The Last Chance Cafe

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Think Before You Furiously Blog

TL:DR

I’m tired of angry idiots getting all disgruntled about things they don’t understand, and apparently don’t want to understand.

 Game of Thrones is making me so very, very angry these days. So many irrational stances being paraded as though there were no other, obviously better choices; So much unjustified, foolish belligerence in adhering to a plotline they believe is the god damn ‘One True Path’ or something; Not to mention the herculean stupidity in thinking they should be able to alter the works of more accomplished writers despite their own notably absent contributions to any existing body of valuable work. I should mention that I’m not talking about the showrunners here; I’m talking about the fans. That’s right, the unruly gaggle of crazed absolutist morons who just keep talking, and writing, and for fuck’s sake blogging about their highly opinionated stance on the direction of the show (yes, I can see the irony, thank you). I’m calling them fans, but that’s just because it’s much shorter than writing all that out every time. 

It takes a special kind of arrogance and lunacy to think that this show, written by established screenwriters and executive produced by the author of the original material, would be SO much better if it was written by a group of angst-ridden, fanfiction-snorting, teenage social justice warriors. Not to say that such a show wouldn’t be good to watch, in fact I think it would be one of the most joyously awful shows I’ve ever seen, sort of like a millennial Steven Seagal type of deal. This is Game of Thrones however, not Steven Seagal. It is a thoughtful and provocative drama based in a world that allows us to explore elements of our own reality through allegory, metaphor and sheer fantastical prose. It explores themes ranging from the death penalty, to the battle between tradition and reform, to the duties of the citizen and the rights of the individual. Both the novels and the show allow us to examine our own sensibilities without really forcing us to realize that is what we are doing. For example, everyone asks the question “Who will end up on the Iron Throne”, while I think the more pertinent question is to ask “Should anyone sit the Iron Throne?” The Iron Throne is not portrayed as a good thing, except in the context of people desiring it and the power that it represents. It serves as a manifestation of autocratic rule, of dictatorship and the dated concept of the Right to Rule. I probably see it this way because my sensibilities prevent me from rooting for the series to end with another monarch on the throne so the entire cycle can begin again. Maybe I would not have known that about myself if I hadn’t been tricked into examining that part of me with seemingly unrelated, fantastical scenarios presented by shows and films like Game of Thrones.

That’s not to say the show’s only value is this breed of philosophical, silver-spoon type reasoning. For some it’s just a fun show, or an interesting character study, or maybe just another ‘un-reality’ to escape to. Whatever the case, it provably does its job remarkably well. This can be attributed in no small part to the works of the showrunners behind the production and to George Martin himself. What has had literally no part in providing the show with its strong themes and messages are the painfully conceited ‘factopinions’ of the very loudmouthed and jaw-clenchingly self-righteous fanchildren who are all so sad that their little fanfictions aren’t going to be ‘canon’ any more.

The highly controversial rape scene between Ramsay Bolton and Sansa Stark was a hell of a lightning rod for this kind of feverish ignorance to float to the surface of the sewerage farm that is the social justice wasteland. “How dare they show such a thing!?” they cried. “Why was it all about Theon!?” they brayed. “I’m quitting the show forever!!!11!” they blogged.

Well, for starters, they probably ‘did such a thing’ because it provides shock value. The show and the novels both have a reputation for doing that, it’s something of a selling point at this stage in the game. People tune in for the unexpected, weirdly enough that’s what we’ve learned to expect from the show. It doesn’t make sense for them to build a reputation for shock and then stop doing it, because if it built popularity on that idea then chances are that’s how they’ll keep it.

               “But if they keep doing shock like this, we’ll be desensitized to it!” That’s a remarkably cogent argument there, asinine voice in my head, shock value does lose its power as it is repeated. So perhaps it’s not the most sustainable plan for the show going ahead, but you realize that by virtue of the fact that there was controversy, it’s quite clear that the shock thing is still working right? Maybe they’ll switch it up when it starts to lose its impact, but obviously that’s not happened yet.

               “No, I mean we’ll be desensitized to rape in real life!” Oh dear. Oh dearie me. If you know anyone who says anything like this, just for future reference, try and distance yourself from them. This opinion belongs in the same school of madness as those arguments that claim Grand Theft Auto makes you murder everyone’s grandmothers, or that American Sniper made everyone who watched it a high functioning sociopath. It just isn’t real. People don’t see a rape on television and then instantly lose their humanity and transform into a rapist. That’s not how it works, thank goodness.

However, this does lead me on to my next point. People complained about Theon being in the room and, more importantly, how the camera focused on him. They claimed that all the focus was being put on his suffering, instead of Sansa’s. I think this is actually one of the more understandable points, but it belies a lack of understanding regarding visual narrative. I interpret the focus as being not on Theon as a character, but on Theon as what he represents in that situation. He is there as an observer, he’s forced to watch a deeply disturbing event taking place but he does nothing. In the context of the show, this is because he’s been broken by Ramsay, but the way I see it he is there to draw attention to the way we as a whole regard the concept of rape. We know it’s happening, we know all the numbers and statistics and we hear the tearful accounts from these traumatized victims and we’re always very sad when confronted with the horrific reality of it all. It’s when we find ourselves in a situation where we can actually prevent it that we freeze up, when all we want to do is leave and ignore it so we can keep from confronting what goes on in front of us all the time. When I watched this scene, I didn’t get the impression that we were being asked to notice Theon’s pain over Sansa’s – I got the impression we were meant to be disgusted by his inaction, and hopefully by extension our own.

It’s not very fair for me to say that everyone should have thought the same though. I am a graduate of English in Narrative Theory and this is exactly the kind of thing I’m geared to look for in a visual narrative of any kind. I don’t expect everyone to see what I see, even other people from my classes; the point is that it’s all about interpretation. What I do expect is for people to exercise a little brainpower and realize that just because something makes you feel uncomfortable, however extreme that discomfort may be, does not mean that it’s irrelevant, irreverent or a sign of poor writing. Usually the reverse is true, because it clearly made you feel strongly about the subject matter and it got everyone talking about rape and rape culture. I haven’t seen the nasty tumor of rape culture so heavily attacked than in the days and week following that scene from Game of Thrones. I’m surprised any of you think that’s not a good thing.

Before we move on, I’d like to touch on the comments made by the showrunners after the episode aired. I think it was something like: “Sansa was a woman making a choice” and people interpreted that as saying that women ‘choose’ to get raped, which is the most extraordinary storm in a teacup I can recall on the spot. Besides that being absolute nonsense, it doesn’t even seem to connect with what was said. I can see how you could make that Olympian leap of logic based solely on the wording and if you were really struggling to try and get that impression out of the statement, but that seems unnecessarily aggressive. The statement refers, I believe, to the wedding scene wherein Sansa takes a moment before agreeing to the marriage with Ramsay. She knows what is about to happen, she knows the kind of beasts that the Boltons are and understands the situation she is putting herself into by agreeing here. She also understands that not agreeing will mean her death, in all likelihood. Instead of choosing to die, which a younger and less experienced Sansa may very well have chosen, she chooses to live and most importantly to live with the consequences. Despite what furious internet harpies might claim, this is not an endorsement of forcing consent and in no possible way can reasonably be interpreted as such, as far as I can see. If anything, the whole wedding scene was a poignant scenario showing that consent is much more than the word ‘Yes’. Sansa hates Ramsay and the Boltons body and soul, but she still says yes because she had no other choice but death. Despite the fact that she ‘agrees’ to the arrangement, what happens next is unequivocally a rape. In Philosophy we call this kind of thing a ‘thought experiment’, where we present a scenario and ask what seems right to you. Generally the idea is to make it clear which option is the ‘right’ option, and thereby prove a point. In this case, the thought experiment is Sansa’s marriage and rape, and the ‘right option’ is that forced consent is still not consent. So perhaps the showrunner in question (I think it was Dan Weiss?) didn’t choose his words as well as he could have, but then again it took me a whole paragraph to explain what I think he meant, so perhaps that’s not exactly a failing on his part.

Finally, to the people who claimed after the episode aired that they were ‘quitting the show’, it surprises me that you got this far. This is not the first horrible event to happen in this show, it will not be the last. It’s not even the first rape in the show, and given the source material and the setting, I’m not sure it’ll be the last either. If you really do have trouble separating reality and fiction, then you should stop watching. If you think that any part of any of the rape scenes in Game of Thrones were endorsing or sexualizing the abhorrent practice, I think you should stop watching. You are clearly not the intended audience for this kind of material because it caters to a level of maturity that you are yet to reach. That’s not meant to be an insult, much as it might sound like it. Some people never reach the level demanded of the viewers for this show, it deals with very powerful and very negative themes, it is not going to be comfortable for you if this isn’t the kind of content you’re ready to deal with.

But most of all don’t be an idiot. The choices being made behind the scenes are not random. They’re not without heavy deliberation and consultation. You should remember that the show does have to make money to keep going, much as you might be a ‘super progressive ultra anti-capitalist revolutionary’, and some decisions will reflect that need. There will also be times when you don’t agree with their decisions, but there’s a reason that screenwriting is their job and not yours, and honey it’s got nothing to do with ‘society’, it’s because your fanfiction isn’t actually good enough just yet.

I would like to hear what they have to say about the Sand Snakes though, because even I can’t work out why that seemed like a good idea.

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I have just made the startling discovery that eating a mouthful of frozen sorbet, followed by a generous gulp of warm sparkling wine, results in the coolest sensation since God invented the orgasm. 

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Language

Isn’t it maddening to imagine

That lying at your fingertips

Are all the right words

And all the right expressions

To make all your dreams

Or your nightmares true.

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On the response to the pardon of Alan Turing

I have noticed several things, spoken and written, about the pardon of Alan Turing which has recently seen a revival in interest thanks to the film dramatising his efforts during the Second World War ('The Imitation Game', and I daresay I recommend it). Most of these responses make excellent points, such as the observation that it is entirely unfair and morally objectionable to pardon one man for being a homosexual at the wrong time in history when there were so many others in the same position who have received no such treatment. A fair and, I would think, unquestionable point. I'm not sure about the assertion that if everyone is not pardoned, no one should be; to me that seems rather backwards reasoning.  But that is not the point I take real issue with. The point I take issue with is the one that - I hesitate to say this, but I feel it is accurate - ignorant people or scaremongerers tend toward.  This is the claim that it is questionable in the first place to be 'forgiven' for being a homosexual.  Hold your fury in for a moment while I explain, because it won't be what you think at first. Of course it is ludicrous to suggest that a person, any person, requires forgiveness for being a homosexual - or for being convicted for it as though it should be a punishable offense. It would be totally unreasonable to offer such forgiveness, as to do so of course implies that the forgiveness was justified - when evidently there is nothing to be forgiven.  You'll notice at this point that I've not used the word 'pardon' or its derivations. This is because there is a remarkable and notable difference between 'pardoning' and 'forgiving', something it seems a lot of rather vocal people do not realise or care to understand.  To forgive someone for something is to acknowledge that they have committed a deplorable act, and that the onus is on you to decide whether that action can be outweighed in some way (either by the convicted making amends or the convictor making do). That's forgiveness; the understanding that something terrible has happened, but that it can be worked past or around.  To pardon is something rather different. It is more a statement of innocence than acceptance of the guilty. A pardon wipes away the crime, the notion that a crime ever occurred. In the case of Alan Turing, this was also a statement that the 'crime' he committed was never a crime in the first place. A pardon is the acknowledgement that the deplorable act was not committed by the convicted, but by the convictor. That is why it is bizarre that no one else was pardoned, incidentally.  So when the Crown pardoned Alan Turing, it was not a statement of forgiveness. It was instead a statement of apology, from the entire nation, for failing a great man.  And as far as I can see, that is a beautiful sign of a far better world. 

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Death and the Girl

It was the night after New Years’ – chilly outside – mostly quiet, save for the rhythmic tapping of wood against pavement. He seemed to glide with every purely theoretical step; all clad in black and leaning slightly on a gnarled and twisted scythe, did Death. Tap, tap, tap. It was a popular time of year for His business. Whatever bitter misfortune it was, the holidays supposed to be full of cheer would all too often venture down the road to ruin. We living souls might think that sad, but as Death was very aware, the dead had little care for the tears of the living. Tap, tap, tap. He had already collected a few. Drunk on high spirits, and their clear liquid cousins, a merry crew had taken a car to see their friends and instead encountered an elder tree. The late happy few had barely known fear before their end, and the tree just waved in the breeze, confused and entangled in a steel embrace. Tap, tap, tap. Death had helped them out of their pained bodies. Peaceful smiles and memories of home will now be all they ever know, and as Death swept away into the dark so too did all the fear and pain and hurt. All the bad memories gather dust while the fond ones wait patiently in anticipation, as they prepare to be taken off their shelves and bookcases to be distributed among loved ones – but all the bad had left with Death, or at least, as much as He could carry. Tap, tap… He paused. Tap. A young girl stood at the side of the road. Her hair caught the breeze and scented it with cinnamon notes – but shortly after that, the bitter taste of sadness. She had no tears upon her cheeks, rosy from the chill; it took a practiced eye to see that she was drenched in the barren dry of all the weeping never seen. The eye of Death was practiced well at seeing through the perfect painted masquerades of perfect painted little people. From His cloth He pulled a watch and checked the hands to see the time. Without ado He snapped it shut and began to walk towards the girl. Tap, tap, tap. She looked over at His approach, steady and deliberate. No fear crossed her face, nor did hatred fill her eyes. She simply watched as Death approached as though she were greeting an old acquaintance that, although they had never seen eye to eye, have found an understanding love that not all things are meant to be together. “Are you death?” she asked Him as He stood beside her, looming overhead. Death did not answer right away – He turned His face that was a skull to look at His scythe, and at His long and flowing cloth. As if to ask without words: What else could I be but Death? “I am Death” He replied. She turned her eyes to meet His, a gaze while not defiant was certainly severe. “Have you come to take me away from here?” “I understand that I have” She let out a long breath, made jagged by the cold, for Death doubted it was fear that put her teeth in chatters. She looked back at the road, casting a glance left and right as if to look for traffic – there was none. “So I do it this time, do I?” she asked, giving Death a thin smile. Death returned her stare. “This time, you might” “So you came all this way just in case?” “It was not out of my way” Silence descended. The girl nodded slowly and clutched her jacket around herself – a jacket that was not hers, it seemed, the arms were too big and the hem was baggy on her smaller frame. Although even He could not be sure, Death wondered if it was the hint of a tear He saw in the corner of her eye. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t inconvenience you, then” she said softly. Death sank to the curb beside the girl. He might have been sitting, but if he had legs they could not be seen nor heard nor felt, and so it appeared that he simply sank. The girl flashed Him a glance, one of equal parts confusion and caution. “What are you doing?” she asked, and He answered in truth. “I have arrived early. I am waiting” She did not appear to be very pleased with His demeanour. Perhaps she was displeased that he so nonchalantly ruled her life as a commodity that he merely waited to collect; or perhaps she was unhappy for making Him wait in the first place. Whatever the cause for her grim expression, aside from the obvious, she need not have worried. Death was patient, and it would not be the first time He had waited by the side of a dead person, waiting for technicality to allow Him to guide them away. “Why are you going to do it?” He asked. It was a question that could never be answered truly. The girl sighed. “I’ve run out of reasons not to” she said, not really wondering why she was answering Death’s question. “It’s not that I have a bad life. There are people with worse lives than me. I just don’t think this one fits me – it’s like there’s something wrong with me being here, living it. “It sounds really selfish when I say it out loud, really… privileged, I suppose. Like, what right do I have to be complaining about all this when everyone tries so hard to make it good? Like, how dare I give up when no one else does? I know that, I know how it sounds. “But that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change me looking out into the world, into my life, stretched out in front of me, and seeing nothing. No way forward. The therapist told me though, she said that ‘no one can see the future, dear’, as if I didn’t know. It’s not about seeing the future; it’s about caring if it’s even there. “And I don’t. If there is a future out there for me, I don’t want it. Give it to someone else if you have to, but I don’t want it” By the end, a single, solitary tear had rolled down her cheek. She rubbed it away immediately and sniffed, as if to suggest that it wasn’t a tear, it was just the cold making her eyes water. Death knew the difference between a watering eye and a tear. Tears are so very different, they are formed with purpose and they travel with intent. They are a mark upon the face, a display to the world that all is not right. They are memory and premonition – and those cannot be caused by a stiff breeze. “That is a good reason” Death mused, mostly to Himself, but loud enough that the girl could hear Him. She looked surprised at His answer. “No one has ever said that before” she said. “They had more to lose than I do” He replied. There was silence once again. Silence as both beings felt the presence of the other. There was no love between them, there was no knowledge, there was only an experience of one another. Experience requires no words, no sound – it is remarkably like death in that way – it was peaceful and it was pure. “That’s just it, isn’t it?” she said, after a minute or so had passed. “That’s all I am to them: something to lose. They want me to be around, they want me to be present, but they don’t actually care what I am. I’m just another thing in their lives, part of a collection. “I can’t even blame them, really. None of them. Not my friends, not my family. I probably do the same thing; you might even meet another girl tonight who will say the same thing about me. I suppose if I was perfect, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” Death shook His skull. “I think we would” he said. “Why?” “Because a perfect person could never know that they were perfect. A perfect person would never think of themselves as perfect. Moreover, none of the things you’ve mentioned would be different, if you had been a perfect person.” The girl gave a short, dry chuckle. “So what you’re saying is: I was going to die tonight either way?” Death shook his skull. “I am saying that we were always going to have this conversation” The girl gave Death a long stare. It was the kind of stare that you give a pet when they do something unusually clever, or human-like, and you suddenly find yourself unsure of how you had perceived them to be. It was the kind of stare that a jeweler might give a man in rags who presents a flawless diamond – as though that person might not be aware of the value of their actions, or diamonds, as it were. “Have you ever thought about doing it?” she asked. “I once wondered if it would be possible” He replied. “But you’ve never… tried?” Death looked up at the night sky. “No, not I. I have no desire for an end” “But you must see a lot of sad things, a lot of terrible things. How do you not want that to end?” “I see these things in a different way. It is not an end for me; it is an end for them. I am not taking, I am giving. You see the sadness that leads to Death, I see the Death that leads from sadness. It is all about perspective” The girl frowned slightly, concentrating. “But death is sad, usually.” Death tilted his skull. “Am I?” “Not you, but like… like, if a grandparent dies. That’s sad for the people left behind” Death nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Not for the grandparent, quite often. They take a great many happy thoughts with them, frozen in time forever. Very few people bother to cling to the bad ones at the end” The girl dropped her gaze and her voice grew soft. “What about people like me?” “People like you? It may surprise you, but when you think about it, it makes sense for a person who desires Death to be happy when I arrive. For some, it is a feeling of finally taking control – of throwing off their chains and being free. For others, it is release of a different sort; release from pain or suffering and finally feeling it all slip away as you rise up out of it. And still others feel accomplished, triumphant even. They feel victorious over the world, and that makes them glad. Very few people hold on to their reasons for dying after they have crossed the threshold” Two tears, large globes of anxiety and despair, rolled down the girl’s cheeks in unison. She wiped them away as well, but this time she could not help but laugh through the tears, into the sleeve of the jacket. “You make it sound so wonderful” she said, her voice not quite breaking, but petering on the verge. Death turned to face her. “It is a beautiful thing” Without warning, the girl turned to Death and wrapped her arms around him. Death felt the scythe fall by his side and hesitantly, he patted her back and let her small body rest on his cloth. She looked comfortable there, nestled into the darkness, enjoying the unexpected warmth of Death’s ghostly form. “Thank you” she whispered to him, and there they stayed for a moment. A moment in time, as a young girl embraced Death and Death held her close to him. A moment suddenly pierced as a truck rushed past them on the road, all lights and wheels and rushing wind. The sudden gust as the vehicle passed kicked up the girl’s hair into Death’s bony face – it smelled of cinnamon. After a while, the girl got up again, and went back to looking at the road. This time however, she had the faintest smile playing on her lips. Death rose up again as well, picked up his scythe, and pulled out his watch once again. The girl watched him this time, and took in a deep breath. “How much longer?” she asked. Death raised his hand. “Before that, one more question. What reasons did you have to live?” The girl looked surprised, but Death continued. “You said before that you had run out of reasons, I’m curious to know what reasons you ran out of” “I suppose all the usual ones” she said, somewhat hesitantly. “I didn’t want my family to be sad, or my friends. I was scared to do it, mostly. I didn’t want it to hurt, or worse, I didn’t want to fail. I couldn’t take it if I’d really tried and it didn’t work, if I woke up later in a hospital or something with a bunch of doctors telling me what an idiot I was” Death murmured his agreement. “Yes. Yes, I thought as much. These are not good reasons” The girl looked a little hurt. “Well, I guess not. They weren’t enough, were they?” “Indeed not. But I think you have forgotten one” The girl frowned. “What? That I should love myself? I’ve heard it before” “No, not quite. I don’t think you are finished here yet” The girl gave another bitter chuckle. “Oh? What gives you that impression?” Death loomed over the girl once again. “You thanked me for listening” The girl’s face went from one of cynical derision to one of disarmed wonderment. Death stared back through skeletal orbs, peering deep past all the walls and defenses. Peering deep inside and gazing finally upon the truth of the girl, the unknowable self. There he saw what no one else had, what she had never even seen herself. There he saw a person screaming at the world, telling the entire planet what she wanted, what she needed to survive – and he saw all the world turn away, dismissive. He saw them call her overly dramatic; he saw them call her attention-seeker. He saw doctors and therapists tell her that she was broken, but that she was normal. He saw a world strip her of everything that she was until all that was left was the sadness and the upset, the roiling discontentment that felt so wrong to live inside. Death saw a girl who just wanted someone to listen, to hear her screams. Not to fix them or try to make her better; just to hear that she was not okay and understand what that meant. Death saw everything that she was, and everything that she could be. He patted her on the head. “You don’t want to die; you want to be heard” said Death, and began to walk away. The girl watched in silence for a moment before calling after him. “Wait! How much longer!?” she called. Death turned as he put his watch away in his cloth. “Oh, a very long time indeed.”

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Enough of This

Maybe he has lived enough of this To merit a modicum of respect. Perhaps you owe a moment to his Shattered mind made derelict To listen and in circumspect Evaluate your stance, lest It be lost to bitter retrospect.

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The other day I saw someone post Happy Birthday to their grandfather up in Heaven, and it was all nice and touching and all that, but he told his grandfather to have a cold beer "on me". That's dangerous. What if he thinks you're serious? What if he gets a cold, expensive heaven-beer and tells the barman to put it on his grandson's tab? Do you have any divine currency? Have you ever met an empyreal loan-shark? Do you know how painful it is to have your spectral knees broken? Don't make promises you can't keep.

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Education Frustration

I apologise in advance if the following starts to get a bit more vitriolic than seems necessary, but it's a very important issue for me and one that, every day, I see more and more evidence of a need to address it directly. Education, dear reader, should always be an option in this day and age. Particularly for those of us who live in wealthy countries, all of which have this pervasive assertion that everyone has a right to success, the potential to grow and raise your station in life. We are led to believe that the days are gone when the authority can tell us that we have 'exceeded our station', because to exceed your station is to rise above it and become something greater, and that is to be admired. This is the world we are promised, it is the world we are told we already have. I am not seeing this. The more I look the more I see people struggling against the tide; I see the last generation of unquestioned authority burdening our new, our rising stars with their insecurities and their hatred and their vitriol at the life they wish they could have had. I see authority figures treating their position as a pedestal for their own personal power, stroking their egos that are rotten to the core because they have forgotten what is important about having authority. To have authority and power is not an excuse to abuse that same gift, because you need to understand that the only reason you have it is because it was given to you by the very people you want to lord it over. They say not to bite the hand that feeds while they sever the hand that raises them up. It's disgusting, truly disgusting, to see this kind of brutish wielding of power performed by our teachers, our educators, who are supposed to be the railing against which we lean to take our first steps up the staircase of the life we are meant to lead. These people have chosen their path; they have chosen to be the pillars on which the giants stand, and they should be proud to support those who can do what they could not instead of cutting them down so the pillars are surrounded by the bones of the giants that could have been. Teachers, letting their own predilections interfere with another person's future. That was never their job, their job was to educate our children no matter what they thought of them personally. Their job was to leave that kind of judgement and prejudice at the door; when you stand at the head of the classroom you are not the man, woman or anything in between that you were before you walked in - when you stand at the head of the classroom, on that pedestal of authority and power, you become the word that you preach and the lesson that you teach. I have seen so many people walk through my door telling me stories about the teacher that pressed them down for talking too loud, or for writing too long, or for thinking too big. So many people who deserved better. People who have become victims of educators, their teachers, that tell their prisoners that they will not succeed where the teacher has failed, that they will not fly where the teacher has fallen. Some teachers have forgotten that their job is not to create more of the same but to help children, students and scholars to build higher than has been built before - not to see the ceiling built by those who came before and call it the sky, content just to sit beneath it and dream of starlight. I told those people not to sit beneath the sky, but to break through it; not to dream of stars but to become one. W.B Yeats wrote that "education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire" and I am tired of seeing a generation of bonfires quenched by the tipping of a few sour pails.

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Overreading, Underreading, and Why Everyone Does It.

What follows is quite lengthy and I am aware my language belongs in a stuffy history book on the importance of grain pricing to 16th Century agricultural development. For that reason I have included the TL:DR at the TOP of the text, because as far as I can see that's the more logical place to put it, instead of at the end where it's usually found. For Heaven's sake, Internet, who raised you like that? TL:DR Overreading = "They delved too greedily and too deep" Underreading = "We need to go deeper" Everyone does it because everyone has their own values and sometimes forget that other viewpoints exist, through no fault of their own. In my travels (to and from the bed and the computer desk) I have noticed a trend that exists in almost every facet of life. The trend, although all-permeating and ever-present, can arguably be noticed most clearly in the blogosphere - you tend to notice it in people like the well-meaning feminist, the meticulous film-easter-egg-hunter, and the amateur (and otherwise, I suppose) media analyst. The trend is that of Overreading. It's a term in the field of narrative theory, it's a literary term applied to what is generally considered a fallacy in narrative analysis. Not to say that doing it makes you less respectable as a source, it just limits your usefulness as a source of information to an opinion piece (which is still a very valid and important part of the analytic framework, despite what the arrogance of academia might tell itself), which may not be what you originally intended. Overreading is this: to look at a text and draw out of it minutiae that, although seemingly intentional and obvious and important to you, are not critical to the final analysis. An example of overreading might be to read Joseph Conrad's well known novella, 'Heart of Darkness' as a racist novel - or even a novel about racism. It is undeniable that the novella contains themes of racism; it contains racial slurs, it contains blatant discrimination, and it treats the concept of racism as being very normal and acceptable. There have been numerous accusations suggesting that Joseph Conrad himself was a racist and that his novella reflects that side of him. It is very easy to get caught up in this side of the novella's content, and to form the belief that the racial themes are the dominant ones present throughout the text. That is overreading. Literally 'reading too much into it'. Simply because a hot button issue such as racism, gender equality, economic disparity, or corruption is present does not mean it should be the focus of an analysis. 'Heart of Darkness' for example, eloquently narrates a tragic commentary on Man's attitudes to Man - a concept that, oddly enough, draws no distinction between races at all. In essence, that core concept around which the entire novella has been constructed is ultimately one where there is no racism - there is only humanity. Someone who has overread the racist language and presence within the novella is likely to miss the unique features that are present, because they are not relevant to what they have perceived to be the core theme; racism. That is not to say, of course, that there is no value to seeing those themes present themselves in a text. But whatever information on racism in the late 19th/early 20th Centuries we could gain from 'Heart of Darkness' (still rolling with this example for now) could just as easily have been gained from any number of history books, dedicated social commentaries, or simply from our own sense of humanity. We wouldn't need the novella, much less the analysis, to tell us that; we already have those resources. What we don't get anywhere else, or at least not commonly, is the startlingly insightful journey through the mind of a guilty person. That becomes what is valuable about the text, and to overread the novella is to miss something that we treasure in literature: a message out of time, that does not erode with the changes of social structure. Conversely, there is also an equally unhelpful practice that requires much less explanation, called Underreading. Underreading is (surprise) the opposite of Overreading, and it occurs when a person fails to analyze a text enough. An example of this might be the viewer who watches 'The Matrix' and thinks it to be a film predominantly about the dangers of technology. This simply is not a useful analysis overall, except if we were only interested in surface level content, which is a field of some repute in itself - but has no place in meaningful analytics. Here on Tumblr, I notice many, many people overreading gender roles in an attempt to formulate quasi-feminist arguments to prove that a text is definitively problematic or non-problematic to the 'Cause' of gender equality, sexual equality, and so on. This is a good practice to get into, because it will make you more perceptive when it is useful to be perceptive to those themes. In saying that, there is a reason that overreading is not considered very useful, generally. It's simply because not all literature, film, music or media is obligated to pursue and build into the framework you are interested in. If they fit neatly into that framework, then your commentary and analysis are probably going to be quite useful in deducing the objective quality or morality of that text - examples for sexual and gender equality frameworks being 'Orange is the New Black' for example, and at the other end of the spectrum, Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines'. These media are dying to be analyzed in the context you want to analyze them, they are inviting critique from the angles you want to critique from. This is where your analysis can be not only curious, but useful and meaningful also. Now of course there's no way to draw a line between what is useful to analyze from what perspective and what isn't, and to do so would be some kind of weird artistic fascism. The point of it all is to say; be careful when you bring something into your analytical framework. Is it really relevant? Are you forcing the connection? What difference does this commentary make? Am I overreading? Good questions to ask before you say 'The Lego Movie' is chauvinistic to the core. You know who you are.

[l-a-cunningham]

You will chase your love and often fall behind And in defeat erase what you must know: You are a thousand, thousand loves combined Thus you are not unloved, and never alone.

[l-a-cunningham]

What is Fire?

It is the final gasp of emptiness, Invisible ignition Of the fleeting shade of excellence, That dies in our cognition. It is the dream of simpler times, When Gods could walk and dragons Fly across the vast forever-sky, And men believed in legends. It is the breath of life itself. That from the spark a flame arise, And issue forth from mother’s mouth. It flickers, once, and then it dies.

[l-a-cunningham]

Imagined Sadness

I want for nothing, Golden mountains rest in ash I am not dead yet.

[l-a-cunningham]

A Painted Rose

You were perfect, the way you were before But others disagreed and said you should be better You should be thin You should be clean You should be happy You should be as we say. Why did they want us to change? Were they jealous or just closed-minded? Perhaps they were neither. Perhaps they were buried too, deep beneath our feet. You washed yourself in other peoples’ dreams, Became the product of their scorn. Are you still the same person you were? Or are you different, Are you changed? Do you mourn for her, the one you left behind? [Do you mourn as I do?] You have forgotten her, and all her merits You have replaced her with plastic sheets and polystyrene Now you look in shop windows and see in the glass A painted rose that looks so sweet, but has no scent You called yourself a broken thing, a cripple? The bastard child of hateful love, a veteran of many hard fought battles You thought your scars hideous [I thought them beautiful] You tried to scrub and cut them out [While I remembered them.] So many dreams, you had, and not enough life it seemed So you forgot your dreams and stole the dreams of others Called them yours and painted smiles on your face So anyone who looked could see: you were happy with your dreams. And then finally I grew heavy on you A great anchor to yourself, a self you’d rather forget You are thin now You are clean now You are happy now You are exactly as they told you to be. What will happen when they are all gone away? When the only one to love you is you, and you Cannot quite remember who you are to start with. How will you breathe when everything around you is empty space? You will suffocate, and the world will tread softly across your grave And there you will remain, buried beneath other peoples’ dreams.