Walls

[channonyarrow]

I always THINK that I'm totally not squickable. I mean, I know myself pretty well, I know that I'll try just about anything once, and usually two or three times to make sure I didn't like it the first time. I read voraciously, in many genres, and I pretty much only don't read sports and biographies. I read horror, I read splatterpunk, I read stuff that makes your spine want to crawl out of your body and find a new home, and not because it's badly written. I only don't watch horror movies because I have a morbid imagination and I get nightmares.

Anyone who can get nightmares for a solid week from the ep of Transformers where they brought back Optimus Prime has problems.

I have things I don't like, sure. I don't like mpreg, I don't like badly-written or overdone incest, I don't like women-as-eternal-victims-in-need-of-saving, I don't like plots that involve everyone wilfully not telling anyone in authority what's going on so they can FIX it, I don't like lots of things - but I don't think of those as squicks, any more than I'd think of walking into an ice cream shop(pe) and deciding that I had to leave because I really don't like rum-raisin ice cream (or raisins in general, in fact). It's a like or a dislike, not a squick.

Obviously, if I had once been viciously raped with a carton of rum-raisin ice cream by a hillbilly axe murderer, I might then legitimately have a squick about ice cream.

But I do still think of myself as someone not squicked by sex or violence or language or imagery, and generally when I run up against a wall and find myself going "Oh, yeah, squick, hey," it's a brickwall...topped with razor wire. And patrolled by an Unfriendly Patrol. Armed with guns. And guard dogs.

In other words, when I do find a squick, it usually makes me want to vomit.

So congratulations, person on bad_rpers_suck who has the icon of someone slitting a woman's throat with a straight razor. You've just found a squick of mine.

Thanks. Have some vomit.

And it's not that I'm not into freedom of speech (my inclination to that alternates with my inclination to buy a gun and shoot everyone I disagree with), it's that I'm not into an icon that I have to watch - carefully and repeatedly - to determine that it is, in fact, as disturbing and disgusting as I thought it was. So now I've overconsumed something I never wanted, and maybe it's the fact that I feel a little full of disgusting that is making me want to vomit, but I tell you - that icon's a winner.

In some strange alternate universe where using a graphic murder icon in a community is okay.


ETA: Okay, so it's her eye. How is this different? I don't care how marvellously arty it is, I find it disturbing (though admittedly a lot less so than when I thought they were cutting her throat). I don't like being an icon nazi, but that's REALLY the sort of thing best left in a personal journal.

Comments

[butterbuns.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an eyeball.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

If you watch it, they pull her head up, something slices across the "screen" and then there's the wound in her throat.

I'll look again, but I'm ninety nine percent certain that's what it is. The grainy black and white film stock doesn't help, but I'm pretty sure.

[butterbuns.livejournal.com]

I still think it's her eye. I've seen that icon a lot, and every time I wind up watching it for like, ten minutes.

It;s from this...

[nebris.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_chien_andalou

~M~

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

No, you're right, it is an eye.

I'm still not fond of it, however.

Un chien andalou

[nebris.livejournal.com]

It's not her throat, it's her eye. And it is from the film "Un chien andalou" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_chien_andalou) made by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel nearly eight decades ago. But it still works, don' it? lol

~M~

Re: Un chien andalou

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Whatever it is that they're slicing open, I don't really care. I still think it's pretty damn disturbing and the sort of thing best left to one's personal journal. However, on rewatching it, they're slicing her eye open.

Or something.

It's A Cows Eye

[nebris.livejournal.com]

If you go to the Wiki I linked, at the bottom of the entree is a link to the entire film. It's worth watching and will give you a major Kultural heads up on many. ;)

~M~

Re: It's A Cows Eye

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

French cinema, avant-garde cinema, and plotless movies a la Brazil all make me want to punch a nun until her stomach flies out of her mouth like a sea slug.

Or, as my father would prefer I say "No thanks." He doesn't really like it when I tell him that his favourite dessert sauce tastes like formaldehyde.

So no thanks.

Re: It's A Cows Eye

[gillen.livejournal.com]

But but but... it's Dali... and a classic. I projected that flick twice in college. Not my favourite of scenes from it, but I gotta give it mad love.

Re: It's A Cows Eye

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Just because something is a classic does not mean that it is de facto good. Slavery is classic. The Catholic church is classic. Stoning people to death is classic. Boring naked-man statues with tiny peepees are classic(al).

Everyone else can have screaming orgasms over that movie. Every single thing I know to date about that movie, other movies, and myself tells me that I will not like it at all, and from that standpoint I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock if, by watching it once and appearing interested in it, I could cure AIDS and cancer, world hunger, global warming, save Alan Rickman from getting shot in the head, and make Gerard Way my personal bitch. Calling something a classic is far too often simply a way of saying "I don't get it, so it must be really good."

This was the logic under which I watched Taxi Driver, and at the conclusion of that movie, I did go punch a nun.

In conclusion, I will never give props to another thing again simply because it's a classic without watching it first and agreeing that it merits that definition.

Re: It's A Cows Eye

[gillen.livejournal.com]

True. Slavery and stonings are only good when applied to the right people.

Re: It's A Cows Eye

[hammerheadshrk.livejournal.com]

you rawk. in this whole thing, much rawkness.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Someone on BRPS demonstrated a clear lack of concern for other people?

SURELY NOT.

(Icon aimed at the comm, not you.)

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

But usually they do it in text! Or, as mcity did, in another community entirely!

I LIKE that icon.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Feel free to steal -- it's from New Gold Dreams, a Something Positive spin-off of sorts. Milholland knows how to lay down the pwn.

[pocketfox.livejournal.com]

Wordy McWorderson all over your post, dude. I'm really hard to squick (hellfire, I watch movies like Hostel, Saw (both 1 and 2), and all those other delicious slasher fics for fun!), and that icon freaked me the fuck out. Somehow it being an eye instead of a throat makes it even worse for me... *shudder*

And just because it's from a "classic" movie doesn't make it any better.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Christ no - that's not an argument, and for me it stopped being one the second I saw Taxi Driver. I don't care if Un Chien Andalou was crapped out by baby Jesus onto celluloid of gold and myrrh or not, I'm not watching it, and the icon in question fails to impress me. Use that sort of thing in YOUR journal, dude, not in a comm.

Actually, I think that post could have consisted entirely of someone typing "fuck" eight thousand times and no one would have caught it, based on the comments on it.

[pocketfox.livejournal.com]

I don't care if Un Chien Andalou was crapped out by baby Jesus onto celluloid of gold and myrrh or not...

AHAHAHAHA! That is so full of win. XD

But yeah, you're probably right. Last time I looked there was one comment about the post. All the rest was icon-squick.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

And it was never changed, either. I'd call troll, if it weren't for the length of the post.

[hammerheadshrk.livejournal.com]

Anything with this much commentary on whether it's REALLY fucking vile or just a LITTLE fucking vile can sail right by me, thanks. I'll un-live vicariously through you, thanks so much.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm completely amazed that it actually is being discussed whether I'm batshit crazy for not loving something from an art film or not. I'm like "WTF? I don't like something, but I have to because it's a classic/art film/by Dali/crapped out by baby Jesus? WHAT THE SMACK IS THAT ABOUT?"

Yeesh.

[tweekked.livejournal.com]

I don't know you, so I hope I'm not out of line for commenting here, but I totally agree. I'm hardly squicked by anything -- I find scary movies really boring most of the time, and I usually like things that can get some sort of emotional response out of me. But, Jesus Christ, that icon drives me MAD. I haven't read the post and I just close my eyes like a little girl and press space bar a bunch of times to scroll down when I get a glimpse of it.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally not out of line. I am actually really irritated now (three, four days later) by someone who would do that and not change the icon when so many people indicated they didn't like it. I'm not bothered by nudity or whatnot, but that one...yeah. Not appropriate for community use. And it feels (if it weren't for the length of the post, I'd be shouting it there) like a troll, almost, someone who's liking that so many people are bothered by the icon.

And yeah - I didn't expect to find out that something like that DID squick me. Not really fun to realise.

[guardian-yugi.livejournal.com]

I know the icon you're talking about. I have to scroll down to avoid looking at it directly or I feel ill. It's terrible.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

It's just gag inducing, it really is.

[guardian-yugi.livejournal.com]

100% Agreement.