I will admit that I'm waiting to see The Hunger Games until summer vacation. I will also admit that I didn't want it to be made into a movie in the first place, because I was afraid that it, like so many movies before it, would glorify the physical and psychological violence described in its source material. But now I know better (at least, in theory), and will review the movie when I see it.
For now, though, something circulating on the internet has caught my attention. WHY IN KRUTZING BELGIUM'S NAME should it matter that Rue is black? Comments have apparently ranged from "not how I imagined her" to "her death didn't matter as much to me."
...I am speechless. Sure, I imagined Rue as pale and blonde, like lots of people did. But the important things to remember here are that 1) Movies DO NOT portray things the way people see them in their heads. Quite the opposite, in fact. In a few years no one will ever remember that they imagined Rue as white, because the cute little black girl will be the image of her that is everywhere.
And quite rightly, too. 2) Apparently there's a passage that all of us imaginers missed: Rue is described as having dark skin. So in this segregated world she should be played by a black girl if we're staying faithful to the book, which we are.
And yes, I said segregated. Reactions to the casting of black actors (Thresh, who comes from Rue's district, and Cinna, Katniss's chief stylist, as well) in The Hunger Games fit into the greater pattern here. I promised myself I wouldn't comment on Trayvon Martin's death, but I shall point out that both controversies stem from the same attitude: that people with darker skin are somehow suspect.
Notice also where the black characters come from: Rue and Thresh are from the same district, and are the only "dark-skinned" tributes. Does that make their district all black? Or all minority? Was this where Panem put them? What does that make Cinna? The son of a District 11 victor sold into sex slavery, as Finnick reveals he was in the third book? Panem is no better than its progenitor.
Or am I exaggerating? Was Cinna born white, and dyed his skin to go better with his gold eyeshadow? Are there other black, Hispanic, Asian, or otherwise minority characters? Extras, either in the Districts or the Capitol? (Don't count women; Panem preserves its gender balance quite carefully.) Will this look better when I see the movie?
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Note on religion: 21st-century Deism
I've decided: I'm Jewish, but I'm mostly a Deist. Except not precisely.
For those of you who don't know or can't quite remember, Deism was the faith of choice for a lot of the great Enlightenment thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson. Its basic principle was that G-d created the universe, and then stepped back and let it run, like a huge clock. This was also soon after Newton and Kepler and other awesome people discovered that the universe runs on scientific and mathematical principles, and decided that the whole of the universe could be understood through science--including G-d.
Now it's the 21st century, and we know the universe is not as clear-cut as clockwork--we have relativity, quantum mechanics, and grand particle-smashing attempts to reconcile them. But Deism still works, albeit in a slightly different paradigm. I started with the idea that G-d could still be present, and act when needed--like winding the clock, or adjusting for the krutzed-up process that is Daylight Savings Time. (Maybe I'll rant about Daylight Savings time the next time I have to deal with it.) And this is what I ended up with.
Imagine the universe as a computer, instead of a clock. G-d made it, or at least took it out of the box, put it together, booted it up, and wrote some programs. Now he stands back and lets it run. Occasionally he gives the world input, and gets results back. Sometimes quantum fluctuations affect the data. And once in a while, enough of the little particles of energy that are people in this universe get together that they can send out a little alert to the User, telling him to check on us.
In spite of all these differences, there is one big thing that connects 21st-century Deism to 18th-century Deism: central to both is the belief that the universe has internal logic, a logic that we humans may someday understand, if we keep working at it.
For those of you who don't know or can't quite remember, Deism was the faith of choice for a lot of the great Enlightenment thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson. Its basic principle was that G-d created the universe, and then stepped back and let it run, like a huge clock. This was also soon after Newton and Kepler and other awesome people discovered that the universe runs on scientific and mathematical principles, and decided that the whole of the universe could be understood through science--including G-d.
Now it's the 21st century, and we know the universe is not as clear-cut as clockwork--we have relativity, quantum mechanics, and grand particle-smashing attempts to reconcile them. But Deism still works, albeit in a slightly different paradigm. I started with the idea that G-d could still be present, and act when needed--like winding the clock, or adjusting for the krutzed-up process that is Daylight Savings Time. (Maybe I'll rant about Daylight Savings time the next time I have to deal with it.) And this is what I ended up with.
Imagine the universe as a computer, instead of a clock. G-d made it, or at least took it out of the box, put it together, booted it up, and wrote some programs. Now he stands back and lets it run. Occasionally he gives the world input, and gets results back. Sometimes quantum fluctuations affect the data. And once in a while, enough of the little particles of energy that are people in this universe get together that they can send out a little alert to the User, telling him to check on us.
In spite of all these differences, there is one big thing that connects 21st-century Deism to 18th-century Deism: central to both is the belief that the universe has internal logic, a logic that we humans may someday understand, if we keep working at it.
Miracles: One size doesn't fit all
Last night I went to Hillel for Shabbat services for the first time in more than a month. I'm kind of embarrassed to say so, but I think it's important, because I wouldn't have made the mental leap I did if I'd seen the text every Friday for the last full semester.
In the middle of the service there's a section called the Amidah, which you say while standing, and often silently. Yesterday, while reading it to myself, I noticed something for the first time that struck me. At the bottom of one page of the siddur (prayer book, for all you goyim reading this) is a short prayer, about a line and a half, expressing our (cultural and theoretical--I'll get into that later) longing for G-d to "return to Zion." By this, I'm pretty sure it means the coming of the Messiah. Then I turned the page and started reading the much longer prayer thanking G-d for little everyday miracles.
Wait, what?
The coming of the Messiah is about the biggest possible miracle ever, and it gets a line and a half. The prayer for small miracles is seven lines in the English translation. Now. Nothing in Scripture is there by accident; it's all been put there by the writers (in this case, the medieval rabbis who compiled the service) for a reason. So what's the reason?
As far as I can tell, the order was intended to remind us to focus on the small things. Then as now, people tend to dwell on the possibility of something big happening: a natural disaster, a war victory, divine judgment. That second prayer tells us that little everyday miracles--events as common as sunrises and family movie nights--are just as miraculous as the coming of the Messiah.
It baffles me that I never hear this second prayer recited in Reform versions of the service. Not hearing the first one makes sense, since the Reform and other more secular movements in Judaism tend not to believe that the Messiah will come in a blaze of glory and make everything better for the faithful. But shouldn't disbelieving the greatest possible miracle make all the smaller ones that much more important?
In the middle of the service there's a section called the Amidah, which you say while standing, and often silently. Yesterday, while reading it to myself, I noticed something for the first time that struck me. At the bottom of one page of the siddur (prayer book, for all you goyim reading this) is a short prayer, about a line and a half, expressing our (cultural and theoretical--I'll get into that later) longing for G-d to "return to Zion." By this, I'm pretty sure it means the coming of the Messiah. Then I turned the page and started reading the much longer prayer thanking G-d for little everyday miracles.
Wait, what?
The coming of the Messiah is about the biggest possible miracle ever, and it gets a line and a half. The prayer for small miracles is seven lines in the English translation. Now. Nothing in Scripture is there by accident; it's all been put there by the writers (in this case, the medieval rabbis who compiled the service) for a reason. So what's the reason?
As far as I can tell, the order was intended to remind us to focus on the small things. Then as now, people tend to dwell on the possibility of something big happening: a natural disaster, a war victory, divine judgment. That second prayer tells us that little everyday miracles--events as common as sunrises and family movie nights--are just as miraculous as the coming of the Messiah.
It baffles me that I never hear this second prayer recited in Reform versions of the service. Not hearing the first one makes sense, since the Reform and other more secular movements in Judaism tend not to believe that the Messiah will come in a blaze of glory and make everything better for the faithful. But shouldn't disbelieving the greatest possible miracle make all the smaller ones that much more important?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The history of science is WHOA
Today I led a discussion in my Honors class about Copernicus, focusing on how he presented his work. Most of it centered on how thoroughly he covered his butt in presenting his then-controversial idea that the earth revolved around the sun. "Buy, read, and enjoy," anyone? To quote William Hartnell, "Sheer poetry!"
But the best part happened before class, when I had an epiphany and tried to explain it to a biology major who was polite enough to tell me it worked. My idea was this: the history of science is cyclical.
Take evolution, for example: in high school biology, I learned about a guy named Lamarck, who thought that animals could pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring (for example, a man who works out a lot will have children who are more muscular). By the time I learned this, however, Lamarck had been pretty thoroughly debunked; all I really learned was that Lamarck was wrong; end of story. Last month, though, I learned about a relatively fresh topic in biology: epigenetics (SciShow video here). In a nutshell, you can pass certain acquired genetic markers on to your offspring. (But please watch the video; Hank Green makes it much more fun than that.)
So Lamarck was right, but at a level that didn't exist when he came up with his theory. Meanwhile, his ideas had been discredited, discarded, then come back to and found to make sense in a new paradigm.
This has happened in physics too: look at our model of the atom. Once upon a time, it was a "plum pudding" with negatively charged electrons suspended in a cloud of positive charge. Then this was thrown out completely in favor of the Bohr model, which resembles the solar system: positively-charged nucleus orbited by electrons. Now the cloud-type model is favored again, but in reverse: quantum theory requires the atom to be a nucleus in a cloud of negative charge. That's pretty awesome.
I can even, though this may be a stretch, tie this back to Copernicus: he began the revolution that moved the Earth away from its comfortable stationary place at the center of the universe. For centuries we thought that was that, because it made mathematical sense. Then Einstein came along, and discovered that relativistic equations require a frame of reference that is stationary from the point of view of the observer. For most of us, this is the surface of the earth, in relation to trains, spaceships, the tops of buildings, etc. So once again, the earth can be considered stationary when it needs to be.
And you know what? This is why I love my liberal education. It allows me to step outside the boundary of any one discipline, and see the patterns that run through everything. History repeats itself, and all I can say is whoa.
DFTBA y'all!
But the best part happened before class, when I had an epiphany and tried to explain it to a biology major who was polite enough to tell me it worked. My idea was this: the history of science is cyclical.
Take evolution, for example: in high school biology, I learned about a guy named Lamarck, who thought that animals could pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring (for example, a man who works out a lot will have children who are more muscular). By the time I learned this, however, Lamarck had been pretty thoroughly debunked; all I really learned was that Lamarck was wrong; end of story. Last month, though, I learned about a relatively fresh topic in biology: epigenetics (SciShow video here). In a nutshell, you can pass certain acquired genetic markers on to your offspring. (But please watch the video; Hank Green makes it much more fun than that.)
So Lamarck was right, but at a level that didn't exist when he came up with his theory. Meanwhile, his ideas had been discredited, discarded, then come back to and found to make sense in a new paradigm.
This has happened in physics too: look at our model of the atom. Once upon a time, it was a "plum pudding" with negatively charged electrons suspended in a cloud of positive charge. Then this was thrown out completely in favor of the Bohr model, which resembles the solar system: positively-charged nucleus orbited by electrons. Now the cloud-type model is favored again, but in reverse: quantum theory requires the atom to be a nucleus in a cloud of negative charge. That's pretty awesome.
I can even, though this may be a stretch, tie this back to Copernicus: he began the revolution that moved the Earth away from its comfortable stationary place at the center of the universe. For centuries we thought that was that, because it made mathematical sense. Then Einstein came along, and discovered that relativistic equations require a frame of reference that is stationary from the point of view of the observer. For most of us, this is the surface of the earth, in relation to trains, spaceships, the tops of buildings, etc. So once again, the earth can be considered stationary when it needs to be.
And you know what? This is why I love my liberal education. It allows me to step outside the boundary of any one discipline, and see the patterns that run through everything. History repeats itself, and all I can say is whoa.
DFTBA y'all!
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