I also had three other titles for this post.
Try them out:
Four Titled Blog on Heuristics and Capitalism
Sneaky Capitalism: How Money Hides Behind and Successfully
Exploits Heuristic Politics
How Heuristics are Failing the Value of Economy
I gave up and settled on the title I posted.
Because this blog is about economics, not heuristics.
About the essay:
I
got it and read it, a cultural critique of a film, lauding the increased
presence of women on the silver screen.
The critique claimed a change from the 1950’s to the 1980’s.
Question:
Was this a win for women?
Next
Question (not the same question):
Was this a win for feminism?
Third
Question (different again):
Was this a win for our common, capital, market
economy?
Fourth
Question (following the train of thought of this short essay):
Were there any
winners that matter to us as persons, as members of families, to those of us
who seek to compromise, understand our place in the world, and create economy
between parties that is mutually reinforcing and ecologically sound?
Now,
I know the fourth question is a biggy; the subconscious integration of capital
economy in our social gene bone marrow code is a big problem. So therefore I am stuck with a biggy kind of
question.
Anyone
who wants to help me along with a more incisive question, please do! Contributions welcome!
As
a bit of back bone to this film industry invective. I looked at numbers, not an equal number of
directors, not an equal number of invitations to the ‘awards’, not an equal
this that or the other. So my math is
good enough to know that one kind of equal puts the same number on each side of
an equal sign (5=5). Equality, however,
not measured in equal signs or balanced equations. Call it too many beers, too few scruples, and
too much loose cannon noise in my brain.
Maybe my math is not good enough.
I consent to my limited arithmetic balance and assume responsibility
that this invective is wholly mine.
And
a final backbone addendum before I start, I would like to quote from Alan
Jacobs’ “How to Think”. Check it
out:
Here’s
the quote:
“…
we are all inveterate taxonomists, and go through our days lumping and
splitting like crazy. And we tend to
taxonimize according to the heuristics – the strategies of simplification that
relieve cognitive load… identifying ingroups and outgroups, deploying keywords
and the like…” (p. 114)
The
care to be taken when we write or discuss matters (or argue most likely as the
case too often is) is to acknowledge that we use keywords (plastic words – Ivan
Illich would have said) to express or describe a position or an idea, without
really thinking too hard about what the keyword might mean. In which case, we use the keyword because we
understand that, without buttressing and clarification, the keyword will be
accepted as understood, the writer and reader assume a shared social platform
and mutually agreed political position. Unfortunately,
what happens is that the argument presented is accepted without critique. The thesis passes untested.
Depending
on these plastic keywords, that really could mean anything and so mean little
to nothing, we judge the world quickly with heuristic language; too often it is
sloppy thinking and self serving of our social and political group identity. And we end up failing to understand a deeper
truth behind our daily experience.
Wondering
what heuristic might mean?
Try: a cognitive or linguistic shortcut to get to
the judgment (answer) quickly, without any laborious computing.
When
I use heuristic words I am saying, “Come on guys. I know you all agree with me. So let’s get on with tromping on those who
don’t!”
Do
I need to mansplain any further? If so,
send me a comment.
Now,
on with my indulgence.
Once
upon a time, it is proposed, male actors dominated the silver screen. Today, it is less so, though still the number
crunchers aren’t quite happy.
To
explain that imbalance, using feminist discourse, I would dive in with words
like agenda, gender,
sexuality, misogyny, subservience, active-passive duality, heteronormative,
oppression, white patriarchy, violence, alienation, fear, men, women, spaceships,
race, assault, sex and sexual, hierarchy, colour, culture of domination, and
girls and you name it.
Discourse
and clear thinking, however, are not synonymous terms .
Which
means only to take care to acknowledge that gender does not equal sex does not
equal male does not equal female does not equal race or power or hierarchy or
dominance or society etc.
They
are all quite different concepts or facts, as the case may be.
So
if we are mixing things up in sentences to discuss equality, I suggest that it
is healthy to try to keep a clear head on the competing ideological, practical,
or, heaven forbid, economic interests.
Definitions
matter and, with definition, the use of words can help construct platforms for
discussion.
Without
definition, reasonably accepted from a reasonably broad cohort of participants
in that discussion, discussions become hazy and words obfuscating and then
degrade into a platform for argument and debate arises. Wherein we only aim to win our argument, not
pursue meaningful and progressive mutual adaptation in our lives.
Check
out this battle between three women.
The
example topic is gun control in the US.
The
example purpose is to show how far women, just like men, can slide down the
slippery slope of debate, simply for the purposes of winning.
No
discussion. No common ground. Only positioning and power mongering.
I
found that little video clip somewhere close to hilarious.
Now,
the parallel is that, when it comes to domination of an argument or stature in
the film industry, a white female human dominating the scene in a film is no
different than a black male dominating the scene.
Or
any character with domination traits.
It
is just dominance and displays of power and subservience.
Much
like the feather ruffling in the video.
In
a movie viewing population (regardless of sex or gender identity or political
position) where most of us are sold on the economics of rational choice theory
– survival of the fittest Darwinian stuff – we are going to love dominance of
any kind, because that is what we have been taught to believe is an appealing
place to be. That’s who the wealthy, successful, and prominent people
are, no? The CEOs who run the
corps? The socialites who own the
magazines? Those who have climbed to the
top.
If
that were not the case, the feminist agenda would not be crunching equal
numbers of who is a senator, who is a CEO, and who directs a film.
When
being at the top is the measure of success, sad story for relationships between
men and women and other loving people, family, community, and the ecology of
this planet which we are ripping apart.
Some
alternative reading in the direction of this last comment could include:
Elinor
Ostrom – common pool resource economics
Ursula
Le Guin – science fiction and the human condition
What
are the top selling films? Power and
dominance are what sell well in the box office.
going it alone. Relationships are
all subservient.
Hollywood,
I suspect, does not care a hoot if the dominant one is male, female,
transgendered or whatever colour of the palette.
It
follows that the more diversity Hollywood can show in any capacity, dominant or
otherwise, the more folks they can draw into a box office, which is what I
suspect is up in most films… how to draw everyone possible into a single film –
mass appeal.
That
makes the placement of a female (which I propose is a neutral biological term)
in a position of power in a movie is an economic choice by film
producers. Dominant behaviours and scenes are precisely that, about
dominance. Very little to do with gender issues, I propose, or womanhood,
or manhood etc.
Take
the sci-fi genre. The placement of any
type of person and their hierarchy on a spaceship to travel through the galaxy
is about successful mission, serving the corporate technocracy that produced
the spaceship. What the technocracy wants is successful mission.
They, like the Hollywood producers, don’t give a hoot about sex or
gender. They want their investment to be secured. The last thing
they want is for women and men to behave in a politically flat, mutually
beneficial, democratic behaviour pattern that respects the differences and
unique qualities that arise through gendered roles in any society or community.
The
people on board that ship would quickly realize that each of them is expendable
when push comes to shove. Saving mission is their only priority. So
they subordinate their sexuality and gender in the interests of the
corporation.
I
know you are all thinking “Martian”. No
exception. The film is about nothing but
saving mission. Everybody is a superhero. Families of all characters are put on the
backburner.
I
see this as a classic example of the impact of capitalism on our personal and
human lives – the elimination of sexuality and gender and community in the
interests of hierarchy, corporate mission, and power.
Under
the rubric of an ecological economy, one in which we as a species may well be
interested if we wish to survive on this planet, we would produce a very
different spaceship. Might not produce a spaceship at all.
Back
to Ursula Le Guin, visionary, non-corporate science fiction. The question explored in “Always Coming Home”
(1985) and the economy of the Kesh people.
A
non-capital economy. One in which
adaptation, interlocutory evolution, open sourced problem solving, and equity
are the values, not wealth, possession, or stature. Imagine.
What
would that movie look like?
Different
dream.
