What is NSFW, what “may offend”

I have always found unacceptable our societies’ excessive tolerance towards violence and the depiction of violence with their simultaneous prudish avoidance of sexual imagery in the (semi-)public domain. The key element here is encoded in ’simultaneous’: I realise people and groups have sensitivities and weaknesses and in our age we are all witnessing how we can no longer afford to ignore either.

My suspicion is that this simultaneous avoidance of (representations of) sex and embracing of (representations of) violence is deeply political. Namely, I think you would agree that authority, religion, multinationals, sexist pigs, fundamentalists and the like can reasonably hope to achieve more of their aims and more effectively so by appealing and resorting to violence and by attempting to condition the public to “violence as a means / a solution / a last resort”; at the same time, sex hardly offers itself to any of the above, being erratic, incidental, and so on.

As I can hardly match Foucault or Marcuse, or any of the great ones, and as I feel we are all corrupted by that part of dominant ideologies which leads us to consider bombed homes and massacred civilians a suitable thing to expose families to at dinnertime, as opposed to nudity, sexual foreplay or intercourse, I will try to run a little experiment of sorts.

Before that, you click on all the links below at your own risk, they all lead to images unsuitable and distressful for some. They are all of (reasonably) non-artistic value, to control for matters like the limits of art and the like.

So, suppose you are at your family or work computer and you click on this link. No eyelid will bat and, crucially, I doubt that these pictures of death, of people suffering and of their homes reduced to rubble would be carrying a ‘may offend’ warning anywhere in the world. They are also safe for work and, as seems to be generally understood, of no corrupting influence whatsoever.

Now, suppose you are at your family or work computer and you click on this link instead. Eyelids will bat and, crucially, pictures like this one do carry ‘may offend’ tags and are not tolerated in many parts of the world. Actually, this link is inaccessible where I work, for instance, as it leads to ‘Nudity’ and is blocked by some devious and morality-guarding software. This is just as well, given that this picture appearing on your screen would make you no friends with your employers, as such material is not safe for work and, as seems to be generally understood, of some corrupting influence.

The same software guarding us from corruption happily let through this (I seriously warn you against clicking on — it’s of the stuff that gives nightmares), which I found via the Goose, whose blog by the way has suffered from Blogger for featuring nudity. Somehow, it’s ok to view this stuff at work and it’s not blocked by nanny software either.

Two points are worth stressing so far:
First, it is of no real consequence whether the image of the shot person is genuine or not (I mean I can personally assure you about the cosmetic value of PhotoShop airbrushing in most shots containing nudity);
Second, the shock value of the picture of a naked woman compared to that of the horrifically mutilated person is or should be negligible — still nobody would call you names for viewing the latter on your computer. Take a minute and think about it.

Let us now raise our stakes. I am not capable of clearly expressing why and how, but politics clearly enters the whole business of what is corrupting, offensive, safe for work or, say, suitable for teenagers. Illustrating:

Death and destruction in the Lebanon is ok for viewing anytime, anywhere, by anyone. The mutilated “suicide bomber” is shocking and horrific (and, to me, sobering, as it makes me consider the ‘beauty of our weapons’ and what they are for) but not immoral, offensive, filthy, sleazy or of corrupting influence — it is safe for work. The picture of a naked woman is hardly shocking and horrific but may be considered immoral, offensive, filthy, sleazy or of corrupting influence — it is not safe for work. Still, even this last unsafe item is ‘better’ than this (or any of these), although quite sanitised and tame. Why? Are male bodies inherently more immoral, offensive, filthy, sleazy or of corrupting influence than female ones? No, it is obviously a matter of politics.

Concluding: we live in a world of distorted priorities. In a world where we feel it is better to waste work hours looking at death and heart-wrenching misery than at healthy and amorously disposed human bodies; in our world we would mind less catching our teenage kid ogling at the image of someone’s face destroyed by weaponry than catching her or him looking at mildly stimulating representations of sex. We live in a world where morality is conceived as a struggle against (public or semi-public representations of) sex, not as a struggle against poverty, hunger, crime, injustice, oppression. Distorted morality, indeed.

Foreign affairs

Tot and husband are back from their honeymoon in America. They thought LA is ‘overrated’ (well, it sort of looks like an overblown Capital City with a Downtown and Hollywood / Beverly Hills thrown in, I guess); they both absolutely adored Vegas: they stayed there for five days; they thought Disney-whatever (the one in Orlando, Florida) was fun (I think I would agree) and that Florida is paradise on earth.

They hated New York: “It’s all just rain and filth“. I nearly fainted.

Earlier yesterday, the following dialogue between Jod and someone I am too embarrassed to name (even under a pseudonym) was reported to me by a mildly bemused Jod:

“Do you watch on the telly what’s going on in the Lebanon?”
“Well, yes. Terrible.”
“Terrible indeed. I’ve been seeing all that destruction and death and I realised I must do something.”

I interrupted Jod in some disbelief: “Is she going to get involved into activism?”

“No, life is too short, so she decided to finally get that boob job. $6000.”

We are clearly hanging out with the wrong crowd. The problem is, is there any other crowd here? I mean, besides the ‘alternative people‘ who occasionally join us and criticise the Outpost: after all, this is not a terribly fun thing to do.

We are clearly in the wrong country.

Explanatory Postscript:

The above post presents two incidental and inconsequential events.

The first is about people we know who preferred Vegas to New York, something my significant other and me find outlandish.

The second is about a train of thought by someone we know. The said train of thought departs from the death and destruction caused by the Israeli aggression against the Lebanon to conclude that this person must finally embark upon expensive cosmetic surgery, possibly via thoughts on mortality, seizing the day and so on.

Given that we subjectively find both points of view (i.e. that New York sucks, especially in comparison to Vegas, and that the situation in the Lebanon could be conducive to one’s decision to meddle with one’s own tissue) incompatible to our tastes and various precepts, I wondered how come we largely — albeit not exclusively — associate with people subscribing to such points of view. I conjectured that maybe such people are quite numerous here (possibly due to socio-educational factors, although no such explanation is explicitly attempted as such), rendering the possibility of meeting them statistically high.

A solution entertained with a degree of confidence is for us to move (if plausible or, even, possible) to a more populous territory, where the probability of peculiar people like us finding like-minded peers could be significantly higher.

Beiruti blog

Kerblog, a composite comics-and-text voice from Beirut, via the Greek blogger aspripetraxexaspri.

Lebanon petition

“Save the Lebanese Civilians”, an online petition, can be found here. Some 138,000 signatures have been collected since the 15th of July.

While on the topic, have a look at this as well.

Plastic or plastic?

When I go to the bakery, which is very close to our flat, I usually get bread, milk and something else (nibbles, pastries, an ice cream, a croissant — or what have you). I am regularly given at least two plastic bags: one for the refrigerated items and one for the loaf. Sometimes I am given three bags: one for each item. They love handing out plastic bags.

I have found out this is not just the bakeries within range, in fact I get so exasperated with their need to hand out as many plastic bags as possible, I once asked one of the employees in the nearby one (we have made friends with some of them). She explained to me they are trained to give out as many plastic bags as possible so that they do not overload and rip open, causing inconvenience to the customers.

Now, because I only live round the corner, and because I always put my bread in a paper bag anyway, so that it keeps better and longer, I usually have to tell them I don’t need a plastic bag, or at least not more than one: I can always use a spare hand for the loaf. Whenever I do this, I sometimes get disdainful looks from the bakery employees, sometimes a smirk, sometimes I get a flash of astonishment, sometimes true grudge: I once went just for bread and had my loaf slammed on the till because I whispered ‘I don’t need a bag, thank you’. Thankfully, they usually just ask ‘what, no bag?’

Three weekend snippets

Catwoman
The Catwoman was very polite, informative and reassuring — she really cares about cats, too. She also has a funny little dog. Leaving her place, Jod asked me

“Have you noticed that too many Outposters seem not to be 100% there when talking to you?”
“You mean they are absent-minded?”
“No, not necessarily — just not 100% there with you.”

Loving traffic jams
We went to the beach yesterday. On the way back there were no less than three major traffic jams (of the genuine stop-and-go sort) on both the country road and the motorway. However, we were in inexplicably high spirits (swimming in the sea is good for you — those Victorians got it right in the first place) and we put on our Soul classics tape and danced to it (firmly buckled up, of course), singing along, braking with the beat and all that. It was like an in-car party and even the black BMW convertible family ahead of us enjoyed it and waved us goodbye when they eventually exited the motorway.

Self-conscious meta-blogging
Hardly anyone reads this blog. It makes little sense if you do not live in the Outpost and it makes even less if you live here. The names are weird, the themes haphazard, the writing weird and impenetrable in times. People do not link here, either.
However, I recently realised it has worked in its own way. Being in tune with what many Outposters seem to think and feel about the place, local young people have started their own blogs blowing whistles, telling it like it is, or simply making fun of what is crooked and unbearable about being (from) here. Most of them are (rightly) in the local lingo, hence making them only partly accessible to Compatridos and speakers of English (sometimes in equal measure, one would think), but I am really happy seeing them multiply and perusing them — most of them are truly both piercingly astute and hilariously written.
Now, I am not implying that I have started any trends here or that I have established any blogging schools — obviously not. Moreover, having written for some time I realised that I had been predated (not always coyly) by certain characters, both in the blogging world (e.g. Zapata) and — naturally — beyond it (e.g. the Nutty Shrink) in chastising, criticising, denigrating and ridiculing. Nevertheless, I just like to think that by writing this I have encouraged people to do what they felt like doing, i.e. the above, more easily. For which I am glad, as I partly do this for a living.

Gaza & Libnan

I can see no justification or purpose for the latest Israeli acts of aggression. This is true not just for Beirut, Outposters’ second favourite weekend destination, but also for poor poor Gaza, totally forgotten and a perceived “legitimate” target, no matter what. I am angry and worried.

Not all ha ha hee hee

Look at this post and the post it links to. From Anatomy of Melancholy.

Advice

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, advised Zapata on Friday.
“When in Rome, fuck the Romans”, I replied.

Still, I partly followed his advice. So, we went to last Saturday’s wedding (yet another one) only for part two, the congratulations session, nice and proper.

We also took Zapata’s advice a bit further; we thought: “we are strangers here, let’s do as strangers do”. Therefore, we also visited that grand waterpark, among fellow foreigners: Israelis, Brits, Russians, Pakistanis and not a single Outposter — Outposters do not even work there. We did all the rides, some of them twice, water slides and watery versions of rollercoasters. The result? Huge fun. So much fun like we had never had here. See, you might have figured out that locals appear largely incapable of having fun, a predicament that by now can be claimed to be of an infectious nature. So it was great we at least had so much fun, for a change.

Of course, us being us, we did our own bit of warped things, too. We went to the beach and we swam at night, under the full moon, with three elderly local residents standing on the beach and looking on, possibly mindful of the possibility of sex rather than of our lives, as they left before our coming out of the water. Tonight, our neighbours from across the street stood in their balcony, ostensibly trying to peer through curtains and half open windows into our living room. They were perplexed by our having a picnic on the floor.

Luctor et emergo

We were in the car. The rain suddenly became torrential and turned out among the strongest I have witnessed in my life, zero visibility and all, tree branches crashing down in front of our eyes, including on the car ahead of us, jets of  muddy water springing out of sewers. In a matter of minutes. Not quite Zeeland, but a fairly good approximation, considering the scale. The car gave up three or four times on the way home (and had to be patiently resuscitated later in the garage) and it was even raining inside our flat itself: our own flood defenses (drains and downpipes and the tiled roof above us) gave up, letting lots of water pool inside the attic. It was then profusely leaking in streams down from the ceiling in the living room, in the study and in the toilet. Rags and buckets could not contain it and we were rushing to save books, notes, electrical appliances. Gizmo the Cat was touring the wet floors, nonchalant like a queen, leaving footprints everywhere. I was mopping around, wringing rags, pushing the pools of water away from power supplies and things made of paper for the best part of two hours, with water soaking my hair and clothes. Then I collapsed into an afternoon sleep where I dreamed of meeting Anthony and the Johnsons in the American South and exchanging phone numbers and emails with them; in the meantime, sounds just like out of that Greenaway film, water drip-drip-dripping into buckets, were going on for six hours, until half an hour ago.