Filed under: Journalism, Politics | Tags: Anarchism, Coppers, G20, Ian Tomlinson, Met, Police, Protest
(As a brief digression from my planned future posts I feel that the following information is infinitely more important. Please post and re-post this link wherever you can).
In the hope that this will receive mainstream news coverage and be investigated accordingly: the Guardian have released the video of Ian Tomlinson’s last minutes, whereupon he is attacked from behind by a copper, with a notable absence of the hurling missiles and cider-drenched anarchists that originally featured in the Met-Tabloid version of events. Suddenly, all the cameras at the demonstrations seem entirely justified.
Filed under: Cinema, Feminism, Sexuality | Tags: Girlhood, Lesbian cinema, Queer theory
By way of what is essentially a ‘list’ post I hope to segue into a new frontier of more regular posting. Following this introductory blog post I plan to write a short summary and critique of each of the films previewed below at a rate of roughly one per week.
These films all have in common a focus on queer girlhood and are frequently grouped into the category of New Queer Cinema, roughly spanning the duration of the 1990’s. New Queer Cinema facilitated the delightfully abbreviated ‘Homo Pomo’ reading of texts thus challenging essentialist understandings of queer and female identity as well as the ever-pernicious culture of the binary, through a postmodern cultural gaze. Whether seen in the framework of a ‘coming of age’ / ‘coming out’ narrative or simply as texts concerned with the experience of young women in the late 20th century, these films are an important part of a small and selective cinematic catalogue that deals directly with the lesbian experience sans vampires, bikinis and drooling, voyeuristic boys.
It is interesting in the initial instance that all but one of these films are American, perhaps this has a lot to do with the limitations of my exposure to Lesbian cinema (often brought to my attention by its links to the Riot Grrrl and feminist music scenes and, embarrassingly, looking into the filmographies of various actresses in ‘The L word) and I am thus actively hunting down more British queer filmmakers in the hope that an undiscovered world of lesbian cinematic talent swims around us, and that New Queer Cinema did not in fact die out in the millennium. Entirely another post for another time is the wealth of such films not in English, and in order to not create a year-long project for myself I am tactically omitting them from this selection. As well, all but one of these films are written and directed by women. This lone text created by a male intruder is also incidentally the only British one and will therefore inevitably be read in a slightly different manner to the rest, however it is my intention to develop an economy of comparison here, and so should probably suggest some key areas of focus for each reading.
From New Queer Cinema and its contemporary successors we must demand threats a plenty to heteronormativia, arguments to counter those of conservative assimilationist politics and positive, optimistic, real representations of queer girls on film. I will likely add to this list of films as time goes on in order to get a greater sense of what is out there. ‘Girlhood’ as a key theme may eventually disappear (likely to allow me to write about that scene from Bound), but for this first set of films what it means to be a queer girl is of central importance. Please let me know of any other relevant films that I may not have encountered, if it doesn’t have Ani DiFranco on the soundtrack I probably haven’t seen it.
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti)
All Over Me (Alex Sichel)
Lost and Delirious (Léa Pool)
Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Jamie Babbit)
If These Walls Could Talk 2 (Jane Anderson, Martha Coolidge and Anne Heche)
My Summer of Love (Paweł Pawlikowski)
Filed under: Sexuality | Tags: bisexual, bisexuality, EM Forster, Foucault, heterosexism, Radclyffe Hall, Sexuality, Tallulah Bankhead, the L word
Tina: I still identify politically as a lesbian…
Jenny: It’s not about who you vote for Tina, it’s about who you fuck.
The L Word, Season 4, Episode 4: ‘Layup’
“…life with you is spiritually murdering Mary. Can’t you realize that she needs all the things that it’s not in your power to give her? Children, protection, friends whom she can respect and who’ll respect her–don’t you realize this?”
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of loneliness
“My daddy warned me about men and booze but he didn’t say a word about women and cocaine!”
Tallulah Bankhead
“…our hearts beat fiercely
with clandestine dreams,
knowing we’ll be the
lovers of libertines.”
Paul-Marie Verlaine,
Poèmes Saturniens: Caprices III
The above quote from (my favourite guilty pleasure and ludicrous thorn in my side) The L Word got me to thinking about ‘queer’ identity and the derision that is often leveled at people who identify as bisexual. In this scene Tina (who has recently begun a relationship with a man after 7 years with a woman) attempts to associate herself with a queer politic, yet is denied the right in light of whom she has chosen to sleep with. It’s fair to say in this regard that many bisexual people have difficulty validating their sexual preference as a legitimate identity in the face of both heterosexual and homosexual cultures.
Particularly within, supposedly, accepting and heterogeneous queer communities, bisexuals are often seen as traitors to the fight, who could at any moment go over to the dark side and immediately access the benefits of a heterosexist culture. If I eventually choose to marry a man I will instantly be written off as ’straight’, I will have lost all entitlement to any queer affinity, I will have “finally made up my mind” – reached the resting place of my sexuality. Or even worse I will be just another LUG, my ex-girlfriends will say I always did like dildos a bit too much, and my gay friends will feel offended that I toyed so disingenuously with their lifestyle.
It is difficult to truly analyse the causal factors in this phenomenon. We could, for example, argue that science propagates biphobia. The majority of scientific studies that attempt to find a biological reason for sexual orientation rarely include bisexuality as a valid sexual identity, seemingly because that would upset the logical binary system of their desired findings. Perhaps it is this inability to weigh up bisexuality, or rather there being no diametrical opposite by which to define it, that has resulted in people who identify as bisexual being discredited and viewed ultimately with suspicion or ridicule.
No better than science in this regard though is pop culture. I struggle to think of a trouble-free representation of bisexuality in any book or film I’ve encountered (thus far), and have grown tired of the standard set by literature like The Well of Loneliness and Forster’s Maurice, in which the natural truth of homosexuality is argued by representation of the bisexual as a sort of half creature, lacking the courage to take that final step towards their true sexuality, someone who occupies an invisible and cowardly middle ground. Thanks also to postmodern cultural phenomenon like Girls Gone Wild, and Tila Tequila (go on Google it, I dare you) the [female] bisexual is now reduced to every teenage boy’s dream and every “man in search of a wife”’s worst nightmare.
One of the main obstacles to establishing a healthy bisexual identity is anchored firmly in that choppy sea of monogamy. It is a common misconception that a bisexual person must be intrinsically incapable of being sexually faithfully to one person, as that person will be unable to “give them everything they want.” I am sometimes attracted to people with fair complexions, yet my boyfriend has dark hair, does this mean therefore that I’m going to cheat on him with a Swede? No – because my desire for him, and contentedness with him, is based on more than his physicality, more than his hair colour, more than his sex. To suggest that bisexual people are any less capable of monogamy than anyone else is to assign them an almost animalistic lack of self-control, is degrading and absurd, yet is the most frequent accusation I hear.
An area worthy of comment too is the attitude as exhibited by Tallulah Bankhead above. This decadently hedonistic depiction of sexuality has done a lot for the school of thought that posits bisexual people as ‘greedy’, having their big hetero-cake and eating it too; or even simply as people who just like fucking, regardless of the genitalia at hand (as it were). And as everyone knows from the days of bedtime stories there are no lines of cocaine at the happy ever after, thus inferring that people who are ‘hedonistically bisexual’ will grow out of it along with their desire to party; the ones who do I would be more inclined to call ‘try-sexual’ or perhaps just ’sexual’ (I’m open to criticism that I may be utilising a form of the reductive discourse I want to challenge here). As I see it though, bisexuality is as unified and consistent an identity as any other and it’s important to bear in mind that bisexual identity is different to bisexual behaviour.
I sometimes wonder if we haven’t flooded ourselves into a terminological corner somewhat, Foucault’s “discursive explosion” has, I believe, glossed over bisexuality assuming it would slot neatly in with the other “peripheral sexualities”. However the fact that this identity is forced to develop in a strange kind of purgatory, being denied the validation of others, suggests that homosexual and heterosexual cultures are equally guilty in imposing the restrictive binary; thus excluding a huge volume of people who are just as affected by gay-rights as those who feel they have sole right to it.
Personally, I find the availability of identifying as ‘queer’ at once vitally liberating and potentially problematic. It’s the option I most often take but I’m starting to wonder about its possible counter-productivity. Of course many people who identify as ‘queer’ are not bi- (or homo-) sexual, but for those of us who are, perhaps a greater number ‘coming out’ will increase bisexuality’s recognition as something more than just a halfway house for sexual activity.
Filed under: Advertising, Journalism, Politics | Tags: anti-war, Barack Obama, Democrat, Girls say yes to boys who say Obama, Joan Baez, John McCain, Republican, US elections
I am well aware that the fundamental message at the heart of this poster, made and distributed last month by a group of young female artists in New York, is one I should (and perhaps usually would) push against; I am open to all suggestions that this sort of statement is unforgivably counter-productive and sanctions attitudes that I’ve been known to criticize, but I must admit to liking this smart (and timely!) take on Joan Baez’s classic anti-war image from the 60’s.
Perhaps my feelings would be more diluted (read: less batshit-optimistic & uncharacteristically forgiving) if Obama was not running against John McCain today, but as it stands I’m willing to ‘take my feminazi glasses off’ on this one and say that while I may not entirely agree with the phrasing of either poster I think it is an important political statement expressed in a sufficiently humorous manner. Also there’s no way in hell I would ever have sex with a Republican…
Filed under: Journalism, Politics | Tags: Bristol Palin, Daily Mail, Journalists, Myspace
Being back at the family home for a few weeks means many things to me. It means being back in a world with clean towels, television and more cutlery than any household could ever need or use. It means seeing my old school friends push prams around the town centre, spending less than £10 on a wild night at the local public house and being repeatedly asked what a veganism is. The biggest culture shock of all though is without doubt my sudden exposure to tabloid newspapers.
For all their wonderful traits my folks are in fact Daily Mail readers, and whether it be some form of insane boredom or morbid curiosity, I cannot help but read it every day. In doing this I have happened upon a startling contemporary addition to tabloid journo-ese, which is playing on my mind. It seems that the increasing popularity of social networking sites has been a real boon for lazy print journalists, in that people’s willingness to reveal every detail of their lives into the public sphere negates the need to do any real researching into anything, or anyone – ever again.
It all started in early September when the Bristol “unwed & preggers” Palin story broke, and it was tabloid front page news that her baby’s father is “Proud to be a ‘f******* redneck”. Tsk Tsk – my dad said. Why do these people say things like that to journalists!? – my mother wondered. But wait – I cried. Upon further inspection this revealing “exclusive!!” on which we were all about to base our opinions of the entire Palin clan, nay the entire Republican party, were simply copied and pasted from 18 year old Levi Johnston’s Myspace page. Mywhat ? – my mum asked… I hid out in the spare room to finish the article.
I Admit, extracting ‘newsworthy’ information that is revealed on social networking sites has been common for as long as the sites themselves, and indeed the fact that journalists do this has aggreived me before – but this particular article really waggled crap journalism (and resulting massacre of a delicate story) in my face. I don’t mean to imply any kind of support for Sarah Palin or the Republicans, but I do support an innocent, victimised 17 year old girl and detest the media bunfight over OMG SHE’S PREGNANTTTTT LOL! And of course I’m pissed that said hoohaa appears to have resulted in this poor girl being forced to marry aforementioned douchey ‘redkneck’. But my personal feelings aside, the Daily Mail gleefully hopped aboard the ‘subtly bashing Bristol wagon’ with their article on the 2nd of September, which twisted what Johnston had on his Myspace page in a truly unforgivable way.
The teenager expecting a baby with the 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin calls himself ‘a f***ing redneck’ on his MySpace page.
So far, so lazy. Not a huge contender for the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, but neither was that a crime. The next bit however should be:
Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was revealed to the Republican party convention just days after her 44-year-old mother was picked as John McCain’s running mate. Palin also released a statement confirming that the teenagers are now engaged, however Johnston adds “I don’t want kids”.
Now then, anyone who has ever had or indeed looked at a Myspace page may have noticed the natty little feature intended to reveal one’s desire, or lack thereof, to have children. It looks like this:
Clearly when creating his Myspace page Levi Johnston clicked that first option “I don’t want kids”, not suspecting that a short time later tabloid readers the world over would be told that he is going around “adding” that his unplanned child is unwanted. This made me wonder how we would all fare if journalists keep using this underhand and frankly shitty way of assessing the characters of people in the public eye. What, for example, would be written about me if I did something Daily Mail-worthy scandalous and the writer simply checked my Myspace for information? “The 20 year old from Harrogate stated with reckless abandon “I’m only interested in coffee, scones, outdoor swimming and gin!” The self proclaimed Sex Pistols loving alcoholic adds “If this is hardcore I’d rather be punk – If this is straightedge I’d rather be drunk!” Hmm, I’d best not impregnate a senator’s daughter any time soon – my family wouldn’t much like that succinct interpretation of my character.
The final point here really has to be that of course newspapers make money from downright lies every day, but this twenty first century take on investigative journalism has to be the basest tack yet. I’ve since noticed it crop up in at least one article per day, with the internet interest always on the one ‘in the wrong’. Teenagers who have committed suicide have their music taste analysed, girls suspected of running away with an older man have their interests and ‘who I’d like to meet’ twisted, youths accused of various crimes have their every throwaway comment scrutinised. It clearly makes for a serious case of guilty until proven innocent, and surely none of this could ever be used as real court evidence, could it? Two things have so far come of this whole debaccle – I’ve asked my parents to hide the daily newspaper from me, and I’ve most definitely made my Myspace ‘friends only’.
Filed under: Advertising, Fashion magazines, Journalism | Tags: Burberry, Couture, Fendi, Hermès Birkin, New Delhi, Photo shoot, Vogue India
Ah the fashion world. That well known cauldron of dubious editorial decisions, low carb intakes and crushing social responsibilities has again this week surpassed itself, by plunging headfirst into a steaming pot of ‘what the fuck were you thinking’. The Photoshop of horrors that is Vogue featured a fashion shoot in its latest edition of Vogue India that goes far beyond the parameters of common sense and takes my opinion of fashion magazines to a brand new level.
This month Vogue India editor Priya Tanna took the decision of using real people from the streets of New Delhi as the models for some obscenely expensive high fashion goods. In one double page spread a toothless and barefoot man stands in a roofless room holding a Burberry umbrella that currently costs around £190.
On another page a family of three grip tightly onto a motorbike for their daily commute. The mother, riding without a helmet and sidesaddle in the traditional Indian way, is holding a rare Hermès Birkin bag that would cost you more than £8,000. Perhaps the most tasteless shot of all though is of young thin child being held by an elderly woman and wearing a £300 Fendi bib. The irony that this child likely hadn’t eaten yet that day clearly escaped the editors.
According to World Bank figures released last week nearly half of India’s population (about 456 million people) live on less than 69 pence per day. However there is a stark dichotomy evident between an emerging, wealthy middle class that are making it one of the world’s best places to hawk insanely overpriced designer non-necessities. Many of the articles and online discussions that criticise Vogue’s photo shoot are focusing on the thousands of Indian farmers who have committed suicide in the last few years due to impossible amounts of debt, and the ever increasing number of young children who die in poverty before being given a chance to make a life for themselves.
In response to the criticism Tanna said in a telephone interview with The New York Times:
“Lighten up! Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” and the shoot shows that fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful. You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously. We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world.”
Admittedly fashion journalism is a world that has never stood up very well to critical social analysis, and I doubt anyone would dare suggest that a fashion rag should be taken seriously as a political force. But the sheer heartbreaking irony of this feature, and the knowledge that with the sale of just one of those items the nameless models could feed and clothe their families for months makes it a fashion forward step too far.
Filed under: Feminism, Grassroots | Tags: global giving, grassroots charity project, the girl effect
There are around 600 million adolescent girls currently living in poverty in the developing world – as far as I’m concerned this is a pretty huge issue for feminists everywhere. Many charities are doing great work in many poverty stricken countries, but help for the women of these countries is all too often centered purely around reproductive health and domestic aid. While these are hugely important issues I think every single female on this planet needs access to wider ranging options, and Global Giving has begun a campaign that will hopefully have far reaching effect in the role that women can play in a strong future for developing countries. When given the chance to participate in their society, who knows what one single girl can achieve.
The video is admittedly simplistic but I think it needs to be seen as it conjures up hope for the kind of future every woman deserves, and gives feminism an alternative, often-ignored, opportunity to surge.
Filed under: Advertising, Cinema, Feminism | Tags: Advertising, anti-woman, Commodity fetishism, Feminism, materialism, product placement, satc, Sex and the city, wedding culture
Independence, fetishism and finales in Sex and The City
I am young enough to have discovered Sex And The City on its original run – whilst feminism was still something my mother told me was “for angry lesbians” – and I therefore have developed an unashamedly ambivalent relationship with the entire franchise. The show’s well-peddled maxim (now admittedly somewhat crass), manifesting the inimitable strength of female friendships, was one that agreed entirely with my priorities as a ten year old. Before I knew Karl Marx from Manolo Blahnik the show seemed almost revolutionary to me. As an impressionable pre-teen I was wowed by these four women; a small, gutter-mouthed whirlwind of Sapphic power and unshakeable loyalty to female solidarity. It told me that girl friends were all I would ever need. Men, those strange, unfathomable creatures, would perhaps pepper my unabashed romp through adulthood, acting as minor aggravations and constant amusement, however in the end friendships with other empowered women would come first and conquer all. By the time the first season finished I had dumped my long term playground boyfriend, decided I was going to be a sex writer when I grew up, and had a revelation: perhaps my mother had been wrong after all, maybe this is what feminism meant? Smashing patriarchy with $800 stiletto heels, and not a disgruntled lesbian in sight.
Over the last ten years I have always referenced Sex and the City’s links to the burgeoning feminist proclivities of my youth as justification for my washy agnosticism, rather than outright disgust, toward the programme and its representational minefield. For this reason I was greatly concerned when it came to my attention that the multi-award winning 1990’s televisual behemoth was coming to the big screen. I had hoped that Sex and the City would forever remain sepia tinged and harmless in my mind, and that I would not have cause to revisit it, having now read Cixous, Benston and Butler. Imagine then the disappointment for my ten-year-old self that now, no matter how tenuous a justification I can summon, I can never stick up for Sex and the City again. Call me an optimist but I had perhaps hoped, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that the writers had also spent the last ten years getting to grips with materialist-feminist theory, and were going to explode a fierce critique on the accumulation of capital and the commodifying of ‘femininity’ into my local Odeon. Of course this was not the case, in fact the final result was a film so abhorrent to my very moral fibre that it’s taken two months for me to even gather the wherewithal to write about it.
Shortly after the film’s general release a review in the Independent succinctly stated: “If it were any more taut with product placement you’d hear it go “twang” from here to Manhattan. Those who don’t like watching ads in the cinema should keep well clear.” Indeed first and foremost this issue was my, and many a reviewer’s, borne cross during Sex and the City the film. Admittedly the TV programme always had sympathies toward the materialistically concerned. Episode after episode we saw the characters accumulate clothes and accessories with nonsensical price tags, it name dropped too; “Manolo’s” this “Gucci” that, but somehow spaced out over six seasons it was forgivable. Packed into two hours and twenty five minutes however the need to namedrop sponsors and bellow cultural signifiers seemed relentless, culminating in a bizarre scene in which the main character quite simply lists a stream of fashion designers at her disposal. Why be subtle when you can be obscene? Squirming in my seat I was dumbfounded at how retrogressive this seemed. The writers apparently saw fit to take a reactionary parody on the most materialistic aspects of the television series and make a whole film out if it. In the series there was at least the odd suggestion that money and men weren’t everything; in the episode Take me to the ballgame from series two Miranda says “How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? It’s like seventh grade… with bank accounts.” Statements like that were what stuck in my mind from my original dealings with the television show, after watching the film however it seems unthinkable that the one came after the other. And unthinkably embarrassing that I ever held Sex and the City up as a remotely feminist text.
The big event of the film, and perhaps the pinnacle of the abundant commodity fetishism, is Carrie’s wedding to Big (more on him and his ridiculously phallocentric name later). The character’s fetishizing of the wedding as a perfectly structured (and financed) necessity is the reason why the day does not end happily. The groom’s last minute fear of commitment is precipitated by the bride’s anti-carnivalesque, almost military desire to create the spectacle of dreams; and the message, that Vivienne Westwood dresses and Vogue sponsored weddings do not a happy marriage make, is a clear one. This is not-so-subtly compounded towards the end when the not-so-unpredictable union finally does take place, in a registry office with Carrie wearing a plain suit by an unknown designer, and with no one watching – the ultimate sacrifice to prove that it truly is about the man and not the magazines.
Just when I began to think that perhaps Candace Bushnell might be a secret endorser of dialectical materialism, it all became clear to me what indeed is the biggest problem with Sex and the City – it is, after all, all about the man. I feel fooled that I could have ever thought it was all about the solidarity and independence of emancipated womanhood, that men are simply the fillers in our epic lives. This film made me finally realise that Sex and the City, along with 99% of all TV shows ‘for women’, are about men. And the silly little things we do when not obsessing about them, around them, for them, are the real paltry fillers in our day to day.
‘Mr Big’ as some central paean to desirable masculinity is a recurring character throughout the series. Janet McCabe, author of Reading Sex and the City writes “The women are still caught in fairytale narratives. The ‘right’ couple were signalled in the first episode, when Carrie and Big met, and in some ways the entire show has just been about them getting together.” Big is bad for Carrie, and bad to Carrie, but it is never truly questioned why there is no doubt that they will get back together. Carrie as someone who women were told to look up to – to respect her sexual liberation, to admire her dream job, and envy her freedom – in the film becomes a weak and wailing child, abandoned by her protector. For a moment it seems like the film will take an unsuspected direction (again I’m mortified to admit to all these naïve hopes for a Hollywood blockbuster), Carrie dyes her hair, throws out old clothes, gets on with her life, stops talking about boyfriends, and starts becoming interesting; and it is during these moments that the audience gets to see signs of all that female solidarity I so desired to see in action as a young feminist. Then out of nowhere Big turns up (in Carrie’s walk in wardrobe no less), proposes to her with a shoe and sure enough her resolve dissolves.
As if this wasn’t bad enough there is a subplot going on involving Miranda, perhaps the most identifiably feminist out of the characters, and her husband Steve. Steve admits an affair to Miranda – a moment in the film which prompted a very real gasp from a large portion of the audience. Throughout the TV series Steve was a sweet dependable man, the sort of man many women ostensibly see themselves marrying someday – cute, nerdy, devoted to you, not threateningly good looking, and was therefore immediately held up as the antithesis to masculine Big. When he admits infidelity Miranda ejects him from her home and asks for a divorce – a very real and understandable reaction. Again I allowed a little hope to creep in – “That’s it Miranda, you don’t need him, go back to your friends!” But, alas, I hoped too soon. By the end of the film all is forgiven, Miranda and Steve are back together, and there is a definite bristle in the audience comprised mainly of women (many of whom I’ll wager have been in that very position) that suggests I wasn’t the only one hoping for a more affirmative, less predictable, ending. Worse than this Miranda allows herself, and he allows her, to take the blame for his mistake- on account of her being uninterested in sex for the last year of their marriage. If this isn’t enough evidence that a heterosexual male directed this film then I’ll eat my cinema ticket. All through the TV series Miranda was the incendiary, ball-breaking tough lover, and yet in the film she too gives up and admits that the final curtain always comes down on a woman in a man’s arms.
My concern about, and obvious disappointment with, this film is not necessarily that I think it gives a bad model for women to admire -although there are arguments for that. Alice Wignal put it well in her Guardian review column when she said “It seems churlish to be bitter about the fact that Carrie et al do not offer a fail-safe model for emancipated womanhood when nor, frankly, has real-life feminism” – with which I am inclined to agree. My main concern is how this film is viewed as a conclusion to all the stories that the television series spanned before it. As an epic denouement to a programme about women, a programme that said ‘cunt’ and made it sexy, that said ‘cancer’ and made it not scary, I find it worryingly anti-woman. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte all take their stage bow with a man. The final shot may well be of the four woman linking arms, laughing through the streets but the very clear subtext is that they will all go home to their men – to live out the serious parts of their lives – after Cosmopolitans and bathroom gossip. The character of Samantha is the only one out of four who makes what seems like a sensible, pro-self decision. Her break-up words to Smith – the movie star hunk who ‘tamed’ her in the last series – are the words I longed to hear screamed from the HBO rooftops in every episode, words I think every woman should not be afraid to say, words I have essentially been hoping on since 1998: “I love you… but I love me more.”
I left the cinema deflated and suspicious of my friends. When we’re all in our late thirties will we too care more about men than ourselves? Will our finale be gatecrashed by a handsome deus ex machina holding an expensive shoe? Will there ever be a television show for women that offers hope and loyalty without store cards? I need a cocktail…
This event has come, shamefully late, to my attention. I will be volunteering / donating and so should you!
The importance of these kind of events cannot be overstated. I sometimes think that there is a wealth of available ‘fests’ and organizations catering for the needs of grown up feminists but the upcoming young ones often get passed by. Occasions like Girls Rock are laying the foundations for real progressive potential by reaching out to the future of feminism and direct action, and giving intelligent young wimmin the tools to deal with the daily media assaults on their burgeoning identities. They should be supported wherever and whenever possible, independently run events can so easily drop off the radar.
Filed under: Cinema, Feminism, Journalism | Tags: 4 months 3 weeks and 2 days, Abortion, Juno, Knocked Up
In the last 2 months the entertainment ‘blogosphere’ and review section of almost every national newspaper (U.K and U.S) has been heavy with unplanned pregnancy. The spark can be traced to the recent release of the film Juno, billed as a “whip-smart”, “off-beat” teen comedy about a sixteen year old girl who discovers she is pregnant after a first time sexual experience with her best friend. To entertainment journo’s Juno immediately called to mind the apparent plethora of recent films dealing with a similar subject. Knocked Up and Waitress appear to be the two reigning examples of Hollywood’s inability to think of a new plot for their cutesy ‘indie’ (grossing $115 million in the first months) pictures, both of which end with the birth of a beautiful bouncing baby, and have identical moments of bonding with the unborn foetus at the ultrasound scan (as does Juno). All three of these films follow a similar narrative: young woman discovers she is pregnant, decides to keep the baby, baby is born, everything turns out for the best – however only in Juno is there any even oblique motions toward the possibility of an abortion. The quote taken as title for this entry is from the scene in Knocked Up that has palpably rung alarm bells in the minds of so many American journalists. Why, some 35 years post Roe v. Wade, can Hollywood still not utter the A word?
In the first, most basic order, it is problematic that these films all resolve in the decision to keep the baby. Attenuation of actuality in these mainstream youth orientated comedies is indubitably common, but even with that in mind, it is grossly misrepresenting the majority to suggest unplanned pregnancies more often than not end in the cuddly birth/heart wrenching yet morally astute adoption process. Clearly there is still, in an industry that gives us horrific sexual assaults, deaths, perversions and terrorism all in the name of entertainment, a simple rooted fear of becoming a bastion for pro-choice liberalism. Feminists in the media brought similar ideas to the fore when Sex and the city was at its peak. In one series a character gets pregnant unexpectedly and there is no serious suggestion of abortion being a viable option, even though she is a highly successful lawyer and famed for her free and single lifestyle. This from a television show that pioneered the prime time graphic sex scenes and unabashed use of the feared C word.
I find it disquieting how manifest it has become that, for Hollywood, abortion appears to be the last taboo. Even more disturbing is the fact that the young girls attracted to these films by the quirky soundtracks and sixteen prestigious award nominations are being lied to about the realities of this potentially devastating situation. If Juno is to be believed then everything will work out just fine, not only will a private closed adoption take place immediately upon your bidding but the virile and supportive young man who helped get you pregnant will turn out to be the love of your life. If Knocked Up is the very mainstay of verisimilitude then you can look forward to the male giving up his job and best friend’s approval to be with you and the child. Generally you can be assured that, although there may be hardship along the way, bringing the unwanted child into the world is the surest way to safeguard a happy ending. Of course it is patronizing and reductive to suggest that all teenage girls will take what Hollywood tells them as representative of real life or the pantheon of moral judgement, but the sheer imbalance of represented ‘sides’ here encourages the further naturalizing of an essentially Christian belief system, when surely we want young people to face an impartial conspectus and be able to make autonomous decisions.
The two main arguments that have risen around this matter are incontrovertibly rooted in either pro-choice or pro-life camps. The consensus amongst socially conservative journalists seems to be that Hollywood is perpetuating this baby boom for the necessity of generating plot. Woman falls pregnant, gets a legal, hassle-free termination a few weeks later and then gets on with her life is apparently not enough fodder for a blockbuster. Interestingly it often transpires in their review or column that said author is pro-life, whereas more liberal pro-choice writers seem to be championing the idea that showing abortion as a cogent and feasible option would upset and alienate half of America, essentially the argument I too am attempting to make here. In reading around journalists having shown an interest in this subject I came across an article by Gerard Baker in Times Online, in which he calls the alienation theory “a bit flimsy. The big studios are happy to churn out films that promote wild conspiracy theories about evil cliques of conservatives.” This may well be the case but what he neglects to ruminate on is how far “wild conspiracy theories” could affect a real life choice made by a cinema goer, and the reasons therefore why conservative Americans are happy to digest that sort of plot but would doubtless revolt if a woman was shown to make an informed decision to abort her own foetus. Baker goes on in the article to become down right fatuous and abuse his journalistic plinth as a quasi-religious high horse:
“The reality is that few people – whatever their political views – want to go and see a film where a woman chooses to have an abortion. We go to the cinema to be reminded that there are some people, on screen at least, who do the good and moral and honourable thing. And confronted with the awful trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, almost all of the time choosing to have the baby is the good and moral and honourable thing to do. Of course admitting this would be problematic for the “pro-choice” crowd. It would involve admitting that the “choice” they vehemently defend is not really a moral choice at all.”
I find his pompous suggestions of “the good and moral and honourable thing to do” too impossibly vague and incontestably steeped in religious fog to even comment on, but here is evidence of Hollywood’s target audience in full voiced ignorant throttle. If we desired even more proof that American cinema’s subtle shuffle to the right is taking herds of well meaning entertainment consumers with it we need only to see Baker’s comments (and many more identical across the online news and review community) regarding the benefits of such light hearted ‘shmashmortion’ fare: “Gone are the searing indictments of US policy in the Middle East and the moving stories about the misery of being gay in the Far West. Instead, Americans are flocking to see a succession of movies – many of which not only make you feel good, but actually are rather good.” Quite.
Clearly the embittered, and at times personal, battles surrounding this topic in the media are only abetting the vituperative mythologies surrounding the abortion debate. I am loathed to give him the virtual air-time but Baker goes on further in his article to cite such preposterously right-wing and racist ideas in support of banning abortion that I can scarcely believe he was allowed to publish it. Here he is on the similarities between abortion and slavery:
” I’m convinced that we will some day come to view it in the way we now view slavery, a moral abomination that generations simply became inured to by usage and practice. The big difference, of course, is that abortion is worse than slavery. Not just in the obvious sense that it involves the taking of life rather than liberty, but because our current debate suggests that deep down most of us really know there’s something quite wrong with abortion.”
[Emphasis mine] The “current debate” he refers to is the same as we are engaging with here, why ‘liberal Hollywood’ (as he calls it) shies away from abortion. This is a tenuous argument at best. How, in any sound analytical way, does questioning why Hollywood refuses to admit to a common and medically respected practice, prove that we “know something is wrong with abortion”? Surely the thing we identify as wrong is the right to chose being given an unfair representation in the media. In these wooly and vacuous gambits Baker only serves to further exemplify the type of conservative audience whom Hollywood is so afraid of upsetting.
I am continually referring to an American audience here as we seem to have a somewhat less blatantly anti-choice approach to abortion in European cinema. Films such as Vera Drake (grossing over $12 million) and the Romanian film 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, which premiered in the States this week and Britain mid way through January, were both widely received as balanced and realistic portrayals of the context surrounding abortion in two very different eras (Vera Drake takes place in 1950s England and 4 months… is set in 1980’s Romania). Evidence of companies outside of Hollywood producing huge, award winning and well respected films that not only dare to mention the word ‘abortion’ but ostensibly use their plots to suggest it should not be vilified, quite blows Baker et al’s argument right out of the holy water. If European companies can do it, why not Hollywood?
I find it interesting how American audiences are going to react to 4 months… this week, having so recently enjoyed Juno. 4 months… portrays a young woman’s desperate attempts to get a late term abortion in a time and country when any sort of termination was still illegal. Compare this to the fast paced sickly saccharine dialogue and bright colours of Juno, and it is evident which film will do best at the box office. Perhaps it is a simple case that people do want cinema to be escapist, but Hollywood’s continual refusal to admit that abortion happens ensures that babies and happy adoptions will always be the escape, and abortion forever associated with the grey, dingy, ‘gritty’ detritus of modern existence. Of course an abortion can be an horrific experience, but so too can pregnancy and the wrenching surrender of a child, the lifelong battles between biological and adoptive parents, the bribery and exchanges of money, the 9 months of shame and justification, the terror of being abandoned by partners and friends whilst heavy with child. Films like 4 months… are important in that they bring the horrors of the illegal abortion process to the fore and encourage young people who do not associate coat hangers and back street clinics with terminations to be in support of legal and safe abortions as the preferable option. I still would like, for once though, to see a Kimya Dawson soundtrack and a witty cast in a film about a young woman who discovers she is pregnant, weighs up her options and decides that an abortion is best. Perhaps even a secondary character or sub plot would do if there is not enough plot potential in a happy, fluffy “well that was easy” abortion to support a whole film. What is vital here is that a well realised, accurate representation of the highs and lows of every such potentially life changing decision is played out on our screens, so that the young people who may be in these situations (not the hipster 30-somethings who write pages of their embarrassingly unconvincing dialogue) do not continue to view abortion as the desperate and shameful last resort.
