Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The Vocabulary of ASOUE

I have a theory that Lemony Snicket's adjectives slowly get more complicated. So, let's test this theory out:
  1. The Bad Beginning (2)
  2. The Reptile Room (8)
  3. The Wide Window (1)
  4. The Miserable Mill (4)
  5. The Austere Academy (10)
  6. The Ersatz Elevator (11)
  7. The Vile Village (6)
  8. The Hostile Hospital (3)
  9. The Carnivorous Carnival (12)
  10. The Slippery Slope (7)
  11. The Grim Grotto (5)
  12. The Pentultimate Peril (9)
  13. The End
Data was based in how commonly a word was used in English, found through Google Ngram. I disagree with a few of these, but I haven't tampered. 

As the Bauldelaires' journey becomes more uncertain, so does the vocabulary Snicket uses. We are as mystified as the siblings.

Despite this, there are outliers. There's a brief rise in complexity at books 5 and 6. These two books are where the mystery of VFD kicks off, and are quite plot-heavy. This makes them very oblique (though fascinating). With The End, Snicket forgoes use of an adjective. This signifies that, like the Baudelaires, we have no hope of knowing what is happening.  

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Tromeo and Juliet - Lloyd Kaufman


There's a scene early on in Tromeo & Juliet while Juliet dreams. For a few, fleeting seconds, it seems as if it could come out of a Swedish sauna porno. But this is a Troma production, and sex is never without meaning; in this case, Juliet's fear of heterosexual intercourse is the meaning. Juliet reaches to an anonymous man's penis, and pulls it out. Not content to be a regular penis, it must be about a foot--and worse, it has a mouth. This was the moment I knew I loved Tromeo & Juliet. (The moment I knew I liked it was earlier--at the reimagining of the "'Do you bite your thumb at me?' 'I bite my thumb, sir!'" scene. You know the one.)

Sunday, May 10, 2015

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect


This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

"Just the same Tip": Gender Fluidity in Baum's Oz

L. Frank Baum's mother-in-law was a radical feminist, and she influenced his work greatly (if you're interested more on this particular aspect, Sally Roesch Wagner has a book on this called The Wonderful Mother of Oz). This contributed to the gender fluidity of his work.