Some thoughts on toys

If the producers of CNN's documentary series are moderately educated baby boomers, then the producers of Netflix's new series The Toys that Made Us are moderately educated Gen-Xers and older Millennials.  Are are predominantly male and without children.
The series focuses on eight toy lines ranging from the enduring (Barbie, Lego, G.I. Joe, Transformers) to the flash in the pan toy lines that are only relevant to hard-core collectors (Masters of the Universe).  Most of the brands were popular during the 1970s and 1980s (Star Wars, Hello Kitty, and the aforementioned Masters of the Universe.)  An OK start, but not enough.  To my mind, a series like this needs to focus on toys with staying power.  Toys that our children will be playing with, or are playing with.  Here are a few suggestions:

• Teddy bears.  What could be more quintessentially American than a toy named for a U.S. president?  In production since 1903, teddy bears are everywhere, and in all forms.
• Slinky.  A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing!  Everyone knows it's Slinky.  Whether in metal or plastic, most of us have owned at least one at some point in our lives.
• Play-Doh.  This staple of preschools has been going strong since the 1950s, and has been produced in a wide range of colors, with all sorts of extruders and molds to fit your imagination.
• My Little Pony.  These colored plastic horses with butt tats (or "cutie marks") have been a staple of little girls' play since 1982.  The animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic not only kept interest in the toys alive to this day and introduced the Generation 4 design, but expanded the fanbase to include men (bronies.)
• Silly Putty.  Tan putty in a red egg, it wasn't as versatile as Play-doh, but how many of us picked up transfers from the newspaper with it?
• Mr. Potato Head.  Another staple of preschooler play, the original iteration made you supply an actual potato.
• Fisher-Price preschool toys.  From the telephone on a string (the one with the eyes and the mouth) to the colored stacking rings, these are the toys are babies will be gumming on for the next century or so.
• American Girl.  I hesitate to include this, as it only really caught fire during the mid-1990s.  Originally conceived as the anti-Barbie, the sale of the brand to Mattel meant the Barbification of the brand, with the childlike dolls receiving colored hair extensions and cars in place of the historically accurate schoolbooks and china tea sets.  However, it has all the imaginative potential of Barbie and none of the body image controversy, as the dolls represent children with stocky bodies, and come in a range of facial molds, hair colors and styles (or not) and skin types.  However, while the dolls cause little controversy, the price point certainly has (remember "homeless" Gwen, retailing for $115?)
• Etch-A-Sketch.  How many of us fiddled with the knobs, trying to get the line where we wanted it to go?

Me too--My Eight Word Response

Lately on FB, there has been a new trend going around.  People, mostly women, have been posting "Me too" as a status if they experienced sexual harassment or assault.  The idea is to draw awareness to the problem and hopefully show that it's incredibly more widespread than most people's comfort levels would like to admit.
However, like all "awareness" campaigns, this one has had a bit of backlash.  First off is "what about teh menz," usually uttered by guys who have never been assaulted, but are pissed off that they're being left out of the spotlight.  The answer to that is easy and straightforward.  If a man has experienced sexual assault, please feel free to post "me too."  You have my utmost sympathy.  No one should ever have to experience sexual abuse. The first person I saw post this statement was a transgendered male.  I'm on your side, guys.
Then there are those who say, "why are women bitching about harmless catcalling and compliments?  Grow up!"  You are putting the "ass" in "assumption."  Most women who post, I'm sorry to say, have experienced far worse than a few catcalls.
But the worst response has got to be the "virtue" response.  The "guess I'm just not pretty enough to rape, huh?" response.  Unfortunately, this comes from women.  The variants on this are "where are my dick pics?" or "if you just (fill in the blank: dressed modestly, stayed out of the frat party/nightclub/bar, didn't drink so much/at all, didn't have that manicure/nose job/breast implants, didn't go to his suite, blah blah or blah), then this never would have happened to you."  A demonstration can be found here.  This is called the "just world" fallacy, and it makes me see every shade of red.  Because the only thing that separates rape victims from those who haven't been raped is bad luck, and nothing more.
I posted "me too," and have written about my experiences.  Like Ms. Bialyk, I decided to develop my mind instead of my looks, finishing college at 19 without ever going near a frat house.  I'm not pretty (there's a reason my FB profile picture hasn't looked like me in years), dress very modestly, and spent several years as a religious fundamentalist.  I even covered my hair.  None of that protected me.  I was at home and stone cold sober, wearing no makeup and plain, cheap clothes.  That didn't protect me either.
When I have the spoons, I usually end up screaming profanity at the person expressing this viewpoint while hoping they never find out for themselves how wrong they are.  But usually I don't.  So I give my basic eight word answer: Long skirt.  Turtleneck sweater.  Covered hair.  Raped anyway.

CNN's "The Nineties" buries our gays

As someone fascinated by history, I got really into CNN's decade series.  I saw "The Sixties," "The Seventies," and "The Eighties," and looked forward to "The Nineties," if for no other reason than it was the first decade I could really remember.  The Soviet government fell when I was on winter break in fifth grade.  I saw the troops marching off to Iraq to battle Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Shield, and we had yellow ribbons in our classroom to support the troops.  I was glued to Law & Order and identified with Daria.  I was in ninth grade when the Alfred P. Murrah building was bombed and O.J. Simpson was acquitted.  I remember Waco, Bosnia, and Rwanda on the news.  My first year of college (don't try to do the math, it won't work), Bill Clinton was impeached.  I voted for the first time in the Democratic primary that nominated Al Gore.  And, yes, I probably danced the Macarena about a hundred times during the summer of 1996.
Which is why I found "The Nineties" so disappointing, mostly for what it left out.  Specifically, our country's extremely dynamic relationship with the gay community.  It was a time of great progress, but also a time of violence and hate crimes driven by homophobia.
By the early 1990s, the status of gays in America was changing.  People felt more comfortable "coming out," and no longer was AIDS the grisly threat it had been.  1994's pop psychology book Reviving Ophelia featured at least one lesbian teenager coming to terms with her identity.  Gay Americans were fighting in court for legal recognition of their partnerships and custody of their children.  Gay characters were shown in media, and the musical RENT featured a gay man, a lesbian, a bisexual woman, and Angel, whose identity (transgender or genderqueer) is still being debated by fans.  And Angel and Collins (the gay man) had the most loving, stable relationship of all the characters!  By the end of the decade, a few states had legalized same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships.
Unfortunately, progress is never linear.  Two well-publicized murders occurred during the 1990s in America's heartland.  Brandon Teena, a transgender man, was killed in 1993.  And, of course, Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in a hate crime in 1998 because he was gay.
None of this gets even a nod.  Sure, the television episode mentions Ellen DeGeneres coming out, and the show Will and Grace.  But nothing else gets a nod.  The episode on civil rights focuses on the O.J. Simpson trial (which wasn't really about civil rights) but neglects to mention Matthew Shepard.  Nothing was mentioned about the changing legal or cultural status of the gay community.  However, it was one of the features of the decade that I remember the most vividly.

Summer blockbuster season--survival of the tritest

Recently, I had the opportunity to see an incredible film about a woman who is a true American hero.  I am speaking, of course, about the biopic Megan Leavey. 
If you haven't seen this movie, I suggest you do.  Like right now.  It probably won't be in theaters much longer.  It opened eighth at the box office, despite an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  One week after opening, it's down to a single screening per day.  The theater had less than 20 people in it.  But what do you expect for a film that was barely promoted and nobody's even heard about?  (I wouldn't have seen it either, but Thing 1 loves dogs.  And since the story was about a Marine and her bomb-sniffing dog--it was kind of required viewing.)
Why do certain movies end up in theaters for ages and others fade out or never even make it?  Why was a film based on the Roald Dahl classic The BFG only in theaters for a few weeks while Boss Baby lasts for months?  Why did the recent release of The Little Prince, an English dub of a French film based on the Saint Exupery story (one of my favorites, incidentally) not even make it to theaters at all?  One week before it was to open, Paramount pulled it, and sent it straight to Netflix.
My guess is we live in the land of the focus group.  Movie companies, competing with streaming services in a pinched economy (going to the movies for a family of four can easily cost $100 between tickets and concessions) will only put their marketing and distribution efforts into films with massive returns.  And right now, that seems to be mostly in big-budget action movies based on the interests of Gen-X and early Millennial males.  Transformers.  Fast and Furious car chase films.  DC and Marvel superheroes (not my brand of geekery, to be honest.)  Most of the previews and theater screens seem to betaken up with some variation on one of these themes. 
But at least there is some hope.  I eagerly anticipated the release of The Great Gilly Hopkins, a film that should have made it (cast included Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Octavia Spencer and Julia Stiles--not exactly names to sneeze at.)  Other than a few sneak previews, the movie never saw the theaters.  However, to my delight, it turned up on Netflix.  So did The Little Prince.  So will a hundred other films you never heard of or paid much attention to when they were in theaters, but start to look better after you binge-watched the newest season of Orange is the New Black and are wondering what else is on.

Breaking Anne--A Review

*Spoilers ahead!
One of my favorite book series growing up was Anne of Green Gables.  I loved the imaginative, ebullient, intelligent redhaired heroine and the other characters that populated her world: shy Matthew, practical Marilla, gossipy, generous Rachel Lynde, Anne's friends, including the loyal Diana Barry, and of course the cocksure Gilbert Blythe, enemy turned rival turned friend turned love interest (spoiler alert--she marries him.  They have six kids together.)  I read all the books and own the Kevin Sullivan miniseries.  So, naturally, when Anne with an E came to Netflix, I had to watch it.  Especially since it was created by Breaking Bad creator Moira Walley-Beckett.
BIIIIG mistake.  They took my favorite character and put her in Bizarro World.
Walley-Beckett wanted to focus on Anne (played by Amybeth McNulty) as the abused orphan, delving into her backstory to create trauma.  Fans of the book will know that Anne was orphaned in infancy and passed around to two different foster homes.  In the first, her foster father was a violent alcoholic.  In the second, her foster mother had twins three times in succession.  Both foster parents used Anne as childcare, even though she was a child herself.  After her second foster father died, Anne spent a few months in an orphanage until she was placed with the Cuthberts, who originally wanted a boy.  As a result of this level of neglect, Walley-Beckett wrote Anne as a broken character.  Rather than being the dreamer of dreams who must express ideas that are too big and beautiful to hold in, Anne talks and imagines to escape frequent flashbacks of abuse.  In this world, Mr. Hammond keels over from a heart attack while beating Anne.  In this world, the town of Avonlea shuns Anne for her orphan status.  Anne herself is no help in this regard.  Her energy is frenzied, as if she is afraid to stop talking or moving out of fear.  She comes off as less eccentric and more unhinged, collapsing to the ground in agony upon hearing that the Cuthberts wanted a boy.  While McNulty is a competent actress, she still struggles with the bad writing.
Aside from taking liberties with Anne's character, the writers also took many liberties with the story, making it as bleak as the iron-cold settings it was filmed against.  The main conflict of the novel was resolved within the first eight chapters, and the rest of the novel is a coming of age stories filled with many charming vignettes of Anne's growth.  Few of them survived the writing process of the series.  There was no playing the lily maid.  No walking the ridgepole of the roof.  No dive-bombing Aunt Josephine.  No liniment cake.  No accidentally dyeing hair green.  Instead, we are treated to the following:

• Anne begging pennies in a train station (just to drive home that she was unwanted--we got that!)
• Lifelong conservative Marilla Cuthbert attending a suffrage meeting (more up Rachel Lynde's alley)
• Anne antagonizing the Cuthbert's hired farmhand (great way to make a first impression on potential foster parents)
• Anne telling her classmates about Mrs. Hammond repeatedly trying to escape her husband's "pet mouse," who lived in his front pocket and got her pregnant with all those twins.  (Because what children's book is complete without marital rape?)
• Gilbert becoming an orphan (It wasn't bleak enough already?)
• Matthew attempting suicide (Completely out of character.  Matthew was not only a religious man, he was the sort of person who would work to his last breath.)
• Aunt Josephine going from acerbic-tongued spinster to lesbian in mourning (While I don't mind the representation, I rather like the acerbic-tongued old lady.  Besides, why can't we have asexual characters if we're going to represent?)
• Anne's first period.  (At least Marilla didn't go Margaret White on her.)

If Moira Walley-Beckett wanted to create a series highlighting the fate of orphans, home children and foster children in the late 19th century, fine.  I'm all for it.  Many of them did suffer abuse and neglect, and even under the best of circumstances were forced to be servants and farmhands while still children.  Just leave my favorite book out of it.

Meet Julia--an imperfect introduction

Over the years, Sesame Street has been a model of inclusion.  They showed college-educated African-Americans in the 1960s, a Deaf main character in the 1970s, death and birth of characters in the 1980s, a Spanish-speaking muppet in the 1990s, and responses to natural disasters and crises in the 2000s.  On Monday, Sesame Street took another step into introducing kids to a diverse, imperfect world with the culmination of their "Be Amazing" initiative: a felt and wire muppet on the autism spectrum.  Julia is four years old, is able to speak (mostly echolalia, which is a legitimate form of communication), loves her stuffed rabbit Fluffster, and flaps and bounces when she is happy.

I'm not going to discuss the accuracy of her portrayal of autism.  There will always be autistic people who share some of her characteristics but not others.  (I'm using identity-first language here, as this is the choice of many autistic people.)  Instead, I'm going to go into the other characters reactions to her.  It's not all bad, but it's not perfect either.

The Good:

• Julia communicates in various ways, whether it's shuddering at the finger paint, using echolalic speech, covering her ears, and bouncing and flapping.  Alan, Abby and Elmo treat her communication methods as legitimate and respond appropriately.
• Alan explains Julia's differences to Big Bird in a way that shows that they are a part of her, and does not attempt to remove or suppress her differences at any time.
• Julia is shown to have talents of her own.  Her painting of Fluffster with wings is not only imaginative, but technically advanced for a four-year-old.
• When Julia starts bouncing during the game of tag, Abby joins in, not because she's "being nice to the disabled kid," but because it looks fun.
• When Julia shuts down due to the siren, almost no one gets angry or upset with her.

The Bad:

• Although most four-year-olds, autistic or not, are not the greatest self-advocates, it would have been nice for Julia to have been able to advocate for herself more without having someone else "translate."
• When Abby and Elmo explain Julia's differences to Big Bird, it comes off as being patronizing.  They sound as if they are saying, "yeah, Julia's weird, but we're her friends anyway."  This is particularly glaring to me because both characters are supposed to be a full year younger.  It makes Julia's differences stand out more.
• Big Bird comes off as kind of a dick in this episode, particularly during Julia's shutdown during the siren.  He's an 8' 2" yellow bird whose best friend is a furry, brown, earless elephant, and he can't deal with Julia because she has sensitive hearing?  His comment about the siren not being that loud comes off as dismissive.  (And autistic people are supposedly the ones who lack empathy...)
• After the intro segment, Julia is not seen or heard from again for the rest of the episode.  I'm hoping this is not the Very Special Episode about autism, and Julia is integrated more into the life of the Street as the series progresses.  I also hope that she has a part in storylines not related to her identity as an autistic muppet.

Overall, I'd give the episode a C+.  It was a fair, but not great beginning.  Let's hope that, as time passes, that Sesame Workshop is improves their portrayal, and Julia becomes a character in her own right.