We have to face what this means

One of the few "mainstream media" podcasts/shows I still pay attention to is On the Media. I love Brooke Gladstone, without whom I wouldn't have found Cory Doctorow, who lead me down a rabbit hole of other Very Good Things. (And I've found some good books from OTM as well, including Fearing the Black Body, which was amazing.) 

On their Wednesday show, Gladstone and her co-host Micah Loewinger dissected their role in not preventing Trump's win. While I applaud them for the self-examination, and I agree that Trump's win is one of the expected consequences of the long-term project of gutting local media, they're mistaken if they think that voters didn't know what they were voting for. Yes, they did. People knew Donald Trump was a fascist and they voted for him anyway.

More than half of the people who turned out this year wanted a fascist for president. They not only heard what he promised to do in this term--chief among them, the deportation of 13 million immigrants--they know what he did in his last term. And even if they just couldn't keep up with all of it--and that was part of the point--they saw the attempted coup in 2021. It doesn't matter that Trump and his people BS'd why he wasn't responsible; anyone with eyes and/or ears knew that he was. Everyone saw, and millions of people didn't care. In fact, some of those people may have welcomed it.

When you infantilize large groups of people for decades, don't be surprised when they're vulnerable to believing someone who wants to play daddy is going to take care of them.

It also cannot be overlooked that sexism played a huge role in this. It's really chicken-and-egg: did toxic misogyny and misogynoir give people the final push into fascism, or has fascism been part of why misogyny has become so murderous? I think Kamala Harris was an excellent candidate, and people who follow these things said she had all the right moves on the campaign. But I had a pit in my stomach as I did in 2016 as soon as Biden stepped down and endorsed her. It's not that America isn't ready for a female president, as if we're in some larval stage on the way to sprouting our beautiful wings of pluralistic acceptance; we're fully formed, and we reject anything that changes the environment we're used to.

(I was worried because Harris was a woman, not because she was Black and South Asian, but maybe I should have been. I should not have forgotten that the intersection of anti-white racism and sexism is one of the ugliest places to inhabit.)

I beg everyone else to stop the nonsensical explanation. (The price of eggs? Are you joking? Trump and his people don't have to make the people who eat eggs happy, the have to make Big Ag happy.) And stop telling yourselves that people didn't understand and they're going to be sorry. No, they're not, not unless they suffer for it. As angry as I am, I'm not wishing that kind of suffering on anyone.

People need to understand what his election means. Assume the worst. Assume that the worst interpretations of Project 2025 will apply. Assume his administration will deport 13 million people. Assume they will try to strip citizenship from naturalized citizens. Assume trans people, and especially the children, will be under concerted attack. Assume they will try to pull back recognition of gay marriage. Assume they will also bring back miscegenation prohibitions, at least in some places. Assume there will be camps. Assume there will be detention centers. Assume people will not be able to avail themselves of due process. Assume there will be politically motivated prosecutions. Assume Taiwan, Ukraine, Gaza, and the West Bank are on their own. (And shame on you for knowing that and voting as if you could indulge purity and not have to choose the best of actual options.)

Assume the worst, because maybe that will drive home how much assistance we who can provide should provide. My time and money are limited for the next year and a half--but that doesn't mean there is nothing I can do. I want to get involved in mutual aid. I want to keep people from being cold on the street (and that was already happening in Massachusetts--don't tell me how Blue we are, please). I want to keep people from starving. I want to keep libraries open. 

I want to preserve everything we have so we can someday reclaim what they are going to try to take away.

Please join me.

Deb in the City

Malice in so many combinations

A few years ago, I was leading a group at my synagogue that focused on food justice. It was really championed by a nationally renowned pediatrician who was also a member of our synagogue and started The Grow Clinic in Boston. That group's mission is to help children who suffer from "failure to thrive" due to malnourishment. While it has a food pantry, it also leads advocacy efforts and research.

My husband was similarly leading a (larger and more active) group focused on criminal justice. Because we talk a lot, he suggested to his group that they start focusing on the nexus between food insecurity and criminal justice. When I spoke to the pediatrician in question, she sent me loads of information, and it wasn't what I expected.

What I was expecting to read about was that suffering from food insecurity made you vulnerable to becoming involved in the criminal justice system. That isn't a difficult combination--the people who suffer from food insecurity are people who suffer from economic insecurity, and they tend to be the people who are over-policed and therefore more likely to be "caught". What I got instead were all kinds of research on the connection between having a parent or relative involved with the criminal justice system and suffering from food insecurity. The research also explored the problems that resulted both during and later in life, including not only physical health but mental health. It was mind-blowing, and in no small part because it explained a lot about my family of origin (but that is a story for another day). I felt like I was wading into murky waters before; now I realized that I was so far underneath it I couldn't see daylight. 

That is how I felt when I came across this report on school hardening by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Wow--wow. Here I had thought that the evil connection between guns, racism, and sexism was to be found in the increased vulnerabilities of Black women to dying during or shortly after pregnancy at the hands of an intimate partner using a gun, but these are the poisonous mixtures that just keep on giving. To read this report, you can see that *another* effect is that as schools respond to gun violence with "hardening"--metal detectors, security surveillance, and on-site security guards--it is Black girls who are suffering the most, being not only over-policed (you knew that, right?) but also sexually harassed (yeah, you knew that, too).

Why was I so naive to think there was only one truly awful manifestation that acted against the most vulnerable among us? Am I just that linear? Have I not listened to my Black friends enough to understand the multitude of ways our country is a land mine for them?

Again, we are past "having a serious discussion" or "exploring the problem". We are also past pseudo-incrementalist, half-assed measures like installing security cameras in schools or anywhere else that is subject to mass-violence. (And no, arming *teachers* or sales clerks is not a solution, either.) We need to control the distribution and sales of guns, period. We need to not allow people to assemble arsenals in their homes. We need to be less interested in "the freedom" of people "exercising their Second Amendment rights" and more interested in the people suffering from that exercise. 

I'm making 1000 phone calls to get people to the polls this election season. It's important for a lot of reasons, and this is one of them. Please go vote this year, please vote for the person most likely to push through gun reform, and please tell the people in office now that this is what you want. This isn't just a matter of democracy, this is a matter of life and death. 

Don't worry, we'll still have a lot of work to do on racism and sexism, but at least it will be (a touch) less deadly.

Deb in the City

This only took thirty years (Day 42)

My husband and I celebrated our first Chanukah together in 1993, when we were expecting baby number one. My mother-in-law gave us what I thought was a beautiful chanukiah, and it should be a shock to everyone that we have kept it this long. The shabbat candlestick holders came along about six years later, when our second baby was very young. 

I moved around a lot when I was a kid, and at some point a lot of possessions in storage were lost. I'm not sentimental about possessions because that wouldn't have served me, and overall, I think it's for the best. But I do take a special bit of joy in a handful of items I own, and these are among them.

The only thing that marred said joy: the wax stuck to all three. And while I did try to flick wax off on occasion, it clearly wasn't enough, and it made me groan after a while.

Today, for some reason, it seemed like the perfect time to try out a tip I had read on social media--the only thing I gleaned from my recent misadventure--and put them on a low oven with some brown paper underneath. 200 degrees for 30 minutes, twice--and voila! Almost all of the wax is now gone. 

 

Trust me, this is significantly less than there used to be

I can prevent this in the first place by rubbing oil on the metal before I melt the candles, but I've always resisted that because that tip came to me and not my husband. But since there are two candlesticks, maybe he can take care of one and I can do the other. That's fair, especially for something I enjoy.

Deb in the City 

Narrative Control (Day 18)

American entertainment made a show of diversifying during the pandemic protests in light of George Floyd's murder. They caught the moment, and good. I'd like to think they realized that, in addition to profits they could generate, they also realized that stories that featured people who weren't exclusively white and straight could be just as interesting as those that did.

That did not last long. People felt their stomachs drop when the Batgirl movie was canceled; sounded like it needed some editing, but it's hard to believe that it was in worse shape than the majority of the movies in the DC franchise. The fact that the lead actor is a woman who isn't white was not lost on people.

There have been many other stories; one that sticks out for me is the cancellation of the series Tom Swift, which was headlined by a Black gay man. I don't think that was a coincidence.

I don't watch soap operas very much, but I do keep up with what's going on. I caught the news this summer about a Day of Our Lives producer being fired after consistent, egregiously inappropriate behavior toward actresses. Still, I was surprised to see yesterday that one of their front-burner actresses is now suing the production company for retaliation; she is apparently the one who escalated the matter, and as a result the show seemed to play games with her contract renewal.

Of note is that the show also lost a slew of actresses in the last year, many of whom were very long-time favorites of the audience. Let me remind you: soap operas tend to be watched by more women than men, and the focus has traditionally been on the women's stories. 

In 2022, when this contraction began, Sarah Kendzior, one of my favorite writers, made a chilling pronouncement on Twitter. This, she said, wasn't about profits; this was about narrative control. Sarah has tended to be correct, even when her predictions are awful (see: the Trump presidency). And yet this prediction I had trouble wrapping my head around, until I remembered something: Backlash by Susan Faludi.

I read this when my young husband and I were expecting our first baby, thirty years ago. There's a lot of good stuff there, and when I identify as a feminist, I think about what Faludi wrote about: the systematic degradation of women in the legal system, health care system, workplace, and culture. (Yes, she talked about women who weren't white in addition to those who were.) Part of her thesis is that women started being inundated with objectifying images and products (see: Victoria's Secret, Designer Rape Sequences) not in spite of legal gains made in the 1970s, but because of it. That, in essence, was the backlash.

Yep, Kendzior was right again. Here we are, thirty years later, rhyming with our recent history.

I want to be able to say that there is something we can do about this, but what? It's not like people don't want to see these movies--but even when they make hundreds of millions of dollars, they still manage to get in a backhand. Ironically, for all of our veneration of money and profit, culture is surprisingly immune to commercial success when it's threatened by change.

It's still, frankly, dangerous to be a woman, but the backlash of the 1980s had no small effect on the women who ran for seats in the House of Representatives, not to mention state offices. That is, ultimately, the lesson of Backlash: they push us, and then we push back. 

It shouldn't have to be this way, but here we are.

Deb in the City

A meditation on South Korean entertainment

I used to joke that I didn't watch any entertainment that wasn't in Korean, only it's so frequently true that it's not really a joke anymore. Not that I'd be inclined to feel guilty about this for any reason, but even people who are shouldn't. It's too easy to snark about how unoriginal Hollywood productions are these days, and I find myself watching something made in South Korea and think, "why can't Hollywood do a story like this?"

I recently finished Delayed Justice. Two unrelated Parks -- an attorney who only went to high school, and a reporter from the wrong side of the tracks who recently lost his good-paying job -- team up to get justice for one downtrodden group of defendants after another, all connected to a corrupt judge, an uncouth businessman turned mayor of Seoul, and a kingmaker who used to be a prosecutor during the last military dictatorship. It was a fun little show, and I'd be lying if I said that some of the backstage drama -- one of the original actors got picked up for drunk driving and needed to be replaced -- didn't add to some of the appeal.

I also recently enjoyed Lucky Romance, but that was primarily because the leads (Ryu Joon Yeol and Hwang Jung Eum) are so charming and talented they could move me while reading the phone book. And A Korean Odyssey was one of the best ensemble comedies I've seen in a long time. And while sometimes I tire of derring-do in Korean action, Vagabond was AWESOME. Now if only they come back for a second season to close the loop...

K-dramas are fun, but in general they're just not as satisfying as the movies. (I don't think this is specific to Korean entertainment.) Not all movies are perfect -- I can think of more than a few that have fallen flat -- but when they're good you feel like you've spent two hours (or more) wisely. Best movie I've seen in several months is Beasts Clawing at Straws. By the title, you can guess that it's about the poor and/or desperate of South Korea trying to pull themselves up with one fever-pitched, make or break attempt, and you'd be right. The stories are intertwined, and even when you think you can see where it's going you'll still feel hit by a curve ball at least once. Can't say it had a happy ending, but most people will be satisfied by it.  

Beasts Clawing At Straws...everyone is as well-adjusted as you think they are.

I'm probably like a lot of movie viewers in that I'm prone to following good actors. Ryu Joon Yeol, mentioned above, is REALLY good. The first movie I saw him in was Believer, and he played the kind of character that made me want to hide under my covers while I hyperventilated. Then I saw him play completely different roles in Little Forest, The King, and Hit-and-Run Squad that made me feel, well, a little less panicky. He's an actor I really hope we see more from soon. 

Gang Dong Won is another compelling actor. I knew this from some of his recent films, but I was surprised at how adept he was over a decade ago in The Temptation of Wolves (look, I'm not the one who makes up these titles, okay?) and Haunters. He, like Ryu Joon Yeol, is a good actor for a director to enlist when they need someone to sell something absolutely crazy and make you believe it. 

Ryu Joon Yeol: trust me, this guy can play scary as easily as he can play charming.

 

No discussion of Korean cinema is complete without Song Kang Ho (you can think of him as the Parasite guy). With the glaring, horrible exception of Drug King (just...why?), he's been universally fantastic. The oldest movie I've seen him in is a ridiculous little film called Foul King, but he managed to be really touching and made the best of the material. After that, he really took off, starting with Joint Security Area and then Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. (People have probably seen him in Snowpiercer and The Host, but those just aren't my cups of my tea.) He was excellent in both The Attorney and A Taxi Driver, but my favorite of all of his roles is Age of Shadows. Basically, if you see Kang featured as an actor, it's an almost sure thing the production will be good.

Wait, aren't there Korean actresses? Um, yes, but I'm sorry to say that with few exceptions, women have better roles on television than in the big screen. Many of the movies fail the first two questions of the Bechdel test, and I've seen very few that pass the fourth question. Actresses who consistently work in movies include Kim Hye Soo, Jun Ji Hyun, Kim Tae Ri, and Kim Go Eun, but even those actresses arguably had roles with more depth on television than in film. In that regard, it's more than a little depressing that South Korea has the same problems that Hollywood does. 

Kim Hye Soo: A talented actress who should keep playing leading roles.

Deb in the City

PS Just about all of these movies are available on Netflix or Viki. Also, I am not getting any consideration from AsianWiki.com, their information is just more consistent than Wikipedia's.