Back in Ameriskankland

After a long scream, I've made it back.

AUGH! It is HORRIBLE here! Oh God, AUGH! Everything looks strange and ugly and filthy! Sweet Jesus, kill me now!

Ahem.

Well, there'll be plenty of time for that later...

My grandmother's health is deteriorating. I've known about this for quite some time, but she's gotten quite a bit worse in the past half year. It's possible that she's going to die. And this is one of the reasons that I came back.

Incidentally, there is a piece of property that she used to live on before moving into her nursing home. It's a rather well-built house in the woods about an hour out of the city. It sits on 30-odd acres of property and is fairly isolated. It's an extremely nice house, actually. Not at all rickety, good-smelling, well-furnished with a big deck. There are also some deer living in the woods and at least one coyote, or so I've been told.

The nearest town is about 8 miles away and the driveway is about a quarter-mile long. It's a fairly good plot of land: it's got a half-acre pond full of fish, a vegetable garden, some fruit trees. One could live there fairly cheaply while being completely isolated from everything.

And you know what? If I wanted to, I could live there for the duration of my stay in the US. I mean, one of the reasons why I went to Japan was to get away from what I consider to be a rather toxic culture and an increasingly insane society. Maybe this will be another means for me to get away while I'm here? Just withdraw as much as humanly possible. It'll be a long commute, but it might be a good option for me to pursue.

Yeah. And maybe I could become a survivalist freak with crates of freeze-dried Spam stockpiled under the floorboards. Put-up concertina wire everywhere and refer to the house as a 'compound'. That would be cool.

So when Haruna arrives in the spring, I'll pitch the idea to her. She might like living there, she's long been interested in tending a big vegetable garden.

And if it helps to keep her away from certain corrupting influences, so much the better!

The Flight

The flight home started quite well. Off the Kuriles, I enjoyed a dry cabernet sauvignon from Chile. But over the Aleutians, I began to puke rather violently.

Not because of airsickness or turbulence but because the in-flight movie was The Princess Diaries 2: The Wedding. I don't know how I managed to survive such a tour-de-crap.

Aside from the camp and the sugary sickness and the tiresome pratfalls, the most notable feature about this movie was that it was your classic white female wish-fulfillment fantasy with a few token 'ethnic' characters thrown into the background for window-dressing.

In a nutshell: it was an atrocity which, although intended for younger viewers, would infantilize pretty much any audience.

But it was an atrocity with a number of interesting assumptions underlying it.

You are probably aware of the story in the original: unpopular American teenage girl discovers that she's heir to the throne in some distant monarchy, she has to learn how to be a princess. And in the process she becomes beautiful, mainly by getting her hair de-kinked.

But in the sequel, a few years have passed and succession is coming-up. It turns out that if our favorite princess is unmarried, she can not become queen of the happy little continental European toy kingdom (where interestingly, everyone seems to speak English). And this marriage requirement, we are told repeatedly, is according to an outdated law which would not be observed if princess Mia were a maaaaaaayaaaaaaan.

So in order to spare our princess an arranged marriage, the queen (Julie Andrews) argues that the heir apparent ought to be given treatment equal to "any man". And then I suppose cries of "you GO girl!" will bellow from the audience and indignant fists will get raised in sisterly solidarity throughout the theater.

But the hard-to-miss problem lying at the center of this is that the story conflates "any man" with "the king". And in our fictional monarchy, there is quite a visible difference between the two.

After all, no one is so gauche as to point-out that the princess LIVES IN A PALACE and already enjoys far better treatment than "any man" in the land. And somehow, our lovable all-American gal never seems to notice that the entire palace security corps (in addition to the peons who handle her baggage and clean the stables and do the gardening) are men and she certainly doesn't want to be equal to them now, does she? Of course not. What would be the point of that?

So by accident, the movie reveals one of the largest hypocrisies which is so central to the American female personality archetype: a woman who says she wants 'equality', but only when she'll stand to gain from it.

And although she may make a few symbolic refusals of certain types of chivalry (she is a 'liberated woman' after all), she still wishes to retain certain aristocratic treatments such as accepting jewels and finery that have been paid-for by someone else, not having to lift a finger when it comes to dangerous and unpleasant labor, stomping on the feet of men with utter impunity if they don't offer an appropriate level of deference, having burly male protectors close ranks around her when the going gets tough, and so on down a long, long list. But lay all that aside. Back to the story...

The Genovian parliament is made-up of Yurpeen fancy-pants in powdered wigs who don't know how to cut loose and have fun. And because of their inflexibility on the outdated marriage law, the princess rushes to have an arranged betrothal with a young English blue-blood whom she selects from a glib PowerPoint slide-show. And in the meantime, there's a subplot about a succession dispute masterminded by John Rhys-Davies and his nephew Nicholas, a rakishly handsome 'untamed' aristocrat in-line for the throne whom our princess finds more irresistible than her chosen suitor (but only in a Disney G-rated sort of way of course- there's one bit where they both get into trouble after falling into a shallow pool, which is suggestive of a penetration metaphor.) But what was extremely interesting about the succession dispute was that the 'Machiavellian' Rhys-Davies (he has a booming voice and a big ring so he's clearly evil) had an extremely valid and well-developed point on which to object to Princess Mia: she was arguably unfit for the throne because she wasn't from the country, she had never even heard of the place until a few years earlier, and she is an embarassing ditz to boot. So his nephew's ascension to the throne actually made a hell of lot of sense. But no it had to turn into a boy vs. girl issue, and the girl must always win whenever there's a conflict of that type.

Along the way, princess Mia is squealingly reunited with her bestest friend from the first movie. The new arrival proceeds to hang-out in the background to drop gratuitous pop-culture references and cutely sarcastic quips in order to show how 'hip' her little clique of two people is. (And since the princess' best friend has an obviously Jewish last name, perhaps this would qualify her as a colorful 'ethnic' too? She knows her proper place is to never upstage the WASPy heroine.)

But just before the royal wedding at the movie's end, our princess loses her nerve and decides to not go through with it. Very conveniently, her suitor nods curtly (sure thing, miss!) and offers his warm, respectful and considerate agreement with an explanation that was so inane, I didn't bother to remember it. You sort of wonder why he allowed himself to be in a position to get married if he was truly ambivalent to it, he certainly didn't have to propose.

The underlying assumption here in the wedding seemed to be that only women have inner turmoils which ought to be accommodated. In contrast, men are completely unburdened by a full range of human emotions so it really doesn't matter what they think and you don't have to feel bad when you leave them standing at the altar. But if the suitor were ever to show the slightest irritation or dismay or upset about the princess' indecisiveness at the wedding, it would only serve to prove what a insensitive asshole he is, eh?

At the end, she makes a short speech which sort of said: 'I am an oppressed victim!' And the parliamentarians are sufficiently moved (they had hitherto been a bunch of humorously dried-up old farts) and they vote (without a formal legislative session) to repeal the marriage law and our beloved princess can finally become queen. Of course, a princess who claims to be an oppressed victim is a rather audacious spectacle which ought to evoke ridicule among intelligent people, but it's a perfectly safe statement in a movie intended for American chicks.

And, by the way, Mia winds-up choosing the rakish Nicholas as a love interest after the evil Rhys-Davies gets hustled away in disgrace. So now that our young feisty woman is a queen, I suppose she is also now "ekwal" compared to "any man". But I could be wrong. Maybe the poor darling still has a long way to go before she'll consider herself to be completely "ekwal". She is an American chick, after all.

But these were just random musings on the way over.

Upon my return in Anytown...

I was greeted at the airport by my parents. I wasn't really jet-lagged, but I was starving.

We went to a nearby restaurant. My sister, her husband and her two screeching kids were already there to meet us.

When I saw them, I muttered through clenched teeth:"Please, no. They are the least pleasant family in the world. No. No." and when they came within earshot, I had to pretend to be glad to see them. "Oh, HI! It's good to see you again..." and mouthed all the other perfunctory crap that you do to keep-up appearances with intolerable relatives.

While waiting for our orders to be delivered, my parents asked me a lot of questions about the past year. Mainly things about my job, my apartment, weather, Haruna and so on.

I also spoke a bit about my little sojourn to Russia which was almost exactly one year ago. I mentioned I was quite glad to visit the historical sights that I'd hoped to see and started to describe the Hermitage. But in the middle of a sentence, I was interrupted....

"I wouldn't go there if you paid me." my sister snorted. "The Russians can't even guard their own damned schools."

(Oh, did I mention that my sister has a completely over-the-top hatred of eastern Europeans which goes to almost comical lengths?)

For a second, I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Schools? Was this a reference to the massacre in Beslan?

"Uh-- Beslan?"

"Yeah, that Russian school that got shot-up. Can't say I can shed a tear about that."

"Overwhelmingly, the dead weren't Russian. They were Ossetian." I replied sharply.

"Yeah, same difference." she sneered.

"There is a difference. The Ossetians aren't Slavic." I continued. "They're an offshoot of the Iranians. Almost none of the ethnic groups in the Caucasus region are Slavic, in fact. But as I was saying-"

"No one wants to hear a lecture NiceGuy!" She slapped the table irritatedly and rolled her eyes.

"That was your ignorance talking just now." I retorted testily. "Your ignorance. Got that?"

"Oooooh, are you taking this personally?" She snorted.

I blinked in reaction to this vulgar display. What the hell?

"All right, so now you're being obtuse. Anyway, it's a moot point, I'm going to move on-" But it didn't matter. She kept talking over me, didn't listen to a thing I said.

"Ooooh, did I offend your politically-correct feeeeeeelings or something?"

Christ on a cracker. It's not just unreason, but militant unreason. Nothing but sheer force of will makes her unfalsifiable.

I've got the truth on my side. But that doesn't matter. It completely does not matter. For American females do not have to bother with facts when they want to be right. Never. She's right since SHE'S GOT A VAGINA God-dammit and don't you ever forget it! Hah!

I rolled my eyes. Just go away. Go away, the both of you.

"Oooh, look! He's getting mad now!" She proudly announced to her husband. She turned to that grinning bobble-head dog beside her.

He sat there. Yup yup yup yup yup yup.

Ugh.

I looked at him, a hunched-over unambitious boob of astonishing thickness who never contradicts his Ustashe-like wife and wonder-- how the hell is it that American chicks can call me 'spineless', yet will consider my sister's husband to be some kind of 'real man'?

How on earth is that possible? It's certainly not because he has any opinions of his own. It's not because he's not a weenie. Is it because he watches football on tv? Is it because he's got dirt under his fingernails?

Oh that's right. He inherited a shitload of money and could buy his wife a mansion in a gated community with a swimming pool. So that makes him a 'real man'. A 'real man' with a spine shaped like a dollar sign. A 'real man' who won't go to the bathroom without his wife's permission.

Swear to God, every ounce of authenticity and substance has been driven out of American females. There is a real philistinism about them. A real provincialism and narrowness. Real moral cowardice, a near-total absence of decency and reason and rationality. A roughhewn crudeness and loudness and hollowness and phoniness and cheapness and corruptness which roils the gut and stabs the soul and offends the senses. Everything about them gets hammered-down until they're a bunch of lowest common denominators.

What a rabble of charmless goons they are!

There was once a striking illustration of this which stuck with me...

About a year ago in Japan, I was watching the BBC. They had this documentary about how globalization affects small-scale tobacco farmers in Malawi. The program focused on one such family. The wife was depicted with a baby strapped tightly to her back while she harvested tobacco leaves alongside her husband. Afterwards, the family was sitting on the floor of their little wood-and-straw hovel eating from a tin bowl of corn mush and talking about the problems they faced. They were talking about how the foreign tobacco wholesalers manipulated the selling prices, how the price of imported fertilizer was going-up, how the cost of food and medicine was going-up. If their 12-year old daughter ever stopped working in the fields in order to go to school, the family wouldn't be able to afford to send her to school. Very serious concerns that are of obvious importance to desperately poor and disadvantaged people worldwide.

Midway through the show, I switched-over to CNN. They were showing a segment about a contest being held in New York city.

Get this: it was a contest on who had the dog with the stinkiest breath.

Unsurprisingly, 100% of the entrants appeared to be women. White American women with nothing better to do than to compete for who has the dog with the foulest smell.

And most of these women looked extreeeemely well-fed.

They were sticking their noses in their little yapping dogs' mouths and giggling. "Ooh, that smells bad, tee hee hee!" Stuff like that.

Idiots.

The comparison was stark and disgusting. I flipped back to BBC. There was the African woman in the field with the baby on her back picking tobacco with no shoes on. Then I turn back to CNN and see the paunchy, jewelry-encrusted chicks with their designer purses and their tiny frou-frou poodles. Back to BBC-- mud-caked tobacco farmer in the field with flies crawling on her face. Back to CNN-- ostentatious and bloated and... wait a minute, aren't these chicks supposed to be oppressed or something?

Aren't they supposed to be living lives of degradation? You know, completely suffering in a misogynistic society? Oppressed by global capitalism and the nuclear family and the man-o-centric maleocracy? Huh? Aren't they?

Well they certainly don't look very oppressed.

Idiots. I threw a balled-up sock at the screen.

But now I'm back in Ameriskankland. The women around me are perhaps the most privileged, coddled and spoiled people on the planet-- and yet they bitch in ever-louder volumes about their oppression and how rotten their lives are.

It makes no sense whatsoever.

Good God, do I ever hate these people. I can't wait until Haruna gets here in a few months. She'll be a breath of fresh air.

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"In fact, women are all perverse by nature. They are deeply self-centered, grasping in the extreme, devoid of all susceptibility to reason, quick to indulge in superstitious practices. They are clever talkers, but may refuse to utter a word when asked even some unobjectionable question. One might suppose this meant they were cautious, but they are equally apt to start discussing, quite unsolicited, matters better passed over in silence... How disagreeable it is to be forced to cater to their wishes in order to please them. What woman is worthy of such deference?" -- Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, 1332.

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