tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post474219412304292164..comments2024-03-28T16:22:14.888-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: "The Hunger Games"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-21427475626900778872012-04-02T09:01:07.860-07:002012-04-02T09:01:07.860-07:00Did the author get her idea from SURVIVOR tv show?...Did the author get her idea from SURVIVOR tv show?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78957928510319245612012-03-29T20:28:05.614-07:002012-03-29T20:28:05.614-07:00Yikes, everyone in the Steve-o-sphere is hating on...Yikes, everyone in the Steve-o-sphere is hating on "Hunger Games," even though most haven't seen it and swear they won't. My wife and I saw it tonight and enjoyed it. Much more engaging than "John Carter," though flawed, like 99 percent of the movies that come out.<br /><br />As far as all those who won't see it because it features a butt-kicking babe, Lawrence doesn't play the part that way. She doesn't punch out any guys or kick them in the nuts. Hand-to-hand she's always at a disadvantage. She's good with a bow and that's it.Harry Baldwinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68879489623302675262012-03-29T16:41:19.020-07:002012-03-29T16:41:19.020-07:00To zero in on the Webb thing mentioned above a bit...To zero in on the Webb thing mentioned above a bit more closely.<br /><br />I think the appeal of the movie is that it's an allegory for the 'working class hero' theme, except the protagonist is a she. Here's a link to a song about working class heroes.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTafZRecy2k<br /><br />A movie with kind of a similar theme was 'Gladiator' especially when he screams at the crowd consisting of bread and circus's rabble and the emperor that wears eye shadow 'Are you entertained'. An essential part of the whole working class hero thing is that you bust your butt for some rich loser's frivolous benefit, which in the movie, the capital residents whom the 'show' is for are losers in the extreme.<br /><br />Lot's of working class heroes in the US, so that's why it's selling a lot of tickets.j mctnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18292568172908195632012-03-29T09:09:20.435-07:002012-03-29T09:09:20.435-07:00Okay. I haven't read the trilogy, and I was th...Okay. I haven't read the trilogy, and I was threatened with an obligation to see the movie no sooner than the summer vacation. However, from what I understand it's just another Harry Potter, Twilight, DaVinci Code, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Ladies and gentlemen, you need to calm down. Are you telling me that something created for and marketed to the largest possible audience isn't of very high quality and is something that only a simpleton can enjoy? You don't say!<br /><br />No, people didn't use to direct better movies or write better works of fiction. The majority of movies and, before that, plays from any given year had been crap with only a couple of good ones. Perhaps you've only heard of the good ones because they'd been preserved and put aside for you as something worth noting. For example, in 17th and 18th century France, dramaturges would write 10 crappy plays to make the masses or their benefactors happy (depending on their situations) for every one play of quality written to satisfy the artist himself. Most of Oscar Wilde's plays, like "The Woman of No Importance" or "The Good Husband" read like soap operas. But, hey, they were very popular and kept him in the money. A lot of adolescents sited Harry Potter as the first book they read without being forced. Many teenage girls said that Twilight was the first book that got them excited about reading "literature" instead of just magazines. Bless their hearts. Obviously, if you actually like to read and enjoy literature, you won't enjoy the stuff that is produced for people who don't like to read and don't know anything about literature. Same deal with movies. Why so angry?<br /><br />As for literary crap being female produced and directed at women. Well... Firstly, there's horrible male oriented lit out there too. I had the misfortune of being lent a novel by a young man who claimed to love reading. It was like a romance novel for boys. An unrealistic, boring, shallow plot that pretended to be deep with some young cowboy returning home after the Civil War just in time to see his family slaughtered and hear his father's final instructions to avenge them all. So he practices for 3 days with a pistol he finds in the attic and becomes the best shot in the West. Then, the plot never really develops or goes anywhere, but the young man drifts from town to village to fort to field and in each new setting, a different woman immediately drops to her knees and relaxes her jaw. I don't remember how it ends, but the cowboy, probably, randomly comes upon the incidental murderer of his family and kills him. Or maybe not. So, yes, boy lit genre exists.<br /><br />The reason why there is more girly shit out there and it gets more attention is what businessmen had known since the 19th century. Dim women read more than dim men, so there is a higher demand for the kind of crap that a dim woman would read. Men always bought more nude drawings and photographs. Just people responding to what they like. Originally, the novel, as a medium, was considered a vulgar low art that was created to entertain bored housewives. And that was great because the type of drivel that these people wanted to read could be easily pin pointed, mass produced and sold. That's not the case with real art, so it doesn't get the same level of attention from the merchants. Don't get mad at the merchant for not being a philosopher. That's not his job. Why should Hollywood cater to you, and don't you have enough fine works to appreciate?Mayanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7150581013143126532012-03-29T01:43:31.238-07:002012-03-29T01:43:31.238-07:00I read the books before watching the movie and fou...I read the books before watching the movie and found them enjoyable. But I've wondered why no one has mentioned the Confederate theme of this movie?<br /><br />The whole basis behind the movie was that there was a horrible civil war in America. And that the victors in the capital oppressed the districts that rebelled. That was the whole reason for the Hunger Games. <br /><br />A few interesting points supporting this are that the 13 districts correspond to the 13 seceding states. That the heroines district is set in Appalachia. And, in the final book, the 13th district's uniforms are grey.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33882830635860155782012-03-28T22:09:00.078-07:002012-03-28T22:09:00.078-07:00Brain-dead as Transformers 3? I admit to not seein...Brain-dead as Transformers 3? I admit to not seeing that one, but the Hunger Games wasn't an especially stupid movie. Obviously bad & good characters are pretty normal.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27076537516675609132012-03-28T22:04:29.444-07:002012-03-28T22:04:29.444-07:00Women up to and including Nobelists can and do wri...Women up to and including Nobelists can and do write much sci-fi, of course, in addition to sports reportage or PUA blogs or anything else. Doesn't mean it will suit every male reader's taste (Margaret Atwood? though "Oryx and Crake" could be shoehorned into about 50% of the posts here), however, readers are predominantly female anyway. The mix of free time and Austenian levelheadedness is beneficial for more & sturdier long-form fiction. I think Steve was just mentioning Neal Stephenson who is better in small doses.guynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-65304074672186885802012-03-28T20:58:26.220-07:002012-03-28T20:58:26.220-07:00The story seems to have been inspired in part by &...The story seems to have been inspired in part by "The Long Walk" by Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King):<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Walk<br /><br />Although having read neither, I couldn't say for certain.<br /><br />While wandering around a Barnes and Noble recently, I was taken aback to find an entire aisle labeled "Teen Supernatural Romance".Mr. Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82441853210960721822012-03-28T20:40:36.005-07:002012-03-28T20:40:36.005-07:00I should stop flogging this, but I chanced upon th...I should stop flogging this, but I chanced upon this Collins/Ross EW interview that has a comically odd exchange:<br /><br />"Some readers have expressed real frustration that white actors were cast in the roles of Katniss and Gale, who they felt were clearly described as biracial in the book. Do you understand or share any of that dismay Suzanne?<br /> SC: They were not particularly intended to be biracial. It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There’s been a lot of ethnic mixing. But I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and makeup. But then there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described.<br /> <br />GR: Thresh and Rue.<br /> <br />SC: They’re African-American.<br /> <br />So will those roles go to black actors?<br /> GR: Thresh and Rue will be African-American. It’s a multi-racial culture and the film will reflect that. But I think Suzanne didn’t see a particular ethnicity to Gale and Katniss when she wrote it, and that’s something we’ve talked about a lot. She was very specific about the qualities that these characters have and who they are as people. Having seen Josh and Liam and Jen perform these roles, that’s really the most important thing. They’re very much the characters to us."<br /><br />GR's answering for Collins, and her canned "They're African-American" sounds a bit Potemkin-y to me.<br /><br />If she'd wanted the characters to be black couldn't she have strictly said so in the book?<br /><br />And I was unaware of an alternate demographic projecting multiethnicity onto the leads. Perhaps so. Maybe teen readers are (understandably) passionately into projection.<br /><br />But this all sounds like Benneton-ad artifice to me. Is Ross leading Collins by the hand into a less white-hickified future he desires?<br /><br />http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/04/07/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-gary-ross-exclusive/Luciushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03938166025093103574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-28996205455312962792012-03-28T20:12:12.327-07:002012-03-28T20:12:12.327-07:00Someone already linked to Battle Royale. That'...Someone already linked to Battle Royale. That's what I thought of when I heard this premise. I remember War Nerd loving it cause of the violence and the fact that popular high school kids get killed. <br /><br />Anyway, I skip movies like this because the whole plot (young hero faces terrible evil - will he save Gotham or whatever?) is always the same. Batman wasn't any better in this regard. Tent pole fiction is always this way. Standins for the audience get rewarded, the people they don't like get pounded.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48284391263679993972012-03-28T20:04:32.300-07:002012-03-28T20:04:32.300-07:00"James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon)?"
In &qu..."James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon)?"<br /><br />In "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" is a short story: Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death --<br />which is *hardly* about a nice-smelling young gal endlessly dithering over which handsome, smitten beau to choose.<br /><br />In the introduction, Silverberg wrotes:<br /> <br /><br />"It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male (xii)."<br /><br />So far as I can tell, even after Tiptree was revealed as a woman, did Heinlein retract his statement.JSMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85564291343441850132012-03-28T19:54:52.052-07:002012-03-28T19:54:52.052-07:00anonymous 5:59 writes: "I'd say about 95%...anonymous 5:59 writes: "I'd say about 95% of the literary agents are women, and like all female dominated industries you have a lot of the same issues:<br /><br />- a refusal to provide any sort of direct critique<br /><br />- inability or unwillingness to provide hard and fast guidelines for what they're looking for (you hear a lot about 'gut feelings' and 'snap decisions')<br /><br />- CONSTANT reminders about how busy they are and how important their work is"<br /><br />This last in particular makes my blood run cold. I'm obsessing more and more about how to smuggle conservative subtext in modern media; but my soul suffers scrotum shrinkage at the thought of a woman "reminding" me of her "busyness".<br /><br />--vis-a-vis "empowered females", I always thought The Powerpuff Girls (which I know Steve dismisses) was wonderfully Aristotelian in certain ways.<br /><br />Yes, there was an intermittent "be more like Buttercup 'cause she's *tuff*" message, and girls aren't so innately into the fighting; but the narratives were often knowingly elegant, and again and again various do-gooding trust-the-bad-guys schemes would be shown up as sheer folly.<br /><br />And when the wool dropped from their eyes there'd be hell to pay. Very edifying.Luciushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03938166025093103574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-45331472555501725852012-03-28T19:04:38.071-07:002012-03-28T19:04:38.071-07:00On one hand, it's probably a net good if someo...On one hand, it's probably a net good if someone buying "30 Rock & Philosophy" learns more about Kant or Leibniz or Wittgenstein, however strained the analogy may be.<br /><br />OTOH, as a practical matter, "Wisdom sets limits to Knowledge also" as Fred Nietzsche pointed out.<br /><br />Just because there's a publishing market for it doesn't necessarily mean you've stumbled on a useful lasting insight that will endure many TV seasons.hmmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-64317300591726661812012-03-28T18:25:40.231-07:002012-03-28T18:25:40.231-07:00Steve, how could you miss the 300 odd pages of phi...Steve, how could you miss the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Hunger-Games-Philosophy-Blackwell/dp/1118065077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332984048&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">300 odd pages of philosophical themes</a> in the film?Jokah Macphersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04185675633464395897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12300543693042917502012-03-28T14:44:36.938-07:002012-03-28T14:44:36.938-07:00After reading the description of this movie, I hav...After reading the description of this movie, I have less than zero desire to see it. Partly because the premise is stupid, but also because it sounds like a plain bad movie.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-69482054020550145992012-03-28T14:20:33.922-07:002012-03-28T14:20:33.922-07:00Anon. said: Basically, Collins is an extremely old...<b>Anon. said:</b> <i>Basically, Collins is an extremely old-fashioned left populist: pro-rural, anti-urban, and culturally conservative (there's a visceral loathing of the Capitol's metrosexual decadence.) There's also a very Jim Webb "Born Fighting" strain of advocating for an alliance of white hillbillies and southern blacks against the urban elites.</i><br /><br />Which reminded me of something I'd just read in Hunter S. Thompson's <b>Freak Power in the Rockies</b>, his account of a radical third party campaign he ran in Aspen during 1969 and the collection of hard living folks he rounded up to challenge the Republican & Democrat lock on the Mayor's office:<br /><br />"<i>Somewhere around the middle of the Edwards campaign even the liberals got a whiff of what his platform really meant. They could see a storm gathering behind it, that our carefully reasoned words were only an opening wedge for drastic action. They knew, from long experience, that a word like 'ecology' can mean almost anything - and to most of them it meant spending one day a year with a neighbourhood clean-up crew, picking up beer cans and sending them back to Coors for a refund that would be sent, of course, to their favourite charity.<br /><br />But 'ecology', to us, meant something else entirely: We had in mind a deluge of brutally restrictive actions that would permanently cripple not only the obvious landrapers but also that quiet cabal of tweedy/liberal speculators who insist on dealing in private, so as not to foul the image ... Like Armand Bartos, the New York 'art patron' and jet-set-fashion-pacer often hummed in </i>Womens Wear Daily<i> ... who is also the owner/builder and oft-curse landlord of Aspen's biggest and ugliest trailer court. The place is called 'Gerbazdale', and some of the tenants insist that Bartos raises their rents every time he decides to buy another pop art original.<br /><br />'I'm tired of financing that asshole's art collection,' said one. 'He's one of the most blatant goddamn slumlords in the western world. He milks us out here, then gives our rent money to shitheads like Warhol.'</i>"Marlowenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-79644186484230668002012-03-28T14:09:56.619-07:002012-03-28T14:09:56.619-07:00I think it's funny the way Jennifer Lawrence&#...<i>I think it's funny the way Jennifer Lawrence's breakout role was as a tough underclass girl in the Ozarks</i><br /><br />Note, however, that Jennifer Lawrence did not play a butt-kickin' babe in <i>Winter's Bone</i>. She instead was a butt-<i>kickee</i> babe, getting a good sound hiding from three harridans for asking too many awkward questions. Off-screen, of course, as seeing a female getting a`beating would be too much for the delicate sensitivities of modern moviegoers.<br /><br />Granted, her character was a tough-girl sort in other respects, by showing gritty determination, chopping firewood, and last but not least shooting and skinning three squirrels.Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04266094188872421777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6873637409033080912012-03-28T13:32:42.520-07:002012-03-28T13:32:42.520-07:00"the economy of Rohan in The Lord of the Ring..."the economy of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings also drove me mad - no herds, no cultivated or fallow fields, no reasonable ratio of peasants to horselords."<br /><br />But I don’t remember anything suggesting there aren’t farmers in Rohan similar to the Shire or elsewhere. Tolkien is not showing everything, and focusing on adventure/war so you could easily assume some of the land in Rohan is farmed. E.g. Tolkien only mentions the economy of Baradur once in passing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-35233098511423589032012-03-28T13:29:16.274-07:002012-03-28T13:29:16.274-07:00"People wrote books and movies, movies that h...<i>"People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"</i><br /><br />The Near/Mid/Far East are all making those kinds of movies now.<br /><br />Just off the top of my head<br /><br /><i>A Time for Drunken Horses</i><br /><br /><i>Children of Heaven</i><br /><br /><i>Nobody Knows</i><br /><br /><i>Poetry</i><br /><br /><i>The Crescent Moon</i>Kylienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6110563155954484562012-03-28T13:27:58.589-07:002012-03-28T13:27:58.589-07:00Steve -- Liked your review, but Hollywood DOES dum...Steve -- Liked your review, but Hollywood DOES dumb down everything. Look at Kevin Smith (yes Smith is a jerk) and his tale of working on the endless script of Superman. Jon Peters demanded famously that Smith write Jimmy Olsen or a Robot Gay, no flying, and Superman has to fight a giant spider at the end.<br /><br />The treatment of old pulp hero Green Hornet (fat jokey Seth Rogen) or Green Lantern comes to mind. Only the Batman movies with Nolan taking the source material SERIOUSLY and trying to do a good job worked out for Warners; that same approach with Marvel/Disney worked out mostly well for their films (Captain America, Thor, the first Iron Man movie were good; the Hulk movies and the second Iron Man movie were bad).<br /><br />I also don't think the butt-kicking babe stuff is sustainable for the male audience/readers. Too many dreamy/screamy fangirls will chase away the male audience/readers such as they are fairly quick. Like fabulously gay fashion designers turned straight men into slobs.Whiskeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01854764809682029464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-54872606484061449272012-03-28T13:26:46.117-07:002012-03-28T13:26:46.117-07:00Your snark doesn't really hit the mark...Panem...Your snark doesn't really hit the mark...Panem (from panem et circenses) is an obvious dystopia that has no merits. The big question, if there is one, is whether the elites could use mass media to keep the people mollified with spectacle. History suggests that they can, and current events suggests that they might be. <br /><br />Of course, the movie suggests that the 'panem' part of the phrase was forgotten by Panem, so there's that. But dystopias are never realistic...even 1984 wasn't remotely plausible. <br /><br />What I found most odd about the movie was how all the youngsters were so blaise about their fate. I would think at least one of them would have tried to run away. And 12-18? Methinks 16-18 would be a little more reasonable. I was glad for the PG13--seeing small children brutalized might be too much.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46227392359211451022012-03-28T13:21:44.610-07:002012-03-28T13:21:44.610-07:00At VDARE, PAul Kersey points out that for once it ...At VDARE, <a href="http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-hunger-games-america-s-hideous-destiny" rel="nofollow">PAul Kersey</a> points out that for once it is nice to have a dystopia where the bad guys are not defined as some version of racist Teutons.<br /><br />As for female sci-fi writers, how about Jeanne Cavelos? Granted, she was working under the guidance of J. Michael Straczynski, but <i>The Shadow Within</i> and the <i>Passing of the Techno-Mages</i> trilogy were both excellent.Glaivesterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16867323638154972101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-64353958478727505442012-03-28T13:06:52.762-07:002012-03-28T13:06:52.762-07:00"...Men are less self-conscious; they have an..."...Men are less self-conscious; they have an easier time stepping outside of their typical state of mind without inner alarm bells clanging away. Hence better able to project into the future as well as uncover the past. A female writer couldn't have made the screenplay for Total Recall or Chinatown."<br /><br />Oh god. So much absurdity and so little time.<br />Katherine Kenyon and Jericho? Zoe Oldenbourg? They're from the past and you may not know them. In fact, I only know them from reading: one of the greatest archeologists, and one of the greatest writers of historical fiction. "The World Is Not Enough" about the Crusade era, was her greatest, and truer words were never said.<br /><br /> Total Recall? Wasn't that with that warm-blooded android, Swarztenegger? No. A woman wouldn't have bothered. You got that right. But Chinatown with its incest motif and inter-generational strife, lurking vengence? Women have written stuff like that. Too much really. Some of it is as good, if you consider Chinatown to be good. You just haven't read them.<br /><br />I live mostly in the past and the future, and I am not alone. I have met other women from now, there too. <br />Yours truly never heard of Hunger Games and doesn't want to hear of them now, but after several hundred years, a successor to Joan of Arc is in order. She did it for God and France though, with an angel on one shoulder and a saint on the other, not just to kick English butt. How we have fallen.Charlottenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70810931548746420692012-03-28T11:55:03.136-07:002012-03-28T11:55:03.136-07:00Really liked this film. It's like a mixture of...Really liked this film. It's like a mixture of Big Brother, "Survivor", Rio carnival and MMA except with weapons and fights to the death.<br /><br /> The guy who wrote the books on which this film was based on was on a major acid trip. Major.<br /> <br /> The books are a lot more brutal and gruesome, though.<br /> <br /> The reason for the immense popularity of the "Hunger Games" books and now movies - they are leading at the box office in most countries outside the U.S - is that the books have as their central theme the overwhelming need that youths of both genders have in showcasing their genetic quality to gain the respect of their peers and the applause of adult society, and with it the best mates.<br /> <br /> By the books and now film being so popular, youths are sending the message that they want that: they want contests where they can display their genetic talents and quality, and they want adult society to applaud them for it. One of the foremost problems of modern society is that modern society is all about individual affirmation for oneself(libertarian/capitalist market system), but throughout tens of thousands of years during our paleolithic past, adolescents required a social network formed by adults to recognize their mating value and gain them mates. The genetic programming of humans is still paleolithic, evident by the fact that humans can store bodyfat in an era when food is abundant. A society of lonely individuals who merely trade with each other and have no further relations with one another is simply unnapealing to youths except or the unusually intelligent and/or mature. <br /> <br /> The film is all about youths proving their genetic worth to a society that applauds them for it. They first dress in gliterring customs and parade to an audience of adults to display their physical beauty and the asults applaud them for it. Then they get to be individual guests at a talk show, where they can display their talents of loquacity, charm and social graces, toi an audience composed 100% of adults who delight in their social graces and also wit. Then, they finally display their physical athleticism, resourcefulness, cunning and toughness by fighting with each other to the death in a forest where they have no water or food and only two are allowed to survive. Even the extreme brutality and ruthlessness of the contest reflects the taste that adolescents of all civilizations and epochs have always shown towards things that are extreme, violent and bizarre.<br /> <br /> The bottom line is this: youths want to belong to a tribe, where the adults of society relate to each other in ways deeper than simply economic trade, and they want the adults to create systems of competition where they, the adolescents, can display their genetic worth and have the adults of the society give them status for it. A society where you can achieve anything you want but have only yourself to applaud your accomplishements, or a society where the applause only comes to adults at age 40, way past prime mating age, is just not paleolithic and thus completely unsexy and unnapealing to youths. The malaise of youth is due to this. The desire to destroy things and wreck revolution that has been so common in the modern West, on both sides of the Atlantic, seems to be just a way of youths saying to adults:"Damn you, I am alive and I am sexy! Look at me! And applaud me..."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56995119655283497832012-03-28T11:49:29.631-07:002012-03-28T11:49:29.631-07:00Given all these arena combat variations,I am perso...Given all these arena combat variations,I am personally holding out for a televised death match between Rick Steves and Ken Burns. The PBS Thunderdome: two half-men enter, one audience heaves.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com