[16 Dec 11] The Myth of the American Sleepover

[Davidj]

Is nobody else kinda concerned with the idea of Lisa fetischizing both the concentration camps & a guy she just met that may or may not be queer? I dunno, if somebody I had just met caught a whiff of my non-normative sexuality & wrote me into their romantic/erotic creative writing assignment, I would be a little put off.

Lemme think about that...nope. Doesn't bother me. I don't think Lisa is likely to have the writing chops to do a good job of writing "Brokeback Concentration Camp" but I don't believe it's a sexual fantasy she's writing.

[Ameyal]

Is nobody else kinda concerned with the idea of Lisa fetischizing both the concentration camps & a guy she just met that may or may not be queer? I dunno, if somebody I had just met caught a whiff of my non-normative sexuality & wrote me into their romantic/erotic creative writing assignment, I would be a little put off.

It's weird to say the least. I mean, it's perfectly normal to fantasize about people you barely know(model, celebrities and what have you) but putting it in written form? And about a person you *Actually* know... it's kinda icky.

Of course it really depends on how she handles the "romance" aspect, since it's the only thing we heard from it. Ir can be as light as a bromance, chaste heros holding hands, or going XXX on the paper.

(So, I get home from work tonight, and discover that this post, which I typed up last night right before bed, never registered my attempt to click "Submit".)

1: Lisa's plot could be a magnificent piece.

2: I predict that it will not, in fact, be magnificent. It will be overwrought, or inappropriate, or just absurd, or all of the above.

3: This will not, in any way, prevent many of her peers, and possibly even her professor, from praising it for its "depth" and "courage" and so forth.

4: This will annoy Sara to no end, understandably.

Why do I predict this? Because it's college, and self-important tripe is very often the bread-and-butter of such environments.

Naaag, it's because Lisa is a Manic Pixie Girl that Can Do No Wrong And Is Always Right Forever and Ever About Everything

More endless Lisa hate! Man, this is becoming a staple of my daily life.

Glad to five you your fix, you Lisa hate junkie

[Mung]

As for Lisa's "gay romance in Dachau", the idea that she'd have the rights sold by Friday actually made me picture a cross between "Brokeback Mountain" and "Schindler's List".

Hitler's Final Solution was their final chance at romance.
Adam Lambert and Justin Bieber star in "The Bois in the Striped Pajamas".

Tagline: You are being foolish, we have ways of making you love.(said in a German accent)

I laughed out loud at this. Does that make me a bad person? I guess it does.
That being said, I have seen neither Brokeback Mountain nor Schindler's list but I think I might watch a cross between them.

The real question is are you a bad person for laughing at it, or are you a bad person despite laughing at it?

[Mung]

While I realize that it is poor form to make two posts in a row, this is so different in tone from my previous post that it looked very odd as an edit to it.

Re The ongoing discussion about knowledge of concentration camps: If you were a boomer and watched all the TV specials at the 20th, 25th, 30th .... anniversaries of the end of WWII, you know the names of LOTS of concentration camps. Bergen-Belsen, the first liberated, Dachau,the second, which shocked allied troops by the implication that there were even MORE of these places. Theresienstadt in "Czechoslavakia" the example camp the Nazis showed the Red Cross (also from the TV mini-series Holocaust that launched Merryl Streep's career). Sachshausen in the very suburbs of Berlin! Ravensbruck where four Englishwomen were killed, and, by happenstance, the female relatives of several famous people. And, of course, the death camps - Auchwitz-Birkenau, Majdenak, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka-Obermaiden. Sobibor and Treblinka being famous for their prisoner uprisings (If anyone ever asks "Why didn't they fight back?", they did) that largely destroyed both camps(strongly recommend Treblinka for reading).
If you didn't have a father or uncles or a live-in grandfather that was "there" - watching these revelations unfold, even if they didn't participate themselves, you probably didn't watch these. Concentration and death camps form a looming darkness of humanity at its worst that doesn't really have or need a name.
That's almost probably better. A lot of the specifics were invoked to make the Holocaust special. Only the Germans could do that and only to the Jews. That's not the real lesson of it though. Anyone is capable of demonizing their enemy, especially if their "enemy" is actually weak, and the result - mass death - flows naturally from that. I remember commenting during the First Intifada in Palestine in the 80's that Israel was one charismatic madman away from doing something obscene. Fortunately, he didn't exist then, but given enough time ....
It can happen to ANY people - even Americans. That's why we must "Never Forget".

Perhaps for accuracy I should have said "even yours" instead of "even Americans".

[Valerie]

It can happen to ANY people - even Americans. That's why we must "Never Forget".

Perhaps for accuracy I should have said "even yours" instead of "even Americans".

After 9/11, my 6th grade teacher switched from her original lesson plan to teach us about Islam. I assumed it was just to keep us from being told (by other adults, mostly) that Muslims are Satan-worshippers, etc.* She was from Germany. So now your post makes me wonder if that influenced it.

*I'll never forget how pissed off my Mammaw was when she told me that and I explained that their Allah was basically the same as our God. Good times. And yes, there are obviously some key differences, but there's no denying they're very related entities.

[sun tzu]

While I realize that it is poor form to make two posts in a row, this is so different in tone from my previous post that it looked very odd as an edit to it.

Re The ongoing discussion about knowledge of concentration camps: If you were a boomer and watched all the TV specials at the 20th, 25th, 30th .... anniversaries of the end of WWII, you know the names of LOTS of concentration camps. Bergen-Belsen, the first liberated, Dachau,the second, which shocked allied troops by the implication that there were even MORE of these places. Theresienstadt in "Czechoslavakia" the example camp the Nazis showed the Red Cross (also from the TV mini-series Holocaust that launched Merryl Streep's career). Sachshausen in the very suburbs of Berlin! Ravensbruck where four Englishwomen were killed, and, by happenstance, the female relatives of several famous people. And, of course, the death camps - Auchwitz-Birkenau, Majdenak, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka-Obermaiden. Sobibor and Treblinka being famous for their prisoner uprisings (If anyone ever asks "Why didn't they fight back?", they did) that largely destroyed both camps(strongly recommend Treblinka for reading).
If you didn't have a father or uncles or a live-in grandfather that was "there" - watching these revelations unfold, even if they didn't participate themselves, you probably didn't watch these. Concentration and death camps form a looming darkness of humanity at its worst that doesn't really have or need a name.
That's almost probably better. A lot of the specifics were invoked to make the Holocaust special. Only the Germans could do that and only to the Jews. That's not the real lesson of it though. Anyone is capable of demonizing their enemy, especially if their "enemy" is actually weak, and the result - mass death - flows naturally from that. I remember commenting during the First Intifada in Palestine in the 80's that Israel was one charismatic madman away from doing something obscene. Fortunately, he didn't exist then, but given enough time ....
It can happen to ANY people - even Americans. That's why we must "Never Forget".

Perhaps for accuracy I should have said "even yours" instead of "even Americans".

[sgtrock]

It can happen to ANY people - even Americans. That's why we must "Never Forget".

Perhaps for accuracy I should have said "even yours" instead of "even Americans".

After 9/11, my 6th grade teacher switched from her original lesson plan to teach us about Islam. I assumed it was just to keep us from being told (by other adults, mostly) that Muslims are Satan-worshippers, etc.* She was from Germany. So now your post makes me wonder if that influenced it.

*I'll never forget how pissed off my Mammaw was when she told me that and I explained that their Allah was basically the same as our God. Good times. And yes, there are obviously some key differences, but there's no denying they're very related entities.

You know the part that always bothered me the most about 9/11 news coverage? It was mentioned in passing just once in all the coverage that I saw that people from 84 different countries died when the WTC collapsed. This was never just an American tragedy.

Now, a sane government might have used that fact to build up a truly strong multi-national coalition to deal with Islamic inspired terrorism. But, nooooooo. Instead we had Chaney, Rumsfeld, Rove, et. al. all chomping at the bit to turn that tragedy into an US vs THEM scenario so they could tear up the Constitution and use it for toilet paper.

[JackFairy]

Someone's already brought up "Bent," which is a really great play (later film) about gay romance in Dachau.

It's not particularly "sexy" though. There's sex in it, but it's heartfelt and emotional and tragic rather than titillating. The "off" part about Lisa's writing isn't the idea or the content, but the tone. She's fetishizing and trivializing others' traumatic experiences.

[Fen]

Wasn't the worst concentration camp in Kamchatka(sp?) though? I mean, I get that Stalin isn't as demonized as Hitler but still. =/

[Freemage]

Someone's already brought up "Bent," which is a really great play (later film) about gay romance in Dachau.

It's not particularly "sexy" though. There's sex in it, but it's heartfelt and emotional and tragic rather than titillating. The "off" part about Lisa's writing isn't the idea or the content, but the tone. She's fetishizing and trivializing others' traumatic experiences.

Again, while I agree that she's probably trivializing the trauma (she's an affluent suburban white kid; even with her reasonable level of self-awareness, the odds that she's ever had to face any serious pain to draw upon are low), we can't accuse her of 'fetishizing' anything without actually having some idea of the actual content of the story. While I can't say it's impossible, I find it unlikely that she's going over-the-top on the sex scenes, or on making sexy, sexy Nazis. Doubly so since this was apparently an in-class assignment, and therefore likely to only be a few pages--unless you're writing for some alt-net lit-porn site, there's simply not enough time in that space for an actual story AND actual fetishization of anything.

[Davidj]

Someone's already brought up "Bent," which is a really great play (later film) about gay romance in Dachau.

It's not particularly "sexy" though. There's sex in it, but it's heartfelt and emotional and tragic rather than titillating. The "off" part about Lisa's writing isn't the idea or the content, but the tone. She's fetishizing and trivializing others' traumatic experiences.

You haven't read what she wrote. That she's imagining Hank and the boyfriend she thinks he lost as the leads doesn't mean that she's trying to write a titillating rather than tragic story.

[JackFairy]

Someone's already brought up "Bent," which is a really great play (later film) about gay romance in Dachau.

It's not particularly "sexy" though. There's sex in it, but it's heartfelt and emotional and tragic rather than titillating. The "off" part about Lisa's writing isn't the idea or the content, but the tone. She's fetishizing and trivializing others' traumatic experiences.

You haven't read what she wrote. That she's imagining Hank and the boyfriend she thinks he lost as the leads doesn't mean that she's trying to write a titillating rather than tragic story.

The art certainly makes me think that. Hank is drawn super emo shounen-ai/yaoi manga style, with the languid pose and the seductive open-mouthed look at the audience and just the liiiiitle bit of blood down his face. I've seen tons and tons and tons of manga art like that which was basically pin-up art. Seeing Lisa writing with gleeful enthusiasm while as having that mental image sure does suggest fetishization to me. And even if she's not writing sex scenes, her facial expression is not the look of someone writing a considerate and historically accurate treatise on the Nazi's persecution of homosexuals.

[Kamino Neko]

The art certainly makes me think that. Hank is drawn super emo shounen-ai/yaoi manga style

... Hank is drawn in exactly the same style he's always drawn in, with the exact same expression he always wears.

[Louisa]

The art certainly makes me think that. Hank is drawn super emo shounen-ai/yaoi manga style, with the languid pose and the seductive open-mouthed look at the audience and just the liiiiitle bit of blood down his face. I've seen tons and tons and tons of manga art like that which was basically pin-up art. Seeing Lisa writing with gleeful enthusiasm while as having that mental image sure does suggest fetishization to me. And even if she's not writing sex scenes, her facial expression is not the look of someone writing a considerate and historically accurate treatise on the Nazi's persecution of homosexuals.

See, I interpreted Hank's pose as a longing look, but not one of longing for anything sexual. The fact that he's looking out towards the audience with his hands on that fence makes me think he's longing for freedom. I didn't see anything seductive about it. And Lisa's facial expression isn't necessarily "this turns me on", it could just as easily be "I'm really absorbed in my writing, and concentrating super-hard". I don't think we can make any judgements about the actual content of her story based on what's presented in that panel.

[Alice Macher]

Dare we ask T for clarification as to Lisa's intent? (I'm not sure I want to know the answer [*shudder*], but I don't imagine it'd be spoilery.)