links for 2009-04-04
April 4, 2009-
review of Small Island
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Fear and contempt of women are the only motivating factors to write a character this way. In Apatow-Brand comedies, the girls who are not "Because, Um…?" girls are either bitches (wives; sexually unavailable women; professional women; ex-girlfriends) or sluts, typically of the crazy drunk variety. (Woody Allen, another prominent "Because, Um…?" writer, uses Manhattan to compress all of the above-listed "bitch" characteristics into a successful lesbian ex-wife, whom he hilariously confesses to having tried to run over with his car. HA! A man trying to murder a woman because she ended their relationship and/or is not heterosexual! It's funny, 'cause that's how a lot of women actually die!)
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The story I’m talking about is this (and apologies for taking a week or so to blog about it): Mr Ward (his family have asked that his first name not be used), an indigenous man, was arrested after being charged with drink-driving.
He was locked into a metal, un-air-conditioned lock-up van (operated by a private contractor, GSL) on a hot summer’s day for a journey of several hundred kilometres.
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"I'm an ally, but"
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To take a page out of the book of Marcella’s usually spectacular analysis of all things rape apologist and denialist, these cops who were so concerned that this rape victim was “filing false charges” apparently had no problem filing false charges against her with absolutely no evidence to back up their claim. Clearly, “false reports” of actual crimes are taken much more seriously than real false reports by the police. Seemingly, it does matter that rather than doing an investigation, which likely could have verified her accusation rather easily, police instead failed to do that investigation and made their own accusation based on assumption.
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This kind of research is at the interface of medicine and social policy: it’s an accident of history that a few people from a science and public health background got involved in the project and did a trial, to get evidence to see if the policy hunch was correct. Robust trials on social policy could happen routinely, if politicians weren’t scientifically ignorant and unhelpfully terrified of the possibility that they might have to state – with simple, constructive honesty: “well, we tried this idea, in all good faith, but it didn’t work so we’re dropping it now”.
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Does anyone feel hurt when I say: “Zeus is a bastard?”. Well, if there are any classics lecturers I imagine I have – but aside from them, most of us do not believe in Zeus. “Odin is a bully, a mysogynist, a bounder and poltroon that deserves nothing but scorn for his treatment of people.” Or how about: “Fidi Mikullu is an abhorrent, horrble and unpleasant character.” Or “I know what Thor can do with his hammer.” Shocking, I know (excuse the pun). “Tezcatlipoca is a pestilential, arrogant and malevolant idiot.”
In all these cases, I – a talking ape – have taking a deity’s name in vane. But… what happens if we had to replace all those insults, and denigrations with the the name Yahweh, capital G god, or Jesus.
