Matters of Opinion

[thessalian]

Yet another one where really, POV matters.


Seriously, I haven't seen every scene in every show ever, so I can't honestly say for sure what the best scene ever is. Plus a lot of times it depends on mood: if I want triumphant, I might not want Owen and Tosh's mutual death scene in the Torchwood S2 finale, for example - even if I do think that scene is the epitome of awesome and always makes me sniffle a little.

So here I sit, going over scenes in my head - scenes that have moved me, scenes that have made me laugh, scenes that have made me cheer out loud for the participants, and a few that have moved me to do all of those things at once. I am not lacking in awesome; I have a surfeit of awesome, and of course, mileage may vary.

In the end, I'm going to have to follow in the approximate footsteps of lithiumdoll's 'honourable mention' list. While Annie's storming of the vampire facility to free the humans being held there as food had a lot of Just Plain Awesome, I actually thought that George and Annie's original storming of the funeral home had more going for it. It lacked Badass, but ... well, you know, that was why I liked it. They were new to the whole idea of storming in somewhere on a rescue mission, they had no idea how to fight and they didn't even know what they were capable of, but damnit, they were going to do it anyway. Because it mattered.

Besides, them bursting in just as Herrick is discussing killing Mitchell immediately afterwards is hysterical:

"WHO WANTS SOME OF MY CHAIR?"
".........I really should have prepared something."

Eeheehee.

In other news, the vuvuzela thing. For those not necessarily following the World Cup and otherwise are not giving a toss, a vuvuzela is a big (I assume plastic) one-note horn that fans blow at football matches in South Africa. Since they're playing the World Cup in South Africa at the moment, one tends to hear it a lot if one's following the Cup at all. I am, by proxy. I find the vuvuzela annoying. Now, I don't mind noise at sports matches. Admittedly, my favourite sport is hockey and there's not a lot of continuous noise through a hockey game - just music played between plays and a lot of cheering or booing dependent on what's happening in the rink - but I can deal with the constant singing from the audience at football matches because it's mostly low-toned, it changes key now and then, and frankly, at least when something interesting is happening on the pitch, it disintegrates into cheering in such a way that anyone even half-watching knows something is going on. The vuvuzela ... just drones and drones and drones and drones and it never seems to stop. I get blowing the things when something interesting has happened on pitch, but I've seen a few games where frankly, nothing interesting has happened on pitch.

Some players are complaining that they can't concentrate with the constant hum of the vuvuzela. The commentators are saying how their audiences watching on telly aren't hearing all the commentary because of the noise. I get that the vuvuzela is a South African tradition, but just because people from other nations have complaints about a tradition that originates in a non-caucasian country ... it doesn't mean that the people complaining are racist. The game is for everyone; you know, World Cup? It just happens to be being played in South Africa. And one imagines that the souvenir vendors are hawking vuvuzelas and people are buying them because think it's the Done Thing no matter what their own country's traditions are in the matter of noise made at football matches. People who want to express their own love of the game or admiration or exasperation with what the players are doing in the style of their own country? They can't, because they can't be heard over the vuvuzela. It's the World Cup, not a month of South African football matches.

I get not banning them. However, I also get the request that a ban be considered, particularly if it's bothering the foreign players. I don't consider it racist; I consider it trying to make sure that everyone's having the best time possible at a sporting event. You know, because they are supposed to be fun? Complaining about an annoying noise does not make someone racist, even if that noise happens to be a tradition in a foreign country. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or a vuvuzela just a horn. One day I'm going to have The Rant about how political correctness has gone out of control and turned into just one more way of feeling superior ... but today is not that day.

Comments

[minmorton.livejournal.com]

well - when you *do* have it - I'd like to be invited ... I got told off by some M***N for using the word straitjacket as an appropriate-to-the-topic metaphor the other day ... apparently it was insulting for me to use it in front of someone with mental problems (I did not forbear to point out gently/briefly that I scored twice for having both a physical mental disability [well two - SAD and epilepsy] and having also suffered in the past from emotional mental problems ...)(she probably would have thought me a mental Uncle Tom or something ...)

so glad you exactly and carefully did not say 'political correctness gone mad' - it's a phrase which makes me reach for the sledge hammers ...

But with language and vuvuzela ... it's all about consideration and thoughtfulness both on the part of the *listener* and the speaker ... and finding a happy medium - and it certainly isn't very medium : )

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's going over the top, getting het up over straitjacket metaphor, and that's saying something from someone with my mental health history. It's really a matter of degrees - using 'gay' or 'retard' as a perjorative is not on, for example, but anyone who bitches about the use of a straitjacket metaphor in front of them is trying to highlight their issue, whether for special treatment or just attention, and that's as abhorrent to me as a behaviour code as casual slander.

And no, I would never use that phrase. It has, but given that the phrasing you flagged up has become a self-parody, I'd rather not use it because it mocks the problem. *g*