Just Read: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret AtwoodMy sentence free summary and review: suppression of women, scary, misinterpreting scripture, religious oppression, future, unreliable narrator (maybe), technology, sexy, unsexy, subconscious sexism
My one sentence review: The narrator's voice and the fact that the author indicts everyone while not taking potshots at any particular group, are really what breathe life and credibility into this well-crafted parable.
Alexander: When will the capitalist pigs give the vegan food and cigarette breaks the masses crave!
me: Right
Mmmhmm
Alexander: I am currently occupying my desk
Viva le Alex!
I will sit here until the school meets my demands of a salary!
And then I will sit here some more!
me: Hahahaha
The question is, do you have boobies?
I only care about the demands of topless feminists
Alexander: Unfortunately not. Nor a vagina.
me: Damn
Alexander: I can draw boobies
I just need a protractor
And I can grab boobies
Does either skill help?
me: No
Alexander: So, what do you think about the Kimmel 60
me: Boobies
I think this is stupid
Alexander: It just seems so silly
me: It is
Like, if I were 19, it would be awesome
and if their demands made sense, it would be awesome
Their general stance, which calls for more budget transparency and more student involvement in larger decisions is fine and worth fighting for...
...but tacking on the Gaza stuff and the Coke stuff and the TA stuff to this particular protest just pretty much strikes any legitimacy they may have
...as do the naked "feminists"
Alexander: There are naked feminists?
me: YES!
Alexander: I didn't know you were being specific to this
me: The BOOBIES!
Alexander: I thought you were just talking about an IDEAL protest
me: nsfw, unless your work is like my work: http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2009/02/19/flashy-protesting
No...THIS protest
Alexander: forehead slap
me: Yes
Yes
Alexander: Ok, this is just retarded
It's like....you know what's it's like
It's like when movie producers want to make a genre teen comedy
And they find every cliche element possible and throw it together to make a bland, pointless mess
That's what this protest is like
It's doing a lot of things, none of them well, and it has no actual point other than to get people to look at it
me: Yes!
Yes!
Argh!
Alexander: And it's so tediously unoriginal
And wtf, make the library open to the public?
That's just dumb
There's a public library!
It's called, The Public Library!
And guess what, it's better than Bobst
The problem is since ANYBODY can take out the books they aren't always waiting for NYU students
Hence, Universities have their own libraries
Further Reading:
What is it about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series that is so right? After reading the first book, I've wanted to (and have on occasion) rant endlessly about everything that is wrong with the series. But the intensity of my emotional response to these books is too overwhelming. I recently stated that the only other piece of literature that has elicited such a strong emotionally ambivalent response in me was Toni Morrison's Beloved. And I assure you that my response to Beloved was for very, very different reasons. So, simply, about Twilight, I have too much to say. So I'll start with a list of the bads:But this is where the internal conflict comes in: I can't help but to love the Twilight series anyway. Each book has been better and better written and these insufferable characters are growing on me.
I'm trying to bite my tongue, which wants to blame Meyer's Mormonism for the obnoxiously traditional values that permeate the love story. But it makes sense. I can be considered fairly conservative myself when it comes to issues of love and marriage...but I can't help but feel nauseated by this common theme of Bella pressuring Edward for sex and him constantly telling her to show some self-control. Of course she's the out of control floozy and he's the mature, protective male full of restraint.
Sigh. I'm rambling. The final book comes out in approx. 36.5 hours. I'm looking forward to it. I can't decide whether or not I can stomach watching the film when it comes out, but we will see. No matter how much this series infuriates me for its shortcomings, what will always infuriate me the most is the fact that it is clearly doing something right.
Hahaha. I'm just joking. What really happens is that the men teach the women that yes, women need men. I've managed to find a few of these films entertaining despite their sexism, because they were just silly. I think Queen of Outer Space is the only film that left a horrendously bad taste in my mouth. Today, however, perhaps it is the fact that I am in the middle of reading Second Sex and io9 posted the above clip that has me in such a tizzy.
You see, I am not offended by the proposition that men and women need each other. No, that's fine. I'm a red-blooded heterosexual woman. I love men. I'd hate not having men around. It's just the fact that men feel the need to tell us that we need them which is slightly offensive. Men (I am now using this term to refer to the patriarchal and misogynistic variety of the male homo sapiens) have always understood that they need women:
If men did not need women, they would have eradicated us. But instead they have enslaved us. As our societies have changed, men's superior strength has become less and less of an evolutionary advantage. As woman began seeking equality, man got scared at the threat to his supremacy. If woman no longer needs man for protection and science and cloning can make reproduction possible without man, then woman can survive without man.
I leave you with a quote from Second Sex:
In truth women have never set up female values in opposition to male values; it is man who, desirous of maintaining masculine prerogatives, has invented that divergence. Men have presumed to create a feminine domain - the kingdom of life, of immanence - only in order to lock women therein.
Ok, I lied. One more thought before I go: Can anyone tell me of any movies in which the opposite is true? In which there is but one woman left?
Movies of Note:
-------------------------------*In some cases, there are men around for breeding purposes.
I like to think that I have a pretty perverted mind, but I must admit that I saw nothing scandalous in the already over-discussed Annie Liebovitz-shot Vanity Fair photos of tween sensation, Miley Cyrus. To me, she looks like a young teen who's just woken up. That's how many of my friends looked first thing in the morning, ten years ago. Granted, pajamas were worn when with company, and the lips were not quite so rosy...
Perhaps the scandal is a result of people lashing out about what is in their own minds? Is this simply another side effect of of our culture's obsession with sex? We see "sexiness" all of the time and instead of dealing with the unhealthy aspects, the reactionaries rebel against the human body itself. ("What is so offensive about Janet Jackson's nipple?" is a question I can't get a straight answer to. I can't understand how a child would be traumatised by the sight of one human breast on a television set.)
Further reading:
I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great - that is, for "great men"; and it's "silly." Besides, you've written a little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty-so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.
Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don't like the true texts of women - female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.
I write woman: woman must write woman.
A couple of years back I found myself watching the unfortunate chick flick, Little Black Book. When released in theatres, this film held no appeal for me, but when one is stuck in front of a television set with not much available to watch, one can easily be drawn in by Holly Hunter, even if, like me, you prefer your Brittany Murphies to be dark haired and curvy.I was admittedly slightly impressed by what the film was attempting to accomplish with its exploration of female competitiveness and of course, the ultimate lesson that a woman does not need a man in her life in order to feel complete. Unfortunately, it did not do this well. The film wrapped up with a neatly packaged and carefully explained moral-of-the-story that left the viewer feeling dumber for having sat through the film and simultaneously incensed that the writer and director would treat us like morons and feel a need to spell everything out. Basically, the film lacked subtlety and charm, which was made increasingly frustrating by the fact that it was obviously written by a woman. It felt like something I would write after having a sort of epiphany of the same sort.
The problem is, similar themes have been explored countless times, to be sure, but most notably in the superior, My Best Friend's Wedding. While this film was definitely no Oscar contender, Ronald Bass, a man who's written many a sensitive film, was able to infuse its female characters with a certain genuineness and believability that was completely missing in the women of Little Black Book. Not only that, but he let you figure the lessons out on your own.
Women, it's time to write ourselves, and it's time to write ourselves well.
fem·i·nism (\ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\) noun: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
What can not generally agreed on? What exactly social equality means. To quote Lindsey Gerdes:
As American women have won more and more rights, the feminist movement has had the luxury of branching off in many, even contradictory, directions. Feminist icons run the gamut from activist Gloria Steinem to porn star Jenna Jamison…not to mention our first viable female Presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton."
And this is where the problems arise. It's not so much the differences of opinion that rub me the wrong way. It is the way in which these arguments are played out in the public sphere. Specifically, the sphere of the internet. I am often hard pressed to find any women-focused or -centered blog or webpage in which one does not see other women-focused or -centered blogs/webpage/periodical, etc. bashed in a catty way. Jim Wallis' admonishment to Christians can also be applied to feminists: "The ways we disagree can sometimes be as important as the things upon which we disagree." The hatefulness with which we attack each other will not help our cause. As long as we continue to live up to stereotypes of backstabbing and manipulativeness and cattiness, we will never earn our rightful place in society.
mi·sog·y·nist (\mə-ˈsä-jə-nist\) noun: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another
(This definition courtesy of H.L. Mencken.)
