Ten Things - Coffee, please!

[holly_evolving]

1 - I stayed up to watch the Colbert Report so I could watch him interview Michelle Obama. She owned. <3
2 - As a result, I overslept and could not stop for coffee on my way to work.
3 - Therefore, I am drinking the nasty free chemically coffee at work. Le sad.
4 - Black yoga pants: feel like pjs, look like business attire.
5 - I made cauliflower casserole for dinner last night. It is amazeballs. Recipe here: http://barefootfoodie.com/aside/cheesey-cauliflower-casserole/
6 - Running my hunter through Northrend. It seems much easier than the previous 5 times I've played through. (a disproportionate number of my guild's 85s are my alts)
7 - Movies I want to see: the Hunger Games and the Avengers.
8 - But first I should probably read the Hunger Games books. I was turned off by the hype, but now that I've had a chance to read about the books...these are important, especially because they are aimed at young girls.
9 - How adorable is David Tennant?
10 - Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" on hammered dulcimer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KK0-9Moz5Q&feature=share

Comments

[warriorsmurf.livejournal.com]

8. Stuff gets popular for a reason. Even Twilight has understandable appeal. (Side note: I am super-tired of people just trashing it. There's SO MUCH equally shitty pop culture out there, this just gets more hate because of its female audience. We get it, Twilight sucks, you like bacon, the nostalgic things from your childhood are awesome and everything more current sucks.)

I feel like we're in a cultural epoch a bit like the 80s. You know how V for Vendetta, The Handmaid's Tale, Watchmen and Pink Floyd's "The Wall" were all sort of thematically linked? They all reflect a fear of totalitarianism and isolation, maybe a bit of technophobia foldedin. You can see a bit of this taking shape now. Harry Potter is shot through with things like the shittiness of racism, lying media and a government that's not here to help you. Twilight's vampire government...I am not defending it. It's not less-stupid than anything Anne Rice ever wrote, though.

The Hunger Games is really straightforward with the fear of totalitarianism and the idea of false consciousness. The "careers" are the kids from more favored districts who volunteer for the games as a chance to win glory. Compare this to conflict theory, where workers fail to rise up because they've been convinced that they can work their way into being the owners of the means of production. This is laid out more clearly in the movie than in the book. In the movie, President Snow specifically says that the games are meant to give people enough hope to keep them complacent, but not enough to lead them to rebellion.

It's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job. My favorite part of the books is how Katniss is a critical thinker. She takes nothing at face value, even those rare times when she should. I like how her motives are slightly unclear to her and how she has to sort them out. People complain about the ending to the trilogy, but I think it's realistic.

...I wrote you a novel! Sorry. Read the books! They're very quick reads and you'll enjoy them.

[holly-evolving.livejournal.com]

Those are exactly the kinds of things I've been reading. Now it's not a bunch of people saying "omg this is eye-opening," which they also said about the Da Vinci Code. There are concepts in there and a role model that I want to see in stories aimed at growing girls. I had literally no idea what these stories were about until a month ago. Now, the idea of a girl taking an active role in fomenting a rebellion...I want to read this because I want my nieces to have this role model.