All posts by rebecca

culture, musings, religion

mystics & messiahs

A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate designs!

-William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

(via Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History by Philip Jenkins. A good read if you get the chance.)

animation, art, friends

yo gabba gabba

Just got this email from Lori D., an awesome animator who taught me at CSSSA:

Hi everybody!
I did a simple little animated music video for this great new preschool kids show called ‘Yo Gabba Gabba’.
My little 2 minute piece is about ‘Listening’. I don’t know when in the show it comes on because I haven’t seen the episode and I myself do not have le cable television…
That episode will be playing on Monday at 1pm Eastern Time…on Nickelodeon.
Hope you all are doing well!
Love,
Lori D.

http://www.nickjr.com/shows/yo-gabba-gabba/yo-ga-about-the-show/yo-ga-about-the-show.jhtml

I don’t have television so I’ll have to wait for youtube, but if you do have tv you should check it out! Here is one of her paintings to whet your appetite:

lori d painting

art, culture, film, musings

slacker boys

David Denby’s essay in this week’s New Yorker tackles the “new” romantic comedy: the “slacker-striver romance.” This pop-culture staple of my adolescence and young adulthood tells the story of hot, ambitious chick falls for a witty, going-nowhere-fast dude. As both a young female filmmaker (these movies are almost always directed by males) and someone with a thing for slacker-boys, this topic is of particular interest to me. Why am I attracted to slackers? Why are the women in these movies always so lame?

brodie bruce To my disappointment, Kevin Smith was absent from the article. If I had to blame my slacker fetish on anyone, the award would definitely go to Brody from “Mallrats,” with Daria’s Trent is a close second. The 12 year old girl inside me still gets all excited just thinking about them. What a disappointment it was to discover, a couple years later, that not every (or perhaps any) video-game nerd converses in a constant stream of humorous but insightful one-liners. Nor are they as cute as Smith would lead one to believe. At least Trent was a bit less deceptive in that department; boys with guitars do tend to be hotter than average.

trentBut its not just that I wanted to do these fictional slacker boys. While there was a definite sexual element to their appeal, more than anything I wanted to be friends with them. Its no contest: Bong rips are more fun than lip gloss. Girls got to pluck their eyebrows, guys got to tell dirty jokes. Girls did homework, guys formed bands.

lindsay weir Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” is the moment’s preeminent example of the slacker-striver rom-com. I thoroughly enjoyed “Knocked Up,” but it also upset me. Apatow is the creator of Freaks and Geeks, a show featuring one of television’s best female characters ever, in the form of a brainy girl who finds her place with a group of “burnouts”. Lindsay Weir is strong yet vulnerable, reluctantly both beautiful and badass. How could someone with the capacity to create such a nuanced and realistic teenage girl on a fucking television series make the heroine in their film so empty?

wendys Sure, for an “E! Hollywood” reporter, Knocked Up’s Allison is remarkably down to earth, but that’s kinda like saying that for fast food, Wendy’s is surprisingly nutritious. As Denby writes, Allison “has a fine fit of hormonal rage, but, like the other heroines in the slacker-striver romances, she isn’t given an idea or a snappy remark or even a sharp perception.” Come on Judd, was getting your show canceled really that bad? That from now on the best we can hope for in regards to female leads are tasty-looking, manufactured, corporate babes who are celebrated for leaving one only mildly nauseated after consumption?

knocked upSadly, things aren’t looking much better on the dude front. Its one thing for guys not to have their shit together in high school, even college. But Knocked Up’s Ben is such a loser that even I can’t build up the slightest desire for him. Is society doomed for perpetual middle school?

Maybe I should stop being so critical and just take “Knocked Up” for what most are lauding it as: a Hollywood movie that is both genuinely sweet and funny and doesn’t suck. After all, its just a movie. But there remains the issue of why, Ben aside, I’m still into slackers. And I’m gonna take a guess that I’m not the only one.

hilary clinton Why don’t we dig boys who have their act together? Is it some kind of perverse maternal urge, perhaps as a result of delayed childbearing in college girls? That coming of age in the shadow of the 90s means the slacker archetype will be forever imprinted on our libido? That Hilary Clinton is such a terrifying bitch, and that with all the pressure of school and a career and looking good, if we don’t date someone chill we’ll become one too? That ambition today is just so horribly revolting?

10 things i hate about youMaybe some better role models would help. Since the real world doesn’t seem to be too forthcoming, I turn to movies. Where is this decade’s “10 Things I Hate About You?” Directed by a man but written by two women, its characters of both genders are intelligent, unconventional, and sexy. For those of us growing up with it, it probably did for bisexuality what “Clerks” and “High Fidelity” did for slackers. 10 Things answers Denby’s plea for a romantic comedy where women “challenge the men intellectually and spiritually, rather than simply offering their bodies as a way of dragging the clods out of their adolescent stupor.” We need more of that.

[A Fine Romance, The New Yorker, July 23, 2007]

PS. Speaking of slacker boys (who really aren’t), Logan’s got a new blog and Vince got published in McSweeny’s. Sweet!

PPS. What’s with my moving to California and reading all these New York periodicals I used to (not so) secretly avoid? Might I be a tad homesick?

activism, cambridge, culture, musings

What’s the Matter With College?

It usually pisses me off when old[er] people, particularly from publications like the New York Times, write about what’s wrong with the kids today. But despite a couple paragraphs of smug nostalgia in the beginning, Rick Perlstein’s essay What’s the Matter with College? strikes pretty close to my own experiences and observations.

Doug Mitchell was beaming, but his face fell when I told him about my conversation the previous evening with Hamilton Morris, a New Yorker finishing up his first year of college. His parents make documentary films. He attended a high school of the arts where “they sort of let me do whatever I wanted.” He is a filmmaker, painter, photographer, an experienced professional standup comedian. His life pre-college was exceptionally fulfilling, and he expected it to remain so here at one of the nation’s great universities. Then what happened?

“I hated it from the first day,” he told me. “People here are so insanely uncreative, and they’re proud of it.” His fellow students “had to spend their entire high school experience studying for the SATs or something and didn’t really get a chance to live life or experience things.”

What’s most harrowing was Hamilton’s matter-of-fact description of a culture of enervation – “that so many people hate it with a passion and don’t leave.” I heard similar things from several bright, creative searchers on campus – the kind of people in whom I recognized my own (and Doug Mitchell’s) 19-year-old self. I sat down with a group of them at the Medici Cafe, a campus fixture for decades, and they described college as a small town they’re eager to escape. “Everyone I talk to has that kind of feeling in their bones,” Mike Yong, a Japanese literature student, insisted. “Even if they’re going into investment banking.” Someone offered the word “infantilizing.” Murmurs of assent, then the word “emasculating,” to even louder agreement. One even insisted his process of political, social and creative awakening had happened, yes, during college – but not because of college, but in spite of it.

The Times is sponsoring an essay contest for students to respond. I don’t have much to say as, sadly, I pretty much agree with everything Perlstein says. On the other hand, I don’t see this as so tragic: My generation gets to have its “political, spiritual, and creative awakening” about 4 years earlier, and it happens for free on the Internet instead of inside the gates of exclusive campuses. Unfortunately, it seems like for many of my peers this awakening will never come, but that probably was always the case.

[via NYT’s Magazine College Essay Contest]

culture, musings, nrrrd

yasns

Do we really need yet another social networking site? Of course not. (Do we even need any?) But do we want one? Maybe.

Lets review the current options:

  • Myspace
    • Pros: Band profiles & page customization
    • Cons: Broken, ugly, sketchy
  • Facebook
    • Pros: Great UI, web2.0 tricked out
    • Cons: Online identity defined by your workplace or college (not hip)
  • Tribe
    • Pros: Based around communities instead of individuals
    • Cons: Only worthwhile if the bulk of your friends attend burningman

Enter Virb. Dripping with slick & hip. Profiles for bands, artists, and non-profits. Hooks right in with flickr. Easy to customize, with a built in css editor. Best part? One click and you can remove the customization of any page.

virb

friend me?

[via cameron]