A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Echoes"

Story time:
A long time ago, when Stephen Colbert was still only a correspondent for The Daily Show, I loved him. I'm pretty sure he was the guy who did my favorite bit the show offered, that being someone who went to the Deep South to root out anti-Northern sentiment and came back fully indoctrinated in the fight against Northern Aggression. He had a map that looked something like this (stolen from here; the rest of the site is pretty cool, by the way):
he discussed the different tactics and strategies, denied the North had won, referenced different "territories", and was hilarious. But then he got his own show in 2005, and I hated it. My friends love it. My parents love it. I can sometimes hear them laughing hysterically in the other room when The Colbert Report is on. But then I walk in, and stoney silence ensues. I am a Colbert killer. He just isn't funny when I'm there. Frankly, I'm not convinced he's ever that funny; I certainly haven't seen it. The reason for this tale of Colbert-woe on a post about Dollhouse? Well, I was starting to think my parents were Dollhouse killers, though that moniker doesn't flow quite as well as Colbert killer. I came to this conclusion because my parents only see alternate weeks of Dollhouse; I watch it with my best friend, and we switch off houses. Week 1, with "Ghost", my house. Week 2, with the awesome "The Target"? Best Friend's house. And so on and so forth. And inevitably, the episodes we watched at my house were weaker. So when this week's episode started with the cringe-worthy dialogue and acting of the fly scene, I was a bit concerned. When Echo/Alice's story started, I told them they weren't allowed to watch the show any more.

I realize that this isn't truly their fault; Palidone made this astute observation:

"When Whedon is on, he’s capable of producing amazing television, but when he’s off, it’s a bit like watching a talented dancer start off on the wrong foot."

That pretty much sums everything up. For every "Restless", there is a "Where the Wild Things Are". For every "Objects in Space", there is a "Shindig". For every "Once More with Feeling" there is, well, much of the other scenes in season 6 (and I like season 6). The trade off isn't equal; the good greatly outweighs the bad, or the not-up-to-par. Also, I'm willing to watch subpar episodes because they are generally still enjoyable and I think it is important to acknowledge that sometimes ideas just fall flat. But while I love the thought behind a lot of the Dollhouse episodes, the themes the show is exploring, the actual execution has just been, for the most part, okay-to-good. I like the show, but it wasn't truly magically brilliant. Last week's episode was the turning point, and - death by glass window aside - this week's episode was a continuation of that. My parents? Apparently not Dollhouse killers. Which is good to know, because I rather like my house and my television and not having to drive 45 minutes at the end of the night.

Let me make it clear; for the drugged Topher-DeWitt interactions alone, this episode is made of win. Seriously. Adelle bouncing on the trampoline was hilarious, and Topher keeping it semi-together without pants was incredible. Don't believe me? Watch this:

And this:

I think my favorite thing may be DeWitt climbing over the bar, and the fact that both she and Topher do it later in the episode as if there is no other way to get down and up to that portion of the facility.

I read in a few places that "Echoes" is Dollhouse's "Band Candy", and I find myself agreeing in a large way. Both episodes deal with an altered state among the population usually in charge. Both episodes use this altered state to bring the hilarity. But as much as I love "Band Candy" (teenage Giles rocks my socks, as does teenage Snyder), I think this episode became, by its very nature, more complex than "Band Candy" could ever boast. In sharp contrast to the antics of Adelle and Topher are what the individual Dolls go through. Last week's discovery that Hearn was raping Sierra delved to new depths when we see Sierra 'glitch' to that traumatic event. It was horrific, both in content and delivery. Special Agent Victor's memory of a wartime trauma was also devastating. And the two of them reacting to each other, both oblivious to and complicit in the reinforcement of those traumatic memories, was tragic. This is where the show, I think, is; the aftereffects of the events are still seared into the Dolls, still present and not dealt with. They cannot escape it, but at the same time, they don't know that past exists. And yet, Sierra is still a rape victim; and the show does not shy away from that. It would be easy to. Given the very nature of the show and the wiping process, it would have been incredibly simple to just let that moment fade, a one-shot meant to make a point about the nature of the Dollhouse. But Joss and Company didn't go that route, and I am appreciative of it. That decision also goes to the heart of what the show can be, what I hope it is and what I see it as being.

What the show can be is also being demonstrated through witnessing the recruitment process. I'm still of the mind that Eliza Dushku is not a good actor. The recruitment scene with DeWitt is painful for me to watch, and not solely because Caroline's very autonomy is being stripped from her. Part of it may be a result of the dialogue in those scenes; but part of it is Dushku's semi-mouth breathing acting style therein. Even with that, the whole "they signed up for this" argument pretty much falls by the wayside. Caroline's tenure as a Doll was coerced; as was Sam's. They both may have had opportunity to refuse, though Caroline was kept in a room for two days with no "frickin' idea where" she was and DeWitt had been tracking her for two or so years; those facts kind of fly in the face of free and autonomous consent. And even if Sam had the ability to refuse, to walk away, DeWitt knew which buttons to push in order to facilitate his acquiescence. The assumption of free will falls by the wayside. Yes, the soon to be Actives make choices; and no, the choice they make may not be the best one for the situation in which they find themselves. But that choice, and the actions that brought them to the Dollhouse's attention, still is not reason enough to turn them into objects to be used. What's more, DeWitt seems to recognize this; her reaction to Caroline/Echo is interesting. She specifically works to keep Echo off of the campus. In her own way, she seems to realize that a severance package and promise of monthly stipends does not limit the evil doings of the organization.

Speaking of evil-doings, Topher continues to demonstrate his amorality with his drug rant:

Could be phases, could be... a little thing I like to call body chemistry. We're all our own little cesspools of hormones, enzymes, chemical reactions. It's the same as any drug - herion, cocaine, caffeine, how your body reacts depends on a multitude of indefinable factors. You snort horse once, don't like it, you go back to your organic tea, have a nice life. I do it once, whoo. I'm doing two bags a day for 20 years. One toot for you, adios, amigo. That's what's so exciting about drugs!

The scene reminded me strongly of an exchange on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

GILES: Grave robbing? That's new. Interesting.

BUFFY: I *know* you meant to say gross and disturbing.

Except Topher isn't Giles, and doesn't have someone like Buffy to pull him back to the moral side of the argument. This isn't a momentary lapse into sciency giddiness. This is who he is. Topher is scientific mind run amuck, like the Operative was government run amuck in Serenity. It is dangerous, and more than slightly scary even if Topher cannot perform the physical feats of The Operative. Perhaps it is even more scary because of that. Instead of coming after you himself, he can just program someone to do it for him. And lose no sleep over it. Which is why his reaction to N-7316 is so intriguing.

Assuming that Fran Kranz can act (as I do), Topher is the one who remains closest to himself and his own goals throughout the course of the episode. DeWitt is still primarily herself, but she becomes incredibly unfocused and like bouncing on the trampoline. Dominic experiences a guilty conscience over his attempt to burn Echo alive (after all, "who does that?") and asserts that there is more to him than what we see. Boyd loses Echo and plays the piano. And yet, although somewhat affected and pantsless, Topher maintains his focus on the issues at hand with only somewhat distracted by his drawer of inappropriate starches. A good friend of mine thinks that's because Topher's a closet druggie. But I wonder if it is because he is less of an adult. He has less of a developed moral code than the others. He seems to have little impulse control, and no ability to stop the ramblings that trickle out of his mouth. He needs his juice boxes. His wrong-doings cannot be explained away by his less than adultishness; in fact, that very thing could be a condemnation. I was interested in that aspect, even though it shot my own theory that Topher may have been a Doll to hell. In its own handbasket.

Another point of interest was Echo's reaction as Alice; for the first time, we see her truly go off-mission. Before, she was always on task, though adapting to the requirements of that task in a way that alarmed Dominic. This time, she up and leaves Tie Boy and makes her way to the college. She has access to traumatic memories before coming in contact with the drug. She is driven to an attempt to fix what had previously gone wrong, and as she tells Sam, "I just have to listen to myself". That is what she has been denied; that is what she is starting to retain.

Final Grade: A

Line I Will Be Quoting: "You're not overwhelming me with specificity".

Gender and SXSW

While meandering around Feministing this morning, I saw the weekly "Feminist Friday Fuck You/Fuck Yeah" video (actually, I just read the transcript, because I'm the only one in my house who is awake, and to play the actual video would have been a bit rude). Since it was about SXSW, the insane and insanely long music festival I'm kind of sad I don't get to go to, it was even better:

One of the things that stands out to me is the fact that "the bands with even one female member is a whopping 388 out of 2000 bands". Like Samhita and Ann, I'm a bit appalled. I'm also a bit intrigued. I would think that there are a whole lot of social factors going into whether or not women would be playing in bands, including but not limited to how the culture at large influences who is interested in being a musician and who thinks they should be on the side of the stage offering their adoration, as well as a multitude of other factors that stem from both the sociological and the individual. After all, even in conceivably feminist-friendly spaces, the aura of the greater culture still looms. As Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads said regarding the early days of punk rock, ‘Women musicians tended to be treated like women drivers…if they aren’t much good, well what can you expect? And if they’re hot stuff, it is despite the fact they are women' ('RiotGrrl: Revolutions From Within', Signs, Vol 23, No. 3). 

That sort of stigma has to be somewhat debilitating as an artist, or even getting to the point where one wants to be an artist. If that mindset is still prevalent (and I see no indication that it is not), then it not only affects women who are musicians but the men judging them. If a woman is auditioning for a band or even looking to audition members for her own band, wouldn't it seem plausible for social assertions such as the kind Weymouth discussed to be - even unintentionally - damaging? Are women in bands an example of another case where women are, due to the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding them, judged differently than their male peers? It seems likely that Dr. Bonnie Bassler's conclusion about women in science, that "women scientists have to achieve two and a half times what their male counterparts have to achieve to have the same credibility" may be also applied to women in bands.

So, assuming that the amount of women even interested in making music is less than men (ignoring, for the moment, why that may be), then it would make sense for the amount of women and the amount of men in bands at festivals like SXSW wouldn't be equal. But the disparity between 388 bands that have even one female member versus the whole 2000 bands available seems a bit high. And questioning that seems like a good thing. Which is why questions like this on the Feministing post:

"Would you have rather they skimped on the acts they wanted to to play just so there would be more women there?"

rather confound me. Firstly, it sets up a false argument. The argument isn't that the promoters should have skimped on bands they wanted to play there in order to maintain a greater level of equality, but why is there such an inequality? What reasons could there be for people wanting to have more male bands play than bands that contain women? It could be as simple on an individual band level as "The bass line in band X is better than the whole of band Y". But in looking at the whole, a different set of issues emerge. Looking at the individual bands is focusing on the trees instead of the forest.

But almost more importantly, thoughts like the one above only reinforce societal inequities. There is a scene in American History X, where Edward Norton's father is talking about how in reading books written by people other than the white men who have always made up the tomes of great literature, there is some disservice being done to those other works. In essence, it boils down to the thought that to highlight a neglected work means to undervalue or ignore a work that has already been considered great. But that isn't really how it goes. If all we read is Shakespeare and Dickens and Twain, we miss the bigger picture. And we cut voices out of our bigger picture. Access to public space is an exercise of privilege - the privilege to be noted and noticed. Too often, the already privileged occupy that space, because they are, also too often, those who control the distribution. So instead of griping about demanding the sublimation of the organizers' own desires for gender equality - an equality that may already be hampered by things outside of their control - we should be looking at how who controls the modes of exposure helps or hampers those who become exposed, and how that affects things like parities between bodies, parities between gender divides and racial divides and even the content of songs.

Year Of Science

This year, the year of 2009, has been declared The Year of Science. By whom, you ask? Well, these guys. Why? Because there are a heck of a lot of scientastic anniversaries being celebrated this year. Like, Charles Darwin will have been born exactly 200 years ago this year on February 12th. Like, Origin of Species was first published November 24, 1859, making this year its 150th year in existence. Like a couple of other cool things the Brian Greene talked to Ira Flatow about on friday (if you really care all that much, listen here).

Long and short of it is, there are going to be themes and events celebrating those themes for every month of the year, because it is The Year of Science! January is the Process and Nature of Science - an intro month to the whole thing. My birthday month (October) gets Geosciences and Planet Earth; coolness. I'd recommend checking out the theme page to see what you get as well (September is Biodiversity and Conservation). And although there are no events yet planned in my neck of the woods, I'm sure that will be rectified soon. Plus, there's always the World Science Faire in New York City June 11th through the 14th. Sounds potentially fun. I'm almost considering volunteering.

And for anyone who is puzzled and wondering why I'm so hip to this whole year of science thing, given my absolute abhorrence for all 3 of the science classes I took in college, to you I say... shut up. But seriously now, those classes were not of the good. And the year has themes! How could anything that has themed months be a bad? Also, Science Friday and The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe have taught me that I actually do like science - I'm just not good at doing the science. Kind of like how Planet Money taught me that I can listen to economic talk without wanting to kill someone or becoming extremely obstinate. So, I'm willing to give this a try; to pay attention and learn some facts each month pertaining to the topic at hand. And I'm also almost willing to promise that I will highlight the month in question's theme and some of the info I've gleaned about that topic. It should be fun. Or disastrous. It's hard to tell right now.

Striving For The Cool Kid Table

"Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters - feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community - by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead."

- Katha Pollitt

President-Elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation is one that stumps me; it puzzles me; and it angers and annoys me. I would like to believe that Obama was trying to get Rick Warren in deep trouble with his evangelical colleagues - which it has - or that he did so in order to say that he is a "fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans" with a modicum of cover, or that he hopes to trade this symbolic gesture for a very real concession on gay rights issues like a reversal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy as Steven Waldman of Beliefnet (last Thursday's Talk of the Nation guest) suggests. 

But I'm in the pack of the "some people" Neal Conan describes when he says, "Some people see it as a continuation. President Bush at his inauguration had some speakers, some evangelical speakers from the far right". Waldman responded,

"That's what makes this such a bold move by Obama. Bush had Franklin Graham, as conservative evangelical, and the parallel thing for Obama to do, I guess, would have been to have a liberal preacher; and instead he has another conservative evangelical. So he's making a very different statement. Bush had picked someone who agrees with him. Obama is picking someone who disagrees with him on a lot of things. It obviously fits his theme of... ...working across party lines and with people you disagree with to achieve common goals. And I think it is an effort to depoliticize prayer, almost a spiritual bipartisanship."

First, I suppose it is a bold move by Obama; he won promising change and a departure from Bush - and instead he's sticking to the same path of highlighting evangelical preachers who preach intolerance and hate. That's fairly bold, although not the bold and fresh action I was looking for when I voted for the man. But perhaps my biggest problem with Waldman's take on this is that picking Warren is not depoliticizing prayer. Yes, this is a man who has criticized other evangelical pastors of being too political. But he is also a man who joined in the fight to pass Prop. 8 in California and who reiterated untruths like the idea that if Prop. 8 failed, preachers could be charged with hate crimes. That is a political stance, and it isn't one far enough in the past that picking Warren to speak as a definitive speaker comes across as depoliticizing spirituality. You know what could have done that? Picking a preacher who wasn't involved in politics for a while. 

Mostly though, I feel as if Keith Olbermann has got my mood right:

"The idea of compromise, though, from the people who got Obama elected; for eight years under the current president, compromise has meant, in essence, everybody who is not on the far right needs to concede something to the far right and then they'll call it a compromise. So now the first compromise for president-elect Obama, and at least in this case, it is everybody who is not on the far right still needs to concede something to the far right and that's compromise. Setting aside the issue here, just focusing on the politics of this occasion, why shouldn't the left and much of the center be upset about this?"

This idea is echoed by Mike from Salem, Oregon, calling into Talk of the Nation on the 18th, when he said,

"I think I understand why Mr. Obama is doing this; he wants people to reconcile and reach toward the middle, and that's fine. But so far with his appointments, he's appointing people and he's asking the Left or the progressives to reach to the right and I'm looking for an appointment or some statement or something that'll ask the right to reach toward the middle - toward the left. And this certainly doesn't do that."

It certainly doesn't. I'm actually fairly happy with Obama's appointments so far. I know that there has been some contention about his appointing many Clintonites to posts instead of innovative and really progressive newcomers as both a way to infuse new ideas into the White House and to revolutionize Washington DC politics; but I feel like if you've got good, experienced Dems who can help you avoid the pitfalls they themselves stumbled over and into then that is who you appoint. I also understand that going too far to the left has been a problem for Democrats in the past and helped Dems lose seats in the Congress to Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution in 1996, and that one could say going too far to the Right helped cost Bush and the Republicans as well - though I would chalk some of that up to out and out stupidity. I understand the need for incremental movement in many areas, saving the seismic shifts for rare issues of importance; incremental movement is one of the reasons I like the electoral college. I even think that Keith Olbermann is not describing the true political climate but the overall feeling liberals have been experiencing for the past eight years - and I would say he would concede that as well. But it is the second of Mike from Salem Oregon's point that really gets me:

Mike from Salem, Oregon: If he's looking for reconciliation in more of a progressive approach toward religion, there are much better ministers and religious people who could be giving this invocation other than Rick Warren.

Neal Conan: But not those who invited him to speak at his very politically powerful church in California.

Mike from Salem, Oregon: That may be the case, but Obama is a very intelligent man... ... the presiding bishop if the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori, she's very inclusive; and that's what we're looking for here, I think, is inclusiveness.

For too long a time now, I've felt like the Democratic Party was that pathetic not-cool kid in high school desperate to sit at the cool kids' table - the one who would abandon his long-time friends on a moment's notice after receiving a scrap of good will from one of the popular students, the kid who would slink back to his table and to his deserted friends after the popular kids tripped him down a flight of stairs. The Evangelicals are not going to like the Democrats; and inviting someone like Rick Warren, a man who has compared homosexuals to perpetrators of incest and pedophiles, a man whose church perpetuates the idea that a woman should be subject to her husband instead of equal to him, a man who believes that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, to speak at Obama's inauguration is going to do nothing to change that. What it does do is spit in the face of those who voted for Obama - the gays, the women, those who respect scientific thought, etc.

Rick Warren may not be the worst evangelical; Warren has, as Steven Waldman writes in his defense of the man, reverse-tithed 90% of his income, living off of 10%. He cares about fighting poverty, and AIDs, and he is adamantly against torture. And I can see emphasizing that and reaching out to him through the White House on those issues; I can see meeting with him and working with him on issues of shared concern. I even think Rick Warren could do some good in those areas amongst his conservative crew. But just because the man isn't as far to the right on every issue as Pat Robertson or as odious as Rush Limbaugh does not mean inviting him to speak on a day that celebrates the signing in of a new President for all Americans since Rick Warren doesn't represent all Americans and is decidedly and vocally opposed to many of those Americans who helped carry Obama to victory in the first place. Compromise of this sort seems to be a compromise of principles instead of representing a rise above the political fray or politics as usual. Because unfortunately, the swill Warren has been spewing is politics as usual.

Why Feminism Is Still Relevant: Girls and Research and ADHD

As I've mentioned before, I listen to Talk of the Nation daily during my workday, along with a variety of other programs ranging from those I have to listen to with my earbuds in and those that I can listen to on my iPod's docking stereo without worry. Tuesday's Talk of the Nation, the second hour had Allison Stewart and her guest, Steven Hinshaw - Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California Berkley - tackling the issue of ADHD diagnosis in girls as opposed to boys. One of the interesting things the program brought into sharp focus for me was how ADHD is seen as a boys' illness. When girls have ADHD, they are less likely to be diagnosed because there is a widespread belief, among clinicians and parents, that ADHD does not effect girls. Before it is even available, ADHD is taken off of the table of potential culprits. Another issue Steven Hinshaw made mention of is the type of ADHD girls are more likely to have. According to Hinshaw,

"For some girls, the behaviors look pretty similar to the stereotypic boy. There's out of seat behavior and fidgeting; but often in girls, there isn't that overt behavior. There's a kind of spaciness... inability to focus, doesn't seem to hear or listen to things, real problems organizing, and the typical girl like this suffers in silence for all too many years."

One of the things not mentioned on the program but that immediately came to my mind is that some of that may be misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all simply because it fits stereotypical girl behavior, and not girls with behavioral or psychiatric problems but regular girls. Girls, especially if one is blonde, are practically expected to be spacey. Girls have the airheaded stereotype fed to them so often it is a wonder any girl with ADHD even contemplates there being something wrong with her. We are fed those images of girls who can't, or don't, concentrate; girls who are more interested in boys and make up and the latest fashion trends than they are in school  - or, as in an episode of Burn Notice and separate but similar episode of Monk, almost certain death. A girl who felt odd about being so spacey could easily find 5 or 10 examples of how that was normal girl behavior simply by flicking through the television channels. And so would parents and teachers and doctors.

What Steven Hinshaw makes clear is that "all of the disorders of childhood that are behavioral or emotional or psychiatric appear more in boys", but what he also makes clear early and then often is this: "...boys with ADHD... are 99% of those studied... ...What we don't know very much at all yet is what are the long term outcomes in girls because there's only been literally a handful of longitudinal studies past childhood. And those studies - including ours here in Berkley, some on the East Coast, a couple in Europe - suggest that (a) girls can and do get ADHD and (b) when they do, in the adolescent years, as with all girls, there's a risk for anxiety, depression, and eating symptoms (A/N: I assume he means eating disorder symptoms). Girls with ADHD have more of that risk."  This is why feminism is still very much a viable movement, and why it is still very necessary. And this is what finally gets Allison worked up (sidenote: Crankosaur, if you're reading this, what do you think of Allison Stewart as a fill-in for Neal Conan? Because I think she's doing a terrific job). She says,

"I want to take off my host and journalist hat for a moment and put on my concerned citizen hat. When we were researching this story and talking about this story, I found myself just a little bit angry that there wasn't more research about girls, that there are all these young women and girls out there struggling with this problem and there hasn't been a whole lot of attention paid to it."

You and me both, Allison. Except in my case, I'm not just a little bit angry. I'm a lot angry. And more than part of that anger stems from the fact that men and boys, and white men and boys, are the default for humanity - always. Even when someone is anonymous, the general idea of them is as a man until it is proven otherwise. I can't even be incredibly angry at the researchers and the people funding these studies, because it isn't a personal myopic issue but a systemic one. This isn't just a bunch of idiot scientists who were too caught up in their own gender to recognize that there was a whole 51% of the population being left out in the cold; this goes to the very core of how we think and how we see the world and everyone in it.

And Hinsahw's reply, while emphasizing his own progressiveness and his own perspective of the inherent unfairness and inequality of this situation, doesn't do much to make my world view change very much at all. He contends,

"Well, I think this is a problem that has been noticed way beyond ADHD for some time now, maybe not long enough. Back in the early 90s, as I got research grants from the national institutes of health and press releases were put out and alerts to investigators, 'if you're studying heart disease, you've got to include females in your sample as well as males.' Females get afflicted by cardiovascular illness, but most of the research was on men, so we do have a sex or gender bias in a lot of areas of research. Now, as I mentioned in the outset, for the behavioral and emotional problems of childhood, boys are more at risk than girls, maybe 3 to 1 for ADHD, maybe 4 to 1 for autism; but the research was being done at 10 to 1, or 20 to 1, or 50 to 1. We need to raise our consciousness. We need to recognize that many of these conditions, both biomedical and psychiatric, are pretty much equal opportunity  - across races and ethnic groups, across the sexes - and we need to have researchers and clinicians and the citizenry realize and demand that attention is paid clinically and in terms of basic research so that we don't neglect a group really in need of treatment because of our stereotypes and our stigmas."

The thing that stands out for me is that although the ratios for most of these disorders is 3 to 1 or 4 to 1, the ratio for this research is out of this world and highly stacked against women. Those are abysmal odds. Those are depressing odds. And those are odds that make women seem insignificant in terms of interest and worth. This is why feminism is still very much needed. This is why we need more enlightened men working in these fields like Steven Hinshaw. But this is also why we need more women in these fields, and I would venture more minorities as well. In order for women to be a concern, perhaps we need to simply have more women be the ones doing the research. Perhaps one of the very real issues here is simply a lack of diversity at the upper levels of scientific research; and so when a man looks across a room and he is merely met with more men, his thoughts naturally do not drift beyond that homogeneous interest group. Either way, this is something that we need to recognize as being a valid issue, and cause for concern. Either way, this is something we need to highlight and point to, and bring as much attention to as possible. Because this is only one reason out of the many for why feminism is still a necessity in the lives of women, but it is a compelling one.

"Happy People Don't Kill Their Husbands; They Just Don't""

How awesome is this? Music you love can do more than get you all boppy. Apparently, "In addition to giving you you a bit of a mental rush, believe it or not, it may have been doing your heart some good as well", according to Talk of the Nation Science Friday (11/14). Listening to music you enjoy can dilate your blood vessels. What I find really cool about this study is that it truly centers around music that brings you pleasure personally, and not like that "listening to Mozart when you're pregnant helps the baby's brain development" thought. So if listening to The Cure or Metallica or Nine Inch Nails is what gets you to your happy place, then that is the music you should be listening to for heart health.

What I also found very interesting about the story was the idea of "emotional desensitisation" the scientist talked about, and how a person should rotate favorite happy songs (or albums) so that it is heard only once every two weeks or so for the endorphins to be released at the same intensity. The title of the post, by the way, comes from Legally Blonde and Elle's fabulous defense of the murder suspect (who works out a lot), saying, "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't kill their husbands. They just don't!" Whenever I hear anything about endorphins, that is what immediately pops into my head. Anyway, to get back on topic here, I find that to be rather apt. I know that I tend to fall in love with songs and albums, and listen to them constantly, getting that "high" off of them, until the high starts to decrease and one day it just stops working. Just this morning on the way to work, I went through about three cds - my Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack, my Disturbia soundtrack (I have a major thing for soundtracks, okay? I'm looking into getting help), and my London Calling cd (which generally always does the trick) - before I finally hit one that didn't leave me listless and ever more disenchanted with my Monday morning commute. That one was Elvis. I listened to "Love Me Tender", "Suspicious Minds", and "A Little Less Conversation" (the remix version) a couple of times before I pulled in the garage this morning, and because it has been a long time since I last listened to Elvis, it did the trick. This whole idea of switching out cds is going to be a bit difficult for me, as I tend to leave one cd in my player until I am absolutely sick of it (as my best friend can attest, having once heard the Disturbia soundtrack about 3 times in a row on one car trip). But I'm going to do my best, because I want the endorphins. I don't exercise and can't eat chocolate, so this is my last, best chance at heart health - aside from the Cheerios, of course.

Why We Believe What We Believe (And How)

Over the summer, I saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull because I love Indiana Jones, I love Harrison Ford, I love Shia LaBeouf, and I had faith that Steven Spielberg would be able to stop George Lucas from doing anything that would destroy the Indiana franchise. And I enjoyed it. I mean, I wasn't enamored; but at the same time I didn't have as adverse a reaction to it as I did to Episode II, where I sat in the theatre with the silently horrified thought of, "I don't like this. Tell me I don't like this. Are the other ones like this? The other ones can't be like this" racing on repeat through my head. This may not sound like a ringing endorsement of The Crystal Skull, and it isn't. On my personal list of Indy films, it comes in before Temple of Doom sheerly because Temple of Doom was gross, boring, and had a heroine whose main purpose seemed to be to perforate my eardrums. There are iconic moments to Temple of Doom, but those aren't enough to make me ever want to see the movie again.

But I started really thinking about why Crystal Skull didn't match up to Raiders or Last Crusade. And although there are many reasons for it to not measure up, the major one, for me, is the suspension of disbelief. It was harder for me to believe that there were supreme alien life forms who came down to earth and left their crystal skulls that hummed and could impart knowledge to humans than it was for me to believe that there was a chest that could kill anyone who did not avert their eyes or a wooden chalice that could take ordinary water and make it the elixir of everlasting life that could also heal a bullet wound. Those two ideas have a weight, a gravitas, a solemn power, to them - whereas alien life forms just seem silly. And this differentiation would make sense, if I weren't an atheist. I'm an atheist born to atheist parents, who did their best to allow me to pick my own path. That meant doing things like sending me to Catholic kindergarden, which profoundly messed with my ability to tell my right from my left (because everyone writes with their right hand, even if they happened to be, as I am, left handed). But the religion thing didn't stick; and I didn't become an anti-theist. For the most part, I'm not even straight up atheist; that's not to say I'm agnostic. The closest thing that really defines what I am is an apatheist, because I don't believe in anything, and more importantly I don't care. I don't want to infringe on anyone else's beliefs, but I don't want to be inundated with them either. Whether or not there is a God or alien life doesn't really impact my every day life, and I go days without the thought of God or there not being a God, and weeks without contemplating the alien question.

So the idea that certain forms of belief in the supernatural deserve more weight and respect than others is a little strange to me, and yet I find myself subconsciously doing just that. Those culturally appropriate beliefs in the supernatural garner more respect than others. How often do we react with sympathy or respect to someone who claims they've been 'visited' by the spirit of a loved one who has passed on? How often do we offer that same sympathy or respect to someone who claims to 'know' that the truth is out there, Mulder-style? The same sort of thing goes down when we are discussing different religions. One of the recent community posts at Feministing is by a Mormon feminist, who discusses her feelings of duality and also her reaction to the protests of her church by gay rights activists. It is an interesting post, but what is also interesting are many of the comments left there. Some comments question the ability to be part of a patriarchal religion that oppresses the rights of women and homosexuals and be a feminist at the same time. Others outright state the inability to marry both. But what is interesting are the comments that mirror OhMissJulie's struggle to be both Mormon and feminist and Muslim feminists who undergo the same sort of balancing act. And while there are those who were calling for OhMissJulie to renounce Mormonism, calling for someone to renounce their Islamic faith would not be so readily acceptable. And I think part of that stems from how we see Mormonism in this country; for the most part, Mormonism is still seen as something of a crack religion. We can still make jokes about Mormons like we do about Scientologists. We don't grant them access to the same tier as "respectable" religions, just as we don't grant the same respect to the theory that aliens could exist and sustain human contact as we do the idea that a man who had been dead for three days could rise again.

Why I find this interesting, aside from being on the outside looking in at this phenomena than holding allegiance to any one religion or alien theory, is that new scientific research suggests that all of these impulses stem from the same place, brain activity-wise. In a Newsweek article, "Why We Believe", scientists examine why we not only place our faith in the supernatural, but also often actually and actively see and feel the paranormal - things like the hairs raising on the back of your neck when you're out for a walk or seeing the Virgin Mary's face on a slice of toast. According to scientists, one answer lays in the evolutionary function of the "hypersensitive agency-detection device"; the theory being that the presence of a living being is "something we default to when what we perceive could be alive or inanimate." Or, "Whether it's a rock formation or a hungry bear, it's better to assume it's a hungry bear". We believe in the feeling of being watched because it was safer to do so than to assume we were being paranoid. We see faces on toast because our brain instinctively seeks out faces, and also habitually "takes messy, incomplete input and turns it into a meaningful, complete picture".

All of this suggests that those who believe that aliens are real, do abduct people, and did help build Stonehenge and were the inspiration for the sculptures on Easter Island are not crazy; their belief stems from the same place as someone who believes angels are among us. It is our cultural reaction to those different beliefs that place them in the "acceptable" or "not acceptable" columns. And that suggests that crystal skulls should be just as plausible to an atheist as chalices that can heal and arks that can destroy. And yet, I imagine that it will be quite a while before that is true, even with articles like Newsweek explaining the phenomena of false positives and how the brain is to blame for our belief in the irrational.