Apparently there’s a movie in theaters now by the name of The Hunger Games – it’s sort of obscure, so you may not have heard of it. Despite the title, it does not have anything to do with food. No, apparently it has something to do with young people fighting to the death on TV, or something.
Over on the Fox News website, Dr. Keith Ablow – described as “a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team” – is shocked to discover that this film contains:
1) Attractive young people
2) Violence
This deadly combination alarms Dr. Ablow, who warns:
The Hunger Games … adds to the toxic psychological forces it identifies, rather than reducing them. …
It is an entertainment product of complete fiction and great potency, given its intense level of fantasy and violence. As such, it only conveys young people closer to “expressing” in a virtual format their powerful and primitive instincts (potentially kindling their desire to truly express such instincts) while conveying them further from their daily realities and a little further still from their real selves.
And apparently the film fails utterly in inculcating hostility towards the Kardashian family.
Almost no one will emerge from a theater swearing off shows like the Keeping Up With the Kardashians, or Jersey Shore because they are produced by adults happy enough to make a buck off of stupefying teenagers.
As I am sure you are all aware, inculcating hostility towards the Kardashians is the aim of all great art, as Aristotle explained so many centuries ago:
A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious, and also, as having magnitude, complete in … with incidents arousing pity and terror, with which to accomplish its purgation of these emotions. Those Kardashian girls are such stuck up bitches — “ooh i got a big ass, everybody look at me!” And don’t even get me started on Snooki.
Hey, can I get a goddamn gyro here?
That quote is, of course, from Aristotle’s famous treatise “Ho-etics.”
In addition to not inculcating hatred towards the Kardashians, Dr. Ablow warns us, The Hunger Games will make its viewers
more likely to come out of theaters having shed some measure of the healthy psychological defenses (which are, luckily, partly reinforced by socialization) that keep them at a distance from their violent impulses. …
Other than entertaining millions and millions of teenagers and making millions and millions of dollars, the net result of The Hunger Games is likely to be:
1) Females will be further distanced from their traditional feminine characteristics that … suggested they were not being real “girls” if they were extremely physically violent.
2) Young teens and many pre-teens will be awakened to the fact that they are capable of extreme violence, given the right set of circumstances.
3) A few psychologically vulnerable teens—who would have come to no good anyhow—may be inspired to replicate the film’s violence.
So I’m guessing that’s a big “thumbs down” from Dr. Ablow.
Given that the mainstream media is but a tool in the hand of our gynocentric matriarchal overlordsladies, I’m not quite sure how this article slipped through. But we’re lucky it did.
Over on What Men Are Saying About Women, where I found big chunks of Ablow’s essay quoted without any explanation of where they were from, our good friend Christian J. explains that:
This movie is straight out of the slut-feminists’ arsenal of the “You Go Grrrllll” mantras. They have promoted violent women and will continue to do so (think Valerie Solanas). Slut-feminists justify this action under their delusional and blatantly false claim that women should be able to protect themselves as they are constantly attacked and physically abused on a daily basis, everywhere they go..
Where they get that from is ofcourse by generating their own falsified and doctored statistics which they have done for too long to remember.
If anyone suggests you go see The Hunger Games, they are probably a slut feminist. You should run far away from them in case they decide to punch you.
Go watch old episodes of The A-Team instead, a show which is totally not violent in any way.
If I were a conservative ghoul I would argue that treating depression costs more than burying a corpse. That’s why I don’t like the prevention saves money argument, it’s often untrue and it ignores the moral point that it’s wrong to let medical conditions go untreated.
Meh, at least if you corner them into saying “let ’em die, it’s cheaper” then that ends the whole “death panels” line or argument.
Anyway it is virtually always cheaper–vaccines are cheaper than treating illnesses, and so on–and if you’re talking to people this mercenary, that’s about the only tack that’s likely to have any success.
And treating depression with therapy and meds is a HELL of a lot cheaper than waiting until someone attempts suicide, putting them in a mental hospital for a while, and then treating them with therapy and meds.
@Ruby:
I actually think that our healthcare system up here has some real problems, and it is treated with such reverence by the public that politicians refuse to acknowledge its flaws, allowing it to deteriorate further. However, I would take my system over your system any day of the mother lovin’ week. At least here I know that if I need medical attention, I won’t have to worry where the money to cover it is coming from.
Of course, as Leum pointed out, we are not by any means the only country with socialized healthcare, and an awful lot of countries have done it better. It’s not like there’s only one way to ensure all of your citizens have access to healthcare.
@Ozy:
Not to mention metaphorically cheaper, with less pain and suffering caused by whatever result was prevented.
Also, fyi, my grandmother died of lung cancer. She was first diagnosed when I was a child. She went into remission twice before it came back the third time and killed her. She was on artificial oxygen at that point, because she had part of a lung removed.
Her treatment wasn’t “too expensive” for society, she was a human being, not a “burden” on the system.
See, this is what you need to get when you try and pretend this shit isn’t personal. It is personal. It is us, our families, our communites, our lives that you are talking about. It’s not some sort of academic thought experiment, it’s actual human beings.
I just have a question. If the hunger games had featured a male protagonist, would we have said something like, :
“This movie is straight out of the asshole-MRA’s arsenal of the “Men are naturally violent” mantras. They have promoted violent men and will continue to do so (think Anders Breivik). Asshole-MRA’s justify this action under their delusional and blatantly false claim that normal men are just naturally agressive and want to rape every woman they see, on a daily basis, everywhere they go..
Where they get that from is ofcourse by generating their own falsified and doctored statistics which they have done for too long to remember.”???
Because I don’t think so. And it really doesn’t even make any sense.
I fell in love with a British guy. Early on in our relationship, I was faced with something pretty horrible: I had to swallow my stubborn independence and all-consuming pride and ask him for money, because I couldn’t afford to have sex with him. Ashamed and embarrassed, I explained to him that I was still paying off a medical bill on my maxed-out credit card, and since we were both dying to jump in the sack, I was going to need a bit of help paying for the visit to Planned Parenthood (about $60 cash in my income bracket) so I could get the prescription for the birth control I’d need (about $20 a month.) I wasn’t poor, exactly, but I just didn’t have $80 cash on my hands at that moment, you know? I didn’t have health insurance through my job, and while I would pay him back out of my next paycheck, I wanted to be absolutely sure that I was clean and protected before having sex with him.
He had no problem going in halves on the cost of our birth control. He asked about the medical bill I was paying off – a $600 hospital visit and antibiotics, because I’d denied the fact that I had pneumonia, knowing I couldn’t afford to get sick, until I basically dropped from it. Then he went online and realized that if I were to break my arm, uninsured, it would literally be cheaper for me to buy a plane ticket and fly to England, where it would be fixed for free than it would be for me to pay it out of pocket.
Reader, I married him. We moved to the land of free birth control (seriously, they just hand it to you, FOR FREE) where a dentist appointment literally costs less than a haircut. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at their teeth. The society still stands.
I’m a actually really angry on behalf of the American poor. Not being able to afford healthcare, for me is a human rights issue. Also, it’s INTENSLY personal, so I’m going to give you a little of my personal history. Over the last six months I’ve had cancer, lots of it, requiring surgery, chemotherapy, dozens of scans of all different types, drugs to control pain, nausea, side effects of chemo, anti-coagulants for huge blood clots in my lungs and highly expensive supplies for my ileostomy. Because of our public health system anything that takes place in hospital is covered by Medicare and I didn’t have to pay. The drugs and visits to my GP were covered but I made a co-payment. Our system is far from perfect but because of it I’m likely to live. In the US I would not have been able to afford treatment and would certainly have died. It enrages me that people like me die because their health system does not treat treat the poor because someone, somewhere in your insurance system decides their lives are not worth saving because treating them is too fucking expensive.
Now, I know that I’m really, really angry here and the chemotherapy is clouding my mind but even so, I know that the poor matter and they deserve to have access to the care they need and not to die of treatable illnesses.
Oh, and our system is actually cheaper than yours and we also have private options if people want them. If that’s “socialized medicine” then I’m all for it.
pillowinhell wrote: “What do americans have against the poor being healthy and better able to contribute to society and qa businesses bottom line?”
Because we’re freaking stupid and too many of us have bought the line that the USA has the best healthcare in the world. Fat lot of good that does you when you can’t afford it.
My sister worked until the last six weeks of her life, because she was so worried about medical insurance for herself and her husband. The last two weeks she was working, she was unable to eat and was barely able to drink, so that by the time she went into the hospital and needed major surgery, she had to have IVs for two days before they could do surgery because she was so dehydrated.
Then when it became apparent she was dying and was unable to work any longer, she had to go to appointments with HR to see what could be done about her and her husband’s medical insurance. By that time, she was so sick and weak, it took her two hours to get ready (even with my mother and I bathing and helping her) and was in a wheelchair, but what the hell. Let’s keep the insurance company happy, because otherwise, you can’t afford medical treatment.
I hate that she had to suffer like that to keep her job and her medical insurance. In any civilized society, she wouldn’t have had to spend her last days working and worrying about medical costs.
seranvali, I just read your comment. Thank you for writing and it is personal.
Oh, and Ruby and Antz, if you don’t care because this doesn’t touch your lives, think again. My sister was a nurse, so those last two weeks of work when she was so ill, she was still working as a nurse. Would you have wanted her taking care of you?
Putting aside everything else problematic with what you said (because everyone else has covered it), you realise that these behaviours (though obesity is not necessarily behavioural, but that has also been covered by everyone else) manifest in every class and race. So what you’re saying is that socialized healthcare is not the solution because the poor, and an increasing number of middle class as well, who don’t live an ascetic life are going to be treated like fucking human beings of worth, when we should leave THAT to those who win the crapshoot of being rich.
Wisteria:
Your story about your sister was absolutly heartbreaking. I’m so sorry. It should never have happened and it’s iniquitous that she was treated as she was!
i love the NHS
i am bewildered by USian resistance to universal healthcare.
i now live in Australia which has a bastardised version of the NHS plus insurance. People don’t go the the doctor because they can’t afford it. that nauseates me to my core.
i am tired, about to go to bed and have a few glasses of wine but i will later try to find the various studies that prove that countries with universal health care provide the best value for money. my husband has worked in the NHS and now in the public health system in Australia and he’s pretty fucking clued up about this shit.
Ruby I just took a look at the health care ratings for the G8. It seems that the US surpasses un in the number of doctors and nurses. But not in mortality or health outcomes. What this tells me is that large segments of the US population are not getting the health care they need.
Poor people don’t eat cheeseburgers constantly. What contributes to obesity is lack of food, such that the metabolism slows down, to store as much energy as possible. This happens because you may only be eating once a day, if that. So then you have to go grocery shopping. I’ve had times when ninety percent of my pay went to rent. I survived on potatoes and milk. Or maybe half a can of soup for a day while working or walking to work resulting in 16 hours of work! When I left my daughters father I worked 12 to 16 hours a day. Seventy five percent of my income went to rent and child care. I had 80 dollars for food for the month. Luckily, I know how to cook just about anything from scratch and once a month could get to a food bank which would provide roughly seven days of high quality fruits and vegetables, dried beans and rice.
Please, the next time you go grocery shopping, take eighty dollars and see what you can buy with it. The cheapest foods have only one thing going for them…the fats and high calory content to keep you going. Most of the fiber and vitamin content have been stripped from them in processing which means that you need to eat more to stay healthy. I used to drown a lot of my meals in maple syrup just to give me the energy kick to keep going. A lot of times, the best and healthiest foods went to my daughter so she wouldn’t suffer malnutrition. When you’re poor, you lack access to decent quality foods, you’re working two jobs when you can get them, and things like cooking, washing laundry etc take so much more time because you lack access to any time saving devices. So add in sleep deprivation to that. Makes for a lot of ill health you can’t take time off work for and can’t afford to treat.
Canada has a good system and I can get treatment. But I had to rely on medication freebies samples given to doctors by pharmacy companies because I couldn’t afford to fill a prescription. At one point I had a serious skin infection around my eye. Untreated it would either have killed me or caused me to go blind.
The NHS is awesome. I’m alive because of it, so’s my Dad, my grandparents, my cousin was born because of it…
I’m pretty sure the easiest way to get 62 million people to riot would be the British government threatening to abolish the NHS. Even if we do grumble about it sometimes, it’s a good system.
Doctor lottery? Go fuck yourself.
@BigMomma:
It’s the ant and the grasshopper. The ant works very hard in the summer months, and stores up food for the winter. The grasshopper lazes around and sings all summer long, and when winter comes he dies because he didn’t work hard enough. Therefore the moral correctness is vested in the ant and it is moral to let the grasshopper die.
And those of us in the US who work 80 hour jobs, eat right, exercise and don’t poison our bodies have a right to deny those whom we deem to be lazier than ourselves any help, and the fact that socialized medicine would force us to do it is outrageous.
Personal responsibility has its claws in this country deep.
I could happily strangle Aesop right now.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard arguments against ‘socialism’ based on some anecdote about a class where a teacher decided to average all the grades and give everybody the same grade, and how everybody ended up with an F because everybody stopped caring.
As if, you know, we lived in such a simplistic meritocracy that what you have is directly linked to how hard you work, without any confounding variables. And as if grades are always a non-biased measure of everyone’s worth, instead of a measure of ability to perform according to a certain set of standards.
Falconer:
I find this incomprehensible. There are just times when shit happens and we actually WANT to help out of love for our fellow human beings and because we know that when shit happens to us we’ll be cared for as well.
Nationalized healthcare is cheaper, more efficient and if people aren’t worrying about money they’ll get better quicker. The conservative American attitude, I think is as much about “Why should people be treated on my dime, even though I’ll actually pay less than I do now.” I’ve heard that arguement so often since “Obamacare” was proposed that I’ve given up talking to people who use it in total despair. You deserve better.
RE: Falcon (and Ruby as well)
Y’know, I WAS the ant for a long time. Did all the “right” things, felt very superior about how I was so self-reliant and crap.
Guess what? I got an eating disorder, and going to a nutritionist and getting therapy so I don’t starve myself to death isn’t covered by my (state-funded) insurance. I live on $10K a year; I CAN’T AFFORD ANY OTHER INSURANCE. And if I were to get a new job with higher wages and more hours, I’d likely spur on my workaholism and perfectionism that GOT me the damned eating disorder in the first place. I have to take life slow, or I WILL destroy myself. I’ve already collapsed numerous times–and guess what! Starved Rogan can’t work, because starved Rogan can’t make the hour commute to work!
Thank god I have food stamps, or in my twisted fucked-up way, I might try starving myself to afford the healthcare to teach me to stop starving myself! Because that’s the way my fucked-up head works, and the only thing I spend more on in a month than food is rent. (After rent, it’s my bus pass.)
But yes, I’m only on state-funded insurance because I’m a lazy entitled slob who if he just TRIED harder, I’d stop being sick. That’s totally how it works, uh huh.
In Canada, you get this attitude about welfare recipients. I think what it boils down to is that many people do not realize just how small a step it really is to be in dire need of assistance for a short period of time. And that often its things you have zero controll over that fuck your life over the hardest. They also fail to realize that that most folks only need help for a short period of time, not their entire lives.
Let some uncontrollable misfortune happen and these people will suddenly see what its really like and they will probably gain some empathy too. In the face of so much uncertainty, I’m sure the “I work hard so I’ll be fine and those other people are just lazy” is probably psychological armor from chronic worry
Every time I heard this from a pundit’s mouth when healthcare reform was going through, I put my head in my hands. In what possible way is the US a leader in healthcare? Certainly not in terms of cost, or average quality of care, or end-of-life care… Seriously, in what way do these neo-cons think they’re winning the race?
It’s like hearing them repeat, over and over, that they used to be the moral leaders that the whole world looked to, but that is now in decline because of Clinton/Obama/whatever. Um… I don’t think that was ever, you know, a thing. Just because you repeat it all of the time does not make it a thing.
Seconded.
We don’t have The Very Best healthcare system up here in the Great White North – but it’s pretty damn good and you can have it when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. Ancedatally, no one in my extended family – from my mother with her cancer, to my grandfather with his depression, to my youngest sister with her 15 week old fetus – have ever experienced anything but the highest quality of care. Surprisingly high, in some cases. Every health care practicitioner I have ever met has been dedicated, knowledgeable and helpful. And this is in Alberta of all places, home of the most right-leaning, healthcare-and-education-slashing provicinical government.
When I’m sick, I get the help I need, when I need it, no questions asked.
I think The Harper Government (TM) can go pound sand, but I’d rather they be “in charge” (as it were) than a company that sees me as a way to make money, not someone who is ill and needs to be well.
@LBT: Your situation really sucks and I’m inferring that I caused you pain with my comment because you’ve addressed your comment to me. I’m sorry that I caused you pain. I should have made it more clear that I absolutely hate the ant and the grasshopper, and the words I set down were the argument the deniers are making, and I don’t agree with it.
@Seranvali: Of course there are times when we as a nation pull together and help people really need it because they got screwed over. The last time I remember something like that happening spontaneously and unquestioningly is after 9/11. When Katrina hit and N’Awlins flooded, there were lots of rich, white men who said that most everybody who drowned, drowned because they made poor choices. They said the same thing after the 2004 tsunami. We in the States are all in favor of charity as a concept, but very few of us are willing to actually give anything on a regular basis. In fact, there’s a big argument on the right that the government should not have welfare programs and their reasoning seems to be that if the government handled charity it prevents private charities from working.
@pillowhinhell: I agree that “I work hard so I’ll be fine and those other people are just lazy” is something people tell themselves, probably so they’ll get to sleep at night.
I once was chatting with a libertarian at a resort and she was kvetching about how EVIL it is to let those “lazy people” have things like health care. Because she works hard for her money and how dare they and blah blah blah. I asked her about who she pays the premium to-would it matter if it was the government or a private insurer if it was the same rate? She said yes-because it might mean that those “lazy people” might not die for not being as self righteous as she was. I pointed out that was illogical-if her premium was the same no matter who it was paid to, why would she care if someone had coverage or not? It would not cost her anything.
She asked me to stop because she was on vacation and she did not want to have to think about difficult things. *rolls eyes*
The fucked up thing is that medicare for all is immensely popular when people are polled on it. However the government does not work that way here in the US-and the Democrats (who would the only ones to do it since the Republicans are about as useful as a stone in your shoe and just as annoying) have not been forced to do the right thing for a long time because rarely do you have someone primaried to get any of them to go left. See Blanche Lincoln and the incredibly ironically named Bill Halter.