favorite whines

have been on our mind recently...friends from New York have imported this joke...I do a lot of whine control in my everyday life and don't really have time to whine anymore although I used to, but all of this made me think about how a lot of the feminist/personal empowerment movement is about mobilizing the favorite whine into activism. Like, instead of saying, "he never takes me seriously..." whine, whine, whine, it suddenly became, "HE DOESN'T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY and this is a political issue." The problem with this political transformation of the whine is that it still assumes, a priori, that one deserves to be taken seriously as a matter of entitlement, rather than that being taken seriously must be earned. Now lest you all think that I have gone entirely the way of the stiff upper lip, think about the impossibility of the revolutionary whine!

By the way, we watched The Departed last night and what a mess of a movie. Heavy Handed, Excessive, Messy and Out of Control are understatements, but it opened in a promising manner, hearkening back to the anti-busing racism of Boston's 1960s with incredible soundtrack and documentary footage -- I thought it was going to be one of these incredible meditiations on class conflict, racism and violence, and then it turns into an inditement of one man, a "rat." No more black figures make it onscreen after we see a wee little lassie's face framed in a school bus while angry Irish Americans pelt her with eggs and insults. Scorcese has lost it...but best of all was his imaginary "professional woman" as police psychiatrist.

I think he needs to get out more.