Archive for February 2014
Hey kiddos,
the piece:
"More insidiously, children’s books with girl protagonists sometimes celebrate their heroines to a fault. Isn’t it amazing that a girl did these things, they seem to say—implying that these heroines are a freakish exception to their gender, not an inspiration for readers to follow."Preach. It brings to mind an interview with director and writer Joss Whedon (you may know him from such things as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and The Avengers, among other things) in which the interviewer asked him why he keeps writing strong female protagonists, to which he replied, "Because you're still asking me that question."
If you've ever spent any amount of time on the social networking blogging site tumblr, you know that it is a place where sanity goes to die. There's a LOT of stupidity and other things of an undesirable nature, but if you follow the right people, it's also a fountain of creativity and ingenuity. Since it's kind of its own little corner of the internet, it tends to generate its own inside jokes, trends, and language quirks. Oh, and most of those funny posts you see on facebook? Yeah, those were stolen either from reddit or someone's tumblr blog.
Anyhoo, one of the finest tumblr traditions is making hundreds of absolutely ridiculous and intentionally poorly-made fandom or pop culture-related Valentines, usually involving poorly cropped pictures, bad puns, and comic sans. Here are a few treasures from this year:
On Wednesday in class we talked about music... I was very much in my element. Not only do I listen to a LOT of music, but I love talking about it and am very interested in the social, political, personal, and other effects and influences involved in the music that our society produces.
My personal music taste is extremely varied, and I really mean it when I say that. I really had to rein myself back in class to stop myself from talking during the entire class. It was bad.
But one of the comments I made was about Janelle Monáe, and I feel like she deserves to be talked about much more, so here we go.
Janelle Monáe is an American R&B/soul artist. She is 5'2", wears mostly tuxedos and sports coiffed hair most of the time, and is absolutely adorable. Evidence of adorable follows:
With the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, I have found myself marveling at how hilarious the world is. (Also did you see the opening ceremony? Because if you didn't you should find it somewhere and watch it- in my opinion it kicked London's butt [because let's be real, the London opening/closing ceremonies were pretty weird at times])
The Pro-Social Twelve-Hundred Year Old Regenerating Time Travelling Space Alien
Wednesday, February 5, 2014EDIT: I wrote this last week but like the idiot I am I saved it instead of publishing it so it's a little outdated but HERE YOU GO
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Today in class we talked about pro-social media, focusing most of our discussion on television shows. Although there are TONS of preschool and younger children's shows out there that are pro-social, we struggled to think of any shows targeted at those in middle-childhood or older that were pro-social AND not violent. For example, there are plenty of superhero cartoons out there that are very pro-social, but most of that is in the context of beating up bad guys to save people.
I sat there in class trying to think of a show that could apply, and of course it didn't come to me until after class was over.
DOCTOR WHO
But.
BUT.
One of the main points of the Doctor is that he doesn't use violence when he can avoid it. He hates guns. The Doctor travels throughout time and space, usually with a human companion, meeting people and exploring new places and saving and helping people wherever he can.
And it's a family-friendly show. It's the sort of show that's complicated and smart enough to keep adult viewers but fantastical and silly enough that a kid as young as six or seven could enjoy it.
As the show's current head writer Steven Moffat put it,
“When they made this particular hero, they didn’t give him a gun, they gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn’t give him a tank or a warship or an x-wing fighter, they gave him a call box from which you can call for help. And the didn’t give him a superpower or pointy ears or a heat ray, they gave him an extra heart. They gave him two hearts. And that’s an extraordinary thing; there will never come a time when we don’t need a hero like the doctor.”
So if you're looking for a pro-social show to watch with your family, I recommend this one. If you can get past the campy, terrible-budget aliens in the first season of the revamped show, that is.
