From the grave

I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.

Late Night Thoughts on the Eaton Center Shooting, Jessica Redfield

I genuinely hope these words turned out to be more than hollow platitudes for this woman. Writing this piece after narrowly avoiding a shooting on vacation in Toronto, she describes a strange feeling, during a moment in a food court. She was killed in the Aurora Theatre massacre last week.

I found this piece after reading Roger Ebert’s magnificent take on the shootings. When I told my family about her story, it was met by pure disbelief, but news articles confirmed it. I’m not a spiritual or religious person, but incidents like this certainly make you wonder about predetermined outcomes in life.

So what we are left with is a haunting message from beyond the grave. The Internet has given all manner of articulate (and inarticulate) people a place to publish their thoughts to millions of people, and in situations like this, that function shows its ability to transcend the simple retransmission of the trivial.

Well-meaning politicians will do their best to argue the case for changing rules related to these poorly interpreted, archaic sections of the US constitution, but I suspect the vested interests will come out on top yet again.

My thoughts are with the family of Jessica Redfield and the rest of the families of the victims.

A rock kid goes Gaga

Last night I attended the fourth of five sold out Lady Gaga shows at Rod Laver, with some friends of mine. I thoroughly enjoyed it. As a spectacle, it was audacious. Her performance put to rest any lingering doubts I might have had regarding her talent, particularly in terms of her vocal abilities, stage presence or songwriting. In all of those areas, she exceeded what I would normally expect of pop artists of her ilk. A decidedly commercial act she may be, she is no empty fabrication, unlike many of those that might be considered her peers. I was thoroughly satisfied with my $130 outlay. 

Some people might be surprised about all of this. Whilst I have always been a fan of a wide range of genres, most would assume that electro-pop might not be one of them. My headphones are almost always filled with rock, metal and hip-hop. But good songs are good songs, whatever genre they might be. Underneath slamming house kicks and layer upon layer of synth, Gaga’s work is  simple but engaging. Most could be stripped back to a piano or guitar and stand up as a solid piece of songwriting. 

Having said that, some approaches speak more to me than others. Seeing fans on the floor going ballistic to ‘Poker Face’ was terrific, but the it felt to me like an like I was an observer: I felt like I was watching something cool rather than participating. The big spectacle is great, but my preference is for less. Less flash, less glamour. Seeing great performers doing what comes naturally to them. I don’t object to staging, or big video screens, or flashing lights. The big arena pop show, like musical theatre, is about pomp and extravagance. It’s awesome, it’s just not my style most of the time.

Gaga’s dancers were great, but something sits uncomfortably with me when you’ve got a bunch of performers move in lock step with another person for hours at a time in front of a screaming crowd with disco beats underneath. It feels a little like fascism to me. That’s probably stretching the analogy a little bit too far, but there’s something fundamentally unnatural, something inorganic about that. 

I might be in the minority on this. Five sold out shows demonstrates that a great arena rock show captures the imagination like almost nothing else. Once again, I don’t wish to deride the concept of the spectacular, because it has its place. Counterintuitively, my preference for authenticity may be fundamentally unrealistic. It just comes down to something innate, I think. I love seeing great performers playing, that’s it. Sometimes nothing else is necessary.

Defending the right to make bad choices

Sexist advertising, miscreants like Kyle Sandilands, and organisers of events such as the Lingerie Football League rely on controversy. They bank on the fact that there’ll be a ready throng of feminists ready to pitchfork them. They know that faux-news channels will be primed to pounce on an exposé, knowing – without a shadow of doubt – that there’s always an outraged feminist ready to give a sound-bite.

Marketers know this, they bank on this and time and time again feminists play into this malarkey.

Worse than just gifting lingerie football undeserved airtime however, every time feminists complain about the sexism of a product, a target audiences gets solidified. Nobody actually cares if feminists boycott lingerie football. Au contraire: a boycott all too often makes a product instantly attractive. Suddenly a whole lot of people who would never have thought about lingerie football are suddenly militant about their God-given right to cheer on a scantily clad tackles. To buy tickets, to buy merchandise. Suddenly folk who are exhausted by the thought police, by the wowsers, are hornily salivating to get to a game.

http://theconversation.edu.au/lingerie-football-ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away-7492

Great piece by Lauren Rosewarne about the debate surrounding Lingerie Football.

I found myself violently nodding in agreement throughout, and it provoked some more thoughts that I have been sorting through for a while now.

Free speech and equality can be difficult principles to uphold without being hypocritical because sometimes it means letting people say and do things you would otherwise disagree with. For instance, I believe in the principles of free speech, which means I do not believe someone should be prosecuted for saying the Holocaust didn’t occur or that climate change isn’t caused by carbon pollution. I believe in equality, even if it means that previous victims of inequality, in this instance women, can choose to do something that seems to me to be pretty backward.

What is of most value to me is that people have the freedom to say what they want and to make their own choices. If they choose to do stuff that runs counter to other things I believe in, so be it. That’s the bitter pill of being progressive. 

In a mediated world such as ours, any publicity is good publicity, and anytime someone focuses attention on an event, program or product, it is valuable to the people who create that product. Even this post is counterproductive, in a sense that I am participating in the public debate surrounding this event. The only effective way to respond to situations like this, if you disagree with or dislike something, is to pretend it does not exist. If you do not like reality television, don’t watch, discuss or engage with it. Even yelling at your television and telling your coworkers how much you hate something is feeding into the maelstrom of attention that products need to be successful in the modern world. Lauren’s example is the feminist critiques of Lingerie Football, a particularly pointed case. All their comments achieve is to reinforce or amplify the feelings others have towards the product.

But once people have the freedom to do and say what they want, how do we know that people will make good choices? You don’t. Besides, it is the height of arrogance for anyone to decide what is right and wrong for anyone other person. I believe Lingerie Football to be extraordinarily tacky, but these women have the right to choose to play and fans have the right to attend if they so wish. Taking these choices away results in a worse society than one in which Lingerie Football exists.

The conclusion I have come to, taking these thoughts to what I believe to be their logical conclusion, is that people will do what they want, and complaining about their choices only serves to reinforce them. To be a believer in progressive and democratic principles is to be an optimist about the potential of people to make the right choices for themselves and for society. I hope that by ignoring garbage and supporting things I think are of value, good will win out over bad in the end in the battle of ideas, in a broad sense. Often it can  be difficult have faith in people’s capacity to make good choices, but to take those decisions away results in a weaker society, not a stronger one.