Ok. I'm paralyzed and struggling. When I want to torture myself I watch reruns of Law and Order SVU. (The Law and Order franchise will get its own treatment in this blog.) When I want to procrastinate, I watch 30 Days of Night, a vampire bloodfest set in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the US. The idea is that vampires get to chow down on a town during its dark month. Josh Hartnett, is Evan, the unconvincingly young sherrif, and there is some twelve-year-old aryan model who plays his estranged wife, Stella.
A word on Josh Hartnett: Physically, he is bland as wheat germ. Maybe that's why I like him: Intellectual fiber. I haven't been feeling like an intellectual, or a writer lately; somehow this is possible and even normal while attending a university for an MFA. So I deal with my anxiety issues, take my little meds, and watch bad movies on my blog's illicit sponsor, Netflix Instant Viewing. Anyway, I like Josh Hartnett because he cries. Don't get me wrong, he is mostly boring. But he is a vulnerable sort of boring. There is a great instant in the film where Hartnett's character finds a head on a pike and reacts like any human not in a horror movie would react: like he just saw a fucking head on a pike. He gasps and struggles with his breath. His character also has athsma, a not overplaid character trait. Perhaps I am implying this actor has chops, sublty, craft. Maybe something really bad will happen to his face and he will be forced to play interesting villains for a few years. I would like that. I feel an affinity to Hartnett. He is young, not at his peak, and I like that. I'm not at mine.
I also like the screaming fascist vampires with beads of blood frozen to their faces. They speak in screeches and subtitles. They are not just blood consumers, they are blood artists. They're not just savages, they're planners. I need a plan.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Film: Home Edit Your Favorite Movies
Some of the films we love and hate can be fixed with home editing, IE, turning it off before the end. For example:
Million Dollar Baby: I've written a whole treatise indicting Million Dollar Baby for tacking a right to die case onto an otherwise brilliant feminist Clint Eastwood sexiesque film. If the film hadn't copped out in this way, i argue, then Hil Swank's character would have logically proceeded to tackle gender barriers in the boxing sport. An alternative to watching Million Dollar Baby and ending before the 'biting off my tongue cause I'm so tough' scene, you could just Netflix the film Girlfight, which tackles my concerns head on. The latter is also very satisfying for people who want to see women beat the rightous shit out of their abusive dads. And worth watching to the last second.
This will be a regular spot on the Institute for Pop Culture and Lesbian Birth Control, and I urge you to submit your own ideas.
Million Dollar Baby: I've written a whole treatise indicting Million Dollar Baby for tacking a right to die case onto an otherwise brilliant feminist Clint Eastwood sexiesque film. If the film hadn't copped out in this way, i argue, then Hil Swank's character would have logically proceeded to tackle gender barriers in the boxing sport. An alternative to watching Million Dollar Baby and ending before the 'biting off my tongue cause I'm so tough' scene, you could just Netflix the film Girlfight, which tackles my concerns head on. The latter is also very satisfying for people who want to see women beat the rightous shit out of their abusive dads. And worth watching to the last second.
This will be a regular spot on the Institute for Pop Culture and Lesbian Birth Control, and I urge you to submit your own ideas.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
A Word on Mystery Science Theater 3000
I love mst3k. It's a show where three robot puppets and a guy in a jumpsuit make fun of films. The premise is that they are stuck in a kind of hellish torture, the only remedy which is commentary (See also: why I love blogs). From my earliest days of exposure to cable at my grandfather's house in Ashland, Kentucky, I loved it.
I remember reading the episode guidebook in the basement level of my junior high school. In the commentary on how the films are chosen for deconstruction, the creators revealed they had accidentally let a a film slip through which had a brutal rape for a plot point. Some seventies motorcycle film is my guess. Obviously they edited the rape scene out and patched the continuity best they could. The problem with my brain is that, as I watch the latter half of the MST3K ouvre while playing little war games on my computer, I keep looking for the missing rape scene. I'm a dog gnawing on a bone.
As an aside, I think me & Em & Paola and friends should do an mst3k-style critique of, say a Lifetime movie for women in which Zach Morris from Saved By the Bell date rapes that girl from 90210. Put our little silhouettes at the bottom of the screen. I, personally, would find that hilarious.
I remember reading the episode guidebook in the basement level of my junior high school. In the commentary on how the films are chosen for deconstruction, the creators revealed they had accidentally let a a film slip through which had a brutal rape for a plot point. Some seventies motorcycle film is my guess. Obviously they edited the rape scene out and patched the continuity best they could. The problem with my brain is that, as I watch the latter half of the MST3K ouvre while playing little war games on my computer, I keep looking for the missing rape scene. I'm a dog gnawing on a bone.
As an aside, I think me & Em & Paola and friends should do an mst3k-style critique of, say a Lifetime movie for women in which Zach Morris from Saved By the Bell date rapes that girl from 90210. Put our little silhouettes at the bottom of the screen. I, personally, would find that hilarious.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Film: Firestarter a la Stephen King
I'm watching Firestarter, a film Drew Barrymore starred in 1984, when she was six or eight and I was two years old. The child acting is so salubrious as to wonder what mind games they played with the little darling, the Dakota Fanning of Gen X. I think I love it so much because plotwise, it is a cross between Bambi and Carrie. Minus the twitterpation.
As though Bambi's mother said: "Bambi, you've got to show them all that this is war. Do everything you have to to get you. Kill them all, Bambi."
If we take the great mind of Barbara Creed (+Freud +Kristeva), female adolescent sexuality is one of the great mythicized horror events. Powers like telekenesis, fire, seduction, possession--staples of The Exorcist and other cult favorites--are ascribed to pubescent girls. Their powers are often turbulent, a quality ascribed to that age group. Baby Barrymore, for example, is depicted on bridges: she is sniped, drugged, and captured on a bridge, and she destroys the evil secret government human weapon organization from a bridge. Would Freud, wearing the undergarments of a feminist (be it frilly garters or a-frame tshirts--lesbian lingere), note that Baby Barrymore is also on a bridge. She is depicted on the dangerous passage between child and adulthood.
In the pubsescent girl-as-horror-object, the girl, who at first seems frail is unstable, makes the society (the CIA, the town in Iowa, her family), makes THEM seem frail in comparison. This is the kind of pleasure I get from looking--identification with the monster. I was a preteen monster.
Drew Barrymore would seem to be more the object than the subject of the film, portrayed with her weird, orgasmic power spasms, and the endless close-ups of her mesmerizing face, blonde hair blowing backward. She is the phoenix. She is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, and she is back for some fucking revenge. I am thinking about the poetry of Judy Grahn, in which she beats onlookers with the skull of a decomposed Monroe. I am thinking of Hothead Paisan, lesbian superhero in a-frame t-shirts that say NO GUILT.
We may have a female revenge film kick on our hands. This month's Bitch magazine has a great article this month about the rape revenge movie, but maybe I'll stick to Kill Bill and The Brave One...
As though Bambi's mother said: "Bambi, you've got to show them all that this is war. Do everything you have to to get you. Kill them all, Bambi."
If we take the great mind of Barbara Creed (+Freud +Kristeva), female adolescent sexuality is one of the great mythicized horror events. Powers like telekenesis, fire, seduction, possession--staples of The Exorcist and other cult favorites--are ascribed to pubescent girls. Their powers are often turbulent, a quality ascribed to that age group. Baby Barrymore, for example, is depicted on bridges: she is sniped, drugged, and captured on a bridge, and she destroys the evil secret government human weapon organization from a bridge. Would Freud, wearing the undergarments of a feminist (be it frilly garters or a-frame tshirts--lesbian lingere), note that Baby Barrymore is also on a bridge. She is depicted on the dangerous passage between child and adulthood.
In the pubsescent girl-as-horror-object, the girl, who at first seems frail is unstable, makes the society (the CIA, the town in Iowa, her family), makes THEM seem frail in comparison. This is the kind of pleasure I get from looking--identification with the monster. I was a preteen monster.
Drew Barrymore would seem to be more the object than the subject of the film, portrayed with her weird, orgasmic power spasms, and the endless close-ups of her mesmerizing face, blonde hair blowing backward. She is the phoenix. She is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, and she is back for some fucking revenge. I am thinking about the poetry of Judy Grahn, in which she beats onlookers with the skull of a decomposed Monroe. I am thinking of Hothead Paisan, lesbian superhero in a-frame t-shirts that say NO GUILT.
We may have a female revenge film kick on our hands. This month's Bitch magazine has a great article this month about the rape revenge movie, but maybe I'll stick to Kill Bill and The Brave One...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Film: She Hate Me: Obviously Written by a Straight Man But Promising Nonetheless.
She Hate Me (2004) dir. Spike Lee
“You're lesbians, right?”
Simultaneously: “--We're businesswomen.”
The ovulating, vampiresque baby hungry lesbians will show up at your door, and you will pimp yourself to them in a humiliating, exhausting, and lucrative ritual that will land you in the supreme court. I love it.
Alternate Title for Spike Lee's She Hate Me: Why Anyone Would Be Better Off Selling Sperm than Going Corporate.
or:
Obviously Written by A Straight Man but Ten to Twenty Times Better than Chasing Amy
Synopsis: Corporate whistle-blower and deeply soulful, ethical Jack Armstrong finds his life sabotaged, and his finances in ruins... when his ex girlfriend Fatima shows up, ovulating, with ovulating girlfriend in tow, to offer him ten grand per donation of his fine fine sperm. First the couple tries to get pregnant simultaneously, and then they organize and informal one-man insemination service for all corporate lesbians of color in a fifty-mile radius.
Fatima's girlfriend is the hot hot, and disgustingly underused in Heroes, “I cry the black plague,” Dania Ramirez.
Ouch ouch ouch. Slap a personality on that girl, Heroes, because baby has the chops and the touch. So far all she's gotten is a brother-sister plot directly ripped off from El Norte, a 1983 film we should all know about if we don't have Latin American heritage--but then all of us in the Estas Unis do, in a sense, even if we do not see how.
But don't get me started on race. Or Race and Heroes. Where to begin: perhaps the black man who never speaks, who is referred to only as “The Hatian.” Or the show's other black man, a young criminal who becomes physically stronger, literally “feeding off of people's fear.” Like the Hulk, but with projected racism instead of internal anger as the catalyst for powers. But I digress.
There was some nice cross-pollenation of whistleblowing feminist icons and black men in She Hate Me. Watching Spike Lee made me think that my partner might find the “joints” (as Lee so endearingly calls his films) uninteresting for the reasons I find them interesting. They are deeply representative of modern points of view and social issues that some find unsettling—the kind of movie that enacts a conversation at the level of law, media, race, gender, and sexuality. The film offers a refreshingly alternate portrayal of, well, alternate relationships, despite its too-patriarchally satisfying, almost mormon bigamist turn at the end. And I was annoyed by the continued insistence of the protagonist: “I'm not proud of [inseminating fourteen lesbians]. I'm not proud of it.”
And while it is clear, Mr. Lee, that you had some sort of black lesbian-feminist consultant on this film, I humbly offer a few words of advice for you about queer women:
The worst thing about being the baby daddy to a baker's dozen of lesbian couples is that the awkward potential is so much worse than my own personal awkward social circles: to be the baby daddy at the party; the punk who slept with everybody's mom-— is so much worse than my position, in which every good party I attend is a reunion of my ex-girlfriends. There is nothing morally reprehensible about prostituting your spunk for a good cause.
Also:
I don't care how many corporate lesbians of color you find in Washington, they won't all agree to inseminate “the old-fashioned way,” despite your compelling Viagra-promotional montages. I must say despite my warm reception of the topic material, about twenty percent of the film was as much a thirteen year old boy's fantasy as the other film in tonight's double-feature, Robocop.
“You're lesbians, right?”
Simultaneously: “--We're businesswomen.”
The ovulating, vampiresque baby hungry lesbians will show up at your door, and you will pimp yourself to them in a humiliating, exhausting, and lucrative ritual that will land you in the supreme court. I love it.
Alternate Title for Spike Lee's She Hate Me: Why Anyone Would Be Better Off Selling Sperm than Going Corporate.
or:
Obviously Written by A Straight Man but Ten to Twenty Times Better than Chasing Amy
Synopsis: Corporate whistle-blower and deeply soulful, ethical Jack Armstrong finds his life sabotaged, and his finances in ruins... when his ex girlfriend Fatima shows up, ovulating, with ovulating girlfriend in tow, to offer him ten grand per donation of his fine fine sperm. First the couple tries to get pregnant simultaneously, and then they organize and informal one-man insemination service for all corporate lesbians of color in a fifty-mile radius.
Fatima's girlfriend is the hot hot, and disgustingly underused in Heroes, “I cry the black plague,” Dania Ramirez.
Ouch ouch ouch. Slap a personality on that girl, Heroes, because baby has the chops and the touch. So far all she's gotten is a brother-sister plot directly ripped off from El Norte, a 1983 film we should all know about if we don't have Latin American heritage--but then all of us in the Estas Unis do, in a sense, even if we do not see how.
But don't get me started on race. Or Race and Heroes. Where to begin: perhaps the black man who never speaks, who is referred to only as “The Hatian.” Or the show's other black man, a young criminal who becomes physically stronger, literally “feeding off of people's fear.” Like the Hulk, but with projected racism instead of internal anger as the catalyst for powers. But I digress.
There was some nice cross-pollenation of whistleblowing feminist icons and black men in She Hate Me. Watching Spike Lee made me think that my partner might find the “joints” (as Lee so endearingly calls his films) uninteresting for the reasons I find them interesting. They are deeply representative of modern points of view and social issues that some find unsettling—the kind of movie that enacts a conversation at the level of law, media, race, gender, and sexuality. The film offers a refreshingly alternate portrayal of, well, alternate relationships, despite its too-patriarchally satisfying, almost mormon bigamist turn at the end. And I was annoyed by the continued insistence of the protagonist: “I'm not proud of [inseminating fourteen lesbians]. I'm not proud of it.”
And while it is clear, Mr. Lee, that you had some sort of black lesbian-feminist consultant on this film, I humbly offer a few words of advice for you about queer women:
The worst thing about being the baby daddy to a baker's dozen of lesbian couples is that the awkward potential is so much worse than my own personal awkward social circles: to be the baby daddy at the party; the punk who slept with everybody's mom-— is so much worse than my position, in which every good party I attend is a reunion of my ex-girlfriends. There is nothing morally reprehensible about prostituting your spunk for a good cause.
Also:
I don't care how many corporate lesbians of color you find in Washington, they won't all agree to inseminate “the old-fashioned way,” despite your compelling Viagra-promotional montages. I must say despite my warm reception of the topic material, about twenty percent of the film was as much a thirteen year old boy's fantasy as the other film in tonight's double-feature, Robocop.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Herotodus: Ancient Pop Culture And A Brief Indictment Of Imperialism
Trannies, Gentlemen, Etcetera,
This is a picture of the last remaining Wonder of the Seven Wonders of the World.
(There was a really tall lighthouse in Alexandria once, but that crumbled.)
Architecturally speaking, it interests me that the soundest funerary monument standing at the moment is made of natural materials. The shadow of the collective machine, the crash. What is the lifespan of a skyscraper. Does an architect have to plan for decay. Moreover, does the architect plan for the death of a building; how it will implode. Or are these two occupations of classes that rarely touch. Perhaps the architect must proceed as far into the notion of immortality as possible in order to envision her masterpiece. I am thinking about gender, decay, New York. The Great Pyramid of Giza is in Egypt, a nation I long to see, but I cannot see a way there in this time of personal and national brokenness. I am touched by war as surely as I am touched by the sensual texts left behind by Herotudus (who was one of the people who got to decide the Seven Wonders. His trembling geography).
What is the mentality behind a pyramid, what seems like an audacious assertion of afterlife? I for one, having been a part firsthand in colonialism (See my unpublished biography, I Was a Preteen Missionary), and having found its effect primarily deplorable, I don't want to leave a mark on the earth. I mean, sure, there is great fusion cuisine in compromised regions; I personally love French Vietnamese food. And we would not have had the redemptive power of the blues without the unique historical atrocity that displaced and deeply oppressed African people for the first hundred years of our nasty little in-your-face country. I want to wear latex gloves around so I don't leave a fingerprint of this decaying earth with its cancerous yet human white people, their expansionist language, their corruption.
Perhaps the will to leave such a monument (also funded on slave labor) has to do with the definition of the I. Psychology and western culture and american individualism have shaped me to see myself as a discrete cultural unit, a being whose boundaries extend to the boundaries of my body skin. Another way of looking at the "I" is the genetic I; I am my family, I am my human family. Or that I am the sum of my culture, the God, the king. Dangerous thinking, and yet I think my scope is too small. I am not proud of my people.
A very optimistic part of me says: Let us build our pyramids, our monument. With our own hands, with our communities. Let us take the proximity of our imperialist ancestors but this time with inclusion, with respect for with the complex, discrete contributions of wisdom of our oppressed ancestors. Let us feel completely pleased about ourselves for absolutely no good reason.
I am so hungry for meaningful involvement between writing and community.
This is a picture of the last remaining Wonder of the Seven Wonders of the World.
(There was a really tall lighthouse in Alexandria once, but that crumbled.)
Architecturally speaking, it interests me that the soundest funerary monument standing at the moment is made of natural materials. The shadow of the collective machine, the crash. What is the lifespan of a skyscraper. Does an architect have to plan for decay. Moreover, does the architect plan for the death of a building; how it will implode. Or are these two occupations of classes that rarely touch. Perhaps the architect must proceed as far into the notion of immortality as possible in order to envision her masterpiece. I am thinking about gender, decay, New York. The Great Pyramid of Giza is in Egypt, a nation I long to see, but I cannot see a way there in this time of personal and national brokenness. I am touched by war as surely as I am touched by the sensual texts left behind by Herotudus (who was one of the people who got to decide the Seven Wonders. His trembling geography).
What is the mentality behind a pyramid, what seems like an audacious assertion of afterlife? I for one, having been a part firsthand in colonialism (See my unpublished biography, I Was a Preteen Missionary), and having found its effect primarily deplorable, I don't want to leave a mark on the earth. I mean, sure, there is great fusion cuisine in compromised regions; I personally love French Vietnamese food. And we would not have had the redemptive power of the blues without the unique historical atrocity that displaced and deeply oppressed African people for the first hundred years of our nasty little in-your-face country. I want to wear latex gloves around so I don't leave a fingerprint of this decaying earth with its cancerous yet human white people, their expansionist language, their corruption.
Perhaps the will to leave such a monument (also funded on slave labor) has to do with the definition of the I. Psychology and western culture and american individualism have shaped me to see myself as a discrete cultural unit, a being whose boundaries extend to the boundaries of my body skin. Another way of looking at the "I" is the genetic I; I am my family, I am my human family. Or that I am the sum of my culture, the God, the king. Dangerous thinking, and yet I think my scope is too small. I am not proud of my people.
A very optimistic part of me says: Let us build our pyramids, our monument. With our own hands, with our communities. Let us take the proximity of our imperialist ancestors but this time with inclusion, with respect for with the complex, discrete contributions of wisdom of our oppressed ancestors. Let us feel completely pleased about ourselves for absolutely no good reason.
I am so hungry for meaningful involvement between writing and community.
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