Another bunch of stuff
Jul. 20th, 2007 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rozkMy view on Kerfuffle Part Two is that it is too early to be sure what LJ actually mean by what they have said. I strongly suspect that they will back down from talking about 18 to talking about 16; I also suspect that they will apply a fairly generous interpretation of what 'graphic' means. I think it is far too early for a mass exodus though I will try to stay in touch with those of my friends who leave and will listen to their arguments.
What is clearly the case though is that LJ really need to work at customer relations. If they mean 16 and are saying 18 as a bargaining position, they have not got the sense they were born with; if they really mean 18, they are getting less than stellar legal advice. It is true that any case against them would be heard in California where the age of consent is 18; it is also true that if the California courts enforced 18 as a cutoff point for depiction of sexual activity, every movie and television company would be being constantly harrassed in court there.
People like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anonymous_sibyl who say LJ's site, LJ rules are quite right; however, those of us who pay them money - perhaps especially those of us who bought paid accounts after their last return to sanity - have a right to ask that they behave with equity towards their customers.
And that is enough of that.
*******
Having originally talked about biking copies of the damn book out to reviewers this evening, Bloomsbury decided to economize and stick them in the post. So I find myself with an unexpected free evening which will be spent at the movies.
Last night, I watched Hard Candy which impressed me and freaked me the frakk out in perhaps equal measure.It is about a teen vigilante who entraps and tortures a paedophile - at one point she fakes his castration before persuading him to hang himself. By the end of the film we realize that she has done this at least once before. It is fabulously gripping - the only real weakness is that they compromised its two-hander drive in order to put in a tiny role for Sandra Oh as a nosy neighbour - and yet more than a little sinister in what it is saying. It is a vehemently pro-death penalty film and endorses vigilantism - our heroine is ahead of the game at almost every turn and is smarter than a smart thing. It is brilliant and the sort of film which might, in the wrong local circumstances, help provoke a lynching. What do people who have seen it think?
*******
Not only Facebook but Myspace - I've finally discovered why so many of the musicians and transfolk I know weren't on LJ. So look for me as Roz Kaveney on either or both.
*******
I am going to be smugger than a smug thing about the endoresements I've started to get for
Superheroes. Marina Warner has said "Roz Kaveney's knowledge is awesome, her analysis passionate: this is awork of eloquent advocacy, urging readers to pay more attention to a crucial arena where ideas about men, women, virtue, and power are discussed - and formed. Like a modern Gulliver, she brings back news of other worlds, of marvellous utopias and dystopias, in order to throw light on the one we live in - or think we live in."
and Geoff Ryman says"" Combines a command of literary theory with a hands-on grasp of how pop fiction gets built by producers and used by readers. Indispensable.". All I need now is Jonathan Ross.
What is clearly the case though is that LJ really need to work at customer relations. If they mean 16 and are saying 18 as a bargaining position, they have not got the sense they were born with; if they really mean 18, they are getting less than stellar legal advice. It is true that any case against them would be heard in California where the age of consent is 18; it is also true that if the California courts enforced 18 as a cutoff point for depiction of sexual activity, every movie and television company would be being constantly harrassed in court there.
People like
anonymous_sibyl who say LJ's site, LJ rules are quite right; however, those of us who pay them money - perhaps especially those of us who bought paid accounts after their last return to sanity - have a right to ask that they behave with equity towards their customers.And that is enough of that.
*******
Having originally talked about biking copies of the damn book out to reviewers this evening, Bloomsbury decided to economize and stick them in the post. So I find myself with an unexpected free evening which will be spent at the movies.
Last night, I watched Hard Candy which impressed me and freaked me the frakk out in perhaps equal measure.It is about a teen vigilante who entraps and tortures a paedophile - at one point she fakes his castration before persuading him to hang himself. By the end of the film we realize that she has done this at least once before. It is fabulously gripping - the only real weakness is that they compromised its two-hander drive in order to put in a tiny role for Sandra Oh as a nosy neighbour - and yet more than a little sinister in what it is saying. It is a vehemently pro-death penalty film and endorses vigilantism - our heroine is ahead of the game at almost every turn and is smarter than a smart thing. It is brilliant and the sort of film which might, in the wrong local circumstances, help provoke a lynching. What do people who have seen it think?
*******
Not only Facebook but Myspace - I've finally discovered why so many of the musicians and transfolk I know weren't on LJ. So look for me as Roz Kaveney on either or both.
*******
I am going to be smugger than a smug thing about the endoresements I've started to get for
Superheroes. Marina Warner has said "Roz Kaveney's knowledge is awesome, her analysis passionate: this is awork of eloquent advocacy, urging readers to pay more attention to a crucial arena where ideas about men, women, virtue, and power are discussed - and formed. Like a modern Gulliver, she brings back news of other worlds, of marvellous utopias and dystopias, in order to throw light on the one we live in - or think we live in."
and Geoff Ryman says"" Combines a command of literary theory with a hands-on grasp of how pop fiction gets built by producers and used by readers. Indispensable.". All I need now is Jonathan Ross.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 02:47 pm (UTC)Largely? I think it's one of the indications that, as an actress, Ellen Page is going to be a huge sensation. Or, at the very least, she deserves to be. I mean, I knew that from Wilby Wonderful? But her performance in this blew that away.
(Unrelatedly, I also really appreciate how much queer cinema she's done. Because she's AWESOME. Yes.)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 02:55 pm (UTC)I think "persuade" isn't really a strong enough word here.
It is incredibly well done and very clever (in fact it is too clever to be realistic but it overcomes this.) As for the vigilantism, yes, is unsettling but it must be the best pro-vigilantism film ever made.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 04:27 pm (UTC)And, yeah, I hated the Sandra Oh cameo, it was a big wtf interuption.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 04:51 pm (UTC)And that grates on my nerves so much. It was a major reason why I couldn't deal with Right At Your Door either (released around the same time, I think).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 08:29 am (UTC)Yes, but in Six Apart's business model, you are not their customer: you are their employee. You produce content which makes advertisers - Six Apart's *real* customers - want to buy adspace on their website.
Everything Six Apart have done makes *sense* under that way of looking it.
Yonmei
(I wrote about this on the feministsf blog recently:
http://blogs.feministsf.net/?p=181 )