Politics
Meet Me at the Protest
Maybe I’m mellowing out a bit as I age, but it’s actually a pretty rare thing these days for anyone’s opinion about a movie to raise my ire to the point that I feel compelled to write an entire article refuting it. Maybe a Facebook post. Perhaps just a 140 character Tweet. But for me to devote an entire blog post or column to a subject, it has to really strike a chord in me. So I’d like to offer my congratulations to David Cox, whose article in The Guardian last week on Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham succeeded where so many other inane pieces have failed, inspiring an entire post to refute it.
Made in Dagenham is a fictionalization (though one that, by all accounts, stays fairly close to truth) of a strike by female factory workers at a Ford plant in Dagenham in 1968. A strike that, by the bye, was crucial to the eventual passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1970 (that would be Great Britain’s Equal Pay Act, not the one passed in the US and signed into law by John F. Kennedy in 1963, after which it was put into a vault and completely ignored by the mostly male managers who run things).
Mr. Cox kicks off his piece with this bit: “Dagenham in the 1960s is presented as in thrall to blinkered routine, bumbling incompetence and heedless injustice. It’s a place controlled by men, and its deficiencies spring from theirs.”
Actually, the film presents Dagenham as representative of the Western world generally in 1968. Historical context: England at that time was barely recovered from the economic devastation of World War 2. Post-war, Great Britain went through a period of not only physically rebuilding, but of vast social change; the fledgling post-war Labour Party had nationalized many industries. Since Mr. Cox writes for a Brit paper and might even, for all I know, be British himself, he should know this already. I grew up in America, where the accuracy of our school textbooks depends largely upon the whim of fundamentalist Christian ministers advising mostly white male politicians, and even I know that much.
Further, the context of this film isn’t about women versus men, it’s about women convincing men — in both their union and the larger entity of the Labour Party — to recognize that what’s fair, what’s right, is for unions in general and the Labour Party in particular, to work to support the rights of all workers, not just men. And at that point in history, they did not. You could make an argument that this is not the case today, but even that would be a dicey one to support.
The film doesn’t create some non-existent fantasy world controlled by men; it was a world controlled by men. The women working in that factory were devalued by their male co-workers, referred to by the diminutive term “girls” even when they were older than their male co-workers and managers. The work they did — women’s work, because it involved using sewing machines, and men can’t use sewing machines! They have penises, remember? — was devalued by reclassifying their jobs as “unskilled” so the men in charge could pay them even less than they were already. It wasn’t female managers making those decisions. There were no women at the top of the union heap representing the interests of its female membership.
And the injustice depicted wasn’t heedless, it was explicitly and deliberately designed to both keep women in their place and to control the bottom line — profit — which would be impacted hugely if the demand for equal pay was met. Not just because that one little demand being met for 187 women would have been huge. It was the collective bargaining power of working women around the world being inspired and compelled to demand equality — a movement that was starting to seriously impact larger society — that these men — were afraid of.
It took courage, spirit, and, yes, balls for the women who marched for equality to stand up to their fathers, brothers and husbands, to take off their high heels and aprons, to cast aside the expectations of the men in their lives and in their workplace that the woman’s place was to be subservient to them. The women at the Dagenham factory, fueled, in part, by the burgeoning feminist movement, collectively put their cute little womanly heads together and said, we’re sorry, chaps, but fuck that.
And Made in Dagenham, which depicts their story, is great if for no other reasons than that tells a nearly lost tale about the fight for women’s equality and it’s about women doing more than talking about men and sex and fashion. Also, it stars Sally Hawkins, who is indisputably a British goddess.
But wait! Mr. Cox takes issue also with the casting of the divine Ms. Hawkins in the role of Rita O’Grady, a fictionalized character who’s an amalgam of two or three real women. Apparently Ms. Hawkins isn’t as burly and manly as he would like her to be. Perhaps the makeup department should have given Ms. Hawkins a hairy mole and a brawny mustache, because heaven forbid a working class, protesting, budding feminist woman who’s an abstract representation of real women should be depicted as attractive. Because everyone knows feminists are all burly lesbians with short haircuts and comfortable shoes, right?
Mr. Cox also takes issue with the film’s depiction of the well-established scientific fact that women and men tend to do things in different ways. He says of the film, “Women do things differently. In their domain, sisterly co-operation replaces blustering self-promotion. Compassion trumps protocol. Good humour banishes pomposity. Above all, homely common sense mocks heartless custom-and-practice. The triumph of these values makes the world a better place.”
Well, yes. So what? Women do do things differently than men. And Made in Dagenham is a story about these particular women and how, united by their common cause and yes, god forbid, “sisterly” co-operation, they found the courage to stand up for their rights, at a time in history when women were largely pinned under the boot heels of men.
Next, Mr. Cox attacks the film for daring to imply that men and their testosterone cause problems: “War, it’s implied, in Iraq as much as the Peloponnese, is rooted in machismo. Political factionalism is displaced brawling. Disastrously reckless financial speculation is fueled by testosterone.”
Yes. Yes. And yes, absolutely. Actually, the “testosterone” effect of successful financial traders has been studied for a while now, Mr. Cox. Here’s an article from TIME on that very subject for you to peruse. (It’s also discussed in Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job, which breaks down the global financial collapse that sent the entire world into a tailspin when the bubble burst in 2008. By the way, the vast majority of the people responsible for that shit? Were men. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
The war for equality didn’t end in Dagenham. In fact, it’s barely begun — as evidenced by this recent article on the disparity in pay between women and men on Wall Street, which discusses little things that might piss feminists off, like women working in the financial sector losing their jobs at five times the rate of men since July 2007. And female managers in the finance field earning 63.9 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Oops, scratch that — in 2007, the most recent year for which data from the Government Accountability Office was available for that Bloomberg article, that dropped to 58.8 cents. Wait, what happened to equal pay? Well, fuck.
The women who protested at Dagenham, at the time they went on strike, were being paid 87 percent of the rate paid to “unskilled” male workers and 80 percent of the rate paid to “semi-skilled” male workers. Women working in finance in 2010 may be bringing home more bacon, but the percentage of what they’re paid compared to their male colleagues has gotten worse, not better. Sucks to be a woman, I guess.
Made in Dagenham does push buttons, yes. But those buttons are well-worn because they’ve been pushed before and need to be pushed again, and again, and again, until the men who are still largely in control of things get the message and fix things. Because the things that were broken in 1968 when the real women of Dagenham went on strike are, to a large extent, still broken. This is exactly why a film like Made in Dagenham is relevant, important, and necessary today.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pop off to paint some protest signs.
I’m OK, You’re OK, “Gay” Jokes in Movies are Not OK
And now for a few words on the “gay” issue surrounding Universal’s film The Dilemma, whose trailer, with Vince Vaughn uttering the line, “Electric cars are gay. I mean, not homosexual gay, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay,” has stirred considerable controversy (note: the trailer has been edited to take out that line).
Were gay rights activists right to challenge Universal for having this line in their film to begin with, and for highlighting it in the opening scene of the trailer? Hell yes, they were.
For me, this issue is a very simple one. As Unitarian Universalists, we are raising our children to respect diversity. Our congregation is a welcoming congregation for the GLBT community. As a bisexual woman with many friends who are gay and lesbian, and a daughter who recently came out herself, this is an issue that’s near and dear to my heart.
I grew up in Oklahoma, a place where openly acknowledging your difference from the norm in any respect — gay, liberal, not fundamentalist Christian — can be a dicey proposition. But while it would be easy to say it’s only in the flyover states that tolerance of gay kids, much less acceptance of them for who they are, is more the exception than the rule, the reality is that even in more liberal places like Seattle, New York City and Los Angeles, there’s a subtle kind of casual bullying that often takes the form of saying things like “that’s so gay” that gives gay people — maybe gay teens in particular — the message that who they are is NOT okay, that if their friends found out they are gay, they will become the target of teasing, social isolation, maybe even physical violence.
I can’t begin to count, for instance, how many times in the past two years I’ve asked the teens at our home school center in liberal Seattle to not use the word “gay” in a derogatory way, as in “You’re so GAY, dude!” and “That’s so GAY.” I would talk to the school’s administrator, to other parents, to make them aware of it being an issue, and for the most part everyone agreed that of course it’s no more okay for the students to use the word “gay” in that way than it would be for them to be saying “nigger” or “kike” or “spic” or any other derogatory term. They agreed that we had GLBT parents and teachers and students who would find it offensive, and even if we didn’t, it STILL wouldn’t be okay.
But it still happened, on pretty much a weekly basis, and was tolerated by default in a way that a student using a racial slur, or making fun of a student’s weight or bra size, would never be tolerated. It was a never-ending battle against the popular culture of television and movies and videos and music these kids are exposed to that tells them “that’s so GAY” is okay.
The thing about oppression is that it’s an insidious thing. The Nazis didn’t just wake up one morning and start rounding up Jews in concentration camps and implementing the “final solution.” They started out with propaganda and smaller bits of oppressive (one might say bullying) behaviors to establish themselves as superior and the Jews as inferior to the Aryan race, and then responsible for all its problems, and then not even human in the same way that Aryans are human. They established with the common people that it was okay to discriminate against Jews by a systematic devaluation of Jews as people, people with the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else. They did it through fliers, through cartoons depicting Jews as rats (thereby setting the stage for the acceptance of “exterminating” Jews as one would exterminate a nest of rodents infesting ones home), through hyperbole, and, yes, through movies. Popular culture is as much a part of what sets the social barometer of acceptable mores as the indoctrination kids get at their parents’ knees.
It doesn’t matter if the joke “clarifies” that “of course we don’t mean THAT kind of gay, sheesh.” It doesn’t matter if it’s a funny joke, if it’s a joke at the expense of another person. It’s not about being the PC police. It’s about the need to respect other people, period, and to recognize that when you make jokes about gayness an acceptable part of popular culture, you by extension make jokes about particular gay people acceptable, and you further are helping to create a culture where intolerance of gay people is the norm. And when intolerance is the norm, bullying will — and does — follow.
You think not? Go do a random internet search on “gay bullying suicide” and see how many articles you pull up. Now go to those articles and read the comments section, and see for yourself how much hate seethes through those anonymous keyboards out there. It’s shocking, it’s sad, it’s the truth.
And while it’s also the truth that you can’t change what’s in peoples’ hearts, you do not have to make hate and bullying and intimidation acceptable. We as members and friends of the GLBT community have to stand up and say enough. We have to say “this is not okay, period.” Most of all, we who are the adults need to be actively concerned about creating an environment where it is both okay and safe for gay and lesbian teens to be open about who they are. Where a gay teen won’t be bullied to the extent that he feels life will never get better, and suicide is the only option.
As a bisexual woman, I wish I hadn’t had to grow up hiding that about myself, or feeling there was something wrong with me. As a mom, I don’t want to feel afraid that my daughter might get hurt, emotionally or otherwise, for being brave enough as a young teen to be open about who she is. And much as I admire Dan Savage and the It Gets Better project, I wish that the world we live in wasn’t a place where we need an “It Gets Better” project to reach out to young people to convince them their life is worth living, even if they’re gay.
This is why, even if you might think they’re being overly sensitive PC police, it’s a good thing for GLAAD to be watchdogs of the media around the term “gay” being bandied about in negative ways. If you’re not gay, or don’t have someone in your life who is gay and has ever experienced being bullied or threatened because of their gayness, maybe you find it hard to get why anyone would get so worked up about this issue, or you think it’s not an issue at all.
But just in the time it took me to write this post, I got a notification in my email inbox about a comment someone made about a YouTube video I put up several months ago of my daughter, her BFF, and her friend’s (gay) father dancing as part of a Glee Flash Mob at the Seattle Gay Pride parade.
The comment, by a user named wowtcg, was this: “Stupid faggots need to get aids and die. But in the end they all get aids :)…..Thank God.”
Wowtcg, who not only took the time to search on YouTube to even find this video in the first place and then to leave a hateful comment on it, inadvertently made my point about why it’s so important that we fight — loudly — against the use of “gay” in a derogatory way in popular culture, including stupid jokes in movies. This, folks, is exactly why.
11 Comments »QOTD: Is "Date Rape" Funny if Jonah Hill is the Victim?
SPOILER WARNING: This post contains a minor spoiler for Get Him to the Greek. Knowledge is power. Use it.
I was watching the mostly very funny Get Him to the Greek when it came to the Vegas scene, wherein Jonah Hill’s character Aaron gets ass-raped with a jumbo-sized jelly dildo by a drunken chick named Destiny. The audience laughed uproariously during this scene, but I couldn’t help but think that, perhaps, there’d have been an uproar of a different kind if things had been reversed and a male character (either Hill’s or Russell Brand’s, take your pick) had been sexually violating the ass of an inebriated female character while she repeatedly said “no.” And, by the bye, whether anyone would have been laughing if that character had stumbled out of the bedroom, looking stunned, and announced to her friends, “I think I’ve just been raped.”
Remember last year’s Observe and Report, and all the hubbub over whether Seth Rogen’s mall cop date-raped his drunken date? Why is it funny for a guy to have his ass violated by a dildo by a woman he’s just met at a party, but not funny for a check to be sexually assaulted by her date? Yes, Observe and Report was darker and more “real,” while Get Him to the Greek is comedic farce, but isn’t a rape scene in a comedy still, well, rape?
I’m just saying.
SIFF Notes: Subtitles
As I was walking out of a SIFF press screening for the film Father of My Children today, this group of four older festival patrons was ahead of me on the escalator (SIFF passholders are allowed to attend the press screenings that run the month before the fest opens). They were discussing the film, which they didn’t care for, and one of them said, “It just had too many little details, especially for a subtitled film!”
And I thought, what a uniquely American attitude … that a film by a French writer/director about French people should, of course, have been created with the needs of American audiences to not be overwhelmed in mind.
Still thinking about what to say about this film with the less-than-200 or so words with which I’m allowed to say them (crap, did those words count? Make that 176 words). One of the things about SIFF is that by the time many of the better films wend their way here, they’ve been acquired for distribution (yay!), which unfortunately for reviewing press means they are on the “hold review” list and can’t be fully reviewed until the film actually opens (awwww!).
I’ll say this teensy bit for now, since both films I saw today — Father of My Children and Soul Kitchen — are hold review films: I liked both of them quite a bit, though they are very different films emotionally and tonally. Interesting combination of cinematic flavor to see them on the same day; the combination would have been even more interesting if we’d been able to see the other film, The Oath (which won the cinematography award at Sundance). Unfortunately, that film had a subtitle problem (specfically, it was not in English and was lacking them), so everyone cleared out and went to lunch instead.
Damn subtitles.
Q& A: A Reader's Thoughts on My Kick-Ass Column, and My Own Response
My Voynaristic column, “Why Kick-Ass Isn’t Reprehensible, Morally or Otherwise” has generated considerable response and discussion, thanks in large part to Roger Ebert re-tweeting it in spite of the column directly attacking his own review of the film (which just goes to show that Roger is and continues to be a prince among men). An email I received from a reader, Robert Hamer, was particularly thoughtful and merited, I felt, deeper consideration and discussion. Robert’s email to me is below; you will find my response to him after the jump.
SPOILER WARNING: This discussion does contain spoilers regarding the film, so if you’ve not seen it and don’t want to read spoilers, stop now or forever hold your bitching.
***
Hello, Kim. Long time reader, though this is my first message.
I wanted to express my disagreement with your assesment of the controversy surrounding Kick-Ass, as it sort of misses the point as to why her character is so distasteful. I have absolutely no fear for the well-being of Chloe Moretz or that any young person is going out to try and be a foul-mouthed superhero. But I am disheartened that someone as vicious, violent, and heartless as her is celebrated by audiences across the country. It’s a sad reminder – to me, at least – of how gleefully sadistic American movies have become to have a film show a child brutally killing people (one of them innocent, if my memory is correct) and expect me to think it’s “funny” or “cool” and to sneer at me if I don’t.
You cite in support of your “the controversy is unwarranted” argument Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby, but I don’t think those comparisons are appropriate. In both cases, the situations of those girls were portrayed with restraint and compassion. Scorsese didn’t cheer at Iris being a prostitute; Malle didn’t film Violet as an object of titillation or juvenile entertainment. Those controversial scenes were necessary and in service of larger ideas. Kick-Ass can’t claim any of that, and in fact has its initial themes (normal superheroes in the “real” world) suffer because of the absurdity of the Hit-Girl character. Certainly, Matthew Vaughn can’t claim “restraint” or “finesse” in portraying this character, as in many points of the film he breaks from the flow of his action scenes to focus, in gruesome detail, every single bloody death.
Does this mean that society should be up in arms over Kick-Ass? No, any more than parent’s groups shouldn’t be crusading against Grand Theft Auto III because it allows you to kill prostitutes. But it’s perfectly justified, as far as I’m concerned, to be disturbed and repelled by both.
***
My response after the jump …
More Fun with Gay Bashing
Just when you thought it was safe to be gay and bring your date to the prom, here’s a story about gay teen Derrick Martin. Martin’s school was smart enough (perhaps in the wake of the whole Constance McMillen thing) not to tell him he couldn’t bring his boyfriend to the prom, but some of the brighter minds among the teen brain trust at his high school are protesting against him anyhow.
Way to represent your generation, y’all!
Oh, and representing THEIR generation, we also have Martin’s parents, who reportedly booted him out of his home over the controversy. They get the “Managing to Have Sex and Produce Offspring Does NOT Make One a Parent” award of the week. No one’s come up with any pics of Martin’s wonderfully supportive folks yet, but here’s betting they’re hardcore Bible-thumpers. (And before any of my Christian friends get offended, I mean that in the hypocritical, falsely moralizing, doesn’t-really-live-by-the-teachings-of-Christ sense, not as a slam against those of the faith generally.)
Chicks and Anime
Really excellent piece on the Guardian by Anne Billson on tough girls in anime (thanks once again to Ray Pride, who unearths the most interesting stories on the internet for our readers). This piece is completely spot-on, and really speaks to what attracts both me and my 13-year-old daughter Neve to anime and manga. Well, that and the fact that the best manga and anime consistently offer more interesting stories and character development than most books and films aimed at kids these days.
Victory for Constance McMillen
A Mississippi court ruled that the Itawamba County School District violated the First Amendment rights of Constance McMillen when it canceled the school’s prom rather than allow the openly gay student to attend the prom with her girlfriend, wearing a gender-bending tuxedo. What?! Girls in tuxedos? What is the world coming to?
Good for the court for making the right ruling here. And wow, do I ever admire Constance, who has been open about being a lesbian since eighth grade. Ponder that a moment, if you would. I grew up in Oklahoma, not exactly what I would call the most welcoming, safe place to come of age and realize you are gay or lesbian or bisexual. Constance, growing up in Mississippi, had the courage to come out as who she is in eighth grade.
That, my friends, takes courage, and a remarkable sense of knowing who you are and believing in yourself at a very young age. Good for her, and I hope she and her girlfriend have a swell time at the alternative, open prom being planned by parents. Shine on in that tux, girl, and make some great memories.
Diary of a Wimpy Film Journalist
As an excercise, for the next 30 days I’m going to try using this space as an online journal of sorts to capture whatever random thoughts pop into my head about film during the day. Short posts, though maybe a longer follow-up if an idea that pops up really intrigues me.Curious to see what this pulls up; I have all these random thoughts about film all the time. Things like, Whatever happened to the kids (Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazzello) who played the brothers in Radio Flyer? Or: Someone should do a remake of ‘Full House’ as a feature movie aimed at kids.
… Only make it starring Chris Rock in the role of Danny Tanner and Sinbad and Mo’Nique as his brother and friend. And whenever the bratty kids (at least two of them should be Will Smith’s kids) get mouthy Mo’Nique can smack ’em around and put ’em in line. Tyler Perry can produce and direct.
Your comments are welcome, let me know if you like how it’s going.
Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom
And now, a brief pause while we delve into the realm of the political …
As I’m sure most of you folks know, there’s been this little brouhaha stirring in Mississippi around Constance McMillen, a teenage lesbian who wanted to bring her girlfriend to prom and gender-bend by wearing a tux herself. Now, this is a pretty common thing here in Seattle, and may be in your neck of the woods, but down there in Mississippi the principal and school board freaked the hell OUT about it, and actually canceled prom so as to not allow this miscreant rebel of a teenager to bring her filthy lesbianism into a hallowed institution of clean-cut fun like the prom. Her presence with her girlfriend, it seems, was going to be just too darn distracting.
In his Savage Love column this week, the lovely and eloquent Dan Savage asked his readers (and whoo-boy, are there a lot of you pervy types out there who like to read his advice on fetishes, three-ways, potentially gay husbands and other such deviant-ness) to show Constance that she is supported by many people by doing any or all of these things:
“E-mail, call, and fax Itawamba Schools superintendent Teresa McNeece (tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us, phone 662-862-2159 ext. 14, fax 662-862-4713) and Itawamba Agricultural principal Trae Wiygul (twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us, 662-862-3104). Then join the Facebook page “Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom.” And, finally, make donations to the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (www.mssafeschools.org), which is organizing an alternate prom that will welcome all students, and make a larger donation to the ACLU LGBT Project (www.tinyurl.com/yl9mvkb).
Call, write, fax, donate. Constance needs to know that there are people all over the world who are on her side. And, more importantly, Itawamba County Schools needs to know that we’re not going to let them get away with this. Be respectful, but be relentless. Let’s show these bigots what a real distraction looks like. Get ’em.”
Me again. You’ll find the letter I sent after the jump. Read it, be entertained, and then please take the time to support gay rights in general and Constance in particular by writing your own letter, joining the Facebook page, and making a donation. Dan is right … we need to send a message, not just to the school board and principal, but more importantly to Constance — and all the gay and lesbian teens out there — that they are NOT alone, that they are not bad people, or deviants who should be discriminated against, that they are okay. Please join me.
Call it Like it Is
Today on Huffington Post, writer Ayelet Waldman has a piece up in response to the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, and the experience she and her husband (acclaimed novelist Michael Chabon) went through in deciding to have a late-term abortion to terminate a pregnancy after tests showed their baby had a genetic abnormality. What struck me most about this piece, apart from its raw honesty, was the way in which Waldman talks about their decision and their child.
Not once in the essay does she refer to their lost baby as a “fetus,” viable or not. Her words are personal, painful, as she describes the days between learning their unborn child had a problem, and the day of the scheduled procedure to end the pregnancy: Over the weekend, we felt our baby kicking. We knew what the procedure would do to him. He had a name. You can still feel, all these years later, the pain these memories cause her.
A name. A baby. A child. A future. A loss.
I applaud Waldman both for writing the piece and for calling it like it is. I am very much pro a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, but I’ve always been opposed to any attempt to spin abortion as something other than what it is: the death of a baby — or at least the death of the potential to grow into a baby, a child, a teenager, an adult. A zygote or a fetus in its mother’s womb will (unless man or nature interferes) grow to be a baby. Not a chimpanzee, or a tree, or an apple. Pro-lifers use this to their advantage in spinning the idea of abortionists as evil baby murderers. We do nothing to further our cause by allowing the focus of the abortion debate to be over the semantics of fetus vs. baby; the issue is the right of the woman to control her body.
Barefoot and pregnant
It’s been a while since I’ve written about a story on Jeff Wells’ blog, Hollywood Elsewhere, but this one just got me so riled I couldn’t let it pass by. Wells wrote a piece (relatively tame, for him) about how he doesn’t like the way Sasha Grey speaks in The Girlfriend Experience. There’s nothing wrong with the post itself — hell, we all get annoyed by the smallest things about particular films from time to time.
No, what got me irritated was the first comment on the post, in which the writer essentially blames the decline of “standards, manners and civility across the board” on the advent of the two-income family. Read: on women who choose to have careers rather than stay home barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, doing all those things that, you know, women are supposed to do. Because home is our place, right? What’s interesting is that the commenter very carefully avoids using the words “women” and “work” in the comment, but the intent underlying the comment is pretty clear.
Observe and Report Q&A
In the comments section of the previous post on Observe and Report, T. Holly asks:
Sorry about my tone, but would like to know what you think of Rizov’ quiz Kim, and if you’d care to answer the four questions. I did, and not in a jokey way: A. is a script fix that I could realistically imagine an savvy Producer ordering, even as a pick-up/re-shoot to cover the bases (the button and the in-character come back; a third hit or payoff would only be necessary for the hearing impaired).
Thanks for the pointer, T. Holly. While GreenCine is usually one of my regular reads, I’ve been sick as hell this week and am way behind on my usual blog reading, and missed this piece, in which Vadim Rizov also writes about the “date rape” controversy over Observe and Report (and, good for him, also slams the writers who have been excoriating this film based solely on the trailer, which I agree is totally unprofessional). Unfortunately, this GreenCine piece didn’t turn up in my Google reader search as I was looking for any posts on the subject I might have missed, or I would have inluded a mention to it, so giving it a shout-out here.
At the end of his piece, Rizov posits that there’s a “massive misreading of the film going on” and offers what he sees as the “right” questions. Below are my answers to his questions — and here’s a link to the post T. Holly refers to, if you’d like to read his questions … it’s too much material for me to feel comfortable pasting in here, even with a link back to his piece. So go there and read what he has to say, then you can come back here and read my answers and see if you agree with them.
My answers are after the jump ….
Who's Your Daddy?
Just read this NYT article about the website SeekingArrangements.com, which hooks up would-be “sugar daddies” with “sugar babies”. Is it prostitution, or modern “dating” that’s simply more open and honest about what each party seeks than traditional dating models?
Perhaps surprisingly, I’m ambivalent about whether a site like this objectifies women any more than dating or staying in an unhappy marriage for financial reasons.
Your thoughts, one way or the other?
Hat tip to the various folks who posted this on Facebook …
City of Gold?
Very revealing article from The Independent about what lies under the glittering surface of Dubai … the environmental issues, the financial issues of a city built on a mountain of debt and, worst of all, the human rights abuses of the slave class on which the city relies to keep building and keep functioning.
Fascinating read.
