The politics of power/The power of politics

Yep. What a great collage. I wish I knew who to credit for it.

On Documentary Photography

The end credits of Lars von Trier’s Dogville.

Classic social documentary photography montage with Bowie’s “Young Americans” as the soundtrack. Another layer of absurdity is added when the credits with the names of celebrities like Nicole Kidman start to appear over top. Pretty insane.

Moms in the Movies

Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane did a great show this morning in honor of Mother’s Day called Mothers in the Movies. The guest was Jeanine Basinger, Chair of the Film Studies Department at Wesleyan University and founder/curator of the Wesleyan Cinema Archives. They played some great clips, from Mildred Pierce, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, Mommie Dearest, etc.

“Please, Mama, will you go? And never do this again. And if by accident, we should ever pass on the street, please don’t recognize me!”

Harsh, Sarah Jane, harsh. This movie is pretty insane/amazing; it’s hyper hyper-melodrama. Douglas Sirk was largely dismissed as a maker of the light-fare melodramatic “woman’s film” in his day, but before coming from Germany to America, he was apparently very influenced Bertolt Brecht, so many people have read his films as critiques of American society, materialism and hypocrisy.

I wanted to call in to mention a few things, but since I was on my way in to WHYY for an interview to work for this show, I thought that might be a little inappropriate. I’ll post them here instead!

Candice Breitz, a visual artist, had an exhibit called Mother + Father at the MoMA a few years back that is really worth checking out to see how mothers have been portrayed in films. She rips the actresses from their respective films and sets them to a black background, aligned in a grid. The gendered differences in the performances of the Mothers and the Fathers  are made really apparent by this extraction and alignment.

From the press release on Breitz’s site:

“The cast members of Mother and Father are free to perform two new dramas under Breitz’s direction. The actors emerge from her mixing-desk recycled and coerced into tautly arranged compositions, flashing onto their respective screens rhythmically and obsessively. Breitz offers us parenthood as a metaphor for the relationship between the star and the fan, inviting us to reflect on the formative role that the media increasingly plays in our lives.”

Check out her other work. It’s all really interesting. I’m going to look into it more.

(P.S. – I got the internship at Radio Times!)

“I love bikini season!”

Bikini Season is upon once again!

Hey Erin, where did you get that pizza? I want one.

Hollaback!

I can’t remember where I heard about Hollaback!, but I checked it out today, and I’m really glad I did.

Hollaback! is a movement dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology. Street harassment is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against. Comments from “You’d look good on me” to groping, flashing and assault are a daily, global reality for women and LGBTQ individuals. But it is rarely reported, and it’s culturally accepted as ‘the price you pay’ for being a woman or for being gay. At Hollaback!, we don’t buy it.

This movement is amazing! I began to click some of the points on the map and read through the stories about others’ experiences with street harassment. I was reminded of the hundreds (that is in no way an exaggeration) of disgusting, rude, and totally despicable comments (not “compliments”) that I’ve endured throughout my own life. From having a man pass my friend and I at the mall when we were 13 and say to our faces “Mmm pusssyyy” to walking anywhere given day being catcalled, asked my name, my number, being told I’m beautiful, sexy, being yelled at from cars, from stoops, being approached, etc etc etc. Many of these individual experiences came flooding back into my mind.

I remember all of the times when I felt helpless, disgusting, and most of all angry. I was angry when all I could reply to the two immature turds driving beside me for three blocks yelling “firecrotch” on Passyunk in South Philly, was “Really? Are you serious?” or that I was literally speechless when two disheveled “homeless” guys downtown Santa Cruz approached me and asked for spare change one night a few years ago, and when I said “Sorry…” they just called me a “stupid whore” and walked away. But it’s not only helpless, disgusting and angry that I’ve felt. I’ve also very often felt scared. And so have many women I know. My sister and I have shared our stories and fears, like the period of time when she was repeatedly followed walking home after leaving the gym, and it’s been helpful to get these things off our chests and give advice to one another. But it’s also really important to try to actively end street harassment.

What is so great about Hollaback! is that while reading the stories is simultaneously depressing (and difficult), it is also empowering. It also offers women and LGBTQ people a place to hold those who harass accountable.

I encourage everyone to check out the site, share your stories, and donate to the movement.

I really like this post from the San Jose chapter:

In order to avoid being harassed, have you ever:

• Avoided walking at night or alone?
• Dressed differently?
• Avoided eye contact with strangers?
• Stayed away from certain areas?
• Driven or bicycled instead of walking?
• Hunched your shoulders, tensed your body, or otherwise changed your posture?
• What else?

Imagine if we didn’t have to do that anymore when we went out in public.
Imagine if we had real freedom of movement.
Imagine if our family and friends no longer admonished us to stay inside in order to avoid being hurt or degraded in public.

We can end street harassment in San Jose and make this a reality.

Also check out RightRides, a service that offers “women, LGBTQ and gender nonconforming individuals a free, late-night ride home to ensure their safe commute to or through high-risk areas.”

Enlightened Sexism

I started reading Susan J. Douglas’ Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done on Monday. The read will be slow-going because I am reading it alongside all of my required coursework. Though I may be able to incorporate it into one of my courses…I’m considering writing a paper on it. Already it’s offering a really interesting and nuanced look at the representation of women and feminism in the media over the past few decades. It’s really focused on my generation, too which makes it doubly interesting and relatable.

From the introduction (which is as far as I’ve gotten):

“Many producers insist that the mass media are simply mirrors, reflecting reality, whatever that is, back to the public. Whenever you hear this mirror metaphor, I urge you to smash it. Because if the media are mirrors, they are fun house mirrors. You know, the wavy kind, where your body becomes completely distorted…This is the mass media–exaggerating certain kinds of stories, certain kinds of people, certain kinds of values and attitudes, while minimizing others or rendering them invisible.”

This particular part stuck out to me, and then I realized it was not only because it’s a great metaphor to understand and reject the way in which people in positions of power claim the media is simply mirroring society’s wants and needs, but also because Jenn Pozner quotes this same passage in her book! I knew it seemed eerily familiar. Douglas attributes the fun house mirrors idea to Todd Gitlin, who wrote The Whole World is Watching, so I should mention that.

“So how did we get here, to this ironic pass, where the media has both exaggerated female achievements and, at the same time, resurrected misogynistic stereotypes of yore?”

I’m excited to find out.

On a related note, I bought my mom Peggy Orenstein’s new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture a couple weeks back. I’ll check in with her to see what impressions it made on her.

Pop Culture Pirate

I have been excited about Elisa Kreisinger‘s work since I readabout it in Reality Bites Back. She’s a feminist video remix artist who spoke on a panel at NCMR titled “Copyright, Copyleft, Copycenter: Can Copyright and Remix Culture Co-Exist?” along with other amazing panelists, including documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt, director of the Center for Social Media at American University Professor Patricia Auferheide, New Media Rights founder Art Neill, and moderated by director of Outreach and New Media at Public Knowledge Mehan Jayasuriya.

Copyright, Copyleft, Copycenter audio file

The amount of links in this post is already overwhelming even me. So I am going to just focus back on Elisa for this one. I will do subsequent postings about each of those awesome organizations/panelists. In the session, she urged that women should create more narratives about pop culture.

Her remix work is at Pop Culture Pirate, and she also blogs there.

Here is her queer remix of Sex and the City, referred to as Queer Carrie:

and here is Elisa discussing her practice:

Happy Birthday, Max Weber.

Happy 147th birthday, Max Weber!

“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so… In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men.”

from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Dismal Numbers of Female Writers in Late Night

NOTES:

1) The host doubles as a writer on each of these shows but we did not include them in the counts.
2) Although Jimmy Kimmel only has one female writer, she is a co-head writer. None of the other shows hosted by men have female head writers.
3) Craig Ferguson’s only female writer is his sister.

All content above reposted from: http://statette.tumblr.com/post/4719501058/women-writers-late-night

I know  there are some really funny ladies out there, so why aren’t they on late night??

Check out http://statette.tumblr.com for more interesting graphs/stats on women in media “that will piss you off.”

Modern Lady

At the NCMR, I was really excited to get a chance to see this very funny lady, Erin Gibson. She is the host of a segment on Infomania (on current.com) called Modern Lady. She showed some of her work as part of the opening plenary, including this video:

I wanna be that funny!

And on that subject, here is another video from another very funny lady at The Daily Show, Kristen Schaal. I couldn’t figure out how to embed video from their site, but it’s here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-2-2011/rape-victim-abortion-funding