The Mako Mori Test

A Bechdel Test alternative. [Link]

In the film, Mako struggles to asserts her independence despite the protectiveness of her stern father figure, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). She is strong, smart, and perhaps most remarkably, her goal of fulfilling her dream of being a Jaeger pilot is a major part of Pacific Rim's storyline.

On Thursday, Tumblr user spider-xan wrote about what Mako means to her as an Asian woman, in the context of the film's failure to pass Bechdel:

It’s really easy to throw away a film because of that test (which is flawed and used incorrectly in a lot of ways) if you’re a white woman and can easily find other films with white women who look like you and represent you... But as an East Asian woman, someone like Mako — a well-written Japanese woman who is informed by her culture without being solely defined by it, without being a racial stereotype, and gets to carry the film and have character development — almost NEVER comes along in mainstream Western media. And honestly — someone like her will probably not appear again for a very long time.

In response to this post, and in the process of running down numerous arguments for why the Bechdel Test can't and shouldn't be the only measurement by which feminist films are judged, Tumblr user chaila has proposed the Mako Mori Test, "to live alongside the Bechdel Test":

The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story. I think this is about as indicative of “feminism” (that is, minimally indicative, a pretty low bar) as the Bechdel test. It is a pretty basic test for the representation of women, as is the Bechdel test. It does not make a movie automatically feminist. 

The application of this test might enable interesting discussions of feminism surrounding films which typically seem to be steamrollered by their failure to pass Bechdel. For instance, while Avengers barely managed to have two women on screen at the same time, much less conversant with each other, it had a female character, Black Widow, whose narrative arc was a major driving force of the plot. Using the Mako Mori Test as a measurement of whetherAvengers is a feminist film or not points the focus away from the film's small quantity of women and towards the way Black Widow is demonstrably capable of commanding her own storyline.

One does not simply use the letters 'mor' to show something is evil

Well, actually, you can. [Link]

In fact, "mor" may be what is sometimes called a phonestheme: a part of a word that tends to carry a certain connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association. Words that start with "gl" often have to do with light (glow, gleam, glimmer, glitter, glisten, etc.) even though they are not all related historically; similarly, words that start with "sn" often relate to the nose (snoot, sniffle, snot, snore, sneeze, etc.). It doesn't mean that all words with those letters have the meaning in common, but there is a common thread among a notable set of them.

How does this happen? Whether it's through sound association or the force of a particular root word, it just seems to snowball. It may be partly through words with phonesthemes in them being preferred to words without (glitter chosen over coruscate because it sounds more, well, glittery), partly through words with phonesthemes in them shifting sense under the influence of the phonestheme (snub is getting more nose-focused), and partly through words changing form to come to have phonesthemes in them.

One possible case of a word changing form to have a phonestheme is the oldest of the "mor" names above, Mordred, the betrayer of King Arthur. His name actually was originally Medraut orModred, Celtic versions of the Latin Moderatus. How did it get the "mor"? Possibly with some influence of his mother, Morgause, or of Morgan le Fay. But possibly also through some sound associations, with murder (earlier murther) and with the French morte. After all, the best-known account of the Arthurian legend is Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

We know that some of the names drew directly and deliberately on "mor" words. J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and knew very well what he was up to when he chose his words.Morgoth, Mordor, and Moria are all formed using the same mor root that shows up in his Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, a root referring to darkness and blackness. He borrowed it from the old Germanic word mora, which, as I mentioned, shows up in the modern word murky.

J.K. Rowling is well known as a dab hand at wordplay. Voldemort is right from French: it can mean "flight from death" or "theft of death." Rowling herself pronounces it with a silent t as in the French, though she's just about the only one who does.

Classical roots very likely played a role in the name Morbius, too. The first one, after whom the others (in Spider-Man and Dr. Who) are named, was in the 1956 movie The Forbidden Planet: Dr. Edward Morbius, his ship's master of languages and meaning, a man with an out-of-control unconscious. Morbius himself would have noticed the resemblance of his name to Möbius (of the famous loop) and Morpheus (shape-shifting god of dreams). He probably also would have known its similarity to Latin morbus, meaning "sickness" — source of English morbid. We can reckon safely that Irving Block and Allen Adler, who wrote the story an
d invented the name, had some idea of this too.

Jedi Mind Meld

I guess the President needs to turn in his badge as the First Nerd President. He mixed the oil and water of Star Trek and Star Wars in a mixed metaphor over averting the sequester. [Link]

President Obama tried to drop a gratuitous nerd culture reference in a press conference about serious business, and blew it. He said earlier today he couldn't perform a “Jedi mind meld” on the GOP, an amalgam of “Jedi mind trick” and “Vulcan mind meld.” Regarding negotiations with Congress over issues like averting the sequester, Obama drew further Twitter mockery with the line, “I am not a dictator. I’m the president.”

To scan the stormy horizon of nerdrage, skim the #ObamaSciFiQuotes hashtag results on Twitter.

They found a great image, and here's some more.

I really like this one

Noooo!

A classic

Three mixed franchises. Can we do better?

Yes. Four franchises mixed

I hate the Other Side

They must lose and My Side must win. [Link]

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.

The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to the Other Side if it could ever be verified.

I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks – remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.

My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Atwoodian tautology considered harmful

Approving meta statement. [Link]

Considered Harmful

Declarative statement opening blog statement. Back away from declarative statement slightly, pivot then double down with even more controversial declarative statement. Insult beloved programming language and assert newer language's idiomatic aesthetic as superior. Including backing statistics with missing Y-axis labels to prop up weak link-bait including declarative statement. Reference Linus, invoke Dijkstra. Oh, everything looks bad if you remember it.

Biased Benchmarks

Supporting albeit equivocating statement. Weak marginally equivocating statement because I want to be on TechCrunch. Farmville.

The phrase 'Atwoodian tautology' cracks me up.

All About the Glasses

Clark Kent can't be Superman, Clark Kent wears glasses. [Link]

If you haven't yet, it's pretty interesting to check out people's answers to Friday's question, where I asked: If you were to play a game set in the DC comics universe, how quickly would you figure out that Clark Kent is Superman?

When I initially asked the question, I was just thinking of it as a simple example of how to apply narrative logic to play (not recognizing them is, in most circumstances, narrative appropriate) without needing to stress yourself out. However, the answers I've gotten to this question have really suggested to me that this may be an incredibly informative question to ask at the beginning of a campaign. It's a question with no wrong answer, but each right answer reveals a very different relationship with the fiction of the game.

Some of the big groupings I saw break down like this.

Interesting points for role playing games and genre conventions. I have seen games where there was a disconnect between players and game master over what things are 'realistic' or in genre.

This makes me feel better about Superman's citizenship

Yes, he is a fictional character, why do you ask? [Link]

In the story in question, Superman is summoned to Camp David, where he is confronted by the president's National Security Advisor. The NSA expresses the administration's extreme irritation with Superman's recent actions -- outraged at the Iranian government's violent oppression of protesters, he flew in and joined the dissidents. There, he simply stood there and allowed his presence to assert his solidarity with their cause -- and his mere presence abated the violence for the duration.

The goernment of Iran, however, was not pleased, stating that Superman -- as not only an American citizen, but as a licensed agent of the United States government (a special status some superheroes in the DC Comics universe hold) -- had committed several acts of war against Iran, and the US was not happy to have to answer for his actions. At that point, Superman realized that he had, indeed, put the US in a very awkward position, and was likely to continue to do so in the future -- so he declared that he would present himself before the United Nations and formally renounce his American citizenship.

In the context of this story, that action was anything but a liberal, anti-American gesture. Indeed, I'd argue it was a very pro-American move, and actually a rather conservative gesture.

One aspect of conservatism is individual freedom, coupled with individual responsibility. Here, Superman is taking responsibility for his actions in Iran, and choosing to give up something of tremendous value to him -- his citizenship -- to spare the US from being held accountable for hi actions. It's not an angry rejection of the US and our ideals (despite his stating "Truth, justice, and the American way -- it's not enough anymore"), but a self-sacrifice for the good of the nation.

In another aspect, the whole storyline can be considered a rejection of the Obama administration's handling of the protests in Iran. Superman didn't fly to Bialya or Qurac (two fictional Mideastern nations based loosely on Libya and Iraq  that DC uses when it needs some Mideastern bad guys or storylines), he flew to Iraq -- where he stood with the same Iranian protesters who President Obama refused to support or aid when they rose up against the Iranian tyrants. Superman did what President Obama refused to do -- and then, when confronted by the administration's representative, refused to submit himself to their judgment and instead removed himself from their authority. Well, their nominal authority -- he's Superman, remember?

Best Fictional Bands

Where did the cars from Cars come from?

Who made them? How do they reproduce? [Link]

DadHacker (previously on Mefi) ponders how the world of Pixar's Cars came about: "They turned on us, and were very thorough." Jake Parker asks a more biomechanical question and sketches the nightmarish result: "Where does the flesh end and the machine begin?"

The Westphall Hypothosis Mapped Out

From Overthinking It. [Link]

Dr. Donald Westphall was one of the main characters on the 1980’s NBC medical show St. Elsewhere. Tommy was his autistic son. The final episode aired May 25, 1989. In the last scene, Donald Westphall returns home, and based on his clothes and conversation, it’s clear he’s a construction worker, not a doctor. Donald looks at Tommy and says, “I don’t even know if he can hear me, because he sits there, all day long, in his own world, staring at that toy. What’s he thinking about?” The toy is a snow globe containing the hospital the series was set at.

The ending’s a bit ambiguous, but the most common interpretation is the entire show was just a figment of Tommy’s imagination. In other words, it was all a dream.

The chart and the key. I love stuff like this.

In a similar vein, the Wold Newton family tree that ties many, many literary characters together.

Spoilers!

100 films in 5 minutes. You have been warned.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

A Return to Traditional Zombie Values

Simon Pegg talks on zombies. [Link]

My expectations were high, and I sat down to watch a show that proved smart, inventive and enjoyable, but for one key detail: ZOMBIES DON'T RUN!

I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run. It's a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I'll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.

More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.

However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you're careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them - much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares - the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.

I am no fan of the fast zombie either. I like my zombies to shamble.

Symbology of Dr, Strangelove

I never noticed all of this, but then I wasn't looking for it. [Link]

Last week, I made the claim that Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was one long sexual metaphor for the Cold War. While this occurred to me unbidden, I'm sure I'm not the first to say so. Still, with the most common discussions of the film taking the political route, with Fascism getting its legs back thanks to the Military Complex, etc., it may be worth exploring the idea on this blog. I've wanted to write more pieces on movies anyway.

One of the keys to the assertion that Strangelove develops an onscreen sexual relationship between two countries is the opening credits sequence. Right from the start, Kubrick is juxtaposing stock footage of a plane refueling, with its back and forth rocking motion and phallic fuel hose, with romantic music. At the very least, it looks and sounds like an education film on the birds and the bees. The same music will return at the film's climax, which we'll get to in due time.

Josh Groban at the 2008 Emmys

I missed the Emmys last night, but this sounds like this was the best part. Josh Groban singing a medley of the best tv themes of the past 60 years. The only theme I wished he would have done was Star Trek, but that's just because of how bad the lyrics are.

The periodic table of awesome

This is, unsurprisingly, awesome. [Link]

I especially like how the groups of elements all make sense in a theme. Batman and Chuck Norris are together, Ninjas are near Pirates. All is well with the world.

Fringe is the Venture Brothers

Makes sense. [Link]

This means that both Venture Bros and Fringe are shows about, in their own ways, the failures of both science and the family dynamic, featuring strained father-and-son relationships (even if Jonas Venture isn't around any longer) and characters trying to live up to the achievements of the past, cloned children and blonde bodyguards who may be the most sensible people in the series. Throw in Mark Valley as some kind of undead Monarch, and I think we've got something here.

When do Dr. Orpheus and Triana move in to the lab next door?

"Real" Superheroes

Wow. I love comics and superheroes, but I don't think I could do this. [Link]

BY MOST OBSERVERS' RECKONING, between 150 and 200 real-life superheroes, or "Reals" as some call themselves, operate in the United States, with another 50 or so donning the cowl internationally. These crusaders range in age from 15 to 50 and patrol cities from Indianapolis to Cambridgeshire, England. They create heroic identities with names like Black Arrow, Green Scorpion, and Mr. Silent, and wear bright Superman spandex or black ninja suits. Almost all share two traits in common: a love of comic books and a desire to improve their communities.

It's rare to find more than a few superheroes operating in the same area, so as with all hobbies, a community has sprung up online. In February, a burly, black-and-green-clad New Jersey-based Real named Tothian started Heroes Network, a website he says functions "like the UN for the real-life superhero community."

I worry about the dark side to all this. One has already had a DUI while in costume and there has been discussions about carrying shotguns. If they want to do this, they really need to stick to the silver age ideal rather than 90's bloodlust.

Lasagna Cat

Very Cool. Live action adaptations of Garfield strips followed by an ironic music video that counterpoints the strip. [Link]

Watching these I was reminded of Silent Garfield where all of Garfield's dialog is removed. [Link]

I imagine I'll be a fan

Real web site for imaginary show goes live. [Link]

Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it's a fan site for a TV show that doesn't exist.

Over the next couple of months, the site will be updated on a weekly or biweekly basis with new information, vignettes, character sketches, character bios, a community message board, and other exciting things.

And starting in mid-February, there will be a series of novellas and novellettes, and one complete novel. Approximately one story every two weeks for sixteen weeks (though we are still tweaking the schedule), comprising the first season (of hopefully many) of a television show that doesn't exist.

Shadow Unit

So far, it seems like an X-Files or Delta Green derivative. Could be interesting.