#framing matters

[odinsblog]

A humanitarian crisis is what happens after a natural disaster like a tsunami, or a hurricane, or an earthquake. A humanitarian crisis is when an unexpected accident happens. A humanitarian crisis is what happens to marginalized communities in a pandemic. Indiscriminately bombing a population of noncombatant civilians and then intentionally depriving them of food, water and medical access is a deliberate war crime, NOT some random act of nature. Words matter. Calling the aftermath of bombing civilians “a humanitarian crisis” is no different than using the passive voice to describe Israel’s war crimes without directly attributing them to Israel. Please do not let the well documented displacement, and the meticulously planned out ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians… don’t allow that to be whitewashed and erased away into some kind of unfortunate “accident” of nature.

And don’t even get me started on the tired media trope of labeling non-white starving people, “looters” when they take food to feed their families…

[silver-wield]

Let's talk about framing again.

The less shots interspaced between two main events or focus characters denotes the level of intimacy and/or importance. So, the more frames between people the less intimate it is or the less it matters. The less frames, the more intimate it is. So if you have a shot of one person, followed directly by the person they're looking at, there's literally no room for anyone or thing between them. Also, camera angles matter.

Aerith's looking at the carriage being moved, but we're supposed to think she's looking at the train Cloud's driving. Although we're shown Tifa's watching that. Neither of them can see him because of the height of the engine.

Aerith's watching the carriage being moved and Tifa's looking at Cloud. Because this time she's far enough back to see him. And he can see her. The shots are back to back to convey an intimate moment between them. She probably realised she was too close from the last one and moved to a better spit to see him. Which is cute of her ❤️

[odinsblog]

Words matter. Framing matters. Hold the media accountable. Don’t repeat their talking points.

[odinsblog]

Why is there a presumption that if the Democratic Party moves to the left on criminal justice issues, if it doesn’t bang the drum of being the law-and-order party, that these white suburban moderates will move to the Right?

Why is it that Joe Biden can’t think of a way to talk about protests, or to talk about riots being the language of the unheard, to talk about these issues in a way that doesn’t adopt the rightwing framing? How do we talk about this in terms of people’s 4th amendment rights, which are often implicated in these stops-and-searches that end up in the deaths of the Philando Castile’s of the world? How do we talk about the fact the Philando Castile’s of the world wouldn’t have been pulled over in the first case if they didn’t have all of these outstanding parking tickets because of economic issues? How can we connect some of these things and frame some of these things in ways that are enormously popular to majorities of the population including white Americans who are also living in these depressed midwestern states?

How is it that the Right is so much more effective at framing things that are objectively morally terrible, in positive terms, when we have have righteousness on our side and can’t talk .... why are we leaving everything on the floor for them and defaulting to their framing? It’s like we’re getting BernieBro’d.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY, asking the tough questions on framing and “Law & Order” Democrats

[ailelie]

So I love Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake. I'd put it in my top 20 books easily (maybe top 10, but that'd require more thought).

The premise is that the universe contracts a bit and time rewinds. Everyone is thrown back in time and they have to live out their days doing the exact same things they did the first time. They cannot change a single word or gesture. They're unable to.

And I love that idea. A thing I see go around every now and then is a post about how you never know when will be the last time you hug someone or speak to them. But in Timequake, you do. You cannot change what you've said or done, but in that moment, you know. This is it.

It reminds me also of the Borges story about Don Quixote. I forget the title. Anyway, in it, a man re-writes Don Quixote. Every single word is the same, but it is his authorship. And because of that, the book is inherently changed.

In that story, in Timequake, the moments don't change. The picture. The story. The words. None of it changes. Everything is exactly the same. But our perspective is different.

We cannot change the angry words we threw at someone not knowing they were the last ones we'd ever exchange. We cannot change the hard look in our eyes or the sneer on our lips. But we can know and still treasure that moment because it is the last.

Something about that is heartbreaking. Something about is beautiful.

[moontyger]

We're Talking About the Minimum Wage All Wrong

As the Fight for $15 movement has escalated over the past few years, winning higher minimum wage laws across the country, the most common criticism on the right has been that such policies will lead to job loss. After San Francisco raised its minimum wage, people freaked out about lost jobs. After Seattle raised its minimum wage, people freaked out about lost jobs. And after New York City raised its minimum wage—you guessed it—people freaked out about lost jobs.

But the entire framing around lost jobs—which centers the conversation around what would be the worst-case scenario for workers, rather than the benefit that the large majority would get from higher wages—is part of the issue. In a new report out today, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argues that “minimum wage proposals are being evaluated as worthwhile only if researchers can prove that there will be no job loss and no negative costs of the policy for low-wage workers,” which is a standard that is “distinctly different than the conversations evaluating every other type of economic policy.”

According to EPI, even the typical image of “job loss”—in which a worker who was adversely affected would have no earnings for the year—is not entirely accurate. “The more likely scenario,” the report’s authors write, “is that what is lost are job hours, and that these lost hours are spread among the affected workers, who work a little less but earn more per year.”

None of this addresses the obvious fact that the quality of employment, in an era where Uber drivers are sleeping in their cars and Amazon warehouse workers are dying on the job, should be as important a goal as employment itself.