The Wagging Dog

Wonder Woman may be the first blockbuster movie featuring a female SUPER HERO, but The Americans tops that as the first peak-tv series to feature a female ANTI-HERO.   There have been other female superheroes, and even other female superhero movies , but the anti-hero business has been an exclusively male preserve. I haven’t seen Wonder Woman (a DC vs. Marvel thing, not a gender thing), but it seems like a fairly conventional superhero story: The good gal fights for truth and justice, etc.   The Americans goes further with a feminist remaking of a traditional genre. First, there is a gender role-reversal in the family dynamics. Elizabeth is the true believer, the patriotic soldier, and the ruthless one.   Her husband, Phillip, is the weaker link, placing family before duty. Phillip has been ready to quit the spy business since the pilot episode. It’s taken five seasons to get Elizabeth there. The series is really about her evolution. But beyond the genders of the chara

If you read my post about my mom, and I hope that you did, you know that I was also planning to write about my dad.   I kind of got side tracked by the insufferable assholes and health care. And now Donald Trump is blowing up, so it’s hard to think about much else. But, it’s important to try, just to keep one’s sanity. So I am going to do everyone a favor and write about my dad to distract us all from what passes for politics these days. One reason I wanted to write about my dad is that he was the anti-Trump. Donald Trump is a narcissistic blowhard who thinks the world owes him, and resents any difficulties that might come his way (even if those difficulties are directly his own doing). My dad was not that way. My dad was a mensch. Now there have been many wise and learned books written about menshlikeit and the definition remains somewhat elusive. One central component, though, is a feeling of grace, of being lucky. Part of being a mensch is appreciating what you have, feeling li

I notice that many of the better bloggers have sponsored ads on their sites. That seems like a good idea. I need some visual punch, and a nice ad would be a good design element. But I want to choose my sponsor carefully.   I want something reasonably connected to the blog. Not something random, like penis enlargement pills. Which don’t work, by the way. I know you think they would, because people are selling them everywhere. I must get two or three emails a week offering me a deal. The companies that sell them seem well intentioned, but they should invest more time in training their staff. The emails are always full of really bad typos. Like ‘p3n1s’ for ‘penis’. You’d think that people who work for a penis enlargement company could at least spell ‘penis’. Weird. Anyway, they don’t work. I was thinking about a good sponsor when I remembered a ‘story’ I heard about something that ‘happened’ when someone was reading this blog. Apparently, this has ‘happened’ to a number of pe

Downside: You have to pay per episode for past seasons, but it’s a bargain. Trust me. 1)    You will gain a deep appreciation of Phil Collins’ “Something in the Air Tonight.” It may become your favorite song. This could be seen as a pro or a con. 2)    Like me, you may have started watching the show and gotten turned off by just how dislikable to protagonists (Phillip and Elizabeth) are. They are basically “good Nazis”-- just following order to do unspeakable things. Walter White and Tony Soprano are angels in comparison (exactly why they seem so much worse than, say, a mob boss, is hard to say. It could be because one of the baddies is female…).   Anyway, time to come back. The truth has been sinking in for awhile, and the good Nazis are starting to realize they have been good Nazis, and are owning up to the damage they’ve done. 3)    The immigration and cold war themes have been a strong part of the show, but they are taking a back seat to universal themes of loyalty and t