My latest column for BitchBuzz was inspired by a random confluence of things -- or, if you don't believe in coincidence, a surprising (to me) confluence of wyrd. Love the image from the Gagosian exhibit on J.G. Ballard's Crash, Douglas Gordon's Self-Portrait of You and Me (Jayne Mansfield) from 2007:Somehow a weird collision of events sparked a realisation for me - or really it was a reaffirmation, I suppose.
When you add together the narrow escape from tragedy dramatised in Lone Sherfing's An Education, the inescapable tragedy that was the University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting and the head-scratching success story of mixmaster/plagiarist Helene Hegemann - "There’s no such thing as originality anyway, there’s only authenticity" - with the news that social media supposedly means big opportunities for women, you get an equation with a solution so convoluted that Schrödinger's cat just hid in the litter box.
The internet -- and not coincidentally, social media -- are supposed to take away the stigma of gender assumptions by allowing us to relate immediately without that bow in the hair or tie around the neck.
Read the rest at BBHQ as always -- help spread the word by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter or with links on your own blog.
If you're in Albany, the last showing of An Education is today: I recommend you go see it. Yeah, sure -- it will depress you, but you'll have a greater appreciation for the power of education particularly if you are a woman. Not that it doesn't slam the bland world of standardised education, too. When Emma Thompson's headmistress tells Jenny that there are alternatives for her future, "It doesn't have to be teaching. There's always the Civil Service," you do share her dumbfounded outrage.
I have a potentially unpleasant meeting this afternoon. Wish me luck. I will either come away with less work to do or with a renewed level of support. So win-win once I get there, I think. Still trying to catch up from being sick; much to do before spring break which is coming up in a week (for me).
2 comments:
I really liked AN EDUCATION, too. It reminded me that sometimes conditions do improve-if only we can remember to make sure they stay that way.
Thanks, Patti -- yeah, seeing some alarming signs of backward turns lately. The importance of knowing the past just can't be stressed too ardently.
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