a comic.

Conversations With Young People

So, I was chatting with a teen that comes into the library a lot.

Her friend is a volunteer and the three of us squeed over Dramacon a couple weeks ago, so we talk about what manga she's reading when she comes in now.

Anyway, she was showing me her artwork and mentioned that she had drawn some yaoi*, but that it was hidden underneath another drawing (in the clear plastic sleeve on the cover of her folder) because the boys complain about it.

I noted that they never seem to have a problem with the opposite. Which, in fact. is acceptable enough to be a common joke in mainstream movies.



Yes, I am on a mission to corrupt them all, one kid at a time.




*exceptionally tame, yaoi, as it turns out, in case anyone cares.

Someone Needs to Be Wrong

I got home from work about an hour ago, I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and I'm in an all around pissy mood.

Someone needs to be wrong somewhere on the internet - so that I can go yell at them.


Pretty please?

When Space Westerns and Lifetime Television Collide

Lifetime Makeover - now Dress-up Challenge - includes Princess Leia buns as a hairstyle option.

(and they say girls don't like Star Wars)



Leia, ready for a night out on the town.



I seriously cannot stop giggling.

I've Decided That It's Simple After All

After reading through the thread on feministing, I've figured how to articulate why the violence against prostitutes in GTA bothers me so much. (by stealing from everyone else, of course)

Robos A Go Go argues

Shooting at police, stealing cars, and running down pedestrians are widely discouraged in other areas of life. Sexism and violence against prostitutes is not. In fact, many people feel that prostitutes invite violence upon themselves by virtue of the "choice" they make, or at the very least accept abuse of sex workers as a matter of course rather than a problem that should be as much of a concern as random assaults of pedestrians and law enforcement officers.

yup, yup, yup

Later, noname asks

Where in that video.... did you see forcibly performed sex acts?

doh, how silly of me, none of the prostitutes ever say "no!" There's no sexualized violence here!

More seriously, correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the prostitutes who are "propositioned" ever say "no," yes? Which means that instead of going right out and making it "real" rape, Rockstar has instead chosen to hide behind rape apology arguments (prostitutes never say no) in order to make sexual violence more palatable. Kudos to you Rockstar!

(Also, I'm fairly certain that the police occasionally survive one's attack. In fact, they have guns, themselves, yes? As do other characters? But do the prostitutes have weapons? Are they occasionally not dumb as rocks and aware that johns often want to hurt them? Do you ever get to proposition women who are not prostitutes or strippers? I think I may die of shock if any of these are ever true.)

nonam also tries to argue

There is an anti-male equivalent to killing prostitutes. Killing men.

just _pat points out what should be obvious:

That's not equivalent at all. I can't kill men:
a) As a member of the opposite gender.
b) As someone who is paying them for sex.
c) As someone being paid BY them for sex.

I also can't go to a club and wait for asshole guys to try to pick me up and/or drug me, only to pull out a weapon and exact vengeance upon them.

There's no equivalent.

sgzax adds what should be even more obvious:

Yes, because there are two sexes: male and prostitute. Exactly. Thank you noname for playing all your cards at once like that.

spike the cat then gives us our deep thought for the day:

People just won't admit that killing feels good. But killing a ho feels even better.

Funny, I thought that whole visceral reaction I was talking about earlier was because while killing (in video games) rates as a "meh" to "gotcha!" in my book, murdering prostitutes makes me want to barf.

Update:

Kristen answers the "can they say no?" question.

The hookers even have to like you enough to let you pick them up.

Interesting.

I disagree with her assertion that "There is no sexual violence in this game," however. There may be no outright rape, but if you watch IGN's fan trailer...oh, wait, you can't because IGN took it off their site. (dorks) It's on youtube though. no idea for how long. Anyway, if you listen to the trailer, ("I'm a hired killer and I pay for sex. My mother would be ashamed") "violence" and the "sex' are hardly divided into neat little categories. Sexualized violence isn't just about rape, after all. Often it's simply about normalizing the idea that they go hand in hand.

I Don't Get It

People that normally make a lot of sense to me have tried to defend GTA to me before.

The advances in game play are mentioned. I am reminded that it is a game, it's not real. It is explained to me that no, there isn't anything anymore disturbing about controlling such action than there is watching it in a movie. And that, of course, the game actually discourages such behavior - really!

But I still don't get. I still don't buy it.

(Perhaps partly because I think sexualized violence poorly done and overdone in most movies as well.)

I don't "get it" anymore than I'd "get" a video game where players go around trying to lynch PoC.

But my reaction to it is more emotional and less intellectual that it is to things like Resident Evil 5. Which means that I have a lot of work to do on becoming a better ally, and that I have a really hard time coming up with coherent arguments that explain how not ok this is.

They No Longer Spend Pitch Meetings Looking for the Button That Opens the Secret Trapdoor

You have no idea how much I wish I had a copy of the recording they did of the panel on Superhero Comics at the Festival.

Its not that I want to listen to it over and over again (it was funny, but not that funny) its that there were tons of hilarious quotes that I can't really quote 'cuz I'm not going to get them quite right. So as you read all the stuff below? Remember that it's being filtered through my crappy auditory memory. Take even the stuff in quotes with several teaspoonfuls of salt. Also, I make no claims to accuracy when it comes to the order in which things were discussed.

With that said, here goes:

The panel was kicked off with each creator being asked to describe how they got from Comics to Hollywood. Mignola and Niles had fairly similar stories. Someone fairly influential liked their comic and wanted it made into a movie. For Niles, it was Sam Raimi. For Mignola, it was Benecio Del Toro - not that Del Toro got things going, more that he kept them going and made sure that things went well. Both at this point and throughout the talk, both Niles and Mignola were very emphatic about having a powerful ally working on the project who was also a fan of the comic itself being essential to it being a decent movie that still resembled their work. Or something like that, anyway.

Loeb said that it went the opposite way for him. He had always loved comics, but started out in Hollywood instead (didn't think he could make a living at comics) and then one day DC called him up and asked him if he would like to write a comic for them.

Before I continue, (1) Loeb is an awesome oral storyteller; I very much fear that my recap will fail to do any justice to his talent. (2) I'm sure there was more to this story than he let on. See #1

Loeb said "of course!" and "Can I write Superman?" "Um, we already have someone for that." "Batman" ditto and on down the line. Turns out they wanted him to do The Challengers. (and yeah, that story is even funnier in retrospect now that I'm more familiar with his resume)

The second question had to do with graphical nature of graphic novels and whether that made them easier to translate into film. All said yes. Having pictures helps studio people visualize what you are talking about, especially when those pictures closely resemble storyboards. Loeb (or Mignola?), mimicking execs internal diologue: "Oh, so you meant this really cool spaceship, not the pencil shaped thing that was in my head." Niles also mentions that, when originally pitching 30 Days, the studio people probably pictured scores of vampires running across the snow in Bela Lugosi capes.

The next question (I think) had to do with whether or not it's easier to pitch Superhero movies now than it used to be. Everyone's reply can be boiled down to "duh - you have seen the figures for the Spiderman movies, yes?" (I kept thinking, don't forget LoTR! It's success certainly helped as well. Geeks Unite!) Someone - Mignola or Loeb, I think - pointed out that time has helped as well, that it it's not just a single hit, but several successful movies, and people getting used to the idea of Superhero movies, untill finally Superhero movies are treated as just another genre rather than an unknown. (File this thought away, it will come up again later.)

They said that it was still hard to pitch comics as movies, especially if you aren't pitching one of the big names (Spiderman, Superman, Batman) but that "It used to be that they seemed to be looking for that secret button that open the trapdoor under you." Not anymore.

One of the other things that helped, obviously, has been the advances in cg. There was talk about how they used to say that movies would never replace comic creators, because there was stuff they could do that would just look dumb in movies. You could never get Spiderman to swing from a web and make it look real! Loeb: But then (?) and I went to the screening of Teminator 2 at Comicon. Beforehand, we weren't really sure what it was going to be like because Schwarzenegger actually had to talk in this one. We left the screening and I turned to him and said "we're screwed."

They still fuck everything up, though, apparently :) (shocker, I know) Niles talked about some guy who was working on 30 Days in the script stage. Nobody seemed to get why the Vampires were in Alaska. (wha?) So this one guy suggested that maybe Vampires were searching for a diamond that was buried underground in Alsaka. (wtf?) A diamond that would make them daywalkers! "He doesn't work there anymore. Not because of that, but I think he tried pitching the diamond idea for every movie." There was also mention of certain people wanting to call the Hellyboy sequel HB2 Instead. (why, exactly would one want to do that?)

This is where my memory gets a bit fuzzier, but the conversation at some point turned to DVD sales, what is still hard about pitching Superhero movies, and how much money movies actually need to make. The gist of that part of the conversation was: studio people don't pay enough attention to DVD sales because DVDs and movie production are different divisions, but it's getting better. They always want to change lots of things, some of which needs to change because comics are so much longer than movies, some of which is completely in opposition to the heart of the story, and some of which is necessary in order to appeal to a larger audience. "The truth is that even the best selling comics only have a fraction of the audience that movies need to make money." Or something like that.

I don't remember when or why, but the topic of what terms people prefer came up (ie, comics, graphic novel, etc.) and they all agreed "comics." Niles joked about Raimi referring to comics by some complicated term "graphical something or other." Someone (Loeb or Niles) made the amusing remark to a studio person that it was ok to call them comics, "graphic novels was the term we made up for you guys!"

It was also established that we were all "geeks." "You all know the difference between geeks and nerds, right? All of you in this room right now, you're all geeks, not nerds." (I beg to differ, but then I'm the idiot that didn't even know he worked on Heroes before he mentioned it, so I think he'd make an exception for me.)

At some point Loeb told several amusing stories about working in Hollywood:

The first movie he worked on was this low budget film called Teen Wolf (cheers from the crowd) While working on it, he'd tell people about it and mention who was in it and people would say. "Oh, that kid from Silver Spoons, right?" But then two things happened, Family Ties was moved to directly after The Cosby Show and Michael J. Fox was picked to be the star of a little movie called Back to the Future. heh.

That lead to the story about the movie thought he was going to be able to retire on: Firestorm. It was starring Howie Long. No reaction from the audience to that name, prompting Loeb to say that we obviously weren't football fans. That prompted some laughter. :) He explained who Howie Long was and that the great thing about Howie Long was that you knew he could talk. Anyway, things were going well and it was getting closer and closer to the release date, and then an Important Studio person broke the bad news. The studio had just finished making the most expensive movie ever made. And it was going to completely flop. Loeb knew he was telling the truth because people were literally packing up their offices in cardboard boxes and leaving. It was going to be that bad. So they needed to release a bunch of other movies at the same time to cover their losses. Firestorm was moved from fall to January. That's ok, Loeb thought, it should still be ok.

So, the flop? Was Titanic.

His last story was about the call that got him working on Heroes. A Hollywood buddy of his called him and said he needed some advice. Loeb figured that he was buying a vineyard and retiring or something, 'cuz he couldn't think of what this person would need his advice for. So they met and it turns out that this buddy had the brilliant idea of doing a Superhero type show and needed to talk to someone who knew Superheros. They spent hours talking, with the guy pitching ideas and Loeb responding by saying, that sounds fantastic, but you can't do that, it's (insert name of character) Marvel/DC will sue you. Repeat for several hours.

That's it. that's all I remember. Recordings will be available in a few weeks, I might try and clean this up when they are released for sale.




Oh, wait.......you were wondering why I was left yelling (well, muttering, really) Wonder Woman.

Yeah, so, at some point near the end - it might have been during the questions - Loeb or Mignola made some comment about Superhero movies needing to appeal to non-comic readers in order to make money. Loeb added "like how do you get women to go see your Superhero movie?" (Or something like that anyway.) To which I muttered Wonder Woman! and started ranting in my headspace about how the arguments made earlier about Superhero movies and needing to let people get used to seeing them as just another kind of movie and not a fluke can just as easily be applied to movies with female action heroes.

Ditto for non-white (and non-kung-fu-asian) action heroes, as well, of course.

Personally, I still think Runaways would make a kickass movie. The ending is a disappointing in terms of racial diversity, but it's still a step in the right direction. (Especially if it does well enough to warrant sequels.) Plus, I think it would not only appeal to a larger audience, it would appeal to that teenage audience studios are so hung up on. Provided it's done right, of course. That's always the catch. But seriously, while the point about comic sales being only a fraction of what the movie needs is valid, better-selling is better than not-better-selling. And better-selling to a wider audience (ie, bookstore patrons, not just comic store patrons) has got to be huge plus as well. So here's to hoping Twilight is the insane success I think it will be, and to studios everywhere mining the YA lit for ideas.