I’m feeling a bit ill today, and not up to much in the way of, like, thinking and writing loads, so tonight I will simply show you my favourite ever animation, “The Dot and the Line”…
I did have a whole heap of gender symbolism stuff to go with this, but it’s probably is old hat anyway, and my head hurts. I’ll just do a really short summary of my Big Idea and then slump on the couch and fall asleep!
What I was going to argue was that in archetypal structures (things like divination methods – the I Ching and the Tarot are my favourites) the division of male and female can even go right down to such basic mathematical concepts as lines, and dots. This cartoon (ether consciously or unconsciously) reinforces the same gender association. And that, dear readers, is my only justification for posting it on a feminist weblog!
I haven’t seen this in years. Thanks for posting it.
I think my favorite joke was the dot’s perfect 36-36-36 figure.
The subtitle reminded me of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. For what it’s worth, in that story, the women were line segments.
(Also, isn’t this illegal?)
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
so, the line was a Nice Guy(TM)?
“Stretching a point”. Oh, my.
Not necessarily. He doesn’t whine about what he’s entitled to; he takes action to be more than just a line.
I read the book this was based on when I was a kid. I think my parents still have it.
Shhh! I’m trying to figure out how to get it off YouTube before they take it down!
This is my brain on math:
When the line turned into a polygon, I was able to justify it; after all, maybe they’re all living in S^3 where lines are all circles anyway.
But then! Then he turned into a parallelepiped! These are not the same thing! All those three-valent vertices! And then he went and disconnected himself, which is also not a line. Don’t even get me started on the rest of his forms.
…I’ll just be sitting over here in my lame obsessive math-geek corner.