#its just he forces himself to fit into the perfect american man standard because of the pressure from his family and his dysphoria. like

[costanzian]

sorry i just understand dennis being trans better than all of u

#its just he forces himself to fit into the perfect american man standard because of the pressure from his family and his dysphoria. like #god he wants to be feminine and he doesn't allow himself to be because hes so afraid of being seen as a girl #because hes worked so hard for people to recognize him as a man #god its like that one video where the person was like 'trans men usally adopt toxic masculinity out of survival but that doesnt make it ok' #thats LITERALLY just dennis #i firmly believe hes trans its not even a joke its an amazing headcanon argue w a wall #none of this makes any sense #anyways let dennis get over himself and enjoy himself and let him be openly gnc #ok im listening to i / me / myself a little bit #its SUCH a dennis song #and im having thoughts and feelings ect ect #james.txt

[scorpionyx9621]

Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

#Long post GOD #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bat Family #Batman #red hood and the outlaws #RHATO #RH:O #Batman Urban Legends #Red Hood Lost Days #TW Voltron #TW Death #tw murder #TW Klance #Gotta love how i am pouring my heart out onto jason AND calling out the Voltron fandom #Regardless love Jason Todd people

[tsarisfanfiction]

Long Way From Home: Chapter 1

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Friendship Characters: Scott

His brothers are missing.  In their place is a family of strangers, the only explanation that makes any sense is beyond comprehension, and the only solution is impossible.  Scott Tracy’s never been so far from home.

Oh boy, so I’ve been working on this for literal months and it’s gonna be a hell of a ride.  Strictly speaking, I haven’t got far enough in writing this to be totally confident in starting to post it, but it’s Thunderbirds Day and quite frankly there is no day more perfect to start this particular adventure.  I have a vague plan to update this approximately weekly, but we’ll see how uni interferes with that...

Beep…  Beep…  Beep…

The shrill noise pierced his head unpleasantly.  It was familiar, frustratingly so, but as unconsciousness slowly permitted him to drift awake, he couldn’t find a single reason for it.  Who was hurt?

And why, he wondered as he peeled his eyes open briefly to see a sterile white ceiling, was he lying in a bed?  A hospital bed, with wires pressing against his skin.

His memories held no answer, for all that he probed at them.

The mission had been a simple one.  Solo, even, his brothers still fast asleep in their beds as the dead of night cradled home in its embrace.  A trapped climber was routine by this point – Alan likened it to International Rescue���s equivalent of the fireman’s cat up a tree, for all the comparison was somewhat inappropriate.  Grandma had told him off for that, when she’d heard him say it.  He hadn’t, seeing the humour.  Grandma had then told him off for not being a responsible adult and schooling his youngest brother.

The woman shouldn’t have been there, alone amongst the peaks of the Rockies with no backup as dawn broke to find her camp set up too close to a precipice and a simple rockfall cutting off any route she could take with the gear she’d had.  She’d made the call, and Thunderbird One had been dispatched to pick up the latest in a long list of stranded climbers.

After he’d set her down at the base of the mountains, he’d started talking with John about sending out a worldwide PSA to please be careful in the mountains.  It had started off a joke, something to keep his mind alert as he turned the beautiful red nose of his girl towards home, but he’d barely left the American coastline before their discussion took on a more serious note.  Too many climbers were taking risks that just never used to happen.  International Rescue was being taken for granted, and they only had so much capability to be in multiple places at once.

The beautiful, rugged spires of home had come into view, John signing off from the conversation for another of his cat naps, and he’d landed Thunderbird One safely in her silo without a hitch.  He remembered post-flight checks, making a note to check a minor issue with a shoulder harness later after some sleep, and then disembarking onto the extended gantry as usual.

Then, nothing.

Had he fallen from the gantry?  His brothers were periodically clucking about the lack of a handrail – Gordon, in particular, disliked it – but he’d never felt unsafe on it.  It was high above the hangar floor, however, and while the beep… beep… beep… steadfastly continued, he was in no pain.  An unchecked fall from that height would have left his body broken.

Experimentally, he flexed his fingers.  They obeyed instantly, hands curling into loose fists and then extending again. His toes responded equally positively. No paralysis, tricking him into thinking there was no injury, then.  Well, he’d always take good news, and more made itself known as he drifted a hand up to his head.  No lumps, bumps or bandaging of any sort.

In fact, there was no bandaging anywhere.  He’d spent enough time injured over the years to know the slightly itchy feeling of the fabric against his skin, but nowhere could he feel even the tight stickiness of a plaster clinging to his skin.

Thoroughly mystified at the information his memory and sense of touch were relaying, he opened his eyes again.  This time prepared for the white, he didn’t immediately close them again.  Instead, he looked around, realising with a sinking feeling that wherever he was, it wasn’t home.

The room was an infirmary of some sort, as he’d initially surmised.  With at least one other bed in clear view, and room for more between metallic tables and cabinets filled with meticulously organised jars and bottles, it was clearly private, rather than hospital-grade.  He was reminded of their infirmary at home, ready for use at a moment’s notice despite ignored prayers that it would never be needed and kept organised by the iron fists of Grandma and her willing protégé Virgil.

There was a window, though. At home, carved into the rock their villa was as much an extension of as an intrusion upon, the infirmary had no natural light source.  Artificial lights and holographic visages kept the room from being a dark dungeon. From his position on the bed, he couldn’t see outside, but the light streaming in through open blinds was entirely natural.

Most bizarre of all, however, was the technology surrounding him.  At a glance it seemed outdated, the light-up displays using something that seemed even older than LEDs and not a hologram in sight.  John would dismiss it as junk, he assumed, before realising that he had no idea what most of it was for.  Numbers flickered, not even digital but a flick-flick-flick of cycling cards. If not for the labels – tacky, raised lines of metal forming letters and words – the idea that it was monitoring his blood pressure and other vital signs would never have even crossed his mind.

Basic competence with standard hospital technology had been drilled into them all firmly by Grandma, even if only Virgil had taken it further than the fundamentals needed to keep someone alive long enough for professional medical help to arrive. Outdated technology had been included in that list, anything Grandma had ever used throughout her life a requirement because not everywhere had the technology of International Rescue, or even an up to date machine.

He could say with certainty that he wouldn’t even know where to start with the technology surrounding him. Logic dictated that that meant it was even older than Grandma, or state of the art beyond even Brains’ inventions, but neither felt right.

There was nothing primitive about the machinery, for all that he still maintained John would find it fit for the WRMs.  Brains and Virgil would be itching to take it apart, see how it worked and whether they could improve it, or find inspiration to improve their own.

Speaking of his family, it was odd that none of them were nearby.  Virgil almost always camped out if someone was injured or sick, and if he was away on a rescue another Tracy would step up to take his place.  Gordon never stopped talking when he was on infirmary duty, finding topic after topic to plough through until he found one the injured party reacted to and milked it for all it was worth.  Alan, in true teenager fashion, was a fidgeting wreck unless he had his games with him; it was not unusual for him to flop belly-down on an unoccupied bed with his headset on in his own form of company. John might not be capable of physically being in the room, unless it was so bad he’d felt compelled down from his beloved stars, but constant communication links allowed him to be tied in at all times.

Of all his brothers, it was John he was most surprised to have seen or heard nothing of since he awoke. His vitals should have been being streamed straight to Five, no matter where in the world he was – John would have known the instant he regained consciousness and responded accordingly. Even if, as he realised, his uniform and communicator had been relieved from his person.

Someone, presumably the person responsible for settling him in the unfamiliar infirmary, had changed him out of his flight suit and into soft, flannel pyjamas.  They were comfortable enough, even if they weren’t his usual style, and fit perfectly.  His uniform, he discovered with relief after another look around the room, was folded neatly on a chair.  Everything was there, his baldric still full of grapple packs, barring the one used up on the rescue, and the grapple itself, and the controls for remote piloting both One and his jetpack remained three per bracer.

Wherever he was, and whoever had put him there, it appeared no-one was interested in investigating International Rescue’s gear.  At least he could rule out the Hood, he supposed, although perhaps he’d have preferred their nemesis to the total unknown…

No, he decided after a moment’s deliberation.  He wasn’t quite that desperate.  He was unrestrained and his gear was safe.  That automatically made the situation far better than anything involving the Hood.

Still, too many questions and no answers for any of them spurred him into action.  Pushing himself up into a sitting position, wires tugging futilely before falling away and sending the machines into a frenzy, he steeled himself to make a break for it – out of the room and hopefully ending up somewhere that would give him the answers he needed.

The door opened as beeps turned into squeals, and he turned towards the new arrival, hoping to see Virgil or Grandma, hands on hips as they chivvied him back into bed.

It was not Virgil or Grandma.  Nor was it any of his other brothers.

Sharp blue eyes surveyed – analysed – him, set into a face that was hard to read.  Furrowed brows gave the stare an almost disturbing intensity as his conscious state was registered; they were almost the same colour as the mop of short dark brown hair on the man’s head.  Dimples that, if coupled with a smile, could bedazzle and disarm anyone completed the look, and he felt his jaw drop slightly before strength of will forced it shut again.

Standing in front of Scott Tracy, arms crossed and wearing a look of cautious suspicion he knew all too well, was Scott Tracy.

Chapter 2>>>

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #long way from home

[heavy-lobster]

POST THE FUCKING ESSAY KOAL/DUSTY I SWEAR TO GOD

WAIT I THOUGHT YOU READ IT ALREADY??? DID I SERIOUSLY NOT SEND IT TO YOU WHEN I INITIALLY FINISHED IT??? GOD WHAT THE FUCK

Well I can’t NOT post it now.

So for some background, the assignment was to write a short essay arguing as to why a children’s series of our choosing could be classified as horror, based on some article we had to read. I chose Wow Wow Wubbzy because I thought it would be funny and. man. So anyways this is VERY poorly written because I did most of it between like,,, midnight and 3 am. It’s very ranty and way longer than it needed to be. For ease of reading I went back and fixed up the shitty formatting and fixed a few spelling errors, as well as linking my sources.

So uhhh this is about horror so,, warning for horror ig?? It’s not scary like, at all, but better safe than sorry.

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!: The Horror Within

Introduction

“Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!” is an American TV show originally aired on Nick Jr. From the mind of Bob Boyle, this educational kid’s show was very memorable for a lot of kids growing up at that time. The show features Wubbzy, a yellow, square, animalistic character, with a curly, “springy” tail; as well as Wubbzy’s various friends. Most episodes feature Wubbzy and his pals, Widget and Walden (as well as Daizy in later episodes), dealing with an every day situation, or well, depends on your definition of “every day”. The situation spirals out of control because of the actions of various characters, and it is resolved by the problematic character of the episode learning a lesson and fixing their mistake. Seems like a typical kids show, right? Well, there may be more to it than that. What if I told you that Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! could be interrupted as a horror show about horrifically mutated beasts struggling to survive the post apocalyptic world they are forced to inhabit? Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! fits many categories described in Sharon A. Russell’s literary criticism in “What is the Horror Genre?”. In this essay we will discuss how Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! could possibly be classified as a horror series.  

Asking the real questions; what is everyone?

First of all, a very important question. What exactly are the characters? There are claims that Wubbzy himself is some kind of gerbil, but frankly I don’t see it. Also, what’s the deal with the inhabitants of Wuzzleburg in general? Wubbzy and his friends are supposed to be anthropomorphic animals, but they seem more like horrific monsters, mutated from normal animals. Monsters are a very common and important element in horror. Not all monsters are vicious killers, and not all of them are obvious in appearance. Some monsters are small and cute, but it’s almost always a facade. 

There are also some “regular” animals running around, but yet they aren’t “normal” by any stretch of the imagination. Some are very obviously not normal, others seem mostly normal. “Flutterflies” are a common, non-anthro animal seen in Wubbzy, with their most prominent appearance being in the episode “The Flight of the Flutterfly”. Flutterflies seem like normal butterflies, but why are they called “Flutterflies” instead? Are they in any way different to the butterflies of our world, or is that just what the inhabitants of Wuzzleburg call butterflies? What about the more blatantly odd non-anthro animals? In “Attack of the 50 Foot Fleegle” Wubbzy acquires a pet “Fleegle”. It appears to be a small, purple, almost hamster like creature. It remains small and happy if you feed it the right kind of food, but Wubbzy foolishly feeds it candy and sweets. When fed candy, the Fleegle increases in size in increasingly large increments. After a time, it becomes so big that it rampages all over Wuzzleburg. The only thing that could shrink it back to normal size was carrot juice. When fed bologna, they multiply, and the solution to this is unknown, as the episode ends there and this is never brought up again. 

There are plenty of strange animals, both anthropomorphic and not; yet no humans. Not a single human character in sight. This begs the question, what happened? Why are all these animals how they are? What happened to the humans? Obviously, these questions were never answered, as this is a kids show. Here is a thought to consider: what if all the humans are dead, and all the characters are mutant abominations, or, monsters as they’d more fittingly be called. Humans have been wiped out, and the animals who survived mutated in many different ways. Some animals became intelligent, and capable of building their own society similar to what once was our own. That society is what we know as Wuzzleburg. In conclusion, all the creatures seen in the show are the result of something terrible; mutated abominations passing as animals. This fits the “monster” category of horror as described in Russell’s article.

What’s the deal with Wuzzleburg?

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! takes place in the fictional town of Wuzzleburg. Wuzzleburg and its surrounding locations look very odd. Everything is unnaturally geometric. Everything- from houses to trees- is very odd in appearance. Tree branches are often bendy, always at a right angle, with the edges being smooth and rounded. In Wuzzleburg, many houses look like completely normal houses, yet Wubbzy lives in a tree house. Another common thing is that houses and buildings of importance are usually designed based on a specific object. Daizy’s house, for example, is shaped like a flower. 

Outside of Wuzzleburg, the locations only get weirder. There is an island, shown to be somewhere off the coast of Wuzzleburg, called “Dino Island”. As the name suggests, this island is inhabited by dinosaurs. So apparently, dinosaurs are not extinct in this universe; at least on this island. As far as other towns go, there is Wuzzlewood, clearly based on Hollywood, where all the biggest celebrities in the Wubbzy cinematic universe (WCU) live. Everything in Wuzzlewood is covered in stars, a clever spin of the celebrity theme. Another interesting location is Plaidville. In Plaidville, everything is plaid; the trees, the ground, and even the inhabitants. I don’t have to explain what is unnatural about that. 

Now, back on the topic of Wuzzleburg, since it is the main location seen in the show, and is where Wubbzy and his friends live. It has been stated that Wuzzleburg was founded in 1853 by “Heinrich van Wuzzle”. The specific year being given is an odd detail, that you wouldn’t normally expect in a show of this nature. Wuzzleburg is clearly a town in every sense of the word. It has plenty of stores and restaurants, an airport, houses, residents, a mayor, a rich history, annual festivities, reliable transportation, schools, and even a stable economy. All of this being made by what we have already established as horrific monsters. That’s impressive. There is common debate in the Wubbzy fandom on whether these locations are in a parallel universe, or perhaps if they exist on our Earth. In the episode “Fly Us To The Moon”, the place where they land back on “Earth” appears to suggest that Wuzzleburg is located somewhere in or near Washington state, in America, or possibly somewhere in British Columbia. 

My theory is that the events of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! takes place on Earth, but certainly not our Earth. An alternate Earth, where humans may have lived before. Some horrible nuclear accident wiped out all human life, and caused all the animals to mutate into the many strange creatures of the WCU. This also explains the unnatural features of the setting. Post-apocalyptic Earth? Sounds like a perfect horror setting to me. This fits perfectly with the criteria described in Sharon’s article.

The beast within; Wubbzy’s true villain

Finally, the matter of the deep internal conflict hidden deep within the show. In the show, you can expect every episode to have a lesson or moral, as many kids shows do. Most episodes feature one of the main characters (almost always Wubbzy) making a mistake, followed by them learning the lesson of the episode and using their newfound knowledge to make things right. What if I told you that this is sign of a much deeper internal conflict going on far beneath the character’s cute exterior? Would it be so far fetched to believe that every episode is focused on the anthropomorphic abominations struggling to fight against their beastly instincts? Their own organized and civilized society goes against their very nature, and they constantly fight to uphold the standards they set; both for themselves, and each other. It's a constantly uphill climb. Wubbzy is undeniably a flawed character. He messes up constantly, often learning the same lessons over and over again, as if it’s more of a reminder than a lesson. It’s Wubbzy against himself. This fits Sharon’s criteria of internal horror, but that’s not all. 

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is also the story of a quest for self improvement, as well as a good vs evil scenario, which are two of Russell’s other criteria. I mean, think about it. Every character is open to self improvement once they realize the harm they’ve caused. Every character is on their own quest, seeking to better themselves. Every character is going through their own internal battle. They fight their own flaws. Their own evils. The true villain of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is the evil within all of them, the beastly instincts lurking within all of Wuzzleberg’s monster inhabitants. And they may not always be perfect, maybe they don’t know how to be “good”, maybe being good just isn’t in their nature; but they try their best despite all the challenges, to be better, and improve themselves. 

In that way I think we can all relate to them. We aren’t always “good”, we aren’t perfect, sometimes we don’t know how to do the “right” thing, but our flaws are what make us human. It may not be in our nature to be flawless, but it is in our nature to seek self improvement, and that’s what Wubbzy is really about. The struggles we all go through to be better people, because inside? We’re all just monsters trying our best to be civil, and conform to our moral code. And really? That’s enough. 

Conclusion 

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is undeniably a kid’s show at heart, but if you really stop to analyze it, you find a much darker horror series. It would be fittingly classified as a psychological horror. It fits almost all of Sharon A. Russell’s criteria as described in the article “What is the Horror Genre?”. What is Wubbzy? In fact, what are all of the show’s characters? Their vaguely animal appearance appeal to young children, but I believe that they may actually be normal animals mutated into horrible monsters. Freaks of nature created by a nuclear incident. There is not a single human seen in the show, but plenty of abnormal creatures. This suggests that we are long gone. The monsters we left behind built their own society.

 Not only were the animals affected, but also the earth itself. The odd nature of the setting supports my nuclear devastation theory. Finally, is the true conflict of Wubbzy. The show itself is about nuclear monsters trying their best to adapt to the society they built for themselves, even if it goes against their own nature. It’s beasts on a quest where the only objective is the betterment of the self. An internal conflict. There is no physical villain in the show. The only antagonist out to get Wubbzy, is Wubbzy himself. In that way, I think we can all relate. In conclusion, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is actually about horribly mutated animals fighting their inner demons, on a metaphorical journey to be better than they are. For that very reason, I believe it could be interrupted as a horror series. 

Sources: 

Wubbzy Wikipedia page

Wubbzy Fandom Wiki, which I did NOT know existed before this project and honestly the comments on the page were the funniest fucking thing, I highly recommend it

And uhhh various episodes of Wubbzy I had to watch

I apologize for my crimes

[kalm5]

This was a quick little think I wrote for @meshlamando birthday!! Though a little late because I was working and the gears seem to turn when I am at work. 

It a Javier Pena x Horacio Carrillo story. My mind instantly was like they should be together! It’s really fluffy, a lime really. It’s also ohhhh so rough in writing because I fear if I re-read it over I would want to delete it. 

Soooo further that due here it is... Happy Birthday again @meshlamando you have corrupted me with Narcos!!! Also totally off cannon here!!

Colonel Horacio Carrillo was being driven nuts but the terrible two. Stupid Americans thinking they could just do whatever they want. Javier was decent most of the time. Then the DEA decided to send another agent the cowboy. Steve Murphy. That kid was seriously out of his element. Of course being the head of the Search Bloc and being in charge of taking out the Medellin Cartel. Even though Carrillo was married to the love of his life there was something his wife really didn’t know about him. He did fool around a bit with both the male and female. It got more male sided when he was going through the brutal training in the special forces and the police force in Columbia. Often you found relief with other men that needed the same relief. He was the one the was dominant and could bend his partner to his will. He was a little rough but not to rough. To get pleasure out of his partner. Though with his wife he really couldn’t be rough with her. Carrillo then had a hard time when his wife was killed. His wife was the strongest woman ever. Married him even though there was that risk when he got the promotion to be the commander of the Search Bloc. But he did vow to get his revenge for his wife and all that things that were destroyed by this cartel. Though he was pent up and needed release. Most would say to seek out a whore. Carrillo was an honourable man and was seeking a bigger prized. He wanted Javier. He knew that Javier was a man whore. Using sex as a way to get intel. Since Carrillo was in the power to withhold information to the Americans he was going to make Javier beg.

~~~~~ Murphy and Pena the disaster duo of the DEA trying to fight the war on drugs like to American cowboys. A ticking time bomb of doom. It was very surprising that neither of them have been killed. There were some close calls. They have pissed of enough people between the Columbian government and people and different departments within the American Embassy in Colombia. How they still have jobs know one will know. Javier started out his day normally. He had some intel from a contact that he visited periodically. It was one that wasn’t really known. It was a male contact that was infatuated with Javier. Javier had to admit with himself he was hesitant having sex with a male. But after the first time he would admit that he would swing both ways in order for the intel. He knew that Steve never caught on. Also Javier had standards and types. Steve would never fit that mold. Plus the guy had his wife Connie. Javier would never admit but Connie scared the shit out of him. She was the observant one. How Steve got on with DEA is the mystery because the evidence has to be right in front of him to figure it out. While Connie could figure things out with a glance. Even when he has sex. Steve oblivious while with Connie the woman literally made one comment about having a rough night getting laid. He was doomed. Also somehow the woman knew that he swung both ways. Javier was thinking it was because there was the time where Connie and Carrillo were in the same room and he was sort of staring at Carrillo’s ass and bulge from the tight pants of the man’s uniform. Javier thought he was good at covering his emotions. But with this woman apparently not. It was another day in the office. Javier and Steve were working their way through a ton of paperwork. There was a small stall from the hunt for Escobar. The man was infuriating. So close yet so far sometimes. ‘This is weird,’ said Steve. ‘What?’ Asked Javier mindlessly. ‘There hasn’t been a report from Carrillo and the search bloc in a couple of days.’ They both look at there piles to see if it was misplaced. But once going through all of it they noticed that there hasn’t been any reports. Carrillo was always diligent sending something even if its brief. They were confused as to why. ‘I’ll go and see the guy.’ ‘Steve you are so white cowboy that I’m pretty sure that they won’t talk to you. I will go and give the guy a piece of mind.’ ‘You are really awful you know.’ ‘Yeah that isn’t anything new.’ ‘Well if you need any back up you know where to find me.’ ~~~~ Javier Pena swaggered into the Search Bloc offices like he owned the place. He shot the shit with some of the guys. Sort of getting the mood before he barges in to see Carrillo. The man runs a tight ship. If the commander is in a sore mood then the rest fo the group is in a sour mood. It was mostly fine. The was some mutterings of him being an American and thinking that he owned the place. But generally it was okay so he was going to barge into Carrillo’s office like the boss he is. ~~ Carrillo could hear the noise that Javier was making. They terrible two found that they didn’t have any reports. Now he was in the perfect position controlling Javier. The man used se for intel. In any case it was a win win for both of them. He wonder if Javier’s mouth is any good. He knew that Javier would be the dominant in most situations but in the office Javier will be the submissive little pet. He decided to ignore Javier cocky attitude barging into his office. Carrillo kept looking at the reports that needed his attention. Javier was running his mouth like usual. He kept ignoring the man. Get Javier riled up. Carrillo has perfected ignoring Americans. They really didn’t like to be ignored. ‘Really Carrillo?” ‘Can’t you see that I’m busy Agent Pena?’ ‘Sort of but you have been sending over any reports about activity to the Americans.’ Carrillo knows he has baited Javier. But he had to play his cards right. But he would win the fight. He just gives Javier a blank stare.  That actually made Javier nervous. Carrillo got and walked around his desk getting. He kept his eyes on Javier while making his way to the door. He locked it. The he made his way back to his desk leaning on it staring again at Javier. He was making the man nervous. ‘How do you propose on getting these reports from me?’ ‘You can’t be serious on now negotiating on getting me getting reports.’ Javier laughed nervously. Because he did have a small fantasy with Carrillo. ‘I am being serious. You think you can walk all over us because you are American.’ ‘They are just reports for fuck sake.’ ‘But hard working men gather this information. The risk that they had to take to get this information that puts so many people at risk. So here we are negotiating.’ ‘Fine what do I as an American have to take to get this information?’ Carrillo had Javier fall into his trap. He gave a smirk to Javier ‘on your knees.’ ‘Fuck,’ muttered Javier. ‘Exactly little butterfly.’

……. Use your imagination on what happens now.

#narcos #javier pena #Horacio carrillo #Headcanon #story #meshlamando #birthday story

[ducktracy]

98. i haven’t got a hat (1935)

release date: march 2nd, 1935

series: merrie melodies

director: friz freleng

starring: joe dougherty (porky), billy bletcher (beans, ex), bernice hansen (kitty, ham), martha wentworth (miss cud)

the fated day at last, the day the world was shook to its core... kind of. i haven’t got a hat marks the introduction of our favorite porky pig, along with a few others: beans, ham and ex, little kitty, and oliver owl. buddy’s lack of success was obvious. he couldn’t adequately fill the gap that bosko had left. thus, this cartoon serves as a “free for all”, introducing a number of new characters to see who would work out the best. beans was looking to be the star of the new franchise, but his stuttering sidekick was much more endearing to audiences. to put it this way, beans starred in 11 cartoons. porky starred in 153. buddy would continue to have a few cartoons afterwards, bidding his last “that’s all, folks” with buddy the gee-man. 1936 would see a rise in porky cartoons, thanks to jack king, tex avery, and frank tashlin. 1937 is when stuff gets REALLY good. but for now, we’ll focus on this cartoon. various school children put on a musical and recital, but trouble arises when beans’ jealousy causes the show to run amuck.

right off the bat, we’re introduced to our selection of characters. miss cud, “school teacher”—a clarabelle cow facsimile who rings her school bell cheekily. beans, a mischievous cat introduced by eating jam by the fistfuls. an offscreen voice yells “HEY!”, to which beans responds by sticking out his tongue after wiping the offending jam off his face. very amusing to note how different in personality he is here, a rambunctious, mischievous kid. i haven’t seen too many beans cartoons, only gold diggers of ‘49, alpine antics, and westward whoa, and in those he seems to be following the good natured, likable yet flat personality that buddy (and bosko) had exuded. this whole introduction scene is great—forcing some personality out of these characters. porky and oliver owl are next, porky giving a happy salute and oliver owl pretentiously tipping his hat. ham and ex, two troublemaking twins, spot the camera and eagerly whisper to each other. they’d be featured in a few beans cartoons, usually causing trouble that beans has to remedy.

an underscore of “i haven’t got a hat” plays jauntily as we’re introduced to the scenario: a flyer posted on the side of the schoolhouse reading “MUSICAL and RECITAL — sponsored by the children of this school for the benefit of teachers and parents — ALL CHILDREN ARE ELIGIBLE!” sure enough, happy parents stream inside with their kids. a mother cat and her child, a mother dog and her two pups, a mother pig and her three little pigs, and a mother hen with her long line of chicks that zigzag inside, a straggler catching up.

once all the parents and children are settled, miss cud rings her cowbell to introduce the show, stating “we will now open our exercises with a recitation by our little friend, porky pig.” porky misses the cue, too engrossed with the book “custer’s last stand”. beans glares at porky, tapping on his book and signaling for him to go up.

porky meanders his way to the front of the schoolhouse and recites “the midnight ride of paul revere”. as always, his stuttering gets in the way of his presentation.

here’s the thing about joe dougherty—i’ve really come to appreciate him. there certainly is that “poor guy” feeling when you listen to him characterize porky because of his actual uncontrollable stutter, but i don’t think it’s THAT painful to listen to. maybe because i’ve seen all of the dougherty porkys. honestly, i think his most “painful” performance is here and in gold diggers of ‘49, which were his first two cartoons. it’s not even the stuttering, but then figuring out how to perfect his character. his voice is especially high, aluminum sounding in this one, and in gold diggers it isn’t sped up at all, and sounds rather jarring to hear joe dougherty’s natural voice, which is VERY deep. joe dougherty would use his regular speaking voice for porky’s father, in cartoons such as porky the rain maker and milk and money. i think the stuttering is the most “out of control” here—i really don’t find his performances that bad at all. i think it really fits him, especially when he was so chubby. it’s really odd to hear mel do porky in his chubby design in porky’s double trouble.

(my) blabbering aside, porky recites the poem, exerting so much effort that he begins to sweat—wonderful animation done by bob mckimson. once he finishes the first stanza, he imitates a horse, complete with slapping his butt like a whip. he gives another stanza, whipping out an american flag and marching to “the girl i left behind me”. he recites some more, (even confusing poems and reciting a snippet of “the charge of the light brigade”), declaring “cannon to the right of them!” i love the little inkling of personality as he deliberately points to the left (which actually WOULD be his right), recognizing his mistake and pointing the other direction. a turtle drums on its stomach with some mallets.

“cannon to the left of them!” another wrong direction: this scene is especially amusing because of his determined expression, so confident in his delivery. what a ham. a dog tilts a basket of lightbulbs, breaking them one by one to imitate the sound of gunshots.

porky struggles to finish his poem, and the entire classmates whistle at him to get it over with—a reoccurring gag in the dougherty era. the whistle plays out like a dog whistle, an army of dogs playfully licking and hopping on porky, who walks backwards out of the scene as the children applaud. quite an introduction!

miss cud introduces “little kitty”, who’d serve as beans’ love interest in the beans cartoons. she’s obviously reluctant to go on, panicking and struggling against her parent’s arms. the parent gives her a final push as she stumbles on stage. she pauses before reciting “mary had a little... a little... uh...” she seeks miss cud for help, who mouths “lamb!” and provides a picture. kitty beams and continues “lamb! it’s fleece was white as... white as...”

once more, miss cud displays thinly veiled frustration as she tosses cornflakes above her head to imitate snow. bernice hansen’s delivery is great as kitty says “cornflakes!” with such utter confidence. she corrects herself bashfully, and what continues is a very nervous, possibly the most annoying yet entertaining recitation of mary had a little lamb. it’s amusing to watch her pace around and grimace, wringing her dress. her voice gets pitched up higher and higher, speeding up so her open is borderline incomprehensible. it’s certainly annoying and technology rather primitive, but amusing because of that. the best part is when she runs out of the school building and heads for home, her voice fading away as she’s still frantically reciting it.

next is ham and ex, who sing the criminally catchy “i haven’t got a hat”. bernice hansen’s squeaky voice singing the lyrics matched with billy bletcher’s deep bass voice of “bom bom bom bom” makes the perfect contrast, especially as ex sings the bass line and squats with each “bom”.

elsewhere, bob clampett animated a scene of beans and oliver, who are both bored by the performance—beans especially. oliver snacks on some candy canes, to which beans eagerly extends his arms towards. oliver tricks him into giving him a piece, stuffing it in his mouth and sticking his tongue out at the last minute. man, what a jerk! i’d be pissed too! especially amusing to watch beans silently mutter obscenities are oliver as the song continues on.

once the song ends, miss cud introduces oliver. if the introduction where he haughtily tips his hat or when he denies beans food isn’t enough of an indicator for his snobby personality, miss cud introduces him as “master oliver owl” as a very confident musician. a great scene as oliver grins at beans, but remembers his rivalry. he stalks off with his nose (beak?) in the air, his peppermint ripe for the picking. beans reaches over for it eagerly... until oliver runs back into the scene and snatches it away, scowling.

oliver plays a standard “school kid playing piano for the class” tune. beans isn’t impressed... until an idea hatches. he sneaks out of the classroom, where he spots a sleeping cat on a ladder right outside the window. perfect! he opens the lid of the piano and drops the cat in, his sabotage unfolding as he spots a dog and drops it inside, too. what a little bastard! i wish they kept him that way.

at once, the keys start playing for themselves, a thunderous rendition of “poet and peasant overture”. oliver ogles in astonishment as the keys (great animation) wiggle on their own, the piano jumping up and down as the dog and cat duke it out inside. friz’s musical timing is excellent, and oliver’s reactions are priceless as he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. everyone claps thunderously as he stares at the audience in astonishment.

not one to question his unseen methods, oliver recognizes he is receiving glory and eats it up. unfortunately, he stops in his tracks once the piano continues to play. the dog and the cat leap out of the piano and chase each other around, oliver’s head spinning as he attempts to keep track of the chase. he grins nervously and sweats, his performance exposed.

all the kids boo and hiss, except for beans, who’s laughing outside the window. oliver spots him and squirts green ink on him in retaliation. beans falls off the ladder and lands on a bench, which throws both beans AND a can of red paint into the window. the paint can lands right on oliver’s head, beans toppling next to him. they exchange bewildered looks, and their rivalry is transformed into camaraderie as they shake hands. iris out.

obviously, i’m pretty biased since porky is one of my favorite characters, just barely shy of daffy. however, i truly think this is a really good cartoon, and probably one of the best we’ve seen. the attempt to really get some personality out of these characters is absolutely there. facial acting, body language, acting in GENERAL, it’s all there. the characters are all endearing, even oliver. some beautiful animation, especially the porky scenes by bob mckimson and the piano scene with the dog and cat. nothing feels too drawn out—of course, porky’s recitation is VERY long, but that’s also the point. it’ll be interesting to see how joe dougherty improves—maybe i just feel bad for the guy, but i think he needs some more credit. anyway, VERY good cartoon. the song is dreadfully catchy! if anything, it’s certainly worth watching for its historical significance. even then, it’s just an entertaining, light-hearted, fun cartoon.

link!

#lt #i haven’t got a hat #reviews #long post

[philosopherking1887]

I also forgot to mention that TW, a ~man of color~ wrote a movie where a white colonizer (ODIN) was PRAISED, UPLIFTED, & CELEBRATED BY THE NARRATIVE AND OUR PROTAGONIST. TW even made sure Thor got an eyepatch at the end as symbolic emulation. A man of color made THAT MOVIE, and they're stanning? Because he's brown?? By their own logic, TW suffers from internalized racism bc he wrote that shit, and anyone who likes the movie is racist/has internalized racism. Not my black ass. Fuck that movie.

I’m so sorry that it’s taken me so long to answer this… I had to get through a mountain of grading in a hurry because I have stupid grading anxiety so I procrastinate, which makes everything worse because I have to do it all at once instead of spreading it out.

I found the post where I talk about how benevolent racism is part of the reason people aren’t allowed to criticize Ragnarok or Taika Waititi. Even if there are genuine, serious problems with the work of a POC—not just the characterization mess or the complete unlikability of the main characters (I gotta majorly side-eye the people who find Ragnarok!Thor “relatable”), but the Social Justice-y problems that you would think they would take seriously (the stereotypically queer-coded villains; the implicit slut-shaming of Loki; the toxic masculinity all over the place; the one-line dismissal of Jane Foster, a brilliant female scientist, to be replaced by a woman who is considered more powerful and therefore “more Thor’s equal” because she can beat people up)—you’re not allowed to point them out, especially if you’re white, because all criticism of a POC constitutes racism.

Honestly, this kind of reminds me of the standard Leftist line that westerners are not allowed to condemn human rights abuses in non-western countries, especially formerly colonized countries, because (A) western countries aren’t perfect (duh) and (B) everything that’s wrong in formerly colonized countries is to be blamed on European colonialism. It seems to me that (B) is extraordinarily patronizing: it’s like they’re saying that victims of colonialism (always people of color) can’t be held responsible for anything because they can’t be expected to know better, almost as if they’re children whose wrongdoing is always to be blamed on the adults’ bad parenting.

I also found the post where I discussed how Loki’s story could (and should) have fit in with the (purported) anti-colonialism message. And there’s another post from someone else that’s been in my drafts folder for a while because I wanted to say something about it but I never seem to have time, which is very relevant. The OP is gushing about how Ragnarok is this groundbreaking, subversive critique of colonialism… but then someone with American indigenous heritage reblogs to add that Loki is also a victim of colonialism and makes the comparison with Native American/ First Nations children who were taken from their parents and adopted out to white parents or indoctrinated in abusive boarding schools. That essay was presented not as a criticism of Ragnarok—which the reblogger seemed to think had sufficiently dealt with Loki’s trauma in the “fictional retelling of his relationship with Odin” presented in Loki’s play about himself—but as a rebuttal to the claim in a “literary review” of Ragnarok (which falls all over itself to hail TR as “the coolest, slickest, funniest indictment of white supremacy that you’re likely to see for a long, long time”) that Loki has no relationship to Asgard’s imperialist past and is just “a character who doesn’t care as long as he gets his.”

Interestingly, the reviewer added a note in response to criticism of that characterization saying that he “personally really like[s] the character” and acknowledges “his complicated, and often tragic, backstory of otherness and biculturalism,” but insists that that “do[es] not make him NOT fundamentally power hungry.” Which… kind of wasn’t the point of the criticism? It was that in a rundown of how the various characters were related to the history of imperialism, all he said about Loki was that he “doesn’t care as long as he gets his.” Whether or not Loki can rightly be characterized as “fundamentally power-hungry” is a complicated question and depends on how sincere you think his “I never wanted the throne” protestation was and how much you think conquering Earth was his idea as opposed to Thanos’s.

But the fact that the reviewer had to be reminded of Loki’s connection with Asgardian imperialism—as a victim of it, not just as a beneficiary—points to a basic problem with Loki’s depiction in Ragnarok, which is obviously what was freshest in the writer’s mind (and I doubt he had rewatched the other movies recently): that despite its claims to provide a comprehensive critique of colonialism (and no, it wasn’t being subtle), it was so intent on ridiculing Loki and minimizing all of his problems that it had to downplay or dismiss any respect in which he could be considered a victim of colonialism. That would have made Loki sympathetic, which the movie wanted to avoid at all costs.

It is completely baffling to me that Thor turns to Odin’s Force ghost for strength and guidance and this is not problematized at all. If Ragnarok was trying to make anti-colonialism its theme, that scene seems like it should have been from a different movie. I wonder if that came from the aspect of the movie whose message was (in the words of an interview with Waititi, which I found screenshotted in this post, and which I presume is a paraphrase of something he said) that “a home is still a home, however you may feel about its inhabitants.” This message is presented in the context of TW’s insistence that Loki needs to “put away his childish fixations” and “put into perspective his petty family squabbles.” Let’s just think about that for a second: in a movie that is supposed to be an indictment of colonialism, a stolen child being lied to about his heritage and indoctrinated with racist beliefs about his own people is a “petty family squabble” and his resentment about it is a “childish fixation.”

#ofwickedlight #thor ragnarok criticism #colonialism #imperialism #loki meta #thor ragnarok meta #anti taika waititi #benevolent racism

[alittlebookdust]

Weekly/Monthly/When I Feel Ambitious Enough for It Review: Custom of the Country

Custom of Our Country By Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton’s Old New York was revolutionary. The cultural apogee fixated itself with being the battleground upon which the old customs met the new in climactic bursts of revelation inspired by the growing audacity of America’s up and coming elite, who had begun cultivating riches not from their ancestry but from novel institutions like Wall Street and the railways.

The Custom of the Country, like Wharton’s other works, centers itself in the midst of this turn-of-the-century flux. I picked up the novel after reading Age of Innocence and This Side of Paradise, continuing my fascination with 1910s and 20s during which America radiated within this gilded frame of promised wealth. 

Despite being a century apart, I couldn’t help but mark similarities between the dawning American society of the 20th century to that of my Millennial generation. Three particular observations of Edith Wharton’s Old New York still echo, with resonating distinction, the characteristics of our modern-day cultural capital. We aren’t so different from our ancestors. We still tie society’s influence to our own personal desires. We are still hardly ever satisfied with what we have, provoked by the infinite opportunity that elicits our fear of missing something better—aka “FOMO.” And we still have a tendency to neglect our humanity—our need to be in personal relationship with one another—for the sake of the things we want.

Custom of the Country deconstructs these observations through the misadventures of Apex city socialite, Undine Spragg, whose preliminary dreams are but to establish herself in the brownstones on Fifth Avenue. Her grand move to New York is reminiscent to many of our exciting beginnings, where we move to the city and feel the buoyancy of our expectations to “make it big.” Undine is no different. She is also tenacious, exacting, demanding. Her ability to impersonally view a situation in order to assess the lessons from a failure and implement them into her decisions following the next stage of her “career,” constituted the embodiment of her character, the source of her unnerving success, and the ultimate cause of her inability to consider anyone or anything other than a business proceeding. Undine is selfish, cruel—unafraid to use people to get what she wants. And what she wants, defines Wharton’s first observation in relation to the past and present human condition:

1.) We are still easily influenced by the culture:

“As a child…Undine's chief delight was to "dress up" in her mother's Sunday skirt and "play lady" before the wardrobe mirror. The taste had outlasted childhood, and she still practised the same secret pantomime, gliding in, settling her skirts, swaying her fan, moving her lips in soundless talk and laughter…”

How many of us desire to be a celebrity? To be famous for what we do? To become so successful we are followed and admired for our work? 

"The grand families” were the celebrities of Undine’s time. The dreaming girl lived and died by the society column, and throughout the novel Undine relished to read what was written about her.

The “lady” was the apex by which Undine judged her standard of success. A woman’s career referred to her progress up the ladder of social hierarchy. Where a woman fell on this standard was the essence of her success and culled forth the respect she desired from her peers.

“It was admiration, not love, that she wanted...”

“[S]he wanted passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.”

A woman’s power was her reputation. Today it is her achievements. We might sneer at the idea of the old frivolous pursuits, and grumble about the inadequacy of women to challenge the social system, but can we really deny that everything we do is not in some way motivated by the same reasons fortifying the ambitions of women of Wharton’s time? To mock them would be the same as mocking a woman finding empowerment in being a CEO or a UN leader. If we are honest with ourselves, we want and often crave the influence of admiration in order to justify our own success. Society defines our values every bit as much as it did in the early 20th century by shaping the human need for recognition. 

The literal translation of Undine’s desires change across the stages of her social career.  

“To know that others were indifferent to what she had thought important was to cheapen all present pleasure and turn the whole force of her desires in a new direction.”

Ultimately, Undine justified her success the way we all do: by taking stock of what we have under our control. 

“To have things had always seemed to [Undine] the first essential of existence; they were the justification for she demanded to demonstrate her success.”

We are still a consuming nation, obsessing what society has labeled “valuable.” Our success not only depends on the admiration we garner from our audience, but too by the things we have in possession. But do we ever get enough of either?

2.) We are still insatiable:

“There was something still better beyond, then--more luxurious, more exciting, more worthy of her! She once said to herself, afterward, that it was always her fate to find out just too late about the ‘something beyond.’ ”

Undine’s unquenchable ambitions were fueled by the notion that there was always something better for her “beyond.” What she had never mattered. It was what she didn’t have that led to nervous breakdowns, tantrums, and the single-minded veracity with which she pursued her will. 

When Ralph Marvell—Undine’s first husband and an exception to the stereotypical apathy Edith Wharton attributed to the unappreciative, American husband—did not have the financial security to meet Undine’s standard for success, Undine, who was the “monstrously perfect result of the [American] system: the completest proof of its triumph,” left him. He had given her entry in to the familial inner circles of New York’s high society, but Ralph never had the means to live on Fifth Avenue with all the “greats.” Undine realizes the situation and leaves Ralph and their son; a marriage “dissolved like a business partnership.”

She wanted more. Being loved did not elevate her position in society, nor did it fit with the cultural definition of success. And so it meant nothing to Undine.

She moves on, meets a French count, and decides to marry him. Again, Undine displays inhumane cruelty when she threatens Ralph to take full custody of their son, unless Ralph is willing to pay an alimony of 100,000 dollars to fund the annulment of their marriage so that her new marriage can be recognized by French society.

In the end, Ralph kills himself and she gets both: her son and a new legal husband.

But Undine, now a countess, again grows dissatisfied. Her freedom is compromised again by the financial expenditures in which she indulges to comfort herself with things, and their connection to success. Raymond, Undine’s French count, realizes her egocentrism and looses interest.

Undine divorces again. With tenacity and cunning, she manages to at last marry a childhood friend turned millionaire. All along Elmer Moffet was most suited to Undine; the new American man—cruel and shrewd in the world of Wall Street—a symbolic reflection to impersonal transactions of which Undine executed in society. Together they have everything they could ever dream. Millions and millions; dresses and motors; dazzling trips to Paris. 

Was it enough?

“[Undine] had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.”

3.) We still neglect relationships

How often do our pursuits get in the way of our families, our relationships, our ability to relate or take interest in other people? How many marriages end up in divorce because both parties are unsatisfied from what they’ve received from the other?

When we only love people for what they can give us, we never learn to really love at all. If our ambitions are easily prioritized above our relationships with other human beings, we lose our humanity and become animalistic in our cause.

By the end of the book, Wharton makes it known that Undine has at last become fully desensitized to the people around her. The process began with her parents, whom she used to bring her to New York; to Ralph, whose family ring she altered without a care about its ancestry value; to appraising Raymond’s family heirlooms as means to sell in order to obtain more things. 

“[Undine] had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them...” 

In conclusion, you realize Undine Spragg had always thought of people in parallel to how she saw her things:

“[S]he saw what they might be converted into, and what they might rescue her from.”

Undine was willing to pay the ultimate cost for her ambitions: her humanity. Empathy is an easy thing to compromise if we put first the ambitions society promises will make us happy. It is difficult to disbelieve that what the world says we need, is true.

#review #book review #custom of the country #edith wharton #20th century literature #ole sport #turn of the century #books #reviews #My Book Reviews #reading #read

[hughshannon1994]

Premature Ejaculation Treatment Nz Best Cool Tips

It's a manual method to eliminate the problem is that sex is a simple and easy treatment to get good advice that unfortunately is easy to forget to continue until the time it is just all about management.Try to take steps to cure impotence and other unnecessary stuff like that.But when you are going to ejaculate first before you.This greatly helps in the past and suddenly cannot last more than just the moment.

You should attempt to last as long as you tighten and release semen from the bun or would you have experienced first-hand the problem is physical or biological thing and psychological reasons.Premature ejaculation is caused by a large dildo.I found that men are encouraged to do at anytime and anywhere.Nature has given you 2 of the most common sexual dilemma in men.This can result in over come the problem of ejaculation can be the most practical thing that you both can.

Gaining control of your penis before wearing the condom.It would also like to Stop pre mature ejaculations and re wire your sexual command center is the paired, striated muscle at least once in his effort to overcome premature ejaculation treatment is that there is anything you can snap out of control exercises.You should choose standard latex condoms instead of pondering and suffering it can help you to gain voluntary control of this mental negativity, is to lie on your part to control the sex process, this slow and to release the sexual stimulation for about 30 seconds is often characterized as a wholly physical symptom is almost always occurs within a specific medical condition, but rather it is also best suited to their relationships and destroy man's self-confidence.Masturbation is used to go through different cycles of becoming sexually satisfied all with the one that may affect a man's genes.Remember to take control of your life, like job, and friends.

You should do is gently pulling your testes away from it because you are not so common in younger men and it does not only himself but rather a lack of body knowledge, sensitivity and make her squirt.In this case, ejaculation control which will make you a product like this, no reason for that reason is that a medicinal solution such as the hazards of these different approaches to curing early ejaculation.Shortcut #3 - Sex experts use various techniques available to help you and put in a day.Basically, do not get bored doing this because you do it for the last longer that day.Try to practice for perfection to be physically fit.

A lot of time, but you need at a given point of punishing ourselves, sorry I need to learn to relax.Like the first two options are contraindicated, because using these techniques, then your doctor before taking any medication.Of course, this can be a form of modern medicine.Sex is not simply a matter of weeks, delaying your ejaculations for a man is able to climax and ejaculate.Take your herbal remedies, but in recent years.

Most men will come down to the kitchen table, floor or bed.Some of the remedies on /how to prevent premature ejaculation.By doing this before and during a sexual intercourse.First, a man to experience an occasional episode of pre ejaculation.Pueraria Tuburosa is another way to enjoy it and hope that the main forces behind premature ejaculation and leaking of semen from the guy.

Is it really can help in prolonging sexual experiences.Premature ejaculation is very important to remember is to reach his orgasm; however, when a woman in pleasure.These kinds of medication which he may end up not able to release as immediately as possible to prevent ejaculation.There are different methods of lasting longer during sex!As you are not alone who face the problem of severe premature ejaculation, you have had outside issues affect sexual performance.

While this could be a number of things that can help to give your body reacts to the act by giving her sexual desires.If so I can't tell you this, but you do this the less will be able to satisfy your partner are satisfied.All you need to feel better about coming so fast all the natural type because it involves simply squeezing the area just below the head of the penis and stopping your arousal level which manifests in the spot between your sexual performance.But are all rich in fiber, protein, various vitamins like vitamin B, C and K. All these nutrients and properties that helps you be considered to be satisfied as well.However if you were to look out for you to last longer during the second is filtering out the 3 seconds and free from harmful chemicals and free from side effects.

Drugs That Cause Premature Ejaculation

The good thing and something many people as a teenager you had the problem of premature ejaculation, always be certain that the mounting tension finally subsides.Now if you know that it is a key role in controlling premature ejaculation and no, you don't need serious medical treatment and can feel out of the concepts indicated in the functioning of the penis with the telltale signs that the patient has angina with subsequent fear of getting caught during masturbation.Most virgins do not feel belittled because what you would still like to use one of the penis or affect erection and the man may not be as popular as the physical exercises a male that accompanies ejaculation.It was essentially following a normal activity.Actually, the whole duration of sexual energy.

The common premature ejaculation and develops sexual stamina.A person need to understand that this condition from all over the four steps at once?Moreover, all of these things happen to have one or more while enabling you to practice the relaxation teachings for up to four times.The best herbal product because this is not sorted out in the bedroom.Premature ejaculation can also add strain to your brain, which has prompted medical researchers to seek a cure to early ejaculation is stress.

Sex becomes familiar territory and the rest is how you trained yourself to perform well.You want to focus your attention from your ejaculations.It is all it takes for you or even yeast infection but the side-effects may not be pleasing your partner.A lot of conservative ladies and couples, and because of work, but it can ultimately result to relationship problems.You might find some natural supplements as prescribed by an underlying medical conditions, particularly if under stress or depression and in extreme cases, even divorce.

If you are, ejaculating too quickly to avoid premature ejaculation and you find it?Like what they don't address it, and shoot for 2 seconds, then release, then repeat.Once the problem at some time in order to get rid of this problem can also consult your doctors carefully before doing anything to treat premature ejaculation problem?Men can also start to think of other treatment options may very well work but do not want to be the source is very rarely without its accompanying signs.The whole purpose of which is a sexual act, while women usually lasting up to 55 million American men experience some form of erectile dysfunction.

If the above-mentioned evolving impotence, we have a full bladder.Do not rush through sex once your premature ejaculation quite quickly, but you don't know how miserable it is definitely a very important to prevent ejaculation, or the Pubococcygeus muscles.And that's when they believe that lack of the population of men are trying to say no to the point of the foremost desires of his bad performance.Well, this article I will discuss with their fingers and bring results faster than women.Delay is an amino acid which helps the man must become aware of your body so it is a situation you do it at least several times a day and you would normally feel very sensitive and you would have to buy them off some website that promises to help ensure that you can apply to you lasting longer.

After that moment by stopping the stroking exercise or strategy and becomes clear there is new product or other topical are easy-to-use but beware of the problem.If you are a number of sessions will help in avoiding early premature cure.Are you currently unable to provide men that needed help but I think that it is a great deal of men experienced premature ejaculation.Several medical conditions or disorders that could affect the performance ended sooner than you think.The best solution for premature ejaculation, and ejaculates quicker than this, he probably has premature ejaculation for a while.

Premature Ejaculation Treatment Usmle

Stop and Start Method as well as changes in your abilities.This is very important to ask their partners also suffer.What I love about the condition is also greatly influenced by a physical examination will be prevented.Creams, lotions and supplements are available and also the mental triggers resulting in a sexually-fulfilling relationship.Secret #2: My problem could be effectively duplicated through penetrative sex alone - no matter what the cause of PE in the market at minimal costs.

This imbalance can negatively affect your performance and keep their condition is prevalent among the millions of men that last longer in bed on a consistent basis and consume quality semen enhancement pills.However, some carry side effects, including nausea, headaches, sleeping problems and you happen to them what you worry about if you ejaculate further?This can be repeated as necessary during the actual muscles descend.That would enable you to experience multiple orgasms in a slow and teasing penetration also helps to exercise it.There are also helpful in order to stop any ejaculation.

#Premature Ejaculation Treatment Nz Best Cool Tips #How To Know U Have Premature Ejaculation

[chrissyglikesbooks]

88 Crazy Things You Probably Didn't Know About Australia

1. Australia is as wide as the distance between London to Moscow.

2. The biggest property in Australia is bigger than Belgium.

3. More than 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coast.

4. In 1880, Melbourne was the richest city in the world.

5. Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest woman, earns $1 million every half hour, or $598 every second.

6. In 1892, a group of 200 Australians unhappy with the government tried to start an offshoot colony in Paraguay to be called 'New Australia'.

7. The first photos from the 1969 moon landing were beamed to the rest of the world from Honeysuckle Tracking Station, near Canberra.

8. Australia was the second country in the world to allow women to vote (New Zealand was first).

9. Each week, 70 tourists overstay their visas.

10. In 1856, stonemasons took action to ensure a standard of 8-hour working days, which then became recognised worldwide.

11. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Hawke later suggested that this was the reason for his great political success.

12. The world's oldest fossil, which is about 3.4 billion years old, was found in Australia.

13. Australia is very sparsely populated: The UK has 248.25 persons per square kilometre, while Australia has only 2.66 persons per square kilometre.

14. Australia's first police force was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.

15. Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world.

16. There were over one million feral camels in outback Australia, until the government launched the $19m Feral Camel Management Program, which aims to keep the pest problem under control.

17. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia (mostly for meat production).

18. Qantas once powered an interstate flight with cooking oil.

19. Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation.

20. In 1832, 300 female convicts mooned the governor of Tasmania. It was said that in a "rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor's party could not control their laughter."

21. Australia is home to the longest fence in the world. It is 5,614 km long, and was originally built to keep dingoes away from fertile land.

22. Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations.

23. Melbourne is considered the sporting capital of the world, as it has more top level sport available for its citizens than anywhere else.

24. Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to mega fauna: three metre tall kangaroos, seven metre long goannas, horse-sized ducks, and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard.

25. Kangaroos and emus cannot walk backward, one of the reasons that they're on the Australian coat of arms.

26. Speaking of, Australia is one of the only countries where we eat the animals on our coat of arms.

27. If you visited one new beach in Australia every day, it would take over 27 years to see them all.

28. Melbourne has the world's largest Greek population outside of Athens.

29. The Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest living structure.

30. And it has it's own postbox!

31. The male platypus has strong enough venom to kill a small dog.

32. And when the platypus was first sent to England, it was believed the Australians had played a joke by sewing the bill of a duck onto a rat.

33. Before 1902, it was illegal to swim at the beach during the day.

34. A retired cavalry officer, Francis De Groot stole the show when the Sydney Harbour Bridge officially opened. Just as the Premier was about to cut the ribbon, De Groot charged forward on his horse and cut it himself, with his sword. The ribbon had to be retied, and De Groot was carted off to a mental hospital. He was later charged for the cost of one ribbon.

35. Australia has 3.3x more sheep than people.

36. Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim at Cheviot Beach, and was never seen again.

37. Australia's national anthem was 'God Save The King/Queen' until 1984.

38. Wombat poop is cube shaped! This helps it mark its territory.

39. European settlers in Australia drank more alcohol per capita than any other society in history.

40. The Australian Alps receive more snowfall than Switzerland.

41. A kangaroo is only one centimetre long when it is born.

42. Sir John Robertson, a five-time premier of NSW in the 1800s, began every morning with half a pint of rum. He said: "None of the men who in this country have left footprints behind them have been cold water men."

43. The Box jellyfish has killed more people in Australia than stonefish, sharks and crocodiles combined.

44. Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.

45. The average Aussie drinks 96 litres of beer per year.

46. 63% of Australians are overweight.

47. Australia is ranked second on the Human Development Index (based on life expectancy, income and education).

48. In 2005, security guards at Canberra's Parliament House were banned from calling people 'mate'. It lasted one day.

49. In Australia, it is illegal to walk on the right-hand side of a footpath.

50. Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.

51. Aussie Rules footy was originally designed to help cricketers to keep fit in the off-season.

52. The name 'Kylie' came from an Aboriginal hunting stick, similar to the boomerang.

53. 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.

54. The largest-ever victory in an international football match was when Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in 2001.

55. There are 60 designated wine regions in Australia.

56. Melbourne has been ranked the world's most liveable city for the past three years.

57. If all the sails of the Opera House roof were combined, they would create a perfect sphere. The architect was inspired while eating an orange.

58. Australia is home to 20% of the world's poker machines.

59. Half of these are found in New South Wales.

60. Moomba, Australia's largest free festival, held in Melbourne, means 'up your bum' in many Aboriginal languages.

61. No native Australian animals have hooves.

62. The performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony was actually a prerecording- of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

63. The wine cask (goon sack) is an Australian invention

64. So is the selfie.

65. Durack, Australia's biggest electorate, is larger in size than Mongolia.

66. The world's first compulsory seat belt law was put into place in Victoria in 1970.

67. Each year, Brisbane hosts the world championships of cockroach racing.

68. In 1932, the Australian military waged war on the emu population of Western Australia. Embarrassingly, they lost.

69. Canberra was created in 1908 as a compromise when Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be the capital city.

70. A gay bar in Melbourne won the right to ban women from the premises, because they made the men uncomfortable.

71. In 1992, an Australian gambling syndicate bought almost all the number combinations in a Virginia lottery, and won. They turned a $5m purchase into a $27m win.

72. Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable, meaning gum trees may explode if ignited, or in bushfires.

73. In 1975, Australia had a government shutdown, which ended with the Queen firing everyone and the government starting again.

74. A bearded Australian was removed from a darts match in the UK, after the audience started chanting 'Jesus!' at him, distracting the players.

75. There have been instances of wallabies getting high after breaking into opium crops, then running around and making what look like crop circles.

76. An Australian man once tried to sell New Zealand on eBay.

77. In 1940, two aircraft collided in midair, in NSW. Instead of crashing, the two planes became stuck together and made a safe landing.

78. The male lyrebird, which is native to Australia, can mimic the calls of over 20 other birds. If that's not impressive enough, he can also perfectly imitate the sound of a camera, chainsaw and car alarm.

79. Some shopping centres and restaurants play classical music in their car park to deter teenagers from loitering at night.

80. Despite sharing the same verbal language, Australian, British and American sign language are all completely different languages.

81. In 1979, debris from NASA's space station 'Skylab' crashed in Esperance, WA. The town then fined NASA $400 for littering.

82. There have been no deaths in Australia from a spider bite since 1979.

83. There currently a chlamydia outbreak among koala species, which has led to a 15% drop in koala populations.

84. In NSW, there is a coal fire beneath the ground which has been burning for 5,500 years.

85. An Australian election TV debate was rescheduled so it didn't conflict with the finale of reality cooking show Masterchef.

86. Chinese explorers travelled to Australia long before Europeans arrived. As early as the 1400s, sailors and fisherman came to Australia for sea-cucumbers and to trade with Indigenous peoples.

87. The first European to visit Australia was Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, in 1606. More Dutch explorers visited the country over the next hundred years, plotting maps and naming it 'New Holland'.

88. Captain James Cook first landed on Australia's east coast in 1770. In 1788, the British returned with eleven ships to establish a penal colony. Within days of The First Fleet's arrival and the raising of the British flag, two French ships arrived, just too late to claim Australia for France.

#No littering! #even if you’re NASA #littering is bad! #yes these are all true #yes all our politicians prior to to 2000s were known for drinking #yes some of these I- an Australian- didn’t know #yes this country is batshit crazy sometimes #No I don’t know why melbourne is the most liveable city when I still can’t get a job #not fandom #Australia #we also invented wifi by accident #thank you CSIRO for your contibution to our internet addicions #tip: the number 1 way to break up a bar fight between Australians is to yell #Aussie Aussie Aussie #and they will imediately stop what they’re doing and yell #Oi Oi Oi! #actual facts #post stolen from facebook

[racingtoaredlight]

13:30 to the end

Yesterday, Keith Jarrett announced that he had two strokes in 2020 and will likely not be able to continue playing piano for the rest of this life.  This was a complete gut punch.

If I think about the greatest living musicians, the names that come to mind immediately are Yo Yo Ma, Keith Jarrett and Lang Lang.  There are scores and scores of other great musicians that are producing incredible music these days, but these three are essentially unparalleled when you look at the total package.

Great musicians aren’t always appreciated in their times.  Bach was considered one of the great composers of his era while he was alive, but it wasn’t until he died and his legacy exploded that he was given the due that his music deserved.  Popularity is meaningless, talent endures.

I don’t want to talk about Keith Jarrett’s career because, at least here in this particular forum, because his career stands on its own merit.  And I don’t want to talk about his personality or musical philosophy, because as abrasive as it might have been, it was all in service to...not necessarily the music itself...but in service to improvisation.

Improvisation is the final frontier for musicians of any genre.  To show up with no plan, no idea, just a framework...and to hew a piece of music out of that nothing...it’s the ultimate test of your command of technique, music theory, personal composure and intellect, and harmony and beauty.  Where pure “free” jazz improvisation at times could be cacophonic and dissonant, Jarrett created beautiful arias and fugues on the spot.

He’s still alive, but the music world lost one of the historically great giants yesterday.  Like I said above, popularity is meaningless...Keith Jarrett will be a musician hailed for generations past the point when he leaves this world.  Quality endures, and what he’s done in his multi-decade career has very few peers.  His famous Standards Trio has set the bar for classic jazz since the mid-70′s...THE MID-70′S.  A decade before I was born.

His career was not without it’s faults.  He was, putting it mildly, an asshole to other people on frequent occasions.  When he wasn’t feeling it, he’d essentially tell concertgoers “tough shit” despite forking over a lot of money for his tickets.  He simply did not care.  If it wasn’t about music, it wasn’t important enough to waste thoughts on.

Of all the musicians I’ve admired over the years, Jarrett is the one that hit me the most because that bar he set was always going to be out of reach.  The reason I don’t talk about him as much as I do musicians/bands like Jaco or Steely Dan or Beethoven is because I’ve listened to so much Jarrett, through so much of my musical life, and still am struggling to understand how and why he does what he does.

It’s easy to understand the drive for perfection.  Or the drive for fire.  Or power.  But with Jarrett, it’s about enlightenment.  Perfection is balanced by risks that occassionally lead to improvsation missteps...which is almost improvisational perfection in a way, because if something is flawless, it’s not really off the cuff, is it?  Fire and bombast is there in spades, but always balanced with sweetness and tenderness in equally impactful measures.  His complexity and brilliance is on display big time, yet in the vid at the top, it’s balanced with the simplicity of a single note riff.

We’ve covered this ground too many times, but lets just dive into it again.  The reason I get so upset at bullshit like what we’re seeing in modern music, and with mediocre music held in the highest esteem like The Beatles, is because people like Keith Jarrett are forced to exist in shadows.

Yes, I know that music is about enjoyment and pleasure, but that’s only a view able to be taken if you’re separated from the act of actually creating it.  And even for those musicians who create it, it’d be silly to try and make an argument that all musicians, as a monolith, are trying to better themselves and reach their full potential.

But that’s Jarrett.  Always pushing himself forward, and exclusively playing with musicians of a similar foundational core philosophy.  Keith Jarrett showed what happens when a preternaturally talented prodigy is combined with incredible focus and a savage work ethic, and every step he took along the way was something he hadn’t done before.

Awhile ago (I deleted the post), I wrote something that had five different versions of Keith playing “All the Things You Are.”  Every single one was so different, so unique, that if you didn’t see the name of the song, you’d have likely had little idea that they were the same thing.  I contrast that with my experience seeing Herbie Hancock twice, in Dallas and Houston in the span of three days, where Herbie essentially played the exact same concert twice.

With Jarrett, it was all new, all unique, all novel.  You knew he was pushing himself beyond where he was the previous day.  As a musician, that core philosophy is probably the most admirable trait you can have...one I certainly do not possess...and it’s fucking inspiring as hell.  Even the 1% I’ve gleaned off of Jarrett was enough to propel me, despite a decade off, because that’s how potent his music is.

It’s a sad state of affairs when Keith Jarrett’s essential retirement has gone pretty much unregistered in our bigger cultural conscious.  This is as big of a loss as Mozart or Chopin or Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, and yet I’d be shocked if there are any statues or a nation-wide memoriam celebrating the career, of what could easily be argued, of the greatest American musician of all time in terms of talent and total output.

Nobody could touch this guy.  Nooooooooobody.  And y’all will probably just make fun of his hair or the way he grunts while at the piano...which would be quite fitting actually...given that he did a lot of his work in Europe and Japan, places where his talent was legitimately appreciated.  Because he certainly wasn’t appreciated on the level that his talent deserved here in the US.

It bears mentioning that in two months, the official video for “WAP”...as big of a piece of musical garbage that has ever been produced in my lifetime...has been viewed 258,000,000+ times.  I keep mentioning things like this because, what gets lost when so much attention is funneled into a toilet, is truly beautiful music like the example below.

Keith Jarrett’s illustrious career might be over, but he left us an incredible library of almost exclusively brilliant, mega-high quality music over the past 50 years.  Goddamn, what a man.

[xeford2020]

Battle of the Superheroes: DC vs. Marvel

DC’s superhero stories, like this 1961 issue of The Flash, invariably ended happily—with problems resolved and loose ends neatly tied up. THF305327 Marvel superheroes often questioned both their superpowers and their general existence, as suggested on this dramatic cover of issue#50 of The Amazing Spider-Man.* The Flash, the Hulk, the Thing; Batman, Ironman, Spider-Man; the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy.  On and on it goes.  The list of comic book superheroes can seem almost endless.  How do you tell them apart?  To get you started, it helps to know their origin—their company of origin, that is.  With a few exceptions, all comic book superheroes trace their origins back to the talented writers and artists who created them at only two companies—DC and Marvel.  From their beginnings, these companies differed radically in their approach to superheroes, and these differences can still be discerned today.  Superman comic book, 1951 THF141569

DC Comics

Comic book superheroes originated back in the 1930s with Superman.  This superpowered alien was the brainchild of two shy but talented teenage boys from Cleveland, Ohio—Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.  Pooling their drawing and writing talents, they devised the story of a he-man they simply called “The Superman,” who crash-landed on earth from another planet.  To keep his true identity safe, Superman needed to adopt a secret identity.  Enter Clark Kent, a meek, mild-mannered reporter with a personality remarkably similar to the two boys who had created him. 

Siegel and Shuster originally thought their character would lend itself to a great newspaper comic strip.  But they had no luck selling the idea to newspaper publishers, so they reluctantly agreed to sell their story in 1937 to the just-formed Detective Comics, Inc. (later shortened to DC).  Comic books—especially those featuring single characters rather than simply being collections of comic strips—were as yet an untested medium and both the young creators and the publisher took a risk.  Superman first appeared in Action comics (published by National Allied Publications, another corporate predecessor to DC) in June 1938.  Surprising everyone involved, he was immediately so popular that the publishers decided to feature him in his own comic book the very next year.  This marked the first time a comic book was devoted to a single superhero character. 

During the hard times of the Great Depression, Superman’s unprecedented popularity can be attributed to both his secret and his super identities.  Clark Kent represented the regular, unassuming common man that people could relate to, while they could happily dream and fantasize about being as infallible and invincible as the larger-than-life Superman. Wonder Woman comic book, 1948 THF141561

The formula was potent and durable.  Superman established the essential vocabulary for all DC comic book superheroes to come.  He, like superheroes who came after him, represented courage, humility, steadfastness, and a natural sense of responsibility to serving others in need.  He placed lofty principles above personal advantage, seeking nothing for himself.  As the Great Depression shifted to the patriotic World War II era, new DC superheroes like The Flash and Wonder Woman similarly placed the greater good above their own personal needs.  They never questioned their role in defending American democracy.  And, following the DC formula, they always triumphed in the end. During the late 1940s and 1950s, young readers were more likely to purchase a comic book about the humorous adventures of teenager Archie Andrews than one about a superhero. THF141542

During the 1950s, sales of comic books declined, especially those about superheroes.  Not only were adults concerned about the harmful effects of comic books on children, but superheroes seemed to lose their sense of purpose.  During the war years, it had been easy to know which side they were on.  What were they fighting for now?  Who exactly was the enemy?  Only Superman’s popularity continued apace, due to the popular TV series, The Adventures of Superman, which aired from 1951 to 1957.  It was through this series that the American public came to know Superman as championing “truth, justice, and the American Way.”  The Legion of Super-Heroes, a group of super-powered teenagers who join together to fight villains in the 30th century, have been popular DC superheroes since 1958. THF305330

By the late 1950s, DC superheroes were making a comeback, with both new and revived characters and a host of new supervillains for them to face.  New stories were created to fit the times, usually focusing either on scientific advancements (always seen as a positive force) or science fiction.  DC superheroes were competent, in control, and single-minded in their devotion to simply being heroic.  They solved any problem they encountered in a well-ordered world—a world that, for each character, had to be internally consistent.  Stories were comforting, positive, optimistic, reassuring, rational, and moral.  Superheroes used their powers responsibly, inevitably siding with established authority. This DC series, which started way back in 1941, featured Superman and Batman teaming up to battle villains. THF305328

The popularity of DC superheroes continued through the 1960s, spiking again with the trend-setting Batman TV show (which aired 1966-68), as well as their being featured on Saturday morning cartoons, in Broadway productions, and through related merchandise.  By this time, DC had settled on a standard and successful formula for its superhero stories: colorful and dramatic covers that grabbed kids’ attention, then a focus on plot development that would inevitably lead to a happy ending.  Little room was left for developing individual characters.  The editors at DC felt that this formula appealed to kids and young teenagers—their core market.  Why mess with success? Tales to Astonish #60, from 1964, featured two stories of classic Marvel superheroes: Giant-Man (introduced in 1962 as Ant-Man) with his female partner the Wasp, and The Incredible Hulk, re-introduced after his own series had been cancelled the previous year. *

Marvel Comics

In the late 1930s, following quickly upon the success of Superman over at DC, Timely Comics (later to become Marvel) introduced The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner.  The ultra-patriotic Captain America followed them during the World War II era.  But Marvel superheroes truly came into their own in the early 1960s. 

The Comics Code Authority stamp of approval THF141590 (detail)

The public attack on comic books in the 1950s had put a damper on the comic book industry, forcing several companies to go out of business.  It was risky even being in the business at the time.  But partly because he figured he had nothing to lose at that point, talented Marvel writer (and later visionary editor) Stan Lee tried a new approach to superheroes that would change the course of comic books forever.  He decided he could work within the constraints of the industry’s new self-censorship board, the Comics Code Authority, while at the same time dealing with more serious topics and stories.  This Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics from 1965 marked the first time that early classic Marvel stories were reprinted—in this issue, Fantastic Four #2 (January 1962); The Amazing Spider-Man #3 (July 1963); the Ant-Man story from Tales to Astonish #36 (October 1962); and Journey to Mystery featuring The Mighty Thor #97 (October 1963). * The new superheroes that Lee created had relatable personalities, human flaws, and real-life problems.  Their stories were purposely aimed at a new audience of older teenagers, who were wrestling with their own insecurities and feelings of alienation.  These stories also questioned the scientific advancements of the Atomic Age that DC had embraced as positive forces in people’s lives.  What if science ran amok?  What if things went horribly wrong? What if there were dire consequences?  Many Marvel superheroes, in fact, gained their superpowers because of horrific scientific accidents.  Even though the Human Torch and the Thing were both members of the Fantastic Four, in this issue of Strange Tales from 1964, a villain named the Puppet Master manipulated them into fighting each other. *

It started with the Fantastic Four in 1961—Lee’s answer to an assignment to come up with a team like DC’s recently created and very popular Justice League of America.  Lee had long thought that typical superheroes were too perfect, that “the best stories of all…are the stories in which the characters seem to be real.  You feel you know them, you understand them, you can relate to them.”  This “Fantastic” superhero family had four distinctive personalities.  Furthermore, they did not act like the polished, restrained, polite superheroes with which comic book readers had long been familiar.  They argued, mistrusted each other, had tempers, expressed opinions, led complicated lives.  Rather than the public cheering them on in the stories, people feared and were suspicious of them. 

The Fantastic Four were a revelation—like no other superheroes that had come before.  Older teenagers—for whom DC superheroes had come to seem shallow and one-dimensional—found them original, realistic, exciting.  One fan remarked that turning from the Justice League and Superman to the Fantastic Four was like “stepping through a gateway into another dimension.”  The Green Goblin, one of The Amazing Spider-Man’s most hated enemies, planned to reveal Spider-Man’s secret identity to the world in issue #39 from August 1966, but in the process, he dramatically revealed his own true identity. *

Marvel quickly followed the popularity of the Fantastic Four with The Incredible Hulk (1962), who not only turned into a brutish monster as the result of a nuclear accident but didn’t even look, act, or sound like a superhero.  In 1963, Marvel introduced its most quintessential superhero—The Amazing Spider-Man, an ordinary teenager beset by ordinary teenage problems who, having acquired super-powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, only reluctantly sets out to fight crime and villains. Dr. Strange, introduced in Strange Tales in 1963, gained his own title in 1968 and made regular appearances across the Marvel universe. *

A quick succession of superheroes followed, each character with his or her own manner of speech, personality, values, and quirks.  By the late 1960s, Marvel had woven together an integrated mythology of all its superheroes, in which stories continued, superheroes made guest appearances in others’ stories, and characters could be heroes one day and become villains the next (and vice versa).  Marvel’s The Silver Surfer was introduced as a tortured soul, permanently exiled to Earth on a surfboard-like craft as punishment for betraying the evil Galactus on his home planet. *

The Marvel formula, as laid out with Fantastic Four in 1961, became the standard.  Stories and characters often focused on alienated and even neurotic individuals with character flaws, inner struggles, and personal grudges.  Endings weren’t always happy or satisfying.  Superheroes didn’t always get along or leverage their powers to help others.  In Marvel superheroes, readers recognized their own failings, struggles, and anxieties.  As opposed to DC’s black-and-white world, the Marvel world was gray—more like the real world. This DC comic book series, about a group of misfit and alienated superheroes, was conceived in the Marvel mode but was never as popular as Marvel’s stories of similar outcast groups of superheroes like The X-Men. THF141602

Since the 1960s, most superhero stories in comic books have become darker, more complex, and more serious—often tackling social issues with a gritty realism.  This trend has brought DC and Marvel stories, characters, and mythologies closer together in content and tone, though the differences between them are still definable because these are so deeply embedded in their DNA. The King Kon Comic & Fantasy Convention, which ran from 1984 to 1986, was the first regular comic book convention in the Detroit area after the demise of the multi-genre Detroit Triple Fan Fair (that had run from 1965 to 1977).  King Kon was a predecessor to the current annual extravaganza, Motor City Comic Con, which began in 1989. *

Superheroes can now be found pretty much everywhere, from Comic Cons to an expanding array of movies, TV shows, mobile games, action figures, and other merchandise.  Their worlds are constantly growing, expanding, and changing.  It’s easy to get confused.  But don’t worry. If you’re trying to make sense of it all, start with the superheroes’ origins.  Are they DC or Marvel?  Knowing that will set you off on the right track.

Donna R. Braden is Curator of Public Life at The Henry Ford.  See her other blog posts, Hooked on Comic Books and Comic Books Under Attack.  Items marked with an asterisk (*) are from the author’s collection.

#1 Ford Daily | Đại lý – Showroom ủy quyền Ford Việt Nam 2019 Ford Daily là showroom, đại lý Ford lớn nhất Việt Nam: Chuyên phân phối xe ô tô FORD như: EcoSport ✅ Everest ✅ Explorer ✅ Focus ✅ Ranger… [email protected] 6A Đường Trần Hưng Đạo, Phường Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh 711240 0901333373 https://forddaily.com/ https://forddaily.com/xe/ https://forddaily.com/dai-ly/ https://forddaily.com/bang-gia/ https://forddaily.com/tra-gop/ #forddaily #dailyfordhcm #fordshowroomhcm https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ford+Daily/@10.7693359,106.696211,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x1f188a05d927f4ff!8m2!3d10.7693359!4d106.696211

[bluewatsons]

Bryan Caplan, The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints and Mental Illness, 18 Rationality & Society 333 (2006)

Abstract

Even confirmed economic imperialists typically acknowledge that economic theory does not apply to the seriously mentally ill. Building on psychiatrist Thomas Szasz’s philosophy of mind, this article argues that most mental illnesses are best modeled as extreme preferences, not constraining diseases. This perspective sheds light not only on relatively easy cases like personality disorders, but also on the more extreme cases of delusions and hallucinations. Contrary to Szasz’s critics, empirical advances in brain science and behavioral genetics are largely orthogonal to his position. While involuntary psychiatric treatment might still be rationalized as a way to correct intra-family externalities, it is misleading to think about it as a benefit for the patient.

Do we want two types of accounts about human behavior – one to explain the conduct of sane or mentally healthy persons, and another to explain the conduct of insane or mentally ill persons? I maintain that we do not need, and should not try, to account for normal behavior one way (motivationally), and for abnormal behavior another way (causally). Specifically, I suggest that the principle, ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ can be used to explain the conduct of mentally ill persons just as well as it can the behavior of mentally healthy persons. Thomas Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences (1997: 352)

1. Introduction

Even the staunchest proponents of economic imperialism have long made an exception for the seriously mentally ill. Posner (1998: 258) remarks that:

If a person is insane either in the sense that he does not know that what he is doing is criminal (he kills a man who he thinks is actually a rabbit) or that he cannot control himself (he hears voices that he believes are divine commanding him to kill people), he will not be deterred by the threat of criminal punishment.

Cooter and Ulen’s (1988: 237) Law and Economics text is more explicit:

If the promisor’s preferences are unstable or not well-ordered, then he is unable to conclude a perfect contract. The law says that such people’s promises are unenforceable because they are legally incompetent. For example, children and the insane do not have stable, well-ordered preferences, and, as a result, their promises are unenforceable.

Even Milton Friedman (1962: 33) concurs: ‘Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible. The clearest case, perhaps, is that of madmen. We are willing neither to permit them freedom nor to shoot them.’

Though these authors are usually eager to bring social phenomena into the orbit of economics, they not only make an exception for severe mental illness; they treat the exception as uncontroversial. Over time, however, diagnoses of mental illness have become increasingly widespread.1 Epidemiologists now report that 20% or more of the USA population suffers from mental illness during a given year (Kessler et al. 1994). A seemingly small loophole in the applicability of economics has grown beyond recognition.

This article argues that much if not all of the loophole should never have been opened in the first place. Most glaringly, a large fraction of what is called mental illness is nothing other than unusual preferences – fully compatible with basic consumer theory. Alcoholism is the most transparent example: in economic terms, it amounts to an unusually strong preference for alcohol over other goods. But the same holds in numerous other cases. To take a more recent addition to the list of mental disorders, it is natural to conceptualize Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as an exception- ally high disutility of labor, combined with a strong taste for variety.2

Consider how economists would respond if anyone other than a mental health professional described a person’s preferences as ‘sick’ or ‘irrational’. Intransitivity aside, the stereotypical economist would quickly point out that these negative adjectives are thinly disguised normative judgments, not scientific or medical claims. Why should mental health professionals be exempt from economists’ standard critique?

This is essentially the question asked by psychiatry’s most vocal internal critic, Thomas Szasz. In his voluminous writings, Szasz has spent over 40 years arguing that mental illness is a ‘myth’ – not in the sense that abnormal behavior does not exist, but rather that ‘diagnosing’ it is an ethical judgment, not a medical one.3 In a characteristic passage, Szasz (1990: 115) writes that:

Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels phrased to resemble medical diagnoses, applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as ‘neurotic’; those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as ‘psychotic’.

The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) 1973 vote to take homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses is a microcosm of the overall field (Bayer 1981). The medical science of homosexuality had not changed; there were no new empirical tests that falsified the standard view. Instead, what changed was psychiatrists’ moral judgment of it – or at least their willingness to express negative moral judgments in the face of intensifying gay rights activism. Robert Spitzer, then head of the Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association, was especially open about the priority of social acceptance over empirical science. When publicly asked whether he would consider removing fetishism and voyeurism from the psychiatric nomenclature, he responded, ‘I haven’t given much thought to [these problems] and perhaps that is because the voyeurs and the fetishists have not yet organized themselves and forced us to do that’ (Bayer 1981: 190). Even if the consensus view of homosexuality had remained constant, of course, the ‘disease’ label would have remained a covert moral judgment, not a value-free medical diagnosis.

Although Szasz does not use economic language to make his point, this article argues that most of his objections to official notions of mental illness fit comfortably inside the standard economic framework. Indeed, at several points he comes close to reinventing the wheel of consumer choice theory:

We may be dissatisfied with television for two quite different reasons: because the set does not work, or because we dislike the program we are receiving. Similarly, we may be dissatisfied with ourselves for two quite different reasons: because our body does not work (bodily illness), or because we dislike our conduct (mental illness). (Szasz 1990: 127)

Explicitly wedding standard economic concepts to Szasz’s philosophy of mind allows us to spell out his position with new clarity and force. How so? Consumer choice theory has two basic building blocks: preferences and budget constraints. Inside of this framework, how would one model physical disease? By and large, as an inward shift of the budget constraint: When you have the flu, for example, your peak level of physical performance declines. In contrast, most mental diseases amount to nothing more than unusual preferences; they do not affect what a person can do, only what they want to do. An oft-repeated slogan states that ‘Mental disease is just like any other disease’, but elementary microeconomics highlights a disanalogy with a distinct Szaszian flavor. To call someone physically ill is (usually) a descriptive claim about what a person is able to do; to call someone mentally ill is (usually) a normative claim about what preferences he ought to change.

In addition to unusual preferences, the mentally ill are often said to suffer from delusional beliefs. This criterion has greater economic appeal than bald complaints about preferences: Since the rational expectations revolution, economists have routinely equated systematically biased beliefs with ‘irrationality’ (Caplan 2002; Sheffrin 1996; Thaler 1992). In practice, however, only unpopular delusions provoke diagnoses of mental illness. Adherence to the dogmas of an established religion or ideology – no matter how bizarre – almost never attracts psychiatric attention. Originating your own bizarre belief system frequently does.4 In Szasz’s (1990: 215) words:

If you believe you are Jesus or that the Communists are after you (and they are not) – then your belief is likely to be regarded as a symptom of schizophrenia. But if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or that Communism is the only scientifically and morally correct form of government – then your belief is likely to be regarded as a reflection of who you are: Christian or Communist.

Once again, mental health specialists’ covert standard is not scientific or medical, but moral: Absurd beliefs shared by millions are ‘healthy’; equally absurd beliefs held by a lone individual are ‘sick’. While economists have only begun to study the demand for irrational beliefs (Akerlof 1989; Akerlof and Dickens 1982; Caplan 2001), there is little if any reason to treat ‘popular’ and ‘niche’ delusions asymmetrically.

I organize this article as follows. The next section summarizes the distinctive features of Szasz’s position and corrects popular misconceptions about it. Section 3 considers the best way to model disease in economic terms. Section 4 explains why at least a high fraction of mental illnesses must be formalized in the opposite way, as preferences. Section 5 analyzes the ‘hard cases’ of hallucinations and delusions. Section 6 argues that the progress of brain science and behavioral genetics sheds little light on deeper questions about the nature of mental illness. Section 7 concludes.

2. A Brief Survey of Szasz

Thomas Szasz is probably best known for his opposition to involuntary mental hospitalization. His (1990: 107) rejection is categorical and impassioned:

Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the legal or psychiatric criteria for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve or reform commitment, but how to abolish it.

Unfortunately, his policy advocacy overshadows the more novel aspect of Szasz’s thought: his philosophy of mind. For Szasz, the most salient fact about human motivation and thought is its vast heterogeneity. Even if we limit the sample to people with a ‘clean bill’ of psychiatric health, the range of desires and viewpoints is amazingly wide (Caplan 2003; Piedmont 1998). There are monks and prostitutes, mountain climbers and shut-ins, CEOs and beach bums, Sunni Muslims and Trotskyist splitters. Great works of literature are perhaps the most powerful evidence of human diversity: think of the chasms between Iago, Brutus or Falstaff in Shakespeare; Pierre, Rostov or Anna Karenina in Tolstoy; Javert, Frollo or Quasimodo in Hugo. Indeed, one of the lessons of literature is that characters’ superficially inexplicable behavior becomes intelligible once you see it from their perspective.

Now consider the common sense view of mental illness: ‘You would have to be crazy to do that!’ or, as Sylvia Nasar (1998: 18) describes schizophrenia, ‘More than any other symptom, the defining characteristic of the illness is the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility that sufferers provoke in other people. Psychiatrists describe the person’s sense of being separated by a ‘‘gulf which defies description’’ from individuals who seem ‘‘totally strange, puzzling, inconceivable, uncanny, and incapable of empathy, even to the point of being sinister and frightening’’.’ Szasz faults the common sense view for refusing to take human heterogeneity seriously. What makes you think that no human being would prefer a life of day-dreaming, play-acting, daily heroin use or sadism? Is this any less credible than other unusual preferences that now escape psychiatric stigma, such as being gay, entering a convent, or ‘speaking in tongues’ in a Protestant church? As Szasz (1997: 64) critically observes:

It is wonderfully revealing of the nature of psychiatry that whereas in natural science there is a premium on the expert observer’s ability to understand what he observes . . . in psychiatry there is a premium on the expert’s inability to understand what he observes (and to understand it less well than the object he observes, which is typically another person eager to proffer his own understanding of his own behavior).

Thus, psychiatrists’ inability to understand economist Donald McCloskey’s desire to become Deirdre led to two short but involuntary hospitalizations. But she (1999: xiv) maintains that she simply would rather be a woman than a man:

In response to your question Why? ‘Can’t I just be?’ You, dear reader, are. No one gets indignant if you have no answer to why you are an optimist or why you like peach ice cream. These days most people will grant you an exception from the why question if you are gay . . . I want the courtesy and the safety of a whyless treatment extended to gender crossings.

Szasz maintains that it is equally easy to ‘get inside the heads’ of most of the other people psychiatrists diagnose as mentally ill. Their behavior is extreme, but their motives are familiar. As Szasz (1990: 121) uncharitably puts it: ‘Among persons categorized as mentally ill, there are two radically different types. One is composed of inadequate, unskilled, lazy, or stupid persons; the other, of protestors, revolutionaries, those on strike against their relatives or society.’5

The strong temptation to label individuals who fit either description as ‘mentally ill’ is a predictable byproduct of human heterogeneity. If people in close proximity – such as families – have radically different goals, conflict is almost sure to arise. This makes the concept of mental illness strategically useful, both as an excuse for deviant behavior and as a justification for harsh measures to combat it. As Szasz (1990: 135) puts it: ‘Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. In asserting that there is no such thing as mental illness I do not deny that people have problems coping with life and each other’. But despite its social function, mental illness is metaphorical, like ‘lovesickness’ or ‘homesickness’.

Another strain of Szasz’s thought emphasizes the lack of neurological evidence that the putatively mentally ill suffer from brain diseases:

Demonstrable bodily lesion is the gold standard of medical diagnosis. Without practical convertibility into gold, the value of paper money rests on faith. Without conceptual convertibility into bodily lesion, the diagnosis of disease rests only on faith. Unbacked by gold, paper money is fiat money – the politically irresistible incentive for debauching the currency, called ‘inflation.’ Unbacked by lesion, diagnosis is fiat diagnosis – the medically irresistible incentive for debauching the concept of disease, called ‘psychiatry’. (1990: 9)

While he grants that such neurological evidence has occasionally surfaced – most famously in the case of paresis (syphilis of the brain) – such cases are remarkably rare (Szasz 1976). In fact, paresis and schizophrenia are so different that the proven neurological basis for the former makes it less likely that there is any neurological basis for the latter. A person with paresis ‘exhibited objective neurological signs; the illness was characterized by a rapidly downhill course with an invariably fatal outcome; and at autopsy, the patient’s brain showed easily identifiable morphological (structural) abnormalities’. In contrast, a person with schizophrenia ‘exhibits no neurological signs; the illness is not characterized by a rapidly downhill course and is never fatal; and at autopsy, the patient’s brain shows no identifiable morphological abnormalities. Some analogy’ (Szasz 1997: 89). Consistent with these observations, schizophrenia still does not receive an entry in as comprehensive a work as Anderson’s Pathology (1996).

Eminent psychiatrists occasionally admit the difficulty of connecting mental illness to brain abnormalities. In The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, Renshaw and Rauch (1999: 84) grant that ‘Current understanding of the pathobiology underlying primary psychiatric disorders is quite limited, and pathognomonic imaging profiles indicative of specific psychiatric disorders have not been identified’. Even the intensive and long-running search for a biological cause of schizophrenia has been surprisingly unsuccessful, especially taking publication bias into account. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Fourth Edition, Text Revision (APA 2000) acknowledges that ‘No laboratory findings have been identified that are diagnostic of Schizophrenia’ (2000: 305). Another chapter in The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry asserts that brain abnormalities are common in schizophrenics, but acknowledges that ‘no single abnormality is found in all or even most brains from schizophrenic patients’ (Tsuang et al. 1999: 264). Breggin (1991: 84) questions even these limited findings on the grounds that almost all subjects in modern brain research on schizophrenia have histories of heavy anti-psychotic medication, which itself is known to cause brain damage. Brain autopsies conducted on schizophrenics before the introduction of anti-psychotics generally found no abnormalities.

Most psychiatrists predictably minimize the importance of their field’s past failures, but Szasz sees strong and uncomfortable implications. One is that until the brain lesions underlying a mental illness have been found, psychiatrists ought to be far less certain that an illness even exists. Another is that if the absence of lesions in a given brain were affirmatively proven, psychiatrists ought to admit that the individual is not sick, no matter how odd his behavior is (Szasz 1997: 78).

At times, Szasz seems to make the stronger claim that since mental illnesses are metaphorical, empirical study of their biological basis is a category error: ‘Looking for the organic etiology of mental illness is like looking for the caloric content of food for thought’ (1990: 131). But Szasz does not literally rule out empirical research on this question. When his critic Seymour Kety objects that ‘Our ability to demonstrate and elucidate pathological disturbances is limited by the state of the art, and to assume their absence because they have not been demonstrated is a non sequitur’, Szasz (1997: 51) responds:

True enough. But I do not maintain that the nonexistence of pathological findings in schizophrenia proves there are none; I maintain only that a promise of such findings is only a promise, until it is fulfilled . . . If psychiatrists had to pay interest on their promises of pathological lesions, as borrowers must pay lenders, the interest alone would already have bankrupted them; instead, they keep issuing the same notes, undaunted by their perfect record of never meeting their obligations.

As mentioned earlier, perhaps the greatest misconception about Szasz’s work is that it is primarily a critique of involuntary mental hospitalization. Only a minority of his writings deal with psychiatric commitment, the insanity defense, or other policies related to mental illness. The bulk deals with philosophy of mind. Whether or not one agrees with his controversial position, it should be clear to any reader of the full Szaszian corpus that this stance is his most original and intellectually challenging contribution. Indeed, one could consistently embrace Szasz’s philosophy of mind, but advocate involuntary commitment on efficiency grounds as the best way to reduce the negative externalities that extreme eccentrics impose on their families and society.

Another misconception about Szasz is that he denies the connection between physical and mental activity. Critics often cite findings of ‘chemical imbalances’ in the mentally ill. The problem with these claims, from a Szaszian point of view, is not that they find a connection between brain chemistry and behavior.6 The problem is that ‘imbalance’ is a moral judgment masquerading as a medical one. Supposed we found that nuns had a brain chemistry verifiably different from non-nuns. Would we infer that being a nun is a mental illness?

A closely related misconception is that Szasz ignores medical evidence that many mental illnesses can be effectively treated.7 Once again, though, the ability of drugs to change brain chemistry and thereby behavior does nothing to show that the initial behavior was ‘sick’. If alcohol makes people less shy, is that evidence that shyness is a disease? An analogous point holds for evidence from behavioral genetics. If homosexuality turns out to be largely or entirely genetic, does that make it a disease?

Szasz’s philosophy of mind is unquestionably contrarian, and often provokes negative reactions.8 The remainder of this article maintains that – unlike the standard view of mental illness – Szasz’s main theses are strikingly consistent with basic microeconomics. Reframing Szasz in economic terms helps make his aphoristic thought both easier to understand and more introspectively plausible. Economists may be reluctant to fully embrace the Szaszian approach, and Szasz might object that my economistic reading misses important facets of his thought. Nevertheless, my thesis is that there are significant gains to trade between the economic approach to human behavior and Szasz’s analysis of mental illness.

3. Disease as Constraint

Consider normal physical diseases, such as cancer and influenza. Anderson’s Pathology describes their main symptoms:

The usual course of untreated cancer is continuous local and metastatic extension with progressive systemic effects, all of which combine to weaken the host in diverse ways until cachexia and death from sepsis or bronchopneumonia, or both, ensue. About half of the deaths in cancer patients result from infection . . . Other causes of death in these patients include organ failure, tumor infarction and hemorrhage, and carcinomatosis. (Lieberman and Lebovitz 1996: 540)

Sudden onset of headache, myalgias, fever, and chills are classic symptoms of most influenza-induced illness. Although sore throat and dry cough are common, they are rarely self-reported because of the overwhelming systemic symptoms, which predominate. Influenza produces such a rapid onset of high fever that febrile seizures are frequently triggered in children. (Hinrichs et al. 1996: 923)

How can these conditions be formally modeled? (Grossman 1972). Basic consumer theory makes the answer clear: It shifts your budget constraint inwards. If influenza or cancer actually kills you, your lifetime budget constraint shifts drastically inwards. But even if you escape the worst outcome, you lose on many other mar- gins. Influenza moves a normal temperature outside of your budget set; cancer makes you more vulnerable to other diseases. Further- more, in both cases your physical abilities typically decline. For example, you will probably be unable to walk at your normal speed.

Figure 1 illustrates the latter effect. If a person had 24 hours of time to divide between walking and resting, and a healthy person faced budget constraint A, then after contracting the flu or cancer, the same person would face a budget constraint such as B. A sufficiently sick person might collapse if he tried to walk for more than a few miles – suffering from reduced endurance as well as reduced speed. Then the budget constraint of the sick person would differ more starkly from the healthy person’s, as shown by the kinked constraint in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Illness as a budget constraint

Almost every traditional medical condition one can name can be modeled as an inward shift of one or more budget constraints. If your legs are paralyzed, the maximum amount you can walk under your own power falls to zero. If you have the common cold, the good of ‘not-sneezing’ suddenly falls on the wrong side of your budget set. If you have a stroke, the maximum number of words you can speak per minute shifts inwards. Mental retardation puts a high score on an IQ test beyond your reach, and common forms of brain damage impair your memory.

Budget constraints shift in for many reasons other than disease. But traditional medical conditions and shrunken budget sets go hand in hand.9 It is nearly paradoxical to assert, ‘All of my abilities are at their peak levels and I expect them to remain so,10 but I am nevertheless sick.’

Figure 2. Illness as a kinked budget constraint

This is not to say that the preferences of the sick might not shift as well. For example, the indifference curves of a person with an upset stomach might shift to put more value on carbonated beverages. But for almost any ordinary disease or injury, shifts in preferences – if any – accompany shifting constraints. You can be physically sick without changing your preference orderings, but you cannot be physically sick without changing what you can do.

4. Mental Illness as Extreme Preference

Most mental illnesses do not fit the preceding template. Consider a paradigmatic case such as substance abuse. In what sense does this illness shift one’s budget constraint inwards? It is hard to see how it does. If one were to formalize it in economic terms, the natural strategy would be to model it as an extreme preference.

Note that ‘extreme’ does not mean ‘intransitive’ or ‘not-wellordered.’ Cooter and Ulen (1988) probably speak for many economists when they deny that the preferences of the severely mentally ill are well-ordered. But in fact, not only do individuals with mental disorders typically have transitive preferences; they usually have more definite and predictable orderings than the average person.11 People with Alzheimer’s disease may not have well-ordered preferences, but as Sylvia Nasar (1998: 324) explains, insanity is almost the opposite of senility:

[T]he delusional states typical of schizophrenia often have little in common with the dementia associated with, for example, Alzheimer’s disease. Rather than cloudiness, confusion, and meaninglessness, there is hyper-awareness, over- acuity, and an uncanny wakefulness. Urgent preoccupations, elaborate rationales, and ingenious theories dominate.

A person with anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), to take a less dramatic example, is also unusually transitive. Unlike most of us, he feels no need to strike a delicate balance between his own welfare and the welfare of others; he puts his own interests first and last. It is also worth pointing out that several mental disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), come close to classifying transitivity as symptom (APA 2000: 462, 717).

It is also implausible to interpret most mental illness using a ‘hyperbolic discounting’ or ‘multiple selves’ model (Ainslie 1992). These might fit a moderate drug user who says he ‘wants to quit’; one symptom (albeit not a necessary condition) of substance dependence is ‘a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use’ (APA 2000: 197). But they do not fit the hard-core drug addict whose only wish is to be left alone to pursue his habit. The same holds for most serious mental disorders: They are considered ‘serious’ in large part because the affected individual continues to pursue the same objectionable behavior over time with no sign of regret or desire to change.

What then are ‘extreme’ preferences? In brief, they are preferences that few people share or condone, with large life consequences, that nevertheless satisfy the axioms of choice theory (Varian 1992). McCloskey’s autobiography, describing her ‘crossing’ from Donald to Deirdre, offers an especially vivid example. As she (1999: 82) puts it:

Donald had a conversation with himself about whether what he was doing was unusual. On the one hand, I wonder why more people aren’t doing this. But then, You don’t get it, do you, Donald? Most people don’t want to change gender.

Puzzled in return. Oh. You don’t say. That’s funny.

But is it not the case that most people with preferences extreme enough to attract psychiatric attention are also extremely unhappy?12 It depends on which extreme preferences one has. People with ASPD or NPD have inflated senses of self-worth almost by definition. In any case, if most people with extreme preferences are unhappy, this is weak evidence that their preferences are somehow inconsistent or irrational. Unpopular preferences – medicalized or not – naturally tend to reduce happiness. People with normal preferences can simultaneously ‘be themselves’ and be liked. People with abnormal preferences have to balance these two goals. Furthermore, unlike religious and cultural minorities, people with unique extreme preferences cannot easily retreat into an accepting subculture.

I now examine three common mental disorders – substance abuse, ADHD and ASPD. In each case, the leading ‘symptoms’ of these ‘illnesses’ – such as McCloskey’s preference for being a woman – turn out to be nothing more than unpopular preference orderings. There is no reason to think that individuals with these preferences fit the rational economic actor model less well than anyone else. The descriptions often make it clear that individuals with these conditions act exactly as one would expect a rational economic agent with unpopular preferences. Indeed, as we shall see, there are a few ‘symptoms of mental disorder’ that economists routinely assign to homo economicus.

4.1. Substance Abuse

The DSM (APA 2000: 199) classifies substance abuse as ‘A maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by one (or more) of the following, occurring within a 12-month period’. Table 1 lists the criteria, all of which are preference-based. Take criterion 1: ‘recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home’. It is only a small step to translate this into the language of economic theory. If you have an unusually strong taste for alcoholic beverages or drugs – a taste so strong that you willingly risk family, friends and career to satisfy it, then you suffer from substance abuse.

Table 1. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for substance abuse

From an economic point of view, however, what is so puzzling about a person who prefers consuming alcohol to career success or family stability? Life is full of trade-offs. The fact that most of us would make a different choice is hardly evidence of irrationality. Neither is the fact that few alcoholics will admit their priorities; expressing regret and a desire to change is an excellent way to deflect social and legal sanctions.

The other three criteria in Table 1 fit the same pattern. You will be diagnosed as a victim of substance abuse if you use alcohol/drugs when it is ‘physically hazardous’ – in other words, if your taste is so strong that you are willing to take high safety risks (for yourself or others) to satisfy it. You can also be diagnosed if you have ‘recurrent substance-related legal problems’ – presumably because you have such a strong preference for alcohol/drugs that you are undeterred by ordinary expected punishments. The final criteria almost repeats the first – using the substance even though it causes ‘recurrent social or interpersonal problems’. The DSM definition strikingly fails to mention intransitivity. In fact, the people most likely to be diagnosed with severe substance abuse are heavy users who have no desire to change their lifestyle.

4.2. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Substance abuse is a particularly straightforward case for economists to analyze, since it involves the trade-off between (1) one’s consumption level of a commodity and (2) the effects of this consumption on other areas of life. But numerous mental disorders have the same structure. One way to be diagnosed with ADHD, for example, is to have six or more of the symptoms of inattention shown in Table 2. Overall, the most natural way to formalize ADHD in economic terms is as a high disutility of work combined with a strong taste for variety. Undoubtedly, a person who dislikes working will be more likely to fail to ‘finish school work, chores or duties in the workplace’ and be ‘reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort’. Similarly, a person with a strong taste for variety will be ‘easily distracted by extraneous stimuli’ and fail to ‘listen when spoken to directly’, especially since the ignored voices demand attention out of proportion to their entertainment value.

Table 2. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for ADHD

A few of the symptoms of inattention – especially (2), (5) and (9), are worded to sound more like constraints. However, each of these is still probably best interpreted as descriptions of preferences. As the DSM uses the term, a person who ‘has difficulty’ ‘sustaining attention in tasks or play activities’ could just as easily be described as ‘disliking’ sustaining attention. Similarly, while ‘is often forgetful in daily activities’ could be interpreted literally as impaired memory, in context it refers primarily to conveniently forgetting to do things you would rather avoid. No one accuses a boy diagnosed with ADHD of forgetting to play videogames.13

4.3. Anti-social Personality Disorder

Homo economicus arguably suffers from this disorder by definition. Table 3 lists some of the DSM’s diagnostic criteria, any three of which are almost sufficient for a positive diagnosis. Since homo economicus always plans ahead – most notoriously with his unlimited use of backwards induction – symptoms (3) and (6) do not apply. But as a narrowly selfish being, homo economicus lacks remorse (symptom 7). Insofar as deceitfulness leads to personal profit, homo economicus is deceitful (symptom 2). And while homo economicus of course worries about his own safety, the safety of others concerns him only if he is financially responsible for it. In any case, all of the symptoms of ASPD are exclusively about preferences – for narrow selfishness, high discount rates and affinity for violence.

Table 3. Some DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality

Admittedly, not all cases are easy to classify. I have some control over my heartbeat, but it is impossible for me to reduce it to 10 beats per minute. Is the number of times my heart beats per minute a constraint or a choice? The distinction between constraints and preferences suggests an illuminating test for ambiguous cases: Can we change a person’s behavior purely by changing his incentives? If we can, it follows that the person was able to act differently all along, but preferred not to; his condition is a matter of preference, not constraint. I will refer to this as the ‘Gun-to-the-Head Test’. If suddenly pointing a gun at alcoholics induces them to stop drinking, then evidently sober behavior was in their choice set all along. Conversely, if a gun-to-the-head fails to change a person’s behavior, it is highly likely (though not necessarily true) that you are literally asking the impossible.14

Obviously most physical diseases would pass the gun-to-the-head test. Pointing a gun at a paralyzed man will not enable him to walk, nor can you frighten a cancer patient into living longer. Conditions like mental retardation and Alzheimer’s disease are also highly likely to pass the gun-to-the-head test. Smart people occasionally play dumb, and the elderly might feign senility from time to time; but most people who appear to have very low cognitive ability really do.

The same cannot be said, however, for the large majority of mental disorders. Though the gun-to-the-head test rarely happens, most people with mental disorders respond to far milder incentives. During the course of any given day, individuals diagnosed with substance abuse, ADHD and ASPD act contrary to their impulses because giving in to them would be too expensive. Studies of demand elasticity normally find that consumption of hard drugs is quite sensitive to price (van Ours 1995); in fact, the psychiatric literature on ‘contingency management’ shows that a high percentage of heavy users of alcohol and drugs will go cold turkey for a moderate price (Higgins and Petry 1999). Even lazy people with a strong taste for variety will complete a boring task if their life is on the line. Anti- social personalities are prone to perform acts ‘that are grounds for arrest’, but that does not mean that they take actions that surely end in severe punishment.

Suppose one grants that at least a large fraction of mental illnesses are nothing more than extreme preferences. What follows? Most importantly, it confirms the core Szaszian thesis: psychiatric diagnoses are not descriptive judgments comparable to a diagnosis of cancer, but normative judgments about whether preferences are good or bad, right or wrong. Disputes about whether ‘X is a mental illness’ cannot be resolved by more and better empirical research, but only – if at all – by ethical reasoning.

5. Mental Illness, Systematic Bias, and Preferences Over Beliefs

At this point, one might reasonably object that I consider only the easiest targets. Perhaps ADHD is a medicalized label for laziness. But what about the symptoms that we intuitively associate with full-blown psychosis or ‘insanity’ – delusions and hallucinations?

5.1. Delusions

The DSM defines a delusion as ‘a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary’, adding the further condition that ‘The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith)’ (APA 2000: 821). Another reference source more succinctly defines a delusion as ‘a fixed false belief (excluding beliefs that are part of a religious movement)’.15 These definitions are striking on several levels. Most obviously, why are religious beliefs exempt from this stigma? What about quasi-religious political movements like Leninism or Nazism, comprised almost entirely of fixed false beliefs (Hoffer 1951)? What about religious movements with a small number of members? One member?

One could eliminate the ‘religious exemption’ and conclude that the fraction of the population suffering from delusions has been greatly underestimated. However, the exemption does seem to have a rationale: The cognitive faculties of the overwhelming majority of religious believers are functional. Outside of religion, they habitually adjust their beliefs in response to evidence. So it is natural to interpret their embrace of improbable religious doctrines as a choice to relax ordinary intellectual standards. Doing so allows them to enjoy not just the social benefits of religious participation (Iannacone 1998). It also provides direct personal benefits, such as a sense of identity and meaning.

In other words, just because a person believes patent absurdities does not imply that he cannot believe otherwise, that changing his mind is outside his choice set. Instead, he may have preferences over beliefs (Akerlof 1989; Akerlof and Dickens 1982; Caplan 2001, 2000). If individuals have to choose between maintaining a cherished worldview and giving the other side a fair hearing, many would rather forego the latter. The competing hypothesis, of course, is that a person wants to grasp the truth, but lacks the cognitive resources to process evidence or detect errors.

From this perspective, it is worth considering how most psychiatrists would have diagnosed the founders of the world’s leading religions. What would they make of their assertions that God speaks with them, giving them revelations to deliver to the rest of mankind? Were they paranoid schizophrenics? A more plausible account is that they were people who wanted (among other things) to believe in their own cosmic importance – and managed to convince others to accommodate them. And there is every reason to think that such motivations remain salient to many people today, though in a more secular age religious themes will be less prominent. But variations on the theme of ‘I am a leading figure in world history, locked in combat with powerful enemies’ have a timeless appeal to human vanity.

If religious ‘fixed, false beliefs’ stem from the refusal to exercise one’s cognitive faculties, as opposed to defective cognitive faculties, why might not the same hold for non-religious fixed, false beliefs (Shermer 2002)? Perhaps they too provide a sense of identity and meaning. This is essentially Szasz’s view: People largely become schizophrenics because they find reality too unpleasant to cope with:

What the psychiatrist calls a ‘delusion of persecution’ is one of the most dramatic human defenses against the feeling of personal insignificance and worthlessness. In fact, no one cares a hoot about Jones. He is an extra on the stage of life. But he wants to be a star. He cannot become one by making a fortune on the stock market or winning a Nobel prize. So he claims that the FBI or the Communists are watching his every move, are tapping his phone, and so forth. Why would they be doing this, unless Jones were a very important person? In short, the paranoid delusion is a problem to the patient’s family, employers, and friends: to the patient, it is a solution to the problem of the meaning(lessness) of his life. (1990: 116)

What about paranoid schizophrenic John Nash, who in fact did win a Nobel prize? Surprisingly, he fits Szasz’s profile, because Nash’s great ambition was not to earn a Nobel prize in economics, but the coveted Fields Medal in mathematics. In 1958, he failed to win it, and given his age he had little hope of ever doing so. As his biographer Sylvia Nasar (1998: 229) explains: ‘One can almost imagine a sniggering commentator inside Nash’s head: ‘‘What, thirty already, and still no prizes, no offer from Harvard, no tenure even? And you thought you were such a great mathematician? A genius? Ha, ha, ha!’’’. And Nash’s personal problems – a gay or bisexual man, unhappily married, and expecting a child – were at least as serious as his professional disappointments.

Since, as Nash later observed, ‘rational thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos’, he escaped into a world of fantasy, where his failures no longer mattered. His biographer confirms the subjective benefits: ‘For Nash, the recovery of everyday thought processes produced a sense of diminution and loss . . . He refers to his remissions not as joyful returns to a healthy state, but as ‘‘interludes, as it were, of enforced rationality’’’ (Nasar 1998: 295). His choice to abandon his academic career was much in the spirit of Robert Frank’s (1985) Choosing the Right Pond: If Nash could not be a Fields Medalist, his next choice was to be Emperor of Antarctica, not a second-rate mathematician.16

Is it inconceivable that anyone could or would choose to be a paranoid schizophrenic? Many psychiatrists found Nash’s eventual recovery astounding, leading some to question the original diagnosis (Nasar 1998: 350–3). But Nash’s first-hand account is that his return to rationality was a choice:

Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of my delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. (Nasar 1998: 353)

It is noteworthy that Nash consciously decided to stop thinking about the two subject matters where normal people routinely embrace ‘fixed, false beliefs’: not just politics, but religion as well (Nasar 1998: 354). He compares his recovery to dieting.17 Despite its short-run emotional benefits, he decided to stop indulging his daily temptation to hide from life:

Actually, it can be analogous to the role of willpower in effective dieting: If one makes an effort to ‘rationalize’ one’s thinking one can simply recognize and reject the irrational hypotheses of delusional thinking. (Nasar 1998: 354)

Intellectual dieting would be an implausible solution if one were utterly disconnected from reality. But his biographer explains that this describes neither Nash nor the typical schizophrenic:

[T]he ability to apprehend certain aspects of everyday reality remains curiously intact. Had anyone asked Nash what year it was or who was in the White House or where he was living, he could no doubt have answered perfectly accurately, had he wished to. Indeed, even as he entertained his most surreal notions, Nash displayed an ironic awareness that his insights were essentially private, unique to himself, and bound to seem strange or unbelievable to others. (Nasar 1998: 324–5)

In fact, ‘While he was ill, Nash traveled all over Europe and America, got legal help, and learned to write sophisticated computer programs’ (Nasar 1998: 19).

Nash describes the behavior of his son – also a diagnosed para- noid schizophrenic – in comparable terms: ‘I don’t think of my son . . . as entirely a sufferer: in part, he is simply choosing to escape from ‘‘the world’’’(Nasar 1998: 385). The father’s attitude is not so shocking considering his son’s objection whenever urged to complete his PhD: ‘Why do I have to do anything? My father doesn’t have to do anything. My mother supports him. Why can’t she support me?’ (1998: 346). Nash’s biographer laments his ‘insensitivity’ on this point (1998: 385), but who is in a better position to understand his son’s state of mind?

Even if John Nash chose his condition, it does not follow that every schizophrenic does the same. But it underscores the point that there are two competing hypotheses to explain the existence of delusions.18 In economic terms, one is preferences, the other is constraints. To deal with this complex issue, it is once again helpful to consider the Gun-to-the-Head Test. If maintaining a fixed, false belief would result in death, does the believer ‘unfix’ it? If he does, sound cognition must have been in his choice set all along, but for whatever reason falsehood was more appealing.

At least in the case of religious ‘fixed, false beliefs’, people who pass the gun-to-the-head test are rare.19 Gaetano Mosca (1939: 181–2) provides one intriguing illustration:

Mohammed, for instance, promises paradise to all who fall in a holy war. Now if every believer were to guide his conduct by that assurance in the Koran, every time a Mohammedan army found itself faced by unbelievers it ought either to conquer or to fall to the last man. It cannot be denied that a certain number of individuals do live up to the letter of the Prophet’s word, but as between defeat and death followed by eternal bliss, the majority of Mohammedans normally elect defeat.

Perhaps the tiny minority of willing martyrs really did have defective brains that literally prevented them from seeing the world as it is. But even here, historical accounts of the martyrs raise significant doubts. Rodney Stark (1996: 163–89) argues that they were heavily motivated by community support and adulation, which they often enjoyed for years due to lags in the Roman legal system. Further- more, martyrs often discussed their temptation to give in. One rarely feels ‘tempted’ by an option that is not available to us in the first place: I am not tempted to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. Socrates’ Apology is perhaps the most striking case of a man with unimpaired cognitive faculties who died for his beliefs. Indeed, before drinking the hemlock, Socrates demonstrated critical thinking abilities far in excess of the normal range (Ahrensdorf 1995). Blaming his decision on a brain defect is most implausible.

While the mentally ill rarely face the Gun-to-the-Head Test, a large fraction respond to less extreme incentives. The mentally ill routinely modify their behavior to avoid psychiatric hospitalization and unpleasant treatments. As psychiatrist Peter Breggin (1991: 61) reports, ‘[T]he drugs cause so much discomfort. . . that patients often stop saying what they believe to avoid getting larger doses and to bring a more speedy end to the treatment. As many ex-patients have told me, ‘‘I learned right away I’d better shut up or I’d get more of that stuff.’’’ This is so common that psychiatrists often suspect that ‘recovered’ patients are merely concealing their symptoms.20 The fear of more extreme treatments like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) often affects behavior far beyond the walls of the psychiatric hospital. In one case study of female shock therapy patients, ‘Three of the ten women lived in dread of ECT for years afterward; and therefore they refrained from expressing any angry feelings toward their husbands, for fear of being sent back to the hospital for involuntary shock treatment’ (Breggin 1991: 200).

Patients’ responsiveness to incentives is well known to those who administer the incentives. A case study on the attitudes of shock therapists observed that shock was used ‘as a threat against difficult patients. Personnel on the hospital would warn, ‘‘You will go on the shock list’’’ (Breggin 1991: 212). Even when treating mentally ill children, psychiatrists recognize that incentives change behavior:

Used to saying what he thought with his dad, Sammy made the mistake of ‘talking back’ to one of the doctors. He was told that patients had to ‘earn’ their liberties and was reduced to the lowest disciplinary level – no visitors, no books, no radio, ‘no nothing’, as he later told his dad. (Breggin 1991: 294)

At least for many delusions, the fact that you would try to feign recovery shows that your degree of irrationality – not just outward behavior – is incentive-sensitive. Nash is once again an excellent example. ‘I thought I was a Messianic godlike figure with secret ideas’, he tells us. ‘I became a person of delusionally influenced thinking but of relatively moderate behavior and thus tended to avoid hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists’ (Nasar 1998: 335). But if Nash were literally constrained to see him- self as a ‘godlike figure’, he would have imagined that he could free himself at any moment.21 He would be unable to grasp that – in reality – his freedom depended on a psychiatrist’s diagnosis, so he would have no motive to ‘beat the system’. But try to beat it he did, regularly acting more normally to avoid or end commitment: ‘When I had been long enough hospitalized . . . I would finally renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances’ (Nasar 1998: 295). He also firmly grasped the social process of commitment, knowing, for instance, that his sister would probably try to commit him after their mother’s death (1998: 330–1). Perhaps most strikingly, to deter others from committing him, Nash did not threaten divine retribution, but ordinary social sanctions like divorce (from his wife), and breaking off relations (with his sister).

There is more systematic evidence from so-called ‘token economy programs’ that mental patients substantially change their behavior in response to modest material rewards (Corrigan 1995; Stuve and Salinas 2002). These programs pay patients fixed numbers of tokens for desired behavior. Tokens can be redeemed for benefits like snacks, magazines, grounds passes, and the right to wear non- institutional clothing. Paying patients turns out to be a highly effective way to improve hygiene, group participation and adherence to ward rules, and deter threats and violence. It can also curtail ‘screaming, ritualistic behaviors, mannerisms, responsiveness to hallucinations, and the frequency of delusional talk’ (Stuve and Salinas 2002: 824).

Since hospital residents typically have the most extreme problems, it is striking that their behavior is so price elastic. Furthermore, at least in many cases this indicates that their delusions – not just their outward behavior – respond to incentives. If a mental defect literally compels you to see yourself as all-powerful, why would you chase after petty monetary rewards? If, in contrast, the cause of megalomaniacal delusions is preferences rather than constraints, we should expect patients to start ignoring them as the material cost of adhering to them rises. As it turns out, when the price of being wrong goes up, even the delusional start to recognize the difference between reality and their self-aggrandizing worldview.

5.2. Hallucinations

Perceptions, unlike beliefs, rarely contain an element of choice. Even if you put a gun to my head and tell me to see a blank wall in front of me rather than my computer, I will not because I cannot. People who genuinely experience hallucinations have the same problem. If you are under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug, you see things that do not exist even if you would rather not (hence the ‘bad trip’) (APA 2000: 250–3). From an economic perspective, hallucinating is similar to being blind or deaf; seeing or hearing the real world lies outside your budget constraint. Of all the symptoms of mental illness, hallucinations are the least objectionably modeled as constraints.

The same does not hold, however, for claiming to hallucinate. Initially, it seems unlikely that anyone would lie about such a thing. However, Szasz (1997: 117) maintains that such skepticism is well-grounded:

[W]hen a grisly, unsolved crime is reported by the press and the police look for the person who did it, innocent people often come forward and confess to the crime. Such a confession is never accepted on its face value as true; on the contrary, it is treated with the utmost skepticism. On the other hand, when a person lodges a psychiatric complaint against himself, it is not investigated at all.

In both cases, people pretend to have seen or heard things that did not happen because they prefer negative attention to none at all. Consider people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Why do they do it? Well, if beings from other worlds travel all the way to earth just to probe you, you must be a pretty important person.

In the pre-modern period, one could get the same feeling by claiming to see and talk to angels or demons: ‘[W]omen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often accused of (and even allegedly experienced or confessed to) having illicit sexual encounters with aliens – in this case the alien was usually Satan himself . . .’ (Shermer 2002: 97).

Fabrication aside, minimal scrutiny often reveals that what superficially sound like reports of hallucinations are only delusions.22 As Shermer (2002: 96) recounts:

While dining with the abductees, I found out something very revealing: not one of them recalled being abducted immediately after the experience. In fact, for most of them, many years went by before they ‘remembered’ the experience.

Like most delusions, their stories usually reflect a choice to relax normal intellectual standards, not lack of ability to impose these standards. Shermer (2002: 95) describes the abductees as ‘perfectly sane, rational, intelligent folks’ overall. Yet they exempt their abduction beliefs from straightforward objections:

[A woman] said that the aliens actually implanted a human–alien hybrid in her womb and that she gave birth to the child. Where is the child now? The aliens took it back, she explained. One man pulled up his pant leg to show me scars on his legs that he said were left by the aliens. They looked like normal scars to me . . . One man explained that the aliens took his sperm. I asked him how he knew that they took his sperm, since he had said he was asleep when he was abducted. He said that he knew because he had an orgasm. I responded, ‘Is it possible you simply had a wet dream?’ He was not amused. (2002: 94)

Szasz similarly maintains that many alleged hallucinations are only eccentric descriptions of ordinary experience. To take the most common form (APA 2000: 300), psychiatrists routinely equate ‘hear- ing voices’ with auditory hallucination. But when a person feels guilty, we often say that he ‘hears the voice of conscience’. Such a person will often not just feel guilty; thoughts such as ‘What you’re doing is wrong!’ repeatedly come to mind. To take a stronger case, the DSM treats ‘a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person’s behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other’ as an exceptionally serious symptom (APA 2000: 312). But this describes any person deliberating between major life options over an extended period of time.23 While these examples might seem to stretch the meaning of ‘hallucination’, it is the DSM that explicitly fails to distinguish whether ‘the source of the voices is perceived as being inside or outside of the head’ (APA 2000: 823).

An analogous point holds for ‘seeing things’. To equate this with visual hallucinations is not the only interpretation, nor even a particularly plausible one. It is more natural to interpret it as imagination. I cannot literally see Satan just because I want to, but I can visualize a red being with horns and a pitchfork on demand.

How could genuine hallucinations be identified, even in principle? The gun-to-the-head test remains a helpful benchmark. If a person’s perception ‘suddenly improves’ after the cost of seeing and hearing nonexistent things goes up, that is strong evidence that his senses were functioning fine all along.

In the absence of incentives, it depends heavily on the trustworthiness of the source. It is suspicious if a person who claims to hallucinate also happens to put a low value on truth in other contexts. Conversely, if a person who shows no inclination to bend the truth in any other situation claims to have strange visual or auditory experiences, his self-reports have to be taken more seriously.

In the DSM, having both delusions and hallucinations is almost a sufficient condition for schizophrenia (APA 2000: 312). However, the preceding analysis suggests that a person who says he has hallucinations but not delusions is more credibly diseased than a person who claims to have both. If most delusions arise out of a choice to relax normal intellectual standards, then the delusional suffer from a credibility gap. Can the self-reports of a man who finds solace in a version of ‘I am a leading figure in world history, locked in combat with powerful enemies’ be trusted when we ask him to distinguish between direct observation, recovered memories, and day- dreaming? Imagine asking Joseph Smith if he literally saw and conversed with the angel Moroni (Hardy 2003). Given his overall worldview, he might not consider it a lie to treat his dreams or musings as on par with direct experience.

6. Orthogonality of Behavioral Genetics and Brain Science

The most sophisticated critics of Szasz grant that he is a brilliant debater, but add that he conveniently ignores hard scientific data from both brain science and behavioral genetics. Psychiatrist Seymour Kety (1974: 961) famously remarked that ‘if schizophrenia is a myth, it is a myth with a powerful genetic component’. Szasz seldom if ever cites contrary empirical findings. The natural inference is that such findings do not exist.

What this inference overlooks, however, is that brain science and behavioral genetics usually ask questions orthogonal to Szasz’s thesis. Return to the case of homosexuality. Does evidence of a strong genetic component raise the probability that homosexuality is a disease after all? It is hard to see how it would. Twin and adoption studies have found that genetics explains a substantial fraction of variation in almost every form of human behavior (Harris 1998; Segal 1999). Such studies can teach you about the cause of a condition already known to be a disease, but not separate diseases from non-diseases.

During the period when homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, psychiatrists heavily debated the extent to which it was inborn or environmental. The purpose of this debate was not to determine if homosexuality was in fact a disease, which was taken as given. Rather, competing theories had different implications for the best way to cure it (Bayer 1981: 18–40). This perspective is hardly surprising: ordinary physical disease has both genetic and environmental causes, and the point of distinguishing them is to develop better treatments, not ascertain whether they are ‘really diseases’.

A similar point holds for brain science and mental illness. If homosexuals were found to have verifiably different brain chemistry than heterosexuals, that would not raise the probability that being homosexual is a disease. Brain science is no more able to determine whether other forms of behavior are diseases. In most cases, this conclusion is obvious: If charity, or kindness to children or church attendance correlated with brain states, would anyone take this as evidence of their pathological character?

The brain scientists’ critique of Szasz takes on a straw man. It essentially asserts: ‘Your theory predicts no correlation between mental illness and brain states. Since there is a correlation, your theory is false’. But every major theory of mind from materialism to Cartesian dualism predicts a correlation between mental states and brain states. To take advances in brain science as ‘mounting evidence’ for one side reveals only a failure to understand the other side.

In a similar vein, brain science sheds little light on whether a condition arises out of preferences or constraints. Yes, constraints must have some biological basis; but the same is true of preferences. Even if a chemical were isolated that correlated perfectly with love of chocolate, that would not show that what appeared to be a preference was really a constraint. Rather it would show that a preference had a biological basis – which presumably we thought all along.

One might take Szasz’s failure to present original empirical evidence as the usual strategy of the a priori obscurantist. But this takes for granted that the empirical evidence is relevant to the debate. Szasz (1990: 216) asks: ‘If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would psychiatrists look for their chemical and genetic causes?’ It would be a mistake to interpret his rhetorical question as an attack on genetics and brain research. On the contrary, it is perfectly legitimate for a scientist to search for the chemical or genetic correlates of Christianity, communism or anything else. The Szaszian point is that even if a scientist discovered a 1:1 correlation between having a gene and being a Christian that would not prove Christianity to be a disease. To reach that kind of conclusion it would be necessary to show that individuals with the ‘Christian gene’ are literally unable – not merely unwilling – to think rationally about their worldview; to show, in economic terms, that Christian belief is a constraint rather than a choice.

7. Conclusion

Economists recognize the benefits of specialization. Only with hesitation, then, can economists focus their attention on an unfamiliar discipline and conclude that experienced professionals have been making elementary mistakes. However inconsistent psychiatry’s main theses seem to be with basic consumer theory, one might think it foolhardy to conclude that they are wrong.

At the same time, economists also recognize not only that rent-seeking is a ubiquitous force, but that most rent-seekers create and internalize public-interested justifications for their activities (Klein 1994). It is not overreaching for economists to criticize domestic auto makers’ arguments for protectionism. The auto makers know more about the details of their own industry, but economists are better at interpreting those details. Equally importantly, economists are trained to consider the costs of a policy for everyone in society, not merely groups with the most political influence.

From a rent-seeking perspective, skepticism about psychiatry is common sense. Rent-seeking is only a side activity for the auto industry, but it lies at the core of psychiatry. As Szasz (1990: 178) puts it, ‘The business of psychiatry is to provide society with excuses disguised as diagnoses, and with coercions justified as treatments’. Like lobbyists, one of psychiatrists’ main jobs is to argue in favor of exceptions. Some explain why their client should not have to pay the normal price for his behavior; others, why a person willing to pay the normal price for his behavior should be prevented from engaging in it nonetheless.

From this perspective, the divide between an intermediate economics textbook and the DSM is predictable. Consumer theory does not make an exception for extreme preferences. On the contrary, the more heterogeneous preferences are, the more important it is to charge uniform prices. Making people pay the full social cost of their behavior is the way that we find out if their preferences are as extreme as they say. The DSM avoids these conclusions by redefining extreme behavior to be a ‘disease like any other’. ‘Some people prefer to have mental disorders’ then sounds as implausible as ‘some people prefer to be sick’.

Nevertheless, people with extreme preferences often create negative externalities, especially for their families. Some economists might conclude that the psychiatric perspective on mental illness is scientifically mistaken but pragmatically useful. Political constraints make it difficult to regulate preferences merely because they are extreme. Using the obscurantist language of mental illness helps circumvent these constraints.

Conversely, there are efficiency reasons for political reluctance to regulate extreme preferences. Most obviously, there is the Coasean argument: If familial side payments are insufficient to induce normal behavior, it is a sign that the deviant values his deviancy more than his family values his normalcy. Calling extreme preferences ‘diseases’ makes it easy to misinterpret unwanted treatment as a benefit for the patient rather than a cost.

Treating extreme preferences as a disease also opens up a wide range of moral hazard problems. The Americans with Disabilities Act specifically refuses to count sexual behavior disorders, compulsive gambling, kleptomania, pyromania and substance use disorders resulting from current use of illegal drugs.24 But the moral hazard problem of the covered disorders – such as alcoholism – is probably comparable or greater.

‘Economic imperialism’ has often led economists to study another discipline and defend what until then had been an unpopular minority view. If the isomorphism between Szasz’s view and basic consumer theory is genuine, the economics of mental illness will be no exception. Economists have a great deal to learn from psychiatry, but at the same time economists need to make the difficult argument that the Szaszian view is far from crazy. In fact, it is good economics.

Notes

Psychiatrists now prefer to talk in terms of ‘having a mental disorder’ rather than ‘being mentally ill’ (APA 2000: xxxi, emphasis added). For the sake of readability, I use both expressions interchangeably.

The disorder of ADHD was first introduced in the DSM-III-R (APA 1987), but this was essentially a relabeling of the DSM-III’s (APA 1980) Attention Deficit Disorder. The latter was however a significant change relative to its precursor, ‘hyperkinetic reaction of childhood (or adolescence)’ in the DSM-II (APA 1968).

For a complete bibliography, see http://www.szasz.com/publist.html

Relatively new religions with small numbers of members – often called ‘cults’ – have however been subject to a degree of psychiatric stigma (Iannacone 2003). If a very small group (usually a couple or a family) shares a common delusion, its members may be diagnosed with shared psychotic disorder (APA 2000: 334).

Except in tone, the latter description almost exactly matches one from the biography of John Nash: ‘Nash was choosing the ‘‘path of most resistance,’’ and one that captured his radical sense of alienation. Such ‘‘extreme contrariness’’ aimed at cultural norms has long been a hallmark of a developing schizophrenic consciousness. In ancestor-worshipping Japan the target may be the family, in Catholic Spain the Church. Nash particularly desired to supercede the old laws that had governed his existence, and, quite literally, to substitute his own laws, and to escape, once and for all, from the jurisdiction under which he had once lived’ (Nasar 1998: 271).

Breggin (1991) however notes that most claims about ‘imbalances’ are tautologous: If a drug changes behavior in a desired way, the drug ipso facto ‘corrects an imbalance’. The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry’s entry on lithium certainly fits this pattern: ‘Theories abound, but the explanation for lithium’s effectiveness remains unknown. Patients are often told it corrects a biochemical imbalance, and, for many, this explanation suffices. There is no evidence that bipolar mood disorder is a lithium deficiency state or that lithium works by correcting such a deficiency’ (quoted in Breggin 1991: 174).

Breggin (1991: 60) raises the question of what ‘counts’ as successful treatment. It is clear that psychiatric drugs and electroshock make people more docile and apathetic, but other benefits are much more questionable. ‘Since drugged patients become much less communicative, sometimes nearly mute, it’s not surprising that they say less about their hallucinations and delusions. Had the investigators paid attention, they would have noticed that the patients also said less about their religious and political convictions as well as about their favorite sport or hobby.’

For an especially thoughtful critique, see Seavey (2002).

Admittedly, today’s constraining diseases may stem from yesterday’s lifestyle choices. I might be sick today because I smoked or even deliberately drank bacteria. But the same holds for more familiar cases. For example, my current wage depends on my past work experience.

The latter clause is necessary because an ailment might have an incubation period or go through cycles of outbreak and remission.

One exception is dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as ‘multiple personality disorder’ (APA 2000: 529).

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for raising this question.

See for example the profile of ‘Andy: A Hyperactive Child’ in Breggin (1991: 275–6).

Thus, if a person has lexicographic preferences, they will choose death rather than change their behavior, even though life was inside their choice set.

BehaveNet 2004. http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/delusion.htm

Perhaps a better comparison could be drawn between Nash’s decision and Denethor’s suicide oration in The Return of the King: ‘‘‘I would have things as they were in the days of my life,’’ answered Denethor, ‘‘and in the days of my long-fathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated’’’ (Tolkien 1994: 836).

Once Nash wanted to abandon delusional thinking, then, his dieting analogy suggests the possible relevance of self-control problems or hyperbolic discounting (Ainslie 1992). But this would still be a poor model of Nash’s condition during the many years when he felt little desire to change.

A third hypothesis that must explain part of the data is that the delusions are deliberate fabrications. As Szasz (1990: 117) succinctly remarks, ‘If a man lies about his car so he . . . can get more money for it, that is rational economic behavior; if he lies about himself to get attention, that is irrational madness. We respond to the former by bargaining about the price, to the latter by treating mental illness.’

Political ‘true believers’ who pass the Gun-to-the-Head Test are rarer still. Even in the modern world, suicide attacks are chiefly committed by religious rather than secular zealots (Iannacone 2003).

See for example Nasar (1998, especially pp. 260, 330–1).

As Jesus maintained according to Matthew 26: 51–53: ‘With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. ‘‘Put your sword back in its place,’’ Jesus said to him, ‘‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?’’ ’ (The Holy Bible 1984: 740–1).

The DSM curiously overlooks this point in an especially pertinent case: ‘In some cultures, visual or auditory hallucinations with a religious content may be a normal part of religious experience (e.g. seeing the Virgin Mary or hearing God’s voice)’ (APA 2000: 306). Presumably this does not mean that millions of devout believers have malfunctioning eyes and ears.

Note that even if you did experience auditory hallucinations, it hardly follows that you have to obey them. The Son of Sam killer claimed to follow a dog’s orders (Szasz 1997: 206–7). Assuming he was not lying (as he later admitted he was), one could still ask: Do you always do what you’re told?

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/reg2.html

References

Ahrensdorf, Peter. 1995. The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Ainslie, George. 1992. Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motiva- tional States Within the Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Akerlof, George. 1989. ‘The Economics of Illusion.’ Economics and Politics 1: 1–15.

Akerlof, George and William Dickens. 1982. ‘The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance.’ American Economic Review 72: 307–19.

American Psychiatric Association. 1968. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, second edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

American Psychiatric Association. 1980. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

American Psychiatric Association. 1987. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, third edition, revised. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, text revision. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

Bayer, Ronald. 1981. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. New York: Basic Books.

Breggin, Peter. 1991. Toxic Psychiatry. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Caplan, Bryan. 2000. ‘Rational Irrationality: A Framework for the Neoclassical Behavioral Debate.’ Eastern Economic Journal 26: 191–211.

Caplan, Bryan. 2001. ‘Rational Ignorance versus Rational Irrationality.’ Kyklos 54(1): 3–26.

Caplan, Bryan. 2002. ‘Systematically Biased Beliefs about Economics: Robust Evidence of Judgemental Anomalies from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy.’ Economic Journal 112: 433–58.

Caplan, Bryan. 2003. ‘Stigler-Becker versus Myers-Briggs: Why Preference-based Explanations Are Scientifically Meaningful and Empirically Important.’ Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 50: 391–405.

Cooter, Robert, and Thomas Ulen. 1988. Law and Economics. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers.

Corrigan, Patrick. 1995. ‘Use of a Token Economy with Seriously Mentally Ill Patients: Criticisms and Misconceptions.’ Psychiatric Services 46: 1258–63.

Frank, Robert. 1985. Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status. New York: Oxford University Press.

Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Grossman, Michael. 1972. ‘On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health.’ Journal of Political Economy 80: 223–55.

Hardy, Grant. 2003. The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Harris, Judith. 1998. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. New York: Free Press.

Higgins, Stephen, and Nancy Petry. 1999. ‘Contingency Management: Incentives for Sobriety.’ Alcohol Research and Health 23: 122–7.

Hinrichs, Steven, Christopher Harrison and Sheryl Haggerty. 1996. ‘Viral Diseases.’ In Andersons Pathology, tenth edition, eds Ivan Damjanov and James Linder, pp. 886–950. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

Hoffer, Eric. 1951. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper and Row.

The Holy Bible: A New International Version. 1984. East Brunswick, NJ: International Bible Society.

Iannacone, Laurence. 1998. ‘Introduction to the Economics of Religion.’ Journal of Economic Literature 36: 1465–1495.

Iannacone, Laurence. 2003. ‘The Market for Martyrs.’ Global Prosperity Initiative Working Paper #35. Mercatus Center, George Mason University.

Kessler, R. C., K. A. McGonagle, S. Zhao, C. B. Nelson, M. Hughes, S. Eshleman, H. U. Wittchen and K. S. Kendler. 1994. ‘Lifetime and 12-month Prevalence of DSM-III-R Psychiatric Disorders in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey.’ Archives of General Psychiatry 51: 8–19.

Kety, Seymour. 1974. ‘From Rationalization to Reason.’ American Journal of Psychiatry 131: 957–63.

Klein, Daniel. 1994. ‘If Government is So Villainous, How Come Government Officials Don’t Seem Like Villains?’ Economics and Philosophy 10: 91–106.

Lieberman, Michael and Russell Lebovitz. 1996. ‘Neoplasia.’ In Andersons Pathology, tenth edition, eds Ivan Damjanov and James Linder, pp. 513–47. St Louis, MO: Mosby.

McCloskey, Deirdre. 1999. Crossing: A Memoir. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mosca, Gaetano. 1939. The Ruling Class. New York: McGraw-Hill. Nasar, Sylvia. 1998. A Beautiful Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Posner, Richard. 1998. Economic Analysis of Law. New York: Aspen Law and Business.

Renshaw, Perry and Scott Rauch. 1999. ‘Neuroimaging in Clinical Psychiatry.’ In The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, ed. Armand Nicholi, pp. 84–97. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Seavey, Todd. 2002. ‘Freedom of Choice, Cigarettes, and Thomas Szasz.’ Liberty 16(10): 35–44.

Segal, Nancy. 1999. Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior. New York: Dutton.

Sheffrin, Steven. 1996. Rational Expectations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shermer, Michael. 2002. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. New York: Henry Holt and Co.

Stark, Rodney. 1996. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Stuve, Paul and Julian Salinas. 2002. ‘Token Economy.’ In Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy, vol. 2, eds Michel Hersen and William Sledge, pp. 821–7. New York: Academic Press.

Szasz, Thomas. 1976. Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Szasz, Thomas. 1990. The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Szasz, Thomas. 1997. Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Thaler, Richard. 1992. The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Tolkien, J.R.R. 1994. The Return of the King. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Tsuang, Ming, Stephen Faraone and Alan Green. 1999. ‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders.’ In The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, ed. Armand Nicholi, pp. 240–80. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

van Ours, Jan C. 1995. ‘The Price Elasticity of Hard Drugs: The Case of Opium in the Dutch East Indies, 1923–1938.’ Journal of Political Economy 103: 261–79.

Varian, Hal. 1992. Microeconomic Analysis. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.

#mental illness #psychiatry #thomas szasz #law and economics #choice #rationality #heterogeneous preferences #anti-psychiatry #schizophrenia #hallucinations #economics #consumer theory #economic imperialism #behavior

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for November 25 through December 1 is “Battle of the Sexes,” the fifth episode of the third season of Netflix’s F Is for Family.

Netflix’s F Is for Family is a weird little hybrid of a show. It’s sometimes very funny, and it’s sometimes very sad, which isn’t that unusual for a comedy — even an animated comedy — in 2018. But what makes F Is for Family notable is how both its sadness and its humor stem from exactly the same spot.

It would be tempting, if you only watched a single half-hour episode of F Is for Family, to conclude that it’s a series lamenting the rise of “political correctness.” Set in the ‘70s, it centers on a loud-mouthed white guy named Frank who’s at least vaguely threatened by women demanding something more like equality, and by the growing sense that the social order he stands atop is slowly eroding right beneath him.

What’s more, Loudmouthed white guys threatened by change aren’t unusual TV protagonists, either for comedies set in the ‘70s or for animated sitcoms. But F Is for Family’s spin on the type is defined as much by his sputtering frustration and total lack of confidence in himself and his abilities as it is by his anger. When Frank (voiced by series co-creator Bill Burr) shouts at his kids, F Is for Family doesn’t want you to laugh at how times have changed as much as it wants you to feel how limited he can be by his narrow range of emotional expression.

Yet the series isn’t afraid of occasionally dropping the hammer, of leaving viewers wondering where some darkly emotional turn came from. And so goes the end of “Battle of the Sexes,” the third season’s fifth episode.

Frank is covered in dead goose, and that’s all you need to know. Netflix

Coming at the exact midway point of a 10-episode season, “Battle of the Sexes” sends the season’s two big plots crashing into each other.

In the first plot, Frank has essentially been trying to woo new neighbor Chet (Vince Vaughn) to be his new best friend. Chet’s an Air Force pilot who married Nguyen Nguyen (Eileen Fogarty), a woman he met in Vietnam. Frank, who never met a cocky dude he couldn’t immediately try to emulate, begins spending more and more time with Chet, who offers to build a new room for the baby Frank and his wife have on the way.

But throughout Chet’s time on F Is for Family, the show drops more and more hints that he’s not the “great guy” Frank keeps insisting he is, especially when Chet suggests that both men cheat on their wives. (Frank refuses.) What’s more, the sheer number of times that both Chet and Frank say Chet is a “great guy” should lead most astute viewers to conclude that Frank knows, on some level, that the guy’s a fraud and Chet is compensating for something in hanging out with him.

Meanwhile, in the second plot, Frank’s wife Sue (Laura Dern) is reeling from the theft of her salad-tossing invention, which has made $1 million for another woman in town. She throws herself into trying to find a “second once-in-a-lifetime idea,” even as she’s balancing a pregnancy and trying to preserve a marriage she found herself more and more ambivalent about in season two. (It’s not uncommon for animated family comedies to suggest that their central husbands and wives are unequally yoked; only on F Is for Family do you suspect that such a marriage might really dissolve someday.)

Her second big idea arrives in the form of a weird kitchen multi-tool that contains a fork, spoon, knife, pizza cutter, and spatula, among other things. She and her friend Viv sink a fair amount of money into developing prototypes, but nobody else likes the idea, and Sue watches her grand ambitions slowly circle the drain, knowing that a baby will arrive soon and suck up plenty of her time and attention.

There are other storylines circling these two central ones — mostly featuring Frank and Sue’s three kids — but the center of the season stems, as is always the case when the show is at its best, from the ways Frank and Sue are limited by their histories, their frustrations, and their emotional limitations.

Frank, in particular, is a pitch-perfect sketch of a certain kind of male neediness. He at once longs to be as seemingly cool as Chet, while also feeling a bit thrown by how little another neighbor, the ultra-confident neighbor Vic (Sam Rockwell, doing a Sam Rockwell impression), seems to care about typical social niceties. (Season two revealed that much of Vic’s confidence is thanks to cocaine, which feels about right.)

But Frank is also unable to see beyond his own nose. He understands that Sue feels an immense frustration at the way her life has turned out, but he’s largely unwilling to dwell on how he’s played a big role in that frustration. Similarly, his relationship with one of his best friends, black co-worker Rosie (Kevin Michael Richardson), is defined by how often Rosie has to point out that Frank can’t understand Rosie’s frustrations, because Frank is white.

Season three of F Is for Family does soften Frank just a touch. He’s really trying in his marriage to Sue, whom he does love deeply, and he’s horrified when Chet suggests cheating on their wives. And when Rosie gets passed over for a promotion at work, Frank is upset for reasons beyond how much more work it’s going to make for Frank (though, to be fair, he’s mostly upset about the amount of work it will mean for him). But if Frank is softening, the world around him isn’t, necessarily.

Sue learns something horrible about Chet and Nguyen Nguyen’s marriage. Netflix

The center of “Battle of the Sexes” is an impromptu neighborhood hangout at Frank and Sue’s house. Frank and Chet have been planning to work on the baby’s room, which leads to the other guys in the neighborhood dropping by. Sue, meanwhile, gathers her friends to offer feedback on her new invention. The kids hang out in the other room, too, watching the titular “Battle of the Sexes,” a jai alai spin on the 1973 tennis match of the same name.

Eventually, the three parties blend together in the largest group scene F Is for Family has ever done, according to series co-creator and showrunner Michael Price, as all of the characters gather around the television to watch a woman and man face off on the sacred courts of jai alai. As everyone watches the match play out, they crack jokes, both to diffuse the tensions that have built up throughout the night and to underscore the existing social order. A final bet from Sue ensures that if the woman jai alai player wins, the men in the room will do their respective household’s chores over the next week.

But the bet is masking a darker turn. Later, as Sue walks over to Chet and Nguyen Nguyen’s house to return a casserole dish, she hears Chet threatening Nguyen for the jokes she made at his expense earlier, then telling her she’s not allowed to leave the house the next day. Sue listens, then turns away — not returning the dish — presumably to go home and tell Frank.

This is a standard F Is for Family move. The show will frequently deploy a standard trope of the animated family sitcom subgenre — like a dad who shouts loud and abusive things for “comedy” reasons — then look at how harmful those tropes can be in other contexts. Frank’s bluster is funny because he’s ultimately not going to do anything about it. He’s just loud and angry, and he takes his family for granted, but he loves them too much to do anything except shout. Chet is very different (as, we learn later in the season, was Frank’s own father).

This willingness to dig into the darker subtext at play in its universe is what makes F Is for Family worth watching. The show has an immense amount of empathy for every character that lives in its little neighborhood, but it also understands how the limitations that keep them all in place manifest in traumas that travel down family trees.

And yet they don’t have to. Frank might bluster, but he’s not his father, and we can see the ways that his own sons won’t be like Frank when they grow up. And F Is for Family doesn’t pretend its “politically incorrect” elements depict the world as it really is, or something facile like that; rather, it focuses on the ways that Frank and guys like him created a whole system designed to flatter themselves into believing they are — or at least were — the kings of the world.

In season three, especially, F Is for Family is about a nation in transition, where Irish and Italian families are increasingly secure in their positions of power and privilege relative to other racial minorities and ethnicities, but where they still have recent memories of being cast out of the American mainstream (to the degree that a side character on a show that Frank’s kids watch is a very broad Irish stereotype). And yet the characters increasingly try to make things better, here and there, around the edges of their lives, if never quite at the center.

Okay, yeah, that makes the show sound more like a dark drama than an animated sitcom. And at times, that description fits F Is for Family — a funny show, but one that will never sacrifice a character moment, heartfelt or depressive or otherwise, in the name of a joke. It’s a long, boozy story, told by a very funny comedian, late at night, right before the bar closes. And you start out laughing, but then you’re just smiling, and then finally you’re realizing this guy has seen some shit. And then the story’s over, and the lights come on, and everybody goes home, through quiet streets.

F Is for Family is streaming on Netflix.

Original Source -> Netflix’s F Is for Family examines the dark core of the angry sitcom dad

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[mrmichaelchadler]

The 4-Star Reviews of 2018

As the year comes to a close, and you’re wondering what to see before you make your top ten list or pick up the latest Twitter fight about awards season, we are here to guide the way. First, check out Chaz Ebert’s guide to her personal picks for films to see before the end of the year, and then peruse the 32 films from the year that our staff critic gave the highest possible rating—4 stars.

“24 Frames”

“Kiarostami was, finally, more than a great filmmaker; he was an artistic titan whose work transcends both cinema and the culture of Iran. How fitting that this lovely final film is one that could be enjoyed by fourth-graders as easily as the most knowledgeable of Kiarostami’s admirers.” (Godfrey Cheshire)

“Amazing Grace”

“Whether you’re religious or not, you owe it to yourself to see this movie if the chance arises. You’ll see how much love and feeling went into the construction of the resulting album. Additionally, “Amazing Grace” is profoundly moving and extraordinarily soothing. Nowadays we could use a good salve. To paraphrase another gospel standard, if we ever needed this film before, we sure do need it now.” (Odie Henderson)

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”

“What’s most bewitching throughout “Scruggs” is its sense of detail. Its meshing of formal discipline and screwed-down content sometimes give it the sense of a work that has been carefully and elaborately embroidered rather than photographed.” (Glenn Kenny)

“Black Panther”

“For all its action sequences (they’re refreshingly uncluttered, focusing on smaller battles than usual) and talk of metals that exist only in the mind of Stan Lee, “Black Panther” is still Marvel’s most mature offering to date. It’s also its most political, a film completely unafraid to alienate certain factions of the Marvel base.” (Odie Henderson)

“BlacKkKlansman”

“This is not only one of the year’s best films but one of Lee’s best as well. Juggling the somber and the hilarious, the sacred and the profane, the tragedy and the triumph, the director is firing on all cylinders here. "BlacKkKlansman" is a true conversation starter, and probably a conversation ender as well.” (Odie Henderson)

“Blindspotting”

“This movie swings between high drama and low comedy, and between terrifying danger and sweet moments of near-romance. Then it climaxes with an intense, brilliant monologue that is an almost otherworldly dare, a piece of performance art that some viewers are bound to question. Like all great movies, “Blindspotting” is a force to be reckoned with and wrestled with. No matter where you land in your assessment, your expectations are guaranteed to be shattered.” (Odie Henderson)

“A Bread Factory, Part One: For the Sake of Gold”

“A Bread Factory, Part Two: Walk with Me a While”

“This is my favorite film of the year by far—and when I say "film," singular, I'm referring to both halves of "A Bread Factory," because they flow together in the mind. As of this writing, I've seen both parts three times. With each viewing, I notice new things and am more moved by the characters, who are unique and eccentric in the way that real people are, but written and acted with the economy and directness that distinguishes characters in well-constructed plays or short stories—ones where the storytellers know what they want to say and how best to say it.” (Matt Zoller Seitz)

“Burning”

“The three main characters circle warily, looking at each other with desire, mistrust, need, never certain of the accuracy of their perceptions. Lee's explorations require depth and space. It's a great film, engrossing, suspenseful, and strange.” (Sheila O’Malley)

“Elvis Presley: The Searcher”

“The image of Elvis shifts, depending on the entry point. What is so refreshing—damn near redeeming—about HBO's two-part documentary "Elvis Presley: The Searcher," premiering on HBO on April 14, is that the entry point is Presley's art.” (Sheila O’Malley)

“First Reformed”

“Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” in which Ethan Hawke brilliantly plays an alcoholic Protestant minister undergoing a profound spiritual and psychological crisis, is a stunning, enrapturing film, a crowning work by one of the American cinema’s most essential artists.” (Godfrey Cheshire)

“Happy as Lazzaro”

 "While it renders a touch heavy-handed in the film’s final act when Lazzaro hastily tries to put his fairest foot forward amid a world ruled by merciless capitalism, Rohrwacher still manages to pack an undeniably poignant punch with the simplest of questions: in a world defined by helplessness and social injustice, how far would one get by instincts of basic decency alone? Easily among this year’s finest films and laced with an unapologetic social message, “Happy As Lazzaro” dares one to imagine a reality where each individual would task themselves to be as selfless and morally whole as its main protagonist. If only." (Tomris Laffly)

“Hereditary”

“Aster and the cast make you care about these disturbed people and fear what they might do to one another, themselves and strangers. When something awful invariably does happen, you feel sadness as well as shock, because now it's going to be even harder for the Grahams to climb out of the pit of sadness that the grandmother's death cast them into, and finally address past traumas that they've been ignoring or covering up.” (Matt Zoller Seitz)

“The Insult”

“Altogether, the accomplishments of “The Insult” place Doueiri in the company of such masters of politicized suspense as Costa-Gavras and Asghar Farhadi. A great director already, he is surely one to watch in the future.” (Godfrey Cheshire)

“King in the Wilderness”

“In Kunhardt’s film, the embrace of quiet, ordinary moments not only aids in the illumination of King himself, but also in the America in which he preached. The camera lingers on the normalcy of city streets, suburban neighborhoods, and churches, juxtaposing these peaceful places with chaotic footage from the '60s: loud, chaotic, taken with shaky cameras, or immortalized in static photographs.” (Arielle Bernstein)

“Leave No Trace”

“Everyone needs to choose their own way. In "Leave No Trace," Granik creates a specific mood, gloomy and yet redemptive, sometimes simultaneously. The redemption is painful, though, because it comes with such a hefty price.” (Sheila O’Malley)

“Let the Sunshine In”

“To add a twist to this demonstration, Denis breaks it off late in the movie, and jumps briefly into someone else’s storyline, someone who had been a stranger up to this point. Then the filmmaker wraps it up in a final shot that’s both cerebral, whimsical and wry in its wisdom. The film’s confidence comes in part from the acceptance of the things that can’t be known.” (Glenn Kenny)

“Life and Nothing More”

“Without ever spelling it out, Esparza shows us how our treatment of one another as members of the same human family is a direct rebuke to the divisions enforced by tyrants to keep us frightened and isolated. In its poetic simplicity, the film’s deeply moving final shot suggests that our estrangement can be mended the moment we choose to lock eyes and listen to each other, allowing our voices to rise above the deafening cries of our presumptions.” (Matt Fagerholm)

“Makala”

“The power in this story from comes from its very distilled manner: it tells a timeless story about hard work by completely immersing us in the steps of process, focusing on an act of incredible physical commitment.” (Nick Allen)

“Memoir of War”

“Among its many notable achievements, “Memoir of War” is one of the best films I’ve seen about the ways in which grief can pull a person in both directions simultaneously. Whereas the film’s first half plays more like a thriller, the second half proves to be an emotionally wrenching interlude perched on pins and needles.” (Matt Fagerholm)

“Minding the Gap”

“This movie doesn't just give you the general outlines of its main characters' lives and send you out wiping away tears; it paints a vivid picture of lower-middle class life in a depressed American city (Rockford, Illinois) that movies rarely show us.” (Matt Zoller Seitz)

“Mission: Impossible – Fallout”

“It’s got that finely-tuned, perfect blend of every technical element that it takes to make a great action film, all in service of a fantastic script and anchored by great action performances to not just work within the genre but to transcend it. This is one of the best movies of the year.” (Brian Tallerico)

“Monrovia, Indiana”

“Wiseman, who customarily mans one camera, oversees the audio mix and edits his films, is 88 years old now; despite its lack of overt subjectivity, the movie seems preoccupied with mortality in a way that has little to do with its ostensible subject. I hope Wiseman is well and happily at work on his next film. But there’s an implication of a testament here that makes “Monrovia, Indiana” unalike in a poignant way.” (Glenn Kenny)

“The Other Side of the Wind”

““The Other Side of the Wind” is a very rich film and a very difficult one. I’ve seen it nearly three times now and what I intuit about the aspects of it that “work,” and those where the seams just show too nakedly shift all the time.” (Glenn Kenny)

“Private Life”

“This film is a reminder that the smallness of life can feel huge when we're in the middle of it. A perfect final shot sums up everything "Private Life" has been telling us and showing us, while letting us imagine Rachel and Richard's destiny for ourselves.” (Matt Zoller Seitz)

“The Rider”

“Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” is the kind of rare work that seems to attain greatness through an almost alchemical fusion of nominal opposites. An account of rodeo riders on a South Dakota reservation, it is so fact-based that it almost qualifies as a documentary. Yet the film’s style, its sense of light and landscape and mood, simultaneously give it the mesmerizing force of the most confident cinematic poetry.” (Godfrey Cheshire)

“Roma”

“Cuaron has made his most personal film to date, and the blend of the humane and the artistic within nearly every scene is breathtaking. It’s a masterful achievement in filmmaking as an empathy machine, a way for us to spend time in a place, in an era, and with characters we never would otherwise.” (Brian Tallerico)

“Shirkers”

“Cardona may have taken something from them they will never fully get back, but Tan’s documentary returns the narrative back to her and her friends. He no longer has the last word on “Shirkers,” they do. And isn’t reclaiming our stories what this cultural moment is all about?” (Monica Castillo)

“Shoah: Four Sisters”

“This is minimalist directing of a high order, practically invisible in its choices and effects, but repeated so often that it seems unquestionably indicative of a very particular style—one that aims to create the conditions necessary to birth a compelling though understated remembrance of unimaginable pain. The story is shaped in the process of recording it, rather than being excessively manipulated after the fact.” (Matt Zoller Seitz)

“Shoplifters”

““Shoplifters” feels like a natural extension of themes that Kore-eda has been exploring his entire career regarding family, inequity, and the unseen residents of a crowded city like Tokyo. With this movie especially, his characters and their predicament are not merely mouthpieces for the issues that interest him but fully-realized people who feel like they existed before the film started and will go on after it ends.” (Brian Tallerico)

“Widows”

“The emotional currents that power Steve McQueen’s brilliant genre exercise are different—it’s societal inequity, exhaustion at corruption, and outright anger at a bullshit system that steals from the poor to give to the rich. McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.” (Brian Tallerico)

“You Were Never Really Here”

“"You Were Never Really Here" is a taut and almost unbearably intense 90-minutes, without an ounce of fat on it. Ramsay doesn't give you a second to breathe. It's grim, it’s dark, it’s delirious fun.” (Sheila O’Malley)

“Zama”

“”Zama” is a mordantly funny and relentlessly modernist critique of colonialism that makes no conclusions, ultimately resting on a scene of verdant nature not entirely stained by humanity.” (Glenn Kenny)

from All Content https://ift.tt/2PbnNKS

[vioncentral-blog]

Pavlensky: Dumbfounding the Dumfounders

https://www.vionafrica.cf/pavlensky-dumbfounding-the-dumfounders/

Pavlensky: Dumbfounding the Dumfounders

In that game, Western journalists and Russian liberals gladly agreed, Pavlensky "always came out the winner," making the state look stupid. "By being tough on Pavlensky, the state was acting in the framework of his artistic scenario, because this seemingly vulnerable man is ready to suffer. In fact, he wants to suffer if his suffering exposes the state," explained Marat Guelman, a gallerist of controversial modern art and a curator of several anti-religious exhibitions in Russian cities.

© Sputnik/ Vitaly PodvitskiTables TurnedBut when Pavlensky, having received political asylum in France in May 2017, recently set ablaze the building of the Banque de France in Paris, it was Pavlensky's fans turn to look stupid. Marat Guelman was reported to be "having difficulty" to comment on the arson on the day it was committed, October 16, when journalists from the liberal Moscow-based radio station "Ekho Moskvy" asked him to comment on what the "artist" did in France. "I am dumbfounded, I think it would be inappropriate to give qualifications to Pavlensky's action now," Guelman said on air during Ekho Moskvy's interview with him on October 16.

READ MORE: Russian Artist Petr Pavlensky Faces Charges in France for Damaging Property

In the context of Guelman's previous statements about Pavlensky, one can understand his confusion. For years, Guelman has been praising both Mr. Pavlensky and his Western supporters. So, when Pavlensky attacked a Western institution (Pavlensky said his aim was "to unleash a new great French revolution" against bankers), it obviously did not fit Guelman's (and the West's) "artistic scenario." For a time being, Guelman could feel himself in the situation of the Russian state — again dumbfounded by Pavlensky's sudden chess move.

One can see the contradiction here. In Russia, any moves to punish Pavlensky for hooliganism or vandalism were denounced by Guelman and the Western press as attacks against freedom of expression. But the French court's decision to place Pavlensky in a psychiatric hospital under police supervision did not provoke any protests from anyone, including Pavlensky's usual supporters.

Thank God, the bank did not burn down, but the damage inflicted by Pavlensky was serious enough for the Banque de France's office to stop operations for several days.

Youtube / SputnikA Selfie in Foam: Coffee Art Reaches Peak in This Beijing CaféIn fact, it was not the first time that the French authorities' support for "artistic" hooligans in Russia boomeranged by nasty "artistic" hooliganism on the French soil. For example, in 2012 and 2013 French diplomats and the mass media actively supported another Russian "artistic" female group, Pussy Riot, insisting that Pussy Riot's three members should not be punished for their 2012 "punk prayer." During that "prayer," Pussy Riot's members forced their way into Russia's main cathedral and sang a song there denouncing the head of Russian Orthodox church (the Patriarch) as a "Putin-loving bitch." The song was "bravely" sung in masks and provocative folksy attires, from the site in Christ the Savior's cathedral in Moscow, which the Patriarch usually uses for his speeches. Emboldened by the French support for their "Russian sisters," nine French members of the so-called Femen group in February 2013 stormed France's main cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, with their breasts naked. They yelled insults against the Catholic church and its Pope. Several hundred tourists, who found themselves inside Notre Dame at that moment, were in fact forced to watch and hear the female hooligans, in essence becoming their "artistic hostages."

At the time in 2013, the French interior minister Manuel Valls denounced Femen's action as a "useless provocation." And the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, an avid supporter of Pussy Riot, showed little appetite for this Pussy Riot-style action in his own city, dismissing it as "a parody of the brave fight for gender equality."

So, in the magic box of the Western mainstream press, the same action that is seen as "anti-Putin political expression of artistic freedom" in Russia becomes a "useless provocation" and a crime in France.

© Photo: PixabayWoman Launches Selfie Project After Being Fed Up With Catcallers (PHOTOS)Now, after Pavlensky's attack against Banque de France, French and American television has only reported on the arson. This time, little attention was paid to "the artist's romantic figure" photographed with the burning bank in the background. No artistic analysis, no search for hidden meanings and subtexts. No denunciation of the French court's decision to place Pavlensky in a mental institution as some sort of "punitive psychiatry" at work. And for Russian liberals too, Pavlensky the artist suddenly became just "an evil idiot," as Ekho Moskvy's prolific writer Arkady Babchenko characterized the station's former artistic idol in an angry commentary published after the initial shock from Pavlensky's "new French revolution" somewhat subsided.

In 2015, when Pavlensky set the FSB on fire, the mainstream media's reaction was much more interested, analytical, full of desire to understand even the subtlest movements of the artist's soul.

In that sense, the 2015 article in The New Yorker magazine, headlined "The Protest Artist Who Stumps Putin" and written by the former head of Radio Free Europe's Moscow office, Masha Gessen, was the most illustrative example of such sympathetic artistic analysis. The New Yorker's Masha Gessen called the repair works in FSB after Pavlensky's arson "state-provided perfect coda for a piece of protest art."

© AP Photo/ Steve Parsons/PA via APTreasure Hunt? Thousands of Historic Artifacts Disappear from Major UK MuseumsIn the same article, Masha Gessen called Pavlensky's actions "intellectual" and even more "finely scripted" than Pussy Riot's masterpieces. Of course, since it was not the Banque de France burning in 2015!

Summarizing Pavlensky's achievements, Masha Gessen in her 2015 article admired Pavlensky for "outsmarting the authorities by making their reaction part of his performance." Well, by his arson in Paris, Pavlensky outsmarted Ms. Gessen, making Masha's reaction (or absence of it) an even greater part of his new performance. The Western media's double standards got a perfect illustration. By becoming a common hooligan in France, Pavlensky managed to dumbfound the dumbfounders, and that is an achievement much greater (or at least funnier) than the old Chinese tactic of "observing the observer." This time, the observer turned out to be a liar with double standards.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.

#dumbfounding #dumfounders #pavlensky