Stable’s gettin’ kinda full, ain’t it?
As Horsemen go, it’s a small one, but a tinny echo of the Last Trump blatted through my bus this morning. —I’m sitting there puzzling out a bit of dialogue when some strap-hanger clinging behind me gets into it with an underling on his cell phone. I missed the particulars, but then he got agitated: “Yeah, well,” he says, “hurry it up! You’re late as it is.” And then he’s listening to whatever the underling is saying about how my car won’t start or the bus blew me off or the idiot at Kinko’s used the wrong foam-core or what am I supposed to do about how IT misunderstood the email and rebuilt the database for Lotus and I can’t get anybody to tell me where the backup tapes are or maybe my cat that’s been the family companion for fourteen happy years is walking funny and leaking something and I can’t put off taking her to the vet it would kill my kids, I’ve just got to fix this one little thing, that’s all, and then I can, and in the middle of it all this guy snaps with no hint whatsoever of self-consciousness: “There is no I in team.” And then he slaps his phone shut and shoves it in a pocket.
Ah, well. At least I got to snicker to myself at how his utter lack of irony made the whole thing rather ironic.
(Confidential to, oh, just about everyone: yes, there’s been a dearth of posts and less back-and-forth than usual and missed emails and I’m really sorry I didn’t get around to installing MT-Blacklist until last night, Barry, but I’m glad it’s going gangbusters for you now. —There’s been stuff. In the interests of reducing my workload, then, I’ll mention that I want to do something with the stuff dredged up by Jeremy’s meanderings, prompted by the infamous Messr. du Toit: the short answer, Mr. Pinkham, is you’re wrong, but. The problem being I’m finding it really hard to pontificate breezily on pop culture without access to what passes for it on the cable channels, and I’m not about to let that beast back into my house for nothing more than a blog entry, and yeah, world’s smallest violin, cry me a fuckin’ river, suck it up, close your eyes and think of the children, what would your mother say, and anyway, you see an I in this team, shithead?
(In the meanwhile, a non sequitur: Mark Lakeman!)
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I thought about what I wrote a little more and one thing that came up was the thought that part of the reason this project I've been working on has developed in the direction it has is because most of the people working on it are white men and women. So, maybe it's the Callahan Syndrome. To feel comfortable with making fun of a someone of a particular group it usually helps to be a member of that group. Thus these dudes felt more comfortable making the comic relief characters who get beat up and ridiculed in these animated shorts white males. I think the comic message would have been received differently if the films had featured a woman character, for instance, who was constantly portrayed as clueless, gullible and getting physically abused by the male characters. (One of the characters in these shorts is constantly being kicked, tripped, etc. Sort of like a fraternity version of Charlie Brown.) Since white men have traditionally dominated, socio-politically, it ties into fewer harmful stereotypes to show white men as getting their asses kicked and being incompetent.
Perhaps guys like Mr. Du Toit are reacting against such portrayals because they feel powerless, lacking in respect, and abused in their own lives, and so can't relate to the idea of white men as privileged patriarchs richly deserving of satirical comeuppance. White males as a group weild too much power, but individual lower- and middle-class white males who aren't having a happy camper experience in their lives may thus get sucked into Limbaughian worldviews which gravely postulate white male oppression by "feminazis," et al.
The problem being I’m finding it really hard to pontificate breezily on pop culture without access to what passes for it on the cable channels, and I’m not about to let that beast back into my house for nothing more than a blog entry, blah blagh blah...
Kip, just go WATCH THE DAMN LAZARUS MAN VIDEO !!!
I swear, I really do, on a stack of Aaron's dusty Atlantic/New Yorkers that you are NOT presently starring in the remake of "The Ring" and that you won't die a week after you watch it !!!
:p Besides, the series is rapidly reaching the age where it gets to be "retro," and thus is fair blog-game.
Kisses,
"sacchi"
"this team, shithead"
two.
Mr. Pinkham: I am, of course, horribly unfair above. My main point is that to read this sort of belittlement as a detriment to the white male is missing a great deal of the story: even with all his aw shucks dumbassedness, the white male is still largely speaking the center of the household run to his benefit in those commercials; he is the point of view which gets to learn the lessons that those superhuman paragons are obligated to teach. --Massa's been a figure of fun on the stage for a while now; ask blacks and Jews and gays and lesbians (as a number of for instances) how much power that sort of mockery really delivers, in a real-world fashion, and ask as well about the thankless burdens of sainthood. But! Enough. Julia has declared a moratorium on discussing that foul-minded little-boy Neandertal, and who am I to disagree?
Sacchi: And what can I do but bow to a will so forcefully expressed?
Julia: Of course, darlin'. But look where the one I is, would you?
on a cyclops?
(children should be a controlled substance. I used to be able to take puns or leave them)