Interesting Links for 24-02-2016

[andrewducker]

FactCheck: Boris on Brexit (tags: politics uk europe facts ) The Charlie Sheen effect on HIV prevention (tags: hiv society ) Squirm with purpose: Fidgeting is helpful for ADHD patients (tags: adhd ) Purity, cleanliness, guilt and modern diets (tags: diet health ) Please sign my petition banning referendum poetry (tags: poetry funny referendum

Comments

[kalimac]

1) I guess I'd agree that the aesthetic goals of studio blockbuster films and indie films are different enough that they count as separate art forms, in the same way (though emphatically not for the same reasons) that I've long felt that concert music and opera are different art forms that should not be treated as parts of the same thing. But not all studio films are of the blockbuster category.

What I lack, though I'm sure it's out there, is a source for reviews of the kinds of indie films that I'd like. Ideally it should not also be filled with a lot of other data I have no interest in.

2) Some of those technology cruds I remember, others make no sense. I've often accidentally connected to the Internet on my cell phone, but I never get charged more than a few cents before getting it unconnected. And you absolutely did not have to cover your eyes to avoid seeing the movie when rewinding a VCR tape. VCRs had two rewind modes, and the one showing the movie backwards was only for use if you wanted to go a short distance and needed to see the image to tell where you were. To use that mode for a complete rewind would wear the tape, and your machine, out. You turned "play" OFF and then rewound. It was also much faster.

3) "They're taking the hobbits to Isengard." I got a huge kick out of this. I was bored by Jackson's theatrical movies, and winced at his extended editions. This two-minute mashup is the only edition of Jackson that I actually enjoyed watching.

I would, however, strongly dispute Hickey's claim that Tolkien's racial and gender constructs are "absolutely awful." Racist and sexist by today's standards, absolutely; but vastly removed from the racial politics of the Nazis or the Afrikaner regime, both of which he loathed. Tolkien was an essentialist and a hierarchist, but he saw virtue in multiple levels of his hierarchy, his essentialism was Jungian rather than Darwinian, and he entirely lacked the sweaty need to denigrate the Other which is the mark of the true "absolutely awful" racist or sexist.

4) Good research on the compiled Tale of the Last Alliance. But it doesn't quite work as an unedited single narrative because of the awkward jumps in perspective and context. And, of course, it only makes sense if you already know most of the story anyway. Also, I wish the footnotes had been set to display their text as tooltips when you hover over them, like the ones on Wikipedia do. It'd make it much easier to follow the sources.

[andrewducker]

If I bump into a good indie film review site I'll let you know!

I agree about movie rewind. It was a lot slower with the image showing, and it was completely unnecessary to do that for going back to the beginning.

I should note that it's not Andrew Hickey's claim there, he's just reblogged it from somewhere else (and I've lazily linked to where I've seen it, rather than going back to the source). I do agree that Tolkien may be problematic (or, at least worthy of discussion in that area), but he was clearly not actually racist. As is made very clear Here (a quote I'm sure you're familliar with).

[kalimac]

Oops, I didn't notice the quote lines on the post. For my part, I wouldn't quote something so long, I'd just link to it myself and quote bits within a context of my own comments. Others may do as they like, but they run the risk of me misreading them.

Oh yes, I know that quote. That's the version Tolkien and his publishers didn't send; the one they did was probably more polite. But this one is wonderfully sarcastic. (Even more so in a part the quoter left out, where, speaking on his professional authority as a philologist, he rags the Nazis on their misuse of the word "Aryan".)

If someone says that Tolkien was racist by today's standards, I won't argue with them. But if they're going to use that big a bucket, I think they have to acknowledge there are different kinds and degrees of racism, and not to confuse an old-fashioned Tory, which is what Tolkien was, with the BNP.

[naath]

That's just how tumblr does things :(

[newandrewhickey]

The quote lines are actually because the person I reblogged it from (piratemoggy) herself reblogged it and added the line at the bottom about having posted it to the wrong account.
The way Tumblr works is that one reblogs things others have posted on their Tumblrs -- that's the primary functionality of the site, to allow you to share others' posts in full, sometimes adding additional commentary, but with the original post and blog being linked to so people can always go back to the original.
It's not an interface I like, myself, but Tumblr is where the bulk of fandom activity now happens, as LJ was ten years ago, and so I use it. When I link things on my "proper blog" (on Wordpress), I do the same kind of thing as Andrew does here...