We needs must have music :)

The Cars ....

Wonder Woman: the book

My latest book borrowed from the public library is Wonder Woman: The Official Movie Novelization by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Holder. I haven't seen the movie yet so while I'm waiting for the DVD I thought I'd get a head start. Though I haven't seen the film, I did see and review Batman v Siperman in which Wonder Woman was introduced and I thought Israeli actress, Gal Gadot did a really good job in the role. There's been a lot in the news about the film and whether it is feminist or not. I will withhold judgement until I see the movie and instead write here about how the story deals with the Amazons.

When I was in college I took some classes in Greek history, philosophy, and literature, and I really liked Greek mythology, so it was interesting to hear that Wonder Woman is supposedly an Amazon .... I read almost no DC comics as a kid and never read any of Wonder Woman, so her story and background are all new to me. I had to do a little Wikipedia research and boy was the background of the Wonder Woman character weird ;) ....

Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston (aka Charles Moulton) who was a psychologist at Tufts University, among other things. He carried on a ménage à trois, living together with his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, a Brit attorney/psychologist, and also with his student, Olive Byrne, who was the daughter of Ethel Byrne, a early feminist and the sister of Margaret Sanger with whom she opened the country's first contraception clinic. And they all had kids together.

One of Marston's favorite pet theories was that bondage was a good thing for women. He said ...

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.

I know I said I wasn't going to opine on the feminism issue but I've got to at least say that a predatory professor and polygamist who is into submissive women is not my idea of a feminist. But the effort is already underway to make him a feminist icon, with a movie about him and his oh so very liberated women (snort ;) ... Professor Marston & the Wonder Women. But I wanted to address the Amazon issue, not the feminist issue (yet). The professor may have been good at psychology but he and later writers at DC comics were not very reliable when it came to the Amazons.

SPOILERS AHEAD ....

The Wonder Woman story has her as the daughter of top god Zeus and the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. Supposedly the Amazons were created by Zeus to protect mankind from the god of war, Ares, who was jealous of humanity. Ares kills all the other gods but Zeus and Zeus gives the Amazons a secret weapon to use against Ares. The secret weapon turns out to be Wonder Woman herself, who ends up destroying Ares.

But this is nothing like what we have been told of the Amazons in Greek literature. They were a band of warrior women, perhaps based on real women but probably mythical, who were ruled by Hippolyta, the daughter of Ares. The Amazons had no special mission to protect mankind from Ares or anyone else.

There were Amazons at the battle for Troy and Hippolyta shows up in the tale of Heracles' labors, but she didn't have a demi-god daughter with Zeus (come on, he was her grandpa), she instead had a son with the hero Theseus, for love of whom she left the Amazons. Sad story, actually ... everybody dies A couple of pretty good novels about Theseus which touche on this - The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea.

So anyway, the Wonder Woman story is only in the tiniest sense based on Greek mythology, but that doesn't mean I won't find it to be a good and perhaps even feminist film .... looking forward to seeing it, and I'll write more about it then.

Cardinal Pell appears in court

Cardinal George Pell showed up in court today in Australia ...



More: A First: Cardinal Pell Appears in Australian Court on Sexual Charges

I will watch this case with interest as I've been an anti-fan of Pell's for years due to his attack on the primacy of conscience, his hand in the terrible missal translation, and his bad treatment of sex abuse victims (see here for details). The Pope hired Pell for very important jobs at the Vatican even while knowing of his bad reputation, and when members of his own sex abuse commission asked Francis to remove Pell, he refused .... another sign of the Pope's disinterest in fixing the sex abuse problem.

What's up?

I haven't been posting as much lately for a number of reasons. I've had some health issues and also worries about the house, the cats, and finances. And then Sitemeter retired its site, and you'd be surprised at how hard it is to write blog posts when you no longer can see proof that anybody ever visits the blog.

I haven't posted much lately about religion either because, I must admit, Catholicism seems more and more irrelevant to me. For more than 20 years I have hoped and waited for the church to evolve, even in some small way, on the issues of women priests, sex abuse, marriage equality, contraception/abortion, mandatory celibacy, wealth redistribution, etc.. Nothing has really changed, not even under Pope Francis, and in fact he has done little but double down on most issues.

It makes me sad - I have really come to respect some of the guys in the church ... William Barry SJ, John Dear SJ, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Tom Doyle OP .... but at the end of the day they are just individuals within a despotism that has marginalized some of them and has forced out others for speaking up for sex abuse victims, for women, for peace. Those who prosper in the church now are the moderate/conservative buddies of the guy on top, like Antonio Spadaro, SJ. The church is reminding me a little too much lately of our political situation.

But I will still continue to post about the stuff that matters to me .... movies, books, music, politics, animals and the environment, history and philosophy, and religion too. I just need to cheer up a bit.

Kittens

Remember the kittens I mentioned weeks ago who turned up in my yard? They're still here. If I could only catch them, my sis would give us a ride to the County shelter where they hopefully could find homes. Unfortunately, I'm totally inept at catching them, so they're still here, quickly growing past the adoptable age. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if there were not already so many cats living in the yard.

Here's Marie and one of her babies ...



The two white kittens are wrestling ...



Two of three (I think) stripey kittens ...

The Young Pope

This week's DVD rental was The Young Pope, a 10 episode English-language Italian tv series from HBO. It stars Jude Law (Gattaca, Enemy at the Gates, A.I.), Diane Keaton, James Cromwell, and Sebastian Roché.

The story begins as Lenny Belardo (Law) has just been elected pope. Abandoned by his parents at a Catholic orphanage as a boy, Lenny was raised by Sister Mary, grew up to become a priest under the mentoring of NY Archbishop Spencer (Cromwell), and then archbishop and cardinal. The conclave of cardinals chooses him as the first American pope because they believe he is nondescript and malleable, but instead they find he is a ruthless and damaged autocrat who does not really believe in God.

I haven't watched much HBO stuff because its shows are notorious for treating women characters like things (HBO Slammed For Sexual Violence Against Women in Its Shows), and so far this show seems to have more than it's share of unpleasant sexual encounters. I'm still watching but it isn't a show I'd ever want to revisit.

But, it's interesting from a Catholic point of view to see a facsimile of what the Vatican is like and how it's run .... the show had the help of Vatican experts. The sets and costumes are very nice and the cinematography is nice too.

Here's the title sequence of the show (from episode 3) with the pope walking past a line of famous paintings. As he walks, a little comet (or the holy spirit?) proceeds him through the paintings, bringing the characters and things within them to life. For some reason the video clip doesn't show all the animation in the paintings, only just a bit (see the the fire burning in the last painting, The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre?), but if you watch the series, you'll get the whole effect. And in the background plays the tune of Jimi Hendrix' Watchtower ...



Here's a look behind the scenes ...

More on Cardinal Pell

From the editorial board at The New York Times: The Vatican’s Failure in the Abuse Scandal

For all of Pope Francis’ deserved acclaim in leading the Roman Catholic Church to new directions, he is failing badly on his promise to address the child abuse scandal at the crucial level where ranking churchmen systematically protected priests who raped and molested children.

His failure to confront the problem was underlined last week when the pope had to grant one of his closest advisers, Cardinal George Pell of Australia, a leave of absence from the Vatican to answer multiple charges of sexual assault in Melbourne.

Until now, Francis stood by Cardinal Pell, the Vatican treasurer, even after the cardinal admitted to a special Australian investigation last year that the church had made “enormous mistakes” in responding to the scandal while he was a ranking archbishop .....

Meanwhile, Cardinal Pell, who has left Rome, is seen taking a break at an ice cream cafe in Singapore (Cardinal George Pell spotted in Singapore en route to Australia) ...

Photos from the yard

July 4th - still hating fireworks

UPDATE: it's almost midnight and the fireworks continue in my neighborhood, including the illegal cherry bombs tossed in front of the house. The terrified cats are hiding somewhere in the yard. The little kittens I've been trying to catch in the backyard must be both deaf and insane by now. I hate fireworks and I hate the jerks who abuse them.

On the 4th of July I usually write about how much I hate fireworks ... they scare animals and birds, and they pollute the air, cause a fire hazard, and and seem to be some people's method for harassing others. It's not just me who doesn't like them - Jesi master Luke Skywalker feels the same ...

HAPPY 241st BIRTHDAY AMERICA-Enjoy your family, BBQs & homemade pies but remember: Animals HATE fireworks!!! #ScaryBoomBoomTime #ForceOfJuly pic.twitter.com/tlOnk3I1K4

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) July 4, 2017