Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

@Valentin

It was a poor comparison (I plead distinct lack of sleep 😛 ) for the reasons you say. Only threw it in because my light side tends to say very little normally!

@Skiriki

He’s going to be huge! 😀 Carisma letting you out of her sight yet? How’s Didi coping – relaxed some yet?

re war movies:

Suprised no one’s mentioned All Quiet on the Western Front yet. That one is haunting.

And in News of the Screws (to not so fondly recall the happily defunct News of the World): ‘Sexually Promiscuous’ Professor at the University of Rochester Faces Censure Vote

Absolute textbook sexual abuse and misuse of power – and the guy can’t be fired because he didn’t do anything against university policy. I’ll be in the corner, banging a head against the wall.

@WWTH

Maybe sometimes, or maybe it’s more common with the movies showing recent wars, but a lot of WWII movies are shot in Europe using equipment from European museums. Besides, I have a hard time believing the miltary would have let the (more or less) realistic depiction of the troops storming the beaches in Normandy go through, or the depictions of American WWII tanks as death traps. (I remember some Army guy actually complained that recruitment went down right after the Saving Private Ryan came out, because those scenes scared a lot of people off, and he was whining that we don’t fight wars like that anymore!!! (Course I believe this was before 9/11 and then the recession as well)).

@Valentin

“I given it as example of films which is not propaganda film. because of what these characters done at breakfast in this scene – this is like anti propaganda film.”

Fair enough, but the Brad Pit character is supposed to be the “good guy” in that scene. That’s what grosses me out so much. :/

One thing worth pointing out, is that Saving Private Ryan took place in France, and the French didn’t want the Germans in their country either. So in general they typically were happier to see Americans than the Germans were. Fury actually took place in Germany, where the Americans were an invading army, so it’s a little different situation.

@Rabid Rabbit

“The scene that always stuck with me in Good Morning Vietnam, from when I first saw it as a kid, was the one where (SPOILERS)”

That’d be the scene. Although (spoiler) remember the kid was trying to save William’s life as well. (Well at least I think so, been a long time since I’ve seen it).

@Shadowplay

“Thank you for the dig in to the guts of Saving Private Ryan, as I’ve never seen it”

I think it’s one of those movies where you can see or realize new stuff every time you watch it. I haven’t seen it in a while, but personally I think it’s worth trying to stomach past Tom Hanks, even if just to say you saw it. 🙂

Mostly. But I’ve read that the American troops were quite rapey, which caused a lot of French ill-feeling.

English ill-feeling too. T’weren’t the French as invented the saying “Over paid, over sexed, and over here” to describe the Americans. 😉

> weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Thank you for “theweek” article, it is really interesting and informative.

For war movies, i did not have read all comments, sorry. Have “Paths of Glory”, “The Road to Glory” or “The Charge of the Light Brigade” been evoked ?

mrex

already long time since I seen Fury, so I don’t remember all. but I think it is too simply to say it is good guy/bad guy movie. because it is not.

as you say. they chose Germany for this movie – where American is invading army. already – this is designed so they will not be heros. or at least it will be complicated how war is complicated.

second – scene with breakfast. why you said brad Pitt is meant to be good guy? where it shows that we must think he is the good guy? good men use their status as invading army to pressure women to make breakfast for them? good men really sit and not stop their colleagues from assaulting women? even if he punched Shia or bouf after – he already allow him to hurt these women. this is not what good men do. this is not behaviour of “good guy” character.

and film is called Fury. emotion of hate and anger and dispair. how will “good guys” exist in such a film? in war there is no such person as good guys. good guys only exist in American propaganda films where a war is like a football game.

@Moggie

“Mostly. But I’ve read that the American troops were quite rapey, which caused a lot of French ill-feeling.”

In general the Americans troops in France acted, at best, obnoxious. At worst, some of us were thugs and war criminals. But we weren’t looking to occupy* France and dismantle it’s goverment either. We came, at least in name, as friends. My point was that it was different for the Germans, where we came as enemies.

The fun thing about WWII is that rapes and other atrocities were happening across the board, but everyone always points to the war attrocities of the other guy. The French troops were assaulting and raping their own women on the excuse that the women were “Nazi sympathizers”. The Americans talk about the rapes done by the Soviets, the Soviets talk about the rapes done by the Allies, and so on.

*Aaaaand the US still has troops in Europe. Most promise, so broken.

War movies. Anyone seen Ken Branagh’s production of Henry V ? The depiction of Agincourt’s mud, blood and hand – to – hand violence is pretty grim. We were spared yet another level of nastiness because afaik Shakespeare’s script doesn’t mention (or glosses over) how a huge proportion of Henry’s soldiers were so stricken with dysentery that they had left their drawers off.

If the female orgasm is a fiction designed to get women to slut it up, why do vibrators sell so well?

Nice of misogynists to advertise how shitty they are bed so that none of us wastes any time sleeping with them though.

content warning for sexual violence

Long (very long) report on the cover-up of sexual assault and other violence by athletes, ctaff and administrators at Michigan State University. ESPN’s “Outside the Lines”

Like the Abuser-in-Chief said, when you’re a star, you get away with it.

Hey everyone! I’m back…sorry for walking away so often. I’m not scared by the politics.

ETA: Oh my Katie…That female orgasm talk is cracking me up ?
Damn you WWTH and ShadowPlay!

@ wwth:

I’m a sports fan, mostly high school, but with Kansas men’s basketball, women’s volleyball high on the list. There have been incidents where the University has been accused of covering up sexual assault. Whenever I follow the games, particularly the men, I have to wonder what’s going on under cover here, now… and when I watch high school games, I got to wonder, what are we teaching our young men about male privilege and “jock” privilege?

re: the screenshot Mish posted above

if a female could orgasm, don’t you think I’d have seen it by now?

… oh, the snarky, sarcastic, disparaging things I could say about this person’s sexual prowess… or just about their powers of observation….

If I was snarky….

If the female orgasm is a fiction designed to get women to slut it up, why do vibrators sell so well?

I like Shadowplay’s explanation, personally, but:
It’s possible that guys like this share the view that only orgasms during het intercourse count as “real.” Therefore, vibrators etc. don’t prove anything.
I’ve mentioned this before, but quite a few years ago, I sat in on a Human Sexuality course, where the lecturer explicitly defined “non-orgasmic” women as those who didn’t orgasm during PIV intercourse. He stopped short of using “frigid”, but only just.
This was at one of our top universities, not some backwater, by the way ?