The Copyeditor's Desk

They write, they edit, is there anything they can't do? Surf. They cannot surf.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

January Writing Post 2

(Readable link for image below.)

Where do you find inspiration for your stories?

I’ve been reading since I was young. My parents were both avid readers. They even bought a house once solely because it had floor to ceiling bookshelves in the living/dining room. :) Anyway, I wasn’t introduced to fantasy until high school where one of my English electives was Science Fiction & Fantasy. I had always read realistic books. That’s what my parents had around and that’s what they had me read in school. This class really opened my eyes to the potential for imagination that writing held.

Since then, I have read fantasy books somewhat regularly. Of course, there are also a few decent films. I definitely draw my inspiration from the genre, but I also have been inspired by other things I’ve read. In particular, the class I took last year on literary theory definitely helped prepare me to develop many of the ideas in the book I’m writing.

Your turn: If you are a writer, where do you find inspiration? If you are a reader, do you have a favorite genre?

Cross-posted on Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

January Writing

(If you go to the author’s post on Mastodon, they have written the questions in a feed there. It is readable.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am coming to this a little late. I just found it the other night on Mastodon.

I likely will not complete all of these prompts, at least not publicly. I will think about all of them and write out my thoughts within my writing file. However, I have not fleshed out everything in my story yet. I am still in that process. These prompts have given me a lot to think about, however.

1. Introduce yourself and your WIP with a theme song.

I really thought I had an immediate answer for this, but then I looked through my story playlist and couldn’t decide between a few.  These are my top two contenders:

Absolute Zero by Stone Sour

Or

ON by BTS

I have eclectic tastes. 

Cross-posted on Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Photos from 2022

Here are some photos from the year. I got bored with trying to write about them so make up your own stories. :) Also, there is a 10 image limit with the tumblr app so there is not one from each month.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Day One

There is a temptation to have a New Year's Resolution even though I know they do not work. People all around me still believe that there is something magical about January 1st. Their optimism is almost contagious. However, no matter how well-intentioned, they will almost all fail. I suppose one could argue that it's the "trying" that matters. In some things, I imagine that is the case.

The truth is, it doesn't matter. All the hope we have for the new year is empty unless we come together to change things. We have been convinced that we must "go it alone" and “be the hero of our own story.” That lie is what ultimately fails us all. We are not meant to live so apart from others. We are supposed to live in community, to be a true support for one another. One might point to their religion, and I would counter with, "lose all you have and become homeless." You find out very quickly, at least in the US, that religion is not real community. (BTDT.)

Likewise, the state will not help us. Our rulers are beholden to their billionaire benefactors. Hoping they will do something to help us is vain hope. The short time they were of any use to us is over, and it's obviously never coming back. We have no choice but to save each other.

I know what it looks like. We all do. In fact, it was just in the news out of Buffalo. People came together to help each other survive, doing simple things like bringing people into their homes or small businesses and keeping them warm and fed. Craig Elston, Merry Christmas Jay, and, very significantly, Sha'Kyra Aughtry. What an amazing story of care and compassion. Capitalism cannot do any of those things. But we can.

I do not know how to bring it about, however. I do not know how to convince us to join together and help one another. I have conversations with other people in dire straits, and I leave it open; I hint heavily, and many times, I just outright say it. But no one does it. Is it because it is too much for us to imagine? Or is the fear of the other that we've been raised with so large that we cannot cross that line?

I wish I had a solution. I wish I could find enough like-minded people. Whenever I read in the news about a family who has had to flee Texas because of their anti-trans laws, I think it would be keen if I could help those who can't reasonably afford to get to Cali (where trans care is your right). We could get a big old house and we’d be able to afford rent together. Then we'd have shelter. The rest is easy after that. Really, it is that simple. I've been doing this for a while, and a permanent place to live is the one thing no one wants to help you with. They'll give you clothes, provide you off-brand canned goods, and even money for petrol for your car, but they will absolutely not give you a place to live. A place to live is where getting on your feet starts. It’s difficult to focus on a job or your mental health and addiction problems when you have to worry about where you will sleep tonight.

But there aren't enough people who can see past whatever "it" is that stands in their way. And there aren't enough people who have the means to help us combined with the will to do so. Instead, it is a NIMBY fight, even, and especially, in liberal neighborhoods. They prefer to gentrify a city rather than help its residents. They'd rather step over the homeless people outside their gated community than demand the city/state/fed governments help the people.

And that is where I will leave it. Because I have no solutions that anyone with any modicum of privilege is willing to assist. My only hope is that I make people uncomfortable when they read this and that the next time this issue is raised locally, they will finally take a stand for those in need.

Cross-posted on Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Capital’s Lie of a Social Contract

[C]apital, without moral and without scruples, can only function behind a moral superstructure, and whoever revives this public morality (through indignation, renunciation, etc.) works spontaneously for the order of capital.

Jean Baudrillard, “The Procession of Simulacra,” trans. Sheila Faria Glaser

It has been difficult for me to believe that anything will be done to Trump as a result of the most recent investigations. He is a white, wealthy male in the United States. This country was created for people like him, and it is run by people like him, for people like him. It's so brazen and well-known that I do not feel compelled to guide you to the statistics of rich vs. poor in the world's largest carceral system.

But lately, I've begun to think it might happen. Not that justice will be served in any sense of the word, only that the system is about to scapegoat Trump as a sacrifice to us.

It seems pretty obvious now that Trump has been cast aside following the midterm elections. The former blowhard in chief has been replaced in the minds of the Right by someone who has gone even further Right than Trump, Ron DeSantis as the Republican golden man-child. However, the midterms showed a weakness in the Right's open shift towards fascism. There are still voters around the country who are willing to show up, even in a run-off election, in an attempt to curtail our descent into what will surely be a descent into hell for our nation's marginalized communities. How fast that descent will happen remains to be seen.

So something must be done. Those in power will not be dictated to by the average voter. Nor will they succumb to the ideals that ordinary people have been led to believe this nation stands for. The ruling class must act to convince us that power can still be used in our favor. And Trump is the perfect fall guy. He is someone they can afford to cast aside in their quest to make sure that we continue to believe the lie that this was ever a country built for the needs of the ordinary person.

There are many reasons why Trump is the perfect pick. His failures in the midterms will be cited, even openly. We will be told that it is evident Trump no longer holds sway in the Republican Party (we are already hearing this from corporate media). They will explain that the Party needs new, younger blood. Boomers are out, Gen X (nearly a millennial) is in.

Age, in fact, is an integral part of what might happen. To sacrifice one of their own, they cannot use a younger person, say, Marco Rubio or Rand Paul. Sentencing them to prison would not offer them the opportunity to commute the sentence due to deteriorating health--something I fully expect to see if Trump is tried and convicted. It also allows the corporate media to promote the Hollywood (imaginary) idea that you cannot outrun the law forever. Eventually, it will catch up with you. Much like the Christian idea of Hell, this illusory promise causes the oppressed to hold to some sort of justice--even if that justice is at a far future time. And, much like Hell, it is meant to keep us content with the lack of justice in the here and now.

After the conviction, while we are dancing in the streets, the ruling class will breathe a sigh of relief. They will have maintained our belief in the social order that does not genuinely exist. We will think that capital has upheld its end of the social contract. In fact, capital "was never linked by a contract to the society it dominates" (Baudrillard). It is all smoke and mirrors; it is the man behind the curtain in the hall of the "great and terrible Oz." It is an act, a show to entertain us and to keep us compliant.

When it happens, if it happens, ask the question: Who will benefit from this action the most? Don't buy the surface explanation. You won't have to scratch too deeply into the skin of the performance to find the truth.

Cross-posted on Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Christmas at Port Hueneme

This is our first Christmas in VenCo. We have traveled to the central coast for about ten years for holidays and beach visitations, but living here is new. Since moving to SoCal 35 years ago, I have always lived inland. So I was very excited to spend yesterday evening photographing at Port Hueneme Pier.

My laptop is still in the shop. (It literally fell apart two days before the end of term. Finals and work were so much fun.😭) As a result, all I have access to at the moment are the pics from my phone. One day I will learn to use the wifi feature on my 35mm.

Needless to say, Christmas Day in SoCal was much warmer than in the rest of the country. It’s not always like this; sometimes, we have torrential downpours, floods, and mudslides for the day.

My kids opted to stay home and play video games. Initially upset, I had such a lovely time quietly walking on the shore and watching the waves that I can’t say I missed them. Their loss, anyway.

Cross posted at Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Great (Imaginary) Expectations

Def. Social Contract: An implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example (sic) by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects. (Oxford Languages)

Author's Note: I do not dislike holidays, but I am a realist.

My favorite question to ask about anything is, "who benefits from it?" Last term's media literacy class emphasized this question, so now I'm validated. Investigating this question will either lead to incredible freedom or spiral you into an existential crisis.

So, Christmas. Who benefits? More specifically, who benefits from this false notion that Christmas is a time of peace, kindness, and love, a time when people come together and enjoy a happy respite from the demands and stresses of everyday life?

The obvious answer to this question is corporations that (or should I use 'who' since corporations are now human, according to the US Supreme Court?) benefit monetarily from the belief that we can buy things to make each other happy. Corporations are not the only benefactors, however.

Christian religions also receive more attention at Christmas. This attention leads to more donations (tithes) from church members and people who often have no affiliation except at the two major Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter. It doesn't hurt that these donations can be written off on taxes in the US, at least if one owns property and/or gives enough to meet the minimum requirement.

Money is not the only positive for churches; they often use the loneliness people experience during the holiday to make the false promise of community to those in need. Churches can also use this time to 'encourage' their members to commit themselves further to the cause, to show unity in the face of supposed opposition from the world, and, ultimately, to go along with the church's teaching. It is a time to remind their members that if they buck the system, the consequences will be separation from the 'body' and, eventually, eternal damnation. Fear is a great motivator.

Who else benefits? Society benefits. Christmas is when we pretend that our rulers are fulfilling their end of the social contract that is supposed to bind us together. Because of this need to prove that he was fulfilling the social contract, Greg Abbott bused people from Texas to the frigid temperatures of the US capital without adequate clothing or other provisions. We have been convinced that the boogie-man society has created of minorities is much worse than the reality of millions of Texans repeatedly finding themselves without power during terrible winter storms. The voters, convinced that immigrants make all their troubles, will believe Abbott has kept his end of the social contract; meanwhile, they and their neighbors freeze to death.

Finally, the family benefits from these expectations. Social media is filled with posts from people who lament the need to be with their blood family during the holidays. Many have been severely abused, or their family refuses to acknowledge their LGBTQIA+' status,' among other things. But society and corporations insist that this is a "family" holiday and that those who do not give in to the pressure to attend gatherings and pretend all is well are the real problem.

These expectations make no sense in the US when corporations, the government, society, churches, and families often insist that we solve our real problems without help. Homelessness, poverty, hunger, abuse, medical needs, etc., are not problems that those who enforce the social contract are interested in helping people with.

Question for further study: Does it make sense for the ordinary person to keep up their end of the social contract when society/government/church/family do not?

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

My entire “editing department” is on holiday until 2 Jan.

Cross-posted on Post.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Research thoughts:

I read an article on racism and credit scores while researching for a piece I'm working on tentatively titled "Credit Scores Are the New Redlining." Following that down the research rabbit hole led me to the pronatalist movement in the early 1900s. I was not surprised that the words of the Eugenicists behind the movement sounded a whole lot like the anti-abortion folks in our present time.

As someone who grew up in Fundamentalism and was a part of the so-called pro-life movement, I thought about how we were told that being pro-life was actually anti-racist. But following the timeline from 1900 to today, there is a direct connection between eugenics and anti-choice. I do not believe the majority of those who are against abortion and women's rights are aware of this fact. It, like all racism in the Church, has been white-washed, and the members are reluctant to look behind the curtain for fear that the great and powerful Oz is just a weak and sniveling old man.

I also think the history has been so neatly obscured that even many who are pro-choice do not really understand what is happening. They think it's only about controlling all women. (And some actually believe that it's only about saving babies.) That is only a small part of it. If you listen to their arguments against abortion, one is that "if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex." The other goes hand in hand: "if you can't afford a child, don't get pregnant." So sexual pleasure is only for the wealthy, and if you push them far enough, they will admit it's only for the rich whites deemed worthy. They have to be physically and "mentally" fit. (I use quotes around that because I think the mental fitness of the rich is dubious.)

It is always fascinating to look up from my research and see that I'm miles away from where I started, yet I'm still on the right track. I believe this is because researching issues that affect the marginalized in the US always leads back to our racist roots. (I once researched comparisons between TERF ideology and the Puritans, and there are a few similarities.) And, of course, further back to the bizarre human assertion that "my religion is better than your religion; therefore I must hate you and kill you if at all possible."

Last summer, I read The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal. His observations of bonobos in the wild showed that bonobos were far more cooperative and less violent than their chimp cousins who had been separated from them by a river. Waal pointed directly toward the difference in resources. Bonobos had what they needed, whereas chimps suffered from scarcity.

We marginalize others because those in power make us believe that we will somehow receive a blessing if we do. They use the scarcity they have created to divide us. In the US, this plays out as poor and middle-class whites embracing racism, either openly or unconsciously. Our contempt against those who are more marginalized than we is dark humor at its worst. Why we believe that joining the rich in their hatred for minorities will benefit us is beyond me. It never has; a simple perusal of history will show us that. But, as with the pro-life movement, people do not want to look too deeply into it. Truth is a terrifying thing. And the truth is, they hate you and me as much as they hate minorities.

Reads:

Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States 1890-1938.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/904674

Why Credit Scores are Racist.

https://medium.com/commonfuture/why-credit-scores-are-racist-da109fcfb300

The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among Primates.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4487598

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

I’ve decided, after reading about the mess at Twitter yesterday, that I would join Mastodon as an act of solidarity. After taking a break at finals, I decided to not return to Twitter because some anti-trans people were starting to sound more violent and, considering what those people do, I felt it was just safer to not bother with the platform anymore. Yesterday, however, was too much. It got messier on Twitter faster than I thought it would. When I saw that Musk had banned Mastodon along with many reporters, and apparently any person who posted an article about him written by one of those reporters, I felt it was my duty ;) to sign up and push the number up one.

All that to say, here is my Mastodon account: @[email protected]

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Author note: I’ve left Twitter, but I will try to constrain my rants. (That’s what Twitter is for, right?)

‘Respect’

The news is that Trump was/is in debt beyond his eyeballs. A huge risk factor for a politician. Especially since he was in debt to a company with North Korean ties when he became president. He made money off his role as President. His son-in-law got billions for Trump going soft on the Saudi prince for the murder/dismembership of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist. Trump is currently secluded in his fancy schmancy golf course where he also kept top secret files he stole when he left the White House.

And you? If you’re like me, you can’t find a place to live, you can’t afford food, car repairs or health issues have sunk you, but you’d better abide by the rules or else you’ll be facing arrest and prison.

The powerful do not respect you. They are not your friend. The system was created for them and you are just here to work and make them richer.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Posting from the app because, well, read on, you’ll see. And forgive any typos and poor communication, my entire crew of editors is off for five weeks so I’m winging it. :)

“No Deity is ‘Out to Get You’”

Finals week this semester was as terrible as the semester, and I suppose that's only fitting. It would probably be depressing if everything went smoothly the last week after the previous 15 weeks had been a waking nightmare. I'm not the only one feeling this way. It's been a challenging term for almost every student I spoke with since September.

Finals week for me, though, was a bit over the top.

OK, so to start and finish, when I submitted my final papers, the computer submitted only the first saved draft. I'm not sure if that is a stupid feature with auto-save or if it was related to my other fun moment, namely when my laptop fell apart. So I spent the week having mini heart attacks when I would see Fs on all my papers. Fortunately, most of my profs notified me. I suppose this is why some older profs still insist on a paper copy.

So, yeah, my laptop fell apart. Was that Thursday morning? I think so. Because Wednesday night, I was busy getting my van towed because it was dead too. I'm glad it lasted until I didn't need to drive to campus. I worked from home on Thurs and Fri; a good thing about modern life, if only it were all good, eh?

That's the short of it.

I was relieved, as I always am when life goes to hell, that I gave up religion. Fundamentalism makes you paranoid, and everything that goes wrong in your life is either a punishment or god "teaching" you to let go of the world and cling to him. *vomit* Of course, any atheist will say this is bunk. Still, when we leave religion, it sometimes takes religion a while to leave us.

After I left and started talking with other ex-religionists, I was surprised that they almost all said the same thing, "I miss the spirituality, the feelings of closeness to something outside myself." This sentiment is the sort of thing that confused me even when I was religious. I was surrounded by people who claimed to have been "touched" by god and felt his presence, peace, whatever you have, but I have never had a spiritual experience. I am not wired that way, and I'm too skeptical. Also, highly strung people hearing voices in their heads and feeling a physical touch from an invisible person make me more than a little nervous.

But I had my own religious hanger-on. I still carried the paranoia. Everything terrible that happened to us still felt like we were somehow singled out for the pain. It wasn't easy to deal with. When things went poorly, I reacted in the extreme because of the paranoia. I would be so angry and then strung out on the pain that I could barely function.

Finally, at some point during our time trapped in the house for nearly two years, it dawned on me that life just sucks. The US is a capitalistic cesspool. Everyone will suffer because no one who cares has the time or resources to do anything about the problems. The rich do not give a fuck about anyone but themselves. So, yeah, all of our lives are going to suck.

Why does this matter?

Well, it matters because when something terrible happens, and I have my mini heart attack, I can recover in a very short period of time. I was surprised, this time around how, after dealing with each problem, I was able to calm down almost immediately. It was nice.

It takes a long time to undo 45 years of brainwashing. But, eventually, it can happen.

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

No Time to Die: The Ultimate Male Fantasy Fulfillment

(Posting this for a friend who wanted to read it.)

Art imitates life. If an artist wants to be successful, they copy what they see in society. This has been true in Hollywood from its inception. Films, with rare exceptions, reflect the sentiments of colonial culture—both American and British, and the political viewpoints of its leaders. They also reflect the cultural beliefs of the dominant group: generally cis, white, straight men. These two ideals converge in the myriad of action films churned out in Hollywood and London over multiple decades. One of the most popular of these franchises, if not the most popular, is James Bond. In the 007 films are found the convergence of everything the dominant culture holds to: the aggressive man dominating the world around him, taking out the enemy by preferably violent means, and, most of all, holding sway over the women he encounters. The success at the box office, grossing in the triple-digit millions for most films, shows how much people want to watch this sort of man. Using psychoanalytic theory and Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, this essay will look at the most recent Bond film, No Time to Die. It will show that the Bond films continue to be successful because the audience wants to be a part of the fantasy it creates, power over beautiful women, no consequences real for impulsive behavior, and unquestioned male authority. 

A film is successful as it satisfies the audience's need to watch, in a voyeuristic way. Mulvey argues that the Hollywood style “arose…from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure” (Mulvey 24). Bond films fill this audience's need by shooting in exotic locations and parading exotic women across the screen. The viewer is never sure which woman Bond will bed, but they are all a possibility and that excites the audience. The women are not there to further the plot, only to provide the audience with voyeuristic pleasure (24). In No Time to Die, Bond has several women he can choose from. The first is Madeleine, but she is a given because she was his girlfriend in the previous film, Spectre. The other two women, Nomi, the new 007, and Paloma, a CIA agent, both create tension for the audience because they know that Bond could have both of them. Even if he does not, in the dark of the theater, their presence still fulfills the fantasy of watching. 

After a flashback scene at the opening of No Time to Die, the film moves into the present with Madeleine and James at an exotic location, ostensibly enjoying James’s retirement from MI6. While at first it might not be noticed by the casual viewer of Bond films, Madeleine has been transformed from the woman in Spectre who went to a meeting in the desert in an alluring evening gown and high heels. Here, she dresses attractively but in a more demure style (NTTD 00:07:25). This is followed by a subdued love scene that ends in Madeleine wearing James’s t-shirt (00:07:53). That trope is the sign of submission in a male-female sexual relationship. Bond has conquered Madeleine. She can be looked at, she is still attractive, but she is off-limits, even to the audience because she belongs to him. This still fulfills the fantasy because it lets the audience know that the woman can be conquered. If the man keeps pushing, she will ultimately abandon her independence if that’s what it takes to be with him. The other two women in the movie dress far more provocatively. Nomi, the new 007, meets Bond in a cut-off tube top that draws attention to her sexuality (NTTD 0:37:43). Paloma, the CIA agent, is introduced to Bond in Cuba and wears a revealing evening gown (0:45:00). As the film progresses, Madeleine is revealed to have had a child, at which point her clothing changes even more dramatically, and she now looks like a television mom (01:34:35). She’s attractive, but she is a mom. That is not what the audience wants in a fantasy, so Madeleine’s wardrobe must succumb to the image Hollywood has created of the mother. As Mulvey explains, she has “become his property, losing her glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexuality…her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone” (29). She is his, and she has submitted so much as to bear his child.

Though Bond conquered Madeleine and can claim her as his own, it does not necessarily mean he feels he has control over her. At the beginning of the film, when an agent of Spectre attempts to murder Bond, the man tells James that Madeleine is working with them and that she is the one who has sold him out. He immediately believes the man who is trying to kill him. In a way, this hearkens back to the Bond of the first three Craig films and his constant struggle with M, his boss and a woman. Because he can never bring her into submission to him, he never fully trusts her until her final days, when Bond feels he can rescue her and possibly expects that this will help him finally gain the dominance he’s always wanted. However, later in No Time to Die, James meets with Blofeld, who in Spectre revealed that he had spent a lifetime taking away everyone James loved or cared about. Blofeld tells him that he is the one who set up James, not Madeleine (01:30:50). Almost inconceivably, James also believes him. Mulvey states that in psychoanalytic terms, “the female figure poses a deeper problem…her lack of a penis, thus the threat of castration” (29). When looked at that way, two things could be understood. The first is that James had trusted his first lover, Vesper. In Casino Royale, he left MI6 to be with her (02:02:55). She thus castrated him. Because it turned out that Vesper was working for his enemies, Bond had since not completely trusted women he was close to. By No Time to Die, Bond would rather trust his enemy than ever chance being castrated by a woman again.

In her essay, Mulvey does not touch on Freud’s id, ego, and superego theory.  James Bond, however, very much meets the definition of id. The id is the “impulsive part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts” (McCleod 1). Bond, acting on his instincts, is the one who drives the action of the story forward (Mulvey 28). While the audience might appreciate the battle between Bond and the villain, or Bond and a woman, his ability to almost always do the right thing on instinct alone feeds the Hollywood “language of the patriarchal order” (24). In that order, the man is at his best when he follows through on his instincts, not giving thought to consequences but trusting in his absolute rightness. In No Time to Die, Bond proves himself to still be as impulsive and disrespectful for MI6 rules as he was in the first Craig-Bond film, Casino Royale. In a scene where Bond attempts to strangle Blofeld while he is in prison, Bill Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff, pulls Bond off and admonishes him that he is “violating the most important rule in the whole bloody playbook” (NTTD 1:32:15). Tanner’s words are almost verbatim what M  told him in Casino Royale after he had attacked an embassy, “you violated the only absolutely inviolable rule in international relationships” (00:23:18). Bond has never matured. He has never grown out of his id phase. The audience lives out their fantasy of never having to play by the rules and yet still succeeding, being wanted by beautiful women, and winning in the end.

The end of No Time to Die is different from any other Bond film. As in all Bond movies before, James fights the bad guy and wins. He then gets Madeleine to acquiesce and admit that her daughter is his child, thus conquering the last thing she had held out from him and making her wholly his. Both these scenes give the audience the pleasure they were expecting. Bond is “ascertaining guilt…, asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness” (Mulvey 29). However, he makes a decision no Bond before ever made. In the end, he chooses to die. However, the most bizarre thing about his death is that it wasn’t necessary. Bond impulsively decides that the island where the bad guy was producing his chemical weapon should be destroyed (NTTD 02:17:15). This, despite the fact that they do not even know if bombs could destroy the chemical. No one questions Bond. Q, who is the supposed know-all genius of MI6, doesn’t mention this fact. M, the head of MI6, doesn’t give an alternative. Despite the problem of the bombs possibly making the chemical airborne or allowing it into the ocean surrounding the island, everyone goes along with Bond’s impulsive plan. Bond now has total control over each person that surrounds him. Even his superior simply goes along with it. It is the ultimate patriarchal fantasy. The world and people around the man submit unquestioningly. In the end, however, his irrational decision is what causes his death. Even in death, though, Bond retains his power. Without remorse or regret, he climbs to the top of the compound so he can watch his death approach. He is the ultimate man’s man now. The audience who know their own mortality can enjoy the fantasy that when their time comes, they will face it in the same manner, without fear or regret.

There is one other reason Bond had to die at the end of this film. The writers know their audience, and the last thing the typical Bond fan wants is to watch his hero settle down into the domestic life promised to Bond by having a child. That would be the ultimate castration. He would no longer command the world around him but be required to meet the needs of a family. Audiences flock to Bond to forget about their ordinary lives: the bills, the parent-teacher conferences, the battles over vegetables at the dinner table. Leaving the theater knowing that Bond had become like them would forever ruin the fantasy that keeps the male audience afloat amid their everyday problems, that someday they might become as free of the common as Bond is. By having Bond die at the end, the writers give the audience one last fantasy fulfillment: completely being free of all their responsibilities. Bond is dead. He will not have to do any of the mundane things that the patriarchy views as women’s work. Bond’s death saves him from complete castration.

By viewing No Time to Die through the psychoanalytic lens James Bond becomes more than a collection of action films to enjoy. In this lens it becomes obvious how No Time to Die and the other films are a way Hollywood perpetuates the patriarchal norms of Western society. The films not only fulfill the audience’s voyeurist needs, they reinforce the man’s rightness in all things and the woman’s roll as his subject to use as he pleases. In turn, the male audience can participate in the fantasy that there is a way to avoid the castration they fear from the women around them. 

Works Cited

Casino Royale. Directed by Martin Campbel, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007.

McCleod, Saul. “Id, Ego and Superego.” Simply Psychology, 2021. www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality, edited by John Caughie and Annette Kuhn, 1992, pp. 22-34.

No Time to Die. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, MGM, 2021.

Spectre. Directed by Sam Mendes, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2016. 

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Neutrality

Whenever I begin a venture like this one, I swear to keep it neutral. It doesn't take long, however, before something happens to thrust me out of comfortable neutrality. The tepid, calm waters where professionals say we should remain feel unnatural to my skin as soon as I hear the calls from the stormy waters. I can only stay neutral as long as the world around me remains calm. And the world around me is never calm.

Injustice has always bothered me. I haven't always been right in my view of what injustice was. After all, I was raised in the alt-right, and that can skew your view, at least until you play their version of justice out to its logical conclusion and you are left with deeper and more scarring injustices.

Whenever something terrible occurs in the US, I wonder again at the Americans who can stomach remaining neutral and posting their happy, 'buy from me' IG and Twitter posts. For the past two years, the world has been burning down around us, so in a way, I can understand the desire to ignore it. However, it is a fool's decision to do so. Ignoring these problems is why they have grown as large as they are.

In the United States, there is a belief that if we are optimistic about things, life will be fine. It's the biggest lie, right up there with religion making everything good, but most feel the need to believe it. This, too, is understandable. Acknowledging that this country has problems with race, misogyny, and homophobia might be too much on top of the stress of trying to make ends meet, often working more than one job to do so.

I work, and I go to school full-time (which is like having another full-time plus a part-time job). I have five kids, each with their own medical needs. And those are just the stresses I'm willing to share publicly. This is not a "since I do it, so can you" statement. It is simply to say that, while I understand why people get overwhelmed, there comes a time when we must acknowledge that the stress is only made worse by what is going on around us.

There is likely no longer a good outcome for neutrality. It might carry us along for a short time and help us in business for a few years more, but neutrality is not maintainable in the long run. Even nations know that. The hazy lines that divided us over the past several decades were marked in ink after the presidential election in 2016. Despite what we'd like to believe, there is no more room in this country for the lie of neutrality.

However, this does not mean we must be cruel in our stance. Many people worry that they will have to become people who scream and spit on cops during protests. There are still many ways to take a stand. At the very least, if you use your online platform for your business, you could maintain a respectful silence on the worst days. It might even help you keep followers. I spent the day of the Uvalde shooting unfollowing every American who posted mundane content on their IG.

Of course, I do know that it can go the other way. You can lose followers when you post what you believe is right. I had to unfollow a Canadian site because the person supported a cause that was hurtful to abused women.

The silence is "amusing," especially if the silent are white. We whites always like to think that "if it had been us," none of the bad things would have happened. For example, "If I'd lived in Nazi countries, I would have helped Jewish people," or "I would have been anti-slavery and helped in the Underground Railroad." Yet, here we are, in a time when the rights in the US are being eroded faster than you can go to press; when the racism that has been rampant since before the nation's inception is being thrust into our face every day, and we are mostly silent. Sure, there are a few people who will put themselves on the line—that line being the potential of losing some followers and some business. It's easier to sit around the dinner table with friends and proclaim how brave we would have been.

The worst part is that the way to give voice to the problem has become more accessible. The internet has opened up avenues that nearly anyone with a public library within walking distance can use. There is no reason why white people should continue to be silent. We have privilege; even those of us below the poverty line benefit from our skin color to let us into areas barred to others.

Let's not be appalled anymore. Let's not simply spout, "Vote blue no matter who." We still have the opportunity to help, but we will not always. At the rate things are going, it is a sure bet that we will be a part of a group about whom future generations will ask as we haughtily ask of our white ancestors now, "Why didn't they say or do something?"

(Special thanks to @toffeecoffeedragon for all her help with this post and the previous one.)

[thecopyeditorsdesk]

Resistance

As I was looking through my books at the beginning of summer, something made me pick up the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I suppose it was my current circle of writing friends at work, as well as the fact that I was published in a school publication this year. I have never been published in anything, as far as I know. Pressfield’s book is all about the sort of resistance I (and all other artists) face. Resistance is anything, and I mean anything that keeps you from your art. It can be your bad attitude or it can be the enjoyable hours you spend playing computer solitaire. Essentially, anything that stops you is resistance. 

I’ve been making my way through at a pace of about 5 pages a day. It is set up in short segments, a bit like a religious devotional. Some of the “days” have only one paragraph, others fill up a  few pages. Things I have found interesting on my almost second time through (I didn’t finish the first time, but more on that later) are that I no longer agree with some of the more “kick yourself in the arse” phrases he uses. In fact, I find those counterproductive. I have learned enough in the last two years, or so, to know that self-compassion is always a better path. However, there are only a few such statements in the book that give that negative vibe, and I have been trying to learn how to read around those parts in all books of this nature.

At one point, and I assume this is where I must have stopped in my first reading, he writes about healing as a form of resistance to our art. He combats the idea that creativity is predicated by healing. According to Pressfield, we do not create from our injured part. I can see how, five years ago, this would have made me put the book aside. At the time, that was the only part I knew of, and I truly believed that was the source of all my work.. I did not understand that, as Pressfield insists, “the part that…needs healing is not the part we create from…The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof” (p 48-49). In short, the part we create from is Self. I had never heard of Self or Internal Family Systems or anything that would have led me to see that Pressfield was making the most important point of his book here. He goes on to say, “what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty?”

I have not written a creative work in months. The one I published was a reworking of a short story I wrote while still in community college. I told my fanfiction readers in January that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to write something creative again while in school because it seemed I could not get anything to work out. I have sat down many times to only stare at a blank screen or an old story that needs editing before posting, and never typed a single character. I let my blog domain expire because I start posts and leave them hanging in midair, suspended without ending, a gaping hole where the heart should be.

I write for school. I write brilliantly for school. And until recently I assumed that was how it had to be. It’s a huge stress to write for a grade, worse than any other type of public writing out there. My entire future depends on me getting it right. I’m not doing it for “likes,” I’m doing it for the almost un-acheivable act of financial independence. I’m doing it so I might be able to get us to a place, monetarily, where my kids won’t have to worry about where we will live next month, or next week. It is a weight comparable to that Atlas carries, because, in my world, it is just as important. Dropping it means definite demise.

There is a part, or parts, of me that shuts down almost all writing outside of school. Each other project I might work on is seen as a threat to that goal of graduation. Even journaling and self-reflection are not allowed. It’s ironic that this started last year, because I always feared this is what would happen if I went on medication for my anxiety and depression. I didn’t start those until December, long after my parts hijacked my creative processes for the sake of my end goal.

They mean well, parts. I can see the need to make sure I focus on the school work. I think, though, that the real source of all of this is fear. Not just the fear of failure at school, but fear of failure in my other writing pursuits. To write beyond the scope of the classroom assignment would put me in the realm beyond school, and, as much as I want to graduate, what comes after school is the biggest and most terrifying unknown of all. At school, I am safe. I know I will almost always be met with success because academia is one of the only places in the US where hard work is truly rewarded. Out there? I’ve been out there. It’s scary and cold and mean. If I just focus on my schoolwork, maybe I can just not think about the fact that in less than one year, I will be out there again. And this time much older and in a far worse economy than the one I left behind when I entered into this foray.

Resistance, in my case, looks like a lot of hard work, moving in the right direction, and improving my skills. All the while, I use it as a reason to give up all other writing so I can avoid thinking about anything outside of school. Because outside of school, life is uncertain. My parts probably would love it if I could stay in school forever, but that would be like a baby never being born and instead living its life out in the womb. One day, each of us alive had to leave that safe environment. Some of you came into something better, the rest of us hit the ground hard, but we all had no choice in the matter. It is the same at each step in our lives, we must move forward. After we were born, we did not resist that inborn desire to grow. We did not think to ourselves, “I will just sit in my cradle because who knows what will happen when I leave.” It came naturally.

As the years went by, well, I think we know what happened. The school of hard knocks does not teach resilience, only fear. Overcoming that fear is optional, and sometimes impossible. But life will move us forward regardless. What I have to decide is which is the better way to face the fear. Do I deny all but the present fear, or do I find a way to acknowledge each, the present and the future, so that when I get to the future, I might have less to fear.