(no subject)

I've seen my facebook page blow up with people talking about the 'women in binders' remark, but nobody actually seems to be talking about what Romney said.

Recall, Obama led off by talking about the Ledbetter Act. He said look at that, we have a concrete legislative accomplishment that I promise you made women's lives in the workplace better by obligating pay equity.

And then Romney steps up with actual real experience with hiring people, and he says you're missing the point, Obama. It's easy for companies to meet the letter of the statute and still do better for men than women. It was so easy for my staffers to come to me with a list of people to hire and tell me with sincere conviction that the men on the list were there because they were the only qualified candidates. It was easy for them to tell me that the majority of the applicants were male. They weren't actively trying to be misogynistic, they weren't actively trying to break the law, they were just doing their job in the easiest way possible for them. If I had just followed the letter of the anti-discrimination laws I would have had no problem discriminating against women and making it look like I had made a good-faith effort to hire without consideration of gender, because I had. We simply hadn't thought about gender.

But, Romney said, that's not good enough! As soon as I actually reached out affirmatively and looked for women to hire, I found plenty. Binders full. There are competent and qualified women out there, but no statute is ever going to force companies to hire them. That requires leadership from the people doing the hiring. What we need isn't government enforcement. What we need is a culture change, so that people realize that doing that extra work will create a better workforce. And I'm standing on this stage in front of millions of viewers committing to taking a leadership role in changing the culture.



I have not always liked Romney, and I didn't always like him in this debate. But I thought this moment was a great contrast between Republican ideology and Democratic ideology, and it showed why I will always be more skeptical of Democratic ideology. Passing a regulation doesn't fix things automatically. Sometimes regulations make things more complicated and more expensive for business and they still don't fix things, because they can't. Some problems are not problems for government.

(no subject)

Dear Yuletide Author,

I am bad at Yuletide letters. Last year I didn't quite manage to finish one, and just threw up links to previous discussion of the nominated fandoms. In any case, that might be a better way to learn how I feel about these fandoms than this letter. In any case, don't read too much into this letter.

Thank you for offering to write a story for me, in a fandom that I have deep and complicated feelings about! I'm sure I will love it and even if I don't, we can blame it on my lack of taste. I have notoriously bad taste, just ask my friends. So just enjoy yourself, write something you like writing, and don't stress out.

I like weird post-modern fanfic and crossovers and stuff that barely and dubiously skirts the line between fanfic and original fic. I like subverting tropes and subverting expectations and subversion generally speaking. I don't know... all the usual warnings that people usually suggest including in a Yuletide letter don't really apply. I don't have a horse in slash vs. het vs. gen. I don't really have 'ships' where it bothers me that someone writes another pairing. I just want a story that celebrates what's cool about these fandoms and digs into the gaps and questions what isn't cool. And if we disagree, that's cool. Don't feel like you have to be respectful of my feelings. It's the intellectual engagement with the source material that I'm seeking, not someone to create a story I could have written myself. These fandoms are so rare that I'm excited to get a story of any kind.

I have requested Danger 5, Koyaanisqatsi, and Moses und Aron. Danger 5 and Moses und Aron are complicated, deeply flawed texts that I love desperately for intensely personal reasons. Koyaanisqatsi is a weird text I find incredibly intimidating and inspiring because every time I try to watch it, I end up drifting off into a reverie of imagination. It just gives me a wide open space to dream in. Here, have some more thoughts on why I like each of those fandoms.

Danger 5

What it is: A seven part Australian TV show from this past winter. It's about an international team of superspies battling against the Nazis and trying to kill Hitler. Despite this objective, the show's vibe is derived from 1960s spy movies. The result is a weird and discordant and hilarious and achronic/anachronic world and a brilliant cast of Nazi hunters. It uses a mixture of bad special effects, bad accents, bad acting, to tell a really great story. The writing is razor sharp, the running gags are so well crafted they make me laugh even when I've seen them dozens of times.

The geopolitics of Danger 5 fascinate me. In my one Danger 5 fic, I merged Inglourious Basterds canon with Danger 5 canon by hypothesizing that after the fall of the Reich in Paris at the hands of the Basterds, one of Hitler's clones escaped Germany and set up a shadow Reich across the world waging guerilla war against the West, while an emboldened post-war West established the World Government under the leadership of Maximiliano Importante, dedicated to rooting out the shadow Reich. This led to a world where instead of the Hot War of World War II and the Cold War of US-Russian relations, we had the Short War of World War II and the Long War of the World Government fighting to eradicate the shadow Reich. And Danger 5 is set in the alternative '60s of that timeline. If you have another theory, I'd welcome it.

Ilsa and Jackson are my favorites, though I also love Pierre, Tucker, and Claire. I find Ilsa and Jackson's relationship hilarious, and would love something where they try to be domestic together and it fails utterly. I'm also cool with just a story about them killing more Nazis. Possible avenues of exploration: Time travel... Zombies... Alien invasions... crystal skulls... Indiana Jones crossovers.

I'm also open to something more serious. Jackson actually struggling with his alcoholism. Ilsa and Claire actually confronting the gender discrimination they face and doing something about it. A snapshot of civilian life in this world. Really, I'm pretty open.


Koyaanisqatsi

What it is: An art film by Godfrey Reggio, scored by Philip Glass. No dialogue, just a stream of beautiful shots. Nature shots, urban cityscapes, extended shots of people walking and cars driving and rockets taking off, with languorous slow pans and amazing time lapse images. And lots and lots of explosions. It seems to have a message about nature or environmentalism or man's relationship to technology, but it's very unspecific and open to debate.

I joked about shipping Clouds/Explosions. I'm totally on board with turning that joke into a real thing. The thing is, I had no idea what 'characters' to nominate for a film like this. I'm not particularly interested in stories about any of the random people we see for usually no more than ten or fifteen seconds. Not uninterested, so if one of those scenes sparks your interest and you can create a cool story, go for it. But if I were to ask for something in particular, it wouldn't necessarily be that. What I like about Koyaanisqatsi is the scale. It is big, but in an anti-Michael Bay way where they're unafraid to show you something big and leave it empty. That leaves so much space for imagination to fill in the gaps. I love the agonizingly slow explosions, like they're savoring the explosions.

A story for a fandom like this almost has to be original fic, so let me be on record saying I don't want just original fic loosely pegged to the movie. I want Koyaanisqatsi fanfiction. What does that mean? Well, I'm not totally sure. You'll almost certainly be the first person ever to write it. What I want is a story that only could exist because of its relationship with Koyaanisqatsi, something deeply intertwined with the canon text. And something that asks questions about what distinguishes fanfiction from original fiction in this context would not be unwelcome. I like meta. I'm also comfortable with RPF, so if you want to write something that turns around the camera and sees what's happening in that direction, it might be interesting. Obviously, I didn't request Koyaanisqatsi RPF, so you're under no obligation in that direction. All you're obligated is to give me Clouds and Explosions.

Basically, blur boundaries, ask good questions, and let your imagination guide you.


Moses und Aron

What it is: An early 20th century atonal opera by Schoenberg, which rewrites the Exodus story for a post-Wellhausen, post-Freud, post-Buber world. Instead of the plagues and the splitting of the sea taking center stage, the Egyptians are almost incidental to the story, a footnote on its edges. What Schoenberg is most interested in is the terms on which the Israelite nation was forged in the aftermath of the Exodus, at the hands of its two leaders, Moses and Aaron, who are brothers and love each other and yet have completely different world views.

Moses believes that God is abstract and unknowable, standing atop a mountain. Aaron believes that God can be brought down to the people in an accessible way. This conflict reaches its apotheosis in the construction by Aaron and the people of a Golden Calf idol which they then worship. In this version of the story, Moses casts his brother out of the nation and reasserts autocratic control.

I love the questions Schoenberg is asking about the possibility of having a meaningful relationship with God, as a perpetually questioning Jew myself. I also love the Moses and Aaron relationship in the opera, and I love how Schoenberg reconstructs the Exodus story by shuffling its focuses until it's almost a new story. I'm seeking anything I can get out of the fic, really, but one thing I'd like to see is how some of the other figures from the Exodus story adjust in this new place. Joshua, Miriam, Bezalel, Zipporah, Jethro, Nachshon, Caleb, and many other characters are crucial to the Exodus story. In some cases, I don't think it's hard to imagine how their participation would change in the opera, while others perplex me. What kind of relationship to Moses and Aaron have with their wives? What hope is there of Bezalel ever building the Temple he has in his head in opposition to a Moses who has completely rejected the physical worship of God?

Or just focus on Moses and Aaron, and tell me a story about them. They are not the same Moses and Aaron we grew up with, but their relationship is rich and complicated and deep. And tragic.


Thanks,

~Ferret