Just for the record, when I posted the pumpkin dance video yesterday, I in no way wanted to support the cultural imperialism. In Austria, we don’t traditionally celebrate Halloween, though it’s happening more and more these days. We have November 1st as the catholic holiday to mourn the dead, which – to my heathen, atheist knowledge – includes going to cemetaries, probably while carrying huge wooden crosses and pourring hot ashes everywhere. I could be mistaken though.
[The same thing is happening with Santa Claus. We have Saint Nikolaus (aka. Santa Claus) who comes on December 6th and on Christmas proper, Baby Jesus brings us the presents. Nowadays, we have Saint Nikolaus and in more and more families Santa Claus comes to bring the presents on Christmas Day, too.]
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Short Viennale Update:
I overslept the showing of The Girlfriend Experience. It was at 11 pm but since I was really tired I went home at about 6 pm to take a nap. Despite the alarm that sounded off at 9 pm, and kept ringing for an hour and a half, I woke up at 1 am. I guess I needed the sleep. Since after waking up and cursing myself for oversleeping, I immediately went back to sleep until 6 am.
Anyway, yesterday I was supposed to see Beeswax, but I was in no mood to go out and after debating things with myself, I decided to skip it.
Here’s to hoping that these movies will make it to the cinemas in Austria anyway.
That means, the Viennale counter dropped to 20 movies. 16 down, 4 to go.
The highlight so far? Definitely Moon. For once, a hyped movie that was NOT completely overhyped. But in depth reviews follow in about 6 years or so. ;)
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[DISCLAIMER: I was looking very hard to find a trace of irony in this thing but I wasn’t able to. Maybe it’s there and I just didn’t see it. But I’m afraid, they’re actually serious.]
This is incredibly disturbing on so many levels.
[For those of you who don’t want to follow the link: it’s a hat that has sensors and so knows when you’re not smiling. And when you’re not smiling, it stabs you in the head.]
First, who would want to voluntarily wear a torture device like that? I think it’s a quite widespread and accepted idea that in education and pedagogy, pain is not the way to go.
Secondly, the theory that all is nice and well if you only smile is such a myth. Yes,
Just using the muscles to smile can make you feel happier. Seeing someone else smiling triggers mirror neurons in your own brain, causing you to unconsciously smile yourself.
But I think it’s pretty much countereffected by the pain you feel when the needle stabs you. Again and again and again. Plus, I don’t think that only considering the nice half of the emotions we feel in any way betters the communication. Which brings me to my next point:
Humans have a range of emotions and it’s incredibly important to be able to express them all. The continuous rhetoric that we should be happy all the time is very hurtful and unhealthy. There are times when life sucks, when bad things happen, when you’re in pain or when you just don’t feel well. Why the hell should you be forced to smile anyway when that happens? To make other people happy?
You gotta be shitting me.
This topic hits incredibly close to home. [Which might be the reason why I’m writing a fucking dissertation on a knit hat.] First of all, I’m a woman and women are incredibly pressured to be happy and smiling all the time. And anytime they’re not, they get pegged down as hysterics.
Then, as you might know, I suffer from depression. And depression is a twofold sickness. On the one hand, there’s a purely physical explanation – the chemistry in you brain just isn’t right. But on the other hand, there’s also the psychological aspect, that certain behaviours we adapt facilitates the depression as well. And for me, part of what made (and makes) me depressed is that I don’t allow myself to show my emotions, that I work really hard to keep people out and to keep a perfect [which means, in our culture, always happy] facade.
It took me years to be able to just say, “that makes me angry.” [And I have Marshall Rosenberg to thank for this. He and his non-violent communication made me so angry that I just couldn’t keep it in anymore.] I’m still working on allowing myself to answer “how are you?” with “not so good” when that’s the case. [Of course, not to everybody. (Maybe one day.) But at least to the people close to me.]
What I’m trying to say is this: Our culture separates good, allowed emotions from bad, forbidden emotions and this separation makes us sick [of course, not everyone is going to get depressed etc. – you gotta have the physical aspect as well]. And I guess I’m not the only one who realised this and is trying very hard to eradicate the conditioning stemming from this belief. And then along comes this hat and again reinforces the old story.
And that makes me feel angry and sad, but most of all helpless: How am I supposed to make my life better by embracing all the emotions I feel when everyone around me constantly feeds into the notion that you have to be happy all the fucking time?
kalafudra's Stuff 
That’s….really scary. I can’t imagine anyone willingly buying such a thing.
And about society separating “allowed” and forbidden” emotions…I never looked at it that way, I always thought it was a question of people assuming that “happiness” in the form of wish-fulfillment or spiritual health or whatever was what everyone aims for. And that doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch, does it?
True, it gets irritating at times, but at least here people are perfectly alright with other people being grumpy or sad or whatever. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, like you implied. There’s just too many people around you to insist that they all be happy.
I say “not so good” to “how are you?” quite often, actually. They did tell us (in junior school, I mean :) ) to say fine by default, but nobody really seems to insist on it or anything.
It is quite definitely a cultural thing.
Part of the reasoning behind it surely is that feeling happy makes people happy. Which of course makes sense and is not a bad thing.
The bad things start to happen when everybody is supposed to be happy (because we have everything nowadays etc) and therefore is not allowed to feel anything but happiness. When you feel down and the people around you seem to say, “how dare you feel bad when your life is so good!” or similar stuff. [And don’t get me wrong, my life is good.]
Thing is, “bad” feelings are as much part of ourselves as “good” feelings and denying one half – no matter the reasoning behind it – really isn’t good for you.
Anyway… The most telling thing about the whole “how are you” thing for me is the phrase “how do you do” to which the correct reply is “how do you do” and not some kind of answer at all.