#like i’m black and a woman you think that’s not gonna hinder my job opportunities also?? whatever who cares

[merevide]

i feel like i need a good cry. like just absolutely sobbing my eyes out, unable to catch my breath, headache inducing cry. (goes on about my day as normal)

[leaveharmony]

A transcription of the english subtitles (+ a summary and some screencaps) of a part one of a two-part NJPW documentary/interview about Hiroshi Tanahashi, circa 2014. Part 2 is Here

Teaser:

(the opening shot is Tana standing in an  elevator)

Hiroshi Tanahashi (referred to from this point on as HT): I'm not tired.  I never  get tired. (he pretends to fall asleep on his feet, with  his head resting against the wall)

(there's a little introductory sequence,  subtitled with the idea behind the  documentary - a look at Tana's then-15-years  in wrestling, his love of it, and his love of  the fans.  My favourite clip is when a little girl he's holding for a photo kisses his cheek and he throws his head back like “Oh!  You got me!”)

(a close-up, Tana is standing in the sun,  talking)

HT: Well, it's been...15 years since I began  my career and I'm happy that I've never grown  to hate pro wrestling.  

(the theme of the documentary is “Why I love  pro wrestling” because if anybody deserves a  title worthy of a painfully earnest  gradeschool paper, it's Tana)

(Tana is walking in the rain at night.  His gait is strange, swaying, like he's always going downhill or is afraid his shoes will fall off)

Caption: New Japan Pro Wrestling holds over  130 events a year.  He posts about NJPW  whenever he gets a spare moment.  

(somewhere overlooking a road, Tana is  standing outside.  It's still raining.   During Tana's monologue, footage of him  attending various promotional events plays;  Tana on camera, Tana chatting next to Yoshitatsu)

Caption: His hectic schedule

HT: I asked for this situation.  Nobody asked  me.  I just wanted to liven pro wrestling up.   You may think it's livened up now, but I  still don't see the top of the mountain.   Even if it's going well right now, I won't  cease my efforts.  I must keep going.  As I  continue promoting, I've been blessed with  various offers.  I just feel grateful and  happy seeing people exited about and craving  pro wrestling.  Nothing makes me happier.

(the footage switches to a DVD release event  at Tower Records; Tana is onstage with Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Togi Makabe, and two gentlemen I don't  recognize.  The Blonde One is chatting with  Tana, I'm gonna represent his dialogue with  “TBO” until I know otherwise)

Caption: Part three of “Gekijo Pro-Wrestling”  DVD release party at Tower Records

TBO: How was part Three?

HT: The venue was Namba Grand Kagetsu, a holy  place for comedians in Osaka.  In addition to  young comedians, many big-name comedians  appear there.  

TBO: That's right.

HT: I was overwhelmed.  

TBO: Though the young comedians performed  freely,

(HT: hai)

TBO:...a legendary comedian was unable to  perform.

HT: So the roles were reversed.

TBO: He was too nervous.

(we switch back to outside, where Tana is  fiddling with his phone)

Caption: Tanahashi keeps the world posted.   Even while filming, he writes on his blog as  always.

HT: I'm posting on my blog.  I like writing.  

Interviewer: Have you gotten used to your  smartphone?

HT:  Not yet. 

Interviewer: How long have you been using it?

HT: About a week.  

Interviewer: How do you like it?

HT: It's super handy.  

Caption: He used to stick to a flip phone

HT: The other day, I went to the office and  boasted “I can type so fast.”  And an  assistant said, “You're three years behind.”  (laughs)

Interviewer: What made you finally get one?

HT: One reason was that my old flip phone was  worn out.  Also, my jobs were hindered  because I couldn't open attachments.  

Interviewer: Your jobs as a writer?

HT: Yeah, but this is really fast.  

Caption: In 2014, his words were published in  book form.  

(interior shot, Tana walking in a cluttered  white room carrying his book.  He grins at  the camera and points to it)

Caption: November 18th, the NJPW offices

(Tana sits down with Koji Uno, an editor with  R25 magazine.  They greet and introduce one  another, then sit down.  

HT: This is our second time, right?

KU: Yes.

(Closeup on Tana's book, the caption reads  "How Hiroshi Tanahashi Suceeded in  Reconstructing New Japan Pro Wrestling")

KU: I wanted to feature you in our magazine  after I read your book.  I felt the title was  like a business book, and it was actually  very interesting.

HT: Thank you. 

HT (in voiceover, again from outside): It's a  great non-fiction book.  A positive side- effect of the book is that it reached a new  audience for pro wrestling.  Also thanks to  the book, major mass media outlets,  newspapers, and business websites began to  interview me.  So I'm glad it got published.  

(back inside, where Uno is taking notes as  Tana speaks)

HT: Well, I like novels.  When I was in high  school, I was into Yasuo Uchida's Mitsuhiko  Asami series.  Asami pilots the Soarer.  He  isn't married and he's laid-back...

(outside in the rain again)

Caption:  Tanahashi is delighted to have a  hectic work schedule.  Is it because he  endured the hard period dubbed the 'Dark  days'?

HT: Looking back, it wasn't tough at all  because everything was rewarding.  I promoted  pro wrestling and more people came to enjoy  it.  I really love it when they say, “It was  fun!”  People tend to compare the dark days  with the current situation, but my activities  never changed and will never change.  

(an exterior shot of a glass skyscraper)

Caption: November 15th, Shosen Book Tower  Akihabara.  His 15th anniversary DVD release  party will be held on this day.  30 minutes  before the event, what is drawing his focus?

(A close-up of Tana's face; he looks urgently focused on something.  His face keeps contorting; whatever it is, it’s Serious Business.  The shot pans back...Tana is  playing on his DS lol)

Interviewer: Is that for relaxation during  long tours?

HT: I enjoy this during tours.  Since I don't  have time to go out, I automatically save  money.  (he looks a bit sheepish)  Sometimes  I play too much, and it affects my health.   (laughs)

Caption: 10 minutes before the event, the  meeting finally begins.

(Another white room, with three people  inside.  One has a lanyard on, one is at a  table with a pen, and Tana is seated before a  mirror with a flatiron, fiddling with his  bangs.  They're going over itinerary for the  event)

Staff: Then the selected match...

Caption: The DVD includes Famous Tanahashi  Quotes.

Staff: “Tanahashi that doesn't fly is just a  good-looking guy.”

(Tana starts laughing)

HT: Is that on there?

Staff: Yes.

HT: When did I say that? (still laughing)

Staff: Before your match with Kojima-san

HT (recalling): Right, I couldn't do my High  Fly because of my knee injury.  

Staff: You were wearing the black shorts.  

HT (repeating it to himself): “A Tanahashi  that doesn't fly is just a good-looking guy.”   I'm still good-looking.  (laughs)

Staff: And still boasting.

(A quick-cut.  Tana is still backstage, every  time we make a cut he's got less buttons done up on his shirt.  His whole undershirt has vanished.  He's taking a huge bite out  of some kind of pastry; it has a fish design  on the top)

HT (noticing the camera): Ah!

Caption: A rare sight of Tanahashi enjoying a  treat during his busy day

HT: Yum.  I was trying to sneak this, but you  caught me.  (laughs)

Staff: You shouldn't eat that.  Maybe just a  bite.

HT: The event starts in two minutes.

(Tana laughs and takes another huge bite.   With his mouth full, he says “Yummy!”  Staff  are scurrying around)

Staff: Did you eat lunch?

HT: Yes I did.  A fan gave me these when I  came in. (he indicates a white box with two  other ...fish pastry things..inside)  So  good!

Staff: Are you ready?

HT (dramatically): It's time.

Staff (the woman looks exhausted; she was probably in charge of keeping his buttons up): This way.  

HT: Okay.

Caption: To the venue where his fans await

(Tana walks through dimly-lit hallways, there  are boxes piled up everywhere.  We see the  emcee of the event welcoming fans.  There are  over a hundred in attendance.  As we cut back  to the other room, Tana's music starts  playing out in the venue.  Tana's buttons are now entirely undone.)

Caption: Backstage, for some reason he bares  his chest. 

(Tana is laughing at his own ridiculousness)

Caption: Then, something unexpected  happens...

HT: Hey!  For real??

(the fans have started singing “Happy  Birthday”; Tana's birthday was two days after  this was filmed.  Tana looks like a kid at christmas, and claps along with the song a little bit.  Everyone yells happy birthday.   There's an explosion of giggles as soon as everyone can see him with his inexplicably  undone buttons.  The emcee, Haruo Murata,  greets Tana)

HM: As you can see, we started with a  birthday surprise.

HT (grinning but also blushing like an anime  character): Look at me.  How embarrassing...I  was supposed to make you laugh.  Thank you.

HM: And here's a cake for you.

(The little vanilla-frosting cake has 1/100  on top)

HT: Ah, my nickname.  

(another explosion of giggles.  Tana picks  the cake up and holds it for a second.  “One  blow” he pledges, and blows his candles out.   Everybody yells happy birthday again, and  Tana thanks them.)

HM: This is a great photo opportunity.

HT (sheepishly): Let me do up my buttons.

(the event begins in earnest; Tana turns up  the charm and starts chatting with Murata,  and telling stories)

HT: It's been 43 years since NJPW was  founded...and 60 years since pro wrestling  began, which means a better wrestler than me  won't appear for another 40 years.

HT: I think it was 2007 when I became the G1  winner, and I was wearing black shorts...a  reporter from TV Asahi asked me why I was  wearing them, I answered, “Because it's sexy.   Shorts are sexier.”  (to the audience) But  that's not what fans want, right?

HM: How did the reporter react?

HT (laughing):  I don't remember.  Maybe like  “Ok..?”  I used to bother them a lot.

(quick cut to the photo op portion of the  event.  People keep bringing him birthday  presents, and giggling.  He chats a little  with everybody and takes pictures with them.   A little tiny girl gives him a present and  declares "He's a prince!" before he picks her  up for a photo; her mother carefully places  electric pink birthday sunglasses on Tana's  head for the picture)

Caption: He keeps a hectic pace to please his  fans.  He says he owes all that to his  family's support.

(we're outside again, with Tana in the rain)

Caption: Gratitude to his family

HT: I'm always out for training, promotion,  and matches.  The only thing I can do is try  to make the most of the time when I can be  with my family.  I feel bad for making my  wife and kids miss me.  My wife always  prepares me well-balanced meals...and my kids  always give me a big welcome yelling “Dad!”  when I return from tours.  I'm so lucky to  have them.  

(nightfall, after the event.  Tana exits a  back gate but as soon as he's visible,  there's shrieking from the street.  Tana says  “Whoa.”)

Caption: Tanahashi willingly grants fans  requests right until he leaves.

(there's a little crowd of mostly-girls  looking for autographs.  One of them yells  “Take me home with you!”  “Takeout?” Tana  jokes.  He chats with everybody even as he's  actually in the back of his taxi)

Caption: Because NJPW is currently riding a  wave of prosperity

(Tana stands against a wall mural, with the  heavyweight title over his shoulder.  He's  pontificating a little bit but also grinning  because it's practically self-parody at this  point)

HT: I think some wrestlers get carried away  with that.  But not me.  Still, someone needs  to watch our step...and keep an eye out for  the fans' needs.  I have to anticipate their  slight emotional changes and cater the  performances to what they want.  Once it  becomes too routine, it won't excite them.   The best part of pro wrestling is always  changing performances.  But don't worry,  leave it to Tanahashi. 

Caption: Dreams

HT: For the future of pro wrestling, I want  more kids to aspire to be pro wrestlers.  We  don't have farm teams like baseball and  soccer do.  And baseball has the Major League  while soccer has role models like Honda and  Kagawa.  Kids can aspire and work towards  being like them.  I want to show kids that  being a pro wrestler is something they can  also aspire to be.  To make that happen, I  must rise up and show them what it can be  like and hopefully more kids will dream of  becoming pro wrestlers.  Perhaps, they'll  play pro wrestling at schools.  I vaguely  imagine such a vision of the future. 

Caption: What is pro wrestling to you?

HT: Pro wrestling is my way of life.  I don't  feel right saying “It is my life” as my life  will go on even after quitting pro wrestling.   In pro wrestling there are good times and  bad times.  If I endure hardships, then  golden opportunities come.  Then I  counterattack and seize them.  So what I do  in pro wrestling and in my life are closely  linked.  It has taught me so many valuable  lessons.  When people ask me this question, I  always answer, “It's my way of life.”

@yungcrybby-anonymousbosch @torukun1 @lone-gunwoman-of-the-week (idk if you’re actually a Tana fan but you might be? lol)

[jamiedeline]

When Prejudices Become Partisan: What Also Happened Last November

One year ago today, our nation experienced a shift that we will be doomed to analyze and re-analyze and over-analyze until the end of time. Have you ever been a student in a history class examining particularly bizarre or frightening eras from our collective human past and wonder, “How the hell did they let that happen?” I feel I’m currently living in one of those eras and I understand it even less. I recently watched the documentary 11/8/16, which follows various Americans throughout the country on that fateful day, and I believe Anthony Ray Hinton, a man exonerated after 30 years on Death Row now voting for the first time since, put it best: “I’ve done stuff and woke up the next morning and said, ‘Man, what have I done?’ I don’t know when, I don’t know how long [it’s] gonna be, but the American people are gonna wake up and say, ‘What have we done?’”

Obviously Americans take many different stances on last year’s election, as did the subjects featured in said documentary. But nearly all of us agree that things were said during the course of last year’s election that were disrespectful, misogynistic, racist, and for lack of a better word, stupid. I had long hoped (if not assumed) that the majority of the American people would draw the line at such blatant bigotry. Well, the majority of Americans did draw that line, but still not nearly enough to stop said offender from ascending to the Oval Office. When the polls closed, I remember not so much being shocked at the results, but more heartbroken, as my worst fears about my country had just been confirmed. So how did we get to a place in our nation where bigotry is brushed off, if not all out accepted, by so much of the voting electorate?

I’m not speaking about the radicals and reactionaries who will always be among us. I’m speaking about the majority of the American public, who I’ll assume, for the sake of my sanity, to be morally decent and good. (Donald Trump is not among the majority I’m considering.) So forget the alt-right and the old-school Nazis. To be fair and balanced, I guess we can forget Antifa, if you even remembered them in the first place.

Partisanship is not a new phenomenon in this country. It’s as old as our constitution. For various reasons, our nation divided itself into a two-party nation, and despite two dominant parties rising and falling and shifting in ideology over time, there has always been two on top. Any vote for a third party ultimately only helps one and hinders the other, because surely it will always be one of the dominant two in the end. I have often claimed that this is far from ideal, but that’s the way it’s always been, and it leaves ample room for in-fighting about the platform of each party (yes, I see you, Bernie bros) while plenty of people feel they cannot solidly identify with either.

With that said, I’m still not sure exactly how and when our partisanship got to be this bad. Yet I do know that it’s worse than I’ve seen it in my lifetime. Despite the cries of many who insist it to be so, I maintain that this is not and never will be politics as usual. I also believe one of the reasons we got here is that many Americans have been fooled into thinking this is the case, and Donald Trump is not the only reason for this. I may not know why and how it came to this, and any reporter or analyzer is welcome to take up the study, but I can present examples of its existence and argue why it needs to be stopped before this country really does go off the rails into total self-destruction.

A prime example was given by Republican Tim Miller in a segment brilliantly pinned “The Cuck Zone” in a summer episode of Lovett or Leave It (one of the many brilliant podcasts from Crooked Media). He referenced back to the 2012 debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney, where the latter made reference to his “binders full of women.” Miller reminded us that in response to this off-hand remark, many liberals pounced on Romney and labelled him a sexist, despite the fact that he’s been married to a woman with whom he shared his first kiss at age 16 for nearly 50 years, and he actually wanted to hire these women. Looking back at the time, I very well may have gotten swept up in the rhetoric in the heat of the impending election and been more critical than necessary of Romney in that regard, but I don’t think I believed him to be genuinely sexist. He’s certainly not the most progressive candidate for women’s rights, but I think at the time the comment and the subsequent jokes it produced was more entertaining to me than disconcerting. (See below for an example.)

Yet come four years later, when the Republicans have on their ticket a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, stood accused of sexual assault a dozen times over, claimed that hiring women costs his businesses too much money, and practically confirmed that he would bang his own daughter if she were not, you know, his daughter - then what good was our outrage if we had already overused and misplaced it in previous elections? We are so bitterly divided in this country along political lines that we the people failed to recognize an actual danger to our democracy. We’ve been crying political wolf for so long, that when an actual misogynistic prick is running for the highest office in the nation, those who identify with his “side” do not take the legitimate gripes of the opposition seriously. At this point, it’s just another partisan divide. Not a threat to our democracy, not a threat to many of our citizens, but just Democrats vs. Republicans as usual.

When Trump was finally chosen as the candidate the Republican party would have to run for president, I did find it a bit of glee in it. Not only was this a time when I naively believed the majority of Americans would see through his bullshit, but it seemed to be poetic justice for the Republican establishment of the past eight years. So much of their party’s platform had become all about blindly hating Obama and everything he did or tried to do, with and (more often) without their willingness to work with him. It was also not lost on me that many of this vitriolic hate came from a place of pure bigotry. There were plenty of people in this country and in our Congress that resented the fact that a black man with Muslim relations was in the White House. Never mind that he was one of the most decent and intelligent human beings to take up the job in my lifetime, never mind basic political differences of opinion; too many of the people that opposed him were ruled by prejudice.

For all that they had done and refused to do, I thought Trump was the candidate they deserved. For their party’s anti-LBGTQ, anti-women, and anti-immigrant agenda, a bigot at the head of the ranks made sense. Now, I am not saying that all Republicans are inherently bigots, yet I do believe the Republican Party of the past decade is less in line with traditional conservatism and more in step with white male prosperity. Nevertheless, the Republican establishment stood ready to reject Trump. How could they be so shocked when the majority of their constituents drank the poison they’d been feeding them for years?

So life-long Republicans who did reject Trump were forced to make a choice; vote for the bigoted bully your party was now all but required to endorse, or vote for Hillary Clinton. Yes, Hillary Clinton. The lightening rod for conservative hate, despite her largely centrist views that has also made her a lightening rod of hate for the far-left. I’m sure most of my fellow millennials saw this GIF going around on their Facebook:

My first reaction was “Dude, you spelled Hillary’s name wrong.” My second reaction was “Heh, that’s funny, I guess.” But my third and most passionate reaction was, “Wait, are you fucking kidding me?” How is Hillary Clinton on the same level as Donald Trump?! How can you not make that distinction?

“But what about her emails?” “What about Whitewater?” “What about her speech at Goldman Sachs?” At the time, I believed this to be complete and utter partisan bullshit. While I recognize the legitimacy of some these gripes back then as I do now, one year of a Donald Trump presidency has proven my initial instincts to be correct. Watching the Trump administration not only have scandals of the exact same nature (and worse) as anything Hillary was accused of during the election and watching the Republican establishment look the other way has validated my initial inclination. Yet what would the Democratic Party do if Hillary had insisted on a Muslim ban? I’d like to think we’d rebuke her, and I know Republicans would tear her apart just because they’d have the opportunity. But would we still endorse her? Would I still vote for her?

I had a couple friends in France that weren’t so thrilled with their final two choices in their most recent election. Because France has a run-off system, their final two choices came down to, as one acquaintance put it, “An inexperienced businessman and a racist.” Yet to me, that choice was obvious! Do not vote for the racist! Thank God 75% of the country took my advice. Perhaps they learned from our mistakes. Americans should have learned from Brexit if the majority of us paid any attention to international news.

What it came down to was that the majority of Trump voters either brushed aside or excused their candidates racism when they cast their ballot. There are plenty of bonafide racists in his constituency, and perhaps even more that aren’t even aware of how inherent racism and misogyny are in our system that they do not recognize it in themselves, but I don’t believe the majority to have had malicious intent. Yet at the very least, they ignored this maliciousness in favor of his policies which supposedly were more in line with their political beliefs.

But does it matter where your candidate stands on the economy if he’s actively mounting a racist campaign? Shouldn’t we, the American people, know where to draw the line between politics as usual and flat-out prejudice?

Unfortunately last year, the answer was no. But we need to learn.

Prejudice on partisan lines is not exactly new in this country, either. We literally fought a war amongst ourselves because one half of us refused to acknowledge the practice of maintaining other human beings was immoral. To this day people still try to make excuses for that, right up to the president’s Chief of Staff! They claim the Civil War was about more than slavery, but rather states’ rights (ahem, their rights to own slaves), economic opportunities (i.e. refusing to give up their slaves), and Southern oppression (because they were being forced to give up their slaves... you see where I’m going with this). Never mind that these statues of Confederate generals were erected decades later as yet another reminder to African-Americans that their lives matter less. And when there is finally some push-back against these symbols of oppression, we end up with Nazis marching in the street. Nazis which the president refused to condemn because he knows they are his constituents! This cannot and should not be acceptable. Even if you voted for Trump on an economic basis, good and decent cannot stand idly by and be complicit in this hatred.

I’m sure there are many who voted for Trump who are now having second thoughts. Probably many of them won’t be willing to admit it, but I’m sure they exist. I’m also sure many of them continue to be in denial, lying to themselves and coating these lies with their daily dose of Fox & Friends. People don’t want to admit they made a mistake. Our nation has made many of them and yet we still make excuses for ourselves rather than acknowledging them. Certainly we on the left are not and will not be so forgiving. I myself find it extremely hard to forgive anyone who voted for Trump, even though several of my loved ones are among them. They must have known what they were voting for, right? Yet so many people have become so tribal that it’s blinded their ability to think critically about their choices. This isn’t a new phenomenon either. Countless studies have shown that human beings will pick their tribe before they pick their beliefs, and then their beliefs will subsequently fall in line with the pack. We as Americans, let alone as people, have come a long way in shedding our more primitive, tribal roots. Yet we have a long way to go.

We on the left can be kinder to each other as well. The truth is that there is often great tribalism among minorities against other minorities. Far more often than necessary, we are compelled to attack ignorance where an attack is not merited. Not everyone is coming from a place of maliciousness. More often than not, people just don’t know. We have to open to hearing other people speak their truths, even if the opinions they’ve derived from their experiences clash with our own. This is the only way we can truly learn from each other and grow. Yet if those who are more “privileged” than us feel alienated from the conversation, they will feel alienated from the movement and more and more reluctant to stand with us as allies.

Maybe with the shock of the election and the disaster of a first year for Trump’s presidency, the winds are starting to shift. Yesterday’s election garnered much more hopeful results. While there is little hope to be placed on Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, there are still those in the party (though they won’t be there for long) willing to speak out. I don’t expect Sen. Jeff Flake or Sen. Bob Corker to start aligning themselves with Democrats on votes. They’re still Republicans and they have a different set of beliefs. Yet bigotry should never be a mainstay in any political party’s platform. It should be called out by all decent Americans, no matter where it comes from. Prejudice should not be a partisan issue. Let’s recognize that in our own personal politics and start voting only for the people who already do.