In comments on Jeff’s post defending the much-lamented former Hand of the King on Game of Thrones, long-time commenter Dirk Lester notes, “Neither Ned’s honor nor his sense of duty were problematic. It was his failure to think strategically based on those impulses that was moronic.” I wanted to riff on that a little bit, because I think it gets at the core reasons I’ve always thought it was a good decision for Martin to kill off Ned Stark — and why people who are deeply upset about Ned’s death on the show are missing the point.

Ned’s failure as Hand of the King comes less from the fact that he’s unfailingly noble, and more from the fact that he fails to recognize that other people’s actions won’t be predictable because nobility is no longer the dominant code of the land — strategic thinking is. Repeatedly, Ned assumes that only one outcome is possible because he assumes everyone is using the same basis for decision-making that he is: he never thinks through the possibility that Cersei won’t react to the revelation of her incest with shame but with deliberate action; he can’t imagine that the people around him would have little compunction about harming his children or using them as hostages; he has a difficult time adapting to the existence of spy tradecraft, much less using it to protect himself while he’s investigating Jon Arryn’s murder; he can’t foresee that the Mountain will essentially go rabid and turn on the man meant to bring him in; he doesn’t anticipate that Renly won’t bow to the line of succession, choosing flight and fight rather than submission; it was inconceivable to him that Robert might have beggared the realm; and he can’t see that a rigid definition of honor might lead anyone into dishonorable actions, as it did with Jamie Lannister.
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-How MySpace promised to change everything and ended up changing nothing.

-The four main characters from Pixar’s first movie with a female star, Brave.

-NFL lockout? No problem: Broncos safety David Bruton’s taken a job as a substitute teacher.

-Now you can get Death Star blueprints without the aid of rebels and plucky robots.

-This will be insufferable or great. I’m leaning towards the former.

-Turns out we haven’t heard much from Missy Elliott recently because she has Graves disease. Feel better, Missy, and fly like a bird:

Well, the rumor that OJ Simpson has confessed to Oprah that he killed Nicole Brown Simpson appears not to be true. Even if it were, I’m not sure what Oprah could possibly think she could achieve by getting a man who already wrote a fictionalized confession to say more definitively that he killed his wife. Especially if he maintains something absurd like that he was defending himself when he nearly decapitated his wife, who had filed for divorce from him, and slashed her breasts. What is she going to achieve? Peace for his children? For the Brown and Goldman families? The police investigation into Simpson’s role in Brown’s murder was clearly deeply tainted. Mark Fuhrman is racist and shouldn’t have had a job with the LAPD given his prior conduct. But does anyone really believe that OJ Simpson didn’t murder Nicole Brown Simpson? This story is over. Oprah should be embarrassed to be continuing the media spectacle over it.

Women are already suppposed to look more attractive while playing badminton, and ignore their religion while playing soccer. Now the head of Wimbledon wants them to sound more lady-like while playing tennis too.

The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday that Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club, which organizes Wimbledon, has requested that players stop grunting so much because fans “don’t particularly like it.” And maybe there have been a flood of complaint letters about the noise level on Wimbledon’s courts. But when Ritchie complains about “players” who grunt too loudly, it seems like his real problem is with women who are getting intense during their matches.

Even though Ritchie frames it as “an education problem with younger players,” the grunting controversy seems less like a matter of etiquette and more like a case of gender policing. Whether it’s Victoria Azarenka defending her grunting as an integral part of her play or complaints about Maria Sharapova’s 105-decible shriek, grunting apparently makes female players either shrill or worryingly unfeminine. It’s the same dilemma the Williams sisters have faced, whether they’re being excoriated for being overly muscled or for wearing things other than traditional tennis whites and adding makeup and jewelry to the mix.

And why should women change — especially if grunting helps them play better? Beyond interfering with opponent’s concentration and annoying Wimbledon officials, Alison McConnell, a professor at Brunel University, explains that there are actual physiological reasons grunting helps:

“We all instinctively inhale just before we make a physical effort such as lifting furniture or swinging a racquet at a ball. We do this because holding air in the lungs helps to provide the stability required for injury-free and forceful movements of the trunk.

Maximising the power of a tennis shot is created by transferring muscular force to the racquet head efficiently. A strong core and trunk is vital for this process because the force transmission starts below the players’ waist.”

Ritchie might as well be telling women that if they’re going to play on Wimbledon’s grass courts, being a lady is more important than being a competitor

You guys. There are SO MANY THINGS WRONG WITH THE FOOTLOOSE REMAKE (beyond the existence of yet another remake, and another movie where people in their 20s play teenagers, that is):

First, banning dancing is a stupid response to a drunk-driving incident. If I were a mainstream evangelical, or a sensible small-town preacher, I might be seriously vexed right around now. Second, if this is a reasonably integrated community (at least when it comes to illicit teenaged dance parties), one would imagine there is a lawyer worth his salt somewhere in hollering distance who will sue the city to get rid of a clearly constitutionally untenable dance ban if only for the free publicity and to get himself to a firm at a bigger city. And finally, I am kind of depressed that in a town that seems like it is maybe sort of a baby theocracy, fighting against said clearly unconstitutional dance ban in City Hall is the epitome of teenaged activism. At least Hairspray had some nod to the idea that integration is a dandy idea if only because it lets you date cute guys. I cannot imagine what life is like for gay kids in this burb.

I mean, I get it, nostalgia is mandatory, logic is optional. And I get that there’s nostalgia for a time when our problems were smaller and our differences seemed more resolvable — and it’s true that the culture war still matters, that the right to express yourself matters, particularly when you’re 17 or 18. But as much as I’d like to believe we’re going to resolve the rifts in our politics and all make it to the big dance together, I don’t really believe we’ve packed our shoes for the same party.

I’ve just finished the third season of Cheers, and while I know the big thing this season is the introduction of Fraisier, and to a certain extent Sam and Diane’s reunion, for me, the huge standout of the arc is George Wendt’s work as Norm. It’s kind of remarkable how, in two seasons, Wendt takes on both the psychological weight of long-term unemployment and the challenge of infertility. And he does it all in a performance that’s essentially the equivalent of the episode of Community where Abed delivers a baby in the background of the action.

I’ve found lots of the show quite impressively progressive, including the fact that Norm loses his job in the first place when he stops his boss from sexually assaulting Diane. In a contemporary movie or television show, he would be rewarded for that, and fairly quickly: one of his coworkers would be bolting to start a new firm or something, and would be impressed by Norm’s integrity, and his firing would be truly momentary. Instead, his suddenly former coworkers cheer, and Norm’s left to face unemployment alone. There’s real pathos in watching a man who’s worked most of his life at one company try to revise his resume, or calculate how much beer he can afford to drink on his unemployment check. It’s not as if Norm’s struggle to find work is always delivered in jokes and asides. It’s the A story in the second-season episode “No Help Wanted,” where Norm secretly starts washing dishes at Melville’s until Diane convinces Sam to hire Norm as his accountant. But rather than having that episode and being done with it, Norm’s unemployment is a constant if low-boil factor in his presence at the bar until he finally finds a new job, and Wendt really shows the toll it takes on Norm. Late in the third season when, finally reemployed, Norm’s new company asks him to become their layoff man, it’s clear how scary the experience of unemployment was for him. He may be collecting a paycheck again, but it’s clear how traumatic not having a job was for him.

I’ll be curious to see, if the job market stays stagnant and unemployment stays relatively high, if more shows and movies start incorporating characters who have been unemployed for a long time into their storylines. Obviously shows like the Real Housewives franchise haven’t suffered during the recession, even though the lifestyles they portray are more out of reach than ever, but I think that’s because they provide a convenient opportunity to judge the rich. But if persistent long-tem unemployment becomes a more prevalent part of the American experience, giving people reflections of their own struggles seems like a good to way to be responsive to audiences and maybe lock in a little audience loyalty while you’re at it.

It’s interesting to me that, having gotten Norm back on his feet financially, the show chose to saddle him with the equally intimate and manhood-implicating problem of infertility. That’s a lot to lay on a guy in a period of a couple years! Not being able to get Vera pregnant appears to weigh a little less heavily on Norm, but again, it’s something that the show keeps running rather than mentioning it once and forgetting about it. I think that’s one of the reasons the show is so good: it remembers that its characters are real people with ongoing problems and concerns, and that most of the things people discuss with their friends are sort of circular and repetitive because that’s what it takes to work big things out. But even though Norm treats their ongoing fertility problems with his usual jocular humor, the whole incident strikes me as a very real way people use their primary group of friends. Sometimes you’re vulnerable, but these are the people with whom you rehearse the stories and self-presentation that get you through the day when things are hard.

Scott Meslow, Campus Progress intern and ace recapper at The Atlantic ponders Darren Aranofsky’s planned Noah’s Ark movie:

Today’s Christian moviegoers have a pretty meager selection of direct-to-DVD films; there’s not much range between the awful Left Behind series and the kid-friendly VeggieTales. When the occasional Christian-themed movie actually makes it into theaters (like 2008’s gloriously corny Fireproof), it tends to be consumed almost exclusively by a Christian audience.

Major studios are still sometimes willing to release movies with Christian themes — as long as those themes are diluted or buried. The first three novels of C.S. Lewis’ allegorical The Chronicles of Narnia have been adapted, but the emphasis has always been on the Lord of the Rings-style action, not the earnest Christian moralizing. To Hollywood, the Christian audience is essentially a niche audience, and the films that appeal to Christian audiences are too narrow and toothless to appeal to anyone else.

Noah’s Ark, I think, does have more crossover potential than some biblical stories, as both a story of faith in the face of objection and mockery, and as a kick-ass environmental disaster flick. In fact, it’s such a reasonable idea that it was done in 2007, when Steve Carrell played a congressman who rode an ark all the way from his district to the steps of the Capitol to lobby for better dam design and general kindness. The movie made $173 million, $100 million of it in the States, which is fine, but only good for 28th place on the year’s box office. Not that I see Aronofsky making a cheerful family picture, but in case he was planning on it, he’ll have to find a fresh interpretation.

And therein lies the challenge, right? If he goes for an argument that says obedience to God requires a commitment to conservation, he might bring in environmentalists, but lose some of the religious viewers. If it’s a dark movie about religious persecution and resistance to belief, it might not have have a ton of crossover appeal. If it’s a movie about a man and his architectural vision, maybe he’ll pull in Christian Objectivists? Knowing Aronofsky, he’ll pull off something fascinating, but this is a tricky balance to try to achieve.

In line with our discussions about how to get more positive images of Muslims in popular culture, it’s tremendously disappointing that DC has axed a storyline about Superman working with a Muslim superhero based out of Los Angeles — in favor of a story about a superpowered dog. I kid you not.

It’s especially sad given how timely this would have been. Sharif is an existing character, an immigrant from the fictional Middle Eastern country of Qurac who has worked with Superman in the past under the name Sinbad, so it’s not as if he’s some insanely risky new creation. If anything, he’s a nice callback for devoted fanboys, one, whom as we can see in this cover, is willing to sacrifice himself to save Americans. It could have been particularly valuable to have a character who is not just Muslim but an immigrant to point out the similarities between Islamophobia and anti-migrant sentiment, particularly if that story dropped at the very moment that a major piece in a national magazine was forcing a conversation about how we treat immigrants, especially undocumented ones. Also, given the superheroes-begone trend of recent movies ranging from The Incredibles, to Watchmen, to X-Men: First Class, an installment where people want to get rid of a superhero for specific reasons other than the simple fact of his powers would be both of a piece with trends in superhero stories and a useful framework for analyzing irrational fears about Muslims in America.

Comic books probably have more leeway than most media to take on risky issues. Folks who are buying comics regularly are devoted enough to handle a single issue on something they don’t like. The potential for a bump in sales with an issue that tells a more relevant story or that ropes in new audiences is high. This would have been a tiny gesture, nothing even as remotely controversial as Superman’s giving up his citizenship, a storyline the Man of Steel seems to have survived.

The trailer for the new Muppets movie looks uniformly charming, and I’m glad to see that Miss Piggy’s still a bit of a brawler:

But really, I think my most powerful interest in this, and in Jonah Hill’s 21 Jump Street reboot, is how nostalgia is functioning here. Jason Segel and Hill have been key, if not the single most important participants, in the creation of the movies that have defined the post-college years of my generation. Now that they have power, they’re continuing to make those kinds of movies, but they’re also rebooting and reconfiguring the cultural artifacts of their own childhoods.

Maybe that’s what happens when culture suddenly shifts and admits folks who are not conventional marquee idols to the ranks of reliable box-office draws. Maybe one of you, in this case Seth Rogen, goes out and stars in a superhero movie. But mostly, you fulfill all the fantasies you had when you were a kid, because who knows how long the moment will last. I think Segel might have the best chance of sticking around as a writer if not as an actor. Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn’t have the critical cred of Knocked Up, but the scene where Kristen Bell explains why she left Segel’s character may be the best depiction of a woman in the Frat Pack’s ouvre, and I’ll be curious to see what his script for The Five-Year Engagement looks like.