"Things you can do at #hobbylobby #keepyourrosariesoffmyovaries #prochoice."

Instagramming in-store activism protesting the Hobby Lobby decision:



More at "Crafty activists are trolling Hobby Lobby by rearranging in-store craft displays to spell ‘pro-choice’" in The Washington Post.

Shea’s fans — actress Wendi McLendon-Covey and columnist Dan Savage among them — have lauded the stunt as a clever, light-hearted way to draw attention to women’s health and the Hobby Lobby case. Her critics, meanwhile, have dismissed it as childish and misguided, less sticking it to “the man” and more inconveniencing a bunch of frazzled, innocent store employees....

In either case, what Shea terms a “protest” or a “prank” is almost indistinguishable from trolling — provoking annoyance and fury, merely to infuriate and annoy. That’s not a criticism, but it’s certainly an intriguing commentary on the state of political discourse these days. We have reached a point where the end-game, perhaps necessarily, isn’t to convert hearts and minds — it’s just to make some noise.

I'm torn. Making some noise = free speech. Yeah, speech doesn't necessarily persuade, but that's a good thing. I wouldn't say it's just noise. Speech is valuable precisely because it is not coercive. Sometimes we call speech "compelling," but it depends on what you say... and how you say it.

The form of expression matters. Here, the speaker appropriates the store's merchandise (and employee labor) as a medium. And the medium is (part of) the message. This prankery strikes me as sort of fun-loving, a way to vent frustration, but I'm distracted by 2 things:

1.  "Pro-choice" is the wrong word in the context where the business owners resisted being denied the choice about covering birth control and where that resistance is premised on their religion which they have the right to choose. Those who don't like the choices the business owners have made have the choice to shop elsewhere.

2. The pranksters are taunting those who have taken a strong stand based on religion. Are we really going to taunt people about religion? If you're inclined to say yes, do you really mean it, across the board for all religions, or is this a special willingness to taunt Christians? If it's special for Christians, why is that? Is it because you think it's okay to taunt what you think is the dominant group? If Christians like the ones your protesting against really were dominant, we shouldn't, in a democracy, end up with laws forcing them to do things against their conscience, so I'd say, the existence of the birth control mandate is evidence that they are not the dominant group, in which case, you're harassing a minority. Why would you do that? Is it that you feel safe picking on Christians?

ADDED: Have you ever moved merchandise around in a store as a way to make a political example? I'm trying to remember if I've ever done something like that. Moving books in a bookstore is the most common protest of this sort, like Code Pink's "Move Cheney's Book to the Crime Section of Bookstores!"

I'm seeing a list of 500 fun things to do at WalMart that I'm not going to link to. #1 is "Take shopping carts for the express purpose of filling them and stranding them at strategic locations." I didn't read the whole list, but it made me think of the "Shopping for Others" scene in the movie "Pecker."

"Little Chrissy, say sugar."

Here's a clip from one of my favorite movies, "Pecker"...



... which I was watching this morning, because I saw that I'd been mentioned on Facebook. It was Annie Gottlieb saying "Ann Althouse, do not watch" about a pre-production trailer to a movie called "Squirrels."



I said, " So... that did make me click, but I stopped at 0:43. I don't want to see the squirrel bite off the girl's finger. And isn't that the girl who played Little Chrissy in 'Pecker'?"

I looked it up and saw that "Pecker" was made a long time ago, in 1998. I am getting old! So is the actress that played Little Chrissy, whose name, I see, is Lauren Hulsey. She looks like this now and seems to work not so much as an actress, but in visual effects. Perhaps she got into that through her experience making "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2," where they made her look like this.

I guess there's a creepy kid category within child acting. Back when I was a kid, the #1 creepy kid was Billy Mumy. And I mean pre-"Lost in Space," particularly the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life."

Recommended Amazon Instant Video: "It's a Good Life" and "Pecker."

"Mrs. Ann, do you have (or could you produce) a list of 'DVD's you deem essential?'"

C Black sees a phrase I used and makes a request. I'm here to answer your questions, so, based on a quick scan of the shelf and probably leaving a few things out, here's my list (in alphabetical order) of 40 DVDs I'd try to get you to watch if you lived with me:

32 Short Films About Glenn Gould
American Movie
Aguirre the Wrath of God
Clockwork Orange
Coffee and Cigarettes
Crumb
Divorce Italian Style
Don't Look Back
Dr. Strangelove
Election
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Fight Club
Grave of the Fireflies
Grey Gardens
Grizzy Man
Heathers
It's a Gift
Lolita
Memento
Modern Times
My Dinner With Andre
Nights of Cabiria
Pecker
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Room with a View
Rosemary's Baby
Royal Tenenbaums
Salesman
Serial Mom
Slacker
Spirited Away
Streetcar Named Desire
Stroszek
The Blood of a Poet
The Shining
The War Room
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
Wisconsin Death Trip
Wuthering Heights

Now, you may wonder which of these movies Meade had already seen and which ones have I succeeded in getting him to watch. You may wonder which ones, once watched, produced a negative reaction and about which ones did we see eye to eye. I'll leave that for Meade to say in the comments if he wants. The rest of you are welcome to guess, to produce your own lists, or to opine about mine.

"I write about the TeePees because it's so sad how they've been manipulated to oppose their own best interests."

Says Roger Ebert, who tweets about politics now and does not, on Twitter, eschew the cruder term "teabaggers" for participants in the Tea Party movement.

When Ebert tweeted that he was unaware of the term's pornographic connotation, Big Hollywood countered that he had referred to such a context in past movie reviews.

Ha. It must have been "Pecker." I love that movie. Yeah. Here's Retracto the Correction Alpaca calling gotcha on Ebert — complete with "Pecker"-clip. Frankly, I can see how someone could have reviewed "Pecker" and even talked about the teabagging in "Pecker" — which is pretty silly — and not realize that the word had moved beyond that context into the general parlance and was implied by the term that is now used to mock tea partiers.

That movie also uses the expression "shopping for others." I remember that, but remembering that doesn't tell me that it's become a term for something people are really doing these days. [ADDED: I see that the link within that link now goes to the absence of a YouTube clip from the movie. It was a scene in which Pecker, a budding young photographer, and his friend go into a store and put embarrassing items in other people's shopping carts when they're not looking. Pecker then takes pictures of their reactions at the checkout counter.]

Anyway, I welcome Roger Ebert to the Tweet-o-sphere. It's great when an excellent, interesting writer takes to the 140-character art form. Follow him here. I am.

Do you love a movie that everyone else hated?

In the first post of the day today, I condemned a movie about Heaven:

This was an early CGI film that was enough to make me never want to see another CGI film. And I only saw the trailer for it.

That made Blake write:

Ann Althouse casually dissed one of my favorite movies on her blog, which provoked in me a great idea for a forum topic/series of blog posts: Movies I loved that everyone else hated....

So, why do I like ["What Dreams May Come"]? ... [T]he "Hell" that Annie (Annabella Sciorra) goes to isn't a place she's assigned to by some bureaucratic angels, it's a place she herself has created through her grief. In other words, Heaven and Hell are made of the same stuff, just not by the same people. It also seems to be far, far away from Heaven, which reminds me of St. Augustine's notion that "Evil is distance from God".

The post inspires a comment from Trooper York:

The reason why people hate this movie can be spelled out in two words: Robin Williams. I have some rules in life: Never play cards with any man named "Doc." Never eat at any place called "Mom's." And never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never go to see a movie starring Robin Williams.

Okay, so we've really got 3 topics here now, don't we?

1. Movies you love that everyone else hated.

2. Movies you're willing to condemn with confidence based on the trailer.

3. Rules for life movies.

I'll start:

1. Pecker.

2. Already answered. But it's my reaction to most trailers. Sometimes the feeling is so strong, I feel compelled to try to help people by saying something out loud — "There's no way that's a good movie" or perhaps a subtly vocalized "Ugh!"

3. Any movie with Claude Rains is worth watching. (A rule best demonstrated by "Deception." Sample line that is incredibly cool because it is said by Claude Rains: "Like all women: white as a sheet at the sight of a couple of scratches... but calm and smiling as a hospital nurse in the presence of a mortal wound... Good night!")