Thanks to a post in Fast Company’s Design blog, the Google Ngram Viewer came to my attention today. In brief, it’s an online phrase-usage graphing tool which chards yearly count of letter combos, words, or phrases across a database of more than 5 million books published between 1500 and 2008 which Google has digitized.
Out of curiosity, and since it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), I ran the terms “rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and violence prevention” through it; the results are interesting:
snapshot of usage of violence terms via Google’s Ngram Viewer
A sobering reminder of the road ahead of us; we’ve been talking about rape for a long time, but sexual assault and domestic violence have really only been part of the conversation since the second wave of the feminist movement, and “prevention” — clearly there’s a lot of catching up to do!
In celebration of the Oscars this weekend, an approximate “Top Ten list” of my favorite movie moments; it should be noted, we’re not talking favorite films necessarily – although some on my Top Ten list are represented here – rather those singular moments. In some cases the moments are scenes, in others just a single shot. [Note: when I originally wrote this post, I had links to almost every item listed here; apparently most of these have been taken down (damn copyright laws); I’ve tried to find suitable replacements, but I presume many of these will eventually be taken down; your mileage (and bandwidth) may vary…]
1) In the Heat of the Night Sidney Pontier, Larry Gates, Rod Steiger – “the slap”; powerful for its time, and probably one of the first instances of a person of color showing strength, resolve, and dignity that I can recall seeing in popular culture. Directed by Norman Jewison.
2) Big Night Stanley Tucci, Tony Shaloub, Marc Anthony – the final kitchen scene, all one take; I wish more American films would embrace the power of simply rolling camera and pointing it at a group of actors so immersed in their characters that we will sit spellbound watching them eat breakfast (understanding that there is subtext – a reconciliation happening just below the surface). Directed by Campbell Scott.
3) The Verdict
Paul Newman, the summation (“today you are the law”); written by David Mamet. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
(not great quality, but full speech; if you want to see HD, follow this, but it truncates the first chunk of the speech: https://youtu.be/qjYP7J3oP9Q)
4) Network William Holden and Faye Dunaway – when Diana breaks up with Max (“why is it that a woman always thinks that the most savage thing she can say to a man is to impugn his cocksmanship?”) written by Paddy Chayefsky; Directed by Sidney Lumet.
5) tie: 2001 A Space Odyssey ape to space transition and blue danube sequence:
& Bowman re-entering the Discovery sequence; Directed by Stanley Kubrick
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t2jibvQfTK0
6) Local Hero Peter Riegert walking over the hill carrying his shoes, then cut to his watch being over-taken by the waves on the rock where he left it with the alarm going off…
as a back-up: the final scenes – Riegert saying goodbye to folks in the village and his return to “normalcy”; note the great sound design here – not just Mark Knopfler’s great soundtrack, but the sound designers’ subtle use of environmental sound that counter-points Riegert’s return to big American city life…
7) 13 Conversations About One Thing Alan Arkin and Matthew McConaughey in the bar, “show me a happy man” (ok, basically Alan Arkin’s whole performance); Directed by Jill Sprecher
8) Raiders of the Lost Ark the opening sequence (and yes the whole film still stands as my favorite action-adventure film of all time); directed by Steven Spielberg
10) RAN the final shot, where a blind Kyoami walks along the cliff, near to the edge, and his stick drops off, allowing him to catch his balance just before doom and then he turns around and continues on his way (this image captures the whole movie we’ve just watched into a single moment: the human race comes close to its own destruction, but somehow manages to recover and avoid complete annihilation); Directed by Akira Kurosawa
So, it has happened again. And once again America will celebrate its macabre parade: the repeated images of grieving families and shocked onlookers; the headlines and special report segments across newspapers, TV, and cable; the questioning of “why?”, “how could this happen?”, and the brazen attempts by news media – as well as legislators and politicians (is there a difference?) – to convey grief but steer clear of taking a substantive stance on the presence of guns in our communities.
First, yes, again it was a male. And again those of us in the violence prevention movement decry for this culture to take serious stock of how we raise boys to be men. How we continue to keep boys boxed-in at a place where they think violence and aggression are the only acceptable means of emotional expression. That anything else makes them like women – and we all know how bad THAT is; to take stock of misogyny and homophobia and the lengths we go to keep the gender divide in place by playing to men’s fears of women, gay men and women, transgender and gender non-conforming people.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, layered on top of it all is a culture immersed in an epidemic of gun violence. Some of the press coverage, and many of the comments on Facebook and Twitter, have brought mental illness into the picture – and while I, too, believe that this individual’s lack of ability to deal with his pain in any constructive way eventually led to his actions and the senseless deaths of he and 26 other human beings, I must admit I get weary of bringing the conversation to the level of mental illness. As if this, and all other incidents, are isolated actions played out by madmen. As if all those struggling with mental illness are mad, out of control, or resort to violence.
Owning guns is a mental illness; it is the collective mental illness that we, as a nation, are in the grip of…
There is no reason – no reason – to own a gun, except to contend with the “boogie man” that resides in your own mind. Gun ownership is the tangible manifestation of a philosophy of life where conflict is resolved by asserting power over others, and where one’s own perspective and experience of reality is the only one. The owner of a gun asserts that because of something – one’s race or national identity, or economic class, or the balance of wrongs that one has endured in life add-up to a sense of entitlement – they are imbued with the right to be judge, and if circumstances warrant, jury and executioner.
How did it get to this point? How does the right to bear arms, written at a time when we were in a struggle with the British crown over sovereignty and control of our destiny, get turned into a manifesto for the rights of individual citizens to have access to weapons of mass destruction (and really, what do you call something with a 16 round clip)? We won that fight. We have a democracy where we get a say in what happens. We have avenues and pathways to address disparity, unfairness, oppression, and violations of the common law that we all swear allegiance to. We no longer need guns, really.
Except, of course, there are those that profit from their manufacture and sale, and therefore profit from the proliferation of a culture of fear and the concept that any problem you have can be kept at bay or wiped out. At the end of the barrel of a gun.
We have struggled through months of robo-calls, commercials, numbers, polls.
That ends today. This morning, we wake to a world still embroiled in war, recovering from natural catastrophes, and with the culture still entrenched in misogyny, racism, homophobia, and able-ism.
But today is election day. And we awaken, as Americans, to the privilege and the power of joining our voices together in a collective expression of our intent to have a say in our destiny.
Certain people like to espouse that we don’t need “interference” from the federal government. Today we remind them that we ARE the Federal Government.
How like an addict we all appear, promoting “Black Friday” like some sick joke; it is transparent, a desperate plea, a junkie strung out on the thing he thinks will take the pain away. It is sold to us as inevitable.
It is not.
Do not let them fool you. You were born naked and perfect. You do not need stuff. And stuff does not speak love for you to those you hold dear. This consumption is our common affliction, and the larger issues — the wars, the sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, poverty, and oppression — will not go away until we grapple with this disease, this mythology that selling stuff to one another, that using profit and capitol as the gatekeeper of justice somehow makes this a great nation.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is a dark time; a bad economy dominated by power mongering elite; federal and state legislatures held hostage by ideologues who want to wrap us in their fear and roll us back to the 1950’s (or earlier); a planetary eco system reeling from millennia of exploitation and neglect.
But give thanks. Give thanks for living, and breathing, and loved ones around you (and those that are no longer with us). Give thanks for the here and the now – they are all we truly have, and they are transitory.
And then, on Friday, remember that it is international Buy Nothing Day.
You will not help the economy by spending vociferously. You will not help yourself. You will not be “missing out†on anything special if you fail to show up. You will not be failing to show your loved ones you care because you do not buy them the best that money can buy at bargain prices.
This is the frenzy that big corporations want, not only because it keeps them “in the black†financially, but because it reifies their world view; it institutionalizes greed and justifies their actions (“we’re just giving people what they wantâ€).
So instead, take the day to breathe. Keep the wallet in your back pocket, or purse. Take a walk outside. Call or write a friend. Contemplate your time on the planet and what impact (positive? negative?) you want to have on it and those that will come after you.
Let’s make this the year that common folk will find their way into the black. Financially. Spiritually.
