Monday, September 23, 2013
Part II: Access to what?
Since Joe Lieberman killed the public option, I've decided there's no hope for this country. In fact, the day the public option died, I drove my Chevy to the levy and almost decided to throw myself into the raging river. Fortunately for my cats, I instead decided to die a slow death and throw myself into art.
So I've given up on politics and just do art in my spare time, which I don't have much of, being a working person in America. Never-the-less, while toiling on a project one day I thought about how strange it was that in an indirect sort of way, Joe Lieberman was my inspiration. It was then that I started to think about health care again. What occurred to me was that back when I would run around with my forehead furrowed and my hands on my hips shouting about access, I forgot to examine the thing that I was insisting on access to.
"Access to what?" I thought.
You see, people, it became apparent to me that if we opened the proverbial door to the wild place called “health care in America” we would find a tangled web that is virtually impossible to navigate and even dangerous. In this world communication sucks, wasteful, unnecessary spending is rife, the big picture is often ignored, paperwork trumps people, patients are generally treated like shit, have most of their time wasted and are lucky if they leave the system better rather than more impaired, stressed out or addicted to pain medication. Sometimes they get well in spite of the system, not because of it.
Notice that I'm blaming the system, not the people in it. There are all sorts of competent, knowledgeable, compassionate, hard working health care professionals . However, I have seen the innumerable examples of the inefficiencies, callousness and frustrating serendipity of the health care system in America first hand because A. I'm a nurse working in a hospital and B. for most of my adult life I have been sick.
What I suffer from is a mysterious roaming back/hip pain that is usually absent but can be so crippling that I am unable to get out of bed. Over the years these “flare-ups”, as I call them, have become more frequent, more intense, and last for longer periods. Most of the time, I just plow through it, taking good care of my body with exercise and a balanced diet, but occasionally it gets so bad that I have no choice but to go to the doctor. Usually, by a "doctor" I mean Dr. Jack Daniels, which works pretty well and only costs 16.99 for a 750 ml bottle, but sometimes, this means an actual doctor in an emergency room or clinic, the only two options I had as an uninsured person, which is what I was for most of my adult life.
In any event, over the course of twenty years, and hundreds of tests I was finally diagnosed with “ankylosing spondylitis” and, more recently by a rheumatologist with "some kind of spondylitis but not the ankylosing kind” since my spine apparently slides around like it’s greased with butter. This rheumatologist who I was finally able to see now that I do have health insurance, listened to me for five minutes, examined me for three minutes and then handed me a prescription for what I now refer to as the “miracle drug”: meloxicam.
I swear I'm not getting any kick backs, but I’ve never felt better in my life. Meloxicam is just a measly old NSAID, not one of those expensive designer drugs that you hear about on TV. You know, the ones that come courtesy of our clever neuroadvertisers who know that the only thing more attractive to the human brain than a person dancing is a content, smiling person arranging flowers.
So, this may sound like a success story, but it was a bumpy twenty year road to my little yellow pill. For example, a few times I waited around the emergency room in excruciating pain until being sent home half a day later with an information sheet on exercises and instructions to take Tylenol. One time a doctor told me “I think it’s some kind of rheumatoid thing, but you wouldn’t be able to afford the medication so there isn’t much I can do.” One trip brought on a four day stay in a hospital on a heparin drip with somebody telling me I had a pulmonary embolism and another person, four days later, telling me that whoever read the CT scan was “hallucinating”. Most of the time I was barely listened to and then treated like a liar or a drug seeker. Once, a doctor practically shoved me out of her office telling me that, according to my blood tests I was in perfect health and suggested an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory and warm compresses. This despite the fact that I had told her several times that I slept on a mattress made of Aleve and snacked regularly on warm compresses. I was still in crippling pain.
One day, I was hopping around an empty waiting room after drinking copious quantities of water for an ultrasound (this during the era of the “ovarian cyst” hypothesis of my mysterious roaming back pain) and contemplating the closed opaque sliding window that the secretary who I'd spoken to briefly forty five minutes before presumably still sat behind. I thought either everybody had forgotten about me and gone home for the day or there had been a nuclear war and the opaque window was made of some special radiation proof plastic that protected me. This window, I thought, was the perfect metaphor for the system as I saw it. Then, though maybe it was the azotemia since I’m pretty sure that my urine was backing up into my blood stream, I started to fantasize about my perfect health care system.
There was no doubt, first, that my perfect health care system would be patient centered, holistic, and completely tax-payer financed. There would be no insurance companies at all. The system would contain health care entities that would operate pretty much the same way they do now but with the stated cultural changes. What would be really different, and this is the part that would have me hammered and sickled if I ever decided to bring it up at the next Tea Party Rally, would be the annual weekend “health retreat”.
This is how it would work in a nutshell. All citizens, from the time they were born until the time they died would be strongly encouraged/incentivized to go. During this retreat, the person would get a full check-up that would include quality time with physicians and a plethora of routine and customized tests. The record that resulted from the health retreat would be in a protected data base that could be provided to the other health care entities as needed, so that the patient’s history/baseline would be laid out, in an organized, linear fashion. In addition, and as an incentive, the retreats would be pleasant, with plenty of down time for people to attend cooking and or exercise classes, get a massage, take a dip in the pool, or hang out in the sauna. It would be a weekend getaway for the whole family, just with some needle sticks and x-rays and maybe a few mandatory classes. For instance, all diabetics might have to attend a refresher course on diabetes, updating them on the latest information. The possibilities for education on prevention and healthy living are endless.
I think the benefits of this system are quite obvious. It would save time and money, emphasize prevention, catch serious problems early, improve communication and remove waste generated by redundant testing and scattered health histories.
So, this is what I imagined as I hobbled around in the empty waiting room, leaking urine into my panties and having no idea when or if somebody was ever going to come through the door to get me. After an hour and a half I ended up rushing to the restroom and just letting it all out. When I knocked timidly on the opaque sliding door to inform the secretary she shook her head scathingly, clicked her tongue and told me I had to reschedule for another day.
At least there hadn't been a nuclear war.
Friday, September 13, 2013
My three minute fiction essay that didn't win
She closed the book,
placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door.
“I can’t take it any
more,” she grumbled, as the door slammed firmly behind her: heavy and air
tight, like the lid of a coffin.
The now deserted chamber
was hardly empty. Buried beneath the clutter and dust, Blattie perched upon the
edge of a stool finishing off the last of his supper. Churning his head
mechanically and crushing macadamia nut between his jaws, he pondered her
departure with a mixture of curiosity and dread. Though it was true that she
often left the apartment, there was something about this particular incident
that felt portentous.
Blattie went over the
sequence of events in his mind. First, of course, there was the piqued
expression on her face followed by a horrified shriek. Second, there was the
book: larger and flimsier than others he had seen. Third, there was the
ominous phrase “I can’t take it anymore”. These words seemed prophetic.
These words summoned doom.
Blattie attempted to
quiet his ganglia. He told himself he was overreacting and appeased himself
with gratifying memories. In fact, in most cases when she left the apartment
Blattie was delighted, since when she returned, her arms were laden with a
variety of colorful, crinkly containers. These packages would eventually be
opened with a fresh, liberating pop followed closely afterwards by an indulgent
deluge of food. He had become accustomed to the rich, sweet crumbs that gushed
bountifully from these bags and her fingers like succulent rain.
For most of his life, as
if enchanted, Blattie had trailed her through the well-worn paths of the
cramped apartment. He scurried over stacks of papers, books, clothing, and
electronics. He disguised himself among crates of toys, boxes of pens and skeins
of yarn. While she slept, the gentle rise and fall of her body felt soothing as
Blattie meandered and foraged for delicious treasures along the vast folds of
her bed sheets.
Still, he could not
suppress the visceral chill that originated from deep within his hemolymph and
radiated along the ridges of his exoskeleton. “From plenty follows danger,” he
knew the presage well, but since he had been born into prosperous times, the
significance of these words had never fully resonated until this moment. There
was an eerie connection between this event and the stories he had heard around
the colony, harrowing stories of chemical Armageddon and scarcity that made the
hair on the back of his legs stand up.
He knew, for example,
that before his hatching there was nothing around the house to eat but wet
newspaper, soap scum and, if one was fortunate, a little piece of fetid fruit.
Once, his uncle Arthro had lived for months on a sliver of dried crust and a
small cardboard box. Previously, there had been someone in the apartment who
had similarly provided his ancestors with abundant sustenance. When she left
for the last time she had uttered the same words: “I can’t take it anymore”.
Blattie flicked his
antennae contemplatively. He had to uncover the truth and warn the colony. To
confirm his suspicions, Blattie decided he needed more proof. Now confident and
without hesitation, he darted to the table and mounted the book. Peering
over the edge, he apprehensively fixed his two-thousand eyes on a slip of
yellow paper that had been torn from its pages: “Exterminator” had been marked
with a thick red circle.
Blattie’s spiracles
tightened. Just then, the lock clicked open. Blattie dashed into the corner as
a fine, deadly mist filled the room.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
From the bottom: a simple solution to the education crisis
“Ping.”
The first time I heard it I ignored the sound and enthusiastically returned to giving instructions for the day’s project to my generally apathetic ninth grade class.
“Ping. Ping. Ping.”
This time the sound was accompanied by giggles and snickers. I identified it immediately. Someone had lifted the beads that I used to illustrate how alleles separate during the process of mitosis and meiosis and was now playfully flinging them around the room.
“Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.”
Not wanting to appear too alarmed, my first reaction was to pause long enough to let the class simmer down. I then calmly requested that the “alleles” be returned. I waited. A few students shuffled reluctantly over to the supply table, deposited their booty, and shuffled back. I waited some more.
“Sorry for chucking the beads,” one student mumbled.
“You mean alleles,” I corrected.
When I felt like the distraction had been satisfactorily extinguished, I jovially began to address the day’s project, again. We had already wasted ten precious minutes, and I had spent all night planning and preparing. I was excited to get started.
“Ping.”
This was my first period class.
By third period it felt like an epidemic. I locked up the beads. I admonished myself for leaving them out in the first place. It was too late; there were already hundreds of them circulating. I tried humor, anger, even begging to get it to stop. At the end of my last period class, amidst beads whizzing through the air, ricocheting off of every surface, I crawled back to my desk, put my head in my hands and cried.
The bell rang. A few of the kids came up to me and said they were sorry. A few gave me lectures on laying down the law. Most of them hurried out the door, giddy with mischievous excitement. One student stayed after and helped me sweep up the beads.
This was one day of my first and last year attempting to teach ninth grade biology. There were days that were better. There were days that were worse. As the year wore on, disillusionment began to set in. Gradually, I was less likely to stay up all night designing and preparing some magnificent lesson and more likely to hand out a work sheet.
Half way through the year I alerted the administration that I was failing as a teacher and quite possibly having a nervous break down. They promised to visit my classroom more often. This happened for a few weeks, but the visits tapered off and chaos was eventually restored. I began to despise going to work. Everyday, I felt as though I was at war and had been shot full of holes. I made up my mind that I was going to quit.
About a month before the year ended the students had all heard the news.
“Why are you quitting?” they would ask, entirely bewildered, apparently ignorant of the extent of my torment. “You just started!”
“Because I suck at this job,” I replied, committing myself to the principle of complete honesty. “I want to teach you biology. I want you to love it as much as I do, or at least understand it. I want you all to be successful. The truth is, however, that I am unable to make those things happen, because, quite frankly, I don’t know how to handle your behavior.”
“Well,” one student said sarcastically, “they are just going to replace you with some earth hater.”
Okay, so sometimes they were funny, too.
I share this riveting story of downfall and defeat in order to raise a point that I find is omitted from every discussion I hear or read about education reform. Most experts seem to agree that “good” teachers are the most important factor in improving education. Therefore, much of the debate seems to center on how to attract “good” teachers and remove “bad” ones. However, what I believe goes unrecognized in this ongoing dialogue is the dual nature of the teaching profession. In order to be an effective teacher, one must be adept at two very disparate, sometimes irreconcilable, skills. The first is being able to teach and the second is being able to manage.
To illustrate this point, I am now going to brag that I am an excellent teacher. I am creative, interactive, enthusiastic, passionate, patient, and knowledgeable. Teaching biology is more than a job for me, it is a mission. I had been teaching for several years at the community college level, a job that I loved, but I needed full-time work and benefits, and felt I would be “good” with this age group. I, myself, had been a defiant kid who had been highly disenchanted with the prison-like, uninspiring atmosphere of public school. I remembered how this felt and was determined to make my classroom different.
On the other hand, as I believe the story above clearly exemplifies, I am not an effective manager. My disciplinary skills are pitiful. I am easily manipulated. I am a transparent pushover who hands out second chances like candy. Some of these kids scared me; they knew it and took advantage of it. Every day I would write up scores of students, only to find myself ripping these documents to shreds, telling myself that the kid really was not that bad, convinced that I would solve the problem “in house”.
Obviously, without these management skills, my teaching abilities were rendered irrelevant. Despite my sincere efforts, very little biology was learned that semester. Though it is worth noting that it was only a few students who were regularly causing me trouble, I devoted the majority of my time attempting to address behavioral issues that were disrupting the classroom, and very little time actually teaching. Some days I was lucky if one full sentence escaped from my mouth.
So, the question is, where do I fall? Was I a “good” teacher or a “bad” one?
While we are oversimplifying, I would like to address this question by calling for a slightly more complex descriptive model. Instead of the good/bad dichotomy, I would divide up the profession into four categories: those who are good at managing and teaching, those who are good managers but bad teachers, those, like me, who are good teachers, but bad managers, and those that are terrible at both.
The first category is rare. These are incredible, superhero like people. The second category, unfortunately, is more common. I think it is obvious why this must be the case. It is a pretty good gig to get paid to play around on face-book while students sit quietly filling out work sheets all day. There may be a few teachers who fall into the fourth category, but most of them would probably never enter the profession to begin with. It is the third category that concerns me. There must be a lot of us, and I think that we are the ones that leave the profession in droves.
Could good teachers learn how to be good managers? Maybe…or maybe there is something inherently incompatible about these two roles. If a teacher is engaging her students she must be moving around the classroom. She must be physically next to them, conversing with them, asking them questions, keeping them on task. A good teacher rarely sits down to survey her classroom. She cannot always be aware of the spiteful little monsters in the corner, quietly dismantling her microscopes.
It is for these reasons that I propose my very simply solution to the education crisis. For those teachers who want it, I think all classrooms should have two adult figures: one who handles the teaching, and one who handles the managing.
Though there is not the space to lay out the details, I can think of many ways this could be achieved. Somewhat facetiously, my favorite would be paying fully vetted ex-prison inmates, former gang members, or other menacing characters to do the job. We could call them “bouncers”, though I would never advocate grabbing students by their collars and tossing them unceremoniously out into the hallway.
In any event, there is one thing I am absolutely certain of. I am certain that if discipline had been taken entirely out of my inept hands that year, all of my students would have learned…a lot. In addition, I would have loved my job. I would have gone back. I would still be teaching.
There must be a lot of us out there.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Lies of Omission: The Case of the McRib Sandwich
I turned on my radio, spun the dial, thought I’d listen to some news for a while
Grabbed the knob, spun it around, got NPR, here’s what I found.
Real news? Hardly a trace
Just one damn marathon marketplace
The nasdaq is up the dow’s in the cellar
And NPR sold out to Rockefeller.
-Utah Phillips
I've been listening to NPR all of my life. When I hear it I have an autonomic response akin to a feeling of safety or security, like a suckling baby lying trustingly in the arms of my nurturing, adoring mother. The soothing, familiar voices of sensible, moral people placate my anxiety. I crave the sound of those disembodied voices: teaching me, offering me a path of clarity, protecting me from ignorance. NPR has been such a large influence in my life, in fact, that they have contributed to my development as a human being arguably more than my actual parents who, in contrast, basically tossed me to the wolves.
In the last few years, however, I've noticed a significant change in my relationship with NPR. I'm not sure exactly when it began since it was a gradual, insidious change, but lately, instead of the above described reaction that previously characterized my feelings towards it, I've become aware of a creeping hostility and distrust: a feeling of betrayal. It is as though my omniscient trackers of the truth who I rely upon to bring me back fat fruits of wisdom are instead returning from their journey with a product that might look tempting on the surface, but upon further investigation is flavorless and even full of rot.
Whether this bait and switch was always present and I was simply too seduced to notice, or whether it can be traced to the increase in corporate underwriters is a job for a much less lazy person, but there is no doubt that when I turn on NPR I am more likely to hear a piece on a cocktail recipe than I am an in depth analysis of the root causes of rainforest destruction. Rarely, do I hear any real criticism of American imperialism or any serious investigation into the perils of global capitalism. In fact, it appears to me that most reporting on NPR rests upon the a priori notion that the U.S. imperialist agenda and the principles of capitalism are essentially "good". Though there may be some attempt to explore the symptoms, the effects are rarely traced back to the root causes. The honest facade makes the obvious corporate bias even more sinister.
Of course, even if one takes issue with my use of the word imperialism or with my assertion that capitalism is the root cause of many of the world's woes, it should be widely agreed that it is the job of an organization that markets itself as a serious "news source" to perform the important public service of a thorough investigation into all of the forces that shape our world. It is not enough, for instance, to do a quick story on the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest without asking questions about the role of western companies meeting western demands for meat products, metal and lumber.
Let's look at a few concrete examples. A reading of the 2007 Morning Edition story entitled "Unlikely Allies Battle Deforestation in the Amazon" gives the impression that in general, global corporations with just a little bit of pressure from environmentalists are working towards a solution and that the ultimate cause of deforestation in Brazil is entirely the fault of local forces. Another similar example, "Electronics Fuel Congo Conflict" discussing coltan mining in the Congo sounds promising but ultimately barely touches upon the role of western forces and concentrates mainly on local corruption. Furthermore, the searches that I did on these topics did not turn up any more coverage. Each of these transcripts left me feeling hungry; and, damnit, if NPR has done its job I should feel satiated.
Speaking of not feeling satiated, in further defense of my thesis, I have examined NPR's coverage of the icon of American domination and capitalism: McDonald's Restaurants. Though there is no lack of potential material for criticism that includes the negative impact of fast food on health and the environment, the scourge of the low-wage job, the disgusting human/animal/environmental abuses of the meat industry, the presence of heavy metals in fertilizer, marketing drugs (fat and sugar) to children, etc. I find it difficult to find any NPR coverage in which any of these themes is even casually mentioned let alone pursued. Instead, NPR has squandered its coverage of McDonalds upon their attempts to make menu changes to satisfy cultural differences globally, their attempts to improve their image by complying with nutrition labeling and offering healthy choices, or, of course, the incredibly newsworthy adventures of the McRib Sandwich.
In each of these examples, I am not making the case that farmers, warlords, miners, purveyors of corruption, law enforcement, parents, overweight people etc. should not share the blame for the bad things that happen; I'm simply arguing that they don't deserve all of the blame. NPR does not utilize a broad enough lens and doesn't ask the really tough questions or even deign to put America or capitalism under the interrogation light. In all of the above cases, the damages done by global corporations and "first world" life-style demands are either omitted entirely or drastically downplayed. It's as though the NPR position is to sit back behind a glass divider and point out the terrible things in the world but not examine America's complicity or hypocrisy.
A few years back I read John Perkins' wonderful book Confessions of an Economic Hit man. In it, he makes some incredible allegations about the direct involvement of the US government and global corporations in the destruction of the economies of "developing" nations. Either John Perkins is a deranged compulsive liar or a messenger for an extraordinarily disturbing truth, or he's somewhere in the middle, but I couldn't count on NPR to investigate. They'd rather fill me in on Janet Jackson's nipples getting exposed during the half time show at the Super bowl.
Okay, I know there are other sources of news, such as Z magazine, Democracy Now! and Counterpunch, that I rely upon and wish had a broader audience. But NPR is "main stream" and there is absolutely no reason why they can't be just as intrepid. NPR promotes itself as "thorough" and "sincere" and "objective" and claims to provide a "broad perspective"; it should live up to its own description. Besides, even if the American imperialist agenda and global capitalism are forces for good then at least prove it to me by giving me the evidence. NPR simply leaves the question off of the table.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
War is Peace
I've made the unsubstantiated observation that as a general rule, Americans dislike having uncomfortable discussions and therefore usually converse about neutral things, such as celebrities, products and pets. To illustrate, I was recently silenced at a party for daring to engage in conversation that was "too controversial" and not "inclusive" enough, even though I was talking about the presidential election. Swallowing my anger along with my next shot of whiskey, and mentally reviewing the long list of things that kill real democracy including complacency, I politely nodded my head to the litany of silly cat stories that followed. Just for the record, I experience joy in the presence of silly cats as much as the next person, but I take this as a given and do not feel the need to waste my precious social time reviewing the time-honored crazy antics of Felis catus. Yes, my cat runs around the house for no reason, too. Yes, it's funny. Now can we talk about politics and religion?
So, it was in this context that I was genuinely surprised whilst in the gym the other day shamelessly eavesdropping on a conversation that actually weighed a few pounds. I mean, maybe not enough to build rippling brain mass, but enough to tone up the ganglia a little. While most of the time I instinctively scramble the unbearable clatter that characterizes the average American conversation, in this particular exchange I began to hear words and phrases that wrestled my slumbering outer liberal into attention; words and phrases so provocative that I even made a special trip to the locker room so I could scribble them down on a paper towel since I can never rely on my disheveled memory. Later, I promptly lost the paper towel since I cannot rely on my disheveled memory. For this reason, I am unable to repeat these words and phrases exactly for you here, but I do remember the most sinister and provocative phrase of them all: "What's wrong with Ward Cleaver?"
Though I'd love to attempt to answer that question, I am trying to converge on a point for which such musings would prove superfluous. Therefore, I will resist the temptation to do so here and instead present to you a general description of this conversation that took place between two gentlemen on stair-steppers. During the conversation, each described himself in one way or another as "conservative". Beginning with the Ward Cleaver comment, the theme of this discussion was the destruction of the american family by the liberal/politically correct lurking among us, a theme that eventually evolved into reflections upon the growing epidemic of wussiness that these gentlemen believed is presently being vectored by overprotective parents to their all too sensitive, spoiled, allergy laden children. Again, in the interest of point convergence, I would like to put aside some of the tasty contradictions inherent in the simultaneous advocacy of these two ideas, and exclusively focus on the second one.
"I grew up in the Vietnam era," the older man said, "kids died. That's just the way it was. You got over it. Kids got beat up in the school yard. That's just the way it was. You got over it. If you didn't like the food you were given, tough, you ate it or you starved. You got over it. That's what made you a man. You didn't talk about it. You just got over it. I heard about this kid who got a pass on reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" because he was 'too sensitive'. I had to read that book when I was in school. I didn't like it, but I got over it!"
So, yeah, I thought, I agree with this guy, to a point. I think reading uncomfortable books improves your mind and playing in the dirt improves your immune system and I, too, have been frustrated by the spoiled nature of some American children when I have sweat dribbling down my face and thirty impatient people to wait on and mom is gently prodding little Samantha to choose between severally equally nutritionless items on the kids menu. This is me thinking: "Samantha, they will all make you hopelessly addicted to fat and sugar for the rest of your life, and Bessie the cow was inhumanely slaughtered just like Wilbur, so really, does it make that much of a difference? And, mom, give her ten seconds and if she can't decide, order her a bowl of broccoli and that'll teach her!"
However, most of the time, when I'm not in basic primitive survival mode like I am at work, I do prefer choice, democracy, kindness, peace, individuality and life to commandments, totalitarianism, cruelty, war, conformity and death. So, in that regard the wussy movement gives me hope that there may be a trend inching forward in that direction in the small cultural subset of white middle-class suburban America, even if the bond of white bread dough that holds families together is being permanently disrupted by too much communication.
As I was just about to make this very eloquent statement exactly how you see it here, however, the two men departed with their unchallenged opinions totally INTACT and I was left alone with sixty more minutes on the stair-stepper and an idiot box full of hundreds of nutrtionless yet tempting television choices. Unable to help myself, I turned it on and flicked through the channels in order to do a rough survey on the number of guns I saw. I was now entertaining chicken versus egg, life versus art, man versus woman, and other delightful dichotomies that typically charge through my mind in response to violence on television when suddenly and unexpectedly, a beautiful thought came blasting through, courtesy of the wussiness conversation.
And the Grinch thought of something she hadn't before. Violence, she thought, doesn't come in a store. Violence, she thought, is a little bit more!
Maybe, I thought as a choir of Whos joined in, the wussiness movement in our real lives (us being the small cultural subset of white middle-class america) sucks the warrior instinct out of us and deposits it upon the stories we tell as reflected by our pop culture. Just maybe, though I'm not entirely convinced, but maybe, the increasingly graphic violence in movies, television and video games does not desensitize the humans that feel the need to watch it, but preserves the aggressive instinct in a harmless fantasy bubble. In other words, increasing violence in this venue is a good sign for those of us rooting for a progression towards peace. I never thought I'd say this, but, hooray for Mortal Kombat!
But, of course, this from a person who argued once that increasing divorce rates are not a pernicious sign of the destruction of the institution of marriage, but an auspicious sign of intolerance for unhappiness.
I'm not saying it's true.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Billboard and The Elephant
Oh, the things I would do if I didn't have to spend most of my time either going to work, at work, or recovering from work and had more money than just enough to get by! Don't get me wrong, the benefits of living on a $30,000/year income under American capitalism do not escape me, it's just that they are tremendously outweighed by all of the disadvantages: the amount of time I spend doing something I hate, the nagging fear that at any moment my life could totally collapse, the nagging fear that when I am old and incapacitated I will be lying in my shit for hours, my only real wish being that somebody come by and put a pillow between my knees. Not to mention the systemic problems with capitalism: overproduction of waste, stress-related illness, environmental destruction, alienation, the emphasis on the more primitive aspects of our human nature, the destruction of community, income inequality, etc.
I am trying to escape from it, of course, and I have several long-term plans in the works to slowly extricate myself from the traps of mainstream American culture. This is tricky business, since my skin has grown around the straps and I must be careful not to injure myself in the process. More on this later. For now, I wish to fantasize on what I would do if I had a few extra million lying around or if I weren't so painfully shy that I could actually behave like a capitalist and raise the money.
First, I would save the elephants. I have an affinity for all living things and even defend the most hideous life-forms of all such as leeches, infectious organisms, mosquitoes, coakroaches, and humans, but I have a special relationship with the elephant that goes back several months when I was at the St. Louis Zoo for the first time since the whole concept of a zoo disturbs me on some level even though I know all about the great things they do. I think the feeling could be described as love at first sight when one of the adult elephants that was so far off in the distance that I could've squashed its head between my thumb and index finger, suddenly began to charge towards the crowd in a sort of slow, graceful trot with it's ears billowing in the wind. The beauty took my breath away.
"You're crying!" my boyfriend said incredulously as the elephant, who was now right in front of us, raised his trunk up majestically infront of his innocuous face, his incomprehensible size rendering the ballet even more sublime. "Yes," I thought to myself, "I'm in love with this elephant."
I think my boyfriend was a little jealous.
"I am not a man!" the elephant appeared to be yelling, who is arbitrarily a male in this story simply to avoid using the term "it", "I am an animal!"
So, most of my money and time would go to help elephants and all other similarly threatened living things on our planet. Of course, any effort to alleviate human poverty, ignorance, greed, poor resource utilization and all of the other scurges of our species that either directly or indirectly lead to the destruction of our life-support system would also get my attention.
After that, if I had just a little money left over, I would promote public art. I would buy existing billboards and hire starving artists to paint upon them. That's it. Art not only for art's sake but also for the sake of reminding us all that while commerce matters, it's not the only thing that matters. In fact, I would even argue that while commerce gives us the tools to survive, art makes the effort worthwhile. That's why the art would be on billboards; since billboards are a medium for the marketplace, so placing something upon them with no conceivable monetary benefit would create cognitive dissonance leading to some sort of break in the dull, seamless routine that grinds around in the American middleclass consumer brain.
I remember hearing some anthropologist say on the radio once that Homo sapiens should be renamed Homo manipulans because what really characterizes us is not our knowing stuff but our desire to change stuff. I would take that one step further and say that our most unique diagnostic feature is not only our desire to change stuff, since other animals do this as well, but our desire to change stuff in impractical ways, which is what art is. Art is our special talent. Art is us.
So, on the one hand I'd use my resources to innoculate the world against the scurges of humanity and on the other I'd use my resources to promote our most amazing attribute. Then I'd buy some land and build an intentional community out of yurts and earthships. Then I'd dance, play music, raise bees, grow vegetables, socialize and generally enjoy the fruits of this one fucking life that I have.
But, of course, no time for that. I have to drag myself kicking and screaming to work. No, Bill Clinton, it doesn't give my life purpose.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Dear Hollywood, why do you hate me?
So, here I am at the gym watching television again and catwoman, who is portrayed by a young Halle Berry is beating the crap out of the older villain who is played by Sharon Stone. I watch the entire finale in which Sharon Stone, whose nefarious plan is to unleash a toxic compound upon the sagging, wrinkled faces of sad older women who can't stand the thought of losing their sex appeal, finally falls to her grisly death: the skin on her cheeks cracking to reveal the aged person that she was all along underneath her artificial marble-like skin.
"There it is again!" I think to myself as I pin the example on the schema I've constructed specifically for my casual and biased research into this phenomenon that I like to call "Snow White Syndrome": the blatant loathing, continuous thrashing and/or outright obliteration of the older woman in Hollywood movies. Though I realize that this is not the only lie that Hollywood tells, it is one that I find isn't often discussed. While the young female is busy kicking ass in order to perpetuate the myth that violence is strength, the older female is either being brutalized, extinguished, or she is simply unpalatable: weak, desperate, hideous, jealous or sad.
For example, while practical, clever, gorgeous, warrior teen Katniss is whipping out her bow and arrow in the Hunger Games, her mother is so emotionally unstable that she is unable to be a parent and her older female escort is a frivolous phony who apparently bathes herself in cover-up. To pull an example from an entirely different generation, Working Girl shows a young, smart, unthreatening female breaking the glass ceiling, but only in the context of replacing her older counterpart who is envious, bitter and cruel. It is also important to note that in each of these movies, the older male is portrayed as kindly, paternal, and in even in cohoots with the younger woman to participate in the scintillating marginalization.
In any event, I guess it wouldn't bother me quite so much if the contagion remained quarantined in the movies. I see the war on the older woman in real life and you know where I see the missles coming from the most? Women. Women who say they don't like women. Women who turn their beautiful faces into expressionless masks because there is so much pressure to worship youth. Older women who engage in persistent self-loathing and repeat disparaging myths about themselves such as "men grow old gracefully and women just grow old". Young women who say they don't care if they turn their skin to leather in a tanning booth because "nobody will want me when I'm older anyway." Never mind the cancer.
It's as though women are telling themselves these things in order to buffer the inevitable blow from their bleak futures as hopeless, lonely Mrs. Robinsons. However, it appears to me that it is less like "being realistic" and more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The conclusion? In Hollywood, it's still a man's world. Women are allowed to be strong as long as we are elevating male values of aggression or entertaining male fantasies for sex and nurturing. We can run around in tight leather jumpsuits with guns strapped to our luscious young bodies and we are allowed to be mothers and grandmothers. If we are older, we are allowed to display our power only if it is fueled by a deep jealousy of the younger woman that is replacing us and is eventually destroyed only to reveal the pathetic, weak person who is buried inside. What we are not allowed to be are older women with sex drives and feelings of self-actualization, real confidence and fulfillment.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's more attractive, happier and healthier than ever? Who's feeling like she finally owns herself, finally knows herself, finally kind of likes herself? Who's finding beauty and delight in the complexity of the mind and doesn't really give a rat's ass about the complexion of the skin? Who wouldn't go back to being twenty again unless she were paid enough money to spend her life walking the planet and saving elephants?"
Me, at forty-five. Fuck you, Hollywood.
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