Fifty Shades of Failure: Why you should skip “Fifty Shades of Grey”

It’s that time of year again. The time to buy your loved ones chocolate, flowers, and cards with romantic messages that could have been said better in another language.  It’s also, apparently, the time of year to go watch a movie that glorifies domestic violence and the complete and utter violation of Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC) rules.

That’s right.  It’s the time of year where apparently, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the must-watch romantic movie. Due to the issues of partner stalking, domestic violence, and the lack of SSC–to name just three of the multitude of problems in the books–one must wonder why “Fifty Shades of Utter Failure” was chosen as the senior fundraiser trip when there are so many more options for a Valentine’s Day trip they could have done.

A simple Google search for the search string ‘everything wrong with 50 Shades of Grey’ nets a little over nine million results. The majority of those results are either lovingly created detailings of everything wrong with the BDSM aspects of the trilogy or terrifyingly on-point breakdowns of the abuse presented and excused in each of the three books (the best breakdown is the “50 Shades of Abuse” WordPress account, which also contains trigger warnings in the chapter-by-chapter listings, given the nature of the book being reviewed). Other results include absolutely nauseating discussions of how wonderful the trilogy is, the minutes of drinking games on various forums (‘divine goddess’, take a shot), and dramatic readings on YouTube (the best is the Nostalgia Team reading in various voices, including Mickey Mouse), to name a few.

As the movie is being released on Valentine’s Day (with an early release on Wednesday, February 11), one can only assume that the movie will be only slightly better than the books, given that it must be packaged for a wider audience (people are more likely to watch a movie than read a book in certain cases). Theoretically, this means that the movie could be better written and contain fewer problematic elements, and the cast interviews–especially the recent disastrous appearance from the co-stars of the movie–make it almost worth seeing, if only to view the utter lack of chemistry and the almost palpable (and somewhat murderous, if interviews are to be believed) hatred between the lovely Dakota Johnson and equally handsome Jamie Dornan.

The premiere of “Fifty Shades of Abusive Relationships” does make one wonder at the state of Hollywood, when this is the type of movie that they want to release for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is meant to be shared by couples, or friends, or the people who spend the day counting down to the post-Valentine’s candy sale. Nowhere is February 14 supposed to be a celebration of domestic violence.

Except, apparently, in Hollywood.  There are no redeeming features in this trilogy. It is abuse apologism in the worst form and contains very misleading information about BDSM that can lead (and has lead) to hospitalizations and one-way trips to the morgue.

Instead of going to see “Fifty Shades of Domestic Violence,” consider donating the cost of your ticket to a women’s shelter, a food pantry, or an animal shelter, and watch something vaguely holiday-themed on Netflix.

American Horror Story: Sniper

In a perfect world, Chris Kyle would be alive and on trial for war crimes and mass murder. In this world, “Selma” would be the top-grossing film of the decade, and Clint Eastwood would have faded into obscurity after he stopped starring in Westerns.

Unfortunately, the world is far from perfect and a movie based on Chris Kyle’s life and war crimes is the top grossing film of January, while “Selma”–the movie based on Martin Luther King, Jr., a man that the FBI feared because he was a mover and shaker who threatened unfair power structures–is being largely ignored by the media.

“American Sniper” is based on the life of an Islamaphobic sniper with 160 confirmed kills and over 200 unconfirmed kills, who is also noted to have wished he could have killed more people.

“Selma” is based on the events that took place in Selma, Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and covers large portions of what made Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greats of American history.

Guess which one the critics said was more patriotic.

At the beginning of “American Sniper”, there is a scene where Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper, who was so much better served as the voice of Rocket the raccoon in “Guardians of the Galaxy”) is on a mission and flashes back to hunting deer with his father in Texas.

This touching, all-American father-son moment is juxtaposed against the scene of Kyle casually murdering two Iraqi civilians–a woman who gave something to her young son, which (according to both the movie and Kyle’s biography) was a grenade.  This is one of the first problematic instances of the movie, and also the most dehumanizing: If the movie compares the murder of two Iraqi civilians to hunting deer, imagine the long-lasting real world impact that this is having on a community that is already at a high risk for hate crimes.

Without going into too much detail, this travesty of a film loves its animal metaphors. The average American–and most of the supporting characters in the film who are ‘good’–are portrayed (metaphorically speaking) as sheep. The ‘heroes’ like Chris Kyle–and I use this term with zero sincerity–are sheepdogs, protecting the dumb, unsuspecting sheep from the big bad wolves of the world, also known as anyone who is not American, Christian, or white.

Or at least that’s how ‘American Sniper’ has decided to portray the issue. The big bad wolves of the film are every Iraqi person who appears onscreen, whether they are innocent civilians or like the woman who picked up a grenade from her son’s corpse and tried to throw it at the soldiers who had killed him or the man who invited Kyle to his home for Eid, only to be revealed as “evil”  because he has a large stash of guns and bombs in his bedroom and is going to kill Kyle and lots of other ‘good’ guys.

In a perfect world, “American Sniper” would be seen for what it is: A film about a psychopathic mass-murderer who should have been on trial for war crimes. Instead, it is seen as a film about an All-American hero who is doing the world a favor by slaughtering Muslim people.

Do yourself a favor; watch “Selma” instead.

Why “The Interview” is almost justification for digital piracy

Cyber crime is one of the fastest growing (and most lucrative) illegal activities in the United States. Figures from the FBI put overall damages as a result of cyber crime activities at around 0.2 to 0.8 of the US GDP (somewhere between 24 and 120 billion dollars annually).

Due to these factors, cybercrimes like digital piracy are among the most heavily prosecuted in the country (although there is a concurrent low rate of arrests due to the nature of the crime and the sheer volume of people involved even as accessories).

Given that cybercrime and digital piracy are theft, I will allege that I don’t approve. This is, after all, related to peoples’ livelihoods. However, there are circumstances where not only do I approve of it, I would argue that it’s a civic duty to pirate the heck out of something. Case in point: Seth Rogen’s latest travesty, “The Interview.”

One of the first life lessons the average person learns, either via firsthand experience or watching some other poor idiot try, is that poking a hornet’s nest with anything is a very bad idea. Smashing an individual hornet is fine; there are very rarely repercussions for it. It’s when you get bolder after smacking the first hornet and decide to go after the nest that it becomes a problem. Usually, you’ll get stung so many times that you regret being alive–if the stings don’t kill you as an example to everyone else.

In this scenario, the hornet’s nest is North Korea, and Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Randall Park are the collective moron with a stick. And, carrying through with the hornet analogy, the stings are the capability for nuclear warfare. If you can imagine that, you’ll realize just how bad of a very bad idea “The Interview” was.

The Sony hack that almost ended the release of the aforementioned movie was a case of civic responsibility in an attempt to prevent World War III, rather than an attack on the freedom of speech. Here’s a tip: There’s freedom of speech, and there’s being an idiot. And then there’s Seth Rogen and James Franco.

“The Interview” makes fun of a man who is painted by the media as a silly buffoon and who is great for being the butt of a joke, while simultaneously forgetting that he has nuclear capability and is suspected of more military attacks than most neighboring countries (with the caveat that no one can prove it because he’s supposed to be a silly little comedic figure who threatens nuclear war but doesn’t do it because he’s after something).

Kim Jong-un looks and acts like a buffoon. He is a great source of comedic news for the rest of the world to laugh at. His leadership and how he acts allows the rest of the world to point and laugh while forgetting that North Korea is a perpetrator of one of the longest on-going series of human rights abuses in the modern world.

Instead of going to see “The Interview” in theaters and supporting two morons who make fun of a country where people are literally tortured, imprisoned, and subsequently worked to death in labor camps alongside three generations of their family for doing things like listening to even a few notes of the wrong music, spend the money you’ve saved on Liberty in North Korea (LINK), a group that helps North Korean refugees, instead.

“The Interview” is not freedom of speech. It is not a comedy. It is a travesty.

Don’t make an effort to see it, and spend the money you saved on something worthwhile.

I’m not flattered: The problem with catcalling

Every once in a while when I scroll down my Facebook newsfeed, I see troubling things. However this past week I stumbled across a friend’s status that troubled me more than your run of the mill annoying selfie would. I saw the status of a friend–let’s just call him Joe. Now Joe, like a lot of people, watched the video that the anti-street harassment organization produced that went viral last week, and his response was essentially that the behavior displayed in the video was in some way complimentary.

When I made the rookie mistake of reading the comments on the video I realized that what my friend, along with a lot of people with a Y-chromosome, seemed to be missing is that what women are objecting to is not a simple “hello” or “you look very nice today”.

Like Joe, the consensus seems to be that “catcalling” is a form of flattery or as a commenter on the video put it, “the burden of being a beautiful woman.” Over half of women have reported experiencing street harassment or being followed in their lifetime. One in six women will be the victims of sexual violence. From whistles to the outrage over being “friendzoned,” we live in a culture where some men think that they are entitled to women’s bodies and time, and they react horrendously if they don’t get either.

Why is it considered overly sensitive to want to walk through the world without dealing with unwarranted comments about one’s body from total strangers? Why is having a total stranger follow you and tell you they’d like to see you naked supposed to be considered romantic as opposed to what it really is: uncomfortable and sometimes downright scary?

For the record, I don’t know a single couple that started with catcalling. This kind of behavior is a symptom of a larger problem, but that probably should not be all that surprising. We grow up in a world where an entire genre of movies revolve around love stories where women who say no just need to be won over with behavior that borders on stalking.

We live in a world where women’s safety is threatened for saying no. If you think I’m exaggerating, I could tell you the story of the night a group of young men followed me for two blocks because I wouldn’t give one of them my number. Although it definitely didn’t feel that way at the time, I was lucky in comparison to 27-year-old Mary Spears who was shot and killed for doing the same thing, or the 26-year-old woman whose throat was slashed for refusing to talk to a guy, and sadly so many others.

Comedienne Amanda Seales debated Steve Santagati on CNN and said, “Catcalling is not complementary. Guys think that by letting you know that they would be interested in sleeping with you, that it’s compliment, and actually it’s really just objectifying me when I’m trying to walk in my daily life.”

Instead of telling women how to dress, saying, “boys will be boys,” or encouraging young women to fluff the egos of men who are pursuing them for the sake of their safety, why not try to create a culture where men have respect for others’ humanity and can take no for an answer?

Diseases, illnesses, and infections, oh my!

Since the end of September, the only thing on peoples’ minds is Ebola, and whether or not they’ll catch it. Stories are flooding the media about how someone coming from Africa will bring Ebola with them and infect everyone who lives in the United States.

That being said, there is one concrete fact for everyone living in the United States: the best chance you have for catching Ebola while living stateside is breaking into the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and licking a petri dish with an Ebola culture on it.

With that in mind, here are five diseases, illnesses and infections deadlier than Ebola that you can catch at home.

Bubonic Plague: Over the past thirty years, somewhere between one- and two-thousand cases of Bubonic Plague (one of the diseases associated with the Black Death) have been reported every year. In that same timeframe, only 56 people have died from this disease.  Recent discoveries by the CDC have led to the information that the plague is, in fact, carried by rodents currently living in the United States. If you plan on going camping in the Midwest at any point, avoid the chipmunks. Other animals to avoid include marmots, groundhogs, woodchucks, and anything in the Family Sciuridae.

Seasonal Influenza: Over the past decade (2003-2013), the CDC has reported somewhere around 55,065 deaths from the seasonal flu. This is mostly due to the fact that people in the United States aren’t taking precautions like staying away from people when they’re sick or getting a vaccine (for those who can get one without risking serious harm to themselves). Due to the nature of the flu, the number of cases reported is not recorded on the CDC website, but it probably numbers in the high millions. Yes, you are more likely to catch the flu and die than to have the same thing happen with Ebola.

Whooping Cough: According to the CDC website, somewhere between 10 and 40 thousand new cases of whooping cough are reported each year, contributing to the 16 million cases a year reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO’s figures also put the death toll per year at somewhere around 195,000 people. In 2010, over 27,000 cases of whooping cough were reported in the United States. Most of the cases reported in the United States were due to the fact that some people refuse to vaccinate their children for the basic things like the flu, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and other easily preventable diseases and illnesses.

Tuberculosis (TB): In 2013, 9,852 verified cases of TB were reported in the United States.  Around the world, nine million cases are reported a year, and about 1.3 million people die.  Tuberculosis is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world (the CDC and WHO estimate that about one-third of the world’s population has or has had TB). There are currently two categories of TB–latent and disease (one is incubating in a host body, and the other is an active agent)–active around the world. Both categories have drug treatment programs that can prevent the spread of the disease or kill it before it becomes active. However, if not treated, TB will be fatal and spread.

Malaria: Malaria is currently one of the deadliest illnesses in the world, caused by a parasitic infection of a Plasmodium parasite (transmitted by mosquitos). The WHO estimates that approximately 207 million cases of malaria exist around the world, and roughly 627,000 deaths occurred. The CDC reports that 97 cases of transfusion-transmitted malaria have occurred in the United States between 1963 and 2011, although there was a 40-year high reported in 2011, topping out at 1925 reported cases. The CDC also reports that somewhere between 1,500-2,000 people, mostly travelers, have caught malaria while abroad.

Now, about Ebola…

How fair is Fair Trade?

The fairness of Fair Trade coffee is debatable.

At the core of the Fair Trade ideal is the idea that coffee farmers should receive a fair price for the coffee they grow and export, without having to deal with shady middlemen or corporations that would exploit them.

The purpose of the various Fair Trade organizations around the world–the majority of which are part of Fairtrade International umbrella organization–is to ensure that growers are paid a fair market price for the goods they provide, along with ensuring that regulations against child and forced labor are followed.

Despite the alleged good that Fair Trade organizations do, there are major downsides present within the system itself, such as what the growers actually make, what the consumers are charged, and the fact that Fair Trade is, at its heart, a marketing organization with a good angle, among other problems too numerous to discuss in a short space.

The price of a bag of Fair Trade certified coffee can range as high as $30 a pound, while a pound of coffee from Maxwell House costs about $5 a pound after sales tax. The average subsidy for a grower in a Fair Trade certified commune per pound of coffee produced is about $2.35 ($1.50 on the general subsidy, plus an extra $0.80 for the market pricing).

For an $8 bag of Fair Trade coffee (one pound), this works out to a 3.4 percent mark-up. For a $30 bag of Fair Trade certified, the mark-up is closer to 13 percent.

While the markup on the price of coffee doesn’t sound like it’s too high, other costs have to be taken into consideration: Fair Trade co-ops need a lot of money to run smoothly; infrastructure to transport the coffee is a general requirement, and Fair Trade practices require adequate housing and other standards, all of which are outlined in Fairtrade International’s 31-page book of coffee-related and general standards.

All of this adds up to a large amount of money put towards development. At the end of the day, the average take per pound of coffee per farmer works out to be closer to $0.20 to $0.30 a pound in wages.

Mark-ups and price-wage discrepancies aside, the question still remains of impact and the efficacy of fair trade. According to Fairtrade International, Fair Trade practices reduce poverty among coffee growers and reduce the negative impact of growing coffee on the environment.

Looking at FTI financial records, though, brings more discrepancies to light: for each pound of Fair Trade certified coffee sold, Fair Trade International (or the organization under their umbrella) makes $0.10 in licensing fees.

Given the already-low wages, it starts to seem as though coffee growers would be better off working with companies not following Fair Trade standards, especially given that no impact studies have been conducted with enough conclusive evidence to prove that Fair Trade standards work in even the most basic terms.

How fair is Fair Trade?

“Talk Dirty”: From mutual respect to no respect

The Balkan Beat Box is a very unique and highly acclaimed band that takes elements, both traditional and modern, from many cultures to create their sound.  Their musical influences include Klezmer, Balkan, Gypsy Punk, Electronica and Middle Eastern Traditional music.

They collaborate with musicians from many places and backgrounds. While most of their music is fun dance-type music, it also includes commentary on society and political issues. They try to make everyone aware of how power works in the world, and the effects of money on politics. They work hard to promote peace and understanding in the Middle East and all around the world.

Sadly most people do not know The Balkan Beat Box exists. They do know some of their music however. Jason Derulo samples the Balkan Beat Box’s song “Hermetico” in the popular song “Talk Dirty”. To put it lightly, this song does not stand for the same things that The Balkan Beat Box does. The song is instead racist, misogynistic and promotes behavior that is highly questionable.

“Talk Dirty” is about how the singer has sex with multiple women while traveling abroad. Derulo does not act very respectfully towards these women.  For example in the song he says, “Sold out arenas, you can suck my penis… Got it saved in my phone under ‘Big Booty’.” These lyrics clearly show that he is not respecting the women that he is interacting with. He does not even call the girl “she”, instead calling her “it”.

The song also includes the line at the end “What? I don’t understand!” This line is said by an infantilized, stereotypically Asian sounding woman, and the racist way this line is presented is troubling. But this line and other lines like it in the song are troubling for another reason.  How can these women who don’t even understand what Derulo is saying be consenting to performing sexual acts with him?

Consent is vital to any sexual interaction and the most important thing when getting consent is verbal communication and a clear understanding of what each party is agreeing to. Without this understanding and verbal communication, consent cannot be given, which means that the interactions taking place in this song should be classified as rape.

I recently heard “Talk Dirty” being used at a Chatham event by a group of Chatham women and this saddened me deeply. I hope that in the future we will all take a moment to consider what kind of messages are in the songs that we choose to promote or even listen to.

Whether the songs are taking something from another culture and using it poorly or they are talking about women in a degrading manner it is important for us here at Chatham to choose our entertainment in a conscious manner. What we each do affects the world. Let’s make that effect a positive one.