I am Han Solo if he had depth
I am ludicrously macho
(“The hammer is not my fist”)
But I can be very, very scary.
And even a little mysterious
As well as just plain adorable
You love me because I’m almost conventionally handsome, but not quite.
Nominations for the Bad Sex in Fiction prize shortlist.
I have some sympathy for the writers because I think that good sex scenes are very difficult to write, but it’s still funny.
I love disaster movies and I’m very much looking forward to 2012. Poor Peter Bradshaw, who the Guardian seems to take perverse pleasure in sending to review crappy movies, appears to have rather enjoyed it.
Anyway, the world is going to end – in 2012! Thus substantially buggering up the London Olympics and all our medal-table hopes! This grave implication is sadly given scant mention here, but law and order breaks down all over the world as the earth’s crust starts to bulge and crack, and for the anarchy in London, Emmerich appears to reuse old footage of the 1990 poll tax riots.
Awesome.
Had a lazy weekend and watched:
Rent (2005)
The short version: bored+cried+bored=ticked off. The longer version will follow at some point as part of the ‘Lesbian Movie Marathon’series, but probably not until I’ve posted a couple of positive film reviews (due to my attachment to not coming across as a total pill on this blog).
The Terminator (1984)
My girlfriend gave a very satisfying scream at the end when the Terminator suddenly pops up again just when you think he’s been blown to pieces. I especially like the last third when Sarah Connor starts to come into her own and take charge (and my Mum always mutters “I’m sure she would have had a miscarriage”). Still got it. This film was totally of its moment and no Terminator movie since has matched the sense of dread.
Babylon 5: ‘No Surrender, No Retreat’ and ‘The Exercise of Vital Powers’.
In which Sheridan and co. start to go up against Earth and win a big battle *Stuff blows up*. But why has no one other than Zack noticed that Mr Garibaldi has been brainwashed? And that Mr Edgars guy is clearly up to no good.
Firefly, ‘Out of Gas’
A stunning episode – so beautifully filmed and directed. The moment at the end when Mal shows just a hint of vulnerability is perfection.
Dr Who and the Waters of Mars
Much better than the dodgy Easter special – good story, older woman as hero, normalisation of gay marriage and hint of the Dr turning to the dark side. I cried twice. I am so tired of David Tennant though. Thank goodness we don’t have to wait long for our Timelord’s regeneration.
Dr Who’s on!
Major Kira Nerys was born during the Cardassian occupation of her planet, Bajor. She grew up in a labour camp and was recruited into the resistance when she was 13 years old. After the Bajoran resistance chased the Cardassians off their world, Kira was given the important role of First Officer on the Federation Space Station, Deep Space Nine, from where the Federation hopes to guide Bajor’s entry into the United Federation of Planets.
From a feminist perspective, there are always problems with the representation of women in Star Trek due to the tendency towards a lot of unexamined sexism on the part of the writers. For example, no matter how tough and self-reliant a female character is, there will always be bizarre episodes in which she acts like a terrified little girl. Kira is no exception to this rule, but as Star Trek women go, she’s definitely one of the better representations and Nana Visitor is really great in the role.
Kira comes across as a complex, multifaceted character. She has a hot temper and a violent past which haunts her; she’s a professional soldier but also a deeply spiritual person; she’s extremely loyal to her people and her friends. She gets her heart broken more than once in the show — one of her lovers dies and another, the shape shifter Odo, decides to return to his people at the end of the series. But Kira never lets this affect her professional life. Over the course of the series, Kira develops a lot, dealing with her violent past, addressing her prejudices about the Cardassians and building strong friendships with the station’s federation crew. She is promoted to Colonel and eventually Commander. Overall, she is an interesting, well-rounded woman of science fiction.
Typical Kira quote: “I was thirteen when I joined the Resistance. Been hanging around the Shakaar base camp for a couple of weeks, you know, running errands, cleaning weapons, that kind of thing. And one night, they had an ambush planned and they were a man short, so I volunteered. But everyone thought I was too young, too small [...] But it was… up to Shakaar and… he stared at me for a long time before he decided I was big enough to carry a phaser rifle after all. So we set the ambush up along the ridgeline, that night, and waited. I was so cold, my hands were shaking. I was so afraid that one of them would look at me and think that I was nervous, that I kept biting my fingers to keep the blood flowing. We must have waited there three or four hours before the skimmer appeared, set down right where Furel said it would. And when that hatch opened and the first Cardassian appeared, I just started firing. And I didn’t stop, until I’d discharged the entire power cell. When it was all over, I… I was so relieved that I hadn’t let anyone down, my head was giddy. Furel told me to stop grinning, that it made me look younger, but I couldn’t help it. I was one of them. I was in the Resistance.”
Just because.
What are you looking at?
The necessity of self-mythologising
A little dangerous, but sad
Rebellious
Compassion & empathy (could have been me in here if it wasn’t for June)
Never settle
Wholeness
Tired but still driven (at what point to do you realise that you’re never going to stop?)
Integrity (how do you want to be remembered?)
While I was stationed in San Francisco, they sent me to Japan for a little over a year. I got there just in time for the witch-hunt. I didn’t know what was going on – none of us did. Well, there we were in Japan, all these kids. We were twenty, twenty-one and MacArthur had said he wanted American woman in Japan so that Japanese women could see what free American woman looked like. I’m sure that what he meant was not the five hundred dykes who got off that boat. And I mean, dykes. We had an all-woman band and they were all in men’s band uniforms (p. 166).
When I finished reading the first account in this book, that of Mary who falls in love with Jane only for them both to marry other people, live next door to each other for years, and never get together, I wasn’t sure if I could continue reading. Were all the stories going to be just as bleak? But I persevered and overall it was rewarding, especially for the sense of reading about my history, about the kind of women whose lives paved the way for my own. Read the rest of this entry »
Hollywood should stop making films about our great writers
I think one of the main problems with these kinds of films is the fact that what’s interesting about these people is their writing. Most author biopics try and put the writing to one side and the result is incredibly boring because the writing is the life.
K Tempest Bradford praises Fox for cancelling Dollhouse.
My favourite bit:
Now, now FOX, don’t get twitchy. You know just as well as I do that you’ve made some bad decisions in the past. And, yes, Firefly was one of them. However, you’ve finally figured out that you can’t right that wrong by allowing Dollhouse to continue. It’s a different show, and Joss Whedon is no longer the Master. (He never was my master. Feminist my ass.)
The bottom line is that when you’ve got a show with a lead who can’t act and is consistently shown up by her supporting cast and occasional guest stars, you have a problem. When you’ve got a show with a sketchy premise that does not live up to the responsibility of that premise but simply shows us the worst kind of people and then attempts to make us sympathize with them, you’ve got a problem. When the audience has to wait until season 2, episode 5 to see some decent writing, acting, and direction, you’ve got a problem. When television journalists insist that an audience owes it to a creator of television to watch and wait and give a show time to go from crappy to not as crappy as all that, you’ve got a problem. Thank you, FOX, for acknowledging these problems and dealing with them in the way you know best: by sweeping them under the rug.
Somebody had to say it.
Directed by Cheryl Dunye
The Watermelon Woman is a pseudo-documentary (mockumentary) about the adventures of Cheryl, a young, black lesbian who works in a video store and wants to be a filmmaker. She becomes obsessed with her search for a black actress who she’s seen appearing in old films from the 1930s. This actress is billed only as the ‘Watermelon Woman’ and Cheryl suspects her of being a lesbian. She sets out to discover the truth about the Watermelon Woman. On the way she has an affair with a white woman called Diana, which causes tensions in her relationship with her best friend Tamara. Through her search for the Watermelon Woman, Cheryl comes to realisations about racial politics in the lesbian community and discovers the history of black lesbian culture in Philadelphia.
I really enjoyed The Watermelon Women, but in order to get the most out of it, there are a few things you have to accept from the get go.
Warning: some spoilers! Read the rest of this entry »
Directed by Jamie Babbit.
If this film was a person it would be in need of some therapy to sort out its cognitive dissonance. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that so determinedly undermines the very narrative it’s supposed to be celebrating.
Ostensibly, this is the story of Anna, a young, depressed, lesbian high school graduate who works as a receptionist in a plastic surgery clinic. She falls in with a group of wannabe radical anarchist feminists: C (I) A (Clits in Action) and in love with the group’s leader, Sadie. The narrative follows Anna as she finds herself through an exploration of feminist and riot grrrl culture. At least, that’s one way of looking at it.
It’s a lively film with some excellent performances, especially from Melonie Diaz as Anna. But there’s no point in beating about the bush (*cough*), I found Itty Bitty Titty Committee hugely problematic on all kinds of levels. For me, this young woman’s journey into feminism quickly became a journey into feminist movie hell.
Warning: lots of spoilers!
For a start, the title of this book is misleading. It should read, The Penguin Collection of Susan Hill’s Favourite Modern Short Stories by Women because Hill’s criteria for inclusion of a story is the fact that she likes it: “I have compiled a collection of stories of the kind I most like reading” (ix). She justifies this methodology by claiming that most editors do the same thing; they’re just less upfront about it.
I am not entirely convinced. Don’t get me wrong, the stories in this anthology are very high quality in terms of the standard of writing on show, but her method of selection does allow her to avoid some political issues. For instance, all the stories are by white women, every single one; so we could alter the title again and call it The Penguin Collection of Susan Hill’s Favourite Modern Stories by White Women.
I thought that at least four of the stories were problematic in terms of the representation of race. Elizabeth Taylor’s ‘The Devastating Boys’, Muriel Spark’s ‘The Black Madonna’, Shena Mackay’s ‘Slaves to the Mushroom’ and Margaret Drabble’s ‘Hassan’s Tower’ all use characters of colour to advance stories about white people, implicitly positioning the white reader as the subject of the anthology and the reader of colour as ‘other.’ I don’t object to the inclusion of these stories on principle, but I think a good editor should have made more effort to balance out the collection and include an equal number of stories by women of colour. As it is, I feel that only a certain kind of woman’s voice is being represented in this anthology and it has a slightly chilly feel as a result – middle-class, cool, distanced, highly educated, and a little vicious. When I try and visualise these authors I see them sitting at their antique roll-top desks writing with scalpels.
Ok, so I went to see the film adaptation last year because it had Frances McDormand in it and, well, I’ll go and see almost anything if Frances McDormand is in it. I didn’t think it was very good (although Frances McDormand was amazing of course *sigh*), but it sort of interested me in reading the book, which I’d heard was great.
Then my girlfriend brought the book home from the library. I read and read and read to the end because I thought it must get better. Huh? Maybe I’m missing something, but as far as I’m concerned, the film was deep and profound in comparison to the book.
I got a bit stuck on the antiquated (even for 1938) gender roles and the racist overtones, but least said soonest mended. If I go any further there will be a dissertation and I could be watching stuff blowing up with my girlfriend instead of writing it.
I forgot to post about this on Tuesday. The structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss died at the age of 100.
A huge influence on critical theory since the 1970s.
My recent efforts at tagging have rebounded on me. Irrational Point has honed the book meme and challenged me to list the academic texts (no set number this time) that have had the most impact on me. Here goes:
1. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, The Will to Knowledge (1976)
2. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)
3. Adrienne Rich, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’ (1980)
4. Gayle Rubin, ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality (1984)
5. David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (1996)
6. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life (2000)
7. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Ninteteenth Century Literary Imagination (1979)
8. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (1984)
9. Diana Fuss ‘Inside/Out’ (1991)
10. Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (1919)
Ok, I re-tag Andygrrrl.
I’ve left off the academic books that I included in the book meme.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Is it the Sea and Lay Down in the Light
Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
Marianne Faithful, Easy Come, Easy Go
Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding
The Indigo Girls, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug
The Breeders, Mountain Battles
Patti Smith, Land
Song of the month: Mark Lanagan, ‘Man in the Long Black Cat’
I’ve decided to list, not so much my favourite horror movies, as the ones that I’ve found most effective, the ones that have stayed with me. I have no idea why I love being terrified by horror movies. I suppose a psychotherapist might suggest it’s my way of dealing with death anxiety, in which case I’m glad I found a way to deal with death anxiety and have fun at the same time. On an intellectual level, I love the horror genre because it’s where you see cultural anxieties stripped bare, espescially the things we like to pretend we’re ok with (but we’re really, really not).
I have put the post behind a cut to save the sensibilities of those of you who don’t like reading about horror films.
I have been tagged by my girlfriend.
“List fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you, for whatever reason. Make sure it’s the first fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”
Here goes (in no order):
1. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
2. Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
3. Toni Morrison, Beloved
4. Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
5. Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia
6. David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha.
7. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
8. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
9. Stephen King, The Dead Zone
10. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
11. Sara Maitland, Women Fly when Men aren’t Watching
12. Sue Thomas (ed), Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories by Women Celebrating Women
13. Corey K. Creekmuir and Alexander Doty (eds), Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture
14. Alice WAlker, The Color Purple
15. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
I tag Josh, Irrational Point .
It may come as a surprise to you to find out that I’m not a huge fan of romantic comedies. I know, I know, but I find they tend to be a bit lacking in the zombies and vampires department. Still, I’m going to make a big exception for Alice Wu’s 2004 directorial debut Saving Face.
Wil (Michelle Krusiec), a young Chinese-American surgeon begins a relationship with her boss’s daughter, a dancer called Vivian (Lynn Chen). Then all hell breaks loose when Wil’s 48 year-old widowed mother, Hwei Lan Geo (Joan Chen), is discovered to be pregnant and banished by her traditionalist father until she remarries or proves immaculate-conception. Wil is dismayed to find herself landed with her mother for a roommate, not least because she doesn’t want Ma finding out about her own secret lesbian relationship with Viv. So, she starts trying to set up her mother with every eligible bachelor she can find. But who is the father of Hwei Lan Geo’s baby? And is Wil ever going to stand up to her mother and save her own relationship before Viv gets tired of the excuses and flies off to a job in Paris? Read the rest of this entry »
House of Mirth and Movies has suggestions for your Halloween horror movie marathon.
My own list of favourite horror movies will be up in the next few days.
Very interesting post from FWD/Forward (Feminists with Disabilities for a Way Forward) about disability in the horror movie Orphan.
He seems to me equal to gods that man
Who opposite you
Sits and listens close
To your sweet speaking
And lovely laughing – oh it
Puts the heart in my chest on wings
For when I look at you, a moment, then no speaking
Is left in me
No: tongue breaks, and thin
Fire is racing under skin
And in eyes no sight and drumming fills ears
And cold sweat holds me and shaking
Grips me all, greener than grass
I am dead — or almost
I seem to me.
Sappho (6th Century BC), was an ancient greek poet born on the island of Lesbos. Most of her poetry has been lost and we all have left is some fragments. Her name has become synonymous with lesbian desire.
I love Gina Torres as Zoe in Joss Whedon’s Firefly. As a lesbian, I find Torres incredibly hot, but there’s a lot more to it than that, honest! There’s a serious dearth of good roles for black woman in science fiction, so it’s great to see such a strong character. Zoe is a tough, stoic, soldier; she’s certainly not a “magical black woman”, and nor is she a highly sexualised figure in the narrative. She balances out the childlike River and Kaylee and the highly feminine Inara, showing a different way of being a woman. She takes no shit whatsoever, is totally loyal to her friends and manages to maintain a happy marriage with the ship’s pilot, Wash.
Classic Zoe dialogue:
Alliance Commander: “You fought with Captain Reynolds in the war?”
Zoe: “Fought with a lot of people in the war.”
Alliance Commander: “And your husband?”
Zoe: “Fight with him sometimes, too.”
I’m going to start my lesbian movie marathon series with Canadian Director Anne Wheeler’s 1999 comedy, Better than Chocolate. This is the story of Maggie, a college drop-out who meets and falls in love with itinerant artist, Kim. Everything goes very well (and very erotically) for them until Maggie’s mother and brother (to whom she is not out) descend for an unexpected visit. Not wanting her mother to know that she’s practically homeless, and a lesbian, Maggie borrows an apartment from a lesbian sex educator friend, pretends it’s her own and that Kim is just her roommate. The film also features a sweet love story between Frances, the uptight owner of the local lesbian bookstore and Judy, who is a trans woman. When Maggie’s mother arrives, all kinds of fun ensues and ultimately everyone is able to make genuinely heart warming progress in their lives.
Warning spoilers! Read the rest of this entry »
Via the FWord I find out that today is Ursula Le Guin’s 80th birthday.
I love, love, love Le Guin. I don’t have anything more intelligent to say than that because I’ve spent all day writing a convoluted report and my brain is now mush, so here and here are links to old posts I’ve written about Le Guin. Perhaps there will be a longer one about her work at some point.
Feminist SF has a post with links.
And Godard’s Letterboxes has a post about one of Le Guin’s characters, Tenar, from the Earthsea Quartet.
Popped into the Oxfam bookshop in Bristol today. It was quite pricey but had an interesting range, especially in vintage science fiction.
I picked up Samuel R. Delaney’s debut novel, The Jewels of Aptor. I’ve been wanting to read Delaney for ages, but his books are incredibly difficult to find in the UK.
There was a Tanith Lee first edition, but it was £44 so I didn’t buy it.
I got an anthology called Wayward Girls & Wicked Women which is edited by Angela Carter. The stories look very international and I suspect any collection selected by Angela Carter is bound to be interesting.
And I bought Wendy Cope’s poetry collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. I’m probably going to give it to my mother as part of my ongoing quest to try and convince her that not all modern poetry is completely dense and inaccessible, but I’m going to read it myself first.
So, last night we went to see The Indigo Girls. This lesbian band has been going since 1985 and the audience at last night’s gig showed a good percentage of older lesbians, but I have to say, I have never seen such a wide range of lesbians in one place at the same time. It would probably take K.D. Lang to better it. There were even mullets.
The audience’s reception was incredibly warm and the band seemed a little bowled over by it, not having visited the UK for some years. There were a few complaints from the Welsh cohort who wanted to know why (oh why) they weren’t playing Cardiff. I don’t think Emily or Amy had the slightest idea where Cardiff is and seemed a bit foggy on the concept of there being two nationalities in the audience. They blamed their agent.
Amy was looking very hot in white shirt, black vest and black pinstripe trousers. Aside from having slightly smaller hair than she had in her early youth, Emily hasn’t changed that much since 1985 — I mean, flannel shirt over CND T-shirt.
It was a real feel-good gig. They played several songs from their new album, but relied mainly on favourites from their back catalogue and encouraged much singing-a-long. In terms of performance, they were absolutely professional and seamless, making it all appear effortless.
I can’t remember the set list in order, but from the new album they played:
Suger Tongue
Driver Education
What are you like?
I’ll Change
Love of our lives
Second Time Around
Fleet of Hope
And from the back catalogue they played:
Power of Two
Three Hits (my favourite)
Galileo
Closer to Fine
Starkville
Yield
Johnny Rotten (from one of Amy’s solo efforts)
She’s Saving Me
Reunion
Get out the Map
Hand me Downs
Go
Ghost
Pendulum Swinger
Fill it up Again
It’s my girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow and in good lesbian-birthday style we are celebrating by going to see the Indigo Girls tonight.
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