Autumnal list-based enthusiasm

In quite a stark contrast to my previous post (which you were all lovely about, you darlings), I thought I'd go for a lighter one this time. Also, I like listing things. Therefore: here are some lists of things that have been particularly excellent lately.

Five tip-top TV shows
Ah, autumn. It's so generous and thoughtful of the television networks to stack the schedules with fabulous shows when it's too cold to go outside.

The Hour

HEY EVERYONE, WATCH THIS SHOW. Series 2 started on Wednesday, and oh sweet lord how I have missed the magnificence of this programme. Set in a 1950s BBC newsroom, it follows Bel (Romola Garai) as head producer of a weekly news show, balancing her commitment to presenting the balanced truth with the pressures of management and the network's restrictions. Her frontman, Hector(Dominic West) is caught up in the whirlwind of new celebrity, while Freddie (Ben Whishaw) - sparky, irresponsible, idealistic journalist; Bel's right hand man, partner in crime, soulmate, etc.- is back from finding himself abroad, sweeping into a co-host role, giving The Hour back its zest.

Series one was staggeringly good - tense, smart, tuned-in, incredibly well-observed, and the three leads have the most preposterously brilliant chemistry. Series two adds to the mix Peter Capaldi as the enigmatic new Head of News Randall Brown (with a gloriously suggestive history with Anna Chancellor's fabulous Lix), and sexy lion* Tom Burke as Bel's rival producer. It's sumptously styled, gorgeously shot and staggeringly well acted, and basically you should all watch it, k?

Parks and Recreation

Anybody who knows me will most likely be sick of me evangelising about this show, but sweet lord it's just the most delightful, charming gift of a TV show - like sunshine distilled into 20 minute bursts. It follows the staff of the parks department of Pawnee city goverment, but basically just deals in awesome friendships, idealistic community work and heart-breakingly gorgeous relationships between adorable bureaucrats. What more could you want?

Fresh Meat

I can't believe I missed out on this show the first time around - I'd heard people taking about how great it was, but only got round to watching series one this month. Which, of course, I fell in love with and binge-watched with hideous speed, before moving onto series two. AT first I thought it was just a silly teen comedy show, but BAM there go the feelings, what with JP's posho daddy issues and everybody starting to lean on each other like a constructed family and oh god I just love these drunken idiots.

Elementary

Elementary is brilliant. It's not a Sherlock rip-off, and deserves none of the derision it has received from certain circles. It's a procedural, but it's smartly written and beautiful to look at. But, of course, the Holmes/Watson dynamic is what matters: and, oof, it's good. Lucy Liu's Watson is unapologeticly herself, taking none of Holmes' shit, and Holmes slowly starts to appreciate her instinct and emotion. Holmes himself is darker, more broken than other interperetations -- he's overwhelmed by his own mind; he's fragile and occasionally callous, but he's learning. Jonny Lee Miller is a marvel (and just preposterously good looking, it's gross).

Guys with Kids

A daft comedy about three dads and their kids? Yeah, it's hardly groundbreaking, but it's fun and sweet and, you guys, Jesse Bradford has a career! You can't imagine how happy this makes me - formative crush Jesse Bradford, on my telly once a week!

Runners up (aka. watch these things too): Modern Family (S4 is stellar so far); The Mindy Project (so charming!); New Girl (just keeps getting better); Me and Mrs Jones (don't talk to me about my Robert Sheehan thing).

Five earworms

McFly -- Love Is Easy. The perfect dreamy pop song (plus a wonderful video).

Charlene Kaye -- Hummingbird Heart. My favourite album track changes almost daily, and it's currently this.

Zooey Deschanel -- Who's That Girl? The sunniest song to ever exist.

The Reindeer Selection -- Whodunnit? Thrown my way by Ed, bringer of all the Scottish-accented goodies.

One Direction -- Kiss You. Shut up.

Five interesting and excellent articles/pieces of writing

Chelsea Fagan, 'I Will Always Care Too Much.

riotrite on Tumblr, 'Misandry Isn't Real, Dudez'

Jen Dziura, 'When Men Are Too Emotional To Have A Rational Argument'

Steven Thompson of NPR, on music snobbery.

Ryan O'Connell, 'The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your Twenties'

Five chunks of eye candy

Yeah, this wouldn't be a proper Hannah blog post without some mild objectification.

Jonny Lee Miller -- situation: critical. He keeps making faces like this and this and I am powerless.

Ben Whishaw -- sexy elf king, talented bastard to boot. Just the most wonderful actor.
Louis Smith -- sambaing me into incoherence. Thank God Sophie is here to share in the #winterofhypocrisy.

Jesse Bradford -- purveyor of formative sexy teeth cleaning; still as handsome and charming as ever.

Dylan O'Brien -- pushes every one of my buttons. Every. Single. One.

Five slices of all-round excellence

-- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A video-blog retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Bear with me: it's properly excellent, and everyone is charming and adorable. You'll get addicted, I promise you.

-- This photo of Obama and McKayla Maroney doing the unimpressed face. I just. Beautiful troll president!

-- These poems. Thanks, Sophie <3

-- Nobody hates Twilight more than Robert Pattinson: a roundup.

-- A 24-hour KITTEN CAM I shit you not.

*SUCH A SEXY LION.

On 'political correctness', and trying not to be a dick

"Rape culture is a culture in which people who have survived a violent crime are asked to laugh about it because other people think it’s funny" - Anon*

This post has been kicking around my head for a few months now, changing format and gathering ammo from the dozens of brilliant articles tackling similar issues (no doubt far more articulately than I will here). It's probably going to be full of mistakes and won't be by any stretch of the imagination conclusive, but I needed to try and write things out somehow.

A fair number of my friends take this piss out of me for being Politically Correct. Overly so, apparently. It's got to the point where people will introduce me with 'this is Hannah, she's really PC', and will say questionable things to try and get a rise out of me. Whatever, that's fine, I can deal with that. This blog post isn't a self-piteous "oh man, people are so mean to me when I try to do good, life is so hard", because that would be ridiculous. This is, I hope, my reasoning for being the way I am. I don't want a cookie or a gold star, nor do I deserve one; I just want to have some kind of coherent explanation.

I'm pretty sure political correctness is bullshit, as a concept. People frequently state that, when they're called out on questionable and problematic language, it's "political correctness gone mad", and the culture we live in today is too sensitive and people get offended too easily. BULLSHIT. As this excerpt explains far more eloquently than I can, I see the use of 'PC' language (i.e. not using terms that are racist, sexist, ableist, sizeist, ageist, classist, homo- or trans-phobic, plus other -ists I am no doubt forgetting**) is basically realising that, hey, these words are offensive, and maybe as a person in a privileged position I shouldn't be throwing them around willy nilly. It's not censorship, it's not a violation of freedom of speech, it's the world standing up for itself and asking not to be treated like shit.

Using these words perpetuates a culture in which it's okay to malign minorities; regardless of the intent behind the use of the word, its use still has an effect. Just because you say a word and 'don't mean it in that way' doesn't erase the cultural history of the word actually being meant in that way. Take the Ricky Gervais debacle -- Gervais insisted that his use of ableist terms was harmless, that he was reappropriating a word, that he didn't mean it as an insult. Nope: Gervais isn't in the position to reclaim a word's meaning, and regardless of how clear his own conscience is, it's still using an offensive term where you needn't, and by doing so, implicitly saying that it's okay to do so.

I read Richard Herring's blog post on the whole shebang and rejoiced as he explained my single, overarching opinion on this and similar matters: why not just NOT say the word? It's not a monumental fucking sacrifice to not use a term that a) has absolutely, unequivocally been offensive in the past and b) can and does remain offensive to some people in the present. Don't say it, use another word. It's not that hard. It's not hard AT ALL. We don't lose anything by not saying these words, by not making the inappropriate joke or generalisation, but we might gain an insight into what it's like to treat people fairly, and not contribute to the never-ending shitstorm that so many people face in everyday life.

The usual reaction to this kind of argument is 'but FREEDOM OF SPEECH, I am being CENSORED'. Your freedom to say the douchey thing remains entirely intact, but this does not entail a freedom to do so without people reacting to it, calling you out on it, or being offended. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, but I happen to think that 'don't be a dick' is a better #1 rule. Not being a dick is super easy, and in a small way might make the world a bit nicer - sounds pretty swell to me.

I found this online about two hours after making this post, and just had to add it. (source)

(I see the same argument all the time when people call out -isms in popular culture, too: "oh it's just a TV show/film/book, stop overanalysing it", as if the media culture with which we are saturated has no effect on what we think, say and do. BULLSHIT. Media doesn't exist in a vacuum. Culture matters. Representation matters. Not being a dick matters.)

A good deal of recent articles have dealt with this in reference to rape humour. This article on Jezebel - which I would quite like to etch permanently across the ozone so everyone can read it - articulates the same argument perfectly. See also the quote at the top of this article (when I first read that, it was like a punch in the gut). I have not been sexually assaulted, and therefore it would be twattish of me to joke about it, particularly knowing how frequent sexual assault is, and not knowing whether anybody in the vicinity might be a survivor. This is why jokes about abuse, Jimmy Savile hallowe'en costumes and casually using the word 'rape' in everyday conversation sucks - because the crime itself is a violent, hideous one and, for some people, hearing that could be horribly, horribly triggering and distressing. Same goes for other offensive speech terms.

JUST DON'T SAY IT. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

Oh god, the more I read this back, the more it really does look like I'm asking to be lifted on high for being morally superior. I promise that is not the case; white saviour-ing is patronising. By trying not to say certain words I'm not better, I'm just trying to be less of a dick - trying being the most important word. I am still a dick. I still use offensive terminology, I still laugh at inappropriate things, but I listen when people speak up, realise what a dick I've been and make an effort to stop. It's not miraculous behaviour, it's basic human decency. I'm not losing out, being censored, or sacrificing anything.

This article about the use of more savvy, less offensive symbols in British Sign Language explains things quite well, too, and highlights the final point of this whole business. Another reactionary argument is "well my [insert minority] friend says that all the time". So they should; as a person in a privileged position (white, middle class, straight, cisgendered) I don't have the right to tell a person in a minority how to behave, but they have the right to tell me, because they're the ones who have suffered. I don't know better, and they do. If someone in a minority isn't offended by a minority-specific term and wants to use it themselves, awesome, but if they are I'll change my behaviour. The onus of responsibility shouldn't be on the victim to not be offended, as suggested by some assholes; it should be on the person in the more powerful position, who is thankfully free from the weight of centuries of oppression to not perpetuate it***. Because it's not a sacrifice for us, it really isn't. It's easy.

It's tough when someone calls you out on being a dick. It sucks. But it sucks much less than constantly hearing offensive and cruel language that can just as easily be not said, and having to consistently explain why it sucks to hear/read such language. Just because you used a racist term doesn't make you a racist, but it also doesn't mean you can't listen when someone tries to explain why using the racist term is pretty awful anyway. So suck it up, say sorry, and make a bit of fucking effort to be less of a dick. 

And that's why I can be prickly, annoying, whiny, whatever you want to call me. I'm a dick, and I'm trying to be less of one.

"Using a word which you know to be politically or socially volatile, and then saying ‘pff, it’s just a word, cool down guys’ is a bit like letting off fireworks in the high street and going ‘hey, it’s just explosives, it’s not my fault if someone gets in the way’" - Mark Watson

[This post doesn't nearly cover everything I want it to, but hey if anybody wants to talk about this more, hit me up - talking things through is amazingly good at helping me realise exactly what my opinions are any why.]

EDIT: as a friend rightly pointed out, the original version of this post used the word 'lame', which is ableist language. I really am a dick. I've now removed it, and I am so sorry.

*and by 'Anon', I mean 'one of those quotes that circulates on tumblr so I don't know who said it first'. If you do, let me know and I shall happily credit it.

**And by PC language, what I DON'T mean is the ridiculous insistence that "you're not allowed to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep in schools any more" and othersuch straw man arguments. We all know those instances are absurd and rare, stop bringing them up.

***This explains things quite neatly. 

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A few more links that may prove interesting, and are related to this whole topic here, here, here, here, here and oh god there's thousands I can't link to them all but everything is super interesting and important and just read everything, k?

Baby's First Conference

WELL. I thought post-dissertation life would mainly involve luxuriating in front of the TV watching endless repeats of Murder She Wrote, but it turns out to be even busier than before!

Alongside PhD applications, conference abstracts, and discussing potential teaching opportunities, I have started a new job; I'm now Project Officer for the Temporal Co-ordination in Communication project run jointly by York and Cambridge universities. My role sounds far more fancypants than it actually is, but basically I am working on gesture and rhythm in speech, and analysing audio and visual data in various ways to investigate how participants negotiate communication using both their voices and bodies. It's SUPER interesting, and I'm enjoying it immensely - I learn about eight thousand new things a day, and working on an actual linguistics research project is the most amazing opportunity.

Wednesday saw my lovely bestie Becky visit Grand Old York, and we had a fabulous time getting spontaneous piercings, exploring the city and the Minster and such (I love any opportunity to go Full Tourist; despite living here for a year, it never gets boring), and kicking through bright autumn leaves like the big kids we are. Subsequently joined by Ed, we all later prepared my house for a Hallowe'en party which went off wonderfully*, with costumes ranging from the typical (ghosts, skeletons, etc.) through a-typical (Caeser, Alice Cooper), to the quite magnificent (a zom-bee, from an apiologist friend). My offering was Daphne from Scooby Doo**:

Jinkies

Following a fantastic few days (and a discombobulating trip around Illuminating York, which you honestly couldn't have thought up unless you were in some kind of trippy fever dream), a different Becky and I headed off to Manchester for the New Researchers Forum in Linguistics, where we would both be presenting our MA research.

I've never been to a conference before, let alone presented at one, so the whole experience was terrifyingly exhilarating. I learnt a staggering amount (with several of the talks being directly relevant to my work, which was incredible), met some truly wonderful people I very much hope to see again, and according to Sam, did my first conference 'properly' i.e. went out to the pub the night before giving my presentation.

My talk had run long every single time I did it, but I think the nerves of the day brought out my usual, jabbery self and I garbled my way through it just on time without missing out too many important points. Questions were helpful and not too intimidating, and people were wonderfully lovely about the whole thing. I know I have a tendency to a) ramble and b) flail about, so it's good to know people got the jist despite my ridiculousness.

Giving it my best presentation face (photo by Becky).

I think the best bit about the weekend was just being able to casually chat about, amongst other things, linguistics and language with like-minded, lovely folk who are just as keen-beany as I am. Glorious. I can see why conferences are so addictive!

One final thing that came from the weekend was a sprawling Twitter-based game of #linguistmovies, which spread into #linguistsongs, and got so fun I decided to collect everything together here - a page which will no doubt be constantly extended, as we continue to furiously procrastinate from our real work by making terrible/excellent puns. Hell yeah, linguists.

*even with the presence of a Jimmy Savile costume, despite my assurance that I wouldn't let anybody in if they were dressed up like him. Not big or clever, guys.

**I'm more of a Velma myself, but my hair is the right colour for Daph.