Another need-to-get-it-off-my-chest-post. Feel free to skip if you dislike rants; it’s only very mildly constructive.

I’ve lost track of how many people have quoted this study to me as being a fun and telling way to characterise gendered languages. For those of you not familiar with it, it’s a study by a Stanford professor which says that people “gender” nouns: that if a table is feminine you will give it feminine characteristics like elegance, beauty; and a masculine bridge will get described as sturdy and strong, which are masculine traits.

OK.

As someone who speaks two gendered languages (one of them as a native), one non-gendered language, and is starting to make inroads into a second non-gendered language… NPR is giving you a false idea of how gender in gendered languages work (I have no idea what the original actual research is; this being the NPR report version, which I suspect distorts the truth). And I’m not denying that language shapes thought, or that genders are completely neutral in gendered languages: for instance, most animal names are male, and I have a devil of a time thinking of a goat as other than female (it’s “la chèvre” in French, which is feminine).

But I do have several issues with that taking that article at face value, and particularly in generalising those results to every single word. The first one is that this concept of “gender characteristics” sounds very much like something that a long-standing Anglophone speaker would come up with: a lot of Anglophones I’ve met have been fascinated by the idea of giving gender to nouns, but in a very odd way. No, I don’t think of a table as female. I think of it as gramatically feminine, which is a different beast. There is a difference–yes, they’re not totally dissociated concepts, but there is one.
Also–I’ve had a chance to interact with US mainstream culture for a while, and it’s struck me that it puts a lot of accent on gender separation and gender proper roles, which is again, fairly compatible with this kind of ideas. We’ve also been discussing this elsewhere with J. Cheney and Chris Kastensmidt, but there’s a whole “anthropomorphising” complex at work in English: Anglophones (or at least USians, I don’t know about UK people) are actually more likely to anthropomorphise their vehicles, computers and cars–giving them names and genders; and referring to them by those names. By contrast, French (and, it looks like, Portuguese) will look at you very oddly if you keep referring to your nice masculine computer. The French language is grammatically gendered, sure; but to all intents and purposes, gender is a dead attribute when it comes to most everyday things.

The other issue I have is with the notion of “gender characteristics”–I’m sorry, but though there are common points between the way cultures view male vs. female, there are also a heck of a lot of differences. People’s perception of “idealised” gender characteristics strongly depends on the culture/language. Very simple example: in France (or in most of the West), a manly man is someone who is strong, and generally good at sports. This is emphatically not the case in traditional Chinese or Vietnamese culture, where a manly man is slender and thin, educated, has beautiful long nails, and can compose beautiful poetry. [1] Puts another spin on the “lone hero”, doesn’t it?

You don’t even have to move that far: where I live in France, it’s usually considered very feminine to be always touching and kissing (on the cheeks) and hugging. Go to Spain and watch a couple of guys from that perspective, and they’ll still seem like a bunch of sissies, because Southern Europe cultures are very tactile.

And another thing… some of the most intensely gender-separated cultures (China and Vietnam, sorry, using what I know, and my repertoire isn’t large, but it will suffice for this) have non-gendered languages, where only the pronouns are gendered. So the gender of people is not the gender of words, and vice-versa.

The study doesn’t mention who they picked as tests subjects, either, but considering that it took place in the US, it’s making me wonder if the German and Italian speakers were pure native speakers with no second language, or if everyone had been immersed in US language and US culture for a while (I strongly suspect the latter). Whatever the case, it certainly looks like the aforementioned speakers got their “perceived genders” classified according to an American perception of gender. So, hum… sceptical, to say the least?

So, please, please, pretty please… do not tell me about the feminine table or the masculine computer? Gendered languages don’t work the way NPR would have you think.

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[1]A fun one is that long hair is usually considered a feminine and weak attribute today, at least in my social circles in France; but in Ancient China, wearing hair long wasn’t a particularly big deal–in fact, when the Vietnamese and Chinese first met, the Chinese thought the Vietnamese were Barbarians, because the men dared to cut their hair)

Hum, OK. Mostly I went to see this movie because friends dragged me, because it would normally be pretty low on my list of things to watch. I have to say, before we get into the snark, that the spirit of it (the ridiculous caper, casual adaptation of history to suit the plot and general sense of fun) would actually have pleased Dumas quite a bit, I think. Also, I didn’t expect to quite like Matthew Macfadyen quite that much in the role of Athos (way better than Kiefer Sutherland in the Disney 1993 version).

Now that the good is out of the way…

Well, it would have been nice if the movie hadn’t quite been so ridiculous, or quite so predictable–or, indeed, quite so creative with, you know, actual French history and geography? I don’t know where the French court is supposed to be, and clearly the movie is in a state of terminal hesitation as to whether it should be the Louvre or Versailles (the placement with regards to Paris sort of looks like a badly located Louvre, but the actual shots suggest Versailles). Which is interesting considering that Versailles was a nice hunting lodge in the middle of the woods at the time Louis XIII was on the throne.
Also, about those nice opening shots on dark green hills with huge, twisted trees that have seen many winters? All I have to say is: Gascony. As in, south of France. Sun-drenched, mild winters, wonderful light, all that is patently missing from said shots. (I think this was shot in Bavaria, and boy, does it show).
And finally, I do want to point out that “musketeers” means one definite thing that the scriptwriters chose to completely ignore: a “musketeer” is a guy with a musket. Someone who used the very first (and admittedly unreliable) firearms of French warfare. You do NOT get to present musketeers as some kind of nostalgic uber-swordsmen set aside by the march of progress. They’re not that. They were never that, and the original novel is indeed pretty clear on the fact that musketeers are called to the war front at La Rochelle, and that they must have their equipment, which includes the firearms.

Other than that… The movie was full of the usual Hollywood conceits that realism should be thrown out the window in the service of good storytelling (whatever that means): I’m sorry, but you cannot swim in the canals of Venice, and then fire crossbows in the minute that follows (your weapon mechanism is probably completely clogged by then). You do not plummet from admidst cloud-cover height into the sea and survive: at this altitude, the sea is going to hit you like a concrete block. For that matter, you do not swim in full court clothes (which would have included very cumbersome underwear in addition to all the frills).
I’ll skip over the usual casting of the Cardinal as the villain plotting to take over France, all the skimpy fan-service that the script parades in the person of Milady, because it’s only predictable from that kind of movie (if really sad); but I’ll admit some final puzzlement as to what the heck all the maps and little figurines were doing in the movie? They were grossly inaccurate in most cases (bonus points especially for the “presentation” of the European politics just after the title roll, which wins a prize for getting absolutely nothing right of the 1625-1633 geopolitics), and they made the movie look like it was made by a really clueless Warhammer adddict.

But that’s not the worst thing. No, the worst thing is the last five minutes or so of the movie, which promise a sequel.

Excuse me while I go tear my hair out, and start a search of a decent movie adaptation of the novel… (any recs welcome, btw. I could use good movies)

I have to say, any book which describes Paris’s 13e arrondissement as the Mecca for Chinese products, and sends you to minuscule grocery shops to find “typically” Vietnamese supplies is… not that well informed?
(you can find Chinese products in the 13e arrondissement, but the vast majority of things on the shelves is Vietnamese or Thai, and there are loads of Vietnamese doing their shopping in the big 13e arrondissement supermarkets. If it’s Chinese and not particularly used in Southeast Asian cusine–unlike, say, oyster sauce or hoisin sauce–you’re going to have a heck of a time looking for it in most of the food shops. Case in point, fermented bean paste).

So… probably not a good idea to believe the book when it tackles Lebanese food or Mexican stuff in Paris, then.

Current mood: vastly sarcastic and/or disappointed. Not sure yet.

There has been a lot of debate on the internet about the ethics of ebook piracy, a lot of which boiled down to “piracy is stealing”. I’m not saying I disagree with that, but…

Well, you should check out this links roundup from troisroyaumes over on dreamwidth, which is a little more measured. Specifically, it focuses on problematic issues with intellectual property rights seen the Western way. The part that especially resonates with me, book-wise (but there’s more here than that), was people discussing the availability of books (whether physical or electronic) in developing countries, and their price–which is a not-insignificant part of the problem. I’ve always thought that asking people to pay US prices for books or DVDs was ridiculous: take Vietnam, where the average salary is 50$. With that, if you’re lucky, you can buy maybe two English hardbacks? (and I’m being nice here, because I’m assuming said hardbacks aren’t subject to import duties). As qian points out, in Malaysia, an imported English book can cost 7-8 times the price of a meal, and getting it is a terrible hassle. I can see why it would give her the unpleasant feeling that “in almost every case, the author is not even contemplating that somebody like you will be reading it. You quite simply do not exist in their world.”

I’m already getting that impression of being ignored from all those ebook piracy posts–and I live in a developed country with high salaries, reasonable access to English-language books (amazon, book depository, few or no import taxes). I can imagine how much freaking worse it would be for people in developing countries.

ETA: fantasyecho has a further links roundup–some overlaps, but there are a few not in the original DW post. Like the earlier one–don’t agree with anything, but a lot of points are definitely worth taking into account.

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Also, one of those linked posts has a very valid point, which is that “illegal” is not a synonym for “immoral”. A lot of those blog posts about piracy don’t make a clear distinction between those two words. “illegal” is what the state thinks is bad. “immoral” is what you think is bad according to personal ethics–and if it’s exactly the same as “illegal” for you, no more, no less, you’re demonstrating a scary amount of trust in your government…

If you’re going to design armour for characters, can I point out that the primary use of armour is to protect your vitals–and by vitals, we’re including things like “organs within the torso”, but also more sneaky things like arteries? Aka, the brachial artery, which is pretty close to the skin in both upper arms, and the femoral artery, which is also pretty close to the skin in the upper part of the thigh?

Which why armour like this, which fails to protect either upper arms or thighs, is, er, pretty much useless? (it’s a bit blurry, but if you want to check it into all its glory, go to the full trailer here and flash forward to around 3:00)

(I’m not a big fan of sexy armours for female characters, for obvious reasons, but if they absolutely have to be sexy, can they pretend to be useful as well?)
(and yes, I’m aware lightsabers cauterise wounds almost instantly, making it unlikely the Sith is going to burst her artery. Please don’t get me started on the (lack of) worth of lightsabers as weapons)

So, if I have the choice between:
-item 1: ebook for the Kindle, 7 euros. DRM-protected, MOBI format , found only after extensive search (amazon turned out to be the only seller I’ve found which would take my French money for this particular ebook). Can be lent to friends exactly once in the entire lifetime of the book. And, of course, my ebook reader doesn’t read MOBI, so we’re looking at cracking the DRM on my own ebook and converting it to epub via Calibre, probably losing a lot in the process (and, er, not exactly doing legal things, even though I wouldn’t be distributing the de-DRMed ebook).

-item 2: physical book. 5.50 euros including P&P. Fully owned by yours truly, lendable to whom I feel like it, as many times as possible. Can be dropped in the bath, lost in transit, etc.

What on earth makes you think I’m going to pick item 1 over item 2, exactly?

(yes, I know, item 1 takes up less space. But also can be lost when my hard disk crashes)

In other, less ranty news, I am now a proud subscriber to the digital edition of Locus, and it rocks. No more waiting a full month to get it, no more lost issues–and way cheaper than the international subscription for something I don’t keep around anyway (and before you ask, it comes in epub format, without DRM).

So, apparently there’s a series of books about Genghis Khan and his descendants, written by Conn Iggulden . The first book was released in the UK as Wolf of the Plains, which is nicely evocative.

In America, they’ve titled it Genghis: Birth of an Empire. Just, you know, in case you don’t get it’s about Genghis Khan, or if you don’t have a clue who this guy named Genghis Khan was and that he would later rule one of the greatest empires in the world…

*headdesk*

…if you’re going to put foreign words into an English book/movie/etc., can you please make sure the aforementioned foreign words are actually part of the language you’re purporting to transcribe?

Because, let me tell you, reading or hearing French that fails to take into account the most basic grammar (as in, gender of words and/or article use) doesn’t fill me with glee and enthusiasm.

(we can then move on to poor word choices, but I’m willing to cut a little more slack here, even though those things tend to sound like nothing a Frenchman would ever say).

Current mood:

cranky

So we’re watching Farscape season 4, which definitely has its ups and downs–and we’d be more in the downs right now. Among my (many) sources of irritation is the way Crichton refers to the child Aeryn is carrying as “my child, my DNA”–which is so darn utterly selfish.

Why on earth is it so difficult to acknowledge that the being in Aeryn’s womb belongs to both of them?

And it’s struck me, even as I was ranting against this, that there are an awful lot of series/movies which feature precisely that trope: the male character finds out he’s going to be a dad, and runs after the woman while continuously referring to the future child as his and his only. Way to respect the mother, dude.

Current mood:

angry

Well, more like a rant… Loved episode 1 to bits, but in general I have the feeling this episode was a little under par. Also, it had a number of massive issues around its depictions of Chinese–the sheer number of movies featuring a powerful Chinese sect (somewhat Triad-like) is really annoying, and it’s a shame this episode doesn’t buck the trend. Let’s not even mention the clichés of the Chinese girl obsessed with the tea ceremony or the eeevil Triad (sorry, sect) pillaging the riches of its own country. Yeah, right.

I have the same problem with the Triads intruding in the UK as I have with the Russian mafia or the Colombian drug-lords in thrillers: behind a premise like that, there’s a strong subtext of “oh, we were doing fine until those *people* started bringing their own criminality over. Really, all British citizens are fine. It’s just foreigners who bring their dirty laundry”. And I thought it was particularly noticeable in that episode, especially given the poor characterisation of the Chinese.

And for once, Sherlock is painfully slow on the uptake–I don’t know any Chinese, but my first reflex on seeing those symbols would have been “some Asian language, probably derived from Chinese” (yes, they’re numbers from an obsolete system, but some of the signs, like the “one” sign, definitely have a familiar component…).

Oh, and yeah–the big bad General Shan looked about as Chinese as me or you. I could be wrong, but I’d have pegged her as some kind of South-East Asian (Thai or Vietnamese, I think, but I can’t find the actress’ name to check). Kind of undercut her seriousness as the top person of the eeevil Chinese sect.