I’ve been writing about The Invisible War, Kirby Dick’s documentary about the sexual assault epidemic in the military, since I saw it at Sundance last year. And now that it’s been nominated for an Academy Award, Dick and I sat down to discuss the movie’s impact, which Dick said had been a surprise:

Even before Hagel’s promise, The Invisible War was getting traction within the military itself, where it’s become a training tool and an agent of cultural change. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh screened The Invisible War for a meeting of wing commanders in November. And the rank and file are seeing the movie as well. Dick says that a distributor he works with who sells movies to the military and other institutions estimates that 235,000 service members—or nearly 10 percent of the 2.9 million members of the active and reserve armed forces—saw The Invisible War in 2012.

“The military itself is using the film for sexual-assault training, in part because, of course, they have no tools,” Dick said. “Eighty-five percent of those [viewers] are men. I think men seeing this is the real game changer, too. I think the film, not only on a policy level but on a cultural level, [is changing] the military. What people would joke about, you see this film and you don’t joke about it anymore.”

For all Dick is shocked by the failures of legislators and the military to act sooner, and by the Washington press corps for failing to investigate sexual assaults at Marine Barracks Washington—“There are documents, there is a lot of stuff there,” he said—he remains hopeful that the military can change, and that the rest of society can as well.

“The military’s done this before with racism. They could do it with this issue. And they could actually become a leader on the issue of sexual assault for the entire society,” he said. “There’s such divisiveness within this country, and especially around the military. There are a lot of issues with the military. But I think it’s a wonderful thought to think that civilians in society will look to the military as having been a leader in helping to reduce sexual assault across the country.”

It’s true that it’s easier—and probably better—for this to happen with documentaries than with feature films, television shows, or novels. But The Invisible War is one of the reasons I write about popular culture. You need narratives to push policy ideas forward. You need characters, be they human or fictional, to embody the impact of policies, or the lack thereof. And sometimes, people who have been deaf to the stories told by real people in their lives can hear those stories more clearly from the remove of a movie screen.

The major controversy over the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Sochi, Russia, has so far been about whether there would be enough snow to hold sports that depend on it. But there’s another controversy brewing that involves the sexuality of athletes, as Russia’s government is considering legislation that would outlaw “homosexual propaganda,” meaning public events that promote LGBT rights and public displays of same-sex affection will be illegal.

The legislation has sparked concern among out athletes like New Zealand speedskater Blake Skjellerup, who told USA Today that he was concerned about the legislation. “I don’t want to have to tone myself down about who I am,” Skjellerup said. “That wasn’t very fun and there’s no way I’m going back in the closet. I just want to be myself and I hate to think that being myself would get me in trouble.”

Even if the legislation doesn’t pass (it is expected to), Russia has already taken steps to fight homosexuality in its society and at its Olympics. Last year, a Russian judge banned the national Olympic committee from setting up a Pride House, a feature of the past several Olympics that hosts LGBT athletes. A Pride House, the judge wrote, would “undermine the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” because it “contradict[s] the basics of public morality and the policy of the state in the area of family motherhood and childhood protection.” Meanwhile, an IOC spokesperson took a bold stand by telling USA Today that it was “too early for the IOC to comment on Russia’s proposed anti-gay legislation because it has not been voted on.”

There were 23 open athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, a sharp rise from the 10 that participated in Beijing in 2008. While they faced an atmosphere of tolerance in Britain, which approved marriage equality this week, their Winter counterparts won’t be greeted similarly.

The fault for that lies with the International Olympic Committee, which has shown little tolerance for racism (even though Russia is no saint in that department either) and sexism but has not fought for protections for gay athletes in the same manner. “We aren’t responsible for the running of or setting up of Houses,” an IOC representative said when the Pride House ruling was made. “So in this case it isn’t a decision of either us, or the organizing committee in Sochi. From our side, the IOC is an open organization and athletes of all orientations will be welcome at the Games.”
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Laura Murphy, whose son is a senior in high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, doesn’t think he—or anyone else—should be reading Beloved in their English classes, and she’s on a quest to get it bumped from the curriculum. Per Raw Story:

“I’m not some crazy book burner,” Murphy, a mother of four, insisted to the Post. “I have great respect and admiration for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I disagree with the administration at a policy level.”

In spite of the awards and accolades won by Beloved and its author, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Murphy feels that the book’s theme of the brutality of slavery and scenes depicting gang rape, infant murder and violence are too intense for high school seniors. She said her son had nightmares when he had to read the book for his senior English course.

“It’s not about the author or the awards,” said Murphy. “It’s about the content.” On Thursday, the Fairfax County School Board voted not to hear Murphy’s challenge to the book. She now plans to take her fight to the Virginia Board of Education.

The thing about sending your children to public school is that you’re consenting to give up a certain amount of control over what they’re exposed to, because one of the major points of public schools is to make sure students have a pre-established set of skills and cultural references in common. And that often means teaching children things that their parents don’t know, or giving them access to literature and history that their parents might not have at home, or frankly, might not want them to read or learn about. It also, on an emotional level, means letting your children come into contact with ideas and art that will expand their sense of the world.

An associated risk of that is that they might be upset by some of the things they learn about the world. Racism is frightening. So is sexual assault. But both of those things have happened in the United States, and for many people, continue to be major factors that affect their day-to-day life. And I think high school seniors, especially those who will be going off to colleges where they have much more sexual autonomy, and will be dealing with larger and more diverse peer groups, not only are old enough to understand the reality of those facts and to be confronted with the emotional impacts they have, but really ought to be confronted by them. I’m not a parent yet, but my understanding is that parenting is a balance between protecting children from things they genuinely don’t have the capacity to process—Wu-Tang may be for the children, but I’m not sure Toni Morrison is—and helping them process the difficult things they have the moral and emotional ability to confront, even if that involves hard work on your, and their parts.

If Murphy’s son is having nightmares about slavery and gang rape, that actually seems to suggest that he’s pretty attuned to the emotional horror of racial and sexual violence. Maybe, instead of trying to protect him from those feelings, she could find some way for him to channel them into productive anti-racist or anti-sexist work. That would be much better college prep (and resume-building) for him than trying to save him, and other seniors, from being upset. I doubt Murphy is going to have much luck with the Virginia Board of Education. And she’ll have much less with whatever institution of higher learning he heads off to.

The bridge is yours.

-Sam Lipsyte on the art of writing sex scenes.

-I like that everyone is discovering what I knew all along: that Channing Tatum is good at his chosen profession of acting.

-Gloria Steinem on Girls.

-Does continuing to watch Community present a moral crisis?

-Lizzy Caplan Forever:

Ever since Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the company would be making not just a subsequent Star Wars trilogy of movies, but stand-alone films based on individual characters, speculation’s run rampant about which projects are under development. There was word of a Yoda picture, then rumors of Young Han Solo and Boba Fett projects. We’re a long way from knowing what the plot and main characters of that trilogy will be, or who the stand-alone movies will definitely focus on. But because pointless speculation is awfully fun, and because I’m increasingly convinced that the best way to make the most of the Star Wars universe would be television, rather than movies. And just as Disney’s developing a S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff from The Avengers, I suspect we’ll get a live-action Star Wars show at some point as the company tries to make the most of its $4 billion in intellectual property. So if we’re making wish lists, here are six terrific settings for Star Wars television shows:

1. The Correllian Security Force: Cop shows have become a cliche, but one way to revitalize the genre would be to move it to another planet, add alien investigators rather than NCIS-style Mossad liaisons, and have the crimes involve smuggling, code-cracking, the Antilles family fueling station, and a class between a Vichy France-style dictatorial government and a spunky rebellion. Plus, if Disney is going to go the Muppet Babies route and tell lots of origin stories for Star Wars universe characters, at least a CorSec show would give us a young Corran Horn dating aliens, going after Booster Terrick, and wandering around unaware of his Jedi origins.

2. Rogue Squadron: It’s been a while since we had a broadcast network show about the military, and a story about a spunky gang of ace pilots/Marine-style commandos dogfighting with Imperial troops, liberating capitol planets, and teaming up with aliens to fight plagues—not to mention having spicy romances with each other—could be a lot of fun. The challenge for science fiction on television is always the expense of its special effects, but focusing on Rogue Squadron’s commando missions rather than dogfights could keep costs down, and let ABC compete with, and hopefully do better than, Revolution.

3. The Errant Venture: When we meet Han Solo in A New Hope, we only get a few minutes of him in smuggler mode before he’s coopted into the Rebellion’s cause. But the Star Wars universe smugglers are awesome! Setting a show on the Errant Venture, a Star Destroyer (for the non-huge-nerds among you, those big triangular ships from the movies) commandeered by Booster Terrick, a Corellian smuggler par excellence, that becomes part spaceport, part military vessel, and for a while, the site of the Jedi Academy. Think Cheers, just writ giant, criminal, and more magical than Bostonian.

4. Tales Of The Bounty Hunters: I’m meh on a Boba Fett movie. But you want an anti-hero show set in the Star Wars universe? Take a look at some of the other badass bounty hunters hired by Darth Vader to hunt down Han Solo. That, or hire Timothy Olyphant after he’s done playing Raylan Givens for FX. Either way, hunting down different characters would be a terrific way to tour around the Star Wars universe, and to spend time with some characters who aren’t simply on opposite sites of the Rebellion-Imperial divide.

5. Mos Eisley Cantina, or backstage at a Coruscant restaurant: Much of the time we spend in the Star Wars universe is with people who play pivotal roles in its political future. But what about folks for whom the Galactic Civil War is largely passing them by? What’s it like to live in a universe populated by a bunch of different species, with huge class divides, where some people happen to have quasi-magical powers. Give us the folks who are witnesses to Star Wars history. Oh, and make it a sitcom.

6. Kessel: Obi-Wan was wrong: there is a more wretched hive of scum and villainy—and also a lot of political prisoners—in the galaxy than the aforementioned cantina. Kessel, the Imperial prison planet, is full of hardened smugglers, Imperial resisters, and Black Sun gang members. An Oz-like show about how they build an alternative society together could be a little bit more hardcore and a lot more revealing than another hero’s journey movie.

I was reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ column about Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city in the New York Times yesterday, and was struck by his description of the way that much of the hip-hop canon that’s concerned with violence (which, of course, not all of it is) situates its speaker in relationship to that violence:

Hip-hop originates in communities where such hazards are taken as given. Rappers generally depict themselves as masters, not victims, of the attending violence. Their music is not so much interested in exalting to our preferred values as constructing a fantasy wherein the author has total control and is utterly invulnerable.

When your life is besieged, the music is therapy, vicarious mastery in a world where you control virtually nothing, least of all the fate of your body. I had a friend in middle school who would play Rakim every morning because he knew there was a good chance that he would be jumped en route to or from school by the various crews that roamed the area. But, in his mind, the mask of rap machismo made him too many for them.

I think that passage hit me in particular because of some of the thinking I’ve been doing lately about the way violence operates in film and television. I’ve been showing my boyfriend The Wire, and I think both of us were hit pretty hard, him for the first time, me in new context, by the opening of the ninth episode, “Stray Rounds.” To my mind, the sequence, in which Bodie’s crew’s beef with another set of dealers spirals out of control, is one of the most effective critiques of Hollywood treatment of guns ever filmed:

No one on either side of the gunfight gets hit. No balance of power changes in the slightest. And even more to the point, no one is any good at using the guns they’re brandishing so casually. Much of the time, they’re not looking when they pull the triggers on their handguns, much less aiming at actual targets. Even if they were taking aim, it’s not at all clear to me that any of the participants would be decent shots. Part of the reason they’re not aiming, though, is because they’re terrified, and hiding behind cars. This is a world where bullets don’t miraculously breeze pass our heroes, or where our heroes have the uncanny ability to know when to dodge and are fast enough to actually do it. When Bodie needs a new clip in the middle of the fight, he fumbles awkwardly for it in his sock. Nothing about this is sophisticated, much less effective.

While this scene is a particularly striking sequence, this attitude is relatively common in The Wire as a whole. Even Omar, the character in the show who possesses the most virtuosic ability with a gun, fails a lot. He misses when he tries to assassinate Avon and gets shot himself, though mostly through his assailant’s good luck. As Maurice Levy points out during his testimony against Bird, most of Omar’s assaults are “by pointing,” rather than involving Omar actually pulling the trigger. When Omar shoots Brother Mouzone, it isn’t a single, accurate killing shot: it’s painful and non-fatal and Mouzone survives. Later, when Omar and Mouzone team up to kill Stringer Bell, the same is true: there’s a chase, and fear, and it takes more than one shot to bring their collective enemy down.

In other words, The Wire makes a series of points that Hollywood almost always ignores. Guns are hard to use. Firing them accurately takes a significant amount of skill, and even then, is extremely difficult to do in moments of stress, or fear, or when a gun is being fired at you. Even given all of those things, guns are extremely lethal, and getting shot with one, even if you don’t die, is extremely painful and frightening. At a moment when we’re hearing a lot of talk about the magical abilities conferred by simple possession of a gun, those are things worth remembering.

This post discusses plot points from the February 7 episode of Parks and Recreation.

When you’re single, the most irritating person on the planet can be the dear friend who wants you to know that you’re so spectacular that of course everything’s going to turn out fine for you. That friend means well, but their encouragement only serves to highlight the gap in between what’s actually happening for you and what they insist should be happening, raising the possibility that a) you’re doing something wrong, b) there is a fatal flaw, c) the Gods have a sick sense of humor. And on last night’s episode of Parks and Recreation, that person was Leslie Knope.

On finding out that Ann is not just dating herself as a way to have new experiences and thinking about what she wants in life, but is considering having a baby with a sperm donor, Leslie declared “You’re definitely going to find a wonderful man who loves you, and respects you, and fills your home with multi-ethnic genius babies.” It’s a nice vision, but it was even nicer to see Ann put paid to Leslie’s relentless optimism for her best friend. “Maybe,” Ann told Leslie. “Or maybe not.” Either way, Leslie’s dream for her best friend is beside the point. Ann doesn’t want to wait anymore, she isn’t being diverted into a different path from Leslie’s, she’s just choosing it.

That’s both an exciting development for a character who can be passive and malleable with regard to her personal life, and as it turns out, a nice choice for the show’s larger universe. I’d been idly wishing for Crazy Ira and the Douche to Parks and Recreation, spurred in part by the debut of the Kroll Show on Comedy Central, so I was delighted to see Howard’s return to the show last night, as one of the candidates to donate sperm to Ann. And the show had a great joke for him: it turns out, to Leslie’s irritation, that he’s a relatively decent guy. “I majored in semiotics, wrote a thesis on narrative forms in the digital world,” Howard explained to Ann when she asked about his education. Leslie, still skeptical, wanted to know “Then you became a shock jock and created the sport taintball?” He shrugged it off, explaining “I know it’s a silly thing to do, but it pays the bills.” And later, he hit all of Leslie’s buttons when she tracked him down in the parking garage. “I’ve thought a lot about having kids. It’s the next big step in this grand adventure we call life,” Howard explained. “You know, if we had a little girl, I’d name her Elizabeth, after my grandmother. She was this strong, amazing woman.”
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