(If you just want one good belly laugh without having to plow through the rest of this, look down near the end for the paragraph beginning "In retrospect...")
This is really a case study in delusion and ego attachment. Let's look at posts two and three in Barry's projected three hundred (this will be a continuing series of posts under this subject heading, BTW): > For example, one *could* go to see a movie and, > rather than enjoy it as the uplifting fable it > is, As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed the film each of the three times I saw it. The hair gaffe--which I hadn't even noticed the first two times--didn't detract at all from my appreciation of the film, even after my sister pointed it out. choose to focus on and go all deja vu on > some trauma from one's own early life in which > one was told over and over again to go comb > their unruly hair. Looks as though Barry's projecting a trauma of *his* early life. It certainly wasn't a feature of mine. That's the magic of "What > you focus on you become," or mindfulness. One > does *not* have to fall prey to one's samskaras > and re-run the same petty ego-dramas over and > over in one's head forever Or if not forever, at least three hundred times, as Barry has declared he's going to do--in public, yet--in an attempt to embarrass me. > at any point one can choose to focus on > something else. He's got 298 to go, it seems, before he can stop rerunning this particular petty ego-drama. > If one were to buy into the logic that allowing > an actress to use her own judgment and wear her > hair the way she thinks best suits her character > is "in reality" an attempt to denigrate and cast > aspersions on "lesser" Native Americans by an > unfeeling director, Total Barryfantasy. The subconscious racism was that they *didn't notice the incongruity*. And here's three (297 to go): > The whole > "Dances With Nitpicks" thread, with her making 20+ > posts simply because I corrected her by pointing > out that Mary McDonnell made the decision to wear > her hair loose rather than braided has been really, > really FUN to watch. Oh, my. Barry didn't "correct" me on anything, first of all. Second, most of my posts about this had nothing to do with what Barry reported of the interview.(*) Most weren't addressed to him at all, nor to any of his points. But every one of his dozen-plus posts about this were attacks on me for having brought up the incongruity--including a raft of his own nitpicks. As I said in an earlier post, this has been *Barry's* meltdown, not mine. (Let's recall that his first batch of hysterical rants completely missed the racism angle and accused me instead of being antifeminist because I had, in his deranged view, purportedly demanded that all women wear their hair neatly or be considered prostitutes.) Here's the very best part of Barry's long, strange trip on this to date: > In retrospect, the thing I found funniest about the > whole "Dances With Wolves" thang was *not* that Judy > failed to address the fact that there is *not a single > scene in the film* that portrays Mary McDonnell's > hair as "dirty" or "matted" the way she claimed it > was, (Obviously untrue, but let's leave that aside.) but the fact that this whole insane theory of > hers *never even occurred to her* until her sister > mentioned it. > > Isn't that classic? On the one hand, it supports my > theory that the whole "slattern" thing is the result > of some childhood trauma, in that her sister was > *also* told to "Go comb your hair," and probably by > the same petty tyrant. On the other, it's one of the > best examples *ever* of Judy BELIEVING WHAT > SOMEONE TOLD HER TO BELIEVE. > > By her own admission, it never occurred to her that > "Dances With Wolves" could be secretly racist *until > someone told her to believe it*. No, my sister never mentioned subconscious racism. That's my own theory. But in Barry's mind, it's "one of the best examples *ever*" of my believing "WHAT SOMEONE TOLD" me to believe. Talk about classic. The thing Barry finds funniest never happened anywhere but in his own head. In fact, it's one of the best examples ever of how Barry creates his own reality. You'd think he'd be up in arms against that skeptic Jeff quoted. Anyway, that's two and three (starting from yesterday). Is Barry having fun yet? I've really barely scratched the surface of the yucks to be found in this extended temper tantrum of Barry's. I think I'm going to collect the whole shootin' match and upload it to the Files section, with expanded commentary, so I can refer readers to it whenever Barry pontificates about ego-drama and attachment and holding grudges and so on. At least, it'll serve as documentation when it comes time to decide who wins the Master of Inadvertent Irony award for 2010. ----- * As we'll recall, he's given two very different versions of the hair decision. In the interview, he claimed, McDonnell said it was the costumers and makeup artists who had convinced her to wear her hair loose and uncombed because braids would make her look "too severe" and "almost uptight." Which is pretty funny, because none of the Indian women in the film looked "severe" or "uptight." In a later post, he claimed McDonnell had decided to wear her hair that way because she was "smart enough to realize" that's what it would look like "within an hour" in a windy setting even if it started out "bound up neatly." Again, none of the Indian women's hair looked like McDonnell's even under the same purportedly windy conditions. And then, of course, in his description of the interview, there was his miraculous transformation of "costumers and makeup artists" plus McDonnell--a minimum of five people--into only two women.
