When working people who struggle to make ends meet identify with the imaginary sufferings of rich and pampered Hollywood starlets and rail against the mean elitist professors who also struggle to make ends meet but who dare not to appreciate the horrible problems faced by the valiant wrinkle-battling starlets, I have to acknowledge that Hollywood’s brainwashing is invincible. We can now stop wondering why the most disadvantaged keep voting for the Party of Millionaires. It happens because they saw on TV or in the movies how millionaires have problems, too.
P.S. When you feel like you have started to identify with people whose net worth exceeds yours by a few million bucks, it’s time to put down the tabloid and step away from the TV. They are messing with your head, buddy.
The following photo by a Canadian artist Sooraya Graham was deemed so intolerable by a group of idiot students and a staff member at Thompson River University that it was torn down from the exhibition of student artwork:
(c) Sooraya Graham
The insanity didn’t end there as an idiot from the Saudi Education Center decided to share his unenlightened opinion on how art should be presented:
“The artist didn’t approach the artwork let’s say in a very professional way that can state and can clarify the information and clarify the idea behind the picture,” said centre president Trad Bahabri.
Bahabri said he thinks text explaining the photo’s meaning is needed.
“I’m pretty sure many people misinterpret and many people misunderstand it. I can guarantee that,” he said.
The question I now have is why Kamloops, a town in British Columbia where this entire shameful incident took place, needs an “Education Center” run by idiots of this caliber. One really has to be beyond stupid to suggest that art should be accompanied with explanatory texts telling the spectators what the “correct” response to the art is. I find it sad that this ignoramus just walks around sharing his pathetic excuse for an opinion. This can only happen because nobody laughs in his face when he starts on his ignorant rants.
Notice how this fear of hurting somebody’s feelings only goes one way. Nobody thought twice about hurting the feelings of Sooraya Graham, the artist whose piece was torn down, humiliating its creator in public. Nobody cares about how much my sensibilities as a person who actually has a brain are hurt by the pronouncements of this officious fool from the Saudi Education Center as to how art should be accompanied by “correct” explanations (probably vetted by him personally.) I have absolutely no doubt that I will now start receiving emails and comments by the bucketful as to how I should respect this jerk’s religion or his sensibilities. My religion and sensibilities, in the meanwhile, can take a hike.
I, however, refuse to be one of those toothless Liberals who are terrified of their shadow and can’t articulate the obvious here: religious fanatics who want to place constraints on freedom of speech in Canada are barbaric, backwards, stupid idiots who need to learn respect for the values of the country where they are living at the moment. If your sensibilities are hurt by a work of art, it’s your job to remove yourself from its vicinity. Nobody else is to blame for your sensibilities because they are located inside you and are fully and completely your problem.
I’m bothered by the idea behind trigger warnings. Normally, I skip posts that start with one because I can’t muster any enthusiasm for the writings of a person who considers me such a delicate tender flower that I have to be warned before reading – no even seeing or hearing – but simply reading about certain issues.
My readers keep asking me if I actually invent all those stories about my students who can’t deal with a movie that has a sad ending or a fictional character who is not completely perfect. However, isn’t this precisely the sort of human being that the creators of the following trigger warning had in mind?
Got it? People need to be warned in bold type that “brief mentions of rape” will occur. Isn’t this completely insane? There is a definite suggestion here that unpleasant realities like rape should not even be mentioned in polite company because they can traumatize everybody too much. Who cares that we cannot address an issue that is never even mentioned? The important thing is that nobody’s feelings get hurt by allusions to anything that is not all happy-happy-joy-joy all the time.
Movies and books should only have happy endings, magazines and TV shows should only present extremely young and impeccably looking people, unsavory realities should not even be mentioned in articles and blog posts. Haven’t these attempts to sanitize reality gone way too far? We are getting to a place where nothing is sanitized enough for the prudish among us. These people are so terrified of life that they need to turn it into a cartoon in order to be able to live at all.
To me all of her righteous indignation reads more like self-indulgent posturing that’s an emotional response for not being considered a Sexy Young Thang anymore.
**Begins crocodile tears and a pout.
She has a mid-season replacement action thriller about a former CIA operative to promote. Since the ratings have dropped, it isn’t likely to be renewed.
I guess I’m not as kind and understanding as other people, which is why Judd’s conversion to anti-objectification militancy comes a little too late for me. Imagine Mitt Romney suddenly going bankrupt and on the next day joining the #Occupy movement and ranting about greedy millionaires. It’s easy to be against objectification when you can’t make the same huge piles of money out of it any more.
No, people, Hollywood is not a place to look for support for our feminist goals.
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