its been an interesting day so far. i know i picked courtney martin's TED speech to be my TED talk of the day - little did i know it would coincide with whatever i did the rest of the day. during breakfast, i decided to turn on the history channel and watch a documentary on the mayans. it spoke about the end of the world and with all the earthquakes, tsunamis, wars over oil occurring nowadays, how we need to look within ourselves, and look at our people, and decide what's the next best step to making the present - and the future - the best we can ... not just for ourselves, but for our planet as well. now i'm not saying martin goes into this depth in her TED speech BUT her focus on a specific cohort - the people of this generation, especially the women, who need to put aside the paradoxes and social expectations and do something for themselves before they "save the world." what do we need to do to come together as a sisterhood? what is in our power to improve not only our standing but the standing of our brethren out there? feminism used to just be about the woman. it's about understanding all perspectives - and understanding that failure has to happen in order for us to find that better way to approach issues. the fact that we're always stuck - overestimating our abilities and underestimating our value all at once - that needs to be done away so there can be progress. in any case, oddly, i think i'd have to agree that mothers are an influencing factor. i'm not saying my mother's a bad person - she's just overbearing. if she was anything different, i probably wouldn't be the way i am now. and that's not a bad thing at all either. :) there are so many lessons we can take away from courtney's talk - but before we set out there to change the world, we need to ask ourselves and check if we are the best we can be before we set foot to change the world. we can't just go idly from one job to the next or one relationship to the next without considering what we've learned from each experience ... and see what we can change to be better. to do better. to live better. if joseph barbera thought like we did at the moment, we would've never had the jetsons and i doubt my childhood would've been the same ;) back to the point. almost two years since i graduated from college. haven't made any achievement i'm entirely too proud of until now. i haven't saved the world yet. but i've come into my own. it has taken me quite a while to figure myself out, to figure out my passion - and now that i have, i intend to go forward with that and make a difference in whatever sphere i can to whatever extent i can. with that, read courtney's talk and a little about barbera below :)
day 3: courtney martin and reinventing feminism
http://www.ted.com/talks/courtney_martin_reinventing_feminism.html
"at this ripe old age of 30, i've been thinking a lot about what it means to grow up in this horrible, beautiful time. and i've decided, for me, it's been a real journey and paradox. the first paradox is that growing up is about rejecting the past and then promptly reclaiming it.
in any case, i didn't readily claim the feminist label,even though it was all around me, where i was trying to be cool at the time. so what very profound epiphany, you might ask, was responsible for my feminist click moment? fishnet stockings. jennifer baumgardner was wearing them. i thought they were really hot. i decided, okay, i can claim the feminist label. now i tell you this -- i tell you this at the risk of embarrassing myself, because i think part of the work of feminism is to admit that aesthetics, that beauty, that fun do matter. there are lots of very modern political movements that have caught fire in no small part because of cultural hipness. so my feminism is very indebted to my mom's, but it looks very different. my mom says, "patriarchy." i say, "intersectionality." so race, class, gender, ability, all of these things go into our experiences of what it means to be a woman. pay equity? yes. absolutely a feminist issue. but for me, so is immigration. my mom says, "protest march." i say, "online organizing."
we don't want one hero. we don't want one icon. we don't want one face. we are thousands of women and men across this country doing online writing, community organizing,changing institutions from the inside out -- all continuing the incredible work that our mothers and grandmothers started.
which brings me to the second paradox: sobering up about our smallness and maintaining faith in our greatness all at once. many of my generation --because of well-intentioned parenting and self-esteem education -- were socialized to believe that we were special little snowflakes -- who were going to go out and save the world. these are three words many of us were raised with. we walk across graduation stages, high on our overblown expectations, and when we float back down to earth, we realize we don't know what the heck it means to actually save the world anyway. the mainstream media often paints my generation as apathetic. and i think it's much more accurate to say we are deeply overwhelmed. and there's a lot to be overwhelmed about, to be fair -- an environmental crisis, wealth disparity in this country unlike we've seen since 1928, and globally, a totally immoral and ongoing wealth disparity. xenophobia's on the rise -- the trafficking of women and girls. it's enough to make you feel very overwhelmed.
i experienced this firsthand myself when i graduated from college in 2002. i was fired up, i was ready to make a difference. i went out and i worked at a non-profit, i went to grad school, i phone-banked, i protested, i volunteered,and none of it seemed to matter. and on a particularly dark night of december of 2004, i sat down with my family, and i said that i had become very disillusioned. i admitted that i'd actually had a fantasy -- kind of a dark fantasy -- of writing a letterabout everything that was wrong with the world and then lighting myself on fire on the white house steps. my mom took a drink of her signature sea breeze, her eyes really welled with tears, and she looked right at me and she said, "i will not stand for your desperation." she said, "you are smarter, more creative, and more resilient than that."
which brings me to my third paradox. growing up is about aiming to succeed wildly and being fulfilled by failing really well. there's a writer i've been deeply influenced by, parker palmer, and he writes that many of us are often whiplashed "between arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves." what i learned from these people and others was that i couldn't judge them based on their failure to meet their very lofty goals. many of them are working in deeply intractable systems -- the military, congress, the education system, etc. but what they managed to do within those systems was be a humanizing force. and at the end of the day, what could possibly be more important than that. cornel west says, "of course it's a failure. but how good a failure is it?" this isn't to say we give up our wildest, biggest dreams. it's to say we operate on two levels. on one, we really go after these broken systems of which we find ourselves a part. but on the other, we root our self-esteem in the daily acts of trying to make one person's day more kind, more just, etc.
the activists i interviewed had nothing in common, literally, except for one thing, which was that they all cited their mothers as their most looming and important activist influences. so often, particularly at a young age, we look far afield for our models of the meaningful life, and sometimes they're in our own kitchens, talking on the phone, making us dinner, doing all that keeps the world going around and around. my mom and so many women like herhave taught me that life is not about glory, or certainty, or security even. it's about embracing the paradox. it's about acting in the face of overwhelm.and it's about loving people really well. and at the end of the day, these things make for a lifetime of challenge and reward."
day 3: Wikipedia article - (joseph barbera)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Barbera
joseph roland barbera (march 24, 1911 – december 18, 2006) was an influential american animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose movie and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century.
through his young adult years, barbera lived, attended college, and began his career in new york city. after working odd jobs and as a banker, barbera joined van beuren studios in 1932 and subsequently terrytoons in 1936. in 1937 he moved to california and while working at metro-goldwyn-mayer (mgm), barbera met william hanna. the two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing tom and jerry and live action films. in 1957, after mgm dissolved their animation department, they co-founded hanna–barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as the flintstones, the huckleberry hound show, top cat, scooby-doo, the quick draw mcgraw show, yogi bear, the smurfs, wacky races and the jetsons. in 1967, hanna–barbera was sold to taft broadcasting for $12 million, but hanna and barbera remained head of the company until 1991. at that time the studio was sold to turner broadcasting system, which in turn was merged with time warner, owners of warner bros., in 1996; hanna and barbera stayed on as advisors.
hanna and barbera won seven academy awards and eight emmy awards. their cartoon shows have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media such as films, books, and toys. hanna–barbera's shows had a global audience of over 300 million people in the 1960s and have been translated into more than 20 languages.
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