This is pretty sad and ugly:
Orson Scott Card: Blacklisted for Defending the Family
(via Orson Scott Card Blacklisted for Christian Faith)
I can’t comment much; I think these posts and the articles they link to speak for themselves. Is it going to get worse? Or do you think Mr. Card is the last and only man people will ever have a problem with?
This interesting article on Cartoon Brew features a look at Disney’s Burbank studio back when it was being planned. Blogger Amid Amidi writes:
But more than the lack of charm, the Burbank studio’s ostentatious in-your-face luxuriousness suggested a certain tone deafness on Walt Disney’s part. It rankled the hundreds of artists who were struggling to get by on $15-per-week salaries, and who now realized that the company cared more about its films than the well-being of its rank-and-file employees. It hardly mattered to the artists that Walt had had to borrow money from the banks to pay for the construction of the studio. Labor tensions began to escalate just months after artists moved into the studio, and within 18 months, the nasty Disney strike that threatened to destroy the entire studio had begun.
I think what artists desire is a we’re-all-in-this-together comradery sort of feeling. We’re all on the same team, we’re all working together to produce something we can all be proud of.
But the atmospheres of some offices (including the pics featured in the aforementioned blog post) kind of make me sick. Instead of a comradery feeling, they evoke a factory feeling. The artists are just cogs. Uncle Walt will get all the power and glory, and you sit at your desk and do the work your superiors tell you.
I think creative artists in the entertainment industry can struggle with this feeling a lot. On the one hand, creativity demands the freedom and power to pursue one’s creative interests. On the other hand, creating something as big and complicated as a film, especially an animated film, demands a level of conformity, a level of sacrifice of control. This is one of the reasons I can’t pursue a career in animation with as much fervor as I once thought I could; I just find the prospect of a studio life somewhat intimidating. I have the utmost respect and admiration for those artists who can keep their sanity while bringing these awesome new and wonderful worlds to life. I’m not sure I’m humble enough for that sort of work.
OK, I don’t know what this post about. I think I’m hinting at another post I’d like to write sometime soon about how creativity and art require humility.
I was thinking about the differences between TV and YouTube. Some differences are obvious. YouTube’s videos are mostly far shorter than an average TV program, and YouTube’s offerings have very low production value, being made by home users who simply wish to share a small comment or piece of art or something.
But the experience of watching a YouTube video is also different. Not just because it’s watched on a computer screen rather than a TV screen, but the experience is framed differently by audiences. That is, audiences expect a different experience when clicking on the TV and when watching a YouTube video. Even though YouTube vids are short and have low production value, it takes audiences more work to get to them. They have to load up the browser, go to YouTube, and search or click around for their desired vid. TV, however, only takes the click of one or two buttons on a remote. TV broadcasters are continually pumping out content. TV audiences often ignore a lot of TV content, leaving it on in the background, or tuning in when they are bored, just to “see what’s on.”
So, if online video is to compete with traditional TV, we need an online service that will pump out video automatically, without the user having to make a conscious effort to decide what to watch specifically. Online video needs a way for audiences to just “see what’s on.” A first-time user could setup a custom channel depending on his interests, and YouTube would load the selected videos automatically. If the user doesn’t like them, he can go find his own videos. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people settling for boring stuff on TV simply because it’s more convenient, because it takes less work to get to. It’s worth competing for their attention.
So somebody go make that.
I couldn’t watch this whole video because the host’s arguments are just too completely insane. It’s probably too insane to even be worth commenting on, but I’m going to anyway. (I like how ratings and comments are conveniently not allowed on the video.)
The argument is that the “damsel in distress” trope in video games objectifies women by portraying them as objects to be won. If this were truly the case, any game involving a damsel in distress could replace the damsel with a bag of virtual money as the ultimate prize, and the story should still work. It doesn’t, because the bag of money can’t love the main character in return. The prize is not the woman’s body, it’s the woman’s love, the return of the mutual love between the two characters. These stories are founded on relationships.
Claiming that wanting to save a woman is objectifying her is like claiming that giving a gift to someone is a form a objectification, because someone is being acted upon. “Honey, I got you a new necklace!” “How dare you act upon me!” We might as well never do anything for anyone else, less we objectify them.
There’s an issue going on in the writing / publishing world involving Random House’s e-book imprint Hydra, as mentioned in this recent post from the Writer Beware Blog.
I have no comment on the issue itself, but on something mentioned in Random House’s open response letter. They write:
While we respect your position, you’ll not be surprised to learn that we strongly disagree with it, and wish you had contacted us before you published your posts.
I’ve seen this sort of defense before in the blogosphere. “You should’ve talked to me before you said something negative about me!” No. Obviously you have every right to defend your opinions, but it is no breach of etiquette for someone else to publish his dissenting opinions without running them by you first. Your original deeds and writings are what he is publishing an opinion about. If his opinions seem to be based on a misunderstanding, you can correct him, but it is not his job to run his opinions by you first.
I doubt whoever wrote this letter meant much by this sentence, but this way of thinking bothers me.
I have started a new blog called Media Consumption Log. I will post my comments (for they are often too short and inane for me to consider them “reviews”) on the media I consume over there. My comments on films I’ve watched will also appear over there. I wanted to keep a log of my own consumption and commentary for my future reference, but I didn’t want to bog down this blog with such posts. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also not linking my media consumption blog to Twitter or Facebook, so I won’t be inadvertently spamming friends every time I update it.
Forgot to include this on my list of interesting films for 2013 (and I’m sure I forgot plenty of others), but the trailer for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was recently released by Sony Pictures Animation, and it looks interesting:
I wasn’t impressed by the trailer for the first one, but was pleasantly surprised by how hilarious it was when we bought it on blu-ray. However, it looks like this sequel is written and directed by a different creative team, so we’ll see how well they can carry on the original’s unique brand of humor.
I was thinking about this as I emptied the dishwasher.
Say you have a story like Star Wars, in which a male warrior main character fights the bad guys and saves the female. And gender-swap it. A female warrior main character fights the bad guys and saves the male. The second feels awkward to me. What guy wants a warrior woman to save them?
I’m not talking about the “female action hero” trope in general, I’m talking about female action heroines whose roles in their stories involve saving a male by physically defeating enemies that the male character is too physically weak to fight.
I think it feels awkward because, in the real world, males are generally naturally physically stronger than females. This is simply reflected in stories.
I think the problem with this silly talk and others who analyze gender roles in stories is that they look too much at the method of saving.
Can a female character save a male character?
Of course. And it happens all the time.
Only they usually don’t do it through superior physical strength. Because that’s awkward and unrealistic.
For example, look at Mary Poppins in the classic Disney film, and notice how she saves Mr. Banks. Look at the problem Mr. Banks has relating to his own family, what Mary Poppins teaches him, and what sort of man he becomes by the end of the film. And notice that Mary Poppins didn’t have to use any superior physical strength to do it. (Meanwhile, look at the sort of woman Mrs. Banks is, and notice why she can’t save her husband.)
Other examples are some of the films from Studio Ghibli, such as Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away, or the more recent The Secret World of Arrietty. Notice how, at times, the male characters physically save the female main characters at certain parts of the story, but in the course of the overall story, the female saves the male without using superior physical strength, but with empathy and wisdom.
I think the mistake comes from looking at a male action hero, and guessing it’s his physical strength that makes him a strong character. But it’s the other way around. When a male action hero raises his sword on the morning of battle, we are not celebrating his physical strength, we are celebrating his moral principles through his physical strength. His physical strength becomes a symbol of his virtue. This makes sense for male characters, because males are naturally physically stronger. So it’s often pretty awkward to celebrate a female character’s virtues through her physical strength. Rather we do it through her physical beauty and nurturing empathy.
Neither physical strength nor beauty and nurturing empathy are “better” than one another. So even though they are “unequal” in that they are not exactly the same thing, they are not “unequal” in the sense that one is worth more than the other. So having these differences naturally reflected in our stories and art makes perfect sense; it is not some strange ignorant sexism to fight against or compensate for. (Nor is it some arbitrary cultural phenomenon.)
According to this article:
“We have taught a computer to write musical scores,” says Gustavo Diaz-Jerez, software consultant and pianist.
“Now we can produce modern classical music at the touch of a button.”
Awesome! Let’s hear some examples!
Oh.
I’ll keep working on my own attempt for now. I want my Mozart Symphony Generator.
In the meantime, here’s Emily Howell creator David Cope performing some John Cage:
The annoying thing about creativity is that it changes its obsessions abruptly and uncontrollably. I’ve got only two scenes left to write for the novel I’ve been working on for a year and a half, and what does my mind want to do now? It wants to study Mozart’s work and write music. (At least it’s cultured, I guess.) So I spent the last few days working on this little “mini-concerto” for piano and orchestra, Piano Concerto No 0, Opus 67:
I number it ‘0’ because it is meant as more of an exercise than a “real” effort. As you might guess, it was written while studying Mozart’s harmony. In fact, the harmony and voice leading of the first section was almost completely blatantly plagiarized from one of Mozart’s piano concertos. (Figure out which one, if you dare.) But the point of the exercise wasn’t so much to be harmonically original as it was to try playing around with these classical sorts of cadences, inversions, secondary dominants, secondary leading-tone chords, and circle-of-fifth sequences. Most of my music is harmonically super simple, just root-position chords progressing through diatonic triads, such as I-iii-IV-V or I-vi-IV-V (my favorites). I hardly ever use sevenths or inversions or the ugly vii°. I’m not necessarily trying to change my “style”, but I would certainly like to expand it. Who wouldn’t? Plus, I love Mozart, so I’d like to try to understand how he and other master composers keep their chromaticism so beautifully tonic.
Structurally, the above piece is rather lazy. It begins in sonata form, then half-way through the development it section, it repeats and ends. I guess the repeat can count as recapitulation? No? Oh well. I was ready to move on. I’ve never been a sonata-form fan.
While I was working on this piece, I also got some ideas on how to expand my melody generator into a full-blown symphony generator. So I’ve got some programming experiments to try, but they will take a lot of work. So… the Mozart Symphony Generator, coming soon… (we can dream at least)