On Boobs: The Trouble with Blurred Lines

I KNOW I KNOW.

Blogging 101: post regularly.

So I'm sorry. Won't happen again.

To apologize, here you go:

Unfortunately there is a problem with these boobs, and that is (a small) part on what stayed my hand from updating the blog. The problem with these boobs isn't the boobs themselves, or the ladies that are attached to them, or in my opinion the music video they are in, but the song the music video is for: Blurred Lines  by Robin Thicke.

Dammit but that's a catchy song, but as the internet quickly pointed out, this song has some pretty serious problems. I'm still not completely sure I've made up my mind about it, but having batted around ideas with enough smart people I can confidently say three things:

To all the people who directed their outrage at the models, you are jerks. JERKS. Who are you to tell any woman what she can and can't do with her body? Shaming beautiful women for appearing naked on camera is just reinforcing the idea that a naked woman is merely an object. The director, Diane Martel, gave an interview after the video came out regarding the controversy, and I think these models did a bang-up job fulfilling her vision:

I wanted to deal with the misogynist, funny lyrics in a way where the girls were going to overpower the men. Look at Emily Ratajkowski’s performance; it’s very, very funny and subtly ridiculing. That’s what is fresh to me. It also forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera, this is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position. I don’t think the video is sexist. The lyrics are ridiculous, the guys are silly as fuck. That said, I respect women who are watching out for negative images in pop culture and who find the nudity offensive, but I find [the video] meta and playful.

The foot-slap in the face, the lack of eye contact with the men in the video, the subtle eye rolls, all these elements combine to give the women in the video an aura of power and control.

So boo-yah ladies, well done. Please spend as much time naked as you want.

That said I come to my second point: Robin Thicke is a boob. AND NOT THE GOOD KIND.

Having read the interview above, I was prepared to defend the music video until I read this quote from Robin Thicke himself:

We tried to do everything that was taboo. Bestiality, drug injections, and everything that is completely derogatory towards women. Because all three of us are happily married with children, we were like, "We're the perfect guys to make fun of this." People say, "Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?" I'm like, "Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women."

It really did inspire a moment of pure speechlessness (which for this author is a blessed rarity).  So apparently Robin missed the point on this one. Which, upon giving the lyrics a closer look, is totally understandable because the man wrote a rapey song and didn't notice.

I know coercing a taken woman is not a new thing; it's a theme that's been written and sung about for ages, and at some level I think that's all Robin was shooting for. This does not make the line "I know you want it" that is looped through the whole song any less troubling. A friend of mine put it well when he said that the song removes the woman's agency; she is being propositioned but is never given a rebuttal, and is essentially being told that the singer knows what she wants better than she does. It just smacks too much of the disgusting idea that at some level a woman wants to be raped.

And then that jerkface just straight blows smoke in one of the model's faces during the video. I'm surprised Martel kept that.

I come to my final point: The culture that this was released into negates anything good Martel put into this video.

Briefly put, we weren't ready. This music video relied too heavily on subtle satire to justify itself, and the only thing most people took away from this video was OoooO NAKED LADIES and some bizarre idea that you can argue a woman into bed. Maybe in a few years we can appreciate Martel's intent for this music video, but in the meantime too many idiots (like Robin) just aren't getting it.

Boobs are wonderful. Let's treat them well.

Screw you Robin Thicke.

On Boardgames: a review of Legendary, the Slightly-Rubbish Deck Building Game

As far as board games go, I generally prefer there to not actually be a board involved. Deck builders are my absolute favorite. I'm also a screaming nerd when it comes to Marvel comics, so when I found this bad boy at my local game shop I made embarrassing squeaky noises and jumped up and down. It was relatively pricey as far as games go but it had Deadpool. So pffft.

I bought the thing and 80 bajillion card sleeves.

Setting up this game will take you into retirement age, especially if you let your dumb friends pick their favorite superheroes. If you make my classic mistake and do not read the rules AT ALL before you invite people to play with you, you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to decipher rules that have obviously been written by an immigrant kindergartner. 

That said, the game moves pretty quickly and is silly easy to learn. Cards are pulled from a giant Bad Guy Deck and you fight them, and cards are pulled from a giant Good Guy Deck and you buy them. It's a classic deck builder in a lot of ways, mainly in that you have two mechanics: fight stuff and buy stuff, and you have to balance them. 

The game creators gave their superheroes plausible abilities which I think adds to the game flavor, like for example The Hulk hurts himself and everybody else a bunch but then turns that into damage. Superheroes gain special abilities when you group them with similar types, so if you flood your deck with all X-Men or all Avengers you can get some pretty neat ability stacks. I wish there would have been some indicator of this in the rules, such as it is exponentially harder to defeat Magneto if you have no X-Men in play. But the rule book barely even told you how to play, so there's that.  The way the mastermind works is pretty ingenious with thematic scary things happening whenever the Bad Guy Deck activates him or his Scheme. Some are vastly harder than others, and depending which superheroes you've let your dumb friends pick they can  be significantly easier or more difficult to defeat. 

If you thought setting up this game took a long time, eventually you will have to put it all back. And then you will know the true meaning of the word forever. 

So all in all I quite like it. The long-ass setup and take-down is a pretty serious deterrent, but overall it's got great re-play potential and the learning curve isn't too steep. It falls into the category of simple rules - complex strategy games I love so much. That said it wasn't epic; the game mechanics are a bit blah. It's almost like someone threw comic art at Ascension. 

Oh, and the box it originally came with is infuriatingly designed to dump everything into a big slurry of bullshit the moment you move it. Which, as a game made out of eleventy-million cards, is generally enough to send me straight into a murderous rage. I highly suggest either putting it into a card box or one of the expansion boxes. 

On Books: You should read books all day long.

So I love books. I love starting them, finishing them, talking about them while drunk, hearing about them from drunk people.

 Books are lovely. Even the terrible ones are lovely. Twilight is complete trash and I fed it to my rodents but it was also wonderful. If that twat can get published well then hope is not dead for the rest of us. Even the rodents couldn't quite choke it down completely; there's still a bit of the spine getting crapped on in the corner under the water bottle.

 I got a Kindle and it's just not the same. On the one hand I had an entire library ratting around in my purse, it stayed charged for a billion years and I never had to worry about getting pizza sauce on the pages. I can also read complete trash without anybody ever knowing. Sadly this also meant I could never show off whenever I decide to re-tackle Atlas Shrugged before admitting that I'm actually a terrible person who will probably never finish it. You also can't force Kindle books on your friends which is my absolute favorite thing to do.

Just finished Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World and that man is a goddamn genius. I then proceeded to get all action-novel happy and burnt through his almost-as-awesome Angelmaker. I'm currently working on reviews of those two books, and then I'll go through John Dies at the End  and This Book Is Full of Spiders.

At least that's the plan. Let's hope I don't go all Atlas Shrugged up in here.