your least favourite shakespeare play ?

[Clopin]

Well you've said nothing particularly objectionable in the last few posts Morph so that's an achievement. I do think that men are better suited to be engineers and scientists however. And you're wrong to say that society doesn't encourage women towards working in traditionally male dominated fields. At least among people of my age women get absolutely nothing but encouragement when they want to enter STEM subjects, and like I said with Chess a lot of money and time has been spent on specific programs and schemes designed only to increase female participation. They have not worked.

Another thing I would like to point out is that if societal disapproval can really drive massive numbers of women who would otherwise play Chess away from the game then it's a wonder we have any Chess players in the first place. Have you ever noticed how Chess is usually portrayed in popular culture? It's maybe a step up from Dugeons and Dragons in being shown as a game for pasty, nerdy losers who can't get laid. Well that's not a pleasant image is it? So how come people continue to play Chess despite the stigma? My own twelve year old cousin told me it was 'gay' that I went to a Chess club the other day!

This is the only part of your post I object to; at least, I'm not sure exactly what you're suggesting with the NFL example. For one thing, I don't see how blacks are privileged there (white men both play football and, if they play defense or offensive line, are also paid to hit people; if they play quarterback then they're also typically paid more to not hit anyone). Likewise, the "hitting" is something everyone agrees to before they play the game; women don't go into a relationship and agree to be hit.

Bolded: Nah, that's just his phrasing. He's saying women and black men have certain privileges and then he gives an example of a female privilege, but doesn't necessarily apply that same example to both women and black men.

Also I don't follow football so I can't be sure, but I believe he's referring to off-field acts of violence and how hitting a woman is taken much more seriously than hitting a man, even if the man is physically weaker than his assailant.

[Ecurb]

You got it, Clopin. I was trying to make a joke about how hitting (punching) a woman is considered a heinous sin, while hitting (tackling) other men is standard behavior. I was also hinting at how certain standards and mores grant privileges to people based on their membership in a group, but may also belittle the group. Chivalry is a perfect example. The codes of chivalry protected women (a privilege). If a knight met a woman on the road, for example, he would not challenge her to fight to the death (as he might if he met a random man, if we can believe the legends). He was sworn to protect women. Nonetheless, the privilege came at a price: women were protected because they were deemed helpless and infantile; the male virtues of courage and strength were highly valued by the codes of chivalry; political power and social dominance were based on knightly valor and skill at arms, etc. So who was "privileged" in a chivalrous society? Women or men? (Both, in different ways.)

[Clopin]

What was it on the Titanic? Children and what first? Now I may not understand this whole privilege thing (because it's a meaningless buzzword) but I wonder if you can get less socially privileged than being expected to die based entirely on your gender...

58'000 American men (boys really, the average age was what, eighteen) died in Vietnam after a male only draft! Imagine that, being drafted into the army to die at eighteen! Sounds horrible, I mean you've barely even lived at that point. But oh well who cares if tens of thousands of men die, and tens of thousands more are maimed or suffer severe psychological trauma after being forced to fight in an absurd war when we have really important things to consider like women being spoken to in elevators or *audible gasp* discouraged from playing videogames!

[Gutted]

Again, Ecurb is dead on with most everything he's saying. I have a feeling we could disagree over the particulars without him being resistant to understanding the general concept, unlike our resident genius.

If they were socially more privileged then, yes, female privilege would be a bigger issue; but note the comparative ER. Too many view privilege as a mutually exclusive thing of inverse proportion, meaning that if one group is "privileged" then another can't be, and the degree they can't be is inversely proportionate to how much the other group is. This isn't how it works (well, not always; privilege can be a zero-sum game in some instances). While we might say that privileges accumulate to one group being generally more privileged overall, that's often (not always) difficult to quantify, and it doesn't mean that the privileges that disadvantage both groups don't need fixing. It reminds me how of in relationships one partner will say "you do X and X is wrong and you should stop," and the other says "but you do Y and Y is wrong and you should stop," and maybe X is worse than Y or vice versa, so one is "more wrong" than the other; but whomever is overall more wrong is irrelevant to the point that both should stop doing X and Y, not use X and Y as an excuse to keep doing what they're doing. Like I said, if people find out ways in which white men are disadvantaged by privilege, then by all means go wage an effort to fix those problems; but don't use those disadvantages as an excuse to ignore or devalue the disadvantages of other groups.

I would be curious to hear about why you think men are more socially privileged. Btw, I don't really disagree with the rest of your post.

[Ecurb]

"Women and children first" is a perfect example of what I was getting at: women are clearly gaining the privilege of being allowed into the lifeboats -- but they are also being equated with helpless children who can't look after themselves. The privilege is direct and real; the insult is less direct, but also real.

Soldiers provide another example. Clopin's example reminds me of G.B. Shaw's play "Arms and the Man", the theme of which seems to be: "War, if we must. But please! No songs and poems GLORIFYING war!" Maybe the only way we can induce young men to fight is by lauding the virtues of courage, aggression, etc. It is true, of course, that men are expected to die for their country (while women are not). It is also true that we honor and glorify the men for doing so.

[MorpheusSandman]

Get rid of guns.

I have no problem with that, personally.

Not force, but encourage and promote publicly from a cultural, public health, and social capital point of view.

So, basically, violate the separation of Church and State?

Which all films have even silent films. Silence and musical scores are sound. Black and white are colors.

Well, now we're getting down to semantics, but I think you know what I meant. For "sound" I meant "films that had recorded sound and authorial/directorial intended scores" and for "color" I meant "films not in B&W."

I think they do.

You're free to prefer it, but you are not free to pretend this preference is either objective or has anything to do with the fundamental art of filmmaking.

Find me a great film without a story. There aren't any.

The Man with the Movie Camera. Sans Soleil. Dog Star Man. Meshes of the Afternoon. Wavelength. Koyaanisqatsi. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Zorns Lemma. Un Chien Andalou. Close-Up.

I'd even hesitate to say that films like Tarkovsky's Mirror, Last Year at Marienbad, Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Playtime, really have "stories." They have scenarios from which they execute their cinematic experimentation.

I don't think that you can.

Hitchcock proved you can, even telling Truffaut he selected Psycho because of its terrible source material, to prove that film is a director's art-form, not a writer's. Really, all of noir falls under the category of what would be considered "poor stories" as pure literature. The Third Man even knowingly mocks this notion with its protagonist being a writer of shlock westerns who's thrust into a detective story.

You said that Griffith and Eisenstein's films were perfection.

Going back through the last pages using CTRL+F, I can't find where I said this. What I may have said was that Griffith and Eisenstein perfected the art-form, meaning the art of mise-en-scene and editing. This is different than saying their films are perfect.

Be aware that you hold a minority view in this respect.

I actually do not. To say color is not innately better simply means that it comes down to preference. This is no more controversial than saying chocolate isn't innately better than vanilla. Besides, painting is not photography/cinematography. Choosing to limit colors is always a conscious choice in painting, while for many years it was mandatory for photography and movies.

Sometimes they do get better though.

Well, yes, they go through better and worse eras (to echo the Third Man reference, see Welles's Cuckoo Clock speech), but this is different than saying that they progress towards some ideal that will only be achievable in the future.

And I think that a lot of early directors used black and white poorly.

Absolutely, but this is because they were still figuring out how to use photography expressively, period. It took a painter like Murnau to really perfect it.

Pretty much every film where Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist, were cinematographers were better for light and color.

Absolutely as well, but most cinematographers aren't Storaro and Nykvist (or Mark Lee Ping-Bin, to throw out a contemporary master).

Bergman however was not responsible for the visual style of his movies. That was Nykvist.

Not entirely. Bergman had an excellent eye even before Nykvist. Go back and look at the compositions and his use of contrast in The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, or even earlier (the best thing about his sub-par early films are the visuals). Plus, Bergman understood using color symbolically coming from the theater; the use of red in Cries & Whispers was his idea, and Nykvist executed it.

If you remove color and sound you have black and white photography. Remove narrative and it's abstract photography. Without color is it even photography? Or is it concept art? It ain't film.

Of course it's film! Firstly, technically, anything shot on "film" is technically "film," but the more accurate term, movie, is itself is short for "moving picture," so the fundamental aspect of the art is literally the moving picture. It makes not a whit of difference whether that moving picture is in color or b&w, whether in sound or silent, or whether it's telling a story or being used experimentally as in the films of Brakhage or Vertov. This has nothing to do with a "reductio ad absurdum" and everything to do with understanding the fundamental art of cinema is, literally, "moving pictures," and that moving pictures typically involves two fundamental elements: mise-en-scene (what's in front of the camera) and montage (whenever any editing is involved).

I don't think the early guys thought of everything. I don't think they could have. Besides with their technological limitations there were plenty of things they simply couldn't do.

I wouldn't say they thought of everything and you're absolutely right that the crude technology limited what they could do; but most of this involved what happened in front of the camera, not how to use the camera and editing. Eisenstein literally thought of everything when it came to editing, to the point nobody has added anything new since.

It's a hybrid medium because it combines photography, writing, acting, painting, and music. Sometimes it includes fashion, and architecture.

First, film is not a hybrid of painting unless you're doing Brakhage's painting on film. Secondly, I already said that music makes film a hybrid. Thirdly, everything else is inherent in narrative, not inherent in the medium of film. They're things the medium of film can be utilized for.

There's no such thing as a silent film or a film without color.

"Without color" just simply means "not shot in color," and color tinting is hardly the same as film stock. There are such a thing as silent films. Again, Dreyer expressed his preference for POJOA being shown silent, and in most silent films the filmmakers weren't actually involved in the scoring.

You don't think that film acting has come a long way since then?

Well, yes, but this isn't really what I was discussing. The evolution of film acting involves recognizing the difference between how acting registers on a camera VS how it registers in a theater. Brando and Kazan were two of the first to recognize that the kind of "projection" necessary in theater became too melodramatic in front of a camera; but even many earlier actors/directors knew this. One of the young actors in Stalag 17 noted how William Holden told him "there's a 135mm lens on the camera, that means they'll be in real close, so don't overplay anything." Obviously in silent film the exaggeration was used because filmmakers were concerned that without audible dialogue the audience would miss the emotional substance. This turned out to be wrong. Yet such styles didn't really die out: Kurosawa was heavily influenced by Noh and preferred that exaggerated mode of acting (which made Mifune such a perfect fit for him), eg.

I don't know how I feel about sequential photography or flip books which is what you are describing.

Go watch some Brakhage and tell me what you feel. To me, his is film in its purest, most poetic form. I'd recommend 23rd Psalm Branch as a great introduction that's powerful without being too long.

For what it's worth, I think he's intelligent. He's just really liberal which comes with as many crazy biases as being really conservative does.

I'm not "really liberal," I'm a "really rationalist" who endeavors to align my beliefs with reality. If proof was produced that showed anything I said was wrong, I'd immediately change my mind. I have zero reason to prefer them to be true; they just seem to be based on the research I've done and based on the research others have done and have related to me.

[MorpheusSandman]

Honestly, I've had much worse days. And in the past, when people made me uncomfortable, I usually complied a lot quicker than Kate, instead of holding out and being stubborn or pig headed. Although, sometimes I don't change and just continue to suffer, and after a while you blame yourself for your troubles more than other people. Thinking "Man, I could have changed this and this a long time ago, and things would have been so much easier."

It would've been a lot easier for Schindler just to comply with the Nazis and not hid any Jews, or if Rosa Parks had just gone to the back of the bus, or if Gandhi hadn't stood up to the British government. Nobody ever said that doing what's right is easy. Sometimes, yes, people DO need to change because of some fundamental flaw; but equally yes, sometimes the social pressures that are trying to force that change are themselves unfair and need changing. My entire point is that the context and content of Shrew presents an entirely unfair society in which men are undeniably privileged and women are seen as property whose only purpose is to serve their husbands. It's even entirely possible that Kate would be a "shrew" were it not for that society, but we have no way of knowing, and what we CAN say is that Petrucchio's torture is done entirely to bring her in line with that society's perfect female ideal.

Although, there's a lot of backlash lately, trying to make men act like women or women act like men.

What are you talking about? What I see is a society that's trying to get to a place where men and women are actually equal, so there won't be any "men acting like women" or vice versa because there won't be any prescribed way for men and women to act that's different from the other. Your "trying to make men act like women" spiel reminds me of the idiotic rhetoric that if we legalize same-sex marriage then men will be encouraged to marry men. The entire point is equality, of not pretending like social norms are innately right or fair. Remember it was once a social norm for blacks to be treated as lesser beings too, and so many never even thought to question this assumption, to question whether it was a social norm based on nothing, or whether it was some fact of biology. Again, the only studies I'm aware of suggest that men and women are far more similar than dissimilar, with men having better spatial skills and women better spatial memory; this certainly doesn't suggest that men would, eg, make better CEOs or be more biologically inclined towards being them; so why the disparity if it's not social? http://www.livescience.com/20011-bra...fferences.html

What you said was more like it's more socially acceptable, or it's less of an injustice to beat and humiliate men than when women go without food or sleep for a day.

Well, it IS more socially acceptable (I'm not saying it should be), but I didn't say it's "less of an injustice" to beat and humiliate men.

Even logic breaks down at some point when applied to the real world.

Logic doesn't break down. The facts we input and our actual reasoning might breakdown, but this is our failing; not logic's.

You said that there isn't any censorship anymore and I said that those men would disagree with you.

I think I meant there isn't censorship in film. I know there are still regulations for radio and TV.

Page six post 96 "this is where privilege becomes an important factor. When you have one group that has historically been in the privileged position, making light of them does not have the same affect that making light of those who are in a much weaker position does. It's like suggesting that both slaves and slaveowners should be equally subject to ridicule. Well, no, they shouldn't. Your "double standard" presumes a level playing field in real life, when the truth is that there is no level playing field, and the playing field back then was far more unlevel then than it is now. Besides, as I suggested above, in those RomComs the women are not TORTURING the men by any stretch of the imagination."

This is just a statement of fact, though, it's not an endorsement of beating and humiliating men. It's absolutely true that making fun of those in power doesn't have even remotely the same affect as making fun of the underprivileged. John Stewart and Steven Colbert have, after all, been making fun at the hypocrisies of the rich and the politicians that support them for years and what's happened? The rich have gotten richer, the politicians haven't stopped supporting them. On the other hand, when you trivialize, say, women's rights then it becomes very easy for people to simply not care and think that nothing needs changing, to not vote for bills that could create greater equality. Like I said, my example about slaves/slaveowners makes it clear; I'm sure the slaveowners had their share of difficulties, and the slaves weren't perfect human beings, but this completely ignores the giant honking injustice taking place and how making fun of those clearly in a superior position doesn't have the same affect as making fun of those in the inferior position would. In an ideal world, there would be no slaves and slaveonwers, blacks and whites would be equal, and both would be equal targets for humor; but that's certainly not the world then, and it's still not the world now.

How are men abused or humiliated in screwball comedies? How about this threatening line of dialogue in His Girl Friday "I'm going to walk right up to you and hammer on that monkey skull of yours until it rings like a Chinese gong." Hildy also kicks Walter under the table. Then there is the character Bruce who is a classic milquetoast, the opposite of the female shrew, who's constantly emasculated and subjected to put downs.

So you think a line of dialog that's clearly exaggerated (considering you could not literally "ring someone's skull like a gong"), and kicking someone under the table to get their attention is the equivalent of starving and sleep-depriving someone to get them to change their personality? Heck, His Girl Friday is very much like the first part of Shrew where Hildy and Walter are like Petruchio and Katherine on a level playing field going back and forth with verbal sparring. To me, that's equality, not a situation where either side is physically forcing the other to change to fit some kind of social norm.

It's exaggerating the domestic squabbles every marriage has for comedic effect.

No, this is far too vague. Married people debating over who uses the bathroom first is a specific, non-violent squabble. The "squabble" in Taming of the Shrew seems to entirely be "this ***** needs to learn her place."

Your other examples just show that you're missing the irony of those scenes. Family Guy is clearly making fun of the casual misogyny and domestic violence that was suggested the Honeymooners; it's in no way "justifying" it. Same thing with The Simpsons clip.

That's because he's too afraid to ask Othello for help. He's been victimized so long, held under his abusers thumb, that he doesn't even dare to show displeasure or object. Classic authoritarianism.

Well, if that's true then I would say that Iago's malicious deception becomes more sympathetic, but I just don't know if that's the case. Again, there's no indication either that Othello has been knowingly malicious or would refuse to help Iago. Iago may have gotten that impression because he's attributing an oversight to maliciousness, but I see no evidence that he's actually right.

So you think Antonio deserves what happens to him because he's an idiot and Othello doesn't deserve what happens to him because he's oblivious?

Antonio didn't "deserve" it, it was merely part of a deal he knowingly, consciously made of his own free will. Othello didn't even get a chance to rectify his "wrong-doing" if, in fact, what he'd done by overlooking Iago was wrong.

Ie, a man.

Not those that are informed, sympathetic, and aren't completely selfish.

[MorpheusSandman]

I was trying to make a joke about how hitting (punching) a woman is considered a heinous sin, while hitting (tackling) other men is standard behavior.

Hitting other men is only standard behavior in a specific context where the men have agreed to hit each other (like sports). You can't walk up and hit some random guy on the street or you'd face assault charges.

[MorpheusSandman]

I would be curious to hear about why you think men are more socially privileged. Btw, I don't really disagree with the rest of your post.

Well, that's what we're all discussing in this thread! Here's a good checklist that runs through the major examples. http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ If you click on "more" you'll be taken to articles that have references to peer-reviewed journals that you can check out, just to make sure they aren't pulling the claims out of their backside.

[Ecurb]

Hitting other men is only standard behavior in a specific context where the men have agreed to hit each other (like sports). You can't walk up and hit some random guy on the street or you'd face assault charges.

True, of course. And shooting other men is only standard behavior during a war. (Although hitting people, both men and women, in and out of the ring, seems fairly standard for Floyd Mayweather. The evidence suggests he may hit harder out of the ring than in it. He did go to prison for punching a woman, but has yet to be imprisoned for taking money under the false pretense of fighting IN the ring.)

[Clopin]

Pop quiz Morph. If I were to violently assault a woman and violently assault a man which crime would both society and the legal system view as more heinous and why?

[MorpheusSandman]

Although hitting people, both men and women, in and out of the ring, seems fairly standard for Floyd Mayweather. The evidence suggests he may hit harder out of the ring than in it. He did go to prison for punching a woman, but has yet to be imprisoned for taking money under the false pretense of fighting IN the ring.

Even as a Mayweather fan, I found that funny!

[MorpheusSandman]

If I were to violently assault a woman and violently assault a man which crime would both society and the legal system view as more heinous and why?

They're equal in the eyes of the legal system assuming the contexts and results are the same. Of course most in society would view the assault on the woman as "more heinous," and while that's understandable to an extent it's another social norm that needs to be quelled as violence either way shouldn't be acceptable.

Pop quiz Clopin: Do you think men or women are more likely to be seriously hurt by domestic violence?

[Clopin]

Also Morph I realize it would be silly for me to argue that men do not enjoy any advantages over women, because of course they do. My stance is simply that men are not socially advantaged over women in any meaningful way, and in fact a great number of men are much less socially advantaged, or suffer greatly due to their sex.

Anyway that entire list is basically a bunch of weak anecdotal crap but I'll point out some of the more egregious bull****.

16. As a child chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hand just as often.

This one so strongly contradicts my own experiences that I absolutely refuse to believe it. Yes some piddley study is linked to, but if you can google you can find a study suggesting anything. Eventually you need a common sense filter. Now real data that shows girls heavily outperform boys in school would seem to contradict this, no? Or are girls just so amazing that despite all of the crippling handicaps they face by society and their (mostly female) teachers they still manage to achieve much better results in school than their oh so privileged and acknowledged male counterparts? Now I work with children and, while they aren't quite school aged when I have them, by the time they are three or four there is some pretty marked gender segregation; not so much in their choosing to befriend only members of their own sex, but in their attitude to play and their interactions with other people. And, frankly, young boys are much harder to deal with, generally quite disliked and often treated poorly as a result. And don't think i'm just blaming female caregivers for not properly meeting the needs of young boys, because I have the same reactions to them as many of the female instructors. Often after eight hours a day listening to shrieking children the last thing you want to do is deal with some high spirited game devised by a couple four year old boys. I recently had a conversation with a woman who wanted to switch her son from his current care centre to the home daycare I work for; her concern being that her four year old son is always in trouble at his daycare and that his paricular needs are not being met. She came to this conclusion after he had spent a few weeks at our home daycare and she noticed a huge improvement in his general mood and energy levels. I'm personally acquainted with the woman who runs the other centre and I think she's a very nice woman and a very good childcare worker, but the boy's mom was completely right, she can't handle a (in his case, very) high energy boy and she doesn't actually even want to. Now I don't think this is some societal flaw, or a horribly offensive example of widespread misandry. It's just common sense that most people can't tolerate as much high energy, violent, loud, and aggressive play which is simply what boys need and unfortunately they suffer a little as a result. However, to argue that schools actually favour young boys strikes me as being very odd considering that girls and women do so much better at every grade and level, right through their degree programs in university.

if I do the same task as a woman chances are people will think I did a better job.

Prove it. This seems to be complete nonsense.

if I have children but do not provide primary care for them my masculinity will not be called into question.

Again, my own experience strongly contradicts this. Many of the children I take care of come from single parent households, or have divorced parents, as I do myself. If the men in this scenario are not perceived to be pulling their weight then trust me, they are absolutely lambasted, and by practically everyone. I am of the opinion that men are generally worse at raising children than women though and that this is natural, however if you take the view that men and women are the same and that it's all societal bias causing various discrepancies then you should be aware that men are indeed called into question if their parenting or support is not considered up to par.

Even if I sleep with a lot of women I will not be labelled a slut, nor is there a male equivalent for "slut bashing"

Wrong. Dead wrong. The male equivalent is simply the opposite. Virgin bashing, or belittling or insulting men based on their, real or perceived, sexual inexperience. Also interestingly slut bashing is mainly perpetrated by other women while virgin bashing is mainly perpetrated by other men.

I can ask for legal protection from violence which happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since this violence is called "crime" and is a general social concern (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called "domestic violence" and is seen as a special interest)

This one is really insane. So women can't ask for legal protection from violent crimes? Victims of domestic violence are seen as selfish special interests? What? Is there any... evidence for that at all?

[Clopin]

They're equal in the eyes of the legal system assuming the contexts and results are the same. Of course most in society would view the assault on the woman as "more heinous," and while that's understandable to an extent it's another social norm that needs to be quelled as violence either way shouldn't be acceptable.

Pop quiz Clopin: Do you think men or women are more likely to be seriously hurt by domestic violence?

Women are much, much more likely to be seriously injured or killed as a result of domestic violence. But isn't that biological and not societal? I mean if a man and woman come to blows the man tends to win due to his biological advantage in strength right? Also I think men are more likely to be stupid, violent thugs who abuse women and children in the first place, but that's debated by people who persist in the belief that gender differences have nothing to do with biology.

Also @ Bolded: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Also morph the argument that men and women are more similar than dissimilar and thus won't display much meaningful gender distinction is pretty idiotic. Humans share 96% of our DNA with chimps making us far more similar than dissimilar biologically, but that 4% seems pretty important right?