Tag: eat your broccoli

Booze, Women and Huh?

metagnat

So, if you’re on twitter and breathing air, you probably heard about Sen. Chuck Grassley’s comments on what keeps folks from investing their money. He has now claimed that his comments were taken out of context (though I don’t see in what context they could be anything other than irritating and offensive), so I thought I’d break this down.

I see more movies in the theater than anyone I know.  I’m sure it’s not record-setting, but a movie a week adds up.

I have kept numbers now on how much I spend on movies in the theater since 2014.

I’ve spent an average of $10 per ticket – an average of just over $600 a year on movies in the theater. That’s $2413 on roughly 240 movies over the last four years. Could I have religiously saved that money and “invested” it, instead. Sure. In theory. Anyone who spends most of their money knows that’s not really how it goes. You put $10 or $15 in savings per week and it doesn’t get invested. It goes. It goes on emergencies or on unexpected expenses or on trips or on presents at Christmastime.

Instead I spent it on industry. An industry that has spent money all over the U.S. and which creates work for tens of thousands of small businesses.

I am not saying the industry is saintly or anything. There are plenty of problems with the way they’re funded and the way they carve up the profits of their enterprises, as well as with the products they produce. The point is, this is how capitalism is supposed to work. The film industry comes closer to successful trickle-down economics than almost anything else I can think of.

Grassley’s point, in saying dismissively that the new tax bill rewards “investors” over consumers is this notion that if you save all your money and spend it on property, you’re somehow more virtuous and more deserving. But without people who actually spend money on things, American industry would collapse.

This is not at all a new concept.

Not to mention, I, who sees far more movies than anyone else that I know would have saved less than $2500 in four years by being absolutely ascetic. Movies are entertainment for me, sure. They’re also socialization and engagement and relief and escapism. Pretty good bang for the buck, too, at $5 an hour.

Would avoiding seeing all those movies allow me to actually do anything? Could I buy a house with $2500? Obviously not. Could I even make a down-payment on one? No. Experts advise putting down 20 percent. Average house value in my town according to Zillow is well over half a million dollars. The minimum down-payment I would need to get a mortgage that would cover a house here would be about $20,000. That’s 32 years of seeing zero movies. I would be 72 and much spiritually poorer for the (lack of) experience. (Not to mention the target may have shifted, somewhat, by that time.)

I see an average of 60 movies a year. The average American sees 5. Five. Movies. $50. Maybe $100 if they see everything in imax 3d.

So even if we leave aside Mr. Grassley’s obvious contempt for people who can’t afford property and who prefer love, celebration and entertainment over spending half a lifetime saving to *maybe* be able to have an ‘estate’ someday (and we shouldn’t leave it aside, but for the sake of argument…) we find that once again, some folks who allegedly lead us don’t have any fucking clue how money works down here on the ground.

Not really a shock. None of them have had their feet on the ground in years.

Maybe they should take in a movie like us common folk.

Like maybe this one:

Or this one:

Or this one:

Or shit, any film about folks who make less money than they do might lend them a sliver of empathy. Though if recent political news is any indication, they might need to be injected with more than just a sliver.

metagnat

There is a saying among motorcyclists about riders who have been hit by cars:

“Saying ‘I didn’t see them’ is not a defense. It’s an admission of guilt.”

Motorcyclists hit by cars fare very badly. Cars hit by motorcycles generally come through just fine. Cars are deadly to other things on the roads, sometimes, in part because car drivers are unused to keeping an eye out for bicyclists, motorcyclists, and even pedestrians in some places. But not being used to looking out for something so different on the roads is not actually an excuse for running into it.

The driver is still making choices and cultivating awareness (or lack thereof) that led to someone else getting hurt.

The societal systems through which we interact are kind of like that, too. There are laws to try to ensure that we share the road, but conventions often leave a substantial sub-set of humanity out of the calculus of safety.

We can help to change that through the choices we make and the awareness that we cultivate. There has been a lot of talk lately about the importance of diversity for minority folks (particularly kids). To see oneself reflected in media is to feel that one can achieve things beyond one’s immediate context.

This reflection still, currently, reflects a lot more white, Western folks than other colors and cultures. It reflects more straight people than queer, more men than women, more cis people than trans folks, more able-bodied folks than disabled folks….

The environment where we still normalize and make default the cis, white, Western, able-bodied, straight man is an environment that doesn’t just cost people who don’t fit in that circle. It affects us all. We miss out when all people aren’t encouraged to reach their full potential. And we miss out personally when we can’t relate to folks who aren’t exactly like ourselves.

It is, for instance, just as important for any random boy to see that a black girl can be a superhero as it is for the black girl herself.

Stories are an important way that we learn to empathize with people who are not like ourselves. They can connect us to people who lived thousands of years ago or people who go to space or people who live on the other side of the planet. They can surely help to connect us to someone with a different skin color or background.

When you find internalized prejudice in yourself (as almost any of us who do any self-examination will), it’s your job to try to de-fang and unseat that prejudice. An easy and pleasant way to do that is to expose yourself to more stories about folks who aren’t just like you.

Prejudice is often defeated person-to-person as an acquaintance with someone in a group disproves what another person thinks they know about that group. But that is a heavy burden to place at the door of folks who already have systemic injustice and everyday life to deal with.

There are plenty of nice ally 101 articles around the web that give solid tips like “research before you ask your acquaintances questions” and “don’t let racist/sexist comments slide – use your privilege to speak up”. This is part of activism 301. Look inside yourself and see what assumptions you’re making. Figure out ways to crowbar those assumptions open and broaden your perspective.

Complex stories can help you to see folks who are different than you as real people with full lives. Stories with heroes that don’t look or love or worship like you can help you to open your mind about the heroic potential in everyone.

Stories can help you to be a better person and a better ally.

Some simple things you can do in this vein include following folks who are different to you on social media. Listen to what they have to say on a daily basis, not just about their identities but about everything.

If the only stories you watch about people of color or queer folks or anyone in any minority category are civil rights period pieces, consider broadening your outlook. Seek out stories that are not about the identity politics of a person but includes their identities as part of a full humanity.

This is not to say that a civil rights story can’t have full, true characters, but there are so many more aspects to minority lives than the struggle for justice.

Make sure your media diet includes stories by minority writers and directors, not just stories written about minorities by white dudes. It might take a little extra effort, but it’ll be richly rewarded. I think you’ll find truth in the words of Alan Yang, co-creator of Netflix’s Master of None, “Thank you to all the straight white guys who dominated movies and TV so hard, and for so long, that stories about anyone else seem kind of fresh and original.”

So let folks who aren’t like you into your imagination and your emotional world. It’s not the only way to unseat your internal prejudice, but it’s a relatively easy and frequently entertaining way to work on making yourself a better person. You choose what you’re exposed to (and what your kids are exposed to).

You choose what you see. Saying you lack exposure is not an excuse for ignorance or prejudice. It is an admission of guilt.