The Neo-Puritans Of Intersectionality And What You Can And Cannot Ask Michelle Pfeiffer
Intersectionality is a sort of victim olympics that's become a secular form of religion -- of the very, very fundamentalist variety.
Under the dictates of intersectionality and the various forms of po-mo bullshit-think that go with, there are just certain tacitly agreed upon things that people are no longer allowed to say -- that is, if they want to avoid having a virtual mob come down on them.
In short, we're now living in a giant ongoing neo-Salem Witch Trial, except the witch burnings are figurative -- on Twitter, social media, and sometimes in news articles. Well, actually, they're figurative at first...until somebody loses their job and reputation -- often over a supposed social crime that should be nothing of the sort.
Disturbingly, I came home on Friday night from the LA Times Festival of Books to (uh-oh) see Jesse Kornbluth mentioned in a friend's tweet...a social psychologist whose path would ordinarily not be crossing with Jesse's, who's an author, journalist, and screenwriter.
Jesse taught at NYU and was editorial director of AOL for a bunch of years. I don't know him super-well, but I have known him for probably 30-some years and I know him enough to feel strongly that he's a good guy.
I got worried and got Googling.
Turns out he'd moderated a panel about "Scarface" and asked what is an absolutely normal, acceptable question -- about an actor who'd lost a bunch of weight to play a role.
Only...there was a problem: It was a female actor. And the Morality Police of Intersectionality (and their minions in the general public) do not allow questions about a woman's weight.
That question Jesse asked-- reported by Hunter Harris at (the rather thematically correct Vulture.com, with video at the link):
"As the father of a daughter, I am concerned with body image. In the preparation for this film, what did you weigh?"
Rather paternalistically!!... (because, ironically, if there's anything intersectionality is, it's that), somebody from the crowd called out to Pfeiffer, "You don't have to answer that!"
Pfeiffer, an adult woman who doesn't seem to need volunteer conversation topic minders in the audience, ignored that person and replied:
"Well, okay. I don't know. I was playing a cocaine addict, so that was part of the physicality of the part, which you have to consider. You know, the movie was only supposed to be a three- or four-month shoot. I tried to time it so that as the movie went on, I became thinner and thinner, and more emaciated. The problem is, it ended up going six months," Pfeiffer continued. "I was starving by the end. The one scene, the end of the film, where I was thinnest, it was always next week, then next week, [and so on]. I literally had members of the crew bringing me bagels because they were worried about how thin I was getting. I was living on tomato soup and Marlboros."
Pfeiffer's tone suggests that she wasn't upset about the question -- in fact, she laughed a little while talking about the ongoing weight loss.
And never mind that a man would be asked a similar question and nobody would say two words about it afterward.
However, intersectionality is big on denying science -- and especially the mountain of research, across cultures, that finds that men prioritize physical attractiveness in a partner.
Of course, the best form of denial is to shut down absolutely any speech that relates to a woman's looks -- no matter whether that speech is absolutely appropriate (and, again, the sort of question a man would be asked without remark).
In short, the world has gone mad, infantile, and idiotic, and Jesse Kornbluth is a good guy who did nothing wrong.
I dug up Jesse's email address and wrote to him late Friday night to express exactly that sentiment. (As somebody who's been the recipient of a number of Internet mobbings, I found that even tiny messages of support or "Sorry you're going through this" meant a great deal.)
And finally, it is a kind of woman I never want to be who cannot hear a question about a woman's weight (a question totally appropriate when a woman loses weight for a role) without turning into a hysterical shrew calling for the interviewer's head on a pike.
Read Jesse's blog post about this here.
"Into the Night" is the best Pfeiffer movie. It's horrible.
I love it. It has David Bowie in it. And Bruce McGill as Elvis.
Don't rent it, you'll be disappointed. It was great.
Crid at April 22, 2018 10:35 PM
I think I saw that. Uh, no.
It sounds insane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(film)
So, Cridster, disappointing good or bad?
Amy Alkon at April 22, 2018 11:10 PM
Honestly bad. It was Landis' 1985 reputation-recovery project after the Twilight Zone atrocity. It's basically a TV movie-of-the-week. It made L.A. look good, and it was fun to recognize the locations after moving here a couple years later.
Pfeiffer has always seemed to have a square appreciation for the absurdities of show business, and has understood how they do & don't correlate to audience desires... She made fun of her own "Russia House" wherein, at 32, she was love interest to the 60 year old Connery. And there was some interview at about that time where she spoke bluntly about getting to old for it, and knowing some older actresses who'd said to her, 'I'm going to get a facelift and tit-job and get another ten years out of this business.'
It would be a genuine surprise if Weinstein's (or anyone else's) predations had been a problem for her.
Crid at April 23, 2018 1:12 AM
The people who try to take away someone's livelihood for what they say are the people who would happily be prison guards in gulags.
Snoopy at April 23, 2018 4:22 AM
"In thinking about the extraordinary capitulation of our institutions to the self-avowedly radical, ‘subversive’ and altogether pernicious forces of Marxism and intersectionality, there is a temptation to see this development as the execution of a sinister plan. As anyone who has come into human contact with real academics would surely know, this narrative flatters their competence."
http://quillette.com/2018/04/22/the-incentives-for-groupthink/
Snoopy at April 23, 2018 4:38 AM
Just read the definition of Intersectionality. It's gobbledy gook. Looks like a bunch of words thrown together from the old game of "Mad libs." To be more direct, it's bullshit.
Jay at April 23, 2018 5:09 AM
The people who try to take away someone's livelihood for what they say are the people who would happily be prison guards in gulags.
Well-put.
And Jay, I once described po-mo stuff as what you would "write" if you threw a bag of cut-up pseudo-intellectual words on the floor and then picked them up and transcribed them to the page.
Amy Alkon at April 23, 2018 5:42 AM
Today's brittle women who've been dipped in "intersectionality" to get their victim badges, and their hyper-sensitive, feeling-her-pain male feminist fellow travelers, make Eric Cartman look like a disciplined and well-mannered little boy.
El Verde Loco at April 23, 2018 6:28 AM
Ironically, he was asking a question out of concern for the health of actors. Think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. There have been several movies where actors had to lose lots of weight. And the conversation totally wasn't about beauty.
Second irony, the very same people who are screaming at him probably do their best to look good when going on a date (excluding rad fems who do the opposite).
The desire to deny the sex instinct strikes me as very odd. Young men particularly are so struck by a girl in yoga pants that they will walk right into a lamp post. They get boners sitting in algebra class. The sex drive is overwhelmingly powerful. Men will actually study long hours so they can make money to get the girls--it drives the economy. But oh no, men should desire a girl totally for how woke she is...barf.
cc at April 23, 2018 8:08 AM
Such things are creeping into meatspace.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/20/far-left-protesters-target-nra-lobbyists-home/
But sometimes, they get invalid information.
Oops, indeed. And it'll go from standing outside and handing out flyers to more sinister acts.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 23, 2018 9:08 AM
Young men particularly are so struck by a girl in yoga pants that they will walk right into a lamp post.
Hi. And I'm not precisely "young".
I R A Darth Aggie at April 23, 2018 9:10 AM
I remember riding home from high school on my bike and running into the back of a parked car. I don't remember on which body part I was focusing, but I do remember that she was blonde.
Steamer at April 23, 2018 10:54 AM
The intimidation is nothing new IRA. I still remember a court order to the SEIU prohibiting them from activities ranging from throwing dog poop all the way to murder. Being a simple person I thought murder already being illegal should cover things. I guess I was naive.
Ben at April 23, 2018 11:23 AM
Intersectionality appears to make the people it covers into screechy, pathetic things who cannot take a direct question. Screw 'em. I'll be happy to avoid them. It's way too peopley outside, anyhow.
mpetrie98 at April 23, 2018 1:16 PM
The intimidation is nothing new IRA.
With the exception of the antifa rioting, such encounters lately haven't gotten too ugly. Sooner or later, such confrontations will eventually turn violent: someone will make a miscalculation as to how far they can go, and someone is going to get hurt. Or worse.
I'll be happy to avoid them.
Ah. You may not be interested in them, but they are interested in you.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 23, 2018 1:40 PM
The big unions are all part and parcel of this. And they've been violent for decades. They are still violent today. On college campuses where various activists have support they get violent as well. The pro-palestinian groups are one's I remember pulling stuff like this. I know there were others. And I was in Oklahoma, a fairly red state.
The key thing is almost all of them are cowards. If you push back or even use their own tactics against them they try to vanish.
Ben at April 23, 2018 2:55 PM
Someone should produce a spoof Film Noir movie about the Social Justice Warrior Mafia vs. reason & reality...
The Unemployables
Starring Amy Alkon as Ellie Ness
It's the story of free speech agent Ellie Ness, a cunning and determined defender of free speech who's agency, The Federal Bureau against Intersectionality, takes on the ruthless SJW mafia of The Evergreen State College.
The Godmother, Tenured Professor Naomi Caponella-Nishimoto Dean of women's studies and underwater pornographic basketweaving, leads the undworld realm of deceit and violence in silencing all who fail to ascribe to the SJW screed; transforming her young, shallow minded "Made Womyn" goons into unemployable malcontents who can only return to academia to perpetuate the mob.
Agent Ness fights against not only a corrupt, university system, but speaks for the right to wear a MAGA hat or possess a cap gun within a 100 yards of a school zone by a police officer or saying the words "Film Noir" without being accused of being a racist.
Darren Smith at April 23, 2018 9:27 PM
And yet Ness is tortured by the knowledge of a terrible secret....
Crid at April 23, 2018 9:37 PM
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