From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 19:45:25 MDT
Oops... Sorry for the empty post, somehow my hand
just couldn't resist that old C-64 reflex - hit enter
after completing line.... It's been that kind of day.
My boss likes to make changes to my work one at a
time, which is really fun when it means that you get
to redo all your carefully placed internal links on a
400 page commercial site every time he thinks of
something else to change. Of course, if he could do
the work, he wouldn't be in management. Right?
Anyway, all this talk of censorship and hidden agendas
rekindled some salient memories. I think that most
people, including most on this list, probably live
rather sheltered lives in certain respects. Here is a
little tale of both hidden agendas and censorship that
may open some eyes:
Some years ago, I chaired a panel at LOSCON on Virtual
Reality. Breaking completely with tradition, I
actually prepared for the panel. I even prepared a
live computer presentation on my little Amiga 500,
including my own artwork illustrating various types of
virtual reality, and a videotape of projective VR
(VideoPlace) environments done by The Vivid Group and
by Carl Struyker (Lurch, Mr. Holmes on TNG, the pawn
broker on B5 - but also a professional VR programmer).
Carl's buddy (Video Mike, I think is his handle) - one
of these underground technomages who lives in a huge
industrial building with a Gibbon and a zillion
computers - delivered his demo tape to me at the con.
My opening piece, however, was one of those hacker
contest demo disks, where the object is to absolutely
push the limits of the machine with something that
will fit on a single (880K - Amiga) floppy. There are
hundreds of these, but I had found one that looked
like the perfect intro to the VR panel.
It consisted of about 4 minutes of silouhettes of man
and a woman dancing separately to sound-tracker music
with a fractal background swirling around them, while
they morphed back and forth periodically into various
geometric shapes. All very fast and upbeat and just
eye candy to run while people were still coming in.
There was nothing suggestive about the dancing - it
was just disco-type stuff - and it was just monochrome
silouhettes anyway. But it was cute and happy, and I
thought it might help get people focused on the
subject more than more talking heads trying to cut
thru the con-lag. Also, it let me show off what my
ancient Amiga could do that would still be hard to
match on a PC with 100's of times the horsepower.
So, I ran the demo and then started to introduce the
panelists, when this middle-aged, obese woman in the
front rows interrupted me with a querilous and
obviously hostile, "Did that VIDEO TAPE (she obviously
had not been listening) have ANYTHING to do with
Virtual Reality." She then went on to some kind of
objections about sexism which I totally phased out on,
I was so stunned. I had the feeling that I was in a
bad dream. Nothing on that demo was sexist or
suggestive in the least. It could have been played at
a kindergarten and no mother would have objected.
Anyway, after a moment, this woman and several others
of similar appearance got up and walked out, radiating
hostility. It really rattled me, and my presentation
was rather strained afterwards. As I left the hall
later, I was approached by a woman wearing a nametag
that read "Marion Zimmer Bradley." She introduced
herself as such and then quietly but firmly lectured
me on how I could have avoided the unpleasantness by
such things as making sure that if I were going to
have dancing, then both sexes should be shown.
I pointed out that in fact, both sexes had been shown.
She had not noticed this little fact, somehow.
Anyway, she concluded, showing NUDE dancing might
easilly be construed as sexist exploitation. "NUDE
dancing"????? "Wait a minute," I interrupted, "They
were just silouhettes. How could you have determined
that they were nude?"
"Because," and she leaned in close, and her voise
became a hiss, "I ssssawww A NIPPLE!!"
Well, I had not thought the dancers were nude, and
never noticed any nipples - or penises flapping
around, but I took it under consideration. The whole
experience was so dismaying that I asked several of my
female fan friends about it over the next few hours
and got this explanation:
I had, so they inferred, suffered a visitation by what
they called "The MZB Mafia." According to them, a
group of man-hating ultrafemists who were fans of Ms.
Bradley had been pulling this sort of disruption for
some time. But what were they trying to accomplish??
It was a real puzzle.
So I asked Video Mike when I called to thank him for
the video tape of Stuyker's work. Mike laughed his
head off and informed me that he had been running into
this sort of thing for years. So what were they
trying to do? According to Mike, the whole idea was
to intimidate me so much the next time I had an
opportunity to speak publically I would ask them first
if any of my material was objectionable. He said that
they undoubtably had some little committee that was
waiting eagerly to have speakers come to them before
saying anything, so that they could sign off on it
first.
Anyway, at home I checked the "VIDEO TAPE," frame by
frame. There were no nipples.
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