Tracy Clark-Flory has written an interesting article over at Salon.com. In the article, Clark-Flory contemplates the difference between women reading/watching romance and men watching pornography (Yes, I know that porn is not the exclusive domain of men. However, romance novels, by and large, are consumed by women.)

Clark-Flory comes to the exact same conclusion that any sane bookseller eventually comes to: Romance novels are socially acceptable porn for women. I worked at a Waldenbooks for many years, and every month the same group of sad looking guys would come in and buy the latest issue of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. And every month the same group of sad looking females would come in and buy the latest romance offerings from Harlequin and Silhouette. There were virtually no differences between the two groups.

I’d like to take Clark-Flory’s argument a step further. I think that the Romance novels are actually far more damaging than pornography. Pornography, by and large, is immediately identifiable as fantasy. Most reasonable people would be able distinguish between real people sex and porn star sex. However, romance fiction is not as easily identifiable, and even more concerning, it taps into and reinforces the gendered roles that have kept women as subordinates for centuries.

Let’s take the Cinderella story as an example because so many romance novels and movies follow the plot. Incidentally, this basic plot line dates back to the 1st century B.C. A young woman lives in an oppressive, abusive, or isolated environment. She feels misunderstood, unappreciated, and unloved–feelings that are quite common. Suddenly, a romantic and sensitive suitor comes along and falls madly in love with the woman. He’s rugged and manly, handsome, and chivalrous, and unlike everyone else around the woman, he recognizes the woman’s beauty and potential. He accepts where she came from, and he swoops her out of her lowly lifestyle and gives her a wonderful new life.

This type of fantasy insidiously reinforces the notion that women need to be rescued by men. The female never really initiates change in these stories, but rather waits on the male to change things for her. This fantasy also reinforces the notion that every person has a perfect mate out there just waiting to be found–the belief that everyone has a destined mate that is perfect, i.e. The One. As in, he’s the one, or she’s the one I’m meant to be with.

What an absolutely rubbish belief. With as many millions of people waltzing around this giant mudball of ours, the notion that each person only has one perfect mate is asinine. We shouldn’t think in terms of destiny but in terms of varying degrees of compatibility. Some might call this outlook cold, but love and varying degrees of compatibility aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s just that we should look at love as rationally as possible or realize we’re increasing the odds of heartbreak exponentially. For instance, if you’re in love with someone and you disagree about films, TV shows, religion, and politics, odds are good your relationship is going to be shit. Love that person all you want, but at the end of the day, you have nothing in common except some nebulous abstraction we humans have titled “love.”

I’ve been down the romantic “she’s the one” road that romance novels and films promise. It’s a road filled with potholes, deadends, and wrongturns.

As I wrote earlier in this post, porn, unlike romance fiction, is easily identifiable. From the costumes to the dialogue to the lighting, porn is nothing like reality. The differences between porn sex and real sex are like the differences between collegiate wresting and professional wrestling. Sure, collegiate wrestling is a great sport, and the competitors are highly passionate about what they’re doing, but not many people actually want to watch collegiate wrestling. It’s boring as hell. That’s real people sex.

But professional wrestling? Huge difference. There’s loud, bassy music that’s cheesy and awesome. The costumes are gaudy and sexy. The wrestling moves are exciting and damn near physically impossible to achieve without injury. That’s porn.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to convince anyone that porn is harmless. It can be quite harmful, but so can just about anything in excess.  My point, rather, is that both romance novels and pornography are forms of escapism, but porn has been vilified while romance fiction has been, for the most part, ignored. Young adults are punished for possessing pornography, yet recent studies show that consumption of pornography does not lead to feelings of misogyny, sexual perversion, rape, or pedophilia. However, the very act of punishing young adults for possessing pornography, especially when coupled with religious fundamentalism, correlates quite highly with sexual depravity. Conversely, society not only condones, but, in many ways, encourages the unrealistic, romantic outlook of love.

Yet again our puritanical roots betray us. We shouldn’t worry so much about the sex. We should, however, be worried about Prince Charming. He’s a liar and a cheat, and quite possibly a serial rapist.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this summer, it’s that I’m apparently not appropriately masculine.

In hindsight, I’ve probably possessed this deficiency for quite some time, but the release of Bay’s “movie,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has made my lack of testosterone blatantly obvious.

I feel I should elaborate:

I thought the first “Transformers” movie (no, not this one. I love that one) was an egregious piece of shit. Story-wise the movie was an illogical mess, the performances were absolute rubbish, and because Bay is an ADHD sufferer who self-medicates with methamphetamine, the film direction and editing was so manic that during the fight scenes I couldn’t tell the Transformers apart. The single, solitary saving grace of the first film was Peter Cullen, but since Bay obviously doesn’t understand: 1) Prime shouldn’t be painted like a fucking 1960s dragster; 2) Other than combiner Transformers, Prime is one of the most powerful and combat savvy Cybertronian warriors around, and thus, he shouldn’t get his ASS KICKED every time he fights; I was unable to even enjoy Cullen’s performance.

Fast-forward to this summer. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” (henceforth will be referred to as “Tranny Revenge”), is premiering in the theaters. People ask me if I’m going to go see it. I unequivocally say “no.” They look surprised and ask “why.” I say: “Because the first film made me want to use the Ultimate Nullifer to erase my childhood so that I don’t even remember the original Transformers cartoon.” The inevitable reply: “Yeah, the story might have sucked, but Megan Fox is sooo hawt!”

The assumption here, I suspect, is that I should be so manly that I would want to go see a film because the woman in it is so damn attractive that I’ll forget the awfulness occurring on the screen around her. Don’t get me wrong, Megan Fox is hot in a pornstar-going-mainstream kinda way, but if she can’t do anything interesting besides stand around and look hot, well, I’m going to stop kidding myself and just get a porno flick. That whole “WOW SHE’S SO GORGEOUS” thing only lasts for about a minute. Then the actress needs to start acting.

There’s a whole list of movies besides “Tranny Revenge” my lack of manliness caused me to dislike: “Tomb Raider.” “Fantastic Four.” “Catwoman.” Anything with Lindsay Lohan. “The Deep.” “Into the Blue.” Those are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are a lot more.

I guess story-driven action films like the Harry Potter series, “The Dark Knight,” “The Matrix,” “Iron Man,” and others, have emasculated me to the degree that stripper boobies and silicone lip injections no longer lull me into complacency. More’s the pity.

Do youself a favor and skip Bay’s “film.” Sure, you’ll miss stellar performances, like this, from Shia. And you won’t see Megan Fox. But with that time and money you save you’ll be able to buy a six-pack of beer and enjoy a decent “Transformers” movie. You can always download porn afterwards if that’s what you’re after.

My mother always says she thinks I have a warped sense of humor. I prefer to think of it as a perfected sense of humor. I love witty humor and clever humor, subversive and ironic, satirical and parody. But my favorite kind of humor? Gotta go with juvenile. There’s just something about a good fart joke that gets me every time. I was watching Benny Hill the first time I can remember laughing so hard that my sides hurt and tears streamed down my cheeks. Benny was holding a huge gong in front of him, and the guy that was supposed to hit it missed the going entirely and smacked Benny right in the nuts. I’d never seen anything so damn funny.

We had a pretty big VHS collection when I was younger, and some of our tapes had small sections that had been watched and re-watched so many times that the quality was noticeably bad. Case in point, “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” I still lose my mind when Chris Rock says “I sho am hungry!”:

Our tape of Transylvania 6-500 was also in bad shape. Not the whole thing, mind you, just the portions with Michael Richards. The bit where he “slips” on a banana peel just slays me.

More recently, my tape of Half-Baked, like many other people I assume, got plenty of replays. I loved the portion with Bob Saget at the NA meeting, but I’ll put the tape in specifically to hear the guy yell out “I seen’em!” after Saget boldly makes his proclamation.

Another good line delivery occurs in Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” during the presidential speech. I go nuts when the dude screams out “That’s what you said last time, DIPSHIT!” It happens at about 3:50 into the clip.

And I’m sure Leigh is tired of seeing this last one. Anytime this episode of “Scrubs” comes on I have to use the DVR to watch and rewatch this scene no less than 50 times. Guess which bit’s my favorite. No, go ahead and guess:

I need to end this quickly because “Raising Arizona” just came on T.V., and I’ll be forced to watch and rewatch the part where H.I.’s cell-mate talks about eating frogs, crawdads, and sand. You ate what? Sand. You ate sand? That’s right.

I’m a big fan of the ongoing writers’ strike. First off, it’s entertaining to see Elaine in the picket line, wearing a crappy pair of sweats and a sucking on a bottle of water. I also love the notion of Jay Leno delivering donuts to the strikers on his big, stupid Harley, like some kind of Hell’s Angel delivery boy.

But aside from the entertainment aspect, the strike represents a group of artists, standing up as one, proclaiming “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

For those of you who aren’t pop culture zombies, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) called for a writers strike after the production companies refused to renegotiate the writers’ wages. Of particular contention in the negotiation were the residuals of DVD and internet sales. Writers receive no compensation for material sold over the internet, and they only receive four cents from each DVD sold. The production studios claim these two forms of media are nothing more than promotional tools; meanwhile, the studios air fewer and fewer reruns, and rake in the cash on DVD and iTunes sales.

I’m a big fan of this strike, mainly because I’m a big fan of standing up to crappy organizations. And if this sounds vaguely communist, well, deal with it. Marx and Engels had some interesting stuff to say. Politically, I like to think of myself as a Repubocratitarian anyway.

I’d be tempted to call myself an independent, but those people are fucking nuts.

No, I support this strike simply because it’s another incident in a long line of incidents where a media company has lost control of its media. I find entropy entertaining, which, funnily enough, is the same reason I support file-sharing. The RIAA and the MPAA are suing the pants off of anyone they catch file-sharing not because they are losing money, or because file-sharers represent a true danger to their bottom lines, but more because file-sharers are usurping power away from the RIAA and MPAA. The current paradigm is breaking down, and no longer are the MPAA and RIAA the principal power-holders of their respective media.

And don’t give me that shit about stealing from artists. If you think that by downloading a CD from a torrent site you’re stealing a massive amount from an artist then think again. Most musicians get less than a dollar for each CD sale, and many of them get mere pennies. If you buy used CDs then they get nothing at all. No, if you want to support your favorite artist then go see them in concert, or buy some of their merchandise, because that’s where they really make their money. If you’re really serious about supporting the artist then use the money you saved not buying their grossly over-priced CD to buy a T-shirt at their concert.

Just as the writers now refuse to work, many musicians are beginning to get angry about this disproportionate profiteering on the part of the record labels and the RIAA. Trent Reznor will release the next NIN album sans production company and completely free on the internet. If you want, you’ll be able to buy a very high quality version of the album (higher quality than a CD) off of his website. Reznor also recently partnered with Saul Williams, and they released the album “The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust” in the same manner (it’s an interesting album, and yes, I paid for it, just as I will the new NIN album). Radiohead just offered their new album for free, and many other artists have started realizing that they can bypass production companies altogether and sell their music at a much greater profit directly to the fans.

I’m glad the writers, and artists in general, are standing up and demanding that they receive adequate and fair prices for their art. Without the artists producing commercially viable products, the production companies wouldn’t exist in the first place. DVD sales have kept many studios in the black, and to hoard all that money away from the writers is reprehensible.

But as much as I enjoy watching the whole debacle, I hope they reach a resolution quickly. If new episodes of “The Daily Show” don’t start airing pretty soon, I’m gonna have to hire a psychiatrist to help me deal with all the bullshit in the world.

Just as a short preface to this post, I think I should mention that I’ve edited and rewritten part of this several times since I first mentioned the topic. First off, I’ve been busy, and I simply haven’t had the motivation nor the mental strength to post. Secondly, at Halloween a reader of this blog, upon meeting me in person for the first time, said that I wasn’t anywhere near as angry in person as I was on the blog. I do use this as a location for complaining, hopefully in a humorous way, but she was right, and I don’t want to seem like a curmudgeon.

So I rewrote this.

And rewrote it.

And after several goes at a rewrite, try as I might, I sound like a curmudgeon. Oh, well.

If you haven’t seen the trailer for the new movie “The Golden Compass,” take a second to watch this clip.

Looks pretty cool, right? There’s swords, magical items, the always attractive Nicole Kidman, and talking bears, which, except for Boo-Boo, are always welcome in any movie or TV show.

The Catholic League of America (which, other than the member being Roman Catholic, has no affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church) has called for a boycott of the film, as have many other Christian organizations in the U.S. So what’s the problem?

Philip Pullman, the author of the books the movie is based on, is an Oxford graduate who went on to teach at his alma mater, a winner of the Carnegie medal for children’s literature, and an atheist. It’s that last bit that has William Donahue, the pit-bull of the Catholic League, all in a tither.

Pullman has never denied the fact that his books are atheistic in nature. The books that comprise His Dark Materials trilogy are about a corrupt and oppressive Authority, which can be seen as an allegory for organized religion. John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” served not only as an influence in naming the trilogy, but as a thematic influence as well.

Typically, Bill Donahue and his ilk have called for a boycott of the film, and by proxy the books, without ever having seen nor read either of them. Donahue and his emailing campaign has been so successful that at the time of this post “The Golden Compass” is the number two entry over at Snopes. It blows my mind to think of boycotting or banning literature, much less doing so without ever having read the “offending” texts. To quote the good Dr. Jones, “Goose-stepping morons…should try reading books instead of burning them.”

Donahue seems to think that Pullman is out to “bash Christianity and promote atheism,” and the movie is simply the secular media’s way of stealthily converting your children to atheism. Donahue seems to view atheism, and all philosophy not his own, as some kind of virus, able to infect and corrupt children simply through proximity.

Let me quote the Elder Brother in Milton’s other great work “Comus”: “Virtue may be assail’d but never hurt, / Surpris’d by unjust force but not enthrall’d” (11. 589-590). To paraphrase, the truly virtuous should never worry, because the unjust may surprise the virtuous person, but the unjust will never subjugate the virtuous. In other words, if your child’s Christianity is destroyed by a movie starring Nicole Kidman and James Bond, or by a book written by a dude named Phil, then your child wasn’t a very good Christian to begin with.

There is always something to be learned from the foreign, whether that be race, religion, gender, or nationality.

Here’s something else Donahue and other fundamentalists never seem to realize: this is a religiously diverse society. Some people are very religious, and others are not, and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t expect a religious pluralism, but let’s all try to understand one another, shall we? There is no better way for your child to become tolerant of other races, religions, and ideologies than to expose him or her to them and then discuss them. Do’em a favor, and give them the intellectual tools needed to operate as a rational being on this spherical melting pot we call Earth.

Or, by all means, cloister your children. Hide them. Protect them from the evils of the “secular” world. Only subject them to the principles and ideologies that you personally believe in. That way they’ll either completely resent and deny you the moment they realize you’ve sheltered them all their life, or you’ll bless the world with another intolerant and ignorant bigot.

Either way. I’d always enjoy a tolerant society, but bigots are fun, too.

I’ve received several indigent e-mail forwards about the new film “The Golden Compass,” each of which call for a boycott of the film. I’ve never read the books on which the film is based, but apparently the author, Philip Pullman, is an atheist, and an atheistic ideology informs the plot of the books.

Incidentally, the judges of the Carnegie Medal called The Golden Compass “one of the ten most important children’s novels of the past 70 years.”

I’ll be ranting about this boycott later tonight.

In August of 1986, my mother took me and my cousin, Brad, to see Transformers: The Movie. I’d already seen what I considered to be some pretty amazing movies by that time in my life. I’d seen the Star Wars movies, Ghostbusters, Superman I and II, and Back to the Future (Hey, leave me alone. I still love BttF.) At that point I still watched cartoons, although I’m pretty sure I downplayed how much I liked them as to not look silly in front of older kids. I went into the theater on that hot summer afternoon expecting to see an hour and a half long episode of the daily cartoon show.

I couldn’t have been more surprised.

From the very first scene when Unicron violently devours Planet Lithone as the inhabitants screamed in terror, I knew I was watching something very different. Just a few short scenes later, I watched in horror as Megatron and his army overtook the Autobot shuttle, and systematically killed Brawn, Prowl, and Ratchet. And then, in a shocking display of sadism, Megatron strolled cooly over to an injured Ironhide, commented “Such heroic nonsense” at Ironhide’s tenacious attempt to continue fighting, and then fired his arm cannon directly into Ironhide’s face, killing him.

And then there was this scene:

When I saw that in the theater I wondered why Optimus never took care of business like that in the cartoon.

I would have found the scene where Optimus Prime actually dies and then passes the Autobot Matrix of Leadership on to Ultra Magnus, but truthfully, I didn’t feel like crying tonight. I did that day in the theater though. Cry that is. And even then, in the back of my mind I knew it was ridiculous to be crying at the “death” of a cartoon character, but hey, we’re talking about Optimus Prime here.

I’d also never heard of Orson Welles at that age, but I did recognize brilliance when I heard it. On rewatches it’s so painfully obvious that Welles was a level far above the likes of the other voice actors in the movie… well, excluding Peter Cullen. But in the theater in the summer of ‘86, all I knew was that Unicron’s voice scared the absolute hell out of me. The line, “Proceed…on your way to oblivion” still makes me cringe. Watch Unicron in his coolest scene in the movie:

I’m aware the movie isn’t a masterpiece. The scenes with Wheelie rival any of the Jar-Jar jackassery in the Star Wars prequels, and could they possibly have found a whinier crybaby than Judd Nelson to voice Hot Rod? Seriously, he’s worse than Dante in Clerks. In spite of its faults, my cousin and I left the theater completely blown away.

We’re going to see the new live action Transformers movie tomorrow, and I know it won’t happen, but I’d love to feel the amazement I felt that day in 1986. Again, I’m not stupid. I know I won’t. The cynicism of adulthood pretty much guarantees I’ll never experience that starry-eyed bewilderment that I did when I was a kid. I’m reasonably sure that my ability to be bewildered began to shrink proportionally with my understanding of how to file taxes.

Also, Michael Bay directed it. Micheal Bay couldn’t bewilder me if he sat in my living room and physically transformed himself into James Cameron.

We saw “Ocean’s Thirteen” today. It was far better than “Twelve,” but not near as good as “Eleven.” The two redeeming qualities of “Thirteen” were the return to Las Vegas, and the additional screen-time for Eddie Izzard. For my money, you just can’t have enough Eddie Izzard.

We’re closing on a house tomorrow, and suddenly, to my abject horror, I realize that I’ve inexplicably morphed into Jack’s Tragic Devotion to Corporate Sponsored Materialism.

In regards to the symbolism in the film “Pan’s Labyrinth,” director Guillermo del Toro states during his commentary track on the DVD that, “Symbols cannot be closed to a single meaning, because if so the symbol becomes a cypher, and the tale become an equation of exact value.”

del Toro means that symbols are subject to interpretation by the viewer, regardless of the director’s intentions for the symbolism in the film. I won’t ruin the film for you, and if you haven’t seen it by all means do so, but the ending of the film is up for interpretation, and del Toro specifically ended his movie with the expectation that many viewers will interpret the symbols and symbolism in the film in different ways. Your interpretation of those symbols will determine how you view the ending of the film.

I am by no means a semiotician, nor can I even claim to fully understand semiotics. Sure, I have a general idea of how signifiers and the signified relate to texts, but as far as breaking things down into their individual structures, well, that ain’t my bag, baby. But, I do find it interesting how different people interpret the exact same symbol, or series of symbols, in completely different ways. Because we do all interpret symbols a little bit differently, don’t we? When I see the montages of the American flag in Michael Bay films, I’m quite sure the first thought that pops into my head is very different than the first one that pops into yours. Likewise, I’m sure the meanings you attach to the Millennium Falcon are very different from the meanings that I attach to it.

Arguing over the meanings and interpretations of symbols in literature and films is quite a lot of fun. Arguing over them in everyday life isn’t really all that fun. In fact, I’d say that many of the major points of contention in our society might very well stem from conflicting interpretations of symbols. Personally, I think everything would run a lot smoother if we treated everyday life like literary and film criticism. Instead of attacking each other over our contentious interpretations we could all sit down and write out an article length paper for each symbol we interpret, wherein we meticulously detail how and why we arrived at our interpretation of said symbol.

We’d be so damn busy writing all the time that no one would have a chance to even interact with another person, much less argue with one.