"A campaign has been constructed around a mood, rather than the other way around. The mood is Obamacore..."

"... the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.... ... Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable. It was Aziz Ansari writing a book on modern dating alongside a Berkeley-trained sociologist, porn star James Deen talking about bacon, Louis C.K. playing a cop on Parks and Recreation.... The fandom that had sprung up around Obama’s presidential campaign expanded to embrace New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and later, Hillary Clinton. For a moment, bodies as hidebound as the Supreme Court and the papacy looked as if they might be rehabbed into vehicles for social justice.... This summer’s sudden reappearance of hope and positivity has spurred split reactions. Do you embrace your inner cringe, or try to tamp it down?... The optimistic case is that, against all odds, we seem to have heeded the lessons of Obamacore. Generation Z is willingly climbing the coconut tree."

Writes Nate Jones, in "That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. The 2008 election sparked a surge of positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight (and cringe) is setting in" (NY Magazine).

See also "100 Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined Obamacore/You know them when you see them — whether they were genius or, well, not," by Nate Jones (in NY Magazine). Just to select one:

"There’s an argument to be made that subjecting straight men to the same objectification everyone else has long lived with is not only fair play, but in fact social progress..."

"... representing a new paradigm where no one identity group is overly centered. But in the Times 'twink' piece, it’s clear what the dangers involved are, too. Haramis writes of Sivan that there’s 'safety in his slimness,' and says his kind offers 'a new answer to the problem of what makes a man.' The implication is that skinniness comes with sensitivity, and maybe even—given the recent cultural accounting of male misbehavior—that it comes with a lower likelihood of being a creep. This is obviously nonsense: Small stature didn’t keep, say, Aziz Ansari from oafish behavior, according to his accuser. But the thinking echoes the way that physical appearance, when overemphasized, gets linked with moral virtue."

From "What 'The Age of the Twink' Actually Means/Are scrawny guys suddenly 'in'? Or are straight men just, finally, getting openly objectified like women and gay men long have been?" by Spencer Kornhaber (The Atlantic).

We talked about the Times "twink" piece yesterday, here.

The NYT would love to hear your most intimate sex stories. Please describe in graphic detail.

Does this seem creepy?

We’ve seen it play out on a public stage, from the Aziz Ansari incident to The New Yorker’s “Cat Person” story. So-called “gray-zone sex” has prompted impassioned conversations about — and personal reflection on — what constitutes consent and how we signal our desire or apprehension in the moment.... We want to hear how you handle consent for sexual intimacy in relationships and encounters. Do you have a particular experience you find yourself thinking back to? What was said, texted or hinted at, through words or physical cues, that moved the encounter forward — or stopped it? How did it make you feel at the time, and how do you think about it now?...

• We are seeking accounts from college undergraduates worldwide in 500 words or less.

• Visuals that illustrate your story (text message conversations, social media screenshots or similar images) are welcome....

I note that the solicitation is written in a gender-neutral way. Other than the reference to the Ansari incident and the Kristen Roupenian short story, there is no indication that they are only seeking stories from women who've had encounters with men. I'd like the Times to reveal in the end what proportion of the submissions (double meaning intended) are from women encountering men. 99%? Would a man who grudgingly provided sex to a woman and regretted it — or extracted himself after inspiring expectations — write up the graphic details for the New York Times? With screenshots!

Isn't it a question of who feels righteous about invading another person's privacy?

"Reading about [Aziz Ansari], I realize how lucky I am that so much of my sex ed came from Harlequins."

Says chick-lit writer Jennifer Weiner in "We Need Bodice-Ripper Sex Ed" (NYT).

Because these books were written for and consumed by women, female pleasure was an essential part of every story.... Shirley Conran’s “Lace” features a heroine telling her feckless husband that she’d used an egg timer to determine how long it took her to achieve orgasm on her own and that she’d be happy to teach him what to do. At 14, I never looked at hard-boiled eggs the same way again.

The books not only covered blissful sex but also described a whole range of intimate moments, from the awkward to the funny to the very bad, including rape of both the stranger and intimate-partner variety. Beyond the dirty bits, the books I read described the moments before and after the main event, the stuff you don’t see in mainstream movies, where zippers don’t get stuck and teeth don’t bump when you’re kissing; the stuff you don’t see in porn, where almost no time elapses between the repair guy’s arrival and the start of activities that do not involve the clogged kitchen sink....

Porn, necessarily, cuts to the chase: a little less conversation, a little more action.

Talking’s not sexy, people complain.

But when you don’t know how to ask, when you can’t bring yourself to tell, when you don’t possess the language with which to talk about desire, that’s when you can end up with crossed wires, missed signals, mixed messages, a guy who goes to sleep thinking, “That was fun!” and a girl who goes home crying in an Uber.

Talking's not sexy? I'd say, depends on the talking. I think there can be a lot of talking during sex, and not just instructions and continuing updates about the level of consensuality. Who are these people who complain that talking during sex is not sexy? If the thoughts in your head would be unsexy if vocalized, maybe you shouldn't be having sex. If you continually withhold your thoughts during sex out of concern that they're not sexy, why are you having sex? At one end of the bed, the genitals are interlocked, and at the other, you've got 2 heads that are 2 separate planets.

ADDED: I reacted to the subject of talking and not much to the proposal that reading romance novels is helpful. I've never read these things. So let me quote the top-rated comment at the NYT:

No. Just no. Romance novels give women an unrealistic view of sex and romance and are not remotely empowering. The woman is nearly always "saved" by a man in some way. Things always manage to "work out" in the end. Women's bad behavior (playing hard to get, expecting men to read their minds) never has consequences.

Romance novels are fine for adult women that have already experienced the reality of dating, romance and sex, but for teen girls? They should be off-limits. Teenagers should be reading books, fiction or non, that focus on females being independent, of having agency, of discovering things, having careers and thoughts of their own.

This makes me think of Tina Brown's excellent book "The Diana Chronicles," which quotes the romance writer Barbara Cartland: "The only books she read were mine, and they weren't very good for her." And please read page 26 (click to enlarge):

And when you're a star they let you do it — you can do anything — and they can tell an eagerly listening world exactly what you were like.

People want access to the star, as Donald Trump famously observed: He's automatically attracted to beautiful women — like a magnet.... And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. They let you do it. You can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.

That's the up side of being a star: You're attracted to somebody beautiful and she lets you have her body.

But the downside is that, because you're a star, if she ever has an inclination to tell the story of what sex was like with you, everybody wants to hear it. The media will publish all the details, down to the awkwardness of your "claw" move:

She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw.”

Little, private things that weren't even the slightest bit abusive will be splashed on the front page of The Daily Mail. She says that you said she was "beautiful and smart just like his daughter," and the world will react with horror as if you'd called her by your daughter's name while you were having sex. She says that you had intercourse in the "textbook generic... one position" that people "would expect someone [your] age to do," and people will laugh derisively, just as they would have laughed if you done something less usual, such as having her urinate in the bed.

You're a star, and you can do anything... and anything can be done to you.

"I hope the ~500 RTs on the single news write-up made that burgundy lipstick bad highlights second-wave feminist has-been feel really relevant for a little while."

Said Katie Way, the reporter who wrote up the story about bad sex with Aziz Ansari. She's criticizing Ashleigh Banfield, a Headline News anchor who'd criticized that story.

Nothing says feminism like a woman criticizing another woman's hair and makeup... and yet, I find it hard to watch cable news because I feel bad about the extremely heavy makeup and the mussy spaniel ears of hair/"hair" on just about all of the newswomen.

"Feminists have been on the forefront of tackling these knottier issues of sex, consent, pleasure and power."

"And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist. This will only happen if we move beyond being reactively 'sex positive' and recognize that human sexual interactions are not always clear-cut: yes or no, good or bad, empowering or not, either assault and worth worrying about or technically consensual and therefore not at a problem. We can – we must – wade into the messy, complicated nature of sex in a misogynist world. What a shame that opportunity was wholly missed with this breathless celebrity exposé."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity" (The Guardian).

I'm surprised to see the belief that feminists haven't yet moved from "being reactively 'sex positive'"! But I think I get it. Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it? (I mean: as opposed to assessing the situation and predicting the odds of having an unrewarding or actively bad experience.)

Fiction and nonfiction: "Cat Person" and Aziz Ansari.

Lately, I've been thinking about fiction and nonfiction. I've said a few times that I love the nonfiction essays of David Foster Wallace but I can't force myself into the fiction. Just last month, I got some insight from his interview with David Lipsky:

I can tell by the Lipsky interview that Wallace put much less effort into those essays than he put into his fictions, but the fiction doesn't work on me the way it's supposed to, which is — Wallace says this in the long interview — that it's supposed to be great fun....

Lipsky emailed me and challenged my resistance to reading Wallace's fiction. I've tried to get into "Infinite Jest," and I can see how much fun it's supposed to be, but it's just not fun for me.

I'm working my way to saying something about Aziz Ansari, so let me preview the nonfiction sex story about him that's in the news today. He's quoted as saying, during the incident, "Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun," and afterwards texting, "It was fun meeting you last night," to which the woman responded, "Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me."

Anyway, Lipsky recommended 2 short stories that might awaken me to the joys of reading fiction from David Foster Wallace: "Good Old Neon" and "The Suffering Channel" (both in  the collection "Oblivion"). I've read them and I've been mulling over what to say to Lipsky, something about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. I was thinking the answer is something like: In Wallace's nonfiction, we see, through his eyes, people and situations that are really out there in the world. In his fiction, his mind has created a world, and everything in it he made for reasons that came out of his head, and that's just too intense, too nightmarish, too sad. In his nonfiction, he goes on a cruise ship or to a state fair or a lobster festival or to the porno film awards ceremony. He comes up with perceptions and ideas about those real things that other people created, that are not figments of his imagination. He didn't invent things for the purpose of making us feel awful about them (or good about laughing at them). That stuff really exists, and he's our fascinating companion, looking at it with us. We're not alone.

The work of fiction that's got so much attention these last 2 months is "Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian, in The New Yorker. Many people who were talking about it didn't really seem to fully register that it was a work of fiction. As Laura Adamczyk wrote (in AV Club):

Debating over who’s the bigger jerk in this [story about a short male-female relationship], or any, work of fiction misses the point.... And yet because so many people came to the story through social media, as opposed to having the print issue delivered to their mail boxes, they clicked through and read without seeing its “fiction” designation. This no doubt encouraged some people to read the story not only as nonfiction but also as something that was up for debate, something they should or should not agree with....

And now we have the turnaround, a nonfiction account of a date with the charming young comedian Aziz Ansari that people are reading and comparing to "Cat Person." But Aziz Ansari is a real person, and the story told by the pseudonymous "Grace" is exposing him to devastating contempt. He's not a fictional character, like "Robert," the "cat person" Roupenian created for us to loathe. Grace's story is presented as true, which of course doesn't make it true, and for all we know, "Cat Person" squares up more accurately to something that happened in real life, but "Cat Person" is called fiction.

Here, I'm having the reverse feeling that I have with David Foster Wallace. I prefer the fiction. I prefer "Cat Person" to Grace's story, because "Cat Person" excludes the question of what should we do to this man who pushed his way through a sexual encounter without noticing how not-into-it the woman was. We can observe and analyze the details contemplatively because there are no real people, just stand-ins for people who might exist, and there's no issue of whether the author is being fair to anyone or whether "Robert" should be arrested or otherwise ruined. We watch and judge and learn. We — all of us — have the woman's vicarious experience. But the decision to tell the stark details of a bad sexual encounter with Aziz Ansari feels so dismal and sad. I'm not able to think about the story itself. I'm completely distracted by the exposure of the frailty of a particular individual, a real person.

A problem I've had with fiction is the sadism: The author creates characters who will be amusing to torment. But Grace's story entails finding a real person, someone we already like (or love), and telling a story about him that demands that we hate him.

I said I'd watch the Golden Globes (and watch it "with an open mind"), so I owe you this post.

I don't know if I'd be choosing this topic for Monday morning if I hadn't essentially promised to write it. Why didn't I write it last night? I fell asleep. I fell asleep, and then I woke up at 2 a.m. and watched the rest of it, including the appearance of Kirk Douglas, who is 101 years old. How did he stay up? Yes, it's Pacific Time, 2 hours earlier, but still... he's 101!

Anyway, quick impressions:

1. Did all the women wear black? The President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which gives out the awards) appeared on stage in a voluminous, flaming red gown, supposedly because in "her Indian culture, it’s customary to wear a festive color during a celebration." Does that amount to a disagreement with the women in black? Were they resisting the usual festivity of the occasion? Do we see some implicit ethnic critique, that the white women of Hollywood were not sensitive to the meaning of color in other cultures? I look up the meaning of wearing black in India:

Black in India has connotations with lack of desirability, evil, negativity, and inertia. It represents anger and darkness and is associated with the absence of energy, barrenness, and death. Black is used as a representation of evil and is often used to ward off evil. 

2. What impression did it make, to see all that black? On the red carpet, the black made the crowd look much less glamorous. There was much less male/female differentiation, much less of a sense that the crowd was popping with especially beautiful people. In the long shots, it looked like a crowd at a boring cocktail party of ordinary-looking people. Harvey Weinstein wasn't there, but half the people in the crowd seemed not much better looking than him. There's a scruffiness to the men's "head styling," and with everyone dressed alike, the men seemed really nondescript. Inside the theater, in the long shots, the crowd looked more like a sea of white faces than usual. Even though great efforts were made to get close-ups of the black stars at the tables, the long view looked overwhelmingly white. Just the predictable effect of contrast. You'd think movie people would have better sensitivity to how component parts appear in long shots. This all-black design concept highlighted white people.

3. How did the men dress? Many of them wore not only black suits but black shirts and black ties. It looked sharp, albeit insectoid.

4. How did the men behave? I jumped over most of the men's speeches, but I think they were following a strategy of keeping it low key and throwing attention over to women whenever possible. I'd have to see a transcript to know if any of them did that old-fashioned thanking of his wife for putting up with him. I see in the news this morning that Ewan McGregor thanked his estranged wife: "I want to take a moment to thank Ev, who always stood beside me for 22 years and my four children, I love you." And then — because we need more love in this world — he also thanked his girlfriend.

5. I didn't hear any Trump-bashing. Aziz Ansari said: "I genuinely didn't think I would win because all the websites said I was going to lose." And: "I'm glad we won this one because it would have really sucked to lose two of these in a row." Wasn't that a shot at Hillary?

6. Oprah won the Cecil B. DeMille Award and gave a speech that has people saying she should run for President? Don't Trump haters realize that pushing Oprah as a presidential candidate undercuts one of the main arguments about Trump — that he didn't work his way up within politics but had the arrogance to think he could jump in and start at the top? Anyway, here's the transcript of Oprah's remarks. See if you think there's anything in there that's special. She had a tough task balancing her big moment with the need to recognize other people and to make her recognition of others about women in general (rather than black women or black people). It's a pretty gauzy text, but she sold it well:

In my career, what I’ve always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and how we overcome. And I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “me too” again.

7. Here's the video of the Oprah speech. Notice the NBC logo — NBC, which played an ignominious role in this past year's sexual harassment journalism:



8. I got the video from the fashion writers Tom and Lorenzo, who say: "Yes, we could talk about how amazing she looks; how her gown is KILLA and the fit is insane; how her hair looks amazing and her makeup is beat to the gods. It doesn’t matter. While these two queens love a diva who turns it out, we love even more when a diva comes into her full power and uses that power to affect others. Nothing but respect for our president."

9. In the comments to this post, rehajm says:

I think she makes a big mistake about the media. They aren't entitled to their own truth. Their own truth is weasel words for lies. She sure got all those powerful women in the room riled up. I wonder if they now feel powerful enough to utilize the justice system, the one with a presumption of innocence, or if they expect to keep using the new one that's ripe for abuse.

Here's the relevant text from the transcript:

I’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, because we all know the press is under siege these days. But we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice... to tyrants and victims and secrets and lies. 

I was going to say that's a blatant display of a lack of dedication to the absolute truth — puffery and stroking. It was spoken word, so how it feels at the time is most important, but you can see in the text that she said "the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth," not "its insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth." She never credited the press with having that insatiable dedication. She only held up dedication to truth as an abstract value.

I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.

This is the part that bothered rehajm. Interesting. Above, I was stressing the difference between putting "the" or "its" in front of truth, and now the issue is putting "your" in front of "truth."

How can there be "your truth" and also "absolute truth"? One way to reconcile the 2 ideas is to say that "your" refers not to the press, but to the women who tell their stories and who are, as individual human beings, entitled to their subjective point of view. The press is separate, and it must "navigate these complicated times."

The press is under siege — a land-based military metaphor — and out on the Ocean of Complication. It should be dedicated to the absolute truth, and part of the truth is the way women experience their own lives and tell their stories. You can give an absolutely true report of the story that Ms. X told, even if Ms. X is only telling her own story, and that story is not the "absolute truth," but an element of a proper news report that will also contain other elements.

The next lines in Oprah's speech suggest that my interpretation of "your truth" is pretty good:

And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year, we became the story.

Ah! How she slipped from TRUTH!!! to stories...

10. "And here are the all-male nominees," said Natalie Portman, before reading the names of the nominees for best director. (Guillermo del Toro won for "The Shape of Water.") That line resonated when, shortly afterward, the award for Best Musical/Comedy Film went to "Lady Bird,"which was directed by a woman, Greta Gerwig.

11. Did you notice what didn't get anything? "The Post" and "Get Out."

12. That reminds me. "The Post" got nothing, which means that Meryl Streep did not win for Actress in a Drama, so who won? Frances McDormand! She wore the best dress. It was the most anti-fashion dress I've ever seen. Not just black, but high neckline, long sleeves, long full skirt, and cut way large. It was the absence of a dress, even more so than nakedness. [ADDED: Tom and Lorenzo on McDormand's dress: "We’re not going to rip apart her nun’s habit. It’s fine. It’s who she is.... Granted, we think she could’ve worn a comfy pantsuit and come off a little more chic in the process, but whatevs."]

13. And I can't believe they didn't give Best Actor in a Drama to the guy in "Get Out." Who'd they give it too? A white man, Gary Oldman, who played the white man, Winston Churchill. Oh, no. Wait. "Get Out" got classified as a comedy. The actor, Daniel Kaluuya lost to James Franco. And I see "Get Out fans 'outraged' by Golden Globes snub: 'We're in the sunken place.'" You know what that means, the "sunken place"? (SPOILER: It means your body has been taken over by a white person, and you are just going along for the ride, able to see where your body is going, but only at a distance, and unable to speak or control your own motions, which aren't really yours anymore, but that monstrous white person's.)

14. Didn't Gary Oldman get on some political shit list a few years ago? Oh, yes, here: "Gary Oldman can't stop apologizing for that Playboy interview he did where he kept denouncing political correctness." Those were simpler times. Oldman had said: "I just think political correctness is crap. That’s what I think about it. I think it’s like, take a fucking joke. Get over it.... We all hide and try to be so politically correct. That’s what gets me. It’s just the sheer hypocrisy of everyone, that we all stand on this thing going, 'Isn’t that shocking?'"