feminist blogs

The Bechdel Test is commonly used to measure an authentic (or relatively more authentic) representation of women’s lives and experiences on film. I employ it usually when I’m on the fence about watching a movie. It generally works, at its simplest, to measure the value of women to the story, and at its most complex, as an exercise in realizing how undervalued women are in the movie business at large. Until I watched The Family That Preys, I never considered that a movie might pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors yet still ooze stereotype and misogyny. Or how my joy for a film stacked with amazing, but terribly underused female actors, may be despite the net effect of sending awfully negative messages about women. Talk about conflict.

Maybe it’s telling that my first FemFilm review centers a male writer-director as a point of discussion, but I couldn’t NOT write about this movie considering the irony of getting what you ask for as a feminist movie buff — top-billing and greater representation of women in film — in such a shitty package. I’ve seen some of the other movies in the Tyler Perry franchise and liked them fine, so I watched Family last night on TV without intending to write about it for this project. For one, it’s fluffier than what I was intending for the project, and two, it’s frought with a larger discussion about black filmmaking and art, especially with its creator, that I’m not expert enough to comment on any more than I do here. Others can elucidate why Tyler Perry, this movie’s writer and director, is so controversial, but if one wants to get a picture why he elicits so much vitriol for his stories, this one isn’t a bad place to start. As a storyteller, Perry relies heavily on cliche. Most of his movies are packed full of soap operatic drama, unbelievable twists, and schlocky moments that are meant to evoke themes of redemption, humility, and perseverance. There is little care in how a story develops, or whether it is believable, as long as everyone learns their place in the end. In a word, dude is hamfisted. On the other hand, much of Perry’s work seeks to represent the black middle-class family in a way that is mostly warm and funny and just not seen enough elsewhere. If you want to sit your brain on the shelf and watch a silly movie with your family, you could do much worse, but when your analyst brain is in function, Perry has serious problems with gender.

There are so many story lines in Family that it’s hard to explain how they all co-exist together. Let’s just say two matriarchs (Bates and Woodard) embark on an adventure so akin to Thelma & Louise that Tyler Perry probably owes someone for story rights, imitating the aesthetic down to the cowboy hats, honky tonk bar, and a photo of the pair taped to the dash of a sweet vintage convertible driving into the sunset. This teaches us, because there is always a moral to the story, that we need to learn to take risks (groan) because life is short. Another character (Sanaa Lathan) has an affair with a white guy, the guy who played a white supremacist in Higher Learning, no less, because she looks down on her husband’s blue collar job. She further emasculates her husband by having a fat bank account he doesn’t know about. In the end, she is punished thusly for being uppity and self-hating and adulterous by watching her husband become very rich while she becomes poor. This teaches us that (get ready for it) money isn’t everything, but also that while interracial friendships are okay, interracial fucking is not. And so on.

I mock the patness of Perry’s employ, but his work is not much different than many of the family comedies or romantic comedies that use cliche and stereotype to tell a story, and it’s certainly not different in its sexism. The big picture problem with Perry, as Alyssa Rosenberg writes, is the hegemony of his methods and his need to center a moralistic point of view (and himself!) in every story, and so his storytelling is flat and self-centered, which sucks because he commands such a huge market and could spread the wealth considerably for other African-American writers and directors more than he has so far. But what he does and does well, really well, is fill a huge gap in representation of black actors on screen. He has a knack for casting incredibly talented actors that aren’t getting steady, valued work in Hollywood, such as the primary actors in Family, Saana Lathaan, Alfre Woodard, and Kathy Bates.

I’ll admit, I probably enjoyed this movie more than I should have just because I was treated to Woodard and Bates. It’s hard to appreciate how difficult it must be to be a middle-aged woman in Hollywood of any size, shape, or color, unable to secure solid jobs despite the level of respect you command or the number of accolades you receive, until you realize how little you’ve seen either of these commanding women in the last ten years. It’s shameful that we lose out on their talents. And they shine in this movie, they do, even with the flat writing and hokey hijinks. Their invisibility, and my delight in rediscovering them, also reflects just how standardized white patriarchy is in movies altogether.

On the flipside, Perry, despite his affection for his female cast members, replaces the usual white patriarchy with black patriarchy disguised as uplift, a consistent message of his from film to film to film. As a feminist, this is one of the most frustrating aspects about Perry considering that his primary audience is made up of black women: the prevalence of messages about what makes a good woman, which usually means speaking softly, never losing your temper, obeying your man, and being a good Christian. Family is no exception. For example, the film excuses the emasculated husband when he hits his wife in anger because he is righteous in his bitterness, and the wrongness of his violence isn’t addressed other than in the desired effect that it puts his wife in her place. By the end of the movie he is righted as family patriarch. Most of Perry’s characters are good or bad with little in between, though it’s far more likely that the women in his work will suffer more harshly for their badness than the men for theirs.

For a long time last night, after I watched the movie and went to bed, I lay there thinking of what a double-edged sword it was, that one little flick can encompass so much of what’s wrong with the representation of women in the movie business while getting one other thing, a thing that feminists pine for, so very right. It also speaks to the limitations of the Bechdel Test, and to the tragic lack of meaningful stories for woman actors to portray.

On Valentine’s Day, this blogger finished a project in which he watched thirty “chick flicks” in thirty days to “understand the opposite sex”, subtitled, “One Guy’s Exploration of Romance Through Movies Loved by Women.” As the title suggests, the majority of the movies he watched were run-of-the-mill rom-coms, which, while a guilty pleasure of mine when I feel like turning off the brain after a long week, really don’t offer a well-rounded representation of women’s experiences or woman-made film. This got me thinking about what an feminist film project would look like, and whether I, Die-Hard Couch Potato, was up to the challenge. And if by “up to the challenge” one means “already sitting on the couch every night with laptop in lap,” the answer is yes.

I have a long, conflicted history with film and movies, and only in the last few years have I developed the patience and vocabulary to explain what I like and dislike about certain films. The sad truth, what with all the money and production work put into one movie, is that most of them are crap. And yet movies are one area of pop culture that is worth evaluating through an anti-oppression lens, 1) because movies are consumed by so many people, and 2) because movies communicate so much about our cultural values. I don’t expect that movies present a perfectly tuned feminist or anti-oppression message, so much that I want to see an authentic narrative that, like any good story, sheds light of understanding on what it means to live, imagine, and dream. I’m particularly interested in how the stories of girls and women are represented on film.

After sharing the original “chick flicks” project on Facebook (where you should be one of our illustrious fans), one reader offered this awesome list:

1. Born in Flames.
2. The Battle of Algiers.
3. Sophie’s Choice.
4. The Piano.
5. Gone With The Wind.
6. In The Mood For Love.
7. The Last Unicorn.
8. Tootsie.
9. Fay Grim.
10. Some Like It Hot.
11. His Girl Friday.
12. Code 46.
13. Terminator 2.
14. The Secretary.
15. A Star is Born.
16. After Life.
17. Ties That Bind (Su Friedrich)
18. The Color Purple.
19. East/West.
20. Alien.
21. The Accused.
22. The Secret of NIMH.
23. What’s Love Got To Do With It?
24. The Joy Luck Club.
25. Steel Magnolias.
26. Fried Green Tomatoes.
27. Foxfire.
28. French Kiss.
29. Working Girl.
30. The Way We Were.

As a fan of Amy Tan as an adolescent, The Joy Luck Club was a favorite I wouldn’t mind revisiting as an adult (see also, Fried Green Tomatoes, where I’d like to revisit the erasure of the primary lesbian relationship put forth in the novel), and I still love Alien (all of them! even Resurrection!) and the Tina Turner biopic.

Unlike the originator of this project, I will be limited to what is available via Netflix or cable (thus I doubt my ability to get ahold of all of the movies listed above). With my schedule will not be able to complete the project in thirty days, though I do promise to write a review of each. Movies I’ve watched recently that could be included in this list are Maria Full of Grace, Towelhead, Every Fucking Day of My Life, and Ginger Snaps, but I will gladly take suggestions for more of any genre in the comments. Like I mentioned above, I am interested not in the perfectly feminist movie, but in narrative movies that interrogate what it means to be female in any context.

Please give a short description of each film along with the title. I hope to have my first review up before Monday.

Also, this project needs a name. Because “chick flicks” is too condescending a term to reclaim.

It pains me to find out that Lucille Clifton, the beloved American poet, passed away on Saturday after a long battle with cancer. Clifton had a long, celebrated career spanning forty years, writing poems about what it means to be a black woman in America, to have the legacy of slavery lapping at her ankles, and what it meant to see her elders and icons have to bear the daily slog of being othered in a racist land.

Clifton is famous in the feminist community for poking at sexism with a short stick, most notably for “Wishes for Sons” and “Homage to My Hips.” Her narrative poems move me most, such as when she wrote about finding out she had cancer in the poem “1994.”

1994

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself hard near my heart

you have your own story
you know about the fears the tears
the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breasts
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life

Many of her poems have an element of redemption, or a wish for redemption, as in the praise song “Miss Rosie.” Ms. Clifton cries for us to recognize our own worth,

What the Mirror Said

listen,
you a wonder,
you a city of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
somebody need directions
to move around you.
listen,
woman,
you not a noplace
anonymous
girl;
mister with his hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!

And to be accountable for what tragedy results when we erase the humanity of others.

Sorrow Song

for the eyes of the children,
the last to melt,
the last to vaporize,
for the lingering
eyes of the children, staring,
the eyes of the children of
buchenwald,
of viet nam and johannesburg,
for the eyes of the children
of nagasaki,
for the eyes of the children
of middle passage,
for cherokee eyes, ethiopian eyes,
russian eyes, american eyes,
for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us, amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men.

Such a beautiful woman, such an affirmational, reaching heart.

Dwayne Betts has a touching tribute to Ms. Clifton here, including one of my favorite poems, “Signs.” I will post more as I see them.

Or, “Where I Crap on Mac Users,” thanks to this delightful essay pointing out the class aspirations inherent to Apple products, cost, technology, and design. Consider this your daily flame.

…something that to me is so obvious that it barely needs mentioning, and yet I never see people talk about it openly: the real advantage of Apple, for many people, is that Apple products are status objects. Displaying your Apple stuff proudly is just yet another of our culture’s myriad ways to engage in a little subtle classism. Apple products are expensive, some very expensive, and they are often significantly more expensive than non-Apple equivalents. When I bring this up in cautioning people about buying a particular Apple product (even in the course of endorsing such a purchase) there’s a weird defenselessness that happens. People don’t disagree, and yet they don’t weigh that as a negative factor, either…

And that brings us to “Apple culture.” This is a phenomenon we’re all aware of. I can’t tell you how often I’ve discussed a potential purchase, of a computer or phone or MP3 player, where my frank discussions of features compared to price point get held up because of terms like “philosophy,” “individualism,” “creativity,” “personality.” You know– all the things that purchasing a commodity can’t give you? That stuff tends to dominate discussion of Apple products, and has been the essence of Apple advertising for years. There is somehow an Apple culture, and this culture is associated with all kinds of vague (but very real!) virtues. There is, according to many, a category of “Apple people,” and this somehow means more than people who prefer Apple products but instead has everything to do with a person’s personal virtue, and most importantly, how “unique” they are, a term thrown around about a commodity owned by millions with such disregard for its basic denotation that my eyes glaze over when I hear it. All of this stuff, this strange but inescapable reference to Apple culture, is just a way to hide guilt about the frank status projection that prominently displaying your iPhone represents.

I’d argue, too, that this kind of class signaling was prominent in VW advertising in the early aughts, and in more recent auto brand development for cars like the Toyota Prius. And part of the appeal is the whitebread Scandanavian design aesthetic that people really latch on to, Americans in particular, that signals the urban upperclass. And don’t even get me started on the choice to make Justin Long the Mac spokesperson, a guy who looks like he’s never had a hard day in his life. Talk about type-casting.

But that’s just me, and it’s the me that is currently in love with my second-hand iPod that my mom gifted me when she was on serious medication post-surgery, and the me that is in dire need of quality podcast suggestions in the comments.

In the meantime, the FRT, one night early because I “think different.” Videos below the jump.

1) Gary Numan – You Are in My Vision
2) Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings – Answer Me
3) Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs – Devil Do
4) Q-Tip – Official
5) Black Mountain – Stormy High
6) Edith Frost – Playmate
7) The Fall – Lay Of The Land
8) Johnson & Jonson – Anything Possible
9) Women – Cameras
10) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Sheep May Safely Graze

Sharon Jones’ voice makes me happy, and I’m encouraged by her story, she having been a working class woman who didn’t find creative success until middle age. Her backing band, The Dap Kings, have played with other notable recording artists like Rufus Wainwright and Amy Winehouse despite not getting enough credit for helping to craft their signature sounds. Here’s a sweet acoustic version of Jones’ hit “How Long.”

And for a more characteristic song showing their big Motown sound, see “100 Days, 100 Nights”:

And Edith Frost, who I love, and who is immortalized in this sweetly dorky appearance on a Chicago public access show singing “Cars and Parties.”

It is being reported that Howard Zinn, the famed historian, activist, and author, is dead at 87 of a heart attack.

To him, to representing the underclasses, and to challenging the status quo.

There is a lot of chatter about The Hurt Locker and whether director Kathryn Bigelow will serve up a feast of schadenfreude by besting ex-husband and douche James Cameron at the Oscars this year. Despite not having seen Avatar just yet, I did sit down to watch The Hurt Locker last night and was blown away (no pun intended).

Bigelow has a rather short resume as far as movie-making goes, though she did direct two notables in the 1990s: Strange Days, a cautionary tale of the merging of technology and fantasy that headlined the always fabulous Angela Bassett, and Point Break, the awesomely bad, infinitely quotable action flick about an undercover cop who solves a bank robbery and learns the power of surfing. Nevertheless, Bigelow has a winner on her hands with The Hurt Locker, a story revolving around three bomb-squad specialists in Iraq and their long, slow descent to psychological breakdown.

The primary characters are a team who disarm IEDs protected by little more than their own swagger, and who learn to embrace the unease of the constant adrenaline rush they need to power through crisis. What makes this movie much different than most war movies is that its storytelling lies in the quiet moments. Despite the subject matter there aren’t a lot of explosions, action sequences, or gunfire. Instead there is the shot of the injured cat limping across the street, or the endless strings of wires leaking from piles of rubble, or the long shots of a vast desert where gunfire appears to come from nowhere. The tension and despair are palpable, especially in the relationships between the soldiers and the Iraqis — some of whom may be going about their daily business and some who may be responsible for the bombs in the first place — and their mutual inability to trust one another’s decency.

The movie is weak in places, the end in particular, but it seems this is because Bigelow didn’t want to wax political or offer too many easy solutions. It does not glorify war, and in fact posits that war makes it harder for one to make and maintain functional human connection. One of the most compelling issues raised in the story is the need to cope with sorrow, illustrated in that the soldier whose experience of war is expressed in the most rational, healthy way is considered a liability to the team.

I’ll be disappointed if this one gets shut out of the Oscars like it did the Golden Globes because Bigelow has a real chance of snagging an Academy Award for Best Director, which would be the first win in this category ever for a woman. It also holds the distinction of humanizing traditionally stereotypical, macho subject matter, and being a war movie that is good without glorifying violence.

The lady blogger at I, Asshole tries My New Pink Button so you don’t have to. She is sorely (heh) unimpressed with what appears to be a scam involving hundreds of mascara wands and repackaged cherry Kool-Aid.

I don’t believe it is, but then, I don’t believe pregnant woman are incubators for the state’s fetuses either. Others disagree, as evidenced in this case unfolding in the First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, Fla.

Samantha Burton was in her 25th week of pregnancy in March 2009 when she started showing signs of miscarrying. Her doctor advised her to go on bed rest, possibly for as long as 15 weeks, but she told him that she had two toddlers to care for and a job to keep. She planned on getting a second opinion, but the doctor alerted the state, which then asked the Circuit Court of Leon County to step in.

She was ordered to stay in bed at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and to undergo “any and all medical treatments” her doctor, acting in the interests of the fetus, decided were necessary. Burton asked to switch hospitals and the request was denied by the court, which said “such a change is not in the child’s best interest at this time.” After three days of hospitalization, she had to undergo an emergency C-section and the fetus was found dead.

To recap: A doctor made a recommendation to a pregnant patient, the patient told the doctor this recommendation was impossible for her and that she wanted a second opinion. The doctor said no and called the state which confined her to this doctor’s care in this doctor’s hospital against her will, where she was forced to have a c-section three days later and it was found she had already miscarried. Later, the patient brings a lawsuit and the court rules against her, saying the State of Florida was only trying to maintain the “status quo” of confining pregnant women against their wills to be cared for by antagonistic doctors, which is, of course, for the good of the fetus.

Burton’s attorney and the ACLU took the case to a higher court, arguing that the original decision unlawfully expanded the court’s right to “to order medical treatment for a child over a parent’s” objections and applied the precedent to a fetus, which is problematic because the fetus happens to be located inside a sentient being who is objecting the medical treatment being exacted on her person. They further argued that the state dangerously expanded existing laws over the rights of pregnant women, indicating that if left unchallenged it would leave the law open to “risk virtually unfettered intrusion into the lives of pregnant women.”

Diana Kasdan argued on behalf of Burton yesterday:

Frankly, I wasn’t surprised to hear that the State of Florida had stepped in to override the medical decision-making of a pregnant woman… What was even more stunning than in other cases was the unlimited breadth of the court order; the complete lack of any consideration of Ms. Burton’s constitutional rights or health; and the fact that the hearing had gone forward with no legal or other advocate to represent Ms. Burton. After a brief telephone hearing, and no review of her medical records or consideration of a second medical opinion, the circuit court summarily ordered Ms. Burton to submit to any and all medical treatments and interventions — including eventually a C-section — that the hospital’s medical staff deemed appropriate.

This situation, and the patriarchal attitudes about women and pregnancy that it springs from, caused Burton immeasurable ills above and beyond the pain that goes with a complicated pregnancy — the court and her care providers erased her personhood, her autonomy, her wishes, and placed her living children and economic livelihood in jeopardy. This ruling also sets a precedent that leaves the next pregnant woman at risk of being held hostage by the state if she doesn’t — or can’t — follow a doctor’s orders at the very time the doctor orders.

Rachel at Our Bodies, Our Blog points out a larger medical issuethat the court has bought into, whether for misogynist, pro-life or pro-corporate reasons, we do not yet know, hospital insurance coverage and the ever-looming fear-of-malpractice-lawsuit excuse that regularly limits medically-assisted birth:

The same values that lead to restricting women’s choices about following medical advice also affects the choices women have in birth. Many hospitals will not allow vaginal births after cesareans or allow women to chose whether they are continuously monitored, implying that the “only thing that matters” is getting a healthy baby at the end, and that the woman’s “experience” does not matter. In such a framework — where women’s desires are readily ignored (and made to seem trivial) –- court intervention with regards to bed rest does not seem extreme. We have already seen cases in which court-ordered cesareans have occurred. In this case — as in abortion and birth choices –- the fetus is prioritized. A woman’s bodily autonomy and preferences for how her pregnant body is treated and used are held secondary to fetal outcomes.

What was special about the 200Xs?

I thought a lot about what happened in the last ten years that was really important to me, and finally I decided that the one thing that most impacted my daily life was how the intertubes exploded. The rise of the blogosphere paved the way for a new generation of feminists and feminist-sympathizers to communicate, fight, and revolutionize, something that really radicalized me. The invention of various communication and social networking applications — everything from Wordpress to Wikipedia to Movable Type to Facebook to eMusic to Gmail to iTunes — allowed me to expand my social and cultural life and keep in touch with all kinds of people I’d never otherwise have the privilege of meeting and ideas I’d never otherwise encouter, and, conversely, gave people I have no intention of talking to ever again alarmingly easy access to my life.

Other milestones? Beginning and graduating from college, getting married, acquiring the cats, redeveloping a healthier relationship with my family, the boy starting school and doing rather well at it, getting my first “real job” (as much as I hate it), memorable trips to Memphis, Michigan, Arkansas, St. Thomas, and Eastern PA, quitting blogging, quitting blogging again, and finally deciding that this is as close as I’m getting to writing every day so I might as well accept it.

You?

The trailer for this upcoming movie on a year in the life of babies from four different countries reminds me how baby faces, baby bodies, and baby behaviors are so universal. Mostly it makes my uterus contract.

I hope it doesn’t fall into a trap of cultural stereotypes so we may all enjoy the effects of pure, uncut cute.

via Blue Milk