Things could be worse

boygirlboigrrrl:

-danika:

nonsensical
wacky
screwy (?)
ridiculous
illogical
ludicrous
preposterous
absurd
silly
unbelievable
incredible
freaky
bizarre
feckless
pointless
futile
outrageous
harebrained (?)
strange
peculiar
weird
impressive
excessive
wild
irrational
funny
unusual

This…

How about “retarded”? Here are some that (as far as I know) are not disability or orientation associated:

Stupid

Idiot (formerly associated with mental handicaps, but having been weakened substantially in modern usage and no longer being used in any formal manner to describe mental retardation)
Bonehead
Blockhead
Twit
Challenged in the field of mental acuity
Dope
Can’t brain, has the dumb
Ignoramus
Fool
Nitwit
Halfwit
Dimwit
(Methodist)

EDIT: As this is meant to be semi-humorous, I will not delete this although pushed to.  Also, despite my obligation to feel guilty about everything because I am white and able-bodied, I like to think that most people don’t triple-check everything I say against meanings that are a century out of use or could possibly, possibly hurt someone’s feelings.  Hint: IF I AM CALLING SOMEONE STUPID, I WAS MEANING TO INSULT THEM IN AT LEAST SOME FASHION.  SOMEONE’S FEELINGS WERE MEANT TO BE HURT.  Stupid is not synonymous with someone that has been diagnosed with a mental disability, in the same way that I don’t go up to someone with Down’s Syndrome and call them stupid.  I know that it’s a difficult concept to grasp, but words lose and gain meaning, and if you really wish to go and dredge up the most insulting and demeaning use of a word and label it as the total meaning of a word, then I don’t think that I am the one causing such common words as idiot and stupid to be seen as ableist.  If we are talking about retarded, yes, it’s fucking ableist to call someone retarded because retarded is still a word in common and professional use for someone with a mental handicap. 

Also, there seems to be this opinion that calling someone an ignoramus or a nitwit is ableist because it suggests that someone’s intelligence is something to be judged by, or that something like intelligence can be quantified.  But it is absolutely insulting and—pardon my language—stupid to tell someone that they shouldn’t use such common, non-pathologized words because obviously there is no such thing as people who make a boneheaded move and need to be reprimanded for their actions (and it seems to be that I am the bonehead in making this list).  I don’t want to be told that I should call someone “illogical” for what they do because, first of all, I don’t want to sound like Spock, and second of all, logic isn’t the be-all, end-all of sensible action.  A person can act completely logically and still be an ignoramus.  We do not live in a binary world.  I won’t limit my vocabulary because there are people out there that believe it is not fair to comment on the intelligence of one’s actions.  And I don’t believe that intelligence is quantifiable, either, and there is nothing specific in the connotation of “stupid” that suggests this.  Hell, one of the biggest idiots I ever met (and had in half my classes for four years) goes to MIT now.  Four years, a salutatorian award, and an ivy league acceptance and I still think he’s a blithering fool.

You simply cannot take a black and white view of words and their acceptability and deface the common vocabulary with it.  I love words like “stupid” and “idiot” simply because they have such wonderful connotations—the difference between them and “retarded” is a difference that showcases that disabilities are not the defining factors of our experiences.  The difference between them shows us that, though many people refuse to acknowledge it, even the stupidest person can recognize a difference between “stupid” and “retarded”. 

I am absolutely not a sociologist, but dammit, I love the English language and have devoted too many years to its study for someone to go and paint a broad swath over words of subtle connotation.  Keep your black and white morality out of my linguistics.

unicornsareace:

burning-up-a-sun:

benedictcumberbatch:

I am ‘The Seer’ and instead of feeling badass, I feel like Professor Trelawney.

I am “The Mentor”

Not so sure how I feel about that one.

Lord Ramasus, apparently.

I AM LORD RAMASUS.

The Mathematician.  I can live with that.

circenses:

tabularasae:

I’m not going to argue anymore about my post on Black Swan. I have yet to read a response that addresses directly what I wrote in response to the film nor have I read a response that actually analyzes actual aspects of the movie. I have in fact gotten many…

Okay, so then the question is, what does sexism portrayed in the movie derive from? My basic view on it is that it’s something inherent in the story being told; without the play of power between sexes and the archetypes the movie draws on, there wouldn’t be much of a story.  I read Nina not as a character whose struggles were all her fault, I read her as sort of a cautionary tale about the environment she was in and the people she was surrounded by.  She was a victim of a culture and profession where perfection was expected and an environment where what was basically sexual assault was condoned (i.e. the expectation that she had to sleep with Thomas to get her part, that no one around her cried foul of her forced sexualization).  Not all women were portrayed as having her mindset (e.g. Lily), but there were others that served as foreshadowing to the fate of those that were put through the same system (e.g. Beth).  I read it as a condemnation of a specific culture (ballet) that can be applied to other similar cultures (many artistic fields and other fields that strive for an uncertain “perfection”).  The condemnation didn’t come in the form of the writers taking out a “THIS IS BAD” stamp, it was something conveyed through the degradation of the character’s sanity and her eventual death. 

However, you could read the source of the sexism as something else.  What I think you are trying to suggest is that the sexism was due to the fact that Aronofsky & Co. were all males, and as such were writing the movie from a male-centric perspective.  I personally disagree with this because I think there’s an implication in that saying that because they are male they are too influenced by that to sympathetically and accurately write a female-centric story.  And that is a pretty unfortunate implication.  I’m not intimately acquainted with Aronofsky, of course, but I think it would be a sad thing to assume that he’s a sexist prick based off of Black Swan.  If I used the argument that “movie is made by male” + “has depictions of a sexist culture in it” = “movie is overall sexist” then I would feel I have made a sweeping generalization of all male writers. 

Since I come from a literary background and not a sociological one, I’m not really sure what you qualify as criticism or not.  If I were to take a very pure literary criticism standpoint, I would have no problem explicating every sexist detail in this movie.  There is surely a plethora of material to work with.  However, literary theory is almost unashamedly academic masturbation.  So I assume in this case that “criticism” is not the English major “criticism” (i.e. analysis of a work) and more in the common usage of “criticism” (i.e. pointing out flaws or issues in a work).  In this case, I would settle for saying that Black Swan is a good example of displaying sexism in many aspects of our society, and even many traditional storytelling elements, but I don’t think it would be fair to say that Black Swan itself is sexist.

As for the storytelling elements and archetypes being sexist—I think, given the canon that storytellers are given to work with, that this is almost unavoidable.  Unless you are actively trying to subvert archetypes, you are likely going to fall into them.  However, as a person with intense interest in methods of storytelling, I do not feel there is anything wrong with relying on some archetypes, whether or not they are flawed.  Their use is just too effective to pass up; they are too embedded within the subconscious of our culture to pass up.  For example, the idea that white = good and black = bad.  Unless you are trying to turn this concept around, it is common to rely on this color coding in storytelling.  That is effective within our culture.  If I were to tell the same story in Japan, I would be more cautious with this color coding, because while white can be associated with purity (as it most often is here), it is also associated with death. 

This is a simple example, but it applies to storylines and character types as well.  The dichotomy of the virgin and the seductress used in Black Swan is deeply embedded in our culture, and many other associated dichotomies presented—black versus white, good versus bad, weak versus strong—flow naturally, not because they are exactly logical, but because they are part of our storytelling culture.  As such, condemning the use of all such story aspects because they are inherently sexist is condemning the director to use a more avant-garde method that will probably not have the same emotional impact.  Most writers do not seek to reinvent the wheel, and draw on these archetypes.  They are storytelling shorthand, and when you have two hours, you use what tools are at your disposal.

Yes, the archetypes are sexist.  They were formed in a sexist culture.  I cannot fault Aronofsky for drawing on them, though.  Now, if he had relied on such cultural dead horses as, say, the damsel in distress, I would have taken much more issue.

In other words, tl;dr, cool story bro, and then I found five bucks.

gigglingatcrimescenes:

Thought a bunch of you might appreciate this.

This is linguistic porn.  Funnily, the Texan accents on there are not as strong as those in my family.  But you can see some of the big differences between Waco/Central Texas and Beaumont/East Texas.

tabularasae:

Black Swan feeds into and supports one of the most destructive forms of sexism; the movie tells us that women are constantly in competition with one another—that a success of a woman can’t be appreciated and valued by other women—and that a woman’s innate sense of jealousy will drive her to…

I don’t mean to belittle your post in any way, but for the sake of discussion—I don’t think the movie was necessarily condoning the attitudes present or the things being said.  I won’t excuse it in the context of “art for the sake of art” but I think it was effective storytelling.  It’s a horror movie, and things are supposed to go wrong.  The characters aren’t necessarily likable, and their attitudes aren’t necessarily modern.  If this movie had had a main character that was stable and moderate in regards to competition, there wouldn’t be a story.  I read the stress on perfection and chaos as more of an aspect of the ballet and virtuosos, not so much an aspect of the females.  As for the character of Thomas, I found him absolutely detestable, but I never regarded him as a character presented to me as someone I should sympathize with.

Now, say the story had been a serious drama about the main character overcoming her need for perfection and embracing her chaos and sexuality, and we were meant to sympathize with this (archetypal) ordeal, yes, I would read it as much more sexist.  In the context of a psychological horror, though, the world is already awash in black and gray morality.  Nothing we see on screen is meant be an example of “good”.  Male dominating over female (seen in the relationship between Nina and Thomas) was not represented in a “right” or “good” light; frankly, I saw it as something unethical (which was part of the point of Beth’s role; she was represented as the result of such behavior). 

Also, the movie revolved around a work (Swan Lake) which is most definitely sexist.  Much of the movie’s story was revolving around the dichotomy between the seductress and the virgin already present in the Tchaikovsky ballet.

habloodyha:

acutezza:

Argyle sweaters for $14. So much yes.

On that note, I am never ever ever looking for tops in the women’s department again. I did most of my shopping in the guy’s stuff today and oh my god everything fits. How is it that ever girl’s button down I buy gets that little boob-gap between the buttons…

Welcome to the dark side, bwahahaha. We have shirts that fit, and jeans with actual pockets and all manner of sensible, dapper wickedness.

I know.  It’s a downright shame that women’s fashion sucks so hard at fitting, and being practical or dapper.