on Elliot Rodger

If you don’t know who Elliot Rodger is, you can google him. But he’s the guy who this past weekend shot a bunch of people in Isla Vista because he felt alone and unloved and had never had sex, while lots of other “less deserving” people were having sex.

The following rant—like the one earlier today—comes mainly from my comments on a facebook post by a friend of mine, partly in response to other people’s comments.

To say this guy is a psychopath (or crazy, or whatever) absolves the rest of us of guilt, of responsibility. It makes it easy for us to go about our lives feeling okay about ourselves. Maybe he was a psychopath, but saying that like it's the answer to the question of "What the fuck happened here?" ignores the much greater danger. (And we are awesome about ignoring greater dangers.) This guy's ideas about women and sex and all that didn't just develop on their own inside his head. They came from a culture that taught him to expect certain things--women, sex, adoration. 

Sure, this guy seems to have had some serious brain issues. Reading a little of his plans and watching a little of his videos was very disturbing. It seemed oddly like he was almost playing the role of the villain in some drama/action/adventure thing. I couldn't read or watch all of it. It was too much. But what I saw there is that he hates himself and blames his pain on a lack of sex. Somewhere (or everywhere) he's picked up the idea that we all deserve to get sex "just because". And that somehow having sex would fix all his problems. That's nonsense. Nonsense that he learned from TV & movies. It’s a general sense that’s just “out there” in our culture. It's absolutely one of the stories we tell nowadays. 

Dismissing that because he's crazy or disturbed is much the same as what gun rights activists say: it's not that guns are dangerous; it's that these individuals who went on a killing spree are disturbed, or that those individuals whose kids accidentally shot someone weren't acting responsibly with the storage of their weapons. But it's both: guns ARE dangerous, AND these people are disturbed and those people were irresponsible. 

In this case, this guy was disturbed, AND there are serious dangerous problems with our attitudes about sex and gender...and violence. Yet we just ignore that later part. It's easier and more comfortable, and that way none of us are responsible.

I do not think with my penis.

A facebook friend of mine posted this link (or “liked” it or something) :

5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women

I made this really long rant/comment on it. But I decided that it was more of a blog rant than a comment on a facebook post. So I deleted it there and am posting it here instead. 

I started out liking this article (the first 2 "ways"), but then he lost me, and by the end he'd just made me angry. Sure, he's exaggerating for comic effect. But...NOT ALL MEN ARE WHAT HE IS DESCRIBING! I'm so tired of hearing about how men "think with their penis". I don't. Not all the time, like David Wong (the author of this article) is saying. 

Of course I sometimes have sexual thoughts, and occasionally they're strong enough that I even get a little distracted by them, but not all day every day. That is simply not true in my experience, and it never has been. Yes, I have a sex drive, but my brain is in charge. 

I've never understand the way a lot of men act when it comes to sex. Okay, maybe I'm just a freak. Maybe I'm a mutant. Maybe my brain was dosed with some rare radiation when I was a child. Maybe the reason I haven't had sex in so long is that my urge to stick my penis inside something is not uncontrollable. And it wasn't when I was 30 or 21 or 15 either. 

I don't get mad if a woman rejects me. Frankly, I'm used to it. I don't think women are conspiring with my penis to ruin me. That would be craziness; it's nonsense. And I don't care if a Supreme Court Justice is pretty or not, nor do I care how much weight Christina Aguilera gained or lost. 

Yes, I am a sad little man who sits at home alone in front of the computer most of the day, with little or no social interaction. And sure, I complain about it, but it never occurs to me to blame womankind for my issues. It never occurs to me to write hate speech about women on "Men's Rights" forums. And it certainly never occurs to me to act violently towards them because I'm unhappy. 

Okay, that last bit is definitely flavored by the recent stuff about that guy (Elliot Rodger) who shot some people at Isla Vista because he wasn't getting laid and women didn't seem to recognize how he deserved sex from them. 

Anyway...rant over...for now.

P.S. (See, that’s why I said “rant over…for now”)

I hadn’t really “weighed in: yet about the Elliot Rodger shooting/Men’s Rights reaction to feminism, etc.So I’ll just say this: 

This idea of the expectation of sex, the lack of appreciation for men, etc., is, to my mind, part of the larger issue of sex in our culture—the fact that we don’t deal with sex very well. We use sexual imagery all over the place, yet we don’t really want to talk about it. We want sex (a lot), yet we think it’s dirty and shameful and ought to be kept hidden (just like our bodies are shameful and ought to be hidden). 

This attitude is unhealthy and dangerous. We need to stop running away from sex. It is a part of us, part of being human. We desperately need to deal with it, talk about it, be open and honest with each other as individuals and as a society. 

That's the wrong word.

Just a little while ago I was in my car and heard on the radio about this rich businessman, Tom Wolf, who just won the Democratic nomination for governor of Pennsylvania. The suggestion of the reporter (or commentator?) was that this primary win by a relative unknown was at least in part due to Wolf’s using his substantial personal wealth to flood the market with ads.

From the (very) little that I’ve read about him, he sounds like a decent fellow. Apparently four years ago he delayed his planned run for governor to instead re-purchase and bail out the business he used to own. However, the fact that he has $10 million of his own money to spend on a political campaign (so far) makes me rather suspicious. Yes, I’m prejudiced against wealth. I don’t know what the man’s net worth is, but it must be a lot that he can spend $10 million on a campaign. Then again, maybe that’s better than special interest groups funding him.

Anyway... That’s all set-up to what I really wanted to say:

The reporter mentioned that Wolf inherited the family business, and that he had a PhD from MIT. His very next sentence was “It’s an interesting combination of talents.”

Perhaps some people reading this will be aware of my position that words have meanings. Well, I think this is a misuse of that word, “talents”. Obviously it’s not the most egregious misuse of a word I’ve heard lately. (That would be something of a religious nature.) But it’s still the wrong word, unless you’re trying to make a point that seeming to be born with a musical or artistic or athletic ability or some other tendency is akin to being born rich and “inheriting” the family business.

Of course, he didn’t exactly inherit it the business. After college and two years in the Peace Corps, he came back home and worked as a fork lift operator for a few years, then bought the business along with a couple of his cousins.

So, I’ve written all this for two reasons. One, I have way too much free time. And two...

Stop using the wrong words, people! It’s annoying to smart people who know what words mean. Or at least to me.

the women in Les Revenants

I watched this show recently on netflix: The Returned (Les Revenants) 

It was very good. It’s about people in this little French town dealing with the return of dead loved ones. It is absolutely NOT your standard zombie-fighting story. It’s more about loss and letting go, or rather not letting go. I guess also there’s a fair helping of secrets and lies. It’s sort of moody and sad. Anyway, I really liked it. 

Something I really enjoyed about it is the way the women looked. I couldn’t help but notice that the female characters in the show were NOT presented in an especially “sexy” way. Their clothing and makeup and hair seem to not have been designed to make them look enticing. In fact, none of them wore much noticeable makeup. Some of them had wrinkles, some had dark circles under their eyes, some had moles or other “imperfections”…and they were beautiful. Well, of course they were all attractive. I mean, they’re actors in a TV show. But they weren’t all sexified. They looked like people. 

Even the love scenes (some of which even included actual nudity) did not seem to my eye and brain to be designed for enticement. Sure, they could’ve communicated that these people were having sex without having to show it. But it never seemed really gratuitous. It really was part of the story. It was very refreshing. 

Also, these female roles were generally not just someone’s wife or girlfriend or mother. I guess you could say they were “strong female characters”. But that’s not something that occurred to me while I was watching it. They were just people—people who had relationships and feelings and actions, and happened to be women. Gee, imagine that. 

happy dream

I feel like I’ve been awake all night editing pictures.

I wasn’t actually awake editing pictures. Nope. But I WAS dreaming that I was editing pictures all night. Good pictures. Some really awesome pictures.

These were pictures I had taken, and not self-portraits. These were pictures of other people, some I know and some I don’t. Some of the people were nude; some were clothed. Some pictures were of one person; some were of more than one. They were all people who had agreed to model for me.

Apparently, they liked what I do was a photographer, and wanted to help me, to be part of it. I like those kind of people. 

But, almost the whole time I knew I was dreaming. I knew those pictures didn’t exist, and those people didn’t really exist. I knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t want to wake up. All these different people, willingly modeling for me? Reality is so much more disappointing in that regard. 

email response

From time to time I post on craigslist an ad seeking people to model for me. I have a hard time finding models. People that I know tend to be busy, or just not interested. Or, in some cases, I think they make inaccurate assumptions about what I’m asking. So...I look for models on craigslist. It's led to a few actual photo shoots, but most of the responses end up leading nowhere. 

Part of my ad is always "Serious inquiries only." To me that means someone has considered the idea, it’s something they actually want to do, and maybe they’ll have some questions about it. What I’m hoping to avoid is a “oo, neat, that sounds fun” response or a response that fails to demonstrate any sense of seriousness and intelligence.

Well, sometime in the middle of last night I got a response that just said, "What are photos used for". (Note the lack of appropriate punctuation.)

I don't quite take that response as a serious inquiry. I was trying to decide whether to just ignore it, or to respond with a sort of sardonic attitude. The latter won out. I did, in fact, just send the following email.

What are photos used for?

Well, I’m not sure if this truly gets to the heart of your question, but… Different people take photos for different reasons. Some endeavor to capture moments they feel will be somehow significant: birthdays; family gatherings; sporting events; graduation. Or maybe simply to capture images which are appealing or unusual or entertaining: the Grand Canyon; a funny ad on a roadside sign; a sunset; a cute kitten. And there’s the sharing of such images with others who aren't present. Taking pictures might be a sort of aid to memory, though that’s likely more a result than a reason to take pictures. There are those for which photography becomes a sort of obsessive thing—people who are constantly taking “selfies” or who post on facebook their “outfit of the day”—in these cases, the self-photos may perhaps be simply a way of interacting with the world, or they may be indicative of some deeper need, some legitimate psychological issue. A more serious photographer may have documentarian or photojournalistic leanings. And then, of course there are artistic endeavors. 

I think my photography is in part a sort of social interaction. I’ve taken tons of pictures of myself, and that’s fine, but I’d much prefer to interact with others and capture pictures of other people. I’ve been giving some thought to what a model brings to the model/photographer relationship, and for me a model is more than simply a body to move around and put into various poses. I think I tend to respond to the attitude and personality and mood of a model. And I hope that I capture some of that in some small way with my photos.

Also I consider my photography in part to be an artistic endeavor. That, of course, opens up a whole debate about the nature and purpose of art, which has gone on for a long time and, I’m sure, will continue to do so. But I will say this about art: there’s something in us humans that drives us to create and express in a way that goes beyond the everyday, ordinary, functional tools we use in life.

So, as I said above, I don’t know that really speaks to the meaning of your question.  Perhaps you’re asking what are PHOTOS used for—photographs themselves, the physical end result of the photography process. Certainly they are physical manifestations of any of the motivations I mentioned above. But they themselves may be collected into albums or stored away in boxes, maybe framed and hung on walls or placed on mantelpieces or end tables.

Of course, what most people do these days is digital photography. And for most images captured this way, there may never be a physical, printed photograph. It’s all on the computer, or out there in the internet. That is what I do: I transfer photos from my camera to my computer, where I delete many of them and edit the better ones; eventually I post them on my blog or perhaps on facebook. I have occasionally printed copies of a photo, framed it, and given it to a friend as a gift. And I have some prints of photos hanging on the walls of my apartment. But mostly it all stays digital.

That does bring to mind another issue of significance, which is the ease of access we in the “digital world” have to images and music and information. It’s become so easy to create and access so much stuff—and we do create and access SO MUCH STUFF so easily—that I fear our ability to appreciate it has been diminished. We see so many images and hear so much music and are just flooded with information that we mostly just ignore. And it seems that much of what we don’t ignore we experience in a fairly shallow way; we don’t examine, we don’t analyze, we don’t critique. We don’t stop to figure out why we like or dislike something, and we may not even determine if we actually like or dislike something.

Well... That’s a whole other diatribe. And it doesn’t really answer your question.

Perhaps this answer of mine is a bit long-winded, considering your five-word question. But sometimes I have a lot to say. And I’m quite certain that somewhere in all of my ramblings above is the answer to your question.  

Mostly I’m just being a smart-ass there. But I did touch on something serious. In addition to being an artistic endeavor, I do think of my photography as a type of social interaction, an attempt to share something with the world. I don’t know that it’s very successful. I don’t think many people actually look at my photos.

Two people I recently asked to model for me had made the same assumption that I only do nudes. And that just says to me that those people haven’t actually looked at my photos. I suspect they are not the only ones who haven’t. That saddens me. I’m certain that assumption contributes to my lack of connection with, lack of closeness to, most people. And this is the overwhelming problem of my life. 

another photo dream

In the past month or so I’ve had several dreams about photography. This is a fairly recent thing. I never used to dream about photography.

In my first photography dream I had found a bunch of pictures and some video I had taken several years ago (when I wasn’t, in reality, taking pictures) but had totally forgotten about. A few were of some models who I didn’t actually know, but most were of my ex-girlfriend. Other dreams were just about taking pictures of various people. I don’t recall the details.

Well, I had one of these dreams last night. I was taking part in some sort of photography workshop or maybe a contest or both. I was one of several photographers who had gathered for this thing, and whoever had organized it provided a bunch of models for us to photograph in a couple of locations. The models weren’t professional models, just people who were posing for us. One of these “models” was someone I know, from the local theatre world.

I go annoyed with these models, because they weren’t all that great. In fact, they almost seemed to not want to be photographed. Every time I would point my camera at them, they would move, often turning away or even moving away from me. They didn’t seem to want to be still enough that I could get a decent, in focus picture. (It’s a lot like the experience I’ve had when trying to photograph animals. I haven’t done much of that, because they’re generally not co-operative models.)

This one “model” who I knew approached me after I finished shooting her to try to get the negatives. Of course, there were no negatives, no film. It’s all digital. I think maybe she wanted to destroy any that she didn’t like. In real life, chances are I would delete any that she wouldn’t like before I really even start editing. Also, in real life, I’ve always let the model see the edited “final” pictures for their approval before I ever post anything online. I don’t want the model to be unhappy with the pictures I’ve taken.

Toward the end of the dream, I was trying to take some casual, non-posed pictures—sort of like “behind the scenes” or something. And there was a cool shot I tried to take of 3 girls sitting on a couch. But the moment I pointed my camera at them, one of them moved and got into “I posing now” mode. That pissed me off. I didn’t take the picture, and I yelled, “No!” then tried to explain a little more calmly that if I’d wanted her to move, I would’ve given her some direction.

I’ve never yelled at a model in real life. But a couple of times recently, in rehearsals, I have decided to not take a picture because the subject shifted into “I’m posing now” mode. What I wanted was to capture what I saw, which was really nice, instead of somebody trying to look cool or pretty or whatever.

If I’m working one-on-one with a model, I’m fine with “posing” mode. That’s sort of what the whole shoot is. And I’m fine with trying to look cool or pretty or whatever. In fact, I’ll make suggestions and give directions to try to help a model look cooler and prettier or whatever-er.