Thursday Tune: Revolution

Because I am fed up with the war against women and this sort of thing, this is my mood.

Wet Cat

And again, I have more reasons to curse the squirrels. They're back -- and they've brought fleas. Argh.

Had it with you, Simpsons

All right, it's been bugging me for at least this whole season and maybe a little longer: the misogynous thread that's crept into The Simpsons. Yeah, the show that once trumpeted stories like Lisa Lionheart and Marge going round the bend because of the stress of her family's unreasonable demands, has not had a show lately that didn't feature some moment of head-jerking anti-feminism. I've skipped more and more episodes because of it. Like the recently rerun Pranks and Greens episode, where Bart discovers he pales in comparison to a super-pranker in the past. Bart asks who he is and Skinner says, "Who said it's a he?" After Bart's stunned, "Huh?!" Skinner tells him nah, it's a guy, of course, and they both laugh at the absurdity of thinking it might have been a girl.

Last night's episode capped it for me. While the B story about Lisa getting popular when she receives an F and featuring Angela Bassett as Michele Obama made a feeble attempt to prop up the "girls can do anything!" message that was once key to the series, the main story had to do with a poorly written cameo by Sarah Silverman as a girl Bart kisses and whose parents threaten to sue the school. The "character" is simply defined by the way she capriciously jerks Bart back and forth between affection and scorn. But as the final lines of the show proclaim, that's just the way women are.

It's sad to see this happen to a show that was once groundbreaking. Enjoy your "poor men are just victims of wily women" scripts, guys. Seems I'm not the only one giving up on the show (even though it's miles better at its worst than anything from craptacular Seth McFarlane).

Why can't I be seeing Lizzie & Sarah?!

Review: The Road

I should insert two warnings: first, that I will be discussing some definite SPOILERS to the film, though I will try to keep the worst ones to a comment to follow immediately upon this, so casual readers won't be surprised. Second, that this more or less constitutes a rant. One final caveat: I have not read McCarthy's novel, so I will make no reference to or comparison to that text. I suspect it may work rather differently -- and as a medium, may be more amenable to telling this particular story -- but I don't know.

Let me say a few good things: the cast is mostly quite good. I would not have sat through this film had not Mortensen been his usual engaging self. The bleak world is convincingly rendered visually; in fact at one point I thought, "What a nightmare set dressing must have been!"

Let me also get off my chest that in the credits one finds the most incredibly fatuous, self-inflating, pretentious credit ever for the young actor's father, something like, "Acting Coach, Guardian and Mentor." Apparently his father -- who has a bit part in the film -- is a less-successful-than-he'd-like actor and hopes to inflate his self-esteem via his son.

Now to the film: I'll admit that I find it beyond irritating when mainstream writers appropriate speculative fiction tropes, because so often they do so with arrogant ignorance. This film does that in spades; now, some of the problems may be the making of the source material, but given the cavalier attitude modern filmmaking has toward written materials, there's no excuse for not addressing them and improving the narrative.

From the start, what's clear is we're living in a kind of post-apocalyptic world. Gradually some details about the past emerge, but never a clear indication about what happened. I'm fine with that. People dealing with something they can't understand is a wonderful premise for exploring their characters. But there's a cardinal rule: to achieve Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" you can stretch reality a long way, but there has to be an underlying plausibility. Whether you want your audience to believe they're in Hobbiton or on Rigel-7, you have to make that world work.

That's the major thing that went wrong here.

The catastrophic happening seemed to be a sort of biblical fire and brimstone, burning everything and leaving a mantel of ash behind. The cataclysm destroyed just about all vegetation and animal life -- except of course, humans (how convenient), but apparently had absolutely no affect on the water supplies.

Huh?

Even in less than apocalyptic occurrences, this is an always dangerous problem. So it's completely insane that while the Man and the Boy wander the blighted landscape, they have no concerns about bending down to drink from an passing stream or indeed stripping off to enjoy the caress of a hidden waterfall's pool. If the ground is diseased, the water will be, too.

At first, this world seems to be the kind that modern Hollywood loves best: a world without women. But it becomes clear that it is in fact a world with One Woman: Charlize Theron's Woman (yes, there are other female actors, but save one addressed in the SPOILER comment, they are not really characters at all, though to be fair most of the characters are not really "characters" so much as potential dangers). Like most MW1W, it also becomes quickly clear that she is not a woman at all, but a meaning for the Man: a memory of golden sex and comfort. For my friend Peg, with whom I saw the film, this was part of showing the Man's gradual loss of humanity, but for me he never had any. From beginning to end, he is the same: terrified and paranoid, too afraid to live, but too afraid to die. Even when we flash back to the beginning of the apocalypse, he is the same bundle of terror and frozen indecision. His only deterioration is physical.

I suppose that as a meditation on how to live when all the comforts of culture are stripped away, the filmmakers want to set up a little behavioural experiment, but even there it fails. If you know you're living in a post-apocalyptic world where violent gangs rove the blighted landscape looking to kill your for your possessions and might even eat you up, do you:

A) Keep to the unpopulated areas, move at night, travel light and be silent.

or

B) Drive your noisy shopping cart piled high with stuff in broad daylight (well, such as it is in this murky world) along the main highway, the one place roving cannibalistic gangs will surely be found as they obstinately seek out the nearly depleted fossil fuels (leading one to assume that the gangs are made up of former oil execs and car manufacturers)?

[More in the spoilers comments]

So, no -- I didn't like The Road despite a good cast and a well-designed look. Cameos were particularly ridiculous, filled with obvious camera work designed in the most notable case to scream "isn't this Oscar-worthy! Look at this gesture!" I can't help contrasting this with the absolutely stellar cast of Young Victoria, who were without exception excellent yet completely immersed in their characters, not showboating for their reputations.

BitchBuzz: Blogging by Gender

My latest BitchBuzz column is up. It was sparked by the revelation this week that the uber-macho blogger James Chartrand is really a woman and the reasons she gave for that mask:

Blogger James Chartrand revealed this week that "he" is actually a she and deliberately took up the name after finding it impossible to make a living as a female blogger and facing ridicule and dismissal. It's hard to tell whether female bloggers were more disgusted that pretending to be a misogynist jerk actually worked or depressed that nothing has changed about the contempt for "ladies" who write.

Feministing put the revelation into the context of the "pale/stale/male-ness of the media" as a whole and pointed to a study by the University of Maryland demonstrating the disproportionate threats women face online when identified by gender...

As always, you can read the rest at BBHQ. One thing I forgot to include was trying out the Gender Analyzer to see what its opinion was and got the following: "We guess http://menwithpens.ca/ is written by a woman (55%), however it's quite gender neutral." So the AI was not fooled by the macho graphics of the page.

This here blog of mine? "We guess http://katewombat.blogspot.com is written by a man (56%), however it's quite gender neutral."

I find it fascinating, the variety of ways we read gender into things. How gendered is your writing?

Note to self

STOP MITHERING!

The Thing about Vampires

Teaching is all about planning + improvisation. You have to plan well and provide a structure, but it's also important to roll with the vagaries of the unexpected. Today was a case for this kind of flexibility. After talking about the ambiguity that signaled the 1980s shift in horror films, we were all primed to see John Carpenter's 1982 movie The Thing. It's a heady mix of gender politics and claustrophobic masculinity and rather good monster effects for its time.

However, the disc refused to play in the dvd player or in the computer. We even tried one of the students' laptops. No go. Argh. So much for my carefully orchestrated preamble. Fortunately, I do bring a handful of other films to show brief clips from to illustrate various points (we had already watched the opening minutes of the stylish vamp classic The Hunger with Bauhaus, Deneuve, Bowie and Ann Magnuson). The students suggested watching that film instead (in part because of our now running joke about David Bowie) but it's a video transfer and stutters a lot, so I decided to go with Near Dark, which is an entertaining film with some interesting developments, but not quite on track with our trajectory.

I suppose it's just as well as we were giving short shrift to vamps over all (on the whole I'm not a big fan of vampire films) but it irks, of course. But that's the teaching life. We had a good discussion and they'll surely have more to post on-line tonight, so I ought to be sanguine.

On Not Watching the Oscars

I thought of a lot of blah blah blah I could write, but the truth is actually quite simple. The Oscars have nothing to say to me because the mainstream Hollywood industry has nothing to say to me. I'm a woman over forty: where are my peers? Apart from Meryl Streep, whose consistently stellar abilities are taken for granted while people go into paroxysms of praise for male actors who take on any kind of variety in roles, older women have mostly been turning to television because film-makers are allergic to wrinkles on female bodies. In men, it's character -- of course (they're so distinguished). Hollywood prefers women skinny, young and stupid.

I'll vote with my feet.

Will it matter? Nah. They'll still get their coveted demographic of 18-25 males -- who will assume that that's what women are like (and presumably trust that all women go off on some kind of Logan's Run death trip after 30). Hey, there was a young man on one internet list I was on today arguing that women went into prostitution because they "liked sex". It's all about the 'pimps and 'hos', you know.

P.S. I tried to find an article on Older Women in Film I had read before at the Guardian and it came up blank. Fitting, eh?

Poking Around

The photo doesn't show it well enough, but there's the result of yesterday's attempt to do a very common thing: give a blood sample. It's been a normal part of life since I was a teenager. Phlebotomists vary greatly, but I've never had one as bad as this. Altogether, four needles of various sizes poked into my arm (the fourth by a different person over at Quest Labs, fortunately). The third one was the worst. She wasn't quite willing to give up immediately and poked around trying to find a vein.

I have big veins, very easy to see and feel. Yet she missed it. Three times. It's the poking around that gave me the swelling and the extra bruising. I had the heating pad on it yesterday, but maybe I'll put a cool pack on it to bring down the swelling.

The best phlebotomist I ever had was in Los Angeles. I can't remember his name because in my head he was always "Hatchet Man." He was nigh on painless every time, straight to the vein and done. But he had this horrific scar and dent in his forehead that looked like someone had buried a hatchet in his head. I was always too timid to ask about it, but it fascinated me. Maybe I should have asked, but it seemed rude. Whatever it was must have been terrible. Probably better I didn't ask.

UPDATE: less swelling, more bruising (fascinating, eh?)

Fiction/Non-Fiction

From the official Empire State Building site:

Narrating the tour is Tony, a fictional, but nonetheless authentic, native New Yorker born 50 years ago in Chelsea, an area of Manhattan not yet the hot, trendy neighborhood it is today. The tour is written from Tony’s point of view and is filled with his colorful, amusing and informative observations about his favorite city . . . and his favorite building.

Huh? I think I might like to be fictional yet authentic. Maybe I am -- who knows?

Stephen Fry in America

My hopes that Fry's visit to all 50 states for his documentary on this country would lead to 1) his no longer doing that quite terrible "Ammurrican" accent (leave it to your former partner, whose accent is superb) and 2) not portraying the nation as a circus of freaks, seem to be dashed by the teaser video at The Guardian. Despite his recognition that the vast expanses of the country assure a broad palette of differences, he sums up Americans as "very positive" but needing "a lot of encouragement" and the video highlights woodsy hunters in plaid, smearing themselves with deer dung, and colorful pagans in wild costumes at Samhain. Yep, Americans are wacky.

I had hoped that someone with Fry's intelligence would resist playing to the stereotypes, but who'd want to see a series on the States that suggests Americans differ as much from each other as they do from people in other countries? Apparently no one on BBC1. Sigh -- maybe the show will be better than the trailer, but I don't hold out much hope.

Repetition

What is it about repetition? My need to repeat things over and over? At least three times I repeat a thing! I like to blame genetics -- we did always run a joke into the ground when we were kids. There's a series of jokes one group of friends knows so well that we just give the punchlines ("Terrible!" "Dung!" "Tang!" "A stick!" although the order can vary).

I brought up the Crane quote three different times in the last twenty-four hours. I used an offhand comment from yesterday at least three times (or maybe four), the last time in a piece I sent off to an editor a little while ago (the Crane quote got in there, too -- amazing what you can cram into 500 words!). Slightly different nuances in each iteration -- maybe all the repetition is about trying to get it right. That's it -- it's just revision!

We're off to Miss Wendy's for Rosh Hashanah dinner tomorrow afternoon. We'll be stopping by Rein's to pick up the challah and looking forward to seeing some friends around the table.

The Latest

Oooh, lookit the purty colors! Yes, the continuing saga of my ankle -- how very dull. Well, according to the receptionist in the doctor's office, I have a heel spur.

Huh?

Well, yes, that makes sense and certainly explains the extensive bruising (not) as well as the persistent swelling (no, my leg is really not that fat normally). In any case, I have to call at exactly 8am tomorrow to get an appointment with the orthopedic doc. With luck I'll get in tomorrow -- if, that is, I can also get a copy of the x-rays to bring with me. The imaging place, however, says they cannot provide copies sooner than 24 hours after a request (made at about 4.30 this afternoon when my doctor finally called). It will be interesting to see what happens (by "interesting" of course, I mean painful, tedious and vexing).

Adding to the irritation, I found out that my essay on Gilliam's Tideland has been bounced from the anthology it was accepted for last year. So it goes.

Fabrications

I've decided the true story of my injury is very dull. I need suggestions of tales I might tell others, including my students whom I will be seeing tomorrow.

Any ideas?

The bruising is getting more colorful, as it tends to do. Will have to get another picture soon. Still no word on the x-rays, sigh.

Adding insult to injury: my essay on Tideland just got booted from the anthology it was supposed to appear in. Waah.

Publication: Book

No, not a book publication yet (although creeping to the end of the novel even now), but a very short play called "Book" because that is the central issue of the narrative. More a comedic sketch than a play, I suppose, it will appear in the next issue of Mused. Yep, the same folks who published "Bell" -- another short comic sketch (guess what the third one's called? go on, guess). I'll let you know when it's up, but I just got the acceptance this morning.

Enjoying my last full day at Domus Crispini -- although it may not be the last if Fay has her way. The flight tomorrow may be delayed -- we'll just have to wait and see. Hamilton has decided to take no chances, apparently assuming that her humans have gone for good. Now rather than hissing at me when I pet her, she has cozied up to me and was even rolling on the floor at my feet, purring, licking my hands, and asking to be stroked. She even decided to play with the little blue ball I threw for her.

I can't help wondering if this house is simply hostile to electronics. The WinBook has frozen twice three times already today, even kicking into check disk mode, which seems to have helped at least. I was really hoping to maybe finish the novel today, so these freezes are extra frustrating. Fingers crossed (again).

What Fresh Hell?

What could make the process of moving less pleasant? 90+ F degree weather (that's 30+ C) and humidity -- what is this, Houston?! Let's not forget thunderstorms, too. We moved some lighter stuff yesterday: musical instruments and dvds. Our new stove is in, though not the new fridge and our landlord was busy painting some of the chipped and peeled areas. Despite the climb to our third floor walk up, we found it cooler up there in our new aerie than in our squat house, so that portends well for that unimaginable time in the future when the move is done. The sparrows were hopping along the roof looking in at us with frank curiosity ("hey, new neighbors!"). I still don't know how it will be done, but somehow it will have to be.

Want to read about one of the plays I saw in London? The Guardian has a review up of Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy. Billington's right about the opening squashing the first speech, but it was quite a cornucopia of sights that had the audience riveted (even up amongst the gods where I was sitting). Kinnear clearly enjoyed himself thoroughly in the role(s, I suppose I ought to add). There was a weird inconsistency in register throughout, playing the gothic for humor, but how else to combine Caravaggio and camp? Gleeful mayhem all around. Kinnear's also going to be in the new Bond film, so more folks will see him soon (his dad would be proud).

Here's a review of the Midsummer Night's Dream we saw at the Globe. It's a bit harsh, but it does touch on my main problem: if Puck isn't magic, it doesn't come off. The rest of the cast worked well -- certainly the students saw it more like this review, but for me Michael Jibson might have made a better Bottom than Puck (although Paul Hunter did just fine in that role while eerily reminiscent physically of Chris Elliott). Puck should be fluid, androgynous, quicksilver and dangerous. Jibson looked far too mundane, weary even at times, and yes, irrationally, I thought his head too round. Sue me. I would have liked to have seen Adam Burton, who played Mustardseed, try the role. You expect the regals (Tom Mannion and Siobhan Redmond) to be great -- they were -- but too often the four lovers are little more than mooning cyphers. Not so here: Boot and Brandon made Demetrius and Lysander wildly passionate lovers, ready to erupt violently at the least provocation, and Nixon and Rogers brought a powerful physicality to the traditionally demure young women which matched them well. It was fun -- how can it not be? -- but I wanted a better Puck. Dean Lennox Kelly was good in the recent BBC version: you might recognize him as a saucy Shakespeare in one of the first Martha Jones episodes of Doctor Who.

How to Survive Moving

Don't do it...

The Jetsetter Returns

Actually I returned Sunday night, but a bit later than expected due to an extended stay in Toronto. Unlike Halifax (the last place Air Canada stranded me) there were at least restaurants open and a few shops to idle at when I was too tired to read. Apparently I looked sufficiently woebegone that the guy at customer service gave me a lunch voucher. "Oh," he said, "you came from London -- you must be tired." Can we say "duh"? Fortunately I had not quite finished the fourth book I had with me, so I was better off in that respect -- I had to resort to buying something in Halifax. There's not much in the airport bookstore milieu that appeals to me.

The rest of the journey was fine. There was the Australian woman who chewed her gum like cud on the Toronto-London leg, but as soon as dinner was over I put in my earplugs and put on my eye shades and went to sleep. She was frustrated trying to watch the movie because the video was not functioning well. On the return journey, the little monitors worked fine, however I didn't bother watching anything because a previous passenger had apparently broken off the earphone jack in the hole, so I couldn't get mine in. The flight attendant shrugged. Ah, service.

But things looked up as soon as I landed in Heathrow because Liz was there to meet me. It's always good to see a friendly face after a long journey. We were soon home to Chez Brooks with hugs all around and a nice cuppa. There was even time for a nap before picking up Sophie from school, which helped my jet lag considerably. A homey evening relaxing and watching TV, then up early and off to the station at Ealing Broadway for the train to Oxford. Along the way I spotted oodles of crows, some in their nests high in the trees, visible because the leaves were just beginning to come in; a kestrel flew over the tracks at one point, a pheasant strode through a field and a large brown hare sat up, watching the train go by. A magpie sailed over the train and later another one hopped along a garden fence, keeping pace with me as I trotted back to the train station.

It was a terrific conference with scholars both new and venerable examining modern culture appropriations of Anglo-Saxon culture. Heather O'Donoghue chaired my session which was an honor, although my co-presenter John Halbrooks of the University of South Alabama referred to our panel as the "American Ghetto" (we were the only presenters from the States). Nonetheless our panel was well attended and they laughed in the right places. Although I didn't get too many questions at the end, several people came up to me afterward and indicated their enjoyment of it, as well as their eagerness to seek out Buffini's play, Silence. Most had never heard of it, so I'm glad to get the word out. It feels as if Britain lags behind in popular culture scholarship -- some of the grad students in attendance mentioned that they found a great deal of resistance to the topics addressed at the conference. Perhaps the Oxford imprimatur will help batter down that resistance.

A quiet evening watching episodes of Drop the Dead Donkey was just right for the wind-down of a speedy weekend. Up at an ungodly hour in the morning and off to Heathrow -- such is the life of the busy academic. I was tempted in the duty-free to buy a bottle of Absolute Disco [pictured left] but decided to settle for some Cadbury Whole Nut. Thanks again to Brad and Liz and Sophie for giving me a home away from home.

That Kind of Day

But there are few moods that cannot be elevated by hearing (and seeing) the Dickies sing the Banana Splits theme.

Still no Recap

No time yet for a trip recap -- maybe tonight. Our departmental symposium is today and despite the name, it will be a chance to hear students read their work, which is a good thing, although it's been a headache for the planning committee (well, the part of the committee that was available for planning). Somehow it will all work out, right?

I got my tickets for the swift visit to London and Oxford next month. Not much time to do a lot, but I can see the Brookses and maybe sneak a little time to wander around Oxford during the conference.

Apropos of nothing, I post the neato poster Gene found of a sanctioned Hello Kitty event. Looks like a lark, eh?