Linky links

[vilakins]

Here are some things I've greatly enjoyed recently.

This one was on UserFriendly: a photographic record of a Russian's tour of North Korea with his friend Alexey and two official Korean guides, referred to as "the girls" or "the ladies". It's a fascinating look at a country I don't know much about.

This is very clever and funny: Pride and Prejudice in emoticons Thank you, azdak, for the link. :-)

And finally, a beautiful and moving Hanukkah story about Snape: The Friday Box.

Comments

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all of these.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

:-) I'm glad you enjoyed them.

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Gosh, that Korean one was quite a trip. In someways, I can completely see the appeal of that sort of economy. While I'm sure, being raised American, I'd hate it, the idea that I don't have to think and just have to follow orders seems nice on the outside. I wouldn't be unemployed now, for instance. I'd just do whatever they told me, I'd obey the rules and everything else would be largely taken care of.

I don't think it's right, mind you, but I can see the appeal in a strange way. But it was really an amazing thing to read through. Completely alien. You just don't think places like that really exist! Thanks for sharing. It was an eye opener.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd like to live in a socialist economy like the one my parents grew up in here. There were huge restrictions on travel and how much you could take out of the country / import into it, but pretty much everyone had a job (and for life if you wanted, though no one was forced to take any particular one) and there was very little crime. OK, we now have access to all the tech from elsewhere and great international cuisine, and don't have to go ojn a waiting list for a new car, but I sometimes think we've lost a lot.

I have a lot of Russian friends here and they miss the certainty of communist life. They were very surprised to learn that our past society was so like theirs, though it was never called communism here. The similarities were in the tight regulation and spread of wealth across society. Nowadays you get obscenely rich people and very poor, plus high unemployment, and that didn't happen back then (up to the 80s or so).

I'd hate to live in North Korea though. It's so sexist; the women have to walk behind the husbands, keep the men's bowls and glasses full, and wear national costume when they get enslaved married, whereas the men have it a lot easier. They should all be equal, dammit. It's not communism if there's still an underclass.

It was alien, wasn't it? I was interested in what the Russian guy found familiar and what he found completely strange.

OK, I'm off to bed now. It feels like holidays now since Greg's off work for three weeks. :-) Yay, latkes for breakfast tomorrow...

[gair.livejournal.com]

Ee! Looking forward to the Hanukkah story - I think I've already talked to you about my conviction that Snape is Jewish, haven't I? (Hogwarts celebrates 'Christmas', including the singing of specifically Christian Christmas carols, so there must be Jewish wizards...)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Well, there's Anthony Goldstein at Hogwarts! Jews do go to ostensibly Christian boarding schools in Britain (and here), and there are Hindus there too, so I imagine Hogwarts is just reflecting the culture of the country, but anyone may attend.

Why do you think Snape is Jewish? I'd be interested in hearing your reasons.

[gair.livejournal.com]

I totally forgot about Anthony Goldstein! Hoorah. I can stop taking the circuitous route via Christianity into the existence of Jewish wizards - it always annoys me that Hogwarts is a Christian school (especially since the wizards seem to have inaugurated their highly secretive society in response to the Christian witch persecutions in the mediaeval period, so why are they not pagans/heathens?), but the hymn-singing is fairly conclusive in terms of wizards having the same religious traditions as Muggles.

I wrote about Snape being Jewish here (http://gair.livejournal.com/19312.html#cutid1) - he seems to conform to a particular set of Victorian/Shakespearean anti-Semitic stereotypes (clever, effeminate, amoral, outsider, hook-nosed, sallow, greasy-haired). That tends to make me want to write him as actually Jewish, rather than just 'abjected because he conforms to the negative characteristics that have been attributed to Jews', in a kind of reclaim-y way, but it's problematic, I know, partly because it's not my tradition to reclaim and partly because it's giving too much credence to the anti-Semitic stereotypes in the first place, to connect that set of characteristics to Jewishness. (Actually, it's a bit like Rowling's thing that you can tell Dumbledore was gay because he had a tragic, sentimental, probably unconsummated love affair with an evil yet seductive foreigner in his youth and then lived ALONE AND CELIBATE AND DAMAGED FOREVER. And that, of course, is what gay people do.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I went to a Christian high school simply because those are the only kind of boarding schools you here, but they had plenty people of other religions there who were "excused chapel". It's fairly accepted--most of the pupils not being religious anyway), and people are almost always pleasantly interested. I got stick only for being a geek and hopeless at sport--you have to be good at sport in NZ.

I actually hadn't noticed any Christianity at Hogwarts. Yes, they did trees and tinsel, and had Christmas holidays and Halloween (though that always feels very American to me) so I thought they were fairly secular and just using popular elements of British culture. I hadn't noticed the hymns, just the fairly pagan trappings of festivals which most people seem to go for.

Your story still fits well, because it might be only recently that Hogwarts allows people from all cultures in, after the post-war immigration waves.

it's giving too much credence to the anti-Semitic stereotypes in the first place, to connect that set of characteristics to Jewishness.

I know what you mean. I have some old English Boys' and Girls' own annuals from the 20s-50s (I collect them from jumble sales) and the villain so often is a "swarthy foreigner", and the English characters fine, fair, sturdy, and upstanding. :-P Still, Snape is an outsider and that fits very well with your story.

I made Vila sort of Jewish, celebrating the mish-mash of festivals he does due to religion going underground in a multi-cultural Britain 1000 years in the future, and a [Jewish] friend thinks he definitely is due to his pessimism and kvetching. :-) [uses icon with an example]

[Edited because I got confused and thought I was replying to someone else who didn't know where I lived, or about B7; sorry.]

[ultrapsychobrat.livejournal.com]

The story was wonderful--thanks for linking it.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to get it more readers. :-)

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Wow. That tour is fascinating. Things look so different. In my first year of uni my Chinese flatmate said only a few things about his visit to North Korea - the lack of adverts and how quiet and tidy it looked!

lol to the emoticons!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've always been attracted to socialism, but in theirs, the woman are still second-class citizens, and the Kim-worship is odd and almost religious. The country certainly seems to run well for the good of all citizens though.

Rampant capitalism has a lot to answer for. My parents grew up in a restricted socialist economy here where it was hard to get electronics and imported goods, but OTOH everyone had a job, no one was really poor or really rich, and there was very little crime. Now we have access to almost anything we want, but there are huge differences in wealth, high unemployment, and a lot of violent crime. I enjoy the cool things like TiVos and fast internet (at last!) and cafes and wonderful ethnic restaurants and ignore the rest, but I'm not sure it makes up for it.