Sex, hippogriffs, and rock and roll
Oct. 21st, 2005 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatI just saw two crazy articles on MSN, both linked from the "your message has been sent" page on Hotmail. Apparently, Jessica Biel (of 7th Heaven and The Texas Chainsaw Masscare: The Shitty Remake fame), has been named the sexiest woman alive by Esqure. If I may use an Internet colloquialism, WTF? And this one says, "A war of words has erupted even between labels and Steve Jobs over whether 99 cents is too cheap for the most popular songs." Too CHEAP? I always thought that was way too expensive for one song. Granted, each track on a CD usually averages out to costing more than that, but there you actually get the CD. Last time I used eMusic, it cost a lot less than that per song, but you had to buy them in packages. I've actually heard of people paying MORE for albums on iTunes than they would have if they'd just bought the CD at the store, which makes no sense to me.
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arfies made a post about Bruno Bettelheim and Freudian interpretations of fairy tales. That kind of stuff tends to annoy me. I mean, Freudian takes are probably accurate sometimes, but there are people who will interpret anything long and skinny as a phallic symbol, anything that you can put something else into as a vaginal symbol, and any interaction between family members as an Oedipal or Electra complex. My favorite is how Freudian interpreters take beheading as a symbol of castration anxiety. Because it apparently couldn't be, you know, fear of losing your actual head. It made me think of this review of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie that I came across last year. It's mostly an anti-CGI rant, but it also includes this gem:
"Cuaron proves himself every bit the hack Columbus was by watering down the suggestiveness that makes fantasy movies powerful. When Harry is taught to tame a beast called the Hippograff [sic] (a combination horse-griffon-eagle), the event is asexual, more neutered than the Pushmepullyou in the Doctor Dolittle books."
So it's not enough for people like this to provide sexual interpretations for every children's story, but when there's something they CAN'T easily sexualize, they COMPLAIN about it? I seem to recall someone mentioning another review of the movie that also said it wasn't sexual enough. Um, who said it was SUPPOSED to be? That kind of thing goes beyond the Freudian thing, though. It's the whole idea of thinking a work of art SHOULD mean something in particular, and then, if it doesn't fit your preconceived interpretation, you criticize the work instead of thinking that, just maybe, you were going about it the wrong way. That's not to say that there hasn't been some successful criticism along those lines, but saying that a hippogriff ride isn't sexual enough is pretty ridiculous.
arfies made a post about Bruno Bettelheim and Freudian interpretations of fairy tales. That kind of stuff tends to annoy me. I mean, Freudian takes are probably accurate sometimes, but there are people who will interpret anything long and skinny as a phallic symbol, anything that you can put something else into as a vaginal symbol, and any interaction between family members as an Oedipal or Electra complex. My favorite is how Freudian interpreters take beheading as a symbol of castration anxiety. Because it apparently couldn't be, you know, fear of losing your actual head. It made me think of this review of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie that I came across last year. It's mostly an anti-CGI rant, but it also includes this gem:"Cuaron proves himself every bit the hack Columbus was by watering down the suggestiveness that makes fantasy movies powerful. When Harry is taught to tame a beast called the Hippograff [sic] (a combination horse-griffon-eagle), the event is asexual, more neutered than the Pushmepullyou in the Doctor Dolittle books."
So it's not enough for people like this to provide sexual interpretations for every children's story, but when there's something they CAN'T easily sexualize, they COMPLAIN about it? I seem to recall someone mentioning another review of the movie that also said it wasn't sexual enough. Um, who said it was SUPPOSED to be? That kind of thing goes beyond the Freudian thing, though. It's the whole idea of thinking a work of art SHOULD mean something in particular, and then, if it doesn't fit your preconceived interpretation, you criticize the work instead of thinking that, just maybe, you were going about it the wrong way. That's not to say that there hasn't been some successful criticism along those lines, but saying that a hippogriff ride isn't sexual enough is pretty ridiculous.
