Philosophy and Faith

I do plan on writing blog entries on more things than privacy and liberty soon. I’ll pick another topic for an entry soon, promise…

So, I’m a bit late to the party on this; I’m sorry…but I’d still call it relevant.
Disclaimer: keep the comments civil; no name calling of anyone.

After the San Bernardino massacre, President Obama made a statement regarding the need to extend gun control to the people on the No Fly List, one underscored by Hillary Clinton – and most people on the left, and even a decent number of the moderate-right said, “seems legit” – including myself.

Admittedly, I haven’t read the comics that inspired this CBS series, so I don’t know what is “true to the comics”, or what is “CBS doing its thing”. What I’m writing about here has a handful of spoilers regarding things that have happened in episodes up to this time (Season 1, Episode 8), so if you haven’t seen it, you may not want to click ‘Read More’…

So, throughout the series, Kara has taken Clark’s “mild mannered reporter” trend to the next level. Mild-mannered is one thing, but she’s frequently clumsy and “adorkable”. Supergirl, on the other hand, has a whole lot more poise and confidence. Kara is frequently seen being all nervous around her boss Cat Grant, the CEO of National City’s largest media conglomerate with a personality clearly inspired by Miranda Priestly, and gets doe-eyed around her crush and confidant Jimmy Olsen. (side note: “National City” has to be the laziest fictitious city name ever created)

The show has a number of references to things associated with modern feminism: in one episode, Cat makes a comment to Kara about needing to work twice as hard for half the recognition, because she’s a woman. In another, there was a discussion regarding expectations being a double standard. In the most recent episode, the ‘bad guy’ in the episode is a board member, with maybe 20 lines in the whole episode, who Cat describes as “the walking personification of white male privilege”, and those are just the references I can recall off the top of my head. Now, before my comment section blows up, I’ll make it known that I’m not saying that the series is wrong for this slant, but I am indicating that it’s present. On the contrary, I’ve got no problem with a series that depicts Supergirl’s challenges in the world, both being ‘super’, and being a girl. I’m perfectly fine with the exploration of both of these themes.

What I do find interesting is this: It takes a solid amount of confidence to fly Cat to the bluffs where the first interview is conducted, and while Kara is a bit nervous, she still retains control of the situation, despite the fact that if Cat doesn’t like what Supergirl has to say, Kara is having a bad day at work tomorrow. When Cat offers to be the bait to take down LiveWire, Kara again is able to keep it together. Void of her powers in one episode, she talks down an armed robber. Later in that episode, Cat makes an accusation that Supergirl abandoned National City, which Kara expertly deflects (interrupting her mid-sentence, might I add). Again, these are just the examples off the top of my head of Kara being resolute and confident when she’s wearing her cape, while that level of resolution and confidence seems to be absent when the cape is.

Kara is no less bulletproof when she’s wearing business casual attire. Kara is just as capable of flying, just as able to throw a punch, and just as beholden to her burden as a Kryptonian on earth when she’s in fetching Cat’s coffee and cobb salad. She’s shown no personal reason to stay at that particular job (e.g. she’s made no statement about wanting to be a reporter herself), and something tells me that she could request living wages from the DEO – she’s certainly got the clout to get a paycheck from Uncle Sam, and let’s face it – she’s presently the only one who’s working for that organization on a volunteer basis. While her secret gives her the ability to live a double life, everyone she cares about seems to know her secret and be complicit, while those characters find themselves in need of being saved by Supergirl on a regular basis – even if she went full-time Supergirl, her friends and family would be in basically the same place they are now. This raises the question: what gives Kara the confidence to speak to Cat with candor when she’s Supergirl, but not when she’s Kara?

The clothes. That’s about the only thing I can attribute it to. Supergirl can go toe to toe with Cat Grant because she’s wearing her Spandex suit and the cape. Whether it’s intentional or not, I’m hard pressed to come up with anything else that can explain why Kara can be confident, especially with Cat, as Supergirl, but not as Kara.

This saddens me.

For a show that seems to intend to extol the virtues of progressivism and female equality, what gives Kara her confidence is her clothes, rather than her training, her mind, her near-invulnerability, and her selfless concern for the citizens of National City.

I do hope that the series does a better job of addressing this as time goes on; I haven’t heard anything regarding the series’ renewal. Until then, I will remain disappointed that the writers of this series have done injustice to their cause in such a subtle way.

Then again, maybe they’re looking for an advertising deal from Nordstrom.

We hear platitudes like “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” all the time, and there’s truth to be had there. However, it presupposes a backwards view: that the intent is to encourage retribution. However, this is not quite the case.

“An eye for an eye” is not encouraging vengeance. The original Hebrew text that became Leviticus 24 is better translated “only an eye for an eye”. It was a limit. If someone takes out one of your eyes, the most you can possibly take from them is one of theirs – no more. Jesus took it a step further in Matthew 5 (“turn the other cheek”), but our society tends to thrive on an insatiable thirst for vengeance to the point where a part of me advocates to at least go back to the Old Testament – “You’ve got your eye. Justice has been served.” Or, in the immortal words of Captain Jean Luc Picard, “The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther!” The limit on retribution would force the person to starve their need for revenge. Savage as societies were in the Old Testament era, the fact that a line was drawn was amongst the ways that the Israelites were set apart. In some ways, we are more civilized than them, but revenge is still something that we, as a society and as individuals, contend with.

An eye for an eye, no more. One day, we’ll be able to turn the other cheek.

Baby steps.

For those of you who read this (approximately five of you), and know me personally (approximately four of you), you know that I can be a bit of an ‘acquired taste’ – I don’t always correctly follow social norms, I’m not the greatest at smalltalk, and my qualifications for the clothing I wear when I walk out the door is ‘basically fitting’ and ‘clean’. My “meta-perception” (i.e. ‘my perception of how other people perceive me’) is basically that most people can deal with my idiosyncrasies in small doses, and just ‘let me talk’ when I attempt to explain technical things, especially in a social context, retaining basically-none of it. When it comes to expressing empathy and other emotions, it can feel like it is, at best, a ‘learned skill’, where I’m attempting to mimic the things that other people do to express concern and compassion, but for me, it’s not a natural skill…and I generally feel that I have a tendency to make things worse when I attempt it.

This weekend, something happened.

Under very different sets of circumstances, three different people independently volunteered that I made them feel better and/or comfortable amidst uncomfortable situations. To say “it didn’t make any sense” is like saying, “platinum is a bit difficult to come by”. How could I, the acquired-taste computer tech who is terrible at expressing empathy, make other people feel better? Then, it hit me.

We live a world that thrives on optimization. Your cell phone is faster than your last one. Your car probably gets better gas mileage than the one you had before it. Your dryer is more energy efficient. Our soda cans have undergone a mesmerizing amount of optimization since their inception. Written messages went from ‘letters’ to ‘tweets’; the phrase “tl;dr” exists. You probably have to consciously think about the last picture you saw that wasn’t filtered or Photoshopped, or don’t have to because you’re thinking of a physical photo album whose contents predate digital imaging. Movies and TV compress a whole lot of human interaction to fit a 22m/44m/96m runtime, and thus, scripts are also heavily optimized – I myself am guilty of saying “too long; didn’t watch” for It’s a Wonderful Life, yet its depiction of human interaction is at a much more realistic pace than…basically any other movie involving a love story that’s been made in the last decade or so.

We live in a world so filled with optimization that imperfection stands out. An unretouched photo looks strange at first, but its genuine nature is itself notable.

When I attempted to express myself to these people, under these circumstances, in my mostly-awkward way, it was notable to them for being genuine – and their response, unexpected as it was, was a response to genuineness amidst a sea of highly optimized emotional expression. I owe the fact that, for a weekend, I was more-understood than I was attempting to be, to a culture where realness is derived from imperfection, because we are the first generation where perfection is the norm.