Seth MacFarlane, Get Off My Ship.

"The Oscars is basically the Kobayashi Maru test."

Yesterday afternoon, Seth MacFarlane spat this sentence into the Twittersphere, and the irony almost murdered me.

MacFarlane's Oscar performance Sunday night has sent ripples of conflict throughout the Internet. Feminist bloggers were sent into paroxysms of rage at his song about the breasts of actresses that have been exposed on screen, his comment sexualizing Quvenzhane Wallis, and other general moments of misogyny, and other people told said feminists to "take a joke" and to let it go because MacFarlane's style of humor is to be crude and offensive.


I fell firmly into the first camp, but I didn't say anything until now, because I found that other bloggers were handling the situation just fine, and signal boosting their work on my fandom blog seemed appropriate enough.

Then I heard about this tweet, and I'm sorry, but what?

MacFarlane's trying to cast himself as an underdog, a good guy up against impossible odds, a regular Captain Kirk.

I call bullshit.

The point of the Kobayashi Maru as a narrative device in Star Trek is that it can be beaten. But it requires self-sacrifice, compassion, and a sense of heroic duty to the larger whole. Spock's referencing the test when he dies makes this almost explicit. The test isn't a romantic notion of being the victim of unfair circumstance -- it's a story of overcoming through cleverness or through sacrifice.

There is no sacrifice in making "humor" at the expense of those already oppressed. There is no cleverness in the perpetuation and acceptance of the social norms that allow for that oppression to exist uncountered.

Beyond that, it's offensive to the idea of Roddenberry's heavily romanticized concept of the future to cast misogyny as the brave little Starfleet cadet up against the Big Bad Kobayashi Maru test. Roddenberry, while the depiction of his future needed work ("Mudd's Women" and "The Turnabout Intruder" in particular being problematic in regards to women), wanted a post-racism, post-sexism, post-classism future, and MacFarlane aping the language and devices of Roddenberry's ideal to cast himself and his sexism as the heroic underdog is fucking gross as hell.

That's all I really have to say on the matter. If I say much more, it'll just devolve into nerd-rage and expletives even more, and I've made my salient points.

-- Shannen

Vaginas and My Feminism -- Reflecting on 1 Billion Rising and the Power of Language

WARNING: Discussion of rape, assault, misogyny, misogynistic slurs, and other violence.

A week ago, my college campus participated in the 1 Billion Rising rally meant to raise awareness for women subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual violence.  I was invited to perform a monologue I had been cast in in a student production of the Vagina Monologues this coming April, and I had to get off book between the day I was asked and the day I was to perform -- about a week and a half's span of time.

Newsies -- Iconoclasm, Subtle Feminism, and a Musical for Our Era

So, I was in the city twice last week to go do some live entertainment -- which means there will be no movies for the next couple of weeks, since it's about fifty dollars a pop for me, as a broke college student, to do the city -- and, on my friend's insistence, one of the shows I went to see was the Disney musical Newsies.

She adores it beyond words, and, while my love of the show isn't as huge and all-encompassing, it's still an excellent show on pretty much every account.  Tony-winning choreography, awesome lyrics, a message I can totally get behind, and a love interest character who is much, much more than that.  I'd probably go see it again, if I had the opportunity to get equally good seats for equally cheap as I got through my university's Student Activities Board.

The Unexpected Movie Review Project, Pt. III: Gangster Squad

Overall: 3/4
          Acting: 3/4
          Cinematography: 4/4
          Production Design: 4/4
          Costume/Makeup: 4/4
          Tech: 2/4
          Music/Score: 3/4
          Pacing: 4/4
          Script: 3/4


I will admit that I had really low expectations going into this movie, since I'd heard that it was super, ultra violent, and I am not into violence for violence's sake -- okay, that's a lie, I'm not into gore for gore's sake -- when I go into a film. I'd originally wanted to do Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, but circumstance landed me at a theatre where that wasn't playing, so me and a couple of friends got tickets for Gangster Squad instead. I rationalized it as wanting a break from award-show-bait movies.

I have to say I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Announcement: Upcoming Posts

So very sorry about the absence in the past couple of weeks -- things in Real Life got hectic.

I have a pretty set schedule of posts coming up in the next few days/weeks, and here they are.

This Week
Today
• The Unexpected Movie Review Project Pt. III: Gangster Squad  Check!
Tomorrow
• Supernatural S08E13 "Everybody Hates Hitler" -- "He Was My Gay Thing."
• Newsies -- Iconoclasm, Subtle Feminism, and a Musical for Our Era Check!
• Vaginas and My Feminism -- reflecting on the One Billion Rising event.
Wednesday
• Reflecting on "Activistic" Foreign Policy -- Dinner with Professor R
• Supernatural S08E14 "Trial and Error"
Thursday
• Supernatural S08E15 "Man's Best Friend With Benefits"

Next Week
Monday
• Shannen Murphy Watches the Oscars
Tuesday
• The Unexpected Movie Review Project Pt. IV: Skyfall
Thursday
• Supernatural S08E16 "Remember the Titans"

Next week will probably wind up with more posts, but, as of right now, this is the plan.

Supernatural S08E12 "As Time Goes By" -- Daddy Issues and Legacies

My feelings are...complicated about this episode.  It's pretty clearly meant to advance the plot, and it does, and it gives us a really fascinating look into worldbuilding of the Supernatural universe and into the Winchester-Campbell history, but they...there are a lot of things that bother me on a consistency level, and this article with Robert Singer just makes me want to break things with the power of my still only vaguely coherent rage (an article on this will be forthcoming in the next couple of days, don't worry).

Spoilers and frank discussion of abuse, absence and neglect on the parts of fathers lay under the cut, so proceed with caution.

Supernatural S08E11 "LARP and the Real Girl" -- Interspecies Queernessand Not Othering the Nerd

I'm pretty sure that last week's "LARP and the Real Girl" was the first time in a long time that a massive majority of the fandom made it out of an episode happy and not emotionally destroyed. As a follow-up to the absolute clusterfuck that was "Torn and Frayed," it could scarce have been better to soothe our destroyed hearts and querulous minds.

As pure, beautiful filler, it doesn't speak to the overarching plot of the season except in parallelisms, which is entirely fine by me, especially when it's this gorgeously executed.

This episode brings back web geek icon Felicia Day (from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, among other Internet phenomena) as lesbian hacker extraordinaire Charlie Bradbury from Season Seven's "The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo."  Charlie won the heart of a large part of the online fanbase, a heavily female, heavily geeky demographic, so there was a lot of excitement over her return.

And boy, did it not disappoint!