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Twitter can fix its harassment problem, but why mess with success? – A very interesting post by Ben Kuchera on how Twitter capitalizes off of harassment and the outrage it generates, both of which heighten the type of engagement that keep people invested in the platform. Game developer Brendan Vance suggests that Twitter has not “failed” to stop harassment, but that they have no desire to stop it, and, in fact, are actually more than happy to let it continue, because it benefits the service and its rising stock prices and revenues:
“As far as Twitter is concerned the ideal anti-harassment policy is just effective enough to prevent [Anita] Sarkeesian from leaving while simultaneously permitting thousands of people to enjoy harassing her every day. In this way Twitter doesn’t need to engage directly in the Charles Foster Kane-style yellow journalism of its predecessors; it reaps the same rewards (while incurring very few of the risks) by allowing users to do so on its behalf.”
In other words, the value of Twitter is such that people like Anita Sarkeesian can’t easily leave without losing a large amount of her community and voice. By withholding tools that would allow targeted individuals like her to manage who contacts her and how, as outlined above, Twitter drives up engagement. The people organizing the abuse are creating value for Twitter, there is no reason to stop them from doing so. –Polygon
Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead? – I’ve been wanting to post this story for a while, and while I know there’s a lot swirling in the publishing community right now, I think this is incredibly relevant to the Romance genre. I had an interesting conversation with Carolyn Jewel a few weeks ago about the way in which women like the Pepsi Co. CEO can advise other women in traditional, heterosexual marriages that they can’t have it all, but no one seems to be proffering the most obvious rebuttal: where are the husbands and fathers in this scenario? Men tend not to take paternity leave, or at least not a lot of it, and often feel pressure from co-workers and supervisors to remain at the office after a baby is born. Women still carry the substantial burden of working and raising children and keeping the home.
So it’s interesting to see this trend in animated films where the mother is killed off (a kid lit staple), only to be replaced by the fun father. It is, of course, a very perverse way of bringing the father into the domestic sphere, and it’s one that relies on the absence of the mother. So what does all of this say about how we imagine fathers, how different genres and media represent them, and how they are treated relative to mothers.
Quite simply, mothers are killed in today’s kids’ movies so the fathers can take over. (Of course, there are exceptions; in Lilo and Stitch, for instance, both of Lilo’s parents die and it’s her big sister who becomes the surrogate parent.) The old fairy-tale, family-romance movies that pitted poor motherless children against horrible vengeful stepmothers are a thing of the past. Now plucky children and their plucky fathers join forces to make their way in a motherless world. The orphan plot of yore seems to have morphed, over the past decade, into the buddy plot of today. Roll over, Freud: in a neat reversal of the Oedipus complex, the mother is killed so that the children can have the father to themselves. Sure, women and girls may come and go, even participate in the adventure, but mothers? Not allowed. And you know what? It looks like fun! –The Atlantic
There Is a Clean, Religious Version of Fifty Shades of Grey Hitting Theaters at the Same Time – This is pretty smart marketing, I think. Independent filmmaker, Rik Swartzwelder, is releasing his Christian Romance film on the same day that Fifty Shades releases, and he’s using the contrast to bring attention to his film and differentiate his goals from what he perceives to be those of the movie based on E.L. James’s trilogy.
Swartzwelder is already riding the buzz surrounding the two very different films opening up on the same night. His own comparison pretty much sums up this upcoming box office battle.
“One is a modestly budgeted indie flick that seeks to make room for godly romance in contemporary America,” he wrote on his blog. “The other is a multi-million dollar studio film based on a best-selling erotic novel that has… other goals in mind.” –E! Online
MAC A Novel Romance Collection for August 2014 – I’m not sure whether to be appalled or impressed by the incredible job MAC did of both satirizing and celebrating some of the most extreme Romance cliches and stereotypes with their new collection. One thing is for sure, though; certain images associated with the genre have sure saturated the popular imagination. From MAC’s publicity:
Fall in lust with A Novel Romance, a colour collection teeming with luscious shades that will have you feeling overwhelmed with desire. Eyes tantalize in Electric Cool Eye Shadow, Fluidline Eye Liner and Mineralize Eye Shadow quads, as lips provoke in seductive shades of Lipstick. Cheeks flush in shimmering Powder Blush, and Nail Lacquers tempt you to take the plunge in intriguing nocturnal hues. Like fiction brought life, the surging passions of this after-dark adventure seem almost too good to be true. –Temptalia