feministfilm

Just so y’all know, yes, I will be doing Mad Men Monday this season after kind of abandoning...

laff-riot — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:51:49 -0400

Just so y’all know, yes, I will be doing Mad Men Monday this season after kind of abandoning it last season; I just don’t have internet or cable at home right now, so the timetable will be kind of weird and probably not actually on Mondays always! But I do have the premiere on my flash drive and will be updating soon!

(tw for rape)

rgr-pop — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:23:00 -0400

This week I marathoned both Girls and Game of Thrones, start to finish, for feminist science reasons. (And other reasons.) I started Girls and I was struck by how much rape was in it. Like, probably I should have paid more attention to very blogger who tried to warn me about this, but it is a really rapey show. Definitely there is more rape in Girls than any show I’d ever seen, SVU notwithstanding. There is something rapey in almost every single episode of Girls.

I had heard that Game of Thrones was also very rapey, so I decided to, um, for really real, one-for-one compare how much rape was in Girls vs. Game of Thrones. I seriously started keeping tallies for y’all! That didn’t last, lol. There are quite a few rape scenes in GoT and you should be careful watching it! But I can say with confidence that Girls is MUCH MORE RAPEY than Game of Thrones. Like, no question, there are significantly higher rapey scenarios per minute of Girls than in Game of Thrones.

I feel pretty betrayed by Pop Feminism, tbh, for trying to convince me that Martin was the real enemy here. I also feel pretty betrayed by myself, for being so stubborn to get involved with a show so beloved by creepy white twerps, because GoT is FUCKING GOOD in spite of nerd boys everywhere. Finally, I feel mega betrayed by Peter Jackson (still) because this show is way slicker and more expensive-looking than The Hobbit.

I’d argue that Game of Thrones is more racist though, absolutely.

“Through their characters’ continuing refrain that...

rgr-pop — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:20:20 -0500

“Through their characters’ continuing refrain that ‘I’m not the one who’s disabled [blind, Deaf, injured, etc.], society is,’ we read this Kids in the Hall sketch allegorically as a challenge to rethink every social situation that entails a response to disability that follows such sentimental logic. These comedians reveal underlying social expectations for and about the disabled body not only to successfully and invisibly function within an ableist society, but also to represent, for the general public, a moralizing symbol. This moralizing symbol acts as a commodity for viewers not only to reject particular bodies, but also to expect accumulated metaphorical weight (morally and symbolically) from those othered bodies.” - Sally Chivers & Nicole Markotic, from the introduction to The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film.

Quvenzhané appreciation post

rgr-pop — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:59:11 -0500

"TV doesn’t make the family, but it makes the family mean in a certain way. That is, it makes an..."

rgr-pop — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:20:13 -0500

“TV doesn’t make the family, but it makes the family mean in a certain way. That is, it makes an exceptionally sharp distinction between the family as a biological unit and as a cultural identity, and it does this by teaching us the attributes and attitudes by which people who thought they were already in a family actually only begin to qualify as belonging to a family. The great power of the media, and especially of television, is, as Simon Watney writes, “its capacity to manufacture subjectivity itself,” and in so doing to dictate the shape of an identity. The “general public” is at once an ideological construct and a moral prescription. Furthermore, the definition of the family as an identity is, inherently, an exclusionary process, and the cultural product has no obligation whatsoever to coincide exactly with its natural referent. Thus the family identity produced on American television is much more likely to include your dog than your homosexual brother or sister.”

- Leo Bersani, from “Is the Rectum a Grave?” 1987

softjunebreeze: Musical director and guitar player BiBi McGill...

rgr-pop — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:38:07 -0500

softjunebreeze:

Musical director and guitar player BiBi McGill plays guitar next to Beyonce Knowles during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show on February 3, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

But What About Beyoncé’s Band?

Whether you’re a fan or not you have to admit Beyonce’s Knowles performance at the Super Bowl was full of explosive energy. Her 13-minute performance included a 120 dancers, a 10-piece all female band and several back up singers.

Then there’s the Super Dome staff, stage, lighting and costume designers, the choreographer, the hair and make up folks, the list goes on.

It’s no surprise Beyoncé is getting all the attention but since no one else is talking about the musicians that made that performance happen it’s a great opportunity to highlight the band.

Beyoncé says she started the 10-piece all female band called “The Sugar Mamas” so young girls could have more role models.

“When I was younger I wish I had more females who played instruments to look up to. I played piano for like a second but then I stopped,” Beyoncé said in a statement. “I just wanted to do something which would inspire other young females to get involved in music so I put together an all-woman band.”

Meet some of the band members that make up Beyonce’s band “The Sugars Mamas.”

I would also recommend I Am… Yours: An Intimate Performance at Wynn Las Vegas!

Important Lady Moments in Degrassi History

getdownliberty — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:20:07 -0500

(Content warning for menstruation)

Editor’s note:

Today, Feminist Film welcomes a guest post, the first in what I hope will be a long series talking about some of those notorious “Feminist” moments on Degrassi. I’ve been watching this show—Degrassi: The Next Generation, the youngest series in a family of teen drama shows that started in the eighties—since it first aired. I’ve been watching it for more than a decade, for a dozen seasons, for most of my growing up. To apply an old teensploitation trope, I have been watching this show practically as long as I’ve been getting my period. Much like the tampon commercials so integral to a Degrassi broadcast, this show has offered some of the most powerful (if corny, and sometimes terrible) media messages about sex and gender to generations of kids. Especially girls. Not even just the Canadian ones!

To kick it all off, I’m happy to offer you a piece from Degrassi recap legend and noted teen-girl-issues blogger, Get Down Liberty.

Can we start out by talking about the Degrassi episode with Emma’s period? No, no, let me try that again, without masking the full glory of the moment - can we start out with the episode with Emma’s period blood? The big dirty red stain on her khaki skirt? Any conversation that deals with Degrassi, ladies, and greatness has to start with this moment, when Emma blatantly bleeds all over the place in the middle of the school day.

For the uninitiated, Degrassi is a Canadian show that regularly mixes tropes from after-school specials and soap operas to showcase the full glorious horror of adolescence. Emma is a key character, originally appearing as an accidental baby in the original run of Degrassi High before returning as a gawky, awkward preteen for the sequel series, Degrassi: The Next Generation. She’s got a cool mom, too, called Spike (because she was a child of the 80s in a way that only fictional characters can be), who has spent the last twelve years trying to raise Emma into an empowered female.

I mean, Spike doesn’t do a perfect job but she does a good job. In this episode, we get to see it up close - she’s all of five feet and she still steps up to the creepiest guy in the mall, shutting him down after he tries to turn an afternoon of retail shopping and ice cream with her daughter into something sexual by growling, “I’d like a lick of your cone.” Though embarrassed by her mom’s awesomeness, Emma gets the message, loud and clear, “Don’t ever let anyone make you feel ashamed just because you’re a woman.” Unfortunately, Emma will take also this strength, this deep self-assurance and use it to be an awful person, but that’s a post for another time.

So, anyway, let’s talk about the day that Emma gets her period, keeping Spike’s words at hand (Degrassi writers like to give you the key to their plots on silver platters like that). Arguably, it’s a very ‘woman’ thing to have your everyday business grind to a halt because you’ve started your period. For my part, I can remember a particularly awkward stroll across campus when I had the bad luck to start my period in Princeton’s engineering building, where every bathroom across all three floors had broken or empty tampon/pad dispensers (natch). For Emma, this means getting pulled back into her chair after her crush, Sean “The Man” Cameron, offers her a golden opportunity to hang out during lunch. It means walking slowly, bowleggedly, to the nearest bathroom while her BFF, Manny, follows dutifully with a folder pressed up against her butt. It means standing in stained clothing, sighing over the loss of a perfectly good skirt and undies, her first sacrifices to ‘Womanhood.’

In all my life, which is made up of TV and movies and stuff I do while thinking about TV and movies, I can’t think of another time when a period was on full display like that, so mundanely, so blatantly, without some punchline or some comically exaggerated horrified recoil or some deep artistic meaning. There’s no writhing around with cramps, no guys around to offer their disgust, no older women cooing about ‘Becoming a Woman.’ Just a girl standing in a bathroom, waiting on a pair of shorts and a pad so she can get back to class.

I think that’s Degrassi at its best. There’s something really familiar in Paige’s hand, chubby with babyfat, reaching into her cool see-through box purse to fish out a pad and handing it to Emma in the next stall. There’s something deeply profound in Emma looking down at her chest, worrying about her future breasts like they were an invading force. And there’s just something really cute in Manny bursting into the scene again, carrying tissues and a huge pair of gym shorts.

“Perfectly natural. Nothing to be ashamed about. Right, Ms. Kwan?”

While we're complaining about Lena Dunham's racist ass, are you putting your dollars towards allowing a Black woman to get her voice heard?

rgr-pop — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:18:55 -0500

sourcedumal:

‘The Unwritten Rules’ needs $22000 for their web series to get season 2 started.

This is written by, directed by, produced by and is starring Black women.

I’ve donated my $20 to help a Black woman get her voice heard.

Have you?

Let’s give Black women a voice and silence Dunham’s.

Donate to ‘The Unwritten Rules’ here

you can't have it both ways!

laff-riot — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:53:55 -0500

gowns:

lena dunham, you can’t respond to one criticism with “well it’s self-deprecating/it’s satirical/it’s tongue-in-cheek/these are supposed to be awful people/i’m not that talented or special or pretty i’m just a lame frumpy girl” and respond to another with “well i just want to be earnest and sincere/i want people to relate to my show/all i’ve ever wanted is to be recognized for my talent,” you may very well hold these manic viewpoints but please stop dodging legitimate responses to your work with the “it’s a joke/it’s the most sincere thing i’ve ever done and you can’t fault me for being real & honest” feint.

quentin tarantino, you can’t say “it’s just supposed to be a fun blaxploitation movie, pure entertainment, you’re not supposed to think about it,” then, once people start talking about its actual social ramifications, you start talking about how honest and real and true and historical your movie is supposed to be with terry gross.

works of art can be complex and contradictory, and the most satisfying art often is. but insincerity is another thing. and keeping the conversations spinning around your art is the worst if you’re going to keep doing that gag where you say something out of the corner of your mouth in a crowd then yell “yeah, what that guy said!!” then you put on a hat and dip into another part of the crowd and start yelling different things

Jumbled Ruminations on "Argo"

rgr-pop — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:01:27 -0500

Jumbled Ruminations on "Argo":

farahjoon:

One of the most infuriating things in the world is when people expect you to “catch them up” on extremely complex histories and cultures and ethnicities and peoples and geopolitical struggles which they could very easily research on their own. What’s even more infuriating? Argo. I have had far too many folks ask me to “explain” why they shouldn’t see Argo, and almost every single time I get upset because it’s so fucking obvious — you’re watching Hollywood once again attempt to narrativize the Middle East through its Western filter. But it’s difficult to even try to explain the many layers of jingoism and self-aggrandizing propaganda in this film and its contemporaries to those who are incessantly trained to prioritize the lives of a handful of wealthy white people who are, thanks to Affleck, valorized as the “civilized,” “educated,” “elitist” Anglos vying for “safety” and “freedom” when confronted with the Angry, Bearded, Brown Revolutionaries™ — and their Supportive, Shrouded Sisters and Spouses® — who “reign over” an “exotic” and “evil” land. Someone who graced me with their presence just this past week said something to the effect of, “Well, where are all the Iranian American filmmakers? I’m sure Affleck would’ve let them take over the film production, but they apparently don’t exist.” What exactly is going through the mind of someone who thinks this way — someone who assumes that Hollywood’s power players would readily afford anyone outside of their entity of privileged, white, Euro-American, Judeo-Christian men the opportunity to make their version of this particular film at this moment in modern history? And, moreover, what exactly is going through the mind of someone who thinks that one Iranian American filmmaker is going to speak for us all? My friends and I have had far too many unnecessary run-ins with a lot of thoughtless, condescending, xenophobic, and bigoted white folks — white-passing privilege makes these experiences all the more interesting because people assume you’re “one of them” and say literally anything they want in front of you — and many of these people have fostered such a cripplingly myopic conceptualization of “terrorism” that they actually talk about “terrorism” as if it’s the polar opposite of anything that Europe and its great North American allies have ever engaged in. No one seems to think about resistance vis-à-vis “terrorism.” No one seems to think about our collective engagement in the Orientalist gaze — how we at once fetishize and denounce the victims of our leaders’ myriad neoimperialist projects. No one seems to think about the acute stigmatization and racialization of Islam. No one seems to think about just how fucking heartbreaking and rage-inducing and gut-wrenching and soul-crushing it is to see peoples and places and religions you are connected to further demonized and othered to no avail by dangerous and irresponsible profiteers — by people like Affleck and Clooney and their cohorts who masquerade as “politically-conscious artists” yet who, in all actuality, poison the masses with fuel for fire, with more reasons to hate “those savages over there.”Argo is the beating of a war drum whose reverberations are unceasing. If you’re going to spend only the first minute or so of the entire film giving audiences an historical foundation that reads like a subpar Wikipedia session, you shouldn’t be producing a mainstream blockbuster movie about Iran. If you’re going to compare CIA operations to abortions, you shouldn’t be producing a mainstream blockbuster movie about Iran. If you’re going to close your sefid circle jerk of a narrative with a soundbite from a former U.S. president instead of a cautionary message about sanctions/drone strikes/apartheid/Islamophobia/warmongering, you shouldn’t be producing a mainstream blockbuster movie about Iran.

What I do argue also is that there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge—if that is what it is—that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external domination. […] Today, bookstores in the United States are filled with shabby screeds bearing screaming headlines about Islam and terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat, and the Muslim menace, all of them written by political polemicists pretending to knowledge imparted to them and others by experts who have supposedly penetrated to the heart of these strange Oriental peoples over there who have been such a terrible thorn in “our” flesh. Accompanying such warmongering expertise have been the omnipresent CNNs and Fox News Channels of this world, plus myriad numbers of evangelical and right-wing radio hosts, plus innumerable tabloids and even middlebrow journals, all of them recycling the same unverifiable fictions and vast generalizations so as to stir up “America” against the foreign devil.

—Edward Said, May 2003

Requisite joke about a category whose nominees were Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey WHOSE...

rgr-pop — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:14:26 -0500

Requisite joke about a category whose nominees were Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey

WHOSE FEMINISM IS GONNA WIN

There’s something be considered about a white supremacist patriarchy SO STRONG that it allows...

rgr-pop — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:01:30 -0500

There’s something be considered about a white supremacist patriarchy SO STRONG that it allows Ben Affleck to win awards for things.

Like,

this guy

GOLDEN GLOBES UPDATE

rgr-pop — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:50:32 -0500

Racist fuckbag Ben Affleck won best director for racist orientalist disaster Argo. I don’t think he should get anymore money or attention or time but I’m secretly glad Kathryn Bigelow didn’t win for Zero Dark Thirty ‘cause I don’t think I could handle pretending like it’s some sort of feminist victory that a white lady found success in big scary sexist hollywood by becoming an orientalist fuckbag as bad as Ben Affleck.

(Made rebloggable by request.) I just saw The Hobbit in 3D. Here is my feminist review of The...

rgr-pop — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:18:49 -0500

(Made rebloggable by request.)

I just saw The Hobbit in 3D. Here is my feminist review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:

I took my mother to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on Christmas day because she has read all of Tolkien’s books at least eight times. My mom really likes Peter Jackson because he cares about women and especially moms. (One of Peter Jackson’s first films was about a man acting as caretaker for his zombie mom.) Peter Jackson cares about moms. Unfortunately there are no moms in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. (None. Do not argue with me.) J.R.R. Tolkien did not care about moms, which is why he was so beloved by Jimmy Page. There are no women in The Hobbit (none, don’t argue with me), so in adapting it to film they had to bulk it up with some Galadriel content. It was pretty alright, Cate Blanchett is good at her Elf Job.

The best part about The Hobbit, as a novel and a film adaptation, is that there are not many elves as compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Elves are fucking obnoxious and nobody likes them, and I’m sick of Tolkien’s weird anglo supremacist allegorical nonsense, and elves’ false sense of cultural superiority when it comes to writing systems. No one cares, elves.

The Hobbit is good because it is about dwarves. Dwarves are better. What made this film really good was that they reshaped the narrative and turned it into a story of dwarves fighting to reclaim their homeland from a colonizing dragon. In the novel, if I recall correctly, dwarves are mostly out to pillage the mountain and take Smaug’s treasure. This adaptation is much more moving and compelling! It basically transformed the story into one of a displaced people seeking justice during a time when middle earth’s greatest powers—FUCKING RIVENDELL, ELVES—were trying to maintain a vision of “peace” and “political stability” and “neutrality” which benefited and maintained their own power while neglecting to address the needs of oppressed and marginalized groups in middle earth. Something tells me that this adaptation was inspired at least a little by that standby legend that Tolkien’s depictions of orcs were Nazi allegories. The film really plays up the whole “dwarves were displaced and chased out of their homeland and are looking to reclaim a settlement while being hunted and brutalized by orcs and goblins” which is hamfisted but also soooo aaaaawesome. Except, you know, to compound Tolkien’s gross racial stratifications, it’s pretty disgusting to see this story of solidarity between hobbits and dwarves, this allegory of struggle and colonization, applied by a production that refused to cast or represent anyone who wasn’t white.

Did I mention I saw this thing in 3D? This was my mother’s idea. I have a hard time with visual processing and couldn’t see much of anything. I cried about this in the theater. 3D movies rank poorly for accessibility and they are expensive and I hate them. (Off the top of my head, I know that s.e. smith has written about accessibility concerns in movie theaters and with 3D in particular, but I would love to read more.)

Anyway, I think my mother liked it okay. She pretended that her mild disappointment arose from the slapsticky action and the less-than-faithful adaptation, but I know she’s had it up for Viggo since the late eighties, and she was probably just bummed that this film lacked the beefcake she’s come to expect.

im sad that this blog is no longer active. i miss your posts!

rgr-pop — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:49:00 -0500

I’ll come back! I just saw The Hobbit in 3D. Here is my feminist review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:

I seem to remember your blog posting a link to another blog or site that has a list of movies and the things they could possibly trigger? If so, could you post the link again? I'm just now realizing what triggers me and I want to be prepared for possible triggering things in movies. Thanks!

rgr-pop — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:01:18 -0500

I believe this is what you are looking for? Hope it helps.

kill yr Woody Allen

rgr-pop — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 23:00:44 -0400

kill yr Woody Allen

Are you fucking kidding me? A Double Jeopardy category called “who’s that girl...

rgr-pop — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:02:40 -0400

Are you fucking kidding me?

A Double Jeopardy category called “who’s that girl director?” just aired. The “easiest” question in the category asked for the director of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle (you know, one of the most successful female directors of all time, who is Nora Ephron). No one got it. The next easiest question asked for The Hurt Locker, and a dude guessed “who is Sofia Coppola?” The next two were about actresses-turned-directors Drew Barrymore and Angelina Jolie (the were both correctly guessed).

The “hardest” question was looking for Amy Heckerling—I coulda answered it when I was nine—and some dude guessed a male director. (I forget who it was, I gotta wait til it goes up on J. Archive in a few days.)

I am gonna give these sexist nerds EVERY SWIRLIE. If you don’t know who Kathryn Bigelow is, what are you even doing on Jeopardy??

[TRIGGER WARNING]Lana Wachowski Reveals Suicide Plan, Painful Past in Emotional Speech

rgr-pop — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 06:42:15 -0400

transqueery:

This story first appeared in the Nov. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

In a funny, honest and deeply moving speech delivered Oct. 20 at the Human Rights Campaign’s gala fundraising dinner in San Francisco, Wachowski revealed painful details related to growing up transgender.Cloud Atlas co-director Lana Wachowski is breaking her silence on her traumatic childhood.

Q&A: ‘Cloud Atlas’ Director Lana Wachowski on Her Emotional Coming-Out Speech: ‘It Was Just the Universe Saying I Should Do It’

She once suffered a physical beating at the hands of a Catholic school nun after she failed to join a line of boys and nearly committed suicide as a young adult before being stared down by a man who wandered onto an empty subway platform where Wachowski was standing.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t look away,” Wachowski told the crowd. “All I know is that because he didn’t, I am still here.”

Wachowski, 47, half of the sibling directing team behind The Matrix trilogy, was on hand to accept the Visibility Award for her recent decision to reverse a long-standing policy of eschewing press and public appearances and to openly acknowledge her transition — a word she said she dislikes “because of its complicity in a binary gender narrative” — to womanhood.

Surrounded by brother Andy, their parents and her wife, Wachowski shared her coming-out story with a crowd of 600 at the event, which for 28 years has raised funds for LGBT-friendly causes (past HRC Visibility Award honorees include Portia Di Rossi, Precious director Lee Daniels and Milkscreenwriter Dustin Lance Black).

A source at the event — attended by Joel Podolny, incoming vp and dean of Apple University, and Ben Cotner, senior vp acquisitions at Open Road Films — says the moment Wachowski stepped off the stage after her 25-minute speech, she cried for 10 minutes.

“Lana’s willingness to tell her story will impact and change countless lives across the world,” says HRC president Chad Griffin, who introduced Wachowski. “She is a giant in her industry, and for someone with such success and such profile to be willing to tell their personal story to the world sends a tremendous message to LGBT people across the globe that they too can aspire to be a giant in their industry.”

Ahead of Cloud Atlas’ Oct. 24 L.A. premiere, her first red carpet appearance in 12 years, Wachowskitells The Hollywood Reporter, “They’ve been contacting me off and on for a while, and I’ve always said, ‘No, I don’t do that sort of thing.” But her schedule worked out “and my wife thought it was a good idea to do it now.”

clambistrooooooo: Man, am I ever sick and tired of Joss Whedon. In so many of the blogs I read,...

rgr-pop — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:18:47 -0400

clambistrooooooo:

Man, am I ever sick and tired of Joss Whedon.

In so many of the blogs I read, time and again I see reams of words paying tribute to Joss Whedon’s status as a righteous feminist, because he manages to write reasonably three-dimensional female characters. (Natasha Simmons’ Reconsidering the feminism of Joss Whedon is worth reading.)

When Whedon imagined a hypothetical interviewer’s asking him “So, why do you write these strong women characters?”, his imagined answer was “Because you’re still asking me that question”. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this excerpted and quoted on Tumblr, every time with a zillion notes.

A more impressive actual feminist response might have been “Because I’m a white guy and we write the bulk of the content in Hollywood, as it’s nearly impossible for women - not to mention women of colour - to sell a screenplay.”

Now, we have to work with what we’ve got: I appreciate that given male screenwriters and directors are in the majority, we should commend those who create good female characters (James Cameron is a tired example from the Clam Bistro hall of fame), but not at the expense of actual female filmmakers.

You do not see the same amount of column or blog space devoted to the work of female filmmakers who are working right now, like Kelly Reichardt, Dee Rees, Zoe Kazan, or Sarah Polley. Instead of rehashing the same old Buffy discussion, why don’t more people write about Leigh Brackett? Why don’t more people know about Leigh Brackett? Why not read FeministFilm instead of AintItCoolNews??

I swear I planned to reblog this before I saw the shouts. But !!