Monthly Archives: January 2025

Marvel abets Chinese censorship

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship China Disney Marvel MCU on by

The ruler of the world’s second most powerful country feels so insecure that he has to ban mentions of Winnie the Pooh because some people think there’s a resemblance. It would be laughable except for the real-world consequences. I’m sure none of the panels at the Chengdu Worldcon discussed Milne’s character. You also aren’t allowed to discuss it in an online game called Marvel Rivals. The use of a long list of words and phrases is flagged as inappropriate in game chat. Among the phrases Marvel won’t let you use are “Winnie the Pooh,” “Pooh,” “Tiananmen,” “1989,” and “Free Taiwan.” Ironically, Disney, which owns Marvel, also owns the animated version of Winnie the Pooh. So Disney has acquiesced in censoring the mention of its own property.
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Racist typography 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged grammar usage writing on by

It’s gotten incredibly common: in the same sentence in supposedly literate websites, “Black” as a skin color is consistently capitalized, while “brown,” “white,” “yellow” and so on are consistently in lower case, sometimes in the same sentence. The racial discrimination is so obvious it’s plainly intentional. What purpose does it serve?

Is it to tell us that “Black” people are the Master Race, while others are subordinate? That would be silly. Is it to provoke and anger people, so they’ll say something intemperate and open themselves to accusations of racism? I’ve often thought that, but a complex intention like that makes no sense.
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The Lost World 1

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged music silent movies on by

Let’s start 2025 with one more silent movie accompanied by me: The 1925 The Lost World. This film, presenting a plateau populated by dinosaurs, uses stop-motion effects created by Willis O’Brien, who did the effects for King Kong a few years later. It still looks pretty good. It’s vastly better than the 1960 version directed by Irwin Allen. I saw that one as a kid and immediately recognized that it was using poorly disguised lizards as dinosaurs.

The movie is based on a novel of the same title by Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s one of three novels that featured Professor Challenger, a man with a brilliant mind, a large body, and a terrible temper. The other two have fallen into obscurity. He has received the diary of an explorer, Maple White, containing sketches of dinosaurs and pterosaurs supposedly living on a South American plateau. He is ridiculed for claiming these creatures are alive in his time, and he responds by organizing an expedition to find the plateau and its inhabitants. He finds plenty of them, brought to the screen with stop motion. After his party struggles to survive and escape, he brings a brontosaurus back to London, where it gets loose to cause panic and wreckage.
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