Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Kracklite,
I wonder what the upcoming John Carter will be like in its treatment of Dejah Thoris?
Since we're talking about a Disney joint, 1) her costume is probably going to be more extensive than four paper napkins and a roll of dental floss and 2) "I will outage your honour, repeatedly" will not the standard Barasoomian greeting to the well-endowed Princess you've just kidnapped.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to papango,
But I like it, and I know I'm not the only one.
Of course not, and as Idiot/Savant has noted most Ministerial office are actually pretty good and/or lifting their game on the OIA compliance front. But damn, some can really bear to do better and others (yes, I'm looking at you Mr. Brownlee) need the judicious application of a blowtorch - 54.8% of requests answered within the 20-day deadline is still unacceptable, but better than 39.7% the previous year. If nothing else, it's in Gerry's best (political) interest not to feed the perception that he's got anything to hide.
I don't mean to dump on people who are doing their jobs, and doing them with the utmost professionalism and integrity. I worked as an OOP staffer for a list MP for a couple of years, and know full well it's not a delightful roundelay of expense account liquid lunches at Logan-Brown, PPV hotel porn and dodgy tilers. More like dealing with severely distressed constituents, drafting letters and dealing with the occasional outburst of unpleasantness through the mails.
But if anything, it's the public servants who make the effort that are being let down by folks who treat the OIA as a joke.
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Another really weird show on the “strong female character” front was Lost – was it just me or was Kate, the well-telegraphed ‘bad-ass chick’ in the pilot, wasted on a soul-suckingly annoying triangle I just didn’t care about. That show had an awful lot of women with Louis Vuitton-quality Boyfriend/Husband Baggage. (Though, to make things a little more complicated, nearly all of them get their moment of Ripley-level Bad-Assery Too.)
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Emma Hart,
For me my first serious waver was Angela’s Disappearing Bisexuality. But man, giving every female character a child is a sign a show is going really, really well, right?
Ah, the Year of The Has-bian. At Seattle Grace, Erica Hahn changed from a career-obsessed ball-breaking bitch to a career-obsessed ball-breaking dyke (yay!) who hooked up with Pathetic George’s wife and promptly got disappeared to a Prisoner-style village for exes of only-slightly-bisexual TV women. Over at Princeton-Plainboro notionally bisexual ‘Thirteen’ provided new frontiers for Gregory House’s sociopathic douchebaggery. Obligatory ex-girlfriend in peril episode, and back to the cock!
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to nzlemming,
Yup, me too. Plus the whole cannibal arc – blech
I'm not the only person who had a lot of "what the fuck, no really... what the fuck?" angst about that. More often than you might think, you see shows doing arcs that don't work (for all kinds of reasons) but they're stuck with them - you've got to play it out and come up with as graceful a resolution as quickly as you can manage. But that whole Gormagon thing was a pretty extreme example - from the start it was tonally wrong for the show, and the pay-off involved randomly throwing a core cast member under the bus.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Charlie Jane Anders is a high quality geek – but I think she makes a good point and it’s not that far from the point made up-thread about Homeland skirting a hell of a lot of dodgy tropes around “magical mental illness”. (It's a damn good show, but fair point.)
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Maybe I’m being harsh, but I don’t really call slapping a Chinese name on characters played by solidly white actors who very occasionally swear in Mandarin “bi-racial”.
I one had a rather interesting (read: fraking bizarre) conversation about the supposedly “white-washed” BSG. Yeah, apart from the male lead being Edward James Olmos. Apparently Kandyse McClure, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Allesandro Juiliani and Rekha Sharma didn’t really count either. Which is in no way kinda-sorta-really racist.
Then again it was a show that, intentionally or not, really brought geek misogyny all the way out of the closet. Educational but unpleasant.
They fly in a spaceship and we accept that as part of the story even though all we actually see is graphics.
Hell, we're also expected to accept that The Firefly/Serenity 'verse is one impossibly jam-packed solar system. What the hell, I've been suspending my disbelief over Doctor Who for over three quarters of my life so it's too damn late to demanding strict plausibility from my SF. :)
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to nzlemming,
The Act specifically precludes fishing expeditions. For one who complains about others playing the man, not the ball, you surely indulge in a fair amount yourself, Craig. Please keep your contributions civil.
Mark: I was being dismissive towards a mindset – and one I’ve had far too much direct experience of for my comfort, which I thought was perfectly clear. If Izogi feels my comment was in any way personally abusive, s/he should feel free to contact me privately and I will issue a sincere and fulsome apology my return post.
Meanwhile, I remain unconvinced that a high volume of OIA requests from media outlets or Opposition parties fail to meet the “due particularity” test of section 12(2) of the relevant act unless they’re randomly generated word salad. (**ETA:** Thanks, Keir. I think we can all grant the Office of The Ombusmen know their arse from their elbows on this.)
I doubt anyone goes into the public service dreaming of spending their lives processing OIA requests. But it is a legal requirement, and how people feel about them is irrelevant. Just as I don’t find keeping my tax affairs in order a load of shits and giggles. Unfortunately, the IRD doesn’t care and if I developed a habit of filing incomplete tax returns months late I’d expect the consequences to be somewhat unpleasant.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Heather Gaye,
It’s a general issue I have with Ryan Murphy – the utterly incoherent and scattershot characterization and storytelling, not only from episode to episode but sometimes from ad break to ad break. Given the success of Glee and AHS obviously a lot of folks don’t care, but it drives me nuts. And while I like me some completely gonzo no-top-to-go-over ultra-camp, AHS is trying so damn hard to be “weird” and “shocking” it perversely ends up being more square than the first season of Twin Peaks.
And, yes, I have more specific problems with Murphy’s treatment of women. I have no issues with Vivien and Constance being “unlikable” – hell, BSG didn’t do easily sympathetic characters of any gender or species and that’s one of my favourite shows of all time – but I wish he wasn’t so fond of one-note shrew-bitches. (Julia on Nip/Tuck, arguably the most coherent Murphy joint, ended up drifting from one more or less random act of heinous bitchery to the next.)
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Heather Gaye,
I might want to revisit this when American Horror Story starts, but it’s embarrasing watch Connie Britten. ‘Mrs Coach’ on Friday Night Lights was that rarity: A middle-class, middle-aged married woman in “flyover” country presented with respect and complexity. AHS? Yet again, I’m left wondering why Ryan Murphy seems obsessed with making pretty much every adult women in his shows mentally unstable shrews who must be punished horribly for showing any kind of sexuality.
(And don’t even get me started on the obscene treatment of Tara in True Blood – didn’t anyone on that show find it even slightly problematic when the only woman of colour in the core cast basically spends two seasons being raped, tortured and monologing about how she really really deserved it before having another self-loathing spite-fuck with Sam? Then she runs off to become a lesbian cage-fighter, which a whole other hairball of WTF.)
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