Attended a Donna Haraway lecture a few weeks back entitled “We have never been human – companion species in naturecultures.” Being totally out of the academic circuit I had never heard of Dr. Haraway before but apparently she is a very popular academic thinker. I can certainly understand that she’s a popular speaker, being droll and animated. In her presentation she followed up some links in human/canine relationships across time, geography and politics establishing that we are connected through our dogs to everything that our dogs are connected to, and that our dogs are connected to us through their integral roles in our histories and ways of constructing ourselves.

Later in question period she pointed out that you could do the same thing with a mass-produced commercial object. So it wasn’t clear that the deliberate cultivation of webby thinking the way she illustrated it would necessarily lead to a commitment to the ethical treatment of animals; she just chose to present it that way. Which was confusing, because she initially seemed to be saying something specific about the relationships between dogs and people, but when she explained what she was saying it was no, she was saying something about people, that when you look at our connections in a webby way we have more in common than we might like to think.

Which seems to be a very old notion. One that has more to do with adulthood and becoming one’s parents and looking fondly at people who are young and leaving their parents than it does with dogs or cyborgs or naturecultures.

But given that I don’t know what a natureculture is, is not for me to say.

What disappointed me was her reply to someone asking how to apply her philosophy in such a way as to convince evil profit-centred capitalists of the necessity for veganism. She said that thinking of meat-eaters as concerned with profit did them a disservice, and that while it might be unfortunate that the entire planet wasn’t vegan at least there were active movements to improve the treatment of domestic animals, such as cage-free rearing of chickens and that we should think about these and be optimistic.

When sharing a planet with six to seven billion other people who are continuing to multiply, when many of them are simultaneously going to increase their abilities to consume, when the vision of the future is an increase in people increasingly competing for increasingly limited resources, when what we know of true poverty is that it breeds a philosophy of “life sucks and then you die,” what the **** does the niceness of cage-free rearing of chickens have to do with anything?

But I get the impression that I might simply not have understood any of the lecture at all. Like my mother says: “Sometimes you can’t tell whether you don’t get the joke or whether you get it but you just don’t care.”

Anyway. Went to something presented with much smaller words on Thursday, and even illustrated. With moving pictures. I’m pretty sure I understood it. Turtles Can Fly, a fictional movie about children in wartime in Kurdistan acted by war-injured children. I almost walked out in the middle of it. The experience recalled visiting television-owning friends in 1985 at the height of famine in Ethiopia. They would be watching the news and I would be desperately ordering them to Turn that thing off! “Why? What’s the problem? Aren’t you interested in international news?” That’s not the point! Maybe you can invite starving children into your living room to die in front of you while you don’t lift a finger to help them. Maybe you think that’s interesting. But I can’t do it and I don’t want to know how you can. Turn that thing off!

Am still a little shaken.

Hugs to all, dogs and children especially but chickens and academics too.

We paid an old-fashioned weekend visit to Mark’s friend Mary who was having her end-of-year cottage-closing party on a little lake in the Laurentians. Food was brought by everyone, children were brought by most and dogs were brought by very few (we dropped ours off at the Dog Lady’s on the way up). The drunks were sociable but not lascivious, the children were active and excited but not rude, agressive or whiny, the food was identifiable and nutritious. As this party lasted two days and as many but not all guests made multiple appearances it’s a little hard to count numbers; but I suppose that Saturday night there were about twenty adults. It ended with a bang this afternoon as the last five of us hard-core partiers played a rousing game of Cranium™.

Anyway, it was very nice.

We left this evening in time to pick up the dogs before the 7 pm curfew, giving a lift to a friend. The dogs were happy to see us but bore no apparent resentment towards the Dog Lady. Exactly perfect. We locked Pepe into his usual cage in the back of the station wagon and drew the cover over to muffle the sound of his barking somewhat. I sat in the back seat with Poupoune on my lap and our long-legged friend sat in the front. I quickly realised that Poupoune reeked something awful. After quick and urgent discussion windows (which had been raised against the rain) were lowered and I stuffed Poupoune into a plastic bag to contain the nauseating odor. This arrangement worked quite well, Poupoune being pretty compliant when she knows what is wanted. Upon our return home both dogs were ushered promptly into the bath and thoroughly scrubbed… and de-flead while I was at it.

I think the other dogs at the Dog Lady’s did the territorial thing and peed on them. And then I think the Dog Lady sprayed them with Febreeze.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 29 2004]

Alison Cummins wrote determinedly:
>
>So I can confidently say that there is no reason to watch this movie at all.

After trashing Supertex Monday I left for work and continued mulling. It was still bothering me. But then I figured out what the essential technical problem was with the movie the filmmaker wanted to make. The basic question of the movie was “What does it mean to be a Jew when you are living in a place with no Jews?” (Though it was phrased rather differently in the film itself, rather “Q: What is a Jew without a hat? A: A Jew in a Porsche!”) Phrased my way, the question becomes more interesting. But in the movie it was illustrated by having a Dutch Jew living in a place with no Jews (Amsterdam) who thought of himself as Dutch… repeatedly confronting Jews who think of themselves as Jews. So, like, is Amsterdam a Jewish space or not? If it is, the question disappears. If it isn’t, then the structure of the movie makes no sense.

Phew!

(According to Mark, while there is a small Jewish community in Amsterdam, it is secular. And… there are no bagel shops.)

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 11, 2004]

Saw Maria Full of Grace last Tuesday. The theatre was packed. My overall impression: a beautiful movie. Mark’s overall impression: a sad one. We both eagerly noted that it met the Alison Bechdel lesbian criteria.

Then on Thursday I read promotional articles about it in the local A&E weeklies and was very surprised to note that it was being touted as an anti-drug movie. I hadn’t noticed that theme. I double-checked with Mark, and he had. Ok, so I am somewhat oblivious. We knew that. But then he said he agreed with me that it wasn’t the dominant theme.

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
Y Latina (a latina occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

*** *** ***
Then Mark downloaded Supertex from BitTorrent and we watched it on Friday. It’s a Dutch movie, made in Holland with Dutch actors who all speak English and Yiddish. There is no Dutch version. He watched it for the Dutch nostalgia value and I watched it for the rag trade theme. Well, it was awful. At first I thought it was just clumsy which I really don’t mind: if I made a movie it would be very clumsy. But then there were some simply terrible scenes and even I had to admit that it was simply a bad movie. The father dies and the mistress and the bright son – who had been fighting like teenagers with PMS up until then – fall tearily into one another’s arms and make love. The moralizing about Jewish identity made me gag: happiness lies in speaking Yiddish, wearing a yarmulke and marrying a submissive, silent woman. Oh, and in carrying on your father’s business even though you have determined that it’s a bad business decision.

Even Mark was disappointed in the Dutch nostalgia value department: people kissed in greeting only twice (not three times, the way they do in Holland) and no, he has never seen anyone with side curls in Amsterdam, never mind large communities of them impeding traffic on Saturday.

Mark knows the filmmaker and says he was one of the few people in Holland who supported the US invasion of Iraq.

Special interest points:
N Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
N Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome).

So I can confidently say that there is no reason to watch this movie at all.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 9 2004]

Oh, and about the movie: recommended. The first Michael Moore movie I’ve seen with an identifiable thesis. (Not the one the title suggests, and not the one the movie seems to start out with, but identifiable nonetheless.)

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man)
Y Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else)
N Crazy (features a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world)
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]

Last night’s movie pick.

I carefully shield myself from unpleasant things I can’t do anything about, which means I don’t watch the news. So this was the first time I ever saw George W in action.

Mean little bugger, isn’t he?

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]