The Meatrix

Whee! The Meatrix. (From purplepaisley)

Whaaa!

They cancelled my class tonight.

Now we're all going to be in a panic about whether or not we hand in Assignment 6 next week. Hmmmm... ( Assignment 5 )

Mayor

Toronto has a new mayor. And it's not Ben Kerr. Poor Ben came in with a trivial 294 votes. (For those of you who don't live in Toronto, Ben is a street busker -- a bit long in the tooth -- who sings hurtin' songs on the corner of Bloor and Yonge. He runs for mayor every election).

Toronto has, once again, leaned to the left. Our new mayor is David Miller, an NDP politician.

CityTV's political specialist, Adam Vaughn (whom I admire) suggested that City Council has picked up 4 more leftists, and a bunch of centrists. The right isn't currently popular, it seems. On the other hand, John Tory got scaringly close to winning.

I'm quite excited about the new mayor -- I, myself, had never voted for Mel Lastman -- but I'm kinda sad to see Barbara Hall so roundly defeated.

A Suggestion I support

Olivia Chow as deputy mayor. Ooooo.

Stop Me Before I Post Again

Hey. I have the same birthday as Neil Gaiman. Cool.

Narrative Heroization

In film theory, the term narrative focalization refers to the process by which the audience is expected to identify with the (usually white and male) protagonist. Devices that contribute to narrative focalization include the amount of time the main character appears on screen, how important the character is to the story, etc.

I've been looking for a term to describe the aspects of films that contribute to making the protagonist unambiguously heroic. For example, in Terminator 2, there's a scene in which Linda Hamilton is being locked in her room in a mental hospital. The orderly, a big, muscular man, straps her down to the bed. In a few minutes, Linda Hamilton will escape from the room and knock this guy out with a stick.

But the guy was, after all, just doing his job. It's mean to knock someone out like that. So there's this moment in the film in which the orderly, after having securely strapped Linda Hamilton to the bed, licks her face. The orderly suddenly becomes the creep. When Linda Hamilton knocks him senseless a few scenes later, it's okay, because he was a creep, right?

Hollywood movies, especially, are replete with these little scenes. Scenes that make it okay for the hero to hurt another character, while still remaining unambiguously heroic. Anyone heard of any terms for this concept?