Monthly Archives: January 2011

Television: My answers

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Posted by maxporter on January 28, 2011 – 12:25 AM
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For this week’s AYA, I asked…

  • Do you watch television shows? (If you don’t watch it on a tv but instead use something like Hulu, I’m counting it.)
  • If so, what kind of things do you watch?
  • Are you watching any currently running shows?

And here are my answers.

  • Right now, I don’t really have access to television. I find that a lot of streaming doesn’t offer captioning or subtitles, so I tend not to bother with it. That way, I don’t get disappointed when I find a show that I really want to see and then discover that it doesn’t have subtitles.
    However, my parents have satellite TV and Tivo. So when I am near them, I tend to take advantage of this in exchange for shoveling snow off of the satellite dish. I currently live on the other side of the country from them, though, so that doesn’t really count.
    Another source of most of the television that I watch is DVD boxed sets. They are a lot more reliable than streaming in terms of captions. I don’t really have too many of these right now, though.
    I enjoy television shows, though – I love the condensed format because I can watch a program in 30-60 minutes instead committing to a two hour film.
  • Like I said above, when I watch television, it’s usually at my family’s house. I end up having to compromise with them and letting them watch things like football.
    When I have free rein of the remote, my absolute favorite show to watch is I Shouldn’t Be Alive. I find it really inspiring because, in many cases, the only way that the people survived was through a combination of ingenuity and sheer willpower. For example, when a British mountain climber attempted to descend Mount McKinley to find help for his stranded friends and fell from a height equivalent to the Chrysler building, he lay there for an entire night in subzero temperatures and stormy conditions – yet he lived because he kept thinking about his family.
    I also tend to watch competitive cooking shows like Top Chef and Iron Chef, much to the dismay of my sister.
    Recently, I saw Pushing Daisies and Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time and I really enjoyed both of those.
    And, finally, I watch the X Games whenever it is on. Summer or winter – I love it all.
  • I’m not watching any currently running shows for the reasons outlined earlier: no access to the TV.
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24 different interpretations: insightful or flawed?

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Posted by maxporter on January 25, 2011 – 9:02 AM
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When I was in high school, one of my English teachers told us: “If you read the same passage from the Bible to twenty-four different people, you will get twenty-four different interpretations.” At the time, the concept blew my mind.

Fast-forward eight years later. Since I was originally an English major and am still in the humanities, I have heard this idea more times than I can count. A variation is: “There is no wrong way to interpret a text.” Over time, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the idea.

Yes, I am a jaded senior who is tired of studying humanities, but my unease runs deeper than that. My problem is that I think it’s a very presumptive way to approach literature or any other work of art.

The way that I see it is, a text exists in a culturally specific matrix. To understand a given work of art, you have to look at the influences in the outer world that prompted its author(s) to create it. I, a modern reader who grew up in the United States, am not going to be able to understand The Epic of Gilgamesh as well as a scholar well-versed in the history of Mesopotamia. Furthermore, that scholar will probably miss nuances that the target audience of the time would have picked up on.

More problematically, I think there is a danger in appropriating an author’s message to conform to your own worldview. For example, I’ve seen people reinterpret Maya Deren’s experimental films, which are supposed to be feminist, into a message that fits their patriarchal and misogynistic worldview. Is that interpretation valid? I don’t think so. In general, I think that there is a certain arrogance in assuming that you will always be able to fully understand another human being: people are much more complex and mysterious than that. To twist the words of somebody else to fit your own agenda is one of the most disrespectful acts I can imagine. Add cultural insensitivity on top of that and you’ve got a real problem.

Embedded in the idea of multiple valid interpretations is also the philosophy that the reader matters as much, if not more, than the artist. I also see this as disrespectful. Unless otherwise indicated, I err on the side of assuming that artists want to communicate something specific. In other words, I trust in the author’s intelligence instead of assuming that I am smarter than the author. To me, it is arrogant to presume that we readers are so valuable that we can make up a better message than the author’s intended one.

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The weekly AYA returns!: Television

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Posted by maxporter on January 24, 2011 – 8:04 PM
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This week, I’m wondering…

  • Do you watch television shows? (If you don’t watch it on a tv but instead use something like Hulu, I’m counting it.)
  • If so, what kind of things do you watch?
  • Are you watching any currently running shows?

Thanks! I love your AYA responses and I’m looking forward to hearing from y’all again.

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Internet beats on my brains / Head in the sand, feet in the clay

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Posted by maxporter on January 23, 2011 – 1:07 PM
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The Whirlwind by Bill Meyers, book three of The Imager Chronicles

The Whirlwind by Bill Meyers, book three of The Imager Chronicles

When I was a kid, I voraciously read everything in sight, including the Christian fiction that was available. One series in particular that I fell in love with was The Imager Chronicles by Bill Meyers. Looking back, the Christian narrative is thinly veiled, but back then, it was simply another fantasy series that I loved, like Harry Potter or something. And, of course, since I was a kid, I absorbed it more readily than I absorb books today.

One image in particular from the series stayed with me for a long time. The two protagonists find special water that allows them to see and hear beyond the illusory world in order to perceive things as they really are. Armed with the ability to perceive the world as it really is, they search the mall for a plot coupon.1 One store off to the side has a display of televisions, and the two protagonists pause, horrified at the sight before them: the televisions actually have tentacles coming out of them that they ensnare innocent bystanders with. The children watch helplessly as a mall-goer wanders into the path of the televisions and is grabbed by a giant tentacle. The tentacle proceeds to feed on his soul, leaving behind a glassy-eyed smiling idiot.

The reason that I bring this up is because I think that a lot of people subconsciously think that television and computers, particularly the Internet, have tentacles that will trap you and drain your life force away. For example, people constantly complain that Twitter has sapped our ability to think in blocks of text greater than 140 characters. And, of course, the title of this blog post comes from Atlas Air by Massive Attack, which is on their newest album, Heligoland. (It’s a great song, by the way.)

I have to say that I disagree with this perspective. I can understand why people complain that the Internet has changed human interaction and that it takes up too much time in our lives. Personally, I can’t sympathize with the first point – in many ways, technological progress has simplified human interaction for me. But I can sympathize with the latter because I have used the Internet as an escape sometimes.

However, I think it’s a mistake to blame technology for problems that are really a result of our action (or inaction). In Blade Runner, when Rachael first meets Rick Deckard, she asks him why he hates replicants (i.e., androids) so much. He replies that replicants can be both beneficial and harmful and that he only concerns himself with the harmful ones. In other words, it’s not the technology itself that matters, but what is done with the technology.

When it comes down to it, televisions and computers are simply glass and metal boxes. They are not endowed with any attributes in and of themselves; we are the ones who assign values to them. Like any other object, televisions and computers are tools that can be used in positive ways or in negative ways.

I hate to sound like an advocate for the bootstraps method, but I don’t think it’s constructive to talk about how much you hate technology if it’s a source of distress. If you feel unsatisfied with your wired life, unplug and do something else. You don’t have to go on a week-long backpacking trip, though that’s a great method IMO. You can do something as simple as turning off every electronic device you own while you sit and read a book. It may be difficult at first, but action is ultimately better than nothing.

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  1. Disclaimer: Links to TVTropes. [↩]
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Happy New Year

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Posted by maxporter on January 20, 2011 – 12:48 AM
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Well, it’s been a while. In fact, it’s been so long that WordPress forgot my login password, even though I never usually have to enter it. Looking at my blog, I see that my last entry was well over a month ago – December 13, 2010.

What have I been up to for a month? Well… this is a list of how I spent my time, in rough order.

  • Doing several varieties of snow sports at my childhood hometown west of the Rockies while adding other sports (like alpine touring) to my list of things I want to try.
  • Eating a lot of my mom’s cooking, Southern food (mostly fried catfish, yum), and burgers and fries.
  • Watching I Shouldn’t Be Alive and every food-related show under the sun, from Iron Chef to Secrets of a Restaurant Chef to Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Anne Burrell is highly entertaining, but if you’re like my sister and you can’t stand cooking shows, watch I Shouldn’t Be Alive. It is, in my opinion, the best show in the entire world.
  • Seeing old friends for the first time in several years.
  • Reading at an approximate rate of one book per day. Despite reading a million books, I managed to not read Harry Potter 6 or 7 even though I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now.
  • Drinking hefenweiser, cider, and blue moon.
  • Getting groped by the TSA in exchange for the privilege of sitting on long flights. Yes, they really do grope until they “find resistance,” which is only slightly more acceptable to me than being naked on a computer screen. Seriously, take Amtrak or Greyhound if you can.
  • Having my mind blown by Inception while being underwhelmed by Dark Knight. To be fair, maybe the fact that I’d skied moguls all day prior to watching Dark Knight affected my judgment.
  • Being responsible and applying for post-graduation jobs and internships.

I had a really great time and I basically decided that, despite the fact that I come from an extremely conservative, homophobic, patriarchal, xenophobic, etc-phobic home state, there are still things about it that I like. (Plus, it’s got a lower cost of living and a lower unemployment rate than where I live right now.) So I will likely end up giving life back home a try after I graduate in May.

Anyway, I think that that’s enough about me. The real point behind this entry is that I just want all of you to know that this blog is back online and posts will be appearing.

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