First off, warmest thanks to all of you who have been reading the blog. I have been working at keeping the articles flowing, including my first guest author (Andrew Russell, from Australia), and what I consider to be pretty incredible interviews (Rachel Cron, Robert Binidotto).
Here is what you can expect next from Beyond Even Bat Country:
-- Sarge: My Life With A Warrior Angel. This is one of the most intimate articles you will ever read about a Viet Nam Vet, and a bit more, if I say so myself (since I wrote it). A story of hope, bravery, and love.
--Upcoming after that this week: Interview with my friend, world-class guitarist and noted UFOlogist Michael Lee Hill. We have agreed to conduct and here publish an interview with Mike, who lies on the cutting edge of understanding the inevitable existence of alien presence on our planet. This is going to be a severely-rocking interview, for a number of reasons, including that he has captured some of the finer UFO footage available.
Stay tuned, and even better, comment and follow, if you see fit.
rde
Tweaking the Knobs as we Speak.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Guest Author Andrew Russell's "Punishment Capitalism"
This is the second article I have published from emerging writer Andrew Russell. For the mainstream reader: you might find this a bit different, but it is very good, accurate work, and I very much enjoy sharing his writing with you. Among the other good things he does, Andrew actually manages to even be funny. Enjoy!
RDE
______
RDE
______
"Punishment Capitalism"
The Curious Motivations Of Some Supporters of Market Economics
by Andrew Russell
Author's Note: This article is several years old and has previously been posted on the blog of the Australian Libertarian Society. "Capitalism" as used in this article is intended to mean "Free Market Economics" rather than the Marxian meaning of the term.
One of the more twisted maladays that the concept of "Fusionism" has inflicted upon us pro-market advocates is an attitude towards markets I like to call "Punishment Capitalism" (not inherently related to the similar sounding "Sado-Monetarism"). The concept of Fusionism, by which advocates of liberty could justify noncoercion as a means to Conservative ends, was first proposed by Frank Meyer; editor of the intellectually toxic "National Review" magazine. Previously, I have discussed the problems of Fusionism, for example how it forces libertarians to justify freedom as a means (implying that freedom is not a worthy goal in and of itself), and also how it was the libertarians who provided all the intellectual ammunition and cultural assets (i.e. Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter and Friedman re-conquering academic economics for markets, Rand and Heinlein who injected the ideas of liberty into popular discourse) yet it was the conservatives that grabbed all the political power. Regardless, the ever-widening faultlines between conservatism and libertarianism are rendering Meyerian Fusionism obsolete. This article will look not at Fusionism itself, but at the attitude of Punishment Capitalism, which the Fusionists frequently carry and have spread.
Fusionism grants us an uneasy tension between the antiauthoritarianism of libertarianism and the authoritarianism of conservatism. Fusionism's economic attitude of Punishment Capitalism is the perfect example of this tension. Since the Fusionist evaluates on the basis of conservative standards of value, the Fusionist cannot see value in a nonauthoritarian portrayal of Capitalism. As such, the Fusionist must justify Capitalism as an instrument of control and punishment. Under Punishment Capitalism, people make money by "working hard" as opposed to "working creatively." Under Punishment Capitalism, people work out of "duty to their loved ones" rather than "rational selfishness." Under Punishment Capitalism, entrepreneurs are portrayed as "Christlike martyrs slaving away in the office" rather than adventurous, creative Richrd Bransons who probably adore their career. Under Punishment Capitalism, to truly enjoy one's job instantly raises suspicion that it is not "real work," rather than to see a truly rewarding career as a great thing. To the Punishment Capitalist, the market is a Drill Sergeant ordering producers to strain in blistering heat to produce a product with a very low price. During my following critique, please keep in mind that my favorite scene in Full Metal Jacket is when R. Lee Ermey's character gets shot. The prick deserved it.
Economic activities tend to be categorizable as either production or consumption. Innovation may be seen as production of ideas. Regardless, the attitudes in each category that Punishment Capitalism has are as follows:
Production is seen as not a means to an end, but like a Kantian perfect duty. One must have some form of constant labor. In addition, this labor cannot be a joyous process to the individual, for that would mean it is 'play' rather than work. The entrepreneur is as such someone that suffers, as are all workers. The pain of production is strongly emphasized, work is 'hard' and the harder the work, the 'better' the product. In the sphere of consumption, however, it is declared that consumption is ignoble, after all consumption grants pleasure. Entrepreneurs that enjoy the rewards of their labor are derided as "playboys." Inherited wealth is seen not as good fortune, but as the product of some sort of moral theft, and the heir instantly has some additional burden of proof of character thrust upon him.
It is no surprise that this attitude is a descendant of the Protestant Work Ethic. The Calvinist belief that constant labor is a sign of personal salvation makes all those nervous "have I really been saved?" Calvinists labor. Although I disagree with Max Weber's belief that Calvin is responsible for Capitalism, it is unquestionable that the Calvinist work ethic is responsible for Punishment Capitalism. The Calvinist ethic is based, eventually, on the assumption (prevalent in almost every sort of Christianity) that sufferring is good for the soul. This idea is the Platonic hangover induced by the mind-body dichotomy which reveres the transcendent and damns the physical. As such, to the Punishment Capitalist, production is noble as a form of punishing, disciplining and chaining the physical, as some sort of penance for Original Sin maybe.
The political implications of Punishment Capitalism are as follows. To the Punishment Capitalist, although they will strongly support Capitalism is certain respects, they will have at least some sympathy with many forms of regulation. For one, industries that deal more closely with pleasures (be they the sex, drugs (illegal), entertainment or gambling) will always be regarded as shady, and as such may be regulated. Luxury taxes will also have some sympathy, since luxuries are regarded as hedonistic and excessive and sinful. Sin taxes (alcohol, cigarettes, etc) will also recieve at best mild opposition from Punishment Capitalists. What will be opposed, with religious zeal, is any form of social safety net. Although opposing safety nets is not unique to Punishment Capitalism, the key feature is why this opposition exists. Most libertarians disagree with safety nets, not because they aim to help the poor, but because they are funded by coercive taxation. A Punishment Capitalist, however, sees the evil of welfare not in the source of funding but in the act of welfare itself: it consists of funding an intrinsic moral depravity (laziness). In the debate over taxation, Punishment Capitalists will argue for consumption taxes over income taxes, rather than see all taxes as equally theft.
Unfortunately, Ayn Rand was not completely free of the spectre of Punishment Capitalism (although she was not necessarily a proponent). I give you the example of Hank Rearden's hatred of Francisco d'Anconia in "Atlas Shrugged." d'Anconia was hated for being a "worthless playboy" and a "destroyer of wealth" (as if piles of gold have an inherent value? Sounds much too Aristotelian-Intrinsicist for Ayn Rand). Although there is some evidence that Rand herself disapproved of anti-consumption positions, for example when Ragnar tells Rearden to spend a refunded gold ingot exclusively on his personal consumption, it is very easy to read Rand as supporting a Neo-Puritan belief that production via back-breaking effort is intrinsically moral (regardless of the fact that this attitude would contradict Rand's technical philosophy on numerous levels).
Regardless, Rand critiqued how conservatives argued for Capitalism on the basis of human depravity. She described the argument as saying man is not good enough to be enslaved, and he must be punished with freedom. Extending Rand's argument, to the Punishment Capitalist, there is no better punishment then being cast out of the Garden (or Welfare State) of Eden and forced to suffer and labor and sweat for our meager rations. To the Punishment Capitalist, constant and unending labor as an end in itself is the most effective set of chains ever devised and the perfect way to force men to virtue.
No wonder the conservatives are such pathetic defenders of Capitalism. In addition to the aforementioned sympathies for certain forms of political intervention that Punishment Capitalism gives, the ethical implications of Punishment Capitalism totally go against the teleological nature of human action as explained by the Austrian economists. Human beings produce because they need to consume. To induce guilt over consumption is to render production purposeless. They are, paradoxically, attempting to bake their cake and not eat it, too. They want factories and skyscrapers and workshops without Las Vegas and Louis-Vuitton-Moet-Hennessey. Eventually, in trying to make the production of wealth a sacrifice, they only succeed in encouraging public decadence and worldliness by producing the stuff in the first place.
Given the vehemence of my critique, one may legitimately suspect that I, the author, am overstating my case. Whilst I understand why someone would come to this conclusion, I am not overstating my case, and I offer as evidence a quote from the conservative Roman Catholic commentator Dinesh D'Souza (known popularly for 'debating' Christopher Hitchens by accusing him of alcoholism whilst repeatedly invoking the Dostoyevsky Gambit ("If God is Dead, Everything is Permitted") in spite of Hitchens' repeatedly showing that said gambit is false). D'Souza, in his book "The Virtue of Prosperity," attempts to morally justify capitalism on traditional, religious moral grounds. His ultimate conclusion is that Capitalism is good because Capitalism “makes us better people by limiting the scope of our vices” and “civilizes greed, just as marriage civilizes lust” [p. 126]. In other words, the goodness of Capitalism is that it restrains us from our vices, being chained to a desk prevents us from being able to indulge our greed. Capitalism is, to D'Souza, a punishment mechanism that essentially forms an economic chastity belt around humanity, and it is this that makes Capitalism an engine of taming the beasts that, to D'Souza, we are.
Thankfully, there is an alternative. This alternative is an understanding of Capitalism as a life-affirming, benevolent system. Philosophically, this alternative requires rejecting the anti-flesh attitudes of the Protestant Work Ethic, which are the basis for the mind-body dichotomy that grounds the anti-consumption attitudes of Punishment Capitalism. This alternative of Benevolent Capitalism is worldly (and hence compatible with either nonspiritual or Immanent/Aristotelian forms of spirituality but not Platonic/Transcendent forms of spirituality) and teleological. Production is simply a means to consumption (which is in itself a method of satisfying our needs) and as such is instrumentally but not intrinsically good. Producers act for their own joy and are justified in doing so. Above all; sufferring and control are not to be considered spiritually superior states or proper for man. Those whose job is joy for them are to be celebrated and praised. Those who inherit wealth are to be treated as everybody else. Ultimately, the core of Capitalism is not one of "work harder than everyone else" but one of "live for your joy." It needs to be promoted as such.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Rich Engle's Interview With Author Robert Bidinotto, about his new novel "Hunter: A Thriller""
From Wikipedia, just for starters:
Robert James Bidinotto (1949- ) is a contemporary novelist, journalist, editor, and lecturer. His 2011 vigilante novel,Hunter: A Thriller, is the first in a series.
He is perhaps best known for his critiques of the criminal justice system, and of the environmentalist movement and philosophy. Bidinotto advocates the philosophy and writings of Ayn Rand, and from July 2005 until October 2008, he was editor-in-chief of The New Individualist, the monthly magazine published by The Atlas Society.
Bidinotto has written for many different publications. He also hosts his own website dedicated to criticism of the environmental movement, publishes a blog, and lectures at colleges and universities.
Here is a link for the e-book version: http://amzn.to/naHYGp
Robert's blog: http://bidinotto.blogspot.com/
And, he informs me of a new blog called "The Vigilante Author," which will be devoted exclusively to his fiction, and will be here: http://www.bidinotto.com/
Here is the current roundup of how well the book is doing:
Here is a link for the e-book version: http://amzn.to/naHYGp
Robert's blog: http://bidinotto.blogspot.com/
And, he informs me of a new blog called "The Vigilante Author," which will be devoted exclusively to his fiction, and will be here: http://www.bidinotto.com/
Here is the current roundup of how well the book is doing:
As of this posting, HUNTER has generated 47 Amazon customer reviews, an amazing 46 of them rating it "5 stars." (The lone exception gave it 4 stars and compared Bidinotto to thriller master Michael Connelly.) Because of these stellar reader ratings, Bidinotto's debut thriller now stands at #1 on three Kindle "Top Rated" lists: "Thrillers," "Romantic Suspense," and "Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue." It is also customer-ranked #2 among all "Mysteries & Thrillers" and "Romance" titles, #6 in "Genre Fiction," and an astonishing #19 among all "Fiction" titles on the Kindle. HUNTER also stands at #86 among all 969,000+ Kindle ebooks -- both fiction and nonfiction.
In sales, HUNTER appears on the Kindle Top 100 Bestseller lists in both the "Romantic Fiction" and "Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue" categories.
I guess that lately I have come into the business of talking about authors. Maybe it is the journalism background in me. Maybe it is the mere, true fact that I know about the certain kind of solitude that must reside within a good writer. Crap, even a lousy one. Maybe it is just curiosity; how others are doing what you are doing.
Sometimes, it is just about watching the discipline of others over time, and that is what I was up to with Robert. I was so happy to watch someone hang in there, and it isn't too much effort to cheerlead. Steve Vai, arguably one of the greatest guitar players in the world said "I've never worked a day in my life in the music business." And it is from that kind of humble, seemingly-effortless approach from which this work comes. It is, in a certain way, a backlash (a successful backlash); and simultaneously just someone that knows how to walk through walls. It is razor-clear, disturbing. One time, a person said about this book that it was very readable, engaging, so forth, but that they had some kind of moral issue with it. I find that so untrue that I will not address it, other than to invoke something near and dear to me in the name of armchair quarterbacks. But, this is not a bitter occasion, it is a joyous, successful one.
The proof, though, is in the pudding, and here is the talk that Robert and I had today. He had some very interesting answers, I think. Also, just for the record, this was not "massaged," other than two minor corrections Bob had, somewhere around correcting syntax. The rest is pure live:So how are you feeling after this successful e-book launch?
Ecstatic. Rich, in all honesty, I thought it would take quite a few months to achieve this level of visibility and sales for HUNTER. But the book has been online at Amazon for just a couple of months, and it's doing very well.
Yes, I was kind of shocked how fast it took off. And the feedback has been really great. If I may ask—what are you reading these days?
Great question! In fact...I've had little time for any reading at all. I read and enjoyed The Philosophical Practitioner by long-time Objectivist Larry Abrams a couple of weeks ago, and even though the book isn't long, it took me forever. I'm now reading another "indie" work—Rambling, a collection of short stories by a friend, Edd Voss. I've enjoyed both books. But promoting HUNTER has left me very little time to read for pleasure.
I kind of figured that. Now, what about the past stuff—say, spy novels and such. Can you talk about your early influences?
I started reading spy stories and other thrillers when I was in my teens. I cut my teeth on the works of Alistair MacLean, Mickey Spillane, Desmond Bagley, and other late masters and pioneers of the genre. These days, my greatest influences come from sensational thriller authors like Lee Child, Stephen Hunter, Brad Thor, and Vince Flynn. I also love works by Daniel Silva, Mark Greaney, Gayle Lynds, Nelson DeMille, and many more.
I was so waiting for you to say Mickey Spillane. I noticed that you have a very fast, rat-a-tat style to your writing; the pace is very strong. How did you develop that, I guess I would ask, and additionally, what your approach is to establishing the visceral experience, which you clearly do very quickly. I mean, you got me on the ramps off the first paragraph.
That is a complicated question, because it bears on all of the elements of writing. Thriller writing requires you to engage your reader immediately. The audience demands it. So, you have to grab them at the first line, trying to infuse it with something that will arouse their curiosity by posing questions. The first line of HUNTER is:
"Today she would finally nail the bastard."
Now, if you think about that, notice how many questions this one line poses, and how much information it already imparts. You know that the point of view character is a woman. You know that she is after someone, out to punish or hurt that person. You know that she thinks he's a bastard, a bad guy—and you know she's been after him for a while. You know she is angry, driven, and sounds tough. But you really don't know who either person is. You don't know who is good and who is bad. You are immediately curious about all those things.
Visceral writing—well, that's another matter. I think I'd say: First, you have to be ruthlessly purposeful in each scene. You have to know exactly what you want to accomplish. You may not know any of the details of the events or conversations ahead of time, but you do need to have a goal. Second, you have to be right inside the skins of the characters inside the scene. You have to see through their eyes, experience things through their senses. And you have to focus on the kind of details that those characters would tend to notice, the things that will stand out. This is called "viewpoint" in fiction writing: Each scene should be experienced strictly through the eyes and senses of a single viewpoint, or "POV" character.
Now, if you think about that, notice how many questions this one line poses, and how much information it already imparts. You know that the point of view character is a woman. You know that she is after someone, out to punish or hurt that person. You know that she thinks he's a bastard, a bad guy—and you know she's been after him for a while. You know she is angry, driven, and sounds tough. But you really don't know who either person is. You don't know who is good and who is bad. You are immediately curious about all those things.
Visceral writing—well, that's another matter. I think I'd say: First, you have to be ruthlessly purposeful in each scene. You have to know exactly what you want to accomplish. You may not know any of the details of the events or conversations ahead of time, but you do need to have a goal. Second, you have to be right inside the skins of the characters inside the scene. You have to see through their eyes, experience things through their senses. And you have to focus on the kind of details that those characters would tend to notice, the things that will stand out. This is called "viewpoint" in fiction writing: Each scene should be experienced strictly through the eyes and senses of a single viewpoint, or "POV" character.
If you do those things, then you can draw the reader right down into the scene. For instance, in the climactic confrontation scene, I had to make that a visceral experience for the reader on many sensory levels. I didn't calculate it all: I simply got right into the hero's brain and stayed there. The rest pretty much took care of itself.
That was what got me, how fast the lift-off was. I was like "there" on contact. Could you give some advice for emerging young writers? How to do that? I mean, the regular answer is "write." But I am talking more about establishing something I call "flow." Also, it would be good to hear about how you approach language, in general. Do you look up words just to be sure they say what you mean? Are you willing to end a sentence with a preposition?
Here's how I established the "flow" in writing HUNTER.
The first thing was to really get to know the main characters, in intimate detail. You have to know their backgrounds and what makes them tick. When you do that, then in every scene, you stay strictly in their POV. That way, you get caught up in this trance-like state, in which you are role-playing that character in your head. If you can stay there, you do get into a kind of "flow." "They" say and do things that you didn't plan in advance, but which simply arises from who "they" are. And it becomes realistic and logical that they would.
One of the great compliments I'm getting from readers is how "realistic" the characters, background, settings, and description are in HUNTER. That comes from doing all that advance prep. I researched this to death, and filled notebooks with notes on the characters, their relationships, their conflicts, and the plot. So, when I got into a scene, I could just relax and let them take over. That was the "flow."
The first thing was to really get to know the main characters, in intimate detail. You have to know their backgrounds and what makes them tick. When you do that, then in every scene, you stay strictly in their POV. That way, you get caught up in this trance-like state, in which you are role-playing that character in your head. If you can stay there, you do get into a kind of "flow." "They" say and do things that you didn't plan in advance, but which simply arises from who "they" are. And it becomes realistic and logical that they would.
One of the great compliments I'm getting from readers is how "realistic" the characters, background, settings, and description are in HUNTER. That comes from doing all that advance prep. I researched this to death, and filled notebooks with notes on the characters, their relationships, their conflicts, and the plot. So, when I got into a scene, I could just relax and let them take over. That was the "flow."
I don’t observe strict rules of grammar in the storytelling. I tried to establish a mood, a “voice”—terse, clipped, staccato. Lots of sentence fragments. Like these, for example. The way people tend to talk—especially tough, reserved people.
A lot of people are telling me how "cinematic" this book is—including a Hollywood screenwriter who has done work that you would know. He wants to do the screenplay for HUNTER had me send the book to his agent and his entertainment attorney. I'm flattered. If I'm also lucky, maybe this will have a shot at being a movie. Personally, I think that Dylan Hunter could be the next Jason Bourne franchise.
A lot of people are telling me how "cinematic" this book is—including a Hollywood screenwriter who has done work that you would know. He wants to do the screenplay for HUNTER had me send the book to his agent and his entertainment attorney. I'm flattered. If I'm also lucky, maybe this will have a shot at being a movie. Personally, I think that Dylan Hunter could be the next Jason Bourne franchise.
I might also add that I really love how you flesh out your strong male and female characters.
Thank you! I really worked at that. You know, in most thrillers written by male authors, the women are treated superficially, as afterthoughts. They are "eye candy," or put there simply as the hero's object of occasional lust.
HUNTER is different. The romantic relationship, and the conflicts that arise from it, are central to the story; they are every bit as important as the external perils, and they are integrated into that thriller plot. I tried to get under the skins of two people falling head-over-heels in love with each other -- something like "The Thomas Crown Affair," only with a huge set of moral conflicts and a terrifying, looming external threat, too. This allows the story to have a psychological and emotional richness that is unusual for a male-authored thriller, I think. At least, the book seems to have attracted as many women readers as men.
HUNTER is different. The romantic relationship, and the conflicts that arise from it, are central to the story; they are every bit as important as the external perils, and they are integrated into that thriller plot. I tried to get under the skins of two people falling head-over-heels in love with each other -- something like "The Thomas Crown Affair," only with a huge set of moral conflicts and a terrifying, looming external threat, too. This allows the story to have a psychological and emotional richness that is unusual for a male-authored thriller, I think. At least, the book seems to have attracted as many women readers as men.
The only reason we know one another is through that strange Ayn Rand connection. We were on the forums for years together and you were one of the only "voices of reason," so to say. I have a great difficulty addressing that crowd, but I do remain on Mike Kelly's site. I almost don't want to go there, and they are talking about you; anxious and quietly enjoying your success, I guess I would say. If you were to say anything about this, I would enjoy hearing it.
Let me talk about the relationship of HUNTER to Objectivism in two ways: first, in terms of its basic themes, and second, in terms of the response to it by Objectivists, at least to date.
HUNTER has been described as "a thinking man's thriller." I'll buy that. Anyone who knows me also knows that I would be incapable of writing a novel without having my own worldview at its heart. By which I mean my values, my conviction that the universe is objectively knowable, that individuals should be governed by reason, and that justice is the moral principle that should express these premises in social relationships.
HUNTER is a "vigilante thriller" that dramatizes the meaning of the principle of justice. It draws upon my years of writing about the criminal justice system, and about the "Excuse-Making Industry" of intellectuals who have completely undermined and corrupted its focus on justice. It deals, in an entertaining way, with fundamental moral issues and personal conflicts about honesty, trust, justice, free will, romantic love, and much else. Individual Objectivists who have read the book have been among its biggest, most enthusiastic champions.
That said, the response from the "organized Objectivist movement" and its organs -- such as it is, and such as they are -- has been the sound of crickets chirping. You say they are "quietly enjoying my success," but I wouldn't know, because you'd have to put all the emphasis on the word "quietly." I have no knowledge of any reviews of the book in the publications, websites, or blogs of Objectivist groups.
HUNTER has been described as "a thinking man's thriller." I'll buy that. Anyone who knows me also knows that I would be incapable of writing a novel without having my own worldview at its heart. By which I mean my values, my conviction that the universe is objectively knowable, that individuals should be governed by reason, and that justice is the moral principle that should express these premises in social relationships.
HUNTER is a "vigilante thriller" that dramatizes the meaning of the principle of justice. It draws upon my years of writing about the criminal justice system, and about the "Excuse-Making Industry" of intellectuals who have completely undermined and corrupted its focus on justice. It deals, in an entertaining way, with fundamental moral issues and personal conflicts about honesty, trust, justice, free will, romantic love, and much else. Individual Objectivists who have read the book have been among its biggest, most enthusiastic champions.
That said, the response from the "organized Objectivist movement" and its organs -- such as it is, and such as they are -- has been the sound of crickets chirping. You say they are "quietly enjoying my success," but I wouldn't know, because you'd have to put all the emphasis on the word "quietly." I have no knowledge of any reviews of the book in the publications, websites, or blogs of Objectivist groups.
It mildly amuses me, because for all their laments about the lack of "Objectivist art," here you have a novel come along, written by a guy who used to be prominent within Objectivist circles, and it is getting a great deal of attention...but not from them. HUNTER is customer-ranked #1 on Kindle's lists of "Thrillers," "Romantic Suspense," and "Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue." Today it has been in the Top 50 bestsellers in the "Spy Stories" category, among all titles on the Kindle; it's ahead of titles by Clancy, Cussler, Silva, Hunter, DeMille -- the masters of the genre. But the Objectivist response? Silence.
The best response it's getting has come from conservatives.
The best response it's getting has come from conservatives.
How is your lovely wife? Any comments on your future work? Oh, and also, what kind of music do you listen to these days?
This was by far the most difficult project I've ever undertaken. The complexity of the writing—especially the integration of all the elements of the characters, backgrounds, settings, plus all the stuff I had to research about spycraft, weapons, vehicles, locales— was almost overwhelming.
During the past year, when I made up my mind to finish this long-simmering project, it was quite an ordeal for my dear wife to endure. She let me pursue my lifelong dream of writing fiction, at a time that is challenging for us, and I'm grateful.
Given the response from readers, I'm encouraged to continue the adventures of Dylan Hunter in a number of sequels. If you read the customer reviews on Amazon, you'll see that fans will kill me if I don't!
I listen to a wide range of music: everything from classical and mainstream jazz (I love "the standards" and their iconic performers) to ZZ Top. Depends on the mood.
During the past year, when I made up my mind to finish this long-simmering project, it was quite an ordeal for my dear wife to endure. She let me pursue my lifelong dream of writing fiction, at a time that is challenging for us, and I'm grateful.
Given the response from readers, I'm encouraged to continue the adventures of Dylan Hunter in a number of sequels. If you read the customer reviews on Amazon, you'll see that fans will kill me if I don't!
I listen to a wide range of music: everything from classical and mainstream jazz (I love "the standards" and their iconic performers) to ZZ Top. Depends on the mood.
Any parting thoughts? Something to throw into the vast ocean of those who will read this?
Given that many of your readers will be Objectivists, I think I would like to mention an interesting fact.
One of the great surprises I've experienced in the aftermath of HUNTER's publication is the enthusiastic response from devout Christian conservatives. I'm talking about fundamentalist Christians. Now, beforehand, I would have thought that the hero's anti-mercy, take-no-prisoners, "Old Testament"-style focus on retribution—and the fact that some core "New Testament" values are criticized explicitly in the book—would have upset them and made them hostile. Same goes for the sexually charged romantic scenes.
But no. I've gotten a better response from fundamentalist, conservative Christians than I have from almost any other demographic group. This certainly undermines the caricature of such people commonly held by atheists, liberals, and, yes, Objectivists. My hypothesis is that conservative Christians are less enamored of religious theology than they are filled with hostility toward a world sinking into moral relativism.
HUNTER is the antithesis of moral relativism...and they love it! I think anyone who holds a similar view will love it, too.
One of the great surprises I've experienced in the aftermath of HUNTER's publication is the enthusiastic response from devout Christian conservatives. I'm talking about fundamentalist Christians. Now, beforehand, I would have thought that the hero's anti-mercy, take-no-prisoners, "Old Testament"-style focus on retribution—and the fact that some core "New Testament" values are criticized explicitly in the book—would have upset them and made them hostile. Same goes for the sexually charged romantic scenes.
But no. I've gotten a better response from fundamentalist, conservative Christians than I have from almost any other demographic group. This certainly undermines the caricature of such people commonly held by atheists, liberals, and, yes, Objectivists. My hypothesis is that conservative Christians are less enamored of religious theology than they are filled with hostility toward a world sinking into moral relativism.
HUNTER is the antithesis of moral relativism...and they love it! I think anyone who holds a similar view will love it, too.
Thanks, Rich, for this opportunity to talk about my debut thriller.
Beyond "B" Movie Review: Roger Corman's "Bucket of Blood" (1959)
Now, it is pretty well a known fact that I am very passionate about a very few things. It starts with my wife, and goes downhill from there. Anyway, about 4 levels down it hits "B" movies, and that is enough said.
I've spent years studying films (which in my case includes the experience of going to drive-in theaters; something becoming a dying craft) and even worked in the independent film world. Shit, I even have a credit out there on a film called "Pieces," directed by the somewhat legendary Russo Brothers (they killed my score but I still got celluloid as a "sound editor," for what that is worth). But I am not here to toot my own horn. The point is that, if you are into that culture (B-movies and all that goes with it), you know for sure who the fuck Roger Corman is--anyone does at that point. Somehow, this film escaped me. Oh, I might have seen bad prints of it--parts, broken reels, or maybe I was just very high back then and forgot the whole thing, but I doubt it. One thing for sure that I can tell you is that I just saw a clean (well, as clean as these go) print of it, and I can assure you this is highly unique. Why? Because Corman went after the Beatniks, and in a very savage manner of parody. It's all there in this film. It is a mind-blower. I didn't have to do any drugs to watch it, for one thing. And that was after I came out of watching a very good cut of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" That is a hard act to follow, let me tell you. But, in 66 minutes, it was eclipsed.
If you view film seminars with Corman, or read him, one thing he talks about is how he kind of created a game with himself about how fast he could finish a movie. This one was shot in 5 days, on 50K.
Cut to the treatment (from Wikipedia, accurately):
A Bucket of Blood is a 1959 American comedy horror film directed by Roger Corman. It starred Dick Miller and was set in beatnik culture. The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days,[2] and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work.[3] Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a dark comicsatire[2][4] about a socially awkward young busboy at a Bohemian café who is acclaimed as a brilliant sculptor when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers its body in clay to hide the evidence. When he is pressured to create similar work, he becomes murderous.
That leaves out a few salient details, and you can only get the feel from watching the thing. It is available on netflix, and Corman's website (most probably).
This is a straight-out attack on not only the Beat Generation, but nihilism, and general artistic a-holes, as only someone as venerable as Corman could do--and he wasn't even venerable when he did this film (1959).
Overall, what with being a reasonably clean print, this is the best piece of trash I've seen in years, and I've seen a lot.
rde
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Brief interview with incredible romantic erotica author Rachel Cron.
One of the most basic skills a writer must apprehend is an understanding of how subjectivity and objectivity work, hopefully even together at times, in art. Or, at the least, to know what the differences are. To quote the mischievous, profound, legendary mystic George Gurdjieff:
That being shown and said, it is not a problem for me, but a blessing, that author Rachel Cron happens to be, by weird extension, my newly-found sister-in-law. What it most importantly means is that I have spent a great deal of time with her, and gotten to see how her head works.
And what a magnificent head it is--all maybe close to 200 I.Q. points of it, if you believe in such measurements, which I kind of don't. But intelligence recognizes intelligence, on a very immediate and visceral level. Let's just say she's running a big block engine.
The daughter of an English professor (who had the rather, er, unique pleasure of assisting her in the editing of her first novel, which is highly erotic and graphic--thanks Dad), she rocketed out of the void with this debut, "Punk Rox Warrior" (Siren Publishing, a highly successful, branded outfit).
The book is deeply based in experience, and for sure she seems to have consciously hyper-amplified the two main characters, which is a common theatrical, musical, and literary technique. The cover is very much along the style-lines that Siren customers expect to see; in this case a female hero reminiscent of the heights of '80's chick/glam-rock (it reminded me of an early Lita Ford, who I know), and a male bodyguard, employed against-will by a dominant mother. He is ex-military, and looks like a Chippendale on roid-rage--that along with either a very delicate tan airbrush, spray-on tan, or maybe just hitting the grill:
Oddly enough, a left-handed guitar, of all things. A female character that not only carries the Zeitgeist of somewhere around the Gen-X period, but tends to perform in karaoke bars. Right!
These two protagonists are (and this is a big deal to those of us that are still of any moral fiber) heroic in nature--now, you don't always see that in erotic fiction.
I am not going to give any spoilers. The writing style is somewhat gritty--the way a woman writes gritty. It is not fluffy, super-elegant soft-lens porn. Oh, no--it is fast-paced, honest, and very grounded in events that actually occurred in Cron's life--perhaps this is her preferred version of how it could have come out.
In person, she is warm, fast, intelligent, and she definitely doesn't take prisoners. She is a guilty pleasure in the world of prose, and she's about to do a whole bunch more. If you look at her bookshelf (which is the ultimate in accuracy if you are trying to figure out the inside of a writer) it is filled with all kinds of everything, with a heavy emphasis on (but definitely not limited to) what used to be called dimestore romance novels. She has paid attention to these, and, along with other things, combined and cranked up the energy levels. She rocks.
Here is the interview:
The following is an extract from P. D. Ouspensky’s book: “In Search of the Miraculous” (pages 295-297). The speaker is Gurdjieff:
“The difference between objective art and subjective art is that
in objective art the artist really does ‘create,’ that is he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art.
In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him ‘it creates itself.’ This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on.
“There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite. … I measure the merit of art by its consciousness and you measure it by its unconsciousness. We cannot understand one another. A work of objective art ought to be a book as you call it; the only difference is that the artist transmits his ideas not directly through words or signs or hieroglyphs, but through certain feelings which he excites consciously and in an orderly way, knowing what he is doing and why he does it. … principles must be understood. If you grasp the principles you will be able to answer these questions yourselves. But if you do not grasp them nothing that I may say will explain anything to you. It was exactly about this that it was said — they will see with their eyes and will not perceive, they will hear with their ears and will not understand."Rachel Cron, Experimenting With Her Image
And what a magnificent head it is--all maybe close to 200 I.Q. points of it, if you believe in such measurements, which I kind of don't. But intelligence recognizes intelligence, on a very immediate and visceral level. Let's just say she's running a big block engine.
The daughter of an English professor (who had the rather, er, unique pleasure of assisting her in the editing of her first novel, which is highly erotic and graphic--thanks Dad), she rocketed out of the void with this debut, "Punk Rox Warrior" (Siren Publishing, a highly successful, branded outfit).
The book is deeply based in experience, and for sure she seems to have consciously hyper-amplified the two main characters, which is a common theatrical, musical, and literary technique. The cover is very much along the style-lines that Siren customers expect to see; in this case a female hero reminiscent of the heights of '80's chick/glam-rock (it reminded me of an early Lita Ford, who I know), and a male bodyguard, employed against-will by a dominant mother. He is ex-military, and looks like a Chippendale on roid-rage--that along with either a very delicate tan airbrush, spray-on tan, or maybe just hitting the grill:
These two protagonists are (and this is a big deal to those of us that are still of any moral fiber) heroic in nature--now, you don't always see that in erotic fiction.
I am not going to give any spoilers. The writing style is somewhat gritty--the way a woman writes gritty. It is not fluffy, super-elegant soft-lens porn. Oh, no--it is fast-paced, honest, and very grounded in events that actually occurred in Cron's life--perhaps this is her preferred version of how it could have come out.
In person, she is warm, fast, intelligent, and she definitely doesn't take prisoners. She is a guilty pleasure in the world of prose, and she's about to do a whole bunch more. If you look at her bookshelf (which is the ultimate in accuracy if you are trying to figure out the inside of a writer) it is filled with all kinds of everything, with a heavy emphasis on (but definitely not limited to) what used to be called dimestore romance novels. She has paid attention to these, and, along with other things, combined and cranked up the energy levels. She rocks.
Here is the interview:
My name is Rachel Cron
Author's Profile
Q: What would you say is your biggest inspiration, not only in writing but in life?
A: Music and books. It’s actually a toss-up between the two. They are the best emotional outlets. For every occasion, day or mindset there is a song to accompany it or that perfect book to accentuate that mood.
Q: This is your first novel, yes? Have you written anything before and did you always strive to be a writer?
A: I’ve always written things, poetry, short stories and songs. I always wrote for myself or friends. It never occurred to me to be a writer. Looking back now I wonder, why? My mind is always moving, it’s hard to turn it off some days. I wonder why I never found this outlet on a grander scale before now.
Q: What prompted you to start writing if writing wasn’t ever a major goal?
A: I suffered a traumatic experience. I had a stalker. When it was resolved I had nightmares and was showing signs of stress. My husband suggested I write about it…so I did. I wrote the book by accident. It started out as a journal entry of sorts, my thoughts and feelings about that experience. Soon it seemed to morph into something totally different and wonderful. I started to enjoy the story and add in little extras. The next thing you know…here we are.
Q: What is your average writing day like?
A: I don’t really have writing days. I get up in the morning and get my family out the door then I go to work. Then I come home and it’s dinner and bed for the kids and I putter around doing wife and mother type things. If I get the spark to write I just write. Some days I write from dawn till dusk. Some days I don’t even think about it.
Q: Do you have any other books in progress?
A: Yes. I have the next two books in the Warrior series begun. Six more are still rattling around in my brain screaming to be let out.
Q: What type of books peak your interest?
A: I just love books. I love books about music and biographies, vampires and classics. Romance books are a new thing for me. I never read them until after I wrote one, now I’m hooked on them too. Reading has always been a big part of my life. I have a few English teachers in my family so books were always around.
Available at www.bookstrand.com as well as other prime outlets. Print only.
rde
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
"There Outta Be A Law" -- Toddlers & Tiaras Edition (Discussion of the Moral Panic over a children's beauty pageant)
NOTE: A piece written by my colleague, Andrew Russell. Enjoy! RDE
AUTHORS NOTE: This is a piece of informal commentary (with a certain amount of Christopher-Hitchens-esque controversial humor) about the Moral Panic which occurred when Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant decided to hold a pageant in Melbourne, Australia. The title of the piece is a deliberate misspelling intended to mock the attitude that I am discussing.
As a piece of informal and semi-humorous commentary, it should be noted that some of the humor and examples used in certain parts of the work may potentially offend some readers. If the average episode of South Park offends you, this might not be the piece for you.
This piece has also been posted at the blog of the Australian Libertarian Society.
"There Outta Be A Law!" - Toddlers And Tiaras Edition
By Andrew Russell
Ever since the announcement that Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant was planning to hold a children's beauty pageant in Melbourne, plenty of Australian parents flocked to the latest and greatest Moral Panic. The pageant is now over, but the Moral Panic makes for interesting analysis.
As is depressingly typical in Australian politics, said parents (mostly affiliated with the group Pull The Pin) were not happy with merely privately boycotting the event or protesting it; they aim to make children's beauty pageants illegal in Australia (see: http://www.pullthepin.com.au/). In other words, "I don't like it, so There Outta Be A Law against it!"
The Pageant was going to feature Eden Wood; child Beauty Queen who was extensively featured, gyrating around in a pink sequinned Stripper Cowgirl outfit, on several Current Affairs shows. Eden cancelled; conflicts between Today Tonight and A Current Affair prevented her from attending.
As per usual, the Moral Panic over Universal Royalty's event included every libertarian's most loathed four-word logical fallacy; "think of the children!"
According to both Pull The Pin and Australians Against Child Beauty Pageants, these events harm the stars of the show. They harm the children they claim to be celebrating.
Pull The Pin's petition for laws against child pageants (http://www.gopetitio...r-children.html) reads as follows;
"We believe that child beauty pageants instil harmful messages in children (girls in particular as they make up the majority of participants), including that their looks are their currency.
We feel that child beauty pageants are exploitative and not in the best interests of the child, but the commercial interests of pageant promoters and parents living vicariously through their children.
We would like to see age restrictions applied (16+) so that the decision to compete against their peers in a beauty contest is made with full consent, and when their emotional maturity better enables them to fully comprehend and handle any negative self esteem impacts. We oppose the narrow gender messages child beauty pageants help perpetuate, doing nothing to improve the status of women in general, and encouraging ever younger games of 'compare and despair'."
In this article, I will make four basic arguments;
1) Fears of 'child sexualization' are clearly overblown,
2) Some anti-Pageant forces may be acting out of wounded pride rather than the interests of the children,
3) The Pageant critics make some very legitimate identifications of problems with child beauty pageants, but these problems are also found in children's sports and no one is trying to ban them,
4) Finally, there seems to be a troubling undertone of xenophobia amongst anti-Pageant forces.
1. Sexualization, The Pedophile's Veto, and Monkey-See-Monkey-Do-Kids
Both Pull The Pin and Australians Against Child Beauty Pageants also raise the specter of "sexualization." PTP says "children should be allowed to be children without being adultified and/or sexualized" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info) and AACBP brings up "research on the sexualisation of children" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info).
Bringing up "sexualization" and "children" is a sure-fire way to provoke a Moral Panic. After all, you're basically accusing the Pageant of either pedophilia or enabling pedophilia.
A desire to protect children from pedophilia is noble, but these campaigns produce not a shred of evidence for any link between child beauty pageants and actual pedophilia! Do these pageants create more kiddy-fiddlers? If not, why should we worry?
Video Games are the subject of a similar Moral Panic, with the argument against them being that they encourage psychotics. But it has been realized that restricting the freedom of completely sane people to engage in a fictional activity that harms nothing but pixels just to prevent the nutcases from going on rampages (and this assumes video games actuallycan influence people to do such a thing, which is a highly contestable proposition) generates a "maniac's veto" on free speech.
Pull The Pin is essentially asking for a Pedophile's Veto on child beauty pageants. They are arguing that because some twisted oily sexual deviant may be, somewhere, reaching for a tub of vaseline and a box of tissues upon viewing pictures of Eden Wood, we should make child beauty pageants illegal.
Should The Passion of the Christ have been banned just because some twisted sexual deviants may have, erm, 'gone to war in the South Pacific' over the scene where burly and butch Roman soldiers were whipping, flogging and caning Jesus (who himself was clad only in a loin-cloth)? I doubt Christopher Hitchens was the only person that believed the film to have a certain level of homoerotic subtext; he described the film as "a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism" and compared it to "the culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity" for having "massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews" (http://www.slate.com/id/2096323/).
Some may counter the above example with the fact that homosexual sadomasochism, if consensual, is not a crime. They'd be correct (although the scene depicted in The Passion is clearly not consensual, and Universal Royalty's beauty pageant did not depict any criminal acts whatsoever). Sex with a child is a crime (although it should be pointed out that the previous example of someone pleasuring themselves over a picture of Eden Wood, whilst stomach-churning, is not a criminal act; masturbation in a private place does not constitute a crime irrespective of the object of the masturbatory fantasy) because children cannot render informed consent.
Rape, however, is a crime. Lets take, for example, Disney's The Little Mermaid. Should this film be banned just because, in some dingy basement somewhere, someone is enjoying a graphic sexual fantasy of forcing copulation upon Ariel at gunpoint? What about Little Red Riding Hood; Red's underage and I'm sure someone out there has fantasized about being the Wolf and saying "all the better to screw you with, my dear!" Should we ban any real life event with any person involved just because someone out there might be sexually fantasizing about raping one of the involved people? I'm sure most of the Australian Olympic team have been the objects of rape fantasies before; lets withdraw from the Olympics! Its the only way to stop rape!
The anti-Pageant forces have argued a position far stronger than "depicting pedophilia will generate pedophilia." They've argued that "presenting a young girl in stereotypically 'adult' kinds of appearances will generate pedophilia." This is a far flimsier hypothesis than, say, "depicting murder in a video game will make more people want to commit murder" or "depicting a fictional rape in pornography will make more people want to commit rape." The latter hypotheses are variants on "monkey see, monkey do," the anti-Pageant hypothesis is that merely a potential suggestion of a pre-turn girl as 'a young woman' will turn monkey into a raging rabid pedophile.
But even the "monkey see, monkey do" hypotheses are empirically false. Crime (including violent crimes and sex crimes such as rape) in the US peaked in the early 90's and began to fall as internet market penetration (i.e. porn avaliability) andviolent videogame avaliability began to rise (http://reason.com/bl...hone-players-ki)(http://reason.com/ar...e-real-violence). This is the exact opposite situation to that which would be predicted by the "monkey see, monkey do" theory. Indeed, what it indicates is that porn and violent video games function as substitute goods for the real thing by creating a Catharsis; instead of shooting your teacher in the head and/or raping them, you play a Half-Life 2 mod where you shoot a naked image of your teacher and then 'teabag' the corpse.
But what about pedophilia? Well, there aren't many proxies we can use for pedophilia given that kiddy-porn is illegal (and it should be; actual pornography of real children is the recording of a crime and the material by definition was produced via a violation of an individual's rights). However, fictional depictions of pedophilia are a different matter.
In Australia, even fictional depictions of child sex (cartoon drawings, etc) are illegal. But this is not the case in Japan. In Japan, sexualized fictional images of young, often pre-teen, children (called "Lolicon" for the female variety and "Shotacon" for the male variety) are a well-known subgenre of Manga (and even some Anime). If the "monkey see, monkey do" theory is correct, than Japan should have a very high rate of pedophilia.
With respect to rape, Japan has one of the lowest rape rates; indeed, it has the lowest rape rate in the OECD (seehttp://www.independe...rostitution.pdf)(http://www.nationmas...apes-per-capita). Note also, nationmaster's statistics show Australia has the <i>third highest rape rate per capita</i> and Canada has the fifth highest. Both of them have more rape than the United States and both Australia and Canada have more legal restrictions on pornography than the US (Canada, in particular, has adopted Catherine MacKinnon's (a radical post-Marxist collectivist-feminist) definition of obscenity into law (http://www.wendymcel....php?content.73)). This correlation of "more porn, less rape" has also been observed by Northwestern University Law Professor Anthony d'Amato (http://anthonydamato...efiles/porn.pdf).
Does this general correlation apply to pedophilia?
According to the paper "Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic" ( http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/21116701), it does. Denmark, the Czech Republic and Japan all have experienced a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and during such time, the incidence of child sex abuse "showed a significant decrease."
Since real life child pornography is a recording of a crime created via the violation of an individual's rights, it is proper to ban iteven if if functions as a substitute good for actual pedophilia. But illustrated fictional material such as the Lolicon and Shotacon of Japan cannot be criticized on this basis. Whilst further study is required to ascertain whether Lolicon/Shotacon can be a substitute for pedophilic acts (because it clearly isn't 'real porn' and thus it would be a more imperfect substitute), this fact clearly puts a hole in the "monkey see, monkey do" case.
But in spite of all of the above, one point hasn't been adressed; even if one were to argue that the Universal Royalty pageant presented children in a sexualized fashion (which, again, is contestable), the pageant is not pornographic. Short skirts, heavy makeup and suggestive dancing do not make something pornography (most music videos would count under that definition). Outrageously over the top costumes, glitter eye-shadow and musical numbers do not make pornography (plus, most drag shows would probably count as porn if we accepted that definition). A standard beauty pageant is no more risque than what you'd find in a fashion magazine, and a children's pageant is typically tamer.
In short, accusations of "sexualization" are, at best, hyperbole. At worst, they're an attempt to exploit fear of pedophilia and use it to stoke a moral panic and restrict freedom.
2. Resentment and Envy
The "Pull The Pin" rally held in Melbourne had many interesting banners (pictures here: http://melbourneprot...ne-24-may-2011/). However, one sign in particular was interesting. Specifically, a sign reading "all kids are beautiful."
Now, lets accept the premise; "all kids are beautiful." Why does that imply that there can't be any ranking of beauty? We can grab several different objects that we might class as "yellow" but they could all be various different shades of yellow, and naturally some yellows will be closer to 'pure' yellow than others.
The answer, of course, is feelings. "You'll hurt the feelings of the losers," goes the common reply.
But this rebuttal applies to more than beauty pageants.
It applies to any and all competitions between kids. Do we ban scholastic competitions because the feelings of less intelligent children? No. Do we ban athletic competitions of any sort because of the feelings of slower, less physically strong, less physically co-ordinated children? Of course not. Indeed, given the immense amount of reverence Australian popular culture has for sporting prowess (see http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), it is at least arguable that sporting failure hurts the self-esteem of more kids to a higher degree individually than a beauty pageant. Do we ban artistic contests? Untalented, unmusical, uncreative people might have their feelings hurt! But no, we have art contests very frequently (and art, like beauty, is a highly subjective field primarily ruled by faddish critics).
Clearly, the "feelings" argument is deployed inconsistently.
Why?
I'm going to suggest an hypothesis; the reaction against the pageant is not an attack on "games of 'compare and despair'" (if it were, they'd be more consistent). Rather, it is a reaction against the idea of competing on beauty.
It is no secret that many people are superficial and thus will judge others on appearance. This is unfortunate but common. Regardless, I think that the anti-Pageant forces are themselves very fed up with that state of affairs, and I don't blame them.
They don't object to ranking kids on the basis of intelligence, artistic creativity, or physical skills/prowess. But they do object to a ranking on the basis of beauty. Why?
Perhaps they object to what they perceive as an over-valuation of beauty. People are often superficial, and this superficiality can indeed hurt feelings. If I were to be Nietzschean about it, I'd suggest that some (certainly not all and possibly even not most) people with strong anti-Pageant sentiment have themselves experienced hurt feelings at the hands of superficiality; they may have been bullied for an insufficient level of beauty, they may feel especially envious of people more beautiful than them, etcetera.
Note that this isn't necessarily the twisted nihilism that manifests itself in a desire to 'destroy all beauty.' I doubt that many of them are going around and fantasizing about mutilating Eden Wood. Beauty is desirable by definition, but I doubt that many people are thinking "if I can't be beautiful, no one can!"
The attitude is more of a subtle and inconsistent ressentiment (resentment that motivates the resenter to generate moral beliefs which back up the resentment). Now, first it must be said that ressentiment is not necessarily bad, and not necessarily irrational (although it can be both).
In this situation, we begin with something which the resenter accepts as desirable, and lacks. Lacking something one wants is not a pleasant experience. It gets worse when people at large commonly have the same basic desires and these desires get manifested in various institutions, such as beauty pageants. To the resenter, this feels like rubbing their nose in their defeat; it amplifies their feelings of inadequacy.
In order to deal with these feelings of inadequacy, they have to confront the premise which society at large (and they, at least subconsciously) have ultimately accepted; that the object they lack is truly desirable.
Take, for example, a person of limited economic resources. Said person, assuming they actually desire more money, would naturally be frustrated at people flaunting wealth, or goods of high quality (and the typically-accompanying high price tag). In order to convince themselves that they really weren't losing out and mitigate their feelings of deprivation, they'd be more likely to generate some sort of moral belief that makes them feel better.
Hence religious doctrines about a god that favors the poor over the rich, and sayings like "money doesn't buy happiness" (a saying which, in my experience, is never sincerely believed in, unless one takes it literally (since happiness is not a physical good or service, hence it can't be bought with money per se)).
This isn't classical Nietzschean ressentiment. It differs in that the self-justifying moral belief (or set thereof) is not sincerely accepted. The resenter is trying to soothe their feelings of jealousy.
Again, it should be noted that this isn't necessarily bad or irrational (although it can be both). But in the case of the Universal Royalty beauty pageant controversy, we've reached the stage where this ressentiment may to some degree be motivating a push for yet more curtailments to liberty. As such, it needs to be analyzed.
If the anti-Pageant people didn't truly desire more beauty for themselves (i.e. they sincerely believed that the Pageant's ideals of beauty were silly), they wouldn't feel a sense of lacking. They'd probably just roll their eyes at the Pageant for overvaluing something that really didn't mean much, scoff, and let it be. But they are calling for a law, calling for the banning of an institution that lives by the premise that people (including children) can be ranked according to beauty and that beauty is a desirable thing.
Since they tacitly accept this premise, but their failure to measure up to their own standards causes pain, they try to convince themselves the premise is wrong. Hence, the argument that "all kids are beautiful" (with, of course, the tacit position that they're all equally beautiful), the lashing out against an institution which contradicts this proposition, and the consistent attempts to delegitimize the Pageant's idea of what constitutes beautiful.
Now, to be fair, there are many reasonable criticisms of the Pageant's idea of beauty; the anti-Pageant people make quite a few. The Pageant's idea of beauty arguably is narrow (then again, so is the cliche Bottle-Blond-Bondi-Beach-Bikini-Babe, and it should also be stated that many pageants have more criterion than physical apperance (such as talent and intelligence)). Additionally, I am not arguing that all opposition to Universal Royalty is a product of this inconsistent ressentiment. But the point remains that there is a clear likelihood that a certain amount of opposition to the Pageant is powered not by disagreement with a specific ideal of beauty, but rather frustration at failing to measure up to it.
3. The Sporting Life, or Tu Quoque
Anti-Pageant activists have often made very valid points about beauty pageants; the primary problem with their activism is not their criticisms per se but their desire to use the State to ban beauty pageants for children.
But I do agree with quite a few of the anti-Pageant's activists claims. The events clearly attract some pushy parents that are living vicariously through their children as a way of compensating for their own failed dreams of glory (and of accumulating glory for themselves for being "such good parents for producing such a successful child"). The events also arguably promote very restrictive concepts of "acceptable" femaleness (specifically, women are meant to want to be physically beautiful in order to impress men, and that's all a woman should aim at doing). Pageants also do arguably encourage people to overvalue the physical aspects of a person, rather than to evaluate people's personality traits, intellect or any other aspects. Finally, pageants do indeed have the potential to encourage games of "compare and despair," or (to rephrase) encourage children to evaluate themselves comparatively rather than objectively (i.e. to be more interested in "I am better than X" rather than "I am good").
These are all reasonable criticisms and I won't contest them. But why are pageants criticized for these flaws when they exist in far more widely-spread activities for children?
Specifically, every single one of these flaws applies to children's sports; a hobby which is beyond "commonplace" in its participation level.
The prevalence of pushy parents in the children's sporting arena cannot be denied. Certainly, many children participate in sport because they wish to, but in my experiences the presence of pushy parents 'encouraging' their children into sport is definite. And naturally, said pushy parents greatly enjoy basking in the reflected glow from said child's trophy and awards collection.
Beauty pageants tend to be contested primarily (but not exclusively) by females. Children's sports, whilst less skewed towards one specific gender, are still principally male in their appeal. And just as Beauty pageants arguably market a rigid kind of feminity, children's sports do the same thing with respect to masculinity. They define one's maleness principally in terms of physical exertion, endurance of physical pain, and ability to supress individual identity and work in a pack with a well-defined dominance hierarchy (this last point doesn't apply so much to non-team sports, but team sports are emphasized far more than individual sports in the Australian children's sporting world).
These traits were useful in a hunter-gatherer society of tribes and still have use (unfortunately) in matters relating to the military. But they have progressively less and less use in a world where capital replaces and augments labour productivity, where wealth is primarily generated by mental effort and competence in creating and distributing novel ideas, and where individuals (rather than collectives) are considered the building blocks of society.
Of course, you'd never guess this if you looked at how most schoolyards operate.
My time in high school was a period of utter torment, endured at the Anglican Church Grammar School (colloquially known as Churchie). Churchie was a strong supporter of its extracurricular sports programs, and as such had a culture which heavily valued sporting success (all to glorify the School Community, of course... that place was the spiritual equivalent of North Korea and only varied in matters of degree rather than principle). It should come as no surprise that the social understanding of "proper" masculinity was indeed very narrow. Basically, one was a "proper" male in proportion to one's level of success at sports and fitting in with the group (to an extent these two standards were interrelated; team sports especially being social-cohesion mechanisms, and one's acceptance into the pack presupposing someone accepts the pack's standards in the first place). War-cries which more or less were about encouraging people to identify with the group and devolve into a primal tribe of grunting and yelling Vikings (an image which I'm sure would strike some people as even more homoerotic than The Passion of the Christ) were a regular feature, analagous to the "Two Minutes Hate" from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
If one were to be so unlucky as to have competencies principally in non-sporting areas, such as music and art, or even worse, academics (because academic achievement didn't glorify the School Community sufficiently; its selfish and hence bad (naturally, during the QCS test (which takes schoolwide average into account in grading individual students), this was reversed and suddenly intelligence became a good thing, only because it would help the School Community (indeed, there was a pre-QCS meeting where two of the, erm, less intellectually capable students basically pleaded for the smart people to try harder so as to lift up their scores (please John Galt! Save us! Save us!))), then one was socially emasculated on a regular basis. Using words of more than two syllables instantly brought up the suspicion of homosexuality. Are you a musician, artist or actor? You can't possibly have a girlfriend!
There was but one metric of proper maleness; sporting participation and proficiency. In this, children's sports were no different to beauty pageants; both promoted rigid gender norms and hence supressed individuality.
And lets not forget some of the parents. Whilst there were plenty of exceptions, I was personally acquainted with many parents that were psychotically pushy and redefined the concept of 'sociopathic social climber' on a regular basis. All of them loved to bask in reflected glory from their sons, who's achievements on the playing field were of course barometers of their own fitness to be parents. There were frequent Churchie-parent get-togethers, the content of which was little more than said parents more or less competing with each other as to who's child is the most amazing. And of course, several parents were more than happy to lend 'assistance' to the school in order to ensure preferential treatment for their kids.
Mothers like Joan Crawford are clearly not confined to beauty pageantry.
So, pushy parents exploiting their children's glory, and the cultivation of rigid gender norms, are present in children's sporting. By definition, sporting success is a predominantly physical endeavour, and thus the valuation of sporting success over success in other fields translates into propagating the belief that physical perfection is the only valuable attribute someone can have.
This leaves one final attribute of beauty pageants which is shared by sports; games of "compare and despair." Indeed, "games of 'compare and despair'" could pretty much be a synonym of "sport." Sports, by definition, are competitive activities which rank the participants from "winner" to "loser," glorify the winner and humiliate (and in the case of men, symbolically emasculate) the loser. In many situations, trophies are distributed, allowing said games of "compare and despair" to be continued when children (or their parents) compare trophies.
Why does it matter whether the trophies come from sporting achievements or beauty pageants?
Maybe my own experience is atypical; maybe my high school's culture was a product of Adverse Selection and all the Stage Mothers of Sporting sent their sons to Churchie because it was basically Jock Central and thus I was subjected to a higher concentration of Sport-Love than the average Australian young male (of course, I'd actually be more inclined to believe this hypothesis if, like Mia Freedman makes clear here (http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), general Australian culture weren't so completely, pathologically obsessed with sporting success!).
But in my experience, every single reasonable criticism that Pull The Pin and other anti-Pageant campaigners make about Universal Royalty's pageant applies just as much to children's sports; games of 'compare and despair' which implicitly endorse restrictive ideals of 'correct' gendered-ness and the overvaluation of the physical (and undervaluation of all else) and are often powered by pushy pathological parents wishing to live vicariously through their Little Winners.
4. "I'm Afraid of Americans"
As stated above, the vast majority of the flaws of beauty pageants for children exist in children's sports.
So why do children's sports emerge relatively unscathed? I don't see anyone arguing that sports for the under 16's should be banned. Even me, who is bitter and twisted over the idolization of sport above all else, wouldn't ban it (then again, I'm a libertarian so I don't fall prey to "There Outta Be A Law").
I think the best clue is given by another sign held up at the aforementioned Pull The Pin rally reading: "Keep Their Tiaras Off Our Toddlers" (http://melbourneprot...05/line-up1.jpg).
Note the invocation of "our" and "their," or an "us" and a "them." So, who is the "us" and who is the "them?" Who are we, and who is the sinister Other out to destroy our society?
In answering that question, I can't help but point out that I have not seen a single piece of news coverage of the Universal Royalty pageant that didn't explicitly remind us that Universal Royalty is an American organization. NineMSN's headline reads "US child pageant hits Melbourne" (http://news.ninemsn....elbourne.glance). Pull The Pin themselves characterize the pageant as "Universal Royalty announcing their Australian invasion" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info). Pull The Pin's leader, Catherine Manning, even said in the video at this news report (http://www.theage.co...tml?from=age_sb) "we're Australian, we're not American."
This helps explain the double standard between sports and pageants. Sports are a national pasttime, a tradition, a foundational element of the Australian identity (in popular culture). As Mia Freedman recently discovered (http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), to question the worth of sport and specifically sporting achievement in international competition will result in a firestorm of abuse being directed towards you and for your Australian-ness to be questioned.
Beauty pageants, on the other hand, are a strongly American pasttime (although, naturally, when an Australian woman wins Miss Universe, not too many Australians go on complaining about pageants then).
Both children's sports and pageants can be fairly accused of being inegalitarian, promoting unattainable ideals of personal adequacy, being full of pushy parents eager to live vicariously through their children, setting up the vast majority of kids for disappointment, encouraging negative body image, self-esteem problems and eating disorders, encouraging kids to judge themselves merely on physical levels etc. but one of these is part of being truly Australian (apparently), and the other is imported from Texas (Mickie Wood's rather thick Texan accent was not good PR, unfortunately).
In short, I find a troubling subtext of anti-American xenophobia and Australian nationalism running through some of the backlash against Universal Royalty. With protestors wanting Mickie Wood to keep her American, Texan Tiaras away from our wholesome, innocent Australian children, it seems hard to avoid the impression that at least some of the disdain towards Universal Royalty stems from some sort of anti-Americanism.
5. A Libertarian's Perspective
I loathe beauty pageants. I have an endless reservoir of hate for pushy parents. Superficiality, one-upmanship and proverbial 'pissing contests' all can have negative effects on children. And yes, somewhere, some sick pedophile might proverbially get wood from the publicity shots of Eden Wood.
But I don't think There Outta Be A Law.
Whether you like them or not, beauty pageants have not been demonstrated to be psychologically more potentially damaging than school sports. The question should not even be whether or not a beauty pageant is a good thing, but whether or not it is proper for the State to ban it.
And clearly, it is improper for the State to ban beauty pageants. The role of the State is not to protect people's feelings, but rather their lives, liberty and property.
To all those that wish to ban beauty pageants (or, more broadly, enforce moral preferences against nonviolent behavior at gunpoint), I think you should realize this; a government powerful enough to ban beauty pageants is a government powerful enough to mandate them. A government with the power to enforce moral preferences becomes nothing more than a weapon which various pressure groups will fight over, and the simple fact is that your moral preferences may not be shared by the ruling class.
Voluntary, peaceful boycotts and protests, even on the basis of irrational or semi-rational positions, are always permitted. But to advocate the use of the power of the State to ban a non-violent activity you don't like ends up enabling Australia to take one more step down the Road To Serfdom.
Freedom requires tolerance. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to like it, you just have to refrain from starting or advocating the use of violence, fraud or threats thereof against it. Clearly, many people find pageants can stir feelings of unease, and there's nothing inherently wrong with disliking them. But merely disliking something is no reason to make it illegal.
And yes, tolerance even extends to little girls that resemble Shirley Temple in a pink-sequined cowgirl outfit, as well as their Texan mothers.
AUTHORS NOTE: This is a piece of informal commentary (with a certain amount of Christopher-Hitchens-esque controversial humor) about the Moral Panic which occurred when Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant decided to hold a pageant in Melbourne, Australia. The title of the piece is a deliberate misspelling intended to mock the attitude that I am discussing.
As a piece of informal and semi-humorous commentary, it should be noted that some of the humor and examples used in certain parts of the work may potentially offend some readers. If the average episode of South Park offends you, this might not be the piece for you.
This piece has also been posted at the blog of the Australian Libertarian Society.
"There Outta Be A Law!" - Toddlers And Tiaras Edition
By Andrew Russell
Ever since the announcement that Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant was planning to hold a children's beauty pageant in Melbourne, plenty of Australian parents flocked to the latest and greatest Moral Panic. The pageant is now over, but the Moral Panic makes for interesting analysis.
As is depressingly typical in Australian politics, said parents (mostly affiliated with the group Pull The Pin) were not happy with merely privately boycotting the event or protesting it; they aim to make children's beauty pageants illegal in Australia (see: http://www.pullthepin.com.au/). In other words, "I don't like it, so There Outta Be A Law against it!"
The Pageant was going to feature Eden Wood; child Beauty Queen who was extensively featured, gyrating around in a pink sequinned Stripper Cowgirl outfit, on several Current Affairs shows. Eden cancelled; conflicts between Today Tonight and A Current Affair prevented her from attending.
As per usual, the Moral Panic over Universal Royalty's event included every libertarian's most loathed four-word logical fallacy; "think of the children!"
According to both Pull The Pin and Australians Against Child Beauty Pageants, these events harm the stars of the show. They harm the children they claim to be celebrating.
Pull The Pin's petition for laws against child pageants (http://www.gopetitio...r-children.html) reads as follows;
"We believe that child beauty pageants instil harmful messages in children (girls in particular as they make up the majority of participants), including that their looks are their currency.
We feel that child beauty pageants are exploitative and not in the best interests of the child, but the commercial interests of pageant promoters and parents living vicariously through their children.
We would like to see age restrictions applied (16+) so that the decision to compete against their peers in a beauty contest is made with full consent, and when their emotional maturity better enables them to fully comprehend and handle any negative self esteem impacts. We oppose the narrow gender messages child beauty pageants help perpetuate, doing nothing to improve the status of women in general, and encouraging ever younger games of 'compare and despair'."
In this article, I will make four basic arguments;
1) Fears of 'child sexualization' are clearly overblown,
2) Some anti-Pageant forces may be acting out of wounded pride rather than the interests of the children,
3) The Pageant critics make some very legitimate identifications of problems with child beauty pageants, but these problems are also found in children's sports and no one is trying to ban them,
4) Finally, there seems to be a troubling undertone of xenophobia amongst anti-Pageant forces.
1. Sexualization, The Pedophile's Veto, and Monkey-See-Monkey-Do-Kids
Both Pull The Pin and Australians Against Child Beauty Pageants also raise the specter of "sexualization." PTP says "children should be allowed to be children without being adultified and/or sexualized" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info) and AACBP brings up "research on the sexualisation of children" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info).
Bringing up "sexualization" and "children" is a sure-fire way to provoke a Moral Panic. After all, you're basically accusing the Pageant of either pedophilia or enabling pedophilia.
A desire to protect children from pedophilia is noble, but these campaigns produce not a shred of evidence for any link between child beauty pageants and actual pedophilia! Do these pageants create more kiddy-fiddlers? If not, why should we worry?
Video Games are the subject of a similar Moral Panic, with the argument against them being that they encourage psychotics. But it has been realized that restricting the freedom of completely sane people to engage in a fictional activity that harms nothing but pixels just to prevent the nutcases from going on rampages (and this assumes video games actuallycan influence people to do such a thing, which is a highly contestable proposition) generates a "maniac's veto" on free speech.
Pull The Pin is essentially asking for a Pedophile's Veto on child beauty pageants. They are arguing that because some twisted oily sexual deviant may be, somewhere, reaching for a tub of vaseline and a box of tissues upon viewing pictures of Eden Wood, we should make child beauty pageants illegal.
Should The Passion of the Christ have been banned just because some twisted sexual deviants may have, erm, 'gone to war in the South Pacific' over the scene where burly and butch Roman soldiers were whipping, flogging and caning Jesus (who himself was clad only in a loin-cloth)? I doubt Christopher Hitchens was the only person that believed the film to have a certain level of homoerotic subtext; he described the film as "a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism" and compared it to "the culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity" for having "massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews" (http://www.slate.com/id/2096323/).
Some may counter the above example with the fact that homosexual sadomasochism, if consensual, is not a crime. They'd be correct (although the scene depicted in The Passion is clearly not consensual, and Universal Royalty's beauty pageant did not depict any criminal acts whatsoever). Sex with a child is a crime (although it should be pointed out that the previous example of someone pleasuring themselves over a picture of Eden Wood, whilst stomach-churning, is not a criminal act; masturbation in a private place does not constitute a crime irrespective of the object of the masturbatory fantasy) because children cannot render informed consent.
Rape, however, is a crime. Lets take, for example, Disney's The Little Mermaid. Should this film be banned just because, in some dingy basement somewhere, someone is enjoying a graphic sexual fantasy of forcing copulation upon Ariel at gunpoint? What about Little Red Riding Hood; Red's underage and I'm sure someone out there has fantasized about being the Wolf and saying "all the better to screw you with, my dear!" Should we ban any real life event with any person involved just because someone out there might be sexually fantasizing about raping one of the involved people? I'm sure most of the Australian Olympic team have been the objects of rape fantasies before; lets withdraw from the Olympics! Its the only way to stop rape!
The anti-Pageant forces have argued a position far stronger than "depicting pedophilia will generate pedophilia." They've argued that "presenting a young girl in stereotypically 'adult' kinds of appearances will generate pedophilia." This is a far flimsier hypothesis than, say, "depicting murder in a video game will make more people want to commit murder" or "depicting a fictional rape in pornography will make more people want to commit rape." The latter hypotheses are variants on "monkey see, monkey do," the anti-Pageant hypothesis is that merely a potential suggestion of a pre-turn girl as 'a young woman' will turn monkey into a raging rabid pedophile.
But even the "monkey see, monkey do" hypotheses are empirically false. Crime (including violent crimes and sex crimes such as rape) in the US peaked in the early 90's and began to fall as internet market penetration (i.e. porn avaliability) andviolent videogame avaliability began to rise (http://reason.com/bl...hone-players-ki)(http://reason.com/ar...e-real-violence). This is the exact opposite situation to that which would be predicted by the "monkey see, monkey do" theory. Indeed, what it indicates is that porn and violent video games function as substitute goods for the real thing by creating a Catharsis; instead of shooting your teacher in the head and/or raping them, you play a Half-Life 2 mod where you shoot a naked image of your teacher and then 'teabag' the corpse.
But what about pedophilia? Well, there aren't many proxies we can use for pedophilia given that kiddy-porn is illegal (and it should be; actual pornography of real children is the recording of a crime and the material by definition was produced via a violation of an individual's rights). However, fictional depictions of pedophilia are a different matter.
In Australia, even fictional depictions of child sex (cartoon drawings, etc) are illegal. But this is not the case in Japan. In Japan, sexualized fictional images of young, often pre-teen, children (called "Lolicon" for the female variety and "Shotacon" for the male variety) are a well-known subgenre of Manga (and even some Anime). If the "monkey see, monkey do" theory is correct, than Japan should have a very high rate of pedophilia.
With respect to rape, Japan has one of the lowest rape rates; indeed, it has the lowest rape rate in the OECD (seehttp://www.independe...rostitution.pdf)(http://www.nationmas...apes-per-capita). Note also, nationmaster's statistics show Australia has the <i>third highest rape rate per capita</i> and Canada has the fifth highest. Both of them have more rape than the United States and both Australia and Canada have more legal restrictions on pornography than the US (Canada, in particular, has adopted Catherine MacKinnon's (a radical post-Marxist collectivist-feminist) definition of obscenity into law (http://www.wendymcel....php?content.73)). This correlation of "more porn, less rape" has also been observed by Northwestern University Law Professor Anthony d'Amato (http://anthonydamato...efiles/porn.pdf).
Does this general correlation apply to pedophilia?
According to the paper "Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic" ( http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/21116701), it does. Denmark, the Czech Republic and Japan all have experienced a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and during such time, the incidence of child sex abuse "showed a significant decrease."
Since real life child pornography is a recording of a crime created via the violation of an individual's rights, it is proper to ban iteven if if functions as a substitute good for actual pedophilia. But illustrated fictional material such as the Lolicon and Shotacon of Japan cannot be criticized on this basis. Whilst further study is required to ascertain whether Lolicon/Shotacon can be a substitute for pedophilic acts (because it clearly isn't 'real porn' and thus it would be a more imperfect substitute), this fact clearly puts a hole in the "monkey see, monkey do" case.
But in spite of all of the above, one point hasn't been adressed; even if one were to argue that the Universal Royalty pageant presented children in a sexualized fashion (which, again, is contestable), the pageant is not pornographic. Short skirts, heavy makeup and suggestive dancing do not make something pornography (most music videos would count under that definition). Outrageously over the top costumes, glitter eye-shadow and musical numbers do not make pornography (plus, most drag shows would probably count as porn if we accepted that definition). A standard beauty pageant is no more risque than what you'd find in a fashion magazine, and a children's pageant is typically tamer.
In short, accusations of "sexualization" are, at best, hyperbole. At worst, they're an attempt to exploit fear of pedophilia and use it to stoke a moral panic and restrict freedom.
2. Resentment and Envy
The "Pull The Pin" rally held in Melbourne had many interesting banners (pictures here: http://melbourneprot...ne-24-may-2011/). However, one sign in particular was interesting. Specifically, a sign reading "all kids are beautiful."
Now, lets accept the premise; "all kids are beautiful." Why does that imply that there can't be any ranking of beauty? We can grab several different objects that we might class as "yellow" but they could all be various different shades of yellow, and naturally some yellows will be closer to 'pure' yellow than others.
The answer, of course, is feelings. "You'll hurt the feelings of the losers," goes the common reply.
But this rebuttal applies to more than beauty pageants.
It applies to any and all competitions between kids. Do we ban scholastic competitions because the feelings of less intelligent children? No. Do we ban athletic competitions of any sort because of the feelings of slower, less physically strong, less physically co-ordinated children? Of course not. Indeed, given the immense amount of reverence Australian popular culture has for sporting prowess (see http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), it is at least arguable that sporting failure hurts the self-esteem of more kids to a higher degree individually than a beauty pageant. Do we ban artistic contests? Untalented, unmusical, uncreative people might have their feelings hurt! But no, we have art contests very frequently (and art, like beauty, is a highly subjective field primarily ruled by faddish critics).
Clearly, the "feelings" argument is deployed inconsistently.
Why?
I'm going to suggest an hypothesis; the reaction against the pageant is not an attack on "games of 'compare and despair'" (if it were, they'd be more consistent). Rather, it is a reaction against the idea of competing on beauty.
It is no secret that many people are superficial and thus will judge others on appearance. This is unfortunate but common. Regardless, I think that the anti-Pageant forces are themselves very fed up with that state of affairs, and I don't blame them.
They don't object to ranking kids on the basis of intelligence, artistic creativity, or physical skills/prowess. But they do object to a ranking on the basis of beauty. Why?
Perhaps they object to what they perceive as an over-valuation of beauty. People are often superficial, and this superficiality can indeed hurt feelings. If I were to be Nietzschean about it, I'd suggest that some (certainly not all and possibly even not most) people with strong anti-Pageant sentiment have themselves experienced hurt feelings at the hands of superficiality; they may have been bullied for an insufficient level of beauty, they may feel especially envious of people more beautiful than them, etcetera.
Note that this isn't necessarily the twisted nihilism that manifests itself in a desire to 'destroy all beauty.' I doubt that many of them are going around and fantasizing about mutilating Eden Wood. Beauty is desirable by definition, but I doubt that many people are thinking "if I can't be beautiful, no one can!"
The attitude is more of a subtle and inconsistent ressentiment (resentment that motivates the resenter to generate moral beliefs which back up the resentment). Now, first it must be said that ressentiment is not necessarily bad, and not necessarily irrational (although it can be both).
In this situation, we begin with something which the resenter accepts as desirable, and lacks. Lacking something one wants is not a pleasant experience. It gets worse when people at large commonly have the same basic desires and these desires get manifested in various institutions, such as beauty pageants. To the resenter, this feels like rubbing their nose in their defeat; it amplifies their feelings of inadequacy.
In order to deal with these feelings of inadequacy, they have to confront the premise which society at large (and they, at least subconsciously) have ultimately accepted; that the object they lack is truly desirable.
Take, for example, a person of limited economic resources. Said person, assuming they actually desire more money, would naturally be frustrated at people flaunting wealth, or goods of high quality (and the typically-accompanying high price tag). In order to convince themselves that they really weren't losing out and mitigate their feelings of deprivation, they'd be more likely to generate some sort of moral belief that makes them feel better.
Hence religious doctrines about a god that favors the poor over the rich, and sayings like "money doesn't buy happiness" (a saying which, in my experience, is never sincerely believed in, unless one takes it literally (since happiness is not a physical good or service, hence it can't be bought with money per se)).
This isn't classical Nietzschean ressentiment. It differs in that the self-justifying moral belief (or set thereof) is not sincerely accepted. The resenter is trying to soothe their feelings of jealousy.
Again, it should be noted that this isn't necessarily bad or irrational (although it can be both). But in the case of the Universal Royalty beauty pageant controversy, we've reached the stage where this ressentiment may to some degree be motivating a push for yet more curtailments to liberty. As such, it needs to be analyzed.
If the anti-Pageant people didn't truly desire more beauty for themselves (i.e. they sincerely believed that the Pageant's ideals of beauty were silly), they wouldn't feel a sense of lacking. They'd probably just roll their eyes at the Pageant for overvaluing something that really didn't mean much, scoff, and let it be. But they are calling for a law, calling for the banning of an institution that lives by the premise that people (including children) can be ranked according to beauty and that beauty is a desirable thing.
Since they tacitly accept this premise, but their failure to measure up to their own standards causes pain, they try to convince themselves the premise is wrong. Hence, the argument that "all kids are beautiful" (with, of course, the tacit position that they're all equally beautiful), the lashing out against an institution which contradicts this proposition, and the consistent attempts to delegitimize the Pageant's idea of what constitutes beautiful.
Now, to be fair, there are many reasonable criticisms of the Pageant's idea of beauty; the anti-Pageant people make quite a few. The Pageant's idea of beauty arguably is narrow (then again, so is the cliche Bottle-Blond-Bondi-Beach-Bikini-Babe, and it should also be stated that many pageants have more criterion than physical apperance (such as talent and intelligence)). Additionally, I am not arguing that all opposition to Universal Royalty is a product of this inconsistent ressentiment. But the point remains that there is a clear likelihood that a certain amount of opposition to the Pageant is powered not by disagreement with a specific ideal of beauty, but rather frustration at failing to measure up to it.
3. The Sporting Life, or Tu Quoque
Anti-Pageant activists have often made very valid points about beauty pageants; the primary problem with their activism is not their criticisms per se but their desire to use the State to ban beauty pageants for children.
But I do agree with quite a few of the anti-Pageant's activists claims. The events clearly attract some pushy parents that are living vicariously through their children as a way of compensating for their own failed dreams of glory (and of accumulating glory for themselves for being "such good parents for producing such a successful child"). The events also arguably promote very restrictive concepts of "acceptable" femaleness (specifically, women are meant to want to be physically beautiful in order to impress men, and that's all a woman should aim at doing). Pageants also do arguably encourage people to overvalue the physical aspects of a person, rather than to evaluate people's personality traits, intellect or any other aspects. Finally, pageants do indeed have the potential to encourage games of "compare and despair," or (to rephrase) encourage children to evaluate themselves comparatively rather than objectively (i.e. to be more interested in "I am better than X" rather than "I am good").
These are all reasonable criticisms and I won't contest them. But why are pageants criticized for these flaws when they exist in far more widely-spread activities for children?
Specifically, every single one of these flaws applies to children's sports; a hobby which is beyond "commonplace" in its participation level.
The prevalence of pushy parents in the children's sporting arena cannot be denied. Certainly, many children participate in sport because they wish to, but in my experiences the presence of pushy parents 'encouraging' their children into sport is definite. And naturally, said pushy parents greatly enjoy basking in the reflected glow from said child's trophy and awards collection.
Beauty pageants tend to be contested primarily (but not exclusively) by females. Children's sports, whilst less skewed towards one specific gender, are still principally male in their appeal. And just as Beauty pageants arguably market a rigid kind of feminity, children's sports do the same thing with respect to masculinity. They define one's maleness principally in terms of physical exertion, endurance of physical pain, and ability to supress individual identity and work in a pack with a well-defined dominance hierarchy (this last point doesn't apply so much to non-team sports, but team sports are emphasized far more than individual sports in the Australian children's sporting world).
These traits were useful in a hunter-gatherer society of tribes and still have use (unfortunately) in matters relating to the military. But they have progressively less and less use in a world where capital replaces and augments labour productivity, where wealth is primarily generated by mental effort and competence in creating and distributing novel ideas, and where individuals (rather than collectives) are considered the building blocks of society.
Of course, you'd never guess this if you looked at how most schoolyards operate.
My time in high school was a period of utter torment, endured at the Anglican Church Grammar School (colloquially known as Churchie). Churchie was a strong supporter of its extracurricular sports programs, and as such had a culture which heavily valued sporting success (all to glorify the School Community, of course... that place was the spiritual equivalent of North Korea and only varied in matters of degree rather than principle). It should come as no surprise that the social understanding of "proper" masculinity was indeed very narrow. Basically, one was a "proper" male in proportion to one's level of success at sports and fitting in with the group (to an extent these two standards were interrelated; team sports especially being social-cohesion mechanisms, and one's acceptance into the pack presupposing someone accepts the pack's standards in the first place). War-cries which more or less were about encouraging people to identify with the group and devolve into a primal tribe of grunting and yelling Vikings (an image which I'm sure would strike some people as even more homoerotic than The Passion of the Christ) were a regular feature, analagous to the "Two Minutes Hate" from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
If one were to be so unlucky as to have competencies principally in non-sporting areas, such as music and art, or even worse, academics (because academic achievement didn't glorify the School Community sufficiently; its selfish and hence bad (naturally, during the QCS test (which takes schoolwide average into account in grading individual students), this was reversed and suddenly intelligence became a good thing, only because it would help the School Community (indeed, there was a pre-QCS meeting where two of the, erm, less intellectually capable students basically pleaded for the smart people to try harder so as to lift up their scores (please John Galt! Save us! Save us!))), then one was socially emasculated on a regular basis. Using words of more than two syllables instantly brought up the suspicion of homosexuality. Are you a musician, artist or actor? You can't possibly have a girlfriend!
There was but one metric of proper maleness; sporting participation and proficiency. In this, children's sports were no different to beauty pageants; both promoted rigid gender norms and hence supressed individuality.
And lets not forget some of the parents. Whilst there were plenty of exceptions, I was personally acquainted with many parents that were psychotically pushy and redefined the concept of 'sociopathic social climber' on a regular basis. All of them loved to bask in reflected glory from their sons, who's achievements on the playing field were of course barometers of their own fitness to be parents. There were frequent Churchie-parent get-togethers, the content of which was little more than said parents more or less competing with each other as to who's child is the most amazing. And of course, several parents were more than happy to lend 'assistance' to the school in order to ensure preferential treatment for their kids.
Mothers like Joan Crawford are clearly not confined to beauty pageantry.
So, pushy parents exploiting their children's glory, and the cultivation of rigid gender norms, are present in children's sporting. By definition, sporting success is a predominantly physical endeavour, and thus the valuation of sporting success over success in other fields translates into propagating the belief that physical perfection is the only valuable attribute someone can have.
This leaves one final attribute of beauty pageants which is shared by sports; games of "compare and despair." Indeed, "games of 'compare and despair'" could pretty much be a synonym of "sport." Sports, by definition, are competitive activities which rank the participants from "winner" to "loser," glorify the winner and humiliate (and in the case of men, symbolically emasculate) the loser. In many situations, trophies are distributed, allowing said games of "compare and despair" to be continued when children (or their parents) compare trophies.
Why does it matter whether the trophies come from sporting achievements or beauty pageants?
Maybe my own experience is atypical; maybe my high school's culture was a product of Adverse Selection and all the Stage Mothers of Sporting sent their sons to Churchie because it was basically Jock Central and thus I was subjected to a higher concentration of Sport-Love than the average Australian young male (of course, I'd actually be more inclined to believe this hypothesis if, like Mia Freedman makes clear here (http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), general Australian culture weren't so completely, pathologically obsessed with sporting success!).
But in my experience, every single reasonable criticism that Pull The Pin and other anti-Pageant campaigners make about Universal Royalty's pageant applies just as much to children's sports; games of 'compare and despair' which implicitly endorse restrictive ideals of 'correct' gendered-ness and the overvaluation of the physical (and undervaluation of all else) and are often powered by pushy pathological parents wishing to live vicariously through their Little Winners.
4. "I'm Afraid of Americans"
As stated above, the vast majority of the flaws of beauty pageants for children exist in children's sports.
So why do children's sports emerge relatively unscathed? I don't see anyone arguing that sports for the under 16's should be banned. Even me, who is bitter and twisted over the idolization of sport above all else, wouldn't ban it (then again, I'm a libertarian so I don't fall prey to "There Outta Be A Law").
I think the best clue is given by another sign held up at the aforementioned Pull The Pin rally reading: "Keep Their Tiaras Off Our Toddlers" (http://melbourneprot...05/line-up1.jpg).
Note the invocation of "our" and "their," or an "us" and a "them." So, who is the "us" and who is the "them?" Who are we, and who is the sinister Other out to destroy our society?
In answering that question, I can't help but point out that I have not seen a single piece of news coverage of the Universal Royalty pageant that didn't explicitly remind us that Universal Royalty is an American organization. NineMSN's headline reads "US child pageant hits Melbourne" (http://news.ninemsn....elbourne.glance). Pull The Pin themselves characterize the pageant as "Universal Royalty announcing their Australian invasion" (http://www.facebook....ageants?sk=info). Pull The Pin's leader, Catherine Manning, even said in the video at this news report (http://www.theage.co...tml?from=age_sb) "we're Australian, we're not American."
This helps explain the double standard between sports and pageants. Sports are a national pasttime, a tradition, a foundational element of the Australian identity (in popular culture). As Mia Freedman recently discovered (http://www.theage.co...0730-1i5lx.html), to question the worth of sport and specifically sporting achievement in international competition will result in a firestorm of abuse being directed towards you and for your Australian-ness to be questioned.
Beauty pageants, on the other hand, are a strongly American pasttime (although, naturally, when an Australian woman wins Miss Universe, not too many Australians go on complaining about pageants then).
Both children's sports and pageants can be fairly accused of being inegalitarian, promoting unattainable ideals of personal adequacy, being full of pushy parents eager to live vicariously through their children, setting up the vast majority of kids for disappointment, encouraging negative body image, self-esteem problems and eating disorders, encouraging kids to judge themselves merely on physical levels etc. but one of these is part of being truly Australian (apparently), and the other is imported from Texas (Mickie Wood's rather thick Texan accent was not good PR, unfortunately).
In short, I find a troubling subtext of anti-American xenophobia and Australian nationalism running through some of the backlash against Universal Royalty. With protestors wanting Mickie Wood to keep her American, Texan Tiaras away from our wholesome, innocent Australian children, it seems hard to avoid the impression that at least some of the disdain towards Universal Royalty stems from some sort of anti-Americanism.
5. A Libertarian's Perspective
I loathe beauty pageants. I have an endless reservoir of hate for pushy parents. Superficiality, one-upmanship and proverbial 'pissing contests' all can have negative effects on children. And yes, somewhere, some sick pedophile might proverbially get wood from the publicity shots of Eden Wood.
But I don't think There Outta Be A Law.
Whether you like them or not, beauty pageants have not been demonstrated to be psychologically more potentially damaging than school sports. The question should not even be whether or not a beauty pageant is a good thing, but whether or not it is proper for the State to ban it.
And clearly, it is improper for the State to ban beauty pageants. The role of the State is not to protect people's feelings, but rather their lives, liberty and property.
To all those that wish to ban beauty pageants (or, more broadly, enforce moral preferences against nonviolent behavior at gunpoint), I think you should realize this; a government powerful enough to ban beauty pageants is a government powerful enough to mandate them. A government with the power to enforce moral preferences becomes nothing more than a weapon which various pressure groups will fight over, and the simple fact is that your moral preferences may not be shared by the ruling class.
Voluntary, peaceful boycotts and protests, even on the basis of irrational or semi-rational positions, are always permitted. But to advocate the use of the power of the State to ban a non-violent activity you don't like ends up enabling Australia to take one more step down the Road To Serfdom.
Freedom requires tolerance. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to like it, you just have to refrain from starting or advocating the use of violence, fraud or threats thereof against it. Clearly, many people find pageants can stir feelings of unease, and there's nothing inherently wrong with disliking them. But merely disliking something is no reason to make it illegal.
And yes, tolerance even extends to little girls that resemble Shirley Temple in a pink-sequined cowgirl outfit, as well as their Texan mothers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)