Disney movies

I don't really have a reason for hating Disney movies other than this: I never enjoyed them as a child and it is totally impossible to come to enjoy them for the first time as an adult.

I blame mainstream Italian culture. Cartoons are for kids, and especially girls. Given the amount of romance in Disney movies, it is hardly surprising that few boys ever watch them. And even for girls, if you are "caught" watching one after the age of 10-12 you are labelled a "baby," and that shit sticks forever. This is obviously quite unlike mainstream suburban American culture, where they are cherished across generational divides and embody a set of happy childhood memories.

That's perfectly fine: I have my own set of happy childhood memories, some of which connect to cartoons, shows, and movies. So while I may feel that there's something wrong with you if you still enjoy Beauty and the Beast at 30 -- because content-wise, almost every Disney movie is RFS: really fucking stupid -- I do understand that you're after the memories that they trigger rather than the content. Now if you actually believe that these are good movies with great artistic value and a significant morale... well, I have bad news for you: you have bad taste!

This is you on Disney movies, except not hot.

(Feminist alert! Yep, I also agree that most Disney movies create false expectations about life and instill unhealthy gender roles into impressionable children, blah blah blah blah. I have defended that argument many times and I think it is sound. But that's a different ballpark and it has little to do with my hatred).

Superheroes

Whiny white weirdos in spandex. Am I supposed to feel safe?

So I could write some kind of deep (?) socio-literary-philosophical analysis about superhero stories, how they're so very different from hero myths, and how the latter are intelligent and culturally meaningful while the former are but a masturbatory fantasy for little boys who need to compensate for a meager life, a small dick, or a lack of mommylove. But I'm not in that mood, so that'll have to wait.

It's really mostly under the skin. Superheroes bore the shit out of me. I must be unimpressed by the idea that justice needs heroes. Or maybe I just find normality fascinating and supernormality (whatever that means) uninteresting. It must be that, for most things that are larger than life do tend to annoy me. "Suspend disbelief and have fun," they said. No can do, not with this stuff.

Why? Because they wear costumes. Kids on Halloween wear costumes. Drunks and punks wear costumes. I am sorry, but there is simply no way around this: all superhero costumes look fucking retarded. And good thing that they didn't keep Wolverine's yellow suit in the movies, or it would have been laughable.

Which leads me to the two exceptions to my distaste for Superheroes. I used to love The Flash when I was little, because all I knew about it was the great TV show, which was (and still is) a masterpiece of urban gothic art. Sure enough, as soon as I tried reading the comic I almost threw up. So fucking dumb. Same for the X-Men: I love the movies because they pose interesting ethical quandaries, because Patrick Steward is a badass, and because Anna Paquin and Ellen Page are fucking hot -- and I tolerate all the costumes, the superpowers, and the really fucking stupid "school for gifted youth" or whatever.

But other than that, really, I'm hopeless. They killed this guy's parents and now he defends a city of weird and ungrateful people. Seriously, why the fuck is that interesting? And a bat, for crying out loud? "What is it like to be a bat?" Must feel fucking stupid, wearing that cape, that's what it feels like. Or the other guy who's a boring nerd and suddenly learns to climb walls and makes sticky goo in his lab while fantasizing about the ladyfriend. Uhh can we say RAPIST? Not to mention guys who turn green, build flying suits (?!), and are blind and yet well-versed in the martial arts (?!?!?).

It's a sad day for Claudio when the only superheroes he likes are the heavily caricatured ones...

"When the mayor needs us, he shines a light in the sky.

It's in the shape of a giant cock." I'd Hit-Girl that.

Justin Bieber

This may seem to be SIHTEHT (stuff I hate that everyone hates too), but it isn't. I don't hate Justin Bieber because he's ignorant, or famous, or rich. I especially hate Bieber-haters who hate him because he looks like a girl... which he does, but that's not the point: the moment you hate him for that reason you're a sexist homophobic asshole and I will gladly fuck your face with my fist. Besides, teens with questionable sexuality are hot. Verily I do say, I wouldn't even need to be too high before I could fuck him. I'd need to smoke less weed to fuck Justin Bieber than Snooki, for example, who is supposedly a female.

Instead, there is only one reason to hate him, and for which he MUST be hated: HE MAKES FUCKING BAD MUSIC. You know the sound a baby goat makes when its balls are being squeezed really hard by Spiderman? Yeah that's what his music sounds like. On a good day. It feels like a thousand midget porn stars raping my ears, and that shit ain't cool.

Also, I hate him because he bangs Selena Gomez, and that's a seriously hot ass to bang.

This right here is the meaning of unfairness.

DAT BAG (the Doritos, I mean).

But maybe "hate" is a strong word. That's more like "bro-hate," you know, the kind of envy that you feel when you remember that Ralph Fiennes fucked Alex Kingston and you... yeah you didn't.

Beautiful Alex with an exceptionally rapey-looking Fiennes.

Here, Dr. Corday! It hurts right here! Visit me!

Capitalism

Go to college. Get a good job. Make money. Buy a house. Make a family. Send the kids to college. Retire. Die. And in all of that, you forgot to live.

I have obvious reservations about free-market capitalism as an economic theory; democratic socialism does a much better job of preserving our freedom and dignity. But more importantly, on a personal level I despise all that capitalism stands for. The idea that you must "work to live" is utterly repugnant and I am deeply offended by it.

Instead, I want to live to work, meaning that whatever task I dedicate my time and life to will have been freely chosen, fully embraced, and attended to with love and dedication. We remember most fondly those things we choose and cultivate, and for far too many work isn't among them. That is because most of us don't actually work: we have jobs instead, occupations, menial tasks in the service of someone else's interest, with the expectation that if we're good enough and don't cause too much trouble we'll be given a small piece of the pie, enough to survive on and retire on. Like rats, we are given a maze to the cheese that was rightfully ours to begin with.

"But resources are scarce and we must compete for them." No. Resources were scarce, and then competition was a necessity. But then we institutionalized it, and we made sure that resources did remain scarce, so that some could remain on top while the rest slithered below in a dog-eat-dog Dantesque vomitorium. Domestically, the most visible outcome is the thinning of the middle class and the growing income gap. Globally, after four centuries of capitalistic colonialism, the outcome is that 3.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day. That goes well beyond a measure of income, and it means instead that half the world doesn't even have the opportunity to improve upon their own condition. As George Monbiot had it, "If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."

We call this a "meritocracy," where if you work hard, you succeed. But of course there is no need for such a thing to even exist in the first place. We are fast approaching a time with enough food, water, and shelter to go around and sufficiently advanced technology to serve us all. In a not-so-far future, we will have the ability to ensure long-term survival for all at very little cost. Instead, we continue to make our very existence conditional to servicing a machine that only needs to be serviced because it was designed that way. And redesigns, like revolutions, are healthy things.

You call this utopian? That is the highest compliment I could ever receive!


PS: By the way, don't mistake me for one of those fucking Occupy Wall Street people. Most of those are potheads with no fucking clue about economics, politics, philosophy, or really anything else. The right is right about that at least. But the ideas of the OWS movement are correct, and the intellectual -- and human -- basis for them is extremely sound.

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ADDENDUM

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Today in class, a student asked me a perfect question. As is traditional in some college courses in the humanities, the last day of lecture the kids get to ask whatever question they want and expect a honest, personal answer from the professor. This kid asked me what I think it would take for the world to become a better place. I looked at her straight in the eye and said: "No more money." She recoiled, her eyes blinking and her head snapping back just a little, like someone who has just seen a shocking image or has been flicked really hard on the forehead. From there on, I led my class in a 30-minute discussion of many of the ideas that I present in this post. Many were very sympathetic; others were vociferously critical. Overall, we debated it, which (I guarantee you) is more than I can say about any other class that these kids have ever been in. Mission for the day: accomplished!

Zooey Deschanel

She looks designed for quasi-hipsters in an underground laboratory by sadistic genetic engineers hyped up on 5-Hour and listening to Skrillex. She's borderline ugly (oh no, sorry: "classic beauty," like Audrey Hepburn -- i.e., fugly), incredibly uninteresting, bad actress, squeaky singer, and alternative enough to think you're not following the mainstream and yet average enough to appeal to your average mind. She pursues the image of "genuine simplicity," and she does it so painstakingly that she's neither genuine nor simple. She's a calculated erectioneer (yes, that's a word!... well it is now).

Also, Zooey sounds like "gooey" and that's fucking nasty. What the fuck was wrong with "Zoe" or "Zoey"? I don't know which is worse: that her parents would be retarded enough to pick that name or that she (or her agent) would be retarded enough to change it!

PS: Katy Perry is also SIHTEL by obvious association.