Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Between the Personal and the Political: The Lawyer, Her Boss and Their Investigator from in media res

For Your Consideration: 13 Underdog Actresses that Deserve Oscar’s Attention this Year from indieWire

Feminist Ryan Gosling (even though you’ve all seen it, right?)

Lifetime to Remake ‘Steel Magnolias’ with All-Black Cast from Deadline Hollywood

Bringing Up Baby: Childbirth as Male Bonding Experience from Bitch

Report: Reality TV Encourages “Mean Girl” Behavior in Teens from Deadline

You Are Not Alone: Black Male Feminists in Action from Clutch

Young Girls’ T-Shirt Inventory Isn’t Looking Good from Jezebel

Leave your links in the comments!

Eff You, Dr. Pepper: An Open Letter

Dear Dr. Pepper,
I personally find your beverages delicious, and happen to make a majority of the purchasing decisions for my household. Thanks to your outrageous ad for Dr. Pepper 10, which I just saw last night, we will no longer drink any variety of Dr. Pepper. 
Please advise.
Sincerely,
Me
P.S. Here’s the ad referenced above, just in case you outsourced this campaign to some teenage boys (although the use of “woman” rather than “girl” suggests that adults did, in fact, create the ad) and you have no clue what I’m talking about (despite this and this and this and this, and this, etc.).

P.P.S. I’m really tired of sexism-as-humor in marketing campaigns. I’m not just talking about the “not for women” thing, though I’m certainly not a fan of that idea. This whole “man up and be a manly man” shit has to stop. You’re not the first to equate a beverage with masculinity, although you’re the most straightforwardly sexist, and probably the least funny. Here are a couple of other examples of unacceptable ad campaigns, so you know what not to do when you re-do this one.
Miller Lite:

Pepsi Max:

P.P.P.S. Yes, I’m aware that companies often create outrageous advertising for the buzz and free promotion it generates. I’m also aware that this open letter generates additional promotion for the products listed above. That said, companies that gamble with such sexist messages risk alienating customers (like me and probably a lot of others), and deserve public scorn.
Readers: Have you written or read elsewhere about the new campaign for Dr. Pepper 10, or other Manly Beverages? If so, please leave your link in the comments and we’ll include it above.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Geek Girl Con: Feminism, Race, and Geek Culture

This cross-post from Jarrah Hodge previously appeared at Gender Focus.
This is the first in a series of posts about Geek Girl Con, which was held in Seattle October 8-9.
 
While some Canadians were celebrating Thanksgiving (or not out of protest or ambivalence), I was attending the inaugural Geek Girl Con in Seattle, Washington. The weekend was full of interesting panels and discussions and I took a bunch of pictures and notes, so will be writing a series of posts on the various issues that were covered.
The first full panel I attended was called “Feminism, Race, and Geek Culture”. It was moderated by Regina Buenaobra, community manager for ArenaNet for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. On the panel were Sociology student Michelle Hu, BreadPig employee and ROFLCon co-founder Christina Xu, and web developer Nina Reyes. Unfortunately the awesome Racialicious blogger Latoya Peterson wasn’t able to make it.
The panel talked about their own experiences with discrimination and stereotyping in geek communities.
Talking about organizing ROFLCon, Christina recalled that the first year they ended up with a huge majority of white male speakers because they were just going with who they’d seen before at other conventions. Talking more generally about conventions, Christina said she’d encountered a lot more awareness about lack of women’s representation than that of people of colour: “People bring up lack of women on stage very frequently but hardly anyone brings up lack of people of colour.”
But Nina Reyes noted the intersections between race and gender in geek culture are more complicated. As a coder, she said she felt a lot more singled out as a woman than as an Asian, since Asians were stereotyped as being good at coding and computer careers.
Another question that came up for the panel was on representations of women and people of colour in geeky fandoms.
“It’s important as a person of colour to see yourself well represented in these types of media,” Michelle Hu argued.
“If you are a white male reading comic books you have a choice of who you want to be. Me, I’m stuck with Jubilee all the time,” Christina added. They both noted that just casting some people of colour or making a token reference to other cultures isn’t enough, using the short-lived but much loved Joss Whedon show Firefly as an example. The show often featured characters speaking Mandarin poorly.
Xu pointed out this “race-bending” is insulting and causes anger because studio’s don’t seem to care enough to try and find someone to play a part who actually speaks the correct language or belongs to the race that will be portrayed. It’s similar to ending up with an all-white convention lineup because you’re just going with who you’ve heard of before.
A question from the audience that I was particularly interested in was about white people role playing characters of other races in RPGs. In response, Christina Xu referenced Lisa Nakamura’s article: “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet” as a good resource for learning more about why this is problematic.
“As somebody who comes from a place of privilege you have the ability to …fulfill your identity as an exotic other,” Christina said, “But it leaves others less room to live their own identities and it perpetuates creepy stereotypes.” She said she wouldn’t say no one can role-play another race, but white people taking on other races need to realize it’s a weird exercise in privilege and need to try to prioritize character over racial stereotypes.
Finally, the panel addressed how geek communities, especially online, can exclude women and people of colour. The panelists said they felt like when they or others raised objections to sexist or racist language or behaviour guys would rally to defend the sexist and racist games, attempting to make the argument that somehow criticizing the language or behaviour was against their geek allegiance.
But the panelists had tips for audience members looking to deal with these types of situations effectively.
Christina recommended using your audience’s vernacular to raise the issue to show you’re part of their community. She also recommended making it clear it’s not a personal attack on a player: “Make it clear you are hating the game and not the player. And understand no one has read Judith Butler as nursery rhymes. There’s a learning process.”
On the other side, the panelists also had some advice for those getting critiques:
“The person on the other side, just f-ing listen,” said Michelle.
“We critique because we enjoy these things. The people who complain the hardest care the most,” said Regina, emphasizing that critiquing something doesn’t mean hating on it.
Jarrah Hodge is the founder of Gender Focus, a Canadian feminist blog. Jarrah also writes for Vancouver Observer and Huffington Post Canada and has been a guest blogger on “feminerd” culture for Bitch Magazine Blogs. Hailing from New Westminster, BC, she’s a fan of politics, crafts, boardgames, musical theatre, and brunch.

 

Movie Preview: Tomboy

I don’t have much to say about this film: it looks amazing, and I can’t wait to see it. Here’s the movie synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:
A French family with two daughters, 10-year-old Laure and 6-year-old Jeanne, moves to a new neighborhood during the summer holidays. With her Jean Seberg haircut and tomboy ways, Laure is immediately mistaken for a boy by the local kids and passes herself off as Michael. Filmmaker Céline Sciamma brings a light and charming touch to this drama of childhood gender confusion. Zoe Heran as Laure/Michael and Malonn Levanna as Jeanne are nothing less than brilliant. This is a relationship movie: relationships between children, and the even more complicated one between one’s heart and body. 

It’s gotten wonderful reviews so far, which isn’t surprising since it’s written and directed by Céline Sciamma, who also wrote and directed Water Lilies. The film doesn’t officially start playing (in limited release) until November 16th (I’m so there), but I’ll post the trailer to tide us over until then. 

3 Women Share 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Tawakkul Karman share the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

Some happy news came last week when three women were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
Leymah Gbowee has campaigned against rape and for women’s rights in Liberia, and serves as the director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa. According to the Nobel committee, Gbowee “mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections. She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war.” She is featured in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell (which is part of the PBS series Women, War, and Peace). In addition to the Nobel prize, Gbowee has been awarded the Blue Ribbon for Peace by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award®, the 2009 Gruber Women’s Rights Prize which honors an individual who has brought about significant advances in the quest for peace and gender equality in Africa, the John Jay Justice Award, the Livia Award from the Livia Foundation in Denmark, and the World Association of Girls Guide 1st Centenary Award, among others. 

To learn more about Leymah Gbowee and other Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country, watch the film. Here’s the trailer:

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the President of Liberia, and is the first democratically-elected woman in Africa. The Nobel committee stated that “since her inauguration in 2006, she has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women.” Her award didn’t come without controversy, as seems usual for a sitting president (such as when Barack Obama was awarded the prize), and was seen by some as merely a political endorsement by the selection committee. Watch a TED Q&A with Sirleaf, in which she discusses women in leadership (which I’m unable to embed here), or an interview with Time:
Tawakkul Karman is the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for her democracy activism in Yemen, and one of the youngest women to ever win the prize (at age 32). She heads the organization Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), which advocates for human rights and freedom of the press. The Nobel committee said of Karman, “In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the “Arab spring”, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.” This past April, Karman wrote an article, “Our Revolution’s Doing What Saleh Can’t–Uniting Yemen” for The Guardian, in which she says, 

After a week of protests I was detained by the security forces in the middle of the night. This was to become a defining moment in the Yemeni revolution: media outlets reported my detention and demonstrations erupted in most provinces of the country; they were organised by students, civil society activists and politicians. The pressure on the government was intense, and I was released after 36 hours in a women’s prison, where I was kept in chains. 

Here is a clip from Democracy Now, which discusses Karman’s activism in Yemen (the focus on Karman begins around the 2-minute mark):
I am thrilled to see these three women honored, and encourage you to learn more about their work (as I will as well).

Quote of the Day: Suzanna Danuta Walters

Hi, did we get stuck in 1995? I’m about to offer an excerpt from a book by Suzanna Danuta Walters called Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory, which was published in 1995. I’m honestly trying to figure out how this entire excerpt (hell, book?) was written sixteen years ago as opposed to five minutes ago. The chapter “Postfeminism and Popular Culture: A Case Study of the Backlash” focuses mostly on Hollywood films like Baby Boom, Pretty Woman, Fatal Attraction, and Basic Instinct, and looks at how those films portray women and motherhood (where applicable) and violence perpetrated by women. Walters compares the Hollywood backlash of the 1940s and 50s with the current Hollywood backlash–and by current I mean the Hollywood backlash from the 90s that we’re still somehow in, even though sixteen years have passed. I’m excerpting from this book on one hand because I think it’s hilarious that Hollywood has completely given up on even trying to portray women like human beings, and on the other because it makes me want to curl up in a ball when I think about how So Not Far we’ve come, especially since this book (have I mentioned it was published in 1995?) spends a significant amount of time discussing how So Not Far we’ve come. In fact, it might be fun for someone to “rewrite” this passage using current examples from film/television/politics/pop culture. Any takers? We’ll totally publish it.

The recent backlash is somewhat different, however. Whereas the backlash in the late 1940s and 1950s carried an explicit message–get out of the workforce and into the kitchen–this time the backlash is couched in the language of liberation, made to seem trendy, even mildly feminist, as in the film Working Girl. In addition, this backlash is more clearly antifeminist: it responds directly to the women’s movement and often pits one woman against another (Fatal Attraction, Working Girl, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle). This backlash is different because it has to push motherhood; it must sell motherhood and domesticity after those ideologies have already been so soundly critiqued by feminists (unlike in the late 1940s). Furthermore, this backlash contains real violence, as evidenced by the vehemence with which film audiences urge the deaths of femme fatales.

The current period is thus not one of simple backlash (such as that of the late 1940s and 1950s) but is characterized by a rewriting of the women’s movement to define our era as postfeminist, creating an image of a movement both victorious (the myth that we have achieved equality) and failed (look what feminism got you: double duty, burnout, and the explosion of your biological clock).

These media images did not, of course, arise in a vacuum. They emerged in a historical period marked by the rise of the New Right and by the governments of Reagan and Bush. These years have seen a growth in antichoice activism (to the point of terrorism and murder), cutbacks on civil rights and equal opportunity legislation of all kinds, and an epidemic of violence against women. The backlash was supported and perpetuated by a government and presidency that spoke to the assembled throngs at the annual Right-to-Life demonstration in Washington, D.C., but maintained a stony silence toward the millions of women who are battered, raped, denied accessible and affordable child care, and paid consistently less than are men. It is disturbing that we see numerous films in which women are depicted as crazed killers when women are more likely to be terrorized by men: the sad irony of Fatal Attraction, and the rash of news stories that emerged confirming the “reality” of killer ex-girlfriends, is that it is women not men who are most likely to be hurt at the hands of an ex-lover or ex-spouse.

It is in this climate that we witness the popularity of both Fatal Attraction and Pretty Woman. These movies are indeed two sides of the same coin: the coin of male control over women’s lives, the equation of work for women with death and prostitution. One of the classic ways Hollywood tells a woman to get back in the kitchen and obey her master is by punishing her for wayward behavior. Hollywood films include countless examples of single women, working women, women who are not fulfilled as wives and mothers, sexually active women, and just plain feisty women being summarily killed, humiliated, or simply beaten down. Hollywood has always maintained its support of oppressive social roles for women by refusing to acknowledge that women are both sexual beings and potential parents at the same time. . . .

Is it not premature to declare a social movement/social theory over when it has yet to achieve even a modicum of egalitarian goals? How can we possibly speak of “postfeminism” when a woman is still raped or beaten every twenty seconds? When women earn roughly half of what men do? When decisions about our bodies are decided by courts and legislatures that are filled with male voices? When the inclusion of women into the academic curriculum is still a piecemeal and embattled process? When fetal rights (really male rights) still assert themselves over the rights of women? When feminist is still a dirty word, designed to deny self-determination, power, and legitimacy?

Documentary Preview: ‘The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men’

The Bro Code: a new documentary from MEF
The Media Education Foundation recently announced their newest documentary, The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. The MEF makes some very good documentaries aimed at educating people to become more media literate–which is one of the most important cultural issues of our time, in my opinion.
Men are not born devaluing women, or objectifying them, or loathing them to the point that the worst possible insult is to be called feminine. No, men (and women) learn these attitudes from a culture that constantly reinforces the supremacy of the male and closely polices masculinity (the recent “Man Up!” ads from Miller Lite come to mind, as do the less-recent calls from some female politicians that their male counterparts, again, “Man up!”).
Here’s the trailer:

TRAILER: The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men from Media Education Foundation on Vimeo.
I’m planning to watch The Bro Code (you can watch a free preview of the full-length film on MEF’s website) and check back in with my thoughts. Has anyone watched it yet? What do you think?

It’s Ada Lovelace Day!

portrait of Ada Lovelace

In honor of the day, I watched the only movie I could find about her (or featuring her): Conceiving Ada.
Before I talk about the movie, first some basic information on Ada Lovelace Day, founded to celebrate Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (AKA Ada Lovelace).
Who is Ada Lovelace?
She is often called the “World’s First Computer Programmer,” although she lived nearly 100 years before the first computer was built. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page about her:

In 1842 Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his analytical engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer, and future prime minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage’s lecture in French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in October 1842.

Babbage asked the Countess of Lovelace to translate Menabrea’s paper into English, subsequently requesting that she augment the notes she had added to the translation. Lady Lovelace spent most of a year doing this. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea’s paper, were then published in The Ladies’ Diary and Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs under the initialism “AAL”.

In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lady Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and Lady Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.[27]

Her notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, the Countess describes an algorithm for the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and for this reason she is often cited in to be the first computer programmer.[28] However the engine was never actually constructed to completion during Lovelace’s lifetime.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, “MIL-STD-1815”, was given the number of the year of her birth. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name[29] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science.[30]

Ada Lovelace Day has been founded to commemorate her historic place in computing history, and to celebrate women in mathematics, science, engineering, and technology. You can learn more about Ada Lovelace and the project Ada Lovelace Day at the website Finding Ada.

Now, on to the movie!

Conceiving Ada (1997)
I debated even watching Conceiving Ada last night after reading reviews, some of which included the words “ridiculous” and “loony.” But, I figure so many woman-centered, woman-directed, and woman-written movies encounter much harsher criticism (especially an overtly feminist movie such as this), and the movie deserved a chance. Plus, it stars Tilda Swinton, for whom I have a borderline-unhealthy obsession, and was written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose most recent film was !Women Art Revolution (which I just mentioned in a post yesterday, oddly enough).
The basic premise of the movie is that a genius DNA researcher Emmy Coer is developing a computer program that will allow her to travel back in time (not physically–just through the computer) to meet and communicate with her muse, 19th century math whiz Ada Byron King. There are troubles along the way to reaching her goal, and consequences to making contact that I don’t entirely understand. And, for some reason, there’s a lot of sex. A lot. Even Victorian-era sex.
I’ll just put the criticisms I have out front, and then get into why the movie is ultimately worth watching. Some of the acting is cringe-worthy, particularly that of main character Emmy’s (Francesca Faridany) boyfriend, and her OB-GYN. There are real moments in the movie that deserve the MST3K treatment, and one can’t help but joke that the movie’s vision of time travel via computer seems a whole lot like watching a movie (until the women actually communicate with one another). I’ll even admit to a fleeting comparison to The Room at a particularly awkward moment.
That said, this isn’t one of those “it’s so bad don’t even bother” movies. It’s actually a really interesting one that explores the bonds that did–and do–define female sexuality (even if we do see some unnecessary nudity), in Lovelace’s time and today. It explores motherhood, and the ways that having children both can empower and inhibit women. Finally, it’s a look at women in the field of technological science, and how maybe not a lot has changed since the 19th century.
Of course, the technology portrayed in the movie seems primitive after about 15 years, and the ability to time travel online to talk with long-dead historical figures is a fantasy. The movie was very carefully filmed, and Leeson claims that “Every scene was structured and shot using a DNA image as a model for actors’ placement andcamera movement.” The movie itself sits firmly in the science fiction/fantasy genre, and if you accept this and focus on what the movie is actually trying to say about memory, women in technology, and DNA, I think you’ll find it quite fascinating and challenging. I did.
Watch the trailer:

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

What if women were piloting the scripts rather than just starring in them? A review of Pan Am from Professor, What If …

I Watched the Fall Premieres So You Don’t Have To from Feminist Frequency

“Law and Order: Mutilated Women Unit” ep cleverly appeals to multiple niche fetishes at once from I Blame the Patriarchy

No, Kirsten Dunst does not like the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” from A. V. Club

The Highest Paid Women in Entertainment — 2011 from Women and Hollywood

Sigourney Weaver’s preference for ‘pure’ parts from Canada.com

Brooklyn Readies for the 14th Annual Reel Sisters Film Festival from FortGreenPatch

Lynne Ramsay: ‘Just talk to me straight’ from The Guardian


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Director Spotlight: Nicole Holofcener

When Megan Kearns reviewed the documentary !Women Art Revolution, she began her post with a challenge to readers: Name three artists. A simple request, and one she suspected would yield an answer consisting of three male artists. 
If challenged to name three directors, would responses be similar–three male directors? If you’re familiar with this site and others that focus on women and film (I’m thinking of you, Women and Hollywood), maybe not. But my guess is that a majority of the population would, because women represent a small minority of directors, and few have gained enough acclaim and/or fame to become household names.
The lack of recognition of women who direct movies is the impetus behind our Director Spotlight Series. We know there aren’t enough female directors (or cinematographers, or writers, or producers, etc.) out there, but we can shine a light on the ones who are working, with varying degrees of success, in Hollywood.

You can read previous Spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, and Agnes Varda, and a Quote of the Day on Dorothy Arzner.

On to today’s spotlight: Nicole Holofcener.
Director Nicole Holofcener
Nicole Holofcener has directed several films, along with numerous episodes of television shows. Her most recent project was directing an episode of Parks and Recreation (season three’s “Eagleton”) and the TV movie I Hate That I Love You. Other television work includes episodes of Six Feet Under, Bored to Death, Enlightened, Gilmore Girls, Leap of Faith, Sex and the City, and Cold Feet.

I’ve seen three of her films, and it’s fair to say that one of the major themes she’s interested in is how to be wealthy and privileged in a society that largely isn’t. One could lob this at her as a criticism–that she’s interested in rich white women–and it’s not untrue. However, I’ve always found her movies thoughtful and aware of privilege, rather than flaunting it unawares, and her characters flawed, complex, contradictory, and, ultimately, realistic. Women are always at the center of the story, and we all know how rarely that’s done, much less done well.

Holofcener has written and directed four feature films. Here they are.

Please Give (2010)

Please Give is Holofcener’s most recent film. It won the Robert Altman Award and was nominated for Best Screenply by the Independent Spirit Awards, and was nominated for a Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) Award. The film was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. The movie  has an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which, I know, isn’t the most objective or accurate system, but, still is worth noting).

I saw the movie when it was in theatres, and remember heated conversations about its characters and its ultimate meaning. Most of the discussions involved its ambivalent ending, and if you’ve seen it, I suspect you have strong feelings about that ending, too.

Here’s a bit of the synopsis, from the official website:

Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. There’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much markup can she get away with?). There’s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There’s the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt), but sensing doubt nibbling at the foundations. And there’s Kate’s free-floating 21st century malaise–the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are always right outside the door.

Watch the trailer:

Friends with Money (2006)

This is the one Holofcener movie I haven’t seen. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, and Frances McDormand, I’d say this movie has the most commercial appeal of her work, but not the highest ratings. Friends with Money won McDormand a Best Supporting Female Independent Spirit Award, and Holofcener an Independent Spirit Best Screenplay nomination. She also won the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award.

From the official website‘s synopsis:

FRIENDS WITH MONEY examines the shifting relationships between four women who have been friends all of their adult lives. Now as they settle into their early middle age, their friendship is increasingly challenged by the ever-growing disparity in their individual degrees of financial comfort. It is a poignant snapshot of the way we live today, where the safe divisions that class and money have created are eroding under the unstoppable force of everyday life and the result is a painfully hilarious examination of modern life that manages to be both brutally honest and ultimately uplifting.

Watch the trailer:

Lovely & Amazing (2001)

Lovely and Amazing is my favorite of Holofcener’s movies, though it’s been several years since I’ve seen it, and can’t provide many specific details other than a major focus in on the relationship between a mother and her daughters. It’s definitely worth renting.

The movie’s website is gone, but here’s the plot summary from IMDb:

The Marks family is a tightly-knit quartet of women. Jane is the affluent matriarch whose 3 daughters seem to have nothing in common except for a peculiar sort of idealism. Setting the tone of vanity and insecurity, Jane is undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter her figure, but serious complications put her health in real danger. Former homecoming queen Michelle, the eldest daughter, has one daughter of her own and an alienated, unsupportive husband. Elizabeth, the middle sister, has an acting career that is beginning to take off, but is timid and insecure, and habitually relieves her trepidation by taking in stray dogs. Only the youngest sister, Annie, an adopted African American 8-year-old, stands a chance of avoiding the family legacy of anxious self-absorption. If only her intelligence and curiosity will see her through what promises to be a confusing adolescence. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way.

Watch the trailer:

Walking and Talking (1996)

I couldn’t find a trailer for Walking and Talking (if you find one somewhere, please let me know!), but it seems you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, if you’re so inclined. Better yet, rent it and watch with some friends. It’s a quiet movie, in that not a lot happens (as the title suggests), but it’s engaging and just good.

Here’s a synopsis, from Netflix, that doesn’t really do the movie justice:

Amelia (Catherine Keener) and Laura (Anne Heche) have been best friends since the sixth grade. For the first time, their lives are taking different paths: Laura is in love and planning her wedding, while Amelia begins to despair that she’ll ever find the right man. But as they try to adjust their childhood friendship to the challenges of adulthood, these friends continue to laugh together at life and love.

Who’s up for a Holofcener marathon?! Hey, come to think of it…

We Interrupt This Broadcast … for an Occupy Wall Street Update

Yesterday, I participated in my first Occupy Wall Street march. I’ve followed the movement—through blogs, twitter, and the live video stream—since it began three weeks ago, so when I left my apartment yesterday, I certainly had a shit-ton of information about the protest. I didn’t, however, really know what the hell to expect (aside from the beatings, gratuitous use of mace by the NYPD, and mass arrests of people exercising their constitutional right to protest, I mean). I kept hearing stuff, like how the protesters aren’t united over a single issue; that they don’t have concrete demands; that they’re leaderless and unorganized; that they’re a bunch of bored college kids who got sick of hanging out in their parents’ basements; that they’re just ungrateful vegan hippies who don’t understand how the world works; that they’re radical anarchists socialists atheists communists artists humanists and—to top it all off—that they’re engaging in all this unacceptable class warfare.

Well.

First, these amazing protesters seriously have it together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so … opposite of unorganized. We knew exactly what was happening at all times, including where we were marching, what we were yelling, when we needed to stop, and when we needed to speed up. This group may officially be leaderless, but it certainly knows how to coordinate, plan, and carry out tasks. At one point, a man handed me a piece of paper with a list of my rights as a protester, and it included a protocol to follow if an officer attempted to question or arrest me. Helpful! A woman walked by and insisted I take a bottle of water to keep with me while I marched. Thank you! And any time I bumped into someone, whether attempting to take a picture or just, you know, tripping for no reason (as I’m wont to do), my fellow protesters steadied me or laughed with me or apologized profusely even if it clearly wasn’t their fault. It was fun. We were peaceful and chill. It kind of felt like … solidarity.

I mean, sure, people carried different signs for and against various issues. I saw signs about protecting the homeless from police brutality; signs directed at corporations; signs for going green and protecting the environment; signs for abolishing the death penalty; signs for animal rights; some anti-Obama stuff; some anti-Bush stuff; and many signs representing protestors’ specific unions. I didn’t have a sign—I just yelled with the rest of them, my favorite slogan being, “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” Truth! Having said all that, I would hardly call this movement divided or unclear in its goals. All these concerns fall under the umbrella of a much larger issue—the fact that 99% of the population is at the mercy of that tiny little 1% at the top of The Money Pile.

I took an Introduction to Political Science course when I was about eighteen and an idiot. I remember my teacher asking us, “Is money speech?” We were all, like, “Um, like, I don’t get it.” The class that day was focused on the concept of free speech in our country, which we all agreed was a constitutional right. But our teacher had to go and make it all complicated. “Is money speech?” he asked again. Our class ultimately decided it was the most ridiculous thing we’d ever heard. I wish I could go back to that classroom, knowing what I know now. One finds out fairly early in her adult life that when she graduates from college, and the bills start rolling in, and the bills start eating up the paycheck, and that emergency room visit happens for that fucking hive outbreak, and wait—how is this visit a thousand dollars when I have health insurance?!—and the bank wants her student loan repaid at this new interest rate, right when her brakes go out, and every broke neo-con in her family is somehow still convinced this whole bootstrap thing is real (and possible)—yeah, she learns that money is, in fact, speech. But how is it speech, you ask?

Well.

In a capitalist society, money matters; but in an unregulated capitalist society, the only thing that matters is money. The people’s right to free speech; our right to democratically elect our government officials; our right to affordable healthcare; our right to breathe clean air; our right to have access to pesticide-free foods; and our right to peacefully protest against, you know, all of our rights being violated; well—you can throw that garbage out the window.

Because, in an unregulated capitalist society, the 1% at the Top of the Money Pile gets to exercise its right to free speech, too, which its elite members happily and unapologetically do in the form of: donating millions of dollars to campaigns, ensuring that when their candidate is elected, they have effectively bought a politician who will work tirelessly to keep them comfy on the Money Pile (in exchange for those pesky campaign contributions again next year, score!); profiting, literally profiting financially, off people who have chronic illnesses, people who become sick and don’t have access to healthcare, people who become sick and have access to healthcare, people who don’t have health insurance, people who do have health insurance, and people who die (pretty good deal for you, insurance companies, amirite?!!); and basically doing whatever the hell they want with our environment and our food supply—the welfare of the people be damned—as long as they make a profit.

The problem with that “I’m using my billions of dollars as speech” thing is that we don’t all have billions of dollars. The 99%, in fact, certainly doesn’t have billions of dollars to throw at politicians as some kind of motivational force to get them to act on our behalf; all we have is our lousy vote. That issue—and this is why the 1% is quaking in its collective [insert expensive brand of shoe here]—transcends political parties and affiliations. My conservative uncle and I can’t post a link on Facebook without each of us having partisan cyber-feuds on each other’s walls. But this issue? It ain’t like that. We’re both pissed that we, the 99%, bailed out The Economy Tankers with our tax dollars, only to stand back helplessly and watch them dole out bonuses and other unaccounted for luxuries to themselves. I mean, are ya serious, assholes?

Now that the mainstream media finally wants to pretend-acknowledge the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its global impact (wait, are they pretend-acknowledging that yet?), I’m not surprised that much of its “coverage” centers around how the protesters aren’t united over a single issue, that they don’t have concrete demands, that they’re leaderless and unorganized. The reality is that the 1% owns the media too, and it’s in the best interest of the 1% to keep this movement from gaining momentum, lest its constituents suffer actual tangible consequences for their thievery. So, they get their media to make Occupy Wall Street about how young liberals are just pissy that Obama isn’t as hopey-changey as they’d hoped; or they get their media to say that those clueless Wall Street kids don’t have any real goals so this can’t be a real thing that we need to pay real attention to; or—their most effective tactic—they get their media to start comparing and contrasting Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party as if this movement is just the eruption of another political fringe group with an exclusively left-wing agenda, rather than what it is: A Call to Action for those of us who don’t get to throw down a cool million here and there and call it “speech.”

But they forgot that we do have ways of speaking up. And that the whole world is watching.

Preview: Miss Representation

Miss Representation (2011)
Back in February of this year, we were fortunate to attend the Athena Film Festival and see the documentary Miss Representation. Since then, the film has traveled to different festivals and been shown at numerous screenings around the country. If you haven’t been able to attend one of these showings, however, you have the opportunity to watch the film on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), as part of the OWN Documentary Club, on Thursday, October 20th at 9 PM EST.

I love the tagline for this movie: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” That idea is very similar to the driving force for this site–the way women are represented in film, television, and media in general has a dramatic effect on how women are actually perceived in our culture. The (mis)representation of women directly contributes to the inequality of women and to violence against women. It’s no coincidence that in a culture where women are systematically devalued in media, we have abysmally low numbers of women in positions of power (women represent only 17% of Congress, making the U.S. “90th in the world in terms of women in the national legislature”).

Here are some stats from the movie worth considering:

  • At age 7, and equal number of boys and girls state that they want to be President of the United States. At age 15, this is no longer the case.
  • The 2010 mid-term election is the first time since 1979 that women haven’t made gains.
  • Women comprise only 16% of all writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, and editors.
  • Teenagers in the U.S. consume 10 hours and 45 minutes of media (television, Internet, music, movies, magazines) every day.
I can’t recommend Miss Representation highly enough. If you have cable (and get OWN), I encourage you to watch–and to watch with others, especially teenagers. Here’s an extended preview, for those of you not familiar with the movie.

Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.